I should have asked this question years ago... (survivability)

Look to people who play methodically and use all the tools. Maltatai is a great example of that; so is jiansonz.
🇸🇪Long live Swedish methodology. What does this say about us as a nation, one wonders...🇸🇪
Magic Damage Reduce (MDR) can be really helpful if you are struggling to get resists up (resists I think are more important if I'm remembering how damage taken is calculated, but MDR is a decent substitute and/or addition).
MDR is indeed applied before resistances, frustratingly enough, so resists are often more important. But it is something of the same as PDR versus %DR in that MDR is better against a barrage of many but weak magical attacks and resistances are better against fewer but stronger magical attacks. Scarabs are a great example of when high MDR can shine and be better than 75% lightning resistance.

There is, or was, a bug connected to attacks that deal both physical and magical damage. If you have PDR and MDR the total damage of the attack is pitted against the combined total of PDR and MDR, even if you have perhaps high PDR but only one or two MDR - which would otherwise have been too much PDR for the physical and too little MDR for the magical part of the attack. The moral of the story is simply to invest in both PDR and MDR if you can.

@Jocular
;) Yes you did, in no uncertain terms;
https://www.diabloii.net/forums/thr...n-looking-for-tips.867079/page-2#post-8668590
Actually that is a somewhat relevant thread here too even if it's focused on melee Amazons rather than primarily a sorceress as @TestyFish has asked about.
Also, where is the patriarch/guardian thread of that PDR Riftadin?
 
Excellent thread! Participating in the SPF makes me happy.

@TestyFish : your posts here remind me of my own experiences and frustrations. The advice so far has been superb, and I'll try to add a couple of my own experiences. Unfortunately, my contributions to this conversation will sadly reveal just how much of a noob I still am at this game!

For an act 2 and act 5 mercenaries, the gear mods that seem to have been most effective for me are "crushing blow," "damage reduced," and "life stolen per hit." Here's how I usually get that last mod: just about every one of my characters leaves their normal difficulty Larzuk socket quest reward unused. Later, when I'm about to start hell difficulty, I go back to normal and use the reward to put a socket in an appropriate rare or unique spear, polearm, or sword (ethereal if I find a good one), which is then fitted with an Amn rune and given to the mercenary. (Aside: most of my fellow SPFers abbreviate that mod as "leech" or "leach." I think it's linguistically nifty that both homonyms are appropriate metaphors for the game's life-steal-per-hit mechanic, even though the words have different meanings!)

Even with good gear, my hirelings still get themselves killed off. A lot. In hell difficulty, I always try to be sure to pick up and sell exceptional and elite armors, even cracked/crude/low-quality. I also try to pick up and sell wands/staves/scepters that come with staffmods. Vendors frequently exchange these for up to 30K gold in nightmare and 35K gold in hell difficulty, so for every two or three that I sell, I get enough gold to cover the cost of one resurrection. If frequent mercenary resurrections deplete my gold stash to below 50K, I stop questing, and I go back, re-run easier areas, and sell a bunch of armors and staffmod items. I may even pick up and sell oil and rancid gas potions, if I have free inventory squares; they sell for a decent amount of extra cash too. Then when I think I have enough resurrection money, I return to where I was stuck.

I recommend that you pay attention to area levels, too. For example, I usually skip the act 1 hell forgotten tower quest until after the mercenary has advanced beyond level 80 or 81, after which I'll come back to act 1 and take on the countess. If I explore the forgotten tower while still in the 70s, my mercenary usually gets killed several times per tower level.
 
Well everyone, look what I did!

HellBall.png
...and
Patriarch.png

All the advice here has been solid. I do like my wind druid, having the grizz to recast ahead is nice, and I made more liberal use of that. I did some more runs for gear, but nothing really dropped, so I decided to make the final push through Ancients and Baal. (I didn't get screens of the ancients, sadly!)

I think that a lot of this was really just my inability to play the way I sorta knew I should. Play more patiently, scout ahead, pull smaller groups...and wait for those items to drop. This character is untwinked and eligible to be a 99er...which was always a goal I had in the back of my head. Maybe I'll farm up Hell Meph for a bit. If he gets nice drops and I feel like committing, maybe I'll start LK runs. =D

I appreciate the advice in this thread, maybe it'll serve as a useful link for other players who are trying to get used to playing in Hell difficulty.
 
I started a Druid on HC awhile back with the intentions to play Summoner/Fissure/Volcano for as long as possible, as Fissure/Wolves and lots of Tir Runes wrecks very far into the game, even on Players 8. Then I was going to go Windy Druid, as they are very good at surviving, not the highest damage on bosses, but very good tanks and capable characters. I named him 'Joplin', but now I thought of a way better name and regret it lol. He's only level 49, so I could easily restart.. I suppose.

But anyway, a Windy Druid is great for Hardcore and survivability and if you want to get through the early stages super easily and fast, use Fissure, Dire Wolves and 'Tir' Runes (I have 3 in a Crystal Sword and 3 in a Large Shield at level 49). The 12 to MPK coupled with a super lethal Fissure, makes it so your mana bulb never even comes close to emptying (costs 15 mana at level 20 Fissure, but Fissure takes down multiple monsters at a time typically) and things die almost instantly, while you have wolves, poison vine, heart of wolverine(or Oak Sage. I use HoW for more wolf damage since I never come cloes to dying) and a merc taking attention off you, a Raven flying around and a +3 Cyclone Armor Helm in stash to precast. On P8 and HC, have basically no fear of ever dying and things die nearly instantly from Fissure/Wolves at any point, until further into the game, when you can keep Fissure/Wolves if you want or respec and start switching to a Windy Druid with Summoner support if wanted.

+1 to Elemental Druids being beasts at surviving!
 
Congrats on making Patriarch!

As I play almost exlusively single pass HC tournament characters nowadays, I have to echo what lots of people already said:

- those MF run videos are highly specialized characters tuned to do exactly one thing: running the chosen area (and maybe one or two others). The players recording those runs have in all likelihood done over 30k runs in that area and know every rock there - you can never compare that to playing through the game, where the challgenges and monster abilitiex are much more diverse.
- there WILL be lots of NDEs in Hell difficulty, esp. at players 8. Period. :) The game is not easy, and there will alway be a boss spawn you didn't expect or an aura flashing you didn't notice.
- that means: play it slowly! Charging into a crowd and demolishing it with superb skill levels in fun and all, but not safe in Hell mode. If one enjoys that kind of gameplay, they should be prepared to be dying a lot. :) If you want to survive as much as possible, you should use all crowd control skills there are, which means using skill you will almost never see in action in MF runs like Taunt, Grim Ward, Conversion, Smite or Telekinesis (Spam for stun lock!), Shock Wave and the like.
- And if your merc dies too quickly: You can abuse the "teleport bug" from your merc to keep him alive. It is especially useful if you have other sturdy summons like Grizzly or Valkyrie: You have to run away from your merc either so fast or using obstacles so that your merc teleports to your place to keep up with you. Sometimes, this will cause monsters to ignore your merc in melee range (and only in melee range!) instead attacking your pets or yourself, whoever is nearer. your merc can then hit without fear of being attacked back (well, AoE attacks still damage them and esp. Diablo's attacks will still kill them quickly...)
- Know your and your character's limits. Your summoner Necro won't ever hit hard enough to make it worthwhile to fight in the first row (Well, a specialized build with very specialized gear probably will be, but not your average playthrough character). Your Paladin will always struggle with crowd control, so try not to rouse the entire dungeon at once :)
- Watch some single pass playthrough videos, if there are any (or read through jiansonz's posts): you will probably learn some survival tricks from them you can't learn from MF runs. (like blocking mummy sarcophagi to prevent the spawning of more)

That is just from the top of my head. Maybe I will sometimes find time to do some playthrough videos, but since I get interrupted a lot by my kids, it would be a pain to edit the video afterwards or to constantly stop and restart the recoding :)

Anyways, good luck and have fun! I think that is the most important part - as I mentioned above, if you like to play suicide bombers and respawn doesn't matter to you, than go for it! (and put those Rainbow Facets to good use while at it :ROFLMAO:)
 
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