Is Griswold worth it?

Hello there!
I've been playing for a while now and I've managed to create/equip some characters....so far I've created [barbarian, necromancer, Amazon] all with the class set... both for aesthetic reasons and because the sets don't cost much ^^
now I'm trying to build a paladin with the class set ...this is my result "tesladin":
https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/bd2h070y

This is turning out to be my most expensive character so far.... and I'm trying to get the "facets" as cheap as possible (20 pgems/

Ist max)

My question is it worth it? or i can do better...while still spending little ^^?

Honestly not worth it. Auradins of any kind are fine in Normal regardless of gear, but unless you go for Dragon build or Dream then you will have a hard time as soon as the middle of Nightmare.

UnjustJester wrote: 4 months ago

Honestly not worth it. Auradins of any kind are fine in Normal regardless of gear, but unless you go for Dragon build or Dream then you will have a hard time as soon as the middle of Nightmare.

I'd like to add quick, the

Holy Fire auradin is a lot stronger for getting past nightmare as

Exploding Arrow from rare gloves or manual explosive firing bows (like

Raven Claw or

Demon Machine) carrying the fire portion vs holy Shocks' lightning portion doesn't, allowing for some serious DPS. Although can go through hell it's like a

Fireball only sorc trying to walk through, less than ideal in Act I before andy, Act III at council, and Act IV for the majority. The main plus side is that, in my case, you only need 41 points to make a normal-hell capable build, as long as you can get

Exploding Arrow some way. This free's up points to be dumped in like

Fanaticism +

Smite /

Zeal +

Holy Shield,

Fist of the Heavens +

Holy Bolt (The hybrid I did to get to ancients on hell) I could go into detail but this was meant to be something other than me stroke'n

Holy Fire in yet another post. >.>

Simply put yes it can be worth it, depending on what you consider worthwhile. The lightning auradin with BIS can do some nasty AFK walkthrough-style DPS, but like it's cost is going to be expensive. A class made for "I don't like to press much buttons" requires a lot of button pressing before no longer needing to button press. If you decide to compare most builds requiring way less can build you a class that's more "I only have to press 1 button every few seconds w/o much, if any positioning."

I'm currently level 62 and completed nightmare quite easily... to level I used "

Holy Fire.... at 54 i have equipped a "Voice of Reason"

Phase Blade and all was good and fast
i tried a little on hell... but the horde of fire immunes put me on pause.

i have tried to build a Dream paladin on d2planner:
https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/tb6y0apm

obviously it's better, tankier and the aura eliminates the immunity problem...... but it is expensive
2

Jah 1

Lo 1

Ber and u need to buy some decent base + maybe u need expensive charms like max dmg+ att rating charms

i buyed the

Griswold set all for 1

Gul and buyed some facet [-4 res +3dmg] very cheap the lower was 10

Ral and another one for 1

Um. same for the aura charms no one want it.
i can go up to -44% to light res with 11 facet it fell way more cheaper .... and buyable for me ^^

the only differences I see... and tell me if I'm wrong... are:
some dmg reduction like 10%
1 hit recovery frame
5% ll
more flexibility with charm
the

Conviction aura
not know why but on d2planner the

Zeal dps is comparable

could the difference be in the possibility of doing ubers or not? I've never tried them until now

UnjustJester wrote: 4 months ago

Honestly not worth it. Auradins of any kind are fine in Normal regardless of gear, but unless you go for Dragon build or Dream then you will have a hard time as soon as the middle of Nightmare.

I'd like to strongly disagree on that. Auradins in general can push through Normal and Nightmare like a hot knife through a butter, and some of them can carry on the train wreck even on higher players count on Hell. I keep seeing comments like this about Auradins, yet I played a lots with them and it was always a very pleasant gameplay full of enjoyment and fun. To this day I still haven't made a Hammerdin and I just started doing Smiter for the first time because of how good experience I had with Auradins in general. I would have to underline that "defensive" tree is a bit odd and usually not really impactful/usable on it's own but hey, all classes have wasteful/underused skills and that's completely fine.

I would highly suggest for people to try any Ranger Paladin build, even to go crazy and mix things as you see fit. Cook something differently, it will surely surprise you. I did the

Holy Freeze Ranger and it was suuuuper cool. True, he can't do ALL the stuff in the game (like Ubers or DClone), but can still farm/clear everywhere decently fast/good and finish the game from normal to hell on his own (without relying on Merc carry or other player's help). Yes you'll need some specific gear but you don't have to min/max with, for example, facets.

@OP yes!

Griswold can work out. Is it worth it tho? I don't know. Although I didn't invest that much as you planned to do, I only ran with like 3x P Diamonds in shield and some basic jewels/gems/runes socketed inside other slots and I was using it on

Holy Fire Auradin for a bit, it did make him a viable character after some failed attempts with other gear (didn't have budget for BiS stuff yet at the time).

P.S. I also made a

Fury: Skill wolf with full Aldur's set and he was reeeaaally powerful (on players 1 tho) I didn't notice any particular change when I upped him with the "suggested" gear. Some sets/builds are actually doable/workable if you invest a bit of time into figuring stuff out (but yes, you usually need a certain budget for it).

Griswold is probably the single most expensive set to fully utilize but imo - so long as you can live without

Teleport - also ultimately the best set in the game once you get to that point.

I wouldn't be caught dead using it for a tesladin but you can build exceptional smiters with it and push pretty ridiculous FoH damage as well, among other builds. Still typically not quite as good as truly ideal other gear choices but the difference in performance at the far top-end ends up being surprisingly small (far smaller than even say a

Tal sorc for example).

Yeah unfortunately i cannot add much to the Tesladin or Dream variants. It's not something I've really tested since D2:LoD and I wasn't personally a fan of the requirement.

Looking at Griswold's Legacy it seems solid enough with a lot of sockets to allow you some lightning damage with facets like you mentioned. I only tend to know cookie cutter and clowny, not the middle grounds. The builds good enough once you have gear

for example to me.
Cookie - Blizzard
Middle -

Enchant sorc
Clowny - Tri-ele

Now in that example as of late I've been trying to use

Enchant since I've

Fallen in love with bows and xbows like

Raven Claw /

Kuko Shakaku /

Demon Machine being able to carry the fire onto the exploding shot, along with

Pierce allowing a second bolt which makes their DPS misleading because it's almost double what is shown, if you can position near a wall or shoot into packs.

Like schnorki said though I've only really ever seen it as entry smiter but just recently read FoH also can make use of it, so there's that.