Paladin Order

[Brimsurfer]

Post 3.0 which Paladin Order would be most effective? Thinking about rolling a Paladin protagonist.......some say Kind Wayfarer is way better than other orders, is that true?

 

Thanks

[boffmoffet]

I will say this, a dual wielding kind wayfarer with the two order specific talents is a walking dervish of healing and killing. They can replace Durance for all but the toughest fights for healing, allowing a greater variety of interesting party set ups in the campaign, even on POTD difficulty.

 

The Strange mercy talents probably has the highest healing potential of any ability in the game, with no cap on the number of times it can trigger and restore all but your beefiest companions to full health. Works well with dual wield or 2-handers.

 

The sword and the shepherd talent works better while dual wielding, as the healing from flames of devotion will activate twice, allowing it to serve as a full heal for surrounding front liners. The two order specific talents need to be supplemented with Lay on Hands so you can handle self heal as well. Keep in mind Lay on Hands is the only time your healing without doing damage, and its a heal over time, allowing you to return to the righteous slaughter quickly.

 

One downside to a Kind Wayfarer protagonist is it requires high might and perception values, lowering resolve, which for me is the most important player character attribute for scripted interactions. 

Edited March 8, 2016 by boffmoffet

[Madscientist]

I have suggested something like this here: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/85077-build-idea-the-damaging-healbot/

 

I have 2 questions:

- is the healing of the kind wayfarers talents dependent on the damage you deal with your FoD or killing blow?

- Does it scale with your level?

 

The usefulness of sword and shepard is reduced by the fact, that you start many combats with an FoD shot as initial strike, and at the start of combat you don´t need healing.

[boffmoffet]

Healing is not dependent on damage done, both talents scale. Sword and shepard is base 20 +7 every three levels after, strange mercy is base 35 +12 every three levels. At level 6 my sword and shepard heals 32 endurance per swing(64 total endurance), Strange mercy 56.

 

Sword and shepard only has reduced effectiveness if you blow the ability yourself at the top of combat which should be used to throw out sworn enemy. PC should always be set to support, only Pallegina should be set to aggressive to get her 20% haste at the top of combat, PC should be managed to save FoD for allies, LoH for yourself. If things are really bad you wanna save up your FoD for killing blows to combine the two. 

[Madscientist]

Thanks

 

I do not use the AI for abilities, they do only auto attacks when enemies are near. The only exception was Zahua, I don´t like to select torments reach for everyattack, even though this means he wastes stunning fist on enemies that are already stunned.

 

I use sworn enemy only for really strong enemies. Pallagina uses it as first stike because of her wrath of the 5 suns.

 

FoD with a strong ranged weapon (and maybe sneak attack) will be enough to destroy many targets, like some nasty casters.

The best battles are those where you do not need healing because enemies die very fast or because you can keep strong enemies CCed.

Killing as much as possible with the initial strike sounds better than waiting to use strong abilities until you really need healing.

This does not work always, but when it works it should be done.

[KDubya]

Back in 2.03 I thought Strange Mercies was good at level 2 and was still better than nothing at high levels. That was when it did not scale with level. Now at level 14 my Kind Wayfarer heals like 170 endurance with LoH and like 105 endurance in an AoE with Strange Mercies. It is really strong now.

 

It would be hard to choose something other than a Kind Wayfarer just based on how good Strange Mercies is.