No more Holy fire builds!

[Meanstreak]

No more Holy fire builds!

If the damage calculator at http://diablo3.ingame.de is to be believed, than there is no way any build involving Holy Fire could work out.

Some poeple have been tossing around the idea of using Hand of Justice and a Dragon armor on a Dream build, or using two Dragons.

Just so you all know, if you stack two Dragons with a HoJ to make a lvl 44 Holy Fire aura, you will be doing around 600 extra fire damage.

Even IF you used a Paladin and maxed Resist Fire AND Salvation for the +480% synergy, your MAX fire damage will then be 3,288.

By the way, Sorceresses' fire mastery is only +163% at lvl 20, so they wouldn't even come close if they tried.

No Dragon-stacking will ever be worth it, epsecially Hand of Justice. While a max Conviction Dreamer can get SOME use out of an extra 4-5k elemental damage after -res, it doesn't compare when the lightning damage is already so high, and the slots used (weapon, body armor) weren't so crucial. You could easily get over 4k PHYSICAL damage using the right weapon and armor instead of wasting the slots on holy fire. At least then you get to use that damage for LEECH.

The bottom line is, Holy Fire is a bad skill. Don't bother.

 

[KillaMike]

Re: No more Holy fire builds!

If the damage calculator at http://diablo3.ingame.de is to be believed, than there is no way any build involving Holy Fire could work out.

Some poeple have been tossing around the idea of using Hand of Justice and a Dragon armor on a Dream build, or using two Dragons.

Just so you all know, if you stack two Dragons with a HoJ to make a lvl 44 Holy Fire aura, you will be doing around 600 extra fire damage.

Even IF you used a Paladin and maxed Resist Fire AND Salvation for the +480% synergy, your MAX fire damage will then be 3,288.

By the way, Sorceresses' fire mastery is only +163% at lvl 20, so they wouldn't even come close if they tried.

No Dragon-stacking will ever be worth it, epsecially Hand of Justice. While a max Conviction Dreamer can get SOME use out of an extra 4-5k elemental damage after -res, it doesn't compare when the lightning damage is already so high, and the slots used (weapon, body armor) weren't so crucial. You could easily get over 4k PHYSICAL damage using the right weapon and armor instead of wasting the slots on holy fire. At least then you get to use that damage for LEECH.

The bottom line is, Holy Fire is a bad skill. Don't bother.

its been known for ages, its same as why people prefer dreamer din instead of dreamer sorc: survivability.

it ll exists, just because you think it renders next to useless, doesnt mean others ll see it that way.

 

[mephiztophelez]

Re: No more Holy fire builds!

you get the occasional torch'din/auradin in pvp games.

they are very effective for the 10 seconds it takes people to figure out whats going on and fix their fire resists.

auradins who stack tend to die horribly.

 

[mmmpld]

Re: No more Holy fire builds!

Good for early levelling a pally with a ravenclaw bow, which may prove useful with respecs on the way :dopey:

 

[krischan]

Re: No more Holy fire builds!

By the way, Sorceresses' fire mastery is only +163% at lvl 20, so they wouldn't even come close if they tried.

A sorc most probably gets massive bonuses to skills, so when assuming that she has +20, she will be at 396%. On top of that, fire mastery is applied twice on her melee attacks, for a x25 multiplier.

Anyway, sorcs tend to be fragile in melee and a holy fire sorc won't have a weapon like Passion for a speedy (edit) and uninterruptible attack, so I doubt that she is really effective, in particular when comparing her with a dual Dream sorc.

 

[Metathrom]

Re: No more Holy fire builds!

Holy Fire is bull**** even on Auradin (talking about PvM here). Disappointed with the Holy Fire damage from HoJ + Dragon, I remade mine with Azurewrath and Gladiator's Bane and do not regret it.

 

[MrBill]

Re: No more Holy fire builds!

Depends on what your expectations are.

If you are only willing to play a D2 character who "pwns" everything just by looking at it, then, yes, I agree, a HFire Paladin isn't for you. However, if you like a challenge, they can be a lot of fun.

A few notes :

(1.) For obvious reasons, they work well with an Act 3 Cold Mage or an Act 2 Holy Freeze merc, as a side-kick. Less obviously, because of the AR problem (see below), an A2 Blessed Aim merc can be very useful to this kind of character.

(2.) The biggest problem for a HFire Paladin is not, as many people think, "low damage" (and "fire immunes"), although those issues do have an effect. Rather, it is, like all elemental Paladins, even with maxed out Zeal, they have serious AR problems in Hell. Partly because of the low elemental damage, this kind of Paladin absolutely must hit consistently in Hell, and that means that AR (or something to offset it, e.g. an Eth rune) is critical. An inadequate AR in Hell means certain death for this kind of character.

By the way, "less than ~1200 hit points by A3 in Hell" also means "certain death", particularly if you are adventuring alone and aren't very careful. Max block is highly recommended.

(3.) My last (Hardcore) HFire Paladin compensated for all these limitations by using a Fools' Mod rare weapon (I believe it was a Scourge) that also had a lot of built-in Lightening damage. Throw in a pair of Venom Grips (for CB + poison, you could also use some good crafted Blood gloves), a crafted Blood belt (OW), Gore Rider boots (CB etc.), Raven Frost (Cold damage, AR + CBF) and a bunch of high damage Poison charms and you have a viable, if unspectacular, character for D2 Hardcore Hell.

Not as easy as, say, a Summoner Necro or a Lightening Trapper Assassin, but then, if life was always easy, it wouldn't be interesting, would it? :wink:

Cheers

Mr. Bill

 

[Meanstreak]

Re: No more Holy fire builds!

Obviously if you are doing a sub-par build for fun, that is your prerogative. I am refering to the many times I see people suggesting that Dual-dreamers also use a HoJ and Dragon manly. I said what I did about using all three HF items to illustrate my point of how little damage you get from using three HF items, much less only adding two.

My beef is that people are just jumping on the aura bandwagons and they think just because you have an Infinity merc that packing on any source of elemental damage is the way to go.

The body armor and weapon slots are so incredibly crucial, and if any Dreamer is looking to improve their killing power, it is NOT by compromising potentially amazing stats in two of the most important item slots just because you can stack an aura.

Hell, if using only the HoJ and a Dragon armor only, I doubt you would get far past 1,000 fire damage added on, and with the right armor/weapon combination you can just about do better than that in physical damage to help with leech as well as get much better stats like resist, IAS, and other offensive AND defensive stats that Dragon and HoJ simply lack.

 

[Scudstorm]

Re: No more Holy fire builds!

(2.) The biggest problem for a HFire Paladin is not, as many people think, "low damage" (and "fire immunes"), although those issues do have an effect. Rather, it is, like all elemental Paladins, even with maxed out Zeal, they have serious AR problems in Hell.

Conviction makes AR quite moot actually.

Even Infy merc (only lvl12 Conv) 1-pt Enchant sorcs don't have AR issues.

 

[LordC]

Re: No more Holy fire builds!

Conviction makes AR quite moot actually.

Even Infy merc (only lvl12 Conv) 1-pt Enchant sorcs don't have AR issues.

I'm pretty sure that MrBill is talking about an untwinked character using Holy Fire as his main aura. Everyone else in this thread is talking about Auradins, who probably run Conviction.

As to the main thread topic: yeah, I think in most cases Holy Fire is underwhelming. Dreams are cheaper, more damaging, and have generally better secondary mods than Dragons. That said, the Holy Fire items do offer players the option to increase their damage output to stratospheric levels. I can only surmise that some players enjoy the high-risk high-reward playstyle that goes with a full Auradin build.

 

[MrBill]

Re: No more Holy fire builds!

You are correct (and sorry if I was not supposed to do this) but I usually never assume that players have access to "1337" ItAmZ when I comment on D2 character builds... this is partly because (due to TPPK, various other cheats and hacks, etc.) I only play in private Hardcore games and neither bot nor trade with people who I don't know.

Just to give you some context of how my own set of house rules affects this issue, in the 7+ years that I have so far had of playing Diablo, out of the 150+ characters that I have on the Realms, I have been able to legitimately find the runes to make ONE (1) Infinity stick (the precious possession of the merc of a Level 91 Hardcore Fire Druid, the merc, incidentally, also has my only Fortitude armor).

Anything requiring runes above an "Um" then becomes something to guard with your (Hardcore) life, so designing characters with Hand of Justice, Dragon, etc., is more or less a pipe dream, especially if it is an experiment that you aren't sure will be viable doing solo Hardcore.

If you are (for example) designing a Softcore dueler, have an unlimited budget and aren't fussy about using possibly duped runes / Runewords / elite items, then few if any of the above constraints would apply, so by all means, go knock yourself out and design a "D2 God" character. It's not my cup of tea but it is a legitimate way of playing Diablo.

Cheers and good luck with your Auradins

Mr. Bill

 

[KillaMike]

Re: No more Holy fire builds!

@ mr Bill, good think they getting they runedrops fixed, pretty much everything equal to 1.12 um drops rate, now its everything bellow zod rune so we finally can make 1337 items our self