East.
I’m currently trying to figure out a way to up the hell out of my cold resistances so I can survive Frozenstein(?).
If you can make it (which I currently cannot), Lionheart will boost many of your mods nicely, Fenris, including dex, str, vit and hp and res.
I’ve built two successful werewolves. The first I managed to screw up partially by going too deeply into some weak stuff … heart of wolverine, spirit of barbs, ravens. But it was still a viable char because of the gear I had (mainly the IK Maul, which is lethal for a druid).
My current baby druid is level 79 and just as powerful as the level 91, if not a bit moreso. Has about 80 less dex and I don’t miss it at all. If I cared, I’d level him up more … and I could do so without a lot of effort … but it really isn’t worth it. I know how to build druids.
You’ll want to invest 20 points each in Fury (the level 30 skill, don’t remember if that’s the name of it), Oak Sage and Lycanthropy, and put probably ten or so in Werewolf. The returns for WW are diminishing after a while, but for the others I don’t think that’s the case. I wouldn’t put a lot in the summoning tree other than oak sage, but if you want to go 1-1-1-1 with raven-dire wolf-spirit wolf-bear, that’s ok. I’d put one or two in the life-giving vine and MAYBE one in the mana vine, and of course the prereq for those is poison creeper, which is handy early on but loses its efficacy quickly.
As far as stat points go, you’ll want to go such that your str and vit climb twice as fast (if not moreso) as your dex. Remember, you’ll get massive amounts of AR from skills … my lvl 79 ww has probably 120 dex, if that, and his AR is almost 6K. Then again, he also has +8 to skills with Islestrike wep-switched on (to cast oak sage), but still.
The point is that this guy will hit hard and he’ll have a lot of life. He’ll also hit FAST, which is part of the whole reason for building WW insteda of WB. WB is viable, I think, but for my money I want something that kills faster (though there are disadvantages to this, such as being in the Chaos Sanctuary).
I recommend that any druid plan to use either a tree on a stick (otherwise known as a maul-class weapon) or something similarly big and heavy. Druids get an attack speed bonus with mauls (the IK Maul, which is Fast Attack Speed for Barbarians, is VFAS for Druids), and in addition to that you’ve the lovely addition to damage when they hit undead. Unless your resistances are REALLY hurting (which, at this stage in the game, is possible. I’m helped by my barb’s natural resists), you probably don’t need (or want) a shield. And if you can leech back life, that’ll help. I’ve done Baal runs with my druid when all 4 of his resists were negative, and as long as I didn’t get frozen I could leech back any life I lost from elemental attacks … and this in Hell. So a shield isn’t utterly necessary as long as you’re doing damage and leeching properly. And with crafting, it’s not difficult to be leeching 6% in NM with leech penalty.
Who_me?, NM Baal dropped a present for you in a public run I was in. It’s on a mule now. I also have gloves for you. I think you will be pleasantly surprised:D
I just looked it up. Aaargh. I want Lionheart! 
Thanks, punha! My hands were getting cold… 
I’ve been playing my ex-mule, the fire sorc. She’s up to 47 and just got into act 3 NM. I built her on a lark, but she’s become fairly viable. She has lvl 25 fireball, and lvl 7 hydra (after bonuses) and does decent damage. The fireball damage is 963-1050 (approx., and is a very fast attack) and the hydra is something like 110-150. I’m very bad against fire immunes, I have no points in any cold skill and 1 point in everything up the tree to Thunderstorm in lightning. I’m going to add to the lightning tree to give me a little more versatility. Maybe it’s just because my equipment sucks, but the sorc does several times the damage of any of my other characters, and is not nearly so equipment dependant. I found a decent 2 socket staff that had +2 to fireball and made “Leaf”, and that’s the only plus to anything item I have of her. I believe I’ll try taking her to hell (once I get the lightning tree up a little) and try to equip my other characters.
Johnny, thanks for the assist last night.
Assuming I haven’t missed anything, I’d like to lay claim to be the first doper (in this thread, at least) to have a ladder character:
- Make a 1.10 runeword (Passion in a Balrog Blade)
- Hit level 80
- Beat Hell difficulty
The barbarian (Patriarch Stol) should be ready for Hell Countess runs in a few levels and with slightly better gear … I’ll be switching out my Stealskull for my Tal’s helm (more leech/res and I won’t be needing the MF, really), and I’m hoping vol and Who_me? will be able to help me out some.
Question #1: My mercenary is not going anywhere in leveling-up, even when we had 3 players going…how can I improve on this other than just getting a new merc in every act that I advance to? Do we need more players to join, or higher acts to achieve?
Question #2: Who was on Battlenet in WEST last night? I tried to get in the SDMB game, but I was level-restricted and I was bummed at the thought of not meeting another doper out West since there is a shortage of them. We must UNITE!
Answer #1 (sort of): what level/type mercenary and what level are you, and where are you trying to level him/her? Even in an 8-player game, beyond about level 30 (if that high) in arcane you’re not going to get much XP. I got decent XP doing Baal runs until about level 45 or so, at which point it got steadily worse until at level 55 I was scraping the bottom of the bucket. Same thing with level … 75 or so in NM runs.
Thanks for the tips, iampunha.
I’m currently using Cleglaw’s set, which seems to be doing very nicely. If anyone has recommendations for better weapons, I’ll be glad to hear them.
Giving me stuff is also highly appreciated!
Oh, one other question. What exactly do crushing blow and deadly strike do?
Last night, I was solo, Levl 27-29 Amazon, with cold Arrow Rogue that has gone from level 7 to level 11 and then came to a grinding halt. So I dumped her and got an Iron Wolf, (cold enchanted and level 19) and I was in the Bloody Foothills and Frigid Highlands and I went up 2 levels and my merc only got about 2K-3K exp during that night (I had another 120K before he goes level 20!) although my Amazone had gotten maybe 500K-1M in exp.?
What gives?
Crushing blow is a chance that you’ll remove some percentage of a target’s current life. If I remember correctly, it’s 25% life for ordinary monsters, and 5% for champions, uniques, superuniques, and other players. It’s based on current life, not total life, so (if you were doing 100% crushing blow and no other damage) your target’s life decays exponentially. Very useful for Diablo and Izual and other high-life critters which ordinarily take a half hour to whittle down.
Deadly strike is a chance to do double damage on an attack. It’s applied after everything else, and doubles all forms of damage, physical and elemental. It’s the exact same effect produced by Critical Strike (from the Amazon skill of that name, or Barbarian or Assassin weapon mastery), and does not stack with it. The game checks for Deadly Strike first and then, only if Deadly Strike doesn’t activate, checks for Critical Strike (or maybe the other way around, but the effect is identical).
And Yeti, where were you tonight? I puttered around for a while, but I don’t want TempusIgne to get too far ahead of you in level, so I logged off. And how does one add someone to one’s friends list? I tried getting the help for it, but I suspect I’m not the first to notice how broken the help command is.
The help command needs to heal itself.
“/friends add yeticusrex” is how you’d add yeti. Or the short version is /f a yeticusrex.
Johnny, I wouldn’t recommend that anyone wishing to do significant melee damage use the Cleg’s set. Even if it does double damage every single hit (which is rather unlikely), you’re still only doing 6-40 damage. I probably have something you can use … or maybe someone else does. Whoever’s using the Hwanin’s Bill I handed out, we found a Boneslayer tonight, so you’ll be wanting to get that off me later today:)
Regarding mercs leveling up, if the guy’s only level 20, of course he isn’t getting significant xp in a5! Go run arcane a bunch and watch him get better xp, I’d bet. Of course, you probably won’t want to keep an a3 merc, as they’re notorious for being weak like cheap booze. For a druid, unless you’re able to tank effectively (and thus not use as many pots as you normally might, which pots you can reserve for your merc) I’d go with an a1 … I have a few nice bows, and it’s not difficult to find one with a few sockets in it and put some perfect emeralds and a perfect sapphire in it for solid psn dmg and cold to boot (I’d recommend this setup most for a fire merc so you have 3/4 elements).
Maeglin, if you’re reading this, Who_me? and I ran Baal a few times (along with countess, who dropped horribly) and landed, among other things, a spineripper. I think your necro might want to use it.
I adored cleglaw’s set for my paladin. With zeal you just tear through the enemies. But it stayed the same while I improved. I was wondering if one could use a cube recipe to make the equipment exceptional or not. Does anyone know?
Bad news Galrion…
For 1.10 the new recipes that upgrade armor and weapons do not work on sets or uniques. There is a recipe that works on rares though. (At least it didnt work for me during beta 1.10)
for the recipes go to:
http://www.battle.net/diablo2exp/items/cube.shtml
No, crushing only works on physical damage, not elemental.
Eric, you can upgrade uniques and rares, just not sets, magical or white/grey items.
Yeti, with such a lower level merc, you need to kill easier enemies for him to level. Keep his screen open and monitor his experience, and adjust your location as necessary.
Sorry, that’s not correct. There are recipes for upgrading uniques.
I do think that being able to upgrade set items would be a good idea, though - it’d make some sets playable. The only thing is, it would have to come at a real price. Otherwise you might be able to play the same set through the whole game, which would be boring. If the Cube weren’t the wrong size I would have suggested two identical set items, so if you’d upgraded your Isenhart’s Case to a cuirass you’d need another upgraded Case to make it a great hauberk. In the absence of a Cube upgrade, maybe Item+Tal+Ral+Ort+Thul for normal to excep and Item+Io+Lum+Ko+Fal for excep to elite.
Chronos,
I was on a couple of times over the weekend, but sporadically…
My amazon is Lvl 35 and I’m on NM, Act1 although I got onto a game just as they were killing off Andariel, so technically I can go to A2.
I will try to get on tonight around 9 or 10pm PST. I will be on yeticusrex2 account, so you should type: */friends add yeticusrex2
I’m not sure if the asterisk is needed or not…try it both ways and see what happens…
As for my merc, it just doesn’t matter where I am or which merc I have, he/she just sucks when it comes to leveling up. I have dumped the iron wolf for a NM rogue (lvl 35)…and I’m running around NM A1 and still crappy exp. Maybe it’s bugged?
Well, I should be on in the nect couple of hours and into the night. My Level 52 Asn is going to get some leveling in. See y’all.
mercs love leveling in areas where the monsters are roughly the same level as they are. So your iron wolf wasn’t getting much exp in act5 if he was level 20ish.
they also don’t gain exp by leeching in a party. Only way they get exp is if you make a kill, or they make the kill.
as a rule, this is how i level my mercs up.
Level 1 - 12: act1 8ppl game
lvl 12 to 20: sewers/arcane
lvl 20 to 27: flayer jungle/kurast areas
lvl 27 +: usually a lot easier to level, from act4 to act5, and NM
i hope that helps your merc problems. Just remember they don’t get alot of exp vs monsters that have MLvls that are hugely different from their levels.