i think bard wins in all aspects, i prefer a good support bard than a good support paladin or vice versa, I FEEL bard is way better
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Do you reject paladins from your groups though?
If you do, then fair enough, pally is not ‘equal’ to bard in your eyes.
If you don’t, whether bc ‘good enough’ or current meta so starved for any support, bottom line is until you start rejecting paladins over bards, both are essentially ‘equal’
Some pretty bad paladins u had in your runs. My friends are always gushing over how thankful they are that paladin (meaning me) saved their asses on Argos small pizza or likes in Abyssals.
It all depends on engravings someone is having. If you see paladin with no Blessed Aura, it should raise some flags, because either they don’t know what they’re doing or have ill idea that they can do DPS while being paladin. If you see paladin u think “nice, support” or “nice, a guy with poor DPS but gives nice shield once per 3-5 minutes”.
To be honest, I never managed to play with an actual Bard. Either in matchmaking or applying in lobby into T3 Abyssals and Argos. But once I made my alt Bard I started to see a lot more of them in T1-T2. Weird.
Anyway, personally, I prefer how Paladin plays: start off with shield, debuff boss, buff allies, circle under asses so Igniter doesn’t die while casting his big fireball with my buff while standing right in front of boss.
Bard has too much damn AoE, tbh. And you have to come up and close to cast shield whereas on my paladin it’s a rule of the thumb, are their markers relatively close to me? yes? bring that shield up.
I have a 1400 bard and 1355 bard. I prefer to have either in my party when running my sorc oddly. they just seem to have high uptime on buffs when I ignite(we’re in comms).
I’m the only bard doing endgame raids in my guild, most of our paladin players quit as well. It’s rough up here.
i never reject anyone in my group, i was just stating that in MY opinion bard is a greater support than paladin, or maybe i never played with a paladin that could hold up to the capabilities of the class
At end game, Bard vs Paladin is really based on who is the DPSer. Hit Master classes like Gunslinger, Reflux Sorc, etc. largely prefer Paladin as their positioning is less bound. Bursters like Surge Deathblade, Igniter Sorc, etc. prefers Bard for the 3-bubble courage.
Their advice is very hindsighted, but their general thoughts are that you’ll eventually use them. So trial by fire and get used to it.
I think its funny because the same logic could be said about NOT using DPS engravings as you are forced to optimize your dps rotation and uptime to make things go faster.
On paper it looks this way, in practice the allies roll out of your beneficial effects, the identity shares charges for healing and to make it really good you gotta coordinate the buffs.
salvation 3 bard heals a lot more than aura 3 paladin
generally when you are doing the most damage you don’t need healing. you also don’t activate aura on paladin because your team needs healing in late game
i’m kicking you from the party if i see endurance/spec build
both bard and paladin are -dps until relic gear is released
Hearing your opinions, I would like to ask one question: What gear score are you currently at?
1385 supports are really only helpful when you want to cheese a mechanic
Paladin does not have just Aura 3 for healing.
This isn’t even an argument. When activated for damage, you’ll also get the healing lol.
The paladin is versatile in their build. Speciality scales aura quite a lot and helps you build meter. When NA/EU produces this magical situation where they don’t need healing and shielding, then you can talk about how defensive builds are useless.
In random groups, more protection will produce far far FAR more damage for your group since keeping them protected and healed vastly increase DPS uptime…something that can equate to 4 or 5 stacked grudge 3s easily.
So what you are saying is that no one should ever be taking a support right now EVER? Interesting. So weird.
yes you take aura 3 because damage reduction is important
? the healing is nice but it is definitely not the reason you ever activate aura
so is bard? spec/swift and swift/spec are viable on both classes. if you take endurance/spec or spec/endurance though you’re not joining anyone’s party
not tanking hits that do >50% of your hp produces far more damage? why do you think people take grudge 3/cursed doll 3?
people take supports because they like standing in fire and they don’t know how to dodge a pizza pattern
either way paladin is more of a damage reduction playstyle that gradually heals over time where bard is more of a do damage playstyle with healing on demand but both work in legion raids
As someone that plays both, I feel like paladin is superior in pretty much every single aspect ngl.
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well…paladin’s aura is a damage reduction too, so for normal paladin supports, they have aura for healing and damage reduction, 2 mid-high stagger(also counter) skills, holy protection for shield+purify+healing, 2 damage boosts, one higher dmg taken debuff on boss, and ult for huge shield and meter gain, one night fox fight takes me 3:30 on average, and I can turn on my aura for 4 times. and good supports do purify in igrexion, much better than just heal
Do you watch some of the endgame korean raids like abrelshud and gang on youtube? If you do, have you noticed whether there are more paladins than bards showing up or vice versa? Personally I see more bards and it confuses me. If pally is outright better, and bard is harder to play with more tiny circles to aim at your teamates, why isnt every support a pally? (Other than waifu reasons) I also hear that people hate the bard’s instrument noises so shouldn’t everyone opt for pally?
That is my question in the original post. Do you have any thoughts on this matter?
cuz there are more bards than paladins…? when the game was released in Korean, bard was the most played class, and there was no paladin, only bard, plus bard is a female character
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I don’t even know what your point is, I didn’t even say paladin is better, if you think bard is better so be it, Bard is a much better class than paladin, happy now…?
You understand where when and why you are contradicting yourself?
Yes. I’m gonna run defensive stuff so that people stay alive. This is the way things are on NA/EU and adapting to your team is how a support is good. Forcing the team to adapt to you is how you get a bad support.
That’s why they are both fine.
It’s definitely this way right now because groups are random and pugs. They are more equal to each other when its a premade group.
yes i should build and play my support unoptimally so that bad players can remain staying bad and good players get a suboptimal support what a brilliant playstyle
i should build my paladin aura 3, heavy armor 3, awakening 3, expert 3, divine protection 1 with 1450 endurance and 450 spec for gigachad healing and shields and have awful cooldowns and meter gain. i should also use protection runes on all my skills so that i take less damage and thus die less.
Cringe. You adapt to your group. Pugs and random groups need more defensive protection. If you want to be an impactful support, you want to maximize your success rate.
My success rate in everything I do in this game (other than honing and ability stone crafting) is very high for this reason. If I get players that have done the content many times per week for several years, yes…I can drop all the defensive stuff cause I’m not gonna need it.
Mega cringe.
Divine protection 1 is useless. Use Judgement 1 so you can build meter faster or Preemptive strike if you like to destroy add phases on certain bosses.
Saying something stupid like 1450 endurance is just you being mad. You swap it around. You build specialization and pick up endurance on your necklace since you get two combat stats.
As for runes, you don’t need defensive runes for yourself, the defenses are for your allies. The problem isn’t YOU dying less, the problem are your allies dying less. You WOULD want runes that give you the shield on some of the DPS classes for synergy with Barricade.
The skills and runes you use for a support build don’t really change.