Diablo II single player questions

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One more general gameplay tip - if you have not done so already, be sure to up the video resolution from the default 480x640 to 600x800. The enhanced resolution makes your character appear smaller of course, but it allows you to see a much bigger amount of the screen. It also helps in that it places you and the enemies on an even playing field. In the base resolution, missile-using enemies can start firing at you before you even get them on the screen. WIth the better resolution you can both "see" each other at the same time i.e., as soon as they get on screen. Evidently, the computer AI "sees" in the enhanced resolution, regardless of whether you have that feature activated or not.

 

The "Magic Damage Reduced by" suffix is misleading in that it should supposedly say "Magic [elemental] Damage Reduced by". Clicky.
It's not as effective as it once was, but it should work very well the Paladin's resists.

I like playing a class with summons which is why I keep coming back to Druids and Necros. The way I built them pre-synergies period I maxed out all the summon spells then put a point each in everything else. Once the synergies came my builds became obsolete, and the opposite of my builds actually became more feasible. I now go heavy on +summoning skills to improve my summoning spells (you can still have an army even with a point each in the skills. I still max out some masteries though) and spend most of my hard points on skills that have synergies, like the poison spells for necro and the fire spells for druid. Playing like this makes shopping and gambling necessary though, a turn off for some players. Progress can be slow without items from previous games.

 

Aldeth, I've heard recently that Blizzard is going to release a "final" 1.13 patch, which will include a bunch of forum-requested goodies, chief among them being higher resolutions. At least 1024x768, and possibly HD and Widescreen resolutions (my hope). And yes, I always play at 800x600 (since it's the highest it goes, which is annoying on my 24" 1900x1200 screen ).

 

@Death Rabbit

I know they have opened the floor to suggestions for 1.13, didnt know they had confirmed anything?

Really, to be honest, pretty much anything they do, at this point in the game's lifespan, is pure gold. I mean, how many developers still make content patches for their games 10 years after release?

 

I'd read that it was no more than a few months away - as part of a final sales-push for Diablo 2 and the "Battlechest" box set before Diablo 3 comes out. However, I don't remember where I read this, and I don't think it was from the official forums, so feel free to take it with a grain of salt. I'd go by whatever is on the official forums, which I do not frequent nor do I plan to.

 

Damn it to hell. If they release a new patch that means they are also going to re-set the ladder. When this happens all current ladder players are moved to non-ladder, which is greatly disappointing because there is a whole list of ladder only runewords and ladder only items. Which, as the name suggests, are unavailable to single player characters or non-ladder characters. (Although if your character is already in possession of a ladder-only item, you can still use it if that character gets switch over to non-ladder. You just don't get to make more ladder only runewords, and monsters will no longer drop ladder-only items.)

It pisses me off, because access to ladder-only items is the only reason to play ladder. It used to be that they only reset the ladder once every couple of years. If they do it again in the next couple of months, that will be the third ladder reset since my son was born. (I remember this only because when I finally returned to playing D2 a few weeks after my son's birth, I was stunned to see all my characters were now non-ladder.) It's happened again since then, and this will be third time. The 1.12 patch and ladder re-set really pissed me off. The only thing that patch really did was allow you to put the music and videos from the CD onto the hard drive so that you could play without the CD.

Crap - it's not nearly as effective as I thought - it's essentially 1/25 as effective as it once was. I also strongly disagree with the writeup they give for physical damage reduction - saying that it is useless on higher difficulty levels because of the high damage monsters deal. It's true that if you have, say, 5 in PDR that it's not going to do you a lot of good. But if you have a very attainable 30 PDR (basically 2 decent PDR items), that's a big deal.

People generally overestimate the amount of damage hell monsters deal. It's true that something like a Stygian Doll can pop for 500 points of damage, but usually when you take a ton of damage it's because you're getting hit by a lot of different creatures a the same time or in quick succession. The truth is that most monsters in Hell difficulty hit for 60 points of physical damage or less (sometimes combined with elemental damage), and having 30 PDR effectively cuts their damage in half. PDR also works in conjunction with % Damage Reduction (%DR). PDR is applied first, so the more PDR you have the less important %DR, which is useful because PDR is a lot easier to find than %DR. PDR comes as a basic mod that can exist on a ton of different items, whereas %DR is generally limited to unique and set items.

 

If they're still delaying the patch by a "few months" then I'm giving up hope D3 will come out before Christmas.
Ah well.

 

OK, with all the time you have put in up to this point, how can you give up when you're this close to getting your Enigma?

That said, I seem to remember you saying you were thinking of trying out a druid. Is that still the case, and have you decided which type? The only one I'd recommend against is a summoner druid. Summoner druids are not as powerful as summoning necros, and I have to imagine if you wanted to continue that style of play you'd just keep playing your necro. (That said, it's silly not to spend a couple of points and get a vine and spirit pet even if you play an elemental druid or a shapeshifter.)

I got to the River of Flame checkpoint in Act IV last night with my sorceress. She and the merc will almost assuredly die a few times fighting Big D. Even though I've reached the point where my mana pool is sufficient to spam spells for a while (so long as I chug a blue potion every now and then) there's no way either she or my merc can survive a Pink Lightning Bolt of Death.

I have got a bit of a rhythm going with the spells. Meteor is timered, in that you cannot cast another one as soon as the animation of the first spell ends. It takes about 1.5 seconds after you cast the meteor for it to actually hit (which does make aiming rather difficult unless you are standing right on top of the creature). As soon as the meteor hits, you can cast a second meteor, so the first one will still be burning when the second one impacts. Fireball, by contrast, can most definitely be spammed. The rhythm I have going is I just hold the right mouse key in, and I switch between meteor and fireball using the keyboard. I can get off two fireballs in between each meteor.

Overall, I like this build quite a bit. You are primarily a fire sorceress throughout much of normal, become primarily a cold sorceress about mid Act V normal and throughout nightmare, and then switch back to being primarily a fire sorceress in hell. The fact that one of your primary skills is fireball, which is just a level 12 spell, really helps out. Also, Meteor not only is your highest damage spell, but it also gives a wonderful +14% damage to fireball. The 14% increase is actually a slightly greater increase than what you get for spending skill points in fireball. So naturally, once you hit level 24, you spend your points in meteor until it is maxed out, even though you'll still use fireball more.

All I'm doing now is waiting for level 30. I will have three skill points to spend when I hit level 30, and they will be spent of frozen orb, cold mastery (which reduces enemy resistance to cold), and fire mastery (+30% damage to all fire spells - although additional points after the 1st add just 5%.).

 

So long as you keep up the necro I see no problem with it. (I too have not officially retired my necro either. I just did a pit run with him last night in fact.) Remember that the runes you will get throughout normal are crap. Many people refer to runes by point value, in multiples of 3. So an El is worth 1, while and Eld is worth 3 (as you need 3 Els to make 1 Eld). Tirs are 9, Nefs are 27, etc. The value of the three runes you get for rescuing the Barbarians in Act V will probably exceed the point value of all the runes you would have accumulated to that point.

I did some more research on the Countess, and the numbers confirmed my suspicions. According to the source, a Countess has a 89.6% chance of dropping an Ort or lower, and only a 10.4% chance of dropping a Thul or higher. That's why even if you see three runes dropping, you're lucky if you get one high value one. (The good news is she can drop as high as an Ist - #25). The only other place that has a guaranteed rune drop that is potentially higher is the Hellforge (can drop up to Gul on Hell difficulty), but you can only do that once per character.

I can totally see your point about Assassins and Amazons. I have NEVER been able to force myself to play an Assassin past normal difficulty. Amazons are a bit different, but you definitely have to be in the mood for a different playing style. Amazons of any type are definitely hard to play on hell difficulty, as they tend to plateau wihtout exceptional equipment.

In fact, the weapons that will get you through the game on hell difficulty are so limited that many amazons are cookie cutter builds. If you're a bowazon, there's probably a better than 90% chance that they are using a Buriza, Witchwild String, or Windforce, with a bow that fires magic or exploding arrows (like Koku) on switch to deal with physical immunes. Javazons are even worse. I have yet to see one finish on hell difficulty without a Titan's Revenge, and they struggle against Lightning immunes. And spearazons are practically an extinct species (easily the hardest subclass to play, as spears have high strength and dexterity requirements, yet most do not put out the damage of many other two-handed weapons, and you do not gain the benefit using a shield. Most melee amazons are actually javazons that alternate using their weapon for missile and melee purposes.

 

The basic skill layout of a meteorb is as follows:

Fire Tree:

1 Warmth
20 Fireball
20 Meteor
1 or 20 in Firebolt
1 or 20 in Fire Mastery
Prerequisite skills: Inferno, Blaze, Firewall
Total points: 65

Some explanation here is obviously required. It comes down to which skill you use more and working with synergies. The first point in Fire Mastery is a must, because it raises the damage output by all of your skills by 30%. You are required to place at least one point in Fire Bolt as that is a prerequisite to a whole bunch of other skills on the fire tree. After that initial point in Fire Mastery, you get a boost of +7% damage to all your fire spells for each additional point spent. So you would get +7% to both Fireball and Meteor. Fire Bolt gives a +5% boost to Meteor damage, but a +14% boost to Fireball damage.

If you use both skills about the same or if you use Meteor more, it makes sense to max out Fire Mastery, whereas if you rely almost exclsuively on Fireball, you'd want to max Fire Bolt. Fireball and Meteor co-synergize each other very well however, and after getting the initial point in Fire Mastery at level 30, you'd want to max out both skills before maxing either Fire Mastery or Fire Bolt. This gives you time to develop your playing style before deciding if you want max out Fire Bolt or Fire Mastery to maximize Fireball or Meteor damage, respectively. I personally do not have an opinion at this time on which one is better to max. Meteor does a lot more damage than Fireball, but there is a 1.5 second delay between castings, whereas Fireball can be spammed.

Cold Tree:

20 Frozen Orb
1+ Cold Mastery
Prerequisite Skills: Ice Bolt, Ice Blast, Frost Nova, Glacial Spike, Blizzard
Total Points: 26

The cold tree is your backup attack. While nothing can compare to the damage output in the fire tree (a fully synergized Meteor is the most damaging skill in the game) you need another elemental attack to deal with fire immunes. And for that you want the highest damage unsynergized attack to get the biggest bang for your buck. With that criteria in mind, Frozen Orb is a real bargain. It deals really nice damage, and it's only synergy (Ice Bolt) only gives a 2% damage boost so it's not worth investing in.

Do not be fooled by the seemingly low damage of Frozen Orb. According to the listed damage on the screen, a level 20 Frozen Orb hits for just 270 points of damage. For comparison sake, Meteor with two synergies of Fire Mastery and Fireball will do about 3400 points area of affect damage and leave a patch of burning earth behind that will deal an additional 250 points of damage per second for up to five seconds to anyone standing there. However, the list damage on Frozen Orb is how much each shard does. As Frozen Orb moves across the screen, it continually sprays ice shards out in all directions, and by the time it hits its target (or another object like a wall) it has sprayed out dozens of shards all over the screen. The creature unfortunate enough to be hit by the frozen orb gets several shards pumped into him (in addition to however many times he got hit by the frozen orb as it travelled towards him).

Frozen Orb is glorious - you will start using it as soon as you hit level 30, and most people max out FO first, because it is extremely effective throughout nightmare. By the time you get to hell difficulty, the damage output is such that you can kill anything that is not fire immune quicker using Meteor/Fireball on them.

Lightning Tree:

1 Static Field
1 Teleport
1 Telekinesis (as a prerequisite for Teleport)
Total: 3 points

Just a few notes here as to why you want these skills. Static Field has a very small area of effect of just around the caster. When you use this skill, it automatically chops off 25% of the monsters hitpoints. So this is a skill to use against bosses. A couple of notes on this skill: 1) It IS affected by lightning resistance, so it won't do any damage to lightning immunes, and lightning resistant creatures will take less than 25% damage. 2) It does 25% of the monsters CURRENT life - not total life - so you cannot actually kill anything with Static Field - with each successive casting it loses potency as the enemy has less and less life. 3) There skill is limited in nightmare and hell difficulty in that it will not reduce a creature to less than 25% of its initial life in nightmare, and less than 50% of its initial life in hell.

Teleport helps with ease of movement (you can teleport to anywhere you can see) and is invaluable should you get swarmed by enemies. Teleport WILL save your bacon numerous times. Telekinesis is required as a prerequisite to Teleport, but it is fun to play around with. You can use it to pick up objects (in fact, light objects like gold and potions can all be picked up with a single casting, but you cannot pick up things like armor and weapons). You can use it to push creatures all over the screen (does not work on bosses unfortunately). And you can use it to activate objects from far away (like activating the Gidbinn Altar or the seals in the Chaos Sanctuary from a safe distance).

There's 94 skill points required to finish this build so if you do all the quests you can finish this build by level 83. Additional points after that should be spent in either Cold Mastery or whichever skill you decided not to max out between Fire Bolt and Fire Mastery. (I think I will max out Fire Bolt, because I will have +skill items, and passive skills like Fire Mastery will benefit from +skill items, whereas I only get the synergy from Fire Bolt if I actually sink points into it.)

Skill progression:

Level 1-11: Only prerequisites
Level 12-23: Fireball and prerequisites (you should have enough saved up skills points to get all of your prerequisites and still place a point in Fireball each level up)
Level 24-29: Meteor (and you still have one more prerequisite, Blizzard)
Level 30: You want to have at least 3 skill points saved when you hit level 30 so you can drop a point into Frozen Orb, Cold Mastery, and Fire Mastery.
Level 31+: Max the skills in the order of Frozen Orb, Meteor (even if you use Fireball more, because the synergy from Meteor raises Fireball damage more than investing in the skill itself), Fireball, and finally either Fire Mastery or Fire Bolt.

+skills are critical to this build to get the damage up high. You definitely want to get your hands on things like: Stone of Jordan, Harlequin Crest, Viscurant, Skin of the Vampermagi, Skulldur's Ire, amulets with at least +1 to all sorceress skills, and definitely an orb - preferably a set or unique, although an orb that has +3 to fire skills and additional plus to other skills you use will do.

Finally distribution of stat points:

Strength - no more than what you need to wear your gear - less is better. The heaviest item I plan on using has a strength requirement of 84.
Dexterity - it depends on whether or not you are going for max block. Most sorceress guides recommend getting a shield with a high base chance of blocking and going for max block, because you only get 2 life per point spent in vitality, and you'll only have your merc between you and enemy monsters. However, even with a good shield you'll need to invest about 150 points into dexterity to have your block maxed at higher levels - which naturally means you could have 300 more life. I went for higher life, and I am raising my dexterity to exactly 58 - which will allow my to equip Hexfire, the unique shamshir that gives +3 to all fire skills. However, I've never done it the other way, so I cannot say for certain that this is the superior choice.
Energy - Most people recommend a minimal investment in energy to get you through the early parts of the game when you'll have mana issues. Most guides say to take your energy to 50-70. The sorceress does get a very nice return of 4 mana per point spent in energy. I haven't invested anything in energy, and I've spent a small fortune on mana potions. My thinking is that stat points are limited whereas gold is essentially an unlimited (or at least renewable) resource. And I also know I have a Stone of Jordan and a Harlequin Crest in my future that will significantly increase my mana pool.
Vitality - as much as you can spare. It may be as little as 100 if you go for max block, have high strength requirement equipment and invest some in energy, or it can be over 300 if you go for none of the above.

 

DUDE! I got the Bloodrise unique mace to drop last night...from a crate!! It's the "normal" version (it dropped in level 1 of the Durance of Hate, the first time through), but still - awesome. It's practically a scepter since it gives you +3 to sacrifice, which only serves to bump up the already-in-use powers of my Frosty Zealadin. This will be my primary weapon for quite a while.

I also found Steelgoad, the unique Voulge, when I killed Mephisto for the first time (that game). Which is kinda weak, but hey - it's a unique, baby. This character has now collected 3 unique weapons, and I'm just barely starting Act 4. This is the best luck I've ever had, and I chalk it up to tons of "find magic" gear and the use of Players 8.

On that note - I've been leaving the game set at Players 8 for most of the game just so it remains a challenge. Act 4 used to be a challenge, but with this new build and Bloodrise, I kill EVERYTHING in Act 4 in 1 hit. It's almost too easy. Given - I'm also currently level 32 (I'm usually around 27 or so in Act 4), so I'm sure that's part of it. But keeping it on Players 8 keeps every enemy at 3-5 hits, which feels more normal to me.

 

Bloodrise is an excellent weapon for a paladin. All creatures and items have drop characteristics, and while crates, stashes, barrels, etc. have lower drop odds than a normal monster, which have lower drop odds than a champion, which has lower drop odds than a unique monsters, which have lower drop odds than a boss, it is possible to get magic/set/rare/unique drops from anything. I will concur that finding a unique in a crate is an uncommon occurance.

While I'm sure Bloodrise will increase your damage it is due to the base damage on the weapon, not from the +3 to Sacrifice on the weapon itself. You only get the synergy bonus for hard points spent in the skills. The bonus from any +skill only applies when the skill is actually being used. So if you used sacrifice as a skill, the effective level of that skill will be how ever many points you spent in it at this point (probably only 1) plus 3, for a total of 4. However, in terms of calculating the synergy bonus for your zeal skill, you only get credit for spending the single point in sacrifice. One other thing to note is that passive skills are always considered to be in use, so any +skills you get to passives (not that paladins have any) always count. Then again, passives don't really synergize anyway, so it wouldn't apply.

On item finding, your reasoning behind why you're getting better stuff is completely correct. Playing on players 8 causes more stuff to drop, and having a high magic find makes the stuff that drops better. Playing on players 8 will increase the number of good finds irrespective of your magic find percentage. While the relative percentages of normal/magic/rare/set/unique will be the same whether you are playing on players 8 or players 1, because more total items drop you get more of all types of items. It will be possible to continue at players 8 throughout much of nightmare (at the very least set it at players 8 when you face the act bosses to really increase your loot), although attempting to continue on hell will really slow you down, as even zombies on the Bloor Mor at that difficulty setting have more than 10,000 life on players 1.

 

/me kicks rocks, sticks out lower lip.

Bummer.

Oh well - I still kick booteezy with it.

Also - do you know what the bleeding damage does? Blood rise gives a 25% chance of "open wounds" per hit, and I noticed when I was fighting Mephisto that blood was shooting out EVERYWHERE. Also - does a bleeding wound reset with each hit the way Poison does?

 

Comparing the bleeding effect of open wounds to poison is very appropriate, as it works almost identically to poison, and yes it does reset on each hit - you cannot get cumulative open wounds active. Open wounds does two principle things - it prevents monsters from regenerating life (not a big deal on normal difficulty, but a boon in hell), and it causes them to lose life constantly. I do not know what the duration is for open wounds. I will attempt to research this for you. Also, since you are already level 32, you should really consider upping your Bloodrise to the exceptional version.

 

How do I do that? I didn't even know you could.

EDIT: Just looked it up.

1 Ral Rune + 1 Sol Rune + 1 Perfect Emerald + Normal Unique Weapon --> Exceptional Version of Weapon

Where the hell am I gonna get a Sol rune...is it possible to get one dropped in Normal mode? I know I can make one, but I don't have enough high-level runes to do it. May have to do some countess runs...