As before, the first report comes after act 3 normal, as the first time new character builds are worth talking about, so here we go. What's different about this team is the long grind up to 30; every build here except the kicksin is built around a level-30 skill, rather than getting started earlier as the previous team did. So it's at least somewhat interesting to cover the progression up that.
Paladin: For normal difficulty he's relying on Holy Shock first, which ramps up a lot faster than Smite which needs to raise both Holy Shield and Fanaticism. I'm going with 5 points of synergy for Holy Shock at the moment, and will decide later if I want more or to put everything towards Smite instead.
Necromancer: For act 1, I had a better plan than Poison Dagger-stabbing my way through as the previous poisonmancer did. Instead I learned from the melee necro: I grabbed (gambled) a crossbow and used that and Amplify and Corpse Explosion which were more than enough. And then I had another better plan: Bone Spear. That at level 1 was enough to kill Andariel, then I decided I could also put in 5 hard points now to use from act 2 up to level 30. Like the paladin's Holy Shock, Bone Spear is meant to be his endgame backup skill, but a few points now will make for a much less ghastly grind up to 30, and will delay the main attack's synergy only slightly.
Druid: Raise Wolverine first, because that's his only skill that starts before level 30, the only thing he can do alongside the 1-point werewolf skills. Wolverine can fit 10 points up to level 29. (This build is hellishly greedy on prerequisite points: 10 in elemental, 5 in shapeshifting, 6 in summoning.) Then max Armageddon (without synergy just yet, but it does get 3 points from its own prerequisites), then max Grizzly (in late nightmare when fire immunes start), then finish Wolverine, and everything beyond that goes into synergy for Armageddon.
However, for act 3 of normal difficulty, he went in a different direction. Someone found a pelt with +3 Fissure, so I loaded up with that and the synergy from the 1-point prerequisites to Armageddon... and amazingly even that low level of Fissure ripped through the flayers and other trash way faster than any melee approach would have. My other fire druid didn't get to do that in normal difficulty - he intentionally delayed Fissure to use the other skills first - so that was fun here. For act 4 this druid will go back to the werewolf plan against fire resistant monsters.
Sorceress: Her first skill to max was actually Fire Bolt. That's Hydra's synergy for later, so I could just start doing that right from the beginning to use early for the long grind up to 30. I could have used Fire Ball for this instead (same synergy to Hydra), but I intentionally wanted to go with Bolt specifically, for a chance to use that famously low-powered skill, and actually also to deliberately avoid Fire Ball for later, so that I'm not tempted to use it and overshadow Hydra.
Bowazon: She also has a use-now synergy-later skill in Cold Arrow, but it turns out it's really weak, it's like 50 damage and the AR doesn't work. So she did have to rely on a physical bow. And I let her put 1 point in Strafe to clean up trash like maggots and flayers faster, even though she won't really use Strafe later; she's not tight on prerequisite skill points as most of the other builds here are.
Barb: Of course his grind up to 30 for War Cry is laborious, but by now I'm used to doing that with 1-point Bash/Stun/Concentrate. For skills, he's maxing Battle Orders before any synergy to War Cry. He gets three things out of that: the life, the mana multiplier (not very relevant for most barbs but tremendously so for War Cry), and the damage synergy to his 1-point Concentrate attack. That totals enough value that I'm willing to do all that first as a higher priority.
Assassin: She has the most to go over here. I didn't describe the details of how I want to do this kicker build, so here it is. I intend to max both Dragon Talon and Dragon Tail, but not Tiger Strike.
Dragon Tail traditionally combos with Tiger Strike, but I don't want to do that for several reasons. I did do that build partway once before. There's not enough skill points for all of that without cutting into the other stuff a Talon kicker wants (Fade, Venom, shadow.) They conflict some in the weapon setup: Tiger attacks with the claw, Talon and Tail only want speed and skills. And finally I'm still sick of the charge-release martial style from the phoenix striker.
I want to play a Talon kicker with Tail also available as an option, so that's what I'm doing. They mesh well, using the same equipment (all damage comes from the boots) but changing pace from each other with neither dominating. Tail alone without Tiger seems decently workable by the numbers, not monstrous multiplicative damage, but a decent amount of splash on Tail's own. Really what I'm doing is taking the standard kicker/"flashdancer" build and substituting Death Sentry's splash damage with Dragon Tail instead. I want to play a dedicated kicker, not a gimped trapsin with extra steps, which is what anything involving Death Sentry would be.
However, that all said, I actually used 1-point Dragon Claw through acts 1 and 2. What I didn't realize was the mana cost of the kick skills, 6 for Dragon Talon and 10 for Tail, which was rather impractical on the low mana supply early on, compared to Dragon Claw costing only 2. And also claws ramp up better for damage early on than do boots. In act 3 I started using Dragon Tail more, once I could buy Greaves for kick damage and Dragon Tail's damage multiplier was ramping up.
Finally, besides all that for all the characters, the real truth is that as always, the mercenaries were doing at least half the work for everyone. Mercs just ramp up better than player characters as long as they have a decent weapon, which is easy with the savage polearms, particularly the higher bases of Bill and Partizan.
Notable items so far:
I didn't get a single Tal rune from all seven Countess kills, so no Stealth armors until later. I did get three Ith runes, and a Ral:
That's the bowazon's bow, 27 to maximum damage is quite a lot for the early acts, equivalent to +225% ED on this composite bow. And the Leaf comes to a total of +9 Fire Bolt (! - who knew Leaf also includes +3 Fire Bolt on top of the +3 fire skills?) for the sorceress.
Weapons for the melee characters: The paladin got a Steel flail to start act two (Tir-El also from Countess drops), then shopped a +Holy Shock scepter in act three. The druid gambled an early two-handed axe, then a maul, then used the Savage Polearm cube recipe. The barb also gambled an early sword, then a maul, which actually came with ED% good enough to be better than any of the savage polearms.
The bulk of useful items so far came from shopping Asheara at the start of act 3. I've learned that's an important step, for fire resistance against shamans and lightning against gloams. (Particularly with almost nobody on this team using a shield for resists, only the paladin, everyone else has a two-handed weapon or two claws or a necro head.) I loaded up on resistance belts and boots for everyone, and gloves with either IAS for the weapon-based characters or more resists for the others. In particular I got a sweet Fletcher's gloves of 10% IAS, best in slot for the bowazon at this point.
And that was the one interesting unique find, an Eye of Etlich amulet, that never came up for any of the other teams. I gave it to the druid, he's the one who most needs the +all skills (he's spread across all three trees the most), plus the life leech and cold damage. I also got a couple good starter skill amulets, +1 fire skills for the sorc and +combat skills for the paladin.
Finally: I got an Amn rune from the council, and a perfect sapphire by way of a gem shrine. That's the cube formula to upgrade a normal-tier rare weapon to exceptional, which is a great sneaky way to get access to a higher-end exceptional base item long before they can be had from drops or vendors or gambles.
So I gambled a rare maul in order to upgrade it, and got this nicely chunky beatstick for the barb, better than the savage polearms, even the -20% requirements helps too. (Although I overlooked that the upgrade formula increases the required level by 5, to 30, so he can't use it quite yet, currently level 28, but should hit 30 before Chaos Sanctuary.)
That's all for now, the first chapter of this tale.
Paladin: For normal difficulty he's relying on Holy Shock first, which ramps up a lot faster than Smite which needs to raise both Holy Shield and Fanaticism. I'm going with 5 points of synergy for Holy Shock at the moment, and will decide later if I want more or to put everything towards Smite instead.
Necromancer: For act 1, I had a better plan than Poison Dagger-stabbing my way through as the previous poisonmancer did. Instead I learned from the melee necro: I grabbed (gambled) a crossbow and used that and Amplify and Corpse Explosion which were more than enough. And then I had another better plan: Bone Spear. That at level 1 was enough to kill Andariel, then I decided I could also put in 5 hard points now to use from act 2 up to level 30. Like the paladin's Holy Shock, Bone Spear is meant to be his endgame backup skill, but a few points now will make for a much less ghastly grind up to 30, and will delay the main attack's synergy only slightly.
Druid: Raise Wolverine first, because that's his only skill that starts before level 30, the only thing he can do alongside the 1-point werewolf skills. Wolverine can fit 10 points up to level 29. (This build is hellishly greedy on prerequisite points: 10 in elemental, 5 in shapeshifting, 6 in summoning.) Then max Armageddon (without synergy just yet, but it does get 3 points from its own prerequisites), then max Grizzly (in late nightmare when fire immunes start), then finish Wolverine, and everything beyond that goes into synergy for Armageddon.
However, for act 3 of normal difficulty, he went in a different direction. Someone found a pelt with +3 Fissure, so I loaded up with that and the synergy from the 1-point prerequisites to Armageddon... and amazingly even that low level of Fissure ripped through the flayers and other trash way faster than any melee approach would have. My other fire druid didn't get to do that in normal difficulty - he intentionally delayed Fissure to use the other skills first - so that was fun here. For act 4 this druid will go back to the werewolf plan against fire resistant monsters.
Sorceress: Her first skill to max was actually Fire Bolt. That's Hydra's synergy for later, so I could just start doing that right from the beginning to use early for the long grind up to 30. I could have used Fire Ball for this instead (same synergy to Hydra), but I intentionally wanted to go with Bolt specifically, for a chance to use that famously low-powered skill, and actually also to deliberately avoid Fire Ball for later, so that I'm not tempted to use it and overshadow Hydra.
Bowazon: She also has a use-now synergy-later skill in Cold Arrow, but it turns out it's really weak, it's like 50 damage and the AR doesn't work. So she did have to rely on a physical bow. And I let her put 1 point in Strafe to clean up trash like maggots and flayers faster, even though she won't really use Strafe later; she's not tight on prerequisite skill points as most of the other builds here are.
Barb: Of course his grind up to 30 for War Cry is laborious, but by now I'm used to doing that with 1-point Bash/Stun/Concentrate. For skills, he's maxing Battle Orders before any synergy to War Cry. He gets three things out of that: the life, the mana multiplier (not very relevant for most barbs but tremendously so for War Cry), and the damage synergy to his 1-point Concentrate attack. That totals enough value that I'm willing to do all that first as a higher priority.
Assassin: She has the most to go over here. I didn't describe the details of how I want to do this kicker build, so here it is. I intend to max both Dragon Talon and Dragon Tail, but not Tiger Strike.
Dragon Tail traditionally combos with Tiger Strike, but I don't want to do that for several reasons. I did do that build partway once before. There's not enough skill points for all of that without cutting into the other stuff a Talon kicker wants (Fade, Venom, shadow.) They conflict some in the weapon setup: Tiger attacks with the claw, Talon and Tail only want speed and skills. And finally I'm still sick of the charge-release martial style from the phoenix striker.
I want to play a Talon kicker with Tail also available as an option, so that's what I'm doing. They mesh well, using the same equipment (all damage comes from the boots) but changing pace from each other with neither dominating. Tail alone without Tiger seems decently workable by the numbers, not monstrous multiplicative damage, but a decent amount of splash on Tail's own. Really what I'm doing is taking the standard kicker/"flashdancer" build and substituting Death Sentry's splash damage with Dragon Tail instead. I want to play a dedicated kicker, not a gimped trapsin with extra steps, which is what anything involving Death Sentry would be.
However, that all said, I actually used 1-point Dragon Claw through acts 1 and 2. What I didn't realize was the mana cost of the kick skills, 6 for Dragon Talon and 10 for Tail, which was rather impractical on the low mana supply early on, compared to Dragon Claw costing only 2. And also claws ramp up better for damage early on than do boots. In act 3 I started using Dragon Tail more, once I could buy Greaves for kick damage and Dragon Tail's damage multiplier was ramping up.
Finally, besides all that for all the characters, the real truth is that as always, the mercenaries were doing at least half the work for everyone. Mercs just ramp up better than player characters as long as they have a decent weapon, which is easy with the savage polearms, particularly the higher bases of Bill and Partizan.
Notable items so far:
I didn't get a single Tal rune from all seven Countess kills, so no Stealth armors until later. I did get three Ith runes, and a Ral:
That's the bowazon's bow, 27 to maximum damage is quite a lot for the early acts, equivalent to +225% ED on this composite bow. And the Leaf comes to a total of +9 Fire Bolt (! - who knew Leaf also includes +3 Fire Bolt on top of the +3 fire skills?) for the sorceress.
Weapons for the melee characters: The paladin got a Steel flail to start act two (Tir-El also from Countess drops), then shopped a +Holy Shock scepter in act three. The druid gambled an early two-handed axe, then a maul, then used the Savage Polearm cube recipe. The barb also gambled an early sword, then a maul, which actually came with ED% good enough to be better than any of the savage polearms.
The bulk of useful items so far came from shopping Asheara at the start of act 3. I've learned that's an important step, for fire resistance against shamans and lightning against gloams. (Particularly with almost nobody on this team using a shield for resists, only the paladin, everyone else has a two-handed weapon or two claws or a necro head.) I loaded up on resistance belts and boots for everyone, and gloves with either IAS for the weapon-based characters or more resists for the others. In particular I got a sweet Fletcher's gloves of 10% IAS, best in slot for the bowazon at this point.
And that was the one interesting unique find, an Eye of Etlich amulet, that never came up for any of the other teams. I gave it to the druid, he's the one who most needs the +all skills (he's spread across all three trees the most), plus the life leech and cold damage. I also got a couple good starter skill amulets, +1 fire skills for the sorc and +combat skills for the paladin.
Finally: I got an Amn rune from the council, and a perfect sapphire by way of a gem shrine. That's the cube formula to upgrade a normal-tier rare weapon to exceptional, which is a great sneaky way to get access to a higher-end exceptional base item long before they can be had from drops or vendors or gambles.
So I gambled a rare maul in order to upgrade it, and got this nicely chunky beatstick for the barb, better than the savage polearms, even the -20% requirements helps too. (Although I overlooked that the upgrade formula increases the required level by 5, to 30, so he can't use it quite yet, currently level 28, but should hit 30 before Chaos Sanctuary.)
That's all for now, the first chapter of this tale.
