Diablo 2 & Sorceress builds

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Forget about 'diamonds galore'. You can only put 1 socket in a unique item

 

You talk about Kurast Sewers, but are you in Hell or Nightmare? I would like to know what your resistances are.

Radament's Sphere should have presented you with a tough choice. It is not a great blocking shield, with an average 56% blocking. It only has one good mod, +75% poison resistance, and poison is the least dangerous element by far. You will have to juggle the equipment to take full advantage of this, but typically you end up with maxed poison res and the other resistances being weak.
It also requires fairly high strength: 110.
Radament is socketable with the quest, but is this enough? The options for that socket are:
- Eld bringing blocking from 56% to 63%. This saves you over 20 dexterity (24 dex saved at level 80 if you want max block).
- PDiamond for +19% all res. Not as good as it normally is. Think of PDiamond as +76% resistance (4*19). In Radament this tends to become +57% (3*19) if poison gets maxed. Still, this is not such a big weakness for the PDiamond option, since as I wrote earlier, poison is not that important.

A Rhyme Grim Shield will give you better blocking, more resistance (25*4), cannot be frozen (which should not be underestimated), requires much less str and has a few other mods that are more useful than anything Radament has.

In summary:
Rhyme Grim Shield is about equal to Radament's Sphere after Radament's has been socketed with either an Eld or a PDiamond and you already have the high strength required (110). If you don't socket Radament's then Rhyme is clearly superior.

Radament's Sphere does look cool though!

 

Well, the best thing to socket it with if you are trying to maximize your resistances is the Um Rune. However, those are really rare, so good luck finding one. The difference between a PDiamond and Um is 19% versus 22%. It doesn't sound like much, but on hell difficulty, every little bit helps. I generally agree that blocking should be brought to 75% if possible, which means every single point you get from here on out has to go in dexterity. Eld will certainly help in this regard, but if your resistances are really low, then you may have to forego Eld in favor of Um/PD.

 

I finished the game! Yay!
Not much to say really. The ancients were a real pain, and I had to respawn them several times because one of them would end up being cold and fire immune (not counting the many times I died to them...)
Eventually did it though. There were no dolls in the Keep, so I went through quickly. Baal was easier than I expected, and a pushover compared to the Ancients.
I think that's it for Diablo 2 for me. If I ever play it again, it will not be single player.

 

Yeah, the tough part is getting to Baal, not killing him once you get there. In addition to the Ancients, I also find Baal's Minions to be much more difficult, especially Listor the Tormentor. Granted Baal's Minions are considerably easier if you aren't using a melee build, so up close and personal tactics are not required.

That seems to happen way too frequently for my liking. In single player, there is always a chance for them to spawn with impossible-to-beat modifiers. With my barb, it was insta-death when they spawned with enhanced speed and strength - there was literally nothing you could do against them - as in you didn't have enough time to do much of anything before you died.

What are the modifiers on Rhyme, and what are the runes requried?

 

They aren't meant to be killed alone, that why you are having so much trouble in single-player. But that's mainly because the new patches basically ignore it, so if you want to play alone and offline, it would be better to stay in v1.04 or similar.

 

"Rhyme"

Runes :
Shael + Eth

Level :
29

Mods :
40% Faster Block Rate
20% Increased Chance of Blocking
Regenerate Mana 15%
25% All Resistances
Cannot Be Frozen
50% Extra Gold From Monsters
25% Magic Find

* * * * * * * * * *

@wordplay
What gave you the idea that the Ancients are not meant to be killed alone?

* * * * * * * * * *

@ziad
You will have much more fun on BNet than single player. Expecially once you find a few people you can trust. That will make it much easier.

 

True. I'm still waiting for the new ladder season though. A SP party would be interesting

 

Let's see:

Runes : Shael + Eth

One very low and one relatively low rune - both definitely acquirable. And of course a two socketed shield.

Level : 29

No problem.

Mods :
40% Faster Block Rate - great
20% Increased Chance of Blocking - great
Regenerate Mana 15% - meh - useful for a mana-dependent build
25% All Resistances - definitely not bad
Cannot Be Frozen - great
50% Extra Gold From Monsters - nice to have although far from necessary
25% Magic Find - always useful

All told a pretty useful shield. I only have a few comments. 1.) 25% resist all isn't particularly high. By the time you get to hell difficulty, you are relying heavily on your shield for resistances. You can probably still get them maxed out, although it will likely require some equipment shuffling, and a prismatic amulet. (As an aside, why are there no such things as prismatic rings? I don't think it's possible to even get a rare with a resist all modifier.) 2.) There are a few less-than-stellar modifiers. The 15% mana regeneration rate is pretty useless for a melee build, and that's what I usually play. The 50% extra gold from enemies also isn't that great, although you need money to gamble. 3.) However, it may be worth it for the very nice +40% block rate and the +20% chance to block. The best bet for something like this would be a paladin shield. They already tend to have very good base block percentages to begin with, and also frequently come with some pretty nice % resist all.

I also agree that the Ancients are definitely doable with a single character. I've done them myself with my conc. barb. (Although I guess I technically didn't do it solo, as I had a merc, who also lived through the battle.) I'm actually a big fan of Act II mercs, and I'm of the opinion that there is really no reason NOT to have them tag along with you. Since their auras affect you and them, they aren't just dead weight that keeps getting killed like some of the others.

With my conc barb build, I went all defense, so I ended up take the Act II Normal defensive paladin with the defiance aura. I had a defense in excess of 30K after using shout. I'd actually recommend the conc barb build for just about anyone who wants to take a melee build through the game. It's not a particularly fast character, as concentrate is a one-at-a-time attack, but it doesn't really matter how long it takes you to kill something if they prove incapable of hitting you. And it's about the simplest of all builds to make. Oh, what the heck, I don't care if it's a sorceress thread. Here's the build:

20 battle orders
20 concentrate
20 shout
20 weapon mastery

The above are listed in the order you should max them out. Obviously, you are welcome to put points into shout and concentrate prior to level 24 when you get battle orders. Unless you are twinking your character, it is better to NOT select a weapon mastery prior to hell difficulty, at which point you should have a good idea of what weapon you'll be using for the rest of the game.

Other than that, all you need is a few one-point wonders:

Battle commands - every point spent in battle orders, increases the duration by 5 seconds, so it's a no-brainer that you're gonig to want to be able to raise all your skills by one. Has to be recast only about once every 3 minutes (I'm assuming you have two howling weapons on your weapon switch), and it's a cheap mana skill.

Battle Cry - at least I think that's what it's called. It's a level 18 skill that reduces the enemy's damage to you by -50%, and reduces the enemy's armor class by -50%. And it works on everything, including uniques, and even bosses. Very, very useful. At level 1, it only lasts about 10 seconds, so it will have to be recast against bosses, but at 4 mana, not a problem.

Taunt - excellent for making a bow using creature come and engage you in melee rather than running away. Definitely under-appreciated and under-used by even experienced players.

Find Item - only one point because you'll eventually have two howling weapons on your weapon switch, which, when combined with battle commands, will effectively increase that skill to level 8.

Iron skin - +30% defense at first level, 10% at all subsequent levels. I think one point for +30% is worth it, +10%, not as much. Plus, you'll need this in order to get...

Natural Resistances - technically this is not a one-point wonder skill. It's more like an "as needed" skill. I would recommend that you raise this as high as you need in order to max out your resistances. Don't forget that battle commands adds one level this skill just like all the others. You certainly wouldn't spend 20 points in this skill, as eventually it gets to the point where you only get resist all +1%. However, in the beginning, each point is worth quite a lot. I'd say about 5 points here is well spent.

Increase stamina - +30% - always useful and you need it to get...

Increase speed - extremely useful.

There's also a few prequisites required for this build - 4 by my count. So you're looking at finishing the build somewhere between level 80-85, depending on how much you sink into natural resistance.

 

Very true. Considering how fast-moving they tend to be, and the damage they deal, I can understand they'd be a pain. But the Meteorb Sorc is really prefect - I tend to welcome them with a Meteor timed to crush them the second they appear. Frozen Orb slows them down, and then spamming Fireball does the job quickly. Naturally it gets trickier if they're resistant to either element, but it's still not too bad.

I know. The problem is with the firewall I'm behind. It blocks just about anything, including online gaming. I tried with D2 - it just couldn't get to Battlenet (all other games I tried had the same problem by the way - including the Homm5 beta at the time, and Homm5 final)

 

I have the same problem. I don't know whether I should disable my firewall or not. I want to play, but I'm uncomfortable taking down the firewall.

 

You should be able to configure your firewall to allow Diablo 2 access without shutting it down completely. What type of firewall is it...software or hardware?

 

Oh it's not MY firewall, it's the university's accomodation's firewall, so there's nothing I can do about it unfortunately.

 

For me it's software.

 

Then you might just need to create an exception for D2.exe or whatever to let whatever info it's spitting out/asking for get through.

 

There is indeed a set port that needs to be open to allow B-net access. Iirc - my firewall did the usual 'do you wish to allow...' and I just said yup, and that was that.

For those of you that do play or are considering playing online, could I recommend you visit Theamazonbasin.com.

Guides, technical info, and best of all, private games to play with fellow baziners on B-net avoiding pubbie idiots. Note the ethos is strictly legit playing, which means no dupes, no cheats, etc great stuff if you like D2.

For those of you sticking with single player:

1) Get Atma. (Google it). It's a way of sharing stash items between your SP characters which means that your palladin can benefit from that brilliant shield your sorc found etc. Perfectly safe as far as I know to download.

2) There are minor mods that enables realm only runewords in single player. Ladder only works fine in SP btw unless they are also realm only.

When the new ladder comes (If ever), perhaps a BoM guild to take on the Realm in HC ?

 

You can count me in on the condition I can play a conc barb.

 

Hehe - Least likely to die, most likely to be very boring to play

With max Bo and shout you'll be very welcome indeed of course

A no twink HC group game doesn't really require the ladder to reset of course Guardian or Bust

 

Well, you did say hardcore, so shouldn't "not dying" be the priority? The one problem with a conc barb is that he is near useless on Normal level, and doesn't really start coming into his own until Nightmare. As you said, this is a very specific build, and there's very little leeway in how you spend your skill points. You spend nothing the first 6 levels other than prerequisites, you go for shout levels 6-17, concentrate levels 18-23, and then battle orders until it maxes out at level 43. Then back to shout, which won't max out until level 51, then concentrate doesn't max out until level 63, and then finally, at that point, pick a weapon mastery. It's true that you get some extra skill points along the line there, but most of those things are going to go into utility skills such as natural resistance, battly cry, battle commands, and find item - the one point wonders. Plus, since it's no twink, it doesn't really make sense to pick a weapon mastery until you're pretty high in levels, as you won't know what you'll find as your weapon of choice.

 

Count me in. I'll just play a summoner and hide behind all my skellies