Holy bolt support build idea

Paladin
1

I’m trying to think of a build to try out next ladder. I really want to make a healer HB build, since I was a kid like 20 years ago haha.

The Cleansing plus Meditation aura stacked should give 100 healing/seconds at least right?
(You’d miss a bit on FCR tho so maybe a HOTO is still BiS for this)

Skill
20 Holy Bolt
20 FoH
20 Holy shield
20 Prayer
1 Cleansing
1 meditation (main aura)
1 vigor

Gear
Enigma
Shako
Plague Weapon (for Cleansing)
Exile (for Defiance)
Aracs
FCR ring
Soj
Maras
Magefist
Tri res boots or whatever

Merc
Grief and lawbringer, arreats, Fortitude.

Let me know if you have better suggestions.

2

Unfortunately people will still prefer if you run Conviction aura over Meditation/Prayer. So a standard FoH paladin will provide more support than a healer. Healing is generally not an issue in this game because there are so many potions everywhere. If this was Lost Ark or something, then people would definitely appreciate the constant healing, but it’s not. :stuck_out_tongue:

1 Like
3

Why would you need more defense from exile? If this is a FoH based build then just go with hoz. As for the weapon those FoH sticks are very expensive and will require lots of hunting to find 1. I would have just said hoto but I’m sure their are other better cheaper options out there. You really want to get your +skills up. Also make sure you are building around conviction. I’ve heard FoH is getting a reduced cooldown time.

4

I’ve been playing around with the idea of a healer myself. The problem I ran into running around with cleansing aura holding an runeword insight was the radius of effect of the aura. The insight had a fairly good healing radius, but only a single point in cleansing wasn’t getting that extra healing to my comrads.

I just posted a build idea you might find interesting. :slight_smile: Max out prayer and meditation and the new Runeword Plague from the 2.4 PTR with a cleansing aura. Not only are you double healing with a good radius, but you can further heal with holy bolt, you can wear a shield in addition to the Plague, and the cleansing aura reduces curses and poisons for everyone, which removes negative buffs.

Exile sounds like a great idea My first thought months ago was to get a prayer merc with an insight doing a double heal while I put out a maxed out cleansing aura, but with a plague and exile, I could be a double healer/debuff/party defense build, then I can max out holy bolt synergies and kill bosses single handedly, or heal other players.

One option I’ve considered was just maxing out prayer so I’d still have the healing synergy with holy bolt and could use plague to do the healing/debuff and then use a prayer merc with an insight to put in 2 other forms of healing and that would free up 20 skill points to place somewhere else.

This is going to blow everyone’s mind, but if you free up those 20 points, with 110 skill points, you can max out prayer, get all the synergies for holy bolt and fist of heaven, with a single point in holy shield!!!

I was in a game last night where a hammerdin was taking damage on a baal run and I started holy bolting him. At first, he was running around trying to dodge them until I said, holy bolt heals you silly. :slight_smile: After that, it was fun keeping him and 2 barbarians alive. :slight_smile: Every now and then I’d use a fist of heaven and help snipe something on the sidelines. It was actually a very fun experience…also, when I clicked on fist of heaven on baal, my paladin moved to face Baal when he split in 2, so everyone knew which one was the real one.

It was very rewarding to help turn a Baal run that could have went poorly into a run where their life stayed up enough, the poison cleared enough and I could focus on a little added combat skill and switch to holy bolts for more intensive healing. Of course, you have a constant meditation aura, so spam fist of heaven or holy bolt all you wanna. :slight_smile:

1 Like
5

FoH is getting a reduced cooldown time, but your actual damage is centered around Holy Bolt, not FoH (lightning). FoH pally will be once of the fastest chaos characters, but not because of the lightning damage from FoH, but the magic dmg from holy bolt. Because of that conviction isn’t as important for your character, but useful groups. If you can get a bit of + skills/offensive gc’s you could easily get the -150% res by putting 1-5 points into conviction total.

OP:

As far as the weapon choice, Put plague on your merc and use a hoto. Get yourself 75% chance to cast for teleporting purposes (Could easily get 125% cast if you drop the exile which really isn’t needed except in bmpvp. Go with Hoz - 75% fcr or spirit shield - 125% fcr.

6

I had a similar setup except I maxed Meditation for it to be the primary aura and Holy Shield is maxed last. The Mana regeneration you will get from doing so will be surreal as it’ll be roughly 50% stronger than a level 17 Insight. The build also had multiple variants: 125 FCR, 75 FCR, 48 FCR and 30 FCR with Teleport/Non-Teleport options.

In general, the gear set-up was the following:

Hoto(required on 125 FCR) or Plague(Crystal Sword/Phase Blade)
Spirit(45 Resist Sacred Targe) or HoZ(Um’d and Upgraded if so desired)
Switch CTA/Spirit
Shako(Cham’d or Um’d)
Enigma(Teleport) or CoH(Non-Teleport)/Guardian Angel(Um’d)
Magefists
Spider
Aldur Boots/Fire Resist Boots
Seraph Hymn(+2 Defensive aura) or Maras(+Stats/Resists)
Dwarf + Wisp(for Absorb), 2 x FCR rings or 2 x SOJ(more Mana/Skills)
Torch + Anni(Inventory)
Merc: Act 5 Frenzy w/ Grief/Lawbringer + Arreats(Cham’d) + Fortitude

125 FCR variant necessitates Hoto and Spirit and ideal for Enigma
75 FCR variant requires perfect Spirit or Hoto, still viable for Enigma
48 FCR variant requires FCR ring but is advised for Non-Teleport
30 FCR variant pushes for max Resistance/Absorb and Non-Teleport

Plague is only viable on 75 FCR or below and Guardian Angel necessitates Maras Amulet to take advantage of the +15 Resist cap. Long story short, it ranges from extreme mobility to extreme defense. Oh and regarding Exile, that’s a waste on a Cleric. Exile is meant for melee builds(like Smiter) where the extra Defene/Life Tap is extremely important.