Paladin

Paladin is a class available to players in Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen. They function primarily as a Tank, directing aggro and damage away from their allies. Amongst the Tanks, the Paladin's specialty is in handling Undead and supporting their party with their healing abilities.

Lore[]

Once a Cleric, the Paladin has a call transcending the customs of the cleric order. Led by her convictions, she sets off to carry out her own righteous judgment.

Description[]

At its core, the Paladin is a plate-armored, melee specialist imbued with celestial power. This enables them to wield spoken rebukes with awesome effect. In addition, by shedding the dogma of the Cleric Order, they have devoted themselves to the study of arms and armor, giving Paladins renowned ability in defensive combat. Perhaps most iconically, the Paladin is driven by an unquenchable hatred of Undeath, a flame they have stoked into a ceaseless pursuit. Thus, a Paladin is never more fierce than when they stand face to face with Undeath.

Game Guide[]

For in-depth guides to the Paladin and beyond, be sure to browse the class guides.

Group Role

Tank. The role of the tank is to grab and maintain the attention (aggro) of hostile creatures (mobs), directing damage away from their allies. To be able to properly tank, it is important to understand the Hate mechanic. Mobs have a hidden "Hate list" which contains every PC and pet that is in active combat with it ("on aggro"). Whoever is at the top of the list is the target the Mob will attack. Nearly every action a PC takes while on aggro generates hate, though the primary sources are: Dealing Damage, Healing and using specific abilities designed to generate Hate (referred to as Taunts). The tank's job is to use their Taunt abilities to top the Hate List, keeping damage focused on themselves so that healers have as few targets to heal as possible.
If a party has more than one tank, it is useful to designate a Main Tank (MT) and an Off Tank (OT).

Combat Resource

Wrath, Reckoning Points

In combat, Paladins will gain Wrath as they take damage from enemies. Paladins will also gain an amount of Wrath based on their Constitution every time their group slays an enemy. Also, certain abilities will increase a Paladin’s Wrath by a certain amount when used. Other abilities will have a Wrath cost in order to be performed.

In addition to Wrath, Paladins will be able to generate up to 3 Reckoning Points represented in the UI by a row of 3 suns, filling one at a time as Reckoning Points are accumulated during combat. Paladins will then be able to use these Reckoning points to perform heroic feats during battle.

Race

The race you choose will provide different racial innate abilities that can and will be handy while adventuring. There will be times when the race you choose is to your, and your party’s, advantage; at other times neutral, and other times to your disadvantage. They will all be useful in any serious dungeon or other adventure area but one may be more advantageous in certain scenarios and situations.

FAQ[]

In September, 2019's newsletter, Chris Perkins debuted a new segment where he answers commonly asked questions about the classes of Pantheon.

Q

Will there be enough Undead content to justify the Paladin’s forte, “vs. Undeath?”

Chris

Yes. I’ll go so far to say that at launch and beyond, one of the main NPC groups in the Terminus storyline (making up one of our end-game raid areas) is entirely corrupted with Undeath. Paladins will be excellent, competitive main tanks that will have plenty of opportunities to flex their vs. Undeath prowess.

From October, 2019's Newsletter

Q

What will Paladin's cast times mean for their mitigation and avoidance? Will they be able to dodge/parry/block while casting? What about spell pushback?

Chris

First of all, Paladins were intentionally designed without mana. That's to help them avoid the traditional anti-mana fare, like silence/counterspell/mana-drain and things like that and the conundrum that can be for tanking in those situations. Which relates to the other reason, which is to maximize their group readiness--to put them on par with Warriors and Dire Lords when it comes to being able to sustain a group's momentum.

But, yes, some of their abilities have casting times which makes them vulnerable to spell interruption, spell pushback and being hit while casting these spells. But like I've said before, the class information we've released is not exhaustive. That would be a drag: to have the entirety of what a class is capable of put out there, so that there's no discovery and no suprizes once the game comes out...

In light of a potential gap or flaw like this, I will go ahead and say: Paladins will have a way to grow into minimizing and reducing their vulnerability towards interruption and pushback. Whether that will have be totally 100% mitigated is yet to be seen.

Finally, on the topic of passive mitigation while casting... that's something we're going to monitor very closely in testing. As of right now, regardless of the class, while you're casting your passive mitigation skills like dodge/parry/block are not active. If that proves to be punitive for the paladin, if it starts to effect their competitiveness when compared to the other tanks, that's something we'll address. Otherwise, I think it's a suitable counterbalance for the insane amount of utility that a skilled paladin has at their fingertips.

Gallery[]

Image of the Paladin class page following the website update in 2020. [Click for Larger Preview]
Image of the Paladin class page following the class reveal in June, 2018 (Archival Purposes Only) [Click for Larger Preview]