Diablo II single player questions

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Hmmm... I didn't have that much trouble avoiding getting hit. While my sorceress did use a shield, it was for the +skill and the resistances, not for blocking. My dexterity was so low that I had little hope of blocking any incoming attacks. My tactic was to teleport away as soon as I saw missile using enemies, and then let my merc get in front of me, all the while raining frozen orbs or meteors on the enemies while the merc closed the gap.

I would not advise pumping strength in hopes of finding a Stormshield, as that is an exceedingly rare piece of equipment. I think I've found one in my entire life. You will probably be better served by pumping as much into vitality as you can to raise your life total.

That's why I didn't like gmoura's guide - his recommended equipment list is unattainable for most people. Even if you were playing on-line, trading for Zods is a risky proposition because many of the high end runes are dupes, you cannot tell by looking at them if they are dupes, and therefore there is a good chance you'll be duped.

While Rik's guide does cover runewords like Breath of the Dying, he also covers a whole array of two handed uniques as well, so there are attainable options. It's been a while since I've looked at his guide, but he makes an excellent argument for why using a two-handed weapon is better than dual wielding. (It's based on weapon range and weapon speed - 1) you hit may more monsters by having a larger radius of attack than by attacking twice as much but only by creatures who are close to you and 2) if you get your weapon speed up high enough, dual wielders don't get twice as many hit checks as barbs wielding a two handed weapon.)

 

Yeah, my sorc is quite fast so I way too easily leave my merc behind which causes the missiles to hit me directly. This is mainly a problem in tight corridors in dungeons, in the open I can avoid them easily enough but when they're behind a door it becomes much more difficult. I've been doing a few countess runs in order to get runes, and perhaps get the memory done for my sorc (currently using razorwitch). I've done about ten of them and I think the highest rune I've gotten is thul, so it's been mainly a waste of time.

EDIT: And just when I decided to do it one more time, she dropped an io.

Okay, so now I have the runes to make memory. Would that be a good idea at the point when I lack a decent onehanded weapon for sorcerer? Or would I be better off trying to find wizardspike (which is relatively common) or the occulus (a bit more rare)?

 

The Countess is the best source for runes in the game, unfortunately it is far more likely that she drops one of the ten low runes (Thul and lower), than one of the high ones. I remember reading that there is nearly a 90% chance that you get a Thul or lower, although it is possible for her to drop as high as an Ist (although the chance of that is a fraction of a percent). So having to do 10 runs to get one good rune, is about what the average works out to.

It depends on what your character needs are. It's hard for me to give you advice without knowing what areas of your character need improvement. But here's my overall opinion on the weapons:

If you have a 4-socket staff on hand, Memory is a pretty decent runeword with the +3 to all skills. However, 4-socket staves are not particularly common. You have the runes, but do you have a weapon to put them in? Remember that when you use a staff on a runeword, you keep any +skills that were present on the staff. So, for example, if you had a 4-socket staff that had +2 to fireball, your fireball skill would increase by 5 if you make Memory in it.

I'm not sure why you'd be interested in using Wizardspike, unless your resistances are really bad. Wizardspike gives +75% resist all. I admit, that's a ton, but with no +skills, it really doesn't cut it as a weapon. Besides, if your resistances are poor, there are better ways to do it (see below).

Occulus is a solid choice, but as a class-specific unique, you certainly cannot count on getting one any time soon.

Allow me to give you a couple of other suggestions that are nearly as good as what you are recommending and are a heck of a lot more common to find.

If +skills is what you are after, and you don't have a 4-socket staff available, you might be looking for one for a long time. You may very well stumble across a 2-socket staff first, and that is good for the incredibly cheap rune word Leaf. Leaf needs just Tir-Ral, and it gives you +3 to all fire skills, an additional +3 (so +6 altogether) to Warmth, Fire Bolt, and Inferno, +2 mana after each kill, and even grants +2 defense per character level. Good and cheap.

However, if you really would rather have Memory, you may want to consider making a 4-socket staff. There's two ways to do it. If you haven't used all of your Larzuk quests yet, he will add the maximum number of sockets possible to a white item. So any of the staves that take up four inventory spaces will work (the staves that take up 8 inventory spaces can get 6 sockets, so don't use them). Alternatively, you can use your horadric cube on any white staff. Ral + Thul + Perfect Amethyst + any normal weapon = scoekted weapon. This recipe randomly gives between 1-6 sockets, but if you get a higher number than an item can possibly receive, you get the maximum. This actually works to your favor. If you use a white staff that takes up 4 inventory spaces, the most sockets it can have is 4. So when the game determines how many sockets the staff has, a roll of 4, 5, or 6 will all result in a 4-socket staff. So you have a 50% chance of this recipe giving you what you need.

If you are lacking in resistances, there are far, far cheaper options than going for a Wizardspike. I would recommend a combination of two runewords, both not hard to make: Spirit for your weapon and Ancient's Pledge for your Shield. I'm sure you're already familiar with Ancient's Pledge, it's just Ral-Ort-Tal and will give you +48% resist all. Spirit can be made in any 4-socket sword, so as long as you meet the minimum strength and dexterity requirements, finding a 4-socket sword is way easier than finding a 4-socket staff (simply because there are so many more swords than staves). Spirit gives +2 to all skills, +20 to Vitality, +90 to mana and gives +35% resistance to cold, lightning and poison (but no fire resistance strangely). This one is also cheap: Tal-Thul-Ort-Amn.

 

I allready have a four socketed warstaff, it does not have any skill bonuses however, and I haven't done any of my larzuk quests yet. My main need is in skills and resistance and memory provide a fair bit of both of those. Of course I also have a fairly high dexterity which is reserved for getting a decent block so going with the spirit-ancients pledge combo might not be such a bad idea either. Still I'm looking for using this sorc as a magic finder also and do some runs every now and then on mephisto and perhaps even on bhaal later on so I'll also try to prepare her to use a shield if I ever find the Occulus.

EDIT: I see memory lacks in the resistance department, which makes it problematic.

EDIT2: Diablo2.wiki says that spirit is ladder only, meaning it ain't really an option.

 

Yeah, I didn't think it had resistances, which is why I thought it was a strange choice when you mentioned it.

My bad - I plan on ladder, and so I sometimes forget that others do not. Even if you don't land an occulus, you may get lucky and just get a good orb on a drop. Sorceress orbs can spawn with up to +2 to all skills, or up the +3 to a particular tree. Hexfire is also not a bad option for a sorceress (+3 to fire skills) and is also a relatively common weapon.

If Magic Find is in your future, you may also want to look into the runeword Rhyme as an option (this one isn't a ladder rune word). Pretty cheap - all you need is Shael-Eth. It adds +20% to your chance to block, gives +25% to all your resistances, cannot be frozen, along with +50% gold find and +25% magic find. That one does everything you need it to do.

 

Yeah Rhyme seems like a solid shield but I lack the weapon. I think I'll stick to the current one for now since it gives good resistances and +1 to skill. If I find a decent orb I might consider a change.

 

Barbs are less dependant upon skill points for damage, skills are still nice and important but other factors such as life leech, damage reduction and defense also become a lot more important, so while skills are still important there are other important factor as well. Defense and leech are fairly useless of a sorc.

I found steelskull today, a very nice item for the 5% dual leech and 42% magic find plus other goodies, not quite as good as vampire gaze but a decent helmet for amazons. Now with noseferatus coil and stealskull I might consider starting a sorc, but the best bow I have is magewrath and it just won't cut it in later stages of hell. I'll have to wait to get some nice runeword or score a buriza, I don't hold much hope in finding the insanely rare eaglehorn or even rarer windforce.

@dmc

You actually managed to find Ber and Ist for the chains of honor? That's insane luck!

 

I would contend the exact opposite. Barbs have a TON of one-point wonder skills, all of which benefit greatly from +skill equipment. In fact, it's pretty much standard for all barbarians to carry echoing weapons (which give +3 to warcries) on their weapon switch. So right there that's +6 to warcries.

But it goes way beyond that. Most character builds focus thier skill points on one or two trees. For example, most paladins ignore the defensive aura tree, necros go either summoning or bone skills and ignore the other tree nearly completely. Sorceresses pick two trees to work on. Amazons go for either bows or javelins, excluding the other. Druids are summoners or elementalists. Assassins are either trap specialists or don't spend a single point in that tree. I could go on.

Barbarians are almost unique in that any sucessful build will have at least one maxed out skill on each tree. Add to the fact that many skills have some functionality and use even with just a single point (off the top of my head: Leap, Leap Attack, Find Item, Battle Cry, Battle Commands, Iron Skin, Natural Resistance, Increase Speed and Increase Stamina) and you have your skill points very spread out. That means that items that grant +1 or +2 to ALL skills as opposed to a specific tree are very important for a barbarian.

Harlequin Crest is awesome for a barbarian if you can't get your hands on an uber barbarian helm. Seraph's Hymn is also extremely useful - it will add significantly to attack rating, damage, life, mana, stamina, speed, resistances, defense, etc.) Barbarians have and use so many different skills that whenever you can get your hands on +skill equipment it means that whatever you barbarian used to be able to do he can now do better.

And that is one of the reasons that the barbarian is probably my favorite character. In terms of versatility and survivability he is THE MAN. People have the misperception that he's just a hulking brute who beats the heck of a things, but it's much more finesse than it appears. I can probably rest my case with the following statement: You now how you can use the F1-F8 keys as hotkeys to quickly change between skills? The barbarian is the only character I've ever played where I wish I had a lot more hot keys. Because there are at least 8 skills you use very frequently, and about 4-5 more that are used often enough that it's a pain to have to go manually selecting them from the skills list, even though a third of all barbarian skills are passive and thus always "on".

 

Yeah, Aldeth probably knows better since my knowledge is badly outdated and I never liked barbs anyhow.

 

Well, all of those things are important too, as that's how barbs kill things. The reason SoJs specifically are so popular among the casters is because there's nothing but +skills on rings that do them any good. (Think of the modifiers you get on rings - with the exception of resistances, what do casters need on them?)

Since casters don't get up close and personal with monsters, a unidirectional equipment selection is possible. Barbarians benefit greatly from +skills equipment, it's just that it is not always worth taking +skill equipment in lieu of everything else. For example, no barbarian would rather have a SoJ over a Raven Frost. That said, most well developed barbarians are walking around with significant +skill gear.

I guess my point was that +skill gear is extremely desirable for a barbarian, it's just that you cannot go exclusively for that gear. In that sense I guess it's "not as important" for a barbarian, but so long as you can keep your damage output high, you'll usually want as much +skill equipment you can get.

Yes - Arreat's definitely qualifies as one of the uber-barb helms I referenced above. I would also put Demonhorn's Edge on that list, and any rare barb helm that gave +2 to all skills and +3 to specific skill(s) you use a lot.

EDIT: And one of the reasons it blows HQ away is because it has more +skills. HQ is +2 to all. Arreat's is +2 to all and another +2 to combat skills. It also comes with resistances and (I think) life leech, but that's just gravy.

 

There are actually sixteen hotkeys available - 8 more were added with the expansion. You'll have to set them yourself, however. I use ASDFQWER for my most used skills, saving F1-F8 for skills with less use or a noncombat use.

@dmc

I've read that the Prevent Monster Heal mod does not work for mercenaries, but I have never tried it out myself. It does seem consistent with what you saw. Strange that just about every other mod works (exept obvious stuff like +mana), but not this one.

Also, I'd like to add that reading this thread is great, and have made me start playing D2 again, despite not really having the time (But I do have time to read this... hmm...). It has taken me since the start of Juli to get my sorceress to nightmare .

 

Btw I just checked the unique rings section in diabloii.wiki and it seems that SOJ is waaaay more rare than ravenfrost.

http://diablo2.diablowiki.net/Unique_Rings

 

Oh great my first unique elite item and it's the spear which is only usable by amazons making it useless for the merc and since spearazons generally suck I don't think I will be using it anytime soon. On the plus side I seem to be getting quite a lot of unique drops these days so sooner or later something good for the sorc is bound to show up. With my luck it will probably be etheral though.

 

No kidding? Huh... I never knew that. I'll have to check that out. Is it on the options menu? If not, how do you assign additional hotkeys? Like I said, usually eight is enough but it wouldn't hurt to have some frequently used but not always needed barb skills (like Find Item, Leap Attack) on the spare keys.

I cannot get the link to work - what is the rarity listed for a SoJ compared to a RF? I must have just got lucky, as I have TWO SoJ, but no Ravenfrosts.

Arreat's is definitely better. In fact, unless you get a perfect Demonhorn's as it relates to skills, it's not even close. A perfect Demonhorn's would give +3 to all Barbarian skills, whereas Arreat's gives +2 to all and an additional +2 to Combat skills. Both helms give life leech. Arreat's has a bonus to attack rating, while Demonhorn's has a bonus to attack speed, so for me that's a wash. The mod that puts Arreat's over the top is the +30% to all resistances. The bonus to strength and dexterity doesn't hurt either, but it really helps to get a huge resistance bonus.

Definitely, especially since you already have some +skills items. A level one Find Item isn't all that useful, but you have to remember that based on your projected equipment you will have at minimum, +11 to your war cries. (I'm assuming +2 from Arreat's, +2 from Mara's, two echoing weapons on switch giving +3 each, and +1 from Battle Commands.) A level 12 Find Item gives about a 50% chance of a second drop, so it's extremely useful. Barbs usually don't have really high +mf%, because they need their equipment setup to be geared towards melee combat, but with a decent Find Item skill they are respectable mf characters - at the very least they are better than any of the other melee characters.

I wouldn't go too heavy into shout this early in the game. You are eventually going to want to max it, but really you don't need to worry about defense until you hit hell difficulty. I'd save up as many skill points as you can so you can invest in both battle orders and whirlwind once you reach the level minimums. If you invest heavily into shout now, you won't be able to max out one of those skills until much further into the game. I usually advocate maxing both Battle Orders and Whirlwind before investing in Shout.

I think your plan of investing into strength early on is a good one. You're going to want to get your hands on the beefer weapons, and the sooner the better. If you think you're going with mace mastery, then you're only a few levels away from using Bonesnap, which will carry you a long, long way.

I though you had decided that you were going to use a mace class weapon. If so, then unless that weapon happens to be a flail (or the exceptional/elite versions) there won't be any dexterity requirement on your weapon. The only flail weapon worth using end game would be the unique scourge, Stormlash, and even that only has a dexterity requirement of around 70 or so. None of the mauls have any dexterity requirement at all, so if you go with one of them, leaving dexterity at base is recommended. What are the candidates at this point?

Unfortunately, you're right - amazon spears are pretty bad. I never understood why amazon spears didn't do a heck of a lot more damage. They only do a bit more than javelins, and since they cannot be thrown and are two-handed, it makes them clearly inferior in just about every respect to javelins. Javelins do about the same amount of damage when thrown, all of the spear skills work with javelins, but none of the javelin skills work with spears, and you get to use a shield. WTF?

If it's an ethereal orb/staff/sorc weapon, then it doesn't matter if it's ethereal or not. Unless you actually plan on using the orb to hit things, it's durability won't change.

 

Funny, the link works just fine for me. Anyhow here are the numbers. The first number indicates Qlvl and the second rarity. Ravenfrost has a higher qlvl meaning that it can't be found in early stages of the game while SoJ has a much lower one. If you've gotten your SoJ:s at a lower level then it's not all that surprising since it only competes with nagelring and manald heal.

Nagelring 10 15
Manald Heal 20 15
Stone of Jordan 39 1
Dwarft Star 53 10
Raven Frost 53 10
Bul Kathos' Wedding Band 66 1
Carrion Wind 68 3
Nature's Peace 77 3
Wisp Projector 84 1

EDIT: Interestingly enough diabloii.wiki lists the spear I found as ladder only, seems their ladder only labels aren't 100% reliable.

 

I'm sure the link is good, but I'm at work at a lot of game-related sites are blocked by the filter.

I think you are correct that the reason you can get more SoJ is the much lower qlvl. Level 39 means it can be dropped by normal Diablo and Baal, whereas Raven Frost won't be available until Nightmare. But I've played a ton on nightmare and hell, and I still have not got my hands on a RF since the last ladder reset, while I have SoJs. Maybe it comes down to just bad luck.

I'm pretty sure "ladder only" items are available on single player.