The Passive Aggressive Tournament

[sivaeB]

Toast has completed Act V, Baal took forever it seems, but there was no harm there...After the battle, gambled 800k worth of blue amulets, worthless, we need some luck in nightmare early on .

Made a cow portal, just killing the Cow Kings group..we need sleep.

[highlight] Destroyer Toast the Golemancer with Waheed the Defiance guard, lvl 45, NM Rogue Encampment. [/highlight]

 

[ranagrande1]

I wanted to finish Act II this weekend, but I ended up working crazy overtime instead. Still made some progress though.

First, Beldric and Elexa cleared the Far Oasis and the Maggot Lair. I had my first really close call in the Oasis, against a boss pack of death beetles. After that, Elexa began tanking any lightning enchanted monsters, due to her having much better resists.

That took Beldric up to level 24, so it was time to head back to the city and try some cubing. I didn't get any of those big resists, but I did get an Amulet of Fortune on the last attempt, so I considered it a success.

Beldric and Elexa both have full helms and superior chain mail socketed with flawed topazes. While shopping for good socketed armor, Beldric also nabbed some Rugged Heavy Gloves of Chance. Finally, he also got a weapon upgrade: a superior flail socketed with a ruby, a sapphire, and a Jewel of Wrath.

Thus outfitted, the pair headed into the Lost City. They found Cathan's Mesh there, so I can stop complaining about not finding set items. In the Ancient Tunnels, they found an Angelic Mantle which will join the Mesh in storage and Civerb's Ward, which Beldric is now using.

One of the snakes in the Claw Viper Temple dropped a Fortuitous Ring, bringing Beldric's MF up to 120.

Beldric the Barbarian and Elexa the Cold Rogue, both 25, looking for the Arcane Sanctuary.

 

[Old_Frog]

Hallow, Ilzan (Offensive) and Gumby have cleared up to Travincal WP and found a Cathan's ring, Civerb's shield and Cleclaw's sword in our labors. After several other crafting attempts when finding diamonds along the way we crafted this slaughter stick, unfortunately Ilzan can't use it yet due to the high dexterity requirement. If I can't find the runes for Insight or some juicy unique, he will be using this later on. I wish Blizzard had incorporated other crafting items like this. Like the ability for craft a cruel polearm or other types of weapons for other mercenary use. The "Safety Weapon" the desert mercenary could use kind of sucks for the expense of a Sol rune and a perfect Emerald.

View attachment 958

Hallow, Ilzan and Gumby, lvl 29, Travical WP

 

[Morathi1]

Awesome progress guys!

Despite RL being hectic i managed to make some progress with Carrisa and she is about to clear out the Arcane Sanctuary, hopefully complete act 2 sometime this week and will post an official update with her journey thus far.

 

[jiansonz]

Maggot Lair was quite easy, but the breeding chamber was not. There were two Rock Worm boss packs in there. Can you imagine the spawning going on?! Waheed had trouble if more than one minion was biting him (elemental- and Extra Strong boss mods) so I had to teleport him back a lot. And feed him potions - I had all my 14 available inventory slots filled with reds. Fortunately, Coldworm had mild abilities (Holy Shock Mana Burn).

Sissy likes to fight more and more. She often helps by softening up the big baddies. It's a matter of picking and choosing the battles, though. Sometimes safety demands that she is more passive:

I knew that the potentially toughest greater mummies for us would be the Guardians in the snake temple, since they are FI. With luck, I would not draw them. You can get snakes-only, or snakes + lesser mummies. Alas, no such luck (Ok, there were none on level 2).
These guys made life hard for us:

For some reason, they were all hell-bent stubborn to get up and melee Waheed, which he could not survive for long. We had to flee from the fight the screenie shows, back out and then lure one at a time from the other direction.

I thought I had drawn a jackpot at CVT level 2:

Look at the urn placement. Perfect, right? I thought so.
BUT, the snakes somehow managed to Charge back Waheed and spill through that gap. I teleported to the famous little dead end down-left and met them there.
(the 'urn channel' was indeed pretty good at separating them from our new position, so it was still a lucky draw)

In the Canyon, Sissy got hit for more damage than she's ever been, and was down to lower life than she has been for a very long time. It was an FE Cursed something maggot boss that hit her when I thought Waheed was a closer target. Probably lost 700 or so life! The ES did its thing, because that orb emptied.

Tomb #4 had an interesting start. It was the segment with no real starting room, the one that opens into a 3-way junction. From straight ahead, a few skeletons came scrambling. OK, let's try down instead. Reached forward a bit, but it soon ended with one of those segments that look like Kaa's corner, and a Holy Shock something Gorebelly boss and minions approached. Uh, I do not like to fight those without either a doorway or a lot of space to fall back on. Triple teleport back to entrance.

Worked down that first Unraveler. Next up was that type of room that is wide but not deep. Burning Dead minions en masse. Two different speeds, and some of the slow ones do cold damage while others don't. That could only mean one thing: three Unraveler bosses in that room. Yikes!
(note the map - it helps understanding what I am trying to describe about this place)

We are pretty good at killing those (they aren't FI), at least as long as I can teleport Waheed where he can poke it and it can't melee back.

And the passage up from the entrance? What if I had chosen that from the start instead? Completely empty of monsters for two hallways and a room!


Nothing on my wish list found. Lean times for runes. Radament was nice enough to drop a Lum but I haven't seen anything above Dol in the act otherwise.

Recent gear changes:
Out: Cobalt Belt of the Squid, lightning resist grand charm and small charm, Platinum Ring of the Wolf
In: Steel (108) Grand Charm, Cobalt Ring of the Sun (back again), small charm with +9 life, and this excellent belt:
Coral Plated Belt of the Whale
Defense: 8
Durability: 24 of 24
Required Strength: 60
Required Level: 37
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 85
Fingerprint: 0x630e680a
+100 to Life
Lightning Resist +27%

Resist are now 75/74/75, AR with axe is 1770, max life is closing in on 1100.

Recent finds:
* Immortal King's Detail
* Amber (11) Small Charm of Balance
* plain Thresher x2 (these have 5 sockets max)
* 4s Thresher (thinking of making Insight in this. Lower damage than my current eth Partizan but it's faster)
* eth 4s Grim Scythe (almost equivalent to the Thresher but does slightly lower damage)
* Felicitous Amulet of Luck (37% MF)
* rare Giant Thresher (kept for potential rerolling. Not likely to result in anything useful, but I think Giant Threshers are such 'posh' weapons so I thought it was worth saving. With my playstyle, TC 87 items of any quality are very rare drops). Oh yeah, congrats to Pb_pal for finding a unique TC 87! The only one I've ever seen is Death Cleaver.

I need just one more level-up to reach a "native" point in Energy Shield. My replacement weapon then will probably be a chippie-rerolled orb. I want an elite one so it can spawn high-level affixes like Volcanic or Arch-Angel's even when the ilvl is such that level 18 skills (like Enchant) are the most likely staffmods.


[Highlight]Conqueror Sissy the Axe Enchantress and Waheed the Defiance guard, level 83, Hell Ancient Kaa's Tomb (Tomb #6) next[/highlight]

 

[thefranklin]

You guys make this look like so much fun, I had to join.

Welcome the Passive Druid, FollowTheBear. Since I couldn't just announce the character without having a bear, FollowTheBear has just defeated Normal Mephisto and is chillin' at The Pandemonium Fortress at level 32.6.

The general plan was to watch the merc kill for 30 levels and then start summoning bears on bad guys's faces. Well, after about 12 levels of pure boredom, the decision to max poison creeper was made. Now we have something!

Act 1 and Act 2 went by easy with one bad decision in the false tombs. I am not patient and my method of play is run into room, run out of room, and then watch attacks. That didn't happen in one particular room, so I started to run a lap around the inside. Well, there were about 15 beetles in there! I went down to at only about half life, but I was a little scared of getting stuck by the amount of guys in the way. I dropped down to p5 for bosses, Andy was dead while I was still rounding up things and Hazade was able to tank Duri no problem (I have him a damage circlet to speed it up). Drops were crap.

Act 3 was also more of the same, watch Hazade hit things with a savage whatchamacallit. The fire shamans inferno would take up half my hp, but I managed to not be stupid enough to get fully hit twice in a row. Nothing really gave me too much trouble. Meph didn't require any merc resurrections, I gave Hazade a life leach circlet. Meph dropped no set/uniques.

I have not had the best luck putting together mf gear. I have 10 circlets worth 20k+ saved, but 0 circlets with mf on them. I have found quite a few useless set/uniques and nothing standout for a summon druid.

And some pics to enjoy:

I made it all the way to the Stony Field before I found my first unique:

It would be nice to hit things with something, but oh noes!

It will be relegated to something I hold during Meph/Diablo (if my minions can damage Diablo at all).
Another useful piece for the Diablo fight:

I haven't figured out a PI solution, I am waiting for help from the D2 gods. They weren't in the helping mood, apparently!

In Act 3 Normal, what the hell? Switch Amp Axe to the rescue!

Best drop from Meph, it will do: (can I complain that the frw is so low?)

 

[Old_Frog]

Hallow and Mizan made it to Act V and man was that a tough, lengthy battle with Diablo. Eventually, I swapped out most of our MF gear for higher damage and resists after resurrecting Mizan more times than I can remember. Hallow would decrepify him weapon switch and run up and take a few swings with this rare axe found somewhere along the way. It was slow swinging but I keep it because it had PMH and I threw a perfect sapphire in it as well that I picked up from the forge. We also found Milbrega's shield adding to our off hand MF during attack.

View attachment 959

Here is a beauty of a head the Council dropped that I was hoping for to pick up Decrepify prior to meeting Diablo and spend all those skill points elsewhere.

View attachment 960

 

[Pb_pal1]

@sivaeB - Congrats on the Destroyer! I don't think I've ever seen a cow portal spawn there, very interesting.

@thefranklin - Welcome, and great progress! Wow, Act 3 seems very early for a Physical Immune to spawn. It's good to see yet another character with amazing boots, seems to be a theme in this tournament!

@Southpaw8668 - That is some major progress since the last update, great job! I just need your latest level and I'll add it in to the table.

@jiansonz - That is a beautiful belt! I've been keeping my eyes peeled for something similar, no luck though. That maggot boss sounds terrifying, that was 700 damage AFTER it drained ES? Yikes!

--

As expected, the Countess' tower provided us with a whole pile of PI Ghosts, so Calabi got to test out her now toy. I am extremely impressed by it, Berserk just melts the PI's so far, even on /p5. The only thing I'm not crazy about is the ctc flee, but that is a small hinderance on such a nice weapon. Having a reliable PI solution meant the Countess' tower was no problem at all. We dropped it down to /p1 for the Countess herself to increase the rune odds. Well, it's a rune I suppose. Oh well, onwards! The Smith was Extra Strong, Extra Fast and Cursed, which gave us some difficulty. I don't know what I would have done without the valk, as Kasim was less than helpful. To give you an idea of his role, here is an "action shot" of his favourite move for this fight.

The Jail tried it's best to Kill Calabi and her gang, as we had these two skelly archer boss packs (#1, #2) jammed in this small room. Yikes, those are some scary mods! Mass amounts of decoy spamming (she fizzled in about 2 seconds) and a lucky break with them concentrating on the valk meant that Kasim could pick them off from the edges and Calabi could stay the heck out of the way. After a few resurrections and some purples for Kasim, we finished them off only to meet up with these guys in the next room. This group was actually much tougher than the other two, as they had alot of room to move around, and it was tough to establish position. You can see in the screenie that the decoy was vaporized in the time it took to take the shot (ie. VERY quickly). We slowly managed to lure minions out, and then could take on the boss. Phew!

The rest of Act 1 was a breeze compare to that, and as usual, Andariel's drop was utterly useless, despite being done with over 400% MF:

Forget it, let's just get on that caravan and get to the desert.

The Stony tomb provided us with a lovely gift for Kasim. This will be kept on hand for Act bosses, or tough boss packs. The CB and DS will be very useful indeed. He will still wear his Tal's Crest for questing, as the LL is too useful to pass up. The maggot lair drew Locusts on all 3 levels, which is a shame for the drops. The lair is pretty much perfect for our group, as the narrow passageway let Calabi hack over Kasim's shoulder without being in any danger.

We met our first PI/MI Plague Bearer Boss in the Lost City. We tried our Lower Resist wand with no luck. The Level 2 LR was not enough to break the immunity. Hm, okay let's look at our options. We could shop a weapon with ctc Amp to try and break the PI, but with their innate 50% physical resistance on top of the Stone Skin, I'm not sure that would be a very efficient option. So we shopped an Arcing Broad sword with our LR wand on switch and tried it out.

Success! We just needed to keep the zombie busy with the Decoy (his Spectral Hit really did a number on Kasim) and we could whittle him down. We needed to employ the same strategy again a little further along on the map as we found our 2nd PI/MI. I think we'll keep this sword on hand from now on, just in case.

Full clear status is still on.

After that we just finished clearing out the Lost City and nabbed the WP, the ancient tunnels will have to wait. *makes mental note: mule in Teleport staff (yes staff, we haven't seen an ammy with it yet) before hitting the CVT this time!*

Finds/Notes:
- 2 more plain Colossus Voulge's. I have only seen these and Ogre Axes so far for elite polearms.
- The Guillaume's Face mentioned above
- Ruby (36% FR) Greaves of Luck (35%), stashed for potential gear swapping later.


[highlight]Conqueror Calabi the Axe-wielding Amazon, with Kasim the Blessed Aim Guard - lvl 82, Lost City[/highlight]

--

Here's a new table, due to the impressive amount of progress over the weekend, great work everyone!
EDIT: Updating Hallow as per below

Table of Heroes:
Forum Name     Class        Char Name      LVL    ACT       Area
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
jiansonz       Sorceress    Sissy          83     A2(H)     False Tombs
Pb_pal         Amazon       Calabi         82     A2(H)     Lost City
Zylo           Druid        Hoyt           59     A3(NM)    Kurast Docks
felixbavaria   Sorceress    Swoosh         51     A1(NM)    Inner Cloister
sivaeB         Necromancer  Toast          45     A1(NM)    Rogue Encampment
Southpaw8668   Necromancer  Hallow         36     A5        Frigid Highlands
srrw           Druid        PurpleHaze     35     A5        Harrogath
djmbbandie     Assassin     Natasha        32     A4        Pandemonium Fortress
thefranklin    Druid        FollowTheBear  32     A4        Pandemonium Fortress
ranagrande     Barbarian    Beldric        25     A2        The Palace
pharphis       Sorceress    SlamDoorsShut  23     A2        Far Oasis
Morathi        Assassin     Carrisa        21     A2        Lut Gholein
Jocular        Assassin     ?????          14     A1        Stony Field/Dark Wood(?)
jamesixgun     Druid        John           6      A1        Rogue Encampment

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Fallen (RIP):
Forum Name     Class        Char Name      LVL    ACT       Area
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Southpaw8668   Amazon       Contessa       15     A1        Andariel
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

[Old_Frog]

@Pb_pal - Hallow and Kasim, lvl 36, Just smoked Shenk, WoW how we get up there so fast!!!

Must have been a D2 LOD weekend, wouldn't want it any other way.

Nice writeup PB_Pal, LMAO at Kasim getting owned by the Smith.

 

[pharphis]

Nice action shot against the smith, lol

 

[jiansonz]

That maggot boss sounds terrifying, that was 700 damage AFTER it drained ES? Yikes!

ES only absorbs just over 100 points of damage (since I have just over 200 mana and only one point in TK). So a 500 damage hit becomes a 400 damage hit, then I take the full "overspill" damage since the ES is empty.

700 may be a little exaggeration - I may have been down a little from poison spits - but it was in that range. Certainly a scare!



Wow, you fought some brutal archer packs there!

We met our first PI/MI Plague Bearer Boss in the Lost City. We tried our Lower Resist wand with no luck. The Level 2 LR was not enough to break the immunity.

Lower Resist has no effect on the resistance against Magic damage.

Congrats on the Guillaume's.

Bad luck with the elite polearms. I've found a few more. Other than the ones I've mentioned, I've also found a blue GPA. What is your plan for merc weapon in the endgame? Since you are in Act II now, keep in mind that Fara can sell War Pikes you can use for crafting and chippie/regular/flawless gem rerolling.


--------------------------------------------

Other than Ancient Kaa, there were no Unravelers in the two big tombs. This sped up the clearance.

For the Duriel fight, I boosted both our cold resists to 85. I kept my shield setup. My plan was to do the initial tanking so Waheed could apply CB (from Strength) in peace. 13% blocking is at least something. My Defense is lower than when I used Haemosu's, around 3500. Waheed's is now over 5000.

I forgot to mule in a useful one-hander (Black would have helped...) so Sissy whipped the big slug with her puny lollipop.

Two merc resurrections in total, and 4-5 full purples used. Got most of it done with reds, nice.

Again, well over 400 MF at the time of act boss death. I was rewarded with a grailer:

"100% chance to cast level 37 Blizzard when you die" LOL!
But I don't plan to die...
Does this effect work on a merc's gear? Then it could be quite useful as a means to give Sissy a bit more time to escape if Waheed bites it (and it may even kill a close-to-death monster).

Sissy reached level 84 on the last little monster pack in the tomb. Only third time I've reached 84 in Act II.

Since no elite orb has dropped (at least that I have kept...) I'm going to mule on Black for the next session. It may be useful in several ways:
* Knockback (mostly to combat priest Champs so they don't heal each other. Black also has +200 AR, which will be further raised by Enchant and my Ring of the Sun.)
* +10 VIT. Never a bad thing.
* In case of temple stairs trap, I may be able to avoid having to panic teleport further into the temple. Maybe we can win the stairs battle if I go nuts with CE...

Only 2 full purples left (outside the ones in belt) but I usually collect several in early Act III.


[Highlight]Conqueror Sissy the Axe (and Flail) Enchantress and Waheed the Defiance guard, level 84, Hell Kurast Docks[/Highlight]

 

[Old_Frog]

@jiansonz - If CE is on a item as charges you can use it?

Hallow: Day 9 of our adventuring and we have found it to be both profitable and very exciting. We continue to help the Barbarians in their efforts to regain Mount Arreat.

As I study the Fire Golem spell to tap into its power, it has become very draining to my source of Mana, however not as powerful a killing source as I had hoped for. I often have to resort back to the my mastered Clay Golem in a pinch. He really has proven to be very durable as my father mentioned during my early training.

Along our travels we have amassed several runes and are looking forward to our first exceptional 4os polearm to make the powerful runeword "Insight", which I have read much about in my fellow adventurers' journals and amongst the local town folk.

We've made Malah very happy rescuing her beloved Anya, who in turn has aided us in gambling much of our gold away in hopes of finding more MF potential. We are currently running with 266%.

Hallow and Mizan, level 41, Rescued Anya.

 

[jiansonz]

@jiansonz - If CE is on a item as charges you can use it?

Yes, see rule #11.

 

[Pb_pal1]

@Southpaw8668 - jiansonz is correct, all ctc skills and charges are allowed.

Lower Resist has no effect on the resistance against Magic damage.

Well that explains it.

Bad luck with the elite polearms. I've found a few more. Other than the ones I've mentioned, I've also found a blue GPA. What is your plan for merc weapon in the endgame? Since you are in Act II now, keep in mind that Fara can sell War Pikes you can use for crafting and chippie/regular/flawless gem rerolling.

Good point about the war pikes! My plans are, in order of preference (barring insane rune luck for a high end RW):

- Find a good unique/rare elite polearm (obviously)
- Re-roll a rare elite, if I find one.
- An awesome Imbue (yeah, right!)
- Use up all those saved Pgems and reroll a magical weapon (I think this is the best use for them?)
- Reroll with other quality gems (although the ilvl is lowered, is this still worth it?)
- I've never tried crafting before, and would definitely give it a shot. If I'm reading the recipes right, then we can only use 'Safety' recipes for spear, correct? This doesn't seem like a very good option. If I'm understanding wrong, I'd love a quick run-down on how it works!
- Upgrade my 'Insight' (Not ideal, I'd rather have something with a little less cheese on it, but if I must, I will go this route)

As I said, I don't have much experience with any of these recipes, so advice on the best routes would be greatly appreciated! For now, Kasim's current 'Insight' Bec-de-corbin is still doing enough damage to keep me happy.

"100% chance to cast level 37 Blizzard when you die" LOL!
But I don't plan to die...
Does this effect work on a merc's gear? Then it could be quite useful as a means to give Sissy a bit more time to escape if Waheed bites it (and it may even kill a close-to-death monster).

They do work on merc's gear(AFAIK). Although the damage probably won't be stellar, definitely a cool option for getting out of a pinch, especially with the chilling!

 

[felixbavaria1]

- Use up all those saved Pgems and reroll a magical weapon (I think this is the best use for them?)
- Reroll with other quality gems (although the ilvl is lowered, is this still worth it?)
- I've never tried crafting before, and would definitely give it a shot. If I'm reading the recipes right, then we can only use 'Safety' recipes for spear, correct? This doesn't seem like a very good option. If I'm understanding wrong, I'd love a quick run-down on how it works!

Keep in mind that although the lower-gem-rerolling recipes lower the ilvl, this does not affect the affix level (alvl) for items with very high qlvl. Ghost Spears, War Pikes, Great Poleaxes, Giant Threshers (all shoppable), for example, can get Cruel affix (blue alvl=51) at ilvl 25 (chippie recipe).

As for crafting, keep in mind that crafting is like gambling with the guaranteed outcome of (a) rare quality and (b) certain affixes. Yes, you can only use the Safety recipe, but you can still get 300+ ED weapons (theroretically), especially with high qlvl weapons for which ilvl does not matter (see above). So if you have Emeralds and Sol runes to spare, go for it!

 

[Pb_pal1]

Keep in mind that although the lower-gem-rerolling recipes lower the ilvl, this does not affect the affix level (alvl) for items with very high qlvl. Ghost Spears, War Pikes, Great Poleaxes, Giant Threshers (all shoppable), for example, can get Cruel affix (blue alvl=51) at ilvl 25 (chippie recipe).

As for crafting, keep in mind that crafting is like gambling with the guaranteed outcome of (a) rare quality and (b) certain affixes. Yes, you can only use the Safety recipe, but you can still get 300+ ED weapons (theroretically), especially with high qlvl weapons for which ilvl does not matter (see above). So if you have Emeralds and Sol runes to spare, go for it!

That is very interesting! This opens up more options than I thought, so that's definitely good. Thanks for the info! *goes to brush up on item generation*

EDIT:
On this note, what are people's plans for Imbuing? I was thinking either merc weapon, or maybe circlets and hope for something very useful. Thoughts?

 

[felixbavaria1]

On this note, what are people's plans for Imbuing? I was thinking either merc weapon, or maybe circlets and hope for something very useful. Thoughts?

My general rule is to imbue only items that cannot be gambled. That is, elite weapons, particularly ethereal ones for the merc (they stay ethereal unlike when you use them as cube input!), Paladin scepters, and Amazon weapons (not useful for your zon though).

(I think technically you can gamble rare elite items but the odds are VERY low ...)

 

[Old_Frog]

Definately the first elite magical spear I find or can purchase will be a crafted safety weapon after finding several Sol runes. Nice surprise, woot woot!!!

 

[Old_Frog]

Researched with the Drop Calc and it looks like the earliest I can expect a magical War Fork to drop is Norm Baal. Maybe I'll get super lucky, but I can't remember him ever dropping me exceptional magic spear. Found many more of these and elites in NM and Hell CS. At what character level can you purchase or gamble these items?

 

[jiansonz]

On this note, what are people's plans for Imbuing? I was thinking either merc weapon, or maybe circlets and hope for something very useful. Thoughts?

With some builds, class-specific stuff is a good option.

I would normally go for elite weapons. Preferrably ethereal if it's for a melee merc. Clvl 74+ guarantees ilvl will be high enough for Cruel on a rare to be possible.

But Sissy and Waheed are now very close to an absolute BEAST of a weapon. That leaves me with three options:
* Orbs (but I'd first like to find an elite (or two) and reroll it with most of my gems)
* Circlets (but I have >25 million gold and will gamble up most of that first)
* Elite axes, if I really do not seem to find that Lem rune. I wouldn't want Sissy to have gained all her mighty strength just to wear a silly Boneweave...