D2R Unique Items - Black Hades (Chaos Armor)

[@mickpratt8327]

I agree with your assessment completely. I have a Black Hades Chaos and have never played with it because the only place I'd use it is in Hell act 4 and I'd rather be running something with resist all on it. I can throw on a Thundergods belt with the Nokozan/Dwarf Star combo and be +85 Lighting and Fire resist and absorb both. So I run the upgraded Duriels shell to max out all my elemental resists and add cannot be frozen.

[@DanXsyn]

I actually use this to stack damage to demons (with jewels in it) because I can’t afford something like a fortitude yet. Farming Trav is noticeably faster with this. I compared it to my Duress armor, and it seems like it’s just about the same, can’t say if it’s better though. It does look cool on the barb however :D

[@GGMentor]

Fashion diablo

[@mwhighlander]

Laying of hands and a black hades like you mentioned full of +%ED to demons is great for trav runs or even boss killing where you need extra damage outside of CB.

[@GGMentor]

@@mwhighlander I kinda want to setup a build revolving around like a holy paladin who smites down demons and undead with extreme prejudice 🤣

[@zackerymcpherson9409]

Seems like maybe a niche armor for merc if you can gather the optimal budget jewels to meet breakpoints. Ias/dmg to demons, maybe unpopular resist jewels with different helpful mods. I’d probably throw decent yellow jewels in it that aren’t worth much to make the most of it before making a treachery or fort.

[@gorgeousgeorge5173]

Enjoying this unique series bro, good job. Hit the like button folks, well earned.

[@randomly-genrated]

I used this to get past those damn lightning beetles in hell with an Ort rune and whatever the other runes are for fire and cold resistance in armors. Not bad having 75% resists in hell on merc for low level runes for when he's getting wrecked. Using lightning traps with not much pts into fireblast this actually helped me get through the maggot lair, but tha'ts so situational and honestly lucky I found it at just the right time.

[@joekelley7649]

Thanks for always keeping my shared stash clear of junk

[@AfroNinjaTB]

Thank you for the interesting content sir!

[@Ownd4h3r]

I socket it umumshael on my zeal, he does very good

[@zaidalielarabeloco4070]

11:56 well you can put some rare jewels on it but with negative requirements and probably could be good and i have found very few of them that can work with this armor.

[@josephdavis3472]

Fixing the strength issue isn't too terrible, but there are some considerations to be made about weapon choice and the IAS breakpoints that sets for the Hireling. The resources I found indicated that the IAS breakpoints of the items people tend to use (thresher and giant thresher) have an important IAS breakpoint at 75 IAS. Most players, I assume, to get around the Strength requirement issue of using the Upped Black Hades would simply use Andariel's Visage, an already ubiquitously popular head armor choice for mercenaries due to the Strength, LL, and (this will be important in a moment) 20 IAS. (meaning you should have ~220 strength using visage at around lv 87 depending on the strength roll.) Since treachery has 45 IAS, 30 more is needed to reach 75 breakpoint for Thresh and Giant Thresh. Andy Visage has 20 on it natively and many people slot in a 15 IAS and 30 Fire Res for a total of *35* IAS on andy visage. Treachery can proc fade for the merc which can fix weird bad resistances, but has lower defense than Fortitude, Gloom, or even Smoke, which all give +all res in different amounts. When Fade is proc'ed, the sturdiness of the merc shoots up, as they get damage mitigation and resistances, but the tradeoff is you have to deliberately proc this effect; if you're spamming runs fast like Sorc teleporting through DoH to get to Meph, this could get annoying as the small skeleton dolls may burst him down before fade procs, in which case fortitude would be better for a variety of reasons, chiefly that you don't have to proc the effect. Resistances on this body would be with IAS Res jewels most likely, but that gives you 2.2k Def, 45 IAS, 45 All Res (assuming 3 15/15 jewels), Falling somewhere inbetween Gloom and Treachery in terms of usefulness (but being absurdly expensive when compared with either) If you were to use 15 IAS 40% Enhanced damage, you'd end up with a hybrid between Fortitude and Treachery that I honestly think falls short of either of the things it wants to contend with. It would have 120% Off weapon ED, and 45 IAS, which it could compare to Fortitude's 300% with no IAS; probably not worth the investiment given those jewels would be outrageously expensive. I'd say TL;DR is: Treachery is the best budget merc armor IF you don't mind getting the fade proc (which in chaos sanctuary for example would be as simple as standing in fire for a moment before beginning), Gloom and Stone are decent budget options if you don't have any high runes. This armor could be equipped by using andy visage and may be worth doing with eth upped Black Hades, but what jewels you put in it would make or break the whole point of doing it. It may have some niche uses that I've not yet considered, but these are the major considerations. I guess you could put it this way: This armor, eth, upped, and paired with andy visage and with the right jewels isn't necessarily bad, it just faces fierce competition with items that are relatively inexpensive. (compared to some of the jewels I mentioned, Fortitude is chump change).

[@ToshIsBack]

Yay I suggested it cool! Personally I do use it on merc for magic finding in chaos because there all demons. :) also personally I put in more dmg % to demon jewels. I’m not a newb just did it for fun on gear I never seen when I was a little guy playing lol.

[@Ashleymaul]

Unfortunately these socketed armors just get power creeped by Treachery's fade and jewel matching 45%ias, I feel like Natalias armor is a little better for memes, but I would still prefer Treachery

[@GGMentor]

I use a 3 40%ed nats on my blade fury assassin it's nice

[@Dartlin]

Damage to demon jewels or + to max damage jewels can stack nicely with phase blade weapons and laying of hands

[@Cornholers]

Um I'd rather have 15 ias 15 all res or 15 ias 40 ed jewels

[@fathersondiecast6521]

just thinking out loud and playing the "what if" scenario, suppose this armor had a mod that said "Runeword Ready" or something. Then you'd have something and I'd invest the strength required to use it. It would make a good Duress or Barb/Pally Enigma

[@blackjohnny0]

It may be good with light facets for javazon.

[@edselmeister]

I replaced my merc's treachery with this on my summoner necro since the damage is distributed to my minions. I find treachery still gets him killed more often than I like and this seem to be working just fine with the resist runes.

[@bigbroarivus]

with +15 all res/15 IAS it become a better version of Treachery but without FHR

[@sligacheese6470]

I have black hades chaos armor. Defense 830 Durability 70 *57% damage to demons *231 attack rating Against demons *142 enhanced defence Half freeze duration -2 to light radius Socketed (3) What’s the best runes to use for this armor ?

[@rhystaylor5623]

Hi I've just had a drop of chaos armour can I upgrade it to black hades? Sorry I'm new to the game

[@GGMentor]

Unique Items can not be upgraded into another unique item no. They can only have the base of the Unique Item changed, the Unique Item itself stays the same.

[@TheAngelRaven]

As a Necro main, I see little value in the stats of this plate. However, from my Amazon's perspective... :D

[@ToshIsBack]

Oh also my black hades merc with demon dmg jewels! will be having an infinity made for him when I’m outta work later today finally ;). Watch out chaos sanc.

[@garneroutlaw1]

Can demon dmg jewels have gold find on them in the rare form? If so, then this might have some use in a barb horker. Hell gold find jewels alone are pretty rare. Think I've only found one so far, and I've found multiple HRs. Even if there was a jewel that existed, it would probably be so expensive, high end runewords would be cheaper.

[@jasontachell9858]

The problem with this armor is that there is almost always a better option. I feel like stealth armor is better lol. I just picked up an Eth version, over 1400 defense, I’m keeping it for my collection lol. Maybe they will fix some of these issues in a future patch.

[@CharDoge]

Ice Barb = Dual doom frenzy barb + Nightwing Veil (ice facet socket) + 3 perfect Ice facet Black Hades + 2 Raven Frost.

[@NoName-md6fd]

The only thing they would have to do is change half freeze duration to cannot be frozen and people would be thinking about it cause you save a ring slot.

[@berenthebear1313]

I think it could be a good mf pally or barb armor with 3 topaz for hell meph runs. And you could always cube it with hel rune to remove the topaz later and it wouldnt be any real loss. Be great for melee players struggling to kill hell meph imo. But it would be for players without enigma until they found one.

[@berenthebear1313]

Be a great armor to put on your merc with 3 p topaz to kill nightmare bosses imo.

[@andrewvader1955]

I feel like upgrading it is cool but this is probably one of those armors upgrading it just makes it too costly to equip. So it's probably one of those when you first find it, and you don't have anything better ... just put whatever you need to get you through hell. That will probably do you very well. It's just one of those armors the developers probably wanted to add flexibility for whenever you find this item in a certain moments these items, it can be very handy. For min maxing a lot of these items don't make much sense but you know the game is full of random. like I love the loot system, it's so random. I've played this game for many years and I got two young guys to play this game. they're like 10 years younger than me and we were doing a playthrough of the four of us, and my other buddy and I we knew exactly what we were doing. we're flying threw the game and we found a gull dagger! The two of us, the more experienced players were super excited and the new players had no idea what we found. we're like boys we can start finding some really good stuff now. this game is really going to show its true colors with having 100% magic find at level 24.

[@jonbellomy329]

Could you put rainbow Fascits in it just so that when the merc has it on and dies you get the poison nova effect?

[@GGMentor]

yes that would work

[@johanekekrantz7325]

Andariels visage solves the str merc issue.

[@GGMentor]

A bit of a rare item but yes that will work

[@elbskipper5893]

my merc is wearing that armor eth version without any problems just didnt upgrade it. But i also dont know what to put in the slots to make it special.

[@Happycamper10170]

I always used reg version on merc with tal ort ral for resist unless I had a Griswold

[@madmansdog]

Wouldnt for rainbowfacets in natalyas not be way better, sure first thing in peoples mind will always be griswolds for 3 socket armor and not nathalyas

[@rasicule]

Give your merc Andariel's Visage (for the strength) and he should be able to use this w/o Hel runes.

[@Tyrannimarja]

I just got the ethereal version with over 1400 defense value. Strength requirement is 130. ❤

[@dredd6696]

If u got nothing else it works well I'd throw a ral ort thul into this armor gives 30 res to fire light ice

[@rhythmandpoetry1987]

I added strength gems so my Merc can us a CV insight haha cool to see it being showcased as well as the meat scraper I was using lol

[@lucaswilliams7280]

I rather like this armor for my summoner merc. I dont like fade on him since it's hard to proc when you have a bunch of minions and when it does proc it makes it easy to lose track of your merc when there's a lot going on. I much prefer to just have the ias from this.

[@garneroutlaw1]

Fortitude is cheaper than the jewels needed to make it viable.

[@Cornholers]

Very good for a zealot

[@lVlalicious]

That was my exact reaction first time i found it

[@reap00]

I took one and threw 3 perfect topaz into it to make a poor mans MF chest for my sorc. works pretty well as a newbie character just starting out. :)

[@ManchmalGaming]

Since the armor is black and not blue +60% Damage to Demons is the right number!

[@monkbunk1396]

Only Diablo players are happy to have ED🤔

[@deividassimkus9725]

i use this on my merk whit 3 runes whit +30 fire cold lightning dmg reduction its works fine just i dint upgrade it

[@m4xw3ll75]

i got an eth one, merc or charsi?

[@GGMentor]

Load It with three 15% IAS jewels and it makes a decent Merc armor yup

[@talictdf4757]

This thing might just be the most useless unique of all time, even a barebones Archon plate with some ED and 4 sockets is arguably better ^_^ I get that it's not an endgame item but even for a temporary item it kinda sucks, to me it barely qualifies as a unique with these stats.

[@GGMentor]

I do agree it needs a bit of love

[@garneroutlaw1]

I'm pretty sure this armor is useless. If there were some jewels with ED or % dmg to demon with the gold find prefix, then it might have a use with a barb horker. It would still probably have to have a ral rune in it, so that would leave two open slots for %dmg and gold find jewels which I don't even think exist. Edit: the more I think about it, this armor appears more useless. Rare jewels that would make this armor viable would likely be more expensive than fortitude. Just get a treachery or even fortitude lol.

[@gruu]

Put a Ber, um, shael in it and call it a day ;)

[@jays8048]

black hades is pretty bleh.

[@haiguyse]

This armor sucks, period.

[@GGMentor]

I don't think it sucks but I do think there are better options. That being said if you didn't have access to those better options could be viable for a little while