[Succulent] Maerd (Paladin) [Level 1 | A1 N | SC_XP_PAL_P_EX]

Introduction​

Hello everyone! For the past 6 months, I mainly played 1.13d, and my Paladin Zealot takes a big share of that time. I could go with any other class for Succulent, there are 6 more classes I haven't even explored in og D2 yet! But... well... the idea of playing pally again wins me over.

I present to you... Maerd.

Build (Skills)​

Maerd's build is called "Shockadin" and the skills used are as follows:

• Zeal as the main attack
• Fanaticism as the main support skill
• Holy shock as a secondary support skill against PI enemies
• And, of course, holy shield

I'm also thinking whether to use conviction. I heard a lot about this skill, but never used it.

Goals​

Here are my short term goals:

1. Maerd doesn't die in Normal
2. Get the first unique
3. Get the "Slayer" prefix (rhymes with the name well)

The list might change in the future.

Last but not least, my long term goal is to share on Maerd's progress in this thread and my thoughts and assumptions about Succulent and how the rest of 1.09b works. There aren't a lot of materials on the internet on how old versions work and feel (plus add Succulent to that. there aren't many people playing it), so the best way is to play D2 Succulent by trial and error. As of this writing, 1.13d is my most played D2 patch. There is definitely a lot for me to explore.

Whenever I bring up my assumptions regarding D2's game mechanics, corrections and discussions are appreciated!

Peace

@kereby0 Wow, this is nice! You are speaking my language with this thread. Succulent is one of my favorites

Your build sounds nice. I don't think I'd change a thing. Holy Shock as a way to deal with physical immunes sounds interesting. Let us know how that goes. And I'm sure you already know to use Charge for extra mobility and to quickly get to mob packs.

GL HF!

You are about to have one hell of an experience. You might never leave Succulent, be careful.

the items are different and skills no synergy. some like it some dont as some skills are weaker but just need to skip or get creative.

items are easier to find then later patches no need to baal endlessly. some odd stuff here and there but you have fun.

love the zealer.

thrasher_565 said:

some like it some dont as some skills are weaker but just need to skip or get creative.

Click to expand...

I feel like that's one of the good points about having no synergies. This lets you play around with your build more while having less opportunity cost. I also feel like only after synergies happened, maximising zeal and sacrifice became prominent, let alone other skills and making some other cool builds useless...

...

So far I'm going through the first act and I plan to upload videos on a separate hosting if anyone wants to watch the progress (besides my summaries) I will upload them one per act. There will be no audio though, as I haven't figured out how to be able to separate the audio of D2 and audio of my other apps in OBS on Linux.

Peace!

Yea the OBS thing is unfortunate. I basically just watch stuff on my phone with a stand while I play and let OBS record desktop audio. It works for me but not ideal. For example this video of my recent session is recorded on Linux w/ OBS:
Make sure to disable border in ddraw.ini so that you don't have that show up in the video.

Heya!

Here's an update on Maerd.

While being busy with irl stuff, I got him to level 12. It's mostly prerequisites that I'm gonna use until I get to the sweet stuff. I got zeal already though

I definitely feel like I got better at playing paladin early game. I have noticed how many support skills I haven't used before.... And the gear setup is quite fun. I have to 2 weapon sets: one for undeads, the other for demons.

Also I got two rares, one of them is a targe shield! It's pretty epic. Its resist+ is even better than on my magic one

Peace!

Nice! The amp dmg on the 2 hand axe will be helpful.