Gameplay
Paladin gameplay is focused around five major aspects:
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- Damage Buff (“AP”/Attack Power)
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Branding/Marking debuff
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Defensive Utility
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Counters
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Identity (“Piety Meter”)
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Hyper Awakening Technique (“T Skill”)
Knowing which one to prioritize at any given time can greatly increase your party’s damage, and the overall raid experience of your teammates.
Attack Power Buffs
Paladins have two damage buffs: Wrath of God and Heavenly Blessings.
Damage buffs make up the majority of your contribution to your team’s damage: assuming all players have equal gear, the buff given by these two spells works out to 22% of your base attack power as a damage buff on all three of your party members.
Maintaining this buff on your party members should always be your first priority. Due to the cooldown of Heavenly Blessings being extremely long, you cannot naturally get 100% uptime on your buffs without external help (magick stream, luminary, quick recharges, etc). As such, timing these buffs well to cover your teammates’ damage is your most important contribution to the raid.
You can check the duration of each skill by watching the red sword icon above your healthbar.
Wrath of God has a low cooldown, you should always cast it first if your Magick Stream and Luminary are not stacked. Its attack buff applies as soon as the spell is cast, meaning you should cast it just as your other attack buff is about to run out.
Heavenly Blessings has a long cooldown, this skill is the bottleneck for AP uptime on Paladin. The spell has a very short cast animation, after which the buff will always go off, even if you get flinched out of the secondary animation. (This does reduce its meter gain, so be careful!)
Light Brand
Your Brand is a unique debuff placed by supports on the boss. Brands increase the damage the boss takes by a flat 10%, and do not stack.
After your AP Buff, your brand is the second largest source of damage for the team, and should be prioritized only after your primary buffs.
Light’s Vestige is Paladin’s unique brand. For legion raids, you can watch the Boss’ HP Bar for the debuff icon to make sure you always have this active. For guardian raids, a large sword symbol will float above the Boss while it’s affected by the debuff.
There are two main skills used for branding, pick one:
- Holy Explosion is the default brand option after all the buffs to it even without Star Core, it is extremely comfy because of how the long duration is (15s) and it also has multi hit, para immunity, AOE, speed of cast. Effectively this has the Branding power of Sword of Justice with the casting/para immunity of Light Shock.
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Sword of Justice has a massive 10 second duration (13 seconds if the boss doesn’t move out of its AoE), and a very long range, allowing it to be safely applied from a distance. Insane duration/CDR ratio, can be precast. No Para and Very slow to cast.
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Light Shock is a higher ceiling brand option but with quite a few drawback, it is a lot less comfy as an option but it is possible to spam it a lot more than Sword of Justice to fish for Quick Recharge and Bold Salvation ark passive node procs to reduce the cooldown of the Z skill as much as possible to then generate more meter to get into aura for more often and for longer. Passible duration/CDR ratio, can’t precast.
- With Sword Prayer, Holy Sword becomes a brand but the cooldown is too long for it's duration (5s), it is helpful as a back up brand but you can't depend on it as main brand.
If you are lacking skill points or are not level 60, it is recommended to run Light Shock at level 7 to save on skill points and reduce mana usage.
In Tier 4, your Light’s Vestige is automatically applied to nearby enemies when you activate Holy Aura once you activate the Light’s Vestige ark passive node.
Defensive Utility
A lot of spells grant your teammates some form of damage reduction or shielding. This is an extremely underrated part of your kit - a good support drastically reduces the amount of damage their party takes, and makes life extremely comfortable for their dps.
Paladin specifically is known as the most reliable defensive support, with almost permanent uptime on damage reduction and constant heals for your entire party.
Holy Protection provides a shield to all party members. With the Vow of Light tripod, it also heals all targets when it expires. The Purify tripod additionally makes it cleanse debuffs from party members on cast.
Aside from certain fights, where you’re expected to use the cleanse for certain attacks or patterns (Inferno Valtan G2, Kayangel G2, or Akkan G3 Fear), you can usually spam this skill whenever it’s off cooldown. Raid Guides will specifically mention when you need to hold cleanse. Robust protection can instead be used for big boy shields.
God's Decree provides an incredibly powerful 70% damage reduction + a shield to all allies within its radius. This skill is incredibly versatile and can be used to save allies or to let your damage dealers DPS through a damaging pattern. If you do not stand inside the circle, you will not get the damage reduction yourself.
Heavenly Blessings, one of your main buffs, also applies a 20% damage reduction to all affected allies. It’s never worth holding the spell for this effect, but it adds up to a lot of damage reduced over the course of a fight.
With the Blessed Aura engraving, your Holy Aura grants a 20% damage reduction to all allies inside it while active, as well as healing for 2% of your max health every 1.5 seconds.
Holy area can be used to give your party an extra 30% Damage reduction effect. Do note that none of the DR in pally's kit stack, they can only be used as coverage extension, otherwise the highest % applies.
Your awakening Alithanes's Judgment provides your entire party with a massive shield that makes characters effectively immune to all damage that is not a wipe mechanic. This can be very effective during attacks that do a lot of damage but do not CC.
Counters
During raids, bosses will periodically glow blue, allowing you to counter them. These are often large DPS windows and/or prevent extremely dangerous patterns or mechanics.
Paladin is equipped with two of the strongest counters in the game. It is therefore expected that you will be able to cover most of them in every raid.
Holy Sword is your proactive counter. It has a huge range and fires for multiple ticks, any of which counter the boss if they connect. The one downside to this spell is its longer cast time, which can make it hard to hit certain counters with short time frames, meaning you often have to precast it before the boss turns blue.
Executor’s Sword casts instantly, making it extremely effective on counters with short telegraphs. The spell has a shorter range, though you can run the Excellent Mobility tripod to increase its range.
All hits of Executioner Sword counters unless you use broad swing, in which case only the first hit does, the second hit applies weak point no matter the tripod you pick.
Most paladins opt to run both counters, though once you are familiar with a raid, you can opt to drop one for an additional utility skill (often Holy Area). In fights with extremely telegraphed counters, like Brelshaza, it’s recommended to drop Executor’s.
Identity
Paladin meter generation is a bit nuanced as some of the skills provide flat meter and some skills provide % meter, The main difference between both types of meter gens is that % meter works during aura to replenish meter but that it does not scale with spec, wealth, meter line on necklace or yearning meter gen.
- Light of Judgment generates a massive amount of meter on hit, use this spell whenever it’s off cooldown and you don’t have aura active.
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Both Wrath of God and Heavenly Blessings generate a decent amount of meter when they hit the boss, though it’s never worth delaying a buff to gain meter if you are out of boss range. do note that around 2/3 of their meter gen is % meter. (+500 meter unit that is unscalable but works during aura).
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If you choose to run it, Holy Area is a close second after Light of Judgment, assuming the boss doesn’t move out of the AoE. You can choose to run the Divine Mark tripod to further increase the meter gain.
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Holy Sword (especially if you run a wealth rune) generates a good amount of meter per cast. This adds up over the course of a fight. Don’t mindlessly spam it, but don’t be afraid to use it for meter gain when it’s safe to do so. If you use Swordprayer the meter gen is 100% converted to % values meaning you get 6% on relic core and 9% on ancient core and Wealth no longer applies.
- Holy Explosion gives a big chunk of meter though the skill is on a much longer cooldown than other options, it makes it very good for burst stagger but not so much for average meter gains.
- Divine Justice (T skill), though it has its own category down below.
Your awakening, Alithanes's Judgment, fills a major portion of your Piety bar when used (80%), with an extra 10% gain if you hit the boss. It is not recommended to cast this at the start of a fight; prioritize your damage buffs, brand, and activate yearning first.
You generally want to use your Holy Aura as soon as you can, since any time you spend sitting at max meter results in wasted cooldowns on your meter skills. The exception is when you know the boss is about to become invulnerable or phase into a mechanic, where you should hold it until that resolves. With Divine Liberation you can start your aura as soon as you have 75% meter and if you cancel aura you get 70% of the remaining meter refunded.
Post support rework, Paladin gets a new identity skill in the form of Divine Wave (Z), it’s primary function will be to replenish 10% meter both inside and outside aura but it also provides paladin with another party shield (20% hp for 6s). Bold Salvation ark passive node will encourage paladin to keep spamming yellow skills during aura to get the cooldown of Z down as much as possible. Basically functions like an extra T skill.
Hyper Awakening Technique
Divine Justice
T skill usage is an integral part of pally’s kit in T4, it serves 3 purposes:
An extra damage buff that stacks with everything else already listed, this is a +10% damage buff on a relatively long cooldown compared to the rest of the kit (base 60s, around 30s with 1800 swift, Magick Stream and Luminary stacked up as well as the Leap Tree CDR node Release Potential).
It’s the only way to buff Hyper Awakening damage making it important to sync up with your dps to enhance their Hyper Awakening.
Specific to Paladin, Divine Justice is also responsible for a big chunk of meter generation due to the Leap Tree Upgrade Node Righteous Light, it provides a self buff granting 1/2/3% meter every second for 6 seconds upon casting T Skill, more importantly, the meter provided by this node actually works during Holy Aura, so it serves to extend aura when you have it up during aura or to generate around 20% meter in one skill when you don’t have your aura running. Get your Quick Recharges out because you want to cast this skill as often as possible.
