Diablo II single player questions

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Don't get me wrong, CB is nice. I'm just pointing out that it is quite possible to have low CB% and still do more damage (both per swing and on the average) than someone else with 100% CB. Extreme example: Crushflange vs. Breath of the Dying runeword on any elite weapon.

Rather than advocate CB everywhere, I find it puzzling that Deadly Strike doesn't get mentioned more often. Given a decent weapon -- most elite uniques would qualify -- you actually gain more for each percent of DS rather than CB. Ask any friendly neighborhood WWS Bowazon if you don't believe me.

1% just seemed such a natural measuring stick, no other reason really.

 

OK, now that I can agree with.

I agree with this too. However, it's not an either/or option. Many uniques offer both mods (and not just weapons). Heck, Amazons and Barbarians can even get DS (or it's twin equivalent critical strike) from their skills. You can get a lot out of both skills. Heck, my current Fury druid is using the weapon Fleshrender which gives CB, DS, and OW to boot! It's always good to diversify damage.

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Hey - finally got back to the game! Did the Nightmare Ancients last night, and it did cause me some concern - they were far more durable than I had anticiapted. I did not die, and neither did my merc (the same cannot be said of my spirit or vine), but I ended up using a good chunk of my SHP during the fight.

I was also missing with alarming frequency, which really surprised me, considering the hit percentage on my Fury attacks on normal monsters is between 90%-95% (it varies depending on the exact type of monster). This is concerning for a few reasons as I enter hell difficulty. My attack rating seems to be fine - it's over 7000 for Fury and over 9000 for Fire Claws - and it goes up every level as I have to sink 2-3 points into dexterity to maintain max block. I may need to up Fleshrender to the elite version to keep my damage up in hell (although with a 20% chance of CB kicking in, I thought it would be unnecessary).

 

Finally got around to taking out Nightmare Baal - the drop was disappointing, yielding nothing of even remote value. I didn't even drop a piece of exceptional level gear. (Although he did drop two pieces of the Berserker's Set - helm and armor. That actually wouldn't be a bad set for a low level barb if it came with a bit better weapon.)

Nightmare cows were surprisingly difficult! It certainly didn't help that the cow king spawned with the Conviction Aura, making both me and my merc very hittable. That's another build I never got around to pursuing - I always wanted to run a Conviction Paladin armed with Baranar's Star using zeal as the main attack.

I'm a little below level 70 at this point, so I'll probably need about a half-dozen more Baal runs to hit level 73.

 

My Frenzy barb faces a tricky choice in belts. I have thundergods vigor, string of ears and Verdungo's but I'm not sure which I should use. Thoughts?

 

I would tend to agree with dmc on String of Ears. The only caveat I would put on that is if you already have a lot of %DR gear, you may not benefit from it much. Remember, %DR is capped at 50%. Granted, there aren't a ton of setups that afford 50% DR, but something like shaftstop + stormshield would already place you beyond the maximum.

EDIT: I just had another thought on the armor situation for my druid. Instead of Duriel's Shell, I can instead use an upped Goldskin with an Um. That would provide an additional +15% resistance to everything except cold. I would miss out on strength and life from Duriel's though, so if I go this route I have to decide soon, because I'll need to invest another 15 points into strength.

EDIT: One more thing dmc - while the loot isn't all that great, the average experience points for the kills you get inside Tal Rasha's False Tombs are actually quite high. Higher than the majority of Act III actually. They are not as high as in Act V of course, but for a level 56ish character, you can gain some levels pretty quickly doing the tombs. Just sayin...

The Arcane Sanctuary isn't that bad XP wise either (and you may have to do a good chunk of it - maybe even nearly all of it - to find the Summoner anyway). The place you definitely want to rush through is the palace. The experience points there are among the worst in Act II, and there aren't even any gold chests in there. That's a area where you can just keep taking the stairs down to the next level.

 

Lightsabres give me more than enough lightning absorb, I doubt I need thundergods vigor for more. I currently use string of ears and it's working quite well. I think I'll stick with it then.

 

Finished Nightmare, reached level 73, upped Fleshrender to the elite and started Hell.

The hardest part is keeping my merc and summons alive. However, unlike with previous builds in which the merc and summons are integral to your performance, my character is just fine on his own. The merc, vine and spirit help, but I can perform pretty well without them.

A few observations - shapeshifting druids hit everything. I get a bonus of 185% attack rating from WW, and 485% or 593%, respectively, for Fury and Fire Claws. I found a near-perfect steel grand charm of vita this weekend. I have it in my inventory, but I'm considering passing it down to another character. It gives over 100 to attack rating and 30-something to life, both of which are multiplied by my skills, which ends up making it over 800 to attack rating and over 100 to life. And amazingly, I don't really need it. My attack rating using Fury, is now nearly 8000 (assuming Enchant has activated), giving me a 93% chance to hit, and since you max at 95%, that's pretty darn good. My backup attack, Fire Claws, has an attack rating of over 10000, and that's at the max of 95%. The only reason I'm holding onto the charm is I'm only in Act I, and so that extra attack rating may help down the road, although seeing as how I still spend points on dexterity every level, my attack rating should ramp up gradually anyway.

It's pretty much the same thing with life - I have over 1600, which dwarfs pretty much any life pool I've had, short of a barbarian with maxed Battle Orders. I still hold onto vita charms though, as you can never have too much life.

I'm still tank everything - Fury against everything that isn't physical immune, and Fire Claws against everything that is. I still have not tried out my WB form against mana drain physical immunes, although I'm certain to run into ghosts eventually. Since I needed to spend a point into WB and Maul to get Fire Claws anyway, I decided to spend one additional point, and pick up Shock Wave. The plan against ghosts and their ilk is to cast shockwave to stun them, and then Fire Claws to kill them. The only part of this plan that I don't know will work, is whether Shock Wave works against physical immunes. I don't care if you don't get the damage from Shock Wave (it isn't much anyway), but I do care if the stun doesn't work. I'm assuming the stun doesn't work against uniques, so the hoped-for strategy against unique is stun the pack, and run like hell, with only the boss in the pack following. The boss isn't so tough without the rest of the the pack.

One little bit of annoyance is that SHP and SMP give back variable amounts of life and mana (at varying rates) depending on the character. A barbarian gets 640 life and gets it faster when he drinks a SHP potion compared to sorceress, necro, and druid, who only get 320 points for a SHP. Vice versa for a SMP. Here's the table.

The thing is, when you have over 1600 life, 320 is pretty insignificant. I carry a row of SHP, but they are pretty much for merc use. I go with FRP when I need life back. That's the other reason I keep a vine around. Even at low level, my vine returns 7% of my life for every corpse it eats, which is over 100 points. So I find having a little bit of life leech on my equipment (just 3%) along with a vine is a much better way of keeping my life bulb near full.

I just have to pay attention to make sure my vine doesn't get killed during combat. The vine is very zealous in the corpse eating, and if you're fighting a boss pack, as soon as the first enemy dies, the vine will go in to eat the corpse, even though there are still several other enemies right there. That usually results in it eating one corpse before it gets killed by the other members of the pack. No big deal if you can kill the rest of the pack without the life points being provided by the vine. You just resummon it after the fight and get your life bulb replenished.

The spirit AI is a little better. It is programmed to avoid combat as much as possible. It only dies when there's archers or other missile-using enemies that it cannot easily avoid.

 

Ooh goody, found a rainbow facet jewel with a fire theme, might be very useful. Also found a unique Eldirch orb, which gives 2 to sorc skills and 12% more fire damage. It greatly increases my meteor damage but also takes my resistances down the mud so I'll have to abstain from using it for now.

Haven't had much time to develop the barb and have mainly been doing casual mephisto runs a few times a day.

 

To hell with the resistances - you shouldn't be using your weapon slot to acquire resistances anyway. That fire rainbow facet should already be socketed in the aforementioned orb, making it that much better.

 

I wonder what slot I should be using then? If I take the orb in use I'll cut all my resistances to well under 50 (fire and cold somewhere between 10 and 20) and addtionally in order to avoid going to negative resistances I need to take into use skin of the vipermagi costing me nearly 100 in terms of magic finding. Making my sorcerers basically completely unable to complete baal runs and killing her even at the sight of gloams. I would win in damage but avoiding getting killed is more important in my book.

 

The simple answer is just about anywhere besides you weapon.

The weapon slot is for damage for melee characters or +skills for things like sorceresses and necros. The most obvious place to get resistances are your shield, although I always make sure I get some on all three pieces of jewelry. Resistances are available on every item slot in the game. Rare boots, gloves, and belts often come with resistances, and while rare helms and body armor with high resistances aren't as common they certainly aren't hard to come by.

Considering you're playing a sorceress, and therefore will never get your defense high enough for it to matter on hell difficulty, all of your gear selections should be focused on +skills and resistances. It really shouldn't be too hard to do better than what you currently have. All I'm saying is that with a character like a sorceress or necro, there are fewer items slots available to give you +skills compared to the item slots available to give you resistances. And barring a great find of a +2 to all skills amulet or circlet, the weapon slot is the ONLY place where you can get more than +1 to skills. So the weapon slot is definitely the one area where I'd be willing to compomise resistances in favor of skills, because I can get resistances just about anywhere else, but I can't get tons of +skills or enhanaced elemental damage in very many places at all.

EDIT: An as an aside, Skin of the Vampermagi is a VERY solid choice for armor for a sorceress - it gives +1 to all skills, faster cast rate and good resistances - the exact type of gear you are looking for. I prefer Goldskin for the higher resistances (although a perfect Skin of the Vampermagi will equal Goldskin's resistances), but there's nothing wrong with Skin of the Vampermagi.

 

Not much action in this thread lately, and I don't have anything noteworthy to report. I'm still going with my druid, but it's been seemingly forever since I've found anything at all noteworthy. Then again, this is NOT a mf character.

 

That the great thing with the HS. WIth a 45% CB, there's no need to up it to the elite version unless you really, really, want to, and with three open sockets, it's very customizable. Amns aren't a bad call at all, but in case you haven't noticed, with a very high level Battle Orders (I'm assuming you have invested 20 points by now, and with +skills, Battle Commands, and at least sounding weapons on your switch, it probably is somewhere around level 30), you and your merc have a TON of life points. And, once you get shout maxed (you probably have a while yet for that), you won't get hit that much either.

 

Should have enlisted for national lottery the other day...

Just in the span of one evening, I scored the Immortal King's Soul Cage (armor) from a random skeleton boss in the Pit, a friggin' LO rune from a Fallen (!) just a bit further in, Baranar's Star from a random Megademon in the River of Flame and as a final punch, Shaftstop from some dude in Chateau Nihlatak.

 

Have you yet made your decision on what your final weapon will be? I'm assuming you have decided to go with either axes or maces if your dexterity is insufficient to equip a couple of echoing swords.

AND THAT'S WHY YOU RUN THE PIT!

A banner day Sir Rechet! Any time you find the IK armor or a LO rune, already it's the find of the month. To find both on the same Pit run is incredible - and outstanding. I'm not even sure which drop is more rare. I've never actually found a LO rune... ever. I've cubed up to a LO rune, but never had one drop. Baranar's Star and Shaftstop are also very nice drops, but they aren't nearly as rare as the other two.

I like my Fury Druid a lot. I did the Countess on Hell last night, and shift to a bear and alternatve shockwave and fireclaws against ghosts works GREAT. Even champions and bosses can be stunned with shockwave, although it sometimes take a couple of castings, which I find surprising in that most skills in Diablo don't work that way. Usually, skills either always work against a particular monster type or they always don't work. This "sometimes work" thing suggests that there is a percent chance of it activating against bosses and champions. The only thing I can think of is this: Is there an attack rating check on Shockwave? Do you actually have to "hit" in order to stun your opponent? It's not inconceivable that it works this way, as it does do damage. It's not like a curse or warcry taht always works.