Anything Goes D2 Lounge!

[Luhkoh]

@ffs I took a look at my little calc, and it looks like 20 fana is about the same as zero fana with decrep proc'd. But thats on an enemy with zero physical res. So with any physical res, decrep will outperform fanaticism. So, especially considering your point about less dmg being taken, looks like you're definitely right! Ok ok I'll definitely have to try the reapers setup out sooner rather than later . Alright another question, but this one is more just details I think. Points in salvation vs sacrifice? Looks like salvation gives you very slightly more dmg than points in sacrifice, but at the expense of less physical dmg for leech and for highly light resistant monsters.

Just to illustrate my point about crescent moon vs grief. If we take an enemy with 100 light res, and 0 physical res. lvl 20 conviction would reduce resistance to 75, then crecent moon reduce it to 40 for lightning dmg of ~2100. Now the physical dmg of crescent moon would be roughly 830, with decrep proc'd, so that's a total of ~2930

With grief, the res would be at 75, for a lightning dmg of only 875. But the physical dmg component, would be ~3300 with decrep proc'd. So a total of 3300+875= ~4200

Let me know if something looks vastly off with those numbers, but if they are correct, even vs broken lightning immunes, I can only see the case for crescent moon when they are also PI or very highly physically resistant. And that just seems too rare to consider lowering dmg against all non immune monsters drastically (because they would likely already be at -100 light res and so crescent moon wont do anything). I think crescent moon is an awesome weapon for tesladins who don't have conviction and for light sorcies (who aren't zealing with grief for big physical dmg), but I don't see its advantages for a dreamadin.

@Dagaz Does a phoenix setup not outperform it?

 

[zemaj]

Would the best hypothetical weapon be an eth phase blade with cruel/fools/ias/2os/lightning damage and socketed with facets? Or would it lack in both lightning and physical--best to just choose one?

Physical damage would lack considerably vs. 'Grief', I don't care how awesome the rolls are... its just the nature of that whole bit, if physical damage is the key interest, and you are talking about 1-hand weapons, 'Grief' wins. Sole exception MIGHT be a coma-inducingly good roll on a 1.07 craft, which would have the bonus of a third socket, but even that would still probably be only equivalent to, not greater than 'Grief'.

On the Lightning side, though, that's an interesting point... if the +%skill damage on facets works like the bonus from Lightning Mastery on a sorc, getting a double application with melee attacks, then it may be more worthwhile to skip 'Crecent Moon' in favor of a 6sPB (2xShael 4xLite Facet). This would be assuming self-running Conviction at slvl25. If relying on 'Infinity' merc, -%elr from 'Crescent Moon' would still probably win out.

 

[ffs]

Agreed, don’t see any rares competing here. Grief is too OP for physical damage.

As for Lightning side, the reason for CM is that -ELR is applied in full after breaking LIs, whereas +LSD is heavily mitigated in such scenarios. At one point I even compared a 30/30 sword to CM for Light Sorc, and while I forgot the exact numbers I apparently concluded CM was the better option. Not sure how that changes with high level Conviction.

@Luhkoh re Lightning damage vs broken LIs, just to be sure, you’re taking into account the stacking aura and synergies? While I found Grief to be noticeably stronger overall, I did buy into the notion CM was stronger vs broken LIs specifically, from what I gathered most Dreamer guides I had a look at seemed to make that point also. Could certainly be wrong though.

 

[Luhkoh]

@ffs yes I am. 30 in holy shock and 20 in resist light = 2836 avg lightning dmg with zero in salvation, and 3503 with salvation maxed. And agreed I see that a lot as well, and again, could always have overlooked something. But the numbers I came up with just dont support crescent moon when conviction and grief are available. I'm not including any effect of the pulse dmg, which could actually be substantial, but eh.

Another alternate I didn't consider, because it really takes away the fun of making dual dream, is maxed fanaticism and reapers. So just a fanazealot with an extra 2800 lightning dmg on his hits and no conviction. This does come out worse than the other options, but surprisingly they all come out pretty close. I fully believe you and phineas now that conviction plus reapers is best setup, but it really seems like you can't do anything too too wrong with a dual dream grief zealot. Even how you distribute points in sacrifice vs salvation vs holy shield make very little difference. Will look forward to making him! Prob not until I hit 96 with sorc though.

 

[zemaj]

@ffs
One point that immediately comes to mind is that on your Lite Sorc, you certainly had Lightning Mastery maxed, making any +%skill damage from items a drop in the ocean. Pally may benefit more from some of that.

In the same line of thought, the higher slvl Conviction you have active, the less impact losing ~15%-elr from CM with the faceted weapon would have... assuming that the facet +%lsd DOES get applied twice like Lightning Mastery, if not, I doubt it would ever be worth it.

Another point for CM I haven't seen brought up is the SF proc... seems like that would really boost damage output overall, as well... though that may be hard to quantify in any good way.

 

[Dagaz]

@Dagaz Does a phoenix setup not outperform it?

I'd love to experiment with Phoenix! Haven't had much rune luck since my restart and Phoenix is for now beyond my reach ...

 

[Jamie]

@ffs Is there any viable builds around using Might for a Zealdin? Or is it always more beneficial to use a Might Merc? I was wondering if you could get more damage and use Faith A1 Merc, or by hitting 4 frames and using Might and then using a Holy Freeze or A5 Merc and use items such as HoJ, Pride, Dream.

I absolutely love my Zealdin, with Fanat as maxed Aura and a Might Merc with Eth Reaper's Toll. He can kill fast and is about impossible to kill him. I am just curious if there is a better way to go about it, with a combination of items. If the setup I have is basically the best, I wonder if I should put a Dream on my Merc or my Zealer instead of the ist'd Shako he has on for MF.

Too tird to type anymore, just would love to know some of the tested and better end combinations for zealers and also combinations of items that add auras and how they can stack up the best on certain characters.

 

[ffs]

Definitely Fanaticism + Might is best for a physical Zealer. Using Might and Faith Merc or the like will result in much lower damage.

Incorporating a single Dream (or other elemental aura item) doesn’t do much on its own. These items are only worth it when they are fully built around, i.e. using several to stack auras and maxed synergies to support them. I would swap out Shako for Guillaume's Face though on a physical Zealer, it increases physical damage a lot.

 

[Jamie]

@ffs I think the main reason I have the Shako, is because I didn't have many places to get MF from, while wanting to keep max resists on him. I have 50%Wtravs, Ist'd 141 Shako, Gheeds and a few MF/Damage charms. I didn't have Gore Rider Boots until very recently, it was one of those items I just couldn't find for strange reasons.

I do mostly Trav and CS on him, but he is so good just about anywhere, that I also use him to run my way through the Worldstone Keep and do Baal Runs, occasionally Pit or Pindle/Shenk/Eldritch Runs and other places for fun. He is just a fun character to use, he is almost impossible to kill and he melts through packs like butter.

Do you think adding the nice boost in damage with Guillame's Face and/or Gore Rider's, pans out better than the less damage, more MF option? I don't know specifics like what is more efficient numbers wise, when it comes to finding items over a certain period of time. Doing Trav and using Guillame's Face makes a lot of sense for sure. Do you advise even using Gore's at all, or sticking with the Wtravs for the MF and other mods that also add damage and what not? Sometimes I have issues sometimes wondering how much MF I should use, where to get it from and which slots can be swapped out without losing too much, especially considering I used to be an almost strictly Sorceress player when it came to PvM and had no issue getting 350-400%+ MF, without hurting speed much at all.

My Zealer has 187% MF with the setup (uses Grief, Fortitude, Spirit,'ist' Shako, 50Travs, LoH, SoE). So all my MF is from Shako, Travs, Gheed's and a few charms.

Don't worry about MF and boost that killing speed? Get more MF elsewhere? I'll admit, I am a slower player and check a lot more things than most people do, such as all rares that have a super slim potential to spawn Godly mods.. as you may have seen in the item find thread.. hahahaha.

 

[ffs]

I’d say don’t worry about it. Zealots are terrible MF chars so personally at least I don’t care about it.. That being said, WT aren’t much worse than Gores in terms of damage so if you want some MF they’re a good choice. Shako is considerably lower damage though in comparison to GFace so I’d use the latter.

Also Enigma has a huge MF boost built in, so if you want to run specific targets more efficiently that’s another bonus.

 

[Jamie]

@ffs Yeah I have my Enigma on my Javazon and use the Fort on my Zealer, since I use him more of a run around style and clear areas and mostly Trav. I only can afford one Enigma at the moment, so I use the Fort on my Zealer. I like the Zealer for doing CS runs too though and they are kinda MF runs.. also have mixed in Pindle through Nihlthaak runs with him too. I don't always play most efficient, sometimes I do, but a lot of times I play what is the most fun and entertaining to me. I just didn't know whether the killing speed or MF would pay off more in the long run. I could always move Enigma around, but I prefer to keep the builds how I have them, as they are pretty well tailored to what they are using, at least for my Javazon and Zealer.. I change around a few of my other chars as I use them and don't have perfect stats or gear or any of that on them. Can only afford to have a few well geared up characters at the moment.

Thank you for advice.

 

[pharphis]

@art_vandelay @T72on1

A bit of a late reply, but.. I got some bad news. In that post I had said that hardcoded spawns don't count towards the spawned_packs counter, but they do. Furthermore, each Champion individually increments this counter! Hardcoded packs will spawn regardless of the counter however, so there's at least that.

So if you know the location(s) of hardcoded champions/uniques (including superuniques!), then you will want to try and reach those locations last.

Each area has its own counters, so Pit 1 and Pit 2 are handled separately. I believe Pit 2 always has one hardcoded unique pack, but I'm not too familiar with the map files and can't say for sure. :E

If an Evil Urn spawns a pack, then that will also increment the spawned_packs counter, so if you're out to min-max your monster packs, pop those urns at the end. Also, these urns will only spawn a pack if the urn dropped at least one item, so you will increase the chance of an urn spawning a pack by increasing the player count (these urns run 1 cycle of the appropriate Chest TC). Silly Blizzard mechanics. By the way, it is not a bug that those two hardcoded urns spawn spiders; all Evil Urns spawn these spiders. The reason that those two urns never spawn a pack is because the game does not allow monsters to be spawned that close to those entrances. (Hardcoded spawns ignore this rule, which is why that Thresh Socket guy for example is allowed to guard that entrance.)


Sorry for that mistake! I had some stuff mixed up.

This changes everything about map planning and rerolling AT, imo. I've got to say that this feels intuitively correct based on past maps, but my memory is foggy and I'm probably making several cognitive errors.

 

[T72on1]

I’d say don’t worry about it. Zealots are terrible MF chars so personally at least I don’t care about it.. That being said, WT aren’t much worse than Gores in terms of damage so if you want some MF they’re a good choice. Shako is considerably lower damage though in comparison to GFace so I’d use the latter.

Also Enigma has a huge MF boost built in, so if you want to run specific targets more efficiently that’s another bonus.

I agree with ffs here. Well, I agree with what ffs writes most of the times actually .

If you want to mf with the Zealot, use Enigma, War Travelers, probably even Isted Shako. You want to be playing at p1 anyway for mf purposes, so you should still kill fast enough that way. But honestly Zealots are terrible mf characters, so you might just want to go for the strongest options damage wise and just crank up the player setting.

 

[Luhkoh]

Do you all do end game running with blank space in inventory, or cube only? I'm doing CS runs with my blizz sorc and wanted to try and get used to cube-only running for that sweet >2600 health. However my 1 death so far and nearly all my close calls have come from trying to get an item in that cube lol. So 2x4 blank + cube (the way I'm mostly used to playing) allows me to dart into the fray and pick stuff up faster, but at the expense of ~200 health. But if i take more than 200 extra damage trying to get GC's in the cube, I guess it's not helping me any. What do you all prefer?

 

[T72on1]

I mostly play with 2x4 blank spaces but no cube in inventory. But it depends on the target I'm running and the goal of the runs to be honest.

 

[maxicek]

Cube in Stash, TP scrolls in belt slot 4, 2x4 free on the left, 8x4 charms.

For MFO I sometimes got cube in Inventory and add 4 more charms, but I don’t pick up gems then.

 

[T72on1]

Cube in Stash, TP scrolls in belt slot 4, 2x4 free on the left, 8x4 charms.

For MFO I sometimes got cube in Inventory and add 4 more charms, but I don’t pick up gems then.

Exactly how I do it: cube in stash and tp scrolls in belt slot.

I tried with an inventory completely full of charms and the cube, but just couldn't get used to it.

 

[Luhkoh]

I haven't tried out the blanks but no cube configuration yet for any real amount of time. Could be a good middle ground. But what about those runs where you find rare antlers and a gc?

 

[art_vandelay]

The biggest drawback of the 'blank space + cube' idea is that you probably will start to move items around (and in and out of the cube...) so you can do more runs without muling.

I oftentimes leave out TPs and the cube altogether if the situation doesn't call for a full inventory of charms. For example Travincal works fine with 4 empty rows and the rest charms, at least for my sorceress.

Also ever since I learned that you can pick up an item and 'hold it in your hand' before closing the game I use that as a free inventory space. I do this to the point where I don't mule in e.g. AT runs until my cube is full AND I have something on my cursor.
This is also great for avoiding deaths. Instead of wasting time rearranging your inventory, you just open the inventory, put the item on your cursor and S&E. There's also no need to go to town to drop stuff in your stash before you can pick something new up.

 

[Luhkoh]

On the first sentence I think I get what you mean. But I THINK (untested) that it costs less time to move from blank space to cube than it does to mule off more frequently due to cube-only. But more importantly to me, you can open inventory only in safe situations if you want, where cube-only you have to open it in the thick of the crowd. This is my current issue. CS feels like the perfect storm of so many drops that I pick up a lot, so crowded that its dangerous, and some immunes I don't kill.

I do love the cursor trick and have used it to avoid death a couple of times. But for some reason had not done what you're saying where you run till 100% full and exit with item on cursor. I think I wasn't considering it due to some subconscious desire to never quit a run halfway through . But that system is much better and I'll start doing it for sure regardless of inventory config. Thanks!