it not even worth to extend chants at over lvl 20-24 cos all you gona gain is always some more points in parry, which are not worth the effort. As you said you can level a pally arms-like until 20 (shield-crush) since your chants will suck anyway, and levels are fast after all. After lvl 22 you are supposed to have blue endo, and parties are gona be QQ once they are told you are AT, making you pretty impossible to group up. I ve never did it myself but I think until you solo, with a crafted armor + weapon + potions, your life is not gona be that tough even with no chants after 20, after all thats what an armsman is like. The point is, its still not worth the effort considering you gona gain just some parry, unless you r going to go for some specific wierd build, which might be a arguable choice since if nobody went for that, there must be a reason

I have...(as grp paladin)

44 thrust (backsnare after anytimer)
42 shield (slam)
42 chants (for red endusong, speccing more in chants is just little usefull in grp rvr, in my opinion. u also have "just" the yellow shieldbuff, but thats enough. If i am right just 10 af difference to the red one and my exp says me most of the time... when i am dieing fight is lost^^... in pvm u can also hold aggro with the yellow healchant)
12 in 2h (using the lv 4 backsnare as often as possible)
rest in parry, its 7 i think.

I made best exp with this specc in rvr and pvm as well.

i am not a AT paladin.

mfg Lupold

I wouldnt consider hybrid that weird of a build. Maybe on uthgard where leveling takes forever and people ahte twohanders. But on live it was always considered a good spec if you were committed to 8v8.
to get
44 chants (for 10% body/spirit/energy chant)
42 sheild
29 slash

you need 125 AT pts, so thats autoing slash till 48, and chants till 40 for a total of 131 pts.
the spare pts get you 3 parry. to AT chants till 48 gets you up to 7 parry.

id agree with you that unless one was aiming for strict 1v1 play, there is little reason to AT those last few pts. and even then it would make a noticible difference.

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on the other hand, if you dont want the lvl 44 chant, you could lose only 5% to the tri resist chant and go
43 chants
42 sheild
29 slash
1 parry

and that only requires 81 AT pts (autoing chants till level 12). so again a minor difference for your average player in the end game, but a significant pain in leveling. but that is the stupidity of autotrain. what was intended as a mechanic to help newbie players, actually only helps the min-maxer.

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for me tho, 44 chants is non-negotiable. body resist is better than det, and applies to the full group.

just want to announce that weaponskill does not effect defensepenetration on uthgard, so low weaponspec is no problem here.
me as a thane, is running a 29 hammer and 26 parryspec.
parry is very important here, since your maintargets in solo rvr are dual wielders!
so i recommand high parry spec+moparry and moblock

I have kind of a n00b pally autotrain question - if I spec thrust/crush will slash still autotrain, or do I have to completely ignore melee?

It will