D2R Ladder Season 2 Start Date & Best Build - Fist Of Heavens Build In Diablo 2 Ladder 2

Diablo 2 Resurrected Patch 2.4 brings a new paladin. The biggest change is now both demons and undead get damaged by holy bolt, which opens up a lot more monsters to crush with it. The damage is very solid from the fist of the heavens. Is fist of heavens paladin actually going to be like a good starting character for the second ladder for Diablo 2 Resurrected? What we're taking a look at today is the D2R ladder season 2 start date and the best ladder reset build. 

D2R Ladder Season 2 Release Date

If the creators keep to a 4-month reset, we predict the D2R ladder season 1 to expire around August 25, 2022. The start date of D2R ladder season 2 is expected to occur in early September 2022. 

D2R Ladder Season 2 Best Build Guide

The fist of heaven is crazy amazing. There are almost no cons with this build, it's all really a lot of pros and that's why this is going to be an incredibly popular ladder build for Diablo 2 Resurrected as well as the best D2R ladder season 2 build.

D2R Ladder Season 2 Fist of Heavens Paladin Build

Stats

Strength - 205

Dexterity - 132

Vitality - 182

Energy - 177

Skills

Defensive Auras - None

Offensive Auras - 15 Might, 16 Holy Fire, 15 Holy Freeze, 34 Holy Shock, 15 Thorns, 15 Sanctuary, 34 Conviction

Combat Skills - 17 Sacrifice, 17 Zeal, 17 Vengeance, 17 Conversion, 36 Holy Bolt, 17 Blessed Hammer, 36 Fist of Heavens, 17 Smite, 17 Charge, 17 Holy Shield

Gear

Axe - Call of Axe

Helm - Shako

Shield - Herald of Zakarum

Boot - Sandstorm Trek

Glove - Magefist

Armor - Enigma

Amulet - Mara’s Kaleidoscope

Belt - Arachnid Mesh

Ring - Stone of Jordan, Raven Frost

Pros & Cons of Starting D2R Ladder With Fist of Heavens

Cons

- Can be annoying very early

It can be annoying to start with this character because the skill you actually use for this build is a holy bolt, but you can't even get fist of heavens until level 30 which you're going to essentially be out of normal and that's very high. If you're going with a fewer hammers build, you can actually get that at level 18. So you can actually be throwing hammers way earlier than you can if you go with the fist of heavens. Therefore, it can be a little annoying to start. You're going to be going with sacrifice and then your next few points you're going to be kind of putting into things that don't necessarily help you a ton and they won't help you later on.

- Only good against undead and demons

It's not great at anything that is a regular monster that isn't undead or demon. It does get the lightning damage from the conviction of a direct shot, but in general, it is not particularly fast to do anything that isn't the undead or demons. Probably like 75% of everything in the whole game is undead or demon, so take that into consideration.

Pros

- Don’t have to respect during playthrough

You shouldn't really have to respect this character. It is a small pro. Respecting a character on a playthrough is kind of a given, so having to respec isn't necessarily a con. But not having to respec is a small pro.

- Has so many things to support your team

If you're running a sorceress, you're dealing out all your damage and killing stuff. Or if you're a barbarian you're getting up there and swinging but you're not really doing anything to necessarily directly help other people out besides fighting the monsters like everybody is. But with these types of builds on the paladin, you could be rocking things like salvation eventually. Even early on with this character, you could be doing might helping out the melee characters. There are a lot of different things with these auras. The auras can really help out all of your party. Let's not forget to mention the party support, obviously holy bolt you can actually heal people on your party when you hit him with that.

- Several different hybrid variations

This is a semi-kind of easy build in order to go into a hybrid type of build. Put one point in a smite and smite you don't necessarily need a lot of points into. You could literally just swap out your boots and start smiting a boss and chop down its health like crazy with all the crushing blow. With fist to heavens it's just fist of heavens, then the two synergies, holy bolt, and holy shot. So it's only 60 points for your to get your main skill fully synergized and maxed out. When you get higher level, you're going to be left with a ton of other skill points to put into all different types of different hybrid builds that people are going to end up coming up with.

- Nothing like redemption in any other class

This is kind of a pro for paladins in general. That is all these different auras but specifically, this redemption aura is absolutely amazing and totally slept on and not really talked about as much. But you always have to have this, you knock down monsters and all you do is you have up your mana over. After the monsters are down, you switch to redemption, the souls go up and you get all the life.

- Survivability

You will see how far away you can attack. If you can barely see it, you can toast them. You don't have to get right up in there and take them out. You can hit them from a long way away and not have a problem. You have all these different skills such as redemption to bring your health right back up. There are all different kinds of auras up. If you ever want to get down to perhaps salvation to help your all res but pally shields can have 45 all res on them. Inherently put a spirit in it, you can have a ton of resistance. It is not difficult on a paladin to max out your resistances. So the paladin just has a ton of survivability.

- Solid even with budget gear

Fist of heavens is a pretty good budget build. Anytime you've got a budget build, you're not going to be just slaughtering the entire game.

- FCR is not of huge importance, FOH has delayed casting anyways

The FCR isn't necessarily the most important like you don't have to hit 125 or the builds unusable.

- FCR very easy to get anyways on pally

We'll jump into another pro for this D2R FOH build. It's actually really easy to get enough faster cast rate to get essentially the highest breakpoint that you need to hit.

- New builds

It's a new build. New equals better. So if you are tired of going with that blizzard sorceress all the time, you're tired of going with the hammerdin, this is definitely a great option to start off Diablo 2 ladder season 2.  Buy Elden Ring runes to prepare for Diablo 2 Season 2 ladder start!