Effectiveness of Dream pally on p3 cows

Hi all,

I’m considering investing a large portion of my ladder fortune on Dream

Helm and shield. Prior to making the decision, I wanted to consult, rather than blindly risk poorly investing my runes.. at least while my goals remain maximizing my Wealth vs late ladder, when I enjoy wasting runes on weird projects.

Cows has been my bread and butter this ladder and I’m attempting to cut my run time. I play an unusual style in which lethal passive damage would be huge for my efficiency. Thus my interest in Dream is almost solely on its aura radius damage and I’m not interested in what I can do while zealing with it.

Resources assert that it is good on p1 but then lackluster on p8. Does anyone have experience on p3? If so, what is the typical time it takes to kill a normal, hell difficulty cow when it is within the aura on p3? Also, I intend to use Crescent Moon to increase radial damage. I don’t currently have access to lightning facets, though i will be making a act 5 Plague merc.

Additionally, how does the radius damage compare between a Dream sorceress vs paladin when

Conviction aura isn’t factored in? I understand

Conviction is an essential contributor to this build but want to understand the raw damage a paladins synergies, vs a reasonably high (30’s)

Lightning Mastery does to the base damage. And I am not so good with the maths…

Any Insight would be appreciated.

Thanks!

If I understood well, you have only rune to make dual Dream but no Enigma.
Without

Teleport, it will take you much time to find the leg.
Also in cow, he is quite slow compared to other build.
A dual Dragon + HoJ can kill cow much much faster.

I have the duel Dream Crescent Moon set up, at level 91 I believe. I don’t have Plague for my merc through, still I’ll check later tonight and get back to you, but I did try my boy out on p7 with predictably poor results (only compared to a javazon or bowazon,

Nova sorc or even hammerdin)

The Tesladin is great in the more dangerous areas like worldstone keep and

Chaos Sanctuary, but yea for cows I agree with mockingbirdreal, the better passive damage set-up is probably a fire pally (though I’ve never played him)

I can’t confirm sorc vs pally

Thanks for the reply! Do you have any data on roughly how long it takes to kill an approaching hell cow with dual Dream, crescent and lvl 25

Conviction on p3?

Sorry, didn’t specify, how long to kill a cow with only aura radial damage.

Thank you!

Personally, I'd go with a sorc for that hands down.

Holy Shock on a pally gets 12% and 4% from the synergies. So that's a maximum total of 12*20 + 4*20 = 320% or 4.2x the aura's base dmg total.

Starting at level 24,

Lightning Mastery exceeds that as it moves to 326%. Realistically, you can get a Dream sorc to about lvl 38 mastery or 494%. So that's 5.94 times the aura's base dmg.

Now, seeing how you're looking to mainly (or only) use the aura dmg, you'd likely also be using crescent for -35 res. On a pally, you want Enigma added in to actually travel decently fast. On a sorc, you don't actually need that, allowing you to quad-facet an armor for another 20 dmg and another -20 res. The dmg takes sorc base to 6.14x base dmg.

Now, if you take those numbers and look at what that translates to in terms of actual damage (as a multiplier of the base aura dmg which is the same for both), you'll see that sorc wins in every single scenario (by a very clear margin), even if you contrast a full -150

Conviction to -85 Infinity (including immune penalty where applicable; assuming sunder for immunes):
The same doesn't hold true for Dragon/hoj as

Fire Mastery doesn't compare to the synergies on that one but for lightning/Dream, sorc is worlds ahead.
Plus on top of everything, the sorc gets massive AoE static + thunderstorm for bigger mobs + faster

Teleport. The only way a Dream pally beats a sorc is if you look at boss dmg (i.e.

Zeal)..if even.

That is super helpful. Thank you Schnorki

Now I’m getting super stoked about experimenting.. eh, I think my hard earned

Jah are as good as spent lol.

I think the matter just settled down but let me say: why don't you use a hero editor in offline single player, create the char you want with the items you wanna test and test it out yourself? It is pretty easy to do and you won't be relying on any opinion, you would be experiencing it yourself.

I'd second that actually.
"12.28x dmg" sounds like a lot more than it really is. It isn't bad by any means, especially on P1 but it also isn't as quick per mob as a lot of other builds can be. It does make up for that by having a massive range and not missing anything within that range but because it is slower per mob and you really just stand there picking your nose until they die, it feels a lot slower than it is, really affecting the entertainment factor imo.

But if you do go for it..solid overpriced alternative to crescent: :p

Thanks!

As far as hero editor, I play console. I’m assuming, perhaps erroneously, that I can only access hero editor via pc. I can play on pc but only use it for trades because it struggles hard and crashes a lot if I use it for too long. Throwing hero editor in the mix might melt something lol. I appreciate the tip and everyone who took time to contribute. I think I’m going to do it. My curiosity is piqued and it might be perfect my farming strategy. Thanks!

Well, editor you can use online if need be. No idea how the char saves work on console though.

Yea I just did a run, took 10 ticks to kill cows on p3… not the worst if you can clump them together and dance around for a while, but there’s definitely more fun and faster ways to kill cows

The Tesladin is still a solid choice, definitely not a waste of runes, but sounds like your more leaning towards sorc at this point?

Using Dream sorc, you need 2 more Bers to make Infinity.
Also lvl 12

Conviction from Infinity reduce 85% while a paladin has naturally -150%.

My recommendation is to make a self-use Infinity sorc that need only 2 HR.

Sounds like you plan on running cows. Which have 50% lightning resistance. A level 25

Conviction aura will send them to the capped -100% lightning resist. Crescent Moon or Lightning Facet (-% Resist) will do NOTHING to the cows when you have level 25

Conviction. Other items to consider are a 15% lightning

Ormus robes or a 6x faceted

Phase Blade for the +30% lightning damage (get +5/-3 facets).

If you havent made Dream RW yet. Go Dragon + flickering + hoj - dmg is insanly higher than Dream and more consistent, lighting dmg is 1-xxxx so in theory you can deal like 1000dmg in 5pulses.
Dunno if it was fixed or not here is reason why:


P3 cows tip for Dragon:

Conviction on right button,

Charge on left. No need to TP.

I have both RW on my paladin (now its NL - I still havent respec into fully Dragon so I have synergies for both buid maxed - yeah max 95fire and light res) I do not recommend Dream. Unless your condition is "must have Enigma" and even then I would argue if Enigma is really worthy to have crappy dmg.

The only pro for Dream are 1) Grief and 2) Enigma

Add me on bnet if u wanna see difference before you make those insansly expensive RW.

For my Dragon pala I even spent few bers on gear for my act5 merc - Plague. Well and at p1 he never has chance to proc lower res, on p2 vs some high hp units he procs lower res, at p3 he sometimes get his

Frenzy to highest lvl.

I made Dream,

Diadem/

Troll Nest for my sorc last night. I like her look especially with her Crescent Moon

Twin Axe. I don’t have enough data yet but think it will decrease my run times. The damage on p3 is lackluster but I’m far from optimized. Losing my +2 to skills from

Shako, Put me at lvl 28 light mastery… So I’m very thankful for the Insight that Crescent Moon is irrelevant with 25

Conviction (I have access to the aura) as I can throw on a Spirit, or hopefully an eschutas if I get lucky or decide to spend some runes for a high quality one.

Despite the lack of damage, I’m pleased with the early results. this setup made my party much more durable. I wasn’t really concerned about dying and my mercs didn’t die once. chance for

Confuse is incredible and I’m already considering what other builds I could throw a Dream

Helm on merc for crowd control. I think the

Stun from shock tick also contributed.

I’m very curious about hoj/Dragon pally. Last night, the gods bestowed a

Ber for my bovine

Sacrifice, but right now, the

Sur market is crazy and I’ll probably wait a while before jumping in. I grabbed 2

Sur really cheap like 2 weeks ago before things went nuts, but I already converted it into

Ber for Enigma. But, right now it’s at the top of my list. I was striving for Infinity and finally have the runes, but now I don’t really want it. Still will take me a couple weeks before I can afford the 3 items without getting raked making change with my precious few high runes..

Thanks everyone for your help. I appreciate you and really enjoy this website and community <3

I take it you're mutliboxing? Or how are you getting a 25

Conviction on your sorc?

Either way, do keep in mind that

Conviction range caps at 13.3 whereas double Dream has you at 23.3 aura range. So that's a lot of range not being covered by

Conviction, resulting in a lot of mobs taking far more damage if you add in a crescent or some other -res gear.

Yeah I multibox

Getting pretty good at running three controllers at once for party movement but it’s very difficult to attempt to attack or use skills on multiple chars at once. That’s where passive damage/support comes in. The barb is for item find. He horks everything he can, which requires two hands and lots of time.. I can

Nova the big waves, but the surviving stragglers kept threatening mercs and party, forcing me to switch back and forth between controllers. Dream has fixed that by dispersing the damage and swinging the damage/

Stun momentum in my favor. If I could get by largely on passive damage with hoj firedin + Dream, it would increase my efficiency a lot… then maybe I make the brr brr brr

It probably sounds like a headache to outsiders, but the party aspect and synergy has been really fun planning and playing and solo mf feels a drag..