For the record, Paladin done as well.
Pat thread here.
**
Time to report on some Necro action! He's now lvl 81 and just got the Horadric Staff in A2.
Picture of the gang upon arrival in Hell AS:
Very happy how this guy is turning out.
Life is 2.3k after BO, resists are fine, add 23% PDR from Enigma and SoE, and overall he can actually take a bit of a beating... not
that much though
given two S&Es in Amp+Might situations in the A1 underground areas that just seemed a bit too dicey.
Attack speed with Ribcracker feels good enough really, considering 14 meat shields. The 2-3.2k damage isn't super impressive, but it's definitely something. 50% CB from Ribby helps of course, and he can kill small groups of monsters on his own without any problems.
As for gameplay: Super fun, really enjoying playing a summoner who takes part in the action, not just casting CE and maybe tickling Baal a little with a Beast axe.
But I'm getting ahead of myself: Since the last update on him, we finished NM and gained a few levels from NM Baal so that he could equip the Ribby. Had to overcome some funky level requirement changes for that, as apparently the +7 rlvl modifier from upped uniques applies not only on top of the new item type, but rather also the highest level req used in the item. In this case that was the rune rlvl of 69, so we had to get to 76 before finally being able to use Ribby. But not nearly as annoying as e.g. the Arkaine's rlvl for the Sorc thank god... Getting to 76 was quickly done anyway. At that point he could requip all of his intended endgame gear except for Kira's.
Accordingly, at lvl 76 we respec'ed to the summon/melee build, got that extra level in A1 Hell to wear Kira's, and his gear has looked like this since:
- Kira's (IAS/AR jewel)
- Mara's
- Enigma
- eth Ribcracker (Zod)
- LoH
- SoE
- Rare ring dual leech/11@/26 LR/life/AR
- Raven
- Natalya's boots
- Switch: CtA/Lidless, which doubles nicely as MPK source when using CE.
- Merc (Might): Infinity, Duriel's, Tal's
- Inventory: Sharp GCs with life, some resist skillers.
Build is 20 Golem Mastery, 20 Skeleton Mastery, 20 Raise Skeleton, 12 CE, 6 AD, rest Bone Armor. I brought up CE and AD slowly, as I didn't want to regret the skill point distribution because of the Beast IG making a future respec painful.
That CE/AD ratio felt nice for his purposes, so the rest will go to Bone Armor for some additional damage mitigation (however little, not a huge fan of that skill tbh
).
He used Graverobber GCs first but really no need, both IG and summons are doing fine enough without them so far. While Raven is not needed for CNBF, I'm still liking its other stats for now. I'll probably reshuffle a bit and in particular swap out the boots, latest after Anya quest in A5.
Oh yeah, and there was this Beast IG business after all... it was made out of this, mostly just to get a stylish semi-transparent IG.
While the last couple of chars didn't find much of anything, he's got a few drops worth mentioning:
So far we're still on P8, but him and the IG staying alive takes priority going forward. So, might go down a little bit later in Hell, should I feel the need.