Hi all, back from vacation and ready to get back to playing some D2!
@ResTTe sorry about the death. Hopefully you got it out of the way! Also nice runtimes. Very similar to my times so far with my fire sorc. If you're running howl (which looks like it works quite well to me) is there any need for delirium on merc? Or I guess also is there any advantage of using something else? Maybe andys for faster decrep.
@Bewitch Nice progress! Glad to see you restarted the pally, and such luck on the fast arachs and maras!
@drmalawi Excellent progress on the can man!
@jjscud huge congrats on the enigma! And respect for no extended stash.
@D30D0R3 Why do you think fire would be faster than lightning for me? That is what I concluded with my spreadsheet, but only barely, and ffs seemed to think lightning would still be faster.
Viper clouds are most definitely still a big threat. I would say the primary threat. The issue is the nextdelay from being near merc, but hopefully through stepping away from him I can avoid that. Also I have seen I think one CE so far and it mustve been a low dmg roll on a low hp enemy, because it barely tickled. Hopefully that's a good sign rather than pure luck
. I also speculate merc cant kill arachs fast enough for nihla to get a CE on them, except when he's FE/LE.
The issue with cold is nihla has 70 base cold res, which causes him to roll unbreakable cold immune much more often than unbreakable fire or lightning immune. Because of this I dont think cold build can compete at all, unless you go blova or another hybrid like pb_pal did.
Equipping merc with a weak weapon is indeed a nice idea. Infinity is required however, and while it would be better in a strict sense, I couldn't bring myself to make my first infinity in a scythe like Bewitch or yng
@ffs thanks so much! Unfortunately I saw your reply after I specced to fire
. Not sure it would have swayed me enough, but it is definitely input I would've considered. So you think lightning would have been faster even considering that calc I tried to do? Absolutely possible. Maybe after I get 99 I will do some runs with that lightning setup and see what the times are like. No promises though I might be too sick of the runs! Speaking of which, have you tried out the fire variant? I would be interested in how the high-end gear times compare with your light sorc with that mac no-lag. I'm sure it would be slower, but I doubt it's by much and it would be nice to have a basis of comparison from the same computer.
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NIHLA SETUP
So i did respec to fire and start the nihla runs. Though I'm only like 600 runs in so far. I actually went with a different setup (I'm calling it safety setup) and like it a lot so far. Basically I went hoto instead of eschutas. This fire res allows me to use treks instead of aldurs, which allows me to socket shako with sol instead of shael. Then I also am using a second natures peace instead of soj, for a total of 26 iDR instead of 11. Also I ended up with some really nice fire res/life small charms. Here's a video showing the gear and a couple of runs.
Video of setup and 10 runs
Please let me know if anyone sees some obvious improvements i can make on the runs whether for efficiency or safety.
I think the most important damage "breakpoint" with this fire nihla build is when you can kill nihla in 1 meteor (when he doesn't have res-boosting modifiers). I needed 1 more skiller to hit that somewhat consistently (needed 5 skillers instead of 4) with my max dmg setup. So since I couldn't hit that "breakpoint" I decided the smallish difference in dmg between max dmg setup and safety setup were something I didn't care about. That being said I'll probably try the soj at some point, but I think the hoto over eschutas is my final decision. So with that, I have a remaining socket quest that I don't think I will use. Maybe nihla will drop griffons and I'll switch to light sorc
S/E TIMES & RUNTIMES
Anyways the runs are going well so far. I did die in like the first ten runs just experimenting in the viper clouds (lol), but no close calls since then. Removing runeword mod made a huge difference in s/e times and then adding no sound seemed to shave off another second or so. So I think I'm around 3-4 seconds avg additional lag for this run (judged by comparing time of first session run to avg runtime). So leaves a bit to be desired, but I'm pleased with that small a number.
Also in the first like 100 runs I dropped boneflame and steelrend. Thats my 4th boneflame and 3rd steelrend, with none of the super cool tc87 uniques to my name.
Runtimes are 24.75s avg right now, and they are still going down, although slowly. Regular runs are ~22s, LE runs are ~23.5s, FE runs are ~27.5s and FE/LE runs are ~31s. Of course magic resistant and spectral hit make a difference too, but much less noticeably. I'm not checking (read: not rolling a map with) any shrines, so exp/hr is around 3.2m. Definitely pleased with that so far. My "minimum" goal was to avg 3m over the whole lvl (not counting any deaths) and that seems very achievable.
EXTRA SKILL POINTS
Oh one thing I didn't discuss earlier is what to do with the extra skill points after maxing the fire dmg and getting the range needed on static. I know @T72on1 put them in firewall, but I didn't see myself ever making use of that, and I know @Bewitch put them into inferno for the afterburn dmg on meteor. I played a few hundred runs without committing the points. I debated doing something defensive with them, but I'm not sure ES is a reasonable idea on a build that doesn't have plenty of mana, and I don't even find myself taking the time to cast frozen armor (despite having put a point in it). So I ended up putting the points in inferno. This SEEMED to immediately shave like 0.5s off the run, but I have a hard time believing it has that big an impact. But regardless I do think it makes a difference.
S/E & PICKING BEHAVIOR FOR SAFETY
Also as far as safety goes, if I see any one of: amp dmg, might, fana, vipers, I keep a finger over the esc button and stare at hp bulb. If i see any two of those, I probably just s/e. If I'm taking dmg through less volatile means (blood stars, archers), I just stare at hp bulb and s/e immediately if i see a number less than 1500. Do these seem like good protocols?
I also occasionally get low on mana, maybe every 15 runs or so. I'm just hitting malah real quick when that happens. Lose like 2 seconds on the run, but feels nicer than slowly using mana pots and needing to restock.
As far as picking behavior goes, I care a lot about this with the sorc. She feels fairly safe during the tele'ing to nihla and the killing (we'll see if i change my tune a few more weeks in though), but picking something up feels like it triples the danger. I walk to the platform to do so for fear of the nextdelay clouds, so it also adds a a few seconds to the runtime. Anyways, I'm thinking something like this for the picking behavior. Let me know what you all think.
- Always pick up - useful uniques/sets, grailers, pul+ runes
- Skip during nihla runs only - small charms, flawless gems, ral runes, rare gloves/pelts/claws/boots
- Not sure, maybe skip as well - grand charms, rare rings, rare amulets, rare circlets
PLANS
I think for now I'm just gonna shoot for 15 mill per week (4.5-5 hours of play, and ~4 months time to lvl) and spend the rest of my weekly gaming time on other characters or even other games. Just take it easy for a bit. That being said, I'm sure at some point I'll rev up the pace to see faster progress. Happy playing everyone!
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