Ned Your Expertise On Building An Uber Powerful Paladin Withing My Constraints

Slapshot wrote: 1 day ago

This is not a class I am familiar with (excepting my time in World Of Warcraft long ago). I had started to build a Hammerdin, because several guides rated is as tremendously powerful. But I soon realized that you just kept casting

Blessed Hammer spells at an adversary and thats simply boring. I'm fine using auras to benefit damage, but want the actual weapon I hold in my hand to do damage when I whack things with it. Is there a powerful paladin build suitable for heavy Hell level use, farming etc, that utilizes both physically induced damage via my weapon, and auras/spells etc. to combine for major damage?

One person in a

Baal run suggested a Dragondin with

Zeal, but again, I don't know Paladins and could really use real life advice from those of you who have high level Pallys and real life experience with them. Thanks for any help in steering me in the right direction when I respec fairly soon.

Yes there is! Do I have a build for you.. This is funny actually as I've been working on a guide video on exactly this thing, and the results are pretty staggering.

The answer: Fohdin.. Or Fist of Heavens Paladin. But not in the way people traditionally make them, and not in a super cryptic way either so let's just get that out the way.

But firstly, let's touch on why this? You wanted a caster that isn't a Hammerdin, and that leaves the best Pali caster - the Fohdin. You wanted Melee? The issue normally is - you need tons of points into

Zeal and

Fanaticism to make a dent usually and splitting your tree in half doesn't really get you anywhere and running one aura for two jobs is usually crippling. People said Dragondin? The issue is they usually wear Dragon armor which means walking, and also there are tons of fire immunes in the game, especially Chaos which is a major farming area, and then they stop doing damage. You're also married to Hand of Justice as your weapon - which I don't see as really strong at all besides being a delivery system for the fire damage.

The Fohdin traditionally has been nerfed upon arrival by guides and players all over the internet and we now see a build that cannot leave low players counts games, and cannot kill anything outside demons and undead. A very fine MF build tho, and one that clears extremely fast in his designated zones... I can now tell you this is no longer the case, and the solution is very simple and so so so so fun. P8 Solo? Done. High MF? Yep. Animal types? Can, and at decent enough speed. Cows? Yeah actually! lol

thanks again to all who have provided assistance with this, and invaluable information on how the variants actually play. No guides can do that. VERY much appreciated.

I'm surprised that Smiter wasn't mentioned yet. If you are looking for an Uber build to smack Ubers, this is the way to go. With maxed fana and Grief, he also smacks everything that is not physical immune with

Zeal. Obviously, smiters are not the fastest farmers but that's the nature of melee builds.

But if you get an Enigma and focus on bosses, MF and "clear" speed are ok. Smiters are enjoyable and running Ubers might be the challenge / play style you are looking for.

They are also effective already with low budget gear but can be optimized without limits.

Slapshot wrote: 23 hours ago

"

Larzuk tends to make shields into 4 sockets"......thats what I thought. Any recommendations on where to come up with 3 socket shields or helms for the Dream runewords? I now have the runes in hand and ready.

recipes/recipe-add-sockets-to-normal-shield-t3316.html

I'm not sure if this works for Paladin shields - might be worth a try though.

TheSoulReaver wrote: 1 day ago

Marlex wrote: 1 day ago

TheSoulReaver wrote: 1 day ago

https://maxroll.gg/d2/guides/fist-of-th ... ns-paladin
https://maxroll.gg/d2/guides/dream-paladin
https://maxroll.gg/d2/guides/zeal-paladin
These are 3 alternatives if you don't like hammerdin

I personally like the Dream Paladin build
Makes use of dmg with an aura

Holy Shock &

Zeal with your weapon

I would not recommend those guides. Especially the Dream Pala Guide has some debatable equipment choices and overall recommendations.

Down at the bottom of those guides there are alternatives to every gear piece
At the top is the most expensive & BiS

For my taste, there's missing information.
f.e. making an overall good concept out of those deliberate choices & cost-benefit-ratio of some deliberate choices (HFire/HShock hybrid might be working, but it limits your gear towards a pretty expensive setup - 7(!) HR instead of 2. Only 1 source of HFire (HoJ or Dragon) doesn't make a lot of sense though it's also not really made clear enough for an in-depth-guide)
f.e. having a higher

Conviction Aura Level cancels out the effects on you, if you encounter an enemy with own Aura - the recommendation of using

Salvation in those situations could be interesting only to save your party members from elemental damage (... though, what dies fast, can't harm you, right?).

There were some further aspects i stumbled upon.

Marlex wrote: 2 hours ago

Slapshot wrote: 23 hours ago

"

Larzuk tends to make shields into 4 sockets"......thats what I thought. Any recommendations on where to come up with 3 socket shields or helms for the Dream runewords? I now have the runes in hand and ready.

recipes/recipe-add-sockets-to-normal-shield-t3316.html

I'm not sure if this works for Paladin shields - might be worth a try though.

Yes, it does. But you only have a 1 in 6 chance to get 3 sockets. It also doesn't work on superior shields.
Finding good bases will take long. There is a reason those good bases sell for high prices.