....Paladins are tanky?

[Longknife]

Tankier than most, sure, but their ability to tank seems absolutely curbstomped by Fighters, to the point where I have to question why you would use a Paladin instead of a Fighter.

[Sleazebag]

Paladins make for really good off-tanks, and they do have slight advantages against singular, hard hitting targets such as bosses. It's weird because I remember reading that the designated flaw for paladins was going to be singular heavy hitters, but it really isn't the case in the finished game. 

 

Basically, use a fighter as your main tank, and a paladin or chanter as your off-tank. Both paladin and chanter can support your main tank at the same time as they take on the enemies your fighter can't engage. In normal and easy you don't really need an off-tank at all though, and you can finish hard without one too, but it'll be a bit tougher.

[falchen]

Why not use a paladin and a fighter?

 

Fighters are the best straightup tanks hands down but a paladin (or even a chanter) have other abilities with which to contribute.

[MasterPrudent]

My handle is MasterPrudent and I agree with this sentiment.

 

(People seem to really like Faith and Conviction but I think that abilties like Unbroken put the Fighter ahead.)

[gkathellar]

Yes, they are, so long as you go full tank with them. If you don't spec them properly for 100% tanking, yeah, they end up inferior, because every percent of a tank-paladin's ability not put into tanking is a wasted percent.

[Starthief]

Eh, Eder is a better tank than my paladin that I designed for tanking.  The paladin's an okayish offtank but pretty unexciting; I feel like I'd be better off with a tanky Chanter in that position.

[gkathellar]

Eh, Eder is a better tank than my paladin that I designed for tanking.  The paladin's an okayish offtank but pretty unexciting; I feel like I'd be better off with a tanky Chanter in that position.

 

The only possible explanation I can think of for this statement is that you don't actually know how to design a tank for PoE.

 

... which is totally reasonable. The stat system in this game can be depressingly opaque.

[Voss]

Why not use a paladin and a fighter?

 

Fighters are the best straightup tanks hands down but a paladin (or even a chanter) have other abilities with which to contribute.

The thing is, they don't really contribute. Paladin abilities are rather awful and lacking.

[Fun3z]

Accuracy and crit chance party wide, with on demand heal and other stuff is lacking? ok buddy.

 

I tried both at level 12 and I would take paladin tank over fighter any day if u run an single tank party.

 

Just my OPINION tho.

[illathid]

You can get ridiculous defenses with faith and conviction too.

[Noctaem]

From what I understand so far, Paladins can be used as tanks.  However, they have many abilities that revolve around last hitting which then grant massive amounts of endurance to everyone in the party within range. They also have accuracy boosts, healing and so on as others have said.  This makes them very very good melee warrior off-tanks imo.

 

Now if in order to make them competitive, you have to completely focus on tanking abilities, your odds of being able to properly trigger endurance granting stuff is going to be fairly limited.  You're sacrificing melee effectiveness for damage soaking.  So I feel that one of the more important reasons to have them in the party won't be efficiently achievable if you aren't focused on damage dealing.  The endurance you can return to your party via the paladin can be quite a big chunk per kill, something like 40 endurance with minimal investment to everyone within range.  It seems to me that the best use of the Paladin is to have them focus on damage dealing and let them be an extended melee reach combatant, using a Pike for example.  Stick them behind your tank, the fighter, and let them go to town while providing very solid benefits for anyone within range with minimal macroing (just make sure they last hit mobs).

 

Perhaps a middle ground could be found on easy and normal mode.

 

TL:DR Figthers are the best tanks because of their inherent abilities.  Some of the best Paladin abilities are much better suited to being an off-tank or damage focused melee combatant who stands behind the fighter offering support and damage in various forms.

[Starthief]

 

Eh, Eder is a better tank than my paladin that I designed for tanking.  The paladin's an okayish offtank but pretty unexciting; I feel like I'd be better off with a tanky Chanter in that position.

 

The only possible explanation I can think of for this statement is that you don't actually know how to design a tank for PoE.

 

... which is totally reasonable. The stat system in this game can be depressingly opaque.

 

 

Nah, the stats make sense when you put D&D out of your mind.  Maxed RES and PER and gave some CON.  Wearing heavy armor and going sword-and-board, just like Eder.

 

Eder had a headstart in XP and so is usually a level higher than my Paladin.

Also, I concentrated solely on engagement and defense stuff for Eder.  The Paladin has some party buffing abiltiies.

 

Still, it seems like Eder doesn't take significant damage from anything, where my Paladin will occasionally get beaten to half endurance.  It's possible that I have the stat bug on Eder, though last time I checked his defense numbers didn't seem unreasonable.

[Voss]

Accuracy and crit chance party wide, with on demand heal and other stuff is lacking? ok buddy.

Yes.  The accuracy is a bit nice, but that is really it.  It comes down to how combat in this game works- the emphasis is on killing things absolutely as fast as possible, and denying the enemy actions in the meantime.  With a couple overpowered exceptions, support in this game is a waste of seconds. Tank (or sometimes tanks) block off enemies, rest of the party burns them down, wizards/ciphers intersperse damage with action denial.  Doing anything else is an absolute waste of time.  Tanks are easily built to not need healing, and other than blocking paths, do too little to even need support.

 

This makes support oriented classes (priests, paladins and chanters [except the arrows chant]) a waste- they might as well be deleted from the game.

Edited April 2, 2015 by Voss

[Lasci]

Paladins are supporting tanks or damage dealers. They will not deal your highest damage or tank as well as your fighter or monk. They will tank better than your enchanter.

 

Paladins have auras (which support the party), a per encounter heal, a per encounter revive, and a mix of high defenses and decent offensive abilities depending on which order you're a part of. They aren't meant to be the end all be all of tanky or damaging classes -- they supplement the tankiness and damage of those classes. Yes, Eder can generally tank better. But can he heal? Can he revive? Can he give an increase in accuracy or crit chance? No.

 

Paladins aren't necessarily tanks. They're more of a tanky, damage-dealing, supportive front liner who can lean towards either damage or taking hits.

Edited April 2, 2015 by Lasci

[Odd Hermit]

Faith and Conviction seems to give +2 to PC Paladins defenses for each point in your Order's favored traits, and +1 to deflection as well. On top of the already high base bonus.

 

Paladin's abilities are support/healing/defensive mostly, which is better for a low accuracy /damage character.

 

Paladins can dispel and revive friendlies, and toss a substantial heal. They come with an aura which can be +3 DR or +6 accuracy depending on how you want to build your party/how many characters will be in aura range.

 

Fighters OTOH can attempt knockdowns with fairly poor accuracy if using heavy shield, and that's about it. Defender + Wary Defender are great early game bang for the buck sort of talents, but Paladins pull ahead quickly because they're dual purpose tank+support rather than just a tank.

 

Only thing Fighter has over them is higher engagement limit and a bit high deflection if we're talking non-PCs so not paladin getting bonuses to faith and conviction - since apparent cautious attack got a nerf. Fighter's have better accuracy and some CCs, but that won't matter if you're wearing a large shield that wrecks your accuracy anyway.

[dunehunter]

You can switch to one handed weapon to do CC, why using shield?

[Odd Hermit]

You can switch to one handed weapon to do CC, why using shield?

 

You can, but swapping does take time, the delay between swap -> knockdown means it's not a great defensive tool in a pinch. It also takes a weapon set away, and some players may swap between two different defensive sets(I did).

[dunehunter]

Many of the arguements above say that Paladin is a tank with a mix of offensive and supportive role, but truth is they don't have any offensive ability except flame of devotion, but you have to build them in a offensive way to make use of their per kill talents. If you build a fighter and a paladin both for DPS, I think figthers will be superior to pals. But in most case you don't need to build a DPS fighters since it's a team game and you have other class for DPS.

[Killyox]

Many of the arguements above say that Paladin is a tank with a mix of offensive and supportive role, but truth is they don't have any offensive ability except flame of devotion, but you have to build them in a offensive way to make use of their per kill talents. If you build a fighter and a paladin both for DPS, I think figthers will be superior to pals. But in most case you don't need to build a DPS fighters since it's a team game and you have other class for DPS.

Give them Lore and have them Fan of Flame + Shocking Grasp enemies - especially good with talents like "Scion of Flame" For some strange reason Shocking Grasp Scroll does ~2,5x more dmg than actual mage spell (mage spell is weake r than in BB) I had my Fighter Shocking Grasp for 110 dmg

[Noctaem]

Right the issue with Paladin is that it's not the best tank, it's not the best support class and it's not the best damage dealer.  So essentially the class must find a role in your party that mixes these things or sacrifices one to focus on the other two.  

 

Focusing on tanking means that you sacrifice, depending on difficulty and investment, support and damage.  If you sacrifice damage, all the abilities that trigger from last hitting something will basically never happen.  Let's face it, the rogue pumping out sneak attacks or the cipher spamming mindlance is going to be doing that!  So that leaves you the support role.  Lucky for the Paladin, they do have good options here.

 

Focusing on damage dealing means that you don't have a reliable tank on the front lines.  Depending on group composition and difficulty level, this might not even matter.  However if you need a tank, a fighter is just the logical choice.  Paladins instead can focus on damage and last hitting which grants multiple benefits to the entire party and the per encounter abilities / auras.  I like to believe that the best status effect you can give is "dead".  So imo, I would never build a Paladin as a tank, it's just counter productive for some of the best features of the class.

[Killyox]

 

You can switch to one handed weapon to do CC, why using shield?

 

You can, but swapping does take time, the delay between swap -> knockdown means it's not a great defensive tool in a pinch. It also takes a weapon set away, and some players may swap between two different defensive sets(I did).

 

My eder is 1h. He has 95 deflection without shield which van be boosted higher with Vigorous Defense. ~90 accuracy too. On hard Shield is not really needed. Tbh pure tank is not needed at all if you play around with good CC like stunned/paralyzed/ or debuffs like blind/terrified.

 

As for DPS melee make Rogue or Barb. I had my bar hit with Barbaric blow 6x 100+ all the mobs in the pack. Looked a bit silly when all 6 of them died instantly. Not too high deflection but with good armor + passives he can "tank' a lot.

Edited April 2, 2015 by Killyox

[pstone]

If you build a fighter and a paladin both for DPS, I think figthers will be superior to pals. But in most case you don't need to build a DPS fighters since it's a team game and you have other class for DPS.

 

True, but the paladin will increase DPS for the rest of the party: allies get +6% to hit, +5% to crit all the time - in a 6 char party, that should easily be enough to balance the scales. If you have 2 paladins, you can benefit from 2 auras at the same time (better DR AND better damage for the whole party)

Edited April 2, 2015 by pstone

[Odd Hermit]

Here's my level 3 PotD Paladin's Faith and Conviction Bonuses:

 

http://i.imgur.com/fFCIe3i.jpg

 

+8 deflection and +16 to all defenses.

 

And that's early in the game. Of course I'm picking all the dialogue choices that buff it but still.

 

 

Fighter just can't beat that IMO.

[MadDemiurg]

Max i think is going to be +13 deflection and +26 saves. Deflection bonus is not exactly stellar and can be matched by fighter's modals, but save bonus is pretty crazy. So palading is definitely better at tanking magic attacks, especially as a PC.

[Elerond]

Faith and Conviction seems to give +2 to PC Paladins defenses for each point in your Order's favored traits, and +1 to deflection as well. On top of the already high base bonus.

 

Paladin's abilities are support/healing/defensive mostly, which is better for a low accuracy /damage character.

 

Paladins can dispel and revive friendlies, and toss a substantial heal. They come with an aura which can be +3 DR or +6 accuracy depending on how you want to build your party/how many characters will be in aura range.

 

Fighters OTOH can attempt knockdowns with fairly poor accuracy if using heavy shield, and that's about it. Defender + Wary Defender are great early game bang for the buck sort of talents, but Paladins pull ahead quickly because they're dual purpose tank+support rather than just a tank.

 

Only thing Fighter has over them is higher engagement limit and a bit high deflection if we're talking non-PCs so not paladin getting bonuses to faith and conviction - since apparent cautious attack got a nerf. Fighter's have better accuracy and some CCs, but that won't matter if you're wearing a large shield that wrecks your accuracy anyway.

 

In end game you get superb small shield that gives +5 to all deferences, which means that difference between deflection bonus with it and large shield is only 3 points. Fighter have modal that gives +10 deflection bonus to all your party members which is sometimes nice. Also fighter can slash melee damage quite reliably.

 

But anyways Fighters, Paladins and Chanters are best classes for tanking in the game. You can build them to have 120-140 deflection by their own and their other defenses you can build up to be about 100. 

 

Fighter has ability to engage more opponents than any other class and their disengagement attacks hit more reliably and usually with more damage than what Paladins and Chanters. They can offer little area support with one of their modal abilities. They also per encounter ability to knockdown enemies, which may come handy depending on your party composition.

 

Paladins have reliable support auras, they have burst damage in form of Flames of Devotion, they have ability suppress negative effects that your party members suffer and they have healing ability that can be useful depending on your party composition.

 

Chanters auras aren't as instantaneous as Paladins, but they have much more variety in them, and even though they don't have similar abilities as fighters and paladins their chant build up ability to cast invocations which have nice summon and foe only AoEs, which forgives quite well their lower melee capability.

 

If you have all three in your party you have quite nasty front line fighting (stopping) force.