8 Player paladin Langame

[Ingolifs]

Hi, I'm Ingo. I've been lurking for a while but this is my first post

I'm organising a d2 lan game with a bunch of my mates, and I came up with the idea for an all paladin party with different and complimentary auras.

We're starting from scratch, and hoping to get as far through d2 in one sitting as possible. So, that's no twinking or any thing of the sort. All 8 characters will be completely new.
Since coming up with the idea, i adapted it from 8 paladins to 6 paladins + necro + barb. Here's a brief rundown

Pally 1: Fanat&zeal
Pally 2: Concentrate&zeal
Pally 3: Conviction&zeal
Pally 4: Salvation/various resists & vengeance
Pally 5: Might/Vigor & Charge
Pally 6: Meditation with prayer synergy & holy bolt/hammer/FoH
Barb: Singer. concentrates in warcries
Necro: Fishymancer-like but with better curses.

In terms of mercenaries, act 2 Prayer, defiance and blessed aim in normal, followed by Might, Holy freeze, thorns difficulty in NM. All other mercenaries Act 1. (funny choice I know, but they benefit immensely from the auras and curses, and they provide physical damage at range)

So overall, three pallys with zeal plus a vengeance pally makes up the core of the melee-squad, while the charge pally gets behind the lines and takes out any caster-type creatures. The cleric-type pally heals any player/merc that needs it, is able to take out undead, and provides necessary mana regeneration, seeing as mana leech will be at a premium.

The necro mainly covers the field with various curses (mostly amp-damage, but with some croud-control curses as well) while providing assistance with a slow-me-down clay golem and a reasonable (but not over the top) number of skellies.

The barb is mainly there for his BO and battle command (the latter would come in immensely useful, considering that everyone benefits from everyone's increase in aura skill).

I have a few questions though.

1. Can anybody see any general problems with my outline?

2. Is there a limit to how many auras you can have stacked on you at any one time? In this outline, each player will have up to 16 auras + 3 warcries active. I know there's a limit of how many auras can stack on a merc, but I don't know of any more than that.

3. Does the healing effect of meditation/cleansing + synergised prayer stack with prayer itself?

4. Is there any difference in calculating experience or drops between an 8 player game and single player on /players 8?

5. I know this question doesn't really belong, seeing as this is the paladin forum, but what should the Barb's secondary job be? Obviously he excels at physical combat, but his physical prowess isn't needed as much as the warcries are. Frenzy/WW barb might be good, but then again, iron barb could work as well.

6. Following on from the previous question, are the barbarian taunts operationally the same as Necro curses? Can you taunt and amp dam a monster at the same time? Or are taunt, battle cry and war cry going to override these curses?

7. Does anyone have any idea on how to approach the logistics of playing the game and distributing loot fairly? With 6 melee classes, decent melee gear will be at a premium, while decent caster gear will be Charsi-fodder. I can imagine players going through the game quite poor as well, considering you don't always have time to pick up stuff.

8. What about a druid replacement for one of the pallys? Druids can provide big life pools with Oak Sage, and extra damage with Heart of Wolverine. On the other hand, i never really did 'get' druids.

Comments are welcome.

[NoisemakerArrow]

Instead of Zeal/Concentration, make it Blessed Hammer/Concentration. And instead of so many Paladins, put an Enchant/ES Sorc in. Take out the Salvation guy and the Zeal/Conviction, since the guy using Vengeance will have Conviction and the resist auras. A summoning or shifting druid will also add minions and damage or life to the party, possibly also the ability to stun monsters.

"4. Is there any difference in calculating experience or drops between an 8 player game and single player on /players 8?"

No.

Barb should max BO and Shout to help the party. Frenzy can work well, since he will receive a lot of tanking cover from the others.

Oh, and another Paladin, instead of Charge, can be a Holy Freeze or Holy Shock variant, taking advantage of the existing Conviction and Fanaticism in the party and adding elemental damage.

A summoning Necro will have 1 point in every curse anyway, and +skills will do the rest, so you don't need "better curses".

So...Fanat guy, Conviction guy, Holy Freeze or Shock, Hammerdin, Medic (max Cleansing, Meditation (main aura), Holy Bolt, Blessed Hammer, FoH), Barb, Sorc, Necro. You could actually take out the Hammerdin in order to make room for a druid or another elemental aura pally, since Hammerdins are overdone and overpowered.

Since these are friends, dividing the drops shouldn't be a problem. Just make sure everyone's gear is upgraded evenly, and you can even take turns using certain pieces of gear. Sorc will need fighting weapons as well as prebuffing and teleporting gear.

I think my suggestions make for a more balanced party (especially once you take out the Hammerdin) with lots of physical as well as elemental damage (of all kinds, no less) and ways to reduce enemy physical and elemental resists, tanks, stunning ability, life and defense increases, mana and life regeneration and boss-destroyers (Static, CB on Frenzy barb, Fanat guy with 1 point Smite, Act 2 merc gear). If you get an Act 2 merc with Prayer and stick Insight on him, the medic won't need to max Cleansing and Meditation, and could instead go with Vigor.

There is no limit to how many auras players or mercs can have on them.

[Ingolifs]

Instead of Zeal/Concentration, make it Blessed Hammer/Concentration. And instead of so many Paladins, put an Enchant/ES Sorc in. Take out the Salvation guy and the Zeal/Conviction, since the guy using Vengeance will have Conviction and the resist auras. A summoning or shifting druid will also add minions and damage or life to the party, possibly also the ability to stun monsters.

Some of these I don't agree with... The concentration guy is essentially there for the aura. Besides, Zeal can benefit a lot from the other auras (Might, fanat, conviction) while the blessed hammer won't. I also don't see the point in taking out/switching around the vengeance and conviction guys. The vengeance/resist paladin will still benefit from conviction being on the monsters anyway, even though it doesn't originate from him.

The main idea behind this setup is to maximise physical damage. While elemental damage is included, it is not focused on (the Necro uses Amp damage as his main curse, not lower resist)

Also, how useful is the sorceresses' enchant, considering it won't get to max during the time spent?

Oh, and another Paladin, instead of Charge, can be a Holy Freeze or Holy Shock variant, taking advantage of the existing Conviction and Fanaticism in the party and adding elemental damage.
One idea i've been thinking of is making the conviction guy have holy freeze as an aura before he reaches conviction. You have to be careful though, because holy freeze can screw up a necro's supply to corpses for CE. (not that CE will be that powerful anyway)

A summoning Necro will have 1 point in every curse anyway, and +skills will do the rest, so you don't need "better curses".
It's a completely untwinked 8 player game. Coming across a + to all skills item cannot be guaranteed, and even so, the + to skills is more valuable in the hands of a paladin anyway.

Also, why do you suggest max cleansing? Its only real use is in the chaos sanctuary against IM.

If you get an Act 2 merc with Prayer and stick Insight on him,
Insight is ladder only.

[NoisemakerArrow]

"Insight is ladder only."

Thanks. I didn't know that.

I was supposed to know what version/mod you're playing?

I offered suggestions that would have been more efficient and fun to play than yours while being an team that works well together. You never said anything about maximizing physical damage. I recommend you be the guy who's just there for the Concentration aura. You will greatly enjoy it.

[Ingolifs]

3. Does the healing effect of meditation/cleansing + synergised prayer stack with prayer itself?

4. Is there any difference in calculating experience or drops between an 8 player game and single player on /players 8?

6. Following on from the previous question, are the barbarian taunts operationally the same as Necro curses? Can you taunt and amp dam a monster at the same time? Or are taunt, battle cry and war cry going to override these curses?

I was wondering if I could get answers to these questions.

[Emil Boeje]

"Insight is ladder only."

Thanks. I didn't know that.

I was supposed to know what version/mod you're playing?

I offered suggestions that would have been more efficient and fun to play than yours while being an team that works well together. You never said anything about maximizing physical damage. I recommend you be the guy who's just there for the Concentration aura. You will greatly enjoy it.

Remember that what is fun to you may not be fun in the mind of others, I have likewise wanted to make an "aura-team" of paladins, and changing that team completely would kind of ruin the point of the team.

I think you're looking at it the wrong way, there's no guy on that listed team that is only there for the aura.

First, there will be the following damage increasing auras: might, fanatisicm, and concentration. Although fana will only provide x% / 2 to team members, the speed bonus should be uneffected, thereby making the team very good, since every player will practically have all auras activated at the same time, therefore the only thing that matters is to be certain about synergies, that's also why the vengeance char will use salvation I suppose.

[Emil Boeje]

Hi, I'm Ingo. I've been lurking for a while but this is my first post

I'm organising a d2 lan game with a bunch of my mates, and I came up with the idea for an all paladin party with different and complimentary auras.

We're starting from scratch, and hoping to get as far through d2 in one sitting as possible. So, that's no twinking or any thing of the sort. All 8 characters will be completely new.
Since coming up with the idea, i adapted it from 8 paladins to 6 paladins + necro + barb. Here's a brief rundown

Pally 1: Fanat&zeal
Pally 2: Concentrate&zeal
Pally 3: Conviction&zeal
Pally 4: Salvation/various resists & vengeance
Pally 5: Might/Vigor & Charge
Pally 6: Meditation with prayer synergy & holy bolt/hammer/FoH
Barb: Singer. concentrates in warcries
Necro: Fishymancer-like but with better curses.

In terms of mercenaries, act 2 Prayer, defiance and blessed aim in normal, followed by Might, Holy freeze, thorns difficulty in NM. All other mercenaries Act 1. (funny choice I know, but they benefit immensely from the auras and curses, and they provide physical damage at range)

So overall, three pallys with zeal plus a vengeance pally makes up the core of the melee-squad, while the charge pally gets behind the lines and takes out any caster-type creatures. The cleric-type pally heals any player/merc that needs it, is able to take out undead, and provides necessary mana regeneration, seeing as mana leech will be at a premium.

The necro mainly covers the field with various curses (mostly amp-damage, but with some croud-control curses as well) while providing assistance with a slow-me-down clay golem and a reasonable (but not over the top) number of skellies.

The barb is mainly there for his BO and battle command (the latter would come in immensely useful, considering that everyone benefits from everyone's increase in aura skill).

I have a few questions though.

1. Can anybody see any general problems with my outline?

2. Is there a limit to how many auras you can have stacked on you at any one time? In this outline, each player will have up to 16 auras + 3 warcries active. I know there's a limit of how many auras can stack on a merc, but I don't know of any more than that.

3. Does the healing effect of meditation/cleansing + synergised prayer stack with prayer itself?

4. Is there any difference in calculating experience or drops between an 8 player game and single player on /players 8?

5. I know this question doesn't really belong, seeing as this is the paladin forum, but what should the Barb's secondary job be? Obviously he excels at physical combat, but his physical prowess isn't needed as much as the warcries are. Frenzy/WW barb might be good, but then again, iron barb could work as well.

6. Following on from the previous question, are the barbarian taunts operationally the same as Necro curses? Can you taunt and amp dam a monster at the same time? Or are taunt, battle cry and war cry going to override these curses?

7. Does anyone have any idea on how to approach the logistics of playing the game and distributing loot fairly? With 6 melee classes, decent melee gear will be at a premium, while decent caster gear will be Charsi-fodder. I can imagine players going through the game quite poor as well, considering you don't always have time to pick up stuff.

8. What about a druid replacement for one of the pallys? Druids can provide big life pools with Oak Sage, and extra damage with Heart of Wolverine. On the other hand, i never really did 'get' druids.

Comments are welcome.

Now for the actual post. Unfortunately it's my experience that during the last ~4 years these forums have went much down in quality in the answers, and also in the frequency of answers. I will only write to you what I think, however to be certain I'd probably wait for someone with more autority to answer, or test it yourself with a mod.

1: I see no problems with your outline, however some of the chars might end up with man skill points left over to invest. Be careful that it doesn't end up with the necromancer being about 50% of the strength of the team btw., in my experience that kind of unbalancing can ruin the gameplay for the others. Otherwise you've a good amount of auras to make sure that you can hit your targets, you hit with a high speed, and a high damage.

Note however that AFAIK (not sure though) the bolts of FOH won't heal. Thereby the last paladin you mentioned will only be able to heal one ally at the time, and that will be hard with other ally members getting in the way. The amount of healing gained from maxing prayer and letting meditation synergise is btw. nothing remarkebly either after you've finished normal difficulity. Oh, and be aware that if the singer, the fishy, and the medic aren't really aware of their roles on the team, then make sure they know what is expected of them, otherwise it could maybe lead to some heavy debate and complaining.

2: AFAIK no, there's no limit of aura's you can stack on a single char. However I'd advice you to test it yourself with some kind of editor or wait for another person to confirm / deny

3: I'm not sure if I understand this question, so I'll just write the basics and hope the answers lies in there:
All active prayer aura's stacks with eachother.
Prayer synergise meditation, and cleanising, so these works as the same power of prayer, however only the highest level of meditation, and the highest level of cleanising which is active will be applied (thereby a level 20 cleanising with a level 1 prayer will be the active aura, eventhough another paladin uses a level 19 cleanising with a level 20 prayer)
If one player/merc has a prayer aura activated, and the other has a synergised meditation aura, and even a third guy have a synergised cleanising aura, then all 3 auras will stack and tripple the effect given all prayer levels are equal.

So for instance with 8 prayer merc you'll heal 8 times as fast as of what a single merc can provide. I believe the merc max level of prayer is 17 btw.

4: AFAIK if you have 8 players in your game, then no. A formula have been posted on how /players8 command works compared to b.net, and it's important to have more people in a party. If you're 8 in the server already I don't think you need to write /players8, unless you have another /playersx command active already maybe.

5: For later difficulities a barb with the ability to stunlock everything will be great, though even with a high level meditation aura I'm far from certain that a singer can maintain warcry due to mana problems. I'd suggest maxing leap for it's whole screen stun (level 19 is sufficient according to pythagoras). However my way of playing differs from most people, and my guess of what would be most fun for the typical player would probably be something like frenzy/ds combo as earlier suggested.

6: IIRC, then yes, so if you really want to use taunt (I think it'll first be needed on hell difficulity if the party goes so smooth through the game that they'll be at a pretty low level here), then it'll probably be best suited for a group of monsters that the team otherwise cannot beat, so taunt one monster, maybe howling the rest away / stunning them, having the party ready to recieve the monster, and then let the necro change the taunt into an amplify damage. (I believe they both overrides eachother)

7: I can't remember anymore what I use to do with melee chars, however I've a pretty simple starting rule. Always get a scepter as fast as possible, buy one with a small bonus, like a bit of enhanced damage or +1-2 maximum damage, though don't spend to much time on it. A scepter, when combining with amplify damage, can actually do quite well up until the end of act3 normal in such a big game, then using the reroll cube recipe's would probably be a good idea for rolling enhanced damage weapons with sockets, etc.
Try to get to craft some blood gloves when you've collected some PRubies.
If you want to split loot fairly, well I've my opinion on that, but I've never tested how it works in the game, however my idea is pretty much choosing a rather random order (maybe let people say a number, and the last number is yours, where you've written the numbers already down, so you now know what order they represent) of whom should have first rights of looting. Just note that the necromancer can go for a long time without anything exceptionelly good, and therefore it'd maybe be a good idea to let him pick last, but let him pick first given the item has +to necro skills or something like that.
Oh and when you're about ~lvl 17-18 I do typically use all my money to gamble for the lowest types of boots, there should be a decent odds of getting a tri res (I think 30% is the maximum at this level) couple of boots that will be very good to have in the later difficulities.
Do also note that your team will probably have many long duration of game playes where the game feels to easy, just remember that the real teamplay is usually first needed in the last difficulity, so if your team have gotten cocky and people have begun running by themselves, they'll probably get some chock after finishing nightmare.

8: Well I think a druid would be of more use than a medic to such a large team, but I haven't played on such a team before, so it's all theory. The druid can give much more life to the party than the paladin, true you won't have the nice effect of meditation, however, if possible, I'd suggest that the vengeance paladin uses meditation until your party really needs the resist, when you get to such a point the party shouldn't have mana problems anymore due to being at a rather high level (mana pots will still be needed from time to time though). The druid can in werebearform stun the monsters in a big area, his minions aren't as strong as the necromancers, however if the necromancer aren't focusing very much on minions their minions might be pretty equivalent in strength, thereby making it a valid option. I haven't tried the druids minions though, so I don't know much about their strengths, however the oak sage as mentioned can really boost the life, however I think that the other spirit (that increases damage) would be a waste due to the already high percent of added damage from other places, and make the druid seem obsulete.

Have fun playing

[Ingolifs]

Thanks for a very comprehensive answer.

Due to the difficulty of organising 8 people to play together, it's probably not likely that we play past normal in one sitting. I have a feeling that this setup will blitz normal, provided everyone can obtain a decent weapon. This makes me wonder about the necessity of healer type chars in the first place.

It will probably come to pass that the main benefit of barb's BO and meditation/prayer will be in the mana regeneration. The first mana steal item I usually come across is manald heal, and that doesn't drop particularly often.

The interesting thing about this sort of gameplay - where your char may not have a future past normal difficulty - is that it leads to radically different choices when levelling your character. Charsi's reward may come in essential when good items are sparse. I may end up socketing a helm with larzuk's quest and putting a flawless sapphire in. Players may end up putting more than one point in skills that are traditionally precursor only - such as double swing or might.

Oh, i've got another question. How do merc skills level as the merc levels? Is there a way of predicting what level Might a merc will have based on their clevel?

[GandalfTheGhey]

What you are proposing has been done before. In hardcore I believe.

I forgot the name but there was some paladin clan from way back that did the exact same thing with 8 paladins. They had an hour group play every week or so. Forgot how far they got. Some other Oldbie's in this forum would probably know more.

Anyway a group of 8 anything owns any part of d2. And getting 8 people together is tough to organize, and cumbersome to play.

I would recommend reducing the number to 4 or less. If you use mercs you can still have about the same effects, with less hassle.

Also the short range auras should be avoided. Stick to long range auras, that way everyone wont have to be hugging each other all the time.

[Ingolifs]

One interesting thing to do if I had the time and dedication would be to try playing in an 8 player team all the way to the end of Hell without having to repeat areas. I wonder if it's actually possible.