Bleed Hammer vs Judgement Aura vs Shield Bash

Hi, in the first cycle after the LE release I did play ~430 hours, completing the campaign with 9 characters and leveling some Paladins up to 97, 89 and 84, to name a few. Mostly was casual playing one of them with two friends and the rest in solo. This second (first) cycle I have less time and will probably limit my time to 2-3 characters so this is my question:

How the Bleed Hammer Paladin, Judgement Aura Paladin and the Shield Bash build (FG or Pala) compare amongst them in terms of end game, gearing and quality ofd life in this second season?

In the first one I had an Aura Paladin which did moderate damage but was fairly tanky. I had also a Holy Bolt Guard Paladin which low damage but was essentially immortal, but with the nerfs that thing is gone. I did also a Bleed Hammer build which had higher damage than the Aura build but was squishier and harder to play (hard to cast cons of hammers while evading attacks compared to just land a Judgement every few seconds).

I’m trying to guess which one of those three buiklds would be easier to main and serve as farmer since as I said, my time is much more limited now. Thanx in advance!

Both Bleed Hammerdin and Shield Bash FG do endgame pretty well, including pinnacle boss. No idea about Judgement Aura, but I don’t think there’s been too many changes to it.

For farming I’d say that bleed hammer is faster.

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There was a nerf to Pious Offering, but Purifying Flame and Flaming Soul got buffs for Consecrated Ground, so Judgement Aura does well too. I’m not exactly specced into it, but I tried it with my fire damage setup and it still deleted monolith content.

Holy Bolts is also doing great after the nerfs, I’m playing that in 1.1 :slight_smile:

For ease of use, I would go for the Judgement Aura, it requires the least amount of gear and no uniques.

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