Work sux right now. I was on Sunday morning for an hour or two though.
Coupla factors have conspired against me, and I haven’t played in about two weeks. I’d wager a few of my mules are dead now, though they didn’t have anything irreplaceable. Plus we’re getting rid of dialup soon, so until I get a wireless router I’m not gonna be able to get online after probably tomorrow.
Well, even if you’ve lost a few mules it’ll be worth it when you’re not timing out all the time any more.
I’ve been basically just magic finding recently anyway. I have gotten my barb to Act4 in hell, but I’ve had issues trying to find a game to kill Diablo. I’ll find one eventually. Then I’ll try to get the pally to Act5. I made a “Smoke” boneweave for the zon gave the zon’s Naj’s plate to the barb and put a Duriel’s that I just found on the pally. Hopefully that’ll be sufficient for him to survive.
My barb does have maxed resists already (without going nuts with natural resists)and still has (of course) the Anya quest to go. I just got my laptop out of the shop so I’ll be able to mule quicker and more safely.
What does Mephisto have that does 800+ damage at once to someone with high resists? Even his Ball of Death didn’t used to do that much damage: My single-player amazon was usually able to survive one shot of it, with 600 or so HP, and she had lousy resists too. But tonight, Meph was able to take my paladin (950 life, all resists above 50) from almost full to dead.
My Trap-asn is now level 75ish and she is doing well in her travels. I haven’t rushed her at all so she is now only in a1 hell, but she is handling it pretty well. My Lightning sentry is at about 3k damage per shot and my charged bolt sentry is doing about 300 damage with 10 bolts for 10 shots. It can handle a boss pretty well. NM Baal stood absolutly no chance when I faced him solo.
My barb merc is doing a pretty good job of killing the lightning immunes that I fun into so that hasn’t been a big problem. She is pretty fun and I may try a casting character at some point! My gear isn’t super, but I hve +8 to traps right now and I can add some to that with come better claws.
Want me to try to trade for a pair of Bartucs?
Did you rid yourself of all of the nearby council members? If not, any chance one of them was conviction aura’ed?
Nah, don’t bother. They don’t come cheap and only give +2 to skills. I have one claw that is +2 already and the other is +1, so I really just need a random magical or regular claw that gives +2 to skills. Damage isn’t an issue as I don’t melee with her. Strictly casting.
We didn’t bother with the one on the left at all. I don’t think that we were in aura range of him, but then again, monster aurae (and other skills) always seem to be higher than possible for characters, so it might have been. And I wouldn’t have even noticed the green scum at my feet, since I was using my own conviction.
Hope I haven’t missed all the fun! I recently “rediscovered” Diablo 2, then happened across this thread.
I’m not a very hardcore player, in fact I’ve spent almost all my time in Normal mode. I’m usually a Paladin. If anyone would like to start a new character, I’d be interested in joining in on some SDMB Battlenet games, and I’d definitely like any hints/tips anyone can give on developing my characters better. I’ve usually just pumped up my Might aura and left it at that.
I’ve seen references to a bow-wielding Paladin with Holy-Shock. Does anyone know how effective/reasonable that is to play?
I’ve seen builds for Bowadins, but they generally took very nice equipment to make them viable in hell difficulty. Holy Shock Paladins are fairly common though, and i’m sure that i could give you some pointers on how to build that (i have a Holy Freeze pally myself, so i have some experience in that area).
I’ve been planning a new character or two for a while, so i’d be glad to start out with you. I play mostly on USWest, feel free to message me sometime and we can start up. If we could persuade Yeti, Chronos, or Buckgully to join us we could have quite the party. my accounts are:
*gand
*gand2
*30-foot-smurf
Mephisto gave me an ethereal Bartuc’s this evening. Useless to MA assassins, but the +20 attributes could be nice. Want it?
MDSL, if you could spare a moment for a relative newbie?
Can you give me advice (or a URL) on how to build a successful trapsin? I had too much fun playing with different skills with my first assassin, who’s plateaued at level 60 (where the hell does a clvl 60 character go to level, anyway?), and I don’t want to make the same mistake with my second.
I noticed you went lightning with your trapsin, is that better than fire (which I tend to prefer, given the higher min. damage), or just your preference?
Any advice would be welcome and much appreciated. (Same goes for barbarian builds; the only post-1.10 build I found online was for a concentration barb…)
Sounds like you don’t like to save up skill points. Concentration, at any given level, will give you more of a bonus than Might, plus you’ve got a chance at an uninteruptable hit, plus it also works with Blessed Hammer. And Fanaticism, available at level 30, is another option.
Be advised, by the way, that when you’re playing in a party, it takes very little effort to get to NM or Hell, and to fairly high level. We’d be glad, on East or West, to give you some nice starter equipment (Sigon’s set, Civerb’s set, Cathan’s Seal, that sort of thing), and a party will considerably smooth over those difficult spots in the game, since different characters have trouble in different places.
And, heck, while I’m begging for advice…
I think I’d actually prefer to go all physical damage/martial arts with my second assassin. Any advice on whether this is feasible in nm/hell without some kick ass equipment? I have no unique assassin stuff, and no armor with defense above 370 or so…
I can’t recall the precise route I took, but you don’t ever put more than pre-requisite points in anything in the Shadow tree except Warrior or Master and you don’t put anything at all in MA or the blade traps.
As for skills: points in Fire Blast aren’t wasted so long as you buy them in threes (3pts adds a shot to Death Sentry), but you’ll want to save most of your points. By clvl24 you should have 3 in Fire Blast, 1 in Burst of Speed (maybe 3 if you don’t have a speed-enhancing boot to give her) and 1 in each of the pre-reqs for Wake of Inferno, Lightning Sentry and Shadow Master; the other 13 you should save. Start dropping points into the two level 24 traps until you hit level 30, then put a point in Death Sentry and a point in Shadow Master. After that, max Lightning Sentry and get Death Sentry and Wake up to about 10. Then max Death Sentry and Wake in that order.
[QUOTE]
(where the hell does a clvl 60 character go to level, anyway?)
NM Arcane Sanctuary, as I recall; I spent a fair chunk of time levelling my merc there.
It’s just better. It has longer range, piercing and is more accurate. Monsters with no immunity to either fire or lightning go down twice as quickly on average to LS.
Not sure if you want to try this asn, but it can do physical dmg and set traps and be relatively good.
It’s the Blade Fury with lightning traps. I’m not the author of this decent build, but I did come up with some differing opinions on what should be spent in skills.
I find that Claws and Blade Fury are best, some ppl say that just getting a good ethereal 1handed weapon is good, but I find that an ethereal claw can work better. Or for that matter, any claw with some +skills and high dmg.
For those of us in the dark on asn’s, they are quite fun to play.
First off, I didn’t know that Blade Fury did 3/4 of your weapon’s dmg, 3/8 if you use a 2hander using the skill. It’s PHYSICAL dmg, not magical or elemental. But the crazy thing is this it can use almost all modifiers to its attack.
Mods like all things chance to cast on STRIKING (not attack), Mana Leech, Life Leech, Crushing Blow, Open Wounds, Deadly Strike, Elemental Dmg from items (but cut down to 3/4). And more that I don’t need to list.
Its cast speed is SET at 6fps, you don’t need to get ias or fast cast gear to make it shoot faster, it shoots quite darn fast with nothing modifying it.
You can use this skill to refill your mana pool and life pool after casting a boatload of traps. And the great thing about it is that you don’t use your Durability on this skills. You can have a high dmg ethereal claw and not have to worry of it turning red and unusable. Just make sure you don’t start meleeing with the claw and the durability should never go down.
Set down some traps and shoot the blade fury out. It’ll take the place of ONE trap so you can have 4 out working.
Blade Sentinel is good too, with the duration being low and it has a cast delay of about 2 seconds. It also does physical dmg at a 3/8 penalty and it doesn’t leech or do much other mods but adds good physical dmg traps.
I think the best asn build would be this: all depending on the gear that can be found.
20 Claw Mastery
1 speed
1 fade
1 shadow master and its prereq’s
20 death sentry
20lightning sentry
1blade sent
1blade fury (yes only 1 point is needed for this to do dmg, since most of its dmg is based on weapon’s dmg)
1 wake of fire (prereq)
and the other trap prereq’s 1
From there you can alter your asn to your pleasure. You can add more to the lightning trap synergies, go towards some fire dmg traps, or go to some martial arts. It’s not bad to have one point in tiger strike and cobra strike, which can help your dmg from claws and leech too.
Check out this forum post from battle.net
it has the full Assassin FAQ, you can also find some help at this forum
Assassin’s are great fun, I don’t really like the martial arts and the synergy system there, but the traps are greatly improved and matching it with bladefury is a great build.
Oh and if you don’t plan on using claws, you can just put one into Claw Mastery and use a good dmg 1hander and have more skill points to allocate, I prefer claws cuz you can get the dmg bonus from claw mastery added to the blades in blade fury.
oh the post from battle.net is extensive, you can find almost anything you need for an assassin build. Itemwise I think it isn’t as detailed, but the diabloii.net link is for specific builds.
This is a pure trap assassin I did, in non ladder that has some success and I think is currently CLvl 71. This is how she got there, I won’t list the items since I’m rather “rich” in nonladder but the build is more than easily reproducible without the items.
from lvl1-12 you can just use a Khalim’s Will and melee everything in sight. You can use the Will even to lvl24 if you don’t enter act4 by then. Just make sure to mule the quest weapon off when you end act3.
Points wise, I would put points in wake of fire. Yes, dare I say Wake of Fire. It is an awesome skill for low lvl killing. You can even get to lvl30 with this skill being maxed, just by doing cow lvl from lvl20-30 or even 8ppl Flayer Jungle. I did it and it was fine. From here you can add points in the lightning/death sentry traps. I went Death Sentry for the corpse explosion after a few dead bodies from wake of fire.
Oh the good thing about Wake of Fire or any traps for that matter is the SET mana cost. They don’t rise with more skill points like Sorc’s skills. An absolute benefit. For early gear, the best thing would be a 4socketed armor and 3 socketed helm with Perfect Sapphires for more mana. If you can’t manage that, then just buy mana pots and chug away. There is no shame in going ghetto styles early on. Just as long as you can kill.
+skills gear is what you want to get a hold of.
What you want in the end though is this skill set up.
1 clawmastery, 1 burst, 1 fade… 1 shadow master if you want to, but you don’t need it that badly. Just keep your merc leveled up and useful. Don’t get an A3 cold merc, no corpses, no death sentry corpse explosions.
20 wake of inferno
20 wake of fire
20 death sentry
20 lightning sentry
no blade skills
and prereq’s
that’s about 90 ish skills to allocate. You can get by in NM just fine. I haven’t tried Hell difficulty but you should be okay versus many other than the dual fire/light immunes, but even those will succumb to corpse explosion.
The last thing I maxed or am planning to max is wake of Inferno. So at lvl71, i have maxed WoFire, LSentry, and DSentry, and the rest with 1 prereq’s ( I don’t have shadow master, their traps they set take your traps offline) and slowly maxing WoInferno.
Fun to pure trap asn, but mix is always best, so you can handle more situations. And with the Blade Fury spiel i made above, you can get physical dmg in the mix. Imagine the possibilities with fire lighthing and physical dmg. all you need is a good 1hand dmg weapon, and one point in blade fury and sentinel.
Man, I think it’s time to make a nonclaw blade fury asn with chance to cast on striking static. The best weapon is an ethereal Stormlash for the nonclaw asn blade fury’er. I think that build is mentioned in the dii.net forum i linked above.
I should have mentioned this in my first post – I’m in Virginia, so I had expected to play on USEast; however, since I currently don’t have any active Battlenet characters, I suppose it doesn’t really matter as long as my connection is okay.
BTW, what exactly does selecting the “ladder” option mean when you’re creating a Battlenet character? (Yes, I’m really out of the MP mode!)
Actually, I usually save up five to ten skill points, until I start having trouble with monsters, but then I just don’t seem to see anything else that appeals to me, so I end up just dumping them into Might. With my single player character, I’ve been working with hotkeys and switching auraus, so hopefully I’m finally branching out some.
I’d be grateful for a little starter equipment, though for me the most fun part of the game is finding all the different items and checking them out. Of course, I haven’t even seen much of Nightmare and Hell, so the faster I got there, the faster I’d find even cooler stuff…
What time do you guys usually play (on East or West?) I’m usually free in the evenings, around 9:00 p.m Eastern or so. I have friends coming over today, so I probably won’t be able to get on tonight. Or maybe just to test my network connection.
One last question – I’m building a Might Paladin (Surprise!) SP, and last night I just reached The Summoner in the Chaos Sanctuary. After he fell (three hits), he dropped – a rejuvenation potion. I wasn’t expecting a unique or rare, but I thought I’d at least see a blue item or two. This is my first time playing with the 1.10 patch, and I’ve found a total of one item with Magic Find.
I’m not sure if my email is in my profile; if it’s not, I’ll try to add it. I’d love to hear from anyone who wants to start a game with me, maybe this upcoming week.
I’m in New York, so i’m on the east coast as well, but i play on West. It looks like we tend to game around the same time though. It doesn’t matter which server you connect to really, you shouldn’t notice much of a difference between them.
Ladder characters are characters who can compete to be on the ladder. They have their own games and can’t join games on nonladder (similar to how hardcore players can’t join ‘softcore’ games). The advantages to playing ladder are that it’s a new(er) economy so you don’t have all of the old dupes floating around, though it also means that some higher end items are worth more because there aren’t as many of them.
Most of us on west play primarily ladder, so if you’re going to make a char. on west, then i’d reccomend it be a ladder character.
Generally with a character you should have at least a basic idea of what his endgame skills are, so you should save skill points for those, unless you’re going to drop them in synergies. For example, a might paladin will probably not survive in hell difficulty, but a fanatic (zeal and fanatacism) is very viable. As is an Avenger (Vengeance and conviction), Hammerdin (Concentration and Blessed Hammer), Tesladin (Zeal and Holy Shock), or Frigidin (Zeal and Holy Freeze). I’d be more than willing to discuss the different builds with you, since i’ve played a few paladins and have a pretty good idea of what their strengths and weaknesses are. If you want more extensive strategy you can check out the strategy forums at www.diabloii.net.