Sun Paladin Guide for 1.5 and hopefully beyond

[Micbran]

Preface
Special thanks to Ster for actually writing this guide! All of this are his words, not mine.
DISCLAIMER: I had nothing to do with the creation of this guide. All I did was spell check and format it to be posted on the forums. He (and I) simply thought this guide should be here because there haven't been any SP guides for a couple major versions.

So Sun Paladin is the only other class I'm actually good at and there are many misconceptions around about why it's so strong despite being called a free NM- win. Here's some words about it, with ez-mode insane and normal builds included.

https://te4.org/characters/208724/tome/ ... 4feb397cb6

So ridiculously strong that it cleared Dark Crypt and got the doomelf unlock cheevo legit (take that bpat!). Heavily abused suncloak timeless, flash of the blade and BiL to not die and shalore's normally bad HP never factored in. Was doing about 4-5k on most turns and could have been higher if I built around Sawrd and not Naloren.

tl;dr
4/1/3/1 2H assault
none in shield/combat vet
1/5/1/5 Celestial/Combat
3/4/2+/5 Sun
5/2-3/5/4 Crusader
(If Ogre 5/1/5/1 Guardian)

1/1+/1/5 Shalore or 1/5/1/2 Ogre
1/5/1/3 Light
5/5/5/0-5/0 Combat training (or max exotic weapon mastery instead)
1-4/2/2 Physics + 5/1/2 Chemistry OR 1/5/1/1 survival

Arcane Might + Flexible Combat

Race
Shalore > Ogre for high difficulties since extending suncloak and everything else is strong and you can chain together multiple Flashes/waves with timeless. Crit mult and global speed on racials help too. Ogre 2h+shield is a decent gimmick on lower difficulty since the one good talent pulls weight better there. Other races aren't worth considering (ghoul SP is a bad meme especially).

Inscriptions
Shielding/Wild/Movement early, Heroism/Shielding, Movement, Movement, Wild late (or 2 salves over wild + movement).
Shield rune is good early until you get BiL going properly and then becomes obsolete, heroism ends up better since it gives you more non-shield HP for lifesteal to work on and gives stats.
You really want movement infusions for stun immunity and because you only have one other mobility talent.

Prodigies
Arcane Might and pick one of Cauterize/Flexible Combat/Windblade
Category Order
Crusader > Tinkers/Inscription > Guardian if ogre/Inscription > Survival/Inscription.
Don't take Survival and Tinkers on the same character.

Equipment
Some priorities include -spell cd (use this over anything else in slot), crit mult,crit rate, armor, spellpower, +max HP(in no particular order). Resist penetration is also very handy since you don't get any from your class.

Class Categories
Two-Handed Assault
4/1/0/0 core, 3/5 Death Dance and 1/5 Execution if you want

Stunning Blow is your only stun but it's good and should be used whenever it's off CD and you don't have anything better to do. 4/5 gives you full uptime.

Fearless Cleave lets you move normally while stunned, pinned, encumbered etc and messes with the AI if it tries to run. A lifesaver with only 1 point.

Death Dance is a decent aoe, nothing better to say about it other than flash of the blade will usually be better. You have a lot of free class points so it's not a bad idea to pick up the bleed damage.

Execution is a guaranteed crit which triggers all your on-crit effects in case your critrate is still bad so it's worth at least a point.

Shield Offense
1/1/1/1 if you're an ogre, ignore otherwise.

Assault is ok, shield slam + riposte might get used once in a blue moon. You usually have better things to do even on ogres.

Combat Veteran
0/0/0/0, you don't care about the regen from first two talents and 3rd/4th are useless for everyone

Celestial/Combat
1/5/1/5, Weapon of Light/Wrath luxury
Weapon of Light prolongs shields. That's basically it. If you aren't starting with Murderblade you could float points here until your physical damage becomes good, otherwise it works fine at 1/5.

Wave of Power lets you smack nerds at range for huge damage so it's really good. If you have suncloak and timeless (or enough -CD naturally and timeless) you can do this twice in a row which will kill basically everything. Otherwise it's just useful for getting the first hit in and scales well with points so you'll want 5 in it eventually

Weapon of Wrath is useless lol. Martyrdom works badly against enemies since they do low damage relative to you, and if you drop below full HP (ie: mark of light is off and shields down) you should probably run instead. Don't even turn this on til like level 30 since the max positive energy is much more valuable.

Second life basically doubles your HP bar. Get it around mid-game when you can afford the cost and you're good. Play like you don't have this since dispersion can remove it plus it's not guaranteed to save you anyway. If it is off you should probably consider running away.

Sun
3/2/2/5 More in Sun's Vengeance and 4/5 Path of the Sun luxury

Sun Ray is free positive energy and does good enough damage early when weapon damage sucks. Get level 3 for blind/off-balance in an AoE since it's useful when you can hit it.

Path of the Sun is your only mobility talent other than Rush so it's a given to get it. 2/5 early for 8 range and 4/5 later for 9 if you want.

Sun's Vengeance gives you crit and significant positive energy generation so you don't run out (also the spellcrit is fairly big in the early game)

Suncloak is nuts lol. It's like Blinding Speed except it stacks with it/Grace, lowers cooldowns on your important spells, and also prevents you from being one shot by void horror bugs as icing. But wait, there's more, it even generates pos instead of using it haha are you for real. 5/5 this midgame some time after maxing Flash since reducing the CD on that (and also it scales pretty heavily off spellpower)

Radiance
Don't.

Crusader
1/2-3/5/4 core, more Absorption Strike luxury

Absorption Strike has a really good effect, gives positive energy and actually scales fairly well with points. It's not what we're here for.

Mark Of Light is beyond stupid and essentially means your HP will never go down as long as you're hitting the thing you marked. 2/5 is enough, in my experience.

Righteous Strength is 54% damage and some significant APR and crit rate max this ASAP

Flash of the Blade makes you invincible for a turn at level 4. Like, actually invincible. You can run up and smack your inner demons or summoner warhounds or other things no one wants to be in LoS of ever. It doesn't have fixed cooldown either so you can stack spell CD reduction and Timeless it and then do it again lmao. Also it's a good AoE.

Guardian
5/1/whatever/4

Shield of Light doesn't get very good until the endgame where you'll be walking around with crazy high crit mult and enough positive energy to actually power it but it's pretty good then since you'll heal off of stuff like +5 cold damage on attack.

Brandish is trash. It has a really high multiplier and literally nothing else going for it.
Retribution gives a decent enough HP buffer to be worth investing in late imo.

Crusade is like a really bad version of timeless but it can still reduce the CD of flash by 4 and that's all you care about.

Generic Trees
Race
Self explanatory, you want Ogre for Grisly Constitution and Shalore for Timeless. 5/5 that and put 1 in all the other racials (more in Magic of the Eternals doesn't hurt if you have free points.

Combat Training
The usual, 3/5 thick skin, 5/5 armor training and weapon mastery, float 3 points in combat accuracy until you get enough from items.

Light
1/5/1/3
Put Healing Light or Barrier on autocast because energy is a bad resource.

Bathe in Light gets you really big shields with some spellpower so 5/5 it.

Providence is one of the best status removal tools in the game. Since you have 1.3 mastery 3/5 is fine for a breakpoint.

Chants
5/0/0/0 with 2/5 Chant Adept luxury
5/5 Chant Acolyte and use Fortitude primarily.

Chant Illuminate is trash.

Chant Adept is ok if you like micromanaging chants for the small benefit of status removal when SP already has really good status removal talents.

Chant Radiant's only use seems to be making sure you don't have to deal with the stupidity that is positive energy but you have better things to invest in.

Survival
1/5/1/1 if you choose to unlock

Do I really have to explain why Survival is good?

Tinkers
2/2/2 Physics 5/1/2 Chemistry gets you Unstoppable Force Salve and the good item tinkers.

Weapon: Razor Edge or Acid Groove
Body: Spike Attachment or Ablative Armor (if you don't want to use Ablative then 1/5 explosives)
Head: Headlamp or Focus Lens
Cloak: Grounding Strap
Hand: Iron Grip
Belt: Fungal Web or Deflection Field
Boots: Kinetic Stabiliser
Lite: White Light Emitter

Notes
Shibari is nerfing Crusader tree soon. What this amounts to is basically nothing except forcing you to stack more spell CD reduction to make flash of the blade properly chainable so this guide should still apply to 1.6.

[tabs]

No mention of Champion's Will?

[Micbran]

Champion's Will isn't that good. Sawrd or any T5 Orange will be better generally. Though if you manage to stack 90% Spell Cooldown reduction, I'd imagine it to be very strong.

[felixcatto]

Survival
1/5/1/1 if you choose to unlock
Do I really have to explain why Survival is good?

Pls explain why survival is good I am a newbie so i am interesting in it.

[Snarvid]

Track is the best information talent, and knowing where and what enemies are is very good on higher difficulties. However, the real prize is Device Mastery, which greatly lowers the cost of item powers. For some items, this is can greatly increase their power, which can be important for certain difficult battles (Wrap of Stone, Dispersion Gloves, Rod of Spydric Poison, many, many others). It can also really underscore and improve certain capacities you need frequently (E.g. I think I went from 1 use to 3 uses on Ruthless Grip gloves through Device Mastery, making them much more effective as gap closers).

[morernil]

Can you add stats distribution pls ?

[Cathbald]

STR > MAG (but enough for talents early) > DEX > CON/CUN

[Gui]

I must miss something, but why Bath of Light is so good ?
It also heals and shields enemies....
As I said I must miss something, I am only lvl 16

[Micbran]

I must miss something, but why Bath of Light is so good ?
It also heals and shields enemies....
As I said I must miss something, I am only lvl 16

healing and shielding enemies is negliable since it:
a.) keeps you alive
b.) you (should) do way way more damage than BiL heals or shields
c.) it lets you stack and extend shields
d.) it increases your heal mod to almost max whenever you use it.

[visage]

Prodigies
Arcane Might and pick one of Cauterize/Flexible Combat/Windblade

Given the focus on cooldowns, how would Windtouched Speed stack up if you were able to spare the generic points to satisfy its requirement?

[helminthauge]

tried to follow this guide but got very harsh...
The final build seems very good but my mid game is really a nightmare mainly due to my poor mobility and accuracy. Also I doubt whether righteous strength should be maxed out ASAP when you only have like 25% physical crit chance when you get it (or shall I aim on phyiscal crit chance earlier?).
My damage seems pretty good on training dummies (or is 800DPT by lv 30 good at all?) but on a lot of enemies I can only land 1 hit in 2 or 3, and my stunning blow almost never hit. Things get better when I decided to put more points into combat accuracy but I still miss a lot.
Also my mobility is really poor. Movement infusions are not good enough even when I have 2. It can be blocked by enemies (and even worse that if I bump into an invisible enemy the effect ends) and generally isn't useful at all when you're confused. Sun of the path is even worse (and is it buggy? I can never freely move on it when only 1 or 2 turns left and even when it has longer duration left, sometimes enemies can still act when I'm moving on it).
And combining these, those dreadmasters in the dreadfall are really a problem, especially when they come with 2 or 3 ranged rares/uniques/randbosses who also have a high defense. So any advices on midgame sun paladins? Or do I have to abuse track and dig zig-zag tunnels just on Insane?

[Arcvasti]

Just 3/5 or 5/5 perfect strike if you're having trouble hitting things.

[Cathbald]

Just 3/5 or 5/5 perfect strike if you're having trouble hitting things.

Exactly, but this guide is bad as it doesn't say to unlock combat techniques

It also say to NOT get both tinker and survival but to get one or the other, even though we all know charm mastery is busted with tinkers.

[helminthauge]

thx. Yeah I guess that combat technique is actually better than survival alone (no DLC for me) especially since I have some other places to put generic points to.

[helminthauge]

so finally got a sun paladin to insane high-peak.
This guide is solid, at least definitely better compared to other out-dated, and maybe never-working sun paladin guides (like those telling you to just activate retribution and wait it to burst so the enemy just killed themselves...). 2H is definitely better than 1H+shield not only because of righteous strength and 1-turn invul but the basic weapon tree and actual weapons are also better, and mark of light really keeps me alive in mid-game.
Some personal thoughts: mid-game (T2s to lv30) is by far the most difficulty part. The only threat before are the start boss if you end up with some other nasty mobs around, and the possible death trap upon entrance in Gloom. But afterwards, it just become too nasty... So I'd say to unlock combat technique tree at lv20 if you aren't going for tinker or both crusade and guardian on ogre. Rush greatly increases your chance to escape when confused and perfect strike greatly helps you to hit stuff (blind speed also shines later). Status management is also a big problem even though I have providence, so I decided to take Spine of the World as my first prodigy and it's really amazing. With Spine I'm almost invulnerable to physical effect (not only stun/pin, but also other nasty disarm/slow/confusion(from archer rares)/insidious poison/numbling poison/cripple...) and in case I got a nasty one sometimes, I can just use providence and if that is also locked I have my chants. Also the most dangerous foes in this stage are AM/AB randboss/uniques with a high defense, who can rain fires and thunders at range and stun/confuse you with melee attacks while you cannot damage them efficiently, and when you do they'll just TP away and heal up.
Skilling wise I didn't put points into suncloak at all until very later and even then rarely use it. It surely synergies well with timeless but at that difficult time I want timeless as a lifesaver for removing debuffs and reset the cd of shield/heal/flash and can hardly afford a mid-fight turn to use it. And after dreadfall I can literally just bump everything to death (currently I usually just one-shot everything with my range-11 wave of power). It should be a good precast though if you don't autoexplore and plan every encounter. and that Bath in Light seems not worth investing and using at all before you have a high spell-crit chance and high crit multiplier.
3 deaths so far, one to a pre-mentioned AM randboss, one to a worm that wolks in Nur (I underestimated that "white" mob...) and the final to my doomed self in shadow crypt (we killed each other with our attack, and then killed each oneself's second life because of martyrdom. All happend in a sudden... but at least I got a new achievement )