Leafiara (prime)/Mechanical Musings/Of Power and Perspicacity: A Paladin Guide

This is a guide, tutorial, or gameplay strategy written by one or more players to better assist others with their gameplay enjoyment. The information presented here may be subject to the personal opinion of the contributor(s), and may additionally require periodic updates to keep current as the game environment changes.

Title: Of Power and Perspicacity: A Paladin Guide

Author: Leafiara

Date Published: 2025-08-23

Updated: 2025-08-29

By Leafiara Autumnwind.

Last updated August 29, 2025.

Feel free to message me on Discord, send a thought, send player mail, or otherwise get feedback to me.

Introduction: How to Use This Guide

This guide is for paladins from 0 exp to 77,777,777! I'll go over their strengths, weaknesses, other unique qualities, things to consider, others' perspectives that I hear about, training plans, and so on.

This guide is exhaustive within its scope, but sorted with collapsible sections for easier navigation. If you want to read it all, though, I do try to scatter nuggets of wisdom for all experience levels all throughout!

Speaking of experience, what's mine? I capped my Two Weapon Combat paladin Cotelle, who's now over 10x cap, long before the melee combat modernizations of 2020 and 2021. After those major changes, I went on to make my second paladin Astrilyn, a shield user, and have raised her to 3x cap.

Onward to the guide!

(Want to read the entire guide? Click here to uncollapse all sections at once!)

Why Play a Paladin or Why Not Play a Paladin?

Pondering the appeal of why to play a paladin at all? Click here!

Flares For All

Paladins are the most flare-iffic profession! Via their Fervor, Battle Standard, and Holy Weapon spells, they can generate up to four flares per attack even with no investment in upgrades from other professions or pay events. (Not all paladins use Fervor, however, but more on that later.)

In case you don't know what flares are, they're random bursts of damage ranging from minor to deadly. Flares are a classic low ceiling, high floor mechanic. Their best case is turning a light tap of an attack into instant death, their worst case is dealing a couple damage points that have no impact, and their middling case is piling on a little extra damage. The more flares you have, the more likely it is to land significant ones through sheer volume of random rolls.

The news gets even better, though! A conventional flare triggers roughly 20% of the time and has a range of rank 1 to 7 criticals. However, Fervor flares can exceed that rate with even minor investment in Religion lore--and can have incredible rates with heavy investment. Battle Standard flares also have a paladin-only perk with a 20% chance of bumping their critical range from 1-7 to 5-9, the latter of which is always significant. 20% of the time, Battle Standard flares work all the time!

Immediate Power

As you might expect after all the flare talk, paladin weapons are good to go out of the box with nothing spent on gear--but I haven't even fully explained why! Besides flares, another perk of Holy Weapon is that it makes your weapon holy. (Crazy, I know!) That means it can hit undead penalty-free even without a blessing or sanctification, the latter of which is typically one of the two most expensive player services.

The even bigger perk of Holy Weapon is the gamechanger called spell infusion. Paladins can put a spell into their weapon so that it fires off before their swing with no additional RT! This flexible ability can try to brute force through with a damaging spell like Repentance, set up for a kill shot with a disabler like Web, or kick off with a general purpose debuff like Aura of the Arkati, tailoring to your playstyle.

If you forego Fervor, paladins can also cast the Zealot aura for an immense Attack Strength (AS) boost to jump ahead of most of the pack on sheer power.

On top of all this, Arm of the Arkati (not to be confused with Aura of the Arkati) adds extra damage factor (DF) to melee attacks, which is roughly a percentage boost for lethality.

In short, if you want to crush creatures offensively, paladins are for you. They can wreak havoc on the battlefield with no investment and wreak even more havoc with investment.

Semi-Custom Messaging

Paladins are encouraged to convert to an Arkati or lesser spirit, which has mechanical benefits we'll review later in this guide, but for now I'll highlight the fluff benefits. Many paladin spells have different messaging depending on which Arkati or lesser spirit they follow, which is the kind of character-defining cool factor that many players would and do pay a bunch for.

Have a look through the wiki's messaging sections of Repentance, Battle Standard, Judgment, Raise Dead (which is a cleric spell, but paladins' Divine Word has identical messaging), and Divine Incarnation to find the right fit for your character as you imagine them!

Tanking for Days

Paladins are quite tough for enemies to kill since they have plate armor to reduce crits, redux to reduce crits even more, Divine Intervention to immediately free themselves from most disablers, a chance from Battle Standard to reduce crits still further, and potentially very high block rates if they use shields and Divine Shield. Using Divine Shield means eschewing Fervor and Zealot, so not all paladins do--not even all shield paladins. Shields do retain a DS advantage even without Divine Shield. Regardless, if you really can't stand dying, look into paladins!

Flexibility

As you might have picked up, the aura spells--Divine Shield, Zealot, and Fervor--are mutually exclusive effects tailored to wildly different playstyles. We'll explore that more later, but flexibility doesn't stop with auras. Paladins' lore training can go in a wide variety of directions to further establish your own style. (We'll explore that too in the same section with auras!) Divine Incarnation has different modes with different purposes. Many individual weapon types or even multiple weapon types at once are entirely viable options.

Paladins can kill creatures very well with physical AS-based attacks, physical SMR attacks, or magical SMR attacks, so they have the tools for any combat situation. Paladins using Fervor can also do at least an acceptable job of killing with magical CS-based attacks later in the game if you truly want a dash of everything.

Downsides

Despite what I just said about flexibility, that's primarily in the context of melee weapons. Shields, Two Weapon Combat, polearms of one-handed or two-handed varieties, and even Two-Handed Weapons or hybrid weapons are approaches that paladin players take (some more than others) at a high level--and then, even within their weapon selections, lores and auras further diversify.

However, other options aren't nearly so well supported.

Trying to kill creatures strictly with magic is a vaguely plausible path at midgame levels and beyond because Fervor can power up an evoked Repentance to the level of a kill spell. However, it's still nowhere near the power of rangers or bards, the other two semis.

Unarmed combat (UC) is a path of a lot more resistance than melee weapons. The good news is that paladins' myriad flares go well with UC's fast baseline attacks and you can bond to a held UC weapon like a cestus (but not handwear). However, plate armor impedes the MM stat (UC's most important combat number) and paladins don't have the tools to make UC's core attacks really shine like monks' and warriors' combat maneuvers and feats, nor rogues' and rangers' stealth.

Archery is a path of vastly more resistance than even unarmed combat, almost to the point of being off the table. You can't bond to a ranged weapon, so you'd miss out on infused spells and the holy property. The Fervor aura is at least acceptable with archery, but Divine Shield does almost nothing for it and Zealot does literally nothing for it. Paladins can't train 2x Ambush and none of their AS boosters except Dauntless improve ranged AS, giving them a lower AS cap than other squares or semis. Topping it all off, the archery path is expensive on training points. Strictly speaking, you can do just about anything in GS if you're dead set on it, but I'd recommend against the archer paladin unless your game knowledge is of the caliber that you probably don't need this guide in the first place. Rangers, rogues, bards, warriors, wizards, and arguably even monks have toolkits more suited to archery.

Thrown weapons, AKA hurling, are something I almost hesitate to even bring up, but have to because you might occasionally see a long-running community joke about whether Zealot will ever be updated to work with hurling. (The answer is probably no.)

Technically, paladins can hurl their bonded weapon and it'll return to them in a few seconds. The problem with this idea is layered, though. None of the thrown weapon bases are any good against plate armor, so you'd either have to avoid enemies in plate or hurl something like a war hammer, handaxe, or spear instead. Even if you did go with the latter plan, Thrown Weapons is the skill to train for hurling AS, but (respectively) Blunt/Edged/Polearm Weapons are the skill to train for DS while the weapon is in your hand and Brawling is the skill to train for DS during the time when the weapon is out of your hand. That degree of training isn't feasible until far post-cap. You could skip the Brawling part and just take the DS hit for a short period of time, but even training two weapon skills means a lot of sacrifices pre-cap.

Making matters worse, the payoff doesn't even exist mechanically; it's more about the cool factor, but it holds you back. Hurling is basically like basic attack single melee strikes except that the creatures have much lower DS against it. However, weapon techniques, combat maneuvers, shield maneuvers, and one of the paladin feats offer a plethora of reduced RT attacks that work out to be as strong or stronger than hurling without such heavy training requirements. In short, I strongly recommend against trying out some Mjolnir paladin concept.

A Note on Old-School Clerics

In the event that you're a returning player from GemStone III days when paladins didn't exist and you were running a cleric whose playstyle was binding creatures and swinging your weapon, people will commonly tell you to play a paladin as the new version of old melee clerics. Thematically, maybe that's reasonable advice. Mechanically, it's off-base. Paladins have divine messaging that's in line with clerics, but the paladin gameplay experience resembles the GSIII cleric experience in almost no respect. Modern rangers are the ones who have the strongest binding spell in the game and can best approximate the gameplay experience of old clerics. It's a question of whether you prioritize flavor or gameplay. (Alternatively, clerics do still have the second, third, and fourth strongest binding spells in the game, so you could play a cleric and train weapons anyway. It's not a particularly supported path, but some players do it regardless because that's their vision for their character.)

Character Creation

Need to walk through the creation of your paladin? Click here!

If making a paladin sounds intriguing, let's get started!

Choosing a Race

Most races excel in at least one area applicable to paladin playstyles, though some are better than others. Unlike with my monk guide, I can't give an exact ranking for paladin races because it heavily depends on what the paladin is trying to do. Instead, let's go through races I might recommend, races I'd recommend against, and why. They're listed in alphabetical order except where two races are so similar that I think they're worth mentioning together.

Great Paladin Races

Aelotoi and half-elves:

These are two of many races tied for third place in combined Agility and Dexterity ("Agidex"), which means fast assault techniques. Aelotoi and half-elves are very good all-arounder paladins who have no significant disadvantages, allowing them to use any aura and any weapon or weapons well. Whether shields, two weapons, or big weapons, every combat option works just great!

Of these two races, aelotoi gain exp very slightly faster via their Logic bonus while half-elves have better carrying capacity, hit very slightly harder, and have slightly better baseline silver prices from Influence bonus. However, aelotoi in Ta'Illistim or Cysaegir will make a bit more silver than half-elves living there due to race bonuses. Half-elves make more anywhere else, but the difference is most pronounced in Wehnimer's Landing or Solhaven.

Dark elves and sylvans:

These are the other third place Agidex races who can go in any direction with auras or weapons and have no major disadvantages (perhaps more arguable with dark elves). Since their Agidex is skewed in favor of Dexterity, they hit slightly harder than the Agility-skewed aelotoi or half-elves, but are slightly worse at avoiding attacks and have slightly worse DS.

Dark elves have better carrying capacity than sylvans and their Wisdom bonus improves paladins' Casting Strength-based (CS-based) spells, which can be particularly good at lower levels, but will remain at least moderately helpful even late in life.

Sylvans get slightly better silver prices than dark elves as a baseline due to Influence. Location doesn't offer dark elves any real help in catching up here either; dark elves get their best silver in Wehnimer's Landing and Cysaegir while sylvans get their best silver in Icemule and Ta'Illistim, so both have quick access to race bonuses in or nearby the most major cities.

Dark elf paladins do take several more minutes to recover full spirit after death or after resurrecting other characters with Divine Word than sylvans (or aelotoi or half-elves, for that matter). (Most other races recover more quickly still than sylvans.) I generally won't mention spirit recovery as a major upside or downside for races because A) most of them recover in decently similar time, B) paladins of any kind are difficult to kill, C) not all paladins resurrect others much, if at all, and D) paladins in Voln can somewhat compensate for a spirit disadvantage with fast spirit recovery symbols. Still, downtime for spirit recovery is an intangible, subjective pain that really annoys some players of elves or dark elves. If you're the sort who can't stand downtime, but would otherwise be looking into a dark elf for mechanical reasons, then aelotoi, half-elves, or sylvans might be the pick for you instead as fairly similar races who recover spirit a few minutes more quickly.

Dwarves:

Dwarves have a good Strength bonus and very good Constitution bonus, making for great carrying capacity and a sturdy paladin who can stay out hunting and hoarding loot for quite a while. Dwarves also have a huge +30 elemental TD bonus, which in theory shores up a paladin weakness. It doesn't matter as much as one might think since few creatures across the entire game cast CS-based elemental spells, but it dose make a major difference if you happen to hunt those specific creatures.

Various contact-based shield maneuvers like Shield Bash, Shield Charge, or Shield Trample (as opposed to non-contact-based shield maneuvers like Shield Throw) also account for the "size" of the race. In this game, size doesn't refer to height, but more like mass or perhaps even muscle density. However you want to think of it, dwarves have above average size, so many of their shield maneuvers hit slightly harder than other races besides half-krolvin, humans, and giants.

On the less bright side, dwarves have a worse baseline selling price than any other race (and could only compensate with race bonuses by living in the isolated Zul Logoth or Teras Isle) and are the second worst Agidex race. Unless they make heavy use of enhancives to bring their Agidex more up to par, dwarf paladins are most likely better off using a shield than two weapons or two-handed weapons. (That said, if they do use two weapons or two-handed weapons, then I recommend heavily leaning into single strikes like Chastise or Spin Attack that will eventually be the same speed regardless of weapon size or number once the dwarf's Agidex has grown enough.)

Lastly, dwarves are tied with forest gnomes and halflings as the fastest at recovering spirit. This is the opposite extreme end of elves and dark elves, where a dwarf (or forest gnome or halfling) is ready to resume hunting at full strength after a death or Divine Word unlink 10-15 minutes more quickly.

Elves:

Elves are tied for second place at Agidex and are another great paladin race that can work with any aura or melee weapon type. They have slightly worse carrying capacity than the third place Agidex races except for aelotoi (but the differences are marginal, not major), but their weapon-based offense is even more rapid fire and their defenses against AS and SMR attacks are better. Elves do, however, recover spirit as slowly as dark elves.

Elves have slightly less size than dark elves or half-elves, so using contact shield maneuvers is slightly weaker than it could be. It's not a major difference, but still worth noting; shields don't play to elves' natural strengths in other respects either, as their great Agidex is quite excessive for a single one-handed weapon. Again, though, the differences aren't major enough that they should put you off the idea if you're set on a shield-wielding elf paladin.

Elves technically have a better baseline selling price than all other non-erithian races due to high Influence. However, since they only get race bonuses in Ta'Vaalor and Ta'Illistim, elves living anywhere else will actually make less silver than races who can take advantage of a race bonus.

Giants:

Giants have near endless carrying capacity, allowing them to go questing and slaying for loot as long as they want, virtually never needing to end hunts early because of encumbrance. Giants are also the biggest race along with half-krolvin, making their contact-based shield maneuvers hit as hard as anyone's going to get.

However, giants are the worst Agidex race. For that reason, as counterintuitive as it might seem, wielding a big two-handed weapon with a big giant isn't necessarily the way to go for high damage output. Unless you go extremely hard on enhancives (even more than dwarves), assault techniques with a two-handed weapon will be significantly slower than one-handed weapons, essentially canceling out the damage advantage of having a two-handed weapon in the first place. Still, there's an obvious appeal to the concept of a huge character with a huge weapon or even two weapons. If you're set on that character concept, then, like I said with dwarves, lean into reduced-RT single attacks like Chastise or Spin Attack.

Giants have good Influence for baseline silver gains. Their race bonuses are in Wehnimer's Landing and the isolated Teras Isle.

Half-Krolvin:

Half-krolvins are a very robust paladin race with high Strength, the second best carrying capacity, and even a small Agility bonus. Any melee weapons, including two weapons, make perfect sense in their hands and they're good at all things combat. Without enhancives or Ascension, the half-krolvin natural max of 55 Agidex actually falls within the same 53-67 Agidex RT reduction range as the aelotoi/dark elf/half-elf/sylvan natural max of 65. However, those other four can much more easily reach the 68-82 range with enhancives or Ascension than half-krolvins.

The main downside of half-krolvins that makes many players not even consider playing them is a big Logic penalty that, for most characters, results in around 4-6% less exp absorbed per minute. However, that doesn't affect instant exp absorption, so it's not necessarily as bad as it sounds if you run a lot of bounties.

Half-krolvin also have an Influence penalty and their race bonuses are in Icemule and the isolated River's Rest.

Halflings:

The fastest Agidex race. Halflings have incredible encumbrance issues that are only slightly mitigated by armor support and/or full plate. Halflings have an enormous +40 elemental TD bonus, though the caveat I mentioned with dwarves still applies: it's very rarely helpful, but when it is, it's extremely so. Halflings also recover spirit faster than any other race besides dwarves and forest gnomes.

Aside from encumbrance, halflings' Strength penalty also hurts a bit; they can use the Zealot aura to overcome the AS penalty of low Strength, but that does mean giving up the flare potential of the Fervor aura that their Agidex would naturally go so well with.

Big weapons or two weapons play much more into halflings' talents than shields do. Halflings swing just as quickly either way, so they might as well use the harder hitting options. Since halflings are the second smallest race, their contact shield maneuvers also won't hit as hard as even an average-sized race, never mind a dwarf, giant, or half-krolvin. Shields aren't off the table for halflings, however; Shield Throw is arguably the best shield maneuver and it's non-contact, so a halfling shield paladin can simply lean on that more heavily.

Halflings have an Influence penalty, but are fortunate to get race bonuses in the two most populated towns, Wehnimer's Landing and Icemule Trace, so many halflings will get richer from selling their goods than most other races anyway.

Not So Great Paladin Races

You can play the following paladin races and you can even succeed with them. Mechanically, however, there are many incentives not to make a paladin of these races and that's what I'm here to explain.

Burghal Gnomes:

A second place Agidex race alongside elves. Despite that, I can't recommend a burghal gnome paladin. They have all the disadvantages of halflings while lacking the upsides of better Agidex and superior elemental TD. They're also even smaller than halflings for the purposes of contact maneuvers. They don't recover spirit as quickly. They have an Influence penalty and their race bonuses are in Ta'Illistim and Zul Logoth.

On the bright side, they do gain exp slightly faster than every other race because of their Logic bonus.

If you want a high speed paladin who can get into the 68-82 Agidex tier even without enhancives or Ascension, then I recommend an elf or halfling over a burghal gnome. That said, the paladin toolkit is inherently very strong, so if you're certain you want to play a burghal gnome paladin, they'll still do well, just not as well as elves or halflings would. Using two weapons or a big weapon leans into a burghal gnome's strengths more than a shield would, but, like with halflings, Shield Throw is a big assist to the shield build.

Erithians:

Erithians bring nothing to the table that a paladin is interested in. They're tied for third slowest race, yet, unlike other slow races, they have a Strength penalty instead of a bonus. They also don't have a Wisdom bonus for spells. They're average size for the purpose of contact maneuvers. They're at the slower end of recovering spirit. Mechanically speaking, there's simply nothing to see here. They have no major strengths and no major weaknesses, but that has no merit when there are races who have major strengths and still have no major weaknesses (from a mechanical paladin-specific perspective).

In short, erithians are generalists who are neither fast nor strong, but the game world heavily favors specialists who are either fast or strong.

Erithians do have a high +10 Influence bonus just like elves. However, they also only get race bonuses in Ta'Illistim and Cysaegir, which means you could just be playing an elf to get the same silver in the same geographical area while being far better in combat. I'd at least acknowledge a silver niche if erithians got race bonuses in the Landing, Icemule, or Solhaven, but they don't.

Humans:

Among my not-recommended list, human paladins are the only race that I do see people playing. I assume it's primarily for RP reasons. If any given player told me they were considering a human paladin and asked for advice purely rooted in mechanics, I'd point them toward dwarf, giant, half-elf, or half-krolvin every time. If someone is drawn toward a human paladin because of:

• Good carrying capacity: Go giant or half-krolvin, who have better carrying capacity.
• Strength and Logic bonus on the same race: Go dwarf for identical Logic and better Strength.
• Jack of all trades with no major strengths or weaknesses: Go half-elf for a major strength, namely Agidex, and still no major weaknesses.
• Above average size for contact maneuvers: Go dwarf, giant, or half-krolvin for as good or better size.
• Race bonuses for selling in Solhaven: Go half-elf for the same Solhaven bonus plus greater Influence.
• Race bonuses for selling in River's Rest: Okay, sure, yes. From a mechanical perspective, the primary reason to be a human paladin is for making more silver in River's Rest than all other paladins. (The only other race bonus in River's Rest is for half-krolvins, who have an Influence penalty.) Unfortunately for humans, though, hunting in River's Rest isn't fleshed out past the early level 60s.

I'd actually far sooner suggest a burghal gnome paladin than a human paladin because they at least have distinct advantages that you can lean into. Humans don't. They're generalists like erithians. On the bright side, humans do have greater carrying capacity than erithians and recover spirit more quickly than erithians.

A Fine Paladin Race

Forest Gnomes:

Forest gnomes recover spirit as quickly as dwarves and halflings, putting them in the fastest recovery tier. They have much worse Dexterity than halflings, which means that forest gnomes are both slower and don't hit as hard due to less weighting. However, they do have better carrying capacity than halflings both as a race and because of a smaller Strength penalty, they have a Wisdom bonus for better casting than halflings, and are slightly bigger size than halflings for the purpose of contact maneuvers. Forest gnomes have an Influence penalty just like halflings, but they get race bonuses in the Landing and Cysaegir, which are within distance of almost all major cities.

Overall, the Dexterity gap makes a huge difference in favor of halfling paladins. I'd also say that aelotoi, dark elves, half-elves, and sylvans are favored for encumbrance reasons while being in the same Agidex tier. Still, I don't think forest gnome paladins are in nearly as dire a situation as human or erithian paladins. Forest gnomes have their niches and, as the section title implies, I think they're a perfectly fine paladin choice.

Stats: Power or Growth

Before level 20, you can change your stats up to five times by checking in at your local inn. At level 20, you're locked in! Because of this finalization, the game stops your exp growth right before level 20 and forces you to confirm that your character is configured the way you want.

But what do you want? That's not a simple question. Broadly speaking, there are two camps on stat placement:

1. Set your stats for power. (Strong start, poor finish.)
2. Set your stats for growth. (Poor start, strong finish.)

Let's elaborate!

Setting your stats for power involves putting the initial value of key stats like Strength, Dexterity, Agility, and Wisdom at 70+ so that you'll immediately be strong in the early game.

However, since stats max at 100 and these vital paladin stats quickly grow through leveling, your power headstart will be gone toward the midgame (level 63.5) and yet the stats that you tanked to be bad at the start will remain bad because they grow slowly. The only way to change that is with a fixstats potion, which costs 1,000,000 bounty points or can sometimes be bought from players for 14-16 million silver.

If you're the type of player who spends very little time in game, I generally recommend setting stats for power. You might as well enjoy your playtime while you have it.

Setting your stats for growth is basically placing the initial values so that as many stats as possible will max out at exactly level 100, resulting in the highest overall stat total.

However, this means that your fastest growing stats--which are basically all the good ones--need to be set low early. You'll feel like a jack of all trades, which can make levels 20-40 feel underwhelming. Depending on race, it's a very noticeable lack in at least one out of AS (Strength), RT (Agidex), or CS (Wisdom). RT is definitely the most problematic of those and can severely interfere with the efficacy of a non-shield build before the midgame or so. (Shield builds can skirt by on a race's natural Agidex bonuses being sufficient.)

If you're running a shield build and you're the type of player who grinds hard and gets exp very quickly, I'd generally recommend setting stats for growth. You'll get past the rough patches soon enough and you might as well have those rough patches be in the early game when creatures are easier anyway. Still, biting the bullet for a fixstat later in life is a completely viable option even for this type of player.

Placing Your Stats

From level 0-19, set stats for power regardless of your plans for setting for power or growth at level 20+. In other words, set Strength, Dexterity, Agility, and Wisdom high so you're at your best in combat and set Logic high so you level faster. This will help power through the early game!

Before the level 20 stats-and-skills confirmation, if you're setting for power, play around with this stat calculator until you find the balance between short-term and long-term power that you're looking for.

If you're setting for growth, then below are my recommendations for each race. These are also the stats you'd use if you were doing a fixstat in the late game.

Three options are shown: tanking Discipline, Intuition, or Influence. If you've been consulting with other players before reading this guide, you might only hear about tanking Intuition or Influence, which are very instinctive tank stats due to inertia from being the the go-tos for decades. However, tanking Discipline is usually my recommendation due to game changes in 2025 incentivizing it, which I'll explain a little further below.

My methodology was as follows:

• Set stats to max out at cap.
• Max everything except Discipline, Intuition, or Influence if possible. If not possible, then take a small number out of the other two stats. (The left column below shows which stats won't be 100 at cap and what they will be at cap.)
• If all stats have gotten as high as they can get by cap and there are still spare points to allocate, then favor the configuration that gives the most mental TPs. If multiple configurations give the same mental TPs, then favor the one with stats that grow most slowly.

The Level 20 Stat Placement Table!

Please note: If you're adjusting stats at the inn, set Strength and Wisdom to 10 lower than the numbers shown here. The game automatically adds +10 more to prime stats, which for paladins are Strength and Wisdom. (The website is different. If you're someone who only wants to set stats once at level 0 and be done with it, the numbers below are exactly what you'd enter during character creation.)

Race	Strength	Constitution	Dexterity	Agility	Discipline	Aura	Logic	Intuition	Wisdom	Influence
Aelotoi (85 DIS)	49	68	68	68	20	82	88	78	62	77
Aelotoi (75 INT)	49	68	68	68	59	82	89	38	62	77
Aelotoi (76 INF)	49	68	68	68	59	82	89	78	62	37
Burghal gnome (79 DIS)	62	62	68	68	25	85	82	73	62	73
Burghal gnome (76 INT)	62	62	68	68	70	85	83	27	62	73
Burghal gnome (76 INF)	62	62	68	68	70	85	83	73	62	27
Dark elf (82 DIS)	49	68	62	62	29	82	88	82	65	73
Dark elf (75 INT)	49	68	62	62	68	82	88	46	62	73
Dark elf (79 INF)	49	68	62	62	68	82	88	82	64	35
Dwarf (98 DIS, 91 INT, 95 INF)	30	49	78	82	53	82	88	70	58	70
Dwarf (87 INT, 95 INF)	30	49	78	82	58	82	88	64	59	70
Dwarf (91 INT, 92 INF)	30	49	78	82	58	82	88	70	58	65
Elf (79 DIS)	49	73	62	68	35	73	88	82	62	68
Elf (74 INT)	49	73	62	68	73	73	88	44	62	68
Elf (91 INT, 96 INF)	49	73	62	68	73	73	88	69	64	41
Erithian (89 DIS, 91 INT)	58	62	73	73	25	82	86	69	64	68
Erithian (71 INT)	58	62	73	73	58	82	86	38	62	68
Erithian (91 INT, 84 INF)	58	62	73	73	58	82	86	69	64	35
Forest gnome (85 DIS, 98 INF)	59	59	70	68	20	82	88	82	62	70
Forest gnome (72 INT)	59	59	70	68	59	82	88	40	62	73
Forest gnome (77 INF)	59	59	70	68	59	82	88	82	64	29
Giantman (90 DIS, 93 INT, 98 INF)	30	58	77	77	43	82	88	70	65	70
Giantman (83 INT, 98 INF)	30	58	77	77	62	82	88	54	62	70
Giantman (93 INT, 87 INF)	30	58	77	77	62	82	88	70	64	52
Half-elf (84 DIS)	39	62	70	70	35	82	88	82	62	70
Half-elf (77 INT)	39	62	70	70	68	82	88	49	62	70
Half-elf (83 INF)	39	62	70	70	68	82	88	82	62	37
Half-krolvin (89 DIS)	33	49	70	70	41	85	91	82	62	77
Half-krolvin (84 INT)	33	49	70	70	62	85	91	61	62	77
Half-krolvin (85 INF)	33	49	70	70	62	85	92	82	62	55
Halfling (84 DIS)	62	49	62	62	35	82	91	82	62	73
Halfling (77 INT)	62	49	62	62	68	82	91	49	62	73
Halfling (81 INF)	62	49	62	62	68	82	92	82	62	39
Human (90 DIS, 93 INT, 98 INF)	39	59	73	73	43	82	88	70	63	70
Human (81 INT, 98 INF)	39	59	73	73	62	82	88	50	64	70
Human (93 INT, 87 INF)	39	59	73	73	62	82	88	70	62	52
Sylvankind (77 DIS)	59	68	62	62	29	77	88	82	65	68
Sylvankind (73 INT)	59	68	62	62	73	77	88	41	62	68
Sylvankind (81 INF)	59	68	62	62	73	77	88	82	62	27

And in case you're wondering what relevant things each stat does for paladins, I'll go over them quickly:

• Strength: Reduced encumbrance. +1 AS for every 1 bonus.
• Constitution: Slightly reduced encumbrance. Slightly more max health. +1 crit padding (AS-based attacks only) for every 5 bonus.
• Dexterity: Reduced roundtime (RT). Slightly increased maneuver defense. Adds crit weighting.
• Agility: Reduced RT. As much increased maneuver defense as Dexterity and Intuition combined. +0.6225 DS in offensive stance for every 1 bonus, assuming you're in full plate. If you're also using a tower shield, then make that +0.33615 DS.
• Discipline: +1 exp pool size for every 1 base stat (not bonus). Increased resistance to enemy warcries. Increased success for Standard Success Resolution (SSR) attacks.
• Aura: +1 TD against elemental spells for every 1 bonus. +1 max spirit for every 10 base stat, rounded up.
• Logic: +1 exp absorbed per minute per 5 bonus on a node (safe place) or per 7 bonus off a node (e.g. hunting). +1 exp pool size for every 1 base stat (not bonus).
• Intuition: Slightly increased maneuver defense. +0.155625 DS in offensive stance for every 1 bonus, assuming you're in full plate. If you're also using a tower shield, then make that +0.03890625 DS.
• Wisdom: +1 CS for every 1 bonus. +1 TD against spiritual spells for every 1 bonus. Potentially +1 starting mana for every 4 bonus of initial stat placement only. Slightly improves Battle Standard creation bonus.
• Influence: Increased success for SSR attacks. +1% silver from selling to NPC shops for every 12 bonus. Slightly improves Battle Standard creation bonus.

Deep Dive Stat Sidebar!

So which stat should you tank out of Discipline, Intuition, and Influence? The short answer is Discipline unless you both A) take semi-regular breaks from being a subscriber and B) don't do bounties, in which case tank Intuition. The long answer requires more detail, talk about history for context, and math.

The Discipline wiki page might inadvertently lead you to believe that it's the best of the three because, after all, it contributes to both types of training points and is used for more systems in the game than other stats. However, that's more trivia than useful information. The training points aspect is actually a downside in this case; paladins' skill costs ultimately result in mental points being twice as valuable to them as physical points, so purely mental stats like Influence and Intuition ultimately provide more training points than a hybrid stat like Discipline.

As for Discipline being used in a lot of systems, that's true, but the only one of those systems that's definitely used by paladins is experience. Warcry defense and SSR bonus are at least potentially relevant, but many paladins will rarely, if ever, interact with either.

Experience was and in some cases still is a primary reason that few players of any profession tanked Discipline. Instant Mind Clearers from login rewards can absorb up to 1000 exp, which means that, to get the full value, you need at least 1000 in your exp pool. This is very doable via bounties, which allow overfilling the exp pool. However, some players avoid bounties, which used to mean that they would need 100 totals in both Discipline and Logic so they could have a max exp pool size of exactly 1000.

That was then. Now, the Wisdom of the Ages perk introduced in 2025 increases your exp pool size by 2 for every month you remain a subscriber. Between that and the Ascension system introduced in 2020 (though that's more aimed at capped characters), it's far easier than ever before to reach the magical 1000 exp pool even while tanking Discipline.

Still, what if someone doesn't do bounties and doesn't stay subscribed all the time? In that case, Discipline reclaims more of its old importance and the question goes to whether to tank Intuition or Influence. Most players will tell you to tank Influence, but I actually disagree.

Professions that aren't monks need either enhancives, Ascension, or access to the Glamour spell to get maximum silver value from selling items to NPC shops. Some people seem to believe this is meaningless because the difference between tanking Influence and not tanking it is "only" 1% more silver.

However, the difference between tanking Intuition and not tanking it is less than 1 DS for a shield build, 1 DS for a non-shield build, and avoiding enemy maneuvers about 1% more often. This is a lopsided benefit that heavily favors Influence. More silver means more ability to improve your offense via gear and profession services.

Players attack creatures more often than creatures attack them, which means that improving offense is already statistically better than improving defense. Besides that, Intuition's best perk is defending against maneuvers, but that means you only get fractional value equivalent to how often creature RNG decides to use maneuvers instead of other attacks.

On top of all this, even if you still subjectively valued defense as highly as or more highly than offense, the great news is that you can use extra silver from Influence to improve your defense via gear and profession services! It's simply much more flexible to tank Intuition than to tank Influence.

Selecting a Society

Almost all characters eventually join and master a society since there are numerous mechanical incentives to do so and none not to. This isn't part of character creation since you can't join a society until level 3, but it can be part of character concept creation. Which society is right for your paladin?

Council of Light:

Mechanically, this society excels at exactly three things, only two of which even might apply to paladins:

• Offering way, way more mana than other societies (with the possible exception of empaths in Sunfist) if you can get away with consuming tons of spirit to do it (but paladins can't get away with that; it's more for CS-based casters))
• Offering slightly more AS and DS than other societies, as it caps out at 35 instead of 30 (Sunfist) or 26 against the living (Voln, but Voln does get 39 AS against the undead)
• Being the easiest and fastest to master

More AS and DS are fine, but paladins have among the best offensive prowess and defensive prowess in the game already. If you're interested in CoL, it's probably either for reasons of ease or for roleplaying reasons like the other two society options being a poor fit based on their lore. You actually wind up having worse mana recovery in CoL since losing spirit is such bad news for almost everything paladins do (AS, DS, maneuver offense, and maneuver defense). You could somewhat get around it by buying a ton of Aura enhancives, but that gets very expensive for a pretty tame payoff.

Guardians of Sunfist:

Sunfist's sigils (abilities) consume small amounts of mana and stamina. If you intend to play your paladin by very frequently mixing might and magic, this is a solid option for reasons I'll explain shortly. However, if you want to play a paladin very similarly to a warrior, then I recommend loading up on stamina regen enhancives or this might not be the society for you. Weapon techniques, combat maneuvers, and the Chastise feat all compete with Sunfist for your stamina usage, so it helps a great deal that more magical paladins can ease the stamina burden by casting more spells and using the Excoriate feat. (More on feats later!)

Sunfist features the best TD bonus of the societies by a small margin and, most importantly for paladins, a sigil to ignore penalties from moderate wounds for combat purposes. Paladins frequently rely on being able to use their spells in combat, but rank 2 wounds on any two body parts out of arms, hands, or eyes will stop them without a way to ignore wounds.

It's worth mentioning that paladins' innate Devout Guardian and Devout Resolve boons, which we'll cover later, can also ignore wounds. However, those boons require getting hit, only have a 20% chance to activate, and only offer a 30-second window even when they do activate. Sunfist offering the ability to ignore on demand is extremely convenient and helpful!

Sunfist also offers a strong utility sigil that minimizes the RT of healing herbs, which can be very useful for builds that take a lot of punishment and prefer healing on the go over running back to town for empaths.

On the less positive side, several of Sunfist's AS- or DS-boosting abilities have short durations (60 seconds) and cost enough stamina that paladins (even magical ones) are unlikely to use them often, if ever. If they only use the cheapest AS and DS sigils, the total benefit lags behind other societies. That said, paladins are already offensively and defensively very strong, so this isn't a huge deal.

Finally, Sunfist uniquely offers access to warcamps, a type of hunting ground suitable for the level of the characters who enter. It's more or less a means to find private hunting grounds for you and/or your friends whenever you wish! Characters not in Sunfist can accomplish something similar via Open Sea Adventures, which explores the same general concept, but that requires millions of silver to buy in to. Warcamp loot is rather poor, but warcamps remain an appealing aspect of Sunfist and can be a helpful alternative to power through level ranges where you might find traditional hunting grounds unappealing.

Overall, Sunfist is something of a one-trick pony for paladins unless you're interested in warcamps, but that one trick of ignoring wounds has such immense value that it catapults the society high on the paladin list for battle purposes.

Order of Voln:

This is widely regarded as the mechanical best society for most professions, but does that hold up for paladins?

Like all professions, paladins get extreme utility out of Voln's teleportation to hunting grounds and back from them, as well as swifter recovery from stat loss after being resurrected. In battle, Voln offers a way to put foes to sleep and an emergency button to go noncorporeal and avoid death crits--just in case your paladin wasn't feeling invulnerable enough already!

Voln's attack booster, Symbol of Courage, gives slightly more AS than Sunfist (unless you're wildly burning stamina on Sunfist's Major Bane) and three levels' worth of protection against the undead sheer fear mechanic, which helps when hunting in areas where you might encounter undead more than thirteen levels higher. (Thirteen because paladins' Dauntless spell adds another three levels of protection.)

Perhaps the primary paladin combat benefit from Voln is increased CS against the undead; no other society can increase CS in any context. Spells like Aura of the Arkati and Judgment only need a 101 endroll to achieve almost all of the intended impact, so some extra buffer to make sure your spells land is very helpful.

Overall, Voln offers paladins the most utility of the societies and its Liabo pantheon-oriented lore can lend itself to Liabo or neutral paladins. I'd still have to argue that Sunfist is mechanically stronger in combat, but Symbol of Supremacy is a notable Voln perk.

Choosing an Arkati or Lesser Spirit

Conversion is usually a big part of paladins' character concept for RP reasons, mechanical reasons, or both. I already touched on the RP aspects in the Semi-Custom Messaging section, so if that's important to you, then review the spells listed on the wiki. Repentance, Fervor, Judgment, and Divine Incarnation are the ones you're likely to see most often.

If the mechanics are also (or exclusively) important to you, we'll review those now! The paladin spells Repentance, Fervor, Battle Standard, and Judgment use holy critical damage types, which vary depending on exactly which Arkati or lesser spirit is your paladin's patron.

Like with races, the power differences are minor enough that I usually wouldn't recommend fixating on having the absolute best damage type. The only one that's truly a cut above the rest is lightning, though that does come with its own drawbacks. In case you do want to optimize around niche scenarios or just figure out the best use for the flare you've already chosen for roleplay reasons, let's analyze the available options. These are arranged into three overarching types:

• Type 1: knockdown-oriented flares with minimal killing power
• Type 2: conventional flares that do roughly as well as expected
• Type 3: flares that excel in specific scenarios

Flare type 1: Grapple and Unbalance

• Grapple (Ivas)
• Unbalance (Arachne)

These two types have below average damage and basically non-existent deadliness, but are unique among the available options in that they almost always knock the creature down. Repentance and Judgment already (respectively) always or usually put the creature on its knees, so a full knockdown is only barely an upgrade in that case. However, knockdowns can be more helpful with Fervor or tier 3 and up Battle Standards if you're not leading off by knocking the creature down in the first place (whether via Repentance, Judgment, Bull Rush, Shield Trample, or other means).

Flare type 2: Almost Everything Else

All flares in this category except maybe steam have roughly equal power against a typical creature in a typical hunting ground, but some have other unique considerations if you run into atypical creatures or hunting grounds.

• Steam (Jastev)

Steam deals average damage, but has very slightly below average deadliness. No creatures in the game that I know of are immune to steam, but it wouldn't surprise me if some fiery creature somewhere is. Steam doesn't trigger environmental hazards anywhere.

• Acid (Aeia, Lumnis, Marlu)
• Cold (Gosaena)
• Disintegration (Ghezresh)

These three types dish out average damage and average deadliness and don't trigger environmental hazards anywhere, but a tiny handful of creatures across the entire game are immune to them. Cold is the most affected by immunities, numerically; I wouldn't recommend raising a Gosaena paladin in Icemule with its myriad ice-themed creatures, but anywhere else is perfectly fine. The wyrm boss in the endgame is notably immune to acid.

• Fire (Eorgina, Laethe, Oleani, Phoen, Ronan, Voaris, Voln)

Fire is another type with average damage and deadliness that a tiny handful of creatures are immune to. It interacts with Web in a way that can be good or bad: if a webbed creature gets hit with fire, the web burns up and they take an extra round of fire damage in the process. In the best case, that means doubling up on fire damage to deal a significant blow. In the worst case, that means prematurely freeing the creature from the web for some minor extra damage.

Some players seem to really hate freeing the creature, which I definitely understand at lower levels, but I don't think it's as much of a drawback at cap as others believe. Most capped creatures get out of webs near instantly anyway, so I'd rather pile on extra damage for an extra shot at a crit kill.

Fire doesn't trigger environmental hazards anywhere that I know of except for a level 82-89 hunting ground, the Bowels. However, it's not an argument against fire because plasma also triggers those same hazards and Holy Weapon grants plasma flares, so paladins will face gas explosions in that hunting ground anyway.

• Random (Zelia)

Random flares have all the upsides and all the downsides of other damage types, except they're unpredictable. Fun option!

• Crush (Kai, Kuon, Sheru)
• Disruption (Eonak, Tilamaire)
• Impact (Niima)
• Plasma (Lorminstra)
• Slash (Amasalen, Andelas, Fash'lo'nae, Mularos, The Huntress, V'tull)
• Vacuum (Jaston, Tonis)

These six types all dish out average damage and average deadliness while having no downsides. To my knowledge, no creatures in the game are immune to any of these damage types. None of them trigger environmental hazards anywhere either except for plasma in the Bowels, but I already mentioned above why I don't consider that an argument against it for convert status.

Flare Type 3: Puncture and Lightning

• Puncture (Cholen, Imaera, Leya, Luukos)

There's a case for this to be in type 2, as puncture actually deals slightly below average damage--but it has far above average deadliness anyway because of its ability to kill creatures that have eyes at very low crit ranks. Nothing's immune to it that I know of, nor does it trigger environmental hazards.

Against corporeal creatures that have eyes and can be crit killed, puncture is markedly more lethal than any previously listed damage type. However, against noncorporeal creatures, creatures without eyes, or creatures that can't be crit killed, all previous damage types other than grapple and unbalance can edge out puncture.

On balance, puncture is a contender for the strongest holy critical type because the numerous cases where it far outshines almost all other damage types outweigh the comparatively few cases where it's slightly weaker than others.

• Electrical (Charl, Koar)

Electrical, AKA lightning, is the other contender for strongest holy critical type. It deals average damage, but has far above average deadliness due to its unique ability to hit a creature's nervous system, which can kill at low crit rank thresholds. Nothing is immune that I'm aware of, though maybe some of the lightning creatures are and I don't know about it.

The downside is that we finally have the one case where environmental hazards matter most, as watery rooms scattered throughout a few hunting grounds in the game will backfire and electrocute the user too. Some of these hunting grounds are so low level that you won't even be casting Repentance before leveling out of them, like the Solhaven bog or Solhaven death dirges. However, other hunting grounds like Old Ta'Faendryl, parts of the Ruined Temple, or parts of the upcoming Sailor's Grief are for capped or (with Sailor's Grief) even far post-capped characters.

If you want the most raw power that's applicable to the largest number of creatures, electrical is probably it. You'll just need to be aware of specific watery rooms not to hunt in.

Selecting a Weapon Type

These are presented in alphabetical order.

Brawling

Very few paladins brawl, but it is an option!

At face value, the main mechanical reason to go this route is to synergize UC's relatively quick 2, 3, or 4-second attacks with paladins' abundance of flares. It makes a kind of sense, though that's basically the entirety of the allure.

The main trouble with this idea is that UC only maintains a speed advantage for so long. Between weapon techniques, feats, combat maneuvers, and shield maneuvers, paladins have numerous options that are all as fast as or faster than UC, but which work better with other aspects of the toolkit like Arm of the Arkati. Paladins only need sufficient levels and stamina to make frequent use of those techniques, feats, and maneuvers and then they'll be able to leave brawling paladins in the dust.

Another possible disadvantage is a higher cost of gear upgrades than any other path if the paladin also wants to make use of a shield since then you have a whopping four pieces of gear to work on: shield, brawling weapon, footwear, and armor. Shields also penalize MM, UC's most important combat number. On the bright side, a brawler with a shield does at least have the big upside of far stronger AoE abilities via Shield Throw.

If you want to try a brawling paladin for any reason, I won't call it great, but it's certainly viable. Nairdin's a famous paladin who did it for most of his life. Just don't expect it to work similarly to nor as effectively as how a brawling warrior or monk would if you're used to those.

Shields and One-Handed Weapons

Perhaps the most common paladin path players take is that of the shield, AKA the "sword and board" route. (By convention, it's often called that even if they use a blunt weapon or an edged weapon that isn't a sword.)

This path can make for a borderline indestructible character if their training and playstyle are built around it. The Divine Shield aura is obviously at its best with shields as the name implies, aiding with that indestructibility via high block chance. It also periodically allows 1-second single-target offensive shield maneuvers. In addition, shield paladins have access to two physical AoE abilities they can rotate between on when the other is on cooldown--Shield Throw and their AoE weapon technique--while other builds would need to train two weapon types to do that. For a paladin who regularly or even exclusively fights swarms, the ability to use AoEs more frequently significantly elevates the offensive power level of shields on a DPS basis once they have the stamina to support it.

As for downsides, the natural overarching point is that a defensive build doesn't have the power of an offensive build except, sometimes, in that swarm-specific scenario. (More on this in the Caveats section.) Abilities like Chastise and Spin Attack can be the same speed with two weapons or a single big weapon as with a single small weapon. Attacks like Flurry and Pummel reach near-identical (and potentially even exactly identical) speed thresholds with two weapons as with a single weapon despite firing off twice as many attacks. Finally, a two-handed weapon or two-handed polearm build also costs less in gear upgrades than a shield build since it only has two pieces of gear instead of three.

Excoriate (covered in more detail later) is detached from weapon attributes like damage factor and weighting, making it exactly as powerful for all paladin builds. Relatively speaking, that elevates the average attack power for a shield paladin more than it does for other paladins (who also still like Excoriate). Divine Incarnation Smite is also detached from weapon attributes, but has a limited number of charges per hunt and gets a great deal of its power from Religion lore training, which shield paladins won't necessarily have much of since they have stronger incentives than other builds to focus on Blessings.

Shields and Polearms

This is similar to the shield and one-handed weapon build, but with two major differences that warrant its own section.

The very good news is that Radial Sweep, the polearm reaction technique and the only reaction among all weapon types that does AoE damage, can trigger from blocking with a shield. Paladin block rate can get quite high with Divine Shield, so this specific paladin build is second only to warriors at how often it can fire off Radial Sweeps. It's arguably better overall than a shield and polearm warrior because the paladin gets the benefit of double plasma flares from Holy Weapon. Radial Sweep does have a 15-second cooldown because of its power, so it's not fully spammable, but it's definitely a great hit when you can get in.

The very bad news is that the shield and polearm path costs 6 more PTPs and 3 more MTPs per level than training a shield and a one-handed weapon, which will probably require sacrifices elsewhere of power, utility, or both. It's a perfectly fine path, but make sure you know what you're getting into by using a character planner or experimenting on the test server.

Two-Handed Polearms or Two-Handed Weapons

Another paladin option is to pick up any huge two-handed weapon from a maul to a lance to a claidhmore and go to town!

As mentioned previously, certain weapon-based abilities like Chastise or Spin Attack pack far more of a punch with a big weapon than a single small weapon while not being any slower (at least once you get the Agidex), so you'll certainly feel the power. Another selling point is that using a two-handed weapon is the cheapest path for gear upgrades since you only have two pieces of gear (armor and weapon). Furthermore, THWs (specifically those, not two-handed polearms) are the cheapest path in terms of training points other than a shield paladin who's not maxing Shield Use. (More on this in the caveats and rabbit holes section.)

On the less bright side, shields are obviously far safer defensively. Big weapons also aren't stronger than two small weapons. That's partially just the math of it when comparing like to like, such as a 4-second swing vs. a 4-second swing, but it tilts further in favor of two small weapons when considering specifics like flares or the fact that, unlike Chastise or Spin Attack, Guardant Thrusts and Thrash (respectively the polearm and two-handed weapon assaults) are slower than Flurry and Pummel (the edged and blunt weapon assaults).

Two Weapon Combat

The final paladin option we'll go over in detail here is using two weapons for overwhelming attacks!

This is the most offensively powerful path even just on the baseline strength of two weapons, but gets even better with any combination of Battle Standard flares, Fervor flares, or the Zealot AS buff, which are all roughly twice as powerful with two weapons as with one. Anything weapon-based--Chastise, Spin Attack, assaults, AoE techniques--is at its most powerful for the two weapon paladin.

For downsides, once again, the most obvious is that shields are far safer defensively. Training point-wise, this path ranges from exactly the same cost as a two-handed weapon build to slightly more expensive than a shield and a two-handed polearm, depending on a player's tolerance for offhand misses. (Before cap, I wouldn't recommend either of those extremes of 1x or 2x TWC training; more on that in the Caveats section.) In terms of gear upgrades, a two-handed weapon or two-handed polearm build is also cheaper than this route.

Caveats and Rabbit Holes

You might still be undecided on your weapon path or just wondering about some of the more vague wording, so here are additional notes for digging deeper:

• When talking about the advantage of having Shield Throw and an AoE weapon technique, I initially wrote "double up on AoEs" instead of "use AoEs more frequently," but it's not quite that simple. In the first place, it depends on how often a character would use two AoEs instead of one even if they could do so, which wouldn't be every time. For example, if they're in a room of three creatures and the first AoE kills two of them, then the ability to use another one is irrelevant. Beyond that, all paladins have Glorious Momentum from level 40 on (more on this later), which allows even a paladin who only knows one physical AoE to sometimes ignore cooldowns and use it twice in a row anyway.
• For similar reasons, I mentioned two weapons being "roughly" twice as powerful as a single one-handed weapon because it's not as simple as saying that it's exactly twice as powerful. In any instance where the first strike happens to kill a creature, the fact that the second weapon would have been available as a followup is irrelevant.
• If you've also been getting advice from others before reading this guide, you might have heard that shields are the cheapest path for training points. I actually had written that in here out of reflex because it was true for decades: when paladins had a 2x Shield Use cap, training a one-handed weapon along with it cost 24 PTPs per level (after the almost always inevitable PTP to MTP conversion that paladins get to). Now, however, paladins have a 3x Shield Use cap, so it works out to 29 PTPs. Meanwhile, maxing a two-handed weapon works out to 24 PTPs. Still, like I implied, someone could stop at 2x Shield Use if they wanted, taking the shield option down to 21 PTPs per level so it can be the cheapest again.
• Alternatively, someone might say that the shield path is cheaper because the non-shield paths have to train Dodging. This is a questionable line of reasoning, though. For one thing, some shield paladins do train Dodging, in which case they don't get to hold that over the heads of other builds. Even if they don't train Dodging, though, the training points saved from not doing so would end up spent somewhere else. As an example, let's say that they put it to use getting 1.5x Combat Maneuvers because they wanted more AS to make up for using a lighter weapon. That extra 0.5x CM costs more than 1x Dodging would. In short, you have to analyze the entire training point cost of either path to get the full picture of which is truly cheaper for your specific plan.
• Speaking of training point costs, the Two Weapon Combat range runs from 24 PTPs at 1x TWC (counting training the weapon skill too) to 42 PTPs at 2x TWC. 1x TWC has an 80% offhand hit rate against like-level creatures; 2x TWC has a 100% hit rate against anything up to five levels above. 1.5x TWC, which would be 33 PTPs, has a 100% hit rate against like-level and, assuming it works fairly uniformly, drops 4% for every level above you. My TWC paladin didn't even go past 1.2x before cap, which is 27.6 PTPs and an 88% hit rate against like-level. If I remember correctly, she didn't even go past 1.4x (a 96% offhand hit rate) until several times cap. How much TWC you "need" depends how comfortable you are with offhand misses. Some people fixate on them and can't tolerate a single miss; I take the stance that if I have an 88% hit rate against like-level, then I'm hitting about 188% as hard as a single weapon from a shield build, which is perfectly good with me. If you're interested in TWC, figure out your tolerance threshold for either missing with the offhand or having fewer training points to spend on diversifying, then go from there.
• Another perspective I've occasionally heard from players is that shield paladins are a natural default option. I don't agree or even particularly understand this perspective since they usually articulate it based around the idea that, because paladins have a shield-specific aura and are one of the three professions who have shield maneuvers, it would somehow be a waste to not use those parts of the toolkit. However, I don't hear anyone claim that shield warriors or shield rogues, the other two professions with shield maneuvers, are a natural default option. Play what you want! You'll be making tradeoffs no matter what you do.

Training Plan: Skills

Wondering how to train your paladin's skills? Click here!

Core Skills

These are skills you consistently train with little to no deviation. This section and the following refer to pre-cap training.

• Your chosen weapon type: Max every level. If using shields, minimum two times per level for those too. If using Two Weapon Combat, I'd say at least once per level for the TWC skill, then push toward your tolerance threshold in the 1.2x to 1.5x range by the midgame after you've hit your early breakpoints and have more flexibility with training points.
• Combat Maneuvers: At least once per level. You can push further whenever you want to learn specific maneuvers. If you're playing a shield paladin, this might need to be pushed a bit more heavily to compensate for the relative weakness of a single one-handed weapon.
• Physical Fitness: At least once per level. Twice per level later in life if or when you really want more stamina. There's also a good case for rushing the first 15-20 ranks for an early burst of 4-7 health per rank, depending on race, along with having a little more buffer on stamina.
• Dodging: Once per level. If you're playing a non-shield paladin, this might need to get pushed further toward the mid-game, if not sooner, to compensate for slightly worse DS. (Note: Some shield paladin players advocate no ranks of Dodging before cap. I don't agree, but more on that later.)
• Perception: Once per level.
• Harness Power: Once per level. There's a decent case for pushing the first 20-40 ranks slightly ahead of schedule for an early burst of 90-140 mana.
• Spell research: Once per level. Some typical paths include A) taking Paladin Base to 35 (Divine Intervention, 40 (Divine Word, or 50 (Divine Incarnation ranks before touching Minor Spiritual, B) training 1, 3, or 7 ranks of Minor Spiritual after any of those Paladin Base marks, C) never stopping Paladin Base once per level and just slipping in Minor Spiritual ranks here and there as you can, or D) skimping on other skills and/or spells to get 20 Minor Spiritual for Lesser Shroud ahead of schedule because it's the only defensive buff in Minor Spiritual that you can't have other characters cast on you.

Bonus Tip!

Before level 20, you can flip your skills around any time and into any configuration. The game will adjust to your new training plan within a few minutes at most. I recommend taking advantage of this early period to experiment and find what you like! The above core skills cost little, so you'll have a lot of leeway to decide what to do with skills mentioned in the following sections.

Skill Training Sidebar #1: Shields and Dodging Are Not Mutually Exclusive!

As I mentioned in the Shield Paladin path section, they can be borderline indestructible if they build for that. One way to not build for that is to be one of the paladin players who train 0 ranks of Dodging because you've read (or heard from somebody else who read) that shields decrease the amount of DS you get from training Dodging. That's true, but let's assess this further.

First, even for a tower shield full plate paladin, Dodging gives 0.33615 DS per rank in offensive stance. That's admittedly much less than the 0.6225 DS that a non-shield paladin would get, but it's still substantial! More importantly, though, Dodging is also a crucial part of defense against SMR attacks, which are one of the few means that creatures have to simply kill paladins despite all their redux, crit reduction, and plate armor. SMR attacks don't become particularly prominent until level 60 or so, so I do understand the idea of not training Dodging with a shield paladin in the early game, but by the midgame and on you're going to need either Dodging or some other buffer against SMR attacks, like 2x Perception or 2x Physical Fitness, to avoid getting destroyed.

Even in the early game, though, I still think a shield paladin should begin on Dodging after they're done with reaching some of the early thresholds like 70/110 Armor Use (90/130 with spells) that will keep points tight early on. Consider the alternative: by saving training points via ignoring Dodging, a paladin could work on spells beyond 1x, Combat Maneuvers beyond 1x, or lores.

...but wait. Pushing spells above 1x is mostly for improving offense. Pushing Combat Maneuvers is mostly for improving offense. Training lores offers minor benefits to defense and enormous benefits to offense. Why be a shield paladin, the defense-oriented build, then ignore a cheap defensive skill like 1x Dodging in favor of training expensive offense-boosting skills like spells at 2x cost, CM at 2x cost, and lores? (Respectively ~6.18, ~2.364, and ~3.636 times as expensive as 1x Dodging.) Unless you're taking advantage of full outside spellups, which has its own sidebar a little further below, there's still great value to Dodging.

Skill Training Sidebar #2: Combat Maneuvers and Two-Handed Weapons or Two Weapon Combat Are Not Mutually Exclusive!

I've never encountered a paladin who believes otherwise, but just in case, the same advice from above for shield builds applies in reverse to non-shield builds. If you've embarked on the path of an offense-oriented paladin, don't stop at 0.5x Combat Maneuvers so you can snap up a few extra Dodging ranks. Stopping at 1x Combat Maneuvers, sure, that makes sense, but the game offers the low-hanging fruit of 1x costs with the expectation that you'll take advantage of them. You admittedly might not even need the AS from Combat Maneuvers on a Zealot paladin, but the maneuver points and boost to SMR offense are keys to a sufficiently wide toolkit of options for successful offense.

Breakpoint Skills

Train these skills to specific thresholds because most have little to no merit for the in-between ranks.

• Armor Use: 70 and 110 are your major breakpoints. In conjunction with your Defense of the Faithful spell taking the totals to 90 and 130, these breakpoints respectively allow for metal breastplate and full plate. Metal breastplate is worth aiming for as quickly as you feel reasonably comfortable with because it has a very strong damage factor advantage over even chain hauberk. Full plate can be delayed into the 40s or even 50s if you want, though many players choose to hurry along the 110 mark too since it's the final armor goal from a mechanical standpoint.
• Multi-Opponent Combat: Before cap, good breakpoints are 10, 24, and 50 for hitting extra targets with your weapon techniques. For shield paladins only, 30 is also a threshold that unlocks the ability to learn Shield Strike Mastery.
• Spiritual Mana Control: Before cap, good breakpoints are 10, 24, 25, and maybe 50 (it's possibly excessive). 10, 24, and 50 are all for hitting extra targets with your AoE spells. 25 adds an extra daily use of MANA SPELLUP and allows you to Multicast a buff spell two times at once. 50 adds another daily use of MANA SPELLUP. (50 also technically allows you to multicast three times at once, but that's only helpful for casting Minor Spiritual spells on other characters; two self-cast spells already maxes out buff duration.)
• Religion and/or Summoning lore: 25 ranks of Religion will max out Judgment's chance of forcing the enemy to kneel at 85%, which can be pretty strong if you push Paladin Base hard and can reliably land that spell. Alternatively, if you don't push Paladin Base hard and could use a boost to your magical offense, each of the first 25 ranks of Summoning will push enemy TD down by 1 against the spell infused in your bonded weapon. If you want to run Web as your infused spell, you'll need 27 ranks of Summoning to be able to do that. Strictly speaking, nothing stops you from taking 25 ranks of Religion and 25-27 ranks of Summoning pre-cap, but I generally wouldn't recommend it due to too great an opportunity cost of training points not spent elsewhere.
• Climbing and Swimming: 10 ranks of each suffice for most places before the mid levels. Specific areas can change priorities, like the Icemule mountains or the Landing monastery. You'll generally know if you need more Climbing or Swimming, though. At cap, 60 ranks handle basically everything, but eventually 101 helps when you need to leave a hunting ground while encumbered.

A Spellup Sidebar!

This is for those of you who take regular advantage of full spellups by any means--alts, Dreavenings, friends, MHOs, the invoker, or any other way. The DS benefits of a full outside spellup will leave you virtually indestructible against enemy AS attacks until the level 40s, if not later. (Almost definitely later on a shield build unless you're slacking on Shield Use and Dodging.) Since armor is primarily (not entirely) for mitigating AS-based hits, this playstyle lends itself to not pushing Armor Use as heavily as others. It can also skimp on various other defensive skills, which is why some players gravitate toward getting outside spells as long as they can.

Niche Skills

Niche isn't a bad thing and several of these skills can be prioritized over breakpoint skills. Just make sure you're training with a plan and a purpose!

• Arcane Symbols and Magic Item Use: These are the most cost-effective means to improve your ability to create and upgrade Battle Standards, the paladin profession service. Of the two, Magic Item Use is more broadly useful due to extending the duration of small statue drops and the fact that rangers are capable of teaming up with other professions like clerics, sorcerers, and wizards to create magic items on demand. That said, Arcane Symbols allows reading scrolls you loot, which can be valuable for identifying which ones are worth selling to the pawnshop and which are worth trying to sell to other players.
• First Aid: Helps with skinning and eating herbs faster. Paladins are tied with clerics for training this skill more inexpensively than anyone besides empaths, so it's certainly worth considering. Voln paladins should especially look into this, but even Sunfist paladins, who can already eat herbs at the fastest speed, might enjoy not having to spend mana and stamina to do it.
• Trading: Free extra silvers!
• Survival: Helps with skinning, but it's twice as expensive as First Aid. Speeds up foraging bounties. Slightly reduces duration of stuns, which is potentially helpful; paladins can just BESEECH out of stuns, but 35 mana per unstun does add up quickly. I like Survival, but I certainly understand why others leave it for the late game.

Skill Training Sidebar #3: The Skinning Deluxe Special!

The Adventurer's Guild bounty system won't assign skinning bounties unless you have at least half your level in First Aid and Survival combined. For example, a level 20 character with 8 First Aid and 2 Survival is eligible for skinning bounties.

Some players purposely remain below the threshold because skinning bounties have comparatively low exp payouts. Other players lean into training these skills because adding skinning into their pool of bounty types reduces the odds of getting other types like escorts or gems that they might want to avoid.

Experience points paid out by skinning bounties depend on the quality of skins the furrier asks for; in turn, the range of qualities the furrier can ask for depends on your skill. It's a double-edged sword! If you keep your skinning ability low, the furrier will only ask for fair quality skins and it'll be relatively easy to complete, but the exp reward will always be 600. If you heavily push your skinning ability, the furrier can (but won't always) ask for fine or exceptional skins. These pay out 650 or 700 exp, but will be more difficult to complete.

What isn't a double-edged sword is that the skinning bounty point payout only depends on the quality and value of the skins sold to the furrier, regardless of what they asked for. The bounty point part of your reward can still be top notch if you sell magnificent skins.

Post-Cap Skills

Eventually you can train everything if you play long enough, but here are some considerations for if or when you reach post-cap.

Spiritual Lores to their collective 202 cap:

As is common with lores for most professions, they're a very expensive skill with high opportunity cost that leaves many players ignoring them pre-cap outside of low-hanging fruit early thresholds. In paladins' case, that would be the 25 Religion and 25 Summoning benchmarks I mentioned before. Lores offer myriad offensive and defensive benefits, but they're less powerful for the exp than maxing Multi-Opponent Combat and Combat Maneuvers on the offensive side or Dodging and Physical Fitness on the defensive side. However, lores are more powerful for the exp than Ascension benefits, so post-cap is the time to prioritize lores and work out your plan. I'll touch on this more in lores' own dedicated section.

Armor Use to 300:

The DS benefits of overtraining armor are fairly minimal, even in full plate. The improved maneuver defense is only slightly more substantial. Maxing out three armor specializations is another niche benefit, as you can certainly run into situations where the ability to switch between (say) Armored Casting, Armored Blessings, and Armor Support might be helpful. Individually, each of these three perks to finishing Armor Use--DS, maneuver defense, and flexibility--is pretty minimal, but, taken together, they do build a cumulative case.

Shield Use if not normally using a shield or Two Weapon Combat if normally using a shield:

There's something to be said for the flexibility of having two different playstyles at your disposal. Two Weapon Combat paladins have overwhelming offensive power, but what if the enemy also has overwhelming offensive power and taking just a couple of hits can spell doom? I'm admittedly mostly thinking of bosses like the wyrm with her 900+ AS mstrikes rather than ordinary hunting, but even so, blocking some of her shots with a shield might be the difference between victory and defeat.

On the flip side, shield paladins have far superior defensive prowess, but they don't always need more defensive prowess. For example, some creatures have fairly low AS and can't significantly damage a paladin with physical attacks anyway, while other creatures are casters against whom DS and blocking will never come into play. In cases like that, the greater offensive power of Two Weapon Combat would serve the paladin better.

Ranged Weapons:

Archery isn't the worst option for diversifying your offense. AS-based ranged attacks don't bring much to the table for paladins, but Volley is an exceptional crowd control tool that does AoE damage over time and pairs well with paladins' myriad flares. I wouldn't do it, but it's out there as a thought.

Redux Sidenote!

Paladins can retain 25% redux--a great threshold--by stopping their spell training at 195 total ranks or fewer. Retaining 33.33% redux requires stopping around 149 or fewer.

As an alternative to diversifying your offense or armor specializations, you could also simply move on to Ascension. For that, see the Ascension section toward the end of this guide.

Training Plan: Exclusive Choices

Looking for information about combat maneuver decisions and their opportunity costs, plus meditation resistance? Click here!

Combat Maneuvers

I won't go over every combat maneuver, but here are quick takes on the more standout ones.

Quick Reminder!

Like with skills, you can flip your trained combat maneuvers around as you wish before level 20. Experiment and find what suits you!

Bull Rush:

Bull Rush can knock down a room of creatures and inflict the Vulnerable status, which makes followup unaimed attacks more likely to hit body parts that will significantly damage the creature. Bull Rush does fairly minimal damage on its own, but is a very solid crowd control combat maneuver, especially before a paladin gets enough CS for Judgment to fill a similar role reliably.

Combat Focus:

Raises TD by 2 per rank. I actually max this in the late game because paladins have just enough spiritual TD that the small boost from Combat Focus can be the difference between getting hit by an enemy spiritual spell or avoiding it. However, even just two or three ranks would usually accomplish the same thing for much fewer combat maneuver points. Definitely don't bother with this until endgame or near it, though.

Combat Movement:

A negligible DS boost that's virtually worthless unless you want the Side by Side maneuver because you'll be group hunting regularly, in which case you need two ranks as a prerequisite.

Combat Toughness:

The first rank gives +15 max health for 6 combat maneuver points, which is a reasonable pickup for the endgame if nothing else seems worthwhile. It's not a priority, though. Even halflings and gnomes shouldn't really need it earlier in life since Vigor already increases max health. As for the second and third ranks, the juice isn't worth the squeeze. Players who are willing and able to afford Bloodstone Jewelry can also just use that for vastly more max health than Combat Toughness offers.

Disarm Weapon:

A 2-second setup maneuver that attempts to get rid of the enemy's weapon. Paladins don't need to train this to defend against it since Holy Weapon already quickly returns disarmed weapons to their hand, nor do they necessarily fear enemy creatures' AS-based attacks badly enough to warrant spending time getting rid of their weapon. That said, it's still a pretty strong debuff of sorts against specifically two-handed weapons (including polearms) because it'll knock out a huge chunk of a creature's DS in the process. Worth considering, but not a staple.

Feint:

Now here's a staple! Feint is the premier combat maneuver for lowering enemies' stance so you can obliterate them afterward. Highly recommended if you're a Divine Shield or Fervor paladin, but still recommended even on a Zealot paladin. Even paladin AS can't power through every turtled creature, barring the extreme top ends of gear, enhancives, or Ascension experience.

Precision:

Worth a look if you're using a weapon that can deal slash damage, which is slightly tougher to land lethal blows with than crush or puncture damage. Even just the first rank for 4 points will cut out most slash-based damage. (Just remember to actually use CMAN PRECISION with your weapon in hand to set the damage type you want! Simply learning the maneuver without configuring it won't do anything!)

Side by Side:

Good straightforward AS and DS boost, but for group hunters only.

Spike Focus:

You'll need this as a prerequisite if you want Shield Spike Focus on a shield paladin, but otherwise it's frivolous at best. Armor spikes from offensive maneuvers aren't terribly significant.

Spin Attack:

Easily a top tier paladin maneuver not despite the overlap with Chastise, but because of it.

Spin Attack is an unaimed attack that swings 2 seconds faster than your normal attacks (that's cutting attack speed in half for most weapon types!) while also having a minor AS boost for that one attack and a boost to Dodging for 10 seconds afterward. It even still fires off infused spells from Holy Weapon in the process.

The swing speed benefit is the same whether you've learned 1 rank or 5 ranks of Spin Attack, making the first 2 CM points an incredible value. (More ranks increase the AS and Dodging boosts.) Get it to have in your toolbox for times when both Chastise and your weapon type's assault technique are on cooldown.

Sunder Shield:

A flat 2-second setup maneuver that can get effectively rid of enemy shields. When it's good, it's really good for the same reasons that Disarm Weapon is. There are, however, far fewer creatures that use shields than creatures that use weapons. Worth considering, but not a staple.

Surge of Strength:

Actually quite good if you're using blunt weapons because it pairs well with Concussive Blows, adding another 2d16 of damage to those flares on top of the AS boost that higher Strength represents in the first place. That said, Surge of Strength really comes across as a "max it or skip it" type of combat maneuver, which means it might have to be saved for the endgame since the whole package costs 30 total CM points. Rank 5 has 75% uptime as a 90-second effect with a 120-second cooldown, but lower ranks have 150, 180, 240, and 300-second cooldowns.

If you're not using blunt weapons, I'd still consider this for races who aren't dwarves, giants, or half-krolvin. Paladins have a pretty good selection of combat maneuver options, but not amazing to the level of warriors or rogues, so you might (or might not) find that you can spare points for your final build.

Tainted Bond:

Tainted Bond makes an Ensorcell AS boost linger for two attacks instead of one. If you have a T5 Ensorcell, you should almost definitely get this, but if you don't, don't. It's also not worth rushing to a T5 Ensorcell and rocketing the gear difficulty of your weapon up just for Tainted Bond.

True Strike:

True Strike is an unaimed attack that swings 1 second faster than your normal attacks while penalizing the enemy's EBP against it and having a higher floor on your d100 roll by changing it to anywhere from 20+d80 (minimum 21 roll from rank 1 True Strike) to 60+d40 (minimum 61 roll from rank 5 True Strike).

Spin Attack is generally better than True Strike in a vacuum because it's faster, but True Strike offers something that's more unique from Chastise than Spin Attack is. True Strike is a solid toolkit option to consider if you regularly face particularly EBP-heavy creatures. Even just one or two ranks will really cut into how well they can avoid your attack.

Weapon Specialization:

A paladin must-have that simply increases AS and SMR power, including that of all the offensive and setup maneuvers listed above.

Shield Maneuvers

This time I will go over every shield maneuver since almost all of them are at least worth a look.

Block Specialization:

Offering 5% block rate per rank, this is a bread and butter must-have passive for dedicated shield paladins. The first rank is a great early buy at a cost of only 4 shield points, but the next two cost 8 and 12, which could be worth delaying for a while so you can diversify your shield maneuver options early in life with other low-hanging fruit options.

Block the Elements:

Reduces incoming crits from enemy flares and bolt splashes. The first rank is pretty strong value at 5-10 crit padding for 6 shield points, but the next two ranks are another 12 and 18 points to bump that crit padding up to 10-15 or 15-20. In practice, I don't find that there are enough creatures who can use flares or hit a paladin with bolts to justify more than a single rank, which is already pretty hefty protection. However, if you simply despise getting hit with all your being and want marginal gains, it's an option!

Large Shield Focus or Tower Shield Focus:

Another bread and butter must-have passive that will improve all of your offensive shield maneuvers and is a necessary prerequisite to train certain options. The final two ranks should be saved for at or near the endgame due to diminishing returns, though. Large shields have a faster Shield Throw and result in very slightly better DS after you have Dodging. Tower shields hit harder with virtually all shield maneuvers and have a few exclusive maneuver options.

Phalanx:

Amazing additional block chance if you regularly group hunt with other shield users who also train Phalanx (available to warriors and rogues in addition to paladins), but it does nothing outside group hunts. You'll know if you want it.

Prop Up:

Requires Large Shield Focus or Tower Shield Focus to be rank 3 before you can train this. Prop Up ranks each give you one-third chance to avoid being knocked down for 6, 12, and 18 shield points. Here's another passive where the first rank offers solid value, but the next two can be pretty difficult to justify until much later in life. Paladins are already very durable even if they do get knocked down, so it doesn't have to be a priority either.

Protective Wall:

Requires Tower Shield Focus to be rank 3 before you can train this. Protective Wall has two ranks and the first rank only benefits party members, halving the DS lost from being stunned, webbed, immobile, unconscious, rooted, or prone. The second rank only benefits you with the same effect. Some players see this as the primary reason to use a tower shield over a large shield; I'd argue that almost everything else is the reason to use a tower shield, though. If you're a group hunter, Protective Wall will help your partners, but if you're going solo, you can already get out of almost all of those status conditions already via Divine Intervention without spending valuable shield points.

Shield Bash:

Basic offensive shield skill that hits and applies Vulnerable. It's not amazing, but it's not bad and you have to train it to learn Shield Strike or make Shield Strike stronger. Whether you use it or just train it as a prerequisite, you'll have it!

Shield Charge:

Far more powerful single-target maneuver than Shield Bash. This attack is 1 second slower, but has potential killing power (rarely, but it can get there) and, in addition to applying Vulnerable, it also staggers (adds RT), adds Weakened Armament (reduces armor protection), and can drop the enemy's stance. Shield Charge simply works well in a vacuum, so it's a pretty strong contender for your first offensive shield maneuver.

Shield Forward:

Passive ability that gives a 30-second Shield Use buff of +10 per rank after using an offensive shield maneuver. In practice, that's long enough that it basically feels like it's always active. Like many other passives, the first rank is great value even early, but the latter two can be delayed until after fleshing out your versatility.

Shield Mind:

Requires that you've trained Spell Block. Use 10 stamina to block the next CS-based spell, then the ability is on cooldown. I have a very low opinion of this one in all except the most dangerous Ascension hunting grounds, where it's only a pretty low opinion. Enemy CS spells aren't particularly dangerous to paladins anywhere else, you already have Faith Shield for the instances where they are dangerous, and the Spell Block prerequisite is, itself, also really weak for paladins.

Shield Push:

Probably the most pointless shield maneuver. This one pushes a creature out of the room, but even if you don't feel comfortable fighting a particularly dangerous creature, just leave the room yourself. No need to spend stamina and RT on making it go away, never mind the shield points.

Shield Spike Mastery:

Requires training the Spike Focus combat maneuver. This passive lets your spikes flare reactively if you block an enemy attack while in offensive, advance, or forward stance. Pretty good if you're a capped character just finding yourself with 20 shield points and 12 combat maneuver points to spare. I wouldn't go out of my way to make room for Shield Spike Mastery if other combat maneuvers and shield maneuvers seem appealing enough to eat up all your points, though. It's specific to spike damage; any other flares on your shield can still happen without this.

Shield Strike:

An absolute must. This requires at least two ranks of Shield Bash. Shield Strike uses what's called a "minor bash"--a light, weak shield attack--that's immediately followed up by a strike with your weapon at 2 RT less and 15 stamina more than swinging with your weapon would be. Its strength is derived from training both Shield Strike itself and Shield Bash.

In a vacuum, Shield Strike is really good, but like I always say, nothing's in a vacuum. Weapon technique assaults and Chastise are both even better uses of stamina, making this your third best option at most even in a strictly one-on-one scenario. If you regularly hunt multiple creatures in a room, then weapon technique AoEs and Shield Throw are also better uses of stamina. So, in practice, you might use Shield Strike as its own ability pretty rarely.

The actual reason that makes Shield Strike a must-have is the next item on the list...

Shield Strike Mastery]:

This passive requires at least three ranks of Shield Strike and 30 ranks of the Multi-Opponent Combat skill. It adds a minor bash right before the first hit of your assault technique, including the potential of any flares and spikes. That's it and that's all it needs to be to claim the title of the best shield maneuver once you have the whopping 30 spare points for it. Assault techniques are your best option for completely obliterating a single target and this makes them even better. Simple as that!

And, yes, this does count to trigger the Shield Forward buff.

Shield Throw:

Shield Throw is the deadliest shield maneuver per second of RT and smashes the room for AoE damage. It doesn't add any other effects like Shield Bash or Shield Charge, but is just for sheer damage. Since it's SMR-based, leading with Judgment and following up with Shield Throw gets pretty devastating! You'll certainly want at least one rank of this immediately.

Shield Throw is the only offensive shield maneuver that makes any kind of mechanical argument for large shields, since at least it's 1 second faster than tower shields; however, tower shields do still hit harder, as they do with all the other previously mentioned shield maneuvers.

Shield Trample:

The slightly more damaging shield version of Bull Rush. It's no more a killing move than Bull Rush is, but offers the same solid crowd control. Training both of them is redundant. I'd generally recommend going with Shield Trample if you have a particularly good shield (meaning lots of flares). If not, then go with whichever one you feel is facing worse competition for the combat maneuver points or shield points it's eating up.

Shielded Brawler:

If you're set on using a shield and brawling, then the better option is a rogue or warrior. Those professions not only have Grapple/Kick/Punch Specialization, but also Small Shield Focus and Light Armor Specialization. That enables them to brawl with a shield while only barely hindering their MM at a -5 penalty.

Mechanically speaking, the only thing that gets a brawling paladin to make sense is the sheer number of flares. The whole idea presumes, however, that you're using a cestus or similar -5 MM held brawling weapon. (The alternative of not using a brawling weapon means not getting any benefit from Holy Weapon, which is basically off the table.) Wearing full plate takes away another -8 MM for a total of -13, though you can eventually get it down to -5 MM at or near cap with 280 Armor Use. A large or tower shield piles on another -19 MM on its own, though maxing Shielded Brawler can take that down to -9. Overall, though, that still stacks up to -22 MM, which very seriously cuts into the the strength of UC's basic attacks.

Some especially mechanically savvy players might be thinking things like "What if I stop at metal breastplate instead of wearing full plate? Then I save myself 3 MM so I can better absorb the hit of -9 MM from my shield." In that case, though, you'd be a house divided who's sacrificing defense by wearing worse armor so that you can get defense by using a shield.

All of this said, if you're absolutely set on using a shield and brawling and being a paladin, then get Shielded Brawler.

Spell Block:

Lets you block bolt spells with an ensorcelled, veil iron, or kroderine shield. You don't need to block bolt spells because paladins have fantastic DS against them and it's very likely you'll never get hit by a bolt spell in your life. That's if you're training Dodging, anyway. Even if not, Minor Spiritual spells still give good enough bolt DS to make them unthreatening.

Steely Resolve:

The other tower shield-only ability paladins can learn. This one costs 30 stamina to give you a 60-second buff of +15 DS per rank and +15% chance to block attacks per rank. It has a 300-second cooldown. Even though I think tower shields are definitely the mechanical pick for paladins, it's sure not because of this. The only context where I have any respect for Steely Resolve is in boss battles that are short and high intensity. Anywhere else, you're already virtually impossible to kill because you're a shield paladin, so there's no merit to spending 30 stamina and 24 shield points just for frivolous overkill levels of defense 20% of the time (because it's a 60-second duration effect with an overlapping 300-second cooldown).

Armor Specializations

Paladins' five armor specializations, three of which are unique to them, offer a variety of combat benefits.

Armor Blessing:

The description on Armor Blessing is a bit deceptive; it claims to help mitigate wound stacking (such as multiple rank 1 wounds to the same body part turning into a rank 2 wound) from magical sources, but what it really means is sources that aren't designated in the code as physical attacks. In practice, it applies to a number of things that might seem physical, like various creature-specific maneuvers.

That said, how good is this? It can save some time in eating herbs, save some silver for buying them, and most notably sometimes bail you out of a bad situation. In particular, preventing two rank 2 arm, hand, or leg wounds from stacking into a rank 3--a severed limb--is an enormous difference maker. For anything short of that, paladins do have many ways to get themselves out of bad situations with or without Armor Blessing.

Still, due to paladin nuances I'll mention with the alternative armor specializations, I think it's completely reasonable that some players treat Armor Blessing as a sort of default armor specialization for a solo-oriented paladin. It arguably offers the greatest mechanical benefit.

Armor Spike Mastery:

Lets your armor spikes fire off reactively when you get hit. This one's not an armor adjustment like paladins' other options, but simply a passive buff, so it might be worth picking up if you have armor spikes and get hit by enough AS attacks. It's comparatively slightly less valuable for shield paladins due to their higher attack avoidance rate.

Armor Support:

A classic. When maxed, it reduces effective encumbrance in plate armor by 35 pounds. (Chain would be 30 pounds, scale 25 pounds, leather 20 pounds, and robes 15 pounds.) Anything with less carrying capacity than a dwarf would get good use from it, but the question isn't whether Armor Support is good; it's whether Armor Support is better than the alternatives. On the smallest races--gnomes and halflings--it probably is. On anything else, that's a question that only you can answer out as you play and learn your own habits with loot.

Armored Casting:

Armored Casting entirely prevents spells from failing via fumbles (1 rolls) or hindrance, but if they would have failed, they succeed at the cost of coming with hard RT. In cloth, leather, or scale armor, maxed armored casting only gives 3 hard RT, making it a very useful armor adjustment for professions in those armor types. Since spells are 2-3 RT, those armor types can only lose 0-1 total RT in exchange for spells never failing. In chain, it's 4 hard RT, so armored casting is excellent for them too.

In paladins' conventional plate armor, Armored Casting results in 5 hard RT, which makes it more of an open question as to whether using this armor adjustment is a net positive or net negative. A 3-RT spell becoming 5 RT is a win because the alternative of casting the spell twice (a failed attempt, then a successful one) would have been 6 RT. On the other hand, a failed 2-RT spell becoming 5 RT is a loss because casting the spell twice would have only been 4 RT.

In other words, whether Armored Casting is useful to adjust your own plate armor depends heavily on which spells you typically cast. Even if you do primarily cast 3-RT spells, there's an argument that Blessings or Support are still better. All that said, if you're a social sort, Armored Casting is a stellar aid for any of your friends who cast spells and have hindrance.

Armored Fluidity:

This adjustment does nothing for a solo paladin because it doesn't stack with Faith's Clarity, but how about for other characters?

Maxed Armored Fluidity cuts spell hindrance in half. This sounds powerful, is powerful, and was the staple paladin armor adjustment for many years since it's unique to paladins and they used to not have Armor Support nor Armored Casting. However, as good as Fluidity is in a vacuum, nothing's in a vacuum and the newer Armored Casting is superior in a wide variety of situations. (Not all!)

Let's consider an example of a ranger in brigandine armor casting Moonbeam or Spike Thorn.

• Moonbeam with maxed Armor Fluidity: 3% of the time, Moonbeam needs to be cast twice because the first time failed, requiring 2 casts and 4 soft RT total
• Moonbeam with maxed Armored Casting: Moonbeam casts never fail, but 6% of the time, they require 3 hard RT instead of 2 soft RT
• Spike Thorn with maxed Armor Fluidity: 3% of the time, Spike Thorn needs to be cast twice because the first time failed, requiring 2 casts and 6 soft RT total
• Spike Thorn with maxed Armored Casting: Spike Thorn casts never fail, but 6% of the time, they require 3 hard RT instead of 3 soft RT

In short, Armored Casting saves mana on all spells and also saves RT on 3-RT spells. The question is whether the character can survive hard RT and the answer should usually be yes because A) with Armored Casting, the spell actually goes through and hopefully makes an impact, but B) even in the event that spell doesn't make an impact, like a low roll that misses, the situation will usually have been even worse in Armored Fluidity because the spell wouldn't have worked then either, but the character would have been standing around in more total RT.

One major exception is bolting, where being caught in hard RT in offensive is potentially dangerous enough to warrant preferring Fluidity over Casting. Some other unusual corner cases can make Fluidity preferable, but they are corner cases and I have to stretch to find them; for example, getting caught in hard RT via Casting can make it easier for a character to be left behind by their group if the leader isn't using the GroupMovement flag.

Another notable exception is for post-cap characters who have unlocked Gemstones and acquired a rare Grace of the Battlecaster property. This property, which can reduce hindrance by up to 5%, stacks with Armored Fluidity and makes various 0% hindrance builds possible that otherwise wouldn't be.

Further Character Progression

Curious about feats and boons? Click here!

Feats and Boons

Paladins gain new abilities called feats and boons at various levels:

Level 15 Paladin Boons: Devout Guardian and Devout Resolve

Starting at level 15, paladins who know Rejuvenation (1607) have a 20% chance to gain the 30-second Devout Guardian effect after taking damage. This allows them to cast Rejuvenation with 0 RT while ignoring most wounds. (They can't ignore fully severed limbs, for example.) If the paladin does cast Rejuvenation while Devout Guardian is in effect, that triggers Devout Resolve, which creates a new 30-second window in which the paladin ignores most wound penalties for combat purposes.

Level 20 Paladin Feat and Boon: Chastise and Righteous Rebuke

Chastise, used with the FEAT CHASTISE command, is a very powerful ability unique to paladins. For only 10 stamina, this unaimed attack with a 15 second cooldown hits a single target 2 seconds faster than your normal swing while having 125% of your normal damage factor and guaranteed Guiding Light flares if you have them from Holy Weapon or Consecrate. Each Chastise also has a 20% chance to trigger Righteous Rebuke, a boon that drops your next spell to 1 cast RT and cuts its mana cost by up to 20 down to a minimum of 0.

Furthermore, every sixth Chastise you connect with has 150% of your normal damage factor instead of 125% and fires off your infused spell from Holy Weapon without consuming a charge in addition to all the normal Chastise benefits. (Note: You won't have spell infusion yet when you very first learn Chastise. You'll have to reach at least level 25 for that.)

Early on, while you only have enough stamina to choose one out of assault techniques or Chastise, assaults are still the better of the two for one-handed weapons, but I'd give Chastise the edge for two-handed weapons and polearms. Damage factor multipliers get even stronger when there are higher damage factors to be multiplied, after all! Damage factor multipliers also get better when there are twice the damage factors to be multiplied, so Chastise is also stronger for a TWC build than a shield build; it's just that TWC assaults are stronger still.

Chastise is incredible value for every paladin and, when it's not on cooldown, you'll likely slam creatures with it pretty regularly while stamina lasts.

Level 30 Paladin Feat and Boon: Excoriate and Ardor of the Scourge

Excoriate, used with the FEAT EXCORIATE command, is another very powerful ability unique to paladins. Once again it has a 15 second cooldown, but this one's a single-target plasma damage magical SMR attack with 3 seconds cast RT that also applies -20% plasma resistance for the next plasma damage within 30 seconds. Each Excoriate also has a 20% chance to trigger Ardor of the Scourge, a boon that allows your next assault technique within 30 seconds to ignore its cooldown and incur no additional cooldown while also stacking +10 AS with each round of attacks.

Furthermore, every sixth Excoriate you connect with will hit much harder, applies -40% plasma resistance instead of -20%, and hits two targets if there are two or hits the same target twice if there's only one.

Since Excoriate is an SMR-based attack, it gets huge bonuses when enemies are prone, stunned, immobilized, or otherwise disabled. (In practice, every sixth Excoriate is so powerful that even landing at all is usually enough, but it's important for the other five Excoriates!) Since it's magical, you can also deal damage with it just as effectively from guarded stance as offensive stance.

The most unique thing about Excoriate is that it can trigger flares from your right hand weapon. At the time of this writing, there's actually no other means in the game to fire off a melee weapon's flares from guarded stance. (Flares from runestaves or from non-weapon sources like Fervor or Battle Standard do fire from guarded stance.) Even if you're only using a basic paladin bonded weapon, that's still a worthy perk because, of course, paladin bonded flares are plasma and Excoriate just gave the enemy a plasma weakness. If you start stacking script flares, holy fire flares, and potentially other flares, then we're really talking about a strong benefit that carves out its own lane.

Unlike Chastise, Excoriate doesn't offer any advantage to THWs, polearms, or TWC since it only looks at one weapon and doesn't use any aspects of that weapon other than its flares.

Level 40 Paladin Boon: Glorious Momentum

(Also requires 75 ranks of a weapon skill, but by level 40 you should have 84.) The Glorious Momentum boon rewards mixing might and magic while taking on swarms. By casting Pious Trial, Aura of the Arkati, or Judgment--a paladin's three AoE spells--and hitting three or more creatures, a paladin has a 20% chance to make the paladin's next assault technique, Shield Trample, or Shield Throw have +25 AS, +15 SMR power, no stamina cost, and no cooldown while ignoring any current cooldowns.

Secret Sauce of Lores

This section reviews the various benefits of the three spiritual lores for Paladin Base spells. We'll start with a comprehensive overview in bullet point form. For the summation-based lore benefits, I'll list comparative benchmarks at the nearest thresholds to 50, 100, and 150 ranks to illustrate the quick early gains of each lore as well as the diminishing returns from going hard in just one or two. (I've opted not to illustrate the nearest threshold to 200 because, due to the nature of seed summation benefits, most paladins will ultimately train each of the three lores to at least some degree.)

Lore Overview

(If thinking about the math of all these numbers makes your head hurt, feel free to skip to the "In a Nutshell" sections below that summarize each lore.)

Blessings

• More DS and TD from Mantle of Faith (+5 at 0 ranks, +14 at 54 ranks, +18 at 104, +21 at 152, +24 at 209)
• Extra duration added to Bless or Symbol of Blessing after Consecrate (+50% at 0 ranks, +100% at 10 ranks; doesn't get any better than that)
• Extra swings for EVOKE Consecrate plasma flares (flat +1 per rank)
• Increased odds of Consecrate or Holy Weapon plasma flare triggering twice (assumed to be a 20% base chance at 0 ranks, +32% (52%) at 52 ranks, +48% (68%) at 102 ranks, +60% (80%) at 150 ranks)
• Longer refresh of food/drink from Consecrate (unknown to what degree)
• Extra HP and stamina regeneration from Rejuvenation (+15 at 0 ranks, +45 at 55 ranks, +57 at 105 ranks, +66 at 153 ranks)
• Reduced enemy Force on Force impact with Defense of the Faithful's Beacon of Courage in effect (ignores 1 foe at 0 ranks, 5 foes at 46 ranks, 9 foes at 108 ranks, 11 foes at 145 ranks)
• Greater block rate with Divine Shield (+10% at 0 ranks, +18% at 52 ranks, +22% at 102 ranks, +25% at 150 ranks)
• More Combat Maneuvers ranks from Patron's Blessing (+10 at 0 ranks, +18 at 52 ranks, +22 at 102 ranks, +25 at 150 ranks)
• Increased max health from Vigor (there's a baseline, but it's dependent on Constitution bonus, so we'll just look at the lore benefits only: +0 at 0 ranks, +18 at 54 ranks, +20 at 91 ranks, +23 at 154 ranks)
• Extra damage weighting for Fervor (+10 at 0 ranks, +15 at 50 ranks, +17 at 110 ranks, +18 at 140 ranks)
• Extra resistance from Divine Incarnation Armor (50% at 0 ranks, 62% at 45 ranks, 70% at 95 ranks, 76% at 143 ranks)
• Extra daily uses of Divine Incarnation Armor (1 use at 0 ranks, 2 uses at 50 ranks, 3 uses at 125 ranks; doesn't go higher)

Religion

• More DS from Higher Vision (+10 at 0 ranks, +16 at 45 ranks, +20 at 95 ranks, +23 at 143 ranks)
• Increased DS debuff from Aura of the Arkati (-10% at 0 ranks, -15% at 30 ranks; doesn't go any lower)
• Increased EBP debuff from Aura of the Arkati (-5% at 0 ranks, -12% at 49 ranks, -16% at 99 ranks, -19% at 147 ranks)
• Extra flare chance for Fervor (15% at 0 ranks, 33% at 54 ranks, 41% at 104 ranks, 47% at 152 ranks)
• More AS from Zealot (+30 at 0 ranks, +40 at 55 ranks, +44 at 105 ranks, +47 at 153 ranks)
• Extra TD for Faith Shield (+50 at 0 ranks, +68 at 45 ranks, +74 at 68 ranks; doesn't go higher)
• Extra CS for spells infused into Holy Weapon via scrolls (0 baseline with flat +1 per each of the first 50 ranks; doesn't go higher)
• Increased kneel chance with Judgment (35% at 0 ranks, 85% at 25 ranks; doesn't go higher)
• Extra raises per day with Divine Word (1 baseline with flat +1 per every 20 ranks up to 140; doesn't go higher)
• Added double strike with Divine Incarnation Smite (0% at 0 ranks, 30% at 45 ranks, 70% at 105 ranks, 100% at 150 ranks)
• Increased stance ignoring with Divine Incarnation Onslaught (50% at 0 ranks, 57% at 56 ranks, 60% at 110 ranks, 62% at 156 ranks)

Summoning

• Extra RT for Pious Trial slow effect (+2 RT at 0 ranks, +3 at 10 ranks, +4 at 25 ranks; doesn't go higher)
• Extra chances to debuff with Templar's Verdict if an attack made after it misses (3 chances at 0 ranks, 4 chances at 50 ranks, 5 chances at 100 ranks, 6 chances at 150 ranks)
• Increased crit rank from Consecrate or Holy Weapon second plasma flare (+0 crit ranks at 0 ranks, +1.2 crit ranks at 51 ranks, +2 crit ranks at 105 ranks, +2.6 crit ranks at 156 ranks)
• Increased damage factor for Arm of the Arkati (10% at 0 ranks, 16% at 45 ranks, 20% at 95 ranks, 23% at 143 ranks)
• Increased maximum Swift Justice charges for Divine Shield (2 charges at 0 ranks, 3 charges at 40 ranks, 4 charges at 105 ranks; doesn't go higher)
• Allows self-cast Aid the Fallen (unlocked at 20 ranks)
• Added debuff for infused Holy Weapon spells (flat -1 DS per each of the first 25 ranks)
• Increases maximum spell level possible to infuse in Holy Weapon (+0 at 0 ranks, +9 at 54 ranks, +13 at 104 ranks, +16 at 152 ranks)
• Extra duration for Divine Incarnation Zeal (30 seconds at 0 ranks, 34 seconds at 46 ranks, 38 seconds at 108 ranks, 40 seconds at 145 ranks)

That's a lot to digest, so let's break it down in chunks and figure out which benefits matter most!

Blessings in a Nutshell

A clear winner if you're using the Divine Shield aura, with the extra block rate going a long way to make shield paladins indestructible. That benefit isn't even entirely defensive in nature, just mostly so, since more shield blocks also means more reactive flares. Another strong Blessings benefit is the double plasma flare for Consecrate or Holy Weapon, though that one does really want to also tag team with Summoning lore to make the second flare hit hard and often instead of just often.

The extra DS and TD from Mantle of Faith and the extra stamina recovery for Rejuvenation are also good benefits, but, like I implied earlier, the alternatives for your exp have to be considered. Compared to all but the earliest ranks of Blessings, Dodging and Physical Fitness are much cheaper paths to, respectively, more DS and more stamina. There's no TD alternative, though, so evaluate the entire package of Blessings. More AS from Patron's Blessing is in a similar boat; it's quite good, but not as good as maxing Combat Maneuvers, so there's an order of operations here. (The Blessings AS benefit also isn't as good as the Religion AS benefit, but the latter only applies if Zealot is your aura.)

As for the less notable benefits...

Extra max health from Vigor via Blessings ranks is a bit frivolous since you already get extra health from just Constitution and Paladin Base training. The Blessings benefit does ramp up pretty quickly, at least, and you can wrangle a good bit of extra health without even trying. If you plan on getting Bloodstone Jewelry, the value of max health drops further.

More Fervor damage weighting isn't too impressive because it starts at a high baseline of 10 even with no lores, so it basically has diminishing returns from the outset. Divine Incarnation Armor similarly starts at a powerful baseline of 50% before lores. Between redux, plate armor, Divine Intervention, potentially a P5 Battle Standard if you have it, and potentially a shield if you have that, the odds of being able to salvage a situation at (say) 70% resistance that you can't salvage at 50% resistance are extremely low at best. Similarly, it's not terribly likely that you'd need to activate the emergency mode multiple times per day.

The Consecrate benefits other than secondary flare rate are basically fluff or QoL that saves tiny amounts of mana.

Finally, reduced enemy Force on Force with Beacon of Courage is nearly useless in almost all scenarios since paladins are already naturally going to train Multi-Opponent Combat. 50 ranks of MOC and 0 Blessings would already mean no penalty against five creatures with Beacon of Courage up; 100 ranks of MOC and 0 Blessings would mean no penalty against seven creatures.

Religion in a Nutshell

The low-hanging fruit of 25 Religion ranks for Judgment that I mentioned earlier is vital for paladins who use that spell even slightly often. Aside from that early breakpoint, the big win from training Religion for almost any paladin has to be Aura of the Arkati's EBP debuff to stop creatures from avoiding your attacks. The debuff starts at a pretty low baseline and scales quite well for how strong the effect is.

Double strike Divine Incarnation Smite also has extreme killing power against anything crittable, bordering on a guaranteed one-shot when it does hit twice. It's not quite guaranteed, but it's vastly closer to that than not. Still, there is the obvious disclaimer that a 100 SMC paladin can only use Smite 10 times per 10 minutes. The ramp up for how often you get double strikes is also pretty slow, making it more targeted at a far post-cap paladin than anyone else.

Religion ranks are to Fervor what Blessings is to Divine Shield: if you're set on using Fervor, Religion takes that aura to another level with fast scaling and a powerful effect to boot. Many high Religion paladins use Zealot anyway, however; the scaling Religion AS benefits are much more marginal, but they do start from a high baseline of 30 and work on every attack. As ever, high baselines are a double-edged sword. If you're into Zealot for the AS, consider all options: maxing Combat Maneuvers is a better path to AS than all but the earliest ranks of Religion, so this is what you'd top off with down the road.

Same goes for the Higher Vision DS benefit; it's reasonable and it's there, but Dodging is more efficient, so max that first. The Blessings DS benefit via Mantle of Faith is also better than the Religion DS benefit via Higher Vision.

As for the less notable benefits...

Extra uses of Divine Word are cool if you cast it often, but potentially useless to players who never resurrect others. You'll know if it's valuable to you or not.

More TD with Faith Shield is pretty good when it is good, but excessive in most cases since the baseline +50 is very high already. Even if you do need extra TD, it's still a spell with a cooldown. On the bright side, the Religion benefit scales pretty quickly before capping off at just 68 ranks. Divine Incarnation Onslaught is another very high baseline at 50% stance ignoring, which should usually get the job done after an Aura of the Arkati even if you had 0 Religion to benefit either spell.

More CS for infusing spells from scrolls into your Holy Weapon is actually very powerful in a vacuum since you can put far stronger spells into your weapon than anything in Paladin Base. However, nothing's in a vacuum, so I hav a small caveat, a medium caveat, and a big caveat. The small caveat is that Religion needs to tag team with Summoning to make this idea work at all since non-native spells count as higher spell levels than they normally would and you can't infuse them without a good buffer of Summoning. The medium caveat is that, even with up to a +50 CS boost, you still need high baseline CS of your own (via high spell ranks, heavy quartz orbs, and potentially even Transcend Destiny) to get non-native spells into the range of hitting creatures consistently. The big caveat is that regularly sourcing scrolls with killer spells like Dark Catalyst, Divine Fury, or Wither is a royal pain.

Summoning in a Nutshell

Summoning works wonders for Arm of the Arkati, making every melee hit land harder. This is already a premier paladin spell, but it's especially potent for non-shield builds as big weapons or two weapons reap more benefit from percentage boosts to their offense. I can't stress enough that even though Arm of the Arkati isn't nearly as flashy and in your face as Zealot or Fervor, the sheer invisible math of it makes it arguably the most powerful of the three effects. It's not an aura itself either, so it can stack with one of the auras.

As for other Summoning benefits that scale into the endgame, higher crit ranks for the second Holy Weapon or Consecrate plasma flares really raises the power floor on those. However, this benefit does want to operate alongside Blessings lore to increase the odds of a double flare happening in the first place.

The first 25-27 ranks of Summoning are also crucial for spell infusion, both in the sense of debuffing creatures (25 ranks) and the sense of being able to infuse Repentance (9 ranks) or Web (27 ranks).

As for the less notable benefits...

More Swift Justice charges for Divine Shield are a decent benefit, but that aura heavily favors Blessings lore overall, so the Summoning benefit is probably only worth thinking about as part of a bigger picture where you're taking Summoning primarily for other reasons. Even then, while the 40 breakpoint isn't a big ask, the next breakpoint being at 105 is a huge commitment.

Pious Trial doubles its slow effect at just 25 Summoning, but I don't encounter many paladins who cast this spell with any regularity. It's pretty strong, but paladins are loaded with options ranging from very strong to extremely strong, so it can fall by the wayside.

Self-cast Aid the Fallen at 20 ranks used to be more useful, but Battle Standard can now do a similar thing with no lore required.

Templar's Verdict extra debuff chances are another hard case of the high baseline blues where you'll virtually never benefit from having more than the 3 you'd get even with no training.

Having a longer window of time for Divine Incarnation Zeal to fire off flares doesn't seem to have any value since the total number of flares is limited by divine energy, not time.

So What Do I Do?

Whatever you want. Paladin players see viability in virtually any split of lores.

Gear Upgrades: Armor

Even though fancy gear is more a luxury than a necessity for paladins, you might as well upgrade your paladin's gear eventually if you enjoy them! But how and in what way? This is going to go quickly because I generally think that armor scripts or materials aren't worth it unless you have a lot of money burning a hole in your pocket. I'll cover both scripts and materials, but do note that if you want both, it's 50k more expensive than buying each individually would have been and you generally have to start with the material. (Transmuting an armor from one material to another is only offered for limited periods of time in rotating selections, so you can't count on its availability. Adding scripts to existing armor is always there at Duskruin.)

Materials

• Adamantine: Has a chance to disarm or break weapons that connect with it, though its minimum weight is 50% heavier than standard armor materials. Its base cost is 40k bloodscrip, so it's for long-term projects that begin with fairly heavy spending. Non-shield paladins would get better use out of it than shield paladins due to taking more hits. Adamantine can't be worn until at least level 65.
• Obskruul: Has impact flares and a 5 AvD advantage. Not bad as a long-term project since the 5 AvD is the equivalent of an extra 5 enchant that would be otherwise impossible. It's worth noting that the base cost is 25k bloodscrip, so unless you go to a minimum of a +35 enchant normally, getting the extra 5 AvD via obskruul is a less efficient path than simply enchanting.
• Rusalkan: A high-end expensive option at 400k soul shards that attempts to knock down up to three enemies if you get hit or evade an attack, boosts AS and CS for 10 seconds if it does knock any of them down, and grants a 1 second haste effect for various offensive actions. It has a cooldown for 30 seconds. Probably the most powerful armor material overall with an extremely powerful effect, though shield paladins might potentially get more use out of zelnorn due to taking fewer hits. (On the other hand, rusalkan shields are much more powerful than the armor, so see those below.) Some contact-based combat maneuvers like Bull Rush can also trigger this.
• Somnis: Can put enemies to sleep after they hit you. Great stuff! But is it 100k bloodscrip great? I'd be hard pressed to say so, but I acknowledge that it's a powerful effect.
• Zelnorn: Uses half of what would be the DS from its enchant as AS instead. If you want to have the highest AS possible, here's the armor for you! Its base cost is 50k bloodscrip, so, like other materials, it best serves as a long-term project that begins with fairly heavy spending. The big downside is that zelnorn doesn't allow flares in the ability slot (AKA category B). Zelnorn can't be worn until at least level 60.

Scripts

• Animalistic Spirit Armor: Much more aimed at warriors and open rogues than paladins. The reactive flares are non-damaging knockdowns, which paladins are already good at via Judgment, Shield Trample, or Bull Rush. Revenge Flares have some value, but aren't at their best on paladins, who have low evade rates. Stamina regen is decent, but expensive compared to buying stamina regen enhancives. Extra DS is fine, but extraneous. This is a fine package, but nothing overwhelmingly must-have.
• Ethereal armor: Again, extra DS and a flare chance for crit padding are pretty extraneous to a paladin. If you happen to have boatloads of ethereal scrip from frequent Reim hunts, then sure, go for it.
• Forest Armor: Random boosts of 3-5 AS and CS for random durations. Not terrible and this is, if nothing else, one of the cheapest armor scripts around. Worth considering.
• Ithzir Armor: Cool abilities involving healing and emergency escape, but not 500k bloodscrip cool.
• Mana-Infused Armor: Mana, damage padding, crit padding, AS and CS, and an emergency button to drive creatures out of the room. The AS and CS buff is three minutes of guaranteed +25 AS and +15 CS, which is great. However, it's 476k bloodscrip to get to that point (and 676k total to also have the emergency button).
• Parasite Armor: Health recovery is redundant on paladins due to Rejuvenation. It can give a 90 second buff to TD, but it's once every five minutes and costs 150k bloodscrip.
• Sprite Armor: Extra DS and maneuver defense are extraneous. However, the Sprite Armor wiki page doesn't adequately cover what does make this worth considering at its full unlock (and only at its full unlock): it can store up to 900 mana, which you can infuse into it at random amounts by touching the armor (on a five-minute cooldown). You extract the mana at 90% efficiency, which means it's a mana battery of 810 mana on demand. This would already be pretty cool, but what kicks it up another level is that whatever random amount the game takes when you infuse mana, the armor stores four times that much. Putting this all together: if you touch the armor and the game takes 50 mana from you, it puts 200 mana into the armor, which you can then get back out of the armor as 180 mana. It's more or less as close to infinite mana as you're going to get, hindered only by the fact that it takes random amounts of mana and there's a cooldown. Is all of that worth 115k bloodscrip? You decide.
• Valence Armor: Now we're talking because we've come to the first armor script that has damaging reactive flares, which are great since paladins take a lot of hits--and even better for non-shield paladins (or shield paladins not using Divine Shield). Of course, since they know damaging reactive flares are great, the base armor is 25k bloodscrip, which might feel steep for people without giant stashes of money. If you absolutely must have non-vanilla armor of some sort, I think this is a fine default that's better than any of the other script options and most or all of the material options, but I do have an alternative suggestion below.
• Voln armor: Extra DS, sheer fear protection, crit padding, and an emergency escape button. Nothing a paladin badly needs.

Defaults

If you absolutely must have non-vanilla armor of some sort, then I think Valence Armor is a fine default script while adamantine or zelnorn are fine default materials depending on whether you favor defense (adamantine) or offense (zelnorn).

However, my actual answer to the armor question is simply:

• Go to playershops and spend 1-3 million silver on full plate that has flares, then get it upgraded by wizards, clerics, and sorcerers over time.

Think about it. You could pay 25k bloodscrip for Valence Armor to have disintegrate flares or 25k bloodscrip for obskruul to have impact flares, just as an example, or you could just buy flares in a playershop for the equivalent of 1-3 million silver. The pay event counterparts don't exceed the playershop item unless you spend even more than those base 25k bloodscrip costs to start piling on ability slot flares (Valence Armor) or scripts (obskruul).

As always, everything is subject to your budget range. If you want to immediately come in and spend big, that option is there too.

Gear Upgrades: Shields

No script, flourish, or material, but simply cast Consecrate on a vanilla shield:

This is where I think you should begin if you're uncertain or dipping your toe in the water. For 50,000 silver or less, you can get a basic shield at the game's baseline expectation of +20 enchantment. Even a vanilla shield becomes potent enough in a paladin's hands due to Consecrate as long as you remember to refresh its plasma flares when they run out.

There's nothing wrong with starting small while you're getting your bearings and saving bigger decisions for later! Just don't sink silver into too far upgrading such a vanilla shield with Enchant, Ensorcell, or Sanctify; you're likely to want a better baseline eventually and the silvers spent on those services can be used more effectively elsewhere.

Start with a special material:

• Adamantine: Has a chance to disarm or break weapons that connect with it, though its minimum weight is 50% heavier than standard shield materials. Its base cost is 40k bloodscrip, so it's for long-term projects that begin with fairly heavy spending. Adamantine can't be used until at least level 65.
• Kroderine: Some professions consider kroderine a neat budget way to get triple dispel flares for 30k bloodscrip instead of the 90k it would normally cost. That said, this isn't what paladins are looking for. Kroderine comes at a +22 enchant and is impossible to further Enchant, Ensorcell, Bless, or Sanctify. You also can't cast Consecrate on it for double plasma flares and it's debatable whether triple dispel flares are better than that or, even if so, how much so. Most importantly, though, holding a kroderine shield cuts your maximum mana in half. It's just too big a price to pay for too little benefit.
• Low steel: A high-end expensive option at 300k bloodscrip that inflicts a damage over time (DoT) psychic flare that deals damage and inflicts RT. Any enemy that gets hit by this flare is basically dead--not literally so, but I mean that it'll be so stalled out in RT that you'll essentially have won. The cost is steep, but the power is immense. Of course, there's the lingering question of how much more powerful low steel psychic flares are than the double plasma flares you get for free as a paladin. I wouldn't blink if someone said ten times more powerful, but it is, of course, difficult to beat free on sheer value!
• Rusalkan: A high-end expensive option at 400k soul shards that attempts to knock down up to three enemies, boosts AS and CS for 10 seconds if it does knock any of them down, and grants a 1 second haste effect for various offensive actions. It has a cooldown for 30 seconds. The shield version of this is a lot better than the armor version since offensive shield maneuvers are much more powerful overall than contact maneuvers that use armor, making it easier to fit into your routine without going out of your way. Low steel might be even more powerful still, but unlike with low steel, you can stack the rusalkan flares and your own double plasma flares from Consecrate. It's a close call.
• Zelnorn: Uses half of what would be the DS from its enchant as AS instead. If you want to have the highest AS possible, here's the shield for you! Its base cost is 50k bloodscrip, so, like other materials, it best serves as a long-term project that begins with fairly heavy spending. The big downside is that zelnorn doesn't allow flares in the ability slot (AKA category B)--and that's a far bigger downside than its armor counterpart since flares really help shields at least try to keep up in the offense department. Zelnorn can't be used until at least level 60.

Animalistic Spirit Shield script:

While Animalistic Spirit's weapon counterparts are extremely popular even without upgrades, off-the-shelf Animalistic Spirit shields face a few unique challenges due to their default grapple damage. Almost all of the offensive shield maneuvers worth using already knock down creatures, which renders grapple frivolous. That means you need to pay extra to either change the damage type or buy the Revenge Flares unlock, which allows blocking in forward, advance, or offensive stance to fire off grapple flares and knock enemies down passively. Wild Backlash is also a good unlock for paladins, who benefit from both sides of the DS and TD debuff, but the power of Wild Backlash is tied to the unlock tier of Animalistic Fury. The problem with that is that there's almost difference in the power of the Animalistic Fury flares themselves unless you change the damage type.

Energy Shield script:

The good news is that Energy Shields come in lightning flare variety off the shelf and don't need an unlock to fire off flares when blocking. (You can choose fire, ice, or impact instead if you want.) The bad news is that both their OTS versions and their unlocks are far more expensive than Animalistic Spirit or Phytomorphic Shields without a corresponding power increase. I love Energy Weapons and highly recommend them, which we'll get to below, but can't do the same for their shield version.

Phytomorphic Shield script:

Slam dunk shield script. These have default disintegrate flares and unlock paths to simultaneously debuff enemy DS and buff your AS (or debuff TD and buff your CS if you prefer as a toggleable choice), add Disoriented status that makes it more difficult for enemy creatures to cast spells, or both. Since shield maneuvers are frequently setups for a followup weapon attack, these debuffs and status-inducing effects are just what the doctor ordered.

Whether you're looking to spend exactly 10k bloodscrip and no more or for a long-term project, this is the shield script right now.

Gear Upgrades: Weapons

I wrote a guide on the topic of scripts with more information on scripts, specifically, but I'll use this section to cover some personal favorites, flourishes, materials, and paladin-specific considerations for scripts!

No script or flourish, but simply bond to a vanilla weapon:

Start here. You won't have trouble finding any weapon base on the cheap and your baseline vanilla weapon will be even better than your baseline vanilla shield due to Holy Weapon and Arm of the Arkati. Again, nothing wrong with starting small; the higher exp of my two paladins actually used two plain eonake war hammers from level 10 to 100 and even for a while beyond before finally upgrading. (I do have to acknowledge that capped hunting in 2017 was a very different thing than capped hunting in 2025.)

Just don't sink silver into too many upgrades on a vanilla weapon with Enchant, Ensorcell, Sanctify, or weighting; get a better baseline to build on eventually. If you really want some middle ground between a starter vanilla weapon and a long-term project piece, then I recommend checking the market and asking around, as people frequently sell vanilla-ish weapons with tons of player services on them at massive discounts when they themselves have outgrown those items and upgrade to bigger and better things. You can then turn around and sell it later when it's your time to move forward.

Create or buy a perfect forged weapon:

Forging your own weapon can eventually create what's known a perfect weapon, which has 6% better damage factor and +3 AvD compared to vanilla weapons of the same base. This is a time-consuming endeavor that can take weeks or potentially months, but many players find it rewarding to create a weapon that's truly their own with their crafting mark on it. Paladins are among the best at forging. That doesn't mean that they'll produce a perfect weapon faster than other professions after becoming masters, but rather that they're likely to become masters slightly faster than other professions.

You can also potentially buy a perfect forged weapon from someone else, especially if you use fairly common weapon bases. This is a vanilla-ish path that doesn't look flashy or do anything fancy like scripts, but has comparable power to the un-upgraded version of most scripts and leaves room for expansion to add scripts or flourishes later. The lower exp of my two paladins has been using a perfect forged white ora broadsword from somewhere around the low level 30s to 3x cap. Meanwhile, the higher exp paladin upgraded from her vanilla eonake war hammers to a perfect eonake war hammer and a perfect zorchar war hammer.

Start with a special material:

Various ores are available at pay events to create weapons from. Let's briefly review those:

• Adamantine: A much better armor or shield material than weapon material since the weapon version can only disarm or shatter an enemy's weapon when you parry. Possibly reasonable in the hands of a Parry Mastery warrior for 40k bloodscrip, but paladins don't have anywhere near their level of parrying ability.
• High Steel: Extraplanar bane material with 8 crit weighting and anti-Ithzir fade mechanics. There was a time when almost all capped creatures were extraplanar, but that time has been erased with Ascension hunting grounds--at least for now. Even back then, players largely didn't consider it worth the 150k bloodscrip.
• Kroderine: You can't bond to it with Holy Weapon, making it an automatic non-starter for paladins even disregarding its other disadvantages like being impossible to Enchant, Ensorcell, Bless, or Sanctify. Other professions sometimes regard kroderine weapons as a neat budget way to get triple dispel flares for 30k bloodscrip, but paladins simply have better options in their own toolkit.
• Low steel: A high-end expensive option at 300k bloodscrip that inflicts a damage over time (DoT) psychic flare that deals damage and inflicts RT. Any enemy that gets hit by this flare is basically dead--not literally so, but I mean that it'll be so stalled out in RT that you'll essentially have won. The cost is steep, but the power is immense. Again, though, you could just be using your own double plasma flares for free, so there's a question of how much power you need and at what price.
• Pure coraesine: I've never heard of anyone even attempting to use this with a paladin, which makes sense because I don't see why they would. Even assuming you can bond to pure coraesine with Holy Weapon, which I'm not certain you can since it's not blessable, you wouldn't get your double plasma flares since it has innate air flares that are weaker. It also takes up the script slot. If that's not enough, it's also 400k bloodscrip, which means you could have been getting low steel instead with bloodscrip to spare!
• Rusalkan: A high-end expensive option at 400k soul shards that attempts to knock down up to three enemies, boosts AS and CS for 10 seconds if it does knock any of them down, and grants a 1 second haste effect for various offensive actions. It has a cooldown for 30 seconds. The weapon version of this is even better than the shield version, which is already a lot better than the armor version, since weapon attacks are the bulk of your offense. Low steel might be even more powerful still, but unlike with low steel, you can stack the rusalkan flares and your own double plasma flares from Consecrate. It's a close call.
• Starsong, AKA vethinye: A 100k raikhen base cost material that flares disruption. Like rusalkan, the flares are in the material slot, which means you still get your plasma flares! Starsong can be upgraded up to twice for 150k raikhen per upgrade, which can make it flare disruption up to one extra time per upgrade. Fully upgraded, it flares disruption 1 to 3 times; if there's only one creature against the room, all three flares would hit the same creature, but if there's more than one, then additional flares would hit other creatures. I'd say the highest value bang for your buck here is the basic 100k flare, but it's still behind the value proposition of scripts... which in turn are behind the value proposition of perfect forged weapons, which in turn are behind the value proposition of basic weapons. Free is infinitely cheaper than non-free, but non-free isn't infinitely stronger than free. Ultimately, everything has to be evaluated through the lens of what you want from your endgame weapon and how much you're willing to spend to get it. If scripts seem expensive to you, starsong probably isn't the way. If they seem reasonable to you, then consider starting here. If scripts seem cheap to you, then perhaps look at the more expensive materials like low steel or xazkruvrixis just below...
• Xazkruvrixis: The most expensive option at 500k bloodscrip, but this is even more imposing than low steel because its flares simply cause instadeath. That's it! It takes up the flare slot, so you won't get your own double plasma flares, but this is obviously better; the question is whether it's 500k bloodscrip better, which is your call.
• Zelnorn: An excellent material for armor and shields, but a terrible material for weapons because it works in reverse: it trades half of the AS of its enchant for extra DS. An easy skip that's not worth 50k bloodscrip.

Animalistic Spirit script (price range: 10k to 185k bloodscrip):

Incredible variety of flavor messaging makes this script very popular among all professions! The default grapple damage type isn't particularly deadly on its own, but does frequently knock creatures down, which makes for excellent followups. If you find that you tend to lead off battles with Repentance or Judgment (or, for that matter, Web (118)), then the grapple type will be redundant and you might be better served elsewhere; however, if you tend to lead with Aura of the Arkati (1614), it can be very useful. You can also convert the dmaage type of Animalistic Spirit, though that's an extra expense.

Wild Backlash is at its best here because paladins can benefit from both sides of its DS and TD debuff. However, the strength of the debuff depends on upgrading Animalistic Fury, which won't be an appreciable power increase on its own unless you've also changed Animalistic Fury's damage type. That said, if you do change the damage type, upgrade Animalistic Fury, and unlock Wild Backlash, all of that also comes together to kick Revenge Flares up a notch. I said with Animalistic Spirit armor that Revenge Flares weren't at their best, but the armor version is only for evade while the weapon version works with evade and parry--plus the weapon version incorporates the Wild Backlash debuff.

Despite a high ceiling of how much you can spend, the entry point is only 10k bloodscrip and the a la carte unlocking paths make upgrading in the future easy and flexible. Still, I'd say paladins have an even better script option from the same creator, so see Phytomorphic Weapons below.

Blink Weapon script (price: 750k bloodscrip):

Extremely expensive, but almost certainly the most powerful option for any one-handed paladin weapon and even some of the faster two-handed ones. It adds the chance to shoot even more spells out of your weapon while swinging it; compared to the spell infusion from paladin bonding itself, the upsides are that it can even fire off AoE spells like Judgment and doesn't require recharging, but the downside is that it's only a flare chance instead of guaranteed on demand.

Most paladin players reading this guide because they need advice probably shouldn't be thinking about Blink Weapons for years, if ever, but I can't judge if you have tons of disposable income and want immense power immediately!

Briar Weapon script (price: 350k to 360k bloodscrip for T3 (don't get T1 or T2, which are basically just more expensive grapple flares)):

T3 Briar Weapons have grapple flares with a much higher damage ceiling than ordinary grapple flares (including the ones from Animalistic Spirit), also poison the enemy, and furthermore charge an internal counter for an activated ability that gives two minutes of +25 AS. In practice, they recharge so quickly that they usually amount to always having the AS boost.

Paladins already have some of the game's highest AS, so Briar Weapons can be your path to jaw-dropping overkill AS. In practice, it's usually not a significant mechanical difference, but more for fulfilling a personal need to have the highest number possible. The cost is also high enough that Briar Weapons are another case where most paladin players reading this guide probably shouldn't be considering them for a long while, if ever.

Coraesine Relic script (price: 750k bloodscrip):

Another alternative to Blink as the strongest possible paladin option. Coraesine relics can flare to swing up to five extra times, though each extra swing consumes 10 stamina and 10 mana until you run out (at which point it won't be making extra swings). These extra swings are even more powerful for paladins than almost all other professions because of all the extra flares you can get going!

In scenarios like boss battles, this is definitely the most burst damage you'll find anywhere. In normal hunting that lasts longer than a few minutes, though, those costs of stamina and mana are very real and will need support from enhancives and Ascension. Some people will swear by coraesine relics, but I definitely side with Blink Weapons out of the two 750k options.

Energy Weapon script (price range: 10k to 125k bloodscrip):

Energy Weapons are one of the only scripts that can come with lightning flares off the shelf, making them an extremely powerful budget option. (You can choose fire, ice, or impact instead if you want.) Their upgrade path also potentially has more raw power than comparable scripts, but less versatility. Energy Weapons have three power modes: standard, drained, and surged. You can ignore drained and surged if you want and just stick to conventional flare power. If you're willing to try the other two, then you can use the weakest form, drained flares, to store energy to unleash the strongest form, surged flares on demand when you need them.

I highly recommend Energy Weapons if you're looking for something that delivers sheer power off the shelf without going wild on spending, but aren't a TWC paladin. (If you are a TWC paladin, see Twin Weapons further below.) Higher unlock tiers remain an option because they do improve the power, but only moderately so. If you're willing to spend a bit more than the 10k OTS cost, but not tons more, then maybe see Knockout/Skullcrusher or Phytomorphic Weapons below.

Iasha Weapon script (price range: doesn't matter because you shouldn't buy it):

I'm only bringing this up to explain that it's a trap. It's cheap and it might look aimed at paladins, but Iasha will cut you off from using your own toolkit's flares in Consecrate or Holy Weapon, which are free, more powerful, don't add gear difficulty, don't take up the script slot, and don't require that the weapon remain white ora forever.

Knockout Flares script and Skullcrusher Flares flourish (price: 100k bloodscrip):

Easily some of the game's best flare messaging and they always hit heads, which can be very deadly, unless the head already has rank 3 wounds. If you're using a blunt weapon, it doesn't get much more powerful than this without costing a ton by getting into Blink Weapon territory. (Honestly, I'd take Knockout over Briar Weapon on a paladin despite the latter costing three and a half times as much. Briar is at its most efficient for archers, where +25 is a greater percentage boost.)

That said, Knockout's entry point--and exit point since there are no tiers--is 100k bloodscrip per item, which is a very tall ask for most people. It used to be a lot cheaper in the days of Ebon Gate on Caligos Isle, albeit released in limited quantities via a jackpot system to compensate. If you are willing to spend to that degree or find somebody who has Knockout gear from older days and is willing to sell, then I say read the wiki page and see if you like the messaging more or less than Animalistic Spirit. Some people pick Animalistic Spirit for their handwear or footwear and Knockout for the other.

As for Skullcrusher, see everything I just said about Knockout, because these are mechanically identical and cost the same, but go into the flourish slot instead of the script slot. That means you can have the benefits of Knockout (in the form of Skullcrusher) and a script if you were willing to pay for it!

Lore Flares flourish, specifically Blessings, Religion, or Summoning (price: 400k bloodscrip):

This is another very high end offering that's at the peak of power, this time in the realm of flourishes. While normal flares have a 20% rate, Lore Flares start at 25%, reach 33% with 36 ranks of the applicable lore, reach 50% with 105 ranks, and reach an absurd and glorious 100% rate with 171 ranks. Blessings Lore Flares deal the always-favored lightning damage and increase AS by 10 for 10 seconds, allowing stacks of up to three without refreshing the duration. Religion Lore Flares deal plasma damage and heavy damage over time (DoT) afterward, but only hit the undead. Summoning Lore Flares deal plasma damage and moderate DoT that's weaker against the living and stronger against the undead.

Paladins like all three of their spiritual lores, so reaching 171 ranks in one of them requires either a hefty tradeoff of other lores or heavy investment via enhancives and Ascension.

Blessings is pretty clearly the strongest for paladins. Still, as great as lightning is, it's not such an enormous margin over plasma that it should necessarily throw you off of Summoning if you were training that for the lore's core benefits. Religion Lore Flares are a bit difficult to justify unless you're certain you almost exclusively hunt undead. Both of my paladins favor Religion lore because I like the core benefits, but if I were to spend on Lore Flares, then I'd go with Blessings anyway for the versatility of hitting everything.

Phytomorphic Weapons script (price range: 10k to 145k bloodscrip):

Another highly customizable instant hit script that you can tailor to your liking by altering its messaging with foraged plants. This comes with a default disintegrate damage type, which, while not amazing like lightning, is perfectly suitable for almost all creatures other than water elementals.

Phytomorphic Weapons' unlockables are what really make them shine! Deciduous Decay makes its flares simultaneously debuff enemy DS and buff your AS--or, if you prefer, it can debuff enemy TD and buff your CS. You can toggle which one it does. As good as Animalistic Spirit's Wild Backlash is, this is the even stronger version in most cases due to being able to specialize in the exact needs of your hunting ground, playstyle, and training. Arboreal Agony makes the flares also have a chance to add Disoriented status that makes it more difficult for enemy creatures to cast spells. Stopping creatures from casting spells is one of very few things that the paladin toolkit isn't inherently good at.

If you're looking to spend exactly 10k bloodscrip and never any more no matter how long you play, then my recommendation remains with Energy Weapons. However, for anyone else looking into the midrange of a low entry point that has room to grow, the a la carte unlocks and high ceiling earn Phytomorphic Weapons a top recommendation from me for any non-TWC paladin. (Still high honors for TWC paladins, for that matter, but up next is my preferred pick for them!)

Twin Weapons script (price range: 7.5k to 117.5k bloodscrip per weapon (minimum 15k total to start)):

With the caveat that Twin Weapons are for Two Weapon Combat only, they're uncontested as the best bang for your buck. Like Energy Weapons, these offer lightning flares off the shelf, which is already an immediately strong starting point. (You can choose fire, ice, or impact instead if you want.) Unlike Energy Weapons, the main hand Twin Weapon has one of the best script perks in the game: the ability to flare an entire second swing of your weapon! (Before you start picturing that these are coraesine relics at 2% the price, not quite. The second swing rate ranges from 1% to 7% depending on the unlock tier. On the bright side, unlike coraesine relics, there's also no mana or stamina cost.)

Twin Weapons also have various other perks of temporarily raising AS, DS, or TWC skill. They also have a pretty flexible upgrade path that allows only upgrading the main hand weapon or the offhand weapon depending on which perks you prefer instead of having to spend equal amounts on both. (The main hand perks are far more powerful because of the double swing.)

All of this said, I'm talking about sheer power. That's where Twin Weapons can't be bested without spending five to fifty times as much. If you want versatility, you might still prefer Phytomorphic, which is completely reasonable.

Miscellaneous alternatives: Daybringer or Nightbringer, Parasitic Weapons, or Sprite Weapons scripts:

I'd describe this trio of scripts as wonderfully flavorful options. Mechanically, compared to other options in their off the shelf form with no upgrades, they're about as strong as Phytomorphic Weapons and stronger than Animalistic Spirit due to better damage types, but less strong than Energy Weapons (and especially Twin Weapons for TWC paladins). Where they fall a bit behind is that their upgrade paths are completely linear, bundling aspects into the cost that you might not necessarily want. Still, if you love the flavor of these scripts, I don't think you can go wrong with any of them. They're not the best of the best, but they're still in the ballpark.

Order of Operations Sidebar!

If you eventually want it all, you can get it, but there can be a correct order. For example, buying Animalistic Spirit gear and adding lightning or dispel to it later costs 40k bloodscrip less than buying lightning or dispel flaring gear and adding Animalistic Spirit to it later. Adding Knockout Flares costs the same 100k bloodscrip regardless of order, but does have a 90k more expensive starting point than Animalistic off the shelf. Adding Skullcrusher or Lore Flares costs the same 100k or 400k bloodscrip regardless of order.

All of this is only talking price without even considering what adding scripts, flares, or flourishes does to gear difficulty. Lightning flares add 100 gear difficulty, but that can be negated with pre-enchanting potions (yes, despite the name, these also work with ensorcelling and sanctifying). Dispel flares add 100 for the first dispel and 50 more for each thereafter. Knockout or Skullcrusher adds 150. Animalistic Spirit adds 200.

(What does any of that mean? Well, but that's another guide entirely, but suffice it to say that the higher the numbers get, the higher caliber of clerics, sorcerers, and wizards you'll need to improve them and the more you'll be paying for their services.)

Profession Service Priorities

Silver does no good unless it's spent somewhere, so if you're going budget on buying gear or just have a money surplus in need of a home, how about looking into profession services?

Battle Standards (the paladin service)

Paladins' own profession service is great for just about every profession and even better for paladins themselves!

From the third tier on, Battle Standards add offensive flares to your attacks. (The flare rate goes up at the fourth and fifth tiers.) These flares randomly deal rank 1-7 crits; however, as a paladin-only benefit, there's a 20% chance that the flare will instead randomly rank 5-9 crits, which is a giant power boost on average. Additionally, you can select from a wide variety of choices for flare type based on which Arkati or spirit the Battle Standard is aligned with, which you can set at any shrine for the Arkati or spirit you want.

Fourth tier and up Battle Standards also offer a short-term buff where every attack you do for 30 seconds is guaranteed to flare. This is a burst of fun, chaotic, powerful mayhem, especially in any area that's even moderately swarmy! There's a 30-minute cooldown at the fourth tier and a 15-minute cooldown at the fifth tier, so you can use it once every two hunts or once every hunt, respectively.

Second tier Battle Standards create an aura that fires off attacks at nearby creatures every 10 seconds or so for 3 minutes. I mention them here because they have quite a long cooldown until your standard is upgraded to at least tier 5, at which point it's a mere 15 minutes--basically once per hunt!

Lastly, fifth tier Battle Standards can reduce incoming crits while retaliating with an SMR-based flare and sixth tier Battle Standards offer a once-per-day activated ability to always reduce incoming crits and flare back for the next 30 seconds.

Just looking at the above, I could still make the case that Battle Standards are still better for faster attacking professions and builds like monks, bards, and wizards. However, what cinches the deal for paladins is that, as long as they do the most recent cast on their own Battle Standard, it never runs out of charges. In other words, Battle Standards are a permanent upgrade for paladins themselves, but an upgrade with semi-regular upkeep costs for other professions. That's an enormous difference with this much power!

The Leafi verdict:

Every paladin will want one of these sooner or later. Tier 5 at minimum, but tier 6 if you like that ability.

Bloodstone Jewelry (the empath service)

Fully upgraded Bloodstone Jewelry increases max health/mana/stamina by 100/50/25, increases regeneration for health/mana/stamina by 20/10/5, and adds 1-5 extra health damage (only health damage) to all attacks. After every 50 health damage it deals, the next attack inflicts Major Bleed. It also has an activated ability to quickly regen health/mana/stamina 100%/50%/25% over 10 seconds with a 30 minute cooldown. It also has another more unusual activated ability to temporarily move your wounds off of you and into the jewelry; however, the wounds come back after 10 minutes and there's a 30 minute cooldown on this ability too. The idea is sort of a quick fix mid-hunt and then you'll need two rounds of healing afterward.

Bloodstone Jewelry is another great buy for paladins because they get good benefits out of health since they take lots of hits, great benefits out of mana since they cast lots of spells, and great benefits out of stamina since they use lots of maneuvers! They're truly the total package for paladins.

(Caveat: If the paladin is mostly trying to play like a warrior and rarely uses spells, then I'd recommend just buying stamina regen enhancives instead for much cheaper. So much of what makes Bloodstone Jewelry good for paladins is the assumption that they'll use all three resources out of health, mana, and stamina.)

The extra health damage at the fifth tier is another good selling point. While it can't stun or crit kill like a Battle Standard flare, it affects every attack instead of 20% of attacks. On average, you'll get the Major Bleed effect after every 8.3 attacks.

As for the temporary healing, paladins can also make better use out of that than almost all other professions other than warriors and maybe Kroderine Soul monks. TWC paladins or two-handed paladins will get more value than shield paladins, who take fewer hits, but even the latter will still appreciate a mid-hunt refresh!

The Leafi verdict:

For paladins, Bloodstone Jewelry is the second best of the charging-based services. (Not counting Battle Standard since it won't be charging-based for the paladins themselves.) Get it some time after you're done with Lucky Items. More on those below!

Covert Arts (the rogue service)

Covert Arts are the most jack of all trades service, being sort of split into five mini-services each with five tiers of their own. Like many of the most recent profession services, they run on a charge-based system and eventually need recharging.

Sidestep helps defend against AoE maneuvers, increases evasion, and helps defend against maneuvers regardless of being AoE or single target. Keen Eye finds children for bounties, helps defend against maneuvers even more, and helps defend against ambushes. Escape Artist helps avoid bandit traps, reduces Force on Force pushdown, and reduces the duration of Rooted status. Swift Recovery decreases the RT of searches (e.g. for heirlooms or pulling bandits out of hiding), increases health regeneration, and reduces the duration of Stagger.

Poisoncraft allows applying various poisons to your gear. Poison on armor can inflict various status effects as reactive flares: Calmed, Dazed, Slowed, Disoriented, or Clumsy. Poison on offensive gear can flare to either deal any of the previously mentioned status effects, deal extra health damage, apply Crippled, or apply Major Poison.

But how good is any of this for paladins? Well... "not very" would be my answer. The combat-oriented perks only offer tiny improvements to things that paladins already range from good to incredible in. (By contrast, casters see excellent benefit from things like FOF defense and the myriad bonuses to maneuver defense.) That leaves the utility perks like Swift Recovery and finding children for bounties, but that's a bit niche for how much it costs.

Poisoncraft is typically a selling point for melee characters, but paladins already have tons of flares even without it. I'm a huge advocate of creating more screen scroll, but, in the spirit of being responsible with your silvers, I can't seriously argue for Poisoncraft unless you've already exhausted all or almost other avenues of flares.

The Leafi verdict:

Think about Poisoncraft far down the road when you have so many silvers you don't know what to do with them. Other than that, I can't justify it for paladins.

Enchanting (the wizard service)

Enchanting offensive gear improves AS while enchanting armor or shields improves DS. The most straightforward of all services and still one of the best! Paladins already have great offense and defense, but making it even greater certainly can't hurt when it's their bread and butter.

The Leafi verdict:

Bring your gear up to +30. It gets expensive afterward and paladins have the offense and defense for +35 to arguably be excessive and to definitely be heavily diminishing returns, but if you have to spend silver on something eventually, further enchanting remains an option.

Ensorcelling (the sorcerer service)

Ensorcelling weapons adds a flare chance for either an AS boost on the next attack, stamina recovery immediately, or health recovery immediately. Stamina is strong, but the flares give AS boosts most of the time, which is merely alright for paladins mechanically.

Ensorcell evenly scales up its AS bonus; a fifth tier (T5) Ensorcell increases AS by 25 while a first tier (T1) increases AS by 5. Stamina recovery, on the other hand, is frontloaded: the average stamina return at T1 is 9 while the average at T5 is 15. For that reason, I like the "get a T1 Ensorcell on your offensive gear and call it finished" philosophy; you already have 60% of T5's average stamina return, but only bought 10% as much of a sorcerer's resource points.

That said, people subjectively place different values on numbers going up, so some players will want T5 Ensorcell for the AS boost! Paladins also have the option of learning the Tainted Bond maneuver, which effectively doubles the efficiency of Ensorcell by making sure that, if it triggers on an attacks, it'll also trigger on the next attack. If you do decide on T5 Ensorcell, just make sure to get most or all of your enchanting and sanctification done first since ensorcelling adds much more gear difficulty than the other two gear services.

As for Ensorcelling armor and shields, that improves CvA, which isn't exactly a major paladin weakness, but also isn't so much of a strength that there's no merit to it. I wouldn't prioritize it at all compared to many other services, but it's probably worthwhile eventually. Like with weapons, though, try to save Ensorcell for last.

The Leafi verdict:

At least T1 Ensorcell on weapons, but I can't necessarily criticize T5 either. Just don't go to T5 Ensorcell before Sanctify (if you intend to do Sanctify) or the latter will get excessively expensive due to Ensorcell's gear difficulty. As for armor and shields, get T5 for them over a very long time horizon.

Lucky Items (the bard service)

Lucky Items are incredible. When maxed out, they have a 20% chance of rolling every combat action that you and every combat action taken against you to take the better of two rolls. In case that's too abstract to understand, the point is that they improve virtually every offensive and defensive aspect of combat.

It's like having extra enchantments, ensorcellments, weighting, and padding all attached to the same item--plus boosts to maneuver offense and maneuver defense as even more cherry on top!

For most professions and builds, I'd argue from at least three perspectives that Lucky Items are mechanically the most powerful service.

The least exciting perspectives (which is saying something because it's still extremely exciting!) is to say that, on average over an infinite number of combat actions, they're 3 better than they would have been. In other words, on average, 3 more AS, 3 more DS, 3 more CS, 3 more TD, 3 more SMR offense, and 3 more SMR offense. It really is a lot of benefit from a single item!

The most exciting perspective involves considering best case scenarios like your offensive 1 roll becoming a 100 roll or an enemy's open roll SMR instadeath attack becoming a normal roll that doesn't even connect. While these events are comparatively rare, they do happen more often than you might think due to how many combat actions you see in a typical day of hunting.

The middling perspective involves looking at probabilities. There's roughly a 5% chance that an enemy SMR attack will be an open roll. To put that in perspective, it's more likely that not (a ~51.23% chance) that you're going to get open rolled within 14 enemy SMR attacks. However, with a maxed out Lucky Item, it's only more likely than not (a 50.04% chance) that you're going to get open rolled by the time creatures have thrown 17 SMR attacks at you. Looking at it another way, let's say creatures throw exactly 20 SMR attacks at you. Under normal conditions, there's a 64.2% chance that at least one of them will have been an open roll; with a maxed Lucky Item, it's only a ~55.8% chance.

Even if you ignore a best case scenario like turning an open roll into an outright miss, it's still a great case scenario to turn an open roll into a non-open roll--and that'll happen a lot!

Even better yet, that the benefit of Lucky Items is so abstract and mathematical that many players don't actually understand it (nor does the game openly show what would have happened if not for the Lucky Item), so you can almost always get away with paying extremely little for a ludicrously powerful service.

The Leafi verdict:

Simply fantastic service for paladins, especially at the prices you'll probably pay.

Mystic Tattoos (the monk service)

The benefits of +5 bonus to a stat are moderate at best for paladins. Standout options include:

• Strength to increase AS and decrease encumbrance (particularly notable for small races)
• Agility or Dexterity to reach an Agidex threshold (Agility gives more maneuver defense, but Dexterity gives crit weighting)
• Logic to increase exp gain
• Wisdom to increase CS

That's for now. In the future, Mystic Tattoos are going to get a significant buff; at the time of this writing, the current proposal is that you'll also be able to pick a skill to get +10 bonus to, have flares to double the stat and skill bonus, have a cooldown-based activated ability to double the stat and skil bonus, and ignore enhancive limits. When such time comes, recommended skills include weapon skills, Combat Maneuvers, or lores.

For now, Mystic Tattoos are fine for paladins, albeit not a priority.

The Leafi verdict:

Pick it up on the cheap when you can and after getting many other services and gear upgrades.

Resist Nature (the ranger service)

Rangers can build a bracelet, anklet, or amulet that grants up to 25% resistance against up to five damage types: cold, heat, nature, steam, and lightning.

For post-cap hunters going into Ascension areas and the Scatter, this is really good since most of those areas use at least four of those damage types. Before cap or in other hunting grounds, usually only one damage type is the scourge of the area. There's a case to be made for getting one or two resistances worked on pre-cap, but I'd usually say that pre-cap creatures aren't deadly enough on average to make it a priority.

The Leafi verdict:

I'd look into ranger resistance for post-cap purposes, especially if you intend to hunt Ascension hunting grounds. Before cap, think about it if you can get it cheaply or know that you'll be dealing with a specific damage type for a long while.

Sanctification (the cleric service)

On a weapon, the first five tiers of Sanctify add AS against undead while the sixth tier adds a holy fire flare against undead that deals 50-100 health damage and a fire crit. The first five tiers also negate undead damage resistance, but that's generally irrelevant on a paladin weapon because Holy Weapon or being a holy armament already eliminates that; it would only help something like a Two Weapon Combat paladin wielding a non-holy offhand weapon.

On a shield or armor, the first five tiers of Sanctify add DS, TD, and sheer fear protection against undead while the sixth tier once again adds a holy fire flare. The sheer fear protection is minimally useful since paladins already have their Dauntless spell, so even without being in Voln nor having Sanctify, they'd need to be hunting undead fourteen or more levels higher to get hit by fear in the first place. That's not happening outside specific Ascension hunting grounds.

For weapons and shields, the sixth tier of Sanctify is amazing because the holy fire flares are extremely powerful if you spend any time at all hunting undead. The question is just whether you're willing to pay for the subdued value of the first five tiers to get there. 10 AS, 10 DS, and 6 TD aren't nothing, but like I keep saying, paladins don't have trouble with sheer AS or DS numbers even without.

For armor, the reactive holy fire flares are still good if you get a lot. They're a bit better on non-shield paladins who take more hits.

The Leafi verdict:

Paladins get comparatively less benefit from the main tiers than most professions due to already having holy weapons, so, in my opinion, either commit to seeing through the entire holy fire path for the awesome flares at the end of the rainbow or don't bother sanctifying.

Weighting and Padding (the warrior service)

Crit weighting is always a great buy for melee characters, especially up to the 5 CER (50 services) mark. Afterward, scaling costs kick in and it's twice as much per CER to 10, then three times as much (as the original rate) per CER to 15, four times as much per CER to 20, and ten times as much per CER to 40. That's all notwithstanding the added gear difficulty; 10 CER is just 100 gear difficulty, but 15 is 225, 20 is 400, and it adds up fast. Many people stop at 10 CER, if that high, for pragmatic reasons.

As for paddings, paladins join warriors as are one of the two professions that can get pretty good use out of crit padding and damage padding alike. The benefits of crit padding are obvious in just reducing instadeath one-shots or hard hits that begin death spirals, but damage padding needs more elaboration. With paladins' redux and full plate, they don't take extremely hard individual hits all that often, but the first 5-6 CER of damage padding can save them from getting plinked to death by enemy mstrikes.

5 CER of damage padding is a reasonable stopping point due to scaling costs above there; 6 CER of damage padding is also reasonable because it always reduces exactly 6 damage per hit, but 7 or more CER randomizes between 6 and its maximum range. For example, if you have 7 CER damage padding, the game will reduce 6 damage half the time and 7 damage half the time; if you have 10 CER damage padding, it'll reduce a hit by 6, 7, 8, 9, or 10 damage each 20% of the time. Some players don't like the psychology of knowing they're not always getting full value. You can still do it if you have silver to burn, though!

Whatever you decide on weighting and padding, it's still almost always cheaper to wait for the automated WPS smithy that comes around every couple of months than to pay warriors. It is, however, faster to pay warriors, so it depends on your patience level.

Like with Mystic Tattoos, the head of dev, Estild, has acknowledged that the warrior service needs improvement at a future date. Maybe hope is on the horizon.

The Leafi verdict:

Get weighting and padding and get it pretty, but probably not from warriors unless unless a friend or alt is providing it for free or near-free. Use the much more affordable WPS wagon and get to at least 5 CER on your weapon and armor.

Order of operations in summary

• Enchant gear up to +30 quickly
• Battle Standard up to P3 as soon as you're capable of doing it
• Ensorcell weapon to T1 relatively quickly
• Weighting to 5-10 CER over time, but start early (via WPS wagons, not warriors)
• Padding to 5-6 CER or even 5-6 CER of each type over time, but start early (via WPS wagons, not warriors)
• Lucky Items when you can spare funds and still handle all of the above
• Either Sanctify weapons and armor all the way to S6 or don't do it at all
• Bloodstone Jewelry when you can spare funds and still handle all of the above
• Battle Standard up to P5 as soon as you're capable of doing it
• Mystic Tattoo when you can spare funds and still handle all of the above
• Resist Nature once hunting post-cap
• Slowly enchant gear past +30 over time, if ever
• Slowly Ensorcell armor over time, if ever
• Sanctify armor very far post-cap when hunting Ascension grounds
• Slowly Ensorcell weapons past T1 over time, if ever

Super Post-Cap Advancement

Far post-cap and still looking for suggestions? Click here!

Congratulations, you've got two or even three caps worth of exp--or more! ...now what?

Ascending Even Further Beyond

When you should start heavily devoting a percentage of exp into Ascension Training Points is a matter of great debate that's beyond the scope of this guide. Within the scope of this guide, however, is the question of what you do with them whenever you've started.

The big long-term goal is the Elite Ascension skill Transcend Destiny, which I'll explain shortly, but it's only for players putting in serious hours; even unlocking the ability to learn it requires that you've spent 150 ATPs on Ascension skills in the Common tier first and then Transcend Destiny ranks themselves cost 10, 20, 30, 40, and up to six more ranks of 50 ATPs each.

So, whether Transcend Destiny is in your future or not, first we need to evaluate where your initial Common tier ATPs should be spent. Here are the options I like:

Common Ascension staples:

• Agility: Reduced RT at various Agidex thresholds, increased maneuver defense every two ranks, increased evade chance, and between +0.6225 DS (full plate with no shield) and +0.33615 DS (full plate with tower shield) in offensive per two ranks. Highly recommended for aelotoi, dark elves, forest gnomes, half-elves, sylvans, erithians, or humans since their natural, unenhanced Agidex is a mere 6 bonus away from the next reduced RT threshold. Split gains between Agility and Dexterity for the most efficient path.
• Blunt/Edged/Polearm/Two-Handed Weapons: +1 AS per rank. Get it if you like numbers going up, but I'd argue that at least the first four ranks of Dexterity and first 10-20 ranks of Stamina Regeneration are actually better for offensive power.
• Combat Maneuvers: +1 AS per two ranks and increased maneuver offense and maneuver defense every rank (but half as much defense increase as Agility, so basically the same rate per two ranks). A solid pickup after sinking 5-50 points each into more important things like your weapon skill, Agidex, and Stamina Regeneration.
• Dexterity: Reduced RT at various Agidex thresholds, increased crit weighting, and increased maneuver defense every two ranks (but half as much increase as Agility). Highly recommended for all paladins this time due to the weighting, but still even more recommended for the races listed under Agility due to the reduced RT threshold. Split gains between Agility and Dexterity for the most efficient path.
• Dodging: Increases evade chance and adds between +0.6225 DS (full plate with no shield) and +0.33615 DS (full plate with tower shield) every rank. Note: that's every one rank, not every two ranks like Agility. Improving Dodging is more one-dimensional than improving Agility, but it's at least worth considering. It's probably more worthwhile for a dwarf or giant paladin than most other races since they take a minor hit to DS from their race-based Agility penalties, but even then, I'd personally rather just take Agility for its more multifaceted benefits even though the DS gains are slower.
• Logic: Get it for exp whenever you get bored of the diminishing returns grind of having trained other Common Ascension skills. Aelotoi, dwarves, erithians, forest gnomes, halflings, and humans might want to pick this up sooner than others; Logic breakpoints increase exp gain at 5 bonus on a node or 7 bonus off a node, so 35 Logic bonus is an especially attractive target as a multiple of both. These races' natural Logic boost brings them to 30 already, so 15 ATPs into Logic gets them to the 35 mark.
• Porter (requires training Strength and/or Physical Fitness first): Encumbrance reduction of 2 pounds per rank. Definitely one to at least to consider for sheer QoL if your paladin isn't a giant, half-krolvin, or dwarf who can carry things for days.
• Shield Use: Another option for increasing DS, this time at 0.433 DS per rank for a tower shield or 0.383 DS per rank for a large shield. The best DS gains you'll get out of Ascension, though it's a pretty one-dimensional benefit to most other things
• Spirit Mana Control: This is here for one reason only: spell infusion with high mana cost spells. Every 2 SMC bonus lets your bonded weapon hold 1 more mana over the baseline of 30. The unenhanced paladin max of 201 SMC bonus holds 130 mana, which is good for 8 charges of Repentance, but putting 13 ATPs into 9 ranks of SMC brings that up to 9 charges, reducing the amount of time you'd have to spend refreshing your bonded spell.
• Spiritual Lores: I can only give general advice here: look into your spells and figure out if any thresholds are close enough to be quick wins from doing some Ascension training. Definitely max out lores with normal exp before even considering this route in Ascension, though.
• Stamina Regeneration: The most universally powerful option. Meeting Agidex thresholds is still more powerful for the races who can do that, but 10-20 ranks of Stamina Regen adds a degree of combat flexibility that will make far more of a difference than the equivalent in AS would.
• Strength: Reduced encumbrance, +1 AS per two ranks, and the first ten ranks combined of this or Physical Fitness are a prerequisite for Porter. If you go the weapon route, it's also +1 AS per two ranks. You also need 31 or more Strength bonus for the CLENCH MUSCLE command to show off your powerful muscles! For most races, I'd put this in the same tier of value for your ATPs as Combat Maneuvers; you'll want it eventually, but many other things are more important. Gnomes and halflings might want Strength a lot sooner than most, though.
• Wisdom: Great for helping spells land in Ascension areas, but unnecessary in non-Ascension capped hunting. If you want it, you'll know you want it.

I'll also give Trading and Influence their own segment since it's complicated. The following assumes that A) you've already maxed Trading in normal exp (if you haven't, do that instead since it's much cheaper exp-wise) and B) you took my advice and tanked Discipline or Intuition, not Influence.

• Half-elves and giants can put a mere 4 ATPs into 4 ranks of Trading to max out silver gains at 28%.
• Sylvans and humans can spend 13 ATPs total across 7 ranks of Trading and 4 ranks of Influence to max out at 28%.
• Aelotoi, burghal gnomes, dark elves, forest gnomes, halflings, and half-krolvin can put a mere 2 ATPs into 2 ranks of Trading to bump up to the next tier of silver gains! ...though the bad news is that that next tier is 27%, not 28%, due to their Influence penalties. Getting them to 28% requires 18 ATPs total across 11 ranks of Trading and 6 ranks of Influence.
• Dwarves are the worst off here, as they'd need 9 ATPs total across 5 ranks of Trading and 4 ranks of Influence to reach 27%. For 28%, it's 41 ATPs total across 15 ranks of Trading and 8 ranks of Influence.
• Elves and erithians reach 28% with no Ascension Trading or Influence. In fact, they can even stop normal exp Trading itself at 201 ranks instead of 202.

Now that we've covered all the Common Ascension skills, let's move on to the big Elite Ascension skill!

Transcend Destiny is the Goal:

After you've spent 150 ATPs in Common, you can begin spending 10 or more ATPs per rank of Transcend Destiny. Each rank acts as though your character is a level higher for the following purposes, where I've highlighted the ones usually relevant to paladins in green and possibly relevant to paladins in blue:

• Ambush Damage - Offense and Defense - Up to 5 Ranks
• Automatic Success of Certain Spells
• Casting Strength
• Evade, Block, and Parry - Offense and Defense
• Force on Force
• Hiding - Rogues Only
• Sheer Fear Resistance
• SMR - Offense and Defense
• SSR - Offense and Defense
• Target Defense
• Two-Weapon Combat
• UC - Tier Up Probability

Let's break these benefits down further since they range from minor to major.

• Increased CS is a big one. Non-Ascension capped hunting and pre-cap hunting doesn't assume that paladins are heavily pushing spell training, so creatures are designed to be pretty easily hittable. Ascension creatures live in a very different world, metaphorically speaking, and you'll want all the CS you can get.
• Improving EBP is a great defensive benefit. Offensively, it's a bit less potent since paladins already have Aura of the Arkati to debuff enemy EBP, but this is still good!
• More FOF defense is helpful since paladins are frontline tanks, but don't have a natural 2x MOC cap to mitigate as much DS pushdown from swarms as warriors and monks do.
• Sheer fear resistance isn't useful to paladins pre-cap because undead need to be at least 14 levels above them to inflict it due to Dauntless--or 17 levels above if they're Voln paladins. Ascension hunting in the Hinterwilds actually has undead that spawn anywhere from level 103 to 119, though, which means that a non-Voln paladin either needs tier 5 sanctified armor or some Transcend Destiny to avoid sheer fear entirely. Even a Voln paladin still needs tier 2 sanctified armor (or a tier 4 sanctified shield) or Transcend Destiny to avoid it. Other Ascension areas' undead aren't quite that high level, though, so I've only highlighted this Transcend Destiny benefit in blue.
• Paladins have plenty of SMR-based offense to capitalize on with Transcend Destiny: their combat maneuvers, shield maneuvers, Excoriate, and 1650 Smite.
• Paladins don't have plenty of SSR-based offense; in fact, they have none. However, the Voln society does have the extremely powerful Symbol of Sleep, so I highlighted this in blue.
• TD is another big benefit in the post-cap world of spell sever, where paladins--and everyone else--will get hit by enemy CS spells regularly. Even though paladins can just beseech away most hard hits, it's better not to get hit if they can help it!
• Better offhand hit rate for Two Weapon Combat against overleveled creatures is another excellent benefit in the Ascension world. Ordinary 202 max TWC ranks allows guaranteed offhand hits against up to level 105 creatures, but they do get much bigger than that now!

Transcend Destiny is a slog after the first few ranks, no doubt, but every rank is a huge payoff. When the time comes, train it and love it!

Gemstones: Diamonds in the Rough

Gemstones, powerful artifacts that might take a while to find, are another key component to post-cap progression. Gemstones generate with randomly selected properties, most of which have tiered upgrades. You can find the Gemstone Property List on the wiki. If you don't like the properties on your Gemstone, you can also reroll it to get new properties within the same category of rarity. Upgrading or rerolling Gemstones has costs in silver and dust, so there are likely to be:

• Gemstones you'll wish to keep and upgrade just the way you found them
• Gemstones you'll wish to keep and reroll until you get a good property combination, then upgrade after you've done that
• Gemstones you'll wish to shatter into dust
• Gemstones you'll wish to sell to or trade with other players willing to pay big for properties that are good for their characters and not so good for yours

Good Common Gemstone Properties for Paladins

Arcane Intensity

You gain 1/2/3/4/5 Bolt AS and 1/1/1/2/3 CS.

The bolt AS is near worthless, but the CS is alright for making some spells land a little more reliably. Other CS-related Gemstone properties are much stronger, though! Fine placeholder property as you look for better ones.

Burning Blood

When you are dealt a rank 2+ critical strike, your blood combusts in the air. Up to 3 nearby enemies must make an SMR test. On a failure, they suffer a Heat flare.

Pretty good reactive AoE flare since many paladins take a lot of hits (though shield paladins take less of them than TWC or two-handed paladins). I wouldn't necessarily recommend keeping this in the long run, but it's a solid placeholder. (Please note that a rank 2 critical isn't the same as a rank 2 wound; almost all rank 2 criticals only deal rank 1 wounds.)

Channeler's Edge

When your warding spells are successful, the endroll is increased by 2/4/6/8/10.

Now we're talking real CS-related benefits! This is basically 333% as powerful an effect as Arcane Intensity for the purposes of Templar's Verdict, Repentance, and Judgment, assuming your spell does land. Arcane Intensity is, however, infinitely more powerful for the purposes of Aura of the Arkati, which only cares about whether the spell connects at all.

Ephemera's Extension

The following spells have 20/40/60/80/100% higher duration: 117, 140, 240, 506, 515, 605, 919, 1608, 1619.

Excellent property if you ever use Wall of Force and even better still if you also use Faith's Shield.

Focused Storm

You gain a Focused Storm effect for each kill. Stacks up to 3 times. When your warding spells are successful, the endroll is increased by 2/3/4 per Focused Storm effect. Focused Storm falls off after 30 seconds without making a kill.

120% as good as even Channeler's Edge since now the phantom endrolls go to +12 instead of +10. If you're looking to boost your magical power (which not every paladin is!) because you cast Judgment or Repentance a lot, this is a top tier among Common Gemstone properties.

Journeyman Defender

You gain 1/2/3/4/5 Defensive Strength and 1/1/1/2/3 Target Defense.

Straightforward defense boosts. I don't think paladins need much more in the way of defense, but if you want to keep tiptoeing toward invulnerability, this is one option!

Journeyman Tactician

You gain 1/2/3/4/5 AS and 1/1/1/2/3 SMR Offense with Combat Maneuvers.

Straightforward physical offense boost. It's not going to knock your socks off, but it's a good, simple staple that virtually every paladin will love.

Mephitic Brume

When you are attacked by a creature, you have a 3/6/9/12/15% chance to release a noxious cloud. Up to three enemies must make an SMR test. On a failure, they become Dazed and Disengaged.

Quite useful for buying time with crowd control. There's not much else to say, but it's a good property for survival! Goes particularly well with Defense of the Faithful's Beacon of Courage effect in a group setting. Be sure it fits with your RP, though, since it's sort of gross.

Stamina Prism

Your passive stamina regeneration is increased by 5/10/15/20/25%.

This might be the highest ceiling Gemstone property of all. You'll need to stack some additional stamina regen from enhancives or Ascension to make it do truly busted things, but if you do it, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is recovering 50-90% of your stamina every minute so you can blast away wildly with Chastise, Spin Attack, and weapon techniques while still feeling like you never run out of stamina.

In other words, you can think of Stamina Prism as indirect means to reduce your RT by freeing you to used reduced RT abilities more often. Strike like lightning!

Storm of Rage

You gain 1/2/3/4/5% damage factor for each kill. Stacks up to 3 times. This effect falls off after 30 seconds without making a kill. This applies to all DFs, including bolts.

Another top tier Common Gemstone property. In fact, it's probably the top tier Common Gemstone property because it's great for all paladins universally. No enhancives or Ascension needed like Stamina Prism, no specific build needed like its CS counterpart Focused Storm. Just destroy everything in sight with incredible force by virtue of having Storm of Rage.

This property is amazing for every melee build of every profession, but even slightly more for paladins because damage factor buffs stack multiplicatively. Let's say you have 45 Summoning lore so your Arm of the Arkati spell grants +16% DF, then you get a maxed Storm of the Rage for +15% DF. Your resulting DF isn't 131%, but rather 100% * 115% * 116%* = 133.4%.

Taste of Brutality

Your attacks gain 3/4/4/4/5% Damage Factor and attacks against you gain 3/4/4/4/5% Damage Factor.

Mini-Storm of Rage, but even mini-Storm of Rage is still amazing. Again, these buffs also stack multiplicatively, so get more of them! As for the downside of attacks hitting you harder, it's not that big a deal when you're a paladin protected by plate and redux.

Twist the Knife

You gain 2/4/6/8/10% damage factor against targets afflicted with major bleed. When your warding spells are successful, the endroll is increased by 2/4/6/8/10 if the target is afflicted with major bleed.

If you use swords, this is reasonable in tandem with the Slashing Strikes buff from Flurry active. The main problem here, despite being another DF booster, is that paladins don't have a way to force Major Bleed to happen on demand like some other professions. It's not exactly excellent here, but still a decent placeholder to use for a while if you find it.

Good Rare Gemstone Properties for Paladins

Anointed Defender

You gain 6/7/8/9/10 Defensive Strength and 3/4/4/5/6 Target Defense.

I definitely wouldn't recommend this taking one of your three rare slots as your endgame unless you're completely set on being as close to invulnerable as possible, but if you happen to get one, it's a solid placeholder to use for a while.

Blood Boil

Your attacks have a standard flare chance to boil the targets blood, dealing 20% of target's current health, up to 100, per tick for 5 ticks (2 second interval).  This effect cannot occur on the same target more than once per minute.  Activate to cause this ability to trigger on your next attack.  Activation Cooldown: 1 min.

A very high quality Gemstone property that can pile on tons of damage, especially in boss battle scenarios or against particularly high health creatures. Unlike normal flares, Blood Boil flares can't outright kill on their own, nor can you land several of them on the same creature. Still, the sheer health damage will frequently exceed more conventional flares unless the creature is already very weakened.

Chameleon Shroud

You have a 1/2/3/4/5% chance to become hidden after attacking an opponent.

With no pun intended, this is sneaky good--but you do have to train Ambush to get full value. It doesn't require Stalking and Hiding training and simply auto-hides you, which is defensively useful, but the real benefit is that you can attack afterward from hiding with stance pushdown and crit weighting against the foe.

However, the even more real benefit is that the game might do this on its own if you're using an assault technique or AoE technique. For example, you might get auto-hidden after the first attack of your assault, then the second automated attack of your assault will have the pushdown and weighting.

An extremely powerful effect if you're willing to spend the exp on Ambush for it.

Channeler's Epiphany

When your warding spells are successful, the endroll is increased by 2/4/6/8/10. Your warding spells have a standard flare chance to double this bonus.

This is the rare version of Channeler's Edge. On average, it works out to a boost of 12 instead of 10. You can stack them, so it's still better than Greater Arcane Intensity (coming up shortly in this list), but I'd only recommend it as a long-term rare if you intend to be a very, very magic-heavy paladin.

Defensive Duelist

When an enemy directs a melee attack at you, you have a 1/2/3/4/5% chance to intercept the attack and take no damage. The enemy must make an SMR test. On a failure, the enemy is disarmed, if applicable, and suffers roundtime.

A universal 5% chance to avoid and (to an extent) counter AS attacks is pretty solid stuff. If you're bent on nigh-invulnerability or if you want to somewhat counteract the DS disadvantages of two-handed paladins or TWC paladins, go for it. For everybody else, players attack much more often than they get attacked, so a defensive benefit would need to be extraordinary to close that gap compared to an offensive benefit.

Grace of the Battlecaster

Your spell hindrance from armor is reduced by 1/2/3/4/5%.

Very subjectively powerful effect depending on how much you hate spell hindrance and would like to get it from 3% to 0%. I probably don't even have to say anything more; most people read that effect and either instantly fall in love or instantly write it off as pointless.

Greater Arcane Intensity

You gain 6/7/8/9/10 Bolt AS and 3/4/4/5/6 CS.

A reasonable placeholder like its common counterpart. These are much better for bolting wizards than paladins; paladins generally only need a 101 endroll, as their spells don't scale particularly well (if at all in some cases) with higher endrolls.

Infusion of [Damage Type]

You gain a standard chance to flare with [damage type] after attacking an enemy.

Top notch rare Gemstone property that's universally powerful for every profession. Like I said toward the start of the guide, flares are high variance, but the more of them you can chain together, the more likely it is that one of them will get the job done. Simple, clean power.

Lost Arcanum

1 additional spell on you is protected from Spell Sever.

Pretty good option, albeit a bit mechanically dull. I wouldn't exactly recommend it as the endgame for any paladin, but it's always at least as good as the third best spell that you'd want it in spell sever that you normally can't have. Very good placeholder.

Master Tactician

You gain 6/7/8/9/10 AS and 3/4/4/5/6 SMR Offense with Combat Maneuvers.

Journeyman Tactician, but twice as powerful. Needless to say, that's excellent in a vacuum!

However, it's not in a vacuum. Part of what makes Journeyman Tactician such an easy recommendation is that you can have up to seven commons for your endgame list (or even as many as ten commons if you somehow decided that you were okay with having no rares or legendaries). You can only have up to three rares, so make sure that Master Tactician is among your top three (or at least close) before committing to using it long-term.

If you're a TWC paladin, I think this is a pretty slam dunk pick because it does boost both weapons. If you're not a TWC paladin, then it's still good, but see Relentless just below for an alternative...

Relentless

When an attack of yours would otherwise miss, it has a 5/10/15/20/25% chance to trigger again. The triggered attack can hit or miss as normal.

Another stellar rare and a perfect example of why I was expressing caution about leaping to Master Tactician. 10 AS is great, but 25% retry chance on a missed attack is better on a shield paladin or two-handed paladin. Since they're attacking half as often as a TWC paladin, a missed attack is twice as punishing.

Looking at it another way, turning a miss into a hit is infinitely better than turning a hit into a fractionally stronger hit. That won't always happen, as sometimes the creature will dodge the second try too, but the upside is too great to ignore when it works.

All that said, Relentless isn't in a vacuum any more than Master Tactician is. If you regularly hunt with a warrior using Carn's Cry or a cleric casting Censure, for example, then you're already not missing much against immobilized creatures. Even if you hunt solo, there's also the question of how drastically your own Aura of the Arkati reduces enemy EBP depending on your lore training. Consider everything in its context!

Serendipitous Hex

Your offensive spells have a standard flare rate chance to cast an additional disabler spell, including Bind, Blind, Cold Snap, Confusion, Limb Disruption, Mystic Impedance, Power Sink, Sleep, Sounds, or Vertigo. This chance is reduced for each tier below 3.

I'm only mentioning this to say that, no, unfortunately, it doesn't trigger from infused spells. If it did, I'd call this no contest the best rare property for paladins. It also doesn't trigger from AoE spells like Judgment. If it did that, I'd call it no contest the best rare property for particularly magic-heavy paladins.

Still, caveats aside, Serendipitous Hex remains extremely powerful for paladins if they actually cast single-target spells like Web or Repentance on their own without spell infusion. That's an enormous if, though. If you're among the ones who do, then here's a strong contender for your endgame.

Spirit Wellspring

You instantly regain all of your spirit. Cooldown: 60/40/20 mins.

If you cast Divine Word even decently often or if you just plain hate long recovery time after death (especially looking at you low spirit recovery elves and dark elves!), I really like Spirit Wellspring as a toolkit option.

I can't recommend it for your endgame combat setup, but just having this around to equip when needed is cool and you don't even have to upgrade it to get most of its value, nor do you have to luck into finding a Spirit Wellspring with a good common. Just having this rare already makes the Gemstone perfectly useable!

(Note that you can't unequip a Gemstone while it's still on cooldown, so upgrading can still be worth it just to reduce that cooldown and allow swapping back to your other combat-oriented Gemstones more quickly.)

Strong Back

Your encumbrance thresholds are increased by 15/20/25/30/35 pounds.

It's definitely not flashy, but small race paladins or anyone who regularly uses Armor Support as their armor specialization of choice might like this. I'd personally consider it a good placeholder, at absolute least.

Tethered Strike

Your offensive spells and weapon attacks no longer trigger creatures' innate abilities to outright avoid incoming attacks, such as Ithzir vanishing, warg avoidance, and myling fading.

From reading the description of what it does, you already know based on what you hunt whether this is a slam dunk to use or a slam dunk to sell to someone else for whom it's a slam dunk to use!

Good Legendary Gemstone Properties for Paladins

Mirror Image

When you attack a creature, you have a 10% chance to create a mirror image of yourself that will replicate the attack.  When you are attacked by a creature, there is a 10% chance that a mirror image of you will appear and take the blow instead.

Easily the most powerful legendary property for paladins of just about any kind. It's a 10% double attack chance on every attack! Do I even have to say more?

If you're playing the long game, I say get Mirror Image at all costs. However, if you happen to find a different legendary that's also solid for paladins and don't want to let perfect be the enemy of good, below are some other reasonable options...

Stolen Power

Your offensive spells have a standard flare chance to trigger an SMR roll against the target. On a failure, the target is inflicted with a random attack spell that cannot be warded off. Spells include Blood Burst, Bone Shatter, Dark Catalyst, Disintegrate, Divine Fury, Immolation, Pain, Repentance, Thought Lash, and Wither. This chance is reduced for each tier below 3.

If Serendipitous Hex already sounded good to you, here's the far superior version of it! The same caveats do apply, though: no triggers from infused spells or AoE spells. If this is strong for you, it'll be incredible for you. It's just that there are many paladins for whom it's basically pointless.

Thorns of [Damage Type]

You gain a standard chance to flare with [damage type] when an enemy targets you with an attack, whether or not the attack hits.

Extraordinary general purpose power for any solo hunter (of any profession) or a group hunting paladin who casts Defense of the Faithful to draw all attacks toward them, maximizing the flare value. Randomly killing enemy creatures by standing in the same general vicinity is pretty good!

Leafi's Wild Dream Scenario Gemstone Endgames

By design, getting the exact perfect setup is mathematically almost impossible since Gemstones are meant to keep people going for years to come. Still, it's fun to dream, so here's my ideal layout for a traditional unarmed combat monk in descending order of priority.

Note that you can have at most one legendary property and three rare properties. Common properties are a bit different; you can technically have up to ten, but each common beyond three would be competing with a rare instead and going up to ten common properties would also exclude you from having a legendary.

Polearm or Two-Handed Weapon Paladin

1. Mirror Image (the legendary)
2. Relentless (rare 1 of 3)
3. Storm of Rage (common 1 of 7)
4. Stamina Prism (common 2 of 7)
5. Chameleon Shroud (rare 2 of 3)
6. Infusion of Lightning (or other damage type; rare 3 of 3, but Defensive Duelist, Grace of the Battlecaster, and Master Tactician are similarly powerful for two-handed weapons; would definitely take Infusion for polearms due to Radial Sweep, however)
7. Ephemera's Extension (common 3 of 7)
8. Taste of Brutality (common 4 of 7)
9. Journeyman Tactician (common 5 of 7)
10. Burning Blood (common 6 of 7)
11. Focused Storm (common 7 of 7, but Channeler's Edge is in the ballpark)

Shield Paladin

1. Mirror Image (the legendary)
2. Infusion of Lightning (or other damage type; rare 1 of 3)
3. Relentless (rare 2 of 3)
4. Storm of Rage (common 1 of 7)
5. Stamina Prism (common 2 of 7)
6. Blood Boil (rare 3 of 3)
7. Taste of Brutality (common 3 of 7)
8. Journeyman Tactician (common 4 of 7)
9. Ephemera's Extension (common 5 of 7)
10. Journeyman Tactician (common 6 of 7)
11. Focused Storm (common 7 of 7, but Channeler's Edge is in the ballpark)

Two Weapon Combat Paladin

1. Mirror Image (the legendary)
2. Storm of Rage (common 1 of 7)
3. Infusion of Lightning (or other damage type; rare 1 of 3)
4. Blood Boil (rare 2 of 3)
5. Stamina Prism (common 2 of 7)
6. Master Tactician (rare 3 of 3, but Grace of the Battlecaster and Relentless are similarly powerful)
7. Taste of Brutality (common 3 of 7)
8. Journeyman Tactician (common 4 of 7)
9. Ephemera's Extension (common 5 of 7)
10. Burning Blood (common 6 of 7)
11. Focused Storm (common 7 of 7, but Channeler's Edge is in the ballpark)

Odds and Ends

Can I interest you in the weirdest inner workings of my mind re: paladins, plus other miscellaneous topics not yet covered? If so, click here!

There's only one topic in this section for now, but it's a relevant one since paladins have some of the game's best group spells.

Hunting Partner Tactics and Synergy

Who do paladins team up well with for group hunts and why? Let's explore!

• Warriors have Carn's Cry, an AoE immobilizer. Between that and paladins' Aura of the Arkati, virtually everything will roll over to the duo's overwhelming offense. Warriors also get immense benefit from paladins' Arm of the Arkati and potentially any of the three paladin auras, depending on what the warrior is doing. Conversely, paladins will enjoy an AS boost from Seanette's Shout or perhaps Coup de Grace.
• Rogues have Subdue as a single-target immobilizer and Zealot can make their ambushes that much more potent. It's not overwhelming synergy, but it exists.
• Monks offer Mind Over Body or Focus Barrier, either of which paladins put to great use. In turn, the Fervor aura or Judgment knockdown really power up monks.
• A paladin duo doesn't have any major synergy, as most duos of the same profession don't, but using two auras will at least be a notable power boost almost no matter which two auras or on which two builds. Even in the worst case where one paladin isn't using a shield and the other is using Divine Shield, they do still both get benefits!
• Rangers have Moonbeam as a single-target immobilizer, among various other disablers. On the paladin's end, melee rangers should love Zealot and Arm of the Arkati from their partner, along with armored casting or armored fluidity. Archer rangers, however, get very little from paladins other than perhaps Fervor.
• Bards pair extremely well with paladins since Song of Tonis is the game's best group buff and has extreme synergy with Arm of the Arkati and Zealot or Fervor. Faster attacks that are also more powerful is all the right stuff.
• Wizards possess myriad AoE abilities, whether disablers or attacks, that paladins can follow up on. Fervor is particularly useful to caster wizards out of the three auras while warmages absolutely revel in Zealot elevating their AS to more conventional levels.
• Empaths are near-universally welcome hunting partners for all professions with their healing, but paladins appreciate them even more than most and the feeling is mutual. Paladins can use Defense of the Faithful's Beacon of Courage effect to keep the empath safe and tank all the hits, which the empath can then heal off. Non-shield paladins will appreciate the healing even more because they take more hits, but should be ready to send mana to the empath to make up for it. Warpaths will really love Zealot or Fervor among the auras.
• Clerics have Censure as an AoE immobilizer, Warding Sphere as a group TD buff (and DS), and Benediction as a group AS buff, so paladins get strong offensive and defensive boosts from the cleric. However, caster clerics very basically nothing from the paladin besides Fervor. War clerics love Zealot and Arm of the Arkati, however!
• Sorcerers casting Major Elemental Wave or Implosion after a paladin's Judgment is a pretty strong combo, albeit not amazing. The two professions otherwise don't add too much to each other as partners, but Fervor is at least something.

Nearly regardless of team composition, your paladin training the Side by Side combat maneuver (which also requires two ranks of Combat Movement) can be helpful to groups. If there are at least two shield users, the Phalanx shield maneuver also helps. I mentioned Defense of the Faithful's Beacon of Courage effect for empaths because it's at its best by far there, but nothing stops paladins from acting as the tank for other professions too.