Hi everyone,

I'm going to play through a hammer paladin with the goal of completing Hell Baal and avenging my former attempt: Emma the Trapsin.

I would appreciate feedback and commentary to help me keep this engaging as I progress. I have played a number of hdins before so I am fairly familiar with the build. But the need to remain safer in hardcore will be an interesting challenging in slowing down and patience.

Since I named the last one after my wife, I named this one after my cat: Faroon (his name is Frank but everyone calls him Faroon)

Goals:

-Complete Hell Baal
-Gear probably: 2x Spirit, Vmagi, Lore with an Insight merc

Rules:

-Hardcore
-Players set to 8 all the time except countess re-runs
-Using normal D2 LOD stash
-Using ladder runewords text mod

Here is Faroon irl in my living room:


Here's Paladin Faroon:

Starting off I am putting points into holy fire and zeal

Ran countess for Stealth


I cant use this yet


Andariel dropped a light speed zeal weapon

Blood Crescent is pretty great early on


Got the cube and prepared this for merc, love that cold damage

Duriel dropped a nice armor for merc



Switched to hammers in Act 3

Nothing special from Mephishto, lots of damage from hammers at this point



Gambled a nice circlet for survivability

Izual


Forge was helpful to build up Spirit set


Diablo action shot

Diablo drops


Nice boots on the way to Anya


And a new Stealth before Ancients

Post ancients action


I wasnt able to collect any screens during this part because it all went so fast. Baal dropped spineripper, and twitchthroe, not bad but I cant use them


Destroyer

Stats and skills starting out NM

I am using random found gear like a 10fcr 20 mana scepter, and a 1 paladin 17res targe from Anya. I need to do some upgrading in early nightmare hopefully.

Building up that spirit set, still dont have a base tho


Io drop would have been awesome for zealer to have black this early


Andy action shot