Reign of the Paladin

A guide for a Mage Paladin in RoTW

With the Warlock getting a nerf in the PTR and upcoming season, I decided to min/max the Paladin back to the top spot! This setup gives you a hybrid Hammerdin/FoH build (Mage) that outclasses the damage of either dedicated build pre-RoTW. I will only be going over the ideal end game setup but if enough people care I might add in some budget options to the Maxroll planner.

The build uses FoH to mass clear trash mob density and hammers for elites/champions/heralds/bosses.

With -res taken into account, each hammer hits for ~24k and each FoH Holy Bolt hits for ~6.8k.

Maxroll setup: https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/yi89320n

Breakpoints
FCR: 125%
FHR: 86% - Can drop down to 48% if 86% is too much of a sacrifice with your current gear

Paladin Gear
Helm:Hellwarden's w/ Guardians Light jewel - Perfect helm that has everything you need including FCR, -enemy magic res, MaEK, and more magic damage and -res with the jewel.
Ammy:Rare or crafted with at least 5%FCR and 2 Pala. Bonus rolls of res, dex, mana, life
Rings: 2x Sling - for obvious reasons
Armor: Enigma
Weapon: Void - 2skills, FCR, 15% magic damage with a nice bonus to attributes is GG and BiS for this build
Shield:HoZ/Spirit ST - HoZ is better for damage and defences but spirit is also a good option if you'd prefer to use a maras ammy, a lower fcr roll Gheeds and swap out the gloves for Chancies. HoZ socket can be 3MAEK+adds jewel, Ber, Zod (if Eth), Jah etc.
Belt:Gheeds - FCR/FHR/-magic res with a nice @ bonus is too good to pass up here
Gloves:Magefist or Trangs - choice based on preference
Boots:Horazons - necessary IMO to counter the -45 magic res from the sunder
Swap: CTA+Spirit

Merc Gear
Helm: Cure/Andy/Tal Rashas/VGaze
Armor:CoH/Fort/Treachery/Hysteria
Weapon: Pride/Insight - Pride if you want to maximize your hammer damage, Insight if you want to use Conc yourself and have Meditation on merc for telespam
*With this build you can actually use right click hammers with the pride merc setup!

Inventory
Renewed Black Cleft Sunder - 24%FHR, -10 Magic res, 75 Mana (mana starved without this IMO), MDR or PDR, 25%MF is ideal setup. -res is more important for this build as it affects Holy Bolt damage but +magic damage does not (according to Maxroll at least)
Skillers - Pcombs with FHR to reach your desired breakpoint (86% for this build) then life on the rest
SCs - @res/FHR or @res/MF or @res/Life
Torch/Anni

Stats
Strength: Enough to wear gear
Dexterity: Enough to reach 75% block with Holy Shield
Vitality: Dump the rest here as usual
Energy: None (If you feel like you want a higher mana pool for teleing without an insight feel free to add some extra here)

Skills

Pride Merc Setup
https://imgur.com/a/IddTGws

Insight Merc Setup
https://imgur.com/a/3RZkY4Y

Thanks for reading!

This post was edited by cam_sally on Apr 14 2026 01:21pm

needs more items that dont exist in d2r

Forgot they patched that lmao! Edited

Never seen such a godly char before, thx for opening me eyes to the paladin capabilities. You deserve an trusted tag.

Beautiful guide. You could put 1pt into meditation and use that as your main aura, sacrificing the right click hammer. I'd pump energy to get like 1500 mana otherwise.

1pt redemption

Ah ya ok

agree

cube charms?

Max DMG
Max block
Max def
Max resists
Totally balanced