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Diablo 4 boasts many incredibly powerful Paladin builds, with top-tier players reaching level 146 in The Pit. However, for average players, such high levels aren't the primary concern; the enjoyment of the process is more important.

Zenith Paladin build is undoubtedly the most satisfying Paladin build currently available. It automatically resets cooldowns, allowing for near-permanent continuous casting of core abilities. Furthermore, these abilities can be converted into movement skills, enabling jumps across the map.

Core Gameplay

Zenith Paladin build's greatest strength lies in its similar exhilarating gameplay to Zeal Paladin build, while maintaining self-healing while dealing high damage.

It deals considerable damage to both single targets and large groups of monsters. Combined with its excellent mobility, it even rivals the effect of continuously using Arbiter and Falling Star. This build offers two distinct playstyles depending on Zenith enhancement path. To unleash its full potential and achieve the smoothest experience, you should choose Empyrean Edge enhancement path.

For a simpler approach, you can replace the enhancement path in the previous version with Sermon of Steel and replace Flickerstep with Ghostwalker Aspect.

This build is very straightforward; it doesn't rely on Diablo 4 items. Its core requirements are simply 100% critical strike chance, 100% bonus attack speed, and maximizing skill levels.

Zealot Oath

Zealot Oath grants your attacks an additional percentage of your original attack damage based on your Fervor stacks.

This effect has a bug, but it's a benign one. It inexplicably doubles the damage. This means that if you have Aspect of the Zealot's Covenant legendary effect on your amulet, it's the maximum damage boost you can get.

It increases both the base Echo damage and Echo damage multiplier. It also increases your Fervor stacks from 3 to 4, meaning you'll get 4 echoes of Zenith's initial damage and 4 echoes of Zenith's secondary damage.

It also interacts with Aspect of Jacques' Fervor. The synergy is excellent; the latter increases critical strike damage based on your Fervor stacks. Each additional Fervor stack increases the critical strike damage bonus from 60% to 80%.

Resplendence

Another core element of this build is Resplendence Glyph, which reduces the cooldown of your aura abilities.

This build incorporates numerous auras, not just for increased damage, but also to reset cooldowns when there's no Flickerstep or the rotation is unexpectedly interrupted. If the rotation is interrupted, you can reduce the cooldown by casting an aura to resume your rotation.

Aspect of Apogeic Furor

The effect of Aspect of Apogeic Furor is that every 10 uses of your ultimate ability reset all cooldowns. This allows you to easily reuse all your abilities repeatedly. Sometimes, Zenith can also reset cooldowns automatically by killing weakened enemies. So, although these mechanics seem quite complex, once you get into the rhythm, you'll find the controls very simple because you can almost constantly unleash abilities.

These are the core items needed for this build. You can adjust them based on your available gear. Let's look at the differences between the two versions.

Empyrean Edge Version

Empyrean Edge enhancement transforms Zenith into a movement skill. Besides providing 25% critical strike chance, it also inflicts Weakens on enemies. Attacking weakened enemies triggers significant damage bonuses.

With cooldown reduction, after using Zenith, it enters a cooldown of approximately 5 seconds. This is where the cooldown reduction provided by Flickerstep comes in handy. Simply dodging Evade through an enemy will reduce your ultimate ability's cooldown by 4 seconds.

Therefore, this playstyle essentially involves alternating between Zenith and Evade. This build works even without relying on mythic items and sanctified gear; they simply raise the potential of this build.

How to Reduce Zenith's Cooldown?

Zenith's base cooldown is 25 seconds, with a maximum cooldown reduction of 75%, meaning a minimum cooldown of 6.25 seconds.

There's an affix in the Tempering affix pool that can reduce Zenith's cooldown by up to 35%. Simply obtain two such forging affixes on your gear, and then stack cooldown reduction on other regular gear slots. Of course, this requires a lot of materials and Diablo 4 gold.

Additionally, there's a node in Paragon board that provides an additional 30% cooldown reduction after moving. So even if your gear isn't top-tier, you can still reach the minimum cooldown reduction.

Zenith Paladin Skills

• Advance: No Enhanced
• Fanaticism Aura: Enhanced Fanaticism and Rite of Vengeance
• Defiance Aura: Enhanced Defiance and Rite of Might
• Holy Light Aura: Enhanced Holy Light and Rite of Judgement
• Falling Star: Enhanced Falling Star and Fanatic Descent
• Aegis: Enhanced Aegis and Stay Resolute
• Zenith: Enhanced Zenith and Empyrean Edge

Zenith Paladin Equipment

• Helm: Heir of Perdition
• Chest armor: Shroud of False Death
• Gloves: Revelator's Aspect
• Pants: Aspect of the Indomitable
• Boots: Flickerstep
• Amulet: Aspect of the Zealot's Covenant
• Ring 1: Aspect of Utmost Glory
• Ring 2: Aspect of Jacques' Fervor
• Mainhand: Griswold's Opus
• Offhand: Aspect of Apogeic Furor

Sermon of Steel Version

Sermon of Steel build deals significantly less damage per attack, but allows for truly continuous, mindless casting. As long as you reach the 100% attack speed requirement of the first attack speed tier, you can cast the skill indefinitely.

However, this build currently has some bugs. Zenith's Unstoppable state should have lasted the entire duration, but in reality, it disappears between attacks, potentially leaving you vulnerable to crowd control.

Zenith Paladin Skills

• Advance: No Enhanced
• Fanaticism Aura: Enhanced Fanaticism and Rite of Vengeance
• Defiance Aura: Enhanced Defiance and Rite of Prayer
• Holy Light Aura: No Enhanced
• Condemn: Enhanced Condemn and Shepherd the Flock
• Falling Star: Enhanced Falling Star and Freefall
• Zenith: Enhanced Zenith and Sermon of Steel

Zenith Paladin Equipment

• Helm: Heir of Perdition
• Chest Armor: Shroud of False Death
• Gloves: Revelator's Aspect
• Pants: Aspect of the Indomitable
• Boots: Ghostwalker Aspect
• Amulet: Aspect of Jacques' Fervor
• Ring 1: Aspect of the Zealot's Covenant
• Ring 2: Aspect of Utmost Glory
• Mainhand: Griswold's Opus
• Offhand: Vehement Brawler Aspect

Even though this build isn't the strongest among paladin builds, it's enough to easily reach level 100 of The Pit. For casual players, besides being very fun to play, this build also progresses very quickly and is definitely worth trying.

Diablo 4 Season 11 has been live for almost a month now, how has your experience been? While it's still too early to judge the overall quality of the season, you've probably already noticed the differences in value between the various gameplay mechanics.

Generally, the most eye-catching aspect of each season is the exclusive seasonal mechanic, but in Season 11, this rule seems to have been broken.

Below, based on current Diablo 4 experience and player feedback, we will analyze and summarize the best and most useless mechanics in Season 11.

Escalating Nightmares is losing value

Besides various seasonal mechanics, Diablo 4 is actually composed of fundamental mechanics such as Nightmare Dungeons, Helltides, and different difficulty boss battles.

Sometimes, to enrich the playability of new seasons, the development team will update them. For example, in Season 9, a version of Nightmare Dungeons called Escalating Nightmares was added and has remained to this day.

The gameplay of this dungeon involves obtaining an Escalation Sigil and activating a chain of three Nightmare Dungeons. After defeating each dungeon boss, you are teleported to the next dungeon.

All dungeons in Escalating Nightmares have their own positive and negative affixes, which stack up to the last dungeon, making the final Astaroth boss battle more dangerous - and of course, the loot more abundant.

In Season 9, in addition to regular loot, more importantly, you could trigger Horadric Strongrooms in Escalating Nightmares to unlock the seasonal power Horadric Spells, and in Season 10, you could trigger Chaos Rifts battles to exchange for rewards.

Escalating Nightmares in S11

After entering Season 11, this dungeon is no longer associated with any seasonal mechanics or powers. Its only value is that you can farm Mythic Prankster affix to increase the chance of encountering Treasure Goblin Fancy Old Fedric, thus obtaining more Mythic drops.

The embarrassing thing is that due to the limited drop rate, the best way to obtain Mythic Prankster affix is to complete simpler daily tasks to obtain many regular Nightmare Sigils, and then salvage them to obtain Sigil Powder.

This powder can be crafted into new Sigils at Occultist along with gold. Although the crafting results are random, this method is much simpler.

As a result, Escalating Nightmares is no longer valuable, whether considering playability or the final benefits, to the point that most players chose to ignore it in Season 11.

Sanctification's reputation improves

In 2.5.0 PTR, players were not optimistic about the new Sanctification mechanism because its random and irreversible results could potentially ruin the gear they had painstakingly upgraded.

However, after further optimization by the development team, this situation has changed. Now, Sanctification can provide you with a wealth of advanced gear and build enhancement options without disrupting game balance.

Now, after upgrading your gear through the optimized Tempering and Masterworking, you can use Sanctification to add extra affixes, upgrade existing affixes and the quality of the item itself, or replace normal affixes with Sanctification affixes.

Although the results are still random and irreversible, the value ultimately added to the gear is much more stable than in PTR phase.

This means you'll be willing to invest more time farming and upgrading your gear, making better use of all related Diablo 4 gameplay and mechanics.

Therefore, although Divine Gifts are the seasonal feature of Season 11, Sanctification's more profound impact on the game experience has greatly overshadowed these gifts.

It's important to note that fully utilizing Sanctification requires sufficient gear. Therefore, if you currently lack enough gear, the fastest option is to buy Diablo 4 items at D4GOLD!

What kind of new mechanics are worth keeping?

From the player feedback on Escalating Nightmares and Sanctification in Season 11, it can be seen that, besides seasonal gameplay that is only a limited-time feature, it's not easy for other new content to become a core part of Diablo 4.

If a certain mechanism is intended to be preserved indefinitely, it must either consistently provide seasonal loot or have a low enough difficulty in obtaining loot to ensure you have enough motivation to play it.

And if it's a mechanism related to character enhancement, like Sanctification, it needs to ensure that the benefits it provides are valuable throughout the entire season while maintaining a balanced combat environment, not just a bunch of inflated numbers.

Because these requirements are not easy to meet, many Diablo 4 mechanics are constantly being added and removed. However, as things stand, Sanctification is more likely to be retained than Escalating Nightmares.

Unfortunately, there are rumors that Sanctification may only exist for one season and will be removed along with Divine Gifts with the release of Season 12. Many players are puzzled and disappointed by this and hope the development team will retain Sanctification.

To be honest, while Diablo 4's update pace is generally stable, it's always been quite slow in responding to player feedback. This makes it difficult to predict the future of Sanctification; all you can do is hope and wait.

2026 has arrived, and Diablo 4 has also announced its roadmap for the new year. The immediate future includes the return of leaderboards in mid-January, followed by new seasons and expansion.

Therefore, even if Sanctification isn't retained, there will be enough new content in the coming months to keep you entertained. So don't worry too much, just enjoy the game!

While Diablo 4 is the fourth installment in a great series, it has been compared to other games in the same genre since its release. The general consensus among players is that Diablo 4 is an excellent ARPG, but not the best.

More than two years have passed since its release, and Diablo 4 has undergone many changes, even adding a new class, Paladin, in Season 11. Many players have praised Season 11, so is Diablo 4 worth playing in 2026?

Leveling Up Stage

Diablo 4 excels among all ARPGs in its leveling up and new player tutorials. This is because players have many choices from the start.

You can choose to experience the campaign story with beautiful cutscenes (which they've always excelled at), or jump straight into the opens world for free exploration.

During leveling up, you can conquer Strongholds, participate in Legions events, challenge World Bosses, and experience various dynamic events. Helltides events, which occur every hour, are filled with random events and dense enemy encounters, and are a major source of enjoyment and the primary method for players to level up.

While the developers adjusted the difficulty of monsters in Season 11, they weren't as powerful as in Path of Exile, and they simply returned to their expected level and didn't significantly interfere with the leveling experience.

Early Endgame Stage

When players reach around level 60 and begin accumulating Paragon Points and challenging Torment Ranks, they enter the early endgame phase. At this point, the core activities can be summarized into four main categories (although there are others):

• The Pit: Used to upgrade Glyphs.
• Nightmare Dungeons: Acquire equipment and items like Diablo 4 gold.
• Infernal Horde: Provides XP, equipment, and materials.
• Kurast Undercity: Farming Runes.

These activity systems provide players with ways to obtain materials and equipment, and the overall process is smooth. From the start of leveling to experiencing the early endgame content, experienced players may only need one to two days. While these activities lack sufficient variability and room for modification, the player experience remains good at this stage.

Deep Endgame Stage

However, once the player character is fully developed and enters the true endless farming phase, Diablo 4's current endgame content lack reveals a significant weakness, which is precisely why Diablo 4 lacks competitiveness compared to similar games.

The core gameplay loop in the late game is extremely monotonous: either constantly challenging higher levels of The Pit to level up glyphs to 100 to test the character's limits, or collecting materials, summoning Lair Bosses (which generally don't survive more than 10 seconds), and then checking the loot. This cycle repeats endlessly, switching between different bosses.

The occasional World Bosses are insufficient to break this monotonous loop, constituting the entirety of the current Diablo 4 Season 11 late-game content, which is undoubtedly a weak point that needs improvement.

Diablo 4 needs a deep endgame experience similar to Atlas in Path of Exile or Monolith of Fate in Last Epoch, allowing players to customize their goals and immerse themselves in long-term gameplay. If the developers could add existing gameplay elements to a system like Atlas in exchange for improved endgame content in 2026 update, it would be well worth it.

Crafting System

Besides new classes, the biggest change in Season 11 is the significant overhaul of the crafting system, making it almost entirely deterministic, retaining only the final step's randomness.

If you want to craft a piece of equipment with two Greater Affixes, you first need to add a Legendary Aspect to the equipment, then add sockets through a jeweler- both are guaranteed to succeed.

You can choose to reforge an undesirable affix until you get the desired attribute, then use Temper to select and add a new affix from the provided affix library. Although one less affix is manually added compared to previous seasons, the overall strength remains essentially unchanged due to the increased affix count of items.

Masterworking allows you to progressively upgrade gear quality, with the chance to upgrade common affixes to Greater Affixes.

Sanctifying gear is the only non-deterministic step. After sanctification, all item attributes are locked, but a comprehensive stat boost is granted, with a chance to upgrade multiple affixes to Greater Affix level.

Through this series of steps, you can transform an initially ordinary piece of gear into a top-tier item with multiple Greater Affixes. This highly controllable crafting system further reduces the game's difficulty, allowing players to almost always craft the gear they need by the endgame.

While some would prefer more randomness, the current system is actually quite reasonable. However, Sanctification is a seasonal mechanic for Season 11, disappearing after the season ends, much like Chaos Armor in Season 10.

Retaining Sanctification and Chaos Armor as endgame content would be a great option, allowing players to strategically cultivate their gear in the endgame.

Is It Worth Playing?

Overall, Diablo 4 Season 11 continues to excel in its core gameplay and social co-op aspects, performing almost as well as Season 10 and well worth your time.

However, its shortcomings cannot be ignored. Besides the lack of endgame content, the current skill and build options for each class remain limited, restricting character build diversity and exploration enjoyment. Diablo 4 needs a deeper, more expansive skill tree or similar system to truly allow players to build their characters.

Encouragingly, the developers have revealed future update plans, including expanding the skill tree, adding fishing gameplay, more boss battles, a new endgame system, and classes for the next DLC. This indicates they are moving in the right direction.

Diablo 4 Season 11's performance proves the game is on the rise. If you're willing to enjoy a 1 to 2-week in 2026 start, enjoyable journey with friends, now is a great time to return.

After reaching level 60 with your leveling build, you enter endgame content, but this is only the beginning. You still need to level up and boost your Paragon level.

In previous seasons, you could continue using your leveling build to farm The Pit or Nightmare dungeons for leveling, but this isn't the most efficient method in Season 11. The latest leveling meta strategy is farming bosses.

Current XP Gain Status

In previous seasons, the core strategy for gaining XP in endgame was to farm a large number of monsters. The main methods were farming The Pit, Nightmare dungeons, or Helltide. However, this method has been significantly weakened in Season 11, with XP gained from The Pit almost halved.

On the other hand, the official XP gain from defeating bosses has been significantly increased, and bosses no longer have invincibility during phase transitions. This means that if your damage is high enough, you can complete a kill in about a minute, making boss farming the meta strategy for XP acquisition in Season 11.

If done correctly, leveling from level 0 to Paragon Level 300 can ideally take only about 25 hours, and even without peak efficiency, 2 to 3 days is enough to reach the maximum level.

Optimal XP Farming Strategy

Of all the bosses, Lair Boss Urivar is the most efficient for XP gain, as a single kill grants nearly 30 million XP. This is equivalent to the rewards from some higher-level bosses, such as Duriel and Andariel, and some other bosses offer even less XP.

However, this doesn't mean Urivar offers the most XP. Bosses like Uber Lilith and Azmodan offer even more XP, so why not choose them? This brings us to Urivar's other advantages.

While Duriel provides similar experience points to Urivar, its summoning animation is extremely long, significantly slowing down efficiency. Harbinger of Hatred provides even more experience, but its Lair Boss materials (3 Abhorrent Hearts) are relatively difficult to obtain. Bosses like The Beast in the Ice and Lord Zir offer very little XP.

Urivar is relatively simple among all Lair Bosses, and its summoning and entrance animations are extremely short, saving a significant amount of time. Furthermore, its materials are easier to collect compared to other Lair Bosses, requiring only 12 Judicator's Masks. This means that while you're farming XP, you can also obtain a large number of Diablo 4 gold, and even Mythic Unique items.

If you use an efficient Boss kill build, you can complete all steps - summoning, killing, and looting - within 15-20 seconds, theoretically achieving 3 kills per minute and gaining approximately 18 million experience points.

At this rate, approximately 1 billion experience points can be gained per hour, achieving a level 1 per hour even in the late game, far exceeding the efficiency of the nerfed The Pit.

How To Maximize Experience Gain?

Besides the XP provided by the boss itself, you can increase XP gain through other means, such as Elixir and Incense. Combining all the following bonuses, you can increase experience gain by up to approximately 50%.

Pool Of Reflection

Pool of Reflection can provide a +15% experience bonus for 60 minutes, and you can stack the refresh time.

You only need to use Forgotten Wisdom Key to open a specific Abandoned Mineworks dungeon. You can find Pool of Reflection within this dungeon, and simply click on it to obtain it. The key can be obtained from the rotating World Boss.

Elixir, Incense And Team

• Elixir: Provides a +5% experience bonus when using any magic potion.
• Incense: For example, incense that provides an +8% XP boost.
• Party Bonus: Gain extra XP by teaming up with other players, and the more players, the greater the XP boost.

How To Farm?

Solo farming is the fastest because you don't need to wait for teammates and can quickly summon and kill Urivar. However, to get the rewards, you need to prepare your own Lair Boss keys.

Team farming is the most economical. If everyone has a Lair Boss key, you get the reward with each kill, saving you time on other events. However, this requires coordination and may involve waiting time, causing your kill speed to be slower.

You need to obtain Pool of Reflection buff beforehand, then drink an Elixir, use Incense, and go to Urivar's location. Summon it and use Lair Boss key to open the chest (skip this step if you don't have the materials), then immediately summon it again and repeat the process.

Regarding build selection, simply choose suitable boss killer builds. I recommend using Blessed Shield Paladin (Captain America build) in Season 11 to farm bosses, and it has high damage, requires minimal skill, and is relatively easy.

If you plan to use this build, you'll need to collect Forgotten Wisdom Key and Judicator's Mask beforehand. This method allows you to quickly reach Paragon Level 300, preparing for the upcoming endgame, The Tower, which will be released in January, 2026.