Nova Hammerdin is an exceptional build with screen-wide clear and effortless playstyle. Enra's Technique combined with Avatar of the Spire transforms Hammer Throw into an AoE skill, filling the battlefield with Hammers and allowing you to crush your enemies from a very far range. Builds with these types of mechanics are rare to find in Last Epoch.
Use Volatile Reversal and Sigils Of Hope for the great buffs they provide. Smite provides mobility in this setup, along with some Attack Speed buffs.
This setup doesn’t require any Unique to function, but it can take advantage of many. Face of the Mountain elevates the tankiness to another level, allowing you to reach 100% Block chance. Items such as Aurora's Time Glass and Foot of the Mountain fit in well into this build, providing both defense and DPS. Li'raka's Claws with Legendary potential will make your DPS skyrocket.
Overall, Nova Hammerdin is an amazing build capable of defeating all content in the game. It’s also great to compete in the Endless Arena. It’s easy to play, has great Damage with massive range and AoE and it can get tanky with good gear. If you are looking for a fast, chill build that performs well and can fill the screen with hammers, this setup is perfect for you!
This build guide assumes you have a Level 70 Character.
Reach Level 70 with our Paladin Leveling Guide.
If you are looking for a different playstyle, check all our Build Guides!
- Long Range
- Beginner Friendly
- Amazing AoE Clear
- Good Scaling With Gear and Uniques
- Needs Gear To Crit Cap
- Heavy Buff Management
- Vulnerable To DoT Damage
- Needs Gear For Good Single Target DPS
Skills
Hammer Throw
Hammer Throw is your main Damage skill. Enra's Technique combined with Avatar of the Spire enables the Nova playstyle. Take Zealot's Conviction and Weighted Hammers for big damage multipliers. Hammer Vortex provides Base Crit Chance when specced into Enra's Technique. Mana Starved Forging allows you to ignore mana management.
Alternative Skills & Tips
Passives
Passives provide powerful effects that dictate the playstyle of a Class and its Masteries. Remember that you can allocate Passives on the first half of all Masteries regardless of the one you chose.
- Armour Clad grants Damage Reduction and is crucial for any Sentinel's survivability.
- Juggernaut, Abyssal Endurance, Holy Icon and Defiance provide tons of Resistances. Use them as needed.
- Place at least 1 Point into Gladiator, Steel Aegis, Honour and Shield Wall for the Block Chance.
- Siege Captain provides both survivability and Damage.
- The Resistance Shred granted by Shield Breaker is extremely powerful.
- Invest your final Points in Reverence of Duality.
Make sure to complete the Campaign to get all your Passive Points.
Gameplay
This Paladin uses Hammer Throw to create novas of Hammers that decimate all enemies within range. Make sure you are familiar with enemy mechanics to know when to use your Support Skills to stay alive. Pay attention to their telegraphed attacks!
Skill Usage/Rotation
- Cast 4 Sigils Of Hope for their buffs.
- Spam Hammer Throw at enemies.
- Use Smite or Shield Rush to move across the map.
- Cast Volatile Reversal and Holy Aura on top of enemies for their buffs and extra Damage.
- Maintain 4 Sigils Of Hope up at all times with the Last Wish node.
Mapping
- Rush to the objective with Smite or Shield Rush.
- Proc the Haste buff from Holy Aura's Expedite Node for the additional Movement Speed.
- Be careful not to backtrack when using Volatile Reversal.
- Group mobs before using Volatile Reversal and Holy Aura to maximize their Buffs.
- Use Hammer Throw while staying on the move to maximize clear and reduce incoming damage.
Bossing
- Take advantage of all your defensive buffs and keep them active.
- Actively use Holy Aura to double the effect of its buffs.
- Use Volatile Reversal to ramp up your damage then spam Hammer Throw.
- Keep a Movement Skill off Cooldown for emergency situations or telegraphed Boss attacks.
- Use unspecced Rebuke to tank telegraphed Boss attacks.
Advanced Skill Tips
Learn more about how to maximize your gameplay in the Build Scaling section of this guide.
Gear
Gearing in Last Epoch revolves around finding Items and then using the powerful Crafting System to enhance them. As long as an Item has Forging Potential left, players can upgrade or modify their Affixes up to Tier 5. However, the powerful Exalted Tier Affixes are drop only and can't be modified by players.
Using the correct Item Bases allows you to make use of their amazing Implicits, this is fundamental for gearing efficiently. Combine Implicits, Passives, Idols and Blessings to cap your Resistances and stack as many other defensive layers as possible. Plan ahead for your next upgrades and consider the final Empowered Blessings of your build while gearing. Finish up by farming Uniques with Legendary Potential and Sealing Affixes into Exalted Items to unleash all of your build's power!
Here are the Stat Goals for this build:
- Capped Resistances
- 100% Reduced Bonus Damage Taken from Crits
- Capped Endurance
- 3000 - 4000+ Health
- 50% - 60%+ Armour Mitigation
- 3000+ Block Effectiveness
- 50% - 100% Block Chance
- 300%+ Critical Strike Multiplier
- 120+ Throwing Damage
- 100%+ Throwing Attack Speed (Pre Buffs)
Gear Progression
Milestone 1
Aim for good Item Bases with two valuable T5 Affixes. The defensive rolls on T5 Suffixes are very important at this stage as they can easily cap all your Resistances when combined with Item Implicits, Idols, Blessings or Passives. Get a good Eagle Wing as soon as possible.
Milestone 2
Make sure your Critical Strike Avoidance is capped. Remember that Woven Flesh is always an option early on. It can be farmed by killing the Abomination in the Fall of the Outcast Monolith Timeline.
Milestone 3
Get an Ironglass Shield with T5 Block Chance as soon as possible. Carapace Shield is also an option early on. Fit as much Health into your gear as possible. Hybrid Health and Health are extremely valuable, but can be hard to find early on. Use regular flat Health until you find them.
Milestone 4
Get a source of Life Leech. If you have Bleeding Heart, you can use it early on for sustain. It's a common item and easy to find. Later add Grand Wrath of Rahyeh.
Milestone 5
While you look for this basic set of gear, start farming your Empowered Blessings and look for any Idols that can help you cap all your Resistances momentarily or increase your Damage output. Your goal is to get 4 Large Rahyeh Idol with Throwing Attack Critical Strike Multiplier Prefix and Block Effectiveness, Chance To Shred Armor on Hit with Throwing Attacks or Health Suffixes.
Milestone 1
Get Chance to apply Frailty on Hit to decrease the Damage enemies deal to you. Get Chance to Chill on Hit and Chance to Slow on Hit on your Axe. These Ailments are important and should always be kept in mind.
Milestone 2
Get an Ironglass Shield with Block Chance, Block Effectiveness and Damage Taken on Block. This build relies heavily on the defensive power of Block, finding a good shield is crucial for its survival.
Milestone 3
When all your core Defenses are covered, start working on your Damage. Get Throwing Damage, Throwing Attack Speed, Throwing Attack Critical Strike Chance and Chance to Shred Armour on Hit to increase your DPS drastically.
Milestone 4
Aim for T5 Level of Hammer Throw on your Relic to invest more points into its skill tree.
Milestone 5
Keep looking for Large Rahyeh Idol with Throwing Attack Critical Strike Multiplier Prefix and Block Effectiveness, Chance To Shred Armor on Hit with Throwing Attacks or Health Suffixes. As you finish up your Empowered Blessings keep a decent Health pool, capped Resistances, Endurance and Critical Strike Avoidance. Your goal is to have Items with 4 valuable T5 Affixes, also known as T20.
Milestone 1
Upgrade your T20 setup with Exalted items, high value Sealed Affixes or ideally both. Obtain the Affixes included in the Planner, but prioritize the indicated Item Bases for their Implicits. Make sure to Seal highly efficient low tier Affixes. Ward and Ailment Cleansing on Potion Use is a must have for Belts.
Milestone 2
Look for a well rolled Oracle Amulet to provide some much needed DoT protection. Aurora's Time Glass is also an option for the Amulet slot, if you happen to find it. You can upgrade your defense with an Exalted Ironglass Shield with T7 Block Chance.
Milestone 3
Farm Foot of the Mountain with Legendary Potential. They provide a ton of useful stats. Only use them after getting Movement Speed on them. This item can be farmed by killing the Dungeon boss in Lightless Arbor. Kill the boss in T4 difficulty to maximize drop rate.
Milestone 4
Get all your Idols as optimal as possible. Keep stacking as much Health, Strength, Throwing Damage and Throwing Attack Speed on your gear as you can.
Milestone 1
Keep upgrading your gear with Exalted Items with Sealed Affixes. Get every stat in the right place and in the correct Item Base. Min/Maxing your gear in Last Epoch can be pushed to the extreme as Items with multiple Exalted Affixes are technically possible.
Milestone 2
Start farming for Face of the Mountain with the maximum Legendary Potential you can find. This Shield allows you to cap Block by stacking Endurance. To effectively use this item, you need to replace some Health affixes with Endurance. Getting T7 Block Chance on it is recommended to reach the Block cap easier. Face of the Mountain and Foot of the Mountain both drop from the Lightless Arbor Dungeon boss. Kill the boss in T4 difficulty to maximize drop rate.
Milestone 3
Aurora's Time Glass has great synergy with Face of the Mountain, as it comes with Endurance. This Amulet provides a lot of extra survivability for this build.
Milestone 4
If you happen to find them with high Legendary Potential, Li'raka's Claws is a great addition to the build for the high DPS it provides.
The Ward Variant offers unparalleled tankiness, but comes with a high gear investment. Only play this variant if you have all the required items with multiple Legendary Potential. Stack as much Health Regen and Strength as possible with Vessel of Strife and Cleaver Solution.
Milestone 1
Transition into the Ward setup by farming Vessel of Strife. It can only be acquired from T4 Julra in Temporal Sanctum and always drops with Legendary Potential. This item allows you to get Ward by building Health Regen.
Milestone 2
Cleaver Solution is also required to properly take advantage of Ward. It grants you free Intelligence by stacking Strength, providing tons of Ward Retention. This item is a common world drop and easily farmable with Legendary Potential. Aim for the indicated Affixes in the Planner.
Milestone 3
Farm Peak of the Mountain with Legendary Potential by killing The Mountain Beneath in the Lightless Arbor Dungeon. This item is essential for scaling your Crit Chance. Kill the boss in T4 difficulty to maximize drop rate.
Milestone 4
Farm Bulwark of the Last Abyss with Legendary Potential. This Shield allows you to easily cap Block, providing a lot of tankiness. It has a 50% drop rate from Harton's Husk in Fall of the Empire Empowered Monolith Timeline. Get at least Block Chance on it.
Learn the basics for crafting gear with our Beginner Crafting Guide.
Check our Unique Item & Set Farming Guide and learn how to get them!
Want to know more about Legendary Items? Check our Legendary Guide!
Blessings
Completing a Timeline in the Monolith of Fate lets you choose one of several randomized Blessings from its unique pool. Their benefits are permanent and persist even outside of the Monolith of Fate.
Empowered Blessings are a fundamental part of all builds, so getting the correct ones for each is key.
The sooner you reach Empowered Monolith, the faster you can start farming your desired Blessings!
Normal Blessings are not important as they are eventually replaced by Empowered Blessings. However they can still be a great source of Resistances, Critical Strike Avoidance or Life Leech for your build early on.
Pick up these Normal Blessings on your way to Empowered:
- Wrath of Rahyeh
- Bastion of Divinity
- Survival of Might
- Persistance of Will
- Bones of Eternity
- Embers of Immortality
- Body of Obsidian
Note: Don't target farm Normal Blessings. Get to Empowered Monolith as fast as you can.
Reaching Empowered Monolith unlocks all the level 100 Timelines and the ability to farm Empowered Blessings. Unlike Normal Blessings, these need to be farmed until you get the desired ones for your build. It is extremely important to get this set up as fast as possible to free up affix slots on your gear. Remember, the more value you get from your Blessings, the easier it is to craft efficient gear!
These are the core Combat Empowered Blessings for this build:
- Start with Grand Wrath of Rahyeh to take care of your sustain and free up gear slots.
- If you are lacking Critical Strike Avoidance, start with Grand Survival of Might. If you're building Reduced Bonus Damage Taken from Critical Strikes, go for Grand Cruelty of Strength or Grand Resolve of Humanity instead.
- Your third choice provides Block Effectiveness and Block Chance from Grand Bones of Eternity. A high roll on this Empowered Blessing is eventually the goal, but you should move to the others and come back to farm an almost perfect one later on.
- Grand Body of Obsidian provides a huge amount of Armor that helps increase the survivability of the build.
- Finish up by farming Grand Crash of the Waves. The CC benefit from this Blessing is hugely underrated and makes most normal enemies completely unable to attack you.
These Empowered Blessings are flexible and depend on your current needs and goals.
These are valuable Empowered Drop Rate Blessings for this build:
- Grand Sight of the Outcasts is very valuable to help you find Large Rahyeh Idols with Throwing Attack Critical Strike Multiplier Prefix and Block Effectiveness, Chance To Shred Armor on Hit with Throwing Attacks or Health Suffixes. Once you find all your Idols, you can switch to the Grand Winds of Fortune and focus on Uniques instead.
- Grab Grand Slumber of Morditas to help you find more Relics. Once you're satisfied with your relic you can switch to Grand Binds of Sanctuary to help you find more Shields or Grand Vision of the Aurora to find more Amulets.
- Take Grand Scars of Blood to find more Eagle Wings.
Learn how to farm Blessings fast with our Advanced Monolith Strategies.
Idols
Idols grant your character bonuses when equipped in the dedicated Idol Container. Unlock all the slots of your Idol Container by completing the Campaign and some of its Side Quests. Remember that some Idols are Class specific and you won't be able to equip them with other non-compatible Classes.
These are the Idols recommended for this build:
- Find 4 Large Rahyeh Idols with Throwing Attack Critical Strike Multiplier Prefix and Block Effectiveness, Chance To Shred Armor on Hit with Throwing Attacks or Health Suffixes. These Idols are important for both DPS and survivability.
- Get 4 Stout Lagonian Idols with Health and a resistance if you need to cap or Health. The HP gained just from the Idols is huge.
Other useful Idol Affixes
Make sure to complete the Campaign to get all your Idol Slots.
Learn how to be efficient with Idols with our Advanced Idols Setups Guide.
Build Scaling
This Paladin uses Hammer Throw to create novas of Hammers throughout the battlefield. Scale your Throwing Attack Speed and Flat Throwing Damage as much as possible. This build also has good survivability thanks to the multiple defensive layers it can take advantage of.
- Throwing Attack Speed: This build gets a ton of it thanks to the buffs provided by its Skills and Passives. The more you have, the faster you deal damage and apply ailments with Hammer Throw.
- Flat Throwing Damage: Hammer Throw doesn't scale with the base damage of our weapon, so we need to stack this as high as possible on our Gloves, Belt, Amulet, and Relic.
- Strength: Hammer Throw gains 4% Damage per point of Strength. Additionally it grants 4% Armour per point, which adds a nice defensive layer for the build.
- Dexterity: Hammer Throw gains 4% Damage per point of Dexterity. We don't build for it, but we get it when using items with All Attributes, such as Foot of the Mountain.
- Critical Strike Chance: Critical Strikes deal double damage by default and scale with Critical Strike Multiplier. Try to get this capped to guarantee a Crit from every hit. Prefixes on our Weapon, Body Armour and Helmet plus the Added Crit from Eagle Wing make this much easier. The Added Crit from Hammer Vortex when specced into Enra's Technique further helps with Crit Chance.
- Critical Strike Multiplier: Increases the Damage your Crits deal. We can stack a lot of this on our gear thanks to Idols. Build as much as you can.
- Sigils Of Hope: They grant increased Damage and Added Fire Damage.
- % Increased Damage: We get most of this from our Passive tree, Buffs and Strength. Any extra on gear is a bonus.
- Volatile Reversal: The Harbinger of Dust Node applies a powerful debuff on your enemies that makes them take additional Damage.
- Level of Hammer Throw: This is a big boost to our damage since it allows us to invest in additional multipliers from the skill tree.
- Shield Breaker: Since the build attacks so fast and has so many hits, it is extremely easy to apply 10 stacks of Physical Resistance Shred to your targets. 10 stacks increase the Damage enemies take by 50% (20% for Bosses).
- Armour Shred: Shredding Armor is good for all hit builds, but it is especially impactful for Physical. Getting Armour Shred stats on our Gloves, Idols, Weapon, and Helmet is a huge damage boost to the build.
- Penetration: Conviction grants 16% Physical Penetration.
- Armour Clad: Grants Damage Reduction and is crucial for any Sentinel's survivability.
- Block Chance: Block is a defensive mechanic that grants a chance to reduce the Damage taken from Hits. Whenever you take a Hit, your Block Chance is rolled to determine if you Block the Hit. On a successful Block, a percentage of the Damage is mitigated. This build can have anywhere between 50% and 100% block. Face of the Mountain enables 100% Block Chance.
- Block Effectiveness: The percentage of Damage reduced on Block depends on how much Block Effectiveness you have. The percentage cannot exceed 85%. The Grand Bones of Eternity blessing is an exceptional source of Block Effectiveness. Additionally, Sentinels have access to the Block Effectiveness Suffix on their Idols.
- Endurance: It allows you to take up to 60% less Damage while below a certain Health threshold. The Iron Sigils node from Sigils Of Hope makes this especially valuable for Sentinels. With Face of the Mountain, it also scales your Block Chance.
- Strength: Grants 4% Armour per point.
- Armour Mitigation: This setup can get high Armour. Combine the Armour from your Item Implicits and all the %Armour this build has to reach 50 to 60%+ Mitigation.
- Health: This build can stack a decent Health pool that can surpass the 3000 mark without sacrificing other defenses. Health is very effective when combined with all the other defensive layers.
- Leech: Grand Wrath of Rahyeh provides this build with enough sustain. Bleeding Heart is an option for even more Leech.
- Chill and Slow: Are Ailments that greatly reduce the Action and Movement Speed of your enemies. They are must haves on most builds, especially once you reach hard content with insane speed modifiers.
- Frailty: This Ailment reduces the Damage dealt by enemies by 6% for 4 seconds. Stacks 3 times.
- Ward and Ailment Cleansing on Potion Use: Cleanse all Ailments on Potion use.
Our Damage Explained Article covers all you need to know to scale Damage.
Learn all you need to know to scale Defense with our Defense Explained Article.
Loot Filter
Loot Filters are critical in Last Epoch. Making sure you highlight all the related valuable Item Bases, Affixes, Uniques and Idols is crucial to ensure your character's progression. As your gear gets better, remember to hide the rules that are no longer useful to avoid screen clutter.
Here is the Endgame Loot Filter for this build:
Learn how to load and make Filters with our Loot Filter Guide.
Video Guide
Summary
This Paladin fills the screen with Hammers in a spectacular nova. Overall this Paladin is an excellent setup capable of completing all the content in the game. It has great AoE, range, survivability and speed.
- Blast through enemies with screen-wide AoE Hammers dealing high Crit Physical damage.
- Scale Crit to turbo charge the damage with Eagle Wing and Li'raka's Claws.
- Maintain 4 Sigils Of Hope up at all times for the amazing buffs they provide.
- Use Volatile Reversal on top of enemies for extra Damage.
- Use Face of the Mountain to cap your Block Chance and reach amazing levels of tankiness.
Credits
Written by Volca.
Reviewed by Facefoot, LizardIRL