Considering a FOH pally hybrid, anyone have advice?

Thinking FOH/Hammer makes sense (hammers for 'animal' mobs), although i'm considering smite also for boss kills

Anyone have experience with it, recommended gear, etc..?

Thanks in advance for your help

20 foh
20 holy bolt
20 hammer
20 vigor
20 blessed aim
Rest holy shield

Pride merc.
Relying on merc to give you conc is the highest possible dmg you’ll get on this build after maxing foh.

Foh’s maximum fcr breakpoint is different than other spells.
It stops at 86fcr.
At this point, you can cast it each 16 frames, with 6 of those frames being the “action frames” and 10 next frames are just a delay.

86fcr means you reach the 75fcr bp for hammer/tele.
At 75fcr, those spells require 10 frames to cast, which is exactly foh’s delay.
This means that if you maximize your casts by using foh then either hammer of tele between each next foh, you end up casting at the exact same speed as a 125fcr build would do.

Going for 86fcr allows you to maximize your +skills.

Gear :
3pcomb 20fcr magic circ
Enigma
Hoz
3pcomb / 3foh / 3hammer 10fcr magic scepter
Arach
Mage/trang
2x soj
2/16fcr amy
Boots of choice

No sunder
Torch/anni
Pcombs
Res scs if you need to fix your res after socketing all the above gear.

This is the absolute maximum dps you can get on any paly build.
Some real artillery hehe

The above scepter is very hard to get tho…
You could still make it work with a 125fcr build using hoto.
Less dmg, but at least you would gain 1 frame faster cast speed for whenever you’re not casting foh+tele or foh+hammer.

Here the completely maximized build (with boots slot open and room for some scs) :
https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/g382t0i1

This post was edited by SinsOfTheSun on Mar 26 2025 07:52pm

Thanks a ton Sins of the Sun.

The way you rely on pride merc for concentration is brilliant, would save a ton of points that you would be able to allocate elsewhere, hadn't thought of that.

I've been playing with a skill calculator and was worried about the amount of points required for the build, thinking i might go FOH/SMITE instead. With teleport from enigma, could just skip any of the 'beast' heavy zones or flip characters. My fav places to MF are pits and chaos anyway, and the smite would definitely speed up the boss kill / make progression through heavy 'beast' zones possible.

One question i did have about the skill allocation for FOH/Smite is where to prioritize the use of those skill points?

I would assume one point wonder to redemption/salvation (dealer's choice)
Max FOH and Holy bolt (+6 prereq)
Max Holy Shield and Fanat (+4 prereq)
Balance of points to smite

Does this give the best damage output?

I think Holy Shiled > Fanat > Smite for damage output, just looking for confirmation.

Thought i had it all figured out, but you gave me an alternative build above to seriously consider!