average standards

[Glenn Cain]

hi

i've never been killing much by myself in hell mode. i'd like to know the consensus regarding acceptable standards of some things we should have if we wanna clear hell mode:

1.) damage range of a weapon
2.) effective damage after mods and stats and everything
2.) defense armour that most of you guys where
3.) amount of plus skills or tree in total
4.) resistance value

also, a more subjective question. for all these builds that is made, how do you define "playable" in hell mode? does it mean having to many close calls, requiring many strategic retreat, and simply taking very long to clear a pack or monster, BUT STILL SURVIVE ON THE EDGE BY CAUTION,

or does it mean it feels like playing level 70 naked in normal?

personally i have a lvl 84 barb, frenzy. 1165 defense from armour, tal rasha helm, bits of defense here and there.

damage range of weapon, 79-139, 61-102, single hand

my merc has a mancatcher 200-400

he doing much more damage than me per shot, but despite that, i am merely scrapping the skin off blood moor hellmode, save baal.

thanks for your reply

[Superhal]

1. max resists, especially for melee chars. go to arreats and check out boss specials: http://www.battle.net/diablo2exp/monsters/bonus.shtml. as you can see, spectral hit, fire enchanted, etc. all allow boss packs to do huge elemental damage. also, in .10, boss minions get all the bonuses bosses do, except releasing bolts for LE.

2. 10-15% leech. there appears to be a bug where after the 1/4 leech penalty, net leech must be over 2% otherwise there is no effect. i just verified this again with my zon using draculs. i had to equip a manald heal to get any mana back. since you are using tal's helm, you are doing enough leech, but probably your damage is too low to take advantage of it.

3. damage: there are two ways of looking at damage: either a) your skills + your wep does most of the damage, like your merc, or b) you have other effects that damage per attack, such as enchant, crushing blow, holy freeze, etc. if you are using a), then 1.5-2.5k damage is the minimum if using a fast attack like ww. i don't consider frenzy a fast attack, as you need over 100% ias with the fastest weps available to hit only 5 fpa, while at worst ww can hit 4 fpa in the first 8 frames. with frenzy, i would recommend at least 3k. if you are using b) (my preference,) then any damage amount is fine. my cb barbs use around 800-1.1k.

4. range: only for ww, other skills don't use/need it. for ww, range 3 or higher.

5. weps: 150 1h is the standard for hell weps. you can get this with any crappy cruel phase blade, or a bk myth sword. 2h weps are 400+. you can get this with almost any crappy spear/polearm and the honor runeword. for barbs, since we can wield 2h swords in 1 hand, the standard is 200 damage, which even a low-end cruel cb can hit. "good" barb 1h weps in .10 are over 300, with eth botds coming in at 400+. as i don't like people (:)) i haven't been trading much, which is why i use low damage weps and cb.

6. defense: i'm in the school of thought that a good defense is a kick-butt offense (pvm, of course. :)) my barbs generally have around 3k def after shout, maybe 50% blocking, and high resists/absorbs, which protects me from the male-cow-kakka boss specials nowadays. generally, when i think of defense, i think of leech. mana-burn phys immunes are a problem, but it's a problem for everyone. there's no easy way around them, which is what blizz wanted.

7. "playability": i believe what you are talking about here is what I refer to as "effectiveness," not to be confused with "viability." viability is a finish-line-type idea, where as long as you cross the finish line (hell baal) the build is "viable," no matter how long it takes. effectiveness involves time. if you can do something as fast or faster than the top builds in the game, the build is "effective." anything is viable. few builds are effective. for me, viable builds are easy. just give them a lot of gold, potions, and eq. effective is a lot harder, but more rewarding.

overall, your problems appear to be with wep and resists. i have put up some recent posts on easy-to-get hell-viable weps.

[Glenn Cain]

regarding playability-viablity, my concern is that i get to kill most monster packs, most uniques and all bosses. but that does not seem to happen. i meet up with some stone skin fella, at which even my merc with the mancatcher could only scratch after 3 hits. not to mention regen. worst off is such that they come attached with a freeze or lightning aura. how effecient or viable if we have to give a miss on such unique and their associated pack of monster (usually aura-affected)?

wep damage refers to max, min, or average? i have yet to see a myth sword in my life!
are cruel blades found or made?

i have yet to see any sword with more max damage than 134. maybe i'm not old enough to see much.

[Glenn Cain]

if i made a conc barb with my current gear, are we looking at long and slow killling time but still alive?

[mstrnicegui]

My conc barb, lvl 91, with an eth botd zerker axe and might aura from merc does about 6.2k max dmg. Even with all that, he still takes 4-5 hits to kill most monsters in hell, after act 2, without a highlords. I haven't yet bothered to get a highlords, but I'd assume from everything I've read that that would seriously help my killing speed.

My barb is rock solid though and even when he meets up with a nasty pack of fanat le monsters, still takes at least 6 hits to get the life bulb to display near bottom (which turns out to be about 800 hp left out of 3.6k.) Normal groups of monsters, without me attacking, take 12 or more hits to get me below half life, and that's after missing me for more than half the time and being blocked more than half the time they don't miss... it's even worse when i am swinging.

Moral of the story, very slow without a decent amount of cb, but very very safe.

[gmoura]

i can't stress this enough!!!!!!!!!

Damage alone isn't everything! you might have nice damage but in order to kill even faster! try and get these mods!!!
- 40%-60% Crushing blow
- any critical strike and open wounds you can get helps!!!!

these two mods are awsome!!!!
test them out! by grabbing a Guillaume's Face and putting it on: kill with and without it, and you will see how much difference 35% CB will do!

i personally use: steelrends, gorriders, and new rune word duress:
total of 40% CB
and nice open wonds % too !!!

i chose this armor cause there is no way im swapping my arreats for a gulliams face!!!

try it, you wont be dissapointed! =)

[Superhal]

somtimes you'll meet packs that have mods that nullify your strengths and play to your weaknesses. the game is just like that now. you are not "not effective" nor "non-viable" just because you can't kill a magic immune stoneskin. when you meet packs like this, do like i do: spit on the monitor, curse the blizz programmer's mothers, and then bravely run away.

it is a problem if you can't beat the regen on most of the monsters you meet, boss pack or not. getting the most out of your attack involves eq, ias, skills, and stats. i don't think you are in need of this much help yet, but hollar if you are.

gmoura: finally started it eh? try it with the guillames instead of arreats, it's worth it. i use my arreats for a5 mercs now.

[Glenn Cain]

i have no money for trading coz i keep dying. not bothered to trade on the market coz its too complicated. i am playing uptwinked/pure. that excludes some lucky pick from some drops by players who deem these useless, or very rare and charitable act by players who bring me to their stash and invite me to accept their gifts.

heaven bretheren armour and mace
aldur advance
3 tal rasha helmet (bloody lucky)
nightsmoke belt

once in a while i get some good rares:

corspe crest slayer avenger guard (242 defense, 3 to BO, 30% lighting resist and others)
falcata rare


i do not suppose i am well "twinked" if you call this twinked.

i also suppose i will not be getting all your godly gears =(

in the end, should you be able to slice your way through world stone levels to the throne on your own to be a successful character?

[mstrnicegui]

The only way to make a successful character is to set a goal for that character. You could make a godly twinked barb that owns everything, but if he didn't have a goal starting out, then it's pretty hard to feel totally satisfied like you have something yet to accomplish.

Before I built my conc barb, TankGUI, I had all sorts of trouble surviving in hell diff. I didn't have much twinked gear, but I set a goal when I decided to make TankGUI, to survive in hell all the way to act 5 without having to drink potions all the time. I am highly satisfied with a successful build. He has made my goal with flying colors.

My next goal was to make a hammerdin that has serious killing power, since my conc barb can tank like no other, but is a slow killer. I now have HammerGUI with 10k dmg that brutally destroys everything around him and survives much better than a meteorb sorc with similar dmg, but not the same killing power. Yet another successful build.

There are some character builds that are more obscure that people make up to make it through normal difficulty only. That is their goal, are they not a successful build just because they can't decimate hell act 5? of course not. They are successful because they were given a goal and they reached it.

[Glenn Cain]

of course my my goal is to slice it thru every act and every region
but tats kinda hard huh

[tl998]

Your solution is to get ridiculously good equipment. Melee characters suck without expensive stuff nowadays. I held off making my first barb until I had the full IK set. With an IK conc barb I was doing pretty decently.

[Superhal]

items = playing time. the longer you play, the more items will drop. the more items that drop, the more uniques/sets you will see. you don't have to trade. all i've traded for are 2 stormshields and a pul rune.

[Glenn Cain]

ah diablo, time, money, it really works like the real world huh lol
thanks for your help all of you

[Superhal]

oh yeah forgot...i usually try to hit damage "breakpoints". if i am too low, i rearrange my eq:

norm a1: 25-40 damage
norm a2-5: 100+ damage
nm: 300 (non-melee), 1k (melee)
hell: 1-1.5k
all of these are for solo questing. if you are partying, i would recommend double for up to 4 players, triple for p5-8.

some tips on damage:
sharp grand charms are usable at lvl 21.
max damage jewels are usable at lvl 12 or something...18?
20 pd/sec jewels have 0 lvl req. i love the ones with -15%req + pd + 0 lvl req.
+skill items are generally useless for damage for barbs.
gems are your best source of damage up to lvl 18. use skulls as well, as all leech items except skulls require lvl 11 or higher.
crushing blow does more damage than almost all normal attacks because of global phys damage reduce.
beware of interrupted attacks. they can cut your damage to 0.

[mstrnicegui]

Like tl998 said, the only way for a barb to kill even in the vicintity to as quickly as say a blizzard sorc or hammerdin, godly equipment is required. Pretty much only the best of the best will work. And, while frenzy can kill pretty damn quickly, no barb build kills faster than ww.

[Superhal]

Like tl998 said, the only way for a barb to kill even in the vicintity to as quickly as say a blizzard sorc or hammerdin, godly equipment is required.

i do fine with my gore riders, guillames, 10% cb gloves, and cmoon's. i'd say i easily match blizz sorcs in 8 player games. hammedins are just lame, nobody can match them. i certainly can outsurvive them though.

[Glenn Cain]

ah so now hal seems to by triumphant on the fact that his defensive build holds something every other character does not have. conc barb make much mre sense now lol

[Glenn Cain]

i've got a few nice helmets

Brimston Crest Destroyer helm:
2 to barb skill
1 to increase speed
total defense 211

or Tal Rasha set helm

which one for use?


i also have a corpse crest slayer guard:
plus 30 att rate
3 to BO
8 to energy
lightning resist 23%
total defense 248

BUT ITS ETHEREAL!! ARGH!!!!!

[Superhal]

ah so now hal seems to by triumphant on the fact that his defensive build holds something every other character does not have. conc barb make much mre sense now lol

?? speak english man!

all those helms you mentioned aren't good. compare to arreats, delerium helm, or shako. (www.battle.net/diablo2exp).

[Halciet]

ah so now hal seems to by triumphant on the fact that his defensive build holds something every other character does not have. conc barb make much mre sense now lol

Wrong Hal, btw. I'm the Conc Hal, Super is the evil twin question answering Hal.

-Hal

[Glenn Cain]

ok. confusion. my apologies.

anyway i do not believe i will get my hands on any of those nice little metal caps, so i need to decide between what i have now?

[Superhal]

ok. confusion. my apologies.


it's ok, people always forget i'm the good-looking, no plastic surgery, still got all my teeth, no bald spot, and real blonde one.

[Glenn Cain]

yes yes you are sexy
free tonight?

duh

lol

[Glenn Cain]

hey i observe that axe damage are easily higher than sword
is there any reason i should not convert to axe with another character?

[mstrnicegui]

You're uncomfortable with your manhood and need to compensate with a big sword. That's about the only clear advantage swords have in pvm.

[Superhal]

i use 2 swords. what does that say about my manhood? :)

[Glenn Cain]

i know. it just means that you have more manhood than a long sword. thus you can multi-task. after, its the DELIVERED CONTENT that is in question, not the size of delivery apparatus. the more the better
versatile huh?

[mstrnicegui]

hmm, not just one big sword but two. Not just hal, but superhal... I see a trend forming :lol: