diablo2 imbueing questions

[pen^2]

some a$$hole told me to hold out till i reach lvl70 to imbue an ornate... guess what, ended up with a crappy 650def rare with a whopping +6 light radius modifier and other meaningless crappola :|
well i did more research later on... others suggested to imbue a weapon at lvl34 and an armor at lvl38.. what are your thoughts?
btw, what matters more for PvP, block rate or def rating? i got to choose between sigon's guard and some 290+ grim (if i ever find one 😀)
my barb is lvl75 and found just 1 soj so far! and he had several magick finding items on him too 🙁 guess he is SOL

 

[IamDavid]

You should always save it right befor you Imbune so that you can just reset the game and try it agin if ya don't like the outcome..

 

[pen^2]

hehe now tell me how to save your game on b-net! i only played single player for 2 days... i mean, whats the point when a sorc in a open b-net game has lvl20 orb and lvl20 cold mastery with lvl20 warmth? 😕

 

[duragezic]

Well the best level to imbue weapons is at level 29. If you want a chance at the +2 skills modifer (and a slightly less chance for highest damage/ar) then it's level 34. I'm not sure about armor though at level 38 you do get the highest +def modifier, chance for some 30%+ resists and chance for of the colossus which is +41-60 to life. You can however get all of those at a level 30 imbue. At level 29 you can't get the Holy modifier (181-200% extra defense) but at level 30 you can so level 30 possibly could be the best time for armor. High level imbues, as you have experienced, usually suck. Some of the highest level modifiers like life regeneration suck and you're better off at lower levels. However, I've imbued so many lances and other good stuff at level 29 and got crap so it's just a gamble.

I'd say block rate is more important. Defense rating isn't that helpful. It depends who you are dueling. If it's a sorceress with FO and high Cold Mastery... well that kind of sucks. You'll need max cold resistant though I don't know how much that would help. You're playing open b-net? People can cheat so easily on that...

And regarding reset the game, what do you mean? You mean imbue, see if it sucks, then unplug your modem? I tried that before on the realms because sometimes when there is bnet problems, I get a connection interrupted. When I get that, I usually lose the last several minutes of playing because that was the last save point. So when I thought about it, why not just imbue, find out it sucks, and unplug my cable modem. Tried it but it doesn't work. I heard there is some rare chance it may work but only if the battlenet servers are really unstable and you get connection interrupted errors.

 

[pen^2]

thx for your suggestions! how much in BC is nuff ya think? i am tryin to give him more increased speed and BO as iron skin, ww and mastery are all maxed out.

nope, I DONT play on open... its a complete joke as you know.
i am basing my PvP only sorc on this guide. the author says cold mastery doesnt help much, which i dont doubt as most high lvl PvP people tell you to have tons of life to spare against sorcs, high resistance or not.

my main enemies are prolly lance barbs and necros cuz i hate em the most... wanna prove em the superiority of a well designed sword/shield barb! i remember when i was @ 63, i was dueling this lvl78 lance guy. unlike other lance dudes at around my lvl, he could never kill me in a single pass of WW... i take it was the shield that was absorbing the hits, so is that associated with block rate or def rating? if def rating is all that twitchthroe could come handy... but another lvl88 guy told me def rating matters more... i guess i am just gonna have to learn by trial and error 🙂

 

[Dark4ng3l]

hmm I have never gotten anything good from imbues. The higher your level is the better your chance for good impued armor. Since it's randow you can get the best item you will ever see or the crappiest. It's all about luck.

 

[pen^2]

Dark4ng3l, i guess you may well be right... my paly found the firsts, tarn and nagel in his first normal game... much better than my barb who is @75 at the moment 🙁

 

[duragezic]

BC is battle commands that increases skill levels right? I don't have a barb or have ever played one but my brother has a level 62 barb. The only war cry he is putting points into is the one that gives +life, +mana, +stamina. I dont think the +skill one is useful unless you were partying a lot with necros.

And yes increased speed is very good for dueling. I had a level 50 necro and I would annoy the hell out of barbs 🙂. But then there was like this level 64 barb and he had so many points into increased speed I couldn't run out of the way anymore. And he has so much life that iron maiden didn't always work (it was maxed and its nerfed in PvP too) and my level 17 bone spirits were strong but I couldn't get enough time to fire many off.

Ok against monsters I think block percent is much more useful than defense rating. The monsters supposedly have a much higher chance to hit you in hell than what it states on the character screen. You mentioned twitchthroe and it's a good armor because it adds +25% to blocking. Except while I do believe defense rating is less important, I think a barb still should have some higher def armor with +resists, hit recovery, etc... I use twitchthroe on my sorceress but that's because I rarely get hit and need the extra blocking since my wall of eyeless shield is only 40% without it.

As far as defense rating against WW... I'm not really sure. Remember, defense rating is only there to determine if you will get hit or not, not to make you take less damage for hits (well maybe ornate has a -5% reduction but I'm not sure). I think during a ww pass, no matter how high def rating you have, one shot will hit you and if you get hit twice you'll probably die. Like you mentioned, the shield could be handy because it can block those attacks. You have a 69% block rating with Sigons and if you used Twitch, then you'll be well over the 75% MAX blocking cap.

Hope that helps.

 

[pen^2]

<< BC is battle commands that increases skill levels right? I don't have a barb or have ever played one but my brother has a level 62 barb. The only war cry he is putting points into is the one that gives +life, +mana, +stamina. I dont think the +skill one is useful unless you were partying a lot with necros.
>>



i have spectated many dueling games, and most high lvl (50+) seem to have Battle command... think about it, +1 to ironskin, +1 to increased speed, +1 to mastery, +1 to ww and all the other crappola like BO and shout... if you put enuff points it lasts a bit longer than half a minute, which is more than enuff to kill... most duels dont last long 🙂



<< And yes increased speed is very good for dueling. I had a level 50 necro and I would annoy the hell out of barbs . But then there was like this level 64 barb and he had so many points into increased speed I couldn't run out of the way anymore. And he has so much life that iron maiden didn't always work (it was maxed and its nerfed in PvP too) and my level 17 bone spirits were strong but I couldn't get enough time to fire many off. >>



iron maiden at lvl20 i think returns 800% but in PvP it is nerfed to 10% effectiveness so its 80% damage returned (i think). well from what i gathered bullspirits are main killing tool for necros, IM only can be a desperation measure cuz you get hurt too, dont you? plus fast barbs wont be hittin bonewalls or golem, just slice you up instead 😛



<< Ok against monsters I think block percent is much more useful than defense rating. The monsters supposedly have a much higher chance to hit you in hell than what it states on the character screen. You mentioned twitchthroe and it's a good armor because it adds +25% to blocking. Except while I do believe defense rating is less important, I think a barb still should have some higher def armor with +resists, hit recovery, etc... I use twitchthroe on my sorceress but that's because I rarely get hit and need the extra blocking since my wall of eyeless shield is only 40% without it. >>



again, for PvP resistance doesnt seem to matter much, maybe except lightning.. chaos sanctuary has all the numbers on how monsters improve for higher difficulties but i am too lazy to look them up.



<< As far as defense rating against WW... I'm not really sure. Remember, defense rating is only there to determine if you will get hit or not, not to make you take less damage for hits (well maybe ornate has a -5% reduction but I'm not sure). I think during a ww pass, no matter how high def rating you have, one shot will hit you and if you get hit twice you'll probably die. Like you mentioned, the shield could be handy because it can block those attacks. You have a 69% block rating with Sigons and if you used Twitch, then you'll be well over the 75% MAX blocking cap. >>



like when i dueleled that dude, my life was close to 1600 with BO, sometimes he was close to gettin me, sometimes near halfway... see, lances have pretty high max damage but low min damage at the same time. my grim shield has only 45% to block but 206 def, maybe that made the difference? well barbs in general need more life than anything so i am stacking up colossus or rare items that give life.. with bo i am pretty close to 2000 now. btw, did you notice a durability bug with 1.04? my shield dur is always lowered to 40/200 whenever i join a new game 🙁

 

[duragezic]

Well I never thought about BC that way. Skill shrines and +skill items don't do anything for masteries, Natural resistance, and possibly other skills I believe. While BC might be good, I'd first have mastery, WW, and increased speed high before that.

I'm not really sure about iron maiden... I got a lot of kills from it though. Bone spirits were great against other classes but it didn't seem like I could fire off enough against barbs. And barbs require like 5+ BS to kill so it was hard using that. Maybe it's a bug but sometimes I'd IM the barb, he'd WW me and I would be left with 1 health. But he would be dead... Also, while he doesn't normally hit the golem, sometimes I can IM him, have him WW toward me, then I'll recast the golem right in front of his WW so he will hit it.

Oh don't know I just tried to get max cold resistance against sorceresses though with CM high it isn't that helpful. Still, it's better than being in the negative.

I could't tell ya for sure about if the shield is blocking well or if the defense matters. Like I said I never had a barb. When you say he couldn't kill you with a single WW, do you mean he didn't hit you or just only hit ya once or something and take only some life? That could be a combination of def and shield block. Defense being that it was simply too high and he didn't hit and block meaning he would have hit except you had that 45% chance to block... Regardless, I'd rather have a higher block shield and get your defense up in other ways such as more Iron skin or the like.

Yes I have seen that durability bug. While my two current characters don't have it, my brother's body armor on his barb does. It's like 65/200 durability and if he repairs, it will cost 30k to repair like 20 of the points. He doesn't repair it now but I don't know what he'll do once the durability runs out.

 

[Zoe]

Yes; imbue a weapon at lvl34 and armor at lvl38. The higher lvl you are, the more modifiers are available to you, many of which are totally undesirable (i.e. causes monster to flee, replenish life).

For pvp, blocking is king. Defense rating pales in comparison to blocking. I'd recommend Sigons. I also heard that having 2 items that give 'fastest hit recovery' is important, but I haven't noticed any quicker recovery using 2 such items, so 1 should be enough.

It's not uncommon for high level pvp barbs to have around 2000 hitpoints using battle orders. Most of them use a sword/shield combo; this helps against paladins, barbarians, and especially amazons.

 

[pen^2]

i think IM+WW=instant death is a feature since the same happens with IM casted by o-knights... i just dont ww on necros. one of the necros i have killled i leaped and he got stunned for an easy bash kill for me 😀 think he had the walls of eyeless too (faster block) so i guess it works on many other necros too, as they, unlike sorcs, dont have teleport.
well i guess its about time to move that sigons from my paly 🙂

anyways thx for your suggestions! i will try my imbue at 29/30 with sorc and 34/38 with paly 🙂

 

[Zoe]

Good luck with those imbues. BTW, iron maiden and thorns does 1/10 the damage to the attacker in pvp mode. For instance, if you hit a pally with lvl20 thorns (1040% damage returned), it will feedback 104%. Obviously, it's still never a good idea to hit them regardless, but it makes sense why the game was designed this way.