So if the 100k block is capped at 75%, doe the stoneskin skill contribute to the cap (ie, %reduction from high block + %reduction from stoneskin capped at 75%) or are they applied multiplicatively (ie, 75% reduction from block, and 75% stoneskin = taking only 1/16th normal damage?)
Also: Oranges are tempting, but they make you stagnate if you don't swap them out for higher level gear because you're relying on their stats, so I keep everything purple on my first run through (upgrading if I find a nice high damage piece), to keep my level advancing towards retirement.
After I had my first veteran piece, I stopped looking at item stats all together, and just equipped whatever had the highest level, because their stats stopped mattering in the face of the heirloom piece, and advancing my level meant advancing the monster level, which meant faster growth for my veteran item. The game hasn't been an idle game since my second veteran piece, since I'm having to swap in gear and raise the monster level as fast as I can manage.... And yeah, I'm playing hardcore....
Skill points spent as follows: 7 Base Damage, 33 damage% - if you haven't retired by now, put it wherever you like... :)
Just keep your max hp greater than twice what a legendary can hit you for and you'll be invulnerable... I did this build hardcore and am on my 5th veteran, and can now take mobs 50 levels higher without any risk of death. :)
Walkthrough:
Start as a cleric, set your skill to autocast at 60% (you'll raise this to 80% later). Autorefine all whites except weapon, and sell the gems for cash. Use the cash to upgrade stats, staying at level 1 until you get as close to a 1.551 weapon and upgrade it to purple (making it a 1.101 speed weapon).
By now you should have lots of stat upgrades, so bump the level of monsters up and re-gear with highest damage gear you can find (for helm to boots) and maximize gold find for the rings and amulet. Energy regen is also nice, but you'll quickly find that you don't really need all that much for your skill to be permanently maintained making you invulnerable to anything that can't do more than 50% of your hp in an attack, at this point, increase the monster level until your base damage can one-shot a small creature.
In the early/pre-veteran game, getting crit high enough to make crit power useful is not worth the base damage you could've gotten instead. In the post veteran runs, crit hits 100% (and naturally accumulates %damage increase as you accumulate several thousand just from having your heritage pieces), but is pretty useless since you'll rapidly hit mobs that either get one-shotted regardless of crit, or that block 60%-80% of your attacks, preventing crits even if you have 100% and armor-pen.
Thus in either case, your highest DPS output is coming from your base DPS.
Armor penetration does not allow for crits (so, if the enemy blocks, not only is your damage reduced to the armor penetration amount, but your crit damage is completely voided) - which by end game, makes critting almost worthless (the only creatures that don't block the vast majority of your attacks you don't need crits to one-shot anyways).
As a result, any points spent in combat are much better spent in the 5% base damage increase skill, and the crit damage skill is pretty much useless...
Pro-tip: Cleric+heirloom = Immortal
(The energy recovery FAR exceeds the rate you can heal at, and you can essentially completely heal any time you take damage)
Ohhp, one more thing to make it truly idle: An "Auto Upgrade" button next to each stat that purchases a point in toggled stats the moment there's enough money.
You know you've been playing too long when...
You look up at your level and you IMMEDIATELY know what that number +19 is...
You know you've been playing WAAAAY too long when...
You immediately know what you level+19 is, but have to doublecheck the math in your head 2 or 3 times to convince yourself it's right...
A "Relative Level" slider & toggle would be nice -- especially for those early veteran levels (example, set the slider to +9, and the game will keep the monster level set 9 levels above your current level).
TheLoverBoy:
DPS takes into account ALL your stats (except critical chance/multiplier), not just the weapon's stats. So if you have some combat skills and/or damage stat increases, then the faster sword with (36+10,000)/1.15 will do much higher dps than the (246+10,000)/1.86 sword.
Example: Currently equipped helmet has damage 400 as the only stat.
Any helmet (of any rarity, except orange maybe, since upgrading comes into play) that doesn't have damage, is sold/refined. Any helmet that has damage, but has it at less than 400, is sold/refined. A helmet with 400 damage and 20 health regen, would be kept. As would a helmet with 420 damage and nothing else. Etc.
Basically what this would do is allow you to do is find a piece with the right "mix" of stats, then instantly remove any items that don't have the right "mix" of stats, and keep only those with the same (or similar) mix, but with better numbers.
Oh, even better than auto sell/refine by level, "Auto sell/auto refine if worse" Basically, the piece being looted mu have the same TYPES of stats as the piece being worn (it can have extras, but is autosold/refined if it is missing any) and must have an equal or greater value for those stats. (Also, a "sell dupes" would be nice, where exact duplicates of the equipped piece can be auto sold/refined, this would be especially useful for off-hand items like the ankh, where you only need to find one of any given level, and the rest are just garbage...
An AutoSell/Autorefine based on item level would be extremely helpful for when we have a few veteran items (and they're leveling you so fast you're just increasing the level and not really looking through your items... being able to instantly refine/sell all items below a given level would be extremely helpful.)
And upgrading Orange items (1, 2, or 3 stars) should improve an items level as well. Otherwise, you get stuck waiting to advance until you get a new orange item, because the purples aren't 1/3 as good as that 20 level old orange item you've got, and it costs MASSIVE diamonds to upgrade just one item from purple to orange. For reference, my "work around" is to only use orange damage items (helm, chest, gloves, weapon, dagger - if rogue) and use only purple for items without a damage stat (rings, necklace, spell book, etc), this way I can maximize my damage, but still progress by replacing the purples with new ones that I find as I advance in level. I end up replacing the oranges every 40-50 levels only this way, and just replace the purples every time I find a higher level replacement with appropriate stats.
A weapon that is EXACTLY 1.25 will not improve to 1.10, BUT... a weapon with a speed of 1.251 WILL improve to 1.101. To see the third decimal place of a weapon, equip it and look in the Attack Speed line to the right of your equipped gear.
Also, keyboard shortcuts for refine and lock (with a separate shortcut for unlock) would be boss!
To all those who feel homing lasers are anti newtonian, what's ACTUALLY happening is that the homing add-on is creating micro singularities at specific points along/near the laser's path in order to bend the light - the reason there are limitations is because it's some CRAZY voodoo math to figure where to focus the graviton waves needed to create said singularities.. yeah, newton STILL RULES! :)
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Upgrading oranges does improve the item level. It increases the item level by 5 each time.