I leveled completely solo so far, currently lvl 23 in act 4, and I’ve hit a wall using milabregas set and holy fire. While most of it could be attributed to the increase in mob fire resistance, it is also partially limited by the milabregas set. Up until act 4, it was a great experience. Many mob types would die as soon as they hit the screen and the rest would die in another 1-2 pulses of holy fire. Currently, the pulse isn’t working as well (as expected as it’s hell) but I cannot survive large packs of pit lords even with the sets 8% life leech. This is partially due to the fact that i lack a lot of fire resistance so this may skew my results but the clear speed is poor in a4 regardless. Below, I will discuss my thoughts in the following sections:
- Forced Stat Placement
- Life leech not working?!?!?! Note the sarcasm
- Upgrade Schmupgrade - too much competition from runewords and caster specs
1) Forced Stat Placement
As good as MB set felt eventually, right at level 17 it was not a great experience. Basically, in order to get the complete set bonus you must put 75 points into strength in order to reach the chest’s requirement of 100 str. This is equivalent to putting 15 levels worth of points into strength. This leaves ONE level’s worth of points (5) which puts you at 30 points in vitality at level 17. Even though you’re able to run around and have mobs die at range, you are so squishy that you’re at risk of dying to any ranged or fast mobs that come in between pulses of the aura.
With that said, I used a respec at level 17 in order to get to that stat distribution. Trying to solo level with only 30 points in vitality is a tough ask even in act 1. With respecs as limited as they are in the base game, it’s unlikely anyone would use their normal mode respec just to equip this set especially when considering that they could use that to change spec into a super efficient hammer spec. As good as the set felt with holy fire damage output, unless a player will be supplying a significant quantity of strength charms or lvl 17 or less +strength gear then without itemization changes, the set and the build isn’t worth using. These itemization changes could include adding +strength to all pieces, +strength as a partial set bonus on all pieces, putting -XX% to requirements to the chest, or some major life bonuses.
Forced stat placement into anything but vitality is an issue with many early game sets and uniques. It’s also a major reason why melee specs are sub par for leveling. While they tend to be powerful in terms of bonuses and appear attractive, it’s frequently at the opportunity cost of having to invest early into strength/dexterity instead of life which is especially tough for leveling as a non-caster build. If part of the goal of early game sets and uniques is to make the leveling process easier for melee then pretty much all normal tier items need to have their required attributes adjusted or something like a cube recipe that allows you to reduce the required stats for normal tier uniques or set pieces. The recipe idea is an interesting take if that stat reduction were to stay implemented as you upgrade the item to higher tiers.
2) Life leech not working?!?!?! Note the sarcasm
While having 8% life leech sounds great as a set bonus, life leech only applies on physical damage done. At level 23 with 100 strength, my lvl 4 zeal is doing 67-134 damage per hit without an aura on but this value is including other sources of damage. I’m currently getting +46 to maximum lighting damage from the MB set bonus, +5 to minimum damage from iratha’s chord (phys) and 25-35 fire damage from cow kings hooves. Assuming I’m not missing some multiplier that would change the phys value, the actual phys damage per swing of only the MB weap is 37-53 damage. This means that with an 8% life steal and rounding down (I assume you can’t get a fraction of life), you’re only gaining 3-4 life per hit and that’s only if the monster had ZERO defense or physical resistance. Going back to my earlier a4 normal example and level 23, this low total leech means that you can’t simply kill everything with holy fire pulses, health potions don’t sustain quick enough, and you’re gaining ~1% of your life per hit or less.
The new + to max lightning damage per level set bonus does nothing to alleviate this. Assuming this set is meant for melee paladin leveling, you’d be better served with probably 10 life regen instead of 8% life leech as a set bonus. The armor would be better served with + max phys damage per level instead of lightning
3) Upgrade Schmupgrade
As I had realized MB set and holy fire wasn’t going to cut it in a4, i thought about trying out upgrading the MB weapon when I came to an unfortunate conclusion - The level requirement for the exceptional version of a war scepter, the divine scepter, has a level 25 req, requires 103 strength (3 more needed) and has a base damage of 16-38. This means without other bonuses, the 50% enhanced damage would bump it to 24-57. As I don’t have access to the behind the scenes calculations, applying a simple ratio would lead to having a physical zeal damage range of 59 - 121. Upgrading it only increases the physical damage by roughly 60% give or take. This would still lead to a pittance of life leech and would probably still have issues with act 4.
With that said, the main bit to take from that is “lvl 25”… At that level, a paladin can easily respec, equip 2x spirit sword and shield, spec hammers, and be set until endgame when they can respec back to melee should they be so inclined.
In summary, I’m not certain where milabrega’s set would fit in for paladin leveling even with the changes. The full set has too stringent of a requirement for the chest for it to be viable for hammerdins and it has such low physical weapon damage that it doesn’t work well for any zeal based paladin build. This basically boils down to the game being designed in such a way that leveling as a ranged class is always going to be a superior option when not being power-leveled because the tools for melee build sustain just aren’t available until endgame
Addendum - as I was writing this, i decided that i should try out some other melee builds. Holy shock (leveled to 24) performed somewhat better in a4 but sit till ran into life sustain issues. Looking at holy freeze, it comes online at level 18 and would run into similar issues in certain parts of a5 but it could be worth testing.
Unfortunately, I was going to test out a4 holy fire leveling with the upgrade MB weapon but upgrading it made it level 30 where its base item is level 25. I think i’m done testing this set!