Paladin PvP Guide for FFXIV

Paladin's kit in PvP features many utility abilities, with a low cooldown single-target stun, consistent self-healing, the ability to give your teammates healing if they hit targets you mark, as well as one of the most unique and powerful abilities in coordinated play: Guardian. Paladin also has an extremely impactful limit break, which, despite its long charge time, can be completely game-changing on both offense and defense.

This page will focus on Crystalline Conflict. While bits and pieces may be applicable to other PvP game modes like Frontlines, it is not specifically aimed at them.

Every job has access to a few common actions:

• Recuperate - This is your most important healing ability. For a quarter of your MP, you heal around a quarter of your HP. Use this liberally—nobody wants to be the guy dying while at full MP. If your MP is low, consider stepping back to Elixir.
• Standard-issue Elixir - This is your second-most important healing ability. It takes a while to channel, but restores all of your HP and MP (more MP means more in-combat healing with Recuperate). The listed cast time is 4.5 seconds, which means the cast is actually snapshotted as complete after 4 seconds, after which you can move and opponents can no longer cancel your elixir. It can feel bad to step out of the fight, but dying is much much worse than stepping out for 5 seconds to restore your MP.
• Guard - Grants 90% damage reduction and immunity to most crowd-control debuffs for up to 5 seconds. Using another action cancels this early. This is your strongest defensive cooldown, so try to play around it being up. In addition, avoid blindly relying on Guard to get you out of sticky situations alone; make sure to have a plan for staying alive afterwards, for example having extra MP to heal up, stunning your pursuers, or running behind a corner. It is sometimes correct to cancel Guard slightly early, since good players will time their CC or burst for the moment your Guard ends.
• Purify - Cleanses all common crowd-control debuffs and provides a 5-second immunity to further CC if it cleansed something. Use this to prevent yourself from getting CC-chained to death. If you have none of Purify, Guard, or Holy Sheltron up, consider moving back to a safe area to wait for a defensive cooldown before re-engaging.
• Sprint - Toggle for increased movement speed. This is a GCD and using any other action cancels the buff, so be smart in using it. Prefer to use Sprint over a regular combo GCD if you need to stay in range until your stun comes off cooldown. If you are using off-global abilities repeatedly while running away or chasing, you should try to late-weave them if you can afford to, to avoid canceling too much of the Sprint duration.

Despite Paladin's slew of strong utility, dealing damage and focusing targets is just as important as smart use of Guardian. Use Intervene to stick to targets and Shield Bash to lock down kills by preventing a Guard when you and your team are mid-burst.

Atonement deals a sizeable chunk of damage, but be mindful that the damage application delay is quite long, around 1.3 seconds. This means that even if you hit Atonement when your opponent has less than 8000 HP left, they still have time to heal before the damage applies to them. Unloading several Atonements in a row on an opponent, while not great in terms of burst, puts a sure and steady pressure on their MP, making it easier for your team to secure the kill.

Using Confiteor deals high damage and marks all enemies with Sacred Claim, allowing you and your party to heal for a small amount by landing attacks on the marked players.

Upon completing a Royal Authority combo, or using Shield Bash or Intervene, you gain one stack of Sword Oath, up to three. With at least one stack of Sword Oath, your basic combo button becomes Atonement, dealing decent damage (twice your average combo GCD) as well as healing you. Using an Atonement does not cancel an ongoing combo, so feel free to use Shield Bash and Intervene as needed.

A 3-second stun with a 10-second cooldown, Shield Bash is a powerful skill to help lock down your targets. This skill also has many uses. You can use this offensively to prevent your target from using Guard while your team bursts them down, after their Guard runs out to lock down a kill, or force a Purify. It can also be used defensively to peel an enemy diving onto your squishy backline. Try to keep an eye on when your opponents burn their Purifies (watch for the Purify icon on the enemy list buff bar) and keep track of their Purify cooldowns to maximize Shield Bash's effectiveness.

With two charges and a 10-second charge time, Intervene makes Paladin quite mobile, allowing you to catch up to targets from range before locking them down with Shield Bash, or to dash back to the enemy Ninja who is solo-diving your backline.

Holy Sheltron gives you as 12000 HP (around a fifth of your HP) shield as well as 15% damage mitigation for 10 seconds. This is a great mitigation skill which also "heals" almost as much as a Recuperate. Use this early and often when you expect to be taking damage. While this is first and foremost a mitigation tool, the AoE damage and 5-second Heavy debuff from the explosion can also be leveraged in both a chase and while peeling as a powerful AoE CC tool. By popping Sheltron 3-4 seconds in advance and then using Intervene to gapclose to your target, you can make it difficult for them to avoid the extra damage and strong Heavy debuff. The shield can also make it so that you can survive a Samurai's Zantetsuken, which deals 100% of your maximum HP in damage, so consider keeping your Sheltron ready if the opposing Samurai has their limit break almost ready.

Guardian is arguably Paladin's most powerful skill, completely nullifying any damage taken by one of your teammates for 10 seconds as long as they stay in range. This is also a tricky skill to utilize, because it can mean you take twice as much damage from people using AoE abilities to hit both you and your target. Try to pair this with Guard or Holy Sheltron to avoid getting instantly burst down after using this skill, and keep your finger on the Recuperate button. Use Guardian on burst targets to waste the enemy team's burst cooldowns, and on low MP friendlies. Because Guardian redirects everything to the Paladin, your covered target (if they know the interaction) can freely use Standard-issue Elixir without fear of being interrupted.

Here is a useful macro for Guardian. This is a mouseover macro, meaning it will try to activate on whatever your mouse is on, whether it be the name entry in your party list or the player's model on your screen:

/merror off
/pvpac Guardian <mo>
/pvpac Guardian <mo>
/pvpac Guardian <mo>
/pvpac Guardian <mo>
/pvpac Guardian <mo>
/pvpac Guardian <mo>
/pvpac Guardian <mo>
/pvpac Guardian <mo>
/pvpac Guardian <mo>
/pvpac Guardian <mo>
/pvpac Guardian <mo>
/pvpac Guardian <mo>
/pvpac Guardian <mo>
/micon Guardian pvpaction

Despite having a huge 120-second cooldown, Phalanx can be one of the most significantly impactful limit breaks, both on offense and defense. It makes you invulnerable to damage and reduces your party's damage taken by 50% for a whole 10 seconds, as well as giving you access to the Blade of Valor combo.

Phalanx is at its strongest in large group battles, shining especially in overtime situations to turn a game around or to put the final nail in the coffin. Try not to use it without three or four teammates in range and in line of sight. In addition, it is often also better to opt not to use it in a 1v5 or 2v5 situation and save it for the next big teamfight instead.

The Blade of Valor combo is buffed by the Sacred Claim buff, and every hit is an AoE around the target, so try and maximize the number of targets you hit. Landing Confiteor, Blade of Faith, Blade of Truth, and Blade of Valor consecutively on an opponent deals an appreciable 35k damage, which is slightly more than half of an opponent's HP bar (and it is all AoE!).