Diablo II single player questions

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Wow, that's a lot of information to take in. I'm not complaining though

I've not really started playing much with the Necromancer and haven't done anything with the Druid. My Paladin is close to the end of Act 1 and is already level 20 (I think /players 8 had a lot to do with this, I don't remember leveling so quickly in the vanilla game, or getting so many gems for that matter). I've got some really nice Sorceress items so I was thinking I might start another Sorceress at some point, though it'll probably end up being a Meteorb, the same build I finished the game on Hell with a couple of years ago. I also got some very nice items I thought the Barbarian could benefit from and briefly considered starting one, but looking at his skill tree it didn't seem like such a fun character to play.

OK, so if the Grizzly will always be more powerful I'm probably better off focusing on him as my main summon and maybe put some points into the wolves for synergy and to use them as assistants. If I take my Druid into Nightmare I don't think investing purely into Summoning or into the elements will make viable builds so I will need to put points into both anyway. However doing the triple build seems like I'll have too few points spread over each tree and my Druid may not be powerful enough at anything.

Alright, that sounds like a pretty good ability. I'm not sure I want to invest too many points into it but it seems like it doesn't hurt to have it active. I especially like the increased blocking chance and speed, as I definitely want my Paladin to have max block and be able to recover as quickly as possible. At the moment I have a very nice Rondache that's giving me good blocking (and resistances) withtout having to put too many points into Dexterity, but as my Paladin levels up that's going to become a problem.

OK, these are HUGE disadvantages for non-boss situations. Decrepify sounds great against single-targets, or a small group of 2-3 champions, but it's definitely not the best for every-day use. I'll invest a few points into it and I'll definitely use it against bosses (I can see it being hugely useful against Duriel in Nightmare and Hell) but I'll have to also put a few points in Amp Damage to increase radius and make it really useful. From the two points you've made it's quite obvious the two curses serve very different functions.

Wow, that's a huge amount of damage! I cheated a bit with PlugY to check how much damage Zeal can make versus Vengeance and although Vengeance does more damage per hit, it doesn't even compare to a full Zeal cycle, especially since Zeal has only one synergy whereas to get the full benefit from Vengeance I'd have to put way too many points into its synergies. My Paladin also got Holy Freeze not too long ago and I'm loving the slowing effect, it's far more useful than I remember it being with the Nightmare Act 2 merc. I may forget about Conviction and Fanaticism altogether and get a similar setup to yours - Zeal/Holy Freeze for my Paladin with a Might merc. Yes, Holy Shock does more damage, but I've never liked the minimum 1 damage that plagues all Lightning attacks in the game (it's the reason I've never had a Sorceress using Lightning as her offensive tree).

A summoner/elementalist seems like more fun and closer to my type of playing than the shapeshifter though (I enjoy playing the Sorceress and the Necromancer more than the Paladin or Barbarian). I'll probably have to rely on some +skills items found by my other characters and pass them on to the Druid, but that's something I've been doing even now.

 

Remember though, you can have either the Grizzly active OR the wolves active. You cannot have both summoned at the same time. There are maximums for the druid - you can have one of the three spirits active, one of the three vines active and one of the three fighting summons (spirit/dire/grizzly) active simultaneously.

I heartily agree. You should be fine spending around 40 or so points in summoning. That will give you a grizzly, spirit and vine of respectable levels. I'd keep the vine at one point - you can always recast it. You probably want to max out the grizzly, and max out either the oak sage spirit (to increase your life) or the heart of the wolverine spirit (to increase damage).

OK, there's a couple of points you need to know about holy shield. First, the duration and defense bonus increases linearly as you invest more points into it. Every point spent increases your total defense by 15% and adds 25 seconds to the duration of the skill. However, your chance to block works on steep diminishing returns. You have a 25% greater chance of blocking if you have 5 points in holy shield, but that only increases to 30% with 10 points, and to just 35% at level 20. Because of this, most people are satisfied with getting holy shield to level 5 and stopping. It has a decent duration, provides adequate defense, and you're already getting most of the blocking benefit that the skill provides.

Remember that Holy Freeze synergizes with resist cold for an additional 15% damage. So you really have two synergies you want to work on. Resist Cold will up your cold damage, whereas sacrifice will up your physical damage. For the early parts of the game, when you don't have a weapon that hits for huge damage you usually see a greater damage output by raising resist cold than sacrifice. The order I would max the skills (after you get holy shield to a level you are comfortable with - do that first) would be holy freeze, zeal, resist cold, sacrifice. Resist cold isn't a bad skill to sink some points into between levels 6-11 when you cannot invest in zeal yet.

 

No, your gear should only count if it is equipped. Otherwise people would full their inventories with magic or rare MF gear!

 

Absolutely true. Unequipped gear doesn't do anything. The only thing that will count will be your charms (which probably isn't a heck of a lot - even if you have significant mf charms it's probably less than 50%).

I like the new portrait Proteus - the eyes are pretty creepy. What's that one from anyway?

 

Oops. I didn't know that. I'll probably stick to the Grizzly then, and maybe put some points in the Wolverine (maxing damage seems like the way to go).

Thanks, this confirms my initial idea that I should only put a few points in Holy Shield (5 seems best). The increased chance of blocking is what I'm most after (saves me putting lots of stat points in Dexterity). Besides with a few +skill items I may end up at an effective 10, which is more good enough in terms of duration and defense.

Why max Zeal before Sacrifice? At this stage extra points in Zeal give me +8% damage, whereas points in Sacrifice give +12% to damage. I've already got Zeal to the point where it does 5 attacks per cycle (is that the max it ever does, by the way?) so maxing Sacrifice fist seems like the way to go. Though I probably should invest more points into Holy Freeze and Resist Cold I suppose.

In any case my Paladin completed Act 1 yesterday and is level 20. Andariel was a joke to kill - I had a good stash of health and antidote potions, but I didn't even use one of the health potions. I just drank the antidote when I got poisoned and kept going. It helps that my poision resistance is around 30% (the highest by far). The only enemies that have given me some trouble until now are Lightning Enchanted, everyone else falls very quickly to repeated Zeal cycles. I've also get a very nice ring that gives +1 mana per kill, so even though my mana pool is very small it recharges as fast as Zeal spends the points. The only time I've had to use a mana potion in the middle of a fight was against those annoying Mana Burn wraiths in the monastery.

 

@Aldeth, thanks, its an Icewind Dale portrait. I think hes supposed to be an Aasimar - if you see the full portrait, he looks like a mage with glowing eyes and a sun behind him.

[It's a cleric portrait IIRC. -Tal]

@Ziad

I thought Zeal gave 6% damage per level? You might max Zeal before Sacrifice for the extra attack rating it gives.

 

Proteus provided the correct answer. While sacrifice will raise your damage output more, Zeal provides +10% to attack rating, while Sacrifice provides nothing to attack rating. In the early Acts of the game (in fact, throughout most of Normal), you won't notice any difference in your hit frequency if you max sacrifice first. However, starting in Nightmare difficulty, monsters get their defense beefed up considerably, and if you attack rating isn't up to snuff, you'll find that your character will swing and miss with alarming frequency.

Since you're going to be using Holy Shield to increase your chance of blocking and minimize your dexterity investment (which is a strategy I agree with), your primary means of increasing your attack rating will be through pumping zeal. The 4% damage difference you see between pumping zeal versus pumping sacrifice doesn't mean anything if your chance to hit is low. You're much better off having a bit lower damage with a 80% chance of hitting, than having a bit higher damage with a 60% chance of hitting.

Oh, and the other question you had: Zeal will never give you more than 5 attacks per round.

 

Yes, it's 6% damage. My bad.

Aldeth, this may be why I thought Sacrifice would be more useful - in Normal my Paladin is having no trouble at all hitting everything and everyone. I've never played with anything but the Sorceress on Nightmare so I didn't know enemies get the big defense boost. I'll probably distribute the points between Holy Freeze and Zeal in this case, so I can increase both damage and attack rating (and slowing enemies down even more!)

This leaves me with an interesting point though... what am I going to invest my stat points in? Not in Dexterity thanks to Holy Shield, definitely not in Energy since I have more than enough mana (and Zeal's cost doesn't seem to change)... I have enough Life for now (though this might change in Nightmare and especially in Hell) and I won't need to spend ALL my points in Strength to wear everything I want. Should I just raise my health pool then?

 

Generally its recommended to raise your health as much as possible for Hell mode because monsters hit HARD. But dexterity can boost attack and defense rating and block chance, I'm not sure if holy shield alone will be enough to leave you well protected. Raise your strength till you can equip the gear you wont, 120 or so would probably be enough. Probably not more than 150 though.

Levelling up Zeal and Holy Freeze sounds like a good idea. Once you have done that you can decide between Sacrifice, Resist Cold or both.

 

How's the present growth of monster AR?
It's been a while since I played a melee class. I'm thinking to retire my present toon for a while and focus on a class that actually uses a weapon.

 

I'm about halfway through Act I on nightmare with my amazon and I'm getting a bit bored with it. So far things are going pretty well, but I can see possible future problems due to my skill distribution... I'm in indecision mode as to which to use right now and if I don't get that sorted out she will have limitations down the road. I'm really disappointed with the Valkyrie, it isn't that great of a summon.

Trying to decide which character to start next...

 

To build a bit on what others have said, I need to invest about one point per level in dexterity to keep my blocking at 75%. My paladin is currently level 80, and his dexterity is about 120. Now, if I didn't invest in Holy Shield, I'd probably need to have my dexterity more like 180 to hit the 75% block maximum. So while holy shield does reduce your dexterity investment, it doesn't eliminate it.

Strength needs to be high enough to wear your gear. I don't know what gear you'll find, or what items you may have stashed away that you are going to want to use. Most of the elite weapons and armors have strength requiremnts around 150. (There are several items that require more than that, but due to their rarity it doesn't make sense to invest points into strength on the off-chance you happen to find them. The heaviest weapons and armor have strength requirements of 232 - the elite great maul - I think it's called a Thunder Maul - and the elite ancient armor - called Sacred Armor.)

Everything else should go into vitality, and it should far and away be your highest investment. My vitality on my paladin is about 230. Simply put, you cannot have too much life. Going with a melee character into hell difficulty with less than 800 or so life is suicidal, and I generally prefer to have closer to 1000 life.

Hmmm... I would say that one run is insufficient sample size to make a judgement. I took my necro on a pit run last night (didn't find anything of note), but then I had my low mf paladin do the countess. She dropped the following three runes: eth, ral, amn. None of them are great, but that's not a bad haul. (And if you found a gul in a stinkin' chest then you have nothing to compain about anyway!)

 

You're finding 3-10 good runes per session? I'm lucky if I get 3-10 total, and a couple of them are usually El and Eld. You also got lucky with a Gul - that's pretty high. I suppose you technically could get it just about anywhere in Hell difficulty, but it's a rare find regardless.

 

I did another Countess run with my paladin yesterday, and I nabbed a Amn and a Sol. Even runes of that level are useful. I now have 5 Amn runes in my character's stash that I use to store runes. I've bottlenecking a bit because I haven't found any chipped amethysts lately. Usually, when I transfer runes over, I transfer over the one or two chipped gems I've found. Of course, given that gem drops are random, you can go through times where you don't find any of a certain color, as is the case here. I'm going to have to start stockpiling flawed gems as well in the not too distant future.

 

Disclaimer: I'm an idiot, about to ask a dumb question.

How do I transfer items from one character to another? Say, I find a sweet Barbarian helmet while playing a Sorceress...

I'm remarkably Diablo 2 retarded. There are tricks and combos and concepts I am totally oblivious to. So much so that when you guys talk about doing "Countess Runs" I'm not sure I know what you're referring to. Me are teh dumb.

Sidenote: I finally beat LoD on Normal for the first time last week, as a Pally. So that should give you some idea of my noob-ness, despite having purchased the game the year it came out. You know, back when hamsters powered Pentium III's.