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 Post subject: Beating 1.7
PostPosted: Mon Mar 20, 2017 1:34 pm 

Joined: Tue Sep 01, 2009 11:50 am
Posts: 130
Upon finishing 1.7 through LoS/Sorrow I'd like to share my opinions.

Firstly, there was alot of complaining about 1.7 from the start.

I personally don't mind mixing the meta. Of course there are some real problem areas and perhaps only meant to experience once. This is normal with change.

Some skills cost too much, but, this is only because players out lvl their gear far too quickly. Being a high level with gear you've found in early normal mode obviously is going to cause mana issues. Later on, with a ton of regen/charms, you don't really notice the mana costs too much for the most part.

I noticed that mobs had alot of life, and so I intended to use that high life against them. My first char I picked was shock web/death sentry sin. Death Sentry is by far the best AoE for clearing mobs, and shock web seems like it is probably the highest dps skill there is against large mobs and alot of bosses. Alternatively, I used inferno trap's low dps for bosses that web's couldn't dps very well like meph or sam.

When I first bought the A2 merc, I noticed two things. First, that prayer was really strong and that defensive aura was really great for tanking mercs. I crafted a topaz amulet and ran prayer myself, since prayer stacks. I decided to use prayer as the most essential aura to use all the time because it really helped to keep my shadow master alive... but, later it simply became so good that I could never not use it. It was like having a pot heal you all the time. Secondly, the aracanna set was really great as well, I eventually learned to upgrade it and put zods in it in norm... I didn't have mana issues any longer even though web costs around 20-30 mana a cast. I was sporting around 80 damage reduction and about 300 mana in norm; aracana was the bis until end game gear... which I didn't start getting until after killing hell baal. Mobs couldn't hurt me and there was no need for a shield. I got to lvl 90 before going into nightmare and ran w/out a shield all the way up to the only difficult boss I had trouble on... which was solo Ancients nightmare and of course later sorrow. I had goreriders, could of used soulmancer sets, and with max fade I had around 2k hp 45% physical res and 130 damage reduction(overkill)... not including what akara rings do.

Ancients seemed nearly impossible to kill when they're together. I don't fully understand what happens, but, when all 3 are together sometimes they would one shot my chars randomly. At first with absurdly high PR/DR and prayer I was able to solo all 3 ancients together with my sin.. but later learned in hell.. to separate them.

When I separated them 1 by 1 through alot of teleport play and using decrep gloves/stick. Not one of them when alone even singed my assassin. I got to A4 hell @ lvl 98 and my char became corrupted. That's a shame. So, I started over again and got to 99 with a new char within a few days. As soon as I got to lvl 98 again, my old sin became uncorrupted somehow... thats a shame too lol. I wasn't solo all the time, because I was board playing alot most of the time.

I noticed a huge exploit when using shadow master and summons. When shadow master is outside of the normal resolution screen, it doesn't take damage properly. So, with the hi res version, I could make the shadow master assist my target from a long distance, and it could tank alot of bosses without taking much damage... and with prayer it stays at max hp often.

When clearing I used the confuse spell on the BO runeword shield. Confuse acts like attract, and would lure ALL the mobs in the vicinity or open map to the confused mobs. Teleport around and I could easily round up all the mobs in one map... The place behind the forge for example would often look like this pic in just in a few casts of web/deathsentry... It was fun actually using the high HP against the mobs. 20fade/20deathsentry/20 shockwebs/20inferno trap/20 shadow master.
Image

How I beat sorrow alone. This fight was extremely difficult. For some reason, even with high phys res/dr, sorrow or the mobs would bring my phys res down to 0 from 45 res. If a skele mage spawned and cursed me with amp, it would drop me to around -40 phys seven with akara's ring buff. This was a huge problem that got me to start using a shield. I even attempted Sorrow with 2 other players, which both didn't last more than 30 seconds. So, I couldn't get rid of the mobs in the room, and I couldn't take much damage... Eurika! I used rising sun's conversion to convert the mobs, and they would tank for me... It worked for awhile... until I realized I no longer had my great prayer amulet. So, after probably the 20th wipe and at best bringing sorrow down to 70ish%. I figured to create a char entirely to beat sorrow.

My second char was strong too... but, not did have the AoE potential that my sin did. I decided that prayer was so strong that I must make a Fist of heavens pally, which also had convert too. I easily got to hell and put hell baal on farm mode as soon as I got there. 20 prayer/20medi/20 hammer/20fist/20shield/1conversion/2 in each elemental res aura.

So, my first attempt at sorrow with my pally was disappointing. I converted all the mobs I could, and killed the ones I couldn't. Heavens was doing decent dps, but, some barbs would have immune to magic buff. Eventually the entire small room was nothing but immune to magic ww barbs that brought my phys res deep into the negatives. I died and went afk hopeless. When I came back I noticed that sorrow's health did not heal like it always did. And, so I realized that as long as there was a player corpse in the room with him, then Sorrow's health wouldn't regen back to full. So, I brought my sin in with my pally still dead in the room, and lathered on the death sentries to clear all the mobs in the room. Everytime a mob would die it would leave an extra corpse even after resurrecting. Eventually my sin would die, and I would res my pally with my sin still dead in the room. Teleport back to sorrow and do the convert strategy... until all the mobs are barbs which cannot be converted. Each time my pally was alive would take about 20-30%% of Sorrow's HP. I cycled between the pally and sin about 3-4 times(the sin to clear barbs, and pally to dps) and sorrow's teleporting ass eventually hit the dirt. The bonus was a 2% chance proc to become immune to damage for 5 seconds(I haven't seen it work).

Land of Shadows was much easier and I had a friend. Death sentry helped with clearing absurdly high HP mobs. If you thought mobs had high HP, these mobs had boss tier HP... but death sentry blew them to pieces, even took huge chunks out of the bosses. With stacking prayer, we we're practically immortal and it took about an hour to clear los of bosses.

Hell item drops are so bad since there are very little hell uniques/sets, most of the drops were rares. Nothing of use other than the charms dropped in LoS. We did sam shortly afterwards, hes not really worth talking about, since its just a long kite/decrep fight... longer than hell baal. Prayer really helped here as ususal.

I understand the reasoning in this patch being that normal being the standard mode and nm/hell being bonuses. But itemization was really horrible this patch with top tier gear being upgraded in norm so easily. It was hell trying to find a item combination that would outdo my arcana set. I never had to use an absorb shield and never needed a shield until way outside of norm. full juvs still drop somehow.starstones are too easy to come by, making upgrading items far too easy. Itemization is disappointing in hell and alot of there are alot of irrelevant stats on items. D2 has always been about diversity to me, not making all the items/builds alike. Is it intentional to make mercs only go up to lvl 98?

Forgot to mention, this was one of the most laggiest season I've experienced. Servers sometimes would many times delay actions for 15-20 seconds..

Legion and parts of halls of Arimyth are currently broken and not playable by any high level characters online. So, I consider this the end of this patch... since there is nothing more to beat.


Last edited by mud on Mon Mar 20, 2017 3:08 pm, edited 5 times in total.

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 Post subject: Re: Beating 1.7
PostPosted: Mon Mar 20, 2017 2:03 pm 

Joined: Tue Sep 01, 2009 11:50 am
Posts: 130
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 Post subject: Re: Beating 1.7
PostPosted: Mon Mar 20, 2017 2:51 pm 
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Joined: Tue Feb 01, 2011 5:48 pm
Posts: 1680
nice job, and thanks for sharing :)

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PureRage-DoD wrote:
Cowards die in shame, I ain't afraid to lose a char, it's not like it's important. :lol:


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