2 quick and random questions (CM and moat trick)

[Cinder]

1. Why is lvl 17 the "golden level" for cold mastery?

2. What exactly is the moat trick?

[distancepieman]

1. Why is lvl 17 the "golden level" for cold mastery?

2. What exactly is the moat trick?


1.) It has to do with a limited gain beyond lvl 17, I can't give the exact reason, I'll leave it for someone else to handle.

2.) The moat trick is a very simple way to beat Mephisto, even if you have bad resists and not much mana. Make your way to Durance 3, kill off the counsil like guys on one side, tele over to get Meph's attention, then when he comes to get you tele back to the other side of the little stream of blood. Move far enough back in the screen that you can get a name lock on him and he should be in the top corner of your screen. By doing this, you can cast your spells at him (blizzard, meteor, fireball, etc.) and he won't cast back. If you do accidently move forward and he starts to attack, just move further down in the screen. (it helps to hold shift while you attack.) Just a side note, this doesn't work to well if you have a merc, as he/she will tend to run up towards the moat and get him casting. Tele back over once he's dead, collect the booty and move on.

~Bails

[Mr.E]

CM Level 17 is -100 Cold Resist. Once you hit greater than 100%, you're wasting Skill Points against any set of monsters with 0% Cold Res.

You can do the moat trick with a merc. =[ You just have to really clear out the council members there. TP up the middle path (across from the portal, and where the Council sometimes is) and then walk around back to the side you're moating Meph from. If you get back around quick enough, you can keep your merc from following you for long enough and he'll be stuck in the middle path while you moat Meph from the left/right sides.

[kookaroo113]

if im far away from him i cant hit him with my blizz but if im too close he can hit me its always one of the other :buddies:

[kookaroo113]

:flip: :flip: if im far away from him i cant hit him with my blizz but if im too close he can hit me its always one of the other :buddies:...but thats just me :flip:

[xanth]

even though most people say 17 is the golden level on my blizz sorc, i decided to max it before maxing ice bolt just because i dont wanna assume that all monsters have a 0% cold resist...it still helps a lot if the monster has a 50% cold resist...every point counts

[melianor]

The actual main reason why we tend to choose slvl17 for Cold Mastery on Dual-tree builds (mind you, you will have to max Cold Mastery with a pure cold build!!!), is that the amount of monsters types that have a higher resistance than cannot be lowered to -100% with lvl17 CM is quite low.
Also those monsters with higher cold resistance will mostly have their other resistances lower, so you can then use your other elemental attacks to dispose them off.

[Cinder]

I've been doing hell mef runs with my frozen orb sorc just fine. I ocassionally die, but I'm not really looking for exp from mef, is it really worth the time to kill the council members?

Edit: on re-reading the question, it sounds like I mean the travincal members. I mean one side of the moat's council member(s).

[melianor]

I've been doing hell mef runs with my frozen orb sorc just fine. I ocassionally die, but I'm not really looking for exp from mef, is it really worth the time to kill the council members?

Only if you are into goldfinding. For MF they are rather useless after their first kill on each difficulty.