Nonono, something lost in translation. I was talking about your reluctance to have folks other than you running your personal characters:)
ED, we’ll see what happens with running in the afternoon/morning. I’m also happy to take a break from whatever to run a different character.
I hope it goes w/o saying that the sorcs will probably want to load up on mf…
I’ll likely be sticking with a Sage-Maul bear. Everytime I go into the West and anyone is playing, they’re always in Hell and I’m still in NM, so I can’t join. And I never remember anyones name to whisper, so I’m assedout.
I’ll be happy to make a Werewolf/Fury druid, as that’s the character I’ve had the most success with. That would be maxed WW/Lyco/Fury/OakSage. Rarely dies so would be a great tank.
However, I don’t want to commit myself to the project because I may end up without regular 'net access for a while. Unless y’all think it won’t take very long to get all the way through Hell Baal.
I appear to be listed as playing a question mark. As I said to Punha … pure summoner Druid. They need a certain amount of gear to be really effective, but since the gear in question has little overlap with other characters: + to tree ammys, class-specific helm (with points in Raven and Oak Sage, preferably), anything reasonable for the rest.
If you could give us your West account name we could keep an eye out for you. Yeti’s acct name thread is here. Since the ladder is starting anew soon, I stripped my necro of his armor to equip my sorc with Tal’s set.
That’ll depend on two main things:
It shouldn’t take more than a week to get past NM Baal; for some folks I’d be surprised if they didn’t make it to NM Baal inside of two days. A sorc can reduce A3 NM to about half an hour (get BO from barb, TP barb and paladin to spider cavern, all 3 renew BO, sorc tps to next area, TP paladin there, sorc tps to sewer level 2, TP barb and paladin there to renew BO, TP from there to durance while barb and paladin find book, rest is gravy).
Hey guys, I’ve been gone for a bit (computer troubles), this new ladder thing is exciting.
I’m not sure what kind of char to make yet… but I’m a total nutjob collector, I want to make the best char for MF’ing quickly / efficiently. It would also be nice to group with everyone, can anyone recommend a build for this? I’m open to all classes, love trying out new things.
Put Larz down for hammerdin and me for summoning necro. Just talked to him.
I think it would be best if the sorcs hoarded the MF gear simply because my experience (and probably others’ as well) has shown that it is far easier (and safer) for a caster to get LH on a boss than it is for a melee character. We already have at least three folks who would be casters, so what we need now are folks who A) tank and/or B) provide crowd control.
It would probably be wisest to have one caster for every melee fighter. I’m categorizing the javzon as melee and the summoning druid as more caster than melee. That’s 4 mostly-casters and 5 more melee than caster.
Oh, hey. Here’s an idea, albeit possibly a little pre-emptive. What are the thoughts on having Ryle make an enchantress for when we start doing mulerushes? Feel free to lay down the smackdown.
Summoner druid helps a little with both of those; raven attacks blind the target, and wolves and bears make good tanks.
You’re also right in classifying them as casters overall, but until clvl30 or so they almost have to be played as melee. So long as you can fit them up with decent meleeing gear and plenty life leech they’re good - in SP I used the Death’s set with Sigon’s Guard from the moment I got 71 Strength until level 28, when I switched to ranged combat (using Skystrike/Kuko Shakaku) for everything except summoning.
Now, to address some concerns:
I’d be inclined to swing the other way. A javazon is really more a caster/ranged character, though their valkyrie takes care of tanking. A summoning druid is IMO more of a tank character, since that’s what the summons do, after all. Same goes for a pure summoning necro. With the right choice of skills, both the javazon and the necro could be a combination of ranged/caster and tank though (i.e. a javazon with high lvl valk, or a summoning necro that has a high level poison nova, an idea i’ve been meaning to try).
It looks to me like we have an abundance of melee characters with the current arrangement, so an extra sorceress or two would not hurt in the least. If Ryle is interested in a sorceress, i say go for it. Also if anybody’s ever wanted to try an Avenger paladin, this would be a great time, since everyone benefits from having a Conviction aura around.
Reviewing matters in chat, Ryle, making a meteorb sorc (maxed meteor/mastery/orb; beyond that I don’t know the build) would be just fine. It is much easier initially to get sorcs dealing higher damage than melee chars, even accounting for decent gear for the melees and no +skills for the casters.
Actually, I would mind. Not my style, and besides, I understand that a good hammerdin is fairly equipment-dependent, so it’d be a bad choice for ladder reset. That’s one of the reasons I favor a sorc: You can go a long ways with just Leaf, Lore, and Stealth. Fortunately I see Larz is already planning on doing a hammerdin, so no need for me there.
If I do a paladin, I was thinking of either a Tesladin or a Medic/Saviour (Prayer, Holy Bolt, Cleansing, Meditation, and Salvation). At this point, I’m leaning away from the Tesladin, since it looks like we’ll already have two zappers of various sorts (MDSL’s trapper and Yeti’s putative javazon). I’ll also probably be doing most of the building of the Clonekiller, if we make one, since I’ve had experience with that. Incidentally, a Clonekiller uses maxed Conviction, which as theckhd says is nice for almost everyone. Also note that a Tesladin, Medic/Saviour and Clonekiller can all three get away with cheap/easy equipment (see note above about the sorceress).
At this point, though, I’m not seeing much in the way of sorceresses or fire on the list, so pencil me in for a fire sorc. Note that even without focusing on it, a fire sorc can get quite a respectable Enchant: Mine currently adds in the neighborhood of 300 damage, with only one skill point invested. So we might not need a dedicated Enchantress.
Meanwhile, I did some experimenting with how to calculate sorceress damage, and I’ve conclusively found a number of things that aren’t the right formula. But I still don’t know what is. According to Arreat, level 20 firebolt does 45-60 damage (without mastery or synergies) plus 16% per synergy point, level 20 fireball does 227-258 plus 14% per synergy point, and level 20 meteor does 955-1019 plus 5% per synergy point (all three of these are synergies of each other). When my sorc is naked, she has all of those at level 20, along with level 20 fire mastery (+163%), and her damage is 885-1177 with firebolt, 3462-3931 with fireball, and 6856-7314 with meteor. When fully equipped, she has +16 to skills (so a total of 36; level 36 mastery is 275%) and +10% to fire damage from Eschuta’s Temper. In this case, she does 9216 - 10099 with firebolt, 12158 - 13251 with fireball, and 25143 - 26183 with meteor. Finally, if I swap out the Eschuta’s for a magic volcanic orb (same skills, but without the +10%), she does 8977 - 9837 with firebolt and 24490 - 25503 with meteor (my volcanic orb also has a plus to fireball, so I can’t compare that). This set of numbers does not remotely fit to any possible formula I can think of. Any ideas?
Same as the East: iamthinksnow with tuefulhundentoo as my only active char right now.
Phae42 mentioned a WW/fury tank, where I build a Bear/maul tank, but the tank with Sage is pretty consistant, so I’d be willing to play that role. Life and def in the high thousands, low teens is pretty standard at Hell.
Two, and bear in mind I am not a math person:)
ISTR someone over at blizz saying that synergies affected a skill if you invested a point in them, not if you got +1 all from an item. So that might have something to do with it.
Have you considered this possible method of calculation? Here is a guess:
Figure damage of just that skill w/o synergies, accounting for +skills to only that skill, and also taking into account any +fire dmg or whatever. Add in mastery, then add in whatever you have for synergies.
I went through your list of possibilities and didn’t see that in there. Iunno what to tell you other than to email Blizz and ask them.
It appears that my efforts to get D2 to install successfully on here will be successful, so look for me (I hope) some time this week.
A minor point, and some questions, on druid spirits.
The question is contained up there. Assuming a druid with lvl 26 sage and a druid with level 10 sage, and both are standing in the blood moor, will they both be affected by the level 26 or by the level 10? Assume for this that they are standing right up next to each other (it’s a pity we can’t customize diablo characters like you can in D&D, else we could have dual gay druids wielding trees on sticks; I dare someone else to mock someone swinging a big ol’ Club of Destruction).
ISTR that whoever cast Sage last, that is- more recently, takes precedence. I totally understand your point, though, and agree that if two of are going Druid, we should build barbs as well as sage.
I’m thinkin of making one communal character for everyone to use (a maxed warmth/enchant sorceress) to help melee’ers get up high lvl quickly.
As for main guy, guess I’ll go for a sorc. I was thinking meteorb but I really liked Blizzard. Can’t really have 2 AE attacks, they don’t work well with the time delays, so I was thinking about Blizz/Lightning. I know lightning has some pretty insane dmg, and casting thunderstorm + blizzard in a Baal run would be pretty decent dmg. IIRC there are no cold immunes on hell Baal runs except the ones hanging around Baal and very few lightning immunes that I can remember, cept the Black Souls.
I know lightning is pretty cool for insane dmg, so what do you guys think about it?
I would recommend warmth/enchant/fire mastery. 60 quick points, and I believe that those three skills cam be maxed around level 49, though I submit you’ll have to get help with Hell Izual;) Then it’s a simple process of getting Leaf (or a very simple +2 sorc orb and a +1 shield), a Volcanic amulet and helm for +6 fire, magefists and some sort of +1 armor. SoJs or skill charms would be lovely, but at this point you’re looking at lvl 31 warmth/enchant/mastery, which is plenty good enough for most folks:)
Lightning, if I’m thinking of the right skill, requires you to stand still while you cast it. If you’re just talking about the skill tree, I would point out that while the max damage is plenty high, the min is nothing to write home about.
Cold immunes will spawn where they bloody well please. Lister, for one, can spawn FI/CI, FI/LI, CI/LI, etc. Black souls are not something I’d want to have remaining to kill;)
My recommendation, if you really want to go with lightning damage, is to pair it with cold, because otherwise stuff will simply be moving too fast. I’ll defer to someone with more recent experience with souls for how to deal with them.
I managed to get onto USWest and get rushed to A5 last night. I am hoping tonight to get to lvl 20 so we can get a massive mule rush to NM, and level 40 will be a hop, skip and jump after that, though some norm Baal runs might be in order. Thanks most especially go out to ckhd, who can now brag that he’s sat through a ten-hour troubleshoot (probably six of which involved me downloading the playdisc since I had lost mine), and the Westers who welcomed me with open arms and Sigon’s set:)