Sun Paladin/notes
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Notes
Human, Shalore, and Thalore Sun Paladins begin in the Gates of Morning. Their starting zone is the Slazish Fens, accessible through a stairway inside the town.
Sun Paladins are powerful arcane warriors who can specialize in either two-handed or one-handed/shield combat, with a very strong selection of healing and shielding.
Sun Paladins are easy to build Stat-wise, needing only Str and Mag for their skills, focusing on maxing Str first. Cun is a good option later in the game, adding to your critical strike chance, which synergizes well with Sun's Vengeance and Sun Ray. Dex is their best defensive stat after everything else has been maxed, as Dex offers defense and chance to shrug off critical hits, along with extra accuracy.
Early on, Sun Paladins might find themselves sustain-heavy and with little resource (there is no real way of obtaining positive energy other than certain artifacts, and more importantly character levels), and must generally choose which sustains are important to them in the class-trees. Fatigue also affects positive energy and -% fatigue items can sometimes partially relieve the need for resource.
It may be tempting to put many points into talents in the Shield Offense or Two-Handed Assault tree in the early game, but make sure you do not overinvest, causing you to lose out on important points in other talents.
Some important early game talents include Path of the Sun, a sun paladin's main mobility tool allowing them to move inside a beam-like area without spending a turn, making it a great gap closer or escape, while also becoming fully effective at talent level 2, not requiring further investment. Sun Ray will be their main opener, dealing ranged light damage and blinding at level 3, along with Barrier for shielding, both providing positive energy for their other talents.
Important later game talents include Suncloak, which increases your casting speed and lowers the cooldown on all of your spells, while providing a jumpstart of positive energy to use them all - and it is important to note that almost every ability you have is a spell! Second Life becomes an immense heal when maxed out and with high spellpower, able to heal over 1000 hp before healing modifier!
Sun Paladins have incredible sustainability thanks to the Light tree, which offers Healing Light, Bathe in Light, a HoT spell that applies shielding on each tick, and scales well with levels and healing modifier. Barrier which will be their default shielding talent, and Providence, a powerful HoT that removes debuffs each turn.
Chants offer an array of powerful sustains that add to a Sun Paladin's survivability, and it's heavily advised to max one that best suits the player's playstyle and avoid the rest, due to being tight on generic points for the rest of their skills.
The biggest choice a sun paladin must make is whether he or she will focus on shield or two-handed combat. Both trees are powerful and have very useful offensive and defensive tools and are recommended to be unlocked at level 10. (Although Ogres may choose to do both)
Guardian Offers Retribution, an extremely useful shield that cuts all damage taken in half, and explodes when reaches the limit, dealing AoE light damage.
Shield of Light protects the player by partially smearing the damage received with healing, and adds to offense by granting an extra shield bash on melee hits.
Brandish offers very solid AoE and single-target damage that scales well with talent levels.
Crusade is a short cooldown single-target talent that will hit with both weapon and shield while also granting the user positive energy to utilize with their talents, and reducing cooldowns as a bonus.
Crusader comes with Absorption Strike which fulfills many roles, it's your main opener with a solid damage multiplier, while also reducing the light resistance and all damage dealt by enemies in radius 2 and should be maxed or invested on early.
Flash of the Blade will provide very reliable AoE damage while also becoming a shield that blocks all damage for one turn at level 4 or higher.
Mark of Light is an instant talent used to mark a target and making it heal you when you deal damage to it, making it ideal for high-priority targets such as bosses.
Righteous Strength increases a Sun Paladin's critical strike chance, while also providing a stacking buff to your physical and light damage modifiers and a dot and debuff to an enemy's armor when critically striking in melee.
Radiance is a solid tree that starts locked for Sun Paladins and offers blindness immunity, light radius, invisibility detection and extra damage with a powerful on-demand heal at the cost of their radiance for 5 turns, and should be considered as an unlock later in the game.
