Time: 2025-12-13
Welcome to the Judgement Paladin Leveling Guide! This build focuses on triggering Judgement as often as possible to create intense holy fireworks all over the screen. Thanks to the chaining back and forth between enemies by effects such as Judgement Day and Judicator, this build excels especially at AoE clearing.
The progression is smooth from the start but the power really ramps up a lot later on. The goal is to eventually spam Spear of the Heavens non-stop, each carrying a Judgement that can interact with other effects. Until the full setup is online, the build leverages Blessed Hammer to hit both the Spear and enemies for more explosions.
Thanks to Rally, health becomes resource by tapping into the arsenal of heals this class offers. Holy Light Aura, Consecration and effects like Longevity, you can spam this ability to never run out of Faith while zooming around the map at movement cap nearly from the start, exploding entire packs with Judgement chain reactions.
There are more things to unlock explained in the Judgement Paladin Endgame Guide, where this build progresses to a state where it lights up your entire screen all the time. If you're interested to find out how it works, put on your sunglasses, pre-order a backup GPU and let's dive in to see what the Judgement Paladin is all about!
This build guide takes you up to level 60 and gets you started for the early Endgame on Torment 1 difficulty. If you're looking for in-depth Endgame guides, check out our Paladin Guides section!
Check out our Leveling Builds Tier List to see how this build compares to others.
The Season 11 theme is Sanctification. Sanctifying your gear at Hadriel's Forge has the chance to add new Stats, Greater Affixes or even Legendary Aspects while rendering the item Unmodifiable. You can no longer Temper, Masterwork, Enchant, add Sockets or Imprint Sanctified items, but you can swap out Gems and Runes. This is the final big gamble on your gear, with a small chance of swapping an Affix to something undesirable. For leveling, this feature is largely irrelevant, but it becomes an important progression step in the endgame. Make sure to have a replacement item, or to Sanctify potential gear instead of the items you've equipped.
By defeating the Lesser Evils Andariel, Duriel, Azmodan and Belial, you unlock Corrupted Essences. These increase rewards and danger in Undercity, Helltide, World Bosses and The Pit, respectively.
Progressing the Seasonal Reputation board unlocks Purified Essences, which also increase rewards while granting a small character buff. Both Corrupted and Purified can be slotted in for even more rewards.
Feel free to adjust these choices as needed to optimize your farming strategy and to leave out Corrupted Essences if you are feeling overwhelmed by their downsides!
To start off, you have to put a point into Basic Skills to unlock the other sections. Holy Bolt is your choice to generate resources because it can apply Judgement and Vulnerable for extra damage, giving you a great early game tool.
Blessed Hammer is the Core Skill of choice. It does moderate damage and is only used for supplemental output for now, but becomes more important later once you unlock your Judicator Oath.
Almost any Paladin build makes use of Auras in some way. They each have both a passive and active effect so you profit from them at all times.
Holy Light Aura deals damage passively, has a big active burst and generates Fortify with Rite of Mercy.
Defiance Aura offers Unstoppable, Resolve generation and healing via Rite of Prayer (works with Mercenaries).
Fanaticism Aura is a great replacement for Holy Light Aura once you have gathered enough healing and Fortify from other sources, giving you massive damage buffs (usually in endgame).
Rally is a staple for early game Paladin mobility and resource recovery. With it, your health becomes a resource that fuels your Core Skills. Thanks to the various healing abilities available to the class, you can use this every few seconds to go fast and nearly ignore your Basic Skill. Ideally, look for items with Life per Second or Life on Hit and hold onto them to improve this combo even further.
Consecration helps with spamming Rally, deals moderate damage and applies the Weaken debuff. This not only improves survivability but also damage thanks to passives such as Break the Line.
At level 15, you unlock your class mechanic called Oaths. There are four possible options, each defining a specific archetype: Zealot, Juggernaut, Judicator, Disciple. Generally, there aren't any choices to think about as most builds quite clearly synergize with one of them.
In this case, Judicator is the obvious fit. This is one of the key puzzle pieces that scales Judgement into an AoE powerhouse. Your marks now deal area damage, can be scaled with various aspects and other effects and can be detonated with Judicator tagged Core Skills. At this point, focus on applying Judgement with Holy Bolt and then blow up the pack with Blessed Hammer.
At around level 20 (without extra points), Spear of the Heavens enters the scene to ascend as the real star of the show by speccing out of Holy Light Aura. Now, your marks aren't just bound to the enemies. You can cast this wherever you want and even stack multiple Spears to detonate with Blessed Hammer. This helps tremendously with single target damage because you get a lot more explosions than before, so cast this skill on cooldown (which resets quickly thanks to Enhanced Spear of the Heavens).
Judgement Day is your Key Passive of choice. This is another important upgrade that makes Judgement spread between enemies, unlocking chain reactions between them and your Spear of the Heavens. Note that this buff only lasts a few seconds and may be lost temporarily in boss fights.
At this point, the leveling setup is complete and all of the key synergies are unlocked. On the way to level 60, you gain many extra points that go into various offensive and defensive passives or max out certain skills. Check out the skills progression above to see where to put your points as you go, but feel free to deviate from the order displayed as necessary if you need more healing or resources earlier (e.g. Longevity, Renewal, Parry).
The endgame build looks different from the leveling build due to additional progression steps later, leading to several adjustments on the skill tree as you acquire more Aspects and Uniques. To find out more details, check out the Judgement Paladin Endgame Guide.