I am almost stuck in D2R and would like to understand what I am doing wrong.
Let me explain: I have been playing a lot of Diablo III (D3 RoS) and basically the distribution of difficulty levels is so granular and smooth that the players always manage to find the right trade-off between ease of completing the various runs and the ability to gradually but steadily improve their equipment. If a difficulty level is too high and you die too often, it is easy to go very little down the Torment levels and you will find your “sweet spot.” By continuing to farm at that level, slowly with Paragon points, Blood Shards, crafting materials etc. it is mathematical that you can gradually improve your character to access higher difficulties.
Coming to D2R, I am a level 73 Sorceress specializing in Blizzard (I follow maxroll.gg’s leveling guide), I would like to be able to play SSF and I am in the situation where the Hell difficulty is too hard for me to be able to deal with it when my Act II mercenary with “Insight” is constantly dying. If he dies, I find myself without Mana and at that point it’s game over. Basically, I am in a hell loop:
in order to seriously farm Act I Hell I need better equipment than I have now;
in order to have better equipment than I have now, I must necessarily farm in Hell, and there is nothing easier than Act I;
but, if I can’t farm in the sweet spots in Act I Hell (The Countess, Andariel, The Pit etc.), I can’t get the equipment I need for that very purpose.
I would like to understand if the only alternative I have left is to keep doing Nightmare Terror Zones ad nauseam until I find everything I need (I’m currently running about +200% MF) or if there is something better I can do to have a smoother gameplay and progression experience similar to D3 RoS.
Playing Blizzard you have other options than Pit.
You can easily farm Andariel and Mephisto, in A1 you can go for Mausoleum, many uniques and you can kill everything with Blizzard.
Andariel can easily be kites to death, Blizzard is just perfect for this, and Mephisto can be cheesed pretty ez.
Countess will be most likely not possible with Cold spec.
Mf is overrated and will cost you survivability. Sure about 200 is fine aslong as you don’t get problems surviving and suffer too much killingspeed, especially with less rare gear.
For your Merc, you should make sure to give him a nice armor, some lifeleech and make sure his resistance is high enough.
Smoke is a good armor runeword in the cheaper segment, has lots of res.
I prefer Treachery, it has fade which is a really good defensive skill and lots of attackspeed, which would favor the lifeleech.
With insight in a good eth base you should be able to keep him alive if you don’t let Emilio run where he wants to. Teleport helps a lot to keep him alive.
And ofc it depends lots of your skill, more skill, the less valuable gear you need to a certain point.
So without knowing what gear you have, it’s tough to say for certain, but a LOT of good gear can drop from NM, especially Andy and Mephy, so it’s very possible you’re not really in a “catch -22” of needing to farm Hell to improve. TZ does help that a lot as well.
For instance, one of the very good caster leveling armors, Skin of the Viper Magi, has a 1:496 chance to drop from NM Andy (non-terrorized) with your 200% MF.
Harlequin Crest Shako (aka Shako) and Occy are both pretty rare, but can drop from NM Baal, and TZ makes that a bit more palatable.
What is the base that Insight is made in for your mercenary? It’s common to slap it in the first 4OS polearm you get access to and then forget about it for a while, especially when you’re the primary damage dealer. To keep a merc alive, they tend to need resistances, decent DPS, and life leach (life leach is a percentage of the damage they deal).
So if you made the Insight in a low damage base and he doesn’t have any life leach, then he’s going to struggle. Similarly, without life leach he’s going to struggle. There’s some decent SP/Ladder options, like Bulwark RW, but in my experience finding a 3 OS helm usually does take me pretty deep into Hell. Additionally RNG always hates me so finding Io from NM Countess can sometimes take ages for me. Other nice options are Tal Rasha’s helm, Wormskull. Rock stopper, while not having leach, does have damage reduction and good resistances, so it is a good choice. The other option is crafting a Blood helm for him. It rolls with 1-3 life leach (not great but it’s something) as a “fixed effect”, as well as 5-10% deadly strke and 10-20 life. It costs a Ral rune, any jewel and a Perfect Ruby. At your stage those may not exactly be growing on trees, but should be accessible.
Body armor the go to is often Treachery, but costing a Lem, it’s far from guaranteed on SSF NM play. Other good options would be Lionheart, Duress (Um is even higher than Lem though), Smoke, Duriel’s Shell, or Griswold with runes/jewels shoved in for res.
Playstyle is another big one. Being single element, you’re going to just have to be comfortable with the fact that you can’t kill everything unless you get a merc that’s pretty decked out, and that’s going to take farming Hell, for sure. So as a sorc your best option is to tele past things you can’t kill. Sometimes that might mean re-rolling the game to reset the random affixes of a super unique you need to kill for a quest.
Some, like Hell Countess, are always Fire+Cold Immune in Hell, but you may find you’re able to kill her by using Static to get her down to half life then hitting her with telekinesis to stun her while merc finishes the job. Since her minions are also cold immune that may not be an option though, since that’s asking your merc to do a lot. One more point on Countess farming, her rune drops are best on P1, so while it may make sense to bump up player count while farming items, if you’re trying to farm runes from her, keep it at P1.
It is the reason I tend to go dual element until I’m better setup though.
The Maxroll guide probably tells you areas that are low cold immune, but if you’re questing through you might not be able to get there yet. You could use teleport to skip through and finish the quests just to unlock those areas, or consider respeccing into something like Metoerb that uses cold and fire damage so you can kill pretty much everything.
Welcome to the fundamental problem that D2 presents its players. You must find better gear, in content that you cannot farm. The answer is to skip the content you can’t farm. Literally. Don’t try to overcome this challenge. Cold immunes? Run by. Immune to whatever you do? Run by.
Man, there is no way I can kill Andariel or Mephisto in Hell. I tell you that my mercenary can easily die as soon as he is out of the Act I town if he is among cold-immune enemies on whom I cannot cast Blizzard (or if I am not fast enough to use Meteor). So I would say that in your opinion this is a problem related to two things:
I should have a stronger base for “Insight” so as to do more damage;
I should put “Treachery” as armor on him so that he is stronger (as a helmet he already has the Vampire Gaze, so I would say that’s it).
To do these two things, I would say my best alternative remains Terror Zones in Nightmare, do you confirm?
(As far as my skill is concerned, consider that it is very, very low).
That’s really only true if you try to “meta optimize” single element farm. It’s totally possible to play through as a hybrid sorceress that deals two damage types until you complete the game. Then once you get a Sunder and some gear with -res, you can drop down to single element for better kill speed if that’s your jam.
For Mephy, look up the “moat trick”. You effectively can drop Blizzard on him from safety of being on the other side of the “moat” and cheese him that way.
Andy might be tougher, but you could drop some blizzards then run around trying to keep her under them.
Agreed that NM TZ to gear up Merc with a better base for Insight and to try to get runes for Smoke, Treachery, Lionheart, or a lucky drop of say, Duriel’s Shell, is a good strategy.
You also mentioned meteor, so it seems like you’re hybrid with fire damage? That might open up the Countess in Hell for you. You still can’t kill her directly b/c she’s also fire immune, but her minions are only cold immune, so you can destroy them with fire then use static to get countess life to half then use telekinesis to keep her mostly stunned while your merc takes her out.
I am less familiar with a Blizzard Meteor hybrid, but I used to use Meteorb (Meteor/Fireball + Frozen Orb) a lot back in the day to progress, and I found Fireball to be very useful in most situations since it’s so much faster w/o a delay. Meteor and Fireball synergize each other and you can still use Meteor on hard Cold Imune targets like bosses where you need big burst damage.
“Ancient’s Plegde” shield (“Rhyme” for MF)
“Stealth” armor
Frostburn
Raven Frost
Goldwrap
Natalya’s Soul
I cannot link my build but it’s basically the Blizzard-Meteor you find on that maxroll.gg website.
My mercenary:
Vampire Gaze
“Insight” Halberd
Iceblink
Can you confirm that my problem is the mercenary with too weak equipment for Act I Hell? Maybe I can give him as armor “Fortitude” on Loricated Mail. In that case, I think the problem is only the weapon. Should I look for a polearm on which I can make 4 sockets by killing Nightmare cows for a new and stronger “Insight”?
For quest progression with a Sorceress, especially one that is just starting out (limited gear options), using dual elements is the way to go.
Personally I like the tried and true Fire Ball + Frozen Orb sorceress. It’s direct and can quickly kill most enemies. FireBall is the main damage dealer with its high damage and small AoE blast radius. Frozen Orb is the screen spammy/slow enemies/Fire immune skill. This will make it easier to do all of the quests in the game. You’ll use Static along with your Merc for any Fire+Cold immunes, as there are a few of them you’ll have to deal with. Once you kill Baal on Hell difficulty, you can then choose to respec to any other build you want to target specific farming areas. This build can be done starting out level 1 without any respecs.
Cold skills - Along with 1 point into the prerequisites, you’ll want to max the Frozen Orb skill, then put enough into Cold Mastery along with any +skills on gear to get it to -100% cold pierce. (Cold Mastery level 17 is -100% cold pierce)
Lightning Skills - 1 point into Static, Telekinesis and Teleport.
Fire Skills - 1 point into Warmth, Max Fireball, then Firebolt, then Fire Mastery.
Also, be on the lookout for a higher damage 4 socket polearm for your merc to make Insight with. An ethereal Partizan works well, as it has high enough damage where he can steal a decent amount of life, but not such high damage that he 1 shots the stygian dolls.
I don’t want to be mean, but if you can’t beat the game with that gear you should rather look for guides how to play the game.
Gaze for your mercenary is really decent.
Like I said, he needs resistance.
Treachery’s proc „Fade“ gives him Allres and damage reduction. Only downside is that it sometimes don’t proc so easily, but if you kill normal monsters before or lets him stand on fire for a bit it should proc.
Once it does and you keep fighting it won’t most likely run off before it proc again.
Treachery helped my merc lots and is what I always prefer cause it’s also cheap.
Even a merc with forti and Andy face can die in hell pretty quick in certain spots.
It’s important to not have him run into everything and this is where your teleport comes in even more handy than it is already.
Also, always make sure to check what debuffs\curses he got on him. Some can hurt pretty good.
Andy and Mephisto can be killed without insight. Jus have some manapots with you.
Well, it’s not like I have much control over what my mercenary does. I can continuously use Static Field, Blizzard, and Meteor on enemies, and reposition myself with Teleport when things get bad. Period. But, if he dies, I can no longer spam my spells at a high frequency because I lose Meditation. And he dies often without me being able to stop him from committing suicide in enemy groups. Instead, I would need him to kill all the cold immune enemies with the help of my Meteor. I didn’t think I had to babysit him using Teleport to save his life whenever there are more than 5 enemies on the screen.
I don’t like that the solution is to skip all the immunes and all the content I can’t deal with, I thought I could get stronger at the lower difficulties and then I could handle everything. This was the original intent of the question.
You can control your mercs position with teleport.
Enemies will typically be attracted to your merc because he always goes towards the closest enemies.
Use that to your advantage to group enemies together along with keeping your merc safe. I like to think of my A2 merc as a fishing lure.
You are the main damage source. Using a high AoE damage skill like Frozen Orb, Fire Ball or Blizzard will put a lot of the monster group in hit recovery. (The monster will usually make a “grunt” noise when they enter hit recovery) When they’re in hit recovery, they can’t attack your merc.
Ancient’s Pledge and Rhyme are both decent for where you are.
Stealth armor I know is often recommended until you can afford a big boy RW, but if you can find a Skin of the Vipermagi from NM the FCR, skills, and res is a big upgrade IMO.
Frosties are good for where you’re at and your build
RavenFrost is a nice ring with a lot of nice mods.
Goldwrap good for MF for sure - may be an option to improve if you need FCR or other survivability mods.
Nat’s boots are nice for the FRW and res.
Vamp Gaze is awesome, but Halbred is a “normal” class weapon, so that’s definitely a big weak point for him. Even an Exceptional base like Partizan would be a big upgrade for him, IMO. Since mercenaries don’t use up durability, having it be ethereal is also a bonus.
Iceblink is also pretty weak, it used to be awesome back in the D2 classic days, but has since been surpassed and run out of steam, and the game mechanics that let it be good have also changed. If you can put a Fort on him, that’s certainly one of the better merc armors. Some prefer the cheaper Treachery for the IAS and Fade though, and I can’t speak to if Loricated Mail is a good use of it or not. Just a note, Fortitude uses “Lo”, not “Io”, which is an easy mistake to make. Lo is significantly rarer, and I’m surprised you have access to it, although Maras and HotO show you’ve had some good luck/drops!
I got those high-level items because, for some reason totally unknown to me, high-level players decided to throw that stuff on the ground and let me take it for free. I’m not sure for what reason, which also led me to wonder if then for those who run Hell Terror Zones the drop of those runes and items is so frequent that they can afford to give them away to strangers.
ah okay, for some reason from your OP I was under the impression you were playing single player. Now that I reread I see you just said you’d like to be able to play SSF or solo?
Yes many people play enough that they get enough that dropping those items on the ground in free or new player games is easily affordable and the community is pretty good about helping others. Also if people play mostly Ladder, they may dump all their items when that Ladder expires into Non-Ladder, so they can free up the character slot and restart a new Ladder character. Even on Ladder at this point there’s probably people who are mostly “done” and happy to share the wealth.
BTW if the Fort was already made in the Loricated Mail then I’d absolutely throw that on your merc. Get him an Insight in a better base and I bet he’ll do great.
BTW if you’re on PC NL I probably have some spare Thresher’s that either already have 4 OS or could get 4OS, if you’re interested in more freebies.
I didn’t see you mention what variant of A2 merc you’re using… If you want to improve both your mercs and your survivability, get a prayer merc. The prayer aura synergizes with the Meditation aura from Insight, which increases the healing amount. And if you get the Cure helmet, it synergizes with that as well for even more healing.
I’ve seen a prayer A2 merc with Insight and Cure at around level 85+ go from a sliver of health to full in less than 20 seconds.
For you, it’s like you’re constantly being healed by a normal to a greater health potion.
If you do switch mercs, be sure to take the gear off first before hiring a new one, otherwise if you don’t you’ll lose the gear.
Thank you for your kindness. I play on PC, Europe region. I’m currently trying some single-player mods, but if I log on and find you online some good bases for my mercenary I’m definitely interested. If you send me your Battle.net tag, I will add you to friends.
Only skimmed over the replies, so mighta missed something.
Most things have been mentioned, but I think a few things might be missing.
Your equipment isn’t the problem. It’s better than the stuff most sorcs have when starting hell.
I usually go for a Fireball+Frozen Orb dual element build duing playthru.
My merc is a prayer merc. I slap on a Cure helmet on the merc the moment I get the runes. 3os helmets can be bought in act 2 normal diff. That won’t be the final helmet, but until you find a better one.
prayer+insight+cure is endgame for me. physical immunes can’t be leeched from and the auras always work, also with a weak weapon, and also for the sorc.
as has been pointed out: teleport = best merc control skill in game.
Thanks to terror zones, you could farm in NM, if looking for better gear. I wouldn’t tbh.
You actually have more options than you think to control your mercenary.
The first option is to use some form of teleportation (Teleport skill, in your case, is the most useful). He will instantly be moved to where you teleported to. This also works for using stairs, using a town portal, a waypoint, etc…
The second option is to move out of his radius. He will then stop combat and run towards you. If you think he is incapable of leaving the dangerous area (due to some obstacle blocking him, just run as far as you can. After a certain distance, mobs stop attacking him, and if you get far enough, he’ll teleport to you.
Also, don’t forget that you can give him potions. By pressing Shift while using the action to drink a potion, it is the mercenary that drinks it instead (you can also move the potion from your inventory to his picture, but that’s way too slow for combat).
If, despite that, you find him dying too often, you can fill your inventory with mana potions every time you leave town. They are cheap at vendors, and can reduce your issues with mana.
As for where to grind, I guess you’ll know what you can and can’t do, but don’t hesitate to look online which areas are which level. As some have already pointed out, there are areas with high monster level that may be reasonably easy to grind with your build (even if in some cases, it can mean skipping cold immune enemies to get to that spot).
For a ranged build, Andariel should be easy to fight. I don’t recall any enemies being cold immune in her area, and her ranged attacks are all reasonably easy to dodge if you study them a little. Of course, it’s unlikely that your mercenary survives the fight, but despite that, you should still be able to vanquish her by kiting her attacks and regenerating your mana normally.
I’ll add that having one point in Warmth (and also in Teleport) is a must have for a sorceress. If you don’t already have one, you should really put one at your next level up. With all the +Skill bonuses you have, you’ll see a massive buff in mana regen.
Don’t let your mercenary just run into crowds. You need to tele a lot to keep him close. I only put my mercenary in there when there’s a cold immune and I’ve killed most everything else, then proceed to static the main immune while the merc kills it off.
Tele is your friend and biggest defense, but also can be your biggest downfall with a bad placed teleport. Ancient Tunnels in act 2 is cool for cold, especially if you don’t have a sunder yet.
Strong advice within this thread already so I’ll just say my 2cents. Hell Difficulty is meant to punish players who go with a single element build. The lone exception, to a degree, is the Paladin or Necromancer with Magic Damage since Blessed Hammer/Bone Spear can pretty much beat the game on its own. They can’t harm Magic Immunes in A2(Plague Bearers, Greater Mummies), A3(Wailing Beasts in Temples) or A5(Wave 2 of Baal specifically) but pretty much everything else can be hurt and defeated in quick order. Blessed Hammer is the stronger Magic wielder thanks to Concentration Aura bumping its damage considerably(should be removed but I digress).
Yet you’re a Sorceress so for her, you either roll Hybrid(Fire/Cold ideally since you can whittle down Fire/Cold Uniques with Static + Telekinesis + Merc) or you stick to single element and just skip foes you can’t kill and farm areas that are typically devoid of your damage type. Best element to farm with is Cold despite the plethora of Immunes. Reason for this is Cold Mastery since anything not immune = dies thanks to -Enemy Cold Resistance. This comes in handy since its free for when you get a Cold Sunder Charm, although CM will work at 20% effectiveness since it was possible to set Sundered Enemies to -100 Resistance. Now, with level 37 Cold Mastery, they’ll be at 55(which is respectable). Manage to get your hands on an Infinity for your Mercenary and that 55 drops to 38 while under the effects of Conviction. Seek out a Nightwing Helm and place a 5/5 Cold Facet within. You may also explore getting a Doom due in large part to the -40 to -60 Enemy Cold Resistance. You get that along with a Cold Sunder and Blizzard will wreck Hell Difficulty with ease. Fire and Light Trees are stronger overall but if you’re farming, Cold is quite efficient.
If you do switch mercs, be sure to take the gear off first before hiring a new one, otherwise if you don’t you’ll lose the gear.