FoHdin ridiculousness

In preparation for ladder I have leveled various builds in singleplayer to learn what works and what not. One of them is a Fist of the Heavens Paladin.

That it's good for farming Chaos Sanctuary is common knowledge, but the extent and cheapness surprised me.

The reason for this is that FoH doesn't need an aura. Conviction is pretty much pointless because the damage comes from the holy Bolts and single targets are quickly dealt with with Holy Bolt itself.
At level 86 after maxing Holy Bolt and Fist of the Heavens with the prerequisite for a one point wonder Holy Shield and Salvation you have 48 skill points remaining.
Yeah you could add Smite to the mix but that's hardly needed. Since it makes the most sense to run Salvation all the time it's possible to max out Resist Lightning, Resist Fire with a few points in Resist Cold for good measure.
And since Salvation takes care of resistances it's easy to stack magic find to about 200% with crap gear.
You are fine with using dual Spirit and a Lore Helm basically... this build can wear a 4os Topaz armor and magic mf gloves, jewelry and Boots with it and have max res all the while farming CS more efficient than any other char with proper gear...

PS: With Salvation you can also make your Insight merc more or less immune to casters. Guardian Angel and Andariel's Visage and it has 90% elemental and 95% poison res.

There's a reason my ladder farmer will be a pally and not a sorc.
Well, two reasons. FoH is one of them.

Given, they're utterly horrid at things like cows and wherever else you run into stuff that isn't undead/demons..but luckily, that's quite easily avoided and far from necessary.

This is what I am also going out of the gate running with my team. Certainly can be in the A-S tier list for sure. Ideal hybrid early on is FoH + Hammers to deal with Animal challenges.

Or as called out can go the T/V Templar setup with Smite as well, but that is of course single target not AoE CC.

Conviction does help for Super Uniques and Bosses of course so you don't want to avoid completely.

Eventually my goal is hybrid FoH + Auradin - ideally with an A3 Fire Dragon allowing me to go full throttle FoH plus -150 res Conviction to benefit Holy Fire etc.

All gear dependent early on likely with a few respecs to fine-tune and optimize.

I feel like I still need to make a sorc first just for the fact that Teleport is a thing. But hmm... what about farming the Pit and Chaos with a non-teleporting FoHer? Maybe that would be a viable start also.

Teleport isn't an issue once you get a staff on switch.

Chaos > Pits for FoH, imho.

Plus you get Charge which holds you over quite well until you get Teleport.

Sure, nowhere near the same thing but still miles ahead of just walking.

I respec'd my hammerdin to test FOH. Loved it in Chaos. I think you might be under estimating Conviction tho. They melt with the -res.

There are plenty of farming areas for the FoH'er - Chaos being the primary melting pot. Then you still have The Pit, Mos/ Crypt, Arcanne, Nihlathak, Pindle, Trav, Baal Waves etc.

A3 is going to be the up and down wild card with the new 85 areas - Until you get a possible Auradin A3 Wolve Merc, it makes Arachnid Lair moot, Swampy and others are not elite areas. But per the above there is plenty to do.