Black Cleft

Schnorki wrote: 18 hours ago

And how often do you really get hit by magic attacks?

Claw Vipers, Unravellers, and Oblivion Knights fairly often I would say.

Necrarch wrote: 17 hours ago

Hmmm, I expected "magic res" to be like

Mal rune, so all sources of non physical damage, including elemental ones.

But from what you say, it's only "pure" magic attacks that are more efficient due to

Black Cleft, do I understand right ?

Are there any monsters applying such attack type, except the

Bone Spear from the Claw Vipers ?

This is a good idea for an educational topic: "Magic" in Diablo 2.

I would write one if I had the necessary competence for such a topic, which I don't. But it seems to me that D2 since launch treated "Magic" in a very loose way (actually ambiguous): sometimes it means all types of elemental damage; sometimes it means the specific "magical" damage type we all know from

Blessed Hammer,

Bone Spear,

Berserk etc (and some monster spells too, of course).

I'd also argue that it was somewhat of an afterthought during game design and it never really "fitted" nicely into the overall scheme of damage types: just look at the few Magic Immune monsters, the actually few monsters causing Magic Damage, and the somewhat few Magic-type Skills (some mentioned above). Also and most importantly the lack, previous to RotW, of +Magic Resistance and +Magic Damage, and -Magic Resistance to monsters. The obvious exception is

Black Cleft, introduced not long ago and somewhat of an oddball among Sunders Charms, exactly because Magic damage itself is an oddball among Damage Types.

And the biggest "design" change introduced in RotW is related just to this question of Magic Damage: the Warlock is, among other things, a Magic Damage character, and most of the new items (mostly geared towards the warlock) include the new magic-related modifiers.

Anyway I'm just yapping.

Thanks guys for the precisions.

Black Cleft +

Sling +

Guardian's Light it will be then (when prices have dropped !), still hesitating on the Arach vs

Gheed step.

There's a list at the Diablo 2 Fandom wiki (https://diablo.fandom.com/wiki/Magic_Damage):

List of Monsters using magic damage in Diablo II:

• Greater Mummy (all types) - unholy bolt,
• Doom Knight - as a random melee element,
• Abyss Knights - white orb throwers, also randomly in melee,
• Oblivion Knight - white orb throwers and
  Bone Spirit,
• Diablo - Cold Touch attack,
• Succubus and
  Stygian Fury (all types) - melee attacks and blood stars,
• Guest Horror Archers - random arrow damage,
• Guest
  Claw Viper, Pit Viper -
  Bone Spear attack,
• Guest Serpent Magus - all attacks,
• Baal - Mana Rift attack,
• All uniques and super-uniques that have Spectral Hit can also randomly deal magic damage.

Necrarch wrote: 11 hours ago

still hesitating on the Arach vs

Gheed step

Gheed's Wager requires a ridiculous amount of Strength. I'd recommend considering it only along with a

Monarch, because

Gheed's Wager requires 151 Strength.

Also, I have a crap

Guardian's Light that nobody wants to take. I can give it to you for free so that you can experiment - as long as your character is on SC Ladder...

Thanks, but I am a pure NL player I am not too poor so don't worry, I'll wait a bit then buy or try to get statues - wanna try that new event anyway.

And I'll probably need to buy sooner or later - after all I need to improve 8 characters + fill my Warlock too

Thanks anyway !