Are Paladins on BNET Party Player Characters Anymore?

[jmcn R]

As the title begs, Are Paladins on BNET Party Player Characters Anymore? by this i do not mean "Are you as a Paladin a party player?"...i mean the state for most Paladins you see online these days.

As a bit of explanation the creation of a Paladin was originally meant in conception that this type of character with its shareable auras and its various tanker group attack/defense skills was to be a character that was meant at its core to provide an overall benefit to a party and increase its pure effectiveness when playing. This would be through using skills such as the elemental defense skills, defensive auras or maybe something like Conviction.

Today, after a few weeks of playing i have yet to see a single Paladin activate ANY of those auras. I see all Fanaticism for zealers and concentration for Hammers.

When there is a room of Ele druids and Sorceress and one paladin...sometimes it may be convenient to activate Conviction especially with todays ultra high restitant hell monsters. As a real scenario from last night it may also be good to activate something like Sanctuary when getting pounded by those elements.

This example from last night takes place in a Hell Baal run with chars ranging from the lowest of 84 (me) to the highest of 93 and 4 of us were paladins. There throne was filled with elemental casting chars including the Ghosts which killed 7 of the 8 players. I turned on Salvation and got laughed at and called a noob as they said it doesnt do anything. Low and behold i lead the charge BY MYSELF into the room and took out almost all the monsters BY MYSELF before they joined me and all survived thereafter.

I will also say i keep running into a shocking amount of people who dont even know what the skills beyond the generic FAQ BUILT CHAR SKILLS actually do.

So that takes me back to the original point after the Hurricane of long wind from me :doped .

As we stand today, do you believe Pallys are being used AT ALL as characters to help support toe whole party?

 

[Kilz]

I have a hammerdin Im building , so yes I have noticed people playing a pally like idiots. The pally is the ultimate player support. The auras help the party and in doing so help you beat whatever you are playing against.
To often I have seen people playing pally clashing auras. 2 or more pally's with the same aura is a waste. I also dont see them turn on cleansing or salvation when the needs arise.
I guess its all for personal glory. But how long do these players think they will survive if the rest of the party dies? Maybe they are just noob's but they cant all be.
While in town If I see someone with concentration on I ask the level. If its higher than mine I tell them ill run defencive auras and to leave their's on concentration.

 

[jmcn R]

glad you get what i am saying kilz. thanks for your thoughts



its just a shame that the party aspect of D2 ....which is a huge part of the game gets totally left behind whenever you play.

the only way i ever avoided this was when i used to have a big group of my own to play with. but sadly nowadays there is little chance for a sensible group game.

 

[Emancipator]

I have a hammerdin Im building , so yes I have noticed people playing a pally like idiots. The pally is the ultimate player support. The auras help the party and in doing so help you beat whatever you are playing against.
To often I have seen people playing pally clashing auras. 2 or more pally's with the same aura is a waste. I also dont see them turn on cleansing or salvation when the needs arise.
I guess its all for personal glory. But how long do these players think they will survive if the rest of the party dies? Maybe they are just noob's but they cant all be.
While in town If I see someone with concentration on I ask the level. If its higher than mine I tell them ill run defencive auras and to leave their's on concentration.

I am in the same boat, I am building a Hammerdin. And I must admit now that Hammerdins are so powerful alot of them are 'loosing' the spirit of BNET, which I belive is working together as a team... and paladins are the ultimate team player-or atleast they should be.

I have to heartly agree with everyone here, alot of paladins are not party players but solo glory seekers. The idea is to help each other, if everyone is dead because you didn't use an aura... well chances are that you will soon be joining them in town! As Kilz says "While in town If I see someone with concentration on I ask the level. If its higher than mine I tell them ill run defencive auras and to leave their's on concentration" that is how the game is meant to be played... together.... What does T.E.A.M. stand for?

Together Everybody Achieves More

 

[Guest]

Those kinds of Paladins went to hell during 1.08.

 

[Johnny]

i dont know what you guys are talking about, except for the noobs that use concentration regardless of if they suck, most parties with more than 1 hammerdin will turn on a different arua.

Also, most sorcs have an infinity mercenary anyways, so its not that big of a deal. Most characters should be able to do good without the use of help from others. For example, a good hammerdin (affordable 11k damage without the use of charms) should be able to have max resists while dishing out alot of damage. He will also have a insight mercenary. So most hammerdins are able solo baal with 8 people in the game, the more the better.

All the extra hammerdins can each use a different aura. I played a 90+ game and it was 8 hammerdins, so we each chose and aura whatnot. The person with some +skills from charms gets concentration, since his will be the highest, then they seperate and use skills such as defiance, conviction (some have it [not sure if it gives -%def or only -%resists.]), salvation, meditation (most people got merc's with it), cleansing, blessed aim, etc.

 

[Tiznit]

I've noticed this as well, but recently I was pleased while doing a Baal Walk in Hell that since we had 2 cold sorceresses and a hurricane druid, the paladin turned on conviction to deal with the ton of cold immunes we'd been running into.
The majority of paladins don't really care what auras the rest of the party needs, but it's nice to see some do.

Sidenote: Maybe it's just me, but when I used Infinity on my mercenary he couldn't use Defiance and Conviction at once and would almost always use his Defiance one making Infinity totally pointless.

 

[jmcn R]

I am in the same boat, I am building a Hammerdin. And I must admit now that Hammerdins are so powerful alot of them are 'loosing' the spirit of BNET, which I belive is working together as a team... and paladins are the ultimate team player-or atleast they should be.

I have to heartly agree with everyone here, alot of paladins are not party players but solo glory seekers. The idea is to help each other, if everyone is dead because you didn't use an aura... well chances are that you will soon be joining them in town! As Kilz says "While in town If I see someone with concentration on I ask the level. If its higher than mine I tell them ill run defencive auras and to leave their's on concentration" that is how the game is meant to be played... together.... What does T.E.A.M. stand for?

Together Everybody Achieves More

great early post emancipator :wavey . as a newbie to BF myself i welcome you to the stables



Johnny/Bio......it seems as if you are playing in the perfect world.....we should have you audition for a Walgreens advertisement or something :doh . for the rest of us this clearly is not the case. maybe if you have a set group of people to play with such as when the BF elite joined up for the ladder rush teams before they got BANNED that is when you would have a good game. but approaching my 4th weekend of play (and once during the week) i can say without a shadow of a doubt that your rare and relative experiences seem to be a needle in the BNET Hellstack (get it hell stack? roflmao i made a funny :dance )


last night i came up with more fuel for the fire. i leveled my druid i started over the weekend by starting hell baal runs from 75-80, and a bowazon from 80-85. i took me nearly two hours of constant trying to find a decent room to stay with. in this room that stayed full throughout (where i got nearly all my levels done as well) it was literally 3 people pulling their weight, a lvl 93 sorc that was tele'ing....a Necro that went from 70-83 in that room and myselk.



that sad part is when its persons like myself actually trying even after such limited time to devote to develop my chars.....and very little gear, almost all of which i have to cobble together myself. then u have a room of supposed godlies doing nothing.


i dont care how damn 1337 haxxor that lvl 80 smiter pally is.....he is of no use to any1 staying way to the sidelines only attacking a stray monster here and there with an aura overlapping with the other 2 paladins in the room. :usad

 

[[Koolaid]]

hammerdins just pwn in partys u need em..

 

[fritfrat]

You don't "need" hammerdins. In reality, you don't "need" anyone.

Characters, on nonladder especially, get so disgustingly powerful that teamwork isn't even needed. My smiter is a 100% pvm, and because of that, he can kill everything himself, including the ubers. Admittably, I DO use salvation when people need it, and if something has resists, my physical damage can kill that monster.

No character is a "party player character" anymore. But if you had to choose one, it would be the paladin.