I'm playing this game yet again

[T-hawk]

Yeah, shields have weight ratings that subtract from movement speed, same as armors. Tower Shield is the only heavy one with -10 but a few have -5.

Much of the shopping overlaps, looking for several different kinds of items at the same time. Javelin and martial gloves, good belts and boots, and the kris all came from Gheed or Charsi by shopping quickly via the cow portal in nightmare difficulty. So I can't really say per item, but I probably did somewhere between 4-6 hours for all of them total. The claw was 1-2 hours at Anya, while also browsing gloves there too. A +3 Fireball staff from Drognan is easy because Fireball is in the most common category of skill tiers at his item level. +3 Bone Spear (White) or Enchant (Leaf) bases take longer.

I often work out the actual probability of the item I'm looking for and the expected time to find one, and I'm usually willing to chase anything that can be expected to come in an hour or less. Example: Bone Spear is on 1/22 wands at Drognan's item level. +3 is 10%, so 1/220. He averages 2 nonmagical Bone Wands per visit (can't use his other wands because they don't get 2 sockets.) At 20 seconds per visit (reroll the map until the town exit is next to him), that's 3 visits per minute, so 6 wand views per minute, and 220/6 comes to 36 minutes. For the gloves, I could expect *some* good combo in an hour (either +3/20%, +3/10%, +2/20%, for either javazon or assassin martial.) Once I had +3/10% for both, the chance of an improvement was small enough that I gave up on it.

I'm always doing something else while shopping, watching tv or eating or actually very often on a work meeting phone call, so I don't mind putting that time into it.

[KingOfPain]

I'm always doing something else while shopping, watching tv or eating or actually very often on a work meeting phone call, so I don't mind putting that time into it.

I can totally relate, though I do more MFing than gambling and shopping. MFing, for me, is more or less muscle memory and frees the mind to wander. I rarely gamble or shop items, except for a Leaf, White base, and +3 War Cry throws x2 for Barbs, and even then, only when a new season drops, which I usually stop following once a version feels stable enough. I can't be bothered remembering all the math. 

Oh right - I used to shop for throwing weapons in Act 5 before all those fancy unique ones were added to the game. I especially looked for Hibernal, Condensing, and Shocking winged-class axes or knives. The elemental damage on those could really stack up - a fast thrower could hit ~2k average DPS just from the elemental rolls alone
 



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[Boro]

Reading this in full made me think about the differences with Resurrected, (A fresh coat of paint on modded diablo 2) since I've been playing that lately.

As for how modded, much of it has been backported to 1.14 LoD, and the irony of the mod being called Desecrator is not lost on me.
https://github.com/Karyoplasma/LoD-Desecrator

As for the differences, I'll go mostly by character:

Most notable is the change from global to local cooldowns, meaning you can, for example, squeeze in two frozen orbs between two blizzards.

Stardiamond, Javazon: Plague Javelin has shorter cooldown and IIRC shorter duration with more damage (will check later), Lightning Fury is no longer a synergy to other lightning skills, making hybrids like this weaker during the time it matters (pushing through hell), in exchange for a stronger javazon once it doesn't (when it settles to farming a specific zone). This is a common theme among the balance changes. Of course, Stardiamond gets to benefit since she doesn't use Fury, so her synergies are stronger in Resurrected. She would also benefit from increased stack sizes, and cast Valkyrie more often.

Starspell, Enchant sorcie: More or less the same.

Stardart, Throw barb: The most overhauled with candy, so much that he is the reason I'm writing this comparison in the first place. First, throwing mastery: It replenishes quantity on a critical hit, and at slvl 21 it gives 57% chance not to consume quantity, and 47% pierce (over 1.5 razortails). Much of this is frontloaded. The replenish on crit works with other sources, such as deadly strike and the amazon oskill from the peace runeword. Minor improvement is that sword mastery works with daggers in resurrected (under the new name blade mastery), so throwing knives can be melee'd with. Berserk is also stronger thanks to getting synergized by battle orders and howl. Double throw also gets 16% damage bonus and +8% per level, same as pumping double swing. If this wasn't enough, the thrower also benefits from 50% increased stack sizes.

Starshock, Holy Shock/Freeze paladin: slightly more pulse damage.

Starsmoke, hybrid Fire/Wind druid: Biggest beneficiary of global cooldowns becoming per-skill ones, letting you mix in firestorms between fissures, fissures between volcanoes (if you had any), and hurricane has no more cooldown. Also benefits from easy spirit runeword.

Starscourge, bonemancer: Slightly more synergy received by bone spear (8% instead of 7%) and spirit (8% instead of 6%). Probably benefits most from Insight.

Starlynx, Tiger/Tail assassin: Possibly the most overhauled after the barbarian, with a finishing move removing only one charge from each stack. Minor gains are more attack rating on charge up skills, and more damage on dragon tail.

[T-hawk]

Hey, nice writeup. I've been somewhat aware of most of the Resurrected changes - the Amazon Basin wiki pages are what I go to most often, and most of those have been updated with D2R stuff. I'm still not really interested in upgrading or back-modding, the old game is fine for me. As I've said, I like the game better without Spirit and Insight and Obedience and Grief, since those are all the one right boring choice every time. And some of the new stuff is just silly, like the sunder charms and Mosaic of course.

[Boro]

This is not an advertisement, no, but the name is just too funny for me to ignore. You've made your point back in I think the first star team, and reading this team's result, the variety of merc weapons alone speaks for itself. Hell, I've been finding nice orbs lately, like one with 80 mana, 30 life, 20% FCR, +2 sorc skills, +1 Energy Shield staffmod, 33% cold resist, and it falls far behind the weakest spirit sword usable many levels prior!

There is one exception though: your choice, or lack of, of mercs. Act II Defiance, Sometimes might, maybe-aybe holy freeze in previous star teams. This looks one right choice boring to me. (Correction. Some act V barbs in the mix)

Sunders and mosaic I have a few choice words about, but I want to finish some of my projects (some are going to get even more silly, you see, have to entertain the Sirian I found in the wilds) before writing them out, and I happen to be a vex rune, annihilus, and sorcie torch short. I DID make two mosaic claws (+3 phoenix, +2 phoenix/+2 warrior greater claws and talons respectively) for the sake of the latter two.

I would love to visit the basin wiki one day without needing a proxy or vpn.