Diablo II Single Player Thread - 2

Just to nitpick. There is no cap on pierce. There is a cap on your cth of 95% IFF the cth equation comes into play. Since LF is autohit, it bypasses this and hits 100% of the time, and pierces 100% of those times provided you have 100% or higher pierce of course.

In fact iirc, there is no cap on any of the active triggers: Pierce, CB, OW, Static etc. The only limit is your cth which is maxed at 95% if the skill is not autohit. Anything over 100% is of course superfluous.

@DMC - The elemental damage from charms and other gear is carried on the physical javelin, so you need to hit the monster. With LF that's never in doubt, with CS and FA the poison from a charm will only apply if you actually hit with the javelin / arrow. It is not added to the lighting bolts or the splash cold damage.

Are you ready to play tag with the boys on the Arreat Summit yet? They will of course be harder than Baal and the waves put together with your build. If you have Cats Eye ammy and or Valk Wing helm I would suggest this is the time for FRW. They also don't really buy into the decoy I find. Might just be me.

******Phys FR LR CR PR
Talic 40 110 50 50 50

Madawc 40 50 100 70 50

Korlic 40 70 50 150 50

So one LI and one CI. I think your real nightmare is if either Madawk or Korlic spawn CI/LI. Hope you're not too proud to re-roll.

Edit - To agree with Aldeth. Normal Diablo is generally the hardest fight in the game till you get deep into Hell for most builds. Other than what you mentioned there is one other reason why Normal D is more difficult. The Lighting hose of death starts further and further away from his body, and in NM and Hell you can Toe to toe him without getting hosed to death. It simply goes over your head. Need a short range weapon mind you.

 

On my current Amazon, I have Titans, Valkyriewing, and Gore Riders for boss fights. They all provide 20% FRW. When you have all three equipped she absolutely motors. I walk at the speed most characters run.

 

Yes. For Monsters with resistances of 100% or less, -% enemy resistance works exactly as it is described. Since Madawac is 100% lightning resistant, he will be 85% resistant when you fight him. For monsters with resistances over 100%, it works differently. For those monsters, -% enemy resistance works at 1/5 of it's stated efficacy until it brings the resistance down to 100%, at which point it functions just like it does for monsters with resistances of 100% or less. Using Talic as an example, he has 110% fire resistance. So you would need -50% enemy fire resistance just to bring him down to 100%, effectively making his fire resistance unbreakable.

 

Yayyyy! I finally got an item with +1 in a skill I use!

 

Playing with /players 8 continuously and without redoing any maps, my Barb is L31 at the Bazaar in ACT III. Wonder what my levels will be come Baal.
ps. Please tell me it gets less annoying once I exit this jungle, the blow-dart pigmies are pissing me off.

 

If you think the blow-dart pygmies are irritating in Act 3, just wait when you meet their souped up relatives in massive hordes (and I mean MASSIVE) during some parts of Act 5. You better hope you brought some AoE damage with you...

 

I think today might be the day that I take on Diablo. I'm excited, and a little scared. Might just do one quick Mephy run before I go there.

Also, I found a Sorceress staff in Act 2, i'm now in Act 4, and I STILL can't sell it for full price. Why can't I find any Druid items this good?

 

Erm, no.

The way immunities work is this:

1) Only the necro curse Lower resist and the Pally aura Conviction are capable of breaking elemental immunity. Only LR can break poison immunity, and AD and Decrep can break Physical immunity (They both always will except against certain Champ / boss combinations, because all PI normal monsters are exactly 100% physical res). Immunity is any resistance of 100% or greater. Max conviction is -150 res (capped), max LR practically is around -60 to 65.

2) Conviction and LR (and AD/Decrep) work at 1/5 against immune elements. For the whole spell / skill, not just down to 99% and even if used together, where one is enough to break the immunity they will still both work at 1/5.

3) No other means of lower resistance work at all against immune monsters, however, if immunity is broken they will work in full.

T-strokes will therefore not enable us to do any damage to Madawk on it's own. Coupled with a shoppable necro wand with Lower resist charges on the other hand, Bingo, and the -15% will work in full. Max level shoppable is lvl 3 charges, but that does require a shopper of lvl 94 or higher. Level 2 is easily available though.

 

Has that changed in a recent patch? Way back in patch 1.10, my brother and I played through a game together where I was a paladin with the Conviction aura, and he as a sorceress with maxed Cold Mastery. We encountered nothing that didn't take massive damage from his cold attacks, even cold immunes. It seems like if we were only getting 1/5 of stated resistance (even after the resistance was broken), a monster with cold resistances would still take very little damage.

 

Wheee, Diablo is down! I've had some amazing loot today, loads and loads of +skill items, but NONE of them for Druid! Argh!

 

Well done - you should be able to sail through the rest of normal difficulty - as I said, Diablo is usually the hardest test in nomal.

 

I'm not sure when it last changed, but it hasn't changed since 1.10 went live afaik. I'd guess that it was changed from 1.09, but I didn't really play much in 1.09, so I can't say for sure how it worked back then. It's 6 years ago after all.

Remember that for those critters that were broken with conviction, the sorc's cold mastery would be working in full bringing their resistance down loads subject only to the cap of -100. For things that remain CI after conviction, the sorc would do zero cold damage, regardless of CM level.

 

OK - that's how I thought it worked - I guess I did a poor job of explaining it. I thought that once a resistance was broken by character A, then further -% from character B worked as normal. I thought you were saying that anytime a creature had resistance exceeding 100%, that all -% resistance worked at 1/5 efficacy regardless of whether it was broken by the first character.

 

Aldeth, close but not quite.

There's a difference between skills that actually lower monsters's resistances for everyone concerned (Conviction and Lower Resist) and stuff that causes vulnerability specifically to *your* attacks such as Cold Mastery and Rainbow Facets. The first two are at 1/5 effectiveness against immunes, irregardless of the order in which you apply them or whether one of them is enough to break the immunity by themselves.

The other category either works at full capacity - against non-immune monsters and the ones whose immunity is broken by Conv/LR first - or not at all, if the monster remains immune after Conv/LR is applied.

So in the case of Conviction pally and a Cold sorc: If Conviction is enough to break immunity, even if just barely, Cold Mastery will take full effect and allow the sorc to really deliver the damage. However, an Amazon using Freezing Arrow without any Cold Facets or other sources of -enemy_cold_resist would barely tickle the same mob.

 

OK - I get it now. I had not realized there was a different way of applying -% resistance. So other than Conviction and Lower Resist (and I guess Amplify Damage, as I know I've used that to break physical immunes), it's an all or nothing proposition based on whether or not the monster is at or over 100% resistance.

---------- Added 2 hours, 28 minutes and 53 seconds later... ----------

I have taken the plunge into single player. I was pissed when I saw that Battlenet is resetting the ladder again next week. When the ladder resets, all existing ladder characters become non-ladder characters. The issue I have with that is non-ladder characters do not have the ability to upgrade runes indefinitely. I believe the last set of runes non-ladder characters can upgrade are Hel to Io. Since I generally play solo anyway, and it is a pipe dream that I'll ever get the runes to be able to make any of the ladder-only runewords, I felt this was as good a time as any for a fresh start. There are many powerful non-ladder runewords that are expensive, yet comparitively less so than the ladder-only ones. Since I can upgrade runes indefinitely in single player, it is feasible that I'll eventually be able to make some of them in a couple of months.

That said, I have found that there are many perks in using single player that I did not have access to while playing on Battlenet. First of all, I downloaded ATMA, and that makes switching things between characters very easy. In ATMA V, you can create a stash with unlimited capacity, where the stash is broken down into many subgroups, so you can organize by weapons, runes, gems, armor, whatever. So it's nice that I don't have to create mules to hold my extra stuff.

Secondly, I never realized until now the benefits of changing the game settings to 8 players. Monsters are worth a LOT more experience points when you change the setting to eight players, and they drop a LOT more stuff. (The downside being they have a lot more life and take a lot more damage before dying.) I'm unsure of the exact percentage, but based on the rate my character is advancing, I'd say I'm getting about triple the XPs I was getting when I played solo on Battlent.

As for items, while changing the players setting to 8 does not affect what a given monster can drop, it greatly increases the chances that it drops something. It's not that you're getting a higher percentage of magic or better items - that part is still controlled by one's magic find percentage - it's just that by getting more of everything, you also get more magic or better items. (You also get more cracked and low quality gear as well.) Chests, barrels, and other containers also have improved drop rates. That didn't surprise me because those drop rates work the same way as monster drop rates (the percentage are different for the different containers, but the drop mechanics function identically). What did surprise me is that not only do containers seem to drop more often, they also appear to drop more stuff when they drop. It's not uncommon to get multiple drops from a single container, whereas on Battlenet if a container gave you anything at all, it was typically one item. (Gold chests excepted - they always give multiple drops.)

Anyway, for my first character, I decided on a Concentrate Barbarian. As far as magic find abilities, this is a mid-range character. The Find Item ability makes him better than most other melee characters, but he cannot hope to compete against somthing like a skellimancer. The thing is, I currently have nothing. So even a mid-range magic find character that can progress rapidly through normal and nightmare is the easiest path to gaining some wealth. My previous skellimancer had some serious problems with normal Diablo, and he was well twinked. I couldn't see Normal Diablo going well when playing untwinked.

The Concentrate Barbarian will be the standard for that build type: max battle orders, concentrate, shout and a mastery, in that order. You'd max the mastery last anyway, but that is especially true for my character, as I have no idea what weapons I will have access to. I have already spent a point in both axe and sword mastery, as they are the two decent weapons I have found up to this point. If I get a good mace class weapon, I'll also throw a point in there. I won't spend points in spears or polearms, because one thing I'm certain of is I will be using a shield eventually. A Concentrate Barbarian doesn't really need a shield in normal difficulty. It's hard to find one with a decent block rate, and a one-point shout is typically adequate to prevent monsters from hitting you anyway. So right now, I'm just using the biggest beat stick I can find as my primary weapon, which up to this point is a magic battle axe.

Anyway, I've reached the Inner Cloister way point in Act I, and I am already stunned by the amount of levels and the amount of gambling I've been able to do. Based on my current advancement rate, I predict I will be level 21 by the time I get to Andariel. I usually don't see level 21 until around the Arcane Sanctuary.

Since there are level limits on what the merchants can sell in normal difficulty, I'm getting all my equipment via gambling, as that is based exclusively on your character level, irrespective of difficulty, and my character level far exceeds the item types that merchants sell. The only downside up to this point is I am using a lot of mana potions to keep my Concentrate skill going. It's actually fairly difficult to find a mana leech item (except for a lucky gamble) this early in the game, and normally that's not an issue because in the past I never needed mana for a melee character this early in the game. It's not too bad though, as my mana pool is so small even a minor mana potion completely fills my bulb.

 

He must have been Fire Enchanted. That's the only way bosses explode like that, and since I do not think he comes Fire Enchanted as a standard ability, he got that from one of his two random abilities. Chances are he wouldn't have done that on your second attempt, even if you were nearby when you killed him, as he probably wouldn't have spawned twice with the same random mod.

Well, the only place where you could possibly encounter gloams would be a random spawn in Act V leading up to Baal. There's no chance of them spawning for Shenk, Eldritch, or Pindleskin, nor during a Mephisto run. And since the gloams won't spawn during every Baal run - or even most Baal runs for that manner - your amazon may still be the better character. You can always save and exit if gloams spawn.

There is also one more thing that you haven't done yet, where your amazon will be much better than your necro - cow running. Even on players 8, LF completely destroys cows, as they can never spawn lightning immune. Your necro won't even be close to the speed of your amazon for cows.

Gotta help me out on this one - are you leaning in any particular direction? Windy Druid, Elemental Druid, Shapeshifter, Summoner, or Hybrid? (Although keep in mind that while hybrids are possible, there are a lot of elemental skills that cannot be cast when you are shapeshifted, so a Shapeshifter-Elemental or Shapeshifter-Windy is not a viable combo. All the other ones are possible, especially with your stash of equipment.