I finally got everything I need for the Enigma runeword, but I’m not sure if the base I have is worth using, it has kinda low durability. Should I hunt for something better, and in that case what should I be looking for?
Currently I have this:
Diamond Mail
Defense: 441
Durability: 26
Required STR: 131
Required level: 54
Sockets: 3
Wouldn’t use this, too high strength. Enigma gives a ton of strength, which lets you save points for other stats (if you use a low str armor like dusk shroud with many characters you can save like 50+ str points and put that all in dex for max block or more vit). Also it’s probably not a “light armor” class, which means you’ll get a run/walk speed penalty.
Best mix/max armor for it is a dusk shroud with high armor, but wyrmhide, scarab husk, and mage plate are all totally fine too (though with MP you’ll have slightly lower armor overall, this mostly only matters for classes like hammerdin with big defense bonuses (holy shield)). So I’d get one of those and decide which appearance you like the best (you can google the appearances for all armors on all classes).
Don’t use a superior elite armor with +durability, or you will be paying huge sums to repair it (I’m not joking, when I say huge I mean like 80k per durability point where the repairs can go into the millions). Just use a regular 3 socket that’s on the high end of the armor range.
i wouldn’t use that.
best base for most cases is mage plate
dusk shroud isn’t bad either
a lot of people like archon plate too but the str requirement is too high if you don’t have torch or anni imo
Thats not good, diamond mail is heavy type or armor and require too much strengt.
You badicly want to use:
Dusk shroud
Scarab husk
Wyrmhide
Archon plate
Archon plate is considered as best choice for look and defense.
Preferably superior with +% enhanced defense
Archon plate, while light class, also has high str requirements (103) so it is not optimal compared to the others. Mage plate is better if you like that appearance, assuming you’re not playing a rare character who gets tons of str anyway (barbs are an exception and may not care, but casters typically don’t want to go to 103 before the bonus kicks in, the amount of stats you save with a mage plate far outweighs having 200-300 more def).
Thanks, I willl look for wyrmhide, scarab husk and mage plate then. I have one dusk shroud but it doesn’t look good on my assassin. So I can overlook durability on these items?
Price of repair doesnt matter that much, you can easily repair with ort runes.
I see, thanks.
20 characters.
This is not a good take. For armor it’s Ral, and you don’t want to use Rals for armor repairs when you should be saving them to craft caster amulets. No reason to subject yourself to horribly expensive repairs for 50-100 armor or whatever you get from a superior, it’s just a giant waste of time and gold and crafting resources.
100% agree with this, unless you’re an absolute perfectionist and don’t mind the hassle of having to find rune to repair the superior base, else it’s better to just stick with a max or high def version base in a nut shell.
I would make enigma in a 24x-261 mp over a superior 15ed base anytime just to save the hassle of repairing using runes.
Ok ral, what ever. It drops all the time.
Its not waste, ral drops often. I recently throwed bunch of them away free. Even if you dont have rals its fine, you just sell few elite items to Vendor, easy money. Or you can get plenty of gold made by GF char.
Still a bad take, when you’re farming at max level you can easily use every Ral for crafting caster amulets (I do it all the time, you get rals at roughly the same rate as pamethysts). And farming gold and going to town to sell takes time, making mf/rune farming less efficient. There is literally no reason to waste them (or the time) for 50 armor. They are not cheap to trade for either because people know they’re valuable for crafting. Use the rals for crafting GG amulets, not because you had poor planning and put your enigma in the wrong base.
Except it is not wrong base, just because you have issue with repairing doesnt mean others will have same issue. Higher defense means that mobs will hit you less. If your char is not build wrongly and you actualy know how to position properly, you will not have truble with repairing Archon plate enigma at all. I am playing chars with it for years and never had issues with it. I dont think you should be telling people to use inferior armor which is mage plate. Its fine as option, but not prefered one at all.
50 armor literally does nothing in hell bro, and it is not worth 80k/dur point repairs. Plenty of hardcore/long-term players use MP, but note I also said dusk shroud/wyrm/scarab are meta, not MP, but some people use it anyway because they like the appearance. You are giving bad advice that will just waste his time and resources, just stop. lol
Look if you like to use inferior stuff with lower stats or armor in which you will look horrible its fine and i am happy for you. But you should not not telling others that AP is not good choice when its basicly meta choice.
Feel free to make enigma in garbage non sup mage or leather armor tho :). But some people actualy like to have best stuff like 15% ed AP.
Actually, superiority based on durability actually lowers the value of an armor. So, armors with both enhanced defense and durability are worth less than armors with only enhanced defense.
Eni runes are very expensive. You want to find an Ist somewhere and trade for a 15% ED Dusk Shroud with 3 sockets. It’s probably as good as it gets, although I’ve almost always gone with AP in the past.
I do have a question for the experts about Mage Plate vs. higher defense armors. I’ve read that armor doesn’t even matter if you’re moving. However, when a Hammerdin is standing still, spamming hammers, won’t a higher defense armor be a better solution for him? Or when Blizz Sorc is making Christmas come early, she’s stationary as well - vulnerable to ranged attacks. Having 150+ defense sounds like a good idea to me. Am I missing something?
Good discussion, nothing good has dropped yet. I will have to consider all this. Your inputs are much appreciated.
Armor is Ral runes to repair. My Duress in a superior Wyrmhide (+DEF and no durability bonus) is 93k per durability point to repair, which has made me be stressed out my Ral supply at all times 
You are standing still often with practicaly all chars which benefits from enigma. Only javazon is on the move often.
archon plate requires more than anni and torch to reach which is obviously no go for majority of the builds anyways. When strength bug was a thing in D2 Lod, ppl could equip str equipment and then wear archon plate enigma, take off the strength gears and wear the normal meta gears, it worked in the older D2 but not in D2R, hence, building enigma in archon is highly not recommended unless you are ok to invest 50ish str more just to wear archon which could equate to 100 - 150 hp more.