Thinking about taking the dive...

[pakman]

Well the title says it all, I'm thinking about reinstalling D2 back on my computer. I have plenty of games on there already like Oblivion, Dawn of War, FEAR, etc., but I have been bouncing this idea around for a bit.

Last time I played it was during 1.09. I kept track of 1.10, but quickly lost interest a little later and fell off the bandwagon. I have a few questions, and I'm not looking for detailed answer, just little summaries, cause I can search the forums for details later.

1. What is the general thought on the skill synergies?

2. How is the monster randomization and item drop randomization in Act V?

3. Is Act V still the xp well it was in 1.07-1.09? Specifically the Bloody Foothills and the Ancients.

4. Are the classes "balanced" by now? Meaning is the Orb sorc. or Firewall sorc. still a goddess when it comes to killing baddies? Will my CE necro still be powerful when mixed with LR and Bone Spirit and AD? What about my Trap'sin?

5. How are the new rune combinations and weapon crafting? Does everyone still go nuts over "chippies" in order to get that Cruel Mega Blade thing with 6 sockets?

Maybe I'll think of a few more later.

[Munkay]

Well the title says it all, I'm thinking about reinstalling D2 back on my computer. I have plenty of games on there already like Oblivion, Dawn of War, FEAR, etc., but I have been bouncing this idea around for a bit.

Last time I played it was during 1.09. I kept track of 1.10, but quickly lost interest a little later and fell off the bandwagon. I have a few questions, and I'm not looking for detailed answer, just little summaries, cause I can search the forums for details later.

1. What is the general thought on the skill synergies?

2. How is the monster randomization and item drop randomization in Act V?

3. Is Act V still the xp well it was in 1.07-1.09? Specifically the Bloody Foothills and the Ancients.

4. Are the classes "balanced" by now? Meaning is the Orb sorc. or Firewall sorc. still a goddess when it comes to killing baddies? Will my CE necro still be powerful when mixed with LR and Bone Spirit and AD? What about my Trap'sin?

5. How are the new rune combinations and weapon crafting? Does everyone still go nuts over "chippies" in order to get that Cruel Mega Blade thing with 6 sockets?

Maybe I'll think of a few more later.

I too just recently began playing D2 again. I stopped well into the days of 1.10 though, dropping just days after 1.11 came out. I picked up the game again roughly 2 weeks ago, but due to a very untimely and unfortunately physical Hard Drive failure everything is gone (the platter literally came unsettled).

The best answer I can give is that things are different in 1.10 than they were in 1.09. If you haven't looked over Ashock's comments in MonTy's Barbarian thread, then be forwarned that physical attacks are damn near useless in hell. Certain physical attack based builds can hold their own, but cannot come anywhere close to the casting builds. Some of the strongest 1.10+ character types I have found are Hurricane Druids (probably the easiest to start brand new with), Lightening Fury Javazons, and Hammerdins. Frozen Orb sorcs Blizzard sorcs and Lightening sorcs are strong, though unfortnately damn near everything is Fire immune, negating the awesome strength of fire sorcs. Sorcs of course still seem to be the soup de jour for magic finders.

The other classes and builds can ally play relatively well in Hell, though they are not dominant killers (am I forgetting any major build?). Of course, if a very strong hell character is not your focus then your mileage will certainly vary:)

Are you looking to play D2 on battle.net or in single player? I was a very large Battle.net player and was very involved with trading and high level chars, but when I restarted again I began playing single player hardcore and it was an absolute blast. Could be something worth looking into. Many builds are a ton of fun to play through nightmare, but become terrible upon the leap to hell. In single player hardcore there is plenty of fun to be had just getting through nightmare.:)

That's the best general summary I can give. As for your specific questions:

1.) Skill synergies are great. For the first time 100+ skill points can feel like not enough. A bonus to synergies is if you are trying to make a uber character, you no longer wait until level 30 to start distributing your skillpoints. Many formerly poor skills are very powerful under synergies.

2.)The monster randomization is frustrating for me. Rather than Boar spawns and Maulers in Bloody Hills there are Skeletons, Jav throwing Spearcats, and the little bat like creatures from act 1. You must be very careful going to Baal, since the lightening shooting Ghosts (think Plains of Despair in Act 4) are extremely powerful in 1.10 and are everywhere on Worldstone Keep.

3.) The cow level doesn't give the fun exp it used to. The last time I play battle.net Act 5 was still where the exp was at. Mostly Baal runs, though this may have changed.

4.) A CE nec can be extremely powerful, but they have become very item dependant. I had a level 93 Nec in 1.10 that was all CE, Iron Golem, Amp, and Iron Maiden. I Iron Maidened monsters and let them hit my golem, once one died I amped and CE'd everything in sight. It killed as fast as any uber build, but the problem was the high cost of equip (I had +23 skills in summons tab, +20 in the poison bone, and +19 in curses). Bonespear and Bonespirit are weak in Hell with anyone else in the game, making a Nec a poor soloing class without a lot of + skills equip. As far as Trap asn's, I personally dislike their power in 1.10. Though I believe there are other loungers out there who feel they are strong, so I'll leave it up to them to explain their strengths:)

5.) Since its been over a year since I last logged onto Battle.net, I won't pretend I know. Although very high end rune words were the top items when I stopped.

Hope it helps a bit,

Cheers,

Munk

[pakman]

I don't plan on playing online for about a month and a half until I get back to Purdue in August. So, yes, I will be playing SP for a while:)

I guess, Ill ahve to see what happens with the skill synergies. I'm still not convinced about them. I was always in the habit of saving my skill points until I got to the proper level of 30.

The characters that I have the most experience with are the CE Necro with a pumped IG, IM, LR, and AD with a pumped Bone Spirit. But You say that Bone Spirit is not nearly as useful as it used to be in Hell difficulty, I may use a different skill, but I'm not sure what quit yet.

I have only played Hardcore once, and it was using a Trap'sin with the lightning trap and fire trap. I got that character up to level 95 and she died in the Ice Caves of Act V to a damnedable MSLE (Are they are ferocious as they used to be also?) I may have to give SP HC a try again. I always like the Trapsins cause you didn't see many of them and when you jumped into a game and started killing everything people were amazed. Same thing with the CE necro. Most of the Necros I saw were of the Zookeeper variety.

I never got into Druids, Paladins or Amazons even though the GA/Windforce Amazon used to be uber-duper. I have always wanted to do a Paladin party where each Paladin specialized in a different aura. One might take the resistance aura, another might take Vigor, etc. The Act II hirelings would be used to provide other auras so these don't have to be taken into account. These Paladins would be *strictly* for playing in a party because they would get destroyed on their own. Maybe this time through I'll give a different class a try.

Thanks for the post, it was informative. I'll be installing the game tomorrow (July 1) because I intend on playing Warhammer 40K for a good portion of tonight.:)

[librarian]

Heiho,

The other classes and builds can ally play relatively well in Hell, though they are not dominant killers (am I forgetting any major build?). Of course, if a very strong hell character is not your focus then your mileage will certainly vary:)

You certainly forgot the Lightning Trapsin.

Just a few counterparts ...

1.) Skill synergies are great. For the first time 100+ skill points can feel like not enough. A bonus to synergies is if you are trying to make a uber character, you no longer wait until level 30 to start distributing your skillpoints. Many formerly poor skills are very powerful under synergies.

OTOH syns made the casters even more unbalanced to the aforementioned physical damage related builds. From what I've seen indeed many poor skills became more powerful, but the cookie cutter skills became even more powerful than before, so there wasn't really that big change.

2.)The monster randomization is frustrating for me. Rather than Boar spawns and Maulers in Bloody Hills there are Skeletons, Jav throwing Spearcats, and the little bat like creatures from act 1. You must be very careful going to Baal, since the lightening shooting Ghosts (think Plains of Despair in Act 4) are extremely powerful in 1.10 and are everywhere on Worldstone Keep.

OTOH monster randomization made Act5 in fact more of a joke than the native cubby zoo before. When all's said and done, as soon as you enter a map and there are ugly monsters you can't defeat you create a new game, and the chance of getting more handsome opponents is quite good.
You'll still have to find waypoints, true.

3.) The cow level doesn't give the fun exp it used to. The last time I play battle.net Act 5 was still where the exp was at. Mostly Baal runs, though this may have changed.

If you don't know anyone your chances of joining a botted Baal Party in pubbies go straight through the roof. And no other place in Act5 is visited for exp, just for shuttling chars to Malah's scroll reward and the Ancients.

4.) A CE nec can be extremely powerful, but they have become very item dependant. I had a level 93 Nec in 1.10 that was all CE, Iron Golem, Amp, and Iron Maiden. I Iron Maidened monsters and let them hit my golem, once one died I amped and CE'd everything in sight. It killed as fast as any uber build, but the problem was the high cost of equip (I had +23 skills in summons tab, +20 in the poison bone, and +19 in curses). Bonespear and Bonespirit are weak in Hell with anyone else in the game, making a Nec a poor soloing class without a lot of + skills equip. As far as Trap asn's, I personally dislike their power in 1.10. Though I believe there are other loungers out there who feel they are strong, so I'll leave it up to them to explain their strengths

All a CE Nec ( = basically every Nec, if you don't want to waste damage) needs is someone for the first corpse. Usually your hireling (preferably Act2/NM offensive) fulfills this role better than any native NecSkill. This hasn't changed since LoD release (disregarding hirelings it hasn't changed since D2 release). Nowadays Nec's skills are when focussed on either Skeletons, Bones or Poison strong enough to bring really quickly first corpses.
Forgive my maybe rude sidemark, but thorny effects, and especially Iron Maiden, are outdated since ... uhm ... 1.04 IIRC, and for sure since LoD release, when monster HPs compared to their dealt out damage shoot right away through the roof and physical resistance was invented on a 'free4allthatismonster' base.

5.) Since its been over a year since I last logged onto Battle.net, I won't pretend I know. Although very high end rune words were the top items when I stopped.

There never where legal cruels with six sockets, they could be cubed with three sockets in 1.09. 1.1x restricted that recipe to two sockets and invented the possibility of getting 450%ED on rares (and even more on crafts). Despite the bad chances of actually find/cube such an item the popularity of the easy 3CG recipe is gone.
This is surely promoted also through very irritating (and IMHO disgusting) runewords with just insane modifiers. Don't even dream about that ones when playing legal SP.

MSLEBs can't spawn anymore, or to be precisely, the Multishot attribute isn't carried over to triggered Bolts of a Lightning Enchanted Boss (or, same thing here, beetles).

[Munkay]

Forgive my maybe rude sidemark, but thorny effects, and especially Iron Maiden, are outdated since ... uhm ... 1.04 IIRC, and for sure since LoD release, when monster HPs compared to their dealt out damage shoot right away through the roof and physical resistance was invented on a 'free4allthatismonster' base.

I'm not offended in the least bit. If you saw the necromancer I had, you'd be quick to take that remark back. With level 39 Iron Maiden, level 43 Iron Golem the "outdated" % damage return quickly becomes "updated". (I may be a bit rusty with numbers but I believe the % returned was around +3k%). Killing the first monster with the use of an Iron Golem+IM took about 3-5 seconds. Compared to a casters kill rate this is not outstanding, but once that body was CE'd (remember, the main skill used to kill was CE) fireworks happened. On levels like the Cowlevel the only person who outkilled me speed wise was a Javazon.

And if you still don't believe me, boot up UDIE II or another Char editor and try out Hell cows in SP. I promise the build works;)

MSLEBs can't spawn anymore, or to be precisely, the Multishot attribute isn't carried over to triggered Bolts of a Lightning Enchanted Boss (or, same thing here, beetles).

And after that, there was much rejoicing:)

Cheers,

Munk

I don't plan on playing online for about a month and a half until I get back to Purdue in August. So, yes, I will be playing SP for a while:)

I'll be back at Boston Univ. about the same time. I'll see if I can find some free time to boot up Diablo II. It'd be nice to play on Battle.net again.

Cheers,

Munk

[librarian]

Heiho,

I may be a bit rusty with numbers but I believe the % returned was around +3k%

sLvl39 IM will reflect 1150% damage. sLvl42 IG will reflect 750% damage. For easiness of use let's say reflect is 20 times dealt out damage (2000%).

Bloodlords:
Average dealt out physical damage is about 100.
Returns about 2000 damage.
Average Hell Monster HPs are about 12k, nonladder, and 16k, ladder
phys resi is 100%
oops ...

Nightlords:
Average dealt out physical damage is about 100.
Returns about 2000 damage.
Average Hell Monster HPs are about 12k, nonladder, and 16k, ladder
phys resi is 66%
damage recieved via reflect: about 670

This is all calculated in SinglePlayer terms. Multiplayer will increase Monster HPs to an incredible amount, but will increase Monster damage just by a slice.
If you take Hell Bovines as example, their damage is a bit higher, but they attack slower than Frenzytaurs, and they have only 50% phys resi. Most melee monsters will do noticeably less than 100 avgdam, about 80 AFAICS.
No mention of elemental or/and ranged attackers.

Your average hireling in same conditions with decent stuff - Hone Sundan/TalRasha Mask/Duriel's Shell, to give you the idea what I call decent stuff - overrides the 2k damage mark easily, is faster and can be supported with another curse. AD in most common occasions, which will break the immunity of Bloodlords, quadrupel his effective damage against Nightlords and triple his damage against Bovines.

And if you still don't believe me, boot up UDIE II or another Char editor and try out Hell cows in SP. I promise the build works;)

I don't doubt it works, but only under certain conditions regarding
- your equipment (on sLvl40 even Teeth can deal damage ...)
- map's population
- player count

You claimed a CE Necro item dependant. CE maybe is the least item dependant skill the Necro has. You spend 20points in it and blast the screen away. It's only a matter of getting the first corpse. If you can afford this with IM/IG, it is a nice touch of RPG. I appreciate that (though still calling it outdated). But this way the item dependancy can't be blamed to CE.

[Munkay]

As a wise man once said, experience is the best teacher:)

Until you spend some time fiddling with the build in practice there are some things about the build that are easily overlooked. IM works better with a Merc than Amp damage because every monster that attacks becomes injured, rather than every monster that the Merc attacks. By the time the first corpse drops, most of the group are at about half life or less. The first CE blast will just be enough to kill off at least one more and start a chain reaction. If the situation were reversed and just Amp is used, the majority of the monsters will have 100% health. Since Amp does 60-100% of the monster hitpoints, and is 50% fire and 50% physical damage, AMP adds another 30-50% physical damage. This results in a 60-100% physical damage and 30-50% fire damage. Added together this is 90-150%, which sounds pretty good on paper. But if you add in fire immunities etc (and see this in practice) the CE chain effect fails to work roughly 50% of the time. Is this bad? Not at all. But it doesn't kill groups nearly as fast as IM.

As far as my comment on CE necs being item dependent, that I agree is arguable. But for this build (which I do believe extends to all Necs using CE as the main killing skill) the extra range each point gives to CE is important. It's far more bang for the buck. It damages more monsters, and more importantly draws more of them towards the necromancer. The more monsters you can draw in, the more dead bodies for the CE chain effect to keep happening.

On number crunching, you are dead on about Moon Lords. They were always annoying buggers to take on. But what about monsters like Hellspawns? These suckers do 69-93 damage, or an average of 81 damage. They have a hitpoint range of 4378-7296, or 5800 average points. But lets assume its the max, 7.3k health. At 2000% return it's 1620 damage every hit. That averages to about 4-5 hits before they die. If you have 8 of them attacking the golem, they are half way dead within give or take 3 seconds. Throw in the 33% damage reduction and it's 4 seconds. By then one drops dead from the Merc weapon and they are cleaned out with CE. It does not happen that fast with Amp. I wish it did, otherwise I'd of used Amp all the time. Switching between curses was always a pain:)

Although the Arreat Summit contradicts this notion, the more players in the game the stronger a CE nec is. Granted the damage to health ratio raises against his favor, the amount of corpses in an area overcomes this loss and turns it to the Nec's favor. As far as making groups goes, with my Necromancer it was easy with some faster run/walk (I had over 100% thanks to some small charms). A large health pool plus some bone armor minimized any problem of running for grouping, and monsters always picked up the Golem or the Merc by the time it was over.

We can certainly go back and forth number crunching and nit picking some more, but where's the fun in that?:)I invite anyone to go out and try out the build for a while, it really is a lot of fun. If you still hate it, I concede its tomay-to tomah-to and your mileage may vary. But I promise that its far from feeling like a decreped old news build:)

Cheers,

Munk

Edit: Took out the block quote.

[pakman]

Thanks a lot guys. Instead of playing D2 today, I was in a Warhammer 40K tournament that I stumbled into at the GW store near my house. But I promise that I will get the CE 'mancer up and running tomorrow. Hell, I'll even post some updates about him. I just always loved necromancers and what they do. I remember that the first time I played the game, I was at a friend's house (this was when I was in high school), and I was running around Act I weilding a claymore, 6 skeletons and bone armor. I thought it was the coolest thing ever. Then I discovered this website and it's been a match made in heaven ever since.

I got bored with my FO sorc. And I used to do Mephy runs with the Trapsin. Barbarians got old with WW, battlecry, yell some more, get +skills, yell again, WW, WW, WW. Amazons were cheese, druids sucked like a Hoover (although a bear with oaken spirit used to be a FANTASTIC tank in mp), and paladins pretty much did nothing. I'm still deciding on whether or not to play HC, but I'm leaning towards not doing it since it'll be the first time I've played in a looooooong time. Once I see the changes and how they work, etc., maybe I'll start up a HC char for grins and giggles.

Again, I appreciate what both of you hae said.

[librarian]

Heiho,

Until you spend some time fiddling with the build in practice there are some things about the build that are easily overlooked. IM works better with a Merc than Amp damage because every monster that attacks becomes injured, rather than every monster that the Merc attacks.

I don't want to sound like a nitpicker, but this is just plain wrong. I know what you want to say, but still you're ignoring phys resi, not to mention elemental/ranged attackers.
And you ignore HP scaling in Multiplayer. Your hireling (most probably your IG also) will be long dead before even one enemy falls if you use IM that way in MP.
Some minus on style points for mentioning fire resi as a drawback to CE and still ignoring phys resi as a major drawback to IM ;-)


Basically I can just quote myself:

I don't doubt it works, but only under certain conditions regarding
- your equipment (on sLvl40 even Teeth can deal damage ...)
- map's population
- player count

But for this build (which I do believe extends to all Necs using CE as the main killing skill) the extra range each point gives to CE is important. It's far more bang for the buck. It damages more monsters, and more importantly draws more of them towards the necromancer. The more monsters you can draw in, the more dead bodies for the CE chain effect to keep happening.

I don't understand you here :-(
Of course each point invested into CE will increase its AoE. But it will increase only the radius (hah, diameter, blizz coders are even more noobish than me when it comes to maths ^^ ), not the damage itself.
So what I said is, if you're going the CE route and play from scratch, you spend your 20 points into CE and care about getting a first corpse. sLvl20 CE will do.
If you want to increase overall damage by affecting more monsters you use either Attract, Confuse, or in special cases Bone Wall or Bone Prison. You'll draw most of two screen distance's monster population to you, and when the chain is ongoing, you'll have insta-cleared next two screens. Maybe some Sand Maggots or other units with slow AI are left ...
Needs a bit of experience, because the unawarely player may get in deep trouble this way, if he didn't expect the swarming.
This needs not a single item, just spending skill points in the appropriate skills.
Of course it won't hurt (to be precise, it won't hurt _you_ ^^ ) to have some extra points from equip.

IM has no appeal effect whatsoever.

If you still hate it, I concede its tomay-to tomah-to and your mileage may vary. But I promise that its far from feeling like a decreped old news build:)

oh, come on, 'hate' is such a strong word ... :-)
I don't like it when I see a mixup of personal experience based on a certain build and a generalized recommendation. The few times I joined bnet in last half year there were still Necros around just casting IM everywhere without thinking, upon Bone Archers, upon Specters, heck, even upon Gloams.
I heavily doubt they had your experience or even your IM sLvl, and certainly, my own ones aside, I didn't meet anyone with an IG.

[Munkay]

...

Welcome to a circular argument. My response is contained in the one you replied too.

Quick, someone call the police because the two of us are guilty of beating a dead horse :lol:

Cheers,

Munk

[librarian]

Heiho,

Quick, someone call the police because the two of us are guilty of beating a dead horse :lol:

if we can explode it, no-one will find a proof against us ;-)

[Roland]

Heiho,
if we can explode it, no-one will find a proof against us ;-)

Except for the poor, dumb newscaster who gets hit in the head by a falling chunk of it.:)

[pakman]

Well, I started playing yesterday and am happy to report that Lord_Ungar happily pranced his way through Act I without dying once. Too bad it's a SC char and dying doesn't really matter until you get to Nightmare, but I am still proud that my first time through again I kept death at bay. I cleared every area of every map and the whole trip with a 2 hour break took about 5 hours. I always find A1 to be a bit tedious seeing as I like A2 and A5 the best, or at least I used to. Andariel was taken out with a combination of IM/Clay Golem Bombs and AD/CE when I could stop and actually hit her.

Lord_Ungar is a CE, AD, IM necro so far, and I really haven't noticed anything different with the saving of skill points for this build. It seems that this build still requires the saving of points and synergies won't do much for it. I have one question, though. Has anyone tried what I have deemed a "fatal attraction" version of this build? Instead of using IM or AD to get your first corpse, use Attract, then when he's dead, cast AD, then CE? Would this be a viable option if IM starts to not work? I haven't decided yet if I want to get Lower Resist.

I found out that the "players 8" command no longer works, and I was only lvl16 when I made it into A2. I also seem to be finding a lot more rare items, and I'll have to look through FAQ/errata to see how drops were changed. Not that any of the rares I found were any good, I just seem to be finding more than I remember, but it's been a while.

I traded in my A1 merc for an A2 defensive merc because I need tanks to keep baddies away from me. the Defense will help my merc and my golem stay alive that extra little time to get that first corpse. I am starting to be able to cast CE a little more now that I am getting higher in levels, but I forgot how much mana it consumes just at lvl1. So far my skill loadout looks like this:

AD - 1
IM - 1

Clay Golem - 1
Golem Mastery - 1

Teeth - 1
CE - 1

I've pretty much been saving everything for when I hit lvl30 since that's what I'm used to doing. If this is not the way to play this build, just let me know...I am seriously considering doing the "fatal attraction" variant to see how it works.

[Munkay]

I'd suggest going over to the Phrozen Keep and getting a character editor like UDIE II. Make a backup of your saved char, then try redistrubting some of your skill points. Attract is a novel idea, and one worthy trying out (why not!).

As for players 8, typing /players8 still works for me :)

Cheers,

Munk

Edit: Took out the block quote.

[pakman]

Then I was typing /players8 incorrectly. I was typing "players 8" without the quotes since that is what used to work "back in the day" of 1.07 when players 200 would work.

[librarian]

Heiho,

let me see this right.
You're using Clay Golem, whose main ability is to slow down any enemy movement on contact, along with high defense, to reduce the probability to get hit. And you go for some IM tactics, which is effective when the IM'd enemy hits often.

Munkay, I won't bother you again.

[pakman]

I'd suggest going over to the Phrozen Keep and getting a character editor like UDIE II. Make a backup of your

I've never used a character editor before. I have used a muling program but that was way back. How much new stuff is out there for 1.11b? I did a search for UDIE II and came up with a version that works for 1.10, would these be compatable? I read in another thread in the Armory in the Frenzybarb thrread (I believe) about another character editor? How do they work? Do they change just the character or do some of them modify important game file? I intend on playing online when I get back to school in August.

EDIT: Does using a program like PlugY modify the game files to where I would not be able to connect to battle.net eventually? Would I have to reinstall the game? Or is it where I could play with chars/items I haven't modified and not the ones I haven't? Right now I'm trying to sift through the Phrozen Keep PlugY forums to get these answers. Can it be uninstalled?

[pakman]

Yes, it sounds counter-productive, but it works well in Normal difficulty. I don't have the luxury of being able to connect online at home to twink characters, etc. The main curse I use now is AD to get the first kill. I like my minions in normal to stay alive a little longer. Once I get to NM, I switch to a Might merc so he kills faster and I don't need to use AD anymore. Once the NM merc is bought, I switch to IM and use and IG mainly made out of weapons so they do more damage and get that kill even faster.

When I face the frenzied moon lords in A4, I don't want my merc to bite it ASAP, I want it to beable to take him down. The frozen aura merc is no good because I don't want the bodies to shatter and I want the monster close. The Prayer merc might be the other option to refill health faster, but that really doesn't matter when you fight bosses. Might will be useful against anything not PI, but that and Defiance are the only viable options. I don't want a rogue cause I need a tank. Skeletons die way too easily, and I don't like revives, although reviving OKs is really nice. I've done this enough times to know what works for me.

[librarian]

Heiho,

Yes, it sounds counter-productive, but it works well in Normal difficulty. I don't have the luxury of being able to connect online at home to twink characters, etc.

everything works fine in Normal, including any weapon on switch to lay his own hands onto the nastier monsters, ie Act Bosses. No need for twinks here.

But yeah, OKs make really insane Revives, and IGs are best boxers in the game :c)

I'm off here, as said, Munkay may till this field. Have fun. That's main purpose of any game.

[Doc]

Skeletons are pretty much the strongest build in the game. And Iron Maiden wont even beat regen any more no matter what level you pump it to. Just hire a thorns merc or get a rogue with an Edge bow to provide thorns aura, then amp.

Yes, there are monsters that will heal faster than the damage they take from iron maiden. A pack of frenzied moon lords for example, heal even faster while frenzied. Iron maiden wont even make them pause for a second. And considering they can have life in the tens of thousands, they won't be going down any time soon. Iron maiden is pretty much worthless.

Skeletons, backed by dim vision, decrep, amp, a bit of confuse, attract, and mages backed with lower resist can safely solo any area in the game. Add a little corpse explosion here and there to keep from snoozing at the keyboard.

Seriously though. All of the worst hitters in the game are ranged... Iron Maiden is a total and complete waste of skill points. Raising it beyond one point will drastically decrease your future potential killing power.

Here's something to consider... A hell Fallen has over 2000 life. And will regen about 200 hit points a second. Iron Maiden is a mere tickle. A single skeleton can whack said Fallen and kill it in a hit or two. Amp and CE. Or lower resist and CE. All monsters now gone. Yes, there are times when lower resist is the better curse for ce.

Have fun.