The Exposure Tournament

Re: The Exposure Tournament

Fire Druid. Molten Boulder is a beast early game and synergizes with Volcano and Armegedon. Maxing Molten Boulder early is definitely very easy going with Sapphired/Tir'd gear, and on paper should be end game viable, though in Hell you'd probably just use it for crowd control.
Also, fissure comes up early in the fire druid tree and makes the Normal a breeze. I do not know if you would rather those points go elsewhere, but it's worth mentioning.


 
Re: The Exposure Tournament

forgot about druid...

only issue is Duriel doesn't stay still long enough to actually keep him hit lock, also immune to knockback. Died to him with character earlier in tournament.

My main problem really comes from not having any luck finding gear. I can easily get 100% or more mf before getting cube. Absolutely nothing drops beyond crappy rares. Uniques and set stuff once in 1000's of kills. When compared to stuff others get I feel cheated.

Top all this I play Vanilla LOD so limited storage causes problems when saving for cubing. How am I expected to compete when the rules of some tournaments favor modders? I feel cheated. This isn't a hate on those who chooses to mod just a rant about unfairness.
 
Re: The Exposure Tournament

forgot about druid...

only issue is Duriel doesn't stay still long enough to actually keep him hit lock, also immune to knockback. Died to him with character earlier in tournament.

When facing Duriel with a Fire Druid, its best to just run in circles while laying down Fissure.


My main problem really comes from not having any luck finding gear. I can easily get 100% or more mf before getting cube. Absolutely nothing drops beyond crappy rares. Uniques and set stuff once in 1000's of kills. When compared to stuff others get I feel cheated.

Thats generally the case for everyone Krazy. Nothing good drops early game. You have to rely on your characters skills as well as gambling in order to progress. Some people get lucky, such as finding a Gull Dagger in the early stages, but thats part of the game.

Top all this I play Vanilla LOD so limited storage causes problems when saving for cubing. How am I expected to compete when the rules of some tournaments favor modders? I feel cheated. This isn't a hate on those who chooses to mod just a rant about unfairness.

I used to be exactly the same as you. I was against using ATMA or GoMule and relied purely on the games storage capabilities. However, with the need to collect so many runes, chippies, rejuvs, max gold items and so on...i felt the need to use ATMA to store all my goodies. Especially as i make the game as hard as possible for me, because thats the why I like it.

I guess going completely Vanilla is just a credit to your game style and gets style points :thumbup:.






After much thought, i have re-entered into the tournament, in attempt to revenge the demise of my other two entrants.

I won't reveal too much now, however, a full update will be posted once I complete Act 1.



 
Re: The Exposure Tournament

Top all this I play Vanilla LOD so limited storage causes problems when saving for cubing. How am I expected to compete when the rules of some tournaments favor modders? I feel cheated. This isn't a hate on those who chooses to mod just a rant about unfairness.

I didn't know that using atma is considered not playing vanilla :ponder: Any tournament other than ones that specifically ban atma use will always favor atma users. At any rate, there are some people that don't use atma and do just fine.

And your unique/set finding luck is about equal to mine. I'm already half way through act 5 normal and have have over a 100 mf since mid act 1 and I only found 3 uniques and 5 sets so far (full clears at players 8 entirely), so your not alone.

After much thought, i have re-entered into the tournament, in attempt to revenge the demise of my other two entrants.

I won't reveal too much now, however, a full update will be posted once I complete Act 1.
Ok Morathi, take this one slow. I want you to get a guardian but you always rush things early on and kill off characters with a lot of potential. Do what I do, I play every character like it's the last one I'm every going to play. It really changes your mindset towards the game.



 
Re: The Exposure Tournament

Ok Morathi, take this one slow. I want you to get a guardian but you always rush things early on and kill off characters with a lot of potential. Do what I do, I play every character like it's the last one I'm every going to play. It really changes your mindset towards the game.

Haha, HC Tourney character attempt no.12312421414124214214.

Don't worry, I will eventually get a Guardian....well at least i hope to before D3 :nod:. I'll take this one extra slow, especially after learning my lesson with Diago. I am learning to play in small stints to avoid rushing and to keep a clear mind-frame. Hopefully this time it pays off :).



 
Re: The Exposure Tournament

I'm a declining breed of gamers. Purest at Heart. So many people want power, self entitlements, and riches, but refuse to walk the tough road to get there.

I'm not playing games to prove I'm better. I play because I have fun. When I cease having fun I get frustrated, only natural. I'm hard headed and stubborn to boot.

It seems my style of play is more geared to being aggressive. I know no other way. As such I enjoy in your face characters rather than hit and run tactics. As a result I gravitate toward melee as fun, range ok, spellcasting boring. Although Windies are fun as they rely close quarter fighting.
 
Re: The Exposure Tournament

I'm predominantly an online player but a typical run through in one of these tourneys using 1.13 will net 50+ plus perfect gems and 150+ runes before the end of nightmare alone. Even cubing up flawless can take 14 spaces in the stash. How much space does cubing up runes and keeping the best take?

Remember the stash size is based on the original game not on what drops now in the later patches so it is out of step with sensible requirements.



Make full use of the cube recipes and don't ignore the low level runewords.
 
Re: The Exposure Tournament

I'm a declining breed of gamers. Purest at Heart. So many people want power, self entitlements, and riches, but refuse to walk the tough road to get there.

I'm not playing games to prove I'm better. I play because I have fun. When I cease having fun I get frustrated, only natural. I'm hard headed and stubborn to boot.

All noble goals.

I use ATMA as extended stash, and that is mainly to avoid the frustration of losing items that I have earned the hard way, and to minimize boring maintenance activities (see below). If the game had a saving system similar to Diablo 1, I would not use ATMA. In Daiblo 1, you could save the game exactly as it was, with all killed monsers still dead and all items still on the ground.

EDIT: Oops, I would still need a muling program when going to the next difficulty, I suppose...

When you only have the in-game stash, you constantly need to do a lot of deciding what items to keep for sure, what you want to keep but you can risk having vanished and what to toss right away. This leads to a lot of frustation for me, unless the whole point of the tournament is centered around this very issuse (e.g. the All Alone tournies, etc.).

Every gaming session, you need to store a buttload of items on the ground when you play. Items, that if you meet a really stubborn boss so you aren´t back in town for many minutes, will risk losing. And there is always a risk that the game may crash, making you swear in frustration for the items lost.

Every gaming session before you save, you need to sell your TP tome, key stack, healing/mana potions (because you will fill your whole belt with rejuves), wield the largest combos of items you can and finally have a 2x4 item as cursor. There are times I´ve even hired a temporary Iron Wolf merc instead of my barb merc, just so I could save another shield I wanted to keep!

And in every gaming session you start, you need to restore all those things so you get a playable character again.

This is not fun, it´s boring.


Also, you can not use the most reliable way to get a nice elite weapon untwinked - the massive chippie rerolling. The strength in that recipe is that you get at least a hundred reroll chances if you´ve kept your chippies all the way back since Act 1 Normal.

Furthermore, you are bound to make bad decisions about which things you kept, because you do not know what will drop later. Is it worth hanging onto those two crappy jewels (for crafting that may or may not happen anytime soon), or that nice-but-not-great exceptional unique that will be awesome if you can make it elite? Dunno, since you can´t know if you´ll ever find Lum + Pul. Or that sweet ethereal elite base weapon that could be a great runeword/imbue base? Now it only takes up valuable space.
 
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Re: The Exposure Tournament

It seems my style of play is more geared to being aggressive. I know no other way. As such I enjoy in your face characters rather than hit and run tactics. As a result I gravitate toward melee as fun, range ok, spellcasting boring. Although Windies are fun as they rely close quarter fighting.
Molten Boulder is calling your name.



 
Re: The Exposure Tournament

I've little problems in Nightmare and Hell when it comes to items. Where I find 90% of all unique and set. Normal has been crap drops since updating to 1.10 long ago. Seems like they reduced drop rate in normal by 50% to compensate for easier late game items. Effectively making it 100% harder than Nightmare. So sad that I use to find Normal uniques at 2 an act back in 1.09. Now i'm lucky to see one drop in first two acts.

As you can see I want pre 1.10 drops back for Normal.

As far as Boulder goes mana cost makes it undesirable before lvl 20ish. Even then lvl 1 skill can drain mana fast. Unlike Volcano and Fissure Boulder has scaling mana cost per skill lvl.

If I could figure a way to get to level 24 with out boring myself I play a Wind Druid. As you can tell that isn't any time soon. I've hit the wall when it comes to creativity. Bored of Op builds, but hate dying. So what happens now? I brain storm and never play which happened 4 years ago. Guess I'm looking for something original.
 
Re: The Exposure Tournament

@Krazy_Solo: The balance between OP, origional, and fun is often a tough line. Especially in the early game, but it mostly just takes patience, I know you said you are lacking in that, but there is not much to be done with lack of patience. Lack of patience leads to lowering /p setting, which lowers experience/gear finding, which in the end hurts you in NM/Hell. Best of luck if you do re-enter.

Thanks for all the help with my problem there, lots of good suggestions.
:thumbup:
Running_Scared is progressing nicely, First real troubles came with Rogues in the cold plains. Rogues were Cold immune and very fast, and they seemed to have an amazing ability to get the mod Extra fast on top of things. Gargantuan Beasts also were trouble if they got extra fast. I quickly Decided that p/1 was a real joke, and only went to it if it was a possible stair trap area. I kept it at p/3 minimum but often bumped it up to p/5 or 8.

First real problem came with the countess, as I previously mentioned was FE/Cursed/Magic resistant. And as I said before she was at p/3. Initially I tried a few things like gambling a poison or lightning damage bow and using some lightning skill staves, none of witch had much success, and casued me to burn about 1mil gold and 10 Full Juves. So I parked her for the time being.

Moved on to find a Rainbow facet in the pits! Got me pretty excited since it had a 50% chance of being a useful one, but alas it was poison. I actually considered throwing it in a weapon for my level up to gain the level 23 venom to use on countess, but decided against it in the end. Found this orb, I think it belongs in the LOL item section. After I reached the outer cloister WP I decided to gamble some charged items as you guys had suggested. I had been picking up almost every single Item to sell, and had accumulated about 700k in the last 2 areas. God some poison nova, bone spear/spirit, and lighning charges, also saved a few poion/oil potions. Tried all of these and none of them would even move her life! I then decided that a PMH rune word would be the only way, but I didn’t have any of the right runes.

So I kept going, moving on towards Andy. The jail is one of the best areas for a Sorc and I did most of it at P/8, First to levels of Cata were good rolls and also done at that level. Third greeted me with an immediate extra fast/cursed Vampire boss pack, that one was a really tough one to kill, even at p/3. Somewhere in level 3 an el dropped, I don’t think I have ever been so happy to see an el! Andy was taken at p/3 although it was far too easy, She actually never even hit me with a single attack. Drop was crap, what I have come to expect, as I have not seen a unique for the last 4 bosses.

Putting my newfound el into a military axe I made a Malice, I had really hoped to find a tal so that I could have made Edge bow, but I knew this would still work. Time to see if I could actually do this! My plan was as follows;
1.Static
2.Malic
3.Poison potions

The plan pretty much worked as I wanted, I had saved up every poison potion and juve that I had come across. The flaw in the plan was my 22% chance to hit, of course malice helped with that a bit, but I still could swing 10 times without her starting to bleed. I expected OW to be more effective, but it only lasted about 10 seconds at most. But the PMH was the real savior, as earlier her she was regening half her life in 10-15 seconds. It was a very scary battle for sure, she often got me down below 250 life, which is in danger of being killed as she often did around 300 damage. But in the end I was victorious! I don’t think I have ever been so satisfied to see a monster die! The drop was not very good, and for the second time in a row my Chest didn’t open. But she did drop a really amazing pair of Javazon gloves. It took around 200 Poison potions and 20 full juves and 15 super healers, and I was only left with 5 juves in the end.
Some other notable finds in act 1 were: Guardian Angel, Infernostride, Shadowkiller, Shaftstop, stormchaser, a 7% mf charm, and the poison facet

Onward to act 2, hopefully it will be vampire light, but I don’t expect that.

[highlight]Running_Scared, Act 2 hell, level 79, 302 points[/highlight]
 
Re: The Exposure Tournament

Hester has made it through to NM Act 5.

NM Act 3 was done at Players 7 and was pretty easy. Frozen Orb (Level 20, supported by Level 10 Cold Mastery) continued to destroy most monsters (well, ‘destroyed’ in under three hits :D ). Three hits (or so) to defeat most monsters seemed pretty reasonable in terms of balancing progress versus item finding and had some unexpected advantages (mostly versus Dolls . . . if it takes three hits to destroy the Doll, then it’s pretty hard to destroy one by mistake). Still, Dolls seemed pretty scary (as always) . . . so, leave it to the game to spawn them nearly everywhere possible (Flayer Dungeon Level 1 and 2, Swampy Pit Level 1 and 2, Sewers Level 1 . . . with Unravellers :doh: , and the Durance of Hate Level 1 and 2). Curse you game! Interestingly though the most annoying monsters turned out to be Ghouls (they have good cold resistance, are often fast, tend to flee - fast, and have good regeneration and get to leech using Fireball!? . . I want to be able to do that :D ). Anyhow, despite the killing being a bit tedious at times and there being numerous annoying monsters Hester made it through to Mephisto. Mephisto got hit by static, Hester got hit by Mephisto (literally), and then Frozen Orbs were exchanged across the moat. Mephisto landed some Orbs but Hester landed more (and had healing potions :grin: ), so, that’s that.

Mephisto dropped nothing interesting. Set/uniques found included: Bladebuckle Plated Belt (Spider Cavern), Sigon’s Greaves (Spider Cavern), Spectral Shard Blade (Great Marsh), Hwanin’s Bill (Flayer Jungle), Manald Ring (Flayer Dungeon), The Ward Gothic Shield (Flayer Jungle), Sigon’s Tower Shield (Lower Kurast), The Eye of Etlich (Kurast Bazaar), Iratha’s Amulet (Travincal), Duskdeep Full Helm (Durance of Hate Level 2), and Rite of Passage Demonhide Boots (Durance of Hate Level 3). The best rune drop came from a Doll in the Durance of Hate Level 2 and was a Lum Rune! The only other item of interest was a gambled rare circlet with +1 to Sorceress Skill Levels and +20% Faster Cast Rate . . . no other useful mods . . . so, interesting but probably not going to be used . . .

Here were Hester’s stats at the end of NM Act 3.

NM Act 4 was pretty much the same as NM Act 3. Hesters Frozen Orb damage made Players 7 a bit tedious but there really weren’t any big obstacles to progress and everything seemed pretty safe. The most annoying monsters were Flesh Spawners, that seemed to be everywhere :rolleyes: . High hit point monsters such as Izual and Hephasto were time (and space) consuming but easy to defeat. Diablo was also easy.

Diablo dropped useless stuff. The Forge dropped a Pul Rune (not bad . . . but an Um Rune would have been so much better :whistling: ). Set/uniques found included: Cathan’s Ring (River of Flame), Cleglaw’s Long Sword (City of the Damned), and Iratha’s Light Gauntlets (Outer Steppes).

The Iratha’s Light Gauntlets completes the set . . . and creates a bit of a problem. I really like Iratha’s (I used it to walk a HC Hammerdin on Bnet, solo - so Players 1, to Guardian and then Level 88 – still, Players 1). Plus, completing and then using a set in a tournament is something that I haven’t done, but, on the other hand . . . I already have pretty good (perhaps better) gear for those slots . . . I suppose the decision really comes down to how much is +10% to All Maximum Resistances worth? I really like resistances (a lot) but I’d be stuck with a 12 slot belt and probably lesser light radius MF and FCR . . . probably . . . hmm, decisions, decisions, . . anyhow . . .

Here were Hester’s stats at the end of NM Act 4.

[highlight] Hester, Frozen Orb/TK/Fireball, Level 67, NM Harrogath, 238 Points [/highlight]
 
Re: The Exposure Tournament

If there was a jack of all build... Aoe and boss killer without immunity problems. That didn't go by the name hammerdin.
 
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Re: The Exposure Tournament

Grats on Hester's progress. I would personally use the full Iratha's if I were you. If I understand the mechanics correctly, going from 75 to 85 res all would reduce elem damage by 40% (assuming no other MDR). FCR dosen't really do much for orb, so I guess its mainly mf from other gear you would be missing out on. You could always burn a socket quest on the helm an stick a PTopaz in it. Scaven would kill for that Pul, but I guess it is of no real use to a mercless sorc.
 
Re: The Exposure Tournament

Good progress guys!

Han, Pul + Lum = elite upgraded weapon, right? Too bad you're not doing any physical damage. I'm on the prowl for those two runes if I can ever find an exceptional bow. Right now my damage STINKS and that's in A1 NM. We're talking 70 average per arrow with a maxed strafe. Well you are still doing well, keep up the good work!

Good work too Kestegs! Good to see you killed the Countess by working hard outside the box. I killed my NM version today and got no rune whatsoever for it. Blast! I'd have loved an Ort like you got, because it is a reagent for Hit Power gloves, and mine currently stink.

OS
 
Re: The Exposure Tournament

If there was a jack of all build... Aoe and boss killer without immunity problems. That didn't go by the name hammerdin.

My favorite character of all time was a berserker. They are definitely an in-your-face type of a character. Stun them with War Cry and then crush them to pieces with berserk using you big two handed stick and zero defense. Based on what you said several posts ago, that character should perfectly fit your playing style. I played one in the no vitality tournament and he got up to level 79 before he died early in hell due to my own fault.



 
Re: The Exposure Tournament

After much thought, i have re-entered into the tournament, in attempt to revenge the demise of my other two entrants.

I won't reveal too much now, however, a full update will be posted once I complete Act 1.

I've killed three characters for this tourney and all of them in Act I. I also have one in making and will reveal the build when Act I is done.


 
Re: The Exposure Tournament

If there was a jack of all build... Aoe and boss killer without immunity problems. That didn't go by the name hammerdin.

Phoenix Striker fits this description...but not in this tournament. I want both merc, Shadow and shield for that build.


"But hmm, one with dual claws and higher level MB..."
(goes to the drawing board.)



 
Re: The Exposure Tournament

Hmmm... I'm thinking good ol' fury or zeal might rejuv my spirit. Now do I go Ravens, Feral, or Rabies prior to Fury! Then there the lack of knowledge with two handed zeal... Choices... Argh never like choosing what to play.

Did I mention I hate Undeads lately?
 
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