Hammerdin - Blessed Hammer Paladin Build Guide - D2R 2.6

Build Introduction

The Hammer Paladin is by far the strongest farming and PvM character in Diablo 2 and D2 Resurrected, and is also very efficient for PvP. If you enjoy obliterating any enemy that comes in your way with one hit, this is definitely a build you should try! Although the endgame build is quite expensive, even with budget gearing options you will be able to crush monster mobs within seconds

Related Guides

Spear Amazon Build | Javazon Build | Uber Smiter Build | Hybrid Sorceress Build |

Gameplay

Attacking skills: Use Blessed Hammer as your primary attacking skill in combination with Concentration Aura. Blessed Hammer deals magic damage and there are very few monsters with magic immunity in the game, so you will rarely need to rely on a secondary attacking skill. In case you run into immune enemies, use Holy Bolt for attacking, or just let your mercenary kill them. Blessed Hammers deal damage on a wide area, but often miss enemies. If you want to make sure that your hammers don't miss, teleport on the chosen monster.

Movement: For maximum movement efficiency is, teleporting is the best option. If you can afford the Enigma Runeword for body armor, you will be able to cast teleport anytime. Otherwise you can buy amulets from Vendor NPCs with gambling that have teleport charges, and repair the amulet whenever charges run out. Having % faster cast rate on your items can greatly improve your teleport casting speed. The second best option for movement is switching between your attacking aura (Concentration) and running aura (Vigor), which increases your runspeed by almost 50%.

Survivability: Even in budget setup your survivability will be decent, the only monsters that could cause you serious trouble are Uber Bosses. Defensive auras like Redemption for life and mana recovery, Salvation for allresistance, or Defiance for extra defense can further boost your survival chances.

If you want to improve on your survivability, use Call to Arms runeword as your switch weapon in order to be able to cast Battle Orders which can almost double your life. Having 75% block chance with Holy Shield skill activated and having 75% all resistances on Hell difficulty is highly suggested, so put points on your Dexterity Stat until you reach 75% chance to block, and get charms with resistances to achieve 75% to all four resistances.

Having % physical damage reduction, additional life, increased maximum resistances, elemental damage absorption, faster hit recovery, faster block rate, higher defense, % bonus to defense, or cannot be frozen stats on your items can further increase your survivability up to a point that your character will become almost immortal and can very safely play even in Hardcore.

Party and Solo play: Except for Uber Tristram, you will be able to quickly solo the entire game on your own. In parties members will be happy to have you as Concentration aura provides a huge boost both to Physical and Magic damage. If most of your party members use elemental damage for attacking, you can switch to Conviction aura to lower monster resistances. When needed, you can also help your party out by using your defensive, or other offensive auras.

Magic Find: This build is simply the best at MFing amongst all builds, period. You can quickly teleport or run to any Boss and kill it within seconds. Gearing allows you to have very high magic find %, while also dealing huge amounts of area and single target damage, making hammerdins the perfect option for finding valuable items.

Stats

Strength: Put just enough points on it to be able to wear your items.

Dexterity: Put just enough points on it to have 75% chance to block with Holy Shield casted.

Vitality: Put all your available points on it.

Energy: Don't put any points on it

Skills:

Best option for soloing:

• 20 points on Blessed Hammer + 1 point on prerequisite skills
• 20 points on Blessed Aim (Synergy, increases damage) + 1 point on prerequisite skills
• 20 points on Vigor (Synergy, increases damage) + 1 point on prerequisite skills
• 20 points on Concentration Aura (Increases your damage a LOT) + 1 point on prerequisite skills
• 1 point on Redemption +prerequisites for healing and mana recovery
• Remaining points on Holy Shield to increase your defense. Put at least 1 point on it as it becomes available and always have it actively casted on your character.

Other useful skills:

Defensive Auras:

• Defiance to increase your and the party's defense
• Meditation to help your and the party's life and mana recovery
• Salvation to increase your and the party's resistances.

Offensive Auras:

• Conviction to help your party deal elemental damage.

Combat Skills:

• Holy Bolt for dealing with immunes.

Breakpoints - Check out  our Paladin Breakpoints guide.
For detailed breakpoints, check out this guide.

Items, Gearing

The listed items are organized by slots.

• The usefulness rating of an item is based on how good it is for farming. 
• The price rating reflects the cost of the item (cheaper ones are available after ladder starts as budget options) higher price ratings reflect exponentially higher cost for an item.
• Magic Find ratings are added to items that are good options for MFing.

Adding sockets and improving your items

• If you complete the act5 quest Siege on Harrogath, Larzuk will grant extra socket/sockets to your items. Use the quest to add sockets to your gear and put useful jewels, runes or gems in your item sockets.
• You can also upgrade your unique items from normal to exceptional quality and from exceptional to elite by using Horadric Cube recipes. After upgrading, your armor pieces will have more defense, and your weapon pieces will have more damage. The downside of upgrading is the increased strength/dexterity requirements.

Helm

• Lore runeword -usefulness 4/10, price 1/10
• Peasant Crown unique helm - usefulness 5/10, price 2/10
• Harlequin Crest Shako unique helm - Usefulness 9/10, price 6/10, Magic Find - 10/10
• Rare or Crafted Circlet with 2 Paladin skills, 20% Faster cast rate, 2 sockets, +resistances, +life - Usefulness 10/10, price 9/10

Amulet

• Any amulet with +1-2 to paladin skills, or +1-3 to combat skills - usefulness 4/10, price 1/10
• Any amulet with teleport charges - usefulness 5/10, price 1/10
• Rare amulet with 2 paladin skills and resists or/and life - usefulness 6/10, price 3/10
• Seraph's Hymn unique amulet - usefulness 7/10, price 5/10
• Mara's Kaleidoscope unique amulet - usefulness 9/10, price 7/10
• Crafted amulet with 2 to paladin skills, 20% faster cast rate and additional life and/or resistance - usefulness 10/10, price 10/10
• Magic amulet with 40-50% to magic find - price 5/10, 10/10 for magic find

Weapon

• Spirit runeword - usefulness 7/10, price 2/10
• Wizardspike unique weapon - usefulness 7/10, price 3/10
• Heart of the Oak runeword - usefulness 9/10, price 7/10
• Gull's Dagger unique weapon - magic find 10/10, price 3/10
• Blade of Alibaba unique weapon - magic find 10/10, price 3/10

Shield

• Spirit runeword - usefulness 8/10, price 2/10
• Spirit runeword in paladin shield base with % all resistances - usefulness 10/10, price 4/10
• Herald of Zakarum -  usefulness 7/10, price 5/10

Switch Weapon

• Call to Arms runeword - usefulness 10/10, price 7/10

Switch Shield

• Spirit runeword -usefulness 10/10, price 2/10

Body Armor

• Stealth runeword - usefulness 4/10, price 1/10
• Skin of the Vipermagi unique armor - usefulness 6/10, price 4/10
• Enigma runeword - usefulness 10/10, price 8/10, magic find 9/10
• Skullder's Ire - usefulness 4/10, price 5/10, magic find 10/10, price 5/10

Belt

• Trang Oul's set belt - usefulness 4/10, price 2/10
• Arachnid Mesh unique belt - usefulness 10/10, price 6/10
• Goldwrap - magic find 10/10, price 3/10

Rings

• Any ring with 10% faster cast rate - usefulness 3/10, price 1/10
• Bul Katho's Wedding Band - usefulness 7/10, price 6/10
• Stone of Jordan unique ring - usefulness 7/10, price 6/10
• Raven Frost unique ring - usefulness 6/10, price 4/10
• Rare 10% faster cast rate ring with allresist and life - usefulness 10/10, price 8/10
• Nagelring - magic find 10/10, price 3/10
•  

Gloves

• Trang Oul's Set Gloves - usefulness 4/10, price 2/10
• Magefist unique gloves - usefulness 10/10, price 3/10
• Chance Guard's unique gloves - magic find 10/10, price 3/10

Boots

• Treahaunch unique boots - usefulness 4/10, price 2/10
• Sandstorm Trek unique boots - usefulness 8/10, price 5/10
• Waterwalk unique boots - usefulness 8/10, price 4/10
• War Traveler unique boots - usefulness 7/10, price 5/10, magic find 10/10

Charms

• Any charm with +skill, life, faster hit recovery or faster run and walk - usefulness 4/10, price 1/10
• Annihilus unique charm - usefulness 10/10, price 8/10
• Hellfire Torch unique charm - usefulness 10/10, price 6/10
• Magic grand charms with +1 to paladin combat skills - usefulness 7/10, price 5/10
• Magic grand charms with +1 to paladin combat skills and +life, +faster hit recovery or +faster run and walk - usefulness 8 to 10/10, price 6 to 10/10
• Magic small charms with resistances and life - usefulness 8 to 10/10, price 6 to 9/10
• 7% to magic find magic small charms - magic find 10/10, price 3/10
• Gheed's fortune unique charm - magic find 10/10, price 4/10

Mercenary

Have a Nightmare Act2 Defensive Mercenary to provide you with Holy Freeze aura. By freezing monsters your Blessed Hammer will hit them more easily.

Ethereal items don't lose durability if your mercenary wears them, so having ethereal item bases for each gear slot is preferred due to their increased defense on armor items and increased damage on weapons. In many instances ethereal items that are great for mercenaries will be much more expensive than non-ethereal ones.

Mercenary gear:

Helm -

• Any 3 socketed helm with 3 perfect diamond to increase mercenary resistances and survivability - usefulness 5/10, price 1/10
• Tal Rasha's set helm - usefulness 6/10, price 3/10
• Vampire Gaze unique helm - usefulness 7/10, price 4/10
• Guillame's Face set helm - usefulness 8/10, price 4/10
• Andariel's Vissage unique helm - usefulness 10/10, price 5/10

Weapon -

• Insight runeword to provide you with meditation aura so you never run out of mana - preferably in elite base - usefulness 10/10, price 4/10
• Bonehew unique weapon - usefulness 5/10, price 4/10
• Tomb Reaver unique weapon - usefulness 6/10, price 5/10
• Reaper's Toll unique weapon - usefulness 8/10, price 6/10

Body Armor-

• Treachery runeword - usefulness 9/10, price 4/10
• Fortitude runeword - usefulness 10/10, price 7/10

Rpgstash.com will have D2R items in its Ladder selection already on day 1. We will be doing our best to let you buy 2.4 ladder items right at the beginning of the season including the new runewords, so you can climb the ladder rankings as fast as possible!

Must have items for this build:

If you want to get the best items and runewords in the game, check out our D2R Store.