Can anyone explain what twisting is, and how to do it? (Paladin)

I am a new player, planning to pick Paladin, I know that 'twisting' is required to play effectively, but I cannot seem to find any good guides on how this works, or if there's an order to it, ect.

Thanks for any help you can provide.

Fri 4 Jan 2019 10:13 AM by Enrighteous

First, Hello. Welcome to Phoenix and hope you enjoy the game as much as I do. I have many years invested into the paladin class and know it quite well.

Twisting is the term used to describe the process of keeping multiple or ALL of your "Chants" specialization abilities active. These abilities are enhancements for yourself and your party members. By default when you use these abilities they have a 6 second duration where only the last one you used will remain active after the initial 6 second duration. Meaning I press all of my chants, they are all active for 6 seconds, after that 6 seconds only the last one will remain pulsing(active). You can keep all of these abilities up with nearly 100 percent uptime if you "twist" your chants.

In general you are trying to maintain the following abilities, in the following order:

Damage Add

Armor Factor

Combat Heal

Endurance-------SITUATIONAL------

Resists
If you have any specific questions feel free to ask and I can elaborate further.

Fri 4 Jan 2019 1:33 PM by Pedro

Most of the "pain" that players state with twisting is that you have to press multiple buttons for all the chants to go off and constantly hit them every 6secs.

Personally I use the in-game commands to bind spells to different keys (qbind), so I bind them to delete/end/pagup/pgdown/home/insert as they are all together and easier to hit.

Also keep in mind that twisting uses endurance, so if you do it at the early levels you will be out of endurance to perform styles. It gets better once you get the blue endurance chant.

Fri 4 Jan 2019 3:33 PM by Citian

I think Enrighteous pretty well covered it, but I always looked at twisting as either two groups:

Power intensive (your last chant is endurance; you are regaining endurance but draining power)

Endurance intensive (your last chant is either your heal chant allowing for "double heals", AF chant in the presence of melee damage, or specific resists in the presence of a specific spell damage type/realms main nuker; the reason it is endurance intensive is the twisting mechanic itself without ending on your endurance chant to offset the cost)

Hope that's helpful

Fri 4 Jan 2019 4:55 PM by Igig_Bluefeets

Thanks for all the replies. Your posts are very informative. I understand the chant order, but is there a timing to hitting them all? Or do I just hit them all in that order as fast as possible.

Fri 4 Jan 2019 9:13 PM by elflord

It's best to have the order of the chants you want to use, assigned to keys next to each other. When you start to twist, you'll hit them like you're typing a name. For example, you have buttons 1-4 bound to endo/AF/damage add/heal. When you twist you'll type 1, 2, 3 then 4. Not too fast or you'll miss 1 or 2. So for a few seconds you'll have 4 chants going. Once the the last has cycled it's 6 seconds, rinse and repeat. The reason someone mentioned double heal is having heal as the last chant. Basically as it cycles another x amount of healing for the group, you cycle through 1-4 again. You'll get another heal pulse off, hence double heal.

Just know that until you get blue endo, you'll be out of endo often. You have to keep an eye on protecting support, shield guarding other tanks and a third eye on everyone elses endo. Its a thankless job but you will be loved for it.

Sat 5 Jan 2019 3:23 PM by Salty

As for doing it, it's like rolling or twisting your wrist.. it's not too fast and not too slow.. I think around level 5 or 6 you get most of your chants so there's lots of time to practice. You'll get a hang of it!

Sat 2 Feb 2019 10:57 AM by Ceen

EDITED AND TOOK OUT QUOTE FROM HANSHI

You can bind all macros to one key using autohotkey but you need to click that one key yourself every 6 s.

Sun 3 Feb 2019 11:35 PM by LordMarshal

Ceen wrote: EDITED AND TOOK OUT QUOTE FROM HANSHI

You can bind all macros to one key using autohotkey but you need to click that one key yourself every 6 s.

Can you give me an example of how to do this?

Mon 4 Feb 2019 7:27 AM by Koljar

You need a keyboard (or possibly a mouse, never did it with one to). Use the software supplied with it and bind e.g. pressing keys 6 thorugh 0 to one key. 6 through 0 on your keyboard now need to be chants (placed on the in game abilty bar) you want to twist.
You could add more keys to that (or reduce the number) but that's basically how it works. Pressing this one programmed button will now have the effect of pressing 6, 7, 8, 9 and 0 after one another.

Adding delays between these simulated key strokes as well as repeating it (say each 6 seconds as mentioned above) is what is, from my understanding, forbidden by the server rules.

Mon 4 Feb 2019 9:49 AM by dudis

Koljar wrote: ↑
Mon 4 Feb 2019 7:27 AM
You need a keyboard (or possibly a mouse, never did it with one to). Use the software supplied with it and bind e.g. pressing keys 6 thorugh 0 to one key. 6 through 0 on your keyboard now need to be chants (placed on the in game abilty bar) you want to twist.
You could add more keys to that (or reduce the number) but that's basically how it works. Pressing this one programmed button will now have the effect of pressing 6, 7, 8, 9 and 0 after one another.

Adding delays between these simulated key strokes as well as repeating it (say each 6 seconds as mentioned above) is what is, from my understanding, forbidden by the server rules.

I thought using macros at all was against the rules, as it gives and "unfair advantage" ?

What i used to do when i played paladin on Uth was to bind my chants to 1,2,3,4,5 and Qbind my attacks to the buttons to the sides of my movement keys.

I run/strafe with ESDF, so ive got Qbinds on QWA and RTYGH. Got my less used abilities/cooldowns on F1-F5 and ZXCVB too.

Thu 7 Feb 2019 9:57 AM by Spuud

somehow i think that it isn't possible anymore to keep up all buffs at all time.
AF has a pulse of 6s. So this means, that after 6 seconds the buff is gone, if the chant is cancelled due to another chant.
The heal chant has a pulse of 6s but a cooldown of 8s.

As an example:

I use AF -> Dam Add -> Endo -> Heal for double heal purpose.
Wouldn't that mean, that the first three are gone for at least 2 seconds before i start the chain over again?

Thu 7 Feb 2019 10:42 AM by Koljar

Yes.