Season 11 has landed and the power spike in Divine Intervention is wild, especially if you are playing Paladin and sitting on a pile of Diablo 4 gold ready to spend on upgrades. The class finally feels like it is where it should have been for a while. With Reforge and Sanctification in the mix, you are not just chasing random drops any more, you are sculpting them. If you are planning deep Pit pushes or want world bosses to disappear before they even finish a voice line, you have to lean into these systems and really push your gear instead of stopping at "good enough".
Dialling In Reforge
A lot of players still stare at item power, see a big number and throw it on, and that is where things start going wrong. Reforge lets you ditch the junk stats and lock in affixes that actually matter for your build, so you should be hitting it early and often. On Paladin, most people are building around Judgement or Blessed Hammers, and if your gear is not rolling extra ranks for those, you are just wasting potential. It is not only about the tooltip damage though. Think about how your rotation feels in the middle of a fight. If your skills come up too slow and you find yourself just dodging around waiting, then you need cooldown reduction on multiple slots, not just one. If your hammers keep stalling out because your resource bar is empty, push for energy regeneration or resource-on-hit so the whole thing actually flows.
Survival Is Not Optional
Endgame in this season hits a lot harder than most people expect the first time in, and a lot of glass cannon Paladins learn that the hard way. You see players flexing big crit numbers one second and then instantly falling over to a random elite affix the next. Reforge is where you patch that up. Stack Armor and flat damage reduction where you can, then layer in Barrier or Fortify generation so you are not living at 10% health every pull. It feels boring to roll off damage for defense, but once you push higher tiers, that extra layer of protection means more uptime on your actual damage dealers. Think about your Divine Gifts and defensive passives at the same time as your gear; if they are not supporting each other, you are making life harder than it needs to be.
Sanctification And Legendary Power
Sanctification is where your build stops feeling "good" and starts feeling ridiculous. It is not just a small buff stapled on top; it blows up the power of your key legendary aspects. Take a helm that boosts Holy damage for example. Once you Sanctify it, that bonus can go from "nice to have" to "why is everything on the screen evaporating". You want to put those upgrades on the items that actually drive your build, not on random filler. If Judgement is the heart of your setup, Sanctify the piece that scales it first so you get those huge bursts in every pack. Some legendary sets barely feel worth using until you do this, then suddenly the stacking bonuses start to matter and you realise you were only playing half the build before.
Where To Spend Your Resources
The big trap with both systems is burning through your materials on gear you will replace in a couple of hours. It is tempting to make every new drop perfect, but you are better off riding out the levelling phase with "good enough" items and saving the heavy investment for high item power ancestral pieces that actually stay in your build. Once you have a set that feels close to finished, that is when you dump your crafting mats, your time and even your stash of Diablo 4 gold for sale into squeezing the last few percent out. Whether you are chasing a burst setup that erases boss phases or a slower, tanky style built for long Helltide runs, Reforge and Sanctification are the levers you keep pulling until the character finally feels "done". For the latest Diablo 4 guides and tips, follow U4GM.
Posted by Rodrigo on Jan 07, 2026 08:57 AM