Hidden Facts about Trang Oul's Set

[Damric]

Alrighty, everyone can easily read the statistics about the full Set bonus on Arreat Summit, so I won't go much in depth on that here. The purpose of this thread is to expose all of the not so obvious things about Trang Oul's Avatar. Please add more information as you discover it.

1. Fast Cast Rate animation is very slow while in Vampire form. This makes Bone Spirit/Teeth/Spear builds less desireable with this equipment. The exact breakpoints for this are listed in the Mouldy Tome.

2. You move at running speed even while walking. This is useful to maintain maximum block and defence while walking, since normally you are 1/3 block and zero defence while running. Just be sure to select "walk" when you log into this charater since it won't be obvious.

3. +Firemastery skill greatly increases the damage output of your Corpse Explosion skill (remember it is half physical/ half fire damage).

4. The -25% poison resist set bonus on Trang's Shield not only lowers resist, but also extends poison duration. Actually all negative poison resist items work like this. So in theory, a Full Trangs Set socketed with x/-5 facets combined with a Death's Web with similar facet will have a near double length poison. This is very powerful for Nova Necros.

5. +Fireball and +Meteor skills do negligible damage in hell difficulty, however the +Firewall does enough damage from the +Fire Mastery to kill monsters quickly when combined with a Lower Resist curse.

6. Chuck Norris wears Trang's Set.

[The Cow King]

Damn I hate Chuck.

I realy do.

Down with the Chuck. :rant:

[sequoia]

This still makes me really really REALLY REALLY

REALLY

really

no really

want to make a poison/fire trang necro

[McCain123]

7. When cruising with a group through areas with vampires, people will regularly shoot in your direction.

8. Every 1000th run someone new to the game will start complaining about the bugged game, with monsters in town.

9. Give your merc Delirium, wait untill he transforms, revive some Souls and wait next to TP locations to regularly shock people that come from town.

10. The Firewall of the set actually does some reasonable damage, so Summoners can get a first corpse that way.

[SSoG]

* If you ever get sick of being a vampire and you have a spare Beast handy, trying to shapeshift to a Werebear will actually turn you back into a human.

* I've heard rumors that, since Vampires have no blocking animation, they actually use their hit recovery animation when they successfully block. I'm not sure that this is true, but if it is, then that means that potentially you could use FHR to increase both your hit recovery speed *AND* your blocking speed.

[axdaddy]

*Trang's Summoner can do Ubers, not pretty, but doable.

*When u travel in between acts u get to keep your human form for awhile. This helps fast cast rate, gd for raising skelly army initially.

[sequoia]

* If you ever get sick of being a vampire and you have a spare Beast handy, trying to shapeshift to a Werebear will actually turn you back into a human.
permanently? from game to game?

[AnimeCraze]

* The vampire runs in such a speed that you will periodically lose skeles and glitch your merc into limbo. Teleing or TPing will solve the merc in limbo problem, though.

[MYK]

* The vampire runs in such a speed that you will periodically lose skeles and glitch your merc into limbo. Teleing or TPing will solve the merc in limbo problem, though.

The speed is too fast. I get tired of losing skeletons because of it.

[SSoG]

permanently? from game to game?
Just temporarily. Recast WB any time you revert back to Vampire form.

* The vampire runs in such a speed that you will periodically lose skeles and glitch your merc into limbo. Teleing or TPing will solve the merc in limbo problem, though.
Are you sure you're running? If you walk instead of running (because the speed is the same), that'll be causing the glitch. Mercenaries are glitched in a huge way where if you're walking all the time, eventually they'll bug out entirely and stop following you.

[AnimeCraze]

I am probably walking.

[Senshiki]

This still makes me really really REALLY REALLY

REALLY

really

no really

want to make a poison/fire trang necro

They are actually quite nice to have. Don't let this thread get you down.

A good strategy to make one of those necro's is to get 2 Trang Oul's Wings (Shield) so that way you can weapon switch without losing the set. On your poison attacks, use Death's Web, and when you begin attacking with fire, switch to Hexfire Shamshire or Hoto is you can afford it. Also for the rich, socket each wing with their respective socket. Use Mara's for maximum dual-skill effectiveness.

[LozHinge the Unhinged]

Are you sure you're running? If you walk instead of running (because the speed is the same), that'll be causing the glitch. Mercenaries are glitched in a huge way where if you're walking all the time, eventually they'll bug out entirely and stop following you.

:shocked: Why isn't this explained by Drognan et al when you hire your merc? This is an absolute outrage! :laugh:

Good grief, what a bug!

[jakotaco]

Hmm, Fire Mastery + Amp dmg = 1 shotting with corpse explosion in small games? :scratch:

Are you sure you're running? If you walk instead of running (because the speed is the same), that'll be causing the glitch. Mercenaries are glitched in a huge way where if you're walking all the time, eventually they'll bug out entirely and stop following you.

That explains alot. When playing Median mod you walk almost all the time, and I always experienced buggy merc behaviour. (stopped following etc)

[sequoia]

think someone who's good at number crunching can figure this out?
with fire mastery adding to CE damage, is it more advantageous to use LR or does amp still reign supreme?

[Damric]

think someone who's good at number crunching can figure this out?
with fire mastery adding to CE damage, is it more advantageous to use LR or does amp still reign supreme?

I suck at math but I'll throw out some numbers.

slvl 20 LR = -62%
slvl 9 FM = +86%
amp = +100%
CE = 1/2 fire 1/2 phys.

Just looking at that, I would say with trang's set, lower resist will be more powerful for Corpse Explode if you had nice +all skills to get Fire Mastery up and a high level of lower resist.

In the end, it all matters on what monster resistance/immunity is.

Best to experiment this on pkers that try to raid your game.

[inanefedaykin]

Lets take 1000 ce damage, no resists on the enemy, 86% mastery
With amp: 1930 total
930 fire
1000 physical
With Lower Res: 2006
1506 fire
500 physical

Lets take 1000 ce damage, 50 fire 0 physical resists on the enemy, 86% mastery
With amp: 1465
465 fire damage
1000 physical damage
With Lower Res: 1550 damage
1050 fire damage
500 physical damage

Lets take 1000 ce damage, 50 fire and 50 physical resists on the enemy, 86% mastery
With amp: 1215
465 fire damage
750 physical damage
With lower res: 1300
1050 fire damage
250 physical damage

[AnimeCraze]

Here's 3 more, showing how immunities affects the issue.

Lets take 1000 ce damage, 100 fire and 50 physical resists on the enemy, 86% mastery
With amp: 750
0 fire damage
750 physical damage
With lower res: 361
111 fire damage
250 physical damage

Lets take 1000 ce damage, 50 fire and 100 physical resists on the enemy, 86% mastery
With amp: 565
465 fire damage
100 physical damage
With lower res: 1300
1050 fire damage
0 physical damage

Lets take 1000 ce damage, 100 fire and 100 physical resists on the enemy, 86% mastery
With amp: 100
0 fire damage
100 physical damage
With lower res: 111
111 fire damage
0 physical damage

[RTB]

That shouldn't work. Fire Mastery acts on dmg in skills.txt and missiles.txt (and the famous application on melee fire dmg) and CE uses neither.

[Damric]

We assumed it worked since +fire skills items affects CE. RTB or anyone have a single player mod to test it?

[Feonn]

Why doesn't the Arreat Summit say 3 pieces of Trang-Oul's gives -25% poison resist to oppo's?

Nice thread, learned a lot already :grin:

[sequoia]

That shouldn't work. Fire Mastery acts on dmg in skills.txt and missiles.txt (and the famous application on melee fire dmg) and CE uses neither.

i've always heard it helped CE, it would be interesting if this turns out to be false

[Damric]

RTB is pretty good with all those stats tables, but we all know this game is screwy. I wish someone could experiment this. Problem is the damage is 60-100%.

[LozHinge the Unhinged]

Someone once posted here that the 60-100% variable isn't random, but a function of how close a monster is to the dead body that is being CE'd. Thus a wider radius CE is deadlier, as more monsters will be subject to the higher percentage damage. I'd love that to be true, but I just cannot see Blizzard coding for that.

[Damric]

yeah I saw that thread and I asked for confirmation on that too because it sounded cool.

[batuchka]

Well think I've asked a somewhat related question a while back regarding full trangs and CE damage here :
http://forums.diabloii.net/showthread.php?t=363735

Anyone did some testing/experiments cos this sounds interesting ^^

[Damric]

I wish I could merge this thread onto the guide I tried to write a couple years ago. This is good stuff I should have put in there the first time.

http://forums.diabloii.net/showthread.php?t=383791

Reading the old comments on my guide were interesting. 2 years ago people didn't believe a necro could do ubers and that golem mastery/iron golems were pointless. Amazing! And wow I was quite a B____ about it. Suprised MM was so lenient with some of my comments in there.

[Mad Mantis]

I'll look into merging the threads later this night if that is what you want.

Most often I let comments slide until someone gets abusive. A condescending or slightly heated tone doesn't really bother me. It is pretty normal when people argue. When you start name calling, being downright annoying to other posters or making a sport of abusing the other poster is when I draw the line. So yeah, you can say I’m lenient.

[alphaz]

A trader declined to trade with me cos he said I looked dodgy. When I asked why, he said cos I look like a vampire.

[Reelix]

Well, if Diablo wanted that +3 To All Monster Skill Levels Torch, and offered you all the riches in the world, would you give it to him? :)

[Dearid]

I would :P

[AnimeCraze]

Same, assuming I can actually get the riches. I wouldn't be afraid to fight him with +3 skill lvl. Nothing you can't own with smite + lifetap anyways.

[CCCenturion]

Trang's set is also a lot of fun to wear on a Singer barb working his way through NM difficulty (check out my avatar). Use Warcry to hold enemies in place so they're trapped in your Firewalls.

Without being able to complete the set and get Fire Mastery, though, you'll want to switch to other gear once you get to Hell.

[Dangerous Dave]

Here's a build I typed up for some friends of mine on another forum about 3 years ago.
It's not extremely detailed as I was trying my best to keep it fairly short, but I thought it would be good for giggles to share it here since the talk is all about Trang Oul's set.

"You move at running speed even while walking. This is useful to maintain maximum block and defence while walking, since normally you are 1/3 block and zero defence while running. Just be sure to select "walk" when you log into this charater since it won't be obvious."

Yup. I always had to pay close attention to the walk/run button to make sure my nec was walking since, in vamp form, he's always flying around very quickly.
Oh, and since you move so quickly, as mentioned before, you'll lose your minions in a hurry, but it's no biggy as long as you use a teleportation item.

"+Firemastery skill greatly increases the damage output of your Corpse Explosion skill (remember it is half physical/ half fire damage)"
I guess that's why I noticed Lower Resist seemed to work very well with CE in most situations, at least better than what I normally experienced with my other "non Trang" necros.

"The -25% poison resist set bonus on Trang's Shield not only lowers resist, but also extends poison duration."
Maybe that's why my necro's poison nova seemed to work more effectively than I thought it would when I was thinking up his build.


Oh, and I played this necro in HC up to about level 86 or so before I got bored with him. Don't get me wrong though, it was great fun to play this type of character! But after soloing Hell Baal over and over and over, it just became kind of dull.
Anyway, I considered him a quirky success. :)


The Poisoned Vampire of Trang-Oul

Introduction
I've been playing this build for a long time (my nec, OFC_GraveMental is currently level 84), and I've just not taken the time to type up this crazy yet effective build.
Anyway, here goes:

In order to play a necromancer based off this build, you must:
1. Have the full Trang-Oul's set.
2. Have some sort of teleportation device that the necromancer can use.
3. Have a desire to play something a bit out of the ordinary. And have a craving for what some call "style points" for playing a non-cookie cutter. :)

This build uses the full Trang's set to take advantage of the great set mods, fire skills and stylish vampire appearance, along with the lower resist curse and skeleton mages for good elemental damage.

Solo or team play
This build works well with a sorceress or other elemental damaging build in the team, but it also is effective enough to solo the entire game, including hell Baal.
One of the things I like about this build is it has an answer for every type of monster I've seen in the game so far.

Priorities
As stated above, you must have the full Trang's set. Without that, you can come close to this build. But to fully utilize this build, you'll need the entire set.
Resists: As with any character, resists are very important. Your minions will help guard you against most physical attacks, but there are many elemental attacks they will not be able to shield you from very effectively.
Plus skills: You'll want to try your best to add as many skill points as possible without giving up resists. This build uses all three nec skill trees, so you'll do well to add + to all skills items. Of course, skill charms will work well too.
Faster cast: You'll want some faster cast gear on as you will be spamming spells.
Teleportation: While it's not necessary for survival with this build, it comes in very handy in many situations, and it'll reduce your chances of losing your minions, especially in areas that tend to "trap" them when you walk away too quickly around a corner or other obstacle.
And this build really shines when you teleport in "Blob formation" in front of a boss, unleashing all of your power on one monster.


Attributes
Strength: Only as much as you need for items, but keep in mind Trang Oul's Guise requires 106 strength, and marrowwalk boots (what I recommend) require 118 strength.
Dexterity: Your call here. Either go 75% blocking, no blocking at all or somewhere in between. Trang's trophy has 60% chance to block, which isn't bad at all, so if you want to go for max block, it won't take a ton of dex. Of course, whatever you put in dex, you won't be able to use in vitality.
Vitality: Everything else.

Skills
Max Skeleton Mage and Skeleton Mastery
Max Poison Nova, Poison Explosion and finish by pumping Poison Dagger up as high as you can take it

Curses: One point wonders (in order of most used): lower resist, amplify damage, dim vision, decrepify, iron maiden and life tap.
Be sure to put one point in revive.

Other important one point wonders: Clay golem/iron golem, corpse explosion and revives.

This build utilizes many skills that you will place only one skill point in. All of your + skill gear will come in handy to push these up to at least level 10, where you'll find them much more effective.

A note about Lower Resist:
Many lower resist nec players insist on maxing this skill, but, in this build, it isn't necessary because of the many forms of damage that this type of necro has at his disposal.

99 Ways To Die
This necro has many different ways to inflict damage upon the baddies. Here's just a few:
1. Poison Nova.
2. Elemental damage from skeleton mages.
3. Physical damage from mercenary, skeleton warriors, golem and revives.
4. Fire damage from meteor, fire wall and fire ball.
5. Physical and fire damage combined from corpse explosion.
6. All sorts of nasty elemental damage from lower resist and revive combos.
7. Reciprocal damage from thorns and/or iron maiden.

Items

Here's some of what Trang's gives us:

Partial Set Bonus
+18 To Fire Ball (2 Items)*
Regenerate Mana 15% (2 Items)
+13 To Fire Wall (3 Items)
Additional Regenerate Mana 15% (3 Items)
Additional Regenerate Mana 15% (4 Items)
+10 To Meteor (4 Items)

Complete Set Bonus
+3 To Necromancer Skill Levels
20% Life Stolen Per Hit
+3 To Fire Mastery
+10 To Meteor
+13 To Fire Wall
+18 To Fire Ball*
+200 Defense
+100 To Mana
Regenerate Mana 60%
Replenish Life +5
All Resistances +50
Transforms into Vampire

As you can see, this set gives a great deal to the necromancer lucky enough to claim it all. And some of what it offers is very unusual for a necromancer, especially the fire sorc skills.
Of course this isn't all it gives. I don't want to use up too much room listing all the mods offered by all the items, but it really gives a lot. Some of it isn't useful, but most of it is very useful, especially with this build.

Weapon
Spirit runeword is a good runeword for this build, and it's super cheap.
Keep in mind whatever + all skills you get from your weapon will boost your fire skills. So, for example, if you use spirit runeword with this build, you'll have level 12 meteor, level 15 fire wall, level 20 fire ball and level 5 fire mastery. Throw in faster cast, hit recovery, vitality and more, and this runeword is great for the low price.

Heart of the Oak runeword is more expensive, but, if you have the runes, +3 to all skills, level 4 BO, 30-40 resist all, and 40% faster cast are good for this build.

Death's Web Unearthed Wand. Need I say more?

Jewelry
You'll want a +2 nec skills amulet with teleport and resists. If you can't get that (not many of us can), go for +2 nec skills and whatever you can get. My nec uses a +2 nec skills with +20 strength. Not uber at all, but those skills help, and, considering the high strength needed by the items, +20 strength is very handy.
Look for resistance, + skills and +attributes on rings. Although Trang's set gives great resistance, you'll find you need more, so jewelry is a good place to make it up.

Boots
Marrowwalks have a high strength requirement, but they're the only boots that give you + to skeleton mastery, which is important in this build. They also have + dex which helps with your blocking, and you might find bone prison charges come in handy when fighting some bosses.


Mercenary
Although many nec players love the might merc from act II, I prefer the thorns merc since most of the damage from this build doesn't come from physical attacks. Also, the defense of your minions won't be extremely high, so they'll get hit a lot, so thorns works well for them.
An argument could be made for an act I or III mercenary here, but I prefer auras and the chance to carry an insight pole (for never-ending mana) or (if you're rich enough) an infinity pole.
The infinity wielding act II mercenary is what you should strive for in this build. Lower resist with conviction will work very well in almost every situation.

Strategy

Some mages are better than others:
When raising your mages from corpses, keep in mind that some will work better than others for this build.
Lightning mages: These mages are probably the best one to use for this build since they do not "shatter" enemies (like the cold mages can), and they do not duplicate your fire or poison damage. It's a good idea to have plenty of these in your army.
Cold mages: Although you don't want too many cold mages, cold is the one element that slows enemies. Even though you won't need to slow your enemies much, it does come in handy to have at least one or two cold mages, and they don't "shatter" corpses very often when there's only a couple in the mix. Also, these mages work fine against fire + poison immunes -- the types of baddies that your nec might have some problems against without his minions.
Fire mages: They're redundant since your nec has fire skills with Trang's set on, but they're still handy against everything but fire immunes.
Poison mages: Since you'll be dishing out huge sums of poison damage with poison nova, there's no sense in getting many of these, if any at all. Go with none of these if you want to keep a close eye on your army, but one or two won't cramp your style too much.

Some revives are better than others:
Most of the time, you'll be using Lower Resist as your main curse with Amplify Damage as a backup, so you'll want to use revives that will use elemental attacks over ones that will use physical attacks.
Gloam revives, anyone? ;D

Mobs: If the baddies aren't fire immune (FI) or poison immune (PoI), spam lower resist, meteor/fire wall, fire ball, poison nova, and watch them beg for mercy as your spells and your minions take them down.
If they're FI, use lower resist and spam poison nova, or use amp. and CE for physical damage.
If they're PoI, spam your fire spells.
If you have a mixture of FI's and PoI's or the group is composed of FI+PoI baddies, use amplify damage and corpse explosion.

Ranged attackers: As with most necro builds, Dim Vision is your friend. Don't get greedy and use LR on these guys. Just play it safe (especially in HC), and use DV. They'll go down fast enough without LR.

Bosses: Lower resist, teleport within range (but not too close) of the boss, spam fire spells (keep fire wall on him) and poison nova, and watch your minions tear him to shreds.
If the boss is FI, use lower resist, teleport, then spam poison nova.
If the boss is PoI, use LR, teleport, then use your fire spells (fire wall is very effective with LR, especially if the boss is stationary).
If you meet up with a boss that is physical immune, fire immune and poison immune, use amplify damage and corpse explosion. This type of boss will be a little slower going down, but he will go down as long as you have all your minions up, including revives that do physical damage instead of elemental damage.

Attack of the Blob:
Teleporting with a lot of minions is a fairly safe thing to do. Only very rarely will you get hit by a physical attack, although you stand a higher chance of getting hit by elemental/magical attacks.
The best technique to use is to teleport within range of your target and take one or two steps away from the target, putting your minions between you and the baddie.


I think that's most of it. Let me know if you have any questions.
Good luck getting all the items in this set. If you do, try out this build. I think you'll find it very fun and capable. :)

[onderduiker]

"+Firemastery skill greatly increases the damage output of your Corpse Explosion skill (remember it is half physical/ half fire damage)"
I guess that's why I noticed Lower Resist seemed to work very well with CE in most situations, at least better than what I normally experienced with my other "non Trang" necros.

As RTB pointed out in this post (http://diablo.incgamers.com/forums/showpost.php?p=5785508&postcount=19) earlier in this thread, Fire Mastery (also known as +% to Fire Skill Damage) doesn't apply to Corpse Explosion's fire damage (although + to Fire Skills and -% to Enemy Fire Resistance equipped by the caster and Fire Resist -% will). I've tested to confirm this for myself, as have others. :(

Going back a bit...

Someone once posted here that the 60-100% variable isn't random, but a function of how close a monster is to the dead body that is being CE'd. Thus a wider radius CE is deadlier, as more monsters will be subject to the higher percentage damage. I'd love that to be true, but I just cannot see Blizzard coding for that.I haven't tested to see whether or not this is true (and it might be difficult to get a definitive answer even if I did), although it seems unlikely and I know of another possible explanation for what might have been observed: fire damage radius ([(8+lvl)/2]*2/3 yards) is larger than physical damage radius ([(7+lvl)/2]*2/3 yards) when skill level is an even number. Thus monsters can be outside the physical damage radius but within the fire damage radius, resulting in less damage.

Also, when target monster level (mlvl)>caster level (clvl), damage is multiplied by clvl/mlvl, which is another cause of variation in damage.

[Dangerous Dave]

"As RTB pointed out in this post earlier in this thread, Fire Mastery (also known as +% to Fire Skill Damage) doesn't apply to Corpse Explosion's fire damage (although + to Fire Skills and -% to Enemy Fire Resistance equipped by the caster and Fire Resist -% will). I've tested to confirm this for myself, as have others."

Ah, yes. That is disappointing. But maybe my Trang necro's CE seemed to be more effective since I had poison nova, firewalls and fireballs shooting all over too. :)

At least those +skills helped fire mastery to boost firewall and such (or at least, I assume those were helped by FM).

I've never had the patience to sit down and crunch numbers for any video game, but I do appreciate how a certain build and a certain group of items come together to make a powerful character. I guess that's a good portion of why I enjoyed my Trang necro.

[LozHinge the Unhinged]

[...]
I haven't tested to see whether or not this is true (and it might be difficult to get a definitive answer even if I did), although it seems unlikely and I know of another possible explanation for what might have been observed: fire damage radius ([(8+lvl)/2]*2/3 yards) is larger than physical damage radius ([(7+lvl)/2]*2/3 yards) when skill level is an even number. Thus monsters can be outside the physical damage radius but within the fire damage radius, resulting in less damage.

Also, when target monster level (mlvl)>caster level (clvl), damage is multiplied by clvl/mlvl, which is another cause of variation in damage.

Thanks for that info, onderduiker. I didn't know either of those facts.

[onderduiker]

Someone once posted here that the 60-100% variable isn't random, but a function of how close a monster is to the dead body that is being CE'd. Thus a wider radius CE is deadlier, as more monsters will be subject to the higher percentage damage. I'd love that to be true, but I just cannot see Blizzard coding for that.
Following up on what I've already posted... I remembered (and reread) a detailed analysis posted by Nefarius in the Some peculiarities of the player corpse explosion topic in the Phrozen Keep's Code Editing forum on 14 January 2008, and there's no mention of the 60-100% variable being affected in any way by distance from the corpse: instead, for every target within the radius a percentage within that range is randomly generated and applied.

It's also occurred to me that the corpses exploded are most likely to be on the front-line, and therefore most likely to have taken damage from other sources as well (pets, hirelings and spells like Poison Nova) whereas those further away might not have done so: if they have less life it takes less CE damage to kill them, which creates the illusion that CE does more damage to targets closer to the corpse.