My clock is set correctly and I still can’t get those character to load. Suggestions?
Thanks! I do need a better Pally weapon! That’ll rock.
The whole point is to see if I can do it at low level with cheap equipment. If I can’t, well, it’s not hardcore. I can level up more and try again. I’ve had to change my target level to 55, instead of 50, because I didn’t notice that my resistance shield has a min level of 55. If that doesn’t work, then I’ll probably try again at 66, when I can put on Tal’s mask. I realize that level figures in hit calculations, but I think I can overcome that. Between my Conviction and the reduce target defense from Malice, I should be hitting about 2/3 of the time (well, 1/3 of the time, because DC has 50% blocking). Going the other way, there’s literally nothing I can do to decrease DC’s chance of hitting me, but I do have 75% blocking.
By the way, I learned some interesting things the other night. First, the good news: It’s possible to freeze Oblivion Knights. Buckgully’s bowazon and my paladin were going through NM Diablo, and freezing arrow was actually working on the OKs. I presume that this is due to the -120 resists from my Conviction.
Secondly, be warned that Prevent Monster Heal might not work quite as advertised. Sturmhauke and I, both with our paladins fresh into Hell, decided to do the Den of Evil before quitting for the night. I hit Corpsefire a few times with my Malice weapon, and I’m sure I hit because I saw his life bar go down a bit and he released some charged bolts (he was lightning enchanted). But after avoiding him for a while to recover from the bolts, he had recovered too. In retrospect, I think that he may have been mana burn, so maybe he was stealing the life back rather than healing it. But this may mean that Prevent Monster Heal doesn’t work on bosses, or has a timer, or something. I hope not. In the end, the only way we were able to beat him was for my sorceress to come to the rescue… Thank the Light that he wasn’t fire immune.
Two thoughts:
-
a communal mule account. Say you’ve found 15 Dols and want to get them to me, but you don’t have my account password so you can’t transfer them to my rune mule. Simply place them on the communal rune mule and I can get at them that way. Similarly, I found a 30% nagel while running A2 stuff today, and knowing that vol MFs with dual nagels, I could put the ring on the appropriate communal mule and save him the trouble of waiting until I got online when he was on to transfer the ring.
-
a communal character capable of MFing in decently high places (NM Meph and above). For me the ideal would be a Talsorc, and we have the gear to make another one (with positive res in Hell), but it’s vol’s clal because most of the gear is his He has full Tal’s twice).
Do any of you duel on open west? Know any good dueling forums other than ladderhall?
I have no idea of anything on open.
Anyone know where I can find Baal’s NM and Hell resists? I’m working on a theoretical build for a character to mainly MF, but also help out with rushes, and I’m thinking the best one for that would be a Blizzard/Meteor sorc. Meph’s got 50% Fire Res in both NM and Hell but only 25% to cold, and Baal’s I haven’t been able to locate at all (yes, the first place I went was Darkness, but it didn’t have that there).
I’m pretty sure that I’ve seen what you’re looking for… but it’s been a while. I’m at work now, but I’ll be home 4 or 4:30 and start checking.
By the way, does the guy we rushed into act4 last night know how to contact us? I realize that he stopped the rush by going to bed, but I would still feel strange about having taken his Hell Forge drop without rushing him all the way.
About that rush, I have to get used to playing with a barb in the party as the tank. I’m too used to having to use the zon as the tank myself and using Lightning Strike and poison, with jab for the LI’s. Lightning Fury is so much more dramatic… and effective.
Hell Baal has 50% resists to fire, lightning, cold, poison, and physical, and no resistance to magic.
The Arreat Summit really should be the first place to look, it being the official site and all. Especially since many of the unofficial sites aren’t up to 1.10 yet, and you can’t necessarily tell which ones.
The kid, I believe, has my account name. I will be on later tonight, though given that he had a bedtime of before midnight last night, the odds that he will be on around 9 or 10 tonight are not 100%. I’ll be home for most, if not all, of tomorrow, though, and will probably be able to help him then if he still needs it.
Now I’m going through the unique polearms and spears looking for the best bet for an A2 merc (probably going Freeze, though Prayer is also tempting). Here’s what I have so far:
Woestave (U. Halberd): 50% Chance of Open Wounds Hit Blinds Target Slows Target by 50% Prevents Monster Healing Hit Freezes Target (other mods I deemed nonessential are deleted) (best defensive)
Bloodthief (U. Brandistock): 35% Chance of Open Wounds +10 to Strength +26 to Life
Meat Scraper (U. Lochaber Axe): +150-200% Enhanced Damage 30% Increased Attack Speed 50% Chance of Open Wounds 25% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items (best offensive)
The Impaler (U. War Spear): Ignore Target’s Defense 20% Increased Attack Speed 40% Chance of Open Wounds Prevents Monster Healing
Hone Sundin (U. Yari): 45% Chance of Crushing Blow 3 sockets
All 3 U elite polearms would be nice options.
So basically I’d love to have either a (twice) upgraded Woestave, a (once) upgraded Meat Scraper or an upgraded Impaler or a Reaper’s Toll. I just don’t know what would be best. I think I might opt for defensive armor for the guy because I’d be using him to help keep me alive, not so much for LH.
I didn’t play much yesterday, I had the pally kill Baal and go into NM. Did the first three quests in NM before I got bored. Went through my mules to see if I had any equipment for him, couldn’t find much worthwhile…
Hey Chronos,
Since you were rushing my paladin around NM to get past Baal, and I need to get past the Ancients when I reach level 40, I got an idea…
Remember I told you that I was holding on all those skill points (almost 20) to distribute later? How about my paladin complimenting your paladin for the Diablo Clone with a different set of auras/skills to make it easier for you paladin to make mincemeat of DC? Just tell me where to put the points, and if you find more equipment that augments my skills, just dump it on me…
I am currently using a full set of Angelic Raiment with Sigon’s boots, belt and gauntlets and steelclash shield…I was pretty useless in act 3 & 4 NM…just set up for a little mfing. But, I realize our true goal should be to get our hands on some annihilus charms and be totally ready to get them with ease when the time comes…so just lay down a recipe here on where you want me to put points (skill and attributes)…
It’s an interesting idea… My original plan for beating the Diablo Clone called for two paladins, but then, that plan has since changed considerably. With my current build, the biggest help would be a necromancer who could spam Decrepify (Bone Spirit, Bone Prison, and Fire Golem would probably also be useful). But another paladin might be useful, too.
As for a build, the first concern should be survivability. My lightning resist is maxed in Hell, and fire resist is more than maxed (every two points in a resist aura adds one to maximum resist in that element, even when you’re not using it). When I finally go for it, I’ll also be wearing Dwarf Star for an additional 15% fire absorb, but I don’t know how necessary that’ll be. You’ll also want maxed blocking, which means a lot of dexterity (two points per level), a good shield, and enough points in Holy Shield to bring the shield to 75%. You want a lot of life, of course, and you want a ton of life leech. Defense is completely irrelevant.
As for aura, TempusNihilator has Conviction covered, and his merc is Holy Freeze. Among the other paladin aurae, probably the biggest help would be from hitting more often, which would mean Blessed Aim or Fanaticism (but I’d want to look up breakpoints on that), or surviving longer, which would mean Prayer (actually using Cleansing or Meditation, of course). Perhaps a Fanaticism paladin, and Prayer merc.
For attack skills, it’d be a choice between Vengeance and Zeal. Maxed conviction will make Vengeance very effective, but on the other hand, that’s elemental damage, which won’t help with leech. And when your opponent has 600k life, crushing blow (if you can get it) dwarfs any other source of damage, from anything, so you want your skills to be geared towards getting those crushing blows as often as possible (that’s why I’m going with zeal).
For equipment, both paladins would need survival gear, as mentioned above (resists, life, blocking, leech), and both should have a source of crushing blow for maximum effectiveness. But only one of the two would need amplify damage, prevent monster heal, and open wounds, as a single paladin should be able to keep those in effect indefinitely.
Coordinating this might be nontrivial, too. My plan for finding the Clone is to start up a game on Friday afternoon, and check it again Saturday morning, Saturday evening, and Sunday until he shows up. It might be tricky to get both of us on at the right time.
Meanwhile, I propose that we now refer to the Diablo Clone as D’’ (that’s dee double prime). Clearly, the Diablo clone can be referred to as “Diablo prime”, but Diablo himself is already a Prime Evil. Hence, D’’.
Well, since no one wanted to play while I was on… 
Got the hammerdin to Act4 Nm and to lvl 55. He still has no problem killing… yet, waiting to see how bad he does in hell. I will definately do a few NM baal runs with him before attempting it.
Found a good group doing Hell Baal and got the zon halfway to 87. I decided to get her some levels instead of just putzing around with her. Another 1000 runs and I may get to 90…
A few? You can hit level 70 doing NM runs without breaking a sweat. I’d hang around until level 75, easy. If you can manage to do runs unpartied with other people in-game, you’ll get a lot more XP.
So does D" represent the acceleration of evil? Can you integrate D" or do you have to use an approximation?
I think the communal mule and Tal sorc account idea is a good one. I would be willing to part with the extra Tal armor that I got by trading away my one and only SoJ. I don’t have the complete set twice though, since I lack an extra Tal ammy…but I believe Pun has one.
As for the build, I would recommend Meteor/Orb rather than Meteor/Blizzard for a few reasons. First of all, I dislike the way that Blizzard can miss monsters standing in the middle of the AoE (area of effect). Second, I like the way that FO can go around corners, and effectively cover the whole screen even covering the area behind the direction you cast it in. Third, FO does not have and does not need any synergies to be effective in hell, which makes it the ideal single cold attack skill to have.
As for the merc, HF is a no-brainer. Another no-brainer is the merc’s weapon, Reaper’s Toll. I have tried all four elite polearms on my sorc’s merc, and Reaper’s Toll is clearly the choice for keeping the merc AND the sorc alive. I only occasionally give my merc a Tomb Reaver for the extra MF and resists when I’m taking on single monsters, such as power Meph runs where I let him get the kill. Otherwise, I don’t need him for Meph. In almost any other situation though, he will die quickly without his trusty Reaper’s Toll.
The only other concern I have about the whole idea is who’s account is used for this. Won’t there be some issues when multiple people are using the same account? Another fairly obvious concern is that we DO NOT post the account/password here on the board. We would also be advised to come up with some ground rules as to who gets access. My suggestion would be only board regulars and the people we each know IN REAL LIFE. No giving this out to people that we met on Bnet that we think we can trust.
I have a Tal ammy in my 91barb’s stash. I have seen no compelling reason yet to mule it, so there it remains.
I have loaded here a list of the post count in this thread by doper, and I think that it would be useful and prudent to establish an email list … for the communal account, the talsorc and other things (such as general playing time … i.e., if I know someone will be on, then I’ll fire up D2 instead of Civ3 or whatever). Though the majority of the play being discussed (and done) is USEast, I would think that for general strategy and such it would be wise to include both Yeticus and Chronos. I have these people, in order of post count in this thread (with certain exceptions … vol is an active USEaster, but has only 25 posts herein), as those I think would benefit/enjoy such a list: Who_me?, myself, Munch, Fenris, MDSL, Chronos, Yeticus Rex, thinksnow, voltaire, sturmhauke, Taran, buckgully. Chronos, you and Yeti and buck are all 3 Westers, yes? I believe the remaining are all East. I’ll give folks a few days to indicate either way if they’d like to be included in this list (and if not cited above, don’t take that as me thinking you’re a n00b:) Just pop in and say you want in.
The password to my diablo accounts I have always been careful about revealing. I believe that Fen knows the passwords he needs, and that mainly because I was unable to login for a week or so and as such needed someone to keep my mules fresh and such. Using a char where the gear is mostly not mine, I would be hesitant to give it to anyone I did not trust to the point where I have no trouble whatsoever not giving it to anyone, even in the SDMB game (I’m reasonably confident that this thread could be found on boardreader.com and someone with no scruples could join up, ask for the password and shortly therafter mule all the gear to someone else, therefor effectively ruining the character/account).
It occured to Who_me? and I during a game that it would really be most prudent to make two mule accounts; one for class-specific items (as well as things that are not often used on certain characters; a flamebellow would do better on a barb mule than a sorc mule if only for purposes of identification) and another for things like runes and gems and such.
Hm. Dead last in posts among US East players. Clearly I’m doing something wrong. Anyway, I’d love to be part of an email list.
I think that a communal MF account is a great idea; our schedules don’t perfectly overlap so we could MF and level one communal TalSorc almost 24/7 (incidentally, I agree that MeteOrb is the way to go. My MF sorcercess has taken this route, and she can fake her way through Hell solo even in the face of immunes, just 'cause it takes so few skill points (37 tops) to make a killer Orb). With good magic find equipment, the payoff could be impressive.
The trust problem is tricky though. Perhaps the solution is some sort of security deposit, at least for people you don’t know personally; I know I’d cheerfully part with both my prized Harlequin Crests in exchange the chance to play with a really solid MF sorceress (they dropped in consecutive Pit runs, for a character with very little magic find. This, of course, makes me a lucky MFer).
Myself, Yeti, and Sturmhauke are most commonly in the sdmb games on West. theckd is also West and online a lot, but he mostly stays in the public games. And I’ve only run into buckgully once, but I think he only recently started on the ladder.
What purpose would be served by a mailing list, though, beyond what we can do in this thread? I agree that we wouldn’t want to put account passwords in this thread, but that would only take one e-mailing at most, not really enough to justify a list. The folks listed by iampunha would probably be a good amount for the communal accounts, though.
By the way, did you forget Madawc in that list? He did, after all, start this thread, and I presume he’s still playing actively, even if he’s not posting much any more.
Taran, my sense of the USEast trade value might be off, but I’d respectfully submit that if I were an unscrupulous person (and there are one or two on Bnet…) and saw that I could gain access to a Talsorc just by giving a Shako, I’d do it in a second. I’d then make a game with someone I knew (or just burn in a game) and transfer the gear to a different account. Shako for Tal’s entire set is a great trade for the person giving the Shako.
I think the better security precaution might be to change the password every week or so in email. And I humbly submit that it should not be variations of some SDMB common theme, likt “fightignorance” or “cecilrules” or something like that. But then my first suggestion for a password is obviously not something I’m going to post here:D
Chronos, I’ve had a few ideas about what to use an email list for, and they serve mainly two purposes:
-
to guard against the possibility (though it is getting more rare these days) that the board is down;
-
to make this less of a trading post; there’s a thread for that already, though it could use a bump as long as it’s going to actually be used.
I think it would be useful to just fire up an email to the group if it’s something they’ll care about but the community as a whole here might not. In addition, I’d like to keep the contents of any communal account away from those who might get some useful knowledge of its existence, and should they find out that something of worth (such as the Bstar voltaire recently gave Fenris) is on it, they might be encouraged to try and hack into it. By limiting the amount of public banter on what would be placed on these communal mules, we decrease the odds that something bad will happen to it.
I would also be interested if there were someone (vol and Who_me?** have both said they have experience, if minimal, in this) who knew their way around the trade fora at rpgforums.net and whatever other places exist, because I’m collecting perfect gems and looking to get runes for them. If that means trading for items and then trading the items for runes, so be it. I’ve already done some (though not nearly as much as I did pre-ladder) rushing for forges, but if I can get my hands on more runes I’m usually eager to do so. I’d be perfectly comfortable with someone here who’s an experienced trader taking the Pgems we have and translating them into Hels or Dols or Shaels or whatever the currency happens to be. It then becomes a matter only of keeping my rune mule in the appropriate chipped/flawed etc. to transmute up.
I have not forgotten Madawc, but I also do not recall seeing a post of his recently indicating that he was even alive (I have no reason to suspect that he is dead, I add hastily), let alone playing. I hoped my open extention would circumvent bad feelings held by any who were not included on my “who’s been posting or playing recently?” list:)
I will spend tomorrow, during brief breaks from doing roughly 20 pages of Bio lab, trying to think of an apt but not obvious name for our talsorc account (the current communal mule account has a character in first slot, and I’m the sort of person who likes to be able to instantly press return and load the best character, so I’ll be making a new account). I will, obviously, not be posting the name of this account on the board, so that will probably be in the first email to those who express a wish to receive such emails. I am also interested in getting, within a day or five of setting up this email list, a general idea of when people play (indicating time zone; I am EST, and I believe that MDSL is CST) so I know when to expect solitude and when to expect 3 or 4 people tagging along.