Archeage Best Paladin/Tank PVP Build 2.3 battlerage defense dps pvp tank vitalism
Guide by Ryjami Last update at Jan 7th 2016, 17:07


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CHAPTERS
  • 1. A Little About the Guide
  • 2. Why Paladin?
  • 3. Paladin Gear
  • 4. Opening Combos
  • 5. Why the Chosen Skills were Chosen and Others Weren't
  • 6. Closing

A Little About the Guide

I'm Ryjami, big fan of heavy-builds which operate on the concept of Defense, paired with a damage main, and an added supplemental class. Recently the Paladin has come into the public eye as an incredibly viable PVE and PVP main class (we'll be discussing the latter). I've been asked to write a comprehensive PVP guide on this, so I'm looking forward to helping anyone who's looking to try out the class I've fallen completely in love with. Please keep in mind this "guide" is nowhere near perfect, and is really just my own preferences. Switch things up, and make your own combos as you see fit! There's no one perfect way to run any class. I hope this becomes the most comprehensive and popular Paladin guide for a basic starting reference to new users.

I've been maining Paladin for about three months now, and over that time have gained a lot of insight I'm looking forward to sharing. Enjoy!

Why Paladin?

Paladin is a unique, and in many ways, very viable and synergistic class. It combines the raw physical power of Battlerage with the stunlocks and stunbreaks of Defense, and adds in just a dash of self-sufficiency with Vitalism to top the build off as a highly survivable PVP tank.

This is the class that counters CC-reliant classes such as Daggerspell, Darkrunner, or Hexblades while maintaining a decent level of damage on its own. This is the class that doesn't need a healer to take care of itself, because it is the healer. This is the class that can win almost any 1v1 against an equally geared opponent.

Paladin Gear

A Paladin is very open-ended in regards to its gear options.

Weapons:



Obsidian Shortspear. You can't beat that kind of healing power mixed with DPS. A Paladin not using this, or a club if you find shortspears in short supply (haha) is shooting himself in the foot. By not choosing a weapon that mixes Healing Power with Physical Damage, you lose the ability to successfully maintain either the Vitalism or Battlerage trees. You must be able to maintain your healing at any moment, and provide damage when necessary. I recommend making one yourself, regrading it to Celestial (or beyond if you're feeling it!) and then tiering it all the way to T4, not at all hard to do and accomplished at a very reasonable price. This will leave you with a fighting fit beginners weapon that can serve you well as a Paladin, Argent, Death Warden, or any other Physical Damage and Vitalism combo class.

Some users, not myself, prefer weapon switching. I would recommend an Obsidian Greatsword tiered and graded to equal level as your shortspear. The Obsidian Greatsword offers overwhelming critical damage factors (Very necessary during a "blasting period" (More on this later). When entering combat, Paladins using this method will want to engage with the shortspear + shield for their opener, then once the enemy is successfully stun-locked, switch to the greatsword for procuring critical hits during their blasting period . When the paladin then comes under fire again, he should use the action bar to weapon switch to his original set and self-heal or play defensively.

Shields:



Shields scale terribly in terms of defense when compared to weapons/armor. You're going to want to pursue something that gives as much Physical Defense as possible, obsidian V1 path works well for this method. For newbies that won't to focus on their shield later, a T3 Hasla shield gives 1007 Defense at base level and will hold you over for a bit. Make sure you socket this with Block Rate lunagems and a block rate lunafrost, as much as you can. This baby is your life in terms of blocking, just don't get too tied up in the defense/stats.

Accessories:



If you're just getting into the Paladin class, a great and cheap set of accessories comes from Burnt Castle Armory and is easily bought or obtained from the dungeon. The necklace of the set is the Moonswept Bay Necklace, the ring is the Golden Fable Ring, and the earring is the Nui's Glory Coast. Together these give you negligible stat buffs, but provide an interesting passive benefit. Together they have a 5% chance each time you take damage to increase received healing +20% for a short time. This is invaluable to a Paladin, and the difference of a thousand or two thousand extra health in a fight. Basically 1 in every 20 hits you take will trigger this. If you haven't got the money to spend on fancy Illustrious/Magnificent/Epherium accessories... this is made for the Paladin.

If you DO have the money for expensive accessories, you'll be looking out for any accessory which gives you increased health, primarily, followed by decreased received damage or increasing parry rates. The stat buffs are again, relatively unimportant.

Armor:



Your armor choices come down to the triarchy basis of most MMORPG's, Leather, Plate, and Cloth. The buffs that each set gives are not incredibly important, moreso the defense they generate is. Each piece of armor has a set potential for a certain amount of magical and physical defense possible. At lower grades of material, mostly all sets operate in the following fashion. Cloth sets give 100% of potential Magic Defense, and 10% of potential Physical Defense. Plate gives you 100% of potential Physical Defense and 0% of Magical Defense. Leather gives you 60% of Physical Defense, and 60% of Magic Defense.

With this in mind, Leather seems to be the obvious choice for PVP engagements, where you will be encountering both magic and physical based enemies (this completely changes for PVE pursuits). Not only can you achieve 10-20% extra "free" defense, but you're now able to counter any enemy you will face in the open world.

Many Paladins prefer to have an alternative set of cloth and plate in addition to their leather. Magnificent/Epherium Stone/Life Cloth are held as popular options, and are switched to when countering magic-based players repeatedly. Plate-switching is much the same, but for when facing PVE content or heavy physcial damage builds like the Darkrunner or other paladins. If you do want these, I would recommend focusing on your end-game leather set first, THEN pursuing alternative battle sets. An easy and free way to get alternative sets at low levels is to run GHA. The full GHA set at Heroic level with a Celestial Serpentis weapon gives you a near-flat 3100 equipment score. Obviously this isn't end-game ready, this guide is for beginners.

"But Ryjami, what kind of leather should I go for?"

It doesn't matter. Too many people will try to tell you that you can't use Flame for a Paladin, Desert for a Darkrunner, Earth for a Primeval... It doesn't matter. Obviously the stat buffs a set gives you will make a difference to some degree, but this should never be enough to base your class on. I'm currently running full Celestial Epherium Flame, a set which only gives Strength Buffs. This means I'm a little less tanky than someone with Desert armor, but hit a bit harder. At the end of the day it's all the same. Don't feel pushed into a particular set of armor to fit the build. Paladin operates on many different stats -Strength, Spirit, Stamina, mainly-, and boosting any of these will only tweak your gameplay a little. I recommend Illustrious or Magnificent Desert at heroic grade or above for newer players, and Epherium or Delphinas Desert/Earth/Flame for a viable set of end-game armor to the average player. Obsidian armor works as well, if you enjoy working with a set of armor that "grows with you" so to speak.

Opening Combos

Pre-Buffs:



Before entering any fight you need to immediately use
on yourself, make sure to hold Alt and cast it on yourself! Combined with the Nui's Glory Coast set you're looking at a 35% healing power increase. Paladins are all about survivability. This is also great for removing any ranged debuffs your enemy may have tagged you with already. *Note, if you're facing a shadowplay class, wait until they tag you with Stalker's Mark, so you can remove it with this!*

If you've changed my build at all and taken
then use this as well asap. It's a great buff for you and party members, I just normally find that I don't have the time to get it off before everything goes to hell.

After Mirror Light, timing the pop of
and
are your main priorities. Use
immediately for your blasting period, follow with
when you run out of firepower. Not taking these two skills and using them with the Paladin build is disregarding everything the Battlerage and Defense trees are built on.

Why?

combos with
to raise blocking rate sometimes above 50%. With a good gemmed shield and block rate cape you should be running at about 75% block rate after your first block. This means 3/4 of the attacks your enemies fire at you will not hit. It is absolutely essential to have both of these.

combos with
, just as the above is everything Defense operates on, this is everything Battlerage operates on. These two together will allow you to keep slamming your enemy in combo after combo after combo.

These two passives and these two pre-buffs together make up the basis of your class and are essential to note.

If you have time, pop
right before reaching gap-closer range.

Group Combat:



The Paladin is a tank and should therefore be drawing "aggro" from the enemies and opening on them to achieve max damage, followed by a defensive period where supplemental members rush in to cover enemy CC periods.

After prebuffing, open with
to snare and do some crazy damage. Follow immediately with
and then
if you chose to take it in your build. If your parry rate allows it, repeat these as many times as you can. If you can't reach multiple enemies and your parry didn't procure, go into your solo combo (explained below) instead of
. Chances are after that initial opening though, the enemy will be CC'ing like crazy and won't allow you to revert to your solo combo. When this happens, most of them will tend to focus damage onto you (which is good, that's what being a frontrunner tank is about).

At this point you can either
to buy yourself time, heals, and support from party members, or begin self-healing if necessary with some
spam or
.
will help deflect any witchcraft or sorcery stunlocks to keep yourself mobile. If your not in need of these aids, try targeting a healer or strong caster. Pick him out, use
to reach him, and if you have the time, go into your solo combat combo. If action is immediately needed, smack them with
to silence their casting for 5.5 seconds.

Solo Combat:



Your general opener for most users will be
(this should already be on you since you're in a PVP situation, use this on them now, it snares them so they can't dodge your
and makes them take extra damage and less heals!), followed by
followed by
. Users without high block or high parry rates will almost always succumb to this. The first attack snares them, the second knocks them down. If the
misses or is blocked/parried, skip the
and move into the next phase.

Follow your opening combo with
to stun an enemy, and
to send them straight back to the ground. This also silences spellcasters for nearly 6 seconds, rendering them near useless.

While using
, you will be able to walk through/over your enemy. Get behind them and use
immediately. This is the earlier-referenced "blasting period". A T3 Celestial Obsidian Shortspear is capable of criticals up to 9000 on some low-armor users, a T3 Celestial Greatsword up to 11,000. Regardless, just hit them in the back and crit. Make sure you have the 24.0% Critical Damage Lunafrost on your glove slot. Slam them with
to keep them down just a little longer.

After this, it's all just whatever damage is available to you. I recommend
, which pushes you and your enemy apart a little bit, jumping back (you will have to rotate the screen sometimes depending on where tiger strike takes you, use your double-mouse-key movement for this to quickly turn), and following with
. After these, if weapon switching, you'd want to get back to your shield and shortspear now.

Throughout all of this, use
and
anytime you get around 40% health. You're a tank, not invincible. Waiting until your health reaches flashing red is not a good idea. When you see incoming strong spells or attacks, pop
anytime to force them to waste a channel or gap closer. Never let it finish though, always jump out after the attack is blocked and get back to fighting. Turtling for the whole 9 seconds just gives your enemy a breather to figure out how to take you down.

Mettle is there for one reason; for you to spend it. Don't let it waste. This is a free 3000 health or 1500 damage anytime you like.

Rebuff
and
anytime they're ready during a fight, these are your life. Hit
whenever you have nothing better, and hit your enemy with
to up their received damage whenever it makes sense to do so.

If your enemy turtles, go ahead and give yourself a
followed by a
. Be ready though, they might do the same trick to you, un-turtle and go after you in mid-antithesis channel!

If they try running away or kiting, use
to bring them right back to you, follow immediately with any of your stun-locks.
,
, and
are your only gap closers for chasing down a runaway enemy, so use them wisely!

Why the Chosen Skills were Chosen and Others Weren't

Battlerage:



Your go-to move for everything. No cooldown, decent damage, instant use. If you've got nothing better for damage you use this.

A fantastic gap closer, combos with
as a stunlock. Does decent damage.

Useful in naval combat or PVE... But the damage output for PVP is very low. If you have enough people on you surrounding you to do decent damage from this, it means that you're already dead.

The only Battlerage damage skill that has a cast-time, it's just not worth taking. The Paladin is slow enough as it is, and doesn't need to be bogged down with timed casts. The buffs are nice, but are more fitting for support member.

Snag an enemy from his mates, trash a guy running away... This is a multi-purpose tool that is great to have.

PVE skill, irrelevant to a PVP'r

A must-have if you plan on taking anybody with Sorcery or Witchcraft on. This breaks Dahuta's Bubble, Crippling Mire, Earthen Grip, and many other stuns that would otherwise ruin you. Pop this as necessary.

The hardest hitter in your damage tree, this is capable of procuring ridiculous amounts of criticals and damage when used correctly. Always hit from behind.

An interesting thought, but basically can only be used when fighting casting classes. Using this against someone with any physical tree is the easiest way to ruin yourself.

Absolutely necessary, explained above.

A great group-PVP move, and very useful to keep yourself moving. Also does some alright damage. Just be careful when fighting near mobs or you might aggro them.

A hard hitter, great opener/gap-closer, no reason not to up your damage with this one.

5% isn't going to make the diffeence, and really falls flat in comparison to
.

8% higher critical rate? Hello, YES.

Delerium, although a fun passive if stacked is really hard to stack, it rarely happens.
takes care of Battlerage cooldowns making this power nearly worthless.

The basis of any Battlerage tree, explained above.

I suppose this could be useful if facing a highly mobile class, but I find more often than not this isn't a deciding factor and points are better spent elsewhere.

A must have, every crit can reduce an enemy enough to make them receive about 15% more physical damage from you, with some cloth users this can reduce their physical defense to a flat negative. Works hand-in-hand with


Gives you just a little more wallop to your hits, always worth taking.

Defense:



A great stun, combos with
for fantastic lockdown.

When paired with
this is an extra 3000 health at max level. You need to have this on at all times in the open world.

A great stun, combos with
for fantastic lockdown. Shuts up spellcasters and healers for 5.5 seconds straight.

This skill is useful at lower levels because of the immense amount of damage 3000 life seems at that point, but becomes unnecessary the farther you go along. Because Bull's Rush now uses mettle and this build lacks
, I rarely find myself with enough mettle for this to make a difference.

Heals 28 health at the max level, not worth it. Go buy Hardtack from the auction house for 2G for 1000. It's the basic healing food and it heals more, this is a waste of a skillpoint. If you need this in your build, you're doing something wrong.

A great instant 4000 health back to you when you have full mettle stacked. Can also socket Eternal Defense Lunagems into your belt to achieve 2,400+ HP from this one.

The basis of your defense class, as explained above.

Consumes a load of mana, but continues your blasting period and can be used at the same time as
, packing one hell of a wallop.

PVE content, not worth much to any PVP'r.

An interesting skill, but not too useful in the PVP setting. Most enemies will just glide in with you, if you use it as an escape. Enemies you're trying to trap can actually get away if you mistime it, and there's always a risk of splicing allies on the rim if you're not careful.

Get someone to send heals your way, take some heat off of yourself as a frontrunner in group PVP, or pop right before someone hits you with a meteor or arc lighting. Great for countering CC reliant classes.

This is for naval combat or PVE content, not used in land combat.

The basis of your Defense tree, see above for explanation.

Sucks, not worth taking. This will mess up most of your stunlocks. If triggered, it counts as a stun (the stun itself is literally so quick it's near unnoticeable, and has such a tiny chance to trigger) which means that just one more stun, and your enemy gains stun immunity for 45 seconds, screwing up your stunlocks for the rest of the fight. Renders the concept of using
twice useless.

Fantastic, extra 8% physical damage resistance, take it!

PVE only used for tanking bosses.

Waste of a skillpoint, 20 milliseconds isn't going to make the difference.

Free 900 health, plus an added 450 or so to refreshment. Get it!

Although not a life-saver, this is definitely useful in long-term engagements. The farther along you go with your PVP as you increase gear, you'll find that it begins to last longer and longer. These longer fights require quick cooldowns, which is there this helps. At higher gear levels, take this, at lower ones, this remains just personal choice.

Vitalism



Your stereotypical go-to heal. Use this when your enemy gives you a breather, or anytime in the open world you need some HP fast.

This is a pre-buff for yourself before fighting begins, and a curse on your enemies you should pop throughout fights.

Always keep this going during combat, keep regen up!

Leave this to the healers.

Long cast time at end-game level, and doesn't stun long enough for what it's worth. Chances are you'll be stunlocked before you can get it off.

Same as above. Could be used in group combat if playing support, but that's not what a Paladin is for.

No need to really take this, more support that's not valuable to you.

Leave this to the support members.

Not worth using, trashy healing.

Your basic combat-heal, can chain up to 5 times to recover thousands of health. This in combination with
can essentially bring you back from the grave. Keep this ready at all times.

Leave this to the support.

I personally don't take this one because of its long cast time. I find wailing on your enemy and knocking them out to be more worthwhile than taking a shot at prebuffing with a long cast time.

Just not worth it, 3% isn't going to make the difference in a fight.

The basis of your Vitalism class, you need this. This lets you chain
repeatedly, over and over.

A nice thought, but points are better spent elsewhere.

Not worth it, you don't operate on timed-cast skills!

A pretty fantastic power, but requires far too many points to be put into vitalism that are needed elsewhere.

Same as above, you need the points elsewhere. Consider a more support Caretaker, Templar, Cleric, or other support healing/buffing classes if you feel inclined to get these two.

As the above two, just not for this build. Would require far too many points in Vitalism, crippling your combat ability and making you more support-based.

Closing

To sum this all up, these are just my personal thoughts and opinions! I encourage playing around and switching things up, which will help me get thoughts and feedback for future builds. I hope you all enjoy this build as much as I have, thank you for taking time to read all of my work here =)