Variation on the Avenger build: polearms!

[snowieken]

I just started dabbling in DII Single Player again (this game seems to be the only one I regularely return to) and I was thinking of making another Avenger. This build is basically the only build I ever got to 99, so it's pretty logical I want to start again with this awesome character build.

However, I want some variation. Up to now I have played the classic Avenger: Vengeance with some resist aura synergies, supported by a Conviction Aura, wielding a scepter and a shield, which was enhanced by Holy Shield. Before I continue, though, might I add that making original builds and see if they are in any way viable was/is one of the things I enjoy the most in Diablo II. I do realize the classic Avenger build will probably be a lot better than what I intend to make. But that's not really the point now.

I want to try a more original approach: polearms will definately be quite original for a Paladin. I thought the speed would be horrible, but as I was browsing through the weapons page on this website, I have noticed it is not too shabby. Especially war scythes (giant treshers in the elite version) look awesome: fast speed and a maximum range. Regular scythes (treshers) are equally fast, but they lack the range, which is supposed to be a major advantage of using a polearm.

So now I was wondering how I would make this build. 20 points in Vengeance are almost a prerequisite, of course. I was actually wondering if I should drop Conviction. Basically to make the build even more original, but I believe the idea has some merit otherwise as well. Polearms generally do a lot more damage than one handers, so that means I will be doing a lot more elemental damage as well with my Vengeance. Maybe I can drop Conviction and put some points in Defiance to make up for the lack of a shield? Or I can go all the way for damage and max all the resist aura's? You know, I think I can actually do both!

Possible build (and the one I am currently leaning to):

20 Defiance
20 Resist Fire
20 Resist Cold
20 Resist Lightning
20 Vengeance
1 Sacrifice (prereq)
1 Zeal (prereq + one-point wonder for fast leeching)

That would make a total of 102 skill points, and then I have 8 points left to put either in Salvation to maximize my Vengeance damage, or I can divide the points somewhat between one-point wonders like Cleansing, Vigor and Redemption. What I am currently leaning to is:

1 Prayer (prereq)
1 Redemption
1 Cleansing
1 Vigor
4 Salvation (just to have that tiny bit more damage for Vengeance, best way to spend the remaining 4 points I think)

Any opinions on this build? Tips? Better ideas?

[AgentMarth]

It definitely gets points for being original and not cookie-cutter.

I'm not sure how well of my advice will be, I've only ever made one Avenger back when I first started, and didn't even know to use Conviction then, so yeah...

One thing I can't help but say:

Infinity (Ber Mal Ber Ist)
50% Chance To Cast Level 20 Chain Lightning When You Kill An Enemy
Level 12 Conviction Aura When Equipped
+35% Faster Run/Walk
+255-325% Enhanced Damage (varies)
-(45-55)% To Enemy Lightning Resistance (varies)
40% Chance of Crushing Blow
Prevent Monster Heal
0.5-49.5 To Vitality (Based on Character Level)
30% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items
Level 21 Cyclone Armor (30 Charges)

If you have access to the runes, I would try it out in a heartbeat. You gain the level 12 Conviction, while still being able to run something else. However if you don't/can't/wont use, then I would look at Obedience. Obedience just is rather slow since no IAS on it.



Other than that,

Defiance is a good choice for the defense boost, but I think I would rather go with Fana for the AR, Damage, and IAS boost.

Get alot of leech, which you should already know

Get some sort of good crowd control. I.E. H Freeze Merc, Act 3 Cold Merc, or something to help with huge crowds.

Aim for 50%DR (or as high as possible) since you have no shield, and also less defense most likely due to lack of H Shield.

[snowieken]

Thanks for the reply and the comment about the originality. Cookie-cutter builds is exactly what I don't like to make.

I am restarting Diablo II, which means I have access to absolutely zilch. No runes yet - I could certainly think about using runeword enhanced items, but that is definately not for the near future. Another point is that I am quite the purist in making new character builds. An Avenger without Conviction is not really an Avenger without Conviction if I have it on a runeword, now is it? :grin: It would definately make things a lot easier, but that's not really the purpose of this build. If I can scrape some nice runes together, I'd much rather use them for another runeword, more focused on damage and, indeed, IAS.

Mana leech is a definite requirement when you are using Vengeance as your main attack, so don't worry, I've got that one covered. :grin:

Defiance is the thing I was in doubt about, so your point about using Fanaticism is really worth considering. It would definately make him a killer, but wouldn't this also make extremely fragile? Remember that we are talking about a paladin without a shield here. Defiance is basically the only thing that is left to keep him alive, apart from... ahem... Prayer. Using Defiance will also save me quite some stat points I would otherwise put in Dex just for the Defense rating. Dex won't affect my blocking at all (since well, I won't be blocking anything) and Vengeance gives a nice boost to AR on its own, so if I don't have to take care of Defense rating so much I don't have to pump as much points into Dex. In short, I am aiming for as much Vitality as possible.

But Fanaticism, hmm... Fast killing is definately fun.

[BAMFSpecialOps]

doom polearm? like in a GPA...ias, holy freeze for crowd control, and ull have the resist aura for the holy freeze syn., a lil dmg on it...

[yetidiah]

I would just use holy freeze as the main aura and stick with the warscythe class of items.

[snowieken]

Well, I really couldn't wait, so I started one. So far I am planning to make it as I described, so no Holy Freeze, no Fanaticism. Both crowd control and damage problems can be assessed by mercs (Holy Freeze or Ice Blast mercs for CC and Might mercs for extra damage), so I will see how it works out. So far I have already put points in Defiance, so there's no turning back (well, there is, since the character is still only level 12 now).

But I just gambled my first polearm, a Voulge, and I immediately got IAS on it. So I equipped it and I am now happily zealing the living daylights out of the poor little Act I monsters. So far, it's a blast. Right now I'm pouring points into Dex to be able to wield my first Scythe soon, and I am going to take a look at end-game equipment. I will definately need a lot of resistance gear, since resists will be sorely missed now that I can't take advantage of the paladin shields...

[MalVeauX]

Heya,

Well, I love it, but I'm biased because I've done something similar myself (not the same though). So I'll recommend something along what you're saying, and I'll even through in some gear recommendations (tip: you will not need a shield at all, nor high defense!).

All you need is high physical damage reduction (not percent stuff) and high resists. There are quite a few items that do this for you, and a few easy to make items. No super runewords here, and yet even more effective in PvM due to the amount of damage monsters deal. Since you won't be blocking, damage is a reality. And without a shield, you might as well forget about high DEF and focus on what you can easily do instead--which is ignore damage, and just get high hit recovery (charms are so easy for hit recovery stacking, and cheap!).

So here's what I recommend:

20 Veng
20 Resist Lighting
20 Resist Fire
20 Fanaticism
1 in prereqs
If you go further, dump rest into Resist Cold or Salvation.

Alternative skills if totally untwinked:

20 Veng
20 Resist Light
20 Resist Fire
20 Resist Cold
1+ Salvation (your primary aura)
X prereqs
-- The idea being, pure damage from veng, yet raw resistance power from Salv & Gear. Plus it will make use of your higher caps on resistance. With quests and gear, you should be able to relatively easily hit 85/85/85/75 res in hell. Plus you'll look cool with Salv as a primary while you unleash Veng into their faces.... since you're their salvation.

Since you're using a polearm, you will have high damage. Fant will work with that. The IAS from Fant is a huge help too. Veng gets higher and higher damage based off your weapon's base damage, so you'll have huge numbers here. High damage also means you can actually leach a little, which will be handy for Mana, but for life, you likely won't need much (more in a second on that).

Gear:

Kira's circlet, socket with a Sol rune. Get a high % like 65 (I bought one for a pul rune like yesterday, they generally go for about that and sometimes less). This gives you `can't be frozen,' hit recovery, and a massive chunk of resistance. And the Sol gives -7 physical damage.

Amulet of everlasting, 22~25 physical damage reduction. This you can gamble. It's great. If you trade one, they're worthless without a groovy 2nd mod (like resistances, you can make a prismatic one in the cube you know, so 1 of each gem and an amulet will always make a prismatic amulet, and it can get a 2nd mod, make enough of them and you may just make a prismatic of everlasting, which is basically godly for these builds, yet just a blue item).

Belt, thundergod's vigor. It's just got everything you want for PvM. Life, str, and higher lighting res and absorb. It enables you to fight certain things that are sure death for a character without a shield. And in the ugly spots, you can pop on light resist aura and just be healed by the souls & gloams.

Gloves & Boots, time to craft safty items. Just craft a few. They come with up to 4 physical damage reduction each and a resist, which can stack, so you can get great resists on these things. Other mods like IAS and life and all that are just bonuses. Cheap to craft too!

Armor - You can either use uniques like Iron Pelt, Gladiator's Bane or Valor. Drop a Sol rune in them for stacked physical damage reduction around 20~27. Or you can just shop some blue armor, like jewelers of amicae (4 open sockets with 10~15 damage reduction, drop 4 sol runes in it), or jewelers of the whale (4 sockets, ~90~100 life, drop 4 sols in it). Or just take 4 socket armor and put 4 sols in it. Whatever floats your boat. You could even use some uniques/sets that have sockets, like the unique Chaos plate and Griswald's armor, drop sol runes in them and you're set. The goal is to get a big chunk of PDR here.

Weapon - Tomb Reaver! It's fast, it's got awesome mods, and 3 open sockets. It's got extra resistances! Load it up with more IAS if you need to, otherwise, you could add some leech to it, or you could use Hel runes to make it super easy to use so you can max out vitality. Or you can drop in ~10% resist all jewels (they 10's are cheap!) for a big chunk of extra resistance. Otherwise, you could go the runeword route. Insight can be super cheap and do awesome damage; plus if you drop points into Prayer you could make him heal himself along with mana--this couples with the PDR built into this guy to make you very durable (think Abbot). Or there's things like Obediance which has extra resistance to boot, and insane damage--just no IAS, but seriously easy to make in a Crytpic Axe and it's dirt cheap with monster damage and other stats.

If you can get a low torch, and a low Annhi, it will help with resistances. Otherwise, maybe hunt down some large/grand charms with fat single resistances and stack a few (fire & lighting are the two important ones). The cold & poison can be fixed with a thaw & antidote potion for the few times you actually need it.

Cheers, :laugh:

[snowieken]

Very nice reply, it definately peeked my interest. As I said, I already started one and poured some points into Defiance already, but I only spent an hour or two on it so I can definately start over.

I'm just not totally convinced, but that might be because I'm biased since I never really worked much with damage reduction before.

However, I am slightly concerned that the solution you propose is a bit too item dependant. I made a fresh start, I can't really trade for much. And I need a build that survives, it's more important to me than dealing huge amounts of damage. It's made to last in Hardcore mode (although atm I'm not playing HC, I just want to make another build viable for it). Damage is good but as far as I'm concerned, there's a cap when it starts to decrease survivability of a build. And if I ignore my defense, won't I be too dependant on DR?

EDIT: I put a hold on leveling him for now, though, as I am in doubt again... After all, dealing huge damage is fun. :smile:

[MalVeauX]

Heya,

Up to you and all. When you play with about 60ish physical damage reduction (not percent!) you'll notice the huge difference. You won't care about defense when you get there. You'll just want to kill stuff merrily as they swat at you and do nothing, or so little that you don't mind it since you're bashing them and leeching it back anyways more than they can dish out--even slow swinging veng style.

As for convicing, just look at the barb/pally guides for the PDR barb and the Abbott Paladin guides. You can even watch the videos of them just taking horrible punishment. PDR is nuts if you get it high enough, where you don't even need DEF anymore. Just resistance and something to deal damage with.

Anyhow, just another way to do things. You can always go for high DEF, but you could just take a Defiance merc for that.... right?

Cheers,

[Tai.]

You're planning to use Defiance as your main aura?

Personally I'd tend to lean towards Salv, with the points in your res Auras and Salv you can easily just ignore res on items and go for whatever (stacking straight DR would work very well as mentioned) mods on items that appeal to you most.

The main downside to that would be that you'd be entirely reliant on your salv for Res, but it seems silly to me to rely on Defense untwinked as opposed to resistances.

Cheers
-Tai

[WrongdayJ]

I made a similar Avenger not long ago that used Mauls instead of Polearms.

Man, he was a Beast.

Extremely fun to play, and was a very good Boss killer. . .the only down side was that he had problems dealing with fast crowds. He also was tough to play in the Chaos Sanctuary (gotta love that IM curse!)

With some patience and some creative tactics, though, you should be able to play this build all the way.

I'd roll with Vengance + Conviction most of the time, accept occasionaly (like Tai said) I'd go Salvation. After a bloody fight or in the tombs I go with Redemption since leeching is tough with all the skellies in these areas.

[snowieken]

Conviction is out of the question. That is just one step away of making a classic Avenger build, which is exactly not what I want to do.

Well, Defiance might not be the way to go. But now you have me in doubt about a Salvation or Fanaticism build. Big, big damage or a little more survivability in terms of resistances? The good thing about Salvation is also that it provides another synergy for Vengeance, which does help a bit in the damage department. Combined with PDR it will make him virtually immortal. The beauty of Fanaticism is the increased killing machine in terms of speed, AR and damage. Also - less important, but hey - if I have counted correctly, a build with Fanaticism as a main aura will be exactly 110 points, so it looks clean and finished. A salvation build will take 107 points and then I have absolutely no idea where to put the remaining 3 points in. :grin:

The good thing about these two paths is that they are both level 30 skills. I can easily start over and I can level him up quite high before making a decision. Right now I'm leaning a bit more towards the Salvation, for the aforementioned survivability. If I have loads of resistances and enough Vitality and LL, I might not even need that much PDR...

[Coldfire]

The Salvation Avenger has already been done, I think the guide is on Amazon Basin maybe, it's called the Angel. Here's mine (using Doom in a polearm)

http://img216.imageshack.us/img216/5665/screenshot169ju5.jpg

[Skinnyy]

Well if you're looking for something different, here is a polearm sort of avenger I came up with that was fun and was able to solo Hell. I wanted to make something viable for holy fire and came up with this:

20 Holy Fire
20 Fire Resist
20 Salvation
1-4 zeal (enough to get a 5 hit zeal depending on your gear)
20 Vengeance

With obedience in giant thresher:

30% Chance To Cast Level 21 Enchant When You Kill An Enemy
40% Faster Hit Recovery
+370% Enhanced Damage
-25% Target Defense
Adds 3-14 Cold Damage 3 Second Duration (Normal)
-25% To Enemy Fire Resistance
40% Chance of Crushing Blow
+200-300 Defense (varies)
+10 To Strength
+10 To Dexterity
All Resistances +20-30 (varies)
Requirements -20%

You end up with a lop-sided vengeance with a very strong fire component on top of the fire damage from holy fire. Maxing salvation is the second synergy to Holy Fire after resist fire but also raises the cold and lightning portions of vengeance high enough to deal with fire immunes. Fire immunes can also be taken out by zealing and letting crushing blow do its job.

The enchant adds even more fire damage to the build, so I guess between all the sources of fire damage you could call it a Pyrodin or something (I don't know if anyone has ever suggested this build or used this name, its just something I came up with). I really enjoyed the build, although it is not the safest because you will have fairly low life after meeting the requirements for the giant thresher. But the speed and range 5 on the giant thresher make up for the higher requirements. Getting 60% IAS will let you reach a 6 frame zeal and a respectable vengeance speed (10 or 11 frames can't remember off the top of my head).

I used lightsabre+whistans guard on switch for a mana leech/blocking combo. The blocking came in handy when dealing with archers, which are by far the biggest nuisance for this build.

[Grim9]

I am currently playing this build (not complete yet):
10+ vengeance
20 holy freeze
20 resist cold
20 resist lightning
10 resist fire
10+ salvation

and a defiance merc

1. Every point spent in resist cold and salvation is a synergy for BOTH vengeance and holy freeze, which is the main aura. This is hard to beat for other builds.Of course with runewords like doom this is unnecessary, but i can't start a character relying on expensive items i may never possess.
And with some +skills the damage from holy freeze really shines.

2. The focus is on survival: holy freeze + defiance : very few hits land on you. Its a real tank, considering you go shieldless.

3. You might consider using a wand with lower resist charges on switch. level 3 equals -41% monster elemental resist.

4. Delirium is a moderately expensive runeword you could consider in the future (without having to change your skill points) for your merc or even yourself. Monsters will be confused most of the time : more survival.

[Clervis]

Hi, I was, of late, thinking of building my own 2 handed Avenger. The differences would be that I would use Conviction and a long ranged Polearm to basically one-hit kill anything before it got to me. I really like MalVeauX's take on it. Snowieken said it was too item dependent because he's starting anew. However, a lot of the things that Mal mentioned needed to be shopped/gambled/rolled and not so much traded.

Anyway, I was wondering if someone with some experience could tell me how much of an advantage range provides with this build, or if the higher damage of mauls would be better. Thanks!