THE BASIN

Basin Home

Diablo II Home

Welcome Mat

Recommended Reading

FAQ

Guides

Tools & Links

The Stash

Basin D2 Wiki

Forums

WeaselTech

VII. Miscellaneous

Mercenaries

The choice of Mercenaries has changed somewhat in LoD. Let’s look at your options.

Act 1 Rogues - Excellent choice. These lovely ladies use bows to dish out damage from afar. They will use either Fire or Cold Arrow, and will occasionally cast Inner Sight. Considering that your primary job is tanking, they will provide good covering fire. There’s an undocumented feature that adding +skills (or +Amazon skills) on them will change their type of attack. +1 skill will allow them to use their Fire/Cold Arrow exclusively. +2 skills will allow them to alternate between Fire and Cold Arrow. +3 skills, however, will make them alternate between Fire/Cold Arrow and Lightning Hose, which deals a lot of damage in short range. This damage scales with merc’s level, and is unaffected by bow damage (but affected by speed instead). If you’re smart, you can use this as a source for Lightning Damage to deal with the pesky PI, although this should present less use for rangers.

Act 2 Town Guards - Boy, they get significant enhancement in LoD. Once a fragile tank, they have developed into veritable aura pillars. They can dish a lot of damage since they use Jab to attack. They can tank, but not as good as you do, but they will tank much better if you give them some leech and damage reduction. In return, this is what you can expect:

Of particular interest from the above list are Defiance, Might and Holy Freeze. Think of them as your personal Paladins. Protect them like you will protect your partying Paladin, and they’ll live to give you the benefit. Choose the one that will give you the most benefit, depending on your build.

Act 3 Iron Wolves - These jungle sorcerers have similar role to the Rogues: provide cover fire. They rarely tank, even though they are equipped with sword and shield, and they tend to avoid melee, so they rarely die. They make excellent choice if you need someone to take care of physical immunes. Cold Iron Wolf will not do much Cold damage, but he helps you a lot in freezing enemies to reduce your tanking load. He uses Ice Blast and Glacial Spike (both are useful, but weak, cold spells), and Shiver Armor for his personal protection. Both Fire and Lightning Iron Wolves focus more on damage. Fire Iron Wolf uses Fireball and Inferno, while Lightning Iron Wolf uses Lightning and Charged Bolt. Compared to the rogues, however, their skills are not that damaging.

Act 5 Barbarians - in the words of Jonathon Spectre: Big, tough and fatty. If you don’t care about auras from your hireling, the Barbarian merc will tank for you. He’s definitely the best mercenary tank in the game, because of his high HP and his skills: Bash (KB) and Stun (stun) which would disable the enemies. Give them a big sword and high defense armor, and maybe a good barbarian-specific helm as well. Pick them if you need a backup tank. Great for rangers.

So, what mercenary to choose? Most of the time, javazons might not need another tanking mercenary because his movements would actually hinder their strategies: in particular, Town Guards and Barbarians can seriously disrupt a herding attempt by moving forward and attracting enemies to them. If you do need a backup tank, first consider whether you'd need an aura. If you want to deal more physical damage, get Might. If you want to get more defense, get Defiance. If you want to chill your enemies, get Holy Freeze. Keep in mind that the auras' benefits do not just apply to you: they would help the merc himself. For example, a Defiance merc with the right equipments can have ridiculously high defense that most physical attacks directed at them will simply refuse to connect - this, obviously, would make a great tank in areas like the Secret Cow Level. If you just want a general all-purpose tank, get a Barbarian: he's a lot more sturdy than Town Guards and he's able to stun or knockback the enemies. If you want cover fire in form of freezing missiles, get a Cold Iron Wolf, and if you need cover fire in form of physical missiles, get a Rogue. A Fire Iron Wolf can do a lot of damage with his spells, but the Lightning Iron Wolf is not too great, and besides, you have access to Lightning Fury, which is much better than any lightning spell that the Iron Wolf has at his disposal.

Hardcore Javazons

"Once you start down the dark path, forever it will dominate your destiny."
- Yoda, The Empire Strikes Back

Hardcore playing is a new feature on Diablo II. Usually, once you die, you'll restart back in town with your equipments in your corpse, located where you died. To continue the game, you must either reenter the game to get your corpse on town, or you can walk to where you have died to retrieve your equipments and continue the game. This death is associated with gold and maybe also EXP loss in Softcore (as the normal mode has came to be known) and is generally an annoyance. In Hardcore play, however, one does not have such luxury. Once a player dies in Hardcore, he stays dead and would have to restart the game using another character. This simple difference makes a profound difference in Softcore and Hardcore game plays, obviously, since Hardcore characters would have to take care of themselves in addition to the enemies or face mortality (and maybe a long and arduous rebuild).

Actually, Hardcore Javazon builds don’t differ much from a Softcore Javazon builds, although one must take care to invest more on defensives such as better developed passive skills, blocking, life, resists, maybe some damage reduction. To be honest, since Javazons are such terrific tanks, they make great Hardcore characters, and the build for SC and HC can be amazingly similar. In my own experience, the hardiest survivors in Hardcore are the tanking Javazons, or Rangers with some build focus on tanking. Playing Hardcore actually involves more a change in thinking more than a change in build: any build that survives well in SC will survive just as well in HC. For example, in Hardcore, be careful not to take on more enemies than you’re comfortable with. Watch out for the monsters with nasty combinations: always, ALWAYS, identify all the mods on a particular special enemy before engaging them. Be aware of your HP at all time.

Special mention must be made on the safety of your teammates as well as yourself. If you’re the tank, you’re supposed to keep them safe. Your place in the party is at front, and yet, you must know your capability. If you're a ranger, always act after you have ascertained that your action will not endanger the others, especially your tanks. If you’re faced with a threat you’re unsure of handling, let your teammates know so that you can act accordingly. Oftentimes, the bowazon behind you will be glad to take out that MSLE from afar, for example. Tanking in front also means identifying potential bad mods of a special enemy before your party engages it.

Conversely, beware of unsafe actions of your teammates. Always keep your eyes open for any bad habits: luring monsters to you, using convert when there are auras blazing around you, popping urns or seals without warning, or blindly shooting at packs without identifying them first. What you don’t expect CAN kill you. Warn your teammates suitably. Make them know the exact limit of your ability.

Of course, even Softcore players should observe these tips, but while the consequences of negligence are not very severe in SC, in HC it may mean a painful rebuild as well as ill feelings toward your former teammates. Be nice.

Be especially wary of Player Killers (PK) in HC. There are some people who derive great pleasure by killing another’s pride and joy. These are the same people who would regularly abuse their cats and dogs at home, and I don’t mean in a nice way. Generally, PKs are specially built to kill, and they normally have no honor in doing so - usage of hacks is not unheard of. Fighting them is usually not worth it, since the pure Javazon is not a great PvP character anyway. See below for tips on PvP and what to do when you’re being hostiled.

All is not lost if you die, however. In Hardcore, by giving loot to your friends, your friend will be able to retrieve your corpse once you die and claim your equipments. Obviously, this is going to be based on trust, so never give out loot to people you don't trust! At least, if you want to see your equipments returned to you so that you can use it for the rebuild. When you're being looted, do NOT press Esc on the "Your Deeds Will Be Remembered" screen, but rather wait until you have been fully looted (no corpse left) before leaving the game. Otherwise, you may not be looted completely. When you're given loot by someone, however, and your friend managed to kill himself, it falls to you to loot him (unless another looter is closer and able to loot with less risk). To loot someone, you have to have the inventory space to hold the equipments: you may have to drop some less valuable items to the ground temporarily to loot more equipments, until the corpse disappears, signifying that you've looted everything valuable. When looting, eliminate all threats in the area so that you can loot undisturbed... nothing is more painful than losing your own character in the attempt to loot someone else. Sometimes, your friend dies because of bad connection: when this is the case, try to loot him as fast as possible before his corpse disappears due to him dropping.

The Warnings@diabloii.net page is an excellent resource for warnings of new hacks and PK tricks and whatnot.

On PvP

PvP build

"How much can you know about yourself if you’ve never been in a fight?"
- Tyler Durden, Fight Club

In the business of killing other players, the Javazon ranks pretty low. Sure, she still has all those defensive passives, but her killing ability is pretty low compared to other melee builds. Other specialized PvP builds have both excellent defenses as well as extremely high damage, but the Javazon doesn’t have that much physical damage enhancing skills. Her Javelin skills are not much better too: Lightning Fury works against mobs of enemies, and not single targets. So, why bother mentioning PvP at all?

Well, the Javazon side of the Amazon is just the other side of the coin. Many successful Amazon duelers utilize both the Javelin and Bow sides of her tree, even though usually she would emphasize heavily on the Bow side instead. The Amazon usually depends on killing from afar, and the skill of choice is usually Guided Arrow. Since Pierce works with Guided Arrow, she can dish out a lot of damage (although high level Pierce is often frowned upon, and outright banned in some cases). But a Bowazon is not that good in defense, since she has a bow and no shield. What to do?

The Javelin portion of a PvP Amazon provides her with more options. For example, against other bowazons, she can approach with shield up, blocking her hits and attempting to jab her. The most common strategy to this is to jab the other Amazon, forcing her to run. In that situation, the Amazon can switch to her bow; obtain a click lock on the other Amazon (hold it over her name, and the Guided Arrow will auto target at her even if she’s off screen). To counter this, the other usually attempts to Slow Missile. Another very common use of the Javazon side is to block attacks like Multishot or Guided Arrows (although having to block the latter usually is part of an act of desperation). The dance that is a PvP fight quickly develops into a battle of wits and cunning. Some unusual (and often unexpected) tactics involving both sides of the Amazon may win the battle unwinnable by a pure Bowazon alone.

Of course, I just have to rant about two things. The presence of bugged items (usually super powerful) has really hurt the PvP community. There’s no point on fighting an Amazon who averages 4000 damage per arrow, with 100% pierce, 75% damage reduction, perfect resistance, and packing enough poison to kill a pod of whales, isn’t it? The private duels typically place strict restrictions on pierce and damage reduction, and ban all bugged items, but it’s a dog-eat-dog world out there in public dueling. Be careful.

Oh, and speaking of dog-eat-dog... beware of people in the public dueling games who would love to pop your corpse: that is, to make your items spill to the ground, making them available to the greedy players. Here's how you may get corpse popped: if you get killed, and you pick up another item to use, and then you get killed... or in general, when there are items equipped on you while your corpse still exists on the ground (therefore, this also applies when you have items that you cannot equip due to Str/Dex restriction on your corpse) then when you die, your items will shower to the ground. To avoid this, be careful to see whether some unscrupulous players have placed items over your corpse, and be wary. You can always exit the game and reenter to retrieve your corpse in the safety of the town. This has the additional benefit of eliminating the Anya bug. Refer back to the resist/absorb discussion for more information about the Anya bug.

The second thing I need to emphasize is the difference between a carefully staged PvP duels versus a PK hunt. In duels, both players are ready and expecting the others to attack, so both are mentally prepared. A hunt, however, is different, where the expression of hostility is one sided, and the victim is often unprepared to counter (especially if the victim focuses on PvM, like Javazons). There is nothing wrong with dueling, but despite Blizzard’s tacit endorsement of PK hunts (as described in the Arreat Summit) hunting another player is the most despicable thing you can think of. See below.

Coming back to carefully staged duels, to construct the Javazon side of your Amazon dueler, I certainly recommend at least three spent points in the Javelin/Spear tree: Jab, Poison Javelin (as prerequisite) and Lightning Bolt. You will use Jab as your primary attack, while Lightning Bolt is your sole ranged attack in Javelin mode (useful when you’re chasing a pure Bowazon, for example). While a pure Bowazon might ignore Dodge, since she would be less likely to be caught in melee, some points in Dodge would be great to make a well-rounded PvP Amazon. Titan’s Revenge would be a perfect Javelin to use for its fair damage (even better if it’s ethereal), its run/walk bonus, and its +skills. For a shield, find a good blocking shield that would give you max block speed and chance. Whitstan’s Guard or Rhyme or even Stormshield (if you have the Str) would be great, although Whitstan’s would be the best shield for pure blocking. A hybrid would typically have excellent dexterity, so blocking chance should not be a big problem. Do have some IAS in your gear. This will come in handy when you’re meleeing: Jab is an extremely fast attack with sufficient IAS, and even if you don’t hurt the other guy, you would at least place him on blocklock, which leaves him unable to do anything. Even throwing accurate Lightning Bolts with high speed can induce stunlock.

As for the Bowazon side of your Amazon, I would refer you to the various Bowazon dueling guides spread over the web that would cover more than what I can cover here. In particular, the Amazon Basin’s PvP Amazon guide (part of which I helped to write) details more tactics and build suggestions. This much I can give, though: enough Str to wear your heaviest equipment, rest is a balance of Dexterity and Vitality, heavy on defensive passives and Critical Strike, max Guided Arrow to decrease mana cost, a decent level of Multishot to cover the screen, perhaps 10-12. Oh, and get an ungodly amount of Run/Walk - 120 would be good. Learn about Dueling Etiquettes and honor the limitations observed by your opponent. Pierce is often limited in dueling leagues, so be aware that not everyone will be happy with your high Pierce. The best strategy is to limit your Pierce from skills and get Pierce from items . . . only if your opponent observes no such limitations. No knockback, no slow target, no excessive poison damage. 200-400 poison damage is normally acceptable. If you're PvPing in a dueling league, always conform to the rules, for failure to obey the rules will usually result in expulsion from the league. And never harbor ill feelings toward your opponents: using personal insults will lower others' opinions toward you, and dueling while you're angry will cause you to make mistakes you wouldn't have made normally.

Defending yourself against Player Killers

"A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense . . . never to attack."
- Yoda, The Empire Strikes Back

While you are an honorable player, there are others that do not share your view on how one might derive pleasure from this game. These players derive great pleasure from causing other people’s death, but not in fair duels. The game is not balanced for PvP, and it shows in terms of Javazons. Pure Javazons are lousy PvPers, even though they can handle every kind of hurdle the game throws at them.

So, in general, I would recommend against accommodating the PK. Instead, when hostiled, try to open a town portal as soon as possible, and go back to town. As I said earlier, PKs are equipped to take out other players, since they’re built for that purpose. You are not, even if you do have your hybrid side. Of course, some PK relies on hacks and dirty tricks more to kill, and it is harder to defend against this. Some other dishonorable (if less skilled) PK will enter normal game with their high level characters and attempt to kill the baby characters (this, however, can be a source of great amusement if you’re well twinked. Once I foiled a PK attempt by killing the lvl 62 bowazon with my lvl 30 Phoenix Strike assassin, using an Ort-ed superior Quhab.)

For now, I’m just going to detail some of the dirty tricks PK would use to kill you (and in HC, beware if someone’s trying to get you to give them loot. He might be plotting to kill you.)

• Good old fashioned hunting. This is the least dirty trick; of course, since it gives you time to prepare. But hunting is hunting.
• Fire Sorceress Waypoint Killing. Be especially wary in Frigid Highland waypoint, and be wary of anyone giving waypoints to you. In waypoints such as this, a sorceress can lay down Hydra, Meteor and Firewall, then town portal back to town and hostile. The spells will stay, and if you’re hit with it (especially when the game is still loading up the graphics, you will react slower), you’re history. Another class that may do this is Assassin, with her traps, although with less success than a Sorceress’. Another similar method is when the partying sorceress likes to lay Hydra around you, or maybe drop Meteors and Firewalls on top of you. Be aware that if they town portal back and hostile, you’ll be toast. In general, unless you trust the sorceress (and I mean someone you’ve played for a long time, and not just that guy you’ve ran with for several runs) be very wary of partying with Fire Sorceresses.
• Convert/Self-Damage trick. This is a nasty one. The basic premise of this is converting a monster, apply a Thorns type aura (Thorns or Spirit of Barbs) and when they unconvert, there will be a split second when the aura still sticks with them. At this state, if you attack them, you WILL take damage from your own attack. For high damage (with little damage reduction), this can mean instant death. You see, this method doesn’t even require the other party to hostile you! The likely suspect for this method is Conversion/Thorns paladin (in fact, this is the most common) or Assassins, using Mind Blast (or the Shadow using Mind Blast) with a Thorns merc around.
• Scroll Hack. This is the first in the series of hack exploitation. This allows Amazons with Guided Arrow to target you from off screen. Usually, this means Invisible Guided Arrow, which happens when she’s off screen. Be aware that if the other person decides to hunt you, he might use this hack.
• Trigger Hack. The dirtier version of Guided Arrow exploitation. The partying Amazon acts like a Sorceress by somehow gaining target on you. If she shoots an arrow at you, it won’t hurt you. But if she targets you, let an arrow fly, and then town portal back and hostile (the whole sequence is automated by the hack), the arrow will hurt you. High damage bow combined with high-level pierce can be lights out for you, especially if she’s using poison as well. This is the current rage in the realms, so be wary of suspicious Bowazons.
• Drop bugs. The Druid drop bug has been fixed, but the Druid can still drop people from the game if he’s using Oak Sage combined with the Barbarian’s Battle Command. There’s a short interval on which he can hostile you and attack you while you’re vulnerable. This is not very often utilized, however.
• Psychological tricks. This is often combined with minor hacks like color change in screen. One scheme is to have two accomplishes hostile each other (with one in your party), and then one (that’s not partied to you) pretends to have been killed (the display looked just like he had been killed) and requests you to loot him. When you go to loot him, however, he’s still alive, and he proceeds to kill you. The rest are often a variation of this.

There are simply too many tricks a PK can use to kill you. Above all, be wary. If it doesn’t seem right to you, it probably isn’t.

A favorite Sorceress' ambush point. Due to the amount of experience obtained in Bloody Foothills, players often repeatedly clear that area starting from the Frigid Highlands waypoint. The waypoint, however, may be trapped by a Sorceress like this . . .

or alternatively, by a Trap Assassin.

As usual, the Warnings@diabloii.net page is an excellent resource for warnings of new hacks and PK tricks and whatnot. Oh, incidentally, if you're thinking of using one of those hacks (the more well-known includes D2Hackit and the plugin Maphack) consider this: On April 1, 2003 Blizzard banned thousands of accounts that had been registered to have used one kind of hack or another, and they were not playing April's Fools either. In addition, many hacks have been proven to contain Trojans and keyloggers that will allow malicious users from across the globe to discover your account name and password and steal it. Whether it is worth it, is up to you.