Golemancer Attempt No.2

Upper Kurast ... Bizarre

We were searching a large structure just past the entrance to Upper Kurast when Jemali drew our attention to two unpleasant facts: Thrashers and more Thrashers. "Umm", said Balboa. "We'll clear the surrounding area so we have some space to work in". Jemali agreed, secretly hoping the golemancer would forget about them.

Elsewhere, we encountered Faithful and Cantors, plus Winged Nightmares. Things again turned unpleasant when a pack of Cantors, three Champions plus a Ghostly, made their presence felt. The fighters were able to tank them effectively, but the creatures constantly healed each other. "It's hopeless, Boss!", yelled Jemali. We couldn't split them up, we couldn't hurt them, so Balboa ordered them parked. "We will need some help, lads", observed Balboa. A moment's reflection took place, and then the golemancer cried, "I have an idea!". When Jemali saw the lunatic gleam capering in the golemancer's eyes, he positively blanched.

Balboa's plan meant clearing the rest of Upper Kurast, which we did readily enough. Rust Froth and his band caught us by surprise and Balboa was forced to drink a full juvy, but Flame Lust was a simpler opponent.
When we were ready, Balboa put his plan into effect. "Back to the Thrashers, lads", he ordered, "But don't damage them - only the bosses!". What?
We circled around to the North-West of the original large structure and cautiously approached the double boss-pack. The minions were Terrored away, but Gray Maim was allowed to approach us. Using Terror and Dim Vision, attack and retreat, we isolated the first boss and slew him easily. This process was repeated for Dire Killer. We now had an intact minion pack of six Thrashers ...
"Right, lets get these guys following us", said Balboa. "Are you out of your mind?", enquired Jemali. "Arrrunn-unk", added Rusty.

We led the band of Thrashers North and West, towards the Champ Pack of Cantors. A tricky job, requiring that the golemancer Decrepify the leading Thrashers to keep them bunched. One or two were lost on our trip. The next step was sheer madness and highly dangerous. We ran back and forth through the Cantors until the Thrashers were amongst them. Balboa then cast Confuse upon the Thrashers. A cunning plan, if a little crazed and it worked ... not one bit. The Thrashers simply didn't last long enough. Balboa couldn't direct the Thrashers against the Cantors, he couldn't even prevent the two fighters from attacking the Thrashers. One by one, the huge beasts dropped. Substituting Attract for Confuse didn't work. The plan was a bust.
Balboa thought quickly and decided it was all or nothing. A single Champion Cantor was targetted and Bone Wall spammed to try to keep the other Cantors busy. This worked after a fashion - the additional moments gained by the Bone Walls' distraction enabled the fighters to get a little extra damage on their target, causing the creature to teleport away. With a little patience, we were able to isolate one Champion after another - without the healing from their buddies, they gradually fell. The Ghostly Cantor was already off on his own when we found him - had the Thrashers hurt him and caused him to teleport away? Maybe so.

We are now steeling ourselves for the two Temples in Upper Kurast, not to mention the Sewers. There are more tough times ahead of us ... let's hope that Balboa doesn't have a plan.

Stats and Random
109 Stats and 7 Skill Points unspent. I was very tempted to sink some points into Confuse, which would have helped with the Cantor Plan, but thankfully thought the better of it. Attract is the better option and it doesn't need any more points in it, either.

Drops: a Ral, a Shael and (yay!) an Ith dropped in Upper Kurast. My Malice rune bank is on the up again. Lots of rares dropped but nothing of importance.

Travincal beckons, a place that fills me with fear. That will be a long, tough fight. Still, it's got to be better than trying to use Thrashers to kill Cantors, right?

In reply
@dutes - thanks very much!

Champion GumbyBalboa - Level 86, Act 3, The Forgotten Temple (Upper Kurast)
 
Good write up, as for the plan it seems sound in principle, just a shame it didn't quite come off. Any thoughts on how you'll handle Trav?
 
Nicely done! I hate champion packs of Cantors. Especially when I encounter them in the center of Travincal, where they can not be ignored.

Good luck with the council!
 
Confusion???`

Loz: That was an interesting strategy. I use attract that way all of the time. Like yourself I never get confusion to work right for me. I have read threads proclaiming it is a great curse but for me attract seems to do the job almost everytime while confusion just seems to confuse...me???

Timevalue: Did Mad Mantis answer you in another thread about the IG damage stacking?
 
timevalue said:
If the FG's 6% damage per level bonus is added after weapon damage is tacked on...well, it just might turn Rusty into that much more effective of a killer!
Click to expand...

I've been trying to figure out the stats RTB posted for the IG, to see if it was mentioned there somewhere, and all I really could come up with was the way the total amount of %ED is handled. The way the weapon damage is handled hasn't been described AFAIK. This calls for some good old fashioned experimentation, or a PM to RTB.



 
Of Temples and Sewers

Just a quick update on progress ...
The two temples in Upper Kurast had Bone Scarabs, Flesh Hunters, Night Lords and of course, Spider Magi. The only notable moment was when I accidentally clicked on the stairs down to the second temple without preparing for a stair trap. Could have been a disaster but only one lonely Night Lord was there to greet us and I got away with it! That means there were no stair traps in any of the Temples in KB and UK ... astonishing.

The Sewers rolled Preserved Dead, Gloom Bats and mosquito-like Feeders - dead easy. Icehawk Riftwing gave it up fairly readily (I was nervous as Old Soldier's "Princess_Diana" - RIP - had very recently fallen to this critter in the All Alone SPF Tourney), but this fellow gave me a real scare. Another Gloombat, of the Possessed variety led me on a merry chase and inspired me to do something I have never done before in D2 - I used Teleport. A +1 Curses with T-port charges amulet I found ages ago facilitated this - I was so frustrated with not being able to keep up with that damned monster.
Level 2 of the Sewers was located and after a full clear of the Sewers, I allowed the fighters to earn easy experience by dispatching the Stygian Watchers down there. The drops in the Sewers were unremarkable - a Howltusk was just about it.

The Temple Guard greeted us on the Travincal Causeway but they were little trouble. Travincal itself was moderately tricky, but three points added to DV (now 8 hard points, 15 with +skills) kept a larger chunk of the screen inactive. Useful for Heirophants.
The only problem ... I had taken a break from the game and when I returned, I wasn't in the zone. I wasn't paying enough attention to Malice Rusty when I was luring out some Zealots from their Heirophant buddies and - yes - he poofed. Really annoying. UK and Travincal had provided me with another Ith and an El, plus a Tir and a Nef, but I couldn't quite scrape an Eth together, nor did I have a suitable 3os weapon (spare weapons and more runes are all in ATMA). Having cleared almost all of Travincal except for the Blackened Temple, I did not fancy a S&E to mule stuff back into my stash, so I have taken a chance and re-cast Rusty from Jemali's Malice Bec de Corbin weapon switch. I hope I don't regret that.

The Blackened Temple was straightforward - it was a case of tanking Hydras whilst luring the minion Council Members and their bosses out one or two at a time. Ismail Vilehand was first, followed shortly by Geleb Flamefinger and finally Toorc Icefist (who took quite a shine to me and my Bone Armour). The Compelling Orb was smashed and the way to Mephisto lies open. Interesting drops - a nice rare circlet with +2 Summoning (Druid, bah) and my first skiller for this character (+1 Traps, +30% Gold from monsters, meh).

Next job will be the two temples on the Causeway (I'll get at least one stair trap for sure, I can't be that lucky), then its the Durance for me.

Stats
114 Stats and 5 Skill points free. Vitality looks a good bet for another 25 points. 2 more skill points are allowed to go into DV per the plan, I'll wait until I feel I need them.

Stupid mistake, losing Rusty like that. You have to pay attention with this build ...

In reply ...
@kykle - thanks. I keep coming up with really great ideas :laughing: One of these days it'll work :grin:

@dutes - thank you. Trav was easy, I have to say. Probably in part because I am ridiculously over-levelled. It was the usual, lure-'em-out, divide-and-conquer routine. If you're patient, it's very doable.

@jgreg7 - thank you for that. Coming from the leader of the Golem-mancer SPF Tourney, that's a big compliment. :smiley:

@JubalBane - I just loved Confuse in Normal and NM dificulties - it was often a killer Skill. The ratio of damage to life of monsters in Hell seems de-value Confuse considerably, and it's a mere distraction now (and DV is much better for that). Attract is brilliant when you have a monster that you have to keep busy, but cannot curse it directly - Attract the normal monster nearest to it and off you go :thumbsup:

Champion GumbyBalboa - Level 87, Act 3, The Disused Reliquary (Kurast Causeway)
 
LozHinge the Unhinged - Sorry to hijack your thread with the semi-OT issue of the 6% FG damage bonus per lvl synergy with IG...but I finally found the necessary post from RTB himself that could answer this question:
http://www.purediablo.com/forums/showpost.php?p=3524338&postcount=40

This post was taken from Pherdnut's "Golem FAQ Revised" guide from the Mouldy Tome.
I wish I had the time to experiment on something like this, but if RTB is right about this one...it may be worth a second look to place some points in FG.

~timevalue
 
timevalue, that is indeed interesting (and so it isn't a hi-jack :wink3: )

The modifiers on an IG that interest me most are CG and OW, although poison/cold as well would be nice. The FG synergy is unlikely to affect these factors and this was the basis for me discarding the idea of points in FG.
In terms of raw weapons damage though, I have just remembered the Honor Rusty I had a while back - I recall being unimpressed with his effectiveness at the time, compared to the Malice and Strength versions. This is despite the high damage potential of the Honor base weapon I was using (max damage was about 600 IIRC). But then again, very little FG synergy was in effect.

Hmmm... too late to change tack with Rusty Balboa. Can I face another Golemancer experiment when this one is done? :laughing:
 
Wow, I thought it was common knowledge that FG acted like skill%ed to IG weapon damage. I remember that golem FAQ from a few years ago and I remember people experimenting, but I guess no one ever bothered to put it in a guide. But anyways, FG points work on the weapon for sure, though it only adds 6%/total skill lvl.
 
Damric
For the avoidance of doubt ... does the FG synergy act upon the total weapon damage, including on-weapon ED%, or only on the base damage of the weapon (with the on-weapon ED% then added on top)?

Scenario 1: Honor Rusty example above, lvl 20 FG x 6% x (approx) 600 = 720 max damage on top of the 600. Effectively a Deadly Strike and a bit, not too shabby.

Scenario 2: lvl 20 FG x 6% x (approx) 250* = 300 max damage on top of the 600. Nice additional damage but worth the points investment in FG? Not sure about that. *250 is the approximate base weapon damage before applying the Honor bonuses.

A further experiment is called for here - once I get time to finish taking Balboa as far as he can go.
 
Total damage of the weapon.

So i you had like a 300 damage weapon and level 30 FG (180%), you get (300+base iron golem) x 2.8=...

It's not bad of a bonus if you can get the skill level high enough with items. I could see someone getting it pretty high like over lvl 50 for a 300% bonus. I still can't say I would reccomend it for most common builds.
 
Damric said:
that part I am speculating. If it works like the rest of summon skills, then total points will count, not just 20.
Click to expand...

It functions like a true synergy. At Slvl 30 (with 20 hard points) the IG, BG, and CG recieve 120% ED bonuses, the FG receives a 180% ED bonus (the same story is true of all the golems synergy skills; Golem Mastery is not a true synergy).

-Starcrunch



 
I just kinda feel badly for LozHinge right now because he put all this work in GumbyBalboa so far without having a chance to try out this FG synergy.

~timevalue
 
@timevalue - I rolled the dice and opted for CG and BG as my chosen synergies (as there aren't enough points to go around for all golem skills). My reasoning was that I wanted Rusty to be able to hit (AR from CG) and have max life (from BG). I thought the damage angle would take care of itself if I found useful r/Ws, uniques or rares. I thought long and hard on this before I even started the experiment.

My experience thus far is that Rusty has tanked very well at /p5 in Hell (at least up to Act 3, anyway), but he's been a fairly slow killer.

It may well be that maxing FG and skipping BG is the way forward - shifting the balance from survivability towards greater damage. I may even start this next experiment before I finish the current one ... oh wait, I haven't even had time to play Balboa much this week, who am I kidding? :smiley:
 
LozHinge - Another option to consider is 10 in BG and 10 in FG for a compromise between survivability and extra damage....
But....experimenting with the full 20 points in FG could answer a lot of questions and, in a way, you'd be like Christopher Columbus exploring the New World. When I looked at the Golem FAQ in the Mouldy Tome, I did not see anyone having experimented with this angle yet and make a report on it. We can always speculate on things, but there seem to be a gadzillion different mods out there on weapons and such that don't seem to have been tested yet with full FG synergy (don't know what to say on + skills items either).
A couple more interesting points:
a) Maxed fire golem would have its own (albeit small) benefits...almost like an attact curse for the monster mobs without Gumby's slow feature.
b) With high FG synegy, the IG player might be able to turn some cheaper rares and blue items into decent killers, saving those runewords for the truly special occasions.
I'm way too slow of a player (full-clears) on top of my free time being too sporadic these days. Any volunteers out there? :evil:
~timevalue
 
Tempted

Loz and Timevalue: I am tempted to undertake the challenge. I only play PvM single player with game drops so I am not sure I would get the kind of runes I would need for multiple Malice rw :wink3: . I have been known to re-run areas for fun and profit but I get bored easily.

I have yet to make a Golemancer and this might be an interesting challenge.

hmmm.
 
Log in to Reply / Create Site Account
Remove Ads - Go PurePremium

Latest posts

Back
Top