That's a pretty cool build for the ladder.

If made nonladder and you just wanted to perfect it I would say that ber btals and verds would be a great option. sspurs. ofc if you don't use dupes you won't use these things, but if you do then you can make it very melee viable.

A few words of advice/wisdom:

Combat charms are far better than offensive for this build. They allow you to keep higher avg smite dmg if you are smiting with conviction or holy freeze on, and offensives aren't as worth it for the conv aura level if you have a quick right click. Here's why:
***If you are vs. a paladin with a higher conv aura than you, and you have conv on you, if you right click your conv aura it will override his for about 1 second, no matter if you have lvl 1 conv and he has lvl 90. Using high lvl conv and stacking the skill over -150% is the lazy way to override the aura.

Grief phase should be the defalut IMO. Allows you to keep max frames without fanat on. In fact, I would argue that a nonfanat build using 9 combats and 10 36/20s or 3/20/20s could potentially be better. It would free up a ton of points that you wouldn't need to add to get fanat or to point it. This could mean you can max smite, or even salv for higher pulses.


A great thing about this build is that you can charge and smite with conv on, be uninterruptable, and still be hitting with pulses. With a v/t you have to cast FoH to get an elemental hit in, and if you get hit in the meantime will go into fhr. That argument in and of itself shows the viability of this above and beyond a v/t (although v.t is more specialized and stronger tete a tete.)



p.s. inkanddagger says STICKY!

p.p.s. I am going to mess around with this thing on hero to see what I can come up with.

This post was edited by inkanddagger on Jan 19 2008 09:21pm

the problem of course is, pure auradins with maxed conviction are still a joke to duel against. Anyone good can easily stack resists high enough to make it tickle. So you are left with a weak smite vs most good duelers. Won't be enough sorry. But it's probably a fun char, just not a good one. If you don't mind dying a lot, maybe this could be fun in pubs?

not agreed due to the fact stacking need items slot and main killing is not done by pulse
btw think about it 150res and sorb how many dr/life u will lose ( except h din xd, wizzy owns...)

Lol I said good duelers, not you. My smiter and necro have 150% lightning stack on ALL THE TIME without any gear switches of any kind. And i'm not the only one, many people have chars that have mass stacking on permanently. The problem is, anyone who thinks auradins do damage are noobs. So these threads are usuaully just a revealer of who is a bad dueler.

noobs always say shit like auras hurt with conviction on etc. Ya it hurts people who suck sure, but why build a noob char that can only kill other noobs? Good duelers will always laugh at the very thought of an auradin of any kind.

also responding to


grief pb/zerk is really depends on enemy zerk will help tons v hdin
in my personal prefences i nvr really smite with conv on
the main purpose of pulse is lower their life and kill summons
the aura is also the dmg source for charge

bottom line, those aura's won't hurt anyone good. You're just a watered down smiter. It's best to just build a smiter / charger the regular way and go with that.

on ur smiteer i would want to know wat is ur inv made up of how many res sc? )just 10x 20/5)? or gc space
,r if u got more res sc than pcombs then u may got out smited imo
torch 20
anni 20
anya (even counting anya xd) 30
coa 30
exile 45
10x 20/5 50 or 20/11 110
190 or 255 total thait it rite? or ami wrong xd?
- 100 is 90/155

Thanks for the insightful post. I definitely agree that combat charms are better than offensive charms. The don't add much more smite damage (except when smiting without fana) but they do add charge damage/ar and defense which is a bonus. The main problem is that combat lifers are generally 6 - 8 times more expensive than offensive lifers, making it difficult to fill an inventory with them (especially on ladder).

That's an interesting point about flashing a low level conviction to override a higher one. The timing would take a while to get down, especially against an impending foh, but, like the conviction/fanaticism trick I mentioned, it could be very useful.

I also agree that a v/t overall is a stronger build. It's close though, and I prefer the playing style of an aura/smiter. If you tweaked this build a bit to max the smiter skills with aura secondary, it would shore up the v/t match a bit.

Thanks for the sticky vouch, pm me if you have any more thoughts after testing.

inv is:

6 x 41-45 life p combats
19 x 18/5's and 19/5's

The point of this build is to move away from auradins that only try to kill with pulses. With the inventory that you listed (which would cost 2k+ fg on ladder), and perfect resist hdin gear (75 wiz, 45 spirit, um'd shako, 30 maras), the pulses will still chip out about 60 life on average every 2.5 seconds. Unlike against a regular smiter, the hdin can't just set up hammer fields and wait for the smiter to charge in. After 30 seconds you're going to be down about 700 life, and even a gg hdin will fall after about 4 - 5 smites from this char then. At some point the hdin has to run away or try to tele onto the auradin, and if the auradin is playing right the hammers won't hit right away because the auradin is walking southwest. Once the hdin teles away (which most do as soon as anything hits them), you tele down and to the left to avoid the hammers and everything starts over, except the hdin has about half life at this point. It's by no means an easy duel, but the way you talk about it you should be able to take this char no sweat, which isn't true. I doubt you've actually dueled a good aura/smiter.

Also, you're not left with a weak smite. As I already mentioned, this char does around 5k damage with smite. The missing skill points in smite/fanaticism (and the +4 from hoz) would add about 2k more damage. It's possible to build this char to have within a few hundred damage of a full smiter, though I generally prefer to have maxed aura damage.

You make some valid points, unlike most of the flames so far in this post, but don't insult people or call them noobs because they don't want to drop 3k fg on a cookie cutter hdin (or possibly disagree with you). If you're on east ladder I'd be happy to run some ft5's. Feel free to s/s and post in this thread afterwards.