Steel

The other night i was talking with Maghnus about narrative text and how i seem to be glued to it, while grouping/raiding to see how effective dreadscale greaves and other stoneskins including our divine aura are in combat. I know enabling narrative text in your tab will allow you to see stoneskin absorbing hits plus when you cure things and dispel things(with doom rays or castigation). But how would you go about setting up a chat tab or modifying a chat tab to show narrative but also when you block, parry, reposte, dodge, and when stoneskin fails? I have the feeling the stoneskin failure can only be shown as when YOU TAKE DAMAGE heading but I was wondering what other paladins do.

I also have ACT running virtually all the time but even with dual screens it is nice to have a chat tab that has some of the info in it. Would it also show when you have a group member use shield ally or intercept a hit? I was toying around with stoneskins a week or so back and had a dirge with his 13% stoneskin proc, the templer with his stoneskin proc on me(not sure on %), a mystic with proc increase, and a warlock with his proc increase, and a ranger for dps. The sheer amount of avoided hits/stoneskins was truely amazing on the parses.

Anybody that has some insight on this, please post as this stuff is always interesting to me, trying to understand how the mechanics of the game can be better roadmapped and make gear choices/ group make ups a little easier....:-)

Oizen

With so many things to modify your durability as a Paladin...

(IE: STA,AGI,Parry,Block,Mit,Resists,+DEF,Stoneskin procs,DA,Heal mods,etc.)

...and the simple fact that we're on the elite EQ2 tanker list, I hope this thread might mature into a list of mod priority for Paladin durability similar to what Mahgs is trying to do with Paladin DPS. If it gets some good input, hopefully we can stickey it.

Along these lines I've decided to rip into the +DEF modifier personally and try and determine it's worth on jewelry and the like?

The +DEF mod seems so sparsely available even when you go out of your way to pile on as much as you can find. I've been collecting stuff with +DEF and have like +20 or so strait +DEF mods from gear and was dueling some guildees for fun on Friday night and saw something intresting.

(I logged in to do some crafting in our guild house and randomly found a troop of folks duking it out upstairs in the dojo for bragging rights... next thing 'ya know the gauntlet was thrown... dunno why but folks like to fight the dorfadin. ROFL)

Without a parse running I noticed significantly better results after loading up on all the +DEF junk I'd been hoarding up to go testing with. I'd kicked some folks around the ring successfully so, thought I might mix it up for fun to see if I could tune up for even more punishing wins. Even at the loss of some nice procs or other higher abilities and DPS mods, the +DEF stuff seemed to make a pretty noticeable difference in my survivability only needing one maybe two wards and an occasional touchup for most duels. (Sword-n-Board with blocking mastery as well)

I've had very little time to play lately so Oi is still only 76 but, I had no problem dropping some knowledge on pretty much all level 80s even in my old EoF phatz.

(I still get worked by fuggin SKs and actually have to use stoneskins and LoH against Monks but, don't have much issue with anything else btw)

So, NEwayz, the DEF modifier really impressed me and I'm all kinds of curious about it now.

As for Stoneskin's worth:
I'm not sure anything gets better than even a single stoneskin for a tanker in a tough spot really and have always respec'ed to DA because I spend a lot of time in PU where healers can not be trusted to keep you off the floor. It's probably the best defensive mod in the game besides block... when you need more defense.

I figure stoneskin like this... if you are tanking, you can't get enough proced stoneskins. Just make sure to coordinate the castable stoneskins for maximum benifit. When you can easily tank and encounter without stoneskin then it's probably time to focus on other things.

Tharinor

One thing I've noticed is that Parry offers a very noticable difference as well. Try tanking some raid content with and without the Dirge's parry buff up.

I remember at 70 going into MMIS with a new dirge in the MT group one night, and I was getting beat on a lot more than usual, with the rest of the raid mostly the same as usual. About halfway through the zone, I realized he was not using Parry song and I had about 10-11% parry instead of 21-22% parry. Had him switch and things were back to normal.

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