Diablo II Single Player Thread - 2

Insight would definitely be a useful selection for your merc, for greatly increasing your mana regeneration ability. In fact, if you go with Insight, you'd be well advised to pick an Act 2 Prayer merc. (You probably already know this, but what the hell...)

Meditation doesn't give a synergy to anything, and even if it did, you wouldn't benefit from it, because skills that you get from items don't give synergy bonuses. However, skills that you get from items do receive synergies from other skills, so a prayer merc would give the synergy from prayer to mediation.

As for points in Holy Bolt versus Holy Shield, I would definitely advocate for Holy Shield. Holy Bolt already gets a hefty boost of 50% damage per point spent in Blessed Hammer, and given that your equipment selection is going to give +skills, you're going to have a decently high level Holy Bolt the way it is. (Are you going for a Spirit weapon and Spirit Shield or just the shield?) Furthermore, since Holy Bolt only affects undead, it doesn't help you against any other magic immune creature you may run across. (Only undead can spawn both immune to physical and immune to magic, but other creatures can spawn immune to one or the other, so an immune to magic non-undead would be immune to both BH and HB.)

Secondly, Holy Shield does something for you all the time - you can have it active and significantly raise your defense. Holy Bolt only helps in that very specific situation where you encounter a magic immune undead, and the rare times that happens you can get away with just one hard point with your +skills and synergy. Like Holy Bolt, Smite will also be used at a level far higher than level 1 because of your +skills, and will be adequate for taking out non-undead magic immunes. Smite also auto-hits, so don't worry about not having the dexterity or AR. (The other perk of leeching life/mana will be obviated if you go with an Insight wielding Prayer merc.) The bottom line is I think you'll be more versatile with Holy Shield, and you can get your defense high enough that it actually matters in hell difficulty.

EDIT: One last thing - there's no need to use a monarch for Spirit. Paladin shields can come with 4 sockets, and can have other bonuses, such as additional resistances on them, and elite paladin shields give better Smite damage than a monarch.

 

The strength requirement on a scourge isn't all that high - 120ish IIRC. It also has a dex requirement of around 70. But like you said, neither are particularly high.

Spirit is cheap as hell - it's Tal-Thul-Ort-Amn. So rune availability should not be an issue at all. There really isn't any good reason to NOT use a paladin shield if you can get your hands on one. At the very least, you could get one that comes with additional resistances (up to +45% resist all is possible) and that would add to the resistance bonus you get from Spirit.

Another thing occurred to me regarding Holy Shield being a better choice: Without holy shield, you'll need a prohibitively high investment in dexterity to acheive max block. Since Blessed Hammer, Holy Bolt, and Smite don't use attack rating in determining if they hit (they never miss), it won't make sense to pump dexterity for any reason other than obtaining max block. Finally, there are places - most notably the maggot lair, but anywhere that has fairly narrow corridors - where blessed hammer is less than great. So having a smite attack for places like that would be helpful as well.

 

You were already regularly using BH by the time you got to the maggot lair, in normal? How did you have the mana to keep it going?

 

Yep - essential I'd say, for any character that doesn't use spells exclusively for killing. My WWS stafeazon is now in Act III normal, and the mana problems have certainly lessened. I only have 4% mana leech on her (which is halved because I use a missile weapon), but I made Lore in a helm, which gives +2 mana per kill. I have not yet reached the point where I use stafe exclusively, as it's 11 mana per use, and against one or two monsters, I cannot possible leech back what it takes to use it, although I imagine it will eventually become my standard attack.

In reviewing some stafezon guides, I think I'm going to pick up Freezing Arrow as a 1-pt wonder. From what I read, it freezes enemies in place with just a single point, so that can't be bad. Freeze, then strafe will be the way I deal with most creatures. Other than that one point wonder (and since you need cold arrow and frozen arrow in order to get strafe, it really is only a one point investment), it's going to be a straight stafer build.

20 strafe
20 valkyrie
20 penetrate
1+ pierce

I don't know for sure yet how much I'm going to invest in pierce. Several guides say that there are better options for belts than Razortail, if you are willing to spend some more points in pierce. Pierce like a lot of the passive and magic skills, suffer from serious diminishing returns. You get at least 4% increase per level up to level 9, which seems like a good goal to shoot for. To put it in perspective, level 9 pierce gives a 69% chance, while level 29 pierce gives a 89% chance.

I have to look through my stash for 3-socket armors for Lionheart. I have to make a decision on my headgear first though. It's either going to be Valkyrie Wing or Tal Rasha's Horardric Crest. If I go with VW, I'll need 115 strength to equip it, or 90 points once I take Lionheart into account. If I go with TR helm, then the highest strength requirement will be the upped WWS - which is 89, meaning I'd need just 64 with Lionheart. If I can cover my leech abilities elsewhere, I'll probably go with VW, although the 10% dual leech on TR is very tempting.

 

It is a +2 skills version (truth be told, all the VW I've found thus far have been +2 skills, and I didn't even know a +1 version existed).

Still, my thinking was similar to yours - 10% dual leech is the biggest avilable on a single piece of equipment. (Crafted Blood Gloves can get up to 11% life leech, but a maximum of 4% mana leech.) The resistances aren't bad either, and as you said, the bonus to life and mana is not insignificant. The real decision is how much is +2 to all skills worth to me? TR is better in every other regard.

I still find TR's helm is the oddest piece of equipment in that set - it does virtually nothing for a sorceress, and yet is a great helm for a lot of other characters.

Have fun at Vegas! What's your game? You seem like a craps guy to me - I don't know why I think that - it's just the impression I get.

 

i have a (non-upgraded)WWS zon, and i found the +2 to be insignificant(albeit, i am on a somewhat limited budget). it also adds a lot of flexibility, as you do not need any other leech.
she is doing fine in act2 hell, although a bit slow because of the unupgraded WWS i presume. the reason it's not upgraded is because i need a lem rune.

 

How disappointing. I don't have a lot of experience with amazons, but I had assumed that with so many passive skills, a +2 to all skills item would be noticable. Upon further consideration, I have decided that I will employ both helms. I really want to be able to cast a level 27 valk for an uber valk, and I'm probably going to need the VW to get there. For general questing though, I think I'll go with TRs. (Although I'll be using VW from late normal through late nightmare, as the level requirement on it is 44 compared to TR's requirement of 65.

I'll probably just suck it up and go to 90 strength. I do have -15% requirement jewels, but I do not think I have a jewel that gives the -req and something else useful. I'm not going to blow a socket on something that just lowers to requirements to wear it.

Lem is well within the range that Hell Countess can drop. She can actually drop all the way to Ist. It could take a bit, but if you did say, 10 runs, you would probably either acquire a Lem, or acquire enough of the lower runes to cube your way to a Lem.

 

3-Card at a table, or hold 'em? I'm not a big fan of hold 'em, although I do like a lot of other types of poker - I just would be leary playing against potential sharks at a casino - I'm more of a group poker guy with friends.

I think craps is the most fun to play, blackjack is easiest to win at (just because it's so odds-based) and roulette is mind numbingly boring.

Hopefully, I'll get some decent D2 playing in this weekend. I have yard work, but other than that, Jack's at the grandparents house for the weeknd, so it's D2 and football!

 

Actually, I'm not really surprised. I remember being obsessed over D1 and the numbers aspect (for lack of a better term). It didn't help that there was a guide (Gerwulf, or something like that) that played right into my obsession. D2 I think has even more potential for that kind of approach (which, in addition to the tedium of Act 3, is one of the reasons why I'm reluctant to get back into it), and given AFI's proclivity for detailed analysis, this thread isn't all that surprising.

Yes, I said "proclivity".

 

Splunge basically nailed it. The diversity offered in this game offers excellent replayability. While I loved BG and BG2, one of the shortfalls is that the only variation you get is with your character and party composition. The storyline, areas, encounters, etc. are always the same each game.

While the Acts are the same from one game to the next (there's the same five acts with 8-10 subsections per act no matter which class you play), no two games are identical. Each area map is randomly generated (with a few exceptions - four of the five levels where you encounter the Act bosses have the same map each game for example). For each area, the monsters are randomly generated from a pool of possible choices. The variation is greatest in Act 5, where not only are there choices for monsters unique to Act 5, but they can also pull in monsters from previous acts as well. That adds a lot of diversity to the game.

The second aspect is the random item generation. Rares offer near limitless possibilities in item drops, and of course the ultra-rare items are like winning the lottery.

Thirdly, while there are only seven different character classes, there are many, many different ways to work with those classes. In a typical build, you only have enough skill points to max out 4 (or in some cases 5) skills. Given that each character class has 30 skills to pick from, there are a great many possible combinations. Granted, you cannot just randomly pick any five and expect them to work, so it's not like the possibilities are all combinations of 5 from 30 selections (which I imagine would work out to millions of combos). But there are about two dozen different combinations per class that would work.

For example here's a sampling of amazon build plans:

Bowazon - general terms that applies to those amazons specializing in the bow skills, which can be broken down futher into:

Mageazon
Ice Maidens
Strafers
Multizons
Snipers
Magic Arrow amazons (this build isn't particularly effective IMO, but it exists

Javazons - general term for amazons specializing in the spear and javelin tree, which is further broken down into:

Lightning Fury Javazon (far and away the most popular of the javazon builds)
Charged Strike Zon (most popular among spear users)
Fendazon
Jabazon
Plagueazon
Lightning Fury Poison Zon

Hybrids - using a combination of bow and javelin skills:

Fishyzon (named after the author of the build - it's lightning + cold)
LF/Multizon
LF/Strafer
Poison Multizon
Poison Strafer

There are even a few builds that don't use amazon class weapons, and sink all their points into the passive tree:

Tankazons
Axeazons
Daggerzons

And those are just a sampling. Each of the builds listed can be further customized once you take equipment selection into account. I'm currently playing an amazon using the unique bow Witchwild String. While it wouldn't be wrong to call my character a strafer (as that is the most used skill), it's not a pure strafer as my skill investement beyond Stafe is different from that of a typical Stafer owing to my equipment.

 

I'm now in Act II Nightmare with my bowazon, and I have already equipped most of my end-game gear. The yet-to-be-upgraded until I get the required level WWS is like a freaking machine gun - and I only have the 9/3 breakpoint at the moment. I actually have two pieces of equipment that I need some additional levels for. Obviously, I cannot upgrade WWS until I hit level 61 - and that's still several levels away. Additionally, I found an ethereal rare lance with huge %ed on it for my merc. In lance form it's base damage is approximately 200-600. That will get huge once I up it to elite. I have to look up what the strength and dexterity requirements are on a war pike, but I haven't bothered yet, as the exceptional version has a level requirement of 53, meaning I need a minimum of level 60 to equip the elite version.

The one thing I screwed up was calculating the correct value for my valkyrie. I wanted to get her to level 27, and I thought I had it at exactly 27. I figured the only thing I had to do was equip any of the half dozen or so unique armors I have lying around that give +1 to all skills, and together with my other equipment, I'd have it at exactly 27. As we are all well aware, I'm an idiot. In order to put on any of these armors, I need to take OFF Lionheart, and in doing so I lose the +25 strength granted by Lionheart, which in turn means I don't meet the minimum strength requirement to use Valkyrie Wing, and the +2 Amazon skills that come with it. There's no way I'm pumping an additional 25 points into strength to equip it without Lionheart, so I guess my dreams of a level 27 Valkyrie are put on the back burner until I land a Shako.

 

First of all, if you go to battle.net, you'll be pleased to learn that there are about a gazillion new runewords released for patch 1.13 (there was another ladder reset to introduce the new runewords on Sep 30). I only skimmed them over, but there seems to be some very powerful ones, and there is a range from pretty cheap to ultra-expensive runes involved. I do not know if a mod is needed to use them in single player. (I'm thinking there is, but I don't know.)

EDIT: I'm an idiot. This is what I get when in my excitement I don't read the title. These were proposed runewords that were originally going to be in corporated into 1.13, but they decided against implementing them, so there are no new runewords.

Not much progress recently on the amazon, although I am still hacked off that I forgot to figure in the bonus to strength from Lionheart being necessary to equip the Valkyrie Wing. I absolutlely LOVE the lance I have for my merc. 200-600 damage is wonderous - he is one hit killing most things (except things like bosses of course) on players 3. The requirements for upping it seem pretty reasonable too. A lance upgrades to a war pike, with a level requirement of 66 (so 73 with the 7 point add on for upping), a strength of 165, and a dexterity of 106 - very attainable by level 73, and probably considerably before that.

EDIT2: I easily defeated nightmare Diablo last night, and there were a couple of other accomplishments. For starters, I hit level 61, so I was able to up my WWS to the elite version. Just wow. Granted, this is a top end elite taking on monsters on nightmare, so it should completely own, but I never expected it would be to this extreme. It actually took my merc a while for his might aura to activate, because I was killing most stuff before my merc and valk could engage them in melee.

In other news, I managed to avoid my idiocy and get a level 27 valkyrie when I remember I wasn't using my weapon switch for anything. So I equipped a piece of equipment that I'll probably never use for anyone at any point - the unique edge bow Skystrike - as my switch weapon. It gives +1 to all amazon skills, and more importantly, a level 27 tank valk.

I know this will change in hell difficulty, but a level 27 valk in nightmare is ridiculously good. Diablo fried my might merc with a PLBoD, and then turned his attention to my valkyrie. She just took everything he dished out and kept coming back for more. PLBoD? No problem. Firestorm attack? No problem. Melee freeze attack? No problem. I don't think her health went down to less than 90% at any point in the fight.

So at this point, even though my merc is wielding what is probably the highest damage weapon I've ever given to a merc, his use at this point is providing a might aura. I'm certainly the most damaging member of the group, but the valk has left the merc in the dust in terms of melee performance. More life, seems to do more damage (hard to tell for sure), outstanding resistances (I don't know how high, but given the ineffectiveness of Diablo's elemental attacks, they must be very good). She's just better than the merc. That having been said, valkyries don't grant might auras, so everyone performs better when the merc is around.