shihonage said:
I'm sorry, but what are these fabled rune words and didn't they majorly nerf corpse explosion sometime around 1.03 because it allowed you to blow up everything on screen ? Was it un-nerfed again ?
Either way, my experiences may not reference the latest patch which as I understand was worked on by just one single dude for 3 years, who was possibly retarded.
Corpse explosion still affects everything on-screen with +skill gear, and since it is 50% physical 50% fire, amp damage causes CE to do more damage than the original monster's life... meaning that all you need is to amp a crowd, let your merc kill a single monster... and then insta-gib the rest.
The runewords would be Enigma, Spirit, Heart of the Oak for casters. Giving your merc the Insight runeword means that your mana is going to regenerate instantly, removing the need to click mana potions anymore (just one step closer to one-button play).
For melee : Fortitude + Grief and you're practically invulnerable and doing insane amounts of damage.
You havent played it recently either, the only reason runewords turn it into such a button masher is because the huge number of dupes, turning what should be a rare item into common currency.
Luckily there was a ladder reset last week.
The fact that 99% of runes are dupes doesn't change the fact that you can fully gear a character in the best runewords in less than 7 days after starting fresh... and then 2-3 more characters the next week (In three weeks of casual play I had fully geared a light sorc, fishymancer, zealer, windy and their mercs in the best gear available (including torches/skillers/5allres-life scs). How did I do it? Spamming mouse2 until everything on-screen died. Uber strategy required obviously.