YouTube Build Guide + Gameplay : Hammer Throw Crit Paladin, Enrya's Technique, Avatar of The Spire, 340+ Corruption, Last Epoch Build - YouTube
Timestamps :
00:00 - Intro + Gameplay
03:27 - Skill Rotation
04:17 - Hammer Throw
06:13 - Sigils and Reversal
07:03 - Smite
07:54 - Holy Aura
08:40 - Passives
10:52 - Gearing
Build Summary :
Hello, this is Dr3ad from Epoch Builds. In this forum topic, we will go over Enyra’s Technique Avatar of the Spire Crit Hammer Throw Paladin. I got bored waiting for the December 10th patch so one final build guide before we get into all the new stuff.
So I’ve tried Hammer Throw before in the past, where I set it up with Enrya’s Technique so I can go Crit Hammers. Most of the time Hammer Throw builds are either focused on proc’ing ailments or proc’ing smites on enemies. This one does not do either of those things. We turn off the Spiral for Hammer Throw so we can get a large damage boost and a bit of base critical strike chance. Then we can grab the node that allows you to cast hammer throw while at negative mana. This makes it so we can grab the nodes in the lower half of the forge guard tree, letting our hammers shred 4-5 phys and fire resistance stacks per hit, pretty much giving us close to 40% more damage on single targets. This adds an obscene mana cost to our hammer throw, but since we are using Mana Starved Forging it doesnt matter in the end.
This was the basis of the old version I played about a year back. But as I’ve learned more about the game I’ve improved this concept heavily. I’ve started using Avatar of the Spire, which has helped our clear immensly. The star pattern the hammers are thrown at is amazing for clear, and since 1 hammer is always thrown in front of you, you can easily aim at single targets.
We also have a heavy investment into Armor Shred. The more I play these kinds of builds the more I am appreciative of how Armor Shred works in this game. It is what allows us to do so much damage in a single target. Since it comes with the Throwing Crit Multi Idols on the suffix, it means we end up with enough to get close to the shred cap.
We also get a large amount of throwing attack speed on the rings and gloves, bringing us all the way up to 184% throwing attack speed on the sheet with buffs up. This combined with the high stun chance hammer throw has as a base, it means we stun most enemies except bosses, making our choice of dual wielding a lot less precarious. We are slightly squishy so any kind of defense we can grab is good.
You can dump the Katana and run a Shield instead, if you want to be much tankier, but you will lost a significant portion of your damage. If you are playing in Hardcore this is a change I’d suggest. We do require the Throwing attack damage % leech blessing to push past monos easily, until you get it I suggest running a bleeding heart until that point. You will lose some damage but you can take it off once you get the blessing.
All in all, I am very proud of Hammer Throw actually having a competent build that isn’t smite or bleed, and with how good it feels to play. I can 100% recommend this to someone who wants to throw hammers and deal damage with the hammers instead of the Turbo Smite variant.
Leveling Guide :
Levels 1-18 : Forge Guard, Level 18 (LE Beta 0.8.3e) - Last Epoch Build Planner (Its a Forge Guard I know, its an accident, doesn’t matter just pick paladin instead lol)
So for leveling you will use Vengeance a little until you unlock Hammer Throw. Hammer Throw is an insane leveling skill and will carry you until you unlock Javelin. The Spiral Node on Hammer Throw is one of the strongest setups for early game leveling for sentinel.
Levels 18-40 : Forge Guard, Level 40 (LE Beta 0.8.3e) - Last Epoch Build Planner
At level 18 you will specialize into Javelin in the back pocket, until it gets high enough level to allocate Holy Trail. At that point, Holy Trail will completely steam roll the game. After that you can run the node that gives you flat adaptive damage per % healing effect, scaling all your flat damage thanks to all the healing effect in Paladin’s tree. Now you can run the node inside Lunge that will cast another javelin for you, raising your max Javelins to 3. Don’t worry about having to run a Polearm, since Holy Trail scales its flat off of Healing Effectiveness, it means you will do just fine, especially since you have 3 trails at your disposal. At level 40-ish you can respec into the build. Save your gold for respecc’ing.