Valkerie's Complete Guide to Paladin

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This page is currently under reconstruction and will be published soon. Guide 2.0



Foreword
To all ye receiving these gifts I bid you welcome. Greeting and salutations fellow player of Final Fantasy XI, greeting adventurers of all levels. I welcome you to the most in-depth guide guide to Paladin you'll find anywhere. Everything you'll need and want to know you can find here, everything. This is the definitive guide to Paladin.

I've been playing Final Fantasy XI for 6 years and has spent almost the entire time as Paladin. I've learned from players that have been playing the game since the beginning. As a result of all the learning and on the job experience I've learned to read the tide of battle in most any situation. For those of you who are experienced you know what I speak of, but for the rest of you I've written this guide book for you.

This guide book is written in a manner that anyone should be able to understand. If for any reason you don't understand something I encourage you to seek me out and ask.

Background
Well there's not a whole lot to say here. The paladin job class has been with the Final Fantasy franchise since the beginning. The Paladin is a sacred knight, and acts as a counterbalance to the Dark Knight. Paladins equip heavy swords and armor, and use special swords that have been imbued with sacred power. They generally can use basic White Magic spells, and have the ability to Cover allies whose HP are low. Some games also give Paladins skillsets that emulate these abilities and expand upon them, giving them the power to strengthen and protect allies and attack enemies with holy-themed techniques. As Dark Knights wield the Deathbringer, the holy-sword Excalibur is sometimes associated with Paladins. Another common Paladin weapon is the Save the Queen.

Final Fantasy I
As the upgrade to the Fighter class, the Knight was the prototype for the future Paladin class and has more in common with them than later knights; specializing in swords and shields, having access to the strongest armor, and the ability to cast low-level White Magic.

Final Fantasy III


The Knight is a Job class in Final Fantasy III. It is gained from the Fire Crystal. Knights are mighty warriors who are experts in close-range combat. They are dependable allies who can defend themselves, as well as shield fellow party members during harsh ordeals. The Knight can be considered a powered up version of the Warrior job.

Final Fantasy IV
Cecil Harvey transforms into a Paladin on Mount Ordeals. As a Paladin, Cecil has access to low-level White Magic and will use Cover to protect weakened allies. Final Fantasy: The After Years

Cecil returns as a Paladin, retaining his skills from Final Fantasy IV. His son Ceodore Harvey similarly has White Magic and wields heavy equipment. During the game Kain Highwind becomes a Holy Dragoon, the Dragoon equivalent of a Paladin, giving Kain the ability to use White Magic.

Final Fantasy VI
Leo Cristophe is officially classified as a General. However, he equips heavy equipment, has a strong sense of honor and justice, and bears the Shock ability, all attributes associated with Paladins.

Final Fantasy IX
Beatrix is a Paladin and is temporarily playable, as well as being fought as a boss. She has her own skillset, Seiken, which consists of some Sword Arts attacks, and can cast White Magic.

Final Fantasy XI
Paladins are an advanced job, and are popular tanks due to having several defensive skills along with strong armor. They can also cast White Magic.

Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings
Basch is given the Paladin job. He uses heavy equipment and swords, and his skillset consists of abilities that protect and strengthen the party.

Final Fantasy XIII
Final Fantasy XIII does not have a Paladin job class; however, Snow Villiers is theoretically the best Sentinel in the game, which acts a bit like "cover", as Sentinels provoke the enemy and defend using guard abilities. Snow also has trademark names for his heavy coats, such as Save the Queen, and even a coat that is named after the job class, Paladin.

Final Fantasy Tactics
Delita Heiral, Agrias Oaks, Cidolfus Orlandeau and Wiegraf Folles are Holy Knights; Folles' title is White Knight, though his abilities are virtually identical to that of the others. The Holy Knight skillset is made up of holy-themed attacks that can inflict status ailments on enemies.

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance
The Paladin job is exclusive to humans in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. The job is a strong attacker and can use abilities with the rare Holy element.

Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift
The hume-exclusive Paladin makes a return in Tactics A2. Frimelda Lotice is a Paladin.

Knights of the Crystals
The Paladin class is obtained by completing the 04:Crests collection. It offers a minor boost to attack and a major boost to defense.

Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light
The Paladin job is usable in The 4 Heroes of Light, and focuses on defending itself and its allies.

Dissidia Final Fantasy
Cecil appears in this game as both a Dark Knight and a Paladin, able to shift forms when attacking. His Paladin form specializes in swift aerial sword combos and light-based magic attacks.

What Is A Paladin
So just what is Paladin? You'll only need to ask this question once. Paladin is many things, and in the right hands of an experienced player can even be a jack of all trades. A Paladin can function as the damage receiver (tank) for the entire party, or can be a damage dealer or even a healer, whether you're doing power leveling or not. A Paladin is meant to hold his own in any situation. If you're in a party and the healer goes down you'll be able to support yourself for the duration of the fight. For those of you who question those last few sentences please continue to read. Really the main job of a Paladin is to tank (take damage for others), to take the damage for the party, but it can do more, this is where pure skill and experience comes into play. But we still haven't answered the big question, just what is a Paladin?

A Paladin is actually a combination of 2 jobs slammed into one very powerful package. The back story behind what a Paladin is states that it started out as San d'Orian Warriors who, through long hours of spiritual training, gained the ability to cast White Magic spells. Also through rigorous training these Warriors have mastered the art of defense and now specialize in it. So there we have it, a Paladin is basically a hybrid Warrior that can cast white magic and specialize in defensive capabilities, but is this all they can do? Not in the least. You see, a Paladin is more than just a tank, it's also a damage dealer and healer, as stated earlier, but we'll discuss later when we discuss the different roles a Paladin can play both in a party and solo. For know let's discuss why you should choose to be a Paladin.

Why Be a Paladin
As a Paladin of somewhere in the range of 5-6 years I've got a lot to say bout the job, a lot of positive things. I've been in some of the heaviest and most difficult situations where the only thing that would ensure my survival was if I was at the top of my game and on top of everything in my domain. Paladin can be a great tool that, if properly mastered, can take you to the stars and beyond, but we want to know "why Paladin"?

The real question isn't "why paladin", anyone can sell their job to someone else. This is the type of job that takes to you and becomes part of you. Why Paladin? Why not, as Paladin you can solo some pretty tough mobs, including those pesky cactuar NMs. With Paladin you can go farther, outlast others, be the last person standing and in most cases, it gets the job done.

The How's Of Paladin
As said earlier I've got around 6 years under my buckle, 6 years of blood, sweat and tears. None of my skill came to me overnight, it took a lot of work. So just how do you do Pally? Well you'll have to know your weapons, know your equipment, know your accessories, know your job (this is the big one) and you'll have to know yourself (this is the biggest one). Why know yourself? You need to know your reaction times to certain events such as enemy TP moves. The difference in the time it takes you to do that Shield Bash or activate Sentinel could be the difference between life and death. Knowing your job means knowing what you have at your disposal. As a Paladin you have a great number of job traits, abilities and weapon skills. You just have to know what to use and when.

Now when I said know your weapons I was serious, and I'll give a short example. A long time ago a member of my linkshell turned me onto a sword that looked like an ordinary weapon, it was a Company Sword. What I didn't know about and was promptly informed of was the fact that the base damage increases by 2 for every 3rd+ member of a party for a max of 54 base damage for a party of 6. Know your gear. So what do we do with a sword like this. We use it, but not in any old situation. Personally I use it on hybrid setups where I need to tank and DD at the same time. Remember that a Paladin holds enmity from many things, one of them being the damage coming from your weapon. This makes your weapon twice as valued because it helps hold hate and do some damage.

Equipment and accessories function the same way. But you can't just slip on any old piece of armor and expect great things. Remember, everything from actions to gear is conditional and situational. Choose your gear carefully, know what you're about to fight and gear up accordingly. Personally, I have probably 65 pieces of gear for my Paladin alone. 65 pieces of gear ranging from a DD setup to a tanking setup to an MP setup for Power Leveling and everything in between. With a setup like that you can fill in lots of spots.

In the process of getting your really awesome gear you will eventually come to the conclusion that Paladin is quite expensive. This is very true ONLY if you choose to stick it out at the higher levels. Some Paladin gear can be overwhelmingly expensive, but if you give it time and effort you will have a favorable result.

Solo
This is where you'll be honing those finely tuned skills of yours. This is one measure of being a good character, the other measure is how you hold up in parties.

Job Combinations
Much like Red Mage, Paladin is a utility job. It can fill in many positions all at once.

Paladin (Standalone)
This is reserved for special events like Maat fights and Brenner. Well, there you are all alone, no subjob to support you. This kind of thing only comes around by certain quests designed to test your mettle. This is the best of Paladin, pure and simple.

Paladin/Warrior
Back in the days of old Vana'diel this was the most common job combo for Paladins. This setup was used for two things, DDing and tanking. Now a days this serves to turn you into a lean mean fighting machine. With attack and accuracy bonuses this makes the ideal job to DD with. This is also the most desirable job combo if you're looking to skill up any of your weapons.

Paladin/White Mage
This right here is probably the best general sub job for Paladin, the combo makes a great utility job. You can walk around Vana'diel like this and there won't be much you can't do once you've mastered the job.

Paladin/Ninja
This job combo dates back to the days of old Vana'diel. It was primarily used to tank gods and other high level HNM's. By today's standards this job combo is pretty much useless. Seeing as how Paladins don't get to tank anymore I can safely say that this job combo is pretty much useless now. That's all I have to say on that.

Paladin/Samurai
There's only one reason you need to play this job, to teach you to be a DD paladin. With this job combo you'll learn to DD as paladin and how to learn the technique of the Samurai. Yes you will fight like a Samurai like this.

Job Abilities, Job Traits, Merits, Spells, Combat Ratings, Magic Ratings & Core Equipment
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Job Abilities

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Job Traits

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Group 1 Merits

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Group 2 Merits

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Spell List
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Combat Skill Ratings

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Magic Skill Ratings

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Job Specific Equipment

 * To see a side by side comparison of the Empyrean sets visit Creed Sets Comparison.

A Bit About Damage
In Vana'diel damage isn't everything (as opposed to what the mainstream wants you to believe). If you want get some good damage in you need to know what kind of damage your target is weak & resistant to. I've divided the types of damage into a table to use:

Damage Types

 * Verification Needed

Damage Modifiers

 * Where not otherwised specified, the damage modifier is understood to be 1.0
 * Reduced modifiers for undead monsters (marked above with *) will be raised to near 1.0 for a short time if the monster takes damage from a Banish spell.

Skill
I know I don't say this enough but skill counts!

Skill-Up Progression Chart
This is an old school chart designed by someone on Killing Ifrit. It works so I endorse it.

PS: This works for any skill (and I mean _ANY_ [That includes Magic]).


 * An alternative to Qufim would be the area right outside of Rabao, assuming you have the levels to compete with the things out there. The worms, spiders and anticans right there can easily take you from 0-100+. When you get low just dip back inside Rabao and chat with your Nomad Moogle to refill your HP/MP then continue.


 * When I say Hobgoblins I am refering to the goblins on the "tough" side of Bibiki Bay (Hobgoblin Alastor, Blagger & Physician).

Establishing a Flow
Over my 7 years I've found that music influences the way I fight. Let me clarify... If I'm in Abyssea and I turn on hard rock and I was let in to DD I find that I do a good job doing that and everything else. Keep reading I'm going somewhere with this. This doesn't apply to everyone, but this should help those of you who can relate. This is part of creating a flow to a situation, it helps to put you "In the zone" and even allows you to have a good time. Here's all you have to do (and I'll give my examples) is turn on your favorite music, something that puts you in a happy place where you can better control the fight with "flow". Makes sense? Ok mabe for a few of you it didn't so I'll give examples of how I work:

Can you see the flow I'm talking about? The music augments you in a very special way that can make you play better (or more efficiently). If you're in a desperate situation put on something more relaxed, if it's something fast paced put on something fast paced and steady. Don't believe me? Give it a shot, mute that FFXI music, play in windowed mode and summon up your flow at will. You never know, it much just work for you, it certainly works for me.

The theme of the music is part of the theatrics of Final Fantasy. Seeing as how this is a Japanese game theatrics play a big role in it. Ninja is a theatrical job, dancer is a theatrical job, etc. See where I'm coming from? Defeat the theatrics and you will inevitably come one step closer to defeating to game.

Tanking [Regular]
This will be what you do most of the time in any party, this is the nitty gritty of the job. This task calls for your tanking setup and the usual line of abilities. Provoke every 30 seconds, use sentinel to mitigate damage and maintain hate. Rampart is used for a small defense bonus and a decent amount of magic damage resistance for you and anyone in range. Use cover to take the damage for others. Shield Bash to stop those pesky enemy TP abilities and stun the mob.

Tanking (On & Off)
This form of tanking is a wee bit controversial. Using In &amp; Out tanking tactics you allow others to take damage if your damage taken is not easy to control. In other words the enemy hits too much or too hard and you offload a few hits onto other party members. This is not something you want to do often, continual use of these tactics may lead to your expulsion from parties. Only do this is you absolutely have to.

Backwards Tanking
This form of tanking involves you not facing the enemy. In this situation you may either be partially tanking or full time tanking. Either way you play it this will require a change of gear. When tanking backwards your shield will lose all usefulness. In order to combat this I recommend using an Earth Staff and am MP grip. An earth staff alone will make a big difference in the way you take damage using this method.

Distance Tanking / Kiting
In this situation you will be far enough away from the enemy to avoid its primary attacks, however, you will incur all of the secondary attacks such as ranged attacks and special TP moves. This setup will almost always use Warrior as a subjob with the primarily used job ability being Provoke.

There's not a whole lot you can do in this situation other than provoking, healing and a few job abilities. The mages and damage dealers will take care of everything else, you just tank, purely.

Kiting is tanking while moving a large area, and most of the time you will be forced to deal with mages or rangers attempting to neutralize the monster. This can be difficult to compete with, so a full set of Enmity gear is suggested.

Damage Dealer
This is my personal favorite part. Many players have said that a Paladin can't do damage, but they haven't tried to _play_ the job. A Paladin is basically a defensive warrior with magic with the capability to do great things and because of that a Paladin can wear many sets of armor that a Warrior or Dark Knight can wear. In order to DD as a Paladin you need to first have your combat skills up to par with your level, combat skills affect everything on a weapon from damage dealt to accuracy to available weaponskills. Second you need to have a gear setup dedicated to DD.

Damage Dealing &amp; Tanking
This task calls for a slightly different setup, it calls for a hybrid setup. You want mainly Damage Dealer gear (weapon, shield, armor and accessories) but your gear needs to be able to handle moderate to heavy tanking. With this setup you're allowed the ability to participate with the other damage dealers. With this setup be sure to coordinate weapon skills as to generate skillchains, this will assist in hate control.

Additionally this can be called "Tanking by DD". This comes in handy if you need to do some tanking but you do not have Provoke available. In this case you would use your best DD setup to maintain and control hate. If mastered this can setup can be just as effective as tanking with Provoke.

Pure Tanking
This section applies to those of you who fight HNMs or very high level notorious monsters. I call this pure tanking because you'll be tanking, purely. This configuration may call for you to sub Ninja for shadows as some of these mobs can hit quite hard. If going as sub nin stack haste gear for your Utsusemi recast timer and use Tavnazian Tacos. Remember to macro in Enmity gear for Flash. Use Reprisal when you are being hit hard and/or fast and you and/or your healer is low on mana, or a monster uses Hundred Fists. Remember that using Sentinel & Rampart & Flash is an amazing amount of enmity generation.

Dual Tanking
You don't run into this too often unless you consider HNM tactics. This role requires you to coordinate your moves with another tank, sharing your enmnity with them. In order to pull this off you really need to know your job, how each ability and weapon skill affects your enmity levels. Do only what you need to to hold the minimum amount of hate.

Dual Roles
On occasion you'll run into a situation that requires you to do more than one role at any given time, this is called "Dual Roles". There's not much I can say on this subject other than you need to mix and match tactics. You'll have to figure this one out on your own, there's far too much to explain.

Healer
Ok some of you may disagree with me on this one but contrary to your beliefs Paladins are closet White Mages. Here's the deal with this one... There will be times where through misfortune and laziness you get stuck with no White Mage. Uh-oh, NO WHITE MAGE, OMFG! :((((((((1. Never fear caped crusaders for the Paladin will save the day! In this setup you'll be healing part or all of your party, depending on how bad it is, but how you may ask? Simple. Come as Pld/Whm geared for maximum MP & Refresh and have your most damaging staff equipped. For this you will require a Staff skill high enough to use Spirit Taker. Yes, you have to fight (cool so far, eh?^^). The higher the Staff skill the more MP you recover from each Spirit Taker. The point here is to continuously cycle your MP pool in a never ending fashion. I would suggest using the extra MP to Haste yourself.

Additionally you can also do this with a Templar Mace, a Dagda Shield & a Hospitaler's Earring. If you so choose this method you need to be geared more toward refresh than damage. A good example of this is in Abyssea, you can run with this setup and use the Atma of the Minikin Monstrosity. In that setup you shouldn't have a problem healing an entire alliance, I know I haven't!

Lastly I just want to point out the differences between a White Mage and a Healer. I said earlier that Paladins are closet White Mages and that is for most part true, however that does not mean that we are White Mages, we're not, we're healers. You see a White Mage has ALL of the curing spells, things which we don't have access to. Paladins can only go as far as to do Divine Seal + Cure IV, so we're rather limited. That doesn't mean that you can't act as White Mage, believe me you can and quite well. Just keep in mind that even the best geared Paladin cannot be a full substitute for a White Mage.


 * Note: Sometimes your only role will be to heal the party leaving you unable to fight. A good example of this is when you go in for a BCNM even and there's an NPC that must stay alive. If it's just you and a few people you're almost guaranteed to be a target healer. This role comes with the job, you'll rarely get it but it does happen.

According To The New School

 * Danger Will Robinson, Danger Danger! I highly recommend that you DO NOT choose this route. It may be the most accessible and easiest way to level up but with laziness comes a price. In these types of parties your core functions are not developed at all, all you learn how to do is swing a weapon. For Paladins this is death. You will not learn how to tank at all nor will you learn the dynamics of battle. In other words you WILL come out a crappy, crappy player. Take the extra time and effort and party like the old days, trust me you'll learn some valuable skills you will draw on time and time again.

According To The Old School
There will be those times when you are rocked by the sudden urge to do things in the way of old Vana'diel. Not to worry it happens to me all the time. Here's a chart telling you where to level up if you so decide to go the route of the Exp Party. If you wish to keep your skills up to par with your level I highly suggest going this route, it's slower and harder but it builds skill and character.

Transcending The Gap
While Paladin can be can demand a lot from you it will also give just as much back to you. One mark of a good Paladin is one who can transcend the gap between Tank, Healer & Damage Dealer... all at once and continue to do it for a long period of time. I mention this because it seems to be a very welcomed role to play these days, especially in Abyssea. There are several ways to transcend the gap between the three roles. Now I can't say which way is THE way to go because this is such a dynamic role.

I'll start by giving you an example and I'll reference one of my high point nights in Abyssea. As I just said this took place in Abyssea in La Theine at the worm camp. I was offered a DD spot and came as Pld/Whm. Immediately upon arrival I self appointed myself to act as White Mage seeing as how my party didn't have a mage. Now I got lucky because we kept getting a lot of temporary items which was a giant help. Things started out pretty fast, but the damage was manageable. Now, here's how I make the magic happen. Remember, DD, Heal and Tank... and tanking against DD's while you have Tranquil Heart ain't easy, this will require work. To tank on Tranquil Heart you have to you have to do what I call "Ancillary Tanking", this is where you don't tank using traditional methods but instead tank by Damage Output... that's right, the first thing you have do is compete with full-on DD's, not an easy task as /whm. Once you have a handle on your damage you need to keep yourself healed. Lastly, stay around your party, at least within range of them. Now I need to do some explaining before I continue. Like I said in the "Healer" section of Roles you need to cycle ALL of your MP, don't skimp on anyone. You gotta nip the healing in the butt before it becomes a problem. Don't bother with Cure I, II or III, stick to Cure IV's and Divine Seal + Cure IV's. If it costs too much MP, use your temporary items more often, if it's still using too much MP then the chances are you have one or more people playing stupid.

Sound a little hard? It is, at least keeping it up is. This isn't something I expect everyone to do, especially as /whm and not using a staff. You have to be very well versed as all three rolls amd able to mentally process all three at once.

On an off-hand note that type of thing makes a very good challenge for a Paladin, especially if you want to chain mobs back to back.

End Game
This part is purely up to you how to play out. There is no end-game guide. All I can give here is advice.

Focus on gear that accentuates the way you play PLD.

You, Nikola Tesla and Atmas
Atmas, Atmas, Atmas... What to do with these atmas. I think at this point the better question would be "What is an Atma?". An Atma is a permanent Abyssean key item dropped when you stagger a certain notorious monster by hitting his weakness. The aforementioned process of staggering an enemy has these days become known as a "Proc", all it really is is a trigger. There are different types of "Procs" that do different things to the mob at hand. From my experience on "procs" it is usually the red "Proc" that makes a mob drop an atma.

Now that we have that out of the way let's move onto our next question... "What is an atma for?" As I may have said earlier an atma is a peice of a mob that harbors otherworldly powers. Atmas allow temporary extreme modification of any of your stats (according to what the atma does). Some atmas may drastically increase your critical hit rate and dexterity and some may give you a major refresh effect. Atmas come in all forms and functions.


 * Sidenote: Before you start collecting atmas you should do your homework on them and choose wisely, there are a ton of atmas out there. My suggestion for DDing (This is what I use) is Atma of Razed Ruins & Atma of the Smiting Blow. If you're healing I would use Atma of the Minikin Monstrosity.

Really the best way to go is to have a different set of Atmas that, like your gear, can be mixed and matched. I suggest having 3 sets of atmas, one for healing (main healing your alliance), one for tanking and one for DDing.

Anything Past End-game
So you think you've reached the top now, eh? Well we'll discuss this indepth a little later on, more to come...

Enmity Tables by Kanican
Just a quick note these tables were not done by me. Since there is no way to assurably confirm these numbers this section is nothing more than speculation. If you plan to use these number you do so at your own risk. Remember, I did not make these number nor do I endorse them. Here's the legend to the table: M = Merited C = D =

* Sentinel - grants an enmity bonus of +100 enmity for the entire duration of the effect. This "caps" a player's + enmity and therefore additional gear which normally grants enmity bonuses has no effect when the player is under the influence of Sentinel. Enmity from all actions are essentially doubled.

** Guardian (Sentinel) - Guardian is a Paladin merit trait which reduces the CE loss from damage taken while under the effect of Sentinel. This CE loss reduction is -19% with 1 merit and increases by -19% each additional merit (to a cap of -95% CE reduction). Guardian does not affect the VE decay rate of -60 VE per second. See here for details regarding CE loss due to damage taken.

*** Divine Emblem - Grants a +50% increase in enmity for the next Divine spell. This increase occurs separately from + enmity enhancements from equipment, merits, and certain statuses, and therefore stacks. For instance, a naked PLD with +4 enmity merits using Flash with Divine Emblem would gain 180*1.04*1.5 = 280 CE.

**** Atonement - a unique weapon skill with damage modifiers solely based on a combination of TP, current CE, and current VE. Basic player statistics play no role in the damage calculation of this weapon skill. +/- enmity enhancements do not affect the damage; however, it will affect the enmity generated from the WS damage. The exact formula is currently untested or incomplete.

Nuking
Ok ok I know Paladin can't do a damn to nuke, this isn't true. I'll let you on in a little secret that astounded me the first time I saw it. How would like your Holy II's to break 1k consistently? Simple, use Divine emblem then use Holy II, then bam! Instant light damage nuke. The higher your Divine Magic Skill the more damage you will do. Cool eh? Try it out, you won't be disappointed.