A little bit of background on the Aura Zealot:
Last ladder I made a version of this build and it was by far may favorite MF character. He utilized fully synergized dual dreams, that were accompanied by a fully synergized Holy Freeze aura from Doom and enough physical damage from Zeal to effectivley leach using Life Tap, but not 1-hit yourself while running Chaos. His only real problem was how slowly he Teleported. So once 1.13 dropped I made the usual Light Sorc, followed by a Hammer/1pt Smiter for MFing and killing DClone/Ubers that never got finished, got tired of all that and wanted to resurect my Aura Zealot from 1.12. This time though, I could take advantage of the removal of IM, create an MF Pally that didn't have problems with Wave 2 in Baal's Throne and increase his FCR making slow Teleporting no longer an issue. Here's what what I came up with:

Skills:
20 Resist Lightning
20 Fanaticism
20 Sacrafice
20 Zeal
8 Holy Shield
Remaining into Salvation

Gear:
Dream BV
Dream ST
Enigma MP
Grief PB
Dracs
Raven
10 FCR Ring (Res & Dex are nice additions)
10 FCR Ammy (Res & Dex are nice here too. One with skills would provide some additional damage but is really unnecessary, especially for their price!)
Arach
Travs

Switch:
CTA (Flail is nice here instead of CS since you're using a PB as you main weapon it's easier to tell which gear you're currently on)
Spirit (must be 35FCR to hit breakpoint)

Inventory:
Torch
Anni
Gheeds
21x 7mfs

Merc:
Eth Andys (15 IAS allows you to hit the A2 Merc IAS break point when using Treachery and a Great Poleaxe)
Eth Treachery (just need him stayin alive not necessarily killing and great IAS)
Eth Infinity Great Poleaxe (The highest DPS weapon at nearly all amounts of IAS possible for your A2 Merc)

Damage:
Lightning Damage 1 - 5,530 (lvl 5 salvation @ lvl 90)
Physical Damage 6,171 - 6,376 (400/15ed Grief, 15-25 dmg from Travs, lvl 28 Fana, lvl 28 Zeal fully synergized)
Total Zeal Damage 6,172 - 11,906, AVG 9,039 (Grief's dmg to does not show in the char screen, so don't be alarmed when it show's signifcantly less dmg)

Res in Hell: (Anya-30 + Dream BV-20 + Dream ST-65 + Torch-20 + Anni-20 = 155, you will need an additional 20 all res from your ammy, ring & charms)
CR - 75
FR - 75
LR - 75 (If you can find an additional 10 LR it really helps because the cap is raised to 85 from maxing Resist Lightning)
PR - 75

MF: Dream BV-25 + Dream ST-25 + Nigma-90 + Travs-50 + Gheeds-40 + 21x 7mfs-147 = 377 MF

Teleporting: I do all of my teleporting on switch because it enables me to hit the 75FCR breakpoint (Spirit-35 + Arach-20 + Ammy-10 + Ring-10 = 75)

Notes:
* Easily hits 4-FPA zeal breakpoint
* Needs 159 Dex to hit max block at lvl 90
* Requires no strength investment using an MP nigma
* CBF
* Cold sorb
* Life Tap
* 10 Frame Teleporting!!!
* Can kill any monster in the game with dual damage sources and merc conviction.

It's also important to note that while I used perfect gear for compiling this guide, the character is very functional with less than perfect gear. For example, you only need 9 IAS to reach the 4 frame Zeal break point while running a lvl 28 Fana Aura and you're already doing a ton of damage as it is, so getting a perfect Grief is definitely not required. The same is also true with Dex and Res. You have plenty of 7 mfs in your inventory that can be swapped out for resistances or and dexterity. Some people would even argue that carrying 377MF is too much because of the high value associated with socketables theses days (try to buy a 15/3 eth 5os Zerker, or Perfect 4os Eth bugged Sacred Armor!).

I've been playing D2 for a while but this is the first guide I've written so your thoughts and comments are definitely welcomed.

This post was edited by Fierless on Jul 9 2010 12:37pm

nice guide, good ideas.

some suggestions :
1/ Laying of hands instead of Draks ? you lose life tap (not so usefull here i guess) to gain 20ias (probably usefull vs Decrepify) and 350ed on deamons.
(+15str vs +50fire res also...)

or 2/ Trang's Gloves to get same fcr in switch while turning Arach to Dungo (or Strings) and amu to a cheap Mara (or fcr-ring to nagel or bk ?).
notice that %psn damage on TO will help your venom on grief !

3/ for a perfect mf-er / goldfinder : bugged dream on a barb + enigma + full mf/eg stuff, skills : usual warcries + max find item, conviction on merc.
1-shot any Hell game (except few 117+light immunes who will be shot by the merc), farm 3M gold + some nice rare/unique in 10minutes

regards

Thanks for the ideas, I like the idea of potentially swapping out the gloves, especially to trangs for the FCR and extra poison damage. I'd like to see how much damage they actually add because I think 3 legit sources of damage is bad ass. I also like the FCR because it would allow me to use dungos for extra DR and life, or I could go maras and then use a wisp for light sorb on those pesky willow wisps and some additional MF. Really tough to give up Life Tap though, pretty much makes me invincible.

I also like the Barb build, I've always been intrigued by an MF/GF Barb but never really found aguide I liked and don't have enough experience using them to make my own. Also not a huge fan of using the dream glitch, it makes you crazy powerful but requires a partner to do it. Anyone know if they patched that bug in 1.13?

bug through trading window has been fixed... but it's still possible to bug !
you don't need a partner to bug your aura it's fast and easy.

Really? How do you bug yourself?

This post was edited by Fierless on Jul 12 2010 11:03am

lack of any cb is disturbing for pvm.


I'd suggest swapping out travs for gores or gobs.

I'd prob use a death war spike instead of the grief for the extra cb and ds. Worth the slight damage trade off in my book. Good phy damage on both + holyshock, so fodder monsters will die instantly either way, but on bosses the death spike will speed things up substantially.

I'd suggest using Conviction over Fanatism. The normal Dreamer is a lot better...
And combining this with Teleport is stupid anyway.

This post was edited by Mors_Agni on Jul 12 2010 11:20am

That's a really good point, CB would definitely help speed up Baal in particular. I think I'd prefer to swap out the boots over swapping out Grief for Death. If I were to use Death I would have to make it in a PB because even using a War Spike (-10) over a zerker means I would need an additional 36IAS to reach 4 frames, which means no LT because I would have to swap out my gloves for something with IAS. So I compared the damage with Grief PB and Death PB:

Physical Damage:
Grief PB - 6171 - 6376 (6274 Avg)
Death PB - 2567 - 2900 (2734 Avg)

Far too signifcant of a damage reduction to make the switch IMO. Is 15% or 25% CB functional or is it too low of a percentage to make much difference?



I actually used conviction as my main aura on my 1.12 version and could go that route without making any gear changes on my 1.13. It's not a bad suggestion either because I would only have to use 17 points in conviction to hit lvl 25 beyond which point there is no additional resistance benefits saving me 3 points that can be used to boost my light damage with salvation. I will also have the advent of -150% res running my own conviction over the -85% provided by infinity. My physical damage would be reduced however from 6274 AVG to 4041 AVG which is pretty substantial. Overall though the killing speed on this build using Fana or Conviction would be comparable. Running my own conviction I could actually use Reapers on my merc for ctc Decripify which would also help with physical immunes. (This idea is sounding better and better).

Though your conviction point is well taken, the idea that having fast teleporting on an MF character is not a stupid one.

This post was edited by Fierless on Jul 12 2010 12:27pm

Teleport on an mf-char is obviously a good choice
+ enigma gives ~90%mf !

my Enigma-dreamer uses :
conviction from his own,
fanatism from merc (discussable choice but ias is pretty fine when you got decrepified, in CS or in Throne).

i must say CB wouldnt help, since he kills Hell diablo in 2sec and Hell Ball in 5sec. maybe for an Uber-build ?



have also Dream on your merc (helm or shield if act3 merc),
replace your dream by your merc' dream, give yours to your merc.
repeat.
never take off your dream, always replace it by the other.

... and you're bugged

I have no trouble taking down Diablo very quickly, but Baal does take a bit longer for me. I think the reason it seems like my Dreamer is so slow at killing Baal is because my light Sorc owns Baal in half the time of my Dreamer, but that might not be a fair comparison.

Conviction Vs. Fanaticism:
As far as the IAS goes you need 72 in order to hit 4 Frame Zeal using a PB, if your using a lvl 28 fana you need 9 additional IAS, if your using a lvl 15 fana you need 14 additional. So if you weren't using any Fana you would have to go 32 IAS (or better) Grief + 20 IAS Gloves + 20 IAS Highlords = 72. However, even running a lvl 2 Fana only reuires 35 additional IAS to reach 4 Frames which can be acheived by using Grief alone. So if you wanted to run your own conviction you would either have to use a Faith Merc to hit 4 Frames, or you would have to sacrafice LT from dracs and FCR from your Ammy in order to hit 72 IAS, which would allow you to use an A2 Merc and gain Decrepify and Holy Freeze. If you ran your own Fana you would then need your merc to use Infinity for Conviction which sacrafices Decrepify, but also allows you to maintain LT and FCR. You would also be doing significantly more physical damage and have much higher AR running your own Fana. It's definitely a toss up and I guess it comes down to how much you like decrepify. I'm also looking into the viability of using an EbotdZ or botdPB for the 60 IAS it grants.

Thanks for the tip on solo bugging too, it will be very helpful indeed!

This post was edited by Fierless on Jul 13 2010 08:39am