Tournament: Envious of the Green and Gold

[Dazliare1]

It's uh...been a good session

http://i.imgur.com/LwAJL04.png

This thing upped could provide some really great CC later in the game. Unfortunately, the damage kinda blows too

 

[jiansonz]

@Dazliare: Nice finds!
(And you summed up Woestave really well.)


Holy Freeze merc worked quite well in the Arcane Sanctuary. He needed no help to quickly kill goatmen, and a little poison/OW help made the Ghoul Lords easy pickings as well. Since the cold damage does nothing to them, they can't be that physical resistant. Exhibit B for that: we fought a Stone Skin boss that was not PI.

The Specters were handled by luring a small pack to a good killing ground (meaning: loot-able spot under them), let the merc tank them while Eric attacked one of them with Goreshovel. Whenever the one he was hitting went below half life (=> the ctc Static on Hwanin's armor no longer useful) or if the merc was taking too much damage, I'd Shock Wave them. A lot of grind but I got through it. I think I'll keep the HF merc for the rest of the act.

Finds today: Undead Crown, and one of the chests in the last treasure end had a Lem rune.
If I can find a Ko rune now, I can upgrade a unique armor item to elite (preferrably something with a large +% defense bonus)


[Highlight]Conqueror Eric the Werebear and Jemali the Holy Freeze Guard, level 82, 12 S/U items equipped, Hell Canyon of the Magi next[/Highlight]

 

[Dazliare1]

Awesome progrees Jian! Priscilla, too, has completed the Arcane Sanctuary, though only in nightmare for us haah.

I posted this earlier, but I think it got looked over. Could you give a quick rundown about how you choose mercs and when to swap them around? Seems like you swap a lot, and it would be helpful to know what benefits I might be missing

 

[jiansonz]

Could you give a quick rundown about how you choose mercs and when to swap them around? Seems like you swap a lot, and it would be helpful to know what benefits I might be missing

My excessive merc swapping in this tourney has mostly to do with my struggle with physical immnues. Not all my switches have been useful. I thought a merc wielding Skystrike would be a PI solution, but she does too little damage (so gameplay gets boring) against other monsters. Now if I could find a Goldstrike Arch or Witchwild String...

In general, I just go with the type that I have the best weapon for (at least as long as I care about them getting the kills for more MF). With no good weapons available, there is always the Act III Cold merc who will do a good job anyway.

In NM and Hell Act V, I usually prefer Act I merc for the large outdoor areas and the RoF bonus areas but the melee mercs provide better safety in the more narrow ice caves and WSK areas.

 

[japanzaman]

OK, so I've gone ahead and started a Barb, as they appear to be somewhat under-represented. I haven't decided if I'll go Concentrator or Berserker just yet- that kind of depends on what gear I end up finding. I'd like to take a shot at a Berserker, but only if I've got a decent shield to use. Concentrator is safe enough, but it gets kind of tedious chopping through the game at snail pace. I plan to take full advantage of Find Item, so hopefully over the long term he be a decent character.

Name          Character    Class       Diff.   Area               Level    S/U's Equipped
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Archone       Chicken      Necromancer  Completed                    87          15
jiansonz      Martina      Amazon       Completed                    87          13
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
jiansonz      Eric         Druid        Hell     Palace              82          12   
Grisu         Meronym      Assassin     Hell     Rogue Camp          75          14
Dazliare      Priscilla    Assassin     NM       Rocky Wastes        50          14
Kitteh        Briony       Assassin     NM       Inner Cloister      50          13
igloosPat     Hennifer     Assassin     NM       Black Marsh         50          13
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
felixbavaria  Bruno        Druid        NM       Cold Plains         48           9
srrw          Selene       Sorceress    NM       Rogue Camp          48          11
jdkerr        Phusis       Assassin     NM       Rogue Camp          47           9
RIP           Thor         Paladin      Normal   Harrogath           35          11
Immortal_S    GreenGoldie  Paladin      Normal   Harrogath           34           8
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Glenstorm     Irene        Assassin     Normal   Kurast Docks        27           3
HC Gunther    Fireyogi     Druid        Normal   Kurast Docks        28           4
HC Gunther    Zutalors     Paladin      Normal   Kurast Docks        27           4
Enceladus     Vengence     Paladin      Normal   Dry Hills           23           5
Tox FTW       Oatmeal      Paladin      Normal   Dry Hills           22           2
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jason         Qirana       Amazon       Normal   Rocky Waste         22           4
kestegs       SankeEyes    Sorceress    Normal   Lut Gholein         21           3
Jerametrius   Passion      Paladin      Normal   Lut Gholein         20           2
Morathi       Yates        Barbarian    Normal   Lut Gholein         20           0
japanzaman    B_Lucky      Barbarian    Normal   Inner Cloister      19           2
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AnjaS         Beril        Barbarian    Normal   Outer Cloister      17           1
kstarm        Malice       Necromancer  Normal   Outer Cloister      17           0
djmbbandie    Rage         Druid        Normal   Rogue Camp           1           0
Kitteh        Brydon       Druid        Normal   Rogue Camp           1           0
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

[HC Gunther]

Zutalors reached the Lower Kurast Waypoint, No S/U drops, nothing of note happened.

[Highlight]Zutalors the Smiter and Durga the Prayer Guard, level 30, 4 S/U items equipped, City of Kurast next[/Highlight]

Name          Character    Class       Diff.   Area               Level    S/U's Equipped
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Archone       Chicken      Necromancer  Completed                    87          15
jiansonz      Martina      Amazon       Completed                    87          13
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
jiansonz      Eric         Druid        Hell     Canyon of the Magi  82          12   
Grisu         Meronym      Assassin     Hell     Rogue Camp          75          14
Dazliare      Priscilla    Assassin     NM       Rocky Wastes        50          14
Kitteh        Briony       Assassin     NM       Inner Cloister      50          13
igloosPat     Hennifer     Assassin     NM       Black Marsh         50          13
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
felixbavaria  Bruno        Druid        NM       Cold Plains         48           9
srrw          Selene       Sorceress    NM       Rogue Camp          48          11
jdkerr        Phusis       Assassin     NM       Rogue Camp          47           9
RIP           Thor         Paladin      Normal   Harrogath           35          11
Immortal_S    GreenGoldie  Paladin      Normal   Harrogath           34           8
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HC Gunther    Zutalors     Paladin      Normal   Lower Kurast        30           4
Glenstorm     Irene        Assassin     Normal   Kurast Docks        27           3
HC Gunther    Fireyogi     Druid        Normal   Kurast Docks        28           4
Enceladus     Vengence     Paladin      Normal   Dry Hills           23           5
Tox FTW       Oatmeal      Paladin      Normal   Dry Hills           22           2
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jason         Qirana       Amazon       Normal   Rocky Waste         22           4
kestegs       SankeEyes    Sorceress    Normal   Lut Gholein         21           3
Jerametrius   Passion      Paladin      Normal   Lut Gholein         20           2
Morathi       Yates        Barbarian    Normal   Lut Gholein         20           0
japanzaman    B_Lucky      Barbarian    Normal   Inner Cloister      19           2
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AnjaS         Beril        Barbarian    Normal   Outer Cloister      17           1
kstarm        Malice       Necromancer  Normal   Outer Cloister      17           0
djmbbandie    Rage         Druid        Normal   Rogue Camp           1           0
Kitteh        Brydon       Druid        Normal   Rogue Camp           1           0
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[/QUOTE]

 

[japanzaman]

Okay, I'm sure this has been addressed somewhere in this thread but as I'm new and too lazy to sift through all the posts I was hoping somebody could fill me in a little bit on what to do in the event a barb gets 4 unique weapons. The rules state that the merc must use the third slotted weapon, but this obviously doesn't work in a barb situation, who can have up to 4 weapons equipped at once. Right now, I currently have 3 set weapons on my barb. Should my merc be weaponless now, as per the rules? Or can I wait until the 5th one drops to make the call?

 

[Dazliare1]

Priscilla has made landfall upon the eastern port known as the Kurast Docks. After battling her way through scarabs, vultures, hordes of undead, and even a few ghosts, the lord of pain was the only one standing in her way. He fiercely guarded the Archangel, eventually sacrificing his life in the process. Tyrael himself seemed....ungrateful. Pity.

I must say, without prime damage output, act 2 on P8 is just a drag. Both the real tomb and Kaa's tomb (coincidentally the two largest) spawned ghoul lords and extra mummies. Maybe someone can shed some light, as I thought mummies always spawned, but they seemed to spawn in packs of 4-5+ rather than just one or two in the other tombs. With the burning dead being resistant to meteor, it usually took CoS (careful to avoid cloaking the sarcophagi) + dragon flight to take down one mummy, then get a few death sentries up and hope we didn't get overwhelmed. With this tactic, we had very few real issues, just a lot of tedium. Duriel himself was another exercise in tedium, with being slowed and having less than stellar accuracy. He dropped four yellow items.

4 S/Us total in this act, which I find very disappointing. Tal Rasha's helm (A killer find! But I can't use it yet), berserker's hatchet, Woestave, and Iratha's Helm. Having zero mf is huge bummer. I think I'm going to use my normal socket quest on Skin of the Vipermagi and stick a topaz in it. As it were, I have no worthwhile jewels to use.

I'm hopeful that the jungles will proved a little more fruitful, and a little less tedious. Meteor should handle the soul killers and flayers well. I'll admit I'm worried about bone fetishes and shamans, and to a lesser extent travincal.

Priscilla, level 60 Phoenix Striker, 14 S/U's equipped, NM Spider Forest next

 

[jiansonz]

Nice going!

I must say, without prime damage output, act 2 on P8 is just a drag.

How can you not have prime damage output in Nightmare with a Phoenix Striker??

Both the real tomb and Kaa's tomb (coincidentally the two largest) spawned ghoul lords and extra mummies. Maybe someone can shed some light, as I thought mummies always spawned, but they seemed to spawn in packs of 4-5+ rather than just one or two in the other tombs.

There are six different monster types that can spawn in the seven tombs: Preserved Dead, Unraveler (together with Burning Dead), Apparition, Ghoul Lord, Gorebelly and a type of beetle (forgot the exact species name). In each tomb you get three of these, picked at random. Apart from boss packs, their spawn pack sizes are 4, 1(+(6-8) skeletons), 4, 2, 3 and 5, respectively. These are the individual spawn pack sizes but that does not mean you can't get several spawn packs close to each other...

I'll admit I'm worried about bone fetishes and shamans, and to a lesser extent travincal.

CoS works wonders against shamans (no Inferno, no resurrections) and for the bone fetishes, use CoS then get 1-2 Metors falling and back off before they land.

 

[Grisu]

Nice going, Dazliare! I was lucky in NM with those fetish shamans, because I had 95% Fire Resistance...but in your case I'd do it as jiansonz says. Yeah, it's a bit tedious, but it works, you can throw in a Charge III Phoenix Strike from time to time, too, to keep those Flayer shooters from running away.

I'm facing a moral conundrum: 5 days ago, I was halfway through clearing the Cold Plains with my Phoenix Striker, when my daughter awoke. I haven't been able to play since, so I let my PC go into hibernation mode. Unfortunately, when I started up my PC yesterday to check my mails and sent it into hibernation again, windows update installed new files and restarted the PC over night, as it seems...it will be very difficult to judge, which parts of the map I've already cleared, esp. because packs don't always spawn in the same place...oh well, I guess

Family >>> Diablo

 

[jiansonz]

@Grisu: I say just do the best you can to play the amount of Plains you have left, and we'll be OK with that.
I've done this many times when the game was much more prone to crashing for me than it is now.

 

[Dazliare1]

Nice going!

How can you not have prime damage output in Nightmare with a Phoenix Striker??

There are six different monster types that can spawn in the seven tombs: Preserved Dead, Unraveler (together with Burning Dead), Apparition, Ghoul Lord, Gorebelly and a type of beetle (forgot the exact species name). In each tomb you get three of these, picked at random. Apart from boss packs, their spawn pack sizes are 4, 1(+(6-8) skeletons), 4, 2, 3 and 5, respectively. These are the individual spawn pack sizes but that does not mean you can't get several spawn packs close to each other...

CoS works wonders against shamans (no Inferno, no resurrections) and for the bone fetishes, use CoS then get 1-2 Metors falling and back off before they land.

You're generally right - most stuff I haven't had much of an issue with. Just the burning dead with extra mummies. Their increased fire resistance means I really struggled to gain enough momentum, and often had to focus fire the unravellers. Unfortunately, it wasn't until the last tomb that I had even respectable poison resistance (found a 28 PR GC), so I was having to play pretty conservatively

 

[Grisu]

You're generally right - most stuff I haven't had much of an issue with. Just the burning dead with extra mummies. Their increased fire resistance means I really struggled to gain enough momentum, and often had to focus fire the unravellers. Unfortunately, it wasn't until the last tomb that I had even respectable poison resistance (found a 28 PR GC), so I was having to play pretty conservatively

Drawing away the burning dead, the casting CoS and then Dragon Flight on the Mummies works wonders, if you manage not to get surrounded by skeletons... Still, the tombs really can be a pain to clear. I'm so not looking forward to the tombs in Hell...

EDIT:
The last boss in Tristram just dropped a Nagelring, that is my 2nd unique ring :jig:

Other recent finds are Soul Harvest and Crown of Thieves. The latter is an upgrade for my merc, but I'll stick with IK's Will for now because of the additional MF - as long as my merc's survivability is good enough without life leech.

Had a bad encounter in the 2nd level of the Underground Passage with 2 skeleton boss packs who came up the stairs for those combined mods: Cursed, Might Aura, one pack Extra Strong, mana burn...had to reposition with Dragon Flight and separate the mobs with CoS, which cost me 6 purples or so, but I still got plenty in stock

[highlight]Meronym, Phoenix Striker, and Ethelred, Barbarian merc, level 77, Hell Black Marsh next.[/highlight]

 

[HC Gunther]

Jiansonz, does the length of the stun of Shockwave get reduced in Nightmare or Hell? What is your current skill point distribution?

 

[jiansonz]

Jiansonz, does the length of the stun of Shockwave get reduced in Nightmare or Hell?

Doesn't seem like it gets reduced, I get the full 10 seconds. It's amazing. Occasionally it even works on bosses but I have not figured out the rules for that.

What is your current skill point distribution?

Maxed Lycanthropy, Maul and Heart of Wolverine
Shock Wave 15
All three vines 1
Werebear 11 (this gets the rest of the points)

 

[Grisu]

Doesn't seem like it gets reduced, I get the full 10 seconds. It's amazing. Occasionally it even works on bosses but I have not figured out the rules for that.

It works 1/10 on boss monsters/champions and works on all monsters in the game (even Lister) except for Act bosses. The stun length doesn't get reduced in later difficulties, but stun length maximum is 10 seconds (at slvl 15).

 

[HC Gunther]

Doesn't seem like it gets reduced, I get the full 10 seconds. It's amazing. Occasionally it even works on bosses but I have not figured out the rules for that.

Does Maul keep its full stun time in Hell as well?

I was researching Smite and one web site said that the stun duration gets halved in Nightmare and quartered in Hell, which really reduces the value of it. As Smite can trigger a CtC on my weapon, I was thinking that Smite would be good for the CtC tourney as it would provide a little crowd control in addition to triggering the CtC's, but a 1.1 second stun time at level 20 isn't going to be useful.

I was wondering if Shockwave had the same reduction in stun duration. So thanks!

Maxed Lycanthropy, Maul and Heart of Wolverine
Shock Wave 15
All three vines 1
Werebear 11 (this gets the rest of the points)

Thanks!

 

[Jcakes1]

It works 1/10 on boss monsters/champions and works on all monsters in the game (even Lister) except for Act bosses. The stun length doesn't get reduced in later difficulties, but stun length maximum is 10 seconds (at slvl 15).

this. It really is an amazing CC skill.

 

[Grisu]

Meronym defeated Andariel and all I got was this lousy drop. Seriously: WTF!?!?!? I mean, the fight was easy, yes, but still...

I hated those zombie boss packs in level 3 of the catacombs, because they are really tough and can hit pretty hard.

The worst was a stair trap in the Pits, 2nd level, though with 1 extra fast cursed Might archer pack and one goblin boss pack (extra strong and some other mods). No room to maneuver whatsoever, the Goblins got resurrected by a shaman off screen again and again and the cursed+Might caused my merc to die like 15 times, each time I had to withdraw a few steps more till there was nothing else to do but DF to the Shaman off screen and hoping that there wasn't another boss pack waiting. FOrtunately for me, there wasn't, so I cleared that corner of the level first and then withdrew the boss archer with CoS from the rest of the pack and killed her first, using DF to reposition so that she wasn't running away towards the other boss pack again...

A few other notable finds were my 2nd IK's Will, Dark Adherent (2nd item out of this set after Telling of Beads) and a Gul Rune. No use for it in this tourney format, but hey! Still nice!

Now on to the desert, were 5+ hours of tombs are awaiting me :crazyeyes:

[highlight]Meronym, Phoenix Striker, and Ethelred, Barbarian merc, level 79, Hell Lut Gholein next, 14 S/Us equipped[/highlight]

 

[jiansonz]

Haven't played much lately. Some progress has been made, though. There were tricky and dangerous starts in two of the tombs but I've managed. Insane boss pack density sometimes. One small tomb had three Gorebelly boss packs, an Apparition boss pack and three Ghoul Lord boss packs and a Champ pack!

In the third tomb, I finally found an amulet. Nice, no more empty jewelry slot. It was a find that would soon improve my MF by 50: Vidala's Snare. After this tomb, I switched out Hsaru's boots for Vidala's. It cost me 17 units fire resistance (dropped down to single digit, but fire is not a big issue for a while (Ghoul Lords can't use Meteor)) but boosted cold/lightning resist and raised my max life to 1644.

I got lucky with Ancient Kaa. I had already lured out all Apparitions and skeletons in the room (quite many, as there were three more Unravelers in Kaa's room), one Unraveler and 5 out of 6 Ghoul Lords. In fact, I was fighting the last Ghoul Lord when Kaa walked up to us. He bumped into the Ghoul Lord and stopped. After Jemali had killed the vampire, he could hit Kaa but Kaa could only breathe gas and shoot Unholy Bolts. Very lucky incident. Amplify Damage does nothing when the damage is just lightning, poison and magic. Jemali did get hit by bolts but it was only one stream and he could steal back most of the lost life. Eric had trouble finding a good spot where he could avoid bolts, so I changed plans and used Poison Creeper instead.


[Highlight]Conqueror Eric the Werebear and Jemali the Holy Freeze Guard, level 83, 13 S/U items equipped, Hell Tal's tomb #6 next[/Highlight]