Need opinion on Tesladin, Dragondin and Auradin

I have a tesladin build right now and thinking of trying to build either a dragondin or auradin. If going for a dragondin, what would be the best or recommended

Helm to use along with hoj, Dragon armor and shield. Also what do you guys recommend for gloves,

Belt,

Boots, amulet and rings to equip? also which is the best build among the three? any suggestions and opinions will be much appreciated. thanks in advance.

Tesladin is the strongest in current patch.

Holy Fire is not strong before patch 2.4.

An interesting build would be

Holy Freeze zealot, actually. With Doom in a

War Spike/

Berserker Axe,

Nightwing's Veil, 15% cold

Ormus' Robes, the cold damage will be respectable.

Tesladin wields a Grief and deals physical + light. Or Crescent Moon which is a perfectly fine substitute since your

Conviction breaks all immunities.

Dragondin deals very little physical and an immense amount of fire...so you'll suck against any fire immunes even after

Conviction.

I recently swapped to Hand of Justice + Dragon + dual Dream for little physical and lots of lightning and fire (cold act 1 merc with Faith to add another element and more physical). Amazing! And should be even better after 2.4

Basically you are stuck with any weapons that ignore defense since your attack rating will be shit.

Gloves -

Laying of Hands for ubers and for Grief, anything else is fair game for everything else.

Dracul's Grasp perhaps?

Belt -

Verdungo's Hearty Cord or

String of Ears

Boots - Anything goes, but for ubers and Grief usage

Gore Rider.
Amulet -

Mara's Kaleidoscope or, for Grief usage,

Highlord's Wrath.
Ring -

Raven Frost + anything else

Oh and if you don't have Faith merc you will need 72 IAS to hit fastest

Zeal with

Phase Blade weapon, so your gear options are limited. Basically Hand of Justice/32% IAS Grief +

Laying of Hands +

Highlord's Wrath. Not possible with Crescent Moon without taking away from other gear.

thank you for the suggestions. i was really looking forward to build the dragondin but after they nerfed it in the updated 2.4 i held back. maybe auradin?

I'm checking the char planner on maxroll.gg and it seems the Auradin's dmg, namely fire dmg from

Holy Fire, went through the roof.

From ~1500 per hit and ~250 per pulse pre-2.4 to 2900-3600 per hit and 480-600 per pulse post-2.4. (This is before

Conviction)
For comparison, the

Holy Shock deals 1-7k per hit and ~1-1150 per pulse. They are on par now.

Big, if true. A worthy opponent to the Tesladin's super-high physical dmg output.

How is maxroll displaying/calculating that?

The main change is that come 2.4, the damage flat out doubles. But that only applies in melee range. So while it works wonders for stuff in your face, the massive aoe pulse doesn't benefit from that.

That did go through more than 1 iteration on the PTR as well..no clue how up to date maxroll is there.

Since it kept the same lightning damage and only upped the fire it'd be weird, if it calculated fire at 200% and light at 100%, don't you think? The light dmg mentioned in post above is pre-2.4 as well as post-2.4

I remain sceptical until proven ("Big, if true") but it seems logical for them to deal the same damage on average. We'll see.

I have stopped assuming people don't do weird stuff for no reason a long time ago.

jackiethu wrote: 2 years ago

Tesladin is the strongest in current patch.

Holy Fire is not strong before patch 2.4.

An interesting build would be

Holy Freeze zealot, actually. With Doom in a

War Spike/

Berserker Axe,

Nightwing's Veil, 15% cold

Ormus' Robes, the cold damage will be respectable.

Does this actually work? assuming you would want to 5/5 facet the

Helm and armor.

Yes.

Herald Of Zakarum can also be 5/5 faceted. You can check it on d2planner.

jackiethu wrote: 2 years ago

Yes.

Herald Of Zakarum can also be 5/5 faceted. You can check it on d2planner.

What about getting a 15cold 15 light dmg

Ormus and using a Dream shield. Then can facet armor with either one?

Would allow you to have two auras Probably a terrible idea.

Do keep in mind that equip auras stack with each other but not with your personal auras. So Doom only leaves you with a lvl 12 and not "12 + whatever your skill is".

As a result, the damage is bound to be rather subpar as compared to combining fire and shock instead. Even more so if you

Sacrifice the additional 2nd aura by replacing Dream and the like with nightwing and

Ormus, only to buff up the mediocre freeze aura.

If you do opt to use your own freeze aura, you're likely still better off combining that with fire and shock for tri-aura goodness. Though at that point, it still becomes a question of freeze vs.

Conviction which may well also not play out in freeze's favor.

Just having a quick look at maxroll (assuming their current numbers aren't too far off), Doom (+veil/

Ormus/facets) gives you about 225 ticks and 1700 dmg, hoj/1x Dragon about 300 and 1850 and double Dream about 550 and 3500 respectively. So dropping either to buff up a Doom (i.e. veil/

Ormus) certainly isn't worth it.

Doom alone does outdo HoJ alone though so if you aren't too set on the range, that may be a worthwhile tradeoff. Going with double Dream, HoJ and Dragon ends up with around 850 in ticks and about 5350 extra dmg. Adding a manual

Holy Freeze bumps that to around 1420 and 8250 which is obviously more but nowhere near the doubling+ of dmg that

Conviction would add instead.
Dropping the HoJ for Doom instead (removing the manual freeze) shifts things to around 770 ticks and about 5700 dmg before

Conviction. So slightly better than HoJ for attacking, significantly worse for the ticking (lower dmg + limited range on both, freeze and fire).

Bottom line: At least based on whatever numbers maxroll is using right now, the combination of HoJ, Dragon and double Dream along with

Conviction remains the winner over any Doom combination, with the exception of actual attacks (at the cost of tick performance) in which case Doom, Dragon and double Dream does perform slightly better.

Sorry to bump an old thread, but I was curious how good the maxroll numbers are?

I run the dual Dream / HoJ / Dragon build with a might/Pride merc . I was thinking of swapping the Pride for an Infinity and swapping my personal aura to

Fanaticism from

Conviction.

The calculator has the Pride Merc setup doing more damage, so before I invest in the Infinity, I wanted to get your guys' thoughts.

Thanks!
Cond

If you don't need it to hit a new IAS breakpoint. the actual damage boost from

Fanaticism as compared to a similar

Concentration is actually quite minor. At least without factoring in your hit/miss chance. Since

Fanaticism does also give AR though, that may push it further ahead, depending on what you typically go after and what your hit chance is going in.

The difference between a pally

Conviction (typically -150) and Infinity at -85 however is quite significant, especially when the largest part of your damage stems from your elemental auras. That, too however depends on your targets. If your targets don't typically have any res then going from -100 to -85 isn't that big a deal. If you regularly go after stuff with 50 to 75 res or the like though, you're going from -100/-75 to -35/-10 which is a very noticeable difference.

That having been said, make sure to factor in your merc's damage as well. A Pride merc generally has pretty pathetic damage output and if he gets involved in fights stands a good chance of dying because of it (no dmg = no leech). An Infinity merc with

Fanaticism on the other hand..that's an actual source of dps.

And just to make it even more complicated and situational..how do you move? If you

Teleport, your merc will be there, meaning an Infinity would reliably work. If you walk/run, he'll get stuck on corners every so often and your actual

Conviction uptime will drop because of it. If you

Charge to speed up your movement, you will lose your merc more often than not and your

Conviction uptime will be utterly pathetic if you rely on him for it.

Maxroll numbers depend entirely on what you're looking at. Some of them are spot on, some of them are beyond f*****. Take

Hydra for example..they attack once every 27 frames (per head, roughly). Yet maxroll uses your sorc's faster cast rate to calculate dps instead so with an 8fps cast rate, it basically shows you 3.5 times the DPS they would actually do.

you should take care of a high attack rating. nothing happens if you don't hit.

I recommend switching on the hit indicator in d2r that you actually see how much you miss.
(hint: with low AR you miss A LOT)

Crispin wrote: 2 years ago

you should take care of a high attack rating. nothing happens if you don't hit.

I recommend switching on the hit indicator in d2r that you actually see how much you miss.
(hint: with low AR you miss A LOT)

Paladin's AR sucks. Luckily both MVP weapons ignore target's defense (Grief for Tesladin and Hand of Justice for Auradin) so on anything but bosses they are more than fine.

@Condaan
As auradin, running

Fanaticism is bad, mkay? You want the whole -150% and have it on demand.
As tesladin, however? Sure, get

Fanaticism on yourself and use Infinity on merc but then you are skimping on 20

Concentration from Pride and are you even really a tesladin by then and not just a Zealer?

Ultimately, the choice of a mercenary for auradin is personal choice - you don't need them and they don't really help you in any serious way. You are the workhorse by yourself.
FYI Your current setup of might+Pride is mostly wasted on an auradin since your physical damage output is tiny for those auras to matter on you. Might + Pride is tesladin's domain.

Queegon wrote: 2 years ago

Crispin wrote: 2 years ago

you should take care of a high attack rating. nothing happens if you don't hit.

I recommend switching on the hit indicator in d2r that you actually see how much you miss.
(hint: with low AR you miss A LOT)

Paladin's AR sucks. Luckily both MVP weapons ignore target's defense (Grief for Tesladin and Hand of Justice for Auradin) so on anything but bosses they are more than fine.

yep, that's what I meant. you really need to stack AR if you want to hit

Über Baal. that's the only mob in the whole game who will give you trouble if your AR is just hovering on 5k. even immune to physical + immune to lightning is not a problem with low AR. it's literally this one mob that will drive you crazy.

you can get around that however if you take a

Demon Limb and pre-buff. it takes you from 5k to 8k. you can also help yourself with AR charms and you can

Sacrifice life to put into dex to boost your AR. this shouldn't be a problem as you will have a cta anyway at some point. at the moment I'm playing around with AR on my tesladin myself and I hope to get around 15k AR. then even

Über Baal will drop quite fast.

@crispin
Why bother with attack rating against

Über Baal at all?
Just use that level 1

Smite and stack enough crushing blow with open wounds (

Guillaume's Face,

Gore Rider, Duress,

Dracul's Grasp, Last Wish, if you can afford it; Grief, if you can't). If you are going against ubers, you can swap your gear around enough for you to have no problems whatsoever. Might take a minute longer to push through the last pixel of health but it works.

naw, I don't want to put a point in

Smite. it works out fine if I change some attributes and

Sacrifice a little life.

I am also playing around with Last Wish atm. when using Last Wish you lose 33% attack speed and there is no way to make up for it. you can get some back but not enough to get back over the 72% breakpoint to make your pala fast.
Last Wish is just too slow. I have yet to find out if Last Wish is worth it because I can't get the speed back. unfortunately, you are not at all flexible with gear with a tesladin. the guy pretty much needs a certain gear set and if you change anything you lose.

I just want the character solid.
why put a point in

Smite when I want to play a brutally fast zealer and not a smiter?
why go under my fast breakpoints for a weapon when I can't get back my speed?
if you see it like that then I would go even further: why even bother playing a certain build and not just putting points in where you feel like and screw builds?

makes no sense to me. I'm just nerdy like that :shrug:

Are you not using

Holy Shield?

Smite is a prerequisite. There's plenty of skill points to go around maxing your

Sacrifice,

Zeal,

Salvation,

Conviction/

Fanaticism,

Resist Lightning and have several spare for

Holy Shield. But you do you, nothing wrong with a...personal approach. You are right about the gear being fairly rigid.

Don't take it as Last Wish is a contender for Grief's spot. Last Wish is not an all-purpose weapon, merely just for uber runs and dclone.