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General Strategies     Amazon Strategies Assassin Strategies     Barbarian Strategies Druid Strategies     Necromancer Strategies Paladin Strategies     Sorceress Strategies Paladin Strategies Hello everybody! Well, I just wanted to tell you that I play single-player, but this is still a useful and effective strategy! My strategy is to make a lance- elemental-zealot/defiant Paladin. He is very, very powerful, and has many spare skill points. It is simple, put 5-10-MAX into zeal, 20 into vengeance, 20 into salvation, 20 into defiance, and 1 into the pre-requisites. Optional: 5-10-MAX points into fanactism or concentration (I think it was, well the other increase damage aura). See, you do have points to spare. Well, it is very strong and took me all the way through Hell without no problems with the Ancients. One last thing, use either Act 2 merc (doesn't matter which one, but either offensive or defensive) or Act 3 merc (cold or lightning). Paladin lvl. 86 (legit) Back to Top Make a good paly like mine i use fanant zeal and venagance (to kill immune to phisicals) i have a 99 paladin hes sweet, i do 3.8k dmg with shaffers mallet, shaftstop, storm shield, vamp gaze, 2 raven frosts, lava gaouts, gore riders, and a maras kalidascope. Well to make a char this good it will cost ya. This is a PvP char with about 90% damage reduced (not 90, 90%) i duel zons with wf's and dont even get touched (tickles me) :) this is what a paladin should be like. I can kill hell diablo in 7 shots. all my skills are lvl 30+ so i advise you to get a couple paladin charms to boost up ur paly. - PvP_Holyknight2 (Lvl 99 paly) -.- Back to Top I have a Level 82 paladin, i recommend u max fanant, zeal, if u want to be PvP max convitction and fist of the heavens. I recommend Barnanars Star, herald of zak, gore riders, hell mouths, guardian angel, vamp gaze, and a string of ears. My paladin uses Barnanars star, hell mouths, gore riders, raven frost, a dwarf star, a perf string of ears, herald of zak, vamp gaze, and guardian angel, this is the best for a paly or if u want to be pvp get a shaftstop and a storm shield to have MASSIVE damage reduced so you wont br touched. This is the best strategy in making a paladin. Arch_nemesis (battlenet) Back to Top I have a stategy that has worked 4 me all the time,but U dont have follow my advice. Use Holy Freeze or Fanaticism and zeal or Vengance. Also use redempton after you've been in afight or to get rid of corpses. Especially those f**king Defiled Warriors in Act 5. I defeated Baal at level 38 with Barb merc and holy freeze and zeal. Sharp_Sword 41 and counting Back to Top Personally, my favorite is to make Zeal a high priority, and then stick with the attack bonus auras. Things like Vengeance and Might can really do a lot of damage. If you have any items that are mana stealing, don't get rid of them. Use them. A 6% mana steal will replenish all of your mana against any enemy, especially the big ones like Diablo, Mephisto, and Baal. A good strategy is also to have life steal and life replenish. I have a life replenish of +7, and a 13% life steal, and I didn't even have to use potions against any of the three prime evils in normal. I am a level 44 Paladin, and I have never put anything into Energy, or Vitality, but that is because of my life and mana stealing abilities. Get a minion early, and don't get rid of them. Give them the best weapons and armor that they can use, even if you take the inferior armor, because they can't use gloves, boots, belts, rings, or amulets. A rogue is good because she will stay out of the fray while killing things, and they are REALLY powerful at level 40 and up. For all that I have 20 in Zeal, and in Might, plus Vengeance, she does more damage than I do, plus she does elemental damage just naturally. If you can find a scepter with poison abilities, use it. Zeal mixed with a lot of poison damage, and cold damage will kill just about any creature twice as fast. Plus, you don't have to beat the creatures to death. It is extremely pleasing to use Zeal on a group of smaller creatures, and see all of them die at once, because you poisoned them all. For larger creatures, it is still useful, because every hit increases the poison damage done to them. Trust me on the minion, even if nothing else, use a Rogue. They will save you the trouble of hunting down those creatures that just run, like in Nightmare and Hell, she will just MURDER Blood Raven. And also, for those lightning enchanted creatures, you don't even have to get close to them. She will take care of them, too. Just thought that I'd add a tidbit. Strong STRONG Paladin (44) Back to Top I can say right now that most people who max out fist of heavens should only use it with 1 or 2 skill points. For a great Cow Runner Pally, Max out zeal and fantacism, if you want to be a party helper, max out thorns and might. If you are a rusher Pally, you are downright dumb, pallys' are ment to kill cows and other players, not kill everything in the game, leave that up to a sorc or zon, who I personally think are newb characters. I once pvp with a 65 Barb for fun and he thought he could beat me, I said one free hit go ahead and sure enough he used the classic "whirlwind" and he died from my thorns. I was laughing my a** off. So any ways I'm still not sure on pvp pallys', because I have two pallys'. One online and one off. Offline one is a group and boss killer. Online one is a Cow Runner and a mix of pvp. Don't you hate barbs? Then use thorns, "it rids you full of those overgrown hyped up on steroids brainless wankers. POWER TO THE PALLY!!!! - - - Serafon-knight (*Space_Psyco) - real name,Mitch Back to Top If you want a paladin who has massive damage WITHOUT have to use ANY MANA WHAT SO EVER, try this. max out sacrifice first of all (but not all at once) (and if your worried about the life damage on you just get 8% life leatch). After max concentration (its the best damage aura, fant. sucks ass cuz its only for fast attack), and finaly go all out on charge. It might not look good but you can trust me it works, and it kicks ass :). Try it for fun... later ppl :) :) :) -Sib Back to Top This is the best dueling strategy for a pally. if ur only duelin then just max salvation or fantism.max charge. max holy shield and the rrest goes into thorns.get viel of steel, heralld of zakarum lightsaber and gardian angel and ull never loose. Back to Top for all u pallys who say thorns. might, and holy freeze are good, i wonder: how do u survive? first of all max out fanaticism (for melee) and zeal(unless u put up a lot of dex) second if u duel max out charge (with charge and fanticism u do about 12 times as much dmg and move very quickly towards ur target) dont bother putting things into holyfreeze most ppl where ravenfrost ring. also put 1 into holyshield because u dont need it at lvl 20 and ur skills should put it up. also put up conviction if u do a lot of elemental. dont wsate skills on veagence because u only do like 200 more dmg so its not worth it. what to wear - helm: 1 to skills helm at least, i suggest runeword "lore" or peasant crown, gloves: any thing thats good, boots: gore rider for extra dmg , armor: griswolds ornate plate or ***guardian angel templar coat*** (strongly suggest), weapons: i suggest using baranars star a lot of 1 hand dmg and u can still kill immune to physical, try to get schaeffers but very unlikely, or use a hellslayer if u just want to charge other duellers and do a shit load of dmg, shield: i suggest herald of zakurum if u can get, otherwise use a good ancients pledge or resistance shield, jewellery: ravenfrost ring, and bulkathos if u watn skil point otherwise have life steal rings Back to Top Ok, all of u people listen up, all those peolple who says 'stay away from pkers' well.... FUCKING GEARKS THIS GAME'S FUN IS DUEL' and dont be scared to 'die' cuz it has no risk (exept poping but it arrives if u die and take an object and click on body) ok, now lets talk stragie.... first for the skillz [[max put sword masterie]] [[max out whirl wind]] put 10-5 point in nat.res and 1 to all skillz and 5-10 to battle order ----- now stat... put about 190-200 str 130-150 dex rest in life DONT PUT IN ENERGIE cuz with mana leech...its gonna be O-k OK, now the items... for a normal pvp ger us stormshield-shaft-ccb-arreat-string-gorerider-venom grip-mana/life leech ring and skill ammy ok thats a gear with 75% dr and 100 life this gear cost about...24-26 sojs now the ultimate gear...... ber'd valor-ber'd perf vamp-gf- and rest like other gear now this gear cost about......97-100 sojs but its better so its ur choice now cya and....good luck Back to Top Hey all of the characters out there. I reckon that you should max out 4 skills, defiance is a must. A good defence is always good especially in conjuction with a lot of vitality which makes you nearly never get killed. I am on lvl 34 and i have 1600 defence using defiance, concentration works really good with most skills especially with blessed hammer and zeal. I reckon if you play this char smart you will be one of the most powerul chars in the game. Back to Top What pallys need the most points into matters if you wanna strike with elemental or physical dmg. Elemental would be vengeance,conviction,and holy shield. physical would be zeal,fanaticism,and holy shield. Equipment would be Baraners for a wepon(does 700 dmg on its own) griz or courpsemourn for armor(dont make my mistake and put all points into strength and not vit) shield would be herald of zakarum(duh) boots any exceptional unique boots. gloves hellmouth or ghoulhide(you can buy a ghoulhide from me:) belt razortail helm vamp gaze or stealskull(expensive but useful the vamp gaze...) rings i used dwarf star and raven frost on my old pally(sadly deleted ::sob::) ammy highlords or crescent moon(crescent if you need the life/mana leach.) if you dont like my stratigy, send me a whisper on bnet. Online:lvl80 zon (tha-hitchick) lvl 39 barb (clunkonthe-head) lvl 16 pally (syr-killzallot) my acct is the_mafia Back to Top hey all paladins I have a good strat that has always worked for me right through out of the game.I'll cut to the chase and tell you straight off. Defiance in my view is the best skill in the game with a lot of vitality and defiance you will never die and i haven't yet and i am in hell on lvl 48. The othet 2 skills i use is zeal on lvl 8 and concentration which jacks up how much damage i do. With this strat i have taken down all characters that have challenged to me to a duel that r within 20 lvls of me which i think is pretty cool.I hope this strat has helped you guys out there. Adrian_Palidan lvl 48 Back to Top Most people lean on holy shield. This skill is good only when in a combo with another skill. The best combo to me is to use Thorns since mine is only at at level 6 it still causes MASSIVE damage! After Thorns Use redemption so you dont have to use potions after a battle. Redemption is one of the best skills on a Pali and no mentions it. Also raise zeal to a high level. Mine is at 10 and i hardly have problems killing uniques and bosses. Paladin_Other, Currently level 35 Back to Top Hey fellow pallies i have a strat that has always worked for me and here it is. I think that the main skills are zeal and defiance. I have my defiance at lvl 20 and no one can kill me especially when i put alot of my stat points into life. And if you are gonna chose this way make sure you put at least one point in vengense for those stupid phisical immune monsters. I think this is the way to goespecially when you have a babarian mercenary at your side with pumped up defence. I hope this has helped c ya. Back to Top i just wanna give all u pallys lookin at this nsome advice...think about these numbers! wiht a 115-149 bone snap maul, using a level 15 concentration and a level 15 vengeance...my damge jumps up to 1056-1463! for all u fanaticism fans think abotu that! and now i kill everything in 1 hit! well just try to helpu decide on an aura rakunishu lvl 32 Back to Top Ok first off paly's r the best for rushers but if ur good at makiin em them make sweet duelers.U need to max out zeal,fantism,holy sield at Fist of heavans(if ur a rushin paly).for items get gardion angel armor,helald of zak and lightsaber. Back to Top the paladin is no doubt the funnest character Diablo II offers. i have been playing the paladin for a while and have made several palys so far. i would say any of these tips listed here are fine if ur gonna be playing in single player. however, if ur gonna play on battle.net its very different because of the availability of super good items like shaftstop and the vampire gaze and stormshield. it seems some of these entries are out dated by patches that have changed the properties of certain skills (fanaticism mainly). if u plan to just play for the fun of it and do quests with lots of people and all that other fun stuff then u can basically follow any tips u choose. however if ur like me u will turn toward dueling for a challenge and rush. after playing the barbarian and amazon to high lvls i was getting extremely annoyed how fast they got killed by pk sorcs. i personally dont like sorcs, altho i have one in single player and shes pretty kick ass, so i didnt want to create my own sorc to kill the other pk sorcs. i did some research and found that the pally has what it takes to kill the sorcs with ease. i also found out that if u plan to build a good dueling pally there are two main paths to take. one path is elemental resistance which makes u very strong against mage types like the sorc. the other path is physical resistance (damage reduced by x%) which makes u hard to kill to the rest of the duelers (ww barbs and guided bowzons as well as other pallys). i will discuss elemental resistance first. add ALOT to vitality. in my opinion a point into vitality is NEVER a point wasted. dont add one point to energy because mana leach will cover ur mana needs. get just enough str to use the items u want and just enough dex to block at 75% with ur shield. when dueling a sorc ur aura should be maxed out Salvation (108% resist all @ lvl 20). ur attack will be charge because it closes the gap between u and the sorc fast and does HUGE damage (+575% @ lvl 20) with an ok weapon. the secret to beating sorcs is elemental TheLastGoodPaly *(sculpen) lvl 54 paladin Back to Top Dueling_Palidin_Stratergy If you intend to duel your palidin the following is essential and best for dueling.... You must max out your holy sheild/smite/charge/fantasicm/zeal which will take you to lvl 95 so youll be in for the long haul, but only put 10 into zeal until you can reach 85. i myself had made many a paladins. And do not use foh besides pissing other characters on b-net off it sucks for anyon that has good items on. If you are serious about your pally the best items for him are as follows.. 1.vamp gaze helm , 2.arcanes valor .08 , 3.soe , 4.storm shield/heild of zakurum , 5.baranaras (for dueling.otherwise use shaefers for cows) , 6.venom grip or lava gout gloves , 7.gore riders , 8.maras keilidescope amulet , 9.combat gcs , 10.1 ravenspiral/1 raven frost XHoly_RebelX----87 Paladin Back to Top I find the best way to choose any character is, choose one that represents youself. The paladin is my favorite character and I have tried all of them. He is "defense" heavy and has the upper hand when fighting the undead. If you think about all the possible combonations for each character, the paladin has some extremely powerful combos. I personally like the thorns skill the best. In Diablo you are going to get hurt no matter what way you play. So your enemy might as well take what it gives. Another skill that is great is holy bolt it is easy to give a lot of damage to the undead quickly in the game which makes up a large portion of the game. Any of the defensive auras are great to have. You can literally make yourself immune to an enemies attack, sounds good to me. I always make sure to decide on a course and stick with it . Pick a skill tree and focus on that skill tree or find combos within the skill trees. Set your hotkeys and you are all set to kick butt. Back to Top I have checked several posts and i haven't seen one with Conversion! please... Conversion is worthless against any boss, i know. but if you put a few points on Zeal or Vengeance (your choice) you can kill ANY boss in ANY difficulty! please, what's the best, getting surrounded by tons of monsters and get yer @$$ whooped while the ranged guyz kill you with all sorts of crap, or convert a few, let them kill each other, get all the xp you would get if u did it yerself and still (!) get the xp items and with redemption get all the mana, life and stamina (you are standing while they kill each other) you deserve and can get! well that's it. Now 1 thing: Holy Shock SUX! cmon! doing 100 damage when you can do MUCH (!!!!!!!!) more with your weapon! if you like Holy Shmakaroos, try Holy Freeze. MUCH BETTER! you hit twice as more, get hit half as more and if u get hit half as more, you have 2x yer life! Lvl 80 paladin, Syko. And this is my 9th pally! Back to Top About the fifth monster in the thorne of destruction, Lister The Tormentor. It is suggested to use Thorns if your charactor was a paladin. It really works on that monster. It could be better if your weapon did not contain any element damage. The skill it uses called spectral hit, that will adsorb your element damage and strike back in double. Sir Fierce Back to Top This is my 9th paladin... YA 9th! well i started as Zealot, but u get urself trapped swingin at those small critters while the ranged ones do the BIGTIME damage. so i tried Avenger. It rocks! but when u get caught with no mana early on, or even surrounded you get squished. then a slightly different build... a Smitadin. he actually rocked anywhere, he could kill (slowly but still good) any guy with anystats, if there was NO other monster in the area. then i started for the 9th TIME! i got a REALLy pERFEct pally this time. i got redemption and conversion and i can kill anything. i attack a few guys in one equal proportion to the enemies and i see them kill each other while i watch and get healed really fast. against bosses i use vengeance and depending on the boss i use a specific aura. i killed Nightmare Diablo using 2 mana potions and 1 rejuvenation potion! man he kills, slices and turns anything into shreds. well about dueling pallys... a pally needs to know how to use his auras! for example against a barbarian holy freeze would do the trick. he would be slower than a one legged 200 year old wheel chaired amazon! against sorcy, salvation and the damage she inflicts is 0 to none(almost, nothin is perfect). amazons, any aura is fine... necromancers... LOL a pally can kill a necro anywhere anyhow. against other pallys use ur own imagination! LeafStorm, lvl 47 paladin (the last one) Back to Top I had a lvl 39 paladin and a couple 20+pallys and my favorite strategy is to put all skill points into smite until lvl 6 the put every point into thorns. You should add every stat point you get into vitality don't worry about attack rating or strength. Try and make all your items add to life or return damage. By the time you get to act 4 monsters will be killing themselves with you moving a finger! But make sure to carry a full belt of potions, small rejs. work best. Extreme Jesus Back to Top i say u should up aruras such as thorns until u fight durial. i found that after it wasn't as good on the stronger guys. I also noticed if u uped might at the start, it really helped me, as well as holy fire. blessed aim and concentration only really should get one point or maybe two. while the rest of the aruras should be uped very high. i found that if i uped my holy bolt early i could kill lots of skeletons/corpses very easily. i only uped holy bolt to 6, no more no less, and it worked very good. Most of the otheer combat skills aren't that great. though blessed hammer is good agains some ppl, so put 2 points into it. all the other skills except for maybe vengeance or cahrge should only get one point except everything past conversion. most of these skills should b maxed out. I think defensive on auras u can skip some like the resist fire......... ect. up defiance a bit because it will help in the begining b4 u get better. prety much every defence arura kind sucks except for the last 2 ( Redemption and salvation). with this help from my first paladin, i made better desicions. Trevorman curently level 19 Back to Top ive got a level 96 Baron Paladin and what i did to about level 50 was max might an zeal (this gives about a 1500% bonus to attack) with putting charge and sacrifice up two each (sacrifice helps alot beating diablo espeacially using a two handed weapon)and also one on holy bolt,hammer one so you can max out fist of heaven I also have a level 77 Battle.Net paladin and ive gotten a level 99 ear so this works. Pikey level 96 and level 77 Back to Top well ive been playind dii for aabout 2 yrs. now and i dont have all the answers your asking for but i do know that the zealot(ppl who use zeal/fan.) and the avenger(ppl who use vengence and conviction)are the two best ways to go. now i have 2 lvl 99 offl;ine pallys and a couple of pallys around lvl 80 online. cause i was bored i made a new pally. i have vengence, zeal, fanaticism, and conviction all makes out. i think both ways are great to go. patriarch maddeadreaper(lvl 79) Back to Top I have a level 30 paladin and I use might and thorns, they are both 15. But when I faced Diablo I used thorns and for some reason, I died once fighting against Diablo and the reason for this was every hit made a painful blow to himself. I died because he used his most powerful attack, and also, my paladin has only 15 points of mana and his is quite strong. But worst of all, my mercenary is the same level as me but he is stronger than me and I been using him ever since Act 2. Back to Top if you start as paladin you could go train in the blood moor before heading to the next level.fight zombies and quilled rats to level up although it maybe long but it is good to fight and get more experince an items Kaiba- Paladin (lvl 8) just started the game yesterday Back to Top Some people say that Paladins suck, but if you put them together the right way, they can strike you dead without even noticing it. First, try to work on Might UNTIL you can work on Zeal. Work on Zeal until you can work on Holy Shield. Work on Holy Shield until you can work on Fanaticism. Max out Fanaticism, then max out Holy Shield, then max out Zeal. From here, what you max out next depends on if you want to be a dueling Pally or a questing Pally. If you want to be a dueling Pally, max out Smite. Mixed with Holy Shield, it does a substantial amount of damage, AND paralyzes your enemy for a while. If you want to be a questing Pally, max out Vengeance. This will help with those enemies who have resistances to most things, especially physical damage. From there, do whatever you want. A good set-up for a Pally is as follows....Schaefer's Hammer or Baranar's Star, Griswold's Armor or the Corpsemourn, the Herald of Zakarum shield, a Razortail belt, Gore Riders or War Traveller boots, Venom Grip gloves, a Stealskull Casque, a Dwarf Star ring and either a Manald Heal ring or a Raven Frost ring, and your choice of an ammy. I have a +2 Pally skills ammy with +10% all Resists. A bit of advice, for sockets, Pallies SUCK at Magic Find, so don't waste sockets with Magic Find items... try raising your Attack Speed. Although it is already high, it's one of the best things a Pally can have. Put Zeal in your left button slot, and Holoy Shield in your right. Before battling, right-click so Holy Shield comes on, then switch it to Fanaticism. Have fun! Ryan ~ Lvl 99 Paladin:TheHonorableOne (BattleNet) Back to Top i have a level 38 paladin and have made several before this one. paladins are by far my favorite character and i know his skills front to back. i think the aura/combat skill combo can be the best attack among all the characters if it is used right. the best combos are vengence with conviction and zeal with fanaticism. conviction makes it easier for you to hit enemies with your all elemental attack of vengence, and lowers resist to kick some more ass. zeal and fanaticism is a great backup because you hit a lot of monsters with one click and you do it really fast with fanaticism. also, with a mana steal attack, this combo is a great way to recharge mana for vengence. as for other skills: defensive auras are useless. the best defense is a good offense, as i have heard. as for combat skills, smite and everything under it is a complete waste of time and you are a moron to think they could be of use. the two ranged attacks the pally has to offer are almost a complete waste of points because they only affect undead and dont do that much damage anyway. as for equipment, find a good one handed weapon so you can put major resistances in your shield (not to mention the pallys class specific item is a shield). the best thing to do is to make the antients pledge out of a pally shield. i know i said the best defense is a good offense, but a good magic war hammer will do more damage than most of the two-handed swords ive seen. as for the rest of you, find the best thing available. i always look for additions to attack rating, defense, and hit recovery. as for jewelery, find rings that add to attack rating and a mana steal amulet. i have the nagelring and a platinum ring, with an amulet of the bat. ive found that miabreagas regalia works well to give good defense. i only have the diadem and the robe. those two make the armor with 460-something defense. as for you newbie paladins, invest some points in thorns. thats what i used until i got to level thirty. putting 10-11 points in there is a good way to make those big bosses kick their own ass. also, dont be afraid to save points and put them in other things at other times. on several occasions you will have three skill to level when you get to certain levels. to make yourself a badass in the future, its ok to be so-so now. good luck. Turdtaker, Lvl 38 paladin Back to Top I really think that holy shield is a good skill. Barbarian and assassin have permanent bonus and abilities, but we, the paladins, haven't it. The likefull permanent abilitie is the holy shield. When you have a 150-200 shield defense bonus, and 10 level to H.S. you will have during 2 minutes a 300 defense bonus. But if you have a good shield (300 defense) an d H.S. at level 20 you will have aprox 4 minutes with a 100 defense only by your shield. Pepe el Paladin Back to Top For ur pali put about 5 into defiance,10 into zeal,max fanatitism,holy shield,and fist of heavans for a great pali. get lots of dext pleant of strenth,vit is a must,and not too much energy.gl with ur awsome pali. Back to Top first of all you ppl are wierd ok now to the stategy, for skills you need zeal and fanatic not maxed but put some points in them vengence wouldnt hurt next conviction and fist of heavens are a great dueling dueling combo the conviction lowers defence and resistance allowing fist of heavens to do Major dmg, now what if you fight a barb you have to worry about whirlwind use holyshield then smite it never misses plus fanatic as your aura this will increase the dmg and if you have any health you should be able to beat the barb, salvation is also a great aura if you like chasing a sorc around Now for items ppl say you need a shaftstop and vamp some ppl cant afford these items so i suggest get the best you can but i prefure a guardian angel for armor rockstopper for helm either a snowclash or t gods for belt (snowclash does basically the same as t gods just for ice not light) if you like running alot aldurs i use ik boots myself for wpn barnars start is very cheap and easy to get but if cant get it an atlantean will work fine for shields i prefure gerks because of the good blocking with holy shield and guardian angel (which adds to block chance and speed) that pretty much covers my strategy if you want to talk /w antman905 Arilios lvl36 pala Back to Top Now please allow my two pennies. AURAS/SKILLS: Thorns is great until you hit around level twenty or so. Personally, I tend to go with a heck of a lot more in the direct damage field. Speaking of "damnage", we'll get to Fist of the Heavens later. In normal mode, I specialized in melee damage until I found out what "immune to melee'' was. That sucked. I had to rethink my whole strategy. Including my gems and armor, I had a strength of 90 and a life of 344 before I considered getting my mana above 130. Something that I appreciated when I got a War Mace that gave me +1 to Fist of the Heavens. Holy moley, does that do the trick. One word of wisdom, Level it up past three BEFORE fighting Baal. Damn! Holy Fire is good, but after its third level, level the mess out of Holy Freeze and Holy Shock. Fire and lightning is so damn useful, slow them down and then beat them into putty mercilessly and pound 'em SHAZAM!-style! I didn't get any defensive auras, all direct damage and good armor. I realized way too late the value of every skill in the ZEAL tree. Get them all and max out. Leave Blessed Hammer ALONE. I made the mistake of maxing the hell out of B. Hammer and H. Fire. Skip 'em. Let's see... Defensive auras, Prayer, Vigor, Salvation... NEXT! Offensive auras: Might, Blessed Aim, H. Shock/Freeze, Concentration , Fanaticism. Equipment: Top to bottom, eh? Helms. I actually stuck with Horned helms from L. 16-36. At 37, I got a Really neat mask that looks killer as hell. Still have it, too. Armor. ( let me take this opportunity to say this right now... wait to imbue/carve/personalize your items. You always find something cooler right after you do. It sucks. I Carved sockets into and personalized my Gothic Plate of Health. Now it is two and a half times better and it does poison damage!! Yeah, should have waited anyway. Gloves. They don't get great, but they do tend to not wear down fast, so get replenish life. Belt. Four by four slots good... Shields. Heraldic and Holy rock, but I found a couple of Crown shields. One with sockets and it is now in super-badboy mode. I also have a Rondache chilling out in my cube just for looks. Boots. Just keep getting better boots I had a pair of demonhide that helped me get some great stuff. Arms. With every new Paladin, I try to stay very specific about my character's weopens. Strangely enough, Shaft (16) uses mainly projectiles. MauriceTheStorm (3) is the blade man. Primarily claymores and giant swords. My pride and joy, Slayer Randolf (37) wields the mace, morning star, maul and scepter with the greatest of ease. Slayer Randolf 37 Paladin Back to Top Now i know i only have a level 47 palidin but i am confussed buy some of these suggestions which make killing mosters time consuming, i use holy shock unless i come against imune then i change to fanatism, holy shock fun cause if you die yyou can still kick butt,now resitance i can ignore using defensive auras as i have 75 resistance on all level and im in nightmare, you shield r your best defence, WAKE UP, have you people forgoten what perfects can do, your so interested in the runes that most people forget about them. my shield has 143 defence and 46 resistace to all, why cause of 2 diamonds and a amathist. i have had this shied since the level 3 normal, if your an early palidin the your shield is your best friend. BelGarion Lv 47 Back to Top Hey all, i don't know who these people are who talk a ton of crap about how pally's suck and barbs do way more damage and own them all the time. . . here's a couple thoughts 1) Paladins are the most diverse characters in the game (eh, the Druids a CLOSE second), they can rely on magic or melee or both 2) Aura's RULE!! the boosts you get from them are enormous in higher levels, and you don't have to waste mana on them 3) Your combat skills make you versitile .. . .specifically Vengence, Zeal, B.Hammer and FotH, if you fight a phycical immune (like the ones in Hell!) you can use Vengence, or the Hammer/FotH, if you're fighting a magic resist monster, ya use Zeal with Concentration. . . I hear Holy Shield is great, but I dont' use it cause I think smite(one of the prequisite) is a waste of a skill point. . .4) Use whatever technique/skill combos you damn well please! it's just a game, I'm not going to tell you what you HAVE to use or what blows for sure, this is just my opinion. . . I use the concentration aura pretty much the whole time, I have it maxed (plus 2 more levels) and it boosts your damage 375%, not to mention a 20% uninterruptible attack. . .whoever said fanaticism gives you a 325% damage boost is out of their mind, the boost is only like 125%, which isn't a whole heck of a lot in hell difficutly, yeah attack speed is nice but any "fast" weapon is fine. . .salvation's good if you don't have resists, umm. . ..and to all those barbs out there who are talkin about their damage. .. .my level 53 pally deals 1100-2100 damage a shot with my vengence and concentration, and vengence is only on level 6. . . .I know several level 70+ barbs who can't do that. . .so there's something for all the new pally's out there who are hearin all the bad hype about how bad pally's are. . .oh yeah, conviction is sweet when you play with sorc, necor's and elemental druids, sorry this was so long, I'm just sick of everyone who say pallys' suck, any newbie pally's who want help, I'm xandrew29 on b-net, glad to help a brother pally out anytime Champion Raephael Level 53 Back to Top Everyone here is dumb if they pick fantacism for its attck bonuses!I mean maxed it only adds about 125% more damage, while maxed concentration adds around 350% more damage! Concentration increses your damage, add so does vengeance, so combined you do some big damage! Now most people wont listen to me becasue im only lvl 28 but I killed d without even dieing! i had a 56-78 maul, and with only lvl 4 vengeance and lvl 6 concentration i did 244-307 damage, even to physical resistant! put a little points into energy so you can use vengeance without always running out of mana. Put a lot into strength, i have around 79 which i am incresing. Also dont be like me and skimp on dex because when i switched to maul i only had 59% chance to hit. I now have around 50 dex and 60 vit, but with increase i had 300 life! but now im having trouble in cows so i need to lvl make sure your either very strong, very high dex or over lvl 28 because thats cow lvl. use concentration not fantacisim! sir holy_phill lvl 27 and growing Back to Top i play single player and after being a heavy thorns supporter i decided to switch to damage why doesnt anyone use vengeance and concentration but me..think vengeance adds a total of 500% elemental and like 20 secs freezing at lvl 20...i dont care about the 20%interruptible but i like the damage increase 350% at lvl 20! thats some big damage! i have gotten there yet but im working on mastereing lets say with a 12-21 mace, using lvl 1 vengeance and lvl 3 concentration i do 28-59 damage! but get mana leech or lvl up mana because vengeance is expensive ill tell everyone when i master veng. and conc. holy_phill Back to Top Lasy man's paladin If your a newb and you suck at the game or your really lasy like me and want to never have to worry about dieing, then put all your skill points into charge and holy freeze and get items with mana steal. Holy freeze to me is a must because it halves monsters attack speed and movement speed. It's like putting yourself in the matrix, everything else moves in slow motion while you stomp their *ss. Also, halving the monsters attack speed means they only hit you half as much, which is the equilivant of doubling you life because it takes them twice as long to kill you. Not rocket science. If you use charge with holy freeze then nothing will touch you, (unless there's the usual lag or usual anvil falling from sky and crushing your head). Takes too long too kill mobs of monsters you say. With holy freeze you can run pass all those little nuggets and make youe way to the more powerful ones,(nugget kings), and suck the exp out of them. Bosses are no prob with charge maxed out. Once these two skills are maxed you will realize that all the other skills are useless in comparison. Items for Lasy man's paladin Weapon- Biggest baddest thing you can find. The more damage the better. My pali is only lvl 34 and does 963-1468 damage (that's without Fanaticism, Concentration or might). Sheild- None. Since your not going to be in the fray and will spend most of your time charging in and out, a sheild will be completely useless. Damage onto other monsters will be your main defense. If they're dead, they can't hurt you. Helm, gloves, belt- Doesn't really matter. Whether it's a $500 leather and gold belt or just an extension cord to keep your pants on; it's all good. For gloves, you may look for something with mana steal but it doesn't really matter. For the helm, I would look for something that doesn't suck. That's as specific as I can get. Boots- You want something that will make you go fast. Other than that, it's all up to your tastes. Mustache- Now how did that get in here? Armor- Since you will not be weilding a sheild this is where the some of your defense will come from. Conclusion, high defense rating is good here. Rings- I use Manald for mana steal and soj for that extra bit of mana. Amulet- I like to use the oak amulet thingy because it gives you 8 levels worth of stats. MUST HAVES Something with mana steal. 4% should be good. Something that prevents freezing. If you pali is frozen, his charge will turn from a smoothly running dump to a catastrophic clinger that moves about as fast as granny on a pogo stick. If you've read this far and still disagree with me then you're an idiot. And if we ever meet my pali will most likely send your pali back too the pancake house...................... OF DOOM! TheralGrinshald lvl 39 paladin and lvl 255 idiot basher Back to Top Ok guyz, i've posted 3 paly stratagies, and i finally came up with my best one. This is my 5th (7th if u count the practice ones) pally. 1st things 1st-Skillz. Max out the following: Conviction, Vengance, Fanactsim or Concentration ( u choose), If u use a shield, holy shield. Put 1 in the following: Redemption, Meditation, Salvation (maybe bout 2 in this one), defiance ok, use veng as ur main attack (put zeal at 1 in the begining, combine it w thorns till u get conviction, but DONT put more than 1 pt to thorns.) Ne way, veng main attack, and keep switching between fanactsim (or concentration) and conviction. It switches back and 4th, so u can have both of them on at the same time. You'll do MASS DAMAGE with fana or conc and vengance combined with conviction. When ever u kikll a mass herd of cows, just turn on redemption and eat ur beef. Items: Helm-Shakos or vamp gaze, Armor- Shaftshop Gloves- hmm... u decide, find something good with resist, Belt- String of ears, Boots- Infernalstride (good fire resist), Shield- Herald of zakarum, Ring- 1 soj and if u can find 1, use bul-kathos wedding band, Weapon- hmm... Shaeffer hammer or lightsaber (i preffer shaeffer) Aura's to use with ppl. Don't be stupid like i did with my 1st paly and use might with sorceress's. Barbs- Concentration, fanactsim. Druids- Fanactsim, conviction (if elemental). Necromancers- Thorns (if they have alot of revives/skelly's) concentration, meditation. Sorcereses- Conviction (watch the ice orb kill everything in seconds!) meditation. Assasins- Concentration, conviction (if they use alot of traps) meditation (damn traps.) Amazons- Fanactsim (there bow turns into a machine gun, specially with strafe.) Other pally's- just use what u use. Blitz_MaSta Back to Top little do people know, zeal pallys are not the best pvp chars. When most people try to run up with zeal on me, i use holy freeze to slow them ( countering there fant aura ) then charge them as a first strike, with maxed holy shield and smite ( the usually over looked move ) i stun them without letting up until they fall. People usually cant attack back when being hit with smite so the whole fant/zeal pally isnt very powerful. Rynoxian (lvl 80) Back to Top first of all i would have to say that almost everyone that has posted about he paladin is insane, i dont understand why u would get thorns and have monsters beat the snot outa you. get fantasism to lvl 20 because it gives more than double the damage and a much faster attack. also get zeal to lvl 10 because it gives to attack rating. dont even touch thorns because its useless. and use a damn sield! thats why theres holy shield! and in duels what i do is charge on first attack, with defiance as aura, and holy shield on and i can beat most people. Noodleman lvl 97 paladin Back to Top Basically, theres two builds for a good paladin, which each have there own names that most people call them.... Zealot: Zeal in Slot 1 and Fanaticism in Slot 2, along with Holy Shield for extra defense and such. This is the one I chose... put a 4 or 5 points into Zeal early on, then save all your points up until the point when you get Holy Shield. Put one point into Holy Shield every level until you get Fanaticism. Then just add 1 point to each for each level. After those two are maxed you can start adding points into Charge for dueling (PvP). You can also add more points into Zeal for extra attack rating if you need it. Avenger: Vengeance in Slot 1 and Conviction in Slot 2 for your aura. This allows you to do some nice elemental damage with Vengeance then weaken your enemies resists and defense with Conviction. Max out both, and after you do that just do the same as I said above, Charge and Holy Shield. Both are good builds, though Zealot is slightly better for Player vs. Monster and Avenger leans more towards PvP. A thing that many people are attracted to is Thorns. WRONG! This aura isn't good because it doesn't return as much damage as it says and it just tends to be ineffective. Defensive auras are pretty much useless too. This is a good breakdown of the Paladin, without all the equipment stuff. 1 Handed weapon and a shield is the best weapon set up for a paladin, and that's it as far as equipment goes. lvl 81 paladin Back to Top Hey, for the fellow pallies out there who are wondering what equipment they should use. Here's what I've found works for anyone who can afford some decent but not top-notch stuff. Helm: Shako or Vamp if possible, otherwise a cheap Rockstopper works (it has vitality, good defense, and 10% damage reduce) Armor: Shaftstop, a must...it's Damage reduced by 30% and 60 to life is excellent! Weapon: Baranars, definetly, don't waste the cash on a Shaeffer's. Shield: Stormshield if you are rich, otherwise Herald of Zakarum is nice (stick an "Um" rune in it) Belt: String of Ears (damage reduction and life leech = good) Rings: Life leech rings! Amulet: Probably a 2 to all Pally skills ammy with 2nd mod Gloves: Lava Gouts work nicely Boots: Waterwalks are good Inventory: Try to get at least 1 or 2 pally charms, depending on what you use. I don't think I forgot anything, but if you want a good pally that can dish out total destruction, follow these guidelines. My pally can take out Hell Baal without losing any life. (He uses fanatacism/zeal) GodLightningAce (*LightningAceBty)--Level 87 Paladin Back to Top I would like to tell you guys, what skills are the best for the paladin. You only need 4 skills maxed, which is Zeal, Vengance, Fanaticism and Salvation. Zeal and Fanaticism are a great combo, which deals the damage needed. BUT there are immune to physichal monsters out there, and often lightning enchanted. Thats where Vengance and Salvation comes into play. You don't need to use vengance to kill off the death maulers in act V Hell dif. You only need baranars star, which does 3-600 in elemental damagege, but when you meet a unique monster with stone skin and immune to physical, you might need to switch to vengance, because it does plenty of non-physichal damage. When it comes to the question of using a one-handed weapon and shield or a two-handed weapon I am not so sure. If you want to make progress in the game, use a shield and sword/mace, but if you want to collect experience by simuating 8 players and go somwhere where you will not get hurt, a two-handed weapon is advicable. I use The Hellslayer ( a unique decapitator) and I do 4200 in maximum damage!! (I do 1400 in max damage with baranars star and a shield) That is the way to go if you want to collect excperience on the lower levels, with simulated players. And the most important thing of all, no matter weapon type, is life-steal. I once had 27% life-steal, which made healing potions useless. If you do 1000 damage, have 25% lifesteal, and have 500 life, you need only to hits to refill your helthbar. That is very important when you advance through the game. But beware, lifesteal doesn't work on elementaldamage, only on physical. Beppe - lvl 78 Paladin/B> Back to Top For starts, i play on the net. I have many friends that help me as i go through the different difficulties. The good thing about paladins is their auras. I have a lvl 73 paladin and it wasn't easy makin him that strong. I use Fanatisicsm and Zeal as my main attacks. Fanaticism is a must have aura, especially on the net. It boosts the attack dmg, rating and speed for everybody in the party.Thorns is another good one. Mine is maxed and it returns 1010% dmg. As far as attacks go, i use Zeal and Vengence. Vengence, Fanatisicsm, and a strong weapon make a powerful combo. Most people use one handed weapons and a shield. I don't see a good reason to equip a shield, except for elemental resistance. I use a two-handed axe(Hellslayer hehe)and with vengance and Fana, not only do i attack fast, i do up to 6000 dmg. For the first lvl of dificulty-Normal- I used thorns until i hit act 5 in Nightmare, then i started to pour points into Fanatisicsm. One problem with not using a shield for me is lack of resistance, So i use Salvation. It really works for that pain in the ass of a unique that always has that really strong spell u can't get past. Well, that's my advice. Hope u use it. Tiamet666 Back to Top this is the perfect setup for a paladin. max -zeal,fantacism,holy sheild,some charge for duels, and dont do fist of heavens because it doesnt really do that much damage. i suggest these items helm-vamogaze armor-guardian angel/shaftstop sheild-herald of zakarum weapon-shaefers hammer/lightsaber/baranas star boots-waterwalk gloves- i preffer venom grip ammulet-+2 paladin skills rings-good life leech belt-strings/razortail trust me on this guys my pali hasnt died yet, if you see me ask me suff holy_palid Back to Top Aside from loveing the necro., even the barb., and the others I will always see the Paladin as vastly superior, why? Well he's got it all. Resistance buging you? - try some salvation. Bosses and those other pesky critters never seem to die fast enoff?- well give a nice taste of fanaticism (OUCH!) Constantly with a complianin' group of mana hungry casters - share with them your meditation. Your sorceress. freind isn't doing enoff damage to harm a fallen? - then try conviction . . . and this barely scratches the surface of his power. The Paladin is easy to play and yet hard to make 1 small mistake can screw 'em up beyond the extent of your imagination, but make him right and laugh at the foolishness of everything and everyone that dares oppose your almighty power. Following the right path is difficult indeed, but the rewards are PHENOMINAL. Lets cease the chitchat and get down to work. As for the skill points I'll give you an idea of where i think they go and hope you feel the same way. First off it is to my prefrence that killing them faster is in fact BETTER then them killing you. My ideal skill layout will go as followed prayer first off bites the dust, don't get me wrong its great (if your level 2) but sooner or later -A- you run out of mana or -B- getting that life back really won't matter as you quickly realize a simple potion of life gets it back faster without you changing skills and you won't be losing mana like crazy. WOW if you didn't figure this out you are worse then sad, you're an idiot! What you'll want is somthing like this (if not now, you WILL in hell) Holy Freeze - this skill will save your ass many times over when out of pots and 2 hit points away from death, this is also very fun when dueling, this is also nice when there are enemys up the butt and there is no back up in sight, good for merc. leveling too (look at all those positives) Next Highly useful skill is fanatictism this is great for a party of melee peoples (barb's, druids, etc.) this skill is also a ---- brick house when its a one vs one and you need some MEGA leachin' to get your mana/life back. Vengence easily the best skill in the game the mana cost is a litle high for a melee fighter but with some good leaching you wont notice to much, what makes it so great is the is NO POSSIBLE WAY for monsters to be immune it's fire lightning, ice (yup even the slow down), and phyical all in 1 whipin' momma of an attack. You would think vengance is hard to follow up you are WRONGO! conviction is a killer of an arua it takes resistance, and defence and then shrinks them in VERY LARGE quanitys need any more be said? now the next skills are more like "sub-skills" not the best but worth thinking about they aren't worth maxxing but any experinced player can tell you they are useful (personaly I'd go for 'em but it is your pally not mine) redemption will get life and mana from the dead "redeeming" them, with more DustmanD_EVIL Back to Top This is my stratagy on how to build a paly Ok, in the very begining of the game, save all ur points, but when u get to lvl 6, just put 1 on thorns. Now don't put ne thing into ne skill till lvl 30. Max the following Vengance- Great elemental damage, saves ur ass in hell with the physcal immunes. You'll dish out ALOT of damage with this. Conviction- Great with vengance, lowers the def and resist on enemies. Concentration-Use with blessed hammer Blessed hammer- WIth concentration, you'll dish out 600+ dam per hammer. Not too shabby. Make sure u have at least 2 meditation, 2 redemption, and 5 holy shield. Use the rest for preqs. Items Helm- Use shako, Weapon- Shaffers Hammer, Shield- HERALD OF ZAKURUM, Belt- String of ears, Rings- Soj and Bul-kathos wedding band, Ammy- Maras Kolidescope, Armor- Arkains Valor, Gloves- Frostburns. Skill points-190 Strength, 50 dex (just use a maul or something throught the begingin of the game), 200 Vit, 100 Energy Back to Top All right, all you need to do is put a hell of a lot of points to Might. And a few to zeal. Like 4. But anyway this way you won't need a lot of healing because you will kick so much ass that there is no need to. I killed Diablo, at level 25, in 10 hits because of my might. It is a great skill and all you idiots need it. Me, Paladin level 27. Back to Top Aside from loveing the necro., even the barb., and the others I will always see the Paladin as vastly superior, why? Well he's got it all. Resistance buging you? - try some salvation. Bosses and those other pesky horors never seem to die fast enoff?- well give a nice taste of fanaticism (OUCH!) Constantly with a complianin' group of mana hungry casters - share with them your meditation. Your sorc. pal isn't doing enoff damage - then try conviction . . . and this barely scratches the surface of his power. The Paladin is easy and yet hard 1 small mistake can screw 'em up beyond the extent of your imagination, but make him right and laugh at the foolishness of everything and everyone that dares oppose you. Folling the right path is difficult indeed, but the rewards are PHENOMINAL. Lets cease the chitchat and get down to work. As for the skill points I'll give you an idea of what i think and hope you feel the same way. First off it is to my prefrence that killing them faster is in fact BETTER then them killing you. My ideal skill layout will go as followed prayer first off bites the dust, don't get me wrong its great (if your level 2) but sooner or later -A- you run out of mana or -B- getting that life back really won't matter as you quickly realize a simple potion of life get it back faster without you changing skills and you won't lose mana. WOW if you didn't figure this out you are wosre then sad, you're an idiot! what you'll want is somthing like this (if not now you WILL in hell) Holy Freeze - this skill will save your ass many times over when out of pots and 2 hit points away from death, this is also very fun when dueling, this is also nice when there are enemys up the butt and there is no back up in sight, good for merc. leveling too (look at all those positives) Next Highly useful skill is fanatictism this is great for a party of melee peoples (barb's, druids, etc.) this skill is also a ---- brick house when its a one vs one and you need some leachin' to get your mana/life back. Vengence easily the best skill in the game the mana cost is a litle high for a melee fighter but with some good leaching you wont notice to much, what makes it so great is the is NO POSSIBLE WAY for monsters to be immune it's fire lightning, ice (yup even the slow down), and phyical all in 1 whipin' momma of an attack. You would think vengance is hard to follow up you are WRONGO! conviction is a killer of a arua it takes resistance, and defence in VERY LARGE quanitys need any more be said? now the next skills are more like "sub-skills" not the best but worth thinking about they aren't worth maxxing but any experinced player can tell you they are useful (personaly I'd go for 'em but it is your pally not mine) redemption will get life and mana from the dead "redeeming" them with more points it gets faster and m DustmanD_EVIL Back to Top Lots of ppl say that thorns is all great and all, but it just SUX in hell. Here our some really good combos i find awsome -Zeal/Holyfreeze- Really good, slows'm down and speeds you up. Great advantage there. Invest 3 pts in zeal and 10 pts in Holy Freeze -Vengance(or charge)/ Fanactism-great for awsome damage and dueling. Use veng on physical immune and charge on magic immune. Max out both of these spellz.These are great, use zeal on quests and veng/charge on dueling Items Find a light saber or a cloudcrack, theyre really good (i use earthshaker and a cloudcrack, lightsaber is to hard to find). Get griswolds armor (its great for d) a hearald of zakarum shield (best pally shield out there) and... i dunno, a griswold crown.( who cares, just get one, but i use gris's) ur gonna need 105 str so dont invest ne more. For gloves i use a cleglaw cuz of the slow target. U may hate me for saying this but wait for my strat. While dueling, turn on a bow, and hit'm. Than switch. Now, u should have a sander boots for ultimate speed, and holy freeze. This way u have a HUGE SPEED ADVANTAGE (cept for assasins and sorcs (damn teleport) u should have 50 dex ( u wont need it) like 75 on energy and the rest on vitality ( energy all u need is a lvl 4 meditation.) have one soj on and one bul-kathos wedding band. For ammy, use a Mara's Kaliedescope. With all this, your paladin should be a forced to be reconed with. Patriarch Bounty_ProbeZ lvl 93 pally.v Back to Top Prayer is an absolute must. After leveling up a bit, it heals you and your mercenary pretty quickly. The best thing about it is that it is always on, even when you have a different aura on (they switch back and forth). I like vigor, just because it can really help out when running around large areas. I never understood just how awesome zeal was until I fought Mephisto. Despite my wench (the mercenary) being stronger than myself, he got killed in two hits. So I was pretty hesitant to go take on Mephisto. However, my friend (a Barbarian) told me to just go in and chop him up. So I did, and HOLY MAN, DID IT WORK!! I only had Zeal up to level 3 and I wasted Mephisto. He never got a chance to attack me, and only hit my wench once! Mazracs --Lvl 29 Back to Top I prefer solitary play, and as I don't currently have an ISP at my residence (don't ask), my adventures are in single player only: No Internet trades on Battlenet, no Mules to carry stuff, limited to stash/cube/pack for items. With these disadvantages, I thought it would be really hard to play thru all the difficulty levels. I was wrong. I have noticed that some of the people writing on your site as complaining that their "weapons" dont do enough damage ( people preferring 2 handed Mauls as opposed to single handed/shield combos...wrong: I own a Unique Sureshrill Flanged Mace, which, combined with Vengance and Fanaticism, does 823-1304 points of damage, per hit. That is nice, especially as I get the advantage of a shield. A couple of other assumptions that have hit the "wayside": Set Items versus Uniques. I had deaths guard sash/deaths hand combo for quite a while, and figured that was the best i could get. Wrong. String of Ears is the best belt I have seen yet. Etheral Items: forget them. They break, cant be repaired. enough said, unless you want to use'm until they break of course... Paladin Shields: I got a ancient-pledged Arakan Rondache. Make sure that the 3 socketed shield you find adds 12-15 % resist all prior to attaching the ral-ort-tal. I have had 5 "pledged" shields to this point, and its really easy to find those "simple" runes. Armor: Still working on a good combo. Had some nice socketed ancient armor, but that is currently in the stash. I am wearing Spirit Shroud, Unique Ghost armor, which, combined with string of ears, gives me 22 points of magic damage reduction. Looking forward to being able to wear ornate armor, as I love having a high AC. Overall, I am pretty happy with my situation: I do about 950 pts per hit, with an attack rating of 2500, a defense of 850, life steal, mana steal, I regenerate HP/Mana at about 3 points per second, extra damage to demons and undead, Max resistances (in Nightmare currently, I am dreading the -100 percent hell resistance loss...). Sureshrill Frost gives me a missile attack in the form of an (expensive) level 9 frozen orb spell. (at about 8000 gold per charge, it gets costly quick...). The frozen orb is good for large groups of creatures, especially those little no-exp maggot thingys that you find in ACT IV. Companions: I have had a Barbarian from Act V since I was level 35 (I played through half of Nightmare Act 2 before I got the expansion) "Gorm" and I have been together for 22 levels now, and though I hear that the Mercs from Act 2 are cool, I cant see myself getting rid of my "partner". He's got ancient armor, a nice 4 socketed Dacian Faulx, and a "cruel hat". He is nearly as tough as I am. Auras/Attacks: Fanaticism/Vengance/Zeal. Fan/Ven are the most important, in my opinion, as they increase attack speed, damage and attack rating by lots. Zeal is nice, but as it now limits you to 5 hits, the only advantage to extra levels is attack rating increase. I usually use Zeal/Fan against multiple enemies trying to surround me, like skeletons and mummies. If I can deal with them one at a time, or in small groups, Ven/Fan is the best choice. Redemption is useful in battles with Undead Uniques like KAA the Souless (in my opinion, one of the toughest bosses in the game, tougher than Mephisto and Duriel); as you can permanently destroy the undead (no resurrection possible). Salvation is good for protection against elemental damage as well as increasing resistances (useful against elemental force damage uniques and their kin... Diablo throws a lot of elemental damage, so this is a good example too). Cleansing is ok when you need to shake off a curse effect; 1 point in abilities that help get to Fanaticism/Vengance/Zeal/Redemption/; otherwise, unneccessary. Thorns, which used to be a favorite of mine, is dependent on you TAKING damage. 1 or 2 points if you have a weak attack, and want to use attrition tactics on the enemy. Concentration is ok too, as it is an important step to Fanaticism; this is good for a few points. Slayer Dark Lord Elric (L59) Back to Top a sper easy way to kill duriel if ur a low level pally is thorns. I cannot stress enough the importance of this aura.First get a merc and then have level 2-3 thorns. Just go up to duriel hell probably concentrate on ur merc while u hack away at him...sine he does around 50 damage, when he hits u it will do aroun 150 back to him! THats only at level three! At level ten(like i was) duriel will do 300 damage back to himself! Just have a lot of life and plenty of potions. Duriel will die after he hits u or merc 6 times if ur hitting him too. Let me jut add that people exaggerate when the talk about mephisto and Izuaral. Mephisto is so stupid u can lure him to the midddle and he cant reach u! Just have a iron wolf merc(lightning is most useful) and a bow and he wont even fight back! Izuaral might have a lot of life but with just vengeance level 3 i kicked his ass! It only took about one min to kill him...Afterwards i was like "that was it"???!?? MEPHISTO AND IZURAUL SUCK! Holy_phill Level 28 Palidan Back to Top There are a couple of effective paladin pvp builds but most of the better pvp builds i've seen generally use fist of heavens and conviction with a melee skill and a melee aura to balance out their attack. I personally would recommend maxing conviction, fist of heaven, and fanaticism while placing a few points into zeal ( only one or two and let +skills take care of the rest ), charge, holy freeze, 1 pt. into salvation ( again, let +skills boost ), and holy shield. If/when you have pts. left over, I would recommend placing them into charge or holy shield. Here is why I recommend fist of heavens as an effective pvp skill: 1) most effective attack against sorc, 2) keeps you out of range of wwing barbs and furying werewolves, 3) conviction will totally take away all of your opponents' resists. You'll run into trouble with zons, assassins, and druids at times because they have minions and fist of heavens is auto-targeting. This is when you switch over to your fanaticism and melee skills. Against druids, all you have to do is charge and run back a few feet and charge again. If you do it correctly, they can't touch you because of the knockback. Against the assassin, there are different ways of trying to attack her, but I just try to get a decent one handed weapon, get as much ias and leech as I can, and start attacking her in a leech/attack speed battle. Very fast attack speed is important against an assassin because she has bos which can block or hit lock anybody. Against zons, I can't really give good advice because to be honest, I lose a lot to them. Their guided piercing arrows are pretty hard to combat. Against a cocky, inexperienced zon, I sometimes charge in and hit them with fanat on, and then when i get close, zeal away. or i go with the convict/foh method. The pt. is if you die while dueling one way, try your other option. It doesnt work all the time, but once in a while, you find you can kill a zon that way. Against a good zon with a buriza, all i can say is, it was nice knowing u. Now stat-pt. wise, I would recommend no more than the low to mid 100's for strength. You can wear most equipment with this amt. of strength and if you need more strength, you can just get from your equip or charms. Some pally's go with the two-handed, no-shield route. I wouldn't reccomend that, and am a strict believer in the shield which is why I would pump dex until I have max blocking. The rest should go into vitality. Equipment-wise, it really depends on what's available to you and who you're dueling but imho, guardian angel is a must-have against sorcs. To give you an idea of a decent pally equip set-up, I'll list mine: Helm: Vampire Gaze, Armor: Shaftop (for melee) Guardian Angel (for resists), Weapon: Atlantian Ancient Sword, Shield: Whistan's Guard ( I would highly recommend Herald of Zakarum if you can get your hands on one but I haven't been able to find one yet), Gloves: Sander's Taboo ( for melee), Frostburns ( for when I know that I'll need a lot of foh's to take down an opponent ), ( if you can get your hands on one, I would recommend a venomgrip gloves instead), Boots: Waterwalks, Belt: String of Ears, Ammy: Eye of Etlich, Ring: Cathan's ( Need to improve ), Ring: Ravenfrost One thing that I find is important for dueling imho is politeness. If you win, do not rub it in someone's face, but just say "good duel." If you lose, take it graciously. Usually, this will help make your dueling experience more enjoyable imho but i do know that there are some cheating, cheap duelers who body-guard, steal money, etc. Try not to let them get you down. I've made a lot of friends in dueling games by showing a modicum of politeness and I actually got my atlantian sword just for being nice and helping out. just wanted to let you guys know that sometimes being nice can pay off =). Back to Top First put a lot of points in charge and might or conviction. Put charge in the left and one of the other two in the right. Have a tomb of town portals and fill it. When fighting a boss put a town portal scroll on your belt as soon as you see the boss right click on the scroll.Hit him a few times and go thew the portal. Talk to whoever heals you in the act. Then go back and do the same. (This does not work well on Diablo because he will put a bone prison around the portal) ant-lvl 31 Paladin Back to Top it is my experience that when using a paladin, it is often a good idea to stock up some experience points on the skill prayer. if you have a high enough level and can afford to spare 10 skill points to the skill, it will prove very useful in a pinch. it also keeps you from going through potions left and right when facing a tough adversary. good luck no matter your strategy Back to Top These people are just plain stupid dont listen to any of them. Some of these people are not even palidins and any body who comes here looking for advice u wont get it. Whats with this be good at one thing,or be good with another sh*t. Be a good palidin all around here is a strategy that is not retarded and i will kick ur *ss with it. 20 points into fanaticism, 20 points into zeal, 20 points into fist of the heavens, 20 points into conviction, use the rest to ur liking just have your first set of weapon your physical attack side and the skills for that should be fanatiscm and zeal. Your second set of weapons carry a scepter of some kind and for those use skills fist of the heavens and conviction and youll be ready for any situation lvl 67 Palidin Back to Top Hello everyone. Ive been reading this strat guide for quite sometime now. And Ive noticed that some ppl say that fist of heavens(foh) should be ur main attack while others say that vengeance(vng) should be ur main attack. however here Ive done a little calculation to show which one works better and in which condition. Uc 20lvl foh does 226-236 holy bolt dmg and 675-725 lightning dmg. Thats a total of 901-961 dmg. No matter what wpn u use the dmg will not increase nor decrease (unless u are using a +skills wpn). So foh is good for those pallys who die often. Its a good way to get rid of the goons that are surrounding ur corpse. as u can do same amount of dmg with ur bare fists! (the BIG problem with foh is if u find an immune to lightning monster then u'll be in SERIOUS trouble!) on the other hand with vng u'll need a MASSIVE dmg weapon to do even more MASSIVE dmg. for example if u get that elite unique war ham(cant remember the name) which has damage 114-228. with str and charm bonus ur normal attack dmg should be at least 250-500. and lvl 20 vng has +554% elemental damage. so that means 5.5x dmg of ur normal attack damag. so ur vengeance damage will be over 1625-3250! which is better tahn foh. so i personally prefer using vengeance. and oh dont forget the lower mana cost of vng.(20lvl vng mana cost 8.7, 20lvl foh mana cost 25) and also u cant steal life/mana with foh as it is a spell. oh and one more thing always use CONVICTION with foh or vng. u will rock! bye! hope this helped! ANANDA Back to Top This is for the pallys, when you get to diablo, be sure to learn fist of the heavens, holy shock and vengance, first, you weaken diablo with fist of the heavens, when he isabout to die, attack him with melee, on the left mouse botton use vengace and on the right holy shock, you will do a lot of damage, i have a lvl 34 pally that does like 80-460 damage with this combination, be sure to learn meditation too, because if you run out of mana, you may refill quickly. Back to Top first off who ever that guy is at frist saying pallys suck is a fool and cant play the game.look into zeal and thorns and get them at a desent level with consontrat(think this is spelled wrong) in good range. then any thing but converte. its veraly usless. SEPTIORS ARE GOOD! iv use these weopons on numerus acctions and they work fine. note on zeal and thorns i suggest that you have zeal on your left hand mouse butten and thorns on your right have thorns on a fnumber butten(ex. F1, F2) and have other good aruas in simeral way. i know im only in mid-20s but i have a vast under standing of this and a brother who knows most points of the game. if you wish to disagree im only to happy to discust this with you. flamindivil Back to Top First of all, most people dont respect paladins because at low levels, they're are worth that crap i just pulled off my shoe. My B.Net pally is level 90 and proud, and (gather round) I have a story to tell. Doing hell cows when i was level 60, a level EIGHTY (80) barb hostiled me, and I was about to quit that game but I decided to lose 90000 instead when I was to die. Well, it turns out, this big brute hadnt played welll and being 20 levels lower I killed him without using more than 6 potions. The way I won, was taking my time levelling, and being careful in trades and whatnot. As level 60, I had a unique ancients sword, a unique pavise(VE-heh-hery good), a rune word helm, unique gloves / boots, rare jewelry, and a unique belt. Get soe friends and get MF and winwinwin BRB Back to Top I didn't think that Duriel was hard to beat at all. I died the first time trying to kill him, but the second time I was ready. Here's what I did: with Paladin lvl 19, thorn aura lvl 7, and a belt full of rejuvination potions...ran right up to him and hacked away with a regular long sword. Hold your ground, running away will definitely get you killed, and in 20-30 seconds he'll be dead. Also you must use rejuv potions, since the effect is instant (I only ended up using 7 or 8). -olaff metal- 22 paladin Back to Top First off don't listen to people about thorns because it doens't work in PVP. It does about 1/10 what it says it does PVP. If you want a good paladin in PVP first off max out fantasim(however you spell it. This will make you do a heck of a lot more damage and be much more accurate ok now you got your aura you should always have on. Next You need to max out vengence this again adds MAGIC damage and a heck of a lot of it. Next you need to max out the thing that makes your shield better. Here's a little something I believe at level 20 it makes your shields defense about 450 percent more defense and 36 percent higher chance to block. With a heral of zarkulm yer defense JUST ON THE SHIELD will be about 2500. After that you can get whatever else you want really maybe a magic attack or THORNS IF YOU MUST ick. But you should really be using fantasim. Back to Top The Paladin is perhaps the most newbie friendly character in the game. He can already kick ass with few skills, and few skill means less complicated, which is why it's a newbie friendly character. Some people screw up with their pallys because they spread their skills too wide enough. Remember that you can only use 1 aura, so only choose and focus on 1 aura and 1-2 combat skill. In this short strategy guide, we will try to focus on some Paladin playing styles that is best or commonly used. *Skill Combinations Mostly I recommend you max. 1 Offensive Aura and at least 2 Combat Skills. You can also add 1-2 high lvl combat skills to support your character. Stay away from defensive auras since most of them suck, but there are some good defensive auras but still a waste of skill points. Here are some paladin skill combinations for you to choose from, these are the most commonly used: 1.Zeal/Charge/Fanaticism This is my most favorite type of paladin. With Zeal and Fanaticism you'll be the fast and furious, zeal hits 5 enemies with fast speed and Fanaticism raises your attack speed too, and both of them gives bonus to your attack rating. Charge inflicts a great amount of damage, and if added with fanaticism's bonuses it will be really wicked. 2.Vengeance/Conviction/Fist of Heavens This skill rocks and the most effective type against physically immune monsters and works with PvP too. Conviction lowers down their resistance and defense, Vengeance adds elemental damage and attack rating while Fist of Heavens is a range attack that have lightning damage. 3.Zeal/Blessed Hammer/Concentration When you engage with your zeal you get locked while bashing down enemies; And concentration works best with it since you will have a great chance to land an uninterruptible attack, it will also boost your blessed hammer's damage. Blessed Hammer's damage is magical so this type of paladin will work mostly on crowd of monsters, and physically immune monsters. 4.Conversion/Thorns This was once my favorite skill in D2 classic, but I don't know why they changed conversion. But still it is a worthy skill combination. Try having much life and fewer defense so enemies will hit you and conversion will try to control some of the monsters and share with them your thorn aura. So there you have 4 playing styles of the paladin there are others but I just shared the few and effective. On whatever style you choose be sure to max. all of the skills. *Add-on skills Add-ons are some extra/optional skills to support your character or help you when your main skills/playing style can't handle the job. 1.Vengeance Always have this skill, especially if your character does not have any magical or elemental damage. It will come in handy in times, especially when confronting a physically immune monster. Suggested slvl. 6-16 2.Smite This skill works great in PvP so max. It if you like dueling. Concentration and Fanaticism also boosts this skill. Suggested slvl. 1-8-20 3.Holy Shield This skill increases your defense rating, blocking and smite damage. The skill really comes in handy at times. Suggested slvl. 5+. *Stats As of stats Dexterity and Strength are the most important at 1st. But when you venture later on to nightmare and hell levels, vitality becomes more important. So I suggest you aim for a weapon/shield/armor to use and plan a strength score to reach. Strength 2, 0 after reaching the planned score., Dexterity 2, 3 after reaching strengths planned score., Vitality 1, 2 after reaching strengths planned score., Energy 0 For Thorns/Conversion Paladins, Vitality is more important, so I suggest you 2 in it and only put 1 on dexterity so it will not raise your block/defense ratings. *Items I would like to pinpoint the best equipment but I won't since most are unique and from set items, I will rather suggest what you should look for in an item. -Weapons- Damage, Speed, Attack Rating, Mana/Life Stealing. -Shields-Resistance, Skills, Block, Defense. -Armor-Resistance, Life, Defense, Sockets. -Amulets-Resistance, Skills, Life, Mana/Life Stealing. -Rings-Mana/Life Stealing, Attack Rating, Resistance. -Circlets/Helms-Skills, Sockets, Life. -Gloves-Attack Speed, Attack Rating. -Boots-Fast Run/Walk. So there you have my short strategy guide, hope you'll enjoy. And I hope I made my guide newbie friendly and clear. Quemthayil, Clvl 83 Vengeance/Fist of Heavens/Conviction Paladin Marcus, Clvl 78 Zeal/Charge/Fanaticism Paladin Valaith, Clvl 49 Zeal/Blessed Hammer/Concentration Paladin Back to Top Ok ... there are two kinds of paladins that one should make: the questing pally and the dueling pally. The questing pally should invest points into holy freeze, zeal and mystic hammers. If you are a dueling pally, you should put all points into either conviction and Fist of Heavens, or Conviction and Charge, or Fanatacism and Charge, or Concentration and Mystic Hammer. All of these are very good combos Back to Top Skill strategy--Concentrate on geting a max of any of these combos always max holy shield as well as carry a shield to use it on. 1. sacrifice, defiance/salvation - then get a combo desert mercenary and lvl him up for his prayer aura.(this one I like best) or you can add pts on defiance then max salvation/fanaticism although I prefer defiance. dont add stat pts to mana on this one, sacrifice uses life so its a waste of pts. 2. zeal, defiance/fanaticism - you can use a rogue/desert mercenary/barbarian on this one,you can also add to defaince then max fanaticism which is prefered for rogue/barbarian and be sure to stock on mana potions and/or have a 6% mana steal. do not max out on zeal tried that and once the target is killed it keeps missing the others 5 - 12 recommended 5,6,7,10 is my prefference. 3. vengeance, conviction - this one works well on a high level paladin but is tough in the begining as you have to conserve all the points you get to make a really good killing use scepters with the ff. skill additions: sarcrifice with life steal, zeal with mana steal for aura use the ff. as you get them--might, thorns, holy freeze. concentrate on one only if the scepter gives skills to two choose aura and combat but always pick one that give the highest pts to the skill youve chosen. hire Iron Wolf (any youre comfortable with) lvl that up you'll be glad that you did when you finally get conviction. to use stat pts. there are 3 ways to best use it. 1. use them to use the best weapons and armor and shield. you'll be glad of this when you combine it with defiance. make sure you have at least 2 to vitality for every lvl if youre going skill strtgy 1 and 1 to vitality and mana for the rest 2. for every lvl 2 to dexterity and 1 to the rest, the strategy is to avoid getting hit, if ever they do hit the holy shield will block it for minimum damage. 3. for every lvl at least 2 to vitality and a stock in healing & rejuvenation potions is my prefference you may not have a whomping damage & defense but you wont get killed in one blow. I know the goal is to kill before you get killed but since the average Paladin is not that good except against undead you might as well last long enough to use your potions and fight another day. fighting strategy--Paladin is a party leader not party fighter which means you bring the invite and decide the entertainment and advise the food. Just Kidding Really. Stay close to your allies and mercs to provide them with your aura. DO NOT BE THE FIRST TO ATTACK!!! Attack together or right after ally or merc or wait for them to come to you. for back stabbing friends and no mercs around break out the potions for a strike and run strategy. because there is no way you can match the more experienced players head to head. here's a trick use healing or mana and immediatley use rejuvenation you'll find you have the points from mana and healing immediately instead of a fast recovery rate. Stock on items which give you life. Back to Top There has been a lot of tips here, some useful some *not* so useful. Many approaches seem the same on the surface even tho they differ indepth. But no one has mentioned the Avenger. Im still building mine and at lvl 42 he is far from complete. The main strat is to max Vengeance and Conviction. Why? Well in the long term resistances on monsters will be a problem, whether elemental or physical, whether you ll like it or not. So this is for those who wants to have an easy time all the way to Act VI in Hell-mode. The stats will speak for themselves. At level 20 Vengeance does elemental damage of 184% with AR-bonus of 210%. But thats not the whole truth. It is multiplied in the following fashion. 184% (Ltng) +184% (Cold) + 184% (Fire) = 552% So, if there is a lightning-resistant creature, you will loose some percentage of you elemental damage (552% -X%), but still press home som impressive numbers (at least +452%). Built to last as they say. The perfect combination for Vengeance is Conviction. This aura lowers the defence and resistances of targets, how neat when you do elemental damage. Conviction lowers the resistance in the following manner at level 20. (-125% Cold) + (-125% Fire) + (-125% Ltng) = 375% more elemental damage Quite neat combo. And the result would be: 552% + 375% = 927% elemental damage And do not forget the -90% in defence that Conviction also offers. There is a lot of other skills to combine to this, the most important would be Holy Shield and perhaps something to compensate for the lack of crowd-control. The plus is a walking Paladin-Tank, the downside is the decreased abillity to handle large numbers of opponents at the same time. NothingSacred is the father of the Avenger, so I will not take any credit for it. I just brought the combinations to your attention. - Sammael Back to Top I ve been playing for a while on the expansion an this is what i did. 1. In act1 i picked up every thing even the annoying bolts and arrows, it gives you extra gold(+1 gold gets you closer to buying better items) 2. I noticed a person who said to put every thing in thorns...i definately agree!!!!! 3. combat masteries are good but a level 20 thorns will kill almost any monster in act 4 in 1 or 2 shots. 4. so far in my game i have been finding unique items easier than gold(i have 21 or so uniques!)so if you dont find anything great i suggest gambling or just waiting as you will definately get 1 through out the game. 5. if paladin isnt your choice here are some other ideas from various people i know: 1) for sorceress fire does the most damage throughout the game. 2) for amazon to beat diablo i suggest you use a heavy crossbow(rare or unique)or a bow and just hit and run! 3) for barbarian bash is the most useful move he has with a lot of mana you can use it all the time with leap attack as your second attack. 4) for the necromancer poision dagger is alot! like bash so its a good move to use in melee but if not an iron golim made out of armor with 2 points in while you are using amplify damage on the enemy will make short work of anybody, but remember to build up his levels and defence!!!! 5)druids are great allrounders so almost anything you concentrate on will turn out good. 6) Assasins with traps is the worst thing i have EVER seen in my life! paladin garion lvl26 Back to Top to start with if you are going to use a shield put your skill points on holy shield, if your like me who enjoys slaughtering demons with a monster two-handed sword then make sure you try to put your skill points on sword mastery. One of my favourite moves is holy bolt as undead enemies are put to rest with this long range move. Aura is also good for healing and recharging and very helpful when playing on battle net. The key to a great paladin is srtong healing magic and lots of damage. When playing on battle net try to get into a mixed party with amazons,sorc's and barbs this is a great combination as the amazons like to use spears and javelins for long range,sorcs are not as hard but are great on long range spells, well and barbs are just all out hand to hand combat based characters while paladins can acompany them with great aura magic. hope my guide helps. Deathblade,level 57 paladin Back to Top Let me first start off by saying that people really tend to overlook the Paladin. Though most of their skills arent really that great, some are the most powerful in the game and deadly when using a aura/combat skill conjunction. List of the skills and my words on them, stats are always shown at max skill points. Combat: 1 Sacrifice: I would usually never use this skill. It is handy in the beginning since you do not have a whole lot of life, and each swing costs 8% of your life(i thought it was 8%mana at first and it cost me dearly). But if you want to put a lot of skill points in it, make sure that you carry lots of healing potions and have a life stealing weapon. Attack rating+ 115%, Damage + 408%, 8% life steal(always) 1 Smite: Not a very good skill unless its around lvl 8 or 9 and that practically a waste of skill points. Its pretty good against andariel if you dont have Vengeance. This skill would be better if it didnt knock the enemy back just because normally they recover before you can reach them. damage: 300%, 4.4 stun length, 2 mana (always) 6 Holybolt: Probably the least used skill in the game. I use it at lvl 1 to heal my mercs but otherwise its practically useless. Damage(undead only) 122-130, heals(ally)39-44, mana cost 8.7 12 ZEAL: OH YEAH, THIS IS WHAT IM TALKIN ABOUT!!Put 4 skill points into this one and no more!!!When your surrounded by a group of enemies you do a little chop suey on them and attack up to five times.So if there is a guy in front and to the side, you will hit the front guy,then the side,frint,side,front. This is a very quick attack and boosts your attack rating. This skill is important even in hell. At LVL4: attack bonus 40% hits 5 mana cost 2(always) 12 Charge: not bad, usually no more than 2 skill points in this one. You basically charge at the enemy with great speed and hit them with great ferocity. Usually kills em to. lvl 20:575% damage, mana cost 9 (always) attack rating 335% 18 VENGEANCE: NUMBA ONE!!! Inflicts lightning, fire, and cold damage to all attacks, good attack rating bonus, and freezes the opponent all the time!!!Max this one out baby!! lvl 20 Elemental damage Fire:184, lightning:184, cold:184 (552% damage total) cold length 12.6, attac rating 210%. mana cost 8.7(use a mana stealing item, or use zeal until you come to a hard monster and then use vengeance. 18 Blessed Hammer: Bleah!! This aint mario guys. Sends a magical hammer at opponent. Max 164-168 damage, 150% damage to undead, 9.7 mana cost. 24 Conversion: Nope, just tries to convert a monster to fight for a meager 16 seconds. no bosses can fight. Max. 42% chance to convert,4 mana cost 24 Holy Shield: This is actually pretty good. enhnces your shield for 30 seconds for 35 mana cost. At lvl 1 anyway. time and effectiveness increases a lot. Max smite damage 57-60....220 sec. def. bonus310% blocking 21% 35 mana 30 Fist of The Heavens : Not too bad could increase damage though. Holy bolt damage 226-236, light. damage 372-422, 25 mana cost DEFENSE: 1 Prayer:Aura that takes mana and converts it to health. Not that great. i would put like 0 points in it. lvl 20 radius 32.6 yards, heals 21 for 4.5 mana 1 Fire,6 Cold, 12Lightning resistance. usually you will never use theseMax resistance 131%, rad 32.6 yards 6 Defiance: Good if your trying to get back your stuff if you die. max def 260% 32.6 rad 12 Cleansing: reduces poions and curse effects *sound of a toilet flushing, NEXT!* max 80% reduce 18 Vigor: never use, just put 1 point into it as a prereq. 24 Meditaion: increase mana recovery by a lot. Good if you have a couple sorceress' or necromancers. max:775% recovery rate rad. 32.6 yards 30 Redemption: Awesome i think. requires no mana. recovers life and mana. Assign it to a hotkey after a long battle and trigger this aura. Great in groups. i would only put it at maybe lvl 5. lvl20 : redeems 45 points of mana and health. 55% chance to redeem. You can also put is at lvl 3 or 4. But five is what i leave it at. Note: This skill is only for when you have points left over. 30 Salvation: ITS A MUST FOR BOSSES. at lvl one it increases ALL resistances 60%. BOOM! here comes the BOOM! Again, only put one skill point into, unless you have some spare ones. i would alterenate spare ones btwn salvation and redemption. (how you like me now) max is at 108 % res. OFFENSIVE: 1 Might : good at the beginning. raise attack dam. a little. put only 1 point in as a prereq. max 230% dam. rad. of 32.6 yards. 6 Holy Fire: How about NOT. very weak aura, 0 points max 19-21 dam over 16.6 yds. does dam every 2 seconds. 18 Holy Freeze. NOPE Just slows down enemies a bit, vengeance will take care of that problem. max 54% slow, over 16.6 yds 24 Holy Shock: RE: NOPE worthless. max 74-83 dam. over 2 sec. adds 1-153 light. damage to attacks. 6 THORNS:OUCH.Only put to like lvl 3 or 4( late in the game) when diablo hits you and you take like 50 damage, at lvl1 he gets 125 damage back. Only works on melee attacks though Max Damage returned 1010%(ouch) 12 Blessed Aim: I like it with conunction of zeal. almost impossible to miss the guys. Early on anyway.lvl 1 attack rating +75% max attack rating 360% 18 Concentration: Replace blessed aim woth this aura. Great spell until you get to fanaticism. max 345% dam 20% chance to be uninteruppted. 24 Sanctuary: Hold on, hold on, this is pretty good in the first two acts. no more than 1 point in lvl 1 150 damage to undead( they cant touch you, so if they get inside the auras radius they will take 150 damage points,) + 8-16 magic damage 30 FANATACISM: NUMBA 2; im just gonna give you the lvl1 and 20 stats for this one.Max it out though. vl 1 +50% dam, attack speed +14%, attack rating 40% lvl20 +373% dam, attack speed +35%, attack rating+ 135 30:CONVINCTION: another great spell,give you the 1st and 20th lvl stats lvl1:defense lowered by 49%, resistance lowered by 30%, rad. 13.3 yards lvl20:def. lowered by 90%, res lowered by 125%, 13,3 yard radius. (The kick in the butt is the radius) Good Combinations: Fanatacism/Zeal,Fanaticism/Vengeance,Conviction/Vengeance. Weapons:I find that you need a high attack. Thats all. maybe mana stealing unless you can find it on maybe a charm. Armor:Ac doesnt have to be high since they will be runnin away. Just make sure that you can run fast and long. If you find High AC great, Damage into mana is good to have and resistance buffers are good too. Shields:High AC Fing as many sockets and put Perfect Diamonds in it. That way you dont have to worry about salvation too much. Helms:Just a Decor,crowns are good and often have mag. ability. I know it seems weird, but if you find a helm with two dockets in it, put two perfect topaz's in it. This willincrease good item find by 50% and i made like 5-6 hundred thousand gold in like 3 hours from this. Or perfect skulls t for life and mana reg. Gloves: if it increases res. or whever Boots:Increases speed is good and stamina. amulets and rings: Whatever you know, if it helps it helps. Not much i can say. Belts: again, make sure that 16is max you can hold and if it gives you something good then you are lucky LOOK FOR THINGS THAT INCREASE RESISTANCES, LIFE AND MANA STEAL OR REPLENISH. Back to Top Many people have suggested focusing on a single aura because the Paladin can only have one aura active at a time. This is a mistake. It is true that only one aura can be active at a time, but once an aura starts affecting an opponent, it has a duration effect not unlike a curse. That is, if you turn on Holy Freeze and wait for a foe to turn blue, slowing him down, he does not immediately speed up when you move to a new aura. The same is true of other auras. So while you do not want to spread your skill points too thinly, consider the following multiple aura strategy. My current strategy is to turn on Holy Freeze as I move around. When I encounter an enemy character, I wait for the aura to turn them blue before attacking. Once they turn blue, I switch to Conviction and wait for the Conviction aura to take effect. Once they start glowing with Conviction, I switch to Fanaticism along with Zeal or Vengeance on the left button depending on the situation and weapon. If everything is timed right they will still be blue when the Conviction aura takes effect and, with a good quality weapon, most monsters will be dead before the Conviction wears off. If necessary for a particularly tough opponent, toggle back to Conviction if the aura wears off before you kill the monster, and back to Fanaticism once it takes effect again. Using Holy Freeze as your starting aura allows you to slow opponents down, allowing you to choose when or if to fight. It also gives Conviction time to take effect once you switch to it. Furthermore, leaving Holy Freeze on when you encounter a group of monsters allows you to string them out so that you can pick them off one or two at a time. To do this, when you first encounter a group of monsters, stay a safe distance from the pack, but close enough to let Holy Freeze slow down the leaders. The ones from behind will keep coming. Keep far enough in front of them to let it slow them down, and so on, until you have them strung out and only have to deal with one or two at a time. Switch to Conviction and continue as above. The beauty of this overall strategy is that Holy Freeze gives you the initiative. Conviction softens them up by dropping their defenses and resistances. Fanaticism adds to damage, attack rating, and speed. Zeal adds further to the attack rating and is your fastest attack combination when paired with Fanaticism because Zeal allows you to attack a single target multiple times or to attack multiple targets with a single attack (which is good for crowd control situations). This pairs nicely with the fact that you have slowed them down with Holy Freeze and dropped their defenses while raising your attack rating. Even better is Vengeance in combination with Fanaticism. Vengeance is a slower attack than Zeal, so Fanaticism really helps boost the attack speed. But Vengeance, while also adding to the attack rating, adds elemental (fire, cold, and lightning) damage to the attacks. So as before, their defenses are dropped while your attack rating is boosted, but now you are also adding elemental damage while their resistances are dropped. And with a good, very fast weapon, even on Hell level many monsters go down with two or three hits max. Another advantage to Vengeance is that it has a cold duration effect. So there is no need to switch back to Holy Freeze once you have begun the attack. The only disadvantage to Vengeance is its mana cost per hit. You need to carefully watch your mana bubble if you get in a long fight. But switching back and forth between Zeal and Vengeance can help here as can a good mana steal weapon. Anyway, this is my Level 76 Paladin strategy as I approach Baal on Hell level. Good luck. Jeff Back to Top I wanted to make a different sort of pally, so I decided to make a Sacrifice/Fanaticism guy. First thing to do is to max out sacrifice, this is the most important step. Along the way start getting the prerequisites for fanaticism: might, blessed aim, and concentrate. You also want to get the prerequisites for holy shield: smite, holy bolt, blessed hammer, and charge. When Sacrifice is at level 20, start adding to holy shield. At level 30 start putting points on Fanaticism, and occasionally add to holy shield. To help you stay alive you want to get life steal rings and ammys. You also want to try to get a life steal weapon, the Kings Grace (Amn, Ral, Thul). Life steal is REALLY useful. Lots of dexterity is also very useful. You need the best chance to hit or else you are taking away your life and not dealing damage. You don't need energy because sacrifice and fanaticism don't use mana. Holy shield is the only power that uses mana, but it is helpful because it gives you shield a great chance to block and it adds lots of defense to your shield. Currently my sacri-pally is only level 41 but he deals 450-680 one handed. He has a 75% chance to block and steals more life than he loses. This combo worked better than I thought it would and its very simple. Brendan and Dan Back to Top Hi young pally friends. I the all mighty (only lv 30... but im workin on it... workin on it...) pally that shall guide your future and rule all acts meahahaha! ... LONG LIVE THE PALADIN!!! ( not, he he he )first things first now im gonna bring this out quite fast so dont be shocked... PALADIN SUCKS!!! SUCKS I SAY!!! SUCKS!!! ... sorry but the truth is the truth. 'sniff' 'sniff' for those of you who want a terribly weak and insufficient char choose the pally... if you dare. a holly bitch who sucks like crap is not worth the time and effort all your doing is training a blind dog. ya get it? blind. dog. not worth. put those words together and think. think deep, long and hard. got it? if you want a fucking strong melee char choose the all mighty holly bitch fucking pally screwer plzzzzzzzzz choose barb for your own safty. dont make the same mistake i made. im trying to change your fateful future. i have a shamful secret i wanna warn you about... here goes. one fine day i was wasting everything in the dark woods ( just playing ) and along came a lv 22 barb ( i was lv 29 ). i was with another pally and he turned hostile with us! i laughed 'HA HA!' 'i'll kick your ass' i said. so he came through the wp... and fucked our asses REEEEAAAALLY GOOOD five times over. each! oh the shame in it all. i tried and i tried. then i had to launch one final assault. me and my buddy. two on one. 'AHHHHHHRRRRRRGGGGGG' i screamed 'CHARGE!!!' twas a furious battle took place in the dark woods. my once faithful ally betray me cause he saw we were losing so he left the game leaving me utterly deffensless and vanrable for an attack from the barb i used all the magic i could muster but still he came closer and closer until i was in his attacks destructive path i was all alone. no one to heeeeeelp me 'sob' 'sob' bad memories that will live on and on till the end of time 'sob' 'sob'. oh if you were woderin who won... well in my case i won... i left the game. oh alright! alright! he won! HAPPY? thats my shamefull story ( its true. every bit of it.none fiction so you belive me? ok good ). have i changed your mind yet? if its a no then dont come crawling to me when you get your ass fucked up a 2 inch hole for those of you who do belive me good on you, a wise choice. choose anyone but pally oh and druid sucks too just for the nosie. sorry this didnt contain much info but i had to warn you before it was too late. well ive stopped training MY pally so im not really workin on it. if i have anymore shamfull stories to share ill write to you. for now though its bye to the pally and hellooooo amazon. cya alan Back to Top hi you all palys out there. you want a kick ass player dont you? well i can help you. first stay AWAY from melee combat. if you wanna do melee, do a barb cuz barbs will always waste palys in melee with whirlwind. now you have to be a mgic paly to be good. i suggest doing 1 on all aruas except...thorns- lvl1-20 these aruas rocks when maxxed, 1010% dm return, if a barb does 500 damage to you, returns 5050 damage. all spare points go here salvation lvl1-5, who needs the rest of the resist cold/fire/lightning aruas when you got this, its better resist and does all at same time conviction lvl1-10 this arua is good too for dueling and end bosses and good when you have a sorc on your team. redemption lvl1-3 good when there are many bodys around concentration lvl20 MAX THIS OUT you will see why later now to the combat skills. holy bolt lvl1, blessed hammer lvl20, fist from the heavens lvl20, blessed hammer with concentration on does 600+ damage per hit from hammer, each hammer 7 mana hits about 5 times at about 2-3 range. your main attack. fist from the heavens + conviction is powerful. with a maxxed conviction on a object with 0 resist, FFTH does 2000 lightning intially with a 500 holy bolt nova. VERY good on duels and killing bosses so hammer kills most monsters while FFTH picks on individuals Back to Top I've been working my way through the ranks and within a week i have gone up 20 lvls. Thorns is great to lvl up cause the damage is a %: which means it goes up as you progress in the game. Another is lvling up Zeal and Might - Might deals, once again, in %, and Zeal lets you spread out your damage really quick. Last but not least, I stuck with one rogue, the one I was givin after defeating Black Crow, and have brought her to lvl 16. She does close to 40 damage a hit, same as me. Think about sticking with one rogue and lvl her/him up, giving armor, upgrading, etc... creepingthing3 Back to Top My character currently does about 700-1000 damage with bonesnap if you dont know what bonesnap is its basically a really strong damage maul good for duels. I originally wanted to make my paladin a sword with shield pally, but i was only dishing out 60-130 with zeal whuch really sucked especially since i could harldy ever hit anything. So now my pally has converted into a chargadin. I would not recommend this plan of action for a person who does not duel. So far my ive heard that is that the most effective strategy is hammer with concentration. I know little about hammerdins since i rearely see them on bnet, i dont know why that is but i suppose it is either because the strategy is often overlooked or it isnt nearly as good as ppl say it is. Either way i think you should try and think about this strategy that i am going to use on my next pally. For skills, just get these 3 maxed as soon as possible: Vengeance, Fist of Heavens, and Conviction which increases your chance to hit and increases elemental damage. For this strategy i recommend you dont take any of the increase damage auras, such as might, concentration,etc... Now i know what alot of ppl will say as an argument, well what you supposed to do until lvl 30 when you can finally get those. And heres the solution, get thorns to lvl 5-10. For defensive auras you should get any of them except meditiation and 1 point in the prerequisites. The mana regen is going to be very important when going up against large groups of enemies constantly. After you take all those skills then i recommend taking a few points toward vogor, or max out holy shield to get better defense. Now keep in mind ive never tried this strategy so i cant say im absolutely sure it would be good, but, from a logical point of view it would work. Its simple, vengeance is a melee attack that does tons of magic damage,combinded wth conviction it increases chance to hit enemies with vengeance amd increases the elemental damage, and, the best part is, it works agai nst any creature even ones that are immune to physical. The other good part of the strategy is using fist of heavens with conviction which would increase the fist of heavens damage by ___%. Too many times have i seen ppl who get fist, use it and think it sucks. Khinison- lvl35pally, Demisa- lvl61 sorc, Aeowulf- lvl49 barb Back to Top I have just completed Act III and it was a learning experience. I am a Lvl 31 Paladin and it wasn't easy. If you want to be successful at completing the last act you have to have patience! I can't tell you how many times I was killed.... My advice is this: Proceed throughout the act very slowly. Let the monsters come to you. Move a bit and wait. If you see monsters moving in the area you are about to move into, lure them out of the area they are patrolling and let them meet you at a place of your choosing which should be a narrow area that prohibits them from surrounding you. When you meet them in such an area, make sure to hold down the shift key in order to keep from moving into a wide open area (which will happen when you defeat a foe). When you move into the area where you will activate the five seals, move slowly and NEVER fight a battle when you first meet a foe. Immediately move back in order to lure your opponent away from their more than adequate support. This separate and conquer technique is the only way I have found to complete the necessary elimination of foes in order to win the game. I would suggest you first activate the seal immediately behind the center ring with the star. Be careful though because you not only will have to defeat the initial defenders but after the seal is activated you will find a horde of monsters with magic appearing to block your escape. Run for your life!!! Defeating Diablo was lengthy but not hard. I had many potions of full regeneration available and used all but two of them maintaining my Paladin's health. I used thorns as my special skill after seeing that my socketed flail, which had cold damage, wasn't doing much harm. I withstood his fire and lightning attacks by using regeneration potions and battling him toe to toe. I have read how you should run around him and avoid the elemental attacks but I really don't think that would do much good as it would take forever to defeat him without a constant barrage of hits by your hero. Keep after him with something that will freeze him and slow him down as he will be doing the same to you. The more concentrated your attack and the more often you hit him the better. Be sure and have a LOT of full regeneration potions and use them when your life is about 1/4th left quickly!! Sir Akamnaman Back to Top First things first...Whn you start a new game w/ a paladin dont use any skill points till you get to level 6.Once you get to level 6 put your skill points on throrns,once thorns is mastered(level.20)you can go ape shit and put points on what ever you want.When you get levels-up put 1-point one strength,2-points on dexterity,2-points on vitality and none what so ever on energy.When it comes to using what weapons and what armor do the following:-use any armor, any helmet, any gloves, any boots, any belt, amulets and rings that put up your strength, shields that are for paladins only. No matter what people say do not use scepters. When finish the second to last quest in the first chapter on get you supped up till you get to the third chapter amd get her to make a long sword pimped out.Hire mercinaries as much as possible in the first and second chapter keep a amazon with you at all times.Once you get to the third chapter hire a cold enchanted iron wolf and give him some kick ass eqiupment.That iron wolf your gonna keep with you for the rest of the game and will bail your ass out on most tight situations.This is what my paladin has: SKILLS:thorns-20, zeal-15, might-5, holy bolt-3, sacrifice-10, defiance-17. EQUIPMENT:shield-Herald of Zakarum, armor-Blessed Mage Plate of the Ages, helmet-Crown of Gargantuan, gloves-War Gauntlets of Spikes, belt- Coral Mesh Belt, boots-Goblin Toe, sword-Death's Touch Slayer Nick Back to Top I cannot believe advice coming from level 20s and 30s. Whats up with that??. First, all Paladins worth anything have both a strong melee and a strong magic attack. for example, a Zealot (fanaticism) with Fist of Heavens (Conviction), such as my lvl92 or perhaps a Chargedon (Fanaticism or Concentration) with Blessed Hammer (Concentration) like my 90. You low level players will realize when you get to High lvl hell OR when you begin to successfully duel, you simply must have both a strong melee and a powerful magic attack. Don't spread your points all over the place. You'll wind up with several fairly weak attacks and that is death for a pal. Pick a physical damage attack and aura and a magic attack. Build thoise only, plus holy shield to 6-8 if u are one handed. Whatever you have to do to get the skills u want as cheaply as possible (points into prerequisites) do that. If youve got 3-5 points saved when u get to 24, then youre doing it alright. You are the Party Leader The Paladin is a party player and leader of that party who must not only share his aura with others, but must aggressively and offensively attack those monsters in the path of his party. Your party members have alot to do with the aura you use in any given situation. Sorcs and all other party members doing elemental damage love conviction. Amazons love fanaticism and concentration. It absolutely jacks their damage and/or AR. Barbs like all the above. FOH and BH are great fun if you have a few meleeing barbs fronting for you (for once). Your best party members are amazons, higher lvl the better. A party of two hi lvl pallys and four hi lvl amazons make for lots of 2 minute cow runs in hell. Amazons will protect you as you protect them. Dive into the melee, hold off the bad guys and amazons will drop em like flies. If you want to carry a two-handed wep, you must be a Chargedon with a max magic skill also. I always suggest max fanaticism and max concentration both. I have killed paladins chargedons using fanat who were 10lvls higher than I by using charge and concentration. And I have been killed by the reverse. At some point, it comes down to practice and skill. Always, If you carry a shield, you must have at least 6-8 points in holy shield. And use it always! Also, there are status points that don't vary much for the best paladins, regardless of what skill you want to invest. Vitality Two of five thru lvl 45. Four of 5 to lvl60. 5 of 5 above 60. (You may want to adjust this to add dex between 45 and 60. this just gives a rough idea unti lthat range.) A hi lvl paladin must invariably have at least 3 of each 5 total status points in vitality. (My lvl92 has 1950 life). You will never have the life points of a barb, but you can come close. You melee, so don't die. this is how. This is key! Energy None. Zip. Zero for any pally required. But, you must have mana steal, but any pally worth a damn has to have mana steal anyway. Strength Two of five pts here up thru lvl 24 or so. Then 1 of five til you get to around 140 strength (maybe lvl 45 or so??). Then no more. Remember, you will need 185 for some elite items. These you must get thru other +strength items. Of course, you can always adjust status formula to add strength for a particular item you want to put on. This is just a guide til you get into that range or so. Dex 1 of 5 points here to lvl24. Then 2 of 5 pts to lvl45. Then, 1 of five to level 60. Then no more, unless you need +dex adjustment to wear item. Zuzax, Zuzaxone, True Zuzax, Roonsrus, Jeepers Back to Top you can only use one aura at a time right. so if u split up your points between auras your wasting them. pick an aura and stick with it(I suggest fanatiscm). that way you can then put the rest of your skills into a combat skill(I suggest vengeance) and put a couple into holyshield. Griff_Paly level 39 Back to Top Yeah for the Paladin Players!! Here's what I would try to do... Use thorns yeah yeah same ol stuff.... Vengeance and then use the lvl. 30 skill that is an offensive aura which lowers resistance (Conviction I think). When you do elemental damage and nobody can resist it its gonna help you a lot!! THEN FOR YOUR STAT POINTS At around lvl. 36 you'll want this! 115 Strength, 65 Dexterity, 115 Vitality, 30 Energy Try to get Strength and especially vitality up. I suggest putting some into dex for better weapons and if you don't want to use blessed aim because you cant hit anything Back to Top Ok first off for all you newbs this is form Shiny_dude lvl 65, i maxed fanaticism, 5 into zeal, and 20 into holyshield( which i must add is one of the best atributes a paladin can have ) Second off Paladins are ONE HANDED WEAPON HOLDERS and carry a sheild like helrald of zakarum. Paladins suck as a 2 hander. oh and let me set anotherthing straight THORNS IS ONLY GOOD IN DUELING. there i siad it thorns is not that great fo a move. first off who likes to get hit huh, huh, No ONE thats right no one and huge blocking shield with holy shield blocks more than enough and with some leech life your paladins a freaking stick. My paladin uses baranar star guardian angel and helrald of zak i suggest u take this advice into consideration AND YES BARANAR STAR IS BETTER THAN LIGHTSABRE BY FAR Back to Top Impt Skills: Holy Shield: (12-15) - This stat ROCKS! You shields de fgoes way up and your chance to block rises with it. A needed skill in HELL mode. Fanatacism: (20) - Again, this skill rocks. +dam, +AR, +attack speed - you will hit harder, more often and faster Zeal (3-4) - Get this skill for hte multiple attacks. I didn't get mine to 5 b/c equip adds to the base for me. Vengeance (15-20) - this skill is slow, and quite useless until HELL mode. In HELL the immune to physicals will whoops you if you can't hit htem, and Vengeance allows you to do element dam. Conviction (mine is currently only 4) - This skill is used to help out yourself and your party members. It lowers creature DEF and resistances. Now, back to the ability to toggle weapons. In your main set of items, get a hig DAM weapon and ofcourse a shield. Se the skills on this mode to zeal and fanticism. This allows you to killmultiple targets quickly, and whoops on bosses. The other toggle should be a high elemental damage weapon and a shield. Skills here are convition and vengeance. When you vcome across a phys. immune, just switch to this mode and watch their hp do far far away. Equipment is a personal preference. I use Atlantean (nice dam and +2pally skills). ALWAYS wear a shield - the blocking (since you should keep holy shield on at all times) is invaluable. Other than that, I wear +20% life leech, and +5% mana leech to help me along the way. Issatauf - US East realm Back to Top the lowbie level stuff like sacrifice/smite/prayer/might... and you know the rest are pretty worthless... just get your short sword and kill a buncha monsters... save up your pts... and wait for level 30 to come around... yeah yean I know it seems like a long way, but when you save up your pts for level 30 to hit it will definitely pay off... from my exp of making 6 pally's to try and get a better grasp of how to play them... zeal isn't all that great, I guess I should give you the down low on what's up with pally's.... well first of all a high attack rate isn't going to help, because of some fluke in the game, paladins who have a 95percent chance to hit a monster will more than likely miss 5out of 6 attacks against them... yeah I know it sucks, this is why zeal isn't the best to jump into, though it's tempting... like I said save your pts, and hopefully with items you find along the way you don't have to worry about putting many of your lowbie skills past 1... this goes for sacrifice, zeal, prayer, might etc... anyhow... this is how your skills "SHOULD" layout... COMBAT SKILLS:(your meager offense *cough) sacrifice(1), zeal(1), holy bolt (1), smite (1), charge (*** (this is a special one I will add to down below), vengeance (1 to 5), blessed hammer (***), conversion (1 to 5), holy shield (none), fist of heavens (***) DEFENSIVE SKILLS: (a bucket of lemons) this will be short... these are the 4 skills you need. prayer (1), cleansing (1), meditate (1), salvation (1) OFFENSIVE AURAS: (your meat and potatoes) might (1), holy fire(1), thorns (***), blessed aim (1), concentration (***), holy freeze (1), holy shock(1 **), sanctuary (1), fanatacism (***), conviction (***) (***) and (**) information: the reason I put up *'s up in some places is because these are areas to pay attention to. I will give you pros and cons on each skill... CHARGE: this is a nice skill that you might want to spnd pts on... it is probably the best dmg skill a pally has in hand to hand combat... though it only deals dmg to one target... but if you are trying to duel with this good luck you will definitely be taken down from a distance (special note: this does work well in conjunction with concentration). BLESSED HAMMER: now this skill kinda looks funny but it does help out a lot whe you beef it up, the pros: it does dmg to multiple monsters, and also can conjure a huge number of hammers each doing dmg... cons: it's mana costly and with out the right equipment pretty slow to cast (like all pally/din spells) HOLY FIST: this is an awesome skill that does loads of dmg but is raped in hell diff where all monsters are immune to lightning (not fire or cold or poison, just lightning). it's fun to use in conjunction with conviction... and is pretty useful against undead but once again raped in hell diff because of all the lightning immune monsters. the pros: it does a load of dmg to the other monsters. THORNS: this is a nice skill,but only useful for fighting one thing... a barbarian... other than that it has no real significance in fighting monsters in hell, but if you like spend as many pts on it.. it's good and it costs no mana to use, just remember range attackers seem to do more dmg and take no dmg from thorns. CONCENTRATION: this is a decent skill... good to learn because it helps in groups, no real downside to this aura, works well with charge since it doesn't add too much to attack rate... *HOLY SHOCK: I threw this in because it's a fun thing to use sometimes against newbies :) because depending on the level you have it at even with barefists you can do major lightning dmg... but once again the lightning immune creatures rape this skill. FANATACISM: very nice aura, amazons and barbs will love you for it, as for you a faster attack speed, higher attack rate ( bad if your attack rate is too high), and the one good thing... enhanced dmg. this is a great aura to use in groups with zons and barbs... like I said they will love you for it, also necros with their summoned monsters. CONVICTION: (the single redeeming skill any pally/din must have) lowered resistance (more dmg from spells) and lowered def (you can actually hit them now without using other auras).... this is a win win aura the necros barbs other pallys/dins sorc will love you for it... now for my reasoning... my reasoning is this, paladins are not a dmg class they are a run around and help others class (they stink at it but it's their life) USEAST Pala"din" Back to Top This isn't a great duleing stratagy, but it's great for completing the game. First ur skill points. Very important, decides if ur good or bad. Max out the following: Holy Freeze, vengance and or zeal, FIST OF THE HEAVENS, Salvation. If u max out Holy freeze, u can just make fun of them. Those things r slow as #@#%. If u want to get rid of enemies b4 they're near u, use FISTOHEAVENS. Than when they get very close, turn on zeal or vengance and womp on them. I sugjest getting a lvl5or6 zeal. Meditation and vigor may come in handy if u need to recharge mana and stanima. Redemption is a fun ability too, if ur close to being dead, but suddenly u get all ur stuff back. So any way, max out holy freeze, fistoheaven. Than get lvl 5or6 zeal, 3vigor, 5redemption. O ya, get lvl 10 salvation. Back to Top I have won many duels against barbarians at least 5 levels higher than me with my level 28 paladin. What works well is Zeal in the left hand and concentration in the right hand with life steal. I have dual cathans Seals 12% Sigons guard sabbot shelter visor and gage with 10% life steal and Blood rise 5% life stal The only bad thing sbout zeal is attacking lightning enchanted monsters with zeal once you click them you attack them as how many skill points you put into zeal. Back to Top I hate hammeradins and fist of the heavens they sux. The skills I use are vengance maxed 280% cold, fire and lightning dmg and conviction lowers resists and defence because u use mainly elemental attacks. Now i have a 5% mana leech belt so when i run out of man from vengance (8.7 mana) i use zeal to steal it back quickly. I might of used fana but monsters in hell have alot of resists. I think resists r real important. Items: unik helm def 200 with 25-40 all resist sept poison. Weapon: 100-165 dmg hammer, earth shaker Sheild: gerkes sancuary 12 all resists 220 def and 75% block. Armor: smoke runeword in 560 def armor result 900def and 50 all resists. Belt:5% mana steal. Gloves:somin with resists Boots: set battle boots really good Rings: 6 life leech and resists one (dwarf star) Amulet: lvl 67 2 to paly skills. icy_dragon kick Back to Top For the Paladin I have now all 4 offensive Fire/Cold/Light/Poison on level 3. This might come in handy, also against end-bosses who come at you with elemental damage. As for Offense Skills I only think I'm gonna upgrade Thorns to the max, since it rocks bigtime. OK, so you take hits, but you've got some pretty good potions for that!!! Zeal is really the most useless one, Thorn does the same in a wat, since when multiple creatures attacks, they all get damage. I even suspect ranged attackers get some too. When it comes to skills, think big, think 'how am I gonna kill an end-boss, or strong creatures. Zeal may be good with some creatures, but how're you gonna kill Diablo with it? Vengeance is one I too liked, but I think I'm going for max on thorns, since I noticed it's got some pretty huge damage at max. It return about 1000%. Back to Top I am reading through these strategy's from other people, and half of you don't have the faintest idea what your talking about, and most of you are around lv 20-it's rediculous! You can't give proper advice until you are at a decent lv like my paladin who is lv97, my Druid98 and my necromancer 99, not forgetting my assasin lv96- I know what I'm talking aboout, I could get to most of your levels in 10 minutes. My advice-max out fist of heavens and Zeal Back to Top I'm a level 38 pally just finished normal and i just thought id share some of my experiences ive had so far. Set yourself goals, say u want to be level 16 (which i reccomend) before u take on andariel, find a place where u get a heap of experience and just work there for a while my fav place is the maggot lair in act 2 heaps of cool items (check the end rooms) and a whole heap of experience. Second of all work on a couple of skills and get good with them. At level 38 i only use fanaticism and zeal. Two great skills but when put together totally awsome. Apart from that just keep the resistances up (fire is a must in act 4) and have fun. Slayer Deaths_Knight Back to Top I played D2 for the first time yesterday and was instantly hooked, so I came to explore what info is out there. In the General Strategy Guide, XANTASMIA has a mouse-breaking tip to defeat the Smith. Here's a mouse-friendly for Paladins to smite the Smith: On your left attack you might like to have zeal, even a low level zeal (I used L2) will do (zeal isn't essential but useful). On your right attack, have thorns: the higher the level the better though it needn't be huge (I used L6). You will also need a rejuvination potion, possibly 2 depending on your armour, and having Paige the archer is useful, though not essential. Here's the tactic: run into the room where the Smith is, preferably backing yourself into a corner (no, I haven't gone mad), or stand in the corridor immediately outside his room. Stand still and let the Smith hit you. The thorns will return a significant amount of damage, in my case 440% percent I think it was. This is probably equivalent to someone tickling you and you thumping them with an anvil. The Smith will hit you, ouch, but the returned damage is indescribably painful. This tactic won't break your mouse, though you may split your sides laughing. The reason for having zeal ready is that you may find yourself surrounded by other minions in which case you can fight back multiply. Keep an eye on your life, sometimes you don't need to rejuvinate (if you're not surrounded by too many minions at once) but mostly you'll need to use just 1. I also find, for newly created characters, this area of the game is ideal for building large amounts of cash and useful items quickly: I've made circa 60,000 gold in a little over an hour (admittedly I do have two items that are increasing monster gold). Use the way point to reach the outside of the monastery, dash through to the right hand side to kill the Smith (well, let him kill himself). After that, there are a few areas with other bosses who are reliably generous to my gold supply. There is a group of coloured skeletons somewhere in the middle of the level and a group of 3 coloured things with goat heads (sorry, don't know the proper name). They inhabit a room towards the bottom right of the map (though not as far right as Smith's room). This room has lots of gold lying on the floor. Use town portals and the game exiting and restarting feature to transfer lots of goodies to the merchants and your stash. You'll also find it's fairly easy to accumulate experience points too. Remember: let thorns do the work (though it doesn't work with ranged attacks). Galahad, Level 16 Paladin and rising rapidly. Back to Top For all the paladin warriors out there, let me fill you in on probably the best strategy. Prior to level 30, go for Zeal until you have the max (5) hits. Then max out your concentration. At level 20, it adds 340% damage ( I think). Also, don't worry about having to wear a shield. Even though it is a great and powerful thing when properly used, the best thing to have is a two-handed weapon. If the weapon is fast, go for concentration. When teamed up with zeal, you become near unstoppable. But let's say you find a slow, yet really good weapon, yet it's slow. Go for Fanaticism. It add less damage than concentration but is faster. If you were using Concentration with a fast weapon before that, switch between the two and see which is more powerful. You may find the seemingly weaker weapon to be more powerful. Im_Mokona Level 27 Paladin Back to Top I have maxed out ww and axes. I also, have maxed throwing. You guys out their do not know what you are talking about. It depends on how much you like the game. Challenges my fellow gamers, have the best pilum and throwing knives can kick ass... But I guess you all like the easy way out. Wussies.......................... Biohzard Back to Top Hi everyone. First at all, I live in Costa Rica so I dont play multiplayer because of the loooooot of lag, so this is a good Paladin for solo playing. I play Thorns/Conversion/Vengeance all the way. My Paladin is @ lvl 50 and have just beat HELL last night easily. Using thorns maxed out monsters kill themselves plus if you convert 3 or 4 foes you dont even have to bother in go to battle or gettin a lot of healing potions. Just sit and watch every single monster around fall dead. But as I dont like to lose action I use Conversion and then switch to Vengeance and hit the monsters one or twice before they touch me and kill themselves. I think an important thing is magic resistence, I have a gothic shield with crappy 34 defense but it has 3 perfect diamonds on it so its plain perfect to do the work. My Expansion Set will arrive tomorrow. Anyone knows if I will lose some of my items? Im mainly worried about my Saintly Sharktooth Armor (440 dfs). I love that armor. Back to Top OK i did this i put 5 on sacrifice so when i get a life steal weapon i can deal some damage to other chars while dueling and if i had a life steal weapon i would put sacrifice in left click so i can have my lv 10 defiance on right (its an aura so i dont gotta clik ) if i were dueling a sorc i would get salvation max or a good lv cuz sorc use elemetals (ice,fire ectd) and i would put lv 10 zeal or higher up on left clik so when i do hit those Bit**es i would damage well if i were fightin a barb THORNS its cheap but... and on left clik umm sacrifice if u got a life steal weapon but if not get a high lv zeal and hit there a** a bunch o knoback weapon with zeal is AWESOME !!! ahhh gotta go till next time -Relams-Keep- lv 53 Back to Top This comes from a level 41 paladin. Use a scepter or one-handed sword. because u have to use a shield! any Paladin only shield will work but any exepetonal unique is best. Do Not use any bone shield or necro type shield. they dont even work for pallys. Use vengaence no matter what and aura up thorns and salvation to 20 skill. No matter what any one on this site says charge is not a good atack in the least. It isn't incredibly fast and is usually easilly dodged. And last but not least level up fist of the heavens so you can protect against pk'ers or pk people yourself on the net. If you dont play on the net the only useful time for it is in Tal Rasha's tomb when your surrounded by undeads. 5 uses and your mana is gone so you have to carry a lot of potions if you want to have mana to use vegaence. So taake my advce and also pk low level barbarians so they can bite it! Back to Top Hello there. First of all I would like to say that at first I thought Diablo II was going to be stupid. But after playing it for a few days, I began to like it, and now I'm addicted. I love the Paladin's abilities, as I may not be giving any of these fast kill strategies, but I will give out some otherwise great over all defensive strategies. Right now I have the Angelic Wings, which makes your life replenish faster and more life total. Then I have Milabrega's Rod and Orb. Which boosts my Paladin skills by 1 and gives me a few extra goodies. The other is Treads of Cthon. The amulet and ring is rare, one adds skills, and the other adds resistances, poison damage, and on top of that, the Prevent Monster Heal, which is tremendously effective to even Mephisto! I maxed out Prayer, but it's at a level 23 thanks to the extra skills from all my items. It's really great when you combine meditation, charge, and prayer. Thorns isn't that useful, because of the need for melee attacks. I use a belt that makes it where I am immune to freeze and it has a few extra goodies, like mana replenish is increased by 35%. My Helm is rare, it has 50% more gold, 30% chance for magic stuff.. It's cool how every other monster has a magic item of some kind or another. My mercenaries last through the entire act, and my healing rate is so fast where every hit is replenished within seconds. I'm a lvl 29 Paladin and I play on the defensive, with a few attacks. Right now I love Zeal, Sacrifice, and charge. My gloves have knockback so I never used smite. My advice is that the Paladin is a very good character, for offense and defense, and both. But my first paladin took on diablo the first time and slaughtered him, I had the knockback, charge to a lvl 3 (which became a 6 with all the extra skills), and prayer and meditation constantly switching back and forth, it was good. I died only once in ActIV, and that was because I forgot I had meditation on instead of prayer when I fought the guy at the hellforge. Now to see that Cow King... Well anyways, my advice is this: Prayer - great if you want a fast healing if you max it out. Smite - Ok if you're cornered and need to run, but Zeal can clear out an army swarming you. Sacrifice - Good ability, especially since my life is around 300 and I have Prayer maxed out. A lvl 4 Sacrifice is strong. Charge - This ability is awesome, especially for the hit and run, or just keep running. What I do is charge until I run out of magic, which is hard with Meditation at lvl 4 with my stuff, or until the monster hits a wall, then I just keep swinging, run off, and do it again. I haven't really messed with all the other skills, but I do know that the combination of items and skills made my Paladin become very defensive and doing some real offensive powers. It really helps when your opponent sees you're 29 and easy kill, when he realizes if I run I can run faster and longer, my life doesn't really deplete, and when I attack, I poison, stun, freeze, and do a lot of damage, all in one hit. The Elusive Kai lvl 29 Paladin Back to Top Hi, I used to have a paladin that is evil-aura. He was pretty good but I found a mistake in him. So I transferred all his items to my new pal and started over. My new pal was still a chargedin. But he is in the d2 expac. The new patch made fant increase dmg more than conc and zealock has been erased. The Max amount of hits with zeal is 5 now. My new pal is using charge and vengeance with fant. Later I plan to get up my smite cause at lv 15 its 255% dmg and with stun knockback plus the dmg increase with fant it is good. Fant even increases attack speed. For the rest of the auras u still want 2 in vigor 4 in holy freeze 1 in salvation 5 in redemption 2 in thorns and 6 in conc cause ur gonna be needing it until u can get ur fant to a high enough lv. For attribute pnts it is muchly the same as b4 except more str cause theres items that require more that 170 str in expac. I still think conversion is crap and thorns aint that good cause its real boring and dont kill real quick. If u like it so much then u might as well be a nec or a dru. Resists r DICK cause u get salvation and u dont need resists that early. Or at least I didn't. For items:helm:Griswolds valor (set item) cause high def resists and magic find,crown of thieves for plus attributes and life steal, ammy:any good 1s u can find. I use 1 that is plus 1 to all din skillz and gold find with resists, Weapon:Griswolds Redemption(Set item) over 100 dmg with 40%ias or earthshaker(unique battlehammer) high dmg or schaefer's Hammer(unique lengendary mallet(elite battlehammer)real high dmg) i currently still use my old kings divine scepter with plus 3 charge plus 3 holyfreeze and plus 3vengeace, armor:Griswolds heart(set Item)plus 20 str 500d and 2 def auras, Guardian Angel(unique templarcoat)plus 1 din skillz plus 15%maxresisitall. i am currently using a 452 def embossed plate. Shield: sigons, stormshield(unique aegis(elite pavise)75%block fastest block rate resists but require 213 str, rare pal shield or griswolds Honor (set item) plus 108 def faster block rate currently i am using a rare pal shield that is plus 1 to din skills and 36resist all. Gloves:any good rare 1s. hopefully with ias and leeches, currently i am using rare gloves with ias and leech with resists. belts:16slot 1s with good mods like fastest hit recovery and def currently i am using rare battle belt 16 slots and high def with resists. For rings try to look for rare leech resist and magic/gold find things like that. i have leech resist rings. both r rare. they also have magic find and gold find. for boots look for 30-40% faster run walk. any new unique boot would be ok and so is sanders riprap(set item)40% faster run walk, i have 30%faster runwalk with resists and goldfind. some good sets for the din: Griswolds Legacy. its full set has +20 str +30 dex +150 life +50%resist all +3 to all skillz +200 AR. the griswolds heart (ornate plate) has plus 2 to all def auras. now for some strats: I use charge on all bosses except cold enchanted 1s cause it does over 1000 dmg. in nm and above many monsters have physical immunes so i use vengeace. Monsters r also much tougher in d2expac. some monsters on norm act 5 have over 1000 hp. thats alot and its enough to survive a couple of thorns. I finally deafted act 5 with the help of some friends and was lv 37 by the time i did it.(died about 6 times during the process)I had learned my lesson. I rushed too much and so when i went to nm i wen thru every little crevice of the caves and dungeons and explored everywhere possible on the maps. From my play time the best piece of advice i can offer is to explore everywhere. A good place would be lower kurast. u find lots of good items there. Exploring will help u get rich and strong. Dont worry if ur lv 30 and every1 else is lv 15 and ur in act 2. if they laugh at u than duel them. c if they laugh anymore. and also u can unparty go kill duriel and make them stuck in act 2. well thats it for now. Cya online! Level 52 BlessedMIGht Back to Top there is an easy way to kill diablo for characters with zeal and other attack speed enhancing spells and auras in which you wont get hurt much and don't risk being trapped. let diablo out and then lure him into a more open space. move up on him and start attacking with your attack speed enhanced and make the first move. after a few hits, the computer will always let him try to get you; usually with lightning inferno. the trick is to move out of the way as soon as your hits stop hitting, because this is usually his move. keep this tactic and you'll find your killing times faster and faster with every attempt. cchase - lvl 36 paladin Back to Top My personal way to play is, max out thorns - with alot of healt points all the monsters do is hit you once and fall over, I personally like zeal and max it out - my weapon is socketted with a bunch of poison, and I have a bunch of charms that add to poison, I do about 1000 damage 80% poison so hitting alot of enemies and letting them get poisioned is a big plus. Another bonus is the attack rating - 200% is a big plus ontop of everything else. It does get a bit limiting when your surrounded, but it helps clear out fast with thorns, just be ready to use potions. Throw in Conversion and your good to go!!!! (always have some form of ice attack to slow down people when using zeal - saves your butt alot) Tim Back to Top I´ve read all the strategies presented here and have to admit that none of them was really useful for my characters, so after doing some trial&error on some Paladins, I found a good way to create a strong and powerful Knight of the light: I´m talking about a Version 1.08 and Expansion-Set Paladin! 1.You will have to cut some fun by only putting one point into prerequisites. 2.Max out Vengenance! It does magic damage, so you can laugh about the problems a Barbarian has with physical immune monsters in hell. 3.put some points into zeal with a very fast attack rate weapon it kicks ass. 4.Get Holy Shield up to a fairly high level, it boosts defense a lot! 5.Get some points into Redemption, it really helps after Blizzard cut down the mana/life leech by 50% in NM/Hell mode 6.Main aura: Well there actually are two ways: a) Fanaticism (boosts your damage/attack speed/attack rate) or b) Conviction (lowers enemies defense and resists) I myself prefer Conviction as it really helps everyone on your team even your Sorceress, while if you play online and have a friend who is playing a Paladin, too, well those two skills together are deadly! Danath LVL:75 Back to Top I want to keep this short and sweet. 1.) Avoid the defense over great mods, at the end Life, Resistances and Damage are the Key Elements of a warrior. 2.) Don't get hung up on how bad your items or characters is. Don't have any mental blocks on how your character could be the best. Just play and have fun. 3.)And lastly, when playing online, make a few friends to play with at certain times so you can avoid all those nasty pks and moochers. Sir_Tyrael Back to Top i am currently a level 25 paladin, act iii, when i first started i looked at the skill tree and in the book, and saw holy fire, now this thing is so great, i just learned skills until this was unlocked, now its at about level 15. It shoots fire damage without having to do anything, i found when i get in a tight spot, all i have to do is run in circles around the enemies and even tho it can take longer, it will kill them all and still give u exp. (this technique works esp well with boots that increase ur speed and energy.) great for those skeletons and demons that attack in packs AfterGloF50 Back to Top I was reading Shaedin's Strategy guide and all he could say about "smite" was NO repeatedly. Excuss ME! HELLO! I have a lvl 20 Paly and I use nothing but Smite. Smite, used correctly, is not only great for offence, but defence as well. Even in the first couple of levels, smite has saved my a@@. Smite is truly usefull when you are about to be surrounded, not only does knockback providing a way out, but it does damage as well. At level 20 which I am now at, smite gives me that extra time I may need to handle multiple attackers. Here how to use smite: For one on one, smite your opponent with the first attack. Follow with two regular attacks and repeat. For mulitple attackers, smite each if possible, followed with single regular attack. Keep in mind also that sheilds have more durability than other weapons. If your weapon goes below effective durability, you can still use use your sheild as a weapon with smite. So I think he is WAY OFF when he says not to use smite. Tarnaak the Paladin, brother of Tarna the Princess. Back to Top Hey, I have a level 47 Paladine, and I have learned that in normal, it is okay not to have a shield (in fact I advise it if you ever plan to hurt diablo). I had a giant axe that had +66% (so it did like a minimum if 50), and I had fantasm to like level 3. I learned that without fantasim, my paladin was getting killed because he attacked too slow. Anyways, with it and zeal I did a good 100 - 250 damage per hit, plus I freeze people. Very nice for diablo because I had to swing at him about 60 times with zeal, which is like 300, and I only had to hit him about 25 times to kill him. After that I learned that in nightmare, you need a shield... so I gambled for a gothic sheild untill I got the one I want, and gave myself a 1 handed weapon. Now I have a pretty shitty weapon, but it has four sockets which are filled with gems, so it does at least 174 damage when I use zeal and fantasim at level 17. Now doing only 174 damage per hit, you would think I would get killed by andariel or someone like that, but I rip through them with zeal, and I have a 75% chance to block (with fantasim, I can hit them 15 times in a second, and I have a sword with a very fast attack speed, plus who I don't kill in one hit, I kill with a posion side effect, +120 posion over 3 seconds). So I would advise anyone out there who uses a paladin, take my advise, get up the zeal and fantasim, get a fast attacking weapon, and make sure you can put gems in it. Really helps to have freezing eairly on, but you will learn it is much nicer to posion people instead. A high blocking sheild is needed (at the least it needs 66 defense), and good gothic armor (Mine has 160 defense, plus I deal 14 damage to everyone who hits me, and I steal 10% health per hit). Also, make sure that you have a belt that can hold 16 items, and try to get something with high fire resistance (for diablo). Oh well, thats my advice for a good paladin. Diablo_Piatt - Lancelot lvl 47 Pal Nicholas lvl 34 Barb Chick lvl 16 Bowazon (still working on her) Back to Top My paladin is about level 30 and I just finished the Normal difficulty. For the most part I found that the best skills to use are Thorns, Concentration, Charge, Blessed Hammer, and Conversion. As for stats, I found it was best to beef up your strength to about 150+ so you can wear goldskins and stuff. I put a little into dexterity and energy and a fair amount into dexterity. As for equipment, find yourself a turbo-charged sword/scepter that also has cold damage, even if it's a little. The drop in enemy attack rate really helps. Get yourself a decent shield w/ a high percent to block. Finally, get some leeching equipment, especially for mana. Without further adieu here would be my strategy. 1. See the enemies. Think "oh crap". Turn on Concentration aura and loose a volley of Blessed Hammers. This should drop some of the enemies or at least weaken them. 2. Charge with Concentration still on! 3. Switch to Thorns and Conversion. Kill/convert some enemies and then run away! 4. Start the dance all over from step one PrinceOfAllMedia Back to Top OMFG. those are all newb strategies. Heres my pally strat... I like a good stand and fight in a group of monsters pally. I dont like blessed hammer, holy bolt, or fist of heavens.A good pally will stand and fight in a large group of monsters with out losing hardly ne life. I believe there are only 2 good offensive auras. concentration and fanaticism. Thorns is good if you wanna be a pker but others wise it sux in nething past act1. In my paladins the basic strategy is use the pally skills to make a good pally. The skills for a pally go like this: Sacrifice 1 skill point only for a requirement Smite: Same as sacrifice Holy Bolt: Leave at zero unless you wanna be a pker then you will need it as a req for fist of heavens Zeal: This is a good attack but i only recommend lvl 5 at most even tho this is a main attack until nm. Charge: A great skill for the big guys like duriel and diablo.I would put about 10 in this and this is also a good pker skill. if u use this skill with concentration and a high dam maul/ancient axe you will be doin huge dmg and will take duriel in 10-15 hits at lvl 25. Vengance: This is a great attack to get to a high lvl and use with fanticism. I wouldnt use it untill you get fanaticism tho because its kinda slow. 10 or so skill lvl Blessed hammer:0 Conversion:1 as a req Holy Shield: Great skill build as your lvl gets higher dont rush to get this skill high but at lvl 50 have it at lvl 6 at least Fist Of heavens: Good only in pk otherwise leave at 0 Offensive Auras: Might: 1 for a req only good in act1 Holy fire: 0 useless Thorns: Good for a pker but otherwise lvl 1 only good in act1 Blessed Aim: 1 for a req Concentration: This will be your main aura untill fanticism and for all bosses so get to lvl 10 at least Holy Freeze: 0 Useless(some ppl like it but i dont) Holy Shock: 0 even more useless Sanctuary: 0 useless Fanaticism: MAX THIS SKILL THEN USE WITH HIGH LVL VENGEANCE AND GOOD 1 HAND WEAPON Conviction: 0 but it could be a good skill if ya decide to use it. Defensive Auras: Prayer: 1 for a req Resist Fire/Cold/Lightning: these skills are your decision since salvation doesnt require them but i would get them to at least lvl1 cuz they will save your ass a few times. Defiance: 1 as a req(unless your gonna be a defensive pally) Cleansing: Same as the resists but ya should get at least 1 for a req Vigor:Uhhh pointless skill yet put maybe 1 in it for the hell of it so you can run when ya need to Meditation: 0 useless for an offensive pally with leech rings Redemption: 0 useless you have heal potions dont u? Salvation: Shit this is a life saver in act4 nm. and in hell then you wont have to use a pos gemmed tower shield an helps a lot becauze your resistances go down 50% in hell. get this to a lvl where you have around 70% resistances to all As for items....... Armor: ne high def armor is good Helm:Ummmmm......... Something that has high def or undead crown crown thingy. Gloves: Helps to get life/mana leech gloves which leaves your fingers open for something other than leech. Boots: Vidalas Fetlock or Treadds of Cthon Ammy: Eye of etlich or +1-2 skills ammy with primastic Rings: Untill you can get 2 sojs wear some life/mana leech this will get you through normal without losing nelife or mana. Shield: Sigons or SteelClash Weapon: Ancient sword with high dmg or a Battle Hammer. And aginst bosses a good ancient axe or Hummongous Giant Axe (33% chance o crushin blow) Belt:Bladebuckle, nightsmoke, or goldwrap. Now for your stat points.... Im dont like the pallys should have 1000 life theory. Str: 140 or so the higher the better Dex: 100 " " Vitality: 75 at lvl 50 dont worry bout it till you get str and dex up. Energy: 15-30 i'd leave it at 15 tho. not ne higher than 30. i think ive covered all of it. o yea some skills/aura combos are: Zeal and Concentration, Concentration and Charge for the big guys. And last but not least Vengance and Fanticism. This strategy waz for an offensive pally that will be able to stand and take hits w/o having ne def auras. If you do just as i sed you will doing huge ass dmg by act2! Duriel is no prob as long as you have good 2 hand weapon resist cold and charge. good luck Immortal-Pally & Asskilla Back to Top well hi people. i am a lv 74 pally and i just wanted to tell ppl what i think is good and bad. i've seen some pretty bad ppl out there and they get killed every time they try to go lv up. no offense to those ppl but they r just not really good. some of u might not agree with me but hey its wat i think. i mean zealdins. wat r those anyways. u should be either a chargedin or a hammerdin. i am a chargedin cause hammerdin costs too much mana. would u rather be doing over 1000 dmg with a maxed charge or zeal lock with maxed out zeal.conversiondin just plain sux. doesn't even sound right does it? i mean wats it gonna do to convert 2or3 when ur being attacked by 20or30? the only way its gonna get good is if blizzard makes it so that u can covert andariel or duriel or meph or somethin of that sort. vengeace is ok but id ont use it a lot cause of low ar and low dmg compared to charge. holy shield is also good but it costs too much mana which is why u might want 1 in meditation. 1 good way to start a battle is to use holy bolt than use med and wait for ur mana to regenerate which shouldn't take more than 10 sec. than charge into the fray. holy bolt and fist of the heaven is pretty much useless and i think u will agree with me on that. sacrafice is good on the beginning of the game if u can fine a life leech but it can result in ur own death if ur not careful on how ur using it. now on to auras. the best offensive aura in my opinion is concentration. it increases dmg by so much it can take u into the 1000 dmg area if u doing it with charge. holy fire is stupid as is might, blessed aim, and sanc. Holy freeze and holy shock r ok. they re pretty good. now for thorns. i know most of u would max it out but i think maxing it out is just a waste of skillz. i mean lv20 thorns is gonna do nothing to a monster in hell and they will still kill u. u should still put 1 skill into it for stincky situations. fant is pretty good with increassed dmg, ar, and attacks speed. now for defensive auras. prayer is just plain stupid. an aura that costs mana...? dont get any resists cause they wont help much. better to get resist items. defiance is ok but i dont suggest putting a lot into it. better to get high defense armor and shield. cleansing is not good at all. u can put 1 into salvation 1 at least 5 into redemption and 1 into meditation and 2 into vigor. med used to suk but now blizzard made it much better by doing 325% MANA recovery rate at only lv 2. now i know most of u will disagree with me about putting even a single point into vigor but when ur getting chased by thos big mean nasty things, the first thing u'll want to do is run. in act 2 some of those sabre cats run faster then me with fastest run/walk boots but not near as fast when i use vigor. now for items. i suggest geting a rare ornate plate for armor. a rare grand crown for helm or tarn. a rare fastest run/walk boot or treads of cothon/terahunch. for gloves get any thats good . for belt get 1 that holds 16 potions and has good mods. u can either have a 1-handed weapon or a 2-handed. i suggest getting a 1-handed with a sigons guard/steelclash. if u want a 1 handed weapon look for a good sword that has leech a good rare battle hammer with leech and high dmg or a good scepter with plus skillz that u like. i have a high dmging divine scepter with plz 3holyfreeze plus 3charge and plus 3vengace. for rings get 1s that have leeches and resists. same for amy and maybe a plus 1 to al skill. for attribute points u should get str to at least 170 so u can wear a n ornate plate. then u get enough dex to wear all ur items and things like that. i suggest 110 there. stuff the rest into vitality for him life so u'll live longer and u dont need any mana. my final skill points would look something like this: sacrafice:2 smite:2 holy bolt:2 zeal:3 Charge:max vengace:4 Blessed Hammer:2 Conversion:0 Holy Shield:max Fist of the Heavens:0 Might:2 Holyfire:2 Thorns:3 Blessed Aim:2 Concentration:max Holy Freeze:6 Holy Shock:0 Sanc:0 Conviction:0 Prayer:2 Resist Fire:0 Defiance:2 Resist Cold:0 Cleansing:2 Resist Lightning:0 Vigor:3 Meditation:2 Redemption:7 Salvation:2 i have 2 skill points in some of the crappy skillz cause i have sigons which gives me plus 1 to skill lv to all skillz. attribute points:str175 dex:110 vitality:rest energy:10 at this point my skillz is same as it is gonna be when its all done execpt i need to get more on holy shield and perhaps get some more on other helpful skillz. thx for listening, P.S. chargdins r the best XxeViL-aRuAxX U.S West realm Back to Top When using the Paladin, the best skill to build early on is the shield smite. This gives you the ability to paralyze enemies by bashing them with your shield. After you've built it up a couple of levels, you can get out of a jam easily when you are completely surrounded. By bashing everyone around you and paralyzing them all, you can walk out of any situation without being touched, and work on the enemies one at a time while the rest are recovering. This skill is very useful on the nightmare level also, when you tend to get surrounded be enemies all the time. Sir Gilgamesh level 29 Back to Top I dont know about the rest of you, but all I do is put 18 pnts to might then 1 to blessed aim then i max out concetration and i do like 350+ in melee with just about any exceptional weapon at level 31, and i dont play on the net. My stats are 120 str 50 dex 15 energy and then everything else just goes into vitality. This works well except vs lightning enchanted guys, but all i do is kill everyone around them and then they are easy to kill, just that you lose hps. I just beat andariel in nm on my closed char at home with no internet acess, and i use a runed brand warhammer that is knockback, so i hit her run to her hit her and she cant even move because i hit her and knock her back and she dies in the lag. Knock back weapons and concetration own basically. I dont know what will happen later on however. Morgoth/Bigdukesix/Kosh Back to Top Yeah, I started D2 as a Paladin and they kick ass! My skill evaluation went like this Might: Nice for act one, but you should only put a point to get to Blessed Aim. Blessed Aim: Again, one point to get to Concentration. You should build Dexterity to juice up your accuracy. Concentration: Good! Very good! Useful combo with Charge. Barbarians will be your friend for this one. Thorns: Awesome! Might save your ass once or twice when you get surrounded. Put as many as you want. Holy Fire/Freeze/Shock: Shock and Fire suck. You can use Freeze to slow enemies down while you make a get-away. Or you can slow them so you can double back and Charge their asses! Sanctuary: Garbage aura! Only useful if you like battling Necromancers. Otherwise, it's use is limited. Fanaticism: I didn't like this aura because I tended to use swords. Unless you have a big ass weapon like a polearm, avoid this one. Conviction: Wouldn't hurt to have a point or two. Prayer: Put at least 3 or 4 points. That way you can heal up between battles. It takes forever though. Resist Fire/Lightning/Cold: So-so. Beef up your resistances with items instead. Defiance: 1 point only! Use this aura to approach missile-weapon-wielding demons! Cleansing: I'm not so sure about this one. When you get cursed, you can always run away so the curse can leave. Vigor: Stamina should never be a problem. Period. Meditation: Unless you use projectiles like Hammers as your base strategy, avoid this one. You might have a girlfriend in the Sorceress though. :) Redemption: Sweet! Awesome for single player, but Necromancers will have beef with you for swiping their corpses. Salvation: I prefer to beef up my resistance with items. Sacrifice: Crazy bonus! If you have a leech sword or what-have-you, it's all good! But Zeal is better for me. Smite: It's fine, but I love Charge. If you do use this, give it the whole twenty points. Paired with Holy Shield and a turbo-weapon, it's killer! Holy Bolt: A point so you can get to Blessed Hammer. Limited usefulness against the undead. Zeal: Crowd control skill! Don't overdo it. Just until level 3. Charge: My favorite! Crazy attack bonus! You can use Concentration, then Charge and switch to Thorns while using a melee skill like Sacrifice or Zeal. Then you can switch to Freeze and double back on them! Vengeance: I put a point to get to Conversion. Just get a freezing weapon. Even a +1 Cold damage is fine. Blessed Hammer: Whoa! Hammer Time! Fine with Concentrate! Scratch that, killer! Conversion: Charge in, convert and slap on Thorns and watch the bodies pile up! Holy Shield: I guess it's all right. But since I was beefing up Charge, no need to use Smite with this. Fist O' the Heavens: Naah. Hammer is better. As for equipment, find stuff that will build up your resistances. A Cold damage sword is good. And always have a one-handed weapon with a shield. It's nice to have the phat damage of a larger weapon, but your defense would suck. Back to Top I've done charge Pally, thorns/conversion, zeal....all of these have limited success but stink for the mostpart. You want a good pally, you gotta go blessed hammer / concentration. With hammer and concentration at around lvl24, you'll be doing 1100damage. I've put just 20hours into my paladin, and he's lvl38. I believe paladins to be the best character between lvl20-40 ... (barbs too good at lvl40+) How to spend stat points: STR - get to 75 for tower shield requirement. DEX - NOTHING! (defense / attack rating are useless to hammerdin) ENERGY - put to energy only if absolutely necessary. 300+ mana should be plenty...this 'can' be accomplished with adding to energy VIT - everything else goes here. 3hp/pt is nice. How to spend skill points: put 1 to the prereqs for hammer and concentration. you will stockpile a lot of skill points, but don't worry, you'll need them at lvl18. Spend 1 to Blessed Hammer and Concentration each lvl up from lvl18-38. After this, nothing is really too useful, it's your choice. Charge is good if you can get a good +2scepter with good damage and 'ignore target defense' (also nice for duels). Holy freeze is nice to switch to for fleeing tough situations. I suggest lots to holy shield (unless you use twitchtoe) with your 3d tower. Key holy shield lvls (+% block): lvl6 = 16%, lvl8 = 17%, lvl9 = 18%, lvl11 = 19%, lvl13 = 20%, lvl16 = 21% (max) Equipment: -similar to necro/sorcs -tarn / frosts / sojs / dual fastest boots / nightsmoke or nice rare belt /+skills ammy -get a +2scepter with +BH / +Conc / fastest cast (shops can sell nice scepters) -try to get as much high +mana equip as you can....you don't want to have to put stat pts to energy -sigon's guard is best shield for normal diff and act1&2 in nightmare/hell diff. other than that you'll have to use a 3-d tower shield...use twitchtoe or holy shield to max your blocking (75% - very important) Back to Top High level paladin Dueling strategy For all those who think it is best to duel in act 1, you are wrong, get your conversion up to a very high level, and then challenge someone to a duel in act 4, Go into river of flames or outer steppes, and convert as many monsters as possible, then activate blessed hammer. Watch as the monsters converge on your opponent, and you fire blessed hammers at him/her. Also have concentrate on for improved accuracy. If more monsters arrive, convert them too. -MetalWarPaladin Back to Top I have a 32 level Paladin and he can't die:). First put some points on Zeal,not more than 6-7, and some points on Thorns and Concetration.This is the best strategy for the begining.Than put some points on Charge and Venegeance (for the big bosses). Use Charge with Concetration. If you put on the both about 8-10 points you will make a BIG damage.If you haven't any items with resistances for the bosses with elemental damage use Salvation.You can also put some points on Holy Freeze.Also useful is often to recharge your shield with Holy Shield,put more points for more duration and defense. Bloody-the Holy Paladin Back to Top Here's my stragedy for my lvl 70 paladin: 1st: stats. For my paladin you don't need alot of defense since your offense is your defense for this particular paladin. You need only 100 str so you can wear silks or goldskins. dex should be left at base. ALL extra pts besides the pts u put in2 str and the 60 pts u put in2 mana should go in2 vitality. A silly and wonderful sideeffect of this is that you end up with TONS of health. 2nd:Skills. You want to max concentration and blessed hammer as soon as possible. Also you want to get as many + skills items as you can and a good sceptor with + skills, and + to bh and concentration (those r hard to find). My BH dmg is over 1200 right now and i have over 1000 base hps and a mana pool over 400 with mana boosting items (1 stone, frostburns, + mana/resists/fastcast ring). Your secondary attack is Smite. Some say this skill sucks but look at it this way. you max smite, grab a good barbed sheild, and max holysheild. use holysheild and it'll last a long time...switch 2 smite on left ability and concentration on the right side and you can do between 700-900 dmg with NO DEX REQUIRED!!! 95% chance to hit all the time with thatmuch dmg.....AND fastest attack. This is how my paladin is going and i must say it sometimes gets boring but its very sucessful in hell/hell. Steve Back to Top Good skills and equipment for Zealadins (Palidins that use Zeal): This is a challenge with Zeal whence you get to nm and Hell Zeal: only get this to level four id to high you will get sloughtered but if you use fanticism get it to level eight no more or you will die in 5 senconds in hell Fanticism: if you use this get this to level 20-31 its extremlly good you MUST get 26% life steal in hell or your toast Concentration: this is ok for hell not the best and i do not reccomend it Vigor: this is ok very good for running just equip to escape from monsters by using the F buttons Stats: I highly reccomned when you get to hell/hell that you have at LEAST 1000 life it is very important! You dont need that much mana only get energy to 30, Stenght highly important you should have 126 so you can use anceint swords. Dexterity 100 thats what you need to hit the monsters! Equipment: 3 dimonds in a soketed pavise or tower sheild, Goldskin, two Skull Grasy rings ancient sword very fast attack speed and 11%life steal, Sia's gloves or hands of Broc fastest run boots with mf and prismatic Undead Crown High life/Mana steal ammy thats all i have for you this is only for the more more experienced people zealidins beacouse of the dificulty. Level 74 Zealadin Death-Scyth (On closed b.net Back to Top #1 Zeallocks Or Zealidins Choice in Skills.(PALIDIN STRATEGY) The VERY welly skills. Smite- this is the most pathetic thing ive ever Had! dont waste one skill on this unless persqurments for Charge Holy-Fire- very usless weak damage (EVEN for ACT1 NORMAL!!!!) very pathetic Holy-Shock- Better then Holy fire but this will screw you up with its welly damage There are a few other welly ones too watch out from those The OK Skills. Might- nice damage + do not increase from level 1 because all it does is improve range for allies very nice for beggining Prayer- nice if at high level it will save you butt several times if at level 20 beacause it heals 21 about every 3 seconds Thorns- well very good for act 1 because there is no magic guys but in act 4 it will not save your life Fantisism-actually good at level 20 in hell beacause you will use zeal so quikly and beable to escape Conviction- nice for diablo actually really nice so those sorceress and necro's can do that addition of damage even you but if you want only you improved use concentration. The Very good skills. Charge-good for hitting those long range loser's like oblivion knights (a zealocks worst nightmare) Zeal- Very good but its a deadlock at level 6 and above or beware and level one if getting skills + Lee Back to Top Hey there, all you aspiring paladins. I have a level 34 paladin, and he is kickin' it. I use charge (level 5) and concentration (level 12) mostly. Right now I do 656-1016 damage with my 145 damage ancient axe. If there are a crap-load monsters, I use hammer (level 5). With charge and conc, it is sooooo easy to kill anthing you can knock back. The exra fast, extra strong, lightning enchanted Treehead Woodfist in nightmare was easier for my paladin than any of my other 5 characters over 30. Also, the Smith and Heapheasto, both of which are massively difficult for other classes, are very easy for my pally. Currently I am putting a few points into freeze and redemption. Freeze for PK and redemption to give me some life when I'm low on potions. I also have a 158 martel waiting for when I get enough strength. I did a few calculations, and, in theory, it is possible to do over 6,000 points with 20 conc, 20 charge and a nice, high damage weapon. I can't wait to see how this pally turns out. --Avogadro (*kharnan) Back to Top I think that charge is really cool in combo whith concentration as i am only level 20 and do around 600-1000 damage and have made many high level people weep as i maul them whith bonesnap and take their gold. The best stratagy is to use smite to stun them then charge them if ur weapon is not great, but that is not relevent if u have an awesome weopon. seeya rouun closed- Demon-stalker Back to Top I've tried many combination of skills and skills points on Paladin. I would like to share: 1. My survival paladin 40 lv. Seeking for survival in the game, go for every aura that can protect him. Zeal + life steal stuff + concentration + cold att can easily pass through very quests in Normal, become difficult in NM unless get over 70 dmg one hand weapon can change the conditions. Can't do it in Hell unless you can get over 200 dmg one hand weapon (I can't find one) or change your plan . (shield is important). And should be escaped from PK guys. 2. Seeking for the champion. Select your main attack skill and stick on it. 3. My Charge paladin 56lv is 350-1000 dmg, (charge+concentration) 91% att rate on 56lv monster. While he was in 45lv, the dmg was 250-900. Both are with 85dmg one hand weapon. The combination is as following: Charge + Concentration with few points on holyfreeze (for escape and lower the actions of monster or other players). Charge is great but only 20 lv is a regret. To only max charge can make paladin unbeatable even in low lv and this setting is good to kill bow Amazon. With 25% to kill 70lv Amazon while in only 45lv. To defend can use items to add resis & defend & quick recovery since each point on charge can increase 25% dmg & 15% att rate. The char points are distributed to life, dex (increase attack rate), strength and some on mana. 3. Into the hell stage, adding some points on convert (the increase rate are not worth to put more) and holy shield (you can activate it easily so save for other one skill). And to select either strategy: concentrating on hammer is for killing monsters or concentrating on throne is for PK purpose. *in high lv, over 50lv, brb is always in better position when PK. Since it can increase dmg with passive skill. stevendragon Back to Top I am a level 48 paladin, my maximum attack is 1255 right now and I only have concentration up to level 16. I have had four paladin previous to this one and I have decided that they are the best close combat character. My previous paladin HF_HolyInferno was nearly perfect. I now have the perfect paladin. In my time playing I have learned some things that are the basis for an unbeatable paladin. First you must only put your natural strength (strength without assistance) up to 170, next you must only put you natural dexterity up to 88. The rest of your ability points must be used on vitality. For your skills there is a lot of skill saving involved so you have to be patient. Your skills must first be put on the required skills to receive the skills that you want. You must put up Smite, Sacrifice, and Might up to level 1. Save the rest of your skills until level 6 when you put Holy Bolt up to level 1, continue to save your skills until you reach level 12 when you put Zeal and Blessed Aim up to level 1 (Zeal is an important attack at a low level, it isn't a required ability but I suggest you put it up). Save your skill now until you reach level 18, you need to put Blessed Hammer up to level 1 right now, now you will put up your main attack abilities, Charge and Concentration, up one at a time. When you reach level 24 put all of your skills towards Holy Shield until it reaches level 16 (I suggest that you have Sigons Shield when you use Holy Shield). When you have Holy Shield up to 16 you get the most percent chance to block bonus possible (if you have holy shield you will have 95 percent chance to block!). Now that you have Holy Shield up to level 16 put Charge and Concentration up to max. If you have reached act four in the Hell difficulty you should have Charge and Concentration max at level 51. After they have been maxed put up Blessed Hammer until it is mated out. You will have Blessed Hammer maxed at level 71, after that I suggest that you put Holy Shield up the rest of the way until you reach 76 when it should be maxed out. You now have 13 extra abilities that you can put on whatever you want. With these abilities by the time you reach level 71 you will Charge into battle and use Blessed Hammer to destroy them. HF_Absolution Level 48 Paladin Back to Top **For the MONSTER FIGHTING PALADIN not the DUELING PALADIN** 1. just max out thorns, raise conversion up to 40% conversion chance, raise your life up to 800, and you're set!!!... 2. next if you wanna be the best you can be... upgrade consentration and sacrafice. both oras together and maxed with a good one handed sword(118 damage), you will take away around 2000 per hit! when you use Sacrafice you will need lot's of life, as it drains you're life every time you hit an enamy. eventually you'll want to find, a leach ring such as (Skull Grasps -level 46 required) enabling you to leach mana and life per hit. Canceling out, and even gaining life over the natural drain of sacrifice. upgrade to this -- life= 900-1000, dex= 118, mana= 0, strngth= 170 you will have left over upgrades, eventually adding it to life will make you even more unstopable, but you can do what ever you want after this... also the best items in the game you can shoot for with this pala are: -2 Skull Grasps rings -one Gemmed(perfect diomands) Pavis or Tower shieled ~a strong one handed sword (118 damage) ~boots are up to you and aren't as necessary ~gloves are up to you and aren't as necessary ~ belt amulet,& helm r up to you and aren't as necessary ~an ornate armor with 800+ deff of attributes up to you yeah I'm a diablo2 freak with to much time on my hands unfortunately, and this is the best pala for fighting monsters as well as main bosses, AVAILABLE trust me, you'll need all the necessary items and upgrades I said in here to be the best! it may get tuff at time, but save you level upgrades, don't waste them. once you achieve compleaiton of at least (1) moster will only look like exp. points to you. Angelo accountname: *Leagon Back to Top Reading through the existing guides on the page i keep seeing the same few things come up - these bosses are hard, these ones are easy, use this skill, yada yada yada. I'm not going to tell anyone how they MUST play a paladin, only give them a little advice and share some of my experiences. I'm only a level 26 paldin and have just started act one on nightmare after completing normal on my own. I have found that the most difficult bosses are those that use magic or those with many minions. The summoner is a very easy boss, or so i have been told, I found HE is, but when i was up against him he had a good 7 or 8 ghould lords with him who loved to cast fire wall and meteor which really does hurt unless you have max fire resist. I found that the real hardest boss was in fact the one at the end of act one - forget her name now, andariel or something - merely because i kept getting posioned which slows the healing rate of your healing potions greatly which you end up replacing with rejuv potions for instant heal. Diablo was the boss i was fearing to take on the most, by then i had luckily found myself a goldskin which increases all resists by 30 and has great defence rating. I was able to withstand everything he threw at me, only having to use a greater healing potion after he hit me with his lightning bolt, all but about 3 of his hits actually got me and he dropped after about 45 seconds of continuous hitting with my longsword. Basically he is easy if you have a good shield, mine was only 38% blocking so you can do far better and have a good defense rating, should have it so there is no more than 25% chance for enemies your level to hit you and boost lightning resist a bit, mine was 30 and that was fine. After that just hammer on him, i had a set longsword, can't remember which one and just zealed him with concentration on, doing about 40 or 50 damage with each hit. Back to Top Paladin Zealot Strategy: Items: Iceblink is a must, for freezing targets. Rune/Ancient sword with Very Fast attack speed, or a nice 60+ damage ITD scepter with leech/+skills. Goldwrap for SIAS and magic find, rare SIAS gauntlets with +dex for AR and DR, magic find would help. high defense undead crown for life leech or a high defense grim helm. boots with fastest hit/run and magic find, maybe +dex/str or +life/mana. rings with dual leech preferrably maybe prizmatic, ammy: eye of etlich > 4%, maybe duel leech/priz/+pally skills rare. Shield: sigons gaurd or 3D pavise, maybe a grim shield with high defense and blocking. Skills: 4 points into zeal, no more or it will be zeal lock and death. max conc if weapon damage is too low, fanaticism preferred otherwise, thorns if dueling or in act 4/hell. Stats: 103 str (if scepter, more if sword), no dex (if scepter, req dex for sword, and AR will come from zeal/fanaticism), no mana (unless NO mana leech), put a point in vitality every level up, and once prime str/dex achieved, start putting all pts in vitality to stay alive. This is my prime strategy for a zealot. it is what i use on my lvl 41 pally. Back to Top Alright, first off, this is MY strat, not someone else's, this is all my opinion and stuff that's worked for me. You'll read other ppl's strats that work too, that are different, but this is my personal favorite, so here I go: First off, in my opinion, all defensive auras are pointless except maybe salvation, and you should only put points in that if you don't have a lot of resistance. I only use two auras, thorns and concentration. I use thorns because it returns a crap load of damage and when I use conversion I have these big walking creatures of death. Concentration adds an INSANE amount of damage to your attacks, and that's why I use Charge with concentration... you should end up with (with a one handed weapon) about 1000-4000 damage... if I did my math right.. because I haven't gotten lvl 20 in both yet... as for other skills.. I'd put one point into each prereq. to these, but no skills further or no more points than necessary before. Also, if you feel that you absolutely need it, 2 points into zeal is good and some points into holy shield are also.... now for items... every character I have (2 pallys and a barb) use 3 things... Undead Crown (half freeze for duriel, 50% poison resist for any poison crap, and 4% life steal so you never have to use potions); GoldSkin.. 30% resistance is a must and since you'll be using thorns the more they hit you the better; and the Hand of Broc, which is a 3/3% dual leech, nice for getting back mana and life. Also nice is +life ammy (+ skills isn't all that important), boots with dual fastest, good resist rings, +strength/dex belt, a nice grim shield or 3d pavise, and a kick @$$ ancient sword (fastest atk is nice)... also... if you must.. magic find is a good substitute for hand of broc if you find you steal enough as it is... now for atribute points...mana is pointless for this type of pally... but the other 3 are a must... strength for damage, dexterity to be able to hit people (conversion has to hit in order to work), and life.. TONS OF LIFE.. no pally survived with out it...That's about it... I hope this helps someone out there with a brand new pally (my new one's perfect so far), and I hope that someone will agree with my strat.. but remember.. it's still just my opinion.. peace.. One Luv FlamingSoul Back to Top My tips is that when you are a Paladin use the cold aura when you are fighting Duriel. It slows him down a bit and even if you are frozen too it will be much easier to kill him. I did that and it worked damn good. IMPORTANT! When i came to act3 with this Paladin i copyed my saved games also the Paladin and re-installed Diablo2.When i tryed to play more with the paladin he was degraded to level 20 from 22 and i had to choose all my stat points and skills again. All my rings,weapons,armor and gold was gone and i started with 1000 gold to buy healing potions ,a kite shield,broad sword,helm,chain boots,belt and chain gloves. This experiense was not good for me. Dont try the same!!!!! Lockward-l.v 20 Bowazon Sir Big Boy-l.v 27 Barbarian (Killer machine-l.v 22 Paladin) Ripper man4s friend-l.v 21 Barbarian Back to Top I thought I'd toss my two cents into the pool, since many of these strategies helped me out making it through the game my first time. I've got a level 27 paladin, and I just finished off Diablo and am getting ready to start in on Nightmare level (after the obligatory trip to the Secret Cow Level). What I did, and I had very little difficulty all the way through Normal, and its the best advice I can offer someone is this: take your time. Investigate every single area thoroughly, including all seven tombs of Tal Rasha in Act II (I found some nice items in there), and a fair amount of time in Lower Kurast in Act III (TONS of unique/magical and even a few set items found there over the course of a day or two). Some other tidbits: In normal, at least, gems didn't prove very useful, but even still, find some you think you'll use and save the others for creating full rejuvenation potions. When I faced Diablo in Normal I had 16 slots all filled with Full Rejuvenation--I used three of them, standing toe-to-toe with him until he died. Okay, skills, a popular topic. I used three levels of might in the early stages, but that was a little bit of a waste, but it made my life a little easier in the early acts. What I used most was Thorns for a very long time (and I anticipate having to use it more in Nightmare and Hell difficulties, probably w/ Conversion--might try that in the Cow Level too), but in normal difficulty, I found Holy Freeze (level 6 or 7) to be far more invaluable, as it allowed me to slow down even bosses like Duriel. Now, the most important thing I can stress regarding combat is the attack speed of your weapon. There are those who favor a higher damage weapon, but allow me to illustrate my point. I had a (war?) axe that was magically enhanced to Very Fast attack speed, added poison, made creatures run away, et al. that I used up until about 1/2way through Act IV, when I found a Longsword with greatly increased attack speed making it well beyond Very Fast (since longsword speed is VF to begin with). It had +196% attack rating and a decent base damage. I never looked back. I hit things so fast (was using Zeal at the time) that they couldn't attack me except with range attacks most of the time. I'll probably use this sword well into Nightmare as well. To sum up: 1) Take higher attack speed over higher damage any day of the week and twice on Sunday. 2) Use chipped gems you're not collecting to make Full Rejuv. potions, don't sell them (there's better things to sell, and you can't buy Full Rejuv.) 3) Take your time collecting high resist/defense items, and try to get some life steal in there as well. This will minimize the amount of running you have to do from creatures. I only had to run from mobs, taking down Duriel, Mephisto, and Diablo all with minimum difficulty this way. 4) Holy Freeze is well worth the investment, seriously consider it if you haven't already. At lvl 6-7 it effectively doubles your # of attacks (kudos to whoever pointed that out to me on this page). -Kysmaine, Level 27 Paladin Back to Top I have a level 27 paladin and a level 46 paladin. I had played my level 46 paladin for a very long time believing I knew what to do, I put defiance up to 20 and zeal up to five and I had all maxed resists in hell. I was totally backwards, I now know that the true ultimate paladin skills are zeal vengeance concentration and holy shield. Here is what I did for my new paladin that will have 95 percent chance of blocking and damage that i wouldn't doubt could get up to 1000. First I put might and sacrifice and smith up to level 1 and saved the rest of my skill points. When I got to level 6 I put holy bolt up to level 1 and then saved the rest of my skill points. When I got to level 12 I put zeal up to level 2 and put blessed aim up to level 1 and kept the rest of my skill points. When I got up to 18 I put blessed hammer up to level one and started putting points toward vengeance and concentration. I kept putting skill points toward these two abilities until my character reached level 24 when I started putting skills toward holy shield. I currently have a 87 percent chance to block because I have sigons shield on and use holy shield. I also deal 287 to 672 damage because I use vengeance and concentration. I suggest getting as much mana steal as possible when using these abilities and only putting vengeance up to level 10 because other wise you will run out of mana to quickly. With the combination of all of these abilities and a sigons shield you will be nearly unstoppable. HF_HolyInferno level 27 Paladin Back to Top Well, first off, Im not trying to say that this is the only way a person should play their paladin. This is just the way I did it and have found some success in. You are welcome to adapt or flat out change anything i advise. I am a hammerdin. In my opinion, hammerdins are great fun and have much success in NM and Hell difficulties. Right now im lv 52 and am doing great in act 2 hell. First, the skills i put points in. To get by the first levels, I put a couple points in thorns and put 2 in zeal when i reached lv 12. Then i saved my points until lv 18 when I got concentration and blessed hammer, which IMHO are the best skills for the paladin. I put as many points in these 2 until i maxed both of them out. Now Im working on redemption so i can get some mana back when i need it. Also, conversion can be helpful when used in conjunction with thorns. Now, skills are important but so are stats. Mostly Ive divided my stat points between vitality and strength, with most going to vit. Dex should always remain at its base for a paladin, unless you are going to melee a lot. Ive put a couple in energy for some extra mana but not much. Some will tell you that you need 170str for that ornate, but its much better to get at least 133str for a triple perfect diamond pavise and try to get some strength equipment or -% requirements for that ornate. If you play a hammerdin, it is necessary to get some equipment that has fastest cast rate on it. Well, thats my advice. Good luck with your paladin. Matt Back to Top hey heres some strategy for your skills Everyone knows that Paladins aren't the best PvP characters in Diablo 2, but they sure can be one of the best PvM characters in the game. So if you want a dueler, then get our your Amazon or Barbarian, but if you want a great party co-op guy and a great PvM guy, then start up a Pally. One thing about Pallys is that they can do just about everything. They have a lot of skills that work great in specific situations, and then a few that work great all the time. One thing to be careful with is your skill points, and not to invest too many points into those situation-specific skills, and to stack up on the all-purpose skills. I'll help you decide what skills to put your points into and some other recommendations. STAT POINTS- Pallys mainly use Strength and Vitality. Put most into Strength because (in b.net) it seems as though these Pally guys whiff a lot of their hits (am I the only one that has noticed??), and when you actually land one, then it'll be worth it. It seems even with a high attack rating these guys whiff most of their shots, although my barb is a lower level and hits most of the time. Weird. You really don't need to put a lot into dexterity, only enough so you are able to use one of those big fast weapons, like a flamberge or something big and relatively fast. Vitality is pretty important cuz you'll want more hit points since you'll probably whiff quite often. Don't put any points into mana, just let it build up through your level ups. Only put points into mana unless you really like vengeance and you don't have a decent mana drain weapon. *THE USELESS SKILLS- The following skills are pretty much useless and are either rarely used or are so situational they don't need to be worried about. So either avoid or get only for pre-requsites. SMITE-OMG!!! What kind of skill is this?? 'Nuff said. Don't put ANY points into this unless it's a pre-requisite for a skill you really want. And I mean it, I put four points into this and I regret it cuz they just go to waste!!! I'm warning you... HOLY BOLT- Great, another bad bad bad skill. Just save your points. This may do a little bit of damage in Act 1, but believe me, it gets left in the dust in Act 2 Normal. That's pretty sad. Just don't, unless, again, it's a pre-requsite. FIST OF THE HEAVENS- Wow. This amazes me. You get to level 30 and get this load of crap. 'Nuff said. MIGHT- Although increased damage may sound cool, there are much much much better auras available. Get your pre-requisite points and move on this isn't worth it. HOLY FIRE- Yet again, another aura that may sound alright but is nothing compared to the others. Just put some points into it so you can get to Holy Freeze, which is a good skill to have. Fire might work in Ac 1 Normal, but look into the future. HOLY SHOCK- Same as above. Sanctuary- Well...your call really. If you want help with dealing with undead..then go ahead...if you need pre-req go ahead....but I prefer getting a mace and doing 150% damage rather than having this. Not really worth the points. PRAYER- Pretty worthless. Kinda tricks the new players. "oh cool healing for everyone!" but the healing rate and the amount of healing isn't too substantial. Raise your defense and resistances instead. CLEANSING- Not too great. May be useful at one point or another but not really too effective. I'd rather get items to do it for me. Get the pre-reqs and move on. VIGOR- Not really effective, but kinda fun for the party. Nah. MEDITATION- This is an iffy-kinda skill. It could be pretty useful if you're in a party with a bunch of sorcs and necros, but that really doesn't happen too often. Considering auras don't use mana, this is more of a charity aura. Maybe a point to help that one sorc who's really in need.....nah. *THE PRETTY GOOD SKILLS- These skills are good. They're not awesome, but they serve their purpose. SACRIFICE- This is an interesting skill. It takes about 8% of your life in exchange for better attack damage and attack speed. Maybe useful against a boss when you got some spare potions. If it's your kind of thing then put a few points into it. Personally, I think this would've made an awesome aura. ZEAL- Yeah, I know...Zeal is a very good skill, but the fact that it makes you go crazy if you pump it up too high really detracts from its value. If you go up past 4, then you go berserk and can get totally pounded because you cant stop it. It makes a good combo with Holy Freeze and Defiance. BLESSED HAMMER- This is one of those situation-specific skills. I don't believe Hammerdins (strict Hammerdins) to be that effective. I'd say put 3 points at the very most into this skill, cuz you'll only use it when you're surrounded by a bunch of undead. This is a good skill for Act 2 when you're in the tombs but other than that its average. HOLY SHIELD- A pretty good skill. You decide. BLESSED AIM- Since your Pally will most likely generating a big ol' breeze on battle.net, try putting a few into this so you might land a few. FANATICISM- Speeds up everyone's attack...you decide what to do with it. RESIST FIRE, RESIST COLD, AND RESIST LIGHTNING- Ok, these are good skills only temporarily. Only put 1 (ONE) skill point into each of these until you reach level 30. Those elemental attacks sure can kick your butt if you don't have much resistance, and all these auras can do is help. I am a Pally bent on Defense, cuz I think if you got great defense, you'll almost never die. Put one into these skills and use them when necessary...be patient till Salvation comes at 30. REDEMPTION- This skill could've been great, but it takes so long. It is pretty frustrating at the beginning levels, but gets tolerable near the upper levels of it. Put a few in it for emergencies...this is an ideal skill for those resting times after you clear out a huge group of monsters, like the big Fetish groups or in the River of Flame. *THE MUST-HAVES- These skills are the best a Pally can get. Invest you skill points mainly in these skills, and you'll be fine. CHARGE- This a great skill because it gets you to your enemy quickly (especially useful against those darn archers and mages) and adds a bunch of attack damage % on top of that. You can put a good 5-7 points here and they wont go to waste. This a great skill to use against bosses and uniques, especially the Stone Skin guys. Charge is also good against Diablo, you can Charge him and then try running away before he zaps you with that red stuff (*shudder*) Although not effective against large mobs of monsters, it is also effective in PvP when those little casters are running around non-stop. VENGEANCE- Though a mana drainer, it's a good skill cuz of all that elemental damage. It slows em down, burns em, and then zaps em. Quite good if you ask me. This works well in conjuction with Holy Freeze. CONVERSION- This is a great skill once you put some points into it. One of the truly useful skills that will help you all the way into Nightmare and Hell. Put a lot of points here because the low rate of conversion at the lower levels gets frustrating. Enjoy this one. THORNS- Another truly useful skill. This a great skill against those mobs of little dudes aka Carvers, Fetishes, the flying eagle things...I wouldn't necessarily have it on all the time though because it allows too much damage to be absorbed. I'd say use this skill only when your hit points are high, cuz the life will drain out of you...it'll happen. My Thorns are at 16 and give back 850% damage to the melee-ers and either kills em or takes half their life. CONCENTRATION- Get this aura too! Stock up on it and those little swarms won't keep you from swingin'. Stock it up. HOLY FREEZE- I'd say put anywhere from 4-6 points here cuz it maxes out somewhat early. A very good skill though. It slows the enemies in the radius down so you can smack em around. Very useful. Don't invest too much though, it'll max out soon enough. CONVICTION- This another great aura for big groups of enemy mages and bigger monsters. This lowers their defense and magic resistances, so its good for your sorc and necro party members as well. Especially useful in the Chaos Sanctuary so you can take out the Oblivion Knights quickly before they kill your party =P DEFIANCE- I found myself switching between this and Thorns a lot. I mainly had Thorns on against big groups of small monsters when I had a lot of health, and then switching to Defiance when I was running away or facing a boss or unique. It raises your defense considerably, and can be especially helpful to your party members, the sorcs and necros in particular because they tend to not have the hit points and armor of a Pally or barb. Don't be afraid to upgrade it past 1 because it doesn't top off any time soon. SALVATION- I like this skill personally, because it takes the pressure off the other three resistance-invloved auras. Get this immediately at level 30, but I don't think more than one skill point is needed in it because the upgrading of it provides so little % added. You'll be using this quite a bit in Act 4 Nightmare and Hell when they so rudely drop your resistances. That's about it for the skills. Some other tips. I recommend always having a good scepter or mace around, and I always use a good shield. Carry a two handed weapon in case you need more power, but I usually stick to a weapon that is above Normal attack speed. You'll need to take more swings if you want to hit because b.net messed up the Pally attack rating somehow and you always whiff. Remember, always go fight in big parties for the most experience and best items and the Pally will always lead the way to glory. -Joe -- THE_CLAW(_) Back to Top Easy and simple....Charge and Concentration...sure...you're not obliged to do that,I'm just telling ya that my paladin does 398-914 dmg and he's only lvl 26...I have a lvl 34 Zeal and concentration paladin...but zeal is great in a normal game,but it sux in nightmare and hell,and I have a thorn and conversion paladin too....I have nothing against this one tho...but he's boring to play...The most important hing for paladin is a good combo...try your own if your not sure...heh..we learn from our mistake From A whole bunch of Paladins from Neoevangelion and neo-flare accounts Back to Top have 3 paladins lvls 32, 48, 39 the skills i have found to work best are concentration, max this as quickly as posible as it makes all or our attacks and party members attacks do alot more dmg, also it allows u to keep ur hammer lvl low to save mana till u either have enough from items or from lvling bonus, also this makes charge even stronger often allowing u to kill anything in a single blow. thorns are fine if u like taking dmg and if ur using sigons shield it is waistful as concentration can do much more with b hammer, the other skills i highly recommend are b hammer and charge use pnts saved on these, usually putting more in charge so that min dmg with weapon is same as min dmg of b hammer on top of these skills lvl 10 freeze lvl 1 zeal and lvl 4 vigor now some of u may say hey only 1 point on zeal? but everyone else says 4, well i say once u start using sigon and an soj and a sceptor that adds 2 to skills ur gonna find ur already at 5, and any monster that walks up while ur doing ur attack is not going to get hit and has a free shot at u, now u could use thorns when this happens but none of my paladins have more than a pnt in thorns and do just fine as far as character points go, find a weapon with good dmg that doesnt require dex, this will allow u to pump all ur points into strength and vitality, which means better weapons and less dying which results in lvling up like a mad man (my current paladin lvl 39 is only 3 days old at this time, and my lvl 48 was 42 in a week so this one is better than the last, and if u use charge and b hammer with cons right u dont even need a high dmg weapon till hell difficulty one last thing to add, bnet tells u "you can get good exp up to lvl 35 in normal game, and good exp up to lvl 50 in nightmare" im am finding this to be true and dying less so i end up with more exp without having to busting my butt and losing gold do as you like with these tips as that is all they are, always use what works for you and your playing style Jonathan Back to Top Heres a great paladin strategy: put tons of sp into might, and set it to your right click, now put sp into zeal, and put it on your left click. Now you have 2 abilities at the same time, and its great too. Tom Back to Top The most absolutely neede skills to survive for the paladin are zeal - only three or else you will get beaten on!!!! Conversion - absolutely! It is awesome to see these really tough guys beating each other....and last of all.....Thorns!!- max out on thorns, if you havent , you need to restart your character. TIPS: For killing Duriel***, only 1 or 2 into holf freeze and zeal, TRUST ME, I'm in nightmare and when i was in normal mode, i killed duriel with only 2 rejuv. potions. For killing diablo***, Charge attack(3 0r 4) trust me!!!! this is the only way that you can beat him and dont think that the red lightning breath wont hurt you so dont invest into any lighting resist unless your further in tthe game! Watch out fo that lightning attack and to avoid it, get fast run or walk boots. For killing Mephisto***, Kill everyone in his layer first and then when you get to him across the little river thing, take him out with a range attack, he should be on the top left part of your screen,if you dont do this, YOU WILL DIE because he can only hover and is not that smart to cross the river WEAPONS -- I suggest you get a sword or a maul of some sort, make sure it is magic or rare - do what you prefer, whatever you do, get somthing with mana steal, it will save your a$$ with vengence or high-mana reguirements, as for gems, sell the low qualit ones, youll never use a chipped rubby or topaz! if you die and your surronded by echanted guys or uniques, if you have to restart and your corpse will be laying in the town, trust me, It will save your butt. PALIDINS ARE THE BEST!!!!!! Ryan Back to Top 1) When beginnig a new paladin, see far in the future (when you be a very powerful Devil Killer...). I mean, don't waste skills points in skills wich proves useless at highers levels of difficulty. You should avoid useless skills (but don't forget to spend only ONE points in those, 'cause of prerequisites) as Smite (only useful in ACT I / ACT II NORMAL, I've made the mistake spending EIGHT points (!!!) in it), Holy Bolt (better to use Prayer to heal NPC, or a +150% against undead weapon), Cleansing (better to use antidote potions), Meditation (unless you want to play in network games), Holy Fire (strictly useless, if you wanna burn your foes, you should use a fire damaging weapon, or any item wich can cause fire damage), Blessed Aim (it's better to use another aura such as defiance or thorns), Holy schock (depending of your game style, but it's not powerful 'till you're mastering it at lvl 19 or 20... andthere is plenty others skills much more useful) 2) Now are the nice skills to use (don't forget that when you kill Diablo2 once, you've to start a new game in nightmare lvl, with (much) more powerful monsters, and then in Hell lvl...): First of all, don't spend more than THREE points in Zeal (as everyone says, you'll probably find a +1 or +2 to all skill object (I REALLY want one like this), and when you attack with Zeal, you can be pounded while you're striking your foes, wich proves to be very dangerous when fighting swarms of tiny monsters , or a couple of powerful ones: your life's goes down very quickly, to quick to use a life potion but rejuvenation [quite expensive].). I've got FOUR points in it, and believe me, it's annoying to switch to normal attack when you got an aptitude schrine (+1 to all skills), and a swarm of Beastmens with much too big axes comin'up (I use Thorns or Defiance instead, couple with my "normal" attack). Don't be afraid to spend points in Defiance, it can be vey useful against big bosses or tough ones ( at lvl 9, Defiance gives you a +150% to your defence... combined with a good armor and helm, you can forget your shield and your poor one handed weapon to use a two handed weapon that blow a lot of damage [if you do so, be sure to have a nice two-handed weapon with speed attack increased, 'cause you can find yourself in a lot of trouble, in exemple with a slow, powerful War Maul against those damned swarms of goblins who runaway when you kill one...]). Another good skill to increase is Thorns. With it (better to have a single handed weapon and a GOOD shield). Thorns is the ultimate solution in killing swarms up to medium sized monsters. I mean: at lvl 10, Thorns gives you a 610% damage return in the face of the monster. Very effective when surrounded by Skeletons, Fallen Ones, low level beastmens or corrupted rogues (In nightmare games, learn to switch quickly between Thorns [when your life's high] and Defiance [when your life is low, to have time to runaway to wait healings potions replenish your life, then come back with Thorns activated). You can also spend points (ONE point is enough) in fire resistance, cold resistance and especially in resist lightning (Damn those lightning enchanted monsters...), then invest in Salvation, wich is a Level 30 skill (Lvl 1 Salvation is equal to have one point in each elemantal resistances, but before spending one in there, you've to be a lvl 30 paladin, so investing one point in each elemental resistance skills can save your life more than once). At Lvl 10, Salvation adds a +70% to all elemental resistances, for you and your friends. Don't go (to my sense) over lvl ELEVEN salvation (+71% resisatnce), 'cause after mastering level 11 Salvation, only radius is increased (you've got to be lvl 16 to have only +74%...). You can spend 2 or 3 points in Vigor, just for fun (increases your move speed, and stamina recovery for you and your friends). Redemption's nice, but you've to be lvl 30, and is interesting only when you master it at lvl 5 or more (lvl 5= 55% chances a corpse to turn into life/mana, and 45 HP/Mana recovery. Very useful to replenish your life after killing a swarm of monsters Don't spend anymore than 3 to 8 points in Prayer (only useful in multiplayer or if you make an extensive use of mercenaries, wich is not my case), wich makes you, at lvl 5, heal up to 6 HP per use (1.9 mana cost). Sacrifice could be nice, if this skill haven't to be mastered at least lvl 10 to prove interesting (+65% attack, +288% Damage, but -8% to your life for each use).Combined with Redemption, it can prove useful. Instead, prefer Charge, wich cost you (whatever lvl you're mastering) 9 Mana to use, but can deal a great blow (Lvl 10=+185% attack; +325% damage) I' haven't tried Vengeance, Blessed Hammer, and Fist of the Heavens but they looks interesting only at high level (> lvl 10). Conversion is a must with an high level Thorns, cause it gives you abaility to change side of incoming monsters, thus give them the right to die while killing his ex-friends. Holy shield is useless (better to use an high level Defiance). Here we are for skills. Let's now see some tactics: 3) I was a young lvl 24 paladin when I killed Diablo2 for the first time (pretty easy with Thorns, the difficulty resides in avoiding his burst of red lightning and survive enough time to drink an healing potion), I died only one time during this battle (I had more difficulties with one of the three Magic Seal Keepers, wich had an Lightning Enchantement). I must warn everyone: Don't go in Nightmare level if you're under level 29-32 (depending of your equipement), 'cause if you do so, you will regret it (cost a lot of life potions and town portals). I tried the Secret Cow Level then, and again, don't go there if you don't have a very fast weapon and plenty of life potions, there is an incredible number of cow with pole axes (when I try, I was chased by almost more than 50 or 70 angry cows, and when I stop for fight, I was quickly surrounded and murdered). 4) In act III, don't be affraid to hire a mercenary with cold attack, because it's a very useful ally (It's the only act I use them). 5) Don't forget to find a +5% (minimum) to mana item, so you will earn more mana than you'll ever need. 6) For character statistics, spend points in Strenght, Dexterity and Vitality, but don't spend more than 10 points in Mana, 'cause you won't need much mana. (If you find yourself runnig out of mana too quickly, there is two solutions: first: don't play a paladin in D2 (not like in D1, wich the paladin had a serious need of spells [and some nice ones, eh eh...]), but play instead a Sorcerer/Necromancer. second solution: spend some points in mana (but not too much) when you go up the next level. 7) For items, Chance is the only way to find what you want. But you can help Chance with an +XX% chances of finding a magical object item (usualy an amulet or ring). You must find the fastest boots you can, 'cause it's very useful in every situation. Try also to find a +XX% gold found on monsters item, in order to increase your cash flow. For an armor, bigger's better (you'll need high strenght to wear those powerful plates). For weapons, it depends of everyone's style: some player prefer an one handed weapon with a magic shield with special resistances, as some others (wich actually should play a Barbarian instead) rather prefer having a powerful two-handed weapon. But try to find a weapon that deal the more damages as possible, with the fastest attack rate possible, and some specials on it. As a belt, try to find a nice one, and of the biggest size (more potions in it). I hope those advices will guide you to build a nice paladin. I think a powerful Paladin is one of the most vital ally in multiplayers games, with nices auras to help the party to fulfill his goal. And don't forget: Have fun in building your character, and don't hesitate to start a new one if the one you've made is not viable for higher difficulty levels (A skill usefull in NORMAL could appear itself totally useless against Nightmare or Hell monsters...) Sir Simoon, level 31 PALADIN. Back to Top Lets face it, Paladins aren't the best duelers, and won't be even at high levels. I have som advice for you paladins starting out though. Pretty much, paladins suck until they get to level 12, once at 12 put skill points in zeal, and do tht until it is level 4, no higher, once at 18 put skills evenly into blessed hammer and concentration. Those two skills are the best things the paladins have, once you have the option for holy shield you can alos put points into that. Once blessed hammer and concentraion are at least at level 10 they are unstopable against monsters. dont bother puttin alot into holy bolt or fist of heavens, they are pretty much useless Baron Mighty_PallyVI level 73 paladin Back to Top Ok, i'm not going to tell you how to play your paladins, i'm just going to give you some advice on what seems to work and what i found as a waste of time. first thing that you should know is that i have a level 60 paladin. so take into consideration that i have played for a while and have some idea what i am talking about. i have noticed that with most of the people giving you advice before, they have not told you what level they are. this is important to know because if they aren't that high of a level, they have not experienced enough. this is my third paladin that i have made, and each time i have gotten better at using my points wisely. and i still have not perfected them, but since i am this far, i'm not starting all the way over ;) first of all i want to give mad props to the guy with the 4 high level characters(Dark, lvl 39 Paladin Necam, lvl 68 Necromancer Zane, lvl 58 Barbarian Mushy, lvl 60 Amazon) you rule(you also have lots of time on your hands) now to the important stuff. right off the bat i'm going to say that thorns rule. personally i think that's the best aura in the game for a paladin. i use it all the time, and i have it maxed out at level 20. it reflects 1010 percent damage, and kills almost anything that hits me in one or two shots. now you don't have to put it up that high, but i really didn't know what to put my skills to, and i think that a level 20 is awesome. i use vengence most of the time as well for my combat skill. the only problem with this is that it drains mana like nothing. so i'd advise you to only put this up a few levels(mine is at 7 and that might be too high). before level 30, i put one point up to each resistance just in case i got in a situation where i needed it. now you might not REALLY need it, but it will definitely help against people like the summoner - fire, any lighting guy-lighting, and anything that freezes you pretty bad(duriel maybe)-cold. once you get to level 30, putting 1 point to salvation will take care of all three of those resistances. but go no further with salvation, it is pointless to waste another point after this because the resistance goes up so little. now when you get into nightmare and hell difficulty, your resistances will start to go down. what i did that really helped me out was i found a socketed pavise shield, and put 3 perfect diamonds into it. this gave me +57% to ALL resistances. my resistances in hell difficulty now are all maxed except for poison which is at 49, but poison is the weakest one anyway, so i wouldn't worry about that too much. i also have many rings and amulets and rare/unique items that help out with my resistances. and i have found that having resistances are MUCH MORE IMPORTANT than defense. don't get me wrong, my defense is 1350 right now, but you can have all the defense in the world, but if you don't resist anything, you will still die, gauranteed. as far as other spells go, redemption is awesome, whatever anybody says. although it is misleading. it says it will redeem the soul of dead bodies for you and your party, but in actuality, it is only you who gets the life and mana. my redemption aura is at a level 7 now and i have a 63% chance of redeeming a soul and get 55 points of mana and life for each body. now in the first couple of levels to this, it does go a little slow, but the more you put it up to, the faster it is. like right now it is almost immediate, and i can get beat up in a battle but then i just turn that on and i'm all filled again. i think it's really good awesome. as far as conversion goes, i put it up a few skill points, and didn't really like it because it took to long to convert the guys cause the chance to convert sucked. but i'm sure a higher level spell would work much better. just remember for all the skills you can look up a chart to see exactly how good it gets. and i wouldn't recommend maxing this out because the chance to convert at higher levels only goes up like 1 point if that. so make sure you check to see this before going wild on a skill. i put a couple to zeal, but i never use that anymore. i never use smite anymore, or concentration or anything else. and i do thing blessed hammer and fist of the heavens is a waste. takes up too much mana. and isn't that good. like i said, i use thorns and vengence, and that works out really well for me. no matter what you use for your combat skill, i would definitely recommend thorns for your aura. and remember, a paladin is meant to be a leader of a party, not to walk around by himself. so you have to factor in whether or not you'll be playing by yourself a lot or with a party. if you are playing with a party, using things to help everyone out is better, but by yourself using things to help you only out is better. think about it. you can ask me any questions if you want. my email is pengu74082@aol.com. i also have a level 51 sorceress. Lord Supergoku, paladin Back to Top hello, my name is Daniel. i have a level 27 paladin. im still at normal and didnt kill diablo yet so i still have little experience, but i know a couple of things. First of all in the beginning of the game, put all of your skill points to might. after you reach level 6, put the experience points to thorns. 4 points for zeal is enough. until act 4, i think zeal and thorns are the BEST combination, but in act 4, i have found out that slowing the enemy with holy freeze and attacking them with zeal is VERY useful. if you are surrounded by a swarm of enemies, i suggest that u freeze them with holy freeze, use blessed hammer around 3 times, and switch back to holy freeze. Most people doesnt like blessed hammer very much, but in my opinion, I think its one of the BEST defense skills. My blessed hammer does more than 100 damage!!! i am currently trying out other cobos but so far, i think thats the best one. OH! and in act 3, when you are on your way to fight mephisto, i suggest that u put at least 1 skill point in resist fire because on your way, the enemies will literally bombard you with meteor. i have died a couple of times by it until i got resist fire. and ALWAYS have at least 5 extra health potions other than the ones on your belt and at least 1 rejuvenation potion on the 4th slot of your belt. rejuvenation potion fills up your health and mana WAY faster than ANY other potions, so use it in emergency situations. Daniel- level 27 paladin Back to Top I've noticed that many people have complained about the difficulty in killing Duriel, but I didn't even notice, in fact, I thought it was a very easy way to get magical items with a minimum of fuss. Just WP to the Canyon of the Magi, enter the correct tomb and (for me at least) just go through a couple of rooms to get to the entrance of Tal Rasha's Tomb. I've probably killed the sucker about 20 times (boo-hoo, only 6k exp. points), in hopes of some "great" unique or rare item. The secret was my weapon of choice. I had foolishly wasted my Imbue on a mace in Act I, and the resulting weapon was pretty crappy. Since I had money and was pissed about the wasted Imbue, I went and gambled (24100 gold) on a Morning Star; it has both 4-7 cold damage and it makes monsters flee, plus it has a Very Fast Attack speed. I typically use at most 2 Rejuvenation or Health potions (no hurry). I have the Thorns aura on as well as using a level 4 Zeal as my main attack. The fight is pretty unsuspenseful, I'm surprised if I get down to half my HP. With a Paladin being a primarily melee fighter, I've found this weapon to be better than anything else for general fighting; although I have come to enjoy a damage enhanced Bastard sword that does 25-59 plus 1-16 lightning and has a Fast Attack (Enhanced AR), but it is better against small numbers of powerful opponents. I am about to take on Mephisto and I still haven't switched my main weapon. Even in a crowd, the cold and flee make getting to the Bosses a snap. Usually the Bosses/Uniques don't go to far, but at half speed I don't have to use much effort to finish them off. For me, the toughest opponents have been the Lightning enchanted baddies (like the Scarabs) and the Fire throwers (Shamans and in the Arcane Sanctuary). Please let others know that a weapon with the "Makes monsters flee" and Cold damage are a top notch combo, especially for lower level players. A substitute would be to use Holy Freeze to slow your enemies, but it doesn't seem to effect the Bosses with magical/cold resistances and there doesn't seem to be a substitute for the monster flee (no gem does it either). I also have another suggestion. Hire the most expensive mercenary you can afford. The free ones you get in Acts I and III (or even the ones you pay for) don't seem to last through a Save and Exit, so make sure you approach their respective "pimps" when you are ready for a long session. The mercenaries (for my paladin at least) seemed to be ranged fighters (Amazon in Act I and a Sorceror (male?) in Act III). I noticed that they go up in level with you too. Another word of caution, in "dungeons" you have to be careful to let them keep up with you (AI isn't that good I guess), because if they get too far away, I noticed that they won't teleport with you if you open a portal. Mercenaries seem to make up for your weaknesses and allow you to gain from their sacrifices. Rob Back to Top Well, I'm a level 42 paladin who spends a lot of time hanging out in Hell (the difficulty, not the Act) and I've worked out a strategy that works quite well for me. Here's how I would distribute skill points: 1) Sacrifice - good for the first part of the game, especially against Bosses. The downside is when you get a high damage exceptional weapon and lose half your health after you take 1 hit. I'd say no more than 4 here. 2)Smite - NO NO NO NO NO!!!!! Not only does this skill only stun for any appreciable time after you pump it full of skill points, you get a damage range of something like 1-6. Only 1 point in order to get Charge. 3)Holy bolt - Hmmmm....1 point. 4)Zeal - A good skill, you'll probably want it or Charge as your main attack until you get Vengance or Conversion. Be careful: too many points causes "zeal-lock" (you get killed because you can't run during an attack). I'd say 2 or 3 points if you've got items that add +1 to all skills. 5)Charge - A nice skill, if not heavy on mana. 2 or 3 here is good. 6)Vengance - Nice damage bonus and freeze time, but you lose on the accuracy you'd have from Zeal or Charge. Probably less than 4. 7)Blessed Hammer - Useful on the occasion, useless the rest of the time (unless you're a Hammerdin). 1 point. 8)Conversion - A great skill that lost some of its potency after version 1.3. Still great for getting through Mightmare & Hell though. At least 5. 9)Holy Shield - 1 point. 10)Fist of the Heavens - As crappy as Smite. WARNING: DO NOT WASTE POINTS IN THIS SKILL!!!! 11)Might - No points over 1; it's crap as soon as you get Concentration. 12)Holy Fire/Lightning - Absolute crap! What good is a skill that does around 10 damage every 1.5 seconds when you're on Hell???!!!! 13)Thorns - One of the best skills in the game. Works great with Conversion (especially on bosses...I killed Nightmare Hephasto without touching him!) The more points, the better. 14)Blessed Aim - No. 15)Concentration - As many as you can afford. 16)Holy Freeze - Mmmm..maybe 2. 17)Sanctuary - 1. 18)Fanaticism - Unless you're using a polearm or something, nothing. 19)Conviction - Nice to have, the more points, the less you get every time. 20)Prayer - Max 2. 21)Resist Fire/Cold/Lightning - None; wait for Salvation. 22)Defiance - Good skill, maybe 5 or so tops. 23)Cleansing/Vigor - Both crap. 24)Meditation - Only good in Multiplayer with a Sorc or Necro 25)Redemption - Great skill, but only after you get at least 5 into it or so. Anyway, there's how I would place my skills...try em out! Aaryl Back to Top Good day, here are some tips for my fellow Paladins. I have a lvl 38 Paladin & I thoroughly enjoy playing this complex character. This was my first Paladin & it has been a great learning experience. First of, Paladins should go for Thorns, Zeal and Conversion. I have Thorns at 16 right now & Zeal at 4 & I am working on my Conversion. Zeal doesn't really work well in Nightmare & Hell since the monsters are much tougher. A combination of Thorn & Conversion might work better since the monster you convert will start attacking the other monster. With Zeal, you just stand there and hack away at the masses. Which is fine except the monsters just clobber you & I know you don't want that to happen. Don't bother with Resist spells & if you do 1 skill point each is more than enough. Forget Fist of Heavens, Blessed Aim & Defiance. Its a waste. Concerntration & Charge skills is fine too but I haven't used it much except when I needed to hit & run. Another tip, when you play ACT 3 (Kurast), hire mercenaries especially the ones that can freeze the monsters. Those pesky Fetishes run like crazy and the more you chase the deeper you get into trouble. As for armor/rings/amulets, well make sure you get good ones (don't we all wish it was that easy) and spend time in normal before going to Nightmare. Experience is vital. I see many lvl 30 players trying to play ACT 4 Nightmare & the results aren't that pretty. Unless you can't wait to get to Hell difficulty (or have great equipment you got from your other high level player), you are asking for trouble. Finally, monsters with lightning powers are dangerous (you knew that right). Unless you are lucky enough to find Resist Lightning items, I'd spend 1 or 2 skill points on Salvation. One should be sufficient. Its worth it or you will be picking yer bodies once too often. If possible max out your resist lightning stats before you start Nightmare & Hell. Grendeth Back to Top Look ya want to know a good way to beat D2? I've heard all this bull and from what i can tell you on ACT 1 go for prayer till about lv 2-3. Then dotn use it and do Zeal and Charge until about the middle to end of ACT 3. From there you go pretty much freestlye and kick some ass. Ya don't belive me? Look for someoen who did soemthing like this and see how they are doing because i can garantee you wont die with this 'cept maybe at Diablo once or twice because you could be DUMB ENOUGH TO USE THE PRAYER! Mac gone! C|A|McMac{VAMP} LV 41 Paladin (with NO HACKS!) Back to Top From what I've read, people have played paladins many different ways. I've found that their ranged skills (Holy Bolt, Blessed Hammer, and Fists) are fairly useless, and skill points should not be wasted there. I read some articles where people use Blessed Hammer a lot. I find it extremely difficult to control unless you're surrounded, and I don't suggest slugging it out when you're surrounded anyway. It also does not appear that many people use Vengeance and/or Smite. Let's be honest, the only time you ever die in Diablo II is versus a unique or other players. I use a combination of Vengeance and Smite to kill almost all uniques unless they have the lightening enchantment. If you get high level in both, you not only stun your opponent, but vengeance also slows them with its freezing attack. I also suggest Holy Shield which greatly increases your Smite damage. I will use Vengeance with Fanaticism together against non-uniques. The increased attack rate and attack rating really helps. My main attack however will always be Charge with Concentration. It does super damage and keeps most attackers away from you as long as you can keep hitting them. My last attack strategy is Conversion with Thorns. I use this whenever I'm attacked by a mass of monsters. I've found that they will stop attacking me and start attacking the converts. I love the use of Thorns, because it makes my converted buddies deliver a lot more damage. I sometimes use Holy Freeze with Conversion to keep the masses away from me. I have read a lot about people using Zeal. I used it on Normal level with some success, but I found that I would get pounded while I was swinging. I wonder if these people continued using it beyond Normal level, because even with a 700 Defense on Nightmare level I got hit far to often to justify using it. Vengeance and Charge kill much faster, and Charge keeps most strong dudes backed away from you as long as you hit them. I have also found that a paladin requires a ring or amulet that steals mana. I would do what ever it takes to get one of at least 6% mana steal. I have a ring of 7% mana steal and have not used mana potions since I made it to Nightmare level. I have a Battle Hammer that does 44-75 base damage, and I always drain more mana than I use no matter what ability I have selected. Vorpril - 38 paladin Back to Top when trying to kill diablo it is not a good idea to just go up to him and hit him because he shoots a very powerful red lightning out of his mouth. when i tried to kill him with my paladin i first tried this and i died many times. after many other failed strategies i found a successful one:charge. it takes much more damage from him than anything else i tried and it is much easier to avoid his spells by charging him, running away, and charging him again until he is dead. i havent yet faced him with my other characters but i would think that the best bet would be ranged attacks. -carolyn Back to Top The Paladin is an incredible monster killer. Most useful skill -- THORNS. High lvl thorns rock because all the monsters kill themselves in one hit. Best combo -- Thorns and Conversion. If you're fighting a throng of monsters, convert a few of them and just watch the other monsters drop like crazy because your temporary pals also get thorns. Make sure u pump up conversion though because otherwise it takes so long to convert one monster. Other than resist fire/lightning and Salvation, I didn't put much stock into the defensive auras -- you can find fastest run/walk boots, and potions are cheap. The resists though are very useful. Resist fire and lightning gets u past uniques and firespittin Night Lords until u get to Salvation at lvl30. Combat Skill-wise, Sacrifice, Zeal, Vengeance, and Conversion are the only four you need. Put lots of pts into Conversion and lvl 1 is sufficient for the other three. Sacrifice is much more useful than it appears -- it doesn't cost mana and at lvl1 it almost triples your damage. Vengeance is good especially if you have conviction. The - monster def and - resist boosts Vengeance damage a lot. Other than Thorns and conviction the other offensive auras were not good enough for me to put those on instead of the first two. However that's just part of the theme that i built my Paladin around. Don't be afraid to toy around with the offensive auras, but make sure you plan out where to spend your pts before you go willy-nilly into the skill tree. TheGreatKhan Back to Top I have had 3 paladins and I think I am a pro at a paladin now. I made many mistakes on the first 2 paladins. I know a lot of people are going to disagree with me but I know what I am doing. 1. First put all your skills in Thorns. I know you have to be on level six before you can even put a skill on. But from there on put every skill into thorns on every level you up , untill you max out on them.(20 is the highest). Try to put a few but only up to 4 zeals. If you follow my directions the monster just die when they come close to you , they die very fast if you have to hit them a few thimes or what i do is circle around them and that automatically kills them. Just run real close around them in circles. You wont notice this until the 6 or 7 level of thorns. (Try to buy a sceptor 1 to 3 plus thorns , I did and it was great.) 2. When you finally maxed out on Thorns , start to put skill in conversion up to only 7 or 8 level. Thorns and conversion is a deadly combo because every monster you convert easily kills the other monsters with ease because they have the thorn damage. I have level 20 now and it is 1010 damage back from enemies. Another good reason this is a good combo is in case you have to play alone. You are like a necro but you have conversion. And the monsters they lose health when they are on conversion. Havent you ever noticed that monsters that just sit around for 50 secs just flop over. 3. Then I would just put your skills into redemtion and salvation and maybe resist lightning for the boses. Maybe a couple of skills for holy shield that is a great spell in my opinion. And last i just want to remind you that thorns are great at high levels. Kevin Back to Top Ok, here's my tip.... i got a level 46 paladin, just got to hell....and.... this is HELL! really... so, for the one's who begins, i suggestprayer, cuz it can save ur butt, more than once. i finished normal without dying once with it level 13.... then, u should get thorns, sometimes, in might be handy to kill big fat boss like hephasto, or duriel... mine is level 10, and it is hell useful. but the far-most useful combination is conversion-thorns... it might sound weird, cuz i know very few people use conversion... lv1, u have 13% chance to convert, so get it at least lv 5, with 30%chance to convert.... with thorns lv 10, it is deadly.... convert two or three enemies then stand back and see your minions get hit, causing 600%damage return to others.... of course it doesn't work against enemies who use magic... zeal mignt also come in handy, lv 3 , but NO MORE! i got lv 7 (items give me a total of +4 paladin's skill) and it is a pain in the neck... but, personnally, i think offensive auras sucks.... for the second town in nightmare or hell, u should use fist of the heavens, as it spread holy bolts that do decent damage. and, finally, if u don't like conversion for pack of enemies, use blessed hammer, it rocks since it go throught an enemy and do lotta damage.... lv 10 is great.... oh, and by the way, i forgot, reedemption is also useful, when getting to place.... this way u don't have to use potions or mana potions... lv 5 is great.... and salvation might come in handy some time... lv1... and, the most important... to kill lighntning enchanted monsters, get a nice weapon, charge and thorns.... and a lot of stamina potions... get far, use charge, hit and run! it might take some times, but it is safier..... i beat hephasto the armorer that way.... thorn is when u make a mistake, he it you and kill you, but he also takes damage.... but against most bosses, thorns is the best.... Count DarkAngel Back to Top Here's my strat for a paladin. First of all, thorns is a must( i have it a level 14, and it does 730% damage). Zeal is my main attack, but only get 3 levels max, and find a mana steal item(preferably a ring). Once you get to level 24 though, conversion is awesome, but only if you have thorns. Once you convert someone, they get your aura- and with thorns, 730% is quite a lot on an enemy. If i'm being attacked by a group of baddies, i convert one or two of them, stay well back, and when i walk in there's only 1 or 2 left. Also, converting the guys who raise others makes them not able to raise, and there more powerful then the little minions so you can kill the little ones off, and when conversion wears off, you get to kill the raising dude with no trouble at all. As for equipment, i like having a very fast attack speed sword cuz it works EXTREMELY well for zeal. Try to get the best armor you can find, and if your gonna get resistances, focus on lightning, cuz the only mofo's that are gonna kill you would be lightning enchanted baddies. Thanks for listening Mike the Great- 24 paladin Back to Top Paladin's are one of the most confusing classes. They have so many Auras and it can be confusing at first. Now, most people recommend zeal, thorns, holy freeze etc... Well, you can go that way, and you can have some success, however, Thorns is useless in hell unless you have about 2000 life, zeal, with extra points becomes a deathwish, and holy freeze, well, there are just so many better aura's out there. This is my strat, it is not following anyone else's, and I use completely different Auras and combat skills than everyone else. First up, If you can find enough life steal, sacrifice is the way to go. At lvl 20, it gives you +400% damage. But, be warned, if you don't have life steal, this is not a good skill to invest in. So, if you can get enough, then go for it. Next, as my Aura, I use high level Defiance. Most people focus on Offensive Auras, however I have gone the defensive Aura path. With High Level Defiance and a good rare ornate plate, you can be very hard to hit. I sit there, in the middle of 10-15 monsters, and can come out with almost full health. In Nightmare, Duriel couldn't hit me. I lost about 100 health to Duriel, and with excess life steal, I was able to get that back without using a single potion. Hephasto in Nightmare also had trouble hitting me. I died only once. He was the only boss I died against in Nightmare. How many people who use offensive auras can clame that? Another great Aura to use is salvation. However, only ever put 1 point into this, as any more is a total waste. +54% resist all at skill level 1. This is the aura to use against Diablo and his fire and crimson lightning attacks. You can also invest in some Offensive auras, and the best one would have to be concentration. Concentration just kicks ass. Redemption is often underestimated. It is a very useful Aura, if you are fighting lots of Grotesque Worms, Flesh Beasts etc.. If you kill a few and put this aura on, then you shouldn't lose any life. So, the Auras you should invest in are : Defiance, Concentration, Salvation, Redemption And, The combat skills are : Sacrifice (if you have enough life steal to balance it), Vengeance is pretty good, and Charge (not as good as sacrifice, but an option if you don't want to/can't use sacrifice) As for stat points, mana means nothing to a paladin. Invest 0 (or at absolute maximum about 10) points in it Vitality is important. If you want to be able to take a few hits, you will need a high vitality Dexterity is very important for a Paladin. If you aren't going to use anything that raises your attack rating, then you should invest heavily in Dexterity. Naturally, Paladins have crappy attack ratings, and you need to either use a skill that gives to attack rating (sacrifice, charge, concentration) or add a lot to dex. Even with these skills, you still want a good dexterity, because your attack rating may still not be high enough. Strength is the most important stat. You need lots of strength to be able to wear the best armours and equip the best weapons. You need to get to at least 170 strength so you can equip Ornate Plates. Defence is important for a Paladin. You may choose to go the way of zeal and thorns, but just think about the long run. This will last for normal and nightmare, but you will have a heck of a time trying to finish hell difficulty. Dark, lvl 39 Paladin Necam, lvl 68 Necromancer Zane, lvl 58 Barbarian Mushy, lvl 60 Amazon Back to Top I've only been playing for a couple of months but I've found that the Paladin is probably the most kick butt char around. The early skills suck, might and prayer do jack once you get to act 2, thorns doesn't hit fast enough for me, and holy fire/shock are too weak. The only good skills i've found are high lvl concentration, vengnence if you have the mana, zeal holy freeze, and charge. Concentration is definitely the best offensive aura in the game. It does + 345% damage at lvl 20, compared to + 230% at lvl 20 for might. Add in the 20% chance of uninterruptable and it rocks. Zeal at around lvl 3 is cool for swarms, but above that it takes forever to finish while you get pounded. Vengence, while draining energy wise, adds a lot to you damage. Combine it with concentration and you can kill boss's in half the time. Holy freeze is a good substitution for iceblink armor (I wear it), and works well with charge. Holy freeze slows them down, then switch to concentration and charge into the fray. Some good Items are Milebrega's Rod (Set War Scepter, +1 to Paladin Skills, and decent hit for Normal chars), SteelClash (Unique Kite Shield, +1 to Paladin skills also, only 17 defense though ) and Iceblink (Unique Splint Mail, freezes target, resist cold 30%) SliceNdice lvl 24 Paladin Back to Top Ok here is a strategy for all u Paladins out there, When i play Diablo and i see a Paladin on an early level using parayer or might i try to kill them because they piss me off. Do not even put one Point into them!!!!!!what i suggest for the first Act one is to put a point into Sacrifice to kill those Minions and leaders. Also put one point into smite so u can get Charge later on. Do not put any points into the Defensive Auras for now, because if u are like me where ur best defense is offense then u won't need them yet. What u need to do is put maybe a point or two into thorns then save your points until you have enough for Zeal. DO NOT PUT MORE THAN 3 POINTS INTO ZEAL!!!!! BECAUSE MOST LIKELY U WILL FIND SOMETHING THAT WILL GIVE U +1 OR 2 TO ALL SKILLS!!! I made the horrible mistake of putting six points into zeal. ass soon as i got to the river of flame in the 4th act i was murdered by the mages because i could not run away, i would be standings there swinging at nothing. Next put a lot of points into charge when u get to LVL 12, lots say it is not a useful skill but i kick ass with it. Once u put about 2 points into charge save up ur skill points until lvl 18 when Concentration and Holy freeze. I suggest only putting 6 points into Hold freeze because after that it gets kinda useless ok as i was sayin once u put 6 points into Holy Freeze start putting points into Concentration, Charge, and Thorns. Thorns and Concentration are the only offesive Auras i use so don't do any of the others. Once u have those levls high than u can start on a defensive Aura, if u want to use one at all, the good thing about having a good defensive aura ( i suggest Defiance) then it will be much easier to find a group to fight with. But if ur not much on defense like me then u might put a few points in it if u can spare em. But once u have all those skills then start to just keep puttin points into thorns, concentration, and charge, after that ur set on the skill tree. Now for Equiptment. Because i dont use Defensive auras then its kinda good for me to have good armor. Because they say a Paladins best friend is His shield. I don't think that resitances are that important unless u want them, i suggest IsenHarts Parry, (set, gothic shield) unless u find something better. For armor try the best u can to get full plate than Ornate armor, especially one that has Enhanced Defense and gives u life or mana steal. For gloves i would go with frost burn, but if u dont need the defence then go with the chance gaurds which will give u +200% gold and a 32% chance of finding a magical item plus 28 defense. For boots i would get something that gives fast run walk, and enhanced Defense. For a weapon, if u like the one handed weapons and shields than i would go with a War Sword called Fiend Fang, or maybe go with the Crystal Sword AzureWrath, but if u like the two hand weapons then go with a Lance (try to get one with faster attack speed then u can really do good), i can do well over 900 damage when i use charge and a Lance, or u can go with an Executioners Sword(Note: both the Lance and executioners sword are on hell difficulty!) because they have fast attack speed and require a high attack rating. Well that is my stratetgy and if u have anything u want to add just e-mail me at Superman2545@aol.com Back to Top For all of you people considering using the paladin or are almost at lvl 30 with dozens of points saved for Fist of Heavens DO NOT I REPEAT DO NOT put anything in Fist of heavens that is quite possibly the most useless skill in the entire game go spend some more points on conversion or umm... that's about it as long as you got a few in freeze, zeal and concentration and maybe vengence you'll be fine. Oh and nothing in the spinny hammer shit waste of time and SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO USELESS!!! Viper7219 Back to Top I did this with my pally and he is so much better than barbs and spearazons. I saved almost all of my skill points. I put 1 point into each skill, unless otherwise mentioned. Zeal, Smite, holy bolt, Zeal, Charge, Might, Blessed Aim, Prayer, Cleansing, Meditation and Salvation. And the remaining points I had left over I put into Concentrate and Blessed Hammer, this way as I got 1 lvl up I could put 1 point into each skill. I maxed concentrate and blessed hammer. I am going for holy shield right now. My pally is currently lvl 56 and he has a lvl 28 concentrate and a lvl 29 blessed hammer. He does around 1200 damage per hammer. And I am trying to max out my holy shield skill. Its at lvl 22/27. There are some people who say that concentrate doesnt effect your blessed hammer and they are wrong. with out my concentrate on my hammer does around 150 damage per hammer in player verses player and it does around 600 in player verses player when I have concentrate on. THe reason that I am maxing out holy shield is that it signifficantly increases the chance to block and adds to your defence rating. I have 2 shields that my pally uses. A sigons shield that has 22 def and a 74% chance to block and a 295 grim shield with a 30% chance to block. With my lvl 22 holy shield I can get my sigons gaurd to have a defence of 96 and a chance to block of 96%. With the grim shield it has a chance to block of 52% and its defence is a little over 1300. When I max holy shield out i'll send a picture in showing the maxed def. I am expecting it to be over 1500. Now with the 1300+ defence shield it is like wearing 1.6 ornates each with 900 def. In hell difficulty, when I put the shield on my chance to be hit drops by 8%. Also the higher the holy shield the more smite damage it adds. Why would you want to use smite. Well with a +2 scepter, +1 conc, +2 bh you dont want to remove it to fight in the maggot lair. Summary: Max out Blessed Hammer, Concentrate and Holy Sheild and Charge. Put 1 skill point into skills. Get more skills after you max out concentrate and Blessed hammer so save your points. I maxed out Concentration, Blessed Hammer, Holy Shield and Charge in that order. When I am lvl 79 I will have maxed out all of those skills and gotten the requirements for them. Also give your Palidin as much + skills as you can and 170 strength so you can wear the big armors. KingRichZ Lvl 56 HammerPalidin Back to Top It's probably a good idea to play a Paladin for a while to test out all the skills (maybe hack him up for a test drive) then scrap him and start over using only the skills you found useful. I see a lot of lower level Paladins using stuff like prayer and might, and i can't help laughing every time. Prayer is nice, -for the first act-, then gets useless really fast, and might is no match for concentration, so you're best to save the skill points for something more useful later on. If you want a powerful, specialized character, this skill guide is very useful: Combat skills -Let's be perfectly honest here. The only skills in this section which are of any use at ALL, are Zeal and possibly Charge. I personally only use Zeal, and i have it as my main attack all the time. I've seen charge work alright on higher levels, but Zeal needs to be no higher than 2nd or 3rd (as you'll probably get stuff that adds to skills anyway). Any higher than that it'll take to long to finish, and you'll take a beating while you're waiting. Holy Shield is nice when you get there, but it drains a lot of points to get it powerful, and i don't use shields anyway. I like the damage behind 2-hand weapons too much. Points: Sacrifice (1) Zeal (2) - up to 4 if you can't find anything which adds to skills. Defensive aura's - I've never used anything in this section except Defiance, and Salvation. I'm using my offensive aura's so much, i've never found time. Defiance is nice for those times when you're getting hit a little TOO much, but try walking instead of running. You get hit much less that way. Salvation is only really good against Sorceress's and Diablo's lightning, but only 1 point! Any more and it's a waste. That goes for the other resistances as well, but i've never bothered with them. By the time you really need them, you can use Salvation anyway. Points: Defiance (4) Salvation (1) Offensive aura's (now the fun starts!) - The trick here is to try and stack on specific ones, so they're really good, and you won't need to change them much. But be careful to only stack to the point where they stop being useful. Thorns is nice, but you end up taking too much damage when the beasties get hard, so it's good for normal difficulty, and on single guys that really pack a punch. Concentration is for taking down the tough ones fast, but Holy Freeze is good for the rest of the time. Fanaticism is nice, but if you have a fast weapon (a must), using zeal and holy freeze, you won't need it. Would you rather increase your attack speed by 30% or slow all the enemies around you (movement and attack) by 40%? Points: Might (1) Holy Fire (1) Thorns (10) - or max it later if you have the points. Blessed Aim (1) Concentration - max this when you can, but not before pumping freeze. Holy Freeze (6) - it advances too slowly after that. A quick note on items - Weapon: You need something which does damage, has a nice attack rating and is fast. Speed and attack rating should come first as damage is useless if you can't hit anything. It'll also be good to have something that steals life (saves you popping potions all the time) and mana (make up for what you use on Zeal). I got through act2 normal using only about 6 potions, 2 of which were on Durial. Jewelry: Jordan's are for the sorceress, you shouldn't go nuts over them if you have something better. What you're looking for is resistances, attack rating, and steal life (or mana if you must). It's always good to find something with +2 paladin skill though. It'll make it easier to ditch the jordan's that way. Everything else: ... is for defense mostly. That should really be your priority, and you'll need strength if you want nice armor. After that, look at anything which reduces poison/freeze duration and gives fastest hit recovery. Fast Run/Walk is good for boots, and +magic item/gold from monsters is nice for gauntlets, but defense is a paladins best friend. ~Valkinord. Back to Top A paladin, because of his auras, is different from any other character class. There are no passive skills, so only one attack skill and one or two auras can really be used at a time. Virtually any skills that you get in the beggining of the game get replaced by better ones later, because of this, saving your skill points for better skills is crutial. Zeal is the first skill worth its weight in shit, but don't put more than 3 points into it, or you'll get stuck swinging away on a lightning enchanted boss and effectivly committing suicide. Concentration and vengence follow soon after, put as many points into these as you can, though the mana equirement for vengence is too hich now, that will change later. Level 30 is money, you can now use redemption, the most powerful skill in the game; not only is mana and life regenerated, but the corpse of the fallen opponenet is also removed. This proves extremely useful against shamans and the skeleton resurecting mofos in act II. Redemption's mana regenerating properties allows you to use vengence, and the mana/hit points recovered via redemption are recovered immeadiatly just like rejuvination potions. Instead of regular healing potions which take forever and all too often result in death. However, redemption is uselss if there are no corpses to redeem, so against bosses and uniques, switch back to concentration, this combination will make almost invincible. It is also important to properly place your attribute points. There is no need to put any points into energy ever. When you use zeal, it only takes a 2 mana per 3 or 4 hits, and by the time you are using redemption you have aquired so many mana points from leveling up that you have a seemingly endless supply. To use ornate armor (ac = about 450) you need a strength of 170; a paladin is his equipment, there are no passive skills to save you make sure that you have enough stregth to use what you find. Dex and vit are also very important, but energy is useless. Darth_Hill Back to Top im a paladin in hc and i can tell you many of the strategies for pals are outdated. I mean, no one uses convert anymore, and no one is stupid enough to get lvl 30 salvation. Everyone knows that the best strategy is concentrate (max), holy freeze (10), and charge (max). This is a good strategy because it allows you to take on bosses and minions with the same skill. You turn on holy freeze before to slow the monsters down, and then charge them to death with concentration/charge. With a mana steal item, and the knockback ability of charge, you can destroy even bosses in minimal time. Also, you only need one point into salvation. Anymore is a waste. and if you are fighting beetles early on, you might want 1 point into resist lightning. It saved my asss in act 2 many times. Last thing, dont wate skill point into the other defence auras. You will never need them, and all they do is take skill points. Dane Back to Top Duriel is the easiest boss in the game if you are a palidin with Holy Freeze and Zeal (Who dosen't?). Just use them in combination to hack at him until his dead. I did it with only using 3 greater healing potions, so follow my advice and you won't have trouble with Duriel Sir Thor Back to Top Yeah all those other pally strategys have some key points but dont really help you my strategy will help you out alot ok first when you start out just concentrate on thorns and save those SKILL POINTS dont go wasting them on some gay auras taht are useless....when you get to lvl 12-14 put no more then 3 skill points into zeal because most likely your gonna get an ammy or some other item stone of jordan etc. that will raise your skills so keep zeal low.....after you get about lvl 30 youll have a few skill points left from maxing out thorns and you can either start on concentrate (GREAT AURA when you stack) and put some points into charge (if your into those two handed weapons) or you could work your way to holy shield witch will help out a shit load later........oh yeah and put like one skill point into salvation try not to get the lvl too high because even though the radius is farther your resistance goes down which doesnt really help taht much later when you need that extra elemental resistance.....hmm... what else do i have to say...oh yeah and on your stats wokr on strentgh until about 170 so you can get on those cool orcher plates and get your dexterity up to what kind of weapon you prefere then just mass all those other stat points into life try not to put that many into mana its nothing else worthless then seeing a paladin with mega mana running around using blessed hammer and fist of heavens (no offense to thsoe skills).....so good luck on all your adventures and maybe ills ee you around soo you can thank me..=) LATER AoC-FaLLeNaNgEL Back to Top When I started out my Paladin, I dumped a lot of points into prayer. It was great! It healed me and my rougue! -- Until I got to the second act. All told you can only up your recharged points per "turn" to 20, and thats hardly useful up against baddies. Early in the game, dump your points into thorns. Also, don't make the mistake of not taking one ineverything. It may turn out you urgently need a skill only to discover you haven't opened up the previous ones. -Kevin Back to Top If you are planning on being a paladin, only put one skill point into each resistance. The starting value is 54% resist, but each extra point only adds 4%. Work heavily on defiance and thorns. Use thorns against bosses and uniques and defiance the rest of the time. If you try to use thorns all the time, you end up absorbing too much damage. Zeal is the best combat skill, but only put 2-3 points into it, or you may find yourself hacking away at enemies when you need to run away and regroup. As far as weapons go, I prefer two handed things like maces because of the massive damage they deal. For stat pumping, don't put anything into mana. You'll never end up using it if you follow my advice. Naroth Back to Top I consider paladins one of the most diffucult and challenging characters to play. Begining paladins have so many auras and combat skills to choose from it can become very daunting prospect to choose correctly, and not waste skill points. After many repeated attempts and wasted skill points i have come to the conclusion that theses skills are the only real viable skills for paladins(IMHO). Concentration - I've maxed out this skill-its nice to have u damage increase by 300%, and being a aura it affects joined party members and their minions. Holy Freeze - Only have this at lvl5, at this lvl it last long enough and slows enought to be effective a great skill. Charge - I've maxed this out as well, with concentration on charge can do well over a 1000 pts of dam per hit, and with the AR increase the chances of missing with this skill is very slim. Its very effective on bosses and lightling enchanted creatures because of its knockback ability. Thorns - I've used this skill quite often with my previous paladins, but at higher lvls NM/HELL I found out its drawbacks. Creatures at this lvl hit for a chunk of damage and enough life to withstand Thorns before your paladin succumbs to being kick in the face. But still ive seen this skill work well with conversion and in pvp vs barbs only at high skill lvls thou. Conversion - only effective with the thorns combo and at high skill lvl. Blessed hammer - Ive heard good things about this, especially when concentration works to increase the dam of this skill. Im still testing this skill and only have a few points in it so far, and seems to work well to clear rooms but only with concentration on. Redemption - A wasted skill IMHO paladins dont need the mana unless they intend to use vengence alot, and the redemption speed is to slow for the life gain to be effective, u'll still be popping potions like candy. Salvation - 1 pt only any more is wasted because of the low % increase. Fist of Heavens - what a lousy 30th lvl skill, people tell me its good in pvp but u need a skill u can use for both multy play and pvp. Zeal - Great skill but only around lvl3-5 at most any higher and u will regret it, getting smacked while zeal completes will get u killed. Vengence - too much mana, does good dam thou for those bosses. Sacrafice - too dangerous to use even with life steal stuff, because its 8 %of the dam u weapon does to a creature if i remeber right? ICEBLINK armor is the paladins best friend or any melee character - Iceblink has low def but it gives u the ablity to freeze targets that u hit with u weapon. A creature thats frozen cannot attack back so def becomes irrelevent, and its freeze lasts a good 2 seconds at least. With zeal this armor becomes more effective, for example u get surrounded and have zeal as u main attack and have iceblink armor all craetures that have surronded u are now frozen= cant attack=paladin attacks=dead creature=repeat as required. Combo iceblink with life steal rings and u wont need potions, well as not as many because u will still get hit especially in Hell, but iceblink will make nm and hell alot easier. Oh and another thing creatures life is not a factor as frozen creatures are shattered, but remeber several things iceblink will not freeze bosses or uniques or other players, but will chill them as if u h d holly freeze on. Steven Back to Top Another good strategy that I have found to work very well......Using Zeal and Thorns makes for an excellent offensive/offensive maneuver. Zeal is set to lvl 4 and Thorns is at lvl 10. That allows me to attack 5x per click and it,s shared amongst monsters from 1 to 5 (1 monster would recieve 5 whacks) but don't much higher than lvl 7 or 8. And Thorns does 610% reflective damage at lvl 10 to the monster that struck me. That drops most monsters in one hit!(faster than my aunt's cow can paint the barn wall when it has the hershey squirts!) But don't get cocky! Thorns is for melee attacks only! Take out any ranged attacking monsters first! Don't wade into a skel mage nest without alot of healing potion. IF you have the patience, include a weapon that has howling with zeal. That helps chase away ALOT of monsters when surrounded. Ragged Tiger Back to Top Hello, I'm Chad Moore, online name as Daton_(iW) which is actually my Open Char account. Now, I have quite a high leveled Paladin who has killed Diablo 4 times, once on his own, and has killed Mephisto so many times you won't laugh. I think that the Paladin is the greatest Class to choose because of his Auras, which my current fav is a lvl.4 Salvation. Now, most people goto B.net and see their way to make a really good Paladin. I tried this and ended up in a Disaster area. My paladin was weaker then my Necromancer friend's skeletons even at level 9. Now, just because alot of people visit this site, I think I should tell everyone my way of turning a Paladin into a true Zakarum Knight. First off, your skill points. You must place your skill points just a tad bit carefully, unlike the Necro, who must keep a constant set of skills. Now, early on, Devolop your Might and Prayer until you reach Thorns. Invest them like this, Might 3-5, Prayer 2-4, Thorns 3-6. This will help you early on, invest more later on (I have a level 13 Might ). Now, once you can, put enough points into Zeal so you get Four Hits off one shot. Zeal is a great replacment to a normal attack because no matter what Zeal always takes 2 mana and you attack a number of times in one shot, great if your fighting a lot of monsters. The auras you can pick a little later on, Vigor, Cleansing, Resist Fire/Cold/Lightning, and Holy Fire/Freeze/Shock are actually quite useless. Redemption(much later on), Salvation(Level 30 required), and Sanctuary are some really good ons. Blessed Hammer and Holy Bolt are useless, Smite is useless, and that's it. Conversion is really good to make new friends, it actually turns a monster you hit succsesfully against his friends, but I more rely on Zeal. Oh yeah, and Sacrifice is good if you don't want or need Zeal, Conversion, or Vengence. Next, equipment. Find Stones of Jordan no matter what and also an amulet that adds 1-2 to all skill levels. Get Resist items early on, then lose them for better stuff because you can get Salvation(Has saved me from Diablo's Crimson Lightning ). Next, Find a helm that's either socketed for Rubies or Skulls or one that has good defense and adds to Life, Life/Mana% steal, or Life/Mana regeneration. As for Gloves, experiment, I use ones that give me a 34% better chance to get a magick item because all my other stuff is either Rare or Unigue(I kill Hackers in loots duels, not even a hacker, except some, can kill me). Belt, get one that holds alot of potions, has average defense, and adds to strength or dexterity. Boots, get some that gives a better running/walking speed and gives you additional health. If not, get some that add to Resistances, even with Salvation I use three items that add to my resists, I've maxed out Fire/Cold/Lightning(Salvation doesn't add to poison resists, man). As for armor, Get real good armor and adds to Life/Mana steal (i.e. Boneflesh) or adds to weapon advantages (i.e. Attack Rating/Speed/Damage). Weapon, personally I prefer a large, two-handed sword over a one-handed one. Get some good Steal Life/Mana on it and don't worry about potions. Also, even if you find a stronger Weapon, if it has slow attack speed and you don't have Zeal get one with a faster attack speed. My rare Great Sword has a Fast Attck speed, and my zeal gets me a good 5 shots(my sword does 41-65 damage anyway, hee hee).As for shields, I don't really Know but get one that adds to your skills (i.e. Sigon's Guard, SteelClash). Even if you find a shield that has 300 defense, it's chance to block rules out everything. Also, if you don't need a sheild to add to your skill levels, always go for a Three Perfect Diamond Tower Sheild, or, if in Nightmare/Hell, a Pavise. I won't tell you how to Play your Paladin, just play him with What I said, you'll then know the true meaning of Holyiness. Chad Back to Top invest skill points on the "holy freeze". most players wear high defense armors/accesories instead of anti-freeze stuff. i freeze em and bonesnap em. 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