If you have been sweating through Season 11 as a Paladin, you already know the Divine Intervention patch did more than just shuffle a few numbers; it completely changed how we think about builds and even how we look at Diablo 4 Items in the first place. It is not just "throw on the newest legendary and hope for the best" any more. You are kind of tuning a machine now, nudging every stat, testing, then nudging again until the whole thing clicks. When it works, your Paladin feels silly strong, but getting there takes a bit of discipline with both Reforge and Sanctification.

Getting The Most From Reforge

Reforge is where a lot of people burn through mats for nothing, usually because they start spamming rolls on low level drops. Do not do that. Save the materials for pieces that are actually going to stay in your build: late game legendaries or that one rare that rolled like a mini‑god. When you are reforging, you are basically shopping for better versions of the same two things over and over: Judgement and Blessed Hammer. Those skills carry most top Paladin setups right now, so if your stats are not leaning into them, you are leaving a huge chunk of dmg on the table. On top of that, any roll that gives cooldown reduction or resource gen is worth a long hard look, because nothing feels worse than just standing there waiting for Judgement to come back while mobs stack up around you.

Staying Alive While You Push

Once you start pushing Pit tiers or crazy Helltide pulls, you realise pretty fast that big crit numbers are nice, but not if you are laid out on the floor every pull. That is where using Reforge for defence stops being optional. Armor, Fortify, and any damage reduction you can squeeze in suddenly matter way more than another small bump to offensive stats. A lot of players try to ignore this and keep chasing perfect dmg rolls, but you end up dying to random corpse bows or weird off‑screen hits. If you can face tank a world boss without staring at your potion count every two seconds, it usually means you have hit a good balance between defence and burst.

Sanctification And Power Spikes

Sanctification is the bit that really makes the build feel like it kicked into a higher tier. You are taking legendary powers that were already good and cranking them up until they reshape your whole rotation. Most people get the best value by juicing their core skills first, so extra Holy dmg, more hits, or shorter cooldowns on Judgement usually jump to the front of the queue. Thing is, the materials for Sanctification are not endless, so you kinda have to choose a lane. If Helltides are slapping you around, it is often smarter to push Fortify or mitigation effects before you go all in on dmg again. The trick is keeping an eye on how each upgrade actually feels in a real run instead of just staring at numbers in town.

Making Your Stats And Powers Work Together

Where the build really comes alive is when your reforged stats and your Sanctified powers are clearly pulling in the same direction, instead of fighting each other. If a set bonus or a Sanctified legendary gives you some wild interaction for Blessed Hammer, then the rest of your gear should back that up with skill ranks, CDR, and enough defence to actually stand in the middle of the pack and let the hammers do their thing. Sometimes you will brick an item, sometimes a "bad" roll ends up feeling amazing in practice, and you only find that out by playing. As you lock in those pieces and round out your diablo 4 gear, you hit this point where the screen just melts and your Paladin stops feeling like a project and starts feeling like a monster.