Diablo II Single Player Thread - 2

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You're going to find that the Immo is fundamentally flawed in any event. Even in 1.13 which boosted immo, I tested it fully synergised (+skills were low of course as I had very limited gear), and it's still completely underwhelming. Possibly it has potential with optimal gear, but in 1.12 it is never going to make it in Hell.

Which means you're going to be using LF/Jab almost all the time to be honest.

I don't know how lazy you are about scrapping / restarting, but level 33 isn't all that much. I can absolutely recommend the following Javazon build for a fun run, and to be honest, any immo build is broken in 1.10-1.12.

20 - Poison + Plague Javelin
20 - LF
20 - Decoy
1 - all other passives.

Mandatory gear: Peace rw armour. The +2 skills and the free level 15 Valk sells this. The real beauty is that you get the level 15 valk as soon as you hit level 30. and can put one hard point in the skill. You can use the armour at level 29, but the Valk will just pop almost immediately because of the game checks finding that you have no points in Valk.

Because of the Valk thing, I use this armour always when levelling Amazons of any kind. The valk will stand up to just about anything well into late NM. Of course when you start boosting the Decoy, she will stand up to most things in Hell too All for the price of a Shael.

Ideally also: Titan's Revenge. There simply are no better javelins for PvM.

There is one huge reason to carry on using Valkwing instead of Harlequin's Crest for your Amazon: Looks matter!!! The shako on a zon just shouldn't be allowed. Also iirc, it has frw on it, which is nice, nice, nice.

There are a few LI/PI monsters that are a pain, which I used Merc + jab on iirc. The only notable ones are the Black Souls in WSK which if they turn up you're looking at liberal use of "slow missile" (Do learn to love that skill by the way on all your zons), and some careful play / run, run, run.

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This is just to comment on a couple of other things in the thread:

1) Multi - Only the two center arrows carry any active triggers, including leech.

2) Sp v Realm: SP = Ladder, so all ladder only items are findable in SP and all ladder only cube recepies work. The only restricted items are the realm only runewords and world events. Both of which you can overcome using mods.

3) 1.13 is currently on 1.13b on the PTR. The plan is that it will go live with 1.13c though 1.13c will not be updated on the PTR before it goes live, it will only be tested by Blizzard. Notable changes: They have apparently fixed the Zeal and Leap attack bugs where you get stuck under certain conditions.

The live patch will combine with a ladder reset.

As far as the respecs go, I do think that it ruins the challenge of a lot of builds, where frankly the hard part is the early build. Removing IM? idiocy.

The key thing to do to fix the game was remove Enigma's teleport together with Infinity and CTA. These are core class skills granted to anyone who wants to use some dupes, ruining the game twice therefore in the process...... They have however changed the odds for HR's to drop fairly substantially. Instead of having found 2 in about 8 years, I would have found 8.

If you want to try 1.13b for SP, simply log onto Bnet and set your realm for the test realm. This will patch you up to 1.13b. Then create 1.13 games.

OK one nice bonus: All runes now show up in bright orange instead of white, so you're also less likely to walk away from them on a cluttered screen.

4) For realm only Runewords in SP:

http://www.theamazonbasin.com/d2/forums/index.php?showtopic=59770&hl=\runes.txt\

 

I am determined. Perhaps you are not understanding how I plan to play this character. I should state up front that I'm not making the arguement that a synergized Immolation Arrow will out-damage a synergized Frozen Arrow. It will not even come close once you take into account the spamability of FA, and the timer on IA. But this assumes you think I'm just going to stand around firing 1 IA/sec. I'm not. In fact, the only time that's even an option is when I run into something that is immune to both lightning and physical damage.

The truth is that while the +6 to IA offered by Kuko is nice, I'm also going to be using a host of other arrow skills that will all be boosted by +3. The debate between Multi and Strafe is age-old, and honestly I think the better choice is situation-dependent. I will have both at a very usable level. I also have discovered that the fire patches left by IA can overlap, especially useful when firing a piercing arrow into packs. What you see as "fundamentally flawed" (which I think is a bit of an over-statement), I view as a challenge.

Have I suggested otherwise?

No arguement there. If you're using Peace, you do get the most powerful Valkyrie by boosting Decoy, because Valkyrie gets the same +100 life and +2% resist all that you get for raising Valkyrie directly. You miss out on some attack rating and damage, and some of the higher level equipment that high level Valkyries can spawn with, but you still get your money's worth out of that 21 point investment, especially considering you get a very cheap decoy spell to boot. (At high levels, I think Decoy costs 1 mana.)

However, let's look at your setup and my setup regarding decoy/valkyrie for an actual comparison. We both would end up spending 21 points. Yours is decoy 20, valk 1 while I am decoy 1, valk 20. Your valk will be level 15 always, with 20 hard points spent in the synergy, so basically a total of 35 points. My valk will be cast at level 27 - the mandatory level to get all available bonus gear - with a single point in the synergy (because +skills don't matter on synergies) for a total of 28 points.

Your valk, for the same 21 hard points spent will have 700 more life, and will have resist all 70%, where I will just have resist all 56%. However, my valk, while not as durable, will have way more damage potential. The best weapon a valk can spawn with is a rare war pike, and you cannot get that until level 17, so your valk will never have one of those. My valk also will spawn with additional rare equipment, most notably a rare tiara, which can really improve her. Your valk is more of a meat shield, capable of absorbing massive amounts of damage, much like a clay golem. My valkyrie has expanded combat capabilities, and the cost of being less durable.

OK, help me out here, because I'm definitely missing something. You say that when you ran into something that was lighning and poison immune, it was a pain, but you were able to deal with it using your merc and jab (and presumably your valk). Yet, you are completely sure that when I run into a lighting and physical immune, that I'm not going to be able to take him down using a combination of IA interspersed with EA, even though I'll have a merc and valk to keep him busy, and my IA is going to be hitting for over 3000 damage, not counting residual burn damage that will prevent regeneration

I took out normal Baal last night. I will however, have to do some additional leveling, as I'm only level 36 at the moment, and not ready for NM yet.

EDIT: Here are the equipment Valkyries get by level:

27 Tiara - Rare
25 Amulet - Rare
23 Colossus Girdle - Rare
21 Myrmidon Greaves - Rare
19 Crusader Gauntlets - Rare
17 War Pike - Rare
16 Sacred Armor - Rare
14 Circlet - Magic
13 Amulet - Magic
12 War Belt - Magic
11 War Boots - Magic
10 War Gauntlets - Magic
8 Lance - Rare
7 Chaos Armor - Rare
5 Plated Belt - Magic
4 Greaves - Magic
2 Gauntlets - Magic
1 Spear - Rare
1 Full Plate Mail - Rare

Of course, they still get the life, resistance, damage, and attack rating bonuses beyond level 27, but there is no more additional equipment upgrades after that.

 

I think you read more into my post than what I actually said. I never mentioned immunities in terms of your build's ability or otherwise to take them down, I'm just saying that immo is so poor in terms of damage output it's frightening, and in Hell we need some serious damage of course. The nerfed it out of usefullness when they made 1.10 unfortunately. I just think it will become too frustrating to try to get anything from it, and you will simply end up ignoring it. Cudos for being determined with it, but I don't envy you the frustrations. The problem isn't just the damage nerfs, which were horrific, there is the 1s cool down on the skill. That's a deal breaker for me. Bowies need fast attacks, and this nets our now at 32 frames+ per shot.

You also misunderstand my build slightly. The free valk is useful because she gets recast where there are enemies, and she will tank where it's needed. She will not kill anything to speak of at that level of course. The real minnion for this build is the decoy. Plant her at level 30+ and she can tank almost anything in the game, including Hell Lister for a while. She packs them in, I zap them with some serious poison, and laugh at them while they are attacking the decoy, not yet knowing they are really already dead....

Decoy is the best minnion in the game bar none, because you can absolutely control her. She's also basically free to recast at high levels.

 

FINALLY got the Horadric Cube, and cut the contents of my bank down massively

Character is level 19 now. Wanna get to 25 so he can get Volcano.

 

I agree on the cool-down period. There's nothing that can be done about that, other than switching to another elemental bow skill for a couple of shots. From experimentation, a Kuko can get off three EA during the cool down period of IA. So against a LI/physI enemy, you go IA, EA, EA, EA, IA, EA, EA, EA. Until you get your EA to level 8, you just use Kuko's standard attack.

I have not experienced any frustration with this build yet, but I'm only in normal. Baal's minions were an absolute JOKE with LF. I just stood next to the altar, threw 2-3 javelins, and game over for them.

I guess my point is that while I see some obvious weaknesses with this build, I don't see them in the same areas as you do. For example, I don't have a boss killer skill. None of my physical, fire, or lightning attacks are particularly good against single targets, and that problem is solved in the standard LF/FA build in that you get a maxed out CS which is ONLY good for singular strong targets. My "solution" to this is to throw a pair of Gore Riders in my stash, and Jab the boss to death, which I concede is a less than stellar option. Granted, the boss cannot do much of anything, because I got Kelpie Snare on my merc, so the boss is totally screwed over - it's just takes a bit of time to actually dispose of him.

I also think you're missing one powerful element of IA against physical immunes, and that is the residual fire damage stacks, and can overlap. It is especially useful for things like ghosts, where you can have 10 of them all occupying the same space. A single high pierce IA will go through a whole bunch of them, and each one will spawn a fire patch, but all the ghosts on that spot will be affected by all the fire patches simultaneously. It's possible to get over 3000 fire damage from the initial attack, and 3000 fire damage per second in burn damage - it's kind of like how poison damage works, but with fire. And since the fire lasts 3 seconds, but the cool down is 1 second, you can thoretically get it up to 9000 damage per second, and now we're talking.

I totally get it - that's why I said that if you actually plan on using the decoy (like in the manner you described) it's a no brainer in terms of where your points should go, especially considering you get a high life valkyrie for free, which basically functions as a second decoy. It doesn't take Lister and company too long to rip through them both, but they buy you a few seconds, and often that's all you need. Additionally, at level 25 and beyond, a Decoy costs ONE MANA. So yeah, it's basically free, even if you just got mana burned.

The reason I'm going for the Valkyrie is that she represents a not insignificant part of the physical damage component of the build.

That I don't completely agree with. (Well, I agree with the ability to absolutely control her, I just don't think that makes her the best.) High level Shadow Masters, Clay Golems, and Frenzytaur/Blood Lord revives are also extremely useful, and damn near indestructible to boot. And we haven't even got into mercenaries yet, although technically I guess they don't count as minions.

I think you mean level 24, but I get your point. The thing is with druids is that most of their elemental skills don't do too much damage with just a point or two invested in them, and if you don't stick it out, you can become frustrated. Volcano is a very good skill once you raise it up to a respectable level. With just a point or two, you may find it somewhat underwhelming. Also, don't forget about synergies for your favorite skills. A skill that is just so-so unsynergized can become a powerhouse if you spend 20 points on it and a synergy.

 

I've got 15 or so skill points unspent at the moment, trying to use as few as possible so I can really pump Volcano up as soon as I get it.

 

So I got Volcano, then found out I could only put one point in it, so I had a bunch left over! Now my Fissure is pretty amazing, and should synergy well with my slowly powering up Volcano.

I also smashed through Duriel and am in Act 3! Truth be told, this is my least favourite act. Still, I shall soldier on

 

How can I check for shield blocking % & weapon speeds? How and why do I increase Weapon Speeds, and do the various sources stack?
Although I mostly play the Barb with 2 weapons, I did have to use the Sheild & Mace against Duriel. I gambled a Ocher Tower Sheild of Deflecting :
24 Def
69% Block
30% Faster Block
20% Increased Block chance
20% Lightning Resist
So I need to know how much Dex to get for Max Block. Also what are these various types of Block listed here?

Also why the heck is my game so heavily leaning towards Sorc? I have atleast 4 staves that are 10k+ value and 1 thats 15k+.

 

Sorry, I forgot to mention that. You can never spend more hard points in a skill than the numbers of levels you have earned to get that skill available. So when you're level 24, you cannot have more than one point in any level 24 skill. However, saving skill points is a viable strategy if you want to build two late game skills simultaneously. Lets say, for example, that your two main skills require you to be level 24 before you can access them. By saving skill points, you can then boost each of them by a point at each level up. So you would have two level 24 skills each with one point when you were level 24. Then you'd place one more in each of them when you hit level 25. Since you gain one skill point with each level up, but you're spending two skill points with each level up, you'd eventually use up the saved skill points.

In fact, this is exactly what I did with my current amazon. The first two skills I wanted to max to 20 points were Valkyrie and Lightning Fury. The issue is that each of them require you to be level 30 to cast them. So prior to level 30, the only thing I spent points on were the prerequisites to those level 30 skills, along with some one-point wonders I wanted to pick up along the way. When I finally reached level 30, I had about 10 un-spent skill points. So for the next 10 levels I spent a point in both Valkyrie and Lightning Fury at each level up, so I was working on two of my end-game skills simultaneously. My amazon is now level 45, and I have no remaining un-spent points.

I think you will find that is a common sentiment among most fans of D2. Act III is probably the least popular of the acts, because it's a long act, yet you do not get much experience points relative to the other acts. Add in the fact that there are a ton of annoying monsters, from gloams, to spiders, to scarabs, to those seemingly ever-present flayers with their blow darts.

How is FA performing now that you are in the later acts? I know it was working just fine in Act I, but now that you are up against monsters with consdierably more life, is FA getting the job done (even if it is not as quickly as you'd like)?

IIRC, plague javelin is damage over time, just like all other types of poison damage. Unless you sink a considerable number of points into it and a synergy, it just doesn't do damage fast enough to be of much use. (But I do know javezons who max plague javelin, and the other poison skill synergy, and it does quite a bit of damage when you set it up that way. Like, several thousand points of damage over a few seconds.)

What about a point or two in valkyrie? If nothing else it gives monsters something else to beat on. You don't have enough remaining points to get valkyrie to the point where it could actually kill anything for you, but it would function as a second decoy. Actually, your best bet would be to spend a single point in Valkyrie, and then the rest in Decoy, as that would improve the life total of both Decoy and Valkyrie.

There's no way to check what your weapon speed is in-game. As dmc stated, faster is always better. All your sources of weapon speed stack, so if you have 20% on the weapon, and 10% on your gloves, you have 30% increased attack speed*. Only gloves and weapons come with IAS as a standard mod, although there are a few set and unique items out there other than weapons and gloves that also give IAS (eg, Goldwrap). If you want to increase your weapon speed even further, the easiest way is use socketed weapons, and insert a shael rune(s) into them. Each shael gives you an additional 20% IAS. If you're only in Act III, you may not have a shael yet, but shaels aren't too uncommon, and you're sure to find one or two eventually.

* The exception is the barbarian skill whirlwind. Only IAS on the weapon itself counts towards whirlwind. For all other barbarian combat skills, IAS from all your sources stack.

As dmc stated, your actual chance to block is based on three factors: The base percentage on your shield (in this example, it's 69%), your level, and your dexterity. Open up your character sheet, and point the mouse over your defense. You should get a popup that says: Chance of monster hitting you XX%, chance of blocking XX%. The maximum possible chance of blocking is 75%.

Counterintuitively, the higher your character level, the more dexterity you need to maintain the maximum block percentage of 75%. With the shield you listed here, your dexterity would need to be somewhere around 2.5 times your character level to reach maximum block. If you just beat Duriel, you're probably about level 25, so I'd estimate you'll need about 60 dexterity at your current level. On your shield, 20% increased block chance simply means that a normal tower shield has a 49% base chance to block, but yours is 69%. 30% faster block means that the block animation that takes place when you block is 30% quicker with this shield, and faster is better. You pause your attack briefly when you block, so the quicker your block, the shorter the pause.

Having said all that, you should really decide fairly on in your barb's career whether or not you're going to use a shield. For barbarians, dexterity does two things: it increases your chance of hitting, and it increases your chance of blocking. However, barbarians get substantial attack rating bonuses from their attack skills and from their weapon mastery. So a barbarian generally doesn't have too much problem hitting things. Therefore, the only thing dexterity really does for a barbarian is increasing the chance to block. If you are typically going to use a shield, then it makes sense to invest heavily into dexterity so that you have a 75% chance of blocking. However, if you plan on wielding two weapons, then your dexterity only needs to be high enough to use those weapons. For mace class and axe class weapons, you don't need much dexterity at all, while swords will require a modest investment (although no where near where what you'd need for max block).

That's just random chance. Any item that comes with +skills is worth a ton of money. Sorceress staves certainly qualify, but necromancer wands, paladin scepters, druid helms, and barbaraian helms also can get +skills on them, and those that do typically sell for 10,000-15,000 gp as well. The drops in the game are random, so it is certainly possible that you've got more staves to drop than other items, but it is not only sorceress items that sell for a high amount of gold.

 

I have all of those pre-requisites, and from my experience, it doesn't slow you down much at all (and the fact that you don't take any damage, makes the delay more bearable). However, if you don't have any of those skills from the middle portion of your passive and magic skill tree, then you are looking at a considerable skill point investment to get valkyrie, and that alone may be enough to avoid taking the skill. Spending one additional point to see if you like a skill is acceptable. Spending five points for an additional skill that you may not even like is a lot to ask.

That's a skill I'm eventually going to have to learn as well. Even though my decoy will only be at level 8, the only goal of a decoy is a target, so that they shoot at that instead of you. The decoy really only has to live long enough to get off a javelin - or an arrow or two in the case of lightning immunes. Another thing I have found useful (although perhaps cheesy) is that the arrow keeps going when it reaches the end of the screen. You can pop up a decoy at the edge of a the screen, and then fire arrows in the direction the lightning bolts are coming from, and hit the gloams before they even see you.

That's a very good point - and one of the things I like about Immolation Arrow as well. Anything that prevents healing is useful, especially if you don't have at least one poison charm in your inventory, and you probably don't have a source of open wounds.

I've been doing some additional reading over at the amazon basin regarding Immolation Arrow (IA), and the one thing I discovered is that IA shines against the larger targets. Every time you hit with IA, it leaves behind a patch of fire that burns for three seconds. How much damage the target takes from the residual burn damage is largely based on the size of the target. Area in the game is determined by tiles, in much the same way that time is measured in frames. The burn area for IA is 1.5 yards, which works out to an area of 9 tiles.

The burn damage displayed by IA is deceptive because the burn damage is 1/3 of the displayed amount per tile, and some monsters can be taking damage from multiple tiles. (Although oddly, no monsters in the game take up exactly three tiles, so you only get the damage listed on indirect hits, when monsters are taking damage from exactly three tiles.)

Small monsters like flayers or fallen only take up a single tile, and thus, can only be taking damage from one tile, even if they stand in the fire the entire 3 seconds. The only way you can get additional burn damage with small creatures is if they are packed closely together, as an IA can pierce the first target, strike a second target, and then if the 9 tile burn areas overlap, they take burn damage from both sources. As a result, IA is a poor choice against small creatures, especially like the blow dart flayers which typically are spaced far apart. For those type of creatures, exclusive use of exploding arrow (EA) offers superior damage per unit of time than using IA interspersed with EA.

Medium size monsters (which are the vast majority of monsters in the game) take up 5 tiles. A direct hit on a medium sized monster will cause it to take damage from all 5 tiles (assuming you have a valkyrie or merc up there to make sure the monster doesn't move away from the burn damage), and thus the damage dealt is 167% the listed damage. In the case of an arrow piercing a target and striking a second target, you can get areas to overlap, further increasing the damage output. This is especially important for things like ghosts, where you can get a whole pack of them concentrated on the same five tiles, where you can have damage from all five tiles multiplied by the number of creatures present. Because of the one-second delay between castings, use of IA against medium targets is situation dependent. Whenever you can reasonably expect to get overlap between two patches, IA offers superior damage compared to EA (although it is still recommended that you fire off an EA between IA shots). For single targets where no overlap is possible, firing EA exclusively works out to about the same average damage over time as does alternating between EA and IA.

Finally, large targets, such as Act bosses take up 13 tiles. They can be standing in all nine tiles form a direct hit, and thus take 300% listed damage. To put hard numbers on that, a level 30 IA with 20 points in EA will deal about 3,500 damage in initial blast damage, and another 4,400 in residual fire damage per second if the boss is standing on all nine tiles. As you are aware, Act bosses don't move around a whole lot (except Diablo), so IA nearly always offers superior damage to using EA against Act bosses.

Charged strike is generally regarded as one of the best boss killers of any character class. That's because Act bosses have very high defenses, but the lightning component of charged strike is auto-hit. I have no idea what level you have charged strike at, but I imagine it's at least 25 or so, and so you should be getting about 6 or so bolts, and with 20 in LF, that's +320% damage per bolt, which is a freakin' ton of damage. CS/LF amazons kill cows and bosses very well - in fact, you can say they exceed just about any other character class in both categories. I am hoping that my 15% CB is adequate for taking out act bosses.

 

Did you spend those points yet? And do you have 100% pierce? If not, that's where they should go. If you do have it, I would look at decoy or Valk. You will only do one thing with the poison damage, and that's stop regeneration. Which you can just as easily do by sticking a single small poison charm in your inventory imo.

How's the freeze time on your FA by the way? If you find it insufficient, any small charms will add 0.25s per cold affix you the FA freeze time in Hell (1s in Normal).

Given your attacks, I don't really think your problem is hitting (LF is auto, and most of your FA damage is auto as well). However, things simply have that much more HP in A4 / A5 Hell, so it simply feels like you're hitting less. A lot of the time anyway.

The Anya level can be extremely tricky with a bad spawn. Do try slow missile on those pesky gloams though. It's a lot easier to dodge out of the way then. And as you've already observed, gloams (and ghosts) have low HP.

IIRC, Big D only has about 112k HP in Hell, though I can't recall his LR off the top of my head. In any event, you will find CS is in fact the best boss killing skill in the game, and though you're not fully synergised here, the damage should be more than adequate to take him down. No harm adding some CB if you can for the fight, but not really needed I wouldn't have thought.

@ Shrikant - Google Titanseal IAS calculator for all your attack speed requirements and breakpoints. It's hosted at Indiablo.de but there is an English version.

 

Actually, Viking brings up a great point. CS also gets an 8% synergy from the Lightning Javelin skill. (I don't know if that's actually the name of the skill - I'm talking about the one that turns the javelin into a lightning bolt.) I'd imagine that more CS damage = more better.

dmc is using Razortail, and has quite a bit of +skills, so I imagine that the 33% from Razortail, 1 point in pierce, along with +skills that he already has to be very close, if not already at, the 95% limit on pierce.

 

dmc was saying what I was saying as I was saying it...

Anyway, yes, you do get the benefit from elemental charms in your inventory even if you use a physical attack on a monsters that is immune to physical damage. Then again, when you're talking about dual immunes, I assume you mean immune to cold and lightning, in which case you're getting the physical aspect anyway. There's no possibility of a monster spawning with immunity to cold, lightning, AND physical.

My zon is currently level 45, and while I have several pieces of equipment that will give me mana leech in my stash, I'm not using any of them at the moment. At this juncture I'm trying to maximize damage, and I have found that Valkyriewing, which gives +4 mana per kill, is very satisfactory in providing the mana fuel I need for LF. Titans isn't even fair. The only reason I don't use it on everything is because for onesies and twosies the mana I get back doesn't pay for the cost of the spell. Even with 3 or 4, I get back what I'm using.

 

The druid is into act 4 now, and starting to struggle a little. As of yet, he doesn't have a single +skill item still, he's tearing into those beasties. Next order of business is to smash Mephistos soulstone. Wish me luck!

 

You may need some luck. IMO, on normal difficulty, Diablo is a tougher fight than Baal. This is because of the level difference with your character. Typically, you hit Diablo when you are level 27 or 28. You won't fight Baal before you are level 35 in most cases. So you get access to the most powerful tier of skills in the game when you hit Baal (a few levels worth in fact), that you won't have for Diablo.

 

Is it possible for me to go back and kill Mephisto again at this point? I'm fairly confident I can down him with relative ease, and he drops very good loot.