In praise of second tier gear (loooong)

Bisonslayer

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Oct 31, 2008
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In praise of second tier gear (loooong)

Hey all,

Finally finished my semi-twinked, offline, SP septet. Semi-twinked meaning I didn't trade anyone else for gear, but my characters could swap freely with each other using ATMA. Did it without runeword mod (I don't mind chugging blues, I guess, with no Insight on my merc).

And I just have never gotten into magic find or crafting or rolling charms. I've done a little MF with my fishyzon, but mostly for the challenge of rolling through WSK on p5 or 7.

I did end up with some first tier gear (Titan's, Oculus, Shako, Ravenfrost) but mostly pieced together second tier stuff. Makes things more interesting, but not not a massive challenge. So no enigma, atma's, gore rider's, high end runewords, etc.

Here's the highlights:

Act 2 merc, usually Holy Freeze, might, or defiance. Usually upped jeweled shaftstop or Treachery, upped Rockstopper with IAS, and a nifty rare cryptic axe with 250% ED, 12% LL (5% + Amn), 75 avg lightning damage. Oh, and an upped Kelpie for poking the big guys.

meteorb Sorc: Oculus, Shako, Tal's ammy/belt, Stealth armor, Chance guards, Rhyme shield for MF or Mosers x 2PD. Defiance merc for keeping critters in one place while they broiled in meteor. Without top gear, cold immunes were kind of slow. Since I never had enigma, though, I loved teleport.

Fishyzon (LF/FA javazon): Titan's, Shako, Peace armor (for the +2 skills and CTC level 15 valk), Rhyme shield or Moser’s x 2 PD, War Travs, razortail, rings/ammy for MF or resists as needed. Melody GMB on switch, although my upped Goldstrike + strafe + mana leach would have been a less mana intensive solution to the LI problem. I can pack over 400 MF on her and kill almost anywhere in hell (*&^%^& gloams…)

Fishymancer (OK, I stuck to cookie cutter builds): Shako, Trang’s armor, rhyme shield, +skills ammy, goldwrap belt, FRW boots, some random +2 wand. C’mon, it’s a fishymancer, does the gear even matter? Slow but ridiculously easy. And casting Amp + might merc is just not fair.

Lighting trapsin: shako, stealth for the FRW (funny I didn’t use treachery here when every other character seemed to), rare C/C with +skills. Again, does the gear really matter? I have a thing about gloams, so it was fun to watch someone else be caught in a 5 way chain lightning crossfire instead of me. Holy freeze merc.

Tesladin with holy freeze backup: lightsabre, shako, treachery, moser’s (+skills shield/sword for holy shield casting on switch), IK boots/belt/gloves, angelic ring/ammy ravenfrost. The lightning absorb + treachery + moser’s was soooo nice. Only character that I didn’t have to run away from gloams shrieking like a schoolgirl. Black scourge on switch for CB for boss killing. Holy freeze merc.

Fury WW: first character that made me realize that you get amped in hell..all…the…time. Built an IK wolf with boots/belt/glove/hammer. With Treachery and some charms, my resists were respectable. Non-leachables sucked. PI Gloams really sucked, though. Might merc, grizzly, we did pretty well.

Frenzy barb: Shako, IK gloves/belt/boots, ravenfrost, treachery, angelics. Used mace mastery with a Baranar’s plus a regular fleshrender, did 2K damage combined. Would have been nice to up the fleshrender, but I ended up needing the Pul for the Goldstrike anyway. Leap was nice, sort of the poor man’s teleport.

And a FA strafeazon as a bonus: Upped goldstrike, Shako, war travs, +skills gloves/ammy/ angelics, ravenfrost, silks otv because it has mana leach and I never found anything better. Melody GMB on switch. Realized way too late the a few points in multi go a long way in some places. Oh well. Might merc.
 
Re: In praise of second tier gear (loooong)

Congratulations! Now what are your plans?
 
Re: In praise of second tier gear (loooong)

Congrats!

Only character that I didn’t have to run away from gloams shrieking like a schoolgirl.

:D

You made pretty good mileage out of that Shako. You should name your characters the Shako Seven.

Who was your favourite to play? Least favourite? Any regrets on build choice of any of the seven(/eight)? Any successes with Hell Forge quests?
 
Re: In praise of second tier gear (loooong)

Congrats! Time now to get some mf'ing in to get some better gear available for the less-than-cookie-cutter builds!

Don't let the ribbing about the Shako get to you. In every restart on Bnet I have done (probably close to 10), that was the first piece of gear I would go after. +2 skills, huge mana (very undervalued, such a huge bonus), huge life, 10% pdr, 50% mf, and customizable with a socket? Looks aside, name three builds that don't have "Shako" as one of the top three helms!
 
Re: In praise of second tier gear (loooong)

Congratulations. That's a nice set of characters. Good luck on your future builds :)
 
Re: In praise of second tier gear (loooong)

Congrats on the seven...uh, eight...! :thumbsup:

That is some sweet gear - far better than most of the stuff my characters end up with.

I espcially like the upgraded Goldstrike Arch. I have a dream that some day one of my rogue-helping builds (Fanatic Pally or Necromancer) will find and upgrade one for their merc. I have similar thoughts about an ethereal upgraded Crainte Vomir and Barbarian merc.
 
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