Paladin is Kinda Weak Past 3rd Floor

[Trashbag]

As I've played through this game, I've begun to notice how each class is overpowered in their own unique way.

You got the Priest, who is actually a beast at killing hefty enemies and has a really good primary that balances splash, range and damage.

You got the Warlock, who has amazing synergies and excellent damage and area denial potential with every one of his attacks, plus health an mana regen on a melee that even has a little extra range on it to make engagements just a little safer.

You got the Ranger, with nearly infinite range and piercing power, who can freely spam down a corridor with (almost) reckless abandon and freely engage anything at a range of his choosing.

You got the Thief, who...I haven't tried much. But the fact he basically has the strongest equip in the game as an early passive is pretty baller.

The Sorcerer is the unquestionable champion of CC, with a primary that may not be a true splash, but is almost always guaranteed to hit more than one target with every shot.

...I haven't unlocked the Wizard yet. I'm working on it.

And then you have the Paladin. The tank class. Although he still can't take that many hits, he can completely block any ranged physical damage with his shield, allowing him to approach without fear...for the most part. He also has the only unconditional hard heal in the game, giving him the best sustain out of any class.

However, his strengths start to fall apart when you hit the 3rd zone of the game. You see, the phantoms that you fight now - as well as skeleton mages - don't deal PHYSICAL ranged damage. They're magical. So your shield doesn't do anything against it. On top of the new dashing Knight units, the Paladin really starts to lose his advantages. He could technically cheese the whole thing by simply waiting out and healing up any damage you take, but you'll still be healing a lot of damage trying to approach these guys. It's easy to read the telegraphs of just one and move around it accordingly, but when you have two or three or five or ten...you start to just feel like a guy with a melee attack.

And that lack of range with literally ANY of your skills is only further frustrated by enemies holed up in fortresses popping shots at you, totems that fire radial blasts of energy that you either have to hit and run for about half a minute or just tank through to deal with, and phantoms that will fly off over gaps and pop off at you until you can coax them back onto solid ground. And of course the Priests that inflict a slow on you - more manageable by comparison, but still aggravating.

As strong as that heal can be, it is HEAVILY taxed in this stage - particularly if you're playing solo, and it does feel like the Paladin could use something...more.

One idea could be to give the Paladin a little extra to his Primary Attack. Like a slashing wave that travels a short distance and deals 50% of the Paladin's base damage. This could give the Paladin some form of ranged tool - not enough to solve all these issues, but enough to make approaches less risky if the player is willing to deal reduced damage.

Another option I might reccommend is to take his shield and make it more consistent. 25% chance to block 5 damage, or even 15, isn't great. If a grub is hitting me for 8 damage 4 times, that's 32 damage. So the lowest class of enemy is still hitting me for 17 damage...except it only blocked 8. 24 damage. And that's a tier 3 shield.

Instead, what about a constant damage reduction, like a +5 armor bonus on all attacks - melee, magical, and otherwise - that hit the Paladin head-on. Increase by another 5 for every additional tier. Now that might be worth something. Or heck, maybe just a complete block for magical ranged attacks too. Or at least maybe a hefty damage reduction would be nice.

One last alternative suggestion is maybe to provide some increased resistances on his skills like his dash or whirlwind attack to make them safer approach or escape options.

Idunno. Maybe I just shouldn't be playing Paladin solo. Maybe he's god-tier in multiplayer, when he has other classes to cover his weaknesses. But I do think he should have some more tools to keep him strong in the mid to late-game, when his old ones start to lose their potency.

[Muffinslop]

Have you tried upgrading your resistance at the magic shop?

[phenir]

Lay on hands provides you with the same chance to block magic as the shield passive does for physical. Pop it if you see magic damage coming. Don't stop moving, keep strafing and you'll get hit a lot less. Also those "chance to block X damage" things are before mitigation. For non ghosts, lure them around a corner. Instead of charging directly at enemies, charge to the side of them so you don't get shot in the face. The damage on charge is pretty bad anyway.

Originally posted by Muffinatorz:

Have you tried upgrading your resistance at the magic shop?

He said he hasn't unlocked wizard so he can't. On that subject, keep an eye out for weird walls in act 3 so you can find the wizard and unlock the magic shop. You can upgrade your resistance there.

[Ghaleon]

I'm still new to this game myself and only got to the 4th boss so far which I th ink I can beat but keep getting 1hit ko'd by cheese spawning bookcases (you'll understand later probably). That said I don't agree. Thing is paladin is certainly weak in the 3rd portion of the dungeon (armory), but that's just a particular area t hat's rough for him. The ghosts are a pain for sure, mostly because they can float in and out of walls out of your attack range too. The dashing knight enemies though actually prove no problem for me so far, I find the liches to be more annoying si nce I can't block their projectiles, and they home.

Thing is I find being a paladin in the armory, in order to really charge large groups of enemies including ghosts and liches and dashers, you want your combo meter up so you can circle strafe while slalshing away, be sure to get a rank of whilrwind asap for this, because gettting that combo meter up is really easy with a single whirlwind into large g roups. Then I just kinda zig-zag dash towards all the threats at the edges of the mob (ghosts and liches), mostly ignoring everything else, t hen once t hey are gone, I just mow the great mob down. To me the biggest issue with my Paladin is sometimes you get stuck for like half a second, and as a class charging right thru mobs, sometimes that can bring you from full health to instadeath before you even know it. I don't really understand it personally. In this game it seems like you can run thru enemies, like they have no collision, but sometimes I just stop dead in my tracks on them and practically explode into bloody gibs lol.

[Trashbag]

Originally posted by Ghaleon:

I'm still new to this game myself and only got to the 4th boss so far which I th ink I can beat but keep getting 1hit ko'd by cheese spawning bookcases (you'll understand later probably). That said I don't agree. Thing is paladin is certainly weak in the 3rd portion of the dungeon (armory), but that's just a particular area t hat's rough for him. The ghosts are a pain for sure, mostly because they can float in and out of walls out of your attack range too. The dashing knight enemies though actually prove no problem for me so far, I find the liches to be more annoying si nce I can't block their projectiles, and they home.

Thing is I find being a paladin in the armory, in order to really charge large groups of enemies including ghosts and liches and dashers, you want your combo meter up so you can circle strafe while slalshing away, be sure to get a rank of whilrwind asap for this, because gettting that combo meter up is really easy with a single whirlwind into large g roups. Then I just kinda zig-zag dash towards all the threats at the edges of the mob (ghosts and liches), mostly ignoring everything else, t hen once t hey are gone, I just mow the great mob down. To me the biggest issue with my Paladin is sometimes you get stuck for like half a second, and as a class charging right thru mobs, sometimes that can bring you from full health to instadeath before you even know it. I don't really understand it personally. In this game it seems like you can run thru enemies, like they have no collision, but sometimes I just stop dead in my tracks on them and practically explode into bloody gibs lol.

Well knowing the format of the original Hammerwatch, I had assumed the use of magical projectiles would only get worse from here. But if all it takes is getting past the Armory, then I can probably manage that. I have gotten to the third floor several times, but couldn't quite clinch it. Usually the excess of liches screws me over.

The Phantom Rogues in particular have become a pain for me. I know all about circle strafing - if I hadn't, I probably wouldn't have gotten this far, but having to approach an enemy that can drop almost half your life bar in one shot at close range is...nerve wracking, to say the least. He luckily doesn't seem fond of tossing one out when I'm in his face, so I've never actually received the full spread, but I always get a tick or two if I don't jump right on them.

[Trashbag]

Originally posted by phenir:

Lay on hands provides you with the same chance to block magic as the shield passive does for physical. Pop it if you see magic damage coming. Don't stop moving, keep strafing and you'll get hit a lot less. Also those "chance to block X damage" things are before mitigation. For non ghosts, lure them around a corner. Instead of charging directly at enemies, charge to the side of them so you don't get shot in the face. The damage on charge is pretty bad anyway.

Originally posted by Muffinatorz:

Have you tried upgrading your resistance at the magic shop?

He said he hasn't unlocked wizard so he can't. On that subject, keep an eye out for weird walls in act 3 so you can find the wizard and unlock the magic shop. You can upgrade your resistance there.

I do understand the mechanic of Lay on Hands. The trouble is I don't see the value of using it as a defensive tool, as it seems practically useless, especially at its first tier. 25% chance means roughly four hits. If I'm taking four hits in the duration of time that the Lay on Hands resistance lasts, I'm probably doing something wrong. And at its current tier, 5 damage even flat is a pretty negligible reduction.

Now if it were 100% chance or if it were a more substantial number, I think it might be worth considering. But even as an offhand buff while healing, I don't really feel it's worth considering.

I do appreciate the advice about strafing, but after having just come off of DUSK, I am quite familiar with circle strafing and kiting. It's really the Liches that mess me up. And occadionally not moving perpendicular enough to a charging Knight. And trying to dislodge those warbanner fellows.

[Ghaleon]

So I just completed the game solo (not NG+ or whatever though).

Like I said, chamber 3 is just a more difficult than it should be zone for the Paladin IMO. Chamber 4 looks like it might be worse with all the magical wispy balls and stuff floating around, but you can actually shield-block their balls even though they look just like the lich ones. Just be careful how they all self-destruct when they die for a nasty fire debuff. Generally you can run right thru them whilile killing them without fear of being burned, but if you stop or go back in the opposite directly at the wrong time you'll probably be nailed.

Zone 5 hard to say. Didn't make it as a paladin yet. That said the difficulty gap between 4 and 5 was real. It seemed like it had a lot of lich-type casters who would ignore your shield though... I didn't make it there AS a paladin yet (almost, got book-cased to death.. I've learned to just camp the room with th e book for that part of the boss.

Zone 6's boss on the other hand. I killed it first try (like the 5th zone's boss), but as you get later on in the fight you're pushed down constantly I can't imagine being a paladin is good for that boss either.

[Trashbag]

Originally posted by Ghaleon:

So I just completed the game solo (not NG+ or whatever though).

Like I said, chamber 3 is just a more difficult than it should be zone for the Paladin IMO. Chamber 4 looks like it might be worse with all the magical wispy balls and stuff floating around, but you can actually shield-block their balls even though they look just like the lich ones. Just be careful how they all self-destruct when they die for a nasty fire debuff. Generally you can run right thru them whilile killing them without fear of being burned, but if you stop or go back in the opposite directly at the wrong time you'll probably be nailed.

Zone 5 hard to say. Didn't make it as a paladin yet. That said the difficulty gap between 4 and 5 was real. It seemed like it had a lot of lich-type casters who would ignore your shield though... I didn't make it there AS a paladin yet (almost, got book-cased to death.. I've learned to just camp the room with th e book for that part of the boss.

Zone 6's boss on the other hand. I killed it first try (like the 5th zone's boss), but as you get later on in the fight you're pushed down constantly I can't imagine being a paladin is good for that boss either.

Thanks for the heads-up. I'll keep these in mind moving forward.

[Ghaleon]

just beat ng with paladin (my 2nd full clear). I had boots that made me immune to movement restriction, making the fight much less difficult (didn't even use a single potion!). I still wanna know what it would be like without them!

[phenir]

You'd be using charge a lot more

[KerZerBer]

as someone who has gotten to NG+5(6?) with paladin, and even gotten a couple of those solo, I disagree. This game is a mixture of skill and stats and it sounds like you are still in the process of upgrading your town. Here's my tips:
Beat zone bosses with other classes for passive bonuses to all your characters.
The warlock grants a flat magic resistance bonus.
Save up your ore for upgrading the blacksmith and shopkeeper.
Try unlocking the fountain for debuffs to increase the exp/gold yield.
Leveling up your guild also grants passive stars for skill upgrades as well. Try to complete the easy ones like drink potions, heal, etc.

If you really want more assistance, I am more than happy to host so you can utilize my town and do a gold/ore run if that would interest you. Just send on an ol' friend request.

[Gundies]

My friend and I found paladin to be an excellent class. He cleared the game with it first and also cleared every NG we've done with paladin first.

Honestly the only 2 classes we don't like are sorc and wizard as they're lower armor/hp and lack of focus fire makes them bad against bosses. Eyeball and dragon in particular are painful if we're both running those classes.

[phenir]

Wizard is god at ng+2+ once you have crimson death drink. His ground fire stacks with each application and high level meteor can hit bosses 3 times if you position correctly. He'll never die either because of the constant life leech. Sorc does have some single target issues but he can spam comet for ages for good damage and if you manage to glitch frost orb inside the boss it'll rip him to shreds. For this reason, Sorc is the second best dragon killer since he can stick orb in a way that makes it bounce between the dragon's body and head and spam frost nova to keep 50% dr up and do tons of additional damage. Wiz is best dragon killer since you can easily hit the dragon with all meteors by standing under him and he'll take all that ground fire damage from it.