Well after FAR too long, she did it and leveled to 73 to finally equipped Windforce! From there it was easy to get the merc to 75 for Reaper's (as well as CoH and Delerium, to standard gearset for this sept so far). She Ral'd her Trang's helm and armour to give her some much-needed FR, swapped some charms around, and she's ready to rock:
Oof. Not ideal, but it's what we've got! Set it to /p3 and off she went, clearing the
Den,
Blood Raven, and saving
Cain with ease. So far I'm having by FAR the most fun with Strafe that I've had. It's a wonder what a capable weapon will do for that! She's relatively safe so far too with Knockback and the Confuse from the merc's Delerium taking crowd-control duties.
She killed
Andariel easily, and pushed her way through
Act 2 until... the Arcane Sanctuary stopped her in her tracks. Those Ghosts are a reallll pain. Swapped Delerium out on the merc so that the Confuse stops overriding the Decrep, but it was still slow going in there. Eventually though she did make it through (thankfully guessing the correct wing on the second try), and to
Duriel without too much trouble. And then she got slowed down again.
The jungles taught me two things:
1) Yellow is ultra fragile now
2) I don't like Strafe. Like, at all.
Down to /p1 full-time now, as Yellow is in constant danger of getting swarmed (and therefore killed). She slowed things right down, put Delerium back on the merc, and followed slowly in his footsteps to try and stay in front of the monsters.
Sszark soon went down (with her valiantly hiding behind pillars), the Gidbinn grabbed, and then down into the Flayer Dungeon where things looked a lot like this:
She mostly hid behind the merc for fear of exploding dolls. Windforce though sines in this scenario, as the KB on it keeps the dolls far enough away that if any get through the merc buffer she is typically still okay. Decoy has been getting a workout too, especially in
cases like Sarina. Even though it's only at 1 hard point, it's still invaluable to a squishy zon like Yellow. The Council was taken out
from a distance, and the Durance cleared before Meph was taken out
without much issue.
Out into A4 and we immediately bumped into
this (luckily unbreakable) PI. No harm no foul, we slowly killed him and moved on only to find... an ubreakable PI spawner.
Sigh. She had to park him since she has no viable PI solution (MA is not allowed for her since it's 'white').
No Gloams to speak of in the PoD, she got rid of
Izual and trudged through to the Forge, grabbing a
Pul and heading up into the CS. The seals went down easily, but I was a little nervous of the Diablo fight.
Turns out it was actually quite easy. The merc died a handful of times, but she didn't even need to use a full stack of arrows before it was
all over. I've hit my stride with Strafe a bit more at this point, but I'm still not crazy about it. Something about it just doesn't jive well with my playstyle, I think. Through
Shenk with no problems, she pushed up into the Crystalline Passage where she was promptly slowed to a halt by PI Ghosts. Slowly she made it through, and found Anya in a thankfully Gloam-less Frozen River, before heading down and taking out
Nihlathak.
More PI Ghosts in the Glacial Trail and I'm starting to get tired of this whole 'no-viable-PI-solution' thing she has going on. Just in time for...the Ancients.
I knew this would be bad. First things first
pop a Decoy up to try and distract at least 1 (but preferably 2) of them, while she hauls it back to the stairs and tries to analyze her chances.
Roll 1: Cursed + Might. Reset
Roll 2: Cursed, Yellow dead instantly. Reset
Roll 3: Merc dead instantly. Reset
Roll 4: Conviction + LE, merc dead instantly. Reset
You get the picture.
I lost track, but probably a dozen or so resets later and she finally got them separated and with rolls that aren't insta-kills.
Korlic (Holy Shock) was pretty much benign and got dealt with no problem. Next came
Madawc (Mana burn, LE). He was scary as he wouldn't stay targetted on anyone in particular, making errant axes a serious danger. He went down eventually though and it was Talic time.
Stone Skin, ugh. Okay, well as long as Yellow stays out of his WW path she should be fine. After what felt like an eternity, he did indeed die, and in what she chooses to believe as a final act of respect, they all turned Yellow to honour her. Group shot time!
A very quick trip though the WSK led her to a Gloam-infested Throne, plus
this (breakable-PI) Pit Lord who took longer than the entire rest of the Throne combined. Slowly but surely she picked them all off, and did the same with the waves, leading them out
a few at a a time. Finally, it was time for Baal!
It was an absolute mess. The merc couldn't keep Decrep on him to keep him still, so it was constant running while
getting some pot shots in, running, dodging appendages, portalling to restock potions or de-spawn the clone, find Baal again and start the whole process over. The merc died a pile of times (and Yellow kicked it a couple times too). After a long and frustrating fight, she used up all of her rejuvs and most of her bank account, but she
prevailed!
Whew. That sucked.
Mat thread
here, with some thoughts.
Yellow, the Strafe Amazon - lvl 81, Matriarch