- Jun 27, 2014
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Introduction
Below are two Pats I came up with to farm torches after trying a few different builds. The duo is decently efficient, though relatively simple: a fairly standard WW Barb paired with a traditional Smiter. I don’t really know if it’s even a particularly fast way of farming torches; it’s simply the most painless way I’ve come up with at ~49 minutes per torch. When I started back in D2R, Hellfire Torches in single-player were an exciting new development. I had known about Smiters that could solo the Ubers back in the day, though I never played anything but offline single-player. I started looking for builds to farm keys and didn’t really find much. I toyed with the idea of one build to farm keys and run Ubers, but this concept seemed a bit strained: Ubers are such a unique single-target ordeal, whereas keys require quick teleporting and dealing with mobs (Nihlathak). So I split the job between these two fellows. [EDIT: See @ffs post below for a FoHdin that can do it all!]My criteria for torch farming were that the characters be:
- Convenient: No switching gear or pre-buffing, no resurrecting merc
- Self-Sustaining: Minimal / no potion usage
- Efficient: Maintain good run times
- Safe: No dying and wasting key sets
Key Runner - Centaur - Lvl 90 Whirlwind Barbarian - D2R
Character Notes:
I can’t find the original key drop rate table I used to calculate the below times but will update this post with it when I can. I ended up running Countess and Summoner at /p7. Though the drop rate wasn’t that much better than at /p3, it didn’t slow my character down perceptibly. Nihlathak I kept at /p3 for the Merc’s sake. Centaur could manage the following runtimes, with the runs listed below (33, 21, and 30) being the respective runs at which it theoretically takes each target to drop 3 keys.
- Countess /p7: 33 runs @ 36 seconds avg = 1188 seconds per 3 keys
- Summoner /p7: 21 runs @ 26 seconds avg = 546 seconds per 3 keys
- Nihlathak /p3: 30 runs @ 27 seconds avg = 810 seconds per 3 keys
Thus, Centaur can farm roughly 1 full key set per 42 min 24 sec (2544 seconds). This seemed about right in practice: Sometimes I would farm a set in an hour, but sometimes it would be closer to 30 minutes. If I wanted to farm one set, I’d usually hit Nihlathak first, Countess second, as she was the biggest pain with all the teleporting, and finally the Summoner, who seemed the easiest. The calculations above bore out my subjective perception of how long each took to farm. Of course, I often didn’t farm just one set of keys at a time: sometimes I would run Nihlathak for quite some time before moving on to Summoner and Countess so that I could farm a pile of torches with the Smiter. I tried a few other characters and builds across a few different classes (Paladin, Sorceress, Amazon, and Barbarian) but they all seemed to drive me nuts a little because of various drawbacks. The WW Barb was the best fit I could come up with for the task.
Build: Standard Whirlwind
Skills:
- 20 points each: Shout, Battle Orders, Whirlwind, Blade Mastery
- 1 point each: Berserk, Iron Skin, Increased Speed, Natural Resistance, Battle Command, Pre-Reqs
- Remaining points: Find Item (if he decides to run more hork-able areas)
Stats: (Base/Equipped)
- Strength: 40/142
- Dexterity: 121/177
- Vitality: 369/384
- Energy: 10/25
Equipment:
- Amulet: Crafted +2 Barb Skills, FCR, Resists, Etc. (for 105 FCR)
- Helm: Arreat’s Face
- Weapon: “Grief” Phaseblade +370 / 40 IAS
- Weapon 2: “Grief” Phaseblade +350 / 36 IAS
- Switch: Wizardspike / Suicide Branch (for 105 FCR)
- Body Armor: “Enigma” Mage Plate
- Gloves: Laying of Hands
- Ring 1: Rare Dual Leech
- Ring 2: Ravenfrost (Cold damage is OK since no key targets can be horked)
- Belt: String of Ears
- Boots: Gore Riders
- Charms: Annihilus, AR, Resists, FHR
Equipment Notes
The equipment here is pretty standard. Though he started out with some more budget items (e.g. “Oath” Cryptic Sword in offhand) and seemed to perform quite well regardless. Nature’s Peace didn’t seem to make any difference with Nihlathak and I preferred more leech. Damage Reduction from SoE, a big life bulb, and leech seemed to mitigate Nihlathak’s corpse explosion quite well. I tried Trang’s belt + Nature’s Peace and they seemed to perform not as well as this setup.
Other Relevant Stats:
- FHR: 48% Breakpoint (Since WW is uninterruptible this seems sufficient)
- FCR: 105% Breakpoint
- Attack Rating: 11899
- Life w. B.O.: 3917
- Life Steal: 14%
- Mana Steal: 5%
- Resists in Hell: Fire 75%, Cold 61%, Lightning 75%, Poison 75%
- Helm: Andariel’s Visage (Ral)
- Weapon: “Insight” Colossus Voulge
- Armor: “Treachery” Eth Wyrmhide
The only requirements for this fellow are, 1) don’t die, 2) keep my mana full. He does both pretty well. I tried a lot of different gear without coming to conclusions on what would be preferable, but this setup seemed to work decently. I actually put a non-eth “Insight” on him, as it seemed when he killed more with Nihlathak, he would be hit more by corpse explosion and therefore die more often.
Fulfillment of Criteria:
- Convenience: 10/10 - Very easy to play, no switching gear, etc.
- Self-Sustaining: 10/10 - Sometimes he does get mana burned, but I just aim for some leech-able monsters.
- Efficiency: 8/10 - He seems pretty decent to me compared to the other builds available to me that I tested, but I'm sure there are some better characters out there. I know there are certainly much better players out there who could farm more efficiently. A better Countess map would probably shave 5 minutes off the total time easily, and since most of his time is spent teleporting rather than killing, maybe it's worth trying to hit 200 FCR.
- Safety: Nihlathak is the main concern here, and he does quite well there.
Uber Runner - Benaiah - Lvl 90 Smiter/Zealot Paladin - D2R
Character Notes:
Originally a pure Zealot I got input on in this thread, I used a respec to shift Benaiah into an Uber Smiter based largely on Excalibur’s build here. This character accounts for less than 10% of the overall farming time, as he could run all the minis Ubers and Uber Tristram in less than 5 minutes comfortably. If the total farming time was roughly 49 minutes (42 minutes for keys, 5 for Ubers), that meant my focus for this character was really safety, rather than shaving a minute off his time, since that would barely move the dial as far as the overall time. Trying to run the Ubers a bit faster, but dying in the process, results in wasting an entire set of keys, is almost an hour of gameplay for me--something I really don't want to do! I’ve seen other builds run the Ubers very quickly, but usually using a lot of prep, prebuffs, and belts full of potions. While I respect that nail-biting, speedrunning approach, I'm not always up for that myself and was looking for something a bit more safe and secure. I’d be surprised if many builds rival a Smiter with Grief + Exile when it comes to survivability and ease of play.
Benaiah's basic approach is to hit Uber Duriel first, then head on to the Matron’s Den and Furnace of Pain, where he glides through with Charge, Zeals mobs when surrounded, and Smites any superuniques/champions/etc. he hits on the way. When moving into Uber Tristram, he runs Salvation while fighting Uber Mephisto, and then Fanaticism for Uber Diablo and Baal. He has never died or really even shown a blip in his health bulb when played correctly. The few times I’ve made an error–not running Salvation with Mephisto–yes, he can be insta-killed! This happened twice when 1) I simply thought I was running Salvation but was actually running Fanaticism, and 2) when I thought Mephisto had died but he still had a sliver of health.
Build: Smite / Zealot Combo
Skills:
- 20 points each: Smite,* Holy Shield, Fanaticism, Resist Fire
- 10 points: Resist Lightning
- 4 points: Zeal
- 1 pt each: Pre-reqs, Salvation
Skill Notes:
What’s surprising here is how little damage maxing Zeal and Sacrifice adds and how much equipment can make up for this. Fully maxed Zeal and Sacrifice with CoH, Goblin Toe, and Mara’s (one setup I found online), actually doesn’t do nearly as much damage as 1 point Sacrifice, 4 points Zeal, and Gore Riders/Highlords (45% additional DS) and Fortitude (300% ED). After messing around with calculations, I quickly came to the conclusion that my Smiter didn’t need a ton of points in Zeal to play as a Zealot when needed, but could rather rely on the extra Deadly Strike from boots and amulet as well as ED from Fortitude. As a result, Benaiah is basically fully synergized as far as Smite goes but plays equally strong as a Zealot when dealing with mobs in the Matron’s Den or the Furnace of Pain. Zeal is also helpful in maintaining mana while charging since mana steal works with Zeal and not Smite. A Smite-only build had me drinking potions every once in a while, which wasn’t my preference. As for the points in Resist Fire and Resist Lightning, the goal was to get over max fire and lightning resists for Uber Mephisto.
Stats: (Base/Equipped)
- Strength: 110/190
- Dexterity: 138/197
- Vitality: 282/336
- Energy: 15/49
Stat Notes:
This is fairly standard: strength to equip items, dexterity to achieve max block, and everything else into vitality. His gear has changed a little, so if I respec I could dial these in more precisely–a few wasted points here and there as it is.
Equipment:
- Amulet: Highlord’s Wrath
- Helm: Guillaume’s Face (Um)
- Weapon: Grief Phaseblade +387 + / 31 IAS (Low IAS roll doesn’t affect much: more below)
- Weapon 2: “Exile” Sacred Targe @45 All Resistances
- Switch: “Call to Arms” (+6 BC / +6 BO /+2 BC) / “Spirit” Sacred Targe @45 All Resistances
- Body Armor: “Fortitude” Great Hauberk
- Gloves: Crafted Blood Gloves (10% CB, Life Steal, Resists)
- Ring 1: Rare Dual Leech (6% Life Steal, 8% Mana Steal, +Str, Resists)
- Ring 2: Ravenfrost (CBF)
- Belt: Thundergod’s Vigor
- Boots: Gore Riders
- Charms: Annihilus, Torch, Resists, Lionbranded GCs
Equipment Notes:
The linchpin of this build is Exile, with the continual Life Tap essentially making the Smiter invincible as long as he continues Smiting. I only departed from Excalibur’s basic build in a few regards:
- I didn’t use Mara’s because I simply didn’t have it. Highlord's seemed the next best option, and the DS is nice for when I'm zealing.
- I settled on blood gloves instead of Steelrends to avoid the Str req and take advantage of some extra leech since I would be zealing some.
- I used Gore Riders just for a little FRW. Goblin Toe’s just felt a tad *too* slow for my liking.
Other Relevant Stats:
- Life w. B.O.: 2563
- FHR: 86% Breakpoint
- Block with Holy Shield: Max
- Crushing Blow: 60%
- Deadly Strike: 83% (only works with Zeal, not Smite)
- Open Wounds: 10%
- Life Steal: 13%
- Mana Steal: 6%
- Resists under Uber Mephisto’s Conviction Aura: Fire 90%, Lightning 95%, Cold 80%, Poison 75%
Other Stat Notes:
Attack rating is irrelevant for this build beacuse Grief has ITD and Smite always hits. When playing against mobs, he takes advantage of ITD and uses Zeal; when encountering any monsters on which ITD doesn’t work, he simply switches to Smite. As for resists, a single point in Salvation with some decent +skills can really help mitigate Uber Mephisto’s lvl 21 Conviction aura. My current setup results in a lvl 7 Salvation aura (91% res all), bringing Mephisto’s -125 res all to -34. It’s not too rough to overbuff all the resists by 34%, but he does have a full charm inventory.
Merc: None
Merc Notes:
I didn’t really find any that could survive Lilith and Uber Tristram without drawbacks, though I looked at/tried quite a few.
Fulfillment of Criteria:
- Convenience: 10/10 - Easy to play, no switching armor or pre-buffs needed.
- Self-Sustaining: 9/10 - No potion usage unless severely mana-burned by Uber Baal. In this case, blues are better than purples, for a slow fill that isn't wiped immediately. He can also switch to Zeal for a second and leech off whoever is nearby.
- Efficiency: 6/10 - I'm sure he could farm faster with Enigma or some other changes, but that would sacrifice resist and survivability. Since we're already talking about only 10% of total torch-farming time, it doesn't seem worth it to me.
- Safety: 10/10 - He is the tankiest character I've played, and in some ways this contributes to efficiency, since he doesn't have to worry about wasting sets of keys by dying.
Conclusion
These two classic builds seem to make a decent duo for farming torches in single-player. I've wanted to choose my builds and characters in a more logical progression since my self-found restart in D2R, and these two complete the Torch-farming piece of the puzzle, and the Smiter can of course handle DClone as well. All the sets and uniques used are somewhat easily farmed from easy targets like Hell Mephisto, and though there are some expensive runewords, they can all be farmed from Lower Kurast with a poorly equipped sorc if you're just willing to put in the time--that's how I did it!I haven't had the patience to try to play the game through as a Smiter, so I'd probably take an easier track like Zealot if starting from scratch, but the WW barb tore through the game very quickly. Once he levels to the mid 90s, he'll transition to Pitzerker (he had a brief time as that during the MFO) and let a younger WW barb take his place to farm keys while he goes on to run Pindle and the Pits.
Sorry for the long post, and thanks for reading!
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Maybe someday... I think my FoHdin with 1pt in Smite could handle Ubers, with some gear changes. I don't have a point in Fanaticism though, so (without a re-spec) I'd have to keep running Conviction as my main aura and settle for a slower attack speed with Smite. I have Conviction maxed, so with +skills gear, I think my Conviction would out-do Meph's. That would at least make resistances less of a problem for me.
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