What do you use to MF / Rune hunting

Hi all

I was wondering, what class (spec), gear and farming route people use, and have best success with when farming.

I myself use a Hammerdin.
Weapon (Main): Hoto
Weapon (Switch): Cta
Shield (Main): Spirit (Sacred Targe)
Shield (Switch): Spirit
Armor: Enigma
Head: Shako (Ist)
Amulet: Mara
Ring (1): Soj/Perf Nagel
Ring (2): Soj/Perf Nagel (Replaced with 10fcr ring when i get Arach)
Belt: Verdungos/Goldwrap (Need Arach, just havnt found one -.- )
Boots: War Travelers
Gloves: Trang-Oul's

Inventory:
Anni
Random +MF sc
Random skillers
Random life and/& resist charms

Merc (Nm Act 2 def)
Weapon: Eth CV Insight
Armor: Eth AP fortitude
Head: Andi
Amulet: Highlords
Ring: Carrion Wind
Belt: Nosferatu's Coil
Boots: Gore Riders
Gloves: Dracul's Grasp

Farming route:
Act 1
- Griswold (Tristram)
- Countess (Forgotten Tower)
- Pit lvl 1+2 (Tamoe Highland)

Act 2
- Ancient Tunnels (Lost City)
- Summoner (Arcane Sactuary)

Act 3
- Chests (Lower Kurast)
- Council (Travincal)
- Mephisto (Durance of Hate)

Act 4
- Chaos Sanctuary + Diablo

Act 5
- Nihlathak (Halls of Vaught)
- Throne of Destruction + Baal

Pit and AT seems a bit slow on my hammerdin, so i often skip these.
My best drop was TM in Throne of Destruction
Best rune is still only Lo's from Countess, Travi and Chaos Sanctuary

Curious to read what others do.

Advice to my setup and route would also be much appreciated

 

Hammer is not the fastest char. My typical route with it would be: Travincal > Chaos+Diablo > Nihtalak > Worlds stone 2-3 > Throne + Baal. So pretty much the same. I just exclude the lower ones because more monsters in act1-2 have lower chance of dropping certain items - runes.

 

It depends on what exactly it is that you want to find. If its runes you are after, I would suggest you to gear up another hero. Hammerdin in this patch is a mediocre farmer, good in some areas of the game, but in my eyes he has an overall bad reputation. I am farming with a Necromancer both on SC and HC , it depends on how lazy I am, my farming route would be Raven - Crypt, Mausoleum, Pit 1,2, Countess - AT, Summoner - Trav, Mepho's Chamber - Izual ( Sometimes the whole zone ) , Hephasto, Diablo - Nihlathak , WSK2/3 , Baal. As North already told you, you would be better of skipping act one and two, because it will significantly reduce your effectiveness. Cow runs are a good source of income of gems, charms , runes and some bases, however H'din doesn't excel there at all. I still haven't spent that much time on this patch to have conclusive opinions on this thread, but I would never farm with Hammerdin on this patch. The best farmers here, in my opinion, feel free to disagree, are CE Necromancers, Javazons, Light/Nova sorceress, Trapsins. You can farm with any hero or build in the game, but in my opinion those are the fastest ones. And whichever one you choose to farm with, should farm zones that the hero excels at. For example I use my Necro to farm cows, because I can do Griswold -> Get the leg -> Without collecting gems clear the whole cow level, whole run lasts between 2 minutes and 5 seconds ( Fastest run ) to 2.30-2.40. I've been told by a couple of people that Javazons are more effective on cows with proper gear, however at this speed CE Necro's are going to be a whole lot cheaper to build. The only item that is a necessity is the Enigma. Hoto, Infinity will improve your damage, but are not a requirement in the beginning. When I'm using this hero I feel confident to farm all the zones I mentioned earlier , because it excels at places that have huge numbers of minions. Of all the builds listed above, the Necromancer is by far the cheapest of them all, and for the effort put in building it, I believe it is the most effective one. The drawback to it is that it is only good on 1-3p difficulty ( It can be modified to do better on higher difficulties, but will lose effectiveness in 1p games ). You can farm pretty well with empty inventory, mine now has some PNB skillers, but I started with zero, was even using a torch for another class, until I found one. At high end gear he might get "outplayed" by some of the builds mentioned above, however, as I mentioned a few times already - building the other heroes is a lot more expensive than the necromancer, I won't go into details on this one, but they do need skillers to be effective, especially lightning sorceress and hers are the most expensive in the game.

Since there has been a lot of talking here already, I will write you a mini-guide I use for both my Necro's , the one I play on softcore has better run times, but is not suitable for hardcore.
Softcore build : Enigma , Hoto, Shako, Spirit, Spiderweb, Tran Oul Gloves , Waterwalks ( I think ) , Mara, 1 ring with cast and BK. My hireling has a few different builds , I'm still experimenting with it, but: Guillames Face, Highlord's Wrath, Carrion Wind, Treachery on eth bugged armor, Infinity on eth CV, Steelrend gloves , Gore Riders. Has 90% ias and 100CB, in terms of boss killing it can be quicker ( Kills Baal on 1p in 10-15 seconds ) , but overall efficiency reduces. Inventory is Torch/Anix , about 10-12 PNB skillers I purchased to check if it would improve efficiency. Overall dmg improves, but you have less space in your inventory and most of the drop you pick up has to be stored in Cube directly, which requires time itself. Cow run time improved if the run didn't have much things to loot, but if you loot some stuff it will remain the same as it was without the skillers.


Hardcore build : Beast, Homunculus, Shako, Mara , 1x ring with cast, 1x BK , Trang Oul gloves, Spiderweb sash, Waterwalks, Enigma. On hardcore hireling has Guillame's Face, Infinty on eth Thresher, Fortitude, Laying of hands, Crafted belt with 10OW, Raven Frost, Highlord's wrath. This hireling is better at boss killing ( 90CB , 54 ias is required to hit the IAS frame ) , but overall efficiency is not quite like the other one, he melts bodies sometimes, due to Raven Frost and Fortitude. This build is meant for hardcore players mostly and does not have as fast clearing times as the other one ( All skills is less, FCR is less , which matters a lot ). Inventory is Torch, Anix, Life/res small charms.

And you need an Insight for your Iron Golem.

Those two are the builds I use for Necro runners, I stuck to this hero, because it is a lot more entertaining to play ( I'm talking about how I feel about it, not how you would feel about it ) , uses a little more spells ( No TP - Nova , repeat , for example, from which I got bored almost instantly ), do not require a huge investment, as you can see to test out.

 

Thanks for all the answers so far.

I think I will try a CE Necro

What skills do you take apart from CE, and what to max?
And how do you equip a weapon on your golem?

 

There is only one viable option for my softcore build, and it is an Insight, because the way it is built, it will not work as good with other weapon choices. There are a few skill builds that you can choose from, depending on what you want it to do. My necromancer is used for cow runs primarily, so I focused on the second spell that can improve your dmg output - which is Damage Amplify curse.
On Summoning spells, you need:
Raise Skeleton - 1pt
Skeleton Mastery - 5 to 6 points
Clay Golem, Iron Golem, Blood Golem - 1 pt.
Summon Resist - Up to 70% resists with gear and BO on
Golem Mastery - Max
Curses :
Damage Amplify - You will dump the rest of your points here.
PNB:
Bone Armor - 1pt
Teeth - 1pt
CE - Max
Bone Spear - 1pt
Bone Wall - Max
Bone Prison - 1pt , you can add more points to it , if you want to have a better absorb on your Bone Armor.
Since I have 60% block with Spirit, I decided to buff up my Armor, it currently absorbs almost 700 damage.
The Reason I didn't put more points on Skeleton Mastery and Raise skeletons, is because my skeletons almost never die, this build relies more on your mercenary to do the damage, and skeletons to soak a part of the incoming damage, in other words they are meat shields. Yes, they can be meat shields, even though they don't have any meat on them.
This build is gonna get you 125 FCR ( You need your spirit on 35 FCR ).
Dumping points on Dmg Amp does not increase it's dmg, but the radius. After you cast it on a minion, your CE will do the exact same damage whether you have 1 point in it or 20, but the increased radius helps a lot in cows. You can use less points and re-cast it a few times, but its not as effective. If you do not wish to have Bone Armor absorb so much damage you can dump your points elsewhere, for example you can get the Lower res curse, if you want, tho you will not use it very often. If you do not want the extra armor, it would be a good idea to get more levels on SM/RS, I found that Armor works best for me.
The way you farm is : Find a group of monsters, cast Amplify Damage on all of them, let your hireling kill the first one - then cast one or two CE's, it should take care of the whole group.
In cows, the way you farm - There are some people that still don't know this, but casting Bone Wall will draw Aggro from almost all of the minions visible on the map. When you cast it, everything you see as hostile on the minimap will start moving towards you. One thing you should keep in mind is this : When you cast it, minions will use direct pathing to get to you. Direct pathing means they will start walking towards you directly, ignoring obstacles, and if they encounter one - they will stop at it. Sometimes if you use it incorrectly , cows will get stuck on the edges of the wall. So keep in mind, when casting it, that they can get to you in a direct way ( Nothing gets in their way ), otherwise some of the cows will not come, and you will have to go for them. And if you decided that one cow left behind is no big deal, it might have been just the one holding your Zod rune x). So, After you cast Bone Wall somewhere near you, wait for them to approach, cast your curse on all of them and they will drop with a single CE. This is why I decided to dump more points in the curse, because if they don't get it - you have to cast your CE 2 or 3 times before they die. Having it at larger radius guarantees that you will get the best of it. You will need a couple of games to get the hang of it and will become considerably faster probably at around your 10th run. You use Insight on your Golem. It would be a good idea to always keep an insight base ready on your stash, because he dies sometimes, and farming without the little guy is a pain. He gets killed very slowly by normal attacks, Diablo holds the only threat for him, I don't know what it is with Life Tap on this server, but do not attempt to kill Diablo if Life Tap was casted on you, because he dies almost instantly to Diablo, and some of the minions in the area. This is it, have fun, I hope you enjoy it. You can use your hoto and enigma from your hammerdin and see if you like it, infinity improves your damage quite a bit, because it lowers resistances and armor , and Corpse Explosion is 50% fire 50% physical, but for cows it will be viable even if you don't have Infinity. But if you don't have one, do 50-60 runs with it to see if you like it, don't take my word for it that this is a good hero to farm with, make your own decisions. You would need a spiderweb sash tho, because it will complete your fcr requirement. You can use Magefists instead of Tran Ouls if you dont have them, they boost your CE by 1pt, but I find 2 points on Amplify Damage more valuable.
Stats are :
Str - Enough for gear
Dex - You can opt to have none, if you want, I have enough for 60% block. It takes quite a bit, I think my base dexterity is about 200
Vitality - Rest

 

good choice mate ) everybody does i think

 

I was sure my current unemployment had something to do with my bad drop's , thank you for confirming.

 

Well.. with my hammerdin I do Countess for runes and key, Pit, Summoner, Travincal, Meph, Chaos, Shenk and Eldritch, Nih, Worldstone and Baal. I found good things. Maybe, and if I have time, the cows's level too.
Now I have a MF sorc and do the same with AT in Act II but no Shenk and no Eldritch.