Pretty sure I've finally roped the demon I'm taking to meet the Colossals...

varangium wrote: 1 day ago

FerociousTerrier wrote: 1 day ago

varangium wrote: 1 day ago

But when I wear level 8 aura Flickering Flame on myself or my merc it doesn't make my demon show as immune to fire... I'm just wondering why it works for you, but not me.

And separately why it would work at all for a demon that already has lightning and cold immune - immunities are supposed to be capped at 2 max, so FF should only take the demon up to 95%. My demon isn't a unique, maybe there is some bug / difference in the mechanics.

I thought that monsters cannot *roll* a third immunity unless innately immune (e.g., megademons), but that external sources such as auras could give them extra immunity. But I could ve wrong.

Do you have a sunder in your inventory?

Good catch - yes I do.

I tried removing it, exiting, creating a new game, and still no "immune to fire". But then I exited the town, and I did get "immune to fire". Apparently it's both the sunder AND that the

Holy Fire aura doesn't apply in town. So mystery solved.

Unfortunately, contrary to what I've read elsewhere, the sunder effects did not seem fixed based on whether the sunder was in my inventory when the game was created. If I put the sunder back in my inventory and left town again, the fire immunity disappeared. So I can only get (107%-70% = +37%) net benefit from the combo of the two.

Lancer has 25% base fire res, + 20% for spectral hit = 45%, plus 37% net on FF/sunder = 82%. So if I bound a unique lancer that had magic resistant (+40% fire res), maybe that could get me "immune to fire". Of course in theory the

Conviction aura from ancients should then break it, but it sounds like that isn't happening?

Ahh yes. If you were testing in town, the auras don’t apply until you go out into the field

FerociousTerrier wrote: 1 day ago

varangium wrote: 1 day ago

FerociousTerrier wrote: 1 day ago

I thought that monsters cannot *roll* a third immunity unless innately immune (e.g., megademons), but that external sources such as auras could give them extra immunity. But I could ve wrong.

Do you have a sunder in your inventory?

Good catch - yes I do.

I tried removing it, exiting, creating a new game, and still no "immune to fire". But then I exited the town, and I did get "immune to fire". Apparently it's both the sunder AND that the

Holy Fire aura doesn't apply in town. So mystery solved.

Unfortunately, contrary to what I've read elsewhere, the sunder effects did not seem fixed based on whether the sunder was in my inventory when the game was created. If I put the sunder back in my inventory and left town again, the fire immunity disappeared. So I can only get (107%-70% = +37%) net benefit from the combo of the two.

Lancer has 25% base fire res, + 20% for spectral hit = 45%, plus 37% net on FF/sunder = 82%. So if I bound a unique lancer that had magic resistant (+40% fire res), maybe that could get me "immune to fire". Of course in theory the

Conviction aura from ancients should then break it, but it sounds like that isn't happening?

Do you need to keep the sunder in your inventory? Only

Talic is immune to fire (I think). Are you trying to kill him last? Could kill the other two with no sunder, add the sunder and then kill

Talic.

Lancer is a bit squishy without Stone Skin. If you find a Stone Skin + Magic Resistant one, jackpot!

Correcting myself, I see you've got a Stone Skin Lancer. I'm hunting for a Stone Skin + Cold Enchanted Lancer to get both cold and lightning immune + fire immune after

Tainted/FF. Good set of resists there!

I've found I barely need Cursed now. The demon does massive damage and I've got fully synergized

Abyss/Chains. Helps with Heralds, of course, but not 100% necessary. For Ubers/Ancients, I will use Lifetap anyway.

FerociousTerrier wrote: 1 day ago

FerociousTerrier wrote: 1 day ago

varangium wrote: 1 day ago

Good catch - yes I do.

I tried removing it, exiting, creating a new game, and still no "immune to fire". But then I exited the town, and I did get "immune to fire". Apparently it's both the sunder AND that the

Holy Fire aura doesn't apply in town. So mystery solved.

Unfortunately, contrary to what I've read elsewhere, the sunder effects did not seem fixed based on whether the sunder was in my inventory when the game was created. If I put the sunder back in my inventory and left town again, the fire immunity disappeared. So I can only get (107%-70% = +37%) net benefit from the combo of the two.

Lancer has 25% base fire res, + 20% for spectral hit = 45%, plus 37% net on FF/sunder = 82%. So if I bound a unique lancer that had magic resistant (+40% fire res), maybe that could get me "immune to fire". Of course in theory the

Conviction aura from ancients should then break it, but it sounds like that isn't happening?

Do you need to keep the sunder in your inventory? Only

Talic is immune to fire (I think). Are you trying to kill him last? Could kill the other two with no sunder, add the sunder and then kill

Talic.

Lancer is a bit squishy without Stone Skin. If you find a Stone Skin + Magic Resistant one, jackpot!

Correcting myself, I see you've got a Stone Skin Lancer. I'm hunting for a Stone Skin + Cold Enchanted Lancer to get both cold and lightning immune + fire immune after

Tainted/FF. Good set of resists there!

I've found I barely need Cursed now. The demon does massive damage and I've got fully synergized

Abyss/Chains. Helps with Heralds, of course, but not 100% necessary. For Ubers/Ancients, I will use Lifetap anyway.

Yeah I just use a regular lancer because if she dies or I want to respec it’s low stress to rebind her. All I need is a Stone skin

Terror zone and I’m good. Well I have to bind about 4 times since I want the

Vigor aura and 1 in 4 chance.

At some point I may try going for a unique to battle the ancients.

Sounds like I would need Stone Skin + Cold Enchanted + Magic Resistant + (ideally) Cursed, then with my preferred

Vigor aura.

Don’t know if I can deal with the odds of finding that combo lol.

varangium wrote: 1 day ago

FerociousTerrier wrote: 1 day ago

FerociousTerrier wrote: 1 day ago

Do you need to keep the sunder in your inventory? Only

Talic is immune to fire (I think). Are you trying to kill him last? Could kill the other two with no sunder, add the sunder and then kill

Talic.

Lancer is a bit squishy without Stone Skin. If you find a Stone Skin + Magic Resistant one, jackpot!

Correcting myself, I see you've got a Stone Skin Lancer. I'm hunting for a Stone Skin + Cold Enchanted Lancer to get both cold and lightning immune + fire immune after

Tainted/FF. Good set of resists there!

I've found I barely need Cursed now. The demon does massive damage and I've got fully synergized

Abyss/Chains. Helps with Heralds, of course, but not 100% necessary. For Ubers/Ancients, I will use Lifetap anyway.

Yeah I just use a regular lancer because if she dies or I want to respec it’s low stress to rebind her. All I need is a Stone skin

Terror zone and I’m good. Well I have to bind about 4 times since I want the

Vigor aura and 1 in 4 chance.

At some point I may try going for a unique to battle the ancients.

Sounds like I would need Stone Skin + Cold Enchanted + Magic Resistant + (ideally) Cursed, then with my preferred

Vigor aura.

Don’t know if I can deal with the odds of finding that combo lol.

It can take a looong time. I try to hit mid-high player count, and often the Lancer zones are already cleared or not spawning Lancers. If I didn't enjoy the hunt, I'd burn out quick.

varangium wrote: 1 day ago

Stone Skin + Cold Enchanted + Magic Resistant + (ideally) Cursed

Unique mobs only get 3 random mods though.

If you want one with 4 mods you need to use a super unique* with two or more of your desired mods as fixed mods - the only demon super uniques with any two of those you listed are

Pitspawn Fouldog and

Toorc Icefist.

* super uniques get 1-3 fixed mods + 2 random mods on Hell

ShadowHeart wrote: 20 hours ago

varangium wrote: 1 day ago

Stone Skin + Cold Enchanted + Magic Resistant + (ideally) Cursed

Unique mobs only get 3 random mods though.

If you want one with 4 mods you need to use a super unique* with two or more of your desired mods as fixed mods - the only demon super uniques with any two of those you listed are

Pitspawn Fouldog and

Toorc Icefist.

* super uniques get 1-3 fixed mods + 2 random mods on Hell

Neither of which are good demons to bind, so better to look for pack leaders with the right combo of affixes or a useful demon like Lister with 2 of the desired affixes.

FerociousTerrier wrote: 10 hours ago

ShadowHeart wrote: 20 hours ago

varangium wrote: 1 day ago

Stone Skin + Cold Enchanted + Magic Resistant + (ideally) Cursed

Unique mobs only get 3 random mods though.

If you want one with 4 mods you need to use a super unique* with two or more of your desired mods as fixed mods - the only demon super uniques with any two of those you listed are

Pitspawn Fouldog and

Toorc Icefist.

* super uniques get 1-3 fixed mods + 2 random mods on Hell

Neither of which are good demons to bind, so better to look for pack leaders with the right combo of affixes or a useful demon like Lister with 2 of the desired affixes.

Is

Smite what gives Lister the Edge over Heph? I've yet to test drive him but if my current Heph eats it on the summit I'll give him a go

Rhaegar86 wrote: 9 hours ago

FerociousTerrier wrote: 10 hours ago

ShadowHeart wrote: 20 hours ago

Unique mobs only get 3 random mods though.

If you want one with 4 mods you need to use a super unique* with two or more of your desired mods as fixed mods - the only demon super uniques with any two of those you listed are

Pitspawn Fouldog and

Toorc Icefist.

* super uniques get 1-3 fixed mods + 2 random mods on Hell

Neither of which are good demons to bind, so better to look for pack leaders with the right combo of affixes or a useful demon like Lister with 2 of the desired affixes.

Is

Smite what gives Lister the Edge over Heph? I've yet to test drive him but if my current Heph eats it on the summit I'll give him a go

Pros and Cons to Lister. He has

Smite, which does a crazy amount of aggro (although, I've never had problems with taking aggro off my demons). He has native 95% poison resist. Native fire immunity. 50% cold, 33% lighning (meh) and 50% physical.

Pro+Con: he is a large demon, which means he gets stuck on you during

Teleport, just like Urdars do. That can be a con if you want him moving freely. It can be a major pro if you are trying to avoid missiles because they hit him instead of you if non-piercing.

Con: he only spawns with 2 useful affixes, not three, because he always spawns with Spectral Hit as one of them. Your best bets with him are either Cursed + Stone Skin (phys immune, but leaves lightning at only 53%), cursed + lightning enchanted (lightning immune and more cursed spread, but only 50% physical) or max survival: Stone Skin + Magic Resistant (in THAT order) which gives physical immune + 70% cold + 140 fire + 93% lightning--Magic Resistant first creates cold immunity which then causes Stone skin to not apply (stays 50%).

Heph is in the same boat because he is aura enchanted, wasting an affix, although can be useful if you find 2 affixes you want AND he already has an auta you want (e.g.,

Fanaticism). His base resists are a bit worse than Lister: 45 cold, 75 fire, 45 lightning, 50 physical and 0 poison, but effectively he ends up nesrly identical to Lister if you get physical and lightning immune with 65% cold resist instead of the 70% Lister gets (ignoring the massive difference in poison).

Some people don't like Lister's knockback effect either. Think it boils down to personal preference there instead of min/maxing.

FerociousTerrier wrote: 10 hours ago

ShadowHeart wrote: 20 hours ago

varangium wrote: 1 day ago

Stone Skin + Cold Enchanted + Magic Resistant + (ideally) Cursed

Unique mobs only get 3 random mods though.

If you want one with 4 mods you need to use a super unique* with two or more of your desired mods as fixed mods - the only demon super uniques with any two of those you listed are

Pitspawn Fouldog and

Toorc Icefist.

* super uniques get 1-3 fixed mods + 2 random mods on Hell

Neither of which are good demons to bind, so better to look for pack leaders with the right combo of affixes or a useful demon like Lister with 2 of the desired affixes.

Agree. Although I just realized looking at the Lancer stats that I shouldn't actually need Cold Enchanted + Magic Resistant. Base cold res of a lancer is 50 per this site, so if I get magic resistant, I should have 50+20% spectral hit res + 40% magic resistant res = 110% cold res.

And then fire will be 25%+20%+40% = 85% before sunder and FF, and 122% after.

And physical will be 33% + 50% Stone skin = 83%.

So that means I need magic res + Stone skin (and ideally cursed). By my calcs (14 options that need to hit twice across 3 chances), chance of magic res + Stone skin is ~3% of uniques and getting all 3 is ~0.3%. Plus then I got to divide by 4 for

Vigor aura. But theoretically possible anyways.

Also, regarding Ancient's 100%

Conviction aura breaking the fire immunity, it's possible the reason it doesn't/won't would be if it receives the same 1/5 nerf vs. immunities, in which case the 122% would still just barely squeak by and get reduced to 102%. If this is how it operates, the 110% cold res in my plan would get reduced to 90% unfortunately.

I wish bosses kept the TZ affix as one of their attributes, it would make hunting for the perfect combo 10x easier.

varangium wrote: 4 hours ago

FerociousTerrier wrote: 10 hours ago

ShadowHeart wrote: 20 hours ago

Unique mobs only get 3 random mods though.

If you want one with 4 mods you need to use a super unique* with two or more of your desired mods as fixed mods - the only demon super uniques with any two of those you listed are

Pitspawn Fouldog and

Toorc Icefist.

* super uniques get 1-3 fixed mods + 2 random mods on Hell

Neither of which are good demons to bind, so better to look for pack leaders with the right combo of affixes or a useful demon like Lister with 2 of the desired affixes.

Agree. Although I just realized looking at the Lancer stats that I shouldn't actually need Cold Enchanted + Magic Resistant. Base cold res of a lancer is 50 per this site, so if I get magic resistant, I should have 50+20% spectral hit res + 40% magic resistant res = 110% cold res.

And then fire will be 25%+20%+40% = 85% before sunder and FF, and 122% after.

And physical will be 33% + 50% Stone skin = 83%.

So that means I need magic res + Stone skin (and ideally cursed). By my calcs (14 options that need to hit twice across 3 chances), chance of magic res + Stone skin is ~3% of uniques and getting all 3 is ~0.3%. Plus then I got to divide by 4 for

Vigor aura. But theoretically possible anyways.

Also, regarding Ancient's 100%

Conviction aura breaking the fire immunity, it's possible the reason it doesn't/won't would be if it receives the same 1/5 nerf vs. immunities, in which case the 122% would still just barely squeak by and get reduced to 102%. If this is how it operates, the 110% cold res in my plan would get reduced to 90% unfortunately.

I wish bosses kept the TZ affix as one of their attributes, it would make hunting for the perfect combo 10x easier.

Unfortunately, no. The only way that works is if Spectral Hit is one of the Lancers random affixes and it comes BEFORE Magic Resistant, because Spectral Hit runs a check and only applies the resistance bonus if the current resist is less than 75%. So if you have Magic Resistant, CR becomes 90% and then Spectral Hit does not apply. If Spectral Hit comes first, you get 70% CR and then Magic Resist applies the additional 40% because it only checks that resists are lower than 100% (which is why it won't bump LR from 100% to 140%).

MR + Stone Skin + Cursed is a good roll, but it shouldn't give you two immunities.

I also suspect that the ancients

Conviction follows the same mechanics with immunities.

FerociousTerrier wrote: 1 hour ago

varangium wrote: 4 hours ago

FerociousTerrier wrote: 10 hours ago

Neither of which are good demons to bind, so better to look for pack leaders with the right combo of affixes or a useful demon like Lister with 2 of the desired affixes.

Agree. Although I just realized looking at the Lancer stats that I shouldn't actually need Cold Enchanted + Magic Resistant. Base cold res of a lancer is 50 per this site, so if I get magic resistant, I should have 50+20% spectral hit res + 40% magic resistant res = 110% cold res.

And then fire will be 25%+20%+40% = 85% before sunder and FF, and 122% after.

And physical will be 33% + 50% Stone skin = 83%.

So that means I need magic res + Stone skin (and ideally cursed). By my calcs (14 options that need to hit twice across 3 chances), chance of magic res + Stone skin is ~3% of uniques and getting all 3 is ~0.3%. Plus then I got to divide by 4 for

Vigor aura. But theoretically possible anyways.

Also, regarding Ancient's 100%

Conviction aura breaking the fire immunity, it's possible the reason it doesn't/won't would be if it receives the same 1/5 nerf vs. immunities, in which case the 122% would still just barely squeak by and get reduced to 102%. If this is how it operates, the 110% cold res in my plan would get reduced to 90% unfortunately.

I wish bosses kept the TZ affix as one of their attributes, it would make hunting for the perfect combo 10x easier.

Unfortunately, no. The only way that works is if Spectral Hit is one of the Lancers random affixes and it comes BEFORE Magic Resistant, because Spectral Hit runs a check and only applies the resistance bonus if the current resist is less than 75%. So if you have Magic Resistant, CR becomes 90% and then Spectral Hit does not apply. If Spectral Hit comes first, you get 70% CR and then Magic Resist applies the additional 40% because it only checks that resists are lower than 100% (which is why it won't bump LR from 100% to 140%).

MR + Stone Skin + Cursed is a good roll, but it shouldn't give you two immunities.

I also suspect that the ancients

Conviction follows the same mechanics with immunities.

Dang