In the land of ranged attackers, Teleport has easily been the MVP skill. Quickly in and quickly out telebombing to make Waheed suffer less damage (and give him time to heal when we have fled). Many resurrections have also been needed.
When I look at my screenies, there are none that shows the main gameplay against all these ranged attackers, not even from situations that were very interesting. The explanation is simple - the action was so fast that there was no time for screenies.
Burning Dead Archers and Slingers on the foothills. A couple of times the archers were so many that I had to lure parts of a massive gathering away from the others. It takes time but it's usually possible. When achers are close enough to notice us but not close enough to fire, they will move closer if the terrain allows it.
Found an ethereal Colossus Voulge here. It has 4 sockets max, so it could make a very damaging Insight. I did not want to use one of my two remaining socket rewards on it - those are planned for other things. As my current merc weapon was good enough and my other planned merc weapon felt within reach, I settled for a shot with the socket recipe.
50% chance of success. It worked, and the roll on it was also good!
The STR requirement is taken care of with the help of Twitchthroe (202 with it).
As this was a slower weapon, I went back to an earlier difficulty to socket Waheed's helm with a Ruby Jewel of Fervor. No, not
the famous RJoF, but one where Ruby means fire resist (really weird that they use the same prefix name for two different things. Oversight?):
This was a pecfect fit now - the fire resist was exactly enough to take Waheed's to 75.
Arreat Plateau had imps and Blood Bringers. I think the latter are the hardest hitters in the game when it comes to
damage per hit of a non-boss monster. Frenzytaurs and Minions of Destruction may be stronger meleers overall but that's because they combine decent hard-hitting with a fast attack speed. Combine the strong base damage of a Blood Bringer with something that boosts damage and you get a powerful boss. Amp on top of that makes for a real beast:
Bane Dancer killed Waheed five times.
Thresh Socket was just as bad - Cursed Might Spectral Hit!
PI frenzytaurs in one of the bonus areas. Sissy helped Waheed fighting those so he did not have to suffer so long.
A boss of these critters could have been troublesome but there were none.
A look at her stats at that time:
AR is almost where I want it now. With the new DEX investment (to have enough for Gimmershred), blocking has increased to 28%.
The following ice caves had pretty easy monster draws. Speedy chilling archer women can be tricky to fight for a melee merc but Teleport makes it much easier, as you can lure them to you and force them into walls and corners.
Grailer in a container:
Too late now for something with that kind of strength requirement - it's not that good anyway. I looked up the partial set bonus for two items in this set (I have Haemosu's armor). Pathetic.
The tactic in Pindle's garden was to force Waheed to stay back with teleports so he could meet the first undead in the narrow passage close to the portal. He got knocked back a little and hurt a little but with potion help and a re-teleport, he could hold his ground. Nice, I've been wary of this area.
Two very easy monster types on first floor of the temple - apes and melee skeletons. Devilkin packs made it tricky anyway. The narrow halls makes it harder to get the warriors away from the shamans. But unlike their relatives in Act I, these aren't FI so they die very quickly. Warriors bouncing all over the place.
When I mopped up the last bits of this floor, the 'ignore merc' bug hit. That, along with the fact that a skeleton had dropped a very significant Ko rune made me save and exit after this floor. I could imagine many monster types where ignore merc bug would be really bad for me.
Okay, last socket reward used, Fal cubed from Ko x2 and Lum x3, beastly weapon created:
The ctc casts lower level Enchants than my L23 version and it does it without Warmth synergy and Mastery bonus, but it's apparently still good enough to kill PI monsters (the -fire resist on enemies helps).
The session started with me luring Pindle's pack closer so I could teleport over it and reach the exit. Scary, but I've done this before. Then a quick-but-controlled dash with occasional teleports through Halls of Valor. Lucked out a bit here - few monsters at first, then just Devilkins again.
Very hectic and action packed Halls of Pain, against Zealots/Heirophants, porcupines and Flayer blowdarters.
Last floor of the temple had two types of PI monsters: Ghosts and Hell Temptresses. Large packs of Temptresses were hard to fight. No leech made Waheed take tons of damage quickly. Sometimes I could break up large packs by luring away (tempting the temptresses
) some of them but they were often stubborn.
One of Nihlathak's abilities was Teleportation. Talk about fail...
In order to protect Waheed and myself from the only real danger in the fight, I made sure to explode the corpses first:
What a mess it became. The 11 charges were enough to last the fight (I could afford to have Waheed take a few when I was well away. His CE radius (and damage) is nerfed a lot since v1.09 where he could often one-hit you from off-screen). I know it says the weapon has 12 charges but the last one does not work. I prefer the Diablo 1 way where you can actually wrest out
one more than the listed number of charges if you are quick...
Waheed is so amazing with his new weapon! Really fast attack speed, it chills and the damage is so huge that his only life steal (3% on the helm) makes him able to tank almost any leechable melee mob. Obedience also has a decent Defense bonus. I think Waheed has well over 6600 Defense now, and that is with gear that isn't much suited for Defense. If my rune luck had been better, he could have had an ethereal elite 'Stone' armor or something like that...
Recent finds:
- Steel (111) Grand Charm of Strength (5) Awesome!
- 4s Champion Axe (requires just 1 more STR than a Silver-Edged)
A weapon like my Obedience must be very easy for twinking players to assemble. I sometimes read about twinked characters and I then often think: "with merc gear like that, why do you need the character to do anything?".
[Highlight]Conqueror Sissy the Axe Enchantress and Waheed the Defiance guard, level 86, Hell Ancients' Way next[/Highlight]
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