Diablo II single player questions

What the heck level is that golem? I was also wrong, but in the other direction. My level 28 golem comes with about 8,700 life.

That must be a unique - no standard item can spawn with +4 to an entire tree. Cerebus's Bite can spawn with +4 to shapeshifting, and Jalal's Mane effectively gives +4 to shapeshifting (+2 to all druid skills and +2 to shapeshifting).

I am a hair's breadth away from level 88, but I suspect that is the last time our characters will be of the same level. My necro will not see level 89 for a long, long, time - if ever.

 

Perhaps you should try using the act 1 mercenary a bit. She stays away from trouble, flees from aggro, does good damage, and casts the Inner Sight debuff which should help overall DPS. Not as ideal as the Lut Gholein merc, but more practical.

 

Unfortunately, while I would hit a bit more, with my merc's aura, I hit for about 400 more damage per zeal swing - not per cycle - per swing. With about a 70% chance to hit, that's 3.5 hits per cycle, or 1400 damage per zeal cycle. There's no way that an act 1 merc is going to get anywhere near that much damage adding both the merc's damage and my increased chance to hit.

In fact, if I'm looking at increasing a merc's survivability, it would make the most sense to replace my might merc with a defiance merc. A high level defiance merc would greatly increase his own survivability odds by getting hit less, and also improve my own character's odds of getting hit less. (In fact, my defense rating would be really high, as my holy shield goes off at level 10, and the additive bonuses of both defiance and holy shield would get my defense really high.)

Yesterday, I had to do a speedy "save and exit". I got to the part in Act II Hell where you have to do the claw viper temple. The superunique at the end of that quest, Fangskin, spawned with pretty much impossible mods. He always spawns lightning enchanted and extra fast as his pre-set mods, but because its hell difficulty he gets two extra mods, which were cold enchanted (and I don't have any cannot be frozen gear) and extra strong. My merc died in seconds and I would have followed quickly if not for gulping a couple of full rejevenation potions and save and exiting the game.

 

Can't say I blame you for that. Still, for convenience's sake you might still wanna try out the Act 1 merc over the Defiance merc.
The extra defense rating won't help him much in Hell (what with his AI and all), although in your case the aura would be a blessing.

Mara's Kaleidoscope is one of the most sought after items in the game. Congrats for finding it.

 

Mara's is out-freaking-standing. Certainly one of the most desired amulets in the game. It's basically a rare +2 skills amulet with resists (which is the item you're gambling for at high levels (that and +2 skill circlet class items). The difference with Mara's is that any character can use it, whereas +2 skill rare amulets are class-specific.

My necro is level 88 now, and I did drop a single point into skeletal mage. I have +8 in summoning skills, so that means with a single point I'm up to skill level 9, which gives me 5 mages. They die a lot more often than my warriors (which I find strange), but what the heck - one skill point for five mages is well worth it.

My inventory is getting pretty clogged up, mostly because I'm carrying around two +1 summoning skills grand charms, a few + resistance, and numerous small mf charms. The difference in the life totals of our golems is definitely due to you having a much higher level of golem mastery than I do. I only have one point in it, so it's level 9, just like all of my other one point wonder skills. My clay golem is a higher level than yours because my wand gives +3 to all summoning skills, and +2 to clay golem to boot. But that still only takes it to level 28, and that does not make up for the 13 more points in golem mastery that you have.

 

maybe your mages die all the time because they have very little life compared to your what lvl 30 skeleton warriors?

 

They certainly have less Balle, but I have skeleton mastery at level 28, and that provides an equal life bump to both my warriors and mages. So they have less than the warriors, but it's not like their life total is 1/3 that of the warriors. I'm at work and I cannot check the exact values at this moment, but my skeleton warrios have 700-something life, while my mages have 400-something life. So the mages have about 60% the life total as my warriors.

The reason I find it strange is that the warriors run up to and engage enemies in melee and take constant damage, whereas the mages stay back and fire elemental attacks. I just figured the more hands-on melee attackers would die more frequently, but I have not found that to be true. I recast mages much more often than warriors.

 

Perhaps it's because of the melee skellies' shields. Blizzard might have upgraded them somehow and the shields are no longer just for show. It's been a while since I last played a Necromancer.

 

hmm, yes i see are they being attacked by melee monsters? they might have a lower defence and 0% to block, and if the warriors does have a % to block it could be found there..

 

I'm sure that's part of it. The other thing is that their AI is terrible. When a melee monster runs up to them, they don't run away. They just stand there, firing their elemental attack. You would think that their AI would be more like the rogue mercenary or the sorcerer mercenary, where if they get to melee range, they run away and begin firing again when they reach a safe distance.

 

Blue +2 Skills are pretty common (and +3 to an entire tree is also possible). Rares have a maximum of +2 and those are the ones you're looking for.

 

I was browsing through the web looking for how to make a Crescent Moon runeword when I found this page.

It shows how to upgrade runes (I didn't know this was possible before). It might help other people in completing certain runewords.

 

Upgrading all runes became available with the 1.09 patch.

Crescent Moon is an excellent runeword. Lightning damage galore, and the only remotely difficult rune to get is an Um.

 

Due to having a not-very-powerful PC and constantly following this thread I've decided that Diablo 2 was a good game to go back to. I'm thinking of playing a Paladin, a Druid and a Necromancer and try to get them all to Hell eventually. I've no internet at home so I'm using LoD 1.11b with PlugY to transfer class-specific items between the builds. I've finished the game on Normal with a Necro before but never did much with the other two classes, so I'm wondering which builds are good and which ones are not so good, specifically for beating the game on Hell difficulty.

For the Necromancer I was wondering how powerful the golems can get and if it's worth investing lots of points to get a strong golem build, or if I should focus on skellies instead. A combination of skeletons and skeletal mages seemed like a good idea because I'd then be doing multiple damage types, something that's essential in Hell. Another thing I was wondering about is Decrepify. In my previous run I relied solely on Amplify Damage and that worked fine, but I thought I may need something more powerful in Nightmare and Hell. Decrepify is supposed to combine Amplify, Weaken and Slow into one curse according to its description. Since curses don't stack this seems great, but it doesn't mention anywhere if it amplifies, weakens and slows to the same extent as the individual curses. If it's going to amplify anything less than Amp Damage I don't think I'll bother with it. The other curse I've been wondering about is Iron Maiden. I only put few points in it the last time and didn't use it much. Is it actually worth investing more into it, or does it become obsolete in Hell?

I've had a look at the Paladin auras and it seems to be a choice between Might and Holy Freeze. I know that the Act 2 mercenaries in Nightmare have these same auras so I was thinking that, if I choose one, I would get a merc with the other. Which combination makes more sense? Is Thorns really as good as it seems and should I get it instead of either? Finally, I remember reading on here that Zeal was a very good attack to have. Is that a viable attack to use all the way through Hell, and which aura would complement it best?

As for the Druid I've never played with this one at all, so I've no idea what's what. It seems that the skill trees are mutually exclusive here - either go for summoning, or shapeshifting, or elemental attacks, but not all or even a combination of two. I'm not terribly impressed by the Elemental attacks, as they seem to do very little damage and I don't suppose they get much better in Hell. In the shapeshifting tree the Wolf form seems to have better special attacks, but the Bear form is more powerful by itself. As for the animal spirits, are any of them good? The Grizzly seems powerful but it's a level 30 skill, so I won't be able to use it before the end of Normal. I'm also not sure how the trees work together - if I shapeshift, can I still cast elemental attacks and summon the animals?

 

Might is completely useless.

You have 2 main physical attacks with a Paladin. One is Zeal, another is Vengeance. Vengeance adds lots of elemental damage (fire, cold and lightning) but costs a lot of mana. Zeal does only physical damage but hits a lot faster. I prefer Zeal myself.

Then, your choice of auras is usually between Conviction, Fanaticism, Holy Freeze and Holy Shock.
Conviction lowers enemy resistances and defense, can even break immunities. I dont use it much but I've heard its very powerful. Use it with Vengeance.
Holy Freeze does cold damage and slows enemies. Cold damage isnt all that much though, I've heard its not so useful at hell difficulty.
Holy Shock does lots of lightning damage. My preferred aura.
Fanatacism increases damage, attack rating and attack speed. Best of the physical auras by far, but again its only physical damage.

The reason that I wouldnt go solely physical damage is that you start encountering enemies who are resistant or even immune to physical damage. Also remember that elemental damage auras add damage to your attack as well an area of effect damage. I know Holy Shock can also be used with ranged weapons, think the others can too.

I wouldnt use thorns, heard its not very good. You still need to get damaged for it to work, that can get you killed in Hell difficulty.