I’ve tried two STR paladins. Neither of them successful.
The first one went the Cleric C1 -> Priest 2 -> Paladin path, it felt really strong at first because of blessing but after the 100 first levels it got pretty weak and underwhelming. Priest 2 is also really bad at healing and support in general with STR builds…
The second one went Cleric C2 -> Diev 1 -> Paladin 2, It felt a little better in terms of damage/healing after the first 100 levels. Carve Attack is nice with a STR build but after a while you just realize it’s not worth it. It’s a forced single target skill with really little melee range and a rather slow animation to deal all 15 hits. I eventually gave up on that path as well because just Carve Attack + Smite wasn’t really doing it for me.
Both builds felt kinda “meh” because they were both bad at both support and DPS (with the second one being slightly better support and the first one slightly better DPS). The big problem with physical damage build paladins is the lack of physical damage skills outside the paladin tree. The only reliable physical damage cleric class is monk and monk+paladin doesn’t really make a good combo cause you need to opt between them at very close ranks and both needs 3 class circles to become effective. Both Carve Attack and Smite are too poor in their AoE damage aspect and you usually struggle fighting mobs in big quantity.
So after those both bad experiences with physical damage paladins I decided to try out an INT paladin, and it actually went better than I expected.
My current path is Cleric 3 -> Paladin 3 and I wouldn’t say it’s a great damage dealer but it’s surely among the best healers you can make. At the 190 dungeon you just throw those heals on the floor in the middle of a combat and with tons of INT, heal lvl 15, and restoration aura, your party member’s HP rarely drop below full.
It’s sort of complicated building a Paladin because you need to accept that you’re not a outstanding DPS nor support in the first place. Paladins are a hybrid class between the both and they don’t really excel at neither. You can build one with very strong heals, true, but other than that their other support abilities are pretty much plain average.
My INT Paladin feels exactly like that. It’s not really an outstanding support because just healing doesn’t rate you as an excellent support (at least to me). And it’s not an outstanding DPS but it can manage itself better than full support builds during solo play.
On the other hand, my STR/DEX Paladins felt bad at both support and DPS. Like I said, there aren’t many physical skills to fill in your rotations in order to make a purely physical damage build. And you will need to give up on one cleric circle or another to get that physical damage, which means a lot less healing capability (not to mention INT builds heal a lot more by default).
So yeah, that’s my overall conclusion: Physical damage Paladins are a bit lacking atm, while INT paladins are still viable. I wouldn’t risk myself making a “full support” paladin with SPR/CON either because like I said, they are hybrids and don’t excel at neither. If you want a SPR/CON build, there are better classes to pick like Priest 3 with Stone Skin for example.
For the rest, all of paladin skills are ok. I wouldn’t rate none as great and none as bad. The exceptions are Barrier which is a little bit TOO situational (to the point its only worth it in earth tower) and Conversion which needs a whole build focused on it to be effective (otherwise just leave it level 0).
To answer your questions:
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Restoration is awesome, don’t skip it. Place at least 1 point if you’re feeling really doubtful about it. It increases your healing (and party member’s) by A LOT. Also, I don’t bother using the SP regen attribute because it increases the skill’s CD.
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Resist Elements is an okay buff. It’s not super awesome, but it’s not bad either. It’s simply ok. Gives you a 20% chance to negate elemental damage thats not holy/dark and it works for any sort of elemental damage (sometimes you can negate ‘physical’ damage from mobs like arrows because they’re elemental, sometimes spells). It also shows a pretty obvious “Miss” when you do negate the damage.
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Turn undead is okay. It might not look so good at early game content, but it will be surely nice to have when you meet up mobs with 60k+ hp and kill them instantly with one skill.
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Conversion is only useful in Conversion oriented builds. I would skip it completely if you’re not focused in making a Conversion build.
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Barrier doesnt work in PvP. Players can simply walk across it.
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Conviction is okay, it’s not good or bad either. If you have elemental damage gear (poison, lightning, fire and ice) you will get 400 additional damage per hit with it. 400 Damage is not awesome by the time you are able to learn Conviction, but since it’s per hit, it can boost some strong multi-hit skills like Cure. It also makes your smite hits 3 times though only the first hit will deal the 200% bonus damage. Again, it’s not an awesome skill because it has a long cooldown and rather poor AoE / AoE Attack Ratio.
And I guess thats it. I’m just sharing my own experience here, but of course you are free to try physical damage paladins as well and I hope you can build one better than mine. Good luck, pudding person.