A week or two into ladder play, I was getting a ping rate so high, so consistently high, that I was happy with 2K.
A few days later, d2.net reported massive hacking and duping and such. I was none surprised.
I am very happy that I managed to hit 90 tonight, because given the current spate of lag, I might die very often if I play my barb in hell much.
Yes, it’s getting me too. I’ve lagged out of 3 games and my ISP (Comcast) dropped my connection for 2 1/2 hours…
Fun times.
Since you lagged out the last game too, punha, I’ll get back on as soon as it will let me.
The total amount of poison damage on your javelin is irrelevant, Who_me?. All that’s relevant would be the amount of damage it would do in the first tenth of a second or so, because that’s how long it would take to hit an antidote potion on the belt. And you can bet that anyone dueling a javazon is going to have antidotes on the belt.
Quoth iampunha:
Do you mean that you cannot be killed by other players, or that you can’t be killed at all? Because a sorceress, say, doesn’t exactly suck while naked. I’m thinking that it might be a viable tactic to have a teammate deliberately kill you, then go fight a bunch of stuff before getting your body back.
I’m not Punha (but I play him on the SDMB ;), but I can assure you that you can die when your body’s on the ground during regular play. I
Playing a naked paladin does suck, and I’ve left trails of bodies behind me trying to get to my original corpse with my stuff on it. He must mean that in player vs player contests you can only be snuffed once.
**Chronos[/b[, I don’t know about dueling in USWest, but in east a dueler doesn’t use any potions at all… no thaw, no antidote, no mana or health, no anything.
It wsa my impression that, during PVP play only, it is not possible to be killed while naked (that is, while one’s corpse is still on-ground). It would be interesting to experiment with “could a caster kill while eir corpse is on the ground”.
And regarding the use of pots … well, all that tests is who can guess right at the right pots to bring. I have been in the practice, because I believe it is the standard USEast method, of not using pots (they have difference values for different charclasses: for barbs they are worth 600 hp, for example). As such I would no more use a minor healing pot than a full rejuve than an antidote potion (since I would be running around a lot in a fairly unpredictable manner, Who_me?'s zon would first have to catch me or guess right:D).
I believe you can be killed naked. I’ve run into PK’s who’ve killed and camped the corpses.
Chalk that up to my ignorance of duelling etiquette. Personally, I rather prefer Butch Cassidy’s style of duelling… “Rules? In a knife fight!?”.
And continuing on the body-recovery thing, what if you took off your good equipment, put on a cracked quilted armor or whatever, got killed, and then re-equipped your good equipment without getting your corpse? It seems like that would work for any class, if it worked at all.
Meanwhile, for the West players, I found a couple of exceptional uniques yesterday. Lava Gout battle gauntlets, which give fire damage and other stuff, and Spellsteel bearded axe, which has charges of several spells. Neither is useful to any of my current characters, so first dibs gets them. And Yeti, on reflection, I might want that Tal’s mask for my Clone-killer guy once he reaches level 66. The lifesteal would be very nice, and all that I’d be giving up by using it instead of Darksight would be the “cannot be frozen”. But whose bright idea was it to put huge life and mana steal on an item supposedly designed for sorceresses?
That would work only if you didn’t die at all after that. IIRC 1.10 did not fix the bug wherein if you re-equip your naked self and you die, all items you are and were wearing become open to anyone to take.
Huge life and mana steal, very solid res, life and mana. I used it on my ww barb until I found better.
And now a conundrum of sorts. Here my barb is level 91 and last I checked less than 50 mil XP from being at the bottom of the barb ladder.
And when nobody else from the board is online, I either run countess (incredibly monotonous and she seems to have been nerfed) or do hell baal runs. I haven’t thought of much else to do.
There is no physical reward, AFAIK, for being on the ladder (the viewable thing, not the char. distinction). But it would be the third char I’ve had on a ladder … I was top 50 asns before I stopped playing mine a day or two into the ladder, and I had my ww barb top 100 or so before I retired him. This guy would have a ways to go to crack the overall ladder, which is dominated by sorcs (the sorc ladder is lvl 94 min, and other ladders have lvl 89s on them, so there is a glut of sorcs on the overall ladder), and the min lvl there IIRC is 92. This guy’s a baby 91; 1.774 billion xp or so.
Oh. One other thing. When the new ladder comes out (I am aware of no current plans to reset it) I think it would be cool if we did as the VET clan did and name our chars so we have a common bit … SDMB in them would be fun, and would gain us notoriety (assuming we got reasonably high on-ladder). What think y’all/ Obviously it is a touch late to do that now unless we play 24/7…
Then why the heck do we have multiple corpses? And if it actually did prevent you from dying again (I’m still more than a little unclear on that point) then it wouldn’t matter.
Meanwhile, I was thinking about “prevent monster heal”, and the Malice runeword looks like a good option. But I’m wondering some about that “-100 to monster defense per hit” stat. First of all, how does that interact with Conviction? Is the Conviction multiplier calculated first, and then the -100, or the other way around? Second of all, does that work on bosses? Third, how long does it last, and forth, can it bring an enemy’s defense into the negative? In the best-case scenario, that would mean that after nine hits with Malice and my maxed conviction, I’d be hitting the Diablo clone every time. Well, half the time, since he still has blocking, but still very nice.
Finally, I’m a bit upset that I apparently wasted 16 skill points on my paladin. The Resist Fire aura comes with a hidden bonus that for every two points you spend on it, your max fire resistance goes up by one, even if you’re not using the aura. So I put 16 points into it, to allow me to get to 83 fire resist. But now, it turns out that Salvation does the same thing, but in all three resistances. So for the same price, I could have raised my lightning and cold max to 83, as well, and had a more useful aura available if needed, to boot. Grr.
This issue was “corpse popping”. That happens when you can’t pick up your gear all at once because you need to equip it in order (i.e. due to str. reqs.). If your inventory didn’t have room, your corpse would “pop” around your body, allowing others to pick your stuff up.
I think it’s a kewl idea. We might (as you suggested) also want to coordinate who plays what so we don’t end up with 6 assassins and no sorcs/mages.
As an aside, the one benefit I see to being on the ladder is that you have access to all sorts of neat magical items/runewords/cube recipes that don’t exist in the non-ladder games.
Fenris
Idea’s good by me…
As for who is going to be what (providing they agree to do it at all), thee are probably several givens.
voltaire is very good with a sorceress
punha will likely be a barb
I’ll likely be a javazon, although it’ll depend on how the elemental druid turns out and whether I try a hammerdin and like it. Zon most likely though.
The rest are less for sure…
Fenris has a pally and a sorc, I don’t know which he prefers.
MDSL has several characters, among them an assassin, druid and a barb
thinksnow has only the high level druid that I know about
Sorry, whoever I forgot, I’m fairly certain there’s someone I’m leaving out.
We have plenty of time to figure out what everybody is going to be though.
By the way, my druid is up to level 36 or 37 now. I’m holding him back from NM until we get a group together to rush for runes. I’m just doing normal Baal runs until then.
voltaire and I have enough experience, respectively, with sorcs and barbs that while I’m sure y’all others can make viable builds … I’ve built probably a dozen barbs past level 60 and most of those past level 80, though on Bnet level 80 is a joke.
What I will probably do with the next barb I build (which will probably be the next ladder session) is to max out his shouts and other defensive stuff first. The reason for this is that I don’t want to commit to a weapon class until I have something viable. This means that until probably level 35 or so I will be incredibly weak, but since I will not be doing a large amount of damage, I will also not be fighting a lot. In recent Baal runs I have existed to cast shouts for the group. BO can be maxed, in theory, by level 44 (assuming no +skills; assuming +skills I could see it at slevel 20 by clevel 34).
I would recommend at least two paladins.
I’d volunteer to be one of the paladins. I’ve built quite a few, and i’m pretty good at getting useful party skills hotkeyed and implemented effectively.
I agree with the suggestion that there be at least 2 paladins as well – paladins playing together can be ridiculously strong in the patch. One of the best combos i’ve tried is one Fanat pally with one Holy freeze pally – this combo nearly never dies, and gives an incredible speed advantage that pretty much destroys anything except Death Lords (those bastardly minotaurs are immune to holy freeze’s slow effect, for some reason). Throw in a third pally for concentration and/or conviction, and there’s almost nothing that can stand in their way.
I really don’t enjoy playing my Sorc. I dunno if I’m not playing her right, or built her wrong or don’t have the right equiptment, but she’s just too damned fragile and I’m helpless against lightning and cold and magic immunes.
I’m having loads of fun with my mid-level necromancer (lvl 24: it’s pub Baal runs for me! 
) and I’m enjoying playing a pally, so either of them would be fun, I also wouldn’t mind trying a Barb if a second one would be useful.
I’ve never so much as named a Pali, but I think I could get the hang of one for the next ladder after I get either a WB or WW druid up and running.
Right now, btw, I’ve got Sage maxed at 24 until I can get some more +skills, so you’re stuck with only +140-145% life in group games. Next time, though, I might invest more in barbs a or…that other one. We’ll see.
I’m not on the realms, but I have to say that if y’all are going to run 2 pallys, you should go with Fanat and Conviction. You can get Might, Holy Freeze, Defiance and Thorns on mercs, but Fanat and Conviction auras are wonderful. I’d imagine that a maxed Conviction would be top priority for both melee and elemental support. I shudder to think what Conviction + Thunderstorm/Meteor would be like.
thinksnow, 140% life increase is probably sufficient. Consider punha’s 4000 life after BO, multiply that times 140% life increase we come up to 9600 life for his barb. I think he could survive with that :).
I screwed up a bit on my druid. I put 2 points into Spirit wolf and 2 into Dire wolf to be able to survive better at low levels. Add to that the 1 point I put into the bird as a prerequisite, I lost 5 points that could have gone into Oak Sage. As it is, the wolves will be useless in NM and hell and all my remaining skill points will be required to max the Tornado/Hurricane synergy. Actually, I guess if I get him up to lvl 95 or 6 I could put more points into Oak Sage, but…
I’ll keep playing him, his Oak Sage is about level 11 or 12 without plusses, but I’ll remember this if/when I build another. I have no points in any other spirit nor in any shapeshifting. It is kind of fun walking through the Worldstone with hurricane going and things just dying and other things dying after I hit them once or twice… I don’t even use Tornado usually until we get to the minions.
As soon as I get him able to compete in hell, I’ll try the next character.
Who, don’t knock Ravens. They have a hidden “Hit Blinds Target” mod on them in 1.10 now, and having several Ravens after +skills is an excellent addition to combat. It’s always good to cast them when you waypoint, but don’t worry about them in the heat of battle.