Paladin Community Guide

General Information

This document is created by community members as a compilation of class related information. This is not meant as a new player guide, if you are a new player we suggest reading Maxroll’s Build Guides instead. If you have any feedback or want to help with class discussions, join our Discord!

How do the Supports compare?

They all have their strengths and weaknesses. It’s a matter of personal preference.

For further information, read their respective documents.

How does my identity work?

Paladin Meter Spreadsheet

Unlike the other Supports, Paladin only has one orb known as the Piety Meter. Once full, you can activate one of the stances to enable their effects. Landing Holy skills will generate the most amount of Piety, and Punish skills (including auto attack) will generate the least.

 Holy Aura (X)

Paladin’s most important Identity skill. It grants a Damage Buff with a Heal over Time (HoT) and Damage Reduction effect while the Blessed Aura class engraving is equipped. Party members affected by the Holy Aura (12-meter radius) inflict +10% (Base with 0 Spec) Damage to foes. Push Immunity on activation. The efficiency of this Buff scales with the Specialization stat. (45% skill efficiency per 500 Spec, 4.5% additional damage from aura)

Divine Wave (Z)

Added following the support rework, skill added that is an extra shield for the party and also used for meter gen, it has 2 interaction with the ark passive, one being granting 10% meter inside or outside of aura and the other one is getting its cooldown reduced by 0.25s per yellow skills that are used during the Holy Aura itself.

 Sacred Executioner (Z)

Only boosts the Range and Damage of your Punish skills. Unfortunately, this is completely useless for Support Paladin. Attack Range of basic attacks and Punish skills +30%. Damage by basic attacks and Punish skills +40%. Push Immunity on activation.

Support Paladins are now locked out of this with their new Z ability, Divine Wave, mentioned above.

Surge™ (X)

Added following the support rework, while using skills paladin will proc falling swords on the enemy per hit, every falling sword generates a stack on you, for every stack on you when you press X you end up doing more damage and clearing yourself of every stack, 1 stack = 5%  extra damage. Max stack is 60.

Unfortunately, this skill doesn’t have a gem to boost the damage (but Valkyrie does).

SG please :(

Paladin is a Support with a more laid-back playstyle and requires less effort to achieve essentially the same results as other Supports. Being a good Paladin is fairly easy due to his simple rotation, screen-wide range for most of his buffs and longer cooldowns that lead to slower gameplay.

Ark Passives

Engravings

Skills

Wealth and Quick Recharges Rune Priority

Depending on your build you may use certain Wealths instead of certain Quick Recharges (or vice

versa) here is a ranking for every skill for their respective rune:

Wealth: Light of Judgment  > Holy Area > Holy Sword > Wrath of God > Heavenly Blessings

Quick Recharge: Light Shock > Sword of Justice > Heavenly Blessings > Holy Area > Holy Protection > God’s Decree > Wrath of God.

Some skills are good at using both runes (Holy Area/Heavenly Blessings) so mix and match to what you find most practical.

 Vertical Progression

Gameplay

Paladin gameplay is focused around five major aspects:

1.  Damage Buff (“AP”/Attack Power)
2.  Branding/Marking debuff
3.  Defensive Utility
4.  Counters
5.  Identity (“Piety Meter”)
6.  Hyper Awakening Technique (“T Skill”)

Knowing which one to prioritize at any given time can greatly increase your party’s damage, and the overall raid experience of your teammates.

Attack Power Buffs

Paladins have two damage buffs:  Wrath of God and  Heavenly Blessings. 

Damage buffs make up the majority of your contribution to your team’s damage: assuming all players have equal gear, the buff given by these two spells works out to 22% of your base attack power as a damage buff on all three of your party members.

Maintaining this buff on your party members should always be your first priority. Due to the cooldown of Heavenly Blessings being extremely long, you cannot naturally get 100% uptime on your buffs without external help. As such, timing these buffs well to cover your teammates’ damage is your most important contribution to the raid.

You can check the duration of each skill by watching the sword icon above your healthbar.

 Wrath of God is your primary damage buff. Due to its low cooldown, you should always cast it first if both buffs are off cooldown. Its attack buff applies as soon as the spell is cast, meaning you should cast it just as your other attack buff is about to run out.

 Heavenly Blessings is your secondary damage buff. Due to its long cooldown, this skill is the bottleneck for AP uptime on Paladin. The spell has a very short cast animation, after which the buff will always go off, even if you get flinched out of the secondary animation. (This does reduce its meter gain, so be careful!)

It’s important to note that the  AP Buff from  Heavenly Blessings does not apply instantly. There is a short delay from when you cast the spell to when your allies gain the buff. It’s recommended to practice the timing (~1.5 second left on the  Buff) in Trixion so that you can always have your damage increase active.

Light Brand

Your Brand is a unique debuff placed by supports on the boss. Brands increase the damage the boss takes by a flat 10%, and do not stack.

After your  AP Buff, your brand is the second largest source of damage for the team, and should be prioritized only after your primary buffs.

 Light’s Vestige is Paladin’s unique brand. For legion raids, you can watch the Boss’ HP Bar for the debuff icon to make sure you always have this active. For guardian raids, a large sword symbol will float above the Boss while it’s affected by the debuff.

There are two main skills used for branding, pick one:

•  Sword of Justice is the default brand option. It has a massive 10 second duration (13 seconds if the boss doesn’t move out of its AoE), and a very long range, allowing it to be safely applied from a distance. Insane duration/CDR ratio, can be precast.
•  Light Shock is a higher ceiling brand option but with quite a few drawback, it is a lot less comfy as an option but it is possible to spam it a lot more than  Sword of Justice to fish for Quick Recharge and Bold Salvation ark passive node procs to reduce the cooldown of the Z skill as much as possible to then generate more meter to get into aura for more often and for longer. Passible duration/CDR ratio, can’t precast.

If you are lacking skill points or are not level 60, it is recommended to run Light Shock at level 7 to save on skill points and reduce mana usage. You will likely run out of mana with Sword of Justice.

Paladin has other skills with brand tripods ( God's Decree and  Holy Explosion), but these tripods are difficult to get good uptime with. You can easily maintain almost permanent uptime with either of the two standard brand options.

In Tier 4, your  Light’s Vestige is automatically applied to nearby enemies when you activate  Holy Aura once you activate the Light’s Vestige ark passive node.

Defensive Utility

A lot of spells grant your teammates some form of damage reduction or shielding. This is an extremely underrated part of your kit - a good support drastically reduces the amount of damage their party takes, and makes life extremely comfortable for their dps.

Paladin specifically is known as the most reliable defensive support, with almost permanent uptime on damage reduction and constant heals for your entire party.

 Holy Protection provides a shield to all party members. With the Vow of Light tripod, it also heals all targets when it expires. The Purify tripod additionally makes it cleanse debuffs from party members on cast.

Aside from certain fights, where you’re expected to use the cleanse for certain attacks or patterns (Inferno Valtan G2, Kayangel G2, or Akkan G3 Fear), you can usually spam this skill whenever it’s off cooldown. Raid Guides will specifically mention when you need to hold cleanse. Robust protection for big boy shields.

 God's Decree provides an incredibly powerful 70% damage reduction + a shield to all allies within its radius. This skill is incredibly versatile and can be used to save allies, facetank patterns, or even to let your damage dealers DPS through a damaging pattern. If you do not stand inside the circle, you will not get the damage reduction yourself.

 Heavenly Blessings, one of your main buffs, also applies a 20% damage reduction to all affected allies. It’s never worth holding the spell for this effect, but it adds up to a lot of damage reduced over the course of a fight.

With the  Blessed Aura engraving, your  Holy Aura grants a 20% damage reduction to all allies inside it while active, as well as healing for 2% of your max health every 1.5 seconds.

Your awakening  Alithanes's Judgment provides your entire party with a massive shield that makes characters effectively immune to all damage that is not a wipe mechanic. This can be very effective during attacks that do a lot of damage but do not CC.

Counters

During raids, bosses will periodically glow blue, allowing you to counter them. These are often large DPS windows and/or prevent extremely dangerous patterns or mechanics.

Paladin is equipped with two of the strongest counters in the game. It is therefore expected that you will be able to cover most of them in every raid.

 Holy Sword is your proactive counter. It has a huge range and fires for multiple ticks, any of which counter the boss if they connect. The one downside to this spell is its longer cast time, which can make it hard to hit certain counters with short time frames, meaning you often have to precast it before the boss turns blue.

 Executor’s Sword casts instantly, making it extremely effective on counters with short telegraphs. The spell has a shorter range, though you can run the  Excellent Mobility tripod to increase its range.

Only the first hit of  Executor’s Sword is a counter, the second only applies weak point.

Most paladins opt to run both counters, though once you are familiar with a raid, you can opt to drop one for an additional utility skill (often  Holy Area). In fights with extremely telegraphed counters, like Brelshaza, it’s recommended to drop Executor’s; You can elect to drop Holy Sword instead for fights with short counters, less stagger, or that require weak point.

Identity

Paladin Meter Spreadsheet

Paladin meter generation is fairly simple, since a lot of it is automatic.

•  Light of Judgment generates a massive amount of meter on hit, use this spell whenever it’s off cooldown and you don’t have aura active.
• Both  Wrath of God and  Heavenly Blessings generate a decent amount of meter when they hit the boss, though it’s never worth delaying a buff to gain meter if you are out of boss range.  Sword of Justice also contributes.
• If you choose to run it,  Holy Area is a close second after Light of Judgment, assuming the boss doesn’t move out of the AoE. You can choose to run the  Divine Mark tripod to further increase the meter gain.
•  Holy Sword (especially if you run a wealth rune) generates a good amount of meter per cast. This adds up over the course of a fight. Don’t mindlessly spam it, but don’t be afraid to use it for meter gain when it’s safe to do so.

Your awakening,  Alithanes's Judgment, fills a major portion of your Piety bar when used (80%), with an extra 10% gain if you hit the boss. It is not recommended to cast this at the start of a fight; prioritize your damage buffs, brand, and activate yearning first.

You generally want to use your  Holy Aura as soon as you can, since any time you spend sitting at max meter results in wasted cooldowns on your meter skills. The exception is when you know the boss is about to become invulnerable or phase into a mechanic, where you should hold it until that resolves. With Divine Liberation you can start your aura as soon as you have 75% meter and if you cancel aura you get 70% of the remaining meter refunded.

Post support rework, Paladin gets a new identity skill in the form of Divine Wave (Z), it’s primary function will be to replenish 10% meter both inside and outside aura but it also provides paladin with another party shield (10% hp for 6s). Bold Salvation ark passive node will encourage paladin to keep spamming yellow skills during aura to get the cooldown of Z down as much as possible. Basically functions like an extra T skill.

Hyper Awakening Technique

Divine Justice

T skill usage is an integral part of pally’s kit in T4, it serves 3 purposes:

An extra damage buff that stacks with everything else already listed, this is a +10% damage buff on a relatively long cooldown compared to the rest of the kit (base 60s, around 30s with 1800 swift, Magick Stream and Luminary stacked up as well as the Leap Tree CDR node  Release Potential)

It’s the only way to buff Hyper Awakening damage making it important to sync up with your dps to enhance their Hyper Awakening.

Specific to Paladin,  Divine Justice is also responsible for a big chunk of meter generation due to the Leap Tree Upgrade Node Righteous Light, it provides a selfbuff granting 1/2/3% meter every second for 6 seconds upon casting T Skill, more importantly, the meter provided by this node actually works during  Holy Aura, so it serves to extend aura when you have it up during aura or to generate around 20% meter in one skill when you don’t have your aura running. Get your  Quick Recharges out because you want to cast this skill as often as possible.

FAQ

How do I make my buffs stronger?

Here are the relevant stats to scale your buffs: Weapon Power, Main Stat (Str/Dex/Int), Base Attack Power (T4 Gem Bonus, 9/7 Stone bonus), Spec (scales Identity Damage), Ally Damage (Ring and Bracelet,), Ally Atk. Power Enhancement (Elixirs, Transcendence, Bracelet), Brand Power (Transcendence, Evolution Tree, Necklace).

Weapon Quality and Attack Power do NOT make your buffs stronger

I wasn’t familiar with every term in the question above, could you elaborate?

-Ally Atk. Power Enhancement: Stat that increases the Attack Power granted by Heavenly Blessings and Wrath of God.

-Ally Damage: Stat that increases your Identity Buff as well as your T Skill buff (Damage buff only, not the Hyper Awakening part).

-Brand Power:  Stat that increases the Damage Buff provided by your Brand (SoJ, etc).

I keep losing track of my buffs, how can I improve their visibility?

In the Game Menu;

Settings -> Gameplay -> Combat Related Settings -> Scroll to the bottom

This is what I personally use

Pet Bonus = the 160 combat stat icon.

Character Skill Bonus Buffs = Buffs granted from skills that are not part of support offensive buffs, this can include stuff like attack/ms speed buff, support’s DR/Shields, Bard’s attack speed on SoC use, soulfist Synergy, there’s a lot of things that can show here.

Attack Support Buffs =  =  AND  = ,  also includes Valk’s Wings of Liberty and Bard’s Major Chord.

Engraving Effect Buff= Adren, Magick Stream, etc.

Ark Passive Buff = Buffs from ark passive that are not support offensive buffs, this is a bit convoluted so I’ll give some examples, Valkiry’s Trinity and Paladin Surge stacks, Bard’s Perfect Harmony, Side nodes that grant buffs, on top of that it also displays things like the Yearning buff and Standing Striker from Evo tree.

Cooking Bonus Buffs = Feast/Food.

Battle Item Bonus Buffs = Atro.

Other Bonus Buffs = Buffs granted in raids like Echidna stagger buff or Attack power buff from Thaemine g4.

Specialty Bonus Buffs = I put it at the end because it’s a real weird one, the best way I can explain this one are buffs from identity that have not been altered by Ark Passive, this means things like Valkyrie’s buff that allows her to heal after pressing Z, or things like the firepower meter on artillerist or the shield granted by Hypergrav on Destroyer. The weird part? If you take Robust Spirit Soulfist and you allocate the points for the first 2 main in ark passive, the Hype buffs displays according to the Specialty Bonus Buff, as soon as you slot in the 3rd node it stops being a Specialty Bonus Buff and it starts being an Ark Passive Buff instead, better to check on a case by case for this one, for my roster it doesn’t do much.

Can I run Conviction/Judgment?

Yes. Put Conviction on  Sword of Justice, and then Judgment on  Holy Area or  Godsent Law or Holy Sword.

 Charged Fury, how does it actually work?

At first Charged Fury does nothing, it activates once upon reaching full Hyper Awakening meter (bar above your awakening skill) when that bar gets full it tries to refund a partial amount of cooldown left from your awakening CD. It usually happens around 3mins into a raid.

Your awakening is not on cooldown? Too bad.

Hello, my name is Broshaza.

I main Paladin, both as a DPS and a Support, with dedicated builds for each spec but I am mostly known for being the DPS Paladin in the west.

I will be taking over and updating this section of the Paladin guide going forward.

If you have any questions, feel free to DM me on Discord - Broshaza

I am going to keep this part of the guide simple and leave room to experiment for players who are interested in giving DPS Paladin a try in their raids.

A special shoutout to Jeffy for providing me a lot of data and logs to help streamline this guide. He is one of the few dedicated DPS Paladins out there pioneering how well a max DPS support can perform in raids.

Disclaimer - Things are always subject to change as we get more balance patches and more data is gathered based on performance. Also, many of the things mentioned in this part of the guide are directed mainly to new and returning players.

Veterans of the game can use this guide as a jumping off point and then branch off based on their own judgments (pun intended) on how they want to adjust their builds and playstyle.

12/1/25 - Sorry for the lack of updates (for the DPS section, the support section is being worked on separately). A number of things like irl responsibilities, progging Kazeros, and generally trying not to burn out on the game has kept me preoccupied.

Since the last time I updated this guide, we’ve gotten a ~5% general DPS buff from the Fall Balance Patch with no other changes and another ~5% general DPS is coming from the upcoming December Update’s Balance Patch, along with no other changes. On top of all of that, everyone in the game now has access to Ark Grid, which changes up a few things for their respective class.

I am still in the process of gathering Ark Grid Cores but having tested them all out in Trixion, it is a crime that SmileGate put these changes behind Ark Grid because some of these effects feel like QoL updates to our skills. And trust me, we are in dire need of an update because every basic blue skill is still the same since its original launch in KR with no changes to its tripods, if at all.

But I digress.

I will make an actual update to the guide once I get the necessary cores and gather data on their in-raid performance. But in the meantime, I will do my best to update parts of this guide that are outdated over the next few weeks, probably after Kazeros The First Mode. Hopefully I don’t perform too poorly (wish me luck).

Stay tuned.

Ark Passives

Advanced Build (can be very expensive)

A build for those who have weathered the storm and are at the end-game

Item level: 1680+

Skills

Note - Many of these blue skills are extremely outdated by modern class standards due to some of the long animation locks that are tied to them. As a result, some of the tripod selections will be entirely up to personal preference.

All blue skills have a back attack modifier to them.
Except your T-skill and Surge™ skill. Both of those have a Front and Back Attack modifier.

I will provide whatever insight I can for each of the following skills.

FAQ

How would you describe the playstyle of DPS Paladin?

Ever since the introduction of T4 and Ark Passive making this spec of Paladin somewhat usable, I’ve described this class as the love child of Mayhem Berserker and Predator Slayer who happened to discover his love of going to church.

It has the permanent identity form of Mayhem Berserker plus the Back Attacking aspect of Predator Slayer and has the high skill uptime needed from both classes to do damage.

All that while using the power of god on his side.

With the addition of our new X Surge™ skill, paladin also got tutored by a Deathblade.

What elixir do I use?

Critical and Crit Damage Pants.

You can, theoretically, use Master set over Critical if you are really starving for the extra crit rate but realistically, you shouldn’t need Master based on Ark Passive point distribution, engravings, and any additional party synergies.

You can also use Additional Damage on Pants but the difference between that and Crit Damage is marginal so either one can be used, but Crit Damage is the preferred effect.

Boss Damage to Shoulders and going for Atk Power, Weapon Power, or Strength for all other elixir  effects is a must.

Will we still need to back attack?

Yes, because all of our blue skills still have a back attack modifier for some reason.

Valkyrie is a hit master class :(

What is the minimum number of Ark Passive points I need to play this build?

As of the July 2025 Update, all Paladins gain access to the DPS mode with permanent identity after the rearrangement of the nodes in the Enlightenment Ark Passive tree. But you will still need a minimum of 80 points in Enlightenment, as this time our new 4th row node gives us access to our new X Surge™ skill.

Players who are 1670+ and are taking on Kazeros Raid Act 2 for Karma materials, prioritize unlocking your Ark Passive in the following order:

1. Enlightenment - This is to unlock more points for you to put into the side node, Judgment Chain
2. Leap - This is to level up Immediate Judgment so that your T-skill does more damage
3. Evolution - This is for those also playing support paladin, for max HP

1. The Evolution tree does give bonus Evolution Damage for every rank up but this should be on the bottom of the list for upgrades.

When do we send our new X Surge™ skill?

As mentioned in the Skills section above, the damage is dependent on the stacks you generate while hitting the boss from our Light’s Condemnation node in the Enlightenment tree. After a few weeks of testing and data gathering from myself and other DPS paladins, it seems like sending the Surge™ skill anywhere between 20-40 stacks is the ideal sweet spot for maintaining skill uptime as well as DPS output. Obviously, results may vary depending on stack generation RNG as well as raid boss patterns.

You can also choose to send this skill off cooldown but always take into consideration the flow of the raid before doing so. If the boss is just going from mech to mech and phasing, you can choose to either just send your Surge™ skill right away or build up stacks and then send it during an opportunistic damage window.

Use your judgment (pun intended) to see when and where to send your Surge™ skill.

As a personal note, sending a max 60 stack Surge™ into the boss hits really hard and the big number I saw caused “neuron activation” for me, so if you ever have an opportunity to send a max stack Surge™, I recommend giving it a try.

SmileGate, please give us the ability to gem our X-skill like you did for Valkyrie

:(

Is it expensive to build up this class as DPS?

It can be, especially if you want to do any form of competitive damage with other actual DPS classes, but if you are a new or returning player, it doesn’t have to be expensive at all.

Do note that DPS Paladin is also a 7 damage gem class and with gem prices as they currently are, it can become very expensive to properly gear out, especially towards the end game.

Plus, it is still a base support class, after all.

Otherwise, it’s a fun build to use in homework raids.

Does this class even do damage?

Okay, so after a few weeks of testing and data gathering, it definitely does better damage than its previous iteration (although that’s not really saying much). The new Surge™ skill also makes the class feel fun and more engaging, however the fact that it’s a Charge skill kind of bothers me. But that’s besides the point. I am also not going to gas you up and say as if the class is broken and that everyone should make a DPS Paladin.

I am going to be honest about the class because it is the class that I main and I am basically at the “cutting edge” of being built out as I can be in terms of gear, engravings, etc so I can comment on how it performs at the highest levels in comparison to other classes.

If you were to take an equally geared and skilled DPS paladin and any other actual DPS class and put them in a raid to see who does more damage, 9/10 times the actual DPS class will beat out the DPS paladin. This isn’t to say that DPS paladins will always be at the bottom (although we currently are at the bottom based on publicly available log data), but it would be unfair for one class to have so much agency and flexibility of being able to be a strong DPS while also being a support class, a role that already has too much power in the outcome of a raid. Believe me, I would love more than anything for SmileGate to buff the DPS spec of Paladin but I also understand why they probably would never do it.

And yet SmileGate made DPS Bard really strong, even stronger than a few actual DPS classes.

Nerf bard please.

And if you want my personal input - if you want to make a DPS support, Valkyrie will most likely be a better choice given that all of the desired QoLs of Paladin are in Valkyrie, for both support and DPS. And she doesn’t have the pain of having to chase the boss for Back Attack as a Hit Master spec class, which makes it ideal for anyone looking to play a DPS support.

Or play bard. Because bard is broken. Nerf bard.

>:(

Just to update - on August 6, 2025, KR received a balance patch before their Kazeros The First Mode (TFM) race and DPS paladin did get a ~5% overall damage buff so maybe that will help with some of the damage output (or lack there of), but we’ll have to actually wait and see how helpful the buff is when it comes to the west and we are able to gather data from it.

Still no gem for our X skill though. SmileGate please.

>:(

Will I get gatekept if I show up in party finder as a DPS paladin?

I will not lie to you, but you will most likely get gatekept.

The only times you may get into lobbies without gatekeeping issues is:

• If there is a DPS shortage (and the lobby lead hates party finder simulator).
• If you are properly geared out (gems, engravings, gear, etc).
• If the lobby lead is feeling generous (I’ve heard people take DPS paladins into raids out of curiosity and for novelty to see how they perform).

• YMMV on this final point

Just to add - after the July 2025 update, I have noticed and have been told of many DPS paladins being seen out there in lobbies and raids. I’m so happy to know that people are taking DPS paladins into raids. But do understand that gatekeeping is subjective from the lobby lead’s perspective, so do not take it personally if you get denied.

Are you going to make a Valkyrie?

Yes, but how far I will push her, I have no clue. I would ideally like to get her to 1680 so I get the feel for the class with the entire Ark Passive unlocked and see how the class feels but we’ll see how honing goes.

Revision History

T3 Archive