Shooby's Bloody Hammers

Character created for 3.0.9 patch (blessed hammer synergies reworked). Sometime at 3.0.10: changed to accommodate blood golems due to me noticing the 3.0 blood aura rework. Aug, 03, 26: 3.0.10: guide created. 0ct, 02, 26: 3.0.12: reformulated for website. Oct, 07, 26: 3.0.12: Added gear summary section Confirmed working.

The Hammerdin is a retail-favorite build due to how it lines up with that game’s version mechanics, being able to do all content while being very defensive.

Here those things still hold true, but there are a lot of more viable options and greater powerlevel spread towards all builds, making so that the Hammerdin drawbacks become more apparent and the build is a lot less played here – also the fact that people have seen the spinny things go off for 20 years already – but if you eventually end up circling back (hehe) to this class after some good time of Reimagined, there are still some interesting new stuff to try out for the class.

And one of those things is putting the new Prayer synergy to use and abusing Blood Golems for their increased magic damage and Blood Casting effects.

REASONS TO PLAY THIS HAMMERDIN

• Damage: damage output on this build actually scales very well (maybe a bit too well) towards the endgame, albeit it being very slow and steady on that front. By the end you are dealing very high single target numbers but, on an area, which makes deleting champion packs in particular very satisfying.
• Very defensive, even with gear pushing a little bit too much to the ‘cutesey’ side like the one on this guide (it will make more sense as you read). Paladins are innately good due to how easy it is to get block cap with Holy Shield, and this build has a very food Prayer dimension to it that increases sustain and also some meaty summons.
• Cool layers of synergy and fun gearing, specially now with -enemy magic res being an accessible stat and freeing some build requirements (in your merc in particular).

REASONS NOT TO PLAY THIS HAMMERDIN

• Spell is CLUNKY AS FUCK. Theres not much dancing around this one. Anyone that played hammers know what it about. The spell has its own particular pattern, it hits stuff that blocks it path all the time, and its not particularly fast. It’s the kind of thing that you play if you like or if you ‘had’ to subject to it due to lack of options like it is on Retail (where FoH is only a real option for a very specific targeted farming reason, but not for actual wide play). Attempts where made in the last few patches to better Hammerdin play, in particular on thigh corridor areas with the addition of Holy Bolt on the build tree, but that only helps a tiny bit.
• Very slow density clear compared to the more flashy newer cousing Fist of Heavens Paladin. Both build kinda play in the same niche (caster Paladin magic damage dealer), but FoH lines up a lot more favorably against the more usual content current in game. Hammerdin has its benefits (mostly in the boss damage front), but if that is good enough to pick it over FoH, it’s a question for you alone to answer. Good thing is that the transition between both builds is pretty easy, as you use a lot of overlapping gear, so no reason you can’t have the best of both worlds.