Hammerdin - skills to max first?

[degini]

Hi,

So the 2 prominent guides here (Giga's 1.11 and the MFing one) seem to be telling different things. Once says to max blessed hammer first, the other says to max it last (in favor of vigor etc first).

What does everyone else think?

[SmittySixTen]

Well, it depends. Are you playing through the game, or are you going to be fully rushed and level up with your full gear?

If you are playing through the game, my suggestion would be to max Concentration first, because it will help you more than Blessed Hammer. After that, start maxing your hammers, followed by Vigor and Blessed Aim.

If you are going to be rushed, and level from Baal runs, it doesn't matter too much. For the sake of argument, I would say to max Hammers first, followed by Conviction, and then Vigor and Blessed Aim.

If you're just starting out, I'd suggest checking out section 9 of my guide. (http://diablo.incgamers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=717499) It will go through what I've noticed as I'm playing through, and should give you a few solid suggestions to help you along your way.

[testyfish]

I'm going to disagree with the previous poster. Here are my rules for how I raise skills on a hammerdin.


1) Can you afford the mana? Put a point in BH
2) Do you have one point in concentration aura? if not, put one in
3) Add up the HARD points in synergies (both of them) and compare to the soft points in concentration aura. The hard points in synergies should equal the soft points in the aura +10. (11 points in synergies, one in concentration aura, 20 points in synergies, 10 in aura...remember that HARD points matter in synergies, +skills do affect the aura)

This is what I did when I built my untwinked hammerdin in SP. I actually built a spreadsheet and that is the most effective way to get the most damage increase. The reason synergies get points ahead of the aura, is that the aura gives 7% or so bonus per point, while synergies give 14% per point. Remember that the effect of your aura is halved.

Other than that, it's a reasonably fun build, if a bit repetitive. Enjoy!

[SmittySixTen]

My reasoning was more explained more thoroughly in the thread I linked to, but I'll explain it a bit here.

When starting out, I had no way to constantly cast hammers unless I switched to Meditation. The damage bonus from Concentration is really what makes Hammers viable, espeically at lower levels, so using Hammers was out until I could get an Insight for my Merc--this did not happen until Act 1 in Nightmare.

That meant, I was using normal attack up until that point (sometimes in melee range, sometimes with a bow). This meant that raising Concentration first benefited me the most, as well as my merc, because it was the only way I could raise my damage through skills at that point. Once it was maxed, I began raising my hammer levels because Insight really was just around the corner.

I wasn't concerned with getting the most damage per hammer, because I wasn't using hammers. If I hadn't been raising Concentration, there is no way I could have gotten as far as I did without doing MF runs to get items to trade for an Insight. Instead, I was able to play through the game normally (expect for Duriel in Normal), and and trade for an Insight when I had the means to do so. I prefer this method over having to MF early on.

Honestly, I never felt that I wasn't doing enough hammer damage. If anything, a weak merc and needing to upgrade my gear a bit is what's holding me up currently.

[testyfish]

Fair enough. I'm the type that doesn't mind going back to town to buy low-level blues, and I tend to hoard mana charms till I get redemption. Once you hit 30 you can just spam hammers, redeem back to full mana, rinse and repeat. Spam blues if you hit a boss.

Two approaches, they both work well.

[SmittySixTen]

Mmm... I had tried the Redemption route early on, but found the 23% chance to redeem, coupled with only gaining the 25% of life/mana didn't cut it early on. Did you have more +skill items than i did early on, or did you find another way to make redemption more affective that I haven't thought of?

[testyfish]

what I ended up doing was spamming hammers till EVERYTHING was dead...by then you're usually at an empty mana bulb. Then I just switched to redemption, and it might take a bit longer...but the corpses don't disappear till you've redeemed them. Sometimes it took three "cycles" but it worked well for me. If you want to move quickly through the game, then it's probably not the best way, no.

[SmittySixTen]

Ah, yeah, that's exactly what I found myself having to do. I was actually able to kill much more quickly just by hacking away at things. Of course, I had been collecting strength LCs that added 5, so depending upon how liberal you were with your stat allocation, there's a good chance my Paladin was much more capable of standing at melee range using normal attack to begin with.

Like you said, two different ways of going about it, but in the end it'd seem we both got to the goal all the same. :D

[Elusien]

I recently just made a Hammerdin and got it up to level 68 today.
Rushing myself, the skill allocation for mine was to put points into prequisites first. Then begin to max out Concentrate, Vigor and Blessed Aim whilst still leaving BH at level 1.