It's really not difficult to twist when you're in guardbot mode... any good paladin will do it. I do when I play my Paladin, and so do Paladins that I group with when playing my Mercenary.Qaewin said:Paladins can also twist their heal chant but more than likely won't. Twisting is for pve and 1v1 fights and is impractical for the pally in rvr.
Any reduction in the amount of damage you're taking makes your Clerics job easier...Has a higher af by 56 (the self buff) shield chant doesn't stack with spec af buff. This is 5% per hit. 3 assisters hitting for 200 dmg each every round for 13 rounds withought one miss and the pally still won't have made up the hp diff.
Since you'll likely be grouped with a Cleric who has resists, it's the tri-resist buffs you're looking at. You need 44 Chants for Soul Ward (Body/Spirit/Energy), which will give your group an additional 10% resistance against Mid or Hib PBAE. Twisting this in with Endurance while taking on a PBAE box makes things a lot easier for your Clerics.There resist chants are nice 20% for the highest ones but to get them pallys would need to have 49 in chants, coupled with 50 in shield 29slash leaves them 9 parry. They would also haveto pick the right chant for each spell type..tough when each grp will have more than one.
2 qbars... One for Soul Ward, and one for Elemental Ward (if you have a Friar) or Heat Resist.So an exceptionally well played paladin that twists all chants and picks the right resist chant each time (would recquire 4 identical qbars bar each resist) and switches bodyguard as well as an arms that doesn't, will more than offset the extra hp.
And I expect Paladins will, in general, be better at switching bodyguard as they have more experience of it (from switching guard). The majority of Arms in RvR are ofensively specced, and it is the Paladins who currently fulfil the role of guardbot.
I have frequently considered dropping my Parry spec on my Paladin, as I find it interferes with my blocking and is often more of a hinderance than help. But that's Mythics fault for having Parry resolved before Block, which is somewhat illogical in my opinion - if you're trained to fight with a sword and shield, you're trained to use the shield as your primary means of defense to keep your sword free to counter attack. Parry would be a secondary form of defense for if someone gets inside your blocking arc.But probably not the extra parry (probably about 30 pts) extra dex (which seems to make a big diff) and the det factor.
And Det isn't an issue if you set intercept on the person you're Bodyguarding! Intercept = Free Purge with no timer!!
You just have to hope that the enemy know what they're doing and go for the right target... F8 /assist n00bs can really screw things up here!
The Paladin will have FH, Purge and some MoBlock at a much lower RR than an Arms will have to be to get Det 5, Purge, IP, MoBlock, SoB... so it'll be a lot easier to find a Paladin to suit your requirements than it will be to find an Arms.FH>SB but arms get IP (as do pallys but its better than nought) and if the bodyguard needs to use 2 instas ur probably in trouble anyway.
Both have their pros and cons, but I feel that the Paladin brings more to the group as a whole. Don't forget that chants don't *just* improve the survivability of the Paladin, but everyone else in the group too...I'm obviously biased towards arms but I feel they will make better bodyguards.
One of each would be nice and probably optimal though.