Improvements

[diabloplayer45]

Hello

I am doing PvM.

I am looking for improvements on my PvM account and characters.

1. MF Sorceress

I have a pure light sorceress (max nova, max lightning, max cl, max lm, rest into charged bolt) with frozen shield and warmth (and teleport, of course). She is doing fine as long as she have potions. The areas I clear are chaos,baal, and sometimes andy and meph. I do countess sometimes as well, and summoner for keys. She is doing all these areas OK.

Areas I am having problems with is travincial, but that is mainly because my merc keeps dying. The problem is, that he rarely activates is aura when teleporting to the council. I have tried going in and out of a TP as suggested but it doesn't work, is there any way to fix this? My gear is full tals with ist in orb/ptopaz, p-spirit,sojs,magefist and wt for 120 FCR breakpoint. But I sometimes to switch to unique gear, griffons,maras,eshutas,arach,sojs,chancies,wt,coh and p-spirit, because she kills faster, but unfortunately lacks the MF that full-tals provides. I haven't decided yet between these two. Merc gear is Andy's/Gaze, eFort AP, Infinity (non-etheral) cryptic axe. My merc is defiance, normal defense A2.

2. Hammerdin

I am using him for mass rushing people in hell but also for keyrunning. I mostly using him for Niathlak because he can survive easily, gear is hoz with ber, shako with ber, maras,enigma,arach,sojs,waterwalks and mages. I don't feel like I am using him enough. Merc is A2 prayer with insight (etheral) cryptic axe, gaze and eFort AP.

3. Goldfind barb

I am using this guy for goldfinding in Travincial, he is not high level enough, but I feel like doing travincial with my sorc is pointless if a goldfind barb can do it better. Gear is 2xali baba lem lem, maras, ik helm with 2xlem, wealth, upped goldwrap, infernostride,chancies and 2x dwarfstar. Merc is Nightmare A2 offensive might, he is going to use Weakth, crown of thieves and some weapon. Skill points are max BO, 1 point shout, 1 point battle command, 1 point find item, I don't know what else from here.

4. Uberkiller

My smiter is my uberkiller, although he is not done yet, I have some of the gear, including highlords, gores, draculs, verdungos, bul kathos, enigma, exile sacred targed, grief PB, some kind of helm (haven't decided yet). I heard that merc dies so no Merc for this guy. Skill points are max fanaticism, max smite, max holy shield, I don't know what else from here.

My idea is to have my sorc/pally do the keyruns, my uberkiller killing the ubers, my sorc doing the MF, and my goldfind barb to find the gold to gamble with, buy mercs and repair armors. Also sorc seems to be the fastest killing in cows, so I usually get leg with sorc, open with hammerdin, then go back into hell cows with sorc, that way I can kill king infinity times because my pally can always open it again, no matter how many times I kill king with my sorc.

Please read through this and see if you can spot some mistakes to fix, thanks.

[Fluffyknowsyou]

1. Theres nothing wrong with your sorc, it just depends on what you want. Lower mf yeilds more rune drops because you wont have as much chance for magic items. Same principle goes for socketable bases. Here's my motto, I'd rather kill 1000 monsters with 100 mf than 200 with 300. It's all preference for your sorc,but if you want your merc to live longer then use an eth infinity and replace the andy's visage since it lowers his fire resist. I'd suggest using a um'd Vamp gaze for the Damage reduction and leech.

4. For your smiter, I'd max resist lightning since it passively increases your lightning resistance by 10 at level 20 and is doubled when active. This will help loads against meph. For simplicities sake, I'd go with this for ubers. What I see wrong is your ammy, you have a lot of wealth and should just opt in for a maras for better battle orders, damage,resists. As for your rings, throw in a wisp projector.

Hm next is gloves, find some nice rares with ias + resist or craft some blood gloves. This will increase your dps and give you far better mods than dracs since you have a exile. Alternatively you can go Lying hands for fire resists, better zeal damage vs demons and ias.
Main thing you want is ias for greater damage per second.

last is your helm, go for um'd guilummes if you're ubering exclusively. This helm gives you massive cb and open wounds.

[magicrectangle]

1. Theres nothing wrong with your sorc, it just depends on what you want. Lower mf yeilds more rune drops because you wont have as much chance for magic items.

No. MF does not effect the type of items that drop, only the quality of those items (non-magic, magic, rare, set, unique). MF has no effect whatsoever on rune drop rates.

Same principle goes for socketable bases.

On this you are right though, MF does make it harder to find socketables, since it can "upgrade" them to magical or whatnot.

4. For your smiter, I'd max resist lightning since it passively increases your lightning resistance by 10 at level 20 and is doubled when active. This will help loads against meph. For simplicities sake, I'd go with this for ubers. What I see wrong is your ammy, you have a lot of wealth and should just opt in for a maras for better battle orders, damage,resists. As for your rings, throw in a wisp projector.

Assuming we're talking pure smiter, ubers only, no zeal whatsoever, then yeah, max res light and defiance.

But really, even if you're doing ubers primarily, I'd recommend 20 in zeal. Killing non-boss stuff with smite is annoying.

As far as the ammy goes, you're absolutely right. With fanaticism and grief phase you hit max speed smite, and deadly strike doesn't work with smite, so the only thing highlords gives is a skill and a little lightning res.

Hm next is gloves, find some nice rares with ias + resist or craft some blood gloves. This will increase your dps and give you far better mods than dracs since you have a exile. Alternatively you can go Lying hands for fire resists, better zeal damage vs demons and ias.
Main thing you want is ias for greater damage per second.

Definitely blood gloves. The nice thing is since you don't need IAS you can get decent blood gloves pretty cheap. Everybody wants 20% IAS so a set with 10% crush, some str/dex or cold/light res won't set you back that much.

last is your helm, go for um'd guilummes if you're ubering exclusively.

G's face doesn't give open wounds, but it is still the best choice for ubers. Using grief means no CB from weapon, so you absolutely need g's face to get a respectable amount of CB.

[diabloplayer45]

I wasn't aware that you could heal your merc like that. But it works. Shift + leftclick on potions makes my merc say "thanks" and healing him. This may a temporary solution, but I would really like him to be able to survive on his own.

Also regarding travincial, I was suggesting that my goldfind barb did all the travincial running while my sorc did Meph/Andy/Baal/Diablo/Countess. But I guess that once you made a game, you might as well do travincial regardless of what character you play on, since travincial is quick and gives some good rewards.

Regarding gloves, there are some glove named Steelrend, they give +% damage (will this work with smite?) but they also give 10% chance of crushing blow. Would these be a choice? I have a couple of Laying hands with 20% ias as well.

Also magictriangle, you are absolutely right regarding travincial. It is blinding obvious. It's such a quick run, with many good drops, it should be a part of any run with any character, be it goldfind,mf or keyrunning. The idea of skipping it was completely idiotic. I admit that.

[diabloplayer45]

Thanks for that guys, highlords have now been exchanged with maras. I don't have a Gullamule's face, but I'll just trade for one, no idea how much they go for on NL though. Also fluffy you mention um in gaze, my mercs resistances are also maxed, so putting um in his gaze would stack his resistances I believe, but I'm not sure if it would help him much in travincial.

[magicrectangle]

Thanks for that guys, highlords have now been exchanged with maras. I don't have a Gullamule's face, but I'll just trade for one, no idea how much they go for on NL though.

G's face should just be a few pgems. It is common as dirt.

Also fluffy you mention um in gaze, my mercs resistances are also maxed, so putting um in his gaze would stack his resistances I believe, but I'm not sure if it would help him much.

If travincal (hydras) is the main thing that kills him, put a Mal in it.

[diabloplayer45]

If travincal (hydras) is the main thing that kills him, put a Mal in it.

I have thought about this too - but one question, is it better to skip travincial completely with sorc/pally and then only do it with goldfind barb instead? Because that may solve the problem completely for my sorcs merc.

[Fluffyknowsyou]

No. MF does not effect the type of items that drop, only the quality of those items (non-magic, magic, rare, set, unique). MF has no effect whatsoever on rune drop rates.

I was under the impression that magic find increases the chances of a magic item dropping, thus increasing the chance of diablo dropping a blue set of gloves as opposed to a rune. Since the latter aka the rune is not affected by magic find, I'd assume lower mf works the same for the chances that a socket-able item will drop. I dont know if you're nipicking semantics or if I am missing something here. though in the end, I don't ever build for mf anyways, so I never learned how it worked. Do you have a link for a good guide to learning the basic? ...

As for the skill thing, I never said anything about defiance.Since he's using exile, 20k defense or 28k for a good eth one should be enough.
I've played alot with my grief and have found a level 1 zeal vs a level 20 doesn't amount to faster killing of anything. If anything I would put nothing into defiance and put the rest into zeal. That's just my thing lol, I still two shot minion mobs with a one point zeal.

G's face doesn't give open wounds, but it is still the best choice for ubers. Using grief means no CB from weapon, so you absolutely need g's face to get a respectable amount of CB.

Haha I guess I got this wrong, it's been a while since I read guillume's mods.

[FredOfErik]

I was under the impression that magic find increases the chances of a magic item dropping, thus increasing the chance of diablo dropping a blue set of gloves as opposed to a rune. Since the latter aka the rune is not affected by magic find, I'd assume lower mf works the same for the chances that a socket-able item will drop. I dont know if you're nipicking semantics or if I am missing something here. though in the end, I don't ever build for mf anyways, so I never learned how it worked. Do you have a link for a good guide to learning the basic? ....

It works roughly this way:

You kill a monster

This monster decides to drop a Tal rune, a Beserker Axe, and a health potion

Now the MF applies and decides whether your BA will be magical/rare/unique/plain.

Since health potions and runes can't be magical these aren't affected by the mf. The mighty Hrus wrote a guide that could probably be useful to you.

[Fluffyknowsyou]

Skipping trav seems like a waste to me. Have you tried holding shift and left clicking on your health/juvvy pots manually to heal your merc?