Stuck at Hell Act 2 With Level 37 Gear

I’m a lvl 71 javazon, playing offline, stuck with gear between level 11 and 37 and a crappy level 26 rare weapon.
I can’t make anything drop, especially a better weapon, even though I’ve done many MF runs. Where do the good weapons drop?

So I’m stuck at Hell A2 because I can’t cope with L. Immune mobs. I’ve rerolled my stats so I could spend some points (15) in jab and valkyrie (15) but the damage is way to low, so it was a waste.

Additionnally, my merc constantly dies. It also requires 10 minutes to kill a boss like Hell Andy or NM Meph.

Any suggestions?

My good dude, if you are struggling in a walkthrough as a Javazon, you must have added the wrong skills and focused on the wrong kind of gear. That or maybe you rushed ahead too fast and are seriously under-leveled for a2 hell.

First of all, I suggest looking up & finding a javazon leveling guide. Shouldn’t be hard to do via YouTube or even a general internet search for a text guide. Second of all, if you are lower than lv 70 right now, you should not be in a2 hell. Go back and run some nightmare Baal until you have lvls and gear that suits hell diff.

If you happen to choose to not go look up a guide, here are a few basic things for you to keep in mind:

  1. Focus on maxing the synergies for your lightning skills asap, particularly Charged Strike. You should be using Charged Strike vs. single targets and Lightning Fury against large mobs. You should not be maxing your Valkyrie. What you want to do is add base points to dodge/avoid/evade, which the Valkyrie will benefit synergies from. With all of the +Skill Gear that you should be putting on your Javazon, the Valk will be strong enough.
  2. Focus on mainly +all res and +skill gear for your Javazon. The second priority would be making sure you have a good shield with high block rate/speed. Third priorities IAS and FRW.
  3. Dedicate some substantial trade resources towards making your merc strong. You should have some form of an a2 merc. In your situation, it sounds like you’d benefit more from a Holy Freeze merc than anything else. Easy & cheap way to bolster him up for hell diff is to make him a Treachery runeword armor, get your hands on a cheap helm like Crown Of Thieves so he has life leech, and get your hands on some kind of a cheapo mid lvl spear or polearm that deals a lot of damage. There are plenty of these kinds of weapons that people just throw away because they are so cheap. The merc should his job to handle lightning immune mobs. If he isn’t, sometimes you just have to avoid the light immune mobs until you can build an Infinity runeword for merc.
  4. In terms of MFing to get better gear, you’ve just got to spend the time to do it man. Don’t forget that you can pick up an sell things off the ground for in game gold, which can be used for gambling. It should be very easy for you to gamble up some basic sets of: +amazon skill javelins, +amazon skill circlets, +amazon skill amulets, +amazon skill gloves.

I’ll let someone who actually mains Javazon comment any further on this.

~ G’luck.

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Thank you for your answer.

I did indeed follow a guide and spent my points in Power Strike instead of Charged Strike and Lightning Fury and the base point in Avoid, Pierce, etc. I know about the synergies. I’m not new at the game either, but first time rolling a javazon. I did reset my points to spend on jab and valkyrie for those immunes but it’s not very good.

It looks like this at lvl 71 with +3 all skills, my base points are :
16 jab, 10 power strike, 1 charged strike, 13 lightning strike, 14 lightning fury, 1 into poison javelin, light. bolt and plague jav., 1 into each passive except 14 for valk., and none into bows.

My damage is very good, except against L. Immune (null) and bosses (takes forever).

No boss will ever drop me a better weapon.

My merc has 1900 armor and 1260 life and 75% to all resists but dies so easily.

With whom do you suggest me to gamble? Further I can reach yet is Hell A2.

Bosses are taking long for you possibly because you maxed out the wrong lightning skills. Charged strike is arguably the best boss killing skill in the game and you only have 1 point in it. You may want to consider respeccing again. You want to max out Charged Strike and Lightning Fury before putting any other extra points in other lightning skills. (40ish skill points total).

If you’re playing mostly solo and want to kill lightning immunes you can consider putting points into the poison javelin skills (this is what I do), or wearing a strong bow in the weapon swap and putting skills there. Please note killing Lightning immunes will still take a while to do.

As for gambling, it doesn’t matter which NPC you gamble with. Gambling is based off your character level, which is why the cost of gambling the same item type increases with our level. The potential quality of the items (the affixes and item quality that can be rolled) is also dependent on level.

As for farming, a good place in A1 to farm is ‘The Pit’ the dungeon in the Tamoe Highlands. You can use the Outer Cloister waypoint and to get to the Tamoe Highlands, and the Pit is off of 1 of 2 of the path branches (stay on the path and you’ll find it eventually… I always pick the wrong branch so it takes me longer…). The Pit is good because the elite/champion packs can drop almost all items in the game, though you’ll have to be lucky to get exactly what you want :stuck_out_tongue:

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putting points into valkyrie is a mistake. 15 points in jab is a mistake too. develop charged strike and the skills that support it. as for your merc dying what level is your merc? you say you are level 71 so your merc must either be equal or less than that, if he has been dying a lot and you play and keep bringing him back he could be level 23 or some crap in which case …dude…he is gonna be cannon fodder in hell difficulty. what you need to do in this case is go to the mercenary merchant, take your gear off of your old merc , buy a new merc close to your level of 71 and then put gear back on. check the resistances on your merc and make sure his gear gets him as close to max level 75 res as possible. also make sure the plate you put on him has a high defense rating. you should have found some elite plate by now if you are in hell. also the choice of merc is important and what skill he has. i use the paladin in normal and hell with defiance because it gives extra defense to BOTH you and the paladin. my merc will die occasionally from an unusually bad monster but mostly i can keep him in the game. also note that the monsters have levels. in act 5 in hell, for example the monsters are about level 80 so your paladin is going to be challenged fighting them as are you. at level 71 i would suggest getting your resistances up as close to 75 as possible and do some countess runs to get runes and some andariel runs.

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Agree with the pit and check your spec. If your damage is low and better gear is out of reach, there’s not a lot you can do for your merc. Nightmare Baal still drops some good stuff. If that’s tedious, farm nightmare cows until you bleed milk. Or chaos sanctuary. Got options.

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  1. Mercenary: Create the runeword Treachery. Find a high attack polearm or create Runeword Insight in a fast elite base such as Great Poleaxe or Thresher. Look up blood crafting recipe for helm/ armet. Keep rolling until you get high life leech and useful mods. Equip all the gear to the merc. He will survive slot more.

  2. I don’t know much about java. However. You need to use cheap runewords like Stealth and Lore which are better than most low level gear. Tgod trades for an Um. Get it.

I feel like javazons have it easy in terms of gear lol. My fendazon is struggling still, especially with resistances in Act 1 Hell but then again, she is only lvl 57 (I am wayyyy underleveled lol).
I was leveling/questing with another zon (bowazon) who was like 1 lvl higher than me when we started doing Act 2 NM like a couple of days ago. I think I was level 42 or something when I was in Act 2 NM. We both somehow got to lvl 56 by finishing whole of Nightmare difficulty in a few hours, just only 2 of us. It felt so easy and smooth for some reason, but then again both of us had our mercs (he had act 2 merc and I had act 1 merc), valkyries and decoys (this was literally spammed in almost all packs of mobs we encountered). I did switch to bow until I had enough dex and str to wear Lycander’s Flank.
Duriel and Diablo seemed so easy to kill 'cause they sat at one spot due to our valks and our decoys near them and we just used our bows on them. Meph and Baal moved a bit around so they weren’t pinned in one spot but they still died easily.

really? there is a big gap between titans revenge, tstroke and…whatever. i am level 83 and i still do not have one of the 2 elite javalins.,thus i have to be creative in what i use. but you are a javazon using fend? are you using a javalin or spear? i would never use a spear because then you cant use a shield. shield blocking is at least as important as defense rating because 75% shield blocking means 75% chance a monster swing will be a complete miss.

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Oh I didn’t know that there are builds where fend is used with javalins. I thought fend was always used with spears. But yes, I use spears with fend. I like the whole spear-holding amazon aesthetic, I find it cool and always have since back when I played D2 almost 2 decades ago. I never got past level 20 or something back then 'cause I probably didn’t know how to play as one lol.
I think I need those stats that reduce overall damage, like Shaftstop I think that’s one type of item like that. Also all resists to survive in hell 'cause of the whole penalty on resists for both NM and Hell.

Thank you all for your answer. I did respec and now my damage is great. Except I can’t kill L. immunes and my merc is worthless :
Life 1416
Dmg 266-677
Def 2010
Hell resists 75/37/57/37

His damage is too weak and he dies quickly by mini bosses or champions or magic.

Optimizing your mercenary is basically a mini game in itself. You should look for guides on how to do that. Or if you want more help you’ll have to be more specific. For example which mercenary you’re using (plus their skills) and what gear you have available to put on it.

As an example I’m using an Act 2 mercenary with Defiance. Its wearing an Insight runeword (polearm), Treachery Runeword (ethereal Wyrmhide base) and I traded and got it a Tal Rasha’s Horadric Crest. It still dies if the Fade from Treachery doesn’t proc in time, or if he gets cursed with amplify damage and I don’t heal him fast enough.

Insight runeword provides me mana (I don’t have enough wealth to make an Infinity to break resistances so its what I’m using now).

Treachery provides a chance to proc Fade when he is being hit, which maxes out his resistances and lowers physical damage too, provides chance to proc Venom on hit to increase mercenary damage, also gives attack speed to mercenary and increased hit recovery. Its also a pretty cheap runeword. Its in an ethereal elite armor because Mercenary gear never loses durability.

Tal Rasha’s Horadric Crest give life leech, all resistances and a bit of extra hp. You’ll want to find your mercenary something similar either on helm or other pieces of gear.

You can heal a merc?!?

/facepalm

You can feed them potions. Default hotkeys are shift + 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 (same as drinking them yourself but pressing shift at the same time).

Same caveats as when you drink them, takes a second to take effect and gains life over time.

Well, I never knew that for all those years and feel like a noob for it, lol.

That is going to solve many problems though!

And to answer your question, my merc uses Holy Freeze (except when it bugs and switches to defiance for some reason), Insight polearm, Dark Adherent (armor set) and Sazabi’s Mental Sheath.

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I think I’d totally recommend finding a decent ethereal base (an elite armor) with 3 sockets and making the Treachery runeword for your merc. It will provide tons of benefit for your merc’s survivability and dps, AND its cheap to make. Getting the ethereal elite armor base will probably be the hardest part!

And then try to get a helm with life steal on it to help the merc self heal.

Another nice stat for mercs if you can manage it is ‘cannot be frozen’.

Why would I want an ethereal armor?

+50% base armor but cannot be repaired ( your merc will not break the armor )

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Exactly! Ethereal armors have an extra 50% base defense!

I’ve been trying to find better gear but to no avail. I have 200 mf and done countless Meph/diablo/baal run on NM and I get nothing interesting. Tried The Pit on Hell without MF for socketed items but nothing either. So many L. immunes there that it’s a hard run.

I don’t know what else to do.