My favorite character is this guardian, I'd link to the thread but I think the squid ate it so I'll copy and paste it from elsewhere:
Daevana - Assassin - level 81
Strength: 105 (140)
Dexterity: 120 (165)
Vitality: 250
Energy: 25
Life: 960 (1032)
Mana: 145 (350)
Skills:
Martial Arts:
Tiger Strike: 20
Cobra Strike
Shadow Disciplines:
Shadow Master: 17 (any extra skill points will go here)
Cloak of Shadows: 1
Burst of Speed: 1
Venom: 1
(and 1 in all the rest but I didn't use any of them)
Traps:
Fire Blast: 3 (to get an extra shot for DS)
Death Sentry: 20
Lightning Sentry: 20
Well, that's it from the stat side of things. Obviously she has a strong phyical attack and is backed up by CE and lightning leaving her able to take on every enemy.
Gear
This is definetly a notch above what you other chars get. For one, I used the complete disciple set on her. While I could have done better with the uniques and sets I found so far, using the disciple was always one of my goals in SC but I never got around to do it. This seemed to be the perfect char for that.
So, we have the gloves, belt, ammy, boots and armour occupied by the disciple. Armour was socketed with a perfect diamond, btw.
Her rings were a Ravenfrost and a rare ring with 100 AR, 8% life leech and some minor mods.
On her head she wore a rare circlet with +2 assy skills, 8% Mana Leech, +54 mana and +140 AR (partially due to the Perfect diamond in there. I could have used shako but I didn't want her to be ugly.
Her main weapon was this baby again:
Ribcracker
Stalagmite
Two-Hand Damage: 348 to 519
Required Dexterity: 35
Required Strength: 63
Required Level: 56
+9 to Strength
+15 to Dexterity
+100% Enhanced Defense
+325% Enhanced Damage
+30 to Minimum Damage
+65 to Maximum Damage
+100 Defense
Poison Resist +29%
+100 Maximum Durability
50% Increased Attack Speed
50% Faster Hit Recovery
150% Damage to Undead
50% Chance of Crushing Blow
Socketed (1: 1 used)
On switch she had dual bartucs to cast her shadows, buffs and traps.
In her cube she had a demon limb (probably she tore off a demon wirt) to make use of the enchant charges.
On the charm side of things we're looking at several res all grand and small charms, a 40% Gheed's, her only source of MF, and a few AR charms. All this junk gave her 75% resis in all except cold which was around 50% or so. She had +5 to all skills in gameplay and +9 on switch. (+2 more to martial arts but she didn't use them when switched)
Okay, that about covers the theoretical side, back to me telling the world how great it was playing her. Well, for one thing it wasn't boring. This girl definetly keeps you on your toes. Anything that swings at you scores a hit and if too many things hit you in rapid succession you're history. But it's not really as bad as it sounds. Cloak of Shadows keeps her relatively safe and she packs the meanest punch. With tiger strike charged up damage was about 8-12k with might. Regular attacks still dealt 1.7-2.5k. Welcome to pain. Common strategy was to charge, cast CoS and then whack one critter four times (as they took for hits to die), tap the next guy once to see him obliterated in a single stroke and then either repeat that or step back and toss a few death sentries.
That's part of why I like her so much. She's a really good trapper/MA hybrid. If you don't feel like trapping for a while you can just clobber everything and if you feel that you want to stand back for a while (because you're facing something you're scared of) you can do that and cast traps. The sentries were definetly a pleasant surprise. Though there's one aspect I'm not so happy about: AR. She almost reaches 8k AR but that's too little by a long shot. With the charge ups you can actually tell easily how often you hit and it's not often enough for my taste. She still kills well enough, I concede that. Without the 200% AR from enchant she'd have to wear the angelic set, though.
Another thing that I like is that she's just the way I think assassins should be: Fragile and yet so very deadly. She's death become flesh.
I can't emphasis enough what CoS does for this build. This is really what makes the difference between life and death for her. I do have a point in mind blast but I didn't find it anywhere near as useful, at least for this build. The great thing about CoS is that you don't have to target it and that it always works. Very dependable. This could very well be my favorite skill of the entire game. Not to mention that the around -25% target defence helped her hit quite a bit.
She's a first in several aspect for me. The first melee char without a decent second line of defence. All the others had either, life, blocking or defence, some even had several of these things. And she's also the first char I've not been able to use to it's full potential. I think it takes somebody who's more dexterous than myself to do that. I've been doing okay, even great at times but I think with better reflexes this char would rock even more. But it's a good thing I stopped using the F keys for hotkeys a while ago. That would have been hopeless.
Summing up I think I can safely say this is a great build to beat the game and I can even see how she could be good at MFing but I'm not sure she should be used for HC MFing. She really is a bit fragile and demands every bit of your attention.
Okay, what else? Oh, I know: A few random events:
Radament: "We live again!"
*whack*
Daevana: "No you don't""
Izual was great, too. I had already charged up on a burning soul and he died in exactly 3 seconds. I don't think any of my chars ever killed him that quickly.
The Chaos Sanctuary went better than anticipated. I used CoS a lot and either dashed past the blinded fools to smash the OKs or just cast my sentries. The grand vizier of chaos learned why they are called traps. From my battle with the guardians of the seal there were a few corpses and some of my Death Sentries left so when I opened the seal he was insta-killed. (I assume that's what happened as I only found his smoldering remains as I came dashing down from the seal...)
Gloams were less of a problem than other things, too. Once I met two boss packs and I was dodging lightning like mad for a few seconds. (CoS hadn't cooled down yet....) I had so much FRW that nothing really hit me.
Ventar provided my with a pleasant surprise as he dropped me my first IK Soulcage ever! And that with 40% MF to boot! Whee! But she had been very lucky before that, too. War Travs and a Baranar's Star are but two of her finds while questing. She also got two uniques from the same golden chest!
Lister was almost a problem but I retreated before his onslaught and put up new sentries as I went, my sidekicks slowing his advance. Eventually he died, though it took a while, him being PI and stone skinned.
Hehe, now I almost forgot the most interesting part: The ancients. Well, they were tough, that much is for sure. On the first try my merc hit the ground before they were even done spawning... Great. "Stop dying you coward!" was the first thing that crossed my mind. Unfortunately I had only 7 Rejuvs and 170k gold. Okay, so they needed to die on the next spawn. No problem, she's not the mistress of boss killing and luck for nothing. So I spawned them and immediately charged Madawc. I think he only took 4-5 hits to die.
This proved to be very convenient as the whirler had spawned Extra Strong and was coming my way. I don't think I could have survived one full pass of this guy. So I went for the leaper first hoping my allies would keep the other busy. Well, that went more or less okay, except for the two times when I did get scratched by the whirly guy. But I still had two rejuvs left by the time the leaper was down. Unlike my usual self, I played it safe: I actually disengaged and let my traps finish the final ancient. Well, that's it.
[/makingfunofMil'schars]
