Meleemancer help ^_^

[SeraphicShade]

BIG Question: 'Passion' Phase blade (for zeal and pretty good mods)
or
'Beast' zerker axe (or something) (for fantacism....which would be faster/more profitable?)

What should my stats look like?

How much strength should I have? (important)

Should I get the dex to have max blocking?

Homunculus or stormshield + vergundo's

If homunculus...maybe shael it and get even faster? suggestions?

is there an IAS table for necros wielding phase blades?

would it be best to spam decrepify and use that curse to kill?

Should I wear CoH or enigma??

base str or pump str (possible enough to wear sigons early on, to make lvling nice and fun? ^^)

How fast can a necro get while zealing? Is there any chart on how much IAS you need on that to be fast enough? Maybe purchase a 160/60 armor and 120/45 helm if needed?

Does poison dagger give a passive attack rating bonus, or do you have to equip it on your left button to use it (i wanted something different on the left button)

Give me all the meleemancer help you can please!! ^_^

[gvandale]

I OCD too often... :thumbsup:
1. Slow down. This isn't a school paper, no need for double spaces.
2. What can you afford? Items generally dictate your stats, and your wealth dictates your items.

I've said (as have many others) that the key to a meleemancer (read non-daggermancer) is having an attack that is not the standard attack. You mention Zeal, and I would suggest 'Passion' being the best choice for a meleemancer. Let's take a look at the two runewords and their mods:

'PASSION'
DOL+ORT+ELD+LEM
+25% Increased Attack Speed
+160-210% Enhanced Damage
50-80% Bonus To Attack Rating (varies)
+75% Damage To Undead
+50 To Attack Rating Against Undead
Adds 1-50 Lightning Damage
+1 To Berserk
+1 To Zeal
Hit Blinds Target +10
Hit Causes Monster To Flee 25%
75% Extra Gold From Monsters
Level 3 Heart of Wolverine (12 Charges)

All cheap runes. I'd suggest a nice weapon like a phase blade, but good luck getting a 4o/s one.

'BEAST'
BER + TIR + UM + MAL + LUM
Level 9 Fanaticism Aura When Equipped
+40% Increased Attack Speed
+240-270% Enhanced Damage (varies)
20% Chance of Crushing Blow
25% Chance of Open Wounds
+3 To Werebear
+3 To Lycanthropy
Prevent Monster Heal
+25-40 To Strength (varies)
+10 To Energy
+2 To Mana After Each Kill
Level 13 Summon Grizzly (5 Charges)

Now while this is a great item with great mods, your still left with a regular attack, and this is a hella expensive weapon.

Passion it is.

3. I can't think of one single melee build that doesn't NEED max block! So get yourself a good blocking shield. SS is a great shield for most any melee build, with it's good blocking %, resistances, and of course the uber sexxy mod of DR.

4. Verdungo's is a great belt for more reasons then just the DR. The Vitality is awesome. With a lot of your stat points going towards your str (items) and dex (ar / block) you'll be left with less then desireable Vitality. Not to mention Faster Hit Recovery.

5. COH is a great armor. I'd go with this, as it will provide good dmg, LL, and res of course.

6. For leveling, sigon's and Civerb's cudgel can/will take you clear into the 30's.

Civerb's Cudgel
One-Hand Damage: 8 to (36-140) (22-74 Avg)
Required Level: 9
Required Strength: 37
Durability: 60
Base Weapon Speed: [10]
+ (1 Per Character Level) 1-99 To Maximum Damage (Based On Character Level)
+17-23 to Max Damage(varies)
+50% Damage To Undead
+75 to Attack Rating

I start all my char's as melee using sigon's / civerb's. Works like a charm. It's a pain due to sigon's str req, but I hel'd all the pieces I could to help out! Man i'm smart.

7. The one area I'm unclear on, and maybe someone else can help out on is the following:
With a paladin, your combat skills are forced on left click.
To abuse the Poison Dagger AR bug when not using a dagger, it has to be on the left click.
So for this setup, does 'Passion' allow you to hotkey 'Zeal' to the right click?

8. I've never seen a IAS table for non-paladin Zeal speed's. My suggestion would be to test it yourself, possibly on singleplayer using a char / item editor.

9. Skills I'd suggest:
Max Poison Dagger (if above situation permits use of both pd and zeal)
Max Bone Armor
Max Bone Wall
Max Bone Prison
1-10 Amp damage
1-10 Decrep
1-10 Dim Vision
1 weaken / terror / confuse / attract

Both setup's depend on IAS breakpoints for Non-Pal Zeal
Gear I'd suggest (if your rich)
Crown of ages (um/um)
COH
Highlords ammy
'passion' phaser
gore riders
steelrends *or* laying of hands
ravenfrost
LL or Dual Leech ring
Stormshield
*tons of life charms, and elemental dmg sc's*
Call To Arms / Lidless Wall on weapon switch for more life

Gear I'd suggest (if your not so rich)
Guillame's Face (um)
Shaftstop
'Passion' Phaser
Whistan's Guard Shield
Gore Riders *or* Goblin Toe
Laying of Hands *or* Bloodfists
Ravenfrost
LL Ring
Cat's Eye Amulet *or* Eye of Etlich
*pick up life charms as you go, and elemental dmg sc's*

Stats (depending on AR bug with poison dagger)
Strength: Enough for items (150'ish should cover the expensive build)
Dexterity: Enough for 75% block with your shield of choice (200 at 90 for ss IIRC)
Vitality: Rest
Energy: :rant:

I may be wrong, I may be right. I'm sure MM will come to save the day.

Oh well, it's late and I'm tired. So good luck, I hope I helped.

g

[SeraphicShade]

Thanks for the help man

I "CAN" afford a beast...but would it be better (faster attack) to use beast's fanatacism in a zerker axe or something than passion's zeal? that's all im asking.

Also, is it possible to find a 4-socket eth phase blade to make the passion from (since they have no durability). Using the beast weapon would allow you to exploit the poison dagger bug for sure....im just not sure what to do!!

I'll put whatever wealth I need to in this to get this to work, and I can make it work, I just need the best end-all.

basically, would beast's IAS and fanat and all be better than the speed I would get with zeal? zerker is -10, phase is -30 though..lvl 9 fanat gives +186% dmg, +29% attack speed, and 80% attack. Phase will be -30, base, 25% IAS, and using zeal. Which would be faster/better with the items available?

I'll do what it takes to afford anything, don't worry.

[gvandale]

In my weapon comparison, take a look at this section:

Now while this is a great item with great mods, your still left with a regular attack, and this is a hella expensive weapon.

Passion it is.

Regular attack just won't cut it in late NM or even hell. Your going to need something else. Phase blades can't spawn etheral, due to their innate 'indestructible' mod.

Again, I say passion with or without the ar pd bug.

g

[SeraphicShade]

Can a phase blade be superior...or should I just make it out of my normal 4-socket phase blade?

Please someone help with the poison dagger idea..

[Dazuni]

I have also been looking at the beast and passion idea, beast is way more expansive and I will only make it if I have the spare runes.

Passion, however, is realistic, in fact I have all the runes already (a zon trade me lem with a 4 sux shadow plate), so just waiting for the right sword.

Phase blade / Cryptic sword, which one?

4 sux phase blade is very hard to come by I believe, every time I get plain phaseblade, I cube-sux it, it turn out 6 sux. I run out of rune to do it now.

Cryptic Sword on the other hand, might actually serves ok, plus the max sux is 4 that is not hard to get.

Now the difference between this is the swing speed, damage and duration. Remember though, we will be using zeal, so I doubt if there will be big different in swing speed (that said some more research is needed).

As for damage, the cryptic sword has a wider range and might yield lower damage then a phase blade, but if you are like me using other gear to give Crushing blow / open wound, (like Gore rider) then the real damage that you would deal would be from those mod, and the damage from the sword don’t really matter.

The indestructible mod is just money, it is okay.

Generally Phase blade is better, that is if you can get 4 sux on it.

Poison Dagger,

My mancer is a dagger mancer. Being a dagger mancer you could use things that a melee mancer would use but you also reserve the deadly skill from the poison dagger.

One extra thing you might want to know is that there is a PD bug, that is when you using other weapon and choose to attach with PD you will not have the poison damage but you have the ar% bonus.

Poison Dagger utilise an icon and obviously cannot be used the same time as zeal. But then again, poison dagger needs time for poison damage to develop; multiple hit would only renew the duration, do we really need to zeal if the main damage from the skill is poison? I guess not.

That said, some people would use fresh ripper (that unique fang knife) for the DS CB and OW mod. Some other use rune words like fury, but for me I love my malice rune word in my pd. There is nothing better then to know that each attack will have Poison damage and Open wound developed into the monster, it is indeed a very good boss killer.

With the support of partial trang (-25% resistance and + 25% damage) it is very sweet.

That said, my necro’s PD skill is a slightly hopeless for monster mob. For my self, I am a skelly + Poison mancer which my skelly can tank for me, and I can use poison nova as main attack, but I would also like to have some melee damage to fall back on, or to pick shaman / caster out after casting PN.

So I would have Passion on switch. With Gilliam face, passion should work wonder.

[Mad Mantis]

BIG Question: 'Passion' Phase blade (for zeal and pretty good mods)
or
'Beast' zerker axe (or something) (for fantacism....which would be faster/more profitable?)

How much strength should I have? (important)

Should I get the dex to have max blocking?

is there an IAS table for necros wielding phase blades?

would it be best to spam decrepify and use that curse to kill?

How fast can a necro get while zealing? Is there any chart on how much IAS you need on that to be fast enough? Maybe purchase a 160/60 armor and 120/45 helm if needed?

If you can get it Beast is the ideal weapon for a two-handed Meleemancer.

Strength about 196. For the Feral axe.

Block or not. It depends on you. You can go without.

For IAS check here (http://diablo2.ingame.de/tips/calcs/weaponspeed.php?lang=english).

You need Decrep. But if you want to survive you will need to learn how to augment Decrep by using other curses.

A Necro reaches Max Zeal speed with the IAS already on Passion.




3. I can't think of one single melee build that doesn't NEED max block!

Enter the Meleemancer. Curses + BA = no need for block.




7. The one area I'm unclear on, and maybe someone else can help out on is the following:
With a paladin, your combat skills are forced on left click.
To abuse the Poison Dagger AR bug when not using a dagger, it has to be on the left click.
So for this setup, does 'Passion' allow you to hotkey 'Zeal' to the right click?

You still need to press PDagger. Doesn't matter where it is. You can't use both combat skills at once.




8. I've never seen a IAS table for non-paladin Zeal speed's. My suggestion would be to test it yourself, possibly on singleplayer using a char / item editor.

Try figuring out this (http://www.theamazonbasin.com/d2/forums/index.php?showtopic=38317&st=15).