leveling with Holy bolt - soon to be FOH- so far feels “meh” or even just bad.
im level 28, 75-80%fcr depending on my gear, ready to drop 1 into conviction and 1 into FOH once it unlocks
act 5 start- i dont even bother with cause 80-95% of monsters are non-demon and non-undead. there’s no point.
i feel like im only relegated to farming chaos sanc- even then i have to skip the bugs or sit their using level 1 zeal. WTF
S tier my a.sz. maybe S teir end-game for farming what… 2 spots?
but as leveling (solo)… naaaah…
i’ll hit level 30 and see how it goes and maybe give an update… but so far this is kinda lame.
Any updates? I think the play is to level early as holy fire zeal, then swap hammer, then end game as FOH ?
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Maggot’s lair in nm and hell is a pain solo even with hammer.
I agree it’s rough but I just found a weapon with concentration on it and I’m slinging hammers relying on the Merc and teammates very difficult to go solo until level 30. I’m just excited for something different once I get into full FOH Mode
For normal, Act 5 was really rough. I wouldn’t recommend starting with holy bolt. I can’t speak for hell yet since I’m just about to get there. I actually farmed my way to 30 before I tried Act5, and even then it was pretty awful because FoH is 25 mana so you just CHUG through pots (unless you spend some points in energy prior to a respec). I ended up finding a decent weapon, so I put more points into holy shock than holy bolt and did a lot of meleeing of non-undead/demon with holy shock on (usually they died pretty quick).
It realllly excels in the demon only areas… I’m reserving judgement till like 75-80 to really give it a whirl. Ideally with a little bit of gear. One thing is that FoH build really does favor playing with groups. Trap Assassins, Light Javazons, and Light Sorcs love me, people who need to jump into the fray love the heals. Plus your make your party immune to conviction aura. It’s the first time in a long time I’ve felt like it was more enjoyable to play in groups.
In nightmare solo, it feels - just okay. In fully demon/undead areas I do feel the strength starting to come on. I’ll have to start seeing if FoH starts one shotting non-demon/elites as I finish skilling out. Realistically it’d be nice to have a beefy merc who you can just spam heals on.
I’m starting to think FoH will only excel with really nice gear, whereas hammers performs well with less.
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It is a pain. But imo damage is fine but the issue is just the limitation initation on undead/demon. Honestly, I dont get why devs didn’t just allow to hit all mobs. I really hope this will come. I think the build would then be viable also to level. But right now I agree that you need to zeal first. But honestly, I expect FOH will still be niche due to that limitation. Only with that change it will start to Challenge the meta.
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when i hit 30-31, i respect him, maintaining the FOH build, but with better stat/skill allocation. more HP, more FOH dmg. chaos was noticably better now. still had to skip a bunch of act 5 stuff, but once i got to the world stone levels, the fohdin crushed that too.
I eventually sailed through nightmare and hell.
it wasn’t that bad… the only annoying parts is having to skip/run past zones and lots of monsters… and then have areas where you are only targeting 1 monster at a time. that stuff was annoying, but it made up for it when you’d reach act 4 chaos or world stone keep and you’d blow stuff up no problem.
You are usually better off with a zealot or some sort of elemental aura until you get the staff of kings in a2 hell. Then you can go hammerdin the rest of the way. Do not even bother with FoH until you finish the game. You can’t kill ancients with it.
Reason to stick with a zealot or elemental aura until then is that the damned bug lair is extremely difficult with a hammerdin. The tunnels are just too narrow.
Like many peoplle gave told you, you don’t level up has FOH.
This is a alternate farming build that team play is more enjoyable then hammer because you help them with their resist too.
Plus it’s WAY safer than hammers before you have gear (Good for hardcore). Cancel out any conviction auras, add your own conviction, heal friends and your merc. FoH is a great group class and demon/undead farmer. But don’t level FoH unless you exclusively play in parties and can handle being just an aura bot for most of act 2, 3, & 5.
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ya… my update was wrong… i thought i “sailed through hell”-- NOPE…
just found out my guy is in act 1 hell…
and my lord does FOH drop off… HARD… defintly contemplating going Hammers or using my Lo rune i found to make a Grief and own hell
I think both Holy Bolt and Sanctuary should be extended to be able to hit non undead/demon mobs even if it’s only with reduced effectiveness. I’ve always found it weird that these skills are basically unable to deal damage or has any effect on most of the mobs in the game, therefore you’re unable to solo level it using this skillset.
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Yes. Tried it and while FOH is great I hated HB. I like my builds to be versatile so I haven’t went far with that one.
But it makes a great act4 mf builds.