Roll call for "hidden" bonuses/features

[Crystalion]

As far as Occhi's experience with the monster resetting it's life, I believe this is something else completely unconnected with PMH, but I don't know what causes it.

While I can't support this with code-reading, it has always been my educated guess that there is a "sub-zone processing" garbage collect. To wit, the local space around players is always processing (i.e. actively running) and sub-zones players were recently in also continue to process--for a while. That is, like garbage collecting, those sub-zones are removed from the processing queue fairly quickly in the absence of players.

Since each player can have at most one (personal) town portal active in the game (across all acts) you could also create a little island of processing around each player's portal. I've heard this suggested, but doubt it (though I've never tested for it).

In any event, when a sub-zone has its processing shut down, a certain amount of "clean up" occurs on shut-down and "re-creation". This, according to all evidence I've ever seen, can include the effect of restoring a monster's HPs completely. My theory here is that there is a least recently used throw-away algorithm, such that the game, when it stops processing the monsters, "freezes" them in time, as they are, but that garbage collecting can result in that state information being thrown away, and the monster is effectively reborn.

Lots of implementation details there, which could be probed by testing or code-reading, but I think I have the general outline essentially right.

I also tried open wounds recently, from a crafted belt, and was a little disappointed in it's effectiveness after all the great stuff I read about it.

Well, iirc, the belts only come in at 10% chance, so you'd have to hit a monster lots and lots of times over any given 8 second period (afaik the timing for OW lasting) to keep their regen off and unresistable OW damage being done. This is rather non-optimal for most "real world" conditions.

OW chances of 25%, 35%, 50%, 100% are readily equipable on a hireling in various ways, and are often more effective than poison (because OW has a longer duration and there isn't immunity to it--provided you get a hit in, of course, perhaps needing a little elemental rider to go with your phys vs. a phys immune, which isn't hard to do). PMH is arguably godly/required for v1.10 hell difficulty. Sometimes, however, your restrictions on your (or your hirelings) equipment choices make poison or OW a reasonable alternate.

I also suspect there is some poison immune ghost or bug-cloud with not very many hit points that OW really melts beautifully, but that's a situational thing.

Crushing blow, as far as I can tell is still pretty worthless for ranged attacks, though I haven't tried to test it in detail.

Actually, at potentially five hits/sec. vs a single target (no reliance on IAS, nor possible) with Blade Fury, I suspect CB could be quite useful. Other ranged attacks, afaik, can only get up to around 3 per second.

Where crushing blow should really shine would be Dragon Talon, landing a hit potentially eight times a second (non-ranged, so no CB penalty) vs. a single target (possible, afaik, around slvl 42, with proper weapon, IAS and BoS--of course you don't have to go to this extreme to be effective).

[Guest]

Actually, at potentially five hits/sec. vs a single target (no reliance on IAS, nor possible) with Blade Fury, I suspect CB could be quite useful. Other ranged attacks, afaik, can only get up to around 3 per second.

Where crushing blow should really shine would be Dragon Talon, landing a hit potentially eight times a second (non-ranged, so no CB penalty) vs. a single target (possible, afaik, around slvl 42, with proper weapon, IAS and BoS--of course you don't have to go to this extreme to be effective).

double throw has some insane ias built into it, is it capped at 7 fps as others though?

i don't get what you mean with dragon talon, it just has more kicks at higher level, not faster, right?

[Crystalion]

double throw has some insane ias built into it, is it capped at 7 fps as others though?

i don't get what you mean with dragon talon, it just has more kicks at higher level, not faster, right?

Can't answer the Double Throw question, even from memory of reading other folk's posts--sorry.

DT, like Zeal, Fury, etc. has a base frame minimum for the initial attack then a repeated set of frames for the add on attacks. I know DT can do 5 total kicks (initial plus 4 add on) from personal experience. I've seen it reported that it can keep going (one additional kick per six skill points). IIRC the initial frames can be gotten down to 7 or 8 frames and the add ons can be reduced from taking 4 frames per down to 2 frames minimum. So, you see, the more kicks you have the lower the average (and if 7/+2(n-1) were the formula, you'd get 10 kicks a second, if you could get the skill up that high and there isn't a cap before that). (edit: you'd need a skill level of 54 for that, which appears theoretically possible; there is no apparent cap in skills.txt either)

Presumably Fury and Zeal can't quite match this, being capped at what, 5 hits?

The new Jab supposedly does 3 hits now, so I imagine its hits/sec are potentially pretty good.

Whirlwind, assuming knockback/flee work well for it, might still be the champ for hits on a single target per unit of time, but I don't recall how badly it was nerfed (at one time it was definitely the champ). Nor do I know if it still helps (vs. a single target) to be slowed/chilled/decrepified.

In any event, CB is like Static Field: it works well with repeated application, until the high HP target is low enough on HPs that beating it up normally makes more sense. So knowing which special attacks in the game hit repeatedly at high speed is helpful. For example, my understanding is that act 2 hirelings are still pretty speedy.

[Ferengi]

For you really old timers, yes, the "Laser" still works

Oh-oh. Seeing how I've been around since 1.03, I did think I was an Old Timer.

I've never heard of Laser. From the pic, I'm guessing this is a mix of Inferno and Chilling Armor?

[Guest]

For example, my understanding is that act 2 hirelings are still pretty speedy.

yes, and since they can use the most powerful (base damage) weapons in the game and pretty much ignore the speed penalty, that's as bad bug as the 1.0 whirlwind. they're more than 2 times faster than act 5's, at least according to dii.net, i haven't seen any other merc ias site.

sure the fps difference is a lot less with more ias, but how are you going to fit that along with leech, defence and resists? then you also have to figure in jab and the auras damage increase, and act 2's are just silly overpowered.

[/rant] that's not what thread was about it, sorry :(

i guess you haven't heard of it, but crushing blow damage doesn't scale with players, or is penalized in some way.

so the already overpowered crescent moon(even with just chance to cast static field it'd be overpowered) is even more powerful, and the "elemental pierce" mod is the chance your attack will completely ignore the targets lightning resist, no matter if they're immune or not.

The new Jab supposedly does 3 hits now, so I imagine its hits/sec are potentially pretty good.

i heard(oh no not another "i heard") that the attacks were first:normal, second:fast, third:slow. since both block and d/a/e can interupt it(and also easily hit recovery, since zons have low hp and resists) that doesn't sound like a good choice.

from the small testing i've done, eventhough fend only hits once, the larger damage/ar bonus and interuptability(for block and hit recovery that is) made it far better than jab against single targets.


also lastly, against a target with 50% block, you can count the attacks per minute as half, and that's where block ignoring CB applying skills(hmm, only smite is it?) shine.

[Crystalion]

crushing blow damage doesn't scale with players, or is penalized in some way

I personally think Corpse Explosion should continue to not scale with players. I don't think CB not scaling eliminates it as a good thing to have. I generally look for "effective" as opposed to "uber/exploit" techniques.

"elemental pierce" mod is the chance your attack will completely ignore the targets lightning resist, no matter if they're immune or not

Whoa! Really?! When/where was this discovered/discussed? If it's that way for release, that puts a whole new complexion on things. And, of course, pretty much cements the prior argument that Crescent Moon is overpowered for its difficulty of acquisition.

also lastly, against a target with 50% block, you can count the attacks per minute as half, and that's where block ignoring CB applying skills(hmm, only smite is it?) shine.

I too, have always been a Smite partisan. However, iirc, javazon's Lightning Bolt is also auto-hit, ignoring block (and transmits CB). Guided Arrow is auto-hit and transmits CB, but I don't know if it ignores Blocking. In any event, Smite is probably the only auto-hit Block ignoring *melee* (i.e. no ranged CB penalty) applicator (now that, for example, blast effects like exploding arrow don't apply CB--or any effects, for that matter).

[IlleglWpns]

The -target lightning resistance on crescent moon can't break immunity, so I don't know what that poster is talking about. Wrt to Crescent Moon's balance, or lack thereof, the chance to cast static field is a double edged sword as it can wake up hordes of monsters that you don't want to get near. It also sets off LEBs which can be deadly.

Personally, though, I wouldn't mind if they nerfed the static field to level 1 or 3. What would be more interesting is to change things around a bit.

Maybe 10% chance to cast level 3 static field, and 40-50% chance to cast level 17 chain lightning. That way you'd get substantial lightning damage added to your attacks, but not screen spanning statics...

[Crystalion]

Oh-oh.  Seeing how I've been around since 1.03, I did think I was an Old Timer.

I've never heard of Laser.  From the pic, I'm guessing this is a mix of Inferno and Chilling Armor?

Well, let's see... I had D1 the day it came out (so I have v1.00), and pretty much the same for Hellfire. I pre-ordered the collector's edition of D2 (so I have v1.00) and was in the LoD beta courtesy of GFraiser (thanks again). But I'm convinced that there are LLers reading this that can trump that (example: D1 beta). So Old Timer is still relative.

I won't recap the whole theory and operation of the Laser here (though I doubt archives are still available for the original posts?) but the essence is that Chilling Armor bolts between two Sorcs play ping-pong, so if you meet three criteria you can have "fun" in a number of ways.

1) you must avoid lagging the game out (if your initial laser "pumping" is inferno/artic blast you tend to get the "no sprites shown" "bug" which is good, because you can easily get the display engine to freak out erroniously and eat *all* the cpu)

2) you must avoid having your Sorcs croak (if you don't have lots of MDR, or, say, snowclash belts, you'll be seeing unbelievable damage to yourselves with a fully pumped Laser)

3) you must "pump" the Laser efficiently (Inferno and Artic Blast are far more time efficient for this than other ranged attacks)

Under the right conditions, many many hundreds of bolts can be pinging back and forth. If you "uncap" one end of the beam (e.g. by teleporting one Sorc) then half the beam shoots off and perhaps hits something (ouch bigtime if the monster isn't cold immune). Meantime, if the Sorcs have cold absorb (ala Snowclash) then they are actually healing a little bit, hundreds of times a second (it adds up).

Because of lag issues, it isn't clear to me whether or not you could eventually use a Laser ala D1 Mana Shield recast bug (or Larry Niven's Magic Goes Away short story, with the spinning disk) in order to hit some active effects limit (in D1, iirc, your 128 recast MS could keep a Rogue from even firing an arrow at you, etc.).

[Neon Elephant]

Maybe 10% chance to cast level 3 static field, and 40-50% chance to cast level 17 chain lightning.   That way you'd get substantial lightning damage added to your attacks, but not screen spanning statics...

Unless Chain Lightning is significantly different from the effect added by Lightning Strike, it too will hop across the screen (if not further) and attract more things to you. Granted, you're less likely to be attacked from two different sides at once, but dragging in monsters from offscreen is not uncommon with LS.

[Thecla]

Well, iirc, the belts only come in at 10% chance, so you'd have to hit a monster lots and lots of times over any given 8 second period (afaik the timing for OW lasting) to keep their regen off and unresistable OW damage being done. This is rather non-optimal for most "real world" conditions.

Yes, I have only a 10% chance of triggering OW with my belt, not having found any of the unique bows/xbows that do better, but it's easy to see when this happens.

My comment wasn't that OW is ineffective in preventing regeneration (even if poison da may be an easier way to do this equipment-wise, though of course it doesn't work vs poison immunes, and PMH is more-or-less permanent) --- if you're using OW as to stop regeneration, then it's very valuable. But that as a means of inflicting damage, OW it isn't terribly impressive, even with the improvements to it in 1.10.

Your comments on Lightning Bolt suggested trying out LB as an autohit method for applying PMH. Curiously, it doesn't tag monsters with PMH at all, though it does apply open wounds (as well as crushing blow from what you said). So my 'zon needs to use a standard throw attack to apply PMH (melee, jab, or poison javelin hits all work too -- I don't have any other javelin skills to try).

The timer on PMH is odder than what I said before. Waiting < ~5 secs in town doesn't remove PMH. Waiting 5-10 secs to about a minute in town does remove PMH. Waiting several minutes in town seems to 'freeze' PMH, and you can't restart regeneration after that just by going between the town and the dungeon. (I suppose this is related to the 'sub-zone processing' you describe which certainly seems to fit with my experience.) On the other hand, if you run several screens away from a monster tagged with PMH and wait a second or two then run back, it will regenerate again, and this is true even you've 'frozen' PMH for going to town and back. So this part all seems very messy and unpredictable, as no doubt is the way the code handles the different active/passive/town etc. zones.

p.s. One nice new feature I only now just noticed is that you can use the unsummon skill to unsummon your valkyrie (or decoy).

[Ferengi]

Well, let's see... I had D1 the day it came out (so I have v1.00)

but the essence is that Chilling Armor bolts between two Sorcs play ping-pong, so if you meet three criteria you can have "fun" in a number of ways.

Well, I did play D1 a couple months after release. I beat Normal in 3 days without any info about the game (was on a friends computer during a net night when my puter was down). D1 was the reason I played D2, but I do wait to read reviews and player comments before jumping into a game.

Oh, I remember the 3 sorcs screeenshot from the original LL. I never noticed that it was tagged with Lazer. I was working on an LA barb back then. It's like the two Necro BG remote life force then.

[Ferengi]

so the already overpowered crescent moon(even with just chance to cast static field it'd be overpowered) is even more powerful,

As the owner of a Schafferdin, I disagree. In fact, I stopped adding any points to Static Field on my sorcs for awhile. It didn't make sense to me to get excited about the ability to drop 50% of monster HP. I thought it was more important to be able to damage any monster successfully (i.e. a 50% dead monster can kill you if you don't get it first). The attraction of extra monsters is not important, there are a limited number of spaces that monsters can attack you from, additional monsters beyond that are generally to your advantage [1]. I stopped using the Schafferdin because the performance beyond 50% HP was lackluster. I just remembered the event that triggered this thinking, encounting a CI/FI. All those points in SF meant that I couldn't do anything to that boss, since I didn't have a useful third skill.

[1] Two exceptions:
a) Ranged attackers --disengage and target them or separate them.
B) When the monsters weapon is longer range than yours. After getting beat up by this a few times, I decided this great disadvantage needed to be reversed and began using range 6 melee weapons. The lack of block is irrelevant if you can stun the monster when it first gets in weapon range (hint: Fury).

[Crystalion]

The timer on PMH is odder than what I said before.

Indeed, the whole regen/monster recreate/pause stuff is quite unintuitive. I was trying to do a (*quick*) test of using PMH vs. the SUs from Diablo's seals to verify for Walkiry that this works (Great Race thread) and I ran into more weirdness.

I was going in and wiping out everything except the Grand Vizier or De Seis, so I could toy with them. I did tests both while at Players 8 and 1, SP v1.10s normal. My glitch was that I wasn't *ever* seeing them regen to begin with.

So, as you no doubt imagine, I looked over all my equipment to make sure I had no poison/ow/pmh gear on, and then I started a new game, just to be sure I hadn't messed up or was hallucinating. (and to be wary of the v1.10 beta bugs with equiping/flagging item effects).

Same story.

So I tried beating them within a few pixels of death. I tried waiting. I tried TPing to town and back. etc. etc. No regen.

Hmpf.

Of course I'm lightly tapping them (hand slap or psychic hammer) to make sure their lying HP bar is updating (and also because of the effect we've noted about them not regenning until they are so touched). So this isn't the problem. Rack brains for new test...

So I TP out, and take a round the world waypoint excursion, return to act 4, and come back via portal... no regen.

Hmpf.

So I TP out, waypoint to cold plains, cast a TP (don't go through--I just wanted to cancel the act 4 one) and cruise around waking up monsters. Waypoint to act 4; wp to RoF, cruise back to De Seis...

Almost there I notice two interesting things:
1) there are still drops on the ground near him
2) his aura is now Holy Shock (had been Fanaticism)

Sure enough, he is still near death and not regenning... so I "tap" him, and PRESTO! he starts regen.

For completeness sake I wait a little and then Town Portal out. Come back: he doesn't appear to be regenning. Tap him--he starts regenning.

Excellent. So, finally, I touch him with PMH, which indeed works as expected.

I have, alas, spent so much time on this test up to this point that I'm not tempted to try and explore more characteristics of PMH duration/removal (some other time).

Odd indeed.

[Guest]

As the owner of a Schafferdin, I disagree.&nbsp; In fact, I stopped adding any points to Static Field on my sorcs for awhile.&nbsp; It didn't make sense to me to get excited about the ability to drop 50% of monster HP.

yeah, you're right. after i started to use hydra on my fire sorc(lvl 40 1.10) i didn't feel like bothering with static. fireball and hydra together do enough damage.

[Raziel]

OW might not do heaps of damage, but it's unresistable and occurs passively.

The way to make it's low damage useful is to make sure a monster doesn't have very many hitpoints left when it starts bleeding. How do you do that?

1) Static Field
2) Crushing Blow

Note that "Crescent Moon" comes with 25% chance to cause Open Wounds. Combine "Crescent Moon" with Goblin Toe boots and some other source of "Prevent Monster Heal" (does anyone know one, other than "Malice"?).

The three work together rather nicely.. cheesily, infact.

[Guest]

melee creatures that have range more than 1.

bosses
4 mephisto
4 diablo
4 baal
4 the ancients
3 duriel
2 izual

monsters
7 water tentacle (do they hit you with anything but that poison spit though?)
5 frozen horror
5 frenzytaur
5 baal's summoned tentacle thingies
4 minion of destruction
3 corrupt rogue lancer
3 flying scimitar
3 abyss knight
3 balrog
3 cow
2 zealot
2 vile mother
2 regurgitator
2 trapped soul

aligned
3 act 2 merc (like they weren't overpowered enough)
3 druid grizzly
3 poison vine
2 druid wolves
2 life/mana vine

[Ferengi]

melee creatures that have range more than 1.

bosses
4 diablo

monsters
4 minion of destruction
3 cow

aligned
3 druid grizzly

Very interesting list! It explains a lot of my experiences with range5 weapons on the poledruid. Stince I tended to keep the target out of melee range, those monsters with additional ranged attacks were the bigger threats to me.

With Diablo, you would like to be very,very close if in melee.

The Minions must have something special for their ITD,knockback. It always seemed to me that I would take hits from them anyway.

Cow seems low.

I definately need to play with a grizzly.

[adeyke]

AFAIK, the maximum range for weapons is 5, available on certain polearms and spears. What are the range 6 weapons you're referring to, and what source are you using to determine their range (I'm using the rangeadder in weapons.txt +1, and this seems to match the AS info, worthless as that is).

[Ferengi]

Ugh, poor memory. Looks like it was range5.

[Guest]

The Minions must have something special for their ITD,knockback. It always seemed to me that I would take hits from them anyway.

oh, which version? in 1.10 all ITD doesn't seem to work for monsters. rogue archers in act 5's freezing/exploding arrow elemental damage doesn't always hit, same for minions's smite(and they do use the smite skill)

oh by the way, there are quite a lot of monsters that spawn with weapons, so they might get the range of those.