Paladin auras - how many can be active at the same time?

Hello all,

maybe it's a stupid question, but here there are so many D2 experts and I want to be sure.

The question is,
can a paladin be affected by several paladin auras at the same time?
I've often read, that a paladin can only have one aura active. Or does it mean, that he can only activate one aura himself at the same time?

For example:
If my Paladin wears Last Wish with Might aura, Phoenix shield with

Redemption aura and himself has

Fanaticism active, are all three auras active then?

Wow, thank you very much for the detailed answer. It also answers all other possible questions!

... and to make the already great Schnorki's answer complete:

Schnorki wrote: 3 months ago

- While using your own skill aura and/or item aura(s), you can still also be affected by and benefit from other characters' auras, be they merc or other player. Or mob in the case of offensive auras like

Conviction.

Also from own or other players' minions other than merc (

Oak Sage,

Heart of Wolverine,

Spirit of Barbs - not paladin auras, but still auras).

True enough.

Or more generally, simply "other units".

Interesting, so now I understand how Auradin/Shockadins work well. Also, you probably want to ensure your

Conviction aura is higher than Uber Meph's. Has Schnorki written a D2 book yet?

Fresh Hammerdin here. Took me a while to figure this out, Hell to be precise.

You can be affected by multiple auras but you yourself, can only have ONE active. For an aura to be active, you have to map the skills buttons in a particular way. If you don't do it correctly, every time you attack, the aura will stop working and you won't benefit from it unless you stop attacking.

So.

Have your main attack skill on the movement button of the UI (left mouse button) and use force stop to force your Paladin to stop moving to hit whatever it is you want to hit. The auras will then be slotted into the skill button (right mouse button) and you can alternate between all of them, without them getting interrupted each time you hit something.

Katsabas wrote: 3 months ago

Fresh Hammerdin here. Took me a while to figure this out, Hell to be precise.

You can be affected by multiple auras but you yourself, can only have ONE active. For an aura to be active, you have to map the skills buttons in a particular way. If you don't do it correctly, every time you attack, the aura will stop working and you won't benefit from it unless you stop attacking.

So.

Have your main attack skill on the movement button of the UI (left mouse button) and use force stop to force your Paladin to stop moving to hit whatever it is you want to hit. The auras will then be slotted into the skill button (right mouse button) and you can alternate between all of them, without them getting interrupted each time you hit something.

I noticed something like this the other day when playing with my

Nova sorc. I self-wield inifinity, and when teleporting it looks like the

Conviction aura disappears and reappears the moment I stop teleporting. Is this just a display glitch, or does the aura truly stop working?

In the case of the paladin, the aura stops working because the skill got replaced momentarily with something else.

When I play with my Sorceress, I

Teleport but I still benefit from

Concentration when my Merc wields Insight. I don't know about what happens when you yourself wield an Infinity bc I haven't tried that yet

Katsabas wrote: 3 months ago

Have your main attack skill on the movement button of the UI (left mouse button) and use force stop to force your Paladin to stop moving to hit whatever it is you want to hit. The auras will then be slotted into the skill button (right mouse button) and you can alternate between all of them, without them getting interrupted each time you hit something.

FYI: You can map left-button skills to other keys/buttons than your left mouse button. If/when you do that, you can cast them much like the right button would, meaning you don't have to resort to force-stop.

Knappogue wrote: 3 months ago

I noticed something like this the other day when playing with my

Nova sorc. I self-wield inifinity, and when teleporting it looks like the

Conviction aura disappears and reappears the moment I stop teleporting. Is this just a display glitch, or does the aura truly stop working?

It shouldn't disappear, much like any other item-aura shouldn't disappear. They're independent of the skill-buttons. Is it possible you're talking about your

Conviction affecting mobs you just teleported to, rather than seeing it on yourself? If so, that's a different thing. There will be a (variable) delay between you reaching a mob and said mob getting convicted as

Conviction (much like any aura) doesn't apply instantly, it only (re-)applies with each aura tick interval.
"Instant aura application" only happens the instant you actually switch to one as your new active RMB skill. Apart from that, you're waiting for the next tick.

Schnorki wrote: 3 months ago

...

It shouldn't disappear, much like any other item-aura shouldn't disappear. They're independent of the skill-buttons. Is it possible you're talking about your

Conviction affecting mobs you just teleported to, rather than seeing it on yourself? If so, that's a different thing. There will be a (variable) delay between you reaching a mob and said mob getting convicted as

Conviction (much like any aura) doesn't apply instantly, it only (re-)applies with each aura tick interval.
"Instant aura application" only happens the instant you actually switch to one as your new active RMB skill. Apart from that, you're waiting for the next tick.

Maybe it's a console thing? I haven't tested it on PC. But yes, I'm referring to seeing it on myself and not mobs. When teleporting it disappears. When I stop teleporting it reappears (on myself) and makes the sounds of when a new aura is activated. It does the same thing with my hdin and his

Concentration aura when I'm teleporting. Unfortunately, due to the nature of it, I can't pause mid-

Teleport and check my character screen stats to see if the bonus isn't being applied while teleporting or if it is being applied and it's just a display glitch.

For informational purposes: When playing on console you can map skills and auras to pretty much any button you want. There is no "left-click/right-click" skill. Think about it like being able to use/activate (NOT map) any skill by pushing any button on your keyboard. You can activate an aura with any mapped-button click and that aura stays active regardless of other buttons you click (unless to specifically deactivate the aura or engage a different one). For my hdin

Concentration is always just 'active'. Hammer attack is right-trigger and

Teleport is left-trigger and right-trigger simultaneously. No where in that sequence is

Concentration toggled. Yet only when casting the

Teleport skill, the aura display disappears and then the 'aura-engaged' sounds happen when I stop teleporting.

Interesting. Sounds like they actively broke it on consoles then.

For the hdin, it makes sense because you're talking about an active aura. In terms of D2 (non-console) controls, you only have two main categories for actively triggered skills (i.e. no

Belt stuffs and such): left and right (mouse button).

A number of skills, including auras and

Teleport, can only be assigned to the right button slot, not the left one. That's why when you

Teleport, your right button is blocked by

Teleport, turning off your aura until you release the

Teleport button.
In the olden days, before they introduced auto/quick skill casting in early D2:R, this was blatantly obvious because you had to manually switch your aura slot to

Teleport, then cast

Teleport, then manually switch back to your aura. Quick-cast, despite saving you the manual skill switching, doesn't change that Principle. It effectively fakes a skill switch, switching your RMB from aura to

Teleport, casting it until let go and then switching it back to what it was before (that's why you see the icon change).

I would have assumed that same Principle holds true on console, simply because it is a far easier adaptation than actually changing the core skill-slot assignments/mechanics and whatnot. Plus it keeps the behavior the same/balanced between console and PC. Though it is blizz so I'll say it was solely because it is the easier way out.

For the sorc wielding Infinity though, that doesn't apply as you never assign

Conviction to any slot. It is simply perma-granted by the item. And on PC, it most certainly does not turn off. Case and point: (

Conviction +

Holy Shock both still active mid-

Teleport)

Since console controls are inherently different though, my guess is that rather than enforcing hidden slots in the background, they took the earlier mentioned easy way out..and made it unnecessarily complicated after all, introducing some sort of hidden switching by skill type instead of by slot assignment. In that case, it'd simply count auras as auras (regardless of whether they're a skill or item bonus) and simply turn them all off while teleporting as a result. Just guessing as to the real reason here but that's one possibility.

I do wonder though..if it is broken on consoles, how far does that go? If you

Teleport from say the left side of a pally to his right (so staying in range of him) while he grants you an aura...does that aura, too get turned off for the

Teleport?

Quick addition:
Just tested this with controller on PC and it still works the exact same as keyboard/mouse. Item auras stay on while teleporting. Active auras do not. So at least there, they seem to be faking the 2-button-system behind the scenes.

Why they then apparently made it even more complicated and treat console controllers differently from PC controllers...oh, who knows...

I was going to start off saying I "did some research", but in reality all I did was pay closer attention. I think my confusion with the self-wield Infinity sorc started off with noticing the aura/

Teleport issue with my hdin.
My play style with my

Nova sorc is lots of fast walking with routine single

Teleport instances. This means I habitually leave my merc behind as I have much faster R/W. My merc uses Cure. Level 1

Cleansing has a radius of 10.6 yards. I walk out of that aura's range regularly. So, when I

Teleport, I bring him with me and I'm hearing the

Cleansing aura reappear on myself. My

Conviction aura was always there. Just hidden underneath Mercs

Meditation (much further radius), and my own confirmation bias of thinking it wasn't there.
But now I also understand why

Concentration disappears from my hdin. Thanks!

Schnorki wrote: 3 months ago

Is it possible you're talking about your

Conviction affecting mobs you just teleported to, rather than seeing it on yourself? If so, that's a different thing. There will be a (variable) delay between you reaching a mob and said mob getting convicted as

Conviction (much like any aura) doesn't apply instantly, it only (re-)applies with each aura tick interval.
"Instant aura application" only happens the instant you actually switch to one as your new active RMB skill. Apart from that, you're waiting for the next tick.

To be exact, that delay for all paladin auras is 2 seconds (50 frames - perdelay column in skills.txt). Enough to be noticed (and to annoy the player).
Surprisingly druid (minions') auras do not have any delay set, so they should be refreshed without delay (every frame?) - probably an oversight?