The Martyr Reborn?

[Crill]

I'm currently toying with the idea of building a Martyr Paladin on the 1.10 softcore ladder. If you've done a build like this, please share your wisdom!

Looking at the new synergies for Sacrifice, I'm amazed at its potential damage output. With level 20 Sacrifice, Redemption and Fanaticism, a Martyr could be boosting his damage by 1181%, and attack rating by 293%. The AR bonus is small in comparison to other skills, but can be compensated for in a number of ways.

For his skills I would max Sacrifice and its two synergies Fanaticism and Redemption. I would want a point in Salvation and one in Conviction for use as utility auras. Leftover points could go into Holy Shield, Vengeance, and possibly Zeal or Sanctuary.

His weapon choices are many. My current favorite is the Ghostflame dagger which has ITD, but one of the new scepters or scourges would work just fine. Any weapon with -x% to enemy defense would compensate for his attack rating deficiency. Plenty of life leech would obviously be a necessity.

Can anyone give me practical advice about the viability of Sacrifice in 1.10? How about speed breakpoints using Sacrifice and Fanaticism together?

I really need to finish my Frenzy Barbarian before I start this guy, but the concept is so intriguing!

[WarBlade]

I've got one in Nightmare. He does okay and that's without Fanaticism backing him up. One thing to remember is now the damage outputs have become huge and so too have the reflected damage returns, so getting enough Life Steal to cover the deficit is a no-brainer

BUT

. . . remember Skeletons and Gloams are unleechable, as are certain static contraptions, so every bit of amped up damage your character does can get very nasty, very quickly.

Sacrifice is a great skill, even a powerful skill, but it should be used with more caution than ever now.

[Nightwind]

I have one doing rather well in normal, with very few points spent in the build. It was orriginaly ment for testing purposes, but after I picked up the normal unique scimitar... that much lifeleach, combined with the rings I already had... 25% leach is not to be simply set asside, i can test with anything...

[BlackLightning]

Greetings Crill,
Your idea for a martyr in 1.10 seems particularly interesting. I haven't tried out a martyr yet, but your idea seems to interest me more. Keep in mind you don't have to have a weapon with -x% to enemy defense, since you could try getting a weapon that "ignores target's defense". Hexfire is a good choice, and backs up your attack with fire damage.
Um....yeah

[WarBlade]

I can't stress enough how important Life Steal becomes, to the point where you may as well forget about Defence bypassing effects if it's a toss-up between that and Life Steal. I'm using a Bloodletter on my Martyr in Nightmare and to be honest wouldn't want to trade that for a Hexfire.

Life Stolen per Hit
8% Bloodletter (with Shael)
6% Set ring (Cathans?)
3% Blood Ring
10% Sigon's (2 items)
------
27%

. . . And even then this is the fastest drinking character I've ever made.

I'm not really all that worried by AR problems come to think of it. Every missed swing is simply more time for a Healing potion to do its work in between strikes. ;)

[Brista]

I wonder how this build will do in Hell

Leech is affected by 3 things all of which become more significant in Hell

1) The divisor for the difficulty. Hell is /3. So 27% would actually become 9%

2) The drain (H) stat of the monster. For instance Blood Moor zombies have 50 for this value. 100 = full leech and 0 = no leech

3) The physical resistance of the monster in Hell. Those zombies have 50% so that's another 50% reduction

So without taking rounding into account that 27% leech would actually leech 2.25% without taking rounding into account. Admittedly Zombies are one of the nastier monster types for this build, you'll have an easier time with Fallen and Quill Rats

On the brighter side the life loss is affected by damage reduction. Suppose you have damage reduced by 25 and Shaftstop. If you hit a monster for 1000 damage, causing life loss of 80, it would be reduced by 25 and then multiplied by (100%-30%) so you would take 38.5 (not sure how that is rounded) which of course would be offset by your leech

Safety crafts might be an option as well as the more obvious blood crafts

Light fast weapons would seem a better choice than a big heavy weapon with equivalent damage over time if you use damage reduction

[Crill]

I'm still away for break so I haven't had a chance to build this character yet. I plan on using a weapon such as Crescent Moon until I meet the level requirement for Ghostflame or something similar. I might go for an upraded Headstriker at some point if my AR is high enough.

Besides maxing the the 3 Sacrifice skills, I intend to put around 10 points each in Holy Shield and Sanctuary, to deal with the Undead problem y'all have mentioned. Its going to be fun!

I'll post my experiences with both this character and my dagger Frenzy-barb after I get both of them up to speed. I need to start a systematic magic-find program first, to help provide the items!

[Shevlock]

Seems to me the best choice of gloves here is Dracul's Grasp... Does Life Tap work unhindered by leech resist/penalties in Nightmare and Hell/etc?

[D2Player69]

3) The physical resistance of the monster in Hell. Those zombies have 50% so that's another 50% reduction

Brista- If a monster has physical resistance, that will reduce the amount of damage done to it. The life loss from Sacrifice is based on the amount of damage scored taken by the monster. For instance, if you use Sacrifice on a physical immune monster, you will score no damage (except ancillary effects and elemental damage, etc.) and so you will take no reflected damage from use of the skill.

I do this all the time with Sacrifice on physical immunes, to use the attack rating bonus to apply elemental damage from wands. I also sometimes don't see the mods when I swing and if I swing at a physical immune - no damage to me, either.

To correct your example then, the net leech amount on those Hell-level Zombies would be 4.5%. That would be 35 reflected damage (from 1000 scored) which could then be reduced by the player's physical resistance and damage reduction.

Note also that the assumption of 1000 damage scored is in the case that the player normally would have scored 2000 damage but that this was reduced 50% by the monster's physical resistance.

John H

[Architect]

Lion_Aleydro is a level 83, softcore Martyr/Zealot on USEest. Worked great until hell and then it got way to painful for my tastes to maintain.

I actually found a bloodrise (+3 Sacrifice) in normal with this character and used the rune upgrade formula to make it exceptional and keep the damage up in nightmare. I used this weapon until I traded for a 12%LL demon limb and thats when I started dying. Bloodrise wasn't providing the damage I needed (20 sacrifice, 20 fanat, 10 redemption) and once I got something that did hell level damage the combination of big life loss, hard hitting from Hell monsters, AND those with even partial "immunity" to life leech proved fatal more than I liked. I found myself turning off sacrifice and just going with a normal attack. Then I thought, well that's stupid, I'll just put one point in Zeal and use that as an alternative. Then I just started using that one point zeal because it was better. The tons of LL I had acquired worked great with Zeal too so I was almost never at risk and that's when I abandoned my martyr ways and became a zealot.

Lucky thing about Sacrifice is its 12% damage synergy with Zeal. If you make it to hell, try it out and don't like it, you can just start putting points into zeal and switch over to the classic zealot. It was still quite fun going through normal and NM as a Martyr. I did trade for a dracul's grasp and when I get a lifetap from it I can use Sacrifice. Combined with an Exile (15% chance for level 5 lifetap on striking) runeword (haha good luck just need Vex, Ohm, AND Ist) you could get lifetap on probably every encounter. Truth is, with the Baranar's Star I'm using now I don't really need to switch back to sacrifice to get the damage I need in any situation and I still only have 1 point in zeal.

Another point for those unsure but wanting to try: don't max redemption. I have 10 points in redemption and with the LL I have now I just don't need it much except in an extreme pinch.

[WarBlade]

Another point for those unsure but wanting to try:  don't max redemption.  I have 10 points in redemption and with the LL I have now I just don't need it much except in an extreme pinch.

Well with the whole Attack + Aura Paladin dynamic thrown into chaos with the synergy system, that one becomes arguable. There's no reason now to run Fanaticism, because a Paladin can get a sufficient boost just from Redemption.

In my case the damage return theme was continued around the rest of the Martyr's build and he runs Thorns quite happily and gets another damage boost from a Might merc, so Redemption becomes the preferred source of damage boost and Fanaticism is the skill that gets ignored. ;)

[Architect]

Well with the whole Attack + Aura Paladin dynamic thrown into chaos with the synergy system, that one becomes arguable. There's no reason now to run Fanaticism, because a Paladin can get a sufficient boost just from Redemption.

The way your comments are worded confused me (not hard to do) so I want to clarify for the others. If you are going to run a different aura than fanaticism then it is true the syngeries to sacrifice from redemption (+15%/level) are better than Fantacisim(+5%/level).

However, if you are going to run Fanaticism, then you should max it first before maxing Redemption. By my calcs, you get +473% damage to sacrifice when running maxed fanaticism (no +skills) along with the increased AR, speed, and improvements to party members. With redemption, the boost is +300% and you get life and mana from corpses for the paladin only and can run a different aura like thorns or conviction.