Matriarch Calista, Immortal Queen Bear

purplelocust

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Nov 4, 2003
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[highlight]Summary:[/highlight]

Sorc wearing much of the Immortal King set uses Beast to transform to a bear and enchants herself, with steady progress through Hell at /p8.

[highlight]Background:[/highlight]

A bearsorc will make good use of enchant, not just for the fire damage but also AR is important. She only invested in elemental masteries and the Enchant skills. The partial bonuses of the IK set give good elemental damage at good speed, so the masteries help increase the damage there. She loaded up on +life and +elemental damage charms. That may not have been optimal in that there were AR problems late in the game, so she switched out some for those later.

She basically played like a Vengeance paladin- a single-target attack with multiple elemental damage types so immunities were not a problem. She had a big life pool and really the major issues were unleechables which were a recurring annoyance.

[highlight]Gear: [/highlight]

Immortal King set: 2 Shael IK maul, boots, gloves, belt.

Headgear: 1.07 Harlequin Crest

Jewelry: Mara's amulet, with big leech and big strength 1.07 blood rings

Code:
Storm Grip
Ring
Required Level: 54
Fingerprint: 0x5ac2e759
Item Level: 48
Version: Expansion
31% Life stolen per hit
+14 to Strength
+85 to Mana
8% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items

Viper Grip
Ring
Required Level: 51
Fingerprint: 0x3b6b5027
Item Level: 48
Version: Expansion
34% Life stolen per hit
+13 to Strength
+4 to Energy

Beast and Sigon's shield on switch

Code:
Beast
Superior Caduceus
BerTirUmMalLum
One Hand Damage: 141 - 164
Durability: 77 of 77
Required Level: 66
Required Strength: 97
Required Dexterity: 70
Fingerprint: 0x971c08e1
Item Level: 81
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Level 9 Fanaticism Aura When Equipped
+40% Increased Attack Speed
282% Enhanced Damage
+150% Damage to Undead
20% Chance of Crushing Blow
25% Chance of Open Wounds
Prevent Monster Heal
+3 to Vengeance (Paladin Only)
+2 to Conviction (Paladin Only)
+3 to Lycanthropy
+3 to Werebear
+27 to Strength
+10 to Energy
+2 to Mana after each Kill
Increase Maximum Durability 10%
Level 13 Summon Grizzly (5/5 Charges)
5 Sockets (5 used)

Body: Treachery, a favorite of mine and Duress, shared between her and the merc. Late in A5 Hell, she became high enough level to wear a 1.07 Arkaine's Valor which boosted her life about 600 more.

The obvious problem is no source of Cannot Be Frozen.

Charms:

Most of the game she was packed with small charms of elemental damage and +life, with pretty impressive totals for elemental damage, about 600 lightning damage before the mastery increases it, with some fire as well.

Merc gear:

The later weapon was eth Reaper's after an earlier beta CM 1.07 eth thresher, headgear was Crown of Thieves and later Andy's Visage, and the torso was Treachery/Duress, whichever Calista (ed: Calafia) wasn't wearing at the time, and then Treachery/Arkaine's at the end.

[highlight]Stats and Skills:[/highlight]

Name: Calafia
Class: Sorceress
Experience: 1205547062
Level: 86

Naked/Gear
Strength: 161/265
Dexterity: 75/100
Vitality: 249/469
Energy: 35/54
HP: 663/1455
Mana: 205/290
Stamina: 398/398
Defense: 18/2435
AR: 325/807

Fire: 107/67/7
Cold: 29/-11/-71
Lightning: 60/20/-40
Poison: 29/-11/-71

[highlight]Skills: [/highlight]

Fire tree: max Enchant, Warmth, and Fire Mastery

Cold tree: one point in Cold Mastery

Lightning tree: max Lightning Mastery

14 points left over. I did think about putting points into Telekinesis and using Energy Shield, but my experience with staffmod Energy Shield experiments was that it was a pain when ES collapsed when she was in bear form, which was pretty much all of the time. She did look a little funny with that gold ball near her bear head.

[highlight]LCS:[/highlight]

At battle with Ancients:
Damage after Enchant: 6k-13k
AR: 3741
Life: 4005
Resists: 75/69/50/69 with Fade and thawing and antidote potions active.
Resists without Fade or pots: 37/-41/-10/-41

[highlight]Gameplay:[/highlight]

Normal and NM went well as a bow enchantress. Raven Claw to Kuko and then good progress to reach level 65 for Beast in late NM.

Once she became a bear and switched to proper melee gear, things went quite well. I think she entered Hell at level 76, with resists in the negative 20 to negative 50 zone. But with a big life pool and leeching, it was OK.

I postponed investing in STR and used a lot of +STR gear, including those fabulous rings. I later put more in STR and should have done it sooner, as there isn't as much need to scrimp on STR for a character which doesn't get a lot of life out of her VIT investment.

Being a shield-less attacker, she generally had no problems with Fade not triggering. When it wore off, she switched armor with the merc and it generally went off again quite quickly, although in late Hell A4/A5 it seemed to not go off as readily. That's likely from her becoming more leveled-up, I think.

Her resists were terrible. In A2 Hell poison was pretty regular occurrence and she made a lot of quick TP trips to visit Atma. The merc appreciated such regular visits as he seemed to be green for much of A2 as well.

Not having CBF with a melee character is a pain. The usual solution, Raven Frost, would have meant giving up quite a nice ring, so I decided to just try without. In Classic, it's pretty common to just suffer with being frozen as there are very few options for CBF so I figured I would manage. I did manage but it was a concern. There were a few bosspacks which were troublesome with cold damage slowing down her attacks, and thus her leech, upon which she was pretty reliant for keeping the red bulb happy.

A hell council member dropped not only the gold-colored Khalim's, but also a gold-colored General's flail, a nice pairing.

A4 Hell went pretty smoothly, although there was a FI/PI venom-lord bosspack that took some care. The CS and Diablo went well. I actually kind of miss IM in there, I have to admit.

One way I often test if I could use an AR improvement is by seeing how much a Combat Shrine helps with killing speed. Her damage and attack rate were quite good, but if she's not hitting much, that isn't so great. It was pretty clear from Combat Shrines that she could use an AR upgrade, so I did make some dex investment and few charm changes. Probably going with a standard Raven Frost would have been a better overall plan.

For the last year or so, I've been doing Hell Ancients battles as "deathcage" matches, even in SC. This started with the 12 Labors tourney and I've been keeping it up with all my characters. For me, this is a big change in gameplay as before I have been known to reroll the Ancients using TPs so many times that they became round and wobbly with not-exactly-fearful mods like "teleporting." But now I play with no TP, no save-and-exit, fight to the death, on /p8. And Calista (ed: Calafia) had a pretty manageable battle, though it took a while. The mods she got were OK-ish. Madawc had teleporting (really!) and spectral, Talic was EF, spectral, and was Korlic: FE EF. The elemental damage mods were a concern, since her resists were negative once the Fade wears off and the prebuffing with potions for cold and poison can wear off. But the merc's decrepify took the edge off and though she did have a number of fat purples and did need to grab some from her piles on the ground, there were still plenty around at the end.

The WSK had bad monster rolls with gloams and unleechables so that took some care. The throne had a bad combination also: OK's, snakes, and the FI frenzytaurs. I'd had some problems with those FI frenzytaurs on the Ancient's Way earlier so those took good patience. There was one frenzytaur boss which was FI/PI with nasty mods that really took a while.

The waves were OK. Achmel was a pain with such hard-hitting poison and I chose the run-and-separate to handle Lister's bunch. Baal was no problem in comparison, with the Decrepify making the outcome inevitable.

[highlight]Finds:[/highlight]

Best rune was her forge drop, a Ko. The good news was that her Baal drop had 3 uniques; the bad news was that two of them were Sparkling Mail and the Patriarch. (The other was Lycander's) She did have some good socketed items drop, Windhammer and a Horizon's as well.

[highlight]Plans for the future:[/highlight]

Not much really, I'll shift my attention to an amazon bear who has been making good progress.
 
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Nice job finding a creative approach to building a character! Nice write up too- maybe this will inspire me to make use of all this gear I've been stashing away.
 
Thanks for the comments. I have way more gear and projects that I seem to have for actually finishing off projects...

Well spotted on the name- it is indeed Calafia, for the warrior queen from whose name the US state of California might come. My mentioning Calista was somehow me mixing up another possible name, based on Callisto, a nymph who was transformed into a bear, so either seemed appropriate!

I did go back and edit the name in the post body, but cannot change the thread title, oops!
 
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Nice mat, impressive damage!

Would you have been able to do it without the hacked rings?

And you had an opportunity to shove those extra points into thunderstorm! The monsters wanted a proper tickling.
 
The big leech rings made it easier but were by no mean needed, and were largely out of convenience since I was raiding gear from a character who had been using them. She had good leech just from the IK gloves already, those rings gave additional safety and big +STR. More of a pain were unleechables, particularly ranged ones or when they weren't mixed with something leechable. Switching to Drac's would be the usual solution for unleechables and she was hitting fast enough for that, but that would have messed up some of the IK set bonuses.

I did think a little about Thunderstorm or TK as investments. Or a cold armor, as she didn't have anything there. I probably should have done TS and TK, just for a more completely decorated bear: faded from Fade, shiny hat from TK, glowing ring from TS, maybe Chilling Armor...

I am thinking vaguely of building a TK bearsorc at some point for self-MPing (with a BO barb and an a maxed Enchantress who would both stay in town) as that would free up 20+ points from Enchant and Warmth that could go to ES and TK. I do have a +3 ES/+3 lightning skills orb somewhere for that project or for other ES sorc use.
 
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