Tournament: Envious of the Green and Gold

jiansonz said:
- Bloody Foothills, early on. I drew Burning Dead Archers and there was a nasty double boss pack. One boss was Extra Strong + Multishot and the other was Cursed something. I do not think that their arrows are pure fire because they devastated my merc and Decoy several times. I ended up luring them a few at time towards secured space. It takes a while to lure these archers - you need to stand in the small section of space between their awareness distance and their firing range in order to get them to move towards you.
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Dropping a decoy (or three) in the middle of the pack usually works in separating them. Works much better with rogue archers than with skeletons, but it still works ...

srrw said:
If I have the nerves to push her to later Acts and find some +mana, +mana regen gear she will probably become a fun character to play but I don't think I have that. I'm no jiansonz you know. :)

Selene the Blizzwaller and Chalan the Prayer merc, Level 50, S/U Equipped 12, NM Stony Field, most likely facing retirement :/
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Surely some points in Energy will fix the problem? You can respec later if you want to.

I decided to join after all :D Hagar, Necromancer has reached the Outer Cloister. For now, he has 1 point in each available curse and 1 point in Corpse Explosion. Planning on a poison build, but we'll see. I have made a crazily twinked poison necro before (Death's Web and Trang's set), so this should still be a challenge. If I get past Normal Diablo, the build should be pretty strong.

Resists are at 14/12/7/5, entirely from charms. One S/U so far: Stoutnail, on switch. Main weapon is a polearm stuffed with emeralds, fire rogue mercenary has a bow with emeralds.

106 daggers gambled :(

I haven't abandoned my Superunique tourney char :) She is in Hell, so need to be more careful. I'll play that char when I get longer play sessions when I am well rested, this guy for shorter ones.
 
Played alot today, only Frozen Tundra, Ancients way, WSK and Cows missing from Normal p8 full clear...Found Tancreds amulet, which would be great for its 78%MF bonus, but i need at least one more item from this set...Decided to try gamble for set Military pick, no luck yet, but good news is, that merchants are selling them very often and price is reasonable...Wish me a luck ;)
 
I've considered respec into FO/ES (if I'm putting points in energy might as well all go there) but that will leave no room for dex (max block) and vita (no reliable +life gear available).

For now I'll just consider her retired, but you never know when the struck to play her again will hit me. Maybe in an hour, maybe in a month, maybe never. We'll see.

And btw, why is everyone so scared of Normal Diablo? The only characters that have a real problem there are a Fishy (or rather an unprepared Fishy) and some seriously wacky builds with no option of ranged attack.

- Edit:
That's actually my 4th (or 5th?) attempt at a tournament Guardian that fails miserably. I should definitely put more effort into character planing before I enter a tournament so don't get bored/annoyed to the point where I stop playing it halfway through. I gotta keep that in mind if I enter any future tournaments/reenter this one.
 
srrw said:
And btw, why is everyone so scared of Normal Diablo? The only characters that have a real problem there are a Fishy (or rather an unprepared Fishy) and some seriously wacky builds with no option of ranged attack.
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One mistake and you are dead. BTW, I didn't mean just Diablo. Normal difficulty has quite a few dangers, the primary ones being Duriel, Infector and Diablo (personally, I'm scared of Radament, Pitspawn, Cold Crow, Blood Raven as well) . After that, act 5 is such a breeze that any character except the wacky ones will be pretty strong by end of normal that nightmare acts 1-4 are usually a breeze (except maybe the Kurast temples)

In my case, unless I find a unique dagger quickly (a good unique spear or polearm also helps), I won't have a half-decent damage skill until early act 5 and will have to rely on corpse explosion, iron maiden and so on. Not a happy situation.
 
There are various ways to deal with most of the monsters you listed easily. The only REALLY scary monster in Normal difficulty to me is Ancient Kaa. If you ever need to kill him in melee range without a mercenary you're dead before even trying. He can easily one-hit kill most of the characters with his melee attack, his unholy bolts hurt A LOT and there's the LE just on top all that.

In your case Diablo shouldn't be a problem. Yes, if you eat a full Lightning Hose you're gonna die but that's easy to dodge so are all his deadly spells. You can use poison nova until he's dead (from my understanding you're going poison build right?). It will be slow but safe.

Another method is Golem + Iron Maiden (thank jiansonz!) which is also quite slow but will do the job. In both cases you'll have an easy time dodging which means you're definitely not gonna die.

Inferctor's pack is quite deadly but can be separated easy if needed and most of the time the merc doesn't have trouble tanking with potion support. As far as Duriel goes I haven't had any trouble with him lately as I've been playing mostly ranged characters or casters but Max Block is a almost a must if you want to tank him successfully.

Agains Act I scary monsters the safest way any character can kill them is with poison potions. I personally prefer tanking them and drinking potions while my merc kills them because it's quicker, but that depends on how high my life pool is.
 
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Just wanted to drop in and say that crushing blow is insanely strong. I went from almost no killing power to instantly killing special packs. Thank you Bonesnap.

Also a question. Out of curiosity does crushing blow still work if you are in werewolf or werebear form? I was thinking about this after I looted Bonesnap and was wondering if it did or not.
 
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srrw said:
Yes, if you eat a full Lightning Hose you're gonna die but that's easy to dodge so are all his deadly spells.
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The scary part is if he jails you in a Bone Prison and then does the lightning hose or firestorm. Not easy to dodge anything then, unless you have Teleport, Leap (Attack) or Dragon Flight. You also need to be level-headed and not screw up in those situations. Like Cain says, his greatest weapon is Terror.

In old Classic 1.03 or in D2X 1.09, he could not capture you if you stayed on the move, but now he can.

Town portal can often get you out of there (you can usually enter it even if it appears outside the prison).



EDIT: a little tip for Ancient Kaa (or any other tough greater mummy): if you must melee him, try to use a weapon of range 2 or more. That makes it possible to hit him and still stay out of his melee range. With careful maneuvering, you can often find a spot where the charged bolts won't hit you either.
 
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Easy, safe and fast way is a Trapsin throwing fire traps. He has a hard time dealing with that and you can stand in complete safety in one of the "corners".
For a Necro you can do the same thing but spam Bone Spirit instead. Ama can use guided arrow and so forth.
 
jiansonz said:
The scary part is if he jails you in a Bone Prison and then does the lightning hose or firestorm. Not easy to dodge anything then, unless you have Teleport, Leap (Attack) or Dragon Flight. You also need to be level-headed and not screw up in those situations. Like Cain says, his greatest weapon is Terror.
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Since I've started playing SP (~1.5 years ago on and off) Diablo has casted Bone Prison on me once. ONCE. I remember back in 1.10 almost everytime I fought him he prisoned me. I can't really tell why is that, I have no idea whatsoever.

If he does it is deadly dangerous tho.

- Edit:

It's not even listed as a spell on Diablo Wiki. Maybe he got nerfed. Again.
 
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Well, during battle he prisoned Thor 15 times at least and once he used red lightning hose, while my paladin was prisoned...Still, it wasnt fatal, but i had to use both full rejuvs very quickly to save his life...I still play 1.11 btw., and Thors case wasn't rare at all...
 
jiansonz said:
The scary part is if he jails you in a Bone Prison and then does the lightning hose or firestorm. Not easy to dodge anything then, unless you have Teleport, Leap (Attack) or Dragon Flight. You also need to be level-headed and not screw up in those situations. Like Cain says, his greatest weapon is Terror.
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The scarier part is Bone Prisons are poison immune. A poision necro won't even be able to fight his way out. If I portal out, I'll be walking my way back from the waypoint, as D likes to imprison portals.

But hey, that's end of act 4. I'm in mid-act 1. I'll worry about it when I get there :)
 
My character in this tourney was jailed by Diablo twice in Normal and twice in Nightmare, and I play v1.13. I got out by TP every time.



Not how I envisioned the zombie garden fight, but it worked. Martina was safe there, as long as the merc survived. This is more and more one of my most feared areas in the game. Those Charge attacks can't be blocked and if you can't blind them or something similar, it can be tricky. I once lost a very promising Blaze/Lightning Sorc here in Nightmare. Over 700 life gone in an instant (I think it was just two consecutive attacks, but I am not quite sure since it happened so fast). Martina got hit by a Rot Walker Charge back in Frozen River earlier. I looked at my life after that - 220 life lost. These guys are deceptively dangerous, as they look so goofy and slow.


Icy Cellar gave me bad vibes right away. Entrance on the center island. The merc took two steps to the right and immediately, his HF pulse caused LE sparks to fly and both of us to get cursed. Abominable boss pack, plus a regular one. There were also succubi Champs (their shots are dangerous when you are Amped!) and a succubi boss pack PLUS Gloam Lightnings coming from off-screen. What an ambush. This is BAD!

Fired as many Immo arrows as I dared, recast Decoy, fed merc potions so he could hold the line but he still crumbled and I fled up the stairs just before getting mobbed. After rest and resurrection, I came down to this mess. Boxed in by the entrance but I noticed that the boss was not right by us (note the sparks) so I decided to blast my way out, killing the bigfoot the pointer points at in the screenie. Did that, ran down a few steps, opened a portal and kept fighting. That move pulled in more succubi and Gloams. From here, it's is where things went completely out of control. I fought in short bursts, fled out by portals a few times and the stairs a few times, must have resurrected the merc six times, used up all my full purples (I started the session with 8, used up two and found two in Ancients' Way) and all my super healers. At one time, I hurled myself to the eastern island to make a panic portal parking, which caused me to eat ALL FOUR Gloam shots from a pack that hung out there. Thank goodness it was still only NM and that I had recently improved lightning resist to 62 and life to over 800!

With my belt now with only 8 greater healers, I knew I couldn't afford to get mobbed or anything close to that. Finally found some peace behind the central block (once the succubi there had been lured to the other side). This was the beach head I needed, and I could use this spot as a base and lure a few critters at a time to us. Phew, what a ride Icy Cellar was! First time for this character that I have really lost control in a fight.


Ancients were OK once I managed to get only Talic to fight us. Merc had been Amped by Korlic so I had the Decoy occupy Talic and repeatedly pulled the merc away from Talic until the curse on the merc had expired. He still needed potion help (those whirls hurt him badly) but we managed the fight pretty well after this. Madawc had annoying Holy Freeze aura but was vulnerable to Immolation Arrow once I could get him to stand still. Cursed Korlic must have had a wimpy polearm because he didn't dish out much damage.

WSK 1-3 were relatively tame but the Throne level was tough, with Doom/OB Knights, Vile Witches and Horadrim Ancients. Annoying to have OB Knights getting resurrected but that happened only twice.

I had to take the Minions of Destruction one at a time, arranging it so that the Decoy was closest to them, with Martina right behind it to prevent knockback and the merc in there to do most of the damage.


Martina had 75% fire and 85% cold resist for the Baal fight. I used Crushflange and Sigon's Guard (56% blocking) for most of the fight. I had collected two full rejuves by now (one cubed from small purples and one cubed from six reds/blues and a Skull) but I never had to use them. It was a long, tedious, annoying fight but it was never dangerous. The drop was very nice. A more damaging weapon than The Impaler for the merc (he will miss OW now so I muled in my small Pestilence charm) and Darksight Helm seems endgame worthy with CBF, fire resist and CoS charges. That may be just the crowd control I need for stairs traps in Hell.


[Highlight]Conqueror Martina the Immozon and Jemali the Holy Freeze guard, level 74, 14 S/U items equipped, NM Moo Moo Farm next[/Highlight]
 
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I just wanted to post a quick update saying that my Phoenix Strike assassin is currently at the Lower Kurast WP (NM). Things are going well, but rather slowly for my taste (Jian would consider them speedy, I am sure). Duriel was pain. A proper update will follow later on.
 
Mentioning my Blaze/Lightning Sorc in my last post made me think about just how much I enjoyed that build and I thought to myself: "Wouldn't that build be awesome to play in this tournament?". Yes it would, so I have started one. :D

Flame (not terribly original, I know) began like so many of my Sorcies, whacking with her staff until level 4 so I could build up Strength, switching to Scepter and Small Shield (with Javelins on switch), hiring a merc at level 8 (Cold variant, which I do not usually go with, but this build is often closer to the enemies than most Sorcies so the shorter Cold Arrow range is less of a factor), investing utility points in Shiver Armor and its prereqs, Frost Nova and Static Field (level 2 in SF now, will probably be one more later). I am level 14 now, clearing the Underground Passage and I now have my first levels in Blaze and my first in Lightning. Not going to use much Blaze until later in the act because the short duration at low levels is annoying and monsters still drop like flies from my whacks and the merc shots. Andariel will be in for a shock, though. :badteeth:

Two chipped topazes in my helm so far. I am ready with 8 more sockets in our gear.

Charm finds have been great for being this early:
* Frost
* 6% lightning resist
* 3% lightning resist and +10 life
(the latter two are endgame worthy!)

I see that my main skills now have more synergies in the latest game version. Blaze can be made almost 80% more powerful than before if you max Warmth. But I think it's more important for me to get more Lightning damage because Blaze is already strong enough against the enemies it works for. Plus it is such a mismatch with Warmth - Blaze is the least mana hungry of all the main Sorc skills!


[Highlight]Flame the Blaze/Lightning Sorceress and Diane the Cold Rogue, level 14, Underground Passage[/Highlight]
 
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