Tier 3 Paladin Build Guide

Welcome to the Tier 3 Paladin Build Guide! Paladin is one of the Support classes in Lost Ark. Your role revolves around providing your party with various damage buffs, as well as keeping them safe through Shields, Damage Reduction, and Heals. Fulfilling this role is relatively easy, thanks to Holy Aura (X) allowing you to heal your allies while simultaneously increasing their damage output and decreasing incoming damage.

Outside of that, Paladin excels at inflicting reliable amounts of Stagger and has an incredible Counter. However, his Destruction capabilities are low. Your class engraving, Blessed Aura, is what allows your identity skill to become so versatile.

Want to learn more about the other support classes? Check out our Bard and Artist guides.

Builds

Raids

Chaos Dungeons

Need some tips for general content? Check out our Guardian Raids and Abyssal Dungeons guides.

• Wrath of God and Heavenly Blessings are your Attack Power buffs, as well as secondary meter generators.
• Sword of Justice is your Brand (Summon Holy Sword) skill. You can think of this as your Synergy skill.
• Holy Protection and God’s Decree are your main defensive skills.
• Light of Judgment is your main meter generator.
• Holy Sword and Executor's Sword are both used as Counter or Stagger skills.
• Alithanes's Judgment is your Awakening. It is preferred over Alithanes's Light thanks to its added defensive capability.

Alternative Skill, Tripod, and Rune Options

Executor's Sword can be swapped for Holy Area, using Quick Prep, Grace, Endless Grace, and Wealth.

• This increases your meter generation and damage reduction capabilities, at the cost of the quicker one of your Counter skills, as well as Stagger contribution. This is only recommended if you and your party are experienced with the raid and its mechanics.

Wrath of God

• Faith - Increases meter generation at the cost of Push Immunity. Recommended for players who are comfortable with boss patterns.

God’s Decree

• Brilliant Law - Helps as insurance in case you miss your Brand skill, but it makes you use this skill more offensively. Recommended if your party is comfortable with boss patterns.
• Focus - Reduces mana cost. Use this if you can't or don't want to use Conviction + Judgment.

Holy Protection

• Purify - Allows you to cleanse debuffs from your party members.

Check the Rune Guide for more details on Runes and how to obtain them.

This build is optimized and meant to be used only in Chaos Dungeons. For Ebony Cube please use a Raid build.

• Execution of Justice, Executor's Sword, and Flash Thrust are your main ways to deal with large packs of lesser monsters.
• Heavenly Blessings and Holy Sword can both deal with Elite monsters on their own.
• Light of Judgment and Wrath of God serve to help you refill your Piety Meter after changing floors.
• Alithanes's Judgment is your Awakening. It is preferred over Alithanes's Light thanks to its wider area of effect. This is also your main way of dealing with the Boss on the second floor.

Recommended Engraving Setup

While you can freely experiment with any engravings you want for this content, here's a recommended setup, based on the Engraving Support system:

• Preemptive Strike causes your attacks to deal immense amounts of damage to monsters that you haven't attacked yet, making it ideal for Chaos Dungeons.
• Contender is a stacking Attack Power effect that increases in strength once you kill a monster, making it ideal for Chaos Dungeons.
• Raid Captain provides damage based on your Bonus Movement Speed, synergizing well with the Buff Nodes scattered throughout Chaos Dungeons.
• Cursed Doll increases your damage with essentially no drawback in Chaos Dungeons.
• Judgment significantly improves your ability to clear and your Sacred Executioner (Z) duration.

Gameplay & Skill Rotation

Paladin excels at providing high uptime Attack Power and Brand buffs to the entire party, regardless of their positioning, while also having reliable Damage Reduction, Shields, Heals and contribution to Utility checks.

Activating his identity grants your whole party the following effects for its entire duration, with some of them coming directly from your identity, Holy Aura (X), and some from your Class Engraving, Blessed Aura:

• +10% Damage dealt to enemies
• -20% Damage received
• +2% of Maximum HP recovered every 1.5 seconds

Your gameplay revolves around supporting your party through various damage buffs, as well as protecting them from dangerous attacks. Here's a breakdown of how you can fulfill that role.

Paladin Identity

Yearning Buff

This buff consists of +8/10/12% Attack & Movement Speed, as well as increased damage, and it comes from the Yearning Set. It is applied through a circle around your character that grants the buff for 15 seconds to any party member inside it. You gain the circle upon landing any attack on an enemy. The Yearning buff is one of your highest priorities, and should always be maintained from the start of the fight until the end.

Attack Power Buffs

This buff allows you to increase your party's Attack Power by 15% of your own Attack Power, as well as granting +6% Attack Power overall. It is applied through Wrath of God and Heavenly Blessings. It is important to understand that both of these skills apply the same buff, and it does not stack. You should maintain this buff as well as you can throughout the fight. Keep an eye on your buff bar and alternate between these skills when the buff is about to expire.

Brand

This debuff causes the target to receive +10% Damage from your party. It is applied through Sword of Justice. You should be able to maintain Brand throughout the entire fight by keeping an eye on the enemy's debuff bar and using your Brand skill when it's about to expire.

Identity

Paladin's identity, Holy Aura, combines offensive and defensive capabilities in a large circle around your character. It can only be used after filling your Piety Meter by using other skills, and you cannot gain more Piety Meter while it's active. Due to this interaction, you should carefully choose when to activate it to maximize your party's damage potential. However, if you or your party are not experienced enough with the fight to know when specific damage windows or phases happen, you should just use it whenever possible.

Shields, Damage Reduction, Healing

Paladin's kit benefits from several ways of protecting your party.

• God’s Decree - All party members inside the area of effect receive a shield for a portion of the Paladin's maximum HP for 6 seconds and take -70% incoming damage until the skill ends or they leave the area.
• Holy Protection - All party members within range receive a shield for 20% of the Paladin's maximum HP as well as a Movement Speed buff. When the shield ends, 8% of the player's maximum HP is restored.
• Heavenly Blessings - All party members within range take -20% incoming damage for 8 seconds, as well as receiving increased MP regeneration for the same duration.
• Alithanes's Judgment - All party members within range receive a shield for 80% of the Paladin's maximum HP.

Tripods and Gems

Tripod Levelling

Increasing the level of Tripods greatly enhances their effectiveness. You may only increase the level of 18 tripods at a time. Some of them cannot be leveled at all, or are left at level 1 - these tripods are omitted from the table, even if they are used. Here are the main tripods you should look out for to maximize this build's potential.

Tripods written in bold text are your highest priority, make sure to level them first!

For more information on where to obtain Tripod Amulets and how to use them, check out our Skill Tree System Guide.

Gems

Gems are another significant aspect of your build, as they directly impact the damage and cooldowns of your skills. You can equip up to 11 gems at a time, but as a support class, damage gems have no impact on your performance. Here are the ones you should focus on to maximize this build's potential, listed according to their priority.

For more information on where to obtain gems and how to use them, check out our Gem System Guide.

Stat Priority

This build utilizes Swiftness and Specialization.

• Swiftness is the primary stat. It significantly lowers your cooldowns, helping you maintain uptime on your buffs.
• Specialization is a secondary stat. It slightly increases meter generation and strengthens your identity's damage effect.

Gear Set

Check out the Gear Progression Guide for step by step instructions and early game gearing.

Yearning Set

This set is the only option for supports, due to the powerful buffs it offers your party, as well as significantly increased meter generation for yourself.

The name of your set will change every time you acquire a higher tier of gear, but the set effect will remain the same. Look for your set's keyword when recrafting it to find it more easily (e.g Entropy, Hallucination etc).

If you are interested in Sidereal Weapons, click here for more details.

Engravings

Engravings are a core part of your build. Typically, most engravings will be used at level 3, but some can be used at level 1 or 2 in addition to the others, after reaching item level 1540 and unlocking Ancient Accessories.

Engraving Explanations

Core Engravings

• Blessed Aura grants your Holy Aura additional defensive effects.
• Awakening allows you to cast your Awakening skill more frequently and increases its use limit.
• Expert significantly boosts your healing and shielding capabilities.
• Vital Point Hit allows your Stagger contribution to become one of the best in the entire game.

Add-on Engravings (Pick One)

• Magick Stream grants you increased mana regeneration, as well as cooldown reduction, helping you maintain uptime on your buffs. Its caveat is that it's a stacking effect that falls off each time you receive damage, and the cooldown reduction only becomes active at 5 stacks.
• Drops of Ether spawns one of five ethers when you land an attack on an enemy, granting various effects to whoever picks it up. This engraving can be a direct damage increase to your party, but it is incredibly unreliable.
• Max MP Increase increases your maximum mana amount, as well as your mana regeneration.

Level 1 and 2 Engravings

• Crisis Evasion can save you from death, but the cooldown of this effect is quite long, effectively making it available once per fight.

Check out the Engraving Guide for more details.

Bracelet

Bracelets provide beneficial effects to yourself or to your party members depending on the rolls they have.

The primary goal is to get the main stats used by this build Swiftness and Specialization. After that, you should be aiming for Special Rolls to get more damage. Please note that this system is heavily reliant on RNG, and you should not expect to get much more beyond your main stats early on.

Check out the Bracelet Guide for more details.

Elixir

The recommended Elixir Set for this build is Luminary.

Check out the Elixir Guide for more details and general stat recommendations.

Card Sets

Cards are an endgame system that helps maximize your character's damage. Here are the recommended card sets for this build.

• You Have a Plan is used early on as it is fairly easy to obtain.
• Lostwind Cliff is the standard endgame option, but it can take a fairly long time to acquire 30-piece Awakening.
• Master of Spears is used as an alternative to Lostwind Cliff, in content where enemies have a weakness to Dark Damage.

Check out the Card Guide for more details on how to obtain cards and interact with them.

End Game Support Card Set