Want to know what the best Paladin starter build for 0.9 in Last Epoch? Well you're in luck! Our guide has the top starter build for the new patch that is a stellar option. This build will take you through the end game on a low budget, and it puts out a ton of damage.
This build was created by Dr3ad, a very active build crafter and content creator for the game. We've featured some of his builds before, so be sure to check him out.
While you're here, why not check out our other Last Epoch guides, such as our Last Epoch 0.9 mastery tier list, our Last Epoch best starter builds for 0.9, and our patch 0.9 guide.
Last Epoch - best Paladin starter build
The build that we're going to be talking about is the critical strike hammer throw paladin. This build is great for anyone. It's pretty tanky from a couple skills, and can dish out a lot of damage with it's hammers, all while completely ignoring mana. First, let's take a look at our passives.
Hammer Throw Paladin passives
To play this build, we're going to be starting with the Sentinel. We're putting a full 30 points into this tree to pick up Blademaster, which increases sword and axe attack speed.
Our mastery that we're picking is obviously going to be Paladin. Paladin's mastery skill is called Holy Aura which is an insane defensive skill. It gives us passive damage and elemental resistance, which is doubled when we use the skill. Taking levels in Paladin also gives us another key skill, Sigils of Hope. We'll talk more about these skills in a bit.
We take a few points in Forge Guard, which is primarily to give us throwing attack damage, and some physical and fire resistance shred.
Lastly, we're taking a measly five points in Void Knight, which is to pick up the Volatile Reversal skill, as well as a little bit of health and resists.
Hammer Throw skills
Next, we're going to talk skills. We'll start with the namesake skill for the build, Hammer Throw. The nodes that we're looking for to make this work is Enra's Technique. This node removes any augmented behavior of our hammers, but grants us massive buffs to hammer's damage.
Additionally we're taking Mana Starved Forging, which makes our hammer throw free if we're out of mana. We're stacking a bunch of extra mana cost on our Hammer Throw to gain various buffs to help it deal more damage. The other node that's going to help us with our clear is Avatar of the Spire, which makes our hammers be thrown in a nova.
Next, we'll look at our defensive suite of skills, starting with Holy Aura. Holy Aura does come with some offensive buffs as well, but it's importance comes from the passive elemental resists that we gain. Our set up will have it grant us 35% elemental resists passively which is doubled when we use it. We're going to want to use this on cooldown. The offensive buffs it gives us are attack speed, damage, stun chance and a slow chance as well.
The other defensive oriented skill that we're using is Sigils of Hope. Sigils of Hope gives us an orbiting sigil that gives us additional fire damage and health regeneration. It will also give us some additional offenseive buffs as well.
We're going to be doing the "Numlock Trick" with this skill, because we want this to cast automatically. To do the numlock trick, you'll need to add a secondary keybind to your skill in settings. You'll set this secondary bind to a number pad number (not the number keys above your letters). Once that's done, you're going to press and hold that new keybind to cast the skill, and while holding that button down, press the NumLock key. This will lock your keypress in place, and autocast your ability.
Now, let's talk about our offensive skills. First off we have Volatile Reversal. This is a skill from the Void Knight tree that essentially rewinds time by two seconds, putting our character back to the position where it was. Normally it refunds mana and health, but we're not going to be using that. We're instead taking nodes that reduce the skill's cooldown drastically, as well as grants us various offensive buffs like attack speed. We're going to want to use this often, which makes having it on a low cooldown so important.
Lastly we're going to be taking Smite. Now, Smite is going to be a movement skill for us, while also grants us additional damage and some healing. We also take a node, Desperate Measures, which makes this free when we are out of mana, which we're going to be a lot of the time.
Hammer Throw Blessings
For our Blessings, we don't have too many requirements here. We can fill in these with whatever fits our needs at the moment. The only one that's really required is the Grand Wrath of Rahyeh in the Black Sun timeline. This gives our throwing damage leech, which will help sustain our health even further.
Hammer Throw gear
As for our gear, the beautiful thing is that there aren't any required unique items for this build to do well. We primarily want to make sure that we get some resists and health defensively, as well as throwing attack speed, damage, and critical strike chance and multiplier for offensive stats. We're going to want to have an axe in our main hand and a sword in our off hand. You could eventually go with a shield in your offhand, such as a Bastion of Honour if you happen to drop one, but this build focuses on dual wielding.
For our Idols, we're going to want to fit in a few Large Rahyeh Idols that have the affix "+#% Throwing critical strike multiplier". This is going to beef our damage up quite a bit. They can start dropping at level 30 while you're still in the campaign, so be on the lookout!
And that's the build! If you want to look at the build planner, then head here. Bare in mind that this is still showing up for version 0.8.5f, of the game, but everything here should still be applicable to what you're going for. Also be sure to check out Dr3ad's video on the build, where you can see it in action. Big thanks again to him for the build!
While you're here, if you're looking for more ARPG content, then why not check out some of our Diablo 4 guides, such as our Diablo 4 beta guide, our Diablo 4 seasons roadmap guide, and our Diablo 4 classes guide.