enigma advice

k so after weeks of grinding and exhaustive trading i now have the runes required to make an Enigma and im curious whats the best base to use. Im building a FoH paladin if that makes a diff. any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Mage Plate or

Cuirass, get yourself a total of 35 points (or 40, resp.) of strength from

Annihilus +

Hellfire Torch.
This way you get to spend exactly zero points on strength for your build, or any other build for that matter, which has zero use for strength.

If you go with

Cuirass, I'd strongly advise to do it 15%ED only, so you have a chance of getting it over 1000 def, which looks nicer than <1000.

ok thats really good advice. thank you.

Mage Plate for the look, if you ever give a

Cuirass to a barb he ll look like he forgot his pants at home

I have gone

Mage Plate myself for my necro, but some people prefer Elite bases. There are several discussions in the Enigma runeword page itself to give you more input (click on the word itself in this post)

If you never want to trade it ever, go for any piece of gear that you like aesthetically. There is no price on looking badass and stylish, in my opinion.

The safest bet for trading is always

Mage Plate/

Archon Plate base.

forums/d2r-armor-appearance-guide-t8650.html
You can buy the normal version from A1 normal

Charsi to double check the look.
Usually, people choose among Light Weight armors.

Archon Plate is the highest rank armor that won't take a hit on your run/walk speed. However having the Enigma that may be a mute thing to consider since you can

Teleport.

Personal opinion of course, but I was never a fan of the Light/Mage/

Archon Plate look on Necros, with the exposed neckline. Makes some helmets look weird.

Much prefer the appearance of

Field Plate or

Breast Plate.

Breast Plate/

Cuirass/

Great Hauberk are the best looking on necro imo, but they're just ugly on any other char

I quite like the

Great Hauberk on a sorc, and dislike the

Archon Plate for that matter, but that's all personal preference...

I like to use

Mage Plate for the low Str requirement and also for the looks plus good defense (use one with at least 250 def to get guaranteed 1000 def out of Enigma).

It's also the most sought after base because of that reason - and along with

Archon Plate for the best looks of it, generally for most if not all classes imo.

Enigma get the best bonus out of 15% ed superior armor. but bases that are best are

Archon Plate,

Mage Plate,

Dusk Shroud, wyrmskin.

StarTempler wrote: 2 years ago

Enigma get the best bonus out of 15% ed superior armor. but bases that are best are

Archon Plate,

Mage Plate,

Dusk Shroud, wyrmskin.

15% enhanced defense bonus is always the same, on any kind of armor or runeword, it only adds the 15% of the base item native defense (the max possible of that given item), the 750/775 defense added by Enigma doesn't benefit of the 15% enhanced defense. Especially on

Mage Plate, the enhanced defense of a superior base gives such a poor defense bonus which is really not that relevant and is not really worth the quite significant increase in repair cost of the armor.

I recently started runewording in perfect, non superior bases after astronomical repair costs on a 15ed

Dusk Shroud Fortitude I made for ubers and paladin, but barbarian was temporarily using. Repair costs are not so bad with 15 ed

Mage Plate, but just fyi. It should be less of a problem as a caster and not much of a problem if you do regular trav runs.

Steccothal wrote: 2 years ago

StarTempler wrote: 2 years ago

Enigma get the best bonus out of 15% ed superior armor. but bases that are best are

Archon Plate,

Mage Plate,

Dusk Shroud, wyrmskin.

15% enhanced defense bonus is always the same, on any kind of armor or runeword, it only adds the 15% of the base item native defense (the max possible of that given item), the 750/775 defense added by Enigma doesn't benefit of the 15% enhanced defense. Especially on

Mage Plate, the enhanced defense of a superior base gives such a poor defense bonus which is really not that relevant and is not really worth the quite significant increase in repair cost of the armor.

thats fine. ill still stick with my 14%

Dusk Shroud over a normal

Mage Plate.

StarTempler wrote: 2 years ago

Steccothal wrote: 2 years ago

StarTempler wrote: 2 years ago

Enigma get the best bonus out of 15% ed superior armor. but bases that are best are

Archon Plate,

Mage Plate,

Dusk Shroud, wyrmskin.

15% enhanced defense bonus is always the same, on any kind of armor or runeword, it only adds the 15% of the base item native defense (the max possible of that given item), the 750/775 defense added by Enigma doesn't benefit of the 15% enhanced defense. Especially on

Mage Plate, the enhanced defense of a superior base gives such a poor defense bonus which is really not that relevant and is not really worth the quite significant increase in repair cost of the armor.

thats fine. ill still stick with my 14%

Dusk Shroud over a normal

Mage Plate.

Don't get me wrong, i use superior bases for some armors, but with elite items like the

Dusk Shroud you mentioned. There the superoir bonus is more significant since the base value on which is calculated is considerably higher and it can make sense to use such a base. But in

Mage Plate the 40ish def point you'd gain are more a minmax thing rather than a real bonus, coming with a real higher repair cost tho, so it is a very debatable benefit

You can always repair an armor by cubing it with a

Ral. In that case, the 60 dura

Mage Plate or

Archon Plate has a clear advantage over the 20 dura

Dusk Shroud.

the odds of you breaking a

Dusk Shroud without repairing first just comes down to laziness imo.

Banjo wrote: 2 years ago

k so after weeks of grinding and exhaustive trading i now have the runes required to make an Enigma and im curious whats the best base to use. Im building a FoH paladin if that makes a diff. any advice would be greatly appreciated.

467 non sup

Dusk Shroud non sup

Cuirass 202 or 470

Wyrmhide for resale value, if it rolls 775 on a perfet base non sup or 15ed doesnt matter as long as base defence is max PvPers will pay alot for it, same goes for 15ed and 15ed Archon plates make sure the base is perfect defence before you roll if you wan't it to have the potential for resale value if it rolls good.

It does not matter what base you chose as long as you think it looks good but if you wan't to retrade it later go for a good base with max defence on non sup ones and not like a 3ed base or something like

Sacred Armor that nobody want's.