Fist Of Heavens build

Semirotta wrote: 2 months ago

You dont use

Redemption for hp in most cases. Its for mana.

If you are using an Act2 merc with Insight, you never need mana with FoH.

There are way better weapons than Insight for A2 merc for FoH.

Redemption for the switch is absolutely insane, even as a 1 point wonder with +skills.

Also

Conviction is a huge trap for FoH.

Morgormir wrote: 2 months ago

There are way better weapons than Insight for A2 merc for FoH.

Redemption for the switch is absolutely insane, even as a 1 point wonder with +skills.

Also

Conviction is a huge trap for FoH.

You would have to use some talent points to get

Redemption, all those points can be used for

Smite + fana, for a FoH / smiter pala that can do ubers and farm, 1 talent point is all you need to use to get

Salvation for a huge boost in all res, and Insight on act 2 merc is nice? i mean i dont hope you want merc to do the killing just stay alive right ? 'switch' do you mean weapon swap ? that would be fine if its in a cta, but i prefer not to use weapon swap except for when i buff with cta.

You would have to use some talent points to get

Redemption, all those points can be used for

Smite + fana, for a FoH / smiter pala that can do ubers and farm, 1 talent point is all you need to use to get

Salvation for a huge boost in all res, and Insight on act 2 merc is nice? i mean i dont hope you want merc to do the killing just stay alive right ? 'switch' do you mean weapon swap ? that would be fine if its in a cta, but i prefer not to use weapon swap except for when i buff with cta.

To be honest I take a fundamentally different approach to FoH. I think the lightning aspect is terrible, and so you can save a lot of points between not maxing

Holy Shock and points into

Conviction. The holy

Bolts from FoH are more than plenty, so after maxing FoH and

Holy Bolt you still have 60+ points (which usually go into maxing

Fanaticism, then

Holy Shield, then

Smite while getting some QoL auras like

Vigor,

Redemption and

Cleansing. Then you just use your merc+

Fanaticism and

Smite to clear out what animals you do run into ( or

Teleport away ).
So

Redemption is a nice 1 point tie in that frees up your merc's weapon slot for something like

Eth Reaper's Toll (this season I actually found an

Eth

Tomb Reaver with 3os for

Amn and I actually think it might be better than Reaper's), and I personally think that it's way better than also trying to max lightning synergy.

I like

Salvation until your gear is good enough to not need it. Personally I play with Fana on to help

Holy Freeze A2 merc while casting FoH, and then just hotkey swap to

Redemption as needed. It really helps for survivability as well since you get a nice chunk of life as well.

Enigma +2,

Shako +2, Mara +2, Arach +1, Sojx2 +2, HoZ+2, Hoto+3,+3 Torch, +1Anni is +18 to skills/+19 after BO. A level 20

Redemption nets you 120hp/mana x corpse, which is huge when a FoH cast easily kills 20+ mobs. To each their own of course however.

Morgormir wrote: 2 months ago

To be honest I take a fundamentally different approach to FoH. I think the lightning aspect is terrible

Ill just use a health pot if i need life, with

Salvation and max block i survive easier and so does merc, and merc gives me all the mana i need,

Redemption is ok if that is what you want, but you dont really need it as a pala.

if you see my previous comments on it, we are on same page with

Holy Shock /

Conviction, but

Salvation also gives merc all res (helps him survive easier), i just use 1 point in

Salvation and all the extra points in

Holy Shield +

Smite + fana and 0 / none toward

Redemption

if you want to run fast when farming just use

Charge,

Vigor is only qol in town since you can run really really fast with

Charge when farming.

I too agree with

Conviction not being the best option for FOH, however it does have some benefits:

1) Negates other

Conviction auras if you have enough skill level.

2) Boosts any elemental damage of your party — FOH included... not amazing, but it does add up.

3) Helps your merc hit more frequently since

Conviction aslo reduces defence.

It's a reasonable choice, I think. With that said, I don't use it in my FOH build because I prefer to keep a defensive aura on, such as

Redemption, Cleasing or

Salvation.

Illusions wrote: 2 months ago

Semirotta wrote: 2 months ago

You dont use

Redemption for hp in most cases. Its for mana.

If you are using an Act2 merc with Insight, you never need mana with FoH.

That is absolutely correct. But considering how weak and easily killed merc is, personally I didnt use merc as I spent more money reviving him than making money. Imo without proper merc gear to keep merc alive or having the ability to

Teleport to bring it to safety: having

Redemption aura is very helpful. You kill enemies in Chaos santuary so quick, theres always bodies laying around for mana if need some.
Sure after Insight that aura is kind of pointless and I used that after Insight merc being able to survive only to heal myself as I didnt bother using full reijus (its all I stack up)

Morgormir wrote: 2 months ago

There are way better weapons than Insight for A2 merc for FoH.

Redemption for the switch is absolutely insane, even as a 1 point wonder with +skills.

Also

Conviction is a huge trap for FoH.

I'm currently finding that out. I went all in on

Holy Shock and

Conviction, and the lightning damage just isn't that great. Animal types, and especially lightning immunes are too slow to kill.

Conviction/

Holy Shock may be good for clearing the game, but now that I'm farming CS after

Baal, Fist of Heaven is just to release 100

Holy Bolt and wipe the screen. I'm farming for a Token so I can buff

Fanaticism and

Smite instead. Then I just need a decent merc weapon to replace Insight.

RackAnewShoe wrote: 2 months ago

I'm currently finding that out. I went all in on

Holy Shock and

Conviction, and the lightning damage just isn't that great. Animal types, and especially lightning immunes are too slow to kill.

Conviction/

Holy Shock may be good for clearing the game, but now that I'm farming CS after

Baal, Fist of Heaven is just to release 100

Holy Bolt and wipe the screen. I'm farming for a Token so I can buff

Fanaticism and

Smite instead. Then I just need a decent merc weapon to replace Insight.

It's a huge trap unfortunately that I found out while playtesting around in offline. A lot of guides on the build are misleading imo. With a proper 30+ FoH the Holy

Bolts will clear screens without all the extra (wasted) points in

Conviction and

Holy Shock.

Smite or

Zeal is the way to go, though

Smite is better imo as it's more flexible/easier to do ubers with. FOH with shit gear is better than Hammers even imo, as long as you farm CS/Pits. Oh, and I highly, highly recommend

Redemption if you are low level/level 60-75ish and in hell. Swap it out with

Salvation as needed if your gear is particularly bad.

If you want I can drop you some gear to help you along, ladder or non-ladder, just DM me.

Morgormir wrote: 2 months ago

RackAnewShoe wrote: 2 months ago

I'm currently finding that out. I went all in on

Holy Shock and

Conviction, and the lightning damage just isn't that great. Animal types, and especially lightning immunes are too slow to kill.

Conviction/

Holy Shock may be good for clearing the game, but now that I'm farming CS after

Baal, Fist of Heaven is just to release 100

Holy Bolt and wipe the screen. I'm farming for a Token so I can buff

Fanaticism and

Smite instead. Then I just need a decent merc weapon to replace Insight.

It's a huge trap unfortunately that I found out while playtesting around in offline. A lot of guides on the build are misleading imo. With a proper 30+ FoH the Holy

Bolts will clear screens without all the extra (wasted) points in

Conviction and

Holy Shock.

Smite or

Zeal is the way to go, though

Smite is better imo as it's more flexible/easier to do ubers with. FOH with shit gear is better than Hammers even imo, as long as you farm CS/Pits. Oh, and I highly, highly recommend

Redemption if you are low level/level 60-75ish and in hell. Swap it out with

Salvation as needed if your gear is particularly bad.

If you want I can drop you some gear to help you along, ladder or non-ladder, just DM me.

I appreciate the offer. Someone else had recently dropped a bunch of BiS gear for me, so I'd feel bad taking more. Thanks anyway. I agree on

Redemption. It's almost too good, even with only one point.

No worries, if you change your mind I've got a bunch of stuff rotting in my stash.

I'll die on the hill that

Redemption is the best 1pt aura skill in its tree, if not among all the auras, for general play/mana-life management/survivability. The skill is absolutely insane when paired with crowd-clearing skills.

Morgormir wrote: 2 months ago

I'll die on the hill that

Redemption is the best 1pt aura skill in its tree

Salvation is a 1 point talent,

Redemption need pre requisite talents so combined it takes more than 1 point, but yea its nice to have ofcourse, but its not really needed.

Making a char with a build only able to farm CS is... strange.

Tornado_OLO wrote: 2 months ago

Making a char with a build only able to farm CS is... strange.

FoH farms keys relatively well. It might be tricky with

Key of Destruction, but both

Key of Terror and

Key of Hate are quite easy with FoH.

I also found it quite good with

Baal. And with

Smite he can do Andy and Meph runs, too.

Tornado_OLO wrote: 2 months ago

Making a char with a build only able to farm CS is... strange.

Well, it's not the only area it excels at. There are other areas with exclusively demons & undead - like The Pit, Forgotten Tower, and

Arcane Sanctuary.

Tornado_OLO wrote: 2 months ago

Making a char with a build only able to farm CS is... strange.

He can do ubers too if going for FoH +

Smite just need a few items to swap for smiting, and alot of monsters are demon + undeads, just not beasts and bugs

Tornado_OLO wrote: 2 months ago

Making a char with a build only able to farm CS is... strange.

ikr? but to begin a season with foh paladin is great. You can farm CS so darn quick, there is no match. Its just nuts how good it is for it and I might the next time I play again; start paladin AGAIN. I never played these before but Ive had a decent teacher so to say what to do and get and this has been extra helpful to get me into this character. (Wow that sounds wrong after reading it again, did not mean that)

Tornado_OLO wrote: 2 months ago

Making a char with a build only able to farm CS is... strange.

I don't think it's strange. I like to check which TZ is on and pick my favorite char for that TZ. But on the other hand, I'm a strange guy. Aren't we all? After 25 years we are still finding new ways to enjoy this game.

It'a not so much that I made an FOH specifically for farming CS. I actually had just got D2R and wanted to do something different by making a

Holy Bolt build, but that just turns into a FOH. After clearing the game, FOH wipes CS extremely fast (and I really dislike Hammerdin) so I kept it for Chaos,

Baal runs,

Arcane Sanctuary, 1pt

Smite/

Fanaticism for clearing Dclone; and occasionally jumping into someone else's normal game. I have a Lightning/CL sorc for other areas until I get all my other builds up to level and geared.

Offline, I transferred all of my 20 years worth of characters into D2R just for messing around.

You can also do Ubers easily.

I usually do (from beginning of ladder to end/in increasing difficulty)

• Pits
  CS
  Ubers (Risky)
  Trav/WSK
  Ubers(Easy)
  Everything else (not cows though)

Note that you can farm everything to do ubers from Diablo; imo the only necessary gear for early ubers is Dracs and

Goblin Toe/Gore's/Gface, as well as res obviously. Treachery, PDiamond 4os Shield are really easy to get (though an

Um-d HoZ is criminally under-utilized and usually really cheap as a consequence).