In Lost Ark, the Paladin is a warrior class that focuses on supporting his allies in combat with a variety of sword and magic attacks. Yes, you heard me, the Paladin is a support class. Now, it feels and plays like a DPS class, you’re just not actually going to be dealing that much damage. Paladin’s sword skills are heavy with the right balance of weight and fluidity to them, and the Holy Magic skills are impactful and feel devastating when they go off.

From a gameplay standpoint, the Paladin is the offensive support in Lost Ark. As such, the class is mainly based around having high uptime on their multitude of damage buffs, while also applying shields and healing when needed. Paladin’s Identity Gauge is called the Piety meter that slowly fills on skill usage. When the meter is full, the Paladin can either enter Sacred Executioner stance and empower his sword attacks to deal more damage and gain more range, or emit a Holy Aura that increases the damage his party deals to nearby enemies.

While leveling, you’ll typically use Sacred Executioner to clear the main story. During endgame content, however, you’re almost always going to use Holy Aura.

Best Paladin builds

Like the Bard, the main Engraving worth using is the supportive Engraving. The Paladin does not do meaningful damage compared to a DPS class even when built as a DPS. You’ll provide more to your party as a support while playing nearly the same as if you built him for damage.

Blessed Aura build

The Blessed Aura build grants the Paladin’s Holy Aura additional damage reduction and healing over time (HoT). This Engraving enables the Paladin to provide additional safety to the party. The gameplay mainly revolves around casting your Holy skills while using your sword skills to move around and avoid enemy attacks. Your Holy skills should focus on generating as much Piety as possible while providing as many beneficial buffs as you can. This way, we can have high uptime on our Holy Aura to make full use of the buffed effect. We’re mostly using Holy skills as they’re the skills that provide our beneficial buffs, but we do use a few Sword skills for mobility and our counterattack.

This build typically looks for Swiftness and Specialization as their desired stats, with Swiftness being the primary focus. Aim for around a 70/30 Swiftness/Specialization split.

Desired engravings for this build are (in order):

Blessed Aura
Awakening
Specialist
Heavy Armor
Ether Boy

An example Blessed Aura build for a brand new level 50 character with 252 Skill Points will look like this:

However, since we are a support, we’ll also need a separate mobbing build to do our own chaos dungeons. An example mobbing build at level 50 with 252 skill points should look something like this:

Paladin leveling guide

Leveling in Lost Ark is pretty straightforward, but here are a few key skills and tripods that will aid you in the leveling process.

Charge

Charge is a Sword skill, unlocked immediately, which makes your character dash forward. With 4 skill points, you can level this skill to 4 and increase the dash distance by 3 meters with the Excellent Mobility tripod. I would leave this skill at level 4 in order to conserve skill points. This is a great skill for moving through zones and you should be using it often.

Wrath of God

This is a Holy skill that is unlocked at level 18 and is one of two high damage AoE Holy skills available to you as a Paladin. You’ll use this skill to clear large packs of trash mobs and as one as your main Piety generators. You want to get this skill to level 10 by investing 48 skill points into it as soon as possible. Since this is the first main AoE skill that you get access to, I would suggest leveling this one to 10 first. Having good mobbing is extremely convenient for leveling, as there will be a significant amount of trash mobs that you need to clear.

Dash Slash

This is a Sword skill that is unlocked at level 20 and it makes your character run forward, following the cursor, and then slashes upward at the end of the skill duration, or when you release the key. With 4 skill points, you can level this skill to 4 and increase your movement speed by 15% when using this skill with the Quick Pace tripod. I would leave this skill at level 4 in order to conserve skill points. This is also a great skill for moving through zones and you should be using it often.

Executor’s Sword

This is a Sword skill that is unlocked at level 24 and one of the two high damage Sword skills we have available as a Paladin. You’ll use this skill to clear large packs of trash mobs and as one of your main damage skills to bosses. I would get this skill to level 7 by investing 20 skill points into it early, and then leave it at level 7 until you level Wrath of God to 10.

Holy Explosion

This is a Holy skill that is unlocked at level 36. This is the other high damage AoE Holy skill available to you as a Paladin. You’ll use this skill to clear large packs of trash mobs and as one of your main damage skills to bosses. You want to get this skill to level 10 by investing 48 skill points into it. This is the hardest hitting of the 3 main AoE skills that you have access to, but has the longest cooldown.

Note that this skill has two setups shown. The first setup changes the skill to cast instantly, while dealing a small damage over time (DoT) during what would have been the original channel period before the explosion. The second setup keeps the channeled cast, but speeds up the channeling time. It also leaves a much stronger lingering DoT after the explosion. I know people who swear by both setups, so I’ll include them both. I personally used the former for my Paladin. You can choose to level this one to 10 first, but you’ll have more downtime clearing packs of trash mobs.

Holy Sword

This is a Sword skill that is unlocked at level 40 and is the other high damage Sword skill available to us as a Paladin. You’ll use this skill to clear large packs of trash mobs and as one of your main damage skills to bosses. You want to get this skill to level 10 by investing 48 skill points after Wrath of God, Holy Explosion, and Executor’s Sword.

Thanks for reading our Paladin Guide! We hope you enjoy purifying the world of Arkesia, one stab at a time!