Diablo II Single Player Thread - 2

Remove all ads!

Well, in terms of uniques, a character with ~80 mf, finds half as many uniques as a character with four times that amount, owing to the steep diminishing returns for uniques. And that's mostly what I'm looking for. MF also doesn't affect rune finding - either positive or negatively, and MF also doesn't affect gambling. I could also just carry a Skullder's around for when I actually fight Baal - it's not like I need the defense to take him out. Once me and my merc get working on him together, he practically stops moving entirely. So perhaps that makes sense (just for Baal - not anything else). Also might try a few LK runs. I've never done them before, but what the hell, it cannot hurt.

Oh, and some noteworthy finds of the weekend from Meph/Baal runs (note without Skullder's): Boneshade and Eschuta's Temper (a +3 skill version) - possibly useful for a fire/lightning combo (although that's rarely seen, owing to both trees needing considerable points as an investment).

 

It's me being obstinate at this point. Sure, I could make a fishymancer - I have an AoKL at this point, and a bunch of other decent to great stuff for a fishymancer to use. Hell a Skullder's + ptopaz, along with a Shako + ptopaz would be over 200% just from those two slots. I could weapon switch to an Ali Baba once get my army up, and be at around 300%.

It's not a issue of being boring or anything, but dammit, I didn't just spend all this time making a near indestructible character (when gloams aren't involved) to not use him!

 

This might sound like a bizarre, even heretical idea, but you could always just play your uber character for the fun of it. A bit of magic find will help somewhat with the drops, but otherwise you could play this character just for the joy of dominating (nearly) all you survey.

Feel free to toss a virtual tomato at my face for suggesting such a thing. I realize that people don't generally play D2 anymore except to search out gear.

 

Marceror,

That is exactly my point. I made this character to be able to solo hell against everything. While I did somewhat fail on the gloam front, I've succeeded everywhere else. (And to be fair, it's not that I can't beat gloams. A pack of 3 or less is still very doable for me. The problem comes in when I run into a multishot and/or conviction boss pack. Then it's just a scenario where the pack is capable of damage outputs of several thousand lightning damage per second. If there was a reasonable means of working lightning absorb into my gear - TGods is the only equipment that would do it, but the resulting character wouldn't be as good against anything other than gloams - then he would truly be invincible.)

As I said before, yeah, my magic find is pretty lousy at 60ish%. Could I fill my stash to near bursting with 3% and 4% mf small charms and get it to around 100% - yeah, but I hate having just my cube to store stuff, and having to open the inventory every time I pick up something. And when it comes to mfing, time spent readjusting your inventory every couple of minutes is time NOT spent killing more stuff.

Furthermore, there are steep diminishing returns with mf. It's not like a character with 200% mf is going to have over triple the chance of finding sets and uniques as me - in fact, chances are it's not even double. (It will be for magic (blue) items, but there are steep diminishing returns for rare, set, and unique items.) Finally, it's not like you have no chance of finding uniques, even with no magic find. There is a base chance of getting a unique, and I have improved that somewhat by getting my mf to 60%. So I think I'm going to run him for a while.

As I mentioned earlier, mf has no effect on rune finding or gambling - all characters are created equal in that regard (in the case of gambling I guess it would be more precise to say all characters of the same level are created equal).

EDIT: Just saw dmc's post.

I have to argue a bit on point 1. This guy is not slow. He's not sorceress fast... that much is true. But he is faster than any other melee character I've ever played. The CB + Amp Damage is a very powerful combination... especially when paired with good elemental damage and -130% enemy resistances. Seriously, the guy averages less than one zeal cycle per monster (except really big things like uniques - he cannot kill Lister in one zeal cycle, but he can in three or four). This guy is fast - the thing that slows him down are unblockable attacks that ignore defense... like lightning bolts from gloams...)

You're obviously right on #2 and #3. I have no idea what the odds are of spawning gloams in the WSC, but they aren't insignificant. OK, my non-Baal mf character can always do all the other runs you describe, and then try to go to Baal. Like I said, WSK2 and WSK3 are area level 85, so it's not like the time I spend there getting to the WSC is wasted if gloams pop up...

EDIT2: One thing I forgot to mention but meant to a while back... Infinitiy will not be able to break ALL lightning resistances in hell difficulty. Some monsters can spawn with 120% resistance in hell, and a level 12 Conviction will grant -85%, which is reduced to 17% when breaking an immunity, which means your merc will have to handle it. That's not a huge deal with the CB, huge enhanced damage, and PMH on Infinity, but it bears mentioning... And it should be sufficient to break the boss's minions immunity.

 

More comments from the peanut gallery...

I can't really argue your points, because you're largely correct in what you say. I think the reason I'm doing this is twofold: 1) I'm stubborn. I invested quite a bit of time in developing this character, and I'm actually fairly pleased with the result. He probably won't be a great mfer, but that doesn't mean I can't try to ram this square peg into a round hole. 2) The character is actually pretty fun to play. He can pretty much wade into the thick of battle, surrounded by enemies, unlease a few zeal cycles, and everything dies.

The only reason I won't debate the very fast point any further is because of the nature of zeal spreading attacks out to many enemies. If I get attacked by say 5 semi tough enemies, I'll probably need 3 zeal cycles to kill them all, because a single swing isn't going to kill any of them. I need 2-3 hits per monster to take them out, which pretty much limits the ability to use a single zeal cycle to kill groups of more than 2 (unless they're little things like Flayers, Devilkin, etc.) In the example of 5 semi-tough monsters (let's say a megademon for example), they'll probably all die on the third zeal cycle, but none of them will die on the first two.

In fact, there's only one thing that he CAN do faster than a lot of the caster builds, and that's kill act bosses. With the CB + Amp Damage, he can easily take out any of them in seconds. Zeal is so fast and delivers so many CBs that he can get the boss down to half life in less time than anything other than a sorceress with static field. But it's after that point where he beats everything else. That's when the Amp Damage kicks in, and so you don't start slowing down as soon as you CBs start losing potency. The very thing that makes him unable to quickly kill large packs - spreading attacks around - is what makes him so effective against single targets.

In my runs last night, I picked up a few runes - most notably a Vex (not from Countess - found in the Pits) - and a couple of pieces of equipment I didn't previously have. I go the unique large seige bow Cliffkiller, and Telling of Beads from Baal.

ToB completes the Disciple Set for me, which is actually not that bad of a set. It offers above average defense with all low strength requiring items, excellent resists, tons of mana, and +3 to all skills. The thing that is excellent about the set though is the item slots it does NOT utilize. Specifically, you get to add in your own weapon, shield, helm, and both rings. The only real downside is that it's almost like getting two different sets. Three of the items (boots, armor, ammy) have level requirements in the 30s and low 40s, while the belt and gloves have level requirements in the 60s.

That said, I can think of a few characters offhand that could make use of such a set, most notably druids - and specifically an elemental druid. A shield with a decent blocking rate and some resistances would easily allow you to reach 75% res all in hell difficulty with all the resistances on the set. That would leave you your helm and weapon to focus completely on +skills, like HotO, and a class-specific druid helm.

OTOH, I can also see you making use out of this set for a shapeshifter. In that case, you'd want to use something like Islestrike (one handed axe with +2 druid skills and CB) and Cerebus' Bite as the helm. It actually looks hell viable to me.

How goes the rune finding for Infinity? (You're only trying to get one of the two Bers you need, right?) I was thinking that depending on how many other runes you have between Ist and Ber will be a large factor in how long it takes you to get to that second Ber. If you have at least one of every in between, then a single Ist would set off a chaing of events that might get you a Ber immediately. But if you're missing something in between - say like you don't have an Ohm - it might take a while.

---------- Added 1 hours, 7 minutes and 4 seconds later... ----------

Or how about this for a druid build using the Disciple:

It's a Fury/Geddon Druid, with a Shockwave/Fire Claws backup attack. It's a variant of the druid a made a while back when I played on the Realms, but this one has points even more spread out. There's only 3 skills you will NOT have a point in. I guess I'll start there. You won't be spending any points in Hunger, Spirit of Barbs, or Solar Creeper.

Build:

Shapeshifting:

The only skill that gets maxed is Fury. Shockwave is fine with just one point and +skills (I should have at least +9 by my early count). Fire Claws does get better with more points, but also receive huge synergy bonuses, and I'll be relying heavily on that. With all my +skills, I won't need much in Lycanthropy either, although I'm going to have to invest a few points early, just so I can extend the duration at early levels.

Used Skills:

Werewolf - 1
Werebear - 1
Lycanthropy - 5 (tops)
Fire Claws - 1
Shockwave - 1
Fury - 20

Prerequisites: Maul, Rabies, Feral Rage

Subtotal: 32

Summoning Skills:

All of these are one point wonders, relying on +skills.

Used Skills: Oak Sage, Heart of Wolverine, Carrion Vine, Grizzly
Prerequisites: Raven, Spirit Wolf, Dire Wolf, Poison Creeper

Subtotal: 8

Elemental: Well, it's a Fury/Geddon build, so Armageddon gets maxed, requiring a point in everything else.

Armageddon - 20
Everything else - 9

Subtotal: 29

Total: 69

So that's the base build. Obvoiusly with a lot of points left over, but we'll get to that in a minute. Fury gets and receives synergies from nothing, so it's done. (It doesn't really need any synergies anyway, it's AR and Damage are huge at high levels. I'm estimating it's about 250% damage, 600% AR.) So we have to look at Armageddon, and it's synergized 14% by all the other elemental fire spells. Also, Fire Claws is synergized 22% by all of the elemental fire spells. In the base build alone, I already have 4 points in those skills that will already be providing synergies. But all of my remaining points can be dumped into the other elemental skills to greatly enhance the damage of both Fire Claws and Armageddon. By my count, I'll have about 30 points into the synergies, giving Fire Claws a 660% damage boost, and Armageddon a 420% damage boost. Good times. Bonus points for utilizing an odd set too!

 

OK - but may I ask how a non-Italian would know such a thing?

The only reason the Disciple is viable is because of the slots that you don't use. If you're like me, and don't have access to Chains or Enigma, getting a total of +3 skills from those equipment slots is about as much as you can get (typically 2 on the amulet and another 1 from the armor, and nothing on the gloves, boots, and belt). Islestrike or Fleshrender (eventually upped for both) is likely my weapon. Islestrike is +2 all skills and an additional +1 to Fury and Maul (only Fury really matters), Fleshrender is +1 all, +2 shapeshifting. Islestrike has a larger range, a little more damage and a bit more crushing blow (25% vs 20%), but Fleshrender comes with Deadly Strike, Open Wounds, and PMH. It's actually a pretty tough call.

Since both weapon possibilities require quite a bit of strength in their elite version, I'm thinking I want a Sanctuary Hyperion as my shield (which I already have). That should cover all of my resists. I have to look through my druid helms and pelts. I have a lot of them, and I may actually be able to do better than +2 all skills. I have rare pelts that gives +2 to a tree, along with specific bonuses to certain skills that may be better than just a plain +2 helm, and +1 all druid skill pelts that give specific bonuses as well.

 

Not a rule per se, I've just never heard of a non-Italian who liked it, or even knew how to prepare it. Then again, IIRC, you're from NY originally, and given the high percentage of Itilians up there, you may have picked it up via osmosis.

 

The easiest way to express ones prowess in MF is this:

Amount of kills per hour*. Times 1.5 for just about any reasonably large double-digit amount of MF or times two for anything heavily into triple digits. Anything else is lost into the background noise.

* = If you're a completionist, keep separate tally on normal bosses and Act bosses, ignore normal mobs. Doesn't matter much in the end anyway since you pretty much have to kill hugely more normal mobs/bosses compared to amount of Act bosses to severely skew the numbers in either direction. UNLESS you want to succumb into doing tele-tele-tele-tele-(repeat enough times)-Actbosskill-Save&Exit-Restart bot runs manually...

Also, I still fail to see any inherent advantage casters have in terms of dps, if you have a well-equipped melee guy to compete. Especially after considering the problem of immunities and/or differences in life expectancy between a melee character in plate and a guy/gal in silk bathrobe.

 

I think the basis for the argument that casters are better at mfing than melee guys is simply because they can carry more mf on their equipment without sacrificing much in the way of killing speed. By their nature, melee builds are more gear dependent, which may lead to carrying around less mf.

---------- Added 3 hours, 8 minutes and 59 seconds later... ----------

EDIT: OK, I think the basic idea of what I'll be using for this character is starting to come together. I'm leaning towards Islestrike as my main weapon. I'd like to hear what you guys think. For reference:

Islestrike (Twin Axe)
One-Hand Damage: 37-110 (73.5 Avg)
Required Level: 43 / Required Strength: 85
Range: 2
Base Weapon Speed: [10]
+170-190% Enhanced Damage (varies)
25% Chance of Crushing Blow
+2 To Druid Skill Levels
+50 Defense VS. Missile
+10 To All Attributes
+1 Fury (Druid Only)
+1 Maul (Druid Only)

Fleshrender:
One-Hand Damage: 64-125 (89.5 Avg)
Required Level: 38 / Required Strength: 30
Range: 1
Base Weapon Speed: [0]
+130-200% Enhanced Damage (varies)
Adds 35-50 Damage
+50% Damage To Undead
20% Deadly Strike
20% Chance of Crushing Blow
25% Chance of Open Wounds
+1 To Druid Skills
+2 To Shape Shifting Skills (Druid Only)
Prevent Monster Heal

At first, you'd think that Fleshrender is better - higher average damage and quicker. But it's not that simple, because when you look at the damage ranges for the upped versions:

Islestrike upped to Ettin Axe (L52, S145): 94-188
Fleshrender upped to Tyrant Club (L49, S133): 85-154

So it's only the base weapons where Fleshrender is both more damage and faster. Islestrike also has a better range (and 2 is significantly better than 1), and I do like the +10 to attributes, which will save me points, and the improved chance of CB (it will be my only source). The thing that clinched it for me was that my primary attack will be Fury, and the two weapons offer the exact same +3 bonus to Fury.

The only thing that would lean me back towards Fleshrender is if it makes a difference in reaching a break point, which I don't think it will. Islestrike is 10 versus 0 for Fleshrender. I'll put on Shael in them either way, I'll have -55 for my projected level as a WW, and another -20 on my equipment, meaning that Islestrike will be effectively -85, and Fleshrender -95. Unless there is a fury speed break point between those, it won't make a difference.

From what I've researched thus far it appears -85 weapon speed will get me to the next-to-last break point, and -110 is needed for the final break point. So it looks like I'm at the next to last one either way. [edit2] That's the break points for fire claws. I can't seem to find them for Fury [/edit2]

The rest of the equipment pretty much takes care of itself. With the resistances of the set combined with Sanctuary runeword shield, I'll be able to reach max resists in hell. For a helm, I don't have a Jalal's, which would have been the easy choice, so I have to decide between a +2 all druid skills pelt with a bonus +one or two to a specific skill, or just go with Shako. It should be a marginal difference either way. If I want to go with a Raven Frost (and I think I do), then the other ring has to be a dual leech ring, because the one thing the set lacks is any form of leech, and I won't be getting any from my weapon, whichever one I end up going with (unless I socket it with a Pskull).

On switch, I may break down and make a HotO. That, along with Spirit, will give me another +3 skills on switch (for +11 overall) for summoning and shifting into the wereforms.

---------- Added 19 hours, 57 minutes and 38 seconds later... ----------

I may have found a way to solve my item finding woes - I can contract it out. While playing D2 last night, my 3-year old son asked if he could play too. At first, I was unconvinced. I was doing a Meph run, and hell Meph is not exactly an introductory lesson in D2. But then I thought, what the hell. I made this character to be invincible, right? There are no gloams on this level, so the margin of error is fairly large.

It took him considerably longer to kill Meph than it would have taken me, but he did it with marginal assistance. Now, I can't contract him out just yet, for a couple reasons (other than my wife killing me if I turn our 3-year old into a D2 addict). There's a few work arounds I need to put in place. For starters, he cannot read or write anything other than very basic words. So I cannot say, run Meph 500 times while I'm at work - you'll eventually land an Azurewrath. But he does know his colors. I already have shown him that hitting the Alt key lights up everything on the ground, and you really don't want those stinky white words, you want to grab the yellow, orange and green ones.

The other problem is a bit more complex, as he doesn't get the whole concept of healing potions. While he had the mouse and was actively playing, I had my hand on the potion keys to feed them to he and the merc as needed. There is also the problem with him not getting what the auras do. It's a lot of fun to use the mouse wheel and scroll through all the different auras and look at the colors around the paladin's feet rapidly change. In fact, for the first 30 or so seconds on my lap, that's all he did. Fortunately, he told me, "I like the green one" - which was the right answer.

So he needs some training, but the early analysis here is he can do this. The force is strong in this one...

 

don't forget the indestructible mod on death either!
making it in an ethereal ettin axe should add another +50% ed and lower the reqs right?

 

Absolutely - that's why I listed it as the primary problem. Especially seeing as how he's 3. I'm assuming death is a given.

You had me at hello - and the +1 light radius was what clinched the deal. That is at the upper end - but just within - my range of affordable runewords. (In fact, I think I have exactly one Gul.) You are correct that the loss of +2 skills would easily be made up for with the damage. And the level 18 GS along with 50 lightning damage would be a means - albeit not quick - to deal with fire and physical dual immunes.

I don't even know what a blood golem does in the 1.13 patch. I know they got rid of the part where the damage dealt to the golem was shared with you, but presumably the life leech property of the golem still works for you. Otherwise, he's just this large lumpy blood thing that's a target for enemy attacks.

Practically speaking, that's the most likely option. Ideallly, I'd like to make it in a faster weapon, like a berserker axe, or even a war spike, but I think both of them can get six sockets. Come to think of it, ettin axes may be the only one-handed axe that has a five socket maximum. I think small crescents can get 4, and while I don't know for sure what a tomahawk can get, it certainly isn't more than 3.

Swords won't work at all, because a phase blade is the only one I'm aware of among the one handed swords that can get more than 4 sockets. Phaseblades have lots of speed, and not much else.

However, I suppose the ideal possibility would be an ethereal 5-socket axe (regardless of type) as Death has the indestructible mod on it.

You know, in looking through my stash yesterday, I noticed something about Mang Song's Lesson. It says +5 to all skills, but it doesn't say (sorceress only) after it. So for shiggles, I threw it on my paladin, just to see if it would work (it's a staff, not an orb, and therefore, not class-specific), and sure enough, it increased all of his skills by 5. I have concluded that MSL is the ultimate pre-buff weapon.

The most +skills you can get on a pre-buff switch (such as the one that I'm considering with my druid) is combining Spirit and HotO. Not only does that combination cost you a high rune, but it also costs you points in strength because you need 156 to use a monarch. MSL strength requirement is like 50 or something like that. Albeit, MSL has a level requirement of 82, so you'd be able to use the HotO + Spirit combo whenever your level hit what you need to use a Vex - which is probably 50-something. However, if you're patient, you could use MSL as a switch for any character with that level requirement without having to spend the runes or the strength on the HotO + Spirit combo.

That said, MSL is not a great option for my paladin. I just did it to test. The only prebuff spell that my paladin uses is Holy Shield, which necessitates having a shield equipped in order to cast it. (Although if your paladin is using a two-handed weapon, you can put a shield on switch, cast HS and still get the defensive bonus. Obviously, you lose out on the blocking bonuses.)

I'm also thinking about leaving Lycanthropy at the base one point. Even if I go with Death, I'll still have +8 skills, because I'll just throw Islestrike on switch and add in a Sigon's shield. So weapon is 2, shield 1, set 3, helm 2. A point in WW lets you transform for 40 seconds. The first point in Lycanthropy extends it by 40 seconds. All subsequent points extend it by 20 seconds. So I'll have 40 + 40 + 160 = 240 seconds. That's 4 minutes, and I can live with that. At level 82 I can throw on MSL, and it goes up to 280 seconds. Of course, I'll have to actually use Islestrike as my primary weapon until I get to the level to equip Death.

And in other news, if I'm on the lookout for a plain old white ettin axe, the best character I have equipped to carry out that search is.... my paladin.

 

Well, that's certainly true. No need for life/mana leech nor AR/CB/DS/OW since you can mostly just dream about hitting anything with your swings anyway. +Life, FHR and resistances are universally needed by anyone so nothing special there either.

Just that I'm not aware of terribly many non-timered spells that get past ~3k damage per cast after you deduct the skill points for your backup attack type. Much less 5k. Or are you supposed to be taking on mobs in packs of 10+ at a time for the various AoE effects to have something to work on and live on the razor's edge with superhuman reflexes?

Edit: I mean, it doesn't take miracles to break 10k damage per second on a melee guy. And if you actually have access to high-end gear, such as Grief and dual Dreams, getting to 50k dps (pre-resistances) ain't all that impossible either. I can't see any caster getting there without massive AoE damage multipliers by high target body count.

 

Well, dmc has made a pure lightning sorceres with a merc wielding infinity...

And skellimancers are pretty darn fast if you make raise skeleton and skeletal mages...

Heck even a meteorb with sufficient +skills can get very high damage rates against everything not fire immune, but would slow down when switching to FO.