Sanctuary

When active, aura damages the undead and knocks them back.

Sanctuary is a level 24 Paladin Offensive Aura that requires Thorns and Holy Freeze and opens Conviction. It is the Paladin's answer to the undead: a pulse of magic damage every two seconds to every undead in its radius, a knockback on each of them, and for the caster a bonus to damage and attack rating against undead. Two numbers decide it: the pulse, 8–32 at level 1 and 88–216 at level 20 at melee range, and the damage bonus, +150% at level 1 and +720% at 20.

The numbers

The pulse comes from the EMin/EMax columns and their five brackets at the row's HitShift 8: the minimum is 8 at level 1, +4 a level to level 8, +4 to 16, +5 to 22, +5 to 28 and +6 past that; the maximum is 16 at level 1, then +4, +5, +6, +6 and +7 over the same brackets. That is 8–16 at level 1, 36–44 at 8, 68–84 at 16 and 88–108 at 20 before the tooltip's doubling: Param7 100 ("Area Damage % Range Scaling") takes the maximum from 100% at the edge of the radius to 200% at the caster, so the tooltip prints 88–216 at level 20. The damage bonus is Param3 150 as the baseline and Param4 +30 a level: +720% at level 20, +1,020% at 30. The attack rating bonus is not on the tooltip but is the row's second passive stat, item_undead_tohit, as Param5 100 plus Param6 50 a level: +100 at level 1, +1,050 at 20. The radius is Param1 5 at level 1 plus Param2 1 a level, times two thirds for yards: 3 1/3 yards at level 1, 16 at 20. Mana is 1 at every level (the row's mana 1, lvlmana 0). Every line reads lvl, so +skills from gear and an Aura When Equipped item count.

How it works

Sanctuary is an aura with the row's sanctuary state and no hit check for the pulse. The pulse is applied on the aura's period (perdelay 50 frames): the Basin says every two seconds, to hostile undead only within the radius, and that the mana is spent on the same beat; a target inside several Sanctuary auras takes all of them. Every eligible undead in the radius is also knocked back (Knockback). The pulse is magic damage and the Basin says Magic Resist is not pierced: it still reduces the pulse, and magic-immune undead take nothing from it.

The two caster bonuses are the row's passive stats item_undeaddamage_percent and item_undead_tohit, the same stats as Damage to Undead and Attack Rating against Undead on items; the Basin's page notes that in the older game they were not applied, and that the current game fixed it. The third passive stat, skill_bypass_undead, is what the Basin describes as piercing the damage resist of undead: the supplier's physical damage is applied as if the undead had 0% physical resistance, even against Physical Immunes, and even against undead beyond the aura's radius. The Basin adds that Crushing Blow does not get this piercing, that the pierce is applied after Amplify Damage or Decrepify have lowered the resistance (so one or the other is redundant), that it is the supplier's physical damage only and not an ally's, and that in the current game the bypass also reaches some non-physical immunities of undead in some cases.

The pulse does not touch Griswold or Radament: the Basin's page says neither is knocked back nor damaged by it.

Synergies and +skills

One skill feeds Sanctuary, read as hard points (blvl) through the row's EDmgSymPerCalc:

• Cleansing: +7% magic damage a point (Param8).

Twenty hard points in Cleansing add +140% to the pulse. The damage and attack-rating bonuses and the radius have no synergy. Sanctuary feeds nothing, and the Paladin has no masteries.

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. Sanctuary's pulse, knockback and caster bonuses apply to undead, and the Basin's page says nothing about players.

Build notes

• Level 20 reads 88–216 magic every two seconds in a 16-yard radius, +720% damage and +1,050 attack rating against undead, for 1 mana a beat.
• The physical-resistance bypass is the aura's real weapon against Physical Immune undead: the caster's weapon damage lands in full, while the pulse still meets magic resistance.
• Cleansing's +7% a hard point only raises the pulse; the +30% a level bonus to weapon damage against undead grows with +skills as well as hard points.
• Crushing Blow stays useless against Physical Immune undead even under Sanctuary; see Crushing Blow.