Using my old forum identity, Parus Paridae is my Main.
I flew way too much this new paladin on these first days so i wanted to write my experience with it. I haven’t flown with wtm for half year before this so things might have changed from my last flying times so take all with that in mind.
Pre bastion change Paladin vs NM:
I flew quite a lot shield fit paladin back in the day any and have to admit as much i love paladin for most situations Nm is better, Paladin is cap stable and can do fun stuff with utility highs and has better range than pulse nm, but its tracking is worse and drone bandwidth sucks.
Flying offleet local rep armor paladin:
Since the raw dps with bastion is bonkers, 1 single navy sink paladin is out dps with t2 guns that of low officer and gun fit. (comparing to my old fit that i blew up) and is equal to faction sink vindi. (1789 vs 1764) With 2 sink it goes to 2184 but paper dps is only paper dps.
The fit armor fit that i ended with after many hours flying and taking overtank off is this :
[Paladin, Local Paladin]
Imperial Navy Heat Sink
Imperial Navy Heat Sink
Syndicate Damage Control
Corpum A-Type Multispectrum Energized Membrane
Core X-Type Large Armor Repairer
Core X-Type Large Armor Repairer
Corpum A-Type Multispectrum Energized Membrane
Core X-Type 500MN Microwarpdrive
Large Micro Jump Drive
Thukker Large Cap Battery
Federation Navy Tracking Computer
Mega Pulse Laser II
Mega Pulse Laser II
Mega Pulse Laser II
Mega Pulse Laser II
Bastion Module I
[Empty High slot]
Small Tractor Beam I
[Empty High slot]
Large Nanobot Accelerator II
Large Nanobot Accelerator II
Acolyte II x15
Well i had abyssal repairers but they are almost same as Core X (1670 vs 1600 hp without boost). Running full set asklepian + slot 9 repair. This fit could tank TCRC first switch quite nicely never going hull in the about 4 times i took it (outunis dead, and i dont think i went too low armor). Didn’t try meat shielding but in theory that could work ok since cap resistance is high, i had more capacitor on previous fit but didn’t see use of so you could do it if you meat shield. Main worry after enough tank was cap stability which managed poorly will kill. So the tank is good enough, when in bastion and with 2 heat sinks you do more raw dps than vindi at paladin range. Sounds nice, ofc its only when in bastion. So to the hard downside of local rep bastion: you lose half firepower when are moving. This leads positioning being super important for max application. I flew with and without mjd (flew mwd only with 1 tracking computer since i had 2 batteries at that point) and i think both work ok. I haven’t flown before normal sites with mjd so there is much more improvement there. So if we go movement times in each site:
TPPH: first 2 rooms sucks since the time you move is high, last room MJD is king though since with 1 jump you can bastion rest of the site at same spot.
NRF: i was really lost here what is good and much improvement exists. MJD at start and sitting still and last wave MJD to sniper targets is okay but so is just burn too about old sniper spot and just sit there for rest of the site and shoot dps targets.
TCRC: I usually just sat at start with bastion on and do high dps to outunis and deltoles and then burn while shooting after first switch. I did MJD to the tower too and could shoot either tower or bs with scorch.
About scorch, witch when in bastion with 2 navy sink Paladin does 1358 dps to + 85km and comparing to 1408 of that conflag pulse mare.All this was done while flying by being off fleet and i had my own booster which i used usually only in tcrc and nrf.
So local rep paladin is nice, how could it work in WTM fleets? Well I could see it work but it would be all on pilot, cant expect to have armor boost in shield fleet which leads that youd need to have own booster or something. You’d never get srp since you almost always die to your own fault. So it would be some kind of special snowflake thing and would it really be worth it. If CCP leaves bastion as it is the much better bastion ship could be vargur. And as paladin lover that makes me sad.
As in my opinion shield paladin is almost equal of that of nm i think it would be stupid to not let shield paladin with bastion on into fleets. Its just ridiculous dps that they can make some times and normal sniper dmg other times. There is risk somebody doing bastion cycle at wrong time which leads the them dying but that’s their own fault.
Just wanted to share my thoughts and experience so Paladins get more low and to Push WTM accept bastion fits (wink wink). Ofc we never know if CCP does new changes.
I might have some numbers wrong but they should be correct, all dmgs are without implants.
TL:DR even local tanked Paladin can do nice dmg and can work with shield fleet but it would be hard to fit into WTM fleet, lets see how Vargur works, let good shield paladins with bastion into fleet!
