Vengeance/Conviction

Captaincatharsis

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Aug 11, 2008
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Vengeance/Conviction

Hello fellow slayers of Evil!

I recently got back into d2 after a 4 month hiatus, and want to finally make the paladin I've always wanted. The premise is a vengeance paladin who uses conviction to absolutely decimate stuff with a big two handed weapon.

I've spent some time on the forums trying to find suggestions, but it seems not many people use this style paladin. Skill build is pretty straight forward to me, but I've had a really hard time designing the perfect item selection (I normally don't play pallies).


For my perfect palladin, so far this is what I've settled on:

Helm: ??
2h weapon: ?? (I'm thinking some sort of unique Maul... Possibly windhammer for the IAS and mini crowd control with twister)
weapon switch:??
Armor:??
belt:??
ring1:Ravenfrost
ring2:??
gloves:??
boots:??
Amulet: (mostlikely resistances)

Merc (act 2 might)
Weapon: Doom (Thresher)
Helm: Vampires Gaze
Armor: ??? (shaftstop... since it's a pretty normal choice)



Help is appreciated, I'm still looking through item lists, trying to get them all figured out.


Edit: oh, and my planned skill build is 20 in conviction, vengeance, and prereqs, then maxing out resist cold->lighting (as I get the points to do so)
 
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Re: Vengeance/Conviction

They're usually called Avengers, check this guide by Asmodeus, it's got all the info you're looking for.
 
Re: Vengeance/Conviction

I want to try to give a short advices about the Avenger pallys or Conviction aura mele pallys in general, based on my own experience.

18 months ago I reinstall Diablo II LOD and build a Avenger, that was in general poorly equipped. While He was able to deal with almost any creature in the game, He was uber slow killing things in Hell. Of course, the main problem is that you must wear a very fast and very hard hitting weapon, since the elemental damage is matter of how insane is your physical damage.

If you read the guides, you basically can go with the "resist elements" ways, that improves more slowly your dps, but with the Revenge cost quiet in 4 pts of mana, or enhance the Revenge skill, which increases faster the dps, at the cost to have around 9 mana pts per hit at level 20 of the skill.

You will not have problems to hit the targets, because with Conviction topped at 25, you'll nerf the enemie's defenses to a 5%, and with -150 to resist, you will find yoursef making always damage from at least a couple of sources.

The two main problems I find was that compared to Zeal, Revenge is not cost effective: too many Mana is required to do the same amount of damage, and of course the Mana burnig monsters. With a Zealer, if you lose your mana but if your pool is high, you can almost instantly recover
2 pts to zeal, even without leeching the mana. With Revenge, even at cost 4, is way harder. My second try was to do a Zealer, trying to avoid the problems with Physical immunes thanx to extra elemental damage provided by gear (Demon Limb, Duress...). Currently my gear is decent, and the Zealer kills way faster and safer than my old avenger. This doesn't mean than Avengers can't be successful, but you'll need a way better gear with a Avenger to do the job.

This was the reason because I build a second Conviction pally based in the guides that I read from Riffters/Voicers, and I build a character -currently at level 80- with a Voice Of Reason runeword in a Phase Blade. He has (23)20 in Conviction, 23(20) in Holy Shield and 20 in Sacrifice -not mandatory-, with Zeal at level 5 -with the gear-. The mechanic is easy: you swing with Zeal, with a very fast weapon that is also indestructible -very nice feature- and the Voice Of Reason blade sprays level 13 Frozen Orbs across the screen, killing and slowlyng not cold-innmune mosnters. Rift runneword works in the same way but is more powerful, at the expense of most costly runes and with the annoying disadvantage of the huge repair cost.

In Nightmare VoR kills very fast, and since my main source of damage was not physical I was safe against Iron Maiden curse -to certain degree-. The problem was that the life leech was poor, so I was forced to increase it with the Sacrifice sinergy, that now makes I.M. a lot more dangerous. Anyway, I was able to reach Hell act IV without too many troubles.

But I'm starting to see the flaws of the "Voicers". Even with Conviction maxed at level 25 and topped at -150 resist, some monsters have up to +180 in cold resist, which means that I do 0 cold damage and tiny physical damage against them.

For this reason I want to ask a couple of questions about:

-Could Crescent Moon runeword as shift weapon do the work against cold inmune, or are his crowd control features too weak?

-What is the best way to spent my saved skill points (16, expected 26 if I reach level 90 (I have another 89 lvl Zealer)?

I think that a good choice could be 20 points in Fanaticism, because then I could change sometimes to do big physical damage and dealing with inmunnes If I find a Azurewrath, Stormslash or build a Death runeword. Seems like other options to invest skill points as Charge, Revenge or Blessed Hammer will not be useful outside a pure Hammerdin, Avenger or Charger, and spent the points in Defiance to increase my Defense looks not interesting compared to increasing my offensive power...

Thanx for the answers, and excuse my grammar and typos.
 
Re: Vengeance/Conviction

I think Crescent Moon would be nice as a switch weapon, the chance to cast Static Field helps a lot with the crowd control, it's an effective way to soften crowds quickly. Fana sounds like a good idea, since you've already invested in Sacrifice for the physical damage, but you might have trouble hitting monsters without the -def % on Conviction. If your AR is low you might be better off getting points in Charge for a backup attack instead, not sure if that would work out though.
 
Re: Vengeance/Conviction

CTC static doesn't work that well with slow attack speeds such at two handed paladins. If you manage 8fps with a 15% ctc static, that's like one static every 4 seconds.

Biggest problem with two handed avengers is interupt. Shieldless/low defence pally is easily hit and you get your attack interupted. Best way to build a two handed avenger is with damage reduction and high hit points to avoid hit recovery as ultimately it is triggered with a hit doing more than 1/12 of your hit points so the more hit points you have or damage reduction works well. So best weapon switch is CtA.

Another interesting set up for a two handed avanger is a Kingdin. Immortal kings set 4 part. Chuck a couple of ed jewels in the maul and get some extra elemental damage from the 4 item set bonuses, 20% PDR, 10% life & mana leech, FHR as well as the CB, IAS and dual sockets. Add in shaft stop/lethiathan/lionheart/duress/fort/CoH/whatever armor you like along with the usual jewellry and then pick a hat. Very cool character.
 
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