Another great feature of the Fade proc on Treachery that you didn't mention is the 79% reduction in curse duration. It makes amp damage, decrepify, etc., wear off much more quickly. Thanks for the vid.
@@spencereades the only exception is if you are transferring items from other characters, and even then, you'll get stealth at least 10 levels before the next really useful runeword or unique armor (Generally I prefer stealth over darkglow or hawkmail, but those do have a use when playing a melee character in normal)
I use a cheap 3 socket armor and 3 socket helmet and toss all 3 major resistance runes in them. Slap on an ancients pledge and your 75% (minus poison) for the low low. If you lack things your boots, belt and glows and jewelry can cheaply hit you at 75% max
I like watching guides for D2Ress specially since it has been many years since I last played D2 or D3 for the matter, but unfortunatly many of the guides are for 85+ and hell, so nice to see guides for someone like me who is down in the 40s at the moment and just popping in to play an hour or 3 from time to time :D
Yea, it's weirdly a frustration I run in to with a lot of game guides for aRPG - the vast majority are "look what this 500-600 hour build can do" ;) - I prefer finding ways to have fun in the first dozen hours :) (so I kind of decided early on in guides I wanted to make them useful for a wide variety of people)
I like putting Bramble on a Poison Necro. The thorns aura applied to summons and merc is great plus the bonus to my already massive poison skills is awesome.
it's fun, though if you're relying mostly on your poison damage, you're usually a little better off with the +2 from Enigma or CoH, as long as you have the rest of the poison kit (Trang's gloves in particular - without Trang's the calculation changes a bit)
These rune word videos are freakin awesome. As a player that played diablo 2 when if launched and has just come back for D2R these have been an amazing value. Thanks for the awesome content!
I love Lionheart. A lot of Life, Res, massive Strength and Dex as well. I prefer it to NefLum usually. For the Werewolf Druid it is the better armor by far and for the Merc the 30 Allres is most often enough. And the Strength and Dex Boost lets him use Polearms, he could not use otherwise.
Lion Heart can be great for stat smoothing if your trying to avoid spending on stats you wont need latter and don't want to rebuild the character, also a good filler for Duress and eventually Fortitude since Fal will usually drop/be easier to farm than an Um or Lo.
Which armor do you think is the best for fury druid boss kill(ubers) Duress or fortitude? I guess forti gives more dmg. But duress have crushing blow and wounds ^^ . I just found my first hr and it was Lo. So wanna make the best use of it. Yes i know smiter pally would be cheaper and better for ubers. But also so meta and boring :) I play on singler player on my switch. So wont be able to trade for runes.
For sure agree with you on these. I have to say I generally prefer CoH to Enigma, as the majority of the stats are typically far more beneficial than adding teleport for so many builds. Enigma really gained a huge following for PvP and people who like to rush through the game. Even in MF runs, I've usually found better drops off the random champ or boss packs than the act boss.
I disagree with this assessment. The two advantages coh has over enigma are 1) resist 2) offensive stats. Resists are easy to top of for most builds; aside from edge cases no build is in need of %65 all res. As for offensive stats, if you want offense, Fortitude is much better. If you don't want to teleport and do mf from random champs, you are still better of wearing Enigma because of the huge mf bonus. CoH is never best in slot; pretty much a waste of a Ber
@@Alzorath The question is what will happen when they actually activate the ladder again. I hope they create new ladder runewords for each season making them common after each ladder season.
depends on your other equipment, but if you are lacking resists, yes - CoH is great for survival, Enigma is only preferred mostly for Strength boost and Speed (the life boost is nice, but fairly minor)
I dunno what I'm doing wrong :( I have a 4 socket grey ethereal and when I try to do fortitude it doesn't give it to me. And I'm dropping in the correct runes in the correct order
@@Alzorath keep these kind of information videos coming. They are very much needed in the beginning of a new D2 era. I would love an end game video next. What to do after hell. Torches, rerolling charms, ubers and more. Keep it up!
yup - a basic white item (well, technically grey) with 2 sockets. I would also recommend making it in light armor (quilted/leather/hard leather/studded/breast plate/light plate - or their exceptional/elite counterparts)
yea, I'm on the fence about ebugging, did I use it? sometimes... though it's not really breaking any builds for me. But yea, Jah and Ber (and Ohm) are on their own level among the high runes.
Sol-runed necro at about -77 damage/hit with a bone chest armor makes my bone necro almost physical immune. He runs around with a Grief crystal sword and chops with his skeletons. He's a Poison-max necro using a faith bow rogue. Not a giga build but when you farm Pindleskin and the other other two stops in act5 for a pet necro... It ends up very fast.
depends on your build and budget honestly... obviously CoH or Enigma would be awesome, but you likely won't have that before beating the game a few times... most people either stick with Stealth or upgrade to Smoke for resists, that is if they don't find something like Skin of Vipermagi (which is the best of both worlds, and has +1 all skills)
I use 'lore' 'smoke' dual 'Spirit' and whatever other gear I have found for now on my orb/fireball sorc. Pretty damn good build with decent FCR, at lvl 75 can clear most every monster in hell fairly quickly, you'll need some decent gear for your merc to kill those things that are immune to fire and cold, great gear for a budget, though a bit on the high side for str at 154 for the monarch.
You did. Worth repeating since the demo doesn't show it eth and it really is a better use of your mal rune. And you can still ebug prudence in classic. Nice rundown of runeword armors.
Hey what would you craft for a hc hammerdin ? Im just starting dunno what i should aim for on chest .. i wear stealth obviously bit for mid/endgame if i manage to stay alive ;)
This may be my personal bias from having used it so much back in the day and what i liked, but I feel like you have stone heavily underrated. Especially since if you put in an Ethereal armor, it is amazing on a Merc for that FHR. They get a lot of tankiness out of it, resist and able to do good damage back. Also I don't feel like its terribly expensive for an armor you can get in NM to take you through Hell till you can get like a Fortitude or other top armor for a Merc.
while it is a decent statted runeword, due to requiring um, pul, and lum - you're usually better off doing treachery, Lionheart, or Duress - since they are all similar or less rarity of ingredients, for better overall boosts.
Very informative. I also found that you can even boost the armor itself with horadric cube. Including using 2 runes and a perfect gem to role the dice to increase number of sockets 50/50
Stone is so underrated, back in the day of bugged armors you can get 4k defense on some armors, with a defiance merc you would easily stack 15k defense on. Basically at higher levels wazim was unhittable
Dont forget the golum that slows enemies and is probably worth 20% damage reduction on a melee character. Yet another video made by someone who obviously buys everything and has never used the lower cost armours . NB Armour has a U in it.
@@AlanTweats ooooh the spelling police is here. You are of course correct, but only in Britain. Rest of the world moved away from the u in everything phase. Although I harbor no ill will to you, it takes a considerable amount of labor to analyze such wording. I hope you can center on more pressing matters and come up with an organized defense for next time.
@@dugowf766 Just a pain in the ass when I keep forgetting on Runewizard that they don't put a U in it . I'm 64 and we were hit with a ruler for less =)
depends on the build, but Peace is a really solid cheap option for the amazon, especially if you drop 1 point into valkyrie, and let the armor do the rest. That said, Smoke, Treachery, Fortitude (for strafers at least), Enigma, and Chains of Honor all do well for transitions after Stealth
im lost on what to do with my lvl 59 paladin... i do okay... but i seem to just generally struggle sometimes. (getting one tapped my bosses) would generally just like to get my defense up with some resistance and att rate. would be content with that. any suggestions?
depends on where you're at in the game, generally speaking your first time through level 59 is going to be a bit too low for hell difficulty (late 60s/early 70s is where you want to be), but about right for act 4 nightmare. For survival reasons - resists are the first place to go, the higher, the better. Defense isn't a big concern usually (since defense only works while you're walking, and is dropped to 0 while running - and even then, defense just determines the chance to be hit). Block is generally more helpful than defense (walking can go up to 75% block, running divides your block by 3, and is capped at 25%) You likely won't be getting damage reduced by %, but that can help a lot as well.
Do I go with Duress for my Act 1 blessed aim Merc? I'm just about to enter HELL difficulty with my Freezadin. However, my Merc dies so fast and is costing me lots of revival gold. So, Duress on him?
Duress is fine, Treachery is also fairly popular - the main trick is making sure the mercenary's resists are good, and that they have life leech with reasonable damage output.
@@Alzorath I made a Duress in a light plate I had, put it on him, nightmare mode where he has max res to all, but he got surrounded by cows and died in seconds. Put my old armour back on... It's UNIQUE Sharktooth... Think its called Tooththrow? He has an insight bec-de-corbin, and a crown of thieves helm. The Duress was a worse option for him. I'm not high enough to have a Lem or i'd go for the Treachery instead. It's very frustrating... Now though, I hit lvl 70, andgot me a might merc, as I have enough AR now without the mercs blessed aim, to hit everything 95%. So figured damage output would be better at this point.
Nice video, but myth and peace might not be the best runewords around, compared to other ones, but they require lvl 25 and 29 compared to others being like 45-55 area. That there alone (granted gotta work to get the required runes at those levels but not very hard to get really), will make them quite okay of armors if you use at those levels at end of normal/into nm playing. Though about only time I'd ever use those runewords in end, they just arent good enough to be much use beyond that. Though if Peace's valk spawn would actually last until died over just few seconds, it would have made it useful just to gain a few valk on non-zons. Or guess can be used with zon, to gain high level valk if you can get to proc without needing the pump skill points as just 1 point will cause the spawn valk to actually stay over despawning like usual. But sadly that 2% chance is quite low still hurting the "possibility." But hey if you can get it to proc, thats a free high level valk with just 1 skill point investment :).
Like you, i LOVE Bone. Don't understand the hate, is awesome for bonemancer. I made mine with "free" UMs from forge. I love Chains too. But almost everyone says that sux.
It's because a lot of them judge it solely on teleport and STR boost (which are nice, don't get me wrong) rather than the merits of the armor - personally I sometimes like clearing full areas, not just beelining for bosses (which is why my rune stash is fairly solid... that and each time I do a build test I get a several dozen runes across each of the player count tests - usually at least one moderately high one - ie Pul+)
Me Personally? Lower Kurast, Chaos Sanctuary, and Travincal mostly... though I have found a ton just wandering around doing experiments. That said "Back in the Day" if it was Pre-1.13, had way worse rune drop rates.
@@Alzorath I played thru a number of versions, I wouldnt be able to tell you now what the breakdown looks like. But it is sad to think that if I played it as much as I did and wasnt legitimately able to make a single Enigma! I had plenty of stuff, but it came from trading - I think the bulk of my good gear came from trading 2 charms which had an obnoxious value. Part of the reason I havent purchased D2R is I dont fancy another 1K-2K (IDK how much time I put into it back in the day) only to never be able to make high rune items.
whoa..dont think u can sneak in the 42069 in there! Yeah, personal fave bias but i got though Hell with a Duress on kicksin, was lucky nightmare hellforge gave me an Um....used it for what seems like an eternity of MF/LK farming which netted me carpal tunnel syndorm and a Lo rune for Fortitude...then D2R is out and im lazy to farm up to where i was in D2L...kinda depressing to start from scratch while u had Fort in an old char tbh..:')
should work as long as it's in plain 3 socket armor - the most common mistakes are trying to put it in 4 socket armor (won't work, has to be 3) or someone trying to put it in Jeweler's Armor (magic) or Black Hades (Unique) - since it only works in plain white armor.
Usually you're better off using armor that boosts your killing speed and survivability, rather than gold find, unfortunately - especially if hitting some of the big gold find targets - like the Council. It's not bad in and of itself, I just don't go out of my way to make it.
What would you recommend as an alternative? Right now I’m using smoke on my assassin. Who knows how long it’ll take me to make Enigma. Is there something else I could upgrade to between the two? Thanks for any suggestions :)
honestly, for a trapper, smoke is solid, treachery can be nice, but not a necessity (though it can be passed to a merc after getting your final upgrade, and it is +2 skills and fade)
Honestly, 2/3 of the runewords have a use for normal players, a chunk of the remainders have a use for niche builds, with only a few being absolutely 'useless'(garbage).
Gosh these armor pieces need to get reworked.....almost all of them are just mehhhh I think enigma should just focus on the mobility aspect, so teleport and faster run/walk....make some magic find, and it would still be great, but just not as OP
Lionheart is essentially +230 to life for a paladin with all the strength and dex that you wont be spending hard stat points on. I think it's pretty underrated
I'm just sad the life from the +Vit isn't added before the % boosts from stuff like BO. Generally I prefer Smoke over Lionheart in that price range, but either one can easily carry you through the end of hell (mind you, stealth can too, it's just less simple lol)
prudence not even in a etheral form... waste enigma, no not thanks to +2 skills, TO TELEPORT... WTF not even knowing why enigma is well known -.- pathetic
Do the rune words up the defence? Or is that just the original defence? If its just the original defence, then where the hell do i find these armours???
it depends on the runeword - if they have +% defense or +flat defense, then yes - they boost them - though there's some that don't, and generally if you want higher defense, you go with elite armors (found in late nightmare as well as all of hell difficulty) - they will be the highest defense values of any armor.
@@Alzorath thanks man. I'm in act 3 hell mode and the highest defence armour I have manged to find is in the 400s. I keep seeing online players my level with like 1400 defence
Another great feature of the Fade proc on Treachery that you didn't mention is the 79% reduction in curse duration. It makes amp damage, decrepify, etc., wear off much more quickly.
Thanks for the vid.
Big downside to that is the effect hits shrine duration too :(
@@Alzorath Oh, I didn't know that. That stinks.
@@Alzorath Well, the mercs doesn't use shrines anyway so they do not suffer from that problem.
Is Stealth the best rune word to use on normal difficulty?
Yea, usually
In a lot of cases it can be the best body armor for normal, period.
@@spencereades the only exception is if you are transferring items from other characters, and even then, you'll get stealth at least 10 levels before the next really useful runeword or unique armor (Generally I prefer stealth over darkglow or hawkmail, but those do have a use when playing a melee character in normal)
I use a cheap 3 socket armor and 3 socket helmet and toss all 3 major resistance runes in them. Slap on an ancients pledge and your 75% (minus poison) for the low low. If you lack things your boots, belt and glows and jewelry can cheaply hit you at 75% max
its even useful in hell XD
Great video dude, another one you can't really find anywhere else on YT. Keep it up!
I like watching guides for D2Ress specially since it has been many years since I last played D2 or D3 for the matter, but unfortunatly many of the guides are for 85+ and hell, so nice to see guides for someone like me who is down in the 40s at the moment and just popping in to play an hour or 3 from time to time :D
Yea, it's weirdly a frustration I run in to with a lot of game guides for aRPG - the vast majority are "look what this 500-600 hour build can do" ;) - I prefer finding ways to have fun in the first dozen hours :) (so I kind of decided early on in guides I wanted to make them useful for a wide variety of people)
I like putting Bramble on a Poison Necro. The thorns aura applied to summons and merc is great plus the bonus to my already massive poison skills is awesome.
it's fun, though if you're relying mostly on your poison damage, you're usually a little better off with the +2 from Enigma or CoH, as long as you have the rest of the poison kit (Trang's gloves in particular - without Trang's the calculation changes a bit)
So the +2 to skills provides more damage than the ~+30-40% increased poison damage??
Excellent video! well spoken, clear concise. I've binge watched all of your videos.
These rune word videos are freakin awesome. As a player that played diablo 2 when if launched and has just come back for D2R these have been an amazing value. Thanks for the awesome content!
Glad they're helping out :)
I love Lionheart. A lot of Life, Res, massive Strength and Dex as well. I prefer it to NefLum usually. For the Werewolf Druid it is the better armor by far and for the Merc the 30 Allres is most often enough. And the Strength and Dex Boost lets him use Polearms, he could not use otherwise.
I recently gemmed a three socket helmet of thaf very reason, to meet requirements to equip a weapon. His damage output tripled due to that new weapon.
Lion Heart can be great for stat smoothing if your trying to avoid spending on stats you wont need latter and don't want to rebuild the character, also a good filler for Duress and eventually Fortitude since Fal will usually drop/be easier to farm than an Um or Lo.
I like how you have 42069 money in stash
Phenomenal Video I love the Straight to the point from lowest to highest. Awesome
Stone is amazing for mercs. That massive FHR bonus is crucial for keeping them alive. I wish it had more res though.
Great vid! I'd be curious to see how the new Runewords stack up in this ranking. Especially Hustle.
thanks i was looking for something for my hell zeal pala as my armor sucked XD nef lum will do for now.
Which armor do you think is the best for fury druid boss kill(ubers) Duress or fortitude? I guess forti gives more dmg. But duress have crushing blow and wounds ^^ .
I just found my first hr and it was Lo. So wanna make the best use of it. Yes i know smiter pally would be cheaper and better for ubers. But also so meta and boring :)
I play on singler player on my switch. So wont be able to trade for runes.
Currently rocking a treachery on my trapsin.
My merc will get it when I upgrade or find another lem.
yea, it's really fun armor, and that fade effect is so good
Stealth is definitely one of the best starter runewords, I use it until I find a better unique such as Skin of the vipermagi.
Tal and eth can go with every 2 socket armour? Thank u
actually no - it can only go in plain 2 socket armor (non-magical, non-set, non-unique, non-rare)
@@Alzorath thanks
For sure agree with you on these.
I have to say I generally prefer CoH to Enigma, as the majority of the stats are typically far more beneficial than adding teleport for so many builds.
Enigma really gained a huge following for PvP and people who like to rush through the game.
Even in MF runs, I've usually found better drops off the random champ or boss packs than the act boss.
I disagree with this assessment. The two advantages coh has over enigma are 1) resist 2) offensive stats. Resists are easy to top of for most builds; aside from edge cases no build is in need of %65 all res. As for offensive stats, if you want offense, Fortitude is much better.
If you don't want to teleport and do mf from random champs, you are still better of wearing Enigma because of the huge mf bonus.
CoH is never best in slot; pretty much a waste of a Ber
One thing to note the runeword "Lionheart" is best used as a cheap merc choice,I don't know if it's a bug but the repair costs are insanely high,
Hey! Great vid. I wanted to ask specifically about a mid nightmare javazon and what runewords I should go for to prep for hell. Thanks!
honestly, you can make it through with Stealth - though Peace, Treachery, and Smoke are all nice mid-level options.
So do Ladder Runewords work in Single Player in Diablo 2: Resurrected? If not, that severely limits armor options.
all ladder features are available in single player in D2R - including Ubers.
@@Alzorath The question is what will happen when they actually activate the ladder again. I hope they create new ladder runewords for each season making them common after each ladder season.
Would you say CoH beats out Enigma for survivability in SSF HC?
depends on your other equipment, but if you are lacking resists, yes - CoH is great for survival, Enigma is only preferred mostly for Strength boost and Speed (the life boost is nice, but fairly minor)
I have a lvl 85 Orb sorc with skin of the viper is there a better runeword to use in the meantime until I get enigma? Seems like I die so fast
Good list, thanks
I dunno what I'm doing wrong :( I have a 4 socket grey ethereal and when I try to do fortitude it doesn't give it to me. And I'm dropping in the correct runes in the correct order
I found a viper chest in nightmare cows. That will carry me to the enigma finish line.
yup, skin of the vipermagi is great armor :) - one of the better skill armor uniques in the game.
@@Alzorath keep these kind of information videos coming. They are very much needed in the beginning of a new D2 era. I would love an end game video next. What to do after hell. Torches, rerolling charms, ubers and more. Keep it up!
to make smoke what base armor should i use? does it have to be a white item?
yup - a basic white item (well, technically grey) with 2 sockets. I would also recommend making it in light armor (quilted/leather/hard leather/studded/breast plate/light plate - or their exceptional/elite counterparts)
There are high runes and then there is Ber and Jah.
I am sad E bugged armors was fixed because E bugged Stone was my favorite merc armor.
yea, I'm on the fence about ebugging, did I use it? sometimes... though it's not really breaking any builds for me. But yea, Jah and Ber (and Ohm) are on their own level among the high runes.
Sol-runed necro at about -77 damage/hit with a bone chest armor makes my bone necro almost physical immune. He runs around with a Grief crystal sword and chops with his skeletons. He's a Poison-max necro using a faith bow rogue. Not a giga build but when you farm Pindleskin and the other other two stops in act5 for a pet necro... It ends up very fast.
duriel armor vs shaftshop for mercenary? for budget at the moment? I heard shaftshop armor damage reduction 30% don't work well with mercenary..
Both will be fine - the cannot be frozen on Duriel's Shell is super nice, but Shaftstop works perfectly fine on mercenaries (the cap on PDR% is 50%)
@@Alzorath yep theres pros and cons to it. If it were you, which one would you pick?
For completing the game, Duriel's, for farming, Shaftstop.
What’s best for sorceress going through hell difficulty
depends on your build and budget honestly... obviously CoH or Enigma would be awesome, but you likely won't have that before beating the game a few times... most people either stick with Stealth or upgrade to Smoke for resists, that is if they don't find something like Skin of Vipermagi (which is the best of both worlds, and has +1 all skills)
I use 'lore' 'smoke' dual 'Spirit' and whatever other gear I have found for now on my orb/fireball sorc. Pretty damn good build with decent FCR, at lvl 75 can clear most every monster in hell fairly quickly, you'll need some decent gear for your merc to kill those things that are immune to fire and cold, great gear for a budget, though a bit on the high side for str at 154 for the monarch.
Have they (or are they) released new rune recipes recently?
It's been teased at, but not confirmed - basically an "it's on the table, but we're not going to promise anything"
Prudence has self-repair on the word. Put it in ethereal armor for more defense.
Great advice, glad I said it in the video lol
You did. Worth repeating since the demo doesn't show it eth and it really is a better use of your mal rune. And you can still ebug prudence in classic.
Nice rundown of runeword armors.
Hey what would you craft for a hc hammerdin ? Im just starting dunno what i should aim for on chest .. i wear stealth obviously bit for mid/endgame if i manage to stay alive ;)
mid-game: Smoke
end-game: Enigma
@@Alzorath ok thanks
This may be my personal bias from having used it so much back in the day and what i liked, but I feel like you have stone heavily underrated. Especially since if you put in an Ethereal armor, it is amazing on a Merc for that FHR. They get a lot of tankiness out of it, resist and able to do good damage back. Also I don't feel like its terribly expensive for an armor you can get in NM to take you through Hell till you can get like a Fortitude or other top armor for a Merc.
while it is a decent statted runeword, due to requiring um, pul, and lum - you're usually better off doing treachery, Lionheart, or Duress - since they are all similar or less rarity of ingredients, for better overall boosts.
Very informative. I also found that you can even boost the armor itself with horadric cube. Including using 2 runes and a perfect gem to role the dice to increase number of sockets 50/50
Thanks for the video , I'm still learning !
Does the '5% chance to cast fireball on striking' applies to spells (if I cast a fireball) or only for physical attacks (melee, bow/ranged) ?
only physical attacks unfortunately :( (though that would be insane with orb lol)
@@Alzorath lol rift orb sorc
Stone is so underrated, back in the day of bugged armors you can get 4k defense on some armors, with a defiance merc you would easily stack 15k defense on. Basically at higher levels wazim was unhittable
Dont forget the golum that slows enemies and is probably worth 20% damage reduction on a melee character. Yet another video made by someone who obviously buys everything and has never used the lower cost armours . NB Armour has a U in it.
@@AlanTweats ooooh the spelling police is here. You are of course correct, but only in Britain. Rest of the world moved away from the u in everything phase.
Although I harbor no ill will to you, it takes a considerable amount of labor to analyze such wording. I hope you can center on more pressing matters and come up with an organized defense for next time.
@@dugowf766 Just a pain in the ass when I keep forgetting on Runewizard that they don't put a U in it . I'm 64 and we were hit with a ruler for less =)
Any armor runes for amazons?
depends on the build, but Peace is a really solid cheap option for the amazon, especially if you drop 1 point into valkyrie, and let the armor do the rest.
That said, Smoke, Treachery, Fortitude (for strafers at least), Enigma, and Chains of Honor all do well for transitions after Stealth
I like Peace on my Zon because of the Valkyrie randomly casting when I am shooting off my arrows . Get's the monster off my merc and myself . LoL !!
im lost on what to do with my lvl 59 paladin... i do okay... but i seem to just generally struggle sometimes. (getting one tapped my bosses) would generally just like to get my defense up with some resistance and att rate. would be content with that. any suggestions?
depends on where you're at in the game, generally speaking your first time through level 59 is going to be a bit too low for hell difficulty (late 60s/early 70s is where you want to be), but about right for act 4 nightmare.
For survival reasons - resists are the first place to go, the higher, the better. Defense isn't a big concern usually (since defense only works while you're walking, and is dropped to 0 while running - and even then, defense just determines the chance to be hit). Block is generally more helpful than defense (walking can go up to 75% block, running divides your block by 3, and is capped at 25%)
You likely won't be getting damage reduced by %, but that can help a lot as well.
@@Alzorath that helps a ton! Thanks! Yes I'm actually in the last act on hell. It's been rather difficult sometimes.
Do I go with Duress for my Act 1 blessed aim Merc?
I'm just about to enter HELL difficulty with my Freezadin.
However, my Merc dies so fast and is costing me lots of revival gold.
So, Duress on him?
Duress is fine, Treachery is also fairly popular - the main trick is making sure the mercenary's resists are good, and that they have life leech with reasonable damage output.
@@Alzorath
I made a Duress in a light plate I had, put it on him, nightmare mode where he has max res to all, but he got surrounded by cows and died in seconds.
Put my old armour back on... It's UNIQUE Sharktooth... Think its called Tooththrow?
He has an insight bec-de-corbin, and a crown of thieves helm.
The Duress was a worse option for him.
I'm not high enough to have a Lem or i'd go for the Treachery instead.
It's very frustrating...
Now though, I hit lvl 70, andgot me a might merc, as I have enough AR now without the mercs blessed aim, to hit everything 95%.
So figured damage output would be better at this point.
Bramble could be fun paired with a ww Barb using stormshield I suppose.
Great video!
Nice video, but myth and peace might not be the best runewords around, compared to other ones, but they require lvl 25 and 29 compared to others being like 45-55 area. That there alone (granted gotta work to get the required runes at those levels but not very hard to get really), will make them quite okay of armors if you use at those levels at end of normal/into nm playing. Though about only time I'd ever use those runewords in end, they just arent good enough to be much use beyond that.
Though if Peace's valk spawn would actually last until died over just few seconds, it would have made it useful just to gain a few valk on non-zons. Or guess can be used with zon, to gain high level valk if you can get to proc without needing the pump skill points as just 1 point will cause the spawn valk to actually stay over despawning like usual. But sadly that 2% chance is quite low still hurting the "possibility." But hey if you can get it to proc, thats a free high level valk with just 1 skill point investment :).
Like you, i LOVE Bone. Don't understand the hate, is awesome for bonemancer. I made mine with "free" UMs from forge.
I love Chains too. But almost everyone says that sux.
It's because a lot of them judge it solely on teleport and STR boost (which are nice, don't get me wrong) rather than the merits of the armor - personally I sometimes like clearing full areas, not just beelining for bosses (which is why my rune stash is fairly solid... that and each time I do a build test I get a several dozen runes across each of the player count tests - usually at least one moderately high one - ie Pul+)
Where do you farm high runes? I played D2 back in the day *A LOT* and IIRC I only ever found 1 BER and 1 ZOD, thats it!!
Me Personally? Lower Kurast, Chaos Sanctuary, and Travincal mostly... though I have found a ton just wandering around doing experiments.
That said "Back in the Day" if it was Pre-1.13, had way worse rune drop rates.
@@Alzorath I played thru a number of versions, I wouldnt be able to tell you now what the breakdown looks like. But it is sad to think that if I played it as much as I did and wasnt legitimately able to make a single Enigma! I had plenty of stuff, but it came from trading - I think the bulk of my good gear came from trading 2 charms which had an obnoxious value. Part of the reason I havent purchased D2R is I dont fancy another 1K-2K (IDK how much time I put into it back in the day) only to never be able to make high rune items.
6:40 May I present, the thorns berserk barbarian
And all this time you left Warriv hanging. Talk to the guy for heaven's sake! ;-)
Have you seen what his caravan actually hauls? Can't even look him in the eyes after that.
whoa..dont think u can sneak in the 42069 in there!
Yeah, personal fave bias but i got though Hell with a Duress on kicksin, was lucky nightmare hellforge gave me an Um....used it for what seems like an eternity of MF/LK farming which netted me carpal tunnel syndorm and a Lo rune for Fortitude...then D2R is out and im lazy to farm up to where i was in D2L...kinda depressing to start from scratch while u had Fort in an old char tbh..:')
Yea, I have a lot of bias for duress, it is a fun armor in a lot of builds, but yea, it is rough building gear back up from scratch
Ur content is so helpful thank you for ur effort and nice 👍🏽 voice 😂
That last statement... It be cool if they added more rune words, but that's not happening right?
The Word ShaelThulLem doesent work 4 me. Does anybody know why guys?
should work as long as it's in plain 3 socket armor - the most common mistakes are trying to put it in 4 socket armor (won't work, has to be 3) or someone trying to put it in Jeweler's Armor (magic) or Black Hades (Unique) - since it only works in plain white armor.
@@Alzorath thank you sir for the fast reply. Yeah ive put it in a 3 socket unique Black Hades armor. 🙈
Talk about repair costs.
I have Duress in a gothic plate and boy, its expensive to repair...
Generally I only worry about repair costs on weapons - never really had any massive issues with the repair costs on any of the armors.
You could put the armor and use a Ral rune in the Horadric cube to repair it, will save you some gold, lol
Tried to make fortitude and it didn’t work!?!?
Great vid
Bro i love making Wealth RW for some reason.
One thing I have to say...
Thank you!
Did they nerf Fortitude cause they have it as a C tier runeword?
Depends on who you are thinking of as "they" - but no, it has not been nerfed.
wtf how you get so much armor?
playing for years, and then transferring it over to d2r :)
Armor runewords that you will never make because its almost impossible to get the runes required.
weirdly, I find weapon runewords more daunting than even Enigma honestly, at least since 1.13 the rune drop chances have been improved a lot.
Impossible for people that don't play the game...
stone is damn great tho ^^ back in my days everybody used this for merc tho
im never gonna find a bear rune :(
Well going drop diamond in shield need that resis
I rock a sorc every ladder. CoH is my bread and butter
if we where in prison i would protect you in shower
Wealth is useful for Gold Find Barbarian and hence much more used than this video make it seem.
Usually you're better off using armor that boosts your killing speed and survivability, rather than gold find, unfortunately - especially if hitting some of the big gold find targets - like the Council. It's not bad in and of itself, I just don't go out of my way to make it.
Treachery only 1 you need but never on a sin lo l
Its not bad mid-tier for a trap kicker
Yeah I kicksin on BoS and I can't use Therchery without going insane lol...it'd amazing for my holy freeze merc and javazon though!
What would you recommend as an alternative? Right now I’m using smoke on my assassin. Who knows how long it’ll take me to make Enigma. Is there something else I could upgrade to between the two? Thanks for any suggestions :)
honestly, for a trapper, smoke is solid, treachery can be nice, but not a necessity (though it can be passed to a merc after getting your final upgrade, and it is +2 skills and fade)
i am 67 and still using smoke...
nothing wrong with that, most of the 'end game armor' you generally won't be wearing until you've beaten the game several times.
There are so many GARBAGE runewords, like what were the developers thinking? Lol, it’s no wonder why enigma and ber+jah are so sought after.
Honestly, 2/3 of the runewords have a use for normal players, a chunk of the remainders have a use for niche builds, with only a few being absolutely 'useless'(garbage).
Smoke is a great merc. armor that is really cheap !!
Cost a fortune to repair if you use one on yourself though ...
look at the funny gold stash number
Chains of Honor Diamon Mail for my Zealot 👍👍
Chains of Honor Sacred Armor for my Physical Zealot, because I put 200 base Strength for damage and wearing Elite high defense gear easily anyway
Gosh these armor pieces need to get reworked.....almost all of them are just mehhhh
I think enigma should just focus on the mobility aspect, so teleport and faster run/walk....make some magic find, and it would still be great, but just not as OP
Lionheart is essentially +230 to life for a paladin with all the strength and dex that you wont be spending hard stat points on. I think it's pretty underrated
I'm just sad the life from the +Vit isn't added before the % boosts from stuff like BO. Generally I prefer Smoke over Lionheart in that price range, but either one can easily carry you through the end of hell (mind you, stealth can too, it's just less simple lol)
@@Alzorath yeah that's a drag. It would be top tier if BO increased life from stats
Lol his gold in stash “42069”
prudence not even in a etheral form... waste
enigma, no not thanks to +2 skills, TO TELEPORT... WTF not even knowing why enigma is well known -.- pathetic
Not really, it was a SSF run, and wasting time trying to farm an ethereal base for it would have been just that - a waste of time.
@@Alzorath don't feed the troll. Well done on this video! Thanks mate!
Good point. Prudence is best in ethereal armor due to the self repair.
nice 42069 gold in the stash
42069g. Nice.
Tytyty
Stopped watching after you said Dragon was not useful...
So you didn't stop watching? (also, look at the date of the video, this was a whole year before they buffed Holy Fire)
Is "ber" seriously pronounced "bear" or are you just trying to be pretentious?
Do the rune words up the defence? Or is that just the original defence? If its just the original defence, then where the hell do i find these armours???
it depends on the runeword - if they have +% defense or +flat defense, then yes - they boost them - though there's some that don't, and generally if you want higher defense, you go with elite armors (found in late nightmare as well as all of hell difficulty) - they will be the highest defense values of any armor.
@@Alzorath thanks man. I'm in act 3 hell mode and the highest defence armour I have manged to find is in the 400s. I keep seeing online players my level with like 1400 defence