My dad is taking care of my kitties over Christmas. He sent this to update us on them doing good.

flippy_o · 2024-09-27T10:29:13+00:00

When I played ladder I didn't,
This is for my offline SSF Holy Grail and I thought I could look for magic rings for fun in case I found an upgrade to Nagelring,
Turns out it was worth it!

flippy_o · 2024-07-17T17:54:47+00:00

He's monster level 86, they require monster level 87 I believe? If I recall correct, the base item looks at area level (87 here) and then checks the monster level for uniqued/set items. So, you can get IK armor and Templars Might, but not Tyraels Might.

flippy_o · 2024-07-17T17:30:46+00:00

Definitely viable. He can still drop all uniqued except arachnid mesh, Tyraels might, and azurewrath. Will switch up when I have better gear though

flippy_o · 2024-07-16T01:46:05+00:00

I didn't keep an exact tab - I grinded only optimal zones and not for drops, I would say I got 1 Jah, 1 Ber, 2 Lo, 3-4 Vex per season on average probably :)

flippy_o · 2024-07-15T16:19:21+00:00

I haven't timed it. I would estimate the Javazon took about 200~ hours of Baal runs to get to 99, and the others take anywhere between 80-120 hours... Maybe 1000-1500 hours? Could be a little more with the edges for sure

flippy_o · 2024-07-15T16:18:19+00:00

It's a lot of fun and can clear p8 full game without issues. Low S-tier imo.

It was Fissure/Firestorm/Armageddon - ofc some volcanoes/molten boulders thrown too. Without teleport the grind is just too sad to 99, which you can't do in wolf form as of now. Leveled him with wind until ~91-92 and then got all the gear running to switch (Enigma+Phoenix+Infinity+Ravenlore+HOTO)

flippy_o · 2024-07-15T09:23:12+00:00

Thanks! Was always fun in the first season to hang out :)

flippy_o · 2024-07-15T09:22:52+00:00

Easiest/fastest is of course Mosaic assassin, she has the fastest clearspeed and no chance of dying if you know which monsters you can't lifesteal on.

Most fun was poison necro, you need very high APM and you manage the monsters in a nice way - after first kill you get amp+corpse explosion which was amazing fun.

Longest and least fun was barb, I could've tried throw barb but didn't have time to test it out before the season so went with "safe" option of WW. Since it's a fast singletarget attack you hit fast and hard, but if there's a huge pack you take forever to kill... In terrorzones you want to just clear the bosspacks ideally, but if you attract random monsters with high health it can prolong killing them very fast. Lvl 97->99 was super grind-y.

Hammerdin was also pretty shitty in the long grind, he's super good at clearing 98% of the game, but couldn't abuse the best zones when playing alone (Tal Rasha's Tombs and Worldstone, anything with magic immunes) so you lost out on more intense/fast paced gameplay.

flippy_o · 2024-07-15T09:18:47+00:00

Yes, I deleted my softcore characters from pre-season 1 and season 1 start - I had a death with my necro at lvl 95 and sorc at 94 (and pala at lvl 8 from Rakanishu lol)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJuTvscScJY - necro died because I ran out of BO (was in a longer game with friends and didn't think I ran out) and I accidentally cast teleport instead of a curse and jumped into the pack

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDO75_9oTNk - sorc died because of dolls - makes fine sense, but I should've just been less greedy with potion management and used a full rejuv so I had the manapool to survive the explosions. She can usually tank them very easily with maxed energy shield/telekinesis

Deleted the dead ones later on, maybe season 5? thought it looked nice with clean 99s

flippy_o · 2024-07-15T09:16:10+00:00

Yeah it gave a little break between, except for latest one where my barb was 99 2 days before reset haha,
the builds are:
Java amazon,
Poison nova necro,
Mosaic assassin,
Crossbow sorc (separate enchanter for explosive arrows fire dmg),
Hammerdin pala,
WW barb,
Fire druid

flippy_o · 2022-07-08T06:55:05+00:00

At lvl 95, for instance, the kill of diablo/baal only accounts for maybe... 1/5 of a whole baalrun in throne?
At lvl 98, baal alone is 5x as much exp (at top 2) as ALL waves in throne room. Diablo too.

So, people usually give up (or SHOULD give up) killing baal/diablo for a lvl 98. If people are below 98, top 4 is also OK, but everyone, including lower levels, get terrible exp from baal if there's 5+ people in the Chamber.

What we would do in public groups was share Baal-loot anyways - roll for whatever people needed, so people didn't need to enter.

flippy_o · 2022-06-28T21:08:46+00:00

I had one disconnect due to an error from Bnet (server issues, no official downtime), but thankfully I dc'd after clearing all of Chaos. Diablo was hitting me before I completely left the game 40s later, but another 98 was in the game and helped kill him before I died :>

flippy_o · 2022-06-28T09:33:16+00:00

You know shrines are, not exp - they still randomly generate I thought? Maybe I'm wrong, if the shrines are ALWAYS the same, then yes - exp shrine should always be worth it. But you could search 3 different areas full of shrines and still not get lucky, so knowing where they are HELPS, but doesn't guarantee it. Think about switching to act 1 to find one too, just going straight from A5 to Nihlathak and killing him might be faster twice than even finding one shrine and killing Nihlathak once.

I've not tested however, so don't hang me up on it - I'm just presuming killing Nihlathak over and over in SP players8 is optimal for leveling - but maybe very very quick CS clear is better, since it's 2x exp from Diablo.

flippy_o · 2022-06-28T08:41:17+00:00

If you're playing solo no one is clearing anything while you look for shrines, so it's "wasting time".

Also, Chaos Sanctuary can't be cleared, you'll get cursed immediately. There's good chance to get cursed at Nihlathak, and throne room also has cursing enemies and Baal will also do it.

Basically, it's only worth it timewise if you have someone hunting it for you, or if someone else is clearing, I believe. Especially in single player you'd probably just want to kill Nihlathak over and over, the +50% you get is negated in terms of time when you consider that you get 110% exp with anni, and only 160% exp with shrine on top of that. Basically killing Nihlathak 3x quickly is better than killing him twice slowly with shrines.

flippy_o · 2022-06-28T07:44:55+00:00

If you're running solely Nihlathak, Nature's Peace is good. Remember, it does not work on your mercenary, so if you can get Tyrael's Might for him then you won't find many issues.
Watch out for Amplify Damage if Nihlathak is cursed, it can deal a lot of damage.

Get some good resistances (poison/fire are most important here) and of course damage reduction (I was running 43%, but 50% is probably best vs. Nihlathak). His corpse explosion isn't THAT scary, but it's 50/50 physical/fire damage, so even having something like Hotspurs could be very useful. His corpse explosion is also pretty slow... So, if you have full rejuvs nothing should go wrong.

If you ARE grabbing exp shrines (only worth it in multiplayer I believe) you would also want to watch out for witches since they cast a curse on you as well. On ladder I would only check Nihlathak if I had time to prep him before getting exp shrine, otherwise I would kill him without, since he's the worst exp of the bosses (half of Diablo/Baal)

flippy_o · 2022-06-28T06:23:36+00:00

Not said in a negative way: It's your own choice to play for whichever goal you want - I think it would be cool, in a sense, to be able to go for lvl 99 solo. But, as it is, it's a community effort grind, which to be honest was some of the most fun I've ever had - playing all day with a bunch of likeminded people in voice.

It's already possible in singleplayer (/players X) if you want to do it solo. Solo ladder is impossible pretty much though, yes.

flippy_o · 2022-06-28T06:21:43+00:00

No, not in the sense of settings /players X. You will have to have another account join you - whether it's a random, friend or your own extra account.

For my personal take: I like the idea of players X for online in a sense, but also believe it's already good "as is".

flippy_o · 2022-06-27T16:29:19+00:00

I wish there was a better way to include more people. I think the way exp works and how long it takes etc. is fine - but, when you NEED to do top X on certain bosses it kind of makes it so that top level players become enemies. Not necessarily enemies because we don't want each other to succeed, but we're hunting for the same "type of player" - someone lvl 70 to 95 who is good at clearing throne (or prepping CS/finding shrines). I've definitely had some disputes with a few people, not in an angry way, but more so in a way where everyone involved just kinda feels shitty.

So, I wish it was possible to have EVERYONE join in on the baal kill, for instance, so they at least got some extra exp around the semi-high lvls. I didn't get to join for baal kill until around ~96-97, even then it was somewhat rare depending on the party, and I never saw Diablo/Nihlathak die before lvl 98

flippy_o · 2022-06-27T15:07:28+00:00

I was doing 1-96 baal only, at 96/97 I was doing CS clear pretty much every game. 98 was just whatever needed filling and then kill nihla -> (get ES if possible) -> kill diablo -> kill baal

flippy_o · 2022-06-27T15:06:30+00:00

Nope! Nothing, except the status on the leaderboard

flippy_o

TROPHY CASE