Youll probably have a hard time using Blessed Hammer effectively until level 30 (when youll probably be in act 4, or late act 3), when you get Redemption, so until then youll still have to rely on your melee weapon, and save Blessed Hammer for specially hard enemies, such as the end act bosses, or times when you get surrounded for example. With the hardest monsters already covered, its time for the act bosses. Id like to thank everyone in the paladin forum for asking me to write again until I did it, its because of them youre reading this one now. Strength enough for your gear if you already have it, but if youre playing from scratch, it never hurts getting some more to give you a higher flexibility when choosing gear. Its rather easy, you can cube them up to sol. A mercenary is useful here, specially a Holy Freeze one, though hell probably die sooner than youd like to. He has massive hitpoints, specially in Hell, and his attacks are quite annoying. This said, Ill just give a brief rundown of the useful items, and suggest a few top items that I thought would be useful looking at the new items, Good choices here early on would be helms with +skills and/or mana, for example Tarnhelm, Lore (OrtSol), Peasant Crown, or a rare circlet.

Good advice but kinda hard to get that in normal.

The skills and strategy advice are all current as of v1.12. Try to go always for the ranged attackers first, since they are the most dangerous ones usually. I played in normal with the /players 5 option, as it is a good balance between experience, drops and the time it takes to kill the monsters in my opinion. Try to aim to make a Lore headgear Ort + Sol runeword. Once again, I cant stress enough the importance of resistances, specially in Hell. The problem is Charge is currently very buggy in the beta, thats why I decided not to spend points in it, but it should be fixed in the final release. Why tho? A monster in chaos sanctuary normal difficulty has 150+ health. A nice block rate is nice to have, but resistances are more important! You realize Holy Fire boots your single target damage right? It has been enhanced in this patch, deals full magical damage and ignores the magic resistance from Undead and Demon monsters, which means itll hurt nearly every monster you find. This is completely wrong in Normal. Now that the equipment and skill choices are more or less clear, lets get to the important thing, shall we? Why are you putting points in to anything other than Holy Fire and Resist Fire, lol? Its borderline overpowered if you put it on before level 20. You can still hit enemies if you encounter them to the right of your character, once at a time, but youre out of luck if they are to the left. If you decide to go with conversion, 5 points here should be enough. Squishy IS tanky in D2. They all go hammerdin the second they can, for good reason. Diablo can be hard, but I suggest tanking him too if youve got nice resistances and block, since his pink lightning attack barely hurts when youre very close, and you only have to worry about his ground fire attack. Id suggest getting used to the spiral pattern of the hammers, theyre always released from the same spot, more or less at the 9:30-10:00 mark. Try to keep as close to him as possible, so he doesnt use his mana draining attack, but considering he can teleport and has the nasty habit of releasing his cold wave to get you back, youll probably be seeing it a lot still. Vitality all your remaining points go there, you need as much life as you can get! It destroys everything until Nightmare Act IV where you hit Demons who have innate fire res. His charge can be dangerous, so you should dodge his initial one, get yourself to a good position to hit him with hammers, and just tank him (if you cant, running around the run releasing hammers from time to time will eventually have the same effect). 0-5 points, Keep in mind you need your gear to have some fast cast rate, +skills, and a decent amount of mana so you can go by with no points in energy, and resistances are extremely necessary in this patch, so you should always try to find a setup that provides you with these things. You are definitely allowed to left click on bosses. Just put more points in to Holy Fire and Resist Fire to boost both your AoE and single target damage. You shouldnt have many problems in normal, except for some ranged attackers, and a few of the bosses. To go through this place, I suggest relying in your mercenary to kill the enemies out of your hammers reach, or using your secondary attack if it deals enough damage. Get a +3 Holy Fire sceptor from Act 1 and run to Nightmare Act 4, then respec to Hammerdin. 1 point, Salvation It can come handy if youre short of resistances, but I dont think theyre hard to get elsewhere for a paladin, so its more of a party aura. 20-22 damage a tick is nothing. Another tactic that works nicely against some ranged attackers (mainly Black Souls), and against melee attackers, is making a hammer field and then retreating, forcing them to go after you and probably dying when they go through the hammers. Are you just standing around waiting for them to die? I suggest saving your points, spending only in prerequisites of Holy Shield, Blessed Hammer and Concentration, until level 18, and getting points in both at the same time while you can from there. Holy fires aoe damage does almost nothing. Nah just run to objectives without paying attention to anything and everything dies automatically. Just for the record, I finished Hell at level 81, and Ive been running Baal for items since then, my paladin is level 87 right now and has already found a few elite uniques with around 150% magic find in my gear.

But yeah personally I always go the route of double spirit(or ancients pledge if short on runes)/stealth/lore and just hammer it up. At level 20 it does a whopping 20-22 aoe damage. The biggest challenge youll find in the whole game are probably the ancients, specially in Hell. Special thanks go to Nacaa, Mack, Any1, Wurmer, Baranor, Zarkano, Alainpp66, Code46 and all the good people from the ETF (Frigya, Xora, Mort, Los, Fercil, Ben, BB, Az, DOC and many others Im forgetting) and the Paladin forum that have endured my talk about 1.10, my paladin and my finds with amazing patience, keep it up! Or do you put a few points into zeal and do significantly more damage? Andariel shouldnt give you any problems if you have a few antidote potions in your belt, you can safely tank her and cast point blank hammers until she dies. A mercenary will prove very useful this early on, I decided to use a Defiance mercenary from act 2, until I could get a Holy Freeze one from Nightmare. Holy fires aoe damage does almost nothing. His cold attack can be dangerous if your cold resistance isnt very good, so try to have at least 50% cold resistance when engaging him. Keep in mind you dont need to score a successful hit to convert the monster, so you dont need AR to use it. You should be fine to be honest, just take your time and bring a lot of potions. No struggle at all until Nightmare Act IV. Ive found that what works best against them (and against Lister and his minions) is releasing a hammer field before they are out, and when they get close on you wait until they start to attack, and then walking two steps back and casting more hammers until they are too close again. You should try it. I seem to constantly have to pop health pots. I really wouldnt bother. Barbs and paladins can be quite tanky in certain builds. My resistances are only 28%. 20 points here, Vigor this ever useful aura is now a synergy for Blessed Hammer, and will increase the damage from it by quite a lot. If he feels like duplicating himself, youre in for major trouble, since your mana will be drained out very frequently. You can probably get to level 45 running Baal in Normal without much effort, and you should do so if youre having a very hard time in Nightmare, but it isnt really needed. I usually go Hammerdin the second I can make 2 spirits. As far as early gear If you can find someone to throw a Sig set at you that will help massively. Zeal is pretty strong however, Hammerdin outshadow it a lot but very good non the less. I mean if hes coming from other games, hes gonna feel squishy in d2. I managed to play through Nightmare with /players 5 on until I got to the ancients, and then I was forced to step down to /players 1, and keep it that way through Hell (its already hard enough that way!). 20 points here too, Blessed Aim this is the second synergy for Blessed Hammer. Thats a lot of farming normal countess for a sol rune. Mana potions are a must here, I got killed once when there was only one of them left because I ran out of mana. To maximize this damage per swing, you want to swing more often. This page was last edited on 14 August 2021, at 09:41. The same applies to Mephisto, once you are close to him he wont be able to use his cold ball, his most dangerous attack, and should be easy to kill with hammers. The tactic that works better here is the same one applicable to Lister or the Balrogs, casting hammers while they are far away, and keeping your distance with them (Vigor is quite useful for that). A good level to finish act 1 normal would be around level 18, after getting Concentration. You will absolutely obliterate everything in Normal by existing. Legit just check any speed runners pally runs. Ive played melee before as a first class, I know it can be tricky. That means more holy fire damage. Melee classes are difficult and very gear dependent to being with. Try to get some potions scattered all over the Summit before fighting them, because theyre very tough and can take quite a beating before dying. There are two states of being in D2. In Act 4. So fast weapons. Thats where the zeal comes in. Powered by Discourse, best viewed with JavaScript enabled, World of Warcraft Arena World Championship. Can I see what your diablo fight looked like? How do I get more suitable gear for my level? While they are all hard in one way or another, Blessed Hammer is generally very useful against them, remember to buy a few mana potions from vendors so you dont run out of mana while fighting them. Why do you need Zeal if your Aura hits everything on screen? Keep in mind that you can re-spawn them by casting a town portal if they spawn with dangerous mods (extra fast, aura enchanted, lightning enchanted, mana burn or cursed come to mind), and that it might take a few tries to kill them, so if youre close to level up it might be wise leveling before getting here. What I do suggest is running Baal in Nightmare until you get level 75 or 76, since his drops are pretty good (including some elite items) and the difficulty increase from Nightmare to Hell is very noticeable, youll need all the life and Blessed Hammer damage you can get. Holy fire does a minuscule amount of aoe damage and adds a sizable amount to every swing you make. It will target the same monster if there is only one in range. There are some pretty nice set gloves too, such as Trang Ouls gloves, or Immortal Kings gloves, Rares are again nice choices, and from the unique and set ones the ones worth mentioning are Waterwalks, Silkweaves, Marrowwalk, Aldurs and Sanders boots, Well, charms are a good place to get things lacking from your gear, such as fast hit recovery, mana, life or resistances.