Tips and advice for newbies

[claudius]

I liked your post. I am continually learning new things. I wanted to ask a question about battle awareness.

I think that the armor added is to each piece of armor. So it is a larger percentage of 350 (cuffs) than it is of the total armor you are wearing. Also try playing an act with armor 80 lower (or 40 and 20 in epic/normal respectively; in each location) than is available from the merchants. You take more damage from mobs. So I think this helps. For the defensive ability you have to remember that it is a relative number. You compare mobs offense and your defense. So in legendary you might have 1200 DA and a small boost seems unimportant. But the mobs have 700 OA and that small boost does give you a little edge. But I admit the DA is not good. Mostly I think the armor is good. It is like having free Legendary boars hide on every piece of armor with completion bonus of tiny DA. (Edit: my DA argument boils down to that while its a small % of final DA the effect of DA is NOT simply the magnitude of DA but the differential between monster OA and your DA. The problem is that monsters keep getting more OA.)

Also I am of the opinion that the survival instinct is pretty important in legendary. In the later acts it keeps them at slivers of life for prolonged time. For example it sucks when manticore stops attacking your wolves because he killed them and then he turns and bites your head off!

Also some skills are worth maxing in normal. For example squall does a lot of damage relative to normal for 12 pts, covers the map, neutralizes the most annoying enemies (archers). Another example is DW. You want a shield rather than 1 pt in each DW skill. If you DW better max some procs even though you get the most % for the 1st point.

[drdoom]

I found Lichking very helpfull.I went soothsayer first on my first character (was nature/spirit): at a moment i had a lichking , wolves and a sylvian nymph but then i changed it thanks to defiler to Oracle (Storm/Spirit). Found Storm more usefull then nature thanks to the surge. Use it on my elementalist aswell.

break down on toons

1) Soothsayer -> oracle : had something to protect me with > for surge
also for shards that do frostburn
2) Roque/earth: poison /burning proc , not yet a pet, also with traps
3) Hunter/earth: markmenship (+3 from gear , bow + armor) and fire.
4) Dream/earth (evoker : sound it bit D&D like): nightmare as pet , has beastcaller stuff to boost pet damage
5) Elementalist: boom, zap , wammo , nuff said



think also for this

some mobs are resisted to life leech and poison.best is to equip with the prometheus relic (does an awsowne burning damage also in combo with earth mastery that has the same ability in one of the skills : earth enchantement if you want flaming arrows).Shoot true a couple of skeletons and they burn nicely very scrispy

[Shadowshire]

I liked your post. I am continually learning new things. I wanted to ask a question about battle awareness.

I think that the armor added is to each piece of armor. So it is a larger percentage of 350 (cuffs) than it is of the total armor you are wearing. Also try playing an act with armor 80 lower (or 40 and 20 in epic/normal respectively; in each location) than is available from the merchants. You take more damage from mobs. So I think this helps.....

Bonus to armor is not per piece, but only to the overall armor.

Also I am of the opinion that the survival instinct is pretty important in legendary. In the later acts it keeps them at slivers of life for prolonged time. For example it sucks when manticore stops attacking your wolves because he killed them and then he turns and bites your head off!)

Well, survival instinct is not a bad skill. Alot of skills are good, but you don't have unlimited skillpoints. That's why i choose to recast instead of spending 12 skillpoints in this skill. In legendary i rarely recast, and never had any problem with my Wolves survivability.

Also some skills are worth maxing in normal. For example squall does a lot of damage relative to normal for 12 pts, covers the map, neutralizes the most annoying enemies (archers).

Again Squall is my favorite skill, but in normal i just 1 point stuff and max masteries, as you'll be safer with health, strength ect. than with maxed skills.

[claudius]

I think that its per piece. The game has NO calculations that are based on total armor. When you are stricken it is at a certain location. If your head is hit your leggings armor doesn't help you.

How would a skill effect total armor when their exist no calculations based on total armor??

You could test this by making a character with high armor absorption (defender with item). Create a legging with 10000000000 armor and go naked at every other location. See if he takes damage.

Ok so, how do weapons actually interact with armor?

Well first off, when you get hit by a monster, a location on your character is randomly chosen, weighted between the various spots on your body. 40% of hits go to your chest armor. Each other body spot has a 20% chance to be hit. Yes, this means that walking around with low armor in one body spot can occasionally result in hard hits.

Next, any physical damage taken up to the armor value of your armor is reduced. Mastery skills that add bonus armor add it to ALL locations (handy). Any damage in excess of the armor value in a given location is taken fully by your character.

From the beginning of the knowledge thread...

[Shadowshire]

Ok, sound logic. Thing is i never thought of hits beign directed to certain bodyparts. Maybe that's abit stupid, but i never gave it a thought...

[claudius]

Yeah I thought the same thing about battle awareness too when I first saw my stats. Its still not the best skill in the game but combined with armor handling you can be pretty sturdy. If I seem to have enough offense I often just dump in defensive skills.

Its been awhile playing a defender though I have played a evoker recently and I noticed the boost from stoneskin (especially with +% armor increasing the bonus).

I made a warden though with high DA that could tank melee mobs dodging almost all the hits and the ones that got through absorbed mostly by armor.

[drdoom]

how does the damage changes in the character screen , where do the + in blue come from ?

[Matseb2611]

A very awesome guide! Are there any boss-killer moves for Warfare and Earth?

To be honest I am finding my Battlemage game way easier than Soothsayer. But I am a melee lover and staff hater, so that explains why.

[Poinas]

If you're choosing Piercing damage (Ranged:Bows, Melee:Spears), you should focus both on strength and dexterity.

Str will always give more piercing dmg than dex. So the focus should be pure str, if maximum dmg is what you're after.

Survival instinct grants extra damage and damage absorbation when wolves go down to 15% of their health.

33%.

Collossus: (Defence)
Spend just 1 point and get 30% damage absorbation, 50% damage, 30% strength and 30 health. This skill is awesome just with 1 point. The skill does not get much better spending more than 1 point, so this is a great bosskiller skill and it's only 1 point spend.

A very good one point wonder, but I'd say the skill does get a lot better with more points spent. At 8/8 you get 50% dmg absorption versus 30% at 1/8.

Phantom Strike: (Dream)
Awesome Bosskiller and also a mob destroyer.

I don't see this skill being a bosskiller by any means. Unless hit - run - wait for recharge is your only tactic.

[Nme]

I don't see this skill being a bosskiller by any means. Unless hit - run - wait for recharge is your only tactic.

After playing Harbinger for a while I tend to consider it more crowd control oriented due to the 360° arc of attack and the multiple targets, but still its damage is decent.

As my character defensive capabilities are low (and the equipment is... lacking), I go for Distort Reality - run - Phantom Strike - run - wait for recharge, with a Trance of choice. I seem not to be able to tank Typhon, Hades and the like.
It may not be a tactic, but it can get the job done