Diablo II single player questions

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you can't make runewords in uniques, only in white or gray items

i would maybe socket it with something like shael shael amn or shael amn amn depending on the breakpoints for the merc.

and if you upgrade it, it should be one of the best polearms in the game

 

I couldn't agree more. You use it more often for you merc than you once you get to hell difficulty - and I agree that you have to teach yourself to use it. With most characters you chug a healing potion, but with a sorceress, it's far more effective to teleport away, because super healing potions do not heal all characters at the same rate. Drinking a SHP will return your sorceress to full life, but it will take several seconds to do so, whereas a barbarian or paladin recover life much more rapidly after drinking a SHP. If you're getting beat on, you simply don't have time for a SHP to go to work, and FRP are not available in sufficient supply for continual use.

I've never been able to do that right. I run in, cast Meteor and then teleport out.

It is a great weapon for a merc. In fact, that's what my holy freeze merc uses. I socketed it the 3 perfect topazes, so he does a ton of lightning and cold damage. The one monster type a meteorb has trouble with are monsters that are dual immune to both fire and cold, and a holy freeze merc isn't going to help you much against those. With the crushing blow combined with good lightning and physical damage, my merc can take out those bosses (after I kill off all of the boss's minions of course).

The other thing with the Hone Sundan - if you up it to an elite and fill it with three Shaels you have one of the all-time favorite weapons for a whirlwind barbarian. With 3X shael, you hit the fastest two-handed weapon breakpoint for whirlwind (meaning you literally cannot whirl any faster unless you switch to a one-handed weapon). The Hone Sundan has a range of 5 - also the highest in the game. A whirlwind barb with that weapon hits a ton, because everything is in range for so long. You can literally hit a monster 10-12 times if you pass over him while whirling.

My mereorb is about half way through Act V (rescused Anya, have not defeated Nihlathak yet). I still cannot believe that I got a great magic finder without trying. She has 211 mf, and that's with ideal killing gear, without any attempt to squeeze as much mf out of my other item slots. I have no mf on my boots, gloves, belt, rings, or amulet. It's all from the set, with armor and helm socketed with perfect topazes.

The game is now openly mocking me. In a run yesterday, I had two champions each drop a set amulet, and I thought I finally had Tal Rasha's Adjudication. When I walked over to Cain, I found out I had Angelic's and Telling of Beads (which I forgot was even a possibility). F-you game.

I am eventually going to get a druid going (with the items I have I can get shape shifting skills up to 32 - that's right I have gear that would give me a total of +12 to the shape shifting tree). However, I may go back to my paladin for a time. With a little gear shifting around, and a couple of sharp charms that my sorceress has found and donated to him, I have added a couple of hundred attrack rating to him (which is multiplied by Zeal to considerably more than that). After switching my items over at the end of the night, I did a quick check and my pally now has a chance to hit of about 70%. That's about 15% more than what I had before, and I also added another 7% crushing blow and 8% more life leech with the equipment switching. I should now be able to hit more and leech more, with more crushing blow than before, all of which should help me survive. All I need are a couple of extra resist lightning small charms to get all of my resistances maxed out again and I'll be set. Right now my fire and poison are at 90%, cold at 95%, and lightning a respectable 78%.

 

Now this I did not know. I didn't notice a difference in healing rates between my Sorceress, Necromancer and Paladin (granted my Paladin has never seen a SHP) but that explains why I never bothered much with healing potions with my Sorceress - they just take too long. If she's just about to die and can't teleport I'll quickly take a full rejuv, if she's running out of mana only I'll drink a mana potion, but her belt usually does not carry any healing potions at all.

That's probably easier and works just as well. As you run in the monsters all try to swarm you anyway, and once you get them all in one spot they're easy bait for the falling meteor.

Have you got items that raise your max resistance for all these? Is that what the "sharp charms" mentioned do?

 

on a paladin my guess is that it is the guardian angel, an exceptional unique armor with +1 to skills faster block rate and +15% all max res.

the sharp charms are maybe +all res. charms? i dunno...

 

I wear the unique armor Guardian Angel. One of the stats is that it raises your maximum resists by 15%, which takes you up to 90%. The reason my cold resistance is 95% is because I'm a frost zealot, with maxed zeal, holy freeze, resist cold, and (almost maxed) sacrifice. The main reason you raise resist cold is for the synergy with holy freeze, but there is a passive bonus with all the resistance auras. Even when they are not active, every two points you spend in a resistance aura raises your maximum resistance of that element by 1%. It's capped at 95%, so even though I have 20 points in resist cold, which translates into +10% cold resistance, I don't get up to 100% resist cold (which would be cool).

Sharp charms are the bomb. They are rare, but what they do is give you a bonus to both attack rating and damage. I'm not 100% positive on the range, but I think a sharp charm can add up to 5 points of damage, and 50 points of attack rating. This attack rating is then multiplied by whatever percent bonus to attack rating you have as your attack, so +50 can effectively be a heck of a lot more than +50. The size of the charm effects how big the total bonus on it can be.

Believe it or not, small charms are actually the most sought after, even though sharp charms are available in the small, large, and grand variety, and the small charms have the smallest maximum bonuses on them. The reason is twofold:

1.) While the small charms have smaller maximum bonuses than the large and grand varieties, the bonus is bigger on a per inventory space basis. In other words, two sharp small charms will have a larger combined bonus than one sharp large charm even though they take up the same amount of room in your inventory. Similarly, three small sharp charms give a bigger total bonus than one grand charm, even though they take up the same amount of space.

2.) Just like with all magic items, charms can come with a prefix and a suffix. "Sharp" is a prefix, but it is entirely possible for sharp charms to spawn with a suffix as well. One sharp grand charm can come with one suffix. However, three sharp small charms can come with 3 suffixes, which makes them even more desirable even if the per invetory space bonus was the same. A sharp charm of vita (which would give bonues to damage, attack rating and life) are some of the most desirable charms in the game.

Sharp charms are most used in player vs. player matchups (i.e., dueling). In PvP, you will run into some characters with extremely high armor ratings, and every bit of attack rating (and life) you can squeeze into your character helps. Some master duelers have their inventory filled with sharp charms of vita.

In player vs. monster (i.e., standard play), sharp charms are still useful, but far less essential. Most character classes either have extremely high attack ratings (and therefore don't really need the bonus to attack rating), or do not engage in melee (in which case attack rating is irrelevant). The only time you need sharp charms in PvM is for characters that are melee and have a small dexterity investment.

EDIT: The resist all charms have names just like the resist all modifiers you find on shields and jewelry - things like shimmering, raindow, prismatic, and chromatic.

EDIT2: The "small charms are better" rule is true for nearly all charms, not just sharp. On a per inventory space basis, small charms confer bigger bonuses regardless of whether you are talking about resistances (either to a single element or resist all), damage (either physical or elemental), attack rating, magic find, whatever. The only exception to this is that some modifiers are only available on grand charms. The most notable are the case of skillers. (Skillers give +1 to all skills of a particular skill tree. There are 21 types of skillers available in the game - one for each tree of each class. All the skillers are prefixes, although they can spawn with a suffix as well, but they only come on grand charms.)

 

Oh of course, now I remember. We discussed Guardian Angel a few pages back and I'd forgotten your Paladin was using it. I didn't know the Resistance auras increased max resistance though. I may have to think about throwing extra points (if I'm left with any) into Resist Fire and Resist Lightning so I can get all my max resistances to 95%. Though come to think of it I'd need an extra 20 skill points, which I won't have. I don't suppose +skill items help in raising the max resistance, do they?

Oh, and I fully 100% agree with you on small charms. My Necro has exactly one Grand Charm, and that's only because it gives +14% resist all, something no small charm I have comes even close to (the best one he has gives 9% to one element). I usually glance at the Large and Grand Charms to see what they do but the only ones I even think about keeping are the small ones. Even if a Grand Charm gives double the resistance (or damage or whatever) of an equivalent Small Charm, you'd only need 2 of the small one to match the grand, and you gain one extra inventory space to boot. I've not yet come across any skillers so I'll only worry about this when I get there.

 

Yeah, you probably won't have enough skill points left to raise them, and yes, like all synergies you only get the benefits (and in this case the passive effects) for actual hard skill points spent. Loading up on things that give +skills to defensive auras will not help you.

On the topic of charms, +14% resist all on a grand charm is excellent (+15% resist all is the max on grand charms). Small charms can have up to +7% resist all and up to +12% resist all to a single element. But the point remains: you can usually get the same resist all from two small charms as you can from one grand charm.

EDIT: And skillers aren't that important to a paladin - the combat skills would be somewhat useful, and the offensive auras would give you a tiny bit extra damage, but the defensive aura tree would be worthless. Some classes have more use for skillers than others, and the paladin is one that gains only marginal benefits.

 

For the skillers I was thinking more of the Necro and Sorceress, especially the Necro. +1 to the summoning tree would be worth 3 inventory spaces.

 

You're absolutely correct. For the necro, not only do you get the bonuses to your skeletons, but also your golem and your associated skeleton and golem mastery, so it helps a ton. Same thing with the sorceress. A fire skiller will give you a bonus to warmth, fireball, and meteor, and it will also give you +1 to fire mastery, which raises the damage of fireball and meteor even further.

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Nihlathak was stunningly easy. He went down with two meteors interspersed with fireballs. Granted, my merc got corpse exploded to death in the process, but my character survived the encounter.

There's a few more areas to go through, but my next test will be the Ancients, which can potentially be very difficult. One of the more challenging parts is deciding if you want to fight the group that spawns at all. If one of them spawns extra strong and extra fast, you probably want to respawn them rather than have to deal with that. More than one spawning fire immune may be reason enough to reroll them as well.

 

I had not realized you even started the sorceress. I'm surprised that you say you are bored with her, as I started playing the sorceress because I got bored with the necro! It was refreshing to move to a character that takes some strategy to play. I do not doubt the necro's power, but repeatedly casting amplify damage and corpse explosion gets boring after a while. The sorceress is definitely a more challenging character, and I dare say that she can move through areas considerably quicker than the necro. The necro's army is a huge shield, but it is not particularly quick way to go because each individual minion does relatively little damage.

Hmmm... I see several possibilities there - what exactly are you planning on using? I know you don't have a complete Tal Rasha's set, so I can assume some items, but I'm not sure with others.

Helm: Harlequin Crest - quite possibly the best helm in the game
Body Armor: Skullder's Ire? Skins of the Vampermagi? Ormus' Robes? Shaftstop? Not sure there.
Shield: Stormshield or perhaps Viscurant (sp?) preferably the upped version if you are going the max block route, as the elite version has 20% greater chance to block than the exceptional.
Weapon: Occulus
Gloves: Magefist? Or the unique that gives a big bonus to mana (forget the name)?
Boots: ??? I cannot think of any great boots for a sorceress - a good rare maybe?
Belt: Arachnid Mesh?
Amulet: Mara's Kaleidescope

With rings there are quite a few besides a SoJ that are good. You almost certainly have a Dwarf Star, which certainly isn't a bad choice with the fire absorb and bonus to life. In fact, I would say that a DS is the most universal ring - it works for every class. The only way you wouldn't want a DS is if you were a melee character and decided to go with two Raven Frosts, but most melee builds go for one of each.

 

Enigma is probably better than any of the other armors. Meteorbs benefit from +skills, and of the armors I listed you aren't getting more than +1 skill on any of them. By the same theory, you could transfer your merc's gear to your new merc as well. You'll probably pick up a holy freeze merc, but crushing blow does the same amount of damage upon activation regardless of how much damage your merc would typically do. HS gives you 45% Crushing Blow, and GF adds another 35% IIRC, and 80% is more than sufficient.

The only issue I would bring up with your equipment list is you seem to be a little light on resistances. Enigma and Mara's are definitely nice, but the only other resistances there are on Stormshield, and that isn't resist all (IIRC it's cold and lightning - although I suppose you could socket it with a pdiamond). I forget the attributes on Arachnid Mesh - does that come with resist all? I'm just saying that resistances are always important, but they are going to be especially so in this case since you're going the 75% block route and likely using a shield with a 156 strength requirement. There aren't going to be a lot of spare points to put into vitality, and many elemental attacks are unblockable.

However, I should point out that I've never tried a 75% block rate sorceress of any kind. I've been playing D2 for years, and before the advent of synergies, the most powerful sorceresses were the tri-elementalist - a build that is now obsolete, but even then I didn't go for high block. So while I'm assuming a sorceress with a low life total would have a hard time surviving, it's purely speculative on my part. Assuming that your sorceress finishes with around 100 in vitality, you're looking at somewhere around 300ish life, which seems a little dicey to me.

For comparison's sake, my sorceress is now level 82, has a little over 300 in vitality, and several items that give significant amounts of +life, that gets my life total up to nearly 1000. (I think it 984 if you want to be exact.) Then again, my sorceress represents the opposite extreme. I invested minimally in strength and dexterity (current totals of 84 and 53, respectively), and nearly every item in TR's set comes with a significant amount of +life and +mana, so most sorceresses get along just fine with significantly less life than mine.

Back to the progression of your character, I'm surprised that you already have FO up to a high enough level to use against normal Diablo. I know you play on players 8 setting, but I can't imagine you're much past level 35 or so. However, once I got FO up to the point where it was killing well, I used it pretty much exclusively until I got to hell difficulty. Meteor does way more damage (especially if you get them to stand in the fire after the initial impact), but it's much harder to target, and if your FO is clearing the screen with a casting or two, there's no reason to not use it, especially in normal and nightmare when there aren't many cold immunes that you'll run into.

Unfortunately, once you get to hell difficulty, FO loses a lot of it's luster. Especially if you intend to keep it at players 8, it just doesn't have the killing power. I use a meteor/fireball combination for everything that isn't fire immune, and FO is strictly a backup attack for the fire immune enemies. The damage on my cold attack was so unimpressive that I actually invested heavier in the fire side of the tree than the meteorb guide I posted suggested, with just a single point in cold mastery. I'm now to the point where I'm pumping Fire Bolt, for the wonderful 14% synergy bonus is gives to Fireball.

I've been thinking of dusting off my paladin again when I finish my sorceress. Even though I've planned my pally's equipment from the start, there is definitely one item that I could add that would really enhance his performance - the unique scepter Heaven's Light. In addition to giving +2 to all paladin skills, Heaven's Light has 33% crushing blow and ignore target defense. Quite possibly the most devastating combination in the game, especially when you consider my CB will probably reach the 95% limit if I add Heaven's Light. Unfortunately, it's an elite, unique, class-specific item, so it probably drops about 3 times per year.

 

+15 to all on a grand is perfect (especially if you get a suffix on it, like "of vita"). And of course you'll want to carry around charms to make up for resistances.

And that is probably wise. Poison is easily the least dangerous of all the elements. My sorceress has her poison resistance at 40%, and everything else maxed, and it hasn't hurt her a bit. Although I did have a slot on my belt devoted to antidote potions when I did the arachnid lair in Act III. Cold shouldn't be too much of a worry either. There's that annoying archer in Act I in the Hole, Duriel, the occassional cold enchanted boss, and that's about it. If you can only max two, fire and lightning are the way to go.

 

Funnily enough Poison and Cold are the only resists my Necro has maxed in Nightmare at the moment, and that's not because I'm trying to. It just seems most of the items I get that have good affixes also add poison resistance. A couple of them have reduced poison length too so it's really getting a bit silly. Thankfully a wall of skeletons means Lightning (the most dangerous element IMO, thanks to LE monsters) isn't much of a problem, unlike with my other characters (the Sorceress and Paladin, especially the former).

My Necro killed Nightmare Duriel yesterday and it was a walk in the park. I've maxed both Skeletons and Skeletal Mastery, and with the Might merc my army is nigh unstoppable. I kept Duriel decripified all the time and was luck to have a cold skeletal mage too. Add the Clay Golem and he just couldn't do anything - didn't even kill a single skeleton! My merc's max damage is now well over a 1000 too, so they did short work of him. I have to admit I'm starting to get a bit bored with my Necro. He's good, far too good. Packs of monsters are easy - wait until one gets killed then do a domino effect Corpse Explosion spree. Bosses are even easier, as Duriel has just shown - Decrepify and watch the fun. I don't even know what to do with my skill points anymore. Skeletal mages are pathetically underpowered compared to their melee cousins, and while having a few is useful maxing it seems pointless. My golem almost never gets killed and doesn't contribute much, so no point in investing there either. Both Amp damage and Decrepify have one point in them, raised to 6 and 10 respectively with items, and that's much more than enough. Corpse Explosion gets to 9 with my alternative set (which also provides a very convenient way to switch from the curses to CE - just press W) and considering how effective it is now I don't feel increasing the mana cost will really be worth it. Add to this that I hate the Flayer Jungle and that doing the seven tombs has left me a bit exhausted and I think it's time to give the Necro a short vacation.

 

I did max Corpse Explosion with my skellimancer. It's not absolutely necessary as you correctly state, but it is fun blowing up 3/4 of the screen (on high resolution) with each corpse.

 

I am on players 8 but it doesn't seem to make much of a difference with CE because it does a fixed percentage range of the corpse's HP in damage, which seems to translate into more damage on players 8. With Amp Damage on and against enemies with no physical resistance I seem to be able to sometimes kill them instantly when exploding the corpse of one of their friends.

I've been thinking about trying a Barbarian, for a completely different style of play. I'm particularly tempted by Find Item, in the hope that if I take my Barbarian far enough and load him with MF gear he'll turn into a good magic finder and possibly help in finding some set and unique items for my other characters.

 

That's a great point that I had not considered, and Ziad is absolutely right. CE does damage up to 100% of the corpse's life total. When you play on players 8, each monster has more life points, and so corpse explosion ramps up accordingly. In fact, the damage output relative to monster life should be identical no matter what the player setting happens to be. It will take longer for your skeletons to kill a given creature on players 8 compared to players 1, but once the first one drops corpse explosion should be equally effective.

I love barbarians, but a few points here. First of all, you only need ONE POINT in find item. There is a reason for this. By the time you start to get to higher difficulty levels, you will want to equip your barbarian with echoing weapons on your weapon switch. Echoing weapons increase your war cries (and find item is in the war cry tree) by +3. Since you can double wield, your weapon switch will increase all your war cries by +6. You'll get another +1 from battle commands, and most barbarians equip a barbarian helm that gives at least another +1 to all skills.

Therefore, with just a single point invested in find item, it will have an effective casting level of at least 9, and there are many different setups that you can use that would get it to more like 10-12. Find item has diminishing returns in that you get the biggest percent jump for the early points you spend on it, and not nearly as much once you get to level 10 or so. With just a one point investment, you'll have about a 50% chance of getting a second drop even if you have just an average setup, and additional points beyond the first will only increase your chance by a couple percent each, and aren't really worth it.

Nearly all barbarians invest heavily into shout and battle orders, and for that reason alone, you're going to want to load up on things that boost your war cires anyway, and you get a good level of find item for free. The typical barbarian tactic is to go to your weapon switch and cast battle command, battle orders, and shout, and then switch back to your regular weapon and go kill stuff. After you kill stuff, you go back to your weapon switch and use find item.

Having said all that, the barbarian's find item ability only improves the barbarian from a poor mf character to an average one. The reason is quite simple: Barbarians cannot exchange out equipment optimal for killing creatures for mf equipment and maintain good killing speed. If you change around your equipment to double your mf, but it takes you twice as long to kill things as a result, you're really not accomplishing anything. The number of good items that you get as a function of time will stay the same, and since you're killing fewer enemies it will take you longer to level up. Barbarians definitely find more stuff than other characters, but because they connot reasonably expect to remain effective with mf at 250%-300%, they aren't necessarily find more great stuff.

However, barbarians are great charcters for gambling. Gold is far and away the most common drop, and so when you use find item you are going to find a lot more gold than your average character. A successful use of find item on a champion will yield an entire second drop, complete with potions, a magic item and a second big old pile of gold. Plus the mere fact that you're getting more stuff, even if it isn't great stuff, means you're going to have a heck of a lot more stuff to sell. That jared's stone you just got from find item may not have good mods on it, but it's still worth 35,000 gp when you bring it to Larzuk.