Holy Melee [1.3] WIP

Last attempt I had like 5 minions of destruction, diablo, and andarial all up at the same time. I couldn't keep up and kept getting melted. I have all of my speed breakpoints and >150 dr, 24k dj dmg, over 500k defense with bear stance. Life and mana aren't perfect (8k hp 2500 mana) but I don't know how much difference more of either would really make. Hops/Edriym(sp?)/Merc help at all? I feel like it would just cause him to spawn even more crap.

That's strange. I had 300k def and 3k less damage than you when fighting him and it took me few deaths and about 15-20 minutes but he went down. But that minion count is too big. I never had more than 3 enemies on the screen. Make sure you clear them before hitting Baal again, that is my only advice here, you should be more than able to do it with better stats than mine.

Two things:
1) you mention your attack and hit recovery frames a few times but didnt include them in the build as far as what the cap is/what to aim for, so i am curious as to what those are?

2) In the mid game section you say helm and gloves with a creepy shrine craft, but dont mention what kind of stats/affixes or whatever to go for on the gear. Can you give a rough suggestion

Aim for high roll of %def, %strength, maybe pal skills and IAS

madgod wrote:Two things:
1) you mention your attack and hit recovery frames a few times but didnt include them in the build as far as what the cap is/what to aim for, so i am curious as to what those are?

2) In the mid game section you say helm and gloves with a creepy shrine craft, but dont mention what kind of stats/affixes or whatever to go for on the gear. Can you give a rough suggestion

1) Maximum. You use d2stats and the d2 speed calc in the tools section of the site (not the forums but the site itself - under the "Game" dropdown at the top of the screen) to see where you're at and how much more you need. Include the weapon speed found on the base item page of the documents and the Dragonform option in the class dropdown in the speed calc to get the right numbers.

2) It talks about it throughout the guide:

In theory you should max Strength. The way the new Divine Judgement works is it hits like a truck on the initial melee swing. That means you want as much Flat Weapon Damage as possible and as many big multipliers for that Flat Damage.

At this point you will want to start jewelcrafting. I personally recommend you craft them with a Lem rune because the flat stats scale really well with Dragonknight.
You want to get on those jewels:
•% all attributes or % strength
•either life or defense,
•either FRW, IAS, FHR.

Basically you're seeking the same stuff. Stats, life, defense, and always +Skills. The +Skills combined with the Bear stance on Brahmen is what will boost your defense significantly. Other unmentioned stats are capping your resistances and damage reduction. This build will force you to learn the game to optimize. One thing that I did while building him was to get okay jewels through crafting to get the important runewords, and then I'll periodically unsocket them and assess which ones are giving pointless stats and replace them with better crafts. You also don't benefit for stacking speeds above the frame caps, and as you get more skill points, gear, and charms you can swap some of the FHR/IAS for other stuff that might benefit you more so long as you can stay above your breakpoints shown in the speed calc.

With d2stats make sure you fully buff (including vindicate and solar flare) outside of town before alt-tabbing to d2stats to take a reading.

Roenan wrote:
madgod wrote:Two things:
1) you mention your attack and hit recovery frames a few times but didnt include them in the build as far as what the cap is/what to aim for, so i am curious as to what those are?

2) In the mid game section you say helm and gloves with a creepy shrine craft, but dont mention what kind of stats/affixes or whatever to go for on the gear. Can you give a rough suggestion

1) Maximum. You use d2stats and the d2 speed calc in the tools section of the site (not the forums but the site itself - under the "Game" dropdown at the top of the screen) to see where you're at and how much more you need. Include the weapon speed found on the base item page of the documents and the Dragonform option in the class dropdown in the speed calc to get the right numbers.

2) It talks about it throughout the guide:
In theory you should max Strength. The way the new Divine Judgement works is it hits like a truck on the initial melee swing. That means you want as much Flat Weapon Damage as possible and as many big multipliers for that Flat Damage.

At this point you will want to start jewelcrafting. I personally recommend you craft them with a Lem rune because the flat stats scale really well with Dragonknight.
You want to get on those jewels:
•% all attributes or % strength
•either life or defense,
•either FRW, IAS, FHR.

Basically you're seeking the same stuff. Stats, life, defense, and always +Skills. The +Skills combined with the Bear stance on Brahmen is what will boost your defense significantly. Other unmentioned stats are capping your resistances and damage reduction. This build will force you to learn the game to optimize. One thing that I did while building him was to get okay jewels through crafting to get the important runewords, and then I'll periodically unsocket them and assess which ones are giving pointless stats and replace them with better crafts. You also don't benefit for stacking speeds above the frame caps, and as you get more skill points, gear, and charms you can swap some of the FHR/IAS for other stuff that might benefit you more so long as you can stay above your breakpoints shown in the speed calc.

With d2stats make sure you fully buff (including vindicate and solar flare) outside of town before alt-tabbing to d2stats to take a reading.

That was a beautifully informative answer, thank you very much!

madgod wrote:That was a beautifully informative answer, thank you very much!

My pleasure :salut:

One other tip - if you get lucky and roll indestructible jewels with one or two usable stats you can use those to offset some very big repair costs. Gold is easy to get, but I'm really anal about keeping my gear up, so I have one in my helm, hand of god, and had one in my ancient armor but goofed that somehow. Also - remember to lucky all of your jewels. They might be tryhard points as stated in the guide, but they're free stats that your +% all attributes, +% STR, and dragonknight all will boost.

Just an example of my stats, and a list of all my gear below.

Before that though - I got the bastard tonight :bounce:

Had a handful of deaths, but kiting the summons away from Baal and burning them down combined with careful attention being paid to gtfo when the black pools were under me seemed to do the trick. RNG was also kind this fight and I wasn't nearly as swarmed as previous attempts.

Stats first:

Charms - Got all but 3 of these without having BRC completed. The far right 2 were gotten on trade and the hammer was gifted but still incredibly easy to get with having access to Bear Stance. The rest were done w/o ideal dmg reduction at all.

► Weapon

► Armor

► Helm

► Amulet

► Ring 1

► Ring 2

► Gauntlets

► Belt

► Boots

► Pre-Buff Crafted Weapon - Only for +Skills

► Pre-Buff Crafted Shield - Only for +Skills

A lot of these things you say " Or you can just pop sacred armor and go for it".

I dont know if sacred armor has been nerfed since then, but when i have tried to use it on a boss to see the dmg reduction difference, i still just get slapped and die lol, nevermind tanking the one shot spears

Sacred armor used to make you invuln for a handful of seconds. It's not like that anymore so eventually it should be phased out of the guide. Can just ignore that info for now.