Some questions from a new SP'er.

[ginNtonic]

Re: Some questions from a new SP'er.

it says that spirit has been found working in non ladder, and i wanted to know if this has been proven. Did 1.12 make it a nl accessable runeword?

taken straight from Arreat Summit:
The following Rune Words will only work on the Battle.net Realms for Ladder Characters only. They will not work for single or open characters or non-ladder characters

Spirit falls under this category. The only reason to delay using RWM is if you are trying to trade to someone playing vanilla (unmodded). Its a great mod that gives single-player-players access to the same runewords as battle.net-players.

Also, while slightly unrelated I'd like to point out that items marked (Ladder Only) on the arreat summit can drop in single player as well without the use of any mods. Bad clarification on blizzards part I guess.

Good luck with your light-sorc. Don't ever be discouraged if you haven't heard of someone beating Hell with a build. There are numerous Pat/Mat/Guardian threads with odd builds both twinked and pure. The odd builds just take some creative thinking. Again, good luck! :wink:

 

[hobbez]

Re: Some questions from a new SP'er.

ok so here's a little update

LightninMcqueen is now lvl 69 and in hell act 1 with completed the first 2 quests.

I'm trying to make my way to the pits where i understand lays lvl 85's, is a good place to lvl up and find decent items.

I didn't do many runs on nm andy/meph/diablo/and esepcially baal. I can handle andy meph and diablo at players 3 ok, but baal is kinda of a struggle staying alive against even at players 1. The reason may be my gear since its pure mf gear + some 20 charms of various resists (i only have -resist on cold in nm, dab nabbit) I plan to do some more runs once my char is a little tougher, possibly by reducing some mf and upping fcr/resist/dmg. But i need to find a decent 4 socket shield for spirit.
Hopefully i can find a occy in nm like that writer of the guide i'm following did?

Mf: 330+ on me and some 100+ on merc, or course its not nearly completed. Still need perfect lucky gloves, 1 nagel ring, 1 ptopaz and all my mercs equip has to be redone (lucky circlet + 3 flawed gem armor, i have 3 socket helm and 4 socket armor but waiting for ptopazes). So yeah i'm pretty happy where my gear is heading.

Ok here's the issue. Hell is HELL! So many stupid light immunes around, luckily my faithful merc can deal with them while i telekinesis the others, but the real issue is that when i get hit, i get that 'frozen into place' effect, and its especially annoying when there's a pack of fast monsters around. I'm forced to retire my mf gear and put on put on more survivable items, which gave me +4 on all skills for now (which boosts my damage from 3-3.5k to 4-5.5k).

Here are my questions:
1)i'm planning to put my mf gear in the stash and just wip it out when it comes to bosses. Can i beat down a boss with regular gear/tp to town/swap gear/go back in and smash his face with my mf gear and get the effect or must the idiot be crushed the whole time with the mf gear? On bnet i keep getting allied players saying 'let me get the last hit, i have high mf" so i was wondering if the same applys.

2)could i technically fight a boss on players 1/tp to town/switch to players 3-5/go back and kill him for better item drop?

Other than that, i feel good about this lady. I've completed 2 sets while marching to hell, one being the sigon set which i fitted on a new pally filled with +dmg charms, just for fun!

Oh wait: can ber mal and ist be found in pit and countess?

Thanks guys!

 

[maareek]

Re: Some questions from a new SP'er.

The pits have lightning immune monsters (rogue archers, I believe, but the melee rogues might be as well/instead and the skellies may be also; I've never taken a pure lightning char in there so I haven't paid close attention to which has that immunity) so you'll have considerable headaches trying to run it with this char. I wouldn't want to wander into the pits with a pure lightning character, but if you're up for the challenge, best of luck to you.

69 is pretty low for Hell for standard play. I'd suggest trying to level up a bit more in NM Baal runs before you try to head much deeper into Hell. You'll almost certainly need to switch out your MF gear, but you're almost certainly going to have to do that, anyway, because lightning sorceress can't really wear a lot of MF and still be strong killers.

About the "getting frozen in place" thing: if you mean you literally get frozen by cold damage you should try making a "rhyme" shield (Shael+Eth) for the cannot be frozen mod and a little MF, until you can make a spirit (the base can't drop until you're in Hell, anyway). Otherwise, you probably mean going into hit recovery. That can be helped by getting more life and by having items or charms that give faster hit recovery. It's also possible that you're getting block locked, but I doubt it unless you have quite a bit in dexterity and a shield with a high % chance to block.

No matter what, you're pretty much going to have to scrap your mf gear in Hell and wear more safety oriented gear. MF gear can normally get you to Hell and increases your odds of finding stuff that will help you once you get there, but only a few builds can really go through Hell still wearing mf gear, and a lightning sorceress is not one of them.

On to your questions:

1. You can indeed do that. Most people put high mf items on their switch (like gull + rhyme or blade of ali baba + rhyme) and bring the boss down to a sliver of his health bar with the normal gear before switching to the MF gear for a (hopefully) better drop. The only MF that matters is what the value is when the boss dies, not what it was while his health was being drained.

2. Nope. When the boss is spawned his hitpoints and his drop rate have already been set and can't be increased by changing the players setting (it may be possible that you can reduce the drop rate by dropping the players setting in this period, but even if that's possible it won't lower his hitpoints, and I haven't heard conclusively whether it's even possible ... mostly because, I imagine, nobody would want to test it).

3. I think all runes can drop in the pits (I know that Jah can, thanks to Corrupted's video where he finds one there), but the odds are really, really low (especially for a rune as high as Ber). The countess can drop an Ist, with odds of roughly 1 Ist in every 1,000 runs. She can also drop all runes lower than Ist, with slightly better odds. The highest rune she can drop is Lo, but the odds of that are absolutely terrible; Ist is the highest you should ever expect to have drop from the countess because it's part of her "special rune drop." Gul-Lo can only drop from her item drop, so the odds are incredibly lower. Keep in mind to run the Countess at players1 if you're looking for runes.

Hope that helps! Best of luck.

 

[Skinhead On The MBTA]

Re: Some questions from a new SP'er.

Clarification on the Rune thing - any and all items can drop in alvl 85 areas except for the Cow King's Set. That includes runes up to Zod.

 

[hobbez]

Re: Some questions from a new SP'er.

thanks for all the info!

About the dex...well i was under the impression that no points are to be wasted on dexterity. So i have yet to place any. Should I or let items do it further on?

What lvl SHOULD i lvl up to before facing off in hell?

 

[Skinhead On The MBTA]

Re: Some questions from a new SP'er.

If you haven't got any dexterity now, you've got no chance of getting enough to get max block with Spirit. So I reckon just pile the points into Vitality and try not to get hit.

I tend to be around 75 when I get to Hell, which is about where I get to playing /p8 all the way through. I tend to do OK.