Re: Tournament: Merc's Merc
Big update today, as I've been busy with Jericho and Alziheer.
We begin this update with an omission: I stated I was missing two Sol runes needed to cube up to a Shael (which I've still not gotten after all this time, including this update) but in actuality, I already had more than one sol. So either a Shael or Sol drop would give me a Shael necessary to upgrade Alziheer's equipment.
The final three false tombs went by without much hassle, except for a nice guardian two boss pack stack and
this guy, a tribute to Insane Wayne.
Act III began with a
nice find in the jungle. This is a very good situational weapon, enabling Jericho to break some physical immunes and teleport around at will. It will definitely come in handy against Mephisto, Diablo, the Ancients and Baal. Mostly against the Ancients and Baal, in my reckoning.
Here is a shot of a tough-to-kill
slug, like Alziheer, though mobs with the ability to curse him or cause him to move around, thus making my holy bolts miss, definitely increase his frailty.
And then it dropped!
Behold the key to faster gameplay! After realizing that I had two more in ATMA, it turned
this weapon, decent enough as it was and very handy at bleeding things out as they ran away, with the help of one of the two Hel runes Jericho had already found, into
this behemoth of destruction. Static field FTW! The OW is less reliable now but it has made the gameplay much faster, even at /P3. I even went to /P5 for some areas including Travincal.
Not long after that I got a neat
rare, though not great, but my weapons hadn't been great so far. Not needed.
While playing in these tournaments, for some reason my characters always seem to get
good drops from Witchdoctor Endugu. None of these were overly useful but I love rares dropping as much as sets and uniques, so this was a cool sight.
Also Jericho got a nice helmet that he might try to socket if something else nicer doesn't come along:
Loot. It might bump up his blocking a bit though, which I don't really care too much about.
About the last neat thing I found in the journey was
another unique exceptional armor. I might throw it on ole Alziheer for a bump in production. It'd cost me 96% MF though. Steep price for speed, and only some of that.
The council managed to kill Alziheer a couple of times, despite constant holy bolting. Usually it happens when he moves out of my line to attack something else and some bolts miss. Regardless, we got them and took on
Mephisto at a leisurely /P3. He hit Jericho with a couple of icy balls of doom but went down without too much hassle, dropping some
junk.
But I knew Act IV was short, so I started it on Sunday afternoon. Right out of the gate we hit a
Spawner boss pack, which meant I was keeping it at /P1. Dang things reproduce too fast. Here is a spawner
party with Alziheer as the guest of honor. Usually when they got that thick, some of the spawner pups would start to beat on Jericho, necessitating a red or two, or a quick flash to redemption to keep things safe. They were just as content to hit Jericho as Alziheer, though I never had more than two or three at a time hitting Jericho. That's just dangerous!
There were spawners all the way to the City of the Damned, so I went up to /P3 there, but Spawners again in the RoF. So back down to /P1 for that. Hellforge reward was
lovely but I already have end game worthy gear so no worries.
After stashing my gear (except that Spellsteal thank goodness) at the River of Flame WP, I continued on. The spawn was balrogs, worms and abyss knights. Not bad, but there was a balrog-abyss knight double pack stack slightly up the road from
here. I was able to lure the balrog boss away and Decrepify him as shown to break his physical immunity. Once he went down, only the conviction abyss knights remained in this wicked crossfire
ambush.
Alziheer, even when getting pumped full of holy bolts and getting rejuves, was crushed time and again by the missiles. He'd shatter, cost me 50K and go down in mere seconds all over again.
So I decided to use the spellsteal to teleport to the bottom of the screen intersection, blindly. There was a worm bosspack there with a PI unbreakable worm who was a pain to go down. But finally I got him down and we could clear around the back side of the abyss knights and conduct a
flanking maneuver. I think Alziheer went down once more but with Concentration he does up to 6K damage so a couple of whacks put an Abyss Knight out of business. Soon the boss went down and the conviction was gone and it was easy.
The Chaos Sanctuary was easy. Alziheer died a couple of times and I had my only NDE when a few of the extra fast minions of the balrog seal boss hacked at my cursed paladin before he could get into the portal. Dicey for sure but not 2 HP remaining dicey either. Probably 500 left.
Diablo was decrepified almost constantly, and he went down pretty fast. He did managed to kill Alziheer three or four times anyway, but the
result was never really in doubt. I did bring the General's Flail for 50% slow but I guess I never got Cleglaw's gloves, so I couldn't get to 75%. And it was clunky trying to combine slow target with the flail and decrepify with the Spellsteal and healing Alziheer, so I stuck with Decrepify only. It worked.
Also, after dispatching Diablo, I decided to use my imbues on Tiaras. I got
normal,
NM, and
hell, which stunk so I rerolled it twice with PSkulls and got
this. I think the NM imbue is OK for a physical melee necro.
Act 3 finds include:
M'avinas Tenet
Islestrike
Trang Oul's Wing
Volcanic Amulet
Culwen's Point
Rose Branded Circlet of Nirvana
Bloodrise
Tannr Gorerod
Venomous Amulet
Crow Caw
Brain Hew
Peasant Crown
Priest's Circlet
Gorefoot
Act 4 finds include:
Shadow Circlet
Witchhunter's Circlet
Sigon's Gage
Baezil's Vortex
Boneflesh
Rite of Passage
Berzerker's Hatchet
Sazabi's Mental Sheath
Jericho, level 85 Paladin, Harrogath