xkcd

by **Gelsamel** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 2:05 pm UTC

Heh, summoner necros can beat anything given enough time.

by **Jebobek** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 2:08 pm UTC

Mighty Jalapeno wrote:
Jebobek wrote:Unfortunately D2 is all about cookiecutter builds and having exact peices of gear to be successful.
It doesn't have to be. I don't play it that way. I play for fun, using a general build as a theme.

Also, counter the AR with "ITD" enchantments on your weapon, if you have it.

Also, I've NEVER, EVER, EVER had an endgame Rune weapon. No Grief, no Crescent Moon, no Bramble, no... no whatever. No Zod Vex Ber bullshit. Not once. I crack up how many people on the forums say YOU CANT BEAT HELL WITHOUT ONE ZOMG YOU NEED +19 TO SKILLS!!!!

To be fair, my problem is not that people use cookiecutter builds, its the synergy system involved that makes you put 20 points into a teir-1 skill so that your bread-and-butter skill actually has damage behind it. When synergy came into play they buffed the crap out of monsters so that a number of hybrid builds fell to the wayside.

I'm right there with you about building Rune combos. I don't even know where to begin when it comes to farming runes or trading for them. I'm pretty much bad at trading in general.

by **Aikanaro** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 2:16 pm UTC

Huh, I always thought that the synergies made MORE builds possible. It made it so that the lower skills could still end up being bread-and-butter, as you put it. Now things like bowling druids or poison javazons are more viable, and don't need +eleventy-billion to skills to work.

Edited for spelling.

by **Jebobek** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 2:23 pm UTC

Hmm, I think I'm just biased towards sorcs where once you could be somewhat powerful in all three trees, but now the same build is not feasable in hell. I guess I'm set in my old ways.

by **Aikanaro** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 2:28 pm UTC

Eh, I always figured that optimally (for ANY class, not just sorc), you basically want to pick 2 of the 6 kinds of damage that you can hit hard with, possibly including your merc's support (especially if your main form of damage is pure magic).

GAHH! This thead is reinforcing my D2 kick! So many builds flitting through my head....Berserkers, Hammerdins, Smiters, Lag-sorcs, Elementalists..../head explodes.

by **Gelsamel** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 2:29 pm UTC

I thought there was a few trispecs which could solo hell?

by **Jebobek** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 2:39 pm UTC

I know you can still do a trispec as sorc and can solo (just avoid those magic-immunes!), but it just takes a lot longer than before when synergies weren't there. If you're a sorc tri-spec and in a group of 5-8, people will turn to you and go "uhh are you attacking?" Granted if you go heavy in +skills then its not as terrible, you're just really squishy. I'll be the first to admit that I like the sorc because I can do OK without good gear. My other cop-out characters that I have tried are Trapassassin and Hammerdin.

Hmm whats a lag-sorc?

by **Aikanaro** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 2:42 pm UTC

Lol, I'll counter and ask what a trispec is. Tri-elemental?

Lag-sorc was nickname for thunderstorm/hydra sorc. Capable of playing when there's loads and loads of lag, with virtually no loss of effectiveness....just click random places, and let the lightning bolts and hydras do the aiming for you!

by **Jebobek** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 2:50 pm UTC

Yea, tri-elemental. I would give it another shot for soloing but I want to have fun and run around with you folks!

Haha yea thats why I like the trapassassin build, for the same lag/lazy-factor reasons

by **Aikanaro** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 3:26 pm UTC

Heh, only Assassin I ever tried was machine gun, with a Maul.....at first I thought it just never missed, then in act 3 I realized mobs weren't getting hit....

Hrmm, probably no point to added points in the throwing stars (i forget the name) skill for it, sadly. Venom works on it thought, right? And does it also work on the blade shield?

by **Mighty Jalapeno** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 3:54 pm UTC

Venom works on the Blade skill, yeah. The machinegun was cool, but it does need fairly special gear, high damage with JUST the right enchantments. My favorite Assy is still TS/DT with a shield, Fade, Shadow Master and loads of Death Sentries. It's fairly straightforward, but man it's fun.

by **Mzyxptlk** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 4:45 pm UTC

Aikanaro wrote:Okay, just messed with a skill calculator briefly...Smite itself gives a % damage boost (pathetic when the base damage sucks, but goes up to 300% at level 20), and Holyl shield provides the straight numerical boost....so what all does Smite's boost apply to? Does it only affect the base Shield damage? Because if it also affects the damage from Holy Shield, I'd think it'd be worth maxing still.....

Smite bonus is applies to all smite damage: holy shield, grief and shield damage. However so does Fanaticism, the damage bonus from strength, and damage bonuses from equipment. The 1pt smite built removes the 285% damage bonus from lvl20 Smite, but since you're looking at 150% from strength and 373% from Fanaticism, that reduction is not that bad.

In the end, crushing is what kills the bosses. Once they're down to the last sliver of life, sure, a lvl20 smite might finish them off 5 seconds faster, but in the grand scheme of things, unless you just want to run ubers, a pure smiter isn't what you're looking for. Remember, smite isn't your main skill, zeal is; the 19 points you save can be put into zeal or sacrifice for better zeal damage. You'll be looking at a finished build at level 84: 20 zeal, 20 sacrifice, 20 fanat, 20 hs, 1 smite, 7 utility skills (defensive tree) and 6 prereqs. Further points can either be put into smite (but by then you'll have found out you don't need it) or defiance (which is very useful in combination with hs).

More info.

by **Aikanaro** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 5:00 pm UTC

Ugh......if I were going to devote that many points to zeal/sacrifice, i'd just make those my main skills....

Really, few things compare to the joy of bitch-slapping a demon to death with your shield

by **Mighty Jalapeno** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 5:04 pm UTC

SLAPFIGHT!!!! *piff piff piff piff piff piff piff piff piff piff piff*

Dammit, now I wanna remake my Terminator, too. Hehe... Terminator Too.

Terminator: Iron Skin / Sword-Shield / Concentrate Barbarian, heavy emphasis on warcries. Colossal tank. Fairly straightforward. Lots of fun. I had "Come with me if you want to live," and "I need a vacation," on hotkeys.

by **segmentation fault** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 5:26 pm UTC

im gonna make a smiter soon. hes gonna own ubers.

most builds today are heavily reliant on items. although the one poor mans build ive noticed can hold its own is a static/fireball/orb sorc.

by **Aikanaro** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 7:00 pm UTC

Heh, way back before the Eth bug, I had fun beating cookiecutter WW barbs with my smiter.....just threw on Defiance and Holy Shield, got a target lock and shift-clicked on them continuously. They'd WW back and forth, you'd hear a lot of clanging, and each time they'd be missing a bit more of their health, while I was just standing still untouched. Cause of Death: Complete lack of pattern recognition....

by **Mzyxptlk** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 7:29 pm UTC

Aikanaro wrote:Ugh......if I were going to devote that many points to zeal/sacrifice, i'd just make those my main skills....

Really, few things compare to the joy of bitch-slapping a demon to death with your shield :P

Well yeah, the 1pt smiter really is just a zealot with some fancy CB gear (it being a prereq for HS and all). But why specialize smite when you can do just as well (better, depending on the circumstances) with more points in zeal?

by **Aikanaro** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 7:36 pm UTC

Aikanaro wrote:Really, few things compare to the joy of bitch-slapping a demon to death with your shield

That's why

I never said it was SMART

Part of the fun for me is just taking a theme, then running with it, and seeing how well I can make it work. I'm kinda proud that I made an Elemental druid work before synergies, even....tho that was back when I had semi-shiny gear.... :cry:

by **tgjensen** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 9:49 pm UTC

Jebobek wrote:Although, I am interested in trying out a crackadin. Walkthrough on the skill tree?

Well it's been a real long time since I played, but basically you'll wanna go for 20 Zeal, 20 Fanaticism, 20 Holy Shield and a bunch of utility skills. Vengeance is a great backup for Hell difficulty when you'll run in to the occasional physical damage-immune bastard.

Equipment-wise, go for a fast one-handed weapon and a shield with high block percentage, or you'll risk getting shield-locked if surrounded by monsters in late game. This got better when they added the damage bonus to Fanaticism, but still...

by **dbsmith** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 10:59 pm UTC

Sigh. I had a sorceress, a barbarian and a paladin all around the end of nightmare difficulty.
Baal and diablo were walks in the park, but the first few levels of Hell were way too hard.
Im not sure if it was my skill allocation (too late to change that now

or i needed way better items.
Either way, i guess thats a few hundred hours of playing to fix.....better get started.

by **Mighty Jalapeno** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 11:05 pm UTC

Dammit, now I wanna do my Frostadin again... I HATE THIS GAME!!!!!

by **Aikanaro** » Tue Oct 21, 2008 2:10 am UTC

dbsmith wrote:Sigh. I had a sorceress, a barbarian and a paladin all around the end of nightmare difficulty.
Baal and diablo were walks in the park, but the first few levels of Hell were way too hard.
Im not sure if it was my skill allocation (too late to change that now or i needed way better items.
Either way, i guess thats a few hundred hours of playing to fix.....better get started.

What I always did online was go through the bulk of the game soloing in games/"instances"/whatever with lots of folks in them (trading ones, or whatever), so that the mobs were boosted for both XP received and for HP. The first few were a little tough, but then my chars would catch up naturally and would just be on a kind of fast track for leveling. Then I'd drop back to solo play for end-of-act bosses, and it was practically like dropping down a difficulty mode.

Or, for offline play, just use the /players 8 command most of the time, and drop back down to /players 1 for end-of-acts.

This put me in pretty good shape by the time I reached Hell mode, and then I'd just coast along in solo games.

by **Shadic** » Tue Oct 21, 2008 2:19 am UTC

..When doing the /players 8 thing, don't try and take on Diablo with a Sorc in Single-player while still in Players8. You'd have to have god-like luck to have equipment good enough to really damage him.

..I spent an hour shooting at Diablo while offscreen. Guided arrow + Mana Leech.

by **Aikanaro** » Tue Oct 21, 2008 2:31 am UTC

Or just spam Hydra from around a corner

by **Haistfu** » Tue Oct 21, 2008 6:14 am UTC

An electric-spec sorceress with an infinity wielding merc can solo all of hell easily.
Hell, my zerk barb could solo hell easily. Hell wasn't that hard. HARD is ubers, and even THAT isn't hard if you have even half-decent gear (gold all around).

by **Gelsamel** » Tue Oct 21, 2008 7:29 am UTC

I believe infinity would be considered specialised gear...

by **Aikanaro** » Tue Oct 21, 2008 12:46 pm UTC

I just realized, I need to test to see if the added elemental damage from the Holy Freeze, etc., auras will work with Smite...

by **Mzyxptlk** » Tue Oct 21, 2008 1:41 pm UTC

Because I'm such a nice guy.

Spoiler:

by **Aikanaro** » Tue Oct 21, 2008 2:02 pm UTC

D'OH! I remembered a lot of that not working, but didn't have time to experiment after 1.10. Thanks for the info, though!

by **Mighty Jalapeno** » Tue Oct 21, 2008 2:28 pm UTC

There, for my spellcasting desire, I am now also Jalapenomancer

by **segmentation fault** » Tue Oct 21, 2008 3:54 pm UTC

so does anyone know how i can build a zmiter? (1 pt smite, max zeal) and how would i use it to kill ubers?

by **Gelsamel** » Tue Oct 21, 2008 3:58 pm UTC

segmentation fault wrote:so does anyone know how i can build a zmiter? (1 pt smite, max zeal) and how would i use it to kill ubers?

I liked a guide on the first page.

by **Mighty Jalapeno** » Tue Oct 21, 2008 4:29 pm UTC

Gelsamel wrote:
segmentation fault wrote:so does anyone know how i can build a zmiter? (1 pt smite, max zeal) and how would i use it to kill ubers?

I liked a guide on the first page.

Me, too. Someone linked it.

by **segmentation fault** » Tue Oct 21, 2008 5:13 pm UTC

oh, thanks, i didnt even see it.

now how do i go about obtaining a last wish phase blade...

by **Jebobek** » Tue Oct 21, 2008 5:46 pm UTC

Has anyone in this thread played with each other yet? Also, is there any way to change your CD key while its installed? I used a temp online one until I can find my real one.

by **Mzyxptlk** » Tue Oct 21, 2008 6:25 pm UTC

segmentation fault wrote:so does anyone know how i can build a zmiter? (1 pt smite, max zeal) and how would i use it to kill ubers?

Sorry to nitpick (really, I am :( ), but a zmiter maxes smite as well as zeal. The 1pt smiter is really just a zealot with some fancy gear; smite is a prereq for holy shield after all.

by **segmentation fault** » Tue Oct 21, 2008 7:12 pm UTC

hmm. well i see very little point to max smite as most of smites dmg will be from crushing blow (so will zeals, but when i dont hit cb i will be doing more main dmg with zeal. zeal is also good for crowd control and a bit more fun to level). so im really not sure how to build this guy. i mainly want to uber with him.

by **Mighty Jalapeno** » Tue Oct 21, 2008 7:17 pm UTC

4 points in Zeal base, 1 point in Smite, maxing Holy Shield, Defiance and "Your Aura Of Choice". 65 points and you got your base Paladin right down. After that, uhm... max Zeal for the AR, and that's about it. Not much else to your basic Paladin. Synergies, synergies, synergies.

by **segmentation fault** » Tue Oct 21, 2008 7:35 pm UTC

why defiance? i think im maxing zeal, sacrifice, fanat, and holy shield.

by **Kag** » Tue Oct 21, 2008 7:38 pm UTC

Kind of makes me want to try playing a 1ptSmite/Tesla build. I'm not sure if it's the least bit possible, but the results would be awesome.

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