Diablo II single player questions

Yes, all of the skills on that branch of the war cries tree (so including find item and that totem thing that makes enemies run away) have the added benefit of destroying the corpse, making them unrevivable. However, there is a much easier method for stopping Shamans from reviving fallen (pun intended) minions. Just cast Taunt on them. If you haven't experimented with Taunt yet, you don't know what you're missing. It's one of the most underrated skills in the game. When you cast Taunt, it makes the creature stop whatever it is doing, walk over to you, and engage you in melee. It also lowers their defense and attack rating. Fallen Shamans stop casting fireballs and reviving. Archers stop running away - in fact they stop firing arrows altogether - they go to melee. Gloams stop using that stupid lightning attack - all for a level 6 skill with low mana cost! The only down side is that it doesn't work on Champions, uniques, or act bosses.

I did not think that the bonus was the same, but if it is, then I see nothing wrong with this strategy. I thought the bonus Berserk gave was smaller, but I certainly stand to be corrected. The other thing you get with double swing is that the mana cost goes down with more points spent. At a certain point - around level 10 IIRC - it becomes a mana free skill, so you can use it even if you are mana drained. Something to consider at least. Of course, there's nothing that says if you find both skills useful that you can't split the difference and put 10 points in each, and then alternate between the two when you hit level 80 and your skill points slow to a trickle.

dmc,

I have discovered that a fact presented in the guide that we both used in creating our meteorbs was wrong. Evidently, the synergy tree changed since the writing of that guide, and it turns out that fire bolt gives a +16% synergy bonus to both fireball and meteor. Given that fire mastery raises both skills by just 7%, it is now a no-brainer that it makes much more sense to pump fire bolt and just sink the initial point into fire mastery for the big +30% damage bonus the first point gives you. Remember also, that fire mastery gains the full beneifts of having +skill items, and the fire bolt synergy only works for hard points spent, that swings the balance even more in favor of fire bolt.

On upping equipment - you should always look up the stat requirements before you up an item. The strength and/or dexterity requirements are the same as the non-magical version of the item you are upping it to. The level requirements are not. To determine the level requirements, you look up the minimum level you need to be to use the non-magical version of the item and add +5 if you are upping to an exceptional item, and +7 if you are upping to an elite item. (Note, if you up a normal to an exceptional and then to an elite, the level penalties are cumulative.)

Isn't Chains of Honor a melee oriented set? Or am I confusing it with something else? I thought CoH gave you a fanaticism aura automatically, making it great for all melee users.

Nightmare will be easy. It always is for a sorceress, as she has a fully developed skill set at that point. I had no problems throughout nightmare. Hell is a bit different story.

On hell difficulty (which I finished with my sorceress this weekend), the ancients proved to be a far greater challenge than Baal's minions or Baal himself. I was able to teleport down to the bottom corner of the summit, and only Korlic and Talic followed. I killed Korlic first as he was only immune to cold, so he got the meteor/fireball treatment, and went down fast. Talic was fire immune, so I had to use FO on him and it took longer.

I did have to give my merc several FRP to keep him going, especially when he had two of the beating on him simultaneously. As an aside - that's all you need a mercenary for - to get in the way of stuff and keep them occupied while you rain spells down on them. It doesn't even particularly matter what your weapon is - the things you look for on your merc when playing a meteorb are getting his resistances maxed, having high life, and having damage reduction gear. (I highly recommend Duriel's Shell for the first two.)

Madawac is often times the biggest pain in the ass, but not when he's all by himself - he spawned lightning immune and lightning enchanced - but that's very doable. As always, there's a chance the ancients spawn with impossible mods. If any of them spawn with two of the following three mods: extra fast, extra strong, cursed - it's probably best to NOT fight them. The only other problematic combo is fire and cold immune. However, you can static field that one down to 1/2 life, and if you merc has a Crushing Blow weapon you can usually take them, especially if you save that one for last.

The only group of Baal's minions that proved challenging was Lister and company, and it wasn't because of the abilities he spawned with, but because Lister is always fire immune, and since he has a ton of life, all you can do is hold down the right click to repeatedly cast FO, and throw an occassional FRP to the merc.

Baal himself was a pushover. Easily less than a minute, and possibly under 40 seconds. I ran up to him and cast static field a few times, to take his life down to half. Then I let me merc get on him and just kept alternating meteor followed by two fireballs. (As an aside, even if you have FCR gear, all that should do is reduce the animation time for the spell - and thus allow you to cast untimered spells like fireball more quickly. Meteor should still have a timer on it, and you should be able to get off at least one fireball between meteor castings.) I didn't even use that many potions - a FRP, FHP, and FMP during the battle - the FRP was for the merc the other two were for me.

So the final result for me - sorceress is way, way, way, quicker than the skellimancer. But the skellimancer is much safer. You basically have to screw up for the skellimancer to die, but you will die at times with the sorceress. The problem with that (other than the obvious death part) is that it is more difficult to recover your body with a sorceress. A skellimancer can resummon his golem, revive his merc, and go out to an easy area to replenish his skeleton army before returning for his body. A sorceress gets her merc, and her spells wokring at a fraction of their normal potency without her gear. You usually have to lure them away from the body, and then teleport past them to get your body.

NOTE - Boring statistics to follw regarding the Barbarian skill Whirlwind:

I know I said I was going to start a druid or go back to my paladin, but I decided that using the Hone Sudan upped on a barbarian [note to dmc - the elite non-magical version of a yari has a level requirement of 60, which means I'll need to be level 67 before I can use the upped version] with whirlwind would be fun to try - I've never done a spear barb before, and a spear barb is probably the least-seen variant, because high level spears have moderately high strength requirements and very high dexterity requirements. For example, Hone Sudan upped to it's elite version has a strength requirement of 122, and a dexterity requirement of 163, which is a lot. Swords have moderate strength and dexterirty requirements, axes have high strength and low dexterity requirements, maces have high strength and no dexterity requirements (other than the flail), polearms have very high strength requirements and moderate dexterity requirements. So the reason spears are unpopular is their stat requirements. At least you're getting something with a high strength requirement weapon, as each point in strength increases damage by 1%, but all you get for dexterity is 4 to AR (which isn't that much) and a small increase in defense.

But enough of that, to understand how to most effectively use whirlwind, we need to talk about weapon speed. The game associates weapon speed with a numeric value, and the lower the number, the faster the weapon swings. A regular weapon with "normal" swing speed has a numeric value of zero, while slow and very slow swing speeds have a rating of +10 and +20, respectively. Similarly, fast and very fast are -10 and -20. That, however, is not as low as you can go. Anything with a rating of -20 or lower is listed as "very fast", but not all very fasts are created equal. When using the skill whirlwind, you keep getting faster until you hit -60. It is possible to get lower than -60, but beyond -60 doesn't do anything to help you. So -60 is referred to as the "last break point" for weapon speed. The other thing to note about weapon speed is that it doesn't increase linearly - you need to hit certain target values for it to matter. For example, the next to last break point before -60 occurs at -45. A weapon between -45 and -59 will swing at the exact same speed - you don't get a difference until you reach -60.

The game translates swing speed into the game by how frequently the game checks for a hit while whirling. Game time in D2 is broken down into frames, with each frame lasting for 1/25 of a second. So speed is measured in frames. A standard whirlwind attack with a speed zero weapon checks for a hit every 12 frames, so approximately two per second. If you get your swing speed down to -60, it checks for a hit every 4 frames - so approximately 6 per second. This is why swing speed is so important in whirlwind. If you hit the next to last break point of -45, the game checks for hits every 6 frames. So by going from -45 to -60 you essentially up your attacks by 33%, and thus increase damage by 33%. By hitting the last break point, a weapon that has a lower listed damage can actually outperform a weapon with a higher listed damage by recording more hits during the whirlwind.

So it is essential to get your weapon down to -60. Unfortunately, no weapons exist with a -60 swing speed, and some weapons cannot get there no matter what you do to them. There are two means of increasing attack speed. The first are modifiers on your equipment. Both the weapon itself and gloves can get attack speed modifiers on them. You can get up to -20 on a pair of gloves, and up to -40 on weapon, and you can tell which one it is based on the name. (Although I forget the order of the names - there's "of haste", "of alacrity" and "of speed" but I don't know which one is which - you'll have to look it up. The second method is through socketing. Shael runes give -20 to attack speed, and jewels with up to -15 to attack speed (but can also have a second modifier on them).

The Hone Sudan cames with a base weapon speed of zero, but also has three sockets, so the easiest way for me to hit the last break point is by placing three shael runes into it, which will get me to exactly -60.

 

I confess I've not even tried it yet. I hadn't realised from the description that it would be so useful.

Turns out you were right. Double Swing gives +8% damage to Frenzy while Berserk only gives +1% magic damage. While the fact it's magic damage is nice, even if I max the skill 20% is still too little to make any difference. I'll need to decide at some point if I want to split the points between them or leave them all in Double Swing, but I'll definitely get DS to the point where it's mana-free first. That would be incredibly useful.

 

The other thing that is great about taunt is that it works fine with just one point, and since it's a prerequisite for other war cries you're going to want further down on the tree, you've got to spend that point anyway. Getting a useful free skill is great - and the barbarian has tons of them!

Another use for taunt is using it in conjunction with howl. Howl to disperse the pack, and taunt one or two back to deal with away from the rest of the pack. Especially useful for gloams, ghosts, and claw vipers. Howl doesn't work on bosses or champions, but it's also incredibly useful to make the rest of the pack run, and deal with the pack leader one on one. Fangskin in the claw viper temple isn't so tough when his minions are running away in terror.

That's what I thought. While having 20% magic damage would allow you to continue using frenzy even against physical immunes, it wouldn't make sense to do that if you had a level 20 Berserk, as Berserk would kill them in a hit or two.

And double swing is invaluable when fighting mana burn enemies. As a barbarian, chances are you are not going to waste a belt slot with mana potions. Even with 1% mana steal you'll have way more mana than you can ever possibly need. If you get mana drained, hotkey over to double swing and have at those ghosts.

 

dmc - Holy Freeze merc is an excellent companion to the Sorceress. FO + aura = almost paralysed enemies while you hit them with Meteor. Nightmare is incredibly easy with a Meteorb, easier than Normal IMO because you've started building the skills you're going to use (and you've possibly maxed a few of them already) and you have decent equipment and resistances. Don't expect things to stay so easy in Hell though. I've not reached Hell with own Necro but I expect he'll have an easier time than a Sorc.

 

Yeah, I had no problems with Nightmare either. Hell is a bit more challenging, because if you make a mistake the likely result is death. Example - you teleport away from a boss pack, and then you run back in to spam meteor, only you forgot to hit the hotkey and instead of dropping a meteor on the boss pack you teleport into the middle of it - instadeath. Or you don't notice that boss was fire enchanted - until it dies. Or you run into a boss pack of archers with extra fast and extra strong mods - you're dead before you can say "Save and Exit".

Good setup, although I'll need more that it begings with "B" to determine the helmet - at least tell me what type of head gear it is. (I don't think it's actually a helmet because I'm pretty sure the unique "helmet" is Duskdeep. There is no limit to damage reduced by X gear, but % damage reduction is capped at 50%, and I'm pretty sure the Shaftstop gives a ton of % damage reduction, so damage reduced by X headgear may serve you well. My mercenary had a chromatic tiara of life everlating - Resist all 24% and damage reduced by 25! (Note: If you have both damage reduced by X and % damage reduction gear, the damage reduced by X is calculated first.)

 

That's not a bad helm at all. There are a few mods there that are quite useful. Your holy freeze merc already slows enemies, and the slow 20% will be cumulative with his aura. Prevent Monster Heal is always a good mod to have, and even the attacker takes 25 lightning damage isn't bad, as it gives you another damage type different from your PC.

I went through the game with my holy freeze merc equipped with Duriel's Shell for the +life and +resistances, a magic tiara or diadem or something that gave Damage Reduced by I think 25 and +24% resist all, and the weapon was Hone Sudan, socketed with three perfect topazes, which allowed him to do an additional (1-40) x 3 lightning damage so he could deal with anything that was immune to both fire and cold.

I got through Act I with the spear barb last night, as well as the radament quest in Act II. I'm saving up my skill points, only giving one point to all my prerequisites. Even though I know I'm going to be a spear barb, I have not pumped spear mastery - I've just placed one point there at level 6 (and I have a helm that gives +1 to spear mastery). I'm going to want to max spear mastery last, so I want as many points built up as possible. I want to be able to pump a point into Battle Orders every level once I hit level 24, and still have enough points left over to dump one into Berserk, Natural Resistances, and of course Whirlwind once I hit level 30. Hopefully I'll still have one or two left over so that I can pump both BO and WW for a couple of level beyond that.

I went through Act I with a three socketed trident, filled with chipped gems. I discovered that while the only spear class weapon that Charsi sells is the one actually called "spear", Gheed does sell tridents which are significantly better. However, I'm now in a bit of a dead zone for spear class weapons. When I started Act II, the best weapon Fara sells is a spetum, which has a top damage of 27, which turned out to be just a slight upgrade from my chipped gem filled trident. The next spear class weapon available after a spetum is the pike, which represents a huge upgrade (max damage all the way up to 63), but it's listed as a level 24 weapon, meaning I'll need to be at least level 19 to have any shot of gambling one. My merc isn't in nearly as bad of shape as me, because he uses polearms too, and I got him a poleaxe.

I think I'm going to go through normal and possibly part of nightmare as a goldfinder, just for shiggles. I'll equip Chance Guards, Goldwrap, and Goldskin, and earn about 5x the amount of gold you'd normally earn. I plan on gambling a lot. Although honestly, Goldskin isn't that bad of armor - it has a big +resist all, +100 gf, 370 defense, and a character level requirement of just 28. It also requires 80 strength, but that certainly won't be an issue. I won't be able to keep that setup into hell though, as the one big thing you lose when you go without a shield (other than the obvious ability to block) is and item slot that usually provides a big chunk of resistances. Natural resistance will make up for some of that. I plan on sinking one point in it at first, but with Harlequin Crest as my helm (I think) and Battle Commands active, it will function at level 4, which is already a pretty decent +34% resist all IIRC. The only way I won't go with HQ as my helm is if I find a barb helm that gives +2 to all skills and also has good +skills on it to boot. My prized barb helem from the last ladder series a few years ago had +2 to all skills, +3 to battle orders, +3 to find item, and +3 to natural resistances - godly.

 

How do you kill Diablo with a skellimancer? I tried many times but his circle of fire kills all my skeletons and his fire-lightning kills Clay Golem and Act 2 merc easily. Necro isn't a good fighter so he can't melee Diablo. I tried using Throwing axes and golem but I could't damage him much and golem dies as soon as he casts his mighty lightning. What should I do?

 

Dengo,

I had a similar experience as you did the first time up against Diablo. I actually DID melee him. I got a weapon with crushing blow, and went toe to toe with him. I did die a couple of times, but one of the good things about Act bosses is that they do not regenerate life. To maximize your survival time you want to run up to Diablo, and cast the clay golem on the opposite side of him. Also, make sure you cast decrepify (not amplify damage) on him repeatedly so he is easier to hit, and will hit you for less damage.

 

Thanks for your reply Aldeth,

I don't have a weapon with CB (except unique Yari which has high str req) but I recently found unique Light Plated Boots which has %25 CB with my HC non-mercenary MAzon. If she dies (probably she will because I'm at Act 3 NM where my previous MAzon died even though she had a merc) I will start a necro and do as you said. I think I will have to use the same strategy against Baal too. Since I never managed to kill Diablo, I haven't faced Baal before with a necro.

 

Two things Dengo: If you are playing skellimancer, I highly advise against hardcore. While it is certainly possible to take out big D with a decent weapon, it is very difficult to do without dying. (Cheese tactic: If you have an amulet that has charges of teleport on it, you can teleport right next to Diablo - when you teleport your merc and minions come with you. Once you are right next to him, he typically reverts to melee attacks, and won't kill all your skeletons.)

Baal is actually relatively easier than Diablo if you are playing a skellimancer for a few reasons. Baal does not have an attack that can kill all of your skeletons all at once, and perhaps more obviously, you're around level 27 when you fight Diablo, but you are around level 37 when you fight Baal. So with the extra skill points, you're skeletons are considerably stronger by the time you get to Baal.

 

I thought Baal was much easier than Diablo actally. Diablo also has the bone prison, which is a joke if you're using a Sorceress or a melee character, but for a low-level Necro it guarantees a quick death when he unleashes his other attacks and you can't dodge them. My skeletons were already dead by then, felled rather easily by him, and once the skellimancer loses his skeletons wall he's practically dead. By Baal as you said the skeletons are much tougher and can take a beating, Decrepify is more powerful thanks to some +curses (I think I even had +1 to all skills wand and preserved head) and Baal has no way to actually freeze you in place and start hitting you. Even if he manages to kill all your summons, a quick TP and some exploration of the plateau just outside town will net you a new army (though I planned for this, I actually didn't need to do it).

 

Agree completely - especially for once your necro dies and you need a new army. I usually go even further and take a waypoint back to act I, and get me army from the Blood Mor. It doesn't matter from where you get the corpse that you make the skeleton out of - the resulting skeleton is entirely based on your skill level and the difficulty level you are playing at. (Skeletons get the same bonuses that the monsters get when you ramp up in difficulty, which is why the skellimancer became a viable build with the release of patch 1.10. Before that, the skeletons had just their base abilities, meaning skellimancers failed terribly after normal difficulty.)

Finally got a pike for my spear barb. Much better - he's back to one-hit killing most monsters again. Next on the need-to-get list is some form of mana leech. I won't get whirlwind until I'm level 30, so I'd like to use Concentrate as my standard attack until then (decent damage, and has a synergy bonus from Battle Orders). It's only 2 mana per use, but since I obviously haven't invested anything into Energy, my barb's mana pool is so small that I actually burn through it pretty quickly, even at just 2 mana per use.

---------- Added 6 hours, 47 minutes and 19 seconds later... ----------

Ziad - how's that barbarian coming along anyway?

I think I may take my strength up to 140 instead of stopping at 122 for the upped Hone Sudan. Goldskin looks totally *****in' when you have it equipped, and if I go to 140 strength, I can up it to the exceptional version, which will make it useable in hell difficulty.

A barbarian is one of the few classes where it's actually worth considering a character's defense. I know that I'll have my shout up to around level 30, and since the first point gives you +100% defense and all subsequent points give you 10%, I'm looking at about a 400% defense modifier right there. Once I hit around level 80, and I have shout, whirlwind, battle orders and spear mastery maxed, the only thing left worth working on is Iron Skin. That's 30% for the first point, and +10% for all subsequent points. With +skills, I can probably get another 100% there. So +500% defense on everything that I'm wearing (and it also applies the modifier for the added defense you get from your dexterity, which will be significant) can get me into a stratospheric armor rating. I'm not sure what defense an upped Goldskin will provide, but seeing as how the normal variant is 370, I'm thinking that somewhere around 800 or so sounds reasonable. Figure in another 200 for the other equipment, and about 50 for dexterity, and I'll have over 1000 base defense which will translate into about 6000 total defense with my skills.

It also just occured to me that I will not use up all three of my socket quests. There are only four things you can socket - body armor, shield, helm, and weapon. My weapon comes socketed, and you cannot add more sockets to an already socketed weapon, and I won't be using a shield, so that means I'll socket my body armor and my helm, and there will be nothing else to socket.

 

The Barbarian is coming along nicely. I'm constantly having to switch between a regular attack and Double Swing; even though the latter takes very little mana my pool is tiny. I'm using 2 Blood Crescents, the unique scimitar I mentioned earlier. Open Wounds is great and they give lots of resistances. I'm wearing 3 pieces of Sigon's to get some nice bonuses, good defense and excellent MF for this early in the game (I'm already seeing lots of rares). I just noticed I have an amazing unique exceptional pole axe, Pierre Tombale Couant. It gives +3 to all Barb skills, +130 to attack rating, 55% deadly strike, mana leech, and base damage is 102-219 (!). Not usable for a dual-wield Barbarian, but I can see it being incredible for a Berserker or a Whirlwinder.

 

As I mentioned earlier, I have the same problem with my barbarian. You really need some form of mana leech to keep your skills going. Even once you get Battle Orders up to a high level and it more than doubles your life and mana, doubling what will invariably be a small mana pool will still result in a mana pool that will still be rather small. Regardless, barbarians leech like crazy, so getting a few % in mana AND life steal is always a good idea.

Even though Oculus is considered a top choice for sorceress equipment, the oculus is the unique version of a "swirling crystal" which is actually an exceptional (as opposed to elite) piece of equipment. That's why it's not nearly as rare as a lot of the other top sorceress gear, and comes with a lower level requirement.

Well that's an interesting strategy. For me, any encounter where the phrase "completely ignorned my merc" is involved usually resulted in my sorceress's death. My battle tactics against any boss was pretty much the same:

Me: Faheed, I want you to go over there to that huge demon and poke him with your pike, OK?

Faheed: What are you going to do?

Me: I'm going to stay back here and fire meteors and fireballs at him.

Faheed: Doesn't that mean we're going to piss him off and he's going to beat on me?

Me: Don't worry, I'll toss you some FRP when that happen.

Faheed: I hate my job...

 

Wow - that's a high life pool for a low vitality sorceress. My sorceress hit level 84 or so, and her life was a little over 1000. However, I had about 300 invested in vitality, and I cannot imagine you are anywhere near that, as your equipment requires well over 100 in strength, and a max block sorceress probably requires at least 150 or so in dexterity, even at the relatively low level you are. Once you get to around level 80, that dexterity requirement probably jumps to close to 200.

On CoH - I forget the stats on it, so please provide them, and I also need to know what the alternative is. It's Chains or...