I’ve used holy fire to advance paladins in the past. It wasn’t this easy.
I can’t believe people are actually advocating for this. Then again now that I rethink about it, I guess I can. Some people just want a laid back easy peasy relaxed game they can play with one finger and win.
Rant over.
it’s potentially a little too fast. .
i’d have to see how it handles 6-8 player cows to make a final judgement. . that said, fire got a 90% buff, a synergy buff, and a x2 dmg when close buff (and given the range on a lvl 44 fire aura, you’re at 200% pretty often). . . and he had a pld own conviction aura dramatically amping it>
what overkills it in my eyes, is the passivity of it. not needing to really do anything to wipe out a screen. . . It’s actual damage is lower than a lot of cow farming builds, it’s just passive and full AoE. . . most late game builds like that will eat cows alive in mere moments. (storm druid, javazon, nova necro, nova sorc all come to mind. . but they require the occasional button click . . the teleport click in druids case). . . in each and every case you’ll murder players 1 cows with prejudice.
If i were to guess, this same build on players 8, wouldn’t really kill much. or at the very least it’d be quite slow relative to other builds. . That doesn’t mean it isn’t a little over the top. But the only way to nerf an AoE pulsation build like that, to not excell in density (esp given paladin conviction aura backing it), is to nerf it so hard it isn’t playable. . at least for players 1 difficulty where most builds murder like that in end game gear.
I implore you to look up any of the above builds. and even lightening/chain lightening sorc in full gear on hell cows at any level (not just p1), and something like that won’t surprise you anymore.
I can already do that…
And pressing one button is not difficult what so ever. The point of D2 is gear finding. Not skilled play and 15 binds.
Well, at least the original game is still up and running. Not looking good folks.
True…there is no activety. Thats like cheating. If PvP not possible anymore i quit to
Now now, usually I’m the doomsayer.
In ladder I can see how this may be an issue for some, but when it comes to JoeSchmo leveling offline I really couldn’t care less how fast he progresses through normal difficulty.
If Ladder is your only real concern, then I could see how you would be alarmed but rest assured the footage of the build in P8 will be widely available before the PTR hits live. I wouldn’t worry too much.
Pretty much yes. Even fire immunes were going down in a few ticks. I’m positive it will be toned down though and not worried at all. This is what PTR is for and why builds like this don’t go live.
You want to see how fast lightning immunities go down with lightning sorc and infinity? Is that what you were seeing? Infinity on the merc? Everyone is conveniently forgetting these are level 99s with perfect endgame gear. See how fast lighting sorc and javazon take care of business then come talk to me about this.
This is why I wanted to test the paladins pulse auras first, because AoE damage requires that fine tuning to make sure it’s not overpowered.
Yes, I agree Holy Fires damage was very weak past early Nightmare, which is where I’d switch over to Holy Shock, which with some crafty footwork and skipping some monsters, would carry me up to Act 3 Hell, where I’d run into the game progression lightning immune wall.
Be careful what we wish for, we may get it.
He didn’t even have a merc with him sometimes, and when he did, it didn’t even have a weapon equiped. Watch the vid, build is broken, blizz will tone it down, everything will be fine.
rn the only reason it’s as strong as it is, is the tripple stacked item at 44. . if you tone it down much from where it is rn. . anything other than a full geared tripple stacked -fire res auradin w/ conviction . . . won’t be able to kill a damn thing.
I don’t think it will do that much on p8 at all. . . . the dmg isn’t high enough for that.
as for fire immunes . . . you’re forgetting that he’s using about as high a level conviction aura as possible, since the fire aura is from the items. . Honestly, the best approach would be slightly tone down the fire aura level on the runewords themselves. Any other approach would likely return that aura to uselessness past mid nightmare (same place fire traps fall off, to play fire in hell you need conviction/second damage source/broken gear/another player with you who doesn’t use fire)
infinity on a merc is wasted . . . HE HAD HIS OWN CONVICTION AURA ON . . . . the fire aura was from the items and conviction from the paladin himself. . . . he’d overpower merc infinity with his own.
if you aren’t aware infinity conviction is capped at 17 on the highest level. . . he had 20 hard points, synergized skills, and +skills all amping conviction further.
That’s why I think limiting the pulse damage based on character level would be a step in the right direction. But the game doesn’t yet have that mechanic. The question would be, what should the base level 1 damage be? 20%? 30%? 50%?
That was kinda my point. He didn’t even need the merc.
Have you played a tesladin, this is the exact same. If that is fine, why is the fire version not fine?
it still wouldn’t work even with that restriction. . . fire damage in hell is damn near useless. The only thing even enabling it, is the paladins own conviction aura. Tesladin is limited by only 2 dreams. If you put a 3rd item with a same holy shock level, you’d get far more devistation than this can do. . . the only balanced approach is to tone down the holy fire level by like 1-2 per item. . because of how exponential skills scale, toning down 3-6 max holy fire aura would be adequate without murdering viability.
fire version is slightly stronger atm. the buff to it was pretty noticeable. . tesladin in the same full stack gear takes 2 ticks to kill cows not 1 lol . . .
I haven’t done any high level testing, so I’m not well versed on that side of it. I’m mainly focused on starter character progression speed. All I have to say currently is… Zoom Zoom. Walk into a room, BAM, everything is dead… Next room. BAM! everything dead. 
I believe there is only 2 ways this is going to be:
Either it is one of the top builds like it is now or it simply wont be played.
This is not a boss/key farming build, not even now on PTR and i guess we can all agree on that. You cannot use enigma without sacrificing lots of damage. This is a mass group monster kill build like Javazon and indeed it crushes in Cows currently.
Now if you take away this purpose and make cows hard again for this build, guess what: noone will play this build!
Its really all or nothing, especially because you have no way to influence your kills as none of the damage comes from any active skills (maybe a little bit from zeal but this not zeal build).
If the kill speed slows down, javazon will stay the cow master of all time and holy fire paladin has no purpose once again
tesladin does the same thing with fully synergized and built gear. . at most it takes 1 extra tick.
fire is just a little over where it should be tuning wise. . they amped it’s dmg by 90% base, boosted synergies, AND amplified damage when closer targets. . it wasn’t that far behind tesladin initially to need that degree of improvement. . . if t hey toned down the items a tid bit, or pulled back just the synergy buffs (but keep the 90%). it’d be prettymuch in line with where tesladin was. . but more limited due to how many fire immunes exist
this variant alone would still do nothing of note on players 8 that most other farm builds don’t already do. but in lower players (players 1 in this case) it does better