Diablo 4 Builds
Build Planner
Map
Diablo 2 Guides
Forums
Support PureDiablo
Vessel of Hatred

Anything Goes D2 Lounge!

qsR4Zua.png


I did screenshot this awhile ago. Pretty accurate. And a good laugh! I almost always go for killing power and max block. Life and resists are almost always sorted out with charms and/or CtA.

Good old @Nightfish explained it really good in this thread so I don't have to. ;)
 
I miss nightfish. Great link there. I have always been firmly in the max vita no block camp, but he raises some valid points and it's hard argue with that math. But either way you've gotta get to a good amount of HP before max block really makes you safer. This is especially true for untwinked I feel, and I have never spec'd max block on an untwinked sorc for sure. Good luck on your next one!
 
kestegs said:
I miss nightfish. Great link there. I have always been firmly in the max vita no block camp, but he raises some valid points and it's hard argue with that math. But either way you've gotta get to a good amount of HP before max block really makes you safer. This is especially true for untwinked I feel, and I have never spec'd max block on an untwinked sorc for sure. Good luck on your next one!
Click to expand...


Define good? 800+????
 
At least i learned a few things with that rip. After death i rushed a new twinked sorc to nightmare, i expect to get to hell andy today.

Edit:

I think max block or 50% block is worth it if you have CtA, just to make your Hp pool as effective as you can. The same applies to %DR, although i have some doubts, its nice to have but for me depends on the situation. My doubt lies on mixing it with block, block gives you less chance to take physical attacks, but %DR reduces the amount of damage you take from physical. So i think that stacking %DR when going for block has diminishing returns, altough my untwinked javazon is doing that and she is inmortal!

I think you could play 50% block in untwinked sorc, but you should have totally max fire and light ress. Cold should be high though (i deeded CE with ~15% CR).

The problem is that Spirit setup is also defensively really strong. 55% fhr on shield leaves you at 5% of the breakpoint, 20 to vit, ress.
 
Last edited:
Sorry to hear @Caralis! I'm not one to speak from HC experience since I have 0 Guardians (though attempting it is going to be my next project). But from my perspective playing safely is about discipline more than any defensive stats. Not taking shortcuts and not giving in to greed. ;)

Closest experience for me was running Nihl for 98-99, it’s a dangerous target and you really don’t want to die and lose some 10 hours of progress, which in fact happened. But it became super safe when I just stopped messing around and always S&Eed at the first sight of danger. :)
 
zemaj said:
@Owlie
I mean, extra range is cool and all, but there are drawbacks too. Since WW hits one target with each weapon every 4frames, when you get mobbed (or whirl into/through same) having that extra range can disperse your damage more than you would like, as you may find your hits landing on the mob behind or to the side of the one you are wanting to hit. I actually learned this in some team duels playing BvC, but it still applies as it can be annoying when you're trying to kill Achmel & the other mummies, and just keep hitting the skellies instead. Still, I got around it by trying to stay more at the edges of packs in such cases, and it worked out well enough.
Click to expand...

Whirlwind will pick a target within a 5-tile radius and attack it regardless of whether the target is in melee range or not. So having a shorter range is never better. Imagine holding shift and attacking a target that's at the edge of your screen, you will attack (swing at the target), but there is no way the attack will land because of how far away the target is, even though it was specifically targeted.
You'd think that a shorter range would indeed keep the spread tighter, but in stead you will just swing the air more often. Imo it's a design flaw of Whirlwind, but perhaps the developers thought it would suit the skill as being a reckless move.
For PvM I'd recommend something with a rangeadder of 3 or 4, and no less than 2. (Extra details on the Basin wiki.)

The "whirlwind at the edge of the pack" luckily is a fairly effective work-around, so you can certainly get away with having a shorter range, but imo it's so much more satisfying to just plow through the mass like an absolute champion. :eek:
 
Proper play is always priority. I just wanted to theorycraft with block builds outside of furyzon and paladin. I really dont want to go max vit and spirit on every char.
 
My standards for hell are 1k life and maxed res. Anything less makes me nervous. 800 life is an okay start for early hell if you can't do any better. The fact that Sorc gets no other benefit from the dex also really bothers me. At least when you go max block on some other builds you get some benefit in chance to hit as well.
 
kestegs said:
My standards for hell are 1k life and maxed res.
Click to expand...
Actually, my sorc has about 1200 life with Occy+Spirit and 1100 life with Ali Baba's+Rhyme.

A problem with blocking is that it's all or nothing. I think it's a good strategy to avoid dice rolls. Life is always present, but blocking will fail at least 25% of the time and there are a lot of attacks that bypass it. If you do Tunnels and Pindle most of the time (and also Meph+Andy), your sorc will have almost no situations in which blocking is needed. The lightning attacks cannot be blocked and the other enemies are either slow (zombies) or huge (4-armed guys), so blizzard will kill them easily or the merc will jump inbetween.

I did Tunnels at /p7 for a while when I leveled my sorc (with full MF gear BTW) and it was no problem from a softcore perspective, i.e. she gained much more XP than she lost from occacional deaths, even though I'm not good at handling critical situations. She doesn't even have maxed resists, only lightning res is halfway close to it, although the rest is in the positievs. She is L96 now BTW, just from Tunnels+Pindle.
 
Wow, 1200. I'm currently at clvl63 approaching NM RoF with 788 life. I've also managed to boost my resists to 75/61/70/51.
 
@Fruit, I had been too lazy to dig into the AB wiki page, but after reading your great summary I finally did. The drawbacks of range adder 1 weapons do seem significant enough (at least to think about). Still, it does seem pretty hard to quantify in less-than-idealised situations. I have a couple of questions:

1) Is target selection (within WW's radius) completely random? Or are, say, nearest targets prioritised?
2) One shouldn't whirl at the very edge of a pack, but rather just "inside" the monsters at the edge, right? That way, you only disregard the area near the circumference of the WW radius (outside of the pack) which you couldn't reach anyway.
 
Last edited:
788 life and L63 is good enough for everything in nightmare, so I suggest to make a few nightmare Baal runs until about L75 and perhaps 500 nightmare Meph+Andy runs inbetween. That should provide enough decent gear for her and another few characters. Then off to hell Meph+Andy for let's say another 500 times, finish hell mode and then it's Pindle+Tunnels time for as long as you like.
 
With regards to the block/vit discussion, I would agree that having enough HP is a must. After that comes the question of whether to go for block or not. This and what "enough HP" means depend on the character, playstyle and the area one is playing in. Examples:
  1. I find my Necro in p7 Pit to be very safe with ~1200 HP and >70% block. Generally, max block makes a lot of sense in the Pit.
  2. For a Trav sorc, max HP all the way as you should never get hit physically.
  3. For my AT sorc, I have ~900 HP and rest into block. While I agree with krischan's analysis, my playstyle sadly features lots of bad teleporting, so blocking helps.
*

Back to WW. I made a quick spreadsheet to compare the viable options for 1/2H Grief and 2H eBotD and the effects of range adder; you can have a quick look at the results here. There must be mistakes, because the differences between 2x1H vs. 2H Grief vs. 2H eBotD are ridiculous? Other than that, BA is the clear winner, but Zweihander is looking very nice indeed. Details in the spoiler.

  • I looked at the damage to demons, because most of the monsters are demons (certainly in Baal runs). For undead there would a 180% ED loss for Grief and a 200% gain for BotD, so keep that in mind.
  • I included ED% (weapon, strength, mastery, WW, Might, LoH), Critical Strike, Deadly Strike to obtain a more realistic picture (for fairly standard Baal run gear). Added 90% to BotD's off-weapon ED because of its +30 to all attributes. Also, a 80% chance to hit (this would, of course, skew in Grief's favour for everthing but Unique and Boss monsters, due to its ITD).
  • Size 2 and Size 3 columns use the values from the range adder table on the AB wiki page essentially as an additional chance to hit (simple multiplication by the apt factor from the table). To make sense, this would require an idealised distribution of monsters within the WW radius. So, not very realistic, but I think this provides a good estimate for the scenario in which the range adder has the most effect on DPS (disregarding the highly improbable worst case scenario where all monsters are out of range). In other words, I think the difference between the Total DPS column and Size 2/3 columns provides a good estimate on the upper bound of the effect of range adder.
  • Main formulas used:
Code: 
Grief avg dmg = (avg base dmg+400)*(1+1.8+10) off-weapon ED*(1+0.85+(1-0.85)*0.3  CS+DS) := AD

eBotD avg dmg =  (avg base dmg) * 1.5 eth * (1 + 4) on-weapon ED * (1+10.9) * (1+0.65+(1-0.65)*0.3)

1H Total DPS = (AD + 2*AD*21/fpa)*(0.8 CtH)

2H Total DPS = (2*AD + AD*17/fpa)*0.8
 
Last edited:
Yes, I recall seeing this type of comparison before and don't remember the differences being this drastic. Since I can't find mistakes, let me offer possible explanations.
  1. Grief vs. BotD: of course it is Grief's +Damage that makes the biggest difference. For the example of a BA, and counting in the differences in ED and DS, to get the effect of that +Damage modifier, one would need ~600% on-weapon ED on BotD.
  2. Grief 1H vs 2H: This same modifier also reduces the difference between the original 1H and 2H base damage from the original ~2 times to ~1.1 times.
  3. 2x1H vs. 2H: the most important thing here are the WW mechanics. In particular, 2x1H basically doubles the 1H damage, while 2H has no similar effect.
 
Last edited:
So NM Diablo is dead, yeeha. Merc only died once. Two Uniques dropped but nothing interesting. Plan is to complete NM and then run Meph for some gear. Currently using Lore Helm, Rhyme Small Shield, Lionheart Mage Plate, Spirit Long Sword, Goldwrap belt, 2 nagelrings and crafted caster gloves boots and ammys. All of it could be better but its what I've got just now.

Starting to feel very safe with her (probably deeds tomorrow) and using teleport for merc placement is becoming almost habit now. I have almost finished pumping meteor so am in the range of around 1400-1600 dmg per fireball but still havent hit 63 fcr yet. Blizzard about half that but proved its worth against the FI knights in CS

Really enjoying this build
 
You can probably do nightmare Meph+Andy with more MF gear. I would exchange the armor for the Wealth runeword or, once you have it, Skullder's. Helm: Something with 3 ptopazes or a Tarnhelm. If there's anything that could slow you down at this point, it's a lack of mana, but that could be solved with a belt full of mana potions.
 
krischan said:
You can probably do nightmare Meph+Andy with more MF gear. I would exchange the armor for the Wealth runeword or, once you have it, Skullder's. Helm: Something with 3 ptopazes or a Tarnhelm. If there's anything that could slow you down at this point, it's a lack of mana, but that could be solved with a belt full of mana potions.
Click to expand...

I have a 3 ptopaz helm and mage plate available. Not sure about swapping out them out until I'm comfortable with runs. 500 completed runs with 100mf or so is better than 10 completed with 250 and deeds on the 11th!!!!!!
 
@Owlie - For the eBotD calculation, on-weapon and off-weapon ED should be applied separately, not added together. Additional points into strength count toward off-weapon ED. base dmg * 1.5 * 5 * 11.9 * etc.
 
Log in to Reply / Create Site Account or log in with BattleNet
 Discord
 Twitch
 GoogleGoogle
PurePremium
Remove ads & support the site - Get PurePremium
Top Bottom
Back
Estimated market value
Low
High