Undead slaying Paladin

[kathgar]

I'm thinking 20 sanctuary, 20 foh, 20 zeal 20 conviction... haven't tested it out but it seems like it would rape act2 sewers and such with some +damage% to undead weapons as well. Any thoughts?

[Animation]

Hi,

I think your problem is going to be dealing with other monsters in the game. You may want to consider picking up a combat skill for general use. You may even want to drop Conviction. I say this because I dont think Conviction increases the anti-undead portion of FoH. Now, you may enjoy increasing the Lightning Damage of FoH but let's be honest .... if you get surrounded by non-undead, you will be hard pressed to kill them all with FoH before you are dead, unless you add other things to your character. OH and you certainly don't need to max Zeal, unless you are planning to go for a low-dex build.

However, I appreciate a pure build, and I wish you luck if you go that route.

If it were me and I were shooting for level 90, say, I would go with 20 Sanctuary, 20 Conviction, 20 Vengeance, 20 Fist of Heaven, 4 Zeal, 1 Meditation, 4 Redemption, and 12 Points in pre-requisites. I would also personally go for base energy only because my goal would be to re-gain the FoH mana by using redemption or by leeching. There are all kinds of variations possible of course, and others would recommend different skills. You could avoid pumping Vengeance and and Conviction and dump those points onto Holy Shock (you'd have a problem with lightning immunes but otherwise it rocks) and Redemption. Max redemption is funny ... and fun.

Anyway, I'm rambling. Good luck on going pure anti-undead. It would be really cool!

Lewis

[kathgar]

First of all, thank you for the reply. Holy shock and Venegence were some of the other skills i was considering, but redemption? I thought the timer/number of corpses in a tick was capped low so it wouldn't be worthwhile, but I'll have to try it out. It seems like it would be almost as good as the Holybolt effect from the FoH. Yes, my previous setup would have some serious problems, but I was going for a theme setup and not really concerned about the other monsters. One of the reasons I was going for conviction was the -defense%, I figured that +zeal or venegences AR bonus i wouldn't need to pump dex much at all, but that would leed to low blocking so I don't know. I think that venegence will work out better because I could use it against the undead as well flashing conviction and using sanc/vengence, fohs every second. The only problem is I think the skeletons and such are lighting immune in hell, not sure though. Anyways, thank you for the input.

kathgar

[Occhidiangela]

Though that may leave non undead Lightning Immunes as a small problem.

Vengeance is a great back up attack, and 20 points in Zeal may not be necessary. 4-10, depending on how you otherwise boost your AR.

[Refrigerator]

I have a quick question that's been burning in my mind for a while, does FoH heal party members with it's holy bolt effect? Just didn't feel that this was worth creating a new topic for.

[D2Player69]

I have a quick question that's been burning in my mind for a while, does FoH heal party members with it's holy bolt effect?

The holy bolts from Fist of the Heavens will heal friendly units in your party. Regardless of the FoH level, one holy bolt is produced and targeted at each enemy unit in range (7.3 yards or so, if I remember my old testing). If a bolt hits an enemy undead unit, it does its damage and goes <poof>. If a bolt hits an enemy non-undead unit, it travels through it without effect - but it travels through it and continues in a straight line. If a bolt hits a friendly unit, it heals that unit and goes <poof>.

So, if you aim at the proper targets, and there are a decent number of enemies around, you can bathe your allies in a huge amount of holy bolts that will heal them in a big way. For instance, if there is one monster hanging back with a large group of non-undead monsters engaging your front-line allies, hitting the one monster in the back with a FoH blast will cause a wave of holy bolts to spread from that target through the enemy front line which will then be absorbed by and heal your own front-line troops.

[Refrigerator]

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[Brista]

The holy bolts from Fist of the Heavens will heal friendly units in your party.

The holy bolts from Fist of the Heavens will not heal friendly units in your party

They just do damage to undead (as well as prettifying the place up a bit)

On the subject of undead slaying the best idea is to get the biggest weapon you can and not worry about %damage to undead

2 examples:

100 avg dam weapon with +200% damage to undead

End damage = 100 * (100 starting point + 200 strength + 720 sanctuary + 575 charge + 200 weapon undead bonus)% = 1, 795

120 avg dam weapon with no +% damage to undead

End damage = 120 * (100 starting point + 200 strength + 720 sanctuary + 575 charge)% = 1, 914

Cruel is what you're really looking for here

Incidentally Sanctuary also has the property of setting physical resistance to 0%. While this is generally a good thing in Hell it does override Amp which is annoying

This all also means that the Vile Husk is just about the worst sword in the game for an undead slaying pally!!

[D2Player69]

The holy bolts from Fist of the Heavens will not heal friendly units in your party

Brista, I'm sorry, but this is demonstrably wrong. I can see my merc heal when the Holy Bolts from a Fist of the Heavens blast hits him.

Just to be sure, I took off all his life steal gear and waited for a group of critters to pound him a bit. Then I started hitting some well-placed monsters with FoH. Sure enough, when I got a Holy Bolt to hit him (not that hard), his life increased.

I have two Paladins with high-level FoH, one is a Meditation/FoH character that parties with arty Necros and Sorcies, the other is a Sanctuary/FoH undead slayer. I see the healing happen all the time with the mercs and often get surprised comments from other players when they are washed by a wave of Holy Bolts and see their life popped back to full.

Maybe the Holy Bolts from FoH didn't heal in some earlier version of the game, but they certainly do now.

John H
D2Player69@aol.com

[Rhydderch Hael]

I'm keenly interested in ascertaining as to whther or not the "Ghostbuster" effect of Sanctuary against a PI Undead (Ghosts and whatnot) applies only to melee weapons, or is it available to bows/crossbows as well?

I'm getting conflicting info as to whether the damage increase against Undead via Sanctuary and a bow does occur (or that any sort of +%Damage to Undead modifiers work with bows).

[WarBlade]

I'm keenly interested in ascertaining as to whther or not the "Ghostbuster" effect of Sanctuary against a PI Undead (Ghosts and whatnot) applies only to melee weapons, or is it available to bows/crossbows as well?

Yes, it does apply to missile fire too.

I'm getting conflicting info as to whether the damage increase against Undead via Sanctuary and a bow does occur (or that any sort of +%Damage to Undead modifiers work with bows).

Sanctuary only amped damage to melee attacks in 1.08 and was upgraded to melee and missile weapon attacks in 1.09. Unfortunately the skill description on the character screen is still the old 1.08 version, hence the common confusion. ;)

[Obi2Kenobi]

Hmm... I could have sworn they didn't... (this version is the only one I have used FotH in)

I went to act 5 in the worldstone keep and lowered my defense to make sure I was hit. I then casted FotH on the back of the people attacking me, and I didn't seem to heal. (Of course, I may have been hit at the same time, but it is doubtful since I moved my chance to be hit down to 13%...

[Swarmalicious]

Hiya kathgar,

One of my favorite chars of all time is the Sanctuary paladin. My latest HC incarnation is a bit screwy by most player's standards, but this is after all, the Lounge. Keep in mind I only played this guy till A1 hell. His general set-up is as follows (haven't played in a while, so I can't remember all the specifics):

Maxed & + Sanctuary (duh)

Even split Conviction & Vengeance (bout 10 pts. each)

1 in Zeal (with +skills) mostly just for leeching

Charge (ended up putting remaining points here)

some other points in:

Vigor (yep)
Thorns

Defiance Merc from a2


Attributes (about)
100 str
100 + dex
everything else into life


- Alright, so - I wanted to make a character and actually play him, rather than the old click-&-kill basket weaving, so I went into this with micromanagement in mind (flashing, skill switching, etc). I wanted to work at a high blocking/defense too.

Sanctuary -
The attacking part turned out to be a lot of fun (with those thilly sparklies following me everywhere, how could it not be? :) ). I hadn't realized before I set out how well Charge works with Sanct, and so toward the end I gave up on Veng and just pumped Charge. They are really made for each other - the knockback pulse turns a room fulll of vicous undead into your own personal cuddly little pinball machine. I highly recommend it.


As for non-undeads, well... its tough but not really an issue. Vengeance does just fine, and if you limit your battling to areas where half the spawned enemies are undead (this is almost everywhere) you'll find little trouble. The reason being that Sanct basically renders any zombified monsters irrelevant, and you can concentrate on killing the others. Usually, by the time you're done with them, the pulse has killed all the undead off. For party play in these locations - I found flashing Conviction, then Thorns, and then Sanctuary (for your own damage) generally turns enemies into oatmeal.

One thing to watch out for is that UD Lightning Enchanteds are triggered by the pulse. Teammates tend to get annoyed by dying, so be mindful.

other stuff -
I'm not much of a number cruncher, but with 65% block & my A2 merc, I hardly ever got hit at all, even standing in big crowds. A HUGE factor in this, I reckon, is that my character never ran. To move quickly, I just switched over to Vigor. With FRW boots and some light armor, you can cruise right along, and the "chance to be hit by %" in your 'lying' character screen should be about right. Vigor makes everyone laugh too, so its fun. Ha ha! Look at us run! Wheeeee! We are running yay! Yay! Yaaay!!!

Whoa.

Thorns doesn't get enough credit, I think. Thorns is a lovely, extremely damaging skill. Of course, if you go for high-defense, then in late game (when you begin to get hit a lot less) your merc will have to be your spike-trap. With a Necro or Herding Druid, its bananas. You can do a whole lot about getting to level 30 using Thorns alone, and I suggest not giving up on it even later. Its always useful. Duriel hates it.

I could keep going, but the wife beckons. :P Good luck!

[Brista]

Brista, I'm sorry, but this is demonstrably wrong. I can see my merc heal when the Holy Bolts from a Fist of the Heavens blast hits him.

Sorry for not getting back to this sooner but, yes, I was wrong they do heal

[Artega]

One of my favored Zealot variants is what I like to call the Shock Trooper; slvl 20 Holy Shock, slvl 20 Sanctuary, slvl 20 Zeal, and slvl 20 Holy Shield. I'm an old-school Paladin, so I always max Zeal, no matter what variant of Zealot I'm playing, but depending on your setup, you may not need the full twenty. A weapon such as Baranar's Star, or a good combination of AR-adders could negate the need for slvl 20 Zeal, though your aim should always be to keep your chance to hit at 85% or better. 80% can be considered the lowest allowed, excepting act bosses, whose levels will likely be higher than yours in some cases (Diablo is LV40 in Normal, IIRC.)

I think I'll go back to SevenLances now... LoD makes me sick :huh:

[whereagles]

Actually, this undead/demon splitting has caused allignment problems. The source of "Evil" are demons like Diablo, Meph and Baal. Undead are just harmless skeletons with zombie-like behaviour who wouldn't dream of conquering the world.

So, I think Sanctuary and Holy bolt should target DEMONS, not undead, dontcha think? :D

[Rhydderch Hael]

Nah, the Undead, being the exclusive servants of Mephisto, are driven by jealous hatred of the living. Driven to torment by the pain fo their own deaths which carry with them to this day, they seek to make all that they touch share in their torment.

The benevolent castings of Holy magics are a complete counter to the hateful death that these entities embody. It is the light washing away the dark spirit that has taken hold upon these forms.

The primary difference between demons and undead would have to be that veil between life and death. As dark and wicked demonic forces may be, they share one thing with mortals: their essences are still that of the living. Their energies are still drawn from life, from the beat of a heart, from the wellspring of consciousness granted to all things living.

The Undead defy that. Where the warmth of life is absent, they still persist. Their existence, their energies are pulled from the other side of that veil. Completely alien, completely incompatible with that of our own.

[Enishi Yukishiro]

I have a question: Do the aura´s effects in a party stack with each other?
For example, there´s a party with 2 paladins, both in the range of other´s aura. One activates Defiance and other Thorns. Do both auras work in them?
Becuase if they do, a party of 8 paladins would be pratically invincible; 8 20-raked Auras: Defiance, Concentration, Might, Prayer, Salvation, Thorns, Conviction, Meditation.

[Rhydderch Hael]

Yes, the Paladin auras will stack, but only on one condition: the auras must eb different. Two Paladins throwing out Might will not be able to combine the bonuses of those two Might auras. Only one will be in effect at any one time.

However, while both Might and Concentration both add damage values, they are different auras. Hence, their bonuses will stack for a higher effect.

The All Paladin Team is a concept often discussed, but in reality takes effort to pull off. It requires organization, scheduling, and trust. Each Paladin has to foster his own sets of auras (it's bad form if everyone pumps the same aura, after all) and they have to assemble consistently into a game. Getting eight people into a game one time, every time, may take more effort that one may wish to devote.

I have, in conjuction with my pending Ranger Manifesto, started contemplating what an 8-Ranger troop would look like, and have penned variant rules and backstory for such a team.

[Obi2Kenobi]

Concentration or Fanaticism would be more powerful than might. :) And I think a 7 pally 1 necro party would be stronger (because most curses don't stack)