Ravens

[LavCat]

Could anyone explain to me what GF is trying to say in the new raven introduction on Arreat Summit?

http://www.battle.net/diablo2exp/skills/dr...ing.shtml#raven

I'm not even sure I can correctly parse his sentence. Perhaps a period is missing between "level Spirit"? If so what he may be saying that the chance to blind goes up with the level of the raven skill, plus the character's level, minus two -- if this is the "level" that feeds into the chance to blind formula.

As a crude test I took my level 73 druid into nightmare and saw that the ravens (one point plus adders) blinded almost everything. In hell act five they blind almost nothing. Of course this could have to do with chance to hit as much as chance to blind.

I would love to know more about the mechanics of how 1.10 ravens work, but I could not turn up much information either here or on the basin. If a coven of high level ravens can shut down non-boss ranged attackers, I for one would consider putting in the points.

I'm further guessing that the duration of the blindness would also increase with raven level. Does anyone have information they could share?

[ShadowHM]

As a crude test I took my level 73 druid into nightmare and saw that the ravens (one point plus adders) blinded almost everything.  In hell act five they blind almost nothing.  Of course this could have to do with chance to hit as much as chance to blind.

Hi Lavcat

(Against all advice) I have been using my Fire Druid for some Hell MF runs of late, so he travels with a mere plus one to all skills from a Tarnhelm and thus has only 3 Ravens to deploy. But they do indeed blind targets for him at times, including at least some of the bow using skeletons who can spawn at the base of the stairs by Shenk.

I would love to know more about the mechanics of how 1.10 ravens work, but I could not turn up much information either here or on the basin.  If a coven of high level ravens can shut down non-boss ranged attackers, I for one would consider putting in the points.

Although it is too late for that character, I too would like to know more. VolcanoShadow was glad to have them for his questing days, but knowing more of the mechanics and AI of them would help figure out optimal point deployment for the next Druid I make. B)

[Pansesus]

I think raven's level is equal to "Raven Skill" level + Char lvl - 2 . Wolves and bears, on the other hand, gain 5% to all resistances per level, and this is capped at 85%, their level = skill level.

There is a hidden AR bonus per level in raven , AFAIK, which means they could not always hit targets. I fear the "chance to blind" of raven does have something to do with ravens' AR, and this might explain why they can't "blind" monsters frequently in hell difficulty, as those guys' armor class is much higher, so long as you don't put enough points on the skill, what a pity :ph34r:

Ravens' HP is set to zero, indicating that you are not able to kill them directly, but some "passive" attack can finish them instantly. These include, AFAIK:

Cold attack from shiver armor

Damage from thorn aura or spirit of barbs, which is only effective to aura's owner, this means other party members can't "kill" ravens.

One thing I don't quite understand is, if minions' chance to hit calculation uses the same formula as char or hireling's, how does it apply on Necro's skeletens? I can't find anything about how to calculate skellie's level, and when I was playing in hell difficulty, my minions worked very well though their real AR is extemely low, it seems that skeletons' level might influence the result greatly. :huh:

[Obi2Kenobi]

What I am wondering more about is whether or not their resists are effected by the Nightmare/Hell penalty.

[Pansesus]

What I am wondering more about is whether or not their resists are effected by the Nightmare/Hell penalty.

AFAIK, only players and hirelings are affected by the difficulty penalty

[Obi2Kenobi]

Well, then... Say hello to my 95% resist everything but magic and physical Grizzley? Might actually be able to tank DXPP™ for a bit...

[Taem]

In theory, ravens do an insane amout of damage over time, like poison.

For example at level 20:

# Ravens - Hits per Raven - Damage per hit = TOTAL DAMAGE
5 - 31 - 22 (average) = 3,410 damage

Unfortunatly, it never seems to work out well with the brainless ravens.

I would also like to mention that you CAN enchant each and evey raven, thus if you traveled with an Enchantress, creatures would just die left and right.

[adeyke]

I don't buy the damage = number of ravens * hits per raven * damage per hit argument. While there are three numbers and while these do produce that number when multiplied together, the resulting product is meaningless.

It's still just 22 damage per hit, or 110 if all five of them hit.

Most summons don't die after a specific number of hits. So if you had a summoned creature that never died, even if it did just 1 damage per hit, it could do eventually do millions of damage; you just have to be patient.

And I think that raven wouldn't be overpowered even the ravens could get an infinite number of hits. The limit means you have to recast it a lot, so it's a problem with convenience, not with power.

Most item poison sources don't do any significant damage themselves (unless you have a lot of them). Poison is still powerful, though, because it stops regeneration. That isn't the case for ravens.

I tried enchanting ravens, but it wouldn't work. I can't target the ravens at all, either with enchant or with unsummon. While this would make them powerful, it doesn't look like it's working.

The blinding effect is nice, but I don't see ravens ever doing a significant amount of damage in hell.

[ryan4nayr]

A Lurker Lounge guy once explained this skill back in the days of 1.10s, but I think it's buried by now.

Basically, it's the mod "Hit Blinds Target" x5, so it depends largely on clvl, mlvl, & (if memory serves me right) slightly on slvl.

I don't know why Blizz even bothers with dmg for these summons, quite pointless. But if it was all about the blinding, it'd be just another Dim Vision. So we have this wonderful mish-mash of a skill that just can't do anything.

Though I like having it around for the random blinding it does (must be pretty low probability with hell mlvl's, slvl 1+7, & clvl 74). Just in case...

edit: proofread

[Taem]

In theory, ravens do an insane amout of damage over time, like poison.

For example at level 20:

# Ravens - Hits per Raven - Damage per hit = TOTAL DAMAGE
5 - 31 - 22 (average) = 3,410 damage

Unfortunatly, it never seems to work out well with the brainless ravens.

I would also like to mention that you CAN enchant each and evey raven, thus if you traveled with an Enchantress, creatures would just die left and right.

Well the damage I listed is "possible", but not plausable. Like I said, the ravens are very limited with their AI and often miss their targets.

RE Enchant: I don't know if I'm going mad or enchant crazy or what but I would bet my entire account I enchanted both mine and a friends ravens in a couple baal run games, but I can't do it now! I must of been something else like his oak or something. I dunno because I was so sure it was his ravens. Strange :blink: .

[LavCat]

Tonight I dumped 20 skill points into ravens. The ravens can now blind almost everything in act 5 hell, even with my now 77 level druid. They seem to distract monsters also. I cannot say I notice that they do much damage. Quill rats are still a pain.

The ravens also seem to repeatedly blind the poor creatures on whom my merc is trying to cast AD.

[LavCat]

The blinding effect is nice, but I don't see ravens ever doing a significant amount of damage in hell.

Adeyke, can you say anything about the chance to hit, chance to blind, and the blind duration? Did I guess right about what GF was trying to say? And is the normal blind formula used? And if so what's the bonus?

Nothing seems to be working out quite right for my druid.

[Ruvanal]

The mlvl of the ravens for figuring the to-hit chances is
mlvl=caster level -2 +skill level
Their AR should be if I am reading it right 100+(slvl-1)*15.

Most of their chance to hit will end up coming from their mlvl, so if it is less than the monsters they are attacking do not expect many hits.

They use the same modifier for blinding targets as is used on items. The base setting for this is -1 though.

From AS:

Hit Blinds Target
Decreases radius of awareness similar to the Necromancer Curse: Dim Vision.
The formula is as follows:

Chance = 50 + (Attacker Level + (Bonus * 4) - Defender Level) * 5
Where the bonus is how many items of hit blinds target the character has -1. Some items have something like hit blinds target +2, which means they count as 2 items for the bonus calculation. Missile Attacks are at 1/3 this chance.

The level of Dim Vision that's cast on the target is equal to (Chance - Roll)/5+1, max of 20.

So if you do not get their level up some, they will have problems contending with the bonus=-1 and monsters that have levels greater then theirs. The duration of the Dim Vision will depend on the level of effect tha tactually ends up being used.

[Jarulf]

I think that the default level of summoned monsters is to equal that of the character summoning it. This can then be modified or changed for specific monsters per the skill. Skletons should thus (if they don't have their own level formula) equal that of the Necromancer summoning them.

And yes, summoned monsters do not get any difficulty penalty for their resistances as far as I recall. Since they are monsters, they can even be immune (from the resistance calcs, they might still have some cap set on their resistance upon creation but skills, auras and such could up it I would say).

[Pansesus]

Druid's spirits are great samples to explain that. They are immune to poison in NM and hell, and DR% is 100% in nightmare.

Another interesting thing is to creat a "elemental immue" iron golem using items with high resistant bonus. Integrating with summon resist, they are invulnerable to elemental attack.

[arrunique]

invulnerable to elemental attack

Yeah but iron golems just get liquid metal beaten out of them.

[LavCat]

Druid's spirits are great samples to explain that. They are immune to poison in NM and hell, and DR% is 100% in nightmare..

To change the subject only slightly, I noticed the other night that when I went to enchant my valkyrie, her name bar showed that she was immune to cold. I thought I had read that a valkyrie's resists were capped at 85%? I wonder what might have been affecting her?

[adeyke]

Valkyries' base resistance is capped at 85, but they get random equipment and this can increase their resistance, even to immunity. I tested this by modding all prefixes and suffixes to give a lot of resist all. The valk would then show as quadruple-immune.