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[2018] Tournament: Set/Unique Worshippers 2017 [by jiansonz]
- Thread starter Grisu
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Other than for added safety, here is another reason I picked a Holy Freeze mercenary for Hell:
Securing a third damage type. Since I didn't bring any Open Wounds, this is a must to keep full clear status when we run into this kind of double immunes. The Valkyrie here was one with a poison weapon. They are the ones I am usually keeping, although in one session I had one that outperformed Fazel in raw physical damage.
Progress is slow but safe. Going with /p3 as usual - I do that unless I have a very weak or a very strong character. I really want to find runes for upgrading exceptional uniques, and /p3 reduces the no-drop risk with regular monsters and chests etc. quite a bit.
Handling three minions makes gameplay interesting. Fazel deals the most damage but he is also by far the most vulnerable. Even the Decoy can take more heat than he can, and she's completely expendable (mana cost is minimal). Double bosspack here, sketetons and archers (and a zombie):
Slow Missiles helps a lot for giving us more time in situations like this. Decoy will soon die, and some extra time is highly useful to avoid taking some surprise arrows when that happens. I've found that I am holding sword + shield almost the whole time, which means I have my desired 18 seconds duration of SM. So no need for extra points there.
One of Viri's main tasks is taking out those pesky Shamans:
Holy Freeze does shatter bodies sometimes, but it's mighty tedious to wait for it to happen with a dozen or so fallen before my troops can get it into their head to attack the shaman. I am always careful when I advance to kill a shaman if it means I am going to tread on "new" territory. Who knows what dangerous bosspack I might wake up?
Here is what turned out to be the most dangerous boss (and pack) in the act:
They killed Fazel three times but that's OK, as long as I can stay safe.
Fighting Ghosts in the Tower:
They melt very quickly from Charged Strike. The stray bolts usually hit several others than the one I am poking, so there are often kills before I've even struck some of them. The boss in this pack died in that way, for example. I do not know what abilities it had. Afterwards, it dawned on me that FE could have been bad. Maybe I am far enough away for the explosion to miss, but maybe I am not. This one wasn't FE, though. Hm, better check the boss next time.
(CE isn't dangerous - I have 60-something resist.)
Entrance to Tower Cellar level 5 brought another Ghost bosspack. I saw Blessed Aim on the enemies, we got Amped and Fazel died. My instinct was to flee but then I saw that the Valkyrie could hold the line, so I took them out with CS. Fazel deals only cold damage to them anyway.
I dropped down to /p2 for the Countess, so I could improve the odds for getting upgrading runes.
Got Dol + Io, so that was nearly fruitless.
Pitspawn's pack was Extra Fast and camped in a caged room. Getting to the door required me to pass in front of the cage, a good distance. Even with Slow Missiles, this felt dangerous. Decoys crumbled in seconds. I had scanned for activity behind the wall on the opposite room with SM and it loked empty, so it was there I went after my rush to open the door:
I had a bad feeling about this (hence the TP). The battle was now occupying the only other possible escape route. You can see my Decoy, but at this point I didn't know (because of the wall blocking my view) if the Valkyrie had followed close enough to draw the monsters' attention if the Decoy should die (which it will do in seconds). Fazel Amped and slighly hurt. Two quick hits from those Extra Strong critters and he'd be gone as well. And then some Extra Fast spitters will rush me! Nope, this won't do.
I took the TP and returned all the way from the Outer Cloister WP.
(In HC, only take chances if you must...)
This one wasn't that dangerous, but hard to kill (immue or highly resistant to all our three damage types):
Andariel died quickly. I managed to keep her occupied with Valkyries (4 in total, I think) mostly on her side away from me and Fazel. Three purples, a blue and three reds were all the potions I used (most of them for Fazel).
Cleglaw's Claw #2 (Den of Evil)
Cleglaw's Tooth (Mausoleum)
Civerb's Ward #2 (The Cave)
Blackleach Blade (Griswold)
Boneflesh (Tower Cellar 2, goat boss)
The Gavel of Pain (The Smith) (<- how fitting that he had a big hammer!)
Magnus' Skin (Barracks, archer boss)
Milabrega's Orb (Catacombs 3)
Sigon's Gage #3 (Andariel)
Cathan's Sigil #2 (Andariel)
Hehe, you always find Milabrega's shield, but it took this long for Viri to do it (and now she doesn't want it...).
I thought "Nice!" when I saw an exceptional unique merc weapon drop, but it's slower and the damage is actually lower than on the ethereal upped Battlebranch.
Viridissima the Amazon and Fazel the HF guard, level 79, Hell Lut Gholein, 118 S/U items found.
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This typo made me smilejiansonz said:
I mean is it Pi-spawn (trigonometri 101) or piss pawn (..forum word filter kicking in probably).
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Brigid_Crane ventured forth some more in the last few moons. She felled Duriel without fanfare (Static Field is all you really need for any boss in normal).
She also got this really crappy ring, especially for a spellcaster in normal. Sold.
She was able to find three S/U items in the Kurast sewers, first Hawkmail (stashed), then Darkglow (merc currently wears it) and then the Arctic bow. Upper Kurast gave her Duskdeep (currently worn herself) and she completed Cleglaw's set in the Disused Reliquary. She won't be using it, most likely.
Mephisto dropped pretty well, and the Vidala's boots replaced a white pair.
Act 4 was fairly quiet, and Diablo dropped some drek.
It wasn't long into the Frigid Highlands before a beauty appeared before Brigid's eyes!
+2 fire skills! Greater mana regen and more than 20% additional damage. Nice! I spent the stat points to equip it immediately.
Good thing I had it too, because Anya gave me total garbage when I rescued her. Nothing is good enough for Brigid if it isn't green or gold!
Baal gave her Tearhaunch, which replaced Vidala's at the cost of some more strength. She likes the resists over Vidala's, though if she can locate the amulet, the tables will quickly turn due to the partial set bonuses on both items.
The Cow King dropped the Angelic sabre, which means we only lack the amulet for a full set (we have two rings). We also found a Skull Splitter in the cow level, and a boss in the NM Mausoleum dropped us a String of Ears with 14% DR. We may use that down the line. Right now our only other belt is the Arctic one, which we are using for its partial bonus of 40% MF with the armor.
Larzuk put a hole in and we socketed the Duskdeep with a topaz.
Brigid_Crane, level 49 Fireballer, NM Stony Field
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I have it verified now. Quite often, the Valkyrie spawns immune to poison. I have no idea exactly how it works but I suppose that she has a good base resist (at high slvl) and then some of her gear gets poison resist on it. Looks like there isn't any cap on the resists. I know that e.g. an Iron Golem doesn't have any cap, so I suppose it works the same for most (all?) summons.
Case in point (Valkyrie is just in front of Fazel):
She's the only one that Radament has hit in melee. All of us have been hit by poison breath but Viri wears Iratha's Collar that has 75% poison time reduction.
Halls of Dead had some tricky situations. The greater mummies here are the worst variant for Viri since they are lightning immune. Got to fight two tough packs of Champions - had to lure off all the skeletons to get Fazel and Valkyrie to attack the big guys.
There was a Mummy Sarcophagus on the second floor. I failed miserably with my first attempt. Fazel or Valkyrie took up a bad position by the sarcophagus, so it wasn't blocked and spat out about a dozen mummies. I fled. After I had taken out the mummies that first followed, I made another attempt. Got a Decoy blocking the thing, but still, this doesn't look good, right?:
Fazel in trouble, and with his and the Valkyrie's slow killing, Decoy will time out before they're done.
But I gave Fazel a purple, hugged the lower wall, then took out a strategic mummy or two so I could drag Fazel with me. Some mummies followed. More potions were drunk, me and Fazel took out the mummies and then:
Dry Hills had both maggots and bug swarms. Maggots tested my patience. Their poison immunity meant that every one of them took time for my companions to kill. I usually had to wait out one or two 'hide below ground' moves as well. Once I entered the Maggot Lair, I was already annoyed with the maggots. And sometimes CS didn't really hit bug swarms very well. Probably a game engine issue. Also, I wasn't feeling great about the decision to play today. I was tired and not that 'into it' as the session went on. But there is a swedish saying that goes: (translated) "If you've brought Satan into the boat, you'll have row him ashore." And yowza, am I glad that I did!
Level 2 was less tedious because it was mostly occupied by beetles, that Fazel can kill quite well.
And not from a boss, but from a regular beetle, I found Viri's first elite unique, which was also a grailer, a very famous item and one of the best that could possibly drop for this team:
Major game-changer (even though minimum damage is less than half of the upped eth. Battlebranch!).
Decrepify goes off practically the whole time. SO much more safety. And now Fazel dishes out high physical damage, 48% Deadly Strike and 35% Crushing Blow (which is far more effective vs Decrepified enemies). He can even kill swarms quickly now (well, except for a Stone Skin boss that showed up).
I like the pretty HF pulse sparkles in the breeding chamber:
Hsaru's Iron Heel (Stony Tomb level 2)
Berserker's Hatchet #3 (Dry Hills)
Goblin Toe (Halls of the Dead level 3, javelin cat boss)
The Reaper's Toll (Maggot Lair level 2)
Skystrike (Maggot Lair level 2, beetle boss)
Viridissima the Amazon and Fazel the HF guard, level 81, Hell Lost City next, 122 S/U items found.
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From the Amazon Basin:jiansonz said:
Base reists is (skill level Valk + skill level Decoy)*2 or 85, whichever is lower. Items can boost that above 100%. So if you have a fully synergised Valkyrie that spawns with a chromatic amulet, she will be immune to all elements xD
And an amazing find it is!
Thanks as always for your thorough and educational updates! I still learn new things every time you post an update
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I'm sorry to say that if you're looking for a nail-biting and scary character update read, look elsewhere.
Not only do Holy Freeze + Decrepfy slow monsters down to slug speed, I have two very tough recastable tanks (one is near-invincible if she spawns poison immune). Plus Viri herself can take a beating, having good resists, nearing 1300 life and some Dodge/Avoid (and 30% blocking with the shield setup).
However, I know what this game is capable of, so caution is still advised.
Fangskin's pack was pretty tame:
I didn't know that Holy Freeze can shatter cold immune monsters, but I've seen it happen a number of times now. You can still learn things about the game, apparently.
Tough archer that killed Fazel earlier:
I wrote earlier about the sneaking danger of FE ghost bosses, since they can be hard to see when other ghosts are on top of them, and Viri is in general very eager to attack ghosts. I've started to listen to their hits on my party. If there are fire hits the whole time, I take it slow. This boss if from such a pack. Unless it spawns with Stone Skin, the PI can be broken by The Reaper's Toll:
A trickier sarcophagus situation than usual, but this greater mummy species can be killed by Charged Strike. They are large, so it's effective on them. And with Viri's awesome weapon range, she doesn't have to get anywhere near the range of their powerful melee attack:
Once it was down, I could place a Decoy in front of the sarcophagus.
I took Duriel on /p5. He mostly attacked the Valkyrie (probably because she was closest) and he couldn't kill her! Got her down to about half a few times, but that was it. I had to go to town once anyway, to refill my supply of mana potions. He dropped this:
I found a Fine (3/14) Small Charm of Good Luck (7). Would probably have used it if my character was aiming for high physical damage, but it got stashed for now.
M'avina's Tenet #2 (Palace Cellar 1)
Gravepalm (Arcane Sanctuary, Specter boss)
Arctic Horn (Canyon of the Magi)
Berserker's Hatchet #4 (Tomb 4)
Bloodletter #2 (Tomb 5)
Infernal Cranium (True Tomb)
Sureshrill Frost (True Tomb, Ghoul Lord boss)
Isenhart's Case #3 (True Tomb)
Berserker's Headgear #3 (Duriel)
Tancred's Spine (Duriel)
Since the stuff I socketed in Blade of Ali Baba (perfect emerald and +damage jewel) are no longer of use, I've used most of my perfect gems to reroll jewels, trying to get some more MF. Skulls on a rare, the others on magical jewels with as low ilvl as possible but still at least 26.
I scored a real beauty: a 30/10 Sapphire Jewel of Prosperity with the white/yellow graphic. I now have max cold resist with the sword/shield setup. The other (empty) socket makes the game a little more fun because any jewel that drops might be what I am looking for.
Viridissima the Amazon and Fazel the HF guard, level 84, Hell Spider Forest next, 133 S/U items found.
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I've been long overdue for an update, so my apologies! I'm still in normal, so most of this update is pretty tame, but there are some neat screenshots. First, since this tournament allows the use of the ring quest rewards, Ormus was kind enough to give up this beauty:
Act three was a special treat on a Rabies druid. Rabies just trivializes the large packs of fetishes and flayers. I found a bunch of SU's, but didn't feel like overloading my post with the screenshots. I'll post this one though, since it was a Nagelring!
Mephisto's drop was disappointing
On to act 4! Most no problems, though Venom Lords are quite resistant to Rabies (who would have thought?!) A boss coughed up this gem though. One of my favorite finds for an S/U tournament:
Moving on to the River of Flame Hephasto had a nice bow on his weapon swap. Not sure if I'll use it on a merc maybe, but who knows
Disappointing hellforge, as expected
This might be the highlight of this session. It's like the game knew I was about to face the big Diablo!
Rabies is quite fun I have to say. It demolishes anything small like maggots and worms, and larger creatures spread it around really well:
It was a mistake to do Diablo on P8, though ultimately not a fatal mistake. Poison damage stops him from regenerating, so it just boiled down to bite and run in circles. I snagged this screenshot during one of my many instance of running from red lightning hose. Notice the town portal is inaccessible
Also, I knew Diablo could do this, but I almost never see it, and it happened five times during this fight. He bone prisoned *me* then spammed red lightning hoses on top of me. I blew through several purples to live through this because I don't have the burst damage to break out in a timely manner. That was scary
As expected, the drop is disappointing
Act 5 next!
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Wow, Act II was stacked with goodies...but I think I earned that, considering that those tombs took me around 12 hours to clear...but let's start from the beginning:
Not long after starting Act II, Langer Briser dropped in the Sewers, which added a nice boost to my MF. It's a bit slow for fights, but I try to have it on switch for boss fights for the final blow and equip it to open chests etc.
Also, my cubing spree netted me something REALLY nice:
Code:Shimmering Grand Charm Grand Charm Required Level: 27 Fingerprint: 0xe5c717e3 Item Level: 37 Version: Expansion 1.10+ All Resistances +15
I used the charms closest to ilvl 35, because they have the highest chance to spawn Shimmering (13-15 resist all). Now my inventory is completely filled up with charms though and every item I pick up has to be put into the cube...
Next was Laying of hands, which is only a small upgrade over Sander's (because I don't rely as much on physical damage), but still an upgrade (50% Fire resistance is nothing to sniff at).
The Battlebranch is a nice find, but The Meatscraper I found earlier is still better, even if I'd up the Battlebranch.
And then there were those really annoying Greater Mummies with hordes of skeletons and other Undead, and it was really, really tedious to draw those undeads out of the range of resurrection. Holy Freeze just isn't a reliable source of freezing and shattering corpses, and the Greater Mummies resurrected fallen undead faster than I could dispatch them, especially the fire immune skeletons. Champion packs of Mummies were especially nasty, and I had more than two situations, where a pack of champions spawned with a super unique on top of it...that's when I had to draw the champions out one for one, too, because they did too much damage and couldn't be stunned realibly (10 % chance to stun Champions/super uniques with Shockwave).
But...not all was bad about those mummies:
I told you about me clearing the whole level, then equipping MF gear to pop all chests? This was my reward
Being the rules junky I am, I of course followed the tournament rules and did equip it immediately.
However, the rules didn't say a thing about what to do if you found a 2nd Gheed's Fortune...
Let the hotmuling begin! (the 2nd one was indeed better than the first one (156 gold/12 price/38 MF vs 86/14/24)
The voyage between those two finds wasn't too spectacular, but I did find a Rattlecage, which my merc now uses to have some CB. And there were some dangerous bosses, e.g. FE Beetle bosses. With shockwave, you trigger their FE explosion damage every time you hit them, so one shouldn't stand too close to the boss while spamming Shockwave
And the omnious Ancient Kaa...
After drawing out most of the minions, I tried to stun him with Shockwave and then hit him as often as I could with Fire Claws. Then dodge his attacks, try to stun him again...rinse and repeat. At least he did drop a usable item (Pompeii's Wrath), althoug not one I intend to use.
I took on Duriel on /p3, and that was a close call...I used up almost all of the Full Rejuvs I had in my stash, because i forgot to refill the stash when I started to clear the true tomb. So, in order to save Rejuvs, I had to return to town about 3 dozen times...I also needed to resurrect my merc 5 times. Although my merc and I had close to 85% Cold Resistance with Thawing potions and 1500 life, both of us could only take 3-4 hits, and the Super Healing Potions took far too long to heal us up. The bear only lasted one or two hits, so I didn't bother to recast it, because then I would have been busy recasting it non-stop.
Eventually, Duriel went down and even dropped S/U: Snowclash. Not much use for me, especially since it is ethereal...
All in all, I enjoyed Act II most of the time, but after the third tomb I got frustrated because of those Greater Mummies. Fortunately, not all tombs spawned those, else I'd be mad by now...I hope it's not the same with those Fetishes in Act III, or I might simply stop doing full clears
S/Us found in Act II Hell:
Langer Briser (Sewers Level 2)
The Battlebranch (Rocky Waste, chest)
Laying of Hands (Dry Hills)
Death's Touch (Halls of the Dead level 1)
Soulflay (Halls of the Dead level 2)
Gheed's Fortune (Halls of the Dead level 1, chest)
Rattlecage (Far Oasis)
Tancred's Crowbill #3 (Claw Viper Temple level 1)
Butcher's Pupil (Harem Level 2)
Infernal Torch (Tal Rasha's (false) Tomb)
Dark Adherent (Tal Rasha's (false) Tomb)
Pompeii's Wrath (Tal Rasha's (false) Tomb, Ancient Kaa)
Gheed's Fortune #2
ethereal Snowclash (Duriel)
Oberon, level 84 FC Druid, and Neeraj, HF merc, Act III Kurast Docks next. 109 S/Us found.
[HIGHLIGHT]Set/Unique Worshippers Leaderboard[/HIGHLIGHT]
Code:Player: Name: Class: Build: Level: S/U found: Area: ---------------- ------------ ----------- ---------------- ------ ---------- ---------------- jiansonz Viridissima Amazon Valkyrie/CS 84 133 Hell Act III Spider Forest Grisu Oberon Druid Fire Claws 84 109 Hell Act III Kurast Docks OldSoldier AndrewNiteTorch Paladin Charge 76 76 Hell Act I Cold Plains Dezrok Roland Paladin Avenger 52 40 NM Act II Lut Gholein PhineasB Quinta Amazon Valk/Passive/? 48 26 NM Act I Cold Plains zoo Alexander Paladin Holy Shock 48 51 NM Act I Rogue Camp Caliph ?? Assassin Dancer ?? ?? NM Act I Rogue Camp OldSoldier Brigid_Crane Sorceress Balls of Fire 49 ?? NM Act I Stony Field Wolron Pam Amazon Bowzon 48 31 NM Act I Rogue Camp Dazliare Pestilence Druid Rabies 35? >2 Act V Harrogath Drystan Goldilocks Amazon ?? 32 12 Act IV Panda Fortress jiansonz Mirex Paladin FoH/Conviction 32 17 Act IV Panda Fortress kstuart Chocopower Necromancer Fishymancer 28 7 Act III Flayer Jungle Charlo Talameer Paladin Thornadin 26 5 Act III Kurast Docks ioupainmax Habacalva Sorceress Melee Enchantress 22 3 Act II Dry Hills GothamsBeard Envy Amazon Elemental Bowzon ?? ??? Act II Lut Gholein hackedagainanda Conrad Paladin Frost Zealot ?? ??? Act II Lut Gholein RedTang PaniSuka Sorceress FO/Lightning ?? ??? Act I Outer Cloister Oakbrain Olyssia Assassin Lightning Trapsin 18 0 Act I Outer Cloister TwentyMuleTeam TwoHearted Druid Fury 13 0 Act 1 Underground Passage
[HIGHLIGHT]Set/Unique Martyrs[/HIGHLIGHT]
Code:Player: Name: Class: Build: Level: S/U found: Area: ---------------- ------------ ----------- ---------------- ------ ---------- -------------------- Southpaw8668 Wuzhul Necromancer Skelliemancer 67 ??? NM Act IV Chaos Sanctuary Charlo KulKanta Druid Ele-Summoner 59 28 NM Act III Kurast Sewers zoo BorisTheBlade Paladin Holy Shock 56 33 NM Act II Ancient Tunnels Oakbrain Jathnolf Barbarian Berserk/War Cry 54 ??? NM Act II Far Oasis zoo Jens-Rune Barbarian Whirlwind 51 27 NM Act I Tamoe Highland Wolron Durbanex Druid Summoner 49 25 NM Act I Dark Tower Skunkbelly NewestSkunk Sorceress FO/FB 34 16 Act IV Diablo
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Well, generally speaking yes, but in my case actually no. Pompeii's Wrath has no inherent IAS, and that's crucial with Fire Claws. Without Shael, it's 16 fpa, with Shael 12 fpa. With my Witchwild String I've got 9 fpa (and 40% res all plus ctc Amplify Damage), with Doomslinger 6 fpa. Also, the knockback can be annoying, and even a synergised level 8 Volcano doesn't balance out the missed damage due to the lower attack speed. For slowing down targets, my General's Tan Do Li Ga would be much better (same amount of slow, 9 fpa instead of 12, plus mana steal on top of it).OldSoldier said:
Oh, and Witchwild String doesn't need repairing, which I find very convenient
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