To Bnet or not to Bnet?

[Myrothantos]

I'm not really a "new" Diablo II player, but I certainly haven't gone as in depth as many others have.

I played Battle.net when Diablo II came out. I had a lot of stuff and characters, it was great. Naturally, it died down, and forgetting to "refresh" my accounts, my characters and all I had worked for expired, and all was lost.

About a year ago, I wanted to return to Diablo II, and out of frustration for losing all my stuff, I moved to the Singleplayer/open Bnet scene (playing with non-hacking friends only). Using ATMA and the other rune-related accepted mods, I've had a great time leveling a number of characters, really getting to know the classes, as well as harvesting items over time, not having to worry that they'd be lost.

However. After playing all of the classes to medium-range levels, like 60 or so, I decided I wanted to take my Sorceress to the limit, and play it out, make her a full time MF'er, and find equipment for my other characters. She's at 78 now, and has hit a wall --- she can't survive more than two hits in Hell, and my Merc also lacks the equipment to hold the beasts back while I fire. He gets iced in about 5 seconds, every time. I can't really make any progress because my equipment sucks, and I can't really go MF'ing in Hell, because, well, I don't have the equipment.

So I've resolved myself to Nightmare runs, and have been doing just fine surviving. Over the past week I must have run Mephisto and whatnot like 6000 times. That may be a slight exaggeration, although honestly I'm not sure, it really seems like a high number in the thousands. It's taken hours and hours, and I've been rolling at /players8. The difficulty is fine, and the runs go fast...but I've found NOTHING that will help make my Sorc better, or that will suffice as any kind of improved equipment with Magic Find. I've found some nice things, like some Immortal King's stuff, which isn't for Sorc :\

What it boils down to is this: I've found several things that I know other players might want, and I would gladly give it ALL away in ONE trade for just ONE piece of end game MF Sorc equipment, like Tal's armor or something. But alas, therein lies my problem. Playing Singleplayer/Open negates any kind of trading --- everyone is rolling hacked, and I really don't feel like going through the hassle of using the forums to become an "approved" trader and whatnot. And the odds of finding equipment that I need, like a 3-socket shako, are pretty much never going to happen. Especially when you add on top of that, the frustration that comes from looking for a specific piece of equipment --- you feel like you're never going to find it when you're looking for it specifically.

So therein lies the dilemma. Do I play Bnet, and just resolve myself to knowing that I won't keep up the account, and lose all my stuff in like 90 days or whatever, as well as also deal with all the grammar-less scum and spam bots, but in turn be able to trade legitly for better items? Or do I just resolve my Singleplayer characters to sucking eternally, because I can't find any equipment that is needed for an MF Sorc?

I really hope that for Diablo III, they allow like one "master" account on Bnet, for each CD-Key, that lasts forever...

[Deltaeagle]

I've always found that BNET multiplayer is the one thing that keeps me coming back over and over again.

[Darkoooo]

Hi and welcome.

First things first, you did 6000 NM Mephisto runs and haven't found stuff like Occy/Vipermagi/Lidless/Duriel's/Vampire Gaze? Or not even runes for spirits and Insight? (ATMA says chances for dropping Skin of Vipermagi on players 1 with 200 MF is 1:548 at Mephisto). How much MF are you wearing? I like to have 300-500, but 200 is good too. You don't need to run Mephisto on players 8, players 3 will do just fine, or if you really want the maximum of his drops do it at players 5 because over that it really isn't worth it.

What is she currently wearing? And what's her stats and skills invested? Also her merc? Lvl 78 is more than enough to enter Hell so it must be something about her.

Once entering Hell most SP'ers change the player settings to 1, as it becomes very difficult to survive some monsters. Static field and use Telekinesis for those monsters your merc can handle and teleport past ones that he can't (for example it would be best for you to teleport through Claw Viper Temple because every monster there is Cold Immune and he won't be able to kill them all).


Do I play Bnet, and just resolve myself to knowing that I won't keep up the account, and lose all my stuff in like 90 days or whatever, as well as also deal with all the grammar-less scum and spam bots, but in turn be able to trade legitly for better items?
Characters on bnet don't expire anymore. From bnet forum:

From bnet tech forum:


Expired Diablo II characters are now being treated much the same way as Battle.net accounts are treated when they have reached expiration status. When an established character (one having at least 2 hours of in-game time accumulated) has gone unused for a period of 90 days, it is considered expired. You will still be able to use and refresh this character by selecting and entering a game. Once this is done, the expiration timer resets and you will have 90 days again to use it before it becomes expired again. If a character has not been accessed for 90 days, the character name will be available to anyone making a new character. If this happens, the original will no longer be able to be used. A "Player not Found" message will appear if you select an expired character that has had its name used by another user. Characters that have gone unused for 90 days are also subject to being deleted by routine periodic maintenance performed on the realms. It's very important for you to use any character that has reached an expired status if you wish to keep the character. Any character that has expired and either been purged by maintenance or had its name used by another user can not be restored.


When refreshing characters, we strongly suggest entering a game and performing an activity to cause the characters inventory or status to change. Killing a monster to gain experience, or buying or selling an item to change your inventory are adequate methods to refresh your character and be certain it has been saved correctly.However you will have to suffer the lag, spam bots, plenty of dupes and 10 year olds.

Give us some more information about your sorc and we might be able to help.

Edit: Why is there a smiley in the title of my post :scratchhead:

[Hrus]

If you have played on Open (even claiming it was with non-hacking friends) and want to trade in SP Trading Forum here, you would have to start over completely and delete your previous chars. On the other hand you have a legit SP trade environment after that and you only can't trade only few most rare items in the game and high runes for some time until you will be approved.
But I get a feeling that you will end up on BNet after hearing this.


And the odds of finding equipment that I need, like a 3-socket shakoHUHUH? The odds are exactly zero. You can't get Shako with 3 sockets. I am not sure why do you think you need it.

6000 thousands Mephisto runs? Oh, probably not.
And don't run Mephisto at /players 8, it's worthless. Run him at players 3, or if you can kill him really easy - at players 5, but he will allways give you 6 items and not more at players5 and that doesn't change with higher player number.

[Myrothantos]

If you have played on Open (even claiming it was with non-hacking friends) and want to trade in SP Trading Forum here, you would have to start over completely and delete your previous chars.

Honestly, that seems a little ridiculous. How would any one know that I have played Open before? My friends and I, who are all hardcore legit, hacking and whatnot ruins the game for all of us, simply choose Open over TCP/IP due to router issues. Once we open the ports, Open works fine, so we just use that to play together. I think it's a little ridiculous to say that just having played with friends on Open would negate any ability to trade, considering I don't even think anyone would ever find out.

But like I said, I'm not even interested in getting involved in all that, and I realize my opinion doesn't matter one bit. Just think that seems ridiculous, considering how hardcore I am with being legit, just seems like I'd be getting punished for just wanting to play with friends.

The odds are exactly zero. You can't get Shako with 3 sockets. I am not sure why do you think you need it.

Yeah, I misread a guide when posting, I took "75% MF shako" to mean a Shako with three +25% MFs in it, didn't bother to edit after realizing my mistake.

Either way, I've been running Meph and whatnot all week in Nightmare, and have only found one Occulus, managed to piece together "Stealth" armor...got maybe three Peasant's Crowns, and a Frostburn...that's about all that comes to mind. Everything else was either below that, or irrelevant to my class (i.e. found IK Gaunts too, but that's useless to me). The best thing I found my merc was "The Meat Scrapper," which sucks. Gave him one of the Peasant's Crowns. He has a total of about 2500 Armor, and he is level 78 as well. About three steps into any zone, and he's dead, on /players1.

6000 thousands Mephisto runs? Oh, probably not.

Definitely not, actually. More realistically I think it was closer to 1000, over the span of the week. Not only that, my friend and I loaded up Hell (he's a summon necromancer, level 80), and we couldn't make it like three steps into Arcane Sanctuary. He died first, and then he's like, "lemme go get some skeletons from act 1," takes his merc out to Cold Plains to kill at least one monster and re-build his army. Next thing I see, while I'm organizing in town, is his death message. His merc couldn't even take out like a Fallen or anything, lol...Granted, I can't speak for his merc and his equipment, I can definitely feel his pain, like I feel like Hell should be hard, but damn man...After dying again and again, our XP bars hit rock bottom, and we just quit, disenchanted with it all.

I'll go ahead and lay my character out a little bit here anyway, to maybe get tips on where I went wrong, because obviously I went wrong somewhere:

Stats (with equipment):
Str: 96
Dex: 31
Vit: 300
Energy: 75

Skills are:
Max FO
Max FB
Max Meteor
11 Fire Mastery (the skill I'm working on now)
1 Teleport
1 Static
2 Cold Mastery

Pretty much followed the Meteorb Guide in the sticky of Guides on the Sorc forum.

Equipment:

Weapon: Occulus
Gloves: Frostburn
Ring: +24% MF magic ring
Ring: +21% MF magic ring
Belt: Goldwrap
Boots: +29% MF magic boots
Armor: "Stealth" scale mail
Shield: Visceratuant shield
Helm: Peasant's Crown
Amulet: +25% MF amulet

Frozen Orb is 340 - 357
Fireball is 2564 - 2861
Meteor is 6118 - 6445

Merc has Corpsemourn, Peasant's Cap, and Meat Scrapper.

[Darkoooo]

Your Cold Mastery is too low. Minimum would be 17 after +skills (yours is 8?).

Your gear looks ok, but only for MFing. Also, you should get more FCR even for running Mephisto, aim for at least 63 FCR (if you found Magefists and some FCR ring just use those instead of Frostburns and one magic ring). Try to find a Kelpie Snare to your merc for Mephisto, cause the slow helps a lot to your and his survivability.

Once entering hell you should concentrate more on the resistances, killing power and FCR. That means you have to alter your gear.
MF rings => Resistance rings
Goldwrap => Upped Nightsmoke/Rare Res belt/Thundergods/String of Ears
Boots => Rare resistance boots
Armor => You should really try to find the Vipermagi, it helps a lot, but Stealth does fine too
Shield => Since you're not going max block, you should use Lidless or Moser's with 2 PDiamonds if you find yourself low on resistances
Amulet => Maybe one with sorc skills, or res if you need more

You should fill your inventory with life and resistance charms.

You're focusing your merc too much on his defense. Things you should look for is %DR or leech and resistance (be sure to have lots of res) such as:
Armor: Duriel's Shell, Shaftstop
Helm: Rockstopper, Crown of Thieves, Vampire Gaze
Weapon: Any high damage polearm/spear to help his leach or Insight or Crescent Moon runewords.

All these items can be found from NM Mephisto, so if you're persistent you'll get them. Hell isn't easy, you have to work hard for it, but once you get better items and more experience it's a piece of cake.

[Hrus]

Honestly, that seems a little ridiculous. How would any one know that I have played Open before? My friends and I, who are all hardcore legit, hacking and whatnot ruins the game for all of us, simply choose Open over TCP/IP due to router issues. Once we open the ports, Open works fine, so we just use that to play together. I think it's a little ridiculous to say that just having played with friends on Open would negate any ability to trade, considering I don't even think anyone would ever find out.

You would have to speak with Thyiad (SPF moderator) about ability to trade/MP. I am myself scared by Open, that I wouldn't MP with you myself. Like you said yourself, it's all about trust.
And the words like "Open", "3sock Shako", "6K Meph runs over weekend" doesn't earn my trust. Maybe I am little bit paranoid.

Your sorc needs more skills and FCR, MF runs are about effectivity (and persistence), not about amount of MF.
Usually you want to get +skills on amulet (+2 skill tree should be quite common as well as +1 sorc skills). You can have +2 skills on amulet instead of 24MF amu and drop Peasant's crown and get 3socketed helm instead filled with PTopazes. You gain +1 skill and 50MF.
Similarly it's better to have FCR on your rings than on your armor - you can have 4 socketed armor with 96 MF!

And if you want to advance to hell, you really need to drop MF for better equip (viz Darkooo's post). Get your resistances as high as you can and learn to use teleport to save both you and your merc if one of you is in trouble. Sorc is one of the safest characters if you use teleport skill well.