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Does Iron Maiden work when a monster attacks bonewall and/or prision. I did a search with no help, arreat summit makes it seem like it doesn't but doesn't actually say it... Any help would be appriciated.
Does Iron Maiden work when a monster attacks bonewall and/or prision. I did a search with no help, arreat summit makes it seem like it doesn't but doesn't actually say it... Any help would be appriciated.
It works. 100% for sure...
but it works very bad... dont even try to make some kind of iron maiden/bone wall necro
Im doing a bonemancer and thought a point in IM might be useful if it worked.
Korrupted
09-02-2005, 05:22
I don't think IM works well with any build. Unfortunately curses are an area which necro's (at least on asia) seem to be lacking in...constant use of IM, even on ranged attackers, overriding LR in a party full of sorcs to boost their ~10 skeles damage with Amp...
what is IM's rate on PVP?
Not sure but if it even works half as well as in PvM (which i know it not the same for PvP) it still going to be lethal.
It not very handy to use on PvM cause most mobs don't hit that hard so the damage that is reflected don;t do that much to their massive amounts of hp.
However it the opposite for a player in PvM. That why O.K are so dangerous against most melee classes/builds. One hit from your barb or paladin etc with IM cursed and you could physical kill yourself instantly.
Not sure but if it even works half as well as in PvM (which i know it not the same for PvP) it still going to be lethal.
It not very handy to use on PvM cause most mobs don't hit that hard so the damage that is reflected don;t do that much to their massive amounts of hp.
However it the opposite for a player in PvM. That why O.K are so dangerous against most melee classes/builds. One hit from your barb or paladin etc with IM cursed and you could physical kill yourself instantly.
just a thought: when duelling zon, cast IM on her then cast walls to block her arrows?
Mad Mantis
09-02-2005, 20:53
just a thought: when duelling zon, cast IM on her then cast walls to block her arrows?
IM only works on non-ranged physical damage.
Thanks I appriciate it, I think I'll just stick with decrep for this build.
IM doesnt work really well either in pvm and pvp. For pvm, the monster's hit points have way more than their dmg dealing. (not to mention they all have 50%physical resistance in hell) For pvp, the dmg return only works on melee and is cut 1/10, (like thorn) and if u wear DR gears, then it will even return less dmg to player.
rickcarson
10-02-2005, 09:44
Iron Maiden DOES WORK in pvm. ... *If* you do it right.
The right way to do it is to put a lot of points into it.
What *won't* work is putting one point into it, putting a point in BW and then thinking that you are now able to solo hell.
Iron Maiden works very very well with Attract. They are okay curses on their own, but in combination they are a thing of beauty. However, both of them have a fixed radius, which is my only complaint about the combo.
Also, Iron Maiden doesn't really work that well with a Skellimancer, you are better off using Amp. Though it does work fine with a Golem (you'll need *something* for the monsters to beat on, because certain mobs (such as the last wave of baal's minions) aren't susceptible to Attract).
If you're on ladder, note that the extremely cheap (Tir+Tal+Amn) runeword 'Edge' provides (in combination with Amp) a much higher level of damage return than Iron Maiden.
If you're off ladder, as soon as the current ladder season ends, you will feel like a complete tool for putting 20 points into Iron Maiden. Edge + Amp also combos nicely with Corpse Explosion to add that extra level of insult to the injury this once noble build has suffered.
If you're offline in single player, I suggest that Iron Maiden + Attract + Golem is a fun build if you like doing things differently. A nice part is that it doesn't require any 'leetzor ublar gearzorz'.
The 'Big Problem' with this build of course is the archers and more so the ranged spellcasters. Naturally there are ways and means of dealing with that, but its definitely something to think about when you plan your build.
A note about Bonewall: while I have seen monsters attacking Bonewalls, I've also seen them standing around next to bonewalls doing nothing. There doesn't seem to be any way to reliably force them to attack the bonewall.
Iron Maiden DOES WORK in pvm. ... *If* you do it right.
The right way to do it is to put a lot of points into it.
Rick as usual we not talking about IM not working at all but moreso on it not working too well (imo) compared to other more direct methods of disposing your enemies. On hell your gonna find your going have to wait a while if your relying on IM alone to take affect. So completing the whole game solo on this could take a while .....and patience. But hey, that your thing looking at unorthodox/original builds so it cool.
The idea of using "edge" to enhance the returns has merit but again it not exactly "doing it right" with IM if your going to need tweaks to make it better.
What my biggest grep about IM is that it use to be quite a effective skill however they changed it so much with (the conditions) it is now more suited for the mob prespective rather than player.
But that just imo of course :)
One thing i couldn't quite remember though was that if it affect PI's?
One thing i couldn't quite remember though was that if it affect PI's?
no PI would take no dmg from IM
Iron Maiden DOES WORK in pvm. ... *If* you do it right.
The right way to do it is to put a lot of points into it.
What *won't* work is putting one point into it, putting a point in BW and then thinking that you are now able to solo hell.
Iron Maiden works very very well with Attract. They are okay curses on their own, but in combination they are a thing of beauty. However, both of them have a fixed radius, which is my only complaint about the combo.
Also, Iron Maiden doesn't really work that well with a Skellimancer, you are better off using Amp. Though it does work fine with a Golem (you'll need *something* for the monsters to beat on, because certain mobs (such as the last wave of baal's minions) aren't susceptible to Attract).
If you're on ladder, note that the extremely cheap (Tir+Tal+Amn) runeword 'Edge' provides (in combination with Amp) a much higher level of damage return than Iron Maiden.
If you're off ladder, as soon as the current ladder season ends, you will feel like a complete tool for putting 20 points into Iron Maiden. Edge + Amp also combos nicely with Corpse Explosion to add that extra level of insult to the injury this once noble build has suffered.
If you're offline in single player, I suggest that Iron Maiden + Attract + Golem is a fun build if you like doing things differently. A nice part is that it doesn't require any 'leetzor ublar gearzorz'.
The 'Big Problem' with this build of course is the archers and more so the ranged spellcasters. Naturally there are ways and means of dealing with that, but its definitely something to think about when you plan your build.
A note about Bonewall: while I have seen monsters attacking Bonewalls, I've also seen them standing around next to bonewalls doing nothing. There doesn't seem to be any way to reliably force them to attack the bonewall.
The thorns aura and the amp curse, you say is a good combo, so i asume they do not override eachother (aura isnot curse).
I just want to be sure, i like to try your corrupted build, was good reading anyway.
Mad Mantis
10-02-2005, 17:11
The thorns aura and the amp curse, you say is a good combo, so i asume they do not override eachother (aura isnot curse).
Indeed, these two can be in effect at the same time. They do not override each other.
rickcarson
11-02-2005, 08:28
Rick as usual we not talking about IM not working at all but moreso on it not working too well (imo) compared to other more direct methods of disposing your enemies. On hell your gonna find your going have to wait a while if your relying on IM alone to take affect. So completing the whole game solo on this could take a while .....and patience. But hey, that your thing looking at unorthodox/original builds so it cool.
Kyo, as usual, people are thinking of the tests which people did about a year ago.
Those tests (or the commonly reported versions of them) indicated that if you cast Attract on a monster, it would take ages and ages for that monster to die.
The math might be a bit hard, but basically for N monsters, (assuming as the testers did) that you cast Amp on the crowd, then the total damage 'per round' is N+1. (The +1 is for whichever monster with Amp the Attracted monster attacks)
What I was suggesting was that those results *do not apply* to Attract and Iron Maiden, for which the following equation determines damage for N monsters:
If you have M damage return for N monsters, the damage will be
N + M(N-1)
eg each of the monsters (including the one with Attract) does their damage, then those monsters with IM on them (of which there are N-1 ie all but the one with Attract) each take M damage back.
Lets look at some sample numbers:
N = 5. M = 9 (900% damage returned - easy to get to)
For Attract + Amp the damage is 5+1 = 6
For Attract + Iron Maiden the damage is 5 + (9 * 5 - 1) = 5 + (9 * 4) = 41
41 / 6 = 6.8333
So in this simple example, Attract + Iron Maiden is 6.8333 times better than the results that everyone thinks of when they say that damage return is rubbish. Hmmm...
Lets add a few more critters, let N = 10.
Attract + Amp = 10 + 1 = 11
Attract + IM = 10 + (9 * (10 - 1)) = 91
91 / 11 is 8.2727
(Which also illustrates the point in my comparison of IM vs Amp that IM gets better as you add extra enemies.)
------
But how do those numbers stack up 'in real life'. For the remainder of the discussion, assume only two monsters, one of them with Attract, the other with Iron Maiden.
Lets look at a common monster in Act 1, the humble skeleton.
Lets pick 'Bone Warrior' as our sample critter. In Hell it has 3124-5952 hit points (4538 average). (NB: it also has 33% damage resistance). Its melee attacks do 37-94 and 37-98 damage respectively. This is an average of 66.5 damage. Factor in the damage resistance, and it goes down to 44.555.
If we divide the average hit points by the average damage, we discover that it takes 101.85 hits on average for two skeletons to beat each other to death. If one of them is Amped, it will be less (40.86 hits (as it takes 44.555 + 66.5 damage each time). But still allows significant time for regen to kick in, and in all likelihood, the skellies would beat on each other all day and have barely a scratch to show for it.
No wonder people complain about it being slow!
However, if one of the two is IMed at 900%, it will take 44.555 + (44.555 * 9) points of damage each hit (445.55 damage - skellimancers take note!!! (And this is only an act one monster, and against a monster with phys res!!! (equivalent base skeleton damage would have to be 665!!!! (!!!!!!!!)))
:surprise:
Oh wait, no, I forgot about the Amp, but still, its impressive (required base skeleton damage (after might, fanat etc but before amp) would have to be 400 to match the Iron Maiden)
Anyway, back to the point, the Bone Warrior with Iron madien is going to die ten times faster - in only 10.185 hits (call it 11). Now thats *maybe* going to stretch to 12 or 13 hits if there's some really aggressive regen going on, but to suggest that this is slow and 'requires patience' beggars the imagination.
For the elucidation of the audience, lets compare the Hell Bone Warrior with the Normal Bone Warrior. Hit points is 45-62 (53.5 average), damage is 4-10 and 3-10 (average 6.75). Damage returned multiplies by 9, so the Bone Warrior in Normal dies in one shot. So hell is only approx 12-13 times slower. You could run around with /players 8 on in Normal to get a
pretty good idea of what Hell will be like (not all monsters have the phys res, so the 12-13 hits becomes 8 hits, hence players 8 is not unresonable).
In Nightmare, the average hp of a Bone Warrior is 1172, and the average damage is 36, so the IMed Bone Warrior dies in 3.25 hits.
This gives us a fairly simple rule of thumb, to see what Hell is like you could play in Nightmare with /players 4 on. (Also more realistic than in normal, since in normal you don't start with your IM maxed, whereas by the time you hit Nightmare you can have it maxed if you want)
Well, thats Act 1 Hell, anything that can do Hell Pit Runs is 'viable in my book.
What about Act 5? An IMed Hell Frozen Abyss (40% phys res) dies in 19.26 hits. A Death Brigadier (33% phys res) in 9.78 hits.
And the ultimate in 'omg run away run away': the final wave of minions before you get to big bad Baal: Hell Minions of Destruction (50% phys res) die in a whopping 55.87 hits. Ouch. Okay, that one might take a while (NB: they'll be immune to Attract as well).
Personally, when I hit those ones, I plan on having some Crushing Blow Revives to "layeth the smack down" on them. (Alternate recommendation: isolate one of them, and kill it, and then Amp + CE the rest)
So thats Hell. Other than the relatively few Phys Immunes (sure seems like a lot less now than there were in 1.09), and the stuff that *everyone* has problems with (eg Black Souls) the numbers actually seem to stack up okay for the Iron Maiden build.
Now, for the Edge + Bramble + Amp combo, it just gets very very juicy, because Amp works wonders against all that nasty phys res, so those Minions of Destruction would die something like 6 times faster (rough guess nine hits each!!!), the other Hell monsters listed will die maybe 4-5 times faster (depending on how much PR they started with). (Or only 2-3 times faster with Edge + Amp but no Bramble)
Conclusion: Iron Maiden certainly isn't obsolete because it 'suxorz', its obsolete because of a massively overpowered low level runeword (where's that rant smiley when I need it most eh?).
My Mojomancer may not like it, but my passive/aggressive zon and 'fuzzy wuzzy' druid love it. (Finally, a Druid worth playing! No offence, but with all my other Druids I've just seemed to lose interest in them very quickly)
I am not sure how u quantify your numbers and equations in relation to IM but it still don't explain how it can be affective.
Yes IM may get better returns compared to AMP but why are we really comparing them? 6.33333 times better?!. When did skills ever be measured in a constant. when they both do 2 totally different things.
Strategy is the fundemental factor imo. When using IM if your waiting for your skeletons to get hit, yes it could be 10 faster against 1 mob however your warriors ain't gonna last too long if you going to do this against 20+ mobs similtaneously. You could counter by saying just resummon but the point is, it really depends on the build ie if your caster of poison, bone etc the last thing your going to do is worry about constantly resummoning, but again weare here to look at IM exclusively and not ways to making it better
And the ultimate in 'omg run away run away': the final wave of minions before you get to big bad Baal: Hell Minions of Destruction (50% phys res) die in a whopping 55.87 hits. Ouch. Okay, that one might take a while (NB: they'll be immune to Attract as well).
Personally, when I hit those ones, I plan on having some Crushing Blow Revives to "layeth the smack down" on them. (Alternate recommendation: isolate one of them, and kill it, and then Amp + CE the rest)
No offence your sole strategy when it comes to "the big boys" is relying on using revive, CB, AMP CE etc but aint exactly showing us "how to do it right" with IM particularly if your whole build revolves around it.
Conclusion: Iron Maiden certainly isn't obsolete because it 'suxorz', its obsolete because of a massively overpowered low level runeword
Sorry, i am totally confused, so now are we saying IM is obsolete ??
rickcarson
11-02-2005, 16:28
@Kyo I didn't understand your reply, if I interpret it correctly you seem to be saying that I'm saying things which I did not say, or certainly never meant that way. It was a long post, and after I posted I did spot some spelling and punctuation issues. Maybe if I'd shortened it it would have been clearer.
Misunderstanding #1
You say that you don't understand the math. Well... I thought that the math was fairly clear and pretty much spoke for itself. I didn't think anyone could argue with the numbers.
The statistics I used for monster hit points, physical resistance and damage were taken from the Arreat Summit. They did not include any bonus elemental damage. Two attacks are listed in the beastiary I do not know how the monsters choose which attack to use, so I just assumed they were used equally often and averaged them.
If the monster was listed as having 33% physical resistance, then I took its average damage, and multiplied by 0.67 before continuing. (That's how 66.5 turns into 44.555)
Perhaps you think that I was trying to say that Iron Maiden was always better than Amp? That wasn't what I was saying. Remember that this is in the context of a companion curse for Attract, and in that particular context, and completely ignoring any minions which you may or may not have, Iron Maiden is massively better than Attract.
I've got a couple of builds waiting in the wings, but the easiest way I have to explain how they work is by referencing Games Theory. I'm probably going to have to revise that if I can't even explain basic algebra.
Misunderstanding #2
The example of two skeletons beating on each other is two monsters beating on each other, not a monster beating on one of your skeletons. And my little comparison with the skeleton damage required (eg the base damage of 400) was in there simply to 'tweak the tails' of the skelimancer zealots. So I didn't understand why you were talking about resummoning the skeletons. Probably I should have used a different example. I could have cheated and used a monster without physical resistance, but I just grabbed the first one that I associate most with the various areas of Act 1 (I didn't think that people would take Fallen as seriously as Bone Warriors).
Misunderstanding #3
You seem to think that you could improve Iron Maiden by adding a basic Skelimancer portion to the build. I think that would be a stunningly bad idea. I mean, just for starters early on your skellies and your Iron Maiden would be in conflict, because both of them are very points hungry skills. And then if you were going to introduce another 9-15 minions to the equation, as I indicated in my earlier post you would end up outnumbering them, and that means that you would have to seriously consider using Amp instead of Iron Maiden... and you just end up with the standard 'I would have been a fishymancer, but I chose to be suboptimal instead' build.
Revive + Iron Maiden would be a better choice than Skellies + Iron Maiden, because you don't really care if the Revives get the stuffing beat out of them, and also Revives give a much better body count for far fewer skill points spent. But I found that I was always conscious of wanting to pump Attract to get its duration up for the jumps to Nightmare and then Hell. (Remember that the main thrust of my argument is that Attract + Iron Maiden is a good combo, much better than either of them separately (though I suppose a case could be made for Revive + Iron Maiden instead as it achieves pretty much the same thing (and without having to pump lots of points into Skeleton Mastery))).
Misunderstanding #4
That you would pooh pooh everything I said on the basis that fighting the final wave of Baal's minions will be quite tough... Frankly, is bizarre. I only included them as a 'reality check' so that people wouldn't think I was being overly biased, or that they would rush around thinking its all really easy. I mean, thats probably the toughest fight in the whole game, and you dismiss it because there might be a tough fight???
*pulls up a chair*
*sits down*
*waits for Kyo to go over to the Amazon forum and inform them that noone should ever play an Amazon ever again because Normal Duriel is 'a tough fight'*
*turns to person next to him and says "this should be good"*
*munches popcorn*
*waits some more*
Oh, were you over at the Sorceress forum telling people that noone should ever use Fire spells because there are Fire Immune creatures in the game??? My bad.
Misunderstanding #5
Is Iron Maiden a good skill? Yes. Are there better options that do exactly the same thing, only more so? Yes. Are these options new? Yes. So does that make Iron Maiden obsolete. Yes... kind of.
Note that those options (eg Edge runeword) are not available to offline and non ladder play.
-
As an aside, there is something wrong with most of the people on this forum. It is this: that they see everything as very black and white. When given multiple options, the psychology is that only one can be 'the right' choice. Only one can be uber. Everything which is not uber (ie all the other options) must be suxorz.
Example: take a look at all the discussions of Clay vs Iron golems. For most people it seems like its not okay for them to each be good in certain situations. Its not okay for one of them to be better if you have at least 7-8 in +skills (which is what the numbers say when talking about hit points). Its not okay for one of them to be slightly better than the other. No, to satisfy the masses, one must be 'Good' (and always be 'Good'), and the other, by process of elimination must be 'Bad' (and always be 'Bad') because anything which is not 'Good' must be 'Bad'.
I see a little bit of it on other forums, but not to the same degree, eg noone bashes you for coming up with a Berserk based build simply because there is this other skill called Whirlwind. Blizzard and Frozen Orb both have their advocates, but it is happily conceded that both of them are 'good'.
Mad Mantis being a prime example of if not the cause of this problem, then at least part of it. (I mean, noone holds a gun to these people who turn up and want cookie cutter builds and don't want to have to think about painful things like 'tactics', but we don't have to encourage them, and by popping in and offering what appears to be the 'official' or 'semi-official' version of the status quo, it only encourages that kind of thinking.)
Or maybe we *should* encourage them? Give them what they want, in an easily accessible format, by providing them exactly what they want in the form of cookie cutter builds.
There should be a cookie cutter build thread. Someone should slap in there:
the fishymancer (plus gvandale's *considerable* contributions to that discussion).
Also there should be a 'high end' build, eg commandomancer, because people always want to know the maximum that things can be pushed to.
And a PvP bone guide. (well, all of the very best necro PvP guides, I have no idea how many of these there are, I kind of get the impression that Bone Spear or Spirit is one of the best PvP builds, but aren't there also people doing Poison + Teeth? Or has that been sufficiently countered by everyone else that noone does that anymore? Or is Poison now considered to be BM?)
And maybe a poison guide or poison/summon guide if those builds *really* are in fact 'uber'. Probably it'd be a 'high end' thing because it'd have to include Death's Web which I hear is hard to come by.
And probably a whole post or five on how:
you cannot make runewords in magical items. That means no White runeword in items which alread have pluses to P&B.
how the Marrowalks bug works, why you shouldn't put a point into BP if you're going to use it, and why on earth does the necro forum still get uppity and whinge about it being a bug when all the other forums have long since stopped referring to the charged item bonus synergies for their classes (or cross class items) as bugs and openly and enthusiastically embraced them???
that Lower Resist does not work with Bone spells (I think the message has gotten through, we haven't had any posts asking about it for a while that I've noticed).
Poison Dagger attack rating, the lying character screen and you (it probably doesn't help that even Mad Mantis' guide (and others) contains several glaring errors (that were believed to be true at the time, but later testing found out they didn't work), of which this is one).
(yes, its called a faq, no, it doesn't seem to be doing the job)
Pretty much everything else (and *especially* most of my contributions to date) should be relegated to 'tier 2'. Eg these are not the uber builds, for the uber builds, go see the cookie cutter thread, move along, nothing to see here kind of thing.
Why doesn't the faq work? Probably because using it requires thinking, and the very essence of seeking the cookie cutter builds is to abandon as much thought (*especially* critical thinking) as possible. We need like a 'McDonalds drive through' kind of system for the cookie cutters, oh sure, the rest of us can be inside the 'restaurant' having a good old food fight, but that need not disturb our valued customers.
Part of the problem is that the good stuff gets lost over time. I imagine that what might work would be like a wiki, where you set it up so that someone responsible and nice (eg Mad Mantis) maintains the first couple of layers... eg 'here's a beer, over here for your convenience we have the best builds, here's some common questions about them etc. Here's a little helper to help you pick the right one for you (eg Are you Rich Y/N if Y then Do you want to duel or PvP Y/N etc)'. And then buried in some footnote would be a link to 'the weird stuff' the ongoing discussions or something.
rickcarson
11-02-2005, 16:34
... was nicer, warmer and fluffier, and had lots of political correctness eg 'don't take this the wrong way', 'please don't be upset... but' etc.
Then I ran afoul of my arch nemesis, the evil 10k character limit! So I had to remove all the hand holdy teletubby waffle. Sorry.
If it seems overly flamey (It ends with me lightly roasting the whole forum) keep in mind that I've just seen the first of the Battlestar Galactica mini series, which in a way was good, but in another way was bad. I saw Richard Hatch (I think, the actor who originally played Apollo) speak at a sci-fi con in NZ about 4-5 years ago and my goodness the man had incredible passion for that series (as compared to say Danny John Jules (cat from Red Dwarf) who spent most of his time (different con) trying to chat up the whole of a girls (high school girls) water polo team (who also happened to be at the hotel at the time)... but who was also highly 'entertaining', just in an entirely different way). What has me upset is that the man has basically been crawling on his belly over broken glass with his zipper down for the last 20+ years trying to get Hollywood to give BG another go, and when they finally do (talk about moving mountains) they don't even find a way to get him onto the screen. Sure he's (by Hollywood standards) an old fart... well, make him Adama! Or make him the president or something, for crying out loud!
Oh the injustice!!
Mad Mantis
11-02-2005, 20:28
Mad Mantis being a prime example of if not the cause of this problem, then at least part of it. (I mean, noone holds a gun to these people who turn up and want cookie cutter builds and don't want to have to think about painful things like 'tactics', but we don't have to encourage them, and by popping in and offering what appears to be the 'official' or 'semi-official' version of the status quo, it only encourages that kind of thinking.)
Or maybe we *should* encourage them? Give them what they want, in an easily accessible format, by providing them exactly what they want in the form of cookie cutter builds.
As you point out, I’m a firm believer of the “encouragement theory”. When somebody is new I assume that they do not know anything about our class. These Newcomers should be made aware of the potential of the Necromancer class. The best way to explore this potential is to get to know all the different skills by playing various cookie cutter builds. These builds are proven to work and are an easy and fun way to familiarize yourself with all the options.
Why should we confront somebody who doesn’t know anything about the class to difficult strategies and builds that seem underpowered? A Newcomer will most likely get stuck in the beginning of NM and will turn his back to the class.
It is my belief that once people get to know the cookie cutters and understand them, they will come up with new ideas or atypical strategies that they want to try out. Once somebody indicates that he wants to pursue an alternative strategy, I’ll be happy to help them and I have done so on several occasions. This goes for all the regulars on this forum. It is not that we don’t care for original thought and underpowered builds, it is just that most of the Newcomers (the ones who post 90% of the questions) have shown us over the years that they don’t care for these builds yet. Since we have gained a lot of new contributors to the forum I can only assume that this method seems to work.
We need like a 'McDonalds drive through' kind of system for the cookie cutters, oh sure, the rest of us can be inside the 'restaurant' having a good old food fight, but that need not disturb our valued customers.
We can't force people to read the [ Essential Necromancer Information ] (http://www.rpgforums.net/showthread.php?t=232935) sticky and think. There will always be posts by people who want a quick answer and a lot of reassurance.
Even if you do direct them to a guide, they will just add the little line "I read the guides already" to their next post and do the exact same thing. These people will be here always no matter what we do.
Part of the problem is that the good stuff gets lost over time.
This is were the members come in. They know which threads contain good information. They memorise it and can reproduce it when it is necessary. If you feel that a lot of the knowledge has gotten lost, then post the info in threads that deal with it, or write a new guide thread.
Sometimes I will ask members who have posted interesting information in one thread to create a new thread that can be stickied. Most of the time when a thread contains some good new information it will either be incorporated into a guide, or the person who posted the info will make a new thread which will then be stickied. Making sure that the info doesn’t get lost is a group effort.
P.S. I still can’t find that Golem-based Build Guide you talked about. Care to provide me with a link?
What *won't* work is putting one point into it, putting a point in BW and then thinking that you are now able to solo hell.
your on.
A note about Bonewall: while I have seen monsters attacking Bonewalls, I've also seen them standing around next to bonewalls doing nothing. There doesn't seem to be any way to reliably force them to attack the bonewall.
get out of their vision radius and then come back.
encouragement is good.
rickcarson
12-02-2005, 09:16
your on.
'Eh?' *taps microphone* 'is this thing on?'
'okay, so a barbarian, necromancer and a fallen wander into a tavern...'
get out of their vision radius and then come back.
encouragement is good.
Hmm... interesting.
Most of the time I'm running around with minions, so running away and then coming back can be frustrating.
I wonder if it could be made to work like this:
Step 1: Massive Dim Vision
Step 2: Lay down some BoneWalls
Step 3: Turn off DV by replacing with Iron Maiden
Step 4: ???
Step 5: Profit!
Or maybe a really short duration confuse would do the same trick, when it wears off, the Bonewall is the closest thing, so they acquire that as the target?
rickcarson
12-02-2005, 10:07
Why should we confront somebody who doesn’t know anything about the class to difficult strategies and builds that seem underpowered?
A Newcomer will most likely get stuck in the beginning of NM and will turn his back to the class.
Well, I'll plead guilty to the charge of 'controversial', but not to the charge of underpowered. Getting through Nightmare is my standard for a build. And most of the time I've been doing it untwinked and/or in hardcore.
Once you get to hell, its a different ballgame of course. Very few builds can get through hell untwinked. I've done it with a skelimancer for instance, but its a long hard slog.
Whereas someone else with whole mules full of Enigmas and all the +skills charms they could want is going to have a totally different play experience.
We can't force people to read the [ Essential Necromancer Information ] (http://www.rpgforums.net/showthread.php?t=232935) sticky and think.
Cattleprods... thats what we need.
I'm suggesting that at the bare minimum a rename and reshuffle is in order. Separate out all the 'top tier' builds (of which there are surely less than half a dozen). And clearly label them as being the cookie cutters.
A lot of the information which gets buried in the faq and gets asked again and again (or at least the four or five most common questions) should get their own posts, and be stickied.
Its about the user interface. At the moment the user interface requires too much thinking.
And maybe, just maybe, when someone posts their new build, they won't have to wade through all the whining about how its not a cookie cutter, how you shouldn't put more than one point in skills x, y and z, etc. Or if someone does start that, then you can just point them at the stickied 'best builds'.
Keep the number of best builds small. And if something is going to be promoted to best build status, then something else should be demoted. And there should be a 'waiting period'. Of at least a couple of months in between a build being announced, and it becoming eligible for lobbying to put it into the best build. Eg if someone wants to argue that (for instance) their Iron Maiden build is worthy of best build status, then they have to wait, and then gather consensus, and then make a case for replacing the fishymancer (or whatever is in the niche they want to occupy).
Not that that should be an issue anyway, I mean the 1.09 mojo mancer certainly wasn't in the top tier, so why should the 1.10 mojo mancer have to be measured against the 1.10 best builds?
Here are the basic categories I'm thinking of:
Untwinked:
Hardcore
Classic (no runewords)
Offline (no ladder only runewords)
Twinked:
PvM
PvP
Top End Runewords (price is no limit)
Eg, someone comes in, wants to know what the best PvP build is, and they can find it.
Actually, probably most of the untwinked list is redundant since hardly anyone else is likely to care about that sort of thing.
What are the most common requests?
There should be a "I'm just starting and have nothing" build (NB: this is relevant even for the pros, every time the ladder resets)
There should be a "What is the best PvP" build, because frankly, noone wants to build the second best PvP build, do they?
And there should be an 'uber' build, something for the '100 zod in each pocket' crowd.
There will always be posts by people who want a quick answer and a lot of reassurance.
Then lets make it easy for them to get what they want.
Even if you do direct them to a guide, they will just add the little line "I read the guides already" to their next post and do the exact same thing.
Because the current ui is not user friendly.
This is were the members come in. They know which threads contain good information. They memorise it and can reproduce it when it is necessary.
Well, thats part of the problem. If they've memorised it wrong, or if it turns out not to be correct, then misinformation can linger for a very long time.
It also makes it hard to challenge the status quo. Or to give situational advice. Eg someone posts that they don't have any +skills gear, and they want to know which is the best golem. There are a number of possible answers:
(a) Clay, but only put one point into it (and let +skills do the rest)
(b) Iron, if you're going to get the prereqs for Revives anyway, Clay otherwise.
(c) Fire, for PvP
Now, hardly anyone is going to say (c), because if they have no decent gear, how likely is it that they'll be duelling?
So just about everyone will say (a) even though in that situation, it is clearly the wrong one. The regulars have a lot of knee jerk reactions, but don't consider the situation. Its not that they're wrong, its just that their world view is that you 'always' have like +20 or more to skills, so their advice is filtered through that bias.
If you feel that a lot of the knowledge has gotten lost, then post the info in threads that deal with it, or write a new guide thread.
Sometimes I will ask members who have posted interesting information in one thread to create a new thread that can be stickied. Most of the time when a thread contains some good new information it will either be incorporated into a guide, or the person who posted the info will make a new thread which will then be stickied. Making sure that the info doesn’t get lost is a group effort.
Speaking of stickies, should you unstick the televangelist (noone has posted there for ages), or should I do a final update or ???
P.S. I still can’t find that Golem-based Build Guide you talked about. Care to provide me with a link?
Are you referring to the MF mancer with the Act 5 merc that someone else did, or one of my golem/curse heavy builds? or ???
Mad Mantis
12-02-2005, 13:33
I'm suggesting that at the bare minimum a rename and reshuffle is in order. Separate out all the 'top tier' builds (of which there are surely less than half a dozen). And clearly label them as being the cookie cutters.
Actually I have a new thread ready to go. Before my finals I didn't have time to upload it and after my finals the forum was giving me troubles. I'll label the cookie cutters and make sure that people understand that they are easy to play.
Any recommendations for a title that will prove more effective are welcomed.
Speaking of stickies, should you unstick the televangelist (noone has posted there for ages), or should I do a final update or ???
Well, the waiting period is over. I was going to unstick it today and ask you to do a final update before being added to the stickies.
Are you referring to the MF mancer with the Act 5 merc that someone else did, or one of my golem/curse heavy builds? or ???
The build you mentioned in the Mojomancer thread started by HoS.
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