Crack of Heavens charm for Fist of Heavens build?

I've been watching and reading the different Fist of Heavens builds and they all revolve around

Conviction to break lightning immunity. Wouldn't a

Crack of the Heavens unique charm do the same thing? It'll save 20+ skill points that could be spent in other areas.
Just my thoughts on the matter.

Fist of heavens with

Conviction only work on the

Lightning Strike single target, the holy

Bolts are magical and do not benefit any from

Conviction, so when i make a FoH pala i use the extra point for smiting and fanatiscm and still have a perfectly good FoH pala.

And i never use

Crack of the Heavens with it for 1 single target strike, i use single

Holy Bolt vs single target like act bosses.

About the question:

Crack of the Heavens (or any sunder charm), always break the immunity and set that resistance to 95% (but only for your own attacks - not for your Merc/Allies/Minions attacks)

Conviction, against immunities, works at 1/5, so at max (L25 -150 resist) will only break immunity from monster with less than 130 resist (and so will not break immunity from some monsters )
And

Conviction effect benefits everybody that is attacking that monsters not only you

If you have both, the

Conviction effect is applied after the sunder, so, at max (L25 -150 resist), the immunities will have, for you, 65 resist (95 - 150/5)
That's why many builds use

Conviction (self or from Infinity) and a sunder charm

I actually run a hybrid FoH/

Smite paladin. Max FoH and

Holy Bolt, max

Smite and

Holy Shield. Only those 4 maxed. I actually have

Vigor as my active aura most of the time. I dont use a sunder charm, or

Conviction. I dont think they would make any meaningful difference for me playing solo, because

Conviction doesnt alter magic resistance.The holy bolts are the primary source of damage, dont really care about the lightning damage. So the only thing that is annoying is enemies that arent undead or demon, but most of the time I just ignore them

So I have LOTS of spare points, I have put 1 point in most auras (but actually none in

Conviction), and ended up putting about 8 points in

Resist Fire just to increase my max fire res. So depending on the party I am with, I could be running

Vigor,

Fanaticism. Even got a point in

Salvation if people want to do uber runs, means everyone has good res against meph

Having max

Conviction means your FoH paladin can go anywhere and destroy all enemies.

I found that VERY useful.

Though now that i have Infinity available, it is not impossible that i might consider changing.

Illusions wrote: 6 months ago

Fist of heavens with

Conviction only work on the

Lightning Strike single target, the holy

Bolts are magical and do not benefit any from

Conviction, so when i make a FoH pala i use the extra point for smiting and fanatiscm and still have a perfectly good FoH pala.

And i never use

Crack of the Heavens with it for 1 single target strike, i use single

Holy Bolt vs single target like act bosses.

Yeah that's what I mean. For single targets that have lightning immunity... (or had as the case may be). Means being able to kill pretty much anything in the game dead or alive, and being able to free up 20 valuable skill points.


And @fredkid, my merc is there purely for the infinite mana pool he provides (and maybe killing the odd mob that gets too close to him).

Chalk6ix_NZ wrote: 6 months ago

I've been watching and reading the different Fist of Heavens builds and they all revolve around

Conviction to break lightning immunity. Wouldn't a

Crack of the Heavens unique charm do the same thing? It'll save 20+ skill points that could be spent in other areas.
Just my thoughts on the matter.

It wouldn't do the same thing. Sunders take immune monsters to 95% res,

Conviction will lower it by some more even with the efficiency penalty. Not to mention it lowers the res for all non-immunes by a lot more.

Also what are you spending those 20 skill points in? FoH works because FoH and

Holy Bolt synergise each other, that's a 40+ investment that leaves quite a lot of room (60+ skill points) to put into other skills. It's quite a flexible and versatile build and there's multiple ways to build it (I go with a defensive auras FoHdin that I call a Cleric).

Just to confirm, do you mean with it this you only consider having

Conviction in yourself, as, you want your Merc using Insight for

Meditation, right?

Chalk6ix_NZ wrote: 6 months ago

And @fredkid, my merc is there purely for the infinite mana pool he provides (and maybe killing the odd mob that gets too close to him).

If you planning on use use Fist of Heavens lightning part against Lightning Immunes, the way to go is self

Conviction + Crack of Heavens (as @Stofsk commented)
If you want to handle lightning immunes another way, so no need for Crack of Heavens.
Against non immunes,

Conviction will be able more than double your damage so it worth to max if Lightning damage part is relevant on your playstyle.

FULCRUM75 wrote: 6 months ago

Having max

Conviction means your FoH paladin can go anywhere and destroy all enemies.

I wouldnt be doing cows as a FoH pala with

Conviction, you might be able to kill all with the

Lightning Strike, but you get 0 damage from the holy

Bolts

so yes you might be able to go anywhere, but if they are immune to magic and they are not undead or demons, it is not really a good place to go for a FoH pala even with

Conviction.

if you add the points in

Smite / fana instead, you could just

Smite the immunes to magic as well and do ubers as i do with a FoH / smiter pala with no

Conviction.

Cows is pretty much the only place i've found where he's no good.

But even there, with each ltng strike doing just under 10 thousand damage to a cow, everyone you hit twice goes down.

Illusions wrote: 6 months ago

if you add the points in

Smite / fana instead, you could just

Smite the immunes to magic as well and do ubers as i do with a FoH / smiter pala with no

Conviction.

I don't even remember what is immune to magic and isn't demon or undead.
Not that it matters much, because my FoH oneshots or twoshots them anyway.

Tested in maxroll.
Maxed

Smite does 546–628 damage per hit.
1114–1196 with also maxed

Holy Shield, which would require level 94, which i have literally never had a character at.

That's with +14 and +18 to skill tabs, which i was nowhere near when this character as setup became capable of going anywhere with my setup.

Bugs beetles maggots and such, but i just try to point out that the zones you can do easy, dont really need

Conviction, you can single target them with

Holy Bolt, or have weapon swap and

Smite a monster immune to lightning and magic or let merc kill it, just seems to me that getting

Conviction for just the single target

Lightning Strike is alot of points 'wasted'

if the monster is lightning immune but not magic immune, single target

Holy Bolt will kill it fast, i dont think you see a monster immune to light and magic often ?, except in zones like cows and such where you dont really want to farm with FoH anyway

FULCRUM75 wrote: 6 months ago

I don't even remember what is immune to magic and isn't demon or undead.

IIRC there is only one such monster - the Wailing Beasts in the Kurast temples (

Ruined Temple,

Disused Fane,

Forgotten Reliquary,

Forgotten Temple).

A FOH Paladin usually have

Conviction as the main aura. Most of lightning immunities are breakble. So, in my opinion,

Crack of the Heavens is not much necessary for a FOH paladin. Only penalizes his lightning res.

Alexandre_Souza wrote: 6 months ago

Most of lightning immunities are breakble. So, in my opinion,

Crack of the Heavens is not much necessary for a FOH paladin. Only penalizes his lightning res.

The extra advantage is that you can hit monsters outside of the

Conviction aura range, and that when they come into range, the amount of damage they take is considerably increased, this makes quite a difference.

So yeah, if you have poor ltng resist, don't use the sunder charm, but if you can have high resist even with it, it absolutely improves your speed taking out enemies when there's lots of ltng immunes(that are not undead or demons) around.

Lots to think on....
And while this thread is still active, thoughts on a

Conviction Hammerdin? Use

Conviction to break Magic Immunity instead of

Concentration? (or will

Conviction even break Magic Immunity?)

Conviction doesnt affect magic resistance. Just use

Concentration