Pb_pal's Character/Post Archive

Passive Aggressive Tournament - March 16, 2015


Calabi picked up in the Ancient's Way, ready to make her push towards Baal. The Icy Cellar provided us with a gloam bosspack (Spectral hit, Cursed) that took Kasim out a few times, but other than that it was fairly standard and Snapchip went down without issue despite being Stone Skin on top of his usual CE/Cursed. We had rolled a valk with ctc amp, so that helped alot with the increased physical resistance.

Up to the Ancients we went! I had been a little nervous for this fight for some time, as I wasn't sure if I would be able to seperate them well enough to make it manageable for Kasim as zons have a pretty terrible cast rate for teleport (she has no FCR). Couple that with the fact that I had an amp-casting valk, so I didn't want to resummon her unless absolutely necessary. We took the standard approach of placing a Decoy in front of Madawc (he is ranged, so he should run directly away from the decoy to get into his attacking range), then he hit the altar and did a couple slow teleports down towards the entrance. It worked! Only Talic and Korlic followed, and we were able to establish a good fighting position:


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Korlic was Cold Enchanted and Stone Skin, with Talic being Spectral Hit and Teleport. As you can see, Talic was distracted by the decoy, so Kasim and the valk could focus their efforts on Korlic. He took a while due to being Stone Skin, but he was never a threat. Talic went down extremely quickly once his brother had been killed. We moved up to find out where Madawc had gotten to, and found him hanging out around the altar. He was Spectral Hit, FE but was not the slightest bit of a problem as we managed to get him backed into a corner quite quickly. That was much easier than expected! Granted, we got very favourable mods (and on the first roll!), and having 3 targets to distract them meant Calabi never even got targetted. Okay, let's go find that Worldstone!

WSK level 1 drew Unholy Corpses (reanimators), Vile Witches (Succubi), and Fetid Defilers. It wasn't very dangerous, but it could be slow at times as we didn't want to draw big groups of the reanimators and succubi. They can be tough to contain and really pack a punch when they're together. Level 2 drew Greater Hell Spawn, Serpent Magi and Horror mages. It was extremely easy, absolutely nothing interesting happened whatsoever. Level 3 brought us Fire Boars (with their Lashers), Demon Sprites and Soul Killers (blowdart flayer variant). Again, nothign really noteworthy happened, aside from frustration of losing a bunch of kills to the lasher-enhanced exploding boars.

With that we got ready to take the trip down to the Throne. We got our TP staff ready just in case, and took the stairs. No stair trap! Perfect, so we switched back to our axe and progressed as slowly as possible until we foudn out what we were dealing with. We got around the corner when lighting came flying from off-screen. Burning souls boss pack, that's okay, slow missiles really makes them harmless. After they were dealt with we continued up and met our next two monster types; Death Lords and Undead Soul Killers (exploding dolls). They ended up being not nearly as dangerous as I thought they would be. We used the decoy to scout, which would take all the of the dolls' attention, so as long as we were careful not to let them explode near us, we were very safe. We cleared the throne without issue.

Waves 1+2 were no problem. Black flail > Resurrectors. Bartuc had Holy Freeze, so the fight was pretty slow. It never proved very dangerous though. The fourth wave was no problem, as Slow Missiles just makes a mockery out of Venom Lords. Lister's group was pulled out of the room and we got the valk into a favourable position:


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The wall kept her from getting knocked back, so Kasim was free to poke at the minions as he pleased. He managed to take out a pile of them before the formation broke and we had to retreat further out of the room. We managed to get the valk into another corner, and even though Kasim got wiped almost instantly by a barrage of hits from Lister, he had taken out enough of the minions that Calabi could finish the job.

The Baal fight was actually quite fun. We subbed Kasim's helmet to Guillaume's Face, so both him and Calabi were sporting some CB (she also has OW from her Gore Riders). The fight consisted of Baal teleporting around a bunch, and our group chasing him down. He only summoned his clone a couple times, so it wasn't too annoying. When he was getting down to low health, he made a pretty good last stand:


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Unfortunately for him, Kasim actually ignored the appendages this time, so him and Calabi could tag-team the big guy. The CB and OW made it a pretty quick fight in the end, and nobody (except Baal) was ever at critically low health. We used up about a row and a half of full juves and some healers making sure Kasim didn't get below half, but that was it really. Baal's drop was about as dull as ever, but that's okay, because I now had my first Guardian ever!

Obligatory stats-upon-baal-death screeny:

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That was great and all, but it wouldn't be complete until those moo moos bit it as well. The Cow level was pretty uneventful, we met up with the cow king right away, so that was a bit scary as we had no space to retreat and he was PI. He went down fairly easily though, albeit slowly. We decided that since we had a ton of money lying around to spare, it would be fun to use our Black flail to make some ground beef and leave it lying all over the cow level. All in all, it was an easy clear, but it was also very fun.

The only notable find of the last leg of the journey was Trang's Shield in the cow level.

So there you have it, Calabi's journey has finally come to a close! As I mentioned above, she is my first Guardian, and she was an extremely fun character to play. I highly recommend playing a passive zon to everyone who has ever wanted to try it, they are extremely durable (if I could Guardian one with my MUCH less than perfect play, everybody else stands a pretty good chance;)), and with some decent drops they aren't even that slow to quest with. This was the most fun I've had with a D2 character in a long long time. I will leave you all with a final breakdown of her gear(you can see her stats above, so I'll spare you that):

Calabi's main gear used was:

Main Switch

* Tal Rasha's Horadric Crest Death Mask (Socketed with a Perfect Ruby)
* 'Lionheart' Gothic Plate
* Chromatic (26@res) Amulet of Luck (30% MF)
* Rare rings with various resists/AR/PDR/MDR
* 100% monster flee Balanced Knife (this has gotten me out of more trouble than I care to admit)
* 'Rhyme' Bone Shield
* Athletic (+3 P/M skills) Light Gauntlets of Readiness (10%ias)
* Russet (16%FR) War Belt of the Squid (+72 life)
* Gore Rider War Boots

Fighting switch:
* 'Passion' Feral Axe

A bunch of life/res charms

Summary of Bonuses:
- 10% OW
- 15% CB
- 15% Deadly Strike
- 62% Critical Strike
- 54% Dodge
- 60% Avoid
- Maxed resistances on shield switch, 69/70/73/51 on axe switch
- 3510 AR with Kasim's Aura (76% cth Hell Bovine)
- 38% chance to block with 'Rhyme'
- 55% MF on Shield switch (30% with the axe)
- 12FPA with Berserk, 8/9/9/9/14 with Zeal
- +3 Passive and Magic Skills

Merc:
* Tal Rasha's Crest (Guillaume's Face for boss fights)
* 'Lionheart' Gothic Plate
* 'Insight' Colossus Voulge

Areas skipped: 0
Monsters parked: 0

Guardian Calabi the Axe-wielding Amazon, with Kasim the Blessed Aim Guard - lvl 88, Full Game Clear
 
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