Amn Rune so highly coveted??? And my personal assassin build der=0

[mattguy]

Amn Rune so highly coveted??? And my personal assassin build

Hi there all assassin lovers,

I've just started Diablo II again with a brand new assassin character on the battle.net. I'm just wondering of any other place to hunt for runes apart from the Countess, especially Amn rune. Apparently, it seems to be highly valued around the Europe servers :scratch:. Hehe.. since I've just started a brand new character.... I'm just trying to get cheap runeword weapons for claws. Strength (Amn+Tir) seems to come to my mind and Malice as well. Btw, I'm a kicker assassin based on Venom and Phoenix Strike (without much synergies). Here's my skill allocation. Need some fine tuning coz I'm planning for PvP and PvM with a bit of focus into elemental charges (it's just too cool!!). Any advice will be appreciated. Planning to magic find with this build as well (with great care in combat due to focus in magic find equipment):

Claw Mastery 10
Weapon Block 15
Venom 20
Shadow Master 10
Dragon Talon 18
Fist of Fire 4
Phoenix Strike 20
Pre-req 13

The skill allocation might be a bit spread out. I was just thinking of a more 'rounded' assassin that will kill things albeit slowly but surely with claw mastery to aid the accumulation of charges for phoenix strike and FoF for a slight synergy against bosses. What do you guys think? Cheers! Btw, Assassin Rocks! :yep: Wonder if I can survive in hell... :scratch:

 

[Kretschmer]

It seems very low on the damage.

I'd recommend fully synergizing one of the PS charges.

WB has large diminishing returns. I'd take +skills into account and shoot for a more reasonable total.

Fade and a maxed SM will help you survive in hell.

 

[John Garrano]

Wonder if I can survive in hell... :scratch:

Good luck! :thumbsup:

Appart from that, tower is pretty cool for amn, but you might try cow runs or travincal, altho i prefer countess personally...

 

[mattguy]

Cows or travincal yields runes? Heheh... something new :surprise: I was also thinking about hellforge runs. Currently I'm in normal and I was thinking will the countess yield the 'coveted' Amn runes? I always though Amn is quite a low level rune.

Ahh I see what you mean about low damage output. I was thinking about venom as a main source of damage. How easy to get +skill assassin charms? Probably I should reduce weapon block to 10 and distribute the remaining points either to SM or FoF, cannot see if I can actually fully synergize PS with FoF due to tight skill allocation.

Any input is always welcome... btw... this forum has pretty kewl community around. Hi Guys! :flip:

 

[Din moscha]

amn is liked becuase it has 7%ll
widely used on mercs by people that wont share their precious potions

 

[mattguy]

amn is liked becuase it has 7%ll
widely used on mercs by people that wont share their precious potions

Hehe... tell me about it. Just recently, on the europe realms, a person wanted a shael rune for an Amn. As for me, I'll stick to NM countess runs... at least I'll have a chance for Amn. I've tried normal countess and the highest so far I've gotten is Ral. Can't wait to kill Baal and get to NM. I think my Lvl 34 Assassin can handle him judging from my playtesting in single player games. I've gotten PS to spam meteor on that bast**d .

On another note, a realm player told me that if I were to kill Baal in normal, I won't be able to see normal games anymore. Is that true? Would you rather kill Baal and do Baal runs yourself (including killing Baal again and again in normal) to lvl up AND get items... or would you wait and lvl up till 50 in public baal runs before killing Baal to enter nightmare? :evil:

 

[stevethatsmyname]

you cant find amn in normal countess..

but NM countess drops it fairly regularly (maybe once in 20 runs or so).

and hell countess drops it about as much as NM countess drops it =)

you could always hope for amn rune from your normal forge hehe.

Or you could collect a few pgems. I am sure someone will be willing to trade an amn fora couple perfect gems.

 

[John Garrano]

On another note, a realm player told me that if I were to kill Baal in normal, I won't be able to see normal games anymore. Is that true? Would you rather kill Baal and do Baal runs yourself (including killing Baal again and again in normal) to lvl up AND get items... or would you wait and lvl up till 50 in public baal runs before killing Baal to enter nightmare? :evil:

Hey mattguy i didnt realise you meant looking for runes on normal difficulty...
If you kill baal in normal you'll move ahead to nightmare, meaning you'll be able to see games from nightmare on join list.
I think lvl 50 is not only hard to reach in normal but also boring, IMO.
Usually i move ahead to NM @ about lvl 42, but here's a great guide to see where should you be (theoretically).

Hope that helped

 

[mattguy]

Hey mattguy i didnt realise you meant looking for runes on normal difficulty...
If you kill baal in normal you'll move ahead to nightmare, meaning you'll be able to see games from nightmare on join list.
I think lvl 50 is not only hard to reach in normal but also boring, IMO.
Usually i move ahead to NM @ about lvl 42, but here's a great guide to see where should you be (theoretically).

Hope that helped

Ahhh... That's what I'm looking for... cheers for that . Attempt to get to baal... pretty hard for a newly begin Lvl 34 assassin to attempt the Minions of Destruction... solo... call me crazy but its a pretty good challenge. Killed the boss but got swarmed by his minions. *Mental note* Gotta get better items and AR.

For now, I think I'll join public baal runs for a while until I reach a decent level for PS to have a decent frozen duration. Thanks for the tips

 

[John Garrano]

If you need a hand and you're on Europe NL let me know.
I'm always available to help if i'm available

 

[Uzziah]

Claw Mastery 10
Weapon Block 15
Venom 20
Shadow Master 10
Dragon Talon 18
Fist of Fire 4
Phoenix Strike 20
Pre-req 13

This is not a really well thought out plan. let me help to make it a bit better for your assassin.

clawmastery 10 isn't bad so your using claws and 2 of them given your weapon block decision.

weapon block 50% once all +skills are accounted for is your target unless your pvp, then a higher amount may be needed. I would stay to 1-5 weapon block.

venom 20 for your build using claws this is not a bad choice play with it. 20 is where you want to be make sure to use it.

Shadow master - you want to hit slvl 17 when all is said and done so 10 with +7 skills will net you your slvl 17. master is like valk with an amazon planned right it can be your only offencive skill.

your staying clear of traps - thats a choice but not a bad one. 0 in trap skills

lets see at most we have
10 clawmastery
5 weapon block
20 venom
20 shadow master
~5 prereqs - 1 point wonders

That leaves us with 45 additional points at clvl 99.

Point intensive skills are not a good option at this point. So lets for get pheonix strike as a killing skill. we can use it for the freezing ablility but we already have a cold skill, so lets just forget getting pheonix strike its not really worth the extra points.

venom is strong and so is your clawmastery and you have already started with dragon talon as a kicker, I suggest using tiger strike then since the ED% of tigerstrike is multiplied not added with that of dragon talon.

IE 1440% and 200% = 2880% not 1440% + 200% = 1640% (forgive me my math may be off, I am not sure on the decimal points in the first situation)

I suggest going all out with tiger strike and dragon talon (or other finisher).


[highlight]Strength runeword[/highlight]
Did you know that you can make +claw mastery on white claws?? the only problem is that they can only get 2 sockets once the ilvl is dropped low enough to get the +claw mastery staffmod. Strength fixes this problem since it only needs 2 sockets. Here is how you do it.

Gather elds, chippies, and "low quality" exceptional/elite claws.

Use the eld chippy low quality weapon = normal quality weapon recipe and bam you have a normal white claw with an ilvl of 1 so +claw mastery is possible. After 5 tries I got a +2 claw mastery wrist sword. But then you have no sockets in the claw, so you have to create sockets there are 2 ways to do this effectively with the white item,
#1 socketing quest give max sockets everytime.
#2 use the cube recipe for a 5/6 chance to gain 2 sockets and a 1/6 chance to gain 1.

then just add your Amn-Tir and fight away.

 

[mattguy]

This is not a really well thought out plan. let me help to make it a bit better for your assassin.

clawmastery 10 isn't bad so your using claws and 2 of them given your weapon block decision.

weapon block 50% once all +skills are accounted for is your target unless your pvp, then a higher amount may be needed. I would stay to 1-5 weapon block.

venom 20 for your build using claws this is not a bad choice play with it. 20 is where you want to be make sure to use it.

Shadow master - you want to hit slvl 17 when all is said and done so 10 with +7 skills will net you your slvl 17. master is like valk with an amazon planned right it can be your only offencive skill.

your staying clear of traps - thats a choice but not a bad one. 0 in trap skills

lets see at most we have
10 clawmastery
5 weapon block
20 venom
20 shadow master
~5 prereqs - 1 point wonders

That leaves us with 45 additional points at clvl 99.

Point intensive skills are not a good option at this point. So lets for get pheonix strike as a killing skill. we can use it for the freezing ablility but we already have a cold skill, so lets just forget getting pheonix strike its not really worth the extra points.

venom is strong and so is your clawmastery and you have already started with dragon talon as a kicker, I suggest using tiger strike then since the ED% of tigerstrike is multiplied not added with that of dragon talon.

IE 1440% and 200% = 2880% not 1440% + 200% = 1640% (forgive me my math may be off, I am not sure on the decimal points in the first situation)

I suggest going all out with tiger strike and dragon talon (or other finisher).


[highlight]Strength runeword[/highlight]
Did you know that you can make +claw mastery on white claws?? the only problem is that they can only get 2 sockets once the ilvl is dropped low enough to get the +claw mastery staffmod. Strength fixes this problem since it only needs 2 sockets. Here is how you do it.

Gather elds, chippies, and "low quality" exceptional/elite claws.

Use the eld chippy low quality weapon = normal quality weapon recipe and bam you have a normal white claw with an ilvl of 1 so +claw mastery is possible. After 5 tries I got a +2 claw mastery wrist sword. But then you have no sockets in the claw, so you have to create sockets there are 2 ways to do this effectively with the white item,
#1 socketing quest give max sockets everytime.
#2 use the cube recipe for a 5/6 chance to gain 2 sockets and a 1/6 chance to gain 1.

then just add your Amn-Tir and fight away.

Hi Uzziah!

Thanks for your tips although I wonder the justification to use TS in conjunction with DTalon. According to the Kicking Basic FAQ sticky, since TS charge is only released on the first kick, the average number of kicks will outperform kicks with the time taken to charge up TS. If that’s the case, I would rather build up charges for PS. It seems that TS will be much better used with DTail, which will result in a higher damage throughput. Would someone care to shed some light on this?

The reason I chose PS is due to the fact that I am designing this assassin to handle hell difficulty levels. Although PS is less synergized than PS striker by skygoneblue, at least I have all forms of damage against those pesky immunes: physical (from 1 point wonder TS), poison (Venom), Fire (with slight synergy from FoF against non-fire immune boss), Lightning and Ice (all from PS). Hehe… something like a Rainbow Martial Art Assassin. Plenty of skill switching to keep me interested. Wonder if there’s any guide on that. From the skill point calculator for PS, I will have decent damage even though there are no synergies by +skill charms. Slight FoF investment will be a plus. Is that viable? With Venom support, I think it is doable though I would need more input on this.

I agree that I invested too much point in WB. Perhaps I’ll reduce it to 10 since I want to play PvP as well and use the 5 points either in FoF (for synergy), SM or BF for chaos sanctuary. Though personally, I would try to find claws that will offer +skills for BF rather than investing points in it or use a good throwing weapon on weapon switch. Not sure about it. And I would need to test this build in Hell level.

Thanks for the tips on white claws Uzziah! Time for me to hunt down those crack version of claws.

John, I am on Europe realms but on the Ladder though. I am not sure if non-ladder character can join any ladder games or vice-versa.

Keep those input coming. Cheers!