Comparison of Paladin Builds

Diablo II Expansion, v. 1.09d
By Tommi Gustafsson

Nikodemus222 published his elemental zealot guide on diabloii.net, which inspired me to compare various paladin builds. Taking my comparison of zeal and vengeance as a basis (once again! ) I elaborated my excel file and entered stats of Nikodemus's paladin into it along with a Schaefer zealot/avenger and my walking paladin.

The Excel file is available here:
Excel file

Results as HTML-pages are here:
Elemental Zealot
Schaefer's Hammer Zealot/Avenger
Walking paladin

(At the moment, there are also two extra sheets in the file, which contain calculations for two other paladins)

In the file white/gray areas are input data (they can be modified), while green areas are calculated (do not change them). The file is quite a good summary of Diablo II's damage dealing mechanisms for those who are interested.

Nikodemus's paladin is on the first sheet. Scroll down to see the results on the four last rows, especially total damage. You can also check other sheet for the other two paladin builds. Note that opponents are considered to be hell bovines which have no resistances, and therefore Vengeance and elemental damage are pretty good against them. You may modify monster's input data to see how resistances affect damage. For example, straight zealing with Fanaticism is more effective against lightning immune creatures (but you lose the party effect of Concentration).

Elemental Zealot's Damage is quite high indeed, but it can't beat a good Schaefer's Zealot (and Static Field is not even considered in this analysis). But most importantly, Vengeance provides more damage than Zeal. The difference is some 1700 points in the case of Elemental Zealot.

I also put the stats of my walking paladin in the file. His damage is a bit lower than that of other two, mainly due to his weapon choice. However, his focus was enhancing damage of others (including his mercenary), in which he is still superior to other paladin archetypes. Also interestingly, you may play him as elemental zealot, since he has 15 points in Conviction as well as maxed out Fanaticism and Concentration.

I encourge you to play with the file a bit and report bugs to me. You can enter pretty much any paladin into the file and see what his damage is. Take care to change all the values, since many of them are repeated from column to column. Also, you have to enter Conviction's effect on defense manually as well as attack speeds (remember to use different speeds for Fanaticism).