Why isn’t Verdungo’s Hearty Cord the best belt for melee characters in Diablo II?
Verdungo’s Hearty Cord is a unique mithril coil belt, and is a popular belt choice among Diablo 2 players for its resistance to physical damage and its large bonus to vitality (and thus health). ).
The statistics:
Defense: 125-158
Minimum Strength: 106
Level Requirement: 63
+90-140% Enhanced Defense (varies)
10% faster hit recovery
+30-40 to Vitality (varies)
Replenish Life +10-13 (varies)
+100-120 to maximum resistance (varies)
Damage reduced by 10-15% (varies)
Minimum Strength: 106
From the start, it can be seen that Verdungo’s Hearty Cord has a high Strength requirement. Plan ahead when using Executioner and see if you can get enough Strength bonuses from items and charms to get you up to a Strength of 106.
10% faster hit recovery
10% faster hit recovery isn’t much, but it’s nice to have nonetheless. Faster Hit Recovery helps your character recover from being hit by his enemies; the more you have, the faster you can recover from hits and dish out your own damage.
+30-40 to Vitality (varies)
Verdungo’s Hearty Cord offers the largest health bonus of all belts, making it very useful for all characters, regardless of class or build. A perfect Executioner will grant your character 40 additional health, giving your character 160 health if he’s a barbarian, 120 if he’s one of the other melee characters, or 80 if he’s a caster. For any character, that’s a huge hit point gain!
Replenish Life +10-13 (varies)
Verdungo not only offers a huge health bonus, but also offers Replenish Life… not only do you get more health points, but you also recover them faster.
+100-120 to maximum resistance (varies)
This is a huge stamina boost, but no player really notices this because by level 63, a good player wouldn’t have any stamina issues.
Damage reduced by 10-15% (varies)
Verdungo’s Hearty Cord is one of the few items in the game that provides a % resistance to physical damage. The others are Shaftstop, String of Ears, Vampire’s Gaze, Harlequin Crest, and Stormshield.
Many players try to put on at least one item that has % physical damage resistance, for the very good reason that it reduces damage taken from successful physical attacks, and therefore with enough items with % damage resistance physical, you can make your character very resistant to physical damage.
Summary:
Verdungo’s Hearty Cord is a very, very useful belt. It is often compared to String of Ears, which is another unique belt that offers the same range of resistance to physical damage (10-15%). String of Ears is a more attractive option for characters who don’t want to invest as many attribute points in Strength, as it only requires a Strength of 20 to use, while Verdungo requires a whopping 106. However, if they meet the Strength requirement, Strength, most characters would pick Verdungo’s because even though String of Ears has Life Leech, Verdungo’s huge bonus to Life is hard to resist.