Paladin

```
As a knight of the Order of the Cross, the Paladin protects her allies from the forces of evil. She had a strong physique, but was cursed by a demon, forced to assume a child-like form. In spite of her weak frame, she trained hard to grow as a knight. The Paladin's greatest wish is to break the curse and return to her normal self. Extremely prideful and even arrogant, she hates being treated like a child.

```

**Paladin** is a tank character with great clutch potential and abilities focused around Taunting enemies, protecting her allies, and increasing her overall survivability. The Paladin can force enemies to attack her while providing valuable breathing room for your squishy characters to work with. The Paladin has a strong self heal, a taunt, a shield, and a unique attack redirection skill. She has the highest base health and GRD of any character along with her unique Resolute jinx to keep her from getting instantly killed. As any tank of any other game, she is best suited to sit at the front of formations and has her Holy Smite Cross to move her back to the front if she gets knocked out of position. Her Taunt can give room to allies and her self heal Divine Hands rewards repeated use while her Divine Armor provides a Max Health shield in a pinch. The Paladin's Holy Guard skill can counter Brands and can redirect attacks and other dangerous boss skills.

The Paladin is great for fighting bosses and fits *extremely* well into a late game party.

## Skills

### Skill Chart

#### Provoke

Provoke is the Paladin's bread and butter and is a staple to any tank character of any franchise. It provides the Paladin with a Taunt effect that works on any enemy. Like any other Taunt, this is completely countered by Brand, so this skill should be cast as soon as possible and should not be cast when a Brand is affecting an ally. It also increases her DEF which is a nice side effect.

#### Holy Guard

The Paladin's Holy Guard skill is the only skill that guarantees an attack will hit the Paladin instead of a targeted ally. This move completely negates Brands along with telegraphed boss moves. Use this when you see an ally is about to be hit with a high damage skill or an extremely dangerous status effect.

#### Divine Hands

This move heals the Paladin and gives her a buff that increases incoming heals by a percentage. The only downside of this move is that it costs mana, as you might not have enough to refresh your Provoke or Holy Guard skills. Luckily, Paladin taking a turn to Block instead of attack is not a bad idea as if she blocks with her Taunt active, it mitigates incoming damage and increases her mana by 20 as blocks normally do.

#### Divine Armor

This is the only move in the game that gives a character Shield health. This extra health is displayed in white and does not serve as a health gate for the Paladin nor does it count as health for purposes of her Resolute Jinx. In the late game, this gives her more health (albeit psuedo health) than her Divine Hands would since it scales with her Max HP instead of her ATK.

#### Holy Smite Cross

By nature, the Paladin is better suited to being at the front of formations. When she gets moved back, she can use her high damage Holy Smite Cross skill to bring herself back to the front as it moves her one tile forward. Beware of this move's low hit chance as a miss could enable a slow enemy to get a fast turn in.

## Jinxes

#### Resolute

This passive jinx keeps the Paladin's health from falling below 1 when above 1. This move has no cooldown and allows the Paladin to take repeated hits while at extremely low health values just by increasing her health over 1. This serves as a health gate and lets you potentially bring low level Paladins into high level dungeons to increase level extremely fast along with saving your party from total defeat when hit with strong boss AOE skills. If the Paladin takes damage while at 1 health, she will enter Limbo or die like normal.

#### Fanaticism

This passive jinx lowers the Paladin's escape chance by 30%. This only works when you try to escape on her turns, so this negative can be mostly overlooked.

#### Pride

This passive jinx lowers the Paladin's defense while in the rear of formations. Given the Paladin's overall uselessness while in the back of formations, this will almost never come up during a normal run.

## Tips and Strategies

* Despite the Paladin being cute as hell, her tankiness is not essential in parties and can be replaced by the Onmyoji's Paper Turtle or just another damage dealer, fitting in with the meta of just killing everything really fast. The Paladin is mostly useful for the utility she brings to a party along with Co-op Skills
* The Paladin's Holy Guard beats Brands and is an exceptional counter to telegraphed boss skills.
* Holy Guard lets you take low level allies into high level dungeons without worrying about them getting hit by stray attacks. This lets you level up characters quickly.
* The Paladin's Divine Hands skill is strong at early levels but loses in terms of health gain to Divine Armor during late game. In higher levels, only use Divine hands if the HP Recovery Booster would help a healer keep you from dying as the health per mana spent is better suited to Divine Armor.
* Resolute works against bleed effects, giving the Paladin an extra turn to bleed out as opposed to a normal character.
* The Werewolf has access to one of the strongest Co-op skills in the game when next to the Paladin: Sudden Attack. This skill deals very high damage (150 - 210%) and increases the party's DEF by (25 - 32%)
* Though it might be tempting to attack with the Paladin when given nothing else to do, keep in mind her Holy Smite has a base -5 to hit. Missing with her could grant an unwanted speed boost to enemies. Instead, consider blocking to increase her mana and GRD.

## Trivia

* Paladin's Japanese CV is Miyu Takagi, a member of the J-pop group "Wake Up, Girls!" who also voices Hacka Doll No.1 from Hacka Doll the Animation.