Well now… I haven’t posted for a few days, so I’ll let you know how thing are going.
My fire sorc is level 70 or 71. She’s still in NM because I’ve been saving her to do NM Baal runs with punha. Baal supposedly drops the same as a first time quest when someone without the quest gets in last hit.
My bowazon is level 71 and in act2 of hell. All I can say about hell is… wow. My bowazon has no trouble at all in Act5 of nightmare, up to Baal’s minions. Baal’s minions are tough, but killable. Baal is… well Baal. I might be able to kill him, but it would take forever.
In hell… my bowazon has problems. She has maxed freeze arrow, level 14 fire arrow, level 17 strafe and without freeze arrow or on cold immune monsters, she takes forever to kill.
Who, aren’t you working on your synergies (i.e. Cold Arrow)? Incredible boosts to Freezing Arrow’s damage. Also, you should check out the new Valk abilities. As her levels go up, she gets new gear:
1:Full Plate Mail and Spear (both Rare)
2:adds Heavy Gloves (Magic)
4:adds Heavy Boots (Magic)
5:adds Heavy Belt (Magic)
7:upgrades Full PLate Mail to Chaos Armor (rare)
8:upgrades SPear to Lance (rare)
10:upgrades Heavy Gloves to War Gauntlets (magic)
11:upgrades Heavy Boots to War Boots (magic)
12:upgrades Heavy Belt to War Belt (magic)
13:adds amulet (magic)
14:add circlet (magic)
16:replaces Chaos Armor with Sacred Armor (rare)
17:replaces Lance with War Pike (rare)
19:replaces War Gauntlets to Crusader Gaunlets (rare)
21:upgrades War Boots to Mirrored Boots (rare)
23:upgrades War Belt to Colussus Girdle (rare)
25:upgrades Amulet (magic) to Amulet (rare)
27:upgrades Circlet (magic) to Tiara (rare)
Level 17 (after +skills) seems to be the goal. Recast her until she gets a black war pike, and you should be good to go.
Yet, look to get an a2 offensive merc. They crank out a might aura, which greatly boosts your damage. Holy Freeze mercs seem to be very popular as well.
iampunha, how are you liking the Passion? Are you using 'Zerk or Zeal?
Yeah, I have worked with the synergies, mostly with the cold side. The damage from cold is pretty good and I’d level up only that side of things if it didn’t open me up to cold immunes.
So what I’ve been doing is putting a couple of points into fire arrow, then putting a point into… hell… what’s the lowest level cold/ice skill… it adds 10% damage to frozen arrow, then a couple into fire arrow until I max it. Then I’ll put all the points into cold for a while. If I ever get high enough to get the cold synergies complete, then I’ll work on fire.
There just aren’t enough points to raise up the valkrie too.
Cold is the one that adds to FA’s damage. I wouldn’t touch Ice Arrow, as it just adds to freeze length for FA.
A lot of people are maxing Magic Arrow for their cold immunes, as it converts 1% of your damage per skill level to magic damage. I think a Passion bow would also be good on switch, if it works with Berzerk.
Come to think of it, the values for my zon are after equipment bonuses. Subtract 3 from strafe and fire arrow each to get what I’ve put into them. Strafe is as far as I want it to got and guided arrow doesn’t have any synergy attached to it so it’s at 7 or 8 just to use against bosses. With the pierce bug fixed there’s no reason really to put more than a few points into it. You can’t have the same arrow hit the same monster more than once anymore and the odds increase of the arrow piercing isn’t worth losing the points from synergies IMHO.
Are you sure it adds freeze length? Hmmmmm… depending on how much longer it’ll last, I may add some points to it. In NM, I would freeze the group and strafe it then freeze it again. It worked quite well. The freeze doesn’t hold well enough for me to use it in hell, but if I could add just a bit more time to it…
If you need freeze time, just add cold charms. Each affix on a charm adds 1/4 second in Hell. So 3 small charms with both a cold prefix and a cold suffix would add 1.5 seconds of freeze time. It’s not worth the points in Ice Arrow, especially when skill points are so valuable for a zon now.
Whoa, does that mean that valks actually (gasp!) do damage now? That’s a significant change, I’d say. But what’s the significance of a black war pike? The affix color codes are a mystery to me.
And Yeti, glad to hear that you’ve caught up. I might be on tonight/tomorrow, and certainly on Friday. I went ahead and killed Baal, too, so I’ll see you in Nightmare.
Munch,
My rogue actually went up a level last night…you might be right! I will experiment with the A2 offensive merc…
Chronos,
I’ll probably be on tonight, after 9 or 10pm, but the flu is running rampant through my family and I might be the only one well enough to nurse them…I’ll see how it goes.
Black is the color for the higher ED prefixes, such as Cruel. I’ve been hearing of zons focusing primarily on plague javelin to take off bigs chunks of life, and letting a high level valk clean up.
Well, I now have a javazon so I guess I’ll see what a valkrie can do. I’m going lightning and poison, but that should leave enough to raise up the valkrie fairly well. My 1.09 javazon went lightning, fend, with a bit of poison mixed in and still I was able to put 8 or 9 points into valkrie, plus a few points into bow skills in order to get guided. This time I’ll leave the bow skills out and see if fend still works well.
My bowazon is now up to Act4 hell. It seems like the game doesn’t really get that much worse as you get further into hell. Sure, the counsel is a pain (twice) in Act3, and getting the ammy in Act2 is quite often fatal for everybody several times, but I’m killing the normal monsters in Act4 just as readily as the ghouls in Act1, which isn’t to say that I’m blowing right through them, it takes a bit of time and a lot of mana.
My lvl42 amazon is going Bow/F Arrow, Javelin/L Fury, lvl 5 Pierce, and level 3 Valkyrie and we are starting to wreak havoc in A2 NM,
Did anyone notice that you CAN heal your Valkarie and Merc simultaneously with a super healing potion from your belt? Just push “Shift+(x)” (x=slot were healing potion is on belt) and watch their life meters move up together…yay! I kid you not…
Chronos,
I’ll look for you on West tonight after 10pm or later…I gotta get payroll done for my company first…If I don’t show, then it means that I have the flu and I’ll be leveling up on Toilet level instead…:eek:
Weird luck. I hadn’t had set or unique items drop for this pally but for once when he was about 5th level. Then I create a game yesterday and I get the gloves from Sanders, Civerbs grand scepter, and isenhearts horns. I create a game today and i get a manald heal and ichorsting.
Weird for me was when all three of Civerb’s items dropped in one game. First time I’ve ever completed a set (at least all at once: I’ve sold two or three Berserker’s sets piecemeal, and I think I have all of Angelic and Sigon’s scattered across mules). But I have been having pretty good luck with item drops, overall. Best item I’ve found thus far is Bloodletter, the unique gladius. Actually, I have two, but one’s ethereal, so my merc is using it. Yeti, if your son wants the other one, he can have it (I don’t know how good swords are for druids).
I don’t know why people sell the Angelic set so short. I’ve got a Barb somewhere who uses the full set with an extra ring and sabre - it functions not unlike using twin Ali Babas on your weapon switch, except much easier to find and with 12% life steal.
Puhna and I had a good night last night as well. Hels and Amns from the Countess and I picked up a Steeldriver. We also found a Durial’s Shell and Hsaru’s Adamant. He kept the shell and I the Adamant. Nice night for uniques and sets!
You forget the other item I got in NM Frigid…TGod’s War Belt.
I was more than a little pleased with that.
Today, runs have produced several runes in the Amn-Ko range (several Amns, several Hels, an Io or 2, Shaels, etc). Also a bunch below that range which help as well. Also managed a Cliffkiller, Gravespine, some nice amulets (fourth nokozan, not inthe nice amulet count) and some nice helms.
Maeglin, if you’d like, I have some gear for your summoning necro. Or if anyone has a summoning necro.
The Adament that MDSL mentioned is Haemosu’s (Hsarus’ set has no armor, only gloves, a belt and boots). It’s not a bad piece, but I’ll take DShell over Haemosu’s any day of the week and twice on Sunday.
Still collecting runes … any level, any amount. I’m a scrounger, but an admitted scrounger. It’ll pay off when I can make that Chains of Honor and Call to Arms (and Breath of the Dying, but that’s another matter).
I was screwing around in NM Arcane Sanctuary and my Amazon picked up Immortal King’s Helm with two sockets! Right after that, I started a barbarian mule…Chronos, I’ll be happy to take that Bloodletter off your hands next time…
You are of course correct, Puhna. I can’t spell nonsense words as well as you, nor do I have the memory.
I would have kept the shell too, but you have shared enough with me in the past to be able to ask a favor or two.
The drops have been realy nice lately. Except for the really really weak drop that I got from Diablo last night. Worthless! From NM Diablo for my first kill! Grrr…
