Galka Paladins/Hate control

[swordchucks]

Do we suck as bad as I would lead myself to believe at later levels? From what ive read its impossible to hold good agroo without spaming spells,at level 61 id have 100 natural mp....should i just give up now and go back to Warrior for good?

[Osir]

See the beauty of a galkan paladin is we can use other gear to make up for our shortcoming ( i.e. MP). Electrum rings are my best friend. We have the highest VIT so , while it is still very important to grab VIT+ items, we dont have to have as many.

I suggest MP --> Hp gear , and maybe juice.
BTW , since 41, I rarely have a pt where there is no mp regen going on ( either through bard ballad or Rdm Refresh). So its not as big of a deal as everyone makes it seem.

[Lartfor]

Yes Galka Paladins can still do well, thing is they need to rely on on red mages more than most do. I would say galkas are one of the harder paladins to play, you gata make sure you dont waist mp, and probably might want to focus on damage a little more than most so you can make up for spell agro with dmg agro.

[imac2much]

I don't recommend using hairpins after first 30 levels or so... the defense you lose compared to wearing a helm is too great. I use astral rings (electrum rings are OK as well 40+), bat earrings, holy phial as well for MP. Before lvl 41 I always had RSE gloves as well to switch back and forth. I also have a Life belt instead of RK belt to hold aggro better.

After 41 I have never been in a PT without some means of refreshing (refresh or ballad... especially at 55, BRD and RDM is about the same since BRD has ballad 2). At this point I switched out one of my +MP rings for a Phalanx, and although I keep my RSE gloves in my inventory, I have never had to use it. I have about 145 MP at lvl 59, and I never run out of MP, able to spam Flash, Cures, sometimes Cure IV if I need to. But the PT never has to wait for my MP, refresh/ballad takes care of that.

The hardest times for a Galka PLD will be before lvl 41. I suggest you keep RSE gloves (maybe boots, but I didn't find that necessary), and also you should level up cooking to make your own juices just in case on the battle field. Even between lvl 41-55 you should bring juice ingredients, since BRD only has ballad 1, and juice stacks with ballad. (it doesn't stack with Refresh, so don't bother if you have a RDM).

But after you have a means of MP regen, there's nothing to worry about. Good luck with your Galka and have fun

[Loial]

This could be a horribly newbie question:

What exactly does the astral ring do? I see it says "converts 25hp to mp" I know that their are other items earlier on that do HP+5 MP-5 or something. But since it says "converts," I assume it does something special.

[Artonis]

oooh check it out. The horribly low level idiot is going to help out.

If you have a war sub, then spam provoke every 30 seconds.

make sure you have a macro reporting how long it will take for provoke to be ready again.

If you don't know it...

/ja "Provoke" <t>
/p Provoking <t>
/wait 15
/p Provoke in 15
/wait 15
/p Provoke ready for use.


or something like that.
obviously you can change parts of it to say different things.
hope that helps you out too.

[imac2much]

Loial: Nothing really special about astral rings (and other convert type equipment like serket ring, charging shield, etc). The difference between Convert 10 MP to HP and -10 MP,+10HP is that the former requires you to HAVE 10 MP to add the Hp bonus, while the latter can be used by someone with 0 MP. So basically all the Astral ring does is subtracts 25 of your HP max (since there's no way you won't have 25 HP), and add 25 MP to your MP max. I have done a lot of tinkering with +MP equipment to see exactly how much I need, and I've found a good balance with just 1 astral ring, Holy Phial, and 2 Bat earrings... with these and Refresh/Ballad, I never run out of MP. I use a 2nd astral ring and some RSE as well if I'm powerlevleing people, but not really needed for XP PT's.

Artonis: Thanks for the advice, but I think this is basically understood by the PLD community. Also, you will get to a point where provoke spam will not be enough to keep aggro. Otherwise, NIN and WAR would be much better tanks than us, since NIN take less damage and WAR do more damage... The advantage PLD has to both classes (not to say we're the best tank, but this is our advantage) is that we can hold aggro better. At higher levels, all damage dealers will do way too much damage for you to keep hate with just provoke spam (tier III spells and ancients, sidewinder and barrage, souleater and guillotine, raging fists, pentathrust spam, etc). This thread is a question whether we can hold hate as well as other races since our MP pool is so low, not whether we can use Provoke or not.

Provoke every 30 seconds is a given. You still have to shield bash, sentinel, flash, cure3/4, cover when needed, rampart when I get it....

Oh and I hate spamming my party with provoke chat ... I don't think it's necessary since I'm obviously going to do my job... I just use:
/ja "Provoke" <t>
/echo Using Provoke on <t>.

Simple

[Artonis]

yea I know it's a given through the pld community.
but for newbies like me..

haha I meant to mention the echo :sweat:
and sure, in the later levels, I agree that provoke won't mean beans...
but for the amount of time it takes to cast provoke, it couldn't hurt to do it every 30 secs right?

[Arnda]

Originally posted by imac2much
Loial: Nothing really special about astral rings (and other convert type equipment like serket ring, charging shield, etc).

Nothing special! Nothing special! Don't forget the PRICE TAG, imac!