Pharaoh thank you for your time and solid advise. My play experience/understanding is way better now.
You're welcome.
I found atmas!! ( i love it)
gamechanger ,the best find so far for my bowazon. now im trying to figure out if ill need magic arrow anymore, im not really needing it but its kinda early to call.
You
will need a backup for unbreakable physical immunes in hell. Any type that is inherently physical immune (such as ghosts) will be unbreakable if it is a) a boss with the Stone Skin mod (this adds a large dose, 80% I believe, to physical damage resist) or b) a 'possessed' champion type monster (since these cannot be cursed). You (or your merc) will need enough elemental/magic damage to take these guys down, unless you're content to just park them in a corner somewhere. Remember that since life/mana leech is based off of the physical damage you do, you and the merc can't leech from these guys.
Magic Arrow is useful because it a) gives magic damage, and b) costs little to no mana. When you're fighting a mana burn pack, and they drain your mana ball, firing off MA a few times can often leech you enough mana to get another Strafe going. Obviously, you can just drink a potion, but this can be annoying if you need to do it all the time, plus there are times when you run out of potions. Remember that MA is more of a backup attack than a main killer, but- just like a condom- it's better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.
If you can get a source of open wounds or prevent monster heal, this will stop physical immunes from healing faster than you can kill them. Poison will work too, if they're not immune to it; here you want a long duration more than high damage, because as long as they are poisoned, they won't regenerate life.
Ive maxed valk for damage/life purposes, and also added to 7 it decoy / thats up from a single point, overall very pleased. ill keep adding to decoy as needed through hell, thank you ZYR and Pharaoh.
You'll notice that a maxed and synergized Valkyrie is a fantastic tank. She will occasionally kill stuff, depending on the gear she spawns with, but her main job is to sit there and take the hits so you don't have to, and she does this like a champ.
I really need clarification on bows, PLEASE!!!! i found a +3 Mat bow i also have 4 soc diamond bow with higher dps, I cant figure out whats the better bow to use for harmony, all factors put in like str, dex, speed, my take is the fastest dps bows/ lower str req are the best so maybe?? Razor bow, double bow, blade, diamond? I cant figure it out THIS IS CRUCIAL FOR MY NEXT HARMONY
This really depends on whether you want a merc to be able to wield it. I would recommend the matriarchal bow for your first Harmony.
Remember that a big part of the damage of Harmony comes from the elemental damage. Even if you will do more physical DPS with a slower bow with higher base damage, firing faster with Harmony lets you apply the elemental damage faster, and thus do more damage overall. This is especially true with enemies resistant or immune to physical damage. Also, remember that the +bow skills will help too. It will give a bit of a damage boost to Strafe, and it will effectively count as +3 to minimum and maximum damage when using Magic Arrow, along with lowering its mana cost (unless you already have it at slvl 13+).
How do the amazon only bows fit in to the equation with their plus skills? and simply how do I decide on what elite bow to use???? very frustrated.. Ko runes are very very elusive for myself .
As you play more, you'll find Ko runes are pretty common. If nothing else, you have a chance to get one when you do the Hellforge quest in nightmare/hell.
Yes Pharaoh its a Lo rune, found in a super chest right by a WP in the durance of hate, i really need everything maxed with RES so im saving it(fortitude) until i find a few better res charms and or gear basically way/endgame.
Focus on lightning resist first (gloams), and then fire. Cold and poison are far less dangerous to you. Remember that you can sometimes gamble some very nice rings with leech (even dual leech) and resists, and possibly other helpful mods like +minimum damage and +attack rating.
But yes, I recommend saving that Lo for Fortitude. That gives you resists, +max lightning resist, and nice damage. You probably don't want to use a superior armor base, because then the repair costs can get really high, but it's up to you.
i think treachery is the best thing for me and my merc now, what kind of armor would you recommend please? its it very noticeable when fade is run out?
It's quite noticeable in terms of your resists (slvl 15 Fade gives 60 resist all), but it's not too noticeable in the sense that you'll necessarily notice the moment it runs out.
If fade is on does it keep recasting as your get hit, or does it run out and I gotta go running away looking for a fire for a fade recast? maybe stick to smoke and keep life simple ??
It will recast even if it's already active. However, ideally you should be hit as little as possible (hiding behind Valkyrie and merc), so it'll likely run out at times. One popular trick is to find some fire to stand in until it triggers.
For a Strafe build, Treachery is probably better on the merc. You don't need a lot of IAS with Strafe, though you probably want some when using Magic Arrow. The chance to cast Venom is handy for dealing with immunes, but that works fine on the merc, and with a melee merc, tey get hit enough that once it triggers, it should stay active until they die or you save and exit.
my best empty armor is
3 socc eth embossed plate 679 def
4 socc loricated mail def 469 4 socc
i have a few 3/4socc wyrmhydes also. this is in contrast to fortitude and treachery.
For making Treachery, the base type doesn't matter much, since it doesn't offer any enhanced defense. For Fortitude, you probably want something with good base defense. This might encourage you to use a higher-tier elite armor, but there are two things to keep in mind. First is the strength requirement; you might want a variety of characters able to use it. Second is the 'heaviness' of the armor; see the 'type' column on
this page. Light armor has no penalty. Medium armor drains stamina a bit faster, and applies a 5% penalty to movement speed. Heavy armor drains stamina even faster, and applies a 10% movement speed penalty. This is the same for the exceptional/elite versions, so your wyrmhide is a good candidate for Fortitude, depending on the base defense. Archon plate is another popular choice, because the requirements aren't too steep, and it looks good on most characters. For what it's worth, my amazon's Fortitude is made in a scarab husk.
One thing you can do is run nightmare cows and pick up plain and socketed elite armor bases that drop. They will be the lower-tier elites, so essentially just what you're looking for. You can have Larzuk punch sockets in them for you, and make your Fortitude, which should obviously go on you, rather than the merc.
im having trouble understanding ias, ive got +20 in contrast to bow speed etc,now with my Magnus skin gloves, how much is too much? I tried knockback and found it annoying so i believe IAS is my better choice for gloves even though i have venom grips
I sometimes find knockback annoying with melee characters, but with ranged characters, it's great. It has two very handy effects. First, it helps keep enemies away from you. Second, if knockback triggers, it will automatically put the target into a hit recovery animation; with a fast enough attack, this can make an enemy boss go from dangerous to harmless. Just remember it doesn't always work. I believe it always affects small targets (fallen, fetishes, etc), has a 50% chance to affect medium targets (corrupted rogues, skeletons, etc), and has only a 25% chance to affect large targets, like frenzytaurs and blunderbores). Some monsters are completely immune, too; off the top of my head, these are Griswold, the Ancients, and all act bosses.
As I mentioned earlier, you don't need a lot of IAS with Strafe, especially with a fast bow (like a matriarchal bow or blade bow). IAS will be helpful for backup attacks like Magic Arrow and Guided Arrow, but less so for Strafe, since it's so fast to begin with. However, you can use the crafting recipes to make gloves with knockback or crushing blow, either of which can also spawn with +bow skills and/or IAS.
Also found Vamp gaze, id love to use it but I need my ort ort ral crafted helm for res, is a this end game helm for my merc?
Vampire Gaze has the nice 'magic damage reduced' mod, which- if stacked- can somewhat compensate for low resists. It also reduces the damage before resistances kick in, which is nice if your resists are negative. This works especially well when you're hit by many lower-damage attacks, vs fewer high-damage ones. An example would be the Hydra spells cast by the council members, which are typically bad news for mercs.
Remember that mercs get resists as they level up, whereas you don't. If your merc can't safely use it now, he will be able to after he levels up some. It's a good helm for mercs, and often characters. Dual leech, cold damage, and some MDR and %PDR is always nice.
I crafted a few merc armors with jewels please let me know if they are good choices
wyrmhyde/454 def 15% ias, +12 max dam, 4-14 cold dam, +9 strength, all res +19 lightning +8 fire +10poison +4 for early hell/ now and Spirit forge linked mail/ 399 def,+30 ias, 20-65 fire damage,15 str 93 to life, fire res 5, 4 to light radi for/nightmare late. I understand damage jewels dont work on armor?? i have tons of ed jewels. i understand they dont work on body armor??? so I went with ias
No, they do. However, there is a bug if the armor has +min or +max damage (either from an inherent mod, or a jewel), and you socket a %ED jewel. I believe what happens is the +min or +max overrides part of the %ED. It's hard to explain, so perhaps an example:
Imagine you have a circlet with +10 minimum damage, and you socket a 20% enhanced damage jewel in it. Imagine your weapon damage is 10-100, and you have nothing else affecting your damage. What
should happen is that your damage effectively becomes 12-120, with +10 to the minimum, so 22-120. What
actually happens is the %ED doesn't apply to the minimum, so it becomes 20-120. If you think of %ED as two separate mods, %enhanced minimum damage and %enhanced maximum damage, it might make this clearer.
Basically, as long as you don't have +min/+max in the armor you're putting %ED jewels in, and those jewels don't have +min/+max, you should be fine.
You should be aware I'm not 100% certain this is what happens. Someone (I think it's
crawlingdeadman) has a link to a thread about this in his sig; I'll see if I can find it later.
MA/strafe works better then FA/strafe in my opinion ( without Atmas in hell), if it weren't for my strafe mana requirement id replace my mercs great poleaxe insight with this sick bonehew i have, I'll report back if i need MA anymore, in case i dont need to, should i put any into penetrate? every point= a single percent chance of strike, i feel too much in penetrate maybe a waste?
Penetrate is worthy of being maxed. If you can't hit things, you can't kill them.
Critical Strike is also worth a few points. Even if you have some +skills, remember that your Valkyrie will benefit from hard points in both Critical Strike and Penetrate. Pierce, on the other hand, only affects you, and it suffers from pretty steep diminishing returns after a few points, so you don't want to spend too much here. You also want to remember that if you use Razortail (unique sharkskin belt), that will give 33% piercing that stacks with the Pierce skill.
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