Diablo II single player questions

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I played a Necro back in the old days and found it fun, but I was always too lazy to curse, so i'd just have skellies as a distraction, and go around bone-spearing stuff to death.

I suppose i'd be up for playing a Necromancer again, though.

 

I never bothered with even a single point in skeletal mages, and I can't say I've missed them. I take it you just spent the one point, and +skills have got you to the point where you can summon 7 of them? I suppose having skeletal mages would allow you to take out the one thing I cannot take out with my army - a boss who is both immune to physical and stone skinned. (My character actually has to do the dirty work there - I carry around the unique tyrant club called Demon Limb. One of the mods is it has 20 or so charges (that are refilled upon repair) of Level 23 Enchant - which adds boat loads of fire damage and attack rating to whatever weapon you are wielding - although I usually just keep wielding the Demon Limb as it has superior damage than my wand.)

Have you moved back up to players=8? The reason I ask is that level 88 is probably only attainable during your first play through if you are playing at that difficulty (and 90 is unrealistic even if you do play on players 8). Given your current level, I would predict your level at completion (if you have players=1 setting) will be 85 or 86. You will probably gain one level between Act III and Act IV combined. Now that you are into the experience point penalty, you won't receive a full level worth of experience for killing the ancients (you'll probably get more than half though), and the entirety of Act V is worth about a full level of experience. So unless you have a high players setting, you'll only gain about 2.5 more levels from now until the end of the game. On players 8 I would expect you'll acquire about 4.5 levels. (Are you enjoying your cumulative XP penalty yet?)

I reached level 34 last night with my paladin, and equipped the first two pieces of end game equipment. I now have Gulliame's Face equipped, and I'm loving it. The other thing was an amulet, that gives tons of resistances, but one aspect I didn't notice about the amulet initially is it has +58 mana on it, which is actually quite useful, as I have no mana leech yet. Before equipping it, casting holy shield cost me 2/3 of my mana bulb, and running out of mana during continuous zeal cycles did happen on occassion. Now I have so much mana that I never run out.

Which actually brings me to my next point: Do I really want to socket my scepter with a perfect skull for life and mana leech? I don't ever intend to change out that amulet unless I get something with +2 to all skills and resist all on it. I really have no concern about running out of mana right now, and since I do gain a little bit more mana each level up, that already remote possibility is going to get even more unlikely as I gain additional levels. However, I still do need life leech - but I can get that from gloves - blood gloves if I have no other choice. The question becomes whether or not I will be comfortable with 3-4% life leech - and I'm just not sure. I fully intend to get some life leech on my gloves regardless, but if I do that along with a perfect skull in the weapon, I'll have more like 8% life leech, which is obviously a heck of a lot more desirable.

I wish I knew if I was going to get one or two sockets for that quest. (I hate socketing before I am ready to use something, because I always inadvertently throw a gem into a socketed item as I move stuff around in my stash.) I'm not going to socket it until I have what's going into it, and I'm able to use the weapon, which won't be until level 46.

Here are the three most logical options as I see it:

1. perfect skull - for reasons already explained
2. jewel - 15% enhanced damage, freeze target +2. This is an intriguing option, as it will take my total enhanced damage up to 314% on my weapon (unfortunately multiple sources of +% damage are added together and then applied - they aren't multiplied together), and with an additional cold source on my weapon it will improve the slowing effect my holy freeze has on monsters (multiple sources of cold damage are also applied additively.)
3. shael - for the increased attack speed. The faster you swing, the more damage output you get. (I know the build is centered around crushing blow, and as such attack rating is more important that swing speed, but increasing swing speed should still increase the frequency of which a crushing blow is scored.)

Obviously, I'd much prefer to pick two of those three from the list rather than just one.

 

Well, if I really don't like the way the socketing turns out, I can always change it later at the cost of a Hel rune. (That's one of the lesser known horadric cube recipes - you stick the weapon, a Hel rune, and a scroll of town portal into the cube, transmute it, and you get your weapon back with the sockets clean. The only downside is whatever was socketed in it is destroyed in the process. Still, if I'm unhappy it's not like it's unfixable.) I am really hoping for two sockets, and I'm leaning towards the jewel and a perfect skull.

I have to get on Diablo wiki and look up break points for swing speeds. A Shael may be a bad idea because it might not take me to the next break point. Time in the game is measured in frames, and the time span of 1 frame is 1/25 of a second. If you already have a very fast weapon (and I do, given that paladins swing all scepters very fast to begin with and I have a 40% increased swing speed on mine) it is possible that making it 20% faster will not reduce number of frames it takes to swing it, meaning it's a total waste to use the shael. The fastest you can zeal is 4 frames, and a typical weapon zeals at around 7-8 frames - so increasing weapon speed can make a difference.

I also had a moment when doing my wish list for equipment. I said it would be hard to find a 4-socket scepter to make holy thunder, when I completely forgot that I can just make one myself using the cube with a good chance of success. (Ral + Amn + Perfect Amythest sockets any normal quality weapon making it useful for runewords.) The cube recipes gives a random number of sockets between 1-6, but if the random rolls exceeds the maximum number of sockets a given item can have, you get the maximum. So for example, a war scepter (one of the kind that takes up 6 spaces of inventory - not the little three space ones) have a maximum of 4 sockets. So if the game rolls a 4, 5, or 6 for the recipe, you get a 4-socketed war scepter. Obviously, this isn't really a recipe you want to use if you actually need 6 sockets as you'd only have a 1 in 6 chance of getting it, but when you are shooting for something that has a maximum number of 3 or 4 sockets, it's a decent recipe.

 

Well, it may not be as bad as it sounds. I imagine that you are able to largely avoid getting hit by most things, elemental or not. I would list three things that I would be concerned with: Cold enchanted bosses, fire enchanted bosses (and things like stygian dolls that blow up when you kill them), and finally gloams and thier ilk, as their lightning bolts can go through things. They may be targeting one your skeletons, but if you are standing directly behind of your skeletons, you may become collateral damage.

I'm mowing through nightmare with my paladin now, which is unexpected, because I'm not wearing most of my end game equipment yet. I remembered that I had a Butcher's Pupil stashed away on one of my characters, so as soon as I hit level 39, the paladin was putting out great damage. As an aside, I consider Butcher's Pupil one of the best exceptional unique weapons in the game. It's the unique cleaver (which is the excpetional version of the axe), so it's fairly common. The average base damage is almost 100, and it comes with 35% deadly strike and 25% open wounds. The only stat prerequisites are level 39 and 68 strength, so there's a lot to like there. I'm level 43ish or so right now, so I should be getting the mighty scepter and the might merc right around the same time, and I'll watch my damage soar. I'm already one-hit killing most things with the Butcher's Pupil, so throughout most of nightmare the scepter is going to be overkill (literally).

EDIT: OK, it appears that the next break point for my weapon would be if I had 10% more increased attack speed than I am currently equipped with. My current weapon speed is -50. (Base speed of the weapon is -10 and I have 40% increased attack speed). In case it is not obvious, lower numbers indicate faster swing speed, where "0" represents "normal swing speed". I do not think I can justify a shael for that extra 10%, as I can possibly (probably?) get a decent pair of gloves with 10% IAS.

Shaels give 20% IAS, but the extra 10% is effectively wasted, as a -60 speed weapon zeals at the same rate as a -70 speed weapon. The next break point after that is -90, and the only way I could get there is if I got lucky and got two sockets and stuck a shael in both sockets, as that would be another -40, and would get me to -90 on the nose. But I do not find that option appealing in the least.

EDIT2: Well, it's good news and bad news. The good news is I got two sockets, into which I inserted a perfect skull and the jewel that gives enchanced damage and cold damage. The bad news is I found out pretty quickly that a mighty scepter is a range 1 weapon. Weapon ranges go from 1 through 5, and while range is typically not a determining factor in weapon choice, you would really prefer to have a zealot that was using something longer. (A range 2 weapon is fine - it's just that with a range 1 weapon you miss a lot when you're attacking a pack of monsters, because you cannot quite reach some of them. With a 50% chance to land a crushing blow, and a 50% chance of a deadly strike, I am not convinced I'm not better off switch back to the Butcher's Pupil.

 

bummer about the scepter there.

i started playing with some friends and using the /players 8 thing

we are almost in act 2 nm, and we aren't finding anything?

it is still pretty easy though as we are a fishymancer? af fanatic zealot and a fury wolf, so lots of life, ias and ed.
as soon as we hit act 2 nm were going to get a might merc and a holy freeze merc, so we're gonna rip em

 

Well, you should at least have got some decent loot off of Andariel - but yes, generally speaking the items that drop in normal difficulty aren't as good as what you get in nightmare, which aren't as good as in hell. Also, there is the act progression. Act II gives better drops that Act I, and so forth.

---------- Added 21 hours, 36 minutes and 22 seconds later... ----------

Well, I'm getting used to the low range of the weapon. It's not as bad once you slightly adapt your tactics. You just need to make sure you run (or walk) right next to the creatures before you start your zeal cycle. That way you'll usually be able to hit more than the first one you swing at.

I've been doing some more research on magic finding to try to fine tune my necro as well. I have found this page, which I feel holds a very comprehensive explanation of magic finding. The one thing I'm noticing is that at a certain point, if what you're after is rare, sets, and uniques, adding more mf gear won't make that much of a difference. This is because magic find gear does not add to your chances of finding all types of equipment equally. More mf always improves your odds, but you only get the full listed percentage for magic (blue) items. For rares, sets, and uniques, you get somewhat less than that amount.

For example, if you have 100% mf, your chances of finding a magic (blue) item are 100% - double what they would otherwise be. However, your chances of finding a rare (yellow), set (green), or unique (gold) item are somewhat less - at 85%, 83%, and 71% respectively. If it stayed at this rate, it wouldn't be so bad, but there are diminishing returns the higher you go. At 200%, the odds of finding rares, sets, and uniques are 150%, 142%, and 111%. Subracting out the bonus you received from the first 100% mf, you see that the second 100% mf only increased your odds by 65%, 59%, and 40%, respectively.

While there is no hard cap on magic find (however, there is certainly a maximum amount based on your equipment and what charms you can hold in your inventory - according to the linked page above it's a little over 1000%) at a certain point slightly adding to your mf won't make a noticable difference. And the higher you go, the steeper the diminishing returns become.

Which brings me back to my necromancer, whose current magic find is right around 250%. If I use up some socketing quests I can get his mf up to about 300%. I'm not sure if I want to do this, as adding 50% mf at this point will only increase my odds of finding a rare, set, or unique by 24%, 21% and 11% respectively. At extremely high mf levels, the diminishing returns get ridiculous. For example, going from 400% mf to 800% mf only increases your chances of finding a unique item by 37%!!! I may be better served by socketing the helm and armor of my paladin with perfect topazes, and adding 48% to his magic find, where I will notice a greater benefit.

Here is a more comprehensive tabe to reference to compare your current mf to your chances of finding a rare, set, or unique.

 

Both level 1 and level 2 of the Pit are coded as area level 85. That means the regular monsters on both levels are capable of dropping from TC 84 (the second highest possible TC), and the champions/fanatic/possessed/etc and bosses can drop from TC 87 (the highest TC).

So level 2 is better in the sense that there are at least two, and sometimes three champions or bosses that can drop from the highest treasure class in a very concentrated area. However, the odds of them dropping from the highest treasure class are no better (or worse) than what you could get from a champion or boss on level 1. Similarly, there are also a whole bunch of regular monsters on level 2 that can be killed quickly, but the odds of getting a good drop from them aren't any better than from the monsters you killed on level 1.

So I always do both levels completely. I never stop short of a complete clear on all level 85 areas. For example, if I'm doing a Baal run, there's no need to clear the entire Worldstone Keep to kill Baal's minions (who can drop anything) and Baal himself (who can drop anything and always gives multiple drops). However, there's no way I'm skipping a single monster because the WSK is level 85.

If you're looking for some other decent mf areas to spend some time, you can take the WP to travincal in Act III - the named members of the Council are capable of dropping anything (but not the "Council Member" ones), and the two small side areas on the causway directly to the south of Travincal are also area 85. (On the actual Causeway - not in Upper Kurast.) The reason why this area isn't particularly popular for mfing is because A.) The unique Council Members are bad mofos (they always spawn either fire or lightning enchanted) and B.) If you are a melee character, there is the possibility of getting swarmed as soon as you enter one of those side areas. (But point B is moot in the case of having an army of your own.)

One more comment - the gold chest on level 2 of the pit is only capable of dropping from TC 72. (For comparison, Hell Mephisto drops from TC 78). So it has worse odds of getting a great drop than the creatures. You have probably noticed when doing pit runs that while you've found a reasonable amount of good equipment, the gold chest is usually not the source of that equipment. I'm not suggesting you skip the chest or anything foolish like that. The chest is good in the sense that it usually produces multiple item drops (all of at least magical quality), and it has a small chance (only 1.2% but better than nothing) of dropping a rune up to Vex (which is #26 of 33 - so quite high).

 

I cannot give you an exact percentage - the formula is complex* and I don't remember it off the top of my head - but I am certain that a higher player setting reduces the monster's chances of a "no drop". As the name implies, a "no drop" is when you kill a monster and it drops nothing. IIRC, the base "no drop" chance with players set to 1 is 62.5%. The greater the number of players, the smaller that "no drop" chance gets, although I do not remember the magnitude of the change. By reducing the "no drop" chance you raise the total number of items that drop, and by corrolary will increase the number of good items you find. (It's won't change the relative proportions of normal, magic, rare, set, or uniques that drop, but it's "a rising tide raises all ships" kind of thing. If you have a 1 in 1000 chance of a given creature dropping a great item, and a typical pit run on players 1 gives you 200 drops, and on players 8 it gives you 300 drops, you obviously get better odds with 300 items dropping - although I must again stress I do NOT know what the exact proportion is and my example of 200 vs 300 is far more likely to be incorrect than correct.)

* The reason the formula is complex is because the drop rates (and "no drop" rates) are not calculated directly from the number of players in the game. They are based on the total number of players, the other player's level relative to yours, the number of players in the same area as you are in, and whether or not these players are partied with you. (Partied members is a multiplayer function that is activated by clicking a button on the multiplayer screen. Players that are partied equally split all experience points earned and gold that is picked up, regardless of who gets the kill shot and who picks up the gold.) I simply do not know how the players function in single player is applied. Are these other "players" the same level as you? (I suspect yes.) Are these "players" partied to you? (I suspect no in that you get ALL the experience points and gold collected.) Are these "players" simply in the game with you, or are they in the same area as you? (I have no way to tell, one way or the other.) So in conclusion, more players = more drops = more good drops, but hell if I know exactly how much more.

Regarding your question concerning circlets, I've never heard of that before. Circlets and Coronets are both considered normal items, while tiaras and diadems are the exceptional and unique items to both of them. So I don't see why circlets wouldn't be upgraded with equal probability as coronets. I'm almost positive that I've gambled circlets that have been upgraded to tiaras or diadems, so I'm thinking it's false. However, regardless of the truth of this, it makes very little difference in terms of the resulting item. Everything in the circlet class (which includes all four item types) have the same list of possible affixes. The only thing that affects which affixes can appear on those items is the level of the character doing the gambling (+/-5 of the gambler's level.) Tiaras and diadems have higher defense than circlets or coronets, but you aren't gambling those items for defense rating.

 

Oh - now I know what you mean regarding affixes and you're kind of right. Everything in the circlets class gets a modifier added to it in terms of what affixes it can get. Regardless of whether it was dropped by a monster, chest, or was gambled, circlets get +3 added to their affix level when selecting affixes, coronets get +5, tiaras get +9, and diadems get +13. However, the maximum level affix that shows up on any item in the circlet class is level 90 (+2 to skills) and it is possible to generate that affix on any of the four items. If your level is already in the 80s, there's a pretty good chance the gambled circlet-class item is going to rolled as a level 90 or above item regardless of whether your bonus is +3 or +13, so it won't matter. However, landing a tiara or diadem if your character is level 70-something can potentially be a significant improvement over a coronet or circlet. However, I still don't think that coronets are upgraded to tiaras or diadems any more or less frequently than circlets.

They might cost a different amount - that never mattered to me though.

 

So circlets are never upgraded to anything else - only coronets. I didn't remember that. That page also provided a better explanation than I did - evidently the modifier that I didn't remember is called the magic level, and I was off on what the actual magic level was - I was right with circlets at 3, but it is Tiaras, not Diadems that are 13, and Diadems go all the way to 18 - meaning a diadem could get any modifier on a gamble with an average character level of just 72.

 

Yes, unfortunately, socketed items are non-imbuable. But you have the right idea - diadems (or tiaras) are the only things you should spend your imbues on. As per our earlier discussion, tiaras and diadems are functionally equivalent provided that you are high enough level to get the +2 skills modifier. Tiaras are +13, and you always get a +5 bonus to your clvl when imbuing, so from level 72 and higher, a tiara imbue can get everything a diadem can get (although the diadem can get those modifiers when you are as low as level 67).

I've been slowly advancing my freezealot, while still doing at least some mfing with my necro. I haven't found anything particularly worth while lately, which is not to say the finds were not unusual. For example, I got the unique gothic axe to drop this weekend, which is called the Boneslayer. It does great damage against undead, and has great attack speed, but it doesn't do much else. I never had any desire to build an undead specialist, and even if I did, I would probably want to use a shield, which would rule this weapon out. I also found a rare phase blade and rare tyrant club - which are potentially great finds - but both of them had lousy mods when they were identified. So I have been finding potentially very good items - elite rares and exceptional uniques are good finds - I've just been getting unlucky on the specific modifiers.

I think the one aspect of a freezealot that I like the best is the constant improvement you get throughout the character's life. I max the skills in this order: holy freeze, zeal, resist cold, sacrifice, salvation (salvation only gets maxed if I exceed level 90). Every single time you level up (or get a +skill) your character gets better. Sure, a skelimancer is nearly indestructible as he never gets involved in combat, but he takes forever to kill things like hell Baal, as minions and mercs get damage penalties against act bosses. The other thing with the skelimancer is your damage never really improves beyond level 60 or so (when you have skeleton warrior, skeleton mastery, and corpse explosion maxed).

I now have my freezealot up to the low 50s, and I'm in Act III, nightmare. He already has a damage output in excess of 1500 (that's NOT counting deadly strike or crushing blow percentages). Considering the only skills I've maxed so far are zeal and holy freeze (and I have about 5 or 6 in resist cold so far), the damage maximum can go quite a bit higher. Every additional point in resist cold should add another 40 or so to my maximum cold damage, and every point in sacrifice should add about the same amount to my physical damage.

I've now acclimated to using a range 1 weapon for zealing, and I hardly ever position myself so that I miss the second creature when I swing. Then again, I still am not sure how effective I'll be with zeal cycles, as I'm STILL one hit killing most of the stuff I run into. Obviously, I'm not one hit killing act bosses, and most regular bosses and champions take more than one whack, but overall I cannot complain about my damage.

I'm considering making one more equipment change, although I'm not positive on this one yet. I have the unique amulet Seraph's Hymn stashed away on one my characters. The only thing I don't like about the amulet is that it lacks resists. The other stats are definitely melee oriented: +2 to all skills, +2 to defensive auras (which is useless to me because +skills don't count towards synergies), and huge +%damage and +attack rating to both demons and undead. Normally, I don't count +%damage and attack rating against a specific type of monster as important, because no single type dominates the game. However, when you get both demons and undead on the same piece of equipment, you now are talking about 3/4 of all the creatures in the game, including all the really tough monsters like all the act bosses, oblivion knights, gloams, and all of Baal's minions. I honestly cannot think of a single monster type that is not a demon or undead that gives me major problems.

I'm thinking if I can make up the additional +20 to all resistances I'll lose by switching amulets, it's worth the change. In addition to the mods on the amulet itself, the +2 to all skills will apply to both zeal and holy freeze, making to total improvement that much better. I'll also get +2 to holy shield, which ain't bad either. I have 5 hard points invested in holy shield, although it's effectively level 8 with +skills. This would take it to level 10. I'm currently investing 1.5 in dexterity per level to maintain max block, which is about 1 point less than you normally would. So I'm alternating between 2 dex and 3 vit, and 1 dex and 4 vit per level up.

 

I'm inclined to agree. Although I have not reached the minimum clvl requirement (which is 65) to try out the amulet yet. I should calculate my resistances now, and see what I'll really need going into hell difficulty. I'll probably already have completed Malah's quest by the time I reach level 65 (I'm currently level 55, but I'm already in Act IV). My shield is resist all 120%, and by doing that quest twice (+20% resist all), means right there I'll have 140% resist all. Subtracting out the 50% nightmare penalty means I'm still at 90% resist all.

Which also means I need exactly 50% more resist all to maintain those resistances throughout hell difficulty. I plan on doing nightmare Baal runs until I hit at least level 70. I am not yet satisfied with my gloves, belt, or either of my rings, and I'm counting on those four equipment slots to carry me a good way to the 50% resist all (I hate filling up half of my inventory with resist charms). This biggest improvement I'll need is with the belt, as I'm currently using the unique Goldwrap - which is good for magic and gold finding but has nothing in the way of resists.

Poison necros can be quite powerful. They are hit and run type characters. They blast off some poison spells (poison nova is probably the most popular) then retreat backwards letting the poison go to work. A fully synergized poison nova can hit for upwards of 15,000 poison damage over the course of about 10 seconds. Unfortunately, there are poison immune monsters in the game. Most poison necros do have one skill (usually bone spear) as a backup attack. Almost all poison necros pick the holy freeze mercenary, as slowing them down will cause most of them to die from the poison before they reach you. I have never seen a necro who specializes in bone spells. That would be strange, because even though it would be a spell-based character, bone spells cause physical damage, and you would still need a different type of attack against physical immunes.

As for your next character, the druid will be the one that will cause you to plan the most before you begin, just because there are so many subvariants. A werewolf is played completely differently than a werebear, both of which are played differently from a summoner or an elemental druid. Some druids even play two trees. It's possible to cast sommoning spells while in werewolf or bear form, but you cannot cast elemental spells when shape shifted. So there are elemental summoners (although not many as you need a lot of +skills to make this build effective), and there are werewolf and werebear summoners (much more common than the former, with werebears more common than werewolves), but there's no such thing as an elemental werewolf or elemental werebear.

The other characters are much easier to decide on. Amazons really only give you two choices - bow/crossbow or javelin/spear. Most javazons use primarily a javelin, although they usually carry around a high damage spear on switch, when they do not feel the need for a shield. Amazon spears gain bonuses for both strength and dexterity (as opposed to all other melee weapons that give bonuses only for strength, and missile weapons that give bonuses only for dexterity). If you are a bowazon, most players try to find some +strength equipment, because you only need enough strength the equip your bow. Bowazons usually play not to get hit, and are therefore unconcerned about their defense rating. They will wear whatever armor their strength allows them to (Skins of the Vampermagi is usually quite popular - +1 to all skills, up the 35% resist all, and a strength requirement in the 50s).

Sorceresses are very straightforward. There are three elemental trees: you must specialize in one, and take one attack in a second tree as a backup for when you run into creatures who are immune to your primary attack. Almost all sorceresses take the holy freeze mercenary, and almost all sorceresses take frozen orb as their backup attack. (In terms of bang for your buck, frozen orb gives great damage without synergies - exactly what you're looking for in a backup attack.) So the only real decision is whether you want fire or lightning to be your primary attack. Lightning sorceresses use chain lightning and thunderstorm because of the mutual synergy, while fire sorceresses use fireball and meteor, again because of the mutual synergy. Then just add in the relevant elemental mastery and you're good to go.

Barbarians are the simplest of all. The only thing you need to decide on ahead of time is what weapon you'll be using by the end game. (And even that isn't absolutely necessary. If I don't know what weapon I'll be using by the end of the game, I sink one point each into mace, sword, and axe mastery to use whichever one I like, and then work on my weapon mastery last.) Other than a weapon mastery, the only other thing you need to do is pick which attack skill to specialize in, and you essentially have four choices: whirlwind, berserk, concentration, and frenzy. Get your primary attack, its synergy, and a couple of relevant support skills from the warcry tree (like shout and battle orders).