I found this very very interesting 7 min short vid on Nova sorc with Mang Song instead of Infinity self wield

stating it does much much more damage on non immunes AND only very little less on immunes.

I love the fact that it gives more stuff options on gloves and amu since you no longer need the FC ! BUT I would really like it if someone was able to compute this "very little less damage on immunes"

anyone capable of calculating this ?

here is the vid :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rf-N9wlsYfo

clickbait. the idea is correct, but not thought to the end
few things to note before:
1. one big asset to self-wield build is that you can use insight/cure/prayer merc for nearly unlimited sustain
2. flexibility on gear sounds nice, but the self-wield build already has the items you want. 3/10 amu is top for your damage and there are no gloves that give a massive advantage over magefist. i'd rather keep these two and switch the armor for enigma

now to the numbers. i only did quick calcs, so these might be slightly off.
mang song has an edge against monsters with 0 and even 50lr. the point is though that those monsters are not a problem anyways, so you should rather focus on quick kill speed on the tougher opponents (i.e. immunes). and against those, the self-wield build offers around 900 additional damage which tranlates to around 20% more dmg than mang song

1. agreed, although with Frostburn now possible you get 40% more mana , and more + skills so more mana regen. He ends up with over 4K mana , since regen is a % of mana, it might compensate quite well the lack of insight.
2. I would definitely love to be able to place enigma too indeed, life and finally some decent MF on this build

edit : regarding the fact that we mainly loose time on the immunes and don't care about the others which are already melting, this was also my feeling . I think main advantage would be on the bosses.
I feel the best way to get a proper feeling would be to try it, its quite cheap anyways ; people who have tried it all say it really destroys everything (from 24K infinity yield to 34K with this build, on non immune of course...)

This post was edited by raudic on Jan 31 2024 06:14am

Mang Song is really bad, sadly.

A simple 3lite/3 nova 20 fcr 2os wand can beat it. Offhand 20/20 shield for a total of -30% res/+30% lite damage.

Slightly higher damage than the self wield Infy set up but you're back to drinking blues. No thanks in my book.

Yeah lots of other item combos that are better…obsession with a 20/-20 armor gives you everything the mang setup could with even more flexibility

those are all good ideas indeed , thank you for pointing them out.

Has any of you actually tried these builds to give an impression on farming efficiency versus the classic infinity self yield ?

I tried it once with a cheaply geared nova sorc, and the build felt extremely weak compared to other budget alternatives (mainly CMoon).

Yet another practical reason why a self-wield nova sorc feels much nicer: there is no delay to the -55% LR you get from it, whereas with Infinity on merc you need to wait a second before the aura takes effect. With self-wield, you're dealing decent damage from the first static/nova cast.

This post was edited by Ashirgo on Jan 31 2024 09:02am

If you find diablo 2 info on YouTube, it is wrong. Has been this way forever.

They try to make sweeping statements that make it seem like they uncovered something no one ever discovered

In reality, all they are doing is farming click bait

Btw, feel free to use the Hero Editor to prepare a godly single player character with the proposed items and let us know if you liked it for players8 gameplay

Theres a reason why no one uses this build lol dont trust youtubers with their OMG THIS BUILD IS INSANE crap