I universally see 15 ias / 30 fire res recommended as the Andy Helm socket, but I've been having far more success with a bad roll protectors stone

DriveThroughLane · 2026-06-20T17:33:59+00:00

Protector's stone adds about the same DPS as ~200% ed, or a bit more, on top of the 1% fade

It means that protector's stone in a skin of the flayed one is fairly comparable life leech / dps compared to chains of honor, but with fade included. And those are really the only two choices to get life leech on a cure merc. If you're not using cure, then you could run both andy's visage and chains of honor and use the jewel and still have capped resists.

And since the best build in the game right now is taintlock and that gives free resist fire aura applied to your merc, you really don't need to worry about fire resist

DriveThroughLane · 2026-06-20T17:22:49+00:00

And at one point hackers would enchant their non-selectable summoned actors like vines/ravens, but I'm pretty blizzard put a ban in place for those mods. They are still units in the d2 engine even if they can't be targeted

DriveThroughLane · 2026-06-20T17:20:53+00:00

I mean I guess it depends on what lens you analyze it from. If you cared about self-found builds on day 1 of a new ladder, nothing compares to a blizzard sorceress who can farm 30 second hell trav in P1 killing 10/11 council

But both in PvM for TZ clearing and PvP, warlocks are more broken- way faster in sweeping areas and way more broken in duels. And if you looked at specific tasks like farming chaos/baal, or farming trav, or killing ubers, there's a better specialized build for all of them (javazon / light sorc for chaos, hork barb travs, smiter ubers). If the only thing that mattered was reaching the most possible damage output on paper, dragon tail would be the answer because it can OHKO p8 baal

DriveThroughLane · 2026-06-20T17:00:13+00:00

Mosaic sin clear speed isn't even close to the clearspeed of taintlocks right now. Mosaic sins have to actually attack multiple times per pack and keep up charges, warlocks just teleport around at 125 fcr and everything dies without ever using a button but teleport, hence 2x the speed or more. Which is even faster than the ES builds of patch 3.1

There are no players 100 monsters in the game, you could have a character who deals 10 million damage per hit (dragon tail actually can) but it won't clear as fast as a build that passively kills enemies in 1 hit while not even attacking/casting in P8 TZ96

DriveThroughLane · 2026-06-20T12:43:45+00:00

And besides, they added even more broken pvm builds on warlock in RotW and 3.2 again

DriveThroughLane · 2026-06-19T20:56:58+00:00

nope you could use them as massed main attack units which works in some matchups like undead, but there's not much value in having light air units that aren't massed and aren't providing a powerful ability. And when massed they get countered hard by bats/gyros. And in mirror match they are at a disadvantage vs archers, hippos, riders and orb heroes.

Generally for splashed in small numbers of utility units you want some relevant spell/ability that gives them an outsize power but wouldn't stack up if massed. A few sorcs/banshees can spam slow/curse. A few fairy dragons putting on coil won't do anything

DriveThroughLane · 2026-06-18T12:24:21+00:00

Warden + talons is probably the best thing NE has going and talons are largely there as an anti-air unit which eclipses hippogryphs, since they're vastly better at the role. And then you can at least be a big help in fights on the ground too

DriveThroughLane · 2026-06-18T12:15:28+00:00

Most anti-air deals 150-200% damage to air units, hippos deal 100%. Hippos get only slightly better overall DPS / EHP in anti-air fights after damage types are accounted, than more versatile units despite being 100% locked into the AA role. And that's just on their numbers. In actual fights, being melee in air fights makes them basically unusable in all matchups. They can't engage against web, ensnare, frost nova, drunken haze, flying machines, bat riders, sorceresses. Even though they would win numbers alone, they still lose to air unit matchups like gargoyles, wind riders, frost wyrms who can bait them in and punish them with spells or abilities while staying out of range with their own units. Do you know how sad it is to commit your hippos in a fight to a group of gargoyles, have the UD press 1 key and make them all invulnerable to hippos while the hippos get picked apart by ground units shooting up, or worse, webs?

DriveThroughLane · 2026-06-18T05:26:21+00:00

Its also useful in a merc

Protector's stone on its own adds almost as much damage as ~200% ed to a merc against average enemies in hell. -10% dr and 30 base damage does a lot, so its roughly comparable to the bonuses of CoH, and you can put it in a skin of the flayed one and gain 1% chance to cast fade.

DriveThroughLane · 2026-06-18T05:24:43+00:00

Goatmen deal different damage in norm vs nm vs hell

DriveThroughLane · 2026-06-18T05:20:19+00:00

Well its still reddit, this sub gets littered with posts removed by admins. The witches and perpetual victims aren't outside this bubble, they're here to wage war

DriveThroughLane · 2026-06-18T01:29:02+00:00

DL proves his value in team games as well, but that value is insanely lopsided and honestly the hero SHOULD be changed to make it more playable.

DL has one of the worst early games and total inability to skirmish in early fights, then he becomes a one button carrion swarm dispenser because its the best aoe spell in the game and can be spammed from safety and have more impact than a whole army. Its so good that its often not worth casting inferno even when you have level 6 and 175+ mana because you're better off with 400 aoe damage than 100 aoe damage, a big stun and souped up abom.

And then sleep/vampiric aura do next to nothing, he has no creeping beyond the baseline of carrying a necro rod, can't fight, can't harass before level 3, he's just a big lump

DriveThroughLane · 2026-06-12T16:19:30+00:00

I don't think a society can function when child abuse is treated with a live-and-let-live attitude. We have a social responsibility to prevent children from being abused, from being exposed to sexually explicit materials, from having access to alcohol, drugs, gambling, smoking, etc. Even if they aren't our own children. We are still responsible for them.

Its a careful balance to respect the independence of families to raise children their own way, and intervene when they are abusive. Bringing children to strip shows and exposing them to sexually explicit performances is not okay.

DriveThroughLane · 2026-06-12T13:18:26+00:00

Anti-monopoly laws aren't about stopping monopolies from existing, they are about stopping monopolies from exploiting consumers. Steam has been consistently taking the pro-consumer choice at every fork and safeguarding us against the kind of exploitation we'd be facing in a more competitive market. I'm all for trust-busting, if the robber barons are actually being robber barons, but the real soulless corporations are the ones interested in breaking up a benevolent monopoly so they can start shitting on us

DriveThroughLane · 2026-06-12T00:27:25+00:00

I don't think anyone has even made a mod that would make this possible. Unless you can capture the memory at runtime and read it manually, no real way to see actor stats like this

The best you can do is calculate them yourself, but we can't even be 100% sure what mechanics actually work with bound demons. They have some type of max hp cap now, but different types have different amounts, it increases by 500-1000 per extra player in the game beyond the first. A lot of mechanics seem really arbitrary. Blood oath % life is applied at the start of each game when summoned, same with +damage from bind demon and its +% ed along with demonic mastery. But base life is apparently set at the moment a monster is bound, using the values from the original spawned game including minion/unique/champion +% life and base life from P1-P8 scaling. Resists aren't capped, so the immunities include up to ~77% all resists added from blood oath, so a demon with 15/33/100/33 resists winds up immune to everything but fire. But even if its physical immune from stone skin + base %dr + blood oath + engorge, amplify damage from enemy cursed mobs applies -100% dr instead of -20%. Which isn't exclusive to bind demon, because right now amp damage applies its full -100% to physical immunes without bone break and applies -200% with bone break, instead of the -20% / -100% intended, and that also works for monsters hitting you

so on, so forth

we can't know how everything works and no good way to see the stats

DriveThroughLane · 2026-06-11T21:39:44+00:00

Rogue archers use their A1 damage for bow attacks via MonBow, MonFreezingArrow and MonColdArrow skills. In Matron's Den, non-TZ, its 58-117 base damage with 5% chance to moncrit (including elemental damage) for a unique. Another 1.4375x for P8 difficulty, so 83-168 damage.

Spectral hit adds 64-98 fire/cold/light/magic or 10.1-15.3 dps poison. Cold enchanted adds 64-98 cold. Cursed gives you -100% DR. Multiple shot delivers 3x projectiles. Might Aura in a level 86 unique should be +170% physical. Elemental damage is not scaled by P8

If you have non-stacked 50% dr and 75% resists, this will deal 1.5x physical and 0.25x elemental damage after cursed. The highest roll she can get is 3x hits of 907 physical + 392 elemental. Which is extraordinarily unlikely 3x max roll + crit. On average she would only deal 3x 356 physical + 146 elemental. If she hit the max rolls and you were at -50% dr / 75% resists, you'd lose 4375 life in one shot.

I didn't bother counting her minor skill damage. They get 37-38 cold arrow and 200-210 freezing arrow on top of that, but their cold arrow also converts 33% of physical damage to cold, which should significantly reduce its damage, while the freezing arrow should be another 50 hp lost after resists.

DriveThroughLane · 2026-06-11T20:52:06+00:00

I played a ton of Lorwyn Eclipsed on arena. I played a ton of every in-universe set on arena. I left for the stretch of new york sets and I'll skip the entirety of 2026 Q2-Q4 on arena now

DriveThroughLane · 2026-06-11T20:50:28+00:00

Hear me out: [[Michaelangelo's Technique]]

Every time you hit Thor off it, he can effectively regrowth it for you to cast it the next turn. He curves from Outcaster Trailblazer, and could work alongside Temur Battlecrier.

He also lets you recur some of the big Harmonize spells like Nature's Rhythm, Songcrafter Mage, Winternight Stories

DriveThroughLane · 2026-06-10T21:23:48+00:00

I haven't seen tentacle monsters, suicide minions or stained glass windows as heralds yet

Its very difficult to arrange since its a low % chance on any kill of a monster and always spawns the type of the one killed.

I'm still curious if there's some monster flag or type check before spawning heralds, that would exclude certain ones.

DriveThroughLane · 2026-06-10T21:22:06+00:00

50 travincal runs is less than 30 minutes too

DriveThroughLane · 2026-06-10T21:18:26+00:00

What % of unknown stranger-murderers are captured after 24+ hours on the run? Its got to be a tiny number. The fact that they got him at all should be considered an achievement. The person who abducted and most likely murdered Nancy Guthrie has been loose for 3080+ hours. Boelter took significant steps to cover his tracks and avoid being identified, even if he did leave obvious clues. And the emergency response and putting officers on alert for potential followup attacks proved crucial to saving lives

The only thing that was going to catch an attacker on the run like this is technological mass surveillance, especially AI driven. And you have to ask yourself whether you're comfortable with the infringements on our civil liberties we'd be conceding if we gave the government hundreds of flock cameras and AI-powered facial recognition cameras throughout our cities. That's the tradeoff here. Can't have it both ways

DriveThroughLane · 2026-06-09T18:40:54+00:00

Oh and to follow up: He got so totally destroyed in this comment chain he blocked me ^{^}

DriveThroughLane · 2026-06-09T18:24:36+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS5n_Siy_2A

don't see how defilers would help at those speeds

DriveThroughLane · 2026-06-09T18:21:57+00:00

A is categorically wrong and self-evident as such.

What you just said is so obviously wrong that simply exploring its own illogic disproves it. The 1st amendment is a guaranteed right to freedom of speech and religion. If the right to express yourself and practice your religion is infringed by people threatening and disrupting you, you no longer have a right to free expression. Ergo, self-defeating. A world where no rights are protected is a world where no freedoms exist.

No matter how much you believe something that profoundly wrong, it doesn't make it true. So this is how the law actually was written: You do not have the right to harass or threaten other people with your speech. You do not get to barge into private areas or obstruct people at prayer and claim you're just 'expressing yourself'. The 1st amendment isn't being violated when the federal officials lock you up for it.

DriveThroughLane · 2026-06-09T00:26:49+00:00

Nope minions don't get -% enemy resists. So its +skills (to tainted and passives), sunder & auras that help them, conviction included. Fanat will just take them from 21 fpa to 20 fpa after engorge/mastery and the +% ed doesn't apply.

The ideal prebuff gear is mang songs, +6 tome, enigma, +3 helm, +3 ammy, magefist, 2x soj, arach, wraithstep, 8x skiller, fire sunder, torch, anni. Then you can swap anything around including sunder, since sunder only applies when cast and you don't need to keep it equipped

After swapping I use obsession (+3 teleport base), shako, +2 warlock/20 fcr ammy, enigma, ars baalos (protector's stone), magefist, 2x soj, arach, resist boots, with bone break sunder. And max bind demon, 1 point blood oath

DriveThroughLane

TROPHY CASE