Is it possible to run 2xholy fire aura's?

Hello people,

I do have a question about the

Holy Fire aura, can you run two

Holy Fire aura's at the same time on your paladin like two separated aura's? I mean one

Holy Fire aura from dual Dragon + Hand of Justice and one

Holy Fire aura from your skill tree? I know that both aura's won't stack but is it possible to have two

Holy Fire aura's active at the same time and run them separately? Or will your lower level aura be overriden by your higher level aura?

In case you can have two active

Holy Fire aura's and are aiming for the highest aura pulse damage wouldn't 2xholy fire aura's + sunder charm making more aura damage than 1xholy fire aura + sunder charm +

Conviction aura (lvl25)? Just talking about the pure aura damage, not doing any melee damage myself.

Thank you

Only the highest level aura will take effect. Auras from items will add together though. You can put points into

Resist Fire and

Salvation to increase the power of the

Holy Fire aura granted to you from items. A Sorceress could also put points into

Fire Mastery to increase the damage too. It would be most recommended to run a

Flame Rift sunder charm with

Conviction and let the item aura handle the damage.

EDIT: Apparently I am wrong! The AoE ticks are separate, and your own

Holy Fire aura will take effect. Your aura will not be added to your weapon damage though.

Conviction would still probably be the way to go through for highest aura damage. The reduction in resistances is just too huge to pass up.

you can try to check the "dragoon" build or "Dream shocker" build of paladin

answer is eq can stack but char skill may be no(or not effectively)
then actually you can bring

Conviction by merc(rw Infinity) so you can boost more

I took the same journey today as vidfail and also learned that self-cast

Holy Fire aura pulse damage is additive with your dragondin aura pulse damage, due to a bug

A sunder charm helps, but running Infinity on your merc has about half the strength of running

Conviction on yourself. How much this matters might depend on which monsters you are fighting and how you gear your character

I think it's technically possible to hit lvl 44

Holy Fire with dual Dragon HoJ. That makes the math easier, so self-cast

Holy Fire would do 33% more pulse damage (4x level 44 pulses instead of 3x). Self-cast

Holy Fire with a lvl 44 build can hit +10% fire damage, -30 fire res, and -85 res from

Conviction. A more standard dragondin can hit +15% fire damage, -35% fire res, and -150 res from

Conviction

If my envelope math is correct, I think self-cast

Holy Fire does ~10-20% more pulse damage vs. cows (which have 50% fire res) and slightly less damage vs. fire immunes, vs. a more standard dragondin build

It would also be pretty expensive to do this. For these calculations, I'm imagining you have a +3

Holy Fire

Caduceus HoJ, a 2 skill 2OS

Circlet, and of course Infinity on your merc

Maybe I'm way off with these numbers, but I don't know that it's worth it, given the frequency of fire immunes in the game

Edit:
tldr, self-cast

Holy Fire with dual Dragon hoj is a big boost in pulse damage vs. monsters with little or no fire resistance. It’s a decent boost vs monsters with significant resistance like cows. It’s maybe a little less pulse damage vs fire immunes

The way I play the game, I don’t think it’s worth it. But if you only care about pulse damage and/or limit yourself to farming specific areas, it’s more damage

vidfail wrote: 11 months ago

EDIT: Apparently I am wrong! The AoE ticks are separate, and your own

Holy Fire aura will take effect. Your aura will not be added to your weapon damage though.

Conviction would still probably be the way to go through for highest aura damage. The reduction in resistances is just too huge to pass up.

Thanks for your reply. I am fine with the damage not getting applied to my weapon damage, I intend not to hit myself and just let the fire aura doing the damage for me . Yea considering the high amount of fire resistant monsters in hell you are probably right about that

Conviction would still be better (even with the help of a sunder charm for the 2xholy fire aura build variation).

meowdee wrote: 11 months ago

you can try to check the "dragoon" build or "Dream shocker" build of paladin

answer is eq can stack but char skill may be no(or not effectively)
then actually you can bring

Conviction by merc(rw Infinity) so you can boost more

Ah yes I didn't think about the possibility of giving my merc Infinity to boost the damage.

marl71 wrote: 11 months ago

I took the same journey today as vidfail and also learned that self-cast

Holy Fire aura pulse damage is additive with your dragondin aura pulse damage, due to a bug

Yea I feel like the whole build is a bug hehe, I mean even that it ticks three times from dual Dragon and hoj instead of one time is a bug as well lol

marl71 wrote: 11 months ago

A sunder charm helps, but running Infinity on your merc has about half the strength of running

Conviction on yourself. How much this matters might depend on which monsters you are fighting and how you gear your character

I see, I was even considering to not use an Infinity at all on my merc, but this seems like a bad idea in this case and I would probably miss a lot of damage.

marl71 wrote: 11 months ago

I think it's technically possible to hit lvl 44

Holy Fire with dual Dragon HoJ. That makes the math easier, so self-cast

Holy Fire would do 33% more pulse damage (4x level 44 pulses instead of 3x). Self-cast

Holy Fire with a lvl 44 build can hit +10% fire damage, -30 fire res, and -85 res from

Conviction. A more standard dragondin can hit +15% fire damage, -35% fire res, and -150 res from

Conviction

If my envelope math is correct, I think self-cast

Holy Fire does ~10-20% more pulse damage vs. cows (which have 50% fire res) and slightly less damage vs. fire immunes, vs. a more standard dragondin build

This is interesting, did you calculate using Infinity on the merc into this calculation or is it without it?

marl71 wrote: 11 months ago

It would also be pretty expensive to do this. For these calculations, I'm imagining you have a +3

Holy Fire

Caduceus HoJ, a 2 skill 2OS

Circlet, and of course Infinity on your merc

Ouf such a scepterr will be pretty hard to get but also kinda expensive, I have checked out trading sites the last two weeks to find such a scepterr with

Holy Fire skills but couldn't find one for trade. I think people do not pick up scepters with

Holy Fire unless it is

Holy Shock.

marl71 wrote: 11 months ago

Maybe I'm way off with these numbers, but I don't know that it's worth it, given the frequency of fire immunes in the game

Yea I could imagine with the high amount of fire immuns in hell this would maybe not be a good idea unless I restrict myself to a very few farming areas which I don't want to do cause I wanna farm terrorzones as well, or pindle, eltrich, cs, countess and so on.

marl71 wrote: 11 months ago

Edit:
tldr, self-cast

Holy Fire with dual Dragon hoj is a big boost in pulse damage vs. monsters with little or no fire resistance. It’s a decent boost vs monsters with significant resistance like cows. It’s maybe a little less pulse damage vs fire immunes

I tried to calculate it on maxroll, but not sure if I did it correctly I could only see a difference of 100 damage which is not much, I am probably doing something wrong there. https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/0xue088y

Afura wrote: 11 months ago

This is interesting, did you calculate using Infinity on the merc into this calculation or is it without it?

This is calculated with Infinity on the merc

Ouf such a scepterr will be pretty hard to get but also kinda expensive

Maybe I got a little carried away with the build. The +3

Scepter is a min/max or theorycrafting item, and

Crown of Ages is a good option for a 2 socket

Helm. Infinity on your merc is critical, though. Without it, your damage gets cut by almost half

Yea I could imagine with the high amount of fire immuns in hell this would maybe not be a good idea

This is the hardest part to predict/calculate. I've heard that fire is the most common immunity in hell. Maybe someone has a comprehensive table of monster resistances, and you could make some prediction by studying it. But I think you would have to test it to really understand whether there is any noticeable difference

I tried to calculate it on maxroll

Maxroll's calculator doesn't handle sunder charms correctly in the damage calculations, so that's why I was estimating with pencil and paper. Maybe if someone else is interested, they can check my work

marl71 wrote: 11 months ago

Infinity on your merc is critical, though. Without it, your damage gets cut by almost half

The play pattern will be abyssmal compared to standard dragon paladin build, however.

You have no

Teleport unless you get some nasty amulet which means you will be mostly charging around with your merc forever stuck in limbo several screens away. Uptime of his

Conviction aura will be quite low. If you want to go on a leisurely stroll (ie. no

Charge), then it will be fine.

Conviction on you negates this whole argument.

marl71 wrote: 11 months ago

This is calculated with Infinity on the merc

Ah ok gotcha. I finally found a hero editor that works with D2R, so I could do some testing. Seems like running 2xholy fire with merc that uses Infinity does more damage than running convic on my own with just 1

Holy Fire aura. The damage difference isn't really that big though, but still. However, here is the issue you may do more damage (my selfcast

Holy Fire was on lvl37), but you rely a lot on convic aura of your merc, the convic aura radius is pretty small in general and when you

Charge a lot your merc keeps being behind you and sometimes he teleports himself too far away so that you can't benefit from his convic aura. I mean damage-wise it is worth it, but due to the AI of the merc and the small convic aura radius makes it all a bit unreliable sometimes. An other problem is that the merc walks pretty slowly which makes it a bit annoying cause you often have to wait for him to get closer to the enemies to make his aura.

2xholy fire aura with Infinity merc would actually be better when it comes to pure aura pulse damage, but since these merc issues I mentioned above I feel like the killspeed does not exceed the killspeed of the 1xholy fire aura build variation despite having more aura damage. I couldn't see any difference in clearing speed between both builds and I would say that they have more or less the same killspeed. If

Conviction aura radius would be much bigger and if the merc AI wouldn't be so dumb (sorry lol) then the clearing speed would be faster and I would definitely go with this version of the build cause I like having the highest possible aura damage , but yea the merc issues are just too serious to make it worthwhile for me, you would need

Teleport to make it work which we do not have due to the use of dual Dragon.

marl71 wrote: 11 months ago

Maybe I got a little carried away with the build. The +3

Scepter is a min/max or theorycrafting item, and

Crown of Ages is a good option for a 2 socket

Helm.

I was using Flickering Flame on the 2xholy fire aura build variation, but

Crown of Ages is a good option as well it's a good mix between defense and damage.

marl71 wrote: 11 months ago

Infinity on your merc is critical, though. Without it, your damage gets cut by almost half

Yep that was the issue with my testing, merc AI is just terrible in Diablo 2, a lot of times I was waiting for him and his aura or he was just simply somewhere else fighting alone some monsters in a corner lol, with

Teleport this all wouldn't be a problem though.

marl71 wrote: 11 months ago

This is the hardest part to predict/calculate. I've heard that fire is the most common immunity in hell. Maybe someone has a comprehensive table of monster resistances, and you could make some prediction by studying it. But I think you would have to test it to really understand whether there is any noticeable difference

I made a couple of

Chaos Sanctuary runs, damage seemed to be more or less the same for both build variations.

marl71 wrote: 11 months ago

Maxroll's calculator doesn't handle sunder charms correctly in the damage calculations, so that's why I was estimating with pencil and paper. Maybe if someone else is interested, they can check my work

Good to know about the sunder charm, I felt like something was wrong with the build planner.


EDIT: Also if someone is interested in it, you can run both build variations on players 8 (if you are fully geared), it is not the fastest but it works, most trash mobs die in 4-8 ticks depending on the area.

Afura wrote: 11 months ago

...merc AI is just terrible in Diablo 2, a lot of times I was waiting for him and his aura or he was just simply somewhere else fighting alone some monsters in a corner lol...

This makes perfect sense to me. I can't stand running a Faith merc on a dragondin for the same reason. Thanks for testing and the writeup!

marl71 wrote: 11 months ago

Afura wrote: 11 months ago

...merc AI is just terrible in Diablo 2, a lot of times I was waiting for him and his aura or he was just simply somewhere else fighting alone some monsters in a corner lol...

This makes perfect sense to me. I can't stand running a Faith merc on a dragondin for the same reason. Thanks for testing and the writeup!

Yea it's really annoying, makes your damage output just too inconsistent which I do not like, it's not very handy without

Teleport.

Thank you as well for the help I appreciate it.