Diablo II Single Player Thread - 2

Sorry for the double reply to the post, but the edit was added after I posted:

I don't think that's a very realistic argument. If you have access to such high end gear great - but your probably made a bunch of mfers along the way to acquire said gear. What's easier - getting the runes to make grief and dual dreams, or equipping a necro or sorceress with Skullder's Ire, Goldwrap, Shako, and Chance Guards?

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Damn it! I have too many good ideas for builds in my head to have another one pop in there, but this one I think is a winner. Realizing that my paladin was no good at mfing, but having ideas in my head on a poison necro, poison/lightning javazon, and a fury/geddon druid, I was in a bit of a pickle. The least interesting one was the poison necro, but that was also the only one on the list that I'd be able to pack on some additional mf.

And then I remembered dmc's comment about just building a skellimancer as an mf character, but I thought to myself, those are boring and I already made one since switching to single player to acquire my initial gear for other characters ... Wait a second... I ALREADY MADE ONE SINCE SWITCHING TO SINGLE PLAYER! And we have respecs now... And I have better gear now... and I don't have to necessarily be all boring and stay as a summons necro... but an all poison necro has a problem shared by all characters that rely on a single damage type... so I need a hybrid... and thus...

THE POISON SUMMONER WAS BORN...

I looked at the character that was soon to be known as the character formerly known as skellimancer (actual character name is Orpheus).

Even better - this is a level 89 character! I have exactly 100 skill points to spend. Note, I don't think this build would be great as a starting from scratch character - but just as an end-game plan. I think you'd be far better starting out as a pure poison necro or a pure summons necro, than to try to hybridize in this way from the get-go. The only reason this is a decent plan is because I have 100 skill points at my disposal from the start.

So, as with all my builds, I work backwards, realizing from the start that I will have to make full use of my switch. I need poison and general combat gear as one set, and I need summoning and prebuff gear on the other set. I think I have accomplished this. But let's start with the skill setup, as that's how the build came into being.

CURSES:

The four curses I really need and will use with some frequency are Amplify Damage, Dim Vision, Decrepify, and Lower Resist. In order to get those four, I need to pick up a point in Weaken, Terror, Iron Maiden and Life Tap, all of which will be used rarely if ever. They are all one-point wonders, and since I will have +5 to curses on my combat gear, I'm assuming that they will all be effectively level 6 - which will do.

Points spent: 8

POISON AND BONE SKILLS:

Teeth - 1 (prerequisite)
Bone Armor - 1 (one point wonder, but level 8 castable)
Corpse Explosion - 1 (one point wonder - level 8 castable, which is servicable)
Poison Dagger - 20 (synergy)
Poison Explosion - 20 (synergy)
Poison Nova - 20 (level 27 castable -Main attck)

The main damage dealers here are going to be Poison Nova and Poison Dagger. Here's some numbers to look at, assuming a level 27 Poison Nova and level 28 Poison Dagger with my poison/combat gear setup. All numbers are in dps, as it's meaningless to express the full numbers. While they look impressive on the surface (as in tens of thousands), you're never going to want them to run for more than a second or two, or else you're taking too long to kill stuff.

Level 27 PN: 658 dps (sucks)
Fully Synergized with Poison Dagger and Poison Explosion: 1,974 dps (better, but not cutting it).
Fully Synergized and adding in Trang Oul's gloves: 2,467 dps (getting there)
Fully Synergized, with Trang Oul's gloves and Level 6 Lower Resist: 3,676 dps (now we're talking!)

How does that compare to Poison Dagger? Well at level 28, fully synergized, with Trang-Oul's Gloves and a level 6 Lower Resist, we're looking at well in excess of 20,000 total damage, but once you figure in the timer, we're at just 1,718 dps with a mana cost of 9 and a +570% AR boost (so you would hit with it). That ain't bad - you could live with it if you had to - but it's less than half the dps as Poison Nova, and since I doubt the poison damage stacks with each other, I probably won't utilize Poison Dagger other than a synergy.

SUMMONING:

Okay... I have 100 skill points to spend, but I've already spend 8 in Curses, and 63 in Bone and Poison Skills. That leaves me with 29 skill points for summons ... and a lot of math as I was to soon discover.

A quick review on loading up on summons gear. All your summons have their stats fixed at the time they are summoned, however the maximum number of skeletons you can have at any given time is fixed by your current skill level. So when you load up on summons gear, you'll summon beefier, hardier, more damaging skeletons which will remain that way even if you later switch to other gear, but the total number of skeletons you'll be able to have active will drop.

This is where the math came in. My summons gear applies +11 to Raise Skeleton and Raise Skeletal Mage, +10 to Skeleton Mastery, and +8 to Clay Golem and Golem Mastery. However, my switch gear applies just +4 to all of the above. So the trick is to try and maximize your number of skeletons based on just your switch gear, but maximize the damage they do based on your summons gear. I think I ran through about 20 different iterations of this crunching the numbers, and I think I figured out the optimal placement of those 29 points.

First, the no brainers:

Clay Golem - 1 (castable at 9)
Golem Mastery - 1 (castable at 9)
Summons Resist - 1 (castable at 9, but it's passive, so it's checked at current level, which is level 5 when I switch)

And 20-something iterations later, here is the optimal placement of those last 26 points:

Raise Skeleton: 11 (22)
Skeleton Mastery: 13 (23)
Skeletal Mage: 2 (13)

The reason Skeletal Mage gets 2 instead of just 1, is because I get an extra mage with one more point when I switch.

OK - so the strength of those skeletons will be fixed at the parenthetical numbers, but the number of skeletons will be fixed based on my switch gear skill points, which will be 15, 17, and 6, respectively. It will give me 7 beefy warriors and 5 not so beefy mages. The two points in mages I think is well spent, because those two points wouldn't even get me one additional warrior, and the damage they do is more than I'd get if switched and put 14 in Raise Skeleton and 12 in Mastery (which would have resulted in 8 warriors, but only with slightly more life than the 7 I currently have, because I'd have one less Mastery point). You're gonna have to trust me on this one - I've got the point placement correct.

Damn it! I just realized I also have a +3 summoning skill ammy that I can equip. Son-of-a-beatch! I need to recalculate. I don't feel like it at the moment. For the sake of argument lets just say I equip it and leave the skill points as is. It won't increase the total number of skeletons, but they'll all be beefier (but if they are beefier, I may be better off modifying the Mastery/Warrior/Mage distribution for optimal performance). Piss me off!!!

Anyway, onto equipment. I want this character to be able to mf some, so the equipment that will always be on includes:

Skullder's Ire + ptopaz - 1.25% mf per level, +1 skills, magic damage reduced by 10. That's 135% mf at my current level.

Harlequin Crest + ptopaz - 74% mf, 1.5 mana/life per level (so 133 based on current level), +2 skills, +2 all attributes.

Goldwrap - 30% mf, and nothing else of interest for the purposes of this character.

Trang-Oul's Claws - 20% FCR, 30% Cold Res, +25% Poison Damage, +2 Curses

Tearhaunch - 20% FRW, Res all 10%, +5 strength, +5 vitality (I'm not totally convinced on these, but I need resists from this slot, so I may have a better rare, but I'm not sure).

Stone of Jordan - +1 all skills, mana

15% res all rare ring - forget the other stats - it's strictly for resistances

+1 all necro skills rare amulet with resistances and other stats I forget

1 Summoning GC

Various other scintillating charms of different sizes that will take up 3.5 rows of inventory space, but provide 44% res all. (Counting the cube and the Summoning Charm, I'll use 6 total rows of inventory space, leaving four rows open, plus three more in the cube).

All resistance maxed (once I get to the shields), 239% mf.

Poison Gear: Blackbog's Sharp and upped Moser's Blessed Circle with 2x pdiamonds. (Moser's is my highest strength requiring item at 100, but I don't feel that bad, because Skullder's requires 97.)

Summons, Corpse Explosion, Curse Gear: Arm of King Leoric, rare necro head with +2 all skills, 20% improved blocking, 19% res all, and a couple other things I don't recall offhand.

Merc: Act II Might - Upped Shaftstop, Blackhorn's Face, Double Upped Ethereal Uber War Pike of Awesomeness. (OK, that's not it's real name, but it's a double upped rare etherial Pike that came with IAS, and 298% ed, meaning the base damage on the weapon - as in what it shows when you highlight the weapon - not what it shows on the screen - is just shy of 1000.) Seriously. It's like 978 damage. Due to the +12 penalty on double upping it, and the strength and dexterity requirements on the war pike itself, it wasn't equippable unitl my merc was level 87. I socketed it with an Amn for life leech.

 

1. I'll take it, although it may be a bit before I can get to it.

2. The necro worked out much better than I thought.

All poison skills level 30.
All curses level 8.
Skeletons worked out in alternate gear at slvl 21 (9 skeletons), mages slvl 9 (5 mages), and mastery at level 18. However, they are summoned at 28, 15, and 25, respectively.

Golem and golem mastery at 12. 5k life clay golem.

CE is level 10 - very adequate.

256% mf, with resistances maxed.

I ditched the SoJ to max resists, but I had a +2 necro amulet I forgot about and a second summoning charm, so I actually came out ahead on skills.

Still have to play test it.

 

Yes. Meteor, Chain Lightning and Lightning Fury do clean whole screens rather admirably. It's just that all of them come to a screeching halt as soon as you meet immunes. Even if you break them with Infinity, you're up against 80+ percent resists unless you can manage a whole lot of -enemy resist in your gear. Don't see how that can be classified as "fast". However, none of those are are very good against sparse crowds or single targets - they get the job done but that's about it. Timered spells are especially clunky against stragglers.

Summon necro, trapper and Frost Maiden variants (whether with Strafe, LF or Immo as backup) are extremely good killers in low player count games (up to about /p3) but slow down noticeably at /p8. All of them are a bit "backwards" in that they rack up kills noticeably faster against huge crowds, due to Pierce and/or Corpse Explosion having something to work on.

So I don't necessarily question the dps potential of casters, just that they seem to be most effective against crowds which, in turn, are clearly more hazardous to their own safety. Melee guy beats a caster every day in a week, twice on sundays against single targets and can actually expect to survive a larger crowd without any major changes to playstyle. It's more of a utility mismatch than a straight dps problem that I'm pointing out. ON TOP OF the number crunching showing no huge dps advantages unless against crowds of 10+ at all times.

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Oh, the poison/summon necro. That's most certainly one of those über builds with the obvious drawback of being seriously underpowered until you reach extremely high levels and/or get good +skills gear. But once there, it solves the "twiddling thumbs" problem that plagues plain-vanilla summoners.

 

OK - I got around to playing the necro... quite boring. It is played remarkably similar to a summoner. Against PIs it's played EXACTLY like a summoner - amp, wait for a body, CE until all is dead. Against a non-PI, there is a third step:

1. Cast Lower Resist instead of Amp Damage on the group.
2. Cast Poison Nova to help your summons get the first body.
3. CE until all is dead.

Is it effective? Hell yes. And it's also remarkably safe. If I have a beef it's that it's extremely slow against Act bosses, which really slows down your run times.

So next I brought out my sorceress. The random teleporting aside, Oculus is a critical part of the build. I socketed it with a jewel to increase the resistances on it to 33%, which puts it in the range of HotO. IMO, the only mod that HotO has that I find desirable that Oculus doesn't have is the Replenish Life +20, which admittedly is a lot. They both have +3 skills, they both have FCR, they both have resist all. But a lot of the other stuff on HotO isn't going to do you a lot of good as a caster. The damage and attack rating versus demons is meaningless, as you'll never be using it to swing against them. Same thing with the mana leech. The +10 dexterity is nice, but Oculus has +20 vitality, and +20 energy. And of course, the +50% mana find is absolutely lovely.

So I transfered much of the equipment I was using on the necro over to her to see where I could get her mf, and then to see how she played. Here's what I came up with:

Oculus - 50% mf
Skulder's Ire + ptopaz - she's level 86, so 131%
Goldwrap - 30%
Chance Guards - 36%
Rare boots - resistances and 17% mf
Shako - 74%
3 7%mf small charms with resistances - 21%

For a total of 359%. So that's considerably more than what I had on the summoner. Granted 100 more at this stage in mf is well into the diminishing return phase. Adding 100 points probably increases my chance at a unique by about 10%-15%.

So then I went out and played her, and after a few minutes, I had to wonder why I stopped. (Especially considering I had previously decked her out in +skill gear, so she was more powerful than she is now.) She is extremely fast, can handly anything, and is pretty darn quick against bosses. Not nearly as fast as my paladin, but considering she can pretty much drop them to half life instantly by spamming a few Static Fields, it's not so bad.

Oh, and in my one Baal run, Gloams did spawn. While it's always wise to give gloams a wide berth, and they still need to be handled with care, she is much better equipped to deal with them than my paladin was - as the options available to him were pretty much charge and hope for the best. While my fire spells are more damaging than my Frozen Orb, I have found that FO is actually the better option against gloams, as they are fast, and sometimes difficult to target - blasting FO at least guarantees that you're hitting something with each cast.

So while the poison summoner works well, I think I'll be making this sorceress my mf character. She got a Ribcracker and her first Baal run, which is something I didn't have.

I agree with all of that. (Although I will point out that if a caster is better equipped to deal with large crowds, they're faster.) The place where melee characters excel is against tough singular monsters, like Act bosses, and that's because of CB. (I'll give an honorable mention to the Amazon, because while Lightning Strike isn't CB, it's an excellent boss killer.)

About this only thing I didn't get with your post was the comment about some characters slowing down in high player count games. Don't all characters slow down in high player count games? CB is nerfed on players 8, and I've never developed a melee guy that was able to do one-hit kills on p8. Casters and melee guys alike should all be slower once you hit high player count games. That's also why I don't do high player count games. The drops are about double in p8 compared to p1, but it always takes me more than twice as long to kill stuff in p8 compared to p1, so it doesn't really make sense. I can probably clear the pits (as an example) three times on p1 in the time it takes me to do it once on p8. And in that scenario, I'm earning more items per unit time, and even the XPs are pretty darn close.

But all of this aside, it doesn't really address the main point of the discussion - if certain characters are better mfers compared to others. While all well-built characters are capable of acheiving high dps, only casters are capable of maintaining most of their damage potential while wearing mf gear. Melee characters are simply more gear dependent. All characters have strengths and weaknesses, but assuming similar run times in a given area, the characters with more mf are going to be the ones that gets more items. And casters can have a LOT more mf. Melee characters would not only have to be faster than casters to match them, they'd have to be considerably faster.

 

Yes, casters have the freedom of choosing MF items over a bunch of other, to them unnecessary melee mods while maintaining kill speed. I only contested the (paraphrasing) "but casters kill SOOOOO much faster as well" part.

Of course it takes longer to kill stuff on /p8, but since killing stuff isn't the only thing slowing you down - hiking to find a new group of mobs/exit to the next area or sorting out the loot that dropped into /ignore and /collect buckets being rather larger parts as well - the actual slowdown isn't really all that bad. However, there's quite a difference in having to spew half a dozen (or more) spells to get your first corpse compared to a single Zeal cycle downing at least one monster at a time, or two cycles downing a row gathered in front of you.

I also freely admit that my judgement on an acceptable monster-lawn-o-meter chug rate is briskly tinted by actually having access to high-end stuff. It takes quite a bit of MFing runs to be able to equip a melee guy to take on Hell even at /p1 with any degree of success, much less /p8 and expecting to rack in the kills at reasonable pace while there is a distant, distant wish for most players.

BTW, found an Ohm during the weekend. So now my mf necro's Call to Arms is legit as well.

 

No Ohms for me yet. Although I do not think I would use my first Ohm for the purposes of make Call to Arms (as good as it is). As you are aware, I'm a big fan of defensive builds, so I'd probably make the runeword Doom with it. (Doom also requires a Cham that I already possess.) IMO, Doom is the ultimate mercenary weapon (for Act II mercs), as you'd be getting two auras from them. Either that, or perhaps I'd make Famine (I have a Jah as well) in a zerker axe or the like. Famine is like a Baranar's Star on steroids.

I hardly played at all last night, although in the one Countess run I got in, she dropped the final piece of Hwanin's set. While certainly not a power set, it would be excellent for all of normal and well into nightmare. If I ever get around to making an IK barbarian focusing on WW (which is to say if I ever find a Soul Cage), this could be a starter set. (Yes, I'd have to spend one point on Polearm Mastery, but what the hell - it's not like WW barbs have a need for a ton of points.)

With my sorceress, other than getting Infinity (but seeing as how I don't even have one Ber at the moment, two is very far away indeed), there is only a few little things I can do to twink her out a little further. One of them would be to find Tal Rasha's Guardianship (armor). That would allow me to up my mf significantly by making a few equipment changes. (It's rare that you can get rid of Skullder's Ire and improve mf, but that piece would allow it.) I'm already using the amulet, and if I found the armor I would also add in the belt. (It's also rare that you can get rid of Goldwrap and up your mf.) The armor has 88% mf on it, the belt has 15% mf on it, and if you use three items, you get 65% mf as a partial set bonus. The resistances on the armor would also allow me to ditch the resistance ring I'm using and replace that with a Nagelring. (I think I have a 28% mf Nagel is my best.) Right now the armor and belt slots are providing 161% mf, and I can get it over 210% with that switch.

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EDIT: Adding Magefists might not be a bad idea either... When you're packing over 350% mf, I imgaine the difference between that and 320% is marginal. Then again, the difference between +8 and +9 to fire skills is also probably marginal.

 

I tend to play on /p8 mostly for the exp per kill bonus. Magic finding hasn't been my primary focus ever since I finally got my Grief + dual Dream Zealot up and running. I figured that since I was aiming to grind him up to level 95+ (just for the sake of having done it at least once in a lifetime), his measly ~50% magic find would be just fine. The sheer amount of kills required to get to such levels is makes any mf runs with any other of my characters rather redundant.

But yes, any other scenario would suggest starting out with some sort of a caster, summoner necro being a rather popular choice just because you get an army of bodyguards as you go. Edit: That's the way I started as well.

 

How far along are you in your quest to 95? For me, the highest I've ever got a character is level 91. It's at that point where you basically stop earning XPs for regular monsters. Regular monsters in level 85 areas are worth essentially nothing due to the XP penalty kicking in when your level exceeds the monsters by more than 5. To get to 95, that penalty would affect everything short of Diablo, Baal, and some Act IV and V super uniques.

 

Oh, he's been level 95 for quite a while now. About one third on his way to 96, actually.

Sure, you lose about a fifth of the exp per kill for each level past 5 above the monsters on top of the normal exp decay, but it's the last one, going from 24% base exp (level 94 vs mlvl 85 monsters) to 5% base (lvl 95 against any normal mob), that finally nails the coffin shut for good. Even then, normal bosses are still at 62% base exp (champions 43%) so level 96 looms on the distant horizon. Going from 98 to 99 is tough indeed since anything but Act bosses and Nihlatak drops to 5% base, on top of the normal level-based decay.

 

I think you'd still be OK with Hephasto too. It's been a while since I checked, but I think Hephasto is level 94. That said, there's a lot of work to do to get to Hephasto, and all the stuff you meet up with along the way is just 5%.

I haven't played much D2 at all since the weekend - I've just been busy. All I had time for last night was a single Countess and Pit run. Switching over to Magefists gave two benefits: First, it increased my fireball damage by about 300 (which is not insignificant IMO). Even though it raised the skill and the mastery by 1 point each, I was surprised it made that much of a difference, even acknowledging that FB is a scaling skill. Secondly, it appears that I'm casting them a lot quicker, which means the 20% FCR allowed me to hit another casting break point. The increased mana recovery rate isn't bad either - 25% on the gloves themselves, and of course an additional level in warmth. My mana now comes back VERY quickly, even without an insight merc.

Insight along with Spirit are probably the two most common ladder-only runewords, and I've never made either of them. I never saw the sense in using an Insight polearm on a merc, because the worst thing that can happen without them is you have to drink a potion more frequently. It's not like mana potions are rare. With Spirit, I go for max block on pretty much every character (except those with both hands dedicated to the weapon), which is simply impractical to do with Spirit.

 

For the madmen among us that actually aim for level 99: Do not forget that you get 40M exp by killing Hell Ancients without any reductions. That's quite a bunch for the final push from 98 onwards. I saved mine until 94 since I knew I wouldn't endure the grind after normal mobs drop to the 100-150 exp per kill range. On /p8 setting.

 

Gack! Another Build Idea!

I just thought of a new idea for use of the Disciple Set and of the Death runeword. I originally thought Druid because it freed up the use of a druid helm. It would also free up the use of a barbarian helm. So I'm thinking on this rather unusual barbarian build. It is not a defense build per se, despite the fact that it focuses on not getting hit.

It utilizes two main attack skills, but I only plan on sinking one point in each. The two skills are Stun and Double Swing. The reason for only one point in each is that the skills don't get a damage bonus with additional points. Stun gets improved AR and improved Stun duration, while Double Swing gets improved AR and reduced mana cost (reaching zero mana at slvl 6).

I know, I know it sounds like suck damage, and why not just make a frenzy barb... work with me here for a bit.

Bash gives an 8% damage boost to Stun per level, and a 10% damage boost to Double Swing per level, so I'll be maxing Bash, despite not using it much. I'll also be maxing Axe Mastery for a 5% damage boost per level.

Here's the thing, if you look at Frenzy, if you max it and some of it's synergies, the average damage increase per point of investment is 8.83%. That's assuming you max Frenzy, and it's two best synergies, Taunt and Double Swing, so it costs you 60 points. Assuming you want Battle Orders and some prerequisites, it prevents you from investing in the mastery beyond a single point.

If you do the same calculation for double swing, assuming you invest just one point in DS and max Bash and the Mastery, you get a 8.95% average damage increase per point of investment. But it only costs you 41 points. So point for point DS and Frenzy are essentially equal, especially when you factor in that you don't have the slow initial swing on Double Swing. The other thing I didn't like about Frenzy is that the speed boost lasts just 6 seconds. By the time you scan the ground for loot and pick it up, you've already burned through most of your speed boost.

Some other things to know about double swing: When the game does a check for CB, it just adds up all the CB on all your equipment. So if you're swinging two weapons that each have CB on them, you get the benefits of both sources for each swing, even though you're swinging them one at a time. This is obviously something that should be exploited. As for frame rates and considering your attack speed, IAS on the main hand weapon (left side of the character screen) counts in full, as does all sources of off weapon IAS. Any IAS on the second weapon doesn't count at all. It is because of this that Death is actually a better candidate for your off hand, because of it's lack of IAS.

Do I'm thinking of going with:

Death - Hel-El-Vex-Ort-Gul in a zerker axe
25% ctc lvl18 Glacial Spike
300-385% ed
20% AR
+50 AR
1-50 lightning damage
7% ml
50% CB
0.5/lvl deadly strike
Lvl 22 Blood Golem

That's the offhand weapon. The main hand weapon is:

Kingslayer - Mal-Um-Gul-Fal likely in a small crescent as that gives 4 sockets maximum
30% IAS (thus making it the main hand weapon)
230-270% ed
-25% Target Defense
20% AR
33% CB
50% OW
+1 Vengence (obviating the need for Berserk)
PMH
+10 Strength
40% gold find

The +1 Vengence really means that if I want to use the skill, Kingslayer has to be the main hand weapon anyway - since Vengence is a one weapon attack. The 30% IAS on Kingslayer, combined with 20% IAS offweapon (from the gloves) gives me a 5.5 frames between swings (meaning you'll alternate between a 5 frame and 6 frame attack speed since the game doesn't work in partial frames). The last bp requires 89% IAS, which would require quite a bit of equipment sacrifice - like not using the Disciple Set.

OK, so for equipment, the Disciple uses the ammy, boots, gloves, and armor, and you see my two weapons. I'll use a +2 all skills barb helm with some bonuses to particular skills, and add a Raven Frost and something that gives 7% or 8% life leech with my other ring slot. The set gives +3 skills, so throw in Battle Commands and I'm +6 all skills. I'll have two echoing weapons on switch, so warcries are at +12.

Skill Setup:

Combat Skills:

Bash - 20
Double Swing -1 (so it's mana free)
Stun - 1
Subtotal: 22 (that's it!)

Warcries:

Howl - 1
Shout - 1
Taunt - 1
Find Potion - 1
Find Item - 1
Battle Cry - 1
War Cry - 1
Battle Command - 1
Battle Orders - 20
Subtotal: 28 (not much there either!)

Masteries:

Axe Mastery - 20
Increased Stamina - 1
Increased Speed - 1
Iron Skin - 1
Natural Resistance - 1
Subtotal: 24 (that's low too!)

Total: 74

Leaving a question of what to do with about 20 or so extra skill points... but more on that later.

Game play style is to make gratuitous use of Taunt, War Cry, Stun, and Battle Cry to reduce the chance or entirely prevent monsters from hitting me. Of the above list, only Battle Cry works on everything. Champions, uniques, and act bosses are unaffected by Taunt and War Cry. Stun works on everything except act bosses. Also of interest is that Taunt and Battle Cry act like curses, and over-write each other. Stunning monsters - either by use of Stun or War Cry is considered a status affect, and can be used in combination with Taunt or Battle Cry. Stun and War Cry can also overwrite each other, with the duration of stunning set at the point of whatever was used most recently.

So I have War Cry and Stun to stop monsters from moving, Taunt to neutralize any missile using enemies (like Gloams), and Battle Cry to increase the chance of me hitting everything, and reduce the damage monsters do to me when I get hit. And the only two on that list that cannot work simultaneously are Taunt and Battle Cry.

As for the remaining points and what to do with them. Well Taunt and Battle Cry get some rather piddly bonuses by adding points.

A level 1 Battle Cry gives -25% damage done by monsters, -50% monster defense, and has a 12 second duration. Each additional point decreases the damage they do by 1%, decreases their defense by 2%, and adds 2 seconds to the duration. Since I'll have it effectively at skill level 14 (1 hard point, +12 War Cries, +1 Battle Command), that means I get -38% damage dealt, -76% defense, and it lasts for 38 seconds, which may as well be forever. Don't think I need any more points there.

Taunt's biggest benefit is to shut down nasty missile users, and it works for that at skill level 1. At level 1 it gives a 5% penalty to monster attack rating and damage, and you get a whole 2% more of each for each additional point spent. So at level 14, it's -37% to monster AR and damage. No more points needed there.

Which means I'm probably maxing War Cry. Level 1 stuns for just one second, with each additional point increasing the stun length by 0.2 seconds. So, at level 33, we're making everything pillars for 7.4 seconds, which is very long. It also gives a passive bonus to Stun, increasing it's duration by 5% per point spent, so with 20 hard points, tbat's 100% stun duration, which will make the Stun skill work for 5.2 seconds.

So what do you think?

EDIT: And maybe a point in Concentrate - if I'm maxing Bash and Battle Orders, it gets a 300% synergy damage bonus...

---------- Added 16 hours, 32 minutes and 6 seconds later... ----------

I knew it was 40M XPs, I didn't know there were no reductions for level - I had assumed that there were. Whilel I never really considered leveling a character much past 90, I always make sure I'm at least at the level needed to get the full 40M from the Ancients (and the corresponding numbers on normal and nightmare). The game is capped that you can never receive more than one full level for killing them. So if you're only level say... 75 or so when you take on the Ancients, and you're half way to level 76, killing the Ancients will take you to half way to level 77, and any excess experience points beyond that are lost.

The only problem I see with that strategy is other than the Ancients themselves, the next best place to level is the WSK levels, and you cannot do them if you haven't killed the Ancients. Until you get beyond level 90 and the XP penalty kicks in for the normal monsters, clearing WSK2, WSK3, WSC, all of Baal's minions and Baal himself, is worth around 20 million XPs - which isn't bad for what for me is typically about a half hour time investment.

Do you know what the formula is for calculating XP loss due to level differential (you seem to given you've posted some percentages). I know that it kicks in if there's more than a 5 level difference, but it would be nice to know when it gets to the point where you're getting essentially nothing. I know by levle 95 everything that isn't an Act Boss and a few superuniques are essentially worth nothing (you get 5% of what they'd normally be worth, on top of the normal XP decay that you experience as you level - so little that it practically doesn't register).

---------- Added 5 hours, 12 minutes and 46 seconds later... ----------

I'm looking forward to this barbarian. I haven't played one on SP since my concentrate barb as my first character, and this should be a fun play. There's a lot to like here, including that my character will not be woefully underpowered until he gets to level 30-something. My main attack is available at clvl 6. Granted my end game weapons won't be available until level 53 and 55, and the set won't be complete until level 65, but I can make use of other equipment until then. The Berserker Set is a no-brainer to start things off. Strength requirement of just 50 to equip everything, and a level requirement of just 3. All my early stat points will go to strength to equip that.

On the end game weapons, each swing I'm going to be carrying:

83% CB
50% OW
-25% target defense
PMH
22% critical strike (from mastery)
25%+ deadly strike (from weapon, increasing by level)
ctc Glacial Spike (from Death)
ctc Nova (from Armor)
ctc Holy Bolt (from gloves)

And I get a beefy life-leeching minion to boot - I'm assuming a level 22 Blood Golem can't be bad. According to the skill description, at level 22, Blood Golem hit for about 100 points of damage and have 139% life leech ability.

Another thing - this character is going to have a LOT of life - even by barbarian standards. The highest strength requiring item is the zerker axe - 138. (The armor is a dusk shroud, needing only 77.) The highest dexterity requiring item depends on the axe type I make the second weapon in, but the highest dexterity requirement on any of the elite axes is just 83. With just over 200 hard points needed in strength and dexterity combined - about 1/4 of which I'll get when I click "create character" and more once I consider the other equipment - means I'm going to be investing about 300 points into vitality, and I project a minimum level of 33 for Battle Orders.

That said, I still think this qualifies as a defensive build. While the total defense on the set isn't great - the armor is the best piece with a defense of 882 - I'm also going to have a level 14 shout active (+230% defense), along with a level 7 Iron Skin (+90% defense). Add in that the play style involves immobilizing enemies, and lowering the AR and damage to the ones I can't immobilize, means I shouldn't be getting hit really often or really hard.

Playing the defensive paladin and researching hit ratios to defense taught me some valuable lessons:

1. Lowering monster defense is a much better plan for acheiving a high hit ratio compared to raising your attack rating. Your attack rating needs to be 9X monster defense for a 90% hit rate, 19X monster defense for a 95% hit rate. It's definitely a case where it is easier to lower the river than raise the bridge.

2. Similarly, because the process is equally applicable in reverse, lowering monster AR is a much better plan for reducing the number of hits you take compared to raising your defense. Lowering a monsters AR by 37% is equivalent of adding thousands of points to your defense.

So I'm a Gul away from having all that I need. It shouldn't take that long. In fact, it may be more accurate to say I'm an Ist away from what I need, as I'm pretty sure I have an Ist in the stash - and I'm willing to go Ist-less for a while if I get to Ist before a Gul.

 

Don't forget that the entire River of Flame is level 85, and generally much easier than WSK. Not to mention good ol' The Pit and even the final level of Maggot Lair, which is pretty much a safe haven for a melee guy. The kill exp of the monsters is a tad lower, but nothing major.

There's two cumulative multiplicative penalties. First, you drop from 100% to 5% exp going from 5 to 10 levels above the monsters you fight in 19% intervals.

The second one is a global exp reduction that actually kicks in already at level 70. You get roughly 5% less exp for each level after that - ie. 95, 90, 85, 80 etc percent, all the way down to 25% at level 85. The decay goes exponential after that, reducing to 75% of the previous value at each step, ending up with piddly 0.59% at level 98.

You can check the full charts at Diablo 2 Wiki.

In short - the global reduction is bad enough past level 85, but it's the level difference penalty that finally drops the bomb when combined with it.

 

Thanks - the link was helpful. I agree that it's the cumulative effect of both penalties that is the problem. At high levels, once you reach the 5% minimum for most monsters combined with the global decrease because of level, causes you to earn a fraction of 1% of the typical experience for kills of non-boss monsters. It is probably not hyperbole to say that you probably get about the same amount of experience at level 80 for killing a few monsters in the Pit as you do for clearing the entire Pit at level 95+.

I am looking forward to the Barbarian build. While I would prefer two axes, I may settle for swords, as both Death and Kingslayer work in either item type. I may even go one of each if that's what it takes to get a four and five socket item. That would cause some skill point shuffling (which I was considering anyway) as there would be no point in maxing a weapon mastery if both my weapons weren't the same type. If I go one of each, I'll just invest one hard point into both sword and axe mastery, and have a slvl7 in both with +skills.

There are pros and cons with this strategy. The main pro is that there will be little damage difference in going with an elite sword over an elite axe. So it's more of an aesthetic choice than anything. Here's the list of average damage for the one-handed axes capable of getting at least 4 sockets:

Small Crescent - 49 (max 4 sockets)
Ettin Axe - 49.5
War Spike - 39
Berserker Axe - 47.5

So with axes, the only one that's really a poor choice would be a war spike. The other three are essentially equal. While the berserker axe has a slightly lower damage output, it's also a bit faster (base speed 0 versus 10) than the small crescent and ettin axe, which may make that the highest damage option of the three. (It would depend on weapon speed break points, as well as what the second weapon was, as double swing is calculated based on the average speed of both weapons.)

Here's the same listing for swords. In the case of a two-handed sword, I'm listing the damage it does when wielded with one hand, as would be the case with this character:

Phase Blade - 33 (but -30 speed)
Conquest Sword - 45 (max 4 or 5 sockets?)
Cryptic Sword - 41 (max 4 or 5 sockets?)
Legend Sword - 39 (max 4 sockets)
Highland Blade - 42 (max 4 sockets)
Balrog Blade - 45 (max 4 sockets)
Champion Sword - 39 (max 4 sockets)
Colossus Sword - 48
Colossus Blade - 45

So once adjusting for speed (most swords are speed 0), the conquest sword, cryptic sword, hihgland blade, balrog blade, colossus sword and colossus blade all have comparable damage outputs as the one-handed axes. But the list also displays the biggest con - there are very few sword options out there that can get a 5th socket.

My list to my sockets page appears to not be working at the moment, so I'm unsure if conquest or cryptic swords area capable of getting a 5th socket. If not, then my only option in one handed sword varieties capable of getting that 5th socket is a phase blade. Among the two handed varieties, legend swords, hihgland blades, balrog blades, and champion swords only take up 4 inventory spaces, so I don't need a socket page to tell me none of them can get 5 sockets, which leave the colossus sword and colossus blade as the only options there (I'm assuming both of them can get 6 sockets).

So while swords are the better option for getting a 4 socket option (several types can get me there with a little help from Larzuk), there are painfully few options available for a 5th socket. Unless cryptic or conquest swords can get 5, you also can't get Larzuk to help you with getting a 5th socket either. AFAIK, all swords capabable of getting more than 4 sockets can get 6, so you're SOL when it comes to Larzuk.

I've also been considering some skill point adjustments on my original plan. Looking at the non-negotiable portions of the skill setup, I have to invest a minimum of 5 skill points into the mastery tree. With the War Cry tree, I definitely am putting 20 into Battle Orders, and at least 1 into all the others except Grim Ward. So we have a minimum investment of 28 there. With the Combat Masteries, the only non-negotiable maxed skill is bash, along with one point in both stun and double swing. So that's just 22 points.

So I have 55 points that are pretty non-negotiable in terms of what I have to spend. So I have essentially two options going forward. I have about 40-45 left that I can reasonably expect to earn, so that means I can either max two more skills that presently have one point, or I can spread out those points over multiple skills. The original plan was to max War Cry and Axe Mastery. As I've already stated, if I have one axe and one sword, that plan is completely out the window, and the points that would have gone to axe mastery would go into stun and double swing.

However, even if I have two swords or two axes, I'm not sure that I need to max a weapon mastery anyway. It only gives half the damage benefit of maxing bash in terms of double swing, and bash gives an 8% damage boost to stun, whereas the mastery gives 5%. Add in that my mastery will get the full benefit of +skills, and I'm not sure it's worth it. At the very least, development of a weapon mastery should be delayed until I'm happy with the skill level development I have in everything else.

As I previously stated, neither double swing nor stun gets damage bonuses with more points. Double Swing gets reduced mana cost and bonus attack rating, whereas Stun get increased stun time and bonus attack rating. Since I have many means with this character to decrease enemy defense - at the very least Battle Cry works on everything - the bonus to AR is a negligible benefit. That's why my initial plan was to just max War Cry and be done with it.

That said, with a maxed War Cry and all my +skills, it's 45 mana per cast - that's a bit pricey against smaller groups, and I'm definitely not going to want to be launching them left, right, and center. For smaller groups of enemeies, Stun seems to be a much less mana intensive option (it costs 2 mana irresepctive of slvl). So I looked up the skill progression of stun, and saw that the stun length increases by 0.2 seconds per point, up to the 16th point. At the 17th point, it goes down to 0.1 seconds, and past skill level 22, it goes to 0.1 seconds for every two points. So there are diminishing returns at high slvls, but there does seem to be a benefit of going beyond a point - up to level 16 in fact, once you count +skills. Beyond level 16, the 5% bonus to duration you get as a synergy form War Cry is actually better than spending in the skill itself (as 5% increased duration from 4.2 seconds at slvl 16 is an increase of 0.21 seconds).

So my new thinking is that while I still want to max War Cry, it also makes sense to invest 10 hard points in Stun - so that it's level 16 with +skills. That will get the Stun length all the way up to 8.4 seconds. So with 55 acounted for, add in 19 more to War Cry, and 9 more to Stun. We're at 83 skill points. It's at this point where Mastery investment makes sense - not that I'm likely to max it - but that's why it would be a benefit to have two weapons of the same type - be they swords or axes.

But I'm not sure a weapon Mastery makes sense there either. I have Venegence to deal with physical immunes, so I'm not too keen on spending a point in Concentrate and Berserk. The damage from Berserk won't be particularly high on its own. The reason why it was such a great option on previous barb builds was because I was maxing Shout and getting a huge boost from the synergy. A one-point Venegence with +skills is actually more damaging than a one-point Berserk with +skills and just two synergy points (one each from Shout and Taunt). Specifically, I'll get 100% damage to cold, fire and lightning with Vengeance (so 300% really), whereas Berserk with two synergy points is 280% damage. And Vengeance doesn't reduce my defense to zero either.

So my final option is to actually pick up Whirlwind. It means getting Leap and Leap Attack as prerequisites, but I can still get it up to around 10 hard points. I'm just not sure I'd need it or use it though - so I'm unsure about the points.

 

Yes, but I'm a barbarian, so all swords are one-handed swords. I just checked and the only sword that has a maximum of 5 sockets is the colossus sword (which is the next to biggest one). The largest is the colossus blade, and that can get 6. So I'm pretty much out of luck either way - there's only one elite axe with 4 sockets available, and only one elite sword with 5 sockets available - I'll go with whichever I find first.

 

I've been home sick for the past two days, but I wasn't so sick that I couldn't start my barbarian. Currently in Act III, level 29. I'm modifying my skill point investment again. The more I think about it, this character has so much mana leech from gear, that I can afford the maxed War Cry skill, and given that War Cry works on everything, and Stun works on one thing, I cannot see the sense in using Stun much at all. Once my end-game gear is equipped, I'm going to have Vengence as my left-click skill for physical immunes, and DS on right click. So Stun is a one-point wonder.

I've also picked up Leap and Leap Attack as utility skills, and I did end up spending a point in both axe and sword mastery to open up some more options until I'm ready for my end game gear. So I think I have my final skill plan:

Bash 20
Double Swing - 1
Stun - 1
Leap - 1
Leap Attack - 1

Sword Mastery - 1 (I may respec it out later)
Axe Masetery - 20
Inc. Stam, Inc. Speed, Iron Skin, Natural Resistances - 1 each

Battle Orders - 20
War Cry - 20
All others - 1 each except Grim Ward (7 points)

Grim Ward has to be the worst skill in the barb list. It doesn't really do anything that you couldn't accomplish with Howl... or am I missing something? I cannot see the practical application of the skill, especially considering you have to kill something to get it to work...

That takes me to a full alottment of 96 skill points, attainable at level 85. As I said previously, axe mastery gets worked on last.