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Assumes all base AC and prefixes/suffixes are as close to perfect as possible. • Royal Circlet (Switch to Thinking Cap for all-Fireball levels) • Awesome Full Plate Mail of Giants • Dreamflange (Switch to Civerb's Cudgel for full immunes) • Emerald Tower Shield of the Tiger • Obsidian Jewel of Zodiac • Dragons Jewel of Wizardry (2) Armor of Giants is recommended here in the dream setup as it gets you +20 str (with the goal being at least +45), freeing up a space to change one of the jewels from zodiac to wizardry, which nets you more magic/mana than you would get with a zod ring and sorcery on your plate mail. You would need to switch from one of your dragon/wiz rings when equipping the TC here, as your str would drop to low to equip the armor. The tiger suffix to the shield is debatable, but as your only other options on an emerald shield are "of the ages" or "of absorption" I'd say take tiger for the "just in case" value. This is also for mages lvl 40+ as it will not provide enough AC (see the max AC needed chart) for maximum efficiency for Clvls 30-40, generally speaking. Also, accept the fact that you will never, ever, ever, ever be able to assemble items of this quality, barring cheating or duping, so look to the specific equipment sections for more realistic recommendations. For levels 13-15 (not including Laz's room), I never vary from fireball, chain lightning, stone curse, and teleport. Very occasionally if I'm on a no fire or no lightning monster level, I'll switch and throw in a guardian or flame wave or charged bolt or bone spirit, but usually if the level doesn't require any chain lightning, for example, I'll just use only fireball and not even pause to alter my hot keys. Once I reach Laz's room and then for lvl 16, (since there are advocates in with Laz, it's unofficially the start of lvl 16.) I switch Chain Lightning for Golem. Golem is very mana-expensive, but it is indispensable for dealing with full immunes. It's great for advocates, and still useful for Soul Burners, but must be used more judiciously, as any type of witch will target a golem from any distance, and unless you have him virtually in a corner, he's going to be bloodstar bait and then gravel in just a few seconds. Recommendation is to still use him a lot on lvl 15 if you get Soul Burners, but just try to make sure you have all the live witches in the area on stone before you pop him out, or he's not going to last long enough to help much. Soul Burners are probably not as bad as Advocates, due to the much lower damage of their bloodstars compared to the Advocates fireballs, and their less unpredictable escape patterns, but they have many more hps, so a golem's help in killing them is really a must if you don't want to spend an hour on lvl 15. The one nicer thing about Soul Burners is also one thing that makes them tougher. Namely that they will follow you around corners. It's nice to lure a few away from a room crowded with other monsters, but if you get into trouble and need to bail out to reload your belt or recast mana shield, you will have to teleport a bit father way to shake the pursuit of the Soul Burners.
The biggest thing is of course cast mana shield the instant you enter a new level. Reflect doesn't hurt either, on Hellfire. After that, know thy enemy! Witches require very different tactics than melee monsters or mages, for example. It is essential that you know how a monster will move, what it will be hurt by, and what it will hurt you with. That being said, for your attacks Fireball is generally more accurate, precise, and deadly than Chain Lightning, or any other spell. Fireball does a lot more damage, in almost all situations, and you can be standing anywhere and fire it at will. (No worries about proper positioning like with Chain Lightning. More on that later.) If a monster resists both fire and lightning, use fireball almost all the time on it for the superior accuracy, and use Fireball liberally. Misses may hit the monster next to or behind it, and splash damage is your friend. The liberal use goes for every spell, (except Chain Lightning in certain situations.) most of the time, not just for fireball. The damage you take (and therefore the mana you lose) from being hit by anything in hell/hell is almost certainly going to be much higher than the mana you would have spent to kill the offending monster if you had cast a little more quickly. It is perhaps your most useful, and also most easily misused spell. Positioning is everything. You should almost never cast chain unless you have a wall on at least one side of you. You also have to take into consideration the sprite limit, and not plan on chain being too effective in big open rooms with tons of targets. Use it intelligently. The sprite limit effects chain even if it's well off the screen. You shoot out a huge burst, it flies through the monsters it was targetting and continues off the screen, where you can hear it moving in the distance. So you click chain again, and get like 3 streams instead of 20. Normally most of your chains will hit a wall before they even get off screen, but occasionally you must wait a moment to get another massive burst, rather than clicking frantically to get a lot of little dribbles. Chain works best when you can get the monsters where you want them. Back up a few steps or around a corner to lead them in. Lining monsters up works especially well with witches, as they'll follow you around a corner and stay in a line, politely holding still (while shooting bloodstars at you) while you irradiate them with chain or fireballs. Other useful features of chain are that you can see how many critters are close to the other side of a wall by how many bolts target them with a test shot. You can be in a 2 or 3 space wide corridor, and find that there are a million (Not literally, silly.=) targets on the other side of the wall to your right. Therefore if you are shooting chain at things ahead of you, stay touching the right wall. (The left wall is either an outer wall of the level or leads to an already cleared area.) Then when some of the monsters from in front of you come in close, especially if they like to mince around, like Balrogs, you can pop or walk to the other side of the corridor, putting them between you and the populated room to the right. Chain them now and they'll get in the way of all the shots heading towards that wall, and they are toast. This is one way that chain can do the most damage in the game, as you can kill off hell/hell steel lords and other lightning resistant monsters with loads of hit points in just one or two shots if you have them at the correct angle with a nice background. It can also be fun to know your targets are lightning weak, and pop over a wall into a big room, land right in the corner, and start chaining away. If you begin hitting the chain (this works with fireball as well) as soon as you are in mid-teleport, it will issue forth from you the instant you land, before even the monsters' instant reactions can start to hurt you. This is a somewhat risky technique however, because of the next topic. Stun lock can be a big problem for mages. Beware dogs, azure drakes, and lightning bugs. (All type of the hidden monsters have high to/hit and rapid swing rates also, so beware them, but any high level mage should have a high enough AC to not have too much trouble with them.) Getting more than 2 or 3 of them up close is a very bad thing. You can suffer a curious fate, as you will be trapped and unable to move or cast any spells, but not taking so much damage that you die instantly. It's often not a problem to drink potions from your belt faster than you are taking damage, but drinking from the belt does not equal escaping them. Stay cool. Often it will be impossible to teleport out or blast them with lightning or fire, but you will be able to walk away, and teleport to safety the instant you are able to. If walking out isn't possible, try use non-targetting spells. Chain and phasing seem to be quicker than Fireball or Teleport, though of course Chain usage determined by the monsters that are surrounding you. Another decent escape trick if you can't get off a spell is to wait a second or two, (drinking blue madly in the meantime) and then try to cast it again. The monsters hitting you often get a rhythm of sorts going, and if you pause an instant and then try again, you might get off of their pattern and sneak in one spell. Or of course if you are playing with another player this is a very good time to try out those F9-F12 keys. The best way to avoid stun lock? Don't get surrounded, of course. At least not by melee monsters with fast attacks. Knights don't strike as quickly as these lesser monsters, but they generally have a better to/hit, and they tend to hit harder and have more hp's to take more damage before they stop hitting. You are a mage, getting closer than 2 or 3 squares from anything that can swing at you is never a good idea. One change made in the recently released Diable v1.07 patch is that Harmony now works. It was bugged in all previous versions of Diablo, (and v1.00 Hellfire) and did nothing for you, but If
there are two or three monster types on the level with mixed resistances,
you have some options. If you have a lightning bait/fireproof monster
(lightning or fire bait = no resistance to that spell) and a lightning
resistant/fire bait monster, go with mostly lightning, as it will kill one
off and wound or kill the other. Though fireballs would be nearly as
effective for the lightning bait/fire resistant monster, they'd have no
effect on the lightning bait type. Of course if you come upon a pack of
the fire bait type, switch instantly and incinerate them. And of course
work on killing the more deadly monsters first. If you have Balrog's and
Blood Knights, better you fireball the Knights first, shooting right
through the fireproof Balrogs as they mince around breathing their
worthless Inferno's at you. Of course if there are 9 Balrog's in your face
and 1 knight off to the side, a few chains are in
order. Walk to encounter new monsters, but once sighted teleport to get into position if it's more than a square or two away. Walking backwards to get a little space between you and a pack of advancing melee monsters is very inefficient. Teleport half a screen away, and let the fireballs or chain lightning rip. Another problem with walking is the tile-based floor sets in Diablo. Your mage must be all the way to the next tile before he can cast any spells. If you have a flock of fireballs or steel lords closing in on you, teleport rather than trying to take one step and then teleporting. It doesn't take very long to move from one tile square to the next, but it can seem a very long time if you are clicking frantically trying to teleport or start squeezing off the fireballs. A mage casts spells at the rate of one per every .4 seconds. (Not quite fast enough to stun lock, as that requires .35 or faster, though some things are stunned by spells, so you can lock them up if you do enough damage.) You can cast 2-3 spells in the time it would take you to walk from one square to the next. However, walking is still used a lot of the time. When exploring a section of the dungeon, unless you know for sure that the monsters on that level aren't very tough, it's never a good idea to just pop over unknown walls. This is by far the fastest way, and if you have an easy level by all means go ahead, but it will take you a lot longer to restart in town and go down to retrieve your equipment than it would have to exercise a little more caution. Advance by walking a square or two at a time, again depending on the monsters you are dealing with. On most chain levels it's best to walk into the middle of the room, then walk or teleport back to your best firing position, leading in a horde of beasties and cooking them as they follow you around the corner. This can be good for fireballs also, either to avoid getting swarmed or just to increase your efficiency. The nice thing about having decent ac (ie not playing artillery mage style) is that you don't need to be as cautious all the time, and if you have cave vipers or some lesser melee beast hitting you now and then, it's not a big deal. Positioning is also important. Very important for chain lightning, but also for fireballs. Better you retreat with a teleport than get hit. For example on lvl 16, you will take well over 100 damage from a hit by a Blood Knight. For the same or less mana expenditure, and in about the same amount of time, you could have teleported back, stoned it, and hit it with 4 fireballs. Get the idea? Telekill isn't just for warriors. Do not walk, do not stay in the same place. This is less important against melee monsters than advocates or witches, but pop all over the place every chance you get. Teleport, fire off few fireballs (with good aim, of course) or stones from one spot, then teleport elsewhere quickly. The monsters are never surprised. You teleport in over a wall behind them, they don't stop to think or try to figure where you came from. They instantly begin shooting at you. But as you can shoot a couple of fireballs and teleport before their slower projectiles reach you, it's a good idea to do so. Telekilling also works well the warrior way, popping in close to the various types of mages or witches so they will begin to flash you or run/teleport themselves. Either choice is better than absorbing fireballs or bloodstars. On stoning, it costs you 40 mana, and again, anything that hits you in hell/hell will do a lot more than that. (With the occasional exception of blood stars and some of the weaker lightning based attacks. Or if you have a bunch of osmosis or deflection items and a Scavenger's Carapace, but I'm not getting into every last little wrinkle here.=) Especially melee monsters, if they are coming too quickly for you to kill them off (as frequently happens with azure drakes and steel lords) it's a good idea to stone the ones in the front of the pack to give yourself a few more seconds. Stone curse is also highly recommended for Advocates on lvl 16. A mage can stone very quickly, and once you hit them, monsters stay stoned for quite a while. Up to 16 seconds, depending on the level of your stone curse. Plenty of time for you to reload your belt, or escape, or move in and crush them. Stone also works over walls, sight unseen. (Though this could be considered a bit cheesy, in the bountiful apoc staff way.) Send in your golem and see where the advocates start flashing, and stone them before they can teleport away from the golem. You'll know you got them if the flashing stops. If you know what monsters are in an area, feel free to stone about 10 times, and then teleport in and pick them off. Stone does not cost you any mana if you miss, and you can't stone something that was already stoned, so target an area, click it a few times, and then feel pretty secure about teleporting in. Of course if you have infravision working that's even more accurate, though it is even cheesier. Though cheesy is in the eye of the beholder. Also remember that your spells have no max range. Sounding out a long hallway (there are a lot of them in hell) with a few fireballs or elementals or a flame wave is never a bad idea. Charged bolt is also very useful for getting lightning bait monsters to come out and play. Guardian can be used for this also, but as it's very mana-expensive (30 per guardian) use it sparingly. (The duration of a Guardian is based on the level of your Guardian spell. The damage they do is based on the level of your Firebolt spell. Obviously raising both of those is essential for maximum effectiveness.) Also, Guardians are stupid and don't know from fire immune/resistant. You can easily cast 3 guardians into an unexplored room, and all 3 would shoot 20 shots at the one fireproof monster in the room, doing you absolutely no good unless they happened to hit a fire bait monster behind the fireproof one they were shooting at. Very seldom can you not do more good with 3 fireballs than 1 guardian, if you play properly. Chain can work too, but it won't target monsters more than 15 or so spaces away, (the targetting range increases with your spell level, along with the number of things that can be targetted) so it's less useful for getting them to come and play. It can also be too good at attracting attention, often shooting off in directions you had no intention for it to go, and bringing in hordes of beasties you are not in a good position to battle. Be very careful using chain while you are still near the entrance stairs, as 20 Balrog's mincing all over the place can be a very bad thing when you have nowhere yet cleared to retreat to. Of course always cast a town portal at least a screen away from the stairs 2nd thing on a new level. 1st thing is always hitting up the mana shield. Remember about chain always, it knows no walls. A quick last note on
golems, since I only briefly mentioned them before. They are controllable,
going in the direction you are facing, and they are pretty resistant to
monster spells, or at least flash. They don't fare so well being on the
wrong end of your spells though, so aim carefully, and of course you can't
stone them, so give them cover of stone, especially against knights, and
stone the advocate they are whacking on, so it can't teleport away, and
also so it will stop flashing your golem. Flash does do some damage to
your golem, just not very much. Be careful to change your hotkey off of
golem as soon as you cast one, as it is easy to forget and try to shoot a
fireball and cast another golem, and you just blew 180 mana. (Sixty for
the one you just killed, 60 for trying to cast another when the first was
still out and killing it, and 60 for the one you now have to recast to
replace the 1st.)
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