Results in: Monster hitpoints in Classic and LoD same

[Fearlessone]

The point has come up now and then over the past few years and its been assumed that LoD monsters have much higher or several times the life than our classic friends. This was indeed the case before Oct. 28th 2003, with 1.10. I've posted my disagreement with any sweeping unproved statements. Recently, I suggested just going out and testing it, with similar chars using the same skills, or trying to come up with a method of testing such as converting to Lod with a hell-level char and timing the difference. That's not necessary if you can measure your damage and the time it takes to kill certain monsters. I chose my pnova necros.

These necros have maxed pnova synergies. The classic necro has a lower resist level of 9 (-54%) and is lvl 91 and damage is listed as 2968-3140 over 2 seconds. My lvl 95 LoD necro has a higher LR skill level and does around 7K damage with annhilus and +skills grand charms, etc. But to test properly, I moved enough of these items to the stash to make the listed damage the same. Also, I removed any poison jeweled equipment and -poison resistance items, such as is available in Trangs partial set. FCR is irrelevant. The final LR level was 7 (-51%) on the LoD necro.

The Test. I made one person Hell games. So I took each necro out to Plains of Despair, finding Izual and rapidly killing all the nearby monsters while the timer started. Izual was kept green for the duration. A lvl 7 clay golem was used for both to keep Izual off the necros, they do little physical damage. Time to bring Izual down, results:

Classic Pnova necro - 26seconds
LoD.....Pnova necro - 28 seconds

Izuals Arreat Summit listed hitpoints: 57,365; pois res: 30%

Calculations. The average listed pnova dmg for each is 3054 over 2 sec. Izuals real pois resistance is -24% for the classic case, and -21% in Lod. Adjusting the pnova dmg for this case:

Classic pnova dmg -> 3787 over 2 sec x 13 casts = 49,231 dmg
Lod.....pnova dmg -> 3695 over 2 sec x 14 casts = 51,730 dmg

So both came to within about 15% of the stated hitpoints to bring Izual down. The clay golems might have done about 100 or so physical dmg over this time. The slightly greater classic dmg (due to the greater LowRes lvl) would probably account for about one second out of the 2 second difference. So there was one second difference, which isnt exactly precise, I expected to be off by several seconds during the test.

Any takers? Anyone else is welcome to try testing. But beware. You can't have a powerful merc at the same time with your character, and all sorts of charms, deadly strike, crushing blow, wildly different levels of critical strike, etc... Char lvl can affect attack rating against certain monsters, for melee damage. Keeping it simple, or absolutely identical helps. I chose the poison dmg because it is continuous and steady - predictable.

More. What isnt answered here is whether LoD monsters, up to act4, are "stronger" than classic monsters. Do they have better AI? Is their attack rating higher? and Do they hit for more damage? You can see how ill answered this question has been treated here:

http://forums.diabloii.net/showthread.php?t=270042

[Locke07]

I plan on converting my Hammerdin after I do about 100 Solo CS runs jotting down the time of Diablos Death, then making an average then continuing on with that in LOD... I hope that this would be a rather conclusive test?

[CdMagicFind]

I don't think so.. Diablo's death is sort of based on other things than his health.

[Fearlessone]

I don't think so.. Diablo's death is sort of based on other things than his health.
Umm....like what? I know that he has, or used to have, an invisible 52% block shield. That wouldnt work on elemental or magical damage. The game makers have built in variation such as mob spawning, your skills damage, and I believe in the past even the monsters life. So I'm trusting what the Arreat Summit says about Izual's LoD life in a single person game. Is Diablo's magic (hammer damage) resistance variable? That would be a new one...

Anyone should be able to hook up with a friend and test this. Problems do arise such as the reported damage display bugs, one of which, I've heard, is that concentration acts with only half strength from what is reported. Someone said you can test this with a barb friend and hit him with a hammer, then taking into consideration that pvp applies 1/6 the damage. There was some disagreement in this recent thread about whether it happens in classic as well as LoD.

[brucmack]

Aren't there any modders who could look directly into the config files and figure this out?

[BoringTown]

Aren't there any modders who could look directly into the config files and figure this out?
I lol'd. I'm surprised nobody has thought of this already.

[Dacar92]

I lol'd. I'm surprised nobody has thought of this already.

This forum doesn't support mods. That is why no one has mentioned it. Do what you like, but you will not be allowed to post the mod here, or directions on how to make it. Sorry.

[Kevin William Cox]

I lol'd. I'm surprised nobody has thought of this already.

LOL'D? So did I, about you not checking into a site to see what it's all about before you joined it. We don't promote Hacks/dupes/cheats or other mods to the game, though there are a few in the SPF, but those only help muling and keeping up with runewords. Anything outside of that is a no-no. Diablo 2, a mystery til you gain the knowledge for youself, as it was meant to be.




Kev

[BoringTown]

This forum doesn't support mods. That is why no one has mentioned it. Do what you like, but you will not be allowed to post the mod here, or directions on how to make it. Sorry.
Ha, no offense intended, but I lol'd once again.

If you think I'm a modder, or even capable of modding, you're overestimating me quite a bit.:rolleyes:

Now that that's clear, let's get your policy clear. We're not allowed to even extract information from the game files? Are you forgetting that the information in this thread (http://forums.diabloii.net/showthread.php?t=413093) is all extracted in the same way?

We don't promote Hacks/dupes/cheats or other mods to the game...
See above thread, and keep in mind that I am not talking about actually modding, but instead using the first step of modding to derive information.

Diablo 2, a mystery til you gain the knowledge for youself, as it was meant to be.
I believe that statement contradicts the purpose of 9/10's of this website...

[Dacar92]

Ha, no offense intended, but I lol'd once again.

If you think I'm a modder, or even capable of modding, you're overestimating me quite a bit.:rolleyes:





Extract all you want. I am saying that this site supports only vanilla D2, if you will, except for the SPF. You will get no help here about extracting, modding, or otherwise. There are other sites on the internet that support this kind of cheating, hacking, and "botting". You are welcome here as long as you understand the rules of the site and abide by them. Thanks for understanding.

[Fearlessone]

Sure would be nice if this thread got back on track. I read a few years back that even if the files say they are the same that only real testing could prove that (Monster life) was the same. I've been thinking about what the barb said in the link provided in the first post: that it took 10x as much ww'ing to kill Andariel after he converted to LoD.

So I decided to start testing it. Like I mentioned before, a skill like ww is just awful for a test on Monster Life. You have all sorts of things that can go wrong: critical strike, crushing blow, deadly strike, charms in inventory with things like +attack rating, +str/dex items. Some skills are identical in classic and LoD, but ww is one of the exceptions, along with static. Ww is speed dependant. I know the limitations of static, but ww has always been one of the hardest skills to pin down number of hits per second or per ww.

I have a classic sword barb who uses a 214 exec with -req. He has about 119 str and 77 dex and is lvl 89, and I am still working on him. He has frosties and a wormskull for cold and poison damage, and can cut thru 4 regular urdars in a full hell game in about 10-15 seconds.

The LoD barb used was given to me by someone leaving the game. It's a dueler sword barb with 268 str and 150 something dex. He was equipped with a rare 502 dmg 20ias thunder maul and 20ias gloves. He has at least +200 attrating in charms and a 6-sec pois charm. But he is a sword barb, so I got out a magical 468 dmg Cruel Colossus Sword of Evisceration, no ias. When equipped, the overall attack rating was over 4000 with about a 78% chance of hitting. I went out to the River and attacked 2 mobs: 4 regular Urdars and 4 regular Maw Fiends. The Urdars took about 2 minutes to kill, the Maw Fiends after about 5 min, were 1/3 to 1/2 down in life, they are poison immune and harder to kill. This was in a full game.

I was shocked at how poorly the LoD barb performed. When he used the thunder maul he would make 1-2 hits per ww. Even with the dmg and attack rating and critical strike with the sword, he could only make about 3-5 hits in a 1.5-2 second ww. So I'm not about to say "Wow, Monsters sure are harder in LoD!", it was clear that something about the ww is messed up.

Any constructive comments appreciated. I'll probably do some more testing soon with this barb and head over to the Barb forum to ask around.

[Damric]

about ww:

Remember in LoD ww is speed dependent so if you are trying to twirl around with a slow weapon you will suck. For 2 handers you need total of -59 speed to hit the fastest ww speed. 1h is -34. In classic you are just fine wwing around with a maul or pike or whatever, you will attack fast. Go to barb forum to see the exact frames per attack, ect.

As far as classic vs. LoD in terms of monster hps:

I've noticed that my latest barb which does a whopping 50-150 damage can cut thru any (except phys immunes) monsters in hell in a second or 2. He does have 50% crushing blow and 50% open wounds. Now what I wonder is those qualities are more powerful in classic becuase I know my barb's set-up would really suck in LoD. Otherwise monster health is much less. I don't know.

[Fearlessone]

Ok, so I checked out one of the calculators. Weapons like a lance have a frame per second attack of 14. The sword I used was 8 fps, some weapons had a 4fps with the right mods. Since the game runs at 25 fps, this went from 1.7 attacks per second with a lance to over 6 attacks per second with a really fast weapon. There might be even faster weapons, clue me in if there are, to get the fastest possible fps attack.

Tried to find info about the -59 speed stuff, but only found lists of uniques and runewords, not the magical and rare items I used.

I still didn't think this information justified why a weapon with over twice the damage took so long to kill, especially with poison charms keeping those urdars green nearly all the time (little reheal).

Btw, what is ur barbs setup to get that much crushing blow and open wounds? I am presuming a battle hammer with swordback and gtoes and rattlecage, ....With rcage u get the annoying flee mod, and it increases the time to kill by 50-100%(only ways to stop it are with Coif helm or using warcry). One-two seconds to kill a monster? But is that in a full game? I doubt it. With other monsters around, which is nearly always the case, it will just take longer per monster.

[fledgeling]

uh, I dont know if I can tell that, but what about doing a hammerdin in the editor (hammers have pretty low deviation of damage) and testing it single player?
the conver him to LOD

also, one could make a 120-120damage bow (or whatever) and test it too (just make yourself a cheated amulet with 10 000 AR or something)


perhaps test a fireball sorc, but Im not sure if the resists werent increased in LOD

[Damric]

feel free to laugh at my set-up:

1 point ww
20 points pole mastery
10 points natural resist
20 points battle orders
putting 20 points leap
1 point Battle Cry
1 point in battle command and the passives

Sigon's Helm and Belt for +attack rate and life steal
Rattlecage
Rare Amulet +1 barb skills + resists
Rare ring with 6%life leech and resists
7%manald
Goblin Toe
Cleglaws Glove for knockback and slow

WOESTAVE!!!

Them monsters are way too blind and slow(75%) to run away anywhere as they are reduced to a sliver from crushing blow then bleed to death from open wounds. And yes, this has been effective in hell with 8ppl.

My friend laughs at my set-up because we play LoD a lot and surely this can't work in LoD. However, I am more effective than a Bonesnap Barb in hell side by side comparison (maybe the range?)

[Fearlessone]

feel free to laugh at my set-up:

1 point ww
20 points pole mastery
putting 20 points leap
Rattlecage
Goblin Toe
Cleglaws Glove for knockback and slow

WOESTAVE!!!

Ho, Ho, Ho :dunce:

To me this sounds like an LLD setup that got carried along into hell*. Congratulations. Setups with mods like crushing blow, like I said, arent good at all for testing Monster life, just like a static sorc would be impossible to use. I dont think i ever see any barbs twirling with a grim scythe or bec anymore. They used to be more common.

Fledgeling: yeah skills like fireball or an enchantress with a bow like raven claw, or barb warcry or berserk would be good to use for testing.

To me its hard to figure out why after 3 years that no one has really tested what we are talking about here. Especially since you have LoD rushers using classic for the hellforge quest. You would think that one of the Statistics Forum number crunchers would like to tackle this...

*if I recall right, that weapon causes quite a stir in LLD circles, some people just arent prepared for it.