Best Endgame Brandish Build for D4

Basic attack builds in Diablo 4 aren’t typically known for doing massive area damage, but the Paladin’s Brandish build featuring the Supplication Unique Sword is an exception. With this combo, you’ll be flooding your screen in energy waves that deal millions of damage each, making this a simple yet very effective build to play in Diablo 4. Here’s what you need to use in order to make Brandish work for the endgame.

Related

Diablo 4: Stats Explained

There are four major stats and several minor stats in Diablo 4, and players will want to know what each of them does to level with a plan.

D4 Paladin Brandish Build

At the very core of this build is Supplication, a sword that makes Brandish’s energy waves fire in all directions. While you can still try this build without Supplication, it won’t be nearly as strong.

The build will primarily use Brandish as its main DPS skill. All the others are merely here to buff your damage output or improve survivability and quality of life while clearing maps. All you need to do to play this build is hold down Brandish and watch as everything disappears in a flood of light.

When fighting elites or bosses, use Aegis to apply Judgement. This will trigger the Sentencing Paragon Node and make any affected enemy take (x)90% more damage until they die.

Ideally, you should always be in Arbiter form while playing this build to take advantage of passive effects. If you have enough cooldown reduction and Arbiter Duration from item tempers, you should be able to recast Arbiter of Justice before Arbiter form expires.

Passives

• En Garde
• Riposte
• Crack in the Armor
• Iron Sharpens Iron
• Break the Line
• Heavyweight
• Press the Advantage
• Shining Armor
• Giant Slayer
• Master Craftwork
• Coat of Arms

This is a fairly standard shield Paladin setup that maximizes Armor and damage. Max these passives out when you have the points to do so. You should have no trouble hitting crits or making enemies Vulnerable, so you don’t need to worry about missing out on any important damage bonuses.

The only passive skills that are worth mentioning here are En Garde and Coat of Arms. The former increases your Armor and Block Chance, while the latter increases your damage based on Armor and Block Chance. Try to get items that increase your ranks of En Garde so you can feed more stats to Coat of Arms.

Paladin Oath

The Disciple Oath is the only one here that synergizes with the build. With this equipped, we’ll do x50% more damage with Disciple skills (i.e. Brandish) while we’re in Arbiter form.

Gear and Aspects

As mentioned earlier, Supplication is the most important part of this build. It makes Brandish fire waves in all directions; not only will this let you hit more enemies at once, but it’ll also let you hit targets multiple times with one attack if you position yourself properly. Other Uniques aren’t necessary, though a Herald of Zakarum is nice to have for its bonus stats.

As for Legendary Aspects, include the following in your build:

• Aspect of the Moonrise
  and
  Aspect of Adaptability
  for better Basic Skill damage.
• Indomitable for more Armor and Impairment Resistance based on Block Chance.
• Celestial Strife to increase Vulnerable damage for every kill you get while in Arbiter form.
• Holy Punishment for more Holy and Fire damage.

Ideal Stats

The stats you want for this build are the same for the majority of other builds in Diablo 4. Build up your Maximum Life, Armor, and Elemental Resistances, then stack your primary stat (Strength) together with offensive stats like Attack Speed, Critical Strike Chance/Damage, and other damage bonuses.

Mythic Uniques like Heir of Perdition are great for this build, but since they’re extremely rare, many players will have to settle for a Legendary armor piece with good stats and a defensive Aspect.

Paragon Boards

The Paragon setup for this build is fairly straightforward. Most of the Paladin’s Legendary Paragon Nodes offer damage bonuses that are easy to activate, so you don’t need to be particularly picky with what you choose. For this build, we’ll be using the following:

• Castle for its massive damage boost that scales with your Armor
• Sentencing for a x90% damage multiplier on enemies that have been Judged
• Shield Bearer to scale our damage based on our Block Chance
• Endure to increase our damage as long as we’re Fortified

Then for Glyphs, take the following:

• Spirit for increased crit damage
• Apostle for stronger Disciple skills against Vulnerable enemies
• Exploit for bonus Vulnerable damage and easy Vulnerable application outside of Arbiter form
• Challenger for more damage against bosses and elites

How to Get Fortify as Paladin in Diablo 4

In order to make use of Endure and other Fortify passives, we have two options:

• Seasonal bonuses (if any)
• Fanaticism Aura – Rite of Redemption

Choosing Rite of Redemption over Rite of Vengeance will sacrifice a bit of your crit damage for the ability to Fortify when you kill enemies. If you’d rather keep the crit damage, then it may be better to go with a completely different Paragon Board instead.

The Preacher Board is great for Paladin Brandish builds because it has nodes that increase your Attack Speed. Also, the Preacher node itself makes you deal more damage based on your Attack Speed, making this an excellent pick for any Basic Skill build.