Unholy Melee Paladin [105-125 content in TU's]

Captcha wrote:cut
BTW why do people max Tainted Blood when the diminishing returns seem quite severe? By the time I've put 10 points in it, it's only reducing the time taken for regen (of 100% life) by 0.6 seconds.

As said above - for total character defence bonus. But there's another purpose in some cases...
Very rare SSU armor

Arkaine's Valor

Arkaine's Valor
Splint Mail (Sacred)
Defense: (9532 - 10839) to (12577 - 14093)
Required Level: 100
Required Strength: 600
Item Level: 120
50% of Your Bonus to Defense Added as Vitality
+1 to All Skills
50% Hit Recovery
+(150 to 200)% Enhanced Defense
+(3000 to 5000) Defense
Physical Resist 10%
Socketed (6)

synergies well with any %TCD.

To bring some comprehesion about this: for example, if you'll get +850% TCD from Tainted Blood, you'll also get +425 flat vitality (850 * 50%). Yes, it works definetly this way. From other items you can earn some more TCD, to around 1200% entire. Equals 600 flat vita.

And combined with some charms and +5% vitality perfect gems you can convert 600 flat vitality into thousands of it! Don't forget about blood thorns/lemures/vitality interaction.

So on, with that rare piece of gear Tainted Blood becomes something very valuable.

You're better off with %mana regen (MO jewelery for more) than mana on attack on UMP IMO. A little goes a long way.

what are we using for sockets in gear and MOs

Jordan28 wrote:what are we using for sockets in gear and MOs

tank or damage build?
cold or fire based?

I like (cold) tank with full vit, so ruby or ohm in spare sockets. That's using full craft/honorific gear, not a silly set that hasn't been rebalanced since all the changes.

Hello, started playing Median XL with this build still in Normal so have some questions.

Should care for gear progression now or when reach harder difficulties?
What about challenges list?
Best way to keep healthy numbers in arcane shards/crystals?
How is the best efficient way to keep the uniques upgraded?
Can socket perfect gems to keep up the elemental defenses and still upgrade equipment?

Beyond that the build keeps me playing (long time I don't get addicted to diablo 2 until now) only I got one death vs Diablo (got hit by that pillar) so thanks and keep the guide updated when you can.

Balded_Hige wrote:Hello, started playing Median XL with this build still in Normal so have some questions.

Should care for gear progression now or when reach harder difficulties?
What about challenges list?
Best way to keep healthy numbers in arcane shards/crystals?
How is the best efficient way to keep the uniques upgraded?
Can socket perfect gems to keep up the elemental defenses and still upgrade equipment?

Beyond that the build keeps me playing (long time I don't get addicted to diablo 2 until now) only I got one death vs Diablo (got hit by that pillar) so thanks and keep the guide updated when you can.

There are probably a few different thoughts on when/where to collect the ACs and start fixing the TUs. Also worth noting that different characters might need their tiered uniqs at different points. With this in mind i'll share how I played my uhm (:
I mostly felt the build didnt require the gear too early, so i just progressed through the game with whatever gear I found. Made a few runs on meph to gather some ACs to make a few uniqs at tier 2~ then played on.
I like to farm nihla for acs since he drops quite a few uniqs (if Im not mistaken, he drops at least 3/run). So when playing this char that's when i started gathering up some ACs and uptiering to T3/4. If u feel the progress is slow in act 4/start of act5 for some reason u can always go back to meph-runs to uptier some more gear.

The first challenge is in act5 at the last wave before baal. Since the charm requires level 50, u might aswell wait until u are at or around level 50 (don't wait longer than level 60 or u must use some ACs to use charm). The challenge is pretty easy, just take it slow and have a tp up behind u.
Second challenge is ennead in nm a3 after u kill meph. As long as u have resist this shouldnt be any problem either. This unlocks ur divine apparition, so u will want it asap. While going through nm u should also gather evil eyes if u happen to come across them since they give 1sk/20%exp gain. Good to apply as soon as possible.

For the sockets, no. If u socket an item and then uptier it, the socketfillers will disapear.
But u can easily unsocket the item first (vendors sell the item oil of disjunction, which unsockets the item), and then uptier and re-socket the gems.

Hope that can be of some help to u!
hf gl with the char

Crescent wrote:
Oh, the farming build... I call it "lazyglasscanon".

It mostly based on Kirimaru's (page 15 of this topic - don't know if there is a way to get link to certain post) & Bonespirit's (can't find, really) investigations.

And sorry for my poor English.

Thanks! And your English is fine btw

I don't have most of those items but I'll know what to watch for now.

Fululf wrote:There are probably a few different thoughts on when/where to collect the ACs and start fixing the TUs. Also worth noting that different characters might need their tiered uniqs at different points. With this in mind i'll share how I played my uhm (:
I mostly felt the build didnt require the gear too early, so i just progressed through the game with whatever gear I found. Made a few runs on meph to gather some ACs to make a few uniqs at tier 2~ then played on.
I like to farm nihla for acs since he drops quite a few uniqs (if Im not mistaken, he drops at least 3/run). So when playing this char that's when i started gathering up some ACs and uptiering to T3/4. If u feel the progress is slow in act 4/start of act5 for some reason u can always go back to meph-runs to uptier some more gear.

Yeah started to upgrade to T4 some TU (Lavadome and Catechumen already at T4) and farming some more AC to get early game TU

Fululf wrote:The first challenge is in act5 at the last wave before baal. Since the charm requires level 50, u might aswell wait until u are at or around level 50 (don't wait longer than level 60 or u must use some ACs to use charm). The challenge is pretty easy, just take it slow and have a tp up behind u.

Done already at level 56 and was easy

I have already some grasp of the mod and how the things works. While in the beginning the mod is overwhelming for a new player, it isn't something a good hour or two reading ingame things to learn a lot. Already killed Baal in Normal so can start moving towards next diff (and I have good resistances).

The only problem now is the mana sometimes I can't generate enough to sustain Blood Thorns

Balded_Hige wrote:cut

About your mana issues...
You can craft

Pollice Verso

Pollice Verso
Gauntlets (4)
Defense: (48 - 54) to (90 - 102)
Required Level: 10
Required Strength: 28
Item Level: 19
4% Chance to cast level 3 Time Strike when Attacked
+(24 to 40)% Enhanced Defense
+(7 to 10) to Strength
+(6 to 10) Life after each Kill
+(6 to 13) Mana after each Kill
Requirements -8%
Socketed (1)
Defense: (216 - 239) to (333 - 369)
Required Level: 27
Required Strength: 52
Item Level: 36
8% Chance to cast level 5 Time Strike when Attacked
+(58 to 75)% Enhanced Defense
+(12 to 16) to Strength
+(16 to 20) Life after each Kill
+(21 to 28) Mana after each Kill
Requirements -16%
Socketed (2)
Defense: (583 - 635) to (854 - 930)
Required Level: 44
Required Strength: 165
Item Level: 59
12% Chance to cast level 7 Time Strike when Attacked
+(92 to 109)% Enhanced Defense
+(18 to 24) to Strength
+(26 to 30) Life after each Kill
+(36 to 43) Mana after each Kill
Requirements -24%
Socketed (3)
Defense: (875 - 946) to (1274 - 1378)
Required Level: 52
Required Strength: 296
Item Level: 85
14% Chance to cast level 8 Time Strike when Attacked
+(109 to 126)% Enhanced Defense
+(25 to 30) to Strength
+(31 to 35) Life after each Kill
+(43 to 50) Mana after each Kill
Requirements -32%
Socketed (4)

.
Crafting tiered uniques possible through unique reroll cube recipe - see docs here:

https://docs.median-xl.com/doc/items/cube

******For the future: no, sacred uniques creation is not allowed in this game at all.

For more lifequality use ""Mana on attack" (MoA) mystic orbs (MO) (can be bought from Gheed in A1, Drognan A2, Alkor A3 & Larzuk A5).

Also, your talents give you "Ignore target defence", it let your attacks not to miss hitting regular monsters. It don't works for bosses, so you need attack rating (AR) to sustain mana in long boss fights.

Blood thorns uses spell animation and damages as spell, but, initializing by weapon swing, it's still the melee attack, so attack rating not worthless, as some people wrote.

To see which chance to hit certain monster you have (= chance to regen mana/life with each swing), you can switch active skill to normal attack and than move mouse to AR in character state window, there will be shown hit% on mouseover. 70% will be enough for first times (btw, you can attach AR MO's to weapon).

How much AR do I need to reliably sustain my mana on 115+ bosses? im at 30k atm