04-28-2004, 10:17 PM
OK so this is my build for a Hammerdin.
It is up to date with Diablo 2 Expansion v 1.10
The stuff for people who don't know:
A hammerdin is a Paladin who uses the skill "Blessed Hammer" and the aura "Concentration" in order to release magical hammers that circles around him and lays waste to enemies in it's path. The Hammerdin was introduced in 1.10 because it got good synergies and auras to make the damage beef up.
NOTICE: If you are an experienced player who is building / have built a hammerdin already, make sure you read the "TIPS & TRICKS" section in the end, I've written a few tricks there that maybe you can make use of.
General about skills:
Blessed hammer- the main skill, this is definitely the most used skill
Concentration- the aura that boosts hammers damage. this must be ACTIVATED
Blessed aim- gives synergy to blessed hammer
Vigor- gives synergy to hammer + makes you run fast when its's activated
Skill usage and key binding:
Put blessed hammer as the "left" skill, the one you use when you press the left button. This will create a hammer every time you click on an enemy. But you don't want to have to click an enemy to cast a hammer, so simply hld down SHIFT button and press left mouse button to cast a hammer.
Put Concentration aura on right mouse button, this has to be activated in order to boost your hammers damage.
Playing with other hammerdins:
If you play with other hammerdins (on a series of baalruns for example) then make sure you ask them what level of concentration aura they have. if they have higher level than you, switch to another aura (i suggest meditation to regenerate mana and life, or defiance for defence) make sure that no palas have the same aura activated, because that's worthless.
SKILL POINTS:
Blessed Hammer - MAX
Concentration - MAX
Blessed Aim - MAX
Vigor - MAX
This makes 4 maxed skills. that is 4*20= 80 Skill Points used.
You get 12 extra skill points from quests. So at level 68 you get all the points you need, if you don't count in the pre-requisits (the skills needed to obtain the skills you are going to use). But i STRONGLY recommend leveling up to about 85-90. A lot of people level past 90, but that is only for show-off i guess
So, if you level past level 68, you will get spare points.
SPARE SKILL POINTS:
Meditation - 1 point (This gives more than 300% mana regen and heals you)
Holy Shield - All spare points (Increases defence, it's gr8)
You can put points into other skills too if you want. Just take the skills you find useful to you or to others!
STAT POINTS:
Important: Remember to calculate the +to stat points you get from gear!
Strength - Just enough to wear the items you are using. (118 for Guardian)
Dexterity - Enough to have 75% blocking. This is important.
Vitality - Every spare point you get goes here. Makes you survive. (250-300)
Energy - Put about 10-40 points here, or maybe none.
Blocking: You need more dexterity to have 75% (max) chance to block the higher level you get. Make sure you have a shield with good blocking % to minimize the amount of dexterity needed. At level 90 I would guess, notice guess, that about 130-150 dext should give you 75% blocking with Herald of Zakarum.
Energy: Only put points here if you need more mana. Most people have enough mana with base energy, but i recomment 10 points here.
PLAYING:
Hammers are hard in the beginning, face it.
After a while you get the hang of it, but it can still be hard to make corpses of some monsters. The hammers have a bad habit of sometimes going through monsters without delivering damage to them.
Agains 1/few monsters: Just get close to the monster and go crazy with spamming hammers!
Agains a lot of melee monsters: Get into the middle, drink a potions to make your life decrease less rapidly, and start spamming hammers. The monsters will be hit and it will take some time for them to recover from the hit. After a while most of them will die, and some will be left, then it's jsut a matter of running to the ones who are left and killing them.
Agains casters/ranged attackers: These are definitely the hardest and most annoying to kill. You need to get close to them to spam hammers, but they will ,most of the time, run away when you get close. Use vigor to run up to them quickly then spam them down.
GEAR:
Gear is importand. Very important.
Headgear: Shako
Gloves: Frostburn / Faster cast rate + mana rare gloves
Armor: Guardian Angel (An enigma in the stash for MF is good too)
Belt: Arachnid Mesh for damage, Verdungos Hearty Cord for survival
Boots: Tearhaunch
Weapon 1: Wizardspike / Heart of the Oak (Depending of the used amulet)
Shield 1: Herald of Zakarum with Perfect Diamond or UM Rune
Weapon 2: Call To Arms if you can afford
Shield 2: Lidless Wall (Boosts the level of Call To Arms warcries)
Ring 1: Stone of Jordan (I will list cheaper choices)
Ring 2: Stone of Jordan
Amulet: Maras Kaleidoscope / Seraphs Hymn
Explanations:
Shako: The only choice. +2 Skills and lots of life/mana
Frostburn for mana, or use Magefist for faster cast rate. But rare gloves can actually be the best ones i think.
Guardian Angel because it gives +15 max all res and +1 skills.
Tearhaunch because of +10 resistance and +2 Vigor (Synergy for hammers)
Weapon 1: Wizardspike of you use Seraphs as Amulet (Seraphs give more skills, but no resistance)
Heart of the Oak if you use Maras as Amulet (Maras gives resistance)
Heart of the Oak gives more damage to hammers. But wizard gives more cast rate.
Stone of Jordan is definitely the best ring with it's +1 skills and mana. On ladder, it's really hard to afford these rings since everybody used their to make DC Clone spawn a couple of months ago. Anyway, if you can't afford the SoJ's, use a ring with resistance and one with faster cast rate and mana/life.
Seraphs Hymn is actually the best choice for an amulet. So using wizardspike instead of HOTO would be a lot cheaper and it is many peoples alternative. Maras + HOTO makes for an expensive trade but you get gr8 damage.
OTHER INFORMATION:
Traveling/Rushing: You can use Vigor to run really fast, which, with most of this equipment on, will end up at about level 30-40. Remember that while using Vigor your hammers will deliver poor damage, so make sure to check often what aura is on so that you don't go around complaining about your low damage when you have vigor on.
Helping the team with auras: Your Hammerdin will probably be the most/one of the most "surviving" characters on most games you play on. So if you feel like you want to help your team out a little, pull out the defiance aura or the meditation. You can also use other skills if you have put points in them.
TIPS & TRICKS:
This build can be good when paying Hardcore
---
Good skills to help other players with:
Redemption (If there is no player making use of corpses)
Cleansing (To remove poison or spells)
Salvation (To increase the other players resist)
Remember you only need to put one skill point in these skills.
---
Cleansing can be really good to switch on just when the second group of enemies (The Unravelers and their Death Mages) is about to spawn on a Baalrun. These enemies will poison most players around them and with low poison resistance players will loose health quickly, your cleansing aura will remove the poison from them quickly.
---
When killing stuff in the Chaos Sanctuary or other places with lots of elemental-damaging monsters you would probably want to put on your Salvation aura to increase the resistances of your team. Not everyone have 90 all res you know.
BECOMING "IMMORTAL":
Maxing the resistances:
A thing I thought of the other day is a nice way to boost past the 90 all res and get even more! You simply put one skill point into resist fire, one into resist lightning and one into resist cold. These three defencive auras has no pre-requisites so you only need 1 point in each of them and you will have more maximum resistance. You see these auras have a passive bonus that is not written in the game. The bonus is that they give +0,5 to your maximum resistance for every level. For example: You put one point in resist cold, this skill now goes up to level 10 because of your +skills gear. +0,5 max res/level gives us +5 maximum cold res with level 10 Resist Cold aura. And the good thing is, you don't need to have this aura activated in order for it to give you more maximum resist. So let's say you put one point into each of these (1 point in Resist Lightning, 1 in Resist Cold and 1 in Resist Fire), this will now boost these up to level 15 (I think they would maybe pass level 15 with best gear) and level 15 of these gives us +7,5 all res (except for poison). So this will give you (If you have enough +res gear on) the resistances:
Fire Resistance: 97,5
Cold Resistance: 97,5
Lightning Resistance: 97,5
Poison Resistance: 90
So let's ask ourselves, do we now have to fear elemental damage? I say no.
Maxing the life pool:
Achieving a large amount of life shouldn't be that hard.
With 118 strength you can wear Guardian and with around 150 dex you can block effectively. At level 90 you will have 465 Stat Points (If you do all Lam Esen quests)
465-188=347
347-150(approximitly)=About 200 skill points remaining
Let's say you also get +stats from gear (For example, Herald gives +20 str and +20 dext i think) and you get some more +stats, you will end up at maybe 250-300 stat points left after puting the required points into str and dext. These points go into vitality and maybe some +stats there too, and this will surely give you above 250 vitality, don't worry. With this much witality you will end up at above 1000 hit points (life). I would say maybe 1500 with bonuses. And if you have Call to Arms you can push this up to maybe 2500 or more with the warcries. On a baalrun you will probably get warcried from a Barbarian, and they often have better BO than Call to Arms, and this might give you around 3000 hit points.
This is plenty enough I tell you.
MERCENAIRY:
Your fellow adventurer, always aiding you in battle.
This will definitely be an Act 2 Merc, they are the best, no doubt.
His aura? I would say Holy Freeze (Defencive) since this slows enemies which makes you hit them more, and they hit you less.
There are two different sets of gear for your merc that i recommend
Super-Slowing-Merc:
Holy Freeze
Uses the Shaftstop (preferrably upgraded and ethreal) as armor, this makes him survive. He has Blackhorns Face as headgear (this slows down and frightens enemies and has other good mods). He uses Kepli Snare as weapon, this greatly slows down enemies. This merc can have a hard time surviving hell but he has sort of cheap gear.
Killing-Tanking-Freezing-Merc (Recommended):
Holy Freeze
Shaftstop (Socket with Enhanced Damage/max-min damage jewel)
Vampire Gaze (Preferrably perfect stats, 8/8/20 i think that is) (Socket as armor)
Tomb Reaver (Socket with 2x Amn Runes to give him great life-leech)
All of these items would preferably be ethreal since that boosts their defence/damage and a merc cannot lower the durability of items.
If you are really wealthy, you can make sure you get shaft and rombreaver with perfect enhanced defence/damage.
This mercenairy will survive hell good. Especially if he gets warcries.
He will also deliver good damage with your concentraton aura since it can increase damage with insance amounts. (500%-something?, i dunno)
-------------------------
So let's sum this up.
1500-3000 life (Or more)
97,5 all resistances except poison which is 90
Maybe around 5000 defence base and with holy shield at level 15-20 maybe you end up with around 15000-something in defence.
Hammers that makes 8000-10000 (Probably more) damage/hammer
A really fast cast rate
Mercenairy that kills and tanks damage for you.
Immortal is the only word I can think of!
-------------------
This guide was written by KeeSe of the European Ladder Realm
You can send me a message about the guide or anything if you want
Send messages to [email protected] or to *KeeSe on battlenet
This guide was made on the 28 of April 2004
Greetingz from Sweden
Hope this guide helped you.
Please give me feedback about it. Complaints, notifications on mistakes and gratulations are always welcome!
/KeeSe
It is up to date with Diablo 2 Expansion v 1.10
The stuff for people who don't know:
A hammerdin is a Paladin who uses the skill "Blessed Hammer" and the aura "Concentration" in order to release magical hammers that circles around him and lays waste to enemies in it's path. The Hammerdin was introduced in 1.10 because it got good synergies and auras to make the damage beef up.
NOTICE: If you are an experienced player who is building / have built a hammerdin already, make sure you read the "TIPS & TRICKS" section in the end, I've written a few tricks there that maybe you can make use of.
General about skills:
Blessed hammer- the main skill, this is definitely the most used skill
Concentration- the aura that boosts hammers damage. this must be ACTIVATED
Blessed aim- gives synergy to blessed hammer
Vigor- gives synergy to hammer + makes you run fast when its's activated
Skill usage and key binding:
Put blessed hammer as the "left" skill, the one you use when you press the left button. This will create a hammer every time you click on an enemy. But you don't want to have to click an enemy to cast a hammer, so simply hld down SHIFT button and press left mouse button to cast a hammer.
Put Concentration aura on right mouse button, this has to be activated in order to boost your hammers damage.
Playing with other hammerdins:
If you play with other hammerdins (on a series of baalruns for example) then make sure you ask them what level of concentration aura they have. if they have higher level than you, switch to another aura (i suggest meditation to regenerate mana and life, or defiance for defence) make sure that no palas have the same aura activated, because that's worthless.
SKILL POINTS:
Blessed Hammer - MAX
Concentration - MAX
Blessed Aim - MAX
Vigor - MAX
This makes 4 maxed skills. that is 4*20= 80 Skill Points used.
You get 12 extra skill points from quests. So at level 68 you get all the points you need, if you don't count in the pre-requisits (the skills needed to obtain the skills you are going to use). But i STRONGLY recommend leveling up to about 85-90. A lot of people level past 90, but that is only for show-off i guess
So, if you level past level 68, you will get spare points.
SPARE SKILL POINTS:
Meditation - 1 point (This gives more than 300% mana regen and heals you)
Holy Shield - All spare points (Increases defence, it's gr8)
You can put points into other skills too if you want. Just take the skills you find useful to you or to others!
STAT POINTS:
Important: Remember to calculate the +to stat points you get from gear!
Strength - Just enough to wear the items you are using. (118 for Guardian)
Dexterity - Enough to have 75% blocking. This is important.
Vitality - Every spare point you get goes here. Makes you survive. (250-300)
Energy - Put about 10-40 points here, or maybe none.
Blocking: You need more dexterity to have 75% (max) chance to block the higher level you get. Make sure you have a shield with good blocking % to minimize the amount of dexterity needed. At level 90 I would guess, notice guess, that about 130-150 dext should give you 75% blocking with Herald of Zakarum.
Energy: Only put points here if you need more mana. Most people have enough mana with base energy, but i recomment 10 points here.
PLAYING:
Hammers are hard in the beginning, face it.
After a while you get the hang of it, but it can still be hard to make corpses of some monsters. The hammers have a bad habit of sometimes going through monsters without delivering damage to them.
Agains 1/few monsters: Just get close to the monster and go crazy with spamming hammers!
Agains a lot of melee monsters: Get into the middle, drink a potions to make your life decrease less rapidly, and start spamming hammers. The monsters will be hit and it will take some time for them to recover from the hit. After a while most of them will die, and some will be left, then it's jsut a matter of running to the ones who are left and killing them.
Agains casters/ranged attackers: These are definitely the hardest and most annoying to kill. You need to get close to them to spam hammers, but they will ,most of the time, run away when you get close. Use vigor to run up to them quickly then spam them down.
GEAR:
Gear is importand. Very important.
Headgear: Shako
Gloves: Frostburn / Faster cast rate + mana rare gloves
Armor: Guardian Angel (An enigma in the stash for MF is good too)
Belt: Arachnid Mesh for damage, Verdungos Hearty Cord for survival
Boots: Tearhaunch
Weapon 1: Wizardspike / Heart of the Oak (Depending of the used amulet)
Shield 1: Herald of Zakarum with Perfect Diamond or UM Rune
Weapon 2: Call To Arms if you can afford
Shield 2: Lidless Wall (Boosts the level of Call To Arms warcries)
Ring 1: Stone of Jordan (I will list cheaper choices)
Ring 2: Stone of Jordan
Amulet: Maras Kaleidoscope / Seraphs Hymn
Explanations:
Shako: The only choice. +2 Skills and lots of life/mana
Frostburn for mana, or use Magefist for faster cast rate. But rare gloves can actually be the best ones i think.
Guardian Angel because it gives +15 max all res and +1 skills.
Tearhaunch because of +10 resistance and +2 Vigor (Synergy for hammers)
Weapon 1: Wizardspike of you use Seraphs as Amulet (Seraphs give more skills, but no resistance)
Heart of the Oak if you use Maras as Amulet (Maras gives resistance)
Heart of the Oak gives more damage to hammers. But wizard gives more cast rate.
Stone of Jordan is definitely the best ring with it's +1 skills and mana. On ladder, it's really hard to afford these rings since everybody used their to make DC Clone spawn a couple of months ago. Anyway, if you can't afford the SoJ's, use a ring with resistance and one with faster cast rate and mana/life.
Seraphs Hymn is actually the best choice for an amulet. So using wizardspike instead of HOTO would be a lot cheaper and it is many peoples alternative. Maras + HOTO makes for an expensive trade but you get gr8 damage.
OTHER INFORMATION:
Traveling/Rushing: You can use Vigor to run really fast, which, with most of this equipment on, will end up at about level 30-40. Remember that while using Vigor your hammers will deliver poor damage, so make sure to check often what aura is on so that you don't go around complaining about your low damage when you have vigor on.
Helping the team with auras: Your Hammerdin will probably be the most/one of the most "surviving" characters on most games you play on. So if you feel like you want to help your team out a little, pull out the defiance aura or the meditation. You can also use other skills if you have put points in them.
TIPS & TRICKS:
This build can be good when paying Hardcore
---
Good skills to help other players with:
Redemption (If there is no player making use of corpses)
Cleansing (To remove poison or spells)
Salvation (To increase the other players resist)
Remember you only need to put one skill point in these skills.
---
Cleansing can be really good to switch on just when the second group of enemies (The Unravelers and their Death Mages) is about to spawn on a Baalrun. These enemies will poison most players around them and with low poison resistance players will loose health quickly, your cleansing aura will remove the poison from them quickly.
---
When killing stuff in the Chaos Sanctuary or other places with lots of elemental-damaging monsters you would probably want to put on your Salvation aura to increase the resistances of your team. Not everyone have 90 all res you know.
BECOMING "IMMORTAL":
Maxing the resistances:
A thing I thought of the other day is a nice way to boost past the 90 all res and get even more! You simply put one skill point into resist fire, one into resist lightning and one into resist cold. These three defencive auras has no pre-requisites so you only need 1 point in each of them and you will have more maximum resistance. You see these auras have a passive bonus that is not written in the game. The bonus is that they give +0,5 to your maximum resistance for every level. For example: You put one point in resist cold, this skill now goes up to level 10 because of your +skills gear. +0,5 max res/level gives us +5 maximum cold res with level 10 Resist Cold aura. And the good thing is, you don't need to have this aura activated in order for it to give you more maximum resist. So let's say you put one point into each of these (1 point in Resist Lightning, 1 in Resist Cold and 1 in Resist Fire), this will now boost these up to level 15 (I think they would maybe pass level 15 with best gear) and level 15 of these gives us +7,5 all res (except for poison). So this will give you (If you have enough +res gear on) the resistances:
Fire Resistance: 97,5
Cold Resistance: 97,5
Lightning Resistance: 97,5
Poison Resistance: 90
So let's ask ourselves, do we now have to fear elemental damage? I say no.
Maxing the life pool:
Achieving a large amount of life shouldn't be that hard.
With 118 strength you can wear Guardian and with around 150 dex you can block effectively. At level 90 you will have 465 Stat Points (If you do all Lam Esen quests)
465-188=347
347-150(approximitly)=About 200 skill points remaining
Let's say you also get +stats from gear (For example, Herald gives +20 str and +20 dext i think) and you get some more +stats, you will end up at maybe 250-300 stat points left after puting the required points into str and dext. These points go into vitality and maybe some +stats there too, and this will surely give you above 250 vitality, don't worry. With this much witality you will end up at above 1000 hit points (life). I would say maybe 1500 with bonuses. And if you have Call to Arms you can push this up to maybe 2500 or more with the warcries. On a baalrun you will probably get warcried from a Barbarian, and they often have better BO than Call to Arms, and this might give you around 3000 hit points.
This is plenty enough I tell you.
MERCENAIRY:
Your fellow adventurer, always aiding you in battle.
This will definitely be an Act 2 Merc, they are the best, no doubt.
His aura? I would say Holy Freeze (Defencive) since this slows enemies which makes you hit them more, and they hit you less.
There are two different sets of gear for your merc that i recommend
Super-Slowing-Merc:
Holy Freeze
Uses the Shaftstop (preferrably upgraded and ethreal) as armor, this makes him survive. He has Blackhorns Face as headgear (this slows down and frightens enemies and has other good mods). He uses Kepli Snare as weapon, this greatly slows down enemies. This merc can have a hard time surviving hell but he has sort of cheap gear.
Killing-Tanking-Freezing-Merc (Recommended):
Holy Freeze
Shaftstop (Socket with Enhanced Damage/max-min damage jewel)
Vampire Gaze (Preferrably perfect stats, 8/8/20 i think that is) (Socket as armor)
Tomb Reaver (Socket with 2x Amn Runes to give him great life-leech)
All of these items would preferably be ethreal since that boosts their defence/damage and a merc cannot lower the durability of items.
If you are really wealthy, you can make sure you get shaft and rombreaver with perfect enhanced defence/damage.
This mercenairy will survive hell good. Especially if he gets warcries.
He will also deliver good damage with your concentraton aura since it can increase damage with insance amounts. (500%-something?, i dunno)
-------------------------
So let's sum this up.
1500-3000 life (Or more)
97,5 all resistances except poison which is 90
Maybe around 5000 defence base and with holy shield at level 15-20 maybe you end up with around 15000-something in defence.
Hammers that makes 8000-10000 (Probably more) damage/hammer
A really fast cast rate
Mercenairy that kills and tanks damage for you.
Immortal is the only word I can think of!
-------------------
This guide was written by KeeSe of the European Ladder Realm
You can send me a message about the guide or anything if you want
Send messages to [email protected] or to *KeeSe on battlenet
This guide was made on the 28 of April 2004
Greetingz from Sweden
Hope this guide helped you.
Please give me feedback about it. Complaints, notifications on mistakes and gratulations are always welcome!
/KeeSe
** he used shard, +2 rare pali shield, tarn, twitch, 2 sojs, bgorget (+2 pali 10fcr 70 life pris ammy for those of u who never played classic) imps, magefist, all the goodies 
he was fun