More like SHAMmerdins, amirite?

there are areas where you get butchered in hell. so you need to take it one at a time. I had that with my hammerdin and Javazon, especially the wisps/hell ghosts which are immune and do devastating lightning damage. it's not D3..(at least when dealing with immunes)

Thanks for all the input, the conclusion is that I'm just not used to hammers, so I persevered for a bit and tried to take your advice on casting two hammers and moving, duck and weave.

I killed the second

Baal wave by upgrading my merc to Treachery and Obedience, that did the trick. Then I started farming

Terror Zones, but it's still not for me. The hammers do ludicrous amounts of damage to almost anything but the whole thing is too annoying so I have done a respec to a

Smite/FoH hybrid. This is far more restrictive in terms of areas that I can reliably farm but it is a) considerably safer, and b) considerably more fun.

One question to the wise heads of the forum; I've put 20 points into

Smite,

Holy Shield,

Fanaticism and Fist of Heavens but I'm only level 86 so

Holy Bolt is only half full. I can clear Chaos quite effectively with this but it's slower than I would like. I don't have much experience with

Smite so my question is this: do I really need 20 points in

Smite,

Holy Shield and Fanaticisim to be an effective smiter? I'd be keen to have a go at Ubers at some point but if I can take some points out of those skills and put them to

Holy Bolt without massively impacting the efficacy of

Smite then that would seem smart. If so, which one should I take points from?

Janet the Java wrote: 2 years ago

... do I really need 20 points in

Smite,

Holy Shield and Fanaticisim to be an effective smiter? I'd be keen to have a go at Ubers at some point but if I can take some points out of those skills and put them to

Holy Bolt without massively impacting the efficacy of

Smite then that would seem smart. If so, which one should I take points from?

I think you can take all points out of

Smite and

Holy Shield and still be effective.

I'm running a FoH Smiter hybrid, I have maxed FoH,

Holy Bolt,

Holy Shock and

Fanaticism. With just 1 point in

Smite &

Holy Shield I can kill Ubers/Dclone, and I don't have to give up on FoH damage so Chaos is also fast.

Now this may be gear dependent - I was lucky enough to find a

Lo while leveling the Paladin, so I use Grief for Ubers. My understanding is that it can also be done fairly easily with Black, but maybe someone who has done it with that can give some input on whether it's necessary to level those skills if you don't have access to Grief.

If you’re making a hammers/smiting hybrid, you’re better off with 20 in

Smite, and 1 point each in

Holy Shield and

Fanaticism. You hit the appropriate breakpoints and the ROI on H. Shield and Fanat drops off precipitously compared to putting those same points into hammer synergies.

Holy Shield and

Fanaticism are meant to be one point wonders for a smiter taking down Uber Diablo and

Über Baal.

Ok that's interesting, thanks both.

I've ditched hammers completely.

Holy Shield is useful for max block, reluctant to totally purge that since I don't want to put more points in dex.

I also find the lightning damage of FoH to be massively lacklustre even with all synergies maxed (have a pure FoH pally on NL) so I'd be tempted to take points out of either

Smite or

Fanaticism and dump into

Holy Bolt but not bother with

Holy Shock.

But now I have conflicting ideas as to which I should take points from, which is interesting!

Edit: and I don't have a Grief on Ladder, just Black.

Depends what you decide to use as your primary skill. Whatever that is, you should maximize the synergies and your gear. And fortunately

Smite is useful even with the bare minimum of points invested!

ExplodeSheep wrote: 2 years ago

Depends what you decide to use as your primary skill. Whatever that is, you should maximize the synergies and your gear. And fortunately

Smite is useful even with the bare minimum of points invested!

Well, realistically,

Smite is only intended for dclone and Ubers, the rest of the time I'll be fisting everything.

1 point

Smite and 1 point fana is enough.

Interesting. That begs the question, if I take all those points out of

Smite and

Fanaticism, max FoH,

Holy Bolt,

Holy Shock,

Holy Shield. Where do the remaining points go?

Conviction?

Resist Lightning? Or is it then worth adding to

Smite?

Janet the Java wrote: 2 years ago

Well, realistically,

Smite is only intended for dclone and Ubers, the rest of the time I'll be fisting everything.

That sounds so wrong...

It depends on your current gears.
Fana to reach the next breakpoint or into foh and its synergies.

Ravoc wrote: 2 years ago

Janet the Java wrote: 2 years ago

Well, realistically,

Smite is only intended for dclone and Ubers, the rest of the time I'll be fisting everything.

That sounds so wrong...

Nothing wrong with a bit of casual fisting.

mockingbirdreal wrote: 2 years ago

It depends on your current gears.
Fana to reach the next breakpoint or into foh and its synergies.

My current gear is all fairly rubbish, the whole idea now, based on the fact that

Smite/Fana only need one point, is to max FoH + synergies and then distribute remaining points into

Smite/synergies in order to be as effective as possible for both builds. For FoH gear I am looking at stacking as much +skills as possible, for

Smite I'm looking to switch that out for gear with CB and resists. That's pretty much it!

Gear I have on Ladder is limited.

Tarnhelm, Spirit Shroud, Black, Spirit sword and Spirit shield, no good belts,

Infernostride is probably my best set of

Boots,

Laying of Hands.

Max FOH + synergies. If you have leftover points in your hybrid build, you get more bang for your buck putting skill points into

Smite instead of

Holy Shield and

Fanaticism because the latter two have diminishing returns.

I dont max lightning synergies: 44 pts spent to have a better single-target, 0.4 casting delay spell seems heavy investment for low returns.
However, because I start Fohdin with a friend playing sorc every ladder, I max

Conviction (24 pts spent instead of 44) to give him more DPS early on.
A side effect is that my build is Ubers ready very early, because I can over-

Conviction

Über Mephisto.
And I can also 2-3 shots non-previously lightning immune champions and elites animals using

Conviction.

My early Ladder Fohdin/DClone killer build, by in order of importance:
- 20 pts in

Holy Bolt
- 20 pts in

Fist of the Heavens
- 20 pts in

Conviction
- 20 pts in

Holy Shield (no Grief)
- The rest in

Fanaticism
https://www.wowhead.com/diablo-2/skill- ... vxzYqtyYmM

My Fohdin/Uber killer build, with Grief and over 300 Lightning Resistance while using

Salvation (to overwhelm

Über Mephisto's

Conviction):
- 20 pts in

Holy Bolt
- 20 pts in

Fist of the Heavens
- 20 pts in

Fanaticism
- 20 pts in

Smite
- The rest in

Holy Shield (Grief give most of the flat damage here)
https://www.wowhead.com/diablo-2/skill- ... YrXqYtySmD

In some areas, the Fohdin is awesome like a

Lightning Fury Javazon.
In areas filled with animals however, it's like all monsters are immunes (and there is no Sunder Charm for that).

I had the same feeling about putting points in the lightning synergies. FoH is all about the those holy

Bolts, the lightning part is just too slow to be effective. That being said, it is possible to get through the animals if you do invest in the synergies.

Having spent some time with my new chap, I have come to the firm conclusion that whilst FoH is less versatile than a hammerdin, it is more efficient and faster in certain

Key areas. Although

Terror Zones should favour the versatility of the hammerdin in general, a lot of the best zones are easier and quicker with FoH; Chaos, Pit,

Tal Rasha's, Forgotten Tower, maybe even Trav.

I won't be touching hammers again.

Flayer Jungle is one of my favourite if it spawn with the three type of Flayer monsters.
Huge density and double dip on loot when you kill a champion or elite shaman!

I hear ya on the hammerdin, I avoided the build until only recently, I finally made one was only for 2 reasons: I had the gear to make him fast (Enigma, arachs, charms, anni, etc), and I needed a character to get to level 93 for gambling/crafting purposes.

I’m ssf offline and with the hammerdin’s clear speed he’s the only one I could level up at a reasonable rate - I started p7 Chaos runs around mid 80s. All my other chars are p3, maybe 5 only, and usually only in

Key areas. I play too wrecklessly to reliably get past lvl 92 on any of my other serious characters, and on my fun builds I start getting bored around lvl 88 and move onto something else.

Just a note on Uber’s when you start them. Be prepared for a hard slog your first time, even with great gear they can be tough. The streamers make it look easy because they’ve done it hundreds of times. My first time with a decently geared smiter went really badly: post2406458.html#p2406458

I really recommend dracs or Exile, and if possible maxing

Smite,

Holy Shield and

Fanaticism. I tried the 1 point smiter Uber thing and it wasn’t for me. Now I have a smiter who’s only job is Uber killing and it’s way easier. It took a while but now all my characters have their torches (less my necro - that torch just doesn’t seem to drop for me)

Good luck!

Cheers Nate! I'm quite experienced doing Ubers solo, I've just never done it with a smiter, could be interesting. Given all of the interesting advice above, I decided to max

Fist of the Heavens,

Holy Bolt,

Holy Shock,

Smite, then put 1 point in

Fanaticism and

Salvation, the rest are going in

Holy Shield.

My gear is improving but there is 0 chance I will have the excess Wealth for Exile any time soon, that

Vex is needed elsewhere for a start, and I only just have enough runes to cube to

Vex. I found

Gore Rider a couple of days ago, a decent base for Treachery, a perfect Mara's, and a

Lightsabre which I figure would be good for

Über Mephisto. I already have Black in a

Knout,

Guillaume's Face,

Laying of Hands,

Nature's Peace for PMH.

I'm hoping that is enough to see me through!

No

Conviction ? It helps a lot with FoH, as far as I remember, and if you are above

Über Mephisto's, you cancel his, so only need to reach 175 res instead of 300 (except that your merc will die, but well... merc's life).

Necrarch wrote: 2 years ago

No

Conviction ? It helps a lot with FoH, as far as I remember, and if you are above

Über Mephisto's, you cancel his, so only need to reach 175 res instead of 300 (except that your merc will die, but well... merc's life).

No

Conviction. I don't really know why, except it barely makes a difference to FoH in my experience, maybe only the lightning damage? And I know some use it for smiters but I don't think it's standard/necessary for them either?