Quote (cam_sally @ Apr 14 2026 03:09pm)

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!

Quote (Stefbef @ May 27 2026 07:11am)

Few things

You should always use pride on a mage

Secondly, you need a 15% magic damage sunderer on mage as -res doesn’t apply to foh, only to hammer

15% to both > -10% just to hammer

For the same reason opal ring with 5% magic > sling

Heck even sojs may be better for this build cos you need some base damage to scale the percentages off of

Haven’t truly revisited mage since rotw but I’m fairly sure this could have a lot of tweaks

Quote (LeetThrust @ May 27 2026 09:27am)

The build is fine, but I just want to say that the "24k hammer" number is inflated due to the fact that in your maxroll calculations, you have picked a zombie instead of the default "target dummy." Thus you are getting an extra 50% dmg due to the monster type. If you switch it to the default "target dummy" which is is what people typically look at as the default damage, your hammers are doing 16k with-45% enemy magic resist factored in, which is much lower than the traditional 20 hard point concentration build would give people (that's 23k vs target dummy). The only issue I have of this hammer/FOH hybridin is that it's a jack of all trades and master of none.

Quote (cam_sally @ 27 May 2026 17:43)

It's the other way around from maxroll planner. -res affects Holy Bolt damage from FoH but +magic% does not. Not sure if that's accurate or not though.



While true, the 50% actually works for both undead and demons (even though the tooltip says undead) which is what like 99% of enemies in the game are. This was also chosen in part because Holy Bolts from FoH only work against Demon/Undead. Since FoH is your main trash density clearing skill, this build will mostly be clearing areas with all or mostly all Demon/Undead.

Quote (cam_sally @ May 27 2026 11:43am)

It's the other way around from maxroll planner. -res affects Holy Bolt damage from FoH but +magic% does not. Not sure if that's accurate or not though.



While true, the 50% actually works for both undead and demons (even though the tooltip says undead) which is what like 99% of enemies in the game are. This was also chosen in part because Holy Bolts from FoH only work against Demon/Undead. Since FoH is your main trash density clearing skill, this build will mostly be clearing areas with all or mostly all Demon/Undead.

Quote (cam_sally @ 27 May 2026 17:43)

It's the other way around from maxroll planner. -res affects Holy Bolt damage from FoH but +magic% does not. Not sure if that's accurate or not though.



While true, the 50% actually works for both undead and demons (even though the tooltip says undead) which is what like 99% of enemies in the game are. This was also chosen in part because Holy Bolts from FoH only work against Demon/Undead. Since FoH is your main trash density clearing skill, this build will mostly be clearing areas with all or mostly all Demon/Undead.

Quote (Stefbef @ May 28 2026 01:01am)

i would probably go for something like this with redemption as main aura:

https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/j77hx0yy

i feel like a 3 pc diadem would outperform hellwarden for a mage since foh doesnt benefit from the -res, its +2 hammer +2 foh as opposed to just -8 resist for hammer

setup does ''24,7k'' (its really 14,1k tbh without the -res and 50% dmg buff calculated) hammer and 8k holy bolt damage from foh

45% magic dmg in total

Quote (Wockets @ May 28 2026 05:27pm)

If you were to use black cleft, shouldn't you use horazon boots for the magic resistance?

Which critters deal magic damage?