Proceed, Heroes, Into Terror's Lair! Diablo II Freestyle Group Slamdance Thread!

So I got my little fishyzon equipped with a rare ceremonial javelin, and hit 32 with her. Charged strike pretty much just destroys any non-unique in 1 hit, lightning fury is just ripping through mobs of mobs, and since I'm still in the tail end of normal, I haven't had need for freezing arrow (though that will change soon).

I think I know what my weekend's going to consist of :P

...And I have the belt portion. Convenient!

Stormeye dropped in WSK, up for claim.

While we're mentioning items up for grabs, some random speed bump on the path to Nightmare Baal coughed up Zakarum's Hand, if anybody wants it.

Yes, I do! Unfortunately for you guys, I'm playing offline single player.

Speaking of which, while I don't wanna spoil too much from my next update, I'm very proud to say that Krakenbrau has just finished Act III (on players = 8, of course) completely death-free. That's right, he hasn't died once since beginning his quest at the Rogue Encampment.

I don't think I've ever gotten this far without dying before. Feelin' pretty awesome.

Good work not dying! Don't let it get you paranoid, though. Just keep chillin' and Zealin'.

This is an excellent plan. Also drop one point - but only one point! - into Cold Mastery. Otherwise you can stick a point in Frozen Orb every once in a while when it feels like the damage is starting to lag. You can even get away with maxing out Frozen Orb if you want. Your lightning damage will still be sicknasty even without maxed out synergies.

Lookin' good to me, chief. The pace is fine and the posts are awesome. I have no complaints.

I just killed the Smith and got some screenshots, so you guys can expect an update either tonight or tomorrow, depending on when I get my creative groove on. Also, you guys are all totally leaving me in the dust ._.

Hm, I've made it to the start of Act 4 Normal, but I've been very lax in taking screenshots. I think what I'll do is make a whistlestop tour of the previous acts to catch Muntak up to speed in the thread, and try and remember to make shots in future.

EDIT: Anyone fancy a set of Hawkmail armour? Frrrt was kind enough to donate it to me, but Stealth runeword suits my character better. While the Cannot Be Frozen mod would be nice, and it does have slightly higher Def than my current armour (111 vs 95), the benefits I get from Stealth outweigh anything Hawkmail provides (specifically, faster cast rate for Warcrys, +30% Poison resist, +6 Dex for blocking, and the faster run/walk is always nice too). Besides, with Muntak having Shout and Defensive Merc he really doesn't need the extra Def just yet (L31, just about ready to take on Normal Ancients).

I've decided to lump the level 24 and 30 lightning spells together since there are only the three of them.

Thunder Storm

This one is a little weird compared to the rest of the spells in the sorcery set. Instead of causing direct damage, Thunder Storm creates an electric field that will occasionally cause a bolt of lightning to drop down out of the sky and smite your enemies. It's entirely random though and you have no control what it targets. Additional points increase not only the damage, but how long it stays active on a single cast. It also has no synergies so max damage is limited, but also makes it attractive for tri-element archmagus builds.



Energy Shield

Energy Shield is a classic double edged sword. Casting it causes a portion of the damage you take to be deducted from your mana pool instead of your life pool. A sorc is usually has lower life totals and a large mana pool so that's a good thing right? It would be except that mana is also how you kill things. This one comes down to a personal choice on whether you want more effective hit points or being able to kill things more often. Enchantresses probably get the most out of it since they use weapons to kill things instead of spells.



Lightning Mastery

Lightning Mastery passively boosts the damage output of all your other lightning spells. Keeping with lightning's theme of stupid high damage potential, it can boost damage nearly 300% fully maxed out.

Thanks for the advice guys. Right after I posted this, chain lightning really started to come into its own for killing groups. Not only did I get a few more points into it, but I found an amulet with +70 to mana so my mana finally regens fast enough I don't have to constantly guzzle potions. Mana starvation is a terrible thing. I figure I'll max chain lightning out first to get the full number of bounces and then alternate between regular lightning and lightning mastery until those are both maxed as well.

I finally found a useful unique! It's useful for my minion, but hey, a win's a win.



And other things:



I ascended Mt. Arreat today and was worried about facing the ancients solo, but surprisingly, they went down like chumps. I just cast chain lightning and it would bounce between the three of them in a circle. So who's ready to go after Baal?

I just have to pop in and mention that unless they changed how Energy Shield works since the last time I played the game, it has a very serious issue that prevents it from seeing widespread use.

Energy Shield absorbs elemental damage before resistances are factored in, and on Hell difficulty, elemental damage hurts. Getting hit by an elemental attack in Hell will frequently drain your entire mana pool instantly, at which point you're left defenseless and with no mana left to teleport away. Ouch!

It also had the potential to make you invulnerable in Diablo I.

Energy Shield works well if you really invest in it (lots of Energy, max Telekinesis), but it helps to have good gear to back it up. Having an Insight rune word weapon for your merc is nice, as the level 17 Meditation aura it grants gives you 700% mana regen(!).

I just tested out a Sorc with max ES, max Telekinesis, around 400 Energy, and pretty much the best gear possible. She took no appreciable damage from anything, including packs of Gloams. Pretty nice! Baal's mana drain attack kind of sucked, but she recovered quickly. It was interesting, though she only had enough skill points left to really invest in Frozen Orb and Nova (with extra points going into Lightning Mastery), so her offense was somewhat limited. I would have tried making her an Enchantress but I didn't feel like tweaking her gear for it. Enchant seems like the best companion for ES.

Interesting! It's nice to know that Energy Shield does have it's place.

I likely overlooked builds that made stronger use of the skill since I tend to play RPGs (of all sorts, not just Diablo-style action RPGs) using strategies that focus on extreme offense at the expense of defensive measures.

The wife had her sister over today to make Renfest costumes, so I sat down and just binged. Having defeated Baal yesterday on normal, I burned all the way to the Hellforge on Nightmare, only breaking for a couple episodes of Doctor Who. Lightning Fury is pretty sick. Lightning Fury maxed out is a little dirty. LF maxed with +skills and 49% pierce chance is so wrong it must be right. It was the first time that the jungle part of Act 3 didn't infuriate me, largely because 1-2 casts of LF just obliterated entire packs of fetishes.

I'm now pumping Frozen Arrow, and just in time too as Act 4 decided that I needed to play with group upon group of lightning-immunes. The frustrating part at the moment, however, is my lack of resists when plinking with FA. If I'm not careful to make sure I nail every single mob, they'll throw liquid death at me thanks to my terrible terrible resists. Still, it's keeping it fresh

Tomorrow I'll have to make a couple mules for pgems and runes, as I've filled every slot in my stash with them. Crafting with the cube has taken care of a bit of the excess, but there's not really a need to make additional pieces.

Items for trade! Get em while they're hot!











Having some real interesting luck and I'm barely out of Normal, just finished Baal this morning. Hopefully someone can make use of all these before I vendor them, I'm fast running out of space.

I must be reading that 'Skull Spell' wand wrong, because it sounds simply amazing. Such a shame I'm playing single player.

That reminds me, I found an amulet with +1 Amazon skill level, if you want it Joshua.

I managed to gamble one up yesterday, but thanks

Baal has been defeated! Amusingly his minions were a tougher fight than he was. Lister especially was a pain in the ass. I had to constantly kite backwards to keep from being destroyed whenever he and his minions got into range. Best strategy I could come up with was to fire a frozen orb to slow them down then a few bolts of chain lightning for damage - back up and repeat. Baal himself liked to stay at arms length and chuck spells at me, which was just fine. My favorite was when he would stand at the opposite end of the screen and use his flamethrower so I could fill him full of lightning.

He did drop a lot of interesting stuff though:

Man, where was this thing two acts ago?




Not shown: yet another Cathan's Mesh.

Now we're cookin'. Any bowazons in the audience?


I saw the circlet drop and was full of hope, then had it identified and was crushed. DIABLO! Spoony, you in need of a +1 to skills hat?

So how is it that you guys are leveling so fast?

Killing efficiency seems to be the biggest factor. Spell-type skills are far less affected by gear than physical skills such as Strafe or Zeal. Physical skills can be incredibly strong, but I know from experience that without continual weapon upgrades Strafe can't keep up with increasing monster hp.

Grouping is also very helpful; auras, CC, damage soaking make a good group able to take on bigger challenges even with the "/players x" scaling.

I've also realized that while Vitality is indeed king, a brand new character will benefit from sinking points into Energy until they can get more mana from gear. The respecs added into the vanilla game really give you the freedom to tailor your character when you're hitting higher difficulties and need additional health.

1. Possess no life whatsoever.
2. Hit Enter in-game, type in '/players 8'. (Only works outside of Realms.)

I will gladly take that off your hands, yes.

If you like, I have a Sigon's Guard (otherwise underwhelming Shield, if not for the +1 to all skills on it), String of Ears (unique Demonhide Sash), or a crafted Caster Light Plate.

I would appreciate the String of Ears if you're not using it. I don't have a lot to trade for it though, sold the Deathspade to make room but everything else in my post is still up for grabs.

Bean gets first dibs on it, if he doesn't want I don't mind passing it along.

The one item I AM looking out for now is, oddly enough, a two socketed shield. I've had no luck finding one lately (except for one of those Paladin-only ones, proving that the game IS INDEED screwing with me). I want to make a Rhyme runeword (MAGIC FIND), and got the runes, just no shield.

Sigon's Guard would be nice—that set is actually pretty nifty once you have three or four pieces of it.

You and me both. When I didn't need one? Two-socketed shields everywhere.

Now that I'm hunting for an exceptional/elite two-socket shield? They have vanished from the face of the planet. Arrrrrrgh.

How amusing. I've found a few three-socket shields now, but I'm on original D2 and thus cannot trade any of them. 3 perfect diamonds on a shield, incidentally, is amazingly broken.

It seemed practically necessary to four-diamond a paladin shield that came with +all resists to get a sufficiency in Hell...