Hi I am on the fence about a friar or paladin. I mostly have only ever played hib but had a friar at one time and really enjoyed how effective it was in PVE. I was able to farm some higher level mobs with my friar solo which I like since I play at random times but this was when they had plenty of heal procs. With the changes to paladin will they be on the same level as friar as far as solo PVE if I am carrying buff pots? I have not had time to play beta and test this out so would be interested to hear what people think. Also if I qbind my chants to be one button on my mouse is this considered cheating on this server?
Hmm, I think Friar will probably win out in the solo PVE category but it's close if the Paladin used dex/qui and str/con item charges + pots, though that would be more work.
Of course if you build your Paladin just for PvE then you'd be really hard to hit - that would be kind of hilarious (something like 39 Slash, 50 Shield, 48 Chants, 35 Parry or 50 Slash and 17 Parry).
I believe you can qbind all your chants to one button as long as you're actively pressing it and it's not on a loop.
A well played friar can solo purples at 50, a paladin can't (for as much as I would like to).
The things that differentiates the Friar effectiveness to solo over the Pally is that the Friar gets Evade (up to 5), which means that you don't take any damage, in contrast to a Paladin that doesn't have evade gets hit do they take more damage (less damage with plate). The Friar gets a lot more buffs and self buffs, the Paladin only has one buff and the chants. Also one of the self Friar buffs is the Offensive Proc Heal, which means you get automatically healed when you hit your target.
A paladin to hit as hard as a staff, has to go 2h, which means the paladin can't use a shield, so no way to prevent damage like the friar's evade. Both get parry, but with the Friar's dex buff and the self dex/quick buff, they parry more.
While both are effectives in groups, the Paladin shines the most in a group with the chants and the ability to tank.
So it's up to you, which fits most your style and your playing times.
Also: This was about Pala vs. Friar. Not about either one with someone buffing them. A Pala is already close to a Friar in PvE without buffs, with buffs it's not even a close match imho.
Are buffs a big deal at end game PVE? Couldn't I just use charges and pots? Would pally S/S spec work better for PVE or is it too low on DPS to take out the higher level mobs?
both paladin and friar are afk killers on pve with styles involved friar can easyly chain oranges sometiems reds with proper ras and spec(meaning chain killing nonestop not able to kill) for pala kiling a yelow or orange is same with styles adn etc(damge output issues) mabe slower then kiling them vs friar but no surprise factor vs friars msing hits and not able to evade etc. for mbos above red and purple pala can matc up friar with chance and skill setup factor still a pala cant kill a purple mob as efective as a friar(after mob lots downtime for a pala) also theris no compare friar vs pala on groups pala is a group boss and if duo with a friar it goes on worng ways(able to solo most lover tier bosses on game)(cleric does same with pala but ther is a risk of turning mbos on cleric for agro holding msing issues)
I think the Paladin would be the most versatile for PvE and if you ever want to RvR it stands better there. Give the Paladin pots/charges, it’s going to equal a Friar in PvE outside of higher end mobs (but a Paladin could easily group with someone to do them) if not be better. If you give the Paladin some RA’s it’s going to be so hard for mobs to hit it with increased Dex/mastery of block or parry that it’s heal chant will suffice to keep it rolling through mob after mob. Yes Friars have Evade, but Paladins will have shield- which can anytime stun mobs too.
If I was to chose between a Paladin or Friar for solo PvE I’d pick Paladin and grab another player if I ever needed to take on high level (purple) mobs.
I've been leveling a friar by pet healing, small group hunting, regular melee groups, & soloing. Strictly from a pve/leveling perspective, the friar appears to be more versatile/useful in nearly every situation.
I think where the paladin will really shine on this server, in Albion, is in small groups (duo/trio). I recently did a level in darkness falls as a friar grouped with a mercenary. As a friar I was able to provide baseline buffs, out of combat healing & occasionally dropped melee combat for in combat healing. Which certainly improved the performance of the merc., and we made better exp than if we solo'd. However, the merc was constantly starved for endurance & was unable to keep up with my combat uptime. Each time the merc. would use a style hit, you would see a huge chunk of the mob's hp disappear, he just couldn't do it often. I am pretty sure the group damage split was 70/30.
A paladin's endurance chant in that situation would have helped skyrocket the merc's damage output. I bet the kill rate would have been 50% higher or more. Although there would be less healing, I think the paladin's ability to block for the merc would have allowed them to maintain that high kill rate by leveraging each other's hp pool.
-- I would expect paladins to do well in regular melee groups while leveling, but for some reason people are really struggling with these groups on Phoenix/albion: The healers seem to always pull agro (maybe they don't understand to use small heals), protect/guards/intercepts aren't doing what they are supposed to be doing, the ice wizards go splat, etc... Whatever the cause for the confusion is in albion melee groups while leveling, it certainly slows down the expected killrate such that I think it would be hard to really take advantage of the endo chant vs having that second/third healer from a friar.
depends on application. holding aggro, paladin hands down. (sword and shield) with a 1hr weapon, they can attack-taunt targets faster than a staff can. as long as someone is taking dmg, the heal chant is working. personally i love 50shield and MoB.
i wish the cap was higher, especially for paladin's as the ONLY argument for lowered blockrate is "i dont see why a passive skill should have that much influence in a fight" - is an argument made by a player who doesnt twist 16 chants while trying to get a positional off.... paladin's have a lot of crap on their plate, but when played right (example above) then they can pull off a lot.
friar's are good 1vA (1 versus anything) but not in the applications for this server (rejuve) the best friar's i have ever seen, took 50 staff. they will knock the !@#$ out of people!! - great dps.
dex based class, dont need points in str or (str doesnt help friar)
in a duel you have to be a caster to beat a shield paladin. hands down. but a shield paladin has limited application in rvr (stun bot, guard bot) where as the friar can actually kill things.
