Guardian Maisie-- Finally, A Girl Is No One

[Jpy]

​

Maisie's journey started like many before her-- emphasis on Wake of Fire with an early Countess session for essentials. With a few Rals and runes for Stealth/Leaf in hand I shot through the rest of Normal without issue. I actually got lucky with terrorized cows as soon as I killed normal Baal and quickly grinded to level 40 while farming for Spirit base. One white Crystal Sword + socket quest later I had a nice blueprint to tackle NM with Spirit, Ancient's Pledge, and a respec to Lightning traps. (I actually wasted a respec because I thought DS was still a LS synergy...)

In NM I made a stop again at Countess for Insight, Lore, and Rhyme runes along with level 50 to make NM progression a bit more smooth. I made a quick stop shopping some things to beef FRW and resists and then beelined for Pindle, which I reran to 65. I actually didn't find a 4 socket polearm until the end of NM (a Scythe at that) so I used a Fire Arrow Rogue with Insight bow for all of NM progression. A few reruns of NM Baal netted me level 70 and I was satisfied with my build's stats to push into Hell.

While I obviously have a lot of things available from my Amazon, I wanted to Guardian the Assassin untwinked. I feel like Assassin is ridiculously strong for this with multi element damage thanks to LS, DS, and Fire Blast along with utility from CoS, MB, and a spammable distraction in Shadow Warrior. With that said, Hell is always quite challenging on HC without significant reruns/stops at LK etc. I farmed Hell Countess a bit (which is quite dangerous in and of itself with archers) from ~71-75 and picked up a few upgrades but other than that I pretty much ran the entirety of Hell in a few hours/2-3 sessions over one evening. After Countess the Rogue merc died entirely too often to sustain using it as gold became an issue around Act 3. Act 4 and 5 were quite tricky and LR wand/Teleport staff charges proved invaluable to finish the run. By the end I had 3.5k+ LS damage, ~1k FB damage, ~1.5k life and maxed LR/FR and still almost died quite a few times pushing the progression. I intended to adopt Rhyme Bone Shield for the setup at some point, as CBF and mobility is so big, but was never able to compensate for the resists from dropping Ancient's Pledge. Very fulfilling play-through, enjoyed it a lot!

What's next?! Now that I completed Guardian untwinked I plan to utilize my Enigma/Infinity from Amazon (I can't stomach another massive session of LK runs just yet) once I have the runes I need for 2x Mosaic (rune stash still depleted from cubing up for Enigma) and decent bases to make them in and try some variant of that out at a few spots. I have a desire to Guardian one of each class untwinked. I technically did Guardian a Druid already but it was so long ago, before D2R, that I won't count it. 2/7 is good for now, no idea what class/build I'd want to do next!

Final Setup:

Spoiler

Level 78 (20 LS, 20 CBS, 20 SW, 17 FB, 5 DS, 1 BoS, 1 MB, 1 Shadow Warrior)
Lore Skull Cap
Magic Amulet (1 Assassin/28 Life)
Spirit Crystal Sword (35/92/6) and Ancient's Pledge Kite Shield
Swap alternating between Teleport charge Staff and Lower Resist charge Wand
Skin of the Vipermagi (28/11)
Magic Gloves (20 IAS/19 LR)
Sigon's Belt
Magic Boots (39 FR)
Rare Ring (17 LR)
Magic Ring (14 all resistances)

Heather Level 76 Fire Arrow Rogue Merc
Hearth Mask
Insight Long Battle Bow
Skin of the Flayed One

Noteworthy Drops:

Spoiler

Ele GC
PNB GC
Ko
Pul
Hell Forge (Pul)
Um
Nosferatu's
Ribcracker
Skin of the Vipermagi

 

[DaveW]

Nice work jpy. Keep it up!

 

[Jpy]

@DaveW thanks! Next project already in the works!