Table of Contents
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Chants
Chants are what separates paladins from armsmen, and are our
most powerful ability. Use of the chants skill in combat can
change the outcome of the battle. Use it poorly, and you will
still help your group, but raise your skill to the level of an
art form, and you will help your group overcome enemies who
should have overcome you.
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Chant Basics
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Chants are a spell-like ability that affect your entire group
for as long as the chant is running. Chants run in pulses, with
each pulse lasting somewhere between five and six-and-a-half
seconds. When you start a new chant your group immediately gets
the effect of that chant, and the chant will automatically
re-pulse when the old pulse ends. Starting or switching to a new
chant costs about 1% of your endurance bar, but most chants do
not cost anything to re-pulse so you can keep them running all
the time. The only exceptions are the Endurance Chant and the Consolidated Resist Chat lines, both
of which cost power for pulses after the first.
With the exception of the Refresh
(heal) Chant, chants do not stack with other paladin chants,
so in a group with more than one paladin you want to work out who
will chant what. You also can't run more than one chant at once,
although there is an advanced technique called twisting that gives you something close to
simultaneous chants.
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Chants and Soloing
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The easiest way to solo with your chants is to just stick with the
Refresh (or Heal) Chant. This will heal you a certain small amount every
6 seconds. If you are feeling strong, and/or you want to finish a battle
quickly then you can switch to the Damage chant halfway through. Or,
start with the Damage Chant and switch to the Refresh Chant once
you take damage. As you get more comfortable with using your
chants, you can start to Twist them.
Note that for minimum downtime, you want to end the fight at
almost full health. This is especially important because, unlike the
Endurance Chant, the Refresh (Heal) Chant does not work unless
the person being healed is in combat.
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Twisting
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Twisting is the ability for one Paladin to run multiple Chants at once
and gain all their benefits. How does this work? It's a matter of timing
and delay. Each chant, when you activate it, lasts for a certain number
of seconds before it gets renewed. For the Refresh Chant, that delay
is about 6 seconds. So, when you first cast the Refresh Chant, you get
the immediate benefit of healing...and every 6 seconds after that, you
get an additional heal. The same works for the Battle and Defense Chants.
Immediately when you cast these chants, their effects are in place and
you can use them.
So how does this allow us to run multiple chants together? Well, it's
not that we actually chant them all at once, but rather, we start a
Chant and then immediately start a different Chant. This gives us the
benefit of the first Chant right away and then the longer lasting benefit
of the second Chant. This sounds like uber-powerful (in a way it is),
however, there's a limit to how fast you can Twist. There's a casting
delay on each Chant, so you can't continuously switch back and forth.
However, the casting delay is about 6 or more seconds for each, so as
the benefit from your Twisted chant is over, you are almost ready to
Twist in another chant.
If we apply this to a real life scenario, let's take Peon the Paladin.
Peon is running the Battle Chant while in combat. He's doing fine, but
then he realizes that he needs to heal himself in order to continue.
However, he still wants to keep beating the snot out of his enemy. So,
he changes his Chants and runs the Refresh Chant. Immediately he gets
some healing. However, in order to keep his damage up he immediately
changes back to the Damage Chant. He can continue doing this forever
or until the battle is over. He gets the double benefit of the Refresh
and the Damage Chant together.
If you are really ambitious, you can twist three or more chants at once
and get the benefit of all of them. You can do this by hotkeying
all the chants and running one right after another. When the
casting delays are all finished, you start the process
again. However, twisting this many chants can cost a lot of
endurance, so read Twisting, Endurance
and You first.
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Double Healing
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Double Healing is a special form of Twisting that allows a Paladin
to actually heal for TWICE the normal amount every 6 seconds. The
way to do this is very simple. Just take the previous example with Peon
and switch the placement of the Damage Chants and the Healing Chants.
Peonette the Paladin is running the Heal Chant while in combat. She's
doing fine, but then realizes that her group mates are getting hammered.
So, she decides to start Double Healing. First, she changes to the Battle
Chant and then immediately she changes back to the Refresh Chant. At
that time, she gets, let's say, 10 hit points when the Refresh Chant
is first starting. She starts to pay close attention to her text
window. When she notices that her Refresh Chant has healed for
another 10 points (after 6.5 seconds) then she quickly changes to
Battle Chant and back to Refresh, getting another 10
hit points. She continues doing this until the battle is over, and
she saves her group mates. The timeline of the Double Healing
looks like this, where 'H' is a recast of the Refresh Chant, 'h'
is a heal tick, 'B' is battle chant and a period '.' is 1
second. If you don't tend to look at your text window while in
combat, you can also watch the cup animation over your head. When
the cup has raised up and disappeared, it's time to do another
twist.
h......hBH......hBH......hBH......hBH......hBH......etc.
We see here that every six seconds we get two heals happening at once.
We also get the added benefit of a Battle Chant in there as
well. Because of the way the timing works out there will be a
second or two at the end of each twist cycle where the battle
chant isn't running, but it will still be operational for about
75% of your swings.
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Twisting, Endurance and You
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There is one additional cost to twisting: endurance. You may
have noticed that whenever you change to a new chant you lose about 1%
of your endurance bar. This isn't a problem when you just leave a
chant running, but if you are constantly twisting between chants it
can chew up your endurance very quickly. Luckily, if you run out of
endurance you can still twist, your endurance will just stay at
zero.
It used to be a running joke that paladins would go for hours
with zero endurance, but this all changed with the endurance chant in 1.53. The
endurance chant allows you to recover your endurance even while
running or fighting, and at the highest level will recover about
5% of your bar every second. What this means is that you can
add the endurance chant to your twist and at higher levels
actually gain endurance while twisting. The rule of thumb is that
you can twist a number of chants equal to your level of endurance
chant with no endurance loss. For example, if you have the fourth
highest endurance chant (Chant of Resilience) you can twist
together Battle, Shield, Endurance and Heal chants and not lose
any endurance. Now the running joke is that paladins
always have endurance. We are the official Energizer
Bunny of Albion.
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Player vs. Environment
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Player vs. Environment (PvE) is fighting against monsters, realm
guards and other computer-controlled enemies. Most PvE tactics are
designed to maximize the amount of experience gained in an amount of
time.
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Soloing
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Soloing is fairly straightforward. Cast your Aura (AF buff)
spell. Find a camp of monsters that are blue to yellow to you, and
stand in a safe spot nearby. Pull monsters from the camp one at a
time using your taunt spell, and kill them using your chants as described above. If you pick the right level
monster to pull, you should be able to finish the battle with close
to full health and full endurance, allowing you to pull non-stop. If
you don't have one yet, get a good map of Albion to help you choose
places to hunt (Kirstena's Atlas is
an especially nice source). Note that Mythic has designed the
game with group play in mind, and the paladin is an especially
group-oriented class. While we can solo quite effectively, the XP
will almost always be faster with a well-balanced group.
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Aggro Control
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Aggro is the amount of aggression a monster has towards a
person. In PvE groups it is very important to be able to manage
aggro so you keep monsters hitting the big burly plate wearers
(you) and off of the cloth-wearing casters. Luckily, paladins
are the best aggro management class in the game.
Paladins have no less than four ways to manage aggro. First, we
have our Taunt spell. This spell can be
instantly cast in combat from range, and makes the target monster
very angry. If a monster sneaks up behind the group and starts
nibbling on a caster, you can quickly target the monster and cast
this spell to make it switch targets. The second way we control
aggro is our heal chant. Monsters hate people who heal, and we
can do it twice every six seconds. If you run heal chant,
especially if you double heal, you will
quickly generate a lot of aggro. That lets casters do their
damage without worrying about having the monster attack
them. Third, paladins can use the protect ability to take some of the
aggro that would otherwise go to a caster. Finally, all the
weapon specialization lines have a taunt style that can be used
to generate extra aggro. The taunt style will often be your last
resort since they are slower and don't work at range, but used
well they can still be a life-saver.
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Organization with Multiple Paladins in a Group
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With our powerful chants, having more Paladins in a group is a good
thing. Multiple paladins give you the effects of multiple chants
without having to twist, and more importantly our Refresh chants
all stack. This means a group of eight paladins all
double-healing the highest refresh chant can heal 736 hit points
every 6.5 seconds! Here are some basic guidelines for
coordinating chants in a multiple-paladin group:
- 2 Paladins - Simple - One Battle, One Refresh. Highest level Paladin
should take Refresh.
- 2 Paladins - Complex - One Double Heals with Battle and one Double
Heals with Defense. Even more complex is One Double Heals with
Battle and one Double Heals with both Defense and Endurance (a
triple-twist).
- 3 Paladins - Simple - One Refresh, One Battle, One Defense. Highest
level Paladin should take Refresh.
- 3 Paladins - Complex - One Double Heal Battle, One Double Heal
Defense, One Double Heal Endurance
- 4,5,6,7,8 Paladins - All Double Heal or follow the 3 Paladin Simple
rule and keep everyone with one Chant. Just remember that only the Refresh
stacks.
In PvE we can distribute our damage to make the most of our
group heal chants. Because the Refresh Chant will heal every
member of the group who is damaged, that five-point heal could
potentially cure 40 points at once. This means it's extremely
useful to spread the damage out over everyone in the group.
There are three main techniques to distribute the aggro (and
thus the damage) among several paladins. These techniques have
the added bonus of keeping monsters from chewing on your
cloth-wearing casters:
- With multiple paladins and a single monster, you play
"spin-the-monster." The first paladin pulls the monster
to the group using the taunt chant. Both paladins double-heal,
to get the healing and to make sure the monster is good and mad
and ignores the casters. After hitting it a few times, the
paladin with the aggro switches to her detaunt style. This has
two effects. First, all the detaunt styles have a high bonus to
defense. This will reduce the damage she takes. Second, it will
slowly reduce the aggro of the monster, making it swap targets
to the second paladin in the group. Once this happens, your
group heal chants will start healing both of you, doubling the
effectiveness. The paladin who now has aggro starts using his
detaunt, and the first paladins switches to normal damage
styles. Done well, the monster will start spinning around,
dividing damage equally across all paladins as your heal chants
works for everyone. If anyone starts to take too much damage,
use the enrage taunt to move aggro to a less wounded
paladin.
- Against multiple monsters with no crowd-control (mez
spells), designate different tanks to get the first add,
second add, etc. Your taunt spell is especially good at
grabbing adds. After you have the aggro of your own monster
well cemented, you can all switch to focus on one monster
(either the largest, the one pulled, or the most damaged). This
is known as focusing swords, distributing shields.
- Multiple monsters with crowd-control spells works the
same as without crowd control, except you want to make sure not
to hit a monster that's rooted or mezzed because damage breaks
the spell. You may want to negotiate a "line of death"
with the crowd-control caster. If a monster gets beyond this
line of death (e.g. if it resists the mez spell) then it's fair
game. Be on the lookout when the mez wears off, because
unmezzed monsters tend to make a bee-line for the caster.
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Realm vs. Realm
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Realm vs. Realm (aka RvR) is the heart of Dark Age of Camelot. It is
the element that sets it apart from the other MMORPGs. It is massive
warfare against other real thinking opponents, and must be treated entirely
different than PvE. Some of the differences are as follows (this is
not comprehensive):
- RvR engagements tend to be very fast.
- Aggro does not exist. Once an enemy is locked onto your someone,
the only way to get them off is to kill them or cause them to retreat.
- Instead of fighting just a few creatures, you may very well be outnumbered.
Tactics need to change to accommodate this fact.
- There is far more magic than you find in PvE. Area effect spells,
mezzes, stuns, roots, etcetera are all far more common.
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Realm vs. Realm in a Group
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In an RvR situation, paladins play the role of a support
tank. We don't do as much damage as an armsman, but our chants
make the other members of our group more effective. In
particular, our damage chant does a lot of damage when you take
into account the damage it adds to every member of the group, and
our endurance chant is invaluable for letting the entire group
style or sprint for long periods of time. Our resist chants are
also useful when going up against casters, though you will need
to research which chant to use where (table coming soon). Keep in
mind that our chant range is limited (especially the endurance
chant) so you need to stay relatively close to your group
mates.
In our tank capacity we can still dish out decent damage, and
the nine-second stun from the shield slam style can make or break
a fight in RvR. Our role is to either close with the enemy and
kill them, or to stay back and attack the enemy tanks that are
trying to kill our casters and healers. We also fall into the
role of rezzers, as there are often many people dead after any
engagement. Your best bet is to team up with a healer and to have
him heal as you rez, at least until higher levels when clerics
can rez a person with a large amount of health.
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Communication and Coordination
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These are the two essential elements that will determine who wins the
battle in a large engagement. Without communication, there is no coordination,
without coordination, a well coordinated enemy will pick us apart one
group at a time. Here are some guidelines to follow when setting up
communications and coordination:
- The goal or objective of the force should be decided on before anything
else happens.
- One group leader should be set up as the force commander. This person
should assign someone to start a chat group and invite the key people
first (group leaders, sub-commanders, etc.), followed by any designated
scouts, then as many of the remaining force as possible. Determine at this
time if a communications tool will be used (Game Voice, Voice Commander,
Roger Wilco, etc). If so, time should be taken to set this up. The group
leader should not be the chat group leader as adding people to the chat
group can become a full time job.
- The force commander should make sure the groups are well designed
for their roles. If not, groups should be split and reformed to fit
their roles.
- Groups should stay together unless their role dictates otherwise
(such as scouts, etc). If you get separated in battle, always reform
at the earliest possible chance. Groups are more likely to survive
if they are together.
- Always follow your group leader's directions. Even if in conflict
with the force commander's directions. Again, groups are more likely
to survive if they are together.
- Group leaders should follow directions from the force commander
as the situation allows. There will be times when a group leader must
ignore the force commander, but communicate this to the force commander if
at all possible at the time, or as soon as possible after the fact.
If you do not communicate, you may cause the entire force to be lost.
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Basic Tactics
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Still to come.
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Flanking Maneuvers
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Flanking maneuvers are best utilized by a group of tanks with speed
support, preferably minstrels, but at least with theurgists/sorcerers.
The role of this group is to circle around to the side or rear of an
opposing force and to attack it's weaker support classes before they
realize you are there. If successful, and coordinated with a frontal
attack by the main group, it will often tip the battle in your favor,
even against a superior number of foes. Here are some ideas to make
this more effective:
- Target healers and casters first. They tend to be the weaker classes,
and while you are attacking them, they can not cast (you interrupt their
casting). In addition, these are the classes that can do the high damage
attacks or heal their friends.
- If you do have a good flanking group of mostly tanks, split into
2-3 smaller groups to attack more than one at once. You should still
be able to kill them in a couple swings, and you create more havoc
that way.
- Perhaps more important than the damage you cause is the confusion
you cause. Your sudden appearance will cause some to turn to face
you, be ignored by others and cause some to flee. This splitting of
the attention prevents them from working together as a focused force.
- This tactic is well used to draw an enemy force into a trap. Set
up behind cover near a position you know the enemy will cross. The
main body has the appearance of being weaker than it is and should
be able to draw the enemy into a desirable position. Stay out of sight
until they pass you and someone from the main force let's you know
to attack.
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Assassin/Archer Baiting
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This is a two man tactic for getting rid of those harassing assassins
and archers. What you need is a Paladin and an infiltrator to work this
out. The Paladin should don a set of robes (I carry two dyed different
colors to change them) and a staff. This will make you look like a caster.
With your armor buff and armor chant running, your armor factor and
hit points will be much better than a caster's would be. Now, stand
still and wait for an assassin or archer to attack you. The infiltrator
should be about six paces behind you to avoid AE mezzes and to have
an easy approach to the enemy or to see his arrows. When attacked, switch
weapons and both of you attack. Keep in mind, there is a good chance
you may still die, but a good infiltrator should be able to get the
kill.
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Groups with Mostly/All Paladins
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As with PvE, groups with mostly or all Paladins require
different tactics than other groups. A group that consists of a
large number of Paladins is fairly self sufficient and extremely
powerful. The more Paladins in a group, the more effective your
chants. You can heal in combat, rezz after combat, and buff
yourselves with extra armor, damage or resistances. You will
still move slowly (although sprinting with endurance chant
helps), and it may help to have clerics, friars, theurgists
and/or wizards from another group to buff you for maximum effect,
but you can survive on your own. Combined with the fact that you
can hit hard and take a decent beating, make us a unique class in
this game. Some tips to keep in mind in this type of group:
- DOUBLE HEAL. If you don't know what this is, refer
to the chants section above. This will maximize your healing potential,
and provide you with the benefits of other chants. While you do lose
endurance faster, combats are relatively brief, and styles will seldom
drain you of your endurance. Plus, the benefits from the chants typically
will be equal or greater than the benefits from your styles (add to
that the fact that you will live longer).
- Stay close together, but not too close. Your chants have a limited
range. This range varies from chant to chant, so you don't want to
stray too far from each other. You also don't want to be too close,
or you are vulnerable to AE spells and mezzes.
- If you are thinking about retreating, don't. In RvR, odds are, you
will not get away. But if you stay and your group wins the engagement,
your fellows can rez you. Worst case is that you all die and need
to release. At least you can regroup in safety. If you do get away
and the enemy wins, odds are they will guard the bodies till they
auto-release, so you probably won't get a chance to rezz your fellows,
and you will have to wait for them to return.
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