Diablo II Single Player Thread - 2

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Ooh, shiny!

Gratz on the 'frost. Makes character planning a breeze.

 

Every time I read this thread, I want to play Diablo 2. I fire it up, play for 5 minutes, then remember why I never play and turn it off again.

 

I did the Palace and Arcane Sanctuary last night. Even though the AS (Hell difficulty) has the highest value of HR drops per full clear of any area in the game, I hate that area. Especially for a barbarian, there's just no way you can do it quickly with the high number of physical immunes around. Skellimancers cannot do that quickly either. I imagine something like a dual elemental sorceress would be most adept at handling that.

The find of last night was a very nice necro head. +2 to necro skill levels, life, and 19% resist all. Once I socket it with a pdiamond, it will essentially be a spirit shield, although it has a fraction of the strength requirement that a spirit shield requires. I'm already planning my skellimancer build, and based on the equipment I currently have, I may be able to get away with a strength of just 55 (which I need to use to equip a mage plate, which I'm planning to use for the bone runeword as my body armor). Since I don't have a Humonculus, I see no reason to go for max block, so I'll probably leave my dexterity at base. Which means I will have a friggin enormous amount of vitality. I can easily see me getting my vitality around 400 (that's hard points, not counting any +vit items).

I know I'll have +2 skills on my shield, bone gives +2, I have a unique wand that gives +2, and I already have an amulet that gives +2, and at worst I'll use a Peasant Crown as my headgear for +1 more. So I'm all the way up to +9 based on what I have on-hand.

 

Hmmm... Actually I think Gravenspine gives +10 strength (and +2 to all Skills)... I may be able to get away with only raising my strength to 45 (55 with items). One small potential problem with that is it will severely limit my choice of my ancillary item spots - belt, boot, and gloves. Although Goldwrap only needs 45, Chance Guards only require a pittance, which just leaves boots. I think I may be limited to Plated or lighter in that category, which I suppose isn't terrible - what would I need exceptional or better boots for anyway? There's Marrowalk that gives +2 to Skeleton Mastery, but they have strength requirements of well over 100, so I'm definitely not going that high.

EDIT: Actually, I don't know what the strength requirement is on that shrunken head. I think they can be kinda high, although no where near the 156 you'd need on a spirit shield.

 

Four words for you. Best... Mephisto... Map... Ever. The WP is literally around the corner for the stairs down to Meph. If I run and leap the moat, I can kill Meph in about a minute. If I was playing on bnet, I would actually have to wait around a bit between runs to avoid a temp ban for starting too many games up. Even doing full clears of Durance 3, I can do a hell Meph run in about 5 minutes. I've only done a few runs up to this point, and the results have been unspectacular thus far, but I plan on hanging around for a while with a map this good.

Other charater updates - hit level 85, equipped Arkaine's valor, with Shout and Iron Skin active, I have a defense over 11,000. Most of the monsters I run into have around a 20% chance of hitting me, and 75% of those attacks are blocked. So only around 5% of all attacks actually get through. The 0.5 Vitality per level of Arkaine's Valor is rounded down, but equipping that armor was still worth over 200 life. (Mostly from the Vitality bonus directly, but also because I got two more levels worth of Battle Orders.)

I also realized what a freakin' idiot I am this weekend. One of the things with ATMA is that since you collect so much stuff, you forget what you have. I was becoming frustrated with my battle hammer - it just wasn't up to snuff in terms of damage, and since I was switching out Duress, I had no source of crushing blow, which is totally unacceptable in hell difficulty with a melee character. So I'm looking though my blunt weapon choices, and I see I have a Fleshrender:

One-Hand Damage: (62.2-72) To (109.8-128)
+130-200% Enhanced Damage
Adds 35-50 Damage
+50% Damage to Undead
20% Deadly Strike
20% Chance of Crushing Blow
25% Chance of Open Wounds
+1 To Druid Skills
+2 To Shape Shifting Skills (Druid Only)
Prevent Monster Heal

Mine has a pretty good %ed on it at 191%. So I upped it to an elite weapon. It now does over 200 points of average damage, as it's base. So it does more damage than what I was using, is faster, and comes with CB, OW, and PMH. Seeing as how I could have been using this for about the past 30 levels or so, I'm a freakin idiot. Note - when I say 30 levels I mean the upped version for 30 levels. The base version has a level requirement in the 30s.

I could have started hell difficulty with a hell viable weapon instead of stuggling through the first two acts without one. The other thing this allows is that I probably won't ever need to utilize my last respec, unless I find some type of uber one handed weapon. I spent my skill points on mace mastery (and clubs count as maces). My strength is at 165 - the necessary point to use Arkaine's Valor, and that counts hard points invested and charms - I don't count items towards my strength total, unless I'm sure it's end game equipment, as I need to maintain some flexibility with my gear. I have max block, and over 2000 in life. I think my character finally has arrived.

 

I cannot tell you how many times I've fallen in and out of love with D2 over the years. There were times that I literally didn't play at all for over a year. I think it's a testament to how good of a game it is when it keeps you coming back. While I cannot say for sure, I'd say you've been doing D2 hard core for close to a year.

EDIT: Actually, I just looked at the first thread you opened, and that post was dated 31 July - 2008. So almost two full years!

Wearbears don't have any area of attack skills (or even multi-attacks like Fury for the WW) unless you cound Armageddon, which is the only spell that can be cast in bear (or wolf) form. So if you're looking at area of affect and a bear, that's the only variant.

 

I'm not trying to talk you out of your decision, but oddly, the assassin has a skill that most closely resembles CE - Death Sentry. It's a trap skill. Almost all trapsins max this skill, because not only is it the most versatile of the trap skills, but it gives and receives a bunch of synergies to other skills. The death sentry fires 5 times when you cast it (+1 one more firing for every three points you've spent in Fire Blast) in fairly quick succession. It does one or two things every time it fires: If there is a corpse around, it explodes the corpse, dealing 50%-80% of the corpses life in a radius that increases with points spent (so it's like a smaller version of corpse explosion). If there are enemies around, but no dead ones (yet) it fires lightning bolts.

Death Sentry is pretty much the cornerstone of all trapper builds, and most kicker/trapper hybrids.

 

The find of the weekend was Gheed's grand charm, which I had not yet had since switching to SP. I guess in the future, if I get more than one, I'll have to drop the one I'm using, run back to town and ID the new one, and then only pick up the one that has the better stat. I guess the only stat that really matters is the mf%. The gf% isn't nearly as important, and I think that all Gheed's charms offer 15% off vendor prices.

Other equipment upgrades include a sharp grand charm of vita. It's by no means a perfect one - it doesn't have the perfect stats for life, attack rating, or damage, but worth holding onto nonetheless. I also found a +30% damage, +8 max damage jewel, which I socketed into my weapon using my final socket quest. (Obviously, I finished Act IV this weekend, and rescued Anya, so I'm about half way throught Act V.)

After completing the Anya quest, I was happy that I was able to get rid of a few charms in my inventory - it was over half filled with various charms, almost entirely devoted to magic find and getting my resistances up to 75%. I was able to lose several small charms that were only giving resistances. Now the only remaining resistance-conferring small charms in my possession do something else - like giving +life in addition to resistances.

I also hit level 87 this weekend, and I've long since finished maxing out the core of the build. I decided to pick up bash as my filler skill. While certainly not a particularly significant synergy to Concentrate (+5% damage per point spent), it's the only thing that I feel is worth investing in. With my current defense, enemies already only have about a 20% chance of hitting me, and that's BEFORE I factor in the defense improvement I receive when I use Concentrate. (Sadly, there is no means that I can see of how you could check in game what your defense is, and what a enemy's chance of hitting you is while using Concentrate.) So I don't think Iron Skin is going to help much, and the only other synergy out there for Concentrate is Berserk, which adds 1% magic damage per point spent to your concentrate attack. That's definitely not worth it, as if I run into anything physical immune, I'm going to switch to Berserk anyway.

My plan at this point is to motor through the remainder of the game, and get started on the necro. I have a few completed sets lying around, although none that are particularly good for a necro. Especially considering I already have my early game weapon picked out (+2 to raise skeleton, +2 to skeletal mastery, +1 to amplify damage with a level requirement of just 5), there are very few sets that do not utilize the weapon slot. I suppose I could use Hsarus' set, as that only utilizes the shield, belt and boots, but even that seems rather silly, as I'm sure I'll switch over the Milabrega's shield as soon as I meet the level requirement on it. The other option for an early shield is Sigon's although I think that is a tower shield, which would place it beyond my strength projection. That's another thing I'm looking forward to with the necro - it will be the first character I pursue with an ultra-low strength score. Nothing in my projected end-game equipment needs more than 55 strength. Even if I should find an Arm of King Leoric or a Homonculus, those are both under 55 too.

 

I just looked up the stats for Gheed's fortune, and mine is actually quite good.

Mine has 15% off vendor prices, and 36% magic find. I don't remember what the gf% is offhand, and I don't particularly care, although I do notice quite a bit of gold dropping from enemies - it isn't unusual at all for a regular monster to drop in excess of 1K gold. On my last Meph run the unique council members were dropping 10K gold stacks.

I agree completely regarding your sentiment of one-at-a-time killing. The concentrate barbarian was done strictly to get my base wealth to an acceptable level, as there's nothing that he cannot kill (with sold physical and magic damage), no area that he cannot run, and no real possibility of dying if you're careful - even to Act bosses and the Ancients. In fact, a concentrate barbarian with a defiance mercenary (I wanted more damage so I went with might), is damn near indestructible, as the defiance and shout bonuses are additive. In fact, the merc is damn near indestructible too as he is also given the benefit of your warcries.

The problem with one at a time skills is that the characters are really slow. About the only thing such characters can do effectively is boss kill owing to crushing blow. In fact, bosses are really the only thing that slows necros down. For my money, I'd say the two fastest characters are probably a dual elemental sorceresses (although I won't make a Meteorb next time - it will be either a Fireball/Frozen Orb, or a Chain Lightning/Frozen Orb) or some type of Amazon hybrid. Safest is definitely the skellimancer.

 

on the gheeds dillemma and muling in general with atma:

while in-game you can fire up atma, transker the things you want from you char. via atma to another stash, thus duping it, and then just drop it in-game, only 1 item survives

oh and congrats on the find!

i have meanwhile started over, and got a necro running (retired), an WWS bowaon in nm, though unable to venture much further b/c of IAS restrictions caused by lack of items, and a meteorb sorc in a 5 nm, with an oculus, i don't think i've ever found one before, and it just screams sorc

 

Wow! You can exploit the hell out of that!!!

It basically allows for unlimited runes, assuming the duped items function identically to the base ones. Once you find a decent level rune, make two additional copies of it, andd upgrade to the next one - then copy that to upgrade to the one after that. Lather, rinse, repeat. You'd have to get at least one decently high level rune to start with of course - while it theory you could upgrade from an El all the way to a Zod using this process, the total number of Els you'd need to make 3 copies of each rune, so it would require 99 dupings...

Well yeah, considering that orbs are the sorc's class specific item - no other character could even equip it!

That is stunning. /players8 nerfs CB as well, so it always took me a few minutes to take out Baal and Big D. My best boss killers were thjings like Zealots, that could activate two or three CBs per zeal cycle...

 

@the dupe thing: yea, but there is also export/import item thing going on

i just took my sorc to act 2 hell, the countess drop was a bloody tir rune! BUT i later found 2, yes TWO UM runes! one in a chest and one from a boss in the pit!
i'm thinking about making duress for my ama, she could certainly use the OW and crushing blow, as this would be her only means of attaining it

here is duress for ease:

ladder-only rune word Needed:

* Body Armor with 3 sockets
* Runes: Shael + Um + Thul
* Required Level: 47

Result:
+40% Faster Hit Recovery
+10-20% Enhanced Damage
Adds 37-133 Cold Damage 2 sec. Duration (Normal)
15% Chance of Crushing Blow
33% Chance of Open Wounds
+150-200% Enhanced Defense
-20% Slower Stamina Drain
Cold Resist +45%
Lightning Resist +15%
Fire Resist +15%
Poison Resist +15%


i want to make it in a pretty high defence armor for future barbs and what not, any suggestions on armor? i was think archon plate or dusk shroud or something in those lines

 

I'm really liking the new rune drops. Scored meself a CHAM of all things. Wasn't even a boss or anything like that, just a plain noob mob just before the finger mage seal boss in the Chaos Sanctuary.

 

Duress is an excellent nightrmare/hell armor. It's relatively cheap (the Um is the only thing remotely uncommon), it has a lot of good bonuses that you mention, and in a decent armor, it can be end-game equipment. I used Duress on my current barbarian from Nightmare up until he got lucky and found Arkaine's Valor.

I'm going to disagree slightly with dmc on this one. While it is true that the highest possible defense you could get on Duress would be using a 3-socket sacred armor as the base item, you would require a total of 232 strength to be able to equip it. While I cannot forecast what future characters you may want to play with, there are not many builds that need anywhere near that much strength, and it almost goes without saying that your current amazon is never going to approach that strength score.

So a general answer to your question would be to make it in the highest defense piece of armor you can wear that is within your projected strength requirements, and that you won't have to wait forever to acquire. That's what I did with my barbarian. He ended up using chaos armor as the base item (that's the exceptional version of full plate mail). I went with that for two reasons: The strength requirement on chaos armor was 140, and since I was planning on getting my strength to somewhere around 150, that was a solid choice. Secondly, and equally important IMO, was I HAD A 3-SOCKET CHAOS ARMOR.

From what you have stated, your principal reason for going with Duress is for the crushing blow. In hell difficulty, monsters will have no trouble hitting you unless you stack up several thousand in defense rating, which is fine if you happen to be playing a barbarian, paladin, or werebear, but it is simply impractical for an amazon to acquire such a high defense.

For Amazons, they avoid damage by blocking (if you use a javelin) and/or through the use of the dodge/avoid/evade skills in the magic and passive tree. So the exact numeric value of the armor is largely irrelevant in making a selection.

If you happen to have a light wieght elite armor with three open sockets lying around, go for it. However, if you don't have one, I wouldn't wait around trying to find one either (as such items don't exactly grow on trees). I would accept any 3-socket exceptional armor as the base item provided it fit within your projected strength requirements. If you find a 3-socket mage plate for example, that's good enough.

You already have a second Um rune, so if later you are playing a high defense character like a barbarian, you can always make a second Duress in something like sacred armor.

I'm still waiting on my high runes. I have definitely noticed the greatly enhanced drop rates of the mid level runes. I do not consider runes in the Ko-Ist range to be uncommon anymore. However, I have yet to see anything higher than a Gul drop. Runes in the Vex-Zod range are just as mythological to me as they have always been.

I beat the Hell Ancients with my barb last night. With the exception of Korlic who spawned with stoneskin, they were a pushover. (Well, Korlic was a pushover too, once Talic and Madawac fell. He just took some time to kill.) Hopefully, I will finish up tonight with the barb, and move on to the necro.