No longer fear Iron Maiden...

[PoHo]

No longer fear Iron Maiden...

Here is a starting list of classes and some of their skills that aren't effected by Iron Maiden.

Note: Would appreciate an amazon or druid listing what they use.

Michaelangelo's Iron Maiden Counters:
Amazon - ?
Assassin - Blade Fury (owns with Crushing Blow)
Barbarian - Berserk
Druid - ?
Necro - Bone Spirit, Bone Spear
Paladin - Blessed Hammer
Sorceress - All (offensive) skills

Enjoy

 

[Akila]

Re: No longer fear Iron Maiden...

correct me if I'm wrong but Bowazons and throwing Javas are already immune from the IM effects. For the Druid... go elemental?

 

[purplelocust]

Re: No longer fear Iron Maiden...

Really the issue is just for melee classes.

One thing that is worth pointing out is that IM reflects only the physical part of the damage. So a melee attacker with primarily elemental damage doesn't need to worry about IM.

For example, take a melee elemental zealot, say a Frostalot, a Holy Freeze paladin with a big investment in Sacrifice to the physical part of damage there. IM would generally be a big concern for such a zealot as the physical damage is large (assuming you are wielding a decent weapon) and once the zeal cycle is started you may be seriously hurt/dead before you can run away. But with a low damage weapon, you can zeal happily away while not worrying about the physical damage. I've had a few Digglerdins who use the Diggler in the Chaos Sanctuary and in WSK when there are OKs around. There is no way that the 4-13 base damage on the Diggler can kill a healthy zealot, and all the cold damage/crushing blow is still transmitted. The Diggler is a good choice for the ITD and IAS as well as the low damage. There are some huge elemental prefixes that spawn only on wands that would also be useful, but wands generally don't get IAS affixes so generally the Diggler is a good choice.

 

[sirpoopsalot]

Re: No longer fear Iron Maiden...

One thing that is worth pointing out is that IM reflects only the physical part of the damage.

As you said in the next paragraph, physical damage except for crushing blow. Just making that clear.

 

[mackscynox]

Re: No longer fear Iron Maiden...

add to paladins: riftadin

 

[Arkardo]

Re: No longer fear Iron Maiden...

Bone Spirit, Bone Spear and Blessed Hammer are not viable as backup skills, in my opinion.

 

[HegemonKhan]

Re: No longer fear Iron Maiden...

IM (iron maiden) returns damage to you from your melee weapon attacks-skills doing physical damage.

I do NOT know exactly what physical melee weapon-skill damage is returned. if it's the listed "total" damage on the LCS (lying character screen) or just the weapon + skills and/or gear base damage or just the weapon base damage. i do NOT know this specific information.

*so any ranged weapon-skill (bows, xbows, javelins, throwing axes) is UN-effected by IM (immune to IM).

*any casted spell is UN-effected by IM (immune to IM).

*as already mentioned berserk (does 100% magical damage) is UN-effected by IM (immune to IM).

*amazon's lightning strike and charged strike (both lit=lightning damage, no physical damage) are UN-effected by IM (immune to IM).

*a paladin's holy fire, holy shock, holy freeze, sanctuary (for the UEDam=Undead Enhanced Damage....if the UEDam worked from sanctuary....it does NOT. according to some one who i forgot who, it is bugged and gives the UEDam to the monsters instead of you) are all UN-effected by IM (immune to IM).

*any low enough damage melee weapon compared to your life is SAFE from IM, as is already mentioned by purple.

*etc...

 

[MrBill]

Re: No longer fear Iron Maiden...

<snip> I've had a few Digglerdins who use the Diggler in the Chaos Sanctuary and in WSK when there are OKs around. There is no way that the 4-13 base damage on the Diggler can kill a healthy zealot, and all the cold damage/crushing blow is still transmitted. The Diggler is a good choice for the ITD and IAS as well as the low damage. There are some huge elemental prefixes that spawn only on wands that would also be useful, but wands generally don't get IAS affixes so generally the Diggler is a good choice.

Nice idea, but aren't Oblivion Knights in Hell Cold Immune? So a Frost Zealot would have a hard time down there -- the only way that he could hurt these @%$#[email protected]$ things is with non-cold elemental damage (e.g. lightening / fire / poison), magic damage or Crushing Blow. Considering that you would get virtually no leech from the small amount of physical damage done by a Diggler, you'd want to have a lot of healing potions handy.

Keep in mind that wands have a fairly fast attack speed built in, so for a character with some off-weapon form of IAS, this is likely to be a tolerable situation as long as you have some CB as well. Incidentally I have seen wands spawn with IAS, but only on yellow (rare) wands and most of these have been exceptionals or elites that had somewhat more base physical damage (typically 20 to 60 points) so that kind of defeats the entire purpose when up against IM.

The approach that I have usually taken, with all forms of physical damage based builds, is just to use the Passion (Dol+Ort+Eld+Lem) Runeword in a reasonably fast / high physical damage weapon (a Naga will do nicely). This Runeword can be made starting in Nightmare (since it requires a 4 socket weapon), can be made both on and off the Ladder, requires only one sort of medium high rune, and gives you that precious "+1 to Berserk", whether or not you're a Barbarian -- so you do only pure magic damage, not physical. (Don't forget to re-map your left click attack skill to Berserk!)

Another thing that I like about Passion is that you get a free Heart of Wolverine spirit, not very high level so it tends to die a lot, but while it's around it adds a bit to your AR and damage and also gives the bad guys another target to attack, other than you.

The only thing that you have to watch out about, other than the leech issue of course, is for things that either have Mana Burn or those annoying Finger Mage type ghosts that slowly drain away your blue bulb with those little red fire things that they shoot at you. (Because, if you get drained down to the point where you don't have enough mana to power a Berserk swing, it counts as a normal physical attack, which is bad mojo if you get IM'ed at exactly the same time.)

A Level 30 or greater Paladin can partly offset this by continuously running Meditation, or, better still, Redemption, which has the added advantage of filling up your life bulb as you whack down those Balrogs, Doom Knights and OKs.

Or of course you can just stand behind your poor Merc and throw knives, axes or fire arrows. Just have a lot of money in the bank to pay Tyrael, when Waheed does the dirt nap in front of the OKs. :whistling:

Cheers

Mr. Bill

 

[SnickerSnack]

Re: No longer fear Iron Maiden...

Good call on using Passion, Mr. Bill. For a paladin, passion+meditation is probably the best way to go. The main problem with Berserk is that your defense goes to zero, but most pvm paladins should have max block.

Does anyone know if a wolf druid can use the berserk from passion while in wolf form?

 

[DudSpud]

Re: No longer fear Iron Maiden...

*amazon's lightning strike and charged strike (both lit=lightning damage, no physical damage) are UN-effected by IM (immune to IM)

Not exactly. You still get a normal hit in with these, so with something other than the start Javs (or better, cracked), you will still take some serious damage on the physical part of the strike - and as I recall, these are auto hit for the physical part...

TehSpud

 

[HegemonKhan]

Re: No longer fear Iron Maiden...

Not exactly. You still get a normal hit in with these, so with something other than the start Javs (or better, cracked), you will still take some serious damage on the physical part of the strike - and as I recall, these are auto hit for the physical part...

TehSpud
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
err, true, though my intent in my posted comment wasn't in being so thorough as you pointed out in your post.

yes, if u use a high damage spear/jav, IM is a big concern. but the skill itself, just adds elem (lit) damage in the form of a casted spell when your weapon attack makes contact with the target.

in classic (which i only play), we don't have any high damage javelins (classic's best thrown weapon is the harpoon javelin doing like 60 max damage). and if u using the charged strike or lightning strike skills for it's lit damage as your damage dealer, than there's not much reason to have a stronger jav vs a weaker jav (mana needs can be solved simply by chugging mana pots. no reason to use and worry about enough phys damage for mana leech when u can buy and use mana pots). your damage is lit not phys. Also the stronger javs have high str/dex reqs that take away from vit. Only the base weapon speed matters. so we classic people don't have enough phys damage from the weak type jav (we, in classic, have no reason to use a spear or the strongest jav, a harpoon, with the charge strike or lightning strike skills) to need to be worried about IM.

i obviously am confident that in the xpac there are some high damage javs or maybe u would use a spear with the chraged strike or lightning strike skills, ni which case IM would be an issue. though for the skill itself, as it only adds lit damage, it is unaffected by IM. only your weapon's damage is effected by IM. so it depends on how much damage your weapon does, if IM is going to be an issue or not.

there, i was thorough and complete this time with my post

*i try NOT to expound on my thoughts as my posts are already long enough, and expounding would only make them even longer....as you can see....
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
please correct me if this is incorrect,

but i believe that with using charged strike and lightning strike skills that the weapon's phys damage still requires your AR vs monter's def rat and clvl vs mlvl for a to hit check, but the lit damage from the skill activates on CONTACT (or u can "cheat" using FC with charged strike skill) with target (or as u call it, "autohit"), not by your AR vs monster's def rat and clvl vs mlvl or in other words a to hit check.

basically, the weapon's phys damage and the skill's lit damage are completely separate and independant from each other with the skills: charged strike and lightning strike.

 

[DudSpud]

Re: No longer fear Iron Maiden...

but i believe that with using charged strike and lightning strike skills that the weapon's phys damage still requires your AR vs monter's def rat and clvl vs mlvl for a to hit check...

I cannot speak for classic, and really, I wonder if I can really speak for xpac, but...

My understanding was that LS/CS/LF were "autohit" for the attacked monster, meaning that the physical damage would be done and that IM would thus return damage. For Example, my LCS in xpac gives phys damage for CS but doesn't give a CtH, which is my reason for thinking that this is just like LF. Though I could be wrong...

Is RTB or Thrugg in the house?

TehSpud

 

[sirpoopsalot]

Re: No longer fear Iron Maiden...

I can confirm that LF is auto-hit on the physical side. My cow-runner should have horrible AR, 100% pierce, and a little bit of poison damage. I've noticed that when cows line up behind my target, they get poisoned. Every cow, every time. Of course, since with LF, I'm "throwing", that makes my attack immune to IM (and therefore mostly irrelevant to the original discussion).

I think CS is also auto-hit, but I never tested it. And I was under the impression that LS is entirely lightning damage (and therefore immune to IM), but I don't ever recall having used it once.

 

[MYK]

Re: No longer fear Iron Maiden...

The CS lightning bolts are auto-hit. The physical damage is based on the AR system.

You shouldn't be sleeping while CSing in the CS, though. I've more than once gave my Javazon the deeds doing so with a set of regular Titans. The easy fix is to use a normal item type javelin. I'm sure cracked ones would do just fine.

Friends of mine in the AB are really fond of a Lawbringer Long Sword. It's a really cool weapon with neat effects. It doesn't do that much damage, making it a pretty IM friendly weapon.

Bear Druids get Shockwave. Fury builds don't really need that many points - They get summons and use a lawbringer weapon.