| Overall: A+ | Early: A+ |
| Late: S | NMM: S |
| Adventure: A+ | Arena: S- |
| Clash: S- | Boss Brawl: B+ |
Dark Paladin is an old-school sleeper OP hero.
He's the kind of hero that you don't realize is so good until you understand how he is supposed to be played.
Before that, he seems a little bit like a kind of more damaged, dealing version of Paladin, but it turns out that his whole key to his kit is disruption. Making him more of a tanky version of Clockwork Mage.
But that doesn't happen until you unlock his two-star forge.
When you first get him, he isn't going to be great because his base kit isn't all that fantastic. But every level up in skills and forge turns him into a monster.
So today we're going to shine a light on exactly what makes the Dark Paladin so dark and mysterious.
The leader of my first guild, Slayer X, was a dark paladin main. I never understood then how he was able to clear all of Nightmare Mode, Hard Mode, and Normal Mode with Dark Paladin. The hero seemed underwhelming to my noob self.
But I wasn't paying enough attention to his forge.
Once you get him forged up, he becomes a beast. His 2* forge offers a 100% chance to freeze enemies on a hit for one second, giving him guaranteed disruption. You add a slow at his five-star forge, and you can keep the horde stunned and slowed for an extended period of time.
This combination makes him incredibly strong in things like the end of hard Mode, Nightmare Mode, and Hero Clash, where you can keep horde away from you and deal additional damage.
The 5* forge is when you can really push late-game content.
DP is built around his soul mechanic. Every 3rd attack from the clayore spreads souls. His souls are what get beefed up from the forge.
His skills revolve around souls, as does his weapon evolution. That means that anything that improves soul damage and utility is a buff across every aspect of the Dark Paladin. When heroes can synergize their forge and skills, they become very strong.
And that is what DP does. His skills and weapon synergize with his two-star and his five-star forge.
He doesn't offer any kind of healing, which I thought might be the reason why he was so strong originally, but he does have a lot of innate tankiness from his globals and faction bonuses.
That combo makes him tanky enough to take advantage of the other Shadow Syndicate faction bonuses. Those are generally pretty heavy on damage, but light on tankiness.
Furthermore, he has a fantastic set of level innate level progression improvements. With projectiles, penetration, and cooldown, he gets enough from levels to clear Normal Mode content with ease.
It's interesting how, again, this is another example where skill forge ability interacts with a skill more so than the actual weapon itself, causing the hero to be incredibly strong. So, a very strong late game here is that you can actually use an early game once you get that forge up and get the freeze going, which is what it is. Yeah, his innate abilities are all very, very strong.
For Dark Paladin, like most other heroes, you run the HvH standard max damage per second (DPS) gear build in Normal and Hard Mode. Even though he's tanky, you want to clear horde before they clear you:
| Helm: Rogue | Gloves: Rogue |
| Chest: Rogue | Necklace: Rogue |
| Boots: Ranger | Ring: Rogue Early Into Wizard At Ascended |
He's tanky enough, you could try a Flag Pole build like Knight if you want to:
| Helm: Knight | Gloves: Knight |
| Chest: Knight | Necklace: Knight |
| Boots: Knight | Ring: Knight |
Dark Paladin really shines in the late game once you get 2* Forge. That means Nightmare Mode is his home.
For Nightmare Mode, you want to run the Werewizard Build:
| Helm: Wizard | Gloves: Knight |
| Chest: Wizard | Necklace: Wizard |
| Boots: Knight | Ring: Wizard |
You can run a build that combines the two for Hero Clash and Hard Mode Arena as your power dictates. Although those modes are more forge-dependent.
Dark Paladin can push Arena when forged to 2* forge. You want to maximize starting upgrades in this mode, so go with the Arena Cheese build:
| Helm: Noble | Gloves: Rogue |
| Chest: Wizard | Necklace: Rogue |
| Boots: Ranger | Ring: Rogue |
You can run a build that combines the two for Arena or Hero Clash as your power dictates. Although those modes are more forge-dependent.
Dark Paladin's kit revolves around souls. They scale off projectiles and penetration, so duplicator tome is core to his build. Furthermore, he evolves his weapon off of duplicator tome, so that's a must once you have 4* forge.
For now, go with the standard max DPS build
You can substitute in better special weapons like Mighty Borer if you have them.
Early in the game, substitute out Chain Lightning or Crossbow for Dragon's Breath to maximize damage.
Tomes to complement the build are:
Cooldown
Area
Duplicator
Damage
Crticial
You don't evolve Crossbow because the increased number of projectiles apply a ton of vulnerability to targets that increases your overall DPS more than the evolution to Crossbow would. The Crit Tome also plays into the Rogue 4x multiplier gear.
Dark Paladin shines in Nightmare Mode. Nightmare mode is much more focused on survival, so your build becomes:
Armor Tome
Life Tome
Arcane Staff
Duration Tome
Duplicator Tome
Damage Tome
Bombs
Crossbow
Boomerang
Boomerang
You need Arcane Staff at 4* forge to prioritize it; otherwise, remove it from the build entirely.
Special weapons like 4* forger Borer are great. As are 5* Lantern, Smoke Bomb, and Slingshot. But most people don't own these.
You only want Divine Aura at 2* and Boomerang at 3* for the cooldown reduction.
If you're doing nightmare content, you probably have done enough Arenas to upgrade bombs or crossbow to 2*. They both get disruption chance at that point in the form of freezes or stuns. You should use whichever is at 2*.
More details on that build here.
On the jewel front, use standard max DPS jewels through most of the game. That makes the priority getting to 60% cooldown in the detail screen with this general jewel priority:
Ultimate Charge
Ultimate Duration
Vulnerability
Cooldown til 60%
Projectile (P)
Area
Explosion
Run cooldown jewels until it hits 60% in the detail window. You cap cooldown at 60% because you get 30% from cooldown tome. 90% is the max cooldown cap in Normal, Hard, Arena, Boss, and Guild modes.
Area has a soft cap on Area Of Effect when the inner ring of 4* Fire Orbs hits the side of the screen. But that's not really a worry until you have Heroic gear.
You have some leeway here to use much higher-level jewels instead of lower-level cooldown jewels. For example, I'd consider a level 7 Projectile (P) over a level 1 cooldown. You can always test which does more damage in your game by doing the same run with the same gear and weapons but changing the jewels.
In nightmare mode, you're looking to change it up for survivability, so things like:
Weakness
Vulnerability
Health Regen
Area of Effect
Evasion
You need 2* forge on Dark Paladin's weapon to start doing NMM content. After that, the 5* forge will help a lot. Jewels are less important to his survivability.
As a late-game focused hero, the Forge is key to the DP's success. As I have been saying all guide, you need his 2* Forge to turn him into a beast.
Soul Volley or Soul Strike are both excellent choices. I would go Right for Boss Brawl and Left for everything else.
This forge level is a massive power spike for DP. Go right for Ice Wraiths in every mode but Boss Brawl. That 100% Freeze chance is amazing.
A top 2 global in the game. Push this as fast as you can.
Spawns Souls in a Vortex around Dark Pakadin, haunting enemies. A nice damage boost.
Haunt adds a 100% chance to add a slow to the Dark Paladin's attack, which is amazing. This is an always Left situation.
This dude is all about souls all of the time. His skills amp the damage and utility of his souls.
Enemies hit by the souls become cursed, spreading 100% of the damage taken by the Claymore to nearby enemies for 5s.
Every 8th attack with the main weapon, the Dark Paladin doubles the amount of souls for one attack.
Killing enemies fills a meter. When full, shoots souls in all directions that do increased damage with more penetration and projectile speed.
Pets for Dark Paladin in most content are straightforward. Go with your highest rarity pet as main and next two highest as passives.
Here's a detailed breakdown of the best main pets and best passive pets to help you think through your choices.
For NMM and HM Arena, you want to run your highest rarity pet as a main and two snails as passives for more HP.
Blazetail and Crystalsuars are the two best pets for this, followed by Basilisk and then Storm Gryphon.
