1k Pindle runs by a relative newb, advice welcome!
Alright, first time to post something substantial here. If the content or presentation doesn’t conform to forum standards, I am open to advice. If you have any suggestions regarding my gear or runs, I’m also open to advice.
Meeting some of my big runeword goals this past month, I’ve decided to turn my attention to more serious MFing.
My previous efforts with regards to MFing have revolved around a pit-running strafer, a cow-running LF Javazon, a CS-running Hammerdin, and my fragile but versatile fishymancer, who focused primarily on area clears and Pindle. Although his Pindle runtimes were… pitiful to say the least, his perseverance was rewarded with some quality uniques and set items. Among them was a green lacquered plate, i.e. Tal Rasha’s Guardianship. This new toy allowed me to complete Tal Rasha’s wrappings and focus more on my blizz sorc for MFing.
I slapped a pair of Ptopazes in the helm and chest, gathered a few other MF pieces and a fistful of good luck charms, and outfitted her with the goods. She’s been alternating between Ancient Tunnels, Pindle, and Hell Andy/Meph for about the past two weeks. I finally downloaded a runcounter to keep track of my progress. Pindle runs are pretty easy, so I decided to do an even thousand and keep track of the results.
Some selected stats and information:
CHARACTER
Name: Grace
Class: Sorceress
Level: 92
MF: 414
Gear: Full Tal’s set (2 Ptopazes)
Chance Guards (39%MF)
War Travs (44%MF)
1 SOJ (sort of the pride and joy of my collection)
1 Nagelring (30%MF)
Lidless Wall (looking for suggestions to replace this)
Gheed’s Fortune (37%MF)
2 Cold Skill Charms
17 Small charms of good luck (6~7%MF each)
Yep, that’s basically all my best MF gear on one character. I use the Lidless to help with mana and FCR, but it seems like a weak point in her setup. Bear in mind I don't use the RWM, so Spirit or whatever you cool cats use is out of the question. I was thinking a 4 Ist Monarch might be cool, but I don't have 4 Ists and I'd lose some FCR...enough to drop below the 63 breakpoint. If that doesn't really matter for Pindle, I might head back over to LK for some more running.
Merc (NM A2 holy freeze)
Um’ed CoA
Leviathan Kraken Shell (first 231 runs completed using a Shaftstop)
Amn’ed Reaper’s Toll
Yet again, I’m open to suggestions with regards to the merc. I basically blew through the last of my LK runes with that Um in his hat, so nothing outrageous like socketing stuff with Ber’s please. The decrep from the Reaper’s doesn’t really seem to serve much purpose for Pindle. I picked most of the stuff for damage reduction since I usually just let him get pounded while I spammed blizzard. The Leviathan was found by Grace in AT, which I occassionally visited to break up the monotony.
RUN TIMES/INFORMATION
Number of runs: 1000
Average time: 23.8 seconds
Total time: 6:45:40
Players: 1
I opted to go players 1 because I read that the players settings don't change boney's drops.
The first 500 runs were really poor. I was actually discouraged by the quality of the drops and nearly gave up. As if sensing my disappointment, the game suddenly went bananas and dropped several TC87’s within the next 100 or so runs. Cool stuff. After this little hot streak, I cooled off again for the remainder.
No difficulties to report. Spam blizzard. Wait for him to explode like a pinata. Rinse. Repeat. When he spawned cold immune I just static fielded him and waited in a corner for the merc to do the rest.
One thing I didn't do was always kill all of his minions. Some obviously ate it to the blizzard, but if he exploded I checked the drops and then S/E. If that's a bad idea, please advise.
FINDS
I’ll admit I was pretty picky when Pindle dropped his loot. No picking up normal set items or junky uniques to slow me down. If you’re some kind of weird pervert who has a trophy room somewhere full of green breastplates, shine on you crazy diamond, but this thread probably isn’t for you. I just tried my best to pick up most exceptionals and elites.
Overall, I’m most pleased with the 2 socket CoA and the Shadow Dancers. I had previously found a 1 socket CoA with the aforementioned necro, but finding a better one was pretty cool. I’m open to suggestions on what to socket it with and who to use it for. Since I’ve read that CoA’s are mostly useful for PvP, which I don’t play, I’m thinking about giving it to a merc. The Shadow Dancers were cool because they’re a high TC, are super shiny, and have a fun name.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Again, I’d really like advice and criticism here. I’m still pretty newbish and make weird newbish mistakes frequently. I’ve read a lot of the guides around here and have done my best to follow the great advice offered up by people far more knowledgeable than me. No reason to break that trend now
I’ll probably start to get more serious about AT for a while, since I seem to have better drops there anyway. Plus, it’s more exciting.
Thanks for reading! Hope it was more interesting than running Pindle 1,000 times. And thanks to Drystan who suggested I make this post! You guys are a helpful bunch around here!
Re: 1k Pindle runs by a relative newb, advice welcome!
If what you want is just pindle drops (and if you're going for a grail, then yes, you shouldnt care about his minions) and are playing on p1 anyway, it's not worth caring about his minions. Just consider them a source of potential socketed or white items you desire, or the rare rune. P1 won't net you much from them, though.
4 ist monarch is a great idea, and I had one on my pindle runner. Aside from that you could try out rhyme (is this rwm? I'm not sure) which has 25 mf and some blocking and other neat things on it as well. Those seem like fast runs, already, but I could be wrong. I never really timed mine, because it was on a crappier laptop that couldn't handle it.
Seems like you got a decent 1k to me, given it only took 7 hours.
Giving tunnels a serious go is a good idea. It is a lot more fun, and having to pay attention to what you're doing is part of it lol. Plus, you'll have a much higher chance of runes, because you'll be killing more minions and stuff per minute. That and you can actually get every item in this area, unlike pindle. I look forward to the next update
Re: 1k Pindle runs by a relative newb, advice welcome!
Congrats on finishing your 1000 runs!
I do not have much to say about your gear but you can try to break the set and use only 3 pieces (armor/belt/amulet) with Oculus and Shako and replace the shield with a Rhyme for a little bit extra MF and see how that goes. I think that will not put a dent on your killing power at all.
RWM is really a nice mod to have and it gives you so much more to work on like Fortitude, Grief and many others. If you decide to grab it Harmony (Lvl 10 Vigor) is a great and cheap runeword that you can keep on switch since Pindle/LK is mostly about running. And if you're going to do Ancient Tunnels Insight (also dirt cheap) would be great on the merc.
Also I might be wrong but I think your MF is a little bit higher than 414:P
Re: 1k Pindle runs by a relative newb, advice welcome!
Thanks for the replies/encouragement guys!
I keep putting off installing the RWM, even though I have it downloaded and ready to go. Some day!
Regarding the MF number, I just used the number in the gomule stats. Double-checking it, gomule appears to ignore the set bonuses from Tal's set. Weird stuff! Thanks for pointing that out though...now I feel even cooler!
Also, I have a few rhyme shields sitting in my stash. I'll throw one on and check the difference.
Re: 1k Pindle runs by a relative newb, advice welcome!
Pretty nice haul there! In the long run, Pindle is somewhat about the lucky streaks. You can get almost nothing in 500 runs, but in the next few hundred, you could get very lucky. I quite enjoyed running him, because it was quick and easy.
Honestly, there's not really much advice or tips we can offer. It looks pretty solid. There was a debate between full Tal's set and partial Tal's + Shako + Occy/HotO, but that is mostly just personal preference. Give that a try and see which you like. Also, on switch is usually Blade of Ali Baba/Rhyme for the MF boost (usually for bosses, as it's easier to switch weapons as the demon's life is slivered.)
Also, GoMule has a full dump feature, where you can just copy/paste the whole text. It appears like you wrote out the item names individually, (?) so it's much easier putting all the finds in one stash, and copying/pasting the text into [code][/code] blocks.
What was your Blizzard level and damage? For areas other than Pindle, you should aim for the 105% FCR breakpoint. An Arachnid's (Pindle can't drop, but Mephy can) is a great addition here, but then it's changing around the Tal's set to uniques - mostly personal choice/preference.
Re: 1k Pindle runs by a relative newb, advice welcome!
Thanks Drystan! My blizzard was level 30, and did 5023-5287dmg. I don't know if that includes the +% dmg from the 5 pieces of Tal's set.
I tried the Shako/HoTo combination and found it to be kind of fun...gives me a slight increase in MF too. I may switch to this for AT runs today. Three day weekend! Woohoo! That means disgusting amounts of D2!
What would be an ideal MF setup for the 105 fcr breakpoint? I'm trying to think of items to swap out to hit that without compromising my MF numbers significantly. I have a pair of arachs that I got off of meph with my fishy (ever run meph with a fishymancer? yuck), but swapping out Tal's gear causes me to lose both MF and Tal set bonuses. Does that +% cold skill damage bonus I get from the 5 pieces of Tal's make a big difference?
I'd feel more confident switching things around if I had more cold skill charms, but those two are all I have. One was found in the pits, the other was an ilvl 50 charm rerolled with pgems.
Thanks again for the encouragement! I really love this character...she's the first that I've really clicked with and my highest level character to date. 50 AT runs after I posted this thread yesterday have her halfway to lvl 93, after which I'll probably start gambling amulets like a madman! Haha
Re: 1k Pindle runs by a relative newb, advice welcome!
I've lost myself, so I'm going to list a few setups. [...]
Sorry man, but I'll give one setup, which looks absolutely fine to me. It gives skills, resists, huge MF and 105% FCR. I would use this for maps where you have to teleport. With Pindle, I would probably drop FCR since it's only 2-3 teleports, and throw a Harmony bow on switch through town.
I am not one of the optimisers around here, so doing this for me is out of character. I haven't done any MF'ing for quite a long time, so I don't know what setup I was using anymore. I do think I've used both setups though at different stages.
+ Gheeds (36) + sm charms (???) = 375 + sm charms.
+ Weapon switch (Ali Baba [75+ 2x10%MF Jewels = 95]) + Rhyme (25) = 120
Total = 459+ %MF
I've probably made a secondary error here, but I think I've fixed it up from before.
Or you could drop the Tal's (this was discussed previously in the forums,) and go for the unique route:
HotO, Spirit, Shako, Mara's/MF+FCR+Skills/Tal's amulet, SotV, Chance, Arach/MF Belt, War Travs, Nagel + Nagel/Raven.
This would also net you 105% FCR, but probably slightly less MF, but possibly more damage/skills/safety. Don't quote me on that, but it is just another alternative.
From my quick working out, I would guess that 3-part Tal's works out slightly better overall (primarily because Blizzard is already a powerful skill, thus not needing the extra boost this setup might give,) but some may like the slight extra damage/safety that the Uniques setup appears to give.
Re: 1k Pindle runs by a relative newb, advice welcome!
Withour RWM and Harmony bow for speed running in town I'd say you should move from Pindle to AT. Without decent FRW on gear you are loosing much time running around in town and not doing any killing.
But if you want to stay and kill pindle from time to time I'd suggest this setup you go with Occulus as base of your build. Its mods for Pindle are impossible to beat, with both offensive and deffensive stats, as well as MF. You shouldn't be concerned with ctc teleport unless pindle is light enchanted where those bolts can hit you, but if you can position yourself in blind spots there shouldn't be much trouble. And you can go with 63 fcr no problem since you are casting so little and blizzard is timiered skill.
For AT, since you seem to have Hoto, I'd build setup around that since it takes care of your fcr needs.
So...Hoto, Shako, 3 part Tal's (armor, belt, ammy), Rhyme shield, 10fcr/MF ring, Nagelring, Chance Guards and War Travelers. Ptopazed helm and armor.
It's 63 fcr setup and it's fine for AT imo. I've been using 63 fcr for quite some time in AT.
Total MF is 552 if we assume you have equal number of 6 and 7 MF small charms, and if we assume your 10fcr ring has 0 MF, so it can go even higher.
What this setup lacks is fhr, but you can socket ptopazes out and put in Shaels for nice fhr boost (I think it really might be worth it, but you can easily test both setups).
You also get nice ress from hoto, rhyme and tal's ammor/ammy; you will have maxed LR to tackle AT.
Use act 1 trick so you can ignore any FRW needs.
Only thing that might be concering is mana consumption, but once you get CtA there should be no problems with that.
Re: 1k Pindle runs by a relative newb, advice welcome!
Everything was said, just quick notes for pindle then:
(Im vanilla myself, so I agree with your choice of staying away from the dark side, dont listen to those fools and their blasphemy about harmonies and such!)
1, FRW matters, and at some point it matters more than damage or MF. Here you might have a performance leak. Its about finding the sweet spot where your "MF drops per second" are highest. My memory is weak, but there might be some analysis of this by RIP.
2, Anyway, he is the man when it comes to pindle, so anything about pindle running by RIP should be treated dogmatically
3, FCR is ok at 63, maybe even less. You should be able to consistently take only 2 teles from portal to his chamber. Srsly, 105 bp is only 4 frames improvement over 37, or 8 frames if you cast 2 statics after. Thats what, like quarter of a second per run? Forgetaboutit. Slap some MF or FRW on instead.
4, Skip CI Pindle.
5, Dont be lazy to change gear for different targets. For pindle, this is even more important, because he is very specific target with very specific requirements, and on the other hand, lets you get away with very specific holes in your equipment (eg, any form of defense is completely useless etc.). Optimize heavily. After those xk runs, it will pay off.
6, Pindle is dull and as stated by others, very streaky. Mix him with patches of questing and/or more challenging targets, like Baal or CS, for he can make your brain smell and taste bad very easily
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