MF and character build questions

iamergo wrote: 1 year ago

No offense, but it sounds so odd to me that somebody could level a character to 93 and still be under the delusion that MF = value. It's not.

You want high value? You do

Travincal. The most expensive and valuable things in the game, especially on non-ladder, are charms and jewels. Bases are second best. Runes, third.

Your sorc can do Trav just fine, you only need to ignore Toorc, but the crème de la crème is the Trav barb. Build one, hunker down and get rich.

Terror zones are a distraction and a new way to level. Nothing more.

Travincal is still king.

I have the absolute WORST luck with Travs because i have done thousands of runs and maybe found 2 things with any worth. I used to play D2 before and on andboff for several years after LOD released and still not much has dropped from them for me. I'll try it again and i do know people run travs a lot but for me at least, it's always been terrible. Not to mention I have the worst luck finding any good charms at all anyways. I usuaply get crap charms and have always had to trade for what I needed lol.

As someone who's been running Trav primarily for last several months and gotten many HRs on a hork barb, best advice I can give is make sure absolutely no cold damage so you can hork all the bodies. No Vamp Gaze,

Raven Frost, Reaper's Toll, or Fortitude allowed if you want to optimize hork chance.

And make sure you max out

Find Potion skill first to get that 20% boost to

Find Item. That change alone could make the difference for you now. Used to be able to

Cap out around 60%

Find Item chance, but now can get up to almost 80%, which causes loot to Rain down like a tropical storm.

Zero187 wrote: 1 year ago

As someone who's been running Trav primarily for last several months and gotten many HRs on a hork barb, best advice I can give is make sure absolutely no cold damage so you can hork all the bodies. No Vamp Gaze,

Raven Frost, Reaper's Toll, or Fortitude allowed if you want to optimize hork chance.

And make sure you max out

Find Potion skill first to get that 20% boost to

Find Item. That change alone could make the difference for you now. Used to be able to

Cap out around 60%

Find Item chance, but now can get up to almost 80%, which causes loot to Rain down like a tropical storm.

How do you make a hork barb? I could give this a try but have never made one, do you have kill gear then switch to mf gear and item find? What skills and gear is needed?

Blindfire187 wrote: 1 year ago

How do you make a hork barb? I could give this a try but have never made one, do you have kill gear then switch to mf gear and item find? What skills and gear is needed?

Check here. This guide is good.

Blindfire187 wrote: 1 year ago

How do you make a hork barb? I could give this a try but have never made one, do you have kill gear then switch to mf gear and item find? What skills and gear is needed?

You pick the damaging skill of your choice (

Whirlwind,

Berserk,

Frenzy or your Merc) and put enough points into

Find Potion and

Find Item to get a decent chance to hork and thats it.
MF is not necessarily a must have as charms and jewels always drop as magic items but you can run MF if you want to go for the uniques that can drop in Trav. If you want to go for bases instead of uniques then you obviously don't wear MF gear.
I run a very budget WW horker with MF - if you want I can show you the build. Or just look up some build on the internet.

Thirodil wrote: 1 year ago

Blindfire187 wrote: 1 year ago

How do you make a hork barb? I could give this a try but have never made one, do you have kill gear then switch to mf gear and item find? What skills and gear is needed?

You pick the damaging skill of your choice (

Whirlwind,

Berserk,

Frenzy or your Merc) and put enough points into

Find Potion and

Find Item to get a decent chance to hork and thats it.
MF is not necessarily a must have as charms and jewels always drop as magic items but you can run MF if you want to go for the uniques that can drop in Trav. If you want to go for bases instead of uniques then you obviously don't wear MF gear.
I run a very budget WW horker with MF - if you want I can show you the build. Or just look up some build on the internet.

Is the build cheapish? I am actually fairly interested in trying this out. My problem is figuring out how the skills need to be set up and what items are actually needed to make it work. If it's expensive then it may be pretty hard for me to make.

Blindfire187 wrote: 1 year ago

Thirodil wrote: 1 year ago

You pick the damaging skill of your choice (

Whirlwind,

Berserk,

Frenzy or your Merc) and put enough points into

Find Potion and

Find Item to get a decent chance to hork and thats it.
MF is not necessarily a must have as charms and jewels always drop as magic items but you can run MF if you want to go for the uniques that can drop in Trav. If you want to go for bases instead of uniques then you obviously don't wear MF gear.
I run a very budget WW horker with MF - if you want I can show you the build. Or just look up some build on the internet.

Is the build cheapish? I am actually fairly interested in trying this out. My problem is figuring out how the skills need to be set up and what items are actually needed to make it work. If it's expensive then it may be pretty hard for me to make.

Yeah I'd say it is cheapish. The more expensive items I use are dual Oath in

Eth

Berserker Axe (could be swords but I like my axes),

Highlord's Wrath (had

The Cat's Eye before for the IAS) and to some extent

Arreat's Face. The rest are a

Skullder's Ire,

Laying of Hands (Damage to Demons really helps here),

Nosferatu's Coil,

Goblin Toe,

Manald Heal (for Manasteal) and

Dwarf Star (Fire Absorb boosts survivability a ton). Baba torch is cheap and anni is easy to obtain with the dclone trackers and the rest of the inventory is mostly filled with Attack Rating charms I found while playing the game. On switch I have dual Ali Baba and I have a ptopaz in skullders and arreats but you don't necessarily need the MF. I don't have a merc because on a budget he won't survive.

Edit: As for skills I run 20 in

Whirlwind, 20 in

Axe Mastery, 20 in

Battle Orders, 20 in

Find Potion, 10 in

Find Item, 1 in

Berserk for the occasional phys immune, 1 in

Iron Skin and 1 in

Natural Resistance. With the prerequisites this build is done at lvl 90 and has a 71% to hork

Blindfire187 wrote: 1 year ago

Is the build cheapish? I am actually fairly interested in trying this out. My problem is figuring out how the skills need to be set up and what items are actually needed to make it work. If it's expensive then it may be pretty hard for me to make.

I recommend skipping the gold find boosting part. While the odds of gambling a decent rare

Circlet or even a Griffon's are not zero, it's mostly just boring and fruitless "click, click, click, check, check, check, sell, sell, sell" ordeal.
My non-ladder lvl 89 dedicated horker wears the following:
Chains of Honor (not required, Smoke will do)
Grief (not required, Oath will do, or I can just give you a spare Grief I have lying around, it's a decent 37/390 roll)

Stormshield socketed with a

Ber (for 51% DR combined with CoH, but the

Ber is, again, not required)

Arreat's Face with a

Cham (Chams are dirt cheap)

Thundergod's Vigor for light absorb

Laying of Hands, best gloves for Trav horker

Infernostride for max fire res

Highlord's Wrath for deadly strike and light res

Dwarf Star for fire absorb
Gold Ring of Performance (+12 to min damage, +94 to AR, can be improved, not required)
Dual

Heart Carver on swap
Four +1 to Warcries GCs
Three max damage/AR GCs
Assorted max damage/AR SCs
Torch + Anni, no

Tome of Town Portal

The skill distribution is:
20

Berserk
20

Howl
20

Battle Orders
20

Find Potion
1

Battle Command
1

Leap
1

Blade Mastery
1

Increased Speed
1

Natural Resistance
Rest into

Find Item
With dual Heart Carvers you're hitting 75% hork chance at lvl 89 (without CoH, it might be 74%)

The gameplay itself looks like this:
0. Speak to Cain to ID stuff in your cube.
1. Run to the WP.
2. Pre-buff in Trav.
3. Five leaps towards the council.
4.

Leap into the crowd. With

Berserk + Grief, they die in one hit, sometimes two. My chance to hit is 86%. But anything above 75% is fine.
5. Swap and hork.
6. Put anything of value into the cube.
7. Save and Exit.

Left click is

Berserk, right click is

Leap.
On swap, right click is

Find Item.

Berserk,

Leap and

Find Item don't have keys assigned to them, because they're always set as default skills on RMB and LMB.
A, S and D are for

Battle Command,

Battle Orders and

Shout, respectively.

Simple, safe, efficient.
Let me know if you decide to build a barb and want that Grief on non-ladder.

The problem with running Trav endlessly is that it's almost as boring as LK. Fair enough if you can stomach it but it's not for me!

Some excellent guidance here. Can't go wrong what's been said and really like Iamergo's

Berserk setup.

Here's my WW Trav gear preference, just to add my 2 cents (bit more expensive though):

Harlequin Crest +

Cham /

Demonhorn's Edge +

Cham

Highlord's Wrath (I've played around with +2 barb ammys, but nothing beats the IAS + Deadly strike from Highlord's)

Enigma (

Teleport is

Key for keeping merc alive)

Arachnid Mesh (extra point towards

Find Item + huge FCR boost beats other belts, IMO)

Any gloves with 20% IAS will do. Many prefer

Laying of Hands for obvious reasons. But I like to switch it up and recently found some rare

Vambraces with 20 IAS / 3% lifesteal / 13% Light Res / 25% MF. Or some GG

Blood Gloves (I've got a pair with 20 IAS / 3 Lifesteal / 3 mana steal / 10 crushing blow / 6 str / 19 life). Or even

Chance Guards, if you're ok sacrificing some IAS for good boost in MF + GF.

War Traveler

Grief mainhand

Offhand doesn't really matter too much, given no cold damage. Could be 6 isted PB,

Lightsabre (cheap), a 2nd Grief, or if you're rich and want the best, I prefer Last Wish.

Fade + CB + MF is too good for me to pass up and I usually equip this for offhand.

And for weapon swap, I've got 2x +3 Warcries Crystal Swords socketed with 2x Ists each. Can be shopped from

Larzuk pretty quickly (maybe 1-2 hours to get both). Extra 120% MF on swap and +6 to warcries. Sometimes switch them with 1 or 2 HOTO's, if I want FCR for faster horking. But not really needed as much with Trav since only a dozen or so corpses.

Rings need some mana steal, life steal, and all res. Attack rating, MF, FCR are nice bonuses, if you can find a GG ring with them. I spend most of my gold on rare rings and have gambled quite a few nice ones over the last few months. Or crafted Blood rings, but that could take a while longer before you get a good one.


And merc can be A2 Might (assuming you don't have Last Wish). I go with A2

Blessed Aim merc since I do have Last Wish.

Defiance aura is also a possibility, if you want the extra defense. I find myself switching back and forth a lot between Insight (in

Eth Great Thesher) and

Arioc's Needle for his weapon. Chains of Honor for his chest and

Helm can be

Stealskull, Guillam's, Kiras or even a

Steel Shade for the Fire Absorb + Life regen. I find myself putting the

Steel Shade on when I do P3

Terror Zone trav for his best survivability.

Hope some of this helps!


EDIT: I don't know if I'd go so far as to say it's anywhere near as boring as LK.. I can do Trav for months on end, but have only managed to stomach the patience for LK about a dozen times in the same timespan. Trav can be challenging and requires quite a bit of work to keep merc alive, whereas LK is just mindless chest popping, IMO.

iamergo wrote: 1 year ago

Blindfire187 wrote: 1 year ago

Is the build cheapish? I am actually fairly interested in trying this out. My problem is figuring out how the skills need to be set up and what items are actually needed to make it work. If it's expensive then it may be pretty hard for me to make.

I recommend skipping the gold find boosting part. While the odds of gambling a decent rare

Circlet or even a Griffon's are not zero, it's mostly just boring and fruitless "click, click, click, check, check, check, sell, sell, sell" ordeal.
My non-ladder lvl 89 dedicated horker wears the following:
Chains of Honor (not required, Smoke will do)
Grief (not required, Oath will do, or I can just give you a spare Grief I have lying around, it's a decent 37/390 roll)

Stormshield socketed with a

Ber (for 51% DR combined with CoH, but the

Ber is, again, not required)

Arreat's Face with a

Cham (Chams are dirt cheap)

Thundergod's Vigor for light absorb

Laying of Hands, best gloves for Trav horker

Infernostride for max fire res

Highlord's Wrath for deadly strike and light res

Dwarf Star for fire absorb
Gold Ring of Performance (+12 to min damage, +94 to AR, can be improved, not required)
Dual

Heart Carver on swap
Four +1 to Warcries GCs
Three max damage/AR GCs
Assorted max damage/AR SCs
Torch + Anni, no

Tome of Town Portal

The skill distribution is:
20

Berserk
20

Howl
20

Battle Orders
20

Find Potion
1

Battle Command
1

Leap
1

Blade Mastery
1

Increased Speed
1

Natural Resistance
Rest into

Find Item
With dual Heart Carvers you're hitting 75% hork chance at lvl 89 (without CoH, it might be 74%)

The gameplay itself looks like this:
0. Speak to Cain to ID stuff in your cube.
1. Run to the WP.
2. Pre-buff in Trav.
3. Five leaps towards the council.
4.

Leap into the crowd. With

Berserk + Grief, they die in one hit, sometimes two. My chance to hit is 86%. But anything above 75% is fine.
5. Swap and hork.
6. Put anything of value into the cube.
7. Save and Exit.

Left click is

Berserk, right click is

Leap.
On swap, right click is

Find Item.

Berserk,

Leap and

Find Item don't have keys assigned to them, because they're always set as default skills on RMB and LMB.
A, S and D are for

Battle Command,

Battle Orders and

Shout, respectively.

Simple, safe, efficient.
Let me know if you decide to build a barb and want that Grief on non-ladder.

I am considering it except was looking at builds that have the Merc kill instead, however with no MF what are you doing the runs for mainly, HR's?

Edit: having watched some builds this looks really fun and could be used in other areas too I think.

Blindfire187 wrote: 1 year ago

I am considering it except was looking at builds that have the Merc kill instead, however with no MF what are you doing the runs for mainly, HR's?
Edit: having watched some builds this looks really fun and could be used in other areas too I think.

Well, the merc build uses the merc to buff your gold find and magic find beyond what you can carry yourself. Even with BotD, it's noticeably slower than you doing the job. And it requires Enigma to reposition the merc between temple levels. If you're not gold- or magic-finding, that build is a waste of time.

Without MF, I farmed charms, jewels and runes with that boy, though I haven't played on non-ladder for a while.

iamergo wrote: 1 year ago

Blindfire187 wrote: 1 year ago

I am considering it except was looking at builds that have the Merc kill instead, however with no MF what are you doing the runs for mainly, HR's?
Edit: having watched some builds this looks really fun and could be used in other areas too I think.

Well, the merc build uses the merc to buff your gold find and magic find beyond what you can carry yourself. Even with BotD, it's noticeably slower than you doing the job. And it requires Enigma to reposition the merc between temple levels. If you're not gold- or magic-finding, that build is a waste of time.

Without MF, I farmed charms, jewels and runes with that boy, though I haven't played on non-ladder for a while.

Thanks for all the advice. I'll probably build this when I find some of the stuff for it as it seems fun. Anywhere other than Travs that it can run? Just to occasionally change things up?

Blindfire187 wrote: 1 year ago

iamergo wrote: 1 year ago

Blindfire187 wrote: 1 year ago

I am considering it except was looking at builds that have the Merc kill instead, however with no MF what are you doing the runs for mainly, HR's?
Edit: having watched some builds this looks really fun and could be used in other areas too I think.

Well, the merc build uses the merc to buff your gold find and magic find beyond what you can carry yourself. Even with BotD, it's noticeably slower than you doing the job. And it requires Enigma to reposition the merc between temple levels. If you're not gold- or magic-finding, that build is a waste of time.

Without MF, I farmed charms, jewels and runes with that boy, though I haven't played on non-ladder for a while.

Thanks for all the advice. I'll probably build this when I find some of the stuff for it as it seems fun. Anywhere other than Travs that it can run? Just to occasionally change things up?

Given how ridiculously tanky the build is (35% physical res with

Stormshield alone; 85% fire and light res; 15% fire absorb (can go 30% with two Dwarf Stars) and 20 flat light absorb), you can farm anything with it. The Pit and

Chaos Sanctuary come to mind, since they buffed the

Leap animation speed and Enigma is not strictly required. You won't be able to seal-pop without it though. Not a big deal either way, 'cause you've got hork. Just keep in mind that it's a sniper build, i.e. you're targeting uniques and champions. This means that you probably want to assign

Howl a hotkey to scatter the surrounding trash.

Now, regarding MF. If you wanna farm outside

Travincal, you'll probably want some uniques to drop here and there. I would replace

Infernostride with

War Traveler and all GCs with 7%MF small charms. I don't recommend going above 250% MF though. People always say "you get diminishing returns after 400%" when in reality you get diminishing returns after 1%. And 250% MF is my go-to compromise amount for non-sorceress characters. Proved by hundreds of hours on my lvl 96 hammerdin/fohdin alone.