02-11-2004, 08:34 PM
I have been doing pretty well with a zeal / conviction paladin, although he is the result of finding a lot of decent loot with other characters.
Low level zeal (I think I have around two real points invested) with maxed sacrifice has enough physical damage to provide some life leach when applicable, but I don't rely on leach. I went with a ~120% resist all paladin shield (4 diamonds + automod) which freed up inventory space for some of the nice high level elemental damage charms I had kicking around. I've thrown gore riders into the mix for a little crushing blow & open wounds
Conviction at or slightly below the -150% lower resists cap pretty much negates the need for AR. I'm sure that when I get ahead on the mlevel/clevel curve, I'll be hitting 95% of the time despite having a sub 2k AR (which would normally be abysmall). Exploiting this one-aura-wonder means I'm not switching auras during combat - no matter what.
I'm putting points into the resist element auras to slevel10 to get the passive +5% max resists and for synergy with a low-level vengance, which seems to work a little better against stone skins where crushing blow is totally out of the picture. Regular phys immunes soften up well enough when the decrepify from reaper's toll on my HF merc goes off. If I wasn't sticking with guardian angel for my armor, I would consider taking the resist auras even further.
There is room for a little flexibility with this concept, due to only needing ~22 skill points for primary attack + maxed synergy and another 15-20 in conviction. Those modest goals can be accomplished well before reaching hell difficulty, leaving skill levels for other minor variations. Pump vigor for a high level shopper, be a mini-medic with a little prayer enhanced meditation/salvation between fights, boost max resists with the passives from resistsance auras, or go crazy with the holy shield / defiance synergy for top notch defense #s - all reasonable choices, and in moderation one can do a little "all of the above".
My weapon options are a mid-stat death cleaver, which cost me a couple upper end hellforge runes, and all the parts for a crescent moon phase blade, as yet unassembled. Death Cleaver with a little extra deadly strike from gore riders functions like an upgraded headstriker (i.e. double physical damage almost all the time), except it is faster and has better range.
Partying with sorceresses or elemental druids is slightly annoying. While conviction makes an inventory full of elemental damage charms viable, it makes a true elemental skilled character uber - making my paladin's kill speed feel wimpy in comparison. Running into a dedicated enchantress is rare, but it is a godsend when it happens. :)
Consider an optimal damage scenario, barring an enchantress, and not depending on weapon based elemental damage. Say you have 28 perfect shocking small charms of storms (1-99 lightning damage each, 28-2772 total, 1400 average) and hit a monster with 50 or less lightning resists (-100 lightning resists after conviction) with a 5 frame zeal using a perfect Death Cleaver with "Lo" and Gore Riders (5 attacks per second, 180 avg dmg, 101% deadly strike) and your character has 150 strength (just for an easy number). You're doing 2800 average lightning damage per hit along with 1764 average physical damage per hit (180 * (1+ 2.4 sacrifice + 1.5 strength) * 2 DS), for a total of 22.8k mixed damage per second with a 95% chance to hit anything below your clevel. The maximum possible on a single hit would be 8180 combined damage. That's ignoring extras like decrepify/amp and crushing blow. That's not my setup, and it makes more sense to mix fire/coldghtning charms, but you can see the potential.
If you have the gear, especially lots of good elemental damage charms (dual mod small/large charms with the slevel 65-69 required elemental mods as their prefix - the slevel 89-91 prefixes on small charms are insanely rare but great if you can find them), then give it a shot. I don't do PVP myself, but I would imagine this sort of build may work well against other players in matches played in hell difficulty, but in normal difficulty conviction won't be able to crack other player's resistances as well as you'd like. You also may need to demon limb yourself some AR against players with insanely high defense builds (a 40k def player will still have 3.2k def after conviction is done with them).
Low level zeal (I think I have around two real points invested) with maxed sacrifice has enough physical damage to provide some life leach when applicable, but I don't rely on leach. I went with a ~120% resist all paladin shield (4 diamonds + automod) which freed up inventory space for some of the nice high level elemental damage charms I had kicking around. I've thrown gore riders into the mix for a little crushing blow & open wounds
Conviction at or slightly below the -150% lower resists cap pretty much negates the need for AR. I'm sure that when I get ahead on the mlevel/clevel curve, I'll be hitting 95% of the time despite having a sub 2k AR (which would normally be abysmall). Exploiting this one-aura-wonder means I'm not switching auras during combat - no matter what.
I'm putting points into the resist element auras to slevel10 to get the passive +5% max resists and for synergy with a low-level vengance, which seems to work a little better against stone skins where crushing blow is totally out of the picture. Regular phys immunes soften up well enough when the decrepify from reaper's toll on my HF merc goes off. If I wasn't sticking with guardian angel for my armor, I would consider taking the resist auras even further.
There is room for a little flexibility with this concept, due to only needing ~22 skill points for primary attack + maxed synergy and another 15-20 in conviction. Those modest goals can be accomplished well before reaching hell difficulty, leaving skill levels for other minor variations. Pump vigor for a high level shopper, be a mini-medic with a little prayer enhanced meditation/salvation between fights, boost max resists with the passives from resistsance auras, or go crazy with the holy shield / defiance synergy for top notch defense #s - all reasonable choices, and in moderation one can do a little "all of the above".
My weapon options are a mid-stat death cleaver, which cost me a couple upper end hellforge runes, and all the parts for a crescent moon phase blade, as yet unassembled. Death Cleaver with a little extra deadly strike from gore riders functions like an upgraded headstriker (i.e. double physical damage almost all the time), except it is faster and has better range.
Partying with sorceresses or elemental druids is slightly annoying. While conviction makes an inventory full of elemental damage charms viable, it makes a true elemental skilled character uber - making my paladin's kill speed feel wimpy in comparison. Running into a dedicated enchantress is rare, but it is a godsend when it happens. :)
Consider an optimal damage scenario, barring an enchantress, and not depending on weapon based elemental damage. Say you have 28 perfect shocking small charms of storms (1-99 lightning damage each, 28-2772 total, 1400 average) and hit a monster with 50 or less lightning resists (-100 lightning resists after conviction) with a 5 frame zeal using a perfect Death Cleaver with "Lo" and Gore Riders (5 attacks per second, 180 avg dmg, 101% deadly strike) and your character has 150 strength (just for an easy number). You're doing 2800 average lightning damage per hit along with 1764 average physical damage per hit (180 * (1+ 2.4 sacrifice + 1.5 strength) * 2 DS), for a total of 22.8k mixed damage per second with a 95% chance to hit anything below your clevel. The maximum possible on a single hit would be 8180 combined damage. That's ignoring extras like decrepify/amp and crushing blow. That's not my setup, and it makes more sense to mix fire/coldghtning charms, but you can see the potential.
If you have the gear, especially lots of good elemental damage charms (dual mod small/large charms with the slevel 65-69 required elemental mods as their prefix - the slevel 89-91 prefixes on small charms are insanely rare but great if you can find them), then give it a shot. I don't do PVP myself, but I would imagine this sort of build may work well against other players in matches played in hell difficulty, but in normal difficulty conviction won't be able to crack other player's resistances as well as you'd like. You also may need to demon limb yourself some AR against players with insanely high defense builds (a 40k def player will still have 3.2k def after conviction is done with them).