Gladiator 1212 Posted August 15 Posted August 15 (edited) ---Guide Contest Preface--- Not sure if this guide exactly fits under a class guide, maybe it falls under the category "Other Insights"? On 7/17/2025 at 10:45 AM, Shimarin said: 3. Other Insights. If your expertise doesn't quite fit the categories listed, you're still welcome to enlighten the world with your wisdom! ------------------------------- Introduction Update 12.6 marked the introduction of guild raids. The system is simple. Each guild can participate and fight a raid boss with gradually increasing difficulties. The guilds with the fastest times and/or higher levels reached, will get more rewards. The rewards are very high-end, hence this is the most competitive PvE content that Warspear offers. For this reason, every member of the guild matters, because in the end, it might come down to mere seconds! And because every member matters, in this guide, I will be giving you a set of general instructions that could be relevant for everyone, then, specific tips for Paladins to make sure that you contribute to your guild as much as possible. I will be going over the class's strengths, and how to utilize the most out of every aspect of the game - gears, talents, buffs, and so on. Because again, Every. Detail. Matters! Finally, I'll briefly go over the 2 permanent guild raids that we have currently in the game to help you familiarize yourself with the mechanics. Even the top guilds will have members that are not playing perfectly or maybe not getting the most of their class as possible. And if it's the case that for - out of all classes - A Paladin, it will have major consequences to the guild's results. Because in my opinion, Paladin is arguably the most important guild support for Sentinels. Even beyond that, since I'll include some general tips, this guide can be a starting point for those guilds who are not competing in the top but might not be realizing their fullest potential and could maybe at least improve their standings, and maybe one day they can also compete for the top ranks. In short: This guide is for Paladins in guild raids, and for guilds/players that don't realize the power of having Paladins in the guild raids. ATTENTION!: I will include some mechanics spoilers! But those will be hidden, so if you’re not interested in seeing them and would like to explore those on your own with your guild, feel free to skip those. Regardless I think this guide will be of benefit to you and your guild. Basic Guild Raid Tips Spoiler As of right now, we only have 2 permanent raids, and we had 3 seasonal raids (Christmas, Halloween, and Spring), since I don’t know if the seasonal raids will return in the same form, for now, I will be only going over the permanent raid, but first, this section will focus on general tips that are relevant for all future permanent raids as well as seasonal ones. For Leaders Spoiler 0. Recruit Paladins! The title says it all. I recommend at least 6 Paladins in a guild (specifically for guild raids). 1. Party lists Guild leaders (including right hands and heirs) should take on organizing the guild into parties. This means you make a list, specifically assigning members to 20 different parties (assuming 100 members). This is very important, not only because Paladin has several skills/talents and relics (spoiler) that boost party's performance, but also it helps keeping you more organized in case the guild needs to split into 2-3 groups, which is often the case in several raids. Spoiler Pro-tips: - In case the guild needs to split evenly, make sure the parties on every side are power-balanced. For Paladins, this means ensuring all sides have at least 1-2 Paladins. - Party structure: Ideally, you want 1 support, 3 damage dealers (DDs) and 1 slot for "secondary support" or 1 more DD. As for tanks, I'd recommend you to put them in a dedicated party by themselves + 1 druid in case they need support. For example: Party 1 Seeker Seeker Ranger Paladin Priest Party 2 Ranger Mage Seeker Seeker Priest Party 3 Bladedancer Ranger Mage Mage Druid and so on... - It is important to assign a good leader for each party that you can trust. Their job will be to make sure that each one in the party is doing their role well and is using the best possible buffs and minions. 2. Buffs, minions, artifacts Speaking of buffs and minions, level 10 raids reward each member with 5000 gold per run, that is possibly 30k gold per day. If the budget is tight, it would be worth it if members can donate part of that gold to the guild, in return you can provide members with buffs and minions. But what are the best buffs/minions? See next section. For Members Spoiler - Follow instructions, duh! - Be familiar with raid mechanics (more on that later) - If you have excess silver dirhams, donate to guild in forms of artifacts - Build your character with the correct weapons and stats, e.g. sea raid = underwater fury, etc. If you're a Paladin, stick around and I'll guide you through that - All members should have AT LEAST these group relics, obtained from Ayvondil castles: As a Paladin, you use this on Aura, and the good thing is, it will automatically activate every X seconds; X being your Aura's cooldown. Or even better: These are used on Persuasion, which is not intuitively used during guild raids if you're not a tank. But as you can see, it greatly boosts your party's damage, so make sure you keep spamming that agro (lvl1, so you don't actually tank) Buffs and minions Physical DDs (Physical Paladin) - Magical DDs - Support (Magical Paladin) - Support: You want 1 minion in the party to boost everyone's damage Damage dealers: Self explanatory, I think. Tanks (Including Paladin): The reason here is to have at least a couple of minions in the guild that apply this or similar debuff on bosses: and this is one example of such minions. Artifacts And don't forget the artifacts , which you can get from here: Pro-Tip: - It is important to keep artifacts on at all times, but also, not to waste them, since they have a long cooldown of 5 minutes. This means the guild needs to be coordinated in how and when they use them. This artifact stacks up to 5 times on on 20 allies. So technically, there should be 25 scarabs at once to buff all guild members for 15% damage. Of course, this is unrealistic to coordinate, a general rule of thumb is to watch over your buff icons*, and if you don't see a stack of x5, use it. But be aware of the boss stages, so you don't use it right before a boss goes to an immune status. This artifact only applies once, and buffs 10 allies. This means you need 10 of them at once, an easy way to organize this, is to make party leads only use them in a coordinated way. *It's highly recommended to turn off all buff/debuff icons from rewards so your bar isn't cluttered with useless icons. Paladin - The Ultimate Guild Buffer Spoiler Because Paladin is extremely strong in guild raids, playing Paladin or building in a suboptimal way can have major consequences on the entire guild's performance. This is why I chose the title, it might be a bit of an exaggeration, but really, not a single class that can affect the performance of an entire 100 player group like Paladin - Too much responsibility, some might argue. Regardless, that's the state of the game and we have to play around it. So in this part, I'll show you how to squeeze your Paladin to its maximum potential! Gear Spoiler Choosing a build for guild raid can be tricky, since both are pretty effective in their own way in both permanent raids, but not the previous seasonal raids - The Halloween, Christmas, and Spring raids were just a boss. Since Physical build is always going to be relevant (there will always be a boss), I'd recommend the physical route if you have to choose 1. But ideally, you should have both builds, just in case. You need a magical build for general PvE and dungeons anyway ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Keep in mind, this is end-game content, so the gear should also be high-end, but I think we can get away with having a budget option, most important thing here is to get the stats. You don't have to exactly copy the gear I suggest, just use those as a guide and get the important stats. As I always I'm gonna suggest builds through the trusty https://wsdb.xyz/en/calculator, so you can go in and adjust the build as you please. Since Paladin is not the primary tank role in guild raids, I would recommend a purely tanking build. Magical Build High end: https://wsdb.xyz/build/6110 This is as good as a PvE magic build can get, it is balanced to be able to handle tanking most PvE content (except high level guild raid bosses), while maintaining decent offensive stats. Most important stats without castle buffs and talents: 40.4%+ 10.5%+ 16,8% from Aura* + 15% from Time Distortion half-set 16.7%+ 15% from Time Distortion half-set 82.5%+ 20% from relic** 39 mana per 5 seconds in battle. (155+15 from talents / 2 - 36 from x2 mermen sets, and - 10 from Aura) Lower Budget: https://wsdb.xyz/build/6111 Replace Time Distortion, the rings, and a couple of enchants, and boom, you got a lower budget build. Unfortunately, you have to get the heavy mermen still. But I honestly would say this is a better guild raid build than the "high-end" build since you are more free with your mana regeneration to go for more Cooldown. Most important stats without castle buffs and talents: 36.3%+ 22.6%+ 16,8% from Aura* 17.1%+ 107.2%+ 20% from relic** 32 mana per 5 seconds in battle. (105+15 from talents / 2 - 18 from x1 mermen set and - 10 from Aura). Here I'd use the Light Patronage talent (More on that later) As you can see, for a magical build , you really just wanna get as much Cooldown as you can. You can go even higher with the Cooldown, there is really no limit as long as you don't mess up your other stats too much. But keep in mind that Cooldown stat gives diminishing return in terms of time reduction (Check the my Paladin guide for more info). That being said, (magical) Paladin's main role in guild raids is really just spamming Banner and Illumination, so I wouldn't worry about losing Critical hit/Aenetration/Accuracy for even more Cooldown, just make sure you maintain at least 40+ mana regen / 5 seconds in battle with higher Cooldown. Physical Build High-End: https://wsdb.xyz/build/6113 With this, you can get really creative, go max attack strength or do a nice pierce build with high speed, or max crit and crit dmg. The latter makes most sense for a Paladin, a lot of your damage is is skill based, so speed and attack strength are not very beneficial. Remember even if with physical build you do a good amount of damage, your biggest contribution to guild raids is still damage boosting your guild, so you need to be spamming illumination and banner at high cooldown, so having high speed is counter-intuitive, check out my guide for more info on Speed vs Cooldown. Stats without castle buffs and talents: 45%+ 10.5%+ 16,8% from Aura* + 15% from Time Distortion half-set 20.4%+ 15% from Time Distortion half-set 72.7%+ 20% from relic** 38 mana per 5 seconds in battle. (152+15 from talents / 2 - 36 from x2 mermen sets, and - 10 from Aura) Additionally you have: 8.4% 18% Lower Budget: https://wsdb.xyz/build/6112 Stats without castle buffs and talents: 35.4%+ 26.4%+ 16,8% from Aura* + 15% from Time Distortion half-set 32.1%+ 15% from Time Distortion half-set 81.9%+ 20% from relic** 39 mana per 5 seconds in battle. (152+15 from talents / 2 - 36 from x2 mermen sets, and - 10 from Aura) *Not-so-secret Aura pro-tip: I'm not sure if many Paladins know this, but with this relic: , you can activate Aura while under Rage to get an additional 40% accuracy - 12% becomes 16.8%. And the best part is, if you do so, even if Rage falls off, as long as Aura had been activated under Rage, you will keep the 16.8%, and won't go back to 12%. **Pro-Tip: - Get on Fetters of Justice, and SPAM the hell out of fetters to get a pretty much permanent +20% CD since mostly likely boss will resist fetters. In general, go for a high cooldown build. For raids, I recommend at least 100% Cooldown. This relic and a 10% from a potion will help you get there easily. Skills and Talents Spoiler 1. Banner and Illumination boost everyone’s damage and critical damage by up to 29% and 20%, respectively. Needless to say, maxing these 2 skills is a no-brainer for all Paladins. Spoiler Let me put this into some simple numbers: Let's say Banner has 18 seconds cooldown, at base level 4, it buffs damage by 25% for 12 seconds. This means if your entire guild does 100k damage per second, it becomes 125k per second. If you do the math, instead of dealing 1.8m damage every 18 seconds (my banner's cooldown), the guild will deal 2.1m, that's almost a 17% damage boost over the entirety of the guild raid. Here is another calculation to show you how much faster, your raid run will be assuming 0 resisted/wasted Banners: And if you have multiple Paladin's, here is the time saved relation with banner's uptime: By the way, with talents, you can increase Banner's boost by 2x 2%, with each 2%, you increase the guild's average DPS by 1.33% and reduce the completion time by about 1% As for Illumination, which actually can have a 100% uptime(!). To give an idea about the efficacy of Illumination, here is a simplified calculation with 40% average critical hit rate and a base critical damage multiplier of 230% in average for the whole guild of 100 players. Assuming a 300 second fight, and each player hits 1 time per second. Note: For simplicity, I assumed lower level illumination would also have 100% uptime. In reality, this is not true. Illumination gives a DPS increase of around 5%, regardless of fight duration, number of players/hits per sec, it gives a constant 5% DPS increase. The only thing that changes this effect is the guild's average crit rate and original crit damage. As such, if the original crit damage is 200%, illumination becomes slightly more effective. In terms of a raid boss fight, this 5% DPS increase can reduce a fight by, naturally, 5%. So a 3:00 minute fight becomes 2:51 seconds. 2. You can also boost yourself and someone’s total damage output by 15% using Sacred Shield’s talent Sacred Teaching. The shield lasts for 10 seconds at level 1 if it's not destroyed, and the damage boost lasts for a further 5 seconds. With a good Cooldown (~85-90%), you can reach ~18 sec cooldown, so I'd recommend having it at lvl2 or 3 so you can keep it up at all time. 3. Additionally, with the adventurer’s branch, you have yet another up to 10% damage boost on the targets that’s applied on everyone’s damage. Here is a simplified visualization of the skill's efficiency: Spoiler Of course this is just an approximation, because the duration of each stage of the skill's effect is not equal, i.e. since the DPS is higher at 10% damage buff, the skill won't be buffing 10% for as long as 1%. In other words, the time where the DPS is highest, is lower than the time where the DPS is lowest. I think if you really want an accurate calculation you need to apply derivatives. I asked ChatGPT and here is an accurate representation if you're interested (I don't really know if you can trust its calculations), but as you can see, it's not far off: Adding up Banner, Illumination, Judgement together = ??? Using a rough simulation with all the previous calculations added together, Paladin reduces the guild's time to finish a boss fight by a whopping 30%! This assumes that Banner is up 67% of the time, Illumination and Judgement are up 100% of the time. The guild has an average of 40% Crit Rate and 230% Crit Damage. If my calculations are correct, this is the highest potential of Paladin improving the guild's raid run: Fun fact: If Paladin's damage boosters counted as Paladin's own damage in this example, they would amount to almost 6M damage out of the 25M... With multiple Paladins, Banner can be maintained 100% of the fight's duration, this will require good coordination with all the Paladin's in the guilds, since Banners can also be resisted quite a lot in high level raids. But if they manage to do so, the time will be decreased by 41%! In this example it is almost 10 seconds difference. This definitely can be a deciding factor between the ranks. I also noticed that bosses have Tenacity*, this has implications only for Illumination's uptime. Because even with my 100%+ Cooldown, which gives me less than 7 seconds on Illumination, I barely keep lvl4 Illumination (10 seconds duration) on bosses for 100% of the time. Spoiler That’s not it! Paladin’s Prayer applies up to 180% magical or 150% physical damage to the next auto-attack of your entire party every 14 or so seconds if spammed with high cooldown. This is roughly 1000+ additional damage per second to your party. A couple of things to note: - If you can’t handle lvl4 illumination agro, use Tranquility potions. - Since paladin buffs apply globally*, i.e. they debuff enemy targets, affecting the entire guild's damage, make sure that you spread out your banners so the boss is always under the debuff. Sometimes (at higher levels, a lot) Banner gets resisted by bosses. So 1 or even 2 paladins is definitely not enough! A guild should have at least 6 Paladins that are free from any tanking roles. Since often guild will have to be split. *Paladin redundancy Spoiler With all this greatness, there is a downside to have this huge of an effect on the entire guild. You don't need that many Paladins in the guild - specifically for guild raids, of course there is no such thing as too much Paladins in PvP. Despite this, I still recommend at least 6 Paladins, which is more than many guilds have due to the low popularity of PvE Paladins (at least in US-Sapphire). As mentioned, bosses have a pretty high chance to resist Banners, which is the majority of Paladin's boosts. I did some calculations and made this graph to demonstrate the relationship between having multiple Paladins and Boss's resistance to help you see at what point having many Paladins is redundant and what is sweet spot. The formula though is based on probabilities, hence when why with 0% resistance, even with 3 Paladins, Banner is not quite up 100% of the time. But for simplicity, just assume anything above 0.9 is 100% uptime. Your aim is to maintain a probability of above 80%, this means up to 6 Paladins if the boss's resistance is above 60%. Now of course, there is no way for us to know the boss's resistance beforehand. But, again, this is why I do suggest 6+ Paladins in a guild. This keeps your Paladin "supply" good in case the guild needs to split, and if you're facing a high resistance boss, they won't be too wasted. P.S. if you're familiar with R, I can share the code I used to make this graph if you'd like to do other simulations. Recommended Talent Branches: - The build to go for is a physical damage build with the middle branch for boss fights since this will give you the most single target damage. However if you’re assigned to a role that requires AoE damage, a magical build is much better. In this case, going for the right branch for the extra 2% on Banner is a better option than the left branch, even though it gives you more magical damage. But the 2% on Banner will result in more damage for the guild in the end. - As much as it sucks to not have the assassin’s talent Power Surge, try to build the adventurer talents for Judgement if you haven’t done it yet, it’s worth it! Recommended Guild Raid skill build (Physical build/Boss fight): 5/5 5/5 3/5 4/4 4/4 4/4 (2)(3)/4 (4)(3)/4 Recommended Guild Raid skill build (Magical build/Mob clearance): 5/5 5/5 3/5 4/4 4/4 4/4 (2)(3)/4 (4)(3)/4 Noteworthy Relics: Purifying: Since you will be spamming agro skill for the group relic (see section For Members), might as well proc some speed buffs, especially in physical build: Persuasion: Heavenly Light: Class Interactions Spoiler To keep this relatively short, I won't be going over every class in detail, In this part, I want to highlight some other classes that are relevant to or have interactions with Paladin in some way. DDs - Seeker, Ranger, Mage There is a really niche and extremely underappreciated yet powerful aspect of Paladin that's not very commonly known by damage dealers, and it's that Paladin has a talent that boosts mana regeneration of the whole party: This comes at the expense of the previously mentioned 15% damage boost for 1 ally by Sacred Teaching. But if the party has 3+ damage dealers and a Paladin, these damage dealers can opt in for a lower mana regen setup, that provides them with higher damage. The best part is that you don't need to level up the skill itself for this, unlike Sacred Shield. In which case, you can level up another damage skill. Examples: With this talent, all damage dealers in the party can replace 1 enchant of mana regen for a Penetration, Piercing or Cooldown enchant. Giving 3 damage dealers a guaranteed and permanent 3.5% or so penetration is often better than boosting 1 person for 15% damage with a shield that, when used on damage dealers in high-level PvE settings, is too weak and might break very quickly, especially if it's not maxed out. Specifically for Mages, you can sacrifice the mana regeneration from Dragon Eye and use the talent Excess Energy for an additional 14% skill damage for you or another heavy hitter. Supports - Druid If possible, get Druids rather than priests in with Paladins in the same party + 3 damage dealers, since Druids increase Cooldown with Invigorating Stream. The Paladin, and thus, the entire guild will benefit of higher Cooldown on Paladin, since they will be able to cast Banners and Illuminations faster. The skill also regenerates mana, so it will make the aforementioned mana boost that much more effective! Tanks - Warden Now, at this point, you might be thinking, what's the point of Wardens, if Paladin can do all of that, and also be a tank. But that's the thing, in my opinion, a tank Paladin is wasted Paladin. For Paladin to tank, it would lose on a lot of damage itself, and will lose focus on the most important part, damage buffing. Sometimes u need a warden to hold monsters away from the group. Wardens can be important in certain raids where you need up to 4 tanks or more. It’s nice to have so that you don’t waste your Paladins' AoE damage and support. Horrors of the Deep Raid Tactics *SPOILERS* Note: Since this content is still new, some information may be incomplete, but it will give you a general idea. Spoiler Key points As you spend time underwater, you lose Sanity. You can refill Sanity by killing fish in the shallow waters as soon as you dive in from the islands. important for tanks: every side should have 1-2 tank AT ALL TIMES, therefore, you should communicate so that you are saving your Sanity until the tanks underwater are low. If all tanks run out of Sanity at the same time, it's a RIP. This raid has the unique design that the boss - the heart is locked behind gates where only 5 players per gate can enter. There are 3 gates, but I recommend only focusing on two (left and right gates), since you have to split the guild for each side, and splitting guild 3-way is pretty hard. Open gates by killing monsters and minibosses on each side, and 5 players enter from each side, total of 10. After 30 seconds cooldown, you can re-open gates, but the same players that entered cannot enter again until 10 other players have entered. So for leaders, you need to split your party list into 2 groups, and 4-6 parties should be designated to enter the heart area in a specified order. Why having 6+ Paladins in the guild is important: Each side (let's call them gate openers) should have 2+ Paladins to get damage buff coverage at all times. AND the teams that are entering the heart area (let's call them heart parties) should also have 1 Paladin per 1 gate entrance (per 10 players in our case). - Paladins assigned to the heart team should have good physical damage builds. - Paladins assigned to the gate openers should have magical damage builds. You should probably contribute to tanking as well, since there are many monsters. But with a good Life Steal, it should be fine. Now you might be thinking Paladin instead of a pure DD in heart? You're crazy right? No. Let's do the math: Spoiler Suppose we have this base situation: By the way, I know that it's usually 4 DPS + 1 support (Priest), but to make it simple here I just used only DPS. Now let's replace DPS3 with a Paladin (I chose DPS3 btw because he represents the average DPS the most) . Again, in this case, the Paladin has a cooldown of around 95%, i.e. 18 seconds cooldown of 27% banner and 12 seconds uptime. So an average DPS boost of 18%. It follows: Paladin, even without doing ANY damage, reduces the fight time by around 12 seconds. Just by Banner alone. Now here is the problem, Banner DOES get resisted a lot in higher level guild raids. But, Illumination and Judgement don't, so even if banner gets resisted 50% of the time (usually it doesn't resist THAT much), a Paladin is still better than a an extra DPS. Chasing the Wind Raid Tactics *SPOILERS* Note: Since this content is still new, some information may be incomplete, but it will give you a general idea. Spoiler Key points The boss will be hidden at the start, to release it, destroy the 2 hooks. The guild here will need to split, so make sure you have Paladins on both sides. When you take damage, you get a debuff (Electrifying). This debuff will cause you to take even more damage (I think 100% at 100% bar - not sure) There is also minibosses, but I wouldn't recommend killing them, it just wastes time. A good way to deal with them is to have Wardens agro them away from the group. Every now and then, the boss will mark someone, you will see it as a red arrow above your head and in the debuff bar, if you get it, you have to move away from the crowd. When the debuff is over, one of the minibosses will launch on you dealing big damage to you and players around you. Periodically, Defense Orbs will spawn that will reduce the damage dealt by a lot (I think 50%), immediately destroy them with your ranged DDs (Mage/Ranger). The Boss will cast a mark on every player, either yellow or purple. It will appear big on your effects bar under your name like so: or When the boss is 50% HP, he will hide again and the hooks appear, you have to destroy them to release the boss. Between 0% and 50% HP, the boss will periodically go into immunity and mark the area with the 2 colors on the ground in sequence, after the sequence is over, AoE damage will be inflicted on all previously marked areas to players of the opposite color. Here is a makeshift demonstration of one of these sequences: basically you stand in the area where the other color hasn't touched (white area). But what do you do as a Paladin? This raid doesn't have any special role for Paladin. So as in all cases, you just spam Banner, Illumination for the damage boosts, fetter to boost your cooldown, and purifying to increase the damage of your party's skills with castle relic. Here I recommend a magical build, since in later stages, the area does clutter with many mobs that can hurt a lot, so you need some magical damage for AoE damage and to heal yourself, because Illumination will you tank a bit, even with Tranquility potions. But you really can't go wrong with a good physical damage build though. It's just my safer preference. As always, with the magical branch I recommend the right branch for guild raids, for that extra 2% on Banner's damage boost, and in this case, extra tankiness that you will need. Support Mages and Rangers in destroying orbs. Coordinate with other Paladins in the guiild - who will use Banner/Illumination on the orbs when they spawn. Summary and Key Takeaways Spoiler The Holy Trinity Paladin has 3 major guild damage buffing skills/talents that are must-haves! Banner, Illumination, and Judgement. If played optimally, Paladins can contribute in the guild raid’s time by up to 40%! Double Duty Paladin not only excels in buffing the entire guild, but also can make the party that much better, if played with the right combinations Cooldown is king Regardless of magical or physical builds, get as much as Cooldown and as possible! 100%+ should be your aim Relics - small items, huge impact Get group relics, cooldown increasing relics, and defense reducing relics. Coordination is key The difference between a coordinated group of Paladins will affect your standing. Don't waste your Banners and time them correctly Know your enemy Familiarize yourself with the mechanics. Credits: @SymbX for the ever-useful calculator https://wsdb.xyz/en/calculator; a truly indispensable tool generally, and especially for making guides Edited August 16 by Gladiator SymbX and Voidknight 2 Quote
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