Diablo II Single Player Thread - 2

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But that's not necessarily bad, right? As long as you don't hold onto the essences, it works?

 

What do you guys think about Duress as an armor for my barb (seeing as how I am now the pround owner of an Um)?

Stats on Duress:

+40% FHR
+10%-20% damage
37-133 Cold damage
15% CB
33% OW
150%-200% defense
Resist all 15% (except cold which is 45%)

That seem pretty solid to me. My merc would inherit Shaftstop.

I have one respec left, and the only way that is going to be used is if I find a different end game weapon, and I need to switch my mastery around. My strength is now high enough that I should be able to use most gear I come across, and so every level it will be about 2 to dexterity and 3 to vitality (with the occassional 3 dex, 2 vit).

I will probably do quite a bit of pit runs, but one option that will become available to me is crafted items, specifically blood weapons. And I have a ton of prubies and Orts saved up for that purpose. (Technically, they've BEEN available to me since level 1, but it is unlikely that any craft with less than an elite axe would yield something better than what I currently have.)

For most vendors, they can only sell the elite version of an item in which they can also sell the base version. However, Charsi and Gheed do not sell elite items (neither does Elzix, but there's nothing that he sells that you cannot get elsewhere). So the first vendor you run into who can sell elite items is Farsa. The only one-handed axe she normally sells is the military pick, and she does have the elite version, the war spike, available. Granted, it will take some time to get a purchasable war spike, as there's only about a 2% chance of a given item being upgraded to elite on the vendor screen.

Once I hit Act III, Hratli can sell Berserker Axes, which would be ideal choice for a blood weapon. They are also sold by Halbu and Larzuk, so Berserker Axes will be a possibility for the rest of the game once I hit Act III.

One of the odd game mechanics is that hardly any elite one-handed axes are purchasable in any Act. You will never find a purchaseable elite hand axe (tomahawk), axe (small crescent) or double axe (ettin axe). Like I said, vendors can only offer the elite version if they sell the base item. Only Charsi and Gheed offer these as base items for sale, and neither of them can offer elites.

 

i love duress, but will the cold dammage pop the baddies? if so, wouldn't you suffer from the missing bodies in regards to find item?

if yes, you might want to look at prudence:

mal - tir

+25% Faster Hit Recovery
+140-170% Enhanced Defense (varies)
All Resistances +25-35 (varies)
Damage Reduced by 3
Magic Damage Reduced by 17
+2 To Mana After Each Kill
+1 To Light Radius
Repairs Durability 1 In 4 Seconds

it's a lot more on the defensive side, but it seems it's as cheap, with more res. more def (you can get it in a etheral) and hit recovery, wich doesent really matter if you'r using concentration

 

With Duress, the enemies would be chilled and slowed, not frozen solid. Chilled enemies have a 20% chance of shattering on death, so in theory, yes, I would lose some, but by no means all of them. Remember that Find Item doesn't work on everything, including many of the top targets for item finding. The Countess, who I'm currently running, does not leave a body behind. Neither do act bosses. Or Nihlathak. About the only two I can think of that drop very well and you can use Find Item are Pindleskin and Thresh Socket.

I would, however, lose 1 in 5 bodies of all regular unique monsters, as well as 1 in 5 champs. However, I already carry a source of cold damage on my character, so I'm losing 1 in 5 bodies anyway. The slow effect granted by the cold damage is worth the price of not being able to use find item on 1 in 5 corpses. (It's not like I'm losing out on 20% of all items though. Even if Find Item worked every time, you still get the first drop. So that already takes us down to 10% of all drops. I only have one hard point invested in FI, but it's at effective level 10 with +skills, granting a 42% chance of success. So I'm really only losing out on 4.2% of all drops by having cold damage.)

Other than the better resistances, that's not doing much for me. Duress gives more FHR, and enhances defense (on average) about 20% more. (Although as you point out, since Prudence has repair item on it, you can make it in an ethereal, which would grant an extra 50% defense. OTOH, that assumes I will find an ethereal elite with exactly two sockets) The other thing I get with Duress is a lot more offense. It enhances damage a bit (10%-20%, and is a source of CB and OW. So I would prefer Duress over Prudence.

The reason you find fewer berserker axes than the others is because they are in the highest TC of any of the one-handed axes. I don't think I'm going to have a problem acquiring the axes - especially seeing as how I can purchase them starting in Act II. I did find a small crescent last night, so I did the craft. A small crescent is certainly less than ideal, but heck, I got so many of the base ingredients it seems silly to not try it on every elite one-handed axe I find.

While the result was not suitable for my current character as the average damage output was slightly lower (130 vs. 150 base), I got a pretty good result. It took me a bit to figure out what my four bonus mods were. I then realized that both the damage and AR were beyond the range of what you can get as standard mods. So I got both bonus damage and AR - the two affixes you absolutely need in order for blood weapons to really shine. The only downside was that they were low +ed% and average +AR%. The third mod was 5% mana leech - so it's dual leech - and the 4th mod was a piddling amount of lightning damage. What makes this a good craft however, is that since all the affixes I got were low level, the resulting craft has a minimum level requirement of just 45. So it's usable throughout nightmare, and at that difficulty, this weapon would be uber.

Certainly - but I don't have a lot of those runes yet, and since the Countess has no realistic possibility of dropping above an Ist, many of those top choices will remain beyond my reach for quite some time. I haven't found anything above Um yet, but my tune may change as I progress through Hell.

Although I must say that the rune drops are fantastic - the limiting resource at this point seems to be my supply of chipped gems. I currently have about 6 Hel runes because I am out of chipped diamonds. Andariel always drops two chippies every time you kill her though, so I can always run her a few times. The one thing that really pissed me off last night was I inadvertently clicked Nightmare difficulty. My great Countess run map was gone.

All of those are ladder only, so I'd need the mod, all of them are beyond my current price range, and two out of three require runes beyond which the Countess can reasonably be expected to drop. Death needs a Vex and a Gul, while Grief requires a Lo. While it's possible for the Countess to drop those runes, those are the ones that are in the 30,000 to 1 range. So it would literally take thousands of Countess runs to upgrade to those. The Countess drops an Ist 1 in 500 times. The one thing you have going for you is by the time you hit Ist, you only need two runes instead of three to upgrade to the next higher one. But one Lo still requires 16 Ists. Gul and Vex aren't nearly as bad, as they are the next two on the list after Ist, but I'd still need 6 Ists to make one of each. While the Countess is far more rewarding now than previously, I don't see me doing that many runs.

I can make Crescent Moon right now. The other ones are beyond the current price scale. CtA requires an Ist and an Ohm (or 8 more Ists), while Doom requires an Ohm, Lo, and a Cham. By my calculation, upgrading Ists to make a Cham would require just 256 Ists. (Or 280 Ists to make of each of those runes.)

 

I see your point, and I wasn't necessarily disagreeing with it. However, I think that a good blood weapon is more within reach than one of the top runewords, and will continue to be for some time. Even respecs aren't much of an issue, because we know a blood weapon will be an axe, and axes are suitable for just about every runeword available.

 

If those figures quoed by Aldeth are correct then the Countess Rune drop cycle has improved dramatically. Ist used to be ~1/1100. So it's roughly doubled in likelyhood.

Not sure where the end of the socket thing was left, but the answer is that all random sockets when cube socketing are generated using a max socket routine of 6, then capped at the max for the item. Armours do get 1/6 each of 1-3 sockets and 1/2 the time 4 sockets [outcomes 4,5,6] just like Aldeth said. Obviously providing the armour can have 4 sockets in the first place. Helms that can have 3 sockets get 3 sockets 2/3 of the time etc. Caveat to this is that I don't know if this same routine is applied to the items the game generates socketed, or if they use a different routine based on the max for the item itself in some way.

Other things:

Base item for Oath - for a one hander check out any etheral Small Crescent you find. They are maxed at 4 sockets, so if inclined just hand it over to Larzuk and make away. Of course a crafted berserker axe has the potential to be incredible, it's just that the time taken to create that special craft would probably see you though the game several times over with other characters.

Armours for a Barb on a medium budget - Duress and Treachery are the two outstanding choices for sure. Lionheart is great as an all rounder, but I'd be more inclined to use it for a bowie than a barb.

 

I did three more Countess runs yesterday. (After getting another good map.) Each time she dropped three runes, and this was the haul:

2 Lums, and one each of the following: Io, Hel, Amn, Sol, El (those are quite rare anymore!), Tal, Ort.

So about half of all the runes she's dropped (not just this time, but since I've started running her) are actually decent runes. Pre 1.13, it wasn't at all unusual to do three or four Countess runs and come away with nothing better than a Tal.

I still have yet to find a suitable armor for Duress. The best three socket armor I have found up to this point is embossed plate. I would much prefer chaos or ornate as the choice, since I have the strength requirements for both, but I have only found 4-socket versions of those.

I'm starting to wonder how much that will matter. It's base defense is 298, so depending on the defense roll, I'll come out with somewhere between 745-894, which is considerably better than the 607 I have on Shaftstop. The further consideration is the defense is not even the primary reason I'm making the armor - it's for the CB, OW, +20% damage and an additional 100 or so cold damage per hit. The 40% FHR isn't anything to sneeze at either. All of my resists are already currently maxed except poison (67%). However the resist all on the armor will provide some flexibility in my other equipment selections (I would not, for example NEED to utilize both my gloves and boots for resistances.)

The more I think about Lionheart, I think it's excellent for any character that isn't too concerned about defense, be it an amazon, or any of the casters. In fact, other than barbs, paladins, and werebears, I think it's great for any other class. You cannot go wrong with the +50 life (and it's actually more because it gives +20 vitality too) and 30% resist all. The bonuses to all attributes, especially +25 to strength, will allow you to reach the requirements on your other equipment. Because of the -15% requirements on the runeword itself, it's highly likely that your body armor will be the highest strength requirement item (which would make the +25 strength rather useless).

I agree on Viking's point about crafter berserker axes. While they have the potential to be on par with some of the high end rune words, it's unlikely that your first several attempts would produce such an item. A crafted item roll isn't that much different than a rare roll - in fact, beyond the four pre-set mods, it's EXACTLY like a rare roll. So your odds of getting a great craft are about the same as getting a great rare, and as we all know, the vast majority of rares we pick up and ID ended up being delivered immediately to Charsi, Larzuk, et. al. Like I said, I have the ingredients for about a dozen or so blood weapon crafts, and I see no harm in doing them. I have far more than 12 utterly useless jewel, Orts are cheap, and while I have other uses for pgems, there's nothing else that I specifically need perfect rubies for.

---------- Added 21 hours, 18 minutes and 57 seconds later... ----------

I did a few more Countess runs yesterday, and I hit level 80, which means I'll probably start doing Pit runs now, as there will be no experience point or to hit penalty now that I'm within 5 levels of the monsters there. I've been playing on players1 throughout hell, so I may not jump all the way up to players8 immediately. I may do a run or two on players3, then go to 5, and eventually up to 8 to get used to it.

I also made Duress last night in the embossed plate. I got a little unlucky on the defense roll, as I only came out with a 758 defense armor, which is on the low end of the possible range. I do, however, like the armor's performance thus far. The OW and CB allows me to kill quicker, and the base cold damage combined with some other elemental damage I have from charms allows me to kill physically immune monsters without resorting to berserk (which is useful against a ghost pack, where one hit empties your mana bulb). It takes longer with Concentrate, but at least I don't burn through a couple of rows of mana potions.

I am starting to see some trends in the Countess (I've done a couple dozen runs up to this point). To breifly recap, every time you kill the Countess she tries to drop 6 items. She has 5 drops like a standard monster, with everything available up to TC66. While any of these drops could be runes (up to and including Lo), it's very unlikely any of them actually will be, because they have everything up to TC66 to pick from. The 6th drop is a forced rune drop, in which she drops a rune up to and including Ist.

There's also a chance for bonus runes to drop. On the first five drops, every "no drop" roll is replaced with a forced rune drop, also up to Ist, with a maximum of three replacements. You want to maximize the "no drop" chance on the first five rolls to get the bonus rune drops, and this is best accomplished by setting players to 1.

Even on players1, the Countess only has about a 27% chance of picking "no drop", so it's unlikely that she gets three of them, and I've never actually seen four runes drop. From my experience, the most likely outcome is three total runes dropping - the one you get automatically, and two replacement rolls from the "no drops". The next most common is two runes drop, and I've never seen only one rune drop - which could only occur if the Countess didn't get any "no drops".

This may be just sampling error, but it does not appear that the rune drops are entirely random. I usually get three, and it's almost always as follows:

One from the very low runes, in the range of El-Ort that don't require any gems to upgrade further
One from the range of Thul-Hel (which require a chipped gem to upgrade)
One from the range of Io-Pul (which require a flawed gem to upgrade)

I realize that the drops aren't entirely randomized otherwise there wouldn't be a 1 in 500 chance of getting an Ist. I've also never got a Mal (the one before Ist, and I've only got a single Um (the one below Mal). Conversely, I've only got one El, and no Elds or Tirs. It seems like the Thul-Pul range is the "sweet spot" where the odds are highest. This is obviously different than what used to happen when you had the highest chance of getting an El or Eld, and each successive rune had a lower chance of dropping.

The other unusual thing about the drops is that I've received an uncharacteristically high number of Lum runes. I'd say half of all the drops I've received from Io on up have been Lums, including another two yesterday. That probably is just sampling error. But I've done enough runs up to this point to conclude that there is not a linear progression in rune frequency going from the highest possible rune down to the lowest. It seems like the very low runes drop with the same rare frequency as the highest possible ones.

 

After a busy Mother's Day weekend, I got back to D2 last night. Did a single Countess and Pit run. I can definitely handle the Pits on players 8. I was going to gradually work my way to players 8, and then I thought, what the hell, I'll give it a try. The merc died once to a boss pack of extra fast, might enchanted archers. (That will teach me to run with sharp objects.) Once I was able to taunt the pack (except for the boss of course) they were much easier. I did find a magic war spike (elite axe!), but I stuck it in my stash and forgot to craft it at the end of my session, so I'll see what I get tonight.

The speed at which I can do countess runs is entirely dependent upon what spawns in the tower. The only things I stop to kill are bosses and champions - everything else I can howl to get rid of. I don't like having to slow down because A) the drops aren't as good as the Pits and B) because I'm on players 1, there aren't a lot of XPs for what I kill either. I know I'm getting something from a boss or champ though, and with FI, a chance at a second good drop. So long as I don't run into many ghost packs, I can do the tower in a couple of minutes. But ghosts definitely slow me down.

EDIT: I was just looking up some drop probabilities of some of the really high end runes. Zods, along with other HRs, are now four times more common, but your odds are still very long. Hell Nihlathak actually has the highest chance of dropping a Zod - his chance incresed from ~0.000003% to ~0.000012%. The next two most common are Hell Diablo and Hell Baal, each of whom have ~0.000009% chance of dropping a Zod with the increased drap rates.

 

Are you Countess running or just taking what runes you happen to land in alvl 85? As I'm sure you've read, the Countess is an excellent source of low to mid-grade runes. (Basically, it's great for anything Pul or lower.) Given your rune wealth, however, I imagine you're more into big game hunting for the top level runes, and it's nearly impossible to find anything beyond an Ist from the Countess.

Well, there's that, and the possibility of running into a physical immune at some point. It's nearly impossible to find a PI in Normal difficulty - I think I saw one of those red insect swarm things in Kurast spawn PI once, but that's it. It's also pretty rare in Nightmare difficulty. In both cases though, it would only be the boss that was PI - no regular monsters spawn PI until Hell, when of course, you run into PIs with much more regularity. (I have a feeling you've told me what you're doing with PIs, but I forget.)

 

Hmmm... an IK Kodiak... Why not the boots as well? 40% faster run/walk, +110 AR (not counting the additional AR partial set bonus), +44 life, and 25% mf (with at least one other piece of the set equipped). Each item you add gives additional elemental damage to the Maul as well. Three items would give five and lightning damage, with the 4th item adding cold (120-360).

There's also partial set bonuses on the other pieces as well. The gloves would add another 10% life leech with a 4th item (not that additional leech is really necessary with Hunger), the belt gets 100% defense, and the boots get +160 defense.

You know, if you should stumble upon the armor, that wouldn't be a bad addition either. (as each additional piece offers +40% resistance to a given element).

I think I'm going to start progressing my barb through the game again. I hit level 81 last night doing Countess and Pit, and it's getting a little boring doing the same areas over and over again. I already have enough base wealth now that I could twink my next character, and next boss worth running for the really good gear is Hell Meph.

 

So I take it you are using Gore Riders as your boots then? Back when I played my Frost Zealot, I started him off using 100% CB. After experimenting a bit, I found that 75% CB was just as effective (you hit a lot), and gave me some more gear flexibility.

So I would not use Duress just to get to 100% CB. (Although it is a fantastic leveling armor - I see no reason why you wouldn't want to use it presently.) You can get to 75% CB rather easily. 40% on the maul, and Guillaumme Face gives 35% - presto! Even if you want to go with Gore Riders, that would take you up to 90%, and if there isn't a heck of a lot of difference between 75% and 100%, there's definitely not any difference between 90% and 100%.

The only reasonable gear combination I can think of that would give you 100% CB and still free up your body armor at some future point for CoH or the like, would be the combination of IK Maul, Guillaumme, and Goblin Toe. That should get you to 100% on the nose. Of course, none of those things come with any resistance, and you wouldn't be getting any from the IK gloves either, so that may not be a viable combination, especially with no shield for resistances. One of the reasons I would think CoH would be great for this character (in addition to being just fantastic all around) would be for the 65% resist all.

 

That is a great thing about the new patch. My second character will likely be a summoner necro, and I already know that I won't have to go all out for max block right at the beginning. In fact, I'll probably leave me dexterity at base throughout all of normal, and probably nightmare too. Once I get my hands on a shield that will afford me some blocking, I'll respec him to have max block. (Actually, a necro might be a character that would greatly benefit from an item like Lionheart - resists, life, bonus to all stats - lots to like there.)

The take home message about my post regarding CB is that while you definitely want a significant amount on a character that will do low physical damage, it is entirely unnecessary to get to 100%. Assuming you hit a lot, there will not be a noticable drop off in performance between 100%, 90%, or even 75%. You have a very fast attack, so if you CB fails to activate once in every four whacks, it's not going to slow your killing speed down by much.

I'd say 100% is a fine goal to shoot for, but I would not do so at the expense of extremely limiting my gear choices. I would much prefer to have max resistances and 75% CB, than maxed CB and less than maxed resistances. Not to beat a dead horse, but with no resistances coming from your weapon, belt, and gloves, likely none coming from your headgear, and no shield to pick up the slack, you may need to load up some resistances on your armor.

An alternative method I came up with is this - keep Duress, but swap out Giullaumme's for Jalal's Mane. You'll lose the CB from the helm, but you'll gain resistances, +skills, life, and mana. That seems like a solid tradeoff to me.