Introduction
Faithless is very old character, dating back to 2009 without any future prospects. I've always enjoyed the play style of Hammerdins in CS. Simple and very effective. Back before the removal or Iron Maiden from CS I've leveled this guy to 96 which was pretty big deal for me back in the day, and then he was subsequently retired. Fast forward to introduction of respec tokens, I decided to give him future in PvP, and I changed him into Mage Paladin (FoH + Hammer) based of Tienje's guide. The result was absolute disaster. Mages are notoriously difficult to play. Conviction aura takes long time to activate, and only way to reliably apply it is for you to charge next to a target and then FoH when aura is activate. By the time it's active you are already on the wrong side of Barbarian's axe. Add in the usual hotkey hell of Paladins, and generally unfavorable matchups at the time, I retired this guy and moved on to another projects once again.
Recently I've been watching videos of some of best battle net PvP players and their Hammerdins were absolutely terrifying. Faithless was half hammer, but reading the comment section of one of best PvP players out there I found a quote that stuck with me. Paraphrasing, „Screw all your templars, mages and whateverdins. Once you played enough, you realize that best pvp paladin is hammerdin, pure and simple. Any hybridization just detracts from its strength.“ It stuck with me because I've seen how they played and it was honestly insane. That gave me new appreciation of the build and after couple attempts to build this guy, I think I got to the point where I feel that I understand build well enough that I can share how to build and play Hammerdin properly.
Hopefully this thread will help future PvPers to build and play their Hammerdins, and make what is in my opinion one of cheapest and most effective PvP builds out there, with massive ways to improve and grow as a player, adapted to SPF PvP environment.
Hammerdin?
Hammerdin doesn't need much explanation. Blessed Hammer is absolutely broken no matter how you look at it, both in PvM and PvP. The fact that it does so much unresistible magic damage lies at the core of why Hammerdins are so strong. Holy Shield is insane, giving you option to go for maxblock with Spirit which is already in high resistances Paladin only shields making this one of the builds with highest overall resistances. You can focus on being tanky, stacking resistances, reaching high breakpoints, while at the same time having one of strongest attacks out there. Paladins in general are well equipped to live and kill in PvP with high stats, good breakpoints, natural maxblock and this build takes full advantage of the class kit.
LCS and basic stats
Skills
Skills are maxed earlier than 96 which was convenient for me. Standard - max out Blessed Hammer and its synergies, but there's couple twists that I stole from battle.net – one point FoH and one point Fanaticism.
Hammer synergies max out fairly early on so remaining points were put into Resist Lightning (10 skills for passive 5 max LR) and rest is dumped into Holy Shield for additional defense.
Fanaticism allows me to use have faster Smite. Hoto Smite isn't scary, but it's very good in case Wind Druid decides to stomp you and you just smite him out in the hammer path. It got me kills more than just once and not only in that matchup. It can also be used to smite someone out of hammer blindspots.
FoH is used in smite/foh chainlock combo. In theory at least, you can smite your opponent, throw FoH, cancel FoH delay by switching to throw/unsummon and then teleport on top of your opponent and do whatever you want (Hammer). Because you can cancel delay after FoH which also puts your teleport on cooldown, FoH damage, even with just 1 point will keep the target from moving until it's too late for them to do anything. Video of foh chainlock tech in spoiler since it's kinda difficult to explain properly.
It's worth noting that this is possible only on ping 70 and above, so on your own host, or in single player this is impossible to do. To my knowledge no one has managed to master this trick on any even remotely consistent basis in SPF, but it would open some nice opportunities against Druids, Amazons and trap Assassins which Hammerdins struggle quite a lot against. I tried to learn this trick but it wasn't meant to be. It requires slightly less than 20 inputs in the span of 3 GCDs which is as difficult as things go in Diablo II. Other than that, it's useful to finish opponent on 1 hp after OW/poison damage which would otherwise be difficult to land hammer against.
Charge and Vigor are obviously stapple of any PvP Paladin, allowing you to build desynch, escape stunlocks and outrun projectiles like Bone Spirits on your tail. I realized that it's pretty bad offensively because it's both slower than teleport (especially c/t teleport) and you tend to take more damage if your opponent can aim their spells properly. Also no one likes desynching Paladins and tend to play very defensively when you charge around a lot.
Gear
Helm: 1.07 Shako Ber'd / Jah'd
Amulet: 2/20 Paladin
Weapon: 39 Hoto
Armor: Enigma BP
Shield: 35 fcr Spirit 45 allress ST
Gloves: Trangs
Ring 1: 10 fcr rare
Ring 2: +2 skils BKWB
Belt: 40/15 Verdungo / 1.07 Crafted belt
Boots: 65 life Waterwalks
Switch
Weapon 2: 15 BO beta CtA in 3 HS Scepter
Shield 2: 35 fcr Spirit 45 allress ST
Inventory
Paladin Combat - 36, 37, 38, 40
life/allr - 39/20, 40/18, 19/5, 17/5, 18/4, 17/4
life/fr - 19/11, 19/11, 19/11
life/lr - 20/10
life/mana - 20/16, 20/15, 20/14, 19/17, 19/16, 19/15, 19/15, 19/14, 19/14, 18/17, 18/15, 18/15, 17/17, 17/17
Mana charms are just QoL and not important at all. Honestly, build has far more mana with just Spirit shield than it would ever need, but it's nice to have some extra. They can always be swapped for single resist small charms with life to cover negative resistance. Switching mana charms for cold resistance charms would get me to ~370 CR, stacking almost everything cold sorcs can throw at me.
Early on while doing some theory crafting with Grip we realized that Ber'd 1.07 Shako is optimal for Paladins. BerBer or even Ber/Req CoA takes a lot more strength to use, and would require additional 50 - 70 strength investment to use. As it is right now, this setup highest str requirement is Verdungo with 106. So I use *only* 31% damage reduction total (Ber'd 1.07 Shako (8%), Enigma(8%) and Verdungo (15%) but it turns out to be optimal for both physical damage and elemental attacks because of Shako's insane 40% to max life and Paladins generally high life/lvl and life/vit. I will admit that I prefer Light Plate + CoA looks on Paladins but math had the final word.
I decided to use 4 x Paladin Combat charms for no apparent reason. Mostly because I had 4 good ones and decided to stick with it. I don't think this has any practical impact on build however. Hammer damage changes from 1800 to 1600; it will still kill any standard character in same number of hits.
This is why Hammerdins are so powerful. They can use pretty basic setup without any skill charms and fill their inventory with life/resistance charms without sacrificing anything in return. On top of it, you don't use ring slot for Oak charges because you have Hoto, allowing you to use +2 beta BKWB or any flexible ring in there. The fact that you don't rely on CBF means you aren't locked on to Ravenfrost either, and the fact that you use caster weapon like Hoto means you aren't sacrificing cast rate breakpoint that Grief based Paladins all have to do. Hoto also provides you with huge resistances which regular weapons usually don't provide at all. Because of that, and Spirit 80 all resistance, Hammerdins have highest resistances of any PvP build out there, even on a fairly budget setup. That automatically makes items with very high life (such as 1.07 Shako or Waterwalks) very easy to implement without care in the world.
As a result of all this, if needed I can have 80 FR and 80 LR, maxblock with 31% damage reduction on extremely high life setup, stacked ~40 LR for any Griffon's shenanigans, and fully stacked cold resistance from a 1 point CM Cold sorc with 20% Ravenfrost absorb and CBF AT THE SAME TIME. It is so insanely versatile that you will never take have FFA where something might hard counter you for any reason if you choose to do so. It is possible to go to 85max fire/lightning resistance which SPF rules allow, but I found it completely unnecessary considering the power of this build.
Only gear switching I usually do is to swap damage reduction items for items with high life (swapping Verdungo for 1.07 crafted belt and Ber'd Shako for Jah'd Shako.
Stuff
For the longest time Paladins in SPF were played mostly like chargers. You charge around, build desynch and surprise opponent by killing him while invisible. After watching proper Hammerdin play I realized that approach was flawed. For one, while you charge around you have much less control over your character and eat much more damage that way. Teleporting on the other hand is faster, more precise and gives you far more opportunities to kill someone. Once you teleport your Oak stacks on top of you and can eat Bone Spirit or hammer for you. Building desynch takes time and you can't either recast stuff nor build hammer fields. You are actually fairly exposed. Charge isn't without its uses however. After unsuccessful engagement you are very open to counter and you can do short Charge that puts you out of retaliation range, be it Bone Spear, Fireball, Guided Arrow or any similar projectile. You can just teleport out, recast Oak and reset the engagement. You can also escape trap locks because Charge is uninterruptible. You should always use Vigor as charging aura, because why not.
What about hammer based hybrids? Remember intro story of my Mage experience? I just don't think Mages are good. Aside from the fact that you need entire inventory of skillers to get your skills to do respectable damage, FoH just isn't good skill. It has delay which hinders you a lot when relying in its autotargeting. Off a namelock it can be much better but like I said before, that is extremely difficult to pull off in any real dueling situation, let alone chaos of FFA. FoH just doesn't do enough damage without negative resistances or Conviction aura active and you lose your inventory flexibility.
What about charge? Unlike FoH, Charge requires just 20 skill points to be effective, and you can just use leftover skills and slightly higher level to max it out. Concentration also helps Charge damage a lot and Charge itself scales very well with points invested. You would need Ravenfrost for both attack rating and CBF and you need to use Oak charges ring because of no Hoto. That's -5 all skills and fcr breakpoint down. That's very notable. I do believe this is much better option overall, but I think it's still a crutch. It does help with bow Amazon, ES Sorcs and Wind Druids to extent, but it's nothing you can't play around in the first place. You can still fall in bad habits by charging around mindlessly and losing opportunities. You also nerf yourself quite a lot vs some other characters, fcr drop is especially notable. Having played both builds, I must say that I prefer pure Hammerdin, but both builds are viable and extremely strong.
Videos?
Perhaps in future for archive purposes, but I will have to disappoint you for now
Conclusion
I've been playing Faithless rather often since we restarted PvP late in 2021. and got much, MUCH better at it than I expected going in. When I started I had to think heavily on my next move, but nowdays I can at a glance recognize the situation I'm in and rarely overextend myself. Hammerdins can work really well with little skill, but can grow a lot. I like that particular thing about them. I managed to incorporate Smite into his standard patterns, but FoH chainlocks and the more advanced strategies are limited both by me being host and by me being scrub.
I do believe that Hammerdin is one of best starting characters for PvP, and I do believe that this way of building and playing them is the right way. If we go full circle to that quote from the beginning, I now firmly agree with it. Hammerdin is without a shred of doubt best PvP Paladin and among the best PvP builds, period. I hope that you will find this thread and some ideas I came along with useful when you decide to pilot your own Paladin into PvP.
Inventory and especially 2/20 amulet are fairly difficult to get, but I believe that majority of other gear can either be forced to drop or are simply Meph items. I find the idea of optimizing characters extremely important part of RPG experience and Faithless is obviously extremely well built character. Aside from some fine tuning and stacking resistances, you can make character with similar practical strength on fairly budget setup, especially when it comes to inventory. That's just how Hammerdins work.
Faithless is very old character, dating back to 2009 without any future prospects. I've always enjoyed the play style of Hammerdins in CS. Simple and very effective. Back before the removal or Iron Maiden from CS I've leveled this guy to 96 which was pretty big deal for me back in the day, and then he was subsequently retired. Fast forward to introduction of respec tokens, I decided to give him future in PvP, and I changed him into Mage Paladin (FoH + Hammer) based of Tienje's guide. The result was absolute disaster. Mages are notoriously difficult to play. Conviction aura takes long time to activate, and only way to reliably apply it is for you to charge next to a target and then FoH when aura is activate. By the time it's active you are already on the wrong side of Barbarian's axe. Add in the usual hotkey hell of Paladins, and generally unfavorable matchups at the time, I retired this guy and moved on to another projects once again.
Recently I've been watching videos of some of best battle net PvP players and their Hammerdins were absolutely terrifying. Faithless was half hammer, but reading the comment section of one of best PvP players out there I found a quote that stuck with me. Paraphrasing, „Screw all your templars, mages and whateverdins. Once you played enough, you realize that best pvp paladin is hammerdin, pure and simple. Any hybridization just detracts from its strength.“ It stuck with me because I've seen how they played and it was honestly insane. That gave me new appreciation of the build and after couple attempts to build this guy, I think I got to the point where I feel that I understand build well enough that I can share how to build and play Hammerdin properly.
Hopefully this thread will help future PvPers to build and play their Hammerdins, and make what is in my opinion one of cheapest and most effective PvP builds out there, with massive ways to improve and grow as a player, adapted to SPF PvP environment.
Hammerdin?
Hammerdin doesn't need much explanation. Blessed Hammer is absolutely broken no matter how you look at it, both in PvM and PvP. The fact that it does so much unresistible magic damage lies at the core of why Hammerdins are so strong. Holy Shield is insane, giving you option to go for maxblock with Spirit which is already in high resistances Paladin only shields making this one of the builds with highest overall resistances. You can focus on being tanky, stacking resistances, reaching high breakpoints, while at the same time having one of strongest attacks out there. Paladins in general are well equipped to live and kill in PvP with high stats, good breakpoints, natural maxblock and this build takes full advantage of the class kit.
LCS and basic stats
Skills are maxed earlier than 96 which was convenient for me. Standard - max out Blessed Hammer and its synergies, but there's couple twists that I stole from battle.net – one point FoH and one point Fanaticism.
Fanaticism allows me to use have faster Smite. Hoto Smite isn't scary, but it's very good in case Wind Druid decides to stomp you and you just smite him out in the hammer path. It got me kills more than just once and not only in that matchup. It can also be used to smite someone out of hammer blindspots.
FoH is used in smite/foh chainlock combo. In theory at least, you can smite your opponent, throw FoH, cancel FoH delay by switching to throw/unsummon and then teleport on top of your opponent and do whatever you want (Hammer). Because you can cancel delay after FoH which also puts your teleport on cooldown, FoH damage, even with just 1 point will keep the target from moving until it's too late for them to do anything. Video of foh chainlock tech in spoiler since it's kinda difficult to explain properly.
Charge and Vigor are obviously stapple of any PvP Paladin, allowing you to build desynch, escape stunlocks and outrun projectiles like Bone Spirits on your tail. I realized that it's pretty bad offensively because it's both slower than teleport (especially c/t teleport) and you tend to take more damage if your opponent can aim their spells properly. Also no one likes desynching Paladins and tend to play very defensively when you charge around a lot.
Gear
Helm: 1.07 Shako Ber'd / Jah'd
Amulet: 2/20 Paladin
Weapon: 39 Hoto
Armor: Enigma BP
Shield: 35 fcr Spirit 45 allress ST
Gloves: Trangs
Ring 1: 10 fcr rare
Ring 2: +2 skils BKWB
Belt: 40/15 Verdungo / 1.07 Crafted belt
Boots: 65 life Waterwalks
Switch
Weapon 2: 15 BO beta CtA in 3 HS Scepter
Shield 2: 35 fcr Spirit 45 allress ST
Inventory
Paladin Combat - 36, 37, 38, 40
life/allr - 39/20, 40/18, 19/5, 17/5, 18/4, 17/4
life/fr - 19/11, 19/11, 19/11
life/lr - 20/10
life/mana - 20/16, 20/15, 20/14, 19/17, 19/16, 19/15, 19/15, 19/14, 19/14, 18/17, 18/15, 18/15, 17/17, 17/17
Early on while doing some theory crafting with Grip we realized that Ber'd 1.07 Shako is optimal for Paladins. BerBer or even Ber/Req CoA takes a lot more strength to use, and would require additional 50 - 70 strength investment to use. As it is right now, this setup highest str requirement is Verdungo with 106. So I use *only* 31% damage reduction total (Ber'd 1.07 Shako (8%), Enigma(8%) and Verdungo (15%) but it turns out to be optimal for both physical damage and elemental attacks because of Shako's insane 40% to max life and Paladins generally high life/lvl and life/vit. I will admit that I prefer Light Plate + CoA looks on Paladins but math had the final word.
I decided to use 4 x Paladin Combat charms for no apparent reason. Mostly because I had 4 good ones and decided to stick with it. I don't think this has any practical impact on build however. Hammer damage changes from 1800 to 1600; it will still kill any standard character in same number of hits.
This is why Hammerdins are so powerful. They can use pretty basic setup without any skill charms and fill their inventory with life/resistance charms without sacrificing anything in return. On top of it, you don't use ring slot for Oak charges because you have Hoto, allowing you to use +2 beta BKWB or any flexible ring in there. The fact that you don't rely on CBF means you aren't locked on to Ravenfrost either, and the fact that you use caster weapon like Hoto means you aren't sacrificing cast rate breakpoint that Grief based Paladins all have to do. Hoto also provides you with huge resistances which regular weapons usually don't provide at all. Because of that, and Spirit 80 all resistance, Hammerdins have highest resistances of any PvP build out there, even on a fairly budget setup. That automatically makes items with very high life (such as 1.07 Shako or Waterwalks) very easy to implement without care in the world.
As a result of all this, if needed I can have 80 FR and 80 LR, maxblock with 31% damage reduction on extremely high life setup, stacked ~40 LR for any Griffon's shenanigans, and fully stacked cold resistance from a 1 point CM Cold sorc with 20% Ravenfrost absorb and CBF AT THE SAME TIME. It is so insanely versatile that you will never take have FFA where something might hard counter you for any reason if you choose to do so. It is possible to go to 85max fire/lightning resistance which SPF rules allow, but I found it completely unnecessary considering the power of this build.
Only gear switching I usually do is to swap damage reduction items for items with high life (swapping Verdungo for 1.07 crafted belt and Ber'd Shako for Jah'd Shako.
Stuff
For the longest time Paladins in SPF were played mostly like chargers. You charge around, build desynch and surprise opponent by killing him while invisible. After watching proper Hammerdin play I realized that approach was flawed. For one, while you charge around you have much less control over your character and eat much more damage that way. Teleporting on the other hand is faster, more precise and gives you far more opportunities to kill someone. Once you teleport your Oak stacks on top of you and can eat Bone Spirit or hammer for you. Building desynch takes time and you can't either recast stuff nor build hammer fields. You are actually fairly exposed. Charge isn't without its uses however. After unsuccessful engagement you are very open to counter and you can do short Charge that puts you out of retaliation range, be it Bone Spear, Fireball, Guided Arrow or any similar projectile. You can just teleport out, recast Oak and reset the engagement. You can also escape trap locks because Charge is uninterruptible. You should always use Vigor as charging aura, because why not.
What about hammer based hybrids? Remember intro story of my Mage experience? I just don't think Mages are good. Aside from the fact that you need entire inventory of skillers to get your skills to do respectable damage, FoH just isn't good skill. It has delay which hinders you a lot when relying in its autotargeting. Off a namelock it can be much better but like I said before, that is extremely difficult to pull off in any real dueling situation, let alone chaos of FFA. FoH just doesn't do enough damage without negative resistances or Conviction aura active and you lose your inventory flexibility.
What about charge? Unlike FoH, Charge requires just 20 skill points to be effective, and you can just use leftover skills and slightly higher level to max it out. Concentration also helps Charge damage a lot and Charge itself scales very well with points invested. You would need Ravenfrost for both attack rating and CBF and you need to use Oak charges ring because of no Hoto. That's -5 all skills and fcr breakpoint down. That's very notable. I do believe this is much better option overall, but I think it's still a crutch. It does help with bow Amazon, ES Sorcs and Wind Druids to extent, but it's nothing you can't play around in the first place. You can still fall in bad habits by charging around mindlessly and losing opportunities. You also nerf yourself quite a lot vs some other characters, fcr drop is especially notable. Having played both builds, I must say that I prefer pure Hammerdin, but both builds are viable and extremely strong.
Videos?
Perhaps in future for archive purposes, but I will have to disappoint you for now
Conclusion
I've been playing Faithless rather often since we restarted PvP late in 2021. and got much, MUCH better at it than I expected going in. When I started I had to think heavily on my next move, but nowdays I can at a glance recognize the situation I'm in and rarely overextend myself. Hammerdins can work really well with little skill, but can grow a lot. I like that particular thing about them. I managed to incorporate Smite into his standard patterns, but FoH chainlocks and the more advanced strategies are limited both by me being host and by me being scrub.
I do believe that Hammerdin is one of best starting characters for PvP, and I do believe that this way of building and playing them is the right way. If we go full circle to that quote from the beginning, I now firmly agree with it. Hammerdin is without a shred of doubt best PvP Paladin and among the best PvP builds, period. I hope that you will find this thread and some ideas I came along with useful when you decide to pilot your own Paladin into PvP.
Inventory and especially 2/20 amulet are fairly difficult to get, but I believe that majority of other gear can either be forced to drop or are simply Meph items. I find the idea of optimizing characters extremely important part of RPG experience and Faithless is obviously extremely well built character. Aside from some fine tuning and stacking resistances, you can make character with similar practical strength on fairly budget setup, especially when it comes to inventory. That's just how Hammerdins work.
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