What the Paladin is for
The Paladin evolves from **Knight** and flips the base class on its head. A Knight absorbs damage and waits; a Paladin *punishes* being hit. Shield Throw criticals plus reflect damage mean your threat generation and your damage output scale off the same stats, which is unusual — most tanks in SpiritVale trade one for the other.
That makes the Paladin the safest pick for players who want to tank without learning a separate damage rotation, and the reason it shows up in most Echoing Spire compositions.
Stat priority
The class scales with **VIT, LUK, STR, and INT** — four stats, which is more than any other specialisation and the main source of build confusion.
- **VIT** — your primary. Every point gives Max HP, Def, Mdef, and potion healing at once, so it is doing four jobs for one stat.
- **LUK** — your second priority, and this is the non-obvious part. Shield Throw criticals are what convert your defence into damage, so LUK is a threat stat here, not a luxury.
- **STR** — feeds the raw physical portion of Shield Throw and your Holy Sword auto-attacks.
- **INT** — only worth points once the other three are comfortable; it scales the healing component of your auras.
A practical leveling split is to hold roughly **2 VIT : 1 LUK : 1 STR** and ignore INT entirely until endgame. See the [stat conversion table](/en/stats) for the exact per-point numbers before you commit.
Weapons and why they matter
Paladins use **Tower Shields and Holy Swords**. The pairing is deliberate: Shield Throw scales with shield defence rather than sword damage, so upgrading your shield raises both your mitigation and your damage, while upgrading your sword only raises the latter.
If you are choosing where to spend a limited refinement budget, the shield comes first. This is the single most common gearing mistake on the class.
Core abilities
- **Shield Throw** — your damage and your threat. Scales with shield defence; criticals are driven by LUK.
- **Reflect aura** — returns a portion of incoming damage while channels are not interrupted. Uptime matters more than the raw percentage.
- **Team-wide protection auras** — the reason groups bring you to Echoing Spire rather than a second DPS.
Playing the class well
The Paladin's damage is passive in a way other classes' is not. You deal meaningful damage while blocking, which means the skill ceiling is about *positioning and aura uptime* rather than rotation execution.
Three habits separate a functional Paladin from a struggling one:
- Keep the reflect aura up before a pull, not after. Refreshing it mid-fight costs you the window where it would have done the most work.
- Face the boss away from the group. Reflect does not reduce what the group takes from cone attacks, so the usual tank positioning rules still apply.
- Do not tunnel on mitigation at the expense of LUK. A Paladin who cannot crit loses threat, and a Paladin without threat stops being a tank.
Paladin vs Knight
Pick **Knight** if you want the simplest possible defensive class and are happy being carried for damage. Pick **Paladin** if you want to hold threat through damage and are willing to manage a four-stat allocation. Both are covered in the [classes overview](/en/classes).
Where to go next
- Compare the other advanced options in the [classes hub](/en/classes).
- Check how your allocation compares in the [builds database](/en/builds-data).
- If you allocated wrong, your first reset is free — see the [respec guide](/en/guide/spiritvale-reset-stats).
- Tanking Echoing Spire? Read the [Echoing Spire Warden breakdown](/en/bosses/echoing-spire-warden) first.