- Jun 22, 2003
- 7,940
- 0
- 0
Back in May 2013, I took an Amazon to Guardian in Morathi's Envious of the Green and Gold tournament.
As usual, all my characters reports are in the tourney thread (quite detailed, many with screenshots).
Being a combo of earlier tourneys that focused on set- and unqiue items, this tourney is a single-pass tourney about item restrictions. We could only use greens and golds (plus whites and greys until those slots had S/U items). Sockets could only be filled with emeralds, topazes and jewels with green or yellow graphics. Mercs had the same restrictions, so once we had found three or more S/U weapons, mercs had to use those in our pool of greens and golds or go weaponless.
My plan was to specialize in one or two skills I had not played much with before: Jab and Immolation Arrow. What I had been told about Immo arrow was that it is not particularly powerful but it will get the job done. Fine by me...
Martina used a combo of scepters and a Long Bow with a +2 max damage jewel in the first act. Got a nice set combo going already before the first act was over - Arctic Furs + Binding. In the second act, she mostly trailed behind a Prayer merc that used a Spetum. A low quality Poleaxe dropped in the AS, so the last bit of the act saw him with a slightly bigger weapon (I 'normalized' it in the cube). Duriel dropped my third S/U weapon. Now I had the following three weapons to choose from:
Crushflange
Skewer of Krintiz
Bladebone
Not a lot of Immolation Arrows or Jabbing to be had from that lot! As crappy as it is, Bladebone was actually the best weapon of the bunch. So axe-amazon Martina and her chilling sidekick Telash the Mage set out in the jungles of Kurast and actually made progress, slow as it was. She did not need to do much tanking because her Decoy was built up to decent levels.
A Cold mage (apart from a couple of lightning mage guest appearances in Act V areas with shambling undead) was with Martina all the way until Nightmare Andariel was slain. Martina found a better axe in Act V: Skull Splitter Military Pick, which she upgraded to Crowbill after Bonesaw Breaker dropped a Sol rune. Socket reward was used to put a perfect topaz in Arctic Furs. Martina's main weapon for Act I Nightmare was Heart Carver (dropped by Baal), a quite powerful weapon for that stage of the game, plus it made it so her block recovery time was no longer ungodly slow...
Now that I had access to new merc types, I changed to Might merc, shifted gear around and became a fire bowazon with Blastbark (Gothic Bow) as my bow. Might merc was outfitted with The Impaler, Tancred's Skull and Skin of the Flayed One.
As soon as I tried it out, I liked Immolation Arrow. Of course it probably helped that it was powerful (~900 damage) against these early NM monsters. Gameplay became much safer when I abandoned the Daggerzon route. I found Skystrike in Lost City which was clearly better than Blastbark.
NM Diablo dropped Stealskull, which made my merc much better. Now that he had life steal on the helm, I could give him (upgraded) Twitchthroe instead of Skin of the Flayed One.
Icy Cellar in NM was the first place where I really lost control over a fight. Read about that in this post. Complete mess, which also meant I had to do the rest of that session (including Ancients and Baal) from a situation where I had no rejuvenation potions (although I could cube two of them later in the session).
Late Nightmare brought some interesting stuff, like Cliffkiller and Spellsteel which both proved useful later. I started to build up a decent level of Charged Strike (as a PI+FI solution).
Next crazy fight was in Hell Pit level 2, where I had to bring back a dagger + shield setup so I could defeat a messy starting room that involved a Cursed rogue melee boss.
I kept going on /players 3 on Hell difficulty. Merc was now wielding Athena's Wrath and Martina had maxed the Exploding Arrow synergy (the one that boosts the impact damage). I did not bother with the other synergy, the one that boosts the lingering flames.
Apart from a situation in Halls of the Dead and one really scary in Ruined Temple, I was very succesful at staying out of danger for the rest of the game (see the thread for how I dealt with a multitude of FI Champion Frenzytaurs in an ice cave, among other things). I was scared of Burning Souls in Act IV (31% lightning resist!) but I managed to play well there and avoid almost all shots.
Merc died before I had killed the FI Talic but Decoy (Talic could not kill her if she was cast in a corner so he couldn't whirl) and Magic Arrow pulled me through there. I had Spellsteel on the switch in this fight so I could use Teleport and Decrepify. Nice little 'swiss army knife' for this tourney, that axe!
Melee mercs are not good in the cow level if you do not have a hugely powerful character or one with amazing crowd control. They attract far too many cows at once. I switched out the HF merc for a cold mage, which I could give some pretty good caster gear (Vipermagi, Lidless).
Guardian Martina the Amazon
Level 87
STR 100+11 DEX 157 VIT 253 ENE 15
Life 1189 Mana 144
Resists 85/40/47/-35
Immolation Arrow damage: arrow 168-504 + fire explosion 1563-1599
Charged Strike damage: spear 120-294, lightning damage 1-314 and releases 6 bolts
Immolation Arrow 20+3
Explosion Arrow 20+3
Jab 1+1
Charged Strike 16+1
Decoy 20+1
Slow Missiles 2+1
Critical Strike 7+1
Pierce 2+1
Cloak of Shadows (30 charges)
Primary Gear (late Hell)
* Darksight Helm socketed with a (yellow) 30% Ambergris Jewel
* Nokozan Relic
* Cliffkiller
* Skin of the Vipermagi socketed with a (green) Shimmering Jewel of the Icicle ((29+6)% resist all, MDR by 13)
* Sigon's Gage
* Sigon's Wrap
* Sigon's Sabot
* 2x Manald Heal
* Ruby (29) Grand Charm
* Sapphire (26) Grand Charm
* Amber (15) Large Charm
* Tangerine (5) Large Charm of Venom
* Large Charm of Sustenance (24)
* Large Charm of Vita (28)
* Burly Large Charm of Vita (29)
* Ocher (6) Small Charm of Strength (1)
* Ocher (7) Small Charm of Life (8)
* Ocher (7) Small Charm of Life (9)
* Ocher (7) Small Charm of Storms (1-20)
* Tangerine (5) Small Charm
* Cobalt (9) Small Charm
* Small Charm of Anthrax
Switch:
* The Impaler (for Charged Strike use)
Merc (mainly Holy Freeze, sometimes Might) gear:
* Stealskull
* Athena's Wrath
* Twitchthroe Trellised Armor
In stash (for special occasions):
* Heart Carver + Whitstan's Guard (for when tanking was necessary - she had 71% block in that Pit situation)
* Spellsteel (used to separate and slightly tame Hell Ancients)
Players 8 on Normal and Nightmare, players 3 on Hell (with a few exceptions)
Managed a [highlight]Complete Game Clear[/highlight], even though some bosses were stubborn, especially a spider boss in Hell Catacombs 2, and let's not forget the Stone Skin (PI) Apparition boss in Normal tombs that I had to bring my newly hired Act III merc over to kill the same session I killed Duriel.
As usual, all my characters reports are in the tourney thread (quite detailed, many with screenshots).
Being a combo of earlier tourneys that focused on set- and unqiue items, this tourney is a single-pass tourney about item restrictions. We could only use greens and golds (plus whites and greys until those slots had S/U items). Sockets could only be filled with emeralds, topazes and jewels with green or yellow graphics. Mercs had the same restrictions, so once we had found three or more S/U weapons, mercs had to use those in our pool of greens and golds or go weaponless.
My plan was to specialize in one or two skills I had not played much with before: Jab and Immolation Arrow. What I had been told about Immo arrow was that it is not particularly powerful but it will get the job done. Fine by me...
Martina used a combo of scepters and a Long Bow with a +2 max damage jewel in the first act. Got a nice set combo going already before the first act was over - Arctic Furs + Binding. In the second act, she mostly trailed behind a Prayer merc that used a Spetum. A low quality Poleaxe dropped in the AS, so the last bit of the act saw him with a slightly bigger weapon (I 'normalized' it in the cube). Duriel dropped my third S/U weapon. Now I had the following three weapons to choose from:
Crushflange
Skewer of Krintiz
Bladebone
Not a lot of Immolation Arrows or Jabbing to be had from that lot! As crappy as it is, Bladebone was actually the best weapon of the bunch. So axe-amazon Martina and her chilling sidekick Telash the Mage set out in the jungles of Kurast and actually made progress, slow as it was. She did not need to do much tanking because her Decoy was built up to decent levels.
A Cold mage (apart from a couple of lightning mage guest appearances in Act V areas with shambling undead) was with Martina all the way until Nightmare Andariel was slain. Martina found a better axe in Act V: Skull Splitter Military Pick, which she upgraded to Crowbill after Bonesaw Breaker dropped a Sol rune. Socket reward was used to put a perfect topaz in Arctic Furs. Martina's main weapon for Act I Nightmare was Heart Carver (dropped by Baal), a quite powerful weapon for that stage of the game, plus it made it so her block recovery time was no longer ungodly slow...
Now that I had access to new merc types, I changed to Might merc, shifted gear around and became a fire bowazon with Blastbark (Gothic Bow) as my bow. Might merc was outfitted with The Impaler, Tancred's Skull and Skin of the Flayed One.
As soon as I tried it out, I liked Immolation Arrow. Of course it probably helped that it was powerful (~900 damage) against these early NM monsters. Gameplay became much safer when I abandoned the Daggerzon route. I found Skystrike in Lost City which was clearly better than Blastbark.
NM Diablo dropped Stealskull, which made my merc much better. Now that he had life steal on the helm, I could give him (upgraded) Twitchthroe instead of Skin of the Flayed One.
Icy Cellar in NM was the first place where I really lost control over a fight. Read about that in this post. Complete mess, which also meant I had to do the rest of that session (including Ancients and Baal) from a situation where I had no rejuvenation potions (although I could cube two of them later in the session).
Late Nightmare brought some interesting stuff, like Cliffkiller and Spellsteel which both proved useful later. I started to build up a decent level of Charged Strike (as a PI+FI solution).
Next crazy fight was in Hell Pit level 2, where I had to bring back a dagger + shield setup so I could defeat a messy starting room that involved a Cursed rogue melee boss.
I kept going on /players 3 on Hell difficulty. Merc was now wielding Athena's Wrath and Martina had maxed the Exploding Arrow synergy (the one that boosts the impact damage). I did not bother with the other synergy, the one that boosts the lingering flames.
Apart from a situation in Halls of the Dead and one really scary in Ruined Temple, I was very succesful at staying out of danger for the rest of the game (see the thread for how I dealt with a multitude of FI Champion Frenzytaurs in an ice cave, among other things). I was scared of Burning Souls in Act IV (31% lightning resist!) but I managed to play well there and avoid almost all shots.
Merc died before I had killed the FI Talic but Decoy (Talic could not kill her if she was cast in a corner so he couldn't whirl) and Magic Arrow pulled me through there. I had Spellsteel on the switch in this fight so I could use Teleport and Decrepify. Nice little 'swiss army knife' for this tourney, that axe!
Melee mercs are not good in the cow level if you do not have a hugely powerful character or one with amazing crowd control. They attract far too many cows at once. I switched out the HF merc for a cold mage, which I could give some pretty good caster gear (Vipermagi, Lidless).
Guardian Martina the Amazon
Level 87
STR 100+11 DEX 157 VIT 253 ENE 15
Life 1189 Mana 144
Resists 85/40/47/-35
Immolation Arrow damage: arrow 168-504 + fire explosion 1563-1599
Charged Strike damage: spear 120-294, lightning damage 1-314 and releases 6 bolts
Immolation Arrow 20+3
Explosion Arrow 20+3
Jab 1+1
Charged Strike 16+1
Decoy 20+1
Slow Missiles 2+1
Critical Strike 7+1
Pierce 2+1
Cloak of Shadows (30 charges)
Primary Gear (late Hell)
* Darksight Helm socketed with a (yellow) 30% Ambergris Jewel
* Nokozan Relic
* Cliffkiller
* Skin of the Vipermagi socketed with a (green) Shimmering Jewel of the Icicle ((29+6)% resist all, MDR by 13)
* Sigon's Gage
* Sigon's Wrap
* Sigon's Sabot
* 2x Manald Heal
* Ruby (29) Grand Charm
* Sapphire (26) Grand Charm
* Amber (15) Large Charm
* Tangerine (5) Large Charm of Venom
* Large Charm of Sustenance (24)
* Large Charm of Vita (28)
* Burly Large Charm of Vita (29)
* Ocher (6) Small Charm of Strength (1)
* Ocher (7) Small Charm of Life (8)
* Ocher (7) Small Charm of Life (9)
* Ocher (7) Small Charm of Storms (1-20)
* Tangerine (5) Small Charm
* Cobalt (9) Small Charm
* Small Charm of Anthrax
Switch:
* The Impaler (for Charged Strike use)
Merc (mainly Holy Freeze, sometimes Might) gear:
* Stealskull
* Athena's Wrath
* Twitchthroe Trellised Armor
In stash (for special occasions):
* Heart Carver + Whitstan's Guard (for when tanking was necessary - she had 71% block in that Pit situation)
* Spellsteel (used to separate and slightly tame Hell Ancients)
Players 8 on Normal and Nightmare, players 3 on Hell (with a few exceptions)
Managed a [highlight]Complete Game Clear[/highlight], even though some bosses were stubborn, especially a spider boss in Hell Catacombs 2, and let's not forget the Stone Skin (PI) Apparition boss in Normal tombs that I had to bring my newly hired Act III merc over to kill the same session I killed Duriel.
Last edited:
Google