Matriach Halle and a build plan

[Nazdakka]

Matriach Halle and a build plan

Matriach Halle
Level 90 Pheonix Striker 'Sin


Character name : Halle
Character type : Assassin
Character level : 90
Character exp : 1619815421

Strength : 105(128)
Dexterity : 75(118)
Vitality : 340(379)
Energy : 25(25)
Stat Points Rem : 0
Skill Points Rem: 4

Life : 1627
Mana : 214
Stamina : 842

Dragon Talon: 1(9)
Dragon Claw: 1(9)
Tiger Strike: 1(9)
Cobra Strke: 1(9)
Fists of Fire: 20(28)
Claws of Thunder: 20(28)
Blades of Ice: 1(9)
Pheonix Strike: 20(28)

Claw Mastery: 15(27)
Psychic Hammer: 1(13)
Burst of Speed: 1(13)
Weapon Block: 2(14)
Fade: 1(13)
Shadow Warror: 1(13)
Shadow Master: 6(18)

Fire Blast: 1(7)
Shock Web: 1(7)
Lightning Sentry: 1(7)
Death Sentry: 1(7)

Equipment:
Natalya's Totem
Natalya's Mark
Jade Talon (+2 to both trees, +49 all res, 223%ED)
Natalya's Shadow, socketed with Jewel of Freedom and Jewel of Fervor
Verdungo's Hearty Cord
Laying of Hands
Raven Frost
Bul-Kathos' Wedding Band
Natalya's Soul (20/22, still looking 24-25% lightning res ones)

Mercenary:
Vikhyat, level 90 Act 2 Might merc
Vampire Gaze
Reaper's Toll
Shaftstop

Halle is probably the most fun character I've ever played - she's powerful enough to wade in to a big pack of monsters on /players 8 hell and come out alive, she can do all kinds of spectacular effects with the various Pheonix Strike charges, and there is almost no monster she can't kill one way or another because she has strong physical, fire and lightning damage, plus the ability to freeze an entire screen of monsters. She also hits (according to my sums) the fastest breakpoints for both the claw-claw and single claw effects.

I'm pretty happy with the skill point distribution - the Martial Arts tree is obvious, Death Sentry is occaisionally amazing (Nihlathak is suddenly not a problem!), and the Shadow tree gives me all the skills I need. My 4 remaining points should probably go in the Shadow tree, but I'm undecided about where - Claw Mastery, Weapon Block, BoS or Shadow Master? I probably have all the BoS I need, and Weapon Block has nasty diminishing returns, but Claw Mastery and Shadow Master are both great and I can't decide.

Now, another character. Recently I was struck by the potentially fun interation between Multi-Shot and the Open Wounds mod, and so CrimsonFields, my latest project, was born. The idea is to combine high-level Multi with lots of Poison and OW to let me do tons of damage to entire room's worth of monsters with just one volley. A nice side effect is that she wouldn't care too much about speed and so could potentially use the 200% Buriza I've got lying around (assuming I've hit 95% OW with the rest of my gear, not a certainty). My current plan looks something like this:

CrimsonFields
Stat points:
Str - to equip
Dex - to equip
Vit - everything else
Eng - nothing

Skills:
1 B&C Prequisites
20 Multishot
1+ Most of P&M tree
? Everything else

Obviously, this isn't very fleshed out, so I'm after some ideas about what to do with the rest of the character. I could go for a Hybrid of some kind, or invest heavily in one of the elemental Bow attacks - maybe Freezing Arrow? Anyhow, I'd like some input on this - what would make a good backup plan for such a build?

 

[Sidhe1]

Congratulations on your Mat!! She sure sounds like a fun build to play. *notes it down for future reference* :smiley:

Bowazon [...]:

CrimsonFields
Stat points:
Str - to equip
Dex - to equip
Vit - everything else
Eng - nothing

You do realize that the more you put in Dex, the more damage you will do eh? So if you only put enough points in Dex to wear your equipment, your damage will be far less than it can be... I'll leave the possible other answers to the experts, though...

 

[jjscud]

Now, another character. Recently I was struck by the potentially fun interation between Multi-Shot and the Open Wounds mod, and so CrimsonFields, my latest project, was born.

I know that mods (like open wounds) are generally not carried by all arrows from Multishot, just the middle two irrc. If you want a room full of wounded monsters, strafe is a better bet.

 

[FrostBurn]

Congrats on your PStriker. I too matted mine not too long ago. The difference was that I used Bartuc's instead of Jade, and socketed Nat's armour with a couple of Ums to make up for the resist. I too have the fastest attack speed with dual claws. I gave up LoH for Dracul's, as I can't stand that Holy Bolt. Otherwise, gear-wise our 'sins are exactly the same.

I wonder why you have 2 pts in weapon block instead of 1. I have a slvl 11 weapon block with 51% CtB. Seems like a waste of a point to me, but I'm rather anal about my point placements. I had the same dilemma between CM and SM. I finally decided on max SM yesterday. This was because I found my slvl 18 SM died often. At slvl 30, she is living somewhat longer. It's not as if CM would have vastly improved my 'sin's attacks. Physical damage is not her forte, the increase in CS does not translate to a massive amount of damage due to her low base damage. The only real benefit was an improvement in AR. But a maxed out CM gave about 1200-1500 more AR, which translated into a 5-8% better chance to hit on the LCS. Again, this was of no siginificance when facing regular monsters, as Nat's claw has ITD. I'm actually grateful to Arreat_Mercenary for suggesting Demonlimb on switch. I Hel runed it, and when I use the level 22 enchant, and switch back, I have enough AR as if I actually did max CM. And based on all of that, that was why I went with SM.

Remember, that you want to increase you SM skill by additives of 3, i.e. 18 to 21 to 24 etc. This is because there is a formula of SM's spell skill = (SM level / 3) + (your spell skill / 2) + shadow equipment. spell skill refers to the skill being used by the SM, e.g. Phoenix Strike.

I would like to know how you found Death Sentry at /p8? I chose not to go with it, and went with Blade Fury instead. At /p8, DS is like the corpse explosion of the necro, in terms of not being able to kill monsters in 1-2 explosions. And the radius would be rather small as well compared to a maxed out DS. Did you find DS, at /p8, just as a means of removing corpses as opposed to a monster killer?

 

[Arreat_mercenary]

First: Congrats on the mat! that's some patience, since I can't seem to find the patience to mat a sin :thumbsup:

Now, I would like to notice a few points on the plan build you have:

1.- As Sidhe suggested, more dex = more damage, and damage = good. Besides, it will be a bowazon, massive ammounts of vitality are not so needed if you play smart (unless you're playing HC)

2.- Multishot carries effects like OW and CB only in the two middle arrows of the pack (as jjscud mentioned) you'll need several MS (and superb aiming!) to make a crowd full of OW

3.- Where's pierce? A bowazon without pierce is like doing a sandwich with nothing in the middle!

4.- Remember that OW works somewhat like Poison, it takes it time to work, you'll need good tanks (good micro management of valkyrie, merc and decoy) or excellent hit&run tactics (and crowd control)

5.- You'll be sacrifing some equipment just to get a decent chance of OW (meaning you can suffer somewhat of resists, and ranged attacks are the only ones an amazon should really worry, even with slow missiles)

6.- Monsters with high hp will take some time to bring them down. Again, CB (Crushing Blow) can help here, but also, only the 2 central arrows can carry effects.

What came to my mind right, but it's a good pre-idea of build

 

[Nazdakka]

I know that mods (like open wounds) are generally not carried by all arrows from Multishot, just the middle two irrc. If you want a room full of wounded monsters, strafe is a better bet.

Balls. That screws that idea :-/. What I liked was the idea of the huge numbers of bleeding monsters covering the ground with blood. If she can't do that, I may as well just build a strafer.

You do realize that the more you put in Dex, the more damage you will do eh? So if you only put enough points in Dex to wear your equipment, your damage will be far less than it can be... I'll leave the possible other answers to the experts, though...

I know, but it just seemed rather odd that every other class tries to get every point of life that it can from maxing Vit, but bowazons like to dump into dex to get the damage. I figured with the planned poison and OW I could not worry too much about base damage, but given the OW-Multi combination doesn't work the point is moot.

Congrats on your PStriker. I too matted mine not too long ago. The difference was that I used Bartuc's instead of Jade, and socketed Nat's armour with a couple of Ums to make up for the resist. I too have the fastest attack speed with dual claws. I gave up LoH for Dracul's, as I can't stand that Holy Bolt. Otherwise, gear-wise our 'sins are exactly the same.

I have a pair of Draculs, but my experiance is that I have enough Leech already (is that possible? :laugh, and the massive damage to demons is quite handy. The IAS also means I can socket Nat's Mark with something else, once I get round to it. I used a Bartuc for almost all of this character's life, and only switched to the Talon while Baal running to level 90 because I wanted to fix my dodgy resistances (that, and I'd just traded for a really good Talon).

I have 4 sockets left to fill - Nat's Mark, Nat's Helm, and the Talon. I could put a Shael in Nat's Mark and switch to Dracul's, but I quite like the +350% damage to demons mod. Otherwise, it's rubies in the Hat and armour, ED jewel in Nat's Mark, and something I haven't decided on in the Talon.

I wonder why you have 2 pts in weapon block instead of 1. I have a slvl 11 weapon block with 51% CtB. Seems like a waste of a point to me, but I'm rather anal about my point placements.

That extra skill point is a bit of a relic of a piece of indecision on my part. I don't let it annoy me, because it's still kinda useful.

I'm actually grateful to Arreat_Mercenary for suggesting Demonlimb on switch. I Hel runed it, and when I use the level 22 enchant, and switch back, I have enough AR as if I actually did max CM. And based on all of that, that was why I went with SM

I hadn't thought of that! Currently my switch is a pair of Shadow claws to give a net extra +1 Shadow Skills for prebuffing BoS and SM. I might give the Limb a try.

I would like to know how you found Death Sentry at /p8? I chose not to go with it, and went with Blade Fury instead. At /p8, DS is like the corpse explosion of the necro, in terms of not being able to kill monsters in 1-2 explosions. And the radius would be rather small as well compared to a maxed out DS. Did you find DS, at /p8, just as a means of removing corpses as opposed to a monster killer?

I never really noticed anything getting hurt by DS. I played through almost the entire game on /p8, and DS was never really used for anything apart from corpse disposal to shut down Nihlathak, Unravellers, etc. It was very good at that though, and if I play on /p1 it's predictably great. Why Blade Fury?

 

[FrostBurn]

I never really noticed anything getting hurt by DS. I played through almost the entire game on /p8, and DS was never really used for anything apart from corpse disposal to shut down Nihlathak, Unravellers, etc. It was very good at that though, and if I play on /p1 it's predictably great. Why Blade Fury?

Thanks for the feedback on DS. That confirms my suspicion of its ability at /p8.

Blade Fury for when I face Oblivion Knights, Frenzytaurs, those exploding Dolls and uniques that spawn Curse as one of their abilities. I don't really want to go scratching any of them with my claws. That's when I Blade Fury them. The SM's AI will instantly home in on them, keeping them occupied while I BF them. It is much better than Gimmershred or Buriza, as I already have Demonlimb on switch, and when switched, my AR plummeted so low that I couldn't hit when I was throwing or shooting anyway. And besides, ALL assassins should know how to throw shurikens!