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Paladin is a Support with a more laid-back playstyle and requires less effort to achieve essentially the same results as other Supports. Being a good Paladin is fairly easy due to his simple rotation, screen-wide range for most of his buffs and longer cooldowns that lead to slower gameplay.
Unlike the other Supports, Paladin only has one orb known as the Piety Meter. Once full, you can activate one of the stances to enable their effects. Landing Holy skills will generate the most amount of Piety, and Punish skills (including auto attack) will generate the least.
Holy Aura (X)
Paladin’s most important Identity skill. It grants a Damage Buff with a Heal over Time (HoT) and Damage Reduction effect while the Blessed Aura class engraving is equipped. Party members affected by the Holy Aura (12-meter radius) inflict +10% (Base with 0 Spec) Damage to foes. Push Immunity on activation. The efficiency of this Buff scales with the Specialization stat. (45% skill efficiency per 500 Spec, 4.5% additional damage from aura)
Divine Wave (Z)
Added following the support rework, skill added that is an extra shield for the party and also used for meter gen, it has 2 interaction with the ark passive, one being granting 10% meter inside or outside of aura and the other one is getting its cooldown reduced by 0.25s per yellow skills that are used during the Holy Aura itself.
Best-In-Slot Stone is Awakening/Drops of Ether combo.
For really hard content that require a balanced setup with additional survivability (TFM, potentially new hell mode, nightmare version of new raids, etc), consider fully dropping DOE to be able to pick up both Vital Point Hit and Crisis Evasion.
MP Furnace can be used if you never run out of mana but considering the buff for Standing Striker there is no real reason to ever play with MP Furnace.
Charged Fury can be used as an alternate to Transcendent Power, the way that it works is that when your Hyper Awakening meter fills up to 100% it tries to refund your remaining awakening cooldown by 10%/level of Charged Fury, this trigger once and if your awakening is not on cooldown the effect is simply wasted.
Biggest meter generator in your normal skillset, also has Lv.2 Weak Point and decent stagger, does not generate meter while Aura is active.
Big DR skill. Unlike other supports, paladin's DR skill is worse at holding but it is better at tapping the skill and instantly cancelling it for something else. It has the longest range and the fastest casting speed of all supports.
Alternatively it also has the shortest holding duration as well as the shortest lingering DR and the shield does not get refreshed every tick.
Can be used for Conviction/Judgement
The Lingering tripod also increases the duration of the movement speed buff given to your party making it a great all around defensive skill.
Can be used with Cleanse if the raid needs it.
Can also be used with Robust Protection and Thunderous Protection, this bypasses the extra cooldown added by Vow of Light while granting you massive shields on a lower cooldown making it a very interesting option for harder fights (TFM, Hell mode, etc).
One of your two attack buff skills alongside Heavenly Blessings, alternate it with HB to maintain attack buffs.
Great meter gen per cast if you hit something with it.
The Faith tripod 5% meter gen gained also works during aura.
One of your two attack buff skills alongside Wrath of God, alternate it with WoG to maintain attack buffs. Compared to WoG this also gives your party Attack speed, MP regen and DR.
Great meter gen per cast if you hit something with it.
The Faith tripod 5% meter gen gained also works during aura.
HB has a 1.5s delay before it activates, you have to cast it when WoG has 1s~on the buff timer or 7s~ left on cooldown
Recommended
Bread and butter brand, solid range, solid duration, has lingering on it for 3 seconds so can be used to precast. The only weakness of this brand is that it doesn't have para armor on it so you have to be careful about when you are using it.
Can be used with a CJ setup.
Sweaty brand, low duration, very low cooldown, para immunity and very fast to cast as well as being the best QR farmer in the entirety of support's pally kit, it is not able to precast and it does not have any lingering effect, mid range.
Good instant meter gen + stagger skill that offers a lot of flexibility, preferably to be used with Star Core.
Can be used as a solo or duo brand skill.
*Recommended*
Best counter in the game when it comes to telegraphed attacks, it also has great meter gen with insane stagger and insane range.
For prog Overwhelm is recommended, after that you could swap to Wealth to build up Aura faster.
With 2b Star Core you free up a wealth rune here so you can go Overwhelm or Galewind without losing any meter gen.
*Recommended*
Added an entry for Holy Explosion as a duo brand skill, this pairs well with SoJ or LS and provides insane burst meter/stagger.
high meter gen as well as very high stagger also comes with Lv.1 Weakpoint. Very effective with HE Star Core.
1 cast of HE is the same stagger as one cast of 3 hits ES (ignoring runes).
Can be used as a solo or duo brand skill.
Great meter gen as well as a great Quick Recharge farming skill.
Potential tripods swap include Divine Mark to get more meter gen ( 30% more meter on the skill at the cost of the 30% DR) and using -Quick Prep at the cost of para immunity.
Can be used for Conviction/Judgement
Fast and reactive counter that has decent range, one of the best all rounder counter in the game. It also has great stagger (#2 or #3 of the entire pally kit) and lvl2 Weak Point.
It is possible to run Wide Swing (either for the ark grid or simply for comfort), makes it a bit easier to hit counters but reduces stagger by like 30%.
Grants all teammates a 10% damage increase for 10 seconds.
Grants all teammates a 20% Hyper Awakening damage increase for 20 seconds.This effect stacks with your AP Buff, Identity and your Brand. Use it off cooldown, it is not worth holding as the damage buff is quite significant. Also provides a massive amount of meter gen with the leap tree upgrade and is also effective during aura.
Alithanes’s Judgment:
Apply a shield equal to 100% of your Max HP for 10s to allies within 24m. Deals large AoE Damage anywhere on the screen that you manually place. Generates a static 80% of the Piety meter on cast and an extra 10% that is affected by sources of meter generation.
Devotion of Alithanes:
Includes the base awakening shield and also provides a 30s death protection effect, once it triggers it makes anyone in your party invincible to damage for 3s (triggers individually once per person or times out).
Heavenly Blessings: You want this skill at the highest CD gem you can afford.
Wrath of God: Basically doesn't even need a CD gem at fully stacked Magick Stream and Luminary, it is just here to be more flexible, a Lv. 6 gem is more than enough, the bottleneck is all on Heavenly Blessings side.
Light Shock and Sword of Justice: You need a CD gem for these skills to feel good but it does not need to be a very high level gem.
Depending on your build you may use certain Wealths instead of certain Quick Recharges (or vice
versa) here is a ranking for every skill for their respective rune:
Wealth: Light of Judgment > Holy Explosion > Holy Area > Holy Sword > Wrath of God
Quick Recharge: Light Shock > Sword of Justice > Heavenly Blessings > Holy Area > Holy Protection > God’s Decree > Wrath of God.
Some skills are good at using both runes (Holy Area/Heavenly Blessings) so mix and match to what you find most practical.
Sun + Moon Core
Normally recommended to go with 1x T skill core (True Justice OR Divine Cause) and 1x Attack Buff core (Heavenly Resolve OR Heavenly Agent) but for the Sun and Moon combo you are mostly picking based on what you already have or based on the 60s self buff that you get:
7% healing and shielding (1st pair) vs 5% stagger (2nd pair).
Consider using Bebok's calc to see which Sun/Moon core combo would best fit your uptime.
If you have an ancient core of any type of sun/moon, use it instead of any recommendation here.
Chaos Core
Chaos Sun Cores are all close to eachother, big gems favoring Faith while more budget gems (and maybe no Magick Stream books) favoring Flowing Magick.
Star Core
Star cores are ALL viable on paladin. Here is what is recommended with current knowledge:
Ancient Sword's Prayer > Relic Prayer of Divine Surge > Relic Prayer of Light >= Relic Sword's Prayer.
The average 7y pally will gain a lot from running HE core, do with that what you will.
in case that wasn't enough here's a few notes on each of them:
Light of Judgement Core (Prayer of Light):
Pros:
Highest consistent meter option, fits any build. Highest meter gen/s potential, it doesn't get % meter which means that while it doesn't work during aura, it also means that wealth scales the entire value of it.
Cons:
Doesn't do anything in aura, lacking in extra utility beside some stagger.
Holy Sword + Exec Sword Core (Sword's Prayer):
Pros:
Solid all rounder pick, Good meter gen in and out of aura, frees up a rune easily on Holy Sword, Extra push immunity skill that you can hold for yourself the majority of the time.
The meter gen applies 3 times, so relic core gives 3x2% and ancient 3x3%, this is both a pros and a cons but it HEAVILY favors having this on ancient as the meter gens climbs from 600 units to 900 units.
Cons:
Forces you into 2B for max efficiency. Broad Slash is a stagger reduction over the third swing (-30%). Not Great at Relic because of how this scales.
Holy Explosion Core (Prayer of Divine Surge):
Pros:
Most versatile option as it can be used as a meter gen or brand skill for 1b and 2b, can replace main brand, holy area, light of judgement, be spicy with it. Extends aura and solid meter gen.
Highest burst meter (20%~) if you opt out of extending aura and decide to keep 2 stacks for when aura ends.
Cons:
The meter gen is partly flat % partly normal meter so it eats a bit into wealth efficiency. Needs a higher cooldown gem than other options to feel comfy.
Paladin gameplay is focused around five major aspects:
Branding/Marking debuff
Defensive Utility
Counters
Identity (“Piety Meter”)
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. 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 sword icon above your healthbar.
Wrath of God is your primary damage buff. Due to its low cooldown, you should always cast it first if both buffs are off cooldown. 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 is your secondary damage buff. Due to its 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!)
It’s important to note that the AP Buff from Heavenly Blessings does not apply instantly. There is a short delay from when you cast the spell to when your allies gain the buff. It’s recommended to practice the timing (~1.5 second left on the Buff) in Trixion so that you can always have your damage increase active.
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:
Sword of Justice is the default brand option. It 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.
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.
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.
Paladin has other skills with brand tripods (God's Decree), but these tripods are difficult to get good uptime with. You can easily maintain almost permanent uptime with either of the two standard brand options.
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 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, facetank patterns, or even 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.
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.
Only the first hit of Executor’s Sword is a counter, the second only applies weak point.
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; You can elect to drop Holy Sword instead for fights with short counters, less stagger, or that require weak point.
Identity
Paladin meter generation is fairly simple, since a lot of it is automatic.
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. Sword of Justice also contributes.
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.
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.
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 (10% 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 selfbuff 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.
Here are the relevant stats to scale your buffs: Weapon Power, Main Stat (Str/Dex/Int), Base Attack Power (T4 Gem Bonus, 9/7 Stone bonus), Spec (scales Identity Damage), Ally Damage (Ring and Bracelet,), Ally Atk. Power Enhancement (Elixirs, Transcendence, Bracelet), Brand Power (Transcendence, Evolution Tree, Necklace).
Note: Weapon Quality and Attack Power do NOT make your buffs stronger
-Ally Atk. Power Enhancement: Stat that increases the Attack Power granted by Heavenly Blessings and Wrath of God.
-Ally Damage: Stat that increases your Identity Buff as well as your T Skill buff (Damage buff only, not the Hyper Awakening part).
-Brand Power: Stat that increases the Damage Buff provided by your Brand (SoJ, etc).
In the Game Menu;
Settings -> Gameplay -> Combat Related Settings -> Scroll to the bottom
This is what I personally use
Pet Bonus = the 160 combat stat icon.
Character Skill Bonus Buffs = Buffs granted from skills that are not part of support offensive buffs, this can include stuff like attack/ms speed buff, support’s DR/Shields, Bard’s attack speed on SoC use, soulfist Synergy, there’s a lot of things that can show here.
Attack Support Buffs includes both ATTACK BUFFS and IDENTITY BUFFS, it also includes Valk’s Wings of Liberty and Bard’s Major Chord.
Engraving Effect Buff= Adren, Magick Stream, etc.
Ark Passive Buff = Buffs from ark passive that are not support offensive buffs, this is a bit convoluted so I’ll give some examples, Valkiry’s Trinity and Paladin Surge stacks, Bard’s Perfect Harmony, Side nodes that grant buffs, on top of that it also displays things like the Yearning buff and Standing Striker from Evo tree.
Cooking Bonus Buffs = Feast/Food.
Battle Item Bonus Buffs = Atro, Timestop, etc.
Other Bonus Buffs = Buffs granted in raids like Echidna stagger buff or Attack power buff from Thaemine g4.
Specialty Bonus Buffs = I put it at the end because it’s a real weird one, the best way I can explain this one are buffs from identity that have not been altered by Ark Passive, this means things like Valkyrie’s buff that allows her to heal after pressing Z, or things like the firepower meter on artillerist or the shield granted by Hypergrav on Destroyer. The weird part? If you take Robust Spirit Soulfist and you allocate the points for the first 2 main in ark passive, the Hype buffs displays according to the Specialty Bonus Buff, as soon as you slot in the 3rd node it stops being a Specialty Bonus Buff and it starts being an Ark Passive Buff instead, better to check on a case by case for this one, for my roster it doesn’t do much.
Ark grid = any buffs granted by ark grid like Destiny.
Yes. Put Conviction on Sword of Justice, and then Judgment on Holy Area or Godsent Law or Holy Sword.
At first Charged Fury does nothing, it activates once upon reaching full Hyper Awakening meter (bar above your awakening skill) when that bar gets full it tries to refund a partial amount of cooldown left from your awakening CD. It usually happens around 3mins into a raid.
Your awakening is not on cooldown? Too bad.
Pîety/Stagger sheet made by escape#7354
Necklace - Brand Power %, Serenade Meter Gain %. Prioritize Brand Power as high as you can afford.
Earrings - Weapon Power %. Flat Weapon Power, Max HP can be filler stats
Rings - Ally Damage Enhancement, Ally Atk Power Enhancement. Ally Damage Enhancement is slightly better.
Bracelet - Hybrid Lines in Bold, other lines. See below:
Swiftness and Specialization are important, but if you have multiple hybrid lines on a bracelet, you may forgo one of the primary stats. Use the Support Buff Calculator if you are unsure of a bracelet's potency.
Leap 1 -> Enlightenment 5 or 6 (enough for 100 points) -> Leap 6 -> Evolution 6