Diablo II Beta: Closer look at the Paladin

The paladin is a powerful character who is easily one of the strongest classes in the game. With high hit points, good strength, and a wide range of weapons to use, he can be deadly in combat. Add to his physical prowess his offensive and defensive auras, and he becomes even stronger.

All the paladin's skills support him in battle. He has combat skills, defensive auras, and offensive auras. The combat skills are special attacks that use mana. The beginning combat skills are sacrifice and smite. Sacrifice is an attack that deals double damage or more at a higher attack rating. However, each time you use it, you suffer eight-percent hit-point damage yourself. Adding skill points in sacrifice increases the damage dealt per blow and the attack rating bonus. Regardless of whether you hit or miss, though, you still lose eight percent of your hit points. Smite is a shield bash that does moderate damage and stuns the struck enemy momentarily. Further up the skill tree, the paladin gets holy bolt, charge, and zeal. Holy bolt is a ranged attack that harms undead or heals allies. Damage and healing increase with added skill. Charge is a running attack. By far the best combat skill in the beta is zeal, which lets you hit multiple times per attack. You start off being able to hit twice in one attack, but each time you add a skill point to zeal, you gain another attack. At skill level four, for instance, you attack five times, and each time with an increased attack rating. If surrounded by five opponents, for example, the paladin will wheel around to strike them all once with inhuman speed. If you are attacking a single opponent, zeal is still useful as you will hit the one opponent five times. Using zeal with two-handed weapons is ideal because the multiple attacks make up for the slower attack speed, and you get to take advantage of the two-handed weapons' great damage range.

The paladin's auras are great because they generally don't mana, and they are continuous effects. The initial offensive aura is might, which adds increased damage to all your attacks and your allies' attacks. The more skill you put in, the greater the percentage increase in damage. On the next tier of offensive auras are holy fire and thorns. Holy fire creates a ring of flame around you that damages all nearby enemies with modest fire damage. Increased skill pumps up the range and damage of the fire aura. The thorns defensive aura is good because it reflects your enemy's damage back at them. At low skill levels, 210 percent of the damage is reflected, and it increases by 40 percent with each skill point added. If you use zeal and thorns in conjunction, you can literally clear a room of hordes of enemies in no time. What enemies you don't hit with zeal will be killed when they hit you as their attacks are reflected back at them for double, triple, or quadruple damage. The last offensive aura in the beta is blessed aim, which gives you vastly improved attack ratings with each skill level.

The defensive auras don't seem as immediately useful as the offensive auras, but they too do not use mana, except for prayer, which increases your hit point regeneration but siphons off mana to power the boosted regeneration. There are also auras for fire, cold, and lightning resistance, as well as a defensive aura for greater defense rating, called defiance, and an aura called cleansing that reduces the duration of poison and curse attacks directed at you.

In the beta version, the paladin seems like an incredibly powerful character. His offensive auras are especially useful, and when used in conjunction with his combat skills, they let him really carve into enemies with awesome results. The paladin also seems to be a good multiplayer character, as his offensive and defensive auras can give his allies a boost in combat or extra regeneration and defense.