Gunter, the Barbarian Mage

[MongoJerry]

GUNTER: THE COW KING



Here he comes. I'm ready for a 45-minute battle.



Anyone for barbecue Cow King? Gunter took him down in 20 seconds. This lends support to the idea I had that there was some kind of bug in 1.10 that they fixed in 1.10s. Gunter can't deal that much more damage than Grizabella can against single targets, so there must've been a change in the Cow King himself. Of course, this Cow King wasn't exactly the same as the Cow King that Grizabella faced. He wasn't fire enchanted, for example. However, since Gunter didn't run into any monsters that took a long time to kill like Vilehand and the Cow King did for Grizabella, then I'm leaning toward there being some change between 1.10 and 1.10s.

The Cow King dropped four rares which were all junk. Interestingly, I was allowed to try a Find Item on his corpse. Unfortunately, nothing came out, because my level 7 Find Item only has a 37% chance of working. It'd be fun to see if you could get a second uber drop out of the Cow King using Find Item.



After the surprisingly anticlimactic battle against the Cow King, I completed my circle around the outside perimeter of the Secret Cow Level. Then, I circled around in the middle to see if there were any cows that I missed. It turns out I had one last boss pack to kill.



I wonder if this minion cow was honored to be the last monster killed by Gunter in his epic story. (OK, since he's a video game character, probably not).

[MongoJerry]

GUNTER: THE FINALE



So Gunter managed to get through all of hell without dying. In fact, except for the Ancients, he got through it much easier than even I expected.

I hope you all enjoyed reading Gunter's story. I certainly had a blast playing Gunter and loved reading all of the messages cheering him on. Yes, not to worry, I have an idea for another character. The idea is absolutely insane and I guarantee you'll love it. Graduate school just started up again, however, and it'll take me some time to level up the character to hell, so you'll have to be patient. It'll be worth the wait, though. I promise.


FINAL THOUGHTS:

So what can we learn from Gunter's experiences?

1. The singer/mage barbarian is a viable build for 1-player hell games. In fact, while the killing speed is much slower than the cookie-cutter builds most people are used to, I can't think of a better tank than a barbarian with maxed War Cry who knows how to use Taunt. However, the new larger monster life regeneration rates mean that a singer/mage barbarian would have a difficult time killing monsters in hell games with a large number of players.

2. For a largely unused skill, Taunt is an amazingly useful skill that effectively shuts down many different types of monsters. Even cookie-cutter barbarians should consider placing a point into it and using it from time to time.

3. If you're creating a singer barbarian and you're wondering how you'll do if you choose not to use the Firewall skill given by the three Trang-Oul's items that Gunter was twinked, don't worry. I used Firewall mostly for "character" reasons. I wanted to make a pure barbarian mage who only attacked by casting spells, so I needed something to use against physical immunes. If you don't have that restriction, then substitute a 1-point Berserk (or a 'Passion' weapon) and a decent weapon on weapon switch for use against physical immunes, and you'll be fine. Most of Gunter's damage was delivered by War Cry and his mercenary, so Gunter shows that a singer is quite viable in 1-player games. By the way, I soloed Gunter fully untwinked (i.e. no Trang-Oul's items) all through normal and nightmare difficulties in 8-player mode and used War Cry almost exclusively to kill things in nightmare. The killing speed was slow until I got enough mana to spam War Cry and until I had placed enough points into War Cry's synergies, but it is definitely possible to play a singer untwinked.

I hope you all enjoyed the show!

[MongoJerry]

If you would like to play Gunter yourself, you can download him using the following link:

Gunter

[hell-bringer]

Well done, I really enjoyed that story about Gunter and I am looking forward to your next build.

[dudearonymus_32]

Great job! Can't wait until your next build :D. Not enough people post battle reports like you do. It would be great if we could get more threads like yours.

[Rumgut]

Another excellent post! Keep up the good work.

[Freepaperclips]

PMH is on a timer, and not a very long one. My tests show about 30 seconds although this was some time ago and may have changed with the patch. Also, have you considedered the Spectral shard? It's relativly easy to find and the 50% Faster Cast Rate could be really useful.

[Bolty]

Can't wait until your next build :D. Not enough people post battle reports like you do. It would be great if we could get more threads like yours.

Amen to that. Keep it up, MongoJerry!

-Bolty

[MongoJerry]

Also, have you considedered the Spectral shard?  It's relativly easy to find and the 50% Faster Cast Rate could be really useful.

Sure. That would've been nice, but I never found one. The idea was to play Gunter untwinked except for the three Trang-Oul pieces that were necessary to make a pure casting character. Actually, I had found some terrific helms, belts, and gloves, so I could've played Gunter totally untwinked. But then I would've had to break character and use weapons against physical immunes (e.g. put a point into Berserk). The extra 50% fast cast would've been nice, but mana was always a problem, so I didn't mind having the large +mana wand I had. Actually, the best would've been a Bahamut's wand of the Magus which would've given Gunter a lot of mana and gotten him to a 9 fps casting speed (70% fast cast). You can buy them in the shop, but after shopping for about 30 minutes without any luck, I gave up. Gunter was killing fast enough for me. With spectral shard, he would've been at 100% fast cast which is still only 9 fps, so he'd still have to find another fast cast item like a good ring or amulet to get to 8 fps. Unfortunately, he didn't have that good fast cast ring and he was dependent on the rings he was wearing for mana.

[DSTheHermit]

Three questions;

A) Are you going to make a site for these like Sirian did?

B) What's your next planned character?

C) Are you, or would you in the future be interested in taking votes as to the next character story played and presented?

Oh, and one more.

D) Do you think I will ever, ever shut up?

Thanks in advance, so sayeth The Hermit.

"He had a lot to say, he had a lot of nothing to say." Tool - Eulogy

[MongoJerry]

A) Are you going to make a site for these like Sirian did?

I've been thinking about that. I need to find the time and motivation to actually do the HTML coding.

What's your next planned character?

It's a secret! Oh, man, it's going to be so hilarious and some places are going to be *so* hard, but God it'll be so much fun. I've finished most of my testing on the character build (using Nobbie over at diabloii.net's package of untrained 99th level characters just to experiment) and I have the actual character up to the middle of normal Act II right now. As I was commuting to school today, though, I thought about a possible improvement to the character that I'll have to test out and if it works out, I might have to start over in order to change where I put some skill points.

C) Are you, or would you in the future be interested in taking votes as to the next character story played and presented?

Absolutely! In fact, before I played Gunter, I put up a poll over at diabloii.net asking people if they'd be more interested in reading the adventures of the Return of Ember (untwinked sorceress who only focuses on Firebolt in honor of the original Ember) or Gunter, the barbarian mage. I described both characters in detail in an accompanying post and Gunter won by a landslide -- like 40 to 5. Ultimately, the choice to play a character is up to me, because these kinds of characters take a long time to play and write up, so the character would have to be something that I personally would enjoy playing and writing about. But the poll was very helpful in seeing what people were interested in. I was worried that people might balk at Gunter, because I was twinking him three Trang-Oul's items, which are fairly rare items, and because while the characters are rare on the realms, there have been guides describing singer barbarians before. However, the poll showed that people were really interested in the idea of Gunter and many people didn't think it would be possible for him to survive. Most singer guides that covered 1.09 that I read basically said, "It's a fun build, but you can't get past nightmare." So it was fun to show that it was actually possible to take one through hell in 1.10. Plus, adding in the "no weapons" policy and having him cast Firewall using new 1.10 items intrigued people.

And I always encourage suggestions for future characters. The idea for Gunter basically came from a suggestion from a poster at diabloii.net who said, "Now that you've made a melee sorceress, you should make a barbarian who casts spells! lol." That started me down the path and after a fair amount of research and testing, I realized, "Hey, this might actually work!"

I started Grizabella simply because I'd always wanted to make a melee sorceress. I wrote her up, because I thought it might be interesting to a handful of people. I had no idea how big of a deal she'd become. She ended up having a big fan club by the end of her adventures and I have to admit it was a big kick for me to see people responding like that to something I wrote. When I thought about what kind of character to do after Grizabella and now after Gunter, I started thinking about what properties would make a character interesting to both play and read about and I came up with this probably not exhaustive list:

1. The character build should be unusual enough that most people wouldn't have played or seen it before.

2. The character should use underutilized skills and make the most of them. (E.g. Enchant and Confuse for Grizabella, Taunt and War Cry for Gunter).

3. The less the twinking of items, in both quantity and quality, the better. A completely untwinked character is a huge bonus.

4. The right balance has to be struck in terms of the power of the character. The character should be strong enough that it could be imaginable that the character could survive, but the character should be weak enough that in some situations, special strategies and skills have to be employed to get through some areas of the game.

5. The rules of the character should be easy to follow and not change. e.g. Gunter must only attack with spells, must get every waypoint and quest, and will be twinked only these three Trang-Oul items. Other than that, anything goes.

6. The character should have an interesting character background story that motivates the build.

7. Right now there's a big interest in changes in 1.10, so characters that use skills and/or items that have changed between 1.09 and 1.10 are interesting. For example, seeing how War Cry got a boost with all of its synergies was interesting for people to see. Also, while I know that there's a contingent of LL'ers who don't like the cross-character skill items, it was interesting to experiment with some cross-character skill items and see how they might affect strategy and play in 1.10 games.

8. The more humorous and ridiculous the build, the better. ("A sorceress who fights melee? You're insane!" "A barbarian who only casts spells? You're insane!")


Of course, probably no character build will have all of these properties perfectly and there's a sliding scale to all of them. For example, the weaker the skills you choose to use, then perhaps the better the items you'd be allowed to twink yourself. But those are the things I think about when people make suggestions for character builds.

[DSTheHermit]

Alright then, I've got one for you, but I'm going to lace it up with options since you're the one who'll have to play it if you decide to do so.

You've done the melee sorceress, but she gets cute little bonuses like Enchant, and you used Delirium. Now, let's try something a little more interesting.

Basic premise; Melee necro.
Basic bans: No Attract, Confuse, Iron Maiden, Iron Golem, Skeletons, Revives, or Thorns merc. This leaves all other curses, and three golems available, as well as the poison and bone tree. Iron Maiden/Golem/Thorns merc are just to take out cheese. Also note that banned skills are banned from items, too. No Delirium.

Judgment calls on your behalf: I'd allow CE, but I'd suggest a limit between 1-5 points, so it doesn't become your main killer. I would look sidelong at the use of the Crescent Moon runeword. Certainly not before Hell difficulty, and I'd try without it first if possible. While the poison and bone tree is technically unrestricted, but like CE, I'd put a mental cap on skills used for non-melee, non-synergy purposes.

Why is this more challenging than a melee sorceress? Well, first off, no teleport obviously. Secondly, you have NO way of boosting your AR with skills unless you use Poison Dagger. If you can pull this off WITHOUT Poison Dagger, I'll owe you a stiff drink. I'm thinking you'd NEED a Fool's weapon or Blessed Aim merc at that point, though. So far as your criteria...

1: Melee necros, particularly poison dagger, were somewhat popular before the expansion, but poison immunity killed the pure PD build more or less although with some luck or twinking I think the -enemy resistance items and/or Lower Resist could revive it. Either way, I'm pretty sure ANY melee necro would be a new build for 1.1s.

2: I'm thinking you'll be looking at a lot of Bone Prison and Life Tap, here. Terror is also another possibility, and I don't think I've seen any of the three on the realms. And using PD or Poison Explosion would also qualify, I believe.

3: I think this is possible untwinked, but I would think heavily gambling and possibly a break for item farming might be called for to get AR or +life gear. You're not going to get terribly good blocking with necro shields, but you will probably want the poison damage from them, if I'm not mistaken. You can't have both a Defiance merc and a Blessed Aim merc, so you're either going to have lowish defence or AR, so I'm thinking you're going to be relying on high HP and Bone Armour to keep you alive, but then again you might do something clever like slipping Eld runes in a necro shield.

4: This was certainly a viable, if terribly slow build in 1.09. I opted for a Blessed Aim merc, but switched to Holy Freeze once a great rare Fool's Knout came my way. Yes, I cheesed in some Goblin Toe lovin' and went for a bit of CB. I'll be very impressed if you do without.

5: As above, simple skill and cheese restrictions. Whether you use a golem or which you use interests me. I haven't done a 1.1s necro, but in 1.1a, Blood Golem's life-link was one way, and did not damage you, only healed you. If this still holds true, it may be a viable optiom.

6: -grins- Well, we've had a sorcie who wanted to be a baba, and vice versa. How about a Priest of Rathma who thinks Necromancy is creepy after seeing outside cultures but still desires to stop the even creepier Diablo? Not having been trained in actual combat skill, he has to try to make the best of his talents, sticking to the less "creepy" ones.

7: Blood Golem possibly fits in here, as well as poison synergies with something other than PNova. The bone wall/armour/prison synergies may also prove to be strong, but I can't justify 60 points here, even on this build, unless you totally forego the poison side of the tree.

8: A necro, who has even less melee skill than a sorceress and charges into melee with abandon? You're giving Jeffery Dahmer lessons in insane!

Viable? Too restricting? You tell me, so sayeth The Hermit.

"And I feel this coming over like a storm again." Tool - H.

[MongoJerry]

Basic bans: No Attract, Confuse, Iron Maiden, Iron Golem, Skeletons, Revives, or Thorns merc. This leaves all other curses, and three golems available, as well as the poison and bone tree. Iron Maiden/Golem/Thorns merc are just to take out cheese. Also note that banned skills are banned from items, too. No Delirium.

Is Dim Vision allowed?

[Thecla]

PMH is on a timer, and not a very long one. My tests show about 30 seconds although this was some time ago and may have changed with the patch.

In 1.10s, PMH isn't on a timer, or if it is it's a very long one. (I've waited up to 10 minutes without seeing a monster tagged with PMH start regenerating again).

Also, as far as I can tell, going to town and returning immediately does not negate PMH, but if you spend around 5 secs in town and then return monsters will start regenerating again. I haven't checked to see if PMH wears off when monsters are left on their own several screens away.

This makes PMH invaluable especially vs. bosses and their minions. My bowazon has a harpoon of vileness on her weapons switch, and the first thing she does in a long battle is tag each monster with PMH before switching back to her main attacks.

[Occhidiangela]

Crowd control is a necessity with the new "more swarming" AI we have been seeing.

[DSTheHermit]

Is Dim Vision allowed?

Absolutely. I'm not insane. That's one of your few options for not getting miserably reamed by spellcasters, or by A5 guest monsters. I would suggest moderation with it, though. I think it would be fair to say TRY not to paste melee mobs with it. If you hit the occasional frenzytaur, fine, but I wouldn't purposefully target any. After all, they're at least brave enough to try and engage you in melee. It's those cowardly archers that tick you off...

But it sounds like you're interested, so sayeth The Hermit.

"Locked in a place where no one goes." Tool - No Quarter

[Obi2Kenobi]

I made one of those, only I used skeleton mages. :) Go go Darth Vader! I also haven't taken him through hell, yet...

[Crystalion]

1.  The character build should be unusual enough that most people wouldn't have played or seen it before.

2.  The character should use underutilized skills and make the most of them.

3.  The less the twinking of items, in both quantity and quality, the better.  A completely untwinked character is a huge bonus.

5.  The rules of the character should be easy to follow and not change.

6.  The character should have an interesting character background story that motivates the build.

7.  Right now there's a big interest in changes in 1.10, so characters that use skills and/or items that have changed between 1.09 and 1.10 are interesting.

8.  The more humorous and ridiculous the build, the better.

Of course, probably no character build will have all of these properties perfectly

Here's a simple but odd restriction: character_name the Skill-less. Poor thing was cursed at birth: the moment s/he uses her own skill, s/he will perish.

Thus no investment of skill points (a known but uncommon variant) and no skill may be used (passively or actively) that is enabled by +skill if that skill is of your own class. (This eliminates the utility of all the +skill "(class only)" items, such as rods, scepters and staffs, and thus levels the playing field, so that Necros/Palys/Sorcs/Assassins can't just laugh at the build restriction).

Additionally no use of "normal" attack (melee, ranged, thrown--except throwing potions). S/he must always rely (apart from the throwing potions, which, fyi, you can "repair" but selling to shop and buying back--so don't combine stacks) on using granted skills. This would be from charged items and all the sets/uniques/runewords that grant skills. This forces the character into "insane" variant-land, as a "skill-less" character that just uses normal attacks and therefore relies on high damage weapons has been done and isn't very colorful.

(edit: tech note: "combining" stacks of throwing potions is okay, as long as you don't lose a stack by having it be completely absorbed into the other stack. Indeed "topping off" stacks is more cost effective than sell/buy "repairing" them)

In short, when you bring up your skill tree page, ideally no skill should ever show any level at all (unless it is not a passive, and you never key/use that skill, because you really wanted to use an item for some other reason that unfortunately has a +skill to your class). But you will nonetheless typically have many skills available to you, as you make use of items with charges, and, eventually, special items granting skills outright from other classes.

The trick, of course, is to limit yourself to little or no twinking (perhaps s/he can pray to the gods from time to time, for the blessing of an item). So, for example, the Trang Oul set is rather excessive (unless s/he finds it). Actually one good rule of thumb might be: if you (the twinker) sell the item to the shop and the twinkee can't pay for it out of the shop (from money they earned) then the gift is clearly excessive.

The reason, naturally, that such an overwhelming restriction is still viable, v1.10s, is that Attract and Confuse and potions to mercs have all been improved. And there are many other charged items that already worked well pre-v1.10 (necro curses etc.) . Also charges of sacrifice are now useful (as sacrifice is basically calculated as -8% lifetap v1.10s). I believe you also have a reasonable hope of being able to make Passion or Crescent Moon by hell difficulty, so this build should actually be playable then as well.

Naturally the most powerful spell in the game is allowed, as it is "granted" (i.e. Town Portal).

I expect the beginning of such a character is running about looting chests, trying to get money for thorns on an item, or to buy an item of skill level 1 charges for their class (these are typically clvl req 7 for the other classes). Killing Blood Raven will be a major rite of passage.

After that, until you've had a chance to pack rat a bunch of useful items, your life will revolve around your hireling, and money generation (to keep those throwing potion stacks full, and those item skill charges repaired).

I may have to go try one of these right now :)

edit: p.s. example partial listing of available charges of offensive low level skill/req for classes...
(note that affix level may prevent these from being offered when you are level 1 and so
amazon: fire arrow clvl 3 req on gloves (level 40, so a twink)
amazon: power strike clvl 6 req on spears (level 12, so a twink as shop affix level 11 is max possible from norm act 1
iirc)
Sorc: fire bolts, charged bolts, ice bolts clvl 1 (affix level 7, so clvl 3 before shops will offer, iirc)
Nec: teeth clvl 1 (affix level 7, so clvl 3 before shops will offer, iirc)
Nec: poison dagger clvl 6...
Paly sacrifice charges are available clvl 1 req for Palys, clvl 7 req for other classes.
etc. etc.

FYI for those of you that never tried it, repairing spell charges is very expensive. Last I tested, v1.10s, the Ort repair recipe didn't restore the charges on a weapon. Clearly this build must use their charges carefully, only at need or when profitable. Town Portals, healing potions, antidote and thawing potions (for your hireling) are all likely to be very cost effective by comparision. Not to mention stamina potions for yourself, so the monsters can't catch you when you don't wish them to.

edit: p.s.: if you twink, Assassin is an interesting choice, as a Chaos (runeword) claw can grant them Whirlwind (clvl 57 req) and no other class has that possibility.

edit: tech note: if you don't have left/right mouse action assigned to a charge or granted skill, you'll have to have it on "throw", with the restriction that you shouldn't then have a throwing item (other than potion) equiped. This is so as to not accidentally "normally" attack something. On the right mouse button, v1.10s, you have the option of putting unsummon (any class). Also in v1.10s you can use the command /nopickup to avoid accidentally equiping a weapon by clicking on the ground.

edit: test prelim report: have played this way through level 6, past Blood Raven and Mausoleum/Crypt. Realized that until my Str is really high, or I can get a good damage weapon, of Sacrifice is too spendy compared to throwing potions. I don't think I'll be able to buy charges of Dim Vision until Act 2, so the real question is: can I shepard my hireling to get me to the next act with only throwing potion support? I'm untwinked except that I just gave myself a horadric cube (this will allow me to keep my potions on hand--in inven in cube--without losing the "low on potion" icon, which warns me when a stack is about to vanish). I've bought thorns cap, belt and armor, and 10% chance level 3 charged bolt when struck cap, gloves, boots. I believe I'm therefore benefiting from the v1.10s bug with multiple item effects. That's unfortunate, but I'm really enjoying running (to allow monsters to autohit me) around pretending I'm a LEB. :D My "holy grail" at this point, aside from wanting a poison chip for my hireling's bow to up its damage, is to get several skull chips (too much to hope for flaweds) and a three socket shield to put them into (really nice thorns damage--this would be a major twink opportunity for any lowbie, that I hadn't considered before).

BTW, you can read a bit on charged items in this thread.

[Brother Laz]

Curse-only necro. Uses Attract and IM/LR/Amp to kill.

Not exactly a 'never played' variant, but it's very rarely played, VERY different from any other character build... I have one, and I seem to be the only one in the galaxy who does. :)

[Dant]

Here's a good one:

A Paladin that only uses Sacrifice and Thorns. I'm not sure how you could work that into a story, maybe he's some kind of Flagellant (Don't know what that is? Go here for an explaination http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11635c.htm ).
The only way for the Paladin to do damage would be to get hit and have thorns do damage back or to use sacrifice which would leach your life. You'd have to make heavy use of healing potions but you'd be able to do lots of damage. The other option with this would be to use prayer instead of thorns,. I don't know what the heal rate of prayer is but you'd be able to at least recover some of the loss of health you'd get from using sacrifice.