Party optimisation philosophy

[MaxWilson]

You're broadly describing our most lethal party here. Everybody had stealth. My Dex Ancients Paladin with a 1 level dip in Rogue had expertise in Stealth. The end result was that we were all over most foes before they could do anything about it, and the criticism of the limited range of the Auras vs. AOE was often moot because we were already among the baddies (And the 7th level Ancients Aura which has already been mentioned in the thread). I wouldn't underestimate the protection from Fear Aura either; we were able to take out a Pit Fiend and a few goons fairly early only because the rest of the party didn't run away.

Remark: one of the best things about Stealth--even better than the possibility of surprising an enemy and gaining tempo--is the ability to initiate combat on your own terms. E.g. if you know there's a Pit Fiend and you don't have a Paladin's anti-fear aura, but the Pit Fiend hasn't spotted you yet, you have more time to come up with a plan: maybe you aim to cast Protection From Evil on one PC to make them immune to the Pit Fiend's fear (and impose disadvantage on attacks), and then have that PC grapple the Pit Fiend, knock it prone, and drag it over to the other PCs for them to shoot at without advantage. (Disadvantage from fear + advantage for attacking a prone target 5' away = nothing.)

For this reason I feel that a stealth capability on at least one PC is very important, and ideally you want a whole-party stealth capability and Pass Without Trace. (But you can never have everything you'd ideally like to have.)