A Lack of Information (A S/U Worshipper Tournament)

[JudgeHolden]

Snoop-ii is still alive! I'm not sure precisely what level I am... high 50s? Clearing the false tombs of Tal Rasha.

I've had 3 near-death experiences, basically just me being a little too cavalier about using dragon flight to jump on top of boss packs. I've stopped doing that.

Play has been pretty good. In the tombs I usually just chill in a doorway and let the whole room crowd in front of me, then meteor everything to oblivion (after an initial freeze).

Here's hoping I don't get obliterated by Duriel... planning on doing it at /p1, and my merc is actually pretty sturdy so I think it shouldn't be a huge issue.

Equipment upgrades:

-Natalya's boots. which give a nice boost to LR, plus the run/walk speed thing is nice. Plus its made for assassins so definitely more stylish.

-Charms: Got a couple charms to boost my LR. Now with fade all my resists are pretty solid for nightmare.

-String of ears belt. 4 rows and some very nice mods... but if I stop using the arctic belt then I lose the 40%MF from arctic belt+armor. Then I'd only have like 15%MF from a single nagelring. At what point does the benefits of alternate equipment outweigh the 40% MF of the arctic belt + furs? If I wasn't wearing the arctic belt and furs, then I could use string of ears, iceblink armor, and face of horror mask.

-Also, how might one decide whether a unique is end-game-worthy enough to blow a socket quest on it?

 

[jiansonz]

-String of ears belt. 4 rows and some very nice mods... but if I stop using the arctic belt then I lose the 40%MF from arctic belt+armor. Then I'd only have like 15%MF from a single nagelring. At what point does the benefits of alternate equipment outweigh the 40% MF of the arctic belt + furs? If I wasn't wearing the arctic belt and furs, then I could use string of ears, iceblink armor, and face of horror mask.

-Also, how might one decide whether a unique is end-game-worthy enough to blow a socket quest on it?

Those are questions with no clear answers, that's one thing that makes touneys like this so interesting.

Nice going, and congrats on finding Natalya's Soul, some of the better S/U boots out there.

 

[Pb_pal1]

@JudgeHolden - Those are tricky questions, as they are both completely situational. As for when to sacrifice MF for killing/survivability, again it depends on the character. I try to stay in full MF gear as far into NM as possible. In your situation (where MF is very scarce), I would keep going with the arctic combo, hoping for some better gear before Hell.

As for the socketing question, I typically use my Normal and NM socket rewards to put perfect topazes into my gear to boost MF. Sometimes it's an easy choice (like Miasma's Tarnhelm), and sometimes it's tougher to commit to using it on a piece that you may not carry forward. If I make it far enough to get my Hell reward, I will use it to fill a gap somewhere (some resistances on an armor, or maybe a Shael into a merc weapon, etc). Don't forget, you can always use a Hel rune and clear out the topaz for something more useful later on if you are still using that piece.

These S/U tournaments are difficult as you may simply not see MF pieces, and there is no real way to control it other than to pop some topazes into your best gear.

--

Miasma stepped out into the Bloody Foothills, and was immediately accosted by these lovely fellows for a fun beginning to the act:

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That's a conviction-enchanted Skeleton archer pack (PsI, no less), accompanied by a Fanatacism-enchanted Imp pack. LR can break the immunity of the skellies, but even then poison nova was next to useless, so Miasma took the task of keeping everything under Dim Vision while Azrael took out the enemies. We kept this strategy up for the duration of the foothills, as those archers can be quite dangerous if they get a couple good shots in. Slow and steady we made our way up to Shenk, making sure everything was constantly blinded or confused, and we managed to off the Overseer. After deciding to use our socket quest now rather than save it, we popped a PTopaz into Miasma's Sigon's Amour (it's the best we have available at the moment, sadly) and headed up to the Frigid Highlands. We killed Eldritch and his crew and then got to see our monster draw for the area; the same PsI archers, imps, and lashers as well for added annoyances. In between keeping everything blinded, and waiting for Azrael to take out all the PsI doorways, catapults, and towers our patience was tested. If this is a taste of what Hell will be like, I'm in for a loooong ride. Eventually we cleared the highlands, rescued the barbs, and killed Sharptooth before clearing out Abaddon and officially avenging Karna (this was where she died).

I guess Act V decided to try and kill Miasma primarily by makeing progress not only incredibly slow, but also terrifying. We drew Slingers and Death Slashers (the ground-spike guys) in the plateau, both of which could kill miasma quite handily if they got some hits in. I have no screenshots from this area, as Miasma spent the whole time frantically casting DV and trying to keep Azrael alive. We got a couple bad boss packs, and Miasma got hit by a few spears here and there (knocking about 40% of his life off), but did eventually manage to clear it out (along with the Pit of Acheron) before moving into the tunnels.

The Crystalline Passage was no kinder to us with it's monsters. First we ran into this guy, and then his buddy just down the way:

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That second boss pack killed Azrael I think 4 times, and sent us scrambling for a TP on several occasions. Luckily, after these two nasty boss packs, the rest of the passage wa relatively calm. Never fear though, any semblance of calm quickly left us once we went down into the Frozen River. I won't be able to do it justice by describing it, so I'll let this picture do most of the talking for me:

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And yes, that's the entrance. Here's a quick run-down of what happened. As soon as we went down the stairs multiple streams of lightning came flying at us. We made the silly mistake of throwing out Confuse instead of DV (I thought I had DV hot-keyed, oops!), which as is typical, drew a pile of new monsters in. Soon the Succubi's stars were flying at us in huge numbers, and the gloams were piling in, we frantically threw DV about while pounding some rejuvs. Azrael was getting slammed (as you can see), the doorway was cut off, more monsters kept coming, we knew this was not sustainable. Miasma girded his loins and did the only thing he thought could save him at this point. He slammed some mana pots, cast as much DV as he could before Azrael died, and he ran. As he ran, one of the cold mages managed to tag him and chill him. So now he was basically walking away from that hellish fray. Somehow, someway, he made it and managed to TP out. Whew! That was absolutely wild, and definitely the scariest moment of Miasma's journey thus far. Once we came back in and established position, the rest of the river was quite tame, and we rescued Anya who gave us some stupid yellow necro head as a reward. You're kidding, right? And that scroll from Malah? Useless. Talk about being underappreciated!

After this, we cleared out the glacial trail, and icy cellar, before heading down to take out that hack of a necromancer Nihlathak. Confuse made Pindle's garden harmless, as well and Pindle himself. The first two floors of the temple were quite easy, as we finally got ourselves some good monster draws. Nilly's floor was a bit tougher as we once again had PsI skelly archers (cold, this time), along with Prowlers (Miasma did NOT want to take a charge to the face). DV kept everythign safe, and Nilly himself was actually a joke. Azrael shatters almost everything, and PE took care of anything he did not turn to ice cubes. So with his CE nullified, it was just a waiting (and chasing) game with our old pal.

Miasma took a break here, and is praying for some easier monster types for the next leg of the journey. The finds continued to pile up, but nothing of any use was found.


Other finds:
- Magnus Skin (Bloody Foothills)
- Duskdeep (Frigid Highlands)
- Sigon's Belt (Arreat Platueau])
- Iratha's Amulet ([url=http://i.imgur.com/B4IHTfF.jpg]Frozen River)
- Sander's Gloves (Halls of Pain)
- Diggler (Halls of Pain)
- Isenhart's Horns (Halls of Vaught)


[highlight]Destroyer Miasma the Poison Necromancer, with Azrael the Thorns Guard - lvl 72, NM Frozen Tundra[/highlight][/url]

 

[JudgeHolden]

Thanks for the advice as always, jiansonz and Pb_pal!

snoop-ii has completed Act 2 NM. The false tombs were mostly fine... CoS makes unravellers much less annoying, and they die quickly to meteors. Thanks to the Natalya boots and some charms my LR is much better, so hordes of beetles were more manageable as well. Those giant dudes with the stunning hits were great, as they tended to block doorways, and the rest of the monsters all crowd around, so I'd drop like 4-5 meteors on them and kill almost the whole room. My AR with phoenix strike is over 6k, thanks to the blessed aim merc and the big AR boost from the cleglaw set. I thought about switching to a holy freeze merc, but I really like not having to worry much about AR.

As for items, in the 2nd to last false tomb of tal rasha I got a stormguild shield. Then, in the last false tomb, I got a stormchaser shield. The stormchaser seems like a pretty good shield (+50% LR, good blocking)... I'll probably end up using it if I ever ditch the cleglaw set. Plus, I consider the fact that stormguild and stormchaser both dropped an undeniable omen that stormshield will drop in hell... not that I'll have enough strength to equip it.

question: What do you guys think about putting a socket in iceblink for a ptopaz? Then I'd only lose 16 MF compared to arctic fur+belt, and I'd gain the advantages of string of ears, iceblink (i wuv hit freezes target), and face of horror.

 

[jiansonz]

question: What do you guys think about putting a socket in iceblink for a ptopaz? Then I'd only lose 16 MF compared to arctic fur+belt, and I'd gain the advantages of string of ears, iceblink (i wuv hit freezes target), and face of horror.

Sounds like a good set of survival gear, but you really lose 40 MF because the alternative would be topazed Arctic Furs, no?

 

[JudgeHolden]

Well I wasn't really thinking about socketing arctic furs... regardless of what else drops, I plan on getting rid of the furs+belt set in hell, so that I can get a 4-row belt going. Of course, hell is a long way away... we'll see if I make it! I will consider this a personal win if I just beat NM.

My other gear worry now is the weapon/glove/shield combo. The cleglaw set is pretty darn good right now, except that dang shield. Super low blocking, and not much else going for it. Compare to the stormchaser which has a much higher blocking, huge lightning res. Without the cleglaw set, I'm also thinking I might not have a hell-worthy AR.

snoop-ii is currently level 60 (almost 61), at the great marsh waypoint. CoS has made gloams not TOO big of an issue, although they still hurt when they get a few lightnings off.

edit: i wrote the wrong waypoint earlier

 

[JudgeHolden]

I went for it and socketed iceblink with a ptopaz using the normal socket quest, so now I'm using string of ears, face of terror, and iceblink instead of arctic furs, arctic binding, and milabrega's crown.

I might be imagining things but I find myself way, way more durable. I'm guessing that the damage reduction from string of ears? Plus the hit freezes target is a huge help.

Also, whats the deal with magic damage reduced by (integer)? Is that actually a good mod or is it just a drop in the bucket considreing the big damage that monsters deal out in NM and hell?

I'm growing tired of the cleglaw set... the shield in particular... but I need some other source of AR and mana leech in order to ditch it. If I can get those, I was thinking about using my NM socket quest (if I make it that far) to put a pdiamond in stormchaser shield.

Still in act 3... lower kurast.

 

[Pb_pal1]

@JudgeHolden - I'm not really well versed in integer MDR/PDR, but I know both are useful enough to make a difference in decent numbers. Maybe someone with more knowledge on the matter will come along. Glad to see snoop_ii is feeling safer, great progress!

--

Miasma figured that Dauntless_Train was probably getting lonely in hell all by himself, so he decided he would make a push to either get there or die trying.

The session started off well, when about halfway through the Frozen Tundra we found Sigon's boots. Sweet, we are already wearing the armor (with a PTopaz, no less), and found the belt recently too! So after clearing the rest of the Tundra, we muled the belt back on and got ourselves a nice 50% MF boost. This brings us to 209% now, nice!

The Infernal Pit and Ancient's Way provided little resistance, but the Icy Cellar was a different story. We ran into a double boss pack of Frenzytaurs (One and Two), accompanied by some snakes. Needless to say this was terrifying, and Mana Burn is quite scary for Miasma since he needs to be able to throw out curses at any point (Extra Strong and Spectral Hit are no cakewalks either of course!). We got pushed all the way back to the entrance by these guys, and they ended up killing Azrael. Luckily, we had a TP set up already far enough away from the stairs that we could park the two packs (and some residual snakes) in a little cul-de-sac right by the entrance. After Tp-ing back in, offing Snapchip, and clearing the rest of the level, we tried to figure out just how to deal with those packs. There was no way we could take them face-to-face, and seperating them would be tough down here. Luckily, we caught a huge break!

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PN could JUST reach them if they were right at the water's edge, so we coaxed them in by attracting the closes enemies, and then put up LR and killed a few of them off. Once we had a couple corpses, Poison Explosion did the rest and we managed to kill off most of them this way. Once it was down to the bosses, we changed position a bit and were able to take them out across the water as well. Whew!

With that, it was time to head on up and activate the altar. The Ancients were actually extremely easy. All we did was keep them under Decrep while Azrael poked them and Miasma flung novas their way. They actually ended up killing Azrael when I didn't manage to refresh Decrep in time, but even then Miasma could keep them busy with gumby while he whittled them down. Obviously that won't work in Hell, but we have plenty of time to figure out an alternative plan by then.

WSK 1 drew Succubi, Invaders, and Rogues. We had to be quite careful here as the succubi kept casting amp on us, and I did NOT want to get smacked by anyone while that was active. We ran into a couple scary packs, such as this, but Attract kept us in the clear, while DV stifled the Succubi. WSK 2 had gloams, soul killers, and beetles. DV was again the hero, and everyone fell easily to PN. WSK 3 was a breeze and had imps and blow dart flayers, which is a blessing for PN.

No stair-trap in the Throne, but this Frenzytaur boss pack gave us a bit of trouble. Eventually the Throne was cleared and it was time to start the waves. Waves 1+2 were easy and went by in a flash. Wave 3 managed to kill Azrael with the hydras once, but was otherwise harmless. Wave 4 took a while to kill, as they are PsI. We led them out of Decrep range, and kept them in a big ball of Confusion while azrael turned them to ice cubes:

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We were seriously worried about the final wave, as they have 95% poison resistance, and are immune to AI-altering curses. Turns out our worries were unfounded, as through Bone Prison and strategically placed Clay Golems, we seperated quite easily and could take them on in groupings of 1-2 outside the Throne Room. Lister himself was even a pushover. So we popped the /p setting down to 3, and it was time to take on the big cheese himself!

If you've been following along, you'll know that the other two Prime Evils took 8 and 9 minutes to bleed out, respectively. Well I guess Baal isn't in charge for nothing, as he lasted a whole 12 minutes! Decrep and CG reigned supreme, and Azrael even managed to get the always fun Baal-shatter on death, so we didn't even have to clean any puke off of our drop. (The ring was a 16% Nagel btw) Here is an obligatory LCS-upon-Baal-death shot for you guys:

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So with that, we saddled up and headed to the farm. Now we MEANT to put it to /p5 for cows, but I guess muscle memory took over and we took them on at /p8. Oops. Right off the bat we realized that we had bit off more than we could chew.

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There's a champ pack in that mess somewhere, and very shortly after this a Conviction-enchanted boss joined the fun as well. Great. The cow portal isn't shown on the mini-map (must be JUST out of range), but it's due east of the fences up there. So with lots of portal hopping, and about 400k spent on merc resurrections, we finally thinned out the herd to a manageable size. After the initial onslaught, we had a decent amount of area to work with, so we managed the rest of the level without too many issues. The Cow King died easily, and soon we were officially done with NM, albeit at the cost of most of our gold and full juvies. Oh well, we'll just have to find some more.


Other finds:
- Mal Rune (Frozen Tundra)
- Chieftain (Frozen Tundra)
- Ghoulhide (Ancient's Way)
- Arctic Horn (Ancient's Way)
- Gorefoot (Ancient's Way)
- Vidala's Boots (WSK 1)
- Eth Steelclash (WSK 2)
- Sureshrill Frost (Cows)


I'll give a gear update before he starts Hell difficulty, he just has to decide what to wear first.


[highlight]Conqueror Miasma the Poison Necromancer, with Azrael the Thorns Guard - lvl 75, Hell Rogue Encampment[/highlight]

 

[Kestegs]

Welcome to hell! I'll start playing my paladin again soon, as soon as the mfo is over.

Integer DR can be really good, but not against everything. It's not going to be great against hard hitters like hell lords or gloams, but against things like flayers or mages or other small hits it can help out a ton. Reducing hits from 50 damage to 30 damage makes you way more durable.

 

[jiansonz]

As for MDR, I think it's pretty useful against elemental damage that is dealt in many smaller chunks, like Flayer Shaman Inferno and Diablo's Firestorm.

 

[JudgeHolden]

My PDR is percentage, the MDR is integer. In any case, I seem a lot more hardy since putting on string of ears!

Let's see... last update I was in LK. Well the rest of act 3 was pretty much fine. A couple nasty bosspacks in those little disused temples, a couple of which required frantic portalling. I did /p1 against the council to be safe, but they went down so incredibly quick I think I could have done a higher setting. Somewhere in the durance of hate I got a tancred amulet. Pretty useless on its own, but I put it on for the meph fight along with the tancred military pick on switch for the last hit against mephisto to try to benefit from the 78% magic find that you get from the ammy with 2 set items on... got rewarded with a bunch of yellows. Also in act 3 I found an angelic ring. This is great, as since I have the ammy I can now get some nice AR without cleglaw gloves. Finally, I found another Natalya's Soul boots in Act 3, this one a little better in terms of LR and a little worse in terms of CR.

Happily, not long into act 4 angelic armor also dropped! I had the angelic sickle from normal difficulty. So iceblink and face of terror go back on the merc, and I try out the complete angelic set with stormchaser as my shield. Its working out wonderfully. There's no mana steal, but with the various mana boosts from gear it isn't an issue at all. All resists except poison are 75 with fade, and I have over 100MF, which I've really noticed in terms of drops.

So Act 4 was fun as always. Doom knights gave my merc big problems... nothing else was too horrible. Diablo on p1 was ok... no good drops.

On to act 5! Currently at the glacial trail waypoint, having cleared the halls of anguish/pain/vaught. I got pretty easy monster rolls in the halls. One annoying thing is CoS crashed the game in the halls of pain. I have no idea what caused it... maybe a flesh spawner?

Of course, moment of silence in Abaddon for Karna.

In terms of drops, got a lidless wall shield. The only mod on it that I really like is the +1 skills... I mean the mana boost helps somewhat but I was done fine with mana without it. I'm using it now, but I suspect in hell I'll need to go back to stormchaser for the +50LR and better blocking.

Currently, level 72, glacial trail. Max phoenix strike and claws of thunder, 10 points in fist of fire... nothing left to do but pump up shadow warrior.

Gear: full angelic set (just 1 ring), nagelring, lidless wall, natalya's boots, milabrega crown, cleglaw gloves. Cleglaw sword and shield on switch for bosses (crushing blow from full cleglaw set).

Current gear wishes? my merc wants a higher damage weapon but I love the big LL from the bloodthief. The milabrega's crown isn't doing much for me. The cleglaw gloves just have the knockback, plus they give me CB when I am on weapon switch. The knockback is actually really nice with blade fury against dangerous bosses because I can pin them agaainst a wall helplessly while the merc and shadow hack away.

notable runes:
hel, io(x2), lum, pul, shael x4, um

One thing I don't know anything about is upgrading stuff using the cube, or just in general what if anything to do with these runes and gems that are piling up in atma.

 

[jiansonz]

The cleglaw gloves just have the knockback, plus they give me CB when I am on weapon switch. The knockback is actually really nice with blade fury against dangerous bosses because I can pin them agaainst a wall helplessly while the merc and shadow hack away.

That's why I really like Crushflange as a Blade Fury weapon. On low players setting, it's also doing good damage with the CB.

One thing I don't know anything about is upgrading stuff using the cube, or just in general what if anything to do with these runes and gems that are piling up in atma.

There are fewer recipes than usual to choose from in this tournament. It's mostly the ones that upgrade uniques that are of interest here. And even then, be aware of how high the new requirements are going to be before you upgrade stuff.

As for extra Pgems, you could try to reroll yourself some nice resist/life charms for Hell.

 

[Pb_pal1]

@JudgeHolden - Wow, great progress! Jiansonz pretty much nailed it for cube recipes in this tournament. Weapon upgrades and charm re-rolling are just about the only useful things to do. Also glad to see the gear is starting to fall into place.

No more progress from Miasma yet, but I figured I'd get a new table in here for snoop's huge progress (a whole difficulty from the last table!).

--

The Proven (Guardians):
Forum Name      Class        Char Name        LVL    ACT      Area
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Azimuthus       Amazon       Furiosa          83     --       Game Complete

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Table of Heroes:
Forum Name      Class        Char Name        LVL    ACT      Area
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
kestegs         Paladin      Dauntless_Train  81     A3(H)    Kurast Docks
Pb_pal          Necromancer  Miasma           75     A1(H)    Rogue Encampment
JudgeHolden     Assassin     snoop_ii         72     A5(NM)   Glacial Trail
Southpaw8668    Amazon       Witchie          65     A4(NM)   Pandemonium Fortress
jiansonz        Paladin      Beren            61     A3(NM)   Lower Kurast
EasyG           Barbarian    Ignorant         ??     A3(NM)   Kurast Docks
Naturallog      Sorceress    Permafrost       53     A2(NM)   Lut Gholein
Dazliare        Necromancer  Covenant         28     A2       False Tombs
Virtue          Assassin     ThisWontEndWell  26     A3       Kurast Docks
srrw            Sorceress    Zoey             25     A2       Palace
SunsetVista     Assassin     Kalandra         23     A2       Far Oasis
U.i.n.i.u       Necromancer  SetUnique        ??     A2       Lut Gholein
Lord Molybdenum Paladin      Zarquich         17     A1       Outer Cloister
Bry             Necromancer  BoneCut          15     A1       Black Marsh
Jocular         Paladin      Grok             12     A1       Stony Field
Sid             Druid        Berta Reed       1      A1       Rogue Encampment

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Fallen (RIP):
Forum Name      Class        Char Name        LVL    ACT       Area
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Southpaw8668    Necromancer  Mithik           80     A3(H)     Spider Forest
Pb_pal          Assassin     Karna            67     A5(NM)    Abaddon
Azimuthus       Necromancer  BoneVoyage       62     A3(NM)    Upper Kurast
Southpaw8668    Paladin      Wolfswift        51     A1(NM)    Cathedral
JudgeHolden     Druid        The_Kid          38     A5        Pit of Acheron
JudgeHolden     Assassin     snoop            30     A3        Flayer Jungle
ranagrande      Druid        Orbin            34     A4        Diablo
Jcakes          Paladin      Ares             ??     A4        Diablo
Bry             Sorceress    ScruffMcBuff     31     A4        Plains of Despair
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

[Sid1]

Well, I knew I'd be back soon, after my last tourney character bit the dust (in my own tourney even).

I absolutely LOVE S/U items in D2... (true story - I listened to the first 8 books of Jordan's Wheel of Time series in Audiobook format while doing (mostly) Mephy runs... if you are not familiar with WoT, believe me, that's a LOT of runs)... so this tourney seems perfect for me

Ima go with a Druid, named Berta Reed. It's an anagram

The only Druids I've ever gotten anywhere with were Lycanthropes. However, I always had in the back of my mind that I'd like to play a pure caster Druid (that is - no shapeshifting at all). Kesteg's Bowler in my tourney has inspired me to give a pure caster Druid a go. I know Windy Druids are a thing, but I haven't read any guides and don't intend to (at least until I get relatively high level). I doubt I'll go Windy anyway... I like the idea of Fire/Summoning better, although I'm not sure how practical it is. I guess I'll find out

 

[Pb_pal1]

@Sid - Welcome to the tournament! Fire/Summoner Druids have always intrigued me, so I'm excited to see how it goes for you. I've edited you into the table a couple posts back for completeness. Good luck!

 

[JudgeHolden]

Molten boulder is ridiculously fun and quite strong in normal and even early NM. Fissure deals big damage.

Snoop-ii has completed NM! Now level 74, Hell difficulty, rogue encampment.

The rest of act 5 NM went well. A handful of tense moments, but nothing ever got completely out of control. Ancients at p1 was fine... tried to separate them, failed, and just took them all at once. I need to learn how to separate them if I get that far in hell! WSK level 1 was, if I recall, gloams/cadavers/poison skeleton mages. The cadavers and poison mages were obviously a cake-walk. In NM and with CoS, gloams were no biggy either. WSK level 2 and level 3 both had frenzytaurs, the unfreezable kind... this required some splitting up tactics.

The minions of destruction and baal were both taken on at p1. The minion waves were all super easy... lister the only small exception, but his minions are freezable so that was nice. Baal was super quick and safe... neither the merc nor I required a potion. I used the CB switch (cleglaw set) to get his life down, then back to main (angelic set + lidless wall) for the kill, hoping for a good drop. Got a bunch of yellows and blues.

However, I got a noteworthy drop in WSK3, I think from a frenzytaur boss pack: Black Hades chaos armor. Maybe this could go on the merc to replace iceblink? But what of the 3 open sockets? Is there anything worth throwing in there other than ptopaz's, assuming resists are ok?

As for snoop-ii in hell... I haven't left the encampment yet, but I've checked out my stats. With fade, and if I ditch lidless wall for stormchaser, and put a pdiamond (NM socket quest) in stormchaser, then I will have 75% LR, 75% FR, 30% CR, and negative PR. I have some resist poison charms.. would it be necessary to use those? And is 30% cold resistance acceptable?

 

[Old_Frog]

@Sid - Welcome and good luck with the Fire Druid, they are always fun up until you reach all those FIs in late NM and throughout hell. However Volcano and Armageddon both do physical damage like bolder does, so at least you will have two types of constant damage output apart from your weapon and summons. From what I've read Armageddon works best with 20% R/W or less on your boots for better angle of your meteors falling.

 

[jiansonz]

As for snoop-ii in hell... I haven't left the encampment yet, but I've checked out my stats. With fade, and if I ditch lidless wall for stormchaser, and put a pdiamond (NM socket quest) in stormchaser, then I will have 75% LR, 75% FR, 30% CR, and negative PR. I have some resist poison charms.. would it be necessary to use those? And is 30% cold resistance acceptable?

This looks good. Don't bother with poison resist, just don't keep on fighting if you've been hit by heavy poison. Drink an antidote or return to town. 30% CR is OK, but don't be down in life if you plan on standning in death novas of CE bosses. For fights where cold damage is a major threat, boost with Thawing potions in advance.

 

[Old_Frog]

Witchie eventually ventured out of the Pandemonium Fortress and was immediately greeted by her biggest threat yet. Gloams and Knights, so she got in her groove and started casting Slow Missiles frequently every time she would venture out a little from her fellow warriors and start getting the streams of lightning shot at her. This was the tactics primarily moving throughout these open areas.
View attachment 2598
The dark red Valkyrie has proven most effective against the strong poison based attacks now more frequently encountered. Another great benefit to the Skystrike bow is that when she runs out of arrows she has the built in Magic Arrows to fall back on until she can either find some more or get back to town to purchase them.
View attachment 2599
Here is the Valkyrie getting mobbed by Knights with their strong poison attack and she is suffering little to no damage from them, very durable tank indeed given she's spawned with the correct mods.
View attachment 2600
Here she's getting heavily mobbed by a FE/Cursed Venom Lord boss and minions with poison damage and still very little damage taken, as long as I kept Slow Missiles active to shorten their Inferno attacks and we keep them chilled.
View attachment 2601
This place was a hornets' nest and I knew it from all the movement I saw within the dark reaches of the desecrated structure. The moment we approached the bridge very cautiously they came from all directions to the crossing and the Valkyrie did her job well and tanked them for like 10 minutes while we softened them from afar.
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Here was the leader of the pack with some pretty nasty mods, I think he had a Holy Fire aura going and his Spectral Hit. Here was a point we ran out of ammo and had to switch over to MA, but I think I took a portal back to town to speed things up since Strafe always delivers much better CTC Meteors.
View attachment 2603The Hell Forge dropped us a Lum a PTopaz, FTopaz and Topaz. Nice!
This screenshot sums up CS, even though the Knights were FI they still fell pretty quick to the combination attacks of the party and of course Slow Missiles kept everything in check.
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Here Witchie practices her spear technique with the Kelpie once again and the Valkyrie is quite impressed with her powerful gluteus maximus extensions and piercing potential on the large red demon. This took some time might I add after forgetting to dial down the difficulty and dropped that sucker on /p8 and he still dropped junk.
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Witchie and crew, Level 67, Harrogath

 

[Sid1]

Thanks for the words of encouragement guys, and Southpaw for the tips. I'll certainly keep it in mind.

No real progress to report yet - I'm only through the Den of Evil, but about to play some now...