D2R Ladder 2

[superarts]

Day 1

Level 35, hell a2

Day 2

• 80 for duriel bug kill
• cleared game at lv 59 to avoid ancient
• solo cow to level 68
• got lucky drop ohm -> 1345, in trist while getting legs
• no good drop from cow at all
• 20 <- 4os long swordc
• got 35 fcr 110 mana -> 300
• 90 <- random spirit sword
• 40 <- poleaxe, 20 <- sol tal
• did normal and nightmare quests
• kept doing cow to lv 72 and got nothing
• occy dropped from cow king -> 1100
• 30 <- 3os helm, topaz'ed
• 70 <- um <- white monarch, 34 fcr spirit
• 40 <- ko+tir, made stealth
• farming milf for a while and got thundergod -> 180

EOD lv 74, 234/334 MF, 73 FCR

What I could have done better

• Classic -> Expansion transition may not worth it. You can save ancient quest, but if you don't have a dedicated team, you may get stuck and progress much slower.
• Pick up any 2os / 3os crap base. When you are looking for Lore / Stealth / Splendid basic, they are not that easy to find.
• Pure blizzard may not be the best ladder starter, you can farm hell Countess early game.

[superarts]

Day 3

• Level 78 now, still have mf chest/helm and crap
• Expect for a Fire Sunder -89% which is just a lem value - always sell unid'ed if you can!
  • Sold with a fire res small charm for um -> magefist + fcr ring + fal
• Crafted some amulets, sold the best for 200 others are pretty useless, all rings are trash
• Did some TZ runs and missed a Sur. Never carry a group in public! Either leech XP or separate farming for loot. Public is the WORST! Level 80 now from TZ cows.
• Unid sunder x 2 -> 400
• 350 <- 87 cold sunder, cold res is at -100% now. Sundering is fun!!
• Leveled all the way to 85, got a few sunder, sold as unid'ed. Absolutely nothing else dropped. At this point, I feel like sunders are like keys.

Yea public game SUCKS!! Someone snapped my gheed. Not as bad as yesterday's Sur but still feels terrible.

[superarts]

Día 4

Comparing to Chinese money grabber tencent's dog GGG's co-owner Chris' stupid "vision", sunder charms are definitely super fun to play with. Imagine you have to run TZ but can't deal with immunity, hammerdin will be the only viable option (I still think FOH is a bait). Anyway, the trade off of sunder is not totally ignorable, as I got one shot by ice nova on death a couple of times. But it's not too bad dependent on your build.

I'm playing pure blizz sorc due to sunder and cold mastery. I regretted yesterday as I felt starting with lightning might be better, but at day 3, cold sunder dropped to Ist with bad roll, which TBH doesn't matter as all as my cold res is -100% regardless lol

So far, a1 and a2 TZs are quite manageable. My merc is using really bad gears, like poleaxe insight and wormskull, and my char is running 200 mf with minus all res. But still I'm doing good in terms of survivability. However at trav I have to give up MF and build all res. Of course public games are much easier, but fk public if you want to loot.

I'm at level 85 and at this point, public baal runs would have 4 times more XP gain. But it's really fun to solo TZ.

[superarts]

First DC walk happened muchfaster than last ladder, luckily I prepared hammerdin just in time. I killed DC with Lv 77 char, and a lifetap wand which was a pain since I need to recast every 50 smite or so. But still got the job done! Sold 2 unid for 1300 and serviced 2 kill for 190.

Sorc is Lv 89 now and paladin is 81 EOD. The thing with TZ is that teleport is mostly mandatory. Being able to skip white mobs is very important with blizzard build, maybe frostball is different?

[superarts]

Level 90 now and interestingly enough, I found nothing worthy at all. Even in some Baal runs nothing dropped for the while 8p party (I wouldn't be able to snap them anyway although I was teleporting and sometimes carrying, but it's public and I'm leveling my hammerdin.) hammerdin is Lv 85 and not heard, got 1k life, 90 all res, 3k hammer damage and totally pwned by CS.

To think about it, if I didn't have that lucky Ohm and occy drop on day 1, I would be pretty miserable. Yea I missed the Sur but still I was really lucky in day 1, like in Ladder 1 I got lucky perfect Mara early game for 2000. But I've been running 200 MF elite hunter for days (300 on offhand if killing bosses), and still nothing worth Um dropped.

To think that I got about no good unique at all but got like 10 sunder while farming elites, sunder drop rate is really high, which is such a good thing because otherwise it's just painful to farm. TZ is fun but unless it also involves bosses, you just don't see lots of uniques at all. It reminds me the days I farmed lv85 area. Just nothing. CS run was much better.

I suspect that before I farm a shako or vipemagi etc. It's easier for me to just go AFK and wait for price to drop. But it's just been 5 days; I'm really happen i started with blizz sorc. Cold mastery is OP and people hyped for build diversity were just wrong. Until everyone has he's enigma, there's no build diversity. Sorc is just OP and ice is the most OP.

[superarts]

A couple of days ago, at 2 weeks, I got lv 93 sorc and 90 paladin. Leveling became much slower and stats boost stopped to matter at all. I'm not pushing to 99, so I've mostly been solo farming TZ, which gives you the worst XP ATM (probably at a similar level running 85 baal with 8 player group, which is by no means bad, just worst comparing with teamed TZ farming), but you can actually get loot by playing solo.

And that's the problem with TZ: you are forced to farm one area, i.e. one kind of farming place at a time, and it lasts an hour. Let's say without TZ, to farm for loot, I could choose from:

• Non-85 Boss runs, i.e. andy/duriel/milf, for OK items like shako, tal ammy, etc.
• CS runs for rune and lv 85 boss drop
• Throne runs for xp and lv 85 boss drop
• Trav for gold and rune
• Cuntess: rune + key
• Summoner + Duriel: key + loot (facet)

Of course, we could also do:

• lv 85 area runs, pit etc.
• throne but skip boss for XP
• LK or other chest runs But these are worse than TZ all the time, so we ignore them.

Back to the loot runs, they are fun in different ways, and it's good to be able to choose from them. But now, we are locked in for only one type, one place at a time, and most of the time it's like previous lv 85 area runs with fixed area. And to be honest, while whose areas are better than pit etc most of the time, and XP is of course amazing, looting is perhaps the worst among all loot runs. Unique and champion mobs don't have loot table so they drop way less uniques than 85 baal, and you don't have dedicated drops like keys. Sunder charms make it up in the first week, but at the 2nd week, unid'ed sunders are cheaper than keys already, and they are way harder to sell.

I'm not complaining about TZ, it's way better than previous farming methods. But if there are multiple areas to be terrorized at the same time, hopefully I'll spend more time playing than surfing reddit while waiting for a more desired TZ area in the next hour.

[superarts]

Didn't play much this week. Got shako (sock'ed ptopaz) from meph, brought occy (sock'ed -4/+5 facet) and 35 spirit shield. The only missing piece is arach and CTA and we are almost done here, and mara would be the last piece which will be the most expensive one. Tal 3 has more res, but we are pushing a bit more damage to comfortably run CS and throne.

[superarts]

Thanks to today's DC walk, I traded 2 unid anni -> 8 mal, then 9 mal -> 2/2/1 CTA. With full inventory with charms, I'm able to get 1800+ life, max'ed all res, 336 MF and 5k blizzard damage. 30 MF can be traded with 0.6k damage with belt swap.

At this point, the next major upgrade would be mara and sorc torch, which I doubt I would get eventually anyway. I'm pretty sure when they become affordable, nothing really would worth farming then. But an easy upgrade would be a better torch, which can easily save 2-3 inventory slots for me. Arach and rare MF res glove would also help a bit, but now I only have 2 um and pgems, facets, sunders, and gheeds are really, really hard to sell at this point.

[superarts]

sorc reached to lv 94. got a tal chest. afk?

[superarts]

This is probably the final form of my sorc. Trang gloves + double SOJ would give me 2 more skill points i.e. more damage, but if I had to choose, andy + fortitude would make more sense. But in the end, it doesn't really matter now. I kill p2 games really quick with about 20k xp per min, both myself and my merc are reasonably tanky (1.8k life with max'ed res), 332 MF, and of course 105 FCR. It doesn't really feel that different with my previous setup but on paper it's much stronger. Also, I farmed my rare glove, boots, and rings myself, and it's very enjoyable to build your own char this way.

For some reasons I wasn't able to trade for a while, and today finally I was able to sell my tal chest, keys, some sunders, 2 unid anni, some p ame ruby etc to buy arach and sorc torch. But most importantly, dumping items to have some free stash room feels really good. I kept too many rare items in case I needed to move res around here and there, but now I think I'm done.

It doesn't really count - with skill shrine ^

[superarts]

搞错了Ladder 3的时间，今天上线发现已经开了一整天了，瞬间丧失兴趣。随便打了打到第三幕14级，觉得没啥意思，这个赛季就放弃吧。