Holy Fire Paladin

Holy Fire* is your main Damage Skill in combination with zeal. It applies Fire Damage to your attacks and deals radial damage every 2 seconds. The radial damage increases the closer enemies are to the Character.

Zeal* is your main Damage Skill. It is empowered by holy fire and hits up to 5 times in quick succession.

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

Holy Shield* is a temporary buff that boosts your Defense and Chance to Block. It also grants improved Faster Block Rate Breakpoints and improves Smite damage based on its Level. 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. Use this Skill 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.

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.

teleport* is a Skill used for mobility. It repositions your Character and Mercenary to your cursor's position. Repeatedly cast it to cover long distances.

* 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/Base Notes: Any Items with specialized or niche uses have a superscript that refers here.
1) These items are used in combination to add up to a Level 44 Holy Fire Aura. They are not added to the Holy Fire Skill Level when you actively use it!
2) This 2-piece combination provides massive Increased Attack Speed, Cannot Be Frozen and All Resistances on your budget build!
3) This 2-piece combination provides massive Attack Rating to your budget build!

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. These areas are strong without a Sunder Charm.

Anything that has a ✔ in the "Starter" column can be farmed with the Starter or Budget Variant.

Act 1

Act 2

Act 5

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.

Act 2 Desert Mercenary

Infinity, Might

Use a Desert Mercenary with Might Aura to deal with enemies that are immune to your main damage source.
Equip him with Infinity to reduce enemy Resistances and Defense with Conviction Aura, drastically boosting damage.

Mercenary Gear Options

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.

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.

General

• At the start of your farming session, cast holy shield to bring up your Chance to Block.
• Use charge, vigor and teleport from a Staff of Teleportation to quickly get to your farming location of choice.
• Swap to Holy Fire and use zeal to attack your enemies. The radial damage starts weakening your enemies, preparing them for your burning sword!

Immunities

• Switch to fanaticism when you encounter an Immune to Fire monster. In combination with your Mercenary, you can bring them down quickly, unless they are also Immune to Physical. In this case you have to skip them.
• flame Rift sets the Resistances of Immune to Fire monster to 95%. With some -x% Enemy Fire Resistance, you can start dealing some damage to them as well.

Late-Game

• At the beginning of each run, buff yourself by swapping to Call to Arms and cast Battle Command 2 times, followed by Battle Orders. Cast Holy Shield on the Weapon Swap that gives you the higher Skill Level. Make sure these buffs stay active all the time, because they are essential to your survivability. 

Standard Variant

• Use Teleport from enigma to get to your farm quickly. Utilize the Faster Cast Rate from your Weapon Swap while teleporting. Engage enemies tele-stomping on them directly. Exile provides you with the necessary Life sustain through life tap.
• Keep your Mercenary close to apply conviction to the targets you are fighting.

Double dragon + hand of justice

• On this variant of the build, you are actively using the Conviction Aura. It excels on a low player count and in areas that don't have any naturally occurring Fire Immune monsters. When low enough, you can just charge around and watch your enemies perish. Just for a reference, Cows in The Secret Cow Level die in 2-3 ticks of holy fire on /players 1!
• You can dive into higher player counts as well. To go up in difficulty, make sure to add zeal to your gameplay.
• Switch to fanaticism to kill enemies with zeal that are still Immune to Fire.
• The ideal Mercenary also uses 2 dragon and a hand of justice. Try to keep him alive as much as possible, he allows you to go to higher player counts due to the addition of a powerful static field.

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 (FCR)

Faster Cast Rate speeds up your casting animation for spells. Aim for at least the 55% FCR Breakpoint on swap. Note: FCR only controls the animation speed of the Character, and not any internal Cooldowns spells have.

Increased Attack Speed (IAS)

Increased Attack Speed speeds up your attack animations. Weapon bases have different IAS breakpoints. Values for recommended weapon options provided below. Consult the d2planner for other bases.

Phase Blade

Faster Hit Recovery (FHR)

Faster Hit Recovery increases survivability. Aim for at least the 86% FHR Breakpoint.

Faster Block Rate (FBR)

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.
This build is Hardcore viable. If you are unaccustomed to this playstyle, we recommend trying this build on Softcore to gain experience on how to successfully pilot it.