Support Paladin

Hello!

Got a group of people that’s going to play through together and really wanted to make the most of a team oriented build so was thinking Paladin because auras. Not finding a lot of comprehensive guides on the subject so thought I’d ask for advice. Is it viable in a team of say 3-5? Any skill suggestions? Does Holy Bolt’s healing remain relevant to your party as your progress? Do points in prayer increase the healing of cleansing and meditation? In other words, would it be worth maxing out those three skills to increase healing? Any thoughts or advice would be appreciated.

I was thinking alternatively, Curse/Summoning Necro, Druid, or Shout Barbarian.

2 Likes

I’ve never been the one to actually be playing the Paladin support but there use to be a guy in my group that would always run behind us in Chaos Sanctuary runs spamming holy bolt + switching around auras for whatever we needed.

I was able to find this and it sounds pretty close to what I remember but I don’t really have concrete information on the build and the leveling path.

You are basically going to be playing an adjusted Fist of Heavens build though. So this might also be useful.

There isn’t a ton of Support / FoH guides out there. A note on the PoD guide - Sanctuary is broken right now in D2R and I glanced through it to make sure nothing was Path of Diablo plugin only and it LOOKED good but take it with a grain of salt.

1 Like

Thanks for the swift response, this is the best information I’ve gotten so far. So for you personally, did you find that build to be desirable in your party or would something else have been preferable. I guess I’m asking, did it work? Or would I be better off doing something more viable?

1 Like

I had to think about this question for awhile and I would probably say that a cleric paladin is a really good choice in a playthrough with friends if your all going to stick together.

I can see a lot of ways that they would be invaluable vs all the bosses and the majority of places you would be farming as a group.

The only thing that I don’t really like.

  • If your group can only afford 1 insight then its better on a sorceress unless your planning on walking everywhere.

  • If your group has a sorceress, assassin, or melee damage dealer they’re going to benefit a lot from conviction aura.

In order to make the build useful it seems like you will be relying on Insight to provide your Meditation + Prayer so you can scroll between Convection / Salvation. ← This wouldn’t be a deal breaker for me just something to keep in mind since additionally, having a high level meditation aura on that insight is now very important.

For damage you swap between FoH / Holy Bolt but because of a self healing exploit in an earlier patch FoH no longer heals allies. ← This here is where I think it becomes clunky to imagine playing and building out the character.

Then the alternatives (mainly at the point where you hit hell as a group).

  • 1pt smiter (HoZ Hammerdin) brings Fanat
  • Pure Hammer (Hoto/Spirit + Spirit) uses concentration aura primarily but if you have two paladins then you are free to bring low level convection and salvation as off-aura.
  • FoH brings high level Convection.
  • Zealer / Smiter brings a high level Fanat and resistance auras.

The only thing a cleric is doing differently is bringing a +25 life per second heal along with Meditation, I believe you can enable cleansing on your own and double that to 50/s, and if you hit your holy bolts they’re equivalent to a super healing potion by the time your level 40. Which is all a ton of healing when you need it and when you don’t you have resistances + convection to fall back on.

It all seems great but it also seems like a hard commitment to the build at every stage of the game with the biggest advantage only being at the later stages.

If anyone else has anything feel free to chime in. To me it seems like a good build but it is a good starting build?

I’ve been in the game where someone was a ‘healer’ pally. It didn’t do much. Holy bolt is so targets and small that is doesn’t do much. The best support out there is a Prayer Merc with an Insight. This gives healing and mana regeneration.

If you want to benefit a party I would just go Zealot. Put a point in all aura’s and get to know them. Proper timing of Cleansing or Salvation can keep the party alive and going. Many Pallys don’t deviate from their one aura they use aside from going to vigor just so they can run faster.

A smiter pally could actually be a great support even maxing all the smiter skills and fanaticism you will only use 60+prerequisites skill points.

That leaves alot of points to use on niche but useful auras… vigor, conviction, cleansing. (Run a prayer Merc with insight)

With a build like this you could build it very tanky and even offer a source of lifetap with exile+dracs.

Was leaching Baal runs on my smiter the other day keep in mind I’m still a budget smiter no grief.

Our runner got to the throne room and died as they got the tp up… I seen this and said f’it beast mode time… Went in and about 5 min later I solo’d 15 souls so the runner could get there body back. It took awhile and I was slow but with lifetap procs and tgods+92 light resist I could tank 15 souls…

Being able to to get your group out of sticky situations even if abit slow can be invaluable.

I’d think the best support is a Tesladin with Conviction (instead of FoH/HB). I was running one - without dream(s). Just wielded a Light Sabre. My kill speed with conviction is almost the same as with Holy shock on in CS. In other areas like Arcane, Holy shock can easily kill low life mobs like the PI ghosts with a few shocks. If you have dream, even better then you can stack with Conviction, but I didn’t.

I had Conviction at level 25 (after +skills). This works wonders for any party with trapsin, javas, sorcs, elemental druids.

They’re fun build, but I finally respec to hammerdin as I needed some solo clear speed. Low budget Tesladin like mine just didn’t have the solo clear speed I needed.