from what I’ve found out, and what I’m going to share with you in a moment, all i can say is almost all D2R youtubers covering the topic of chaos runeword, are no experts but just diluted fools claiming CHaos Runeword repairs are expensive and that you either need a steady ort rune supply or a goldfind barb in order to play wwsin…
this is completely not true, unless you are a complete min-max nut that can’t sacrifice few skillpoints…
To the point:
the reason behind high repair costs is that the repair costs are strictly connected to the uncapped value of the item ( yeah i know most expensve items go only for 35k however real item value in gold can go waay beyond that)…
the problem is some modifiers cause the item price in gold to literally skyrocket…
remember when You just started the season and picked up every staff wand or a necro head hoping they have some decent + skills? yeah they’d certainly go for 35k at charsi ( most of those items value was actually alot higher… the problem with asassin’s staff mods is that assassins sometimes ( especially in case of wwsin) actually uses the item’s durability ( and oh boy she does ww chews through claw durability like protoss through minerals and vespene gas), for castr class it is not a problem to have expensive items in ewapon slot since they don’t use them… wwsin does however…
so your only choice is to forgo the + skills on the chaos runeword claw and either settle on superior or plain normal claw ( normal as in non-superior but can be elite).
I’ve checked the stats myself and made 3 set of chaos claws drained them to 0 durability, and took note of the repair costs:
Claw#1
Superior Runic Talons:
+15%ED +15%Durability +3Weapon Block +3Fade +3 Venom
durability 0/79
full repair cost of the runeword 3’245’056 gold
( that’s ~8 trav runs with gf barb per each two baalruns with wwsin)
Claw#2
Superior Runic Talons
+15%ED +15% Durability and no stafmods
durability 0/79
full repair costs of the runeword 111’500 gold
(that’s literally ~10 baalruns with wwsin per 1 travrun with gf barb) this option probably still requires gf barb since it’s hard to fork out 111k per two baalruns
Claw#3
Runic Talons
non-superior no-staffmods plain white socketed Runic Talons
durability 0/69
full repair costs of the runeword 13’600 gold
( that’s literally ~14k gold per two full baalruns [14k given that other equipment requires fixing as well] that’s literally perfectly managable without owning a goldfind barb or any +% goldfind affix for that matter)…
I hope you’ve found my little post informative…
and if you knew that already than why none of you shared this info?
Yeah, the real hack is to not go for a superior item as it puts like a 10x multiplier on repair costs. You definitely want to make Chaos in something that at least has weapon block, because it means never spending points in weapon block. Extra Venom or Fade isn’t that substantial, but it is optimal. I’d personally go for something with at least 1 in Weapon Block and 1 in Dragon Flight because both save talent points, and Dragon Flight is useful utility.
Gold is basically free, but the max caps on gold, both stash and character, create extreme playability issues. In your first example, any sin below level 75 literally can’t hold enough gold to repair that claw from zero durability. If D2R changed anything, it needed to be caps on repair costs. Not because there’s such a thing as wasting gold, but because players aren’t allowed to hold enough of it for these niche but real use cases. Protip for anyone who doesn’t have a dedicated goldfind barb, any wand or sorc orb is a 99% chance to be worth 35k, and it only takes up 2 inventory slots each. Easy way to cap gold while not actively trying to cap gold.
Stashing ort runes in your cube is still a good idea if you don’t want to go back to town more often for whatever you’re doing in game.
But WW sin always had the frame bug. I forget the exact details, but the assassin model will often bug out during WW frames because of an unfixable discrepancy with the model frames. That’s what causes the WW animation lock that has to run it course before you can act again. On top of that, I believe the recent changes to WW also affect WW sins, meaning that you’re still borked if you get hit with decrep or the fairly common frozen affixes on elite mobs that override the “cannot be frozen” mod.
If they ever add more updates to the game, reducing weapon durability drain overall is a good place to start. It needs to be 1/3, ideally like 1/5, of what it is now. It adds value to using eth weapons that aren’t indestructible, as right now you trash anything that can’t be a merc weapon.
I actually honestly can recommend ww sin for pvm, but chaos claw can’t have +skills nor be superior. Has to be used in offhand…
Preferably without such stupidity as blade shield.
That does next to no damage and chews through main hand durability on top of ww…
Recent changes to ww actually help more than harm for pvm… at least crushing blow doesn’t have a -50% modifier like it used to have in lod from lvl 1 ww…
Also i recommend maxing weapon block, instead of 1 point wonder on weapons…
If you want bonus skills than have them on the rare mainhand with rep mod, you could then cubeglitch the durability and literally have indestructible mainhand…
Ad for using grief berserker axes for ww barb ppl couldn’t have figured a dumber setup…
With a freaking 26 durability item?! Srsly?
Either use death runeword or stick to phase blades.
My man… I’m not quite sure what did you want to present in your video…
to this point i’m still not sure if you are trolling or are actually glad for my tips…
As i said: #1 blade shield is a no go skill it does next to no damage and eats your main hand durability like bum downs a bottle of booze… #2 instead of ligtning sentry and teleport i’d focus on crushing blow and chance to hit%
so the replace that diadem and enigma for gface and duress… optionally go for goblin toes instead of gore riders… 75% cb is far better than 15% from gores alone… pefer + shadow discipline charms over 10/76 ones, they may give less damage and attack rating but also give other bonuses like burst of speed venom, weapon block, claw mastery, and fade… charm
beefed up burst of speed, can be decent moovement skill instead of teleport, when near mobs you switch to fade, forgo lightning sentry… best bet is to have high attack rating ( angelic jewlery combo) high attack speed 2x runic talons with a minimum of +32% ias on both gets you there ( chaos has 35% so the main hand runic talons has to roll 40% IAS to fit, you wouldn’t need highlords then…
– your chaos claws has +skills on it which is bad since the repair costs will be huge
best weapon setup is chaos in plain normal runc talons wihout any skill bonus, and rare runic talons with: cruel; fool’s; mechanic’s ( 2x sox); 40%IAS, 20sec rep;9% mana steal, and if you plan to cubebug the durability on this item thanks to 20sec rep mod and a properly timed ort rune recepie, you could also keep any + skills on this weapon, as durabuged item does not consume durability anymore, hence no reapir costs for it…
if it interests you the rare runic talons mentioned above should be runed “BerEth” with a decent pair of blood gloves for a total of 100% crushing blow, this will literally melt non physically immune mobs…
PI’s should go down with venom and magic damage from chaos runeword. if you have 95% chance to hit the mob it should go down fairly quickly. alternatively you could switch to a3 fire merc for the enchant if ctc is still low…
I’m definitely not trolling. I genuinely want to find the most efficient P1 solo self found build. I was trying to illustrate repair costs, but it’s been a while. The video was poor quality. Here are a few higher resolution runs in Chaos and in Tombs TZ:
5 Chaos runs + build and full cost at end: https:// youtu.be/5LxqXXsHwJ4
Full Tomb of Tal Rasha TZ clear with full cost at end: https:// youtu.be/jcwpWd7Joa8
*Honestly, I’d love to see someone do more efficient clears on a WW sin. I focus on Champs, Elite, Ghosts and any thick packs I see. Best exp per hour and kill speed is my target and so Enigma is critical.
Let’s not get away from the point of thread which is about repair costs for melee, and for WW sin specifically. This line here encapsulates why it’s a problem and massive disincentive for playing melee with weapons that have durability:
The idea that using an optimal RW base is worse than using a suboptimal base due to repair costs is blatant and flagrant flaw in the game historically, and has continued into the current game. You have 2 major flaws baked into one inescapable death knell for WW sin: the constant need to repair an item so that the game can be played at all with that build, and the exorbitant resource cost to fund those repairs.
Assassins don’t have a phase blade option to circumvent this design flaw. If phase blades didn’t exist, you would see only weapons with indestructible mods used by melee. Instead of Grief, they’d be using Oath or Death, or some unique item with that same mod. This thread and the discussions within it are undeniable proof that durability and repair costs need an overhaul.
As with any D2R changes that would improve the game, don’t hold your breath.
I suppose I’ll spell it out since I can’t expect everyone to view my video demonstrations. It is true that repair costs can be an issue, but if your main hand is a claw with no skills the repair costs are very manageable. I even have my desired skills on the base of my offhand Chaos claw, and the repair costs are still very easy.
It costs me about 50k to do 5x Chaos runs, and the same 50k to repair after a full clear Tombs run.
Do I think the repair costs should be addressed for other configurations? Sure. But I demonstrated how to run WW sin optimally with blade shield and skills.
I’m not saying that you haven’t or that WWsin shouldn’t be played. I’m saying that all melee using weapons with durability run into a fundamental gameplay flaw.
i personally think wwsins are fine the way they are the expensive stuff is left out to be used only by pvp comuity, yet on the contrary to a common belif this build is viable for PvM if you step away from the die-hard min-max route… you could simply gamble for the other claw and get one you aim for… and if it rolls repair mod you could easily use it even if it has +3x3 skills on it and never loose a single point in durability or pay a single gold piece to repair it, due to duraglitching by cube recepie…
It is moderately hard to pull off as you only have like 0.2 seconds time window in another window of either 20 seconds or 33.3 seconds (depending on the roll) where you need to press the cube transmute button with weapon repair recepie ( when the weapon has durability lower than max) in order for the game to break that item’s durability game logic, the engine would think the game has higher durability than the max 69.( as in repaired to 69 by ort and also repair mod triggered at the same time causes the +1 bump not visible in game) this in turn causes the item’s durability damage game logic to fail since the engine asks lower the durability from 69 to 68, and the return says the item’s current durability is not 69 and the “lower the durability request” always fails for it, so in the end the item won’t get damaged if you prep it properly…
all in all…
I think the durability issue is in a good spot… most if not all major melee builds have either a way to completely negate weapon repair costs by having them indestructible or a way to make the costs unnoticable, which is ok in my book, as for having to pay for repairs before completing the end game build should exist and should be penalizing, as the end game build is the reward you strive towards, and it is it that reliefs you of the costs, not somewhere inbetween…
As i said before the guy with videos doesn’t realise that the repair cost cut he has is because blade shield skill is now grinding away the duability from the less expensive claw, and his chaos runeword while still expensive to repair now looses the durability at 1/3 rate of what it was before ( when held in mainhand both blade shield and ww chewed off the dura, and blade shield ticks like 0.2 seconds so 5fpa but is guaranteed to hit (unlike ww) and every hit is 10% chance to lose dura)…
what i presented in my estimations about baalruns was killing every single monster encountered, not zipping through with teleport and skipping everything to kill 1 or 2 packs like in his CS runs… playing like he does would prolong the claw durability even further, making it even more cost effective than what i described… so spending 13,6k on a full repair of chaos claw would be divided amongst even more runs… that would be completely neglegable
Bro, please realize how insane these ideas sound all piled together. This is proof that durability is not fine when the solutions are “play without durability”.
please don’t slice my posts and put senteces pulled out of some context to create another…
i stated clearly that some have indestructible weapons while others have low cost reapirs…
the truth is only zeal, fury, fenzy and ww have increased durability issues due to abnormal attack rates, other melee buids seem to be fine if a weapon has decent amount of dura…
although if you insist on lowering the durability consumption i have an idea… since the problem persists with ww for the most part i’d give wapon masteries all barb weapon masteries and assassins claw mastery a chance (as in another roll after the 1/10 lower the durability has been rolled) a chance not to consume durability based on the weapon mastery. it would start at (99% chance at lvl 1) and would decrease with level ( + to skills would work too) so at like lvl 40 it would cap out at let’s say 1%. So it would be 1% out of a 1/10 chance to lower durability for example… i still think his reduction is a bit too much and should be internally tested to fine tune the numbers, however I’m not aginst the idea to somewhat cripple the “durability loss system”, though I won’t be complaining if blizz doesn’t do jack, as the current system though cruel is managable…
I’m slicing out core concepts of your perspective because they’re flaws in the train of thought. What’s more, your points emphasize why weapon durability is borderline broken in D2. The prevailing strategy, as you’ve acknowledged, is to circumvent ever dealing with the weapon durability mechanic, be it by using only indestructible mod weapon choices or bugging the durability in a way that effectively removes it from a weapon.
Classes don’t need specific workarounds, the mechanic itself needs to be altered to make the game more playable while using weapons that have durability.
So you indeed acknowledge by stating “alter the mechanics” you actually mean lower the “durability loss” proc rate?
there’s really not much to durability loss mechanics it either is or it isn’t, if it “is” the only question that remains unaswered what proc rate should it have… i agree that the current 1/10 chance is a bit too harsh, so i proposed that any weapon mastery should have a chance to lower it down based on weapon type or in case of paladin and druid chance for all weapon types should be tied to individual skill levels… lowering the durability proc rate from 1/10 to let’s say 1/100 or even 1/1000 should do the trick, otherwise i have no idea what You mean…
As i said before the guy with videos doesn’t realise that the repair cost cut he has is because blade shield skill is now grinding away the duability from the less expensive claw, and his chaos runeword while still expensive to repair now looses the durability at 1/3 rate of what it was before
Yes, I understand this…
what i presented in my estimations about baalruns was killing every single monster encountered, not zipping through with teleport and skipping everything to kill 1 or 2 packs like in his CS runs…
Skipping everything? Lol, I kill everything that is relevant including all packs. If you want to play the game inefficiently, expect to pay high repair bills.
I don’t know man… I started out complimenting your original post. Weird bro.