Max Auradin Avenger

Lemme just copy that wall of text from the comment... Almost there... Aaaaand voila!!

I introduce you to an Ultimate Auradin appropriately named Saint Vindictus, he is father of all Auradins not just put random stuff to get max auras and see-what-happens; or in other words I tried to min/max him as much as I could and yet maintain that original plan/idea of him having maximum different auras (or as much as theoretically possible). Yes, some sacrifices had to be done to achieve that sparkling aura effect when they all combine beneath your feet (even tho it makes him a bit less dangerous, he just looks awesome)! He is very fun to play on P1 (did try max P3 but didn't see any significant difference), a true complete menace I would have to say.

Idea for this build (this was at the time I didn't even know about "builds" in general, neither that there are meta builds, hybrids, off-meta etc.) was born on the very 1st day of D2R yet I had to create a new character recently to see how he feels at the current state (it's fabulous).

I know it's nothing special in comparison to some other builds out there but he still kills Hell

Baal in just a bit shy of 11 seconds (more on link below).

Current state (prone to minor changes):
https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/bi6x079t

How does he look (had to put this in): Now let me put a little edit in here:
The major alternative to this build I ended up with was definitely this one:
https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/jif40ahp
That would have been in total on me 7 auras incl.

Fanaticism [29] +

Conviction [12] instead of 7 incl.

Conviction [25] +

Fanaticism [15]

Hmm looks fun and new opportunity for me to try. But why not act 2 merc if you want to maximize your auras? You can get a Beast and he can carry Doom or whatever you like and can add another like

Prayer or might?

basicnecromancy wrote: 3 months ago

Hmm looks fun and new opportunity for me to try. But why not act 2 merc if you want to maximize your auras? You can get a Beast and he can carry Doom or whatever you like and can add another like

Prayer or might?

If he would carry Doom it wouldn't add on top of my auras since Holy auras only add on it's user. That being said I wouldn't mind Act 2 Merc's aura as an addition, BUT I also wanted to retain and work more on that personal damage since I don't use any Holy Auras myself and I use

Vengeance as a main skill and

Conviction as secondary (I know that calculation for

Vengeance takes physical dmg from weapon and transforms it into elemental but it feels better when you have more added fire, cold and lightning on top of that as well, I don't know it just feels natural). Now all that being said, I could have gone with, for example, Hustle weapon + Merc's aura or Insight + Cure +

Prayer combo which would yield more auras in the end but I think I tried that and it felt like I'm losing quite a bit of power myself and orient more towards my Merc, which again, wasn't the original idea (I'm not saying it's not a better choice).
This way I would have to lose either

Holy Freeze on myself, or alternatively either

Conviction or

Fanaticism which I did calculations for and DPS dropped significantly in both cases.

I went for Act 1 just because she can carry Faith and help that way with addition of some crowd control with her

Exploding Arrow, also she is doing it from a distance (which is sometimes finicky and doesn't work properly sadge). And Faith stacks very nicely for that, it also gives

Fanaticism to both for perfect IAS breakpoints.

Since you're really just going for "flashy" over performance here by maximizing the number of auras, rather than performance of them, an A2 merc would indeed be the way to go. Head slot options remain the same (flickering, Cure, ..) to add an aura. You get the inherent A2 merc aura of your choosing. Add a Hustle weapon to keep fana. And give him a Bramble to add

Thorns to the mix.

Or A5, dual wielding Hustle + Last Wish for fana + might I guess. Same overall result.

(Though there used to be a limit [3 I believe it was?] to max auras on/from merc..actually not sure if that's still a thing)

Schnorki wrote: 3 months ago

Since you're really just going for "flashy" over performance here by maximizing the number of auras, rather than performance of them, an A2 merc would indeed be the way to go. Head slot options remain the same (flickering, Cure, ..) to add an aura. You get the inherent A2 merc aura of your choosing. Add a Hustle weapon to keep fana. And give him a Bramble to add

Thorns to the mix.

Or A5, dual wielding Hustle + Last Wish for fana + might I guess. Same overall result.

(Though there used to be a limit [3 I believe it was?] to max auras on/from merc..actually not sure if that's still a thing)

Yeah I know double Dream is usually a way to go and all that, but I just wanted to be flashy as you said. I also kinda wanted to equalize elemental dmg across the board, not to have like 12k of light and then like 2k of cold for example, because that would be off the main point. Don't know about the last part about Merc auras but I remember from legacy or some earlier version that there was definitely a

Cap of like same aura "subclass" not stacking or something like that, can't remember exactly what it was but I think it was something like if you use 2 defensive auras they won't stack (it was very long time ago, forgive me if I'm wrong).

I'm actually rocking with Act 5 Merc on offline with this build, I think he has standard Grief + LW, but with Bramble and another Dream

Helm and yes clear speed is quite slow on players 8 but we still manage to kill everything without dying most of the time (you do need to be careful tho) but at least Merc is suuuuper tanky and does an actual dmg. The problem there is that I don't have other gear like rings, amu,

Belt, gloves or

Boots. xd The biggest problem with LW on Act 5 or inherit Might aura from Act 2 Merc is that with

Vengeance I, myself, am just not doing any physical dmg to be considerably affected by the Might and boosted that way...

I know I tested a lot of different options on maxroll and saw that using other setups with Mercs didn't change much in raw DPS output, like against

Baal on that level DPS goes from like 27k to like 32k which is not that much of a change. On the other hand I know for sure that if I lose a source of

Fanaticism I definitely drop down to 9 or 10 frames instead of min. of 8 (because with my setup I can achieve 8 frames with 14 or 15

Fanaticism Faith). I do need to test other options out and see how much it actually "feels" with lesser frames but more other stuff...

TL;DR Thank you for your input about Act 2 Merc, will definitely try to slap that, maybe first on offline and see how it goes and where is a soft spot in manner of players x!

Hey got a bit of inspiration on this, tried it out with a Phoenix shield and

Zeal?

Or maybe a

Frenzy barb with Beast or Hand of Justice in the offhand?

EDIT: just did some quick calculations, a barb wearing a Dream

Helm, Dragon armour, Doom and Hand of Justice will still be doing less elemental damage than just equipping 2 gimmershed … they really are the best single source of elemental damage on an item in the game

Nate2.0 wrote: 2 months ago

EDIT: just did some quick calculations, a barb wearing a Dream

Helm, Dragon armour, Doom and Hand of Justice will still be doing less elemental damage than just equipping 2 gimmershed … they really are the best single source of elemental damage on an item in the game

Yeah, I was actually very surprised by a

Gimmershred when I was starting and had no BiS gear/runes to make stuff... Tried both on some earlier crappy Paladin version of this build (actually it was basically just

Vengeance + self

Conviction) and on

Frenzy Barb (with double Gimmers) and it was more than fine on players 1, well for the most part. With that Pala I think I stopped at Hell Ancients and Barb got to Hell Andi (but on Hell Barb's efficiency significantly dropped -- again not even close to BiS gear). I know for sure I also used them on some other build/class to level up to like lvl 81-2 but I can't remember exactly where.

Since now I know more about game and that

Vengeance is basically converting phy. dmg to elem. would surely try to mix something up on yet another test build, but I'll have to think. I know synergies can be a big problem but some ideas like having an elemental throwing Barb was even popping on my mind. Don't know if that would work... Something else would be like a Barb with Kingslayer and

Gimmershred that mixes

Vengeance and throw but that sounds waaaay too weird and under-performing that I never put an effort to work on.


P.S. On this:

Nate2.0 wrote: 2 months ago

Hey got a bit of inspiration on this, tried it out with a Phoenix shield and

Zeal?

Or maybe a

Frenzy barb with Beast or Hand of Justice in the offhand?

Didn't try those but something I'm currently building is a Cold Bear Paladin with Beast +

Holy Freeze + Merc's Infinity, wanted to see if that would give me a new perspective on things. Something that is also on my list is some kind of SS Barb, I already took that

Wolfhowl from someone and was thinking about incorporating that with even Beast on Barb and maybe adding double Dream or something, dunno yet.

Now all of that being said, I just thought of something... Can't you use ANY weapon under other form? If I would to change my Auradin a bit and add an SS on top of him, couldn't I just, basically,

Sacrifice my shield and go with like Ice instead of Doom but then I'd have to use just a normal attack? Hm... Don't know if that would boost dmg now when I think about it more, but it could provide more Life I guess, because of the form. [yes dmg is almost halved]

Since I wanted to incorporate all of holy auras the only alternative utilizing

Zeal instead of

Vengeance would be to have something like you mentioned Beast + Phoenix but then re-orient everything into

Holy Freeze for myself and use Act 2 Merc with Infinity. Now that would significantly improve dmg and yield around 37k DPS on

Baal which kills him in around 6.4 seconds (but doing mostly cold, then physical, and then same-ish fire and a lot less lightning dmg). For comparison purposes the current build has around 27k and 11 seconds kill time (but elemental dmgs are more equal across the board with almost nothing as phy).