A long-shot use for a very rarely used cube recipe

A long-shot use for a very rarely used cube recipe

You know, I was reading through the cube recipes on Arreat Summit, and I came across a recipe I have never used. It got me thinking, and I realized it can be useful, under very specific circumstances:

* You play untwinked, and you don´t allow yourself to "run" areas/bosses
* You play in a tournament that restricts the investment of some skills (but allows for +skills gear to raise them).

I am talking about the following recipe:

Magical Shield + Spiked Club (any) + 2 skulls (any quality) -> magical shield (same type) of Spikes.

The recipe apparently works with Pally shields and Necro heads. The item level is set to 30. A prefix may spawn on it (25% chance, I guess).

I have a weaponless Necromancer (meaning, I can´t use wands to boost skills or to give me access to skills I don´t invest in) in a tournament in the Single Player forum. With my style of play, I will see a limited number of necro heads when I go through the game. They can´t be gambled. They can be imbued, and they can be rerolled with Pgems (and 6x PSkulls, if it´s a rare). The Shield of Spikes recipe will allow me to see quite a few more of them (the character has very little use for low-quality skulls anyway). Just getting more chances of the "staffmods" isn´t bad. But it gets even better:

The two highest elite types (Succubus Skull and Bloodlord Skull) have such a high qlvl that this recipe will allow any prefix to spawn on them. As you know, the + to necro skills and + to necro skill tree affixes are prefixes, as well as the big resistance affixes (including the juicy Chromatic). The next type "down" in line, the Overseer Skull, is a much worse prospect, it will only get alvl 33 with this recipe (allows for +1 Necro skillls or +1 necro skill tree prefixes).

You often learn something new about this game, even after all this time...

 

Wow, that's an excellent observation. I was just thinking my new necro needs a new head . I'll be sure an try this next time I play. Thanks.

 

Mmmm good stuff. I have a similar crafting success story. My low lvl duel Assasin (lvl 25) needed some War Boots for max kick damage. However, all the unique and set boots have high lvl reqs. So, instead of just wearing normal War Boots I crafted some safety boots and kept rolling until I got some with some good run/walk, resists, and other cool bonuses. My assasin has taken out high lvl bowazons and sorcs (Dragon Flight then Dragon Talon till they die). At lvl 25 she pwns with these boots. I also made her some crushing blow blood gloves which enchance her dmg immensly. GG!

 

Did you consider upgrading Goblin Toe =). You even can upgrade them twice, for higher level assassins.

 

At level 25, magic rare or crafted war boots with the right mods are better than goblins, which I believe are also higher then 25 when upped. The crushing blow on them doesnt make up for the lack of damage. Since CB takes a %, you do need some decent "actual damage" to finish anyone off. You can get the crushing blow other places (strength claw, crafted gloves etc), but war boots are the best choice for boots, thanks to their damage.

 

I thought CB was % of the target's life removed, not a % based on damage done by the item....

 

Crushing Blow removes an amount of life equal to how much a /players 1 monster would lose if the 'pecentage loss' was applied.

Let´s take a fully healed non-boss monster with 100 life that you hit in melee. In this situation, Crushing Blow removes 1/4 of the current life, so the damage would be 25 (however, that amount can be reduced if the monster has physical resistance). The p8 version of that monster has 450 life, but that first hit would still only remove 25 life.

Corpse Explosion damage is also based in the life of a p1 monster. Static Field is the only skill where the damage scales with more players.