Quote:Caaroid, why max tele? Are you building her to regen mana per tele during PvP?
Hehe, well, the idea came from there, yes. But for different reasons.
As I mentioned in my previous post, when I MF, I only kill the non-cold immunes. Since around Andariel there are hardly any CIs, and the blood lords around Mephisto can be avoided, and neither the Mausoleum nor the Ancient Tunnels host CIs, this is not a great sacrifice.
On the other hand, what I kill I want to kill fast. Maxing cold mastery makes a HUGE diference, so I basically 'wasted' 40+ points on the build, the remaining ~ 40 are hardly sufficient to build up a skill that helps you kill fast. See, the key to successful MFing is to kill as many things in the given time frame as possible, while wearing as much MF as possible. Thus maxing the synergy for orb lands us with 60+ points spent.
Now what can one do with ~ 20 points? max static, now that's a fine way to go, but I prefer to don as much MF as possible. Wearing a lot of MF (both on equipment and on charms) leaves your mana pool rather small. (I have 566 life and 470 mana, 8xx life with oak from my brand-new Nature's Peace. I love that ring!)
Since I do not use the "external game feature" MH, it does take quite a few teleports to find Mephisto. It is a huge asset that I don't have to spend the 8 mana potions I had to use previously just to find his lair. This saves a trip to town, and allows me to use my life-setup on the belt (full rejuv-healing-healing-mana; instead of the mana setup full rejuv-healing-mana-mana). This adds to the durability of the character.
My strategy against him is to go toe-to-toe (at times this requires to kill the council, since if you go too deep in the central cavern the Blood Lords come out; but killing Bremm 'n' Co. with a maxed orb is finger practice). While fighting, I compensate for my lack of mana with mana potions (I can cast about 12 orbs before I go totally dry, so I am basically fighting from potions all the time).
All in all, it is a rather fun build, and is a HUGE help when having to find something (i.e rushing people through the game). Free teleport gets you addicted rather fast.
PS: My firend fell in love with my character, and decided to make an improved version. His char has 20 orb 20 mastery 20 TK 20 Telep 1 ES, since he has 800+ mana and can afford the stray hits. There the 20 teleport serve not only as a convenience feature but also as a safety solution: he never goes so low on mana so that he cannot teleport away from danger. This character proved to be especially durable.
edit: spelling