Diablo II Single Player Thread - 2

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Like I said, I never tried on single player, so it may be worth a shot. I imagine your necro could acquire a leg on normal in no time at all, and then start a hell game and see if it works. It would take 10 minutes, tops.

As for the rune requirements for the socketing recipe, that's pretty cheap. Certianly low enough that you'll find way more of them than the appropriate bows, and that's not counting upgrading runes.

 

That's the argument against Valkyrie. It requires a point in nearly every other skill on that skill tree as a prerequisite, and if you have four other skills you'd like to max, that is a hefty investment. The only positive you get is that the Valkyrie gets the same stat boosts from the skills in that tree as you do, so it's not a complete waste. That said, I agree that with your build, Valkyrie isn't a good investment. Decoy is a solid option for your last few skill points, although Critical Strike and Penetrate are worth mentioning if you are interested in upping your damage or attack rating, respectively.

I cleared Act IV with my WW barb last night. I'm still in Nightmare with my amazon.

 

dmc, you're leveling fast! Nice going.

Haven't had the time to take my sorceress out for a stroll. I reached quest 2 or 3 in Act V Nightmare. Am level 67 and she's still kicking butt

Planning on a bowazon. Never played it, so I'm curious. First I have to finish my new house though

 

Penetrate ups attack rating - Pierce increases the chance of piercing attack. I agree that with Razortail, you'll only need a single point in Pierce. Razortail, a point in Pierce and some +skills will get you very close to the 95% max for Pierce. (Equipment and skills work additively, so it is theoretically possible to exceed 95%, but just like everything else, there's a cap at 95% chance. Therefore, it would in fact be unwise to invest more than a point into Pierce if you are already at or near the 95% mark.)

Penetrate, on the other hand, is a whole different story. It gives a flat boost of +10% to your attack rating for every point spent. (The first point I think gives more than 10%, but each subsequent point is 10%.) The thing is, in order for the piercing attack to activate, you actually have to hit your target, and the best amazons have high attack ratings and chance to pierce.

In my play throughs with bowazons in the past, AR can become a problem in hell difficulty. Many of the bow skills like Multishot and Penetrate, do not give any bonus to AR, and so your AR is directly calculated from your dexterity. Now, if your amazon is walking around with 200 in dexterity and a Raven Frost, it won't be a problem. If she's walking around with 130 in dexterity and not much in the way of AR boosting equipment, it can be. Obviously, you won't be able to tell until you get into hell if your AR is up to snuff, as you never have problems in normal and nightmare with AR.

That's why I said that Penetrate may be of interest as a last skill once your other four are maxed. If you have no problems with hitting stuff, than perhaps Critical Strike is for you. (I must concede, however, that I do not know if Critical Strike applies to only the physical damage or the elemental damage as well.) The amazon has hardly any skills that hit for exclusively physical damage - in fact most skills the physical component is quite small - so Critical Strike would be pretty lame if it were only physical damage and limit its use to amazons whose primary attacks was either: Jab, Fend, Multishot or Strafe.

 

Wait a second - Lycander's gives +4 to bow skills?!?! I was not aware of that... That alone would merit its use.

Well, that defiance merc has to go by the time you hit hell, (although perhaps not if you really do have him equipped with an upped Shaftstop). Shaftstop is already an exceptional armor, so if you upped it to the elite version, I'd be surprised if your merc at level 60-something would meet either the strength or level requirements to use it.

As you are aware, you need several thousands in defense for it to make much of a difference in hell. If a defiance merc is taking the defense of you and he up to around 3000-4000, it's really not any different than walking around with 300-400. I usually recommend getting defense in the range of 7000+ (preferably closer to 10000) for it to make a big difference in Hell. That MIGHT be attainable for the merc in an upped Shaftstop, as I have no idea what an upped Shaftstop provides in defense, but with only Shaftstop and a helm, I doubt you're going to break the 3000-4000 range. I think the same would apply to you, even with CoH and Enigma.

Generally this list of characters who can make it to hell with a defense high enough to merit consideration are limited to: Barbarians using Shout, Paladins using Holy Shield, and Werebears using... well... Werebear. So if you aren't going to be using a defiance merc, your next best bet would probably be a Holy Freeze merc, as slowing things down will only help in keeping you alive. With you putting out so little physical damage, a might merc isn't really an option.

That's actually a pretty tough choice, because it affects a lot for the rest of the game. I need a bit more info though to helpt you out. You are correct that you need exactly 156 strength to equip SS, but you say that currently your strength is less than 100. If the goal is to maximize vitality, I am unsure if the additional strength investment you make to equip it will be offset by the dexterity saved. Further consider that even with an Eld SS, you're still going to need around 180 in dexterity by the time you hit level 85 or so. While you won't need any further investment in dexterity for some time, it's likely you're contribution to dexterity will still need a bit more. If you need to spend 50 or so points in strength to equip the SS, keep in mind that's enough points to cover about 20 levels worth of dexterity investment to maintain max block. I'd estimate that your amazon would finish with close to 1000 life with this method.

The argument for Mosers is that you don't need any more strength, but a considerable larger amount in dexterity. That, however, isn't all bad. Even if you don't spend any additional points into Penetrate, you already have it at level 11 with +skill items, so each point you spend in dexterity will be worth about 10-15 in attack rating, which is none too shabby. Each point in dexterity also gives a 1% increase in damage to your bow and javelin skills (when thrown). It would also allow you to dump the entirety of your 75 saved attribute points into vitality, albeit at the cost of having fewer future points to donate into vitality. Your vitality would go up to around 1100 under this plan, which is a very respectable total for an amazon.

I cannot think of any unique head gear that starts with a B off the top of my head.

On a completely ancillary note, Nightmare Diablo dropped perhaps the best rare ring I have ever seen. It gives 5% mana steal, 6% life steal (already it's a winner - dual steal), +149 AR, +22% fire resistance, +25% lightning resistance, +17% mf, and a partridge in a pear tree.

 

Holy Freeze works on just about everything - champions, uniques, act bosses even cold immunes (they don't take damage, but they are slowed). The only creature in the game that isn't affected by Holy Freeze are the Frenzy Minotaur things (although I concede that is a major creature to be unaffected). The slowing affect of Blackhorn's Face is cumulative with Holy Freeze, so the total slowing affect would be considerable. What is your merc's current defense? Is it high enough that keeping the defiance merc makes sense?

 

At 8,333 that is do-able for Hell. His defiance aura is already maxed. (Aura strength is the character's level divided by 3, with a max of 20 - but +skill items do count, so his defiance aura is level 22.) His total defense will still increase slightly as he gets additional dexterity every level up, and I believe mercs also receive a defense bonus every time they level up (not a lot - I think it's 9 for Act II mercs), both of which will be multiplied by defiance.

Out of curiosity, I have a Shaftstop, but I never considered upping it. What are the level and strength requirements for an upped version? If your merc got there at level 66, that's not too bad.

I defeated Nightmare Baal with my WW barb last night. I only died once in Nightmare, and it was from something I don't think I ever died to before. It was the unique Frozen Horror (those things that breath the frost breath) in one of the side areas of Act V (Shaftsnip or something like that?).

I'm now using what I believe will be my endgame equipment, except for the upped HS, which requires level 77! I'm still using the standard HS, and I haven't had any problems up to this point. My merc is using the exceptional unique trident - I don't remember the name of the weapon, nor do I remember what an exceptional trident is called offhand. It's max damage is only a little over 100, but it has the mod slows monsters by 75%, which essentially reduces them to a crawl. I was actually able to walk away from Lister when he tried to hit me, then walk back in and start attacking him again. Baal was a joke as well. I don't really care about the merc's damage output, as he's never going to match me in damage anyway. Slowing down enemies is a big help.

Obviously, with a Barbarian with maxed shout and battle orders, my merc has tons of defense and life, so the only option that made sense was the might merc. I plan on doing a considerable amount of NM Baal runs though - I'm only level 67, and I'm not exactly comfortable proceeding to hell yet. (Although I may start one game, just to get a look at my resistances and my mercs, to gauge what stored equipment I should be getting ready.) My lightning, cold, and fire resistances have all been maxed for a long time, and that was before I added Demonhorn's Edge and Seraph's Hymn, which game me another +4 to Natural Resistance, and before I rescued Anya for another +10. My poison resistnace was at 73% after that, and just last night, I found a small charm with 8% poison resistance and 5% mf. So I can say definitively that my poison resistance when I start hell will be 31%. While I'm not thrilled with that, I'm not gonig to juggle all my equipment around just to max poison resistnace. When I switch to more resistance-based gear, my poison resistance will go up, but poison is easily the least worrisome of all the elemental damage types, and if it's not maxed I don't care that much. I can always fill a row of my belt with antidote potions when I'm going to be fighting things that I know do a lot of poison damage, like Andarial, Radament, and the Spider Caverns.

 

You will definitely finish your amazon first. I had serious doubts about my plan when I read that guide. Then I remembered that I wanted to go back to my barbarian, and only delayed him to play a druid because I lacked the runes I needed to up my HS. Since I now had them, I went back to the barbarian, and I'm loving it.

How do you think the amazon will be for item finding? Fast is great of course, but what kind of mf % are you currently using? You have the shako of course, but it doesn't seem like much of the remaining gear can be mf oriented.

EDIT: And yes, it is Kelpie Snare - as soon as you mentioned it, I knew you were right - I just couldn't think of it for some reason. It is 75% slow is fantastic. To put that in perspective a holy freeze paladin with a level 30 aura, has a 55% slow rate.

 

Yeah, we discussed the diminishing returns on mf on anything other than blue items a few pages back. I don't remember exact numbers, but I think the increase for uniques by going from 300% to 500% was only like 30-something percent. So yeah, 200-250 is a very nice number to shoot for, and you probably won't see much benefit going much beyond that.

Regarding the Cow King set, the reason you don't have any/many pieces to it is that they can only be found on the cow levels. (Although not necessarily by the Cow King himself - any cow can drop them.) So if you want to find them, you have to run cows, and doing one run once per difficulty level isn't enough to collect the pieces.

It's like if you ran the Pits twice, didn't find anything of value, and concluded based on that the Pits weren't worth running. Of course, now you're actually making a character that can run cows. The necro, for how good he was in getting you through the game, was TERRIBLE when it came to cows.

 

Jalal's Mane is excellent - although I think it gives the biggest bonus towards the shapeshifting tree, which might incline you towards that kind of druid. However, it gives a boost to stats as well, so there's nothing wrong with Jalal's even if you aren't playing a shapeshifter.

You do eventually reach the point where you run out of stuff to socket. When you collect items, and characters start using hand-me-downs, a lot of times you already socketed the item with a previous character. Even if you want to change what's socketed in it, a Hel rune will get rid of it, and you won't need to re-socket.

With imbues, I hate wasting an imbue on boots or gloves, simply because there are so many useless mods that come on those items that you are unlikely to get something that you are looking for. I probably gamble more boots and gloves (oh yeah, and belts) than any other items in the game for exactly that reason. I don't find gambling jewelry to be particularly productive until you get to high levels, and while I will always gamble circlets and coronets, they do not appear in high enough quantities to gamble them exclusively (unless you want to spend 30 minutes re-opening the screen to see if there's a circlet there).

I was under the impression that the list damage you see on all of the elemental damage skills for the amazon (bow and javelin) were on top of the base damage of the weapon. That's why the javelin you use is so important. While the physical component on Thunderstokes is small relative to the elemental damage, it is not insignificant. Also remember that IM causes phyical damage returned to be several times greater than phyical damage dealt. The IM cast by OKs is at skill level 5, 15, and 25, on normal, nightmare, and hell difficulty, respectively, and I would guess that a skill level 15 IM is about 400% damage returned. (Incidently, that's the other way to build a summoning necro - you use IM in conjunction with a thorns merc.)

Now that I think about it a bit more - I am not just under the impression this is the case - I'm nearly certain it is so. If it were not, there would be a lot of mods found on javelins that would be of no value - like anything that increased damage by +X or by XX%. Of course, this is easy enough to check - just equip a different javelin and see if the damage changes. If it's exclusively elemental damage, it shouldn't matter what javelin you use.

That said, OKs are still no big deal - afterall, you have a bow, and javelins can be thrown. So you have two different elemental attacks that use missile weapons. You still have to be careful with your merc, but no problem for you.

While I did finish nightmare with my barbarian this weekend and started hell, I'm putting him on hold for the time being, and I also started a new character, which I will refer to as javazon v2.0. Due to some poor expenditures in skill points in the early going with my first attempt, I'm making some modifications, but I'm not doing the lightning fury freezing arrow combo. I just cannot bring myself to spend 40 skill points on a backup attack. I know it works - your character is proof - but I'm convinced there is another way, and I spent some time thinking how to do it this weekend. (My wife and son spent several hours over her parents yesterday, so I went through all my stored equipment on my characters, trying to put together a solution here.) Here's what I came up with:

First, let's go over the goals here. I sadly came to the conclusion that the physical damage component offered by javelins is too small to be considered a damage type by itself. The first thing I considered was going all-javelin, and investing in the poison tree. After examing the damage output from poison skills, it is significant but only if you max two different skills on the poison tree. (You need poison damage in the thousands, because it's time based, so I need the poison cloud javelin skill AND plague javelin to make it work.) After I thought about it for a while, I realized that if I was going to sink 40 points into poison skills that I may as well sink those 40 points into the cold arrow skills that the guide mentioned. So that was out.

OK, so I need a bow on switch. But I want one where it fires some type of enchanted arrow, and damn it, I only want to sink 20 points into the bow tree, with those 20 saved points going into Valkyrie. I knew I had a Witchwild String, but examing the damage on it, I was unsure if it would do it, even if I upped it to the exceptional version. So what else do I have? The answer was Koku Shakaku. It's the unique Cedar Bow (which is the exceptional version of the long bow). It fires skill level 10 explosive arrows as its standard attack. (Explosive is the second of the three fire-based arrow skills on the tree - it goes Fire, Explosive, Immolation.) Now, skill level 10 explosive arrows wouldn't cut it on hell difficulty, except for the fact that Koku comes with the "adds 80-120 fire damage mod", and skill level 10 explosive arrows +80-120 fire damage IS sufficient for hell. This was the bow I used as my backup with my stafezon a while back against physical immunes, and it was sufficient, even in hell difficulty, with a minimum investment in fire skills. Koku also gives +3 to all bow skills, and another +3 to Immolation Arrow, for a total of +6 to that skill. So I'm spending 20 points in Immolation Arrow, along with the prerequisites (one point each in Fire, Explosive, Multishot, and Magic Arrow). Double good and done!

The second thing that occurred to me, is with my Stafezon, I had major attack rating issues on hell difficulty, because I only spent the minimum in dexterity to use my equipment. So I thought I had to spend 20 points in Penetrate. I then realized that with my on-hand equipment, I'll have a level 30 Valkyrie running around me, which has Clay Golem-like life, so screw it, I'll take a Blessed Aim merc with me! Another 20 points saved.

Then I looked through the javelin tree. I know I want to use Lightning Fury with Titans, but then I realized that Charged Strike gives a measley 1% synergy to Lightning Fury. With a merc, valkyrie, and a nice base attack on Koku, I don't need no stinkin' melee attack. If it's fire immune, well, that's what Lightning Fury is for.

So, I figure this is my skill expenditures:

Bow/XBow tree: 20 points in immolation arrow, and 4 points in prerequisites, so 24 points spent.

Magic/Passive tree: I want a point in Pierce, so that means I need a point in Penetrate and Critical Strike. Since I also want 20 in Valkyrie, that means I need a point in everything else on that tree. So 31 points here.

Javelin Tree: 20 in Lightning Fury, and surprisingly just 4 prerequisites (all the poison skills are distinct). So 24 points here.

That's just 79 skill points, so I'll be done with the base build by the end of Nightmare. I have some options after that. Perhaps putting more into Explosive Arrow as a synergy to Immolation Arrow. Of course, that might make me more of a fire character with lightning fury as a backup.

Equipment - I already have a perfect Skins of Vampermagi (perfect in terms of resistances - I'm not sure if there is a variable defense on Skins), which I have already socketed with a 15% resist all jewel, so I have 50% resist all there. The jewel also comes with a bit of cold damage which will slow enemies.

Helm - Valkyriewing - +2 to all Amazon Skills, decent cold damage and mana boost. Already socketed with an Um.

Weapons - Koku (probably will stick a perfect ruby for more fire damage and Titan's (probably go with a perfect topaz here). Since the helm and armor are already taken care of, there's really no point in socketing anything other than the weapons.

Shield - I'll probably make a Melody runeword. I already have an elite round shield, which three open sockets, and the elite version has a high base block chance, so I won't kill myself with dexterity if I decide to go max block. Also, tons of resistances.

I have a pair of rare gloves with +2 to Amazon skills, 20% IAS, and mana leech. I'm undecided on boots and belt (unless I find a Razortail). I have a rare amulet with +1 to Amazon skills and 18% resist all with some mf. I probably will use a dual leech ring on one hand, and undecided on the other hand (unless I get a Raven Frost).