Re: Is there any interest in a Classic "Tournament"?
Count Kui has defeated Diablo!
After running Meph a few times I and not getting more useful gear I moved on to Act 4. The beginning was fine, with no gloams in the Plains of Despair. Izual took a long time and kept me on my toes as the frost nova hit pretty hard, even with 85 cold resist.
The bad news about A4 in Classic is that you can't have a merc. The good news is that you don't have to worry about losing the merc when you go back to earlier acts to surf for shrines. I found 2 gem shrines and made some good use of experience shrines. I looked forward to doing the Forge- I usually don't bother in Classic with the forge, but since gems play such a huge role in Kui's damage, I wanted to make the most of it. I've had great luck with topazes but I really wanted a source of cold damage for A4 since I couldn't use the A3 cold mercs who had been helpful. After laboring to the forge, I got one of the worst forge drops possible for Kui- all amythests and skulls! No ruby, no sapphire, ugh!
One annoying thing is the very short length of the BO. Well less than a minute at this stage so it was constantly wearing off.
In the Chaos Sanctuary, I bravely did the (usually) unthinkable- went swinging right at monsters while IM'd in HC. And lived to tell the tale! It helps that the wands are doing 3-7 damage but still the first time I did it, I tensed up some. No problem there! No measurable effect on the life bulb, even. And then I was happy to be cursed by IM- it was way less trouble than being hit with Lower Resist, Amp or Decrepify.
The CS went pretty well, and I levelled from 25 to 26 right before De Seis. My Howl wasn't enough (not high enough level) but the HCMTF on the poison wand was very effective. This was basically meant as an initial foray, with the idea that if I had difficulty I would go back and level up/improve gear.
Well, the CS went smoothly, with TP-and-walk-back-and-Taunt the Infector's minions working well (although I really missed having some cold damage there for slowing.) That left the big problem of lightning resists versus Diablo. Even though I'd rolled at least 100 wands, I had yet to get one with 2-sockets, no staffmods and the Amber prefix, so lightning resists were at a terrible 23.
No problem, I would just find a lightning resist shrine kind of near a waypoint to solve that problem. Well, after 45 minutes of searching the entire game, I found no lightning resist shrine anywhere. So my choices were restart the game or have a go at Diablo with the low resists. I decided to go for it, with a decent supply of fat purples.
Diablo's lightning hose was scary and many purples were used during the battle, fat and thin. The hose is somewhat avoidable by sidestepping but I still caught some pretty strong blasts. The good thing is that it doesn't hit all at once, so you can get a purple down before you are dead.
Against Diablo, the chance to hit was a pathetic 52% (via LCS) and it felt even worse. But with patience, a lot of visits to skill and combat shrines throughout the game, lots of potions, repairs, and general running away before things got terrible, eventually Diabo died.
I don't think I'll carry on with Kui but I am very happy with this Count!
Code:
Version 1.12
Forum name Character Name Class Level Location
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Purplelocust Ceto Static/Orb 72 H Diablo is vanquished
Mursilis Mirax Blizzballer 62 H Lut Gholein
asdfgah ClassPSNama psnJav/valk 60 Hell Dark Wood
Purplelocust Kui Drummer 26 NM Rogue Camp
asdfgah eggiWEEG Hammerdin 28 Kurast Bazaar
SiTro of_Spades Amazon 11 Outer Cloister
Nagisa Riinfosu Orb/TS 11 Stony Field
Thyiad SickTrout Fishy 7 Cold Plains
EmperorMoo GudrunII Amazon 1 Rogue Encampment
Google