The PVP Auradin.

----------------------------------------------Gear:--------------------------------------------
Helm: Dream helm(personally, I prefer something with low REQs, but I have seen many auradins with bone visage dreams)
Shield: Dream shield(again, I prefer a sacred targe to keep my REQs low)
Chest: Dragon armor(dusk/archon, or something with even lower REQs would probably be best). Due to the fact that the dragon rune word adds a flat +360 defense, rather than a %enhanced defense, using a high str-req armor with a higher base is counter-productive.
Weapon: Hand of justice weapon. I prefer a phase blade, because it's the easiest elite weapon with which to reach the maximum attack speed. Some people prefer berserker axes for the bonus range. Using extremely low req weapons like crystal swords may be viable if you plan to do your damage exclusively with auras rather than zeal/charge. Personally, I don't think such a build would be as viable.
Rings: 2x bks. The + skills will add to your aura damage, and the +life will increase your survivability. If for some strange reason, you're finding yourself running out of mana from charging, you could consider using an SOJ. Using a 9min dmg, stat, life, resist ring may be an alternative option for a more charge/zeal oriented build.
Gloves: 20ias, cb, str, dex, life, resist gloves are ideal. Unfortunately, they are also very expensive. Realistically, there are many viable options in the glove slot. Many auradins use bloodfists (sometimes up'd) for the fhr, ias, and life bonuses. Some use laying of hands + credendum belt. Some use draculs. There are many combinations.
Belt: Again, this is an interchangeable slot. A rare belt with fhr, str, dex, life, resists, etc would probably be ideal. Some auradins use verdungos for the survivability bonus. Some use arachnid's mesh for the +1 skill level. Some use a belt + glove set combination.
Boots: Gore riders are the most common boots. However, since such a small percentage of auradin's damage is physical, the bonuses from gore riders wont be nearly as beneficial as they would be to say a pure zealer/charger. Ethereal treks are an option as are a good pair of rare boots. If you're mega-rich, you could use something like soul spurs or other dupes. Some people even use tearhaunch to avoid spending 4 skill points on the vigor pre-requisits.
Amulet: A rare +2, str, dex, life, resist amulet would be best. For a more zeal/charge oriented build highlords may be an option. A simple maras can work if you're on a budget.
Inventory: Torch, anni, defensive aura GCs(with life if you can afford them.) The defensive aura GCs will increase your overall aura damage. Luckily, 90% of paladins use combat GCs, which makes defensive GCs less expensive. In your remaining 10 or so slots, you will want to use 20life/5allresist SCs. Stacking resists (especially lightning and fire) is extremely beneficial in pvp. Due to the nature of the auradin build's slow, draining-damage playstyle, surviviabilty is essential. The natural bonuses on your runewords will increase your maximum resistances from 75/75/75/75 caps to 85/75/90/75, which is extremely useful. Nearly half of all pvp builds use some form of lightning damage: trappers, sorcs, foh pallies, holy shockers, javazons, etc. If built correctly, your paladin will be completely invulnerable to all of those pvp types, especially if you slap on a couple of wisps.
Other things to note about gear: Be mindful of your synergetic build type. Some auradins prefer to have a strong physical attack, and choose to use a zerker or legendary mallet HOJ. Combining those more powerful weapon bases with gore riders, highlords, and a skill build that involves more of a focus on leveling up charge + synergies may be beneficial. Some Auradins choose to use smite as a secondary attack, in which case a shield that provides greater smite damage (like a vortex or zakarum shield) should be used in conjunction with smite synergy skills. As mentioned: survivability is everything with an Auradin build. With that being said, keeping 2x wisps, 2x dwarf stars, and 2x ravenfrosts in your stash is always a good idea. I always keep a tgodz and nokozan handy as well. Nothing is more hilarious than getting healed by a BM, aimer, modding firesorc.

---------------------------------------------------Skills------------------------------------------------------------
Must-Have Skills:

-Level 25 conviction: Keeping conviction up at all times is the way to go for pvp. There is a cap of -150% resistance, so plan your build accordingly so as not to waste skill points going beyond conviction level 25 including +skill item bonuses and your CTA's battle command. Again, it's important to note that leveling conviction beyond the -150 cap provided at level 25 is completely useless. The range of 13.3 yards does not change from skill level 1 to 99.

-Max resist fire aura: this adds damage to the holy fire auras given by your dragon and HOJ.
-Max resist lightning aura: this adds damage to holy shock, given by your 2x dreams.
-Max salvation: this adds damage to both holy shock and holy fire.
-Level 1 base zeal
-Level 1 base holy shield - for increasing block rate and defense bonuses
-Level 1 base vigor - essential for synching

Interchangeable Skills Depending on Desired Build:
-smite+synergetic holy shield
-charge+synergetic vigor/might
-Foh+synergetic holy shock
-holy shield

Overview of Skills: At level 90 your character should have 102 skill points. At least 77 points are required to fulfill the essential skill build (likely more, depending on your +skills as conviction must reach level 25). This leaves approximately 25 skill points that are left to play around with. Personally, I prefer to have survivability over damage, so most of my extra points have gone into holy shield. However, as previously stated, there are several alternative builds including an FOH build, a charge build, and a smite build. Pre-plan your character so you can use the proper skill build in unison with the proper gear setup. For example, a charge-heavy build will use gores and highlords, while a survival build will prefer to use treks and a good +2/stat/life amulet.

----------------------------------------------------STATS------------------------------------------------------
-Strength: Minimum amount required to use your gear.
-Dexterity: Minimum amount required to achieve 75% block with holy shield active. Remember, this number will change as you gain levels.
-Vitality: All of your extra stat points should go into vitality.
-Energy:

-------------------------------------------------STRATEGY------------------------------------------------------
The basic concept of an auradin is simple. Run circles around your opponent, avoiding his attacks while your damaging auras slowly drain his life. Remember your conviction aura has a radius of 13.3 yards, so you can keep yourself positioned at a safe distance, but if your opponent is standing outside of that range, your damage to them will likely be miniscule. If you're fighting a character like a sorc or necro, you can target them with charge to slap them for big damage. However, charging characters like whirlwind barbarians may be suicidal, so use discretion. Hold the shift key while clicking the charge skill to run around, avoiding attacks, while making sure to stay within range of your auras.

Side-note, it's always nice to have an enigma in your stash just in case you need to do some pvming... or worse, if a BM necro is bone-prisoning you. Wearing an enigma rather than a Dragon will lower your damage by at least 25% though, so only switch to the trusty enigma when absolutely necessary.

This post was edited by captainthrall on Apr 13 2015 04:09pm

Im confused : " Pvp Auradin Guide > Fun, Fresh, Unique Playstyle " ?

Haha, I think it's fresh and unique in terms of the play style. Nearly every other build is played one of two ways: run up to the enemy and smash them, or shoot stuff at them. Auradins are fresh in the sense that their strategy for success is completely different from any other character.

So this is just the usual, old, boring, done-many-times-before auradin.

can u write about merc options and there is no more glitching for aura din right?

Waste of time

Generally,it is considered BM to use a merc in PVP, so I wont comment there.
Yes, aura glitching was considered an exploit and that exploit has been patched/removed.

This build does not require any exploits, and is 100% up-to-date. (diablo 2 patch 1.13d)




I've received a few questions via direct messages. I'll address them here, as they may be useful to people browsing this thread in the future:
Q: Should I add points to my paladin's holy fire and holy shock skills?
A: NO. The passive HF and HS auras given by your gear (dragon, hoj, dream helm, and dream shield) do not benefit from points added to HF and HS in your paladin's skill tree. They do however benefit from synergetic skills such as: resist fire, resist lightning, and salvation. During play, your paladin will never actively use HF or HS. Leveling HF or HS is counter-productive.

Q: My auradin is very high level, and I've added all of the required skills you mentioned. What do I add now?
A: Once you've maxed conviction, resist fire, resist lightning, and salvation, there exist a variety of different skills you may choose to increase. The most common choice is holy shield, but as I mentioned there are several different possible builds which may prefer to increase the charge or FOH skills as well. It's really up to you!

Q: Why did that DHA guy say this is a waste of time?
A: He's from France. Upon encountering an auradin in a duel game he would certainly surrender immediately, and thus his opinion can't really be taken seriously.

For your info :





No and no. Only hard points into synergies affect the aura damage.



Except if you're dueling another auradin (in this case, it's possible to negate his aura if yours has a higher level).

Yeah, I've heard this before but I'm not 100% sure whether +skills from items give bonuses to passive, item-given auras or not. There is a lot of conflicting information strewn across the internet. Some sources of information say only hard points to synergies increase passive aura dmg. Some sources say hardpoints and +all skills attributes from items both increase passive auras. Other sources say neither hard points or +all skills items add bonuses.

I have done some testing and can confirm 100% that hard points absolutely do give bonuses to passive auras(auras given from items.)

I'm still not entirely sure if items also boost dmg through synergy or not. I'll do some further testing and research to see what I can find.

Thanks for mentioning this!

Alright, first I would like to thank Feanur for his input.

I ran a few experimental tests to determine whether hard points, and +skills from gear increase the damage of passive auras. Passive auras are auras that given from gear and are always active, such as the holy shock aura provided by the runeword Dream.

The very first thing I tested was whether or not a dream shield and a dream helm stack together. Meaning, do you get double the aura damage when using two dreams rather than one. YES, you do.
Next, I tested whether dragon stacks with hand of justice(hoj). YES, it does
Finally, I tested whether dream + dream + dragon + hoj all stack together. YES, they do. Wearing 4 runewords with passive-auras does in fact provide the character with 4 separate, but active auras simultaneously.

Next, I wanted to test how synergy skills affect passive auras. According to the skill tree description, Holy shock(from dream) receives +12% lightning damage per level of resist lightning aura, and 4% damage per level of salvation aura. Holy fire (from dragon and hoj) receives +18% fire damage per level from resist fire aura, and 6% fire damage per level from salvation aura. The question is, do passive auras receive a synergetic benefit from both hard-point skills, and +skills given from item bonuses, or neither?

I ran some timed trials to answer this question. To do so, I reset all of the skills on my paladin, giving him 0, 0, 0 across the board for all 3 skill trees. Next, I put on the 4-piece runeword combination, dream + dream + dragon + hoj. Then, I grabbed a fairly wimpy sorceress to use as a crash-test dummy. I went hostile, and had the paladin stand next to the town gate. I then clicked start on a stopwatch as the sorc walked outside of the town gate. When the paladin's auras killed the sorceress, I stopped the timer. I repeated the trial 5 rimes, and took an average. I then divided the total life of the sorceress (1454) by the average amount of time that passed before she died. This yielded the average damage-per-second of the paladin's auras.

First test: baseline - no skills added to the paladin's talent tree. This test will determine the raw damage produced by the passive auras alone(without any bonus damage from synergies.)
trial 1: 00:47:80
trial 2: 00:49:00
trial 3: 00:43:80
trial 4: 00:44:10
trial 5: 00:44:60
5-trial-mean: 00:45:86
damage per second: 31.71

Second test: 1 hardpoint was added to resist fire, resist lightning, and salvation. This test will determine if passive auras do in fact gain bonuses from hard-point synergies.
trial 1: 00:39:60
trial 2: 00:37:50
trial 3: 00:37:00
trial 4: 00:41:90
trial 5: 00:38:40
5-trial-mean: 38.88
damage per second: 37.40

Third test: +skill items added. I equipped the paladin with additional gear, including bul kathos rings, maras amulet, and defensive aura skill charms. This test will determine if "+x to all skills" and "+1 to defensive auras" attribute bonuses have an effect on passive auras.
trial 1: 00:37:70
trial 2: 00:37:20
trial 3: 00:38:70
trial 4: 00:39:80
trial 5: 00:43:20
5-trial-mean: 00:39:32
damage per second: 36.98

Fourth test: hardpoints maxed. I added +20 to lightning resist, fire resist, and salvation auras - effectively maxing them on the paladin's skill tree.
trial 1: 00:11:70
trial 2: 00:08:20
trial 3: 00:08:50
trial 4: 00:10:70
trial 5: 00:09:20
5-trial-mean: 00:9:66
damage per second: 150.52

These tests conclude the following:
-adding hard-points to passive aura synergies (resist fire, resist lightning, and salvation) increases the damage of passive auras
-using "+x to all skill levels" and "+defensive auras" items DOES NOT increase the damage of passive auras

Conclusion: this build has even more freedom than originally thought. Using +skills items is useless in terms of aura damage. Rather than using items like SOJ, Bull Kathos, and Maras, it would likely be more beneficial to use +AR, str, dex, life, resist rings and amulets.