Hi, so I am level 24 paladin and I want to know what weapon would be best for leveling? I’m spec’d into Gladiator but right now I have a sword and shield I am using. I see people with youtube clickbait videos on end game saying that this is a leveling guide but it’s not. So just let me know thanks a bunch.
You have a few leveling guides there, not sure if they’re any good.
Maxroll also has some guides. Usually they’re not too optimized, but they’re good if you’re starting the game.
Ultimately, it really isn’t too important. The campaign isn’t hard and you can usually finish it easily even with a suboptimal build.
But to answer your question: at early game you want the weapon that has the highest flat damage you can get for your damage type. Meaning that if you are melee you should get +melee damage, if you’re a caster you should get +spell damage.
Âs you level up and get more passive tree nodes, this becomes less important and by endgame the flat weapon damage is mostly meaningless.
Also, if you need some help making your build better you can always post your build in the sentinel category (use the LEtools I provided, click “Build Planner”, “import”, place your account and character name, then link the resulting url).
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What do you mean by “flat damage” and do I mainly look for strength and vitality in all my armor sets for more surviability?
Flat damage is:
40 melee damage
as opposed to increased damage which is:
40% increased damage.
Early on flat damage is better. That is because your base damage is very low, so a flat damage increase will greatly boost your damage, whereas a % will increase less. If you have 20 base damage and add 40, that’s a total of 60 (200% increase) whereas adding 40% increased damage brings you to 28 (effectively 40%).
Vitality isn’t too useful. You should slap on resistances and armor where you can find them. Strength is mostly for damage and you’re at a point where the skills start to dictate what you need to increase it.
Look at the skill tags (each skill has a section at the bottom labeled “Scaling Tags”). Those are the things you need to invest in for extra damage. So if a skill says “Strength, Physical”, getting more strength and more physical damage will boost that skill’s damage.
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vitality brings some resistances plus health which i find very useful. good advice other than that.
Vitality isn’t as useful since the 0.9.2(?) patch that changed them. It’s nice to have, but no longer too relevant. There are better alternaties.
what build are you going for? palarus’s sacred light works for smite and ignite early game. vitality still gives 5 health and 1% poison and void res so you need not have so many idols if you have some or other gear but i know it isn’t optimal.
Necrotic, not void.
thanks for correcting.
Correction No. 2
6 Health 
my eyes must be going badder then i would have sworn it was 5.
Anyway there are item databases you can check for builds and if i remember right as i memory is at least as poor as my eyesight icy veins or maxroll.gg and some other sites have them.
I have no idea what builds I am doing… I am just randomly clicking. I put points into throw and rive and aura and that’s it really… I have a hard time following guides because some of them are just way too over my head.
Well, if you really have no idea what you’re doing and randomly clicking, i would highly suggest you to at least take a peak into some guides to be able to decide what kind of build or playstyle you’re aiming for, otherwise it makes it really hard for anyone to suggest anything to you.
I’d say max roll guides, since they’re pretty straight forward and less than 5 min read.
Max Roll - Paladin Guides
As for stats on your gear, it will really come down to what build you’re building. As a general rule, you only need to focus on getting such attributes as strength or vitality if the skills you’re using scale off that, you can see that by hovering over the skills and checking their tags. Or if you have some other effects that scale off each point in said attributes… Other than that you’ll scale your damage and sustain mostly off other affixes.
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You can use the build planner at the link DJ shared to get a glimpse ahead and see what skills you may be interested in using and any possible synergies. Almost none of the builds I come up with are being used by someone else so that always adds a fun sense of uniqueness.
To expand on what he said:
Although, as I said, Maxroll’s guides usually aren’t too optimized, they’re great for early leveling. Especially because they have a progression bar. Check their passive panel or skill tree panel and it will have a bar at the right which will give you the order in which you use the points.
They also have detailed explanations on what you should search for in gear, idols, etc.
They’re very beginner friendly.
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@MellowFresh
If you don’t want to dig deeper into external sources, just follow this. To elaborate:
If the skill you use says “MELEE” among it’s tags, use the weapon that has the highest total of
- melee damage implicit (the stats that depend on the weapon type you’re using, Gladius for example has +10)
- melee any type damage as an explicit affix (like +15 fire melee)
Early game don’t worry about that type not matching your skill. That becomes a factor later, when your core element has 500+% inc damage.
If however your skill doesn’t say melee, like Hammer Throw, which has a “THROWING” tag instead, forget all previous instructions. You scale that outside of your weapon with + throwing damage on items like gloves or rings. Put those affixes in your lootfilter and prio them above all else.
I can’t tell you much about your weapon in that case, but I suppose you would want a fast weapon, pref with an attack speed affix. Life on hit should be very good, too.
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I honestly don’t like their guides. But I like the planner on the site. When I click on their video they mainly show end game and claim it’s early setup, but I look at their HP on the globe to the bottom left and it’s maxxed… So i’m like HMMM misleading much? Or maybe, i just suck at the game and not realizing what to put on for armor… Because right now, I should be like 600HP but I am only level 28 with 471HP total.
I find that Maxroll’s guides are good for new players because they’re very visual and explain things very well. And it’s especially useful because they have progress bars that show you the order in which to put stuff.
I don’t like their planner, I think lastepochtools is better and it’s also more similar to the game interface, thus more intuitive to use.
I don’t think icy-veins is any good, really (sorry AaronRPG). Bad interface, no planner, builds aren’t well explained.
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You’re not wrong on Icey Veins… But I think I just overthink things too much and make simple things more complicated than it needs to be. My opinion is that MR should have like early armor stats and final armor stats to look for on all gear etc. I’ll try to learn it more though.