naranjadita
Diabloii.Net Member
Hello everyone.
I've finished another character and I'd like to share the joy of the moment with you
Ever since I've learnt that Blade Fury is a solid skill to wrap a build around, I was eager to create a corresponding character. The itch became even stronger when I got my paws on this thread.
I've spent quite a lot of time calculating the damage output with a bunch of high end items - I used different setups in my calculations, I compared results, I enjoyed messing with the numbers - this is almost as fun as actually playing once you've accumulated some wealth and spent several years in the game.
However, I decided to push the idea further - I started wondering, whether a BF assassin is good if played untwinked. So, I took a pencil once again and, with some plans and build options written down, I created a new character.
The journey was quite long - I don't play as much as I used to these days. But everything comes to its end sooner or later, and so did this journey. Meet Guardian Shmassassin (oh shut up <_<), level 85 assassin.
Have a look at skills and items and numbers, with Might and Fade active.
The Build
It is obvious that the better your weapon is, the better your shurikens damage output is. But according to the abovementioned thread and my own calculations, Blade Fury can deal some considerable damage if provided with a healthy amount of + Trap Skills. With this in mind, I decided that lightning traps should be a good additional source of damage and a viable solution to PI problem.
The other problem I needed to solve was a severe lack of attack rating. So I went for high dex and str. Apart from high base AR, this gave me the following pros:
- high block chance should I decide to go shield/1-hander route instead of claw/claw one.
- very wide range of equippable items (due to stat requirements)
- a significant stat bonus to weapon damage as I was going to use either a claw or a dagger.
Well, the AR problem wasn't entirely solved, as I didn't want to use a BA mercenary, but - and I really mean it - this was the unluckiest character I've ever played in terms of drops - so I was unable to get even a visionary circlet, leave alone a Demon Limb or Lava Gout. But more on that later.
Usual shadow one-pointers are usual and expected. Shadow Master is a one-pointer, too - actually, I was going to max it, but it was really irritating when she replaced my traps, so I decided to put skill points elsewhere (Claw Mastery, as I did have a claw that was good enough to be an endgame weapon).
Equipment
Oooh this is the most interesting part.
When the character came into her fifties - when I started using all my skills - shadow, minion traps and blade fury - I found out that the character needs EVERYTHING. Here's what I mean here:
- as a low vit character, she needs good FHR if shadow skills fail to save her hide.
- for the very same reason, she heeds some FCR so that shadow skills became actually usable against quick monsters like dolls and flayers and extra fast everything.
- for the sake of balance, the character needs IAS. You seem she uses Fade for obvous reasons, so for fast trap layout this was essential. With slow traps, the first trap expired very soon after the fifth one was layed, and that levt very little time for astually using Blade Fury - thus drastically redusing the performance and even killing the build idea itself.
- Blade Fury needs accuracy, so a viable bonus to AR was a must.
- Traps need skill bonus.
On top of that, she needs all the usual stuff - leech, resists, life.
Well, the current gear set up does have all that. I'd like to comment on a few pieces.
1). 'Spirit' shield.
I've been looking for a base literally for weeks! And the first monarch I got had no sockets. You should see my face when it got 4 sockets from the cube recipie. The shield has everything!
- Resists.
- Life.
- Mana (from this point, Insight became really useful as Medi kicked in for real)
- FHR over 9000.
- FCR.
- Skills to strenghten both lightning damage and physical damage.
- 75% block (vs whatever is provided by Weapon Block)
Needless to say, I was really happy to replace the old off-hand claw with the shield.
2). 'Peace' armour.
I've been using 'Peace' from early nightmare. Runes are common, so I could afford making new armours whenever I found a better base. The armour has FHR and a Critical Strike oskill. This is the tits! with +skills 'Spirit' provided, this armour alone granted 38% chance of Critical Strike.
CTC Valk was too rare to rely on steadily, but it was fun :3
3). Weapon.
I was lucky enough to find a rare claw with Fool's prefix and some other mods, too.
But I was really lucky when I found another rare claw from a random NM Chaos Sanctuary run. It had Fool's, Screaming, Strange and of Vileness mods! True, I'd be more glad to see a Cruel or Etherial topping that, but I was happy to keep what I got, so I upped the claw and added a socket to it (in retrospect, I should have put an Eth in it, but I totally forgot about this option for some reason).
Also, I managed to find the General's Flail (later - Pompeii's Wrath) and used it against act bosses and the Ancients.
Gameplay.
The game started pretty easy - I used Blade Fury from late A1 Norm, and managed to get good +AR gear befor the accuracy problems could have kicked in in early game.
Then, I started to include lightning traps into the list of skills I used on regular basis. The mana consumption skyrocketed, so I had to use 'Insight' (not like I did have a better option, duh). And with that and after I got my equipment priorities straight, the game went smooth. Shadow skills saved my butt from ranged attackers - heck, even gloams were pretty harmless!
I did have some issues, however (an NDE due to me being inattentive, and some usual assassin crap).
General "workflow" was as follows:
- cast cloak of shadows/Mind blast, if necessary
- place traps
- throw blades
And it worked wonders. Very few monsters I encountered were really tough against that. This includes 3 LI+PI bosses, some kind of minotauri (those were PI and had enough life and lit resist to make me frown) and A5 Gloams (CoS rendered those harmless, but they are LI and have 90% damage resist so they took a bit more time than I'd like to spend on them).
I was even reckless enough to go for Hell Hihlathak!
Monster rolls were pretty easy everywhere except for Halls of Vaught. There I ran into the infamous snakes, PI witches and reanimated soldiers. I did have some reasons to get nervous at that point, hehe.
Anyway, I killed Nilly - and after I removed snakes and whatever else from the place that wasn't too hard - and got a Personalization reward, which I didn't use due to stupid character name (I wanted to rename her just for this but still couldn't come up with anything. Well, I did have an option - Banana - but then I imagined Banana's Plague Fist and rejected the idea).
Then, there were the Ancients. Unlike I always do, I lowered player settings from 3 to 1 here. Mainly because I suddenly remembered someone on these forums saying a few years ago "I had this character, she rocked the game, but Hell Ancients squashed her like a grape".
Well, turns out that I could have done than on higher player settings. The only LI was Madawc - again, I got cocky and facetanked him. Lol, I blocked five axe throws in a row! But then I got amp'ed I had to fearlessly hide behind my merc and shadow.
Korlic and Talic were not LI, so I just ran in circles placing traps here and there. Benny Hill musical theme would have been appropriate here, I guess.
WSK moster rolls were pretty easy.
Then there was Baal, who was slowed (Pompeii's Wrath) and didn't pose much of a threat. Boom.
Drops.
C-R-A-P-P-Y.
Seriously, this character was lucky, like, 4 times - first rare claw, second rare claw, rare sorc ammy and white monarch <_< The only elite unique item I got is pretty useless - Boneshade lich wand (almost perfect roll, though - lacks 1 bonus point to Teeth but who cares).
Hellforge wasn't good. NM one wasn't even worth remembering, and Hell one was Lum. The highest overal rune drop was Pul.
Conclusion.
That was fun! the character is both strong and balanced. With proper gear, I'd expect such assassin to be quite powerful.
However, I don't know if I'd play her past mid-NM if I hadn't got the Fool's weapon.
.
.
.
Ummm.. thanks for reading, I guess?
Also, the first Guardian of 2014
I've finished another character and I'd like to share the joy of the moment with you
Ever since I've learnt that Blade Fury is a solid skill to wrap a build around, I was eager to create a corresponding character. The itch became even stronger when I got my paws on this thread.
I've spent quite a lot of time calculating the damage output with a bunch of high end items - I used different setups in my calculations, I compared results, I enjoyed messing with the numbers - this is almost as fun as actually playing once you've accumulated some wealth and spent several years in the game.
However, I decided to push the idea further - I started wondering, whether a BF assassin is good if played untwinked. So, I took a pencil once again and, with some plans and build options written down, I created a new character.
The journey was quite long - I don't play as much as I used to these days. But everything comes to its end sooner or later, and so did this journey. Meet Guardian Shmassassin (oh shut up <_<), level 85 assassin.
Have a look at skills and items and numbers, with Might and Fade active.
The Build
It is obvious that the better your weapon is, the better your shurikens damage output is. But according to the abovementioned thread and my own calculations, Blade Fury can deal some considerable damage if provided with a healthy amount of + Trap Skills. With this in mind, I decided that lightning traps should be a good additional source of damage and a viable solution to PI problem.
The other problem I needed to solve was a severe lack of attack rating. So I went for high dex and str. Apart from high base AR, this gave me the following pros:
- high block chance should I decide to go shield/1-hander route instead of claw/claw one.
- very wide range of equippable items (due to stat requirements)
- a significant stat bonus to weapon damage as I was going to use either a claw or a dagger.
Well, the AR problem wasn't entirely solved, as I didn't want to use a BA mercenary, but - and I really mean it - this was the unluckiest character I've ever played in terms of drops - so I was unable to get even a visionary circlet, leave alone a Demon Limb or Lava Gout. But more on that later.
Usual shadow one-pointers are usual and expected. Shadow Master is a one-pointer, too - actually, I was going to max it, but it was really irritating when she replaced my traps, so I decided to put skill points elsewhere (Claw Mastery, as I did have a claw that was good enough to be an endgame weapon).
Equipment
Oooh this is the most interesting part.
When the character came into her fifties - when I started using all my skills - shadow, minion traps and blade fury - I found out that the character needs EVERYTHING. Here's what I mean here:
- as a low vit character, she needs good FHR if shadow skills fail to save her hide.
- for the very same reason, she heeds some FCR so that shadow skills became actually usable against quick monsters like dolls and flayers and extra fast everything.
- for the sake of balance, the character needs IAS. You seem she uses Fade for obvous reasons, so for fast trap layout this was essential. With slow traps, the first trap expired very soon after the fifth one was layed, and that levt very little time for astually using Blade Fury - thus drastically redusing the performance and even killing the build idea itself.
- Blade Fury needs accuracy, so a viable bonus to AR was a must.
- Traps need skill bonus.
On top of that, she needs all the usual stuff - leech, resists, life.
Well, the current gear set up does have all that. I'd like to comment on a few pieces.
1). 'Spirit' shield.
I've been looking for a base literally for weeks! And the first monarch I got had no sockets. You should see my face when it got 4 sockets from the cube recipie. The shield has everything!
- Resists.
- Life.
- Mana (from this point, Insight became really useful as Medi kicked in for real)
- FHR over 9000.
- FCR.
- Skills to strenghten both lightning damage and physical damage.
- 75% block (vs whatever is provided by Weapon Block)
Needless to say, I was really happy to replace the old off-hand claw with the shield.
2). 'Peace' armour.
I've been using 'Peace' from early nightmare. Runes are common, so I could afford making new armours whenever I found a better base. The armour has FHR and a Critical Strike oskill. This is the tits! with +skills 'Spirit' provided, this armour alone granted 38% chance of Critical Strike.
CTC Valk was too rare to rely on steadily, but it was fun :3
3). Weapon.
I was lucky enough to find a rare claw with Fool's prefix and some other mods, too.
But I was really lucky when I found another rare claw from a random NM Chaos Sanctuary run. It had Fool's, Screaming, Strange and of Vileness mods! True, I'd be more glad to see a Cruel or Etherial topping that, but I was happy to keep what I got, so I upped the claw and added a socket to it (in retrospect, I should have put an Eth in it, but I totally forgot about this option for some reason).
Also, I managed to find the General's Flail (later - Pompeii's Wrath) and used it against act bosses and the Ancients.
Gameplay.
The game started pretty easy - I used Blade Fury from late A1 Norm, and managed to get good +AR gear befor the accuracy problems could have kicked in in early game.
Then, I started to include lightning traps into the list of skills I used on regular basis. The mana consumption skyrocketed, so I had to use 'Insight' (not like I did have a better option, duh). And with that and after I got my equipment priorities straight, the game went smooth. Shadow skills saved my butt from ranged attackers - heck, even gloams were pretty harmless!
I did have some issues, however (an NDE due to me being inattentive, and some usual assassin crap).
General "workflow" was as follows:
- cast cloak of shadows/Mind blast, if necessary
- place traps
- throw blades
And it worked wonders. Very few monsters I encountered were really tough against that. This includes 3 LI+PI bosses, some kind of minotauri (those were PI and had enough life and lit resist to make me frown) and A5 Gloams (CoS rendered those harmless, but they are LI and have 90% damage resist so they took a bit more time than I'd like to spend on them).
I was even reckless enough to go for Hell Hihlathak!
Monster rolls were pretty easy everywhere except for Halls of Vaught. There I ran into the infamous snakes, PI witches and reanimated soldiers. I did have some reasons to get nervous at that point, hehe.
Anyway, I killed Nilly - and after I removed snakes and whatever else from the place that wasn't too hard - and got a Personalization reward, which I didn't use due to stupid character name (I wanted to rename her just for this but still couldn't come up with anything. Well, I did have an option - Banana - but then I imagined Banana's Plague Fist and rejected the idea).
Then, there were the Ancients. Unlike I always do, I lowered player settings from 3 to 1 here. Mainly because I suddenly remembered someone on these forums saying a few years ago "I had this character, she rocked the game, but Hell Ancients squashed her like a grape".
Well, turns out that I could have done than on higher player settings. The only LI was Madawc - again, I got cocky and facetanked him. Lol, I blocked five axe throws in a row! But then I got amp'ed I had to fearlessly hide behind my merc and shadow.
Korlic and Talic were not LI, so I just ran in circles placing traps here and there. Benny Hill musical theme would have been appropriate here, I guess.
WSK moster rolls were pretty easy.
Then there was Baal, who was slowed (Pompeii's Wrath) and didn't pose much of a threat. Boom.
Drops.
C-R-A-P-P-Y.
Seriously, this character was lucky, like, 4 times - first rare claw, second rare claw, rare sorc ammy and white monarch <_< The only elite unique item I got is pretty useless - Boneshade lich wand (almost perfect roll, though - lacks 1 bonus point to Teeth but who cares).
Hellforge wasn't good. NM one wasn't even worth remembering, and Hell one was Lum. The highest overal rune drop was Pul.
Conclusion.
That was fun! the character is both strong and balanced. With proper gear, I'd expect such assassin to be quite powerful.
However, I don't know if I'd play her past mid-NM if I hadn't got the Fool's weapon.
.
.
.
Ummm.. thanks for reading, I guess?
Also, the first Guardian of 2014
