Diablo II single player questions

Well, that's true too...

 

I didn't know Find Item gives diminished returns with more points. Your suggestions make perfect sense and I'll keep them in mind.

That said, looking at the skill tree I'm not sure what makes a good barbarian. I'm assuming Warcries like Battle Command, Battle Cry, Battle Orders and so on don't stack, so I'll need to pick one and maximise it. Battle Command would be great in a party but seems of limited use in SP, even though it still looks like the best out of the bunch. I'll need to put some points into the Masteries, but if they also give diminishing returns I'll probably just drop one point into the weapon I plan on using (from swords, maces and axes), and another into the general masteries (Natural Resistance especially). Then I guess I'll need a combat skill to focus on. Double Swing seems really good at low levels, as I was planning on using two weapons. I'm not sure which skill to use at higher levels though. I'll need something that increases damage and Berserk is the best one in this regard, particularly if the Magic Damage is non-resistable, but the decrease in defense worries me, especially if I'm going without a shield. Then again I get the feeling that only Double Swing and Frenzy allow the use of the off weapon. In this case Frenzy seems pretty good, especially since I can then pour points in Double Swing and they won't go to waste since it synergises with Frenzy.

I think I need to go do some reading about Barbarian builds.

I just checked out the skill page on Arreat Summit. Turns out only Natural Resistance and Increased Speed give diminishing returns, all other masteries increase linearly. Sigh, more choices.

 

Played for the first time in three weeks or so and nothing to note. I think moving ruined all my enthusiasm for the game.

 

Quite to the contrary, they ALL stack with each other. Most barbarians have Battle Orders, Battle Commands and/or Shout all active at once. The duration on the war cries may be different depending on the number of points you have invested in the skills, but there's no reason you have to limit yourself to a single war cry at a time. However, they don't stack with themselves. You cannot cast Battle Commands 5 times and get +5 to all your skills. If you cast a war cry a second time before the duration of the first casting runs out, the only thing it does is re-set the duration timer.

Battle Commands deserves a single point, and that's it. The main reason for that is because it raises all of your skills by one, regardless of if you have a single point in it or 20 points in it. The only thing that changes with more points is the duration. But here's the thing - Battle Commands gets a duration synergy with two other skills - Battle Orders and Shout. Nearly all barbs max out at least one of these skills, and a few builds max out both of these skills, and for every point spent, Battle Commands gets a 5 second duration boost. The first point spent in Battle Commands gives a duration of 30 seconds, so if you spend just a point and then max the synergies, it only needs to be recast every 230 seconds. But it's even better than that - remember those echoing weapons that I talked about last post? Well they work on Battle commands too. You can reasonably expect that your Battle Commands skill will be at least level 8 or 9 when you cast it, and points spent to the skill itself increase the duration by 10 seconds, so that's another 80 seconds, meaning it lasts at least 310 seconds with just a single point. (And you can tell when the war cry runs out - when you cast a war cry there's a swirling circle that appears at the barbarians feet and you can tell which war cry (or cries) are active based on the color(s) of the circle(s).

Battle Orders is by far the best war cry. If you go ahead and invest the full 20 points (and remember that with the echoing weapons, Battle Commands and a Barb Helm with +1 to war cries, 20 points spent will turn out to be more like level 28ish), it will more than double your life, mana, and stamina when you cast it. This is the skill that makes Barbarians so durable. They can easily attain a life pool over 2000, even if they are wielding a weapon and wearing armor with high strength and/or dexterity requirements, and if they have modest stat requirements on their equipment, they can get over 3000 life.

Unless you already have a weapon stashed away that you know you want to use, it is usually best to hold off on heavily investing in a mastery. In cases where I did not have a weapon to pass on to my barbarian, I spent a single point in sword, axe, and mace mastery, to get some bonus regardless of which weapon I decided to use, and then go back and max a mastery later once I have what I feel is my end-game weapon.

You'll want at least one point in each of the non-weapon masteries on that tab. They are all useful - increase stamina, increase speed, iron skin, natural resistances - and sometimes more than one point is justified. While natural resistance does have diminishing returns, it doesn't get bad until you get to level 6 or 7. One point is absolutely necessary (especially since you'll have +1 to it with Battle Commands active), so a single point will give you resist all +21%! However, I see nothing wrong with investing a few points into this skill if you need to max your resistances, but I would not invest more than a few, and you definitely would never want to go to 10 or more where the diminishing returns get steep (it eventually gets to the point where an additional point give 1% resist all, and beyond level 15 you need to spend 2 points for 1% resist all).

The first thing you need to decide before you pick a skill is decide which of three options you want to go with - a 2-handed weapon, dual wielding, or a single handed weapon with a shield. (And as an aside, even though you dismissed polearms and spears as options for masteries above, both options are definitely viable, especially for whirlwind barbs.) One thing I do need to point out because just about everyone screws this up the first time they make a barbarian, is that a barbarian can wield a two-handed sword with one hand (damage is reduced), but not a two-handed axe or a two-handed mace class weapon with one hand (like a great axe or a maul, respecitvely). So you can dual wield two great swords, but you cannot dual wield two mauls. You'll also probably want to pick two of the same class of weapon if you dual wield (2 swords, or 2 axes, etc), because you won't have enough points to max out two weapon masteries. Final note on masteries - with most weapons it's obvious what class they belong to - everything that looks like a sword or an axe is in that weapon class. With mace class, it's a lot more than just maces. Flails, war hammers, mauls, and all the various types of clubs and morning stars also count as mace class wweapons.

Double swing and frenzy do synergize and are the only two skills that allow use of the off-hand. So yes, if you decide to dual wield you'll start off using double swing, and then graduate to frenzy once you gain enough levels. Berserk's damage is unresistable, but most barbarians only invest one point in it, to use against physical immune creatures. Even with a single point the damage is so high you can usually dispatch a PI pretty quickly.

I can also provide some more advice if you have a specific variant of a barb in mind (a frenzy barb, whirler, conc barb, etc.) One of the very odd things about the barbarian's combat skills are they get synergies from war cries. You don't usually see synergies crossing over trees to this extent, but nearly every combat skill gets a damage synergy from a war crry. Concentrate gets boosted by Battle Orders, Frenzy gets boosted by Taunt, Berserk gets boosted by Shout (another reason why one point is enough for Berserk). The only commonly used combat skill that doesn't get a synergy boost is whirlwind.

All of the barbarian guides abide by the "Big 4" rule. Since barbarians have so many one-point wonder skills, you can usually only work on 4 different skills. Which four depends on the build, but all barb builds look like this:

20 in Battle Orders
20 in Combat Skill of Choice
20 in Synergy to Combat Skill
20 in Weapon Mastery

And the Weapon Mastery is always worked on last. You generally get a bigger boost working on a synergy than the weapon mastery, so you usually max out your weapon mastery late in your character's career, when you're in hell difficulty. So for the frenzy build you mentioned, the Big 4 would would be Battle Orders, Frenzy, Double Swing, and your mastery. Any left over points would go to Taunt as that also synergizes with Frenzy. (Taunt is an extremely useful skill with even one point though - almost all barbs get a single point in taunt as soon as it becomes available.)

 

That is a fairly cheap runeword - the hard part is getting a 4-socket staff to get it to work. I've never used that runeword because my sorceress usually carries a shield, but +3 is nice, espeically with the +3 FO mod on it.

You will continue to use FO for a while. FO kicks ass all through Nightmare. It only loses it's power in Hell, and even then it has utility, but it usually takes 2 or 3 castings of it to kill stuff. Still if it's a pack of monsters that are clumped together, 2 or 3 castings will usually take out the pack. Besides, you need a means to deal with Fire Immunes, so skimping out on FO may not be a great strategy. (Of course, you could use this staff as a weapon switch, and use it only for fire immunes.)

The problem in hell is you get mixed groups of enemies clumped togther, where some are cold immune and some are fire immune, so it takes a while as you have to alternate skills as the immune creatures interspersed in the pack protect the further back monsters from the spells. (Meteor, however, flies over them, which is another reason why meteor will eventually become your skill of choice.)

 

It does, and you will alternate between the spells because fireball and meteor don't do anything to fire immunes. That's why I said you could even keep the staff as a weapon switch.

 

my paladin is coming along nicely now, and is in act 1 hell, i am using this setup

helm: rare diadem with +2 skills +30strength and +2x dex and +17 all res
armor: guardian angel (+1 pala skills res. you know the drill)
weapon: mythical sword with the runeword Crescent Moon (-enemy light res. ctc static field, +20% ias, Ignore targets defence and a few others)
gloves: laying of hands (+20%ias and +350% dammage to deamons)
belt:mavinas(i simply don't have a better one)
amu: magic +3 offensive auras
ring(s): both rare with AR, dual res. and a little bit of leech
shield:the ward (lack of better also)

and my skills are as following

resist shock: 23 (synergy to holy shock)
holy shock: 27
zeal: 8
Holy shield: 16
and a few other points in one point wonder, prereqs and such

all is with +skills and the +skills are not that likely to change

i haven't had any problems with light immunes yet as i seem to do okay phys dammage, and i have max block and an okay deffence, and my res. will be ok after i put an UM in my guardian angel, because i don't have a HERALD OF FING ZAKARUM

so, what should i max next?
zeal? i seem to be hitting fine
Holy Shield? i seem to be blocking fine
edit: maybe a few points in fanatisicm? 1 point spent would give me an effective lvl of 8 for dealing with lightning immunes?
anything else?


and definately try to play a barbarian! they are by far my favourite class to play, it's just sad that you need somewhat good gear for them to be hell viable

 

First of all: Nice F'ing Headgear.

If you're not going to change your weapon to something else, you should raise sacrifice, not zeal. The reason you don't have problems hitting things is beause Cresent Moon has the modifier "ignore target defense", which does what it says it does - you have a 95% chance of hitting with each swing. Pumping zeal will add to your attack rating and damage, but since your attack rating doesn't matter, all it really does is add damage (I believe at 8% per point spent). Sacrifice, on the other hand, doesn't add anything to attack rating, but gives a 12% synergy boost to zeal damage, and 12% is more than 8%.

You don't need a herald of zakarum for this to be viable character, and the ward is quite good as a shield. +50% resist all (and you probably threw a pdiamond in it to take to +69% resist all) and a high block rate - what more do you want out of a shield? If there was a piece of equipment I'd take issue with it's the amulet. +3 offensive auras is nice, but there are tons of stuff that you can get on amulets that would be way better than that. While finding a +2 to all skills rare amulet is hard, +1 to all skills rare amulet with other good modifiers would provide nearly the same damage output (as you'd raise holy shock and zeal) and could potentially add to mf, resistances, strength, dexterity, whatever. The amulet modifier list is the exact same as the circlet/coronet/diadem/tiara modifier list.

 

thx man!

and what do you think about getting a few points of fana?

and what about hitting bosses, the ITD should not apply to them or champions right? i would really like this to be a boss killer.

about the amulet: yea but the problem is, i haven't found anything usefull yet sadly

and the ward has +33 all Res. it is good, yea but i would really like something more

 

ITD works on EVERYTHING. You ignore target defense. The reason you don't hit on every single swing is because of a couple of issues:

1. Everything in the game is capped at 95%, so even though you have ignore target defense, there's still a 5% chance that you swing and miss.

2. The paladin zeal skill is a little quirky in the way it works. While it has the "cannot be interrupted" modifier, it kind of can be interrupted. Sometimes when you use zeal, if the first swing misses, and a monster attacks you during that first swing, you'll miss on all 4 subsequent swings as well. I don't know why they have never fixed this bug, but it's been around forever. So if you're fighting a boss and you whiff on your entire zeal cycle, that's what happened. There's almost no chance that you can have an ITD weapon and miss all 5 swings (the chance is like 0.00003%).

Reagarding fanaticism, that's not what I would go with if I were making a boss killer. Upping your physical damage and attack speed on hell difficulty bosses isn't the greatest plan because all bosses have 50% resistance to physical damage on hell difficulty, so you'll still be a slow boss killer.

What you really need for a boss killer is some crushing blow, and there are some item slots that you could use to get some - specifically your gloves, and possibly your boots. (When crushing blow activates is takes off 10% of the boss's life, which for hell difficulty bosses is a lot. Crushing blow is also available on weapons and headgear, but I wouldn't recommend changing either of those items on your character.)

There are only two pairs of boots that have crushing blow and both are uniques: Gore Riders and Goblin Toe - either would be great for this build, but I understand they are hard to find. Crushing blow is not a standard mod that can be found on boots, so you'll never find a rare or magic pair with CB.

The easier option is to craft a pair of blood gloves. The recipe for blood gloves isn't that bad. All you need is a pair of magic (blue) chain gloves (the exceptional and elite versions work fine too), and the following ingredients: one jewel of any type, one perfect ruby, and a Nef rune. Throw them in the cube, press transmute, and you will get a pair of gloves that have 6%-10% CB, +1%-4% life leech, +11-20 life, 10% increase attack speed, and 4 other randomly generated attributes that you could find on any other pair of rare gloves, which IMO, has a strong chance of being significantly better than laying of hands.

Also, there's no reason you'd be limited to using this recipe once - if you are unsatasified with your first attempt at crafting (say you get near the minimum for life leech and crushing blow, and you got crappy random modifiers) you can always try again. You are only limited by the ingredients required, and none of these ingredients are that rare. The hardest thing is probably a Nef rune. Perfect rubies aren't that hard to come by, any jewel works regardless of what mods it has on it - it doesn't matter if you get the jewel in the Blood Mor in Act I Normal - and the gloves can be purchased from a vendor (remember they have to be magic - not normal, set, rare, etc).

My frost zealot has a pair of blood gloves (exceptional version) and he is my ultimate boss killer, because he has 77% CB. I took out Hell Duriel with 6 zeal cycles! While more crushing blow is better, even if all you have is 10%, a zealot attacks so rapidly that it will activate quite frequently. The chance of at least one swing in your zeal cycle activating crushing blow with a 10% base chance of it occuring is approximately 41%.

Gamble those bad boys - you have nothing better to spend you money on, and it should take long for you to find something better.

Oh, you got a +33 res all ward. How unfortunate. The resistance on it is random between 30%-50%. I have one that's 50% (although I did not get a 50% one the first time it dropped).

EDIT: Oh, and if you don't like your belt, you can consider a blood belt too, but I don't think CB is random mod on that - but it's still better than what you got...

Go here and click on items, then crafted items, and finally recipes for a full list of crafted items.

 

AFI - Thanks for the very detailed post. I think I have a much better idea now of what kind of build I want to make. I think I'm going to have Battle Commands as a one-point wonder and let +skills (and echoing weapons, when/if I find them) take it up. Battle Orders will be my main Warcry in this case. Since this'll mean one point in all the prerequisites I will probably end up activating them as well for tougher encounters. Once I have good items they should last some time even with only one point.

I'll save the weapon masters for later, when I've got a better idea what my main weapon will be. I have a very nice barbarian helm that gives +2 to sword and mace masteries, and another one that gives +2 to axe mastery, and their level requirement is only 3, so I can hold off putting any points into them for now and rely on the helm. One point into each other other masteries and into Find Potion and Find Item as they become available.

I think I'll go the dual-wield way, just because it looks like a really fun way to play the game and I'd like something different. I wish I knew you could dual-wield two-handed swords, I had some really good ones with my Necro and Paladin and sold them because I never thought I'd use them! Thankfully I've kept the Uniques so there could be something there that my Barbarian can use at higher levels. I'll have to max Double Swing and Frenzy, and after I've maxed Battle Orders and my mastery as well I may end up putting any extra points into Shout to boost Frenzy further. If I can find weapons that deal good elemental damage I may end up having no trouble against physical immunes, but I think I'll put a point in Berserk just in case.

I have a couple of nice rare maces with low strength and level requirements that I'll pass on to the Barb, so the outdoors in Act 1 should go fairly quickly until I reach the Monastery.

 

Oh heck no, don't try to find them. On hell difficulty you can BUY echoing weapons from vendors (and you can buy +2 to war cries weapons on nightmare difficulty, and the +1 varieties are available on Normal difficulty, but only from Larzuk). You don't care about what the stats are on them or what the weapon type is - even if you don't have a weapon mastery for them - the only thing you use them for is to buff up before battle and scrounge stuff from corpses. They can be two echoing daggers for all you care, because you'll never actually use them to attack things.

I agree with everything you said here. Berserk is definitely worth the point, and shout helps a ton - even at level 1 it doubles your defense. I would recommend saving as many skill points as possible in the early going (the only skill I'd sink more than one point into is double swing), because when you hit level 24, you are going to want to add a point to Frenzy and Battle Orders with each level up. I would also recommend maxing Battle Orders FIRST, because you'll need a good sized mana pool to keep frenzy going (unless you get some mana leech), and more life always helps. I'd then max the skill in the following order: Frenzy, double swing, weapon mastery, unless you find your end-game weapon earlier, in which case you can start on your mastery whenever you like.

 

thx i will change to some CB gloves (i have about 10 lying around) ASAP

the reason i was reluctant to do so, was because i though i would attack less, turns it i wont

thx!

 

Of course - silly me. I forgot it was much easier to just buy them I'll start keeping an eye for the +1 versions while still in Normal. With Find Item and Find Potion I expect to see get a huge amount of gold so paying for them won't be a problem.

Ah, clever. And since Battle Orders boosts mana as well, once I've maxed it I should be able to sustain Frenzy. Sounds good.

 

Echoing weapons aren't even that expensive to buy. They aren't like scepters, wands or staves that can cost hundreds of thousands of gold. They sell for around 20,000 gp.

DRAT! Defeated by the ancients! And I HAD them. Interestingly though I discovered two things in this battle - First, I'm certain that I can beat them, because I got some unlucky mods on them and still came close, and secondly - and more importantly - the Arreat Summit is a big enough area that you can separate the Ancients and not have to fight them all simultaneously.

Mind you I wasn't trying to separate them, but the way I started the battle was I immediately teleported a few times and got down to the southwest corner of the summit. The only guy that followed me was the axe guy who uses leap attack (I think that one is Korlic). On his own without backup, we pwned Korlic. At that point I thought I had the battle won, since I killed the first one and only used one SHP in the process. However, the whrilwind anceint (Talic?) spawned extra strong, and the axe thrower (Madawac?) spawned cursed (which means you get amplify damage cast on you when you're hit), so that went really badly. Madawac hit me with an axe and cursed me and immediately thereafter I got whirled by Talic and that was the end of me.

 

This is IMO essential if you want to defeat them with a Meteorb without repeating the battle many times. Trying to time your Meteor properly and avoid attacks from all three at the same time is a feat for people with better reflexes and hand/eye coordination than me. FO doesn't even help that much because the cold duration in Hell is so short that it wears off completely, and that's assuming none of them are cold immune. It does make things a bit easier if one of them is immune but not the others, as you can slow the two down and run away (or teleport short steps) so that only one follows you.

I've started a game with Cohen the Barbarian (thank you Terry Pratchett) and so far it's incredibly easy. I started using my 2 rare maces at level 2, as well as two parts of the Arctic Gear set that I have, the armour and belt. Then I noticed that the partial set bonus for the belt is +40 to magic find! So off the bat and with no effort I have a magic-finding Barbarian. At level 6 I decided to replace them with something much better - 2 copies of a unique scimitar (forgot the name) that I have, which grants among other things Open Wounds, +15 resist all, has Very Fast attack speed and does relatively low damage but very good for this early in the game. Then I noticed that by pouring most of my stat points into Strength I could start wearing several of the Sigon set that I have (3 to be exact, the 4th I have is the shield). This got me some very nice defense, more resistances, and upped MF to 50. Add a very nice low-level unique ring and another rare ring and my MF is at 86, with all resists above 50, good damage, and I'm still at level 6! It's amazing how much easier the early game is when you've got other characters to pass down equipment to your new character. I've also noticed an incredibly useful side effect to Find Potion - it destroys the bodies and makes enemies like Fallen unable to be raised by shamans. I have noticed something about Double Swing though - increased points in it will up attack rating but not damage. Since Double Swing and Berserk offer the same synergy bonus to Frenzy, my Barbarian might benefit more from maxing Berserk rather than Double Swing, since Berserk will also be my main attack against physical immunes later in Hell.