Diablo II Single Player Thread - 2

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I have played very little the past few days, so I'm still in Act II, now in the Canyon of the Magi.

I'm reaching the first decision point with my character. Sigon's Complete Steel has served me well up to this point, but I think the time is soon approaching where I should consider switching into mid-game gear. I'm setting the target level for the switch at level 35. A lot of the items I'm considering are equipable long before level 35, but I need to be able to make a wholesale switch for it to be worth breaking up the set and it's cumulative bonuses.

The first consideration is the weapon. Seeing as how damage is irrelevant, I've decided my end-game choice is Jade Talon. (Bartuc's does considerably more damage, but for a kicker, I really don't see how it is the best choice.) Jade Talon has multiple variable mods, and I have a version that gives +2 to the Martial Arts and Shadow Discipline tree. It also has 30% FHR, huge 15% mana leech, and 41% resist all. (The resistances is actually on the low end of the range you can get - 40%-50% - but the +skills are also randomized between +1 and +2, so I definitely am going with the version that has lower resistances and higher +skills.)

The only thing that I'm not getting help with is traps with this choice, but I consider that to be a negliglible consideration. I'm only using two traps - Lightning and Death Sentry. Death Sentry is like corpse explosion - more points increase it's range, not it's damage, and with 20 points invested in it, I'm going to be hitting the whole screen anyway. Lightning Sentry only gets extremely powerful when synergized - which do not receive benefits from +skills - so missing out on a couple of points there shouldn't do much. However, the level requirement is 67, so that's a ways off yet.

In the meantime, I'll be looking through my collection of rare claws. I don't have any that give +all skills, but I have several choices that give +1 or +2 to a particular tree along with other assorted bonuses. Most of these have level requirements right around 30, so I'll see what best suits me when I get there. I know I have dual +3 SD claws waiting to go on switch when I hit level 45, so the primary weapon will probably be something that improves DTalon.

I'll eventually equip "Sanctuary" as my shield, but "Rhyme" seems a fine choice in the meantime. I have "Rhyme" in a tower shield, so it will have a pretty good block rate. "Santuary" will be made in a hyperion. I recently found a regular 3-socket version, which means I can avoid the superior 3-socket hyperion I had on hand and reduce repair costs. I'm going hyperion because they have a very good block rate (better than a monarch actually), and have a reasonable strength requriement of just 118. I can eke out 2% more block rate if I go with an aegis, but the strength requirement goes all the way to 219 then. Also useful because the level requirements for both the shield and runes are nearly identical. Mal is #23, so it should be available at level 49, and hyperions are unusable until level 48.

The gloves will be just like the claws - one of the assorted rares that give +skill to a tree (probably MA again), along with other bonuses.

Helm - I have that wonderful circlet waiting for me at level 66. +2 assassin skills, resist all, magic find, +24 strength. In the meantime, I'm going with a rather unusual choice: Stealskull. It has a bunch of useful modifiers, although not quite enough to be an end-game choice: IAS, FHR, dual leech, magic find. With an assortment of offensive and defensive mods, that's not bad at all.

My mid-game belt and boots are also going to be an usual choice: I'll be using two pieces from the IK set. Bonuses to life, mana, strength, dexterity, and some good partial set bonuses of resistances and magic find.

Which leaves the armor. I know it's going to be "Treachery", and it's usable at level 43. As defense really doesn't matter for this character type (I'll never be able to accumulate several thousand, so I'm relying on the shield almost exclusively), the choice of armor comes down to asthetics. I'll probably make it in an elite piece anyway, because that's really the only kind of socketed armor I keep. I'm not too keen on how the full plate armors look on the assassin, and the ultra-light armors don't look so good either. I'll have to try on a breast plate to see what that does. Maybe go with Silks of the Victor or Skins of the Vampermagi in the meantime.

 

An interesting subtopic on +skills on claws. As you know, +skills only appear on exceptional and elite claws, not on the normal versions. The randomized +skills you can get on claws are dependent on the quality level of the claw. This creates a rather unusual situation, in that it's almost impossible to get a claw to drop that gives bonuses to the first two tiers of skills (those you can invest in at level 1 and level 6). Since the lowest exceptional claw has a qlvl of 25, you have a far higher chance of getting one of the higher tiers skills. With elite claws, it's actually IMPOSSIBLE for a claw to drop with +skills to anything in the top two tiers, as elite class specific weapons can only spawn with +skills from tiers 3-6.

This causes some problems for people who want "perfect" weapons for use in runewords, (any pre-existing +skills on claws will be retained once you make the runeword). So a kicker who wants to make "Chaos" initially appears to be out of luck. Only the elite claws can get three sockets, and elite claws aren't available with +3 to DTalon, because their qlvl (at least 45) prevents the first two tiers from being selected.

However, there is one way to do it. You need to find a cracked/low quality elite claw, and use the cube recipe to change it to the normal version. When you do this, it rolls for the +skills, but the recipe changes the qlvl of the claw to 1. So now, not only can the first two tiers of skills be selected, the qlvl is so low that it's a near certainty that only tier 1 and tier 2 skills will be selected. After cubing and getting the desired +skills, you take it to Larzuk, who always gives the maximum number of sockets, so you're guaranteed to get 3.

Also of interest in that topic, is that the game generates up to three different skills to give bonuses to on class specific weapons, and the first selection impacts the second and third selections. Once the initial +skill is selected, all subsequent choices are limited to 3 tiers of the first choice. So it's impossible to get a tier 1 skill in conjunction with a tier 5 or 6 skill (the ones available at level 24 and 30), as well as a tier 2 and tier 6 skill together. So while you can finagle an elite claw to give you +3 DTalon, there's nothing you can do to get a claw that has +3 DTalon and +3 Shadow Master, for example. And the same thing applies to all the class-specifc gear that can come with +skills. While I didn't know that, now that I think about it, it does seem true from experience. I cannot recall ever getting a class-specific to drop that had both very high level and low level +skills on it.

Pure trappers can be powerful (although I'd have to look into weapons - neither Bartuc's nor Jade Talon appear solid choices there). They also usually sink 3 hard points into the Fire Blast trap, as every 3 hard points gives a synergy of an extra shot for all other traps.

 

That's what I was driving at - when I said neither Bartuc's nor Jade Talon were solid choices, I was thinking that really NONE of the unique claws were particularly good ideas. But you have it right: Blue claws are available with +3 traps, and also to +skills on particular traps. As primarily a caster, I think HotO and Spirit would be better suited as switch weapons. Not only are +3 trap skill claws available with other bonus skills, but you could equip TWO OF THEM. It's theoretically possible to get +12 to your most used trap just from your weapon slots.

I'm going to be decent with +skills on my kicksin. For MA, I'll have +6, traps +5, and SD +10 (weapon switch required).

 

Well, you mentioned HotO +Spirit, so I did the comparison between those and dual trap claws. Yes, a CtA + Spirit would be better, but if we're going for the ideal, why stop there? Let's consider this for a moment - CtA does offer prebuffs, and would be useful in their own right, but if you're switching to enter melee (like against lightning immune monsters for example), we can do even better than that.

I submit, for your amusement, the thought of your switch being dual +3 MA claws with +3 to the martial arts skill of your choice. I don't care which one you want to go with - pick one: Fists of Fire, Blades of Ice, Phoenix Strike, whatever. Throw on a Shako, Arachnid Mesh, or whatever else you got lying around, and you'll have a level 16 MA skill with a level 10 finisher for the cost of a few skill points.

Or if you want to get super-ridiculous dual +3MA claws with +3 to the same MA skill AND finisher, for level 16 in both.

EDIT: And obviously have some type of CB available to boot of course...

 

I made quite a bit of progress on the assassin this weekend, finishing Normal, and reaching level 40. I'll probably level for a while longer before proceeding to Nightmare.

I went and did my switchover to my planned equipment as outlined above, with the exception that instead of going with claws that gave +2 MA skills, I went and equipped "Strength" claws for the CB (and to equip a couple of pieces of the IK set). As it has worked out, I'm just about as pure melee as you can get. The way I've done my skill point allocation, everything currently has just 1 point in it other than DTalon and Shadow Master. So typically I summon a Shadow Master, prebuff with Burst of Speed and Venom, and then get kicking. Since my traps only have one point in each, and I'm consistently playing in higher player count games (5 or higher), the traps damage is small enough that it doesn't really help. I'll throw down a couple of death sentries when fighting through Baal's minions, but for right now they aren't necessary.

So, in addition to getting a few more levels in normal, I think the next order of business is actually working on things like learning to use Cloak of Shadows and Mind Blast in conjunction with one another. I don't need those skills right now, but it would probably be a good idea to learn them now, than trying to do it on the fly when I actually need them.

My mercenary is wearing one of the few sets that are completely equippable by a mercenary. He's wearing "Hwanin's Justice" as the only pieces are the polearm, helm, and armor. The only other set that springs to mind is Isenhart's Armory, which includes a sword, shield, helm, and armor, which would be equippable by an Act III Iron Wolf (not that many people would want an Iron Wolf, and that not many people would chose to outfit him in such if they did). I concede that I have not done a full examination of all the sets, so I may be missing an option or two, although the vast majority include using a piece of jewelry, belt, boots, and/or gloves.

My next major equipment change will take place in the mid to late 40s. New boots and "Sanctuary". I don't know when I'll equip "Treachery", or even what armor I'll use. I'm going to have a high strength score, so maybe I'll just throw it in a 3-socket balrog skin or something like that - may as well use a 3-socket armor that I'll be unlikely to use for anything else.

The one (perhaps only) concern I have with the build is the "squish" possibility. Out of necessity, I will be making a significant investment in both strength and dexterity. So far, each level, I've donated two each to those stats, which only leaves one to go to vitality. I get 3 life for each point spent in vitality, which means most levels my life is increasing by just 5 (you get two free life with each level up). Eventually, I can stop with strength, which means I'll be on a 2/3 rotation between dexterity and vitality, but that's still just an average of 10 per level.

Which brings my back to my previous point about learning more technique in my fighting skills. Cloak of Shadows definitely helps. Mind Blast has a chance of conversion. Traps can be cast anywhere you can see (so you can cast traps inside rooms you have not physically entered). Even with a max block, I'm going to have to learn to fight differently than walk up, start kicking.

 

The thing is, even with respecs, there's only so much I can do about the strength/dexterity investment. I need 158 strength just for the boots I want to use - which is also why I mention I may as well use a fairly heavy piece of elite armor for "Treachery" - I'm going to have the strength regardless. Ditto for dexterity - I need max block, so that's about a 2.5 point allocation to dexterity per level as well. Let's take level 80 just for simplicity sake. At that point, I would have gained around 400 stat points. Of those, about 300 of them have to be spent on strength and dexterity.

Once you do the math, counting what you get to start, 2 per level up, 3 per point in vitality, and some assorted +life/vita equipment I'll have available, I'm looking at approximately 800-900 life at that level. Most of the melee oriented characters I have played up to this point have had close to double that amount. Of the few that have not (like a paladin most notably), they still had over 1000 in life, and coupled that with a high defense score that lowered their chance of being hit. A life total of that size and a low defense score for me usually means I'm playing a caster, or a missile character (my WWS zon only has around 700 life, and no shield) and is played with the idea of not getting hit much.

The only other option I'll have available to me to reduce damage is Fade. String of Ears may not be a bad idea to use in conjunction. This can prove quite the challenge.

The other odd thing about this character is my resistances uncharacteristically (for me) suck. Everything worked out reasonably OK for fire and lightning, but my cold and poison resistances will be negative once I go to nightmare. I suspect this will be a problem that sorts itself out as I move towards end-game gear. "Sanctuary" will provide a minimum of 50% res all, and my end game weapon has 41% res all. Add in the two Malah rewards for normal and nightmare, and I've already completely overcome the hell penalty.

 

OK, did Baal runs on p8 and leveled to 50. (When your clvl is in the low 40s, you actually gain TWO levels for each Baal run.) Equipped my dual shadow claws and Sanctuary. I got a good roll on Sanctuary for resists - 64% (range is 50-70), and a not so great roll on defense - 138% (range is 130-160). Obviously, I was more concerned about the former than the latter, especially since Mals don't grow on trees, and I only wanted to make one. That, along with a few other gear switches, completely solved my resistance issues. When I started NM, all of my resistances except poison were maxed, and even poison is around 60%. So with the Malah quest reward in NM, combined with the 41% on Jade Talon, my resists are completely covered even for hell difficulty.

Skill wise, here's where I stand: Maxed Shadow Master. She's actually level 28 when I cast it. All of my other skills from the SD tree are level 9, which is more than adequate. I'm already well into the range of diminishing returns, and the only thing more points will meaningfully change is the duration (each additional point is worth 12 seconds). Since the first point is worth one minute, level 9 means I have to reset my buffs about once every two and a half minutes.

I am close to maxing, but have not yet completely maxed DTalon. With my current equipment setup, I have DTalon at level 24, which is exactly the level you need to get 5 kicks. I think I will be able to get to level 30 for a 6th kick, but not until I have my end-game gear available, and so there's no real point in pumping it further right now.

Which means I'm working on traps. My thinking is I'm probably better off pumping Death Sentry first, as that increases the range and gives a 12% damage synergy to Lightning Sentry. Although I haven't really needed a lot of traps up to this point. When I was running Baal, I set up DS and LS prior to each minion wave, but on players 8, the damage being dealt was pretty minimal. Even the DS explosions were only knocking off about 10% of the monsters health. (Except the second wave - a mummy explosion or two was typically enough to wipe out the skeletons.)

I'm starting to use CoS more, as it is very helpful against anything ranged. They basically stand there doing nothing until you are next to them. My Shadow master loves spamming Mind Blast - seriously, I think it's her favorite skill. She has access to all skills at this point, and she is very exuberant in entering combat. Oftentimes she dragon flights across the screen to engage enemies.

No problems on NM so far though. It appears that p5 is still my player setting of choice. I'm still one kick killing most stuff with that. I've also started devoting more to vitality. Once I equipped Sanctuary, not only did I get a boost to my block rate, but I forgot that it comes with +20 dexterity as a preset mod. So for the past couple of levels I've been doing 2 strength, 0 dexterity, 3 vitality. Every little bit helps.

 

You know, that's not a bad idea at all - starting off as a kicksin - the easiest and quickest to play, especially in the early going when all you care about is slogging through and gaining levels, and then respecing to either a trapsin or MAsin after you're level 40 or so.

As I commented on earlier, traps - especially on higher player settings - are near useless with only a few points in them. However, once synergized they are extremely powerful. You're going to need a good 40 skill points to have two useful, synergized traps, which pretty much puts having anything resembling an enjoyable build centered around traps out of the question for normal difficulty.

If the goal is just to get through Normal as quickly as possible, I'd definitely go the kicksin route. I played through Act III, IV, and V on Sunday in a couple of hours, only half paying attention while football was on.

 

I would recommend against it. While DTalon is the best skill to use for pure kickers, it is the worst skill to use in conjunction with a lot of the other chargeup skills because the bonus effects are only applied to the first kick in the series, and will only apply to the one monster that is hit by it. In the time it takes you to hit three times to charge the skill and then do the DTalon sequence as the finisher, you would have done more damage by just kicking.

You would pick a different finisher if you're working on the MA tree. Some finishers (I think DTail is the most popular, but I'd have to check) strike once, but hit everything that is in melee range, and the finisher is released on all of them. So for MA assassins, they typically only put one point in DTalon as a prerequisite to the other finishers.

If you wanted to play around with the MA skills, you'd pretty much have to respec now, and then respec again once you get the first quest in NM completed.

 

OK, did some work on Act I NM last night, and the assassin is butt-kickin' good. Espeically the Shadow Master - I think she could solo NM on her own. I got lightning bolts flying, meteors dropping in from orbit, and ice shard flying everywhere, and that doesn't even count the traps. Fully developed, the SM is 20 points VERY well spent.

I've been thinking about your build as well, and for a trapper, the SM is probably very optional. As I would envision a trapper, you're probably going use Lightning Sentry as your main damage source. LS has three synergies, all of which give the same 12% synergy bonus: Death Sentry, Charged Bolt Sentry, and Shock Web. Prior to respecs, Shock Web was usually the first heavily invested skill, as it was a decent skill for levelling (most people preferred it to Charged Bolt Sentry), and the points gave the same synergy bonus to LS that you'd get from the other traps later on. Since your starting off as a kicker, the decision between SWeb and CBS is moot, as you'll never actually have to use either skill, and the synergy benefits are identical.

So, you're definitely going to be maxing both LS and DS as you first two skills, and after that, whichever one you want between SWeb and CBS. And that's when the decision of whether or not to invest in Shadow Master becomes problematic. While you'll have enough points to eventually max that skill, you still have another synergy to your traps available, and taking along a Shadow means you're missing out on another 240% (20*12) synergy damage. If traps are your primary means of killing stuff, that's a lot to give up. I think I'd rather have the extra synergy for my traps.

The other thing I'd consider (and I know you said you wanted a "pure" trapsin) is maintaining a smallish investment in DTalon. I would shoot for skill level 12 for three kicks - and that's 12 counting all bonus skills. With the ability to get MA claws on switch, level 12 should be attainable with just a few points. Or, if you would prefer the switch to be to a weapon that carries some CB, then I'd say that you could settle for level 6, which I think would still work, but would be less than ideal. There's a huge +25% AR bonus for every level of DTalon, so hitting isn't a problem even if you don't have a great dexterity or a lot of points in the skill. Heck level 12 would be +300% AR.

The reason I'd recommend DTalon is twofold. First, if you have to go into melee, whether by choice or by getting surrounded, you need SOMETHING other than your regular attack. DTalon, with it's knockback property is quite handy for that. I've gotton surrounded with my current assassin, and you can "shoot your way out" with that skill. The second, and perhaps more important benefit of DTalon is for act bosses. A little bit of CB in your equipment will make dealing with bosses much easier than traps alone. (Your synergized traps will be hitting for thousands of points of damage, but landing a few CB shots early in the fight will greatly reduce the amount of hits they'll need to get through it.) Remember, you are capped at 5 active traps at any given time, and your maxed out LS trap gets 10 shots before it expires. It fires about once per second, so you have 10 seconds after casting 5 traps to do something, and I would suggest the something you should be doing is using DTalon.

So looking at skill point allocation, I'd shoot for something like this:

Shadow Disciplines: Fade, Burst of Speed, Cloak of Shadows, and Mind Blast are skills that I've found very useful, but all are one-point wonders. I use BoS and CoS the most, but that's because my Shadow has a fondness for MB. That's four points, and you'll need a point in Claw Mastery and Psychic Hammer as prerequisites.

There are two optional one point wonders in this tree that I'd also consider: Venom and Weapon Block. You're already investing in all the pre-requisites for both of them, so it would require just two additional points. Venom is essentially free damage (and not an insignificant amount even at relatively low levels) for any skill in the Martial Arts tree (but not the traps). Even if you only occassionally use DTalon, why wouldn't use want more damage on it, especially since it only requires one more skill point? Weapon Block would be advisable if you plan on dual wielding claws. One hard point and +skills will get you to around a 50% block rate, and so to me, it's a no brainer that you want that if you aren't using a shield.

So the SD tree would require at least 6 points, but likely 8 points. One point in everything besides Shadow Warrior and Shadow Master.

The MA tree you'll have whatever you need to get to either 6 or 12 in DTalon. Say 1-5ish points depending on your decision.

The rest is in the Traps tree, and I would recommend a 20 point investment in:

Lightning Sentry
Death Sentry
Charged Bolt Sentry
Shock Web

I'd probably go LS and DS first, probably in that order, and it doesn't matter the order for the last two.

So we have:

SD: 8 points
MA: 5 points (I'm assuming you'll go to level 12)
Traps: 81 points (there's a single prerequisite skill (Fire Blast) to all four traps, so that's where the extra 1 point comes from)

That's a very doable 94 point skill setup. In fact, it's doable even if you need a bit more than 5 points in DTalon to get to Skill level 12.

 

Not to be nitpicky, but I think you give me too much credit in calling my character an MAsin. Most MAsins utilize at least one chargeup along with a finisher, and the only skill in the entire MA tree I have invested in is DTalon. My character would more aptly be called a K/Tsin, for Kicker/Trapper.

I suppose for skills, I should break them up into pre-buffs, utility and attack skills.

For pre-buffs, I always make sure I have a Shadow Master active. I have two +3SD claws on switch, so I cast that at level 28. I typically prebuff with both Burst of Speed and Venom, which are both currently at level 9. Once I equip Treachery, I'll have Venom autocast at level 15. Seeing as how Venom is essentially free damage, I went and spent the one point in it even though I'll get it for free later, because I already had all the prerequisites, and I wanted the extra damage until I get around to making Treachery (probably in a Balrog Skin, as I cannot see what other purpose I can possibly use that 3-socket armor).

The main utility skills are Cloak of Shadows, Mind Blast, and Death Sentry, all of which I cast situationally. CoS shuts everything down until you get into melee range. Missile enemies stop firing, Shamans and Mummies stop resurrecting, Maggots stop laying eggs, Venom Lorads don't use thier inferno breath, etc. So in areas where I encounter them I use it. In areas where there are mostly melee monsters, it's largely useless as once you move into melee range to fight them they can see you again. It also gives a decent reduction to enemey defense, but it's not like I have trouble hitting stuff when I don't use it.

Mind Blast is spammed by my SM, but I do use it myself on occassion. It stuns enemies for a short time, and has a small chance (around 25% or so at my current slvl) to convert an enemy monster to fight on my side. The second affect is more beneficial than the first, as the stun length is only around 3-4 seconds, and is halved in NM and halved again in hell difficulty. It's really only useful when cast against a pack, and even if you only get a couple of monsters to convert, it draws enemy fire away from you and to them. The duration of the conversion is much longer than the stun duration. I'd guess the duration at around 10-15 seconds.

Death Sentry is useful against packs when I'm not too concerned about taking damage, as soon as the first one drops, the others start taking damage. So I use Mind Blast in conjunction with CoS against more dangerous groups, and DS against less dangerous foes.

For offensive skills, unless you want to count DS as one, all I have is DTalon. Currently at level 24 with (I think) 18 hard points invested in the skill. The battle tactics are as I outlined in the previous paragraphs, and then get kickin'.

That is for now. I envision a couple of changes as the character progresses. For starters, once I equip Treachery and its wonderful +45% IAS, I will not require BoS to reach the last break point for DTalon, so I'll switch to fade for the %DR. Secondly, once I hit hell difficulty, and drop the player count to no more than 3, traps, most notably LS, will come to the forefront in my skill selection. I'll still use CoS and MB, but traps will be used the most in combat, along with a healthy dose of DTaoln of course. As I said previously, even though my traps are getting more powerful with every level, they are still slow to kill stuff on high player count games.

 

In the many guides I have read, a 3fpa is the fastest kick I've seen. Usually you can trust SSoG's guides, but in this case, it seems general opinion is against him.