Skunkbelly's Ultimate Tournament Challenge 2011

Re: Skunkbelly's Ultimate Tournament Challenge 2011

Sorry to see you go Pwangsta. But I guess it has to happen to all (most) of us. I also fear Barbarians, so I am glad you took one with you. My guess is that when one comes my way he will be buried beside Farr in short order.
 
Re: Skunkbelly's Ultimate Tournament Challenge 2011

I did, in fact, craft a safety spear for Farr (using a gambled magic Fuscina as the base item). Unfortunately, it came out with no ED or IAS or anything remotely resembling a useful modifier, so I had to sell it. I had enough resources to craft another one, but I was too disheartened by the first crappy result and figured I would wait to see what my imbue looked like before trying again with a gambled Lance if the imbue was junky too.

But yeah, barbarians are not a class I am all too comfortable with. I don't think I've ever played a HC barbarian past Act 2 normal on my own, so at least this was a nice new experience.
 
Re: Skunkbelly's Ultimate Tournament Challenge 2011

RIP Fisto.

My goodness, things are starting to get interesting!
 
Re: Skunkbelly's Ultimate Tournament Challenge 2011

yeah, I thought that mighta happened pwangsta. sucks, that safety craft has such potential to be so disappointing! I was mega lucky to get +ED on top of the hit power craft for farr, in fact until dooku I would say my luck has been very good

I did burn through a number of caster crafts for dooku to help with CE mana costs that all turned out horrible. He is using them currently because he is so safe, but damn! no resists at all on 3 crafts! Boots, gloves and belt without resists!
 
Re: Skunkbelly's Ultimate Tournament Challenge 2011

A little about Fisto. He was a Fanatic Avenger with a 7 point investment in Conversion. lvl 48 when I got him. Despite knowing they are viable, Im just not a fan of the build. That Aside he was doing fine pushing through. He had a malice maul, stealth, and a ring with 28 FR and 30 LR. Otherwise his gear was pretty much not worth mentioning IMO. Not much else to say he was ok but I was looking forward to the switch. I had some crafting plans in mind for later in the act, and was hoping for a good imbue. I would have been sending him off with 1 or 2 free skills and 25 atts.
 
Re: Skunkbelly's Ultimate Tournament Challenge 2011

I really have to say I am not a fan of all these stealth armours. Almost all the deaths are melee builds so far, and stealth gives them nothing really.

It is fine as a early normal runeword, because you dont have access to anything better, but I really dont think it adds much otherwise. Some poison res, FRW, FHR. Well, looking at that, it does sound good, but I don't think FRW is too important in hardcore. FHR of that range isnt gonna do much. So you get a single resist.

Mana regen and FCR are pretty useless on most of the builds that have them in this tournie.

I think maybe we all have the mindset that FHR, FRW and res are end game stats, but I reckon they are useless early on, in the same way that resists (except fire) are pretty lame until mid normal, when elemental damage gets more common. Pitspawn fouldog being the exception!

Even in Act 1 NM I would prefer a 4 pruby gothic plate than a stealth. Then are the crafting possiblities - Blood body crafts can be great for a melee build. Hit power body crafts give some safety with the frost nova, although cast on being hit seems counter-productive here! Safety body crafts give a decent amount of damage reduce for this level of the game, and have good defense potential for builds that utilise defense.

That is totally ignoring other plain socketed gear - sol armours, resist runes or jewels in armours and eth/tir armours for mana regen are all pretty dominant early on. Really, if you get resists elsewhere a multi-sol armour can make you near invulnerable for most of nm. One of the barbs is using a life everlasting circlet at the moment right? Pair that with some sols and watch melee enemies give up in disgust!

That was a bit of a ramble, but I reckon some slightly different approaches to armour choice will serve folks well in this tournie, and all tournies.
 
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Re: Skunkbelly's Ultimate Tournament Challenge 2011

I like Stealth. The FRW frees up the need for it on boots, making it much easier to get some useful boots, and the FHR is also nice.

I´ve crafted a Safety armor for a melee merc, and that worked nicely, too.

I think we´re going to see some decent armor runewords down the road. Smoke, Lionheart, Duress, Treachery, etc.
 
Re: Skunkbelly's Ultimate Tournament Challenge 2011

Solo has completed Act 1 NM.

He did so with relative ease, especially after I found a Sol to upgrade his Steeldriver. He also had some great item luck:

- Chromatic Ire
- Hexfire
- Tarnhelm
- Rite of Passage
- another Steeldriver (too bad this one wasn't found first, it had a much better roll!)
- A few good runes (Hel, Dol, Shael, Sol)
- And one nice Hork: a Twitchthroe, which stands a chance of being either a nice merc or melee character armor once it's socketed and upgraded.

I kept the Hexfire and Twitch for future socketing/personalizing purposes... we'll see what I find that competes. In the meantime, though Solo should do just fine for a while. I know I wouldn't mind seeing him again soon.
 
Re: Skunkbelly's Ultimate Tournament Challenge 2011

jians... Do you really find frw and fhr useful in normal/early nm? To me there are far more useful mods early game. Because life is low a pruby is worth so much more. monster damage is low so pdr is much more useful. At this stage +def actually has an effect, unlike the end of the game.

Fhr and frw? To me they are secondary, by a large margin. If you are in a situation where a 1 frame quicker hit recovery can help in normal or nightmare... I don't know, I just can't see it.

And poison res is pretty useless too. Just take an antidote to the andy fight.

That said I always make them too. Force of habit maybe

Ps. Nice work skunky. I had the exact same stashed items after act 5 normal!

That upped beatstick would be mega tasty

pps. I an interested to know which skills you are boosting first, it was a tough choice with solo for me (kinda). What is your approach?
 
Re: Skunkbelly's Ultimate Tournament Challenge 2011

soulmanz said:
jians... Do you really find frw and fhr useful in normal/early nm?
Click to expand...

FHR, not much unless it´s on a merc armor, or if it´s a really weak melee character that struggles a lot in the fights.

FRW definitely, because it helps for making the game less tedious when selling stuff, and also to run away from monsters in an already-cleared area when starting a new session.

soulmanz said:
To me there are far more useful mods early game. Because life is low a pruby is worth so much more. monster damage is low so pdr is much more useful. At this stage +def actually has an effect, unlike the end of the game.
Click to expand...

All good points. To be honest, I haven´t thought about it that much, because in all other tourneys, I am fully decked out in topazes, of course. :)


If I take Antilles I played in Act I NM as example, I simply preferred the convenience of FRW on Stealth over anything else available. He was a very safe character, with nearly maxed resists, 75% blocking, >750 life and a melee merc that was leading the way and taking the brunt of the onslaught. There was no need for additional defensive modifiers from the armor. Other than in the Andariel fight, I don´t think he ever dropped below 3/4 life during the act.



 
Re: Skunkbelly's Ultimate Tournament Challenge 2011

It's good to see all the different playstyles, and preferences. Thats one of the fun parts about these tournaments.

ps Anyone else notice all the D2Legit ads lately? whats up with that.
 
Re: Skunkbelly's Ultimate Tournament Challenge 2011

yeah jiansonz, thats all fair too ... but obviously there are characters not as massive as antilles (he really is a bit overpowered right now!). I fall in the same trap - frw for convenience over something safer .. and I suspect others here do to.

Interesting thoughts all round.

just got a Lum from the cathedral super unique! thinking about smoke. Why couldnt it have been an Io to match my Dol? I guess this way I dont have to shop for hours in act 1 normal for the ultimate wand, so that is nice.
 
Re: Skunkbelly's Ultimate Tournament Challenge 2011

Bad news for Mothma...

She couldn't gain a single level in act 1 :(

I received Mothma at level 58.1 and will be sending her on at 58.8
She came very well prepared with crafted gear besides her tarnhelm( socketed with 15@ jewel )and tearhaunch. I switched her shield to rhyme for the blocking and supplemented some charms for the resists. She was using a white ceremonial javelin, which seemed like the natural imbue. The results were not too impresive, but at least got 2 skills. Killed andy and countess 10 each and ran the entire act at p8 the whole time. Countess didn't do great, she dropped 2 hels and several shaels. I did get an IO and KO on the way down to her though. All in all a great character, she will continue to dominate through NM, but I fear for her in Hell as she has no back-up to lightning. I highly recommend that the next person make a good merc upgrade in act 2, but I don't know why anyone wouldn't anyways :)

The only real contributions I made to her were to add some nice life/resist charms to getr her life up a bit.
 
Re: Skunkbelly's Ultimate Tournament Challenge 2011

urrgghh .... tooo much drognan shopping! mind going crazy

so I found an io to go with the dol I had. Now trying to shop a grey wand to upgrade from the already good +2 summoning wand on hand.
+RS +SM is stupidly rare though, like ... I havent seen it at all for over an hour. I know it can exist because I have found them before, but ... damn

i have a current tie between a +3CE, +3GM and a +3RS and a +3SM to drop a white into, which has inherent +3CE and +4SM. I think I will try again tomorrow, a white with +3RS, +7SM is probably end game for dooku

someone convince me to stop shopping! PLEASE!
 
Re: Skunkbelly's Ultimate Tournament Challenge 2011

soulmanz said:
someone convince me to stop shopping! PLEASE!
[/spoiler]
Click to expand...

If it is for a Skellimancer, the skeleton skills are good enough with the native points. Go for +3 to Dim Vision instead. Or you can go for an even bigger CE.



 
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Re: Skunkbelly's Ultimate Tournament Challenge 2011

I was pretty excited to get this map for my Black Marsh WP. Figured with 4 shrines right next to the WP I could do some gem upgrading to get some decent crafting gear. But no such luck. Don't know if shrines are predisposed to roll from a certain subgroup, but I have noticed similar behaviors on LK maps before. Speaking of LK, that map was like a mini Act1 LK. There were sooo many poppables scattered through that shrine cluster. Never seen anything like it before.

I also had a quick question about fade. I might just be crazy, but it seems like shrines don't last as long when faded. Is this some kind of programming bug that ties the shrines in with shorter curse duration?
 
Re: Skunkbelly's Ultimate Tournament Challenge 2011

I don't think it is a programing bug, but yes the duration is reduced just like a curse. so just cast BoS, hit shrine, then fade again and you won't have a problem. Shrines are somewhat static, a little like racks, but Gem, Monster, and Portal shrines are all very rare. I had a black marsh wp with 3 around it in my craftsman tourney map that I ran a lot and was pretty successful at, and also popped a lot of stuff around them too. It was a lot safer than LK, so I liked it.
 
Re: Skunkbelly's Ultimate Tournament Challenge 2011

Brak said:
I also had a quick question about fade. I might just be crazy, but it seems like shrines don't last as long when faded. Is this some kind of programming bug that ties the shrines in with shorter curse duration?
Click to expand...
You are not crazy. Fade reduces Shrine duration by the same percentage as it reduces curse duration. To avoid reduced Shrine duration, cast Burst of Speed before touching the shrine; once you touched the Shrine, cast Fade again.
Only works with an assassin of course

Edit: Damn ninjas, shouldn't have double checked :P


 
Re: Skunkbelly's Ultimate Tournament Challenge 2011

The short shrine duration on Fade is an annoyance mostly for non-assassins using Treachery as what an assassin can do with a shrine is switch to Burst of Speed for a moment, touch the shrine, and then switch to Fade again. Then the shrine will last its regular time. Classes that can't cast BoS are stuck with short shrines under the effects of Treachery's Fade.

It may be my imagination, but I have noticed that some shrines tend to be drawn from certain pools. Sometimes it seems a given shrine on a map is more likely to be an interesting shrine like an exp shrine or skill shrine and sometimes it seems that a given shrine on a map is doomed to always be a standard recharging or mana shrine. I'm always happy when I get a bunch of shrines near a WP and sometimes (not in this tourney) I'll reroll shrines near an A1 WP before facing the Ancients or something like that. Of course, whenever I do that, they turn out to be Cursed but hopefully I'll recognize that quickly and reroll them before they actually do any cursing.
 
Re: Skunkbelly's Ultimate Tournament Challenge 2011

Intersting note about the shrines. I haven´t noted anything like this since I only "do" each area once, but I have seen that health and mana shrines are very common, and seem to be guaranteed to show up at least 1-2 times in most areas. Maybe Recharge Shrines, too.


purplelocust said:
Of course, whenever I do that, they turn out to be Cursed but hopefully I'll recognize that quickly and reroll them before they actually do any cursing.
Click to expand...

Yeah, but there always a risk that one of their weapons will have that annoying '5% ctc Amp' affix, that triggers early if you are unlucky...



 
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