Diablo II Single Player Thread - 2

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That I do not know. I assume that you have to hit stuff to actually get any of the damage. EDIT: Sir Rechet responded while I was typing.

My standard helm is going to be Valkyrie Wing - although I do believe I have a Nightwing's stashed somewhere. Nightwing's has a high level requirement, so even if I did use it, it would be very late nightmare/hell. Since I'm not specializing in cold skills, I do not view Nightwing's as markedly better than Valkyrie Wing (I have a +2 to all skills version).

Kuko Shakaku
Two-Hand Damage: 25 to (72-81)
Required Level: 33
Required Strength: 53
Required Dexterity: 49
+150-180% Enhanced Damage
Fires Explosive Arrows Or Bolts [Level 7]
Piercing Attack (50)
Adds 40-180 Fire Damage
+3 To Immolation Arrow (Amazon Only)
+3 To Bow and Crossbow Skills

I don't know if you get any synergy benefits by investing in Immolation Arrow from the standard attack. (I'm thinking you don't.) Assuming a 179 in dexterity (at level 80) and socketed with a perfect ruby, even when I don't add any synergy bonus, or take into account extra damage I may have on charms or other equipment, I calculate the average damage to be 389.

That owns throughout nightmare, and even in hell it isn't bad, considering it's a fast attack, costs no mana, and has a 95% chance to pierce. Remember, we're only talking about picking off stragglers. I would never stand around pumping my standard attack into a champion pack. This is to pick off onesies and twosies for mana conservation.

Conversely, immolation arrow will have an average damage (assuming I only put a single point into fire and exploding arrows - completely unsynergized, and not taking into account damage from any other source) of 1,011 per arrow, and that doesn't count the over 200 points of burning damage per second that monsters standing in the flame will continue to take after the arrow hits.

My last bowazon I made specialized in strafe and used a Buriza. I kept a Koku on switch for physical immunes, and it worked very well in hell, especially considering I'll be at the max (95% chance) of pierce. Even boss ghost packs didn't last long with that kind of damage output. (I play on Battlenet, so it's the equivalent of players=1. I concede that on players 8, this attack would take a while to kill stuff on hell.)

Well that really bites the big one. You would think that by the time a game gets to it's 12th version (1.12) that the list values on the screen would be accurate.

OK, so we're talking about 2100 max damage. My Koku calculation gets me to about 1000 average damage, And monsters on players 8 easily have at least twice as much life as monsters on players 1. If I may ask, when you have the opportunity to check, what is your attack rating on your FA to get to that 91% chance?

It does, because the +20 to strength on Titan's DOES count towards the total 156 needed, as I'll only have SS equipped when I'm using the javelin. My strength will drop by 20 when I switch to Koku, but that's meaningless when I'm using a bow.

I finished Act 1 Normal last night. I forgot to buy a few antidote potions prior to fighting Andariel, said what the hell, I'll fight her anyway, and died. The most humiliating defeat I've suffered in a while, and apparently a necessary reminder for why I typically buy a couple of antidote potions and drink them pre-battle to max out my poison resist. So I obviously went back to town and defeated her on the second try. I also hit level 18 in early Act II, and got myself a 3-socket hunters bow with perfect gems. I hit for an average of about 80, and that's a cannon in Act II Normal. I liked it so much that I purchased a 3 socket brandistock for my merc, and loaded that up with 3 perfect gems as well.

EDIT: I'm also OK with having a lowish life total for investing heavily into both strength and dexterity. I will have an effective level 8 in all the Amazon passive "dodge" type skills, which gives her about a 40% chance of avoiding damage altogether. When I'm using Titan's, I'll also have a 75% chance of blocking. Meaning most standard attacks will have just a 15% chance of even hitting me to begin with.

While I'm not sure exactly how my skill progression is going to go, I'm only investing in prerequisites for now. I should have enough points saved to invest in both LF and Valk for a while once I hit level 30. I'm not sure which of those two I should max first, but I'll definitely max Immolation Arrow last, as the standard attack on Koku is sufficient for one hit kills throughout most of nightmare.

EDIT2: I still want to eventually play an assassin, but I don't even know where to begin. A trapsin seems cheesy, and while there are a boatload of guides out there, I cannot even get the basics straight of what kind of assassin I want to play. Some of the martial arts moves require claws, some work with any weapon, and one of the finishing moves only works if you have two claws. I don't even know something even as basic as whether I want to go claw-claw, claw-shield, or weapon-shield. I have some nice assassin gear, including a +2 to all assassin skills rare diadem with +20% resist all and some mf, and a +1 to asssassin skills rare amulet with a bunch of other nice mods. I even have a nice claw or two lying around - I just have no freakin' clue what to do with them.

 

For your question - standard attack neither receives nor gives any synergies.

However, 389 damage isn't what I call adequate in Hell level, even less for the purpose you're thinking of using it for. Yes, it'll get the job done, and admirably at that, it's just going to be SLOW. Remember that all monsters have several thousands of health, even at /players 1. And four times that on /players 8.

What happens is that you totally demolish a large pack of monsters in a couple piercing Immo/LF strikes and *then* you'd pluck away some ten, even twenty times MORE to kill the one that just happened to sneak behind a corner at the critical moment?

I tried (briefly) using a Thul'd Nord's Tenderizer on switch to whack down phys/lit immunes with my Grief/Dual Dream Fana/Shock zealot and boy, did it teach me a few lessons in futility. The poison damage from Grief's Venom proc was already doing more than I could muster with the alternative..

 

Well, score one for a Blessed Aim merc - which is a bit disappointing. I know I didn't want a Might merc, because I don't do much physical damage. Ideally, I wanted a Holy Freeze merc, but because I'm not investing heavily into Penetrate (1 point and +skills) my attack rating may suffer. I'm fine with a 90% hit rate, but the problem is that's in Act I, when you'd assume you'd be facing monsters with considerably lower defenses that what you'd encounter for the remainder of the game. If you attack rating is falling to around 70% by Act III and IV, that's not so great. The whole idea with piercing attacks is that you have to hit to get the pierce chance to kick in, and it is the chance to pierce that makes LF a powerful attack.

I seriously doubt I'd need 10-20 more. I mean, I've used the bow before (granted only against physical immunes) and I do remember it taking a while to take down a physical immune using the standard attack. However, I assumed this was because I wasn't getting any damage help out of my valk and merc.

With that build, you couldn't do better than a Nord's? How about a Baranar's Star if you were going the elemental damage route? One build I have considered but never actually made was a Zealot using Baranar's Star in conjunction with Conviction. It has a decent base damage, especially when synergized with Sacrifice. You'd be hitting constantly because Conviction lowers enemies defense significantly, and since the base build would only require 60 points, you could invest heavily into Holy Shield, which, with decent armor could really jack your armor class high.

 

Baranar's without its lightning damage < Nord's. (Remember I'd only use it against phys/lit immunes.) Plus it's slower and has much greater STR req.

Ideally I should probably have used Azurewrath, but it's only about twice as much non-phys non-lit damage compared to the Nords I used, so it would still have been slow going. Then again, *anything* is when your main attacks deal ~5k physical and ~3k lightning per hit.

 

Yeah, Azurewrath is great, except you need to be a really high level to use it. Isn't the level requirement like 85 or something like that? I hate waiting that long for end-game equipment. Heck, I don't even like having to wait until level 70 or so. Of course, once you hit level 85, you could have gone with Azurewrath.

EDIT: I just looked up the strength requirements, and I had not realized that they were that different. Nord's is 88, while Baranar's is 153. I also didn't realize the attack speeds were that different either, especially considering that Baranar's isn't that slow - it comes with a pretty decent IAS mod (+50%), and a devil star isn't that slow of a weapon to begin with.

I'm still slogging along through Act II with my Amazon. I also realized that Valkyrie Wing doesn't have to be a permanent solution - I can just as easily go with the HQ when I hit the appropriate level, and with the bonus to life and mana, that's not a bad option at all.

 

Switch your attack to Nornal arrows. This will show your true AR even for the FA, because the FA AR bonus doesn't exist as Sir has already mentioned. However: FA - The splash is autohit. CS - The Lighting is autohit (not the physical), Fury - Everything is autohit You've got to love that attack.

Sorry I'm about a month too late to suggest Amazon builds, because I've completed quite a few.

My favourite Java was certainly LF / Poison pure Java. She rocked, and made Guardian on Ladder this season. Budget build too, since I only play HC, and when you solo all the time it's easy to lose some gear The B-net gods giveth and the B-net gods taketh away and I can live and die with that. Built around 2 items (Titans and Peace RW armour) and whatever I had on top of that. She was pretty sucky at bringing down Act Bosses, but with LF being autohit, she did OK using Goblin Toes for those fights.

DMC:
1) If you have Realm RW's installed for your SP, then Prayer merc with Insight is a solid choice. Both LF and FA are massive mana hogs.
2) Silkweaves for boots (If you posted up the boots you're using, I think I missed it). The 5 MAEK are a Godsend for any Java with no Insight merc.
3) Yeah, you're going to want that decoy in Hell I would imagine.

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Ilkori's Guide to kickers and dancers. Lots of great info there. Alternatively, make a Blade Fury Sin and hurl those stars for more hurt than you ever thought possible. Do not however use any of the old guides to build a BF sin. Lot's on changes to those.

http://www.theamazonbasin.com/d2/forums/index.php?showtopic=62415&st=0&p=700461&#entry700461

 

Another thought on my bowazon (and possibly a solution to potential mana issues) - for just two more points, I can get Jab and Strafe. Jab has no prerequisites, and since I already had to invest a point in Magic Arrow and Multishot in order to get Immolation Arrow, I think I already have all the necessary prerequisites for Strafe as well. Both Jab and Strafe have cheap mana cost but can leech mana very effectively. I have +8 to javelin skills with my current setup, and +9 to bow skills, so with just a one point investment they would be at level 9 and 10 respectively. And strafe at level 10 may be a better option than my standard attack with Koku, while Jab can provide a low cost melee attack with Titans.

Skill points certainly aren't an issue with this build. I certainly have two to spend if I need it. The only necessary skills to max are LF, Immolation Arrow and Valk. Granted, there's about a dozen points worth of prerequisites for those skills, but the only other skills I will want would be one point wonders. This build is essentially "done" by the end of Nightmare. The only synergies even worth considering once my three main skills are maxed would be Exploding Arrow to boost Immolation Arrow damage, or Decoy, to boost the Valk's life. Thoughts?

 

1) Aldurs are fantastic boots. Absolutely excellent boots. But Silks will give you more of what you need which is Mana. In Hell, you will be tossing those jav's really like there is no tomorrow. (When I play HC, there really isn't... )

2) Really, do get the Realm rw mod (SP = Ladder in all respects except this one.) As it goes, this is massive. Insight + Spirit (You think Enigma is overpowered?) alone make this the main reason I only play ladder + on line. I can't be doing with the hassle of modding it, and I can play with good friends when appropriate.

3) razortail v T-gods is Not in question. Honestly. Razortail all the way, and never ever be deceived by the lying character screen.

Honestly, this is how it goes:

Razortail + 9 in pierce (inc adders) = 100% pierce = 100% of hitting 5 enemies. OK they do have to be in line and in range. There is no other way at all to get anywhere near 100% pierce. It is absolutely THE only belt for ranged attacks, and your main attacks are just utterly perfectly suited. Just ignore the LCS.

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I'm not sure about the build, but strafing at all, 3% mana steal will fill your bulb in a single / two volleys at most unless you cth is as good as zero. A physical bowie lives or literally dies by not having LL and ML. You don't need much, but you have to have some.

You also have to have faith in the fact that it will save your arse, speaking from some seriously bitter expeerience, where if I'd stood my ground I'd have made it, unfortnately I chickened, and got slated. Trust the leach

 

Unfortunately, I was wrong about the skill points. I thought I had all the prerequisites, but I don't. I forgot about Guided arrow completely, and it turns out that I also have to invest in two of the three cold arrow skills to get to Strafe, so do you think it is worth 4 skill points? At one, I thought it was a no-brainer. Not sure about 4 though.

 

I'd go as far as to say that elemental Amazon builds have the unique irritating point about groups with two conflicting immunities: It just totally destroys their killing speed. Instead of a dense clump where Pierce really comes to its own, you get two half-sized dispersed groups and you need to get rid of the first group first before you can begin on the other half.

Sorcs always have some sort of a half-passive attack going for them, either as main or backup. For Meteorb sorcs, drop a Meteor and start slinging Frozen Orbs around. That way both fire and cold immune monsters will drop about at the same time. Only the lightning attacks require the sorc's constant attention to keep going.

 

Hmmm... It is true that I have skill points to spare. The only must-max skills in my proposed build are Immolation Arrow, Valkyrie, and Lightning Fury. In addition to those 60 skill points, I have 4 prerequisites on the Bow Tree, 4 prerequisites and one-point wonders on the Javelin Tree, and 10 prerequisites and one-point wonders (which is all of them) on the passive tree, for a total of 78 skill points, meaning by the end of nightmare, this build is "done".

Additional skill points would be placed into one of the synergies to my three main skills. Lightning Fury has several synergies, but all of them only give a 1% boost to damage. So even if I take this build into the 90s in level and max out one of those synergies, I'm only looking at a 20% increase in damage, which seems rather meager given the investment. Valkyrie has a single synergy with Decoy. (She also gains the same benefits as your character for the passive skills, but since I'm not seriously considering increasing them beyond a single point, I don't count those.) Decoy gives a decent boost in life to the Valkyrie. I am considering this option, however, given the level I'll be casting the Valkyrie, I am unsure if she'll need more life. It may be something like the clay golem for the necromancer. It may be nice to have a clay golem with 10000 life, but if your clay golem instead has 4000 life, it will still get the job done. The final option is Exploding Arrow, which boosts the damage of Immolation Arrow, by 8%. If I am satisfied by my Valkyrie's life total, this is the obvious spot for additional points.

While I have not spent the points for Strafe yet, I'm leaning in that direction. (I have not reached the level where I can start wearing my plus skills gear, so that skill would be suckage at this point anyway.) That will increase the total points needed to finish this build to 82. Once you add in the quest-related skill points you get for free, the difference between 78 and 82 skill points translates into being done in Act V Nightmare or Act I Hell. So the question becomes is Strafe a good enough investment to be worth 32% less damage on my Immolation Arrow (as the 4 points I would not spend on Strafe would go into the synergy)?

I have also been experimenting with Multishot, as I thought that could be a cheap alternative to Strafe, and while I know Multishot will become more effective as I start equipping my +skills gear, I'm unsure if it will offer the same type of crowd control benefits as strafe. It seems like Multishot is at its best when all the monsters are coming from a single direction. Additional skill points give more and more arrows, but it still seems like no matter how many you get, they all basically go the same direction. There's no way to effectively use Multishot when you have enemies all over the place. So while it will not substitute for Strafe, there do appear to be situations where it would be useful. (Like when all the enemies are coming from a single direction.)

Since there does seem to be some utility in Multishot, and since I already have a point in it, I do have some questions about it. From what I have read, there are three differences between an arrow fired with Multishot and a standard arrow. The first is rather straightforward - Multishot only does 3/4 of the damage of a single arrow. The second is that only the middle two arrows can activate a chance to cast mod on your weapon. (Since Kuko doesn't have any ctc mods, this one is irrelevant.) Finally, even if your arrows are tightly clumped together, only one arrow can hit each monster (even if it appears that a monster got hit by three or four arrows). That said, does everything else still work with Multishot? Will all my arrows be able to Pierce, and will all my arrows be able to leech life and mana?

Right now, my amazon is in Act V, Normal, and is level 29. So I have not hit the launch point yet with this build. I'm hoping that launch point is level 33, when Kuko comes on line. The one major error I made with this build was not properly outfitting my amazon for the early levels. I probably should have stuck the Arctic Set on her and continued using it until some of my end-game gear became available. Right now I'm using no end-game gear, and no end-game skills. Diablo took a long time to kill.

One resistance I don't think I'll have a problem with maxing in Hell is Lightning. In looking through my rare amazon amulets, I think I'm going to go with the one that has +1 to all skills and 18% resist all. One of the additional mods I got on that amulet was increased resistance to lightning, so although I get 18% to everything, the lightning resistance on it is +50%! While I knew you could get resist all and resist a particular element (or even two different elements), I was unaware you could get that much more. The bonus lightning resistnace was 32%, and I thought that was outside the range of what was obtainable on a rare.

EDIT: Having said all that, Sir Rechet's comments on the viability of this build are noted. I'm still not sure what I have, which is somewhat disconcerting, especially considering that I won't know for sure until I get to Hell difficulty, where any shortcomings of this build will become apparent. The first obvious concern is I don't know if I'm playing a Javazon with bow skills as a backup, or a Bowazon with Lightning Fury as a backup. I do not consider this to be simply a semantic difference. I believe you should know what your character does best before you actually finish the character. As a result I see two distinct possible outcomes for this character. I may end up with a very versatile character that can do everything pretty well, or I may end up with a character that cannot do anything particularly well (and that definitely isn't a semantic difference).

One other equipment change I've decided on is that I'm going to switch from Valkyriewing to Harlequin Crest when I reach the appropriate level. The original plan was to go from Valkyriewing to Nightwing's Veil. As Sir Rechet noted, there's not a lot of sense of using Nightwing's if you aren't going to benefit from the increase cold damage, as the only other thing that helm really gives you is +2 to all skills. HQ gives the same boost to skills, as well as bonus mana, life and magic find. And since I currently have a extra HQ hanging around that no one is using, it seems rather senseless to go with Nightwing's especially considering the level requirement on HQ is actually a bit lower.

The other thing I'm considering is socketing Koku with a perfect skull instead of a perfect ruby. The extra fire damage from a perfect ruby isn't multiplied by the fire damage from any of the fire arrow skills, so it's only going to give me an extra 20 or so points of damage. The extra leech (which isn't great on bows) may be more worthwhile.

 

Since you already have two crowd decimators (LF/Immo) it suggests that you should steer clear of yet another. Strafe all the way, I'd say. You're most likely only going to use it against stragglers and LI/FI bosses anyway, and there Strafe > Multi.

 

OK, then Strafe it is. The only reason that I even considered Multishot is that it was a prerequisite of Immolation Arrow, so I already had a point in it, and with +skills it would be level 9 or 10 (I forget if I have 8 or 9 +skills once I'm fully outfitted).

Do you concur that it's more practical to stick a pskull as opposed to a pruby in Koku? I just don't think that 20 points of extra fire damage is going to be much of a difference maker, and it will allow me to focus all of my other gear selections towards resistances, skills, and (at least for gloves) IAS.

 

OK quick question ... what do you do with all that gold? I finished ACT I using /players 8 with my Barb on L20. Since I have an extended inventory mod, I was able to pick every small piece and sell it and now have 150k gold in the stash and 200k on the barb. I can't pick up any more gold!!
I have checked all the shops in ACT II and picked up a couple of things but the stuff I have is leagues better. There are some sorc staffs but I'm not wasting money on items I cant use.
So what do I do here on forward??

 

I thought it was half leech efficacy. The reason I'm looking into skills like Jab and Strafe, is because that does physical damage. I'm not leeching much at all with LF or IA.

Sadly no. If I had a fire facet, I wouldn't be asking what to socket in the bow. I could socket a pskull and always remove it later at the cost of a not very expensive Hel rune. And assuming that you only get the actual damage adjustment on the pruby - unless for some reason that it actually gets multiplied by something else - you only get about 25 points of extra damage. I don't remember the exact damage range on a pruby, but it's something like 15-40 points of damage.

You gamble, gamble, gamble, and then when you're done with that, you gamble some more. It's a great way to get rares, as 1 in 10 of all gambled items are rare, and a rare can beat the pants off a lot of set and uniques you find. While it's possible to gamble a set or unique, your odds are very poor - 1 in 2000 IIRC. So while it's great to get a unique or set on a gamble, you don't go in expecting to get one.

EDIT: I guess I'm in wait-and-see mode with my Amazon in terms of what I am. I have been, up to this point, a bowazon. That won't change when I hit level 33 and start using Koku. The earliest I can conceivably start being deadly with my LF attack is when I get access to Titan's at level 42. That was another oversight - I do not have a good javelin-class weapon for use prior to level 42.

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EDIT2: Apparently, Blizzard will release patch 1.13 in the coming weeks. It's in beta right now, and when it goes live, there will be an additional reward for doing the Den of Evil quest. When you complete that quest, you will be able (if you want) to reset all of your spent skill points and attribute points. The idea is that you can actually spend all your points at each level up, and not hold onto spare points to be spent later.

So, to use my current amazon as an example, I could have boosted my bow skills early, to make normal difficulty easier. Then, upon completing the Den of Evil quest in Nightmare, I would be able to adjust every skill point I spent, and only put one point in each pre-requisite, in order to have the higher skills with more points in them.

I can see equally good use in reallocating attribute points. Mnay people raise their attributes (most notably strength) to a certain level to wear specific gear. If you later find another piece of equipment that boosts strength, you could re-distrubute your points, and place those additional points elsewhere.

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EDIT3: Chances are when Patch 1.13 goes live, the ladder will reset. I will have to give strong consideration to using ATMA once that happens. If I'm starting from scratch again anyway, I could go the single player route. The odds of finding the ladder-only equipment is so rare anyway, that it seems futile to play on ladder for that reason alone.

 

While playing last night, I found a rare war javelin of awesomeness. It's now my main weapon. Jab is on left click, Lightning Fury on right click. It even comes with mana leech, so I actually leech back more than I use when Jabbing. The only downside to the war javelin is it does not have the replenish quantity mod, so I cannot go willy-nilly with Lightning Fury just yet, but I'm doing respectable damage while jabbing (currently only at level 4 with current equipment). I know I have boots (Gore Riders) stashed somewhere with CB, so I can equip them for bosses and have it activated regularly with Jab.

I hit level 33 last night, equipped Kuko, but I already see the power of LF. It's already the superior weapon against packs, and since I'm lazy, I just Jab the onesies and twosies instead of going with Kuko. I foresee Titans being my weapon of choice against anything that isn't lightning immune. That also means that I may not worry too much if my resistances aren't maxed when I'm not using a shield, since it definitely isn't going to be a 50-50 split. Also, with all my dodge and evade skills at fairly high levels, there's a decent chance I avoid getting hit completley, even against elemental attacks which cannot be blocked.