Paladin's Holy Fire + Hand of Justice

I did a forum search and could not seem to find the answer I was looking for.

I'm attempting to make a Holy Fire paladin, maxing Holy Fire and Resist Fire. As of 1.13, what happens if I use Hand of Justice for the -20% fire resistance? Does the my natural level 20+ aura override the level 16 on HOJ? I just want to make sure this is the right move before I waste any runes on an already insanely hard build.

Thanks!|||Why would you pump into holy fire if your going to use Hoj? Also, HF is a bad choice with the terrible damage. Your better off trying out holy shock or even holy freeze.|||Well, no offense, but none of that really answers my question. I would use HOJ just for the -fire resist% it offers, as with Holy Fire, enchant, and lots of other fire damage from my shield, socketed jewels, items and charms, the % would outweigh what additional +fire damage items would add.

As to "holy fire sucks," yes, I'm quite aware that its terrible. I've built every other type of paladin imaginable (in fact, many moons ago I actually wrote the Frost Zealot guide for this very forum) and I want to quest through the game with an honest-to-god Holy Fire Paladin. I'm ready for the challenge!|||to answer your question yes, your own level 20 aura overrides the level 16 aura on HoJ. if you're going to use HoJ you might as well just max resist fire and salvation for the synergies and then live with the level 16 aura.

if all you want is a -fire res gear, you can also try phoenix sword/shield.|||Your own HF aura overrides the HOJ's. However, if you equip a couple of dragon runewords, armor and shield, the items' auras stack, giving you up to level 44 HF as a passive aura.Your own natural syngeries also take into effect, and so if you max resist fire, you not only add a decent synergy to HF, but also adds a passive 10% max resist to your fire, nothing to scoff at on hell difficulty with all the fire damage you can expect.

If you use for your main aura conviction, you will do a lot of damage, especially against most bosses, given that your -125% wil probs take most things into the red, if not the max of -100%.

With a good zeal FPS, you can do some sick fire damage. I would advise a phaseblade HoJ if you're going for PvM. I cant see it working on pvp due to the relative ease you can stack fire resists. If you put a point or two into vengeance, with conviction you can easily take out most fire immunes.

I wouldnt say it was a cookie cutter, but it would kick ***.|||guface - that is a sick idea. I only play self-found single player, so finding the runes for those 3 runewords is going to take me while. I'm going to have to run Lower Kurast and the Council. A lot. But honestly, that seems like a stronger way to build a straight Holy Fire paladin than using the natural aura, which would take an insane setup to get to level 44 and would require a lot more gear sacrifices in other places.

With everyone getting their resists crushed down to -100%, that would essentially double my fire damage, which would be huge.

If I built HOJ in a sceptre with +3 holy fire, does that actually add to the aura granted by items? I might do that for style, and to get a level 47 holy fire! I'm also not sure if items with +fire skills will add to the aura. Maybe I'll test with another cheaper runeword.

Oh yeah - lastly, do +offensive aura skillers add to auras from items?|||I didn't go to level 44, but a level 40 Holy Fire aura with 20 Resist Fire and 20 Salvation would do aura pulse damage of 452 - 464 (458 avg) and add 3113 - 3229 (3,171 avg) to each attack. That ties up your armor, shield, and weapon slot while eating up 7 hr's:

Hand of Justice Weapon

Sur + Cham + Amn + Lo

Dragon Shield

Sur + Lo + Sol

Dragon Armor

Sur + Lo + Sol

I would highly suggest running Conviction as your main aura. As for your final questions:

#1. No, a base weapon with +skills will not add to auras granted by items. Also, a scepter would make it nigh impossible to hit the fastest Zeal breakpoint.

#2. Grand charm skillers do not add to auras granted by items.|||the skillers will add to your conviction though, so you will spend less points to get the most of it (I believe after level 25 conviction no longer reduces enemies' resists). If you can get away with it, you can probably make HoJ on a scepter (a caduceus probably?) with +3 conviction, and use only skillers and the like to bring it to 25, saving you a TON of skill points that can go elsewhere (zeal, sacrifice, holy shield, fire resist, salvation)|||I'm definitely considering a Caduceus as my weapon - I've played a million paladins, and there is one thing I've learned: there is no point playing if you're not playing with style. Paladins were made to wield sceptres, and that's what I'm gonna do!

+3 Conviction and +offensive aura skillers (I only have a few but will try to roll more) should definitely help me save hard points in the skill. You are correct, you gain no bonuses after 25; that is the max of -150%.

I'll probably end up going with an Act III cold merc as well, both because his freeze will be useful, he'll do respectable damage with Conviction, and again... style! I've played Act II mercs out.

I'll be starting the runs for the runes this weekend. I anticipate this will take me a little while. I'm also going to self-hellforge-rush several characters through the game to get a ton of hell hellforge drops to cube up. Hopefully it wont take quite as long as I think to make this happen.|||Ah good luck on that!

As frostadin has already stated before, the +skills and indeed +all skills nor skillers do NOT stack with the auradin gear.

Secondly, if you want pure damage, using a phase is the better choice, since most of the damage is coming from elemental, therefore FPS is the most important damage indicator. A Faith merc may be an idea, but I prefer melee mercs to help me tank.

Problems with this build:

1. You're going to need dracs and possibly more LL from other sources, perhaps string, andy or a nice circlet, with a nice rare ring, since the phys damage you're gonna do is minimal.

2. fire immunes are tough. Remember conviction above 100% resists only works at something like 1/6 strength. The upside of -ve fire resist value on the HoJ is that if a monster can be broken, he is very vulnerable.

3. Dragon does not have the enhanced defense mod, only +xxx def, which is ok. Even with HS, you're not going to have extremely nice defense, which perhaps an ebugged exile can give.

4. resists - is going to be difficult as your armor and shield will be minimal. You could get a 3 soc pal shield with like 45@ but if you're playing self found that will be hard to come by. You will need a good resists anni and torch.

5. Remember, you need to fit in a LOT of other stats into the other gear to make the build work, which may involved finding perfect items...

Finally, withh conviction, you may want to add a point vengeance. With the 5 pts in zeal, and 15+ points in conviction, resist fire and all the prereqs, you still over 60+ pts to play with. What you can do with them:

Possibly HS, defiance? Or perhaps HS, resist light and ice, and be like 85% resist all.