My Holy Shock (FoH-to-be) Paladin has reached Destoyerhood. Gear setup changed a number of times during the last act, and even my merc plans have changed. More on that later.
As usual, I'll list the S/U finds first:
The Salamander (Bloody Foothills)
Isenhart's Case (Bloody Foothills)
Stormstrike (Crystalline Passage)
Venom Ward (Frozen River)
Sigon's Visor (Glacial Trail)
Milabrega's Orb (Halls of Pain)
Cathan's Mesh (Halls of Vaught)
Cathan's Mesh (Frozen Tundra)
Nokozan Relic (Frozen Tundra)
Griswold's Edge (Frozen Tundra)
The Face of Horror (Worldstone Keep 2)
Hsaru's Iron Heel (Worldstone Keep 3)
Cathan's Seal (Bartuc the Bloody)
Venom Ward (Baal)
Immortal King's Will (36% MF) (Baal)
Beren travels with his Prayer buddy Jemali, who's weaponless and hardly does any damage but his aura is nice to have and Jemali can soak up quite a bit of damage and enemies. That usually leaves Beren in peace to deliver his lightning attacks. He started out the act wielding Axe of Fechmar. Imps on towers were often lured off of the tower (by getting away a bit - around the edge of screen), then I used Charge to nail them. Or, if I found a tower with no imp close to it, hacked up the tower in 2-3 swings. I had boosted a few points in STR and spent a bunch of runes and was now the proud owner of the rarely seen Axe of Fechmar Military Axe.
Look at the imp corpses here:
How many of them do you think I hit with the axe? None! I was fighting two Crush Beasts in this position. All those imps died from a barrage of Holy Shock pulses! And HS still had a few (4, I think) levels to go at this stage...
Isenhart's Case on the Foothills meant no more topazed non-magical armors/helms, but I decided to socket an armor item with a perfect topaz to at least keep the MF at a decent level. My pick for socketing wasn't as bad as the Isenhart's Case Pb_pal is thinking about. I chose Arctic Furs, as that is going to stay on for most of Nightmare unless I were to find Arctic Mitts (or possibly Arctic Horn). I could have picked Berserker's helm, but I have hopes for better helms. Along with my Nagelring and of course Arctic Binding, MF was now +82%.
I gave Jemali Isenhart's armor + helm. The resist bonus wasn't needed here in Normal (they were maxed anyway) but the extra Defense was probably useful.
I used Crushflange on Frozen River and part of Glacial Trail, as I did not want to shatter the shambling undead there. The Knockback is sometimes really annoying, but since I was now using a one-hander, I could switch gloves to Sigon's and benefit from the large IAS from the partial Sigon's bonus (Sigon's Guard was my second piece). I had found Stormstrike on Crystalline Passage, but the lack of IAS made it a less attractive option for the moment. And with either of those setups, I was whiffing notably often.
Then in the Glacial Trail, a fantastic find in the form of Sigon's Visor changed the whole situation. This helm solved both my problems. I can now have +30% IAS with any weapon, and with a large AR bonus as well! Wow.
Beren now became a Shock Ranger for a while. The piercing on Stormstrike was awesome!
Jemali can't tank large mobs for long, but he doesn't need to when the enemies drop like flies.
As you can see from the list above, more MF gear turned up in Nilly's temple. The "cursed" green shield of greed. Of course I'll use it! Blocking dropped from 75% to 45% (well, 45% only if I can be bothered to cast Holy Shield...)
And back to the bother of the knockback, but that only last for the rest of this session (plus the fire resist on Crushflange was good insurance against Nilly's CE madness).
I switched to Tancred's Crowbill, a much more convenient weapon for regular play than Crushflange, and it's also faster. The rest of the act was even more of a breeze. It was nice to find items that fit my two empty jewelry slots. Nokozan was very welcome because my fire resist was only 15% at this time, and there's a lot of fiery stuff going on on the Tundra.
Ookay, still no weapon for a desert guard, and with the high-roll IK Helm, I've decided to abandon my attempt to get the Prayer merc completed for my merc dodecavirate in SPF tournies, and will soon hire an Act V merc. The Prayer thing was never that good an idea for this tourney anyway, since it's more suited for a merc that uses Insight, and with a character that can benefit a lot from both mana- and life regeneration. Nova sorc and the likes comes to mind. Jemali will probably hang around a little more, but as soon as I find another Sol rune I can upgrade Griswold's Edge and then I'll make the switch, if not sooner (not sure how a merc will fare with a regular Griswold's when he's helped only by level 1 Might or Conviction).
Destroyer Beren the (for now) Holy Shock Paladin and Jemali the Prayer guard, level 48, Moo Moo Farm next
