Next up: Grey the Paladin.
First let's address the elephant (grey pun VERY much intended) in the room. I know the Americans out there like to spell it 'gray', but let's just get something straight right now.
1. I'm Canadian, we use 'grey' here, thanks to the Brits.
2. The game itself uses 'grey', as evidenced by the armour 'Greyform'.
It's grey. Case closed.
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Now, for the actual character! Why a Paladin? Well, IK set is grey so the natural inclination might be to go Barbarian, but grey actually doesn't look that great on them due to how their armour displays. It ends up looking more blackish. Also, the maul doesn't transform well (the handle remains brown), so I wouldn't be able to use the whole set anyway. Grey looks absolutely great on a paladin and two items that immediately jumped out at me were Spire of Honour and Guardian Angel, obviously both geared towards Paladin use.
"But wait a second Pb, that sure is a slow weapon for a Paladin..."
Sure sure, you're not wrong. Though you know what skill doesn't give a single hoot about IAS?
Charge. That's right, we have ourselves a massive-lance-carrying charger! He will need a safety/act boss killer switch too, that will be made up of Tiamat's Rebuke and some weapon I'll decide on later.
Grey is an interesting colour in terms of gear. There is an absolute abundance of very useable gear, so he'll likely be swapping a lot of gear as he goes through. Light grey and dark grey display very similarly for the most part, so that opens up a TON of options for him. The only problem with a Paladin is that there aren't really any grey auras. Sanctuary is white though, and
kind of looks silver so... close enough! I've never used it before (other than Lawbringer mercs), so that is fun as well, though he'll be aura-less until 24. Okay okay, enough about the plans, let's get killing!
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First things first, he slapped some chipped skulls (dark grey) and chipped diamonds (light grey) into some gear and set out smacking his way around on /p8.
His gear quickly started filling out. First he equipped
Felloak, and then a quick (and sizeable) upgrade to
Stoutnail at 5.
Greyform came in at 7,
Umbral Disk at 9, and level 12 gave him two Angelic rings and the amulet, plus his first official point in Charge. He can't use it yet due to mana constraints, but it's still fun situationally.
His next group of gear came at 15 when he equipped the complete Iratha's set (minus the amulet as the Angelic bonus is more useful right now), and
his gear is almost full! Andy
killed the merc, but Grey prevailed. Not a ton to say for the next while as he picked up
Goblin Toe at 22 (and switched to Duskdeep for his helm, as it looks way better than Irathas), Sanctuary at 24, Howltusk at 25, and then I also remembered I had been carrying
Bladebone and Stormguild on switch this whole time, so I changed to those too.
Looking slowly better!
Duriel down and then partway through A3 was the next gear-upgrade-flurry. It was Insight for the merc, which opened up charging more feasibly,
Tannr Gorerod to get his first real weapon until SoH, and Rockfleece to finally have a plate armour for a good display:
Nice! Looking good now, they easily
closed out the act and flew through A4 pausing only momentarily to equip
IK belt, gloves and boots as he picked up levels. Eldritch to 34 to equip
Guillaume's and finally get rid of the irritating flee on Howltusk. Easily through the act now he got himself
Tiamats on his switch, then hit 39 and got his end-game weapon:
Awesome! Charge is one-shotting most things now, so progress was smooth for the remainder of the act.
Slayer at 43, just shy of 44.
Straight into NM, mix of skillers and sharp GC (from his charging idol
Gary) into the inventory. I took this time to sort out his switch too, which will be used for safety and/or boss fights since charge can be lacking there. Tiamats is already there, and he had the pick of a few weapons but settled on Coldsteel Eye, partly due to the fact I can use it for Mana steal to fill up the blue bulb if need be. Not sure if I'll even use it yet, but it's there if I want it.
Charge up to 5k+, nice! Who needs resistances anyways? Out he goes. At 45 he replaced one angelic ring with
dwarf star and also equipped his end-game armour:
That looks AWESOME. I love the lighter shade of grey vs his old rockfleece, and you can see the engraved cross on his chest. Back out with renewed confidence he flew throught he
rest of the act.
Chargers are (obviously) pure offense, so he immediately grabbed a might merc and set out. A2 made things a bit tricky however. Unleechables are a pain, and LE beetle bolts are really dangerous to him (11% LR...yikes!)
Regardless,
he flew through the act and the experience is flowing. Into act 3 things slowed down a bit as small fast swarming monsters don't make it easy to charge effectively. The duo is ultra strong still (and getting stronger as he pumps Vigor) so it was easy enough through gathering the organs, dispatching the council, and heading for
Meph. Killed
Izual and Vigor is officially maxed so its time to pump sanctuary. He hit 65 in the CS which opened up giant skull for now.
I don't know that its better than Guillaumes (well, it almost certainly isn't), but nice for a change (and it looks cool).
Diablo down, 66 in the foothills and he upped his SoH. The rest of the act was very easy, though he had to watch out a bit more for ranged attackers, especially elemental ones as his resists are horrendous. Through to
Anya, and the Ancients were a
breeze. He soon reached Champion at 72.
Grey the Charger Paladin, lvl 72 - Hell Rogue Encampment
So far so good, but Hell is a whole different ball-game for chargers. Looking forward to it!