Community

Eyebite (Cha vs will) should be at least blue, and arguably sky blue, for its utility for charismadins. There used to be charismadins that would paragon multiclass to warlock largely to get access to it as an at-will. Combined with divine challenge, you tag, move away, and eyebite. The divine challenge persists because you targeted them with an attack. If you miss, they get to choose between chasing you down (possibly taking opportunity attacks) or hitting someone else at -2 to hit and soaking down automatic damage. If you hit, they get the same choice, except that you're invisible to them, and at paragon you can take that nifty psychic-boosting feat and give them another -2 to hit if you hit. It's a bit on the vicious side, for a combination that runs completely off an at-will and one stat, that you would be raising anyway. Also worth noting that half-elf is a reasonably good race for charismadin to begin with, so it doesn't take as much to convince them to make the switch.

Late edit: note that there are paladin PPs out there that upgrade the divine challenge mark in various ways. Taking one of those can increase the power of this combination significantly.

I don't think eyebite really works that well for most paladins. If you're not the only defender, it's ok, but if you are, you're really sacrificing a lot to use this tactic. I think in many situations, the foe will simply choose to attack one of your allies and take the auto damage. Because divine challenge does quite mediocre damage (especially at higher levels), you'll end up doing ok damage overall (nothing too special) and penalising the enemy's chances to hit your allies, but you won't be nearly as effective as a defender as you might have otherwise been. Eyebite provokes opportunity attacks so you might need to stay out of melee with other enemies, potentially allowing them to attack whoever they like unmolested by you.

It's not a bad strategy but it can be situationally useful. My bard has divine challenge and in our session yesterday was trapped behind a portcullis for the duration of a fight. Being able to divine challenge and repetitively attack the elite in the encounter with cutting words was pretty nice. I kept him near our defender, and he couldn't reach me (without letting me into the room). So he just took divine challenge damage round after round - which made me feel a whole lot less useless than I would have otherwise felt.

On that topic, the eyebite strategy also works for any half-elves that multiclass into paladin. They only have divine challenge as an encounter power, but on the positive side, they may be playing a build which is generally stronger at range, so in a way, they don't have to sacrifice as much to implement the strategy.

I'm certainly not arguing that eyebite should be lower than blue. It should definitely be either blue or even sky blue.

Is true. When combined with some of the paladin paragon paths (many of which give the divine challenge quite a bit more bite in one way or another) the combo gets a fair bit stronger. Having the poor enemy take -2 to hit, take mark damage, and heal whoever his target is by 1/2 my level + wismod just for taking the swing? Yes, please. (As a side note, this works even better on controllers - the Hospitaler PP healing triggers off your friends being targeted. It has no requirement at all that you not be attacked.)

Also, is worth noting, just worshiping Corellon and getting his holy symbol will take care of your arcane implement needs just fine. You're a charismadin - you're going to want a holy symbol anyway. (...also, you're a half-elf with high charisma who is playing a paladin with a side of fey-pact warlock. Corellon is *appropriate*.) On the other hand, if you want to trim down to SID, then yes, you need both a heavy blade that qualifies as a holy symbol and the appropriate feat. On the bright side, this means that you can take focused expertise, and have it count for everything.

MwaO wrote:

Except that's not the real strategy - what you want to do is position yourself for the following:
If your foe attacks you, he attacks you at a penalty of -7 to hit and takes some damage from White Lotus.

If your foe attacks anyone else, he likely generates an opportunity attack from the Paladin with combat advantage, swings at the opponent for a -4, likely heals the party member regardless of a hit/miss, and takes DC damage.

Either way, unless the opponent has a close blast/burst to attack the Paladin with, his options aren't that good. With the ability of a Paladin to now take Heavy Blade as an arcane implement at the cost of a feat, it isn't such a good bargain for the foe...

Yes, you can do all of that, although I'm not sure what you mean about "the real strategy". There are a couple of responses to the powerful character you paint.

1) The combo you describe is good, but eyebite is only contributing the -5 to hit you and granting you combat advantage. Eyebite shouldn't be given full credit for what other powers, feats, or class features are contributing. For a build like this, all eyebite really does is ensure that the enemy won't attack you, because whatever nasty things you might be able to do to them if they attack someone else, it gets an even worse deal out of attacking you.

2) If, when you listed a -4 penalty, you were referring to Psychic Lock, note that this only applies the next single attack roll. It's not nearly as effective against controllers, or elite/solo mobs as many people seem to assume.

3) Although hospitalier + eyebite is a great combo against solo enemies that lack countermeasures (such as close or area attacks, which completely negate concealment), it will not function nearly as well in other situations. For instance, in group combat, paladins relying on ranged powers are either constantly skipping out of melee and failing to make opportunity attacks, or are provoking opportunity attacks themselves.

Thus my conclusion: while it is very good in certain situations (e.g. your target is a solo without countermeasures or you are not the only defender), the strategy won't be effective in all encounters. It might be worthwhile for a paladin that is the sole defender, but they'll often need to switch to other tactics.

SanityFaerie wrote:

This is not a combination for someone who wants to tank more than one person at a time (and paladins aren't so hot at that to begin with.) It's for a character who builds himself as a high-stickiness one-enemy defender. For many of his fights, that's what he'll be. For some fights, having eyebite means that he gets to transform into a character who renders one enemy at a time largely ineffectual.

Yeah. Although I do have to admit, I'm now wondering whether taking eyebite is really that expensive an investment. I mean, there's no reason why an eyebite paladin couldn't also take other feats, powers or class features to patch up their multiple-target tanking abilities also. Just because they won't be using eyebite every combat doesn't make it worthless, if it's really really good when it is used. It's one of three at-wills after all.

What does an eyebite paladin miss out on? What dilettante options are better? I don't think there are many contenders. I think perhaps eldritch strike would compete with it. It's a nice way of getting melee training for free and makes opportunity attacks and charges that much better. With some creative multiclassing or feat choice to improve the paladin's ability to make opportunity attacks (for instance, battle awareness, paragon multiclassing into fighter or perhaps warpriest PP), this would present a solid, more multi-target-stickiness oriented half elf chaladin build.