All Diablo2 Talk here.........

Cafe Society
2721

The Baal GCs and SCs might go for something useful (shael each, mebbe?) in trade. It’s really pretty easy to gather up crap Baal charms gotten from runs and mule them to someone else’s account.

I’ve stopped min-maxing for now, but if you see any low lvl-req jewels with nice +max or +min dmg, keep those.

For my money, let’s remember that a giant conch, lovely though it is, has a decently high str req and cannot spawn +1 class skills. Circlets and their ilk can. I’d say that the best items to re-roll are those that can spawn worthwhile stats for how they’d be used; a giant conch isn’t up there. Neither is a necro wand - we have enough of those +2 that anything that gets found now, unless it happens to land the r0xx0r +2 class +2 skilltree, can probably be discarded.

I’d like to make sure we keep at least one complete of every set, and in some cases two. Further, there are some items that, as long as we keep them properly organized, we can’t have too many of. A quick example is sigon’s belt/gloves, which provides 30% ias, life, str, AR, cold res and ll for the modest investment of 60 str points. That much can partially be gotten from having (as a lead-in to my second example) dual Cathan rings and any other set piece (I tend to use the amulet), which will also give you non-trivial (for lvl 11) fire dmg. Death’s belt and gloves also gives 40 ias and ll; a very under-rated set combo. Higher up on the set list, a Mav’s belt is an easy way to get mana leech and frw, just to name one useful stand-alone piece. Wilhelm’s belt is even better leech-wise.

2722

As I said before, I would advise keeping two of each Sigon’s piece, but I can’t imagine that we’d ever need more than two. The Death’s belt and gloves combo is nice, but would anybody ever actually prefer that over the equivalent Sigon’s pieces? If not, dump the Death’s (besides the fact that the only Death’s pieces we have muled now are three swords). And my “dump everything else” was only for normal items; exceptionals like Mav’s and Orphan’s Call should still be kept.

I find it surprising that reroll charms would be tradeable at all. First, anyone doing rerolls probably has the same problem we do, that gems, not charms, are the bottleneck, and second, it’s generally impossible to tell a Baal charm from a Den of Evil charm on sight, so a buyer would have to have a fair bit of trust in both the seller’s integrity and memory. But if that is the case, then sure, sell a few off. Shaels would be a better use of space than charms which will never get rerolled, and we can always cube up runes.

Yeti, another thing to look for in jewels is elemental damage, which can get as high as 50 average, and resistances, which can get as high as 40 to an element. Compare those to runes, which can give 25 average elemental damage in a weapon or 30 resist in an armor (both of which are occasionally useful uses for runes), and the jewels are clearly superior.

2723

Someone was trying to make a 6S 20/2 pd weapon that a starting-out char could use, so I’d save those jewels if you find then.

2724

While y’all are resorting the mules, I still have that Tgod’s belt and the Necro bone wand that I was given to hold. I forgot who gave them to me (everyone changing mules, its hard to remember who is who :slight_smile: ).

Also, I need a good pally amy. If someone has one I would appriciate it.

As for going into hell, I’m planning on using vengence as my backup skill, does anyone know how many points I should put into it? I currently have a bunch of skill points saved up. Also, is the Pally monster resist lowering aura worth putting 1 point into? I would have to spend 2 more points on the pre-requisites.

And if anyone has +skills charms for pally’s, mainly offensive auras that they don’t need I would appriciate it.

2725

Rune Master (3S, so fairly poor) highlighted tonight’s runs, which saw more blue drop than I’d like to see outside of watching Smurf Dodgeball. Tuesday runs will begin after 9 PM EST for me, since I have class from 6-9 and I don’t know for sure that it won’t go the distance. It’s one meeting a week, too.

BTW, just in case folks thought, since I play more’n a few of those chars, that they’re just mine, anyone is welcome to take Ogs_awesomemfer (not my idea for name) or Seeker or whoever out for a spin*. Just make sure (other than xp, of course, and gold for the most part) that the char ends its runs roughly as it started them. Any useful merc (I say useful because someone’s rushed mule has a lvl 4 a2 merc) should be alive. A good rule of thumb for determining if a dead merc is worth ressing, btw, is how much it’d cost. A merc raised for 500 gold probably was discarded some time in a1. SeekerMerc, for comparison, costs 48K. Also please make sure that the char’s belt is as full when you end as it was when you began. One person, once upon a time, used my sorc and when I came on to play her again I discovered half my full pots were gone (I had about 20, all told) and my super pots had been replaced with greaters. That doesn’t make much of anyone happy.

Similarly, since I have the highest lvl char, y’all are most welcome to mule cash to her, gamble etc. Feel free also to re-roll rares. Just don’t fill her stash up with stuff I’ll end up muling away.

*I thoroughly encourage folks to run the ever-loving bejeezus out of Seeker. She’s meant as a communal MFer; I run her more’n other folks do because I know her quite well, but I’ve no issue running the barb or someone else during MF or rushes.

Next rush … we don’t have an 40rush convictors left, but with Seeker doing as she does I’m not sure we’ll need another convictor as badly as we used to. What we will probably want is to run Trav by first shouting up Seeker and Merc, then continuing and re-shouting Seeker if shouts run out (very possible). I won’t be available until 9 pm tonight (it’s midnight:30 here), I think, but Wed or Thurs are fine this week. Friday is a beginning-of-semester club fair, and after that I have no idea what meetings there will be at what times.

Also, feel free to take all the non-uber gear you want from the mules. The gear is there to be used. Stuff we have lots of, feel free to trade for non-crap runes (El for Mav’s belt, not so much; Shael for Mav’s belt gives us a rune we can use for a belt we aren’t using), IMHO. Obviously we’ll want others to weigh in on this as well.

Next sets of mules I think we want to put +skill gear for that charclass (a barb with barb ammys, echoes, +skill helms, etc.) and have the eighth … iunno. Also I’d like to have a separate mule for each set for which we don’t already have a mule (IK, Disciple are two prime ones, though Tal’s is certainly up there as well). That can easily be accomplished by emptying out sd-team and making a pile of paladins (I think they make the most useful 40rushers). We’ll name them accordingly.

2726

My highlight in magic finding last night was a really bad spawn of a Doomslayer. As for people using up your full rejuvs, as soon as we get the mule situation cleaned up, I’ll create a mule of fulls for you. My necro doesn’t use any kind of health pot that often (being the coward that he is) so I end up with a stash full of fulls rejuvs that I end up dropping in game in order to put something else in the stash.

I won’t use the sorceress and will only use the barb when there is no one else because I dislike using other peoples’ builds and hesitate in changing all the hotkeys around on a character that others use. Also, it seems that most people put the cube in the inventory and fill up the rest with charms. I find that very irritating, and I end up dumping some of the charms into the stash so I don’t have to open my inventory every time I want to pick something up. When I build and equip a character I take this into account and use items that give me resists or socket items with things that’ll give me resists. This is why during the last ladder season I wanted Tal’s armor more than skullders. It’s also why I like using the necro for mfing, he doesn’t need decent resists as long as I stay out of a few areas such as the Worldstone Keep.

2727

In other words, using two high-level characters to run the rush. That sounds like a Bad Idea to me; as it is, we’re only bringing about five clients total to a rush. One rusher for four rushees is already a bit underpowered; at two rushers for three rushees, we might as well not even bother.

An alternate plan: Are any of the remaining 40chars paladins? One point of Conviction would be sufficient to break NM knights. And for the Hell council, I could clear out most of Travincal with my sorc, and then bring in my assassin for the three boss councillors. For that matter, I could clear the NM Chaos Sanctuary with my assassin as well, if we can’t get level 1 conviction, though she’d be slower than my sorc, I think.

Still more alternately, would Seeker be able to run the rush unshouted? I could lend you my Energy Shield orb, if you think it would help. If Seeker does the rush, though, punha will probably have to play her. I wouldn’t be able to play her without resetting all of her hotkeys. Running around in a Hell 5 or 6 player game unshouted requires quick enough reflexes that one can’t be hunting for hotkeys or menu-selecting skills. Or we could also just run through the tedium of setting the hotkeys and setting them back.

2728

My pally is getting ready to go to hell, I’m already level 71, and I can do over 1k damage without holy shock. I’m thinking of making a Crescent Moon rune word phase blade… They look pretty intreasting. I would need runes Shael + Um + Tir. I do not know how the rarity of the runes go, are these easy runes to get?

Also, since my pally is almost in hell, I’m thinking of starting a new char. What type of char do we not have enough of? And what type of build should I use?

Also, since I am level 71, I can now use an Ani charm. Do we have any extra’s I could use?

(Wow, this game is SO much more fun with a team)

2729

Well, I’m all moved into Bowling Green and I should have broadband in about a week. So I’ll be back in next Tuesday! Woo ha!

2730

Found another Stormshield…any takers?

Cleaned up the ammy, ring and jewel mules and kept the better items. There was only one +2 skills ammy (assassin), so I kept the best +1 skills ammy for the other classes until a +2 comes along. I kept the best +3 skill tree ammys and +2 skill tree ammys (if there was no +3 for that particular skill tree)…also kept the best resist all ammy, best mf amulet, etc…looks alot better. Did the same for the rings too. Kept the high end jewels and the elemental and poison jewels too.

Hirka, did you find a decent amulet in that heap I made? Otherwise, I know we have a +3 combat ammy, and I’m sure we have a +2 off. aura ammy with an additional attribute. Tell me what you have tonight and I’ll see if I can hook you up with another amulet.

We have 1 Curio Amulet and several Nokozon amulets.
We have a couple of mid mf Naglerings and several Manalds too.

Now stop eating my posts you ravenous hamsters…you suck.

2731

No. Bring in the barb to do shouts, then bring back the mule who was temporarily replaced by the barb. The mule will lose relatively little from not getting shouts, and since the purpose of shouts is to get the rusher, not the rushees, more life/mana, it doesn’t matter if any mules get shouts.

I don’t believe any of them are paladins. However, we have left over a durimule from the last mule rush, though damned if I can remember which one.

I could do it. It would require more care in TPing, but it could be done. The main difficult area I see as follows:

A2 open areas, where a pack of random flying pixels (those birds can be hard to see when you’re tping around) can unexpectedly do manaburn. Especially in this list is A2 tomb, which can spawn most unfavorably (a group of fanat amped blunderbores might give me significant trouble. Might give most any char significant trouble). Trav is a bit of difficulty, but unless there’s something MB/amped, it shouldn’t be much of an issue.

The trouble with energy shield is that it eats up mana. I run about 1K mana with tank wep/shield on, which is a good bit, but that tends to get burned up tping constantly. If I’m shouted, I don’t think it has ever gotten under 1/2 mana. The problem is not enough mana, not a lack of life.

I think at this point it’s either Seeker or FWOO. Using FWOO would mean switching back the Reaper’s Toll, so I’d really rather use Seeker. Doing that also means the merc will get xp, which is never a bad thing (he’s up to lvl 81; Seeker is close to lv 86).

Re: full pots, I don’t use them anymore for reasons I’ll detail later. For now, I am about to go to class (Og bless, I hope it doesn’t go the full 3 hours. I am ready for bed right now). tata.

2732

Hmm… Should work, so long as the mule in question was on the same account as the barb (switching between accounts would be a little too clumsy, I think). We should probably rush the trade mule anyway. As for your potential problem areas, with a durimule (Punoq played it; he might remember which it is) you need never see a Hell desert area, and I find that Blunderbores (even fanaticism ones) usually have slow enough reflexes that I can teleport through them.

Meanwhile, Hephaesto dropped a nice fire facet for me today. It’s +5%/-4%/on level up. My sorc has already filled all her sockets, so I left it on the jewel mule. Anyone else want it?

2733

Actually, I think that iampunha played it for setting it up as a durimule, IIRC, though it is on my account. The name is OgReed.

2734

I don’t use full pots because:

  1. If I die (rare, but happens), I lose those pots and they take a good bit longer to recover.

  2. If I need mana, I have either been burned or TPed myself to hell and back. if I get burned, a full rejuve would work for about a tenth of a second. A mana pot, on the other hand, works gradually, so if I got burned twice more I would still be able to try TPing out.

  3. If I need life that bad, I’m either about to die (in which case I save and exit, because quite often I’m also amped, block-locked or something similarly dire which a full pot will only delay a bit) or I’m being poisoned and I can just drink a Super Health pot.

BTW, let’s aim for making a hell durimule each go (a NM one is not really all that crucial, but a Hell one saves a lot of work).

2735

Seeker is up to 500+ mf with baba/splendor, and 575 if merc gets lh. She clears about 70K gold per River run minus any gear she finds that isn’t worth keeping (but is worth selling). So:

  1. Feel free to run her without mercy on the River of Flame, but;

  2. Since it’s best (166 more mf) to run her with baba and splendor, but her res are fairly low (35/5/40/something) with them, respawn if you get abyss knights. Then;

  3. When you’re done running her, try to mule the gold you get to FWOO. When FWOO has about 2 mil gold, go ahead and gamble for whatever. I go for circlet-class and jewelry, but there’s nothing stopping you (except the high price) from going for armor. I personally find circlet-class and jewelry the only stuff worth buying, but maybe that’s just me. And as always, as a courtesy to others who may also want to play her;

  4. Make sure she is as you found her, pot-wise and such. I check each time to make sure hotkeys are as I’ve set them, but don’t worry about re-setting them if you have to because of your particular configuration or what you’re used to.

2736

Last night, some mass selling of crap gear was accomplished. Tomorrow I’m going to consolidate the sd-team gear onto as few mules as possible, then make some new, more descriptive (Ogs_junk is unfortunately more descriptive than I’d like for some of what was kept) mules for stuff we’ll be keeping in a neat and orderly manner. Be looking for an email listing the stuff that’s in the mules. Much of what remains will be kept, since even if we can’t use it now it’s decent gear (e.g.: Bloodtree Stump U. War Club. We won’t be using it any time soon, but it’s a nice piece). Ogs_IKDisciple and Ogs_TalHwanin, Ogs_TrangGris and Ogs_CraftedCrap (or, in lieu of that, Ogs_andCrafts) will be the first mules made.

2737

Well, I finally got my sorceress into Act 5 of hell… now it’s time to start 2 more characters. I’m not sure what I’ll be starting yet, but I’m leaning towards a sword barb and a javazon.

Also, to make things a little easier for everyone, I want to pass on a little information that I’ve discovered. When trying to get a character the Hellforge quest, that character does not have to be in the game when Hephastus (or whatever) is killed and he will still drop the Hellforge hammer. You just need to create the game with a character that needs the quest (and has the river wp) and then bring in someone that can clear the river from the waypoint to the forge and clear the forge area, then bring the orginal character back in and follow the route you cleared. I started the last game with my sorceress, stayed 5 minutes, left and brought in my necromancer. I used the necro to clear the river (to give the sorc a free walk from the River WP) and after the forge area was clear, left the game and brought the sorc back in. Got a hel rune.

2738

Thank Who_Me? , thats nice to know.

I’m planning on starting a new char also, but I don’t know what I should make. I was thinking of a freezing arrow zon, but I don’t know how well she would do in hell. Do we have one of those unique amy’s with freezing on it that is advailable?

2739

Who & Hirka,
As you may have noticed, I have a hybrid amazon that switches from Demon Arch(Lightning Fury) to Hellrack(w/Freezing Arrow). I find this hybrid very fun to play, and although I’m not the one who beats down the Act Bosses, I’m very good at crowd control and keeping the horde at bay, either with the lightning, or the freezing. But for the character to run around in hell, I think you need both skills to thrive. The synergies for LF aren’t that great except for Lightning Strike, so max those two skills. Freezing Arrow is about the same in synergies, where you add points to cold arrow, and not much anything else in that tree. The Passive skills will be the key since they enhance both LF & FA in number of hits, AR, Piercing, physical damage, etc. So invest your points there, including Valkarie. Valkarie keeps you from getting interrupted in your attacks, because you may not kill everything in one throw, but several throws/shots. I use the A2 might merc to ramp up the damage and AR as well. This helps especially running around in solo Hell play. With Demon Arch, I have Stormshield with a P.Diamond in it, plus Naj’s Plate and Tal’s Helm for the leech. With some charms, my resists 85/75/85/75 and I can survive the onslaught of A5 burning souls. You won’t do that with just a bow/crossbow. I survive just about anything. The freezing arrow is used on the lightning immunes so I don’t get slowed down too much. Fun times.

I know there are some good uniques for amazons that we have stored, a hellrack, couple of titan’s, etc. I’m always looking for better titan’s and demon arches, because I currently have lvl26 LF, which means I have up to 27 bolts projecting from a hit, and any little increase in damage will just make crowd control that much easier.

I guess I’m trying to talk you guys into being hybridzons.

2740

As for a mule rush tonight, N00b might be able to do it if it starts around 7pm PDT (10pm EDT), and I’ll ask him to use my computer also to run one of the #1 account mules along with one of his mules. I won’t be on at that time because my parents are coming over for dinner, and I promised my mom a game of Pinochle afterwards.