DiabloFans

Stat and skill choices

I’d suggest your stats looking something like this:

Strength – enough for your gear if you already have it, but if you’re playing from scratch, it never hurts getting some more to give you a higher flexibility when choosing gear. For example, imagine you find an armor better than your current one, but because you’re only getting strength for your ideal gear, you can’t wear it. My paladin, for example, has around 165 base strength, but you probably can get by with less

Dexterity – you should be getting enough dexterity to reach a decent block rating with holy shield on, but I don’t suggest getting much extra dexterity, since you’ll eventually find a nice shield with good block. My paladin has around 125 base dexterity, I’d say that’s enough

Vitality – all your remaining points go there, you need as much life as you can get!

Energy – I’d suggest using no points in energy, since paladins only get 1.5 mana per energy point, and you’ll have enough mana with no points here. If you really feel your mana is too low, you can get some points here, but you might regret it later when you upgrade your gear

Now for skills, the ones I suggest are:

Blessed Hammer – the skill that gives the build its name, and your main (and probably only) attack. It has been enhanced in this patch, deals full magical damage and ignores the magic resistance from Undead and Demon monsters, which means it’ll hurt nearly every monster you find. 20 points here is a must

Concentration – this aura is the only one that enhances the damage from Blessed Hammer, another skill to max. 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. 20 points here too

Blessed Aim – this is the second synergy for Blessed Hammer. I suggest getting 20 points in it for a pure Hammerdin, but if you wish to get a secondary attack, you can get by with less. 1-20 points

Holy Shield – this skill will really help you to get your block to 75%, and will give you a nice amount of defense. Getting it to around level 10 after +skill items is enough, but you can max it if you have enough spare points. 1-20 points

Charge – if you want a support skill, this one is your best bet. It deals a ton of damage in 1 hit, isn’t affected by IAS so using Concentration isn’t a problem, and has a common synergy with Blessed Hammer (Vigor), so you only need a decent weapon on switch to use it effectively. The problem is Charge is currently very buggy in the beta, that’s why I decided not to spend points in it, but it should be fixed in the final release. 1-20 points

Redemption – 1 point in this skill is a must, it’s extremely useful for a Hammerdin, and will allow you to keep up with the mana costs easily once you get it. 1 point

Meditation – This aura, as Redemption, is also very handy to recover your mana, specially in hard fights (such as the Ancients), and more party friendly. 1 point

Salvation – It can come handy if you’re short of resistances, but I don’t think they’re hard to get elsewhere for a paladin, so it’s more of a party aura. I did alright with no points in it, but you can choose to get 1 here. 0-1 points

Conversion –A few points here can get you some crowd control, and you’ll probably have an easier time surviving, specially in hardcore. Keep in mind you don’t need to score a successful hit to convert the monster, so you don’t need AR to use it. If you decide to go with conversion, 5 points here should be enough. 0-5 points

Equipment choices

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. This said, I’ll 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

Helm – Good choices here early on would be helms with +skills and/or mana, for example Tarnhelm, Lore (OrtSol), Peasant Crown, or a rare circlet. Your top choice here probably remains the Harlequin Crest, for obvious reasons, and a few of the new uniques (such as the circlets or the Crown of the Ages). The attract on the Delirium runeword (LemIstIo), coupled with the +2 skills and vitality, also make for a good helm. Since my paladin is more or less dedicated to mf now, I’m using a 3 perfect topaz crown

Amulet – Anything with +skills here will do, your ultimate goal would be a +2 paladin amulet with fast cast. Some of the unique amulets are also pretty nice, specially Mara’s and the Seraph Hymn. If you come across an amulet with teleport charges, it comes very handy for mf runs

Armor – You should really get some armor with fast cast and/or +skills, and TalEth is a great starting armor. For top end choices, the easier to find is the Vipermagi or the Que-Hegan’s, but the best armor for this build is probably the Enigma runeword (JahIthBer)

Weapon – There are quite a few very nice choices, I started with a Sander’s wand (an Spectral Shard would also be nice), and had enough luck to find a Wizardspike later. The Suicide Branch would also be nice, if you manage to find one. Once again, a runeword might look as one of the best (if not the best) option, the Heart of the Oak (KoVexPulThul) in a Flail, since it won’t work in scepters, but the runes are hard to come by

Shield – Rare shields can be quite good, specially paladin ones, resistances and block should be your main concern here. The best shield around is still the Herald of Zakarum for Hammerdins, but other nice shields would be the Sanctuary (KoKoMal) runeword, Blackoak, Stormshield or even the unique Aegis (Medusa’s Gaze) if you can find one

Rings – You can get pretty nice rare rings, with mana, fast cast, resistances, stats... From the unique ones, those that look more useful would be the Stone of Jordan, the Bul-Kathos Wedding Band, and the Ravenfrost

Belt – Few choices here, I would try to craft a caster belt early on, and hold to it until you find a good unique or set one, such as Trang’s Belt, Tal’s Belt, Thundergod’s Vigor, Gloom’s Trap, Nightsmoke, Arachnid Mesh or Verdugo’s Hearty Cord

Gloves – One of the best options would be getting some rare gloves, good mods to have on them would be mana, resistances, strength or dexterity. From the unique ones, Magefist are good for the fast cast, Chanceguards are nice (more mf never hurts), Frostburns can help if you’re low on mana, and Hellmouths are useful against fire damage. There are some pretty nice set gloves too, such as Trang Oul’s gloves, or Immortal King’s gloves

Boots – Rares are again nice choices, and from the unique and set ones the ones worth mentioning are Waterwalks, Silkweaves, Marrowwalk, Aldur’s and Sander’s boots

Charms – Well, charms are a good place to get things lacking from your gear, such as fast hit recovery, mana, life or resistances. Ideal ones would be +1 combat paladin charms, to increase your damage

Quote from "Krow" »

I

I also went to the mountains for a week, and hiked over 75 miles in 5 or 6 days. I actually lost 6 pounds in that week, and I was eating fast food stuff, lol!

Quote from "InvincibleEMP" »

any idea why the magic is a line while everything else is charted on a curve?

Quote from name="-Mephisto"s Lament-" »

Perfectly, actually. It's just funny how this country has grown used to be fucked in the ass everytime it tries to get on its feet. I'm Lebanese, yeah, but I hate Hezbollah. Everytime we get close to being a more modern and civilized nation, they screw it up for us. Lebanon was the single most important Arab country, thriving and thriving. But the existence of Zionism is a threat to it all, while I'm against Hezbollah, I'm against Israel and zionism (no, I don't hate Jews, just zionists, so don't put words in my mouth). What's even more ridiculous is us fighting amongst each other, each sect being at the other's throat, which is bringing us down even more. That's why I stopped watching the news, becase it's just disgusting now. Another thing is foreign intervention, namely America, Syria, and Iran. We can live without those, actually, it's fucking us over working with them. Where do you think the bombings that happen here are from? (over 23 btw).. Al Quaeda? If I want to go far into this topic, I'd explain to you how Al Quaeda is more American than Uncle Sam. It's all a plan. Zionists want to take over a lot of countries, it's in their holy book, you should know that. The Americans are basically controlled by Zionists, you should know that. There's a lmore going on that most of the Americans don't know, because they're brain washed by the media. You can control people in many ways, by making them scared, putting forth false information so that the government can do what it pleases (i.e Iraq), and those are all implemented in America, where everyone is really oblivious to what's going on, thinking they're living the American dream. All this reflects on us. Nobody wants to see Lebanon become a thriving, successful, and powerful nation. Why? Because we're the biggest threat to Israel's existance, and nobody wants anybody to threaten Israel, which makes America and its affiliates the biggest hypocrites in the world. "Oh, you can't own own nukes, but we can, because we're so innocent..we just went in Iraq to play Chess. You guys are terrorists and shouldn't have them" oh for God's sake, who are they fooling? THis is a long paragraph, I know, but I'm telling you everything you should know. The entire world is fucked up, and every single fucked up thing reflects back on Lebanon, and even the Lebanese themselves aren't helping. The situation is so ass raped at this stage, I don't even know what's going to happen. Regardless, Lebanon is a beautiful country now with thriving tourism, thank God a lot of dust has settled, and we're going back on our feet....basically we're just waiting for more bombings or another war to fuck this up for us again. It's all so tiresome, if you think about it really.

Quote from "Umpa65" »

not only that, his attitude is just BAD, he doesnt deserve it because of his representation of his country.

Quote from "Umpa65" »

no, you saw it! that was the one!did u see him even turn his head n shit!?!?!? SO DAMN COCKY!

He doesnt even deserve to win with that attitude. Tyson deserves it, or Usains teamate Asafa Powell.

Of course he was going to win because those guys aren't nearly as fast as those top 3 guys but still, he shouldnt have been able to jog a 9.92.

For centuries people have struggled to break 10 seconds in the 100 meter and Usain just shruggs it out like it was nothing......

Quote from ".KILLING-HAZARD." »

phelpss!! yeaaa boyyyy!!! hes a champ FO SHO!!!

Quote from "J/-\YK/-\Y" »

I own a Wii and a 360. I mainly play the 360 on Halo 3 and CoD4 online. My sister is borrowing my Wii atm but I'd play SSBB every once in a while.

There are soooo many games out and coming out for the 360 that I want... Too poor to get any of them though.. :'(

Quote from name="Elfen Lied" »

I'm not entirely sure Murderface's post was mocking your's


I just have lots of posts because of post almost ever day, even if it is only a few times, 5 or 6. I have just been here a long time.

Quote from "applesoffury" »

its official everyone...Michael Phelps is the worlds most decorated Olympian, and arguably the greatest, with wins in the 200 butterfly and 4x200 relay. he has 11 golds overall and 13 overall medals, 2 bronze in 2004 athens.

current medal count:
gold, silver, bronze, total

1. China 14, 3, 5, 22
2. United States 10, 8, 9, 27
3. South Korea 5, 6, 1, 12

Quote from "Murderface" »

And in Elfen's case its both, which astounds me.

Quote from "Bambithegreat" »

you are aware were right next to Yosemite and the giant forest lol