Stuck with paladin at Hell difficulty

Hi everyone!

I did a

Holy Fire paladin that was amazing in normal and nightmare.
Just starting act I hell (lvl 63) I already hit an enormous wall xD

I'm leveling this paladin to have a smiter for ubers, as my other chars (summoner necro and cold sorc) are not the best for that.

So I need to respec now and farm / buy some gear to prepare for hell.

My question is:

Is there a build that I can use to finish hell (no need to speedrun just to be feasible) in a way that I don't need to respec again to be a smiter?

I checked multiple guides and it looks like:

- As a smiter I can't really do the content as you only hit single targets.
- As a FoH, you can't either bc you only damage demons and undead.
- Could be

Zeal (using a better weapon instead of

Holy Fire) but I didn't see examples of how to -later on- switch from

Zeal to smiter without respeccing.
- Hammerdin?

The first answer to this post is interesting (tldr:
"basically you build normal hammerdin and just swap to smiter gear")

I already fell into the trap of following a guide that was some years old and turned out to not be viable anymore ^_^u so I'll appreciate your oppinions on the matter.

Thanks a lot!

The recommendation for fast leveling is

Holy Fire until ~ Act 3 Normal (before

Mephisto)
then respec to Hammerdin
https://maxroll.gg/d2/guides/paladin-leveling

Caster builds in general are better for level up as you are less dependent of equipment (a Spirit weapon and some + skill amulet/head/shield and you are OK )
And Hammerdin has no serious issue with immunities

get a

Heaven's Light to fight.
it will still very difficult.

The other way is collect all pgms and

Perfect Amethyst and runes(

Ral

Ist

Lem

Pul

Hel

Mal) and exchange someone with cheapest Grief. Then you can easy pass hell with

Zeal.

If you want continue with

Holy Fire and can spend a little,
you can buy/do Flickering Flame +

Flame Rift
or go for a DragonDin (2 x Dragon + Hand of Justice). I level up my paladin with this one, but I already had the equipment and runes for it...

For my uber smiter build, on swap I use a Lawbringer runeword in a

Phase Blade with

Zeal and Fanatacism . It's cheap and it will cut through physical immune.

Here's a link to when I got started and that was several hundred Ubers ago.

forums/i-think-i-m-ready-for-my-first-u ... 11646.html

sard4ukar wrote: 3 months ago

Hi everyone!

I did a

Holy Fire paladin that was amazing in normal and nightmare.
Just starting act I hell (lvl 63) I already hit an enormous wall xD

I'm leveling this paladin to have a smiter for ubers, as my other chars (summoner necro and cold sorc) are not the best for that.

So I need to respec now and farm / buy some gear to prepare for hell.

My question is:

Is there a build that I can use to finish hell (no need to speedrun just to be feasible) in a way that I don't need to respec again to be a smiter?

I checked multiple guides and it looks like:

- As a smiter I can't really do the content as you only hit single targets.
- As a FoH, you can't either bc you only damage demons and undead.
- Could be

Zeal (using a better weapon instead of

Holy Fire) but I didn't see examples of how to -later on- switch from

Zeal to smiter without respeccing.
- Hammerdin?

The first answer to this post is interesting (tldr:
"basically you build normal hammerdin and just swap to smiter gear")

I already fell into the trap of following a guide that was some years old and turned out to not be viable anymore ^_^u so I'll appreciate your oppinions on the matter.

Thanks a lot!

You can do a one-point smiter hammerdin. Basically a hammerdin can double as a non-optimal smiter. It is very usable to defeat ubers and still do hell content.

Hammerdin would be the way to go. My Paladin is a Zealer and I have one point in

Smite. I can kill

Uber Baal with no problems (for Meph and Diablo I use

Zeal because I hate

Smite ).

As some have pointed out already, you can also stay with

Holy Fire and use a Sunder Charm and a Weapon with some nice Magic or other elemental Damage. E. g. I can give you a

Lightsabre or an

Azurewrath (EDIT: lvl requirement might be a problem ) and a Fire Sunder for free. If you are interested simply add me on Bnet and message me.

Thanks a lot for all the suggestions!
I'll look at a couple more guides specially for Hammerdin... the idea of the fire sunder also sounds good, and oOKIWIOo thanks for offering the items, I already have a

Lightsabre but not the fire sunder.

I am sure I have a 73 fire sunder somewhere in my stash.

SC NL. Add me if you want it.

I had no problems finishing Hell with

Zeal/

Fanaticism. Make sure your Crushing Blow is high.

Goblin Toe, Duress, Black are all relatively cheap and will do the trick. An Act 2 Merc with Might and Obedience & Treachery helps a lot, too.

First, level 63 is too low for starting hell. Second:

Holy Fire in hell you will suffer a lot with immunes, fire immunity is very common in hell.

Flame Rift you can only use in level 75. Auradin or zealot rely on attack rating and requires expensive equipment to do well in hell. The easiest way to pass through hell with a paladin is as hamerdin, unless you have the right equipment for other builds (dual Dragon + Hand of Justice),(Two Dream), (Grief, Death, attack rating charms).

Similar to @fredkid's fire sunder suggestion, you can also go

Holy Shock with a light sunder and crescent moon

Phase Blade. It's stronger (stronger aura and -35% enemy light resist) and less expensive than Flickering Flame. I did it once as a second character, and it went really smoothly through hell

Zealer/Smiter build is a thing. I've done it lots. There's more than enough skill points to max out

Smite while also maxing out

Zeal+

Sacrifice, and then still have enough points into

Holy Shield to have a decent duration plus max chance to block. Or max out

Holy Shield and put a few points into

Smite, depending on what you value more, damage or defense. Imo

Resist Lightning and

Salvation (which some recommend) are overrated for a Smiter/Zealer. If anyone disagrees thats fine, but I'm just saying thats what worked for me to melt Ubers and still be able to farm WSK, CS, and all kinds of other areas efficiently. Had more than a couple paladins built like this that could melt Ubers and still shred those areas efficiently.

If youre having issues with physical immunes, get yourself a Lawbringer would be my advice. Mows down any PI undead and gets the job done for others.

Another alternative is FoH. Max

Holy Bolt and Fist, you should be able to clear basically everything and farm CS/Pits for gear. Then respect as you want.

Zeal/

Smite is also a consideration, though may be harder depending on your level and skill point allocation.

Third is

Holy Shock, like someone else mentioned, though that may be a bit slow. Keep in mind that in all cases you'll find something that can't cover everything (FoH beasts,

Zeal physical immunes, etc), which is fine in Hell, just run past the mobs.

Also depending on if Ladder or Non-Ladder I can drop you some gear to get you started.

I also disagree with Hammerdin without Enigma/adequate gear, it's way too hard to hit things imo, especially the ranged mobs (which are the deadliest at the beginning of hell imo), like Rangers and Souls. Clearing speed is also slow with low FCR.

When I hit hell on ladder reset with pally I always respect.
Ideal progression imo for maximum farming potential is:
Level 1-6 whatever.
Level 6-12

Holy Fire
Level 12-40+

Holy Fire/

Holy Bolt
Respec once you can put 20 hard points into FoH and

Holy Bolt each (Around level 60). Get necessary pre reqs and obviously

Holy Shield. I also higly recommend

Redemption and

Salvation from the beginning of Hell, both give you tons of survivability even with some extra skill points.
I have farmed CS at level 65+ doing this for the last 4+ ladders, since I started playing diablo again.
Doing this I usually farm CS/Pits until I feel comfortable also doing Trav/WSK which I then add into the mix. Your best runeword bar none is CTA, too few people go for Hoto or something else over this, unless you plan on exclusively doing Ubers, then obviously Grief.

marl71 wrote: 3 months ago

Similar to @fredkid's fire sunder suggestion, you can also go

Holy Shock with a light sunder and crescent moon

Phase Blade. It's stronger (stronger aura and -35% enemy light resist) and less expensive than Flickering Flame. I did it once as a second character, and it went really smoothly through hell

Remember that -35% ELR from Crescent Moon Runeword doesn’t work on lightning immunes. After the immunity is broken from another source,

Conviction aura or

Crack of the Heavens. It Will work 100%.

Alexandre_Souza wrote: 3 months ago

marl71 wrote: 3 months ago

Similar to @fredkid's fire sunder suggestion, you can also go

Holy Shock with a light sunder and crescent moon

Phase Blade. It's stronger (stronger aura and -35% enemy light resist) and less expensive than Flickering Flame. I did it once as a second character, and it went really smoothly through hell

Remember that -35% ELR from Crescent Moon Runeword doesn’t work on lightning immunes. After the immunity is broken from another source,

Conviction aura or

Crack of the Heavens. It Will work 100%.

That's why I said "light sunder" aka

Crack of the Heavens

marl71 wrote: 3 months ago

Alexandre_Souza wrote: 3 months ago

marl71 wrote: 3 months ago

Similar to @fredkid's fire sunder suggestion, you can also go

Holy Shock with a light sunder and crescent moon

Phase Blade. It's stronger (stronger aura and -35% enemy light resist) and less expensive than Flickering Flame. I did it once as a second character, and it went really smoothly through hell

Remember that -35% ELR from Crescent Moon Runeword doesn’t work on lightning immunes. After the immunity is broken from another source,

Conviction aura or

Crack of the Heavens. It Will work 100%.

That's why I said "light sunder" aka

Crack of the Heavens

Yes, but still it cannot be used in lvl 63. Only in Level 75

Ok...but that's close to the level you reach from nightmare

Baal lobbies. Or you can level in the

Blood Moor and

Dark Wood, neither of which have natural light immunes. As I've said, I did it one ladder, and it worked great. I recommend it if OP is inclined

fredkid wrote: 3 months ago

The recommendation for fast leveling is

Holy Fire until ~ Act 3 Normal (before

Mephisto)
then respec to Hammerdin
https://maxroll.gg/d2/guides/paladin-leveling

This works for pushing forward, but for quick loot farming I would say go FOH and farm Hell

Chaos Sanctuary. Worked perfectly.