I'm going back in time. I am playing paladin via classic HC.

I was wondering if there are any pages on here that relate to starting out on Classic again. It's been so long i've lost touch with what is and what isn't.

Any advice for a Paladin normal - nm - hell?? Appreciate it friends.

in D2R FoH classic is still king in CS and hammers still kind anywhere else. at least endgame. i would assume leveling would still be best done with zeal or hammers. FoH sounds TERRIBLE in hell A2. sorry im not too much help, but it seems no one else wanted to comment

This post was edited by DeathStrikeUSMC on May 1 2023 05:30am

If solo...

1-19 go javelin/might into scimitar/holy fire

respec into hammers and put 6 pts into blessed aim, max hammer, max conc, 1pt vig. ~55 str rest vit. If you get a shard you can probably justify dex, you'll respec around 90 even if you stay hammer. typical hammer leveling, always be putting points in hammer and then vigor/conc. unless it's different than xpac have vigor and aim combined be 12 points higher than conc. 1pt holy shield isn't great and you'd want at least 3total points so it isn't so annoying to run. 1pt redemption is great too

Try to not go below 30fcr in this phase. fcr from rings and ammy will let you use a +3hammer scepter from norm drog, otherwise you need a wand with fcr and other mods but your damage will of course suffer

Shop nm charsi/gheed for armor/gloves/belt/boots. You can get res with life, mf/res, frw res this way. 3pdiamond shield. For hat you can go triple topaz but I also like mix of rubies/saphire until I find something real.

Get through hell. Iirc lvl56+ you can start to find +2din/+3hammer from vendors. Once you get the river wp you can decide if you want to respec to FoH, you'd still have one more respec if you do and I wouldn't use it until ~90ish. If you do max foh/holy bolt, 10total holy shield and get salvation. salvation will give you so much res you can use a plain +2pally shield until you find your final pally grim shield

Get Magefist and Soj. Try to maintain 50fcr once you're doing cs and have a magefist. Otherwise good luck finding the amazing rares and try to find good, trusty people to cs with...players 1 cs is excruciating in classic and even hitting 80 that way will take too long.

I don't think there are any pages on here with Classic Strategies anymore, at least that apply to today's patch.

You can scour old school forums to see some classic builds and get an idea, I built a few single player characters to test a few things recently

For Pally classic, Hammerdin is best, you want to get + mana gear + mana after kill and use conc/hammers/holy shield, thats about it, nothing can stop you once you get your res up in hell, foh is weak, and zeal/veng can only work if you find a sick 1 handed rare, which I have seen Pallys find in the past, it will just take a while, but I've seen +200 1 handed hammers and veng pallys tear stuff up, you'll also have to be quick with auras

Barb is WW, best is a maul, lance is also amazing but it breaks a lot, I have a sick lance but it has 20 durability and I can't even run CS without having to fix, its a bummer when playing, you can go Exec sword if you find a high dmg one, but I find maul to be best

Ama really is terrible in classic, even if you have a sick goth bow you aren't going to kill much plus you can easily be one shotted in hell, java is not very good either since you have to get up close and most javs don't do a lot of dmg, in pvp though, gothic bow+guided arrow+pierce is killer

Sorc is awesome, Cold is best, fire is too weak in hell, however, you could make a fwall sorc to just farm mephy, but if you are running CS Cold is best, lightning skills take a lot of mana, until you find good items like Silks, +2 ammy, you wont have a lot of +skills to buff yourself so I would stick to 1 tree

Nec is a mixed bag and what I play on classic hardcore, I go a mix of Summon/Spear/Corpse explode

Also remember in classic you don't need dex for block, its just based on the shield block % so thats nice, its also good to stack gold and gamble IMO because finding gear can be tough, so I sell all the high gold items I can find and gamble a lot in A4, usually I can get a set item or decent rare to carry me on and eventually by A4 I am geared enough to CS.

Maybe we can make some guides for the future, but my general stat builds are:

Str: Enough for gear, usually 60-70
Dex: Generally none
Vita: As much as possible
Mana: in Norm/NM you might want to put some here because you'll be running out a lot, in hell mode you can respec and put 0 in energy, your items should be able to get you by




This all can change if you get Goldskin/Shard/Silks/Tarn/Frostburns/Magefists and some really good high level rares with +res, but generally you'll be staying in these builds until then.

This post was edited by Nec025 on May 2 2023 02:16pm

Thank you for your input! I was looking for the perspective. I appreciate the time you took to explain your thoughts!!