Matriarch/Patriarch/Guardian Archive Thread

Originally posted by MukTuk on Mar 12, 2011:

Matriarch Tritoch, Vengeance Sorc

I made this sorc after reading this nice Vengeance Sorc guide here. I wanted to try something different, and a melee sorc sounded intriguing and fun.

And fun it was. Vengeance is a powerful skill in the hands of a Sorc, as she can use her elemental masteries to rack up the elemental damage. Throw on a maxed Enchant for more damage and some needed AR, and suddenly Vengeance is hitting for thousands of mixed elemental damage. For a good portion of the game, she was one-shotting everything she hit, and with AR provided by Angelics and enhanced by Enchant and then with Kingslayer's -25% Defense, enemies were easy to hit and would not stand up long. Sorcs are for some reason pretty fast with two-handed axes, and Kingslayer has built in IAS, so with some more IAS from gear you can be swinging pretty fast as well.

They also look awesome holding axes.

One of my favourite parts of playing this character was using the Sorc's skills to support her in battle. My favourite skill in the game is Frost Nova, so it was awesome to be able to play a character that used it so much and as an integral part of it's strategy. Frost Nova was excellent for slowing big groups of monsters and was cast on everything that was succeptible before engaging in melee. Glacial Spike was also great for being able to freeze monsters too, if things got tricky, I could always throw one GS to freeze, swing the axe, and then freeze again before they could attack (monsters reset their animations upon unfreezing). By slowing them down and alternating attacks with GS, I could keep a small group of monsters in freeze lock if I needed to, which was vitally important for staying alive against some of the tougher opponents. Use of cold skills gave the Sorc some much needed safety, as a Sorc in melee with no shield is a fragile thing indeed.

Then there is Teleport. Offensive, defensive and utility use all in one skill. Teleport was great for getting to and taking down high priority monsters (Shamen, Greater Mummies, Oblivion Knights, Aura Uniques etc), and good for ranged monsters too. For example, my preferred method of dealing with Nihlathak was to teleport into his face and them smash it in before any other bodies hit the floor for him to explode. It's also useful for getting yourself out of trouble as well. Teleport is well suited for a fast paced aggressive style of gameplay, I'd often be teleporting all around the battlefield, constantly repositioning myself to my advantage and wiping out stragglers of big groups. Teleporting in place is also good for summoning your Merc to aid you whenever you need him, a Merc is much more useful when you have a degree of control over it.

I also used Energy Shield for the first time, since I found that a Memory Staff would prebuff Enchant just as well as a Leaf staff would. I didn't invest any points into TK, didn't build my character around it and used whatever skill level I could get from a prebuff, yet it still worked out pretty well. I wasn't using my mana for much else anyway, so it may as well go towards taking away some damage. With a level 17 Meditation and 20 Warmth, my mana regenerated fast enough to make ES actually worthwhile. A few times it worked against me and left me with no mana to cast Glacial Spike or Teleport when I wanted to, but it never actually caused me significant danger, my mana regen was so fast that even if drained it took only a second or two to be able to cast again. Despite my mana bulb being nearly emptied in 2-3 hits, ES would stay active most of the time anyway, and it wasn't long untill it was refilled and ready to absorb some more damage.

Surprisingly, I had only a few deaths, and all of them easily avoidable. I died twice in NM to exploding uniques before I learnt to let my Merc finish them off, and once in Hell Ancient Tunnels to a few leftover minions when I wasn't quick enough on a full rejuv. As long as I was somewhat cautious and made good use of chill, freeze and teleport I could handle any situation just fine. However, there were a lot of NDE's, so a few times I must've just been lucky. Relying on Fade for resistances nearly killed me a few times when it wore off at the worst times, like against a conviction OK in Hell CS, or when fighting a small pack of Gloams. There were a lot of times I had to go and sit in a fire in Act 1 to activate Fade before I would dare adventure further.

That's about all I can think to write, so enjoy the stats and other details.

STATS
Name: Tritoch
Level: 83
Strength: 176 (137)
Dexterity: 67 (36)
Vitality: 299 (297)
Energy: 43 (45)
HP: 1072
Mana: 379

Resistamces (with and without Fade)
Fire: 75 (34)
Cold: 73 (13)
Lite: 75 (18)
Poison: 75 (15)

Vengeance: 5,616-8,039, 10 Frame Attack
AR: 6588 (w/ -25% Defense)

FHR: 42 (9 Frame)
Energy Shield: 55%

SKILLS
Fire Bolt: 1/4
Warmth: 20/23
Fire Ball: 1/4
Enchant: 20/23
Fire Mastery: 20/23

Static Field : 1/3
Telekinesis : 1/3
Teleport : 1/3
Lightning Mastery : 20/22

Ice Bolt : 1/3
Frost Nova : 1/3
Ice Blast : 1/3
Glacial Spike : 1/3
Cold Mastery : 5/7

Enchant was cast at lvl 29 with lvl 26 FM, and ES was cast at lvl 8 (55% absorb)

GEAR SUMMARY
'Kingslayer' Silver Edged Axe
'Memory' Battle Staff (+6 Enchant, +6 ES)
Harlequin Crest (+14% Res All Jewel)
'Treachery' Mage Plate
Dracul's Grasp
Rare Belt (+fire, +poison, +str, +life)
Rare Boots (30% r/w, +fire, +lite)
Angelic Ring + Ammy (+996 AR, +90 Life)
Raven Frost

GEAR READOUTS
Code:
Kingslayer
Silver-edged Axe
Two Hand Damage: 222 - 394
Durability: 28 of 35
Required Level: 53
Required Strength: 166
Required Dexterity: 65
Fingerprint: 0xfe1c167d
Item Level: 81
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Properties: 
259% Enhanced Damage
40% Extra Gold from Monsters
30% Increased Attack Speed
+1 to Vengeance
25% Target Defense
50% Chance of Open Wounds
33% Chance of Crushing Blow
Prevent Monster Heal
20% Bonus to Attack Rating
+10 to Strength
4 Sockets (4 used)
 
Memory
Battle Staff
Two Hand Damage: 15 - 13
Durability: 40 of 40
Required Level: 37
Fingerprint: 0x66d61650
Item Level: 20
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Properties: 
+3 to Enchant (Sorceress Only)
50% Enhanced Defense
Magic Damage Reduced by 7
20% Increase Maximum Mana
+3 to Sorceress Skill Levels
33% Faster Cast Rate
+2 to Static Field (Sorceress Only)
+3 to Energy Shield (Sorceress Only)
+10 to Energy
+10 to Vitality
+9 to Minimum Damage
25% Target Defense
4 Sockets (4 used)
 
Harlequin Crest
Shako
Defense: 124
Durability: 9 of 12
Required Level: 62
Required Strength: 50
Fingerprint: 0xcd76f800
Item Level: 99
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Properties: 
Damage Reduced by 10%
50% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items
+2 to All Skills
124 to Life (Based on Char Lvl)
124 to Mana (Based on Char Lvl)
All Resistances +14
All Stats +2
+6 to Energy
1 Sockets (1 used)
 
Socketed: Scintillating Jewel of Knowledge
Scintillating Jewel of Knowledge
Jewel
Required Level: 26
Fingerprint: 0x182e8f84
Item Level: 41
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Properties: 
+6 to Energy
All Resistances +14
 
Treachery
Mage Plate
Defense: 248
Durability: 58 of 60
Required Level: 43
Required Strength: 55
Fingerprint: 0x4d29655b
Item Level: 85
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Properties: 
+2 to Assassin Skill Levels
45% Increased Attack Speed
25% Chance to cast level 15 Venom on striking
5% Chance to cast level 15 Fade when struck
20% Faster Hit Recovery
Cold Resist +30%
50% Extra Gold from Monsters
3 Sockets (3 used)
 
Bramble Brogues
Heavy Boots
Defense: 6
Durability: 14 of 14
Required Level: 29
Required Strength: 18
Fingerprint: 0x26d61904
Item Level: 73
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Properties: 
Fire Resist +38%
Lightning Resist +35%
30% Faster Run/Walk
Repairs 1 Durability in 20 Seconds
 
Dracul's Grasp
Vampirebone Gloves
Defense: 138
Durability: 13 of 14
Required Level: 76
Required Strength: 50
Fingerprint: 0xb879e44
Item Level: 87
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Properties: 
+10 to Strength
110% Enhanced Defense
10% Life stolen per hit
+9 Life after each Kill
25% Chance of Open Wounds
5% Chance to cast level 10 Life Tap on striking
 
Demon Chain
Plated Belt
Defense: 15
Durability: 24 of 24
Required Level: 50
Required Strength: 60
Fingerprint: 0x23be5f58
Item Level: 77
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Properties: 
+17 to Strength
+30 to Life
32% Enhanced Defense
Fire Resist +13%
Poison Resist +27%
 
Raven Frost
Ring
Required Level: 45
Fingerprint: 0x40f016bc
Item Level: 78
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Properties: 
+19 to Dexterity
+40 to Mana
+216 to Attack Rating
+15 - 45 cold damage with 4 sec Duration
20% Cold Absorb
Cannot Be Frozen
 
Angelic Halo
Ring
Required Level: 12
Fingerprint: 0x5b3d5613
Item Level: 75
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Properties: 
+20 to Life
Replenish Life 6
Set (2 item): 
996 to Attack Rating (Based on Char Lvl)
 
Angelic Wings
Amulet
Required Level: 12
Fingerprint: 0xbc4e3836
Item Level: 75
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Properties: 
+3 to Light Radius
+20 Damage Taken Goes To Mana
Set (2 item): 
+75 to Life

CHARMS
Code:
Shimmering Grand Charm
 All Resistances +13%
Shimmering Small Charm of Burning
 All Resistances +5%
 +3 - 6 Fire Damage
Fine Small Charm of Balance
 +16 to Attack Rating
 +3 to Maximum Damage
 5% Faster Hit Recovery
Beryl Small Charm of Balance
 Poison Resist +5%
 5% Faster Hit Recovery
Shimmering Large Charm of Vita
 +29 to Life
 All Resistances +6%
Burning Grand Charm of Balance
 12% Faster Hit Recovery
 +1 to Fire Skills (Sorceress Only)
Fine Small Charm of Vita
 +19 to Life
 +12 to Attack Rating
 +3 to Maximum Damage
Shimmering Grand Charm of Life
 +15 to Life
 All Resistances +15%

MERC
Holy Freeze Act 2.
'Insight' eth CV (lvl17 Meditation)
Duriel's Shell (PAmmy)
Tal's Mask (Pammy)

Code:
Insight
Colossus Voulge
Two Hand Damage: 89 - 797
Durability: 26 of 26
Required Level: 48
Required Strength: 200
Required Dexterity: 45
Fingerprint: 0xc045565d
Item Level: 84
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Properties: 
All Stats +5
223% Enhanced Damage
23% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items
+5 to Critical Strike
35% Faster Cast Rate
235% Bonus to Attack Rating
Level 17 Meditation Aura When Equipped
Ethereal
+5 - 30 Fire Damage
+2 to Mana after each Kill
+75 poison damage over 5 seconds
+9 to Minimum Damage
4 Sockets (4 used)
 
Duriel's Shell
Cuirass
Defense: 683
Durability: 150 of 150
Required Level: 41
Required Strength: 65
Fingerprint: 0x6e651910
Item Level: 75
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Properties: 
186% Enhanced Defense
Cold Resist +30%
+100 Maximum Durability
Cannot Be Frozen
103 Defense (Based on Char Lvl)
83 to Life (Based on Char Lvl)
All Resistances +20
+25 to Strength
1 Sockets (1 used)
Socketed: Perfect Amethyst
 
Tal Rasha's Horadric Crest
Death Mask
Defense: 109
Durability: 20 of 20
Required Level: 66
Required Strength: 55
Fingerprint: 0x3bf09f28
Item Level: 59
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Properties: 
+60 to Life
+30 to Mana
+45 Defense
10% Life stolen per hit
10% Mana stolen per hit
All Resistances +15
+10 to Strength
1 Sockets (1 used)
Socketed: Perfect Amethyst

SCREENSHOTS

* The safest way to deal with Lister. Yes, you'll be constantly under Decrepify, but you'll only ever face one Minion at a time, so it's a fair trade off.

* Sometimes, I wish I was a Chain Lightning sorc instead...

* Actually, with the Stormrider Axe, for a while I kind of was

* Demon slayer, treasure hunter, lumberjack

* What a convenient place to put a tomb

* The most insulting quest Meph drop I've ever had. He made up for it with a Reaper's Toll in Hell though.

* Someone was lazy when they made these waypoints

* Casting frost nova when stuck in a wall. Looks pretty neat.

* X marks the spot!
 
Originally posted by Naab on Sep 20, 2008:

Matriarch Manbearpig - Dual dream bearsorc

Well this char was one i've dreamed :)whistling:)to try out long time and i had never thought i could actually, but thanks to some luck from 1.07 getting a jo rune, which really got the ball rolling for me and then some rushing and trading i could manage finally to get dual dreams which were the base of this build.

Not much to say about the game play really. MP'ed Normal,NM and Hell act 1 with Nepeta,San and some other guys, who i can't remember;) Used the 1.09 Raven claw h4xx with enchant mostly, then at lvl 40 or so switched to Kuko which was better imo, thanks to the pierce. I actually didn't have Teleport until lvl 65 so that lvl was highly waited.When finally got to lvl 65 i tried both setups-Passion and Bearsorc, and i preferred Bearsorc more.Guess im just a sucker for faster attack really even though the passionsorc has teleport and static.(and she needs some ias gear,which i didn't like)
Everything died quite fast in hell(P8 all the way of cause ;) ),LI's were a bit slower, but still gg.Ancients rolled LI both on Madawc(fixed LI i know) and Talic so they took a bit more time then kalic, but still died quite fast thanks to conviction from merc.Baal throne obviously rolled with lots of OK's - Think i saw atleast 5 + minions and witches, but it wasn't a big problem.Only really problematic area i think was CS, where IM killed merc several times, so he needed some ressurrects.
Baal waves were quite easy,was a bit afraid of Lister myself first, but turned out just OK.Baal of cause was a pushover,even on p8.
I can't remember deaths, think there were few in Normal and NM.Beta Delirium on merc really shrined in hell for me - Excellent crowd control. I agree with people who say it's one of the most underrated runewords.Obviously having big life helped, too.Almost no leech meant i had to gulp a few potions sometimes though.
That's pretty much all about the char,she is quite fun as well so i would reccommend her even if it's on battlenet.

Finds:I can't remember any good ones,Hell Hellforge was Io.

Stats(Base):
LCS

Strenght 30
Dexterity 107
Vitality 328
Energy base

Skills:
20 FM
20 LM
20 Enchant
20 Warmth
1 in static,shiver armor,telekinesis and prereqs.
Got 10 free skill points which will prolly be used in thunderstorm or shiver armor.Haven't decided.


Gear:

Dream Troll nest-no comments here besides thanks to Ray patean for trading this for me(for a Ber btw)

Dream Bone visage - Took some time get the base item actually, Cows were very reluctant to drop it, took like 150 runs :S .(High defense one)

Enigma Breast plate(mmmm breasts) - Choose this for huge FRW,big strenght bonus and other yummy mods.CoH could maybe challenge it, but since i don't have it i didn't have any regrets.

Gemmed PB with 95% IAS,57% LR,50% CR,23% FR - weapon made cooperation with Jae,Undying and Omgwtfbbqpwnt.

Mara's 30 all resists-Huge resistances,stats,+skills.Easy choice.

Arachnid mesh-I'll be needing the fcr for throne teleporting while baaling.Slow and plus skill is nice as well.

Crafted Gloves with 10 CB,18% CR,18% LR,28% FR,20% IAS,1% LL and 14 life.Gloves part was the biggest part i had most thinking.Finally chose these over Bloodfists and Dracul's, because of the resistances and CB.

Rare boots with 32% FR,37% LR,20% FRW,19% MF,+4 dex and some ED.

Raven frost and Beta BKWB for rings.

On switch i switched from Beta CTA War Scepter and Beast Zerker(yes im a dirty ebugging h4xxor :( ). Shield was Lidless wall.

Charms were 6 sparking skillers with 7% FRW and +140 life in total.Cold,poison and fire res small charms with some str and other minor mods also.I'll be switching them out when im getting more str from Enigma or free stat points.

29 Str amulet in cube so i could wear Beast zerker.

On Holy Freeze mercenary i had Fort Archon plate,Infinity GPA and Beta Delirium Winged Helm.


Future of this char:I'll be testing some baal runs with her,i'm hoping may be i can push 3 min average out of her.


Thanks to:
Undying-for donating some runes,practically half the enigma :shocked:
Omgwtfbbqwtf and Jae for res/IAS jewel donations.
Ray Patean-for trading his shield for Ber.
Me-for having gg patience getting the gear,rushing,playing the stupid game :p

Any questions or suggestion maybe?
Thanks for reading.
 
Originally posted by NagisaFurukawa on Apr 28, 2008:

Matriarch Hinagiku, ES Ribcracker Enchantress (HnG 2/3)

Introduction

Introducing Matriarch Katsura Hinagiku (? ????). Hina would be your average 16 year old know-all, do-all. Having faced an enormous amount of adversity in her past, she bears maturity well beyond her years. As president of not only her school's student council but also its kendo club, Hinagiku is the envy of many a person (quite unlike her alcoholic oneechan... last seen in Lut Gholein...).

Strength: Strong parries. Quick movements.
Weakness: Fiery attitude. Stubborn to a fault.

Hotkeys
F1 = Normal Attack: Whack~.
F2 = Teleport: Whoosh~.
F3 = Tome of Town Portal.
V = Battle Command: La Senorita Presidente.
C = Battle Orders: Mademoiselle la Presidente.
F = Enchant: En Fuego.
D = Energy Shield.

Blargh. I wanted to make something original, but that just didn't seem possible with the popularity of sorceresses... Anyway, it seems Nightfish already made something quite similar. There are some pretty glaring differences though. x).

----------------------------------------------------------

Vitals
Name: Hinagiku.
Level: 86 (1150473689 EXP).

Strength: 110 (117). <- Blah! Couldn't be helped.
Dexterity: 25 (52).
Vitality: 10 (12).
Energy: 375 (377). <- Future points go here.

Total Damage: 2503-3294 @ 11 frames.
Physical Damage: 696-1052.

Attack Rating: 7883 (67% Chance to Hit Baal).
Defense: 3778 (77% Chance of Being Hit by Baal).

Life: 649 (984 with BO). <- For an Energy sorc, this is stupidly high.
Mana: 1928 (2706 with BO).
Resists: -70/-70/-70/-70. <- Intentional. Shouldn't have saved Anya...

ES: 80% (0.75 Mana per Unit Damage).
DR: 34 PDR, 10% DR, 20 MDR.

FHR: 90% (7 frames).
FCR: 0% (13 frames).

----------------------------------------------------------

Skills
Energy Shield: 20 (25).
Enchant: 20 (26).
Warmth: 20 (26).
Fire Mastery: 11 (17). <- Future points go here.
Battle Orders: 6 (11).
Battle Command: 4 (9).
Teleport: 1 (4).

Telekinesis: 20.
Prerequisites: 1.

Equipment
Weapon 1: Hinagiku's Ribcracker (Stalagmite, 15 IAS Jewel).
Weapon 2: Ethereal Call to Arms Crystal Sword.
Shield 2: Splendor Bone Shield.
Helm: Harlequin Crest (Sol Rune).
Armor: The Gladiator's Bane (Sol Rune).
Gloves: Frostburn.
Belt: Trang-Oul's Girth.
Boots: Silkweave.
Amulet: Angelic Wings.
Ring 1: Angelic Halo.
Ring 2: Angelic Halo.
Charms: 5 Strength, 5 Maximum Damage, 1-6 Lightning Damage, 100 Poison Damage, 11 Attack Rating, 157 Life, 268 Mana, 10% FHR, 1 Fire Skill.

----------------------------------------------------------

Mercenary
Name: Jemali.
Level: 81 (71998608 EXP).
Class: Desert Mercenary - Combat (Normal, Prayer).

Equipment
Weapon: Ethereal Insight Thresher.
Helm: Tal Rasha's Horadric Crest.
Armor: Duriel's Shell.

----------------------------------------------------------

Ramblings
Let's get this out of the way first. Total Deaths: At least 50 (mostly in Normal). Total NDEs: Lots. I was keeping a tally in a Microsoft Word document. Bad idea. Hit around 40 by the time I made it out of Act 1. Gave up shortly thereafter.

1) Having zero ES with zero Vitality is a pain. Cain can go save himself. 40 life equates to instant deathly goodness against stuff like Treehead Woodfist on /players 8. Duriel? Holy Freeze vs Hina. Guess who wins. Did I mention the lack of stamina (both in game and in real life)? In other words, there was no going over /players 1. Too bad that didn't really stop the dying. Scarabs? Sayonara. Gloams? Au revoir. All in all, a very traumatizing experience. Would I do it again? Heck yea! At least it wasn't HC, right? ...... :banghead: Always wanted to use that smiley. x).

2) Mana Burn hurts, but poison hurts more. I'm no fan of carrying Antidotes, and the double Prayer aura from the merc was hardly enough with -70% resist. Poison basically meant an instant town portal and heal.

3) Having no leech was bearable. ES and PDR make hits on the life bulb quite negligible. Prayer and a bit of Replenish Life gave more than enough HP. As far as mana is concerned, Insight and Warmth really got the job done. Besides, leeching with 800 average physical damage every 11 frames or so doesn't exactly amount to very much anyway.

4) Hell (except for WSK/Baal) was probably the easiest difficulty. This kid is one heck of a tank. It's just a matter of steering clear of poison clouds and mana burners. Easier said than done, but definitely fewer NDEs than with most characters.

5) Using Frostburn instead of LoH/Drac's/Drainers was quite worth it. The mana was an obvious plus, but the cold damage made some targets quite a bit easier to bring down. That 5% off-weapon ED didn't hurt either. x).

7) I took some time to read up on previously Matriarch'd Enchantresses, and quite a few of them had separate gear for prebuffing Enchant. Whether it be laziness or... well... laziness, I decided that it wouldn't be worth the extra work to net a couple thousand extra damage (though in retrospect... this sure seems silly).

----------------------------------------------------------

Future Plans
1) Optimal melee Baal runner thread, here I come! No. I did two Baal runs to test her run slow (I would say speed, but...). The first run took a little over half an hour. The second took 25 minutes. Decrepify? Ouch. FI Stone Skin Lister? Fun. Mana Burn Multiple Shot Achmel? *cries*.

2) HnG 3/3: Undecided. I have a Harmony Valkazon parked in Act 3 Nightmare. Very painful to play. Might just scrap that entirely and go for something else. One more odd build, and I'll be satisfied. But what to make?!? A PS assassin would fit a character, but that's still relatively cookie-cutter.

Special Thanks
~ jjscud's MFO for most of the items.
~ BobtheWarrior and scarred_life for some of the charms.
~ Myself for killing my screenshot folder.
~ Anyone who still reads these.

Time to take a little nap.
 
Originally posted by NagisaFurukawa on Dec 5, 2008:

Matriarch Alicia, 'Rift' Enchantress (4.5/12)

Introduction



Guess who/where I got the idea for this build from? =). Anyway, while browsing the Arreat Summit, I noticed that 'Rift' could be made in both scepters and polearms. Makes sense why people would only make it in scepters. Ever heard of a 2 handed 'Grief'? ;). Why does this matter? I wonder.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Introducing Matriarch Alicia. Alicia Florence is one of Neo-Venezia's undine. Neo-Venezia, as a handful of you may know, literally means New Venice, and undine are female gondoliers who work in that city. (Undine are something slightly different in real life, in case you were wondering.) Neo-Venezia is located on the planet Aqua. Aqua is essentially a colonized version of Mars, in which the gravity and atmosphere are both highly regulated. Although Alicia is one of the city's three best undine, she has an extremely laid-back personality, and enjoys all of the little things in life.

Alicia loves the snowball effect. Frozen Orb anyone? She was also featured in this amusing little cross-reference (which about 0.00001% of the world understands). That's Alicia holding the scythe form of Fate's Bardiche. Long story short, Fate has a sister named Alicia, blahblahblah you still won't get it, so I won't bother.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Different encounters, separated only by time, together gave life to this one little miracle.

I hope that didn't induce the gag reflex, but it often holds true, as it did for this character. For the record, the anime in question is Aria the Natural, season two of three in the Aria family. Full of "embarrassing remarks", such as the one found above.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Stats and Skills
LCS

Enchant: 20
Frozen Armor: 1
Teleport: 1
Static Field: 1

Cold Mastery: 20
Fire Mastery: 20
Warmth: 20
Ice Bolt: 6
Telekinesis: 1

Equipment
Weapon 1: 'Rift' Alicia's Scythe
Weapon 2: 'Memory' Gnarled Staff (+3 Enchant)
Helm: 'Ort' Kira's Guardian
Armor: 'Treachery' Light Plate
Gloves: Bone Knuckle Heavy Gloves
Belt: Storm Cord Demonhide Sash
Boots: Bitter Shank Heavy Boots
Amulet: Angelic Wing
Ring 1: Angelic Halo
Ring 2: Angelic Halo

Code:
Rift
Alicia's Scythe
'HelKoLemGul'
Two-Hand Damage: 8 to 20
Durability: 47 of 65
Required Dexterity: 33
Required Strength: 33
Required Level: 53
Polearm Class - Fast Attack Speed
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 28
Fingerprint: 0x60d4398b
+8 to Strength
+8 to Energy
+18 to Dexterity
+8 to Vitality
Adds 60-180 fire damage
Adds 160-250 magic damage
75% Extra Gold from Monsters
Requirements -20%
38% Damage Taken Goes to Mana
20% Bonus to Attack Rating
16% Chance to cast Level 21 Frozen Orb on attack
20% Chance to cast Level 16 Tornado on striking
Level 15 Iron Maiden (40/40 Charges)
Socketed (4: 4 used)

Memory
Gnarled Staff
'LumIoSolEth'
Two-Hand Damage: 13 to 14
Durability: 35 of 35
Required Level: 37
Staff Class - Slow Attack Speed
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 20
Fingerprint: 0xe7fd9414
+10 to Energy
+10 to Vitality
+50% Enhanced Defense
+9 to Minimum Damage
Magic Damage Reduced by 7
Increase Maximum Mana 20%
+3 to Sorceress Skill Levels
33% Faster Cast Rate
+2 to Static Field (Sorceress Only)
+3 to Enchant (Sorceress Only)
+3 to Energy Shield (Sorceress Only)
-25% Target Defense
150% Damage to Undead
Socketed (4: 4 used)

Kira's Guardian
Tiara
'Ort'
Defense: 139
Durability: 25 of 25
Required Level: 77
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 87
Fingerprint: 0x71f6019c
+99 Defense
Fire Resist +56%
Lightning Resist +86%
Cold Resist +56%
Poison Resist +56%
20% Faster Hit Recovery
Cannot Be Frozen
Socketed (1: 1 used)

Treachery
Light Plate
'ShaelThulLem'
Defense: 101
Durability: 59 of 60
Required Strength: 41
Required Level: 43
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 39
Fingerprint: 0x3fd5285
Cold Resist +30%
50% Extra Gold from Monsters
+2 to Assassin Skill Levels
45% Increased Attack Speed
20% Faster Hit Recovery
25% Chance to cast Level 15 Venom on striking
5% Chance to cast Level 15 Fade when struck
Socketed (3: 3 used)

Bone Knuckle
Heavy Gloves
Defense: 13
Durability: 14 of 14
Required Level: 27
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 62
Fingerprint: 0x1c3ee971
+94% Enhanced Defense
Fire Resist +20%
Lightning Resist +27%
10% Increased Attack Speed

Storm Cord
Demonhide Sash
Defense: 48
Durability: 11 of 12
Required Strength: 20
Required Level: 56
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 82
Fingerprint: 0x1cc24e87
+11 to Strength
+34% Enhanced Defense
Damage Reduced by 3
Magic Damage Reduced by 1
Fire Resist +13%
Lightning Resist +17%
Poison Resist +10%

Bitter Shank
Heavy Boots
Defense: 12
Durability: 13 of 14
Required Strength: 18
Required Level: 23
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 87
Fingerprint: 0x7ba2ab37
+79% Enhanced Defense
Lightning Resist +28%
Cold Resist +28%
20% Faster Run/Walk
10% Faster Hit Recovery
12% Chance to cast Level 4 Nova when struck

Angelic Wings
Amulet
Required Level: 12
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 55
Fingerprint: 0xbabb40a4
+3 to Light Radius
20% Damage Taken Goes to Mana

Angelic Halo
Ring
Required Level: 12
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 61
Fingerprint: 0x26980b79
+20 to Life
Replenish Life +6

Angelic Halo
Ring
Required Level: 12
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 87
Fingerprint: 0x763f38c1
+20 to Life
Replenish Life +6

Garnet Small Charm of Strength
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
Required Level: 20
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 65
Fingerprint: 0x8f34de0e
+2 to Strength
Fire Resist +9%

Sapphire Small Charm
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
Required Level: 32
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 87
Fingerprint: 0xd935f8f1
Cold Resist +10%

Small Charm of Vita
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
Required Level: 39
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 80
Fingerprint: 0x7a422105
+16 to Life

Small Charm of Vita
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
Required Level: 39
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 79
Fingerprint: 0x205d2981
+18 to Life

-----------------------------------------------------------

Mercenary
Name: Mizan
Level: 81 (64,600,362 EXP)
Class: Holy Freeze Town Guard

Weapon: 'Shael' The Reaper's Toll
Helm: Vampire Gaze
Armor: 'Treachery' Archon Plate (Ethereal)

-----------------------------------------------------------

Comments
1) Any time Frozen Orb was triggered, Alicia would be unable to attack anything for about half a second. Whether or not this affects any other classes as well is beyond my knowledge, but it was really more of a nuisance than a total setback. It just made it impossible to get a barrage of orbs without some help from a friend. =).

2) Alicia was truly a joy to play. Unlike just about every other character I have made, she stayed on higher /players settings until Act 3 Hell. Her killspeed was quite good, though she couldn't kill Balrog-type monsters very well. You could honestly call her a cookie cutter, as she was essentially an Enchantress with Frozen Orb "backup". The only difference was in her execution of things (pun intended).

3) Battles were pretty easy to figure out. It helps when the only skills you can really use are Normal Attack (if you call that a skill) and Teleport. It was just a matter of diagnosis. No Fire Immunes? No problem. Fire Immunes only? A little bit slow, but nothing impossible. Mixed Immunes? Teleport around until the mercenary engages the things which are Fire Immune. Deal with the other stuff yourself as best you can, and hopefully fire some Frozen Orbs in your buddy's direction to speed up the process.

4) Alicia was basically a walking, talking three course meal. One that can change positions on a dime. She had a lot of NDEs, mostly from poison damage, and died from time to time due to careless use of Teleport. She also died to this. No comment. Frozen Armor was kind of nice. Didn't freeze stuff for particularly long, but every little bit counts.

5) 'Rift' is a very nifty weapon. Sorceresses swing a little faster with Scythes than with Caducei, though I did not actually know this until after I had made it. *whistle* This beauty of a weapon will be used at least a couple more times. The known variants include Conviction Zealots and Kickers, but it might also be serviceable on a few other characters. Fury druids (synergized Tornado) and Conviction Clerics ('Rift' on the mercenary) immediately come to mind. *shrug* Probably a handful of other choices as well.

6) Finds? Enough to keep the average person happy. =). My guess would be that she found at least 30 S/Us. Pretty darn good for a character with 0 MF. Here are the more notable finds.

Leviathan, Eaglehorn, Homunculus, Suicide Branch.
Ethereal Blackbog's Sharp, Lightsabre.
Um Rune (NM Forge), Pul Rune, Ko Rune (Hell Forge).
23 MF 18 LR 13 DEX 3 LL Heavy Gloves.
Scintillating Jewel of Bliss, Trainer's GC of Life.
Serpent's LC of Balance, Serpent's GC of Greed, 3 plain-ish Serpent's GCs.
3 socket Mage Plate, 5 socket Naga, 4 socket Monarch, ethereal Balrog Blade.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Future Plans
1) With her luck, Alicia might as well be my primary MF'er. =). Honestly though, she might do some Council runs every now and then. Slap on a Gheed's and some Chance Guards (maybe even a Dwarf Star?), and she'll have about 500 GF. Not exactly amazing, but it'll be enough to get the rest of my characters out of the red.

2) If I can get my hands on some Nature's Peaces, I'll be working on a PDR character next. Should that prove impossible, I won't really mind. There are tons of other things I've been wanting to do. =).

Special Thanks
1) Neksja!
2) Junichi Sato for Aria. Best anime ever.
3) TopHatCat64 for the Kira's Guardian.
4) Oblivious for 2 Lem runes.
5) The readers and SP(T)F.

P.S. Was going to complain about how this exhausted just about all of my rune wealth, but... I'm not really in a position to do so at the moment. =).
 
Originally posted by NagisaFurukawa on Jul 30, 2009:

Matriarch Shion, Titan Berserkeress

Introduction

This character was inspired a lot by this thread, where Master Zap writes about her (?) HC Titan Enchantress. It was a pretty fun read, and for a long time I wondered how she could ever pull off such a thing and keep herself sane, so at the end of the day the only way to know for sure is to try yourself (albeit SC), right? :D.

As for the character name, if you know what yandere means, that explains everything, including why I picked Berserk. ;).

Numbers
Nutshell

Strength: 420 (445)
Dexterity: 25 (86)
Vitality: 10 (10)
Energy: 35 (35)

Enchant: 20 (40 prebuff)
Fire Mastery: 20 (37 prebuff; 22 normally)
Warmth: 20 (22)

Static Field: 20 (22)
Teleport: 7 (9)
Frozen Armor: 1 (3)

Items
Weapon: 'Passion' Thunder Maul
Helm: Kira's Guardian (27 CR / 15 IAS Jewel)
Armor: 'Treachery' Dusk Shroud
Gloves: 24 FR / 25 LR / 9 DEX Chain Gloves
Belt: Immortal King's Detail
Boots: Waterwalk
Amulet: Highlord's Wrath
Ring: Raven Frost
Ring: Raven Frost

Charms: 15 MAX, 689 AR, 351 LIFE, 8 FHR

Prebuff: 'Call to Arms' War Scepter, 'Spirit' Monarch, Volcanic Swirling Crystal (+3 Enchant), Volcanic Tiara, 'Enlightenment' Dusk Shroud, Magefist, Arachnid Mesh, Volcanic Amulet of the Leech, The Stone of Jordan

Code:
Passion
Shion's Thunder Maul
'DolOrtEldLem'
Two-Hand Damage: 94 to 513
Durability: 35 of 60
Required Strength: 253
Required Level: 65
Mace Class - Normal Attack Speed
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 85
Fingerprint: 0x25124bad
+185% Enhanced Damage
Adds 1-50 lightning damage
75% Extra Gold from Monsters
25% Increased Attack Speed
+1 to Berserk
+1 to Zeal
Hit Causes Monster to Flee 25%
Hit Blinds Target +10
74% Bonus to Attack Rating
225% Damage to Undead
+50 to Attack Rating against Undead
Level 3 Heart of Wolverine (12/12 Charges)
Socketed (4: 4 used)

Kira's Guardian
Tiara
Defense: 118
Durability: 20 of 25
Required Level: 77
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 87
Fingerprint: 0x5ba88078
+70 Defense
Fire Resist +66%
Lightning Resist +66%
Cold Resist +93%
Poison Resist +66%
15% Increased Attack Speed
20% Faster Hit Recovery
Cannot Be Frozen
Socketed (1: 1 used)

Treachery
Shion's Dusk Shroud
'ShaelThulLem'
Defense: 445
Durability: 19 of 20
Required Strength: 77
Required Level: 49
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 79
Fingerprint: 0xda1dc98e
Cold Resist +30%
50% Extra Gold from Monsters
+2 to Assassin Skill Levels
45% Increased Attack Speed
20% Faster Hit Recovery
25% Chance to cast Level 15 Venom on striking
5% Chance to cast Level 15 Fade when struck
Socketed (3: 3 used)

Shion's Spirit Grip
Chain Gloves
Defense: 18
Durability: 12 of 16
Required Strength: 25
Required Level: 31
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 88
Fingerprint: 0x338c5087
+9 to Dexterity
+80% Enhanced Defense
Fire Resist +24%
Lightning Resist +25%
14% Chance to cast Level 5 Nova when struck

Volcanic Swirling Crystal
One-Hand Damage: 18 to 42
Durability: 34 of 50
(Sorceress Only)
Required Level: 45
Orb Class - Slow Attack Speed
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 80
Fingerprint: 0xaa40543c
+54 to Life
+3 to Enchant (Sorceress Only)
+3 to Fire Skills (Sorceress Only)

Enlightenment
Dusk Shroud
'PulRalSol'
Defense: 607
Durability: 11 of 20
Required Strength: 77
Required Level: 49
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 79
Fingerprint: 0x15582515
+30% Enhanced Defense
Damage Reduced by 7
Fire Resist +30%
+2 to Sorceress Skill Levels
+1 to Warmth
5% Chance to cast Level 15 Fire Ball on striking
5% Chance to cast Level 15 Blaze when struck
Socketed (3: 3 used)

Steel Grand Charm of Sustenance
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
Required Level: 41
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 80
Fingerprint: 0x587e51fd
+30 to Life
+119 to Attack Rating

Iron Small Charm of Life
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
Required Level: 31
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 80
Fingerprint: 0xacacc38f
+10 to Life
+22 to Attack Rating

Iron Small Charm of Sustenance
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
Required Level: 31
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 80
Fingerprint: 0xb18526d2
+13 to Life
+20 to Attack Rating

Iron Small Charm of Vita
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
Required Level: 39
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 80
Fingerprint: 0xbe2638ab
+17 to Life
+23 to Attack Rating

Bronze Small Charm of Vita
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
Required Level: 39
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 80
Fingerprint: 0xb0bcb897
+18 to Life
+6 to Attack Rating

Iron Small Charm of Vita
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
Required Level: 39
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 84
Fingerprint: 0x609fdcd9
+17 to Life
+13 to Attack Rating

Iron Large Charm of Vita
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
Required Level: 50
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 85
Fingerprint: 0xdca2540d
+30 to Life
+36 to Attack Rating

Small Charm of Vita
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
Required Level: 39
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 85
Fingerprint: 0x8fcd489e
+18 to Life

Small Charm of Vita
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
Required Level: 39
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 80
Fingerprint: 0xdc1a6c20
+20 to Life

Small Charm of Vita
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
Required Level: 39
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 88
Fingerprint: 0xbb474ee1
+16 to Life

Sharp Grand Charm of Life
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
Required Level: 21
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 80
Fingerprint: 0xe2284cec
+15 to Life
+51 to Attack Rating
+9 to Maximum Damage

Fine Grand Charm of Sustenance
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
Required Level: 37
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 99
Fingerprint: 0xefb93e1e
+28 to Life
+48 to Attack Rating
+6 to Maximum Damage

Steel Grand Charm of Sustenance
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
Required Level: 35
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 80
Fingerprint: 0x9e753dca
+24 to Life
+113 to Attack Rating

Small Charm of Vita
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
Required Level: 39
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 80
Fingerprint: 0x1dbda5cd
+18 to Life

Bronze Small Charm of Vita
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
Required Level: 39
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 80
Fingerprint: 0xac765f79
+18 to Life
+2 to Attack Rating

Steel Grand Charm of Sustenance
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
Required Level: 37
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 70
Fingerprint: 0x6d5b1719
+28 to Life
+98 to Attack Rating

Iron Grand Charm of Sustenance
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
Required Level: 53
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 80
Fingerprint: 0x6bd4a283
+31 to Life
+75 to Attack Rating

Steel Large Charm of Balance
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
Required Level: 36
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 80
Fingerprint: 0x80f5c877
+63 to Attack Rating
8% Faster Hit Recovery

Mercenary
Class: Town Guard, Might

Weapon: 'Shael' The Reaper's Toll
Helm: 'Ort' Tal Rasha's Horadric Crest
Armor: 'Treachery' Mage Plate

Questing
Normal: Nothing much to speak of here. Envy Bow / Helm / Armor -> Raven Claw made for very smooth sailing early on. Partial Angelics for extra life made any potential threats not a problem at all. By the time Kuko Shakuku and Razortail came around, and with Enchant being decently beefy by that point, one hit kills, individual or group, were quite abundant. Boring? Hardly, especially since I knew it would get more painful eventually. :D.

Nightmare: As Enchant gets beefier, things continued falling. The LCS lies about ranged Enchant damage I believe, but really killing things in two hits instead of one really isn't all that troublesome. :p. The real questing began at level 65, when the nasty, nasty Thunder Maul became available. You can bet I was so sad when I had to mule off that bow. :(. The damage was still great, but monsters FE or CE (or worse, both) were always a death waiting to happen, which proved annoying enough to make me decide to go the 'Call to Arms' route. It didn't help that much of her resists would only become available at level 77, when Kira's Guardian would be equippable.

Hell Act 1: She entered Hell at a very young level of 67, I believe. Things actually proceeded quite smoothly, provided she was patient enough. With her high level Static Field, she could whittle entire screen fulls of monsters (provided they weren't LI) down to half, and then take them out in a single passing blow or two. Since monsters were still relatively weak, she determined that she could probably level her way up to around 75, when her mercenary would get a major boost through The Reaper's Toll, and as such set out to do /players 8 bosspack runs in various areas. Most monsters could make very short work of her mercenary, and as such as was forced to teleport around, getting in single hits once she temporarily separated enemies. Some ordinarily mundane monsters proved more troubling than usual, but otherwise the progress was smooth.

Hell Act 2: The Maggot Lair was surprisingly easy. When this character doesn't get swarmed, she performs perfectly fine. Now that her mercenary had The Reaper's Toll, she was able to get him in there and have him slow down the monsters, while she employed hit and run tactics to take off big chunks of enemy hit points at a time.

Hell Act 3: Ah yes. Hell on earth. Needless to say, huge packs of Flayers are the bane of her existence. Sure, they die in a single blow, but when there's millions of them putting you into recovery, all is not well. The Gibdinn quest was particularly frightening, as the pack of Flayers spawned directly on top of her. A quick reposition proved more than enough for them though. Dolls were also slightly annoying, as one unlucky explosion could spell instant death, but this is why we spend money on mercenaries. ;).

Hell Act 4: While she had thankfully avoided running into Gloams in Act 3, Shion ran into plenty of Souls, including a handful near Izual. While they fell in one hit, getting to them, particularly with their piercing attack, proved no easy task. Then again, this all paled into comparison with the Chaos Sanctuary. My usual tactic for non-rushed sorceresses in the Chaos Sanctuary involves teleporting to the center platform and clearing space to slowly lure enemies back towards. Some fancy footwork and teleporting typically proves more than enough, but in her first attempt at it, Shion kicked the bucket to a screenful of Oblivion / Doom Knights. :(. Her second attempt, however, proved much more successful, and Diablo fell without any trouble at all.

Hell Act 5: Her Bloody Foothills map rolled with Burning Skeleton Archers. Hooray! This was thankfully made up for later, however, as her Frozen River map was Gloamless, and her Halls of Vaught map was without a Viper. :). Of course, nobody goes unscathed for long, and her Throne had both Burning Souls and Oblivion Knights. Very fun stuff, and even though she was able to dispose of those nasties, she inevitably fell to a Lister she was much too foolhardy to park. Immediate death awaited shortly after taking that picture. :D. Her second attempt was equally bad, as she magically forgot to buy more TPs, and as such she had to abort her mission a few waves in. For her final attempt, she breezed through the first four waves as always, but Lister spawned Extra Fast (and possibly other mods, but she was much too busy fleeing to bother to check), and as such she decided to park his pack and finish off Baal to put an end to her story, albeit quite cheesily.

Finds: Not much. My very first Key of Destruction, but otherwise nothing more than a forgettable set of forges (Fal / Hel), though she did find the "Lost" City, as well as one of the more convenient questing (not to mention AT!) maps of all time. :D.

Comments
I have to say, a 910 life melee character with limited crowd control and zero source of leech is quite interesting. She does make up for it with her RIDICULOUS damage, but it is damage which you must apply quite slowly by hitting and running, since monsters seem to simply ignore your mercenary if you approach them to kill them. Not that I'm saying it's a bad decision on their part, but... :p.

She did all the quests and hit the majority of the waypoints, as most of my questing characters do, but really she got quite lucky with some of the rolls. She did not meet any very scary bosspacks (by normal standards at least), and my biggest fear of Vipers in Nihlathak's Temple ended up being unfounded. For the record, the old geezer was a measly three hit kill. *whistle*

Closing
If you've never made an Enchantress before, I suggest you go try one! They can pack quite a nice amount of damage, and while the usual complaint is low damage against Fire Immunes, I didn't really notice this problem. :p. On a more serious note though, they are very unique melee characters, in large part because of their built in 'Enigma', and can handle their own quite nicely with their array of interesting skills. Did I mention your mercenary gets a nice little boost to his damage? :).

Questions? Comments? Wishes of luck in the MFO? Complaints about my absurd Grisu-rivaling (I'm calling you out!) smiley to word ratio? *hides* If you've made it this far (or even if you haven't), thanks for reading! :).
 
Originally posted by NagisaFurukawa on Nov 14, 2009:

Matriarch Sakura, PK, er... 2H Sword ES CtC Enchantless

With threads flying around asking for new ideas for builds, I thought I'd contribute this not-entirely-original-but-still-fun one. :).

Alibi
Sakura's 5 minute rise to infamy was quite entertaining, at least from her point of view. Upon reaching level 76, she entered a game full of level 30 characters, threw on her Enchant, ES, and Bone Armor, and proceeded to hostile the bunch without so much as saying a word. Is this the part where I get banned from MP? *hides* Despite this, she had no *real* intention of actually killing anyone (although only because she didn't recognize them all), and decided instead to take her only late waypoint (WSK 2), and kill off some monsters.

Things became quiet, at least for a while, until she had made it back up to the Arreat Summit. Upon reaching her destination, the words "Icy Cellar" fluttered into her ears, but by the time she had managed to figure things out, a collection of red X's had not only stumbled upon her, but also triggered the Ancients! :D. With her pathway back into WSK jammed, the rest, as they say, was history.

Just so we're clear here, she stood in the corner and waited them out. It's not *her* fault they came recklessly charging at her moderately dangerous rogue. :whistling:

"Real" Introduction
"Enchantless" is a term coined by SSoG (I think), referring to a sorceress who synergizes Enchant charges from Demon Limb just to save a few skill points. The appeal of the build, at least according to him, is the versatility which it allows for, as having around 50 spare points opens the door for a much stronger backup.

So what strange thing, you ask, was done with these points? In review, Sakura (the Type-Moon one) comes from one of the most successful families of mages and holds a very large reserve of mana, but for tl;dr quality reasons, remains untrained in any of the magical arts. A latent talent, if you will. If that sounds like a disaster of a D2 character waiting to happen, you'd be very much wrong. :).

With 20 points already in Warmth, ES seemed like a natural fit, especially for a character who fights at melee range, and has little actual use for her mana, aside from the occasional Teleport. Having already finished an ES Enchantless or two in the past, however, I made sure she was further hybridized, adding the more traditional Frozen Orb to the mix, via chance to cast from 'Voice of Reason'.

Outfit
LCS

Strength: 80 (80)
Dexterity: 48 (60)
Vitality: 10 (10)
Energy: 332 (332)

Life: 882
Mana: 2490
Resists: 35/-20/-40/-40

Fire Tree: 20 Warmth, 20 Fire Mastery
Lightning Tree: 20 Telekinesis, 13 Energy Shield
Cold Tree: 10 Cold Mastery

Weapon: 'Voice of Reason' Flamberge
Helm: Arch-Angel's Circlet of Life Everlasting (62 AR/14 Life, 15 IAS)
Armor: 'Bone' Dusk Shroud
Gloves: Laying of Hands
Belt: Hsarus' Iron Stay
Boots: Hsarus' Iron Heel
Amulet: Bahamut's Amulet of Life Everlasting
Ring: Dwarf Star
Ring: The Stone of Jordan

Switch: 'Call to Arms' War Scepter, Lidless Wall
ES Prebuff: 'Memory' Cedar Staff (+3 ES)
Enchant Prebuff: Amber Amulet of Atlas, 'Hel' Demon Limb

With 'Memory', she hit 81% ES. The amulet gives her the 30 extra strength for reaching the 107 required by the Demon Limb.

Mercenary Weapon: 'Faith' Diamond Bow
Mercenary Helm: Vampire Gaze (15 IAS)
Mercenary Armor: 'Fortitude' Dusk Shroud

Code:
HebrewHammer's Ear (omg!)
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Level 32 Paladin

Weaver's Ear (always good to kill more paladins, :D)
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Level 30 Paladin

Serpent's Large Charm of Vita
Large Charm
Required Level: 50
Fingerprint: 0x122c5ed8
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+26 to Life
+25 to Mana

Serpent's Large Charm of Vita
Large Charm
Required Level: 66
Fingerprint: 0x32f5e8c5
Item Level: 88
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+32 to Life
+30 to Mana

Serpent's Small Charm of Dexterity
Small Charm
Required Level: 40
Fingerprint: 0xbc411c22
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+2 to Dexterity
+17 to Mana

Serpent's Small Charm of Winter
Small Charm
Required Level: 40
Fingerprint: 0xdd619763
Item Level: 88
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Adds 4 - 7 Cold Damage Over 1 Secs (25 Frames)
+14 to Mana

Snake's Small Charm of Vita
Small Charm
Required Level: 39
Fingerprint: 0x71860764
Item Level: 85
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+16 to Life
+8 to Mana

Snake's Small Charm of Vita
Small Charm
Required Level: 39
Fingerprint: 0xe682de12
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+17 to Life
+11 to Mana

Lizard's Small Charm of Vita
Small Charm
Required Level: 39
Fingerprint: 0x85dc8959
Item Level: 85
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+19 to Life
+6 to Mana

Snake's Small Charm of Vita
Small Charm
Required Level: 39
Fingerprint: 0x737ec32a
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+20 to Life
+11 to Mana

Serpent's Small Charm of Sustenance
Small Charm
Required Level: 40
Fingerprint: 0xf2c9e779
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+15 to Life
+17 to Mana

Serpent's Grand Charm of Sustenance
Grand Charm
Required Level: 37
Fingerprint: 0xa0c16160
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+27 to Life
+52 to Mana

Serpent's Small Charm of Sustenance
Small Charm
Required Level: 40
Fingerprint: 0xdd99c2ed
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+12 to Life
+16 to Mana

Small Charm of Vita
Small Charm
Required Level: 39
Fingerprint: 0x77fd1411
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+20 to Life

Small Charm of Vita
Small Charm
Required Level: 39
Fingerprint: 0x1dbda5cd
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+18 to Life

Small Charm of Vita
Small Charm
Required Level: 39
Fingerprint: 0xdc1a6c20
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+20 to Life

Lizard's Small Charm of Sustenance
Small Charm
Required Level: 17
Fingerprint: 0x67019646
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+15 to Life
+7 to Mana

Small Charm of Vita
Small Charm
Required Level: 39
Fingerprint: 0x8fcd489e
Item Level: 85
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+18 to Life

Small Charm of Vita
Small Charm
Required Level: 39
Fingerprint: 0xf5c0f8ac
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+20 to Life

Serpent's Grand Charm of Balance
Grand Charm
Required Level: 41
Fingerprint: 0x2c178ce6
Item Level: 49
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+12% Faster Hit Recovery
+54 to Mana

Small Charm of Vita
Small Charm
Required Level: 39
Fingerprint: 0xbcf66e02
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+20 to Life

Serpent's Grand Charm of Sustenance
Grand Charm
Required Level: 41
Fingerprint: 0x4c29456f
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+26 to Life
+59 to Mana

Lizard's Small Charm of Vita
Small Charm
Required Level: 39
Fingerprint: 0x5e9912b7
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+17 to Life
+1 to Mana

Serpent's Grand Charm of Greed
Grand Charm
Required Level: 41
Fingerprint: 0x141243e6
Item Level: 88
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+58 to Mana
22% Extra Gold from Monsters

Voice of Reason
Flamberge
LemKoElEld
One Hand Damage: 9 - 15
Two Hand Damage: 13 - 26
Durability: 50 of 50
Required Level: 43
Required Strength: 70
Required Dexterity: 49
Fingerprint: 0xd4e1d502
Item Level: 58
Version: Expansion 1.10+
18% Chance to cast level 20 Ice Blast on striking
15% Chance to cast level 13 Frozen Orb on striking
+50 to Attack Rating
+349% Damage to Demons
+357% Damage to Undead
+50 to Attack Rating against Undead
Adds 100 - 220 Cold Damage Over 5 Secs (130 Frames)
-24% to Enemy Cold Resistance
+10 to Dexterity
Cannot Be Frozen
75% Extra Gold from Monsters
+1 to Light Radius
4 Sockets (4 used)
Socketed: Lem Rune
Socketed: Ko Rune
Socketed: El Rune
Socketed: Eld Rune

Arch-Angel's Circlet of Life Everlasting
Circlet
Defense: 26
Durability: 35 of 35
Required Level: 67
Fingerprint: 0x2573f871
Item Level: 88
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+2 to Sorceress Skill Levels
+15% Increased Attack Speed
+62 to Attack Rating
+14 to Life
Damage Reduced by 23
2 Sockets (2 used)
Socketed: Jewel of Fervor
Socketed: Argent Jewel of Hope

Bone
Dusk Shroud
SolUmUm
Defense: 438
Durability: 19 of 20
Required Level: 49
Required Strength: 77
Fingerprint: 0x5b33a452
Item Level: 88
Version: Expansion 1.10+
15% Chance to cast level 10 Bone Armor when struck
15% Chance to cast level 10 Bone Spear on striking
+2 to Necromancer Skill Levels
+124 to Mana
All Resistances +30
Damage Reduced by 7
3 Sockets (3 used)
Socketed: Sol Rune
Socketed: Um Rune
Socketed: Um Rune

Laying of Hands
Bramble Mitts
Defense: 79
Durability: 11 of 12
Required Level: 63
Required Strength: 50
Fingerprint: 0x8ca25b3d
Item Level: 88
Version: Expansion 1.10+
10% Chance to cast level 3 Holy Bolt on striking
+20% Increased Attack Speed
+350% Damage to Demons
+25 Defense
Fire Resist +50%

Hsarus' Iron Stay
Belt
Defense: 197
Durability: 15 of 16
Required Level: 3
Required Strength: 25
Fingerprint: 0xa27d7d1d
Item Level: 18
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+20 to Life
Cold Resist +20%
Set (2 items): +192 Defense (Based on Character Level)

(2 items): Attacker Takes Damage of 5

Hsarus' Iron Heel
Chain Boots
Defense: 9
Durability: 14 of 16
Required Level: 3
Required Strength: 30
Fingerprint: 0xaef99f64
Item Level: 75
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+20% Faster Run/Walk
Fire Resist +25%
Set (2 items): +770 to Attack Rating (Based on Character Level)

(2 items): Attacker Takes Damage of 5

Bahamut's Amulet of Life Everlasting
Amulet
Required Level: 37
Fingerprint: 0x46d2cef8
Item Level: 68
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+112 to Mana
Damage Reduced by 22

Dwarf Star
Ring
Required Level: 45
Fingerprint: 0x2a962be0
Item Level: 86
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+40 to Life
+40 Maximum Stamina
Heal Stamina Plus 15%
Fire Absorb 15%
Magic Damage Reduced by 15
100% Extra Gold from Monsters

The Stone of Jordan 
Ring 
Required Level: 29 
Fingerprint: 0x5787976a 
Item Level: 99 
Version: Expansion 1.10+ 
+1 to All Skills 
Adds 1 - 12 Lightning Damage 
+20 to Mana 
Increase Maximum Mana 25% 

Faith
Superior Diamond Bow
OhmJahLemEld
Two Hand Damage: 146 - 178
Durability: 33 of 40
Required Level: 65
Required Strength: 89
Required Dexterity: 132
Fingerprint: 0xb162df43
Item Level: 86
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Level 15 Fanaticism Aura When Equipped
+1 to All Skills
345% Enhanced Damage
Ignore Target's Defense
300% Bonus to Attack Rating
+1 to Attack Rating
+75% Damage to Undead
+50 to Attack Rating against Undead
Adds 120 - 120 Fire Damage
All Resistances +15
10% Reanimate as: Returned
75% Extra Gold from Monsters
4 Sockets (4 used)
Socketed: Ohm Rune
Socketed: Jah Rune
Socketed: Lem Rune
Socketed: Eld Rune

Vampire Gaze
Grim Helm
Defense: 378
Durability: 21 of 21
Required Level: 41
Required Strength: 48
Fingerprint: 0x2f32993e
Item Level: 88
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+15% Increased Attack Speed
Adds 6 - 22 Cold Damage Over 4 Secs (100 Frames)
8% Mana stolen per hit
6% Life stolen per hit
+100% Enhanced Defense
+16 Maximum Stamina
15% Slower Stamina Drain
Damage Reduced by 20%
Magic Damage Reduced by 15
Ethereal
1 Sockets (1 used)
Socketed: Maroon Jewel of Fervor

Fortitude
Dusk Shroud
ElSolDolLo
Defense: 1416
Durability: 20 of 20
Required Level: 59
Required Strength: 77
Fingerprint: 0x4cce8dce
Item Level: 82
Version: Expansion 1.10+
20% Chance to cast level 15 Chilling Armor when struck
+25% Faster Cast Rate
300% Enhanced Damage
+200% Enhanced Defense
+15 Defense
+77 to Life (Based on Character Level)
Replenish Life +7
+5% to Maximum Lightning Resist
All Resistances +27
Damage Reduced by 7
12% Damage Taken Goes To Mana
+1 to Light Radius
4 Sockets (4 used)
Socketed: El Rune
Socketed: Sol Rune
Socketed: Dol Rune
Socketed: Lo Rune

Call to Arms
War Scepter
AmnRalMalIstOhm
One Hand Damage: 38 - 65
Durability: 70 of 70
Required Level: 57
Required Strength: 55
Fingerprint: 0x7a4c47c
Item Level: 74
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+1 to All Skills
+40% Increased Attack Speed
286% Enhanced Damage
+150% Damage to Undead
Adds 5 - 30 Fire Damage
7% Life stolen per hit
Prevent Monster Heal
+2 to Holy Freeze (Paladin Only)
+2 to Meditation (Paladin Only)
+2 to Battle Cry
+2 to Battle Orders
+3 to Battle Command
Replenish Life +12
30% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items
5 Sockets (5 used)
Socketed: Amn Rune
Socketed: Ral Rune
Socketed: Mal Rune
Socketed: Ist Rune
Socketed: Ohm Rune

Lidless Wall
Grim Shield
Defense: 298
Chance to Block: 0
Durability: 70 of 70
Required Level: 41
Required Strength: 58
Fingerprint: 0x4ebff521
Item Level: 99
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+1 to All Skills
+20% Faster Cast Rate
+98% Enhanced Defense
+10 to Energy
Increase Maximum Mana 10%
+3 to Mana after each Kill
+1 to Light Radius

Memory
Cedar Staff
LumIoSolEth
Two Hand Damage: 20 - 32
Durability: 35 of 35
Required Level: 37
Required Strength: 25
Fingerprint: 0x98bf3deb
Item Level: 79
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+3 to Sorceress Skill Levels
+33% Faster Cast Rate
+9 to Minimum Damage
-25% Target Defense
+3 to Energy Shield (Sorceress Only)
+2 to Static Field (Sorceress Only)
+3 to Energy Shield (Sorceress Only)
+50% Enhanced Defense
+10 to Vitality
+10 to Energy
Increase Maximum Mana 20%
Magic Damage Reduced by 7
4 Sockets (4 used)
Socketed: Lum Rune
Socketed: Io Rune
Socketed: Sol Rune
Socketed: Eth Rune

Demon Limb
Tyrant Club
One Hand Damage: 96 - 175
Durability: 65 of 65
Required Level: 63
Required Strength: 107
Fingerprint: 0x896f4b3a
Item Level: 87
Version: Expansion 1.10+
202% Enhanced Damage
+123% Damage to Demons
+150% Damage to Undead
Adds 222 - 333 Fire Damage
9% Life stolen per hit
Fire Resist +20%
Repairs 1 Durability in 20 Seconds
Level 23 Enchant (9/20 Charges)
Requirements -20%
1 Sockets (1 used)
Socketed: Hel Rune

Amber Amulet of Atlas
Amulet
Required Level: 63
Fingerprint: 0x5da6c03a
Item Level: 85
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+30 to Strength
Lightning Resist +39%

Comments
Normal/NM: If you think for a second that leveling a character who uses Warmth, Fire Mastery, Cold Mastery, Telekinesis, and Energy Shield is fun and easy, . . . you'd be absolutely right. :D. With some aid from her neighborhood Enchantress, she cleaned out Normal with the usual Envy -> Raven Claw -> Kuko Shakuku setup. By the time she equipped 'Voice of Reason', at a young age of 43, she was ready to go, with a powerful Fire Mastery buffing her damage to improbable heights for a character in NM. For those who would prefer to quest normally (or don't have an Enchantress), however, the going would be so tough, I doubt it'd be worthwhile.

Hell: She entered Hell at a mere 65, with Demon Limb in stash and 'Faith'ful rogue by her side. With her low AR and level, things were occasionally slow, but Inner Sight made things workable in the early going, plus she could tank virtually anything that didn't have Mana Burn. Bad teleporting got her stuck in situations which would've otherwise been painful, but her fancy mana pool and decent ES rendered them all but harmless.

ES without 'Insight': Is it viable? Sort of. With her maxed out Warmth and 2490 mana, few things managed to crack through her shell, unless she flat out stood there for a half minute, eating the damage. Elemental attackers were noticeably more successful, but the same pretty much applied. She recovered her mana quickly enough without 'Insight' (again, max Warmth helped a lot) to keep from having to use very many mana potions, but things were slightly problematic against anything with Mana Burn. Her ES wouldn't crack from a single hit, but her mana wouldn't regenerate fast enough to deal with hits in succession directly after the Mana Burn, regardless of enemy. While 'Insight' doesn't help so much with tanking a pack with Mana Burn, I'm almost positive it's broken regeneration (2-3x more than Warmth?) would've kept her alive against a single mana burner surrounded by monsters without it.

'Voice of Reason': Even with her minimal investment in the cold tree, the Frozen Orbs did decent damage on /players 1, slowing down a tad on /players 3, and becoming quite slow on anything above it. The damage per hit is considerably better with 'Rift' (against both CIs and non-CIs), not to mention the FPA with 'Rift' is at least 30% better. The main advantage of 'Voice of Reason'? Aside from the cost, it provides CBF, something absolutely vital, particularly on a character with an already abysmal rate of attack.

Enchantless: Not my first Enchantless by any stretch, but as always the damage felt a tad bit low. Was it workable? In short, yes. Two thousand damage per hit isn't gamebreaking, but it gets the job done, provided you have supplemental damage elsewhere. Would I recommend it? Probably not. Having to wait until level 63 for your attack to become viable is a horrible idea, especially when you consider how relatively weak it is to your average prebuffed Enchant.

Bone Armor: I'm almost certain now that Bone Armor comes BEFORE Energy Shield in the calculations, rendering it all but useless in Hell. Why this matters is a whole separate issue, as it's not that you even need Bone Armor to begin with, at least not with so much PDR. :whistling: Even without the Bone Armor, 'Bone' still made for a nice, if a tad expensive, choice, providing a very large sum of mana, an extra visual or two, and some poison resist on the side.

Visual Appeal: With a slightly faster attack (read: 'Rift', or one handed weapon), the chance to cast would've been a little bit better, but a big red sword and a bonemancer cosplay aren't uninteresting to look at. :).

'Faith'ful Rogue: She cost a Jah + Lo + Ohm to put together. Just thinking about it makes me sick. :p. Her damage is serviceable, and she's essentially unkillable with her solid resists, DR, leech, and AI. Speaking of her AI, her tendency to run is quite often a good thing, but every so often she does makes you wonder whether she's actually "faithful". :(.

Finds: ...wait, what?

Closing Remarks
Long story short, with her ES and [grossly overdone as to abuse MDR bug] PDR/MDR, she's a disgustingly good tank, except for around poison (note the antidotes), plus she has a lot going for her in the visual department. As far as killing speed goes, her rogue mercenary probably beat her out by a tad, but as long as the monsters dropped, neither ever complained. Not really advisable, however, for settings higher than /players 3 (or even /players 1). For anyone looking to make something similar, the fancy looking runewords were hardly a necessity (aside from the 'Voice of Reason', of course, :D), as my 'Rift' Enchantress proved no more than a year ago.

Thanks to everyone who got through my not-as-gg-as-Liq writing awake, omg/Zylo (assuming it was you two) for the free ears, buraz for the amulet which I stole from the giveaway stash :)p), and Liq/Smips/colony for the help with the runewords some time ago. :).
 
Originally posted by Neksja on Oct 13, 2008:

Matriarch ESSoul, Trielementalist

Meet Matriarch ESSoul, my trielementalist. First, her name, she has nothing to do with Energy Shield (aka ES), but as you cannot use numbers, I had to letters to describe numbers. Her real name is 35Soul. But let's see some statistics:

Character name : ESSoul
Character type : Sorceress
Character level : 83
Character exp : 899361322

Strength : 84 (97)
Energy : 35 (42)
Dexterity : 25 (47)
Vitality : 361 (368)

Life/ after BO : 1225 / 2029
Mana/ after BO : 654 / 948

Resists: 80/75/75/75

Skills:

20 Frozen Orb
20 Nova
20 Lightning Mastery
20 Hydra
1 in prereqs and wonders

Damage numbers:

Hydra 637-723 (687-779)
Orb 445-466 (461-483)
Nova 1258-1680 (1340-1783)

Gear:

Harlequin Crest (10 all res jewel)
Mara's (29@)
Upped Vipermagi (50 total all res)
Mang's Lesson (15 all res jewel)
Magefist
SoJ
Rare 10fcr, all res,
Arachs
Waterwalks
CtA/Lidless


Charms:

Code:
Viridian Large Charm of Vita
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
Required Level: 66
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 88
Fingerprint: 0x26d90217
+35 to Life
Poison Resist +8%

Amber Small Charm
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
Required Level: 32
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 85
Fingerprint: 0xff16fe86
Lightning Resist +11%

Crimson Small Charm of Life
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
Required Level: 14
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 49
Fingerprint: 0x51dcb72f
+8 to Life
Fire Resist +5%

Serpent's Grand Charm of Sustenance
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
Required Level: 53
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 86
Fingerprint: 0xeb8ac683
+31 to Life
+48 to Mana

Shimmering Grand Charm
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
Required Level: 27
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 86
Fingerprint: 0x241e36f2
All Resistances +14

Lizard's Small Charm of Vita
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
Required Level: 39
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 87
Fingerprint: 0x95811f73
+19 to Life
+5 to Mana

Serpent's Grand Charm of Sustenance
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
Required Level: 41
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 85
Fingerprint: 0x15ec1bd9
+30 to Life
+58 to Mana

Shimmering Small Charm
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
Required Level: 25
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 66
Fingerprint: 0xdf1bdeab
All Resistances +5

Shimmering Small Charm
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
Required Level: 25
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 50
Fingerprint: 0xd05b9909
All Resistances +5

Shimmering Grand Charm of Life
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
Required Level: 27
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 80
Fingerprint: 0x746bdb69
+18 to Life
All Resistances +14

Shimmering Grand Charm of Shock
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
Required Level: 27
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 80
Fingerprint: 0x83771893
All Resistances +15
Adds 1-3 lightning damage

Gear readouts:

Code:
Harlequin Crest
Shako
Defense: 135
Durability: 11 of 12
Required Strength: 50
Required Level: 62
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 87
Fingerprint: 0x4f108378
+2 to Strength
+2 to Energy
+2 to Dexterity
+2 to Vitality
Damage Reduced by 10%
All Resistances +10
50% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items
+2 to All Skill Levels
+124 to Life (Based on Character Level)
+124 to Mana (Based on Character Level)
Socketed (1: 1 used)

Mara's Kaleidoscope
Amulet
Required Level: 67
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 87
Fingerprint: 0x85cb48d
+5 to Strength
+5 to Energy
+5 to Dexterity
+5 to Vitality
All Resistances +29
+2 to All Skill Levels

Skin of the Vipermagi
Wyrmhide
Defense: 917
Durability: 24 of 24
Required Strength: 84
Required Level: 57
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 86
Fingerprint: 0xc4abdc4c
+120% Enhanced Defense
Magic Damage Reduced by 9
All Resistances +50
Required Level +7
30% Faster Cast Rate
+1 to All Skill Levels
Socketed (1: 1 used)

Mang Song's Lesson
Archon Staff
Two-Hand Damage: 83 to 99
Durability: 26 of 26
Required Strength: 34
Required Level: 82
Staff Class - Slow Attack Speed
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 86
Fingerprint: 0xf802d519
Regenerate Mana 10%
All Resistances +15
Adds 1-41 lightning damage
30% Faster Cast Rate
150% Damage to Undead
+5 to All Skill Levels
-14% to Enemy Fire Resistance
-11% to Enemy Lightning Resistance
-14% to Enemy Cold Resistance
Socketed (1: 1 used)

Magefist
Light Gauntlets
Defense: 24
Durability: 18 of 18
Required Strength: 45
Required Level: 23
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 87
Fingerprint: 0x6456f3e0
+21% Enhanced Defense
Regenerate Mana 25%
+10 Defense
Adds 1-6 fire damage
20% Faster Cast Rate
+1 to Fire Skills

The Stone of Jordan
Ring
Required Level: 29
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 50
Fingerprint: 0x4c544a7b
+20 to Mana
Adds 1-12 lightning damage
Increase Maximum Mana 25%
+1 to All Skill Levels

Bone Touch
Ring
Required Level: 37
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 87
Fingerprint: 0x7bbca056
+2 to Strength
+67 to Mana
+29 to Attack Rating
All Resistances +5
10% Faster Cast Rate

Arachnid Mesh
Spiderweb Sash
Defense: 122
Durability: 9 of 12
Required Strength: 50
Required Level: 80
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 87
Fingerprint: 0x469d7cbf
+95% Enhanced Defense
Increase Maximum Mana 5%
20% Faster Cast Rate
+1 to All Skill Levels
Slows Target by 10%
Level 3 Venom (11/11 Charges)

Waterwalk
Sharkskin Boots
Defense: 116
Durability: 14 of 14
Required Strength: 47
Required Level: 32
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 49
Fingerprint: 0xca484121
+15 to Dexterity
+62 to Life
+40 to Maximum Stamina
+190% Enhanced Defense
Heal Stamina Plus 50%
+100 Defense vs. Missile
+5% to Maximum Fire Resist
20% Faster Run/Walk

Call to Arms
Crystal Sword
'AmnRalMalIstOhm'
One-Hand Damage: 25 to 80
Durability: 11 of 11
Required Strength: 33
Required Level: 57
Sword Class - Very Fast Attack Speed
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 85
Fingerprint: 0x4cd8c0b5
+267% Enhanced Damage
Adds 5-30 fire damage
7% Life stolen per hit
Replenish Life +12
30% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items
40% Increased Attack Speed
+4 to Battle Orders
+2 to Battle Cry
+6 to Battle Command
Prevent Monster Heal
+1 to All Skill Levels
Ethereal (Cannot be Repaired), Socketed (5: 5 used)

Lidless Wall
Grim Shield
Defense: 335
Chance to Block:  40%
Durability: 69 of 70
Required Strength: 58
Required Level: 41
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 87
Fingerprint: 0xc68cb8b8
+10 to Energy
+122% Enhanced Defense
Increase Maximum Mana 10%
+1 to Light Radius
20% Faster Cast Rate
+1 to All Skill Levels
+4 to Mana After Each Kill

Mercenary Items (damage 1905-6590) :
Code:
Vampire Gaze
Grim Helm
Defense: 378
Durability: 21 of 21
Required Strength: 48
Required Level: 41
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 85
Fingerprint: 0x8f63da3d
+100% Enhanced Defense
+1 to Minimum Damage
Magic Damage Reduced by 14
Damage Reduced by 20%
Adds 6-22 cold damage over 4 seconds
8% Life stolen per hit
8% Mana stolen per hit
15% Increased Attack Speed
15% Slower Stamina Drain
Ethereal (Cannot be Repaired), Socketed (1: 1 used)

Fortitude
Archon Plate
'ElSolDolLo'
Defense: 1587
Durability: 60 of 60
Required Strength: 103
Required Level: 63
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 85
Fingerprint: 0x3bebbbe2
+200% Enhanced Defense
+300% Enhanced Damage
+15 Defense
Damage Reduced by 7
Fire Resist +28%
Lightning Resist +28%
+5% to Maximum Lightning Resist
Cold Resist +28%
Poison Resist +28%
Replenish Life +7
+1 to Light Radius
25% Faster Cast Rate
12% Damage Taken Goes to Mana
20% Chance to cast Level 15 Chilling Armor when struck
+83 to Life (Based on Character Level)
Socketed (4: 4 used)

Insight
Cryptic Axe
'RalTirTalSol'
Two-Hand Damage: 172 to 749
Durability: 33 of 33
Required Dexterity: 93
Required Strength: 155
Required Level: 59
Polearm Class - Slow Attack Speed
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 79
Fingerprint: 0x88a8c9dc
+5 to Strength
+5 to Energy
+5 to Dexterity
+5 to Vitality
+233% Enhanced Damage
+9 to Minimum Damage
Adds 5-30 fire damage
+75 poison damage over 5 seconds
23% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items
+3 to Critical Strike
35% Faster Cast Rate
210% Bonus to Attack Rating
+2 to Mana After Each Kill
Level 17 Meditation Aura When Equipped
Ethereal (Cannot be Repaired), Socketed (4: 4 used)

Gameplay:

Well, basically I just used FO and Nova. Hydra was very weak at lower levels (I maxed it last). If I ever get more levels for her, I'll put the points to Fire Mastery, just make Hydra even a little stronger.

FO and Nova were very strong through the whole game. First, I maxed FO, so I'd definitely have a good skill for NM and then Nova and LM, to get my main skill. Yes, I used a lot more Nova than Orb. It was just a lot more fun :yes: My basic "strategy" was, Cast Orb for freeze (and a little damage) Nova, Nova, Nova. If there was CI's, just Nova and if LI's, just Orb (what a surprise? :whistling: )

Is Hydra good choice for trielementalist? Well, it's not the most optimal choice, but it's a lot of fun. It can take a single CI/LI boss down (with few hydras and a little time) if you're Merc is dead. But, my suggestion is to take the Firewall, if you want pure damage over funny little fire hydras.

Gear choices? Well, Mang's was obvious (the reason for this build) and then I just wanted to get as much +all skills (not sorc skills) as possible, maxed res and 105 fcr. That's why there's that crappy rare ring instead of another SoJ.

Finds:

Can't really remember. I guess the Hell HF was Ist, but not a clue about other finds. I guess nothing fancy, since she doesn't carry much mf.

btw. She was my 26th Mat/Pat so she not my recent Pat/Mat. She was a lot of fun, I might try to do some AT runs with her (just because I love AT nowadays), but she might also just retire because of so many builds in my to-do-list...

Questions? Please, ask. There's not enough trielementalist around here, so we need to keep 'em alive 😉

Thanks for reading,
Neksja
 
Originally posted by Ohomemgrande on Oct 8, 2008:

Matriarch LuKara - The Special Chest running ES Sorceress

Most of my Pat/Mat's tend to be "cookie-cutter" type builds so I never feel the need to do a write-up. This one however, tends to be under-represented in the Mat/Pat/Guardian thread and is probably unique enough to deserve its own write-up so...

Here's LuKara - the Special-Chest running ES-sorceress.

With the exception of my CTA, I don't particularly like moving equipment around from one character to another. Recently I've also had fun building characters for specific tasks i.e. my main MF sorc carries ~700% MF and is built exclusively for Pindle/AT runs but is not that great at other areas. I've got a pure lightning sorc that can run the Countess and Baal pretty good and was an OK LK runner for quite a while as well. I've got a pretty good system for doing HF runs, etc, etc.

LuKara was born out of inspiration from a thread started by nepeta: Guide: Lower Kurast running Sorceress by nepeta (see post 29). In that thread, there was some discussion on the merits of Energy Shield. Some people liked it, some people regretted it, I had never tried it. I wanted to form an opinion, had an empty afternoon, and built myself an ES-sorc. I also wanted to see if I could build a better LK runner than what I was using at the time.

With that in mind, I decided that I'd go with a fully synergized Energy Shield. Since I never really planned on taking her to Baal, I figured I'd end up around level 70-73 once I made it to Act 3. With 40 points invested in my defense, I figured that I'd have about 40 more to play with for a killing skill(s). Candidates were Frozen Orb, Firewall, and Nova. Due to it's large area of effect and ease of use, i went with Frozen Orb. I originally intended to max it and then pump of CM but later decided to branch out into Nova to take care of the occasional CI.

Since my main goal of this character is to get in and out quickly to the chests, I decided that I needed to hit the 105% FCR breakpoint (8 frames). Also, if I did get hit, I'd want to recover quickly so I wanted to hit the 60% FHR breakpoint (8 frames) with the option to go up to 86%. In my opinion, both of these are very important to the build. With ES active and good FHR, I'm not too concerned if things hit me so I decided to ignore dexterity and dump everything into Energy.

The other thing I decided was that I wanted to have a decent amount of Damage Reduction for those times that I ran into a mana-burn boss-pack. <400 hp's does not last very long in Hell without some sort of protection (by the same token, I think having decent resists is also a good idea for the rare cases when the ES goes away). So, I cobbled together some gear that got me to 110% FCR & 60% FHR, gave me ~50% resists on everything, and a fair amount of MDR/PDR (with room for improvement if I found it lacking). By no means is my current setup optimal but it does the job.

For my merc, I wanted something to carry Insight. So, I finally installed RWM and made my first Insight. Then I made another one. Since I really want my merc to stay alive, I equiped him with Vampire Gaze and Shaftstop. He'll die if I neglect him for a while but is able to hold his own against most things. He's currently a Might merc so that he can kill things when we're questing. For the purposes of chest running though, he rarely gets a chance to proc his aura so it really doesn't matter what he is.

Current skills are:
Energy Shield: 20 (28)
Telekinesis: 20 (28)
Frozen Orb: 20 (28)
Cold Mastery: 2 (10)
Nova: 15 (23) <--- next to max
Lightning Mastery: 1 (9)
Warmth/Teleport/Prereqs: 1 (9)

and of course with Battle Command active, those all go up by 1.

Stats:
Str: 60 (91)
Dex: 25 (29) <---min
Vit: 10 (45) <---min
Ene: 350 (389)
HP: 157 (390)
Mana: 819 (1678)

With BO active, my life is around 550 or so and my mana is around 2300.

As I mentioned in the other thread, my skill progression went something like this: All skill points into ES/Telekinesis until level 30. Then I maxed FO with 1 pt to CM. Finished up ES & TK next. Then I started pumping Nova. I'll probably finish up with Nova and then alternate between LM & CM if she levels much more but she's essentially done.

The other interesting thing is that I only assigned points into STR for gear until after I had collected the Hell HF quest -- In other words, even at base mana she did OK. Of course, that was because of the one item that is really useful for ES--Insight. Also, even though I used CTA to finish off Baal, it wasn't necessary throughout the journey and was only used because it was sad sitting in the stash.

Progression Impressions:
Since this was a personal experiement, I didn't want to bother with the normal questing so I twinked on some gear and took off. I probably used the 1.09 Ravenclaw method through normal and then once I had access to FO, used that through NM. I started to invest in nova once I was in Hell and had a maxed FO but didn't use it too much. It's essentially for the CI monsters in Lower Kurast if I actually do need to cause some pain. NM was a breeze and soon I was in LK. Since I was so close, I figured I better go collect the HF and ended up with a Ko.

I made a first attempt at Baal a couple of months ago but my merc died in the minion waves, I hadn't taken any TP scrolls and didn't have money to get my merc back. Lister spawned CI/LI so I gave up that attempt. I don't remember any problems with the Ancients so I'm assuming they went down without too much of a fight. Then LuKara went back and started her LK career in earnest. I think I've done ~1000 runs with her so far and have been killed probably less than 5 times to mana burn + some other nasty amp curse/fanaticism/might aura creature. Most of the time though, mana burn is not even that big of an issue. Her best LK rune is 2x Um. Since most things bounce off the ES, I ignore them and definitely prefer her as my LK-runner over my other sorceresses.

Yesterday I took a peek at the River of Flame thread and noticed that there was some discussion about what type of build to run. RoF being more dangerous than LK requires a bit more attention when playing of course. Hmm, I wonder how LuKara would do there?? Not knowing what to expect, I threw on my CTA, switched out a Nightsmoke belt for a String of Ears, bumped up the players settings to 8 and took the RoF WP. Then I teleported to some monsters and watched what happened. Mostly it was a bunch of random Occulus teleporting and quick refilling of the blue bulb. The red bulb slowly decreased but never to anything dangerous.

OK, this is good, now let's find a map to run the special chests!

So, now we're in business and just like LK, she doesn't care what monsters spawn as long as there aren't too many around the chests. They're not a danger but it makes it harder to pop them open and slows the run down.

Having tried that, I decided that I should make another run at Baal and get the Matriarch title. Once again, I forgot TP scrolls and my merc died. This time, I had the cash to get him back so we were able to go back and defeat the minions and Baal. The battle wasn't too exciting as long as I kept feeding the merc potions and keeping him out of harms way.

Impressions about Energy Shield:
I liked it as it was a different way to play a sorceress. I think the key thing about a successful ES is that you have to make the full investment of skill points and stat points to make it effective. If your energy shield skill level is too low, too much damage gets through and hits your life bulb so you'd naturally need higher life. If you don't synergize ES with telekinesis, you're actually "increasing" the damage you take to your mana bulb. For example, a single point in TK with ES gives a damage multiplier of 1.93 or in other words, if you take 100 points of damage, you'd take a hit of 193 mana points. A fully synergized TK drops the multiplier to 0.75 so in the same example, you'd only take a hit of 75 mana points. Essentially, a fully synergized ES gives you the ability to take ~33% more damage than how much mana you have (and, if you have a lot of mana, it regenerates quickly, especially with Insight). Mana burn is a problem but it's no more dangerous than Iron Maiden 😁

What about the blood mana curse? This happens when you have more mana than life. Basically when you have this curse, you do damage to yourself whenever you use mana. Frankly, this wasn't an issue. Only Baal and witches cast this and it's easily countered by drinking a red pot.

The Good:
A very sturdy sorceress that can kill at a reasonable rate.
Lots of blue bulb goodness.
It's cool to run around Hell with 390 HP's
The "bloodmana" curse squiglies are neat
Great for LK/RoF runs

The Bad:
The "bloodmana" curse is annoying
Mana burn is super-annoying
You probably won't have a huge damage spell

Rich (BB code):
Name:       LuKara
Class:      Sorceress
Experience: 592110671
Level:      78

            Naked/Gear
Strength:   60/91
Dexterity:  25/29
Vitality:   10/45
Energy:     350/389
HP:         157/390
Mana:       819/1678
Stamina:    151/810
Defense:    6/1238
AR:         75/75

Fire:       146/106/46
Cold:       150/110/50
Lightning:  141/101/41
Poison:     168/128/68

MF:         109       Block:      3
GF:         0
FR/W:       27
FHR:        60 (60 is 8 frame BP, 86 is 7 frame BP)
IAS:        0
FCR:        110 (105 is 8 frame BP)
PDR:       25%; 21
MDR:       24

Warmth: 1/9

Charged Bolt : 1/9
Static Field : 1/9
Telekinesis : 20/28
Nova : 15/23
Lightning : 1/9
Chain Lightning : 1/9
Teleport : 1/9
Energy Shield : 20/28
Lightning Mastery : 1/9

Ice Bolt : 1/9
Frost Nova : 1/9
Ice Blast : 1/9
Glacial Spike : 1/9
Blizzard : 1/9
Frozen Orb : 20/28
Cold Mastery : 2/10

Equipment:

I've highlighted the main attributes that I was interested in my gear. I focused on making sure I could hit the FCR breakpoint while keeping my strength requirements down. I also looked for opportunities to get +skills as it really helps out both the killing skills and ES. Level 20 ES absorbs 75% of the damage you take. Level 29 absorbs 84% which means I've further reduced the damage that gets through by another 36% over just the level 20 skill.

I initially chose the Occulus mainly for the +skills and resistances. I didn't mind the random teleporting but would like to try to do it without. If I had a +3 Eschutas, I'd probably prefer that. However, there are a lot of other options you could try which would allow for some more interesting gear choices.

Weapons to try: Eschutas (+1-3 skills, 40% FCR, +20-30 energy (+40-60 mana), +10-20% lightning damage) or Wizardspike (50% FCR, 75% resist all, +15% mana (regenerate & maximum), +2 mana/level); Spectral Shard would work on a budget (50% FCR, +50 mana). Compare to Occulus (+3 skills, +20 resist all, 30% FCR, +20 vitality/energy (+40 mana), the teleport feature, 50% MF)

A word about belts. I started with Nightsmoke because I was interested in the 50% damage goes to mana. Turns out that damage to mana isn't too useful for this build because of Insight and the fact that so little damage is getting through, there isn't much to return back. For example, if I took 100 points of damage with 84% mana shield absorb, 16 points would get through to me. With my damage reduction of 25% and then 21 more, that would be negated, essentially leaving me returning 50% of 0. So, I switched it to a String of Ears for the nice DR mods. Arachnid's Mesh would be a good choice for the +1 skills/+5% mana and 20% FCR. Verdungo's Hearty Coil would be interesting to try as well since it has the 10-15% DR mod as well as some FCR, +30-40 vitality and replenish life mod.

Rich (BB code):
Harlequin Crest
Shako
Defense: 112
Durability: 6 of 12
Required Level: 62
Required Strength: 50
Fingerprint: 0x659c2ff3
Item Level: 87
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Properties:
Damage Reduced by 10%
50% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items
+2 to All Skills
117 to Life (Based on Char Lvl)
117 to Mana (Based on Char Lvl)
All Stats +2
Damage Reduced by 7
1 Sockets (1 used)
Socketed: Sol Rune


Wraith Necklace
Amulet
Required Level: 27
Fingerprint: 0x908c063d
Item Level: 95
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Properties:
+7 to Energy
Magic Damage Reduced by 1
+1 to Sorceress Skill Levels
10% Faster Cast Rate
All Resistances +14

Skin of the Vipermagi
Serpentskin Armor
Defense: 279
Durability: 20 of 24
Required Level: 29
Required Strength: 43
Fingerprint: 0x3be3d5d3
Item Level: 87
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Properties:
120% Enhanced Defense
Magic Damage Reduced by 9
30% Faster Cast Rate
+1 to All Skills
All Resistances +34
Damage Reduced by 7
1 Sockets (1 used)
Socketed: Sol Rune

Bitter Coil
Ring
Required Level: 48
Fingerprint: 0x1d50f0cb
Item Level: 75
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Properties:
+2 to Strength
+10 to Attack Rating
10% Faster Cast Rate
All Resistances +11

Shadow Circle
Ring
Required Level: 28
Fingerprint: 0xf6a1ff88
Item Level: 49
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Properties:
+1 to Strength
+30 to Mana
9% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items
10% Faster Cast Rate
14% Chance to cast level 5 Nova when struck

String of Ears
Demonhide Sash
Defense: 105
Durability: 20 of 22
Required Level: 29
Required Strength: 20
Fingerprint: 0x174bbc6f
Item Level: 87
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Properties:
158% Enhanced Defense
+15 Defense
Magic Damage Reduced by 14
Damage Reduced by 15%
8% Life stolen per hit
+10 Maximum Durability

Frostburn
Gauntlets
Defense: 49
Durability: 20 of 24
Required Level: 29
Required Strength: 60
Fingerprint: 0xbd635aef
Item Level: 87
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Properties:
19% Enhanced Defense
5% Enhanced Damage
+30 Defense
+1 - 6 cold damage with 2 sec Duration
40% Increase Maximum Mana

Sandstorm Trek
Scarabshell Boots
Defense: 162
Durability: 14 of 14
Required Level: 64
Required Strength: 91
Fingerprint: 0xbae72307
Item Level: 99
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Properties:
+15 to Strength
+13 to Vitality
146% Enhanced Defense
Poison Resist +59%
20% Faster Run/Walk
20% Faster Hit Recovery
50% Slower Stamina Drain
78 Maximum Stamina (Based on Char Lvl)
Repairs 1 Durability in 20 Seconds

Switch Weapon/Shield
Call to Arms
Crystal Sword
One Hand Damage: 18 - 55
Durability: 20 of 20
Required Level: 57
Required Strength: 43
Fingerprint: 0xaafc4618
Item Level: 64
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Properties:
268% Enhanced Damage
Replenish Life 12
40% Increased Attack Speed
+3 to Battle Cry
+4 to Battle Orders
+5 to Battle Command
+1 to All Skills
7% Life stolen per hit
+5 - 30 Fire Damage
Prevent Monster Heal
30% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items
5 Sockets (5 used)
Socketed: Amn Rune
Socketed: Ral Rune
Socketed: Mal Rune
Socketed: Ist Rune
Socketed: Ohm Rune

Lidless Wall
Grim Shield
Defense: 291
Chance to Block: 20
Durability: 70 of 70
Required Level: 41
Required Strength: 58
Fingerprint: 0xd95b499f
Item Level: 86
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Properties:
+10 to Energy
93% Enhanced Defense
10% Increase Maximum Mana
+1 to Light Radius
20% Faster Cast Rate
+1 to All Skills
+4 to Mana after each Kill
All Resistances +19
1 Sockets (1 used)
Socketed: Perfect Diamond

Primary Weapon/Shield
The Oculus
Swirling Crystal
One Hand Damage: 18 - 42
Durability: 50 of 50
Required Level: 42
Fingerprint: 0x485b25c1
Item Level: 87
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Properties:
+20 to Energy
+20 to Vitality
20% Enhanced Defense
50% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items
+3 to Sorceress Skill Levels
30% Faster Cast Rate
+5 to Mana after each Kill
25% Chance to cast level 1 Teleport when struck
All Resistances +20

Lidless Wall
Grim Shield
Defense: 303
Chance to Block: 20
Durability: 63 of 70
Required Level: 41
Required Strength: 58
Fingerprint: 0xf66b54c4
Item Level: 87
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Properties:
+10 to Energy
101% Enhanced Defense
10% Increase Maximum Mana
+1 to Light Radius
20% Faster Cast Rate
+1 to All Skills
+4 to Mana after each Kill
Damage Reduced by 7
1 Sockets (1 used)
Socketed: Sol Rune

Charms: Regarding charms, I haven't done any charm optimization yet so there are probably some weird ones that are carry-overs from early questing. This is where you can add a lot of FHR and mana.

Code:
Sapphire Small Charm of Sustenance
Small Charm
Required Level: 32
Fingerprint: 0x4ec3f373
Item Level: 64
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Properties:
+15 to Life
Cold Resist +11%

Lizard's Small Charm of Balance
Small Charm
Required Level: 29
Fingerprint: 0x90bcced7
Item Level: 64
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Properties:
+1 to Mana
5% Faster Hit Recovery

Small Charm of Balance
Small Charm
Required Level: 29
Fingerprint: 0xd4e72bb3
Item Level: 86
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Properties:
5% Faster Hit Recovery

Iron Small Charm of Balance
Small Charm
Required Level: 31
Fingerprint: 0xe4c9e967
Item Level: 85
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Properties:
+13 to Attack Rating
5% Faster Hit Recovery

Small Charm of Balance
Small Charm
Required Level: 29
Fingerprint: 0x98ed5428
Item Level: 88
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Properties:
5% Faster Hit Recovery

Small Charm of Balance
Small Charm
Required Level: 29
Fingerprint: 0xc0a4be6d
Item Level: 87
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Properties:
5% Faster Hit Recovery

Small Charm of Balance
Small Charm
Required Level: 29
Fingerprint: 0x5d2ee6ce
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Properties:
5% Faster Hit Recovery

Serpent's Grand Charm of Strength
Grand Charm
Required Level: 41
Fingerprint: 0x8b7180d6
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Properties:
+5 to Strength
+53 to Mana

Snake's Small Charm of Strength
Small Charm
Required Level: 24
Fingerprint: 0xaf5ba3b2
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Properties:
+2 to Strength
+10 to Mana

Ruby Small Charm of Strength
Small Charm
Required Level: 32
Fingerprint: 0x65fd5eed
Item Level: 87
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Properties:
+2 to Strength
Fire Resist +11%

Amber Small Charm
Small Charm
Required Level: 32
Fingerprint: 0x824be1ff
Item Level: 88
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Properties:
Lightning Resist +11%

Amber Small Charm
Small Charm
Required Level: 32
Fingerprint: 0x454ef5fb
Item Level: 85
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Properties:
Lightning Resist +10%

Ruby Grand Charm of Inertia
Grand Charm
Required Level: 22
Fingerprint: 0x4f6b9b18
Item Level: 88
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Properties:
Fire Resist +26%
7% Faster Run/Walk

Sapphire Small Charm
Small Charm
Required Level: 32
Fingerprint: 0xd01440a9
Item Level: 85
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Properties:
Cold Resist +10%

Sapphire Small Charm of Flame
Small Charm
Required Level: 32
Fingerprint: 0x2631f704
Item Level: 88
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Properties:
Cold Resist +11%
+1 - 2 Fire Damage

Bronze Small Charm of Balance
Small Charm
Required Level: 29
Fingerprint: 0x9390002a
Item Level: 87
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Properties:
+9 to Attack Rating
5% Faster Hit Recovery

Cobalt Small Charm of Strength
Small Charm
Required Level: 20
Fingerprint: 0x8e4b37e5
Item Level: 80
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Properties:
+2 to Strength
Cold Resist +9%

Amber Small Charm of Winter
Small Charm
Required Level: 38
Fingerprint: 0x1ddbadd1
Item Level: 71
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Properties:
Lightning Resist +11%
+5 - 8 cold damage with 1 sec Duration

Arcing Small Charm of Dexterity
Small Charm
Required Level: 57
Fingerprint: 0x1a7aab22
Item Level: 86
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Properties:
+2 to Dexterity
+1 - 28 Lightning Damage

Serpent's Grand Charm of Sustenance
Grand Charm
Required Level: 53
Fingerprint: 0xfb49943c
Item Level: 81
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Properties:
+31 to Life
+50 to Mana

Burly Small Charm of Balance
Small Charm
Required Level: 29
Fingerprint: 0x4e6f9dba
Item Level: 55
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Properties:
+15 Defense
5% Faster Hit Recovery


Mercenary:

Code:
Vampire Gaze
Grim Helm
Defense: 378
Durability: 21 of 21
Required Level: 41
Required Strength: 48
Fingerprint: 0xa7d134ab
Item Level: 87
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Properties:
100% Enhanced Defense
Magic Damage Reduced by 11
Damage Reduced by 19%
+6 - 22 cold damage with 4 sec Duration
6% Life stolen per hit
6% Mana stolen per hit
15% Slower Stamina Drain
Ethereal

Shaftstop
Mesh Armor
Defense: 676
Durability: 34 of 45
Required Level: 38
Required Strength: 92
Fingerprint: 0x52cf1f14
Item Level: 88
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Properties:
+60 to Life
216% Enhanced Defense
+250 Defense vs. Missile
Damage Reduced by 30%

Insight
Cryptic Axe
Two Hand Damage: 124 - 523
Durability: 51 of 65
Required Level: 59
Required Strength: 165
Required Dexterity: 103
Fingerprint: 0xecc7c625
Item Level: 81
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Properties:
All Stats +5
249% Enhanced Damage
23% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items
+1 to Critical Strike
35% Faster Cast Rate
182% Bonus to Attack Rating
Level 17 Meditation Aura When Equipped
+5 - 30 Fire Damage
+2 to Mana after each Kill
+75 poison damage over 5 seconds
+9 to Minimum Damage
4 Sockets (4 used)
Socketed: Ral Rune
Socketed: Tir Rune
Socketed: Tal Rune
Socketed: Sol Rune

Name:       Azrael
Race:       Desert Mercenary
Type:       Off-Nightmare
Experience: 57679012
Level:      78
Dead?:      false

            Naked/Gear
Strength:   174/179
Dexterity:  139/144
HP:         1487/1547
Defense:    1069/2123
AR:         1166/1166

Fire:       142/102/42
Cold:       142/102/42
Lightning:  142/102/42
Poison:    142/102/42

So, to summarize, here's a build that is specifically tailored to run the Special Chests in Lower Kurast or River of Flame and ends up being quite safe in both cases.
 
Originally posted by pharaoh on Aug 13, 2010:

Matriarch Kementiri, Cannon of Tempered Glass

I haven't been active in the forums as of late, but this doesn't mean I've stopped playing the game. In fact, I've been playing a fair bit, and now I'll share my latest matriarch (and yes, the name- but not the character herself- is recycled from a previous melee sorc of mine).

First come the numbers.

Str: 90 (130)
Dex: 75 (80)
Vit: 170 (258)
Ene: 180 (185)

Life: 504 (705)
Mana: 493 (704)

LCS Damage: 3621-9472

Warmth, Enchant, Fire Mastery, Telekinesis: 20 hard points each
Energy Shield, Static Field, prerequisites: 1 hard point each
Lightning Mastery: 8 hard points and counting (future points go here)
Skill boost: +3 to all

When making a melee sorceress, Enchant is generally a key skill. Even those lacking any hard points will usually acquire it somehow. Not only does it offer more than the recommended daily intake (or is that output?) of fire damage, it also gives a healthy attack rating bonus (at least for characters with decent base AR). Of course, the problem with Enchant is that it deals only fire damage, and so an alternate flavor of damage is helpful in Nightmare, and essential in Hell in order to cope with immunes. The usual approach seems to be to stuff the backpack full of lightning damage charms (or 'electric biscuits', as AJK calls them) and crank Lightning Mastery. However, I've been running the Hellforge a good deal in my absence, and decided there was an obvious (though expensive) solution. Imagine my surprise when I searched the forums and couldn't find any thread detailing someone else's previous account of their experiences- it seems I'm the first!

Kementiri cheesed her way through Normal and almost all of Nightmare with Chain Lightning, Energy Shield, and a fire rogue merc. Since she didn't do full clears, she was only level 60-ish in mid-Act V. A bit of leveling to 65 allowed her to use most of her endgame gear, and more cheese was used as stats were reallocated to morph her into the killing machine she had long been dreaming of.

At level 65, she was garbed in the following:
Dream diadem (20% FHR, boo, hiss)
Prudence e-bugged archon plate (in retrospect, Iron Pelt with a Sol would likely have been better)
Laying of Hands (from v1.07; fire was no longer dangerous)
Thundergod's Vigor (lightning was no longer an issue either)
Sandstorm Trek (ethereal, +70% poison res)
Mara's Kaleidoscope
Raven Frost
Stone of Jordan

Once she hit level 85, she swapped out the Prudence for a v1.07 Gladiator's Bane socketed with Sol and the Raven Frost for a Nature's Peace. At this point, her tankworthiness soared.

In her hands she held an Infinity war scythe. This was the centerpiece of the build, with my reasoning being that the aura solved most problems with immunities as well as the to-hit dilemma. As an added bonus, the -enemy lightning resist meant that she'd be doing maximal lightning damage with minimal lightning mastery. The war scythe was chosen because it's relatively fast (it's in the fastest speed bracket for polearms), the requirements aren't too steep (meaning more life and mana), and the reach is impressive. In fact, the weapon's reach was greater than that of most (all?) enemies, meaning she usually got a free hit in while they were closing to melee range. Most of the time, this was enough to put a foe into hit recovery, and another hit or two would take them down. Monsters that she initially expected to maul her in short order (like thrashers and frenzytaurs) went down with naught but a wimper. I'm very happy I used this base type, and another benefit is other characters can use it easily (such as if I want to make a skeleton mage necromancer).

Of course, there were plenty of times when she was subjected to arrows, swords, spears, and other assorted pointy or otherwise hurty things. This was where her trusty sidekick Azrael came in. Azrael held an aurifying beatstick of his own: Insight. Coupled with his innate Prayer aura, this kept Kementiri's life and mana at healthy levels for the most part. The guy was a walking recharge station, and except when given the task of tanking mana burners, explodey dolls, or other nasties, his job was to simply stay alive. Of course, Kementiri was well acquainted with his 'fool's rush in' approach to staying out of trouble, so she gave him a Delirium helm to help him appeal to crowds.

All in all, I found she played a lot better than I'd anticipated. She was somewhat fragile with the lack of a shield and low defense, but her Energy Shield compensated pretty well. Once she hit level 85, she could tank quite well against most enemies, and mana burn bosses weren't the instant death I expected, thanks to the large (compared to a standard ES sorc) life pool and good PDR/MDR. I considered using a cold Iron Wolf to add another damage type, as well as a Harmony-using rogue (the theory being that the broad-spectrum elemental damage would be bolstered by the Conviction aura, and a ranged attack would provide safety for the merc), but I'm really glad I chose the merc I did. Energy Shield performs pretty well when Telekinesis is maxed out and your 700-ish mana pool recharges from zero to full in under 11 seconds. Bits of damage that filter past the shield are regenerated in short order thanks to a respectable level of Prayer plus a synergised Meditation.

If anyone has a non-ethereal Infinity, or the ability to make one, I highly recommend this build. It's a lot of fun. Just imagine a Vengeance paladin with Teleport. This girl kills just as well, but because 'attack' can be mapped to the right mouse button, you're doing a lot less mad clicking. Also remember that although the paladin may reach higher LCS numbers with Vengeance, a sorceress gets her Fire Mastery and Lightning Mastery applied on top of what the LCS says (at least that's my understanding). In other words, damage may be double or triple (or more, with good +skills) what the LCS indicates, and that's before the Conviction aura kicks in. That's huge!

The lack of heavy physical damage on her weapon (which was only relevant when facing unbreakable FI/LI monsters) wasn't much of a drawback thanks to the huge crushing blow. Her apparent frailty at first made me play quite cautiously, but I soon learned that the best defense is a good offense. Teleporting into a pack (or to the edge of the pack, if it was especially nasty) followed by a few swings made short work of many foes. This approach was especially handy with packs that would make many pale with fear, like Might or Fanatacism aura bosses, as her weapon could often reach the boss, taking it and its aura out of the equation. To extend the paladin analogy a bit further, Teleport followed by a quick hit is like the sorceress's version of Charge.

A few tips for any thinking of giving this a try:

If you use Delirium for crowd control, be especially wary of cursed bosses. This is the single most annoying and dangerous boss mod (yes, even more so than mana burn) because it overrides the Confuse curse from the Delirium, turning a docile pack into an angry swarm. If your merc is a melee one, he is quite likely surrounded and killed in short order. If you go with the rogue merc, then it's not as much of an issue (unless you're in the middle of the pack, of course).

Get some FHR. This goes without saying, and the biggest disappointment in making this character was the lousy worst-possible roll on Dream's FHR stat. I suppose it's partially made up for by me getting a perfect roll on the resists, but at least for this character, the resists (besides poison) don't matter much at all.

You can do without the Dream helm, if her performance against FIs is any indication. Just grab a stack of AJK's aforementioned electric biscuits. The biggest benefit of Dream may be that Lightning Mastery gets applied twice (once to the aura that adds lightning damage to your attacks, and a second time when you hit and deal that damage). I'm not 100% sure on this point, but it's worth looking into.

Likewise, Gladiator's Bane can easily be replaced with Iron Pelt, as long as you toss on some 'cannot be frozen' gear. Kira's Guardian, Raven Frost, and even Death's Guard are possible choices, with a Cham rune in the helm or armor topping the bang-for-buck list (j/k).

The only non-negotiable part of the build is the weapon, and even that can be made in a different base type if you like. Just remember, while the exceptional and elite polearms offer more damage, using a normal base weapon offers more flexibility. Remember that the lion's share of your damage will be elemental, and if you run up against an unbreakable FI/LI, you've got big crushing blow and the 'prevent monster heal' mod, so you can take your time. You also want a fast weapon, since this lets you apply the largest share of your damage- elemental- as often as possible. I found 20% IAS from my gloves to be sufficient, but socketing another 10% would have knocked a frame off my attacks, giving me about 8% more damage over time.

Something I considered was using Shiver Armor. Lightning Mastery could lose a few points and still be viable, and chilling enemies that attack could help if mobbed, but frankly, I don't think it's necessary. Feel free to try it and let me know what you think.
 
Originally posted by RobbyD on Mar 2, 2011:

Matriarch GIEB_VEX, 1.09 Nova/Orb/Meteor Countess Runner

I would like to present Matriarch GIEB_VEX, a Nova/Frozen Orb/Meteor Sorceress in 1.09 that was specifically created to run 1.09 Hell Countess for the Vex rune. She was successful in that calling, but I had invested enough gear and planning into her that I needed to Mat her before moving on. GIEB_VEX is my 8th Mat/Pat and my first Nova Sorc.

So, without futher ado, I present GIEB_VEX's Stats, Skills, and Gear:

LCS - GIEB_VEX - Sorceress
Level 82

Stats: (naked/main gear)

Unallocated: 26 (I was keeping the option to equip Stormshield)
Strength: 110/130 (to wear Thundergod's Vigor)
Dexterity: 177/179
Vitality: 156/178
Energy: 35/47 (over 1500 mana with main setup)

Resists: 75/75/85/75

Skills: (hard points/main gear)

Cold Spells:
Frozen Orb: 20/27 (prereqs: 5)
Cold Mastery: 1/8

Lightning Spells:
Nova: 20/33 (prereq: 1)
Teleport: 1/14 (prereq: 1)
Lightning Mastery: 20/33

Fire Spells:
Warmth: 1/8
Enchant: 1/8 (I like this for the merc)
Meteor: 13/20 (prereqs: 5)
Fire Mastery: 4/11

Final Gear: (105 FCR)

Helm: Harlequin Crest (pTopaz)
Ammy: Caster Crafted - 45/19/19/19, +1 Sorc, 9%FCR, 4% Mana Regen, etc.
Armor: Skin of the Vipermagi - 35Res@, 10MDR (pTopaz)
Weapon/Shield 1: Wizardspike (Ist)/Lidless Wall - 5MPK (pDiamond)
Weapon 2 (for casting): 'Memory' Gothic Staff (+5 ES, +2 Chilling Armor)
Rings: SoJ/SoJ
Gloves: Frostburn
Boots: Rare Greaves - 0/37/33/0, 30% FRW, 19% MF, etc.

Charms: 6x Sparking GCs (1 of Sustenance), 2x Serpent's (of Life and of Sust), Serpent/Snake's SCs of Balance, SCs of Good Luck (7% MF)

***Note - I pumped Dex for listed blocking, and I switched to the Occy/'Rhyme' Hyperion for Ancients***

Merc End-Game Gear:
NM Act 2 Holy Freeze Merc "Razan"
Helm: Blackhorn's Face
Weapon: Hone Sundan (197% ED, AmnAmnShael)
Armor: 'Smoke' Loricated Mail

Progression:

Early Game:
I tested some of my twinking advice with this character. She's the first character to wield the 5 JoE Long Bow from the beginning (she needed a Cap and Leather armor with 2x chipped Amethysts each to do it, since a Sorc starts the game with the lowest Str of all characters), and it was a very effective twinking weapon. The bugged poison stacking really makes this overpowered for the early game.

She ran Normal Coldcrow for my 2 missing TC3s until Level 18 (didn't have any other waypoints until then) - she found 3x Hand of Broc, but did not produce a Torch of Iro. Oh well.

I used my Set-based twinking to make her well-nigh invulnerable in the early game:

Arctic/Hsarus' at level 3 (in 1.09, the Arctic Gloves have req lvl 3)
She bypassed the Death's at 6
Angelic Armor + ammy + 2x rings at level 12
At level 13, I added my newest twinking item, the Cow King's Hooves. These are fantastic twinking boots and added a lot to the bow damage.
She did switch Arctic Belt + Gloves for Death's before taking on Andariel.

Perfect Tarnhelm at level 15.

At Level 18, while Nova was available, she had nowhere near the mana to use it for any duration, so I stuck the 6x pEmerald Long Battle Bow on her, and it was plenty effective until she got to level 30 and could start using Frozen Orb. This bow is 1.09's answer to the converted Raven Claw.

Gear Breakpoint - Level 30:
In Act 3, she got to level 30 and started using Frozen Orb with a single point in Cold Mastery. This was an effective skill throughout the game.

She dropped the mix of sets for uniques at this point: Skin of the Vipermagi, SoJs, Peasant Crown, Frostburn, String of Ears, and she went with Infernostrides just for Big D. I had some nice rare orbs to play with, and she had a decent Orb until level 42. I also went with the 'Rhyme' Grim Shield. A nice rare ammy with +1 Sorc skills, 13/13/13/13 rounded out the gear setup.

Gear Breakpoint - Level 42:
Well, Occy and Skillers got added here, a new ammy with +14 Str and +17 Ene and 21/32/0/0, a 'Rhyme' Heater added at level 43.

Gear Breakpoint - Level 62:
Engame gear became available here - Wizardspike and Harlequin Crest, and to reach the 105 FCR breakpoint, I popped a pDiamond in a Lidless Wall and replaced the 'Rhyme'. This is the setup that allowed for the telestomping that is the best way to play a Nova Sorc.

Gameplay:
Normal and Nightmare were done on P8, Hell done on P3 (except for Ancients for all difficulties, which was P1).

I found that the best defense for a Nova Sorc is an aggressive offense - aggressive telestomping Nova keeps her MUCH safer (especially in places like CS) than approaching monster packs on the ground. You have to mind your blue bulb, and she never got over her mana pot/mana shrine/spring habit, but that approach generally kept her safe.

I switched to Occy/'Rhyme' Hyperion for Hell Ancients - it was the fastest, easiest Hell Ancients fight I can remember. Minions + Baal weren't too bad either. The worst was the Blood Mana areas - she was so unbalanced in mana/life that there was no way to escape Blood Mana.

One death in NM Flayer Dungeon was it (accidentally hit a Fire Shrine, then staggered into the middle of a Shaman pack).

Hell Countess Running:

Yep, she's good at it - very good. My fastest, most efficient Countess runner. Chilling armor on the 'Memory' switch helped a lot with the Archers (and there was indeed an Archer pack when the Vex drop happened), but otherwise Nova destroyed everything. Countess is VERY often LE, so Thundergod's Vigor helped a lot, as did Blackhorn's Face on the merc.

She actually got the Vex quite a bit faster than I expected. She got to Countess at level 73, and ran her on P3 until level 76, when dropped to P1 for faster Countess kills.

Finds:

Well, Vex

Some other notables:
Ist (went in the Wizzy since I was feeling rich)

Shako, Shako, SHAKO

Also this Blackhorn's Face got put to immediate use on the Merc.

HFs were awful: NM: Sol, Hell: Hel

Plans:

This concludes my 1.09 goals, so, at least for now, I'm setting up to move ClimateChange, my other Sorc, to 1.10a for Andy running and planning my 1.13 Teslot to use the 1.10s Crescent Moon and Call to Arms I plan to make.
 
Originally posted by scrcrw on Jan 5, 2011:

Matriarch Destiny - Little Girl, Big Sword

I've always found the Vengeance oskill on 'Kingslayer' very intriguing. The Sorc with her elemental masteries seems particularly suitable. Any melee sorc wants enchant, so maxing Warmth as well is a no-brainer. The huge mana regeneration works nicely with ES. Let's add that to the mix (and use Enchant charges to free up points for TK). Final ingredient is of course a big 2H Atma-hax base for 'Kingslayer'. Sounds like a great build, right?
Let me tell you why it isn't...

The sword that made it possible (thanks Kimppi) (I fixed the read-out):
Code:
Kingslayer 
Colossus Blade 
MalUmGulFal 
Two Hand Damage: 316 - 712 
Indestructible <- evil
Required Level: 63 
Required Strength: 179 
Required Dexterity: 100 
Fingerprint: 0x4c6b4158 
Item Level: 87 
Version: Expansion 
+30% Increased Attack Speed 
264% Enhanced Damage 
50% Enhanced Maximum Damage
-25% Target Defense 
20% Bonus to Attack Rating 
33% Chance of Crushing Blow 
50% Chance of Open Wounds 
Prevent Monster Heal 
+1 to Vengeance 
+10 to Strength 
40% Extra Gold from Monsters 
Ethereal 
4 Sockets (4 used)

LCS
LCS without Enchant

Stats:
Code:
Name:       Destiny
Level:      79

            Naked/Gear
Strength:   142/194
Dexterity:  78/125
Vitality:   80/100
Energy:     125/132

HP:         1.2k (after BO)
Mana:       2k (after BO)
Defense:    2.5k (Cold Armor)
AR:         3.5k (w/ Enchant)

F/C/L/P: 27/27/27/75

FHR:        42
IAS:        50  --> 15fpa Attack
FCR:        0

Other gear:
Code:
'CoH' AP - all skills boosted damage nicely + other nice melee mods

Harley (P Sa) - more skills, more mana

Rare Gloves with 20ias, 3ll, 3ml, 7cb - nice

eTreks (15/13/66) - fhr and poison res - yes, please

Tal Belt - was supposed to be Arach at level 80...

Mara's - more all skills

Raven Frost + SoJ - CBF, AR, mana and another skill point

Pre-cast: 9ES Memory (thanks THC), Demon Limb, 4BO CtA + Spirit

Charms: Mana, Life, 22 FHR

Merc: Holy Freeze with Infinity CV, Leviathan, Vamp Gaze

Skills (+8 all after BC):
Code:
20 LM/FM, 1 CM - damage, please
20 Warmth - more enchant damage
23 Enchant - cast from Demon Limb
1 Teleport - most imba skill ever
1 Cold Armor, Blaze - why not
20 TK
1 ES (more here), cast at level 17 (72% absorb) (skiller switching is boring)

So far, so good, right?

The ES is a bit weak and the attack speed is a slow, but otherwise things are looking ok. Nice damage number, enough AR to hit stuff (under the effect of conviction) and solid life/mana numbers. Perfect merc control through teleport as well.
The whole thing falls down because ES simply doesn't work in pvm. Mana burn boss packs are ridiculously deady and just plain annoying. "Wait a minute!" you say "Just check boss mods before telestomping, you lazy idiot!!!". Then why invest points in TK and prebuff ES in the first place. What's the point of a defensive skill that forces you to play more careful?
Yes, I know this is not a new discovery.
The slow attack speed wasn't that much fun either, but this build was mainly inspired by the "Sword of Destiny" tournament. Using a Rogue Merc with Faith and Delirium might have been more fun (and a bit safer).
I realize that I skipped any sort of "Gameplay" section. There simply wasn't much. Teleport onto boss pack, kill boss pack, teleport to next pack, die to mana burn, rage quit, etc... Also: teleport.
Planning this character was fun, playing not so much (somewhat unsurprisingly).

Anyway, thanks for reading. Good luck in 2011!
 
Originally posted by scrcrw on Mar 22, 2011:

Matriarch Amy, Tri-Aura Armychantress

Wouldn't it be nice if your Enchantress could spread the damage on more than herself and the merc? Some minions sure would be nice.
There are only two runewords that allow you to get a decent sized army that doesn't fall over whenever there's an enemy.
Harmony has a Valk and high level Revives. However the amount of charges is low and Enchant loses a lot of damage when used with a ranged weapon. It's also much too reasonable.
The alternative is 'Eternity'. It allows 8 Revives and has a good amount of charges. I just had to resist the urge to pick an ethereal base. 👍

Add a couple of auras and pretty ctc's and we have a character:

Rich (BB code):
Matriarch Amy
Class:      Overlord
Level:      81

Strength:   162
Dexterity:  136
Vitality:   259
Madness:    39

HP:         955
Mana:       371

AR:         3467 (w/ Enchant)

Resists (f/c/l/p): -63/-36/-28/+3
(I don't actually dislike resists, it's just that none of the cool gear has any on it.)

Block:      31% @ 9 frames - did anyone say block lock?
FHR:        45 (9 frames)
IAS:        50 (10fpa = max speed)
FCR:        10

Skills:
20 Enchant (cast at 35)
20 Warmth
20 Fire Mastery (30 on kill switch, 35 prebuff)
20 Lightning Mastery (22 on kill switch)
1 Teleport, Frozen Armor (rarely used)

Equipment:
'Eternity' Phase Blade (15ed/1ar base):
Code:
Eternity 
Superior Phase Blade 
AmnBerIstSolSur 
One Hand Damage: 133 - 140 
Indestructible 
Required Level: 63 
Required Strength: 25 
Required Dexterity: 136 
Fingerprint: 0xdaab0feb 
Item Level: 86 
Version: Expansion 1.10+ 
Indestructible 
300% Enhanced Damage 
+9 to Minimum Damage 
+1 to Attack Rating 
7% Life stolen per hit 
20% Chance of Crushing Blow 
Hit Blinds Target +1 
Slows Target by 33% 
Replenish Life +16 
Regenerate Mana 16% 
Cannot Be Frozen 
30% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items 
Level 8 Revive (46/** Charges) 5 Sockets (5 used) 
Socketed: Amn Rune 
Socketed: Ber Rune 
Socketed: Ist Rune 
Socketed: Sol Rune 
Socketed: Sur Rune
'Phoenix' Monarch:
Code:
Phoenix 
Monarch 
VexVexLoJah 
Defense: 148 
Chance to Block: 0 
Durability: 78 of 86 
Required Level: 65 
Required Strength: 156 
Fingerprint: 0xa5225afc 
Item Level: 85 
Version: Expansion 1.10+ 
100% Chance to cast level 40 Blaze when you Level-Up 
40% Chance to cast level 22 Firestorm on striking 
Level 15 Redemption Aura When Equipped 
385% Enhanced Damage 
-28% to Enemy Fire Resistance 
+362 Defense vs. Missile 
+50 to Life 
+5% to Maximum Lightning Resist 
+10% to Maximum Fire Resist 
+17 Fire Absorb 4 Sockets (4 used) 
Socketed: Vex Rune 
Socketed: Vex Rune 
Socketed: Lo Rune 
Socketed: Jah Rune
'Dragon' Mage Plate:
Code:
Dragon 
Mage Plate 
SurLoSol 
Defense: 613 
Durability: 50 of 60 
Required Level: 61 
Required Strength: 55 
Fingerprint: 0x506295a7 
Item Level: 85 
Version: Expansion 1.10+ 
20% Chance to cast level 18 Venom when struck 
12% Chance to cast level 15 Hydra on striking 
Level 14 Holy Fire Aura When Equipped 
+360 Defense 
All Stats +3 
+230 Defense vs. Missile 
+30 to Strength (Based on Character Level) 
Increase Maximum Mana 5% 
+5% to Maximum Lightning Resist 
Damage Reduced by 7 3 Sockets (3 used) 
Socketed: Sur Rune 
Socketed: Lo Rune 
Socketed: Sol Rune
'Dream' Bone Visage:
Code:
Silliness's Dream 
Bone Visage 
IoJahPul 
Defense: 415 
Durability: 30 of 40 
Required Level: 65 
Required Strength: 106 
Fingerprint: 0xcf18e4c0 
Item Level: 88 
Version: Expansion 1.10+ 
10% Chance to cast level 15 Confuse when struck 
Level 15 Holy Shock Aura When Equipped 
+20% Faster Hit Recovery 
+30% Enhanced Defense 
+211 Defense 
+10 to Vitality 
Increase Maximum Life 5% 
+50 to Mana (Based on Character Level) 
All Resistances +7 
21% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items 3 Sockets (3 used) 
Socketed: Io Rune 
Socketed: Jah Rune 
Socketed: Pul Rune
1.07 Laying of Hands
Nosferatu's Coil
eth Sandstorm Treks (15/13/66)
Highlord's Wrath
Bul Kathos' Wedding Band (5ll)
Rare Ring (10fcr/52mana/21ar/27cr)

Switch: eth Eschuta's (+25%/-5% Fire) + eth Spirit Monarch (35fcr) (prebuffing enchant in style)

Charms: 8x Burning GC (one with 31 life), Small Charms with 5fhr, mana, ar and life

Merc (Holy Freeze): 'Infinity' eCV, Giant Skull (15ias, 44ed, 5dex), 'Chains of Honor' AP

Thoughts:
Did anyone notice the silly flaw in her equipment? No, not the low life and non existent resists. Not the slow block either. I'm talking about putting a permanent Redemption aura on a character that's supposed to rely on revives. Clever plan...
Actually this worked out fine. I just had to be fast on reviving and couldn't always get the exact revives I wanted.
The revives worked really well as meat shields, but I gave up on enchanting them individually rather quickly. Keeping 8 of them that run around like crazy enchanted is a lot more bother than it's worth. They all vanished on each level up anyway (and sometimes just randomly).
The other big factor in terms of safety was the Redemption aura. It constantly held Amy's life nicely topped up and prevented a lot of deaths.
Looking at the LCS, you can probably guess that Amy didn't really need help killing things. Almost 15k average damage is pretty nice. The delay from the Firestorm and Hydra ctc's was noticeable against high life enemies, but not crippling.
Amy went through Hell at /p3 all the way through. Nothing really posed a problem. There were a few deaths to bosses with multiple elemental enchantments, especially when there were no revives around. A lot fewer than expected though. :D

Screenshots: bugged Cain's Portal, Minion Stack, Go Minions, Go!

Final Words:
Well, this worked. Surprisingly. It was good fun, too. Don't do it though, it's a stupid build. Do this instead. 👍
 
Originally posted by sevenOfDiamonds on Apr 29, 2011:

Matriarch ChoOyu - Dream/Zeal Sorc

D7 introduces Cho Oyu - a cookie cutter melee sorc wielding Passion and dual Dreams.

Cho Oyu was originally born DenaliTwin; a socket rusher of mine. DenaliTwin was done with her duties at level 48 in the Frigid Highlands (NM). Before transmuting into Cho Oyu, she cleared the remaining quests up to Larzuk in NM and pounded Eldritch 'till level 65.
Then followed a quick visit to Akara and Cho Oyu rised from the ashes of DenaliTwin.

Skills
maxed LM, FM, Enchant Warmth
TP+TK
Rest in Shiver Armor

Gear
Dream (Diadem)
Dream (Troll Nest)
Passion (PB)
Treachery (AP)
Dracul's
String of Ears
Waterwalk
Mara's
BKWB
Raven Frost

Switch: +3 Enchant Leaf staff

Charms
+4 Lightning skills
+202 Life
+16 Res all
+11 LR
+11 FR
+6 PR

Merc
HF Town Guard wielding
Infinity (eGPA)
Fortitide (eAP)
Crown of Thieves

LCS

Progression

Wow! This is one fiery lady. Not many (if any) melee characters have so much offensive potential. Even with only LM @ level 27 she still packs ~22k avg dmg per hit - pretty neat especially combined with Infinity.
Her major problem is her fragility. As I previously had bad experiences with Treachery (link) I started out using CoH, Nos' Coil, 20 IAS gloves and HLW. This worked extremely well for the rest of nightmare and the first two acts of hell (at /p3). Everything went down in one or two hits. I don't think she completed a full Zeal cycle outside the act boss battles during these acts.
Act 3 was not too bad either. But it became more evident that she does not like hard hitters.
In act 4 she started to get into trouble by many things she didn't kill immediately. This trend continued through act 5. After a couple of deaths in the Halls I switched to the gear above. The extra DR% from Treachery and SoE did wonders for the little girl. As opposed to my previous experiences Fade was more reliable this time around. I assume that her low (30ish%) chance to block allowed her to get hit more often and thus trigger Fade more frequently.
The Ancients (also at /p3) were merely punchbags. They spawned without any dangerous mods and went down very quickly.
The waves presented little problems except for a merc revive after wave 3. Lister was unbreakable LI but the merc did the job in style.
Baal was no problem either and thus another Matriarch was a reality.

Finds
HF Hell: Gul!
Code:
Thresher
Two Hand Damage: 18 - 211
Durability: 33 of 33
Required Level: 53
Required Strength: 142
Required Dexterity: 108
Fingerprint: 0xe630fb70
Item Level: 79
Version: Expansion 1.10+
Ethereal
5 Sockets (0 used)

Blackoak Shield
Luna
Defense: 341
Chance to Block: 0
Durability: 47 of 129
Required Level: 61
Required Strength: 100
Fingerprint: 0xb56cfa0b
Item Level: 83
Version: Expansion 1.10+
4% Chance to cast level 5 Weaken when struck
+50% Faster Block Rate
+175% Enhanced Defense
+37 to Dexterity (Based on Character Level)
+93 to Life (Based on Character Level)
+46 Absorbs Cold Damage (Based on Character Level)
Half Freeze Duration
+45 Maximum Durability

Shimmering Small Charm
Small Charm
Required Level: 25
Fingerprint: 0xcb4cbfce
Item Level: 59
Version: Expansion 1.10+
All Resistances +5

War Staff
Two Hand Damage: 12 - 28
Durability: 36 of 50
Required Level: 24
Fingerprint: 0xa88b090f
Item Level: 83
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+3 to Energy Shield (Sorceress Only)
4 Sockets (0 used)

Iron Grand Charm of Vita
Grand Charm
Required Level: 69
Fingerprint: 0xddb7a4cb
Item Level: 82
Version: Expansion 1.10+
+73 to Attack Rating
+40 to Life

Thanks for reading!

//D7
 
Originally posted by sirpoopsalot on Jan 26, 2008:

The Hellacious Adventures of Morgana and Dorkana - Twin Melee Enchantress Matriarchs

... and their even more hellaciously-long writeup...

Disclaimer: I'm gonna be very, very long-winded on this one, so why don't you grab a fresh beer and a bottle of tequila before you start to read this. 'Liquor makes it quicker', as the rhyme goes (i.e. the rhyme I just made up 👅). Don't say I didn't warn you.


History, and a Premise:
I spent about a year thinking about Enchantresses(essesessesessesesses- sorry... got sidetracked) before I finally got around to making one. The reason for the delay was I could never make up my mind on whether to do a Zeal/Passion, Vengeance/Kingslayer, or ranged/Demon Machine build. The more I thought about it, the more I flip-flopped on my 'favourite-du-jour'. Not long ago, I finally got tired of the voices debating in my head and decided to just build one. Even then, my debate continued all the way into Nightmare while I was questing. But eventually it was decision-time, so I finally settled upon Frozen Orb and a Demon Machine. Despite the success of that matriarch (writeup), it didn't take me long to get back to the thoughts of which melee Enchantress I thought would kick the most butt, and if either one would match my ranger.

Now, I'm not necessarily the sharpest knife in the drawer. But, eventually, my epihany was bound to happen. Since you've read this thread title, you can probably figure out what that moment was, but it's my thread, so I'm going to write it down anyways. The epihany was: "Wait! Why don't I try both at the same time! :scratch:... Yeah... and I can also try a few ideas that I've always wondered about with sorcs, and then do a 'contrast and compare' thread. Wow, everyone's going to think I'm super-smart now."

Actually, I'm embelishing a little bit; most of you probably know me well enough to know that I'll respect you, but I really don't give a hoot what you think of me (just so we're clear where we stand ;-).

What are the other ideas I wanted to test:
- What's an Enchantress' most reliable secondary damage type for fighting against fire-immunes? (don't forget, I've already tried Frozen Orb with my ranged enchantress)
- I wanted to see if an Act3 merc was a tolerable companion for a sorceress. Every time I've tried these mercs in the past, it was with a non-teleporting build and every time the merc got swarmed, he'd die. Now that I have teleport, it's easy to rescue the merc from a swarm. And since I'm a tank anyways... in theory this should work.
- Playing single-player, there aren't a lot of sorceress builds that have enough spare skillpoints to maintain two solid damage-types as well as have a decent investment in Energy Shield (a Nova/Frozen Orb sorc is possibly the best candidate to try ES in single-player, but I've already done the Nova/FO part). So, I've never tried ES before with any of my sorcs, and it was time to change that (well... there was once a one-point-ES failure, but that was a failure driven by my own ignorance).


So, what are the main differences between these two ladies?
- Primary Attacks: Vengeance vs. Zeal (oskills, FTW)
- Secondary Damage: Lightning & Cold damage vs. Enhanced Physical damage
- offensive-focused vs. defensive-focused
- 2-handed vs. max-block
- cold/casting merc vs. tanking/might merc



The Journey to Hell:
I decided that when I got to Hell I'd alternate each one's progress for an Act. They're sharing a few items, but swapping isn't a huge deal with ATMA, so what better way to get a feel for how they really match up? Before that though...

Both sorcs followed similar paths through Normal. /players8 all the way. Twinking gear + Act1 = dead monsters. 1.09 Ravenclaw + Enchant = more dead monsters. Shaeled Steeldriver + Enchant = even more dead monsters. It's really not rocket science. Fortunately, I was smart enough this time to put some FHR on each sorceress (no-FHR, caused by laziness, was the biggest difficulty I had with my ranged enchantress during the early-game; I guess I learned my lesson). Doing normal two times in a row was boring work, but eventually they each killed Baal around level 43-45.

First up for Nightmare, Morgana the Vengeance sorc. I leveled her to 49 on Normal /players8 Baal runs, so that I could equip my Treachery Dusk Shroud and Ravenfrost and set off. Act1 was fairly smooth cruising, but I found I used teleport a lot (to keep the merc close and to spread the monsters out - the mercs' Glacial Spike/freezing really helped keep things under control). As a team, the two of us could take down monsters very fast though.

Things started to slow down immediately upon entering Act2. There are more unleechable monsters, as well as a few that have some fire resistance. Although my merc was still kicking butt fairly well, my attack was starting to slow down, and I was developing a little bit of a chemical dependency on red potions. Mostly, those complications were dictated by my equipment - I'll explain...

I've played enough sorcs to know that they're relatively fragile. The Vengeance sorc was planned to be going into hell as a melee sorc, without a tanking merc to help, and attacking with a two-handed weapon. Needless to say, if I had to bet on her eventual fragility vs. the sun rising in the east, it seemed like a tough decision on which was more likely. So, to help counter that fragility, I was anal about pre-planning my equipment in Hell, including optimizing every single, tiny, measly, little stat point. Since I was counting on an additional +25 Stregth and +15 Dexterity (or thereabouts) from equipment that I couldn't equip until near-Hell, that meant in Nightmare I had a lot of equipment and charms that were focused on +stats instead of other useful things like attack power and survivability.

However, before long in Act2, I hit level53 and was able to equip my Vengeance axe. I also wised up and ~doubled my lifeleech. When you go from 4-5 hit kills against normal monsters to 1-2 hit kills against Champions, as well as making your lifeleech return about 400% more life, for some reason things tend to get easier. After that, it was relatively consistent sailing all the way to Ancients.

I did manage to squeeze on a couple of +skills along the way, and each +6% damage per element gained by Vengeance really had a noticable effect once my masteries gave it a big boost. The progression through Nightmare actually played out fairly well for someone obsessed with twinking the best available equipment. I usually don't find it enjoyable to spend 15% of my playtime in ATMA, but this time things would just start to slow down, then I'd say "hey, level58! I can equip BKWB now.", and the +1 to Vengeance and leech would add just enough to make things better for another 4 levels ("hey, it's shako time!!!", etc.). Of course, I was playing entirely on /players8, so I could've easily just dropped that a little and been perfectly fine. Considering all the time I spent adding +str and +dex on my equipment, lowering the /players setting would've been a wiser choice. Oh well, live and learn...

Ancients were not particularily easy. I've had better and faster times with some of my other characters in Hell, but the difficulties were mostly because I went in with the attitude of "it's only Nightmare, how bad can it be?" Once I realized that I needed to pay attention and drink a few potions, it wasn't that bad at all. WSK and Baal were pretty easy, and I learned once in WSK3 that I didn't quite do enough physical damage for IM to equal insta-death. Otherwise, Static Field is a faster Lister and Baal fighter than melee, so I acted like a typical caster-sorc for some of the time. I killed Baal at level73, and did a few more /players8 runs to hit level76 (Dracul's Grasp) before setting Morgana aside for Hell.

After that I returned to Dorkana. By that time, I'd decided that I was tired of fragile two-handed sorcs (that's what I get for playing her on /players8 full-time), so it was time to switch to a one-handed attack. However, her strength was too low to equip a 'good' one-handed weapon. After spending (literally) hours with Morgana searching through my ATMA stashes so she could find something with +stats and improve her gear in Nightmare, I was dead set against reapeating the "let's find +strength from equipment so we can wear something new" approach, and there really aren't many great mid-game one-handed weapons for this build anyways. Instead, I decided to see how hard it was to levelup to the mid-50's in normal Baal runs. It turns out, it wasn't difficult at all. You can pretty much gain one level per run up until about level49, and even until level55 it was still a level every 2nd run. Since I'd been extremely lucky on her map (5 teleports for WSK2, 2 teleports for WSK3), it was only an hour or two to get to level 55.

With my huge starting level entering Nightmare, the ability to block attacks, good resists, a tanking merc, and some end-game worthy equipment, Nightmare was a different experience with Dorkana. I simply focused on getting at least +4 to zeal (for 5-zeal hits per cycle), boosting my Enchant and Energy Shield as high as possible on prebuff, and having enough IAS to reach my maximum zeal-speed. After that, for the rest of Nightmare, it was pretty much: teleport, teleport, zeal, teleport, zeal, etc. She was a little more fragile than I'm used to for melee characters, so I started to use ES in late Act2 and it took care of most of that. In the end, she was less frustrating than with the Vengeance sorc, but less interesting to play too.

The few fire immune monsters I faced in Nightmare with Dorkana were relatively slow fighting, so I leaned heavily on teleport and the merc for those. That didn't bode well for hell, even if I wasn't carrying any equipment to boost my physical damage at that time (no charms, no Duress, nothing). So after some consideration, I decided it was a good idea to try old-faithful on weapon switch - an upgraded, Shaeled ribcracker. Much better (except now I can't use CtA/Lidless on switch without a lot of swapping items, but I've had that CtA for quite a while now, so I kindof wanted to experience 'life on the poor side' again).

Ancients were a cakewalk this time, but one of them was manaburn, and it taught me that if your mana drops to zero, Energy Shield doesn't stay active (yes, I'm a noob). Not only is this extremely annoying, but it can be quite dangerous. After that, I realized that prebuffing my ES with a Memory staff was actually a bad fit for me - my mana couldn't handle a high ratio of ES. That meant it was time to start putting a few points back into Vitality too, since my absorb dropped about 25% (from 65% to 40%, IIRC).

Baal & Co. were easier than the ancients, except for a Lister wave or two. I did a few more /players8 runs to hit level76 and get her to the same point as Morgana, and it was finally time for Hell.


Act1 Hell
*Dropped to /players1 from here on out.*
Morgana's first again. 1-hit KO against non-FI's (even a few champion-class monsters), 2-hit KO vs most FI's. Griswold proved the most sturdy enemy in the entire act when he took 7 hits to kill (without the merc, who was occupied elsewise; Andy took 5 hits, but she was slivered after the 4th and the merc was admiring a pack of fallen). I managed to stumble across a couple of LI/FI monsters, but even those were relatively easy. The only real difficulties were a single extra-fast/mana burn pack, as they took away her mobility without teleport (which reminds me: I need to get and Enigma someday and build some melee chars with it). A couple other bosspacks hurt when they hit, but she hurt them much worse in return. Otherwise... :yawn:

Sidenote: Morgana was such an offensive juggernaut that I was wondering at this point if my estimate of her fragility was incorrect. Was it?

Dorkana was a little more of an issue. She started off just fine, but manaburn packs really aren't much fun for an ES sorc - one hit, and poof-goes-the-energy-shield; two hits, and poof-goes-half-your-lifepool. She also seemed to be perpetually cursed. A boss pack of archers & champions in the Tamoe Highlands managed to kill her, and unfortunately I wasn't going out of my way to find waypoints, so she had to start all the way back at the Cold Plains waypoint :p. She managed a few other NDE's late in the act, including one battle that took all of my purple potions and left her with 68 life and poisoned when she killed the final monster. At least the ribcracker kicked FI-butt fairly well, but there sure did seem a lot of times she used it instead of her primary weapon, including one or two entirely-FI areas.


Act2 Hell
I decided to 'leap-frog' their progress, so Dorkana got the first crack at Act2.
After ducking through the bottom entrance to the Sewers and finding the stairs down quietly, there was a nice welcoming party at the first intersection of Sewers2 - a champion pack of Dried Corpses and a triple-boss pack of FireImmunes (2x BoneArchers and SandRaiders, each pack with manaburn and cursed). I was too busy dodging arrows to take any screenshots, but Neeraj & Dorkana managed to pull through with a few trips to heal in town. Sewers3 had another triple boss pack, but with Fanaticism instead of manaburn, so it was actually a little safer. The rest of the act was pretty straight forward, except I don't know what Fire-Eye spawned with, but he soloed/killed the merc, then Dorkana, in about a second each - two times :p.

Morgana started Act2 like she finished Act1 - by kicking butt. She drank a few potions early on, but most times it was partially because I'd forgotten to refresh Battle Orders. Most monsters were still being completely obliterated though. The Claw Viper temple was the first the first hint that things weren't always going to be a teleport through the park - she teleported around a pillar, and BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!... 4 quick charges from a champion pack of vipers took about 2/3rd of her life - and since they were Cold-Immune, it made Yashied nothing more than an inneffective meatshield (since he likes to runaway at the first sign of melee). She teleported around the other side of the pillar, and managed to string them out to one-at-a-time, which made things quite easy.

No severe difficulties after that until PalaceCellar3, which was where I found Morgana's achilles heel. I was teleporting through, searching for FireEye so she could avenge Dorkana's difficulties, when she encounted a small room stuff full of large pack of extra-strong, extra-fast, cursed archers. The results of that first pass are rather succinctly summarized here. She managed to die a second time when trying to get her corpse (Yashied died fast to them too), but the third time was able to grab her corpse, heal, load back up on potions, and pick off a couple before retreating to town. Rinse, lather, repeat, and about 8 town trips later, the last archer was dead.

Duriel proved a much more difficult battle with Morgana, but not too miserable. It was obvious that Vengeance's interruptability is at a significant disadvantage to Zeal though - there were a few times where Duriel's mini-charge/knockback interrupted her attack. LifeTap wouldn't trigger either, which meant plenty of potions were drank.


Act3 Hell
Morgana went into act3 leary of all of the blow-dart flayers, but it turns out my concerns were mostly unfounded. Her attack is strong enough to one-hit kill them, and teleport makes it hard for them to run away for long, so those all dropped fast. The only real concerns for this act turned out to be hard-hitting packs, especially when she was cursed (i.e. Sszark was 'interesting') - and Dolls (I hate those guys). By luck though, it seemed the LifeTap on Dracs would kick in at just the right time, or I was able to use the natural terrain to her advantage (an example of both was this doorjam). There were still a few tough battles that required a few potions, but nothing too strenuous.

One thing that I didn't mention about Morgana was she managed to avoid the Great Marsh (and Gloams); Dorkana had no such luck. That first encounter went something like this: BAM-BAM-dead. "Shoot, now I have to get my corpse". Ressurect merc, then teleport + teleport + teleport... TP scroll... cautious teleport, cautious teleport, BAM-BAM-dead... "frig"... ressurect merc, tp scroll, cautious teleport, cautious teleport, BAM-dead... "****!!!"... yep, 3 deaths in 5 hits (and about 2 seconds). After the third time I decided to focus entirely on surviving, and let the merc do whatever he can to pitch in... it worked - barely (one stray hit took off ~90% of her life before she could get her corpse).

After that Dorkana retreated to thoroughly explore the Spider Forest to see if she'd missed a direct route to the Flayer Jungle. Dorkana's cowardice was rewarded appropriately by the D2 gods (i.e. she was stuck going through the Great Marsh :p). Some slow progress, a few NDE's, and a lot of potions later, she managed to grab the Great Marsh waypoint, which meant she was able to take a break and mule on some more purple potions. To my relief (and a small amount of chagrin), there weren't any gloams after starting the new game. I felt somewhat cheap, but figured there'd probably be plenty of Gloams in later acts to make up for it, so she pushed ahead. Of course, after the fact I realized that her resists were geared towards a much higher level of ES. ~30% lightning resistance and a low level of ES wasn't one of my brighter moments, so I ended up twinking a little resistance gear on during the next break.

The rest of the act went about as well as could be hoped. A few NDE's, a lot of potions, and avoiding mana-burn (and Dolls) along the way. Nothing more exciting than a Windhammer drop in LK.


Act4 Hell
My favourite act. Two great quest rewards, some quick questing progress, and some challenging monsters. What's not to love (besides IM)?
*Sidenote: I wrote that opinion before completing either Hellforge. :p*

Outer Steppes started with 4 bosspacks near to the entrance, but only 2 of them were closely grouped (and only one was FI), so it didn't turn out to be a big deal. Leapers and Breeders (or whatever those damn things are called) aren't my favourite monsters, but neither are FI, so at least they died fast. Dorkana started cautiously into the Plains of Despair, and that caution paid off. The first thing she encountered was a nice circle of Burning Souls surrounding the stairs, so she managed to get hit a couple of times. But, it's amazing what a difference maxed lightning resistance makes - with her improved resistances she was sturdy enough to clean up the stray Souls and drink a couple of potions and move along. Definitely rewarding after her experience in the Great Marsh.

Both the City and the River of Flame spawned without FI monsters, so they were a real pleasure to quest through. Hephasto proved a challenge, but not for the usual reasons (he hurt, but really wasn't that dangerous). Dorky had to retreat to town and inspect her equipment before remembering that Zeal isn't the only oskill on Passion. Static + Berzerk = dead Hephasto... After collecting my Ko rune, it was on to every melee characters favourite area - The Chaos Sanctuary.

The welcoming party at the entrance had me thinking "c'mon game, I'm not that dumb; I remember now, so give me a break" (looks familiar, no?). Lots of Fire Immunes here though, so some slow progress and lots of red potions. She went in almost at level80, and was determined to get to it without dying, so progress was very cautious. Neeraj? Not so much. It turned out, with teleport, the OK's were much less of a problem than FireImmunes though, so it wasn't with a ton of difficulty that she made it to level80 (relatively) incident free. Lord de Seis had manaburn, and he was anal about casting IM (after the fourth consecutive time Neeraj died, let me tell you that Lord De Seis wasn't the only one cursing), but teleport-as-a-leading-monsters-along-tactic works so well that dorky managed to squeek through by stringing out the tougher packs. BigD was one of the easier battles for that area.

Morgana's progress through Act4 was mostly dependent on two things. Was the monster Fire Immune? If not, it quickly became a dead monster. If the monster was fire immune, did LifeTap trigger quickly? If not, things quickly became difficult (otherwise they were just slow). The Plains spawned without Souls, so that area was no problem either. After Hellforge dropped my fourth sub-par rune in a row (a Hel - making my 4 forges: Shael, Io, Ko, Hel) I let forth a stream of profanity that would've stunned a pack of Oblivion Knights into silence ("curses?!? I'll show you curses").

The Chaos Sanctuary was actually pretty decent. Yashied's Glacial Spike froze all of the slow-to-kill Fire Immunes, and we tele-bombed all of the Oblivion Knights while the Abyss Knights were still frozen. Morgana did manage to get cornered by one manaburn, cursed, extra-fast pack, and didn't last long in the midst of that. Otherwise, it was somewhat easier and faster than Dorkana. And fortunately, she managed to get 'inside' the range of BigD's LBoD, so he went down fast and easy too.


Act5 Hell
Going into this act, Morgana was a little weary of all of the ranged guest monsters that spawn early on, but it turns out those fears were somewhat unfounded. Even FI VileArchers were a 2-hit kill (they must have low lightning resistance), so she was able to use teleport to pickoff enemies and avoid their attacks. The Act3 merc was once again a blessing, as were red potions. Crystalline Passage was her first introduction to Gloams in hell, and happily that went quite well too... until Frozenstein.

On top of his usual Cold Enchanted/Manaburn, he had ExtraFast and Cursed. Since Yashied couldn't chill/slow him (or his pack), it was hard to not get swarmed (and one hit removed her mana & ability to teleport away). Then there were the ~dozen Gloams floating around taking potshots. FHR (and purple potions) were her saviour here, as she was able to get away and kill a few gloams, then as Frozenstein's pack came near she teleported the other way and killed a few more Gloams. Eventually there was only a stragler or two from the Gloams, so she was able to pick away at them too. No deaths for her or Yashied, but tons of action (and even more potions).

After that, it was fairly routine progress until the Ancients - a few potions, a few retreats, a lot of dead monsters. As soon as I found the Ancient Way waypoint, I took a minute to make sure Morgana had enough potions stashed, then spent a few minutes littering them all around the Summit. After refreshing all of her prebuff, it was time... She immediately teleported straight up, and all three ancients followed along willingly. I was hoping to separate them, and to my amazement, only Madawc the Whimperer followed the first time I teleported down. I had no idea what the mods on the other two were, but Madawc looked wimpy enough, so I decided to take him down. It still took ~8 potions, but he didn't hit hard or fast enough to make anything scary. With a little coaxing, Korlic the came next, and he also had some pretty wimpy mods (something like Blessed Aim aura - I forgot to take a screenshot). Finally, it was time to tackle Talic the Wussy... I don't know if I've ever had a luckier first spawn of Ancients - she had a harder time with them in Nightmare.

WSK1 was pretty much like every other area - cautious teleporting, GS from merc, a few potions, and many dead monsters. WSK2 started the same, but there were Gloams and Beetles, so I was a little more cautious. However, one time I came around a corner, and insta-died. The second time, the same thing happened. And the third. After that I decided to wait around long enough to see what the problem was, and this guy explains my difficulties. Even more cautiously, Morgana returned to the scene, using pillars as shields, and she managed to lure out a few beetles, one by one Yashied would slowly take them down, and I was feeling pretty good about my persistance. And then... this guy decided to come out and see what was going on. Yashied tried and tried, but he couldn't do enough damage to counter the beetles regeneration. And he was faster than morgana's teleport, so he chased her all over the place... in fact, I was so focused on trying to ditch the beetle that I didn't notice the Gloam boss had drifted over to have a better angle of attack... you can probably guess what happened next.

After that, Morgana and Yashied tried and tried, and tried and died. And tried and died some more. But nothing they did could put humpty-dumpty together again (or get them back to Morgana's corpse or do enough damage to one of those bosses). Finally, demoralized and almost a million gold poorer, I saved and exited. Morgana could've probably hired a temporary tank for replacing Yashied and possibly squeeked by, but that would've felt like a hollow victory anyways. After all the times Yashied's GS saved her butt, it didn't really seem like a better choice than the easy way out.

The respawn was more friendly and they quickly made their way down to the throne. WSK3 and the throneroom were like the Oblivion Knight Family Reunion, but the GS merc and teleporting sorc took them fairly easily with all of the frozen Abyss Knights standing around. The minions were all quite easy, except Lister spawned especially sturdy (Dorkana probably would've crapped her pants). Baal dropped Zakarum's Hand (unique RuneScepter), so he was only 98% stingy this time.

As for Dorkana, she cruised along to rescue Anya just fine. In the Crystalline Passage she encountered Succubi (and Hell Witches, IIRC), which made me realize that somehow Morgana managed to avoid this monster type entirely. Too bad too, since it made me curious how she would've faired. Dorkana didn't have any real difficulties with them, but she did have her share of potions. Neeraj decided to do an encore performance of his behaviour in the Chaos Sanctuary ("hey Ma, watch me die again!!! I'm getting good at it, don't ya think?"), so he actually didn't get ressurected for a while, leaving Dorkana to clear much of the path solo.

Another monster type that Morgana somehow avoided were FI Deathlords. Dorkana's first encounter was in the Glacial Trail, and if Morgana's achilles heel is archers, these guys were Dorkana's (actually, I think with their chill/slow resistance they would've been very tough for Morgana too). A champion pack spanked her pretty silly - repeatedly - until she was able to separate them one by one and have Neeraj do all of the heavy lifting.

First spawn of the Ancients proved a little more difficult to separate for Dorkana. Two of them had ExtraFast, so they could pretty much keep up with her teleporting back and forth. However, with a little effort she was able to separate them, and her and Neeraj managed to takedown Talic... only to learn that his Fire Enchanted death explosion was too much for her energy shield and lifepool and she was standing a little too close. What a lame way to die. It happened the second time with Korlic (reaction = :censored:). Third time's a charm, as the saying goes, and this time it proved true. Neeraj was able to safely solo Madawc. After that Dorkana and Neeraj were able to gang up on Talic (who seemed to have a defective attack since her life or manabulb didn't budge once, and neither the Neeraj's). Finally, Korlic proved no more difficult than his cohorts, and thus, the Ancients were conquered. FYI, the number of potions used: 0.

WSK1 managed to produce a lovely welcoming party right at the stairs. Dorkana temporarily ditched them with teleport, cleared out a side-wing, and came back and lured them away one by one. Surprisingly, that didn't take very long with Neeraj tanking, but he did take 4 purple potions while Morgana's openwounds and elemental damage drained the boss... oh well, she had a few spares left over from the Ancients fight. The stairs down to WSK2 were fairly close, and WSK2 had an easy spawn too (Serpent Magus', Horadrim Ancients, and Flayers, so that was pretty uneventful. WSK3 had Hell Temptresses, SkellieMages (whatever they're called), and DemonImps, so it wasn't too bad either (though Neeraj once again proved himself so adept at dying that Dorkana decided to find her way down alone).

The throneroom spawned with Burning Souls, Snakes, and something else inconsequential. Neeraj, once again, was quickly overwhelmed by souls. I don't know what this guys problem was (other than equipment ;), but I got pretty sick of him near the end. Dorkana teleported around and managed to pick them off one by one. The minions were relatively uneventful, except for a cursed Ventar that required all of my remaining purple potions (I was too busy trying to stay alive to take screenshots). What a great way to be going into battle with Lister & friends - with only red potions. Fortunately, Lister spawned with some (relatively) harmless mods, so with a little persistence Dorky and Neeraj took the final wave down. Baal, of course, proved his usual self... dying slowly but fairly easily. And, also as usual, he might as well have dropped a turd as opposed to the 'treasure' he provided.



So how do these ladies compare?
*I'm including my previous ranged Enchantress in this section*

I'll refer to them by their names:
Alice = Ranged (Demon Machine), Frozen Orb backup
Dorkana = 'Passion' Phaseblade (for a Zeal attack), Physical Damage backup, EnergyShield and max-block
Morgana = 'Kingslayer' SE-Axe (for a two-handed Vengeance attack), backup damage not required, ColdWolf merc.


Lowest Cost of Equipment: Alice
Generally the items for a viable ranged enchantress will be a little cheaper than for a melee Enchantress. That said, Dorkana could've gotten by with some cheaper equipment than what she had. Morgana obviously was the most expensive with a Gul, Mal, Um and Fal tied into the weapon alone.

Of course, they all seriously benefit from being wealthy. I'm not sure if they'd be fun untwinked, even if you could realistically pull it off. Personally, I wouldn't want to try it.

Questing through Nightmare: Dorkana
Simple, straightforward, fast, and safe.

Questing through Hell: 3-way-tie
They each have advantages and disadvantages, and not one seems to significantly dominate the others.

Best Merc: Morgana
... seriously... The freezing/chilling from Glacial Spike is an amazingly strong compliment to this build - as long as your sorc can reliably kill everything you encounter. Predominantly you need your merc to provide crowd control - moreso that than anything else (i.e. killpower from the merc is secondary). Furthermore, even if the blocking on a Spirit isn't that great (23% in his case), I did notice that Yashied did fairly well against archers (maybe the +500 defense against missiles from dual Spirits helped too).

Best Against non-FireImmunes: uh... whichever has the fastest attack
Dorkana probably wins with an uninterruptible attack, but I'm not a huge Zeal fan. And the 25% flee on Passion can slow things down when a monster runs away and you have to chase it down though. Overall, this was pretty close.

Best Against Fire Immunes: Alice
I love the powerful aspect of Vengeance + Lightning Mastery, but the safety advantage of Frozen Orb is just too nice. Of the three, Alice definitely had the least troubles with most fire immunes - even if she was a little slower than Morgana was at times. Dorkana was definitely the worst in this department.

Best Against Bosses: Dorkana
This is the one area where she really stood over the others. She had a harder time with swarms, but could tank single monsters relatively well. The higher crushing blow (and faster delivery) obviously is a factor here.

Best in HC: Alice
For survivability, ranged > melee. I'm not saying it would be easy though.

Least Debilitating Weakness: Morgana
Dorkana gets pretty completely hosed by manaburn and FI swarms in Hell, and in case you haven't noticed, those are fairly common. Alice and Morgana each had problems with ranged attackers, but I'll give Morgana a slight edge because she would typically use teleport to attack aggressively (often forcing the archers to run away - and they don't attack while they're running). Alice would teleport, but by the time she re-targeted the archers were often recovered and shooting at her again... the margin for error with Morgana just seemed a little higher, and the powerful attack took archers out faster.

Overall Champion Enchantress (so far): Morgana
Perhaps it's the 'novelty' aspect of trying something different, but I simply enjoyed playing Morgana the most. She also had possibly the most-powerful melee attack that I've used yet (with uber-fire, strong lightning, and solid cold & physical damage), and that goes a long way. Plus, you gotta admit that a two-handed-axe-wielding melee sorceress accompanied by an Act3 IronWolf is a pretty stylish lady.



So, knowing what I know now, how would I build the "Ideal" bad*ss Enchantress?
duh... a dual-dream bearsorc, of course... However, like most SPF'ers, I seem to be short a rune or two for making that happen.

In the certainly-expensive-but-possibly-attainable category, I'd start with a 4-socket, ethereal 1.07 Berzerker's Axe, then make Oath in it, then remove the Oath just to get the indestructible mod, then make Kingslayer. Then, get a shield with good block (probably Whistan's Guard or an upgraded Moser's), throw on Drac's gloves, and stuff on as much IAS, Resists, FHR and lightning damage as possible, then basically rebuild Morgana (possibly socketing IAS instead of 'other'). I'd also strongly consider going ~50% or ~60% block.

In the moderately-attainable category, I'd probably rebuild Alice (including a Frozen Orb backup), but with a little more FHR, and with a Passion/blocking weaponswitch to deal with archers or other monsters that are more advantageous to fight up close. For the most part the monsters you'll want to melee will have lower life than the monsters you'll want to keep at range, so even a low-damage weapon like Passion will work fairly well (focus on speedy attacks more than damage, and simply cope with ranged attackers that are FI).


Morgana's Setup:

LCS (without Fade Active)
... surprisingly, I didn't even notice how low my AR was until I saw that screenshot. It never seemed to be a problem, so that -25% Target Defense on Kingslayer must've been huge :p. I'm also wondering if being frozen by GS lowers a monsters defense.

SKILLS:
20 Warmth
20 Enchant
20 Fire Mastery
20 Lightning Mastery
6+ Cold Mastery
1 Static
1 Teleport
1 Frozen Armor

+5 skills for cold and lightning
+7 fire skills
+18 Enchant prebuff

EQUIPMENT:
'Kingslayer' Silver-Edged Axe (246% ED)
'Treachery' Duskshroud
Harlequin's Crest (13 resists, 8 dex) - shared this with Dorkana
Mara's Kaleidoscope (25)
Dracul's Grasp
String of Ears (14%pdr / 13mdr / 8%ll)
Ravenfrost (19/244)
Rare boots (20 FRW, 10 FHR, 34 LResist, 22 CResist, stuff)
Rare ring (6% MLeech, 4% LLeech, +3 minDmg, 67 AR, 9% LResist)

Switch: CtA + Spirit

Prebuff:
'Leaf' staff (inherent +3 Enchant)
2x Burning skillers (additional)
Ormus Robes (+3 Enchant, 16% with facet)
BattleCommand

Charms:
2x Burning skillers of Sust (+33, +25)
2x Shimmering GC (30 resists, 18 life, 4 str)
1x Sharp GC of Sust (9/70 / 33)
1x Steel GC of Balance (125 / 12)
1x Poison Resist LC of Balance (12 / 8)
1x Shimmering LC of Vita (7 / 34)
1x Shimmering SC of Strength (5 / 2)
1x Amber SC of Balance (11 / 5)
1x Fine SC of Balance (2/18 / 5)
3x Fire Resist SC (+26 resist, +26 life, 3% FRW)
1x Arcing SC of Life (1-42 / 7)

MISC. RESULTS:
60 Faster Hit Recovery (8 frames, barely enough too)
75 IAS (10 frame attack - tolerable when you're still getting an occasional 1-hit kill in Act5 hell - against champions :p)
-25% Target Defense *
Prevent Monster Heal *
20% Bonus to Attack Rating *
50% Open Wounds *
33% Crushing Blow *

* these were entirely from Kingslayer. Many people focus on the +1 Vengeance, and don't notice the other fantastic melee mods on that runeword. Sure it's expensive, but at least it delivers some pretty sweet returns for that cost (unlike, say... 'Wind').


Yashied:
level 81, Iron Wolf (cold, normal)
Life: 1910 (with BO)
Resists: 75 all

Equipment:
'Spirit' Crystal Sword
'Spirit' Monarch
Skin of the Vipermagi (33/9, socketed with a PRuby)
rare circlet (+32 Strength, 20 FCR, 11 resist all, +8 maxDmg, stuff), socketed with PAmethyst
... would've swapped the circlet for an Andy's Visage once he could equip it at level83.



Various Notes about Morgana:

1. Other than that one gloam & beetle pack, my theory about the Act3 merc was an amazing success; he performed significantly better than expected. Even aside from IM/Oblivion Knights, Yashied died less than his Act2 counterpart (with Dorkana). He wasn't as reliable of a killer (and was virtually useless against bosses), but this sorc slows down a lot against fire and lightning high-resist/immune monsters - which is precisely when GlacialSpike's freeze works to full effect. It was even a better compliment than a Reapers/HF merc in regards to crowd control.

2. It was the first time I've tried relying (somewhat) upon treachery/fade for resistances. It was more reliable than I expected (of course, sorcs are easy to hit, so it makes sense it would trigger often), but it definitely wasn't 100% reliable. I would say it was more like 80-90% reliable (for example, when I started Act4 in Hell, it didn't trigger until after I'd quested through to the City of the Damned, even though VenomLord's were breathing fire on her a lot of the time).

3a. I'm very glad I didn't make the Kingslayer in a superior axe. The repair costs for each trip to town were already 10-30k, so it would've been outrageous if it had been a superior item (I'm guessing 200+k every time - I would've burned some Orts on that one).

3b. That said, I wish I'd remembered the indestructible bug... I'd have gladly blown the runes for Oath for another 50% damage from an ethereal axe. When I did remember, it was after I'd already made the axe.

4. I didn't know it before, but Glacial Spike (at least from a merc) does not trigger a beetles lightning bolts until their death explosion. I tried to let Yashied take care of those guys after finding that out.

5. In case someone mentions 'Delerium' as a good helm for no-shield meleesorc, I'd like to clarify that it was always my intent to NOT use it. It's a fantastic helm that will provide all the crowd control any character ever needs, but that was the problem; I wanted to try to make this viable without guaranteed success because of one item.



Dorkana's Setup:

LCS
Weapon Switch

SKILLS:
20 Warmth
20 Enchant
20 Fire Mastery
20 Telekinesis
3+ Energy Shield
1 Cold Mastery
1 Static
1 Teleport
1 Frozen Armor

+4 all skills
+15 Enchant prebuff

EQUIPMENT:
'Passion' Phase Blade (189%)
'Sanctuary' Tower Shield (68 resists)
Harlequin's Crest (13 resists, 8 dex) - shared this with Morgana
'Duress' Archon Plate
Highlord's Wrath
Wilhelm's Pride (needed leech somewhere :p)
crafted Blood gloves (20% IAS, 9% CB, 13% fResist, 19 life, stuff)
Stone of Jordan
Ravenfrost (20/179)
Goreriders

Switch: Ribcracker (upgraded, Shael, 289%)

Prebuff:
'Leaf' staff (inherent +3 Enchant)
2x Burning skillers (additional)
Ormus Robes (+3 Enchant, 16% with facet)

Charms:
6x Sharp GC (82 life, 7 FRW, stuff)
1x Shimmering GC (15 resists, 18 life)
1x Shimmering LC of Vita (7 / 34)
1x Fire Resist SC (11 / 9 life)
1x Shimmering SC (5%)
1x Foul SC of Sust (50 Poison, 14 life)
3x Fine SC (20 life, 2 str)


MISC. RESULTS:
50% Energy Shield
60 FHR (110% with Ribcracker)
max-block
39% Crushing Blow (89% with Ribcracker)
45% Deadly Strike
43% Open Wounds
65 IAS (10/7 Zeal)


Neeraj:
Level81, Might Town-Guard
1688 Life
Resists: 65f/75c/65l/75p

'Insight' Cryptic Axe
Duriel's Shell (IAS jewel)
Vampire Gaze (IAS jewel)


Various notes about Dorkana:
1a. The 25% flee on Passion was bearable. Teleport made up for it ~98% of the time, but there were always a few monsters with realy high life (or really fast movement) that were annoying at running away.

1b. That said, there were also a few times where Open Wounds scored the finishing damage as a monster was trying to run away - these times were a real treat, and were fair compensation for the few super-fast monsters that fleed and regenerated.

2. I didn't think my equipment choice for Neeraj was that bad, but he was really, really fragile. He was a very good FI killer though.

3. Near the end I used the Ribcracker less and less. I was tempted to switch over to the CtA, but I wanted to get a feel for what a sorc was like without it (since I can't remember the last time I didn't have one available). It's amazing how much more fragile she was with that ~50% less life and mana.

4. As for my testing of Energy Shield, I have to say I was very underwhelmed. If I did it again, the ~25 points spent on Energy Shield, as well as the 115 hard points I spent in Energy would go into something else (skillwise, probably Frozen Orb for keeping dangerous monsters at range, and Vit for the stats, obviously).

5. This build would've been better with Dracul's Grasp. Looking at it though, that most likely would've meant using Treachery (dropping OW & CB from Duress), or the belt (lost leech), or the helm (lost shako), or... this build just feels like it needs one more equipment slot to really finish it correctly.



Notable Finds:
I didn't keep track of who found what, so this is combined:

- the aforementioned cursed hellforge: Shael & Io (Nightmare), Ko & Hel (Hell)
- Dol rune was the best rune while questing
- Felloak
- Fine LC of Sustenance
- Goldwrap
- Graverobbers GC of Life (+9)
- Guardian Angel
- Iron LC of Life (38/15, and quite nice for a LLD'er)
- eth Kinemil's Awl
- 2x Nagelring (26, 29%)
- Nosferatu's Coil
- Razor's Edge
- Sharp GC (9 / 58)
- Snowclash
- rare boots (30 FRW, 23 ColdRes, 32 PoisonRes, stuff)
- rare ring (6% LLeech, 2% MLeech, 20 ColdRes, 6 FireRes) <-- possibly the best item Duriel's ever dropped for me
- Perfect Superior Thresher (15% ED, +3 AR, and likely to make 'Obedience' someday)
- 2x Tal's Helm
- eth Grim Reaper
- eth Tread's of C'thon
- Ume's Lament
- Windhammer
- Zakarum's Hand

... and the best of the bunch...

Titan's Revenge
Ceremonial Javelin
Throw Damage: 78 to 209
One-Hand Damage: 78 to 153
Quantity: 140
(Amazon Only)
Required Dexterity: 109
Required Strength: 25
Required Level: 42
Javelin Class - Fast Attack Speed
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 80
Fingerprint: 0xdbe373ec
+20 to Strength
+20 to Dexterity
+195% Enhanced Damage
+25 to Minimum Damage
+50 to Maximum Damage
9% Life stolen per hit
+2 to Amazon Skill Levels
30% Faster Run/Walk
+2 to Javelin and Spear Skills (Amazon Only)
Replenishes Quantity
Increased Stack Size



Bonus Section (with 1337 itamz):
... no, not cows. Neither of these ladies is really capable of taking hard-hitting swarms, which pretty much sums up cows. Instead, I had something different in mind...

me: "Hey Joosh, how about you let me take that fancy-smancy Infinity for a test-spin with my newly matted Vengeance sorc?"
Joosh: "no. you suck."
me: "I know. But my sorc doesn't... Please?"
Joosh: "maybe... but you still suck."
me: "ok. Did you see Thyiad's thread about nominating 'tars? I might have to post one of you riding a donkey (in the biblical sense, if you know what I mean)."
Joosh: "...ok... but you can only borrow it if you recite teh lord's prayer backwards."
me: "Nema. Reve rof dna won..."
Joosh: "... you still suck..."
me: "thanks."
Joosh: "np."

... or something like that (and in case it wasn't clear, I'm embelishing again, with a little dishonesty and misinterpretation thrown in for good measure). Sue me.

Nevertheless, Joosh did lend me his Infinity. Which brings me to my next point: This is not only the Bonus Section, [highlight]this is also the thank you section[/highlight] of the thread since Joosh was by far the most significant contributor to this experiment (the authors of the Enchantress guides in the sorc forum deserve honourable mention, as do InsaneWayne, Jiansonz, and Superdave for their numerous adventure-threads). My thanks again.


As for the runs, my ambitions were relatively minimal (I don't want to get hooked on the weapon, I just want to see how much of an improvement it makes :p)., so I didn't keep the polearm for long. Just long enough to try a couple of runs against some areas I haven't run in years. I was going as fast as is reasonably safe, and doing (roughly) full clears. The areas:

- Icy Cellar (Act5)
- The two tombs in the Causeway (Act3)
- The two tombs in the Graveyard (act1)

... one pass with Morgana and Yashied on /players1
... a second pass with Morgana and Yashied on /players3
... a pass on /players1 with the Infinity (on a Holy Freeze merc, with Duress & VampGaze)
... a fourth pass with the Infinity on /players3

*no, I didn't load up on MF - that's not quite the point here. The point is to get a reasonable idea of how much of an improvement an Infinity adds to a Vengeance sorc. *


First pass with Morgana and Yashied was relatively uneventful (as far as monsters). Icy Cellar had some Siren's, so she finally got to meet that monster type. She said: "ooooh wow, I want to kill you", and that was that. So she did - in one hit each. There were a couple of random hard-hitters though, so she drank a few potions along the way. The monsters in Act3 and Act1 were much more friendly, and died without much difficulty.
Time: 14:19 (higher than I expected).

Sidenote: One of the Act5 bosses dropped a magic Archon Staff, so maybe I should've had MF on afterall. Another of the bosses in Act1 dropped a magic Legendary Hammer, as well as a third dropped a certain etheral Fanged Knife (post at the end). With some MF, I might've set the record for the highest waimea factor in one run in quite a while.

Second Pass was relatively easy too, except Yashied got pwned by some Gloams in the Icy Cellar. There were few hard hitters in there this time too, but Morgana managed to drink a few potions just in time, and she squeaked through.
Time: 17:39

Third Pass
Wow, that was quick. The spawn was worse (Dolls, Harlots and Hell Lords in Icy Cellar), but lots of things died in one hit (I think Snapchip Shatter took three hits). Demon Limb dropped too.
Time: 11:47

Fourth Pass
Pretty much ditto. 13:42


Oh yeah, that ethereal Fanged Knife...

Fleshripper
Fanged Knife
One-Hand Damage: 73 to 285
Durability: 19 of 19
Required Dexterity: 76
Required Strength: 32
Required Level: 68
Dagger Class - Fast Attack Speed
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 86
Fingerprint: 0x65a6f9a2
+236% Enhanced Damage
-50% Target Defense
Prevent Monster Heal
50% Chance of Open Wounds
25% Chance of Crushing Blow
33% Deadly Strike
Slows Target by 20%
Ethereal (Cannot be Repaired)

... time to build a BF sin.




Finally...
Are you still reading? Wow, you're dedicated. And courteous. Thanks.

Don't worry, I'm done now. You don't have to read any more.

Have fun.
👋
 
Originally posted by sirpoopsalot on Aug 11, 2008:

Matriarchs GibItamzPlz, GibItamz, and BBIV. 3 WSK/Baal running sorcs.

Quick Heads Up:
Although this is a triple-matriarch write-up, my emphasis from the start was always to focus on WSK and Baal runs. As a result, the information and opinions provided here are severely skewed towards that emphasis. If you want a more 'traditional' Matriarch writeup, there are several excellent threads within the Mat/Pat compilation thread that can serve that purpose.

Since the final Matriarch, BBIV, is slightly more non-standard (and had the most successful results), I've tried to provide slightly more details on her. But the write-ups are pretty low-detail and revolve almost entirely around my WSK and Baal experiences. If you have questions about what I omitted, feel free to ask.


History:
I know I said with BaalBusterIII (200 FCR Nova / Fireball sorc) that it would be a while before I got around to building another WSK/Baal runner. But although BB3 is fun as heck, I wasn't satisfied with one moderately important aspect of her (read: important for a 'runner')... she struggled to get to 200 MF while maintaining the other aspects of the build (200 FCR, and a decent Nova).

And what kindof rich bugger would I be if I can barely get 200 MF on my WSK/Baal runner? 😉

So, I started searching around for other WSK/Baal sorcs (teleport = required, and no Enigma = sorcs), and the common consensus was Meteorb, Blizzballer, or CL/FO (for dual-tree, and I don't have Infinity, so no single-tree option sounded great). I've already built 3 different CL sorcs (yes, 3 of them), so I'm pretty bored with that build. And Lightning/CL requires too many synergies to leave much for a strong backup attack. That lead to me starting with the Meteorb, since I tend to prefer spam-based spells for sorcs, and the Meteorb is primarily a fireballer, whereas the Blizzballer is timered on her semi-primary spell of Blizzard.


Sidenote #1:
My purposes were for item-finding and MFing. Not for making a run at a level99 character. So my running is exclusively on /players1. Playing with a higher players setting would probably affect some of the skill choices I made, since damage from some skills scales better than others.


Sidenote #2:
Another important motivation for this whole project was the fact that at the moment I'm relatively rune-poor (by my standards). Since I don't HF rush, and haven't been trading lately, I just felt like running a character or three to hellforge, just to see what popped out. This is also a fairly 'weighty' factor in why I undertook this project in the first place. FYI, I don't have any plans for the runes yet, but I'm sure I'll put them to use someday. As a major bonus, all 3 sorcs were actually above-average in this result (Dol/Um, Pul/Mal, and Lem/Gul :cloud9:).

But that means that each sorc was played with an emphasis on getting through the game quickly... Basically I slogged away through Normal until I could equip an Insight, and after that I teleported straight to Baal to do enough /players8 levelup runs in each difficulty to proceed with acceptably-safe progress.

In other words, these aren't "true" matriarchs, since after level 27, ~50% of the playtime was spent purely in Baal runs in Normal & Nightmare, and she only killed the bare-minimum of monsters that were required to get through the game and complete the 'good' quests or get maximum experience.

As a result, you get minimal writeups:


Matriarch GibItamzPlz - Meteorb

1. Full Tals, 35 FCR Spirit, and Magefists (for 105 FCR total)

2. Since sorcs don't gain much return on stat points invested in Vit/Ene, I decided that the 70 dex required by my beta-CtA Caduceus was well worth that return on investment, so that's my weapon switch (with another Spirit).

3. Remaining gear is focused on maximizing damage, resists, and MF (about ~370 MF), with a small addition to FHR to reach the 86 FHR breakpoint.

4. ~2200 life (not bad for a sorc, eh?), ~1500 mana. With the high FHR and resists, and the merc (next point), this sorc was very safe to play.

5. Merc was a Prayer+Insight merc for the healed hitpoints (meaning I could be lazy and take a few hits), with Fortitude (to help his damage and resists) and VampGaze (leech, DR%, and socketed IAS).


Review:
I see why Nightfish ranked this as his top solution in his MF-oddballs WSK "competition" (that is... if I remember correctly... it's been a while since I actually read those threads :p). He plays hardcore, and this is a very safe build. Even if I removed much of the top-end items I have available, I still think this would remain one of the safest sorc builds there is.

On top of that, she's a very capable killer. With all of my good items, I had a ~9k fireball, and the FO was quite tolerable too (of course - when is FO not tolerable?). Fireball was so strong that I barely bothered using Meteor.


Her Undoing:
It was as much my own fault in the build planning as anything, but she was so strong with fireball that 80% of her time in the WSK was played as a FrozenOrb sorc (and her FO was relatively mediocre). Her few Baal runs really emphasized this fact, especially when I had to slog through half of the minion-waves and mowed down the others in mere seconds. Comparing her to BaalBusterIII, I realized that Fire isn't a good primary because the minions natural resistances really make a firesorc slow down too much (at times) for my tastes.

That led me to build:


Matriarch GibItamz - Blizzwaller

Points 1-5 are pretty much identical to GibItamzPlz, so I'll just jump straight to the...

Review:
Most of my searching mentioned Blizzballer as a great choice for WSK/Baal, and Blizzwallers were seldom listed (although every mention I found had favourable reviews). However, as I thought about a Blizzballer and compared it to BaalBusterIII, I wasn't convinced that Blizzard would be that much stronger than Nova unless I managed to spend several extra points into my cold tree - and having a Fireball attack wouldn't really allow that.

So, I decided to shift the emphasis to a Firewall backup so I could skimp on fire-tree skillpoints and build a quite-strong blizzard with what I'd saved. I still had an ~8k firewall though (with ~a few in FireMastery to help), so she wasn't exactly shortchanged in that regard. And Firewall seldom gets much love anyways (although I've always strongly recommended it if you're a sorc needing a backup and are stretched on skillpoints - it's fantastic for a low cost).

She was very successful - almost enough to make me very content. After the lightning-based BaalBusterIII, and the fire-based GibItamzPlz, I quickly realized when playing her that a strong cold attack was my preferred 'primary' for a WSK sorc - the chilling/slowing makes things significantly safer much of the time. But...


Her Undoing:
I'd feared this from the start. She's built around two timered attacks. So you get to stand around and twiddle your thumbs waiting for a spell timer to elapse (and for your spell to do its 'magic') before you cast your spell again and repeat the thumb-twiddling. This was compounded by the fact that I went with GlacialSpike as my 20-point backup instead of IceBlast... even if I wanted to spam a spell to help, the damage wasn't really of note.

fyi, I've actually built a pure-IceBlast sorc. The power is fantastic, but the missiles travel very slowly and there's no area-of-effect whatsoever. When I weighed these shortcomings, I decided that GlacialSpike was a better solution, despite GS's lower damage. I'm still not sure if that was a right (or wrong) choice.

Also, a lot of the monsters in WSK that are cold-immune are "run-away" types. BoneMages (wave2), Hell Witches (or whatever they are), Oblivion Knights, Dark Lord's, etc. So, you can cast a firewall under a monster, and often it will simply run away and not die - leaving you to wait for the timer to expire and the monster to stand still before you can try another Firewall. As a result, it's hard to get more than 1 or 2 monsters in the WSK to stand in a firewall for any length of time (some other areas have better results for Firewall).


Brief Interlude:
At this point, at some time or another, I'd tried pretty much all of the staples of a sorceress build for this task. Here's the summary/review:

- Lightning/ChainLightning. Decent, but doesn't leave much room for a strong backup, and I'm kindof bored with these anyways.
- ChargedBolt. A little more fun than Lightning/CL, but still not leaving much room for a good backup.
- Nova. Nice area of effect and decent results, but the damage is just too hard to maintain as a primary skill. Possible backup attack (if you can spend the necessary 41 skillpoints to build it up).

- Fireball. Too many fire immunes (especially the minions) to be used as a primary, and often too skill-point intensive to allow for a different primary that's strong "enough"
- Firewall. Too many "run-away" types of monsters to be a great fit, but a possible backup if stretched on skillpoints.

- Frozen Orb. Moderately weak unsynergized, but has a nice area of effect, good sweet-spot, and safety. Untried as a synergized/primary attack.
- Blizzard. Nice damage (obviously), but it's frustrating to have that one stray monster stand untouched in the middle of your blizzard for 10 seconds. This problem is often compounded by the two not-great "spam" spells associated to Blizz: GlacialSpike and IceBlast.


Moving Forward:
As I mentioned with GibItamz (the Blizzwaller), I really liked having a cold-based primary. The chilling/slowing adds a lot of safety, and although the cold-immune monsters in WSK have moderately high 'nuissance' values, none are so dangerous that I'd want to focus on killing them first (unlike Gloams & Dolls, which always get "preferential" treatment).

I quickly ruled out Blizzard simply because I don't particularly like the spells that are associated to it (GS and IB), and how those spells will freeze a monster in the middle of a Blizzard and the spell will fall all around that monster without touching it. (Maybe IceBolt could actually be a better fit if you can get the damage up high enough :scratchchin:). Also, making Blizzard strong "enough" for my standards would have left me with a weak backup attack.

I took some time to look into a pure GS sorc (kindof like a fireball sorc, but with cold), but that requires too much investment just to get mediocre damage. I've already tried IceBolt (blech). I even considered bringing FrigidBridgette (Frost Nova) out of retirement, but couldn't see getting her to have noticeably better damage, MF, and survivability than BaalBusterIII.

So, that left FrozenOrb. It was at this point that I realized that I'd only tried it unsynergized (for WSK/Baal). Throw a Death's Fathom or Nightwing's Veil on top of a 20 point synergy, and I could likely boost my damage by quite a bit compared to my previous FO/WSK-experiences. And also, FO's not a complete skillpoint-hog, which meant a strong backup was possible. I still wasn't convinced FO would be strong enough for a primary, but it looked like the best possibility in the cold tree, so that's what I chose to start from.

In regards to the backups, Firewall, Fireball, and Nova were the best possibilities, by far. Firewall was 'out' because it just isn't a good WSK fit because of the monster types that spwn there, as well as I'd be building another two-timered-attacks sorc right after I was dissatisfied with the first one. Nova won over Fireball simply because I have them both on BaalBusterIII, and still prefer the weaker Nova attack's area-of-effect to a stronger Fireballs-against-mostly-single-targets. Besides, with the aforementioned Death's Fathom equiped, I'd have more +skills than the WizardSpike-wielding BB3 had. Also, Nova spanks Dolls, which are the most consistently-dangerous WSK monsters (in my experience).

So, it was settled, a FrozenOrb/Nova sorceress...


Matriarch BBIV - FO/Nova

[edit] Update for reaching level92 here [/edit]

Level82:
Life: ~1500+
Mana: ~1000
Resists: 75/75/75/41p
MF: ~300+
FO Damage: ~800 average, before CM
Nova Damage: ~1700 average, before Griffon's

20 Frozen Orb & Ice Bolt (+12 cold skills)
20 Nova and Lightning Mastery (+14 lightning skills)
~5+ Cold Mastery
1 point for the wonders and prereq's (might expand Static Field by 1-5 points, later on)

Death's Fathom (+28/-5 with facet)
Griffon's (-20 with facet)
Spirit Monarch (35)
partial Tal's (amulet, armour, and belt)
Trang's Gloves
2x SoJ
Rare boots (30 FRW, 31c/34l/17p resists, 24 MF)
Switch: beta-CtA + Spirit
Charms:
- 1xChilling (+5 Str)
- 3xSparking (all plain)
- Gheed's
- Fire/Poison/Shimmering Resist of MF/<life>/Balance/stuff


Review:
- 800 FO damage is very nice. If you can hit the 'sweet spot', everything goes down very fast (even Baal). And even if you don't quite hit it properly, but you still 'try' to get it close, the damage remains very strong. It also works very well for situations where you're "in a panic" and don't have time to properly aim your attacks.

- Nova is a fantastic backup. It has a great area of effect, mows down the skeleton-mages in the 2nd wave (even better than Fireball), keeps Dolls stunlocked at long range, and generally creates havoc among any large group of monsters. And all of my +Lightning skills gives my static Field a great area of effect too.

- I stuck with the same merc as previous. Prayer+Insight, Fortitude & VampGaze. Insight's Meditation aura is almost a "must have" for Nova and the regenerated health is nice if you're lazy on potions (like me). Fort+Vamp is simply a solid all-around combination for boosting his offense and defense.

- Her map spawned as the best pure-Baal map I've ever seen (in my limited WSK/Baal experience). 6-7 teleports to WSK3, and 3-4 teleports to WSK4 (or whatever it's called). She could routinely be facing the first minion wave within 20-30 seconds after starting a new game. As a result of the "~80% of set/uniques drop from bosses" rule of thumb (and my laziness), it's very tempting to make her simply a Baal runner.

- She's very safe to play. Her only real issue is if she gets poisoned by the 2nd minion wave, she pretty much needs to go to town within 20 seconds. The 3rd wave has spawned Conviction a couple of times, and that hurts quite a bit too, but it can generally be worked around with potions. Of course, Convicted Gloams still suck, but that's hardly any surprise (although I do actually have a little bit of overstack on my lightning resists).

- Her speed is moderate at this point. I need to use static field more to get some easy lower-life monsters from the start (not so much on the minions, but on the other monsters in the WSK), and some more points in CM will start helping my orb work even better much of the time. Practice makes perfect, and all that.

- However, she's going on 'break' for a bit. I saw a post today that implied someone else was looking into one of the specialty builds I have in-progress, and I can't let them finish theirs first. ;)




******
Edit: I meant to include this section, and forgot it.

What to do if you don't have top-end equipment...
First, let me recommend that if you can't use/find/afford the full Tal Rasha's set, then a sorceress might not be the best choice for your WSK/Baal runs. Personally, I consider full-Tal's the minimum to making a sorceress sturdy enough for WSK (although you can surely get by with a lot "less" - you'll just be moderately slower and more unsafe because of it). If you can't "afford" full-Tals, and still want to use a sorceress, simply focus on making your merc tank and use teleport and potions as much as necessary to keep yourself alive ... (I know that's pretty generalized advice, but for a one-sentence-summary, it's as good as you're gonna get).

Fishymancers, Fishyzons, Hammerdins, Trapsins, and maybe even high-CB Freezealots would likely be just as safe (or safer) than a sorceress without comparable equipment to full Tals. Teleport is darn useful, but sorcs are darn fragile, and many other builds have better tanking abilities and/or crowd-manipulation skills that are such a big help in the WSK.

So, knowing what (little) I know now, and building around this premise, for a sorc:

1. I still like the cold tree as a primary. The chilling/slowing provided by cold attacks will make things a lot safer for your sorceress, and the cold-immune monsters you'll encounter aren't that bad compared to certain lightning immunes (Burning Souls) or fire immunes (Lister's wave). And with the +15% cold damage on Tal's Orb (with the full set), you can build a strong Blizzard or Frozen Orb relatively easily.

Many folks would choose Blizzard because of its higher damage potential, but as I mentioned earlier, IceBlast and/or GlacialSpike both have their faults, and one of those skills is going to be an important component of a well-played Blizzard-based sorc. If you're willing to accept this limitation, then Blizzard might be a better choice for you.

But I prefer a synergized Frozen Orb. With the full set and 20 in Icebolt, you should be able to get ~650+ FO damage pretty easily, with ~700 damage reasonably attainable. FO is more likely to "hit everything", and at most you'll spend ~55 skillpoints into it (20 FO, 20 IB, ~10 CM, prereq's), leaving atleast 40+ skillpoints for a strong backup. You can do the same for Blizzard, but in my opinion FO is better for the same number of skillpoints (and Blizzard becomes better if you have extra skillpoints to spend synergizing it).

2. That leaves the backup attack... Firewall, Fireball, and Nova still remain the best non-cold backup attacks a sorc can have. What I mentioned previously about Firewall still holds true... if you're stretched on skillpoints, it's a fantastic option; you get a lot of power for the investment. But otherwise, the monster types you'll be using it against aren't the "right" types for Firewall's strengths.

With ~40 skillpoints, Nova and Fireball each have their strengths, and choosing one is likely a matter of preference. I will say, from my experience, that Nova almost requires at least +12 skills to be a good choice for WSK (and that's with the -15% Enemy Lightning Resistance on Tal's Orb). Otherwise you might find Nova underpowered. Also, Nova is a real mana-eater.

But, with those +12 skills and an adequate mana supply, I really prefer Nova because of it's superior area-of-effect. And without the +skills & mana, I'd probably pick Fireball as the safer, guaranteed-to-work choice.

So, in summary, with Full-Tal's, I'd likely settle for a variant of the Meteorb. Skipping the points in Meteor, and putting the points into CM/Icebolt instead, then playing as a cold-sorc first, with the Fireball backup. If I had some Sparking skillers to boost Nova to level ~32 or higher, then I'd prefer Nova over Fireball... but getting level32+ Nova (without sacrificing too much) can be a stretch without great equipment.
 
Originally posted by sirpoopsalot on Oct 20, 2008:

Re: Matriarchs GibItamzPlz, GibItamz, and BBIV. 3 WSK/Baal running sorcs.

Gromp said:
Could you post your actual stats?

Is it smart to use infinity and on switch cta with spirit? or is that stupit? :)

None experience with this so pls be kind :)

First, welcome to the SPF. Second, to answer your questions...

If I had Infinity, I'd probably make a pure lightsorc and go with that. ;) Unfortunately Ber runes aren't exactly common. Otherwise if I wanted to stick with this build and had Infinity available, yes, I'd use it in a heartbeat... Nova would be a little more tedious without the Insight, because you'd constantly be out of mana, but I think the extra damage from Infinity could make up for the mana troubles easily enough.


Anyways, as for the requested updates, GibItamz and GibItamzPlz have stayed retired, and all their gear has been muled off, so I'm not going to try to figure out their exact stats. They were both very close to the build guides that you can find scattered around this site (look in the FAQ near the top of the forum). But here's an update of BBIV since I have managed to crawl to almost level 92.5 in my runs (if I didn't get bored at times and not pay attention - and therefore die on occasion - I'd probably be level94 by now :p).

Overall, there really hasn't been (m)any changes since BBIV made matriarch. Mostly in the growth of her Vitality/Hitpoints and in how she does runs, and the little I've learned along the way (especially about drop tendencies from minions vs. random bosses - that was the biggest eye-opener for me).

Stats:
LCS
Total MF: 303

Skills:
20 (32) Frozen Orb
20 Icebolt
14 (26) Cold Mastery (an additional -5% from 1x Rainbow Facet on Death's Fathom lowers enemy cold resists by as much as 150%)
20 (34) Nova
20 (34) Lightning Mastery
2 (16) Static Field
1 Warmth, Teleport, Telekinesis

+28 Battle Command
+19 Battle Orders (beta-CtA rocks)

Her skillpoints for her next 2-3 levels will go into Static Field. After that I'll evaluate whether to stick with Static Field or return to ColdMastery to help with Lister himself (who has a minimum of 70% natural cold resistance, so 4 more points of CM would still be effective).

Equipment:
Death's Fathom (+28/-5 with facet)
Griffon's (-22 with facet)
Spirit Monarch (35)
partial Tal's (amulet, armour, and belt)
Trang's Gloves
2x SoJ
Rare boots (30 FRW, 31c/34l/17p resists, 24 MF)
Switch: beta-CtA + Spirit
Charms:
- 1xChilling (+5 Str)
- 3xSparking (all plain)
- Gheed's
- Fire/Poison/Shimmering Resist of MF/<life>/Balance/stuff

Merc
level92, Prayer
eth 'Insight' Cryptic Axe
Fortitude
eth Andariel's Visage (29/15 FireResist Jewel of Fervor)


Progress Update:
- I timed a few minion/Baal runs somewhere around level86. The average time was a little more than 4 minutes on /players1 (best time of 3:35, iirc), with an average time guessed to be near ~4:30-4:45 on /p1/p8/p3 runs. With more points in Cold Mastery and more experience in WSK for me (and a merc that dies less), she has sped up somewhat since that point.

- I have found two small branches in the maps of my WSK2 and WSK3 that routinely have 1-4 boss/champion packs, so I've been running those too; there's nothing like a triple bosspack to liven things up, afterall. In WSK2 I sometimes skip the branch if it spawns the suicide bombers, and in WSK3 I sometimes skip the branch if it spawns Oblivion Knights (so my merc doesn't kill himself). This pushes my run time up to ~6 minutes per run, rough average, and I would guess that I kill an extra ~5 boss/champion packs per run, in addition to the minions & Baal.

- I'm after items, not experience, so I've been sticking on /players1 exclusively.

- Speaking of items, I kept track of the first ~250 set/unique items I found. I was surprised that ~60% of the items came from Baal, ~32% from the ~5 random boss/champions I faced, and only ~8% were coming from the minion waves. I realized that it's because the minion waves have a pretty high chance to drop gold - which they do constantly - but the others chances of gold are lower/non-existant... Still, if you're running WSK for items and are only focusing on Baal+minions, I'd definitely think about adding a few boss packs into your run too.

- I've learned to just accept poison damage from the 2nd wave when it happens, so I no longer have to retreat to town to heal it. A few red potions can do the trick, and they drop commonly. I still grab the occasional antidote potion if I see it.

- For me, Dolls are a much bigger threat than Gloams (or anything else). Extra-Fast Lister and big packs of Hell Temptresses are probably next.
 
Originally posted by TopHatCat64 on Nov 8, 2010:

Matriarch Summertime - Passion Enchantress

Matriarch Summertime


"It was like nothing I'd ever seen," said the grizzled old soldier.

"Most of the mages on the march hate getting their hands dirty. They'd rather go hungry then pick up a sword and give the beasties a good honest strike. But the fire witch...she..she was something different," he mused between swallows of wine.


The Planning Stage

Summertime is my oldest and most finely-tuned active character. Her long and winding journey started sometime back in 2005. Even back then, I was searching for something different. The idea of getting a sorc to survive in melee seemed intriguing enough, and enchant seemed tailor-made for experiments in close combat.

I originally geared/skilled Summertime for being a hybrid melee enchantress/ES sorc. Once I maxed the holy trinity of Enchant, I noted that I had room for 2 more maxed skills. I wanted to stay in melee, so most of the other spells were out for me. Energy shield (and TK) seemed to be the only legitimate choice, defensively. I dismissed the cold armors as inadequate past Normal and a poor investment.

Gear-wise: I had popped Sol runes into my Gerke's, Twitch, and Kira's and my belt was originally a 15mdr String of Ears. The rest of my gear was as you currently see below. For you old-timers on the SPF, those blood glove were acquired from necrolemming. Twitchthroe, ah good ol' Twitch...anyone reading my mat/pat threads knows I am the unofficial champion of Twitchthroe as 'Most Underrated'. This character was the start of my appreciation for that simple green armor. Twitch helps me save about 60 dex for max block, let's me not sacrifice socket spaces for jewels of fervor, and gets me halfway to my current FHR breakpoint. For a character class so poorly designed for melee, Twitch gave my other gear choices a lot more flexibility.

Leveling and Observations

Fast forward to the point where I could actually use my Passion phase blade. I think it was act2 NM. Holy moly, I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it definitely was not seeing my sorc rip through crowds like an out-of-control wildfire. At the time, I don't think I had a single Burning charm, and I was still using a Leaf staff as my only piece of prebuff gear. I expected things to slow down in Hell but I was still able to rip through packs of non-immunes at players 8. As I added more and better gear over time, my killing rate just kept getting faster and faster.

Fire immunes obviously slowed things down a bit, but the combination of Static Field, my merc, and my small amount of crushing blow kept the steam-roller moving at reasonable pace.

Teleport is my favorite part of this particular character. Normally, teleport is a useful, but mundane part of every sorc's arsenal. Here, it was key to my enjoyment of this build. Being able to constantly jump from place to place on the battlefield was so fundamentally different from my previous melee builds (and future builds, as it turned out). It's the only advantage for a melee sorc and it works perfectly to overcome her many disadvantages in the trenches. Those negatives are mainly: poor FHR breakpoints, low life per vit point, slow blocking speed.

The more monsters attacking me, the greater the chance I have of dying. That's true of all builds, but much more so for enchantresses, I found. Teleport allows you to create a brief 2on1 situation when you zap next to stragglers on the edges of the pack. Lone monster gets hit with the double whammy of a full zeal cycle and the merc jabbing. The pack turns around and starts to advance and you teleport to the other side and pick off another straggler. "So thus it is that the Desert is crossed."

Defensively, Teleport also helps since the merc is always "on top" when you 'port. He take any intial hit and gives you a split second to start attacking unhindered.

After many hours of questing I realized ES just wasn't working for me. My gear wasn't focused enough on prebuffing it and I didn't have enough PDR/MDR. It was going down way too fast and leaving me stranded with no mana. When 1.13c came out, I now had a chance to rejigger my loadout.

Gear-wise, I settled on bumping up my frame rates in blocking, FHR, and casting rate by swapping in Shael's for Sol's and swapping Arachnid Mesh for SoE. Arach's +1 skill also gave me 1 extra hit with zeal. Skill-wise, I maxed Teleport so that I could 'port indefinitely. Mana-burn monsters were creating situations where I couldn't port, and that was very dangerous. Static Field got maxed as well. The range boost was helpful when I needed it.

The Future
Summertime currently encompasses one of my long term D2 goals: get Enchant as high as possible. There's only 3 places where I can improve:

1. Get a beta BKWB - gonna take awhile
2. Get another beta BKWB - gonna take awhile longer
3. Find the perfect magical orb: +3 fire skills, +3 enchant, +3 fire mastery - nearly impossible, but I still pick up every magical orb I find. It's how I found my current orb


Questing Gear Stats - Screenshot
Code:
Lvl 94

Zeal damage w/ full Lvl 50 Enchant: 14K-16K

Life: 1114 | Mana: 374
Resists: 75/75/75/75
Str: 95 | Dex: 132 | Vit: 298
6 frame Zeal

20 Enchant
20 Warmth
20 Fire Mastery
20 Static Field
20 Teleport

Questing Gear
Code:
70res Kira's 'Shael'
Viper Torc Amulet*
'Passion' Phase Blade
Twitchthroe 'Shael'
30res Gerke's 'Shael'
Havoc Hand Gloves*
Arachnid Mesh
Goblin Toe
Rune Master Ring*
Corruption Gyre Ring*

6 Burning GC's with +29/+29/+30/+30/+33/+34 life
1 15res Shimmering GC with +30 life
5 Mana/life SC's
2 FHR SC's

Merc: Guillame's / Reaper's / Duriel's

Viper Torc
Amulet
Required Level: 51
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 86
Fingerprint: 0xdede4c7a
+19 to Strength
+17 to Dexterity
+54 to Life
+16 to Mana
Fire Resist +27%
Lightning Resist +20%
Cold Resist +20%
Poison Resist +20%

Havoc Hand
Heavy Gloves
Defense: 10
Durability: 14 of 14
Required Level: 73
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 92
Fingerprint: 0x5d9c3b90
+15 to Strength
+19 to Life
+55% Enhanced Defense
Lightning Resist +12%
2% Life stolen per hit
20% Increased Attack Speed
7% Chance of Crushing Blow

Rune Master
Ring
Required Level: 65
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 86
Fingerprint: 0xc3516bfb
+40 to Life
+39 to Mana
Poison Resist +10%
8% Life stolen per hit
10% Faster Cast Rate

Corruption Gyre
Ring
Required Level: 48
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 66
Fingerprint: 0x50db2789
+4 to Energy
+20 to Life
+81 to Attack Rating
Fire Resist +10%
Lightning Resist +18%
Cold Resist +10%
Poison Resist +10%
10% Faster Cast Rate

Prebuff Gear - Screenshot
Code:
Volcanic Coronet of Atlas 'Two 5% dmg fire facets'
Volcanic Amulet of the Giant
Volcanic Sacred Globe w/ +2 Enchant 'Two 5% dmg fire facets'
Ormus Robes w/ +3 Enchant and 15% fire dmg '5% dmg fire facet'
'Spirit' Eth Monarch
Magefist
Arachnid Mesh
SoJ
SoJ

10 Burning GC's
 
Originally posted by Toppo on Jun 19, 2005:

Matriarch Caillech, the Goddes of Weather

I've always wanted to make a tri elemental sorceress and here she is. Decided to go with the "weather" skills for the added challenge. I thought a FO/FBall/TS would be too easy. And that's probably true, even this Weather Girl seemed to beat the game with ease. Whether it was because of the gear or just my 1337 skillz0rz, that's up to you to decide :D

Without further ado, here are the stats:


Matriarch Caillech

Clicky me for teh LCS!

Base Statpoints:
Str - 81
Dex - 121 (~50% block)
Vit - 258
Nrg - huh?

Meteor: 4090 - 4285
Thunder Storm: 1012 - 1341


Cold Tree
Blizzard - 20
Cold Mastery - 5

Lightning Tree
Thunder Storm - 20
Lightning Mastery - 5
Teleport, Telekinesis & Static Field - 1

Fire Tree
Meteor - 20
Fire Mastery - 5
Warmth - 1


Equipment:

Shako (ptopaz)
Death's Fathom
Ormus Robes (blizzard)
Viscertuant (pdiamond)
Frostburn
Snowclash
Silkweave
Mara's
Raven Frost
SoJ

3x cold skiller, lightning skiller, 3x shimmering GC + SCs with life & resists


Leharas the Defiance Merc
(Eth Rockstopper, eth Reaper's & upped Shaft)


Notable finds: none (Lem & Lum from Forges - boo!)


Thoughts:
- Blizzard owns
- Surprisingly easy
- Fun to play
- Blizzard owns
- Meteor wasn't so bad as I thought. Maybe I was a n00b back in the day when I played with my MeteOrbess and hated it :eek:
- TS should do more damage
- Blizzard owns
 
Originally posted by Toppo on Jul 18, 2006:

Matriarch Velhotar, Nova/Tri-Elem Staff Sorceress

(All links to screenies are direct!)

Oh yes, my second Tri-Elementalist but this time with a staff. Quite fun to play, a little more challenging than a sorc with shield and block. No major problems, except that I took her to Hell at the ripe level of 57 and her merc didn't just want to stay alive. Despite the suicidal merc Velhotar killed Baal at level 77 and did it again for a couple of times (& Pindle/Pit/Countess) to gain five more levels to be perfect. She just hit level 82 and I started writing a mat thread. Oh, and I used Nova most of the time, FO for LIs and FW for the occasional CILI. And now to the stats:

Matriarch Velhotar

Stats and Looks

Base Statpoints:

Str - 60
Dex - 25
Vit - 365
Nrg - 50


Lightning Skill Tree

Cold Skill Tree

Fire Skill Tree


Gear:

Griffon's Eye (LI facet)
Chromatic Ire (Tir)
Vipermagi (ptopaz)
Arachnid Mesh
Magefist
Silkweave
Mara's
SoJ x2

Gheed's, 2x LI skiller, 3x Shimmering GC + mf/resist SCs


Holyfreeze Merc with Rockstopper, Shaft & Reaper's


Finds? - Fal from Hell HF, Lum from Countess :/

(Oh, and Velhotar is Sorceress in Finnish :rolleyes: )

Questions?
 
Originally posted by VoX Dei on Apr 12, 2010:

Matriarch Sekhmet - CtC Lightning Frozen Orber

Matriarch Sekhmet, CtC Lightning / Frozen Orb


Introduction

In Ancient Egypt, Sekhmet was often seen as Hathor’s destructive aspect. D2-wise, they started their journeys at the same time, but Hathor (ES CtC Cold Enchantless) got to Matriarch first. Now, it’s Sekhmet’s turn…

Concept

Sekhmet is a melee /caster hybrid Sorceress that synergizes the Chance to Cast Lightning spells on striking from items: ‘Crescent Moon’ weapon (10% CtC lvl 17 Chain Lightning and 7% CtC lvl 13 Static Field) and 2 x Wisp Projector ring (20% CtC lvl 16 Lightning). That’s ~3.800 max Lightning and ~2.900 max Chain Lightning before taking -60% eLR from gear into account. Add healthy Frozen Food (er.. Orb) at -100% Celsius and the arthritic monsters have a hard time trying to kill Sekhmet!

LCS

Breakpoints and other useful stats

Rich (BB code):
55% IAS => 10 frames per attack (max speed normal attack)
25% FCR => 11 frames per cast (Teleport, FO, and the rare Static Field)
64% FHR => 8 frames per hit
35% FBR => 6 frames per block
75% Block
43% PDR
30% Lightning Absorb
50% MF
20% FRW
8% LL
CBF
25% OW
+550% ED vs demons
+100% ED vs undead

Skills including Battle Command from ‘CtA’

Lightning Spells: 63

20 / 26 Charged Bolt and Nova (both synergize the CtCs Lightning & Chain Lightning)
20 / 26 Lightning Mastery (increases both CtCs and charms damage)
1 / 7 Teleport, Static Field, TK

Cold Spells: 28

20 / 34 FO (LI solution and improved crowd control)
3 / 17 Cold Mastery (-100% eCR)
1 / 15 in the five FO pre-requisites

Fire Spells: 2

0 / 23 Enchant (from Demonlimb)
1 / 7 Warmth, Fire Mastery

Unspent: 1

I’ve only planned this char to lvl 82 so I’m not sure what to do with further skill points. ATM I’m undecided between investing in Lightning and/or Chain Lightning for more CtC damage, or CM so that it remains at slvl 17 while Cold skillers are switched to Lightning ones and/or +lightning damage SCs.

Equipment

Weapon: ‘Crescent Moon’ PB
Shield: Stormshield (25% LRes, 15% ias)
Helm: Griffon’s Eye +15/-20 (+5/-5 facet)
Armor: ‘CoH’ Wyrmhide
Belt: Trang-Oul’s Girth
Gloves: LoH
Boots: Eth SS Treks 13/14 59% Pres
Amulet: Mara’s 30%
Rings: 2 x Wisp Projector
Switch 1: ‘CtA’ War Scepter
Switch 2: ‘Spirit’
Prebuff: Demonlimb
Inventory: Cube, keyset, dual mod charms consisting of 8 Cold skillers with life, dex, FHR and 11 SCs with lightning damage, AR, life, FHR

Mercenary: Vikhyat (Holy Freeze)

Eth Reapers (Shael)
Guillaume’s Face (+15 max, 15% ias)
‘Fortitude’ 27% res

Since the weapon has ITD and this char overall had less crowd control than Hathor, I’ve changed the original planned Blessed Aim merc to Holy Freeze. Overall, this was a great decision with the exception of fights like this one which took a long time.

Strategy

Replace GS with FO and add fearlessness of gloams plus a drinking problem. Other than that it's the same as Hathor's.

Noteworthy Finds

Only 2: Fire skiller with +4 max damage and a rare jewel with -15% req and 11 total in stats (str/dex).

Final Thoughts

Sadly, a pack of Fanatic rogue thingies armed with spears in WSK 1 stole my mojo and prevented me from writing “Never died” on this character’s future epitaph.

Thank you readers!

Cheers,

VoX Dei
 
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