Opinion: Dream or Dragon?

Hello all!

With my Necromancer more than capable of doing Ubers now, I'm thinking about revamping my smiter into something more interesting. I'm currently torn between Dragon and Dream. I've had both paladin variants before, and I remember back then that Dream was much stronger, if more expensive. I also already have a really nice Grief and Enigma, which Dream can use where Dragon can't.

However, I also know that there's been some changes since I've played either build. For one, sunder charms change the immunity landscape, impacting both fire and light immunes. Fire immunes, though, seem more significantly impacted. For two, Flickering Flame exists, offering essentially a 3-faceted

Helm with extra Fire Res built in to offset the Sunder Charm. For three,

Holy Fire itself has received some changes in D2R that I haven't been keeping up with. For four... I've already got a lightning sorc and a javazon and would like something a bit different, but I don't fancy spending some 28+

Ist value on something trash for aesthetics. I've got other characters for that

So, my question! Has anyone played Dream and Dragon paladin recently? How do they compare in the current state of the game?

I've got both. An Dream auradin and Dragon fireadin. After playing both for some time, I find myself drawing back to the Dragon build.

Holy Fire with sunder just melts everything in its path. You have to work harder with the Dream build. But this just my opinion.

Yo dude! Lemme be that one annoying guy who will throw an instant wrench in your planning/idea... xd
-Why not both in the same build?

Didn't try Dragon one but I did test double Dream in offline and it absolutely wrecks everything in it's path (even on higher players count).

AFAIK there aren't that many monsters that are immune to lightning in general (and I think there isn't a single one that can't be broken even without Sunder?) whereas fire immunities are quite common...

On the other hand, I played with

Holy Fire (myself) +

Conviction (merc) and it was okay-ish on players 1 thru Hell with budget gear cept Infinity (nothing spectacular). It is very satisfying and fun to play on Normal and Nightmare tho, even on players 8 I'll give it that at least (you just walk and everything...just...dies)!



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My ultimate goal was and still is to make a true Auradin with max auras it can possibly stack alone (with merc ofc). Didn't finalize yet how exactly would it look like -- with what gear. It would have to have all holy auras +

Conviction and on top of that it would probably run with the

Vengeance (what if Avenger Paladin and Auradin had a child).

Original idea was:

Me (

Vengeance +

Salvation)
Helmet: Dream
Armor: Dragon
Weapon: Doom (in

Berserker Axe)
Shield: Phoenix
Merc Act 2 (Might): Infinity

Alt idea:

Me (

Vengeance +

Fanaticism)
Helmet: Dream
Armor: Dragon
Weapon: Doom (in

Berserker Axe)
Shield: Exile
Merc Act 2 (

Blessed Aim): Infinity

Now that was in time before widely introduction of new runes, I took a Flickering Flame and Cure (Merc) into considerations later. Maybe even to run with a

Conviction by myself and put something else on Merc (like Faith, Mist, Pride, Last Wish, Plague, Insight). Other option was to run a

Holy Freeze by myself (because Ice and Doom are only options for that otherwise) and switch to Hand of Justice as a weapon of choice which would that way allow me to have another thing somewhere else or even run with some other weapon just to increase the damage output (Grief, Beast, Breath of the Dying, some unique?) even more...
If it was possible I would even go completely insane and end up using like Act 3 Merc as a support beacon with Last Wish and Exile or Phoenix, but unfortunately Act 3 Merc can't use Paladin shields yet AFAIK neither

Redemption aura works on other party members apart from user (in this case myself).

Just a little food for thoughts (yes this insanity is probably the most expensive build in the game, ever).

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Dragondin, hybrid Dream/Dragon, and Dream are the options. Dragondin and hybrid are elemental

Zeal builds that are fun to play, because you

Charge around and everything around you explodes at low players counts. Dragondin is stronger. Your gear is important if you want max damage, but it doesn't matter that much. Sunders make these builds more widely viable, but you are limited by bulky immunes at higher player counts, partly because your damage is limited and partly because you don't have much life leech

Dream is a more "serious" farming build, because you can run Enigma. It is a super safe, tanky build that can handle absolutely everything in the game at p3-5. I've come to the conclusion that Dream is one of the most misunderstood builds in the game. Every week on reddit, someone is trying to build one and complaining it's weak, but they are running weird weapons, not hitting the fastest

Zeal breakpoint, not running the right merc, etc.

If you want a fun & easy elemental build, you want a dragondin. Dream is weak as a pure elemental build in comparison. It works best in my experience as a Grief-wielding dual-leeching physical zealot that runs

Conviction aura for a balanced mix of damage. An incredibly important and overlooked part of the build is running a reaper's toll merc. This is really important for telestomping bosspacks, bosses, etc. to take them out quickly on higher player counts

Anyway, this is becoming my standard opinion/rant about my favorite build in the game. If you go with Dream, check out the standard Dream build on maxroll, which is my favorite. Or I'm happy to help you build any of these builds, let me know

I use:

Helm, shield - Dream
Weapon, armor - Hand of Justice , Dragon
dual leech ring,

Raven Frost ,

Gore Rider ,

Laying of Hands,

String of Ears (like 15% dr with 75% block)
2 sunder charm - lighting and fire
used

Charge for fast move
carry res charms to 75 all res and some attack raiting
I took the guide as a basis^


the video is "old" because there were changes in the work of the

Holy Fire aura but I think it is still relevant.
in the video, he put the glasses in

Sacrifice , i put on

Holy Shield to make 75 % chance to block

TheDoo wrote: 7 months ago

AFAIK there aren't that many monsters that are immune to lightning in general (and I think there isn't a single one that can't be broken even without Sunder?) whereas fire immunities are quite common...

There is at least 1 monster type in the game that has too high Lightning Resistance to be broken by even a maxed

Conviction - the Horror Mage that appears in WSK has 130%, and the maximum that

Conviction from a Paladin can do is -150%. There is also a few more that can't be broken by Infinity, if you're curious - there's the Damned in Act 4 and another

Skeleton Mage Act 5 guest monster, Returned Mage, both of which has 120%. There may be a few more that I'm forgetting about, I looked this up back before Sunders became a thing, so it's been a while. Also, when a unique mob is Lightning Enchanted (+75%) it can push the resistance well beyond what is breakable by even a maxed

Conviction.

Thanks y'all for the input! I think I'll go for the Dragon variant. Just gotta find a nice shield now!

Im with Bass on this I like the versatility of running both over the single element.

I have a Tesladin that I made Pre-Sunders and it was extreamly fun to play if you were looking for a zealer playstyle. The

Holy Shock aura just destroyed everything and

Zeal picked up the slack after that. However after sunders I'm 100% convinced Dragondin is stronger since you can get dual dragons and HOJ stacking a far stronger

Holy Fire than the

Holy Shock aura. I'm not sure if

Zeal would even be needed much with this build to be honest, and pair the build with Flickering Flame for the - fire res just bumps the power even more.

I love my tesladin but I'm thinking of running a hybrid build eventually and then maybe full switch to dragondin.

Blindfire187 wrote: 7 months ago

I have a Tesladin that I made Pre-Sunders and it was extreamly fun to play if you were looking for a zealer playstyle. The

Holy Shock aura just destroyed everything and

Zeal picked up the slack after that. However after sunders I'm 100% convinced Dragondin is stronger since you can get dual dragons and HOJ stacking a far stronger

Holy Fire than the

Holy Shock aura. I'm not sure if

Zeal would even be needed much with this build to be honest, and pair the build with Flickering Flame for the - fire res just bumps the power even more.

I love my tesladin but I'm thinking of running a hybrid build eventually and then maybe full switch to dragondin.

Thanks for your post man, did you finally try out a dragondin to see if it is better than a tesladin when it comes to aura damage? I am trying to make one that doesn't even need to use

Zeal, just afk aura killing lol. Can't decide between Dream build or Dragon build.

I tried both and find Dragon Paladin better if you want to run around and stuff killed by aura. On the other hands, haven't try Auradin yet.

I have both and find Dragon Paladin better and faster if you want to run around and kill things with aura.Its fun watching cows melt with 2 ticks even when terrorized on players 1

I have both.

Dream is nice for normal gameplay. you need to hit a little more as the aura is not as strong, good but not amazing and the damage addition to your hits is great.

2x Dragon + hoj +

Flame Rift +

Conviction has a lot more power and you can just wait for almost everything (as others have stated already regarding res) melt away.

you can one shot or better one melt cows

Dream needs more ticks (or you just keep hitting things) because the

Holy Fire aura has so many more levels.

I tried Auradin with fire and lightning sunder and I'd say it's underwehlming. Resists are real issue, kill speed is lower than full Dragon Paladin and more points into strength required.

Instead of this, for a P1 player, my suggestion is Dragon / FoH hybrid build. It's really fast even in CS and fun to play.

Just leaving this fact here:

When you have an item supplying you with damage aura, you deal that damage as many times per tick as you have the number of items granting it, at a level of their combined effectiveness. Game only shows you one pulse, however. One tick is, I think, 50 frames, or 2 seconds.

TL;DR
A) 2x Dream is so SO much weaker than (avg 4670 light aura pulse)
B) 2x Dream + Dragon + hoj which is weaker than (avg 8058 fire+light aura pulse)
C) 2x Dragon + Hand of Justice (avg up to 9903 fire aura pulse in a 50% bigger radius)
/TL;DR

ad A) aura adds 1-7005 dmg to your attack and deals 1-2334 twice per tick. Aura deals 2-4668 before

Conviction, so up to 4-9336 per tick in a radius of 23.3 yards.
ad B) aura adds 1-7005 light dmg and 2916-3628 fire to your attack and deals 1-2334 light and 486-1208 fire in pulses, each twice per tick. Auras do up to 1948-14168 combined elemental damage per tick after conviction. Radius 23.3 yards.
ad C) aura adds 5335-6350 fire and deals 889-2116 fire damage three times per tick (with free headslot you can up that with facets for +5-15% fire dmg on top). Aura does up to 5334-12696 after conviction, 5838-13968 with

Crown of Ages socketed with two +5/-5 facets. Radius 32.6 yards.

And for all cases above, if the enemies are close to you they suffer up to double that thanks to 2.4 patch which increases pulse damage based on proximity.

This is how it worked since the origins of dreamers/auradins, no bugs here. Does it make sense it works this way though? Heh, no.

The more I read the more I'm thinking about dual Dragon/

Fire Wall sorc!

basicnecromancy wrote: 3 months ago

I tried Auradin with fire and lightning sunder and I'd say it's underwehlming. Resists are real issue, kill speed is lower than full Dragon Paladin and more points into strength required.

With auradin you mean dual Dream + dual Dragon?

Yea I can see that running 2 sunder charms will be an issue to get max. resistances, possible but will make your inventory full with res charms.

Crispin wrote: 3 months ago

I have both.

Dream is nice for normal gameplay. you need to hit a little more as the aura is not as strong, good but not amazing and the damage addition to your hits is great.

2x Dragon + hoj +

Flame Rift +

Conviction has a lot more power and you can just wait for almost everything (as others have stated already regarding res) melt away.

you can one shot or better one melt cows

Dream needs more ticks (or you just keep hitting things) because the

Holy Fire aura has so many more levels.

Thanks for the info . Ah yea I prefer not hitting at all and just standing there and watching everything getting killed by my aura, that would be pretty cool . Any idea what is better for this purpose: dual Dragon + hoj + Flickering Flame or dual Dream + Dragon + hoj ?

Pipp wrote: 3 months ago

I have both and find Dragon Paladin better and faster if you want to run around and kill things with aura.Its fun watching cows melt with 2 ticks even when terrorized on players 1

Yes this is what I am lookin for just letting the aura(s) killing everything for me. I will ask you the same question as Crispin (maybe you have tried it out), any idea what is better for this purpose: dual Dragon + hoj + Flickering Flame or dual Dream + Dragon + hoj ?

basicnecromancy wrote: 3 months ago

I tried both and find Dragon Paladin better if you want to run around and stuff killed by aura. On the other hands, haven't try Auradin yet.

Thanks for your reply man. Yes this is exactly what I am looking for just killing with the aura without having to hit the monster myself.

Queegon wrote: 3 months ago

Just leaving this fact here:

When you have an item supplying you with damage aura, you deal that damage as many times per tick as you have the number of items granting it, at a level of their combined effectiveness. Game only shows you one pulse, however. One tick is, I think, 50 frames, or 2 seconds.

TL;DR
A) 2x Dream is so SO much weaker than (avg 4670 light aura pulse)
B) 2x Dream + Dragon + hoj which is weaker than (avg 8058 fire+light aura pulse)
C) 2x Dragon + Hand of Justice (avg up to 9903 fire aura pulse in a 50% bigger radius)
/TL;DR

ad A) aura adds 1-7005 dmg to your attack and deals 1-2334 twice per tick. Aura deals 2-4668 before

Conviction, so up to 4-9336 per tick in a radius of 23.3 yards.
ad B) aura adds 1-7005 light dmg and 2916-3628 fire to your attack and deals 1-2334 light and 486-1208 fire in pulses, each twice per tick. Auras do up to 1948-14168 combined elemental damage per tick after conviction. Radius 23.3 yards.
ad C) aura adds 5335-6350 fire and deals 889-2116 fire damage three times per tick (with free headslot you can up that with facets for +5-15% fire dmg on top). Aura does up to 5334-12696 after conviction, 5838-13968 with

Crown of Ages socketed with two +5/-5 facets. Radius 32.6 yards.

And for all cases above, if the enemies are close to you they suffer up to double that thanks to 2.4 patch which increases pulse damage based on proximity.

This is how it worked since the origins of dreamers/auradins, no bugs here. Does it make sense it works this way though? Heh, no.

Oh wow thanks a lot for the maths here, this is pretty good I like it. So if I want a build that uses only aura(s) as damage output (without me hitting anything) best way to go would be going 2x Dragon + Hand of Justice + Flickering Flame/CoA(2x5/5)? From the maths it looks like that 2xdream+Dragon+hoj is as strong as 2xdragon+hoj+Flickering Flame, but the second option has a bigger aura radius.

Afura wrote: 3 months ago

Thanks for the info . Ah yea I prefer not hitting at all and just standing there and watching everything getting killed by my aura

First off, @Teebling the synergy values for

Holy Fire here are wrong (never got updated it seems?). They should be 21 and 10% respectively, rather than 18 and 6.
Trusting you for the remaining numbers still though as I believe they haven't changed and I'm too lazy to double-check everything.

With regards to the actual question here:
Dragon-din > Dragon/Dream-din >= Dream Sorc >>>>>>> the rest

Or more specifically (rounded/trunc'd): The above is assuming raw base aura damage without the proximity multiplier which is effectively the same for both. Kind of. Technically, the scaling would slightly favor a larger radius (and hence dragons + hoj) but the difference shouldn't typically be all too big on average.

Other gear (facets and the like) is ignored here as you can play around with those as you please and more or less even all of that out across the different build options (or not), depending on your ultimate preference.

Conviction is also ignored. This'd obviously give the pally builds an overall Edge over sorc due to the higher -res but if you're looking specifically at "melt with aura", you'll often enough accomplish that well before they get

Conviction anyways, due to the significantly lower radius on it.

Sorc masteries are conservatively assumed to be lvl 40 though you could push them slightly higher.

Apart from the general base numbers above, each build has its own advantages and disadvantages that you can weigh to your liking to see what you really want in the end. They're all valid, just not all equal for the same purpose.
- Dragon/hoj = significantly higher aura range.
- Dream pally = easily combined with a Grief to add a physical component if you want to actually smack stuff without losing the aura benefit.
- Dream sorc = full light skilling to max out aura damage makes it very easy to also get a lvl 40+ thunderstorm to smack stuff in addition to your aura and with that adds static with an insane range which pairs very well with the idea of aoe aura melting.
- Dream/Dragon/hoj = solid mix of fire and lightning meaning you could pretty much leave out sunders if you're fine with immunes just taking a tad longer (as opposed to not dying at all with pure Dream or Dragon/hoj). not saying you should..but you could.
- Dragon sorc = easily combined with

Hydra or the like for targeted semi-passive melting of whatever high-health mob might be hiding amongst the aura-killed packs, not to mention bosses.
- Dream pally and the sorc versions both allow for getting

Teleport (Enigma/sorc) without sacrificing an aura item. Dragon pally needs to actually run places.
- And so on and so forth...

Personally, if the goal is actual (semi-)passive aoe killing, I kind of prefer the Dream sorc approach over the others but that's just me.
Dream pally has shit aura dmg by comparison (mastery >>>>> synergies for

Holy Shock), Dragon pally is missing

Teleport and watching tstorm for added melting is just fun. Plus static is great in terms of making up for the damage that all of them auras ultimately do lack sometimes (on higher counts at the latest).

Added bonus of the Dream versions as well, specifically because aura dmg drops off so hard so quickly, is that you can simply sit there, afk in the middle of a self-chain-pulling pack on P8 and wait for the auras to finally widdle them down while taking basically no damage, thanks to reliable

Confuse procs:

Spoiler

With Dragon, you actually need to eventually start healing, running, attacking to leech or whatever else you feel like doing to remedy the situation.



Edit:
Apparently, the HF damage values in the DB here are outdated. As a result the numbers for

Holy Fire above should actually be quite a bit higher.
Dragon pally moves to around 2911 total. Sorc to 1632. Dragon/Dream would also move up a bit albeit not by as much due to the lower lvl.

Schnorki wrote: 3 months ago

For what it's worth, I did a bunch of the same calcs today for another reason, and got the same numbers as Schnorki for dual Dream, but the maxroll calculator gives me 148–176 as the base tick damage range for lvl 44

Holy Fire. Not sure why we are getting different numbers

And to add my two cents. Of the pally builds, dragondin is clearly more elemental damage and much more flexible in gear, especially if you are going for a more relaxed playstyle. But it lacks mobility and survivability no matter which of the dozen variants I've tried, and it is limited in where you can realistically farm. My favorite dragondin variant right now is hybrid with fist of heavens--lots of possibilities with gear and very fun. Original build credit goes to macrobioboi

But I like tesladin much much more. Running Grief adds a lot of physical damage, up to 6K per strike of

Zeal with perfect gear and a Pride merc. That damage also gives you huge instant life leech, which adds to the already excellent defensive properties of Dream. As a downside, if you want to farm at higher player counts, I've found that you pretty much limited to the standard Grief build with little deviation. But with that gear, you can farm absolutely anywhere in the game, and Enigma of course lets you farm efficiently. It's a completely different playstyle from dragondin though. You are a telezealot that trades

Fanaticism and some physical damage for mixed damage, some AOE, and extra survivability

The sorc builds I've tried are fun, but the are also pretty squishy, and I find them pretty clunky to play by comparison. But I don't have as much experience with them

From Schnorki's comparison, I found Dream Sorc really interesting. Will try that for sure.

For Dragon Paladin, I kind of learned to

Charge everywhere and lack of

Teleport don't bother me that much. But this is me of course.