Whether you need help or you're just looking to chat - come join us! Or is it just a skill that adds bonus? Thats it. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts. I would suggest going to the you tube and looking up guided playthroughs for paladin (zeal pally too if you want that) and find mrllamaSCs play throughs, it will answer all your questions.
You can assign hotkeys (F1-F8 by default) to these skills by pressing them while hovering your mouse over a skill. Information, tips and strategies about how to build a starter Paladin on a budget with the goal of finishing Normal difficulty as quickly and easily as possible. In the meantime, weve got Auradins, a variety of Paladin that relies on one of three aura - Holy Fire, Holy Freeze and Holy Shock - to dispatch enemies. Keep Holy Fire active and whack enemies with Zeal. Leaf runeword (Tir + Ral, staves only) - Steel runeword (Tir + El, one-handed axes, maces and swords only), +2-198 to Defense (Based on Character Level), Purchase or find 2-socket armor, 2-socket one-handed axes, maces or swords (ideally a scimitar or flail for the attack speed), or a 2-socket staff. The only property that really matters for the Fire Auradin is attack speed, as Holy Fire will account for your damage, so grab something fast like a scimitar or flail. But if you have a crap weapon, no matter which way you spec your zealer he will feel weak. If your level and attack rating are low, you will miss a lot of your normal or Zeal attacks against bosses, this does not happen with Smite. A Zealot / Zeal Paladin can be quite strong and super fun, but he needs a lot more gear to make work later in the game than something like the Hammerdin - a naked Hammerdin with maxed out Blessed Hammer and Concentration aura will still do a lot of damage, but you can dump as many skill points as you want in Zeal or Fanaticism and still deal no damage if your weapon is bad, and you generally also need useful abilities on your other items like lifesteal, manasteal, attack speed, deadly strike (chance for double damage), crushing blow (more about that below) or cannot be frozen.
Lastly, regarding Smite - the reason it is good is that it cannot miss. The Fire Auradin is in the enviable position of really not needing to worry that much about stats at all - get 40 Strength to be safe, dump the rest into Vitality, and invest more into Strength/Dexterity depending on drops. As for respecing in general - of course it's totally up to you on when you want to do it, but I'd personally suggest playing your character and skilling the way you want until you get stuck, then respec and use the knowledge you've gained playing the Paladin and/or online guides / help from Reddit to build something that actually works. Remove ads and unlock special features, Diablo 2 Resurrected Patch 2.4 - New Runewords, Buffs, Nerfs and Bug Fixes. Thats the build. However, I don't want to discourage you from playing a Zealot - you just might have to spend a little more time looking for some better items, maybe you can find a nice weapon to get you through normal and upgrade your other gear along the way. But thats a matter for later. Holy Fire is a great aura for the early game, and if you upgrade your gear, it can probably get you through normal difficulty, but should probably be replaced in nightmare at the latest. 
Max 5 hits at SLv4, which should be the most you invest. If I understand correctly you need to assign your aura to your right click and your attack skill to your left click. A Hammerdin uses Concentration for extra damage. To craft it youll need any 2-socket staff (must be exactly 2-sockets) and the Tir and Ral runes - both of which are easily farmed from the Countess in Act 1. The guide for Diablo 2 Resurrected seeks to help new players find their footing in Sanctuary by providing build advice and information on gear and how to farm it. However, Smite is very weak in normal PvM / killing groups of monsters, and its damage is very low and highly dependent on your gear - its base damage depends on your shield (as a Paladin, Smite damage is one of the stats displayed on your shields), and most damage Smiters do against bosses (or things like the Ubers) comes from having the Crushing Blow ability on your gear, which deals damage based on the target's health and can be triggered by Smite. I'd farm for a bit to find something better, or check if there's an easy runeword you can make to bump up your damage. Press J to jump to the feed. Fanaticism and Holy Shock aren't available yet, and waiting for level 24 for a single point in Holy Shock won't really make a huge difference either. A very simple build, youve got two goals: get a point into Zeal so you can whack enemies in the head with some sort of weapon or another (which is mostly a means by which to transmit fire damage via Holy Fire) and drop most of the Skill Points you earn into Holy Fire. You must be Lv13 to equip it. So for the hanmerdin and concentration aura in confused, doesnt the auras effects disappear after clicking out of it? Play through the rest of the game until Act 4. For the Steel runeword you just need a one-handed axe, mace or sword with exactly two sockets. Synergy for Holy Fire. Will try again! Sorry, this post was deleted by the person who originally posted it. I'm not sure if your version already has skill synergies - if so, you also max out Blessed Hammer's synergies (Holy Bolt, Vigor, Blessed Aim). Really struggling to find a weapon with good damage this early, feels like Holy Fire is doing all of my damage lol. It also doesnt hurt that the Paladin matures into two of the most useful, popular builds in the game, the Hammerdin and the Smiteadin. As pretty much every Paladin build, you also want to max out Holy Shield. The weapon doesn't really matter, you really just want something fast so it hits as quickly as possible. Stealth isnt great for the Fire Auradin in particular, but it does have numerous mods that are just useful in general, and you probably arent going to find anything better. Get Strength high enough to wear any gear you want. The Smiter is a bit too specialized for general PvM, being more a single-target warrior with little in the way of crowd control, while the Hammeradin doesnt gain access to its core skill - Blessed Hammer - until Lv18, and arguably doesnt become a proficient killer until a bit later on. Thank you for the detailed response! So how does it help? When your kill rate becomes tedious, respec to another build. And if so, does it make sense to max base skill before the ones that add bonuses? Of all the starting characters, the Paladin is one of the sturdiest, mostly due to having a special class of shields exclusive to their vocation (shields that tend to come with high Block Chance and Resistances, we might add). Regarding combat skills and auras - as u/DOMESPLITTER69 has said, you want to assign your aura to your right-click skill and your combat skill to the left click. You must be Lv17 to equip it. Boost when you cant put points into Holy Fire. You never need to actually use this skill. Multi-hit attack. If you feel like you need more hits, invest a few more points. You do that by clicking on the attack / skills next to your health and mana orbs, which will open a skill window (IIRC you can also open this window by pressing "S" by default). If you can correct your Aura settings you can use Holy Fire all the way through NM Act 1 (Andy takes extra damage from Fire). Prereq for Zeal. Plus, if you plan to switch to a Hammeradin at some point, Stealth will probably be the best armor you have until you get Skin of the Vipermagi You need any 2-socket body armor to serve as the base. I will try again after work. There is also the Auradin, but as Holy Freeze doesn't deal a lot of damage, he generally uses Holy Shock as his main aura but can definitely use Holy Freeze as a backup. You must be Lv19 to equip it. In the case of the Hammeradin, its a great class for clearing out areas, while the Smiteadin is one of - if not the - best builds to take down Ubers with. So in practice, what you want to do is have your Zeal, Blessed Hammer and things like Smite on your left skill / mouse button, and switch between different auras on your right skill. It doesn't appear in any feeds, and anyone with a direct link to it will see a message like this one. It uses maxed out Blessed Hammer and the Concentration aura to increase the damage. This subreddit is for people who want to discuss Diablo 2 and Diablo II Resurrected. As for the Paladin in general - it really depends on what you want to play.
When this stops working, respec.
A Steel Flail (Tir + El) might prove desirable, which requires 41 Strength and 35 Dexterity, but you could just as easily go with a Leaf staff (Tir + Ral) and avoid any Strength/Dexterity requirements. I'd say Holy Fire + Zeal even with some misplaced skillpoints here and there should be strong enough to get you into act 4 or even nightmare, but you can also respec earlier - however, level 19 is probably a little early to get much out of Blessed Hammer + Concentration. So makes sense that Zeal isnt very good with my shit gear haha. Despite being Sorceress-focused, Holy Fire counts as a Fire Skill and will suitably get a boost from this weapon. If your Attack Rating starts making it difficult to hit enemies, spend some points into Dexterity, but honestly, by the time this becomes an issue you may be wanting to respec anyways.
Primary damage-dealer, adds fire damage to weapon attacks and as a passive AoE. Very helpful :), Couldnt get the right click left click assign to work, now Im worried that was not a thing in the original versions? Youll need to grab Sacrifice to unlock Zeal (Lv12), and while you wait for Holy Fire to unlock at Lv6, you might as well dump points into Resist Fire, which is one of Holy Fires few synergies. As a single skill point in Smite is enough to ensure it never misses and can trigger your Crushing Blow, you don't really need to max it out but can still use it in any Paladin build (again, depending on your gear). Why not join us today?
Since you dont gain access to Holy Freeze until Lv18 and Holy Shock until Lv24, well settle on using Holy Fire as our beginner build.
Most of your damage is going to come from the aura bonus to weapons. Just using the magical and rare items that drop should suffice, but you can also make use of some cheap, early-game runewords, like a Steel (Tir + El) weapon, a Leaf (Tir + Ral) staff and Stealth (Tal + Eth) armor.