rhesonance's Paladin Tanking Guide

As someone who has made a Cleric, after making a Paladin, I see a lot of Paladins not tanking correctly. This either a). makes your cleric very cranky or b). wipes your party. Do not underestimate your role in a party. Don't think "Oh, I'll just stand there and be a meat shield, clerics will heal me, damagers will do their damage, easy peasy." NO. As a lurer, you lead your party and you decide the risk you make your party face.

SKILLS


-Required Skills-

Provoke MAX - What use are you as a tank if you can't hold aggro? You must max this. Any lower and you risk your party members "stealing" aggro from you.

Transference Lv1[or higher] - A Paladin with Transference up is near indestructible. Heal yourself every time you do damage.

Perseverance Lv1 [or higher]– Lowers damage by 30%, self-explanatory.

Divine Ward MAX – COMPLETE skill immunity. VERY useful for boss fights where the boss uses painful skills.

Judgment Lv1 [or higher]– A 4m AoE that silences all mobs it hits. A Paladin’s weakness is magic defense, so make it so things can’t cast, even if for a few seconds. Combos VERY nicely with Transference. Full heal in most cases.

Reflect Blow Lv1 - COMPLETELY blocks and then REFLECTS the very next attack on you. Self-explanatory.


-Suggested Skills-

Vanguard MAX – Increases PDEF/MDEF. Self-explanatory. Only get this if you plan on doing dungeons from Lost Mines Elite and BELOW. Afterwards this skill is practically worthless.

Challenge Lv1 [or higher]- High-ish threat skill. Use it to gain aggro on stray mobs while Provoke is on cool down.

Onslaught Lv1 – Grants all normal attacks splash damage. Combos VERY nicely with Transference.

Defiance Lv1 – Grants extra threat. Useful for when you have over-geared damage dealers in your party for boss fights.

Aegis Lv1 [or higher] – Drastically increases your defense and grants a passive heal. Self-explanatory.

Stronghold Lv1 – Has a 5% chance to decrease the damage on you by 10%. (Any higher than this is not suggested unless you have a lot of extra skill points as it scales horribly)

Blades of Aika Lv1 – Basically a smaller, but stronger, version of Shadow Fall centered on you.


-Useless Skills-

Shield Smash [higher than lv1] – Main use is for stun, damage increase is almost unnoticeable. Waste of skill points and mana.

Recover – It is difficult to heal yourself with a 2s casting time skill mid-fight. That’s the cleric’s job.

Enrage – Possibly good in theory, but it seems to be not working correctly.

Benediction – Horrible bonuses compared to extra skill points used.



GEAR

-Armor-

To understand how to gear yourself, you have to understand how defense works, and luckily, it’s simple. 8 defense is 1 damage lowered; 800 defense will lower all damage by 100, 2400 will lower by 300, etc.
With that said, it’s not very significant. You should always get as much defense as you can, of course, but you should keep a lookout for damage resistances versus different races depending on the current dungeon you need to do (demons in Zantorian Citadel, human in Lost Mines, etc). Also, highly upgraded gear has HP/MP bonuses as well as raw damage reduction, so in some cases, highly upgraded lower tier gears may be better than higher tier gear despite having less PDEF/MDEF.

-Weapon-

Ironically, the thing that will help make you a better tank more is not your armor, but your weapon. Your value in a party is your ability to hold aggression from enemies. You will hold aggro a lot better if you’re doing more damage. Look for Threat, PATK, Skill Attack, Crit Rate, PCrit Rate and Hit Rate bonuses on your weapon.



WHAT TO DO

First and foremost, you must familiarize yourself with the dungeon you are going to run. If you’ve never run a certain dungeon before, ask someone else who is more experienced in the party to tell you where the different mobs are or look up and see if you can find a map online.

RULE 1: Do not aggro more than you feel comfortable tanking. This is usually 2-3 mobs max if you are doing dungeons of your own level.

RULE 2: Double Tap. After you’ve lured a few monsters away from a group, Provoke and then Judgment right afterwards. Judgment is a very high threat skill in of itself, if you use both Provoke and Judgment right after, you will almost never lose aggro.

RULE 3: Use Perseverance and Reflect Blow EVERY TIME the cool down is over. This will make you a lot more durable as well as make the Cleric’s job MUCH easier.



TIPS

If you ever accidently lure too many, tell your party to stop attacking, while you gain all the aggro and run away as fast as you can. This will cause all mobs to reset to their initial positions. This only works if EVERYONE in the party stops everything they are doing.

You can also abuse the previous strategy to lure monsters when some are melee and some are long ranged. The best application of this will probably be in Lorik’s room in Lost Mines. Lorik, Watcher Vilander and Archmage Sedin are all standing in the same room and it can be quite difficult to lure just one. You can run into all 3 of them, then run away right afterwards. What will happen is, since Vilander and Sedin are long ranged, they are at a further distance away from you, while Lorik will be following you closely to attack. This makes it so you can run outside the aggro range of Vilander and Sedin very easily and cause you to just have Lorik left over.

Transference + Judgment/Onslaught are the best combo ever if you’re dealing with a large mob.

If you are unsure of a boss fight you can cast Divine Ward and wait 4 minutes for the skill to be off cool down so you can recast right after your first Ward wears off.

If you are ever being lazy and just running through a dungeon, you must lead the party as you are most likely the only one who can take all the random hits that come with running through large groups of mobs. Make sure everyone in your party is ready for the run and to countdown before you start. This would be a good time to cast Aegis/Pran Buffs. Transference + Judgment are very useful for running, as they both have no cast time. If the mobs wear you down, just pop off one of these combos and you’ll be at full HP again.

When using your skills with auto attack on, sometimes your character may “fail” to cast to skill and just keep on continuing. You can get around this in one of two ways. You can either turn off auto attack, or you can HOLD your skill hotkeys as opposed to just pressing them. I personally prefer the second option.






Feel free to post your own tips! Let's make sure no more of our parties fail because of crappy tanks.



Edit: Added note on Vanguard
Last edited by rhesonance on Fri Jun 18, 2010 8:59 am, edited 2 times in total.
~Feonir~

Paladin - Vindica <Vanguard>
Warlock - Rhesonance <SkyLore>
Cleric - Rheso <SkyLore>




***All credit goes to Rhesonance***