Choosing the Best Equipment For the Time

[dwaynegand]

Mostly, during the game, I look for items with specific prefixes and suffixes. My primary concerns are resistances, damage, defense, and later on, increased skill levels.

These are the prefixes I look for on:

Helmet: Hallowed, Juggernaut's
Armor: Transluscent, Juggernaut's
Amulets: Divine
Weapons: Veteran's
Anything else: Prismatic, Hale, Hardy, Cyclopean

These are the suffixes I look for on:

Weapons: Trickery
Amulet: Of the Cat, Of the Lynx
Armor: Of Champions
Armbands: of the Gryphon
Legs: Of the Pegasus
Anything else: Momentum, Willpower, Mobility

Farming for them or looking for them in merchants takes too much time, but that's what the Titan Quest Vault is for.

My questions are:

-How do I know if a certain piece of equpment is worth buying or not?
-When should I start realistically looking for certain prefixes and suffixes?
-When is a good time to look for items that increase skill levels?
-What should I be looking for on equipment throughout the game?

[redgreen999]

Based on your armour and helmet preferences, you are playing as juggernaut correct?
I'll reply as if that is the case, if not then reply as to which masteries you are using.

I had a high level juggernaut that I played melee as sword/shield. I don't keep track of prefixes suffixes, I just know where stuff drops that I like. I prefer the very fast swords that the tigers sometimes drop in late act 3. The ones that add 35% attack speed or so are great.

Act 5 is when you can sometimes get helps that drop with 50% vitality resistance in Legendary. I believe they drop with maybe 30% VIT in Normal.

Its not so much that you have to have a specific sword, leg armour, torso armor, amulet etc..

Maybe this won't help but what you need on your items for melee are below.

+attack speed. You want to max this eventually, but understand that won't happen until Legendary when stuff drops with higher bonuses.

%slow to enemy is very nice and can cover for if your attack speed is too slow still.

%life leech. You can use relic to add this to a weapon if your best one doesn't have it.
% energy leech so you can use your earth debuff spells.

You can craft those thingamabobs that go in the bottom left character slot that have these leeches.

You want some amulet, ring combo that will gives resists and offense/defense

My recommend resists for normal:

Fire - 40%
Cold - 20%
Lightning - 30%
Poison - 20%
Vitality 40% you need 55-60% to fight Act 3 end boss melee or he will keep healing to much off you. Also probably 60% fire resist for that boss if possible,

Pierce - 35-40%
physical - 0 Its just hard to find any in normal until I believe there is Physical resist armor in Atlantis. But you can eek by without it till after normal.

If you wear a lot of life leech you can get by with less resistance, unless you are fighting skeletons/ghosts or anything you can't leech off of.

Oh and if you play to never die, you need 70% or higher stun resistance even in normal. Can be combo of helm/amulet.

These are the basics really. If your running a character 1st time through without sharing from stash, realistically you cant cover all of this. So you may need to swap gear for certain main bosses. I've gotten with as found, and a few store bought items, by added items with stats I need into green or yellow item sockets.

I am currently in act 4 where there is a lot of tough undead and I added a relic that gives 74% damage to undead with its bonus. I had to give up my life/energy leech socket bonus to kill undead. Until I get a better item of 2. So drinking pots for now, but that is how the game plays out unless you farm or use the vault which I have done in the past but am not using on my current run.

I wouldn't go for any int boost equip if your playing melee. I use the one skill that lowers monsters defense rating and meteor later just for debuffs, not so much damage.

If you are not playing melee Juggernaut, then let us know so we can replay better.

[dwaynegand]

I'm playing a Conqueror. So I'm looking for physical damage primarily, together with increased strength, health, and resistances.

From what I've seen so far, having life leech in Normal isn't very effective because the amount you leech is too low and doesn't really give you much gain against enemies that can inflict over a hundred hit points in one attack.

I would think that you would need more poison resistance against Cerberus and other enemies that powerful use poison attacks.

[chris.ferrantegerard]

Origineel geplaatst door dwaynegand:

These are the prefixes I look for on:

Helmet: Hallowed, Juggernaut's
Armor: Transluscent, Juggernaut's
Amulets: Divine
Weapons: Veteran's
Anything else: Prismatic, Hale, Hardy, Cyclopean

These are the suffixes I look for on:

Weapons: Trickery
Amulet: Of the Cat, Of the Lynx
Armor: Of Champions
Armbands: of the Gryphon
Legs: Of the Pegasus
Anything else: Momentum, Willpower, Mobility

Different fixes are good for different builds. So the fixes you want will change a bit depending on what you're playing.

Prefixes:
Helmet: Hallowed (everyone),
Amulets: Divine/Sacred for +1/+2 skill or +1/+2 to individual masteries (for builds that need +skill and don't have alternatives)
Rings/Amulet: +pet dmg fixes in general for summon builds, Forsaken (vitality dmg builds), Occult (casting speed buff vital for pure casters), ale for +str/health, Socrates for +Int/energy good generic fixes.
Weapons: Any fix that gives +dmg%, projectile speed, etc. Veteran’s is one of my favourite fixes here.
Armour: Juggernaut’s, Veteran’s is great for defensive buffs

Defiled (etc) is a good fix for poison builds and can appear on a lot of stuff.

Suffixes:
Arms: of Alacrity (and other attack speed fixes)
Boot: of Campaigning (and other movement speed fixes)
Head: of Focus, of the Magus (CDR)
Chest: of the Gods (big +health/energy boost + total damage %)
Shield: of Focus (CDR)
Weapons: of Devouring (because ADCtH is so good), of Reckless Power (+physical dmg/attack speed for melee)
Amulet: of Convocation (for summon builds)

In general, of Immortality is good for stacking some extra health. of the Tinkerer from Atlantis lets you use two charm/relics and is very good.

Farming for them or looking for them in merchants takes too much time, but that's what the Titan Quest Vault is for.

My questions are:

-How do I know if a certain piece of equpment is worth buying or not?

Look at stats and affects of equipment. Compare to what you are currently using. Don't really vendor farm much, so I largely just try out stuff I found or pick an item for a while then swap to something else.

-When is a good time to look for items that increase skill levels?

+skill is always good. Some builds need it more than others (ie: Nature summoners want +2 Nature ASAP for the third wolf summon) so these builds would want to hunt down skill level gear faster. Early game this basically means farming for Stonebinder's Cuffs and vendor farming for +1 Nature amulet.

Other builds don't need to hunt it down specifically. Later in Epic/Legendary, grab Stonebinder's Cuffs and this is pretty good. Getting appropriate resistances, defenses, etc. more important than the +skill.

-What should I be looking for on equipment throughout the game?

Generally the pool of fixes grows as you go further but you'll largely be using the same type of fixes, just higher tiers of the fix.

[redgreen999]

Origineel geplaatst door dwaynegand:

I'm playing a Conqueror. So I'm looking for physical damage primarily, together with increased strength, health, and resistances.

From what I've seen so far, having life leech in Normal isn't very effective because the amount you leech is too low and doesn't really give you much gain against enemies that can inflict over a hundred hit points in one attack.

I would think that you would need more poison resistance against Cerberus and other enemies that powerful use poison attacks.

I am doing 400dps in act 4/Atlantis with skills active. Going back and forth between the 2. So 20% life leech would give back 80 life on avg. Most normal mobs have little to no life leech resists.
That is where a fast attack sword comes in, cause if you hit 4 monsters fast your at 320 life back. Your right though its better further into the game. For most mobs though, you are not taking much damage so its enough not to need pots except mobs that have a boss with an aura. Fast swords is my play style with Conquerer, but you may prefer an axe. I am using a spear with my Hunter/Nature build. Most are slow, but eventually there are fast ones that drop. I forget which act. I am doing enough damage now that its ok still.

When I do Spear Dance I may leech off everything around me, not sure. Atm I just got a shield that combined with other items brings my pierce resistance to 80. Elementals are 25-45. I am not taking much damage except for bosses with auras. I don't have any life leech atm. I always play through to about level 76 and for me its just something I always want when the right other equipment drops. I have 4500+ life with 1 point in oak and my character is level 30.

I haven't played in 2-3 years. I played maybe 6 months after Embers DLC came out. I notice the devs added some totems with 3 monsters in some random areas. This is really cool as its new to me and makes the play through more varied. Like I had blood witches IIRC, ones that did vitality damage that you don't see until late act 4, and I have them in early act 4.

Regarding Cerberus, I had 30 poison resist with 1 point in the Hunter skill that gave that and Cerbeuse barely touched me. I did have some life leech at that time and used maybe 3 pots. You would need to max poison in Legend mode for him.

chris.ferrantegerard is an expert on prefixes and the game in general. So he can be more specific then I can. I just play by feel and I do swap equipment when I know a bosses strengths. Its very hard not to have to swap equipment without farming a lot.

[Swanky]

Origineel geplaatst door dwaynegand:

I'm playing a Conqueror. So I'm looking for physical damage primarily, together with increased strength, health, and resistances.

From what I've seen so far, having life leech in Normal isn't very effective because the amount you leech is too low and doesn't really give you much gain against enemies that can inflict over a hundred hit points in one attack.

I would think that you would need more poison resistance against Cerberus and other enemies that powerful use poison attacks.

If you're playing conqueror you might want to consider "Of the Wanderer" on boots if you don't need the resistances. For arms you should look for "Of Alacrity" because of the massive attack speed bonus. Pair with a legendary Anubis Wrath with attack speed bonus and you leech and attack like crazy.

Leech in normal doesn't seem to be a lot but it's heavily dependant on your weapon and AoE skills. Conqueror's shield bashes can easily refill your health with the correct setup.
For normal artifacts, I like to use Soul Shiver from act 2 because it gives a melee character everything they need for normal difficulty - tons of leech and a good bit of damage.

Buying from merchants can supply you with jewelry but for other items it's better to farm MIs, but depending on what item you're looking for it can take you dozens of hours finding good MIs with preferable affixes.