Paladin Guide and FAQ

[Kagi]

Originally posted by imac2much
3) Evasion is nigh worthless. Even with +30 evasion from bat earrings when blind I don't dodge jack. Use equipment with more practical value, like DEF, VIT, MP, HP, etc.

You're too hard to miss Rug *pokes* I never get to poke you anymore in Jeuno :/

Evasion.. I dunno. I have 2 dodge earrings (eva+3 each) and I don't notice a thing. Maybe I should unequip them while exping and see how it goes.

[JP_Ikari]

Awesome guide. Even though my profile reads war, i'm building him til 35 so I'll have warcry once my pally gets to 70 ( i know too far, but hey it won't hurt right). I finished the flag quest about a couple of weeks ago, and since my dsl line has been down for 2 weeks I've been looking through boards and what not about Pally's and I stumbled upon this one. imac, yer bad ass for making an extensive guide, keep up the good work. I can't wait to work on my pally soon.

[Eroland]

Currently I have Dodge earrings eva+3, should i change to Agl earrings? Will i get a better respones from Agl +3 then eva +3?

PLD45/WAR22

Sorry I didnt see all the talk about the two before, what earring would you all suggest then?

[Blayde]

I'm currently a level 28 paladin and I was wondering what food a paladin should use at which levels. I'm planning on starting to use it at level 30+ since I read somewhere that was a good level to start with it. If someone could post what food they used/are using at levels then that would be great. Might be a good addition to the faq aswell.

[Kagi]

Food Stats
Roasted Corn -- HP+6 DEX-1 VIT+3 (30min)
Tortilla -- HP+6 DEX-1 VIT+4 (30min)
Boiled Crayfish -- DEX-1 VIT+2 Def+11% (30min)
Boiled Crab -- DEX-1 VIT+4 Def+21% (30min)
Fish Mithkabob -- DEX+1 VIT+2 MND-1 Def+25% (30min)
Steamed Crab -- VIT+5 Def+25% (60min)
Fish Chiefkabob -- DEX+1 VIT+2 MND+1 CHR+1 Def+25% (60min)

I'm not very sure about the food stats but I -think- those are correct.

I was a bad paladin and didn't eat until 50 >< But I've heard some people recommend:

Low levels (15- 30): Roasted Corn or Tortilla (both are just as cheap, so Tortillas preferred)
Mid levels (30-45): Boiled Crayfish
Mid-high to high (45+): Boiled Crab or Fish Mithkabob

No one really uses Steamed Crab or Chiefkabobs for normal exp unless they're really rich or craft it themselves.

[Grizzlebeard]

I use Boiled Crab usually but it hurts my bank balance something rotten. The effects are very noticeable but at 6-7k a stack I usually use one when joining a new party and if they prove to be mediocre or just plain lousy I refrain from burning anymore gil on a group that thinks 50xp per kill is good. On the other hand, if the group is switched on and using food themselves I chain eat myself silly. :spin:

[Dont Bot Play Fair]

accualy pld is better then nin then war/nin then nin ^^

[Elite]

Any type of earring you go for, should hold 2 pigeon pierces for pld. You see HP will become very important for other things ingame especially hnm battles and bc30's.

[LordBiGGs]

meh, for earrings you dont have much selection. just pick something, whatever it is, its not gonna do much. i do with drones, lessen the criticals. i experimented with this and it seems like i do get critical'd a lot more without them.

also i dont really feel pld is greater than nin/war or war/nin. after lvl 37, nin's pretty much dominate the tanking. pld's can produce much more hate, but nin's can keep the hate they already have better. what people don't realize is when you take damage you lose hate. for example last night i was fighting some soldier crawlers, they were hitting pretty hard and i was havent some trouble keeping hate off this samurai, who suprisingly was dishing out more damage than the drk. anyway i was producing tons of hate like always and in most cases enough that is another melee provokes the mob wont leave me. but last night when taking all this damage, i was having some trouble. nin's on the other hand don't suffer this loss.

also when playing my ninja the other night, i was partied with another nin with utsusemi. we would both cast before battle, she would provoke, take 2 hits start recasting, 3rd hit gets absorbed, utsusemi gets recast. i count the shadows after she loses the 3rd i provoke. i take 2 hits, and we both start recasting, i take the 3rd, recast and take 3 more, she vokes and we repeat. with this method we could go for as long as we wanted without the party taking damage. this is basically how a nin/war works after it gets utsusemi ni, but before ni we needed 2 ninjas to do it. its also the same way 2 war/nin's can work after lvl 24.

also with war/nin you can do a lot of damage, war's have decent defense which makes them ok for tanking, with utsusemi thrown in it helps them. its difficult for them to recast during battle because of the long cast time, but if theres another tank or they lose hate for a second they can just let someone else get hit once recast and start tanking again. in my experience its really not the mages who get agro'd much after lvl 30, mostly rng's, drk's, sometimes sam's and blm's. so, aside from the blm, if one of these other jobs takes a hit during the recasting its not the end of the world, especially if its a sam and he just absorbs it with 3rd eye.

pld's are definitely the safest tank and most dependable. if a nin takes an extra hit before he recasts utsusemi he's in a world of hurt, and war/nin's cant tank as well as pld's if they dont have a way of recasting (like another voker, paralyze gets in, slow). i still feel each class is about equal. i havent played war/nin yet (i plan on trying it) but i've played pld for a while, and a little bit with nin/war. i think they will all be about equal...until lvl 74 when war/nin gets utsusemi ichi....then they get kinda crazy.

[nuvas]

what people don't realize is when you take damage you lose hate. for example last night i was fighting some soldier crawlers, they were hitting pretty hard and i was havent some trouble keeping hate off this samurai, who suprisingly was dishing out more damage than the drk. anyway i was producing tons of hate like always and in most cases enough that is another melee provokes the mob wont leave me. but last night when taking all this damage, i was having some trouble. nin's on the other hand don't suffer this loss.

I really don't understand this line of thinking. Is there something I seriously missed throughout my Paladin career? The only reason I've lost hate is because of huge renkei damage, Divine Seal + Curaga3+, or some kind of hate removal technique like Antican petrification. Never have I lost hate because I was taking a lot of damage. I do believe that Hate detiorates over time, but I don't believe it's relative to the damage a monster gives you. By that line of thinking wouldn't a Paladin lose hate within a few hits on a HNM? Some of them hit for obsecene amounts of damage, yet I've not had a problem. Please correct me if I'm wrong, because that's new information I've never heard before and I'm willing to listen.

[Lan'Urk]

I dont know if the hate deterioration is based on amount Damage taken. But i have experieced that the fact of being hit, and take damage does take hate away. thats what Blink tanks and BSTs rely on. let me explain this.

when a NIN is blink tanking, the monster will not turn away till he gets hit, then the mob will face another melee till next provoke(this being before Utsusemi: Ni). and as far as BST goes, when you use Heel for example you get the hate usually, so what happen is, you take a few hits and the mob goes back to the pet killing it.

I have personally tried both aproaches, and from my tests that has proven to be true. im not saying im 100% right on this, but im pretty confident about it, and would highly recomend trying out to have a better understanding of how hate works.

~Lanurk

[nuvas]

I guess you guys are probably right. After talking to a friend, his example was, "it's easiest to notice on mages, like when a monster leaves the tank and smacks a mage once and turns right back on the tank without any kind of provoke or whatever".

I had always assumed it was because that extra sword hit you got while it wasn't on you added enough hate that it turned back on you. I guess I also thought hate detioration was kind of a static amount per tic, when in reality I guess it's based on either the number of hits a monster connects to you, or the amount of damage it does to you. So is it based on the number of hits, or the amount of damage? Because I'm still confused about my HNM example. If it was based on damage, the PLD would lose hate extremely easily right?

[Nemes]

I strongly believe getting hit lowers your hate.

Best example is your friends'. I've seen a couple of times the monster run to the BLM, away from melee range 'cause he took us by surprise, hits the BLM for a lot, then runs back to me.

As for the HMN, I haven't fought any of those, yet... but, hear me out.
When you're in an alliance or party for quests where you fight a bunch of Decents or Easy Prays, ever noticed how hard it is to keep hate?(especially because you can't use your MP too much else they'll have to wait for you...) Well, that's because the damage dealers do way too much damage. It's probably the same with HMN. Nobody does enough damage to get the hate away from you, even though he hits you hard.

Anyways, that's how I see it... (also, if anybody has tricks when bulldozing through an area for a quest, like Dark Spark to be able to keep hate, or if you guys simply just give up on that? Thx

[Lan'Urk]

im not sure in which its based on. I would imagine would be on damage dealt, but i havent a clue. But one thing to keep in mind as far as keeping hate with the hate deterioration is, PLDs is constantly getting that loss even out by curing. I base this train of thought by following the logic of how much hate you get from dealing damage and curing damage, since all those are based on HP taken/healed, so i would imagine deterioration works the same way.

In my vison, the hate you get from curing is mostly being used to even out the hate you are loosing, and the "Hate Spikes" is what is giving you an edge over other damage dealers/mages.

This logic for the relationship of these factors would also make sense for the other tanking classes.

WAR or MNK- they are constantly dealing heavy damage... so that damage dealt is compensating for the hate loss, and the hate spikes is also giving the edge...

NIN - they dont have the "hate loss" by getting damaged so they only have to worry about the hate spikes.

PLD- they are curing to compensate the hate loss by being damaged...

well this is kinda what i came up about this issue, seems to make sense but then again im not sure on this...

~Lanurk

[nuvas]

Ya it does make sense, I guess I thought of similar things all along but with some very real differences. One being I didn't realize you could lose hate by getting hit, so thanks for putting it under a different light.