Still some noob questions

[phaolo]

Hello, I have a pair of questions to ask:

1- How does the character resistance affect damage dealt? 75% means -75% damage? And what about poison.. does high res mean that you lose less life when you're poisoned?
2- Does defence stops elemental\poison\magic attacks too? And what about shield blocking?
3- Do I really ever need to use socketed items? Rares seems way more powerful
4- does iron maiden reflect back only physical damage? So, to be safe could I use a low damage weapon with high magical\elemental powers + vengeance and holy freeze?
5- Why does the map change when I go back to a previous difficulty??

Thanks

[WarlockCC]

1
Res does indeed reduce the amount of damage you take for that specific element.
If a lightning attack normally does 100 damage and you have 49 lightning resist against lightning, you will only get 51 life taken from your red bulb.
As for poison, it works the same. Poison also has a length component, which means that if you have a item with 75% poison length reduced, you will only take 25% of the original poison damage if you have 0% poison resistance.

2
defence does not stop attacks which are completely elemental and do not require ar.
If a attack requires attack rating for the attacker, your defence will help lower the chance that you get hit. I am not certain about the shield blocking, I think that is an entirely different matter, since I vaguely recall blocking Oblivion Knights attacks at times.

3
Socketed items can be nice to start out with until you get a worthwhile rare to replace it.
For instance a shield with 3 perfect diamonds in it will give you 57 to all resists with a levelreq of 18(depending on the shieldtype it could be higher).
Or if your character does have the level for a item, but doesn't have the str yet to wear that item, you could use a 3 socketed helm with ametheists to give your character 30 str.
Also, a 3 socketed helm can have the most Magicfind possible on a helm.

4
I have no idea, I haven't played a lot of single player Diablo 2.

[phaolo]

Ok, things are more clear now.
I've however added an important question while you were answering:

4- does iron maiden reflect back only physical damage? So, to be safe could I use a low damage weapon with high magical\elemental powers + vengeance and holy freeze?

Can you tell me something about this also? Thanks WarlockCC

[struikje]

Iron maiden does only effect physical melee dmg, so it doesn't reflect bow dmg. The vengeance wouldn't be a very good idea, since it transfers your physical dmg to elemental. So a good idea would be high dmg weapon +vengeance and holy freeze/conviction/holy shock. Another way would be zeal + high elemental dmg weapon, but those don't really exist in the game. the highest you'll get is 6-240 max lightning dmg and 600 poison dmg. Don't use conviction if you work with emeralds, conviction only lowers light/cold/fire resists.

[phaolo]

Uh.. I don't get it.. the point is surviving inside chaos sanctuary when cursed with iron maiden. So even melee elemental damage is dangerous.. ok for the bow, but why do you suggest high damage weapon? I would kill myself the same.. :hang:

In CS I currently make minions follow me and then I take care of oblivion knights alone with zeal+cleansing. Works, but it's slow and very dangerous


p.s: I didn't enable conviction.. do you think it's better than fanaticism?

[goomba]

yes, melee elemental damage can bite you in the ***.

as an example, I have a str barb that I sometimes solo/mf with and will sometimes self chant myself for more AR, and even faster killing speeds on the undead.

anyway, I frequently leap into the cs whilst holding a bo-stick (crummy +2 mace for boost battle orders for the new people). w/out a chant, I can WW endlessly through hoards in the cs, and not hurt them, or myself if I get IM'ed.

with the extra 1500 or so damage from the chant, I quickly end up suiciding with even just the bo-stick on...

[goomba]

Uh.. I don't get it.. the point is surviving inside chaos sanctuary when cursed with iron maiden. So even melee elemental damage is dangerous.. ok for the bow, but why do you suggest high damage weapon? I would kill myself the same.. :hang:

In CS I currently make minions follow me and then I take care of oblivion knights alone with zeal+cleansing. Works, but it's slow and very dangerous


p.s: I didn't enable conviction.. do you think it's better than fanaticism?

most would suggest you read the build guides.

aside from act 2's narrow confines, a blessed hammer paladin is largely opined to be the most versatile, and overpowered pvp character in the game. there are several guides for them as well.

[phaolo]

Eh, unfortunately I've heard that.. but I hate blessed hammer even if it's the most powerful weapon. I want to melee, survive amongst hordes with my aureas and strong armor.. not launching spirales of magic overpowered hammers due to a bug :undecided:

I've managed to become very strong in nightmare, but I started hell and i feel the big difference.. expecially for physical immunes. I'll power a bit BH or use vengeance + some elemental weapon.. we'll see..

[goomba]

Eh, unfortunately I've heard that.. but I hate blessed hammer even if it's the most powerful weapon. I want to melee, survive amongst hordes with my aureas and strong armor.. not launching spirales of magic overpowered hammers due to a bug :undecided:

I've managed to become very strong in nightmare, but I started hell and i feel the big difference.. expecially for physical immunes. I'll power a bit BH or use vengeance + some elemental weapon.. we'll see..

in hell, I'm thinking you're going to want to have a pretty high holy freeze, which will penetrate and slow even cold immunes, in order to have some form of crowd control, combined with perhaps some conversion to make a couple of tanks for you

re: physical immunes, my foggy memory seems to recall that most phys immunes are undead, perhaps try holy freezing them to slow them down, and then using holy bolt on them? (obviously isnt' going to work in hell travincal where one of those goons is usually not only a P.I., but also a mana burner with a fanta aura... but anyway...)

I have yet to see a melee paladin do anything significant in a hell cs, and even with a 170 dmg bh am fairly certain you won't find any meaningful success.

but, enjoy it regardless...

[phaolo]

I should have chosen the barbarian then.
It's a pity that some characters cannot be strong enough. I'll post my success or failure lol

In hell I've arrived to Stony Feld and have to go kill Blood Raven. Monsters are difficult but not impossible..except for zombies..how strong are these guys?? :shocked:

Bye :)

[goomba]

I should have chosen the barbarian then.
It's a pity that some characters cannot be strong enough. I'll post my success or failure lol

In hell I've arrived to Stony Feld and have to go kill Blood Raven. Monsters are difficult but not impossible..except for zombies..how strong are these guys?? :shocked:

Bye :)

the WW barb's only significant challenge (aside from weapon breaking) is Iron Maiden Curse in the CS. Physical Immunes can be mostly avoided by WWing right through most of them, and one point in berserk will kill any remaining in council if you need to for the quest.

re: Iron Maiden, with discipline, and some luck it is avoidable to a degree, but one can level deeply into the 80s just by doing flayer/council runs.

oh, and since we're hijacking to he WW barb, I did run into an rcage wearing, woe-staver in a cs run last week. I'm guessing he also was using gtoes for the extra crushing blow on top of the rcage, he was also part crier - stunning, then WWing back and forth to crush/bleed 'em out. He got IM'ed several times with no significant change in his CSing behaviour :laugh:

after my attempt with the gnasher/sback, the woestaver seems like it may be slightly more fun due to the larger range, and other modifiers. :thumbsup:

[phaolo]

Uh.. maybe too much diablo slang lol. Anyway, killing enemies and survive IM is a great thing! I'd like to be able to do that..


Hey, do you know how it's possible that my experience grows so little in hell? From act start to Blood Raven and 3 minor labyrinth I gained only one level(now lvl 61)

About immunities, I've encountered magic resistant monsters.. how can hammerdins defeat those? (they should be weak in melee)

I still don't believe however that 650 melee damage is not that much even in current act.. undeads expecially are strong, and I'm using a rare battle hammer. Luckly I have 700 defense and about 45 res in all.. damn scary

[EagleEntek]

Rattlecage, goblin toes, woestave, 1 pt in polearm mastery, maxed ww for ar. Low dmg from 1 pt in mastery = low physical dmg - maxed ww = ar, more hits. End result = crushing blow, bleed, slow - enemy drains slowly to death.

Or try the rattlecage/boneflesh, gobtoes, gnasher hand axe, swordback hold approach - with life leech rings you take so little dmg even ww'ing. Ever wonder why these weapons are so low dmg? Ripsaw - that wonderfull 2 hander sword - low physical dmg - maybe its MEANT for the cs....who knows...

Disadvantages? Yep - low durability - maybe stacking on open wounds means less ww's, but not in hell cs.....you try making something bleed to death in hell 8 player games :undecided:

[Fists of War]

Uh.. maybe too much diablo slang lol. Anyway, killing enemies and survive IM is a great thing! I'd like to be able to do that..
Heh, I see posts like Goombas and EagleEntek's pop up in threads like these, and think...this guy is never gonna understand more than a few words of what you just wrote.

He is saying that a property on weapons - open wounds (OW) can be used to "bleed" monsters to death. It's combined with crushing blow (CB) which lowers monster health by a percentage. Both of these things do not need high weapon damage, and as the Iron Maiden curse returns only physical damage, you don't die (You use low damage weapons with Open Wounds and Crushing Blow on them).

Hey, do you know how it's possible that my experience grows so little in hell? From act start to Blood Raven and 3 minor labyrinth I gained only one level(now lvl 61)

Well, thats only like the den, blood moor, cold plains and blood raven you killed, one level is ok. Maybe you are playing on /players 1?
I assume you know about it but...try typing /players 8 in the chat bar (press enter to bring that up). That simulates having eight players in the game. Monsters are way harder *but* you get way more experience and better drops. If thats too hard replace the "8" with a number from 1-8. The more players you set your game to, the harder it gets.

About immunities, I've encountered magic resistant monsters.. how can hammerdins defeat those? (they should be weak in melee)

Hammerdins should be weak in melee, but the way you are going you seem to both a hammerdin and a melee pally :)
I don't think any monsters in classic are magic IMMUNE. Hammerdins do enough damage to kill these RESISTANT monsters. No monsters are immune to hammers in classic anyway, to my knowledge.

I still don't believe however that 650 melee damage is not that much even in current act.. undeads expecially are strong, and I'm using a rare battle hammer. Luckly I have 700 defense and about 45 res in all.. damn scary

650 melee damage is enough to get you through act 1 and maybe act 2 in hell. Is that 650 maximum damage? If it was average you might make it through act 3, at least up until travincial, but if it's like 150-650 you won't stand a chance. 700 defence is a good amount to have in Normal mode. A few thousand defence is good in nightmare. To make much difference, a good 5000+ defence is needed in hell. 45 res is sufficient in hell for a caster who stays at a distance or behind a mercenary/summons. For a melee character like yourself you will need 50%+ all resists. And 800+ life.

Looks like you might have to do Nightmare Chaos Sancuary runs for more exp before venturing much further in hell!

EDIT: Looks like I just spent 20 minutes typing one post. I'm hoping it has helped ;)

[phaolo]

Well, thanks for your time! It's all useful info :)
I understand all the method now


Yes, I'm playing 1 pl and it's difficult enough for the moment. I did Blood Moor + Den + Cave, Cold Plains, Stony Field, Blood Raven + Crypt + Mausoleum for that single level. Nighmare CS doesn't give me enough exp anymore and is slow. I did it killing Diablo 2 times (scary with the brown colour!). I'll continue to proceed in the Act for now


Yep, I'd like to be both Zealer + Bh!
Planned:
zeal 10
fanat 20
sacr 20
holy shield 8
holy freeze 8
bh 15
vigor 12
conc 3


You're right, those monsters were magic resistant only. The presence of magic immunes, however, would be fair for other players and would have avoided overpowered characters; I think that Blizzard should have added more magic resistance items for PvP also.


-Current damage is 450-700 per hit with fanaticism active. Lots of hits needed.. Blood Raven seemed to have more life than Diablo in nightmare.. :shocked:
-About defense, 700 + holy shield is perfect for nightmare. I hope I'll find better armor for hell. I'm still not sure if to reach the 170 str however.
-I dunno how to get more res.. shield, helm and amulet already give me +49. I'll need to use socketed shield or find another +15 on gloves, boots or belt (I won't change my rare battle hammer)
-My life is 550 base. I've read that levelup adds +3 and vitality +2, so I tried to verify final life, but.. I cannot get it with calculations. Current base life at lvl61 and vit137 should be equal to:

(61-1)x3+(137-25)x2+(20xpotion)=550-55

444=495 ?? Something is wrong..

p.s: subtracted values are the character attributes at start

[fledgeling]

you still havent understood, that 75 all res will help you much, much more than investing 170 str for an ornate, which will give you say 500 more defense

this 500 more defense, will make the monsters hit you say, 5% less times

while 50% (you have 49%) all res increased to 75% will make you take 25% less damage per each hit

[phaolo]

No no, I've understood that fledgeling! :tongue: I saw the difference in nightmare (even if gloams were dangerous also with 75 all).
I'm trying to adjust both res and def though. Holy shield would boost my defense with 400 more armor. I'm at 65\50\55\40 res for the moment. So I can't do anything apart finding a pavise to socket or a better res item.

Clues about the life formula? (maybe vitality adds 2.5?)

[Murrogh]

Well, if you are worried about defence, why not try mage plate, grim helm, grim shield.

They all have under 60 str req and can give huge def.

You can actually get to 60 str without doing any str points, 35 str total is all that needs to be added by gear or stats.

I would suggest going for high res with low str req items. then as you find/trade get higher def items.

(vit adds 3 per point)

[phaolo]

Ok, I'll take care of the resistances first then

Ah, for the values it was the contrary: levelup adds +2 and vitality +3
(61-1)x2+(137-25)x3+(20xpotion)=550-55

But I still get an error..one point too much
496=495 :cry:

[Fists of War]

I just go...60 (base) + 60 (quests) + vitality*3 and whatever from gear. Your formula is a tad cryptic for me :P

I suggest getting a 3 socket shield (maybe from normal or NM cows) and puting Perfect diamonds in it. Leave off from using it untill you find the diamonds necessary, it's not worth it putting lesser quality ones in there at your level, just wait till you have enough to get perfects.

[WarlockCC]

Actually, you can buy 3 socketed large shields in normal act 1 and act 2.
You will probably need to 'refresh' the vendors a couple of times, but you can actually buy them.
Downside of a large shield is offcourse, a lower chance to block, but when you are going for a 3D shield, you're not really taking it for it's ctb. :)

[phaolo]

Well, the formula meant this:
(level-startlevel)x2+(vitality-startvitality)x3+(20xalkorpotion)=life-startlife

Seems right to me..apart from that misterious point. I don't understand your calculation instead "Fists of War" lol


About shields, don't they contain 4 sockets? I own the perfect diamonds, but I really want a pavise to socket. Changing difficulty would cause the map loss :undecided:
Why don't hell shops sell better items..


Anyway, it's really slow to get experience in hell! Expecially from level 63 to 64. Weapon swapping also would be useful here.. expecially against a physical immune extra-fast griswold :shocked: (I own a scepter with +2 conc, +3 bh)

[WarlockCC]

In classic, shields can only have 3 sockets. Not entirely sure about LoD, but I kinda thought at least the shield socket numbers where the same.
Tower shields can have 3, pavise can have 3, bone and grim can have 2, spiked and barbed can have 2, the rest you will have to look up if you want other types.
Are you working with the /players 8 option ? If so, you might need to start killing monsters closer to your level.
Look around in the FAQ sticky, you'll find a area levels list, which should tell you where to level. Try to stay within 5 levels of your own level.

[phaolo]

Uh..Blood Moor is level 67 in Nightmare. I'll need lots of rushes. W full rejuvs however

/playersN is too dangerous for now. But can I use this like a trick for chests? In the mausoleum there's one that always drops 2-4 good rares! Would it improve with more players? I love these treasures.. another one was near a temple entrance in kurast (in previous difficulties).