Season 11, Divine Intervention, has pushed Paladin players into a very different mindset, and you notice it fast once you start pushing harder content in diablo 4 gear runs. Just stacking the highest item‑level pieces is not enough now; your character can look stacked on paper and still fold in a second in higher Pit tiers. The real difference comes from how you handle the new Reforge and Sanctification systems, and if you ignore them, you are basically playing with half a build.

Getting Reforge Right

Reforge is where most people quietly throw away power. You get a legendary with a great aspect, but the affixes are off, so it feels bad to use. With Reforge you get a proper second shot, and for a Paladin that means hunting for bonuses that push Judgement and Blessed Hammers instead of random filler stats. You want damage to these core skills, skill ranks if possible, and then anything that helps you actually keep your buttons rolling. Cooldown reduction and resource regen sound a bit boring, but once you have tried a build without them in a long boss fight, you know how rough it gets when Judgement is stuck on cooldown and your hammer spam dies.

On top of that, you can not just tunnel on damage lines and call it a day. If you are walking into late‑game Pit tiers with no real defense rolls, you are basically asking to get deleted by stray hits. Reforge gives you plenty of chances to fix that. Armor, Fortify scaling and any kind of Barrier generation show up a lot, and those rolls are what let you keep standing when the screen fills with nonsense. A lot of players reroll the "boring" defensive stat off their chest or pants, then wonder why they get one‑shot in content they should be able to clear.

Why Sanctification Feels So Strong

Once you have got a few pieces with reasonable affixes, Sanctification turns into the fun part where the build really comes together. The whole system is built around amplifying what your items already do, so you get the most value by starting with your core‑skill legendaries. Pumping Judgement or Blessed Hammers here, whether it is more holy damage or shorter cooldowns, makes the character feel smoother almost straight away. You hit Sanctify on the right item and suddenly the whole rotation clicks, your hammers are flying and Judgement is back up before you expect it.

There is also a quiet defensive side to Sanctification that people do not talk about as much. You can lean into sustain by boosting Fortify or Barrier effects, and that has a huge impact in longer fights like Helltides and extended Pit pushes. The trick is not to spread points everywhere. Look for pieces that unlock extra effects when Sanctified, or where the legendary power ties directly into your main skills, then invest there first. Work on your best items, do not dump rare resources into a random ring you will probably swap out next session, and keep adjusting as the meta shifts around new builds and new drops.

Putting It All Together

When you blend strong reforged stats with smart Sanctification choices, your Paladin starts to feel less like a glass cannon and more like a proper anchor for high‑tier groups, especially once your diablo 4 gear setup is tuned around Judgement and Blessed Hammer uptime. You will see fewer awkward dead moments in your rotation, your defenses will not fall over the second a boss looks at you, and pushing into higher Pit tiers will feel a lot less like gambling with your time. It takes some trial and error to nail the balance between damage, cooldowns and survivability, but if you keep tweaking your reforges and Sanctified pieces instead of just chasing raw item power, the build scales in a way basic legendary swapping never will.