Lvl 15 LLD Kicker Guide


Kickers are cheap and easy to make, and the gear is easy to find, as well. You don’t have to rely on max damage jewels like a lot of LLD builds (since kicks aren’t affected by them), and this one is built mostly on low level uniques that people will part with without much coercion. I do not list many other options, since this stuff is easy to get, and in LLD, there isn’t much room for adjustment. It’s all about the min/maxing.

This build is NOT glitch rushed, but in the end, it doesn’t matter too much. You rely more on equipment than skills, and the level restrictions are what hold you back, not stats. Getting rushed to act 5 for the Anya quest will get you as far as you need to. By the time you need to save Anya, you can do it solo in a private game, since at lvl 15, you’ll be getting zero xp from the monsters but you can beat them with ease.

--Skills--
15 Dragon Talon*
Rest in Burst of Speed
1 pt. in Claw mastery (prereq.)
*note – You will not be able to actually max this. You are limited by the fact that you can only put 1 pt. per level in the skill, so 15 is the highest you can get here.


--Stats—

I recommend not spending any start points until you get all of your final gear, so you don’t waste a single point.

Str. – 70 after equipment. You will need 70 str. to use Greaves, the highest-damage boots for your level.

Dex – Max blocking. Be careful, since you’ll get a lot from your equipment.

Vit. All the rest.

Energy – None.

--Equipment—
Rings/Ammy – Angelics. Nothing else is worth your time. +10 dex, and you NEED the AR from this stuff. When you wear the armor you get a +1 skill (see below about the armor).

Helmet – Optimal: Deadly circlet of the tiger: 30% ed +30 life, with 2 sockets from Larzuk, both filled with 20% Enhanced Damage jewels. I don't have one, so I use...
-Biggin’s Bonnet, socketed with a 20% Enhanced Damage Jewel, for a total of 50% Enhanced Damage. Excellent helm. The life and AR are just a nice bonus.

Belt – Death’s Belt - This is your source of Cannot Be Frozen. Keep Sigon’s belt around for fire-based casters.

Shield – Umbral Disk, socketed with a 20% Enhanced Damage jewel. This makes max blocking easy, and +10 to dex adds 5 points of damage to your kicks. Also adds some life.

Gloves – Bloodfists. Life, IAS, FHR, what else do you need? You can use Death’s if you want, but I wanted more FHR.

Armor – Two things are needed here:
1) Blinkbat’s Form, socketed with a 20% Enhanced Damage Jewel. 40% FHR, 10% FRW. Use this 90% of the time.
2) Angelic armor, socketed with a Flawless Ruby. Put this bad boy on for fire-based caster duels or against low AR melee’ers. The armor’s defense will become 218 with the ammy/rings, and you get 50% fire resistance, plus a +1 skill on the ammy.

Weapon – Skewer of Krinitz, socketed with a flawless Amathyst. +10 dex, +10 str. Saves you a lot of skill points for vitality. It’s quick, and even adds some damage from the +stats. What you socket it with is kind of trivial, since few things in a weapon can add to kick damage.
Other weapon options: Gnasher, (slower) or Blood Crescent. Open Wounds doesn’t do much at lvl 15, but any little bit helps.

Boots – Sigon’s are good to start with, but you really want some rare greaves with FHR, FRW, life, and at least one good resist. Gamble with a lvl 20-ish character to find these. I don’t think I’ve ever seen greaves on my gamble screen at lvl 15.

Inventory – Life charms, poison charms, and one FHR GC. Don’t be picky. Just fill up the whole thing. You may want to keep some resist charms in your stash for caster duels.

All in all, you’ll hit the 86% FHR breakpoint, the 2nd fastest kick IAS breakpoint, and 75% blocking. The rest depends on your charms, but you’ll be able to hold your own against characters as high as 50.

--Strategy—
Most duels: Pre-cast Burst of Speed while wearing your Angelic Armor, then switch back to Blinkbat. Run up to the desired opponent and kick away. The kick will knock them back, so if they’re a hard-hitter you should wait for them to come back to you to maintain your blocking. Otherwise, just namelock and chase them down. Because of your FRW and BoS, you’ll be faster than 90% of opponents.

Chargers: Just sit and wait for them, block, and counter. They’ll fall for it every time, since they NEED to do that to attack. If you keep blocking, you’ll win. Just hope that 25% chance NOT to block doiesn’t happen, because if they have an eth Steeldriver or another big-ass weapon, you’re dead.

Cold-Based casters: Don your Sigon’s boots, and namelock.

Fire-based casters: Don your Angelic Armor, Sigon’s Belt, and try your best to dodge fireballs by running perpendicular to their motion. Get in on them, and kick away.

Warcry Barbs: Your FHR should ensure that they will have a hard time, but they will have a VERY high defense, so you’ll have a hard time hitting. If they’re REALLY good, they’ll have a spirit or two. It’s a battle of attrition, and they will have more life, too. Odds are, you’ll hurt ‘em pretty badly, but their life will mean they win.

Don’t fight WWers. You will lose. I promise. You’re not equipped to deal with that.

--Notes—
In pubby duels, you’ll be able to easily beat characters at least twice your level. Against professional LLDers, you can do almost as well, with a little more effort. Kicks are a very good attack, especially since the knockback will make the opponent continually need to close the gap between you, and lose their blocking. The hardest opponents are, ironically, other kickers who are higher level.

The highest-level opponent I’ve beaten was a lvl 52 Fury Druid. Most level 35s and down are chump change. Be ballsy, but be careful, also. People will often get mad and bring in a lvl 85+ character to “show you how cool they are” after you’ve beaten their lvl 35 a few times. At this point, all you can do is wait for them to leave, or leave yourself. You’ll be accused of cheating, hacking, and people will ALWAYS want to look at your equipment. The question I get most is “what sword is that?” even though it makes very little difference on my kicks.

The best opponents are always other LLDers, who will be a good fight, and will want to talk shop for a few minutes about gear, etc. You can get a lot of great ideas this way, and learn about what to expect from opponents.

I promise, this things works. Try it and see. I bet you have all this stuff just lying around, anyway.

Nice guide Acid!

Actually there is a substitute:
e.g. Deadly circlet of the tiger: 30% ed +30 life
2 sockets @Larzuk, 2x 20%ed jewels in it and off you go.
;)

edit: Don't know Acid if you are aware of what I call "the string bug". If the opponent is wearing string of ears the % dr is somewhat mulitplied against kickers. Kickers must reach over 700 max kick (don't know exact value)
to actually inflict damage to the enemy. Otherwise they won't even scratch him.

What's the lvl req. on that circlet?

About the bug: No way! That's really weird.

lvl 15 is req for circlet B)

And about string, check it out yourself in game. My lld co-duellers also noticed it.
I have lvl 29 hammer pala with string and even high lvl kickers can't do much to him.

I don't recall ever dueling a lvl 29 and not being able to do anything to them, save maybe a Warcry Barb that I couldn't seem to even nick any life from, but I just assumed he just had that much life and defense. What a weird bug. Does it work with a Verdungo, too?

I have no idea.

Do some testing.

i wonder if that's actually the MDR bug in disguise.

how much damage are you guys doing to your opponent, after the PVP penalty?

I dunno, having never experienced the bug, how much people kick me with. What's the MDR bug?

Mikeandroe's words:

Well, you're right on the "low level" part, as you can only get so much PDR on your gear.

However, you won't be restricted solely to kickers and smiters (offered as example because the majority of their attack is physical, I assume?)
Thanks to the PDR bug, if you can negate all of their physical, you get the bugged bonus of negating all their elemental and magic also.

According to posts I've read, MDR has the same effect, however, my (VERY brief) testing did not show this.

It appears the PDR cancelling out all physical will cancel out all elemental, but MDR canceling out all elemental will not cancel out all physical.
However, until I an get some further testing in, I cannot say that with any degree of confidance.

But, still, it would be great to see the look on the face of the guy that smites you with his fully optimized, twinked and rushed level 18 smiter, and realizes your life bar didn't budge.

Well I am a bit puzzled now.
I gambled magic deadly circlet and it is lvl 16 req :o
According to Arreat Summit it should be lvl 3...

I know this is old but I had to point it out.

Circlets are level 16 required *vampel*

Hmmm, weird I have a lvl 30 lld kicker asn and a lvl 87 or so hld kicker, i have yet to encounter this problem or is it just because they both use cb?


*Note: Correct me if im wrong but I do belive that Enhanced damage does not effect kick damage, the 5 damage from equipping Umbral would be from the dex it gives since both strength and dexterity effect kick damage.

Off-weapon %ED sources affect kicks, just not on-weapon sources, in all their logical glory.

Another good weapon IMO is 'steel' (tir+el) made in a 20s scimitar. 20s scimitars can be purchased from charsi. Scimitars have a base speed of -20 for assassin, combined with all the other sources of IAS (steel has 25%IAS itself) you can hit that DT breakpoint easily. Oh and of course 50% chance of OW isn't to shabby either.

I might just be making one. Looks like I have most of the stuff needed, so why not?

Your Guide is very clear on most things... but have you considered how increasing the level to 16 and using Twitchthroe instead of Blinkbat's would affect the build? I foresee losing FRW and FHR, but gaining defense, block (meaning vitality points), IAS and considerable stats. I think a proper pair of boots could make up for the loss of FHR and possibly FRW.

What do you say?

While I'm not highly knowledgable about kickers, I have to say that for any melee-type class, Twitch is easily my favorite armor. It's got good, USEFUL stats, IAS, and FHR. Frw is nice, but with some BoS and Sigon's boots, you should be just fine, I think.

My main worry is that I don't really know how the kicks would benefit from the increased IAS.

http://e.domaindlx.com/JRichard/D2/aas22/T...cks/dtalon.html

could you clarify that?

i think what he means is that he doesnt know breakpoints for ias for dtalon (which is what is in the link in my post)

thats what i suspected, and its good you know a link for them since I dont know them myself

Phew, that will give me something to figure out. I haven't felt this noobish in months. What the hell is WSM? Base weapon speed?

I also found this... it has the formula. No idea where it makes the difference between base weapon speed and gear IAS, though...
http://s94360530.onlinehome.us/d2/assassin-faq22.htm

yes.

I figured it out while driving... three hours later. Weapon Speed Modifier perhaps?

possibly... thats an important thing to be thinking about while driving :P

replace "it" with one of three thousand things and you have me. I figure out all sorts of things when driving.

Who needs to think while driving? Driving is like walking, if you have to think about it you pretty much suck at it.
You just usually cause more damage when you screw up driving than walking, that's all...

And I still haven't figured out how the damned thing fits in the formula, that abbreviation was keeping me busy enough, and I had better things to think about anyway...

I need to think while driving. This is because I suck at it.

EIAS = SIAS + 120*IAS/(120+IAS) - WSM
SIAS = Skill IAS (BoS and Fanat are the only skills that count; Frenzy is normal IAS)
IAS = Equipment IAS + Frenzy IAS (the same equation seems to work for frenzy barbs)
WSM = weapon speed modifier = base weapon speed for 1-handed attacks.


For dual wielding, it gets more complicated (usually an average.. )


Where's the guide? As BeB would say it, my search-fu has failed me. :(

Without that, all I can say is that lld seems to be a wierd mixture of balancing different levels, and not much else. Equipment availability affects builds more than any other single factor... so (conjecture) Acid's build may be for a specific set of fighting rules found somewhat commonly. I think I've worked out the level 41 gear, but past that I don't realy know.


The link to HBM's post is a bit outdated (follow-up bps are completely wrong). You'll want the edominatrix link to jrichard's updated stuff. jrich's dtalon bps

http://s11.invisionfree.com/Barons_Bazaar/...p?showforum=123

That's the guide, stored in our archives.

So... the Effective IAS if I used Twitch (assuming everything else is as it is in the guide, and a level 3 BoS) would be:

EIAS = 31 + 120*(10+20)/(120+(10+20)) -(10) = 65 , reaching the last kick breakpoint at 63? Did I screw up or discover something fantastic?

Okay, I'm back. I've been gone all weekend.

Sure, why not make it 16? I did 15 because of Flawless gems, which was my "breakpoint." I shot for the lowest lvl with the highest return. Also, if you used Twitch, you couple possibly switch out the weapon for something a little slower, but with CB, at the loss of the Skewer's stats (but Twitch even helps for that too).

So, in conclusion, "yes, I think it would work fine."

When I made this build quite some time ago, I used a Malice Crystal Sword. Kicked ass because with dual angelic rings I hit for 100% OW and wasnt affected by the drain life.

Highest kill - 54 Cold sorc

Highest Non-kill ownage - 74 ww barb ran away before final blow.

Archives, so that's where it was hiding. I was looking in the Builds forum.

Got it. Technically the formula needs an extra (-) by the WSM, but you did the math like it was a -10 weapon anyway.

Next time use a Flail. I had a Malice Flail on my lvl 41 kicker, and it was schweet.

Wow... he must have sucked.




Unrelated

I wonder what the best breakpoints are for kickers. They're pretty effective at 41 (I had a few level 80 ears and havne't fought anyone at my level that I couldn't at least beat), and the 30-range. My guess is that they'd be good at level 25 also (first chance at War Boots).

Nice guide, I may have to post my level 41 experience some time. :D

This is very, very true. The only duels I could never win were against level 58 lld melee builds. Dragon Talon is just an amazing skill.

I wish IK boots were available before 31. Great LLD boots for kicker

lld101.com actually lists 33 as the "official" level for a kicker, I think. I might be wriong, but it's above 30, I believe.

prolly for that very reason

I don't think I'll move down and use a slower weapon. I like the idea of reaching the last BP.

Yeah, I calculated first, typed it up later. At least it's right.

Crystal sword is base 0, Flail is -10. Malice flail it is, if I don't get my hands on a Skewer soon, at least. And 16 is a breakpoint for open wounds anyway if I remember correctly.

I imagine that others could panic and do something stupid when they see themselves bleeding, too.

If I did the math correctly, then:

OW damage per frame = (18*Clvl-104)/256 = (18*16-104)/256 = 0,71875 dpf, making approximately 18 damage per second. Over 8 seconds that's 143,75 damage. I don't know the average life of LLDers, but it should at least make a dent.

Anyway, Twitch and level 16 it is.

Level 30 for all Assassins. They put some nasty restrictions on the skills used, though. A pure melee build would look different than a "hybrid" build, and half of the useful skills are "ranged"


I'm not sure about level 16, but I had a few setups, most of which put me in the 800-1000 range for life on my 41 kicker. Just to put that in perspective, that is usually what I finish the game with on most of my Assassin builds (level 80+).