Beyond Nakedness

[Occhidiangela]

Decoy is now a bit of a hoot, since she takes us back to the days of minions blocking movement. Your build idea strikes me as sound.

Occhi

[KingOfPain]

MisGuided is the same build. There will be points to spare around clvl 50 for a side branch.
Do you want to use fire or cold? Pick one and I will go the other way.

KoP

[Zed-F]

I would probably take cold.

[Occhidiangela]

MisGuided is the same build. There will be points to spare around clvl 50 for a side branch.
Do you want to use fire or cold? Pick one and I will go the other way.

KoP

Shardik(BND) is no more. I deleted the entire account, which included all the HC's I'd been messing with. He's been scarce lately, and I can't seem to get on when you all are BNing. So, he's been sent back out into the wild to frolic about and seek honey.

Occhi

[Bam-Bam]

Don't Forget SkinNBones! After you left, we managed to make our way to Travincal, offing the council and crushing the orb. SkinNBones also managed to hit 24, which allows him to wear a nice eth demonhide sash.

Last night was a blast, with only one "real" PK--when Shadow roasted Zed's zon, thinking that Zed was the Decoy . Of course, I think QuietRiot's only death was mostly due to a certain someone causing a chain CE under his feet.

I especially enjoyed watching the random smacks at Gumby, who ended up being one-hit-kill fodder for QuietRiot's smacks, Zed's poisoned arrows, or Hapless' fireball. It seemed everytime I would turn around, someone would abuse poor Gumby I also enjoyed dueling curses, with QuietRiot and SkinNBones each trying to taunt or dim the monsters for easier slaughter.

Long-term, I will probably put a few more points in dim (2 now). Having several methods to isolate ranged attackers (taunt from QuietRiot, decoy from Zed, and/or gumby) will give us needed time to set shooting lanes and control the field. I will likely keep CE low, since too-high of a blast radius could cause more friendly fire harm than good. Use of prison/wall will be interesting, since teammate fire will easily end the skills ability for crowd control. I think most of my walls were getting fried by Hapless or pierced by Zed's arrows. My experience with the skill in single player does not see a wall dropping as fast as I saw it last night, even from LE bosses.

As to Shardik's fate, I'm sorry to see the not-so-old bear gone. Twas fun running with him the few times I had the opportunity.

[Zed-F]

*thinks about starting a vengeance/conviction BNP with an Insight staff/polearm for a weapon*

So many good ideas, so little time...

Maybe I should replace my BNZ with this idea since MissGuided has that angle covered? Thoughts?

If I did, would it be acceptable to catch up to killing D with solo play since that's where the others are?

[ShadowHM]

*thinks about starting a vengeance/conviction BNP with an Insight staff/polearm for a weapon*

So many good ideas, so little time...

Maybe I should replace my BNZ with this idea since MissGuided has that angle covered? Thoughts?

If I did, would it be acceptable to catch up to killing D with solo play since that's where the others are?

What? And strip away what pitiful resists your comrades might have?

I cannot think of any reason why catching up in solo play would be a bad thing. Maybe you would discover on the way any reasons why this build might or might not be a good BN one? Just don't delete that girl with the nasty Slow Missiles habit, eh? She too is fun to have in the game.

[Zed-F]

The nice thing about conviction is it would strip away all the mobs' DR too, making them near-ITD for everyone, not just himself. Of course, he might be a bit challenged in the defense department himself, but probably not much worse off than, say, QuietRiot. With other people providing crowd control, he might even be survivable.

Of course, another idea that just might be too crazy to pass up would be for an E-shield melee enchantress that uses an insight staff to spank all the monsters into submission. I think it would probably even be ok to goose those pesky FIs with TK.

EDIT: Having thought about it a bit more, I do have some additional reservations about both of these ideas. The pally might work but he's awfully vulnerable as a regular Avenger. QuietRiot has BO and Battle Cry to fall back on, and even he has trouble tanking at times. A staff/polearm avenger would have pretty much no defensive or crowd control options at all other than Vigor, and considerably lower life as well. He might be able to dish it reasonably well, but I'm unconvinced that he can take it well enough to avoid multiple deaths and the associated XP loss in nightmare/hell. I'm imagining him trying to get from the RoF WP to the entrance to the CS, and things aren't looking all that good. At least QuietRiot has the option to leap in/out of trouble.

And the sorceress... well, I am pretty sure AR would continue to be a big problem even with max enchant unless I made another exploding shot enchantress. Since I already have two of those, I'm not interested in making a third. Having seen what 1500 AR can do in a5 normal, I'm not too optimistic about any builds that rely purely on AR for to-hit. I could aim for Warpspear rather than Insight as my main weapon of course -- at least that has ITD and some useful +skills -- but I still have to contend with very limited mana pool by Eshield standards, limited mana regen, low HP, no FHR, no faster cast, no non-fire damage, etc. Certainly a staff-based E-shield enchantress is possible, but as a BN? Maybe that's a bit of a tall order. She has no crowd control either, and we've already seen how crucial crowd control can be for BNs even in normal diff.

[Zed-F]

Another point I think it's good to highlight for anyone considering giving this a try is that the lack of XP sharing really hurts even when you pick a BN build that is capable of killing stuff on its own, if the rate at which you can kill things doesn't match reasonably closely with the rate your supposed teammates can. Even with trying to share kills as much as possible ala D1, some builds suffer more than others and will tend to level more slowly as a result. This could result in a situation where you wind up falling behind your teammates or leaping ahead of them until some factor changes the equation, such as being able to equip a new weapon or gaining access to a new skill.

You may need to pay attention to how much your curse is helping your supposed allies, compared to how much it is helping you. A conviction paladin might wind up boosting a teammate's ranged elemental attacks enough that his own weapon-based elemental attacks just can't compare as an XP-gathering device, for instance, since they are either much lower output (ranger Pally) or require substantially more time and/or risk to use (Avenger/Zealot), and in any case can potentially be blocked.

Another point to consider is how many skill points it takes for your build to mature. A build that depends on several skills all working simultaneously to be viable (e.g. enchantress/eshield sorcy) will have a good deal of difficulty getting to the point where all those skills are available at a reasonable level. It's better to pick a build that will work well enough in normal and nightmare with only a couple skills that are crucial to the build, and which can add in additional skills later for extra punch or more versatility. The same holds true for stat points. For any weapon-based build, AR can be a crucial issue; your only sources of base AR are Dex and your weapon. There is no relying on charms, rings, partial sets, or anything else to make up the difference. This means that extreme measures may be required to gain as much AR (or - enemy DR) as possible just to have a decent chance to hit -- especially if you are a melee build and/or have a slow weapon. This in turn could impact your ability to do enough damage to keep up XP-wise with teammates wielding spell attacks. Some builds will suffer from this more than others, depending on how many and what kinds of +AR and - enemy DR skills are available and in use, and on how risk-tolerant such builds can be made to be while still dealing acceptable damage.

[KingOfPain]

Good points.

Tho, to my suprise, we are not doing too bad in Clvls entering act 5 at Clvl `26. And that's with only a few repeated areas to catch up teammates. We might want to do a few act 5 exp runs before entering NM to avoid heavy exp penalty. I usually like to be as young as I can and never worry about clvl vs mlvl (afterall, it only make a more challenging game) but I think the BNs can use a little help in that department. Last I checked, QuietRiot's CTH was 52% in act 5. Mind, the team is at an akward age and things will change for the better once a few lvl 30 skills come into play, as long as we are reasonably close to the mlvls.

Glad to see SkinNBones has grown enough to "run" with the pack. It was agonizing to let and watch him kill anything in his teens.

QuietRiot in the company of 3 rangers is ouch, ouch and ouch! And he could hardly kill anything before finally DOc or Shishak found a Bonesnap in another area of the game. Ya, I know, I have tons of good stuff on mules, but me actually using muled items?! Just isn't done often ;p

Anyway, I am so glad he is a baba with Taunt and Howl. You can see the problems he has with partners' back stabbing, things blowing up in his face or underneath him, monsters putting him into hit recovery, slow weapon and heavily mana challenged, and ONLY 50ish% CTH without Battle Cry... He is required to keep up the lvls on Howl, it gets too hairy at times. Taunt is great for stealing customers away from teammates and still avoid much friendly and unfriendly fire. Of course, it is also a great skill for relieving the pressure off teammates when they get surrounded.

I only wish the quiet guy is more "useful" in the curse department. Battle Cry alone doesn't do much with rangers. Hopefully War Cry (when he gets it) will be more of a pain to you all ;p I am going to look more into weapons with CTC or Charges to bring more curses in


KoP