Diablo 2 Fallen Classes: The Paladin

[Flix 5,167]

Read more detailed info on the SacredWiki page for The Paladin.

Character: Paladin
Orientation: Close Combat / Magic
Aspects: Sublime Combat, Devout Offense, Blessed Defense

Lore: The Paladin is a knight who follows the teachings of Zakarum, the Religion of the Light. To ensure the success of future missions, the Church set about training holy warriors, Paladins, to accompany and safeguard their missionaries. These cavaliers of righteousness swept through the lands, expunging the taint of demonic contamination wherever they found it. A battle-ready warrior for whom faith is a shield, the Paladin fights for what she believes to be right. Her steadfastness gives her powers to bestow blessings to her friends and wreak cruel justice on foes. There are those who call the Paladin an overwrought zealot, but others recognize in her the strength and goodness of the Light.

=========================================================
Aspect: Sublime Combat


Vengeance - When a Paladin undertakes a crusade to banish evil, she is permitted to call upon the just souls of past crusades. Thus summoned, the spirits of the honorably vanquished manifest themselves and lend their energies to the weapons of the Paladin.

A hard hit weapon attack with extra fire, ice and lightning (magic) damage added.


Zeal - A noble Paladin, fervent in her dedication to righteousness, can draw upon the spirit of that dedication to perform seemingly impossible tasks. When surrounded by her enemies, a Paladin versed in this skill sets upon her adversaries with the zealous fervor of many times her number.

A multi-hit attack based off of Pelting Strikes.


Smite - The sword of a Paladin represents the might of righteousness and her shield symbolizes the strength of her faith. Both are tools he uses to mete out justice. Just as righteousness can give her spirit the fortitude to overcome the attacks of the unjust, so too can faith be a weapon to strike back at those who work to defeat her.

This CA is essentially Assailing Somersault. Since Sacred 2 has no mechanics for actually using the shield as a weapon, and no characters have any animations that even resemble shield attacks, this CA is more like the classic D2 skill Charge.


Charge - In showing fear, a Paladin displays lack of faith, and a faithless Paladin is less than a woman - let alone a knight. This is vital in that when all else fails, it is faith that will carry the Paladin through to victory. Warriors of faith never shirk from combat, but rush forward with heads down and shields up, allowing their glory to carry them into the thick of battle to deliver the first blow.

I designed this CA off of the Horse CA Charge. It actually works better than the Horse version because the run speed modifier actually works on foot. So this is a bit like Charge + Dashing Alacrity + Ruinous Onslaught. It buffs the Paladin during the Charge, breaks roots, and does a lot of damage at the start of the spell and any enemies you run into will be knocked back and damaged. However, you have to keep moving to keep it active.


Fanaticism - True faith can cause its believers to perform fantastic feats. With this aura the Paladin, and all those allied with her cause, carry themselves with a zealous fervor, allowing them to strike down their foes as swiftly as the scythe reaps the harvest.

Increases weapon damage, attack rating and speed, as expected.


=========================================================
Aspect: Devout Offense


Holy Bolt - The Paladin can learn to summon bolts formed of pure, righteous energies. These projectiles are vessels of pure life, bane to the Undead and T-Creatures.

Holy Bolts do moderate damage to normal enemies, but will absolutely annihiliate Undead and T-Mutants. They seek targets and can be modded for multiple bolts. They don't heal allies, but they have a new spell token that will allow them to banish undead.


Fist of the Heavens - This spell allows the Paladin to summon the power of holy vengeance. Manifesting as lightning from the heavens, these bolts rain down from the sky, exploding into a shaft of light to banish the evil from the battlefield.

This looks like Radiant Pillar, but don't be fooled. You directly target enemies with it, instead of the ground. And instead of a prolonged pillar of light inflicting damage over several seconds, imagine if Radiant Pillar instead inflicted its entire damage payload in a split second, like a lightning bolt.

Blessed Hammer - Once, legions of the undead laid siege to a small convent of nuns who were the keepers of a sacred relic, the Hammer of Ghrab Thaar. Rather than letting it fall into the hands of evil, the nuns took the Hammer and plunged themselves into the fiery chasm within the convent, releasing a wave of holy light that destroyed the undead legion. Since that time a well-trained Paladin is able to tap the remnants of this released energy, summoning a magical hammer to strike down her adversaries.

Blessed Hammer is a hybrid combat art. It's a spell that uses weapon damage and attack speed for casting speed.

Conviction - It is fearsome enough to behold the power of a Paladin, let alone a Paladin aglow with the aura of Conviction. This halo of righteousness demonstrates, with force, the grim determination of those who shine within its brilliance. Any who stand against the Paladin and her allies will understand the meaning of folly.

It lowers all enemy resistances, as well as causing a "sensitivity" to all types that works like reverse Damage Mitigation.


Holy Fire - With a hint of brimstone in the air, the noble Paladin strides into battle encased in this holy aura. All those within its range are burnt with the fires of divine virtue. Holy Fire cannot be used in conjunction with Holy Freeze.


=========================================================
Aspect: Blessed Defense


Conversion - Through force of will and strength of steel, a noble Paladin with this skill is able to blind her enemies with the glory of the Light. After trading blows with the Paladin and facing the fire of righteousness burning in her eyes, an enemy will sometimes be struck with a divine epiphany and momentarily repent his past undertakings. So complete is the transformation, that the converted will turn to slay its former comrades.

Because I could not combine the conversion effect with an offensive attack, this spell will convert enemies 100% of the time. Converted enemies will follow and fight for the Paladin like any other minion.


Holy Shield - To a Paladin, the shield is a symbol of her faith. Particularly devout Paladins can channel their faith into their shields, bolstering its defensive value with holy energy. The purer her faith, the greater her defense.

Just as it appears, this is a modified Divine Protection. It is not significantly different from its Enhanced Spells counterpart. You will find however that the concept of Energy Shields in D2F is changed from a technological one into a magical/holy/arcane one.


Prayer - With this aura the Paladin basks herself and all she deems faithful in a warm, healing light. Her prayers for salvation carry her through the direst situations, allowing her to heal even the deepest wounds in time. It is in these times of silent worship that the Paladin is rejuvenated in spirit.

This aura is a combination of D2's Prayer and Meditation right from the start. It can be modified to further enhance these effects.


Thorns - An eye for an eye is sometimes not enough. Those who would strike the emissaries of the Light had best take warning, for retribution shall be swift and certain. The might of your blows shall be felt a hundred fold unto you!

Unlike Thorns in D2, this aura does not actually amplify the damage reflected back onto enemies. I think this is more than made up for by the fact that reflected damage in Sacred 2 is not inflicted on the player at all but instead totally blocked. This is why I consider it a defensive aura in D2F.


Holy Freeze - Using this aura, the Paladin causes the temperature of the air around her to drop drastically, freezing the flesh of her enemies. Those so affected will find their movement drastically hindered and are easily dispatched back to the Hells from whence they spawned. Holy Freeze cannot be used in conjunction with Holy Fire.

Like the D2 aura, Holy Freeze does not actually inflict cold damage, but rather freezes enemies. And like the D2 aura, the freezing effect cannot be resisted by enemies.


=========================================================
Dev Notes:
This time I tried putting specific notes about the combat arts next to the descriptions.

Some general notes:

• Some of these aura fx are graphics intensive. On slower computers they may drop your framerate a bit with several active at once. However buff fx can be toggled on and off in the options menu.
• Holy Fire and Holy Freeze have the same mutual exclusivity that Incandescent Skin and Crystal Skin have in Sacred 2.
• If you're wondering what use the Blessed Defense aspect would have, being full of buffs and non-damaging spells, then keep in mind that there is almost no defensive power to speak of in the other aspects. Almost every build will be wanting to dip into Blessed Defense at some point or else suffer a lot of damage.
• So Holy Shield doesn't increase defense, and Defiance isn't in the mod...how do we increase the Paladin's defense? Don't worry, Defiance still exists as a modification available on a few different Combat Arts throughout the Paladin's selection of Auras.
• None of the above pictures show wings but they are still part of the Paladin's equipment. I just forgot to equip any. This also shows you that the Paladin doesn't have those ugly fallback wings anymore.

Edited April 23, 2017 by Flix

[Flix 5,167]

New Character Designs
The Paladin


The Paladin finally gets new icons along with the other remaining characters in beta 0.4. I made her dark-skinned like the original Paladin, but by default she is still light-skinned with fair hair. It's easy enough to use the custom sliders to make her any color you want.



Since she is not an angel, the Paladin has a new human face with piercing blue eyes, made by Wardust. Her default gear is a new chainmail and leather outfit made by Pesmontis. The Paladin can equip wings in imitation and reverence of the angels, but she has none as fallback equipment.

Right now, the Paladin has one new unique hairstyle to make her seem less like the old familiar Seraphim. The twin ponytails are replaced:


Armor Designs
Some of these changes are from Wardust's serious textures. Many needed extra tweaking to avoid all kinds of strange glitches, like metal shaders being applied to skin, and custom skin colors changing armor color. Some had to be discarded. The end result is not a lot of changes, but some are striking.
Links go to the original designs on the Wiki for comparison.

Iron Armor


Leather Armor


Magic Armor


Angel Dust Armor
4th pic is Niokaste's Blade Dance, focused on the Sublime Combat aspect.
5th pic is Virtues of the Seraphim - I made this set more rare in the latest release, due to its power.


Mystique Armor
4th pic is Revelation of the Seraphim, focused on the Devout Offense aspect.
5th pic is Sopor Aethernis, also focused on Devout Offense

Edited February 27, 2016 by Flix

[laharl9999 10]

Does Holy Freeze also reduces casting speed ?
It is written that it reduces movement speed and attack speed but not casting speed ?

Also why are there 2 attack speed stats in the character "Sum stats" of the inventory window (one from gear and one from buffs/spells ) ?
Thanks

Edited August 12, 2016 by laharl9999

[Flix 5,167]

Does Holy Freeze also reduces casting speed ?

It is written that it reduces movement speed and attack speed but not casting speed ?

 

Also why are there 2 attack speed stats in the character "Sum stats" of the inventory window (one from gear and one from buffs/spells ) ?

Thanks

I'm away from home right now. I'll check when I get back.

 

About the sigma bonus list, it's a common thing with many bonuses to appear twice. The 'white' bonus are like base bonuses that are applied first. The blue or yellow ones are applied afterward.

[Flix 5,167]

Ok, Holy Freeze reduces all enemy speed. That means movement, attack, and cast speed.

[jordan0422 39]

Vengeance and Dual Wield: it doesn't seem to do double-hit for me. Can anyone confirm?

[Flix 5,167]

Vengeance and Dual Wield: it doesn't seem to do double-hit for me. Can anyone confirm?

Confirmed. I've been having a hard time fixing it though.

 

This bug isn't my fault. Soul Hammer didn't hit twice when dual wielding either, and Vengeance inherited its animations. I tried replacing the dual wielding animations for just that combat art but even though they appear correctly (both weapons swing) only one hit registers. So it's not an issue with the animation itself (even the default animation swings both weapons).

 

So far the only method that has worked is to change the spell's script to use the generic attack animation. This would apply to all weapons when using Vengeance though. Meaning all the special animations for the other weapon types would be lost and replaced with generic weapon attacks when using Vengeance.

[Flix 5,167]

Ok, I finally managed to fix dual wielding without sacrificing the other animations.

 

Voila, two-hit Vengeance:

 

In the process I noticed a different bug that caused Vengeance to use the completely wrong set of animations while mounted on the Tiger (for all weapons). She was using unarmed animations. Upon inspection, it looks like this change was introduced by the CM Patch for reasons unknown (it is an undocumented change). In Ice and Blood, Soul Hammer (pre-CM Patch) has a different, unique set of animations. I have reverted back to these animations for Vengeance in the upcoming patch. Aside from just looking better, another perk is that Vengeance will also hit twice when Dual Wielding on the Tiger now.

 

I'm going to go ahead and continue checking other special mount animations and fx for all the characters.

[Flix 5,167]

Blessed Hammer is here

 

It's almost two years to the day since I got this suggestion:

Not sure if it has been suggested before, but instead of making a swirling circle of damaging hammers for the paladin, like D2 Blessed hammer, you could go for a single blow from an ethereal weapon, inspired to the concept.

The SW's ghosthand spell could fit for that purpose, expecially if you change the glow from green to blue, fitting the holy/celestial style of the paladin.

Just a small suggestion, pls don't hit me for my blasphemy!

 

I finally figured out how to do it. With help from Pesmontis we redesigned the Shadow Warrior's Spectral Hand into a Blessed Hammer.

 

Once, legions of the undead laid siege to a small convent of nuns who were the keepers of a sacred relic, the Hammer of Ghrab Thaar. Rather than letting it fall into the hands of evil, the nuns took the Hammer and plunged themselves into the fiery chasm within the convent, releasing a wave of holy light that destroyed the undead legion. Since that time a well-trained Paladin is able to tap the remnants of this released energy, summoning a magical hammer to strike down her adversaries.

 

 

Blessed Hammer is a hybrid combat art. It's a spell that uses weapon damage and attack speed for casting speed. It will appear in the Beta 8 release of the mod.

 

 

Blessed Hammer will appear in the Devout Offense aspect, replacing the Sanctuary aura. This buff got cut because I deemed it the least useful and probably the least used of all Paladin buffs. Some elements of Sanctuary, like bonus damage to Undead and T-Mutants, are carried over into Blessed Hammer.

 

These are the modifications:

 

Furnace - Converts a portion of Blessed Hammer's physical damage to fire.

Crucible - Converts a portion of Blessed Hammer's physical damage to magic.

Swiftness - Increases the execution speed of Blessed Hammer by 20%.

Clout - Increases the damage of Blessed Hammer by 20%.

Cleanse - Adds bonus fire damage against T-mutations (20 + 10 per level).

Purify - Adds bonus magic damage against undead creatures (20 + 10 per level).

[gogoblender 3,206]

I really love the animation you did for the floating hammer... the hammer is very well detailed, adorable in fact, and probably very deadly at the same time...wonderful creation@!

 

gogo

[Flix 5,167]

Simple change to Blessed Hammer's FX for the sake of consistency:

 

The glow underneath the enemy is no longer green but orange that matches the color of the hammer itself. 

I also reduced the amount of damage conversion from the "Furnace" and "Crucible" bronze mods, from base 50% to base 10%.

[gogoblender 3,206]

8 hours ago, Flix said:

Simple change to Blessed Hammer's FX for the sake of consistency:

 

The glow underneath the enemy is no longer green but orange that matches the color of the hammer itself. 

I also reduced the amount of damage conversion from the "Furnace" and "Crucible" bronze mods, from base 50% to base 10%.

The hammer looks awesome ... did it take long? For fun can you make it any image you want? 

 

 

gogo

[Flix 5,167]

13 hours ago, gogoblender said:

The hammer looks awesome ... did it take long? For fun can you make it any image you want? 

 

 

gogo

I changed the color and textures of the FX, but at its core, it's a model replacement.  Check it out:

 

The original was Spectral Hand, so it was the Shadow Warrior's arm holding a sword.  I wanted to change it to a female arm holding a hammer.  Pesmontis was kind enough to do the replacement, and with his skill it only took a moment.    It was actually DeathAngel7's idea that he posted almost three years ago.  It took forever for me to find that arm model to replace it though.

[gogoblender 3,206]

7 hours ago, Flix said:

I changed the color and textures of the FX, but at its core, it's a model replacement.  Check it out:

 

The original was Spectral Hand, so it was the Shadow Warrior's arm holding a sword.  I wanted to change it to a female arm holding a hammer.  Pesmontis was kind enough to do the replacement, and with his skill it only took a moment.    It was actually DeathAngel7's idea that he posted almost three years ago.  It took forever for me to find that arm model to replace it though.

A brilliant composite of talents.  Little bits of history like this make the mod so rich

 

gogo

[jordan0422 39]

Noticed something while testing out the new Paladin:

Holy Shield - Gold mod Boost decrease the cooldown by 20% instead of the stated 25% (down to 48 seconds cooldown instead of 45 seconds, from base of 60 seconds).

[Flix 5,167]

Upcoming Paladin Changes in v12:

As with the other characters, I've been spending time leveling Paladins from scratch, with self-found gear. No cheats or save editing or free gear.  This way I really get a feel for imbalances and bugs.

•  Vengeance: Fixed an animation bug that caused the Paladin to lay sideways in the saddle when mounted and using 2h swords. This is yet another animation vanilla issue that our awesome bug reporters caught.
•  Smite: Increased base regeneration time.  This is a great skill, and it was a little too easy to spam it.  Now it's still low, but closer to the other CA's in this aspect.
•  Charge: No longer causes Stun without taking Overwhelm modification. Stun chance from Overwhelm increased to 50%. Tooltip no longer mentions breaking existing roots as this was non-functioning.
•  Holy Bolt: Increased damage.  In original D2, this skill only worked against Undead, but of course there were only 3 monster types: Undead, Demons, and Beasts.  Sacred 2 has dozens of monster types, so this skill got a boost to be decently useful against any monster type, and EXTRA powerful against Undead and Demons (and T-Mutants with a mod).
•  Fist of the Heavens: Increased damage.  This CA is meant to be a nuke, now it performs as such.
•  Conversion: Duration and minion attack speed now scale with CA level.  Because it's important to have a reason to read more runes.
•  Holy Shield: Percent of damage diverted to shield starts at 70% instead of 80%.  Having the percent too high at low levels meant the shield took so much damage it often got depleted too quickly.

About the Paladin's personal quests:  The Paladin is now fully differentiated from the angels (Seraphim and Archangels), and all the dialogue, quest logs, and lore reflect this now.  The Paladin and her order are human men and women who fight with holy powers, while the angels are... well, angels.  They are faceless and mysterious immortals, and despite being ethereal creatures of light, most have a cool attitude at best towards the other races of Ancaria.  Paladins on the other hand are grounded in their mortality and are therefore compassionate and have a keen sense of justice.

The Paladin's personal quest is still much the same at its core.  The Dark Seraphim is still the main antagonist, but her origin is much better fleshed out, and tied in with D2 lore of the Sin War and Necromancy.  Side note: If you play the Barbarian you will also learn even more about these events through his own class quest.

I have also corrected what I believe to be an oversight, if not a bug, in the vanilla game, where you are sent to the Swamp to bring the Dark Seraphim out of hiding there, but then you have to go all the way back to Tyr Lysia to kill her in the same cave where you drove her out in the beginning of the quest. This makes no sense!

Therefore the Dark Seraphim final battle now takes place in the Swamp underneath Hesheth, as the dialogues and quest logs suggest it should. She is also now equipped with a dangerous poisonous weapon that I meant for her to have all along.

•  Class quest "Whoops" now drops Herald of Zakarum as reward.  This is that quest that is an homage to the Sacred 1 quest "Seraphim Rescue" (now a human Paladin like the player).
•  Class quest "The Hunt III" now drops Endijian's Javelin as reward (upon reporting to Sophia).  I wanted each of these loooong character chain quests to also have a "midway" reward, so Sophia outfits you with an angelic weapon now.

    

[gogoblender 3,206]

Quote

As with the other characters, I've been spending time leveling Paladins from scratch, with self-found gear. No cheats or save editing or free gear.  This way I really get a feel for imbalances and bugs.

This is awesome..cant believe you do this!! Old school time... Flix, how do you do this! Bots? 

 

gogo

[Flix 5,167]

22 hours ago, gogoblender said:

This is awesome..cant believe you do this!! Old school time... Flix, how do you do this! Bots? 

 

gogo

Whenever I'm away from the mod for an extended period of time I like to come back to it like a player would.  Just starting a fresh character and experimenting and trying to create a good build.  This is really the only way to smooth out issues with balance.

All 7 characters deserve to have this process done, I just never have the time, so I usually just use test characters to make sure everything works and is generally balanced.  But to get it really polished you gotta put in the time.

[chattius 2,623]

Watching my daughter playing a paladin I think she is real good or the paldain is a tiny bit overpowered, or both.

Holy Fire does fire damage

Prayer adds intelligence to make it more powerful

Conviction and Ancient Magic make the enemies without any protection against fire, probably even negative mitigation

Damage Lore multiplies the burning damage at mastery.

So a Holy Fire burn damage tick with 15000 damage results in 55000 burning.

Add a base range of 15m and multiply by 1.3 because of +CA-range

 

Her build at 108 in hell mode:

Concentration 75, Blessed Defense Focus 75, Devout offense Focus 75, Riding 8, Bargaining 75, Devout Offense Lore 1, Energy Shield Lore 1, Blacksmith 1, Damage Lore 75, Ancient Magic 75

200 runes in Holy Fire, 200 in Conviction, 200 in Prayer, 98 in Holy shield (shield is at 300000+ because of willpower from prayer), 7 in Fist of Heaven

every slot with +5/6 to all skills

She started with an fresh installed game, so no common chest

 

[Flix 5,167]

1 hour ago, chattius said:

Watching my daughter playing a paladin I think she is real good or the paldain is a tiny bit overpowered, or both.

Holy Fire does fire damage

Prayer adds intelligence to make it more powerful

Conviction and Ancient Magic make the enemies without any protection against fire, probably even negative mitigation

Damage Lore multiplies the burning damage at mastery.

So a Holy Fire burn damage tick with 15000 damage results in 55000 burning.

Add a base range of 15m and multiply by 1.3 because of +CA-range

 

Her build at 108 in hell mode:

Concentration 75, Blessed Defense Focus 75, Devout offense Focus 75, Riding 8, Bargaining 75, Devout Offense Lore 1, Energy Shield Lore 1, Blacksmith 1, Damage Lore 75, Ancient Magic 75

200 runes in Holy Fire, 200 in Conviction, 200 in Prayer, 98 in Holy shield (shield is at 300000+ because of willpower from prayer), 7 in Fist of Heaven

every slot with +5/6 to all skills

She started with an fresh installed game, so no common chest

 

Thanks for the feedback. Sounds very powerful indeed.  I wonder if any one combat art is at "fault" or if the scaling simply needs to be slowed down at high levels.

[chattius 2,623]

Break points are level 31: prayer, holy shield, holy fire and conviction fully modded. Conviction instead prayer at fire immunes. Combat art foci can stay at level 31 till level 75.

Next and important one is at level 75: damage lore (longer and better burning at near none resists) , ancient magic ( enemy resists, mitigations lowered) and concentration (conviction as third buff, quite same as ancient magic) mastered.

If  I remember right the Diablo2 Addon brought these synergies between skills. So it is in tradition to good old diablo ;)

Next she will max riding for more speed.

 

[Flix 5,167]

Now that v13 is released, here is the list of Paladin-specific changes you will see:

• Vengeance: Improved scaling of "Aim" and "Precision." "Bleeding" chance for open wounds reduced to 30% but effect now scales. "Battering" and "Incision" scale more slowly.
• Charge: Damage mitigation from "Resist" scales more slowly.
• Holy Bolt: Magic damage % scales better with level. Normalized damage bonuses against Undead/Demons/T-Mutants. Magic DOT from "Lambent" scales much better.
• Fist of the Heavens: Damage scales more slowly. Critical chance from "Amplify" scales more slowly.
• Blessed Hammer: Reordered mods so damage/speed are bronze mods, racial damages are silver mods, and damage conversions are gold mods.
• Conviction: Increased regeneration penalty. Duration and hits per second now match to prevent a stacking exploit. Base range reduced. Damage sensitivity reduced and scales more slowly (including "Singe/Chill/Zap"). Opponent's Armor -X% now functions correctly (was previously giving a chance to reduce armor to 0). "Assurance" reduces 1% armor per level instead of 10%. "Weaken" is replaced with "Subdue" which lowers opponent defense rating. "Singe" & "Chill" are now silver mods, "Zap" & "Subdue" are now bronze mods.
• Holy Fire: Base damage doubled (including "Combustion"), but damage, hits per second, and chance for burn scale more slowly. Base range and range scaling reduced (including "Explosive").
• Conversion: Increased regeneration time.
• Holy Shield: Duration now scales (results in 2 seconds gained at max level). Energy Shield Absorption is now 50% + 0.1% per level. Max Shield Energy scales more slowly. "Dampen" now grants Energy Shield Mitigation (flat damage reduction) instead of percentage. Swapped places of "Uplifted Force" (silver) and "Ward" (gold) mods.
• Prayer: Hitpoint regeneration effect scales more slowly. Perseverance/Insight now grant 5 Willpower/Intelligence points per level instead of 30.
• Holy Freeze: Base range and range scaling slightly reduced.

This update is almost entirely focused on fine-tuning the combat arts and modifications.

@chattius @Androdion  This will be probably the section most relevant to you and your family's current characters.  Mostly these are just scaling adjustments, and also the mod reordering that we discussed.  One thing I snuck in there was that Holy Shield no longer grants Damage Mitigation %, but instead uses the flat values of Energy Shield Mitigation. I'd be interested to learn if the perceived effectiveness of the shield is impacted one way or another.  Also note that the cooldown reduction mod is now paired against "Uplifted Force" (max shield energy %) because my impression was that the choice was a no-brainer for players before.

[chattius 2,623]

For discussing:

Holy Shield and Holy Freeze build a frustrating to play combination in the words of my daughter. Every 48 seconds to recast two spells is nerving.

48s:

Pro: If the shield is down in combat you have to wait less time

Con: you spend time waiting anyway when you were running with shield up and want a fresh shield because you notice a big mob.

90s:

Pro: less nerving if you can keep your shield running

Con: Long waits if it is down. (But then you should consider yozr tactics at dangerous mobs anyway.)

 

I will edit spells.txt for a 90s test and report back. Gold mod will reduce coodown to 90s, CA-Level 150 (hardly reachable) will result in a 90s duration. base duration 75s.

 

--      entry0 = {"et_duration_sec", 4500, 1, 0, 8 },
         entry0 = {"et_duration_sec", 7500, 10, 0, 8 },

--      cooldown = 60.000000,
         cooldown = 112.000000,

 

The gold mod in cooldown reduction has diminishing returns!!!!

25% in spells.txt are 20% in real.

50% in spells.txt are 33% in real.

So 112s*0.8 = 89.6s close enough.

[chattius 2,623]

The longer duration makes playing a build with Holy Freeze way less annoying once you have a decent level. First levels there is some waiting for the shield leaving cooldown.

"et_regThisCool" has diminishing returns. So when fine trimming the numbers this has to be considered.

[Flix 5,167]

Paladin Updates in D2F v15

Zeal: bronze mod "Succession" chance for melee double hits now scales with level, and also adds extra projectiles when used with ranged weapons.

Blessed Hammer: Bronze mod "Swiftness" changed to "Pummel" (Chance for Double Hits). The small speed increase seems pointless as modification when attack speed is so easily gained from other sources.

Base skin and default armor have been tweaked. She's got more color to her lips and the gear, while exposing her midriff again, adds some more armor to her lower body.

This is with no gear equipped:

 

Holy Freeze has brand new VFX. It now a nice inverse of Holy Fire.

  

 

Adjusted some of the intense shine on the Revelation of the Seraphim set and its random variants. This was another case of an overly intense normal map.  Now the sun can shine on the metal without blinding you.

 

Niokaste's and Megalcarwen's sets (and their random variants) adjusted to have a more heavily armored symmetrical look.  Combined with the metal shader, the sets look bit more serious if not knightly.

  

 

Endijian's Relics armor set has new FX. Seems like this set's design was always kind of scoffed at due to how odd it looked. It looks a bit spruced up with some model work and a different shader. Still looks "ancient" but also brimming with power yet.

  

New weapon/shield set: Endijian's Heirlooms. Design matches Endijian's Relics armor.  It was always a shame you couldn't wield Endijian's Spear along with the shield. The devs just abandoned the shield as junk.  Now both are part of a two-piece set, similar to how Niokaste's Armor also has the sword/shield mini-set as a companion piece.  The spear is now classified as a 1h axe.  Overall the set provides big boosts to Holy Shield.