Martyr

[Ichthyoid]

Anyone out there made a Martyr paladin before?

Don't know...i'm obsessed with paladin builds right now, and kinda want to make a martyr paladin.

[Zipje_en_Zopje]

I've made a Martyr 3 weeks ago: fun but pretty hard. Softcore pvm only of course.

You will need some decent equipment to be succesful.

I'm in the middle of writing a guide for it actually - might post the full thing when finished.



Some quotes from it to get you going (keep in mind that some info still has to be verified and might thus be incorrect)


3. Skills

Sacrifice is your main skill and you should max it immediately. Make it your default attack at level 1 and keep it that way.
Redemption is the main synergy and gives 15 % per level
Fanaticism is the second synergy as it gives 5% per level.
...
Use Fanaticism as you main attack aura. Don't bother with Prayer.
...
A point in Holy Shield is advised, since it will increase your life span somewhat and save you points in dexterity. It is however not necessary - especially the fact that it has so many prerequisites will be a decisive factor.


4. Stats

The most important stat is vitally and you should pump it as high as possible.

Put as few points in strength and dexterity as you can afford: a few skillpoints in Holy Shield should give you maxed blocking and gaps can always be filled up with charms.
...
Sacrifice gives you a nice bonus to AR but should you still have problems to hit anything try gear that increases AR or dexterity. The Angelis combination comes to mind or else a weapon that ignores target’s defence. Or Demon Limb for the enchant charges. You can also put spare skill points into Blessed Aim, as described above.

Strength should in any case be kept as low as possible. Your damage comes from your weapon and skill, not from your strength.

A great thing about this build is that you don’t need any mana.


5. Equipment

Just remember the basics: give priority to anything that increases your health and sustains your health. Then look for things that keep you from getting damage from outside sources.

Things to look for are thus :
· Health, health and more health (see section 4)
· Life leech or Life Tap (see section 7)
· Damage reduction
· Resistances
· High damage weapon
· IAS
· Increased chance of blocking
· Fast blocking
· Defence
· Absorb
· Elemental damage (for PIs)
· Increased maximum resistances
· Nice melee mods (crushing blow, static, …)


When you use the Sacrifice skill you take damage yourself. To be more precise: when you hit a monster you take 8% of the strength of the impact of your weapon on that monster, regardless of the damage the monster actually receives: if you do 2000 damage but you could have killed it with 200, you will still take 160 damage instead of 16. This is an overkill.
...
The effect you are looking for is to kill any monster in one hit. You will thus have to make sure that the weapon you use is adapted to the monsters you meet.

You will find that these one-hit-kills are no longer possible by the end of nightmare: at that point, speed will have to make up for lack of pure damage.
The animation of Sacrifice is the same as of a basic attack (most people won’t even realise you are using Sacrifice) and it attacks at the same speed. This means the highest speed you can attain is 8 frames (FYI: Zeal has 4 frames) (25 frames = 1 sec). You should never get a weapon that has a slower base speed than –10 (this does not include IAS on the weapon itself!). To get to 8 frames with a weapon of –10 base speed, you will need 110% IAS but only 30 % when Fanaticism is active. This should not be a problem.
With a weapon with a base speed of –30 you will need only 55% IAS without Fanaticism and 10% IAS with Fanaticism: piece of cake.

Something with Static Field (or even Crushing Blow) is very effective, since it allows you do decrease a monsters health fast without taking additional damage yourself. A crapload of fast poison damage never hurts either: when there is only a sliver of the monster’s life left stop attacking and let the poison do its work – this allows you to avoid the actual killing blow, thus saving you a possible overkill.

You will find some excellent weapons in the unique flails-section, with Baezil’s Vortex for the lower levels and no less than 2 excellent elite ones: Horizon’s Tornado and Stormlash. Stormlash is my favourite, since it has high maximum base damage, high elemental damage, is fast and has chance to cast static, but keep in mind that it has almost ridiculous dexterity and level requirements. Horizon’s Tornado is a bit less impressive damage-wise but is even faster (base speed is –10 and it has 50% IAS !), has life leech and its requirements are less steep. With Horozin’s Tornado, Fanaticism and/or some other IAS equipment on, people will even think you are a slow zealot.

There are also 2 runewords which are of interest: the first is Call To Arms which would make a good weapon switch for the Battle Orders. Furthermore it is fast, has good damage and life leech so it would also make a decent attack weapon if you socket it in a nice item.
The second is of course Crescent Moon because of its damage, speed, ignore target’s defence and chance to cast static. Crescent Moon works best when put into a weapon like a Phase Blade, since this has a base speed of -30 and still does good damage – only drawback of this weapon is the high dex requirement.
If you can afford it, Famine and Hand of Justice can do even better.


In any case resist the temptation of getting yourself a 2-handed weapon but opt for a shield instead. The damage of a 2-handed weapon might be too much to cope with, especially when you receive additional damage from monsters because you don’t have the protection of a shield.

Look in particular for a shield with high chance of blocking, fast blocking and resistances. Extra life and fast hit recovery are also nice – all the rest is gravy.

If you don’t use Holy Shield, you should aim for a fast block rate of at least 32% (3 frames block) or 86% (2 frames). Once you activate Holy Shield, you already block at 2 frames and need 86% FBR to reach 1 frame.

Get a fast hit recovery of at least 27% (6 frames), 48% (5 frames) or 86% (4 frames). 27% is easy enough to attain, with the high number of charms of balance that drop (12% FHR for a large one and 5% FHR for a small one).


An idea I stole from Arreat Summit is to keep a low-damage weapon on my switch in certain areas to use against monsters with low health or for the killing blow. This way you can kill them without sacrificing too much of your life. Demon Limb is very nice for this, since you can also use it for the enchant charges.
The reverse is also possible: keep a big 2-handed weapon on switch to use against a single dangerous enemy or a boss if he is the last remaining foe. It is after all not as dangerous to be at the brink of death when there are no more monsters around you.


To sustain your life, get as much life leech as you can and at least 16% effective leech (double of what Sacrifice takes). I use a Vampire Gaze, String Of Ears and Carrion Wind ring, netting me well over 20%. Please also see section 7 on life leech and health.


NOT CONFIRMED YET - STILL CHECKING !!!
Damage reduction: damage reduction does reduce the damage you take from Sacrifice. With the maximum of 50% DR, you will take a penalty of only 4% instead of 8%.
If you have maximized damage reduction, you will thus also need only half of the required life leech. As you can imagine, DR is the only realistic way to allow you to use life leech to compensate for Sacrifice in hell (see section 7).


7. Let’s spill some blood …

You can start using Sacrifice from your very first level. However, the damage output you will get at such a low level is much more than you actually need and the damage you take will also be more than you can deal with: a Fallen really does not need 35 damage to kill. Therefore I suggest you keep falling back onto your normal attack as long as you can kill monsters with it in one hit, keeping Sacrifice for the harder monsters.
... I really recommend full Sigon's for the first levels ...
Put the skill point you get from the Den of evil quest in Might and use this aura until you can get Concentration after having maxed Sacrifice.

From lvl 15 on you can use the unique mace Bloodrise as your main weapon. It seems to have been made especially for a Martyr, with its fast attack, +3 to Sacrifice and life leech.

As you hopefully realise by now, health is more important for this build than anything else.
This is also true for life leech. With a high number of life leech items you can virtually remove the penalty of Sacrifice.

Once the damage doesn’t keep up, exchange Bloodrise with a Spineripper. Later on you can get the Butcher’s Pupil, but you will have to make sure you have enough life leech on your other equipment.


As said before I recommend at least a life leech of over 16%, preferably even more than 25%. During normal and nightmare this is sufficient to survive, but then hell will hit hard: unlike all other chars, this build is punished twice in hell. First of all monsters have a lot more life, meaning that you will have to do more damage to yourself to kill anything. Second life leech is almost worthless, so you will actually start feeling the main drawback of Sacrifice.
The penalty to life leech in nightmare is 1/2, while it is 1/3 in hell. You would thus need between 24% and 48% life leech to compensate for Sacrifice in hell. NOT CONFIRMED YET: With 50% DR, you still need 12% to 24%, which will not be that easy anymore since you will have to concentrate more on resistances and defence now than in normal.

Your best friend during a fight is therefore Redemption, which luckily for you is also a synergy for Sacrifice and you thus wish to max already. Once Redemption reaches about lvl 15, you will find you can switch it on for maybe a second and fill your entire life bulb immediately if there are some corpses near.

[Epsilon Eyez]

Nice Martyr guide there. I just built a Martyr, but it's Sacrifice/Thorns (I think its called Flaggellator). Its really fun and it made quick work of The Smith.

Got to level 18 solo in less than two hours.

[Ichthyoid]

Thanks! Hope you post the full guide soon, although, this one sounds great as it is!

[Heaven Torn Asunder]

Nice Martyr guide there. I just built a Martyr, but it's Sacrifice/Thorns (I think its called Flaggellator). Its really fun and it made quick work of The Smith.

Got to level 18 solo in less than two hours.

Can you tell me how this works? And what's the advantage of having thorns over fantacism?

That sounds pretty cool.

[Epsilon Eyez]

Well, I actually think Fanaticism is better with Sacrifice, since it would do more damage than running around with Thorns.

But Thorns kills fast while taking away life, and so does Sacrifice. I wanted to see if Sacrifice + Thorns is viable, and I'll have to say it is, but its very hard to use. Dies frequently.

There really is no advantage to using Fanaticism over Thorns, except in groups, when enemies attack you, they die :D . You need TONS of life for this to work without dying alot.

I wasn't aiming for total usefulness here, I like a little struggle here and there. But later I might make a Sacrifice pally that uses Fanat for damaging.

[Voice]

I did this a loooooong time ago (.09) and if I were to redo it now I would probably looking into these 3 basic things since I would think them to be very important in pvm.

1) Attempt to get massive def. Your damaging yourself if you miss so if you miss enough and then get hit your dead. If they cant hit you your money.

2) Phoenix shield or using redemption aura. This should help keep you alive in mobs since when you kill one it helps heal you.

3) And now w/ .10 out I would definitly looking into an ITD weapon. This will make killing everything but bosses that much easier.

[Ichthyoid]

I did this a loooooong time ago (.09) and if I were to redo it now I would probably looking into these 3 basic things since I would think them to be very important in pvm.

1) Attempt to get massive def. Your damaging yourself if you miss so if you miss enough and then get hit your dead. If they cant hit you your money.

2) Phoenix shield or using redemption aura. This should help keep you alive in mobs since when you kill one it helps heal you.

3) And now w/ .10 out I would definitly looking into an ITD weapon. This will make killing everything but bosses that much easier.

Since on of the synergies of Sacrifice is Redemption, wouldn't you get it anyways?

Hope you guys give more feedback

[Voice]

bah really didnt look into synergies etc. .... like i said i built mine in 09 when synergies didnt exist.

[St_HotPants]

might want to take a look at this Iron Martyr guide:

http://www.mrfixitonline.com/readPosting.asp?PostingId=1680631

It can also be seen here with additional discussions and updates:

http://www.theamazonbasin.com/d2/forums/index.php?showtopic=54492

[Ichthyoid]

might want to take a look at this Iron Martyr guide:

http://www.mrfixitonline.com/readPosting.asp?PostingId=1680631

It can also be seen here with additional discussions and updates:

http://www.theamazonbasin.com/d2/forums/index.php?showtopic=54492


So damage reduction does reduce sacrifice damage to self?