Shattered Kingdoms

Does this specific class need art trained for their spells? Would it benefit the class in PvE or PvP?

It depends on your build, but if I were playing a paladin I would only train 3 art at most: Mainly because paladins are generally starved for stats anyways, and I'd rather train HP than art.

There's two spells affected by art for a paladin, and those are spear of faith and bolt of glory, both reflex saves (Many people think that Holy Word also checks it for Dispel, but Dulrik seems to disagree). BoG is really the one you'll want people to fail their save against, as it locks your enemy in combat on a failed save.

In PvE, the difference will be extremely marginal: In fact, probably no difference at all. In PvP, it -can- have a much larger impact, but honestly, I wouldn't do it. Maybe a few points, but most people are probably going to have minimal reflex on their gear anyway (It's a generally rare enchantment) or build MR anyways, rendering your art useless.

, thats a very good explination, thank you!

Art always seemed useless to me for my paladins, but I can see where OA is coming from, but I believe art also affects flamestrike, and I don't care WHAT Dulrik says, the dispel from holy word is affected by ART, as my priests seem to land much more devastating holy words than my paladins ever did.

Oh yeah, flamestrike.

Still a reflex save though.

I know this discussion is concerning paladins, but I think it was pretty useful to train ART with my hellion. My hellfires always seemed to land and I never had much trouble hitting people with afflictions, though I don't remember what all ART really applies to.

There are a few ways to build a hellion. Maxing art is definitely a viable route, and is probably the way I would go personally.

As for paladins, I probably wouldn't put any into art. Putting a few points into it would certainly be a viable build, though.

I think paladins only have 4 spells that are affected by art and that is flamestrike, spear of faith, bolt of glory and holy word.

I think you need to ask this question of yourself: do you use your paladin to stand in the front lines and take damage or do you stand in the back and use spells?

Personally, I would try going for the route of art as while the general theory of a paladin tanking blows is solid, in practice it doesn't work out that well. Maybe if you're playing as a human paladin though, it would work to your advantage to dump hps over art.

I'd say max out your art as a paladin and sit in the 2nd row with some sort of reach weaponry or ranged weaponry and let a melee class take the blows. Dropping a holy word at the beginning of a battle can turn the tide in your favor immediately, especially in a group of multiple holy word casters as this tactic is generally indefensible (yes, I realise that there are certain players that are rugged enough to defend against this but the average SKer will be raped). The ability to cast bolt of glory or spear of faith to do damage will be far more potent than the spear you are stabbing someone with. Also, having the ability to use cure critical to heal your tanks is good to have so you might want to think about going for mana trains too. Either art or mana would be the best choices for a paladin, although I lean more toward mana trains to give more utility to the paladin, considering cure critical and holy word will suck massive amounts of mana and a character needs the most mana they can get their hands on.

I'll also say that art becomes useless against the top tier players, and the paladin has less advantages to training art over their evil counterparts. Ultimately playing a successful paladin is realising that your class is a support class and that's all it will ever be. Facing human opponents is different than facing computer opponents too. NPCs in the game cannot adjust their tactics to yours or vy for better position. They can only do what they're programmed to do.

The sooner you realize the same is true for humans, the sooner you unlock your own potential.

Humans are biological machines that still possess vastly superior abilities than current computers.