Zeal* This is your Damage Skill. It swings your weapon up to 5 times in quick succession. Your Character is stuck in its attack animation until the maximum number of swings have been completed. Leveling this Skill increases your Physical Damage and Attack Rating. Zeal applies on-hit Lightning Damage from your Dream-granted Holy Shock.

* Increased Attack Speed Skills (IAS)

Conviction* This is your Primary Aura - keep active while using Zeal. While active, it lowers the Defense and the Fire, Lightning, and Cold Resistances of nearby enemies based on its Level. This Skill is capable of breaking monster Immunities.

Holy Shield* is a temporary buff that boosts your Defense and Chance to Block; it also grants improved Faster Block Rate Breakpoints while active. This Skill requires a Shield.

Charge* makes your Paladin instantly jet forward towards the position of your cursor. Making contact with an enemy in the process makes him abruptly stop and swing his weapon. Continually using this ability allows you to quickly cover long distances. Charge also applies on-hit Lightning Damage from your Dream-granted Holy Shock. While this Skill can be used for dealing Damage on this build, it is mostly used for mobility if not using Enigma.

Vigor* While active, this Aura provides your Paladin and members of your Party with increased Faster Run/Walk based on its Level.

Salvation* While active, this Aura provides your Paladin and members of your Party with increased Resistances to all Elements (Fire/Lightning/Cold) based on its Level.

Resist Lightning* While active, this Aura provides your Paladin and members of your Party with increased Lightning Resistance based on its Level. Every 2 Skill Points put into this Skill raises the cap on your Maximum Lightning Resistance by 1.

Cleansing* While active, this Aura provides your Paladin and members of your Party with Poison Length Reduction and Curse Length Reduction based on its Level. This Aura is especially useful after killing the 2nd Baal Wave in the Throne of Destruction or if Cursed with Amplify Damage.

* Increased Attack Speed Skills (IAS)
* Faster Cast Rate Skills (FCR)
* Skills that do NOT utilize either FCR or IAS

While every Stat in the Desirable Stats column is useful for this build, we highlighted the Priority Stats in Teal so you can easily identify the Most Important Stats on them.

Hover over any Item to see a pop-out with the full Item description.

Gear Notes: Any Items with specialized or niche uses have a superscript that refers here.
1) A Life Tap Charge Wand on Weapon-Swap is used for applying Life Tap to Uber Bosses when options such as Dracul's Grasp or Last Wish are not available.
2) Only ever use a Last Wish versus Uber Bosses. It is not recommended to use it for most standard gameplay on a Dream Paladin.
3) Treachery and Demon Limb are used for pre-buffing, usually prior to taking down the Ubers. Treachery pre-buffs Fade for All Resistances, Curse Length Reduction, and Damage Reduction, while Demon Limb pre-buffs Enchant for increased Attack Rating.
4) Wizardspike is used for the Faster Cast Rate it provides on Weapon-Swap prior to acquiring a Call to Arms, or if Barbarian-granted Battle Orders is available.
5) Only use Naj's Puzzler, a Staff of Teleportation, or a Teleport Charge Amulet for Teleport Charges if you are not using Enigma.

The areas below are efficient farming locations that make use of the build’s strengths. Other farming spots might not be as effective due to Immunities or bad layouts.

This build is capable of farming Uber Tristram and the Mini Ubers before (See the "Ubers" Build Variant):

Your Mercenary serves an incredibly important role to the overall success of your build. They can be a front line tank, provide a pivotal Aura, and/or deal Physical Damage to kill enemies with Immunity to your Skill set.

Use a Desert Mercenary with Might Aura to significantly boost your Physical Damage. Equip him with The Reaper's Toll for a 33% Chance to cast Decrepify on striking, Slowing down and increasing Physical Damage dealt to enemies. Decrepify can even break most Physical Immunities.

Alternatively, you can use an Act 1 Cold Mercenary equipped with Faith to maintain maximum Attack Speed without much Increased Attack Speed on your gear. This comes at the expense of raw Damage (see Build Variants).

Your Mercenary needs maximum Resistances, Life Leech, a high damage Weapon, and high Defense and/or Damage Reduction to stay alive reliably. Cannot Be Frozen is also a great stat for maintaining Mercenary DPS and leech. Ethereal gear is preferred since it doesn't lose durability. Mercenary Types and Gear Options at each Gear Level perform equally well in different situations; choose based on Farming Spots and/or personal preference.

The Mercenary is hard to keep alive until you have the minimum gear recommended in this guide. Remember you can drag Healing Potions onto the portrait, or shift + 1/2/3/4 to directly feed them a Healing Potion from your Belt. The Mercenary also gains bonus Resistances from Thawing Potions and Antidote Potions.

If your Mercenary dies in battle, you can revive them from any of the Mercenary NPCs in each Act. This does come with an increasing cost, capping at 50,000 Gold. Keep that in mind and decide if the Mercenary is currently worth the cost.

Breakpoints in Diablo 2 are the minimum values required to reduce the frames of an action. Below are the important breakpoints considered for this build. For more information on the mechanics involved, check out our in-depth Resource: Breakpoints.

Faster Cast Rate speeds up your casting animation for spells. Aim for at least the 48% FCR Breakpoint for Enigma Teleport cast speed, which is achieved on Weapon-Swap on the Standard Build. Note: FCR only controls the animation speed of the Character, and not any internal Cooldowns spells have.

Increased Attack Speed speeds up your attack animations. Weapon Bases have different IAS Breakpoints. Reach the 72% IAS Breakpoint on the Standard Build. Consult the d2planner for other bases.

Faster Hit Recovery increases survivability. Aim for at least the 48% FHR Breakpoint.

Faster Block Rate does not need to be obtained for this build. Holy Shield already reduces the block animation to 2 frames through a hidden mechanic.

For all Hardcore gameplay, your primary focus is increasing your Resistances, Damage Reduction, Chance to Block and Maximum Life. This can mean sacrificing overall power level for a more secure playstyle.

The Dream Paladin can become Hardcore viable with key changes to Gear and Skill Point allocation. Review the changes below before building this character in Hardcore, as some of these changes differ significantly from the Standard Build.