Pakal was pretty hyped when he got released so with some time elapsed I was able to write you this guide with all the information you need to know about his strength, how to prioritize his skills and, of course, how to build his talent tree. I don’t want to spoiler, but his rally build is not as you would expect (or see on many other sources I don’t want to name) that I believe makes so much more sense. But first things, first, let’s have a look at him.
Pakal’s Role
Pakal’s ‘s primarily a very good rallying commander in Rise of Kingdoms. Apparently he can also do open field quite well, but his primary use-case is rallying. Big time.
The main thing about Pakal is that he needs to be attacked to really go through the roof due to the fact how his skills work. For that reason he can do fine in the open field as well but let me explain that below with the skill order.
Current Ranking – is Pakal S-Tier, A-Tier, or D-Tier?!
See how Pakal is ranking in the different game modes of Rise of Kingdoms in my current tier list here.
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Skill Order
When you star up Pakal, you also unlock a new skill. This helps you fine-tune in what order you want to upgrade your skills as not all skills are equally good for him. This helps to invest your sculptures more reasonably to get the biggest bang for your buck.
Well, fine-tuning skills is alright but the thing is that if you want to rally with Pakal, you will simply need to max him out. If you don’t do that, all fine-tuning is worth nothing.
In a perfect world, I’d NOT max out his primary skill (yes, Pakal is one of those rare exceptions of the always-max-legendary-commander-primary-skill rule) but work on his 2nd skill simultaneously. This will give him versatility in the open field as well instead of his single-target skill damage active skill.
From here I’d take him straight to 4-Star to work on his 4th skill. This is the sweet spot. When you get attention you will start dealing a ton of counterattack and this one will help reducing the damage you take when swarmed up to 45%. You can basically go around all the time.
Finally you want to expertise him to get that counterattack bonus, this is the point where Pakal is simply nuts.
Best Troops
With Pakal you should run infantry units. None of his skills is about having only infantry units in the march, but the max talent in the Infantry Tree is and most buffs also only apply to infantry units.
Best Commander Pairing
Due to his talent trees, there are several interesting options available to pair with Pakal:
The single meta combination is combining Pakal with Harald. Super sustain, great damage. This will give you a lot options. This is the setup that will define the marches for the next time.
Also Alexander is a viable pairing and you can use both commanders as the primary commander. With Alexander as the primary, you will have more damage, with Pakal primary you have more tankiness on the battlefield. The only downside of this pairing is that it misses area of effect damage, but I still like it a lot.
The last pairing that also make sense is pairing with Guan Yu. It’s not as strong as the other ones and you really need to get focused to get much out of this combination.
Find out more about the most useful commander pairings here.
Best Equipment
In terms of equipment, here’s what I recommend to use as the route for Pakal:
| Gear | Starter | Progressed | Required |
|---|---|---|---|
| Helmet |  Windswept War Helm |
Windswept War Helm |
 Witch’s Lineage |
| Chest |  Windswept Breastplate |
 Quinn’s Soul |
Quinn’s Soul |
| Weapon |  Gatekeeper’s Shield |
Gatekeeper’s Shield |
Gatekeeper’s Shield |
| Gloves |  Windswept Bracers |
 Seth’s Brutality |
Seth’s Brutality |
| Leggins |  Sentry Breeches |
 Karuak’s Humility |
Karuak’s Humility |
| Boots |  Windswept Boots |
Windswept Boots |
 Frost Treads |
| Forge Time | 70 Days | 166 Days | 218 Days |
You have at the left side the absolute starter setup that you want to get when running him. The middle step is where you fit in good alternatives to improve where it makes sense and at the right side you have the setup that most players run with this commander. ATTENTION! The best possible whale setup is NOT included here as it will not be obtainable for most players and I don’t want to list “best-of-the-best” here just for the sake of having it here. If you’re able to et the best gear for this commander, you don’t need to follow these recommendations anyway.
Best Builds For Pakal
There are two builds you can run with Pakal, one for open field and one for rally marches.
Rally Build
For using Pakal for rallying I recommend you to run this talent build here:
You might wonder why this rally build is not spending any points into the Conquering Tree, right? Well, the reason is this one here maximizes the mechanics of Pakal very well and this makes him so much stronger than spending the plain points into the Conquering Tree. Here’s the best order how to build this setup:
Defense Tree would be your first step here and you want to go to the Desperate Elegy point as fast as possible. This is insane to have and will bump up your energy regeneration so crazy. This is for rally only as it will require you to have your army reduced to below 30% (something you don’t want to have in the open field, but in rally scenarios absolutely normal).
Infantry Tree is where you should spend the points next. You will get nice stat buffs as well as more rage that comes in handy with Pakal.
Open Field Build
If you’re using Pakal in the open field, this is the build you want to use:
This build is similar to the one above, but you do not go for Desperate Elegy in the Defense Tree as you don’t want to drop below 30% to make use of it. Instead you can spend more points in the Infantry Tree as well as Buckler Shield to reduce the counterattack damage you’re getting.
