Diablo II Single Player Thread - 2

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Arkaine's Valor is uber-rare. I was shocked when that was among the first elite uniques I found when I moved to SP.

Another thought has occurred to me in regards to my summoner. While I still think AoKL would be the best choice, I'm not too far away from being able to cube a Vex. Heart of the Oak would definitely be a solid choice. +3 skills, FCR, resistances, mana, and the Oak Sage charges would help everyone (although OS tends to die frequently).

I'd probably make in a war hammer for the sheer comedy of it.

 

@Aldeth does'nt it also add BO and shout? that could be pretty usefull...

 

That's Call to Arms you're thinking about and it gives a bonus to battle orders, battle command and battle cry. Yes, it would be useful, but it's only +1 to all skills, and Heart of the Oak is +3 to all skills. That's a big difference for a necro as you skeletons receive bonuses not just from the skill itself, but also from the mastery. Going with CtA would effectively meaning losing 4 levels worth of skill points on both the skellies and mages.

 

I was thinking about HOTO some more, and I actually think a war hammer is my ONLY option. I won't meet the minimum dexterity requirement to make it in a flail, the only other 1-handed staff/mace weapon that can get 4 sockets!

Anyway, I started up NM last night at level 51, and did the first few quests. I'm still steam-rolling everything on /players8. The toughest boss I've fought thus far in NM is Griswold, and he lasted maybe 15 seconds against my army.

I've also added a new tactic. For shiggles, I decided to try out a few other golems. I actually like the fire golem. It is surprisingly un-suck-tasitc. For starters, it seems like it is really fast, meaning it is typically the first thing to engage enemies. Secondly, it does pulse fire damage, which causes even more enemies to be drawn to it. Thirdly, the one time it died, it exploded killing a bunch of stuff around it.

So, now I'm thinking that for everything except bosses (where you would want the CG slowing effect) that the FG is the way to go. The goal most of the time is to get the enemies to attack your biggest, hulkiest tank (i.e., the golem) and the FG is the best means of accomplishing that.

I'm already starting to wonder what player setting I want in hell difficulty. I probably do not want 8, as I know CE doesn't scale up with player difficulty. On Normal and Nightmare, having a lackluster CE doesn't really slow you down too much, as your army can take care of most stuff quickly on its own.

To those who have tried hell on /players8 (I assume at the least dmc has run /players8 on level 85 areas), what's the performance like? Is it unimaginably slow? I'm thinking perhaps dropping down to players5, or maybe even players3 would still result in more items/XPs, while still allowing me to have a semi-effective CE.

 

Hmmm... I'll have to play around with it a bit then.

Here's the weird thing about the way the game calculates the player settings in SP. Every player you add gives a linear bonus of +50% to the monster's life and experience gained for killing it. However, the added players are considered non-partied players in terms of drops, and thus only count as half a player.

When doing the no drop check, the game rounds the player count down. So on p2, you've added one extra player, so the game considers it 1.5 total players, rounds that down to 1, and you get the same drop rate as if you were on p1. (But you do get the added XPs for killing the monster.)

Therefore, in terms of drops, p1 and p2 are equivalent. (By similar rationale, p3 and p4 are equivalent - both equal to 2 partied players - p5 and p6 are both counted as 3 partied players, and p7 and p8 are counted as 4 partied players.) The only added benefit you get from going from p7 to p8 is some added experience. The only reason you rarely see people running on p7 is because if you can handle p7, you most likely can handle p8, so you may as well get the better XPs.

So if you're looking to maximize drops while minimizing run time, you should pick an odd-numbered players setting. Furthermore, in hell difficulty you tend to use CE as your main killing spell (in hopes of setting off a CE domino effect), it's a basic math problem.

Assumptions:

1. We're dealing with a boss pack, and all the monsters within the pack (exluding the boss) have nearly identical life.

2. All hell monsters are 50% immune to physical damage.

3. Some monsters are completely immune to physical damage.

4. Some monsters are completely immune to fire damage.

5. CE deals 80%-120% of the monster's life total in damage, equally split between physical and fire.

So I'll put together a few tables here, doing the easiest case first, where a monster is immune to neither fire nor physical, and assume the monsters are under the effect of amplify damage.

Key: Players = players setting
Mon life = Monster's life total relative to player setting (base set at 100)
Min # CE = minimum number of CEs required to set off domino effect
Max # of CE = maximum number of CEs required to set off domino effect

Each casting of CE will inflict a minimum of 40 fire and 60 physical damage. (Monsters have 50% phys resistance, but Amped they are at -50%.) Maximum CE damage is 60 fire and 90 physical

Players / Mon life / Min # of CE / Max # of CE
1 100 1 1
2 150 1 2
3 200 2 2
4 250 2 3
5 300 2 3
6 350 3 4
7 400 3 4
8 450 3 5

So for non physical or fire immune, players 5 looks like the sweet spot.

If fire immune, but not physical immune, each casting of CE will yield 0 fire damage, and have a minimum physical damage of 60, and a maximum physical damage of 90 when amp is active.

Players / Mon life / Min # of CE / Max # of CE
1 100 2 2
2 150 2 3
3 200 3 4
4 250 3 5
5 300 4 5
6 350 4 6
7 400 5 7
8 450 5 8

Sweet spot here is players 1, with a rather linear increase for max # of CE.

For physical immune, under amp, the min damage would be 8 physical 40 fire and the max damage would be 12 physical and 60 fire. Conversely, if I cast a level 8 lower resist on them (-52%), they'll receive no physical damage, but a minimum of 61 points of fire damage, and a maximum of 91 fire damage. So against a PI pack, while I would go with Amp to kill the first one, I'd max my CE damage by switching over to LR. The table is exactly like the one above for fire immune, so I won't repost it.

No regular monsters can spawn physical and fire immune (just bosses) so there's no need to do a table. Such bosses would either be amped, or if still immune after amping or unampable (like possessed creatures), then LR would be cast and have my mages deal with it.

This is a long winded means of saying that on hell difficulty, the absolute maximum player setting I should consider is 5, and I'm probably better off sticking to 3.

 

That's the other thing I've been considering - specifically that once you reach the point where you are running solely for items, the only time you would deviate from p1 setting is for Act bosses. The only purpose of increasing the players setting beyond experience is to reduce the monster's "no drop" rate. Champions and unique monsters have a 0% "no drop" rate. They all drop two potions, gold, and a magic or better item (unless they drop a rune or gem). Super-uniques (like Eldtritch, Pindleskin, etc.) drop two magic or better items (again, unless they drop a rune or gem). Since you cannot reduce a drop rate beyond 0%, and player setting does not improve the quality of drops (only mf does that), you gain nothing but more experience in upping the player settings.

Act bosses, on the other hand, are a different story. As implausible as this sounds, Act bosses do have a "no drop" chance. It's just that the "no drop" chance is rather small (a little over 20% on p1), and every act boss gets six drop chances. So while it would require an unbelievable stroke of bad luck, it is theoretically possible to kill an Act boss on p1 and get nothing. (Granted, the chance of this happening is less than one hundreth of a percent, but possible). While I have never been so unlucky to have this occur, it was not that unusual when I was playing on battlenet to kill a boss and only have him drop two or three items. On p8, I regularly see the full compliment of six drops, and rarely see fewer than five drops.

 

I'm now in Act III NM with my necro, and still going smoothly. The one thing I do not like about D2 is that once you get good at the game, normal and NM difficulties are a joke. I play this game for the challenge of hell difficulty, and it ticks me off that I have to devote about 10 hours of play time in normal, and another 10 in NM to get to the point where the game gets "fun".

Normal is totally useless for me already, as I already have much of the good stuff I can get from normal. Nightmare isn't quite as bad, as there's still a ton of stuff that is NM droppable that I don't yet have in my stash. What this effectively means in game play is that I do all the quests and move on, without doing full clears of areas. I'm not too keen on doing anything in the optional areas either. For example, I didn't do all the false tombs of Tal Rasha in Act II. I may consider running NM Mephisto for a while if I can do him quickly. He's the first boss you encounter that is both quick to run and can drop most of the exceptional set and unique items in the game.

I've also been re-thinking my players setting strategy. While it is true that all unique monsters and super-unique monsters have a 0% chance of having a "no drop", all regular monsters in the game have a non-zero "no drop" percentage. While the chance of a regular monster dropping a rare or better item is small, given the sheer number of regular monsters, I'm guessing that you get a fair percentage of your rare or better drops from them. It thus stands to reason that one should set the player setting to as high a level as one can handle without it becoming too hard (or tedious) to kill monsters. At this point, I'm leaning towards p5 for Hell difficulty.

 

I did some more searching, and I agree with your assesment. Specifically:

Even if you are talking about a alvl 85, while any monster can drop from the highest TC, there are still some items that they cannot drop, owing to the qlvl restriction. Monsters with an mlvl of 85 can drop from TC87, but can only drop set and unique items from TC87 if the qlvl of the item is lower than their mlvl. (For magic and rares, qlvl=mlvl, so any monster capable of dropping a regualar (white) version of an item can also drop a magic or rare version.)

Items that have a qlvl of 86 or 87 can only be dropped by champion or unique monsters in alvl 85, and since they have a 0 no drop chance, you aren't helping yourself by upping the player setting. The list of items with a qlvl of 86 or greater isn't large, but it includes:

qlvl 87: Arachnid Mesh, Azurewrath, Tyrael's Might
qlvl 86: Crown of Ages, Mang Song's Lesson, Stormlash, Tomb Reaver

Also, Pindleskin also has a mlvl of 86, so he cannot drop from that top group either.

Other common MF targets are Eldritch and Shenk, who are mlvl 84 and 83, respectively. So Eldritch loses out on the qlvl 85 items (and everything listed above of course) containing a ton of good stuff:

Alma Negra, Andariel's Visage, Arioc's Needle, Arkaine's Valor, Halaberd's Reign, Kira's Guardian, Metalgrid, Rainbow Facet, Shadowkiller, The Cranium Basher, The Gladiator's Bane, The Grandfather, Wolfhowl

Shenk also misses out on all of those, in addition to the qlvl 84 items:

Boneshade, Dracul's Grasp, Dragonscale, Griffon's Eye, Hellrack, Medusa's Gaze, Wisp Projector, Wraithflight

(Which other than Griffon's, really isn't missing out on much.)

I also read through a few single player magic finding guides, and it turns out that while monsters life totals and XP gained increase linearly with player setting, the reduction to the no drop chance has a diminishing return formula associated with it. The biggest return is upping the players in the game to 2 (which is the /players3 command). The difference between /players3 and /players7 (which is equivalent to /players8 in terms of drops) is only 8% more set and unique items. So the only way it is profitable to go from p3 to p7 for finding items is if it only takes you 8% longer the do the runs on p7 (which is virtually impossible irrespective of your build).

A similar thing occurs with Act bosses. According to the guide, all act bosses get 7 drop chances, but can drop a maximum of 6 items. So the first failed drop check is essentially free, and if none of the first six drop checks fail, the seventh check is aborted. The average number of drops from Act bosses on /players1 is 4.54. This number increases to 5.89 on /players3, and with 6 being the maximum possible, it's really silly to go beyond that.

So I'm in Act V NM now, and I think that I'll be doing all of hell on the /players3 setting, which I'm actually quite happy about. On that setting, I should only need 2 corpses to start the CE chain.

 

Out of curiosity, what is the highest qlvl item you have ever found? I know you've landed at least one Rainbow Facet, which would be qlvl85. Since switching to SP, I have found Arkaine's Valor (also qlvl85). I think you may have mentioned finding an Arachnid Mesh, which is among the top qlvl items.

 

Wow - there's a ton of stuff there to make a build around. Arkaine's + Tomb Reaver (or Arioc's really) sounds like a really good start for a melee build, with the Act 2 merc getting whichever weapon you don't use.

So there's still a decent number of items you don't have yet. But it is a quite impressive list to be sure.

There aren't any of these unusual items in sets, because for whatever reason, there aren't any set items that have qlvls well in excess of the TC that contains them. All items in a given set have the same qlvl, and the qlvls are unusually low, even for sets that contain only exceptional and/or elite base item types. If a monster cannot drop a given set item, it is because it cannot even drop from the TC that contains the base item. I cannot think of a single set item where the qlvl is the limiting factor in whether or not a monster can drop it.

To use just one TC for uniques for illustrative purposes: Alma Negra, Kira's Guardian, and Gladiator's Bane are all qlvl 85, but the base item (sacred rondache, tiara, and wire fleece, respectively) are all in TC 72. So you can start seeing normal, magic, and rare items of this type by late nightmare, but not the uniques. For a good number of unique items, it is the qlvl that is the limiting factor in what can and cannot drop it.

Here are some of the top set items. (Full disclosure: I knew that set items had much lower qlvls relative to their TCs, but I looked up these numbers - I certainly didn't have them memorized):

Natalya's Mark (scissors suwayyah) and Natalya's Shadow (loricated armor) are in TCs 87 and 75, respectively, but have a qlvl of 22.

M'avina's True Sight (diadem) and M'avina's Embrace (kraken shell) are in TCs 87 and 81, but have a qlvl of 21.

Both the swords for the Bul-Kathos set are in TC 87, but have a qlvl of just 50.

The IK Soul Cage is in TC 87 with a qlvl of 37.

And far and away the hardest set in the game to complete is Griswold's. Griswold's Redemption (caduceus), Griswold's Valor (corona), and Griswold's Honor (vortex shield) are all in TC 87. (And the weapon and shield are class-specific, so they only drop with 1/3 the frequency of other items.) But all these items are just qlvl 44.
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Another interesting point in that single player mf guide was doing LK (Lower Kurast) runs on hell difficulty. As I (and presumably you) already knew, Lower Kurast, Kurast Bazzar, and Upper Kurast all contain super chests that pop a ton of items every time you open them. What I didn't know was that these super chests (and there are always three of them) are always located in the huts north and west of a campfire, along with an armor stand and weapon rack, as seen here. Red circles are the chests, blue circles are the racks.

LK is the preferred area because it is possible to spawn a map with two campfires, and thus, six super chests and four racks. These super chests are incapable of dropping anything from the upper TCs, but have about a 1 in 1000 chance of dropping a rune in the range of Um-Ber, and that is why they are run. (The racks don't have great drops either, but you're there anyway, so what the heck.)

In maps with a WP nearby all six super chests, it is possible to pop all of them in a matter of seconds. It's so quick that many people run them exclusively for the runes (teleporting sorceresses can do the run over 100 times per hour on a good map), and nearly all serious mfers include the super chests in their runs, regardless of what particular area they happen to be running. The guide said the best player setting for getting a rune is p3, which is convenient, as that's also what they recommend doing all youf mf runs on.

It's not a great run for battlenet, because the maps are randomized every time you start a new game. So you don't know if your particular LK map has one or two campfires, and you don't know where they are located. (And even if you had a map hack program running, bnet only lets you start three games in a 10 minute span, so it would be impossible for players on bnet to run them quickkly anyway.) The 1 in 1000 chance are not great odds, and are only done in SP because you can do them quickly. In the time it takes a rune hunter on bnet to search the entirty of LK, he could have done a countess run, where he's guaranteed at least some runes for his work.

 

The armor is the easy piece of that set, but you have the two hardest pieces to acquire. Both the shield and weapon are in TC87 with a 1/3 probability of dropping relative to the other pieces. It's relatively easier to get the helm compared to the other items.

I found a Witchwild String when I killed NM Diablo the other day, and I seriously think my next SP character will focus on that weapon. I have the complete Arctic set already, which would be great for a starting bowazon. The WWS just seems like a great weapon, and I've seen several bowazon guides advocating its use (upped from the exceptional to the elite version of course). The mods on it are simply amazing. fast attack speed, two open sockets for customization, fires level 20 magic arrows, 1% chance per character level of deadly strike (meaning at high levels it will nearly always hit for double damage), 40% resist all, and the kicker - 2% chance to cast Amp Damage on attack. With a high chance of deadly strike and Amp Damage, you'll be hitting for four times damage a lot of times. Of course, to get the Amp Damage to activate with any frequency, you'll need to be using a fast attack, so I think this really calls for a strafer build.

I'm not abandoing my necro or anything - I still need some items for that amozon build - most notably a Razortail.

EDIT: Specifically, I'm thinking of maxing Strafe, Penetrate and Valkyrie, with a healthy dose of pierce. I can carry a Kuko on switch if I want a third damage type.

 

i am currently running a wws amazonm with max pierce(edit: NOT pierce but PENETRATE), vakyrie and strafe.

i have only hit the 9/2 ias bp with 95% ias overall (found highlords wrath recently to make this possible)
she is da bomb!
i haven't yet found a pul to upgrade it though (got lum), but at level 77 and with kb gloves(sometimes switched for lava ghouts for the enchant) she is kicking ass in hell act 1 /players 3
not a lot of mf though, but i could see her being viable. i essentially have 2 open ring slots for mf, and boots as well, with a few charms, she could get around 200 mf
edit: pierce is just 1 hard point, with a few +skills she gets around 80-90% pierce

 

I would argue that is the exact attack speed you should shoot for. The first number is the frame rate of the first shot, and the second number is the frame rate for all subsequent shots. So the second number is much more important than the first IMO. The second number can never go below 2, which is where you have it, and according to a Weapon Speed Calculator, you'd hit the 9/2 speed with a total of 86% IAS. So your 95% total sounds about perfect.

Also using the calculator, you can get to 8/2 with 105% IAS, but that's only saving you 1/25 of a second per strafe cycle, which isn't worth it IMO. It certainly isn't worth sacrificing any gear to get at least. The final weapon speed break point is at 200% IAS, and that gets you to 7/2. I don't even know if 200% IAS is possible, but it's almost certainly unattainable without some serious gear sacrifices, and even then, your strafe cycle would only be 2/25 of a second faster than it currently is.

Strafe fires up to 10 arrows at a time, so at your current speed, a full strafe cycle will be 27 frames - a hair over a second. I cannot see any noticable benefit reducing that to 26 frames, or 25 frames at the last break point. That said, I totally agree that you need to shoot for that 9/2 breakpoint, because before that you have a 9/3 attack speed, which would make the strafe cycle take 36 frames - and you can definitely tell the difference between 36 and 27 frames.

Run Hell Countess for that Pul. She can drop runes all the way up to Ist, so a Pul is doable. I won't go into her odd drop mechanics (you can seach earlier in this thread if you want the details), but you want to run her on /players1 for the best chance of getting multiple rune drops. Since you're only after a Pul, it shouldn't even take that many runs. After a dozen or so runs, while she may not actually drop a Pul, you'll likely have the runes you need that you can upgrade them to a Pul.

200 is plenty of mf. I pasted a piece earlier in this thread on mf. The author considered 1000% mf to be the maximum attainable, but pointed out that magic find has steep diminishing returns. Basically, every point of mf you add does less for you than the previous point you added. A character with around 100% mf finds about half as many uniques as a character with 1000% mf. A character with 200% mf finds about 3/4 as many uniques as a character with 1000% mf. So that first 100% mf is important, and it's always nice to get over 200%, but beyond about 250%, the diminishing returns are so steep that you'd never make gear sacrifices to go higher. Gheeds, War Travelers, and a ptopaz in your helm and armor get you to around 130%. Anything beyond that is gravy.

I agree with that too. Pierce is a one point wonder. It seems like that with a Razortail and a level 8 pierce (attainable with one hard point and +gear), that you should essentially get up to 98% pierce, which means you're arrows will miss more than they fail to pierce.

This is something I'm genuinely curious about. There is no AR bonus from strafe. Do you find the enchant on Lava Gouts to be necessary most of the time to hit a decent attack rating? I found that I needed Lava Gouts on my last zeal paladin, because my chance to hit was only around 70% in hell without them, but jumped up to 85% when the enchant activated (which with zeal - and obviously with strafe - would be frequently).

 

about your previous post on mf and breakpoints(and anything else), i have read them all, and thank you for posting them.
on the gear/ias bit, i could switch my belt for a goldwrap getting me past the bp and giving me additional mf, i would consider this if going for bosses, as pierce doesn't really matter with them, mainly for the ias though.

iirc on the AR, it does jump from somewhere in the 80's to early 90's and it is not really a noticeable difference at this stage, act 1 hell, but i tend to put them on every minute or two, and after the enchant hit switch with my kb 20% ias crafted gloves
at this point i would say they are definitely not necessary and the benefits of the kb far outweigh the enchant, nothing can get near her.

i am also using the ring carrion wind, and i think i'm keeping it, it's great for the extra LL (7% i think) and the stun of the tornados works.
i am unfamiliar with the spell, having never played a druid, but it seems that they come in waves, every now and then appears anywhere from 8-20 (something like that) tornadoes and stuns everything on screen, this with the life leech has saved my amas life (5xx) a couple of times, it seems like she gets her life bulp filled by every single arrow, making her very hard to kill if you just keep shooting.

my gear is:

bow: wws(unupped) 2xshael
armor: duress in wyrmhide 1300 def.
crafted gloves 20% ias, knockback and other unimportant stats
razortail: pierce a bit of dex also i think
boots: can't remember aldurs rhythm i think for life and res.
helm: tal rashas with 15%ias jewel (couldn't find any better, but ED/IAS would be proffered)
rings: 1 carrion wind and the other is a rare ring with + all res 10-15(can't recall)
amu: highlords wrath, without this I think it would be hard to hit the desired ias bp

she could have a little more res. I think I'm 15% from max all but she is rarely getting hit, and the dodge things seem to work fine on magic

edit: on the countess, yea i know shes the bomb to drop the stuff i need, but she left me with 3 tirs and a lem on 4 runs, hate that *****