paladin is much better than it used to be, primarily because they tweaked the power of blessed hammer
i have a level 90 hammerdin on US-East, although i hardly play it now, here's my gear first of all if you wanna know:
weap: runeword "heart of the oak"
hat: shako with 15% to all resistance jewel
amulet: +3 to combat skill +10% fast cast
body armor: runeword "enigma"
belt: arachnid mesh
boots: war traveler
shield: herald of zarakum with rune "Um" for 22% to all resists
gloves: magefist
ring1: bul-kathos' wedding band
ring2: raven frost or 27nagel
merc weap: runeword "insight"
merc hat: vampire gaze with perfect ruby
merc body armor: runeword "fortitude"
i have +18 to all skills, 270 magic find (gear+charms), max all resists, 1618 hit points, 17000 defense, and my hammer does 11000+ minimum damage per hammer, and i basically never run out of mana and if i do i have potions, also i basically never die, nothing can hit me (unless cursed) and no magic hurts (except those chain lightning ghosts)
for skill points, i followed a suggest path and it worked very well:
KIRBIX on GameFAQs wrote:
Get your prereqs, and start saving points like mad. You'll have 10 or more when
you get to blessed hammer. Dump 5-10 points into blessed hammer, blessed aim,
vigor and concentration. From there, max out vigor. You'll love the increased
speed. Put a point into salvation and holy shield when you get to them. Max
concentration after vigor, followed by blessed hammer and blessed aim.
Don't max blessed hammer first. It ends up costing too much MP for your low
energy. Don't max concentration last. You'll regret it, believe it or not.
Vigor and Blessed Aim are synergies. That's why you max them.
the challenge with hammerdin is positioning yourself in relation to your targets. if fighting a crowd, i position myself right smack in the middle of the crowd. nothing to fear: youre a paladin. then throw your hammers. if any crowd stragglers remain, sidestep and throw more hammers and they should die. since your left click will be hammers, if you want to reposition yourself you are forced to click on a spot of ground where no enemy exists (since if you click on an enemy you'll just throw a hammer). once you get enigma armor you can just teleport yourself into the middle of the crowd, this is much nicer.
if fighting 1-on-1, i like to get to the bottom left of my target so my hammer immediately hits the target, and if its a big target like baal it can spiral around and hit him again. hell mephisto takes about 5 seconds, hell diablo about 7 seconds and hell baal is about 25 seconds.
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