D2R Party Booster Skills Guide

Party play in D2R has many advantages. Different party effect skills can provide you with extra damage, better survivability, movement speed, attack speed, and a lot more. Due to their party boosting attributes, using these skills can make runs like the Cow Level, Baal or Chaos Sanctuary multiple times faster to clear, and can make the runs safe for all party members even in Hardcore to. Let’s take a look which skills are the betst to boost your party’s performance:

Assassin Skills

While Assassins don’t have skills that could boost other party member performances, they have a very useful skill that allows for monster crowd control, namely: Mind Blast. By spamming Mind Blast, especially at Baal runs, Assassins can stun and immobilise enemy monsters, making it possible to kill them much quicker and much more safely.

Necromancer Skills

Necromancer Summoning Spells can help your party’s survivability a lot, as the summons act as Meat Shield, distracting enemy monsters from attacking party members.

Necromancer Curses

Curses take effect on enemy monsters, and depending on your party member skills, they have big potential to use them in a variety of ways. For parties that deal mainly Melee damage, the Amplify Damage curse will double the physical damage dealt to cursed monsters. 

Decrepify is also a very useful skill for Physical damage dealing parties, as it reduces physical resistance by 50%, while also helping the party’s survivability by decreasing monster speed and damage by 50%.

If the party consists of mostly elemental damage dealing members, the most useful curse to use is Lower Resist. The skill will decrease monster resistances by a huge amount, allowing caster characters to deal much higher damage. Lower Resist can even reduce Immunities of some monsters.

For Melee survivability boosting, the best curse by far is Life Tap, with which physical damage dealing characters can heal themselves almost immediately by attacking monsters, receiving an amazing 50% life steal of their dealt physical damage.

The rest of Necromancer Curses can be used for survivability boost, mainly as crowd control skills that prevent enemies from attacking party members.

Barbarian Warcries

Battle Orders is the most commonly used party buffing skills, as a high level one can more than double every party member’s life and mana, providing a huge survivability boost.

Shout is another very useful skill which provides an immense defense bonus (up to 4-500%), making characters a lot more sturdy against physical damage attacks.

Battle Command is also a very frequently used skill, which increases all skills by +1

Other Barbarian warcry skills are useful for crowd control, or reducing enemy damage and defense.

Sorceress Skills

Sorcs have only one skill, Enchant, that’s useful for party members, but it can give an enormous, up to 5k fire damage boost and up to 400% attack rating boost, which increases the chance of hitting enemy monsters by a huge margin. Enchant can be used on party members, mercenaries and summons alike.

Druid Skills

The most useful party life booster skill of Druids is Oak Sage. Having an Oak increases party life by an even bigger amount than Battle Orders. A high level Oak Sage can provide a +200% life boost. The only downside of the skill is that the Oak is fairly weak and can be killed fairly easily.

Heart of Wolverine is another skill that benefits the whole party by buffing damage and attack rating up to +200%, making melee and missile attacks much more effective.

Paladin Skills

Both Offensive and Defensive auras are amazing boosters for the whole party. Paladins have a wide versatility of useful auras for different situations, so let’s see which one should be utilised and when.

On the Defensive Aura tree, there are several auras which are useful, but aren’t game changers. These are Prayer (provides some extra healing, but it isn’t enough for Hell difficulty), Resist Fire/Lightning/Cold which boosts a resist immensely, Cleansing, which reduces curse duration and has Prayer synergy. The remaining auras deserve a paragraph on their own, so let’s see what they can do!

Defiance provides a huge defense boost, a lvl20 aura adds 260% extra defense, which is great for survivability, as monsters will have a much lower chance of hitting you. Act2 mercenaries are also available with Defiance aura, and I highly suggest them for Hardcore gameplay.

Vigor is an amazing skill for runspeed, and it benefits the whole party, as everyone’s runspeed will increase by roughly 40%+. This can speed up runs by a great deal.

Meditation is the go-to aura for mana recovery, and the whole party benefits from having it. Whenever you use a build that has high mana consumption, an Insight runeword on your merc can fix any mana recovery issue as Meditation will boost your mana recovery by 500%+. It is an incredibly useful aura and makes gameplay a lot more fun!

Salvation will fix the whole party’s resistance issues, as at level 10 it already boosts resists by almost +100%. It comes extremely handy when doing Uber Tristram, as you will be under the influence of Mephisto’s Conviction aura which reduces resistances by a great deal.

On the Offensive Aura tree, there are plenty of skills available which boosts your party’s damage output. Let’s take a look at which ones you should utilise at different situations:

Might is a huge damage booster, and Act2 mercenaries are available with Might aura. At level 20 it adds +230% Enhanced damage, which results in a lot of extra damage for Physical damage dealing builds.

Blessed Aim is another aura that’s accessible via Act2 mercenaries as well. It provides a +360% Attack Rating boost at level 20, which is again super beneficial for physical damage dealing characters due to the much higher chance of hitting monsters with each attack.

Concentration is the big brother of Might. At level20 it increased party physical damage by 345%. It’s important to notice that Conc is the only aura that boosts Blessed Hammer damage, but only with 50% efficiency. Concentration is available by a few runewords which can be used on mercenaries, so a Might+Conc merc can give a truly immense damage boost for your character.

Fanaticism is the most effective physical damage dealing aura. It increases attack speed by 35% at level 20, boosts party damage by 186%, your own damage by 373%, and also increases attack rating by 135%. It is by far the most useful aura for physical damage boosting, surpassing both Might and Concentration.

Conviction is the only aura that helps casters in the party deal more damage, as at level 20 it reduces maximum resistances by -125%. The resistance reduction is capped at -150%, so don’t put more skill points on Conv once you reach it. Conviction also breaks immunities for plenty of monsters, especially Lightning Immunes. If your party consists mainly of caster characters, it’s best to use Conviction to kill monsters much more rapidly. Infinity runeword is the only item in the game that has Conviction aura on it, and for most caster builds it is by far the best mercenary weapon.

If you decide not to farm for hundreds of hours, you can quickly buy runes from our D2R Store.