Equipment amusement

[vrot]

I want to pitch in on the "even mentioning high end stuff makes you irrelevant" side. By keeping on talking about elite gear people are just encouraging cheating. The maths have been done over and over. Your enigma is a fake, accept it!
Normal players will only get this sort of stuff through trading. I have traded some equipment and I will again, but it is BORING! I play this game to kill stuff. And if you do trade for anything high end you know it's a dupe.

Another thing. Hell is not impossible without elite gear. That's just justifying your own lack of creativity. With 2 or 3 characters you will eventually get lots of great gear for any character to solo hell with.
"the game is much more fun with high end runewords, play non-ladder" oh dear.... It's really a lot of fun to get a great item you worked hard for yourself and then see it in action. I picked up a guardian angel for my paladin, it's hardly mentioned in the current paladin builds, but it works a treat. Then I picked up a white 45 all res pala shield in a 26 minute old cow game, a few pdiamonds later and I immune to elemental attack. Now that is fun!

[letosan]

Now that is interesting. I've run my Lightning Javazon through Hell and unless I missed something there were very few physically immune monsters.

Its not so much just the phys immunes, its the phys resists. That, along with the hell leech penalty make it a bit more difficult for people who rely on physical damage to survive in hell. I have played paladins for the last 10 years (jeez, has it really been that long?) and am able to deal with them just fine.

I make sure I have multiple sources of damage. CB, OW, and DS are great helps, but you cant just rely on physical damage. I use stuff like a Bstar or a Gimmershed (a new additon to the list) for additional sources of damage. If a monster is immune to one, two, or even three of the damage types I have, its ok because I have several others.

I picked up a guardian angel for my paladin, it's hardly mentioned in the current paladin builds, but it works a treat. Then I picked up a white 45 all res pala shield in a 26 minute old cow game, a few pdiamonds later and I immune to elemental attack. Now that is fun!

Yup yup yup, I love a GA. I always use one on my pallys because I am somewhat of a resists freak. 90 cold 90 light resists in hell helps out my survivability quite a bit. I often up the GA too for the added defense. Nice shield too, I always love doing that. I also like to get a nice res shield and put Ancients Pledge in it. Rhyme also works. It is a very viable alternative to a HoZ which is so expensive with all these first-gen uber-killing pallys.

[De4dEyE]

Most of these guides that you're looking at [involving CtAs] are most likely PvP guides, or ones that can easily be converted to PvP.

Understand that top-tier equipment will ALWAYS be the main focus for most of the guides you will run across, and simply ask for cheaper alternatives [Oh no, the guide is locked! I can't ask! Make a new thread...].

Or you could do what many people have already done; start off with crap equipment, gather pgems/crafting runes and sell them for better items/runes, and eventually get one very good item, look for a seller that's buying it for far more than you paid, and then you've just gotten yourself even more currency to gear your characters.

There you have it, the quick solution, and the long-term solution.

BTW, so what if my enigma is 'fake'? It still teleports me behind that wall, and it seems to still be adding +2 to all of my skills when I wear it.

[DarkStooge]

"the game is much more fun with high end runewords, play non-ladder" oh dear.... It's really a lot of fun to get a great item you worked hard for yourself and then see it in action. I picked up a guardian angel for my paladin, it's hardly mentioned in the current paladin builds, but it works a treat. Then I picked up a white 45 all res pala shield in a 26 minute old cow game, a few pdiamonds later and I immune to elemental attack. Now that is fun!

fun = pvp

killing monsters is hella boring IMO

and if u dont trade, and only use things like GA, you will have a boring time in pvp as u will almost never kill anything

my idea of fun is joining an 8 player game, killing 7 people and leaving to join the next one

[AnimeCraze]

Yeah, expectation to have all the really godly gear is annoying. I hate reading guides where a line like this is included: "This is a 1-point-wonder skill! Your +50000 to all skills should easily boost it to a decent level!" The highest + to all skills I've EVER had was 4 (hammerdin with dual spirit).

When people say 1 point wonder, they mean it. It is VERY easy to get +8 skill tabs. Here's how: Lore helm, dual spirit, +3 skill tab ammy. This makes those 1 point wonder completely viable. Replace +3 tab ammy with +1 skill for +6 all skills. Don't tell me you can't get those ammy, since they can easily be gambled. Now, your 1 point static suddenly becomes 7 points (minimum) That would be more than enough in most cases.

You can thank 1.10/1.11 for the current state of guides which are honest because hell is HARD for physical damage characters. Want to take a melee paladin/whirlwind barb/melee assasins/shift druid/bowazon/etc. into hell and be competitive and survive past one player hell? You better have some damn good equipment. Why do you think everyone flocks to hammerdins/trapassins/sorcs/wind druids/etc. ? because for a bunch of pgems they can get all the gear they need to perform damn well in hell except for the respective immunities (excluding blessed hammer).

The guides recommend all of this gear because it really IS that damn hard for many builds in hell if your gear doesn't cover damage/resistances/IAS/etc. to a signficant degree.

Survive? Not a problem. Life tap solves it all. Dracs are not that difficult to trade for now, as far as I know. CB does wonders in general game play too, not only when killing Ubers. I agree that melee character gets the short side of the stick, though, since you can not kill nearly as fast as a caster no matter what you do.

What I don't particularly like is the fact that high runewords are mentioned as priority in those Uber killing guides. First, you don't need them. Second, the guides make it sounds like that you do. I really laugh when someone carrying Grief and BotD cannot kill the Ubers while my little zealot using Heaven' Light can handle them without problems.

[Nimbostratus]

When people say 1 point wonder, they mean it. It is VERY easy to get +8 skill tabs. Here's how: Lore helm, dual spirit, +3 skill tab ammy. This makes those 1 point wonder completely viable. Replace +3 tab ammy with +1 skill for +6 all skills. Don't tell me you can't get those ammy, since they can easily be gambled. Now, your 1 point static suddenly becomes 7 points (minimum) That would be more than enough in most cases.

True, those would give a lot of + skills, but I like to always have max/near-max resistances, and it can be pretty difficult to obtain that and a high amount of + skills at the same time. (At least for me, as most of my gear is pretty lame :o )

[letosan]

I myself dont really focus on +skills either for my melee characters. I also focus on resists and a GA makes best use of that.

As for one point wonders, there are several of them for each class that really can be used with 1 point, but they are for special purposes, not meant to be used exclusively. A paladin has a number of auras that work very well with just a single point in them. At most, they are +3 because of a handful of +skills items, nothing over the top. Sanctuary, salvation, meditation, and vigor are true one point wonders because they give a large boost for just that single point. More points in them is always better but not required.

Now for a cast, you almost have to double your chosen skills. Getting a tab's skills to 30+ is almost required these days. Of course, it makes it easier when there are a lot of good caster stuff out there with + skills, especially spirit. The nice thing about that is that you can really turn one skill point into like a +9. My necro uses corpse explosion and has a number of +skill items to boost that skill.

I also use an iron golem, and as such, I put one point into each of the other golems for pre-reqs and synergies. In this case one point becomes a +9 because of +skills stuff I have. One point in revives allows me to have a small army of meat shields lol.

For a caster, yes, +skills is almost required to survive, but a good melee character can do just as well without them. They may not kill as fast, but they survive better and are more adaptable to situations that would stop or slow another person.

[AnimeCraze]

True, those would give a lot of + skills, but I like to always have max/near-max resistances, and it can be pretty difficult to obtain that and a high amount of + skills at the same time. (At least for me, as most of my gear is pretty lame :o )

You don't need resist when there are 20 tanks in front of you *hint: make a necro*. :lol: Even my sorc runs with negative resist when killing meph. :lol: