Operation Death and Destruction
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Quick kicksin question. I had planned to use some heavy elemental weapon damage for my mid-twink gear (ie. Lawbringer) but the added elemental damage from the weapon isn't showing up on the LCS, and the character power seems to be about the same as without the weapon. But I am seeing cold damage effects getting transfered. Is there something weird here I don't know about. Could not find much info about on weapon non-physical damage in relation to kicking. This will be a bit annoying as I had hoped to get the magic damage transferred from Destruction later on.
TIA
TIA
Surprisingly, Doc was able to clear the Cows at p1. Likely because the Valk is just a beast. I could leave her udderly surrounded by cows and she would take minutes to die, if at all. I did leave the King alive just in case I want to respec to a javazon once this is all said and done. Unfortunately no juicy runes, but she's already done well enough.
T72on1
New member
From the bible of all Kicksin guides (not entirely sure if it's completely updated; I'd refer to the version on the Amazon Basin forums, but they are still down):
So elemental damage should work, but isn't displayed on the lcs.
Thanks a lot for the help. I was pretty sure this was the case but it doesn't feel that way in game. With Ginther's Rift I could definitely feel more power from the magic damage though. It might be because the kick cycle is much slower with the two-hander. I've just moved to Bonesnap for now and that seems quite good with the on board IAS and Crushing Blow. Will probably keep this setup until I hit requisite level for Destruction. I also socketed an IAS jewel into Guilleame's Face and am sporting Treachery until Venom and Fade get above the autocast levels (pushing Shadow to 17 first) then move over to Fortitude.
Gear is still very much up in the air, I need to hit a lot of breakpoints, +skills and for this will need a pair of MA/Ias gloves that I haven't been able to craft yet. This will likely mean I'm falling back onto Drac's as usual and missing out on the last 58ias breakpoint for my slow slow weapon.
She is fun to play though. The ability to just hold down the RMB and wander around while everything dies is a nice change from the click click click of basic attack over my minions shoulders.
Gear is still very much up in the air, I need to hit a lot of breakpoints, +skills and for this will need a pair of MA/Ias gloves that I haven't been able to craft yet. This will likely mean I'm falling back onto Drac's as usual and missing out on the last 58ias breakpoint for my slow slow weapon.
She is fun to play though. The ability to just hold down the RMB and wander around while everything dies is a nice change from the click click click of basic attack over my minions shoulders.
Might post some details of her travels later, but Pestilence has reached lvl 65 and equipped Destruction. It's great to see fields of volcanoes again after the relative peace of playing Doc and her slow and infrequent attacks. They are a bit just for show since her kicks have inherent knockback and all.
Not sure what to do with her skills to some extent. Plan on maxing Venom and Master then pumping more into Fade. I guess either more shots for Death Sentry, or Blade Shield for the extra duration?
Not sure what to do with her skills to some extent. Plan on maxing Venom and Master then pumping more into Fade. I guess either more shots for Death Sentry, or Blade Shield for the extra duration?
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I'm remembering why I started this project now 
She's more fun than Death to be honest
Though Hell is going to slow down as I'll likely have to swap out Burst of speed for Fade. I am going to look into gear tweaks that might let me keep using BoS though, cause I'm just having too much fun spewing volcanoes and boulders and novas. Oh my
Though Hell is going to slow down as I'll likely have to swap out Burst of speed for Fade. I am going to look into gear tweaks that might let me keep using BoS though, cause I'm just having too much fun spewing volcanoes and boulders and novas. Oh my
I've run Pit with javazon and she's great there. And then there's baal runs obviously.
I did a bit of the pit, but for me the Light immune archers were pesky and the density of bosses wasn't so exciting. I'm currently trying out Shenk, Eldritch, Pindle runs. They aren't too bad, ran them from 84.5 to 86 without getting anything of note.
Overall i've never been a huge MF fan, so I'm not sure how much time she'll get.
Overall i've never been a huge MF fan, so I'm not sure how much time she'll get.
So I haven't gotten around to introducing Pestilence although I have jumped the gun and posted some gameplay for her. I only have time for a brief update, but I'll get to the rest later on.
I haven't done much with Sins in the past and I only remember trying to make a BFsin. I especially have never touched the MA tree because my terrible gaming skills couldn't keep up with the charge ups and releases. So aside from Dragon Flight, I've never really used much there.
As an assassin she has points all over the place because there are so many useful 1 point wonders. Her leveling up was mostly beefing up Dragon Talon. Think I started by getting it to 18 with some points spread around to get things like Mind Blast, Blade Fury, Burst of Speed, Fade, Shadow Warrior, Death Sentry, Venom etc. I was kind of tired of twinking, so I played her untwinked through most of normal, and she never really ran into too much trouble. She really didn't kick a lot for lack of mana leech until later one when I believe she came across a Manald Heal. She lucked into an early Crushflange as well, so unlike most untwinked character boss fights were a cakewalk whereas dealing with lots of little targets was a pain. Duriel melted so fast with Burst of Speed and a Crushflange that I thought I might have set it to players 1 by accident. But then the Flayer Jungle was a major pain.
One thing I am a little sad about is the inherent knockback of Dragon Talon. While it helps with survival when getting surrounded, I'm not super happy about it in its final state with Volcanoes from Destruction. But we'll get to that later.
The other plan that I had was to use a Shadow Warrior instead of Master to be a little bit different. The idea was set RMB to Death Sentry and then I'd get free Death Sentries all the time. But after playing around with the Warrior, I realized her AI doesn't really allow for this to be useful. She only lays traps when monsters are not in close range. That means before engaging she'll lay down 2 or so sentries that all splurt out Lightning charges before anything dies and there is very little of corpse exploding goodness that the skill is good for unsynergized. She completely ignores the skill thereafter. So I've moved over to the Master, and I have to say, she fits the theme of the project much better anyway (ie utter chaos). With the Master I was able to get pretty screenshots like this well before any of my later fireworks producing gear would be added.
Everything went very smooth up until the end of the Chaos Sanctuary. I accidently left Diablo at players 8, though I didn't think it would be a problem with my Crushflange and how amazingly fast the other three act bosses had died with BoS and my kicks. I was very very wrong. This was a long drawn out fight. Even with Fade, I could not stand and kick Diablo without getting fried or grilled. I tend to not have much life in Normal because I am hoarding stat points to be able to use Colossus Blades ASAP, she also wasn't twinked so no Bloodfists or other big life boosters I would usually have. The merc died so fast, I didn't bother to resurrect him. So I just recast Shadow Master as a decoy and hurled Blade Furies from as far away as possible. Once mana was gone, port back to town and repeat. This took at least 20 town trips, but then Diablo was no more, and he dropped not much useful.
After that experience, I decided to start the twinkathon with a Ginther's Rift and some other shinies. But I'm out of time for now. I'll get her up to date next time hopefully.
I haven't done much with Sins in the past and I only remember trying to make a BFsin. I especially have never touched the MA tree because my terrible gaming skills couldn't keep up with the charge ups and releases. So aside from Dragon Flight, I've never really used much there.
As an assassin she has points all over the place because there are so many useful 1 point wonders. Her leveling up was mostly beefing up Dragon Talon. Think I started by getting it to 18 with some points spread around to get things like Mind Blast, Blade Fury, Burst of Speed, Fade, Shadow Warrior, Death Sentry, Venom etc. I was kind of tired of twinking, so I played her untwinked through most of normal, and she never really ran into too much trouble. She really didn't kick a lot for lack of mana leech until later one when I believe she came across a Manald Heal. She lucked into an early Crushflange as well, so unlike most untwinked character boss fights were a cakewalk whereas dealing with lots of little targets was a pain. Duriel melted so fast with Burst of Speed and a Crushflange that I thought I might have set it to players 1 by accident. But then the Flayer Jungle was a major pain.
One thing I am a little sad about is the inherent knockback of Dragon Talon. While it helps with survival when getting surrounded, I'm not super happy about it in its final state with Volcanoes from Destruction. But we'll get to that later.
The other plan that I had was to use a Shadow Warrior instead of Master to be a little bit different. The idea was set RMB to Death Sentry and then I'd get free Death Sentries all the time. But after playing around with the Warrior, I realized her AI doesn't really allow for this to be useful. She only lays traps when monsters are not in close range. That means before engaging she'll lay down 2 or so sentries that all splurt out Lightning charges before anything dies and there is very little of corpse exploding goodness that the skill is good for unsynergized. She completely ignores the skill thereafter. So I've moved over to the Master, and I have to say, she fits the theme of the project much better anyway (ie utter chaos). With the Master I was able to get pretty screenshots like this well before any of my later fireworks producing gear would be added.
Everything went very smooth up until the end of the Chaos Sanctuary. I accidently left Diablo at players 8, though I didn't think it would be a problem with my Crushflange and how amazingly fast the other three act bosses had died with BoS and my kicks. I was very very wrong. This was a long drawn out fight. Even with Fade, I could not stand and kick Diablo without getting fried or grilled. I tend to not have much life in Normal because I am hoarding stat points to be able to use Colossus Blades ASAP, she also wasn't twinked so no Bloodfists or other big life boosters I would usually have. The merc died so fast, I didn't bother to resurrect him. So I just recast Shadow Master as a decoy and hurled Blade Furies from as far away as possible. Once mana was gone, port back to town and repeat. This took at least 20 town trips, but then Diablo was no more, and he dropped not much useful.
After that experience, I decided to start the twinkathon with a Ginther's Rift and some other shinies. But I'm out of time for now. I'll get her up to date next time hopefully.
So I started twinking Pestilence in Act V and things moved way way faster from here. First upgrades were rather simple, Ginther's Rift, Rhyme Shield, Guillaume's Face, IK Pillar, and some other odds and ends mostly to get leeching so I could play as a pure kicker. Once Pestilence was kicking full time things went very smooth. After rescuing the Barbarians, the Act II Merc was swapped out for a Barb so we could schwing our swords together. We went with Hygelac, because his name sounds pretty similar to someone choking to death. He was given a Bloodletter/Headstriker/Bing Sz Wang as he leveled. Rest of the Act went smoothly, and Baal was dispatched without much trouble to Pestilence, but he did kill both the Shadow and Hygelac.
Onward to Nightmare. At this point I felt bad about the Sword and Board, so I swapped over to a Bonesnap in the spirit of two handedness. Then I felt bad about not using a sword, so I gathered a 3 Socket Legend Sword and made a Lawbringer. Then the Lawbringer didn't seem to be working so well, so I opted back to the Bonesnap. Then retried Lawbringer with Treachery and changed my mind again until finally Destruction. On a whole, things were quite easy, we mowed through everything as is normal for heavily twinked Nightmare.
I don't have a ton of pics of her journey and as always I waited just a tad too long to write up for fresh memories.
I made documentation of Duriel's demise and apparently didn't think much of Mephisto to bother.
As usual in Act IV I got Destruction up and running. As I've already spoiled that fun, I will reiterate that it is magnificent on a kicker. As usual, Diablo didn't pose much of a challenge in Nightmare with the ability to stand inside his lightning hose. But I still took him on with Fade activated just to be safe.
Act V was a breeze. The usually annoying ranged monsters were of no bother as I could telebomb them with Dragon Flight usually dropping a Nova/Volcano or Molten Boulder on their heads in the process. Something amazing happened on the way down to the Throne Room. WSK3 spawned Abyss Knights, Demon Imps, and Flayers. The monster density was astounding. Fireworks were just constantly going off. And I eventually got the whole floor carpeted with fire.
That's really been my main problem. I'm just wandering around with the right mouse button held down and have almost no idea what's going on.
The final level of the keep rolled quite challenging, thankfully we were on Nightmare. We had Gloams, Knights and Unravelers. Wasn't too bad with Dragon Flight to take out the Unravelers as needed. I'm p sure my lightning res was heavily stacked by this point with Fortitude, so the Gloams were of no worry. We then took on Baal. Kicked him where it hurts
and as per usual, he dropped not much.
Moving on to Hell is where things always get less loltastic and more of a challenge. This is Pestilence after arriving in Hell before any charm tweaking. You can see we're now having to give up Burst of Speed for Fade. I also just don't have quite the right gear to optimize her. I'm missing on getting enough IAS to hit the last breakpoint I can feasibly reach with this slow sword, +MA skills to his 24 needed for a fifth kick. and getting all the Crushing Blow, Life Leech and resists needed for being a kicker and being an alive kicker.
Very quickly in Hell I realized how much of a glass cannon she is. She died to the second random Zombie mob on the Blood Moor. Basically, she goes from melting everything to dead very quickly. I think this mostly happens when I've lost autotargeting in the middle of a mob and she stops attacking, but I don't quite notice it. The other major issue is Physical Immunes. Basically the merc dies quickly, Shadow is off doing who knows what, and Pestilence is left tanking for herself while she can't leech.
In Act II, I finally just swapped over to Drac's because Hygelac was just dying too often. I even skipped Radamant because I didn't need the skill points. DT, Venom and Master are max'ed, Fade is reasonable and I've decided to dump remainders into Death Sentry for bigger area.
I've actually just hit a bit of a wall in the Arcane Sanctuary. She already has some trouble with Physical Immunes, but between the Venom, the Magic damage on Destruction, the Cold damage on Death and Volcanos, its usually no big deal. But the knockback of Dragon Talon along with the lack of walls makes Specters a huge pain in the ass. I've given it two goes so far and have just stopped out of annoyance. I'm considering just using normal attack my next go through to see if this helps.
Onward to Nightmare. At this point I felt bad about the Sword and Board, so I swapped over to a Bonesnap in the spirit of two handedness. Then I felt bad about not using a sword, so I gathered a 3 Socket Legend Sword and made a Lawbringer. Then the Lawbringer didn't seem to be working so well, so I opted back to the Bonesnap. Then retried Lawbringer with Treachery and changed my mind again until finally Destruction. On a whole, things were quite easy, we mowed through everything as is normal for heavily twinked Nightmare.
I don't have a ton of pics of her journey and as always I waited just a tad too long to write up for fresh memories.
I made documentation of Duriel's demise and apparently didn't think much of Mephisto to bother.
As usual in Act IV I got Destruction up and running. As I've already spoiled that fun, I will reiterate that it is magnificent on a kicker. As usual, Diablo didn't pose much of a challenge in Nightmare with the ability to stand inside his lightning hose. But I still took him on with Fade activated just to be safe.
Act V was a breeze. The usually annoying ranged monsters were of no bother as I could telebomb them with Dragon Flight usually dropping a Nova/Volcano or Molten Boulder on their heads in the process. Something amazing happened on the way down to the Throne Room. WSK3 spawned Abyss Knights, Demon Imps, and Flayers. The monster density was astounding. Fireworks were just constantly going off. And I eventually got the whole floor carpeted with fire.
That's really been my main problem. I'm just wandering around with the right mouse button held down and have almost no idea what's going on.
The final level of the keep rolled quite challenging, thankfully we were on Nightmare. We had Gloams, Knights and Unravelers. Wasn't too bad with Dragon Flight to take out the Unravelers as needed. I'm p sure my lightning res was heavily stacked by this point with Fortitude, so the Gloams were of no worry. We then took on Baal. Kicked him where it hurts
Moving on to Hell is where things always get less loltastic and more of a challenge. This is Pestilence after arriving in Hell before any charm tweaking. You can see we're now having to give up Burst of Speed for Fade. I also just don't have quite the right gear to optimize her. I'm missing on getting enough IAS to hit the last breakpoint I can feasibly reach with this slow sword, +MA skills to his 24 needed for a fifth kick. and getting all the Crushing Blow, Life Leech and resists needed for being a kicker and being an alive kicker.
Very quickly in Hell I realized how much of a glass cannon she is. She died to the second random Zombie mob on the Blood Moor. Basically, she goes from melting everything to dead very quickly. I think this mostly happens when I've lost autotargeting in the middle of a mob and she stops attacking, but I don't quite notice it. The other major issue is Physical Immunes. Basically the merc dies quickly, Shadow is off doing who knows what, and Pestilence is left tanking for herself while she can't leech.
In Act II, I finally just swapped over to Drac's because Hygelac was just dying too often. I even skipped Radamant because I didn't need the skill points. DT, Venom and Master are max'ed, Fade is reasonable and I've decided to dump remainders into Death Sentry for bigger area.
I've actually just hit a bit of a wall in the Arcane Sanctuary. She already has some trouble with Physical Immunes, but between the Venom, the Magic damage on Destruction, the Cold damage on Death and Volcanos, its usually no big deal. But the knockback of Dragon Talon along with the lack of walls makes Specters a huge pain in the ass. I've given it two goes so far and have just stopped out of annoyance. I'm considering just using normal attack my next go through to see if this helps.
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T72on1
New member
Great writeup. And love the pictures, tremendous fireworks going on. Euh off. Well ...
Melee Assassins are hard to play, and kickers are no difference. You tend to try and tank like a Barb or Paladin, only to find out you can't. Using MB and CoS helps a lot. As does picking your enemies and fights carefully, instead of just wading in. IIRC my Dancer didn't have too much troubles anymore staying alive in the end, when she had all her endgame gear, but still I had to be careful. And use Dracul's for sure !!! And as a Dancer, she didn't have to go toe to toe.
Melee Assassins are hard to play, and kickers are no difference. You tend to try and tank like a Barb or Paladin, only to find out you can't. Using MB and CoS helps a lot. As does picking your enemies and fights carefully, instead of just wading in. IIRC my Dancer didn't have too much troubles anymore staying alive in the end, when she had all her endgame gear, but still I had to be careful. And use Dracul's for sure !!! And as a Dancer, she didn't have to go toe to toe.
So you're saying I have to do more than hold down the RMB and watch everything blow up *sadface*
BTW is Fortitude really the way to go? Should I consider Treachery for the IAS, Skills and FHR? I could hit the next IAS BP and the extra kick by swapping armors, but I lose the ED, life and @res. Not sure how profound the ED effect is for a kicker.
@Pb_pal I've had to play with the sound off a lot lately, so I imagine every time he dies there's this loud gutteral Hygggggelac! sound emitted.
T72on1
New member
Yeah, there's definitely a lot more to it than holding down RMB. Unfortunately, because that's what you'll do (and what I did at first) if you are used to playing Barbs and ... oh no, not Paladins, that's still LMF clickfest. But it's also a good thing once you get used to it, because having to do more than just hold down RMB and actually use tactics is quite satisfying 
.
Fortitude vs Treachery? I guess it depends on where the majority of your damage comes from. My Dancer was using a Stormlash on her kick switch, combined with Gore Riders. So she mainly was trying to apply Static and CB as fast as possible, so she benefited more from Treachery (I think, I never did the calculations, but didn't even have a Fortitude at the time to begin with). Fortitude might be a better option if you go for pure damage, although from what I've read about Kickers, I'd think that you would want to rely on CB a lot anyway and Treachery comes back into play. Even more so because that extra fhr, attack speed breakpoint, +skills and as a consequence extra kick can also increase your survivability.
I definitely recommend reading Ilkori's guide to Kickers and Dancers, as it's a wonderful resource to anything related to Assassin kicking skills. As you can see in that guide, the ED% on Fortitude should work. DS / CS don't work, so don't equip a Highlord's for that property (although it still makes a very good kicker amulet).
I don't know how much CB you have on your current gear, but if you still lack some, there still is the Duress runeword as body armor: some CB, great fhr, res all, some ED%, OW and cold damage make it a very good armor.
.Fortitude vs Treachery? I guess it depends on where the majority of your damage comes from. My Dancer was using a Stormlash on her kick switch, combined with Gore Riders. So she mainly was trying to apply Static and CB as fast as possible, so she benefited more from Treachery (I think, I never did the calculations, but didn't even have a Fortitude at the time to begin with). Fortitude might be a better option if you go for pure damage, although from what I've read about Kickers, I'd think that you would want to rely on CB a lot anyway and Treachery comes back into play. Even more so because that extra fhr, attack speed breakpoint, +skills and as a consequence extra kick can also increase your survivability.
I definitely recommend reading Ilkori's guide to Kickers and Dancers, as it's a wonderful resource to anything related to Assassin kicking skills. As you can see in that guide, the ED% on Fortitude should work. DS / CS don't work, so don't equip a Highlord's for that property (although it still makes a very good kicker amulet).
I don't know how much CB you have on your current gear, but if you still lack some, there still is the Duress runeword as body armor: some CB, great fhr, res all, some ED%, OW and cold damage make it a very good armor.
Feel like I'm falling back on the usual gear again, but switching over to Treachery has just opened up so many gear improvements. It was just a domino effect. With the IAS, I could reach a higher breakpoint while swapping out Highlord's for Mara's giving an extra +skill and all res. Then String went in for Nos Coil, adding a bit of PDR. With all the +skills of Treachery and Mara's I could then hit an extra kick without either of my plain skillers. This opened up charm slots for hitting the next FHR breakpoint and fill in some resist holes, get a bit of life/ar/elemental damage. In the end, I feel like I'm doing more damage with the extra kicks that come faster, and surviving better with more resists and hitting two or three frame faster FHR. The merc's also doing better with the Forti armor. Just wish I wasn't always using near identical gear for each character like a crutch. But I guess with a slow weapon that has no IAS, life leech, res or skills, its bound to happen.
I'm convinced the Diablo Gods hate this project.
My first Death was 318 ED. So I rerolled it and got 315.
I've piled up some runes from RoF running so decided to reroll again and got an amazing 317.
At least they owe me some runes now. Hopefully I'll finally get that Sur I've been waiting on.
EDIT: also does anyone know where to shop a Vigor/Redemption scepter?
My first Death was 318 ED. So I rerolled it and got 315.
I've piled up some runes from RoF running so decided to reroll again and got an amazing 317.
At least they owe me some runes now. Hopefully I'll finally get that Sur I've been waiting on.
EDIT: also does anyone know where to shop a Vigor/Redemption scepter?
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