Sacrifice

Increased accuracy and damage at the cost of life.

Sacrifice is the Paladin's level 1 Combat skill, with no prerequisite, and the road to Zeal. It is a single melee attack that trades a share of the physical damage it deals for your own life. Two numbers decide it: the damage bonus, +180% at level 1 and +465% at level 20, and the self-damage, 8% of the physical damage you deal at level 1, shrinking to 2% at level 20.

The numbers

The damage bonus is Param1 180 as the baseline and Param2 +15 a level, so level 20 reaches 465% and a level 30 Sacrifice from +skills 615%. The attack-rating bonus is ToHit 20 plus LevToHit 7 a level: +153% at level 20. Both lines read lvl, so +skills on gear count. The mana column is 0 at every level; Sacrifice costs nothing.

The self-damage is the table's max(par6, par5 − lvl ÷ par3): Param5 8 as the baseline, minus one point for every three levels (Param3, integer division), never below Param6 1. That gives 8% at level 1, 5% at level 10, 2% at level 20 and 1% from level 22 on. This line also reads lvl, so +skills lower it. The Basin's page, from the older game, prints a flat 8% at every level; the current table is what the game uses.

How it works

Sacrifice is an ordinary melee attack: it needs a hit check against the target's defense (Chance to Hit), it uses the weapon's damage with the bonus applied as skill damage (Dealing Physical Damage), and it has no elemental part. What makes it different is the blood price, and the Basin's page spells out what the price is based on:

• The Paladin always bleeds when he swings, but the self-damage is only applied if the attack hits and deals physical damage. Against a physical immune the self-damage is zero.
• It is a share of the physical damage actually taken, not the damage you could have dealt: if 1,000 physical damage is available but only 100 is needed to kill the target, the self-damage is 8, not 80.
• Damage to Demons, Damage to Undead, Critical Strike and Deadly Strike do not apply to Sacrifice's physical damage, so they do not raise the self-damage either.
• Neither flat nor percentage damage reduction on your own gear reduces the self-damage, and being cursed with Amplify Damage or Decrepify does not raise it. Cursing the target does raise it, because the target takes more physical damage.

Life Stolen and Life Tap are applied after the self-damage. If the self-damage takes your life below zero you die before the leech heals you.

The Basin's advice follows from the rule: treat your maximum life as reduced by the self-damage share of your maximum physical damage, and keep the range between minimum and maximum damage narrow.

Synergies and +skills

Two skills feed Sacrifice, both read as hard points (blvl, so +skills do not help them):

• Redemption: +15% damage a point (Param8).
• Fanaticism: +5% damage a point (Param7).

Twenty hard points in Redemption add +300% and twenty in Fanaticism add +100%, so a maxed Sacrifice with both reads +865%. Sacrifice in turn gives Zeal +12% damage a hard point. The Paladin has no masteries; the self-damage has no synergy.

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. The self-damage is a share of the physical damage actually dealt, so it shrinks with the hit. The Basin's page adds nothing else about players.

Build notes

• Level 20 reads +465% damage, +153% attack rating and 2% self-damage, for no mana. +skills past 20 keep adding 15% a level and push the self-damage to its 1% floor at level 22.
• The self-damage is paid from life before leech heals you, so a wide damage range is the thing to avoid; the Basin recommends Life Tap over Life Leech because the curse is not cut by difficulty leech penalties.
• Hard points in Redemption are worth 15% a point to Sacrifice, the same as a hard point in Sacrifice itself; hard points in Zeal get 12% a point from every point here.