<-Paladin>
Feast PvP Guide
Written by Ash Florentine
Skills, Rotation, and Your Gauge ➤
Your Role in Feast
Paladin is probably considered the most defensive tank in The Feast. For this job even more than the other available tanks (Darkknight and Warrior), you will spending your time primarily playing a support and disabler class (a class that interrupts enemy team from killing your team). Your task is to analyze the fight and to notice how it develops and how to react to it, and for that task it is really acceptable to take some time (even if your damage will be lower as a result of that). The skills of the Paladin job profits most of your decision when the timing is right to actually use them and when not. It is possible to play Paladin on an average level as beginner, to master it though you will require additional knowledge of most or all other classes. It will get easier with more experience and as in PvE, muscle memory will lead here also to your improvement.
You are playing against other players in The Feast, thus there is a lot of situational gameplay involved, this guide can’t cover every situation you might encounter as Paladin, but help you to develop a mindset which should let you make the right decisions more often. Sometimes an unconventional playstyle is required to adjust to your teammates.
Strengths
+ Low Cooldowns of Crowd Control effects (Stun & Silence)
+ Strongest Support abilities with a high frequency of potential uses
+ Best personal defensive skill of all tanks, Hallowed Ground
+ Usually low to normal queue times for The Feast as it is a tank class, additionally tanks are a more relaxing role to play generally
Weaknesses
– Mobility; we have 0 gapcloser, all other tanks have 1
– Micro-Managment (lots of buttons to press)during certain short time windows,
on “high” skill level necessary
– Positioning plays a big role due to the limited range of Cover and Spells
– Job Gauge and MP & TP managment
About this guide: It is very lengthy and some information especially the one in cursive script are often just additional information. Reading and understanding the skills and what they really do, helps a lot, you will get surprised as I got surprised multiple times, even after playing for several seasons.
Skills, Abilities, and Your Gauge
Gauge
These are your two variants of your Gauge, Sword and Shield Oath Gauge, which you may know from PvE already. Every skill that deals damage except Requiescat will fill it by 5 Gauge.
In PvP the Gauge solely enables you to use the Coverskill, which will deplete the Gauge by 25 with each servertick (approximately every 3s).
Sword Oath Gauge Shield Oath Gauge
[Simplified versions]
Skills
Paladin has two main meleerange weaponskill combos, which you can see in the figure. Their effects are once again different from PvE and are explained in detail below.
- Both melee combos have the same potency at each skill of their rotation, both have a combined 3000 potency (750+1000+1250). This means you don’t have to worry about picking a certain rotation because of damage.
- Only with the execution of the finisher skill Rage of Halone or Royal Authority you activate their combo bonus effect.
Rage of Halone
The combo bonus of Rage of Halone is that it reduces the target’s attack potency and healing potency by 10% for a duration of 15s. This rotation should always be used when you are near (8500+) or full MP. It is mainly used on the melee or range damage dealer, as these will deal the most damage in a match and during bursts. It is worth to take a second, to pick the right target, to apply it or to refresh this debuff e.g. on the melee again.
As of Patch 4.5 this healing potency down debuff works on all healing spells and abilities and therefore could be viable to be placed on healers as well, to reduce their output and make them starve and consume their MP even more. Some comps especially with summoner could profit from a constant combined 20% less healing in the long run (high pressure) .
Royal Authority
The Royal Authority combo grants you 1000MP with the completion of its final comboskill. MP is needed for 1) Clemency, a healing spell and 2) Holy Spirit, an offensive spell, therefore it is relevant to keep your MP at an acceptable level so you can support your team during defensive and aggressive time windows. As a rule of thumb, I would use the time outside of culling to regain your MP to high levels and during culling I would “sacrifice” the MP for a few Rage of Halone combos for the debuff, which will hopefully prevent that member of your team get killed within a second.
(for reference, one culling stack means 10% more damage on everyone and it will increase by an additional stack up to five every 15s until a death)
If you happen to notice you are in the Royal Authority combo (MP regeneration), while you are at 10.000/10.000 MP, don’t be afraid to interrupt it outside of burst windows, so you can spread instead the 10% potency debuff faster. Only focused damage peaks will kill targets in The Feast, we do not need to care so much for total damage, that is an important concept of this current PvP playstyle in general.
Shield Bash
The most important crowd control (cc) effect, a Stun, you will use very often is Shield Bash. It is an “off-global” melee range ability and your only TP spender. Though the interesting thing about Shield Bash from a Paladin point-of-view is, that it will also increase the oath Gauge by 5. Looking at a just 5s cooldown, this offers us the possibility to get a lot of Gauge in a short time.
It is used defensively to stop enemies and offensively to stun burst targets or the enemy healer/ paladin during a countdown (and help with damage to some extent).
Your objective will be to interrupt the enemy team from getting synced burst peaks on your team, as such you might be hesitant to use this skill as you see they are not seriously attacking yet. But it is a double edged sword, if you sit on 1000 TP and don’t use the TP ressource at all or exclusively when you notice something, you are actively making the job of your healer harder. Executing perfect stuns will be difficult as a beginner in PvP and not always possible. Because of that it can be more beneficial to narrow the burst windows of the enemy team in a small time window by stunning them more often, sometimes even on cooldown. The advantage of this tactic is, that you even might get lucky and prevent a melee preparation of a burst or evenLimit Break sometimes. Two seconds after you stunned a damage dealer, they have a 10s Stunresist buff (if no Increased Resistence trait, which is likely) to execute their burst, this makes them more predictable, as they will aim to burst with this resist buff. If you are going to stun the melee, you probably do not have to Cover somebody in the next 6s (as countdowns are 5s long), be efficient with the resources you have.
Another sidenote is that it is important to check if the targets are Stunresist. Try to prevent stunning them, unless you 1) need Gauge quickly or 2) are helping actively with burst and value the mere 500 potency of Shield Bash as enough to get a kill maybe.
In order to interrupt Limit Breaks with a stun, you will have to track who gets adrenaline boxes (each box gives ~25% adrenaline Gauge) and check the Limit Break icons in the party list.
Adrenaline Gauge fills for approximately 33% every minute, it will be full after or a few seconds before 3 minutes into the match (the moment Wolfsheart spawns). One adrenaline box will make the first Limit Break like 40s earlier ready, stay on your watch.
Range damage dealer like to use their Limit Break for Wolfsheart sometimes, if they are in your range and around Wolfsheart it is worth stunning them. Otherwise stun the melee 1s before wolfheart spawn.
Requiescat
Let’s break this skill down! Requiescat is an instant ability, this means it is like
Shield Bash an offglobal skill. The most relevant thing about this skill is the 0 MP cost of all your casts for the next 6 seconds.
Because of the Global Cooldown of skills that is around 2,3s, you will be able to fit still 3 casts into that window. This gives you the option to use it either for three Holy Spirit offensively (your main burst) to deal damage or defensively for three Clemency to heal your teammates or yourself. It is of course also possible to mix it up, especially in situations where you notice it was a bad time to burst and you need to support again with Clemency. Often you won’t be able to execute three casts under the 0 MP effect.
The wording of the skill description is a bit confusing regarding the “Potency increase up to 200% with near max MP” of this skill. It actually only deals an attack of 2000 potency, when you have full MP, not 3000 as some may think. (At 50% MP it will deal around 1500 potency.)
As mentioned, this below is your highest potency burst rotation you can execute in The Feast as a Paladin. It might be worth to use the first Holy Spirit on the healer to silence (at around 1s of countdown) then switch to the burst target for the remaining two.
It can be improved by preparing and starting with your melee finisher skill / or to weave in a Shield Bash before this Holy Spirit burst, but often bursts are not taking over 3 GCD.
The extra effect of Requiescat is that it also boosts the potency of both your casts
(Holy Spirit AND Clemency) by 25%, therefore casting just Holy Spirits without this buff is not really recommended and should be avoided most of the time.
Do not waste this skill, 30s Cooldown will feel long in a match. Always try to use it for bursts or as an emergency tool for extra buffed clemencies. It doesn’t increase your Oath Gauge either. A decent use of this skill will separate the good from the bad paladins. If you just use it as “extra dmg” (with no casts after it) you have failed it’s purpose.
Holy Spirit
One of your two spells in PvP. Holy spirit, as mentioned before, is part of your best burst and will put a two second Silence cc effect on the target. The skill has a hefty MP cost of 2500 MP, if you intend to use it without the Requiescat “0 MP cost” effect . If you use it unwisely it will deplete your MP pool after four Holy Spirits already, therefore use it:
A offensively, while you are under the effect of Requiescat, almost 2000 potency!!
B outside of Requiescat only, if you estimate the situation and think that it will profit really well from a Silence (like defensively e.g. on a Blackmage spammingFire IV or a Summoner casting Ruin IV spells, or as a fast surprise Silence on the healer)
C if you think the 1500 potency of it will matter to get a fast kill before the enemy healer can heal the target, which is often the case when the enemy healer died (instead of trying to get in melee range, sacrifice the MP for the follow up kill, potency of 1500 is still more damage than every melee skill of your combo)
During a match you want to avoid options B and C, but sometimes those bruteforce/ wasting MP options might be necessary. Otherwise your MP pool should be mainly for your emergency clemencies.
Either way, don’t be afraid to use an extra Holy Spirit if you sit on the MP cap with 10.000 MP.
Clemency
Your second and last cast as Paladin, Clemency. It has the same cure potency as a small healing spell from a healer. It potency gets buffed the same way as Holy Spirit under Requiescat (+25%) up to around a value of 3000. An interesting effect is that it will also heal yourself for 50% of the heal but only if the target is a party member. This makes it really well to use on your Cover target, as the target might have already taken some damage and you will definitely eat a few hits because of Cover too.
You don’t want and can’t replace your healer with this, it is a support heal. A healer has limited resources to deal with burst peaks, he might be able to deal with one or two, but then he lacks his cooldowns to deal with it. You have to make these usually dangerous bursts somehow healable for him (either with Cover and applying Safeguard or Hallowed Ground, mitigation like Tank Limit Break, or stunning enemy damage dealer and if that is not enough, you start healing).
You also want to instinctively heal your team whenever you notice you can’t peel for them or when you are covering a member during the next burst. In most scenarios 1-2 Clemency are enough buffer for your healer to comeback.
If you need big emergency heals e.g your healer died or you are still leading in the last 20s but struggling a lot to stay alive. Do not be afraid to do this:
These 3 Clemency can increase your heal output by ~14000-15000 healing.
As mentioned before, try to adjust to the game, if you see a reason to stop healing, then do a Holy Spirit instead (under Requiescat). If you can’t target an enemy for Holy Spirits, heal the person which gets attacked most likely. A free heal is a free heal.
The effect window of Requiescat barely fits for 3 casts make sure you cast fast or the last spell will cost you MP.
Cover (& Hallowed Ground)
I’ve put these 2 respectively 3 skills together, because you will use them very often at the same time. Cover is the main element of the Paladin gameplay. This skill differentiates you a lot from the other tanks, it enables you to transfer the damage a party member would take onto yourself. A lot of damage dealer will learn to hate this skill and will get irl nightmares of it (promise). You want to master and execute this skill as efficiently as possible.
You should know by now how you generate and spend your Gauge.
Cover is a toogle-skill, it will deplete your Gauge every tick (~3s) by 25 of your maximum of 100, this is the minimal duration in which Cover has to be active, you can’t deactivate it by any means earlier than that. The same icon you use to activate will be used to deactivate it again, it is called Uncover, you notice that the red part of the icon turns blue then and the border will change around it. The next aspect of Cover is it’s range! It can only be applied on teammates which are around you, to speak in FF14 terms, your team member has to be during the whole time you want to cover in a 10y radius around you, otherwise it will interrupt the effect even if it still is active. For that reason, prediction of bursts and positioning is a key ability you have to learn as Paladin. You have to stay somewhat close to your team in almost all situations, you are slow and you have no gapcloser. Don’t chase the impossible.
We are not immortal! Bursts are scary, we actually don’t want to cover a whole burst!! We amplify the damage the target takes by 10% just by covering it, as this is sadly an additional (negative!) effect of Cover. If we have Medal Stacks, just by picking up the first 50 medals for example, we will take the exact same damage (under Cover) as player with zero stacks, even if Shield Oath is active. The only benefit is we have around 2000 more HP, but that’s it.
Subsequently, try to imagine a burst like a damage graph, it has a peak usually when the enemy countdown hits 0. You of course don’t know when that moment actually is, but we can guess and try to estimate it. So to conclude it, we want
A the enemy to actually start their burst, before we start to cover! This is important because, if you start covering too early you will have to cover longer or what is even worse, the enemy could cancel their countdown and keep all their burst, while you just wasted your Gauge.
B to cover either the peaks of a burst or end part of it, as shown in the picture. If you take out that chunk of damage from their bursts, your team member will survive and your healer will have less stress. If you or the bursttarget drops too low in HP, use a Clemency to support. (Sometimes even just covering the peaks of a burst can be deadly, especially against classes like Dragoon and Mages as they have aoe, which could hit you double)
C Don’t forget to turn it off again! This is the mistakes most newbie Paladins do, they cover the right moment but don’t deactivate/Uncover it again. It would increase the healer stress again, if he is scared about you taking too much damage and potentially dying.
D It is usually highly likely that the target you cover will suffer from cc and usually we do not care so much about it! Though if you notice early enough very deadly damage is incoming(like immediately a Limit Break), try to break Cover by running and jumping away by yourself to prevent death, or you will get possibly stunned and e.g. get a covered melee Limit Break on you. We jump because, if we get stunned, we still complete the jump, which still increases our distance to other players (in this scenario we couldn’t uncover yet, which you would typically do after a melee Limit Break on you).
E Manage your Gauge! Cover has to be used conservatively, you can’t use it for every small burst. There are more ways to prevent a death than just to cover, usually if it is not possible to stun with Shield Bash you will Cover, and if Cover is not enough, you will Clemency.
Another excellent use of Cover is when your melee announces his melee Limit Break (Raw Destruction) to you in the chat. If you notice he is engaging in the fight and starts to countdown, it is very helpful if you cover him to transfer all the crowd control effects onto yourself. This, with a Stun on the target, will lead to a safe execution of the melee Limit Break. (Get used to the audio cues from quick chat commands!)
Luckily the developers gave us like an extra second after those first 3s to be able to remove the Cover status, without losing out directly another 25 Gauge for the next 3s tick. The sad news is, cover has an inherent delay like many skills, which will make it take effect like 0-1s after you have pressed it, this latency+skill delay balances the gained 1s out again. Having knowledge of these two details gives you the possibility to keep cover active when you noticed you just spent 25 Gauge. You just “paid” for 3s, may as well leave it on for another second then. In addition to that, the lag issue enables you to cover burst peaks easier, because of the delay. Getting used to optimal timing will play an important role for an effective Cover.
It is important to say that, as mentioned, you will take the damage your team member would take. Every damage increasing debuff on him and you will count to the damage amplification. Covering something like a burst with 25% vulnerability debuff from the Mage Limit Break, Butcher’s Block 10% vulnerability, Melee Debuff 15%, 10% Cover vulnerability, 20% Heavy Medal vulnerability for taking 200 medals, Culling stacks (Damage increases by 10% each stack up to 5) ~ will result in instant deletion of your HP bar even if they only do a tiny burst on you.
If you cover something like that you need a strong defensive….
something like….
Hallowed Ground
This skill is our joker, our “Get out of jail – free card”, Hallowed Ground. It will make you invincible like the PvE version, just here, only for 5s but also all type of damage (not only physical). It’s cooldown is only 90s, which could mean you might get up to 4 decent uses out of it in a 6min match.
The awesome aspect of this skill is, that it synergizes with Cover. You can Cover a team member and you and the target will be invincible for 5s (this is different again to the PvE version).
As described in the last paragraph of the Cover section, you might encounter situations where the vulnerability buffs just stack up against you. Covering those targets will be very scary and almost impossible without a death on your side, if you can sense these situations it is the best time to use this skill. Imagine both Limit breaks from the enemies land on your cover target, you don’t think about it twice, just instantly use Hallowed Ground. It is also worth a lot after your healer died, when you need to retreat to your respawn point in your base.
A different way to use it would be offensively, as weird as it sounds. If your team member is used to Cover, he will take more risks when pushing into enemy lines. Therefor you can use the Cover + Hallowed Ground combo to follow targets behind walls or other obstacles that would potentially break the line of sight to your healer. You give your team the room to follow that countdown with such a playstyle.
If you see your healer struggling with MP it is also worth using it to Cover the next burst. Remember it is only a 90s cooldown, we want to get the most out of it of course, but in some matches there will never be a situation where it would be really necessary, then just switch to use Hallowed Ground for less scary situations. It will still benefit the team.
Shield Oath
You can either turn Shield Oath on or off, there is no Sword Oath like in PvE. It works like a tankstance and on Paladin the tankstance is kept active over very long times in The Feast. Once it is dropped you will have to wait 5s to enable it again, keep that in mind, when trying risky tactics.
Using Shield Oath is incredibly useful to offset the extra 10% damage taken by Cover.
Let us recap quickly how much medal vulnerability stacks affect our taken damage:
With that it is fairly easy to say, when you are holding 126-150 medals, resulting in 2 stack and 10% damage increase on you, you will take as much damage when covering a target as if you would have no Shield Oath. Consequently, you are increasing the enemy burst if you are covering without Shield Oath by 10-45% depending on Medal stacks of you and your target (don’t be this guy). Use your tankstance therefore always when covering. There are of course exceptions of this rule e.g. you have light medal status which decreases your damage taken or using Hallowed Ground, but generally always keep it active.
You want to drop Shield Oath in the direct preparation phase for countdowns/bursts, but do not forget to switch back into it after a burst.
Dropping Shield Oath with or even stacks is very risky and should only be done in rare situations for very short moments. Usually you would prevent stacking early or at all to not make your best support skillCover a detriment for your team.
Playing Paladin resolves around making a quick decision how much mitigation you need to balance the burst out in order to be able to survive it. If you add another layer now, the Culling mechanic which also increases your damage taken by 10% each stack, things will add up real fast again. Always try to estimate how big the burst peaks will be with those damage adjustments.
Tank Limit Break (Aegis Boon)
Aegis Boon is your Tank Limit Break. You can imagine it as an AOE Safeguard for your whole team, but only if it is in your visible 50y range (it will get blocked by obstacles). Its duration has been nerfed recently to just only 10s, which makes timing it a bit more difficult. In most matches, you only have one use of this skill, it is possible to get 2 depending on Adrenaline Boxes(1 box adds 25% to Limit Break Gauge) which spawn at 4:30 and 1:30 time left in the match.
Generally, if your team gets both first boxes, I would take one box and aim for an early Tank Limit Break within the next 2 minutes. If you enter the last 2 min of the game and still haven’t used it, I would save it for the best possible moment, as you highly likely won’t get a second one. If you are around 30-50% Limit Break Gauge at the “1:30 time left”-mark AND your team is leading, communicate with your team your Limit Break status with the Quick Chat command. Best case scenario is, your team members will listen and give you both Adrenaline Boxes to get a 2nd late Tank Limit Break. Anything over 50% means you will need only 1 box.
Please make sure that you use it before the match ends, it sounds trivial, but often players forget the duration of the buff.
Using this skill means your healer has time to refresh his mitigation cooldowns, which he will need when the Tank Limit Break is over again. Use the Limit Break between the last 20-15s of the game, even when nothing is happening. Even when it runs out and the situation is still dangerous, you can just start covering again.
Outside of that, the best way to use this skill is during Culling, bursts are just too high if they have 10-50% extra damage by the Culling debuff. Because of that, I would strongly consider using Tank Limit Break at 2-3 Culling stack or upwards. If you see the enemy team is engaging yours during culling (just see how they move towards you, in Culling they are usually very defensive, so it is easy to tell), it is a good indicator to use it.
Another good use of the Tank Limit Break is to counter a Mage Limit Break on your team if it hits multiple people. The 25% vulnerability debuff by the Mage Limit Break is very dangerous and comparable to Culling with 2-3 stacks. For all other situations use common sense, try to avoid using it while your team is in an offensive countdown window, as the enemy team usually plays defensive already and could wait out the duration of it, rendering it useless.
Additional PvP Actions
In solo PvP queue, I would recommend a combinationpair of the three useful Additional PvP Actions, which are Safeguard, Recuperate or Bolt.
Because of how easily and fast we regenerate MP and TP, especially after somebody died, other options seem more important than Muse or Enliven.
Some Paladins tested Concentrate and Purify, they might have their place in premade Light Party teams, but generally change the way you and your team plays with Paladin a lot, so I would advise against it.
In comparison to other jobs, who could pick additional actions that are truly useless (Warrior with Muse for a MP refresh for example….) , Paladin could at least potentially use all of them in a good way.
Safeguard
Almost every non-healer player uses this skill, it is the best way to mitigate bursts.
As mentioned before, covering a target can be dangerous, especially if you cover Limit Breaks or team member who are holding Medal Stacks or have other “damage taken” increasing debuffs on them. You need to mitigate damage increasing buffs to an acceptable, healable level or you will kill yourself very fast when using Cover.
Because we have Hallowed Ground, we can use Safeguard more freely to mitigate cover damage or burst on yourself, it only has a 60 seconds cooldown after all. Every burst reduced by Shield Oath and Safeguard is much less to heal by your healer, it will significantly help his MP pool in the long run.
Try to use Safeguard before your HP drops hard down. When you barely survived the burst, you missed your chance to use it at the right time and might be better to save for the next burst.
If you used this skill perfectly on high HP, it might be better to let the enemy burst waste their damage on you, instead of cc’ing them. A tank with safeguard and tankstance is really hard to kill. If they still burst on you, you ensure your team 15-30s offensive play without worrying.
Recuperate
Recuperate restores 25% of your maximum HP on a 45s cooldown. It is very useful for Paladin because we are getting attacked due to Cover as tanks even if nobody aims at us directly. Our potential uses are higher because of that usually compared to Warrior or Dark Knight. As you can guess by now, covering teammates is a clutch endeavour sometimes, you barely get out a life and need a fast way to gain HP again and with Recuperate you get out of these messy situations.
Other than this main use, try to make use of it even in less life threatening
scenarios (~50% HP), if you notice your healer has to heal multiple targets or you will be potentially breaking the line of sight him, use Recuperate to make his life easier.
Recuperate is to prioritize before Clemency as it is a instant skill, if you need a very fast heal.
Bolt
Sadly Bolt has become an additional skill with the PvP revamp during Stormblood, it is fairly nice to have, especially because we do not have gapcloser and have to take care of our positioning a lot. It will only increase our movement speed by 10s compared to the PvE variant which is 20s, so be wary of that!
In TheFeast it is important to not reveal your intention too early, if you don’t have Bolt, it might be difficult to approach a target and not giving a good indicator who the next target is or when the next burst happens. Therefor
- Bolt can be used offensively, try to slowly get in the area where you can stun the enemy healer fairly quickly. It can be useful to pop the skill a few seconds earlier before the countdown and just hover around the targets, instead of going in a straight line towards it. You will be fast there, so it doesn’t matter if you are not there yet. Healer are used to read positioning patterns, you have to catch them off guard.
- Or defensively, if we end up in a bad position by e.g. a knockback or stun, we have to quickly close the distance to our team to be able to support during a burst. Another use would be kiting away if you become the target, it is way easier to run away from melees with Bolt.
PvP Traits
There are in total 9 PvP Traits to choose from.
We can ignore Increased Resistance Duration, Decreased Recast Time,
Increased Healing Potency and Increased Action Speed. The gains from these skills are very low and do not reflect our playstyle or role so much than the other remaining 5 traits.
As the main medal holder in the group, we have to make sure we don’t die, so any extra HP or mitigation is very welcome. Mitigation is beneficial because of our frequent uses of Cover.
- This can be achieved by using the Decreased Damage Taken trait, which decreases the damage we take by 3%.
- The Increased HP trait will put us closer to the Health Points of other tanks, as the Paladin HP is naturally nerfed by a small degree. It will increase your HP by 500.
Resource management is important on Paladin, you will use both MP and TP. Because of downtimes during a match, especially after deaths, my experience is that TP is less an issue as it refreshes kinda fast. MP on the other hand can take several Royal Authority combos to refresh. It is also possible to use both regeneration traits, but you would have to exchange a defensive trait for it.
- The Increased MP Regeneration trait will increase your MP regeneration rate by 25% or in other words, it will give you every tick 50 extra MP to the 200 MP you regenerate usually. That are theoretically 2-3 more free casts in a six minute match.
- The Increased TP Regeneration trait will increase your TP regeneration rate by a whole 40%. Even though this sounds very nice, I personally don’t feel it is truly necessary, we can only use our TP for our Shield Bashes after all. A few good Paladin still use it though.
For Paladins who want to play in a very aggressive way and want to add to pressure damage over time in certain matchups, it could be worth to pick the Increased Damage Dealt. It will increase your damage only marginally by 3% though.
I personally only use Decreased Damage Taken,Increased HP and Increased MP Regeneration right now(Patch 4.45).
A more aggressive Paladin playstyle would pick Increased Damage Dealt, Increased TP Regeneration and preferably still one defensive one.
Helpful Tips and Macros
This section consists of general tips followed by macros and specific matchup information depending on which roles you play with and against.
- You could make it a habit to mark yourself in the one minute preparation phase at the start with a neutral looking sign, one of these four are possible. I usually mark my healer aswell to notice if he is in a bad position, and if he might need my help with Cover.
- The “medal gathering” order should be in most cases →/→ or again, if all your members still have 100 medals and consequently 0 Medalstacks. Our personal mitigation tools are strong but not many/frequent. We want to avoid Heavy-Medalstacks, early in the game. It might be okay to bait burst on you the last 1-2 minutes of the game, if you have all your mitigation available. Otherwise let always teammates with or more Light-Medalstacks take them.
Medals always stay at least 10s on the ground, even longer if they are split. Give your team time to sort themselves before you rush them.
- Try to be communicative, as a tank you should have more time noticing weaknesses in the enemy team. If you get a team that is very silent on cooldowns and target callouts, start callouts yourself and maybe even countdowns if really necessary. You should also ping Adrenaline, Wolfheart Boxes and your Limit Break Status at 2nd set of Adrenaline Boxes at 1:30. If you notice your melee overextending when your healer has 0 MP try the “Retreat/Fall Back” Quick Chat command.
Macros
If you want to have the same macroicon as the skill you have to use the /micon command (see examples below). If you are not using the auto-translator e.g. Clemency, you have to write the skill in your client language in quotation marks e.g. “Clemency”.
For targeting commands like <1>,<2>,<3>,<4> of your partylist, the setting you made in the character configuration will be relevant. Some people have the tank first, a few others have it different. As tank it could look like below:
Your class will always be on Slot 1. You could target yourself with the <1>.
Target the party member on slot 2 with <2> in macros.
Target the party member on slot 3 with <3> in macros.
Target the party member on slot 4 with <4> in macros.
There are at least two prefered ways for Paladin, if you want to macro your skills.
Some Paladin are creating Clemency and Cover macro for every member of their teams. Others are doing it manually or just with one assist macro.
Try to fill your remaining free lines in your macro completely with the /pvpac – line, it is a server/delay issue that results in less failed macro uses.
Examples of macros:
Variation 1
For healing party list member <x>, insert 1-4 for the position of your partylist members.
/micon “Clemency” pvpaction
/pvpac “Clemency” <x>
For covering party list member <x>, insert 2-4 for the position of your partylist members.
/micon “Cover” pvpaction
/pvpac “Cover” <x>
Variation 2
Focustarget the enemy melee during a match, 99% of the melee in PvP will aim at the target at which they are using their skills. The idea is to predict the targets with the assist macro and then using manually your support skills on your teammates, which you will already be targeting. An advantage of this method is that even if you don’t know what they are planning, you at least got a lucky shot to be on the right target.
/assist <ft>
You can create an assist macro also for your e.g melee to help with his burst or when he is casting his Limit Break.
/assist <2> (it is usually 2 , check what number your melee has for you)
Targetingmacros (useful for gamepad)
You can create targeting macros for each enemy role e1-e4.
Pick a symbol for it you like either default one or one you can associate with the class with /micon.
/target <e1>
or
/target <e2> etc.
Skill specific macros like a Holy Spirit macro on the enemy healer
/micon “Holy Spirit” pvpaction
/pvpac “Holy Spirit” <e2> (it is usually 2 , check what number the enemy healer has for you)
or a Shield Bash on the enemy melee are also possible.
/micon “Shield Bash” pvpaction
/pvpac “Shield Bash” <e3> (it is usually 3 , check what number the enemy melee has for you)
Though if you are comfortable and fast with the way you target or with the targeting macros, you won’t really need these. You want to avoid to macro to many weaponskills or abilities as they increase the delay.
Specific Matchup information Paladin vs. X
Paladin
- Stun or Silence them during Requiescat.
- Stun them 2-3s after they used Cover to deplete their Gauge faster.
- Bait them out of position for the next burst target.
- Pressure damage and burst baits work well against Paladin, make him waste his resources even at small bursts.
- Keep bursting him, even if he uses Cover during a good burst, he might die or waste
Hallowed Ground or the Limit Break.
Warrior
- Can give important information on the next burst target because of their Butcher’s Block debuff preparation, that will make a member of your party 10% more vulnerable to damage. Holmgang is also a good tell and might pull teammember behind walls.
- Very vulnerable out of tank stance Defiance as they dont have the 20% mitigation and cant use Inner Beast.
- Seeing their range stun Onslaught, is a good moment to start casting Clemency.
- Watching them use Inner Release, is the moment you start peeling for your team.
Darkknight
- Try to avoid hitting or destroying The Blackest Night, as it will fill their Gauge and deal 0 damage anyway.
- Power Slash debuff will reduce healing on the target by 15%, it is an indicator for a potential burst target.
- Soul Survivor debuff on teammembers means additional damage, keep them alive, Darknights will not use this skill for no reason, because it has a high cooldown.
- Has a long cc chain that can make your healers life worse than against the other two tanks. Adjust by using support skills longer than normal.
Whitemage
- Potentially has a pushback skill Fluid Aura (Cooldown 20s) every time you are getting in his melee range. If you are going for a stun try to be faster and less obvious than usual.
- Is vulnerable after using Protect.
- Suffers from positional mistakes the most, keep that in mind if you have one in your team.
Astrologian
- Using cc effects on them during Lightspeed, will hurt their MP pool in the long run.
- Teammates who have a Bole and Synastry will need your support less likely.
Scholar
- Chain Strategem debuff will increase the damage taken of a player by 10%. Indicator for burst!
- Has the most total damage of all the healers, if played correctly. Expect burst peaks to be very slightly higher.
- Vulnerable if forced to heal with Adloquium a lot.
Dragoon
- Fastest bursts of all melee, Dragoon finisher skills deal aoe damage and can hit you under Cover twice.
- Chaos Trust debuff and especially Dragon Sight are burst indicator.
- A stun directly after a Dragoon used his gapcloser Spineshatter Dive from the distance is often very effective.
- Can lose his Blood of the Dragon buff if a Dragoon can’t attack a target. Don’t let him extend it by staying unnecessarily in his range (important against all melee tbh).
Samurai
- Midare Setsugekka cast is a very good indicator for a burst. You can Cover or stun immediately to desync their burst. Because they have to stand still to cast, running away is a good option to desync their burst, if you are the target.
- Hissatsu: Chiten stop attacking on this Samurai buff, it fills their Gauge and reflects damage back to you. If your damage dealer still commit, try to remove this buff by hitting the Samurai three times.
- Hissatsu Soten is the gapcloser of a Samurai, it is a good way to know a burst will happen.
- Yukikaze is their damage increasing debuff, potential next target.
Ninja
- Shadowfang is their damage increasing debuff, potential next target. Has a burst on demand style of gameplay, difficult to predict. Usually opens with
Bhavacakra, a skill with a very noticeable audio effect. You have to be fast with your support here. - Kakuremi keep an eye (or ear) as tank on this skill, if the Ninja is not attacked during the duration of this buff, he will vanish for maximal 10s.
- Uses Shukuchi to escape burst, stay close to them because of Cover range.
- Has a lot of cc options, which will make positioning even more difficult!
Monk
- Riddle of Fire buff and Demolish as burst indicator. Monks have a very strong and fast burst with a big animation delay, but also a huge downtime. Try to be very fast with peeling when you see the Riddle of Fire buff. They most likely will burst in the next 10s then.
- Do not attack them under this buffRiddle of Earth, or their defense and attack power will get boosted. Monks tend to burst, if it still happens, get ready to stop them.
Bard
- Try to stun and peel when you see their Barrage buff.
- The Troubadour offensive version of this buff is a decent burst indicator.
- Can bind you if you get too close to them.
Machinist
- Can execute a strong and fast burst. This burst has a huge cooldown of 30 -40s. Try to notice Quick Reload two-three times in a row for an incoming burst. Stun immediately or stop covering if you see Wildfire on yourself!
- As a Machinist burst reaches high peak damage, it is risky to Cover. Hallowed Ground can be a lifesaver here.
- A Machinist relies heavily on a stun on the burst target for the Between the Eyes damage modificator (3x). If they used their stun (1min Cooldown), they won’t be able to stun for their next Between the Eyes (30s Cooldown). Therefor while playing with Machinist be conservative with stuns, as they don’t want to wait 10-15s extra each time you stun somebody out of burst windows.
- Flamethrower is the best DoT (Damage over Time) effect in TheFeast when suffering from multiple stacks of this cone-shaped aoe. Enable your Machinist by stunning an enemy to apply many stacks or stun the enemy Machinist as soon as possible when you are in range. This ability can hit through walls, look out!
Blackmage
- Nightwing enables them to sleep e.g. your healer. Because of that you might have to support more during the cc chains on your healer.
- Multiple casts of Fire IV mark their burst with a high hitting aoe finisher skill
(Flare &Foul), use your stun and silence here often and in a surprising way if possible. - Be careful against Dragoon & Blackmage comps, as they have both aoe finisher, which can hit you twice under Cover.
- Because a Blackmage has to cast a lot, it is very easy to break the line of sight with them behind an obstacle. Abuse that as much as possible!
Redmage
- Monomachy debuff is the burst indicator.
- If a Redmage executes the melee combo outside of a burst, keep looking to which target he switches. Redmages have a limited timewindow to use their finisher skill after the melee combo, which also indicates the best time to stun them.
- They can slightly heal their teammates with Vercure. Stop them from healing when their healer is dead.
Summoner
- Summoner should be interrupted in their Bahamutphase, they will cast Ruin IV and stand still during it until they execute their finisher. Support your team in these moments.
- They also have to come close in melee range and can inflict a vulnerability debuff on the players standing in front of them with Wither. Keep watching!
Thanks for reading! Good Luck in the arena!
//Changelog
Patch 4.5
- Skillchanges + Healreduction change