Diablo II single player questions

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I do have a point in Iron Maiden, however I usually find more success in casting Amplify Damage. It's usually better to have all of my minions hitting for double damage, then having big reflected damage from the one minion that gets hit.

As for Teeth and Bone Spear, that's a solid plan if you're going for that build from the beginning, as there are numerous synergies. However, I won't be able to get the synergies due to having spent 40 points in skeletons and the mastery. I'm thinking that Corpse Explosion deserves some extra points, as I do use that skill with some frequency.

 

The percentage listed on the shield (this is for all characters, not just a paladin) is the shield's base chance of blocking. Your character's percent chance to block can be (and in fact usually is) different than that. You are correct that the main difference arises from points spent in dexterity. Paladins generally need to spend fewer points in dexterity than other characters since they also gain blocking benefits with some points in holy shield.

Like I told you earlier, a lot depends on the mods that spawn on the Ancients. Since you never stated exactly what mods were on them, you apparently got a lot better combination the second time around. (By the way, the guy you took out first uses leap attack.)

The armor in the Immortal King's Set also requires well over 200 strength to equip. It's a great set for a barbarian. The two aspects that make the set viable are there is no dexterity requirement for any of the items (most Immortal Kings leave their dexterity at base, and only invest in at strength and vitality) and the set gives massive bonuses to attack rating, so you don't need dexterity to hit things either. It's probably not worth using if all you have is the maul, but it's a great set if you can complete it.

Are you planning on making a skellimancer, or have you yet to decide on a build? One word of warning: normal Diablo was a huge pain in the butt with my necromancer. I died several times fighting him. On a brighter note, I am breezing through nightmare difficulty with ease (although I'm only in Act II, so I don't know how Big D will be in the second go around).

 

That would certainly qualify as a skellimancer, or at least a variant thereof. Any build that maxes skeleton warrior and skeleton mastery is a skellimancer. However, I should point out that a skellimancer is more of a nuanced build. If you don't have particularly good gear he will struggle until he gets to be around level 30, and both Diablo and Duriel could prove extremely difficult in normal.

If you are interested in summoning, you may want to consider a druid, and place a single point in lycantrhropy and wearbear so you can transform into a bear and get the life bonus. That way you could actually mix it up with your summons as well. And of course, if you want a true spell caster, the sorceress is the way to go. You don't need any items for her to become very powerful.

I'm not trying to dissuade you from picking a necro - I'm just saying that you'll need some patience throughout most of normal before you see a very capable build emerge.

 

I agree with both getting Decripify and an amulet or some other item with telelport charges on it. It will definitely help. The only problem that you will have is most items with teleport charges have a level requirement in the 30s or 40s, so you'll have to do without when you first fight Diablo.

You won't need great items with this guy - in fact for most of normal you could go through naked with no items at all and not have a problem. The only difficulty comes with the boss fights, as sometimes Diablo will take out ALL your skeletons at once with his fire nova spell.

As for curses - you probably want a few more into amplify damage, as the area of effect increases with more points - it saves you from clicking all over the screen to amp everyone, although I confess I went with just one point in this skill until I maxed both raise skeleon and skeleton mastery.

I also am raising corpse explosion, becaues the area of effect increases with more points there as well.

Other skills worth a point:

Iron golem - it takes on the properties of the item you use to make it, meaning it does considerably more damage than the clay alternative.

Attract - it doesn't work on bosses or champions, but it helps when you run into a pack with a really tough modifier on it. You cast attract on one of the members of the pack, and all the other pack turn and attack that creature. It's a great means of thinning out the herd, as once the attracted creature inevitably dies at the hands of his fellow pack members, you attract another one - all the while you skeletons hammer away at the other pack members.

I agree that 100 is a good number to shoot for with strength. While you get a lousy return on life for vitality spent (just 2 life per point of vitality), it's probably a better option than going for max block. Necromancers also get a lousy conversion rate with dexterity in terms of chance to block, because most of the time you're using a demon head with +skills on it that has a base blocking chance of around 40%. Unless you are planning on investing well over 200 points in dexterity by the time you character gets to level 70, I would advise against gonig for max block. The other downside of going for max block is your life pool will be terrible, and you will be in a situation where a single hit in hell difficulty will likely kill your character. With my necromancer, I only invested enough in dexterity to equip a decent crossbow on weapon switch to help do some combat damage, and I have invested heavily into vitality. I am now level 53, and I have a little over 500 life, which means I can take several hits on nightmare difficulty before I die.

 

Actually, the glay golem is one of the most useful additions to the skelliemancer (or fishymancer as he's more commonly known).

I build one after I re-installed DII last year. He's very useful for item farming and MFing. Definatelly a keeper if you're using ATMA.

Anyway, the clay golem slows the target he attacks by a certain percentage, I think it's about 20%. Combine this with decrepify and most bosses slow down to a crawl. Duriel can easily be taken out by combining those 2 spells. Diablo is more difficult, as he can take out your skellies quite fast as he starts casting. I usually deal with that by quickly WP'ing over to a random spot and raising a new army. IIRC bosses don't regenerate HP like regular mobs.

Try to keep Duriel's and Diablo's attention on the clay golem, he will probably die in one hit but you can easily recast him. This way they don't kill your skeletons.

Good luck! D2 is an amazing game, but I've put it on hold when I started seeing the development screens of D3. Can't wait!

 

I agree that for bosses, the clay golem is more effective. I was rather disappointed in how quickly Diablo took out my skeleton army last night. I'll give him another go tonight and hopefully have more luck. Diablo was my most difficult fight in normal, and it appears the same will be true in Nightmare. Most disappointing, considering I've sunk every point I can spare into vitality. I have over 200 vitality and over 550 life, which is pretty good for a necro at my level. Of course that doesn't do my skeletons any good, and I'm easy pickings once they are gone.

 

My observations have been that every +skill you have helps tremendously in keeping your skeletons alive. But it's true, usually they can take any punishment, but if they start taking a serious beating they will die in 2 seconds. There is no in-between for them.

For bosses I've mostly relied on my clay golem and merc. The skeletons and revives (if any) help with the damage, but as long as your merc is attacking and the boss is focusing on the golem, you're set.

I don't have D2 installed on this laptop and my ATMA is stashed somewhere on a pc I've donated to my father for the time being, so I can't check. But I believe I have somewhere between +8 and +14 to raise skeleton and skeleton mastery, which really helps. Of course, this boost is done my using pre-buff gear and AoKL (IIRC) on switch. I have better combat/mf set-up in my usually gear.

 

I play on-line actually. Ever since the the ladder reset a few months ago, I lost my premium gear. I had a AoKL but that's on a non-ladder character now. Currently, my "best gear" nets me only +5 to raise skeleton and skeleton mastery, so both are being cast at level 25.

I completely forgot about doing a few revives. That was the most obvious way to help out the army. Open the seal for the blood lords last, and then grab 3 or 4 of them to help with the beat-down. I should also probably switch out my amulet (which will cost me +1 to all skills and some resistance) for a teleport amulet to get on top of Big D early on.

I agree that necros are excellent magic find characters, because you don't actually have to do the killing. The only thing you need is some decent +skills gear, and then load up on mf. I think my necro's standard gear is getting me somewhere around 200 mf.

 

All this talk of D2 is making me want to install it again, must resist...

I only use revives during boss fights, to protect my skeletons from insta-killers or whenever I actually remember to use the damn skill. That limited duration is a large annoyance for me, in spite of their great strenght.

Another handy tip is opening a portal in the Chaos Sanctuary and quickly WP-ing to the Durance of Hate lvl 2. If you're lucky the first mob you run into are Urdars. They don't stun Diablo, but they have crushing blow IIRC. Might work.

I admit I haven't tried playing online anymore after I discovered ATMA. Part of the reason why I left battle.net (and WoW as well btw) was the other players. The internet is a place filled with arrogant idiots hiding behind a screen name (this forum is definally excluded) and I don't enjoy myself there anymore. ATMA is an amazing tool, allowing you to store any item and switch easily between all your characters. This basically serves as a bank and mail system akin to WoW, which D2 had always lacked.

 

I did defeat Diablo on nightmare a couple of days ago - the blood lords did the trick. Like you, I often forget to use revives. It's a high mana cost for temporary help. Although 3 minutes is long enough to defeat most bosses. I'll try to remember to grab a few of Lister's crew before I go up against Baal. This is the first time I've ever played a necro this far. I really like the melee oriented builds, including barbarian, paladin, and druids specializing in the shape-shifting tree.

 

You can't revive Lister's beasts. Which is quite a shame, but understandable...
Frenzytaurs on the other hand are quite handy to have, but I've never had a lot of problems taking out Bhaal with a summoner. The biggest problem is your horde going after the wrong copy, but that's easily fixed by teleporting on top of the right one.

The necromancer is my favourite character in general. I enjoy most of his builds and I still have a couple planned that I haven't tried. The summoner is fun because he offers a chance to unwind, you don't have to be fully focused when playing him. You're safe from most of the common danger. Well, until you get to Act3 Hell...
It's the barbarian I can't stand, never even managed to finish Normal with him...

 

What happens in Act 3 Hell? That's never a point where I have ever got bogged down. Is it just from the sheer number of enemies (i.e., Flayers) present?

You don't like the heck and slash? It cannot possibly be due to difficulty, as the melee based builds are the easiest to play in the beginning - it's the spell based builds that do not come into their own until the higher levels.

 

Well, it's mostly the sheer annoyance of the flayers. They make a shamble of your army line. What with them running around and fleeing everywhere, before you know it there's a couple of them behind you.
And believe me, you probably don't have the life expectancy to stand up to all those poisonous blowdarts.

Well, at least that's my experience.

Barbarians... I dunno, they never did it for me, you know? I guess I don't find them all that interesting, skill wise. I was a bit dissapointed to find out they transfered over to D3, whereas I'd rather have a bunch of new classes.

 

Hmmm... I was hoping that with 10 skeletons, a golem and a mercenary, I would have enough of a wall in front of me. Apparently not.

As for D3, there's only so much you can do class wise. We knew we were going to get two melee type characters (Barbarian and Knight most likely), and we knew we were going to get two spell casters, one of which would be an elemental spell caster (Witch Doctor and Wizard - or was it a Mage? I forget at the moment.) And the fifth character will likely be a missile weapon specialist. (I have heard the rumor that a Ranger will be that class.) For me, it isn't about what the calsses are called or what exactly they look like on screen. I hear they are overhauling all the skills, and that all classes will have an entire tree devoted to passive skills. If all the skills are new, I won't be bothered by what they name the classes.

 

Barbarian is confirmed for D3, as is Witch Doctor, and I believe a Wizzard.

There's still 2 to be announced. I hope my computer will run it, but this is Blizzard we're talking about. I may be ready for a new machine by the time it ships anyway...

 

Correct - those are three confirmed. As I referenced above, diabloiii.net (which is a very good source - better than the Areat Summit IMHO) is reporting that the other two classes appear to be the Knight and the Ranger, although Blizzard has not yet confirmed either. The only doubt I have about the naming is that since you are allowed to play either class as either a male or female, "Knight" does not appear to be a particularly gender-neutral term like the other four. I suppose you could be a female knight, I just never mentally envision a woman when I hear the word knight.

As for needing a new machine by the time the game ships - you have some time to decide that. While Blizzard has announced late 2009 as a release date, they are notorious for delaying games. Given that Starcraft 2 is behind schedule, and that Starcraft 2 will definitely be released before Diablo 3, I think sometime in 2010 is a much more realistic release date.