Our killing power has waned a bit at the start of act 2, so we had to buy a new weapon for Yau. Progress is still fairly quick and safe, but we are starting to have trouble with the bigger mobs, especially if they pack a decent punch. We cleared our way to Creeping Feature, who gave us a hard time. He hit hard, and slowed us to a crawl, so we had to try not to get hit as it got dangerous quickly. So we spent the fight weaving in and around the pillars and smacking him once or twice before he hit us.
Luckily Yau still packs a decent punch, so it didn't take long to whittle him down this way. The whole time all I could think was "There are no pillars in Duriel's chamber". We'll deal with that when we get there. For now it was enough to keep
using doorways to take care of tougher packs.
An El rune dropped at the end of the Stony Tomb, so we took a visit to Fara and made ourselves a 'Steel' Battle Axe. This was a nice increase to our killing power, but most importantly the IAS makes our attack speed significantly better, which will save a great deal of our sanity. The cube was then retrieved without any issues. We then went down to the sewers, and the 'Steel' Axe continues to rip through everything we encountered. The unleechables gave us a few problems if they were in big packs, as we don't have any life or mana leech yet. Other than that it was easy, and Radament was taken down
without any trouble.
The Maggot Lair is perfectly suited to Yau with his single-target, high damage attack. The monsters just line up to get taken out one by one. No issues there. Onwards we went to the CVT, and cleared the first level. We were a bit nervous for Fangskin's room, as if Yau gets trapped in a pack of snakes, the knockback could be big trouble. We took the stairs and edged forwards, Fangy was nowhere to be seen. So we cleared the room counter-clockwise around the top of the altar to give us some room just in case. Fangskin and his pack were in the lower corner of the room, and woke up as we approached the altar, so we made a mad dash and got to the stairs JUST before his pack caught us. From there it was easy, as we could take the snakes on 1-2 at a time. We also had Hunger now, so all of our leeching problems have vanished into thin air (aside from unleechables, as it does not work against them).
The arcane sactuary again was very well suited for Yau's style, so it went without a hitch. Time for the false tombs! The tombs only became a problem if they were populated heavily by Unravellers (as usual). Unleechables are the bane of Yau's existance, but leading them out of resurrection range and then running in the kill the Unraveller proved a successful strategy. We only drew Unravellers in 3 out of 7 tombs (including Kaa's and the true tomb), so all in all the tombs went pretty quickly. Kaas' tomb gave us some serious trouble right off the bat. The layout was the entrance into the one big room, and it was populated with a
champ pack of unravellers. Luckily they spawned across the room from the entrance, so we could park the skeletons (and some accompanying zombies) by the entrance, and portal back in to take the unravellers alone. Even so, it required a few town trips to restock healers. After that, the rest of Kaa's tomb was a breeze and he was taken out
with no problems.
We didn't know quite what to expect out of the Duriel fight, but we knew it would be bad. Chilling is just about the worst thing that can happen to Yau, as his attack speed is already pretty slow. Couple that with no merc for distraction, no blocking and the fact that we're taking him on /p8 and we were starting to get a little bit worried. We will definitely be wanting a source of CBF in the future, so we'll have to look into our options there. For now though, we were just thankful the leech from Hunger would still work on him. So in we went, and threw up a portal right away. Our first priority was getting a few hits in to charge up Maul, and hopefully get OW activated. We quickly found out that tanking for extended periods of time was not an option, as the chilling just left Yau as a sitting duck. So once we got our hits in, the fight looked alot like this:
We would smack him a couple times to keep Maul going, and tried to keep him bleeding. With this strategy, and a ton of town trip to restock pots, Duriel's health was slowly but steadily dropping. Eventually we got him down and took
our final stand. It looks like I forgot to take a screeny of his drop, but for once it was actually useful! Or rather, it WOULD have been useful in any other tournament, as he dropped 36% Chance Guards. It figures that they would drop in the tournament with MF restriction.
Oh well! For now Yau is resting at the Kurast docks before resuming his lonesome adventure.
Finds:
I'm surprised at how many S/U are dropping even with 0% MF, even if most of it isn't too useful. Here is Yau's haul from Act 2:
- Isenhart's Armour and Sword
- Cathan's Armour and Staff
- Gorefoot Heavy Boots
- Chance Guards (36%MF)
- Crushflange
- Hsarus belt (currently in use)
Yau the Titan Mauler Bear - lvl 28, Kurast Docks
Found quite a few low runes, but haven't made anything further than the two swords earlier. Perhaps I make up a Nadir, seems to be pretty popular.
