Smite Shield Throw Paladin Guide
Last Updated:July 6, 2024|Changelog
Welcome to the Smite Shield Throw Paladin Guide. This build takes a staple playstyle in the ARPG genre and adds a proccing component to create a flashy and powerful build that uses Shield Throw to trigger Smite, which calls down Lightning from the sky. While similar to the Smite Hammerdin build on the surface, this build offers a different playstyle, better defenses, and more consistent clear while having much lower Single Target damage.
The build offers great clear and defensive performance. Shields fly toward enemies and ricochet off them, zapping enemies with Lightning that also chains. This makes clearing packs of enemies an easy and satisfying experience. Thanks to the Armoring Aegis Node in Shield Throw, every ricochet from adds a substantial armor buff that makes this build very tanky.
This setup doesn't require any Unique to function but gains tremendous damage scaling from Devotion and defense from Face of the Mountain. It does require Adorned Rahyeh Idols with Chance To Cast Smite When You Hit With Throwing Attacks so make sure you have these before trying to play it!
Overall, this Paladin reimagines an ARPG staple while also being fully capable of defeating all of the content in the game. It's easy to play, has great clear and is very tanky. If you love the Shield Throw playstyle and want to maximize your damage and defenses then this is the build you're looking for!
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!
Skills
Shield Throw
Shield Throw is your means of creating Smite procs. Shield Barrage allows us to spam the skill while Polished Steel keeps the mana cost at 0. Armoring Aegis dramatically boosts our Armour while Eruption gives us more ailment applications.
- If you want to be able to auto cast Sigils Of Hope using the Num Lock trick you need to take Exigency. Note that you have much less control over your mana this way and won't be able to burn it at the start of a boss fight for maximum damage, so we do not recommend this.
- If you find yourself crit capped and you don't need to invest the full 5 points in Conviction on the Smite tree, you can instead allocate those points to either Blinding Flash or Deep Impact. The DPS gains are very similar.
- If Shield Throw is not at 0 mana in your setup, you can take a point out of Fleet of Foot and place it in Polished Steel to further reduce the mana cost.
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.
- The stats granted by Reverence of Duality are extremely powerful.
- Heavenfire and Sanctuary Guardian provide a ton of Flat Spell Damage.
- Holy Precision is important for scaling your Crit Chance and Crit Multiplier.
- Invest your final Points in Prayer Aegis or Light of Rahyeh, depending on your needs.
Make sure to complete the Campaign to get all your Passive Points.
Gameplay
This Paladin uses Shield Throw to proc Smite, which calls down Lightning upon the battlefield. Remember that you don't need Smite on your Skill bar. 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 Sigils Of Hope until you're low mana to maximize the damage gained from Devotion.
- Spam Shield Throw at enemies. Stand close to them to maximize damage.
- Use unspecced Shield Rush or Lunge 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 while also using it to keep your mana low.
Mapping
- Rush to the objective with unspecced Shield Rush or Lunge.
- 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.
- For large groups, use Shield Throw while staying on the move to maximize clear and reduce incoming damage.
Bossing
- Burn your mana with Sigils Of Hope just before engaging the boss.
- 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 Shield Throw. In this setup, Volatile Reversal can have 100% uptime so use it on cooldown as long as it won't place you into a bad position.
- Keep unspecced Shield Rush off Cooldown for emergency situations or telegraphed Boss attacks.
- Use Volatile Reversal to cancel out animations. This can be used to interrupt Shield Rush mid animation in dangerous situations. This mechanic can be pushed to the extreme by skilful players, creating a choreography of blinks and dashes that the enemy AI struggles to keep up with. At the same time, using this at the wrong time could end up with you in the wrong spot, so be extremely careful while learning how to use this Skill.
- Proc the Haste buff from Holy Aura's Expedite Node before using Shield Rush. The additional Movement Speed gained by the buff applies to the entire duration of Shield Rush, even if the buff expires.
- Try to use Shield Throw often to maintain high amounts of Armour. The Damage Reduction you get from this Skill is huge.
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 Critical Strikes
- Capped Endurance
- 3000 - 4000+ Health
- 60% - 70% Armour Mitigation (Pre Buffs)
- 2500+ Block Effectiveness
- 50% - 100% Block Chance
- 100% Smite Crit Chance
- 60%+ Throwing Attack Speed
- 500+ Mana
Gear Progression
Milestone 1
Make sure you have several Idols with well rolled Chance To Cast Smite When You Hit With Throwing Attacks Prefixes. 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.
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 T1 Throwing Damage and Reduced Mana Cost on both of your Rings to help with your rotation. 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. Use Avarice or Tome of Elements and later switch to Grand Hunger of the Void.
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. Continue looking for Chance To Cast Smite When You Hit With Throwing Attacks Idols with high rolls and good suffixes.
Milestone 1
If you don't already have a Devotion begin to push for one now. Use any Rune of Ascendance you have on Amulets, and once you have your blessings covered work The Age of Winter Timeline for the Unique echo rewards.
Milestone 2
Get Chance to Apply Frailty on Hit to decrease the Damage enemies deal to you. Get Chance to Chill on Hit and Chance to Shock on Hit on your Wand. These Ailments are really important and should always be kept in mind. Keep looking for any useful Idols.
Milestone 3
When all your core Defenses are covered, start working on your Damage. Get as much Mana and Throwing Attack Speed as you can. Get enough Crit Chance to cap Smite. Try to get Level of Smite on your Relic.
Milestone 4
Continue to look for better Adorned Rahyeh Idols with Chance To Cast Smite When You Hit With Throwing Attacks and either Chance To Shred Armor on Hit with Throwing Attacks, Block Effectiveness or Health. 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
Push to get crit capped if you haven't already. An exalted Spell Critical Strike Chance on your wand will give you ~30%, and a good Copper Ring will get you most of the way there.
Milestone 3
Maximize your defenses. A Dawn Plate and Dawn Helm will provide a ton of Armor if you can get the right affixes. You can upgrade your defense with an Exalted Ironglass Shield with T7 Block Chance and Block Effectiveness on your Idols.
Milestone 4
Get all your Idols as optimal as possible. Keep stacking Health. Push your Mana as high as you can without sacrificing other valuable affixes.
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 and Foot 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
Feel free to experiment with any crazy Unique, Legendary or Experimental items that you might craft, trade or find! The possibilities are endless!
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:
- Hunger of the Void
- Bastion of Divinity
- Survival of Might
- Persistance of Will
- Bones of Eternity
- Embers of Immortality
- Body of Obsidian
- Mysteries of the Deep
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 Hunger of the Void to take care of your sustain and free up gear slots.
- If you are lacking Critical Strike Avoidance, get Grand Survival of Might next. If you're building Reduced Bonus Damage Taken from Critical Strikes, go for Grand Resolve of Humanity instead.
- For damage, take Grand Mysteries of the Deep, which provides a significant damage boost against bosses. For defense get Grand Bones of Eternity. The order in which you pick these up is your preference.
- You could go Grand Body of Obsidian for the big boost in Armour, but this is a stat the build already has plenty of. Instead, go with Grand Embers of Immortality, which frees up a suffix slot and the implicit on your gloves to provide Critical Strike Chance, which in turn allows you to put more Lightning Damage on our gear. Ultimately either choice here is solid, but if you go for Armour make sure you still cap your Endurance.
These Empowered Blessings are flexible and depend on your current needs and goals.
These are valuable Empowered Drop Rate Blessings for this build:
- Grand Mark of Agony is very valuable to help you find a Adorned Rahyeh Idol with a well rolled Chance To Cast Smite When You Hit With Throwing Attacks Prefix and good Suffixes.
- Grab Grand Slumber of Morditas to help find more Relics with Exalted Level of Smite. 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 for Legendary slams.
- Take Grand Cruelty of Formosus to find more Crystal Wands.
- The other Blessings are completely optional and will have minimal impact on your farming efficiency.
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 Adorned Rahyeh Idols with Chance To Cast Smite When You Hit With Throwing Attacks and Chance To Shred Armor on Hit with Throwing Attacks, Block Effectiveness or Health.
- Get 2 Small Eterran Idols with Increased Stun Chance and a resistance or if you need a resistance not provided by that Idol type use Small Lagonian Idol with Mana or Armour.
- Health
- %Health
- Vitality
- Armour
- Elemental Resistance
- Fire Resistance
- Lightning Resistance
- Void Resistance
- Physical Resistance
- Poison Resistance
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 Shield Throw to call down Lightning through Smite procs. Scale your Throwing Attack Speed and Mana 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 more often you proc Smite and apply ailments.
- Mana: Thanks to Devotion, we get flat spell damage for every 5 missing mana we have. This means pushing our Max Mana over 500+ and then burning it down with Sigils Of Hope provides us with a ton of damage. Don't go too crazy on pushing your Mana over other damage stats or you may end up with a net damage loss. 500-700 Max Mana is the sweet spot.
- Attunement: Smite gains 4% Damage per point of Attunement. Additionally it grants Max mana per point, which further improves our Devotion scaling. However, the Mana gained is low, so don't choose this over large sources of Added or Increased Mana.
- Critical Strike Chance: Critical Strikes deal double damage by default and scale with Critical Strike Multiplier. Thanks to Conviction and Holy Precision, we have a lot of baseline Crit Chance. An exalted Spell Critical Strike Chance on your wand will give you another ~30%, and a good Copper Ring and pair of Solarum Bracers will get you most of the way there.
- Critical Strike Multiplier: Increases the Damage your Crits deal. We don't have a lot of room for this on our gear, but we get a sizable amount from Holy Precision and Deep Impact. Getting extra on your Relic and Amulet really boosts your damage. This stat is also interchangeable with Increased Lightning Damage Shard/Spell Damage on your Crystal Wand without much difference in performance.
- Sigils Of Hope: They grant increased Damage through Empowering Sigils.
- % Increased Damage: We get most of this from our Passive tree, Buffs and Attunement. Lightning Damage on your belt + rings and either Spell Damage or Lightning Damage on your Crystal Wand are significant damage boosts.
- Level of Smite: This is a big boost to our damage since it allows us to invest in additional multipliers from the skill tree.
- Grand Mysteries of the Deep and Shock: Since the build attacks so fast and has so many hits, it is extremely easy to apply 10 stacks of Lightning Resistance Shred and Shock to your targets. Together, these ailments provide 40% additional damage against Bosses.
- Armour Shred: Shredding Armor is a damage multiplier for all hit builds and should always be invested in. Getting Armour Shred stats on our Gloves, Idols and Helmet is a huge damage boost to the build.
- 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. We don't scale damage through this stat so it's not a priority investment, but we do pick some up through the Passive Tree.
- Armour Mitigation: This setup can get high Armour. Combine the Armour from your Item Implicits and all the %Armour this build has to reach 60-70% 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 plenty of sustain.
- Chill: Is an Ailment that greatly reduces the Action and Movement Speed of your enemies. It's a must have 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. Great for dealing with DoT damage or Chill/Slow/Shred/Marked for Death
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
COMING SOON!
Summary
This Paladin throws Shields that ricochet between enemies and summon Lightning from the sky through Smite procs. Overall this Paladin is an excellent setup capable of completing all the content in the game. It has excellent AoE and survivability along with great speed.
- Blast through enemies with ricocheting Shields, calling down Lightning from Smite.
- Scale Crit to turbo charge the damage thanks to large amounts of Crit Multi from Holy Precision and Deep Impact.
- Scale damage by stacking Mana thanks to Devotion.
- 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, Lizard_IRL