Other classes may not bother with blocking if they need a two-handed weapon (or dual wield, for barbarians and assassins), or if the shield they want has terrible blocking properties.

As a Paladin, you have holy shield and the excellent paladin shields, so you should be blocking (Chargers are the only real possible exception, and even they should strongly consider a shield), but it won’t require too much Dexterity with the right shield (Herald of Zakarum is a popular option that can actually be reasonably found, and many cheap shield runewords like Spirit or Sanctuary go very well in paladin shields to get Exile legitimately takes quite a bit of dedication). Dexterity: To block or not to block, that is the questionĭexterity requirements on most weapons aren’t too high (with bows as a major exception already noted), but blocking is an incredibly valuable option. Strength: Obvious minimums, strong incentive to make them the maximumsīut of course, you do want to equip the best weapons/armor, which means you need Strength (even so, equipment with high Strength requirements have that fact counted heavily against them equipping an Ogre Maul or Myrmidon Greaves requires a lot of forethought). The damage you get from Strength is very minor compared to skill bonuses the bonus from Dexterity isn’t any better but ranged amazons can safely drop some Vitality. It allows you to travel and fight more safely, and reduces the chances of being killed faster than you can react to whatever’s killing you (especially important on due to lag issues). Vitality gives you Life, and therefore keeps you alive. The reason for this rule is simple: opportunity cost. The only major exceptions to the above rule are glass cannon amazons (who will sacrifice some Vitality for extra Dexterity, purely for the damage) and energy shield sorceresses (who use Energy mostly in place of Vitality, though some Vitality is still absolutely necessary). (I also don’t like respecs.) Two Major Exceptions

I typically do not bother with quite that much planning in a character, so I leave myself a little cushion (either extra points in Str or Dex, or unspent points) until the end of the game when my gear is finalized. If you have all your gear ahead of time, you can spend some time with a calculator to figure out how much Strength and Dexterity you need, and just plug the rest in Vitality. This rule will optimally cover about 99% of all possible builds in Diablo II.

Enough Dexterity to equip your weapon or achieve 75% blocking (Paladins should almost-always go for max block holy shield leaves no excuse).

Diablo 2 paladin skill tree build