OK I know this may raise some flaming or ranting and THATS ok as long as you know what the your talking about.

I'm uneducated on the matter, but what the hey, have my opinion anyways

Personally i dont enjoy the forestal totemy "in touch with nature" type of class, so Ebonguard is out the window and i've never had any experience with the Serenguard at all but i assume they are similar, so they are too.

Out of Paladins and Ur'Guard, technical ability aside i find it much more enjoyable to play a badass knight of dhoom, than a knight in shining armour who helps children across the road, but i'm a light-aligned person IRL . Even though generally i tend to go for light-aligned classes. I've tried Paladins and Ur'Guard, and found i got bored with my Paladin and stuck with the Mag..it's just not very creative and fun to play the lawful peaceful warrior, as opposed to the crazy amount of ways you can express your role with a demonic knight.

I'd still reckon that from a skills perspective, you're probably best off with either Sacraments or Necromancy, probably in that order. Rituals has some good stuff in it (Puer and Puella alone are worth the price of admission) and then you get the specialization.

I stuck with Night and it works out OK -- +20 to all stats on a 2-hander isn't to be sneezed at, plus I get extra damage from shadow stealing (which I always forget to do), and I can changeling into mugwump for super-efficient nightkiss bashing. Having been a Blacktalon, I can say that the Crow skill is mostly total crap and I can't imagine it being particularly useful to a warrior, unless I'm forgetting something.

I don't know much about Moon, Stag or Hunting so I can't comment there. And of course this is all just from a skills perspective. From an RP/organizational perspective, I think all of the warrior guilds seem very well organized and supportive, though I can't speak as much for the paladins. Other than that it's up to your RP preference. I love Glomdoring so for me, I like the Ebonguard. Some people don't like the Glomdoring RP at all and wouldn't join Ebonguard even if they had the SMITE skill.

All that said, from a completely biased perspective, Go Ebonguard!

See, I think the Paladins should move away from that sort of thing, anyway. There've been quite a few "Let's go squash some evil, to Nil with the kids who need crossing the road, they'll make it eventually" types in Celest, and I think the Paladins should lean that way.

Anyway, the Ebonguard aren't necessarily "in touch with nature" unless it's our Wyrdy sort of nature. We are not treehuggers!

That might just convince me to check Glomdoring out, but i have 3 characters already that i'm torn between. I started out with a few completely opposite characters to put my feelers out and see which role i want to settle in to, and didnt exactly count on all the orgs i joined being so damn cool

Paladins arent all warriors in shining armours who are helping childrens.

We are quite far from it, we dotn act as bdass, at least most of us, but we arent pacifists. Paladins haev always lack of members with Kelly, Shinza and me in rule position we are do what we can to get more members and i think we are doing it quite well. Just look at TOPGUILDS. Paladins never was so high. We were worst in Celest and at bottom of list for almoust a year.

We have still a lot to do but we are working at it.

From what I know, there has never been a forestal-warrior guild before, so the concept itself is fairly unique, unlike a Death Knight or Paladin, which are overdone in all the other IRE games. That being said, Necromancy and Sacraments are pretty good here for combat purposes, whereas the Totem specializations have a lot of utility purposes. It's also a lot harder to work out a decent RP for a group of tribal warriors than Death Knights or Paladins.

Well 'best' is ambiguous, do you mean all around or something else as each guild has its own strengths and weaknesses.

Things to consider (as a start)-
+ The people in it, do they define the guild, or vice versa?
+ The RP associated with such
+ The guild as a force in the Basin and mainly within their city/commune, coupled with skillset preference
+ The reputation of the guild

In terms of their skills, a Moon Serenguard.

In terms of overall RP and ass-kicking, Ur'guard.

guido is correct, serenagurd moon is the best warrior out there, but come to the ur'guard and you get some awesome people, and even some badass training and a large dose of harden up

Well a nice dose of harden up, except around that softie Murphy of course.

psh i'vee give you soft, you he-bitch man-hoe human-softon

You all wish you could join the Serenguards.

Skillwise, it has to be Paladins. Come on, rituals plus infidel/heretic/inquisition plus Trueheal?

I wish Paladins were the best skill wise anyone with common sense would run soon as they see infidel. I would say the best would be moon serenguard they get darkmoon and a aeon skill with drawdown i can only wish for skills like that.

Personally, I'd love to be a Paladin, the only things holding me back are I'd have to quit the Serenguard and join Celest to get it. Once is more than enough.

Aeon + Drawdown > Trueheal > Lich > Whatever crappy skills Night and Crow have

Trueheal looks great for running away. Ceren is impossible to kill because two rounds into the fight he just trueheals and heads for the hills. Then Kaileigh summons you into a statue, and you spam the Legion aether with "SOMEONE EMPRESS ME"...

What were we talking about?

I wanna be a rogue Pallie, if only Sacraments didn't draw its power from that dirty pool.

Run run run run?

I still challenge you guys to come 'ere and try infidel out. The only time its going to work is if the person ain't moving. And Carcer isn't cutting it for me.

Generally I infidel - the person runs and I don't have to worry about finding them until the infidel has fainted.

By far, Paladins are superior in terms of raw abilities. The reason they tend to get rated lower than they are stems from the fact that the Paladins don't have anyone (and haven't had anyone in a long time) that is truly an elite combatant. I dread to think what it would be like if Murphy, Terenas, etc. even went Paladin.

Why?

First, Paladins can heavily afflict with Sacraments. If you figure Heretic/Infidel alone, you end up with about 9 afflictions for 6p over a period of time. That's pretty good. Given that these afflictions fire off over time, you can give heretic; hit on the target a little; infidel; etc.

Inquisition is a game-over skill. While it isn't easy to achieve, it is far from impossible for Paladins. With some use of abilities like impale, knock down, break chest, break nose, pin leg, leg tendon, mangled limbs, etc, you should be able to slow down the target enough to get to it. Once a target has Inquisition, he or she takes double damage (on top of the ~1,000 damage it deals) along with having all defenses stripped (including lichdom, vitae, spirits from Totems, etc). You have time for 2-3 attacks too.

Trueheal is as amazing offensively. With Diamante's swords, he was able to instantly kill elite fighters instantly with swing/swing, trueheal, swing/swing. Even if you can't instantly kill someone, this combo is quite nasty as it will deal out more wounds and damage than haymaker but also instantly cure you of all afflictions, wounds, health, mana, and ego. That's not bad.

Trueheal is also under rated on a defensive level. It cures EVERYTHING - even special power afflictions like omen, sap, etc.

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As for Moon, Waning (aeon) has like a 3.5-4.0 second equilibrium cost with normal equilibrium. As a result, it isn't very good for warriors. They have no good way to make it stick (or at least make it stick long enough to recover equilibrium and do anything else). While Waning is extremely potent for Moondancers, it just isn't for Serenguard.

Dark Moon is a tricky ability to assess. If you cast it in a room, the target just has to get one room away to stop it. It is nice for holding a room, but that's about it. The targeted version of Dark Moon isn't really that good at all. It costs 5p and lasts 60 seconds. It gives 1 afflictions and strips 1 def every 10 seconds and is cured by focus spirit. Given the afflictions are limited (dementia, amnesia, confusion, stupidity, or paranoia), that's nothing too severe - eat pennyroyal.

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The only advantage I see for a Moon Serenguard versus a Paladin with Sacraments is that the Moon SG is tankier in general and gets the weapon bonus. However, I'm not so sure that alone makes them better than Paladins. I can say for certain that I can stand and fight toe-to-toe against any Serenguard. I have to run like hell against anyone who is going for Inquisition because one false move and you are toast.