Sun Paladins in 1.25: a vaguely comprehensive guide

[Effigy]

Good stuff!

[IejirIsk]

I find myself kinda curious though, what you think of vile life for pallys.

[0player]

Fast As Lightning description is unclear, it needs just 3 tile straight run.

[grobblewobble]

Prodigies
Windblade: This is for dual weapon wielders. You aren't one, but if you can put up with using a weapon set you're not skilled with for mooks or maybe spending a long time mis-activating the Ruined Dungeon orbs to qualify I think the skill itself is weapon agnostic and it'd be pretty good for a shield build. It's not enough better than FotB to justify the effort to qualify for two handed builds.

You can deal 50k damage with two garbage daggers against a training dummy within 10 seconds and it will count (at least in 1.25 that certainly worked). Windblade is the best prodigy for sun paladins imo.

The guide needs an update for 1.3. Ogres change everything. Now you no longer need to choose between shield and two-handed weapons. Ogres can have the best of both. Which I think easily makes them the best sun paladins.

[Atarlost]

Prodigies
Windblade: This is for dual weapon wielders. You aren't one, but if you can put up with using a weapon set you're not skilled with for mooks or maybe spending a long time mis-activating the Ruined Dungeon orbs to qualify I think the skill itself is weapon agnostic and it'd be pretty good for a shield build. It's not enough better than FotB to justify the effort to qualify for two handed builds.

You can deal 50k damage with two garbage daggers against a training dummy within 10 seconds and it will count (at least in 1.25 that certainly worked). Windblade is the best prodigy for sun paladins imo.

The guide needs an update for 1.3. Ogres change everything. Now you no longer need to choose between shield and two-handed weapons. Ogres can have the best of both. Which I think easily makes them the best sun paladins.

There will not be a 1.3 update for a while. I played an awful lot of paladins while writing the guide and am playing ToME less in general now and don't have ogres unlocked anyways. I doubt it will do as well as you think, though. There aren't enough category points to really unlock both trees or enough class points to invest in both. You may see something like investing a bit to get cleave and death dance, but I don't expect them to displace shalore for this class unless they have a crit rate booster. Not being limited to short staves would make the shield and staff build viable, but otherwise I don't expect them to really change anything.

[grobblewobble]

There aren't enough category points to really unlock both trees or enough class points to invest in both.
You may see something like investing a bit to get cleave and death dance, but I don't expect them to displace shalore for this class unless they have a crit rate booster. Not being limited to short staves would make the shield and staff build viable, but otherwise I don't expect them to really change anything.

I am playing one now and having a great time - Normal RL, just went East.

It is a very different build. I rely less on magical damage trees and play him more as a pure melee tank. Taking points out of fancy stuff like weapon of light frees up class points, so that you have enough to go by.

The best thing about Ogre Sun Paladin is that you can use Counterstrike and Assault while wielding a two-hander (like, say, legacy of the Naloren). This lets you outdamage bulwarks and berserkers. And the tools that a paladin has available for surviving (retribution, second life, chants) are better than unstoppable (at least they are on Normal). Having a huge pool of HP helps too.

Combined, that makes this the ultimate brute melee tank, lots of fun. You hit like a truck and you're incredibly tough. Maybe I will write a new guide.

[Atarlost]

Combined, that makes this the ultimate brute melee tank, lots of fun. You hit like a truck and you're incredibly tough. Maybe I will write a new guide.

I don't think anything big except the ogre has changed so you might want to write a guide to ogres in general. If most of what you're getting is from the bigger weapon it's not very class specific.

[OrionJAnderson]

I won Normal/Roguelike with an Ogre Paladin. It was embarassingly easy, although that may be because of 3 extremely lucky drops. I got Rune of Reflection and Tirakai's Maul very early, and a rare shield with Cosmic and Patience somewhere around dreadfell. Anyway, Ogre Paladin does have class specific interactions, in that it allows you to use the Crusader and Guardian trees simultaneously, which is amazing. Honestly, though, it is so good that you shouldn't need a guide. It's intensive on both class and especially generic points -- you will leave a lot of important skills at 2 points or so -- but it's so damn strong the decisions aren't painful. It's also rough on your energy economy because of the proliferation of sustains.

For class talents, you need to quickly get

Sun: 3/2/5/0
Celestial Combat 1/5/0/0
Guardian 1/1/5/1
Crusader 1/1/1/4
Shield Offense 1/1/0/0

Longer term, you need

Crusader 5/1/5/4 unless you're using an elemental weapon
Shield Offense 1/4/1/1

Stat Priority is Strength->Magic-Cunning if Rune of Reflection or Tirakai, Strength-Cunning-Magic otherwise. If you don't have Combat Techniques you will need a few points in Dex.

That's the core. You can sprinkle excess points into weapon of light, shield of light, brandish, second life, 2-handed assault 1/1/0/0, or unlock combat techniques and shoot for something like 2/1/3/5. For generics, Ogre is 1/5/1/5, which leaves very little room for your magic. Chants is an 5/0/0/0 or 5/1/0/0 because it's not worth the skill points to use an alternate chant. Light can be left at 1/1/3/3 or so for a long time, though I recommend at least 2/1/5/5 by the end. Pray for celestial escorts. On normal, it's reasonable to take 2 offense prodigies. Irresistable Sun is strong and flavorful. You will get lots of individual hits, so both arcane might and flexible combat work.

Inscriptions are super flexible. Between Ogre skills and Bathe in Light, you can alternate one shield rune with Barrier for essentially perma-shield. Many statuses will be blocked by your enormous saves. You need a mental wild for silence and confuse, especially because your mental save may be very weak before you raise cunning, if you don't have the right items. You need an escape, probably teleport. Beyond that you can do almost whatever you want. I ran Reflection/Wild/Teleport early and ended Reflection/Wild/Wild/Phase Door/Teleport/Movement. But I wish I'd gone combat tech. instead of the last movement infusion, and I basically never used Phase Door. I didn't have a heroism because I never found a good one, but I really didn't miss it. I *did* have a big problem with stealth and blindness; I have to carry the withering orbs with me all game. That's part of why I like combat techniques -- I was using a ring for blinding speed and an amulet for blind fight, so it would have saved 2 item slots. Anyway, if you *don't* have perfect strikes or multiple points into piercing sight (I had 1, but it seemed to do nothing) then I would actually recommend trying a vision rune.

[Atarlost]

I'm still very much not sold on the oversized weapon build. They go through stamina very quickly and don't have the class points to spare on improved stamina regen. Normal paladins have more points to spend on defense, aren't sabotaging their spellpower based defenses, and while I don't myself play at higher levels those who do claim the worst part is the tier 2 dungeons, which an ogre won't have both crusader and guardian unlocked for, but will still be distorting their point distribution in preparation for it.

[OrionJAnderson]

Go through stamina quickly? How? I basically didn't use stamina at all.

[Atarlost]

Go through stamina quickly? How? I basically didn't use stamina at all.

Everything in the shield offense and two handed assault trees except riposte multiplied by the fatigue modifiers from heavy armor and shields.

[OrionJAnderson]

Okay, but why are you even using that stuff? Assault and Stunning Blow are sometimes worth using on bosses. The rest are irrelevant. With Flash of the Blade, Brandish, Absorbing Strike, Crusade, and Wave of Power, you have 5 weapon attacks buttons that don't use stamina. You can rotate through them endlessly with occasional pauses to refresh your defense spells. You need to invest points in them for their utility functions, so they'll have high damage multipliers. You don't use Fearless Cleave or Death Dance because you already have 2 celestial AoE weapon skills. You don't use Shield Pummel because shield hits at 1/2 proc damage are way worse than greatsword hits. You don't need to use Shield Slam because an extra Block is not noticeably better than casting another shield or heal. Honestly, even Assault is kinda unnecessary against anything vulnerable to light damage because absorbing -> flash of the blade -> create distance -> wave of power will kill most rares.

[Atarlost]

You're talking like the game begins at level 22.

[OrionJAnderson]

For these purposes, yes. You criticized Ogre monkey grip builds specifically for their stamina issues. The only reason Ogres would have worse stamina issues than anyone else would be if you were using both the 2-handed and the shield physical trees. Monkey grip is available at level at the earliest, but it's really not worth the generics to rush it. Getting Light to 1/1/1/3, Weapon Mastery and Armor Mastery to 4/3, and Chant of whatever up to ~3 is too important. I didn't switch to monkey grip until around level 16. Delaying also gave me time to find a couple shields I actually liked and a belt of giantness. So we're talking about a fairly brief window here.

During that window, do you have the desire and the class points to invest in both physical weapon trees? It's possible, but it's hardly necessary. At level 17 you have, what, 23 class points? You want to have something like

2-handed 1/0/0/0
Shield 1/3/0/0
Celestial Combat 1/5/1
Sun 3/2/1
Crusader 1/1/1

That's 21. You could take shield to 1/3/1/1, in which case you'd be slightly hungrier than a longsword/shield build. But you could easily spend those points in Sun's Vengeance, Weapon of Light, or Second Life instead. Or, you could take the 1 point out of Stunning Blow and use Shield Pummel for your stun. There's really no way you can afford to even 1/1/1/1 both 2-handed and shield before the mid 20's.

[Atarlost]

My experiment with monkey grip is at level 19 and has both technique trees fully invested. I tend to cycle among a bunch of characters and haven't been putting much time into him at a stretch because he's not very fun so I'm not absolutely sure, but I think I had them both maxed when you were finishing up ogric wrath.

That's 1/4/1/1 in shield offense and 1/1/1/1 in two-handed assault: as heavily as I ever invest either.

And the fact that you're suggesting 1/3/1/1 for shield offense suggests that something is fishy. The breakpoint for riposte is at 4 and there's no point in leaving it at 2 or 3. Not unless you've cat pointed it for some reason on a class that already has it at 1.3x.