I landed a 3LP Renegade’s Will and given the look of Healing Hands decided to have a go at it and see if I could make a workable-ish melee in your face build.
The whole idea is based around spamming vengeance fast to continuously pop-off Healing Hands and with Searing Light, Bane of Evil and Seraph Blade.
Here’s my question. I’m getting ready to head to Temporal to craft my Legendary. Melee Attack Speed is obvious. The other three I thought would be worthwhile would be Fire Penetration (in a suffix slot) and then Fire Damage or Melee Fire Damage.
Of those last two which do you think would be ideal? Since Seraph Blades changes Healing Hands to Melee, would it benefit from the Melee Fire Flat damage? And if it does would it be stronger than the %Fire damage because Flat Fire is a little hard to get for a Paladin?
HH will benefit from both fire damage mods, but it also benefits from the healing effectiveness to flat damage conversion in the HH tree. So you’re not exactly thirsty for flat damage depending on how hard you chase HE/Attunement, and might be better off with percentage fire or even looking at crit stats - though melee crit variants I’ve seen favour a two-hander for the high mod values.
EDIT: Other notes:
You have Divine Barrier but no experimented missing HP on your gloves or other ward nodes. Homeward isn’t terribly necessary for melee HH, as you’re always in the cone area no matter what. So either pick up the glove mod and become immortal, or maybe free up a couple of points - I’d suggest trying Rahyeh’s Chariot with Sun Shroud, as it gives you an invulnerable (if slow) dash that works even without a target, then pick up Javelin with Battle Standard for the last slot. Battle Standard gives it the Buff tag, so even if you never use it you’re getting Cleric’s Wrath damage for four skills instead of three.
Attunement over Levels of Healing Hands on helm is basically always a mistake - you’re getting 42-48% healing effectiveness to HH instead of 66-83 and skipping two skill points (and 2% from Cleric’s Wrath) for, at best, 16 max mana.
I’m on the early stages of testing stuff out (just hit empowered monos) so I still have a lot to play with. I actually only took Divine Barrier to get Homeward and the extra healing effectiveness but it’s probably not likely I’ll that those two points are worth it. (thought I might test out a pari of those gloves before I do. :D) I like the option of Chariot/Sun Shroud. One of my favorite things with not looking at build guides is making discoveries and that is a great way to get a fourth buff skill. I was trying to figure out a way to do that! I’ll definitely give Chariot/Sun Shroud a go.
This is definitely one of those play around things. I had a helm while leveling that had a +2 on Healing Hands but it just didn’t feel necessary. But I also know I just hit empowered so those two points might be even better (especially if I test out the gloves) as I’d have to points to toss to Chariot/Shroud.
So currently with a few crit stats on my gear my Crit chance is around 17%. Adding 5% melee crit makes it a 37%. 1 in 6 to 1 in 3 is probably a good investment. I think I’ll hope for Melee Attack Spd/Melee Crit Chance/Fire Penetration. Shred armor might be the 4th as a backup. I considered Health on Melee Hit but if I go the ward to health gloves route not sure if that interaction would be a good idea.
The levels themselves aren’t necessary, but +Healing Hands is just a better healing effectiveness mod than +Attunement - HH only gets healing effectiveness from Attunement. 5% per point naturally, plus the 1% global per point from Paladin. Plus if nothing else you can grab the anti-void and anti-undead nodes for the damage reduction buffs.
It’s probably not coming from Vengeance, it’ll probably be mainly coming from Healing Hands due to it having a bigger added damage effectiveness modifier (200% from memory) & grtting more flat damage from healing effectiveness as well as any other flat melee damage spurces (mainly the weapon).
Update: I’ve been playing around with some of @OtterSeaborne’s suggestions. I’m holding off on pulling the trigger on making my Legendary because I’m still getting a feel for some of these changes and trying to tweak things to my liking. Adding javelin was a really nice boost from the extra ‘buff’ on Cleric’s Wrath. Using HH as my transport skill now though is a little weird but I’m adjusting.
And now it’s packing a real punch and it’s pretty fast, considering “melee.” I want to push to 200 monos before I make my final call on what attributes to add to the Renegade’s Will.
What’s your reasoning on running with Vengeance instead of Rive? I’m doing a similar warded build but with Rive and Judgement for small AOE and increased HH. The Challenge node in the Rive talent tree along with Anointed node in the Judgement tree are too huge of quality of life improvements to pass up IMO
I use Vengeance mostly for the buffs. Rive for pulling enemies together and triggering HH fast, as well as getting the crit-chance buff.
I use Holy Aura’s Flame Burst, which gets stacks from Rive and HH separately. Flame Burst also gets stacks from Vengeance’s counter attack and from the counter attack you can get from the Sentinel’s passive tree.
I use Anvil Stance from the Forge Guard for another 25% damage reduction, even though it lowers the damage I deal. My goal is a durable brawler, not a speedrunner.
I switch between dual-wielding and using a shield with nearly 100% block chance when I want to tank bosses. Even when dual-wielding, I can tank 2 or 3 meteors that hit almost simultaneously at ~150 corruption. I should be fine at 300 corruption, and my gear isn’t even optimized that much.
When playing, the usual routine is to Lunge into enemies, use vengeance, followed by spamming Rive. If for whatever reason the fight takes longer than 3 seconds, I throw in another vengeance to keep up the armour and damage reduction buff.
Maybe you can take some inspiration from this. My build isn’t optimized, it’s an ongoing experiment, but I have fun with it.
Yeah, I would think Rive is better otherwise (without your Unique)… more attack speed, plus you run an axe with +crit chance and take advantage of the attack speed node in Sentinel base tree. But, with the hammer you got, Veng is a no-brainer… plus you gain Fire Shred as well, and probably tankier as an added bonus. win-win, if you ask me.
It currently feels very tanky but I’m only in low 100s so…
I can stand in a barrage of Diamond Matrons, Rayeh Fire Mages (they call down those bombs) and Tornado Poison Serpents all at once and my health almost never ticks more than 10%.
When I hit a speed shrine I get sort of a taste of how it’ll feel once I can (IF) add a t6/t7 melee attack speed, but for now, creeping toward 200 it feels pretty good. Obviously a tad slower than ‘meta’ but I like the interaction because even if you have to break off and maneuver it doesn’t get you one shot. @OtterSeaborne’s suggestions were very nice additions. And I’m currently picking apart @HorusKBZ’s paladin to see what I can stea…adapt.
This is what im doing currently 500ish corruption, I supplement with Judgement to nuke small packs and better damage on bosses. I face tank Corpse Emporer no problem, Julra I can usually kill before the pools kill me if I tank the bomb but not always, Orobyss i tank everything but void meteor, Lagon i still dodge the beam. I have a 3lp Sunwreath just waiting for the right exalt, trying for a 2 lp devotion ammy and have a 3lp Judgement gloves just trying to get the better exalt gloves, Siphon I bricked like 9 2lps and have ptsd with em.
Yeah, I have been tinkering with an entry-level rive/HH build. Trying not to abuse the ward too much, but sometimes I swap in the gloves just to feel how the other half are living. It’s nice face-tanking bosses… nothing can one-shot you with that abuse, but running around with only 450ish ward and 250ish life is kinda scary at times. So thinking about going back to a straight life-based build. Also, then I dont have to worry about any letdown with ward gets its inevitable upcommance.
I played Rive also first, but pushing Arena wave up to 200 I managed after get the damage reduction from Vengeance, so I stick with Vengeance for pushing, currently almost corruption 400 with no problems.
