Gunter, the Barbarian Mage

[MongoJerry]

GUNTER: ACT IV

Gunter and Cain arrived at the Pandemonium Fortress, the last bastion of heaven's power before the gates of the burning hells. It was a remarkable sight to see and Gunter felt a mix of feelings -- humility at seeing the wondrous and legendary place, pride about being chosen to see it, and fear about the mission he was being asked to complete.

Cain told Gunter that he must find the Hellforge deep within the burning hells and destroy Mephisto's soulstone. It was the only way to vanquish Mephisto forever. The archangel Tyrael had another mission for him. He wanted Gunter to find the fallen angel Izual and free him from the demon that bound him. It wasn't enough that Gunter was being asked to walk into hell to save humanity. Tyrael also wanted Gunter to take what sounded like an unnecessary side trip.

As Gunter walked away from Tyrael, he muttered under his breath, "Oh, great. Now you want me to run errands for you. You're the freak'n archangel around here. You free your friend, you ungrateful hypocrite. I don't even know what side you're on anymore. It seems like every time you meddle in things, you only make things worse."

Cain heard Gunter muttering and asked, "What was that?"

"Oh, nothing," Gunter replied.

Gunter took a deep breath and walked out onto the Outer Steppes of hell.




If the start of Act III was easy, the start of Act IV was just the opposite. It was hard. No, this is not one of those stories where I accidentally had the game set in 8-player mode. There's just a big difficulty jump between hell Act III and hell Act IV in 1.10, and I've felt this jump even with my twinked characters. Monster hit points and corresponding life regeneration rises noticeably and monsters hit a lot harder in Act IV than they do in Act III.

The Outer Steppes had Flesh Spawners, Cliff Lurkers (leapers), and Doom Knights. If you Taunt the Flesh Spawners, they'll stop making baby Flesh Beasts and come try to melee you. Once they reach melee range, however, they'll go back to making babies as one of their "attacks." Of course, if you stun them with War Cry, that'll stop. If you Taunt Cliff Lurkers, they won't leap attack you. Instead, they'll walk slowly up to you to try to melee you. If you cast War Cry on them, they'll be knocked back out of the range of a second War Cry attempt, so you have to knock them into some kind of wall. Or in Gunter's case, I cast Firewall twice on the stunned lurkers to cook them. So the process went Taunt-War Cry-Firewall-Firewall = dead Lurker. The Doom Knights are fire immune, so all you can do is spam War Cry.

Gunter wasn't in a lot of danger in the Outer Steppes, because the monsters were all melee monsters and the War Cry kept him safe. However, because of the higher monster hit points and life regeneration rate, it was taking a lot more casts to kill things. This seems like a good place to answer an excellent question posted by galzohar at diabloii.net (I'm posting these reports to three different sites, so pardon me if you've seen this).

galzohar asked, "I was wondering - does your firewall actually kill anything? I remember a 99 naked sorc with max firewall/mastery had trouble getting a kill in A5 hell."

It's been OK in 1-player mode so far. Gunter does have one advantage over true sorceresses in that he can stun monsters and keep them nicely in the Firewall. I'm sure that in the latter stages of hell, the Firewall will be a very difficult spell to kill things with, though. I mostly use it as a supplemental skill.

Here's the idea. Firewall has a 1-second timer and lasts for 3.6 seconds. For now, Gunter has 50% fast cast, allowing him to cast 2.5 times a second. Per MMAgCh at the Amazon Basin's suggestion, I've started trying to more aggressively shop for a Bahamut's wand of the Magus which would allow Gunter to cast at a rate of 9 fps or 2.8 times a second while keeping his mana pool high. No luck so far, but I'll keep trying. Rounding the numbers, let's say that Gunter can cast three times a second and that he can keep up 3 firewalls on a monster at a given time. He does on average 630 physical damage with War Cry which is not timered and 835 fire damage/second with Firewall. Then, one gets:

Without Firewall: Damage = 1890 physical damage/second (three War Cry casts)

With Firewall, ideally one can keep up three Firewalls on a monster at one time and spam War Cry twice a second in between casting the Firewall, so one gets: Damage=1260 physical damage, 2505 fire damage/second.

So, ideally, the Firewall gives a nice damage boost in addition to being useful against physical immunes. Before choosing to use the Firewall on a monster pack, though, you have to think about the fact that the Firewall only attacks a few monsters at a time whereas War Cry can hit an entire group of monsters. So, if you use the Firewall/War Cry combination, you might end up doing less damage over all -- 1260 physical damage/second instead of 1890 physical damage/second on the monsters that aren't being cooked by the Firewall. However, there's no doubt that the Firewall is an effective attack against individual targets you want to take out like bosses and champions.

(Please don't nitpick the math. I'm a graduate student who's studying astrophysics, so I know my stuff when it comes to mathematics and I could if I wanted to come up with a precise calculation of the ideal time-averaged damage Gunter does per second. However, I'm trying to keep the calculation simple and use round numbers to explain how, when, and why I use Firewall. It's the idea that's important -- not the precise numbers).



The Plains of Despair had Flesh Spawners, Venom Lords, and everyone's favorite monster, Burning Souls (Gloams). The Flesh Spawners were Taunted and killed as described above. The Venom Lords were a pain, because their life regeneration is incredibly high. To conserve potions, I stopped trying to damage them with my spells and instead just held them down with the occasional War Cry and let my mercenary take them out.

The Burning Souls were only a mild annoyance for Gunter compared to the problems that most characters have with them. The biggest problem is that they can shoot you from off screen and you often get attacked from multiple directions. But a simple Taunt cast on each of the Burning Souls (if they're off screen, then you spam Taunt at the edge of the screen) effectively neutralizes them. They stop shooting and come right next to you. I'm not even sure if they shoot you when they're next to you. I stunned them with War Cry before I could find out. Warning: This does not mean that you don't have to worry about lightning resistance in areas with Burning Souls or Gloams. It still takes time to cast Taunt on each of the Gloams and you do take hits while you're doing that.



I found Izzy, cleared out his minions, and then focused on him. I went to town twice to refresh mana potions but the fight wasn't dangerous. A Flesh Spawner and Venom Lord got woken up near the end of the fight, but as you can see in the picture, the spammed War Cries kept them at bay. I used the two skill points from the quest reward to finish maxing out Taunt.

I walked up the stairs to the City of the Damned and found the waypoint almost immediately. I walked around a little to see what monsters were there in the City of the Damned. Stranglers, Corpse Spitters, and I forget what else. The Stranglers were Taunted and stunned per usual. After killing a couple of monster packs, I decided not to waste my time anymore. I was anxious to get to the hellforge. If I got an Um, I could make a 'Crescent Moon' hyperion spear for my merc. If I got a Mal, I could socket his spear with it and have Prevent Monster Heal even against poison immunes. If I got an Ist, I could make a 'Delirium' crown. (Yes, I got a Lem from my nightmare hellforge, and I figured out that if I cube up about half my saved runes, I could make an Io).