Equipment-related general question(s)

[Colorless Green 0]

So, I've read a solid majority of the guides hosted on this site and quite a bit of the other random build-related discussion, but the subject of equipment doesn't seem to come up nearly as often as I'm used to, so I'd like to see if I can clarify a few things.

 

(For the following section, I'm talking exclusively about armor. Weapons/jewelry/relics aren't included.)

 

In general, what I'm taking from this is that the general guidelines for armor are:

 

-Run (insert boss/miniboss) for a while.

-Put on whichever aspect-specific set matches your main aspect.

-

-Profit.

 

I've seen a few exceptions in cases where complete sets aren't necessary for full set bonuses switching in one or two other specific pieces of set equipment, but I see very little about using rares with the notable exception of stacked mitigation for the 2-3 slots that can have it. Is this an accurate reflection of how people actually play? Is the optimum equipment build really 90+% sets 90+% of the time?

 

If so, what do people do before they have these completed sets? Do people use, say, a level 20 set over level 70 rares? Do people just go online and begz0r itamz from anyone willing to listen? Is the usable equipment pool this static based on analyzing the rares and realizing they are categorically inferior, or just out of ease?

 

If not (which I'm hoping is the case,) what do people like to use (which I realize is an extremely broad question the answer to which necessarily begins with "For ___ build,"?) Is there any sort of repository containing information about what mods (and mod combinations) can spawn at what values at what levels?

 

 

Granted, I'm not (yet) running 180+ level chars in niob with hundreds of set items (though actually I think my set collection is in the triple digits at this point,) so I'm well aware I haven't seen everything yet and there might be more of a disparity between sets and rares later on, but based on what I've seen so far in the ~60 level range (comparing level 60-75 sets to level 60-75 rares), it looks to me like there'd be viable shoppable alternatives to even the really obvious set choices (say, Pyromancer elf, which everyone seems to basically agree should use the Pyromancer set.) Given patience, you can guarantee four mods (including sockets) per rare directly tailored to your char, while most of the sets seem to (at least at these levels) come in at below 4 average, even after factoring in sockets and set bonuses.

 

What am I missing?

 

-CG

[Knuckles 904]

I rarely try to wear a full set. Typically I can get much better items for my build from uniques and rares. Many people make dedicated traders just to find the right equipment for their toons. Especially if you're making a 'specialized' build, like trying to have max 'deathblow' or 'enhanced perception'. Other times the equip stats aren't as important as the amount of sockets it has.

[Colorless Green 0]

I rarely try to wear a full set. Typically I can get much better items for my build from uniques and rares. Many people make dedicated traders just to find the right equipment for their toons. Especially if you're making a 'specialized' build, like trying to have max 'deathblow' or 'enhanced perception'. Other times the equip stats aren't as important as the amount of sockets it has.

 

That's more what I was hoping - it seems like the better option on paper, but it doesn't seem to reflect most of what I've been reading in guides and such.

 

 

So, assuming things besides the most obvious set are viable options, do you tend to focus on 1-2 stats to the exclusion of others (e.g. deathblow sets,) or do you go for more balanced sets (e.g. bit of evade, bit of mitigation, bit of deathblow, etc.)?

 

What mods do you like for melee-offense, ranged-offense, defense, casters, etc.? I haven't been able to find any hard data on how quite a lot of the mods work and what they work with (in terms of weapon based Combat Art's, non-weapon based Combat Art's, melee, ranged) so it's hard to tell whether I'd rather have "opponent's chance to evade -20%" or "chance opponent cannot evade +20%" or just skip it and take "damage +20%" or "attack value +20%".

 

-CG

[Knuckles 904]

So much depends on what character and build I'm doing, whether it has a nice defensive buff, strong attack Combat Art etc. That said I do tend to go for 2-3 stats for each build. I typically do a lot of regen mods and evade mods but I'm sure many others focus on something else entirely

 

If you haven't yet check out the Item Modifiers section in our Sacred2 Wiki, hopefully that'll help you out

[Dragon Brother 619]

What mods do you like for melee-offense, ranged-offense, defense, casters, etc.? I haven't been able to find any hard data on how quite a lot of the mods work and what they work with (in terms of weapon based Combat Art's, non-weapon based Combat Art's, melee, ranged) so it's hard to tell whether I'd rather have "opponent's chance to evade -20%" or "chance opponent cannot evade +20%" or just skip it and take "damage +20%" or "attack value +20%".

 

Well, deathblow will only work with weapon based Combat Art's or weapon attacks so for a caster this is pretty much useless. attack value +20% is always going to be worse than the -x% opponents chance to evade and +x% chance opponent cannot evade. Which one is better out of these two is kinda dependant on youre gear, just play around with your gear and if one increases your chance to hit more than the other then thats the better one. Sometimes one of them is better, other times the other

[chattius 2,527]

It highly depends on the build: my bargaining melee elf is dressed up with rare gear to look like a gladiatrix and not like a model for victoria's secret or how ever the shops are named on the other side of the pond. The rare gear is even better suited for the melee elf than the sets because I put a lot of time to find nice looking stuff which has also good modifiers on it.

 

Then there are builds who really need certain sets:

A weaponless Kungfu Dryad needs x% life leech. Since she has no weapons it has to come from the armour. And the only chance to get it is to wear a full Dethaya.

 

In the AddOn there are now unique armour which are also nice, like boosting intelligence by 20%. I never saw this modified on shopped gear.

 

So all depends what you want to play. The only piece of armour I really use at least in one socket in all builds is the unique artamark amulet which adds armour to all damage types. If my armour formulas prove to be correct then getting hit with no armour against a damage triples the damage you get in niob.

 

Several torso set armours offer all damage type armour for all classes, but sadly none for the dragon mage I played the last 2 month.

[ka243 3]

A lot of modifiers have diminishing returns so its worth getting some of a lot of different modifiers in many cases to avoid this. An exception is damage mitigation that has no diminishing returns. Get it to 100% and then you can only take damage from Damage over time or life leech. Its possible around level 150ish in most cases but I've never gotten a character past level 104 since I finished niob at that point.

 

Character that was most fun for me to play was the bfg seraphim as there was no need to keep changing the weapon and I could spend my money on other gear which was nice. Permanent (chain-castable) divine protection and dashing alacrity is uber. I would never make a seraphim without both of these.

 

Generally, I'd say some - regen time is nice or some - regen penalty from buffs (if you need extra regen). More armor and damage is always nice (I put these in bronze sockets only) as is chance to block, chance to block combat arts, chance to reflect close combat, chance to evade, deathblow, experience, all skills, run speed (if you need it) etc...

Regen per hit is a great mod on melee and ranged builds, I love this mod, not for casters though.

 

Up until gold I almost never socket defensive mods though as I find they just aren't necessary. Beginning of the game, I focus on boosting damage, attack speed, movement speed (via mount or run) and experience.

If you get EP, make sure to get lots of gear that has +experience as a bonus modded by enhanced perception. If you don't use this mod, don't bother with EP.

 

One of the fun things is trying different modifiers to see what works best. Once I socket a piece of gear, I don't generally remove the equipment since you lose stuff that way. I'll keep the socketed piece of gear and maybe use it on another character or if you play multiplayer you can give/trade it.

 

I have never completted a set except the 3-piece ones that give extra visibility. I like these because they"re easy to complete and generally have lots of sockets.

Edited November 26, 2009 by ka243

[gogoblender 3,070]

Nice topic. I'll flesh out how the armor scene is on me these days. Firstly, we've all been playing for a while on MP here in EU servers. Most of us have done many runs with toons across many classes. What's happened is that we've practically been sleeping with item generators since last year, and so our chests are pretty much filled to bursting with stuff.

 

As well... Sets are not as unique as I guess in other games. You'll always get some if you play at least an hour, and if you're part of a busy online community like this one here, you make friends, and begin trading your wealth...eventually you "grok" that you can put together any set you want, as long as you know what you're looking for.

 

I always play with a set. Why? There are two things a set has that no rare has... max sockets AND highest number of mods at every high levels. Add that to the fact that you usually get a very good bonus to boot, and you can understand why sets are not only cool looking but EASIER to hunt for, collect and use.

 

Set bonuses are pretty good if you know how to build and understand game mechanics. For my dryad builds lately, because I'm so into DPS and very fast one-hit kills, I only use Deth, for the simple reason that it's set bonus is Leech life from opponents... incredibly powerful...and has synergy with viability, boss killing, damage etc... yeah the plus skills and Combat Art and all are interesting...but that one ability of leech makes it godly imo, and so it's the reason why with all the many run-overs of my dryads I've ended up with distillation of Detheya's...the largest collection of Deth armor in the land...I think ?

 

So, this is me raccounting what a player with wealth does...he is empowered with choice through the wealth of his friends and the canniness of his online trading.

 

But what does a new player do regarding sets?

 

Sets drop easily from side quests I've heard, but more funner...they drop super easily from mini-bosses, I usually always do boar and griffin and usually always end up with the set I want by the end of day.

 

Schot has a guide somewhere which has become the bible of set drop farming, which you can find in our guides section here at DarkMatters.

 

That's for sets

 

For jewelry uniques... do you want info on this as well? That's the subject of another long post

 

heh, good luck with game, and welcome to the forum

 

 

gogo

[Colorless Green 0]

Well, deathblow will only work with weapon based Combat Art's or weapon attacks so for a caster this is pretty much useless.

This is actually one of the things I've been trying to find. Is there any collection of information available anywhere on what modifiers will affect which categories of attacks? (Weapon-based Combat Art's vs Non-weapon based Combat Art's, Ranged vs Melee)

 

stuff about AddOn and set-only modifiers

Sadly, I'm in console-land, so I don't get to play with any of the AddOn stuff. I'm holding out hope that it'll still be released for consoles at some point, but oh well. And, the set-only modifiers you mentioned are the one place I've identified where my current argument really completely fails. Some of these mods appear to offer substantial advantage over what's available on rares. However, based on my (limited) looking through the wiki/my stashes, it's seeming like a lot of the time, those mods aren't set bonuses so much as mods on specific pieces of gear, meaning it'd be easy to just pick out only the necessary pieces and use rares elsewhere. I'm quite sure there are exceptions to this where wearing the full set is the way to go, though.

 

stuff about (a) diminishing returns, (b) bfg seras, © lots of general mod-related advice

(a) This is another of the things I've been trying to find. Is there any collection of information about what modifiers offer what kind of diminishing returns?

 

(b) I tried out a bfg seraphim until about level 15 or something like that. It was fun and I'll likely continue with it at some later date. However, I've got a quite large collection of 3-4 star weapons (console, rememeber, so I guess they're uniques and legendaries, maybe with a set thrown in? Haven't really looked in that great of detail,) so I've had no problems keeping good weapons available on any of my chars so far making the constant-free-weapons bonus of the bfg seraphim less appealing. My DW seraphim was swayed by the dual boneslicer article and has the sword weapons skill, so she's got weapons on demand for the rest of her career if I ever hit a point where I fail to find other interesting things via drops. Speaking of my seraphim, I haven't bothered with divine protection for her yet - she's built pretty defensively and I've never really needed it. Is it really as worthwhile as you say? I might have to look into it if anything ever starts injuring me.

 

© Thank you, this is all very useful information.

 

assuming infinite wealth, use sets

I'm quite used to having access to lots of wealth - in my D2 days I literally had access to anything I could desire, so when I'm trying to plan things out I tend to plan assuming I have everything, and if I don't have it yet I sit down and try to get it (either farming X indefinitely or trading if necessary.) But, even assuming infinite wealth, it still looks to me like there's better alternatives to (at least some) sets. Take, for example, the Pyromancer high elf set (I keep using this as an example set because my Pyromancer elf has gotten the most hours of playtime from me so far, so I've studied that set as an option the most.) Using the stats screenshots from the wiki (level 210 set), each item has exactly 5 mods (counting sockets as mods.) Based on what I've read, the max that can be obtained by rares is 4 mods, so looking at it like this, the set would win. However, the set actually has less sockets than rares potentially would. By counting from the screenshots, I'm seeing 3 bronze, 5 silver, 2 gold (even though the wiki says there's only 4 silver total...), for a total of 10 sockets over seven slots. Rares can have up to two of their mods be (gold) sockets, for a total of 14 sockets over seven slots. Now, let's take into consideration that, assuming you're socketing rare rings/ammys, you get two mods per socket. I'll spare you doing all the math, but this brings us to a total of 49 mods over the seven slots while using the set (counting the set bonuses), and 42 mods over the seven slots while using rares. The set is still winning, but the margin is much narrower. However, 9-10 of the mods on the set (depending on whether you count 'aspect:Pyromancer', which technically qualifies but realistically is almost as good as 'all combat arts') are inferior versions of mods that could be guaranteed on rares (e.g. +X incendiary shower rather than +X all combat arts, or +X Pyromancer focus rather than +X all skills.) A single "all combat arts +X" mod would take the place of five of the single combat art boost mods on the full set, and a single "all skills +X" mod would take the place of four of the remaining single skill boost or categorical skill boost mods. Subtracting these differences out takes us down to exactly 42 mods apiece (by taking the nine aforementioned set mods and replacing them with the two all-channel boosts). Suddenly, there's no more advantage to using the set in terms of available mods - we're exactly equal. And, lastly, rares (assuming infinite wealth, or infinite time with a shopper) mean that you get to choose exactly what those 42 mods are and at what levels, so you're not forced into using your mods on things like damage mitigation:fire (unless you particularly need more fire mitigation on a Pyromancer elf...)

 

Unfortunately, there's two things that my analysis doesn't consider. First, this assumes infinite wealth. I'm guessing it's going to be a lot easier to put together the seven pieces of Pyromancer elf gear than it is to put together the seven exact rares. Second, and more importantly, I have no idea what the individual values of the mods available are, I.e. whether a mod on the set piece is worth more than a mod on a rare due to being able to get higher +skills or whatnot. Does anyone know if this information exists anywhere?

 

 

 

Thanks for all the replies, everyone. I already understand the general equipment opinions substantially more than I did from my last few weeks of lurking.

 

-CG

[ka243 3]

Well, deathblow will only work with weapon based Combat Art's or weapon attacks so for a caster this is pretty much useless.

This is actually one of the things I've been trying to find. Is there any collection of information available anywhere on what modifiers will affect which categories of attacks? (Weapon-based Combat Art's vs Non-weapon based Combat Art's, Ranged vs Melee)

 

Deathblow works fine on spells on consoles. If you live in console land, check this article out:

http://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php5/Sacred_2:Xbox360

[Dragon Brother 619]

Well, deathblow will only work with weapon based Combat Art's or weapon attacks so for a caster this is pretty much useless.

This is actually one of the things I've been trying to find. Is there any collection of information available anywhere on what modifiers will affect which categories of attacks? (Weapon-based Combat Art's vs Non-weapon based Combat Art's, Ranged vs Melee)

 

Deathblow works fine on spells on consoles. If you live in console land, check this article out:

http://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php5/Sacred_2:Xbox360

Beat me to it! But yeah, consoles have this advantage, it got patched out for us And in any case, any modifier that is weapon modifying will increase melee or ranged unless its a weapon specific lore (Hafted lore, ranged lore, sword lore...). However if a Combat Art isnt weapon based then you cant raise it by raising your weapon damage, but any +Damage% or +damage type% should work.