With the ladder reset looming on the horizon, I've been giving a lot of thought towards what class and spec I'll be popping this ladder's cherry with.
Usually I go blizzard sorcy (20 blizz, 20 cold mastery, 20 ice blast, 20 ice bolt, 1 warmth, 1 telekinesis, 1 teleport, couple other points to play with), which has served me well up to and including solo Hell Baal runs. However, for this round, I think I'm going to start with a poison nova necro, which I've never done before, and which I really have no idea how to do. Should make things exciting.
6 month resets are freaking stupid In D2, I'd love a year long but to compromise(like bash said earlier in the year and about a poll I never even knew about) is a 9 month ladder season(that seems reasonable)
However, Blizzard seems hell bent on sticking to 6 month resets for that completely and utterly hacked to shit game now
Even after they got a lot of feedback from players from the first poll they took(last year I think).
I'm just not into D2 anymore with all the changes they've done since 1.09...
6 month resets are freaking stupid In D2, I'd love a year long but to compromise(like bash said earlier in the year and about a poll I never even knew about) is a 9 month ladder season(that seems reasonable)
However, Blizzard seems hell bent on sticking to 6 month resets for that completely and utterly hacked to shit game now
Even after they got a lot of feedback from players from the first poll they took(last year I think).
I'm just not into D2 anymore with all the changes they've done since 1.09...
If there were no bots farming exp and items, then a year long system would seem reasonable, but with the absurd number of bots (and the almost inherent need for them in the game design), more than six months leads to a lot of downtime for the rest of us. Basically, I believe that bot-related power leveling and item farming is what fuels the shorter ladder season.
Well done on your high levels, though! In all these years I've never taken a toon past 88.
i just made a pally, got it to lvl 10 or so last night with some clannies. i dont know how long i'll play this ladder since 6 months is too short for me to stay invested...and i dont have much time to play anymore.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Remember the String of Ears
"to the worm in horseradish, the world is horseradish."
i just made a pally, got it to lvl 10 or so last night with some clannies. i dont know how long i'll play this ladder since 6 months is too short for me to stay invested...and i dont have much time to play anymore.
Agreed, six months is not enough time for me to amass the wealth I need to get all the necessary gear. I'm hoping D3 will be out before the next reset anyways. Once that happens D2 gets dropped immediately.
So I rolled a poison nova necro... I can see where this class will be powerful eventually, but holy cow this this worthless without good gear. Definitely a bad first class to roll after reset. I'm level 41 and I presently only get 3 combos of lower resist + poison nova (for about 450 damage per nova if lower resist is up and the monster has no base resists) before I'm totally out of mana. Even spamming pots like crazy I have to go back to town constantly, and I can't really solo anything past act 3 (I haven't even tried meph yet, the council almost owned me). I can see where getting better gear, like trang gloves, shield, bramble armor, etc. will really make this build rock, but as a basic MFer it's pretty awful. Plus I was 100% worthless until level 30, almost fully leeching my exp since I couldn't kill a damn thing on my own.
Switching to lightning sorc and life is *much* easier.
I still have dreams of making a procadin conviction/zeal build, but that's possibly the most gear-intensive build imaginable what with the need to stack all of those rune word auras.
The lesson learned here is that the reason pretty much everyone builds a sorcy or pally first is that in bad gear, those are the strongest classes. Ahh well.
So I rolled a poison nova necro... I can see where this class will be powerful eventually, but holy cow this this worthless without good gear. Definitely a bad first class to roll after reset. I'm level 41 and I presently only get 3 combos of lower resist + poison nova (for about 450 damage per nova if lower resist is up and the monster has no base resists) before I'm totally out of mana. Even spamming pots like crazy I have to go back to town constantly, and I can't really solo anything past act 3 (I haven't even tried meph yet, the council almost owned me). I can see where getting better gear, like trang gloves, shield, bramble armor, etc. will really make this build rock, but as a basic MFer it's pretty awful. Plus I was 100% worthless until level 30, almost fully leeching my exp since I couldn't kill a damn thing on my own.
Switching to lightning sorc and life is *much* easier.
I still have dreams of making a procadin conviction/zeal build, but that's possibly the most gear-intensive build imaginable what with the need to stack all of those rune word auras.
The lesson learned here is that the reason pretty much everyone builds a sorcy or pally first is that in bad gear, those are the strongest classes. Ahh well.
well a pure novenec is pretty terrible at pvm, so usually, as with any truly effective pvmer, you need to hybridise your build. get some summons to serve as meatstack, and invest in a couple points of corpse explosion. you can keep lr as your main curse, which will help ce with fire dmg, but u could also use amp after you get enough corpses. as soon as you can, get an insight merc, and then after your +skills are enough, make an insight iron golem, that will free up your merc for something more of a boss killer.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Remember the String of Ears
"to the worm in horseradish, the world is horseradish."
well a pure novenec is pretty terrible at pvm, so usually, as with any truly effective pvmer, you need to hybridise your build. get some summons to serve as meatstack, and invest in a couple points of corpse explosion. you can keep lr as your main curse, which will help ce with fire dmg, but u could also use amp after you get enough corpses. as soon as you can, get an insight merc, and then after your +skills are enough, make an insight iron golem, that will free up your merc for something more of a boss killer.
Thanks Apples
I must profess my ignorance here... how does iron golem work? I've always thought it ate the item and that you then needed a new item every time you summon it... I doubt I'd be able to make a new insight every time I join a game, so I figure there's something to the skill that I don't properly understand.
As for my current play, I've got a single point in all of the summon skills, for future +skills items to take advantage of, but at level 41 I find I really need some serious gear to be able to play at a sustained level. I'm at 11 poison nova, 10 lower resist, 4 poison dagger (probably a mistake this early on), and 1 in all of the pre-req skills, the entire summon tree, and bone armor. I figure I'm done putting points into LR, and from here on out was just going to buff PN and Synergies until it was maxed, but maybe I should buff my imp golem first? I've decided that, while using LR, I should focus on the fire golem as my alt elemental attacker, and was going to get a frost aura act 2 merc.
In theory it all sounds great to me, even as I write this, but the fact of the matter is that I can't kill things that other builds dispatch with ease. Insight will be a big help, to be sure, and once I get Trang gloves and Bramble armor, I'll be in business, but until then I think I'm stuck farming with another class.
the iron golem *should* stay with you just like a merc should. however there are some theories and rumors about the lvl at which your golem is. such as, if you equip a +3 iron golem head, and summon your golem, then switch to homunculus, does the golem lose that +3 lvls? some say yes, and some say no.
the golems do not actually do that much damage, and fire golems are really just used in pvp more for their holy fire aura to ping 1 hp opponents. the best merc would be either a prayer merc or might merc. you want as much crushing blow on him as you can get since he will likely be your main boss killer (ce and nova are pretty slow against diablo and baal). holy frost will only cause monster bodies to shatter into ice and melt, thus taking away corpses for ce or summons. if you need crowd control, attract, terror, confuse and decrep can work if you get stuck in a pinch.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Remember the String of Ears
"to the worm in horseradish, the world is horseradish."
the iron golem *should* stay with you just like a merc should. however there are some theories and rumors about the lvl at which your golem is. such as, if you equip a +3 iron golem head, and summon your golem, then switch to homunculus, does the golem lose that +3 lvls? some say yes, and some say no.
the golems do not actually do that much damage, and fire golems are really just used in pvp more for their holy fire aura to ping 1 hp opponents. the best merc would be either a prayer merc or might merc. you want as much crushing blow on him as you can get since he will likely be your main boss killer (ce and nova are pretty slow against diablo and baal). holy frost will only cause monster bodies to shatter into ice and melt, thus taking away corpses for ce or summons. if you need crowd control, attract, terror, confuse and decrep can work if you get stuck in a pinch.
Good to know. I've been using Fire Golem because of the synergy with LR, but the build I saw recommended earth golem for the slowing effect. I'll probably end up with the might merc.
In other news, the lightning sorc is pretty fun. Level 40 and already over 1k max damage (sure, sure, 500 damage on average, but still!).
Edit: Now I'm level 70 with +4 lightning skills from items and I'm over 5k max damage. Pretty much 1-shotting any non-boss creatures in nightmare.
I figured that I would give D2 another shot with the new ladder reset. I always enjoyed the resets because everyone started from scratch, and finding those low level items became exciting again. But it wasn't a week into the reset and everyone is running around at level 95 wearing Enigmas and EBOTD's. What the hell?
When the ladder resets, doesn't someone have to legitimately find a high rune before it can be duped? There's no way that all of these runes have already been found. Or maybe they have, I don't know. In any case, I gave my account away. It's probably a good thing, I need to get some work done before D3 is released.
I figured that I would give D2 another shot with the new ladder reset. I always enjoyed the resets because everyone started from scratch, and finding those low level items became exciting again. But it wasn't a week into the reset and everyone is running around at level 95 wearing Enigmas and EBOTD's. What the hell?
When the ladder resets, doesn't someone have to legitimately find a high rune before it can be duped? There's no way that all of these runes have already been found. Or maybe they have, I don't know. In any case, I gave my account away. It's probably a good thing, I need to get some work done before D3 is released.
The number of bots currently farming the game is astronomical. If you think about the quantity of bots in public games, and then think about how easily you could just program 8 bots to join the same private farming game and clear the whole thing super-fast for runes... well, you see why blizzard is trying to put an end to bot-farming in D3. It really is absurd. As much as bots can make power leveling easier, the fact of the matter is that they ruin the game. It's not fun to just follow a program endlessly while you level up, and it's certainly not fun to find a rare item when there are already 40,000 of them in circulation because of the army of undead computer zombie bots farming endlessly for their demonic overlord's amusement and (meager) income.
Usually I go blizzard sorcy (20 blizz, 20 cold mastery, 20 ice blast, 20 ice bolt, 1 warmth, 1 telekinesis, 1 teleport, couple other points to play with), which has served me well up to and including solo Hell Baal runs. However, for this round, I think I'm going to start with a poison nova necro, which I've never done before, and which I really have no idea how to do. Should make things exciting.
What is everyone else going to be playing?
6 month resets are freaking stupid In D2, I'd love a year long but to compromise(like bash said earlier in the year and about a poll I never even knew about) is a 9 month ladder season(that seems reasonable)
However, Blizzard seems hell bent on sticking to 6 month resets for that completely and utterly hacked to shit game now
Even after they got a lot of feedback from players from the first poll they took(last year I think).
I'm just not into D2 anymore with all the changes they've done since 1.09...
If there were no bots farming exp and items, then a year long system would seem reasonable, but with the absurd number of bots (and the almost inherent need for them in the game design), more than six months leads to a lot of downtime for the rest of us. Basically, I believe that bot-related power leveling and item farming is what fuels the shorter ladder season.
Well done on your high levels, though! In all these years I've never taken a toon past 88.
Diablo 2 Reset
Diablo 3 Beta, once I get it
Dungeon Defenders (looks fun)
Torchlight, soonish
.. can't decide. Definitely going to play D3b, question is how excessive.
Add me if you will be on HC too
<---
"to the worm in horseradish, the world is horseradish."
Agreed, six months is not enough time for me to amass the wealth I need to get all the necessary gear. I'm hoping D3 will be out before the next reset anyways. Once that happens D2 gets dropped immediately.
Switching to lightning sorc and life is *much* easier.
I still have dreams of making a procadin conviction/zeal build, but that's possibly the most gear-intensive build imaginable what with the need to stack all of those rune word auras.
The lesson learned here is that the reason pretty much everyone builds a sorcy or pally first is that in bad gear, those are the strongest classes. Ahh well.
"to the worm in horseradish, the world is horseradish."
Thanks Apples
I must profess my ignorance here... how does iron golem work? I've always thought it ate the item and that you then needed a new item every time you summon it... I doubt I'd be able to make a new insight every time I join a game, so I figure there's something to the skill that I don't properly understand.
As for my current play, I've got a single point in all of the summon skills, for future +skills items to take advantage of, but at level 41 I find I really need some serious gear to be able to play at a sustained level. I'm at 11 poison nova, 10 lower resist, 4 poison dagger (probably a mistake this early on), and 1 in all of the pre-req skills, the entire summon tree, and bone armor. I figure I'm done putting points into LR, and from here on out was just going to buff PN and Synergies until it was maxed, but maybe I should buff my imp golem first? I've decided that, while using LR, I should focus on the fire golem as my alt elemental attacker, and was going to get a frost aura act 2 merc.
In theory it all sounds great to me, even as I write this, but the fact of the matter is that I can't kill things that other builds dispatch with ease. Insight will be a big help, to be sure, and once I get Trang gloves and Bramble armor, I'll be in business, but until then I think I'm stuck farming with another class.
the golems do not actually do that much damage, and fire golems are really just used in pvp more for their holy fire aura to ping 1 hp opponents. the best merc would be either a prayer merc or might merc. you want as much crushing blow on him as you can get since he will likely be your main boss killer (ce and nova are pretty slow against diablo and baal). holy frost will only cause monster bodies to shatter into ice and melt, thus taking away corpses for ce or summons. if you need crowd control, attract, terror, confuse and decrep can work if you get stuck in a pinch.
"to the worm in horseradish, the world is horseradish."
Good to know. I've been using Fire Golem because of the synergy with LR, but the build I saw recommended earth golem for the slowing effect. I'll probably end up with the might merc.
In other news, the lightning sorc is pretty fun. Level 40 and already over 1k max damage (sure, sure, 500 damage on average, but still!).
Edit: Now I'm level 70 with +4 lightning skills from items and I'm over 5k max damage. Pretty much 1-shotting any non-boss creatures in nightmare.
When the ladder resets, doesn't someone have to legitimately find a high rune before it can be duped? There's no way that all of these runes have already been found. Or maybe they have, I don't know. In any case, I gave my account away. It's probably a good thing, I need to get some work done before D3 is released.
The number of bots currently farming the game is astronomical. If you think about the quantity of bots in public games, and then think about how easily you could just program 8 bots to join the same private farming game and clear the whole thing super-fast for runes... well, you see why blizzard is trying to put an end to bot-farming in D3. It really is absurd. As much as bots can make power leveling easier, the fact of the matter is that they ruin the game. It's not fun to just follow a program endlessly while you level up, and it's certainly not fun to find a rare item when there are already 40,000 of them in circulation because of the army of undead computer zombie bots farming endlessly for their demonic overlord's amusement and (meager) income.