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Judgement Aura Paladin Build Guide

Posted By Bakageyama on March 12, 2023
Last updated on March 19, 2023

Overview

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With the Hand of Judgement unique enabling some strong judgement builds, I was having quite a blast running this Consecrated Ground build. With a quite simple Judgement and Volatile Reversal playstyle (much like void knight builds) we can create a large damaging and healing AOE around our character and run through packs.

The unique has changed since and now does not provide flat Fire Damage based on attunement, so we'll need to find a way to scale our flat damage outside of the unique. We can do this with a feature of Consecrated Ground, where every 5% of healing effectiveness increases our flat damage by 1.

This build is extremely friendly for SSF due to it's low cost and can immediately be swapped to when you have 55 passive points. The uniques for the build aren't too hard to obtain unlike some other setups, and the gloves are only a quality of life upgrade for the build to have an increased area of effect (and they're quite low level to obtain). Until acquiring the gloves you can run a wand and gloves with attunement or other stacking affixes which can be found in the loot-filter.

The gear setup depicted in the build is not the absolute best of the best, and not at all required to have the build be in a functional state. The loot filter provided below will cover any additional affixes that may be helpful for the build.

I personally have only tested the build up to about ~400 in corruption, but it didn't see any signs of slowing down. Also for the purposes of clarity, the unarmed condition is only that no weapon is equipped, both shields and quivers can be utilized.

Pros & Cons

Pros

Simple playstyle

Constantly heals

Low gear requirement

Very tanky

Cons

Judgement is unlocked quite late in leveling

Reliance on mana and attunement stacking

Gameplay / Mechanics

Fast Mapping

We can replace Javelin on our bars with Shield Rush since we have plenty of clear without the ability. As you move onto higher corruptions you may want to keep Javelin around for the bonuses to endurance threshold with the Battle Standard 1/1 node.

Judgement > Volatile Reversal > Shield Rush

The rotation is extremely simple. Slam with judgement and get your Consecrated Ground active, then immediately Volatile Reversal to get your massive mana pool back. Since we now have a damaging AOE around our character we can Shield Rush through the map for as long as the AOE remains active and kill things as we pass them.

Bosses

For bosses you can start with Sigils Of Hope x 4 > Volatile Reversal wait a few seconds for cooldowns then Holy Aura > Javelin > Judgement > Volatile Reversal

I will sometimes swap out Sigils Of Hope for Rebuke to get that insane tankiness, as the sigils provide the least amount of value of our skills.

Skills

Passives

Stat Priorities

Equipment

Resistances

For our resistances, a large portion is covered by Holy Aura. We get 40% elemental resistance and 20% poison resistance with the Shelter from the Storm 5/5 and Purification 1/1 nodes respectively. An extra 35% necrotic resistance is obtained with the Holy Icon 5/7 passive. 20% in both physical and void is obtained with our points in the void knight tree on the Abyssal Endurance 5/10 passive. At most 45% of void resistance is coming from our utilization of the Hand of Judgement unique.

Most importantly we are shooting for 20% in all resistances with the Grand Resolve of Humanity blessing. We can work our way up to obtaining this blessing as there are more than enough passive points in the sentinel tree to fix resistances as we level.

This leaves us with a few missing resistances:

  • 35% Poison Resistance
  • 15% Elemental Resistance
  • 35% Physical Resistance
  • 25% Necrotic Resistance

In order to obtain these we can work towards a massive Bone Amulet that has both SuffixElemental Resistance and SuffixPoison Resistance. We don't even need high tier values to hit our resistance cap. This means that there are very few resistances that are actually necessary on affixes and we can even work towards sealing these on various pieces, or applying them on uniques with legendary potential.

Critical Strike Avoidance

To reach our cap of 100% critical strike avoidance we obtain 40% from the Faith Armour 8/8 passive and will need a total of 60% in various affixes across our accessories and boots. The easiest way to obtain this is two decently rolled T5 SuffixCritical Strike Avoidance affixes on your rings, but you can also look out for a max rolled T6 belt or boot affix as well (or even a T7 if you're feeling lucky.) For the purposes of the build we're using two affix slots on our rings to reach our cap.

Endurance

As a sentinel our base endurance is 20% so starting from there we achieve 15% from the Shelter from the Storm 5/5 node in Holy Aura. Tack on another 25% from a highly rolled Grand Embers of Immortality blessing and we've reached cap.

Alternative Gear

Our helmet, chestplate and boots aren't really necessary for the build to perform, but they does contain quite strong affixes for the build. If you're looking to replace any of them you'll want to find high LP unique items and try to obtain the same affixes on those pieces as the planner. That means keep a hold of older gear when you find slight upgrades as you never know when you'll find a rare LP3 or LP4 unique to slam it onto.

Some examples of items to replace the chestplate are Woven Flesh, Core of the Mountain, and Wings of Argentus. For the helmet we can look at Calamity or Peak of the Mountain, and finally for the boots we can use Foot of the Mountain, Vaion's Chariot, Stymied Fate, Fiery Dragon Shoes or even Yulia's Path.

Replacing the Bone Amulet

We can also work towards replacing the amulet, but this requires much more coordination of your pieces as the amulet is responsible for the remaining 35% Poison Resistance, 15% Elemental Resistance, 35% Physical Resistance and 25% Necrotic Resistance. If you can get these resistances sealed on other pieces, or replaced in the unique swap for the amulet then you can look at options like Bleeding Heart, orStrong Mind with high LP values. Or completely replacing the amulet entirely with Aurora's Time Glass, Omnis, Orian's Eye, or The Confluence of Fate. There are some very good amulet replacements for the build so dividing out those resistances between other pieces will be a top priority for maximizing our item slots.

Slot
Items
Stats
Main-Hand

None

None

Idols

There actually aren't very good idol combinations for us, so we're going to focus on the PrefixIdol Increased Healing Effectiveness, and PrefixIdol Mana affixes. You should also always be on the lookout for PrefixIdol Increased Health and SuffixIdol Health affixes.

Blessings

Timeline
Blessings
Ending the Storm
The Age of Winter
Fall of the Outcasts
The Stolen Lance
Blood, Frost, and Death

None

Fall of the Empire

Build Variants

Leveling

1-17

Level with anything until 18.

18-49

Primarily you'll be using Javelin and it's Holy Trail 1/1 node to be able to scale fire and damage over time on your gear to have an easier time when you switch over to Judgement. I would recommend picking up Holy Aura and Sigils Of Hope as they become available. You shouldn't need to specialize into the Void Knight tree for Volatile Reversal at this point.

50-59

Every point during this period should be spent on the Void Knight tree as we need to unlock Volatile Reversal as quickly as possible. You can also put points into your paladin tree for additional damage then choose to respec once you hit 55 passive points.

60+

At this point every necessary skill is available and we can begin stacking mana/attunement and damage over time affixes to scale our damage.

Endgame

Loot Filter

The loot filter below is for levels 60+ once your judgement build comes online, before then just focus on fire damage over time scaling and health and resistance affixes.

https://pastebin.com/TKCQc4Tu

FAQ

Video

Changelog

  • Added video for T3 Lightless Arbor run. Plan to hopefully get T4 Julra in there at some point.
  • Updated preferred boots on planner and loot filter.
  • Updated descriptions.
  • Small fix for amulet changes.
  • Added options for replacing the bone amulet with a unique.
  • Added potential unique upgrade replacements and expanded boot drop pool. Will update loot filter later today.
  • Added skill choice descriptions and alternative pathing options.
  • Adjusted volatile reversal tree to drop movement speed for the increased damage dealt to enemies.
  • Overhaul of the passive tree to increase overall tankiness. Added javelin specialization to nearly double damage on boss rotation. Updated loot filter to account for changes.
  • Updated filter to contain more ring and relic types to increase gear acquisition chances.
  • Removed variant build as it doesn't perform as well as I'd like with attunement stacking. Made affixes more specific to judgement aura effect.
  • Updated variant build description
Show more
  • Updated smite variant build link
  • Updated some item references to be correct and added additional descriptions for idol and loot filters.
  • Build guide was published

Discussion

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