Optimizing whirlwind - what’s the best PVE set-up?

Rik wrote: 1 year ago

Thanks for the update. I’d really like to make

Iron Golem work but I’m discouraged if he’s dying that quick to physical damage. I think Exile or Obsession would probably provide the best balance of durable/helpful items to use but both would only provide defensive perks to the barb which are nice but not nearly as spicy as a Faith, Pride or my Christmas wish, a Brand golem. Reapers and Lawbringer are potentially good cheap alternatives but I heard the

Iron Golem attacks painfully slow, meaning the decrep proc is unlikely to provide much. But the

Sanctuary Aura would have at least kept him alive against lord de sais

If you get a future Beast and do more testing, you might try a

Holy Freeze merc, granted you’re sacrificing 200 ed but the bonus from the

Iron Golem could offset that. Another thing, this may be outdated info, but I watched a vid in which a creature remained summoned while the item providing it was in the weapon swap. This could open up your ammy to use highlords if you put Oath on the swap. Highlords is a huge boost to damage and is the only way to max deadly strike.

I’ll do my own testing but, I’ll need some more practice, confidence in the survivability or Wealth before I make him out of any runewords using anything higher than

Lem..

This was a fun post, plz keep us posted, specifically on

Iron Golem testing

Summon Necro players sometimes use

Iron Golem for Insight (cheap to replace) and then have the merc carry Infinity, sort of best of both worlds. But as I mentioned above, it's useless without maxed

Golem Mastery, even then it can die on rare occasions (although not nearly as often). For reference I have level 42 mastery on Necro character. Don't put anything expensive in it, I'm just trying to save your runes.

M1ck wrote: 1 year ago

Rik wrote: 1 year ago

Thanks for the update. I’d really like to make

Iron Golem work but I’m discouraged if he’s dying that quick to physical damage. I think Exile or Obsession would probably provide the best balance of durable/helpful items to use but both would only provide defensive perks to the barb which are nice but not nearly as spicy as a Faith, Pride or my Christmas wish, a Brand golem. Reapers and Lawbringer are potentially good cheap alternatives but I heard the

Iron Golem attacks painfully slow, meaning the decrep proc is unlikely to provide much. But the

Sanctuary Aura would have at least kept him alive against lord de sais

If you get a future Beast and do more testing, you might try a

Holy Freeze merc, granted you’re sacrificing 200 ed but the bonus from the

Iron Golem could offset that. Another thing, this may be outdated info, but I watched a vid in which a creature remained summoned while the item providing it was in the weapon swap. This could open up your ammy to use highlords if you put Oath on the swap. Highlords is a huge boost to damage and is the only way to max deadly strike.

I’ll do my own testing but, I’ll need some more practice, confidence in the survivability or Wealth before I make him out of any runewords using anything higher than

Lem..

This was a fun post, plz keep us posted, specifically on

Iron Golem testing

Summon Necro players sometimes use

Iron Golem for Insight (cheap to replace) and then have the merc carry Infinity, sort of best of both worlds. But as I mentioned above, it's useless without maxed

Golem Mastery, even then it can die on rare occasions (although not nearly as often). For reference I have level 42 mastery on Necro character. Don't put anything expensive in it, I'm just trying to save your runes.

Thanks for the tip, I probably would have blown them anyway bc fools learn by no other but I just realized you can’t use bows and I’ve lost all enthusiasm

Yea one of my builds - the renegade Arbalist - self wields a Faith

Crossbow, uses a might merc and has an

Iron Golem made from Pride. The IG is a central pillar of the build and so IG,

Golem Mastery and

Blood Golem are maxed, and that set-up actually works pretty good

Reading this has me super jealous. Most of the items shown are out of my reach. I have never gotten anything close to a Grief or BOTD (and you are all talking like its a common occurance.) Wish I had more luck getting Runes.

Chalk6ix_NZ wrote: 2 months ago

Reading this has me super jealous. Most of the items shown are out of my reach. I have never gotten anything close to a Grief or BOTD (and you are all talking like its a common occurance.) Wish I had more luck getting Runes.

Most people get their high runes from trading. E. g. on the market you can get a

Lo rune for ca. 70

Perfect Gems and a

Mal for ca. 20

Perfect Gems - this is nearly a complete Grief (btw, two days ago I traded 180

Perfect Gems for 2x

Ber). I have now found all the runes in the game, but I traded for my first high runes, such as a

Jah, long before I found one.

Chalk6ix_NZ wrote: 2 months ago

Reading this has me super jealous. Most of the items shown are out of my reach. I have never gotten anything close to a Grief or BOTD (and you are all talking like its a common occurance.) Wish I had more luck getting Runes.

+1 to the above. The very best rune I ever dropped is one

Ohm (twice in total) and I play since the start of d2r (not that much though). My chars are now worth more than 20

Jah thanks mainly to pgems, pamethysts (hello Gem shrines !) and Annis (the last source is kind of tarished, the other two are still super valuable).
Build slowly, gem after gem, understand the market... you'll eventually get to your goals more safely than hoping to hit the jackpot that comes so rarely.

Chalk6ix_NZ wrote: 2 months ago

Reading this has me super jealous. Most of the items shown are out of my reach. I have never gotten anything close to a Grief or BOTD (and you are all talking like its a common occurance.) Wish I had more luck getting Runes.

Do you play online? I got a big jump start by getting a few nice rares luckily that I was able to trade. Pick up every rare

Tiara/

Circlet/

Diadem you can find, rare gloves, rare

Boots.

I traded some tri res

Boots and a rare

Circlet for 5

Jah and that really set me off and going. Got an Enigma and then the game became much easier and more streamlined.

Also trading

Perfect Gems for runes is very easy to do.

Ral and

Hel also have good value and can be traded upwards

Chalk6ix_NZ wrote: 2 months ago

Reading this has me super jealous. Most of the items shown are out of my reach. I have never gotten anything close to a Grief or BOTD (and you are all talking like its a common occurance.) Wish I had more luck getting Runes.

Made my first ever Grief less than 2 weeks ago, despite awful luck with runes.
And i achieved that by trading mostly

Perfect Gems for

Ist runes(plus a few tokens and some keys). 20 pg to 1

Ist. You need 4 or 5

Ist to trade for a

Lo, totally doable in a few weeks.

Every day, take a few moments at different times to check for "free" games, because lots of people, including myself, go to those and drop off gear we found during the day and don't need or sometimes people outright just empty their mules completely (in terms of value, i've probably taken far more than i've dropped, but in terms of sheer number of items, i've probably dropped off at least 30 times as much as i've taken, probably even more). Like the time some nut dropped over 200

Annihilus in a single game, sure they were all low or low mid quality at best, but i still have about a dozen spares waiting for future characters thanks to that single game. Another time, someone dropped over 50 midrange runes, everything from

Amn to

Lem.

I've also picked up a Heart of the Oak, Call To Arms, Spirit, Cure and a Mosaic in those games.
You will rarely find really valuable things in them, but you can get pretty much everything you need to put together a solid build for Hell.

However! Do not ignore the possibility of limiting yourself to doing Nightmare Diablo and

Baal runs(potentially all actbosses if you can). They can still drop lots of very good gear, some of it valuable for trade. And you can do runs like this much easier with drastically easier to get gear, because most character builds once they're at level 70+(which you can get from NM baalruns without trouble), can curbstomp NM diablo and

Baal.

And if you need a "safe build" for hell, you can try a Fist of heavens paladin. I tried it out with what was meant to be a disposable char just to get the socket quest 3 times extra and it ended up being my first character that could go pretty much anywhere in hell and not die.

cheap ww barb - (im using this as im on HC ladder now and started with nothing)

Tal Rasha

Helm w. fervor jewel
Obedience in a

Thresher
Hustle in

Wire Fleece
loh, trang

Belt
rares with res/life leech
everythin cheap, even on HC...

can do all areas, some slowly ofc...

Yeah about trading.... i have enormous trust issues with people. not the 1st time people have said "trading only channel and games".... go in to trade, get slaughtered, and then either have my gear stolen, or farmed trying to get it back. Most communities i have been in have been either toxic (Age of Conan) or just ignored me and been unhelpful.

And i have been farming the utter arse off Hell for YEARS now. Lowest character is 89.... yes yes level 89 and years. I also have other games i play. D2 isn't the only choice i have. Most of my toons have a HOTO/Spirit combo with various armour names and uniques.
As for Runes.... Never ever not once ever gotten a rune from

Mephisto's Soulstone (just gemstones of various quality), nor from travencal (despite watching many a vid showing it's possible) even with my

Find Item at 150-190%.
Never thought

Perfect Gems worth trading for (i mean they're not THAT hard to get. I sell my

Perfect Gems when my stash gets full).

Chalk6ix_NZ wrote: 2 months ago

Yeah about trading.... i have enormous trust issues with people. not the 1st time people have said "trading only channel and games".... go in to trade, get slaughtered, and then either have my gear stolen, or farmed trying to get it back. Most communities i have been in have been either toxic (Age of Conan) or just ignored me and been unhelpful.

And i have been farming the utter arse off Hell for YEARS now. Lowest character is 89.... yes yes level 89 and years. I also have other games i play. D2 isn't the only choice i have. Most of my toons have a HOTO/Spirit combo with various armour names and uniques.
As for Runes.... Never ever not once ever gotten a rune from

Mephisto's Soulstone (just gemstones of various quality), nor from travencal (despite watching many a vid showing it's possible) even with my

Find Item at 150-190%.
Never thought

Perfect Gems worth trading for (i mean they're not THAT hard to get. I sell my

Perfect Gems when my stash gets full).

For all of my experience the community here is very kind and helpful. Try us out
And ofc you should only trade in town. I never traded somewhere else.

Besides that, you get per default one rune from the Hell's Forge Quest - in Normal up to

Amn, in Nightmare up to

Um and in Hell up to

Gul
And Magic Find does not affect rune drops. It is complete luck what you get concerning runes. Many have good experience with farming

The Secret Cow Level.
I for my part found

Vex,

Lo and

Jah in

Travincal and

Ber,

Jah,

Cham and

Zod in

Chaos Sanctuary.

Chalk6ix_NZ wrote: 2 months ago

go in to trade, get slaughtered, and then either have my gear stolen, or farmed trying to get it back.

I understand the trust issue and that you've been tricked/duped in the past, but your gear can't be stolen online in D2R unless you actually drop it on the Ground (don't drop items on the Ground in a game with someone you don't trust). There are no gear stealing exploits in D2R, there are no exploits where you can be killed in town. There's no such thing as "open bnet" where cheaters and hackers reign supreme. Trades happen in town, you can't get attacked in town. You normally use the trade window to conduct trades, where each party places their items and then both have to click accept before anything happens. As long as you actually double check what items the other party has placed in the trade window you can't be scammed. And like I said - gear can't be stolen in D2R. And as long you don't leave town, you can't be killed either. If you do leave town and get PKed, just save & exit immediately without trying to get your body back, then make a new private game, and your body will be on the Ground in town, you just click it and get it all back.

Also - most people trade using a third party trading site like here at diablo2.io or at traderie.com. You offer/accept/chat through the website, carry out trade in-game, then report result on the website again and give each other +trust or a review. Both sites use a trust/review system.

Chalk6ix_NZ wrote: 2 months ago

Never ever not once ever gotten a rune from

Mephisto's Soulstone (just gemstones of various quality)

Hm, you're guaranteed a rune from

The Hellforge quest, so not sure what you mean. It might be a rune you don't need, or one you already have plenty of, but you always get one rune (and several gems) when you smash the soulstone, on all difficulties.

Chalk6ix_NZ wrote: 2 months ago

Never ever not once ever gotten a rune from

Mephisto's Soulstone

That quest ALWAYS drops a rune.

And if you seriously want runes, well, there's always the option of farming

The Countess. You rarely get what you want, but you always get something.

Chalk6ix_NZ wrote: 2 months ago

go in to trade, get slaughtered, and then either have my gear stolen

Unless you drop things yourself, you cannot have your gear stolen.
And unless you go outside of the starting zones you CANNOT be attacked at all.

And if you trade with the people on this site, well i sure haven't seen anyone be the slightest unreliable as yet.

And even ingame, there's far more issues with misunderstandings than with bad Faith or intent. And not that much of those either.

Chalk6ix_NZ wrote: 2 months ago

Never thought

Perfect Gems worth trading for (i mean they're not THAT hard to get. I sell my

Perfect Gems when my stash gets full).

They're used for crafting AND for rerolling magical items, in particular, grand charms to get skillers with extra affixes on them.

A skiller charm with nothing else will generally get you an

Ist or a bit less.
If you manage to find one of the most desired skiller charms with a 2nd affix giving +45 life, you're rich, because those sell for lots and LOTS.
And anything in between.

Or in other words, there's pretty much ALWAYS a big market for

Perfect Gems.
Just take note that rubies and sometimes skulls are considered worth a little bit more(1.5 to 2.5 another p.gem) and that amethysts are worth more still(2 to 4 times another p.gem).

Chalk6ix_NZ wrote: 2 months ago

And i have been farming the utter arse off Hell for YEARS now. Lowest character is 89.... yes yes level 89 and years. I also have other games i play. D2 isn't the only choice i have. Most of my toons have a HOTO/Spirit combo with various armour names and uniques.

Meh, then you're not quite THAT bad off clearly.

I made my first EVER HOTO just a few months ago and i've played D2 since start with just 5 or so years pause before starting D2R.

My personal preference when doing MF-ing is to do Countess,

Andariel,

Arcane Sanctuary,

Travincal if the character can handle it,

Chaos Sanctuary and Diablo(with or without

River of Flame),

Pindleskin, Eldritch and

Baal(including worldstone keep 2 and 3).
And sometimes randomly some other places just for variation or because they're currently TZs.

I've been farming the arse off

The Countess for ever. I get the odd

Pul rune in there, but mainly anything from

Ith thru to

Fal, and in the greater scheme of things, prolly not doing that badly at all. My toons have all cleared Act 5 Hell, just wish i could get rarer runes (

Mal and higher).
As for upskilling charms, tell me more please. I use a (probably VERY outdated) D2 called The

Arreat Summit and there isn't anything in there about upskilling runes.... but again it's somewhere in the region of 20+ years old so could probably do with an update or 3.
As for not losing gear on Death, didn't know that (or might have forgotten - it's been a long long time since i played with anyone).... might have to come out from my wee rock of comfort and experience the wider D2 community.
As for

Mephisto's Soulstone, ill have a closer look next time i create another toon.

The Arreat Summit is indeed outdated - the game received quite a few patches since D2R release.
However, skill charms are described in this guide, since they were added in LoD: https://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp/i ... arms.shtml

Basically, these are grand charms with +1 to a skill tab (for example, +1 to Sorceress Lightning Skills).
Some skillers are worth a lot, because they also can get a suffix - for example, +1 to lightning that also has +45 to life (perfect roll) is worth multiple high runes (maybe even dozens of them). And even plain skillers are usually priced between

Pul and

Ist.

If you have a bunch of spare perfect gems, you can use recepy "perfect gem x3 + magic item" to reroll any grand charm you got from Hell Terror Zone or from Hell

Baal (these are the only one that can get +45 life suffix mentioned above). Or, if buying lottery tickets is not your cup of tea, you can always sell them - the current price is between 15 and 20 PG for

Ist. Keep in mind that

Perfect Amethyst costs more than other gems (7-8 PA are equal to

Ist).

Nekeyby wrote: 2 months ago

If you have a bunch of spare

Perfect Gems, you can use recepy "perfect gem x3 + magic item" to reroll any grand charm you got from Hell

Terror Zone or from Hell

Baal (these are the only one that can get +45 life suffix mentioned above).

Or any grand charm from A4(and most of A3) in nightmare, as that's where +1 to skills can first appear on GCs.

You're more likely to get skillers from these lower level GCs as they do not include some higher level affixes, but that also means you cannot get the most valuable affixes on them.

So, if you're trying to make skillers for trading, only use the top level ones, but if you want to quickly get more for you own use, getting them from NM A4 and A5 will be faster, as they also have a greater chance to roll as skillers when they drop there.

Of course, almost any skillers are worthwhile trading(except Paladin defensive auras(almost completely worthless), and to a lesser degree Necromancer curses), so rerolling lower ones is not necessarily bad even for trading.

Nekeyby wrote: 2 months ago

the current price is between 15 and 20 PG for

Ist.

20 to 30 more like it. In 5 months i've only seen less than 20 twice, while i've seen 25 and 30 many times.

But overall, 20 is a good baseline to assume.

Barbarian is really weird. I am 86 on mine now, i have pretty good gear. I have access to 2 griefs, and I made a 389 ED EBOTD

Colossus Blade as well.
Grief is just go busted lol. every which way i try to run this in the calculator, dual griefs just wins out. It beats Last Wish, Death, ebotd, anything else in off hand.

I am being stubborn and using my ebotd in my off hand right now for

Frenzy because when i was in high school Breath of the Dying was always a big goal for me, and i found an organic

Zod rune and i'm using that bad boy.


But looking at Death/botd or Death/Last Wish berserker axes etc...just Grief wins out on everything. it's kinda sad

also

Frenzy doesn't auto re-target as well on controller as it does on kb/m but man it's fun running SUPER fast.

Whirlwind also worked really well on controller, ive used a token almost every day just going back and forth and playing both...i'm about to run myself broke LOL.

i found a 14ED 6OS

Phase Blade i kinda want to make Last Wish in one day...but that's a lot to spend just for a trophy weapon that won't even get used.