Many places on internet says holy bolt deals damage to both undead and demons, but in regular d2r that's not true. Only undead take damage from the holy bolts.

I find foh to be a very mediocre skill. For hardcore, it is okay and safe enough. But i am strongly considering switching to bow paladin with normal attack instead. It must be faster and more damage dealing than dealing 1700 lightning damage every 1.5 second, before enemy resistances. Even if using lower resist wand when relevant. Using fanaticism to boost merc which deals good damage and is the main damage dealer. I feel inadequate, lol. And sometimes he get waltzed over too so that feels kind of stupid.

How much damage should foh be doing anyway, i mean the lightning damage? I have +5 all skils and maxed it, and am now skilling holy shock to increase damage, and still only have about 1700 average lightning damage. It does kill most enemies in 2-3 hits, but it feels quite slow.

This post was edited by Taurean on Aug 8 2023 11:31am

which demons did you test?
just asking because one of the 'many places om the internet' is the official patch notes for 2.4
also multiple non-troll users on this forum had made posts back then saying that foh pala was quite fast to full clear cs because there are only undead and demon type monsters...

This post was edited by PiXi31415 on Aug 8 2023 11:18pm

Foh cooldown has been severely reduced allowing it to be spammed more

This is d2lod, not d2r, just for info.

Tried act 1 demons - fallen, dark spearwomen etc.



In d2r i guess.

alright, that clarifies the issue
you are correct: in D2L, holy bolts (direct or from foh) only deal dmg to undead. the change with dmg to demons was done with patch 2.4 of D2R. since then foh paladin was established especially for cs clearing with a high kill speed. in D2L, foh is used in a bunch of pvp hybrids (vt, tv and mage being the most common ones i guess). in pvm it is very slow since the lightning dmg is single target only and the cooldown is high

Ah dang, typo ... Thanks for info. I guess i'll have to try to respec to bow pala or something. Decided to make every character ranged now since hell is too dangerous in hc with low-midrange gear.

I did consider using conviction though. Would push the lightning damage up to maybe 3000, and make merc hit more consistently. Have to think about it. But probably fanaticism is better in any case. If only vengeance worked with a bow lol.

This post was edited by Taurean on Aug 9 2023 02:48pm

Yeah its more spammmable due to cd changes, more usable in pvm now too, as it damages demons from the holy bolts.

one problem with conviction though is the limited radius, you can check here if it gives enough safety distance for your taste:
https://www.theamazonbasin.com/wiki/index.php/Radius

holy bolt is a piercing attack as well now, a very big point everyone seems to have missed. it also damages demon as well now
foh is very viable pvm at this point, just not an amazing boss killer but still does well

This post was edited by tag_ohai on Aug 10 2023 03:38pm