we’ve had these discussion a million times. just switching to paladin auras is bad game design. it takes away from the class fantasy he is supposed to represent. also the a3 mercs are supposed to fill the 3 gaps for melee characters: crowd controle (cold), AR (fire) and AoE (lightning). rn the problem is rather with the numbers and the damage, due to missing synergies. 1 skillpoint in the corresponding element mastery would already help ALOT (think it would translate to +100% fire damage and +146% lightning dmg)
here is a good summary for suggestions we made: