He’s getting decent, but not great, resists: he’s using a Rhymed pally shield of some sort–gives +67 % to all resists
My Assassin is also MA at level 78 and can hold her own in a2 Hell, but I won’t take her further solo until I get some more levels.
My Paladin is still using the 38 def Ancient’s Pledge shield that I made in normal.
+58% to all resists. I’ve been looking to make another with better stats, but I just haven’t found the right shield.
Who, I would like to take a look at the Nat’s armor. I have the boots and the helm right now, though it will be hard to switch to the Nat boots from the Mirrored boots that I have atm. They do 145 kick damage. That works out to about 1500damage per kick with knock back. And that’s before my charged skills. Usually about 4k damage. Good times!
And if anyone finds a Shadow Killer I’ll be really greatful!
vol and I have a few things to announce. I’ll announce them in his absence.
- We need to give some serious thought to what weapon we want to put Silence in, because we can make it now. Here’s how:
A) Fen has an Ist. I have 2. MDSL, IIRC, has my Gul. 2 Ist + standard sapphire=Gul. 2 Gul + another gem I can’t remember ATM=Vex. Dol Eld Hel Ist Tir Vex=Silence.
-
I truthfully don’t know what would be best for a Silence. I think a sword would be utterly pointless because we already have a few nice ones of those. I do not want a 6-socket mace runeword because I already have nice maces and my res are 75/75/75/45 in Hell. I don’t know if anyone has an amazon who would be substantially improved with a Silence bow.
-
We don’t need to make Silence. We could make Delirium and wait for more, better runes to make other stuff. vol, if one of our other ideas pans out, will need better tanking armor, which I’ll be discussing soon. I don’t think “Chains of Honor” would be best for him because the dmg increase would be utterly useless. “Gloom” and “Lionheart” would be good.
-
vol and I have discovered (and tried out successfully) a concept I call character shelling. It’s … a unique take on making a character for the forges alone. As we figured it, it takes 30 minutes for one character to rush another through Norm (including finding a game with a char who can get the ancients q, but more on that later). I think it took about the same time for NM, and about twice as much for Hell. But that’s with one char. If we could get 2 or 3 sorcs rushing 2+ chars through, we’d A) get twice as many runes doing forge quests and B) save time on it. But the trick is that we have to do ancients with another char who can get the quest. You don’t have to be in the worldstone chamber to get the Baal quest (I know because I was in town each time).
So yeah. If we can get Fensorc, Who_me?sorc and volsorc together along with a mule of mine (I think I have one or two, and I can always make new ones for the forges) and someone else, we can rush 2 or 3 people through, and that’s at least 4 good-level runes. Early this morning we got Fal from the NM forge and Pul from the Hell forge. And it’ll take a lot less than two hours to get everyone through (and if we can get someone in who wants to be rushed, we can then get that person’s forges as well). So we’ll have chars who are in A4 of Hell, and vol can do their Hell forge one by one while Fen or Who_me? do their NM forge one by one. It’ll be good for our rune collection, and a lot more interesting and productive than running Countess eight billion times.
So. Thoughts?
All I would need to tank would ideally be Tals armor, though I won’t hold my breath. Although, with 1 nice high level rune from our hellforge idea, I could probably add a few items and successfully trade for Tals armor. Otherwise, an upgraded ViperMagi would probably work well, but I donated my last one to Fen’s sorc. I might be able to reclaim another one I gave my friend now that he has Ormus Robes, but that one didn’t have as high of resists IIRC, and wouldn’t really be worth upgrading. I’m also thinking about upgrading my Mosers which will give it even better blocking and defense. And I really really want Cow Kings boots, but won’t hold my breath on those either.
Oh yeah, MDSL about 20 minutes after you logged off last night we found a Shadow Killer off Meph, which as far as I’m concerned has your name on it. Pun is holding it.
For rune finding, add to the list two character I have in nm that are just sitting and being used as mules atm. I think they are around act4 of nm and are both above level 40 so there would be no wait to get them past the nm ancients. I’m not sure if either have done the nm forge or not.
This will give us 6 hell lvl forge drops and possibly 2 nm drops from my characters alone. I’ll donate any or all of them to the group effort.
I take it that the Hellforge gives more than one rune per party in 1.10?
Shoot, as normal I forgot something…
My sorc is not very viable at the moment, she never had the greatest build (I’m not very good with sorceresses) or very good equipment to start with and after Fenris lost his sorc’s equipment I stripped her the good stuff that she did have and gave it to him. I still have a Viscertant shield muled somewhere as well as a set of ethereal Frosties, I may have a couple of poor caster rings, but that’s about it. She never did have very good armor. Oh, and I still have a Leaf staff… but that’s it.
Even fully equipped she’s not very good because (as I discovered) if you go for a fire sorc, you don’t have enough points left over to try for lightning also. I should have gone for cold skills and she would be MUCH better.
All in all, if I can equip her, I’ll give your plan a try. If we’re going to do this in one group in hell, my javazon would be a much better choice, she does over 2000 lightning damage 9chain lightning) with Lightning Strike (+ the physical damage), 1400 lightning with Lightning Fury (28 bolts), and over 6000 poison with plague (?) javalin.
Should have previewed…
No, only one rune per party, the same as 1.09, but if the other characters either don’t join the party or leave before the party kills the smith they won’t get the quest.
Sounds like a fun idea. I can volunteer my Paladin for the Hell forge; he’s level 75 but not past NM Baal yet (new players: don’t make the Zeal/Sacrifice/Fanaticism Paladin. It seems like a much better idea than it really is; even getting to call your character a ‘GungaDin’ isn’t compensation enough).
My others are 20-ish and in Act3 Norm, too low for this. Someday they’ll be viable magic-finders; the Paladin needs good equipment too much.
Woe is me! I have built a cold sorceress, and my fiancee has her Amazon, and we are each level 77 on Hell difficulty. We each have passable – but not perfect – lightning resist. She provides most excellent fire support, and her merc, a Thorns paladin, manages to stay alive longer than my Barbarian.
Tonight we cleared Claw Viper Temple level 1, despite the hideously high proportion of cold immune monsters. Then we stumbled onto Claw Viper Temple level 2.
Fangskin, as I’m sure you all already know, is cold-immune, lightning-enchanted, and extra-fast, and there appears to be no room to maneuver down there! Am I missing something painfully obvious, or is this map worse than trying to kill Duriel?
Well, I’m sitting in game right now hoping punha gets back on…
In part one of the experiment we didn’t do too badly. I only had one character in NM that needed the forge… he got a Lum. My two zons got a gul and an um in hell. Fen got a ko.
Punha, if you don’t make it back on, my barb has the Um, Gul, and Lum. Fenris picked up everything else.
Jurph, have the zon cast her valk as far back behind fang as possible, and also cast her decoy. If you have anything that does knockback, now would be the time to use it.
What you’ll want to do is kill as much other than fangskin as possible. Work your way left (stage right) in the room, where you’ll find some skellies and a Horadrim Ancient, or whatever they happen to be called there. Watch out for poison damage and take that guy out.
With your beachhead established, you’ll probably want to tp back to town (one of you will want to keep a tp at the entrance to 2, and the other as far from Fangskin as possible) for potions, because poison damage is nasty and lightning damage isn’t much more fun. Again make sure the zon keeps her valk and decoy as far away from both of you as possible, because they will be soaking up damage from Fangskin … and a bunch of other baddies, probably. What non-cold attacks you have you will want to spam.
Of course, if this is non-ladder, I have a few chars who could cough help a bit. And if this is ladder … well, we have ways of helping our own:D
If this is SP, you might try going onto Open Bnet (a perilous adventure, to be sure), starting a game and just trying to get someone to help.
Duriel, as long as you can keep one of your mercs alive, and keep the valk fresh and your zon out of reach of Duriel’s holy freeze, should be just fine. I would worry more about Meph, off of whom you cannot leech unless you have life tap.
Well, yes - all you have to do to complete the quest is smash the altar and grab the Amulet of the Viper. So why not just have your sorc teleport to the altar, do the needful and then portal out?
Evil Death, thanks for the advice. I was actually wondering whether that would work. I tried a few dummy runs of it last night with the same character in Norm and NM, and couldn’t touch the altar (because DUH! I’d already completed the quest!). I’m more than a little worried about my Barbarian, who will doubtless charge down the stairs and get himself killed.
iampunha, our plan was to in fact “kill everything that moves and save the bosses for last”, which is a good plan. Until you realize that I’m crap against cold-immunes, and everything in the room except the Horadric Mummy Mage is cold-immune.
Until I’ve got a melee character into Hell, actually fighting my way through the hard stuff is going to be prohibitively, um… hard. I’m relying on my fleet feet to save my ass.
punha, I soloed most of the rest of Act2. Fluiddruid came in and helped finish off the summoner. I have full staff and all I have to do now is get Duriel.
I’ll be off until this evening, but then I plan on knocking off Duriel and go to a public game and get Travincial and then get Mephisto wp. If one of you guys is around, I can get them from you instead.
After last night’s session, I spent a couple of hours fooling around in Hell.
My Sorc? Without too much problem, she can kick butt on a Blood Run or a Sorceress run or a Pit run. Could use a hair more armor, and her resistances could stand a nudge up, but overall not bad. (Also, I figured out part of the reason I was having so much problems with TPing around dungeons last night. Um. Did you know that you could turn up the contrast on the map so it shows up better? I didn’t. < cough > )
My Pally on the other hand. Ick. Something’s very wrong. Either I can do OK with the Djinn’s (while running back to get it fixed every 5 minutes or so) OR, I use just about any other weapon (including that nifty +2 Pally skills mace you gave me) and get trashed. The problem with most other weapons 1) They’re just not fast enough. I can get like 5 hits out of the Djinn’s for every 2 I get out of that mace. 2) It doesn’t have huge fire damage like the Djinn’s, which means that if I run across Phys. Immunes, I’m toast.
Pun, Vol, Who_me? and everyone else. I’m stumped. This character currently can’t be played well in Hell, even with all the other great stuff he’s been given. Is there any weapon that meets the following requirements? [ul]
[li] “Very Fast Attack Speed” or better (if it exists) (the Djinn’s is -20 and a Phase Blade is -30. I assume the more negative, the faster)[/li]
[li] It must have decent elemental damage. I’m tired of getting slapped around by physical immunes.[/li]
[li] It has to be a one-handed weapon[/li]
[li] Resistances would be nice. Very nice. But probably not a ‘must have’. [/li]
[li] It’s gotta do decent damage in any case; I’m talking like 800 pts average hit, say. (I still haven’t figured out how much of that comes from my STR and how much from the weapon) [/ul][/li]
SILENCE would be good, but it doesn’t have any elemental damage. FAMINE doesn’t work in Flails or Swords and Hammers/Axe are slooow (plus Diablo2.net doesn’t think it’s active yet. Arreat Plateau does, but who wants to take a chance?). An “Azurewrath” or a “Lightsaber” would be spiffy (esp. the “Azurewrath”) but what are the chances of finding them?
In a perfect world, I’d get a SILENCE and some sort of other item (boots/belt would be ideal) that adds a ton of Elemental Damage.
I’m not trying to whine (although on preview, I’m pretty sure I am. 
) but it’s frustrating that the character I built to Tank…can’t. Am I doing something wrong? Anyone have any suggestions?
Fenris
Slim to none. You’re right, though; Azurewrath or the Light Sabre would be perfect. The backup plan if you can’t find them would be Frostwind, which adds 237-486 cold to a base 200+ physical damage (including min STR bonus).
Baranar’s Star would do the trick if you didn’t need attack speed, but the Demon Limb isn’t far off what you want - average of (127-150)+STR physical, 300-450 fire damage and +123% damage to demons. Attack speed 0, though, so you’d need to Shael it. Nord’s Tenderiser and Stormlash both have attack speed -10 and massive elemental damage also (200-400 cold for the Tenderiser, 1-473 lightning on the Lash).
Why is the elemental damage such a big thing? You are a paladin! You have Vengence! That skill gives crazy elemental damage, so just ge ta high damage weapon and go to town. I do over 2k with my Steel Driver with fanaticism and vengence.
As for the zeal/fanaticism/sacrifice thing not working well…yes it does! My nm palidin destroys everything in his path with the Moonfall mace. He actually hits so fast that it doens’t display any hits beyond the first, though you can see the elemental damage hitting them.
My Darn Snake Legs: Maybe it’s just an equipment thing then. At level 76, I’m using such platinum hits as Fleshrender, a Rhymed Barbed Shield, and Duriel’s Shell (and I only just got that from Lister). My attacks are impressively quick, but it takes 3-4 Zeals to kill anything in Hell, even with just 1 player. When I died to a lone Zombie last night, I knew I had a problem…
Everyone: Is there a single-player character editor that works with 1.10 (Jamella’s doesn’t seem to)? I’d like to try out some new builds, but it’s not as easy to leech as it used to be so I’d rather not build them on the Realms.
Well, fine. I gave vol several hours to report his latest find and here he has done nothing. So instead of asking for a few chipped topaz and such, I’ll spoil his surprise by informing you all that GLARGH SPOWRG LJRG! HELP! HE’S SABOTAGING MY POST!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH! HE FOUND THE SET ARMOR TO K;SFGKNB!!
OK, OK, FINE! I won’t tell them! Go ahead yourself!
[sub]In reality I am perfectly fine. I figured it would be in bad taste to poil it for everyone else.[/sub]