Take your time, purplelocust! No rush. I'd rather see anothe guardian.
Well, as a confirmed procrastinator, when someone says I can take my time, I do! Nevertheless, I am happy to say that GertrudeStein is now (finally) a Guardian.
GertrudeStein defeated Baal. It took several attempts to get through the WSK, probably about 25 attempts over five sessions or so. One of those attempts was heartbreaking, after a great deal of trouble to get to WSK3, there were unravellers and gloams which are one of my absolute least favorite combos. On the final successful trip through, there were witches on WSK3 which were very hard on the merc, and gloams and OKs in the throne. It was slow going and there were some merc deaths, but I have a deep reserve of gold and full rejuvs. Normally I am too miserly with the fat purples on the merc, but each time he died, it meant reviving him, going someplace for his aura to reactivate, and then changing armors and waiting until Fade activated, and that was so much trouble that I got a quicker trigger on feeding him the fat purples.
Gertrude has 13 hard points in Valk, so to get a level 17 one summoned I had to switch out helms to the Peasant Crown +1, use Lycanders for the +2, and Skin of the Vipermagi for +1.
Baal's minions went well, with great care and frequent trips to town. I had no replenishing javelins so Larzuk was getting sick of seeing my smiling face in his shop so often. If the Valk and the merc could tank things, I would stand back and LF away, but if not, I switched over to Lycander's Flank and CS'd alongside them. The Treachery armor (made in HD's personalized normal 3 OS breastplate) was a key ingredient but it complicated things as it was shared. For big battles, ideally Venom and Fade would be active on both the merc and Gertude. The duration is plenty long, but getting it to trigger could take some trouble sometimes. I used the "stand in fire" method (just outside the town gate) and once I nearly killed Gertude, which would have been totally humiliating. ("Mighty hero found dead after playing with matches!" the Harrogath Post would scream...)
Baal himself was not too bad- I switched back to Goblin Toe and was careful. Even with a quick finger on the fat purples for the merc, he died a few times, so the battle was somewhat long.
Here are her current stats with gear and charms:
L83 S148 D167 V257 E28 life 1234 (!) resistances maxed with Fade active from Treachery
Charged Strike damage: 472-1044, 1-1312 with Lycander's Flank
LF damage with w/rare javs: 254-430, 1-859
Her gear:
Fantastic rare circlet: +2 traps 30%FRW 20%FCR 45%ED +87 life +20 resist all (socketed with PRuby) and Peasant Crown swapped in to summon Valk
Mahim-Oak curio (I had terrible crafting luck and with the limited supply, that was it)
rare matriarchal javs: +2 jav/spear, 38%ED, +9 max +108AR 1-3cold +50 poison
Lycander's Flank on switch
Skin of the Vipermagi (socketed with PRuby, 31resists) and Treachery, shared with merc
Whitsan's socketed with PDiamond
Magnus' Skin gloves
rare ring, +59AR, 2%ML, 5%LL 21life LR15% FR 6%
Bladebuckle
rare ring, 10%FCR, +15AR, 3%LL CR17%, LR 9%, MF 9%
Goblin Toe boots or switched out with rare sharskin 20FRW, 16LR 18PR 16MF
charms- full, mostly life and resists, some FHR, a Foul Large Charm of Blight 67 poison over 7 seconds. No skillers, unfortunately. I'm not enough of a poison expert to know how Venom interacts with poison damage from charms but that wasn't a big part of the attack, of course.
Merc gear: (HF)
Honor War Pike, 94-471
Treachery/ Skin of the Vipermagi (shared with Getrude)
fantastic rare circlet from NM imbue: 6%LL, CR 17, LR 29, FR 17, PR 17
Hard points in skills:
Bow: 10 in Guided + prereq.
Passive: 13 in Valk, 5 in Critical Strike, 1 in Pierce, 2 in Penetrate
Jav: 6 in Poison and Plague Javelins
20 in LF, 19 in Charged Strike, 1 in Jab
That rare circlet that she was wearing had some wasted aspects for her (+2 traps, FCR) but it was a godsend for Olga, a severely underlevelled trapsin I had to play in A2 Hell which is its own very long story, and for HD, who was a much better built trapsin I played in A4 Hell.
About a month ago I switched to using GoMule (on my Mac) instead of ATMA and I must say that it's great. It saved me the trouble of using a Windows machine just to run ATMA and it's nicer than ATMA in some respects, though weaker in some others. And it's been steadily improving!
I must thank Skunkbelly for another ingenious, engaging tournament that I enjoyed a great deal! I've enjoyed all of his tournaments so far (particularly those that I haven't died in normal in) and the follow-up tourney to this is even more challenging. And thanks to all the other participants, particularly those who played cooperatively and didn't attempt to sabotage characters deliberately!