Blessed Hammer – Paladin Leveling for Diablo 4 (Season 11)

Build Introduction

The point of this leveling guide is to quickly take your character from 1 to 60 while using Disciple Skills and prepare for your transition into the endgame. This guide will walk you through the skill point placement for levels 1-60 and give some insight on how each passive and skill work together to create the synergies needed to be able to tackle whatever form of leveling you choose to take. We will also give some insight on Legendary Aspects, Affixes, Gems, and Elixirs we can utilize to accelerate our journey.

Our primary skill with this build is Advance as our primary Faith Generator. We’ll be augmenting this skill using:

• Enhanced Advance – This grants us Unhindered for 2 seconds allowing us to keep moving through enemies and out of any dangerous puddles on the ground. This is extremely useful for keeping our speed up in battle.
• Flash of the Blade – This causes Advance to become tagged as a Disciple Skill with a Cooldown. Do not pick this node until you have Rally and enough life gain where you do not need a Basic Skill to generate Faith anymore.

Our Core Skill and primary method of dealing damage is Blessed Hammer. Our spender and what we’ll be using to chop up the forces of hell. We augment this skill with:

• Enhanced Blessed Hammer – This causes Blessed Hammer to hit multiple enemies, greatly increasing the AOE clear and damage output.
• Disciple’s Halo – An incredible node that causes Blessed Hammer to become a Disciple skill and to travel around with you, allowing you to traverse the battlefield quickly while keeping swirling AOE damage. This pairs well with your other skills like Falling Star that can quickly move you to another group of monsters across the screen. Additionally, this makes Blessed Hammer attack 20% faster.

The Aura used in this build is Defiance Aura to regenerate life for Rally and provide quick Resolve Stacks. One of the best Auras in the game.

• Enhanced Defiance – This gives you and your allies 10% Maximum Life
• Rite of Prayer – Grants passive healing every second to you and your allies plus grants Resolve for healing allies. This is an amazing Aura and can be used on any Paladin.

The Valor skills being used in this build are Falling Star for quick movement across the battlefield and and easy way to get into Arbiter Form and Rally to generate Movement Speed and Faith

• Enhanced Falling Star – Reduces the Cooldown of Falling Star by 1 second per Vulnerable enemy killed. This is a great way to maintain 100% Arbiter uptime in battle.
• Freefall – Gives an additional Charge of the skill, once again further making it easy to maintain 100% Arbiter uptime in battle.

• Enhanced Rally – Increases movement speed further and generates more Faith on use.
• Words of Sacrifice – One of the best nodes in the game. Rally now costs life but no longer has charges or a cooldown and can stack. This allows you to move insanely fast around the map and as long as you have some minor ways to get health back (This is where Defiance can help) you will be completely safe.

The Justice skill being used in this build is Condemn which is another Disciple skill with a cooldown to gather enemies and stun them.

• Enhanced Condemn – Casting Condemn now makes you unhindered for 1.5 seconds to keep us moving without allowing anything to reduce our Movement Speed
• Gather the Guilty – Grants an additional charge to the skill and applies Vulnerable, working nicely with Falling Star to keep our Cooldowns low and our Arbiter up.

The Ultimate Skill being used in this build is Arbiter of Justice which is an improved form granting increased movement speed and damage strikes around us. You do not actually need to even use this Ultimate Skill in your Skill bar as you should be able to maintain Arbiter Form through your other skills, but you still want to put at least 1 point into it so you can get the node Seraph’s Wings

• Enhanced Arbiter of Justice – Wing Strikes recast time is reduced, increasing damage output
• Seraph’s Wings – Grants a ton of Movement Speed, improves the Wing Strike damage, and makes nearby enemies Vulnerable. Remember this improves ALL Arbiter Forms and not just when you use your Ultimate, thus it is an extremely powerful skill

The Key Passive we are taking for this build is Exaltation as we are going to spend most of our time in Arbiter Form and this buffs that.

Now that we know the skills, we can look deeper into how we will allocate our skill points as we level up.

Quick Navigation

Allocation of Skill Points

Below is the recommended order for spending your points as you level up. If you are missing skill points, complete the Season Ranks to earn the additional points as you progress your journey.

Skill Bar and Skill Tree Points

If you are unsure how best to use these skills read our Build Mechanics section after setting up your skill bar.

Wondering what comes after level 60 or which Paragon Boards to choose? Head to the Paladin Builds Page and choose an endgame build to continue progressing your character beyond level 60 and into the endgame.

Paladin Class Mechanic – Oaths

Paladins are able to devote themselves to one of four Oaths which drastically change your game play and give you access to some new resources that allow you to take your build even further. Each Paladin archetype is represented in the Oath system allowing players to choose between Zealot, Juggernaut, Judicator, or Disciple. For this build we will want to take the Disciple Oath.

Under this Oath whenever we cast a Disciple skill with a cooldown we enter Arbiter form for 4.5 Seconds. Our Wing Strikes gain Disciple Skill benefits as well and in Arbiter form our Disciple Skills do 50% increased damage. Since we have a bunch of Disciple cooldown skills on our skill bar, we should be able to be in this form 100% of the time we are in battle.

Gear, Stats, Gems, and Runes

When selecting your items, higher item power generally indicates stronger gear, but you also need to consider the affixes and effects that are relevant to your class and your build. When making gear decisions during leveling, keep an eye out for both the item power and specific attributes that complement that build.

Legendary Aspects

For general information on how to unlock the Codex of power, head to our Aspects and Codex of Power Guide. You can also imprint aspects onto items by visiting The Occultist in towns.

Listed below are all the aspects that are important to this build as well as what slot they are best placed in. However, you can move the slots around during the leveling process especially since early on some of these aspects can only be found via random drops and might not be on the most ideal slot.

Stat Priority and Tempering Affixes

During your leveling journey, you may stumble across items with incredible affixes. Tempering these items can provide you with a significant boost in power, so make sure you understand how tempering works!

As a reminder, tempering is only possible if you’ve found the tempering manuals while leveling.

Keep an eye out for the following stats that are beneficial for this build. We will list the most ideal stats and best tempering affix if you’re lucky enough to find the right manual, however these are not the only affixes you can use.

Gear Slot	Targeted Affixes	Tempering Affix
Helm	1. Cooldown Reduction 2. Strength 3. Maximum Life 4. Resistance to All Elements 5. Armor	Maximum Life Worldly Endurance
Chest	1. Strength 2. Maximum Life 3. Armor 4. Resistance to All Elements	Maximum Life Worldly Endurance
Gloves	1. Attack Speed 2. Cooldown Reduction 3. Critical Strike Chance 4. +Ranks to Core Skills	Guardian Finesse Disciple OR Arbiter Form Damage
Pants	1. Strength 2. Maximum Life 3. Armor 4. Resistance to All Elements	Maximum Life Worldly Endurance
Boots	1. Movement Speed 2. Strength 3. Maximum Life 4. Resistance to All Elements 5. Armor	Movement Speed Natural Motion
Amulet	1. %Strength 2. Cooldown Reduction 3. Attack Speed 4. Movement Speed	Guardian Finesse Disciple OR Arbiter Form Damage
Ring 1	1. Cooldown Reduction 2. Attack Speed 3. Critical Strike Chance 4. Critical Strike Damage	Guardian Finesse Disciple OR Arbiter Form Damage
Ring 2	1. Cooldown Reduction 2. Attack Speed 3. Critical Strike Chance 4. Lucky Hit: Chance to enemies vulnerable for 2 seconds	Guardian Finesse Disciple OR Arbiter Form Damage
Weapon (1-Handed or 2-Handed)	1. Strength 2. Maximum Life 3. Critical Strike Damage 4. Damage%	Judicator’s Augments Chance for Blessed Hammer to deal Double Damage Guardian Finesse Disciple OR Arbiter Form Damage
Shield (If using 1-Handed Weapons)	1. Damage Reduction 2. Maximum Life 3. Resistance to All Elements	Maximum Life Worldly Endurance

Gems and Runewords

Gems

Listed below are the best gems to socket into gear for each slot type.

• Weapons: Emerald for critical strike damage
• Armor: Ruby for more Strength
• Jewelry: Diamond for resistance to all elements

Runes

While leveling in Diablo 4, you may come across Runes, a unique gem that can be placed into an item with two sockets such as a helm, chest, pants, or two-handed weapon. Putting one Ritual Rune and one Invocation Rune into the same item creates a Runeword, which can enhance your gameplay and grant powerful boons. Ritual Runes generate Offering when the conditions are met, and once enough Offering has been met, the associated Invocation Rune’s effect will trigger. Here are some early rune suggestions for leveling if you’re fortunate enough to find them.

Place these runes in whatever combinations desired based on how you are using Skills.

Rune Name	Rune Effect
Cir	Gain 300 Offering: Cast 5 Skills then become exhausted for 3 seconds.
Lum	Requires 5 Offering (Overflow: Increased resource generation): Restore 3.5% Primary Resource
Moni	Gain 100 Offering: Cast 2 Mobility or Macabre Skills
Gar	Requires 25 Offering (Overflow: gain multiple stacks): Gain 2.5% Critical Strike Chance for 5 seconds, up to 25%
Cem	Gain 75 Offering: Cast Evade
Thul	Invoke Frost Nova to inflict Freeze and Vulnerable

Season 11 Mechanics

Divine Gifts

As you complete the season journey and fight across Sanctuary you will earn the ire of the lesser evils. Defeating them will grant you corrupted essences which you can then purify into Divine Gifts. There are 8 of these in total and you will have four Purified and four Corrupted allowing you to modify various content and get different boons and reward as a result. For this build our recommended setup is below:

Purified

• Essence of Lies (Fortify)
• Essence of Squalor (Experience Globes)
• Essence of Anguish (Movement Speed)
• Essence of Sin (Armor)

Corrupted

• Essence of Pain
• Essence of Shadows
• Essence of Screams
• Essence of Hellfire

Sanctification

Season 11 brings a new way to “Finish” an item called Sanctification. Any item of item power 750 or higher can be Sanctified, but BE WARNED: Sanctification will make it so that you cannot alter the item any further so it should always be the final step in the crafting process! It provides many powerful options to enhance your builds. Since it requires item power 750 or higher, we won’t be including a list of options in this leveling guide. Check out our Endgame Builds for more information.

Mercenaries

As you play through the campaign in Vessel of Hatred, you will unlock various NPC Mercenaries who can join you on your quest to slay demons. Each Mercenary has their own small talent tree that will give them bonuses and skills to help you. Additionally, you can assign a Mercenary that you don’t take with you as a reinforcement to jump in when you activate certain skills. Let’s take a look at how we want to set this up for this build

We hire Raheir, the Shieldbearer

• Core Skill: Ground Slam
• Core Skill Passive: Raheir’s Aegis
• Iconic Skill: Bastion
• Iconic Skill Passive: Inspiration

Our Reinforcement Mercenary will be Varyana, the Berserker Crone

• Opportunity Skill: Skill Cast
• Reinforcement Skill: Bloodthirst

Build Mechanics

Rotation and Playstyle

The playstyle of this build is fair straight forward. We want to jump into Arbiter Form and remain there for the majority of the fight while dashing around. Here is a basic look at our skills

• Advance – Our basic skill, use this to generate faith early on and later as a quick Disciple Cooldown skill to proc Arbiter Form again.
• Blessed Hammer – The Core Skill that we will be using in-between any cooldown skill. Will follow us around as well so it has great area damage output.
• Falling Star – A quick way to dash across the screen, get into Arbiter Form, and deal damage. Use as necessary for movement in battle and let charges refill between monster packs.
• Defiance Aura – A passive healing Aura that grants us a lot of Resolve Stacks as well. The active can be used whenever expecting a burst of damage.
• Rally – A supportive buff that restores Faith and grants movement speed. Spam this constantly to move around as we have plenty of ways to regenerate life.
• Condemn – Similar to Falling Star, another Disciple skill to provide Arbiter form while also stunning and applying Vulnerable. Useful to use after the first use of Falling Star to help speed up its cooldown.
• Arbiter of Justice – Our Ultimate skill that can be used if not choosing to run Defiance Aura (or feeling like you can maintain Arbiter form without Condemn). Use on bosses for a long Arbiter duration.

Resolve

Resolve is a damage reducing effect. While we have any stacks of Resolve, we gain 20% damage reduction. Getting hit by an enemy removes one stack of Resolve no matter how big the hit was. You can hold a certain number of Resolve stacks, the default is 8 stacks but this can be increased through some Legendary Aspects, Unique Items, and Tempering.

Which Elixirs Should You Use?

Visit the Alchemist in any main town to craft helpful Elixirs that increase stats, and experience gain for 30 minutes. Make sure to forage plants and pick up the necessary crafting materials during your adventures; they randomly spawn around the world. We want to use Elixir of Advantage for the attack speed but any Elixir you have should be used for the extra experience as they all grant between 5 and 8% increased experience to help you fly to level 60 even faster.

Season 11 Updates

For a complete overview of Season 11, its mechanics and theme, new leveling activities, and other changes coming with the Season of Divine Intervention, please check out our Season Hub!

Season 11 is the introduction of the Paladin Class! So there are no class updates to post yet.

Difficulty & Endgame

Once you hit level 60 with this build, you will be ready to tackle harder difficulties as you transition into more challenging content. Make sure to pick one of our recommended Endgame Builds to continue the journey. Additionally, we recommend keeping your Obols until your reach level 60 then spend them on a weapon to help kickstart your preferred endgame setup!

• December 12th 2025: Guide created for Season 11.