How to make paladins useful

Suggestions-

more damage and range buff on blast (if they dont get magic crash)
3rd job charge blow does not consume charge (3rd job qol change make it easier to grind)

Give them magic crash so they have a use in parties and to reinforce their CC tank identity.
Change shield mastery to post bb usefulness to reinforce their CC tank identity.
If magic crash and shield mastery is given then blast stays exactly the same as now so they have weaker dmg both 1v1 and aoe than a hero but have utility which the hero has absolutely none.

despite being infinitely better than maple with cubes, pre big bang has obvious flaws- mages damage formula and pally uselessness being the big ones.

 

A damage buff and some extra range would be nice. Charge blow doesnt use up the charge when you get ACB (kind of the whole point + a bunch more damage), and buffing it in 3rd job would remove the point of ACB in 4th. Just straight damage increases makes more sense than a passive skill that just adds damage if that makes sense.

As for the other changes, what are the "post bb" changes you're talking about specifically? Most classes went through extensive reworks (several times) after BB.

 

shield mastery was changed at bb so that pallies took like 1 dmg where other classes took 1000, as long as they went 1h + shield.
All warriors at bb got a skill called magic crash which silenced nearby enemies for x seconds (bosses included) with a x + 30 second cooldown or something like that. so this would be useful in zak + krex in frequently removing the ability for them to cast cancel weap attack. i suggest only giving this ability to pallies as the other 2 warriors (and all non archmage classes in fact) have distinct uses in boss runs.

 

First by fixing threaten..

https://royals.ms/forum/threads/warriors-guardian-threaten-skill.104463/#post-576855

 

Paladins aren't even that weak though in new source, but it appears to be weak because the average paladin has way lower gear than the average hero or dark knight. (At least that's how I've experienced it, playing mine)
A lot of my friends are heroes or dark knights with 10-13k range so they deal good damage, and then I look at my paladin friends and they have like 5-8k range so they generally just deal no damage.
My current paladin is over 9k range clean at lvl 14x , and when I use stoppers I can still hit a strong 130k and over 145k crit. Now if I use a stronger pot that puts me at relevant to compare with attack range, I can hit for 160k and crit for over 180k. I'm not saying that paladin is strong, but I am trying to say they aren't as weak as everyone makes them out to be.

 

Is that on multiple target or just one? And what about the range of attack (the skill)? Can you hit that damage from the same distance of a hero/drk?

 

Blast can only hit one target one time. And as for the range, it's something that I am uncertain of is if Blast reaches top right arm from the platform the ranged attackers stand on (it's been changed since new source), if so it happens to reach further than both brandish and crusher. Need a confirm @Dutchess @Dimitri. Also, it only reaches out in a straight line and not as high as hero's brandish, it's similar to drk's crusher in my opinion.

 

Dimitri is right, they're not "weak", a lot of pallies just don't gear enough, but even at equal gear (sword pally to sword hero), a hero is still outdamaging in most situations, and the only time a pally pulls ahead if they do is on elemental weak stuff. Heroes are just strong everywhere because of how orbs and brandish work, pallies are just awful period on elemental weak stuff, which, hey, they should, but it's not like they're pulling really far ahead in other areas.

They don't need a lot, just, a damage boost to charges or something so they have a little bit more hmph on elemental weak stuff would be nice. I'm mostly a solo-pally, and Ill go to zak here and there so my damage range is a personal challenge, but it's kind of how @Buccaneer said that a 250b bucc is on par with a 40b NL, the disparity isn't that large, but heroes start right out of the gate with more for less, it would just be nice if pallies had something going for them when the ball is in their park.

As for threaten, I can check that tonight. I've gotten so used to it being terrible that I stopped using it. lol

 

Paladins need to be able to stack lighting charge with other charges. The biggest problem for paladin is neutral monsters. Nexon eventually did this buff, and I've already made multiple feedback threads with positive comments from both staff and players.

 

I understand that this would increase our average hit dmg by a fair bit which I can agree to probably every paladin player would enjoy (unless they hate doing more dmg), but if we're a 1 line wonder class doesn't it mean our damage increase diminishes as soon as we have the ability to hit or crit 199k? I ask this because I know heroes can go over the 100k per line mark on crits and paladins can reach the 199k mark in endgame, in which case to me it sounds like the hero would always have an edge over the pala just because they can continue to scale in maximum hit dmg potential. And if it is true that this would mean that heroes have another advantage over us, wouldn't that make the dmg cap a part of our problems?

(This is absolutely not to shutdown potential buffs or to bash on your ideas, but I am legit just curious how other paladins feel about this situation I mentioned here)

 

I think it's a fair concern, but there's things that can be buffed without messing with blast hitting cap. Considering the push for skull being the best pally weapon, which means the use of a shield, a more comprehensive shield mastery (to make them actually, ya know, useful), making PG block a %age of Zaks 1/1 (NL can avoid it, no reason warriors with high HP and def shouldn't be able to negate some of the damage <-- personal pet peeve).

That said, I can honestly live with the shitty damage (relative, im still gearing), but a lot of my gripes are honestly QoL stuff. 5 minute charges (like holy charge), 200 or 300 second PG instead of 90. I know there's not much class fantasy on Maple, but in every other reincarnation, Pallies are hallowed as tanks. We don't feel tanky here, and our suffering damage would make sense if they were. It would make life a lot easier

As for lightning charge stacking: Same issue as Dimitri said, although that's looking at late game. I think it would help close the gap early game, and add a more dynamic... spin on things. Some monsters are weak to 2 elementals, some are immune to one. If charges in general stacked to 2 (any 2), you'd need to be careful to pick the right ones, and it would also make ice charge useful on stuff other than ice weak stuff, cause ya know, you could freeze normal stuff that might be weak to holy or lightning.

 

Exactly
Paladin's aren't weak, people are weak.

 

For what it's worth, if charge stacking can't be done with current client/version (since it was a v86 change originally), we could just buff each charge by the amount that it would be buffed if stacked with lightning. Or by some smaller amount if it's decided that's too much.

 

Paladin here. I've had several Zak arms solo sessions, and full Zak duo sessions with a ranged attacker.
I can confirm that even in New Source, Paladins not only struggle to keep the top right arm consistently targeted, but they have troubles with the curse arm too (2nd bottom left).
Curse arm can't be targeted when other arms are alive, and even in a cleared arms situation, Blast goes on a constant hit and miss.
This is because of:
- Zak room platform layout (too far away, awkward positioning)
- complete lack of vertical hitbox size, which works really bad with Blast, since Zakum arms are constantly moving up and down.

As a result, during my runs I usually let the ranged attacker take care of both Curse and Top right arm.

Haven't tested Threaten recently (a few weeks ago it wasn't working though), but I will do it the next time I'll solo a Bigfoot. I'll keep monitored this thread anyway. I'm happy to see that people are actually interested in Paladins!

Ultimately, I agree with Dimitri that the 199k damage cap would pose a serious limit to all those high level Paladins that would dare to invest into their character, so that any change to Blast formula could be awkard in a private server where the average endgame attack gear is enormously better than the 2008 era. However, it would probably make the 4th job power curve overall a bit smoother.

 

I have not ran into the damage cap problem yet, because I chose pyrope sword as my end game weapon of choice. 132 attack vs that of a 150+ attack if you chose to use crushed skull or ST/Dragon

 

ouch.... a hero with your range would be doing twice your damage... to three mobs.

 

tbh, i think giving them magic crash is the best solution going forward- pallies arent supposed to be primary dps, theyre supposed to be a cc tank, if its possible, create a brand new spellshield type skill where it will block seduces at ht (as well as other cc like darkness, curse, weakness etc). in return, revert their new source damage buffs so as to make heroes >the< dps warrior

 

I can also confirm this too with the zakum arms, it's a real pain to hit them.
If possible a good solution would be to boost the vertical range of Blast, and boost the overall range of Charged Blow, atleast then they can help attack multiple arms along with tossing a heavens hammer here and there.

Theres also another problem, dealing with the mobs that zakum summons. Half the time they are completely out of range to hit without jumping, on top of that most of them are resistant to most/all elements, not making them that viable there either.

I havn't hit the damage cap myself either, I think its tricky for any high level paladin to hit the cap, even with a elemental weakness. But yeah, Paladin has a problem not only doing damage, but also landing hits.