Grizabella, the Realistic Fighter Mage

[MongoJerry]

GRIZABELLA: ACT IV

Flush with success from my adventures in Act III, I was feeling cocky -- cocky and a little tired. My "hardcore spidey sense" was tingling, telling me that to go on in this state would be dangerous and that maybe I should take a break for a while. I ignored it and stepped out onto the Outer Steppes.

I charged forward and met a pack of Flesh Spawners. Cold immune. No problem. I started Zealing them, and a might enchanted boss pack of fire immune Pit Lords came from below and more monsters came from above. Uh, oh. I tried to recover, but every time I ran or teleported around, I just woke up more monsters. The Confuse wasn't holding everyone down and there were too many Pit Lords to deal with all at once. Things were breaking down. I teleported to a temporarily clear spot and tp'd to town.

Stupid stupid stupid. You gotta stick with what brought you here. Go at a slow steady pace. Make a beachhead and then take on monsters only a few at a time. Don't get cocky or greedy. I took a break to clear my head and restarted the game.

This time when I walked out onto the Outer Steppes, I hugged the area's edge and inched along slowly. The first monster pack I met were Leapers. Lightning immune, not much in the way of hit points, no problem. Annoying, but no problem. Then some poison immune Corpulents came on screen. This was getting easy. Finally, I saw the third and final monster type: Doom Knights. I went from having the monster roll from hell to having one of the easiest monster rolls possible. Sure, Doom Knights are fire immune, but they're slow, easy to break up, and aren't that dangerous in small groups.

I steadily made my way along the edge of the Outer Steppes and eventually came upon the entrance to the Plains of Despair. I took a deep breath, prepared for the worst, and walked up the stairs. The first monster group to greet me were Doom Knights. I can handle them, I thought. Then some Corpulents joined them. Nice. Finally, some Flesh Spawners came on screen. Woohoo! No Gloams! No 20,000 lightning bolts shooting across the screen!

I progressed along the edge of the Plains of Despair and eventually came upon Izzy. He was surrounded by a huge pack of Doom Knights, so it took a while to clear out his minions. In fact, while I and my merc were busy attacking random Doom Knights, Izzy kept coming up to us and pestering us. "Excuse me! We're trying to kill your minions here. Thank-you!" I wanted to take a screenshot of Grizabella whacking away at Izzy, but I accidentally ended up killing him before I had finished killing all of the Doom Knights around him. He wasn't fire immune, so whenever he got in range of my Zeal, he'd get hit and take damage and of course my merc would take some shots at him every once in a while. Dead Izzy. Oh, well. I dropped a skill point into Lightning Mastery per AWOL's suggestion on the hope that it will improve the lightning damage dealt by my Passion blade and the lightning damage charm I have and then dropped the other skill point into Chilling Armor.

The City of the Damned had Stygian Hags, Damned, and Pit Lords. The Stygian Hags and Damned were dispatched easily. The Pit Lords on the other hand were very annoying. After I had slowly and meticulously picked apart my second group of Pit Lords, I felt I'd had enough and figured that once you kill one Pit Lord pack, you've killed them all. So, from then on, every time I saw a Pit Lord pack, I'd Zeal until the Confuse started and then teleport past the group. I'd slaughter any Damned or Hags in the area to thin the monster herd, but the Pit Lords were left to squabble among themselves.

The River of Flame had Udars, Abyss Knights, and Stygian Hags. Normally, I'd be scared of the Abyss Knights, but several factors were in my favor. First, the Confuse from 'Delirium' really helped. Even if the Abyss Knight himself wasn't Confused, he'd still shoot at the monsters who were. Plus, their spells can be blocked, so my 75% block and max resistances kept me safe. Just in case, though, after the Confuse aura would go off, I'd teleport next to the Abyss Knights and kill them first.

I got to the hellforge area and the Smith came out. I wasn't sure what to expect from him. I lured him away from the other monsters, so I could take him on alone. Finally, with some trepidation, I teleported next to him and started wailing on him. He hit me. And, well, it wasn't too bad. I don't recall the exact number, but I'd say he took at most 1/3 of my life -- maybe only 1/4. He's always spectral hit, so my resistances probably saved me from a lot of damage. Considering my blocking rate caused him to miss 3/4ths of the time, his damage wasn't bad at all. I used Super Healing Potions to heal me but had an itchy trigger finger on my Full Rejuv hotkeys if I ever dropped below half life. It never happened. He died in about 10 seconds.



And all I got was a lousy Pul rune. Sheesh, I got a Pul rune out of my nightmare hellforge.

Along the way to the River of Flame waypoint, I met a couple of monsters I had to park, but otherwise things went smoothly.



Inside the Chaos Sanctuary, the fighting got a little hairy. The first problem is that Doom Knights and Venom Lords are all fire immune. The second problem is that Doom Casters can suck your mana dry and leave you unable to teleport out of sticky situations if you're not careful. And the final problem as everyone knows is the Oblivian Knights. But the OK's were a problem for Grizabella for a different than normal reason. Sure, their spells hurt, but Grizabella's block and resistances neutralize that problem effectively. No, the problem was that the OK's would cast curses that would override the Confuse curse on the minions. (You can see in the above screenshot how a lot of monsters have lifetap or amp curses on them).

The one thing going in Grizabella's favor was that the OK's aren't fire immune, so they can be killed fairly quickly if she's given the chance to get at them. The key is to pick off the OK's one by one. First, you draw the minions away from the OK's, which is pretty easy, since OK's tend to stay back. You then start up the Confuse to give you that extra half-second advantage and then teleport to an open OK and kill him before you're surrounded. Then you teleport away and start the whole process over again. Once all of the OK's are dead, the Confuse aura stays on the minions and they can be picked off at your leisure.

The Grand Visor and his minions were dispatched quickly and then it was off to de Seis.



I've been through the Chaos Sanctuary before with twinked up characters, but it wasn't until now that I realize what a patsy de Seis has become. You used to have to deal with a full pack of Oblivian Knights (mages) and it was as scary as hell. Now, he appears with just a pack of Doom Knights. Gee, that's scary. Not! I teleported over to the main area of the room and drew off the Doom Knights in pairs and dispatched them there. Then, I teleported next to de Seis himself. Without his minions, he fell quickly.

Hmm... There does seem to be a pattern here. No msle's, the Ruined Temple is nerfed, the exploding dolls aren't scary anymore, and de Seis is nerfed. And I thought Blizzard wanted to make things harder.



De Seis may have been nerfed, but the Infector of Souls got a major upgrade. Still, the strategy is the same. Draw off and kill his minions one or two at a time and then take him on alone. I groaned when I saw his attributes. Immune to Fire and Immune to Physical. Plus, he was Spectral Hit, which means his resistances to other elemental attacks were really good. I put on my Raven Frost ring to give me some extra cold damage and my 1-18 lightning damage charm. Those plus the 50 pd charm and the 1-50 lightning damage on the Passion were the only things I had that would do any damage to him. I hoped that the whole Lightning Mastery idea would work. After staticing him to half life, I slowly whittled him down. It took four trips to town to buy potions and 20 minutes (less time than it took to kill Vilehand), but he finally died. A second after he died, a voice in my head asked, "Why didn't you use Berserk?" Doh!



I hit the final seal, teleported onto the platform when Diablo appeared, staticed him to half, and started wailing on him. What a total letdown. This is the first time in a long time that I have played a melee character; I usually play sorceresses, bowazons, or necromancers. I'm used to running like mad every time Diablo starts up his Lightning Breath of Death. But as you can see in the picture, the lightning breath doesn't start for several yards! I know that most of you knew that already and intellectually I knew it before now, too, but this was the first time I had my own character on the line to see it. My merc and I took no damage from his lightning breath. His fire damaged us the most, but we both had max fire resistance and I had 12 mdr, so the damage was quickly repairable with red potions. His melee attack was blocked 3/4ths of the time and it wasn't terrible when he did hit me. I forgot about Battle Cry until about halfway through the battle (it was 2 in the morning, give me a break!). With battle cry on him, he couldn't do a thing to us. He fell in under 30 seconds.

Grizabella is in Act V, preparing to save Harrogoth. More adventures are to come!

Here are the usual end-of-act screenshots:

The quest screen

The waypoint screen