Paladin info in the May Vanguard Newsletter

[Adam]

While I don't plan on playing a Paladin myself (more of a warrior type at heart), I thought you guys would be interested in this newsletter and the info within. Enjoy!

http://www.vanguardsoh.com/Newslette.../main/may.html

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Taken from the newsletter
Featured Class: Paladin


Combat Forms
The Paladin has combined the Combat Forms with their Auras. Having them separate before seemed a bit cumbersome in general.

Aura of Divine Power - This aura gives you and those around you increased melee damage and accuracy. While slightly less than the Warrior's offensive form bonus, you also do not pay the mitigation penalty the Warrior must endure.

Aura of Shielding - This aura increases mitigation for you and those around you. When combined with the Swell of Conviction (detailed below), this adds an addition 25% damage rune. This aura rivals the Warrior's defensive form for mitigation.

Aura of Replenishment - This aura increases regeneration of major expendables for you and those around you. This includes health, mana, power, and psionic points.

Aura of Radiance - This aura makes you immune to undead based magical attacks. This aura also cleanses you and your group of undead related effects such as poison and disease. Any undead in the aura's area of influence take minor damage.


Melee Attacks
The melee style of the Paladin has also changed a great deal. In the past, the Paladin had unique attacks for all phases of chains. Now, each of your attacks can be used as both a bridge or a finish attack, and each takes on different properties when used as such.

Blessing of Steel - This attack delivers moderate damage and grants increased defensive capability for a short time. When used as a bridge attack, these defensive capabilities are passed along to your group members, and when used as a finishing attack, these defensive capabilities increase in both power and duration.

Hammer of Judgment - This attack is relatively low damage initially, but generates substantial hatred in your enemy, and receives significant increases to both damage and hate when used from a frontal position, or in conjunction with an ally. When used as a bridge, this attack also feeds your muscles with increased endurance, and used as a finisher, heals both life and endurance for you and your group members in range.

Sentinel's Might - This attack inflicts moderate damage and infuses you with increased offensive capability for a short time. When used as a bridge, this offensive power is granted to your group members, and used as a finish, these offensive bonuses grow in both power and duration.


Rescues
The Paladin is the premier class when it comes to sacrifice. Taking the damage for another and rescuing them from certain death is the Paladin's Forte. And woe be to the adversary that continues to press the attack. If the Paladin rescues the same friendly a second time in rapid succession, significant harm is visited upon the enemy.

Argent Guardian - This rescue fends off a great deal of damage and strikes back at your enemy for minor damage. When used a second time, this defensive attack completely blocks incoming damage, delivers massive damage in return, and stuns the enemy for a long duration.

Shattered Will - This rescue fends off moderate damage when successful, and slightly lowers the damage capability of your enemy. If used a second time on the same enemy, this completely blocks incoming damage and severely cripples that target's ability to attack your group for 60 seconds.

Contention - This rescue stops an enemy from hitting a friendly target, and locks your enemy in a stalemate for a period of time leaving them unable to attack anyone else.


Spells
Let's not forget that the Paladin is a spellcasting tank. A hybrid if you will between magic and melee. This however does not take away from the primary job of the Paladin, that being to take damage. In fact, these spells augment their ability greatly. One major change is how you acquire these spells as you grow. No longer do you need to visit a trainer. All spells are now learned when available through the Prayer of Enlightenment.

Gifts of Virtue
Gifts of virtue are powerful special abilities. The Paladin gains the ability to perform a limited amount of gifts per day. The paladin may choose which of his available gifts to use, but he cannot perform more than his daily allotment.

Lay on Hands - The classic healing touch of the Paladin. This spell allows you to deliver mighty healing power instantly at a simple touch and may be used on anyone, however this consumes Virtue Points when used upon another Paladin (including yourself).

Mass Shield - This spell allows you to project the shielding powers to your group members for 2 attacks.

Shining Beacon - This spell casts a divine light upon you radiating to your group giving immunity to fear based effects. This light also generates an intense hatred towards you in undead creatures.

Sun Burst - This spell calls down a ray of sunlight to sear the decaying flesh off your undead foes. This light is so powerful, any summoned undead enemies are utterly destroyed.

Zeal - This spell causes your attacks to strike twice for a period of time.

Paragon - This spell greatly bolsters your power in combat for a period of time. Constitution, Dexterity, Agility, Accuracy, and Damage are all increased.

Final Stand - This spell gives all players in your group who are below 25% health an extra life boost for 30 seconds. This boost is lost when the spell expires and players can die if not careful.


Regular Spells
These spells consume power and may be used as often as your power permits.

Barrier of Faith - You extend your shielding powers to a single friendly target, granting invulnerability for 5 seconds.

Blood Oath - You swear a blood oath to destroy your target giving increased ability until you switch enemies.

Courage - This spell increases your health points and armor class.

Healing Touch - This spell allows you to heal your target or yourself for a moderate amount.

Anointed Blade - You anoint your blade, giving increased damage against the undead for five minutes. You cannot have more than one blessing upon your blade at a time.

Blessed Blade - You bless your blade, increasing your ability to do damage for five minutes. You cannot have more than one blessing upon your blade at a time.

Prayer of Life - This spell revives the dead.

Sanctify Corpse - This spell sactifies the corpse of your dead enemy preventing them from being raised by a necromancer.

Summon Holy Water - This spell summons a vial of holy water, which when thrown burns the undead as it strikes them.

Swell of Conviction - This ability causes all of your auras to become more powerful at a substantial power cost.

Righteous Command - This spell instills great hatred towards you in your enemy, and can influence enemies around you as well.

Rallying Cry - This war cry emboldens you and your allies, greatly increasing your accuracy and ability to do damage for two attacks.

Cry of Inspiration - This war cry heals endurance and mana to small extent for yourself and your groupmates.

Cry of Relief - This war cry heals a small amount of health.

End of Paste
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Looks like Paladins will have a lot of abilities and options with their auras. Should be a fun class to play.

[Skellen]

Definitely looks like a cool and unique list of abilities. Also really captures the feel of the traditional Paladin; sacrificial and protective of others.

It's cool to look at side-by-side with the Warriors list of abilities also, as featured in the April newsletter. They show a stark difference in focus for the two classes: Paladin is geared towards being protective of others and enhancing self and groupmates, while the Warrior is geared towards keeping the enemy off-balance (stuns, interrupts, etc) and providing weaknesses that groupmates can exploit.

It also looks like the Warrior might have an easier time of increasing hate, perhaps why there are so many options to enhance the Paladins group with aura's and spells?

[Lightning]

What intruiges me is this:

Sanctify Corpse - This spell sactifies the corpse of your dead enemy preventing them from being raised by a necromancer.

Sounds to me like Necromancers will be up there with healers in terms of "kill them first" to stop them bringing back any of their friends you've just killed to fight on as undead :shock:

[Danth]

The Vanguard Paladin has a solid foundation. It's hard to comment on specifics without knowing via personal experience how well the individual skills actually work.


It's worth noting that no direct stun spells are mentioned (only one that's rescue-based). This is a bit of a departure from previous MMO Paladins, but it's not necessarily a bad thing.


I wonder if perhaps there's a bit too much offence in there. Warriors won't be happy--rightly so--if Paladins prove to add nearly the same damage output to a group as a Warrior does. This is one aspect that might need some tweaking. In particular I question the need for a dedicated offensive aura. A Paladin can put away his shield and switch to 2-hander mode when he wants to improve his damage; having a dedicated aura seems potentially like overkill. This falls into the "we have to see how well it actually works" category.


The important thing is that this skill list leaves me in a positive mood, thinking about how the various skills could work together. Contrast that with WoW's beta Paladin, which always left me hoping Blizzard was going to improve it (they never did). As I said above, it looks like the Vanguard Paladin has a solid base to work from.

Danth

[Tazzrin Jaegernaut]

Originally Posted by Lightning

What intruiges me is this:

Sounds to me like Necromancers will be up there with healers in terms of "kill them first" to stop them bringing back any of their friends you've just killed to fight on as undead :shock:

That got my attention as well. I definately agree that the npc necros sound like they are going to be a handful.

[Adam]

Originally Posted by Danth

I wonder if perhaps there's a bit too much offence in there. Warriors won't be happy--rightly so--if Paladins prove to add nearly the same damage output to a group as a Warrior does. This is one aspect that might need some tweaking. In particular I question the need for a dedicated offensive aura. A Paladin can put away his shield and switch to 2-hander mode when he wants to improve his damage; having a dedicated aura seems potentially like overkill. This falls into the "we have to see how well it actually works" category.


The important thing is that this skill list leaves me in a positive mood, thinking about how the various skills could work together. Contrast that with WoW's beta Paladin, which always left me hoping Blizzard was going to improve it (they never did). As I said above, it looks like the Vanguard Paladin has a solid base to work from.

Danth

I agree about the offensive aura having some possible balance issues- especially since it extends to your group mates as well. It should be ok though as they claim it is not as powerful of a bonus to offense as the warrior stance. Has there been any word on two paladins auras stacking?

[radhazg]

I agree, we need to wait until we actually can test things before passing true judgment. While on initial glance, I suppose the offensive aura may seem a bit out of place I suppose, but looking at the skills in general, there are a number of them that are pretty much undead specific. Which is fine.
The warr seems bent towards more of a 1 target control, keep 1 target really busy and off balance, with some options for multiple targets and assuming you're not the main tank, dealling some good damage as well.
The pally on the other hand, seems more along the lines of keeping his and his allies defence up, with a little hate generatoin thrown in for good mesure. In fact, from the looks of his rescues, he may actually NOT want to keep aggro 100% of the time. Throw in the heals, and the buffs, this guy looks pretty tough on most opponants, and undead should quake in fear of this guy.

Overall, it seems to me they're doing what they said they would. I would gladly take either a warr or a pally along for a main tank, though if it was against 1 big guy, I might prefer a warr. If it was against say, swarms of undead, I'd take a pally first any day of the week. Undead typically come in swarms anyway, and the pally's skills seem to take that into account. Instead of keeping the mobs on him, he keeps the mobs from doing to much damage to the party.
The reason the offensive aura is in there, obviously, is to compensate for the warr's offensive stances and abilities. The pally won't deal as much damage, but he won't take as much either in that respect. It gives him something to do if he isn't tanking. It falls into the whole "keep the party going" theame as well.

Almost makes me wish I was rolling pally (again). Almost. But I swore off hybrid classes of any kind after wow. ......Almost.

[Adam]

Hmmm... seems that they protected the newsletter with a username/password now. Guess it wasn't suppose to get out?

[radhazg]

not that I'm aware of... unless you need to register on the vanguard forums/website to see it. which doesn't take anything. I read it just fine, and thats all I have.

[Darkgecko]

This info is up over at Paladins of Telon as well. Some of these are pretty unique/original, but it's hard to tell how they will actually perform in action, although I'm sure that will change a few more times before release anyway