auradin queries

I'm testing dragondin, just casual hoj and 2 Dragon, for Merc 2 HoJ 1 Dragon.

What I observed/question is:
- MAEK does not work with aura, been wearing

Silkweave and Nos whereby I expect Mana globe will fully restored each pulse, but it's not, is that bug or function?
- Don't know how aura pulse work between merc and my Pal, do the

Holy Fire from my Pal pulse independently to my merc or just pick the higher level one (which is my merc with 46 skill)? I observed the latter.
- If I put in Dream on my Merc, do those 2 Aura pulse independently?

MAEK does not work on auras, this is intended. I made a Call To Arms into a

Scepter providing +

Redemption. With a quick weapon swap I can refill life and mana between fights.

Every aura pulses once every 50 frames (2 seconds). All damaging auras from different units (!) are independent from each other. For all other auras, the game only applies the highest level aura. Every unit may have only one aura of their kind. If you are wearing HoJ and activate your own

Holy Fire, the lower one is not applied. If you are wearing Dragon + Dream, both auras work independently. Aura levels provided by items add up.

Damaging auras from items pulse once for every item providing the aura. In case of HoJ + 2x Dragon, the level 44 fire aura pulses thrice per 2 seconds, effectively tripling aura damage. Dual Dream pulses twice. This is why the HoJ/2xDragon Auradin features the strongest aura in the whole game in terms of raw damage. Expect around 6k damage per tick.

Your merc's aura is way weaker than that of your paladin, because mercs don't have synergies or elemental mastery, keep that in mind. Therefore, I wouldn't go for a Dragon merc.

Good merc options are:

-Manic Pixie Dreamgirl (Rogue with Delirium, Mist/Ice, Hustle/Treachery) -> best crowd control in the game!
-Might Desert Merc with Doom, Obedience or Hustle
-Barbarian with dual Plague, Plague+Hustle or Plague+Last Wish (my favorite,

Cleansing is king, Might aura,

Life Tap,

Lower Resist, Crushing Blow)
-Lightning Ironwolf with Plague,

Griffon's Eye, eth Spirit,

Skin of the Vipermagi (

Static Field and

Lower Resist helps fighting fire immunes)

Your merc's aura is way weaker than that of your paladin, because mercs don't have synergies or elemental mastery, keep that in mind. Therefore, I wouldn't go for a Dragon merc.

I got this, but my theory is that if the aura from the merc pulse at the same time with aura from Pal then total dmg can fill up the gap and clear up the mobs with 1 pulse, thing cant be done with dmg from Pal aura only. Beside, I want to test if the

Holy Fire from Merc will be synergized by the

Resist Fire aura granted by Flickering Flame, if yes then dmg is ~ 800 which is big, so far I can't verify if this is true or not.
In the other hand, I switch to Dream on my Act3 merc and confirmed that

Holy Shock aura works independent to

Holy Fire from my Pal. Gear is

Crescent Moon + Armor 4 facet + 2 Dream, work greatly, the only thing is Act 3 movement speed is slow, can't really follow Pal.

Good merc options are:

-Manic Pixie Dreamgirl (Rogue with Delirium, Mist/Ice, Hustle/Treachery) -> best crowd control in the game!
-Might Desert Merc with Doom, Obedience or Hustle
-Barbarian with dual Plague, Plague+Hustle or Plague+Last Wish (my favorite,

Cleansing is king, Might aura,

Life Tap,

Lower Resist, Crushing Blow)
-Lightning Ironwolf with Plague,

Griffon's Eye,

Eth Spirit,

Skin of the Vipermagi (

Static Field and

Lower Resist helps fighting fire immunes)

Will test all these to see which one is more effective.

With an auradin, the aura that you should be running is

Conviction. That way you increase both your and your merc damage. Your attack skill would usually be

Zeal since

Smite does not add aura elemental damage. Therefore you want as much IAS as possible.

When I did my offline Dragon I had an act 1 rogue with Faith for the

Fanaticism aura.

LoTra wrote: 14 hours ago

I got this, but my theory is that if the aura from the merc pulse at the same time with aura from Pal then total dmg can fill up the gap and clear up the mobs with 1 pulse, thing cant be done with dmg from Pal aura only.

Fire immune mobs can't be killed with 1 tick, I doubt your merc may close that gap. Even with maxed

Conviction and a perfectly rolled Flickering Flame your own aura damage is lowered to 70% (95 -30 -15 -20 = 30). Against immunes, your aura will do around 4K of damage per tick. This is just enough to kill a

Fallen One.

For your merc, the situation is even worse: Most fire immune monsters won't take any damage from a Dragon merc. The sunder doesn't work on mercs so the only way to break immunities is

Conviction or

Lower Resist, and the higher fire immunes can't be broken by them.

Example:

Venom Lord on hell has 130% fire resist. A maxed

Conviction reduces by 30% (only working at 1/5 effect against immunes), so the monster will stay immune. You will need

Conviction AND

Lower Resist to break this one...

Having said that, Venom Lord has 12982-15455 life in Singleplayer. No way to kill these guys with 1 tick of damage, whatever you do. Doom Knights may be broken by

Conviction alone (110% resist) but they have 6-10K life. I doubt that the few hundred damage of an aura merc will change things to your favor...

Another problem comes up if you take a look at the resistances of your Dragon Barb.

Dragon Armor: No resist.
Hand of Justice: No resist.
Flickering Flame: Fire resist only.

Your merc will end up with around 50% lightning/cold/poison resist and 80% fire resist. This is too low for hell, and since he's inflicting around 50% fire damage, he doesn't leech much life. You could swap that Flickering Flame for a dual facetted

Crown of Ages, but don't expect to get a tanky Barb out of this.

Believe me, I have tried nearly any merc build possible in my life. The best merc to give a HoJ/Dragon/FF gear to is Act 3 Ironwolf, and this is still far from being a mass killer.

There's only two ways to deal with immunes:

1. Increase physical damage
2. Add non-fire elemental damage

If you want to do maximum aura damage, try a dual Dream Ironwolf with a Crescent Moon Runeword and maybe a facetted armor or something. His

Static Field may give additional AoE damage to fire immunes, but it is quite unreliable, and these guys are slow...

This is the best I can think of. If I were you, I would go an entire different route, as described in my first comment.

A Rogue merc with Mist

Matriarchal Bow, Hustle Armor and

Nightwing's Veil will do approximately 3K cold splash damage to fire immunes with 100%

Pierce at an 9 fps attack rate (2.8 attacks per second). She strongly profits from your

Conviction, she is running fast, adds crowd control and she increases your and her own physical damage. This is way better in my view than a Dragon Barb or an Ironwolf.

LoTra wrote: 14 hours ago

Beside, I want to test if the

Holy Fire from Merc will be synergized by the

Resist Fire aura granted by Flickering Flame, if yes then dmg is ~ 800 which is big, so far I can't verify if this is true or not.

This won't work. "Aura when equipped" receives bonuses from your hard skillpoints, but will not apply bonuses to other skills.

Sorry to crush your plannings!