Gunter, the Barbarian Mage

[MongoJerry]

GUNTER: ACT V THE ANCIENTS

It's been interesting playing Gunter after having played Grizabella for so long. The two characters are studies in contrasts. On the one hand, Gunter is infinitely more powerful than Grizabella against large groups of monsters. As far as Gunter is concerned, who cares how large the pack is if all the monsters in it are stunned? On the other hand, Grizabella is much more powerful against solo opponents with her ability to use Teleport to position her merc properly and to rescue her merc if her merc needs it. When Gunter made it to the Arreat Summit, I thought about the advantages and disadvantages for each character when facing the Ancients:

Grizabella's advantages are:
1. She can Teleport to position her merc to target a specific target and to rescue herself or her merc when necessary.
2. She doesn't have to worry about mana for her attacks which is a big advantage, since one can't go back to town to refresh one's mana potions during this fight.
3. She can quickly static any non-lightning immune Ancients down to half their life. (again, a massive advantage)
4. She can leech life, although not enough to fully counter the damage the Ancients can do.

Gunter's advantages are:
1. He has a little more life.
2. His War Cry attack can hit more than one target at once.
3. His Battle Cry is slightly more powerful
4. I'm more experienced.

Needless to say, I didn't think Gunter's advantages came close to equaling Grizabella's advantages, so I was pretty scared.

I went to town and put on my Rising Sun amulet, both to make my Firewall a little more powerful and for its replenish life +10. Combined with the replenish life on the Trang Oul's helm, that gave me +15 to replenish life. I figured that if I got desperate and if there was only one Ancient left, I could run around and try to refresh my life and mana that way.

Then I had to choose whether I would use Life Tap or Battle Cry in the fight. I opted for Life Tap and switched out my +mana wand for my wand of Life Tap. I figured it would save on potions if my merc could keep himself alive. Plus I would need to quaff rejuv potions to keep casting, so it wouldn't matter too much if I took some extra damage. In addition, Battle Cry is additive and I figured at least one of the three Ancients would be amp cursed. A lvl 23 Battle Cry normally reduces damage by 47%, but if you're amped, that means that damage is increased by +100%-47%=+53%. So, in effect, if you're amped, Battle Cry only reduces the damage by about a quarter. That's nice, but I preferred keeping my merc alive with Life Tap.

I exchanged charms with rejuv potions from my cube and stash, came back to the summit, and in one trip made two stashes of rejuv potions on the ground. It was important to do this quickly and in as few trips as possible, because the computer will clean up potions left on the ground after a couple of minutes. The clock was already ticking.

I then went back to town, retrieved my charms (adding a couple of +life charms out of my stash that I'd saved for the occasion), came back to the summit, took a deep breath, and touched the alter.



The first thing I looked for was to see if any of the Ancients were immune to physical. None of them were. Check. So I cast Life Tap on Korlic and Talic and Battle Cry on Madawc and started battling Korlic and Talic while checking to see what auras and curses the three Ancients had. The three Ancients I had to fight were configured as follows:

Korlic (leaper): Cold immune, Mana Burn, Spectral Hit
Talic (whirlwinder): Fire immune, Fire Enchanted, Extra Strong
Madawc (thrower): Lightning immune, Cold immune, Cold Enchanted, Holy Freeze Enchanted

I waited for what I thought was the inevitable Amp and it never came. I was thrilled. I thought that this was a really good roll. It was up to the mercenary to decide which of the two melee Ancients we'd focus on first and he started attacking Korlic. That was a great choice for me, because he wasn't immune to fire, allowing me to use my Firewall on him.

I felt pretty good about things. The damage we were taking seemed manageable. In fact, I was quaffing potions more to give me mana than life. But then I realized that we were damaging Korlic and Talic very slowly. Perhaps my memory was playing tricks on me, but I thought that Grizabella had been able to do much more damage more quickly than this.

That's when I looked at my mercenary. Madawc's Holy Freeze had slowed him to a crawl. Even with Life Tap, he wasn't dealing enough damage to repair all the damage he was taking and he was sucking up rejuv potions because of it. I fought on, thinking that this draw still had to be better than a a set of amp cursed Ancients. But then something happened that changed my mind.



I spent a full belt's worth of rejuv potions and refreshed my belt from the stash on the ground. I'd managed to get Talic and Korlic down to about half their life by this point, so I thought that while it was going to be close, I might be able to take down Korlic and Talic before the potions on the ground got cleaned up and my belt got emptied. If I could kill Korlic and Talic, I felt pretty good about my chances of facing a Life Tap'd Madawc alone with my merc. Then my merc died.

I realized I hadn't kept the Life Tap on Talic and Korlic up and my merc got taken down before I realized that he was in trouble. At first I tried to fight on, but with all three Ancients focusing their power on me, I was using potions too quickly to be able to win this fight. TP.

I rescued the remaining rejuv's on the ground before they got cleaned up and revived my merc. It was clear that this was going to be a tough fight.