Diablo II Single Player Thread - 2

Yeah - I don't usually do my first gambling bonanza until I'm well into normal - I'm probably level 30-something before I have hit the 2.5 million gold mark. I have stashed many +1 to +3 skill tree amulet I've gambled over the games, and most of those have some type of suffix to boot. (Upon gambling one with a suffix, I naturally sell of the suffix-less ones.) My particular favorites are the ones with the "of luck" suffix. At this point, I probably have a +1 to +3 of just about every skill tree in the game. (Except +3 to paladin defensive auras - I probably have gambled them, there's just no way I'd keep it.)

Point taken. And I guess I was like that for a while with TR's Adjudication. Of course, I never did complete that set, because I didn't find the ammy until I switch to SP, and so I no longer had the armor.

 

I've never made a sorceress without warmth, so I cannot even say whether or not I agree. One hard point and some +skills (I think you need either 6 or 7 altogether) double your mana recovery rate. I suppose if you have an insight merc that your mana recovery rate would be fine, but I always dropped a point in there to help with the early levels, as that's when mana issues are at their worst. It's passive so it's always on, and it's only one point - it's not like you have to invest in never to be used prerequisites to get that skill.

It almost certainly won't. Even if you find a "powered" ammy (just remembered that - static is a weapon prefix that adds lightning damage) with a really good suffix, like "of the whale", "of luck" or "of life everlasting", that one extra point in skills isn't going to make up for 30% resist all. The only way you'd be better off with a powered ammy is if you can get that 30% resist all elsewhere without making some equipment sacrifices.

I've said it before and I'll say it again - Mara's, IMO, is the most useful item in the game, no matter what class you are playing. So I'm certainly not disparaging that as your choice for end game equipment. I was just thinking what I'd be using between levels 45-67 when Mara's wasn't available, and if I'm only using one tree, it's an easy decision.

 

I get it now. Yes, I agree that you're still just a lightning sorceress if you sunk just one point into warmth. I hardly played at all yesterday - I just did one Countess run (got a Sol and Fal, so not bad), and did my first pit run (nothing). I like the current maps I have. It is one where it's actually quicker to go from the Black Marsh wp to get to the pit. In fact, the Pit is just into the Tamoe Highlands, and the Black Marsh wp is right by the exit to the area, and right next to the Tower. (As an aside, if it's a Tower, why do you go down the levels?)

The map of the pit itself is less than stellar, shaped like an upside-down Y, so you have to backtrack a bit to clear it, but it doesn't take too long (especially with Vigor) and because it's so short getting there to begin with, it's something I can live with. I think I'd rather level up a little bit before progressing too far. Now that I'm in hell, I'd like to have all of my end game gear equipped, which requires level 82 in this case.

 

It's the left hand rule for level 1 of the maggot lair to the stairs down, and the right hand rule for level 2 of the maggot lair. Of course, that doesn't help you much if the stairs are on the opposite side of the map, but at least it prevents you from doing the entire map to find the stairs down.

AFAIK, there is no system in place to find the right room in TR's tomb. It seems like even though the map is "random", the tomb is invariably very far from the entrance.

I don't believe so. I have, let me think... exactly zero ethereal 4-socket threshers. Although that does lead me to a couple of questions...

Are they threshers or giant threshers? (Both are elite items.) And aren't cryptic axes (the elite version of either the halberd or the polearm, I forget which) the polearms with the most damage? Or is it just a question of availability? Although it seems strange that you'd find 4 eth-threshers and no eth-cryptic axes. Although threshers probably have somewhat lower strength requirements as an advantage.

 

Right - I don't think the damage difference is that significant, although the minimum strength requirement may be.

I forgot about the giant poleaxe. Clearly, the giant poleaxe is the elite verison of the poleaxe, which means the cryptic axe is the elite version of the halberd.

 

Damn it all to hell. My dream of getting everything down to a 5% chance of hitting me ranges from highly unlikely (in the case of regular monsters) to totally and inconceivably impossible (in the case of superuniques and bosses).

I did some research on chance to hit ratios. The following information assumes that the difference between you and the monster trying to hit you is 5 or less. There's a penalty assessed to monster's chances if he's more than 5 levels lower than you, and there's a bonus assessed if he's more than 5 levels higher than you. So this chart is a fairly accurate summation of your chance of hitting and being hit for characters between level 80-90.

• If your defense = monster AR, the monster has a 50% chance of hitting you - which makes sense
• Your defense = 3x monster AR, 25% chance of getting hit
• Your defense = 4x monster AR, 20% chance of getting hit
• Your defense = 6x monster AR, 15% chance of getting hit
• Your defense = 9x monster AR, 10% chance of getting hit
• Your defense = 19x monster AR, 5% chance of getting hit

All I can say is holy diminishing returns. You need to more than double your defense to go from a 10% chance down to a 5% chance.

That already sounds very daunting, but before we make any final assessments, we need to find out what kind of AR monsters have in hell difficulty. I visited the Arreat Summit, and surprisingly, there is not a heck of a lot of difference in monster ARs as you proceed through acts once you reach hell difficulty. (The differences are substantial in nightmare, and huge differences exist in normal.) In each act, the low ARs are around 1.5K, and the high ARs are around 4.5K.

But that explains why I'm a little under 10% for most stuff. My current defense is 18.5K, so that means everything with an attack rating under 2K I'll have less than 10% chance of getting hit. However, in order to reach the 5% threshold, even assuming the minimum 1.5K AR, I'd need to get my defense up to about 28.5K

If we assume an average AR of about 3K, we can see this is a big problem. I will need a defense of 27K just to get under the 10% threshold, nevermind 5%. Realistically, you'd need about 57K defense for all regular monsters to have a 5% chance, which is an unrealistic total to reach (at least for this character).

Once we start considering superuniques and bosses, the results look really grim. I'm gaining about 500 defense per level up, so a realistic total for me by the time I reach late hell is a defense of about 25K. That would be level 87 with all skill quests completed.

The Smith - 4.4K ~15% chance of hitting me
Andariel - 4.7K ~15%-20% chance of hitting me
Duriel - 3.9K (I was surprised that he's less than Andariel) 10%-15% chance to hit me.
Mephisto - 7.0K ~20%-25% chance to hit me
Izual - 6.9K ~20%-25% to hit me
Diablo - 8.1K ~25% chance of hitting me
Anceints - 2.1K(!) ~5-10% chance of hitting me (nyah, nyah Ancients! I fart in your general direction!)
Lister and Company - 7.4K ~20%-25% chance of hitting me
Baal - 9.8K ~30%-35% chance of hitting me

If we want to get silly, let's take a look at Lister. He's level 88, so here's what you need assuming you're between level 83-93:

7.4K defense - 50%
22K defense - 25%
30K defense - 20%
67K defense - 10%
140K defense - 5%

I don't think 140K defense is even possible - not even if you could pick any defensive piece you wanted in the game and any skill combination. A barbarian with +12 warcries with a maxed shout, maxed iron skin, and a defiance merc with lots of +skill gear can't even get there.

Final verdict - I can expect typical Joe Monster to have somewhere between high single digits and low double digits chance of hitting me throughout the game. Bosses will have a 20%-25% chance of hitting me (except Baal who's more like 30%-35%).

EDIT: But 75% of all attacks that get through will be blocked, so I'll be getting hit pretty infrequently nonetheless.

 

Act IV is always the shortest Act. Not only is it small geographically compared to the others, but from the second wp to the end of the act, the map is pretty much fixed. (OK, the River of Flame is technically variable, but you know if you just keep heading to the top right corner, you'll find the exit.)

While I was intially quite disappointed with the results regarding defense, after some more thought, I've concluded it's really not a bad deal. I'm going to be hit less than 20% of the time by anything short of an act boss or a superunique, so I'm getting hit about 3 to 4 times less often than a character with a defense of say, 5000 or so (which is about best case scenario for anything that isn't a barbarian, paladin, or werebear). When I further consider that I can block 75% of the attacks that actually DO get through the defense, I'm probably getting hit less than 5% of the time (less than 20% chance of getting hit, and 1/4 of 20% is 5%). So it wasn't a bad deal after all.

Note that it also works in reverse - that you need more and more AR to reach 95% chance of hitting (or for a monster to reach 95% against you). With conviction though, I know I have that. When I look at my character sheet against a typical monster, I'm between 75% and 80% chance to hit. But that's pre-conviction. That means my base attack rating is about three times the monsters base defense. However, since Convicition gives him a 90% defense penalty, it means with Conviction my AR is about 30 times his defense.

So it seems like anything in your toolbox that would lower monster defense by a percentage is the means of getting to the 95% hit chance. Conversely, it's very difficult to do just by increasing your attack rating. A one point investment in Battle Cry does more for a barbarain's attack rating than an Amazon maxing penetrate.

I did hit level 80 last night - defense now at 19.2K - and while it was not a great night for item or rune finding, I did get one item I did not previously have - the scepter for Milabrega's set, which completes the set for me. It will prove useful if I try a FoH paladin after this. (I was thinking that with a FoH paladin, it probably makes sense to drop one point sacrifice and zeal just to have cheap melee attack to leech back mana. Unlike this build, a FoH build is all about +skills, so just a one point investment will get you to a 5-hit zeal, and since I'm running conviction, I don't need to worry much about my AR.)

 

I don't even have to play test this to answer - he has a decent amount of CB, and source of amp damage. Anything that's a single target is not goign to be particularly difficult (or take particularly long) to kill.

No, I haven't, and I don't have a ton of mf on him because of his gear choices. I don't carry around measly 3% or 4% mf charms, and the only charms in my gear that have any mf are there because of something else they do for me. So right now, my mf is 50-something. Even with Gheeds, it would only increase to about 80.

Absolutely it would have to be a caster. They only need +skills to be effective. I agree that your summoning necro is great, and the only other real contenders would be sorceresses as far as general classes go. That said, any caster-geared character CAN be a good mfer. Hammerdins, Elemental druids et al, can all do it.

Wands also drop with 1/3 frequency - not just heads. Same thing with scepters - anyone can use them, but they are still coded as if they were class-specifc in terms of drop ratios. And staves are also coded as class specific, even though only orbs technically are. The basic rule is that anything that can give +skills to one particular character class drops with 1/3 the frequency as everything else in the TC, except claws, where the penalty is only 2/3.

I'd say the major reason (aside from luck) that you don't have any necro heads are their their small number and the TCs they are in. First of all - there's only 3 of them (as compared to about 10 wands). Secondly, none of them are "normal" weapons (but there's three or four normal wands). Finally, two of them are elite, and they are in TCs 84 and 87. The only skull that's even relatively common is Homunculus - the other two are extremely rare items.

Wasn't your last zon a hybrid? I loved my WWS zon, and I was actually thinking of going completely the other way for my next character - a poison/lightning javazon, who uses a spear on switch.

 

Yikes! If that's the criteria, by my count you have one choice. The only unique bow or xbow I'm aware of that comes with resistances to more than one elemental type is WWS, with 40% resist all. IIRC, that was the exact reason why I picked that bow to make my build around. Now there are a ton of high damage, high +skills bows out there - both class specific and not, and there are even a few xbows out there to consider. If you shael them, xbows aren't that bad. They can actually make up for thier lower rate of fire by inflicting more damage. Hellrack and Buriza (which can be upped for extra goodliness) spring immediately to mind.

The only runeword that springs to mind that can be made with a bow and carries resistances is Silence - and that carries a lot of resistances - +75 to all I think. I'm not 100% sure, but I think Silence is one of those "any weapon" runewords. But there are a few other mods on it that make it less than desirable - I'm pretty sure it has hit causes monster to flee. And it's also asusming you have a good 6 open socket bow lying around to make it in.

If you don't get resistances on your bow, you'll need to make up for it elsewhere - a runeword armor will be very necessary - something like Lionheart would get you started, and CoH for 65% resist all if you can use it - I don't know what type of armor you made it in.

Helms, gloves, boots, belts, amulets and rings all come with resistances too. And charms of course. It's not that you cannot hit max resists with little on your bow, it just goes a long way in dictating subsequent equipment selections. (And to be fair, the issue isn't the bow, it's that you don't have a shield.)

 

You're right - the only bad point is that it has a 25% chance to make monsters flee, which would drive me crazy at times. But if you can live with that, it's definitely very solid otherwise.

Well, you could carry two bows - one for when you are fighting nasty elemental stuff, and one for when you're not. Also rare bows (of any kind) can come with up to +2 amazon skills, and of course all the amazon bows do as well. With silence, you may be able to take your pick of bows, assuming you have them. It also comes with -20% requirements, so that takes the requirements of a hydra bow down to more reasonable levels.

Crusader bow: S97/D121, meaning with silence, it's S78/D97.
Hydra bow: S134/D167, or with silence, it's S107/D134.

The first thing to consider is the dexterity requirement is largely irrelevant. As a bowazon, you are going to be making a hefty investment into dexterity, and you'll likely go over 200 anyway, so by the time you are level 60ish and able to equip these bows, you're going to have more than that dexterity regardless.

So the decision boils down to the strength requirements, and I agree that if the decision comes down to the 29 point difference between a crusader or hydra, I'd take the crusader. However, that is assuming you have no other strength requirements on your gear that would require you to go considerably higher. For example, if you're going with CoH which you made in an elite armor that has a strength requirement in excess of 100 anyway, then there's no reason not to go for a hydra bow.

The other thing you have going for you is item availability. Larzuk gives maximum sockets on items, so if you don't have such a bow on hand, all you have to do is find the white version and give it to Larzuk, and you're guaranteed your six sockets.

Um does not give resistances in weapons. It gives some type of melee mod like deadly strike or open wounds or some such - in other words, not what you're looking for.

I'm not positive about the name (because jewels have stupid names on a lot of them - but scintillating jewel of fervor sounds good to me), but such a jewel, irrespective of what it's called, does exist. The resist all is a prefix, and the IAS is a suffix, so it's possible. And yes, they are rare. Hellrack is actually pretty damn fast with two shaels, because it comes with 20% IAS on it as a base mod. So it's 60% IAS with 2xshael, which ain't bad.

The thing is, if you're going with two bows, you need that second bow to do something that the first bow can't do as well. Presumably, you're going to specialize in at least cold skills, and possibly fire skills as well. If that's the case, then the only thing WWS would do that Silence couldn't do better is fire level 20 magic arrows as it's base attack type against dual immunes. That's a pretty narrow niche. I think WWS is an excellent selection for when your boawazon is growing up (I think the level requirement is 30-something), but it doesn't really fill in anything that Silence doesn't do better, and I can envision very few situations which would call for it's use.

It depends on what type of build you're considering (any ideas yet?), but if you are going to fully max your cold skills, then carrying something that fires fire based arrows (like and upped Kuko), or carries big elemental damage (like a Hellrack) could be a solid solution against cold immunes. If you're going to split between cold and fire skills, then CI/FI would be your bigger problem, so you'd want something that would give big physical damage. Eaglehorn gives big bonuses to damage and attack rating per level, ITD, and comes with +1 all skills. Widowmaker seems to give everything that WWS does (except the resists) and more. It also fires magic arrows, has deadly strike, and gives +5 to guided arrow, so it's ITD that also works on champs and bosses. Obviously, if you happen to have a Windforce lying around, that would be a solid choice as well.

Don't get me wrong - I loved the WWS zon I made a while back. I upped it and used that bow from the time I hit the level requirement to use the base version, and kept on using it for the rest of the game. It just doesn't strike me as a particularly great choice to pair with Silence, unless you are considering a combination cold and physical build. The only way I'd make WWS my backup bow is if I were going to max strafe. WWS has a base 2% chance to cast amp damage, and could be a solution against cold immunes, and also would be able to break a combinatino cold/physical immune. The thing is, with only that 2% chance to cast amp damage, strafe is the only skill you could use where you could get the ctc amp fairly reliably.

So I guess you could use WWS, but it's build dependent. Like I said, what are you going for? Cold+Fire, Cold+Physical, Fire+Pysical or Cold+Passive? Also, what's the primary attack, and what's the backup attack?