The Exposure Tournament

felixbavaria said:
I think they were added as an incentive to run a broader variety of targets (such as Duriel).
Click to expand...

Andy and Duriel drop the same one, so still no reason to run him.

They just did it so we could have unlimited respecs, but at least have to do a bit of work to get them.
 
Re: The Exposure Tournament

I guess I must have had a D2 burnout 18 months ago. Why else would I stop playing my favourite build, making good progress in Hell?

Can't tell you much about the trek through the jungle, as that happened 'back then'.

I suspected I had Arachnid Lair left, and that was indeed the case (it was unmapped when I entered). This was a good and somewhat forgiving 'warmup'. Nothing but spiders in there.

Next up, (gulp!), Swampy Pit. Gloams are not so bad for this build, as long as I have Fade going. At least they take a lot of damage from my fires. Had to use my prebuff claws a couple of times because Fade ended (I generally get Fade from Treachery, but I can cast level 8 Fade if I equip a set of claws I have in my stash). Still, there were two CE packs that troubled me a lot (Faith often relies on quick movements, she hates being chilled).

There were a couple of really bad Doll boss packs. This guy was the worst, and caused two NDEs and a lot of sweating. Even though Faith has well over 1300 life, at least it felt like this little terror had 2-hit-kill potential if the first hit Amped me. Heavy Mind Blast use, and retreats to town every I time the curse hit. Got one Meteor down but had to flee, and that fire was not enough to kill it. Managed to get a second Meteor down but had to back off and I was Amped again. But this time, I downed a purple and spammed Mind Blast to push the boss back into the flames.

Lower Kurast was no pushover, with those leapers being LI and with heavy fire resist.

Bazaar (the outdoor area) was easier, with swarms and both types of zealots. I used a lot of 3rd charge freezing on the Zakarumites to keep them from running away.

Ruined Temple welcomed me like this. Mind Blast was key here. There were two Teleportation Extra Strong spider boss packs in the temple, one FE and one LE. For the FE boss, I used two of its minions as tanks (MB conversion) and hit with a couple of lightning charges. Eventually, those killed one minion when they were back on the enemy team. I converted the other again, and took out the boss with a Death Sentry explosion of the minion corpse. The LE boss was more troublesome. Immune to fire and with very high lightning resistance, it took too long for Faith to 2nd charge down his life. It was that damn über poison Spider Maguses have. I gave up with PS and brought Fleshrender from my stash, ran back and forth in the hallway and BF-ed down its life.

I had two NDEs against Sarina's insanely fast pack. More than one of them was just impossible to tank safely, life drained like mad! Never actually had the time to get a look at the lady herself, but they must have been Extra Strong.

Ruined Temple really provided great fights this time - gotta love that!


As I have written in the thread earlier, this tourney format makes my character feel lonely. Faith tried to make some small talk in the Docks. She was envious (and curious) of Natalya's gear.


[Highlight]Conqueror Faith, dual claws Phoenix Striker, level 84, Hell Act III Sewers next[/Highlight]
 
Re: The Exposure Tournament

Good progress, those are some scary places. And Wow, the title "The Hammer" is sure fitting for an extra strong cursed spectral hit doll.

And the answer to the cool cloak is: D3.
 
Re: The Exposure Tournament

No major troubles in the remaining four temples (no stairs trap with a boss) and not really any big trouble for the rest of Act III. I did not want to tank two of the Council bosses (Ismail and Geleb) so I used the central Travincal plaza barriers to keep them from getting to me, and used Blade Fury to kill them.

Mephisto was moat tricked and also Blade Fury-d. I now use Fleshrender instead of my 'Black' Maul as main BF weapon, I like the bleeding.


Act IV brought Venom Lords in the first two areas. Ugh. Hell Venom Lords are FI, have 75% lightning resistance and around 25000 life on players 3. It typically took Faith half a minute to kill one. I kid you not. Best method was to go cold-lightning-cold-lightning, etc. That kept them mostly frozen, which meant that much fewer healing potions were needed (Infernos did not do much but the damage from their melee hits added up if I used lightning full-time). Since I hit them so many times, it typically did not take long for the 10% OW on my belt to trigger. I had no problem taking on 2-3 Venom Lords at the same time becaused the ice shards usually froze all three, but that did not in any way shorten the total time I needed to fight them. Collateral cold + lightning damage was so small (compared to total life and regeneration) on the ones I did not actually hit with my claws. Once my target was dead, I had to start working down the next one from its full life.

Spawners and Burning Souls on the Plains. Both required some care, but handling those was a lot less tedious than killing Venom Lords. There was one spawner boss I could not tank safely, though. It had Fanaticism and Cursed => potentially major danger if a few pups spawned and mobbed me while I was tanking the boss. I drew this boss back to the bridge from the Steppes where I hoped I could tank it if all the little ones would eventually be stuck behind her. She kept spitting them out right at me, though. I had to flee.

When I had cleaned out the beasts, the boss suddenly decided to move towards me. Ah, nice, as long as she does not bump into anything, she won't breed, which means she is done for if I play my cards right. I led her to a long "corridor" of land without any holes or other obstacles, then I ran back and forth there about a dozen times.

Fighting Izual was the exact opposite of fighting Venom Lords. They are one of the hardest foes for Faith but she is perfectly suited to fight Izual. Stacked flames aplenty, and he died in less than 20 seconds. Sweet! And that was not even with the full FoF synergy - the reward points for killing Izual brought FoF to level 18.

River of Flame had Urdars, and they were a major pain. Their cold resist is so high that I did not have time to do anything else with Phoenix Strike while they were frozen. Cloak of Shadows was used a lot so they did not mob me and I only had to tank one at a time. That could be done, painful as it was. Then rain several fires on them. If they hit too often, I'd run small circles so they chased me in the flames and I could let healing from potions take effect. That's a problem for Faith, that the red potions aren't so powerful here in the late game. Super healers heal 480 points, which is only a little more than 1/3 of her max life. Full purples are of course fantastic but they are also in limited supply.

Hephasto had Conviction aura and spawned Extra Strong + Stone Skin. The latter meant he was hard to hit, which in turn meant I would need to tank him for far longer than I had purples for in this game. Also, some of those hits he scored took me below half life, so no, Blade Fury was the way to go. Problem was, there was no really good spot to park him. I used the central part of the river maze. As you can see, Burst of Speed made a rare guest appearance. As you all probably know, he gets faster the more damaged he is.

Mal rune from Hellforge. Faith's second Mal.

Chaos Sanctuary was actaully more straightforward than it usually is for me. With no summon or merc that wants to run to the enemies, I could separate and lure out enemies with more precision and less work than usual. Storm Casters were complete pushovers. ONE Meteor was enough to kill them. I just needed to keep them from running away while that Meteor burned, which could be done with CoS, with one 3rd charge freezing or simply by tanking them for 2-3 seconds. Doom Knights got the same treatment as the Venom Lords (cold-lightning-cold-lightning). The difference was that only 2-3 such cold-lightning cycles were enough and the freezing lasts longer. Oblivion Knights, once they were alone, were pushed (by walking up next to them) straight into a wall or corner, then killed by fire or lightning.

Fightning Diablo was much like fighting Izual, apart from Diablo's Firestorms. I had to sidestep two of them and drink potions, plus Diablo has much better blocking than Izual, so I whiffed more. It may have taken more time to kill him that it takes killing a Venom Lord, but not by much. Ha!


[Highlight]Conqueror Faith, dual claws Phoenix Striker, level 85, Hell Bloody Foothills next[/Highlight]
 
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Re: The Exposure Tournament

@pharphis: you haven't fought him with a Blaze sorc?
(yeah, I suppose it is much more common to have a character, merc or summon to tank him with)


Faith was in for a major challenge on Bloody Foothills: fire immune Quill Rats. She had to do countless town trips to refill her column of healing potions. Both their spike shots, their poison and their 'porcupine defense' (passive damage dealt when you hit them in melee) hurt and combined, it was very often too much to keep fighting. I eventually developed a decent routine to fight the regular ones, with a combo of CoS and 3rd charge freezing (usually both, with overlap in time). If I hit a frozen one, the passive defense still hurt, but that is at least not poisonous. During most of the Foothills, I played with antidote-boosted poison resistance. Having 40% resistance rather than -10% helped considerably.

Worst of all were two boss packs, one was CE Extra Strong Mana Burn and one Cursed (with minor other abilities). Those packs were tough to even get close to. If I cast CoS too far away from the pack, the back part of the pack wouldn't get affected by it, and you can't blind the boss anyway. I used Mind Blast a couple of times, so they would get a target they fired at while I could move in close enough to CoS more of them. I had to be very careful. When I eventually managed to face the bosses alone, they were not so bad. I used three purples in total, which I later in the playing session more than made up for with my finds.

The other monster type was much easier to handle. This setup (with the narrow path) was like shooting fish in a barrel. Lots of fire carpets and explosions followed.

Haven't decided what to do with the socket reward yet, but I think an Eth or two (or three - ATMA says that my NM socket reward has not been cashed in yet) in my claws would be nice. Does the -target defense on a secondary claw work when I hit with my primary? Not likely, huh?

Highlands was pretty easy with imps, fire archer ladies and Slingers. Abaddon also had imps, along with Balrogs and Horror Archers. These particular archers are the strongest in the game, doing both cold and poison damage. They are one of few enemies (along with Dolls, gloams, Frenzytaurs and Siren types) where even a single regular one needs to be taken seriously. I was met with a seriously threatening early boss pack of the archers. Yikes, Might for those archers, along with annoying Mana Burn and even more cold against my non-CBF character.

I decided to BF-kill that boss before taking on the pack. If you hit archers from a distance, they can suddenly fire at you from a larger distance as usual, for a short time. Every time I hit the boss, I tried to dodge his arrow and then I backed off. After 1-2 more shots, I could move in again and he would not fire until I hit him again. Success, and I managed to take out the others with Meteors, under cover of CoS. It still took several raids and retreats (with some Balrog interludes). Yeah, the Balrogs. Much easier than the Venom Lords in Act IV. Both lightning and cold resist must be much lower than what the Venom Lords have. EDIT: I checked it out on d2data.net - 33 lightning, 0 cold.

Plateau had Carvers (not FI, unlike all their relatives in Act I), lightning mages and Death Slashers. It was pretty much a cakewalk, as was Pit of Acheron (Balrogs, Salamanders and goatmen - with no boss). Thresh Socket was CE Extra Fast. That seemed scary to melee so I BF-ed him from across a fence.


[Highlight]Conqueror Faith, dual claws Phoenix Striker, level 86, Hell Crystalline Passage next[/Highlight]
 
Re: The Exposure Tournament

A couple of more areas cleared, and the only real dangers have been two Champion packs. Faith is very much NOT good at tanking more than one hard-hitting enemy at the time. Blocking and hit recovery messes up her damage dealing. With boss packs, if I think that the boss is non-tankable, I can usually convert some minions to help with boss tanking the short time I need to get some damage going. Not so if I meet nothing but the Champs. Mind Blast can buy me a second or two to think, but it won't really solve anything. And if they are faster than me (spearwomen, Marauders) I am in trouble. Chilling Zeal Champ attacks is no fun to meet without CBF.

The spearwomen were in Frozen River. When I saw that one if them was a Berserker, I ran. Yikes. Back to a peninsula close to the entrance. I could not place the portal very well - it was simply cast as fast as I could. Lucked out, though. When I returned from the Crystalline Passage WP, they could see me when I approached the water, so down they went.

Faith's first Frenzytaurs on Hell difficulty showed up in Infernal Pit. Lightning immune, possible to freeze, and no boss pack => easy pickings. Stygian Doll blowdarters here as well. They are FI so they were fed with lightning. It was a lot of fun to fight them. 1-2 lightning shots were enough to kill them. Nice to see some foes just drop like flies. Third monster type here? Balrogs, once again.

The resist reward almost made my 10/17 Rainbow Ring of the Wolf obsolete, at least when Fade has triggered. I think I'll do some ring gambling now, hoping for something Platinum/Mammoth-ish. I have used my last two socket rewards to put an Eth in each claw.

Zombie garden up next. Scary for a lone character. I have a CoS/MB/burn plan that I hope will work.


[Highlight]Conqueror Faith, dual claws Phoenix Striker, level 86, Hell Nihlathak's Temple next[/Highlight]
 
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Re: The Exposure Tournament

Nice progress Jian! Keep it up!

I think if anyone is to Guardian a character in this tournament, it is yourself!
 
Re: The Exposure Tournament

Nice that you popped in, Morathi. :)


This session, I discovered something in the zombie garden I have not though of before. The starting area is actually not a bad little "fort". There are only three ways leading into it, and the two passages on the righthand side are very narrow. So the enemies can't swarm into there in an efficient way, and it's very hard from them to get any serial Charge action going. I did use a little Mind Blast early on, but CoS and fire would probably have been enough. Most Meteors were released towards the central part, of course, but I brought down a few on the stray enemies coming in from the right. No problem at all.

One of the levels had Zealot/Heirophant packs along with porcupines. Quite tricky, but manageable. These porcupines are not fire immune.

Halls of Vaught had Ghosts, boars and archers. Nilly's lair was tricky because there was about a dozen archers in it, most of them in the inner part. Nihlathak hit me with one CE (archer corpse) but that was not too bad (it's been nerfed more and more since v1.09).

Ancients' Way required care - spearwomen and porcupines.


Icy Cellar nearly brought an end to Faith! It started out innocently enough, letting me know it was about Abominables and Bone Spear-tossing snakes. I defeated an early snake Champ pack with good use of MB and pre-laid fire patches and Abominable corpses.
The area had the layout where you start in the top-right corner, follow the outer edge counterclockwise and the first bridge is on the western side of the central island. It was just by this bridge where it happened.

For some reason (misclick, unexpected early death (or unexpected movement) of some monster I had attacked, I don't know), I got wedged in between an abominable, a snake and the water, with another abominable and snake just past the bridge. Plus 2-3 snakes ahead that kept firing Bone Spears. All of these enemies were part of boss/champ packs. The closest abominable was an FE boss. Those sasquatch bosses are sneaky, as their colour palette does now allow for bright colours, so it is often not easy to see that it is a boss unless you mouse over it. I do not remember if this boss was FI but at least it would take long to kill with fire, especially since I was nearly block-/stunlocked into not being able to do much at all. Got a couple of Mind Blasts off but that did not do much good because all monsters had something behind them that prevented knockbacks. The only monster next to the boss was a Champ snake, so no chance of conversion help there.

Yikes, life (and potions) dwindle fast! Let's try spamming Dragon Flight a few times on those snakes in the back so I can get out of here. What? My DF hotkey is not working! Oh yeah, I had Teleport (from an amulet I was no longer wearing) on that hotkey when I traversed the Tundra at the start of this session. I have no DF hotkey!

OK, the space above and to the left of me is free, so if I can get a portal up, it should be possible to click on. I tried to cast TP a few times but I was still stunlocked. F-k, almost out of juvies now!

*Mind Blast*
*TP*
(frantic clicks on the portal)

"BOINK!"


I did not know if I was going to play all the way to the endgame this session, so thankfully, I had brought in a big load of full purples and could fill up the whole belt again, with some to spare.

BTW, that abominable boss was FE Spectral Hit Extra Strong. Later on, I led it back towards the entrance, Mind Blasted it into a wall at maximum range, ran away from it and then killed it with BF from the central island.


[Highlight]Conqueror Faith, dual claws Phoenix Striker, level 86, Hell Arreat Summit next[/Highlight]
 
Re: The Exposure Tournament

I rerolled Ancients at least a dozen times. I was not going to accept:
- Might
- Fanaticism
- Conviction in combo with any sort of elemental booster
- Getting cursed right away (e.g. from a Holy Something pulsing aura), or having a Cursed Madawc

On one attempt, I easily defeated Korlic but Madawc was just too dangerous. On another attempt, I ran out of Teleport charges and the guys were still not separated.

These attempts ate up many full purples. When I was down to 8 of them (i.e. two full columns and no reserves), I got my chance against Madawc. That Extra Fast was good for getting alone with him. He was soon toast (pun intended). Great, now let's separate the other two. Managed to park Talic really close to the bottom while Korlic chased me up to the cliff wall. Fire Enchanted + Cursed. Immune to fire. Ouch.

I was pretty sure that frying him with lightning was going to be extremely painful and that I would not have enough potions to pull that off. So, Blade Fury ad nauseum it was. That was still scary, having him hopping after me. Plus I was not sure how much of the FE bug still remains in v1.13. As far as I know, they have nerfed the damage but not really fixed the bug. So I was not going to let him start an attack animation while I was standing next to him, and certainly not stand next to him when he died. Just like against Hephasto, I used good old Burst of Speed to help me keep the distance. After a couple of sweaty minutes, Korlic was killed.

Talic had Mana Burn Stone Skin. Unless he has a super weapon (not likely - he gets random blues), he is not going to be particularly scary, and indeed he wasn't. Not even his whirls. I still pulled my usual stunt in the top right corner - stand so he has no space to whirl past me to. But jeez, how annoying his abilities were! It was very hard to reliably charge and release the lightning, with him being so hard to hit and burning my mana the whole time. My column of blues was soon empty.

So it was BF against him too. Really long and boring ring-around-the-rosie on the Summit, this one. Damn that Stone Skin. Not only did I often miss with 20+ throwing stars in a row, the big physical resistance made the Crushing Blows puny. Nowhere near as powerful as they were against Korlic. Still, I had Venom and Open Wounds on my side, and still five reds and all my 8 purples. I won after about 30 more minutes...

I have little memry of WSK 1 and 2. I remember only zealots, witches and Black Souls. Third level was trickier, with Doom Knights and Death Lords. I generally did not use MB much, but when I took the screenie, it was early on and I had just cast CoS but missed these two with it.

Throne level had Assailants, Burning Souls and witches. When I saw a champ pack of Assailants, I though "Ah, the last major challenge the game throws at me." Wrong, there was another, even worse, but more on that later. Fighting a Champ was scary but red potions were usually enough to keep my life up (just a few purples needed). My blocking is 49%, after all.

A Berserker Assailant! Not going to melee him, no siree. It's MB + Blade Fury for you. That was not enough, though. They are just SO fast. There was not enough time to BF him between my MB spammings, and major danger if he rushed past where I aimed Mind Blast. I needed more speed/distance. I needed Teleport, so I brought back that amulet. Now I could throw a few BF stars and pop away as he got next to me. Still scary. I got up the stairs twice, just so I could breathe a little. Good thing I did not need to worry about regeneration, since Fleshrender has Prevent Monster Heal.

Colenzo was Extra Strong Blessed Aim. I pulled back and managed to charge up a freeze attack and nail a minion with the ice. Then proceed with more freezings and other elemental mayhem and kill it so it shattered, nice. Boss leash was strong so they zipped around a lot. I tried to freeze more of them, then disaster happened. Maybe a little hubris/underestimation, plus the worst possible timing of several things. I chased after the little snot and tried to release my ice. It blocked several times in a row. Now I just happened to be close enough to Colenzo that the other warriors suddenly did not run any more, and at least three (maybe four) of the others threw themselves over me. At exactly this moment
- Fade timed out
- Baal Decrepified me

Do you see the danger here? They are boosted by Blessed Aim so they hit me easily. They are FE against my non-Faded ~25% fire resist. They are Extra Strong and I currently have -50% physical resistance!

Result: THE WORST NDE IN THE GAME for Faith, at least as far as the amount of life goes. No visible red in the life bulb! I slammed the rejuve buttons (and probably a few others!) and miraculously survived.

Phew, let's not try that again.


The rest of Baal's minions were uneventful fights. Lister's pack was CE Mana Burn, so it was pretty useless trying to melee them, not even lone minions. You know, this character would have been pure awesome together with a Cold Act III merc...
I BF-ran them, one at a time, Lister and his seven minions, around the starting block. Boring as hell, but worth it now that I was so close.

For the Baal fight, I switched my secondary claw for a 'Strength' Blade Talons. I figured I may as well get some Crusing Blows in while I fight him. For the large part of the fight, I did not get much efficiency because Baal kept teleporting away from the fires I rained on him. But from about 25% and down to his death, he was standing still in what eventually became about 8 stacked Meteors.


I went players 1 for the cow level. Just wanted to finish now. CoS works wonders with big packs where most of them bump into other cows and lose direction when I cast it. Plus level 14 Death Sentry owns those large packs on players 1. Kinda funny to see twenty cows keel over from explosions #3 and #4 when I had herded a large pack over to a corpse pile.

What will the Cow King's abilities be. Can I burn him? Nope. One last BF grind, then. Figures. At least he was half dead from a couple of explosions.

The last half dozen cows left me an interesting gift. Pretty good outcome from a single cow run on /p1, eh? At least if I was twinking. (OK, I am actually saving all runes Hel and up from my retired characters in an ATMA stash.)


[Highlight]Guardian Faith, dual claws Phoenix Striker, level 87, Complete Game Clear[/Highlight]



Well that sure was fun. Some of you know that Phoenix Striker is my #1 favourite build, and dual claws obviously works with it. Fully synergized level 34 Phoenix Strike definitely packs a wallop. Well, unless you fight Act IV Venom Lords...

(I still prefer my Phoenix Strikers with a shield, a Cold Act III merc and a strong Shadow Warrior, thankyouverymuch!)


Today I have played my Poisonmancer in this tourney, and he makes good progress in late Normal. Then I should really try this tourney with a Berserker (which Morathi and I have discussed). And a Blaze/Lightning Sorc...
 
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Re: The Exposure Tournament

Congrats! I look forward to the write-up. I should probably look at the rules so I can see where the challenge was... :p
 
Re: The Exposure Tournament

pharphis said:
I should probably look at the rules so I can see where the challenge was... :p
Click to expand...

No merc
No shield
No summons

That's pretty much it. And then I go and play the only option that lets me block, and it also has access to temporary tanking help from MB conversion. :badteeth:
 
Re: The Exposure Tournament

Well sins are probably best geared for this type of challenge. CoS and MB are just too good. I'd probably do the same if I was determined enough to try this :p
 
Re: The Exposure Tournament

HUGE congrats to you jian! Just had the good timing to check this site again and saw this. Guardianing with a melee character is impressive.

Experiment failed. ;)
 
Re: The Exposure Tournament

I have moved forward with my second character (of the four I have planned) in this tournament - Smaragd the poisonmancer. Smaragd is 'Emerald' in swedish.


While I always thought I had a chance to go all the way with the Phoenix Striker, that is not the case for this guy. There is just so much that can go wrong, and there are a couple of situations already where I have more or less lost control and it's been quite dangerous. The main method of applying his best skill (Poison Nova), running around enemy packs is risky in itself, especially indoors.

Another big problem is the lack of skill points. It is impossible to be good in all areas I want to be good at:
- I want to max all three poison skills
- I want a strong Bone Armor/Prison
- I want an effective level 12+ Dim Vision in Hell
- I want a good duration of Attract. Level 9 gives about 10 seconds, which would be nice
- I want a long duration Decrepify
- I want a strong Corpse Explosion (which Necro doesn't?!)

The access to +skills is of course hampered by the ban on shields.



Moving through the ice caves in Act V, Smaragd made an interesting find. Awesome, but it also made things more difficult and tedious. Playing like I do, I have to hold this dagger, of course, and that meant giving up my handy Toxic Bone Wand of Enlightenment with +3 to Lower Resist. So a big mana boost disappeared to be replaced by an item with negative mana. I could cast about 3 fewer Poison Novas per full mana bulb now. I started using more Poison Explosions again, whenever I could.

I had an NDE in an ice cave where I was boxed in next to a wall by a 3-pack of abominble Champions. I escaped by town portal. The only chance I had there, really.


Met my first PoI monster in the throne room. Hammer time!
(very nice that my range is longer than his!)

I checked out d2data for info on the poison resistance for Lister's pack. 95% across all difficulties. YUCK!
I drew out one at a time, Bone Prisoned it so I could hit it once with my 'Malice' Maul (for the Prevent Monster Heal) with less risk of getting into trouble. Then Lower Resist and Poison Nova running with a whole inventory full of mana potions. Each one of them took several minutes to kill.

Baal fight was not hard (I could stay out of range of his most dangerous attack) but tedious.
Cow level, on the other hand, was the easiest and fastest I have ever played, I think.


I started out in Nightmare, curious as to how well my killing power would hold up. OK, fallen and quill rats fell over from 1-2 PN bursts but the zombies took forever to kill. Even with Lower Resist (although that did help a bit). I experimented with other killing methods. While that was not so effective, there are still elements in it that I have used and gotten better at. After some more playing, I found that the best way of killing a single skeleton or 1-2 skeleton archers was to use Decrepify and hammer away. Even though my AR is literally only the same value as the number on Donald Duck's license plate, the large level advantage I have in this part of the game still lets me hit often. And after the first hit, the following hits are increasingly easier to score thanks to the abilities on Malice.

I quickly learned that I needed more foot speed to stay a little safer and be better at using Poison Nova, so I made my first MF sacrifice - replaced my Greaves of Luck with some Acceleration boots. It hurt, but it had to be done.

I had trouble in Black Marsh, because that large fenced Carver section was not there. With underpowered ranged characters, that place is where I will usually trap Treehead's pack on the other side of the fence. Treehead's pack was CE and every time a minion hit me, I had to run in panic. Could not do anything else until the cold had worn off. (I have had an idea about using a belt column for thawing potions, but I do not think I can afford that.) These guys get faster the more hurt they are, so danger was increasing. Eventually, I Decrepified the pack, TPed out and returned from the WP so I could fight one at a time. Heavy use of this method to stay safe. Those segments are still weak, so I had to spam BP often.

Short status report at the Outer Cloister Waypoint, Nightmare (Cloister, Tamoe Highlands and Pit still to play).
Smaragd the Necromancer
Level 50
About 80 stat points in STR, a little in DEX and the rest in VIT. A little over 450 life at the moment.
Resists in NM: Fire 50, Cold 26, Lightning 19, Poison -26 (cold can be taken to 76 with potions; lightning and fire can be boosted to high numbers with assorted jewelry I keep in my stash)

Skills
Poison Nova 16
Poison Explosion 7
Poison Dagger 8
Bone Prison 2
Corpse Explosion 1
Lower Resist 2
Dim Vision 6
Prereqs and all other Curses 1

Primary Gear
* Artisan's Great Helm of Sorcery (+14 ENE) with 3x perfect topaz
* Amulet of Luck (35)
* Gull unique Dagger
* 3s Breast Plate with topaz and 2x flawed topaz
* Garnet (27) Leather Gloves of Fortune (24)
* Fortuitous Ring of Chance (22)
* Rare Plated Belt with 30% lightning resist, a little life regeneration and some other minor mods
* Ring of Fortune (21)
* Sapphire (39) Heavy Boots of Acceleration (thanks, Gheed!)

Switch
* 'Malice' Maul

* Three Grand, two Large and five Small charms with assorted resists, +life and a little foot speed.
(I can accept filling up five more inventory spaces, so gimme that Shimmering/Coral Grand Charm now, please!)


[highlight]Smaragd the poisonmancer, level 50, NM Tamoe Highlands next.[/highlight]
 
Re: The Exposure Tournament

Crap, my poisonmancer died in the desert. Nothing strange about the death - Poison Nova running often involves getting pretty close to enemies and often trying to be within PN range of as many enemies in a pack as possible. This particular incident did not feel any different from many others (that I survived). Strong, fast enemies was always going to be dangerous for this character. Should probably have given more (scratch that, should have given at least some!) priority to FHR over MF. I was stunlocked trying to break free. I was not surrounded and I had only drunk my first potion. It was over that fast.


I just can't bring myself to do a write-up of the areas from where I left off in my last report up to where I was now, even though there were some interesting things that happened there. Sorry.


[highlight]Smaragd the poisonmancer, level 55, killed by half a dozen Black Raptors (including a Champ pack) in NM Far Oasis. R.I.P.[/highlight]


I will try a Blaze/Lightning Sorc now, and try to beat my personal best for that build: Pindle's garden in NM. A shield does not help against the Charges so I won't be at a terrible disadvantage in that place.
 
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