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I am looking at a Meditation paladin but would like some advice and answers to a few questions.
I understand that meditation also heals health, when you have points in prayer. Cleansing also gives healing but do I need to put points into cleansing to boost the healing properties of meditation? I am not sure how the synergies work on this one.
So if I am reading the AS correctly I would max prayer and meditation and have only one point in cleansing, yet where to place my other skills? I was thinking BH and a synergy skill like vigor. How viable would this be? Would FoH be a better choice?
My other question regarding Meditation is that I have read questions about whether it heals other party members as well as increasing mana regen. Can anyone confirm this, or is the healing only for the paladin?
Lastly does the aura of a prayer merc stack with that of the healing properties of the meditation aura?
I'd like to make a very party friendly character that could offer some offensive support to a party.
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11-07-2003, 01:52 PM
(This post was last modified: 11-07-2003, 01:56 PM by Raziel.)
I built a cleric paladin in the beta, which is what it sounds like you want to do.
1) Yes. You would max prayer, but only need ONE point in Meditation to inherit all of Prayer's healing pulse.
2) I made my cleric paladin with FOTH, holy bolt and prayer for pure undead killing, and healing. Didn't turn out so great. Prayer's healing is just a waste of time later in the game. I'd instead be inclined to focus purely on pumping holy bolt damage undead and something like smite + holy shield for dealing unresistable physical damage. FOTH sucks in hell, no two ways about it.
3) The aura of a prayer merc DOES stack with the healing properties of Meditation. Add the Prayer merc's healing to your Prayer skill level's healing to figure out how much your red bulb will fill per pulse.
I suggest the following:
Holy Bolt: 20
FOTH/Blessed Hammer: 20
Smite: 20
Holy Shield: 1-20 (Depends how much defense you want)
Conversion: 1-5 (Depending how much you want to convert)
Prayer: 1
Cleansing: 1
Meditation: 1-5 (Depends how many skill points you want to waste on the radius) PRIMARY AURA
Sanctuary: 1 (save yourself from the undead) SITUATIONAL AURA
Salvation: 1+ (lend resistances to all) SITUATIONAL AURA
This is a simple 'helper' build; you can pump Prayer up to 20 if you really want that passive healing tacked onto Meditation.. but IMHO it's not going to be of any help past Normal difficulty. Neither is a Prayer merc - get yourself an act 3 Iron Wolf to control crowds. A single point in Conversion with +skills can help tremendously. It's not really a cleric - although HB can be used to heal, it's underpowered (and won't save anyone from balrog breath anyway).
Smite is made useful through Crushing Blow/Open Wounds. You aren't going to kill quickly with it, but that's not your plan, either. You're a supporting char.
FOTH/Blessed Hammer is used only for synergistic purposes, to crank up HB's damage (50% per skill point omg). Pick one. Neither will be of any use to you past normal/nightmare in their proposed form - though FOTH might do enough damage to be useful through to the end of Nightmare. Blessed Hammer with no synergies and no Concentration --> :(
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Prayer is a waste of time? In SP beta, I had a praying smiter doing well in hell and a mageazon who would very much like to keep her prayer merc intact. In any case, prayer increases the amount of healing by holy bolt and isn't that bad an investment for a healer as well.
And if you're going to be a simple 'helper' build, I'll even go as far as to max out meditation as well to give as huge a boost to mana regen as you can for your mana hungry party members. While they might not feel anything normally, fighting mana burners could never be easier.
For a simple 'helper' build, might consider this setup too:
20 Holy Bolt
20 Prayer
20 FoH (mainly for the mass bolting)
The rest into either Meditation or Holy Shield depending on how defensive and mana supportive you intend to be. Even without the points in smite, it can still be made useful through crushing blow and open wounds... without those, the stun could be useful anyway.
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Joined: Feb 2003
My apologies - when I said unresistable, I meant undefendable.. so to speak :)
As for Prayer, my experience has simply been that there are better places to spend one's skill points. You can do more with one well aimed slvl 20 Holy Bolt than with a lot of slvl 20 Prayer.
As for maxing Meditation.. I think that's overkill, but I did find value in bumping it up to slvl 5.. you get an extra 100% mana regen rate and the aura radius is nearly doubled.
There are a lot of very helpful Auras a Paladin could offer his party. Conviction and Salvation spring to mind. When was the last time you saw a Pally running Salvation?
Like you said, it does depend on how defensive, mana supportive, helpful and/or offensive you want to be. My personal inclination is to be more than just an undead killer. That's why I like Smite. At worst, you can immobilize whatever you can't kill.
You could build a real helper as follows:
20 Prayer
20 HB
20 FOTH
5 Meditation
5 Salvation
5 Conviction
Maybe put the last 5 into Conversion or Smite?
