Gladiator

I hear you, even if magic 1h paladin is like one of the worst builds offensively, but being "unkillable" even with no damage hasn't stopped people from complaining about Wardens back in the day. And I feel like with something like 15% Parry, 25% block, 600-700 magic, 10k HP, 40%+ damage reduction (MM and 30% HP Inner Force) might be getting close to that "unkillable" status.
 
Now granted, every class is seemingly getting stronger, so we still need to see how it plays out, at the end of the day, reapers and like you said, chieftains are still a thing. 
 
Btw, I totally see people trying to make it work with magic hammers in some situations since it works with parry as well.

I hear you, even if magic 1h paladin is like one of the worst builds offensively, but being "unkillable" even with no damage hasn't stopped people from complaining about Wardens back in the day. And I feel like with something like 15% Parry, 25% block, 600-700 magic, 10k HP, 40%+ damage reduction (MM and 30% HP Inner Force) might be getting close to that "unkillable" status.
 
Now granted, every class is seemingly getting stronger, so we still need to see how it plays out, at the end of the day, reapers and like you said, chieftains are still a thing. 
 
Btw, I totally see people trying to make it work with magic hammers in some situations since it works with parry as well.

It will be better if three types of scroll or potion will be added to the game.
1. Attack potion & scroll
2. Defence potion & scroll
3. Support potion & scroll
 
So that we can drink all three types of potion and scroll at a time. 

"List of reasons you sound like a newbie and a person who takes heavy medication":
 
1. Warlocks are the only class in mc side with AoE CC unlike elf side.
 
2. You resist Dark Circle and the story ends there unlike templar's bubble which can stun you again in case you resisted it in the first place. 
 
3. Dark Circle won't stack with another Dark circle if it's used in the same 3x3 area.
 
4. Same goes for Zone of Weakness, (Check 3*) atleast as things are atm.
 
5. In a war scenario,(since you wanna take the big guns out) if you die in place and any warlock uses Zone of Weakness on your spot to secure that upon the use of Life scroll you wont get the chance to use any skill guess what,it won't affect you upon resurrection. Unlike Templar's Bubble which not only does affect you upon resurrection but ALSO gets you out of position/denies you to approach any further.
 
6. I agree about Dark Circle and Zone of Weakness not getting affected by the Magic Resistance Book but that's only an "issue" because elf side doesn't have similar skills working that way. Therefore a similar mechanic should be given to elf side so both sides being able to "counter" those who happens to own such a book. But again how many of such people are in each server that we have to discuss such stuff. Outside of Arena these books barely make a difference as it's all about tactics and numbers, plus those scrolls you mentioned are trash compared to Castle scrolls. ( i hope i don't have to explain why)
 
7. Why would any skill of warlocks be like or work like Templars one in the first place or vice versa? Both are different classes with different roles and capabilities.
 
8. I can do this all day.

I like it, it would be nice if the rewards of the normal guild tournaments also changed

Oh, wow... Interesting... Cool, cool.. Nice. Talk about a meta shift. 
 
I'm interested to see how this will work. Will all amount of healing in the entire party be counted and every 2 seconds 8% of that healing that happened in the 2 seconds applies to all characters? If so, it can kinda get pretty juicy.
Do all healing effects get counted? Do heal multipliers affect that? Do non-skill heals get counted? Does the healing of this talent count? That would be a crazy circular bug. So many questions, can't wait to test it out in the closed testing that I'm definitely going to be a part of!

This is kinda... Scary..

So the event is over and I was little mad that I spent too much time spamming (around 300 runs) and got no troll costumes, still got drops that covered up the costs though.
But now I wanna calm and the best way to do it is to laugh at it.




 

I like making Memespears

Mooaaarr

Sorry to burst your bubble, it's not only 112 players in the ss, but also it's fake/photoshopped...
 

 
Here for example, it's impossible to have players stand like this in the game.

Sorry to burst your bubble, it's not only 112 players in the ss, but also it's fake/photoshopped...
 

 
Here for example, it's impossible to have players stand like this in the game.

I've been maining Beastmaster recently, here is a few related memes:
 

 
 
 

 
I totally didn't misclick Order to Attack 
 
 

 
 
 

 
Come on! It's too early... 
 
 

 
Why does it do this

Yeah I give up.. 

I suggest instead of hints like this you just post a little bit more "zoomed out" version of the location.

I suggest instead of hints like this you just post a little bit more "zoomed out" version of the location.

EZ, next.

EZ, next.

Introduction
 
As an extension to my Comprehensive Paladin Guide, in this topic, I'll be comparing Paladin's defensive skills and their pros and cons for each situation. The goal is give an idea on how effective each of those skills and which ones are the best, if you had to choose to level one or two of them, since there is not enough skill points to level all of them. And everything is backed with evidence and numbers! 
We're talking about the skills Sacred Shield, Light Defense, and Inner Forces.
 
 
 
 
For a while I disregarded Light Defense as a mostly useless skill that is only useful in larger fights like 5v5 arena or GvG/wars. Most Paladins prefer Sacred Shield and Inner Forces when they want to be tankier, Light Defense isn't usually the first choice when it comes to using skill points. Now, let me get it out of the way and say that Sacred Shield IS the best defensive skill for Paladins, hands down, I don't need to make an analysis for that. But in this topic I'll be rather comparing Light Defense and Inner Forces in reference to Sacred Shield.
 
 
Methods
 
It's a little hard to exactly quantify the efficacy of Light Defense and Inner Forces, as opposed to Sacred Shield. Sacred Shield gives you a fixed amount of damage absorption per usage and a defined CD, it will always be 80% (talent - 86%) of your max HP per X seconds (Cooldown), hence why it's also easy to use Sacred Shield as a reference point.
For example, your Sacred Shield has a CD of 25 seconds, each time it protects, let's say 5k damage, that simply equals to 5k damage reduction per 25 seconds or per 1 usage, and that's always gonna be the case, as long as your HP and Cooldown are constant.
 
But how do we quantify Inner Forces when it's passive and the reduction is based off your HP lost? And how do we quantify Light Defense when it's also basically passive due to the usage duration being basically permanent?
 
I'll be presenting 2 basic methods that can approximately gives us an idea about the average efficacy of each skill. The first method is going to represent damage reduction over a defined period of time as a variable in a completely hypothetical scenario based purely on math. And the second method is based on numbers collected from an in game test, where the Paladin receives damage over time till death, and the average damage reduction is calculated.
 
 
Method 1: Pure Math
 
To simulate the damage received, I used a self-made calculator that is pretty accurate to real in-game values with very minimal deviations (0.001% - 0.005%)

Figure 1: These parameters are the same as the ones that were in use for the in-game tests (Method 2), where the damage received was 1124.
 
When applying Light Defense, I only need to just the defense value and get the new damage received.

Figure 2: This is with 4/4 Light Defense, increasing defense from 5971 to 8048.
 
However, it's tricky to apply Inner Forces (IF), since the value of reduction varies depending on the HP lost, so we have to either take different HP points and compare it to Light Defense (LD) at each point or take an average of 50% HP and see how much reduction that gives us, or both!
As for calculating with IF (Same goes for Mermen damage reduction), all we need to input is the amount of damage reduction in %. The way to calculate it for IF is the following: Say we want to figure out IF's power at 60% HP and lvl 4/4, we'd need to calculate how many 6%'s are there in the remaining 40% HP. That is 40 / 6 = 6.67, but the game doesn't count the numbers after the decimals so we have 6 "ticks of 6% HP lost", each 6% gives us 2% damage reduction, this means IF would reduce a total of 12% of the incoming damage at 60% HP, 16% at 50% HP, and so on...
 

Figure 3: This shows the damage received with x5 mermen buffs and HP level between 16.01%* - 22% HP with maxed out IF.
*At 16% HP exactly, IF becomes 28% strong
 
Now that we have a working damage simulator, all we need are variables such as time, amount of hits, or number of skill usages.
The best way to evaluate the effective duration of a passive (i.e. IF) or a quasi passive (i.e. LD) skill is to calculate efficiency over a given period of time. But we also need to think about how much damage would we receive in that amount of time, this could very well vary from 0 damage per second to 2000 damage per second or even more! This is why a damage simulator comes in handy, this way, we can multiple the damage by a given amount of hits that we could arbitrarily assume would be dealt during that time.
For example, we want to see how much damage reduction does LD gives us in 1 minute when we are being hit 1 time per second, that is basically 60 hits * amount of damage that we calculated once with and once without applying the bonus from LD.
 
 
Method 2: In-Game Test
 
In this method, a Bladedancer with 1749 phyiscal damage, 48.9% Ferocity, 21.3% Penetration, and 2% Attack Strength was used to attack an idle Paladin with 47.8% Defense and 42.4% Resilience with only auto-attacks until the Paladin was dead. The damage values on each hit were recorded for each condition. The following conditions were applied:
- Inner Forces level 1/4, and Light Defense level 4/4 (With and without Mermen)
- Only Inner Forces (With and without Mermen)
 
Inner Forces level 4/4, and Light Defense level 1/4 was not evaluated because I felt that lvl1 LD is not something that most Paladins go out of their way to activate and keep active, especially if not using the respective talent. And with maxed out IF, its talent "External Influence" is more likely to be used. Additionally, in an intense battle, there are higher priorities than to keep a buff of 10% defense active!
 
The evaluation after that is pretty simple, the total damage received was added, from that, the damage reduced in proportion was calculated.
 
 
Results
 
Method 1: Pure Math
 
Light Defense
 
First of all, let's take a look at Light Defense at work on its own.
Since, the amount of defense in the calculator needs to be in %, we first need to know how much defense we need to input. If you don't have the defense values in game. You can use this calculator by mixing gears to figure out the % for your desired defense value.
 

Figure 4: This shows the amount of damage reduced when applying the damage amounts acquired from figures 1 and 2.
 
Here we see that a 4/4 LD reduces the incoming damage from 1125 to 1010, which is approximately 10% damage reduction.
To see how much damage exactly was reduced, we just multiply the damage by a number of hits. This 20 hits could be done in 30 seconds (750 damage per second)
 
As a comparison, the efficacy of LD was also evaluated using mace + shield, and as you can see from figure 7, LD becomes less effective with higher defense, this is obviously due to the fact that defense % damage protection decreases with increased defense value.
 

Figure 5: Damage received with 7769 defense mace/shield
 

Figure 6: Damage received with 4/4 LD applied to get 10160 Defense
 

Figure 7: Light Defense damage reduction
 
It's worth mentioning that, changing around certain values (Resilience, Ferocity, Attack Strength, Phyiscal Damage) except Penetration did not affect the % damage reduction (Data not shown).
 
 
Light Defense vs Sacred Shield
 
To figure out the relative defensive power of LD, Sacred Shield's (SS) power was used to compare the two.
 
In order to simply do that, the following hypothetical scenario was set:
- Battle lasts 1 minute (t = 60 s)
- Incoming damage is represented as 1 attack per second
- Opponent has a Phyiscal power of 1749, Penetration of 21,3%, Ferocity of 48,9%, and Attack Strength of 2%
- Paladin is being healed
- Sacred Shield was able to be used as soon as it is available with 25 seconds CD (40% Cooldown), thus SS was used 3 times during battle. (Time points t = 0s, t = 25s, and t = 50s)
- Case 1 - No Mermen: Paladin has an HP of 7004 (86% -> Shield power = 6023), Defense of 5971 (47,8%), and Resilience of 42,4%
- Case 2 - Mermen: Paladin gets an HP of 8236 (86% -> 7083 shield power); For simplicity's sake, the battle starts with x5 Mermen buffs
 
First we need to figure out how much damage the shield is receiving per hit, since we know that shields don't take Defense, Ferocity, and Resilience into consideration:

 
Figure 8: Damage received by Sacred Shield
 
Case 1:
 

Figure 9: Comparison between LD and SS without Mermen
 
The % damage reduction for Sacred Shield was calculated from the total damage reduced highlighted in yellow (11394) divided by the total damage received without Light Defense (67500). Without LD, because we are comparing Sacred Shield vs LD on their own!
 
Case 2:

 
Figure 10: Comparison between LD and SS with x5 Mermen buffs
 
LD has around 10% damage reduction in both cases, while SS has more 50% more damage reduction. Additionally, SS becomes more effective (almost x2 stronger than LD) with Mermen due to the max. HP increase, however, Mermen doesn't seem to affect LD significantly.
From these numbers, it might be surprising that SS is only twice as strong as LD. The reason for the total % damage reduction being so close, however, is that as you can see, SS absorbs the damage from only 10-12 hits in the entire 60 seconds, thus, there is a lot of down-time where SS has no effect, where LD provides a small reduction over the entirety of the 60 seconds.
 
However, it is important to highlight that this simplistic hypothetical scenario disregards many things, such as controls. It's not very realistic, especially that receiving around 1000 damage per second isn't sustainable without external help and/or Paladin controlling the enemy, which would help avoid damage during the shield's downtime.
 
This scenario could simulate a strong boss fight, where the Paladin is the main tank.
But thanks to this calculator, we can just change the 2 inputs (amount of hits for LD, and amount of usages for SS), and see how the difference in effect between the 2 skills change for different scenarios:
 
A)  B)  C)  
Figure 11: Comparisons with variating damage per seconds received: A) 1125 DPS . B) 750 DPS. C) 2250 DPS
 
As you can notice, LD has a constant % of damage reduction of around 10% in all situations. However, Sacred Shield, while having a constant damage reduction (3798 per shield), its % efficacy depends on how the maximum damage received in each scenario.
 
 
Light Defense vs Inner Forces vs Sacred Shield
 
Now let's add Inner Forces (IF) into the mix and compare each skill individually.
For IF, it gets a bit complicated, since we have to set an HP value for Paladin each time.
The same conditions as before apply, but additionally, we will account for Paladin at 90% HP, 75% HP, 50% HP, 35% HP, and 20% HP.
For 4/4 IF this means: 2% - 8% - 16% - 20% - 26% damage reduction, respectively.
 
There really should be no surprises here, IFs % damage reduction is already known - it's already predetermined by the Paladin's HP loss! This calculator translates the efficacy of LD and SS from defense increase and shield power into % damage reduction, and IF already is displayed in that way.
 
A)  B) 
Figure 12: Damage reduction % comparisons of LD, SS, and IF without (A) and with (B) Mermen gear.
 
One Information we can acquire through this comparison is at what HP level does IF become stronger than other skills! In this case, IF is the strongest defensive skill at when the Paladin is below 50% HP (A) or below 35% HP (B). 
 
Keep in mind, all of these numbers consider the fact that each one of these skills is applied individually. This is important for SS and IF interaction. Because with IF, the incoming damage reduction with decreased HP will affect Sacred Shields effective power. For instance, in A, the total damage received is 67500, but if the Paladin stayed at 50% HP, the total damage would be 56700, increasing the relative power of SS.
 
 
Conclusion
 
In summary, Light Defense and Inner Forces provides a constant % damage reduction regardless of the total damage received. Sacred Shield gets relatively weaker, the higher the maximum damage received, and vice versa, because it holds a constant power (% of the Paladin's HP). Depending on different situations each one of these skills could be the strongest defensive skill:
Short battles or intermitted damage - Sacred Shield (Most common case)
Long battles with constant and high damage to the entire party - Light Defense (Rare - 5v5 or wars)
If the Paladin constantly drops HP - Inner Forces (mainly PvP or boss tanking)
 
 
Method 2: In-Game Test
 
Since IF and LD are similar in their effect, which is a (passive) damage reduction, I decided to look further into them in the hopes of seeing which one would be better to max out. So in this part, I'll be presenting results for an in-game test, that could help us assess the effectivity of each of these skills at 1/4 and 4/4.
 
Inner Force vs Light Defense Without Mermen
 

Figure 13: Damage received data collected from in-game test, comparing the damage received with 4/4 Inner Force (orange) and 4/4 Light Defense and a passive 1/4 Inner Forces (yellow). On the left side (red), we see the number of hits. To the right, the HP value is being calculated ( = Max HP of 7004 - the damage received with each skill). Additionally, and on the left hand side, the % HP was calculated to indicate the amount of damage reduction applied on the next hit from Inner Forces (Green).
* Deviations emerged towards the end of the test presumably due to the innate HP regeneration per 5 seconds (HP values were calculated, not measured from the game)
 
We can see that Light Defense helps us receive less damage from the get-go. The line (below hit 5) determines the cut-off point, where the damage received with maxed IF becomes stronger than LD 4/4 and 1/4 IF. This means that the combination of LD 4/4 - IF 1/4  is in fact, better than 4/4 IF up until the Paladin is at 29% HP! (When IF provides 22% damage reduction, which is between 28.01% - 34% HP)
 
This information only tells us at which HP level do we receive less damage is it with maxed LD or maxed IF? To get an idea on the total reduction through all HP levels, we need to determine an average level of damage reduction:
 

Figure 14: Skill evaluation without Mermen gear: Orange - Inner Force 4/4, Yellow - Light Defense 4/4. "dmg received" = sum of damage of all hits. "dmg total" = damage with 0 reductions (i.e. 1124 x the total number of hits). "dmg reduced" =  dmg total - dmg received. "average reduction %" = dmg reduced / dmg total * 100%).
 
We can see that, it total, the average damage reduction of a maxed LD is higher when accounting to all HP levels. The word "Average" is important here. For example, even though IF has a higher damage reduction on a fewer amounts of hits (only 5th - 7th hits), the reduction at that level is stronger than that of LD (up to 26% on the 7th hit!).
 
Keep in mind, that with IF 4/4 we are not considering using 1/4 LD, since according to my experience, it is impractical to keep using LD and keep it active since there is a lot more going on that needs to be focused on. But for the sake of completeness, I also collected data with 1/4 LD and the cut-off point becomes around 40% HP:
 
 
Inner Force vs Light Defense With Mermen
 


Figure 15: Damage received data collected from in-game test, comparing the damage received with 4/4 Inner Force (orange) and 4/4 Light Defense and a passive 1/4 Inner Forces (yellow). On the left side (red), we see the number of hits with the damage reduction buffs from Mermen for each hit. To the right, the HP value is being calculated ( = Max HP of 7004 - the damage received with each skill). Additionally, and on the left hand side, the % HP was calculated to indicate the amount of damage reduction applied to the next hit from Inner Forces (Green). Regarding the max HP with Mermen, the values for calculating the % HP is shown at the bottom for each tick of Mermen buff.
* Deviations emerged towards the end of the test presumably due to the innate HP regeneration per 5 seconds (Since HP values were calculated, not measured from the game)
 
With Mermen, the cut-off point, where IF provides a better damage reduction increases to 38%, where IF provides 20% damage reduction (that is between 34.01% - 40% HP)
 
As for the average damage reduction with Mermen:
 

Figure 16: Skill evaluation with Mermen gear: Orange - Inner Force 4/4, Yellow - Light Defense 4/4. "dmg received" = sum of damage of all hits. "dmg total" = damage with 0 reductions (i.e. 1124 x the total number of hits). "dmg reduced" =  dmg total - dmg received. "average reduction %" = dmg reduced / dmg total * 100%).
 
As we can see, with Mermen gear, both skills have an almost equal damage reduction of 25%, where IF is slightly stronger (25,4% IF, and 24,9% LD). It shouldn't be a surprise that with the help of Mermen gear, IF becomes more effective, since the maximum HP increase helps IF trigger faster.
 
 
Conclusion
 
This method helps us better determine which skill combination is better for an overall damage protection. As you can see, there is no definitive answer. While LD provides a better damage reduction from the beginning of the fight, that is constant till the end of it, IF starts becoming stronger only starting from 40% HP (Mermen) and 34% HP (Without Mermen).
 
On first sight, LD might be the better choice since it provides a better initial protection, but protection at high level of HP isn't as necessary as at low HP, where you can profit the most out of Mermen gear and relics that work better with low HP. It's also worth mentioning that IF is completely passive, while LD is a buff that could be removed by opponents! On the other hand, LD and its strong talent buff the entire party, while IF and its talent only benefit the Paladin. 
 
Discussion
 
In this topic, I discussed the power of each of the defensive skills of Paladin individually and in combination, in addition their power with or without Mermen, in the hopes of helping lower budget Paladin decide which skills are the best to make them defensively stronger.
 
It is very important to recognize the differences in each skill besides the fact that they provide "damage reduction".
 
For example, even though Light Defense is seemingly the weakest defensive skill when it is judged based on improving a single players survivability. Light Defense's talent Patronage of Light provides a very useful mana regen buff. Additionally the damage reduction applies to the entire party, this could make it the strongest skill in 5v5 arena, and GvG/War battles if the Paladin is in the party. But even on a level of a single Paladin, LD is more effective than IF till 40% HP.
In addition to that, leveling up LD makes it easier to keep the skill active if you're or your party are relying on the talent "Patronage of Light" for your mana regen. 
 
Inner Forces makes you stronger when you're low HP, it can absorb up to 30% damage (10% HP), it definitely can be a life saver, it is the weakest at high HP, but at that point, we don't need it do we? Additionally, it synergizes very well with Mermen gear, keeping HP level below 50% provides the Paladin with a debuff cleanse every 6.5 seconds, and, below 50% HP, IF provides at least 16% damage protection in addition to the 15% from MM. Increasing the  max. HP through mermen makes it easy to stay around 50% HP without the fear of dying fast (50% would be something like 4k-5k HP!)
 
Sacred Shield provides the strongest instant protection, but with a considerable down-time, but its long duration combined with the talent Sacred Teaching, can make a great damage booster for Raid Boss battles and dungeons. It's also the most effective defensively in smaller battles (2v2 or 3v3 Arena), since you can apply 2 shields at once. SS also synergizes with MM due to the max. HP increase.
 
There are obviously several limitations to the methods applied here, these methods are very oversimplified in comparison to a "real-life" battle, where there are many variables that could affect a skill's efficacy
 
Additionally, a comparison between the efficacies of LD and IF was not performed for levels between 1 and 4, it would be helpful to know if there is a "best combination" for maximum damage reduction using 2/4 and 3/4 on each of the two skills. Considering the accuracy of the damage simulator, this could be done purely computationally, as to not waste any in-game resources.
 
 
Summary
 
Skill
Pros

Cons

Sacred Shield

- Strongest instant damage reduction
- Most effective in most situations (1v1, 2v2, 3v3, dungeon mobs, short boss fights)
- Constant damage absorption; depends on Paladin's HP
- Strong synergy with Mermen gear (increased HP)
- Has a relatively long down-time (Cooldown)
- Can be removed by opponents skills/relics
- Relative strength is lower with higher/increased total damage received
Inner Forces

- Strongest passive damage reduction at low HP (below 30%)
- Very strong in 1v1 situations and high damage boss tanking
- Strong synergy with Mermen gear
- Passive; cannot be removed/deactivated
- Only applies to Paladin; no support value
- Weakest skill at higher HP levels (above 40%) and only stronger below that.
Light Defense

- Relatively more effective without Mermen gear
- Best effect with a full party
- Constant protection across all HP levels; stronger than Inner Forces when above 40% HP
- Constant relative protection regardless of total damage received
- Long duration; effectively a passive
- Can be removed by opponents' skills/relics
- Rare situations where it's most effective: Long fights with high damage on multiple allies (5v5 or Wars)
- Gets weaker with increased defense (Defense curve)
 
 
References
https://wsdb.xyz/en/calculator
 
Advanced Paladin Calculator.xlsx
 
 

How can you know it's intentional? This has nothing to do with ganking at crossings. It doesn't make any sense to have moon not attack enemies here, when they're clearly "attack-able"  

I haven't read shit besides the OP but I think I know the gist of it.
There seems to be a general lack of understanding when it comes to class balance. Every time, discussions boil down to d*** measuring contests of comparing different classes and different skills that should not be compared. I've been guilty of that myself in the past.
 
It always comes down to arguments like Chieftain and Mage are similar right? But why this one has more AoE damage? Why this one has more stuns, why this has more of that and bla bla bla. Well, no Chieftain and Mage should not be compared.
 
When it comes to balance between sides in the game, the focus seems to be rather on skill-based, not class-based levels, IMO.
Meaning: If one side has a prominent skill, i.e. Harad's Banner, they introduce a skill that is analogous but not similar to the other side, i.e. Chieftain's Swooping Army.
 
Warlock used to be dominant in AoE control with Dark Circle and Zone of Weakness, they introduced Templar with skills of similar effect - Reverse Flow and Touch of Truth. Now one can come here and say WHAT? Templar has more heal and is much tankier than Warlock, how dare you say that's balance?! That's not the point of the balance though, it is to balance the skills and not the classes! Warlock and Templar are still different classes in their own rights! Their differences are still compensated by other classes on each side.
 
So, to the OP: You can't just compare Swooping Army and blazing ground or warlock's pool. In fact, pool and blazing ground are a perfect analogue, hence why both don't stack! Why not compare it to Banner? Banner damage also stacks, just like swooping army. Just because Mage and Chieftain have parallel skills (Resistance skills, and buff removing skills), doesn't mean they have to be compared in all other skills.
 

Introduction
 
As an extension to my Comprehensive Paladin Guide, in this topic, I'll be comparing Paladin's defensive skills and their pros and cons for each situation. The goal is give an idea on how effective each of those skills and which ones are the best, if you had to choose to level one or two of them, since there is not enough skill points to level all of them. And everything is backed with evidence and numbers! 
We're talking about the skills Sacred Shield, Light Defense, and Inner Forces.
 
 
 
 
For a while I disregarded Light Defense as a mostly useless skill that is only useful in larger fights like 5v5 arena or GvG/wars. Most Paladins prefer Sacred Shield and Inner Forces when they want to be tankier, Light Defense isn't usually the first choice when it comes to using skill points. Now, let me get it out of the way and say that Sacred Shield IS the best defensive skill for Paladins, hands down, I don't need to make an analysis for that. But in this topic I'll be rather comparing Light Defense and Inner Forces in reference to Sacred Shield.
 
 
Methods
 
It's a little hard to exactly quantify the efficacy of Light Defense and Inner Forces, as opposed to Sacred Shield. Sacred Shield gives you a fixed amount of damage absorption per usage and a defined CD, it will always be 80% (talent - 86%) of your max HP per X seconds (Cooldown), hence why it's also easy to use Sacred Shield as a reference point.
For example, your Sacred Shield has a CD of 25 seconds, each time it protects, let's say 5k damage, that simply equals to 5k damage reduction per 25 seconds or per 1 usage, and that's always gonna be the case, as long as your HP and Cooldown are constant.
 
But how do we quantify Inner Forces when it's passive and the reduction is based off your HP lost? And how do we quantify Light Defense when it's also basically passive due to the usage duration being basically permanent?
 
I'll be presenting 2 basic methods that can approximately gives us an idea about the average efficacy of each skill. The first method is going to represent damage reduction over a defined period of time as a variable in a completely hypothetical scenario based purely on math. And the second method is based on numbers collected from an in game test, where the Paladin receives damage over time till death, and the average damage reduction is calculated.
 
 
Method 1: Pure Math
 
To simulate the damage received, I used a self-made calculator that is pretty accurate to real in-game values with very minimal deviations (0.001% - 0.005%)

Figure 1: These parameters are the same as the ones that were in use for the in-game tests (Method 2), where the damage received was 1124.
 
When applying Light Defense, I only need to just the defense value and get the new damage received.

Figure 2: This is with 4/4 Light Defense, increasing defense from 5971 to 8048.
 
However, it's tricky to apply Inner Forces (IF), since the value of reduction varies depending on the HP lost, so we have to either take different HP points and compare it to Light Defense (LD) at each point or take an average of 50% HP and see how much reduction that gives us, or both!
As for calculating with IF (Same goes for Mermen damage reduction), all we need to input is the amount of damage reduction in %. The way to calculate it for IF is the following: Say we want to figure out IF's power at 60% HP and lvl 4/4, we'd need to calculate how many 6%'s are there in the remaining 40% HP. That is 40 / 6 = 6.67, but the game doesn't count the numbers after the decimals so we have 6 "ticks of 6% HP lost", each 6% gives us 2% damage reduction, this means IF would reduce a total of 12% of the incoming damage at 60% HP, 16% at 50% HP, and so on...
 

Figure 3: This shows the damage received with x5 mermen buffs and HP level between 16.01%* - 22% HP with maxed out IF.
*At 16% HP exactly, IF becomes 28% strong
 
Now that we have a working damage simulator, all we need are variables such as time, amount of hits, or number of skill usages.
The best way to evaluate the effective duration of a passive (i.e. IF) or a quasi passive (i.e. LD) skill is to calculate efficiency over a given period of time. But we also need to think about how much damage would we receive in that amount of time, this could very well vary from 0 damage per second to 2000 damage per second or even more! This is why a damage simulator comes in handy, this way, we can multiple the damage by a given amount of hits that we could arbitrarily assume would be dealt during that time.
For example, we want to see how much damage reduction does LD gives us in 1 minute when we are being hit 1 time per second, that is basically 60 hits * amount of damage that we calculated once with and once without applying the bonus from LD.
 
 
Method 2: In-Game Test
 
In this method, a Bladedancer with 1749 phyiscal damage, 48.9% Ferocity, 21.3% Penetration, and 2% Attack Strength was used to attack an idle Paladin with 47.8% Defense and 42.4% Resilience with only auto-attacks until the Paladin was dead. The damage values on each hit were recorded for each condition. The following conditions were applied:
- Inner Forces level 1/4, and Light Defense level 4/4 (With and without Mermen)
- Only Inner Forces (With and without Mermen)
 
Inner Forces level 4/4, and Light Defense level 1/4 was not evaluated because I felt that lvl1 LD is not something that most Paladins go out of their way to activate and keep active, especially if not using the respective talent. And with maxed out IF, its talent "External Influence" is more likely to be used. Additionally, in an intense battle, there are higher priorities than to keep a buff of 10% defense active!
 
The evaluation after that is pretty simple, the total damage received was added, from that, the damage reduced in proportion was calculated.
 
 
Results
 
Method 1: Pure Math
 
Light Defense
 
First of all, let's take a look at Light Defense at work on its own.
Since, the amount of defense in the calculator needs to be in %, we first need to know how much defense we need to input. If you don't have the defense values in game. You can use this calculator by mixing gears to figure out the % for your desired defense value.
 

Figure 4: This shows the amount of damage reduced when applying the damage amounts acquired from figures 1 and 2.
 
Here we see that a 4/4 LD reduces the incoming damage from 1125 to 1010, which is approximately 10% damage reduction.
To see how much damage exactly was reduced, we just multiply the damage by a number of hits. This 20 hits could be done in 30 seconds (750 damage per second)
 
As a comparison, the efficacy of LD was also evaluated using mace + shield, and as you can see from figure 7, LD becomes less effective with higher defense, this is obviously due to the fact that defense % damage protection decreases with increased defense value.
 

Figure 5: Damage received with 7769 defense mace/shield
 

Figure 6: Damage received with 4/4 LD applied to get 10160 Defense
 

Figure 7: Light Defense damage reduction
 
It's worth mentioning that, changing around certain values (Resilience, Ferocity, Attack Strength, Phyiscal Damage) except Penetration did not affect the % damage reduction (Data not shown).
 
 
Light Defense vs Sacred Shield
 
To figure out the relative defensive power of LD, Sacred Shield's (SS) power was used to compare the two.
 
In order to simply do that, the following hypothetical scenario was set:
- Battle lasts 1 minute (t = 60 s)
- Incoming damage is represented as 1 attack per second
- Opponent has a Phyiscal power of 1749, Penetration of 21,3%, Ferocity of 48,9%, and Attack Strength of 2%
- Paladin is being healed
- Sacred Shield was able to be used as soon as it is available with 25 seconds CD (40% Cooldown), thus SS was used 3 times during battle. (Time points t = 0s, t = 25s, and t = 50s)
- Case 1 - No Mermen: Paladin has an HP of 7004 (86% -> Shield power = 6023), Defense of 5971 (47,8%), and Resilience of 42,4%
- Case 2 - Mermen: Paladin gets an HP of 8236 (86% -> 7083 shield power); For simplicity's sake, the battle starts with x5 Mermen buffs
 
First we need to figure out how much damage the shield is receiving per hit, since we know that shields don't take Defense, Ferocity, and Resilience into consideration:

 
Figure 8: Damage received by Sacred Shield
 
Case 1:
 

Figure 9: Comparison between LD and SS without Mermen
 
The % damage reduction for Sacred Shield was calculated from the total damage reduced highlighted in yellow (11394) divided by the total damage received without Light Defense (67500). Without LD, because we are comparing Sacred Shield vs LD on their own!
 
Case 2:

 
Figure 10: Comparison between LD and SS with x5 Mermen buffs
 
LD has around 10% damage reduction in both cases, while SS has more 50% more damage reduction. Additionally, SS becomes more effective (almost x2 stronger than LD) with Mermen due to the max. HP increase, however, Mermen doesn't seem to affect LD significantly.
From these numbers, it might be surprising that SS is only twice as strong as LD. The reason for the total % damage reduction being so close, however, is that as you can see, SS absorbs the damage from only 10-12 hits in the entire 60 seconds, thus, there is a lot of down-time where SS has no effect, where LD provides a small reduction over the entirety of the 60 seconds.
 
However, it is important to highlight that this simplistic hypothetical scenario disregards many things, such as controls. It's not very realistic, especially that receiving around 1000 damage per second isn't sustainable without external help and/or Paladin controlling the enemy, which would help avoid damage during the shield's downtime.
 
This scenario could simulate a strong boss fight, where the Paladin is the main tank.
But thanks to this calculator, we can just change the 2 inputs (amount of hits for LD, and amount of usages for SS), and see how the difference in effect between the 2 skills change for different scenarios:
 
A)  B)  C)  
Figure 11: Comparisons with variating damage per seconds received: A) 1125 DPS . B) 750 DPS. C) 2250 DPS
 
As you can notice, LD has a constant % of damage reduction of around 10% in all situations. However, Sacred Shield, while having a constant damage reduction (3798 per shield), its % efficacy depends on how the maximum damage received in each scenario.
 
 
Light Defense vs Inner Forces vs Sacred Shield
 
Now let's add Inner Forces (IF) into the mix and compare each skill individually.
For IF, it gets a bit complicated, since we have to set an HP value for Paladin each time.
The same conditions as before apply, but additionally, we will account for Paladin at 90% HP, 75% HP, 50% HP, 35% HP, and 20% HP.
For 4/4 IF this means: 2% - 8% - 16% - 20% - 26% damage reduction, respectively.
 
There really should be no surprises here, IFs % damage reduction is already known - it's already predetermined by the Paladin's HP loss! This calculator translates the efficacy of LD and SS from defense increase and shield power into % damage reduction, and IF already is displayed in that way.
 
A)  B) 
Figure 12: Damage reduction % comparisons of LD, SS, and IF without (A) and with (B) Mermen gear.
 
One Information we can acquire through this comparison is at what HP level does IF become stronger than other skills! In this case, IF is the strongest defensive skill at when the Paladin is below 50% HP (A) or below 35% HP (B). 
 
Keep in mind, all of these numbers consider the fact that each one of these skills is applied individually. This is important for SS and IF interaction. Because with IF, the incoming damage reduction with decreased HP will affect Sacred Shields effective power. For instance, in A, the total damage received is 67500, but if the Paladin stayed at 50% HP, the total damage would be 56700, increasing the relative power of SS.
 
 
Conclusion
 
In summary, Light Defense and Inner Forces provides a constant % damage reduction regardless of the total damage received. Sacred Shield gets relatively weaker, the higher the maximum damage received, and vice versa, because it holds a constant power (% of the Paladin's HP). Depending on different situations each one of these skills could be the strongest defensive skill:
Short battles or intermitted damage - Sacred Shield (Most common case)
Long battles with constant and high damage to the entire party - Light Defense (Rare - 5v5 or wars)
If the Paladin constantly drops HP - Inner Forces (mainly PvP or boss tanking)
 
 
Method 2: In-Game Test
 
Since IF and LD are similar in their effect, which is a (passive) damage reduction, I decided to look further into them in the hopes of seeing which one would be better to max out. So in this part, I'll be presenting results for an in-game test, that could help us assess the effectivity of each of these skills at 1/4 and 4/4.
 
Inner Force vs Light Defense Without Mermen
 

Figure 13: Damage received data collected from in-game test, comparing the damage received with 4/4 Inner Force (orange) and 4/4 Light Defense and a passive 1/4 Inner Forces (yellow). On the left side (red), we see the number of hits. To the right, the HP value is being calculated ( = Max HP of 7004 - the damage received with each skill). Additionally, and on the left hand side, the % HP was calculated to indicate the amount of damage reduction applied on the next hit from Inner Forces (Green).
* Deviations emerged towards the end of the test presumably due to the innate HP regeneration per 5 seconds (HP values were calculated, not measured from the game)
 
We can see that Light Defense helps us receive less damage from the get-go. The line (below hit 5) determines the cut-off point, where the damage received with maxed IF becomes stronger than LD 4/4 and 1/4 IF. This means that the combination of LD 4/4 - IF 1/4  is in fact, better than 4/4 IF up until the Paladin is at 29% HP! (When IF provides 22% damage reduction, which is between 28.01% - 34% HP)
 
This information only tells us at which HP level do we receive less damage is it with maxed LD or maxed IF? To get an idea on the total reduction through all HP levels, we need to determine an average level of damage reduction:
 

Figure 14: Skill evaluation without Mermen gear: Orange - Inner Force 4/4, Yellow - Light Defense 4/4. "dmg received" = sum of damage of all hits. "dmg total" = damage with 0 reductions (i.e. 1124 x the total number of hits). "dmg reduced" =  dmg total - dmg received. "average reduction %" = dmg reduced / dmg total * 100%).
 
We can see that, it total, the average damage reduction of a maxed LD is higher when accounting to all HP levels. The word "Average" is important here. For example, even though IF has a higher damage reduction on a fewer amounts of hits (only 5th - 7th hits), the reduction at that level is stronger than that of LD (up to 26% on the 7th hit!).
 
Keep in mind, that with IF 4/4 we are not considering using 1/4 LD, since according to my experience, it is impractical to keep using LD and keep it active since there is a lot more going on that needs to be focused on. But for the sake of completeness, I also collected data with 1/4 LD and the cut-off point becomes around 40% HP:
 
 
Inner Force vs Light Defense With Mermen
 


Figure 15: Damage received data collected from in-game test, comparing the damage received with 4/4 Inner Force (orange) and 4/4 Light Defense and a passive 1/4 Inner Forces (yellow). On the left side (red), we see the number of hits with the damage reduction buffs from Mermen for each hit. To the right, the HP value is being calculated ( = Max HP of 7004 - the damage received with each skill). Additionally, and on the left hand side, the % HP was calculated to indicate the amount of damage reduction applied to the next hit from Inner Forces (Green). Regarding the max HP with Mermen, the values for calculating the % HP is shown at the bottom for each tick of Mermen buff.
* Deviations emerged towards the end of the test presumably due to the innate HP regeneration per 5 seconds (Since HP values were calculated, not measured from the game)
 
With Mermen, the cut-off point, where IF provides a better damage reduction increases to 38%, where IF provides 20% damage reduction (that is between 34.01% - 40% HP)
 
As for the average damage reduction with Mermen:
 

Figure 16: Skill evaluation with Mermen gear: Orange - Inner Force 4/4, Yellow - Light Defense 4/4. "dmg received" = sum of damage of all hits. "dmg total" = damage with 0 reductions (i.e. 1124 x the total number of hits). "dmg reduced" =  dmg total - dmg received. "average reduction %" = dmg reduced / dmg total * 100%).
 
As we can see, with Mermen gear, both skills have an almost equal damage reduction of 25%, where IF is slightly stronger (25,4% IF, and 24,9% LD). It shouldn't be a surprise that with the help of Mermen gear, IF becomes more effective, since the maximum HP increase helps IF trigger faster.
 
 
Conclusion
 
This method helps us better determine which skill combination is better for an overall damage protection. As you can see, there is no definitive answer. While LD provides a better damage reduction from the beginning of the fight, that is constant till the end of it, IF starts becoming stronger only starting from 40% HP (Mermen) and 34% HP (Without Mermen).
 
On first sight, LD might be the better choice since it provides a better initial protection, but protection at high level of HP isn't as necessary as at low HP, where you can profit the most out of Mermen gear and relics that work better with low HP. It's also worth mentioning that IF is completely passive, while LD is a buff that could be removed by opponents! On the other hand, LD and its strong talent buff the entire party, while IF and its talent only benefit the Paladin. 
 
Discussion
 
In this topic, I discussed the power of each of the defensive skills of Paladin individually and in combination, in addition their power with or without Mermen, in the hopes of helping lower budget Paladin decide which skills are the best to make them defensively stronger.
 
It is very important to recognize the differences in each skill besides the fact that they provide "damage reduction".
 
For example, even though Light Defense is seemingly the weakest defensive skill when it is judged based on improving a single players survivability. Light Defense's talent Patronage of Light provides a very useful mana regen buff. Additionally the damage reduction applies to the entire party, this could make it the strongest skill in 5v5 arena, and GvG/War battles if the Paladin is in the party. But even on a level of a single Paladin, LD is more effective than IF till 40% HP.
In addition to that, leveling up LD makes it easier to keep the skill active if you're or your party are relying on the talent "Patronage of Light" for your mana regen. 
 
Inner Forces makes you stronger when you're low HP, it can absorb up to 30% damage (10% HP), it definitely can be a life saver, it is the weakest at high HP, but at that point, we don't need it do we? Additionally, it synergizes very well with Mermen gear, keeping HP level below 50% provides the Paladin with a debuff cleanse every 6.5 seconds, and, below 50% HP, IF provides at least 16% damage protection in addition to the 15% from MM. Increasing the  max. HP through mermen makes it easy to stay around 50% HP without the fear of dying fast (50% would be something like 4k-5k HP!)
 
Sacred Shield provides the strongest instant protection, but with a considerable down-time, but its long duration combined with the talent Sacred Teaching, can make a great damage booster for Raid Boss battles and dungeons. It's also the most effective defensively in smaller battles (2v2 or 3v3 Arena), since you can apply 2 shields at once. SS also synergizes with MM due to the max. HP increase.
 
There are obviously several limitations to the methods applied here, these methods are very oversimplified in comparison to a "real-life" battle, where there are many variables that could affect a skill's efficacy
 
Additionally, a comparison between the efficacies of LD and IF was not performed for levels between 1 and 4, it would be helpful to know if there is a "best combination" for maximum damage reduction using 2/4 and 3/4 on each of the two skills. Considering the accuracy of the damage simulator, this could be done purely computationally, as to not waste any in-game resources.
 
 
Summary
 
Skill
Pros

Cons

Sacred Shield

- Strongest instant damage reduction
- Most effective in most situations (1v1, 2v2, 3v3, dungeon mobs, short boss fights)
- Constant damage absorption; depends on Paladin's HP
- Strong synergy with Mermen gear (increased HP)
- Has a relatively long down-time (Cooldown)
- Can be removed by opponents skills/relics
- Relative strength is lower with higher/increased total damage received
Inner Forces

- Strongest passive damage reduction at low HP (below 30%)
- Very strong in 1v1 situations and high damage boss tanking
- Strong synergy with Mermen gear
- Passive; cannot be removed/deactivated
- Only applies to Paladin; no support value
- Weakest skill at higher HP levels (above 40%) and only stronger below that.
Light Defense

- Relatively more effective without Mermen gear
- Best effect with a full party
- Constant protection across all HP levels; stronger than Inner Forces when above 40% HP
- Constant relative protection regardless of total damage received
- Long duration; effectively a passive
- Can be removed by opponents' skills/relics
- Rare situations where it's most effective: Long fights with high damage on multiple allies (5v5 or Wars)
- Gets weaker with increased defense (Defense curve)
 
 
References
https://wsdb.xyz/en/calculator
 
Advanced Paladin Calculator.xlsx
 
 

I like the resemblances of your work to a scientific paper. Good job! 

Shields dont take ferocity too