NFL touchdown simulator

General Discussion
1

I know I’ve posted about this before, but good gracious, Just let me vent lmao.
So…Just beat act 3 on my ladder lightning trapsin… first assassin character ever.

Everythjng immune. Literally everything. Felt like 2-3 hours of attempting to run a touchdown solo, except the field is tiny hallways, and other team has blowdarts and 1000 players

Then, when you die, there’s no way you’re getting your body back, so you have to restart, which resets the map lol. :man_facepalming:t2:

This was not fun. And as much as I love D2 , this feels like bad game design. The game heavily pushes you toward one element, or you do almost zero damage, but then puts immunities everywhere? It contradicts itself….

It should have been synergies OR immunities. Not both. :confused:

I can’t put points into another element. if I do, then all I do is negligible chip damage to everything, thanks to synergies.

Really unfortunate game design, that will
Likely never be addressed.

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2

If a game presents little to no challenge, it quickly becomes a “mouse click = win simulator”… AKA boring.

As far as dealing with immunities to your main damage type, that’s where character planning comes into play. Sure, you can dredge through the game with a single damage type, and there will be areas where you completely obliterate everything, but there will be challenging spots where you’re chipping enemies and/or relying on your merc to do the killing.

Those tight spots where you’re facing light immunes forced you to think around the problem, dodging, parrying and juking through enemies… Sometimes getting close to certain death, only to escape by a razor thin margin. Those experiences get your heart beating faster, get that adrenaline pumping… Especially if you’re playing hardcore.

Always have a backup plan, even if it is running.

A biased response, I know… To each, their own.

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3

Fire blast, your merc and death sentry should provide a good mix of extra dmg types; fire and physical. Fire blast used to synergize with lightning sentry and give it dmg, but obv this isn’t the case anymore, I still think it’s worth investing into though. FB gets synergy dmg from LS and overlaps with LS’s synergies, it provides off type dmg for immunes, and provides extra casts for death sentry every 3 hard points. 1 point into DS is fine too, your +traps/skills gear should be giving it a decent blast radius with only 1 hard point, it’s light dmg doesn’t matter. So first 60 skills into LS, then 1 point wonders, and dump remaining into Fire Blast.

And I find you have to use cloak of shadows a ton, same with mind blast. Like really spam the hell out of MB, until a few things convert, when things are hectic. It removes so much attention off you and really calms mobs, especially ranged ones, down. The shadow warrior isn’t affected by the cooldown for CoS either for some reason, so she can spam it a fair bit, if you keep it as an active skill, which is handy.

I’m currently playing a brand new single player martial arts assassin, Claws of Thunder as main and Fist of Fire on backup, and I’m running into that problem a bit too, but that’s how I worked around it. I ain’t denying though, it can be really rough at times, but that’s where I think excessive use of mind blast can be key. It’s less than ideal, but it works for me.

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And since 2.5 it got even worse:
Normal and Nightmare: “Focus on a single element in order to have high damage; you’ll kill everything in your way.”
Hell: “Oh, there are immunes everywhere. You should have made a hybrid build to have a back-up element to fight them.”
After Hell: “Sorry, we changed our mind again. Get that damn Sunder charm and focus on a single element again.”

And no, having a free respec in each difficulty is not a solution.

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5

Right? The game keeps flip flopping on how it wants you to play. Like it has an identity crisis or something.

Don’t get me wrong, I like a good challenge, But I was bothered by the fact that I couldn’t even participate in act 3.

I came to enjoy diablo 2 gameplay but the overwhelming amount immunes turned diablo 2 into some silly 3 hour gauntlet run, where none of my characters skills or abilities mattered except the charges on her tele staff.

Starting act 4 tonight tho. Wish me luck🤞

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6

How is A3 even a problem, get a teleport staff and zoom through it. Or you could use your vast toolkit as assa? Cloak of shadows, mind blast for example. You can even kill lightning immunes with fire blast + merc. Obedience is pretty much free and will let your merc carry you through hell, ancients included.

7

once you have some points into death sentry the lightning immunes become a non-issue.
of all the chars i have ever build the trapsin is by far one of the easiest.

also, 1 point into cloak of shadows makes the game trivial since you can just blind the whole screen and walk by the monsters.

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8

Playing on controller, teleport is sometimes a bit unpredictable and gets you killed as much as it saves you. But if you die, the maps reset. You run out of gold pretty quick.
That said, I did abuse the tele staff a fair amount,…

But the point is, I shouldn’t have to skip entire acts.

9

I play on console, played through a handful of times.

Well it is a 20 year old game and is abandoned by blizz, the hope for a redesigned act 3 is lost

10

Totally lost, I agree.
Nothing is going to change and it’s just one old man yelling at the sky….
BUT… it makes me feel a “little” better to grunt and groan lol

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11

Huh how do you fail with an assassin…? Whether trap or ma, sins have got to be one of the strongest and easiest chars to solo the game with… as others stated, immunities are nothing for a trapper, you have so many options… and trapsins are one of the few builds outside of sorcs that can retrieve their naked bod. Lots of questions…

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It’s been the hardest for me, personally.

Sorc: I dual element. No problem here. 40 points to nova, 40 points to frozen orb, donezo.

Necro: my main, always has 3 damage types, no matter what you pick. Poison immunes rarely encountered, magical immunes almost never encountered. Fire and physical in case of emergency.

Paladin: magic hammers SO easy……or zeal: was just a matter of drawing out enemies one by one

Frenzy Barbarian: this one was a struggle, but drawing them away from the crowd also did it

Bowazon: multishot, got lucky, found a buriza… was tough but got through the whole game with it.

Druid: wind can pretty much just get everything, slowly,

Assassin: they say start as fire switch to lightning. And then everything is immune to lightning in hell difficulty.
The corpse explosion is very weak compared to necro, and the one or two bodies I can drop, don’t deal with the rest of the enemies around. Gets them to half Hp, and then my char is worthless and I have to turn tail and run because they cannot even be scratched.

FYI I don’t use a merc. He’s pathetic and dies instantly in spite of my best efforts to equip him with playthrough gear.

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Huh, can we watch you play on a stream…? A2 Merc is by far like 99.99999% of everyone’s way to dealing with immunes as they do a tremendous amount of damage to everything that isn’t an act boss, to have Infinite mana supply by wielding Insight one of the cheapest and strongest runewords, to slow all monsters around you constantly even if cold immune by his Holy Freeze and to give your enemies a target while you blast them with your spells.

You are an extremely young grasshopper.

14

Hahaha
Well I’ve gotten out of the habit of using mercs for my normal->hell playthroughs. Endgame, yes. But this early on, they just die so fast. Costs too much. I’ll bring them out for a bossfight to buy me a couple seconds of meat shielding, but yeah. Haven’t invested in him much.

He never had an insight, just a rare polearm, haemosu’s chest and face of horror for the helmet.

15

He should never die unless you’re against an act boss…it is pretty much best practice to equip your merc with an insight as early as you can, makes all your mana problems starting from nightmare disappear and then as you find better bases, you should be able to make insight many times over… and making sure you have a nightmare a2 merc with holy freeze is another best practice…with the addition of bulwark, you have another super cheap runeword that does wonders…this is d2 101 yo…

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Not to mention a Prayer A2 merc with Insight + Cure helm, which both Meditation and Cure synergize with Prayer for faster healing, results in ultra rapid healing at high character levels. With that setup, Sir Pokesalot doesn’t even need life steal in most circumstances.

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17

Guessing the MA comment is slightly directed at me;

I’m playing single player and I’m not twinking with a sorc. And personally, not to beat a dead horse, but I hate what 2x mosaic does to the MA gameplay. I think it makes martial arts so f’ing boring to play, and makes the char a different beast entirely, so I’m not using 2x mosaic. Admittedly, I don’t even have the runes for one yet, even if I wanted it.

Char’s still fresh af, I’m just trying to get through with the regular gear I find. Currently stuck in either the ancients way or on the ancients themselves. The biggest thing I’m finding atm, is balancing resists, dmg and actually making your charge skills hit in hell difficulty is hard AF without infinity:

CoS doesn’t work on everything, and more importantly it’s defense reduction isn’t the best at low levels, but high levels also increase the duration of the cd which makes it less accessible/active.

A single mosaic will help solve dps, but makes the chance to hit with charge skills problem even worse; providing barely any boost to chance to hit. Currently looking for 2x fools claws, with either + CoT, or + sin/ma skills. Fools mod, or 3x eth rune, seem to be the only ways to make charge skills hit reliably late game. Fool’s mod preferably because the value it provides isn’t cut in half when facing uniques and bosses.

Char is at level 86, I could definitely grind higher; but at this point the lvl part of the hit calc is 1:1 for almost all monsters, besides bosses.

Merc is holy freeze, thresher insight with solid dps rolls, treachery, and bulwark. Blessed Aim merc barely provides any actual Chance to Hit because the %AR pool is already super inflated by the charge skills bonus themselves. Also using a lvl 20 faded shadow warrior as well.

I tried an act 1 merc for inner sight, for a short time. It felt like she wasn’t casting it enough to warrant swapping out the claws. She always ran around too much, and even when engaging, she didn’t prioritize it. I definitely didn’t try it for long enough though, I only had a Reflex bow for insight, so she was having survival issues.

I’ll get through eventually but definitely having struggles here and there, usually revolving around light immunes. FoF and BoI just don’t have the same reach as CoT, making spamming of CoS/MB almost necessary to safely get in there. Which is fine, just still admittedly tough at times.

Char:
https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/mx42a09o
charms aren’t exact, but gets the point across. Other gear and skills are as shown. Been grinding Andy and Meph, but no such luck so far, and they don’t really provide any items that would fix the Chance to Hit issue anyways. Kinda hoping for Shako, some better boots, or any kind of claws to try out.

Open to suggestions, just explaining my experiences

Personally, I wish they had made it so that charge skills always hit, and spenders check attack rating, instead of how it currently is. Each charge even provides +50% attack rating (25% for PS), that currently do nothing cause spenders always hit. :man_shrugging:

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18

Wasnt directed towards you, ive played lots of sins. Last season, my very first char was a ma sin and I had a great time wayyy before i got my first mosaic. It actually took leveling 2 or 3 chars to 80+ before I found enough runes to make 2 x mosaic… ma sin is very good at finishing game but obviously sorc/foh/java/etc so much better for speed farming…

19

I’ll have to look into getting the merc back.
You might not believe me, but he just dies around every corner lol. Is there some gear you’d recommend for him? or is it just because I’m a really low level? level 58ish.

If a group of flayers run up to him, his health is just instantly yellow and then red and he dies before I can teleport us away most of the time lol.

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Holy freeze, life leech, high damage weapon with Insight, he ain’t gonna die instantly… play on a stream show us…

I posted this video in response a couple years ago to a troll on this forum so ignore the commentary but you can see, nothing special with the merc build and they took out countess and immunes who are immune to me…aside from static shock merc tanked + killed…