Holy Bolt

A bolt of divine energy that damages demons and undead or heals allies.

Holy Bolt is a level 6 Paladin Combat skill with no prerequisite; it opens Blessed Hammer. It is a cast missile, not an attack: it carries magic damage that only demons and undead take, and it heals any ally it passes through. Two numbers decide it: the damage, 8–16 at level 1 and 196–220 at level 20, and the healing, 1–6 at level 1 and 39–82 at level 20.

The numbers

The magic damage comes from the EMin/EMax columns and their five brackets. Minimum: 8 at level 1, then +8 a level to level 8, +10 to 16, +13 to 22, +16 to 28 and +20 past that. Maximum: 16 at level 1, then +8, +11, +15, +18 and +23 over the same brackets. The healing is Param1 1 plus Param2 2 a level for the minimum and Param3 6 plus Param4 4 a level for the maximum. Mana is 2 at level 1 and rises a sixteenth a level: 3.19 at level 20. All of these lines read lvl, so +skills from gear count.

How it works

Holy Bolt is cast at Casting Speed speed, so Faster Cast Rate drives it, and it needs no hit check. The Basin's page sets out the current game's behaviour:

• A bolt pierces every target until it expires, healing each eligible ally and damaging each eligible enemy it crosses, and passing through everything else.
• It heals allies of any kind, including a Necromancer's skeletons, mages and revives, and other players. It does not heal a converted monster.
• It damages hostile undead and demons. It does not pierce a demon's magic resistance, so a magic-immune demon takes nothing; the Basin names the Pit Lords of the Furnace of Pain and Tristram as the only magic-immune demons in the unmodified game. Animals take no damage at all.

The damage is magic damage, reduced by the target's magic resistance (Resistances and Immunities, Dealing Elemental Damage). There is no physical part, so nothing on your weapon and no leech applies.

The Basin's page notes that the 2.4 patch notes promised a 50% damage increase that did not happen; the table above is the current damage.

Synergies and +skills

Two skills feed Holy Bolt, both read as hard points (blvl):

• Fist of the Heavens: +50% magic damage a point (Param8, the row's EDmgSymPerCalc).
• Prayer: +20% life healed a point (Param7, inside the healing calcs above).

Twenty hard points in Fist of the Heavens add +1,000% to the bolt's damage; twenty in Prayer raise a level 20 heal from 39–82 to 195–410. Holy Bolt in turn gives Fist of the Heavens +15% Holy Bolt damage a hard point: the bolts that Fist of the Heavens fires are its own missiles, so points here raise them. The Basin's older page listed Blessed Hammer as a third synergy; the current table has no such line.

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, but Holy Bolt damages only demons and undead, so it never damages a player. It heals an allied player for the listed value.

Build notes

• Level 20 reads 196–220 magic damage and 39–82 healing for 3.19 mana; +skills add up to 23 damage a level.
• The damage synergy is worth more than a hard point here: a point in Fist of the Heavens is +50% of the bolt's damage, while a hard point in Holy Bolt past level 20 adds 16–18 damage.
• The bolt pierces and heals on the way, so one cast down a line of allies and undead does both jobs at once.