Whatcha wearin?

[crawlingdeadman1]

Whatcha wearin?

i know there are leeches who dont wear gear in the early levels but...
last season i cobbled together what i thought was a decent set up for leveling early characters through norm. i am curently putting it back together for this season and i was wondering if anyone else has a "standard" gear set up that they use on characters through normal. for the most part i just ignored skills and went pure melee on all my characters till i hit baal runs then start puting on gear more suited to the character i was making.

hsarus' full set
berzerkers full set
till i can wear the better stuff then as i get up in levels:
angelic ring, ammy, and armor
cathans helm, ring
deaths full set (i put a -15 req jewel in the sword to help with the kinda high reqs)

i also kept on hand a skull cap with flawed amethysts in it, tarnhelm, another angelic ring, and two pieces of the infernal tools set. and most of my characters at one point or another used silkweaves and the orphans call belt. all of that plus some low level charms with dex, str, and elemental damage made a good set up that i highly recomend.

i found this set up to be really good once you get up to 12 for the angelic, it makes tombing (hate it) easier and it has carried me through normal baal runs even with caster characters (sorcs). when ladder reset i used whatever i could get my hands on and have come to really like rixor's keen short sword (stealth rocks). does anyone else have a favorite set up? especially using uniques.

 

[Jarath]

I currently have a lvl 5 baba who will be wearing sigons helm, boots, armour and belt when he has enough strength (havn't got gloves, BAH). For jewlry I have a manald heal and angelic ring/ammy combo. Weapon of choice is Dimoak's Hew. I'm trying to get the complete Hwanin's set so he can switch to that once he gets to level 28-45, his jewlry will stay the same but I will switch his gloves/boots out and give him Inferno Stride and Venom Grip.

Not really too sure what to give him after this point though, to be honest looking at the the exceptional pole arms I'm a little underwhelmed. It's easier to work out what to give him for end-game items, but mid-game is a bit trickier... Will have to ask for advise in the Baba forum.

 

[ArcOlixter]

For almost all melee characters: Full Sigon's until Nightmare. A smattering of Strength & element damage charms, Angelic Ammy/Ring combo, Manald, Skewer of Krinitz to start.

 

[phool]

I use a variety of equipment selections, but they are centralised around this:
1)sigon's gloves, belt, boots, helm, angelic armor, amu, rings x 2. Weapon depends, but the hellforge hammer or khalim's will (rixot's for andy) is good with unique small shield. At lvl 8 I have an excellent ethereal rare war sceptre that self-repairs I often use. Alterntively, 6 socketed crystal swords can be useful.
2)variation including death's gloves, belt.
3)variation including hsarus set.
Druids normally get a horadric staff, barbs, amazons, palas, assas get khalim's will. Necros get a +3RS, +3SM wand - even if they're not a skelemancer, this gets them quite a way. Sorcs get whatever really, the unique short staff is very nice, but normally they use khalim's too until lvl 12 at least.

edit: I don't like sigon's shield because of its terrible block rate and the angelic armor is a lot better than sigon's, with the jewelry equipped. It also has a better defense i believe.

 

[Omikron8]

My 1-15/20/25 equipment

Hsaru Boots + Belt
3 Envy Breast Plate
3 Envy/wrath Mask
Bloodfist
Cathan
Manald
Whatever ammy
Blood Crescent/Rixot's Keen/5 hel'ed great sword

 

[AnimeCraze]

Angelic ammy, 2x rings, armor
Sigon boots, helm, shield
Full Death set

 

[Painman]

For this ladder when I make my strafezon I have full Iratha's and a Twitchthroe to give her. Plus some decent low lvl rare bows I collected with my sorc. She finds ridiculous amounts of bows.

 

[crawlingdeadman1]

this topic has always been in the back of my mind wich is why i posted the question at work after i got home i did a little research...
i made a barb once...once. and on that barb i put full sigs and used the skewer. i gave up on him at around level 20. he seemed to be unable to keep up with the monsters. with that in mind and arc's suggestion of gear i did a side by side comparison off ladder with said barb wearing first sigs full, angelic rings and angelic ammy and angelic sword (note the sword is possibly the worst sword in existance for pure damage but i couldn't find my skewer).

set up one:
full sigon set
2x angelic rings
angelic ammy
angelic sword

set up two:
full deaths set (the death sword has a rare jewel in it with -15 req/3 dex/14 max stamina)
hsarus boots
hsarus shield
cathan's helm
cahtan's ring
angelic armor
angelic ring
angelic ammy

set up one:------set up two:
9-50 damage-----79-144 damage
1150 AR----------1148 AR
663 def-----------534 def
182 stamina------185 stamina
260 life-----------220 life
129 mana---------99 mana

the only real significant differences are the higher damage of 2 and the better def and 40 more life on one

resists:
22--------------75
40--------------65
30--------------40
0---------------75

big difference here

here are the keywords on all the gear that isn't reflected in the character screen:
60% ias-----------------------30% ias
10% life leach-----------------18% life leach
150% mf----------------------50% mf
12 replenish life----------------6 replenish life
damage reduced by 7----------damage reduced by 4
attacker takes damage of 32---attacker takes damage of 5
20% faster run walk-----------20% faster run walk
+2 to all skills-----------------+1 to all skills
250% damage to undead-------poison length reduced by 75%
20% chance to block-----------CANNOT BE FROZEN

24 to max fire damage----------5-20 fire damage
-------------------------------25-75 cold damage

i think the biggest things that stand out to me are the more ias, more mf, and much bigger attacker takes damage (wich kinda makes a difference imo in the lower levels) on the first set up; and the greater life leach, cannot be frozen, and the masive cold damage (wich is added into the lying character screen) of the second set up.

after seeing not too significant differences i am still at a loss as to why my barb had trouble with the sig set up when i put 2 sorcs and a necro through with the other set up. i am fairly sure it boils down to the massive cold damage, greater resists (much), and the 8% more life leach.

again thank you all for your responses. the purpose behind this exercise/question was to come up with a generic gear set up for leveling characters w/o outside assistance from say a huge enchant. also it doesn't use any skills aside from the prereqs that you are going to get anyway. in other words + skills, and class specific items are not really taken in to consideration (although with a summon necro specifically you don't really have to hold back skill points b/c you get your end game skills right up front, so that's the reason i had part of the infernal tools in my stash, for necro building). this is assuming that pretty much every character starts mostly as melee and holds off developing skills to begining of nightmare, when you are going to change to a more class specific set up.

im definitly going to have to test out omikron's and anime craze's suggestions. if you guys can do you think you could put in relivent damage, ar, def, etc. stats? i happen to think for me this is the most interesting part of character builds; getting them to where they start to destinguish themselves from other builds quicker with less hassle.

 

[Omikron8]

Never use set items for low leveling, they are horribly pathetic. The only unique worthwhile weapons from 1-20 are: rixot's keen, blood crescent, bloodrise, skewer, tan do liga flail, gnasher (probably forgetting a few). Even with these i prefer to make my own low level weapons. Ire jewels have a level 3-5 requirement. Wrath jewels have a level 8 requirement and carnage comes in at level 18 requirement.

Take any normal type weapon with nice amount of sockets such as flail, war scepter, war hammer, great sword (requires some hel runes), flamberge (again requires some hel runes), war axe, etc. and fill it with as many damage/-req jewels as you can get. Another great choice as i mentioned is "of envy" jewels which add 20 poison damage over 2 seconds. Fill a weapon or armor or helm with this and AT LEAST act1 and 2 will be a complete joke.

Normal difficulty is all about killing everything in 1-2 hits, so you want to stack the poison and max dmg as much as you can. The only other relevant mods for non-weapon equipment in normal difficulty are life and mana. IAS is too low to be significant, resistances aren't necessary (yet) and defense isn't necessary either.