Auradin Questions

As the title states I am looking to build an Auradin. This will be my 3rd character (Blizz Sorc and Hammerdin) and I loved playing Zealadin back when runewords were first introduced and this is an extension of that. However I have a few questions about the build. Mainly what direction to take initially. Not sure if I should go

Holy Fire or Tesladin, I will probably go both eventually but it's too expensive now and I'm having a hard enough time getting the runes to build the equipment (currently have

Jah and 11 ists) so I figured I would either go dual Dream or HOJ and Dragon (armor) but not sure which is better individually.

What is an Auradin actually good at doing lol? I'm mostly building it because it looks really fun but wondering what area's it can clear, is it good a "fast" clearing area's? Can it do ubers, I understand Smiter is probably much better at it but can an Auradin still do ubers?

As far as gearing, What should I look for as far as bases? I assume

Sacred Targe or

Royal Shield with good resistances and probably a

Bone Visage or

Corona for the Dreams but what about for the Dragon (armor) and Hand of Justice. Also If I go Teslading Initially what armor should I go with? I have an Enigma currently which would make it cheaper if that would still be effective and have an

Archon Plate I could use to make a Fort but not sure which would be more useful.

Lastly, Mercs. I assume Act 2 Might merc would be best but not sure what weapon to use. Reapers toll comes to mind but maybe a good runeword with

Holy Freeze or something similar? Or an Act 1 Merc with Faith but I think I like using A2 Mercs better.

Sorry for all the questions and thanks in advance for reading and answering.

I have a tesladin and base on my experience its better than dragondin. I used

Bone Visage and

Sacred Rondache for the Dream runewords. Enigma will work great with tesladin so u can

Teleport. I use Grief in a PB. Definitely it can do ubers. For merc, I use act 2 with Doom in a

Eth

Thresher and a

Eth Fortitude and

Eth

Vampire Gaze.

peej17 wrote: 2 years ago

I have a tesladin and base on my experience its better than dragondin. I used

Bone Visage and

Sacred Rondache for the Dream runewords. Enigma will work great with tesladin so u can

Teleport. I use Grief in a PB. Definitely it can do ubers. For merc, I use act 2 with Doom in a

Eth

Thresher and a

Eth Fortitude and

Eth

Vampire Gaze.

Doom would be nice but

Eth reapers is cheaper so probably get that temporarily. Will run Tesladin then go with both. Just need to save a lot of runes. Been at it a couple weeks now lol. Also runes for a Grief too. Thanks for the advice.

Any other users with both tesladin and dragondin who can share which performs better? I've been curious about this too and was hoping fire would be stronger, for aesthetic reasons.

i have both. from my experience, tesladin feels much stronger it can do any content. dragondin is really good at farming cows but u gonna have problems if u encounter fire immune enemies like in

Chaos Sanctuary. I made an auradin (dual Dream / Hoj and Dragon armor) that way i can switch to tesladin or dragondin(add

Dragon Shield and remove Dream)

With Tesladin, you can use Enigma for

Teleport.
Dragondin is very bad against fire immune because no Grief and no Enigma.
With sunder charm, Dragondin should (I didn't test yet) be better than Tesladin because his elemental damage is much better.

Both are fun builds, they don't farm faster than popular farming builds.

While I don't currently have one myself because I find the playstyle a bit too uninteresting (subjective of course), I've done extensive testing (both theoretical and actual gameplay) of basically all possible iterations after the changes to dmg auras and from what I've gathered:
- They all work decently fine
- An all-out firedin offers more raw dmg on average than a tesladin, generally speaking [this wasn't truly applicable prior to sunders, due to rampant unbreakable fire immunities but it does hold true now]
- A tesladin may still be faster overall, depending on where you play, due to the firedin using a Dragon armor while the tesladin can run Enigma for

Teleport [i.e. movement speed makes up for less dmg]

That having been said, my personal solution of choice (if I wanted any of them) would be "both". Both in one mind you.

Traditionally, if you run as either a firedin or a tesladin, you will augment your item-based dmg auras with a solid, real

Conviction at -150. In my personal experience however, more often than not, that

Conviction hardly applies (admittedly biased, due to usually being on lower player counts). That's especially true for a firedin because their aura range is so stupidly high that trash mobs simply blow up off-screen and well before they're ever in

Conviction range. It really only makes a difference if you're on a boss or get stopped by a champ pack that takes a sec to kill.

With that in mind, an alternative solution is to run an all out firedin but push a real

Holy Shock yourself and handing an Infinity to your merc. Yes, his

Conviction will be lower than yours would've been, and due to no Enigma, you will outrun him reliably. However, if you know how to

Charge-step your merc around, he will reliably

Teleport in when you do get stopped by a champ pack/boss (or just use a tele

Charge neck), meaning you don't lose it there and you will end up with not only a full firedin

Holy Fire but a

Holy Shock that is higher than the lvl 30 you'd get off double Dream. In my experience, that more than makes up for lower conv on yourself. The higher

Holy Shock not only means higher raw dmg from it but it also means it starts to match your

Holy Fire range and you end up with even more stuff dying before it ever gets onto your screen (again making

Conviction even less relevant).

Another big added bonus of combining both, fire and shock is that shock is a solid way to take care of previous fire immunes. Even with a sunder, a firedin suffers from the fact that fire immunes more often than not tend to be high-life mobs (Venom lords and whatnot) and since you can't realistically drop their res as far as non-immunes, you still do comparatively little dmg to them in the end, relative to their life pool. Having lightning dmg on top pretty much solves that problem.

Schnorki wrote: 2 years ago

While I don't currently have one myself because I find the playstyle a bit too uninteresting (subjective of course), I've done extensive testing (both theoretical and actual gameplay) of basically all possible iterations after the changes to dmg auras and from what I've gathered:
- They all work decently fine
- An all-out firedin offers more raw dmg on average than a tesladin, generally speaking [this wasn't truly applicable prior to sunders, due to rampant unbreakable fire immunities but it does hold true now]
- A tesladin may still be faster overall, depending on where you play, due to the firedin using a Dragon armor while the tesladin can run Enigma for

Teleport [i.e. movement speed makes up for less dmg]

That having been said, my personal solution of choice (if I wanted any of them) would be "both". Both in one mind you.

Traditionally, if you run as either a firedin or a tesladin, you will augment your item-based dmg auras with a solid, real

Conviction at -150. In my personal experience however, more often than not, that

Conviction hardly applies (admittedly biased, due to usually being on lower player counts). That's especially true for a firedin because their aura range is so stupidly high that trash mobs simply blow up off-screen and well before they're ever in

Conviction range. It really only makes a difference if you're on a boss or get stopped by a champ pack that takes a sec to kill.

With that in mind, an alternative solution is to run an all out firedin but push a real

Holy Shock yourself and handing an Infinity to your merc. Yes, his

Conviction will be lower than yours would've been, and due to no Enigma, you will outrun him reliably. However, if you know how to

Charge-step your merc around, he will reliably

Teleport in when you do get stopped by a champ pack/boss (or just use a tele

Charge neck), meaning you don't lose it there and you will end up with not only a full firedin

Holy Fire but a

Holy Shock that is higher than the lvl 30 you'd get off double Dream. In my experience, that more than makes up for lower conv on yourself. The higher

Holy Shock not only means higher raw dmg from it but it also means it starts to match your

Holy Fire range and you end up with even more stuff dying before it ever gets onto your screen (again making

Conviction even less relevant).

Another big added bonus of combining both, fire and shock is that shock is a solid way to take care of previous fire immunes. Even with a sunder, a firedin suffers from the fact that fire immunes more often than not tend to be high-life mobs (Venom lords and whatnot) and since you can't realistically drop their res as far as non-immunes, you still do comparatively little dmg to them in the end, relative to their life pool. Having lightning dmg on top pretty much solves that problem.

Interesting Information. I was thinking of running one (probably Dreams) then adding the other through gear (Dragon and HOJ) , while running a higher level

Conviction on myself than the Infinity offers for full resistance reduction which I think needs to be level 25. Then have my merc run

Holy Freeze and/or Might through gear and it's own aura. That way I had all 3 elements and Might for added phys damage if needed.

Holy Freeze would mainly just be for slowing enemies if

Holy Shock and

Holy Fire didn't do the job and had to go toe to toe, that way enemies were slowed. Not sure how well all that would work out and it would for sure be expensive but starting with dual dreams and Grief looks like the way to go first for versatility.

Still, Have a LONG ways to go to build even the dual dreams up. I have a Base level

Bone Visage (3 sockets but not sup) and the runes to make 1 Dream but not the rest of it. Still need a PB,

Sacred Targe with good res, a Dual Leach ring, and the runes to make Grief and 2nd Dream. Currently sitting on 11

Ist's, 2

Um's, and a

Gul. Mind I am playing on NL and do not currently have access to Sunders.

Hey,
I asked for some advice and help about a

Holy Fire Paladin some days ago and Schnorkie gave me some advice and provided a working character file to test the build offline in D2R.
Take a look at the following forum topic for the file and some discussion about the needed fire res reduction:
post3089106.html#p3089106

After playtesting in singleplayer, I decided to actually build this paladin as my main character and invested everything I had into the runes, to actually build it.
Right now I'm only using the -20 fire res from the weapon and 2 PT in my CoA to get around 130 mf on the build. It works quite well and I took an A1 merc with Harmony to keep my running speed up. This feels like a really good speed, to kill everything without stopping for most monsters, while

Charge is kind of too fast for this playstyle. Even CS is fine, but I have to actually hit the fire imunes to kill them fast.
It's a fun build and I can do any Terrorzone on P1 without any trouble, but I guess if you are aiming for P3 and higher this kind of Character slows down significantly, because of the lack of a second source of damage, as Schnorkie mentioned before.

In my opinion the main reason why a Dreamer Paladin is so considered stronger than the

Holy Fire build is not the Enigma, but the Grief weapon, which pushes your physical damage so much, that you can kill any imunes anyway. Also you will have a decent amount of lifeleech thanks to the physical damage, which makes the char even smoother. It's a great char design that worked before Sunders and got even stronger now.

One idea that did not get any attention here:
Did anybody consider to go full lightning damage with a

Crescent Moon ?
The "-35% To Enemy Lightning Resistance " seems really interesting, since it gives you negativ 15% more, than the weapon of the fire build.



Hope this helps