Erhiadkeb's death thread reminded me of just how sub par this dedication has become. Lowest defensive capabilities of all paladin specs, and offensive power does not match that of Polearm or hand.

What are all of your thoughts on how to bring back up to speed but not be an instant powerhouse?

My opinion is to just add an extra attack to their dedication, see how that plays out.

There, now you have a powerhouse Avenger. Everything after 30 is basically useless.

lvl30 level-sitting Avenger, meet lvl35 level-sitting Assassin.

I don't know if avengers are weak compared to other dedications, but I do know that they aren't weak compared to a lot of other classes.

Paladins seem to get a lot of attention, but maybe it would be best to make a list of the weakest classes and give a boost to those first.

Removal of mandatory empowerment and less strict approach to empowerment by imms has allowed a new stratum of players play the paladins and make the class more popular.

You get hardcore PvPers to play the class - you get its design exploited as never before.

Jalim rocked paladins for years. So did someone else whose name escapes me as I'm knackered.

Bat is a bit of a screwy skill and a jalim could exploit it just as well as anyone else.

was wrath nerf.

I'd argue his ability to exploit wrath spam means he would be good at exploiting bat spam.

once you learns that you have to be elf to maximize the bat effectiveness and speed. And it takes PK-focused player to research that.

I played elf champion ages ago but didn't use bat much at all because it seemed screwy and because I didn't like the idea of being dispelled and tried to death. Heh.

In all seriousness I actually disliked having to enter multiple commands each round. Too much effort for me these days.

My elf champion was a scribe too and got told to stop being aggressive in pk.

Guessing RL stuff played a big part. Not with respect to paladins in particular, but to CF in general.

But yeah

I think you are vastly under representing the dmg output of strikes. Avengers I think aren't subpar so much as they are more work. They can do a lot of quirky stuff, but it requires more finesse to pull off.

If anything, I'd like to see the duration and affects of the templars defense moves be increased to the point where you could get some meaningful maledictions going if you opt to invest the commands into it.

I could maledicts improvements being a nice improvement to them. Templars defense can blind, bleed, drop str, or even dex, depending on weapon, so believe? Also this is making me want to try another.

I've given Templars defense a few trys in the past, and it always seemed lackluster or very niche. Might just be a not getting the whole perspective thing, though.

I've only ever played a defender, and that was more than a decade ago. As an outsider looking in, though, avengers seem like crappy monks. Whereas the avenger has some huge damage moves, the monk can achieve roughly the same effect by intensifying. Instead of one big move he gets a few rounds of super-juiced melee.

Fun thought exercise: how would Erhiadkeb's player fare playing an avenger? We've seen what he can do with champion and monk. He was actually considerably less deadly with the monk, but part of that may have been due to different priorities for the character. That, and monks not being able to extract as much benefit from top-shelf gear, e.g. eagle-inscribed staff, bal'talon, defiance, etc.

With temperance they tank exceptionally well. At least my elf did.

Also they can lag reliably. And can lag on a damage burst move.

The maladictive ability outside of hilt smash is not quite good enough though, imho.

because you can't lag. You'll see him performing a shield ded though.

Nt

Avengers can't lag you to kill like defenders or champions, their only hope for a kill is burst.

Same with monks, right? He played one of those.

And like you said, it was not nearly as deadly.

I disagree. You can, for example, nerf an assassin's Dex just before you lag them and you'll do a lot of damage in that lag if they haven't covered the start. Sure if you just lag then it won't be great.

Long story short, it is much harder to seal a kill as avenger (and monk, for that matter), than with storm defender (who can permalag) or an elf champion (who can permalag but less reliably).

The maledicts just aren't enough to be effective for anything at hero. Unless something has changed, the templar defense maledicts don't even stack.

The lag is ok, but it won't come close to permalag. And when you only have third attack without dual wield, your passive melee damage isn't enough to be enough to win many fights by itself.

All the while (unless you have temperance) you're soaking up damage because all you have is parry and every melee class you fight knows a weapon you don't.

At least one move can do a lot to nerf Dodge.

Not sure after all this time whether it was down to ruining dex or something directly influencing Dodge. But I had it used on one of mine and then used it effectively against other Dodge based classes. Think it was the low spin with the mace? Unless that was the lagging move.

Also don't forget that a number of virtues address parry or defense.

Your lag options aren't great as a 2h ded and your maledictions are very low (like -2 dex). So assuming you did 4 of those and they didn't wear off and they stacked (they didn't used to but I haven't played in a very long time) and for some reason he hasn't left...then you do a lag maneuver and you have to hope he doesn't parry or shield block your attacks in the one round he can't flee for...that's not realistic. In practice when I killed someone it was because I striked them down to almost dead then used call lightning or chase + wrath to finish.

You're pretty much always better off letting them lag themselves and then doing strike burst and hoping/praying it kills them.

If you do manage to kill people as a 2h with the lag moves it'll be because of gear procs mid round if you're setup with stacked gear that does that.

The maledictions a 2h ded has are really weak as far as maledictions go and in general assassins will wreck you because of kot. You're never going to win a malediction war against an assassin as a 2h paladin...his moves are just more punishing than yours by several orders of magnitude.

With defiance and temperance you can. At least, when I last played one and kot wrist break didn't remove a no disarm weapon.

Nt

Nor should it necessarily depend on a drawn out maladiction fight with an assassin. Fortitude would probably also work well.

And that aside, I did suggest somewhere that perhaps it also nerfs dodge. But I know that somehow it can cause assassins issues. Not sure if I'm thinking back to before dex changes though.

Which pretty much is the same for a 2hand ded as not having a weapon. You still parry, but you don't get strikes or templar's.

I've never had it personally. I don't really expect most paladins to have it.