Fist of the Heavens

Lightning strikes your target as holy bolts seek out nearby enemies.

Fist of the Heavens is the Paladin's level 30 Combat skill; it requires Blessed Hammer and Conversion. It is a cast: a bolt of lightning strikes the target, and a spread of holy bolts flies out from it at every hostile nearby. Two numbers decide it: the lightning, 150–200 at level 1 and 675–725 at level 20, and the 0.4-second casting delay that sets how often you can throw it.

The numbers

The lightning comes from the EMin/EMax columns and their five brackets, both ends at the same rate: 150–200 at level 1, then +15 a level to level 8, +30 to 16, +45 to 22, +55 to 28 and +65 past that, so the range is always 50 wide. The number of holy bolts is the row's calc4, Param1 6 plus Param2 one a level: 25 at level 20. The row also carries heal columns (calc1 and calc2: 1–6 at level 1, +2 a level each) that the tooltip does not print. Mana is 25 at every level, and the casting delay is the row's localdelay 10 frames, 0.4 seconds, at every level. Every line reads lvl, so +skills from gear count.

The holy bolts' own damage is a missile stat that the repo's excel bank does not carry for the current game, so it cannot be computed here. The Basin's page prints its older values: 40–50 at level 1 and 226–236 at level 20.

How it works

Fist of the Heavens is cast at Casting Speed speed, so Faster Cast Rate matters up to the delay, and it needs no hit check. The lightning is lightning damage, reduced by the target's lightning resistance (Resistances and Immunities, Dealing Elemental Damage). The Basin's page gives the shape:

• One holy bolt is cast at every hostile target, including the selected one, within a radius of the target (the row's aurarangecalc 20, which the Basin prints as 13 1/3 yards), undead or not. The selected target's own bolt is fired toward the player, so it only hits if the target moves that way.
• With no target selected, one is sought within 5 1/3 yards of the cursor and the nearest is struck.
• The holy bolts damage only undead and demons and pierce their magic resistance: the Basin says the magic damage is applied as though they had 0% magic resistance, even when magic immune.
• The bolts do not pierce a hostile undead, but their own next-delay normally stops more than one bolt from colliding with a single target. They do not damage a Necromancer's skeletons, mages or revives.
• The delay is local in the current game: 0.4 seconds on this skill only, where the Basin's older page had a 1-second global delay.

The delay is the throttle: at 0.4 seconds, no cast rate gets you past 2.5 casts a second, and the mana is 25 a cast.

Synergies and +skills

Two skills feed Fist of the Heavens, both read as hard points (blvl):

• Holy Shock: +7% lightning damage a point (Param8, the row's EDmgSymPerCalc).
• Holy Bolt: +15% holy bolt damage a point, on the bolts this skill fires.

Twenty hard points in Holy Shock add +140% to the lightning; twenty in Holy Bolt add +300% to the bolts. Fist of the Heavens in turn gives Holy Bolt +50% magic damage a hard point, so the two skills feed each other. The Paladin has no masteries; Lightning Skill Damage from items is the other multiplier on the lightning.

Against players

A player's hit on another player is cut to 17% of its value (difficultylevels.txt PlayerDamagePercentVSPlayer) before anything else, see Player versus Player; that applies to the lightning strike. The holy bolts damage only undead and demons, so they never damage a player. The Basin's page adds nothing else about players.

Build notes

• Level 20 reads 675–725 lightning and 25 holy bolts for 25 mana, at most every 0.4 seconds; each +skill past 20 adds 45–65 lightning and one bolt.
• The two synergies pull in opposite directions: Holy Shock is +7% a point to the lightning, Holy Bolt +15% a point to the bolts, and twenty in Holy Bolt also gets +1,000% back from your twenty in Fist of the Heavens.
• Against undead and demons the bolts ignore magic resistance entirely; against anything else only the lightning lands.