Frostdin

[Archon_Wing]

Someone traded me a low-defense HoZ straight up for 15 pgems and an Oculus I found on a free for all clickfest NM Baal run. Based on what I can tell, I think I did pretty good on that deal. Seems as though HoZ is more coveted than I remember.

What's your screen name; If you ever have the time to get on. =p Mine is just Archon_Wing

That's pretty nuts;)Typically HOZ is Ist+, and occulus may be something less than um. I have no idea why, since occulus is rather good, Item values seem kinda busted. But that may be a 2-3x benefit for you, of course not everyone knows about or cares about item values that sometimes make no sense. Personally I usually trade off stuff I don't use, so I really don't care about getting the "right" prices. It could be a doop, but then again such fools would be interested more about greed and ask for the world on any item. I personally use diii.net's forums to trade, as it lets me bypass some of battle.net's uhh... more unscrupulous and rude "personalities"

That being said, I think gems serve their role as currency very well, being widely available via legit means but still being in high demand since crafting items and rerolling charms burns them up fast. Much more effective then duped SOJs

And yea, gear always helps. Some would argue in d2, it matters a bit too much. But your standard melee build has quite a bit of trouble in hell and they have to worry about health and resistances. Even elite weapons like lightsabre don't really cut it. On the other hand, an elemental zealot needs two things for offense: weapon speed and crushing blow. Crushing blow helps a lot with immunes and bosses. So your merc can take care of those. Easy runewords like strength and black flails are pretty awesome. Heaven's light is great for the same reason. Actually black flail may be a nice switch for areas with iron madien as crushing blow damage doesn't get reflected through iron madien. Or perhaps just punching them works.