Hammerdin Guide

Guide To Hammerdins

Hammerdins are obviously paladins that use blessed hammer and concentration aura as their main skills. They're very popular among the ladder now. They have the ability to exceed most other paladin builds with damage (My level 81 hammerdin does around 4100+ damage). This is a basic run down of the build.

Skills

Skills on this build mostly focus around maxing out Blessed Hammer, it's synergies, and Concentration, along with a few support auras and combat skills.

Combat Skills

Charge: 1-10 points. Sort of a back up skill whenever you get in a jam and you cant use blessed hammer. Handy for such places like maggot hole. Plus its handy early on when blessed hammer is too weak to take out act bosses like Duriel.

Zeal: 1-5 points. Also a back up skill if you dont feel like using charge. I personally like using charge better.

Blessed Hammer: 20 points. This is the main skill that give this build its name. It goes magic damage which most monsters lack an immunity too. It does extra damage to undead monsters which makes up alot of the enemy population in this game. The best part is that ignores the the magic resistance of undead and demon monsters.

Holy Shield 20 points. Handy skill that keeps you alive. With it you're almost guranteed max block. The extra defense bonus makes you hard to get hit also. Don't max this skill out until you get the more important skills out of the way (Blessed Hammer, it's synergies, and Concentration).

Offensive Auras

Blessed Aim: 20 points. Blessed Aim is a synergy for blessed hammer so naturally it should be maxed out. Other than that its useless.

Concentration: 20 points. Concentration is the only aura that increases the damage on blessed hammer. Which I thought this was a bug in 1.09 but apparently it's not now. Oh well...

Sanctuary: 1 point (optional). I've been seeing a bunch of paladins using Sanctuary aura. It's (apparently) for the annoying (and bugged) Black Souls that are a thorn in the side of hell difficulty Baal runners. Personally I didn't even bother with it on my paladin. It's a waste to get all the pre reqs for it. If anyone can clear up why people use it, email me.

Defensive Auras:

Vigor: 20 points. Vigor is a synergy for blessed hammer and nice for getting around fast since paladins lack teleport.

Meditation: 1 point. Handy for regen mana quickly whenever you need it. Redemption will probably overshadow this when you get it, but its handy for the ancients if you run out of mana potions. It's also party friendly with spellcasters.

Redemption: 1 point. Very very very very handy aura. It's saved my life a few times. It's also a nice potion saver. Simply kill a bunch of enemies, run around the corpses to gain life and mana.

Salvation: 1 point. Good for in hell difficulty if you lack the resistances. Save it for Lightning enchanted enemies.

Stat Points

Strength: Only enough to wear your gear. If you plan on using enigma or some body armor runeword, be smart and choice an armor with low strength requirements. Usually 120 will be fine.

Dexterity: Only enough to have decent blocking on shield. Paladins have the best block of all the classes. With holy shield, you can slack off dex even more.

Vitality: You want to dump most your points into this. Try to break over 1000 life.

Energy: You can leave this at base. Your items and redemption will cover mana. If you *really* need mana add some energy. Try not to go over 50.

Blessed Hammer Strategies

Even though B. Hammer is powerful it can be hard to get used to using it at first. First off, its pretty weak at first. The first act boss you encounter with it will shrug off the damage Duriel especially. I would recommend using charge on Duriel.

B. Hammer can also be hard to aim with until you get the hang of it. As you know the little hammer spiral outward from the paladin. This creates areas between the orbits and the hammers where the hammer does no damage - "neutral zones." Sometimes enemies you approach you can take no damage because they managed to walk in between the orbits and the hammers themselves. Yea this can be frustrating. The best to hit them is to try to keep aligning yourself so you can hit them. Most of the time if you're facing the monster, behind the monster, or facing the side, you will hit the monster. Try to avoid being diagonal to it. The hammers also start out at 3 o'clock and spiral out. This means if a monster is in your face on your left side, chances are it wont be hit.

The hammers also suck narrow passages. If the hammer hits a wall, it will stop spiralling. This makes the maggot hole a pain in the ass for hammerdins. Though you can survive with just using hammers in the hole but its frustrating. Try partying with people if you tackle the maggot hole. Or you can use charge.