Gearing
From HGWiki
Gear setups are an extremely important part of staying alive in Legendary Levels. Knowing what to cover can be extremely difficult, so this guide explains the basics of gearing Level 60 characters, especially in terms of the Hells.
Contents |
Armor Class
For most classes maximizing your armor class is one of the most important things you can do while gearing. In terms of the 9 Hells, you should aim for above 130 AC, any lower and you will need either high concealment or very good immunities and resists. If your AC is lower than 110 AC it probably isn't worth worrying about and you would be better off loading on more immunities.
Maximizing armor class isn't that difficult, especially now that URs are often randomized to have BUR grade AC. Another method of maximising AC on the cheap is to pick BURs that have lowered AC from lootsplits. People will often leave them due to the bad AC, but fixing the AC at the Forge of Ixion usually requires fairly mundane items you can find yourself or trade for.
For Deflection, Shield, Armour and Natural AC modifiers, only the highest ever applies, but Dodge modifier is a notable exception that can stack with itself to an effective maximum of +20. This can be reached with +16 boots and haste (which gives +4). Dodge actually stacks above +20, but 20 is the maximum you will receive in terms of your actual AC. Dodge AC above +20 helps to ameliorate penalties to AC in the hells. For example with +16 boots, haste and bard song you would have total 27 to dodge AC (although only 20 of it shows on your character sheet), when you get to Malbolge this is decreased to 18 (AC penalty there is -9, so 27 - 9 = 18).
Ability Scores
Getting +12 to each ability on your character is important, especially when entering the Hells and beyond. BURs can be randomised to +14, so fitting one item in to max out your main casting stat or STR/DEX for tanks can help increase the chance of your spells or attacks landing by 5%. If you can fit in +14's for other stats you can boost your saves, skills, AC by 1 and add 2 to any ability checks.
Try not to neglect any of your ability scores, even if it isn't one of your primary stats, +12 to Wisdom, Intelligence and Charisma can help filter out some checks from random enemies like Dogai (DC 32 Daze vs Int), Brachina (DC 32 Confuse vs Cha).
Two excellent pieces of gear for covering Ability Scores are Introweave Cape and Greater Psi Actuator. If you are lucky with randomisation and have a good augmenter, you can quite easily get +14 to every ability with one item.
Energy Immunities
Energy Immunities are expressed as a percentage and are an important part of any gear setup to reduce large packets of damage. Any incoming damage is reduced by that percentage, so if a character has 50% immunities, and takes damage for 50 Phys and 150 Cold, this damage is reduced to 25 Phys and 75 Cold. All sources of immunities stack with each other, so the more the merrier. Although they play a vital role in how much damage you take, they should be one of the last things you try to fit in your gear setup since they are close to useless without the right resists and effect immunities. It is worth noting that immunities are applied to incoming damage before resists are.
In terms of elemental immunities, which you choose to maximize depends on what class your character is and what gear you have available. For tanks it is usually best to cover the kickback damage types first, since you cannot avoid these (via good positioning or high dodge rate you can avoid damage from enemy attacks completely) although for soak tanks like CoTs this is less relevant. For example, on a tank character, Acid/Elec immunities are important for Malebranche/Pit Fiend kickback which become very common in deeper layers. The range of damage types taken in the Hells are extremely diverse, so apart from Acid/Elec on tanks, it doesn't hurt to load up evenly on all elemental immunities.
Physical immunities are most commonly obtained from Armour, Gauntlets and Cloak item slots. Monsters use a variety of weapon types, so maximizing Piercing, Slashing and Bludgeoning evenly is best. If you don't have Critical Hit Immunity, high Phys immunities help to reduce damage from Critical Hits.
Exotic immunities can be easily found on UR or BUR rings, but small amounts can also be found in other item slots. Exotic immunities are fairly rare, and getting more than one high at a time is reasonably difficult. In terms of the Hells, high Magic Immunity is the best choice and reduces a lot of damage taken, but on layers such as Styg and Cania, Positive immunities are an equally good choice. Aiming for 50% to Magic is a good goal for tanks, but more never hurts. Casters can get away with less.
It is worth noting that Phys and Elemental Immunities will be reduced in the Hells due to layer penalties. There are also numerous sources of vulnerability infliction to reduce your immunities, so there is nothing wrong with having immunities over 100%.
Resists
Resists are applied to incoming damage after immunities are. They are expressed on gear as resist XX/-, denoting the exact amount by which any incoming damage will be reduced (unlike immunities the reduction is not proportional). So using the example from Immunities, if the character had Phys Resists of 20/- and Cold Resist of 45/- in addition to the immunities, the damage taken would be further reduced to 5 Phys and 30 Cold. Unlike immunities, only the highest resist in each damage type applies, they do not stack.
Resists are one of the most important parts of a gear setup, especially for tanks. High resists reduce damage taken from ordinary hits and kickback by an extraordinary amount. When high resists are used in conjunction with good immunities, Crit Imm or high Parry, they can effectively reduce the damage taken from elementals and exotics to zeroes. Reducing phys to this level can be more difficult due since most enemies do a lot of Phys damage and Phys immunities are much harder to get higher, that said, they should never be overlooked.
There are situations where reducing resists to increase immunities is better, but this requires a good idea of how the two interact. For example, when comparing 5/- and 5% to a single element, resists are always going to be better than immunities for damage under 100 (ordinary hits, kickback), but for damage over 100 (critical hits, spells like EQ) the immunity will reduce damage by a greater amount. If you are able to stack on a large quantity of immunities it can be a good gear investment, but you must weigh up what it costs you in terms of resists. As with Immunities, making sure important damage types such as Acid/Elec have high resists will reduce key damage types.
For the Hells, the minimum resists would be 15/- to all Physical/Exotic damage types and 30/- to all Elemental damage types, but higher never hurts. Some good UR gear for covering resists include Veil of Kings, Helm of the Heralds, Boots of the Bastion, Elemental Crown and Gauntlets of Inverted Forces. BUR gear like Scintillating Scarf, Helm of Zeal, Legendary Boots of Absorption, Coil of Grabduk, Shattered Innocence and Gauntlets of Transposed Energy are even better. The BUR Cloak of the Elements is also very useful since it adds 10/- to your existing elemental resists via feats, so if used with the Legendary Boots of Absorption, you would actually have 40/- for each element.
Other Immunities
There are a lot of generic item based immunities you will need for Legendary Levels. Some item grade immunities are bypassed (KD, Mind Spells etc) by monsters in harder runs but they are still fairly important to cover.
Mind Spells, Disease, Poison, Fear, Paralysis, Freedom, Knockdown, Negative Levels, Sneak Attack and Death Magic are the usual group to cover. Some of these (Negative Levels, Sneak Attack) can be neglected with varying rates of success depending on area, but it is usually best to try to cover them all to be safe. For the Hells, Poison and Fear are especially important.
Lich-King's Phylactery and Touch of the Grave are two excellent items for covering all immunities including fear with one item. Ainafea's Masterwork Belt is a similar BUR item that also has immunities to the Bigbies spells on it.
