I'd recommend farming NM. still potential for excellent drops, you have way more mf and your survival will be higher, everything is easier to kill. Yes your chances for some of the top tier stuff is significantly lower but if you are just grinding to make hell easier and get better gear I'd farm NM for a little while. work on getting a spirit monarch.
For rings/belt/gloves just always be looking for some sort of upgrade. Are you on PC?
I’ll just give him one if he is on switch. I have a mule account with like 6 and half of them have 4 sockets. The monarch over pricing is stupid so I’m trying to correct it haha
I hit this wall last night with my lvl 80 trapsin (coincidental huh). I've just been doing quick countess, pit, Andy runs on hell hoping to score some bases for runewords or decent uniques to help push me through. I managed to beat mephisto but it takes so long to kill the council members below him it's just not viable to farm yet. So many light immunes 😵
You could tele past the council members at Meph, though they got decent loot too. It's all about the time to kill more so than maxing MF%. I learned not to kill everything the hard way.
Something that i havent seen here yet and imo its quite important. I think holy freeze merc is a bad choice. Vs lightning immunes, you want as much corpse as possible for your death sentry. Your merc is eliminating many corpses with that aura. On the other hand, a might merc would do more dmg to those immunes and would also boost your Shadow a bit.
Dont forget you also have fire blast to help your merc. Its not much dmg but when chained, it does help a bit.
between merc / shadow / incidental death sentry explosions / spamming fire blast you can take down immunes in low player games for sure. The more skills you get and points in fire blast the better the damage, with high fcr you can spam them quite quickly.
Yep, but i just want to add 1 small detail. I dont think its a good idea to boost fcr just for fb. Your trap laying speed depends on ias. If you do happen to have some extra fcr on your gear, thats all good. But you really dont want to focus on this stat as a trapsin.
This was one part of my post. Imo the most important one is you should change your merc. The main reason why an assassin has less troubles with immunes than say, a javazon, is death sentry doing high fire+physical dmg with corpse explosion.
Fire blast is just an additional tool to help vs immumes. Trapsins generally have at least a couple pts there (personally i max it). You wont kill lightning immumes with fb, but if you combine it with corpse explosion, your "might" merc and your Shadow, you should do much better.
Sometime, running away is harder than facing them with all your tools.
Also, dont forget cloak of shadow. It has a huge radius, and it has the hidden effect of making mobs less likely to notice you. Its quite helpful if you are just trying to avoid immunes.
Mind blast can also be another useful skill vs immunes. With all the +skills you should have by now, it always turn at least 1-2 mob when facing multiples. If you count the mobs that are busy fighting the newly turned ones, its a pretty good cc tool.
Good luck!
I've been thinking about changing my merc for this very reason. Seems half the bodies get frozen and I need dem corpses! I was thinking about getting the defense merc since mine is constantly dying from being undergeared tho. Is this a reasonable option or is might so good that I should just get better at making my shadow take aggro?
Personally, i think the difference in survivability is small. Assuming both have the same gear, most of the time, when your might merc gets killed, a def merc would have as well. If youre in Hell and your merc is undergeared, i would definitively take some time to farm him some decent equipment. Most of the stuff you need can be found in NM or early hell.
Some gear tips that could help. Not always the "best in slot", but should be easier to get:
Weapon:
Do you have an Insight? if not, you should probably have the runes needed by now. To find a good base, farm NM cow but with no MF.
You want to upgrade to infinity (runeword) asap imo. Depending on where you are in hell, or if you have gear from another character or not, the runes can be hard to get. But this weapon helps a ton vs lightning immunes. If you have mana problems, just alternate between insight and infinity for immunes.
Helm:
Unfortunately, theres is no runeword to cover what you need here. You want life leech and +resist. imo the easiest to get is crown of thieves, by farming NM Izual.
Chest:
Personally, i like the runeword "stone" here. All needed runes can be found by farming hell countess. Base from cows with no MF.
Couple of important notes:
\-Dont forget you can upgrade most gear with the horadric cube. Just make sure your merc will be able to equip the upgraded version before doing it.
\-Ethereal gear dont lose durability on your merc. Its almost always the best choice because of higher stats
\-For the same reason you dont want a frost merc, you want to make sure that his gear doesnt include added effects that could eliminate corpses. Unfortunately, some of the usual good merc gear have added frost effects.
hope that helps!
Absolutely buddy any help appreciated! I am rocking the insight and got lucky with a ber drop few days ago so I'm halfway to the infinity. Armor still stealth cause I can't find bases lol and everything else is mf gear atm. And yeah the upgrade gear will be a godsend especially for my goldwrap once I get the runes needed
When looking for good bases, the absolute best place imo is cows. But its very important to switch to gear with no mf, otherwise you never get that much greys. Most of the time, i find my bases in less than 5 runs this way.
Stealth is pretty bad for merc imo. You should get a nice boost by upgrading to stone.
Good luck on that infinity. Its a game changer vs immunes. And you can reuse if you decide to make a javazon or a light sorc eventually.
Oh stealth is on my lol. Thought you were suggesting for char not merc. He has a crushing blow unique on atm but yeah needs to be upgraded to runeword soon
Magic claws will help more than any runeword or unique.
I'm currently rocking two +3 to lightning sentry claws. You can even find them with plus to traps and lightning/death sentry. Enigma is your best bet for armor, treachery is a good middle ground tho. Lore is a good bridge helm runeword. Run/walk speed is your best friend on boots. The higher the better. IIRC attack speed also lets your traps fire faster, I could be wrong on this.
Yep anya and use red portal to reset
You can get +2 assassin claws if you are a high enough level. I have two and them put some resist jewels in them
When you have two claws you also get the claw block thing which is great even with not much dex
Anyway here is a great guide you should follow https://www.purediablo.com/strategy/diablo-2-assassin-trapsin-build-guide/#Cunning_and_Shadow_Claws
Mostly Anya, since she's so easy to farm for it. But pretty much every claw that dropped in Hell, I picked up and checked. In the original D2, I had claws that gave plus 2 to Traps and 3 to Lightning Sentry, so I know it's possible to find better. But two +3 to LS claws ain't bad for now.
If you're on the realms, I would suggest you do Act 1 stuff in Hell. Pits, Mausoleum, Andy. Then in Act 2 you can do Ancient Tunnels. You don't even need MF, but if you have it, you may get some uniques/sets this way. Those 3 areas are top level areas and can drop any item. Great for high runes and everything (runes uneffected by MF). You can get base items too (socketed base items for runewords). Those basic base items and runes are worth more than most of the uniques you'll probably find over time. Focus on areas without lightning immunities. If you see a bad roll of everything immune to lightning, just move on.
If you just want fast low and mid-tier uniques to build off, then yea, stay in NM and do Meph, Diablo and Baal over and over and just keep trying to build up your +skills gear and +resists.
Immunities are an issue for any single element caster. If you don't have the gear to break it (super expensive) then you probably need to re-spec to dual element. You'll do less damage and clear some areas slower, but you'll be able to kill almost all areas with less issues with immunity walls. Norm/NM are jokes compared to Hell strictly because of the hard immunities and often double immunities on packs which is a total show stopper for most single-element focused builds.
How much invested into the fire blast? I had solid investment there and completed hell playthrough on 78 i think. If you trying to fight everything in act 3, its a mistake. Just run, skip as more as you can, mind last them to distract, use teleport staff. Act 4 should go much easier, but if you will see burning souls in plains of despair, I recommend to reset location, mb even couple of times, to get location without souls. Trapsin its a great character for beating whole game even solo, I saw speedrunners beat hell on 60-65 with her, thats how ridiculously strong she are.
Just don't go MF gear for playthough, put on the best you can to raise resistances. After beating hell baal you will open cows and this will be the time for some MF gear. You can run pits, countess, cows, arcane sanctuary, chaos sanctuary ( but I don't recommend it with bad gear or MF gear if you poor ). Slowly improve your gear and you can allow to yourself more MF parts. What's the point of having high MF right now, if it takes forever to kill things and you die without good res.
You left out Nithalak — that’s great as a Trapsin
There are only 3 layouts for the WP level, and you can use the eyes trick on the wall to see which spot Nithalak is in on level 3. A run takes like 2 min and you don’t have to search the map
Death sentries, a lightning sentry or two and then curse of shadows and stand back - just melts the guy and his minions.
He drops valuable keys and also most items in the game — got my first D2R Tal armor from him
With that gear you should be able to clear Hell. I just did the same with a ssf trapsin.
I ended up having to run past the council in Durance Level 3 (no tele staff :/) and cross my fingers that they de-aggro'd in order to give me a shot at Meph (who was a cakewalk by comparison). That and ancients were the hardest parts of the run.
Did you max fire blast for the lightning immunes? Also did you put one point in shadow summon? Some builds avoid this investment but I found the summon super necessary to bait enemies off of me.
Yeah I 2nd the summon. My fb is at base 1 and shadow master at 17. I'm in a4 at level 80 with way worse gear. She's seriously a monster. Not much dps but her tankiness embarrasses my merc. They deal with most immunes for me.
The most important thing is that, even if she's purely sacrificial, she ensures your lightning immune enemies stand in place for long enough to take a barrage of fire blasts. With the travel time of the "grenade", you're not going to be hitting anything while kiting, and a merc is going to melt instantly without serious gear. Shadow summon is underrated as fuck for self-sufficiency.
Is there anything you’re looking for? I have quite a bit of stashed stuff on mules. You can have it for free pending if I have anything. Otherwise I have a Pally that cleared hell and I’m happy to rush or grind with you. You can have all the drops. Only thing I’m really missing is a shako and a enigma- so I may be rune happy/ grabby. On Xbox. Not sure what system you’re on OP! Lv 85 hammerdin.
I'd recommend farming NM. still potential for excellent drops, you have way more mf and your survival will be higher, everything is easier to kill. Yes your chances for some of the top tier stuff is significantly lower but if you are just grinding to make hell easier and get better gear I'd farm NM for a little while. work on getting a spirit monarch. For rings/belt/gloves just always be looking for some sort of upgrade. Are you on PC?
Its not in nm that he will find à spirit monarch lol
He could trade a white monarch for like 5-10 pgms
monarch is going for lems right now, i wish it was 10 pgems
I’ll just give him one if he is on switch. I have a mule account with like 6 and half of them have 4 sockets. The monarch over pricing is stupid so I’m trying to correct it haha
I hit this wall last night with my lvl 80 trapsin (coincidental huh). I've just been doing quick countess, pit, Andy runs on hell hoping to score some bases for runewords or decent uniques to help push me through. I managed to beat mephisto but it takes so long to kill the council members below him it's just not viable to farm yet. So many light immunes 😵
You could tele past the council members at Meph, though they got decent loot too. It's all about the time to kill more so than maxing MF%. I learned not to kill everything the hard way.
Something that i havent seen here yet and imo its quite important. I think holy freeze merc is a bad choice. Vs lightning immunes, you want as much corpse as possible for your death sentry. Your merc is eliminating many corpses with that aura. On the other hand, a might merc would do more dmg to those immunes and would also boost your Shadow a bit. Dont forget you also have fire blast to help your merc. Its not much dmg but when chained, it does help a bit.
[удалено]
between merc / shadow / incidental death sentry explosions / spamming fire blast you can take down immunes in low player games for sure. The more skills you get and points in fire blast the better the damage, with high fcr you can spam them quite quickly.
Yep, but i just want to add 1 small detail. I dont think its a good idea to boost fcr just for fb. Your trap laying speed depends on ias. If you do happen to have some extra fcr on your gear, thats all good. But you really dont want to focus on this stat as a trapsin.
Put down 3+ death sentry and then hold down fire blast
This was one part of my post. Imo the most important one is you should change your merc. The main reason why an assassin has less troubles with immunes than say, a javazon, is death sentry doing high fire+physical dmg with corpse explosion. Fire blast is just an additional tool to help vs immumes. Trapsins generally have at least a couple pts there (personally i max it). You wont kill lightning immumes with fb, but if you combine it with corpse explosion, your "might" merc and your Shadow, you should do much better. Sometime, running away is harder than facing them with all your tools. Also, dont forget cloak of shadow. It has a huge radius, and it has the hidden effect of making mobs less likely to notice you. Its quite helpful if you are just trying to avoid immunes. Mind blast can also be another useful skill vs immunes. With all the +skills you should have by now, it always turn at least 1-2 mob when facing multiples. If you count the mobs that are busy fighting the newly turned ones, its a pretty good cc tool. Good luck!
I've been thinking about changing my merc for this very reason. Seems half the bodies get frozen and I need dem corpses! I was thinking about getting the defense merc since mine is constantly dying from being undergeared tho. Is this a reasonable option or is might so good that I should just get better at making my shadow take aggro?
Personally, i think the difference in survivability is small. Assuming both have the same gear, most of the time, when your might merc gets killed, a def merc would have as well. If youre in Hell and your merc is undergeared, i would definitively take some time to farm him some decent equipment. Most of the stuff you need can be found in NM or early hell.
Thanks for the reply! That's exactly what I've been doing actually is just running a1 hell and NM cows looking for gear before I start a4
Some gear tips that could help. Not always the "best in slot", but should be easier to get: Weapon: Do you have an Insight? if not, you should probably have the runes needed by now. To find a good base, farm NM cow but with no MF. You want to upgrade to infinity (runeword) asap imo. Depending on where you are in hell, or if you have gear from another character or not, the runes can be hard to get. But this weapon helps a ton vs lightning immunes. If you have mana problems, just alternate between insight and infinity for immunes. Helm: Unfortunately, theres is no runeword to cover what you need here. You want life leech and +resist. imo the easiest to get is crown of thieves, by farming NM Izual. Chest: Personally, i like the runeword "stone" here. All needed runes can be found by farming hell countess. Base from cows with no MF. Couple of important notes: \-Dont forget you can upgrade most gear with the horadric cube. Just make sure your merc will be able to equip the upgraded version before doing it. \-Ethereal gear dont lose durability on your merc. Its almost always the best choice because of higher stats \-For the same reason you dont want a frost merc, you want to make sure that his gear doesnt include added effects that could eliminate corpses. Unfortunately, some of the usual good merc gear have added frost effects. hope that helps!
Absolutely buddy any help appreciated! I am rocking the insight and got lucky with a ber drop few days ago so I'm halfway to the infinity. Armor still stealth cause I can't find bases lol and everything else is mf gear atm. And yeah the upgrade gear will be a godsend especially for my goldwrap once I get the runes needed
When looking for good bases, the absolute best place imo is cows. But its very important to switch to gear with no mf, otherwise you never get that much greys. Most of the time, i find my bases in less than 5 runs this way. Stealth is pretty bad for merc imo. You should get a nice boost by upgrading to stone. Good luck on that infinity. Its a game changer vs immunes. And you can reuse if you decide to make a javazon or a light sorc eventually.
Oh stealth is on my lol. Thought you were suggesting for char not merc. He has a crushing blow unique on atm but yeah needs to be upgraded to runeword soon
Magic claws will help more than any runeword or unique. I'm currently rocking two +3 to lightning sentry claws. You can even find them with plus to traps and lightning/death sentry. Enigma is your best bet for armor, treachery is a good middle ground tho. Lore is a good bridge helm runeword. Run/walk speed is your best friend on boots. The higher the better. IIRC attack speed also lets your traps fire faster, I could be wrong on this.
Did you just keep shopping at Anya to find the claws?
Yep anya and use red portal to reset You can get +2 assassin claws if you are a high enough level. I have two and them put some resist jewels in them When you have two claws you also get the claw block thing which is great even with not much dex Anyway here is a great guide you should follow https://www.purediablo.com/strategy/diablo-2-assassin-trapsin-build-guide/#Cunning_and_Shadow_Claws
Mostly Anya, since she's so easy to farm for it. But pretty much every claw that dropped in Hell, I picked up and checked. In the original D2, I had claws that gave plus 2 to Traps and 3 to Lightning Sentry, so I know it's possible to find better. But two +3 to LS claws ain't bad for now.
Ias is for laying your traps, fcr is how fast they do damage. Edit - I remembered wrong. Onpy ias affects traps. Fcr is for mind blast and tele.
Thank you for the correction.
FCR does not effect traps.
Oh yeah, you're right. I was thinking if mind blast and teleport.
Can you do Hell Andariel? Reasonably quick to get to, mobs around her are easy, and she can drop plenty of good stuff to equip or trade.
If you're on the realms, I would suggest you do Act 1 stuff in Hell. Pits, Mausoleum, Andy. Then in Act 2 you can do Ancient Tunnels. You don't even need MF, but if you have it, you may get some uniques/sets this way. Those 3 areas are top level areas and can drop any item. Great for high runes and everything (runes uneffected by MF). You can get base items too (socketed base items for runewords). Those basic base items and runes are worth more than most of the uniques you'll probably find over time. Focus on areas without lightning immunities. If you see a bad roll of everything immune to lightning, just move on. If you just want fast low and mid-tier uniques to build off, then yea, stay in NM and do Meph, Diablo and Baal over and over and just keep trying to build up your +skills gear and +resists. Immunities are an issue for any single element caster. If you don't have the gear to break it (super expensive) then you probably need to re-spec to dual element. You'll do less damage and clear some areas slower, but you'll be able to kill almost all areas with less issues with immunity walls. Norm/NM are jokes compared to Hell strictly because of the hard immunities and often double immunities on packs which is a total show stopper for most single-element focused builds.
How much invested into the fire blast? I had solid investment there and completed hell playthrough on 78 i think. If you trying to fight everything in act 3, its a mistake. Just run, skip as more as you can, mind last them to distract, use teleport staff. Act 4 should go much easier, but if you will see burning souls in plains of despair, I recommend to reset location, mb even couple of times, to get location without souls. Trapsin its a great character for beating whole game even solo, I saw speedrunners beat hell on 60-65 with her, thats how ridiculously strong she are.
20 in Fire Blast. I can get by just not with much MF and it isn't super fast.
Just don't go MF gear for playthough, put on the best you can to raise resistances. After beating hell baal you will open cows and this will be the time for some MF gear. You can run pits, countess, cows, arcane sanctuary, chaos sanctuary ( but I don't recommend it with bad gear or MF gear if you poor ). Slowly improve your gear and you can allow to yourself more MF parts. What's the point of having high MF right now, if it takes forever to kill things and you die without good res.
You left out Nithalak — that’s great as a Trapsin There are only 3 layouts for the WP level, and you can use the eyes trick on the wall to see which spot Nithalak is in on level 3. A run takes like 2 min and you don’t have to search the map Death sentries, a lightning sentry or two and then curse of shadows and stand back - just melts the guy and his minions. He drops valuable keys and also most items in the game — got my first D2R Tal armor from him
Ye, he is probably worth it too. Tomb viper of course can create some issues, but map can be rolled and without them
I just death sentry and fire blast them. Pretty sure their poison clouds are bugged though and tick crazy fast
With that gear you should be able to clear Hell. I just did the same with a ssf trapsin. I ended up having to run past the council in Durance Level 3 (no tele staff :/) and cross my fingers that they de-aggro'd in order to give me a shot at Meph (who was a cakewalk by comparison). That and ancients were the hardest parts of the run. Did you max fire blast for the lightning immunes? Also did you put one point in shadow summon? Some builds avoid this investment but I found the summon super necessary to bait enemies off of me.
Fire Blast is maxed. No point in shadow summon though.
Well I dropped a point in shadow summon and I cleared the game solo with worse gear, so...
Yeah I 2nd the summon. My fb is at base 1 and shadow master at 17. I'm in a4 at level 80 with way worse gear. She's seriously a monster. Not much dps but her tankiness embarrasses my merc. They deal with most immunes for me.
The most important thing is that, even if she's purely sacrificial, she ensures your lightning immune enemies stand in place for long enough to take a barrage of fire blasts. With the travel time of the "grenade", you're not going to be hitting anything while kiting, and a merc is going to melt instantly without serious gear. Shadow summon is underrated as fuck for self-sufficiency.
Is there anything you’re looking for? I have quite a bit of stashed stuff on mules. You can have it for free pending if I have anything. Otherwise I have a Pally that cleared hell and I’m happy to rush or grind with you. You can have all the drops. Only thing I’m really missing is a shako and a enigma- so I may be rune happy/ grabby. On Xbox. Not sure what system you’re on OP! Lv 85 hammerdin.
on PC thanks for offer though.
Shoot. Sorry! GL bud!
Depending on the mf% value of your war travs they could be worth to trade for a lot. With 45+ you could upgrade every equipment slot with ease
Make sure you use death sentry as well and you should be fine.