Daggerzon

[Freepaperclips]

While they might not shoot your dog, you never know about your goldfish.

[Guest]

Heh.

Munkay:

In a different post you said you're getting your Daggerzon to level 85. Can you give us any updates on it? How fun is it to play? Are you viable solo? I'm very curious. My own daggerzon never made it past level 12, because I got bored.

[Munkay]

I posted that moments ago!

But sure. I've indulged in single player, played untwinked until 39. I beat Baal and headed off into nightmare, with my blessed aim act2 merc. I logged onto battle.net and looked at what items I had left that weren't already eaten. From there I twinked her with similar gear to attempt to be 'fair.' (I'm sick of battle.net, and in love with players8)

Armed with two angelic rings, angelic amulet, sigons gloves, sigons shield, sigons helm, string of ears, goblin toe, and spine ripper, and a 4 socket gothic plate full of goodies I've found along the way, I set off into nightmare!

Resists became a large problem of mine, as per usual. I had issues with duriel (mainly surviving the charges, and the death of my new merc), and a few very close deaths looking for khalim's brain. I spent too much time in classic diablo frying my brain in act4, and the killing actually went alright there. My favorite time has been in Chaos Sanct, where I loaded up every rare with resists I had found, an ever beautiful Ancients Pledge (Many thanks to Qual'Khek), and my wits, and set out. I've been very lucky so far and drawn very mundane modifiers on key Unique Monsters, and my original "folly" of boosting penetrate helped immensely with diablo. I'm a packrat with my rejuvs.

She's now waiting for a hell upgrade, leveling in act5 nightmare. She just turned 64, and is looking towards hell mode with a bit of fear.

But Kalos will fight on!

-Munk

[Guest]

Er... It says you posted it on June 15th.

[Little Faith]

I have a similar Daggerzon, though she is going to be pure Single Player.

Right now she is level 30 in act 3 normal wearing:

Twitchthroe
Wormskull (for the poison)
Immortal King's Forge and Detail
Goblin Toe
A rare bone shield I gambled long ago
Malice (in a kris)
Eye of Etlich
Two rare rings I gambled not that long ago.


I look forward to reaching level 37 where I will be able to wear:

Heart Carver (a significant damage upgrade)
Crow Caw
Guillaume's Face
Moser's Blessed Circle
Immortal King's Forge and Detail




Oh yeah, until now her main problem has been her abysmal damage. Sure Open Wounds help, but it doesn't really take advantage of my attack speed. The 25% Crushing Blow is too little for this build. She needs to CB and Critical/Deadly with the majority of her hit in order to get any semblance of killing speed. She really looks forward to be able to wield the Fleshripper.


She is quite a tank indeed, though life leech has had a lot to say in that matter. Still she is able to hack her way out of a solid block of skeletons.


Oh yeah, and Decoy is really friggin' cool crowd control skill.

[Munkay]

I feel this is far from warranting an entire new thread, and no search results yielded a topic started, but what about a daggerdin?

That's right. A paladin who uses a dagger. In reality it would be nothing more than a glorified zealot. I tried transfering over one of the equipment set ups that was dubbed optimal for the daggerzon and tried it out on a paladin.

The results were . . . spectacular. With Holy shield being able to drop block animations down to only 2 frames, and a faster attack led by zeal, this puppy kills real fast. A major snag is that daggers are slower for paladins than any other class. But with the classic zeal/fanat speed was hardly a problem.

The only other major snag was that he is not as good of a tank as the zon is, due to the zon's passive evades. It is possible to see his red orb dip for a moment or two, but this is still far from a problem. I leveled from level 60 to level 83 with only one death (due to a combination of amp, and gloams) and a few close calls. It was very enjoyable :D

For a mercenary, I tried out a holy freeze act2 nm merc which worked out great. The damage bonus would have been better with might, though I'm certain the holy freeze saved my hide on at least a few occasions.

Cheers,

-Munk

[Guest]

Hmm... The reason that a Daggerzon is viable is because they have very fast block rates and a high attack speed. It would seem that with Holy Shield, your block speed is already so high that it doesn't matter, and as you said, the dagger is slower on a Paladin.

Wouldn't the paladin be doing better with just a sword? He would certainly attack faster. I don't know if the weapon change would be enough to drop the block speed though.

[adeyke]

Amazons are the only class that has a different block speed depending on what weapon they have. A Paladin will always have a 5-frame base block speed without HS or a 2-frame base bock speed with HS.

[Munkay]

The difference between paladin dagger attack speed and amazon dagger attack speed is listed as "fast" vs "very fast." IIRC this gives the zon a difference of -20 on attack speed.

With fanaticism and Zeal the speed difference is nulled, and even turned into the paladin's favor.

As for the 'isn't he better with a sword,' that's what I thought. Go try it and compare. :D

In my experience he kills much faster than any 1h sword. Oh, and if you still don't beleive it, just compare the dagger damage to another 1h'er. You'll find that the dagger is not that much lower than any top one hander. Then factor in all the CB and double damage (due to 100% deadly) and once again, the paladin will be on top.

It's interesting, and I encourage anyone to try it.

-Munk

[Guest]

Amazons are the only class that has a different block speed depending on what weapon they have.

Is this a bug, or a built in attribute (such as asns lock pick, barbs dual wield, etc)?

[adeyke]

The difference between paladin dagger attack speed and amazon dagger attack speed is listed as "fast" vs "very fast." IIRC this gives the zon a difference of -20 on attack speed.

The "fast" vs. "very fast" is completely meaningless.

A dirk (speed [0] one-hand thrusting weapon) with no IAS gives a 16 frame attack to Paladins and a 12 frame attack to amazons.

A broad sword (speed [0] one-hand swinging weapon) with no IAS gives a 14 frame attack to Paladins and a 13 frame attack to amazons.

That would be a way to quantify the speed difference. The "fast" vs. "very fast" isn't.

[Munkay]

Thanks for the clearification :)

Though now I'm possibly more confused about attack speed than I've ever been. I'm sure this has been discussed, though a search has (so far) yielded no results.

Does each character have a 'base' frame rate attack with each weapon type?

Note: I apologize for any of my posts this weekend, I have a very bad flu at the moment, and have spent the last 48 hours in bed, with only trips to the bathroom (this never seems like a big deal until you are sick, upon which the bathroom seems like a extremely long journey). Between Dayquil, Nyquil and assorted remedies, I'm far from 'myself.' I'm sure my posts are ridiculous, and I apologize ahead of time.

-Munk

[adeyke]

Does each character have a 'base' frame rate attack with each weapon type?

Yes. Weapon type here would be something like one-hand swing, one-hand thrust, two-hand swing, two-hand thrust, bow, crossbow, etc. All one-hand swords, maces, axes, etc. are swinging weapons, so they'd all have the same base rate on a given character class. Daggers and javelins are one-hand thrust weapons.

The base speed of a weapon (e.g. the [0] of the dirk) is a property of the weapon, not the character who wields it.