My hardcore Challenge - Unique Of-a-Kind

[Hellwolf_36]

Why am I not on that team? Well, I just found out the guy I named my Necromancer after died of leukemia yesterday. I will continue on his name through him!

[Al-T]

(a) My characters have to die to be renamed and I am going to do my utmost to make sure that doesn't happen any more after 9 deaths early on and (b) you have to be a threat which at present you are not. Not because you aren't good enough, you just haven't been playing the tourney long enough to be a threat. Clersius on the other hand is beginning to p*ss me off and I am going to get serious and kick his a**

[Hellwolf_36]

I am not a present threat? Who is kicking your ass in the Zy-el Evolution Tourney? I will show you how much of a threat I WILL BE

Lady-Raven the Amazon

I managed to make some Crafted normal Boots to apply Teleportation charges. In all entirety, there isn't much to look forward to when it comes to high-end footwear and my Necromancer doesn't engage in melee combat. I just need the jewelery and I can apply them.

I got Multiple Shot and Dodge as my new skills. Dodge has its moments (51% chance of working). Multiple Shot doesn't do a whole lot of damage right now but it spreads the Freezes Target across more than one monster. It does cost me a hefty 23 mana to fire one barrage. With the distracting help of the Grizzly Bear, I defeated Treehead Woodfest with constant Magic Arrow firing. I ended at Dark Wood at level 42.

[Al-T]

I am not a present threat?

Correct, you are not.

Who is kicking your ass in the Zy-el Evolution Tourney?

What does that have to do with this tournament D'oh

[Hellwolf_36]

EVERYTHING! Eventually, I will catch up. I already claimed JrEye as a victim!

[Al-T]

You had better find more hours in the day if you are going to catch me as I played until 4am this morning and got all of the "We Hate Everyone" team to the start of Act 4 (That's right, 4 hours sleep ). I should finish Act 4 with all of them some time today and possibly make a start on Act 5 which I should be able to finish within a couple of days as I am just blasting through at Players 1. After that, all I have to do is some tweaks to some of the team equipment then get down to the business of Insanity runs to get them all to 10K.

Happy Zy-Elling
-----------------

[EDIT] Amazon and Assassin have finished Act 4. Having a quick break for lunch then it will be the Barbarian next.

[EDIT 2] All of the team have completed Act 4 and my Sorceress has just killed Baal in Hell. It is nice to get my first Guardian.

My Barbarian took the longest to do Act 4, mainly due to there being so many Physical Immunes including Diablo himself. Even with a 77% listed chance to hit Diablo using Berserk, I was still only landing a hit once out of every 15 swings. My Paladin was easier as he used Smite to quarter Diablo's life and although his chance to hit using Conviction and Vengeance was about the same as my Barb, he had less work to do to finish the job. My Barb needs more Attack Rating, dual-leech and an elemental damage jewel. Going by my Sorceress' exploits in Act 5 I should maybe also give the rest of the team more life. I also have a list of minor tweaks/equipment changes for them all. Too many to list here. Table update:

Code: Select all

We Hate Everyone

Name/Class               Level       Difficulty/Act      Name/Class             Level      Difficulty/Act
---------------------------------------------------      ------------------------------------------------
Get_Hans/Assassin         1035               Hell/5      Get_JrEye/Barbarian     1023              Hell/5
Get_Away/Paladin          1041               Hell/5      Get_Phlebiac/Amazon     1044              Hell/5
Get_This/Sorceress        3796               Hell/5      Get_Clersius/Druid      1023              Hell/5
Get_Dapaba/Necromancer    469                Hell/5     

{Total 9431    Position 2nd    Deaths 9}

----------------------------------------------

[EDIT 3]

Get_Phlebiac (Amazon)

Before starting Act 5 with Get_Phlebiac I noticed I still had a full Zy-El scroll in the shared stash so I made her a pair of "Stride" mirrored boots. Also after my Sorceress' adventuring I had a few Troll Nests and plenty Zy runes and made her an "Oath of Amazon" shield to replace the unique crap (sold) she was using on switch with a "JoJo Wingit" javelin.

In some ways this was easier for my Amazon than my Sorceress, mainly down to the awesome damage that Plague Javelin does, 275-282K. Platinum Drakes went down in a matter of 2-3 seconds, even large mobs of them. Baal went down without a fuss and 2 of the team are now Guardians.

I will now try out my Assassin in the first couple of Act 5 quests and depending on how that goes, carry on with her or do some Insanity runs with my Sorc to get some better gear. I reckon, if she can, my Assassin will be the last of the team that can do Act 5 in it's entirety without any further tweaks. Certainly my Barb and Pala need tweaking and my Druid and Necro mercs need some tweaking if not the puppeteers themselves.

[Clersius]

I'm hanging on every word, Al... my interest in your exploits in Hell have gone from purely academic to highly vested! I am particularly interested in how you will handle your Druid at something greater than p1. Mine is a complete and utter failure so far. All that work to get him doing something at p127 in Normal Insanities went out the window once he started fighting in non-Insanity areas again. Neither of his wolves do squat now, and he can't afford to waste any skill points monkeying around with them until he is back in the areas where he will make the push to 10k.

The RagTags are through Act II Nightmare now, and Happy is almost done with Act III. They started off Nightmare with each and every one of them playing at p127. As one might imagine, that was taking an Ice Age per character, and since the Sleeper has Awakened, I just don't have the luxury of wasting that kind of time anymore. Sleepy the Amazon, Sneezy the Druid, and Bashful the Assassin did Act II at p127, but the rest dropped down to rock-bottom, p1. Not only that, but they each only killed a few dozen monsters in the entirety of the Act, running around, hopping over, or teleporting past everything in their paths.

One thing I wanted to share was something that Sleepy did. She was the first to take on Act II, and I had decided to whittle her damage down from the 250k it had grown to be to around 40k. Both before and after this, she was doing almost no discernible damage, and was mainly taking monsters out with Static and Crushing Blow. I decided that it was finally time to use the 1300+ common, uncommon, and secret cube scrolls that add elemental minimum damages to weapons, rings, and jewels. She added some to her bow (which already had 900 min fire dmg and 900-1200 cold dmg), some to one of her rings, and the rest to a jewel. The ring and the weapon went well enough, and seemed to be accurately reflected in the LCS. The damages were really too low to notice if they had made a difference. The jewel, however, was a different story. As one can see from doing a little estimation math, that little guy has over seven thousand points of elemental damages on it, right? Yet when she added it into her inventory, the LCS showed an increase of around 1100 damage WTF? Not only that, but there was absolutely no difference whatsoever between damage done with the jewel and damage done without the jewel. What a frustratingly monumental, colossal, incredible waste of time, energy, and storage space that was. Easily the most disappointing experience I've had with this mod. Very discouraging, if I'm being honest with myself. I have to wonder how much of a waste of time it is going to be to try megaloading elemental damage onto jewels, if this is the result of adding elemental damage scrolls onto jewels...

Anyway, a few days later and, while I'm less discouraged, it is still a mind-bogglingly maddening memory. I share this mainly as a caveat to any other packrats who think that one day those scrolls will add up to something useful... they won't!!!

[Al-T]

Fear not. There is nothing wrong with your Druid, just his low level. Your "min damage exploits" are a bit strange but I'll give you a full rundown tomorrow as it is 1am here and after my 4am stint last night I need some serious sleep and will try to formulate a proper answer some time tomorrow.

Just a quick tip before tomorrow's rundown...

I am particularly interested in how you will handle your Druid at something greater than p1

...why play P127 NM/Hell when you can play P8 normal Insanities with an XP shrine and get a ton of levels Nothing in the rules says you can't After you get enough levels your clvl/mlvl should be high enough to (a) advance to the next mode albeit at reduced Players X settings or (b) increase the Players X setting in your "current mode".

[Clersius]

I can fully understand your point when applied to a character who is taking hits or giving hits. The clvl as compared to the level of the monsters has a massive effect on viability for such characters. The Druid is another animal entirely, though, isn't he? No matter how many levels my Druid advances, that has absolutely zero effect on the level of his wolves, their ability to take hits, or their ability to do damage. They don't get better as he does, they only get better as he puts more (or less) points into that skill. Therefore, Sneezy at level 1000 with 203 points in Spirit Wolves has the same exact wolves as Sneezy at level 5000 with 203 points in Spirit Wolves. If they suck now, they will suck then, right? Perhaps I am missing something fundamental here...

By the same token, if someone (you, me, Rahhja, Metro, whomever) finds a skill level and a players setting that has wolves that are actually useful, then any Druid should have viable wolves at that skill level and players setting, regardless of that Druid's level, right?

Your other point, about not wasting time trying to gain levels while plowing through "regular" areas, is well made, and I'm taking it to heart. I think my goal initially was to have the experience of Nightmare at maximum overdrive, just to see how the team fared. But... aside from idle curiosity, there is no real point to it at this stage. I'll save my energy for the Insanities.

What I meant with the comment "...your Druid at something greater than p1..." was meant to be taken as "...your Druid once you start your actual leveling in the Insanities at something greater than p1..." Hopefully that clarifies my area of interest. At p1, Sneezy can simply tear everything to shreds with 83k Armageddon and 81k Hurricane, no problem at all. He doesn't even need to have wolves summoned, in fact. But then? That's my question... what then? When he actually needs his wolves, and they are a bin of rubbish, what then?

Sleep well, my friend. Talk to you on the morrow.

Good luck to everyone who is actually awake and trying to make some progress!

[Al-T]

Druid Issues

I really was tired last night and wasn't thinking straight when I mentioned the clvl vs mlvl problem and our Druids are similar levels anyway and my Wolves are hitting everything in Hell so far so it has to be a skills-level issue or Players X issue or a combination of both.

As for my Druid doing higher players settings he has already done so in normal....

I gave The Matrix, Cows and Suicide Sanctum a go at Players 1. As they were a piece of cake, I took a massive risk and tried out Wayside of Woe at Players 127 (just call me Hans ) . I am glad I did as I didn't even come close to dying or even clearing it and got to level 402

(page 35 of this topic towards the bottom).

After this I pumped a few points into Wolves and if I remember correctly I had to go back down to P8 as at 127 they weren't any use (life cap rollover). It is an annoying aspect of the Druid that there are various sticking points like this which can only be overcome by either; changing the Players setting, adding to Wolves/HoW, removing skills or a combination e.g. Summon at Players 127 and play at Players 8 or summon at Players 32 and play at Players 4 or summon and Play at Players 8 etc., etc., etc. Sometimes with a Druid you just have to do a few experiments like this to get the right balance (the Necro falls into this category also).

In order that you can do a comparison, my Druid in Hell summons his level 164 Spirit Wolves and level 164 Heart of The Wolverine at Players 127 in town and then drops back down to Players 1 to play. They hit everything and I use Armageddon, Hurricane and Volcano to take out Physical Immunes (merc helps a lot here also...Decrepify and Static). So maybe your level 203 is too high or just at a point where the Wolves are at another "sticking point" and you need to add more skills.

I know my level 164 summons won't be the "best balance" for the various Insanity levels in the different modes and I imagine having to do a few more experiments as listed above along the road as I hit more sticking points. I will overcome them however hard it is I will also state right out that I won't be attempting the Hell Insanity levels with my Druid unless I can make my merc enough elemental damage i.e. Max all damage types (which I doubt I have the time for) as there are too many Physical Immunes. I'll be levelling my Druid to 10K via the Normal and Nightmare Insanity levels.

In summary, don't lose heart and persevere with him until you find the right balance and I know you will .
----------------------------

Damage Issues

This is something I probably should have shared/posted on the Wiki and I apologise for retaining this information and not publishing it. Please don't hate me/flame me as this was not intentional, merely my subconscious prevented me from making the same mistakes as you due to having done it a few times before, long ago and seen the same results (or lack therein). You may already have figured all of this out yourself but I want this as a source of reference and I will copy it to the Wiki.

The logical part first (I know you know this but this is for my benefit for porting to the Wiki and for the benefit of other players here)

Adding min damage to something with a "range" i.e. min-max, and min 1 point less than max, say 1-2, will always raise both. In the example here it will give 2-3 if you add 1 min.

Adding min damage to a range where min is much less than max, will raise min only until it is again within 1 point of max e.g. 1-100, add 50 min gives 50-100 and so on until you are at 99-100. After that, it adds whatever the min value is to both. Min will always be 1 less than Max.

Taking it one stage further, adding min damage (ignore types for now) on an item without the same damage but lets say another item does, should raise the min or min/max value but it does not which is strange (or maybe intentional by Blizzard/Kato..I just don't know). e.g. Adding min fire damage to a Bow when you have a pair of Zy-El's Vice Vambraces should raise the fire damage output from the Vice but it actually does nothing. This could be intentional.

Where you add min damage but have no item with the same damage also does nothing and to me this is logical. There is no "source" to add to so until you add max to the min to give a range on the same item, it will do nothing and I accept that.


If something is just listed as a "flat damage" e.g. 100 Damage, 100 Fire Damage, 100 Magic Damage etc., it appears to do nothing. This has been my experience with cube scroll applications, Megaload Elixir recipes and some high-end treasure card ring/weapon/glove outputs. If you can somehow change the item to have a "range" e.g. 10-100 (ignore type) it works again. The reason this happens is down to the way the game calculates the damage output for your character: It looks at the "minimum" and "maximum" values and picks a number within that range so if there are no minimum or maximum values i.e. "flat damage", it returns zero which is logical.

For cube scrolls and Megaload Elixir recipes, they will only work on the "source" item and only if that item already has a range (or your application changes it to a range) but beware.....


The Illogical Part (Particularly applies to Cube Scrolls and Megaload Elixir recipes)

Poison damage......my advice is to steer clear of this with cube scrolls and Megaload Elixir recipes as all my previous attempts where there has been or has not been a "poison source" on the item, after either adding min poison damage followed by max or the other way around to attempt to give a range has resulted in a big fat zero poison damage.

Tip: If you really feel you must, then only use cube scrolls/Megaload Elixir recipes on items that already have a range of the damage type you are adding to and avoid poison damage cube scrolls and Megaload Elixir poison damage recipes at all costs.

My Advice: Don't use cube scrolls to add damage.....PERIOD. Megaload Crafted jewels instead (just make sure they have a "range") and stick them in a socketed item. It is much safer.

[EDIT 22:46 GMT]

One Caveat: "Mega X" Arcane cube scrolls can be used but use them with caution. They are fine when applied to an item with few modifiers but anything unique, crafted, rare or magic with a lot of modifiers can cause damage and skill overflow problems.
------------------------------------------

I am going to add the above to the Wiki.....done

It can be seen here. I have added a link to it on the main Navigation panel, underneath "Items". It will open in a new window.

Hopefully this will be of some use and I apologise once again for not sharing it sooner.

Happy Zy-Elling everyone

[Clersius]

Good to have that information, Al, thank you for uploading it!

Adding level 164 Spirit Wolves as viable at p1 to my list... check!

I'll have my subconscious mind mull over these things and come up with some sort of "plan" as I work my way towards needing said "plan."

In the meantime, everyone is in Act V now, and Dopey is the first Conqueror on the team. Super-fast with Teleport, obviously. Wow, Teleporting into packs of Rock Golems is a really, really bad idea. Thankfully she has tons and tons of life. It takes a while to spam out a Hydra or another Teleport while in constant blocking animation.

On with the rest of them, then!

[EDIT1]
Doc joins Dopey as Conqueror.

[EDIT2]
Sneezy adds his Conqueror hat to the ring. Whee!

[EDIT3]
Unwilling to be left behind, Gumpy_III took a stab at Conqueror, only slightly more slowly than Dopey due to:

1. Having to summon a bare-bones (pun intended!) army and
2. Having to return to town every 90 seconds to repair his Teleport boots.

[EDIT4]
Bashful followed suit, the fastest of the lot so far. She has her supersonic Burst of Speed, allowing her to traverse the wide-open spaces of the plateaus in seconds flat once she has uncovered the waypoints. Additionally, she has Teleport boots for maneuvering through the underground passages. Bashful has become Conqueror the Fifth!

[Al-T]

Wow, Teleporting into packs of Rock Golems is a really, really bad idea. Thankfully she has tons and tons of life. It takes a while to spam out a Hydra or another Teleport while in constant blocking animation.

Teleporting into large mobs of Hell Lords, Death Destroyers (or whatever they are called) and Succubi in the Hell Throne of Destruction is even worse

My Assassin, Get_Hans, has achieved Guardian status. She was reasonably comfortable throughout the act but is the last to do it without any additional tweaks and changes to equipment.

My Sorceress, Get_This, did a bunch of normal Wayside of Woe runs at Players 8 after Get_Hans finished Hell and is now level 4170. I'll not post a table update until the team total breaks the 10K barrier (not far to go now). With all the gold drops and the gear and gold I already had in the team shared stash, she was able to make 9 full Zy-El scrolls followed by a Zy-El's Decorum and Zy-El's Vengeance for my Paladin. He sold his "Oath" torso but will keep his "Zac503Zac" runeword War Hammer in his personal stash in case he encounters damage problems with the Vengeance. The remaining 7 scrolls were used to make a start on some elemental damage jewels for my Barbarian.

Now for some more WoE runs with Get_This.

Happy Zy-Elling

[Hellwolf_36]

Death Lords are the worst, since you cannot Freeze them despite not being immune to Cold. Succubi are just bad if you get constantly hit by them since Burn Curse stacks.

Lady-Raven the Amazon

Despite almost getting killed twice (once by a Bone Golem group and the second by an angry unique Cursed Monolith), I got to level 50.

With this achievement, I can now use my Sid poster and slow missile speeds by 1/3. My damage surged to 700-1400 with Magic Arrow and about 500-1000 for Multiple Shot.

I added Hydra and Lower Resist to rings (my damage is mostly elemental now). I increased my Lord's Long Bow freeze to 12 and added some more Damage and Attack Rating mods. With the addition of Hydra, I am able to destroy almost all the opposition I encounter, with the help of the Bear causing a distraction at least. I can't wait to get Valkyrie.

With left over gems, I made some Teleportation charges to the Crafted Boots for my Necromancer. I am gonna make some more for the Druid next.

Last quest that was completed was rescuing Cain. Last waypoint was Black Marsh.

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Warriors of Harven

Name/Class          Level   Difficulty/Act    Name/Class        Level   Difficulty/Act
------------------------------------------    ----------------------------------------
Caretaker-Chibz/Dru    7          Normal/1    Lady-Raven/Ama     50         Normal/1
Commander-Fan/Nec     90          Normal/2    Lord_Terence/Pal    1         Normal/1
SlyvTheUnseen/Asn      1          Normal/1    Tymopheus/Bar       1         Normal/1
Kurisu/Sor             1          Normal/1

{Total: 151   Position: 19th    Deaths: 1}

[Phlebiac]

I have to admit that all this talk about druids and caps and everything is beyond me.
Maybe it is just my bad cold that freezes my brain, but this kind of stuff requires way too much thinking for my liking .

Anyway, after my wife and daughter were ill for about two weeks and now it is my turn, I did not play that much and reading the last one and a half pages of the thread leaves me a little bit discouraged. But I'll try my best and maybe I'll do a little goldfarming today.
I am still not sure if I should stick with my 10k gf for the start and play with different chars or if I should get one char to max gf and let him/her do all the farming.

[Clersius]

Personally, I was all afire to set up all of my characters with decent gold find (%EG). It sounded like an inspired idea! My Barbarian was the easiest of the lot to get from 0 to 60 and start *doing* something, so he got the first infusions of %EG. I don't regret that for a millisecond. He then made the major %EG jewels for my Amazon, who then took off like a rocket. Now that she has the capability, she makes the Barbarian look like an octogenarian on barbiturates (she makes him look soooooo slooooooooowww!). From those experiences, I can state with finality that no other character of mine will get even a single iota of %EG, as it would be a major waste of resources.

*IF* I was going to play through Nightmare and Hell at higher players settings with any of my characters, *then* I would strongly reconsider my stance on the issue, as having a high level of %EG in that situation would be quite beneficial. But as it is, with all of them playing just to get through the Acts as quickly as possible, they would have to go out of their way to actually do any gold farming, and that would be a waste of time because none of them can mow down Blood Witches and Hell Temptresses even remotely as fast as the Amazon can do it.

Anyway, that's my experience... so my advice in the end would be to load up your fastest-killing character with %EG, with perhaps some %EG on the second-fastest-killing character just in case your prize horse falls in battle.

I'm sorry you have been sick, I know how horrid that is. I hope that you are feeling better or that you will feel better as soon as possible! Please don' t be discouraged, either... remember what happened last time someone looked like they were going to finish up the tournament? Everyone thought, "Oh well, it's over, he's won for sure." And then nothing happened! Besides, finishing this tournament at all is the real reward. I'm not going to win it, but I am bound and determined to "beat myself!" at it by getting seven Hardcore characters to kill Baal and to level 10,000! I encourage you (and everyone else with the cajones to be playing in this tournament) to do the same. Ultimately, the question is, "Is this fun? Am I enjoying myself?" If you are having fun, go for it! Push on with those Hardcore badarses! If you are not having fun, then why put yourself through this in the first place? Do something that you enjoy...

I think that you are doing a great job with your characters, and appreciate the thought that you put into playing them, as well as the posts that you make on their progress and pitfalls. It's so nice to have others playing the same tournaments - the company makes it worth continuing.

Good luck to you, Phlebiac. And to Hellwolf and JrEye, as well! And to Rahhja... I hope he is just taking a little break to refresh himself. Al doesn't need luck, he needs to "accidentally" bang into a doorjamb, or mash his clicker-finger with a hammer, or conveniently fall down a (short) flight of stairs. Oops, did I type that out loud? I meant to type, "And good luck to Al as well!!"

[Rahhja]

Ok, after a forced 2 week hiatus from Zy-El, I'm back and ready to continue. My plan is as follows:

1. Farm gold and jewels/rings to replenish my stash.

2. In the process of doing #1 I will get all characters that have finished ACT5 to level 500 (I figure at this point I will have the required materials for #3)

3. Craft the {filtered} out of my necromancer. I hate playing him. It's painfull. The only hope I see for him is if I can remove some of the reliance on summons.

That's all for now. Good luck to everyone.

Rahhja


Edit: Sturm was the first to finish and stands at 502. Wulfgar is next and after rereading Clersius' post have decided to replace his 2 Artifact Colossus swords with the ever popular Phase Blades.

Question: what is the best choice about what to do with them? I made 2 Oath runewords in them but the damage seems pretty low. Does the speed upgrade make up for the lower damage? Should I now look to make elemental damage jewels?

[Clersius]

Rahhja is back!! Wooooooohoooooo! Welcome back, Rahhja.

I posted about damage over in the Softcore Rotation tourney, but I will try to be a little more comprehensive here for you. Your weapons are often little more than stat-buffers. They provide niceties like Open Wounds, Skills, or Crushing Blow (among dozens and dozens of others), plus a little damage. The rest of your damage will come from things like:

1. Increasing your strength - every point of strength is 1% more damage squeezed out of the damage that you do have. For a Phase Blade, every point of dexterity adds .75% more damage as well. For a bow, every point of dexterity adds 1%, and strength does nothing. Etc, etc.
2. Damage jewels like Shard of Atlas or Shard of Accuracy.
3. Mega3/4 to weapon.
4. Crafting Sol runes onto a jewel for Minimum Damage. I strongly recommend against crafting Ith runes onto a jewel for Maximum Damage, as ideally you want your min and max to be as close to each other as possible.
5. Use Elixir recipes to add Minimum Damage directly to your weapon. This has the added advantage of being easy to remove a few points at a time when you get near your cap. Jewels are all-or-nothing, as you cannot remove part of the damage once they are socketed.

These are just some of the sources of damage.

If you want to figure out what your physical damage will be, use the formula:
Dmg = PD * [1 + (str + .75*dex + %ED) / 100]

This is for a Phase Blade or a Caduceus, both of which, in Zy-El at least, use 100% strength and 75% dexterity to modify damage. Use it once for min dmg and once for max dmg. PD is physical damage. If you have a Phase Blade that does 50-100 damage, a Shard of Atlas (200 min dmg), and a Shard of Accuracy (150 min dmg), then your min PD is 50 + 200 + 150 = 400. %ED is the sum of all %Enhanced Damage that you find off of your weapon. Any %ED that is on your weapon is already accounted for by your weapon's listed PD. Off-weapon %ED also includes any from skills like Frenzy, Whirlwind, or Sword Mastery.

So in the example above, if you had a Biggin's Bonnet (45% ED) as well as the 50-100 dmg Phase Blade and the Shards of Atlas and Accuracy, along with 2000 strength, 4000 dexterity, +1510% from Frenzy, and +985% from Sword Mastery, then your min dmg would be:

Min Dmg = (50 + 150 + 200) * [1 + (2000 + .75*4000 + 45 + 1510 + 985) / 100]
Min Dmg = 400 * [1 + 7540 / 100]
Min Dmg = 400 * 76.4
Min Dmg = 30,560 (always round down)

Similarly, your max dmg would be:

Max Dmg = (100 + 150 + 200) * [1 + (2000 + .75*4000 + 45 + 1510 + 985) / 100]
Max Dmg = 450 * 76.4
Max Dmg = 34,380 (always round down)

A couple more things... Critical Hit/Deadly Strike. The Barbarian has 25% natural Crit, and there is nothing you can do to get rid of it. Therefore, you need to maximize it so that it is always in effect. Craft it onto a jewel, or gloves, or boots, or wherever you can, just make sure you have at least 100% Crit on him. With that done, now your max physical damage cap will not be 83k, but half of that, or 41.5k. Call it 40k just to be "safe." In the above example, if you want to ensure that you are doing as much physical damage as possible, rework your equation with 40k plugged in on the left hand side:

40,000 = X * 76.4
X = 40,000 / 76.4
X = 523

That tells you that you need 523 total max PD in order to reach your physical damage cap. You already have 450, so you would need 523 - 450 = 73 more.

A big caveat is if he is wearing a Requiem. If so, then both his strength and his dexterity will be increasing all the time, so you will need to keep checking his damage with the above equation, readjusting (lowering) his PD to keep him under the cap. For my Amazon (who is wearing a requiem), if she is doing normal gold runs, or working her way through the normal Acts in Nightmare or Hell, I will generally only lower her PD so that her max dmg drops a few hundred points. She will not be making many levels in this scenario, so her dmg will not be making wild jumps. If, on the other hand, she is killing in the Insanity areas, then her levels will be increasing quickly, and her dmg will be making wild jumps, so I will lower her PD so that her max dmg drops a few thousand points, giving her a little more breathing room. Does that make sense?

The reason I keep pushing the equation is because as soon as you add any elemental/poison damage to him, you can no longer tell what his physical damage is just from looking at the LCS. You can try to do it the way Al does it, and decrease/increase damage until he starts/stops doing any, but again you have a major problem when you add elemental jewels to the mix. It can sometimes be difficult to tell "by feel" if you have stopped doing physical damage if you have 120k or more elemental damage as well. You could argue that if you can't tell "by feel" then there is little point in having that damage to begin with, but a purist would call you a heretic and bonk you on the head for such a remark. Whether you can "feel" it or not, you will have lost 80k damage and at least some of your efficiency.

So the actual answer to your question, "...what is the best choice about what to do with [the Phase Blades]?" is, "Whatever boosts your stats in a manner pleasing to you!" You can put a runeword with life into them, and use some of the other ways outlined above to boost your damage, or you can use a runeword that gives you enough Critical Hit to bump you over the 100% mark, or use one that has good +Skills, or one that has high damage, or one that gives you combinations that you need. It's completely up to you, and there is no wrong answer. Well, using runewords that give %Maximum Damage per level or straight Maximum Damage per level would probably be a wrong answer, as you are just making your life unreasonably difficult by doing so, but other than that...

"Does the speed upgrade make up for the lower damage?" No, it does not. Using the Phase Blades is strictly for speed, and meant in no way to make up for anything other than slowness of swinging. The damage is a whole other question, as you now know.

"Should I look to make elemental damage jewels?" When you have tweaked your physical damage, and are comfortable with increasing and decreasing it to keep it in some kind of "perfect" range, then it is time to add elemental damages into the mix.

I hope that this helps, that it answers your questions. If not, I'll be more than happy to reword/expound on any unclear points.


Additional information not directly related to your questions follows.


For most other melee weapons, the equation to use is:
Dmg = PD * [1 + (str + %ED) / 100]

For bows, the equation to use is:
Dmg = PD * [1 + (dex + %ED) / 100]

Two last things for anyone reading this who is going to try applying it to Assassins. First, the equation is:
Dmg = PD * [1 + (.75*str + .75*dex + %ED) / 100]

Second, Claw Mastery does not use the listed %damage, but instead uses the listed %Attack! Therefore, you want to add the %Attack to the above equation's %ED variable...

[Rahhja]

My brain hurts.

Thanks for the info. I'll have to keep going back and rereading some of it till it sticks.

Got 3 of my guys to 500 before I decided to spend my resources to improve Walter. I made:

Extinct RW wand
Zy-El's Decorum
Zy-El's Idea
Zy-El's Vice
Crafted Boots w/teleport charges
Zy-El's Ransom
Narrow charm with 2 life jewels totaling +54000 life and 1650% to life.

I took him out for a test drive in the Bloody Foothills with 100 mages at p/127. After casting Lower Resist the mages take out everything on the screen in about 3 seconds. As long as I don't move 1 inch and teleport when all enemies are dead, my mages stay intact much longer. Going to go through ACT5 at p/32 then tackle the Matrix and Cows.

Edit: decided to go into the Matrix at level 170 and came out at 193. Going to take some work but the loathing is starting to pass.

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Literature Heroes O' Mine
Name/Class          Level   Difficulty/Act    Name/Class        Level   Difficulty/Act
------------------------------------------    ----------------------------------------
Esten/Assassin        341    Normal/5         Wulfgar/Barbarian   507      Normal/5
Sturm/Paladin         502    Normal/5         Catti-Brie/Amazon   276      Normal/5
Polgara/Sorceress     505    Normal/5         Llauron/Druid       335      Normal/5
Walter/Necromancer    193    Normal/5
{Total: 2659 deaths: 4}

[Clersius]

Sorry about your brain... but I am glad that your detestation of Walter is abating somewhat. You are progressing nicely, sir, keep up the great work!

-----------------

Sleepy the Amazon

Happy and then Sleepy were the last two to make Conqueror, and the RagTag's were done and ready to at least consider moving on to Hell difficulty.

However, I figured that it was largely unavoidable for them to make much more progress without addressing the issue of Elemental Jewels, so before embarking on the protracted journey through Hell, it was time to take stock of the situation.

There were still 50 left of the 400 Zy-El Scrolls that Sleepy had made for outfitting the company. Before the transition from Normal to Nightmare, she had made another 50 and filled the stash with gold. As the team progressed through Nightmare (well, as Happy and Sleepy progressed – none of the rest of them have any %EG, and so contributed absolutely nothing to the pot), more gold was accrued and slowly converted to full Scrolls. Sleepy was given this task, and flipping back and forth between Normal and Nightmare wreaked absolute havoc on her maps! Between the full 4.2 billion they started with and the 4.5 billion more that they accumulated from simply clearing the Acts of Nightmare (sometimes at p127, sometimes at p1), they added another 87 Scrolls to the 100 with which they started Nightmare.

I planned to have Sleepy, Happy, and Doc receive a jewel apiece with 50 applications each of cold damage, lightning damage, fire damage, and magic damage. That would make 600 Scrolls total, a large order indeed. I considered adding several more %EG jewels to Sleepy's inventory in order to speed the production up as much as possible, but the math showed me that just one more full jewel would be sufficient – a second or third would not speed the process up enough to compensate for the 70 Scrolls spent.

Using 70 Scrolls for the %EG jewel left 117 towards the first Elemental Jewel – Sleepy's. Her new %EG jewel increased her processing rate from about 12 per hour (collection plus combination) to 15 per hour. On Friday she made another 120 Scrolls in about 8 hours of actual play time. Part of that was spent in Normal WoW and OtO gaining some more levels, but the collection rate in those areas is only about 1/3 what she gets from a Throne of Destruction run. After making the Scrolls, she used 200 of them on her Elemental Damage Jewel, which took about an hour and forty minutes. She was eager to test it out, but it had been a long day so that had to wait until Saturday.

Saturday was quite the good day! First off, the jewel was a fabulous boost to her damage, as one might well imagine. It cut her killing time of gold-run monsters (and Platinum Drakes) by much more than half. Unfortunately, she only spends about 20% of her time killing things – the other 80% of her time is spent picking gold up off of the ground. Still, her production increased to better than 16.5 Scrolls per hour, so there is absolutely nothing about which to complain in any of that. I ended up spending almost 10 hours on Scroll production, netting another 160 of them. Only 3 shy of the next jewel! I must not have realized that, or surely I would have pressed on and made another 3 Scrolls...

Sunday yielded another 130 Scrolls and Happy's Elemental Damage Jewel. Monday brought 120 Scrolls and Doc's EDJ, leaving a surplus of 47. On Tuesday Doc socketed his and went into Nightmare WoW/OtO to test it out, first at p8, then at p16. Both went well, and didn't take long at all. The extra damage is really quite noticeable, which is good, good news. I didn't get a lot of Scrolls made after that (a mere 63), as I was sick and tired of it, but I did take Dopey out for a spin in Nightmare Suicide Sanctum and Wayside of Woe. What a waste of time. Chimeras in Nightmare are immune to Fire in addition to their previous immunity to cold. I took her back to Normal WoW for a few hundred levels in an effort to remove the bad taste of Nightmare from my mouth.

During all of this time, I had been churning the situations of Dopey and Sneezy through my brain, round and round and round. Sneezy's wolves were in such a pathetic state in Normal that I cannot realistically see using them anymore. I mean, after 6 hours or so fiddling around with them before, the best I could come up with was a pathetically worthless pile of drivel, so I'm not feeling good about that at all, despite Al's reassurances to the contrary. Dopey's damage from spells is simply not going to scale, so unless I am content to level her all the way up to 10,000 in Normal Wayside of Woe at p64, something different is going to have to happen. In both cases, I'm thinking that a weapon with max physical damage and a nice, fat EDJ may be the solution. Perhaps with 300 or 400 scrolls applied instead of 200. 800 total Scrolls with 110 of them already made... I wish I had known that I would decide this, as that is enough to have warranted a second full %EG jewel - too late now!

I think that I will go ahead and start Hell now, bringing Sleepy back to Normal to make more Scrolls in between playing through the final Acts.

Code: Select all

The RagTags

Name/Class          Level   Difficulty/Act    Name/Class        Level   Difficulty/Act
------------------------------------------    ----------------------------------------
Bashful/Assassin     1079       Hell/1        Happy/Barbarian    1228       Hell/1
Doc/Paladin          1554       Hell/1        Sleepy/Amazon      4192       Hell/1
Dopey/Sorceress      1141       Hell/1        Sneezy/Druid       1418       Hell/1
Gumpy_III/Necro      1204       Hell/1

{Total: 11816    Position: 2nd    Deaths: 2} 

[Phlebiac]

Wow, I didn't know that I need a PHD in advanced maths to generate a viable character .

Btw. would you mind recalling or maybe pointing me to where you explain how exactly you craft your scrolls? I know several cheap ways, but none of them are convenient at any rate.
I usually buy two flawless skulls + an elixier to create a perfect skull, make 1k collectors with those, upgrade five to a 5k collector and then redeem that for a scroll fragment. This costs me about 4.5 million gold per fragment.

[Clersius]

Wow, I didn't know that I need a PHD in advanced maths to generate a viable character .

Heehee! You don't, obviously, but that part really interests me, so I spend time on it. I share it here just in case there are other people with number-ish tendencies who might be interested as well.

You are correct, many of the ways to make Scrolls are not convenient. The cheap ways are time-consuming, and the expensive ways are much less so, that is the tradeoff.

The way you do it is one of the ways I do it. I usually start with flawed skulls when I am really, really gold-poor, using them to make perfect scrolls and then fragments, then move up to standard skulls when my income grows a bit, still making perfect scrolls to turn into fragments, then to flawless to make perfect scrolls for fragments, then at last to perfect skulls, still making fragments. This is where I am usually stuck until the two full %EG jewels are completed. At that point, it becomes efficient to graduate up to using a perfect skull and a collector to make a 1k, then combine the 1k with 5 Zy runes to make a 10k, and combine 5 10k to make a 50k, which makes a full Scroll, bypassing fragments forever! Yeeehaw! That is the end of the line for me. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of full Scrolls made with that recipe.

Once the money is flowing in and Anya is rescued, I gather lots and lots and lots of gold in the stash, then clear out at least half of the character's inventory and place them in Harrogath. That way he/she can hold 5 collectors, 5 perfect skulls, and 25 Zy runes, making 5 Scrolls at a time. For me, it averages out to about 9.5 minutes to make those 5, or a little under 2 minutes each. I tried, early on, making 10 at a time, but because none of my characters could, at that time, carry enough gold to buy 10 perf skulls and 50 Zy runes at once, I settled into the routine of doing them by 5's.

Hope that answers your question? If not, let me know, and I'll ... fix it/elaborate/whatever.

[Al-T]

Looks like I'll have to get my backside into gear again given your progress Clersius. I have played somewhat recently but obviously not enough . Sorc has done a bunch of WoE runs to supply my Barb and is a higher level (4371) than your Amazon but she needs to get into overdrive to compete with your elemental damage jewel

I am such an idiot/forgetful at times My earlier post, in particular the part about "flat damage" being broken, I already knew the answer to. It is and it isn't broken. The reason it doesn't have an effect is the way the game calculates the damage your character does: It looks at the "minimum" and the "maximum" values and picks a random number in that range, so if there are no minimum or maximum values i.e. "flat damage", it returns zero which is logical. I will update the earlier post....done and the Wiki.....done

Get_JrEye (Barbarian)

In an attempt to improve Get_JrEye's low damage I decided to take a slightly different approach than normal, bought him a couple of Phase Blades and used the collector recipe to create a unique sword. The first attempt I was initially very happy with as it gave a Lightsabre. On the second attempt I was even happier as I got a Lightsabre on Steroids so I decided I would be better with two of these than just one + the Lightsabre. I then kept using the collector unique recipe on the Lightsabre until I got the 2nd Lightsabre on Steroids. It took a further 4 x 50K collector rerolls but I think it was well worth it (there was another unique that rolled...a "Dukara's" something or other but it wasn't as good as the "Generic Stoner's"). Could you make an equivalent or better item with what, to all intents and purposes, amounted to 5 full Zy-El scrolls? I'll leave Clersius "the perfectionist" to answer that For a further increase in damage I was initially going to use my only remaining 2 x "Mega 2 to Any Weapon" Arcane cube scrolls but decided against it in case it took the damage too high and/or boosted skills too high. My Sorceress had in any case already crafted this sweet jewel for him which will go in his Vice Vambraces. I am not going to craft for Cold or Magic damage as Berserk takes care of Magic and Megaload Cold recipes are not powerful enough for my liking (takes too many to be of any use). I will do some more runs with my Sorc and craft another jewel for Fire and Poison damage, although I may even leave out the Poison since it is so slow acting.

Time to get serious

Happy Zy-Elling I hope all your characters get killed

[Clersius]

Happy Zy-Elling I hope all your characters get killed

That is hilarious!

Not only is your Sorceress higher leveled than my Amazon, but your high levels are on the Sorceress! Mine are on the Amazon, which are stunningly easy to get. It's going to take many long hours to get those levels on the Sorceress or get her a decent weapon and Elemental Damage Jewel and then get those levels.

Those are some seriously sweet weapons, Al. They are much more classy than a pair that you make through crafting. But yes, the crafted weapon w/damage jewel would be somewhat better, having 450 min physical dmg, 150-900 fire damage, 50-1500 lightning damage, and 180-900 magic damage, plus a scroll left over for covering either the mana leech or the IAS. However, it would not have lightning absorb, which you just can't craft for, so even more hoorahs for the classy weapon! You can't craft absorbs, right? Runewords/Uniques/Secret scrolls only?

I was shocked to see that megaloading cold damage does not follow the listed values for the rune of 8-16, but rather follows its own internal values of 3-14! It made me sick. However, I put 50 on the EDJs anyway, just to make it a little easier to kill certain you-know-whos.

Indeed, time to get serious! *goes and takes a nap*

[Al-T]

You can't craft absorbs, right? Runewords/Uniques/Secret scrolls only?

I haven't found a way to craft absorbs but in addition to your list you can also get them on some posters, Mega CHoMs and top-end Treasure Card recipe outputs for gloves, boots and torso armour. I can't remember if belts have any.

However, I put 50 on the EDJs anyway, just to make it a little easier to kill certain you-know-whos.

I may have a rethink about that then as Freezing Arrow probably won't do enough damage at higher players settings in the you-know-wheres, where the you-know-whos are.
--------------------------------

[EDIT] Getting back to....

Get_JrEye (Barbarian)

I socketed the Lightning++ damage jewel in his Vice Vambraces and ploughed on through Act 5 with him. I say "ploughed" as it was heavy going even with the additional damage. He was never in any real danger of dying but his damage output is still too low to be able to kill fast in Hell. It may also be a question of Attack Rating still not being high enough but at least now I can go back to the "normal" Insanity levels with him without much fear of dying to test which of the two (or both ) it is. What I am happy with is, he gained a decent amount of levels and is now my 4th Guardian. Before I go back to testing him more I am going to finish Hell with the rest of the team. Next up....probably my Paladin.

Happy Zy-Elling everyone (apart from Clersius )

[Hellwolf_36]

I hope all your characters get killed

I hope one of yours gets killed so I can be put on your "hatred" list there.

I haven't found a way to craft absorbs but in addition to your list you can also get them on some posters, Mega CHoMs and top-end Treasure Card recipe outputs for gloves, boots and torso armour. I can't remember if belts have any.

Solution, make a Mega Sponge Charm.