eBotD Archon Staff Sept - Progress and Planning Thread

Was it the ribbon that wrapped around your legs and tripped you? :p
Hahaha pretty much! Seems fitting that one of the sillier guesses won in the end, considering the choice to make him in the first place. I was actually genuinely worried about the 'Clay Golem Cast' guess for a while until I realized all I had to do was unbind it from a hotkey and I'd be ok. :LOL:

And now I don't have to feel guilty about having a Pride IG sitting around gathering dust!
 
With the necro done, it's time to turn my attention to the 3 remaining ladies of the sept. One thing I've noticed with my rules is that forcing everyone to only use the specific staff weapons has essentially made Normal/NM completely boring (and often slower than I'd like), and by nature of the eBotD requirements, the true fun only really starts in Hell. With that in mind, I had some motivation to move a couple characters up to the fun threshold and power them through the first two difficulties before updating.

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First up, the Snapjacks the Assassin.

Slated to be a standard TS-sin using normal attack as her finisher, she absolutely plowed through Normal with ever-increasing power. Baal did manage to kill the merc and shadow, but he was no trouble for Snapjacks herself. Slayer at 41.

Nightmare was more of the same. She took a small pitstop after Andariel to gear herself out a bit better, and then cruised through to mid-NM where she had to make her first use of CoS and other situation crowd-control techniques.

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That prompted some thinking. He AR is going to be absolutely atrocious since she'll be using normal attack for her finisher. So she decided to go back and grab a BA merc for her partner. With that problem (hopefully) resolved, she progressed through the rest of NM and hit the magical number:

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I moved it over to her other hand so you could see how fun it looks all ghostly-green with Venom. Nice! She closed out the difficulty at 71, and now I'll take a bit of time to tinker with gear and get her set up for Hell.


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I also took RonniePumpkin out on her quest to become a bearzon. She destroyed normal as well (no surprises there) and hit Slayer at 38 which is.... a bit low for my standards. I thought about leveling a bit before NM, but quickly scrapped that idea and forged ahead regardless.

I wasn't really looking forward to taking her through NM, with the whole 'only normal attack with no real damage buffs', but we slogged it out with the promise of fun gear ahead to keep her motivated. Sank some points into the valk and she's holding her own well, so between her and the merc (and her new WWS) it's decently quick, even against surprise Treehead visits:

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Look at that spawn location! Once Ronnie got Treachery at 43 things picked up and it was quickly through to Andariel. The rest of NM followed suit as she unlocked better gear for her and the merc. Duriel was soon down, Meph followed, and it was through to A4 where she hit 63 and finally got to become fuzzy:

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Then Divo got her Ice

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And then in the ancients way Ronnie got her final weapon:

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Which was good, because the 'Insight' staff sure was slow in bear form. From then it was a blur of fur and frost novas until Champion at 72.

Now time for some final preparations, and it's out into Hell with her too!
 
Housekeeping time for Snapjacks!

So I looked at the attack speed calcs, and I can't max out her IAS (10 FPA) without using BoS, which is a bit of a shame. I was hoping to use Fade since her resists are absolute garbage (we're talking -50 in Hell), so let's explore some options. I could:

1. Use BoS and try to make up resists elsewhere. I'd only need a lvl 5 to get to 10 FPA if she's wearing LoH. This also allows me to use Angelics which makes AR way less of an issue.

2. Forget about 10 FPA and pack on some resists, getting more IAS from gear to compensate.

I think I've got to go with option 2. I don't want to be running around Hell in negative resists just for an extra couple frames on her finisher. LoH, Highlord's and an IAS jewel in the helm gets her to 12 FPA, and I think I can call that good enough. Shored up the rest of her resists via charms and had some space left over for Fine SCs as well. The final product:

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Not bad! Her normal attack is at 86% cth as well (with BA from the merc active) which I'm very happy with. 12 FPA feels plenty fast enough as well (I was operating much lower than that until the eBotD became available, and she feels quite durable with high resists, some DR% and tons of life. Speaking of life, that screenie isn't showing with BO active from CtA so she's actually running around with 2.2k life.

That was fun to figure out and theorycraft, I'm ecxited to get her moving again!

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She will take the path of the first 3 characters in the Sept and go on with /p8 at all times through Hell. She plowed her way through the Den, 1-shotting fallen even just with Tiger Strike.

19k fully charged attack when needed turned even the big guys into paste, so it was quickly up to Andy herself.

Straight out to Radament and then the deserts. Unleechables have made us need to use pots a bit more, but nothing too bad and on she went plowing her way through. Things got a little crowded for the final room of the maggot lair due to dealing with PI locusts

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Other than that it was smooth sailing through the CVT and AS (where I was REALLY happy the merc had Reaper's), and some fun to be had in the Canyon with procs and traps from the shadow:

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Duriel soon fell, and it was into the jungles. Found a Mal on her trek through the GM, on through to the cities she took on Sarina with the help of CoS and MB. The council was a bit tricky, but again CoS to the rescue

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Then through to Meph no worries, on to act 4. I learned something in the Outer Steppes. If you cast BO while monsters are converted from MB, the BO will not only affect then, but persist one the conversion wears off

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It's to be expected, of course, I just don't think I've ever run into it before. Neat! Onwards, a quick Black Hack sighting, then through Izual and up to the Forge where she killed Hephasto and grabbed a Lem. Through the CS and seals easily, Diablo was also a piece of cake.

Up through Shenk and Thresh Socket, she was finally slowed down in the Crystalline Passage by PI (breakable by Reapers at least!) Frenzytaurs. Still, even on /p8 they didn't take that long and she was shortly through to Anya. I took a quick trip down to Nihl just for fun, and it's a good thing I did because there was a 'Fade' party happening down there:

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That's Snapjacks, the merc, shadow and the enemies all faded out. It looked cool, but it was kind of a pain to track those guys down and also keep track of where I was going.

A quick rest of the journey through the Ancients, the Waves, and Baal himself before Snapjacks was officially crowned Matriarch at level 86

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She was fun! I'll have more thoughts in her Mat thread, which I'll try to post shortly.
 
We last left RonniePumpkin the Bearzon having just entered Hell, and needing some final prep.

First order of business was to fix her terrible resistances. I was going to blatantly steal take a page out of a @maxicek idea and use Kira's but... she's not high enough level yet. So for now she looks like this:

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Not bad! 2k+ life, so all stat points will be going to strength now to help with damage numbers. Also threw a Delerium on the merc for additional crowd control and it's out into Hell. Through the Den and initial thoughts are; she's beefy. Still quite strong on /p8 despite not having any real damage modifiers other than Werebear. I can sense that she'll be slowing down later, but that's okay. She's very safe with all the safety measures of the merc and her own P+M skills making her hard to hit. So far so good! One thing I didn't know is that even if the merc transforms, she can still fire arrows.

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Weird. Treehead gave us our first PI/CI battle. It was lengthy, but never dangerous. I'm not looking forward to more of those as we don't have a viable solution to it other than letting OW/CB do the job. After that it was shortly through to Cain and we hit 77 which prompted a proper re-gear.

Popped the Kira's on and the resistances got much better (big surprise!), which freed up some charm slots for some more damage. I could now replace TEH FROAT with another Angelic ring to never have to think about AR again, and I popped a jewel (25ED%/15IAS) into the Kira's to get her to 10 FPA (the max attainable without Fanat). I figured while I was taking inspiration from max's gal, I may as well go Titan like she did as well! The merc is loaded with safety features (HF, FNova procs, Delerium) and Ronnie is set with D/A/E so why not pump the damage numbers a bit more?

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There we have it! 1.5k health definitely seems a bit low but she feels good and I really like the uptick in damage (and the novelty of going Titan). She cruised her way through the rest of A1, taking out Andariel with ease.

An absolutely ridiculous slog through the AS as this group doesn't have any great solutions for PIs. It's up to the merc entirely, so it was a bit slow going. Luckily we guessed the correct wing on the first try so my sanity was spared. More ghosts in the true tomb but no Unravellers (Beetles and Urdars, as you can see by the corpse-pile in that screenie), so it was soon enough through to the big bug.

As far as p8 boss fights go, that one sucked. It was never dangerous, though it did require a couple town trips for pot refills. It was just longer than I would have liked. Ronnie already attacks slowly enough without the help from Duriel's chilling and HF. Either way they took him down and made it to the jungles. I was glad I buffed her resists now as situations like this were not uncommon.

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Feeling the low health now! Bit of a stairtrap in Sarinas temple smoked the merc, but an otherwise smooth journey through to Meph. He left a colourful drop behind, and it was off to the underworld for Ronnie.

Not the nicest welcome to the Outer Steppes...

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Through Izual, then Hephasto with ease (Io at the Forge, yuck.) and Diablo was no trouble either. Not a ton to say as she's still holding her own quite well. Sure, kill speed has slowed a bit as expected on /p8 without any damage auras, but it's safe and smooth and she's never really in trouble. If anything dicey comes up, the Valk takes the brunt of it and we move on Like this:

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PI Ghosts in the CP slowed us down but Ronnie persevered (well, the merc did anyways) and soon enough Anya was saved, though it did get a bit hectic in there at times

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Thanks, Delerium! I didn't feel like going after Nihlathak, so it was straight the Ancient's Way where she hit 86 and right up to the Ancients. I knew I could potenitally be in for some trouble on /p8, so I used an old tournament strategy and popped a Decoy up top to hopefully separate the big boys.

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It worked! Korlic (LE/MB) was the first to fall. We lured Madawc over next and disposed of him easily. We then crossed all our fingers and toes and went to see Talic's stats. Nice! Sure, Spectral Hit + Extra Strong is a bit dangerous, but I couldn't believe Ronnie's luck that she didn't draw any Stone Skins, that would have been very tedious to deal with. So with Ronnie and the Valk to absorb all the damage, Talic was easily dispatched and it was soon through the WSK to the Throne.

The waves gave us no real trouble (man that zon can tank!), nor did the big guy himself.

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That's that, Matriarch at 86.

Whew. Longer writeup than I expected! She was great fun though, I'll have more thoughts in her Mat thread. One more character to go!
 
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Last but certainly not least; the Sorceress.

Introducing OrangeThunder, the 2-H Enchantress! Pretty straightforward build for the last one through the sept, and I'm into that. It feels nice to just kinda turn the brain off and kill lots of monsters really quickly. On to the gameplay!

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Predictably smooth sailing through normal, Enchant and a twinked merc is quite OP. Vizier gave us our first FI, Colenzo our 2nd, but the merc took them handily and before we knew it she was Slayer at 40.

She absolutely tore her way through NM, easily the fastest of the Sept. Andariel, Duriel, Meph, Diablo all fell in quick succession in a single evening (which is unheard of for me typically) and then she got the hurty stick, killed Baal and sat down to do some theorycrafting. I hadn't finalized any real plans for gear yet for her, so I took some time to sort that out.

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First order of business, a Dream helm. Yes the status quo is to go dual-Dream but that's obviously not an option for her since her hands are full. @maxicek has previously talked about how a single dream still has a decent impact (at the bottom of his Mat thread, if you're interested), and I thought it would make a fun twist to help her stand out from her peers in this sept.

I also considered Dragon armor for some thematic fun, but with just one the HFire dmg is negligible even after Fire Mastery. The ctc Hydra is interesting, but in the end the sheer utility (and +2 skills) from CoH won out.

The rest of her gear is pretty straightforward and is based around +skills and +fire skills primarily. Highlord's gives her enough ias to get down to 11fpa, and the rest is just gravy. One small change (which I implemented on my dual-dream throwchantress) is to use Trang's belt as my source of CBF (and some bonus life) which freed up the ring slots for skills. Some stuff may change as I go, but I'm happy for now with her setup.

The merc got Fortitude and an Infinity along the way as well, so he's set.

Anyway, here she is ready for Hell:

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Okay. Not fantastic on resists other than Fire and Lightning, but otherwise good!

Next time I'll see if my ideas panned out in a satisfactory way for this sept's final trip through Hell.
 
Looks awesome! What's the exact build/gear you're going for?

I wonder why you're not playing her as a bear, too? More life, a bit more damage and in particular better FHR breakpoints... Apart from the high-defense Zeal/Dream Sorc I made for my Zod Sept, I always ended up going that route with Dream Sorcs.

I'm planning to make yet another one for the next MP group and contemplating a few single Dream options, too. Generally IMO the main reason to double down with 2x Dream is that chronic AR illness. Having double the damage helps when frequently missing hits. :) Infinity helps for sure and against most enemies that's it, but for example in Baal runs I found there's still some whiffing going on. The ridiculous damage makes no difference when things are one-shot of course, but let's be honest, the big fun with Dreams is to live on P8 and still smack down tough bosses ASAP. :D
 
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Looks awesome! What's the exact build/gear you're going for?

Build is just a straight up Enchantress. 20 Enchant + synergies, 20 LM for the Dream. Not sure what I'm going to do with the leftovers, Shiver Armor I guess?

Gear is also pretty simple, truth be told I didn't spend a ton of time thinking about it. eBotD AS, CoH, Dream Helm, Magefist, Trang's Belt (CBF+life), dual-BKWB and I have Infernostride for the boots. Charms are fire skillers + some resists.

I wonder why you're not playing her as a bear, too? More life, a bit more damage and in particular better FHR breakpoints... Apart from the high-defense Zeal/Dream Sorc I made for my Zod Sept, I always ended up going that route with Dream Sorcs.

I thought about it! The main reason is I wanted to be able to teleport around at will and try that approach. I do have vague plans for a bearsorc in the future, but I think I'll try to make it a dual-dreamer elemental-based one if I can. Too many plans, too little time.

I'm planning to make yet another one for the next MP group and contemplating a few single Dream options, too. Generally IMO the main reason to double down with 2x Dream is that chronic AR illness. Having double the damage helps when frequently missing hits. :) Infinity helps for sure and against most enemies that's it, but for example in Baal runs I found there's still some whiffing going on. The ridiculous damage makes no difference when things are one-shot of course, but let's be honest, the big fun with Dreams is to live on P8 and still smack down tough bosses ASAP. :D

Agreed fully on the AR issue, I'm a little nervous about it but I think it will be manageable as I've built her. Looking forward to seeing what you come up with!
 
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Makes sense :) what about Raven + Arach? That was my go-to option for Dream Sorcs anyway, but seems to fit this girl very nicely, too. FCR from Arach helps with teleporting (in particular you're not shapeshifting) and more importantly Raven adds a ton of AR which is in short supply. Only downside is losing 3-5 LL from one BKWB, but really shouldn't matter much given BotD provides a ton of leech already.
 
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Despite @ffs making a very good suggestion for a gear change, I... uh.. completely forgot to try it. Next time!

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Out into Hell and she absolutely carves her way through. Even on /p8 things are dying in 1 hit, and the Infinity on the merc both helps that as well as helping her atrocious AR to be workable. The only thing is she is a bit fragile when it comes to elemental attacks, but so far so good. Still, if she stays around the perimeters, she has no problem tackling large groups such as this..

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Through the jungles easily, she did make a cool find in Upper Kurast

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+3/13/19 for those curious, up through the Council and to Meph without issue. Act 4 presented her first real slow down due to all the inherant FIs in the act. I'd been dreading this act for a while, and guys like this really reinforced why:

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That's a PI/FI boss with a Holy Freeze aura, stacked on top of ANOTHER PI/FI boss with a Conviction aura. Fun! Liberal use of teleport to re-position the merc let us take out the minions easily enough, and then some patience got rid of the two bosses. That fight alone probably took as long as getting through Hephasto and to the Forge (which gave us a Mal). I thought the CS was going to be bad, but even with being filled with unbreakable-FI Venom Lords, between the merc and her physical and lightning damage (from Dream) it was actually pretty smooth. She even nabbed an XP shrine for the Diabo fight.

Lots of fireworks in the foothills, but careful footwork got us through.

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Smooth up to the summit, I actually didn't manage to separate the Ancients, but we stumbled into a good fighting position anyway:

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No unbreakable FI either! Korlic fell first while Madawc was stuck behind the pillar. She went for him next and the merc handled Talic on his own with no real problem. Easy enough, she steamrolled through until Lister's pack. I knew there would be a slowdown here due to him being unbreakable FI, and he had one more trick up his sleeve.

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Cursed, and Might. Basically though with a ton of teleporting (and a couple merc revives) we split them up and took them out. The Baal fight was essentially a formality, and just like that the sept is officially complete!

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Man was she ever strong, and also fast due to teleport. I had a blast playing her, I'll have some more details and thoughts in her Mat thread.


Thanks for following along everyone!
 
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