1.10 Ridulous

[Crystalion]

The necro TWICE was left with a sliver of life in mere seconds.  That's nearly 600 damage being delivered within the reaction time to drink a potion.

Was that from the Shamen inferno, the lil guys butcher knives or from a barrage of blowdarts? Since you had bone armor up I'd assume you got flamed? I've heard that like the Balrogs, these guys inferno was improved for v1.10. I'm afraid I don't know personally, since my wake of fire assassin never got touched by a shaman inferno when she did act 3 in her low 20s. I've never had an easier time creaming the lil act 3 pests than with v1.10 WoF.

I'm 36 now, and, iirc, I've died only once, fairly early on, when I was careless about keeping my HPs full, and putting points into vit--a bit of lag hit and splat. I'm actually tracking on 12x clvl for hitpoints, since I'm trying to have 90%+ of what I'm fighting not put me into Hit Recovery if they happen to get to me (I'm not meleeing with this build, unless there is only one monster and my act 3 cold merc has frozen it and I'm bored or low on mana). I'm basically only doing something other than WoF when terrain is too narrow for it, or I'm facing a Fire Enchanted or immune boss. I found the Flayer Dungeon (I never used a Shadow Warrior, so it was just me and my act 3 merc) to have just enough room to continue to use WoF, which, like a Hydra Sorc, means most mobs never got close enough to me for my merc to "save me".

I'm assuming you weren't using cast ahead skills (Clay Golem, which is cheap and slows enemies when they hit the golem now; Dim Vision; etc.) but were just proceeding cautiously?

When my Assassin hit 35 I realized I'd once again neglected a visit to the cows (never been much of a fan). WoF build dusts normal cows pretty much like old time spammed FO did: fast and pretty, before they get close.

So I think some builds have suffered in some areas and others gained. I'm pretty sure my build will run out of steam in early hell difficulty, but I don't mind (this is my jumpstart build, and it's fun). I personally think the Hardcore concept is inherently flawed and only "worked" because previously the game was "too easy". The game is too laggy and unfairly damaging at times for HC to make any sense to me (although they made some effort to fix some of those apparently). In playing through normal I had three really bad cases of lag that would have made me very unhappy to be playing HC.

It's an interesting question whether "normal" builds should have been play tested for unfair death in "storyline" quests. I've had a couple of scares with the new "stair traps allowed" monster placement that would be quite challenging to overcome (i.e. unfairly so) in hell difficulty I imagine. I would like to see how a Holy Freeze Merc with 100% Monster Flee would do when swarmed like that.