Pally help and advice?

Daffie

Daffie

Dalayan Pious Diety
Hi everyone. I just started playing Shards of Dalaya, and it is a lot of fun. I am looking for some tips on gear, agro management, and pulling.

A little background: Being an EQ vet, I have been finding SoD a bit challenging getting use to the many differences. I have rolled a Pally and a Cleric to complement my brother's Monk and Shaman. The plan is eventually for me to box the pally and shaman while he boxes the monk and cleric. The pally and cleric just made level 60, and have just started grouping with the 65 monk/shaman. The pally does not have great gear...

Agro:
Even before grouping with the much better geared monk, I was having agro issues with the pally as the main tank in groups. I have read that pallys have agro issues in SoD? Regardless, healing does not seem to be significant agro, so I have been alternating between stuns and blinds. Basically, Blinding Light/Holy Might on singles, and Blinding Light/Holy Might/Gleaming Light. I tried adding in another low level stun, but it really doesn't seem to help my agro much. Am I doing something wrong? Any suggestions to help keep agro better? Is it true that resisted spells give almost no agro?

Gear:
It seems that gearing is fairly similar to the original EQ in what to look for on gear pieces. AC/HP. We have been doing maps (very easy, easy and normal) in order to get gear. (The monk tanks because his gear is so much better...) I did a few adepts at lower levels, but do not have a ton of adept gear. We also worked through some Thurg quests while I was in my 50s. Are maps a good place to keep gearing up? Are there any other suggestions on things we can do to gear? Are there any specific weapons that I should be looking at to assist with agro?

Pulling:
Does anyone have tips on pulling with Pacify for when I am boxing by myself? I have been pacifying every mob in agro range, then trying to pull one with blind, but it never seems to work out that I get single pulls. Is there something I am doing wrong? Maybe I am stuck thinking in old EQ terms and Pacify works differently here?

AA:
Should I stop leveling and do some AAs? Should I get to 65 then AA? What AAs should I be buying first? I assume run speed/regen, then Natural Durability/Combat Agility, then Divine Stun/Physical Enhancement/Fury of Light, then Heroic Durability/lighting reflexes/rush to judgment/shielding mastery. Does this seem like a reasonable path, or should I be changing things up?

Any other tips for playing my pally would be great! Would love some suggestions on where to hunt with the pally/shaman duo at level 60.

Thank you for all the help!
 
Daffie said:
Agro:
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ST blind, ae blind, ST blind, stun will give you most aggro off the bat. you shouldnt have much aggro problems at low tier tbh, unless you run out of mana. the problem with paladin aggro is that it doesn't scale up through the tiers.

Daffie said:
Gear:
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tmaps are a good place to start, you can also do cmal for class specific armor and the lower bosses. the new zone overgrowth prob has some nice loot. also you can get boe's from blood quarry/citadel for vendor price usually if you decide to go that route. you can do stuff like work on murk rep in remnants and make money and get some toys while doing it

Daffie said:
Pulling:
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pacify doesn't work nearly as well here as it did on live. root pulling/splitting with a monk are your options p much

Daffie said:
AA:
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I would suggest leveling to 65 straight away unless you want to stop at 57 and do adepts. you can get AA's in whatever order you want, eventually you will get them all.
 
Cian2, thanks for the advice!

When I am casting the blinds for agro, should I have to wait for it to run before I can recast (or cast a the AE blind)? Seems like I should, but it is hard to tell.
 
Daffie said:
Cian2, thanks for the advice!

When I am casting the blinds for agro, should I have to wait for it to run before I can recast (or cast a the AE blind)? Seems like I should, but it is hard to tell.
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if you are just single target blinding, yes, you want to wait for it to wear off before recasting or it does nothing. however, you can do single target - ae - single target in succession because they overwrite eachother. so basically when AE blind is up you can triple blind. otherwise you just blind on cooldown and stun and bash and hope you dont lose aggro
 
Flame of Light (50) is a 250 hate spell, don't forget about that. Also, remember AoE Blind has a very big range but AoE stun is quite small range.

Here is a hotbutton saving macro set up from the wiki altered a bit. Mash it! Bash is very useful, and should get into habit of bashin all the time as shields in the future have procs on them, as well as it being another means to add aggro.
73 Is divine stun. (AA stun):

/doability (whatever ability number bash is on)
/alt activate 73
/cast (single target blind)

Something else I have picked up is that Taunt should be saved for when you've lost aggro, not when you still have it. irc successful taunt gives you +1 point more hate over whoever has highest hate. Could be wrong.
 
Rusheeth said:
/doability (whatever ability number bash is on)
/alt activate 73
/pause ##
/cast (single target blind)
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Don't forget that so there is time between casting AA stun and blind. Value will have to be messed with a little.
 
I don't really recommend doing a hotkey like that though, just because as a tank you will get stunned a bit which will cause you to redo whatever you tried to cast.
 
Don't use hotkeys. Ability hotkeys are awful and anyone that uses them is awful (except when in raids as a healer or boxing two classes that spam lots of abilities, like Paladin & Necro).

If you are pulling 2 mobs, get both mobs on your target toggle. Divine stun to pull, toggle to other and blind, toggle back and blind. You will have aggro on both before they get to you (DS will keep the first mob stunned in place for long enough). You can then aoe blind to overwrite the single target on each. If you don't have any mages, that should be enough to keep the non-assist target aggro'd on you. If you have a mage you will need to toggle back every now and then to blind so that the mage doesn't get summoned and end up raining himself. A word of advice re: AoE stun, if you are fighting mobs that are tearing you apart, it is much easier to have your melee DPS aggro their aggro better so that you can save AoE stun for when your healer gets behind on heals. This is something that I did often in zones like FR/Emberflow/Citadel when I was on tier for them. (These days nothing kills me unless my healer dies and I run out of mana).

If you are grouped with melee DPS, they will simply need to manage their aggro much more than they would have to with a Warrior or SK (Monks FD, Rogues evade, Rangers jolt, Bards song of dawn, Beastlords.. uh.. stance and pray).

Flame of Light is useless outside of raids, the mana cost:aggro ratio is very low. To give you some perspective, Terror of Kaezul is 2.5x more efficient for each point of aggro and casts in 40% of the time Flame of Light does. Personally, I only ever use it on magic immune/highly resistant mobs.

Divine stun is also useless after you initially pull mobs, I am not sure that it even generates more aggro than a single melee swing. Same note as the above: I only use on magic immune/highly resistant mobs.
 
This is an important thing noone here has mentioned to you but when you are pulling mobs you need to actually put some damage on them (damage shield, melee) before someone else is an idiot and casts a spell while they are running at you and for whatever reason the everquest client decides to ignore all the aggro you threw at them getting said other player killed.
 
Otcho said:
This is an important thing noone here has mentioned to you but when you are pulling mobs you need to actually put some damage on them (damage shield, melee) before someone else is an idiot and casts a spell while they are running at you and for whatever reason the everquest client decides to ignore all the aggro you threw at them getting said other player killed.
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Beware of rangers!
 
Thank you for all the advice. For sure I am going to make some changes to my stun/blind in terms of single target and AE. I didn't realize that I could be chaining them! All the other tips are most welcome too!

Again, thank you for all the help.
 
I don't put a pause in because when AA is on CD blind is up, and when blind is on CD AA is up. Because there's no pause element in there the command is over after whatever is cast meaning there's no 'macro downtime'.Just some button to mash for a box, and save space for heals on the hotbar. I do pal/ rog and that's a constant tabbing over to backstab (now a BS hotkey is indeed stupid as it prevents you from assisting or evading or re-stancing). Just easier to be able to spam a button with lots of commands in it. Of course it's not acceptable for raids but use your judgement.

As Bango said up there tho toggle targets is the best button bind it somewhere convenient.

DPS never cares that you're playing a paladin to be better at their class... Flame of light might not really be great now you have R2 since blinds are enough but before then at like t4-9 single target aggro would be pretty shitty if it was just blind/aoe/blind.
 
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From a dps perspective, necs are paladin's best friends as strange as that may sound from an RP perspective. undead slow, nukes, aggro management , and can mez mubs off the baddies. You will never go wrong choosing a semi-competent nec.
 
Everyone has been sooo helpful, so I have just a little update and maybe another question or 2!

We have been doing some cmal, but have only had luck getting the box cleric some gear thus far. Hard to find stuff up, especially the named... We have also been xping in ummm mistmoor and great divide (can't remember the names for SoD) doing faction hunting while we XP. Did some more normal maps too. The pally is almost level 62 now, and we are continuing the hunt for xp + gear/faction! We are rushing to 65 before starting AAs.

My agro has greatly improved now that I am using multiple blinds in succession!

Is there somewhere where I can find out what hate each spell costs (maybe similar to lucy?) The Wiki doesn't seem to have this info. Do blinding light and flash of light have the same hate creation? I guess the same could be asked for the AE blinds. I know that blinding light has the resist adjust, so it lands more often for me.

Am I going to get the same amount of hate from Holy Might as I would Words of Thunder? On live EQ for many years the low level stuns gave the same hate, so I could use those to conserve mana. I am wondering if the same type of mechanic is at work here.


Here is my new spell setup at level 61:
Superior Healing
Blessing of Althuna
Yaulp IV (or Flame of Light)
Blinding Light
Holy Might
Gleam of Light
Flash of Light
Celestial Cleansing


Thanks again for all the input. I am really have a blast on Dalaya!
 
I can't recall the exact numbers but they were posted years ago during the hate tournament

I think all blinds are 690 hate, all stuns are 700, divine stun was negligible. Don't think anyone knows about bash but I suspect its 300ish, think it's adjusted by shield AC

so yes, as far as i know you can use low level things. higher stuns do more damage so would do a bit more hate (and longer stun obv) but it's nbd.
 
cian2 said:
I can't recall the exact numbers but they were posted years ago during the hate tournament

I think all blinds are 690 hate, all stuns are 700, divine stun was negligible. Don't think anyone knows about bash but I suspect its 300ish, think it's adjusted by shield AC

so yes, as far as i know you can use low level things. higher stuns do more damage so would do a bit more hate (and longer stun obv) but it's nbd.
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Ah very cool. Using the lower level spells really helps with mana management while chain pulling.
 
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