Diablo II single player questions

Remove all ads!

Immune to cold, maybe if you have ranks in Holy Bolt, you could shoot at teh Zombies, but if you've neglected it, then you might have trouble...

Thorns might be worth a look too. High enough level, the Zombie will eat multiple times what they dish out. Combine that with Zeal and fire damage, you may have a chance...

 

dmc,

Upon quick inspection, I'd say the biggest problem for that character is low damage. Once you hit hell difficulty, you have to be doing about 1000 points of damage per attack or you will get the stuffing kicked out of you. Also, when I say 1000 per hit, I don't count poison damage, because the poison damage resets every time you hit again. (So if you are hitting a creature multiple times per second you are only getting a tiny percentage of the total poison damage listed.) Having a weapon that does 3-8 points base damage is simply not going to cut it - I'm astounded that you cleared nightmare difficulty with such a weapon. You want a weapon that does around base 100 points of physical damage, so you aren't even in the ball park here.

Another thing that I would advocate is placing a single point in all of the elemental auras (your +skill items will help you here). When you are fighting zombies holy freeze does you no good, so you have to switch to either holy fire or holy lightning to enhance your damage. There are no creatures in the game that are immune to more than two elements, so if you have at least one point in every elemental aura, you'll always have at least one damage type they are not immune to.

As to your specific questions - An act 1 bow mercenary is a pretty weak choice all in all for a paladin. About the only thing she is good at is staying out of the way of monsters (which makes for an excellent mercenary if you are playing an amazon, necromancer, or a sorceress, but a lousy mercenary if you are a melee character). Most melee characters chose an act 2 mercenary (the paladins) because their auras help in hand to hand comat. The most popular mercenaries for paladins are: 1) Defiance mercenaries - they can be hired in normal and hell difficulty, and once they hit around level 60, they will triple your defense. 2) Might mercenary - only available in nightmare difficulty, once they hit level 60 or so, they will double your physical damage (although with a weapon that does 3-8 base physical damage, that isn't going to do you much good). 3) Holy Freeze merc - can also only be hired in nightmare difficulty - but this one does you no good because you already use the holy freeze aura. Remember Auras stack so long as they aren't the same aura (which is why the holy freeze merc won't work for you), so your aura will help your mercenary, and his aura will help you.

1000 defense is low, but probably not worth trying to fix. On hell difficulty, it doesn't matter much if your defense is 1000 or 3000 - you'll be getting hit consistently. You really need a defense in excess of 5000 to have a reasonable chance to avoid being hit, and the only way you have a shot at getting to 5000 is hiring a defiance mercenary and investing heavily in holy shield. Which actually brings me to my next point...

Since your defense isn't up to snuff, you need to avoid taking damage by getting your chance to block up to the maximum value of 75%. To check on your chance to block, go to your character sheet, and hover over your defense, and a box will pop up that say chance to block XX%. You want that number to be 75%. (Note: Make sure you cast holy shield BEFORE you check on your chance to block - you want 75% while your holy shield is active - it doesn't matter if it's lower than that without holy shield.) Your dexterity is actually fairly high, so your current chance to block is likely to be higher than the value listed on your shield. The means of raising your chance to block is investing more in dexterity, or investing more in holy shield. If your two points currently in holy shiled bring your chance to block up to 75%, then that's enough - if you are less than 75%, I'd advise adding more points into holy shield. (By the way, you know holy shield is active because the shield graphic for your character - regardless of what type of shield you have equipped - will change to have a cross graphic on it.) You also definitely want your resistances maxed out at 75% in hell difficulty, because it's difficult to avoid elemental attacks, so you have to reduce the damage they do.

To summarize - max resistances, max chance to block (if you block 75% of the time, it's effectively having 75% immunity to physical damage - just remember that your chance to block drops dramatically if your character is running - so walk into battle), get a higher physical damage weapon, and switch to either a defiance or might merc. Other than that, I'd say you did everything perfectly.

 

I'd do some more Baal runs actually - a sabre is a normal weapon, and nightmare baal can drop some pretty nice exceptional weapons. Upgrading to an elite weapon would be ideal, but a nice exceptional rare should be adequate. If you haven't had Charsi upgrade your equipment yet from Normal and Nightmare, now would be the time to bring her a non-magical exceptional weapon. Even if you hand her a cracked exceptional weapon, she will turn it into a rare with full durability. That might be the easiest avenue to take if you haven't used the quests yet.

 

As the others said, do some kit farming for a while. Run Mephisto, Baal and even Diablo if you have some time to spare.

Okay... item quality quick guide.

Items have two separate quality types. One you are already familiar with - magical quality - which contains low quality items, magic items, rare items, unique items, and set items. The other you might have encountered but probably werent aware of it, and its called tier (it doesnt really have a name, more on it later).

Magical quality starts with Low Quality being the worst, which has several synonyms such as cracked. It means the stats are lower than normal, with lower durability. Low quality items have their names coloured white. So Cracked Heavy Gloves are low quality, and not worth using. They will never have magic modifiers.

Magic items you have definitely encountered - these have blue names. They include things like Cruel Long Sword of the Bat, and have 1-2 magic modifiers.

Rare items are more powerful versions of magic items. They are random, and have names containing two words, for example Bitter Barb. They are yellow in colour, and can be very powerful. Charsi can make you a rare item.

Unique items have gold coloured names, and are unique in that only one of them exists. For example, Steeldriver is an unique great maul - Steeldriver can only ever be a great maul, and its magic properties are fixed. unique types are the most powerful generally.

Set items are green in colour, and are similar to unique items, but give powerful bonuses when their set is completed. A set of items is simply a group of set items designed to be used together - highlight a set item and at the bottom you will see a list of the other set items and whether you have them. With the right set, these can be the most powerful of all.

As for tier....

You know how there are 3 Difficulty levels? Tiers roughly correspond to that. So you can get Normal items, exceptional items (for nightmare difficulty) and elite items (for hell difficulty). Exceptional and elite items look similar to normal items but have different base names. For instance, the exceptional version of a Claymore (normal item) is a Dacian Falx. Exceptional and elite items are far more powerful than normal items. thats why your sabre doesnt kill anything - you are using a normal item in hell when you should be using an exceptional item at the very least.

Exceptional and elite tiers have their own lists of unique and set items.

Those two lists give you the (almost) full combination of items, from Low quality normal items to exceptional unique items.

 

Proteus gives an excellent explanation of item quality above (item quality are things like magic, rare, set, unique), and I'll expand a bit on normal, exceptional, and elite items. You have to realize that the two definitions are completely different. You can have a rare normal item, a rare exceptional item, or a rare elite item. Having completed nightmare you have undoubtedly encountered some exceptional items, and by Act 5 nightmare it is possible to have elite items drop.

Some basics to start - normal items are the least powerful, followed by exceptional, with elite being the most powerful. Exceptional and elite items look exactly like their normal counterparts, can get the exact same modifiers, but have higher base stats and higher strength and/or dexterity requirements to use them.

Some examples might help: You are undoubtedly familiar with the normal item called the short sword. You can buy it from charsi or find one in the Blood Moor of normal difficulty. It has no level, strength or dexterity requirement associated with it.

The exceptional version of the short sword is called a gladius. You've almost certainly seen a gladius drop as well. It looks exactly like a short sword, can get the exact same modifiers as a short sword, but its base damage is several times greater than that of a short sword. It also has a higher strength and dexterity requirement to use, which effectively prevent low level characters from using them.

The elite version of the short sword is the falcata. It looks exactly like the short sword and gladius, can get the exact same modifiers, but it's base damage is serveral times greater than that of the gladius, and probably 10 times greater than that of the short sword. The falcata also has significant strength and dexterity requriements which prohibit all but the most experienced characters from using them. (I'm not positive, but I think you need a strength of 150 just to use a falcata, and that's a pretty low requirement for elite items.

All the different armor pieces you can equip also have exceptional and elite versions.

Example: Normal - padded armor. Exceptional - ghost armor. Elite - dusk shroud.

Normal - cap. Exceptional - war hat. Elite - shako

All three items look exactly the same, but have increasing strength requirements as you go from normal to exceptional and exceptional to elite. Exceptional and elite armors offer much greater base defense than their normal counterparts, just as exceptional and elite weapons offer muh greater damage than their normal counterparts.

The only items you equip that only come in the normal standard version are rings and amulets. There is no such thing as an exceptional or elite ring. (But rings and amulets do come in magic, rare, set, and unique varieties - I hope you're beginning to see the difference.)

 

Holy Shield has to be cast, unlike a Paladin's auras. So just switch to it on your right mouse button, cast, and switch back to your stock aura.

 

Yeah, if it's on your right button, push the right mouse button, then switch back to holy freeze. It will need to be re-cast every couple of minutes, but it's easy to tell when it runs out because the shield icon changes.

 

Did you do a Nightmare Cow Level run? Lots of good stuff to be found in there, especially with /players 8.

 

i have put the fanatic zealot idea on hold for a little while, even though i did manage to fin a HoZ

but my lightfury javazon is coming around nicely!

armed with a titans(eth), a spirit monarch and the treachery runeword made in a regular mageplate, you can see it here: http://www.battle.net/diablo2exp/items/runewords-111.shtml
(look at the % to get lvl 15 fade)

she is now at act 5 in nm, and she has failed to take down baal 1 time but she is just about ready to do it again soon

 

Glad to hear your next attempt at Hell is going better dmc. The jump in difficulty between nightmare and hell is big - much larger than the difference between normal and nightmare. (In the sense that Act 1 NM is only a bit harder than Act 5 Normal, but Act 1 Hell is way harder than Act 5 NM.) An ataghan is a solid weapon choice - solid base damage, but yet not something that has a ridiculous strength requirement (some swords are up around 200). The problem with high strength requirements is the more you have to invest in strength, the less you can invest in vitality, and high vitality is quite necessary for hell difficulty.

I am still using my bowazon, who is now in Act 5 NM, level 67. She's armed with a 'shael' buriza, which almost isn't fair. I use the strafe skill almost exclusively (3% mana leech is plenty to keep my mana bulb full) and it basically looks like I'm using a machine gun.

Even better, I have skill points to burn. Right now I have maxed out stafe, penetrate, and valykrie (plus all the prerequisities obviously). Penetrate give a 10% increase in attack rating (per skill point) for both you and the valykrie, and with a might mercenary tagging along, I have one bad ass valykrie. She does more damage, takes more abuse, and hits more often than the might mercenary. Plus, in the rare event that she should die (which has not yet happened), all I have to do is recast her.

But back to the skill points. I have several +skill items on, so my magic and passive skills are all level 5 (with the exception of the aforementioned penetrate and valykrie), even though I have only spent one point in each of them. Due to the diminishing returns of all the evade-type skills, I'm not sure they are worth the investment. An additional point spent will only improve my chance of avoiding an attack by a couple percent, and seeing as how there are different ones for walking, runnning, and attacking, that doesn't seem a particularly good way to spend points.

Another option is pumping critical strike. A point spent there will still net me a 4 percent increase in doing double damage. Given the volume of arrows I'm firing, a 4% increase doesn't seem like such a bad idea. And even the next two points beyond that will give me another 3% each. So spending an additional three skill points to take my chance of doing double damage on each attack from the low 40s percent to the low 50s percent seems like a good call. However, beyond that the whole diminishing returns argument kicks in again.

So from level 70+ what to do? The only other options for consideration: Pump decoy, or work on another arrow skill. While I don't use decoys often (they are useful to distract bosses are particularly tough opponents like the ancients and Lister), they are a synergy to valkyrie, with each point spent providing a sizeable +20% to the valk's life. The new arrow skill would likely be one of the elemental skills. There's no need to have multi-shot or guided arrow beyond level 5, so maybe one of the fire arrow skills (the buriza already adds about 200 points worth of cold damage per hit, so that would add a third damage type.

 

I would advocate for using the upgrade on either an elite version of a weapon, or the elite version of an armor. Which one would really depend on what you are using at the moment. Whichever one is weaker, I'd go for. Just keep in mind strength requirements, as the elite heavy armors may be beyond your character's ability to wear. Then again, even if you're happy with your weapon, it would be hard to pass up the chance to upgrade a phase blade - a rare one of them has the potential to be really good (because they have high damage and are really fast, and can later be socketed).

As far as sorceress vs. necromancer is concerned, it's pretty much a matter of personal preference. Both characters are viable with minimal equipment, as they are spell-based characters, but with some nice set or unique equipment that gives bonuses to skills, these characters can become godlike (see Disciple's necro-butcher). What type of equipment do you have stashed? That would help in making the recommendation.

 

Absolutely, and my run with the Necrobutcher was easily the most fun D2 run I had in a very long time. Completing Trang-Oul's set was icing on the cake.

 

What's the best class to use for someone who does not understand the intricities of the game, to have fun? I played it YEARS ago through to about Act 4 or 5 (the big foresty one if I remember right) with a barbarian, but I got bored. A few months back I played it with a sorceress to Act 2, then got bored. I'm thinking probably a necromancer or an amazon.

Bear in mind I have normal vanila D2, no add-ons or owt!

[Edit] I tell a lie, I have LoD