Paladin weaponry/abilities

[Ariesknight]

I am torn between DRG/DRK/PAL. DRK/DRK for power, however they find it hard to PT at higher lvls. Whereas PAL's are always in demand. What is thier weaponry/abilities like? How good are they really? Does the White Magic help that much?

[Lerican]

well, here's my opinion

Well, if you play a Paladin, you will be looking at wanting/needing THE BEST (or very close to) Armor for you level, getting to use the trademark Heater Shields (it's a type of shield 'and' the name of one of the shields), and you will be able to use a Sword and Great Sword well based on your skill ability.

You will likely always use a Sword/Shield in an XP party, but for farming, you are not limited to the Great Sword as you 'are' able, at higher levels, to use Spear and get Pentathrust.

As for abilities, you get Holy Circle, Sentinel, & Cover (not sure what else) and for traits you get Defense Up (a bunch of these), Resist Sleep (improved, but doesn't really work well/often in xp parties), & Undead Killer ('really' helps and noticeable effect when fighting undead, especially so when used with Holy Circle). You get no Attack Up, Accuracy Up or anything to improve your ability to hurt non-undead mobs unfortunately =(.

Holy Circle is a short group buff that paralyzes (intimidates) undead mobs that are aggressive towards you. Sentinel is a very short Defense Up buff. Cover allows you to take damage in place of a party member as long as you are between the mob and the target; however, it does not last long and you cannot parry/block while you are covering another.

The White magic, imho, helps a LOT. You can cast it to heal yourself, your support characters, to get hate, etc. and unlike every other job that can heal, you 'want' the hate. It helps with soloing in that it lessens downtime in protective buffs and healing and 'if' you've spent time raising your Divine skill, then you can do a decent amount of damage with the Banish/Holy spells. Unfortunately, you don't get any status heal or bar spells, but that's why you get a Whm or Rdm/Whm to deal with it.

If you like tanking and being a responsible member of a PT, then Pld is a very good choice. Do NOT be a Pld if you want to kill things quickly or do tons of damage. If that's what you want to do, be Drg or Drk~~.

-Lerican