The Spirit Realm

.. I just do not understand this.. Every class has their jobs.. Ours is NOT DPS!! On raids a well played paladin is highly desired.. we fill the roll of fire fighters ( IMHO) .. When something starts to go wrong our job is the put the fire out.. by battle rezzing, curing a nasty dot, healing, OT an add.. or even standing in for the MT as long as we can.. In groups a decently equiped paladin should have no problem being MT.. I am always scaning new content for tools to do my job better.. not resourses to do someone elses job.. Need more DPS??? Get a .. rogue, zerker, wizzie, mage, beastlord, ranger .. there are many classes where DPS IS part of their job.. there are very few classes that can do all that we do... being alert.. running around rezzing,, helping heal the MT, curing a nasty DOT.. keeping my group up.. I enjoy doing all that soo much.. and when we DO raid undead THAN I CAN be DPS.. so I am very happy with the state of our class.. the idea that we will get targeted purification seems sweet.. as well as targeted DA.. O am also satisfied with having only a 90% rezz.. Clerics need to have a few unique things they do...

battleblade is that you?

If you need to question why so many want a DPS boost then you can't possibly be playing a paladin on a regular basis.

A dps increase is needed regardless of any other skill we possess. If you don't want a dps upgrade then by all means stay in the dark ages and don't purchase any of the new aa/skills/spells that the community is trying to have added this expansion. Trying to stagnate the dps of an entire class because it doesn't fit your play style is moronic. If 98% of the community wants a dps upgrade then maybe you should think before you post. With that said, I find your rant rather asshat like.

...
shiftie

The 1st character I EVER rolled was my dwarf paladin ( just after LDON came out).. he has been may mine and always will be ( the day comes I do not have fun playing Thurvok is the day I stop playing EQ).. I have over 3000 AA's.. You keep yelling and screaming for DPS you will continue to be a sad pally.. Want more DPS??? than roll a DPS class.. say a rogue, wizzie or zerker.. I used to play Asheron's Call.. I played it before EQ and played it for 3 years.. it got to point where all characters were soo simlar.. the only differcence was HOW you did your damage.. wither by a weapon or a wand.. but all classes could pretty much cast the same spells and do the same DPS.. talk about BORING!!! thats why I swithched to EQ.. Continue to yell, scream, bitvh and moan and ruin a great game!!

We need more DPS to qualify for a Raid Role, yes we are capable of doing alot more, but with SoD being such a gimp expn you need to bring more to the table than the qualities you outlined.

With the advent of the 36 Man SoD events, if you are Hybrid then you can expect to be benched by your Guild. So Rangers, Beastlords, even SKs will be sitting out and as we get no where near their dps we have zero chance of a spot.

Well our guild intends to skip those.. we are still moving thru Crystallos and Korfax so will be a while before we reach end game.. How many paladins are denided roles in groups as MT or denined admitance to a raiding guild because their DPS is not high enough?!?!?!

that is irrelevant. Your post is irrelevant.

At the moment I doubt ANY Bleeding Edge Guild would recruit a Paladin (unless said Paladin was swapping Bleeding Edge), for instance my Guild, Raging Fury has 6 active Paladins with at least 4 and usually all 6 online for 80% of our raids. If we were to loose 2 to burnout, retirement, Guild jump I very very much doubt they would be replaced.

Paladins will always be a viable group tank, but grouping and raiding are two completely seperate beasts. In a group all they want you to do is keep the mob occupied whilst the rest kill it, its as simple as that. In SoD raids there are only a few events which contain adds and these are either controlled by your Chanters or are so gimp a Chanter can OT them, (with only 1 Korafax event as an exception). Curing is a none entity, I only load cures for the Rallos Event and then only use them after TZ and VZ are dead to nullify those dots and then through events 6 and 7 in the Tower to self cure the DT DoT. Our cures are so weak they take multiple casts to cure other group members and by the time you get to them the Cleric / Druid / Shaman has cured them. Battle rezzing doesnt happen that often as I personally find people refuse to accept a 90 Rez and simply go to bind and wait for fight over and a Cleric click.

So these leaves the new SoE Raid tactic of Zeeeeeeeeerg and for that you need more than click 2nd spire when the RL calls burn as that is all we can effectivly do, our dps is lacking, the sad part is everyone agrees Paladins need more dps, not rogue level, not even Ranger level but somewhere close to SK level that is except SoE themselves who atm are blinkered and refuse to acknowledge the problem.

Thurvok, you really need to try reading before deciding that everyone else is simply wrong. There are posts and posts and entire threads dedicated to showing why we need a DPS boost and you either ignore any of the reasoning there, or you have not read anything and are posting in complete ignorance.

So here was my arguement in a nut shell. Currently there are 3 tanking classes: warrior, SK, pally. On the group end, mobs have quite a bit more HP with this expansion (like with most expansions). All three tank classes can tank fairly well, as defined as keeping agro from a single mob off the group mates. However, due to our current setup for how we do this, paladins end up having to cast non-damage or nearly 0 damage spells constantly to keep agro. This shoves our limited DPS to near 0. Meanwhile both SK's and warriors have similar agro generation but can be weaved through hits. Warriors are using disc stuff that does not effect their swings and have duel weild for some respectable DPS. SK's have most of their hate generation come from spells and effects that also damage, and in fact going for agro actually increases their DPS, not reduces it to nothing. This puts paladins as the least desireable tanks in group content, since it will always take longer to kill things with a paladin tank. We are unlikely to be invited to a group that already has a tank, because we cannot offer anything else. Yet both a warrior and a Sk will still be taken for extra DPS.

On a raid when the burn is called, we have almost nothing to do. Now we can spam one of our crush lines, and most of us do (spamming both runs a huge risk of taking agro). Second spire helps a small bit, our Holyforge is so broken its a joke but most of us will pop that as well. Even doing all that, we'll come out well below a decently played SK. On the rare undead mob, we CAN do a bit better, but I still find my parses right in line with our SK's even though my slay is just so overpowered.

We aren't asking to be wizard DPS, and I would be in line complaining if we were. That would be screwed up. We are asking that we should not be dead last by over 50% from all other melee.

Now, before the inevitable arguement of "well maybe you just suck thats why you don't get groups so quick bitching" sort of reply. I still get plenty of groups. I'm an officer and raid leader in my guild, I'm a very capable paladin. I know how to group heal, I know how to tank, I even now how to gimp pull in a few zones. People in my guild will always take me in a group because they know I'm not an idiot. But for pickup groups, I see paladins sitting on the wayside more often than not. I see my guilds parses so I see how utterly pathetic our DPS tends to be.

Look I am the first to admit I am not curtting edge like say Genadinee ( a very impressive Magelo).. and if her profile is typical of the paladins posting here.. then excuse me of interupting the discussions among gods.. All I know is from the world I play in.. I raid/play as often as RL permits .. which is less than last few years .. However in our raids ... ( we are now in Crystallos and have 2 out of the 3 Korfax mobs on farm status) ... the Raid Leader is not looking for paladins to be DPS.. I do not expect to be DPS.. would I like to have greater DPS??.. Sure.. why not.. but when I go LFG ( which is very seldom as I usually get guild groups) . I have a "rep" as a good tank and can get in groups.. On raids my group heals seem to almost always make my groups the last to fall when wipes happen.. I just feel there are better ways for us to shine I would like to see the devs give us.. tools that reflects our class/job .. I.E. cross betwen a warrior/cleric .. give us/sharpen our unique abilities.. I am not trying to start a fight.. just looking for a little education.. When a new expansion comes out and start chewing threw the new AA's my offensive/DPS one are some of the last ones I get.. I get defensive/healing/LOH related/curing 1st..

In a dps centric world such as the one we play in - possibly if you did your aa in reverse order.. dps first tanking/healing second... you might find yourself making aa at a faster rate overall. And that is the crucial point of this entire debate... xp gains. The faster mobs die the faster everyone makes xp. Taking a paladin into a group is setting yourself at a dps disadvantage... kinda like adding a % xp penalty just for inviting a paladin when compared to the other 2 obvious tanking class choices.

The same holds true for solo xp gains.

In a raid setting why add more than one paladin if sk have greater crowd control through ae aggro and can in a pinch add burst dps. Our heals are marginalized by increased hp and our cures are a joke. We will see the same standard advances in our toons as we see every expansion and thus the one major glaring issue is a complete lack of dps. Suggesting that we don't need a dps upgrade makes you look like Shiftie doesn't agree with you (and cut out the personal attacks) - Zsa.

I am in a guild that has sod on farm and no we don't need any more dps. The OP is right we got enough we can and do do we don't need uber dps in our lineup as well. Greedy much? Want dps? reroll a wizard.

Even if we get an upgrade to dps we are still the lowest rung on the ladder every one else will (and should) out dps us so how will giving us a dps upgrade have anything to do with making the class more desired for raids ?
Btw on a personal opinion i dont think we should have more dps, instead i think ouer heals and cures etc should be upgraded and then its up to the devs to tailor some raid encounters to go beyond the kite adds and dps shit down that you all seem to talk about.
Imo a paladin is about preventing others from harm not to cause harm (undeads being the exception)

And that is why some of the many solutions suggested in lots of these types of threads already focus around the idea of choice. If we have added DPS solutions, they take up spell gems so we are forced to decide how we are going to play our characters. This topic has been done to death, thats why people who are routinely more involved in some of these topics seem to be jumping on you. For some of us, this is the 10th+ time we've seen this arguement play out.

/shrug. Don't take it personally, you are welcome to your opinions as much as any of us. But topics like this can get fairly heated due to the sharp contrasts.

The fact that a DPS upgrade is being debated from fellow paladins is down right funny. Those opposed are full of fail. The reason for the upgrade IS independent of any other class. But for the sake of argument. What new defensive skills/cures/heals do you think we are going to gain to make the long standing argument of the paladin defensive/sk offensive tank valid. Who gives a shit of SK have always done more dps than a paladin, who gives a shit if a warrior has also. The fact is we need a dps upgrade.

We do not tank better than a warrior or sk. There is no reason to push for this at all - because it is never going to happen. Narrowing the gap offensively is the only thing that is going to bring about any semblance of balance.

Unless you have some solid idea to somehow rework our entire heal/cure lines then (he disagrees - removing more unnecessary attacks - Zsa )

Ah yes the DPS difference at the high end of the game. Seems to me the problem is much more pronounced there, because many factors are at play not least of which is the current bleeding edge guild obsession with DPS as the best (and therefore ONLY) way to beat raids these days.
Step back a bit to low and mid tier raiders who don't have an overabundance of DPS classes to throw at events (or even whats considered a "good" raid force makeup) and to those who truly are playing the group only game, and suddenly the side of our class which has been readily dismissed by several here as useless (healing, curing etc) becomes a MUCH more valuable component of our class make up. They have the ability to shine, because they are being given the opportunity to do so thanks to their circumstances. That your guild doesn't use or appreciate those abilities, is to be blunt, not their problem, and I should think they are speaking up to ensure that those abilities are not dismissed and subsequently stagnated or removed, because a vocal minority is desperate for a DPS upgrade seemingly at the cost of anything.

IMO....
Do we desperately NEED a DPS upgrade to do the typical jobs the class is designed for at most group and raid levels? No.
Could we use a reasonable DPS upgrade to bring us a bit better in line across the board? Yes. Although I can't see this happening until the Devs are happy with how to deal with Slay (not so much, whether or not we think there is a problem, but until they are happy with it)
Is a DPS upgrade going to magically solve all these "high end" problems that seem to plague paladins here? I can't see how, personally. If your guild is making choices based solely on DPS alone, no DPS upgrade is going to be enough to push a paladin into consideration without upsetting a LOT of other classes, your primary (tanking) AND secondary abilites (healing, curing, kiting etc) HAVE to be in demand in order to make a worthwhile case for a spot. This is NOT to say we shouldn't be bought into line anyways, just saying I don't think it's going to help you as much as you seem to want to believe it will.

EDIT - the bigger problem seems to be more about raid design rewarding bringing massive DPS and not allowing a lot of classes' secondary abilities to really be utilised, hence the top end obsession with throwing more and more DPS at things as a result.

My statement was purely focused on the agro generation side of things, not as a whole. SKs always have had a higher damage output across the board than Paladins, and frankly that's the way it should be.
SKs use their Terror lines and Dread Gaze lines for agro... That is their premium source of agro... they do nothing except agro... no stuns, nor damage.
We use Stuns or Crushes for agro. We end up with unmatchable damage mitigation on stunnable content, or a DPS boost in situations of our choosing.

In terms of melee... I don't know the exact specifics, however from what I have been seeing, they are very similar, if not an exact copy of Paladins. The key difference in our two class's dps output is purely on the magic side. There's no denying TotC and Soul Abrasion are very potent as you stated, but the key point that separates Paladin and SK damage output is all spell/proc based dps. (Unless of course something has changed recently that I missed, at which case I could be gravely mistaken).

I'm not even certain now that I know what was meant by your statement. Considering Crushes can be weaved between melee just the same, they actually net a dps increase, and using both is something like a 125 dps increase just from those two spells without any outside help. I don't understand how us weaving spells between melee is any different than SKs... it's the way of melee for any hybrid.

We had another DPS increaser added in Mark of the Crusader line with SoD as well. Another .5 second cast (weavable between melee) on a 12 second recast. Ultimately, it functions as a nuke as well... but doesn't work that well in the raid game with multiple Paladins on a single target. In itself rank 2 is roughly a 78 dps upgrade, if it wears off due to the 10 hit limit before 12 seconds and it's recast.

Between those three, we saw almost a 200 dps upgrade in new spell lines that don't lower our dps in melee as well. I have a hard time biting on the fact that our dps gets shoved closer to 0 (because ours can't be 'weaved', which it can be), while SKs weaving their spells makes their dps go up.

That makes more sense than what was originally stated.

I can't say I have watched any group geared SKs tanking in group content. Raid geared, I've seen a lot of, but the group game doesn't handle raiders well anyway, so it's hard for me to judge exactly how things would pan out. Ultimately, I haven't seen any SKs in my guild who dump their shield when tanking to use a two hander for more DPS, unless the content is that trivial. I do also agree that their passive self healing has gotten a bit out of hand (well, maybe more than a bit).

As far as I'm concerned, the loss of DPS switching weapons is irrelevant. 1hand/shield is suppose to be lower dps, and higher defense... Our 1hand ratios should have kept up more than they have, but it's been bloody impossible to wake the devs up on that one, more than once I've been told Knight weapons are already 'balanced'. Ultimately, the loss of dps is the same for both Knights on the switch.. so it makes little sense to even bother diving into the numbers on this one.

And as we narrow down the problems, we come to the combination of Touch of the Cursed, Soul Abrasion and Shroud of line. With SoD, we were given a 'counter measure' to the TotC line in Blessing of Life... at max a 420 Hp heal proc. With the current incarnation of the SK combo, we should be sitting at it being at least a 1.5 - 2k proc heal, even if they added 18-21 levels of the AA to get there.

While this would NOT cure a dps disparity, it would balance out the proc self healing aspect far better than it currently is... our healing is stronger because it doesn't do damage. Giving us a Soul Abrasion type AA wouldn't really work, unless it increased the healing output of the Ward of Tunare line. While not DPS again... it would cement our passive self healing to the level that it SHOULD be at.

This, then leaves the DPS disparity... of which we should be behind both tank classes. I don't think we should be back nearly as far as we are... but I don't believe we should be even either. From what I've seen, it's more or less been covered what we need to move us up a bit and I definitely stand behind us having some nuking potential dps outside of Crushes. I don't stand behind the idea that we should get innate melee upgrades beyond SKs to try to catch us up. That doesn't really make any sense to me. However, this is merely my opinion.

u know, some keep askin why we want more dps when its not our "job". If thats the case
1) Why do Clerics druids and shamans get nukes and dots?
2) Why do Sk's have HoT's?
3) Why are monks rangers and rogues listed on most shields?
4) Why do Chanters have nukes?
5) Why do Beastlords have Paragon when they are monk/shaman hybrid..yet neither class has that type of ability?
6).....i can keep going ALL nite long but i think the point is made...

No class has just 1 certain "job". If you think your job as a paladin is (insert some crap here)..please go play WoW and leave us be. Sony has been making all classes pretty Versatile for quite awhile now. Also (and my personal favorite), i REALLY hate trying to solo a trash mob for 5 minutes when just about any other class can do it in over half the time...

(More editing... - Zsa)
I have never lost my temper on beta tho.

ill admit, i have. Ive fought tooth and nail in betas to defend this class and get/keep things we are rightfully entitled too. Lost some and won some. Playing Mr. Nice guy will only carry you so far.

or you can pop a merc and kill 10 in the time we kill 1.