Diablo II Single Player Thread - 2

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Apparently, it only works for summons that typically aren't available for your class. If it's a summons available to you as a skill, so long as you have one point in it, you keep it at the level it was cast at. So an amazon with one point in valkyrie gets a level 15 valkyrie from the Peace runeword, and a necromancer gets boosted skellies if he switches to the AoKL for summoning them (although the actual number he can keep is reduced on weapon switch).

The question thus becomes why have a runeword weapon that has summon charges for two different classes? Oath gets a Blood Golem and Heart of Wolverine. No matter what your class is, it's impossible to have a hard point in both of those skills.

Needless to say, I'm not thrilled the way this is implemented. I'm not saying I think that you should get affects from items if they're just sitting in your inventory, however I think the effects of anything that can be cast from the weapons should be still in effect so long as the items are still equipped on your character. I was hoping it worked in much the same manner as how echoing weapons up your war cries by +3 each. When you switch away from those weapons, any war cries already cast (like Shout, Battle Command and Battle Orders) are still at the effective +6 level.

EDIT: I'm still trying to figure a way to implement Aldur's set, and I'm not meeting with any success. The first hing I've concluded is that it's quite pointless to have much of anything to do with the shapeshifting tree. You need some CB with any melee class, and given the slots the set uses, the only slot available where you can get CB is the gloves, and even then, you're looking at a maximum of 10%.

So it's either an elemental druid, or more likely, an elemental/summoner hybrid. The best way to go there would be a mixture of fire and physical damage. You'd have a maxed fissure and volcano, which only requires 42 points, are even a maxed Firestorm/Fissure for 41 points. It sure would be nice to add a third fire spell in there that would synergize the two you already picked, but of course druids get hosed there as well, as there's no combination of three fire spells that are mutually synergistic. So it's easy to combine two, and get mutually synergistic benefits, but there's no getting three:

Firestorm gives a synergy to both Molten Boulder and Fissure, but those skills don't synergize each other.

Molten Boulder and Fissure both give synergies to Volcano and Firestorm, but they don't synergize each other.

Volcano gives a synergy to Molten Boulder and Armageddon, none of which synergize each other either. So regardless of whether or not you go firestorm/fissure, or fissure/volcano, if you add in a third fire spell - irrespective of which one it is - it will only benefit one of those two skills.

The combination of all the windy skills - cyclone armor, twister, tornado, and hurricane certainly seems viable, but it's almost exclusively physical damage, and I pick that up betewen myself, my merc and my summons. The windy skills seem like an all-or-nothing proposition. Every one of them synergizes the other three, so you either sink one point in each to get Armageddon, or you max all four. I suppose you could go crazy and work on Arctic Blast last, and have a dual damage cold/physical build, but then you lose the safety of all your summons.

So it seems the most sensible plan would be to throw the 41/42 points into fire skills, and everything else in your summons - that's pretty much the only skill tree that the druid doesn't get hosed - every single point spent in your summons benefits the other two. I'd almost certainly max dire wolves and grizzly, as the synergies they bestow are life and damage, respectively.

And the excitement level of this build on a scale from 1 to 10 is about 1.2.

The build I'd love to try if I ever get the runes would be an auradin. Dream helm, Dragon shield, Doom axe. Run conviction as my main aura, but I'd max salvation because it would give a synergy damage boost to all three of the elemental auras I'd get from my equipment. I don't know what I'd throw in with it - I just think it would be cool to have four active auras at once.

 

While it's certainly cool to have all three elemental auras active at once, they are woefully underpowered at slvl in mid-teens, synergized or not. Rather Dream helm + shield together with Dragon Armor + Hand of Justice weapon for slvl30 HFire+HShock. You could provide Holy Freeze yourself since you can get Conviction from a merc, but you'd run out of skill points trying to do that.

I tried the Auradin a few weeks ago (scroll back a few pages) and wasn't really impressed. While the combo of two strong elemental auras with Conviction is in perfect harmony synergetically, the combined problem with poor resistances, lack of skill points and poor life/mana leech due to at best average physical damage is a bit too much to pay for it.

 

Hmmm.... That's rather depressing indeed. Ah well, it's not that I currently have, nor am I likely to acquire in the near future the runes I'd need for that kind of equipment either.

You know, the Aldur's set is really ticking me off. Even when I look at best case scenario for that set, the best I can pull off with +skills is +7 all. Three from the set itself, another two from a spirit shield, and two from an amulet. (And as an elemental summoner, spirit would actually be a decent plan with the build.) Conversely, I could get +5 with just HotO and Spirit combo, and still leave open all the other slots for even more skills. Two from headgear, two from the amulet and at least one (or two if I make the Rain runeword) from the armor. Last I checked, +10 is more than +7. Damn it all to hell.

 

Full Aldur's set is only viable if you play a fire elemental Druid and don't need a high Fast Cast rate (which should be 99 fc to be viable in hell).
And even then it is outclassed pretty fast by better equipment.

Well at least the Aldur boots are pretty good, I almost always end up using them, but the rest of this set can be replaced by better and sometimes even cheaper stuff.

 

I've always been under the impression that a good Druid build is no one trick pony, and even the much celebrated Wind Druid build is nigh unplayable without powerful +mana or +mana regen gear. The druid is a hybrid class, so each skill tree it has is a pale imitation of some other class's. The combination of different skill trees is what defines the druid as a class, but is also the reason why good druid builds are so hard to find.

When building my elemental/summoner druid I relied on the elemental tree for AoE and the summoning tree for single-target damage/tanking. As far as summoning goes maxing Dire Wolves + Bear (more well rounded) or HoW + Bear (all out offense) is usually enough. Maxing the right earth spells is tricky business. Ultimately you'll be using the first three earth spells the most, since Volcano is only useful against bosses (and still pales in comparison to CB/Static Field) while Armageddon's short range makes it unreliable. Note that Earth spells all share the same cooldown and Firestorm is the only spammable earth spell.

 

Agree with all of that. In my druid builds in the past, I've tended to focus on two trees as well. Either SS/Summoning or Elemental/Summoning. The only exception to that rule was when I made a Fury/Fire Claws Wolf, where I made a heavy investment into the summoning tree fire spells for their synergy to fire claws. My personal preference is to max both Grizzly and Dire Wolves, and place just a single point into both Oak Sage and Heart of Wolverine, using whichever one I need at a given time.

I also agree with your point on the elemental spells. Fissue/Volcano is the most common combination as they synergize each other, although Fissure/Firestorm is also viable. Unfortunately, as I stated earlier, there's no 3rd fire spell that you add to that mix that shares a common synergy with everything. To use the Fissure/Volcano pairing as an example, you have two choices going forward once both are maxed. If you pump Firestorm, it will give a synergy to Fissure but do nothing to Volcano, while pumping Molten Boulder or Armageddon will increase the damage of Volcano, but do nothing for Fissure.

About the only point I'd disagree on is that you use the first three spells the most. Many fire druids only put a single point in Firestorm, and I personally never liked Molten Boulder at all. So I would say the skill most fire druids use the most is Fissure. So specifically the 3rd fire spell.

 

I must confess that I haven't played elemental druids but it feels like the druid's arsenal is awkwardly.. clunky? You try to hit stuff with a slow bowling ball, make them Stand In The Fire (tm) or try and pray that the random fire streaks home in on your intended target?

Nothing straightforward like dropping a Meteor on their heads or placing a trap that keeps on shooting them?

Anyone care to elaborate how you actually kill stuff without pulling your hair out? For example, the good ol' Hammerdin seems just so totally useless until you learn how to use 'em hammers good..

 

@Aldeth
I've had mixed success using Fissure. It's really powerful in normal/nightmare but once fire immunes start popping up (eg. the Chaos Sanctuary area) it loses much of its punch. It's a dangerous spell to cast against Lightning Enchanted uniques, and it also doesn't scale with +skills very well. I also like the Molten Boulder spell so there's some bias there. Molten Boulder just seems to work well in cases where Firestorm/Fissure don't, and I don't mind losing the +% physical damage from not taking Volcano (I already have that damage type covered). Overall it's a great spell where it works, and is a liability where it doesn't.

@Sir Rechet
Thanks to summons Druids can move freely in the battlefield, so you shouldn't have any trouble setting up your spells. The clunkiness only becomes apparent when you're fighting monsters like the teleporting imps in Act 5. Fissure is like blizzard, you really can't miss when using high level Firestorm, and Volcano is just point and click. The only spell that needs getting used to is Molten Boulder, which does wonders against mobs not immune to its knockback effect. I'm not about to discuss the wind spells - I hate how random those things are.

 

@Sir Rechet,

Well, as I've already commented, I think MB is useless. Against smaller sized enemies, it can knock them back, and hit multiple times, but the ball just immediately explodes against anything that's bigger than you. Volcano is effective against anything that doesn't move much, or that you can keep from moving. So it's great against an act boss. A Volcano cast right under thier feet will hit every time. The reason fissure is popular is because it's great against moving enemies. The quicker an enemy moves, the more times fissure will hit. Still, the idea of an elemental summoner is not very appealing to me.

Which game me another idea with Aldur's set... What about a rabies druid? That way there, the base damage on the weapon isn't a big deal. And of course, you can equip Trang-Ouls Claws as gloves. Fill out your equipment slots with a Spirit Shield, +2 skill Druid amulet, Raven Frost, and whatever you'd need/like for the belt and other ring. That will give you +8 to the Shapeshifting and Elemental Tree, and +7 to the Summoning Tree.

I see a few ways to go with a Rabies build. First, you'd need to maximize the damage of rabies for it to be able to kill anything. That means you'd need a point in WW, Lycanthropy and Feral Rage as prerequisites, max Rabies and Poison Creeper. That's just 43 skill points, so there's a lot of tinkering you can do here. Hitting an already infected monster with Rabies doesn't really do anything. So it seems like you want another attack type, and I see several options of what you can do:

Option #1: Add another attack that isn't reliant on weapon damage, like Fire Claws. This option requires two more pre-requisites, Werebear and Maul. You'd need 20 points in FC, and you still have enough points left over to max any one of it's synergies. So we're looking at 85 skill points, which means you can afford a one point Oak Sage and a one point Grizzly, with anything beyond that likely going into another synergy for FC.

Both Fire Claws and Rabies give a big bonus to AR, so you could probably leave dexterity at base, especially considering you'll have somewhere around +75 dexterity from the set and RF to help you out, and the set does give a 150% bonus to AR. The set also comes with +65 strength. Your heaviest item is far and away Spirit, needing 156 strength. Meaning I think you'd need to raise your strength to 91 base. The partial set bonus will get your strength up to 121, which would enable you to equip the armor, which would add another 35 to your strength, taking you up to 156. Everything else goes into vitality.

As your physical damage is low, you definitely wouldn't hire a Might merc, and would probably go holy freeze.

Option #2: Go heavy into the summoning tree. Max both Dire Wolves and Grizzly, and a one point Oak Sage. Rely on your summons and merc for physical damage, infect the monsters, then stand back while your minions finsih them off as the poison does it's work.

Option #3: Well, you do get +350% ed on the weapon when the set is complete, and while this doesn't make it uber in any sense as it's an exceptional weapon, it does make the damage mediocre. You could max Fury, and since that's only 20 points, You could still go into the summoning tree and either get a 1 point Dire Wolves with a 20 point Grizzly, or a 1 point Grizzly and 20 point DW. The damage you'd lose from the extra minion would would be made up by you.

I think all three are viable, just not sure which is best.

---------- Added 0 hours, 33 minutes and 42 seconds later... ----------

EDIT: Actually, since you already have all the prerequisites, a one point Fury would be useful even if you went with option #2. Help out your minions. I think I actually like that one the best (although feel free to disagree...)

So using option #2, I'd have a skill layout as follows:

Shapeshifting:

Werewolf - 1
Lycanthropy - 1+
Feral Rage - 1
Fury - 1+
Rabies - 20
Subtotal: 24+

Summoning:

Ravens - 1
Oak Sage -1
Heart of Wolverine - 1
Spirit Wolf - 1
Dire Wolf - 20
Grizzly - 20
Poison Creeper - 20
Subtotal - 64

Elemental - Nada

Total - 88, so there's a few leftover points. I added in Heart of Wolverine, because I think under this setup there's enough physical damage lying around to make it worthwhile. Not sure if I want a might or holy freeze merc for this build, for the same reason.

I would think that I'd place any remaining point either into Lycanthropy or Fury, but it's a nice thought that this build is essentially "done" by the time you hit hell difficulty.

 

Granted Fissure is great against Gloams and flayers but enemies won't be moving as much when you have your pets out. Large monsters are excellent Firestorm/Fissure fodder, MB is for those annoying shamans, oblivion knights, Horadrim Ancients, ghoul lords, etc. A shame it doesn't work on Frenzytaurs and Lister and co., that's my one gripe with the spell.
I've played too many iterations of characters with access to Static Field/CB to appreciate Volcano. Whenever I'm just standing there spamming Volcano and letting my summons/merc do the dirty work I'm also sharply reminded of my necro-summoner. But I digress.

I've heard mostly praises for the rabies druid, so even though I've never tested one myself its probably a really good build. I remember someone mentioning that using rabies on lone monsters wasn't very fun, but the sheer amount of extra skill points you have should more than make up for it.

Edit: BTW, a very simple yet very effective way to deal with Gloams and other skill spamming/ranged monsters is to carry around a "Nadir" runeword helm.

 

Finally got around to making my Auradin a Patriarch by finishing Hell Baal.

Final verdict: A bit of a glass jaw to be called a true melee guy, unless you have excellent gear. Resistances require a whole lot of charm support since the four main items (Dream helm+shield, Dragon body armor and Hand of Justice) have rather poor resistances and do not provide any leech. Skill points are spread a bit thin since you have three synergies to max for your two elemental auras on top of the one you provide yourself (Conviction). I chose to max Holy Shield last, having it at only slvl 5 all through Hell and getting the last points after clvl 90+, should I ever get there..

Hand of Justice's combination of Hit Freezes Target and Hit Blinds Target is a surprisingly effective extra life insurance against normal mobs. You end up with a wall of mostly frozen flesh separating you from the still active mobs, assuming they survive the initial hit. (Not going to happen often unless you play with /p8 setting like I do.)

However, there's a fatal flaw in this insurance. It does jack and squat against mobs that are ranged and/or use charge-like abilities to get up close and personal. While that's true for almost any melee character, Auradin doesn't have a huge life total, much in the way of damage resistance or extremely high defense to ward off the most imminent threats like many "true" melee characters have.

I decided to alleviate this problem by taking a somewhat unorthodox companion with me: A Defiance merc wielding a Doom weapon. Together with him I ended up with a hair short of 10,000 defense, but my already lacking physical damage took yet another hit below the waterline. The Lying Character screen reported my physical damage output as 256-314 or somesuch ridiculously low value (low STR build, no Might, no physdmg synergies, no Fortitude...) so I was practically swinging it without any effective leech to speak of. Which is a Bad Thing (tm) for a melee guy, believe me.

Other than that, the damage output is immense. Just the dual aura pulse together with Conviction bites considerable chunks off of /p8 Hell monsters, and anything smaller than Frenzytaurs and/or lightning immune monsters do not have a meaningfull life expectancy to speak of. In a way, this also confirms the suspicion I had about relying too much on a single damage type. While a vast majority of Lightning immunes were, in fact, stripped off of their immunity once treated with a slvl 20 Conviction, they still remained close enough to immune that it didn't matter much either way. It was still noticeably slower to plow through LI monsters compared to anything else. Considering that the average damage breakdown is ~3.5k lightning, ~1.5k fire and ~300 physical per hit, pre-Conviction, this is no great surprise.

---------- Added 0 hours, 37 minutes and 15 seconds later... ----------

Oh, speaking of synergies: Not many builds consider the Raven Frost ring because of its 15-45 cold damage, but combine that with Conviction and you have something nearing "above infinitesimal". In fact, you get the same cold damage as you would by using a Doom weapon (Holy Freeze) unsynergized without Conviction.

Next project: Turning my poorly developed MF Summon Necro (several extra skill points wasted on pumping Lower Resist and Dim Vision when I already have like +13 on all curses, pumped up Revive, more than 100 BASE points in both STR and ENERGY of all things.. you get the idea) into a weapon of brainless mass destruction, while keeping MF as the side course.

Dilemma: Go all out Poison (Nova with synergies) with sub-standard summons or use a few pieces of Trang-Oul's set to get access to Fireball to have some eye candy to throw at the enemies when life gets boring behind the wall of summons? I'm assuming that the FB provided by the set is at least better than unsynergized slvl ~15 Teeth.

The problem with poison is that it has a huge conflict with one of the centerpieces of my equipment: Enigma. It can't be used together with Bramble, and not using THAT just sucks the juice out of effectiveness of poison.

So the question becomes: Has anyone actually TRIED a poison-based build? Can you get enough dps out of one to actually KILL things or are we back to the "herd a bunch and kill them in packs, lest you die of old age yourself" dilemma?

Edit: Hear hear, found an EXCELLENT calculator for Necromancer pets, and according to that, the difference between having your Skeletal Mages at slvl 1 vs having them maxed is around 2000 damage per second for the projected skill levels for a summoner (for the whole bunch of them combined). That's more than any other skill you could be pumping as far as I know.. ?

 

I take it you mean not many builds consider RF because of it's damage, not because it isn't a useful item. With up to +20 in dexterity and up to +250 to AR, I consider that a staple item for just about any melee build.

Any Act 2 mercenary wielding Doom is great - double aura. I've never done a defiance-holy freeze combo, but I have tried (during a prior ladder season) a might-holy freeze combo, and that worked great - you get an offensive and defensive aura from the merc.

I've done both (max skeletons and skeletal mage on several occassions, and recently I tried a max poison build).

First of all, both are viable. The skill plan on the full summoner is obvious. You can look a few pages back on my poison summoner thoughts. Maxing the three poison skills and a one point Corpse Explosion left me with enough points to get about level 23ish in Skeletons, level 13ish in mages, and level 18ish in skeleton mastery with +skill items on switch (and a point each in Clay Golem, Golem Mastery and Summon Resist of course). I think I had +12 to the summoning tree with my switch gear (AoKL and +3 summoning necro head), so I guess I had around 20 points available to devote to that tree once my poison skills were maxed and I had a point in each curse.

If you go this route, any source of +%poison damage, and -%enemy resistance to poison is going to greatly help. I did use Trang-Ou's Claws, but I didn't have Bramble, which I imagine would just make the build that much better. (I won't have Bramble for my Rabies druid either. In fact, that's probably an item I'll never own, as the runes required to make it would all serve better purposes elsewhere.) I ended up going with Bone RW as my armor, which, with +2 to all skills certainly wasn't a terrible choice.

As far as using other pieces of Trang-Oul's set to get a Fireball, I'd suggest you not bother. They did OK in a pinch, but killed rather slowly, and that was on P1 (so OK is under best-case scenario). Since you typically play on P8, the damage output would be negligible. The shield is worth considering for the +2 Bone and Poison skills, although if you have a Homunculus that would be better. Blackbog's Sharp is pretty non-negotiable for the weapon, and well out-fitted you should be able to get all your poison skills in the low to mid 30s.

As far as killing power is concerned, it breaks down as follows: The total damage potential is higher for the poison necro, but the summons necro is much more versatile for the simple reason that Amplify Damage can break nearly every physical immune, whereas Lower Resist is incapable of breaking most poison immunes (which are surprisingly common in hell - MegaDemons and Stygian Dolls stand out). Even with a lot of +curses, it's hard to have enough points to get Lower Resist beyond about -60%, which is simply not enough to do the job against poison immunes. So at that point, you revert to playing as a summons necro.

So to sum it up, in areas without poison immunes, a poisonmancer is your better option. In areas with poison immunes, a summoner is better. So if you are dead-set on using Enigma (and telestomping stuff), you'll have a much better go of it with a summoner, because poison is only viable (espeically on P8 games) if you devote everything to it, so there isn't a lot of gear flexibility.

For my barb, I'm now in Act III Nightmare, level 57 or so. I have equipped Oath, but no Death yet (as a berserker axe has a level requirement of 64). I'm now working on War Cry, and I'm actually using it to some extent. I'm maxing it for sure, as it's essential for a build that isn't going to have a really high defense, and isn't going to have a shield for blocking. I like the damage output - Oath is hitting for about 1200 per pop, and I haven't touched axe mastery yet beyond a single point.

I also haven't equipped a single item of my set at this point. The plan is to do the full switch when I hit level 65. The only gear pieces in the set that are good for anything individually are the gloves and belt, and those are the two items you need a level requirement in the 60s to use.

 

Yes, Ravenfrost is good for most melee builds due to its combo of mods, just that a fast attacker with Conviction can actually count the cold damage ALSO as a non-insignificant bonus.

About the necro: I ended up respeccing him into a pure summoner. Just 55 base STR since I had made my Enigma into a Mage Plate (55 STR req) and the rest of the stuff has insignificantly low req once its +66 STR (at my current lvl) kicks in. I guess one could argue that it'd be nice to have Spirit on a weapon switch (together with Call To Arms) but I can't fathom how an extra 3% mana/life from the already slvl 15 BO would make much of a difference so I dropped a Lidless Eye there for +1 skill instead.

I've been wondering about what weapon to use with the mercenary, until I remembered your thoughts about Warcry and its effective bonus for your chance to hit. The skellies aren't really up there with their Attack Rating in the 4-5k range, so rather than piling onto their already huge enhanced damage percentage (Raise Skeleton skill itself plus mercenary's Might) with Pride's Concentration aura, it's actually better to make their hits connect more often with Conviction from an Infinity stick. It also has the extremely nice side effect of boosting both the Skelly Mages and.. drumroll please.. Corpse Explosion, without even having to choose between Amplify damage and Lower Resist as you can effectively have both now.

Now that I have all three skelly skills and CE maxed, I'm wondering what to do with the remaining points. Adding to Revive seems pointless as I can already command 16 of them with just one point, and slvl 14 on my Dim Vision feels plenty as it is without pouring more hard points there. None of the bone or poison attack skills will do me any good with at best ~10 points invested.

Maybe make the good ol' Gumpy even beefier than his current incarnation with just a hair shy of 6,000 hit points?

 

My vote would be bone armor (1 pt) and then the synergies, as they give a bigger boost to Bone Armor than investment in the skill itself.

 

Oh, that's right. Bone Wall it is, then. Kinda nice to actually test it for once, might actually like it in the "funnel them into a clump" kinda way.. and who knows, an extra fast Frenzytaur might actually have to take two swings at it instead of just one when chasing me.

Oh, and I'm giving up on the /p8 idea with this character. /p3 should provide a decent balance between drops and kill speed, considering how CE is balanced.

 

P8 is pretty hard when you are relying on corpse explosion. Even when you amp them (or cast LR) it takes several bodies to clear a screen. I also agree that if you're looking for a balance P3 is the way to go. The increase in drops per kill is not linear (unlike XPs and monster life) with player setting. You get the biggest boost going from P1 to P3. In fact, the difference in drops from P1 to P3 is larger than the difference between P3 to P7. (And, while you probably already know this, the only reason to play on P8 (as opposed to P7) is for extra XPs. The drops at P8 are identical to P7, because the game rounds down.)

---------- Added 15 hours, 37 minutes and 44 seconds later... ----------

Hey, just pulled out a pet calculator for my potential druid build, and I knew Grizzlies were beefy, but I didn't realize they were this big. According to the skill calculator, if you max Dire Wolves and Grizzly, your resulting bear will hit for about 2,600 points per damage (and attack a little more than once per second), and have about 5,500 life. That's a beefy summons!

 

Fodder is never an issue for a Druid with maxed Dire Wolves, and he can even use his summons to lock down mobs that are dangerous at range (Oblivion Mages, Horadrim Ancients, Flayer Shamans, the Summoner, etc). Dire Wolves also do double damage when they eat corpses so you don't lose much DPS when you use them over the bear, in areas where corpse management is essential and where keeping yourself from being overwhelmed > single target DPS. As I said between your minions and a Might merc (and goodies like Bramble and Reaper's Toll for hell) you should already have physical damage covered, I found that out after I saw vids of pure summoner druids... odd builds, but wth. So when I built my elemental/summoning Druid I was trying to juggle AoE/maxing out the earth line's fire damage potential/a little bit of utility/general playability/synergy skill point costs. I ended up maxing Firestorm, Molten Boulder and Fissure. It worked well enough, not as well as I hoped but it could have been better.

 

The DPS on three wolves is comparable to one bear. The calculator I used stated the damage per wolf, and it was around 1/4 that of a bear. In fact, when enraged, three wolves actually had a somewhat greater DPS than a bear. My choice of a bear over three wolves is more tactical than direct damage related.

First, the life of one bear is significantly more than the life of three wolves. It's about six times as great as a single wolf in fact, so the total survivability of a bear is much higher than three dire wolves. Moreover, the regeneration rate of life from a bear is also much faster than wolves, so a bear is a more durable summons overall. This is important for me in terms of combat casting. If I run into a pack of gloams, I can combat cast the bear closer the the gloams (but to the side of course) to focus their lightning attacks on the bear as I close in, and having a bear with more life is obviously more useful in that regard.

The second aspect is also a tactical one. Bears have knockback on their attack, and a monster infected with rabies that gets the knockback animation will spread rabies to all those it is knocked back into. Dire wolves do offer a better overall means of crowd control than a bear, but for this particular build plan a grizzly will suit my needs much better.

A couple other bits of research that I've noticed: While the synergy from Poison Creeper is a linear +18% damage to Rabies, it appears that ramping up rabies first is definitely the way to go. It's one of a fairly short list of skills where the damage per level increases by a greater amount with each additional point you put in it. So, for example, the difference between points 15 and 16 is much greater than the difference between points 10 and 11.

There also appears to be boosts every 8 levels. For the first 8 levels, each point in rabies increases the damage output by 25-30 points. Then at level 9, it jumps to 40 points. It stays in the 40-60 point range from levels 9-16, and then jumps again into the 80s once you hit level 17, and the boost goes all the way to over 200 per level once you break level 24. (I imagine that a similar increase would take place at level 32, but the skill chart I was looking at stopped at level 30, and with my current projections, it appears my rabies skill is going to top out at level 29, so I wouldn't be gaining the benefits of the level 32 increase anyway.)

So the damage of rabies works exponentially. It's definitely an all-or-nothing type skill. Squeezing as much as you can out of that skill is definitely something worth doing. If I wasn't deliberately trying to use the full Aldur's set, I'd consider Plague Bearer as my weapon. I'll not use it for this build, because I'm planning on leaving dexterity at base, and by the time I reach a level high enough to have enough dexterity from my gear to equip it, I'll be better off using the weapon anyway.

I'm also probably going to go a little overboard on my strength total, which I may respect down from later. I'm certainly not going to want to wait until level 76 to use Spirit - which I'd have to do if I was using the +35 strength on the armor to reach the strength requirement - so I'll probably end up with close to 200 strength - but whatever.

 

LEVEL 65! All end items equipped. That includes the enitre Disciple Set, Oath and Death weapons, shako, Raven Frost, and a rare ring that gives AR, resist all (not that I need that extra resist in NM), and a very nice 8% life leech. I like - a lot. Probably the safest character I've ever created. Before I go in depth a couple of notes.

I got an average damage roll on Oath - 272% ed, and 275% would be the exact midpoint of the damage range. I got a somewhat below average damage roll on Death - 315% ed, where 340% would be the average. Still, the two weapons are very powerful. Oath has an average damage of about 1900, and Death has an average damage of about 2100 per swing, and I still have only invested a single point in Axe Mastery, so the damage is going up from there (once I finish maxing War Cry).

Anyway, here's the standard battle tactics at this point - run up to a pack of monsters with my echoing weapons equipped. Cast war cry, battle cry, war cry, weapon switch, and hack away. Even though I don't have battle cry maxed at this point, the stun length on it is quite good - about 6 seconds. Since I'm at 11 frames on my double swing (that's 11 frames for both weapons - not 11 frames on each weapon individually), that allows for a bunch of attacks.

One of the properties on Death that I had overlooked in terms of its utility is the 25% ctc Level 18 Glacial Spike on attack. Glacial Spike doesn't just slow enemies, it freezes them solid. The duration and frequency of its activation is such that on the rare occassions that they would out-live the stun duration of War Cry, they're still frozen from GS. So basically, once they're stunned, they remained either stunned or frozen until they die. This strategy, combined with taunt when dealing with ranged attackers, allows me complete control of the battlefield. I still plan on maxing War Cry, because the freeze length of GS will be halved in hell difficulty, so I'm going to want to maximize the duration of the War Cry stun, which isn't affected by difficulty level. (It's not like I have a better place to stick those points anyway.)

A few other properties are also nice with this character. The set gloves, Laying of Hands, has a +350% damage to demons on it, and it is applied to both weapons. That's massive. The fire breathing megademon seal boss pack in the Pandemonium Fortress weren't even a challenge. A single Double Swing cycle (so two hits), was enough to kill the minions, with the boss not lasting much longer. That's on p8 in Nightmare.

There's very few situtations that I can foresee being problematic for this character (I've encountered none at this point). All of the more dangerous ranged enemies (like Gloams) can be taunted over to you, at which point they are shut down with War Cry. Uniques and Champions only have a 10% chance to be stunned with War Cry, so you cannot rely on it, but a boss without his minions to help him is not a big threat. Act bosses are never affected by War Cry, but with the 50% chance of a crushing blow from Death, they're not going to last long either.

If I'm going to be nitpicky, the only negative point is that Battle Cry is a necessary inclusion with this character. Even with a Raven Frost, and a decent boost to AR from Death, he still only has about a 70% chance to hit, which is unacceptable. That was expected from the low investment in dexterity. That said, the duration of battle cry is really long - I don't remember the exat number, but I'd guess it's around 30 seconds. It certainly outlasts several castings of War Cry.

Battle Cry also functions like a curse (as does Taunt), and the two skills over-write each other. So you do have to be a little careful when dealing with gloams. You taunt them over, but as soon as you cast Battle Cry on them, they cease to be under the affects of Taunt, and so you have to make sure you keep the stunned, or else they will revert back to using their lightning attack.

Anyway, I've only just started the end game use of this character, and I haven't ventured into hell difficulty yet, but the early returns are very, very good. His defense is no where close to what my paladin's defense was (by nearly a factor of 10), but that doesn't matter much when no monster can even swing at you, much less hit you. His end game mf is also going to be much better than the paladin - I still have some tweaking to do in that regard, although I'm not concerned with optimizing that until I get to hell difficulty, but I'm thinking I'm going to be in the 120%-150% range, which is acceptable given his killing speed. I may actually try hell on a higher player setting if he keeps up at this rate.

 

Double swinging dual elite weapons in Nighmare mode is bound to result in something like that. Overkill.

You have pretty decent damage even for Hell level when you're swinging around 2-3k hits. Together with Barbarian's huge life total, it's going to be a rather smooth ride, apart from the obvious physical immunes.