Leaf?
Rune Word “Leaf”. A really good Rune word.
http://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp/items/runewords-original.shtml
I believe the level requirement is only 18 or so.
Oh, nice - I’ll keep my eyes peeled. I’ve only picked up one rune so far, but I’m not very far in act 1 as I quickly put the Switch version down originally waiting for this patch, as playing with number of players 1 is excruciating when you get used to the PC version and having the option. Now that it’s on console as well, it’s been a joy to get back into. I’ll keep on the look out for a staff with two sockets and Tir/Ral. Thanks guys!
Tir+Ral are the real bottlenecks. If you don’t have a 2-socket staff by then, you can buy one from the vendors, it’s fairly common.
If you get stuck on runes just farm countess, you’ll get a ral fairly quickly.
And if you’re playing hardcore, keep an eye out for lightning elites. That lightning can kill you in act 1 if you’re going up the Tower to get the Countess.
Ral rune is level 17.
Drognan in A2 will sell you a two-socket staff. The final staff will retain any skill bonuses on the base staff, so shop accordingly!
(All vendor inventories reset as soon as you leave town via exit or waypoint. You can just jump bank and forth until he offers something decent.)
Runes can be upgraded through the Cube. Three of a kind makes one of the next rank up. Ral is definitely in Normal Countess’s drop table, but you may find yourself cubing it if the RNG isn’t being kind.
Note that MAGIC ITEMS WITH SOCKETS CANNOT BE RUNE WORDED. The item has to be “grey” (aka its name), a socketed item. A “Mechanic’s Quarterstaff of Fart Noises” or whatever, that has two sockets from the Mechanic’s prefix, is NOT ELIGIBLE FOR RUNE WORDS. Consider yourself warned!
Here’s the Leaf I made. I lucked out and found one that already had +3 to Fire Bolt (ends up being +9 now).
Let me know how your Fire Sorc goes. I created a new one for the patch but ended up switching her over to Cold when I got to Nightmare. I was going with Fire Bolt, Fireball and Meteor but was having a hell of a time with fast moving enemies. Frozen Orb is such cheese compared to the Sorc’s fire skills.
I’m now at the point where I have to pick another element so I’m going with Fire, but this time putting points into Hydra. They changed up how Hydra works and it is much more spammable but I’m not sure if it will be a good solo skill.
Hydra
- You can now spawn multiple hydras on controller when holding the button down
- Casting delay removed
- Limited max number of Hydra groups to 6
Lastly, with Hydra, we wanted to improve the gameplay of summoning Hydras to make it easier to use to skill in combat situations. The removal of Casting Delay and the new limitation on max Hydras will match the maximum Hydra count achievable from before the changes, but now players will have a much easier time to summon that amount.
Also, anyone make a Sorc and managed to do Hell difficulty? I’ve actually never made one for fear of not being able to handle the immunes. I’m breezing through Nightmare on Players 3 but I’m afraid I’m going to hit a brick wall when I get to Hell.
Never solo. In my friends’ group, we used to have one friend who always played a Sorceress whenever he could, and one friend who always played a Necro whenever he could, so the Necro got really good at micromanaging curses at just the right times so that the rest of us had an easier time. So he could cast that curse which lowers resists, and most of the time it removed immunities too, I think.
Not like amazingly well but I did at least clear all content, albeit slowly, waaaaay back in the day with Charged Bolt + Hydra. Orb + Meteor is the traditional way to go, but honestly if you can kit out your merc a bit you can do pretty well with mostly Static Field plus something shitty and either Hydra or Orb as your main damage.
I also find Meteor annoying to use, fwiw.
Hydra is a good skill?
Wow, I had no idea.
It’s not top-tier, no, but it’s functional enough. Probably a lot better with the changes.
Thanks for that piece of advice by the way. I always forget to actually look at what the runes do by themselves and get too caught up in what they could do in horadric cube recipes and runewords.
As to Hydra and its viability, I’ll keep you updated as I make my way to Hell difficulty this week. Having respecs is absolutely fantastic but I have to remember that we only get 3 (until you have a character that can start farming bosses in Hell, then you only have to grind them out to get tokens)
Honestly I dunno that there’s many other uses for “naked” runes. Eth i guess in a rare weapon with a socket; the target defense malus is extremely strong because of the way the to-hit calculation works.
Well I got my Sorc through Hell but it was rough (probably always is for a fresh character). I gave up on Hydra pretty early in Act 1 on Hell difficulty and went all in for Meteor/Fireball with Frozen Orb. Maybe a pure Fire Sorc could make Hydra work well but there is a reason the Meteorb Sorc is a classic.
Hydra gains a synergy from Fireball (+3% dmg per level) but not the other way around, so your Fireball stays pretty weak. Meteor on the other hand gains +5% dmg per level from Fireball and Fireball gains +14% dmg per level of Meteor so they work great together (+100% to Meteor, +280% to Fireball when maxed).
They also handle different enemies pretty well, with Fireball for the fast low health enemies (Flayers and whatnot) and Meteor for the slow, big hulks (those tree creatures in Act 3). When there is a mix of cold/fire immunes (which happens too often unfortunately) my Hydras could get stuck on a cold immune whereas Meteor has a nice big AOE and Fireball has precision.
As a side note, here are a couple other great beginner runewords: Lore and Stealth. Lore got me through Hell but I eventually switched out the Stealth for its bigger cousin Smoke.
I would add too that the absolute most difficult fight for her were the Ancients that you have to fight before you can face Baal. They can have dual immunities which makes the fight come down to your merc vs an Ancient and, well, unless you have a lot a great luck finding merc gear the merc is probably gonna lose. You can “reroll” them by popping a town portal, which resets the fight but overall they were nasty in all their incarnations.
Well I’m close to getting through Act 2… on Normal. I forgot how boring Act 2 is. I think it’s been literally 4 months? of trying … I mean I’m still looking for Tal Tasha’s tomb, but yikes. I’d like to get to Act 3.
It’s interesting how both Titan Quest and Torchlight 2 in their own ways addressed specific issues with Diablo 2 and ended up for better or worse with different solutions.
But I can barely play Act 2 for 30 minutes without going to sleep, so I end up doing a lot of sections of the map multiple times as I quit halfway between check points.
I think my problem with a2 is that it’s visually bland. Sewers, desert, tomb, desert, WORST ARPG LEVEL EVER, desert, tomb, space Rome, desert, tomb, Absolute Penis.
Duriel is probably my least favorite boss in any of these games. I hate that he’s just a gear/build check - you can’t do anything but stand in there and soak the hits, so I hope you have the HP to do it!
Weirdly I kind of like, in the old EverQuest grind way, the sense of place that the desert levels have, especially the day night cycle. But the constant dragging on, looking for the notch in the minimap for the next level thing, that’s just … I mean, I’m getting too old :/.
Interesting ARG.
I picked this up on xbox this week with the 50% off sale right now. The audio work they did for this is great.