Classes don't need to be mules or have amazing dps for people to want to play it from beginning to end game and still be useful in parties or solo. Paladin's reliance on elements and their wonky short attack range will always hurt them in out damaging everyone class so they either have to match Hero/Drk range or have a ridiculous damage buff to not be overshadowed and even then they would just be another warrior clone while still being weaker than Nightlord's. At the moment Shadower's have the potential to be the tankiest class in the game since they have the highest avoid and can tank 60k so why not give Paladin's the best weapon defense? Even one of these changes can make them very useful in most situations and have more reason to play them rather than "I want to be the underdog so I'll play this class." Power Stance With great concentration and intestinal fortitude, enables one to stay at the same spot even after monster's attack.Level 30 prevent from getting Knock-backed with success rate 90%. Since Paladin's range is so short and stubby I think it's suiting their Power Stance should be at 100% instead of 90% since they will fumble and re-position themselves more than Hero's and Dark Knight's. Threaten Near useless skill currently. Maybe just a flat number like -200 attack and defense instead of -20%, which in reality is -20 cause of some difficulties implementing the skill. -200 attack and defense is enough to hurt most bosses and decrease regular monsters damage to 1. It's a 2nd job skill so it doesn't have to be that strong, but it should at least have its place somewhere. Shield Mastery Shield Defense increases. However, it does not affect if the character does not equip the shield. Level 20 +100% shield defense. Completely useless. Any warrior who wants to go 1 handed will most likely gravitate towards a 20 defense Mapleshield so it gets a whopping 40 defense with this skill. If this skill can be changed to overall weapon defense at +300% increase then it would make the skill worth adding points into. Remove it for Hero's or keep Hero's Shield Mastery unchanged. Achilles Permanently increases the weapon defense of one's armor. Level 30: Damage taken from enemy -15%. If Shadower's can have a better Shadow Shifter than Nightlord's for the sake of them having the highest avoidability in the game then Paladin's can have a better Achilles than Hero's and Dark Knight's. -30% seems like a good buff -1% every skill point added. Strength Ability point All Strength does is give weapon attack for Warrior's while every other ability point like intelligence gives multiple benefits. Why can't Strength give weapon defense as a second benefit for the stat? can be 3 weapon defense for every point of strength. This combined with the Shield Mastery change Could allow Paladin's with 900 strength to tank over 4k touch damage. With these changes Zakum's 3rd body can do less than 500 damage touch damage and Horntail's strongest touch attack can do as little as 4k. It's a much better niche than element attacks, because there's too many bosses that are neutral or strong against elements. If your range is arm distance it doesn't matter how many monsters charge blow can hit cause those opportunities do not happen often which is why the other Warrior's main attacks work so well and Charge Blow does not. There's already 2 warriors with long range that can mob 3 monsters so adding range, damage or extra mob-ability to Paladin's skills just makes another semi-clone. Wouldn't it be better if they were rocks that sat on top of bosses and lived long enough for you to use the restroom and come back with barely a scratch?
Although I'm new to the server, it's very clear to me that just being very tanky isn't very helpful at boss runs/training. People will always seek damage dealers for their group, and I can hardly imagine anyone cares about the survivability of the Paladin in their group if he doesn't bring a considerable amount of damage anyway. What Paladins need is straight up damage and range boost. And as long as HP wash is a thing (I'm not against it, personally), being overly tanky will just never be a good niche. Now, about your statement I just have to disagree, I play Paladin because it's the most appealing class to me, and I used to main it back in pre-bb gms. Some people genuinely enjoy Paladins, and still, when I see that I'm doing about the same damage as heroes on what is supposed to be where Paladins shine (A single target boss with elemental weakness)- it's frustrating.
these suggestions are nice and all but would only make paladins a better mules , which is not what we want ( I think ?) , but I agree they need some kind of a buff
I don't really like any of the changes you have to offer for paladins. A change I thought would be interesting would be to buff the skill Guardian. As it stands, Guardian will block any hit at a 15% chance at lvl 30 if you are holding a shield. I think giving that skill an extra 5% starting at lvl 1 would be nice. so 5.5% at lvl 1 and 20% at lvl 30. None of your suggestions work well with the current systems of the game or preserve how the game is now and severely alters power of paladins. No one should have 100% stance, reducing all damage taken by 30% is completely ridiculous, and weapon defense just doesn't change that much both for bosses and for players.
The idea was to give Paladin's something they would be good at to add appeal. At the moment people literally have to make up pros about Paladin's that don't really exist, although they have a nice recent weapon cancel buff. If Paladin's get a range and damage boost they may as well be Hero's and Dragon Knight copies cause all that would happen is they would hit more monsters with extra range and be on the same dpm chart just like their brothers. I'm saying that a underdog appeal shouldn't be the sole reason to play a class as advertised. We have perma beginners for that and perma 2nd or 3rd jobbers if anyone ever feels like making those. Technically speaking every bosser is a mule for Nightlord's. What I want to propose is just something for Paladin's to be good at and whether their damage is low or not it would be cool for them to be able to tank a ridiculous amount. I have maxed Guardian and I wouldn't mind 20% guardian, but that change is almost inline with my own ideas don't you think? All you did was get a defensive skill and buff it like what I did for mine. I don't see how my changes don't preserve the game since they just made a huge change by giving them weapon cancel. The only awkward changes in my thread is making strength give defense, but I don't see what's wrong with the rest. What's wrong with 100% stance and 30% achilles? With high weapon defense tanking becomes easier and it makes a near useless stat have some uses at least for a few classes.
I think 100% stance should stay in GMS and 30% achilles is just way too much. Of course, these are just my opinions and I don't want you to feel attacked or anything. Thanks for putting yourself our there and starting up some discussion.
100% stance sounds a bit overpowered and even dull - invincibility isn't fun as it takes out the element of surprise and the (already very limited) challenging aspect of the game. 95% is twice stronger than the regular 90% (you will dodge x2 more hits) - seems better and not broken. I don't think the other changes are significant in the current state of the server. People don't care too much about defenses/blocks - it's all about the damage. I loved how they gave paladins the armor crash-ability, a great buff that increases the whole party's damage potential in bosses. I believe buffing paladins with indirect buffs would be a better approach for this one (Except for 95% Stance, That would be very fitting). If they ever decide to buff grinding on top of bossing and encourage players to train in higher levels instead of doing bosses 24/7 and never really grind - That would already be a significant buff for paladins because grinding is every paladin's strength.
All they have is holy charge lol, aside from that they got nothing. The special thing about Paladins in fantasy/games isn't their tanking abilities (other warriors can be tanks too) but their holy powers. They should get something like Heal, a weaker version of Res or maybe Combat Orders if you want them to be viable at all.
Hmm you can use it with different charges too though so not sure if it's holy. Anyway I think the best idea to buff Paladin is to give a significant range increase to Charge Blow (like double the range it has now) to make it good at hitting multiple targets and also make the HT parts weak to certain elements (the ice head would be weak to fire, the fire head will be weak to ice and maybe mark the arm weak to holy (cause they can curse so they are kinda evil I guess lol?)
I don't see how 100% stance is bad for a character with the shortest range in the game. Characters like Nightlord's don't even have to worry about wobbling around their sweet spot since they have such high dodge chance and over 5 times the range of Paladin's. They have to be chest distance to hit most monsters so they deal with bumping the most. It really isn't an over powered buff considering Dark Knight's had a huge buff to their Beserk. 95% Stance isn't a bad compromise. Yeah most people just care about damage or being a mule for Nightlord's, but plenty of people play Shadower's for their avoid even though it really only helps the Shadower, but it's their specialty that they're best at with no compromise whether another class out does them in that aspect. Paladin's tie with Hero's defense and they still lose in 1v1 and mobbing damage to most classes. Weapon cancel crash is helpful. I haven't gotten to see it myself however, and I'm not sure if the class that can stop weapon cancel once in awhile is very appealing. I wouldn't be opposed to a Heaven's Hammer buff so they can increase their grinding and bossing damage/kills as a warrior mage hybrid. As far as grinding high level goes bossing has taken it over since I usually see maybe 1 party at Oblivion 2-4 rarely. Paladin's have plenty of bad and useless skills to buff or tinker with rather than borrowing skills from Cleric's. Combat Order's seems like it would be hard to implement, but I hope it isn't.
I can understand why people want changes to be made for this class because it has never been designed properly from the first place. However, if more funded people would even take their time to make one, many would actually agree how strong this class can be. The only problem I can think of is charged blow's lack of range. I don't mind the 350% damage as it can hit up to 6 mobs at once, which is pretty decent for grinding, but since this skill was mostly meant for mobbing (you hit a monster and you end up hitting the following ones in some kind of a chain reaction), you'll find yourself only hitting 2 zak arms at once (most of the time only 1 depending on the arms movement) and into a similar situation at HT during tail/legs segment. This is one of the reasons pallies are not welcome to boss runs and this has always been issue. I honestly don't think buffing pallies' achilles/guardian skills would be fair to heroes (they've already been nerfed with crash skill). As far as I know, pallies can easily be more tankier through hp washing and that alone wouldn't be enough to make them a reliability for bossing; their main concern is they lack dps and from what I've been reading on the forums, most believe with a better charged blow range, this could help tremendously. I have to say though, I enjoy playing this class a lot and from the beginning, I always knew this class was bad dps-wise and I actually thought I would never get to HT just like DKs and heroes do. This is also why I don't agree on zak/HT parts being weak to certain elements, pallies would become overpowered all of a sudden. I think this is something people have to accept when they first create their pally character and think more about enjoying the game than anything else. This class is unique just like shadowers and buccaneers and personally, since I have a penchant for warriors, this is the main reason why I play this class.
All it would do is make u have to wash less and use less potions. Being tanky means nothing in maple all you need is enough hp to not get one hit. If you want to buff paladin just make then do more damage there is no point in making them tankier as it would not change a thing for their position, they would still not be wanted by parties as they dont reduce the bosskill time by as much as other jobs. Sadly the design of paladin makes it so they can never be balanced as it relies on elemental weaknesses of the mobs which zak and ht dont have.
Just increase % of acb, enable stackable charges or even increase the % of blast since its single target ezpz
I'm actually more concerned about actually hitting the monsters. I know this thread is asking for more tankier options for Paladin but really the main concern right now for me at least is hitting stuff, and I don't mean how much damage I do.
