Tao
Tao picked up from the Outer Cloister and tore her way through the rest of Act 1 really easily. At this stage Hydra is just stupidly powerful, so nothing gave her any resistance. Once we made it down to Andy, Hazade des
almost instantly, despite buffing with antidotes. Tao ran Andy in circles for a few minutes while laying down Hydras, and was eventually
successful.
So here she awaits for Gort to arrive before departing for Lut Gholein. More on her later.
finds:
- The Impaler (sold due to space restrictions)
--
Sheela
First things first, we upgraded Gaile's bow to a Gothic Bow, which actually enables her to kill some monsters before Sheela wipes them all out. Things have finally started to get a bit dangerous for Sheela now, and she has been using CoS and MB more and more as she progresses. We still have maxed resistances without Fade, but she's starting to feel squishy.
Progress is still quite quick though, and she moved her way through the wilderness easily,
kick-locking Blood Raven into a bush and moving on. One highlight of the act though was this
awesome amulet she found, which will make Tao quite happy indeed.
We got quite a nice greeting in the Pits level 2:
.
Note the archer boss who is quickly making her way to join the fun as well. She was Stone Skin and Extra Fast. That is NOT a fun combination of mods to deal with for Sheela, especially when under Fanatacism from the other boss, and with such limited space. Through lots of CoS, MB, and Shadow re-casts (along with a few emergency juvies!), we did eventually clear the level out.
Andariel was given the reverse-portal-park, as per usual. As you can see, Gaile didn't make it, but Sheela and the shadow had no trouble
finishing her off.
finds:
- Manald Heal (kept for now)
- our 2nd Spirit Shroud (we had to sell it for space, but we wouldn't need two anyways)
--
Gort
Since the ladies were hounding Gort to catch up, he decided to do a quick
clear of the cows and officially join them in NM.
With some crafting done by Tao and Sheela along the way, Gort now has some mana leech and is no longer dependant on the blue stuff. Gort is an absolute juggernaut right now, to put it simply. High defense from Concentrate, Shout and Chalan's Defiance make sure that things hardly ever hit the duo. Add in a huge life-pool, high leech, and War Cry to stun everything and they are near-untouchable right now. The killing is a bit slow, but that is to be expected with a single-target attack.
They smashed their way through, killing
Blood Raven, saving Cain, killing the Countess and even having a run-in with everybody's favourite reincarnating boss
Black Hack before hitting the Outer Cloister and level 51. This means that all 3 characters can now craft freely, which alleviates a huge headache of always swapping ingredients around.
Gort took this opportunity to do a pile of crafting, since he wanted to actually make some of his own equipment for once, instead of only using gifts from his lady-friends. He is proud to say that he and Chalan are now both completely outfitted solely in crafting gear, which he thinkgs is pretty cool. We also upgraded Chalan's Pike to a pretty decent Yari:
.
It has more damage, ctc amp, and a WSM of 0 (vs 20 for the pike, yuck!), so that should up his killing power quite dramatically.
The rest of the act was uneventful.
Pitspawn was smoked, and Andy herself didn't even pose
much of a threat, even with Chalan dying 1/4 way through the fight. Gort has CB from his gloves, and OW from his belt, so that helped to
emerge victorious.
Finally the girls could stop bugging him, and the trio took the trip to Lut Gholein together.
finds:
- Chance Guards (39%!) (we kept these in case Tao ever leaves Tier 1)
--
[b
]Tao (again)[/b]
Not content to just sit around talking, Tao left the comfort of Lut Gholein.
First though, she switched out her merc for Waheed, who sports a nice HF aura. His aura should help Tao's Hydras have a better chance of scoring more hits, so we feel he compliments the team well. We will miss Hazade's old Prayer aura, but it's nothing some healing pots can't fix.
She met her first innate-FIs in the sewers (Burning mages), but Waheed had no trouble killing them, and the dup quickly made their way to
Radament, and promptly turned him to a pile of ash.
Not much to say from this act, really. Waheed is performing well, and once his level caught up and he grew out of his squishy phase, things were very straightforward. One thing I love about sorcs is their ability to easily gain tactical advantage over Fnagskin:
.
Before we knew it, we had cleared all the false tombs, killed
Kaa, and were staring down the True Tomb. It went smoothly as well, with only this
FI Ghoul boss giving us a bit of a headache. The big bug himself fell quickly and harmlessly to Tao's Hydras
.
He left us a
couple gems to cube, but nothing else noteworthy.
finds:
- Heart Carver (kept, just in case)
- Nat's boots (kept, although I think Gort is going to stick with crafts only from here on out)
- Ko rune
- Goblin Toe (we're going to keep them for a bit, but I doubt they'll ever get used)
--
Destroyer Gort the Conc. Barbarian with Chalan the Defiance Guard - Tier 3 - lvl 53, NM Lut Gholein
Destroyer Tao the Hydra Sorceress with Waheed the Holy Freeze Guard - Tier 1 - lvl 60, NM Kurast Docks
Destroyer Sheela the TS/DTail Assassin with Gaile the Cold Rogue - Tier 2 - lvl 52, NM Lut Gholein