- Feb 23, 2006
- 3,148
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- 113
I love 2 handed warriors in Diablo. They are powerful and do well until Hell unless your really high level. I powered quite a few through and enjoyed them fiercely. I wanted to recreate that with a paladin. Looks like a warrior but likes shields. Very similar as a Kings Sword of Haste was able to stun lock just about everything and was superior to axes, unless you 1-hit killed them of course.
So Axer was born. Then he died in the Cold Plains. Then he died again in the Cold Plains. Well maybe I'm a bit rusty. About a week later I gave it a serious go with the idea if I perished I could use anthing the previous incarnations found. So Axer was born a third time. He never needed a fourth.
Knowing I wanted a Cold Mercenary, I had but one option: Vengeance and Conviction. I could safely ignore most AR then as well. My first cool axe dropped from Mephisto
It was Ethereal. Oh man. One of these characters that always just misses. NM Andariel dropped me my next good axe and it took until Act 3 for me to be able to upgrade it:
Between running some Mephisto, Andariel and a couple Baal I was able to find some cool stuff:
Duriel's Shell, War Travelers, String of Ears. Few other cool things, but nothing that would see any use on the character.
I was ready for Hell. I decided to run Countess some to get from 74 to 76 or so, then some more until about 78. At which point I switched to the Ancient Tunnels. I found a nice 3 socket Feral Axe, but killing was rough and was not having luck finding any new weapon that dealt damage. Crafted, gambled, or bought. Finally I was able to find a Cruel Ancient Axe which dealt more damage, but was trash still. Where is this Um so I can make a Crescent Moon and obliterate the rest of my path?
It was not to be, as after running LK for around 4 hrs I my highest rune drop was a Lum. Well, there is always Hell Forge? Nope, a Gul. When you want an Um and get a Gul.
Finally some more LK and my final weapon dropped:
Bonus: This is pretty much my final stats I ended with. (For Baal I got my AR up to about 1100 which was good enough to hit fairly often) Unfortunately the weapon only got one socket, 2 would have hit the next attack breakpoint. My switch was a Life Tap charged Axe and a shield with 13 DR. Life Tap was great with this character.
For Ancients I utilized a teleport helm for initial seperation, took down the Throwing Machine, then lost Jarulf, but beat down the other two once seperated again. WSK was a slow crawl to the finish line with Achmel took about 15 minutes to kill. Jarulf helped greatly with finishing up Lister and company half solo by pulling and letting him freeze them one at a time and blast them to bits. Baal just a slog like I expected.
Skills: I utilized a skill that @Swamigoon hasn't recorded being used before this high: Cleansing at level 8. The reason being was it took around 7-8 seconds to remove Amplify Damage and saved me from going to town whenever I got Amp'd. It was highly useful to stop some poison, though I made use of chugging tons of thawing and andidote potions.
To round out my skills the following:
Vengeance: 10
Cleansing: 8
Resist Lightning: 20
Resist Cold: 8
Resist Fire: 4
Salavation: 6
Holy Freeze: 6
Conviction: 20
Vigor 1
Final thoughts on this guy: The Feral Axe was fast enough for me to level an extra time and I really wish I had a more powerful or found it earlier. Two-handed Paladins aren't as bad as they seem, and if done right can be pretty safe, though I had more NDEs than I care to count and am sure I got lucky more than once to not biff. This by far was a blast to play and the Jarulf has done a lot for Diablo with his guide and he sure shined blasting and freezing everything in his path, maybe because he wore this thing:
So Axer was born. Then he died in the Cold Plains. Then he died again in the Cold Plains. Well maybe I'm a bit rusty. About a week later I gave it a serious go with the idea if I perished I could use anthing the previous incarnations found. So Axer was born a third time. He never needed a fourth.
Knowing I wanted a Cold Mercenary, I had but one option: Vengeance and Conviction. I could safely ignore most AR then as well. My first cool axe dropped from Mephisto
It was Ethereal. Oh man. One of these characters that always just misses. NM Andariel dropped me my next good axe and it took until Act 3 for me to be able to upgrade it:
Between running some Mephisto, Andariel and a couple Baal I was able to find some cool stuff:
Duriel's Shell, War Travelers, String of Ears. Few other cool things, but nothing that would see any use on the character.
I was ready for Hell. I decided to run Countess some to get from 74 to 76 or so, then some more until about 78. At which point I switched to the Ancient Tunnels. I found a nice 3 socket Feral Axe, but killing was rough and was not having luck finding any new weapon that dealt damage. Crafted, gambled, or bought. Finally I was able to find a Cruel Ancient Axe which dealt more damage, but was trash still. Where is this Um so I can make a Crescent Moon and obliterate the rest of my path?
It was not to be, as after running LK for around 4 hrs I my highest rune drop was a Lum. Well, there is always Hell Forge? Nope, a Gul. When you want an Um and get a Gul.
Finally some more LK and my final weapon dropped:
Bonus: This is pretty much my final stats I ended with. (For Baal I got my AR up to about 1100 which was good enough to hit fairly often) Unfortunately the weapon only got one socket, 2 would have hit the next attack breakpoint. My switch was a Life Tap charged Axe and a shield with 13 DR. Life Tap was great with this character.
For Ancients I utilized a teleport helm for initial seperation, took down the Throwing Machine, then lost Jarulf, but beat down the other two once seperated again. WSK was a slow crawl to the finish line with Achmel took about 15 minutes to kill. Jarulf helped greatly with finishing up Lister and company half solo by pulling and letting him freeze them one at a time and blast them to bits. Baal just a slog like I expected.
Skills: I utilized a skill that @Swamigoon hasn't recorded being used before this high: Cleansing at level 8. The reason being was it took around 7-8 seconds to remove Amplify Damage and saved me from going to town whenever I got Amp'd. It was highly useful to stop some poison, though I made use of chugging tons of thawing and andidote potions.
To round out my skills the following:
Vengeance: 10
Cleansing: 8
Resist Lightning: 20
Resist Cold: 8
Resist Fire: 4
Salavation: 6
Holy Freeze: 6
Conviction: 20
Vigor 1
Final thoughts on this guy: The Feral Axe was fast enough for me to level an extra time and I really wish I had a more powerful or found it earlier. Two-handed Paladins aren't as bad as they seem, and if done right can be pretty safe, though I had more NDEs than I care to count and am sure I got lucky more than once to not biff. This by far was a blast to play and the Jarulf has done a lot for Diablo with his guide and he sure shined blasting and freezing everything in his path, maybe because he wore this thing:
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