Synergies?

[Derrick]

I've read some stuff here on the site mentioning synergies, and I have done a search on the forums as well.

A lot of places mention them, but I can't seem to find a clear definition on what exactly a synergy is.

Any help would be appreciated.

[Crowd Control]

Lots of skills on all chars become stronger in some way by putting skill points in certain other skills. This is called synergie because sometimes it works both ways. For instance an Amazon specialized in throwing javelins has a powerful skill called 'Lighting Fury'. If you open the skill tree of the amazon and put the pointer on the 'Lightning Fury' you see that the lowest part of the box that open says something like: "this skill receives bonuses from [skillname] "
The skills mentioned are the synergies. For ' Lighting Fury' there are 5 synergies IIRC, one being 'Charged Strike' . Each skillpoint allocated to a synergie adds 1% (IIRC) extra dmg on top of the original 'Lightning Fury' dmg. This works also the other way around; putting a skillpoint in 'Lightning Fury' gives a certain percentage bonus to a 'Charged Strike' too.

All classes have some skills which work this way:
Blessed Hammer/Vigor/Blessed Aim
Hurricane/Tornado/....
Lightning/Chain Lightning/Charged Bolt/....

[Bobby Wong]

Synergies are often more important than the main skill that you are focusing on. For example, I often play barbarians that specialize in the double swing skill. Every point I put into double swing gives me 5% Attack Rating, whereas every point I put into Bash gives me 10% increased damage to my double swing attack. If I have only a few points to spare, I would take the damage rather than the AR any day.

You just have to do a little research to figure out your optimum skill point distribution. There are many good build guides on this forum, or check out the skill charts at the Arreat Summit: http://www.battle.net/diablo2exp/skills/

[Turmoil]

Synergies were added in later versions of the game, partly to help deal with the problem of earlier skills becoming "obsolete" in later stages of the game as the more powerful spells were favored.

[Thyiad]

Synergies in pictures (http://www.chrisclarke.co.uk/D2stuff/PDFs/Synergy_relationships/).

[Derrick]

Thanks for the help everyone!

[zeskelnec]

@thyiad : nice !!!
quickly spotted : shouldn't be a direct arrow between Double swing and Frenzy instead of double throw to frenzy ?

[Thyiad]

@zeskelnec - No idea - I got the piccies from one of the Stickies here; all my info on that site is. If you're right I guess I could add in an arrow. I am not really into game mechanics. LMK.