Tier 1 Skills Showcase Sept Progress Thread.

[logoutzero]

Hello fellow SPF'ers!

I've noticed lately that I really enjoy questing tons more than the endgame, so I've decided to start a sept project to have something to hold my interest.

I couldn't really think of a neat theme, and I'm a poor writer anyway. And, I didn't want to have the freedom to build item-independent cookie-cutter builds, so I've decided to utilize only the first tier of skills! What the heck...

The rules are simple:
[highlight]
Skills are limited to those available at level 1!
Synergies may be pumped, but not used!
There will be a shared stash, and all characters must play in the same act!
Single Pass!
Hardcore!
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Honestly, I don't expect any Guardians, but I am going to work on this in my spare time. Should be fun!

So, I suspect the builds will end up like so:

Amazon:
Fully synergized Fire Arrow, probably go with a high Critical Strike, with a decent Inner Sight to help land hits.

Assassin:
I have no experience here, but I'm thinking Tiger Strike with a big weapon, and maybe some Fire Blast for support?

Necromancer:
Obviously skellies will be involved. Maybe Teeth with some good synergies, or super Bone Armor meleemancer?

Barbarian:
BASH! With a Sword, Axe, or Mace.

Paladin:
Looks like it has to be a Martyr, I think I'll shoot for a synergized 'Insight' stick, with big Sacrifice and Might! Smite may also find some use...

Sorceress:
Charged Boltress FTW!

Druid:
I think this is going to be the toughest, or tied with the Assassin. I have no experience with Druids, but looks like I'm limited to Ravens, Poison Creeper, a Wolf with no attacks, and Firestorm.

Don't expect the updates to be frequent, and certainly don't expect any story.

 

[pharphis]

Good luck Mr. Crazy

 

[Mezion]

no story? awwww

About the Druid, one of my most fun character ever was a Poison Creeper Druid. Max poison Creeper, synergies and get +% poison damage increase if possible (like trang glove) and oh boy it gets fun. Don't let the damage on the tooltip fool you, its much more than that! If I recall right:

> Poison creeper is crazy and put a lot of poison nap on the ground (the amount depends on the amount of ennemies on the screen so you want some big backs to make it work nicely)
> the nap overwrite themselves really quickly when they are stacked, doing the poison damage a lot faster (something to do with frame/sec and poison calculation)
> recasting the creeper where you want, when you want for maximum ground coverage is the key
> poison creeper is, most of the time, underground. It's AI is also sort of smart and ennemies are easily confused by its behavior

so yeah, hot stuff right there. And once again, dont get fooled by the tooltip, try it yourself
p.s - max the synergies ASAP

 

[Grisu]

Sounds like fun ... and a real challenge

My thoughts:

Druid: Firestorm Druid is actually quite decent, but Fire Immunes are a PITA of course (and there are a lot of FIs in Hell). Although First Storm really only shines with lots of +skills. A level 20 FS fully synergised does ø1189 Damage, at level 30 it's already 2934, at 40 it's 5564. Also, there was a thread a long time ago about a Hell viable Poison Creeper build, but the links in the thread is dead. It had something to do with the mats the creeper lays, and the more creatures there were on one mat the more the damage for everyone scaled...I never tested it though.
There's a thread about a Poison Creeper build at the Amazon Basin though. Plus, there's a discussion thread on the lurker Lounge (search for poison creeper and posts by electricblue). Here's another thread on this matter. And here's the snapshot of the wayback machine from electricblue's summary about poison creeper.

Sorceress: you could Ice Bolt as a backup and for slowing monsters down...

Paladin: You could also do a smiter, or at least use Smite as a backup. In HC, the stun effect and always hits mode are awesome. Put on some Crushing Blow ("Black" RW, Blood Gloves), and Smite is a great boss killer.

Barbarian: Don't dismiss Howl as a crowd control skill!

Assassin: TS Sin is quite powerful (esp. if you manage to find a Ribcracker :wink. Fire Blast is a killer early on, fully synergised (which, of course, isn't possible, since it would require 140 skill points...) can deal serious amount of damage in Hell, esp. with some +skill. If you max TS and Fire Blast and then the synergies, you'll have an average damage of 538 with Fire Blast in hell, with +6 to Fire Blast already 1100 damage. Good backup for PIs.

Necro: Teeth is really bad without lots of +skills (351 without +skills, 21 missiles). But standard skelliemancer with AD seems the obvious choice here

Amazon: Magic Arrow as a backup for FIs/PIs is probably a good idea, too.

 

[pharphis]

I thought poison creeper didn't have any synergies. . .

 

[logoutzero]

(...)so yeah, hot stuff right there. And once again, dont get fooled by the tooltip, try it yourself
p.s - max the synergies ASAP

You are not the first person in recent times to talk about synergies for Poison Creeper. I must be playing some weird version I've bore witness to the power of Creeper in Normal, but not must past that... Thanks for the tip!

Sounds like fun ... and a real challenge

My thoughts...)

I will take some time to look through your links after this post, but in the meantime:

Druid is going to be a tough one, but, with your faith in Fire Storm, I'm thinking a slight investment in Raven to provide crowd control, might allow me to focus on going for whatever +Skills I can scrape together. According to your numbers, a +3 Fire Tree amulet, and maybe a lucky +3 pelt (chance for staffmod +Fire Storm too?) is close to doubling my damage, and shouldn't be too terribly hard to consider a baseline... I think I will spend some time reading up on this skill, and your links!

Sorceress is my least favorite class (ignoring Druid and Assassin, I have no opinion on them yet) so, I'll probably have a hard time keeping her up. Ice Bolt is brilliant!

Definitely will be taking Smite along for the ride on this Paladin.

I have tons of experience with Barbarian including extensive Warcry skill tree usage. I don't actually forsee any problems here, other than possible lack of AR, but there's runes for that...

I had no idea the Assassin bombs could deal that amount. That's actually quite a decent PI backup!

Ah Necromancer, my absolute favorite character. He's actually already gotten to Jail Level 1, wearing about 70% MF (+45% for merc kills.) He's picked up a few starter items for the others. I will be sharing a stash, but I won't be taking items from 1 character and passing them around. For example, once he kills Andariel, he won't pass his Topaz gear down to the next one, but he can pass chips, gold, and armors down to the next one.

Good suggestion, as usual, for the Amazon.

You've really got me excited for the Druid, I think I will start him next!

 

[Mezion]

holymacaroni you're right haha. Poison creeper is a synergy to Rabies, but not vis versa

my bad !

well then stack the +skills.
I don't know what I was smoking...

 

[Korlic]

Teeth is a very underated skill. I myself plan to make a dentist at some point

 

[KStuart]

lol one of my currently cobweb collecting characters is goofy my dentist may get around to progressing some more later this year

 

[coju]

kestegs played a dentist in a tournament and did pretty good with it, irrc.

Kicksin is level 1, eh?
Logout, have fun! I've wanted to do this to, but with only the 'first' skills also (level 6: leap/TP/shockweb, for example).

 

[Kestegs]

Did someone say my name?

Dentist was really fun actually. But that was HEAVILY twinked, including a stash of p&b skillers. I think my teeth was around level 35 or more and it was viable. It's also very mana intensive, which is a big problem. You'll probably be much better off going for a skeleton build, but if you can get an insight you could maybe make teeth work.

I've used poison creeper to great effect in normal and to little/no effect later on.