Almost dead

Re: Almost dead

Now THAT was a close one.

Had taken my beloved Non-Ladder Level 89 Full Tal's set Firewall / Thunderstorm Sorceress, "POS_Sparky" (yes Narci if you're reading this, it's the same one that you used to do Baal runs with, back God knows how many years ago in 1.09), out for her once monthly spin to keep alive on Battle.Net; and, since she's now almost 90 (has only taken about 5 years to get her from 89 to almost 90... :whistling:), after a ho-hum tour through WSK2, decided to try River of Flame.

Mucho baad idea!

The first couple of encounters went okay, but then, charging from the left (they apparently came from that little out-jut into the flame lake that has the two chests in it), came one of the WORST boss Urdar pack I have EVER seen.

All I see is at least one boss Urdar (turned out to be two, actually... see below) with Fanaticism :shocked: , so I start a cautious retreat back toward the Waypoint. Merc, thanks to the Decrep from his Reaper's Toll, stays up for about three hits and then gets pounded into a fine red smear on the pavement, and now I start thinking, "feets do yo' stuff".

Damn good idea, let me tell you!

I'm teleporting madly backward, to the right toward the RoF causeway, and I see the Urdar pack quickly gaining on me... WTF!?!?!? I was going to stop and just hit the RoF Waypoint, but I could easily see that the pack was going to be all over it by the time that I could click on it (this is no word of a lie -- I have NEVER, EVER seen Diablo monsters that can move that fast, not even Frenzytaurs), so I figure, "Egads, I haven't cleared the right part of the River yet, but what have I got to lose, anything has got to be better than this crowd." Well, I was right, but that doesn't mean it didn't hurt.

Somehow -- don't ask me how -- I manage to teleport across one of the lava inlets, giving me a precious split second or so before the boss pack makes it on top of me. I try throwing a TP, but the friendly other Urdar pack that's there gives me a few friendly love-taps to remind me that they're not happy that I intruded on their tea party, and, of course, since they have Knockback, it keeps me away from the TP as the Fanaticism pack is now within a half second of showing up on my doorstep and helpfully giving their aura to the Urdars in whose midst I'm now being pummeled.

It's Teleport time again -- what's left to do? I hot key to Teleport and hit it again and again, but I keep getting stunlocked and hit for 25-50% of my hit points (1080 at full health, this was my first Hardcore Hell build, I guess she's a bit fragile), but somehow (maybe the 2 or 3 FHR charms I've got in my holding area) I manage to break the stunlock and start jumping wildly around, right past the Fanaticism boss who looks up as I'm sailing past and goes, "Hey, you, come back here!!!"

I was teleporting back to the left, again in the midst of a crowd of Urdars, but this time I was able to get back to the clear area just to the left of the RoF Waypoint and throw a TP back home.

But did Mr. Bill give up at that point? No way, Jose! ;)

Knowing that the game would stay up for a few minutes, I exited POS_Sparky after resurrecting her too-fragile Merc, and bring in POS_RhythmStick, my Level 89 Plague Javazon. The crucial difference between these two characters (apart from a 36K Plague Java for the Amazon :grin:), is the latter's Level 35 (with prebuff) Valkyrie, plus POS_RhythmStick's patented FearMerc (basically he has tons of "Monster Flees x per cent", which means that the bad guys end up running away while they're poisoned). So my Javazon zips down to RoF, throws the Decoy way ahead down the causeway to the right, and watches it get poofed in one hit... yeah, that's him up there, all right!

One good Plague Javelin and half the hit points of a Level 36 Valkyrie later, I get a look at the boss pack. There are actually two boss Urdars:

Boss #1 : Extra Strong, Extra Fast, Aura Enchanted (Fanaticism), Stone Skin, Immune To Physical.

Boss #2 : Extra Strong, Extra Fast, Spectral Hit, Lightening Enchanted, Fire Enchanted.

I should again take the opportunity to point out how fast these monsters were. Like I said, I have never seen a boss pack that can move like they did -- they had to be bugged or something. They could run much faster than I could teleport halfway across the screen. Yikes!

Well, any one that you walk away from (alive that is), is a good one. Just don't tell my Merc.

:thumbup:

Cheers

Mr. Bill
 
Re: Almost dead

Character name : Hanna_Banana

Build : Orb / Hydra Sorc with weak Enchant backup (mainly for merc AR)

Level : 72 (at the time), U.S. East Hardcore Ladder

Location : Mausoleum (in A1 Hell)

Situation : Decided to take my long-suffering A2 Prayer merc, "Emilio", down to the Mausoleum (as it's one of the few places where my somewhat under-geared Ladder Season V Sorceress can semi-safely MF).

Just to give you an idea of what "under-geared" means here, the Sorceress' best two items are a Smoke Dusk Shroud and an upped Nightsmoke belt; poor old Emilio has to make do with a Shael'ed / Amn'ed Hone Sundan, an upped Heavenly Garb (well, it gives him a few more resist points, I guess) and a Wormskull hat for a little poison damage and life leech.

Well, we're more or less blasting everything in sight with a combination of Hydras (~500 points per, Fire damage) and a Level 25 Frozen Orb (unfortunately still low Cold Mastery, as yet), and we take one step inside an innocent-looking room, and... BLAMMO! 600 or so of my delicate little Sorc's 710 hit points, gone instantly, due to an "Extra Strong, Extra Fast, Lightening Enchanted" Boss Zombie with the Might Aura. Purple happy pill, Teleport backwards real fast, then... BLAMMO! Another 600 points gone! :surprise:

At this point, on the screen, the Boss Zombie was at least half a screen away, so all I can conclude is that there was some kind of weird desync going on, frame rate was good, etc.. Purple pills, do you' stuff!

To make a long story short, he managed to whack off Emilio's head two or three times, before the Hydras finally got him... when I remembered to use the Weaken charges from my Smoke armor.

Moral of the story: Never trust the lying D2 map screen. If they're closer than on the far edge of it, assume that they're so close that you can smell their bad breath, from having eaten "braaiiiins" for 800 years without brushing their teeth. :nervous:

Cheers

Mr. Bill
 
Re: Almost dead

Had the closest near-death experience this morning as I've had in a very long time. Was leveling a frenzier (Hell Baal glitcher), and am running three characters on 3 computers, and wasn't paying close enough attention to the glitcher (who was just standing in Hell Baal's throne room gaining exp). He got poisoned and I hadn't noticed it until his health was all the way down to where his life orb looked totally clear. Not sure what his health was exactly because I smashed the keys to make him gulp a purple. This was at 4 AM, had just gotten up and hadn't even had my first cup of coffee yet (was perking). Well I was certainly awake after THAT!
 
Re: Almost dead

Not sure if this counts as a "real" NDE as the character involved was only down by about 1/3 of her hit points... but she certainly would have been dead except for... well, read on.

Was doing one of my once per month "keep-alive" runs of my legions of high level HC characters from previous ladder seasons, in this case "Icya_Mueller", a Level 83 (almost) PureFire Sorceress (~7K Fireball, ~17K Meteor plus a Level 12 Orb for backup).

Had started the game with a Blizzard Sorceress who of course is next to useless in the Act 5 Ice Caverns, so with the game session still up I exited the Blizzard Sorc and brought in Icya. Decided to try the Crystalline Passage... my bad idea.

I got the map where the CP Waypoint is at the top left, then there is a little bend in the passageway, so you can't really see what's "beyond the bend" until you walk or Teleport up there. Silly me, I decided to Tele... at which point, when the screen re-drew, I was, uhh, face to face with one sh*tload of Frenzytaurs, those Dark Rogue type chicks with the lances, as well as something that was shooting arrows (I think these were also Dark Rogue types but I didn't stick around to find out). There were at least two bosses in this triple pack, and at least some of the Frenzytaurs were Champions, that much I was able to see.

I heard the Amp Damage curse sound and my trusty merc Emilio, who had foolishly forgotten to turn on his Holy Freeze aura, went down in one shot (apparently to a Frenzytaur, or an arrow, or some combination of both). I Teleported backwards, with a third of my hit points already gone to some kind of attack that I didn't see, only to see 3 or so Champion Frenzytaurs bearing hard down on me. But this time I deliberately did not Teleport back to the Waypoint; I've learned the hard way that this requires rapid hot-keying and a misclick can land you somewhere where you can neither click on the Waypoint (if you constantly get hit and put into FHR you can't activate it) nor throw a usable Town Portal. So I just ran back, and as I clicked on the Waypoint, the last thing I saw was one of these Frenzytaurs, swinging his axe at me.

What's the matter, has he got some kind of axe to grind?

As an aside, I then resurrected Emilio and cleared out the Glacial Trail, which wasn't such an unfriendly area tonight. I seriously considered tracing my steps back in the opposite direction from the GT-CP gateway, but decided not to largely because of (a) only ~930 hit points and (b) possibly, Fire Immune Frenzytaurs. Not sure if they really were FI, but I didn't want to sit and read the description. Neither did Emilio. :whistling:

Cheers

Mr. Bill
 
Re: Almost dead

Nearly lost my level 82 paladin Twice just now in the Durance of Hate. Those DOLLS how do they get so awful?! I have over 22k defense, 2288 life, and max chance to block, but it just doesn't matter. I fear a pack of more than 3... was redlined the first time so quickly if I had lagged or clicked off the window for one instant there's no doubt in my mind I would have been dead. I got that "feeling" like when you suddenly die... my heart jumped. I happened yet again not longer, and I was just about to leave the Durance for good when I came upon the stairs to level 3. Sweet.
 
Re: Almost dead

Decided to make a martyr on sp in hardcore for a new challenge. For ages I was using a naga I found with fools mod then I found a rare mallet with cruel mod and nice max damage mod on it, all it took was a few swings and misses from a heavier hitting weapon with a lot less ar to nearly empty my bulb. I'm now thinking of trying a new sacrifice based build though so it's not all bad
 
Re: Almost dead

My SP HC fishymanser allmoast die today. I was running in WSK 2 from the waypoint to the stairs to kill baal . In my map these points are very close. So i think ok i will try to get there in a sec . But some snakes-like monsters close my way and hit me really hard . I have only 390 life so ... i hit 12 and esc :crazyeyes: . My life was empty but i was still alive. So i will not run again in front of my minions.....
 
Re: Almost dead

as new to HC i am gonna tell you my "Death XP" xD

martual artist, lvl 18 fire claw / dragon dual claw est with BoS on, fisher mancer and sorc as well in game. just killed andy in under 30 secs ( was well surpreice, after sorc was screaming half screen away and necro's skellies wanted to relax on floor ) she died with fully charged fire + other charged.

back to present time, killed rade, health never gotten lower then 2/3 of my hp, coming out of lut gholen, looking at beetle. beetle looking back.

asa like, bring it on.

beetle like: i am boss.

asa like: what boss?

beetle like: LE, MS ( mutli shot )

asa like: you already lighting enchanted and multi shot... oh plz, you aint ranger.

1 hit em, and andy was nothing compare to him, because poor assa with 35 res was with feet up.

Nice_Sorcy storry:

River of Flame, after killing nm dia with ez, at lvl 52, she felt comfi to get her HF solo, did see everything, been on time, and praer/insight merc with 35 hp per sec was all nice. some one ( too many on screen ) was cureser, so Amp on my head, i am like, yeah, 50 hp gone, 2 sec wait, np, and knight hitted me... usually they take about 1/4 of my hp.... but that was a) boss b) extra strong.

moral, got cursed, go town get it off asap. dont wait for merc to heal you.

Nice_SorcyBack

nm, lvl 74, about to go to hell.... huge lag.... wave 4 on your head... aura ( fana ) mana burn and Extra strong. lag off... ( after i read it all, i knew something bad gonna happen ) we shall remember all it sayd.

good thing i had ww barb there to help me.... got killed when enter tp with minin.
( he said needed mana to get ww going, and ML should have been okay for that, sooooo wasnt )

there are my storyes.

and near death.... going into cata lvl 2 with sorc lvl 62 and every corner = exitment

too afraid too lose another char to play with her, time for tea and get some bravity :crazyeyes:
 
Re: Almost dead

Lvl90 Light sorc 1,500hp and 900mana es after bo. Max block, 3k defense, max resists.

I don't have a very eventful tale since the whole thing was rather brief but it sure woke me up to the fact that I am NOT invulnerable as my arrogant teleing all over the place may have led me to believe.

Was running the umpteenth hell baal and was slowly walking through the throne room (as I normally do for safety's sake) after teleing through the two upper floors. The place is crawling with dolls and mummies and I slowly wade through them. I use my trusty tele to throw my merc to tank everything while I shuffle back and throw out lightning. Everything is going good and I'm at the arch leading to the area where baal's minions spawn. So almost there.

My merc is busy dealing with a boss pack of dolls that came from baal's direction while I cautiously blast at them. Suddenly 1-2 dolls run up to me from behind even though I was sure I well cleared the path I was walking. I'm thinking 'not good' but thankfully my merc finished with his pack of dolls so I was able to tele-reposition him and myself to deal with the two pals who sneaked up on us. Whew.

Another doll comes running in from the top. I'm getting a little uneasy but deal with it all the same. Everything looks quiet and finally I pass under the same arch leading to baal's area. I'm precisely under the arch so I only see myself from the waist-down and I don't even see my merc. I hear my merc attack and wabam: the 900mana es and about 900 life got in a second. By now I was thinking wtf only to see another 2 dolls running from baal's direction.

Before I could comprehend what to do with them after being knocked to about 30% of my hp, 3 more dolls resurrect (yes, I saw it this time) from their corpses behind me, all about half a screen away from me. By now I realize that I need to bail (pardon the pun) NOW if I want to leave this game without a hoodie.

I hit the keyboard in the general direction of big purples and tele'd once in a direction I thought safest to buy me enough time to save and exit. I pulled that off but while doing it I saw another 2 dolls resurrect and a pack of mummies right around the corner merrily doing their thing (resurrecting). :whistling:

Since then I decided maybe it'd be better for me to start using my SS instead of the upped Visceratuant that gives skills and max block.

O.O
 
Re: Almost dead

Had the closest near-death experience this morning as I've had in a very long time. Was leveling a frenzier (Hell Baal glitcher), and am running three characters on 3 computers, and wasn't paying close enough attention to the glitcher (who was just standing in Hell Baal's throne room gaining exp). He got poisoned and I hadn't noticed it until his health was all the way down to where his life orb looked totally clear. Not sure what his health was exactly because I smashed the keys to make him gulp a purple. This was at 4 AM, had just gotten up and hadn't even had my first cup of coffee yet (was perking). Well I was certainly awake after THAT!

By the way, poison can only kill mercs and minions (not too sure about them). If the poison is strong enough to drain 'all' of a character's hp then the poison will stop affecting you precisely at 1hp. IE. you can never die from the poisoning effect of poison :)P) attacks alone.


 
Re: Almost dead

By the way, poison can only kill mercs and minions (not too sure about them). If the poison is strong enough to drain 'all' of a character's hp then the poison will stop affecting you precisely at 1hp. IE. you can never die from the poisoning effect of poison :)P) attacks alone.

Yup! but standing in a corner of Hell Baal's throneroom while all the fighting is going on with only 1 HP isn't a very good idea, either. ;)



 
Re: Almost dead

By the way, poison can only kill mercs and minions (not too sure about them). If the poison is strong enough to drain 'all' of a character's hp then the poison will stop affecting you precisely at 1hp. IE. you can never die from the poisoning effect of poison :)P) attacks alone.

and i would like to dissagree, psn can kill you, even at 1hp.

proofe: ask any one with plague zon, they ll kill you with pure psn ( make level 9 char on hc, and see it for your self )


 
Re: Almost dead

Whilst doing NM Pindle runs with a strafazon / valkazon, my usual tactic was to enter the red, run just up the stairs, cast a decoy (Lvl 25), and a valk (Lvl 25) next to it, then stand back, and strafe away happily.

This worked every time, except the one near-death experience:

- Nightmare Difficulty -

After the intro, and into my strafing, I noticed my Decoy, after being hit about a little bit, go *poof* - Which was unusual, as it had (I think) 4k life (I had 1k, lvl 25 Decoy) - Well, I had my valk for backup! (Not having it quite yet click that my decoy had just been insta-gibbed), so I have Pindle run straight past my Valk ignoring it totally, and perform a double charge, the first one hitting me with Amplify Damage! After seeing the amplify, I hastened a quick S&E, and rejoined on 98 life! Whew! Lvl 68 Amazon saved! :D

- Edit -

Until TPPK'd 20 minutes later on ;p
 
Re: Almost dead

Level 87 Toxic Fairy (Max PJ / LF) Ladder Javazon "Sheila_Killyou" was doing one of her endless Tower runs looking for that elusive Um rune... or in fact any half decent rune (I'm not picky at this point, it has been a lousy ladder for my MF'ing).

Now to be fair, she had already run into a couple of entertaining boss Archer packs, including one that had sent me back to the Rogue Encampment to spend a cool $50K resurrecting Haseen's butt. [BTW : He is a FearMerc(R), Face of Horror hat to make 'em run, The Meat Scraper to make 'em bleed. Works doubleplusgood, 99% of the time.] So I was half paying attention, this time... I should have been paying 100%.

Stepped into a room with a LOT of champion archers into it, dropped the Decoy nice and far in (saved my butt!), then heard the two sounds that intelligent D2 players dread the most : Amp and Fanaticism, coming from the boss... one arrow from that "rhymes with witch" and Sheila dropped down to ~250 of her 1255 hit points. :shocked:

Feets, do yo' stuff! :scared:

Anyway, after a purple happy pill, both Haseen and the Valk had wandered in, time enough for me to throw another Decoy and a nice green java... there was nothing wrong with those archers, that 19.5K of poison, couldn't fix. :cool:

Still... I think I'll maybe pay some attention before I get hit, next time...

Cheers

Mr. Bill
 
Re: Almost dead

Seems to be a scary time for all my Hell level characters these days...

My off-Ladder Level 85 Holy Freeze Zealot, "HSG_Krusadist", was on the 60-day countdown, so I decided to take him out for a quick Tunnels run. He is a decked-out Act 2 (at least, Sewers and Tunnels) type, with Rockstopper, GA, HoZ, Gores, LoH, Highlords and a Lawbringer Caduceus.

He has 1100 hit points (I know, lowish for a melee Paladin), 75% block and (this is important), 90-92-90-64 resists in Hell.

So he starts running the Tunnels, and, of course, the combination of Level 25 Holy Freeze, the Sanctuary aura and Decrep from the Lawbringer stick are just owning everything in sight...

Then HSG_Krusadist turns a corner and runs into a LOT of those skeleton mages that throw the little charged bolts at you. He proceeds to start beating on them with his Caddy, then, out of the corner of his little 2-D animated eye, sees a boss skeleton mage... with, Conviction. :shocked:

Now you have to understand that with 90+% resists against Fire, Cold and Lightening, this character is not used to being afraid of elemental attacks. However, this time, he gets hit by five or six of these nasty little charged bolts, and instantly his life ball slivers... not sure how low it got but it couldn't have been much more than 100 points or so, obviously the dumb driver frantically hit the potion buttons and HSG_Krusadist beat a hasty retreat, coming back a second later with Salvation on to give himself 180+% stacked resists, which did the trick.

I am not sure if I am calculating this correctly, but let's say that he got hit by four charged bolts, all at once. That would mean ~250 points of Lightening damage after the Paladin's resists had been reduced from the boss monster's Conviction aura, but assuming that the aura had say reduced HSG_Krusadist's final resistances to the 20-60 range, we are talking about one hell of a lot of Lightening damage that must have been there as the monsters' unmodified, initial attacks. (Couldn't find an exact figure on the Arreat Summit.)

It would have sucked to have lost this character as he is a hold-over from the first Ladder season, and he is also one of my first characters to do Hell Baal and live to tell the tale (admittedly, he had a lot of help from a certain Level 87 Sorceress... you know who you are, if you're out there reading this...)... but that's another story. :grin:

Cheers

Mr. Bill
 
Re: Almost dead

and i would like to dissagree, psn can kill you, even at 1hp.

If you get hit by psn once, then it won't kill you (exception is rabies which will), but if the poison damage is reapplied when you're at 1 HP it will kill you.


 
Re: Almost dead

New candidate for "stupidest n00b death (almost) in D2" :

How about a Level 77 Barbarian with > 2600 hit points (as well as 75 across the board resists, except for Cold, which is 72) who's down in Flayer Dungeon Level 3, having just whacked the Witch Doctor (nasty little guy, I hate Mana Burn!) and has switched to his pair of +3 to Warcries throwing spears, so that the Find Item thing is a bit more effective. (But no blocking, because no shield, when holding a spear in each hand.)

Happens to be standing in front of one of those annoying little flying bolt traps (you know the ones that go 'click' and then send something looking like a shuriken flying at you) while horking everything in sight...

... then the game lags. And lags. And lags.

When it wakes up, my beleaguered Barbarian is down to ~500 of his original 2600+ hit points, :shocked: due to those little shurikens having whittled him down, bit by bit. A close call, but imagine how embarrassing if it had lagged just a few seconds more... :p

Grrrr

Mr. Bill

BTW : Did you know that two doll pops down there, even with 75% resists and ~15% PDR, is 2000 points of damage? Ouchhh...
 
Re: Almost dead

After starting classic hardcore with another guy (playing untwinked and private) we had a minor accident in maggot lair where accidentally casted CE resulted setting off several beetle baileys off and my barb lost -150hp in an instant.

Luckily I had been pumping points in vita early on alot as my previous experience in hardcore suggested, as it pretty much saved my character :p
 
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