Paladin Mastery Leveling Build for Last Epoch

Our base class is Sentinel, which fills the role of a knight in Last Epoch. Upon finishing Act 1 in the campaign, your character will be offered an opportunity to select an Advanced Mastery. Each base class has three possible Masteries to choose from. For Sentinel, you can choose between Passive Trees for Paladin, Forge Guard, and Void Knight. Upon selecting a Mastery and placing 20 Passive Points into the Sentinel Tree, you'll then be able to place Passive Points into the Mastery Trees.

For our initial 20 points that we need to spend in the Sentinel tree, we will be taking all purpose nodes to give us a bit of everything. Resists, damage, survivability, cooldown recovery, etc.. This is the recommended order to allocate your points:

• 8 points into Juggernaut: Flat Strength and Fire/Void resists.
• 5 points into Armour Clad: 75 Flat Armour and 10% reduced damage taken from nearby enemies. A great node for defense.
• 1 point into Fearless: Vitality and Increase Health Regen
• 1 point into Stalwart: Block effectiveness and 3% block chance. We only spend 1 point for the 3% block chance, which does not scale with more points.
• 5 points into Valiant Charge: Some flat Health and increased Cooldown Recovery for movement skills.

Our base class is Sentinel, which fills the role of a knight in Last Epoch. Upon finishing Act 1 in the campaign, your character will be offered an opportunity to select an Advanced Mastery. Each base class has three possible Masteries to choose from. For Sentinel, you can choose between Passive Trees for Paladin, Forge Guard, and Void Knight. Upon selecting a Mastery and placing 20 Passive Points into the Sentinel Tree, you'll then be able to place Passive Points into the Mastery Trees.

We will only be spending 10 points total in the Void Knight tree. Specifcally, in the Abyssal Endurance node. We recommend spending at least 5 points in the tree shortly after picking your Mastery, to unlock  Volatile Reversal as an ability and because the physical/void resists granted are quite good early on, before you've gotten stronger gear.

Our base class is Sentinel, which fills the role of a knight in Last Epoch. Upon finishing Act 1 in the campaign, your character will be offered an opportunity to select an Advanced Mastery. Each base class has three possible Masteries to choose from. For Sentinel, you can choose between Passive Trees for Paladin, Forge Guard, and Void Knight. Upon selecting a Mastery and placing at least 20 Passive Points into the Sentinel Tree, you'll then be able to place Passive Points into the Mastery Trees.

The Paladin tree is where we will be spending the majority of our passive points after we finish the Mastery quest to choose Paladin. The early nodes are mostly focused on increasing our damage and healing effectiveness (which is also a damage stat for us, more on that in the skill section). This is the suggested order to take the passives in:

• 8 points into Conviction: Increased Physical/Fire/Lightning Damage and Penetration.
• 10 points into Valor: Flat Health and Increased Healing Effectiveness.
• 1 point into Divine Bolt: Adds a 20% chance to cast Divine Bolt at an enemy when you hit with a melee attack.
• 1 point into Honour: Increased Block Effectiveness and Stun Avoidance, as well as 2% block chance. Only put 1 point here, as the block chance does not increase with more points and that's the main reason we want the node.
• 5 points into Heavenfire: Flat Spell Damage when you use a shield.
• 5 points into Holy Icon: Increase Healing Effectiveness, Necrotic Resistance and Flat Health.
• 10 points into Prayer: Increased Damage and Healing Effectiveness if you have healed yourself, or an ally, recently (last 4 seconds).
• 5 points into Reverence of Duality: Increase Health, Damage, Healing Effectiveness and Mana.
• 7 points into Light of Rahyeh: Increased Fire/Lightning Damage and Movespeed.

The first ability that we specialize in, despite  Judgement being our bigger hitter because we won't have that ability unlocked initially. In the early levels, when you are relying on just  Javelin for most of your damage, you should prioritize using a Spear, as it will give half of its flat melee damage as flat throwing damage.

However, once you get Holy Trail, the majority of the damage will come from the Fire Damage over Time effect that it leaves behind, not the initial hit, and that ability scales off of spell power instead of throwing damage. It's at that point you'll want to swap to a sceptre with both melee and spell damage and a shield in your offhand.

This is the order you should allocate points into this skill tree:

• 1 point into Mighty Delivery: More Damage and Attack speed.
• 1 point into Burning Strength: Ignite chance for Ignite chance.
• 2 points into Spear to the Thigh: More Damage Over Time for Javelin, we will put more points into this later.
• 1 point into Holy Trail: Adds the trail behind Javelin, which deals damage and heals you while you are on it, but adds a 3 second cooldown to  Javelin.
• 4 points into Pilgrimage: Adds 60% more Fire/Lightning damage, and adds 120% chance to Ignite/Shock with Melee attacks while Javelin is on cooldown.
• 1 point into Path of Judgement: Adds Flat Spell Damage to the Holy Trail per 5% Increased Healing Effectiveness.
• 2 points into Serrated Javelin: Adds Armor Shred Chance and increased Armor Shred Duration.
• 1 point into Excellent Balance: Reduced Mana Cost.
• 1 point into Perfect Setup: Reduces the cost of the next Melee Attack after using  Javelin.
• 4 points into Sacred Forge: Gives large damage buff to  Judgement after hitting an enemy with  Javelin.
• 2 more points into Spear to the Thigh: Making a total of 4 points in this node. If you happen to have an extra skill point from gear at this point, go ahead and put it here to max out the node.

The majority of our damage will come from using  Judgement, doe to the Consecrated Ground that it leaves behind, burning our enemies and healing us. We will be converting this into an Aura that travels with us as well, letting us move and burn enemies that get close to us. It will also trigger  Healing Hands, which will both deal damage and heal us as well, which is why most of your damage will come from using  Judgement. You will not be able to spam the ability, however, as it will cost a good chunk of mana, and you want to trigger some of the buff effects for  Judgement by throwing a  Javelin beforehand. It's best to only recast  Judgement after the aura has faded.

As  Judgement's Consecrated Ground gains 1 spell damage per 5% healing effectiveness, this makes it a great stat to help scale the damage with, as  Healing Hands has similar scaling from the same stat. Allocate your passives in the tree as follows:

• 2 points into Sanctified Serenity: Increased Healing Effectiveness.
• 2 points into Lingering Force: Increased Duration for Consecrated Ground. We will put more points into this later.
• 1 point into Anointed: Consecrated Ground becomes Consecrating Aura, with the same effects but now it travels with you, centered on your character.
• 2 more points into Lingering Force: for a total of 4 points in the node.
• 2 points into Divine Destruction: More Damage against High Health (above 65%) targets.
• 4 points into Pious Offering: If you don't have enough mana regen to cast  Judgement in between each  Javelin when you first take these points, you could trim a couple points until later.
• 1 point into Destructive Impact: Larger Area for Consecrating Aura.
• 2 points into Swift Verdict: Cooldown Recovery and Mana Efficiency.
• 4 points into Flaming Soul: 100% More damage for Consecrating Aura.

 Holy Aura is the mastery skill you unlock when you pick Paladin. No other masteries have access to this ability, and it's practically an auto-include in every Paladin build for the passive bonuses it provides. Without any points invested, it already gives you 30% increased damage and 15% elemental resists, which are then doubled for a short time when you activate it.

We will be taking nodes that add more, or increase the current, bonuses to  Holy Aura. Also, don't forget that these other bonuses are also doubled whenever you activate  Holy Aura.
This is the order we recommend for taking the passives:

• 5 points into Shelter from the Storm: 25% Elemental Resists and 15% Endurance.
• 1 point into Rahyeh's Devotion: Ignite chance for you and allies.
• 2 points into Rahyeh's Fury: 10% Fire Penetration.
• 2 points into Vital Boon: 20% Health Regen.
• 4 points into Redemption: Adds 40% Healing Effectiveness.
• 5 points into Faith: Adds 15 Ward per Second.
• 1 point into Shielded By Faith: Adds 5% Ward Retention.

Despite seeing some nerfs to its Ward Generation abilities,  Healing Hands remains a very strong ability for the Paladin. Especially, when you are able to trigger it off of melee attacks for free. It can both heal us and do a significant amount of damage to our enemies, effectively 'buffing' our Melee attacks.

First, we rush to the nodes that allow it to trigger off our melee attacks. Afterwards, we'll look to increase both it's healing effectiveness (which increaes both its heal and damage components) and damage. We jump around the tree a bit, as some of the nodes are more important to get initially, and others are weaker until you've gotten other nodes. Here is the suggested order for your passives:

• 4 points into Cleric's Hammer: Gives it a 100% chance to trigger off our melee attacks.
• 1 point into Searing Light: Gives  Healing Hands the ability to damage enemies on top of healing us.
• 1 point into Divine Barrier: Give Ward on top of the normal Healing, and can give a massive amount of Ward if you are going a 'low life' style with the experimental mods that gain ward based on missing health.
• 4 points into Prayer of the Fallen: 100% Increased Healing Effectiveness, which is doubled if a Dead Player is nearby. The 2nd part is only relevant if you group with others.
• 2 ppoints into Bane of Evil: Adds 2 Flat Spell Damage per 10% increased Healing Effectiveness.
• 2 points into Cleric's Wrath: More damage based on the level of your specialized 'buff' skills. This includes  Holy Aura and  Healing Hands. If both skills are level 20, this node would give 40% more damage, which is very strong. The only reason we don't take it earlier, is you won't have many levels in both skills early on.
• 2 points into Virtue of Patience: Increased Damage, Healing Effectiveness and Area, with the downside of slower Cast Speed. However, this drawback does not apply when you are triggering it from a Melee Attack.
• 1 point into Purity of Thought: Reduced mana cost
• 3 points into Synthesis of Light: Adds flat Ward each time you cast  Healing Hands based on your Healing Effectiveness.

 Volatile Reversal is the last skill we specialize in, simply because it's mainly going to be used on bosses to help kill them quickly. The skill takes a little getting used to, as it returns you to your position 2 seconds ago. However, it also resets your health/mana to what it was at that time, which is great considering  Judgement will eat our Mana up, and provides a large amount of increased damage to enemies in the process. See the 'Mechanics and Playstyle' section below for more info on your basic rotation to utilize  Volatile Reversal fully.

We will rushing to the nodes that increase damage taken by enemies, as this is a large boost to our overall damage. Additionally, we want to reduce the cooldown so we can use it more often and reset our manapool to full each time. Here is the suggested order for taking these passives:

• 1 point into Incipient Void Rift: Leave behind a  Void Rift, dealing void damage in an area.
• 3 points into Disintegration: The Void Rift will do 66% more damage.
• 3 points into Time Rifts: Enemies hit by Void Rifts will take 60% more Damage Over Time. A huge increase to our Fire DoT effects.
• 3 points into Time Sap: Helps bring the Cooldown down faster by killing enemies or hitting Bosses and Rares.
• 1 point into Timelost Vitality: 60% increased Cooldown Recovery Speed, but it no longer restores Health on cooldown. We have plenty of Healing effects to keep us healthy, so this isn't that bad of a drawback.
• 1 point into Terminal Void Rift: Puts a Void Rift where you arrive.
• 3 points into Dark Expanse: Increases the size of the Void Rifts.
• 3 points into Harbinger of Dust: Increases all damage taken by enemies by 30% when they are hit by Void Rifts.
• 2 points into Traveller's Fatigue: 50% increased Cooldown Recovery Speed, but we lose 20% Health Regen while it's on cooldown. With all of our Healing and Regen effects, this isn't very noticeable.