Needing Help With Deciding How to Build my Paladin

[Creative]

I'm struggling with deciding which route to go down with my Paladin. I don't have access to the beta, I'm just trying to be prepared and have an idea of what I'm going to do with my main character once the game releases. 

 

So with that, the plan I have in mind is to main a 2handed greatsword Paladin. I quite like the idea of dealing a large amount of damage on the frontline, by being either an offtank or maintank, whilst supporting everybody with aura's, a bit of healing and such. Primarily though the idea is to be doing large amounts of damage.

 

A few questions I have;

Is it possible to main tank with a 2hander? Is it viable? I'm undecided on what kind of party composition I want. I don't know whether I can make my character the main tank, like I described, whilst being able to dish out a lot of damage, or if I should bring in an actual dedicated tank so that I can focus more on dealing damage.

 

What subclass should I pick? I typically like to play 'good' characters, trying to help/fix and save everybody. I was reading about bleak walkers, they sound fun and seem to fit what I want, but what I don't like is it looks like I'd have to play a general 'bad' character to fit how they're suppose to be played. Is it true that if I go against the theme of the subclass, I get penalised? Can I not play a bleak walker as a more positive character without the game punishing me?

 

What multiclass should I go? This is something I'm really struggling with. If I can maintank with a 2hander, then I'm possibly thinking of making my party composition something similar to;

 

Me as main tank,

An offtank/melee dps

A healer/cc

And a mix of mostly damage and some support for the last two picks

 

But if tanking with a 2hander isn't recommended, then I'll take the offtank/melee dps/support role

 

So I'm trying to figure out what multiclass would fit well with what I have in mind. I've heard priest might work well? I don't know how well they'll fit with my idea of being able to deal lots of damage, or what subclass to pick. Would that turn me into more of a support and less damage? Maybe fighter? I don't like the idea of specialising and limiting myself to one type of weapon through the game though. Hmm, I don't know. I should say I'm planning to play on the second hardest difficulty (I don't like the idea of getting stuck and struggling with everything without the ability to lower the difficulty and not having to start the game again)

 

So really I'm just after any advice right now with trying to figure out what path to choose. Do you guys have any advice to offer? Would be very much appreciated!

Edited April 24, 2018 by Creative

[KDubya]

I'd wait until we see the full ability tree to see what we lose when we go multiclass. The high level abilities might be good enough that losing them is not worth it.

 

Paladins and Priests penalize you when you act contrary to their beliefs, so your Bleak Walker needs to be Cruel and Aggressive or at a minimum avoid any Diplomatic or Benevolent actions (I think that's what they are) You're not a bad guy just a brutally honest, tough love sort who knows that violence solves all problems and that peace is achieved through strength.

 

All the Paladin orders are pretty good, better to pick the one that best fits your roleplay and run with that.

[Yosharian]

> is it possible to main tank with a 2-hander

 

A shield brings a sizeable deflection bonus (less likely to get hit/crit) and whatever special abilities the shield possesses, which, lategame, can be extremely powerful.  (obviously that's an unknown at this point)

 

Also, some Paladin subclasses (think of them as specialisms), and some subclasses from other classes, can provide bonuses when you use a shield.

 

It's possible to tank without one, but a shield is always better from a defensive point of view.  The harder the difficulty level, the more important these defenses become; it's never necessary, but it might be important depending on your skill level.

 

> Is it viable?

 

Depends on the difficulty level, your skill level, your character's level, and the equipment you carry.

 

Also some abilities, like the Goldpact Knight's gold armor effect, will make you a bit tankier regardless of whether you're carrying a shield or not, so you can definitely still be tanky without a shield.

 

> I don't know whether I can make my character the main tank, like I described, whilst being able to dish out a lot of damage, or if I should bring in an actual dedicated tank so that I can focus more on dealing damage.

 

You can definitely fulfil both of these roles, but you won't be as powerful as a character focused solely on one or the other.  You'll have to decide whether you want to bridge these roles with your main character, or specialise.

 

> Can I not play a bleak walker as a more positive character without the game punishing me?

 

Yes, but you will suffer some slight Deflection / saving throw penalties if you stray from the Bleak Walker's core ethos.

 

Favored: Aggressive, Cruel

Disfavored: Diplomatic Benevolent

 

> What multiclass should I go?

 

Too hard to say for sure right now, there isn't a 'you should definitely be this' because we don't know all the abilities and the multi-class combinations offer too wide a variety.  Best thing to do is keep watching the character build forums as the game releases, and see what multiclass combinations tickle your fancy.

 

That said, I'll offer a very quick summary of what each multiclass combo (Paladin + X) would give you:

 

Barbarian: damage, attack speed

Chanter: support abilities, flexible casting

Cipher: damage, flexible casting

Druid: not recommended, Druids are best when using Shapeshift, which you don't want

Fighter: tankiness, damage, attack speed (doesn't have to specialize in one weapon type, can still be a potent class without that)

Monk: tankiness, damage, attack speed

Priest: support abilities, combat buffs

Ranger: damage, pet that can grant tankiness if you take the 'Stalker' subclass

Rogue: damage damage damage, escape/repositioning, disabling attacks

Wizard: combat buffs, nuker casting

 

That's mostly what you'll get from multiclass combos although obviously I won't have covered every single ability.

[dunehunter]

The question of if you can tank with 2h weapon can be divided into two sub-question:

 

1. is your character tanky enough to not be killed by multiple enemy.

 

2. will enemy stick to him instead of disengage and seek his teammate.

 

For question 1. Greatsword might not be an ideal weapon because it doesn't gives u more deflection. Staff might be a better choice, currently staff modal gives +20 deflection which is equally powerful to sword/shield style. 

 

For question 2. I'm not too sure about how enemy AI is designed. But I think if you play an Unbroken, enemy will stick to your character forever because the stronger disengagement attack. So it means your damage affect how well you can prevent enemy from disengagement, which means 2h weapon > 1h weapon on this aspect.

Edited April 25, 2018 by dunehunter

[Boeroer]

In my beta-experience they also stick like flies on sh*t if you use an Unbroken with a heavy one hander (sabre, sword, battle axe and so on) and a shield. The shield gives an extra engagement slot that you won't have with a quarterstaff. You can then use Cleavin Stane instead of Defender.  And the block modal of medium shields is pretty useful when surrounded.

 

But the quarterstaff is a nice variant - if you use Defender Stance the additional engagement slot from a shield isn't that important anymore and the disengagement attacks will surely hurt even more.

 

Now I want to try an Unbroken/Wizard with Concelhaut's Staff... hrmpf.  Look what you did!

[Ascaloth]

If it's a 'good', damage-dealing, healing Paladin you want, I would think that Kind Wayfarer fits the bill perfectly.

 

IIRC the favoured dispositions of Kind Wayfarers are Benevolent/Passionate, which fits the 'good' part. And like the Bleak Walkers' Black Flames, Kind Wayfarers have White Flames as an upgrade to their FoD, so that's the 'damage-dealing' portion. True, it's not as good as Black Flames in that regard, but it also heals party members; thus the 'healing'.

 

I'm thinking of going Kind Wayfarers/Unbroken as the Watcher for my first 'all Hirelings' playthrough, myself. She would be the main tank protecting the squishies at the back, and can do respectable damage herself, but her true role would be as combat support for the Devoted/Berserker melee DPS specialist of the party.

[Creative]

Some great answers, thanks guys! Is it true the penalties for Paladin subclasses are gone now? That was something I was having trouble with as most of the choices prevented or penalised me from what I wanted to do, but if that's the case it makes my choice much easier now.

 

Another question I have for you beta players. Just how hard is Path of the Damned? Or even, how much of a challenge is Veteran? I know it's subjective and it's going to vary from person to person. For me, I'm looking for a challenge, but I don't want to be in a situation where I'm stuck and am get frustrated with most fights, and I have no option of lowering the difficulty without starting again. Which is why I'm thinking of going the latter, but I also don't want it to be a steamroll. 

 

Also, I didn't play the first game too much. Though I keep hearing that wearing heavy armour gave a big penalty. Is it the same for PoE2? Would it be ill-advised to wear heavy armour as a melee dps/offtank? I like the idea of wearing heavy armour, though not so much if it's going to reduce the amount of damage I deal.

Edited April 25, 2018 by Creative

[Ciphys]

Another defensive variant is using dual hatchets instead of a shield (each gives 3 melee deflection), or a even more defensive variant, 1 hatchet 1 dagger. The hatchet modal reduces the targets accuracy by 10, and the dagger modal gives you an additional 10 melee deflection(both modals reduces your damage by 25%, however).

This effectively gives you 23 "effective" deflection against a single target melee, 13 against melee targets you have not hit... but 0 deflection against ranged/spells that target deflection(unless you hit them with the axe). What you gain however, is the massive recovery reduction that is offered by dual-wielding (-30% default, -20% from the talent). The big reduction in recovery causes them to be able to wield the heaviest Armour available without feeling too "sluggish", so I tend to run this setup on a tanks that can provide some support/utility so he can still quickly assist allies.

The low damage output of the weapons might cause those type of tanks to be a bit less "sticky", as Boeroer mentioned(although I have not had any problems with that so far for the party setups I have been playing). So multiclassing with unbroken might help a bit with that. 
Are disengagement attacks full attacks or just primary? Have not really looked into that. 

[Madscientist]

If you want to be good, paladin, 2h and tanky, I was thinking about a kind wayfarer/monk who fights with a quarterstaff.

 

Kind wayfarer is the obvious choice if you want a classical good paladin.

Game mechanics wise if you want a tank, use shieldbearer if you use a shield or goldpact knight otherwise.

Quarterstaff would fit to a monk ( RP wise, in PoE no class is connected with a specific weapon, except monk+fist maybe), it has the +defense modal and if it is like PoE1, monks have abilities that makes them tougher if they have more wounds.

A paladin/monk with a staff might not be the best tank or the best damage dealer, but it may be above average in both things.

 

For the ultimate tank I would multi class a shieldbearer paladin with either unbroken fighter, wizard or priest of wael. Those casters have lots of self buffs.

 

I have not played PotD, In PoE1 veteran was very easy except dragons and archmages maybe.

Edited April 25, 2018 by Madscientist

[dunehunter]

Some great answers, thanks guys! Is it true the penalties for Paladin subclasses are gone now? That was something I was having trouble with as most of the choices prevented or penalised me from what I wanted to do, but if that's the case it makes my choice much easier now.

 

Another question I have for you beta players. Just how hard is Path of the Damned? Or even, how much of a challenge is Veteran? I know it's subjective and it's going to vary from person to person. For me, I'm looking for a challenge, but I don't want to be in a situation where I'm stuck and am get frustrated with most fights, and I have no option of lowering the difficulty without starting again. Which is why I'm thinking of going the latter, but I also don't want it to be a steamroll. 

 

Also, I didn't play the first game too much. Though I keep hearing that wearing heavy armour gave a big penalty. Is it the same for PoE2? Would it be ill-advised to wear heavy armour as a melee dps/offtank? I like the idea of wearing heavy armour, though not so much if it's going to reduce the amount of damage I deal.

 

It depends on how good is your build. I rolled a lvl 8 Devoted/Bleakwalker, with fine plate armor + dw fine hatchets. I slaughterred every mobs in the beta, and I'm on PoTD difficulty. I'd say if you use some unopitmized build, it might be even hard on veteran. Anyway some abilities are not very balanced right now so i think it is pretty pointless to talk about how hard the game is right now.

Edited April 25, 2018 by dunehunter

[KDubya]

With the current recovery penalty on heavy armor I'd only use heavy armor if I was dual wielding. Unless I cared nothing for damage output.

 

Two handers or sword and shield is just too slow with heavy armor, better to go naked and have a decent action speed. Keep your survivability up by having a good deflection via weapon modals like dagger, hatchet or quarterstaff, paladin's deep faith or illusion spells from Trickster, Wael priest or wizard.

 

A Rogue/Paladin - Trickster/Goldpact is surprisingly tanky due to the illusion spells, armor from gilded enmity, and escape. Also has some interesting Rogue powers for more burst damage.

 

The most powerful melee I've run in beta (not including any broken cleave cheese) was the "Carbide Chainsaw" - a Gold Pact Paladin/Berserker dual wielding dagger and hatchet and wearing full plate. With the +4 armor from gilded, tough skin and plate armor he had a massive armor rating of like 15, multiple boosts on kill, carnage, frenzy and Flames of Devotion. Bleak Walker does well here as well. Kind Wayfarer not as well as the confusion causes your heal from white flames to heal enemies.

[Creative]

Does Heavy Armour really make that much of a difference regarding damage? Having my frontline Paladin wear no armour/cloth armour seems like such a dumb thing to do, especially from a lore perspective. In my opinion Paladins should be wearing big bulky badass looking armour! Not pieces of cloth... 

[Boeroer]

Yes, it makes a huge difference. +50% recovery makes you deal 1/3 less damage (quite oversimplified, but still).

[Stargazer55]

So dual wielding would be preferable ... or just light/no armor?

[Boeroer]

For pure dps? Both.

[Creative]

That seems like such a strange design choice... I get that being in bulky armour would make you less maneuverable, meaning not being able to attack as fast. That makes sense, but is the goal really for anyone whose focus is melee damage, at the hardest difficulties, to be nekkid or in cloth armour? That seems really weird to me. I guess it's a min-max thing, and you don't have to follow it. But when it seems to make such a huge difference... I've just not really paid much attention to that system before.

Edited April 26, 2018 by Creative

[KDubya]

Another issue with armor is that since they buffed penetration armor doesn't do a whole lot to help you.

 

Basic weapons have 7 penetration which makes light armor at 5 AR useless and makes medium armor at 7 AR only good for stopping over penetration attacks. Even heavy armor loses to armor piercing weapons and comes at an expensive -50% speed.

 

Basically unless you can get some extra AR to add to your heavy armor you might as well go naked. You could even trade 6 points of dex for con getting you +30% hit points to offset the +30% damage from over penetration while suffering -18% attack speed compared to the -35% attack speed malus of medium armor.

 

Think of more of a renaissance era pirate/musketeer than a medieval knight.

[Yosharian]

Another issue with armor is that since they buffed penetration armor doesn't do a whole lot to help you.

 

Basic weapons have 7 penetration which makes light armor at 5 AR useless and makes medium armor at 7 AR only good for stopping over penetration attacks. Even heavy armor loses to armor piercing weapons and comes at an expensive -50% speed.

 

Basically unless you can get some extra AR to add to your heavy armor you might as well go naked. You could even trade 6 points of dex for con getting you +30% hit points to offset the +30% damage from over penetration while suffering -18% attack speed compared to the -35% attack speed malus of medium armor.

 

Think of more of a renaissance era pirate/musketeer than a medieval knight.

 

What about the consequences of overpenetration on incoming attacks for someone who forgoes light armor for cloth?

 

I'm aware you guys have done the math on this already but I still don't fully understand it

Edited April 26, 2018 by Yosharian

[Boeroer]

Yes, there are certain encounters/enemies where putting on a light/medium/heavy armor would make total sense.

 

But first of all a new players can't know what's coming and you can't change armor during battle.

 

And secondly: do you want to change armors all the time in the first place?

 

I hate that. And so for me it's either "stack the heck out of AR" or "go with 0 recovery penalty". In PoE every type of armor made some sense because DR always got substracted from incoming damage. In Deadfire it may be that you suffer a recovery penalty while your AR doesn't help at all.

Edited April 26, 2018 by Boeroer

[dunehunter]

I think we shouldn't completely judge armor rate by weapon penetration. One important thing to be noted is the enemy type we face has big range. And there are only part of them use weapons. And there are a lot enemies that has natural weapons. If we assume that these enemies has low penetration, then armor is still useful in these cases.

[Boeroer]

As I said: how do you know it will be useful for the next encounter? Do you sneak up and then change armor after inspecting the enemy? What if you haven't met those before.

 

This all sounds rather meh.

[Urthor]

ha I thought they were going to fix the 0% or 100% binary armor choices for PoE1, instead they've doubled down on it 

[KDubya]

Heavy armor is definitely worth it if you have extra AR due to talents.

 

A GoldPact gets +4 AR from Gilded Enmity, add in the +2 AR when damaged ability, triumphant defense or whatever its called and you're sitting at 15 AR with normal plate. This guy will be taking minimal damage from most everything.

 

A Berserker gets +2 AR from frenzy and another +1 from thick skin. That'll get your plain plate up to 12 AR which will push a plain  Estoc to minimal damage.

 

Even just having a +1 AR is probably worth it to armor up as your plate will drop an Estoc to -25% damage and have normal weapons at -75%.

 

Worst case naked takes +30% damage as every attack over penetrates. If you have a high deflection from illusion spells, shields, shield modals or weapon modals naked is pretty survivable. Plus you'll kill a lot faster so the incoming damage will be reduced. Or be able to stunlock the enemy group with something like upgraded Torments on a Shattered Pillar with an interrupting Rooting Pain added in for fun.

[Creative]

I'm thinking I'm just going to go for whatever feels right. I can't believe that in an rpg, their design choice would be to limit what armour types you should use so heavily in the way they have. I think I'll aim for plate armour for my tank. Medium (maybe?) for my Paladin offtank/dps (I hate as a frontline I'll be punished so hard in terms of dps for trying to protect myself a bit. Naked or cloth on the frontline just feels wrong, especially for a Paladin). And cloth for ranged. I just hope I'm not going to be punished too hard for doing so.

Edited April 26, 2018 by Creative

[Judicator]

It's certainly possible in PoE 1. I'm playing a Fighter using Tidefall and he's got well over 100 Deflection and plenty of DR not even halfway through the game. Of course, Eder is better thanks to his shield and defensive modals, but he's doing perfectly fine as an offtank. Unless they've radically changed the system in PoE 2 it should be viable.