NANEEJE

EDIT: The purpose of this post is to guide a few Pallies who are struggling to find their niche after they get their epic and are trying to get a raid force position. If your an 80 Paladin and doing 800 points of damage per fight, and you have your epic? Kind of failing there. So let's help you get that up.

There is a lot of talk about using the heal crit line, and agility end line abilities.
I want to share with you my experience in trying different specs out and wondering which works best for me.
First of all, I have ditched Divine Aura for all TSO/ROK instances. Divine Aura is a self spell only helping yourself out and unfortunately there are a lot of major AOE's going in in TSO/rok, even Maiden's has it's share of frontal or group damaging aoe's.

I found it best to try out your specs in the wastes of the Skyfire mountains.
1. get the writs for all 4 of the trash in skyfire, skyfire drakes/ashfire drakes/gnawing devourers/gnashing devourers.
2. get a collapsable fishing pole, and fishing skill 400. The lava in skyfire yields Magma fish which is used in your raid food/drinks. These sell for 3gold each on AB. fishing for 200 takes literally 20 minutes in 5 pools of magma . (approach lava pool, kill the magma protector, fish, move on).
3. when you respec it goes from like free/1gold, 1p, 10p, but never goes higher then 10pp.
When you are doing your writs for guild status out there, the trash drops gear that sells for 15-25 gold each, and you can pick up about 10 peices each run, plus your fish, plus other loot, so you wiped out the cost of your 10pp respec out in a hurry. I currently have about 120pp just from skyfire writ/loot/fishing runs.

Now, after you respec, get your Advanced combat tracker running. Go out there, run one set of writs, in that spec, (whether you are in offensive or defensive, 1hr, or 2hr, or whatever you do, just run it as solo content).
Take a picture of your act , go to your out put damage and take a screen shot, save it in paint, put it on your desktop and label it "dps/heal spec" . zone out, get new writs, THEN RUN IT AGAIN, this time, try to get at least two mobs on you, forcing you to heal yourself, and try to stay alive.
Best part is, if you die, noone saw that
THen zone out, save your screen shot again, now compare the two.

ONce you do that, go back and respec into tank spec, ditch your divine aura and try the lance or vice versa, and do it all over again, took me like 4.5 hours to do this, but when i was done, i had 800 magma fish, all selling the next day, making me 24pp.

What I noticed was the difference in heal crit, and the difference in the Lance , it does good damage, and the debuff does not go away so fast. I noticed the dps/length of fights with Lance was significantly lower, but I also realize the importance of Divine Aura on tough mobs in tough zones. I have discussed this often with my healers and they agree to take the debuff line and let them do their fricking job.
Noticable differences. Trash on epic weapon, and T2 set of legendary plus , void darknight set, and some good jewelry yields me about 1.3k to 4k really, chain pulling, Depending on what was up. But I am geared well enough and have 180 points AA, so i have a lot of the bonuses for survivability.
If you do this... and you really care about being a decent Paladin, you will find your best spec for the way you play.
Maghnus will tell you all day your heal crits are a definite plus. But what do you really notice from it. My heal crit is 24% and I love it. My healers know I will cast group heals to get group from 80% to 100% and if we all are down, their group heals with my group heals do well together. IF you don't agree with Lance? try it out. Dont just say "what is the best spec for tanking" How the hell is Boli supposed to know if you even use your group heals, if you have them mastered or apprentice 1.
So, when you ask what spec you should be using, please, inform them of your play style, tanking/self healing, tanking using divine aura, or tanking/lance, they can give you some awesome advice on what TSO lines to take and paladin lines based on your playstyle.

With that said.. get out to Skyfire, find out how you do, can you only hit one at at time because you get smacked to 25% from one skyfire wyrm? Well, good luck, I currently get smacked , and quickly am back to 100% without self heals, just from procs/regens. (single mobs). You have lots to look forward to, and you will just keep growing no doubt. If your bored with your pally, and have never tried the agility line, give it a chance, just the porting ability in Joust is fun in itself on the pull

Jeal

you're nuts

Nybo

Good sized write up. I hope some paladins will benefit from it. I especially like the tips on plat farming and fishing for magma fish. However, the entire heal spec idea is not going to get a Paladin in to a raid. Honestly, no raid guild that I have ever seen has cared about a heal spec'd paladin. Holding Agro and not screwing up strats in the only things important for a paladin in a raid. You're not there to heal, so why bother with a heal spec. DPS is great, but is only secondary to true tanking skills.

I'm not saying what you posted isn't helpful, I just don't think its neccessary to go through all those steps. There are plenty of hints and tips in various threads in the paladin forums of this site.

My advice: 1) Read up of what the more experienced and talented paladins on this site have to say. 2) Do group instances, learn how to pull, keep agro, strategically use your taunts & cures around all the shit that TSO throws at you and if you need lessons in healing yourself in tough spots, bring 1 healer with you to Palace of Ferzhul or Guk: Outer Cooridors.

Artur

Well My guild is just starting to riad with a full force, and Im MT. I dont seem to have much problems, though granted im on a PvP server and got a PvP breast plate thats close to the Void raid gear BP. on top of that I was VP flagged from a previous guild and bought my hroshkar update for 100 plat and thus have my mythical.

I am however the only one in our raid with a mythical AM but it seems to help. Gear wise theres ALOT of good gear in Shard of hate, and for a new guild starting out, making SoH runs weekly going just after the first 2 named and trash will give yas lots of good gear and Masters.

I see alot of Pallies that dont concentrate on thier Avoidance and specifically BLOCK. they need too, with my current gear, self buffed im 61.4% mit, 63.7 avoidance and thats with the first tier shard armor my PvP BP, and a Savage Wall I got loot rights on last night from another guild. Before that my Avoidance was 61.4% like my mit with deepwater barriar, an excellent MT shield for starting out.

DA imo is needed, cause there are times when healers mess up and time things wrong, get stunned at bad times, or get knocked out of range and that DA has saved my arse. in instances Ive survived a full wipe of group from Aoes, by popping my DA, and rezing my healers and made full comebacks and wins simply because of it.

I dont have 180 AAs yet, only 167, so i have a ways to go, and I dont use Heal line because my healers are the ones that do the heals, however I have found my group heal does help at times and could see usefulness of crits i guess, however the STA line and full STR line are just too important and maximizing HPs and melee/spell damage crits help me hold aggro.

Everyones different I guess, But i survive and keep things going when lesser tanks would fail.

NANEEJE

Please remember there is a point from going from master crafted level 72 no good weapons, to vp raiding with mythical. I seem to be running into a lot of those people and i just wanted to help get them to the point where they will understand what you guys are posting as vp raiders. It's not easy getting through vp now as a guild force without their mythicals. We are progressing, but slow. There are a lot of folks just going from 80 and wondering how to get to that point.
This should help them get to understand the difference in healing/dps'ing, and divine aura and lance. OR whatever they decide on. The part of farming skyfire is not posted anywhere, and it really is a great training ground, better then training dummies, until you understand what survivability really is.
Just trying to help.

Wurm

If a level 80 Paladin isn't wearing at least level 77 Mastercrafted, there is something wrong with them. And 800 DPS, with an epic? LOL they need to reroll.

After tonight's shard run (when I get home from work) I'll be in a complete set of T1 shard armor and will start working on my T2. Also not a hard thing to do, considering the amount of easy TSO instances, it just takes time and effort.

My main weapon is the Jade Reaver, with it I average 990 DPS in defensive stance. Still working on fucking froglok faction to get my epic, and since I refuse to buy my mystical I guess I won't have one. Not that I'm worried about it. I'm a damn good tank regardless.

Skyfire is a fun zone I go there on a daily basis to farm devourer teeth (since the rare one sells for 10 plat on my server) and names since they drop chests with items worth at least 17 gold to the vendor. I also farm nodes.

With every upgrade to my gear the mobs up there get easier and easier. I find taking on 2 to 3 ^ yellow isn't much of a problem with T1.

Nice tips, much of which are commonsense.

Vulkan

I disagree that they need to reroll.. I believe they just need to be pointed in the right direction.. If they'd just reroll they'll just get another class they're not playing well..

The main issue is tho.. do those paladins even read these forums?

Wurm

If they did the "hard work" to get their epic (note the quotation marks please)... Then they better know how to do better than 800 DPS with it. If not... they should roll something else.

And no, unfortunately I doubt that they do.

NANEEJE

Sign Tried to help, I will quietly go back to learning how to be a better me.

The two gentlemen i tried to help.. please let me know if you read this so i know it wasn't a complete waste of time?
Show me a little love at least

Wurm

No need for the

Its a good post.