Anything Goes D2 Lounge!

[Swamigoon]

Question about druid werewolf skills (1.14): How are the Werewolf skill bonuses applied?

• Werewolf is supposed to grant increased attack speed. From my observations, it doesn't seem to offer any IAS for normal attacks. However, extra points in the Werewolf skill do seem to increase the speed of Feral Rage and Rabies attacks, and maybe Fury as well. (I haven't yet bothered to observe whether Werewolf makes Fire Claws nor Hunger attacks happen faster.)
• Werewolf is supposed to give more attack rating. I think points in werewolf add AR to all attacks while shifted, including normal attack, but I don't really have a very good experiment to observe whether or not this is true.

Have other werewolf players noticed these?

 

[snickersnack]

I'm questing a hunter/summon druid, and having a blast. Here's some thinking out loud:

Harmony is a great runeword for the druid since the Vigor aura means that your summons get to mobs faster, especially the grizzly. Revives are also great, although repairs are expensive. Interestingly, while killing Radament in NM, he got amped by the Valkyrie, which means that she spawned with a weapon that had the affix for that. You can't get that reliably, but it made me wonder if there's any good way to keep her alive. She's starting to die a lot in Act 2 of NM, so there's no way she'll have any tankiness in Hell.

For now, I'm using an Act 3 fire merc for Enchant. I'm also going to try out a barb merc wielding Grief and Lawbringer, for the Decrep proc. I wonder if Decrep will be good enough to keep the Valk alive if I also stack some +skills to get her level up. A level 6 oskill with +11* all skills would get her all rare gear, but she would be completely unsynergized. Might that be enough?

* With CTA on switch, I think you can get +11 all skills while wielding Harmony. Helm +2, body +2, ammy +2, belt +1, rings +2, anni, +1, Battle Command +1. Before D2R, this wasn't possible for a druid, unless I'm missing something. Also, if you're quick, you can swap to CTA, cast BO again, and swap back before the Valk despawns ... I think. It may be that applying BO triggers her to check if you still have the skill. I haven't tried yet.

Ah casting BO does despawn the Valk.

 

[coju]

Ah casting BO does despawn the Valk.

BOo.

Did peace Runeword work? Level 17.
Or is that the one where she’ll despawn since she isn’t skilled?

 

[Arjan]

Did three Baal runs today (Hell) and got a Tal Rasja’s Guardianship and a Guardian angel from a random Oblivion Knight.

Well kinda balances the bad luck for runes I guess. Still not nearer to my Enigma

 

[snickersnack]

BOo.

Did peace Runeword work? Level 17.
Or is that the one where she’ll despawn since she isn’t skilled?

I hadn't considered that, though it's level 15: 2% Chance To Cast level 15 Valkyrie On Striking.

I'm using Treachery right now for the ias, but once I level enough for LoH and Highlord's Wrath, I might try it out. I don't think that switching weapons, or even taking off the armor, would despawn her if she was made with a ctc effect..

 

[PhineasB]

I hadn't considered that, though it's level 15: 2% Chance To Cast level 15 Valkyrie On Striking.

My experience with Peace is the ctc is frustrating because she despawns and respawns fairly regularly, usually in a spot that undermines tactics for whatever fight I was in. I'm interested to hear how your experience goes!

 

[Arjan]

My experience with Peace is the ctc is frustrating because she despawns and respawns fairly regularly, usually in a spot that undermines tactics for whatever fight I was in. I'm interested to hear how your experience goes!

Yep, that was my experience too. 2% doesn't sound like much but I found she respawned a lot more than you'd think. Especially with piercing lightning fury it was like once every minute or so. Sometimes even on every 2nd jav thrown.

If she's tanking a pack it gets very dangerous very fast

 

[snickersnack]

My experience with Peace is the ctc is frustrating because she despawns and respawns fairly regularly, usually in a spot that undermines tactics for whatever fight I was in. I'm interested to hear how your experience goes!

Yep, that was my experience too. 2% doesn't sound like much but I found she respawned a lot more than you'd think. Especially with piercing lightning fury it was like once every minute or so. Sometimes even on every 2nd jav thrown.

If she's tanking a pack it gets very dangerous very fast

It's a cheap runeword, and one that I don't think I've ever used before, so I'll try it out and report back here.

Also, since I'm currently switching to cast BO, I have to manually recast her frequently.

 

[coju]

It does respawn often, but with a summon Druid I don’t think they would detract from her being summoned again and again. But, I’m not playing a summon Druid.

 

[Arjan]

It's a cheap runeword, and one that I don't think I've ever used before, so I'll try it out and report back here.

Also, since I'm currently switching to cast BO, I have to manually recast her frequently.

It’s 100% worth making. I really loved having a lvl15 valk around. Gives you a lot more choices on when and where to put points in the skilltrees

 

[snickersnack]

It’s 100% worth making. I really loved having a lvl15 valk around. Gives you a lot more choices on when and where to put points in the skilltrees

I could see that for an elemental bowzon, but I'm building a hunter/summoner druid. I have Harmony on him for the Vigor aura and I use the Valk oskill as a free minion to supplement the group. I was just thinking about how to make her survive in Hell, and stacking +all skills might be a way to do that, or the Peace runeword might be a better way. I'm currently using Treachery, and that +ias is hard to beat.

 

[BBS_Agonistes]

EDIT: I'm dumb.

 

[snickersnack]

Ummmm... my son was playing his sorceress and I just watched NM Hellforge drop a Ko rune???

Are Hellforge drops different in D2R? I was pretty sure that couldn't drop, so I went and looked, and sure enough, supposedly the highest is Hel? What am I missing here?

Hellforge

The Hellforge is a magical forge found in the Burning Hells which has the power to destroy a Soulstone. The Hellforge is protected by an Overlord called Hephasto the Armorer, who holds the Hellforge Hammer required to smash the Soulstone. During Diablo II, your hero completes a quest named...

diablo-archive.fandom.com

Ko can drop in NM: https://www.theamazonbasin.com/wiki/index.php/Hell's_Forge

Hel is the lowest possible in Hell, though, so maybe that's what you were thinking.

 

[BBS_Agonistes]

Ko can drop in NM: https://www.theamazonbasin.com/wiki/index.php/Hell's_Forge

Hel is the lowest possible in Hell, though, so maybe that's what you were thinking.

Hah! I guess the Diablo Wiki isn't so reliable. Amazon Basin it is.

 

[snickersnack]

Hah! I guess the Diablo Wiki isn't so reliable. Amazon Basin it is.

It's kind of funny, I googled for the 2.4 runewords the other day and clicked on the first google hit: wowhead. Wow, the person/people who write d2 "articles" for wowhead don't know hardly anything about the game. It's pretty silly to read it and see all the glaring errors, at least in the one or two "articles" (quotes for added derision...) I looked at.

I've found that a lot of information online about factual stuff is absurdly wrong. For example, several years ago I was doing some consulting work for a department that was designing an online math class. I had to review lots of youtube videos for accuracy to see if they could be used in the class. Roughly 50% had glaring errors and it amazed me how much junk "math" is on youtube. When I went on to design my own online math courses, I hired an assistant to make new videos that were actually reliable.

This isn't the off topic forum, so I wont expand on that idea.

 

[Gorny]

It's kind of funny, I googled for the 2.4 runewords the other day and clicked on the first google hit: wowhead. Wow, the person/people who write d2 "articles" for wowhead don't know hardly anything about the game. It's pretty silly to read it and see all the glaring errors, at least in the one or two "articles" (quotes for added derision...) I looked at.

I've found that a lot of information online about factual stuff is absurdly wrong. For example, several years ago I was doing some consulting work for a department that was designing an online math class. I had to review lots of youtube videos for accuracy to see if they could be used in the class. Roughly 50% had glaring errors and it amazed me how much junk "math" is on youtube. When I went on to design my own online math courses, I hired an assistant to make new videos that were actually reliable.

This isn't the off topic forum, so I wont expand on that idea.

I'm betting that most from Wowhead don't actually play Diablo games much or not at all.

It's kind of like seeing Random Facebook ads about specific games or movies, where you can tell the writer doesn't really know what they are talking about.

 

[snickersnack]

I'm betting that most from Wowhrad don't actually play Diablo games much or not at all.

It's kind of like seeing Random Facebook ads about specific games or movies, where you can tell the writer doesn't really know what they are talking about.

Facebook? Is that something on the proletarinet?

/jk, ofc. I have a FB account. I just haven't logged into it in ... oh ... 11 years?

 

[Ergro]

I have a maybe somewhat curious question but... I did fight DClone a lot of times back way on battlenet so I know he is doable with just about any char.

However I wanted to ask, if it is actually possible to defeat whole uber tristram solo with any character (obviously with reseting the build and twinking necessary stuff) or there are some characters, that are simply unable to solo the trist at all?

 

[lizard]

I have a maybe somewhat curious question but... I did fight DClone a lot of times back way on battlenet so I know he is doable with just about any char.

However I wanted to ask, if it is actually possible to defeat whole uber tristram solo with any character (obviously with reseting the build and twinking necessary stuff) or there are some characters, that are simply unable to solo the trist at all?

It is gonna be more difficult for some than others (e.g. paladin is probably cheapest and easiest), but there are builds for all chars. Barb is also quite good, because you can Howl away the minions that are spawned by Diablo/Baal.

calefx did Ubers with Aldur Set Druid for example Aldur vs Uber. he did the same with Sigon set and Heaven's brethren set, but you can find videos and guides for all classes from budget to fully decked out. Some have done it in the UT99 thread, even with respeccing mid fight for Uber Meph (shame on me, but i forgot who did that). Most melee builds rely on stacking CB and use Draculs for survival, while stacking res to counter Uber Meph.

 

[art_vandelay]

It's kind of funny, I googled for the 2.4 runewords the other day and clicked on the first google hit: wowhead. Wow, the person/people who write d2 "articles" for wowhead don't know hardly anything about the game. It's pretty silly to read it and see all the glaring errors, at least in the one or two "articles" (quotes for added derision...) I looked at.

I've found that a lot of information online about factual stuff is absurdly wrong. For example, several years ago I was doing some consulting work for a department that was designing an online math class. I had to review lots of youtube videos for accuracy to see if they could be used in the class. Roughly 50% had glaring errors and it amazed me how much junk "math" is on youtube. When I went on to design my own online math courses, I hired an assistant to make new videos that were actually reliable.

Funny thing is that a lot of the "factual" stuff about D2 is also just an approximation of the truth. The only people who can know anything about what actually happens are those that open a debugger and see what code is being executed as the game runs. Considering that Blizzard does not look kindly on this (i.e. it forbids it for D2:R and tolerates it for D2:L) and the PK follows that policy, we are in a position of getting essentially no information on how D2:R works under the hood. Which is why you can't do anything but speculate when it comes to D2:R. (or break the EULA)

When somebody starts with some math nonsense (1 != 0.999..., -1/12 or 6/2*3) it is usually easy to untangle it, considering that it is either plain wrong (1 != 0.999...), stating a correct fact via abuse of notation (for example shadowing one definition with another, i.e. the -1/12 stuff) or undefined in most circles (6/2*3, because some people think that precedence rules are anything but a notational convenience).

With D2 there is no true authority you can refer to when somebody says something wrong and there are very few commonly accepted definitions of stuff, which makes sense because we don't have the source code or a specification of the game and hence have to make up stuff as we go along. Even if you debug D2 you still only debugged it for your system, it might be completely different on e.g. a Mac, see for example the insane loading times that some users achieved on a Mac, which where not reproducible on PCs.