Holy Paladin Discussion

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Scalewinged
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Gekko right
MXL Docs - Poison damage explained wrote:Passive poison damage:
Passive poison damage includes all the skills that passively add poison damage to your attacks. Poison damage added from items works in the same way.

affected by-
+spell/poison skill damage (only in melee, see note)
+skills (if it's a skill and not on an item)
weapon damage multiplier
+x poison damage over y seconds.

not affected by-
+poison duration
+spell/poison skill damage (only with missiles, see note)
Energy and Energy Factor / Strength Factor
Sangeros
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I just leveled a Paladin to 120 playing Median XL XVI version. Here are my findings in regards to Holy Paladin vs Unholy Paladin.

- The Holy Melee tree relies on Solar Flare/Incarnation too much to be viable. And the Holy Melee Set (Cinadide's) doesn't allow you to cast Solar Flare once you have two pieces. That's a big problem because the Life Steal, AR and Bonus Elemental Damage from Incarnation make Retaliate great. Without that, you gotta put points into DEX for extra AR. That's counter-productive and should be fixed or addressed in the upcoming patch (Sigma?)
- I also agree that plague is quite weak. The damage is spread over 9.6 Seconds so the DPS is quite low. If you need poison, Symphony of Destruction does about ten times more in a shorter time. As a suggestion, Plague should also scale with STR as a Synergy Bonus.
- Holy Melee hasn't got any Life Regeneration except Vindicate (Innate) and Solar Flare if you have Incarnation. You are stuck with potions/apples. More space consumption in Invo :mrgreen:
- Retaliate scales with hard points into STR. This makes the Dragonknight stat buff mostly useful for STR unless your gear has insane amounts of +Attributes or you invested evenly into other stats.
- Superbeast increases Spell Damage and also attacks/casts faster than Dragonknight.
- Tainted Blood with Terror Strike offers more protection than Dragonheart which caps out at 1000% defense and doesn't regenerate life. Tainted Blood can be cast on your Mercs/Minions and Dragonheart can't.
- Stormlord provides more stat bonuses than Dragonknight for the majority of the leveling portion of the game and allows you to put hard points into other stats like Eng for Spell Synergy. Holy doesn't have that luxury. Let me explain.

With a Current Skill Level of 10, Stormlord provides 90 points to all attributes.
With a Current Skill Level of 10, Dragonknight provides 20% Boost to attributes.

For Dragonknight to provide the same effect of 90 points of attributes, you would need to have base stats of 450 Str, 450 Dex, 450 Eng, and 450 Vit. Then the Dragonknight buff would give you 90 to all Attributes. Consider the fact that you can only use 500 Signets of Learning per Character. 90% of the time you play Median XL, Stormlord will provide more stat bonus than Dragonknight. The odd 10% of the time is based on gear with +attributes (late game SU's/RW's). Eventually Dragonknight will provide more in the later stages of the game because it offers a percentage rather than straight points. Until then, Stormlord wins most of the time because it isn't an Uber and can be used alongside Superbeast or Resurrect.

- Holy Melee does have the advantage of benefiting from on striking modifiers with Retaliate/Hammerstrike hitting multiple targets. This can be really useful depending on what gear you pick up.

To conclude, I think the Holy Melee isn't quite there yet. Based on my experience playing on P8 thus far, the Unholy Paladin has more Stats, Life, Defense, and Damage (Physical and Elemental). I have a significantly easier time as an Unholy when I run Ubers rather than a Holy. I haven't tested all the SU's yet I am still grinding it :evil: I noticed some SU's still have the Searing Glow Dazzle Duration on Paladin based items. Not sure what the use of that is anymore. I hope this feedback helps to improve this amazing mod. Thanks for reading.
Edited by Sangeros 9 years.
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RollsRoyce
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When i tested the holy din compared to the one last ladder:

1) You can now have plague AND ressurect ( i would never use dragon morph at all Gul-XIS or gul helm offers all you would ever need) - we invest only into str anyway so the dragonmorph bonus would effectively degenerate to 40% str

2) Jump through the game with colloseum, apply plague screenwide in that process

3) cast Solar flare and stay alive forever with retaliate

4) if you have venom stinger the + spell dmg grants you the deadliest of all procs while still dealing so much dmg that your leech heals you instantly

5) Vor + solar flare are perfect single target killer, also you can even use resurrected monsters which you shouldnt underestimate

I think that the new din is alot more fun compared to the old one. Terror strike should however spawn on a much lower lvl for a paladin weapon.

Retaliate is also not that dependent on AR as you might think since it has the chance to hit more than once and has ND anyway, so you will usually end up with at least 1 hit to an enemy
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ChuckNoRis
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Sangeros wrote:- The Holy Melee tree relies on Solar Flare/Incarnation too much to be viable.
:shock:

the holy melee doesn't need solar flare and incarnation to be viable. you can get enough attack rating from gear and you can skip that leech too , Vindicate + some LaK and Losim + heal pots is all you need to stay alive . There's the Legion Commander miniguide in my compilation that does that and works great .

The holy melee was great even before the boost granted by incarnation/solar flare was invented and even before the character orb was added to provide some boost in early-mid game (you lost all of that at level 120) . you didn't have any of those in older patches and the retaliator was still strong.

the holy melee is actually boosted by having plague in early game and Dragonheart not reducing speed as it used to + the level 90 morph.

now tell me again how is the holy melee not viable without solar flare/incarnation ? :roll: :lol:

players these days .. T_T
Sangeros
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It's funny you only read one of my points and missed that the Holy Set doesn't even work with Solar Flare. If you aren't using Solar Flare + Incarnation then you are handicapping yourself. It provides AR, Leech and a shit load of Elemental Damage. Also Retaliates without being struck.

I guess you agree with my other points then since you haven't attempted to refute any. There's a reason why there's a discussion going on in case you haven't noticed :mrgreen:
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ChuckNoRis
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Sangeros wrote:It's funny you only read one of my points and missed that the Holy Set doesn't even work with Solar Flare. If you aren't using Solar Flare + Incarnation then you are handicapping yourself. It provides AR, Leech and a shit load of Elemental Damage. Also Retaliates without being struck.

I guess you agree with my other points then since you haven't attempted to refute any. There's a reason why there's a discussion going on in case you haven't noticed. :mrgreen:
1. who cares about the melee set ? yes , not being able to use Solar Flare sucks only if you invest points in that direction .

2. i just explained in the last post and inside my holy melee miniguide how not using solar flare + incarnation is nowhere near a handicap . you just don't need it to have a strong build , you can invest those skillpoints somewhere actually usefull , you don\t have to stop every 5 seconds to cast a spell .

3. read my posts from page 3 of this topic


somewhere in the past we had the patch "X" where holy melee had plague as uberskill , got slowed from lionheart , but was still a strong build

in patch "y" the holy melee got a small boost by using the caracter orb untill level 119 (you lost it at level 120) - some leech/attack rating/other minor stuff to help (the newbies)

in patch "z" the holy melee got plague since early game , no slow from Lionheart (not named Dragonheart) + a morph that boosts your speed a lot.

how is "z" not better than "x" or "y" and how is that solar flare+incarnation making the holy not viable , or "self hadicaped" if it could do great ever since "x" ?


/multiple facepalms

i am playing holy melee builds since it was invented some many years ago and i don't feel the need of using solar flare+incarnation . if you play holy melee since patch "y" , then i might try to understand you
Sangeros
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What's the point of having Solar Flare and Incarnation available if you don't spec into it? It's designed for Holy Melee thus the Leech, AR and Retaliate. If you are running Retaliate based build and you aren't using Solar Flare + Incarnation you are throwing away alot. Check out Page 1 and read Marco's posts.

Marco said: "But let me put it this way. Imagine Solar Flare stated: buff that lasts 5 seconds, enables retaliation, gives ridiculous amount of life steal, attack rating and spell damage. Would you use it?"

If you aren't running a Ret build I understand your point of not using Solar flare / Incarnation.
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ChuckNoRis
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Sangeros wrote:What's the point of having Solar Flare and Incarnation available if you don't spec into it? It's designed for Holy Melee thus the Leech, AR and Retaliate. If you are running Retaliate based build and you aren't using Solar Flare + Incarnation you are throwing away alot. Check out Page 1 and read Marco's posts.

If you aren't running a Ret build I understand your point of not using Solar flare / Incarnation.

i am throwing away something i never had and never needed .(i have the R button to run every time i need to go to 0 defence,get hit once and then easy retaliate - manly meleedin/how to retaliate for men anyone ? ) . it's not a "must have" because you can do just fine without it (as a pure melee) , just like you did before it was added 2 months ago in this patch , between 2007 and early 2016 . i choose to invest those skillpoints somewhere else and still pwn the game with no problem .

you do fine for 9 years and now if you skip this new buff (that stops you every 5 seconds for something you can get from proper gear/items) the build is bad or self handicaped or "relies on it to much to be viable " ? :roll:

i use solar flare and incarnation for casters and hybrids (see my Gandalf miniguide) , not for pure melees because it believe it's pointless .

why do i bother to explain the obvious ? it seams to be leading nowhere .
Sangeros
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Sorry I didn't mention I play in P8.
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iwansquall
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Personally i wished the buff lasted more longer with synergies like every point into melee tree or hard point synergies.

I mean it doesnt hurt much and forcing to use a skill that last too short kinda tedious IMO. Every 20 second maybe is fine but for 5 seconds is abit too short. If you evn more lazy then you can increase cbd to make it longer.


But thkfully now it stackable with colosseum