The devs actually delivered on "multiple builds reaching at least pit 100" this season.
We're all caught up in the endgame push, mephisto, T12, yada, but damn...they did it! The mad lads actually pretty much delivered lol
As we all know it's easy to look a gift horse in the mouth when it's not a stallion, but hitting Pit 110 on wingstrikes was surreal for a moment.
After going through multiple paladin builds just to finally get T10 mephisto down...
Why did they not only make Lilith and mephisto actually way more difficult than it states (T8 Lilith being closer to T10, and T10 mephisto being closer to T12) but also put them in the season journey??
I understand that mephisto was advertised as aspirational content not meant to be speed cleared or regularly farmed (IE: wudijos interview with the dev, I forget his name, the homie with glasses.) and that ranks 8 and 9 of the journey were also completely aspirational and not for everyone. But it just looks weird when the two brand new classes have trouble even reaching the final 2 torment tiers, while EVERY OTHER CLASS can do everything reliably with almost zero pain points.
And poor spiritborn man...fuck...
I just think that blizzard needs to seriously reevaluate the current strength of all dlc classes after the expansions release...
Holy moly Batman! I was farming for some unique charms and better gear rolls last night, and I said "I'm exhausted from work and it's 2 AM...let's get wingstrike gear."
So I got some ancestral white bases, farmed a metric shit ton of escalation sigils (really good all purpose farm in my opinion) crafted all my whites up with relatively good luck, and I slapped on all the pieces and went straight to torment 12 after clearing pit 100 in 3 minutes.
I know doing normal torment 12 content (lair bosses, dungeons, hordes, etc.) isn't really as impressive as actually being able to take down Lilith and mephisto quickly (I refuse to touch those fights for the rest of the season) but it just put into perspective for me how insanely underpowered judgment is right now...like...it's way worse than I thought.
I believe the best solution is taking judgment from 80% weapon dmg to 180%, it would have a much better scaling experience late game.
It was actually pretty awesome to watch a basic as bread sword and board build actually... decimate everything before my eyes.
I'm now in t11 having a ball, it's unfortunate that paladin got shafted this season due to the great passive purge of April 28th 2026, but hell! At least we have this wacky ass build lol
For all the other clash converts after realizing the paladins current situation, how's it feeling to play?
Firstly, huge shout-out to ok_bullfrog5314 on my last post for taking the time to share his cracked resolve blessed spear build last night, absolute legend for doing that so soon after my post!
But reading over his admittedly awesome build, it sparks a serious question that I have for all my fellows who've defeated t10 mister phister the sinister mister, is the ONLY way I'm doing it at this point going to truly be sentinel glyph, redirected force, and resolve on everything I wear???
I'm no stranger to hopping on the overturned mechanic wagon from season to season, but...it's just so counter intuitive to my oaths entire entity...is there no other way to close the t10-t11-t12 damage gap??? Please say it ain't so!
(Wrestle with jimmy!)
My glyphs are currently all 91, I'm running lucion charm, hysterias maxroll judgment build, heir, shroud, and starless. Hitting for 22 billion currently on judgment crits.
So after finally getting the appropriate gear and switching fully over to a full judgment nuke build, I've been able to reliably take down bosses in about 2 minutes at the most.
I went to go try good ol phisty, and lo and behold...he didn't one shot me at all! I was genuinely shocked because I only have 20 resolve stacks to make room for health and only 78% block, but I got him down by a third before I realized it was taking waaaay too long. about 8-9 minutes.
All of y'all had so much useful advice on my last help post, so I'm asking you guys one question, am I stupid or are my only power increases left glyphs and a possible unique charm swap?
My gear is near perfect with every piece having a vulnerable, crit, and holy multiplier, I'm running hysterias max roll judgement build, with the only exception is I'm using a starless skies and el'druin as well (dope ass sword).
Is it just pump glyphs hard as fuck now? Plus I don't have the lucion unique charm yet, is that really such a massive increase?? Thank you guys!!!
EDIT:Y'all have been so helpful in fixing my judgment build! Special shout-out to ChalkyPalms88 for the crazy judgment breakdown! Completely elevated my gameplay to hitting for BILLIONS!
So let me start by saying that the paladin is my absolute favorite class since it dropped, but after extensively trying to get my homebrew radiant fire judicator hammerdin to push into T11, I have some disappointing and odd findings to share about radiant fire, judgement, and judicator oath this season.
Radiant Fire set: firstly, it works exactly as intended during 99.9% of mobbing activities. At first glance, it seemed just as strong as every other set bonus that focused on a damaging archetype. But, then came the bossing.
I don't know for certain if this has been reported already by anyone else in the community, but judgement just...freaks out on bosses.
I've tested it on the dummy on boss settings, all the lair bosses, dungeon bosses, pit bosses, judgement just completely stops working when you try to stack it on a boss. The best part? It varies by activity to activity! Nmd bosses are usually fine, sometimes the stacks will freeze for a sec then start stacking again. But lair bosses? You'll be lucky to have 10 stacks of radiant fire by the end of the 5-7 minute long WAR OF ATTRITION you just entered into.
But by far the most baffling part, about 30-45% of the time you'll enter a lair boss and...wait... where's my stacks...WHY ISN'T JUDGEMENT GIVING ME STACKS!?!
I don't know what triggers this big but it completely nullifies the Battle as soon as it starts.
Judgment: it has what seems to be a 1-2 sec internal cooldown on reapplication attempts on the same Target, which could be what's contributing to radiant fires extremely broken mechanics that just stop working, but I noticed during my last pit 85 run that holy bolt was giving me 3 judgement stacks on random single targets, even if it didn't bounce to anyone.
But then on another pit run before that, my stacks were going up in bursts, multiple stacks appearing in quick succession. Again, only from hitting a single target. (Elite, pit boss.)
The damage still seems to scale the same but the mark itself is just...acting strange this season.
Judicator Oath: it just straight up doesn't work sometimes. Just like radiant fire. I've tested it at the dummy without radiant fire on, and most of the time, I'll get my x80 multi from judicator after a couple hits...on the normal dummy...on the boss dummy? It's a complete toss up. To the point where I was getting confused at how the game was calculating anything. Random jumps, random drop offs, huge spikes (3,800 mil no bonuses except Griswold's and my morningstar with dps variance off) and sudden dips (10.8K, 109k, 10 mil, 500 mil, 300 mil...13.5 mil?...400.8 mil???)
It's definitely best to just stay away from the oath and set until everything is addressed or just buffed for now.
I'm playing a completely Homebrew judicator hammerdin build (pure blessed hammer damage, focus on judgement for dps buffs through paragon, oath, and radiant fire set.)
And up until T8 Lilith I was, Cruising through the content like the calmest ocean waters.
Once I realized she was just an arbitrary dps and toughness check, I farmed up a shroud and got a godly crafted shield with glynns on it, and boom, she went down easy. My dps was fine, survivability won me the fight.
Now, I'm in T10 after cleaning up tier 80 on the pit, and Jesus Christ man, what happened??? I can't even get to varshans first shield! Again, I barely feel any attacks, even sky swords! But like...what on earth could I upgrade to handle these health pools?!
I use hammers with the split explosions upgrade, defiance and fanaticism auras, arbiter with seraphs wings for vulnerable, holy bolt for judgment and resource, and condemn for my god slayers crown prices (it's so fun to watch them all fly lol)
All my offensive slots have crit multies and crit tempers, plus holy multies where I had extra room on good rolls. I'm running a godly Griswold's with a GA crit multi and GA crit damage. My glyphs are all level 80 currently.
I'm using holy punishment on my amulet, proselytizing on my ring, starless skies, watkins law on my gloves, glynns on my shield like I said. My unique charm is currently herald of zakarum for that insane survivability, but is that too much? Should I craft a heralds morningstar charm instead? Or am I missing something else entirely?? Please help me! The build was doing so good guys!