Gunter, the Barbarian Mage

[MongoJerry]

The River of Flame had Flesh Spawners, Blood Lords, and Abyss Knights. The Flesh Spawners and Blood Lords were dealt with in the usual manner. The Abyss Knights were slightly more tricky. Taunt is also fantastic with them. They'll stop casting spells at you and instead come try to melee you. If they're shooting at you from off screen, you can Taunt the edge of the screen to get them to stop and come to you. That's great, but there's a big caveat when Taunting Abyss Knights in the River of Flame. Remember, if a Taunted monster's path finding routine can't find a good way to get to you, the monster will come as close as it can and then resume it's normal AI. In the RoF, there are lots of twists, turns, and ledges, so you have to be more aware of the terrain and position yourself in a location where you're confident that a Taunted Abyss Knight can easily find its way to you. Once you've Taunted a monster, you can't Taunt it again (unless you waypoint to another act and come back), so if you make a mistake and Taunt an Abyss Knight who can't get to you, then you either have to be able to accept the punishment of his attacks or leave the pack of monsters you're dealing with and run/leap attack over to the Abyss Knight and stun him with War Cry.



I got to the leading edge of the hellforge area and Taunted the edge of the screen to bring out monsters so I wouldn't have to deal with them at the same time as battling Hephasto. It was a modestly successful strategy -- I lured away and killed about a half a dozen monsters that way before Hephasto himself came out. I led him to a safe area where we wouldn't be disturbed by other monsters. I wasn't all that worried about fighting Hephasto after witnessing Grizabella's surprisingly easy battle with him. Defensively, Gunter is built similarly to Grizabella -- 75% block and max resistances (Hephasto's always spectral hit) -- and has about 50% more hit points than she did. Probably the most annoying thing about fighting him with Gunter was that he came up Mana Burn, so he kept draining Gunter's mana ball. In this case, the gradual mana recharge of blue mana potions helped. Hephasto's hit would drain Gunter's mana ball, but the ball would keep recharging from the blue potions and still allow Gunter to cast at a decent rate. I may have had to go to town once or twice to refresh mana potions, but Gunter was never in any danger during the battle.

And so, the moment of truth came. Would it be an Um to make a 'Crescent Moon'? A Mal to enable Prevent Monster Heal? An Ist to make a 'Delirium' crown? Or perhaps a Vex to get Gunter closer to making a 'Heart of the Oak'? And Gunter got...



A Gul?! Aw, cr**. That was about the most useless rune that Gunter could've gotten. On the realms, someone who wanted to cube up to a Vex or Ohm might be willing to trade an Um or Ist for it, but for Gunter, it was practically worthless. Who knows? Maybe Gunter will find a Jah so he can make a 'Fury' weapon. Yeah, that'll happen.

(Incidentally, if an Ist had dropped, I wouldn't have made a 'Delirium' crown for my merc, because a lot of people would probably have thought that would've been cheesy. But it would've been fun to brag that I could've made an untwinked 'Delirium' crown).

I finished clearing the RoF and found the waypoint. There was one boss I decided to park, but otherwise the journey was uneventful.



Inside the Chaos Sanctuary, however, things got a little more hairy. Oblivion Knights (mages) can't be Taunted. The prudent strategy would be to use Taunt to draw off the minions and kill them away from the OK's. Then with most of the minions killed, the OK's could then be dealt with more safely and efficiently. The more reckless and less patient strategy would be to run at and/or leap attack a pack of OK's and stun them, hoping that you can take the pounding from the OK's that are out of the range of your War Cry while you kill the monster pack and that you don't wake up too many more monsters in the process. I chose the latter strategy. Gunter had 2500 hit points, max block, and max resistances. I figured he could take the pounding.

And pretty much he did. The boss OK in the screenshot above along with a couple other OK's in the area hurt enough that Gunter had to retreat a couple of times, but otherwise the damage taken while clearing the Chaos Sanctuary was manageable. Then, it was time to hit the seals.