All Diablo2 Talk here.........

Cafe Society
1501

Not true, actually. Level 5 conviction is -50% to enemy resistances. Against a normal monster which naturally has no resists, that won’t matter much: You’ll increase elemental damage by a factor of 1.5 . But against the Diablo Clone, who has 95% resistances, that’ll make a huge difference. You’ll take his resists from 95% to 45%, which means that your level 5 conviction would increase elemental damage to him by a factor of 11. Of course, maxed conviction would be even better, but even first level conviction (which would be a factor of 7 increase) should still be your first choice of aura against D’’, if you have elemental damage in your party.

If you play in a party a lot, it’s a good idea to put one point into (almost) every aura (don’t bother with resist fire/cold/lightning, since Salvation does all at once; don’t bother with Holy Shock unless it’s your main skill, since it doesn’t help party members; and if you’re focusing on Concentration, you might not bother with Fanaticism). Every aura has some situation where it’s very useful, and your whole party will gain the advantages. For instance, even if your own resists are maxed (not uncommon, for a paladin), switching to Salvation might keep the rest of your party from dying to that Lightning Enchanted Cold Enchanted Spectral Hit boss, and if you keep Meditation active in between monsters, then your Sorceress will never need to waste time running back to town for more blue potions.

You don’t need too many points in Zeal. At 4th level, you get 5 swings per attack (the maximum). Additional points will only add attack rating and 6% damage per point. Points in Sacrifice will add twice that much damage, and points in Fanaticism will add much more damage and half as much attack rating bonus, plus more attack speed and it’ll also benefit your party. For Holy Shield, it’ll depend on what kind of shield you have and how much dexterity you’re willing to spend. Whenever you level, look at your chance to block in your character screen (make sure Holy Shield is active first), and if it’s less than 75%, put more points into Holy Shield or defense. Personally, I wouldn’t put more than 3-5 points in Holy Shield, because after that, the diminishing returns start to get pretty stiff.

As for Redemption, I personally haven’t found it too useful for healing (at least, not at level 1), but it’s great for getting rid of corpses. This is especially nice when Throne of Destruction is full of hell knights and gloams, and Achmael (the mummy boss) is about to spawn. No thanks, I’d rather not fight them all again.

1502

I may have to look into that. My Zealot is currently operating off a Hand of Justice Colossus Voulge that I got from a friend (I suspect he may have duped the runes, but I can always go back to my legit Bonehew if he did) because it has long range, does 1,000-10K damage per Zeal hit and I can use it with positive resists in Hell, but he’s previously been using HoZ with a sceptre. When he does, he has around 70% blocking, but maintaining that is costing 3 Dex a level - which means I’m a bit skimpy in the life department. Holy Shield may help to clear that problem up, even if it does mean going back to 900-2300 damage per hit and letting my merc do most of the fighting with my Hand.

This, also, I had not thought of. Undead archers have been the bane of my life in Act I Hell so far (well, that and the occasional pack of Fanatic-enchanted Dark Archers, and the unusually frequent PI Brute bosses).

1503

I’d still have to disagree, i think Zeal is more important than Sacrifice. Sacrifice will give you more damage per level, but the Attack Rating bonus on Zeal is much more important – most dueling and high level pallys try and stock up on AR charms to boost their to hit, because the damage output of your Zeal is highly dependent on how many of your five swings hit. Thus, a point in sacrifice might boost the dmg of each swing by 12% (total of 240% at lvl 20), but each point in zeal works towards raising your damage by up to 400% (assume you hit with 1 out of 5 swings, if you can boost your AR to the point that you hit 2/5 youv’e increased your damage by 100% – if you can raise it to 5/5, your damage has gone up 400%). Especially for paladins who skimp on dexterity for more life, the AR bonus of Zeal is hard to replicate – it takes a lot of charms to do what Zeal does. AND it boosts your damage, which you’ll want to do in the long run anyway.
In summary, at low levels points in Zeal are definitively more important than Sacrifice; doing lots of damage is worthless if you can’t hit anything. Most of my low level paladins have noticed that the hardest part of killing a monster is connecting, often they did enough damage to kill with one swing already.

All that being said, Fanatacism should be maxed before either of the other two skills – iirc it gives you the best bonus to AR and damage (out of the three skills) AND increases your attack speed, which is one of the most important factors in your damage output (i.e. dmg/sec). In general, if your not at a 4 frame zeal, piling on the IAS gear will do more for you than Enhanced Damage gear. Also, since Fanatacism does this for the whole party, it’s clearly the skill to max first.

Holy Shield does get hit pretty hard in the diminishing returns department, but it can be a Paladin’s only means of raising that block level to 75% in some cases, even with the best of shields, and especially if you’re low on dex. Blocking is key because there are many monsters that ignore target defense, which means that blocking is your only way to defend against those creatures.

I’ve found redemption very useful with my Hammerdin, though my Holy Freeze Paladin doesn’t have the skill at all, since he’s still working on maxing Sacrifice for more physical damage. Plus he’s already a tank and a half, even with sub-75% blocking, so redemption is too slow to be useful other than for eating corpses. I’d rather not waste that 2 seconds on redemption when i could be using Holy Freeze to slow everything and dish out more damage.

1504

That can’t be right. Maintaining a full 75% blocking with a Herald of Zakarum should only cost 1.8 Dex points per level, even before Holy Shield, and if you only want 70%, it’ll only be 1.7 dex points per level. With even a single point in Holy Shield, that drops to 1.6 or 1.5 points per level respectively, and with level 5 Holy Shield, it’ll only take 1.4 or 1.3 . And keep in mind that dex will also increase your defense and attack rating.

Zeal gives twice the AR bonus per point as does Fanaticism, but Fanaticism has a much greater damage bonus and effects the whole party, so I’d agree that Fanaticism is the skill to max first.

But if attack rating is a big problem, then you should maybe consider Conviction as your aura instead. Level 20 conviction will reduce monster defense by 90%, which is equivalent to raising your attack rating by 900%. For comparison, level 20 fanaticism, zeal, and Blessed Aim (from a merc, presumably) all combined only gives you a little less than 700% to attack rating. The only thing better than Conviction for increasing your hit chance is “Ignore Target Defense”, which is better than any conceivable bonus to attack rating, but ITD doesn’t work against bosses, champions, or players.

1505

I know what I’m seeing, Chronos. I had 70% block at clvl69. When I upped to clvl70 my block dropped to 69%. I added two points to Dex and it didn’t go up; I had to add a third. While it’s been a little while since I levelled to 69, I know I added three points then as well.

I’ll see if I can give it a go, but it’ll take time because I don’t have any of the pre-reqs.

1506

Well, I started a Zealot last night on Battlenet East. No one else showed up :frowning: , but I managed to get up to Clvl 14, and I’m at the last waypoint before the Act 1 Boss.

 I've managed to conserve my skill points, using one for Might (pre-requisite), and I put one in Zeal. I haven't put any more in Zeal yet because I can't use it effectively until I find something with Mana Leech. 

 What's a good distribution of Attribute Points to see me through Normal mode, and be prepared for Nightmare? So far, I've distributed them about equally between Strength and Dexterity, with a few token points in Vitality. Should I start to build vitality more, when I can rely on the Zeal skill to improve my attack?

 If anyone's interested, I'll probably be back on tonight for a while. I suppose I'll carry on and start working in Lut Gholein. 

 The only thing that's giving me trouble so far are the elemental attacks. I usually put one point in each elemental resistance aura, but I am trying to conserve the points this time. Is that wise? What are some tips for finding/making equipment with elemental resistance?

 Oh, one last question. If your character dies and you don't recover your corspe, is whatever you had equipped gone for good, or do you get it back when you restart?
1507

If you have a corpse in a game, and you leave and join another game (or the same one again), then that corpse will appear at your feet, so you do get your stuff back.

HOWEVER, if you have two or more corpses in a game when you leave, only one will reappear when you start the next game: the one containing the equipment with the highest gold piece value. So if (for example) you die, buy some new equipment to reclaim your corpse with, fail, die again, give up, quit, and join a new game, only the corpse with the highest-value items will reappear. If the stuff you bought happens to be worth more, in total, than the stuff you were wearing the first time, then your old stuff is gone forever. Fenris tells a sad story along these lines, five or six pages back.

1508

I have started another character. NoPrenup (my trap assassin) is stalling out around a3 Hell. Friggin midget monsters are all lightning immune and I don’t know how in the world I am going to get through that act.

My next character is going to be another weredruid, but a wolf this time. He’s level 9 at the moment and I’m looking for a “plague bearer” sword if anyone has one laying around. I lost mine in a mueling accident ages ago. :frowning:

1509

For attribute points for a combat character, you want enough strength to equip your gear (usually somewhere in the 100-150 range, for a paladin), enough dex to block well (how well is “well” is up to you, but I’d recommend trying for the maximum of 75%), none at all in energy, and the rest in vitality. Of course, you don’t have to build all of this up at once: If your current armor only requires 40 strength, then there’s not exactly a rush to build up more.

As for resistances, paladins have an easier time than any other class. Your best source of resistances will be a shield. Some paladin shields have a “natural” bonus to all resistances built in (others have a bonus to damage and attack rating, but that’s not generally as useful), and all shields can get good prefixes for resistances. In addition, if you have sockets in your shield (or use a socketing quest reward to put some in), then you can stick diamonds into a shield for even more resistances. Don’t bother with resist fire/resist cold/resist lightning at all: Once you get Salvation (which offers resistance to all three), you’ll never bother with the others at all. For that matter, you probably don’t need more than one point in Salvation, either: Your own resistances should be good enough that you never need it, at least not until Hell, so you’ll only be using it to help out party members.

You can also get resistances from charms, but beware that charms are sort of addictive. It’s very easy to say “Sure, I have room for another charm… There’s always room for more charms”, and before you know it, your inventory is so full that you can’t pick up any loot. If you happen to get either of the unique charms (Annihilus or Gheed’s Fortune), they’re certainly worth keeping, and it’s good to have a small charm with a little cold damage on (it doesn’t matter how much), so as to chill enemies. Think carefully before keeping any more, though, lest you turn into a charmaholic.

1510

Here’s the formula for figuring out block rate:

Total Blocking % = [Blocking x (Dexterity – 15)] / (Character Level x 2)

An HoZ has a 77% Blocking.

Clvl 69:
70 = [77x (Dexterity – 15)] / (69x 2)
Dex = (77*138)/77 + 15
Dex = 141

Clvl 70:
X = (77*126)/140
69% blocking

70 = (77D)/140
(70140)/77 = 142.X

You only need to put 2 points of Dex in at lvl 70 to maintain your blocking. Could you have switched gear at any point?

1511

I prefer a poison charm to prevent monster heal.

I usually allocate twelve inventory slots to charms, which when you add in a Cube, keys and a Tome of Identify still leaves enough space for goodies. I’ve found it to be a good balance.

1512

Once more I curse the No Editing mode…

I absolutely didn’t change any gear that would affect blocking. The only change I made was switching my amulet from Commander’s of Thawing to Chromatic of Light.

1513

I had a Plague Bearer, I’ll go through all the mules and see if I still do…

I guess since you’re starting a new one and FGfY has joined us, I’ll start my long delayed throw barb. Since I get up at 4:30 in the morning, it may be until the weekend until we play much together though.

1514

I’ll be glad to join up for a party sometime, but it definitely looks like we’re on different schedules. I am NOT a morning person!

1515

Hi, my name is Yeti, and I am a charmaholic…

1516

82%, actually. It’ll display as less if you’re looking at it with a non-paladin character, but that’s hardly relevant, since only a pally can use it anyway.

The best I can figure is that Evil Death is seeing some sort of roundoff error, which might conceivably cause him to need 3 points one level. But that would be balanced by only needing 1 point some other level, and he certainly shouldn’t have to allocate 3 two levels in a row.

As for poison charms, my take is that if a monster is healing slowly enough that a single charm worth of poison damage is enough to counterbalance it, then it’s healing slowly enough that you don’t need to bother stopping monster heal at all. But I might use a poison charm anyway, if it also had a good affix for resistance or life. If monster heal is a problem, then I just use the Malice weapon I have on switch for a couple of hits, which takes care of the problem once and for all. YMMV, of course.

1517

Weird. dii.net lists it as 77%, Arreat as 82%. Never seen one, so it doesn’t matter!

1518

Just to keep this from dropping too far…

I finally found something worth trading… found a 25% maras on Shenk. According to the one site I found that had a ladder price list, it’s worth about a soj (although the lowest % so listed). Now all I have to do is find someone that wants one that’s trading what I’m looking for… an HoZ for Fen and a Skullders (why can’t I find one? It’s not like it’s very rare…) for me, plus anything else I can talk them into.

I’ve found a couple of people wanting one, but only one had either and he only had the Skullders… and of course NOTHING else I was even interested in.

1519

Then you have those of us who have +skill gear on weapon switch (+5 cries IIRC). It would not be worth 6% (at least) of my life for Malice. I prefer poison damage, but then I also have open wounds and PMH, I believe. And Crushing and Critical.

I am also a charmaholic. I figure if you have them, why not use them?

1520

You’ve never seen a charmaholic until you’ve seen how my paladin was decked out at level 55 (when he fought D’’ for the first time). I left myself exactly enough room to pick up the loot I was planning on finding. Which, of course, is one small charm.

Trouble ensued when, on the way to the big guy’s hiding spot, we found a Gheed’s Fortune. buckgully and theckd each already had one, and I couldn’t pick it up because I didn’t have enough room. I ended up having to drop my keys and my Tome of Identify in order to grab it. Fortunately, since then, between the Anya quest and re-socketing my armor, I’ve been able to get rid of some of my resistance charms and free up about 6 or 8 spots in my inventory.

By the way, Yeti, speaking of charmaholics and Gheed’s Fortune, how much magic find is on yours? NM Baal gave me another one the other day, at 37%, and I’d be willing to trade. That’s the only MF I have on either of my characters, so I’m not exactly doing MF runs anyway.