My guess (and it is only that, since I haven’t asked) is that it’s in response to a felt-but-not-commented-upon notion that we gradually lose a lot of the good one-slot gear we find. An amulet here, a charm there, a few rings and eventually we feel like we’ve lost half our gear to sloth.
Also: I would like useful names (like Ogs_Sigons) for the future 40rushers. Feel free to chime in here with a particular name you’d like me to use.
Some of the mules have undergone a bit of spring cleaning. Nothing lost, rest assured, merely more properly organized. I have pulled extraneous Sigon gear from set mules and placed it on Ogs_Sigon’s. Ogs_Psncharms has received my extras of those, and Ogs_ExcepUArmor has received the exceptional unique (body) armor of which I was aware. Later on I will do more muling. Further mules on sd-team4 (the host of Ogs_Sigons, Ogs_Psncharms and Ogs_ExcepUArmor) will carry ExcepUHelms, ExcepUBoots and ExcepUGloves.
Some final notes. 1, please let’s try to keep the rune mule organized. When I went in today (minutes ago, in fact), the stash was full, but organized, and the inventory was … not so organized. I think it best to keep one of every rune from El up (to Mal, in this case, as I haven’t yet muled the Ists) in the stash, and keep copies of higher runes in stash as well. In the inventory I like to keep the spare lower runes, and mute them (with chips, if applicable) etc. It makes things much easier during a long transmuting session if all the runes necessary are in the inventory. 2, please do not mess with the MFer’s hotkeys or potions. Last night I found that his battle orders had been switched from f5 to f6, battle command the opposite, find item had been unhotkeyed and where he’d had 4 red pots (column 3), he now had 3 blue pots. I can’t express clearly enough how much more important it is to have life pots to drink than mana pots;) It can also be a bit confusing, when we’re all been using the same hotkeys, to go in and find that someone has changed them. 3, the second of the PGem mule is quickly filling up (the first one is full but for an empty cube). I expect it will be almost totally emptied soon after W gets back from vaca (hey, W? Hurry the heck up, willya?;)), but bear that in mind when you’re putting regular (or, Og help us, flawed) gems on the guy.
My lord, you guys are still using the function keys as your hotkeys?!? Don’t you find that to be an incredible game of hunt 'n peck? I don’t mean to sound like preaching, but when I switched to QWER-ASDF-ZXCV as my main skill buttons, I died about 80% less often. YMM-certainly-V.
Not really, no. However, I have been using the same hotkeys for the same skills for some years now (find pot is always 7, leap attack is always f7, town portal is always f12).
That might work for us, but these days when I die it’s due to two things:
It doesn’t really happen beyond those two cases, and I don’t think using letters instead of function keys would do much:)
Munch, one box = one space in inventory. Every character seems to have a couple of rings, amulets, small charms, etc. laying around that are put there and forgotten…it’s better to have an account that becomes a clearinghouse for all one box items that can collected, sorted and located for future use…
Upon further review…I think there are two characters that are nearly full with perfect gems, so now I’m thinking of starting an account that is exclusively perfect gems, and each character will be a particular perfect gem mule, and we can have one of the mules be a flawless gem mule that will collect and cube them to perfect gems…but this may be a ways off if the current structure of gem mules becomes too unwieldy.
Scratch that…we should use the p.gems evenly to cube baal charms and jewels. It’s nice to have a large stash of them, but we got to use them eventually.
There are two levels to hotkey assignment: First, associated with the client, we have a level of “Skill 1: q. Skill 2: w. Skill 3: e”, etc. Secondly, associated with the character on the account, we have “Bash: Skill 1. Frenzy: Skill 2. Berzerk: Skill 3”, and so on. So if someone has their hotkeys set up the same way as punha does, and they play the barbarian, then they’ll use the same buttons for the same skills. If, however, Munch played the barbarian, and did not change the settings at all, then, for Munch, Battle Command would be some letter or another (I’m guessing probably “S”, but it would depend on your exact settings). But since Battle Command is still set to Skill 6, it would be back to F6 when punha played it again.
Note also that two people might use the same set of keys but with different mappings. For instance, I use F1-F8 for skills 1-8, and QWER ASDF for skills 9-16, and put most-used skills, like combat skills, on the letters, and less-used skills, like summons and Find Potion, on the function keys. So, when I’m playing the team paladin, Zeal is “W”, and Salvation is F4. But another person might have QWER ASDF for skills 1-8 and F1-F8 for skills 9-16. If that person played the paladin, then Zeal would be F2 and Salvation would be “R”.
Personally, I suspect that hotkeys on shared playing chars (as opposed to mules, that don’t matter) will always be a bit of a bone of contention. Each of us has our own preferred arrangement of hotkeys, so when the primary player is on a shared character, it’ll feel perfectly natural, but for other players, it won’t be. As an example, if I’m playing the barb, I would expect Find Potion to be on F5, but it would for me be (I think) “D”. So either I’m going to be confused, or punha is. I think that the best solution is if the person who plays the character the most (probably the person who made it) sets the hotkeys, and designs the character so that switching rarely if ever needs to be done “in the field”.
And the reason that punha is looking at Conviction for the next 40 char is to help in the eventual rush. Given that our current strongest sorceress is single-element, it would be really helpful to be able to break immunities. It might be worth researching, though, just exactly how much resistance the High Council has, and whether that’s breakable with a level 11 Conviction, since they seemed to be the fire immunes which caused the most trouble. Also Hell-level Dark Ones, though I would imagine that they’re lower than the Council.
Also, punha, if you’re going with medical skills, you’ll want a mixture of Holy Bolt and Prayer, which synergizes it. I don’t know what exact mix is optimal; check chippydip.
Reminds me I have a +19 life GC in someone’s stash that’s a Hell Minions GC. I’ll cube the heck out of it today and see what I get.
http://www.battle.net/diablo2exp/monsters/act3-councilmember.shtml
So that’s 120% fire res in Hell. Given 1/5 efficacy of Conviction against immunities, lvl 11 Conv (no synergies apply) would give -80% to enemy resists before penalty, and -16 to res, making that 120 fire res 104 … still unbroken. If we could manage to get the guy some +3 offensive aurae stuff (a +3 scepter, a +3 amulet we have, a +3 helm, rinky-dink +1 skill armor, a +3 or +2 all shield), that would pump Conv to 140% from enemy resists or -28% with penalty, which would give the council 92% fire res (and 72 ltg res). That would mean taking the guy to lvl 45, something I don’t think would be a terribly difficult thing (bit more annoying, but there you have it). It will also mean muling more gear, also not difficult, and a weaker build lvl 24-30, but since that’s when I’ll be doing ancients/baal, that isn’t so much of an issue.
Another option would be, and it would require more work, to make both a convadin and a lower res necro with points in fire golem as well. Lvl 3 LR gives -41% res to enemies, which would bring a 92% fire res down to 51%. I don’t know what penalties exist versus immunities, but if lvl 3 LR would bring a 120% res down to 79%, it seems to me to be the way to go. A lvl 33 necro would also allow for considerable meat shield, and with 3 points in revives, some in golems and some in skels, there’d be much more of a meat shield than we had with the past mule rush, where NM ancients took a while because they kept running around.
I think it will be important to distinguish charms that are muled because they came from high-level opponents, and charms that are muled because the owner doesn’t want them anymore, but thinks they’re still useful to others.
As far as the council, from http://www.battle.net/diablo2exp/monsters/act3-councilmember.shtml, lightning-immune council members have resistance 100, so any amount of conviction or lower resistance will break it, while fire-immune members have resistance 120, so it would require better than -100 resistance lowering (5 * 20), which would mean conviction level 16 or better. Maxed-out conviction would reduce them to 90% fire-resistant. Used in combination with a necromancers lower resistance curse could bring that down to about 80 or even 70 if they really pump that curse. And superunique fire-enchanted council members could have unbreakable fire immunity.
Act I dark ones, believe it or not, have fire resistance 125, requiring a conviction level of 21 or higher to break.
My understanding is that the reduction in resistance lowering’s effectiveness against immune creatures is for all skills and item effects, not just the paladin’s conviction skill. So, if a paladin’s conviction brought down a council member’s fire resistance to 92, the level 3 LR would then only bring it down to 84.
Except that of the three important ones, I think that two are actually lightning type with the fire enchanted mod. Certainly, at least one of them is of the lightning type, since some of the minions are Lightning Immune. Which, assuming no Spectral Hit or Magic Resistant, would give them 108% fire resist, breakable by a mere level 4 Conviction.
I don’t think it would be worthwhile to have both a necro and a paladin in support roles. At that point, we might as well just bring in another high-level character, with physical or cold damage. But a wand with charges of Lower Resist might be worthwhile, if we decide that it’d be enough. After all, we would only need it at two or three places in the rush.
Decent night of MFing. Bane, two Skins, Occy, Lidless, that sort of thing. Also picked up a 4S Kraken Shell that I now learn is 3 defense point shy of perfect.
Ogs_Seeker, an OrbFball sorc, will be started at some point in the near future. I’m thinking maxed Orb and mastery, giving Hell Meph -40% Cold res against Orb in Hell. With level 20 Orb and lvl 1 ice bolt, that’s 267-282 damage per shard thing (not counting Meph’s predicted -40% cold res). However, I’m extremely open to other suggestions. One thing to keep in mind is that for this girl, res will not be a gear-deciding factor, since we’ll be running a paladin medic with her (and a barb tank, FWTW). Here’s what I have her down for so far:
39 chances
Shako (we’ll want to trade a Pul for one, I think)
32 ammy if we can’t nab a Tal ammy
tal belt to go with tal ammy (tal belt anyway, for dex)
some sort of boots
Occy and either a 4S Monarch of Ease with 4 Ist or … Iunno, mebbe a rhyme or Splendor.
we might want to spring for a Skullder’s
30 and 29 nagels
Gheed’s
all the barb’s MF charms
an anni.
Res will be an issue, since even with a perfect anni her res will be -30s. If we manage to find a Tal armor that’ll send her res comfortably positive. Still some work to be done fetching gear (Who_me?, get your butt back from SoCar so you can trade for us!).
In case anyone misses me, I’m leaving for New Mexico in about five hours, and will be gone until the 17th. So, until then, happy hack-and-slashing! 
The latest paladin is sitting at level 49 with lvl 28 Conv (Fetid sprinkler, Spirit Shroud, Peasant Cap, +3 amulet and Sigon’s). Were I to stick with this build for future 40rushers, and were I similarly to incorporate Herald of Zakarum, I could get to level 29 Conv (and also take some from dex and put it in vit), but as is right now I’m looking at ~-93% enemy defense and 150% from enemy defenses (that’s 30 from res to immunes). The Fetid Sprinkler also has chances to cast decrep and confuse, so that may help us out some. I wasn’t able to break Colenzo’s fire resistance with my lvl (at the time) 24 conv, and I don’t know if adding 4 levels to it will manage to do so, but if nothing else it’ll make everything else easier. I’ll go shopping for a wand of lower resist soon.
I also had a thought on making mule rushes easier. Last night we got Wightfella, one of Punoq’s mules, to A2 Hell and made the staff, inserted it etc. IOW, we made a 1.10 durimule. It will only work for one use, but I’m thinking that in the future we should do this:
Rusher and 40rusher, along with mules, go through norm and NM. Take one mule out after Hell Andy and replace it with the durimule, who makes the next game. That eliminates the need to do all but look at qlog to see the sign, get through the tomb and get the durimule’s Duriel. Continue through past Duriel, Meph and go forge a while. After that, folks bring in their tanks to get the staff for the mule who had been removed after Andy. ISTM that this would eliminate most of the hard work that has been (unnecessarily, IMO) part of the Hell portion of these rushes.
Overbuilt. Conviction maxes out completely at level 25. As in, level 511 conviction is identical to level 25 conviction. Next time, either go a little easier on the gear, or put three more points into one of his other skills. But that and Lower Resist had durned well better break everything (except for Colenzo and the Grand Vizier of Chaos, who I think are unbreakable, but at the very worst my merc can kill them).
Also, I’ll be out of town for a week from Wednesday to Wednesday, and completely without Diablo. For that matter, mostly without a network connection. So don’t go looking for me. A mule rush on Monday or Tuesday night is conceivable, if enough folks are on.
Geeze… I’m back now… I’ll get on tomorrow morning and see what’s available to trade and see what I can get. Since it seems like a lot of items have been added, I may just post them all to see what’s offered.
Since it appears that there’s a mf sorc in the works, should I try for Tal’s full set? I know we have the mask and belt now. Whether you guys want that or not, are there any priority items I should try to get?
By the way, there’s nothing keeping anyone else from trying a trade here and there. It’s better with more people looking…
On second thought I’ll check the mules and see tonight and check the trade forum now… but I’m not going to be up long.
I don’t know if we want to aim for max MF with the prospective sorc or we want to aim for a char who can survive in Hell and MF with her gear. Tal’s full set certainly makes a sorc capable in Hell, and we could probably trade out a shield, gloves, boots and rings before switching from MF to tank mode, but we could also get higher MF from other gear.
Found a goldwrap tday, FWIW. If we can get some decent MF boots we can up the barb’s mf a good bit while sacrificing some in the way of res. And the more we find the closer we grow to being able to field that mf sorc.
Who_me?, I think I’ve found a buyer for the +1 elemental GC we have on (I think) sd-team. Here’s the relevant thread:
Ogs_Seeker is now level 10 and has all her stat and skill points saved thus far. I didn’t know if we had yet determined the optimal build for her. She’s the lone char so far on sd-team5. Other slots will probably be taken by mules.