Irene, the Infirm

[MongoJerry]

After the champion pack was disposed of, some normal wraiths and tainted were led out of the Cathedral and killed in the Inner Cloister.



As they walked deeper into the Cathedral, our heroines kept whispering to each other, "Where are the shaman?" There were no dark ones or shaman in the alcoves on the right or the left, and none in the center up to the altar. Finally, they found one shaman to the left of the altar. The dark ones were led out of the Cathedral and killed, and then Irene and Aliza killed the shaman while Bone Ash looked on. Irene and Aliza completed their sweep of the Cathedral, leaving only Bone Ash to deal with.

Bone Ash turned out to be tough -- really tough. He's cold enchanted and hits hard with his poison attack, so Irene and Aliza went to town and stocked up on poison and thawing potions. That's when a bug in the game was discovered (which I hope miraculously was on Blizzard's list of bugs) regarding potions. One nice new feature of thawing and antidote potions is that they give you +50% to cold and poison resistance for 30 seconds, respectively. Plus, they increase your maximum resistance to these elements by 10% for that time (not important for Irene or Aliza, obviously). As an experiment, Irene quaffed an antidote potion. Good, she had a 50% resistance to poison. She then quaffed another one -- and her resistance went to 0%! A similar thing happened with the thawing potions -- drinking multiple potions brought one's resistance to cold to 0% and it would stay that way no matter how many more potions one drank. Irene had to wait for the potions to wear off before she could get the +50% bonus to resistances again. (Incidentally, this turned out to be a real effect and not just a display screen error. There didn't seem to be any doubt that Bone Ash dealt a lot more damage to Irene after she quaffed her thawing and antidote potions twice than when she only quaffed them once).

Why was this important? It meant that Irene had to wait for the effects of her first potions to wear off completely before she should quaff her next set of potions. In the time between the potions wearing off and when she quaffs the next set of potions, she can get hit by Bone Ash and receive the full damage from his attack. What's more, she would have to have her attribute screen up to watch for her resistances to change, but she also would have to have her inventory open in order to quaff the potions, so she wouldn't be able to see what's going on in the battle or contribute punches. This was not good.

Still, Irene and Aliza tried, and the added resistances from the potions helped. When they were active, Irene could tank reasonably well while quaffing potions, as long as she quaffed a light healing potion occasionally (they heal faster than minor healing potions). But as soon as the resistances wore off, Bone Ash damaged Irene too quickly. She would have to back off, which would then cause Aliza to stop shooting and start moving, which would then allow Bone Ash to heal. As it was, Irene and Aliza were having difficulty delivering enough damage to offset Bone Ash's life regeneration. Allowing him a few free seconds to heal was devastating.

Irene decided to change tactics. Instead of tanking Bone Ash, she'd run around him and let Aliza whittle him down. The idea was that he'd constantly miss with his attacks, so it wouldn't matter if the potions were working or not. Unfortunately, Aliza delivered just about the same amount of damage that Bone Ash healed. It really helped to have Irene adding some damage, even if it came from slow punches. Worse, Irene's running sometimes prompted Aliza to move, and sometimes Bone Ash moved, which caused Aliza to miss. Irene and Aliza just couldn't deliver enough damage to offset Bone Ash's healing rate this way.



Then Irene had an idea. She led Bone Ash out to the Inner Cloister waypoint, and then she and Aliza went to town. Irene bought thawing and antidote potions from Akara and quaffed one of each right before returning to the Inner Cloister. Irene tanked Bone Ash as before, but this time when the potion effects wore off, instead of backing off and fumbling with potions and letting her life ball (and Bone Ash) heal, she walked over and took the waypoint back to town. Bone Ash did not heal while Irene and Aliza were in town, so Irene and Aliza could heal themselves, get themselves re-potioned, return to the Inner Cloister, and continue where they left off. They did this more than a dozen times and finally whittled Bone Ash down and killed him.

There was one last piece of business left to take care of.



Irene and Aliza let the wraith boss out of the alcove and led him back into the Cathedral. They remembered the strategy they had stumbled upon while dealing with a ghost boss in the Countess's Tower. Irene couldn't tank the wraith boss -- both because the boss was capable of delivering too much damage and also because the boss could burn mana and thereby leech life for himself off Irene. It was Aliza who had to do the tanking, and Irene and Aliza needed to find a spot where Aliza would stand still and allow herself to tank the boss.

They searched around the Cathedral and tried to back Aliza up against various objects around the altar, but nothing around there worked. Finally, they found the perfect spot near the stairs down to the catacombs, where a pillar and a torch made a nice barrier. The wraith boss pushed Aliza back into it, and while Irene fed her potions, Aliza took him down -- thus completing the clear of the Cathedral.

UP NEXT: The Catacombs