
A sword, a shield, three buffs that never seem to need pressing, an Oath menu the game barely explains, and a resource called Faith. This chapter answers the questions a new Paladin actually has — what am I supposed to press, what does my Oath actually do, and why is my armour somehow my damage? — then gives you four complete builds, every skill point from level 2 to 70, respecs included.
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The terms this codex leans on. The same definitions appear as hover tooltips everywhere else on the page — on mobile, tap them.
The pattern: nothing on this class is a party-only pick. Every aura passive reads YOU first — a solo Paladin loses the audience, never the buff.
Not "high armor" — layers. An incoming hit has to survive every one of these before it reaches you, and each build leans on a different subset:
The tree's favourite trick is changing what a skill is — and your Oath multiplier and gear only read tags. Every conversion these four builds touch, in one place:
Four genuinely different characters, not four flavours of one list. One detonates holy marks across whole screens, one is a wall whose armour does the killing, one is a two-handed blur paying for damage in blood, and one sprouts wings and lets the game fight for it. Each chapter is complete: every point 2 → 70, respecs printed, Oath and aura setup by level, gear with honest "until then" answers.
This build is for you if: {{bd.tagline}}
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One point per level-up, 2 → 70, plus 14 bonus points at the end. Set your level to see exactly what you should own at that moment, what to buy next, and where your Oath, auras and weapon stand.
The same character, before and after. When a build "feels wrong", the usual reason is that it's still being played as the left-hand column.
What pays for this build, what its second currency is, and the loop. If your rotation feels broken, it is nearly always one of these paragraphs.
Four jobs, and what on this bar does each of them.
In order, with what each one actually affects. Stats not listed are not worth a roll on this build.
Every slot has a best answer and an honest "until then" answer. No build in this codex requires a unique item to reach level 70.
The engine, start to finish. Break any link and the damage sags — which is how the troubleshooting below diagnoses it.
Everything here targets Season 14 · Death Awakening · patch 3.1.3, checked against live sources on August 17, 2026. The Paladin arrived with the Lord of Hatred expansion — young enough that stale guides are only one or two seasons old, but the Season 14 buffs made even those misleading.
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Play Mode answers four questions at the level on the slider: what your character should look like, how to play it, what just changed, and what to work toward. The full chapter — every point, gear tables, troubleshooting — is one EXIT away.