The Sentinel’s holy guardian Mastery class in Last Epoch, the Paladin, places a strong emphasis on magic and defense. By use of its Mastery Skill, Holy Aura, the Paladin protects and amplifies personal and allied qualities, such as protection and damage.

Without the right build, leveling up as a Paladin can be difficult because of the build’s concentration on defensive, which makes switching to offensive strategies more difficult, especially when playing alone. However, there are a few strong builds that provide workarounds, like the one below that focuses on Healing Hands. Please bring enough Last Epoch Gold to find out with us!

An Overview Of Healing Hands Paladin Build

This Paladin build revolves around the Healing Hands skill, which at its core provides healing to nearby allies along with a heal-over-time effect. However, by specializing in Healing Hands, you can enhance it with the Searing Light node, introducing a damaging aspect to the skill.

Following this, there are two paths to take with Healing Hands - melee or ranged. In this particular build, we’ll focus on the melee version, although the ranged option is equally viable, albeit with a distinct skill setup.

The pivotal nodes essential for making Healing Hands your primary damage-dealing skill are Cleric’s Hammer and Seraph Blade. At four points, Cleric’s Hammer grants a 100 percent chance for Healing Hands to activate upon using a melee attack, while Seraph Blade transforms Healing Hands into a melee attack, allowing it to scale based on melee damage rather than spell damage.

Considering this, the general gameplay of this build leans towards tankiness and melee combat, utilizing Void Cleave to maneuver between enemy groups and dispatch them with Rive and Healing Hands. Overall, this build offers straightforward gameplay, requiring only one button for attacking and another for traversal.

Skills

As previously mentioned, the central skill of this build is Healing Hands.

When enhancing this skill, prioritize maxing out Cleric’s Hammer initially to ensure Healing Hands triggers with a 100% chance upon executing a melee attack. Subsequently, progress towards the Seraph Blade node. Following this, acquire Divine Barrier, Synthesis of Light, and Guardian’s Heart to generate Ward on the left side of the skill tree.

Next in focus is Rive, which serves the purpose of activating Healing Hands while inflicting damage. Within this skill tree, promptly unlock the Foe Cleaver node, then shift attention to the right side to obtain Challenge, subsequently progressing towards the Double Slash node.

For mobility, Void Cleave is employed. While Lunge is an alternative, Void Cleave enables movement without requiring a target and serves to trigger Abyssal Echoes for supplementary damage.

Within Void Cleave’s skill node, prioritize unlocking Gravity’s Edge promptly to enable Void Cleave to operate as a proper traversal skill, followed by acquiring the Hellish Chasm node to convert it into fire damage. Subsequently, focus on unlocking Resonating Cleave to ensure Void Cleave triggers Abyssal Echoes efficiently.

Abyssal Echoes serves solely for additional damage when utilizing Void Cleave and is not cast independently. Start by using the Void Purifier node to transform Abyssal Echoes into fire damage. Then, use the Embrace the Darkness and Vorpal Reverberation nodes on the left side of the talent tree to increase the damage.

Lastly, Holy Aura is addressed. Progressively enhance the Shelter from the Storm node for substantial Elemental Resistance, then bolster the skill’s damage buffs by investing in the Flame Burst, Fanaticism, and True Strike nodes.

While our primary focus in this build is on Rive, it’s worth noting that Vengeance offers alternative effects. Rive boasts higher attack speed, allowing more frequent triggering of Healing Hands, whereas Vengeance becomes preferable when seeking additional defense.

Passives

In this build, we’ll allocate passive points across the Sentinel, Void Knight, and Paladin skill trees.

Before unlocking your Mastery, prioritize investing points into nodes such as Juggernaut, Armour Clad, Valiant Charge, and Time and Faith in the Sentinel tree. Additionally, allocating points into Blademaster proves beneficial.

Within the Paladin tree, initial emphasis should be on upgrading Defiance, Valor, Conviction, and Holy Icon, offering a balance of defensive and offensive stats. Subsequently, prioritize enhancing nodes like Blinding Light, Divine Essence, Reverence of Duality, and Light of Rahyeh for increased damage output.

Lastly, in the Void Knight tree, consider acquiring the Abyssal Endurance node for supplementary Void Resistance, World Eater for lifesteal, and Void Corruption for a notable boost to critical damage.

Crucial Attributes

The paramount statistic for the Healing Hands Paladin build is Healing Effectiveness. Through the Bane of Evil node within the Healing Hands skill tree, this skill scales its damage in proportion to Healing Effectiveness, doubling its original healing augmentation function. Consequently, every percentage point of Healing Effectiveness significantly bolsters both survivability and damage output.

Considering this, here are the primary statistics to prioritize when upgrading your gear as you progress:

1. Healing Effectiveness
2. Levels of Healing Hands
3. Fire Damage
4. Attunement
5. Elemental Resistances of any kind

It's advisable to leverage crafting opportunities as you advance and acquire new gear. Utilizing shards imbued with any of these statistics, alongside more general defensive or utility attributes like health, mana, and armor, can enhance your gear for added potency.

Noteworthy Unique Items

Fortunately, this build doesn't heavily rely on specific Unique items, making gearing relatively straightforward.

Nonetheless, several Unique items offer notable power increases and should be integrated if you chance upon them while leveling:

• Volcanus: With a ton of extra Fire Damage, this two-handed sword is the greatest weapon in its slot for this build.
• Valeroot: This Chest Armor offers good defensive stats and the crucial Healing Effectiveness stat, even though Spriggan Form isn't applicable in this situation.
• Calamity: By adding additional fire damage, this helmet amplifies the healing power of Healing Hands.
• Advent of the Erased: Serving as a generally beneficial pair of boots, these boots expedite leveling through increased Movement Speed and Haste upon enemy demise.

Check out this new build guide for Warlock in Last Epoch 1.0, which is called the Torment Warlock. The Torment is an exceptional ailment that delivers a tremendous amount of damage with a single application. This build doesn't rely on special skill combos. If you’re new to the Warlock, this build is perfect for you.

Pros & Cons

The main reason to pick this build is the traditional gameplay of damage over time build that doesn’t require constant reapplying. You can achieve very high amounts of ward with a method to quickly recover it in case of danger, paired with access to a strong crowd control effect.

On top of that, your boss fights are very safe because of the high uptime of Profane Veil, which makes you almost immortal while your Torment continues to deal damage. You will have excellent damage with low gear requirements to start, and you will breeze through the campaign as soon as you unlock the Warlock Mastery.

Of course, this gameplay has some drawbacks that you should know of. The Chthonic Fissure skill has high mana consumption and requires proper skill usage management, which is especially noticeable during Echo. The single target damage is limited by the single stack of Torment, which can make boss fights a bit longer at higher corruption levels.

Gear Setup

Most of your ward comes from specific modifiers that are generated based on your missing health, available on specific unique and experimental items. But you don’t need it to farm low corruption levels. The more health you have, the more ward it will generate. The other items are very synergistic with the modifiers they provide, but are not required for functionality. You can decide which Uniques you need based on your amount of Last Epoch Gold.

The Marina's Lost Soul is a simple wand, but it grants you exactly what you need. It offers a lot of flat Necrotic damage for your spells and decently increases your spell and curse damage.However, it also lowers your maximum health a bit.

The Exsanguinous is one of the core items for your ward generation. It drains your health but restores a portion of your missing health as a ward, which you can then boost via ward retention or ward decay threshold. You will also gain a decent boost to your movement speed when you use a potion.

This pair of Last Steps of the Living boots offers the same modifier as the previous armor, further improving your ward generation. It also offers a decent amount of movement speed, but it is mostly negated because of the chill applied to you every 3 seconds. Your skills will cleanse negative effects on you, but not as often as those boots apply it.

This Boneclamor Barbute helmet offers plenty of intelligence and Necrotic Resistance and greatly increases your ward generation thanks to the resistance modifier you stack. It is fairly common, so getting one with good Legendary Potential shouldn’t be too daunting to acquire.

The most important modifiers to scale your damage are flat damage for spells, Necrotic Resistance, critical strike multiplier, and intelligence. You will also need some mana regeneration to comfortably spam your Chthonic Fissure during Echo, although it is not that important against bosses. The Necrotic Resistance and intelligence are also the major methods of improving your ward.

You will need an experimental mod on your gloves that grant you a ward based on the missing health, which is why you should improve your maximum health too. By increasing the health of your minions, you will improve the Vampiric Pool interaction. Capping your critical strike avoidance at 100% is mandatory for your survival.

Active Skills

Chthonic Fissure: This skill creates a rift in the ground that deals with a bit of damage and releases spirits upon contact. The spirits apply the curse of Torment, which is the major source of damage in this build. Most of your damage scaling comes from the Twisted Waves and Grim Tide, which grant you more damage per point of Necrotic Resistance or critical strike multiplier. You will also deal more damage against bleeding or poisoned enemies. The Stygian Coal, paired with the Gloom and Flames, increases the frequency of your spirits, making it easier to apply your Torment.

Spirit Plague: Inflicts your target with a curse of Spirit Plague, which deals with a small amount of Necrotic damage. In this build, it is used to buff your Torment damage even more. The Pestilence grants you global increased damage as you continue to cast the skill. The Enfeeblement weakens the enemies you hit, and the Anguish causes them to run in Fear.

Transplant: This is your movement skill. You should cast this as soon as it goes off cooldown as it also restores your mana and grants you the Bone Armor buff. The Acolyte’s Fervor also grants you Haste and Frenzy buffs for 3 seconds. The Azure Veins and Pale Blood restore your mana, but only if you hit at least one enemy. The Bone Armor and its upgrades grant you the Bone Armor buff, which reduces the damage you take.

Profane Veil: It is a very powerful defensive skill that makes you dodge any incoming hit when you keep channeling it. In this setup, it is also used to generate a lot of ward with the Vampiric Pool. You will consume your minions to get the ward based on their maximum health. You will also deal more damage to your Torment applied during channeling the Profane Veil. Thanks to the stream of profanity, you will lower the cooldown of the veil by spamming any curse skill.

Bone Curse: With this skill, you can weaken enemies and create a Bone Prison, providing a substantial ward increase when consumed. The Sigil of Mortality applies a Mark for Death on enemies, resulting in increased damage taken by them. With the Marrow Thief, you will occasionally gain Bone Armor when you kill enemies affected by the curse.

Passive Trees

Acolyte: Your basic Acolyte tree is focused mostly on defense. It will boost your ward resistance and intelligence. During leveling, you can pick Blood or a Blood Pact and Eye of Damnation to boost your damage, but it isn’t very effective in the endgame. The Stolen Vitality enhances the health of your minions, resulting in a greater amount of ward gained when you consume them.

Lich: The Survival of the Cruel is extremely useful during the campaign as it offers health leech. You may also opt for Dance with Dead and Grasp of Fate to augment your Necrotic damage. However, given your endgame setup, these passives are redundant and should be refunded. The Apocrypha is universally useful as it grants mana regeneration and intelligence.

Warlock: The Unholy Torment and Duskbringer are very valuable as they add flat spell damage to your Torment. The Doom Herald grants more damage when you channel the Profane Veil. You will take slightly less damage if you invest 5 points into Harrowing Armor, Dark Protections and Wither. With the Fleeting Crone, you will constantly have the Haste buff with an increased effect. Lastly, the Wreak Havoc grants you crit multiplier, which is converted into more damage.

Idols & Blessings

Then let's talk about idols in this build. You can use them to get more health, ward retention, stack more resistances, or improve your spell damage a bit. If you find yourself channeling to Profane Veil very often, you can try to get a modifier that generates ward for each second spent in the Veil.

For blessings, in the Black Sun timeline, you're faced with a choice between critical strike multiplier and void resistance. Opting for the resistance bonus is advisable, as it allows you to allocate more resources towards Necrotic Resistance elsewhere. In the Age of Winter timeline, you'll encounter a straightforward decision: cold or physical resistance, depending on your current needs.

Moving on to the Spirits of Fire timeline, you'll have the option to either reduce your enemies' Necrotic Resistance, particularly beneficial against bosses, or enhance your damage output by stacking more Necrotic Resistance instead. In the Reign of Dragons timeline, you can select one of the resistance bonuses or prioritize critical strike avoidance for improved survivability.

As you approach the end of the Storm timeline, choosing the Lightning Resistance blessing is a viable option, although ward-related bonuses should also be considered, especially if you lack the necessary Uniques combination.