Kylearan sends an async team to death or guardianship

[KingOfPain]

Yes, that ties perfectly into the discussion that in the end, any class can beat the game if they let the merc do all the work. But the assassin really needs some help while at the same time still manages to pull her own weight - she could do it on her own if necessary, but too slowly and tedious for my taste. (Of all my three classes who employ a desert merc, she's also the only one not dependent on an Insight for mana regeneration.)

Right. If you are playing a monk in a mmo team you hold the faith of the team in your hands. No one is going to call you out for the lack of kills. So long you are actively contributing to the Game then you have a place in the Game.


Such is the RNG. You could have one of the 100s ShaftStops T-hawk had with his team instead of a Rockfleece

Rockfleece isn't so bad if you don't have better. Don't forget the Damage Reduced By 5. That's is actually quite helpful to negate a lot of the small damages that can add up fast from range attackers.

Besides, me think Armor/Defence is overrated. Not that it is totally useless, just overrated.

If you have Blocking
Let say you get hit 100% of 100 hits for 100 dmg each, but you block 75% so you take 2500 dmg
Let say you get hit 75% (from DR upgrade) of 100 hits for 100 dmg each and block 50%, so you take 3750 dmg
(to achieve 25% improvement on Not To Get Hit is quite large. See Below)
(to up Blocking by 25% is ~50 Dex)
Furthermore, with perfect block and Rockfleece 10% reduction you take 2250 dmg. That's huge differences from 3750

To consider what it costs to make and wear the higher armor. Especially the points in Str you might need could go to Dex, or Vit that everyone loves.

All things being equal, it might make more sense to up the Rockfleece.

---

The following data using McTyraelGal's normal setup wearing everything as usual. Only the armors changed. Rockfleece is represented by whatever armors I had in my inventory that roughly corresponds to the DR. Note: DR upgrade gets better return with a Def merc.


First Number represents Monster Will Hit. Second number is with Slvl 18 Defiance 240% bonus

No Armor
80% 62%

Rock Fleece - avg ~225
73% 51%

Upgrade Rock Fleece ~500
70% 45%

Elite Vipermagi ~1000
63% 36%

Stone 1700
53% 27%



EDIT: More Math
100 hits x 100 dmg = 10000 possible dmg

ROCKFLEECE with 73% Be Hit = 7300
Minus 10% = 6570
Minus -5 dmg/hit = 500, = 6070 Total Dmg Taken

1000 DR ARMOR with 63% Be Hit = 6300 Total Dmg Taken



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[Meiz]

The countess was a disappointment, dropping 1 El, 4 Tir, 1 Tal, 1 Ort, 1 Sol and 1 Io rune.

Did you kill the countrss with players 5 setting? That will decrease her rune drops significally, the one instance where players 1 is best for the results.
Edit: nevermind, missed your comment on dropping to players 1

[T-hawk]

Prediction: If the druid dies, it will be because I won't realize my Oak Sage has died. I'm very bad at visually discerning stuff on screen; I get easily overwhelmed and have a hard time tracking all the things.

Wow, I feel the same way. But I usually notice pretty quickly if Oak Sage dies by the missing portrait inset at the top left. The Resurrected version still has that, I think?

Besides a Ko and a a Lem rune from Andy, he also found an Ist rune! I actually misread it for an Ith on the ground and only realized what I had found when I put it into the stash. This opens up the possibility of a Delirium now, but I think I'll wait to see what other runes might drop for better options, like Chains of Honor or Call to Arms.

I would make a Delirium now for the bowazon. The constantly triggering CTC Confuse is amazing for crowd control. I made it four times across all my teams, and loved it every time, and every one of those characters made Guardian. Even with a Mal on hand also, I wouldn't try to wait for a Call to Arms. If an Ohm rune does come, you have another great use for that in a Chaos claw for the assassin. (I always keep a 3-socket Suwayyah for every assassin in case an Ohm does come.)

Delirium does need a 3-socket base; all of my characters always make and keep a 3-topaz helm to use for act boss kills (crown or great helm), so that can be unsocketed for a Delirium.

We encountered our first (out of many) cold and fire immune boss right out of the gates in the Blood Moor. Took some patience until the barb had killed it; again, something that is less painful with an A2 merc wielding an overpowered Insight weapon, but it's manageable (if the barb has a source of poison damage, otherwise they often regenrate faster than he can damage them).

Look for Open Wounds somewhere too, which also stops regeneration. One way is a Malice runeword, in whatever base the sorceress has requirements for, maybe something with long melee reach to stand behind the merc.

I also cubed her an Ancient's Pledge

Three perfect diamonds is more resists than Ancients' Pledge, and you'll never miss the other tiny modifiers on it.

It's always the same with the assassin: I start playing an act, encounter my first boss or large mob, my merc dies a couple of times and I have to quaff way too many potions, thinking in panic, "Oh no! This won't work at all!", until I rediscover the groove of teleporting to solitary fleeing monsters, killing them, then releasing my charges at the edge of mobs, rinse repeat. And then I'm confident again that she's not a failure after all.

Yup, assassins can't charge in like a tank and demolish monsters, I had the same experience of rediscovering every act how to nibble around the edges of packs and hide under Cloak and Mind Blast. And yes, finding claws can be a problem, since there aren't any runewords until Chaos. Particularly for your build here - you're trying to do a hybrid physical and elemental build, so you can't focus just on damage or on skills and defense-piercing, you need both.

On level 5 of the tower ... at player 1 difficulty (set before entering the level for the countess' rune drops)

I experimented with this in the tower - it turns out that you can start on a higher player count and go a little ways in to level 5, as far as clearing out the first pair of side rooms. The Countess spawns about when you get to the middle of the big room, so just change to players-1 before you go that far.

In contrast to the sorceress, the necro has no real way to save him when he speed-runs half-dead to dangerous monsters

Decrepify goes a long way towards bailing out a reckless merc. There's also Terror. Both are worth keeping on hotkeys.

overwriting my amp damage like the Frenzy barb does with his Taunt (I have to read up on/test how Stun and War Cry interact with curses).

They don't interact. Any stun effects can stack with any curse.

The countess was a disappointment, dropping 1 El, 4 Tir, 1 Tal, 1 Ort, 1 Sol and 1 Io rune.

That's about expected value for the Countess. She drops runes specially, but those runes are no higher than from any other source. She gets many drops from the rune treasure class, but the contents of that treasure class (the distribution between different runes) are the same as for any other source of runes. Um for example appears roughly 1 time out of every 400 rune drops for every source including the Countess. Only the hellforge behaves differently.

[Kylearan]

KoP, thanks for the math! I tend to play D2 by intuition once the scenario gets too complex - I have to do way too many precise analyses at work and thus enjoy the contrast when playing. But the whole defense vs. block vs. dmg reduction thing bugs me for some time now; maybe I'll take a closer look at the specific situation with my assassin after all.

Prediction: If the druid dies, it will be because I won't realize my Oak Sage has died. I'm very bad at visually discerning stuff on screen; I get easily overwhelmed and have a hard time tracking all the things.

Wow, I feel the same way.  But I usually notice pretty quickly if Oak Sage dies by the missing portrait inset at the top left.  The Resurrected version still has that, I think?

Yes, but there are too many portaits (merc, sage, bear, wolf, raven) for me to notice a specific one going missing in my peripheral vision. That's exacerbated by the fact that the number of portraits changes all the time, for example when my ravens run out. But I also know I'm very bad at this visual stuff.

I would make a Delirium now for the bowazon.  The constantly triggering CTC Confuse is amazing for crowd control.

I can imagine it is, but the amazon already has great cc with knockback, Buriza's cold damage and her merc's Freezing Arrows. Nothing gets close to her! The Delirium would be overkill here, I think, albeit fun. For now I keep my 3-Topaz-Helm, but I'll keep that option in mind even if only for fun, as I've never used it before.

Look for Open Wounds somewhere too, which also stops regeneration.  One way is a Malice runeword, in whatever base the sorceress has requirements for, maybe something with long melee reach to stand behind the merc.

Interesting idea, I might try that!

  Three perfect diamonds is more resists than Ancients' Pledge, and you'll never miss the other tiny modifiers on it.

Damn it you're right of course, keep forgetting that. 

Decrepify goes a long way towards bailing out a reckless merc.  There's also Terror. 

*cough* I have to admit I've never used Terror before, should probably try it out...

[KingOfPain]

KoP, thanks for the math! I tend to play D2 by intuition once the scenario gets too complex - I have to do way too many precise analyses at work and thus enjoy the contrast when playing. But the whole defense vs. block vs. dmg reduction thing bugs me for some time now; maybe I'll take a closer look at the specific situation with my assassin after all.

I always thought Dex is king, even since the beginning of Classic Diablo, which led our resident math boy Charis to change the lvlup point distribution on his Amazon rules.

It is intuition that tells me things don't add up that led me to do these "complex"  math thru the Lying Screen

I always felt DR is not worth the points unless you plan to pump and boost it. I was only looking to prove the point yesterday thru the video. (I recorded a video and wrote down the data)

There is a wealth of game information out there but I tend not to read much of them because I always want to find out on my own.
Why I always say I trust my own experience over some code reader's interpretation of the data.


Hah. I will not be accused of being a math boy!


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[T-hawk]

Why I always say I trust my own experience over some code reader's interpretation of the data.

Well, the right answer is both. Sometimes your own experience is correct, sometimes the code readers are. Without them, we would never know the details of many of the complicated subsystems, particularly stuff like wereform speed mechanics. And this is empirically testable - you can observe the results yourself and see if they match the stated formulas. I've been doing that at times myself to verify. Experience lies - one big notable example was in Diablo 1, where there was no difference between the two fastest speed suffixes, yet everyone claimed they "knew" the top one was going faster.

[KingOfPain]

Of course, I am not dismissing the benefits of code readers. I avoid reading too much about games, especially when the game is still newish. Too much misinterpretation and hearsay. Too many sheep repeating misinformation to make it "real", such as the decipher of maps. The "Maphack In The Mind" guy shows time and time again of getting lost in Dur 2. IIRC, I have even heard exact instruction how to do WSK, L,R,L,L,R, and then L,L,R,L or some such.



I do value data sets, at the very least, to verify/compare my own real world tests, and on things I find not worth my while to test. Sure they can reveal things not easily testable, but really, how USEFUL is my chart of "Grim Ward Progression To Slvl49" to anyone? Probably less useful than my suggestion on our Rockfleece dilemma.



Experience lies, but so does data interpretation. Why we say, "Garbage in, garbage out"



I also know my own observations can be skewed by factors unknown; I could be wrong. And that my observations maybe affected by the way I play, but that would at least be my truth - and that's real.

Hah. I will not be accused of being a math boy!

Seeing how this can be taken as a complaint... I am only poking fun at myself

[Kylearan]

Hell Act 2

Act 2 will most likely be the last long act I'll have to play. I will skip several dungeons in Act 3 or take the shortest way through some of them, Act 4 is shorter anyway and Act 5 will see me rushing through the fastest way possible. I did an almost full clear of Act 2 (at players 3 difficulty) however, only skipping some of the false tombs if a character was about to gain too much experience (or if the monster mix was too annoying).

And it was worth it: Many of my problems got solved.

Amazon

The amazon replaced Tal-Rasha's belt with a rare one with +23% lightning and some fire resistance as well as +38 life. I also re-socketed Tal-Rasha's helm with a Thul rune for +cold resist and was ready to go. (I actually played most of the act with a 3 topaz helm; I felt safe enough behind the Valkyrie and a Decoy.)

In the Halls of the Dead I was glad the Buriza freezes targets and that I have a cold merc for shattering corpses, especially in one room where there were three Ancient bosses with their minions! There were so many of them, I didn't have the room to snipe the ancients and had to destroy most of the minions first. The reward was Guillaume's Face, nice!

In the Arcane Sanctuary, this happened:

   

A Sur rune! Wow, a high rune! Although, er, not to sound ungrateful, but... couldn't that have been a different rune? I doubt I'll find the other high runes needed for some of the better runewords involving a Sur, like Last Wish or Hand of Justice. But after thinking about this for a while, I think I might do something with the Sur nobody usually does, and which only makes a little bit of sense in this particular variant - we'll see, that will depend on what else drops.

I also had gems to spare and so re-rolled Grand Charms and got this:

   

A +1 to combat skills, +33 to life for the paladin, nice! What also came out of this was yet another +1 elemental tree GC for druid, my fourth one - he doesn't have the inventory space to use all of them...


Paladin

Fist of the Heavens owns dungeons in this act - the paladin steamrolled the sewers and the temples. Many animals in the overland areas were no problem for FotH as well, albeit slower, but killing a rock worm took a comparable amount of time with FotH as with Vengeance (he doesn't really have a good weapon yet). He only had to enter melee for some lightning immunes for which Conviction broke their immunities but didn't drop their resistances far enough for FotH to do enough damage, like beetles.

Speaking of which:

   

Lightning and fire enchanted bosses sure lost their edge now that the bugs around this were fixed in D2R! While I often lament how easy the game has become, in this case I'm okay with the fix because dying to such an unfair bug as invisible explosions feels stupid.

By far the best drop that the paladin had, and which got me jumping out of my chair and pumping with my arm excitedly, was this:

   

A Pul rune means that my barbarian can actually make both Oath and Stone, so putting the barb last in the roster for this act was the right decision! Now I know I can safely make Stone immediately (he desperately needs better armor, much more than a better weapon) and look forward to crafting Oath for Act 3 with the second Pul rune.

The paladin also found 9(!) unique or set bows and crossbows, what's up with that?!?


Druid

Not much happened gameplay wise, but the druid had several interesting drops.

   

Not the best Demonhorn's Edge with minimum life steal and not optimal skill bonuses (and the IAS is also almost wasted for a leaper), but sure better than the magic helm the barbarian wears right now so I'll take it!

   

A nice high-defense armor with resists for one of my mercenaries, not bad. And finally, another goodie for the barbarian: A 4os Balrog Blade for making Oath in!


Necromancer

The necro had swapped out the Frenzy merc for a Bash barbarian equipped with a Bing Sz Wang (I hadn't kept any two-handed swords around, unfortunately) and the increase in killing power was noticable, albeit he was still worse than the desert mercenaries. Unfortunately the new barb also overwrites my Amplify Danage curses; the necro & barb pair hadn't really been the best idea in hindsight. This became painfully obvious in the Lost City with its magic immune plague bearers; the barb simply wasn't good enough to deal with more than two of them at the same time. A similar problem occured in the tombs with magic immune Unravellers. They would regenerate faster then he could damage them, so I had to equip him with Plague Bearer to stop the regen - but at least he had to deal only with single Unravellers at a time. Still, this became an annoying exercise in patience.

In the Halls of the Dead, I actually had to quickly save and quit once. I hadn't really paid attention when I was poisoned that I had run out of healing potions, and suddenly my life pool decreased so quickly that I felt I didn't have the time to open a portal and go to what's-her-name to heal in town. (I was almost sure you cannot die in town from poison but not 100% positive, so didn't want to take that risk!). That was quite embarrassing! Because I then couldn't advance further into the dungeon without redoing a larger section, I decided to skip the rest entirely.


(to be continued next post...)

[Kylearan]

(continued from previous post)


Assassin

I know I said claws for the assassin are my #2 problem, but her exceptional claws worked fine most of the time in this act because of all the undead there - the +394% bonus damage against undead might have played a role here a bit. What became obvious though was that she not only needs elite claws with more damage, they also have to be faster.

No good claws dropped, however. Instead, right at the beginning of the act in the sewers, she found this:

   

Wait, that unique grim helm, wasn't that something nice...?

   

Oooh, Vampire Gaze! Fits perfectly into her physical resistance/damage reduction/absorption theme. The only problem is that she needs her current helm for resistances - but Vampire Gaze is better than String of Ears, so maybe I could get the missing resists from a good belt, ...I pondered that while playing on, but it turned out I shouldn't have thought too much about this ("What can wait, should wait"), as the barbarian would solve that particular problem for her later on.

Funny how the pRNG sometimes thumbs its nose at you: The assassin only has 4%(!) MF instead of 100%+ like most of the others, and yet it rained lots of items for her and interesting ones at well: The Oculus, Szazabi's Mental Sheath, and more! In fact, she found more unique and set items than some of her team mates.

Remember how I defended using Rattlecage's monster flee ability for her merc? I still think it's at least part of the reason why the assassin works better than I feared, but when I came to the Arcane Sanctuary it annoyed me to no end. Killing the damn wraiths was almost impossible with it, so I equipped the merc with something else for that area.


Sorceress

Hm...I think I had played the sorceress sometimes earlier, but for the life of me I cannot remember when exactly. I have no screenshots of her and no recollections of what happened during her run, only a list of items that had dropped - which was the shortest one of all my characters. Must have been quite a boring run, then? At least she still lives and is safely in Act 3, so I know I did play her...


Barbarian

The barbarian went last because I had postponed the decision what to do with my Pul rune. Now that I had found another, he made himself a new, much needed armor:

   

Going from an under 400 defense armor to a 1712 defense one made quite the difference, as you can imagine. He still had to use Unbending Will for this act, but that was fine as I knew what awaited him soon. (And it was still faster to use Leap Attack to kill most monsters than Berserk, and safer anyway, so...)

While playing, I thought a lot about how easy the game felt. Even with non-optimal gear and some mistakes in skill choices, and and players 3, none of my characters really felt in danger 98% of the time. Sure, a mean boss in tight quarters might still get me, but this felt like the wrong kind of difficulty if you know what I mean. And I'd say I'm not a very good player either! In fact, I started to feel a bit bored.

Besides the reasons people have already discussed, like overpowered runewords and power creep when patches made skills better and rarely nerf any of them, there's an additional factor at play at least for me, even if it's a small one. I play using a 34 inch wide-screen monitor, and the additional screen real estate makes a noticable difference - I can spot and target monsters from much farther away, often before they become aware of me. The game doesn't utilize the whole width of the screen (Blizzard said the AI couldn't handle it), but it's stil strange to see groups of monsters exactly how the map generator placed them in a very regular formation at the edge of the screen.

Here's one example of utilizing the wider screen, when my barbarian faced Fangskin:

   

In hindsight I should have taken a shot from an outside area with more light, but anyway: I could easily see Fangskin where in classic gfx mode I could not, and let my merc's fireballs deal with him from afar. (I had several other situations where I had a bigger advantage because of that but forgot to document them properly.)

Anyway, while I was disappointed with the lack of difficulty, at least the game entertained me with good drops:

   

A unique wrist sword! A UNIQUE WRIST SWORD!!!

   

Hooray! Jade Talon is no Bartuc's but still fantastic for my assassin, and it hasn't rolled too shabby either! And thus my next big problem has been solved, at least partially: The assassin still needs a second claw, but I already have an idea for that (and she will play Act 3 last this time).

When my barbarian leapt Duriel to death, I felt kind of nostalgic and a bit sad: This was probably the last time ever that I fought Duriel, as I doubt I'll play the game any longer after finishing this team variant.

   

Duriel must have thought so too and made a parting gift of three set and two unique items, one of which was Moser's Blessed Circle.


Gear

Some other notable gear that dropped in this act:

• Headstriker. This will be a solid barb merc weapon!
  
• Pierre Tombale Couant: Too bad the barb mercs can only equip swords.
  
• The Oculus. Ooooh, so tempting, such a nice orb! I considered putting it on swap for areas where it feels safe to use it, but in the end decided not to take the risk. I guess this is just a stupid idea in hardcore.
  
• Griswold's Heart: Too bad mercenaries don't benefit from +skilltabs; still, it's a nice armor for one of my mercs and will probably socketed with rubies.
  

I also crafted more hitpower gloves (for the amazon) and some blood gloves (to replace the barb's Chance Guards, looking for mana leech) without much luck. The cold rogue received a new Insight bow, now in a crusader instead of a great bow. I also finally rememberd that +x-y damage on a weapon will not be converted with Vengeance and thus most of my one-handed weapons like Aldur's or Plague Bearer are not optimal for the paladin. So I took away The Atlantean from one of my barb mercs, socketed it with a +11 all res jewel and gave it to him instead.

Now that the assassin has access to Jade Talon with its +all res, I can actually give her Vampire Gaze and let her keep String of Ears, although then she will have overstacked physical resistance. I don't think I'd really want that just in case I get cursed with amp damage or decrepify, so this provides me the opportunity to switch out Rockfleece for something with an actually impactful defense value, although I don't know yet with what exactly. There's also another idea for her I debate in my head, so she will definitely play last in act 3 before I make a final decision.

[KingOfPain]

WIND?

While playing, I thought a lot about how easy the game felt.

That's why you need Sundered Charms!

The game doesn't utilize the whole width of the screen

This has a different effect on me since I have been playing my Throw Barb the last couple of days. I am more aware of how painfully short ranged the throwing weapons are. Throwing axes and knives reach just 2/3  and a little more of the screen on either side. Javs should have the full reach. I keep wishing there are "usable" Unique throw javs. Sigh, what a wasted opportunity on the making of the Gargoyle Bite, especially...


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