Diablo II Single Player Thread - 2

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It's certainly not a classic tri-elementalist - it's like a tri-elementalist lite. The only way it could be is if I dumped all of my post-level 80 skill points into the lightning tree - and I have no plans of doing that. However, with Static Field, I'll probably do more damage than the merc against dual immunes. I'll static them down to half their life, and then switch over to lightning. TS lasts for about 2 minutes at that skill level (I think it's 116 seconds to be exact), so it can be recast easily enough, and I'll probably have it active all the time.

Keep in mind that the only function my mercenary serves is to stand there and get in the way of opposing monsters. I don't actually expect him to kill anything, which is why I planned the build with a few points in lightning in the first place. The only goal for the merc was to maximize his survival time. He's a defiance mercenary, and his equipment includes Crown of Theives (for life leech), Shaftstop (for damage reduction), and Kelpie Snare (for slow monsters by 75%). That's about the best I can do to keep him alive.

That said, if I were to build a true tri-elementalist, with about equal damage output of all three trees, I'd take Fire Wall, Thunderstorm, and Frozen Orb - the three skills that don't require synergies to be effective, and then sprinkle the remaining points in to the masteries. I doubt that's a hell-viable build though - I think you need at least one hard-hitting tree, and preferably two. That's what I got here - very good Fire and Cold damage, with Lightning as an ancillary damage dealer. And my thinking with TS was similar to yours - it's basically free damage every second.

EDIT: There are TS builds out there though - if you max TS and Lightning Mastery, and have some +skills, it's very nice. Level 25 TS and Level 25 LM gives an average pulse damage of 1775. And you can get that with just 45 skill points, counting prerequisites, leaving plenty of points left over for a second element to be added in.

 

I've actually been thinking a bit about my next build - the sorceress is going so well, I may try another variant. Although, I always wanted to make a conviction paladin, and now that I have a Baranar's Star, I actually can. We'll see.

The current sorceress is now level 67 or so, and is in Act V Nightmare. I'm still on players8, and I've experienced very little difficulty up to this point. Since I'm still killing very quickly I see no reason to lower the player setting. I won't be able to maintain players8 in hell without really slowing down though. I haven't settled on a definite player setting for that yet, although I'll probably start at p3 and see how it goes.

I'm switched out my merc's Crown of Theives for Blackhorn's Face, so the total slowing mods on my merc are now at 95%. Any monster he is working on moves glacially slow.

At this point, I'm working exclusively on the fire tree, and I'll probably stay with that for the rest of my skill points.

Lightning is definitely done. I have a point in everything except energy shield, and all those skills are level 10. It turns out that Chain Lightning does do considerably more damage than regular Lightning. At my current skill level, Lightning tops out at around 350 damage, whereas Chain Lightning gets up to 420. I always thought the advantage of Chain Lightning was that it bounced around enemies, and so the total damage was greater when there were multiple enemies on the screen, but that regular lightning was superior when targeting a single source. Apparently this is only true when you consider synergies. While L and CL synergize each other, and both receive a synergy bonus from Charged Bolt and Nova, all of the bonuses are greater for Lightning. CL gets 6% from L, and 4% from CB and Nova, while Lightning gets 8% from all three.

My cold tree is also probably done. I have FO at level 30, and CM at level 17 (I do have a +1 cold skill charm, which is why I have +10 to cold). I've done a bit of research on cold resistant monsters in hell, and it turns out that about 25% of monsters are cold immune, 40% have some resistance to cold (generally 25%-50%, whihc is not displayed in game), and the remaining 35% of monsters have no resistance to cold whatsoever. I'm still not sold that more points in CM is a sound investment, based strictly on those figures. Cold immunes won't be broken, and since -100% is the floor for all resistances, 60% of all monsters won't take any more damage based on adding more points in CM. If I want to up my cold damage, I can do more by adding points into Ice Bolt, as that will add 2% to my Frozen Orb damage, and will affect all monsters not immune to cold.

Which brings me to fire, which at this point, is still a bit under-developed. I have maxed Fire Ball (lvl 29), have spent one hard point in Fire Mastery (lvl 10), and I'm currently working on Fire Bolt. After that, I have a decision to make. I know I opted out of Meteor for this build, and now I'm wonding if that was a good idea or not. I was originally going to pump Fire Mastery, but I'm not sure the math is on that side or not. I have to do some research to see how FM is calculated. If it's just added as I suspect, I may be better off investing in Meteor, even though it will cost me two points just to get Meteor available. After that 1st point in FM, all subsequent points give a 7% bonus to fire damage. Meteor gives a 14% boost. So, I'll need to spend two points to get Blaze and Fire Wall before I can place a point in Meteor, but it seems like I'll break even after four skill points, when I'll have a 28% boost to Fire Ball either way, and after that, Meteor takes the lead and never looks back. Since I'll end up earning about 95-100 total skill points, I certainly will have more than 4 points to devote once I finish the base build.

 

Oh certainly, I'm only considering Meteor for the synergy benefit - I would imagine I'd use Meteor, at best infrequently, for things like Act bosses that stand still. That's why I'm considering dumping points into Meteor - it's the same 14% synergy to Fire Ball as you get from Fire Bolt. Remember this isn't a Meteorb, as I will have invested 87 skill points before even considering points into Meteor. And it's not really an Orbitaller either. It's kind of a hybrid between the two, that also utilizes Hydra with some additional points in the Lightning tree. I don't know what the hell to call it. Hydra and lightning use makes it distinct from both of those builds. The Fire Ball damage is equivalent to the Meteorb build, but points go into Bolt instead of Meteor for Hydra damage. The only damage you miss out on from Frozen Orb in the Orbitaller build is the meager 2% synergy from Ice Bolt. As far as I can tell, I've developed the skills I like the most, and have acheived extremely similar damage.

So the decision is between only Meteor and Fire Mastery. Hydra is actually a decent scout spell, and it's damage is increased by points in Fire Bolt, so Bolt increases both of my fire attack spells, and it's a no brainer that it's getting maxed. But since I use Fire Ball much more than Hydra, I'm doing whatever I can for Fire Ball instead of worrying about upping the damage from Hydra (which Fire Mastery would do).

The other benefit of sinking points into Meteor is that Fire Mastery gets the full benefit of +skills. It doesn't work like most other synergies where only hard points count - FM functions at the level it says on your skill tree. The reason why you'd pump FM if you prefer Meteor is because Meteor doesn't receive any benefit from Fire Bolt, so it's 7% versus nothing.

Regarding the laptop - while I've never attempted to play D2 on one, I imagine the touchpad would make it near-impossible to play the game.

How are you killing stuff with your bone necro? Are you actually entering melee (and if so, did you spend a point in Poison Dagger?) or do you go with a missile weapon - especially crossbows? Something like Ichorstring works great for the first couple of Acts, and Hellcast (not Hellrack) is also fantastic early on, although it's level requirement prevents it from being used in the first couple of Acts. Of course, Pus Spitter would also be worwth looking into as a switch, for it's great poison damage and +2 to necro skill levels, although that also has a level requirement of around 30ish.

I'm considering a poison necro, largely because of the specialty weapons you have available for such a build. Pus Spitter would be the weapon switch, but there's a natural progression of unique daggers for your melee weapon. You'd start with the Diggler at level 11 for the IAS and ITD. Then you'd progress to the Jade Tan Do at level 19 for the huge poison damage. Level 32 would give you Spineripper, with +1 skills, IAS, ITD, and life leech. You'd finish up with Blackbog's Sharp at level 38, and probably use that for the rest of the game. It adds 488 poison damage (on top of whatever your poison dagger skill does), has 30% IAS, 50% slows target, and gives +4 Poison Nova, +4 Poison Explosion, and +5 Poison Dagger. (If you haven't guessed, while the poison necro does enter melee, it's hit-and-run, and Lower Resist as opposed to Amp is your curse of choice.)

 

I forgot you were using the Infernal Set, which would pretty much rule out Poison Dagger. As the name implies, the skill only works on a dagger class weapon.

 

OK, I've been doing some research on poison necros, and I think they look viable. I have come up with a proposed build that requires 100 total skill points to complete. Now, 100 is a freakin' ton. Even with all skill quests completed, that means level 89 to finish the build. However, the last skill that will be maxed is Corpse Explosion, and since that's effective long before you reach level 20, it's not nearly so bad. With +skill items, it's functional with just a single point, so even though the build isn't done until level 89, it really can be mostly done with just 81 skill points. So if you figure by the end of nightmare when you've earned 8 free skill points, that's level 73. After that, your Corpse Explosion Skill just gets mo' better.

The thing with the three poison skills is that they all receive huge snyergy bonuses from the other two. Specifically, Poison Dagger gets a 20% bonus for each point spent in the other two, Poison Explosion gets a 15% bonus for each point spent in the other two, and Poison Nova gets a 10% bonus for each point spent in the other two. So you really can't half ass this build. If you're going to do the poison build, you have to do it whole hog.

Build:

Poison and Bone Skills:
Poison Dagger (20)
Poison Explosion (20)
Poison Nova (20)
Corspe Explosion (1+) (Eventually max to 20)
Prerequisites: Teeth (1)
Subtotal: 62 (eventually 81)

Curses:
Lower Resist (1)
Attract (1)
Prerequisites: All the rest (unfortunately) - 8
Subtotal: 10

Summoning:
Skeleton Mastery (1) (Revives get the bonus too.)
Clay Golem (1)
Golem Mastery (1)
Summons Resist (1)
Revive (1)
Prerequisites: Everything else except Fire Golem - 4
Subtotal: 9

Total: 81 (100)

Here's what we're looking at in poison damage. I'm assuming I'll have at least +5 to all skills. (I'll probably have more, but I like to low ball and be pleasantly surprised, than high ball and be disappointed.)

Poison Dagger: 7,929 Poison Damage over 11 seconds, +510% AR
Poison Explosion: 16,975 Poison Damage over 11 seconds
Poison Nova: 3,090 Poison Damage over 2 seconds

As you can see, Poison Nova (PN), while it has the lowest total damage, is your main damage spell, as the poison length is fixed at 2 seconds, irrespective of skill level. You can get 5 PNs in the span of 1 Poison Dagger (PD), and once you figure that in, PN does way more damage. Additionally, PD only works on the creature struck, whereas PN sends out poison in all directions and should (at least in theory) hit everything on the screen. Poison Explosion (PE) works just like CE, in that you need a coprse, it explodes, but the poison damage is based on your skill level, and not tied to monster life. I imagine that CE will still prove to be more useful, as it deals it's damage instantly.

The two curses I'll use the most are Lower Resist and Attract (for obvious reasons). Unfortunately, those two skills require all the other curses as prerequisites. Even assuming just a skill level 6, Lower Resist gives -51% to enemy resistance to all elements, and it CAN break poison immunity. It's definitely a one point wonder though, as once you get to level 6 or 7, it only gains an additional -2% per level after that.

The summons are pretty self-explanatory. I don't have tons of points to spend on skeletons, but revives are always summoned with 200% of the original monster's life, and will provide adequate help. The only thing more points do is increase the number of revives you can have (one per skill level). They do receive the bonus from skeleton mastery, and with a 3 minute life span, that will be good enough. And of course I want a clay golem. Since I have to spend a point on Raise Skeleton and Raise Skeletal Mage as prerequisites for Revive, I'll probably make use of them at least in normal difficulty. Even with just a single point and a couple of +skills, I'll have 2 or 3 of each.

As for equipment, I already know what I want on three of the slots.

Bone Armor:
15% ctc level 10 Bone Armor when Struck
15% ctc level 10 Bone Spear on Striking
+100 mana
+2 necro skillls
Resist All +30% (sweet)
Damage Reduced by 7

Blackbog's Sharp:
+488 poison damage over 10 seconds
adds 15-45 damage
30% IAS
Slows Target 50%
+4 PE, +4 PN, +5 PD

And there is only one possible choice for gloves - Trang-Oul's Claws:
20% FCR
Cold Resist 30%
+2 Curses
and especially: +25% Poison Damage

Now let's revist some of those older numbers, once we consider the weapon and gloves, along with Lower Resist. I'll keep the skill level at 25 for simplicity sake, even though it's definitely higher.

PD: 15,887 poison damage over 11 seconds
PE: 32,040 poison damage over 11 seconds
PN: 5,832 damage over 2 seconds

Those are low ball figures.

 

11 seconds is a long time - that's why PN is your primary spell. The idea is still in the develpment phase at this point. It's not like I'm ditching my FB/Hydra/FO/TS sorceress who needs to be named at some point. I still don't know what to call it. It's most similar to an Orbitaller, as the two dominant spells are FO and FB, but the incorporation of Hydra and TS are not insignificant deviations from the build.

I think what I really want is a poison build of some kind, as I've never done that before. The only other option would some type of javazon, that focused all of her points in the javelin tree (passives would only be 1-pt wonders, and I could ignore the left segment of that tree entirely). Maxed Lightning Strike, Lightning Fury, Poison Javelin and Plague Javelin. Anything else would go towards another synergy.

It might come down to what happens first: Finding a Titan's Revenge, or finding a Homunculus. And then there's still the part about the sorceress being built as a MF character, that I should actually emply to that end for a while.

And I prefer to think of the poison damage on a per second basis myself:

PD about 1,400 per second
PE about 2,900 per second
PN about 2,900 per second

... which still isn't bad

 

If you're to try a poison Necro, it'd be a cry and shame not to don a Bramble armor. It has 25 to 50 percent increased poison damage mod on it. And as unorthodox as it sounds, a Grief weapon might actually surpass Blackbog's due to its sizeable minus poison resist on enemies mod.

But yes, they're both on the pricey/hard to assemble side.

Edit: Actually, no need for Grief. Just use the unique wand (Death's Web) that has the same mod.

 

The only problem with Death's Web (or any non-dagger type weapon) is that I'd lose the ability to use Poison Dagger. (Of course, I could always hold onto Blackbog's on switch.)

As you said, the runes for Grief and Bramble are expensive, and I don't have the necessary runes for either. (Incredicbly I do have a Cham and Jah, but I have no Sur, Ber, or Lo.) It's still in the development phase, regardless. The main reason I wanted to try a poison necro is simply because I never had done one before.

The sorceress is now in hell difficulty, and has just rescued Cain in Act I. Two noteworty events have occured thus far. I ran into my first dual cold/fire immune. This is important because I wanted my sorceress to be both a mf character and a rune finder, and the countess always spawns immune to both cold and fire. A few blasts from static field and then switching over to Chain Lightning absolutely tore him (or perhaps it - it was a unique zombie) apart.

Secondly, while running the masoleum, I landed my first Crown of Ages. It isn't a particularly great version of it, owing to it only having 1 socket (it can get two), but it does have the maximum 15% DR, and an above average resist all of 28% (possible range is 20-30). So not bad. It does seem to be a rather niche piece of equipment though. The +1 skills are nice, and the open socket means you can easily up the res all further, or even add some mf to it, but the minimum requirements make it not for everyone. First, you need to be level 82 just to equip the dang thing, and even then, only if your strength is at least 174. I'm just not sure if that's worth it, unless you're going for a high defense build, as the only thing CoA offers that a Harlequin Crest doesn't is high defense. It's +1 skill as opposed to +2, slightly higher DR%, but no MF, and no bonus to life or mana. The 28% res all is nice of course, but it's not to the point where you couldn't possibly make that up with other equipment. It's a nice helm, but only if you were already planning on taking your strength up to 174 because you were planning on utilizing other equipment.

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Also, I miscalculated the damage difference between investing in Fire Mastery over Meteor. Specifically, I forgot about also needing a point in Inferno. That takes the prerequisites to get Meteor up to 3, and makes me lean towards investing in FM instead. With 3 prereqs, Meteor doesn't become the better skill investment until the 7th skill point after maxing Fire Bolt, at which point I'm all the way up to level 90. Even at level 90, the Meteor path is only slightly more beneficial. At that point it's a measly 7% more fire damage out of Fire Ball. I think I'm better off investing in FM, as that makes Hydra better as well.

As for poison builds, the only other real option is a poison/lightning javezon. There's only two poison skills, so both could be maxed. That build looks like:

Passives - 8 - One each except for decoy and valkyrie

Javelin and Spear:
Poison Javelin (20)
Plague Javelin (20)
Lightning Strike (20)
Lightning Fury (20)
Prerequisites - 4

Total - 92. Definitely doable. Any points after that go into something like Charged Strike or Lightning Bolt as an additional synergy to the two lightning skills. Of the two poison skills, the only one that bears mentioning is Plague Javelin. While Poison Javelin does have the ability to deal decent poison damage (more than plague in fact), the timer is impossibly long. At level 20, it takes 50 seconds to deal all of it's damage. Plague is done in 10 seconds, and it's a very respectable 10K damage in that time.

 

You DO know that synergy and mastery bonus are two different multipliers, right? Once you get your synergy to, say, 100%, you'll get double benefit from the mastery and vice versa. Either or won't do much, you really do want both, even if they're considerably lower for that.

 

I'm assuming you're talking about the sorceress build. To that end, it should be pointed out that ideally, yes, you'd want both synergies and masteries. However, this is a rather odd build in that I'm investing my points in all three trees, just to try it to see if it would work. Lightning is the weak tree - that's just invested in to take care of physical immunes, and get some pulse damage from TS.

The issue is that because of this, I have a limited amount of points to spend in each tree. My two main damage spells I picked for the fire tree are Fire Ball and Hydra, and so naturally, I maxed Fire Bolt to give a mutual synergy to both of them. Once I hit level 80ish, my skill points will slow to a trickle, and I have to decide where to invest those final points. FM will give a mutual syjnergy of 7% to both Fire Ball and Hydra, while Meteor will give a 14% bonus to Fire Ball, and nothing to Hydra. (I already invested the initial point in FM for the 30% bonus the first point gives.)

Since I use Fire Ball much more than Hydra, at first I thought that I'd be better off sinking my final points into Meteor, to maiximize the FB damage. However, it's not like I can just start pumping points into Meteor. I still lack three prerequisites (Inferno, Blaze, and Fire Wall) before I can even sink that initial point into Meteor.

The base build requires 87 points, and estimating that I level this character up to the high 80s, I'll have about 100 points to spend. So I'll break the chart down as follows:

Scenario 1 is I place points in Meteor.

1st three points: Prerequisites, giving a bonus to neither FB nor Hydra
4th point: Meteor - FB Bonus 14%, Hydra Bonus 0%
5th point: Meteor - FB Bonus 28%, Hydra Bonus 0%
6th point: Meteor - FB Bonus 42%, Hydra Bonus 0%
7th point: Meteor - FB Bonus 56%, Hydra bonus 0%.

Second Scenrio - invest points directly into FM, which gives 7% to both. But since I don't have to buy the prerequisites, 7 skill points gets me:

FB bonus 49%, Hydra bonus 49%.

After that, Meteor takes over as the clear winner, but up until the 7th point, I get just as much damage to FB for placing points in FM, and a not bad 49% boost to Hydra as well. Now if I go all the way up to level 90, that gives me 101 points. That would be 14 more than the base build, and Meteor would be the clear cut winner for FB damage. But I would be missing out on a not-insignificant amount of Hydra damage. I go back and forth on this arguement, and now I think I'm leaning towards Meteor again.

 

How sensible.

I've also been thinking of a paladin build. It's nothing new, it's using a high elemental damage weapon, like a Baranar's Star (or any of the various RWs that provide good elemental damage like Famine if I can get my hands on a Ohm) coupled with a high level Conviction. The twist is that I will use Atma's Scarab as my amulet.

That will mean that not only am I getting a huge -def and -res on my enemies, but I'll also have a 5% chance per hit of casting a level 2 amp damage, which with a zealer, is quite often.

Other than that, it's the standard zeal build, of maxing:

Conviction, Zeal, Sacrifice, and probably Holy Shield, just because I cannot see me needing anything else.

 

Quick update - while I did more snow shoveling than D2 playing yesterday, I did have time for a Countess run. (I have a good map, so what the hell.) One of the devilkin bosses I ran into on the way to the Countess dropped a Stormshield! First one since switching to SP. I couldn't believe my eyes. I actually double-checked, because I surely thought it was a rare and not a unique monarch. You never expect to get a Stormshield, but at least it's not a total surprise if Pindleskin drops it or you're doing a pit run or the like.

The other thing I've done is a few Masoleum runs. I hardly ever do this because 1) unless you have a map where the entrance is close to the Cold Plains WP, it takes a while to get there and 2) since the place is crawling with undead, any character that relies on leeching is going to have a tough go at things.

But for my sorceress build, it does offer a few bright spot. For starters, you get to kill Blood Raven on the way in, and she drops as a super unique, which is usually pretty decent. Second, the Masoluem is a level 85 area, just like the Pits, so the drops are pretty good. (But it's only the Masoleum - the neighboring Crypt is not alvl 85.) Third, on hell difficulty, it's a fairly large area - probably about equal in size to the 1st level of the Pits, and just like the Pits, there's a superchest (although it's not gold and sparkly like the one in the Pits, it drops like a superchest). Finally, and most importantly, all of the standard monsters that spawn there only have a natural immunity to lightning. (Uniques, of course, can spawn with an additional immunity, but there's a zero chance of anything spawning both immune to fire and cold, which is the only thing that slows me down.)

The downsides are mostly what I've already mentioned. It's filled with unleechables, so bad for any melee class, and owing to lightning immunity, any character that relies on that for damage is going to want to avoid the area. That area was horrid for my assassin. I did kill Blood Raven, just because I feel honor-bound to complete all the quests, even though that one isn't required, but skipped the two side areas.

I actually haven't advanced my sorceress to any meaningful extent in a few days. I've been doing Countess, Masoleum and Pit runs. I've also reached the point where my Countess is virtually mana free. I don't think I run out of mana while spamming Frozen Orb, and while I can do so while spamming Fire Ball owing to it's maching gun rate of fire, it takes a while.

 

With those last two sentences you highlighted the biggest pros and cons with lightning sorceress builds - the big pro being that they potentially are the highest damaging spells in the game, with the con being that they are mana hungry, and that the damage range is very large. You may get off a 10k lightning bolt that hits multiple targets, or you might get one that hits for 10.

That's one of the things I don't like about lightning sorceress - it's ridiculous that spells like lightning and chain lightning have minimum damages that stay so low - in many cases the minimum is a fraction of 1% of the maximum.

 

I'm now at the Arcane Sanctuary, level 82. I have now equipped Mang Song's Lesson on my switch. A TC87 class-specific unique... one of the hardest items to find in the game, and for me, it's a pre-buff weapon. That's all I can use it for. I love the +5 to all skills, and I use it when I'm prebuffing with Enchant, Frozen Armor, and Thunderstorm, but it's useless as a standard weapon. For starters, I lose the ability to block. The other problem is that I lose all the resistances on Moser's and my resistance socketed Oculus, which together add up to over +100% res all. So when I switch, not only can I not block, but all my resistances are 10% or less... negative in the case of cold and poison.