The Aurariftadin: MFer, Dkey runner, uber runner (The most versatile character ever?)

[wingsfan]

Hello to everyone! I am been a frequent lurker on these forums (with the exception of the trade forum where I have done some good business) and have greatly enjoyed the wealth of knowledge this site has to offer. Perusing the forums has been almost as entertaining as playing the game itself. However, I just made a riftadin based on IntelligentX's guide: http://forums.diabloii.net/showthread.php?t=535467, and feel like the equipment setup I used is exrtremely versatile and can conquer nearly every challenge in the game.

This is not an original build! It is a more specific equipment and skill point distribution based on the guide linked above.

First a few of the benefits of this build:

-Kills the vast majority of enemies in one to two hits.
-Is a great playing partner because of the awesome auras you provide.
-Can Mf in every area of the game with relative ease.
-Can keyrun Nihilack very efficiently.
-Can solo the sub-ubers and ubers fairly easily.
-Is a ton of fun to play!
-Is not a hammerdin!

The relative drawbacks:

-Is hella expensive to make (about 12 hrs for the complete MFing and ubering setup)
-Will not kill every single enemy in the game in one to two hits (I have a little trouble with the Travincial council and the immune to everything monsters in the Furnace of Pain)
-Without insight teleporting to the countess or baal may be a pain

So on to the specifics!

Equipment Setup:

This build draws 99.9 percent of its killing power from its equipment, so certain pieces of gear are indespensible.

Helm and Shield:

Dream Runeword - "Io Jah Pul"

10% Chance To Cast Level 15 Confuse When Struck
Level 15 Holy Shock Aura When Equipped
+20-30% Faster Hit Recovery (varies)
+30% Enhanced Defense
+150-220 Defense (varies)
+10 To Vitality
Increase Maximum Life 5% (Helms Only)
+50 To Life (Shields Only)
+0.625-61.875 To Mana (Based On Character Level)
All Resistances +5-20 (varies)
12-25% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items (varies)

Dream has several key benefits:
-First the sickness of the lvl 30 holy shock aura when they are equipped
-Second when dream is made in a Paladin shield with high base resist all it provides a huge boost to your base resistances.
-Provides a bit of MF

Weapon:

Rift Runeword - "Hel Ko Lem Gul"

20% Chance To Cast Level 16 Tornado On Striking
16% Chance To Cast Level 21 Frozen Orb On Attack
20% Bonus To Attack Rating
Adds 160-250 Magic Damage
Adds 60-180 Fire Damage
+5-10 To All Stats (varies)
+10 To Dexterity
38% Damage Taken Goes To Mana
75% Extra Gold From Monsters
Level 15 Iron Maiden (40 Charges)
Requirements -20%

This gives you a wide variety of elemental damage, but its principal benefit is the frozen orbs it throws off in every direction. Make this in a war scepter as the low physical damage will allow yout to run through the Chaos Sanctuary with little trouble.

Armor:

Enigma Runeword - "Jah Ith Ber"

+2 To All Skills
+45% Faster Run/Walk
+1 To Teleport
+750-775 Defense (varies)
+ (0.75 Per Character Level) +0-74 To Strength (Based On Character Level)
Increase Maximum Life 5%
Damage Reduced By 8%
+14 Life After Each Kill
15% Damage Taken Goes To Mana
+ (1 Per Character Level) +1-99% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items (Based On Character Level)

Two reasons: A huge boost to magic find and the teleport skills! This allows you to easily traverse the durance of hate and the halls of pain to loot the bosses.

Belt:

I use a gold wrap belt for the magic find, you can use whatever you please.

Suggestions: Verdungoes, Nosferatus, disciple belt, tgods, etc.

Gloves:

I use Lavagouts for the resists, IAS, and the CtC Enchant, however, I am sure the Disciple gloves, or a any nice rare gloves would work equally well.

Boots:

War Travellers for the magic find.

Rings and amulets:

Use one Ravenfrost for the "cannot be frozen", the other ring is up to your discretion, I use a Nagelring for the MF.

The amulet is also flexible, but I use a maras for the resists, however, highlords might be better as it will allow you to hit the highest zeal framerate. Any nice rare amulet will do though.

Charms:

Pally Torch, resists are a priority, as they are somewhat lacking with my setup.
Anni, again a given.
Gheeds, for the MF.
Whatever else you need!
I had to use a couple resist gcs, but if mf is your priority, stack mf scs.

Alternative gear for Ubering:

By switching your gloves to dracs, your weapon to a beast, and your boots to gores (or goblin toes) you can instantly transform the character into a solo uber runner, I have done it several times with little or no trouble. With only 10 IAS off weapon you will reach the max frame rate for smiting due to the built in fanaticism aura on Beast.

Switch gear:

I would put a spirit and a wizard spike on switch to help you teleport faster.

That is about it for gear. It is a hefty pay out in terms of wealth, but it gives you a really nice character in return.

Skill Point Distribution:

14 in prerequisites

1 in zeal
(your principle attack, will be boosted by plus skills to give a five attack zeal)

20 resist lightning
20 salvation
(both of these are synergies for the holy shock on dream helm and dream shield, they provide about 7000 max damage when maxed)

20 in holy shield
(gives you huge defence, max blocking, and a nice damage boost when uber running)

17 hard points in to conviction with my equipment setup
(Use this as your principle aura. This is what makes this build awesome. It breaks almost all lightning immunities and boosts all the elemesntal damage of your attacks. In addition, it makes you a nice party member for sorceresses and pretty much every other character)

1 into redemption
(This is just awesome for quickly refilling your mana and life bulbs. It also makes running Nihilack for d-keys a bit easier)

Stat Point Distribution:

Strength: Enough for equipment, with enigma this is basically nothing. I put about 70 base into str so I could equip my low lvl gear and ended up with way too much.
Dexterity: Enough for max block with holy shield.
Vitality: The rest, I have about 1500 life with equipment.
Energy: None

Mercenary Gear:

I use an act 1 Rogue equipped with a faith bow. The Fanaticism gives a huge boost to increased attack speed which allows you to hit a very high attack framerate.

You could also use a Act 2 holy freeze merc with insight to help you with mana and teleporting issues.

Closing Comments:
Thank you very much for reading this and if you choose to folow my outline I hope you enjoy it! Feel free to leave feedback, suggestions, or open flames. Finally, thank you very much to IntelligentX for his awesome riftadin idea!

[IntelligentX]

Heh, I never think of a riftadin wearing enigma to be honest, but it looks quite interesting =)

I think it is wise to boost up FCR a bit if teleport is used. This not only increase speed on teleport, but provide more safety in case you encounter some nasty monsters/wrong click on teleport and so on.
I think it shouldn't be too difficult to reach 48 FCR, example:
Arachnid mesh = 20
FCR rings x2 = 20
Magic/Rare/Crafted amulet with 8 or higher FCR = 8+

And here it goes 48 FCR, which increases cast rates from 15 frames to 11 frames.

Or plain 20 FCR (From arachnid mesh or 2 FCR rings, for example) will bring the cast rate to 13 frames.

Unfortunately I guess FCR and last IAS BP is not possible to happen together on this build - either FCR or IAS. I assume you have level 14+ fanaticism from your mercenary, but you still need 45 IAS if you wish to reach the last zeal IAS bp. Your weapon, helmet, shield, armor is fixed, and no boots provide IAS or FCR, so the choice left are amulet/ring/glove and belt. To reach 45 IAS, glove/belt/amulet have to be used (For example, 20 IAS on lavagout, 10 IAS on goldwrap, and 20 IAS from cats eye/highlord's wrath). With this, there is no way you can reach 48 FCR bp with IAS gear. In this case, I think we will settle for 20 FCR (from two FCR rings).

Of course, I think this build is for magic find purpose so IAS is not that important, so reaching higher FCR bp is probably more important.

That's all I can think of at the moment. I haven't play Diablo 2 for sometime already and hope the values on FCR/IAS is still correct =X

[EquiLa]

After reading it thru it's really close to what I posted here some month ago.

Showoff (http://forums.diabloii.net/showpost.php?p=6185546&postcount=304)
Gear "discussion" (http://forums.diabloii.net/showthread.php?t=625107)

Never really tried to MF with this guy. Mainly been doing cows, wsk and some pvp but finally put him to rest some week ago awaiting a rebuild.

Using Wiz/Spirit on switch should be enough for any teleporting duty so I would use the main gear to hit the last zeal breakpoint instead. If you've got a really nice fcr/ melee stats rings you might aswell use it but that should be enough.
(If it helps you reach another bp on the tele switch, haven't checked)

Anyways, it's a real fun build to play. Nice to see some new gear choices.

/Equila

[IntelligentX]

Ouch, I forget about the wizardspike + spirit on switch section :azn:
And yeah, hitting last zeal IAS bp is recommended. More IAS = more orb sprayed = more damage per time frame.

[maiku]

BTW, also remember that "Rift" in a Thresher is really nice on an Act 2 Merc, so you can get more Frozen Orbs. I made a "Rift" Thresher, put it on a Merc with Andariel's Visage w/ an IAS jewel and "Treachery," and made my Merc into an Orb machine.

[niner]

Why do you need fcr when you can just kill all? Talk about a versatile build...

http://forums.diabloii.net/showthread.php?t=414604

Theres better, then there is weaker copies of it....

[THRiLL KiLL]

sadly i have not gotten my hands on a rift. i need to.

my auradin varies a bit from yours

i have the dual dream setup helm/sheild

armor i have the dragon. the hydras rock.

ammy = maras
rings = raven/natures peace

weapon 1 i have a 6ocs phaseblade = 120ias
on switch i have beast/phoenix sheild

belt = string of ears
boot = gores
hand = rare 20ias 30fr 20 lr

the orbs sound cool, but for my current setup, the 4 frame hits rock..

[Ankeli]

You invented a whole new way to spell Nihlathak. Propably the worst one to date too :P

[iLoveSoccer]

So from what i saw the main attack is zeal ( physical ) and holy shock ( lightning)?

[IntelligentX]

So from what i saw the main attack is zeal ( physical ) and holy shock ( lightning)?

You have missed the frozen orb.

[Clervis]

You could also do the lame thing and slap on a Grief when you go up against ubers. Gear options are so crazy now that you could build a Pally with only one point in each skill and he'd be able to do the whole game with ease if he had all the right equipment. But, yes, Riftadin is an awesome build. Oh, and, niner is a shameless self-promoter.

[maiku]

LW is not required when lots of Level 21 Orbs are ripping across the screen from you (and your Merc) under the influence of Level 25 Conviction. Those'll result in a lot more AoE and total damage than LW will ever provide. Need to avoid damage? Consider %PDR and straight PDR stuff and high defense.

[SyCoMiDgEt]

I Just Have 2 Things To Say:
1. Nice Build/Guide
2. 12 hrs? thats expensive lol haha

[IntelligentX]

IMO holy shield can boost defense a LOT that reaching 8k-12k should not be a big problem.

[wingsfan]

Thank's all for the comments.

After finally checking out the IAS breakpoints for my character's Zeal, I discovered that I am one frame short of the max speed. The only way I could reach the final breakpoint is (as IntelligentX pointed out) to put on a highlords or Cat's eye. Since this is not viable as this point for my character (as I need the resists from maras) I may just throw on some Chancies, add a fire resist gc, and make do with the second best framerate for a while.

Thank you for all the compliments, as well. The reason I love paladins (except for hammerdins) is the versatile ways in which they can spit out damage. All the variants other people posted are awesome, even the whateverdin (niner). Although if you are implying that mine is a weaker copy of your build, I would say two things: I copied IntelligentX, not you, and mine is better because I have an emotional investment in it.

I made this build specifically so I could run the chaos sanctuary with a melee based character, but then quickly realized it could kick butt anywhere in the game including ubertrist.

One more point of clarification, the Beast I use for ubering is in a War Spike which is how is allows me to easily reach the final IAS breakpoint. Thrill Kill, I think you should be ready to handle the ubers if you use a beast or death or some other high crushing blow weapon (this is in reference to another exchange about auradins and the ubers).

The reason I opted for Beast as opposed to Last Wish, Grief, or Death is the built in fanaticism aura. This way I can gain the speed boost and damage boost it provides, while still overriding meph's conviction aura with my own.

Finally, yes, I did butcher the spelling of Nihlathak. Go ahead put me in the "butchered spelling of names" Hall of Fame (For the longest time I thought the character Elrond from Lord of the Rings was Erond, because I just skimmed everytime I saw it in print).

Sorry for the somewhat disjointed nature of this post, but I greatly appreciate all the comments and criticisms of my spelling.

Thanks again to IntelligentX for his awesome riftadin guide.

[flamingchen]

Wait, so rift's chance to cast frozen orb on ATTACK means that when you simply attack, you can release a frozen orb?

[EquiLa]

Wait, so rift's chance to cast frozen orb on ATTACK means that when you simply attack, you can release a frozen orb?

No, you have to be swinging at something. And by swinging I mean attempting to hit something within (weapon-)range.

You can most probably explain it better then this. Quite sure I read something about it IntelligentX guide to the riftadin.

/Equila

[IntelligentX]

Wait, so rift's chance to cast frozen orb on ATTACK means that when you simply attack, you can release a frozen orb?

It is like what Equila said - you have to actually swinging to an enemy in order to cast the orb, which means Shift + Attack won't work if no enemy is on your weapon range.
To be precise, CTC on attack means you don't need to land a successful hit on enemy to cast the orb, where CTC on striking requires you to actually hit the monster to cast.

[flamingchen]

Ah. Shame lol, imagine just sitting there shift attack and getting orbs to spew out.

[THRiLL KiLL]

they praticaly do...

right now, i hit a 5 frames.. if i get a act1 merc with faith, i can hit 4 frames..

with 5frames its always going off...

[IntelligentX]

they praticaly do...

right now, i hit a 5 frames.. if i get a act1 merc with faith, i can hit 4 frames..

with 5frames its always going off...

He meant to shift attack while no monsters are around.

[SocraticB]

Two Questions:

First, is it worth holding out for a War Scepter with specific +skills?

Second, what leveling advice is there for this build? I building an AuraRiftadin, currently at Clvl 45, and am using Stormeye to give me a Holy Shock aura for my main attack. I have maxed Resist LIghtning, and am doing about 89-1100 damage. Problem is, I'm in A3 Nightmare, and the physical damage isn't enough to leech well, nor does total damage do enough damage reliably to packs. It's clear that leveling from 45-53 is going to be annoyingly slow, and hard at the last few levels, with my current setup. I can do it, but prefer to avoid the PITA.

What is a good alternative weapon for this build until Rift is available at Clvl 53? Is Zakarum's Hand the only alternative (gives +2 Holy Shock)? I'm not sure that Holy Shock is a good alternative through to level 53; seems that the damage is pretty much maxed on that right now for this build since I can't put Dream on until the 60's, (I don't want to waste a hard point into Holy Shock myself, and with 1 Zeal, 20 Res Light, about 10 Conviction and the rest in prereqs/Holy Shield, my offensive options are limited (except for harsh language).

I have about +5 skills from my equipment, giving me enough Zeal and some nice (at this level) bonuses to various skills.

I'm thinking my only alternatives are:

1. Upgrade to Zakarum's Hand for holy shock in a higher damage weapon and suck it up, OR
2. Drop my Spirit Shield and equip Tiamat's Rebuke, switch my aura from Holy Shock to Conviction and use a mid-level elemental damage weapon (Sureshill Frost, etc.).

Any recommendations/insight would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

SocraticB

[maiku]

"Black" Knout. Decent damage, Crushing Blow, and some cold damage on it for slowing. Hell Plague long sword is also a good alternative, since it has hefty fire damage. And you can take a 4-6 socket sword and stuff it with topazes and use Conviction. Anything you use that has elemental damage on it + Conviction = death to monsters in NM.

One more tip I have is to run the tombs in large games in NM. It's good experience. This is what I've done with my rebuild VoR Zealot. He's made nearly level 60 from running NM tombs solo in 8-player games. Cows are also good for experience, but somewhat tough to kill/survive at lower levels.

[SocraticB]

I switched my Spirit pally shield with 60+ resists for Tiamat's Rebuke shield, and switched the Stormeye out for a Ginther's Rift (all I had at the moment). Using Conviction, the elemental damage from Tiamat's Rebuke is making life MUCH easier. A weapon with better elemental damage than Ginther's would be nice, but Ginther's swings fast, so I'm getting the elemental damage from Tiamat's out pretty fast. Also, the effects on Tiamat proc pretty often with Ginther's speed.

Resists have suffered, though - gonna have to put a PDiamond in the Tiamat. I think I'm going to have to switch out my Guardian Angel for Lionheart, Smoke or Treachery, or maybe a Duriel's. The Venom Lords in A4 Nightmare are ripping me up with their inferno breath. Otherwise, this appears to be a good setup to reach 53 and get that Rift!

P.S. Any thoughts from forum members on what skills I should be looking for in the War Scepter in which I make Rift?

[IntelligentX]

This depends on your character's needs IMO. But personally I will go for conviction and zeal. I want to mention holy shield too but it is just far too hard to find a plain + holy shield one so I abandoned that.

But if you can't find a 4 socket war scepter with any skills, a plain one can do the job without problems.

By the way, do not use a 4 socket war scepter that has random skill that you are not going to use it - once I have a rift in a war scepter with +3 holy freeze and +1 conversion, and the repair cost for each durability is like 50k. If you are on budget on repairing you better find a plain one instead.

[SocraticB]

IntelligentX: Thanks, good advice. It looks, though, like I may have to find a weapon that gives me some Vengeance; swapping out all the gear has reduced my +skills pretty low, and a 2 or 3 skill Zeal is not sufficient. Running with a high-damage weapon and Vengeance with Conviction should carry me through to CLvl 53.

Kind of lame to be so stuck on 3-4 levels of advancement here . .

[THRiLL KiLL]

You dont want one with mods. at first its awesome. and then the repair costs come.

[maiku]

Yeah, I think plain 4os War Scepter is the way to go. Repair costs can become tedious after a while.

[IntelligentX]

IntelligentX: Thanks, good advice. It looks, though, like I may have to find a weapon that gives me some Vengeance; swapping out all the gear has reduced my +skills pretty low, and a 2 or 3 skill Zeal is not sufficient. Running with a high-damage weapon and Vengeance with Conviction should carry me through to CLvl 53.

Kind of lame to be so stuck on 3-4 levels of advancement here . .

If you are making rift in a war scepter, vengeance won't help much as vengeance is based on weapon damage.

By the way, one with + conviction won't bring up the repair cost too much.
Example. (http://img267.imageshack.us/img267/5859/screenshot022zj3.jpg)

[THRiLL KiLL]

48k for a full repair.. not bad at all...

my armor is a nice 1.2 mil :cry:

[Alc]

I have a Duress which costs 50k per point. The smiter that uses it has a few rals laying around, so it's really not that much bother. It takes quite a while for it to get low.

[maiku]

my armor is a nice 1.2 mil :cry:

You have my sympathy. :cry:

[IntelligentX]

Want to keep on topic guys? :wink3:

And you can use ral/ort recipe to repair armor/weapon respectively by the way.

[maiku]

Bah, thread nazi. ^_^ But I do have a question for the guide writer and IntelligentX. Do you think that +/- cold gear (such as Nightwing's, Ormus's Robes, cold facets) also make much of a difference on this build, such as sacrificing the "Dream" helm for a Nightwing's w/ 5/5 cold facet (up to 20% more cold damage for your Frozen Orb procs)...or is it not really worth it?

I've been running with a high-end Nightwing's on my VoR Zealot, and noticed quite an increase in damage output with my FO and Ice Blast procs. Enough to make me seriously think about adding more %+ cold damage gear, like an Ormus's Robes. (Although this creates problems with IAS unless you have a "Faith" Merc or something.)

[IntelligentX]

First of all, I am not good at numbers so any experts please correct me if I am awfully wrong.
Second, my playing style on riftadin is the ability to wipe out most monsters in the game. (ie opinions vary on different people in here)

In my opinion, I think if you have the currency, go for dual dream instead. Know that there are monsters that are still cold immune AFTER conviction applied, I think even the + cold damage won't help much against them.

You have to consider the item properties on nightwing and ormus too - apart from the +% cold damage, do they treat you well and increase your survivability?

Anyway, according to your post, I assume +% cold damage works on procs, and I think the orb will shed any non cold immune monsters with ease. But you may have to think of other alternative when you encounter dual (or even triple immune monsters) though.



On your IAS problem, assuming you have any faith bow on your mercenary, 50 IAS is what you need to reach max IAS bp on war scepter. Gloves provide 20 (Rare, lavagout, laying of hands etc), belt provides 10 (Goldwrap, nos coil) and amulet (cat's eye, highlord's) provide 20. With this you can swap headgear and body armor as you desire =)

[2TheMongoose]

What about the Zeal BP without Fanat? Is it even possible?? 45 treach + 20 glove + 20 Highlords + 10 Nosfer = 95....plus weapon speed? What is the base weapon speed?

3 More questions reguarding a Aurariftadin:
Without Dual Dream, does Cold Orb have the Speed to run chaos fast?

With Dual Dream?

If you had an enemy within your attack range so that the name frame [ fallen ] was on your screen, but like so

[You] ------------------------ [Fallen]
could you shift-click and proc Orb?

[THRiLL KiLL]

nope.... you need to hit the monster before the orb will go off.

[2TheMongoose]

lol, what a shame, I was have a PvP dream of a caster type pally orb char...w/e. Anyone have any insight into dueling with this Char? I mean like clearing pubs?

[THRiLL KiLL]

it does well. but if you kill ppl to fast, they will whine that you are cheating (aura stacking)

[2TheMongoose]

Hah very nice. I love the idea of forcing them to go offense with your pulse, then convict + orbing them. Plus chaos sanct hell seems fun