Grizabella, the Realistic Fighter Mage

[MongoJerry]

GRIZABELLA: THE REALISTIC FIGHTER MAGE



Ever since Diablo II came out, I have always been, well, enchanted with the idea of the skill Enchant. I have always wanted to make a sorceress who focused on this skill and could power up her party and then jump into the fray and start hacking and slicing up foes herself. Sadly, Enchant has always been severely underpowered, especially when compared to the party skills of other character classes (Battle Orders, Necromancer curses, Paladin auras, and Druid spirits, especially). So when I found out that Enchant had its damage boosted and that a badly needed attack rating bonus had been added to it, I rushed to try it out.

Sadly, as we all know, Enchant is still severely underpowered even if one maxes it, its synergy skill (Warmth), Fire Mastery, and even add a few modest +skills items. At least, it's severely underpowered if the sorceress herself wants to use it as her main attack. But that didn't stop a group of us over at diabloii.net from discussing the possibilities for fighter mages. We created some fun twinked up versions of fighter mages like the "Werebear Enchantress" (a sorceress who uses 'Beast' to transform into a werebear). That was fun, but I still wanted to answer the question, "Is it possible to make a realistic version of the melee sorceress that can succeed in hell difficulty?"

So I created Grizabella, the realistic fighter mage. My goal was to use only equipment that one could reasonably expect to find after about a month's worth of playing time. So no 'Breath of the Dying' or 'Beast' weapons, no Bul-Kathos rings, no 'Chains of Honor' archon plate, no Stormshield. None of that. I used the following equipment principles as a guide:

1. She can use any equipment that my twinked characters found while adventuring.
2. She could use any equipment that my hardcore battlenet characters found themselves in 1.09. Since I don't do a lot of magic finding and never do cow runs, this seemed reasonable.
3. She could be twinked a couple of mid-level runes that could reasonably found or traded for after a month's worth of play.
4. She can wear anything she finds herself, of course.

When I created Grizabella two weeks ago, I had no idea how far she would get. I had only been playing the patch for a week, so I didn't know a lot about how all the new equipment worked or how the monsters had changed. I had run through hell with a totally twinked-up werebear enchantress but that was it.

When Grizabella finished nightmare, I wrote her up on diabloii.net and asked people in a poll to guess how far Grizabella would get in hell without dying. The rules I established for Grizabella were:

1. She plays solo.
2. She plays in /players 1 mode.
3. She must get every waypoint and quest in game order.

She could skip or reroll monsters if she needed to, but she had to fulfill every quest. The poll responses were all over the map, including many who thought she wouldn't even get through Act 1.

I kept the diabloii.net crowd updated on Grizabella's progress, and people seemed to really get into it. At first, as you'll see, I kept my reports short, thinking that people didn't want to be bothered with too much detail. But as more people seemed to follow Grizabella's adventures, I got into it more and started telling the whole story. It became so popular that I thought that perhaps LurkerLouge folks would enjoy the story, too.

Plese note that this is not intended to be an official "fighter mage guide" and I don't want to pass myself off as some sort of "fighter mage guru." This is simply one guy's build, one character's adventures, and reports of the things I noticed as I was playing this spunky and yet underpowered character.

Here are the reports, starting with the very first one I gave right before Grizabella stepped into hell (with minor edits).

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Grizabella's level 76 now, has completed Nightmare, and is about to step into hell for the first time.


CURRENT EQUIPMENT

Sigon's Gage (Gauntlets)
Sigon's Sabot (Grieves)
'Passion' Phase Blade
Coral Tower Shield of Deflecting socketed with 2 perfect diamonds
'Call to Arms' Phase Blade (weapon switch)
Sigon Shield socketed with a perfect diamond (weapon switch)
'Delirium' Crown
Skin of the Vipermagi socketed with an Um
Nightsmoke upgraded to a mesh belt
Rare amulet: 4% mana leech, +17 all resists, 10% magic find
Rare ring: 5% life leech, +15 str, 26% pr, 2 dr
Rare ring: 6% life leech, +107 ar, +1 max damage

I have found all of the runes necessary to make the 'Passion' and 'Call to Arms' phase blades. I figure if I found one Ist and one Lem in a week, then after a month's worth of intensive play, I could find or trade for another set to make the 'Delirium'. I have found two Skins and one Um with my hardcore account. I found the Nightsmoke while adventuring, and the runes to upgrade the Nightsmoke are easy to find. I bought the Coral Shield of Deflecting at the Act 1 hell shop and socketed it using the Larzuk quest reward. The amulet and rings are ones I've found over the last few days and could use major upgrades. The Sigon stuff is easy to find.

(ed. Since Grizabella was created, the 1.10s patch came out and started requiring an Ohm to make the 'Call to Arms' Phase Blade. That'll definitely make it take longer to make this equipment. However, I did find a Doomslayer, so let's just say I traded the Doomslayer for an Ohm and call it even.)

All of her charms were found in patch games and are probably underpowered. Her inventory is completely full of them. They consist of charms that complete her max resists, give her 50 pd, and give her a boatload of life.

My holy freeze mercenary is equipped with (I found all of these):

Unique Bec-de-Corbin socketed with an Amn
Tal Rasha's Mask
Duriel's Shell



STAT POINT ALLOCATION

When I finished allocating points, my naked (no items) stat allocation looked like this:

Str: 75
Dex: 194
Vit: 161
Energy: 35

After equipping everything, my stats look like this:

Str: 100
Dex: 195
Vit: 171
Energy: 35


SKILL ALLOCATION

My skill selection process was pretty clear:

FIRE

20 points Warmth
20 points Enchant
20 points Fire Mastery
1 point Firebolt (prereq)
1 point Fireball (prereq)

COLD

9 points Chilling Armor
1 point Shiver Armor
1 point Frozen Armor
1 point Cold Mastery
1 point Ice Bolt (prereq)
1 point Ice Blast (prereq)

LIGHTNING

1 point Telekinesis
1 point Teleport
1 point Static Field
1 point Energy Shield
1 point Charged Bolt (prereq)
1 point Lightning (prereq)
1 point Chain Lightning (prereq)


RELEVANT STATISTICS

With this equipment and stat setup after Enchant, Battle Command, Battle Orders, and Chilling Armor, I get:

1267-1607 Zeal damage (1022-1266 is fire damage due to Enchant)
5234 Zeal attack rating, 6446 Berserk attack rating
75%/75%/75%/66% resists
75% block
1722 Defense
1499 Life
404 Mana
21% Life leech
4% Mana leech
+7 Skills (on weapon switch after Battle Command)
+3 Skills (off weapon switch without Battle Command)



GAME PLAY WITH GRIZABELLA

A fight against a typical monster pack works something like this:

1. She runs up to the first monster and Zeals as quickly as she can before she gets swarmed in order to trigger the Confuse Aura on the 'Delirium' crown. It usually triggers after one or two Zeals.
2. She then Teleports backward to get herself and her mercenary out of the monster pack.
3. While the monsters are busy fighting each other, she walks around and statics the monsters as much as she can.
4. She then teleports to and kills any strategic monsters like shamans and oblivian mages that need killing right away.
5. She then mops up all the normal monsters using Zeal and/or Berserk. Typically, the Confuse aura lets her take on the monsters only a few at a time.

At least, that's the idea in theory. In practice, things get a lot more hairy. Fire immunes take a long time to kill. I'll have to switch to using the 'Call to Arms' phase blade to kill Immune to Poison monsters, since it has Prevent Monster Heal. Monsters that are allowed to regenerate are nearly impossible for Grizabella to kill.

A melee sorceress has many obvious disadvantages compared to other melee classes. She can't deal nearly as much damage, can't handle large groups of monsters as well, can't obtain nearly as much life, and doesn't have all the passive skills that other melee characters have. Because of all of these disadvantages, it is important that she take advantage of the two advantages she does have:

1. She can teleport around at will and knock off critical creatures like oblivian mages while the main monster pack is turning around or busy fighting each other. Also, teleport brings the mercenary with her, which means that she can direct the mercenary to attack a specific target. This is crucial, because often her mercenary can deal more damage than she can.

2. Static field. Taking a group of monsters down to half their hit points can be a huge time saver -- especially if it's a boss or champion pack.


COMMENTS

1. After maxing the requisite Enchantress skills, Enchant/Warmth/Fire Mastery, I chose to focus on Chilling Armor simply because I wanted to play a "pure" fighter mage to see how well one would work. However, I can imagine a perhaps more practical fighter mage where a person invests those points into Meteor instead. The Enchantress can cast a meteor on top of herself as the monsters start swarming her and while she Zeals, the meteor can land and clean up the place. The Enchantress has already maxed Fire Mastery, so the Meteor's damage should be pretty good. This would be a build that would probably annoy a party less, because the sorceress could actually deal a lot of damage on her own. Of course, you would still have a problem with fire immunes, but since Enchantresses are typically built with parties in mind, that's OK. Another choice would be to spend those points in Telekinesis which would help the sorceress absorb more damage using her energy shield. The amount of extra damage one can absorb is less than a lot of people think, but there's no doubt that it helps. It's a personal preference thing.

2. 'Delirium' is absolutely amazing. I used a 'Lore' crown (+1 skills) until lvl 51 and to be honest, I was having a lot of trouble with the middle acts of nightmare difficulty -- at least in /players 8 mode. I put on the 'Delirium' crown and suddenly nightmare was a breeze. At this point, I just can't see how any legit melee sorceress could play without it. Without it, you'd have to massively twink up all of the rest of the equipment to survive.

3. I can envision a 'Delirium' sorceress variant that uses a 'Delirium' helm and an "Ignores Target Defense" weapon (e.g. Hexfire). The sorceress strikes a monster until the Confuse aura activates and while the monsters fight each other, she casts Meteor, Blizzard, or Chain Lightning on them. It would seem like a pretty straight-forward build. Or the sorceress could save herself the trouble and give the 'Delirium' crown to her mercenary (do they turn into stygian dolls?).

4. Enchant is way underpowered. The sorceress herself should get at least 4x what the spell gives now. If Blizzard is worried about game balance if Enchant is cast on a multi-zon or something, then they should just make it so that the sorceress herself gets a big bonus and everyone else gets what the spell gives now.

5. I foresee in about a month a lot of people wearing 'Delirium' helms and using 'Call to Arms' on weapon switch. It'll probably end up being standard gear. With people focused on rune runs, the runes will be common enough that one will probably be able to trade for them with modestly powerful items or even find them oneself as I did.

6. The 'Delirium' aura is really funny (see the picture at the top). I still can't stop laughing every time I see it. On a practical level, you attack really fast in that form. However, it can be a scary to suddenly not be able to teleport or use any spells in the middle of a pitched battle.

7. I've had the chance to play her in a couple of parties over the last couple of days. She works well in a party, enchanting everyone's minions and any fighter characters, giving everyone bo, and tanking and giving the proverbial first kill for necromancers. The one thing that was kind of disappointing was the use of enchant with skellamancers. Lots of people have been drooling over the idea of Enchanting a horde of skeletons with 1k+ Enchant, but I have to tell you it's not all it's cracked up to be. For one, the skeletons keep moving around, so it's a pain trying to figure out which ones you've Enchanted and which ones you haven't. Second, skeletons often get left behind around corners and the necromancer is constantly refreshing them, so they lose the Enchant that you cast. Unless you like the idea of being a skeleton babysitter and are constantly watching out for when the necromancer raises another skeleton, it's not that practical. I just cast Enchant on a random small selection of my skelemancer partymate's skeletons every once in a while (when I refresh my bo) and let that be that.

8. I was very tempted to twink Grizabella a pair of Laying of Hands gloves with their +350% damage to demons. Since many of the most dangerous fire immunes are also demons (and of course since the end of act bosses are all demons), those gloves would really help. I refrained, though.

[MongoJerry]

GRIZABELLA: ACT I

I'm happy to report that Grizabella passed the Act 1 test with flying colors. I'd like to give a detailed report on the exciting adventures of Grizabella in Act 1 and describe all of the new strategies and game concepts I learned along the way, except that all of the monsters fell exactly according to plan, Grizabella was never in any real danger, and I didn't really learn much except that Delirium is the most powerful item in the game.

The one thing I did learn was that shaman have an incredible range on their "Raise Carver" spell. The Carvers and Shaman are fire immune, so they always took some time to kill. I always teleported around to hunt down all the shaman before taking out the Carvers, of course. I'd think I got them all, start to kill some carvers, and the carvers end up being revived by a shaman in some corner two screens away.

Otherwise, everything was a slow methodical cakewalk.



The Quest Screen

The Waypoint Screen

[MongoJerry]

GRIZABELLA: ACT II

Act 2 was a little more exciting for Grizabella, but I'm happy to report that she's now safe and sound on the Act III Kurast docks.

Before I describe Grizabella's Act II adventures, I have to say a few words about 'Delirium.' After having used it for a while, I now have great reservations about potentially writing a melee sorceress guide that describes a build using 'Delirium,' because there is no way that this runeword does not get nerfed. If it doesn't get nerfed in the final release of the patch, it'll get nerfed in a followup patch, because 'Delirium' is the most powerful item in the game. That's right, not a 'Breath of the Dying' weapon or a or a Cruel Ethereal Colossus Blade with a Zod in it. If 'Delirium' allows a severely underpowered character like mine to walk through the first two acts of hell unscathed, think about it in the hands of a cookie cutter build. At least my sorceress has to run up and take a few whacks on a monster before the Confuse aura goes off. A bowazon could shoot guided arrows off screen or around corners to start up the Confuse aura and never ever be in any danger. Ideas I had to fix it would be to make the chance of the Confuse aura going off much less, make the level of Confuse lower so that the radius and time length of the curse is smaller, or make it so that it gives off a high level Decrepify instead. I'll tell you, though, after seeing Confuse in action, I think we have all been seriously underestimating this necromancer skill. It might be time to start making some necromancer Confuse specialists.

And now, Grizabella's adventures in Act II!

Most of Act II was as straightforward as Act I. The skeletal archers and spear cats made things a little more interesting, but on the whole Act II went pretty smoothly. I did have a few observations and adventures this time:

1. While attacking Radament, I found out an interesting, funny, and somewhat dangerous thing regarding the Confuse aura given off by 'Delirium' that one needs to watch out for. When going after Radament, my strategy was to take a few whacks at the first skeletons to start up Confuse, teleport past them, take a few whacks at the skeletons in the back to Confuse them, and then teleport to Radament and start whacking him. That sounded like a straight-forward plan and for the most part it worked. However, Radament was also Amp curse enchanted and Confused monsters are considered enemies. Therefore, when his Amp went off, all his minions got Amped by him. That sounds like a good thing, except that it also means that the Confuse got taken off them and the minions started to swarm me. I had to teleport out of there and restart the whole process over several times in order to take down Radament.

2. There was an amazing room full of monsters in one corner of the Halls of the Dead. I didn't realize just how incredible it was until about halfway through the battle, so I didn't know to take a screenshot until it was too late. But in one room there was a champion Hollow One (the guys who raise undead) pack and *two* Hollow One boss packs with all of the skeletons that would go with them. Plus there was a sarcophagus pumping out zombies like mad. Plus there were Hollow One/skeleton groups in the hallways leading to the room. It was wall-to-wall monsters! I would've teleported past it all, but I'm stubborn and had to accept the challenge. It took 10 minutes, but I finally cleared it.

3. The maggot lair was surprisingly easy. I was expecting it to be worse with all of the baby bugs and the lack of effective crowd attack skills at the melee sorceress's disposal. But nothing in there was fire immune, so everything died efficiently. I also think I got lucky in the final chamber. It spawned with a lot of itchies which die in one hit from fire damage. It was therefore easy to get to and deal with the smaller number of maggots before they laid too many eggs.



4. The viper temple was also pretty easy with the its lack of fire immunes. I've never been as afraid of Fangskin as a lot of people are, because I always have max lightning resist and always wear magic damage reduction items. In this case, the battle was the easiest one with Fangskin I've ever had. The Confuse aura caused all of his minions to attack each other, and Fangskin himself charged out of the group alone to take me on. He wasn't fire immune, so my merc and I took him down quickly. Without his buddies to back him up, Fangskin was a piece of cake.

5. The Summoner was also easy -- easier than I expected. I drew his minions away and pummeled them (which took a while, because Blood Clan's are fire immune). Then, I teleported onto his stage area and whacked him. Dead Summoner. I want to take this moment to say something about the wonders of magic damage reduce. I've run into a lot of people on bnet who don't understand it and think it's a "junk" stat. However, what they don't get is that it is applied *after* resistances and works on every frame of an attack. I remember reading somewhere that firewall attacks every other frame, or 12 times a second. If so, then a 1000/sec firewall becomes a 250/sec firewall after 75% fire resistance and then my 12 mdr saves me 144 damage per second of that damage, so I would only take 106 damage/second. That's only 40% of the damage I would have taken without it. People who fear lightning enchanted bosses, the Summoner's firewall, the Infestor's inferno, the cold breaths from those monsters in Act V, or Diablo's lightning breath should seriously look into wearing a little mdr equipment. OK, off my soapbox now.

6. The Canyon of the Magi was a pain as there were approximately 10,000 spear cats. After making a valiant effort to make some headway here and after quaffing several full rejuv's and reviving my merc once, I said, "Forget this!" and teleported past everything to the tomb.



7. Ah, Duriel. Surely he will teach some humility to this young brash upstart of an underpowered melee mage. 'Delirium' won't save her here! Ah, but you see, there is something that you may be forgetting. Do you see that little red fuzzy ball on top of Duriel in the above screenshot? That's the result of the underused cry Battle Cry which is included with 'Call to Arms.' With +7 all skills added to the +10 Battle Cry on the 'Call to Arms,' that comes to a level 17 Battle Cry which reduces damage by 41%. So, Grizabella entered Duriel's lair, teleported to just the other side of Duriel so that he couldn't charge her or her merc and the battle went like this:

Teleport next to Duriel, battle cry, static, static, static, static, static, battle cry, whap, whap, whap, whap, whap, whap, whap, whap, whap, whap, whap, battle cry, whap, whap, whap, whap, whap, whap... etc.

She spent at least two minutes in his room and only quaffed one healing potion. That probably wasn't necessary, either. Her mercenary didn't need anything. As if we needed another reason why everyone will own a 'Call to Arms' weapon.

[MongoJerry]

GRIZABELLA: THE SPIDER CAVERN

Grizabella had some exciting adventures in the Act III Spider Cavern. However, before you respond to this posting or make any judgments, make sure you read the epilogue at the end.

Act III from the start was harder than Act II. A lot harder. It was so hard that I kept checking my message log to see if I had set /players 8 by mistake. I hadn't. Just making my way through the Spider forest was tough. It'd take five trips back to town to kill one boss pack of anything, and if I didn't tend to my mercenary constantly with teleports and potions, he'd die in 3 seconds. I just couldn't get it. Act II had been pretty straightforward, except for a few battles here and there. Just starting Act III was a struggle every step of the way. After about 45 minutes of pain-staking fighting, I finally made it to the first offshoot area in the Spider Forest which contained the Spider Cavern. I took a deep breath and went in.

The first group of four spiders were fire immune. "Aw, c**p," was my first reaction. It took several full rejuvs and several trips to town, but I finally managed to kill the group and establish a small beachhead by the entrance. But when I went around the corner, I found out I was going to be in big trouble.



Little lamprey bugs started flowing toward me in a seemingly neverending stream. "OK," I thought. "No problem, they're not fire immune, so I can handle them." I figured I could zeal a few of them, start up the Confuse, teleport to the mamas and cut the supply off at the source. The Confuse went off and then, bang! Amp cut in a split second later. "Uh, oh," I thought. Confuse went off again and then Amp cut in again right after. One of the Giant Lamprey mamas was a cursed boss. Anytime the Confuse went off, the mama would hit one of her babies and start Amp on everyone, canceling out the confuse. I Zealed for a bit and made a little headway through the little bugs, quaffing potions as I went, but then the spiders came in and stopped me dead in my tracks. I tried backing out and then teleporting to the mamas to try to kill them before they laid more eggs, but with me and my merc amped, we couldn't get more than three swings off before we had to get away -- without the mama bug hurt in any way. It didn't help that the merc AI attacks whatever attacked him last, so at best he'd hit the mama bug once and then get distracted and start jabbing at the babies. My merc does 3-4 times as much damage as I do, so without him providing the power, it was useless to attack the mamas directly.

So, I tried a desperate gamble. I quaffed a full rejuv potion and teleported around the cavern (teleporting away fast if I teleported into the middle of a spider pack) until I found a safe spot away from any boss monsters. I planned to then slowly and methodically take on spiders a few at a time, making my way toward the gold chest, all the while hoping I don't meet any more curse enchanted bosses. That's when I first met poison immune spiders.

Poison immune spiders? No problem, I thought. If they're not fire immune, they're toast. Hm, I don't seem to be doing any damage to them. Why aren't I doing any damage to them? What the hell? Oh.

If they're poison immune, the poison charm in my inventory won't stop their life regeneration, and the spiders were regening as fast as I was damaging them. I switched to my 'Call to Arms' blade which has "Prevent Monster Heal" on it and slowly made progress. To conserve Full Rejuv potions for battles against boss monsters, I tried to use only Super Healing Potions as much as I could while fighting normal monsters. I filled 8 potion slots with healing potions each time I went to town and on average I managed to kill one spider for every trip to town.

This adventure was starting to feel like some of the descriptions of the adventures of Sirian's Firebolt sorceress. (I know I'm dating myself a bit here. Sirian was a guy who two years ago made a pre-LOD hardcore Firebolt-only sorceress and managed to get all the way through and kill Diablo in nightmare. And this was before Firebolt became the uber skill it is today. Hm, a firebolt sorceress. I should try that).

But I managed to do it. Woohoo! It took 45 minutes of grueling work, but I did it. I made a nice path to the chest, popped the chest, and positioned myself for a screenshot next to the Eye.

Then I hit "Esc" to change the automap settings to make the scene look better and accidentally hit "Save and Exit" instead of "Options."

I just couldn't believe my eyes. I restarted the game out of some vain hope that the Eye would appear in my inventory even though I hadn't picked it up or that maybe all the monsters would still be dead. Of course, it was crazy, but when you'd just been through what I went through, denial can be a powerful force. The Eye wasn't there, and all the monsters were back. I was back at square one.

Well, not entirely. I did still have the map up to and inside the Spider Cavern. After I took a break to clear my head, I looked at the map and said, "To h*** with it" and teleported my way over to the Spider Cavern, leaving all the outside monsters for another time. I wanted to get the Eye just have something concrete for all my efforts.

I walked in and the first monster pack I came across was a Might enchanted Amp cursed spider boss pack (might've been two boss packs, but I didn't stick around long enough to find out). Here we go again. Teleport, teleport, teleport.



I ended up finding a nice little spot up in the top corner that you see in the above screenshot where there weren't any spiders in the immediate area. Unfortunately, the chest with the Eye is near the bottom corner. I did get one bit of good news while I was furiously teleporting -- I saw gloom bats, which means that there were no Giant Lamreys. I can deal with bats.

I again slowly and methodically made my way toward the chest. I had the system down, so it only took about 20 minutes to get there. I'd lure a couple of spiders at a time to my little corner and pummel them there. It was important to corner them, because 'Passion' has Hit Causes Monster to Flee on it and besides spiders like to run when they're injured anyway. I knew I success was at hand when I managed to lure away and kill two of Sszark's minions. Then, Sszark himself came out.



Immune to Fire, Immune to Physical, Magic Resistant, Stone Skin. How the hell am I supposed to do anything to this guy? Not to mention he's Extra Strong and Amp cursed. Time to quit out and reroll the monsters?

Forget it. I lured the rest of Sszark's minions away from the chest, teleported to the chest, hit it, grabbed the Eye, tp'd to town. Cya!


EPILOGUE: It turns out that the game was set on 8-player mode after all. I forgot that I had done some testing against the Ancients in nightmare difficulty and had set the game in 8-player mode. I didn't know until now that the game remembers what player setting you used even after you leave a game and create a new one. It makes sense now that I think about it, but I usually play on bnet, so I didn't know. It's nice to know that I can make some headway in an 8-player game, even if it's quite slow. Actually, as agonizing as it was, it was also the most fun I've had with Grizabella so far, because it required the most strategizing and skill of any adventure so far. Maybe when I'm done with 1-player mode, I'll try everything again in 8-player mode. It'd only take every waking moment for the next month to do it.

[MongoJerry]

GRIZABELLA: ACT III

With the game now correctly set to /players 1 mode, the monsters got eight times easier to kill and the game got 64 times easier to play. It was still a slow grind and I still had to break up large packs of monsters at times by luring members a few at a time back to a safe location to pummel them, but the going was much easier.

Of the jungle areas, the Great Marsh probably took the longest. The Zombies there are fire immune and have a lot of hit points and the Gloams are always a pain. Still there weren't any times in the Spider Forest or the Great Marsh where Grizabella was ever in any real danger.

I expected the Flayer Jungle to be much harder than it was, but there for the first time, I saw the power of Zeal. Up until now, I've been wondering if 'Passion' was worth bothering with and I still think that one could get by with using a 'Call to Arms' Phase Blade alone. (If I had more +skills items, I would probably like 'Passion' more). But with the little flayers swarming me and my merc, the Zeal on 'Passion' let me for once kill at about the same speed as my mercenary. None of the little flayers are fire immune, so they tended to die quickly -- somewhere in about 2-3 Zeals. Then, I and my merc would then teleport to the shamans, who are fire immune, and take them out without much difficulty before they raised too many of the little flayers. And if any of the little flayers did swarm us while we were attacking a shaman, Zeal would quickly dispatch them. It was a grueling long journey through the Kurast jungle areas, but after a couple hours of adventuring, Grizabella had her feet firmly placed on the Lower Kurast waypoint -- Eye and Brain in her stash and the Gidbinn protecting the Kurast Docks from harm.

Gidbinn Screenshot

Lower Kurast Screenshot

The next big challenge was the Ruined Temple or as I like to call it, "The Death Trap." But I'm no novice hardcore player. I specialize in taking out the Ruined Temple in hardcore hell. The Ruined Temple comes in two possible maps. About three-quarters of the time, it'll show up with one large main chamber right in front of the entrance stairs with two small chambers to either side. This is the "Death Map," because it allows for maximum swarming from all sides. But there is a second map that appears about one-quarter of the time that starts off with a long hallway and then has two medium-sized chambers off the hallway. This is the "Safe Map" in that it's much easier to take on monsters one group at a time. My plan was to keep rerolling the map until I got the "Safe Map."

The first time I went into the Ruined Temple, I got the "Death Map," but nothing swarmed me immediately. Hm. "Well, I'll take a look around, but at the first sign of an extra fast might enchanted boss, I'm out of here," I mused. I checked the side rooms, and they had no monsters. Strange. Finally, a Flesh Hunter and a couple of Gargantuans came out of the main chamber to greet me and the fight was on. But it wasn't too terrible. Sure, I used tactics to help me like fighting in doorways to keep from getting swarmed, and I'm sure the Confuse from the 'Delirium' runeword helped a lot. But it was weird. There didn't seem to be nearly as many monsters as I remember from 1.09 and earlier versions of D2. There were a few Gargantuans, a few spiders, a few vampires, and the usual Flesh Hunters. But I think the only boss pack was the Flesh Hunter boss pack. Nothing was fire immune, so everything died efficiently. Either I got really lucky with my monster rolls, or Blizzard majorly nerfed the Ruined Temple. I hope it's not the latter one, because I always liked the challenge of taking on the Ruined Temple.

Lam Esen's Tome Screenshot

I popped into the sewers and got lucky in that the entrance to the second level of the sewers was near the entrance I used. I got the heart and then it was off to Tranvincal.

I'm glad they're making people do Tranvical now. Of course, I wish they made people get the Eye, Brain, and Heart, too, but Tranvincal has always been one of my favorite areas. It's a nicely well-built challenge. Sure, if you have an uber-l33t character, you can probably march up to the full council and take them all on without a thought. But if you like to play more challenging builds as I do Tranvincal takes a lot more thought.

The first thing you have to do with Travincal if you're playing an underpowered character is do a full clear of the entire map away from the temple area. In particular, you want to hunt down and destroy any Heirophants, because the last thing you want is to spend five minutes wailing on a council member boss only to have him healed by a Heirophant. Getting rid of all vampire-like monsters is also a big plus, because you don't want meteors raining down on you while you're fighting a council member. I usually go around the outside perimeter of Travincal first, then spiral in and hit the outer buildings and end by attacking anything left in the middle and in front of the temple area. Then, it's time to lure council members out one at a time to some safe location well away from the temple area. As long as you're attacking them one at a time, the council members are not bad at all. However, I had an amazingly difficult time with Ismail Vilehand.



I don't get why he was so tough. He was Immune to Fire, but he wasn't Immune to Physical. Nonetheless, it took literally 25 minutes to kill him (I watched the clock). I don't know how to read the MPQ's, but I would guess from this experience that he has a natural 95% resistance to physical attacks or something like it. He wasn't regening, because he's not immune to poison (and anyway I hit him with my 'Call to Arms' blade just in case). He also never cast a healing spell on himself. Indeed, his health never went up at any time. It just took 25 minutes to finally whittle him down. I backed him into the corner that you see in the picture and wailed on him there. After a bit, he seemed to give up. He stopped attacking and shut down. Either his AI doesn't know how to handle being cornered or the AI says, "If a guy's been pounding on you for 10 minutes, just give up." After he didn't do anything for 5 minutes, I rested a book on my mouse button and went and made a sandwich. The other council members died efficiently, though. (ed note: It's two days later, and I realize now I should've tried Berserk).

I found a Doombringer off a Heirophant in the middle Travincal. If I find one in a hardcore ladder game a week into the ladder season, I wonder how much I'd get for it on Ebay. :-)

I smashed the compelling orb. I still can't believe that Blizzard hasn't done anything to make this quest more rewarding. You should get a hellforge level rune out of it at least. Oh, well. I went down into the Durance of Hate and finally got the screenshots I've been dying to get.



Undead Stygian Doll on Undead Stygian Doll!



Take that!



And that!

Besides laughing hysterically at the doll on doll action, I did notice something significant. Both in doll form and in sorceress form, I wasn't taking any damage, or at least any significant damage, from the exploding dolls. I even killed a boss exploding doll and was hardly damaged at all. Either the explosions can be resisted or blocked, or Blizzard nerfed the exploding dolls considerably. Hmmm... no msle's, the Ruined Temple's been nerfed, and now the exploding dolls don't do much damage. Blizzard may have made your average joe monster harder, but it seems like they're nerfing everything that used to be a challenge in the old game.

Into the Durance of Hate Level 3 I went. The council members and vampire guys fell efficiently. Sure, I had to run and teleport around a bit and go back to town twice, but the fight wasn't too bad. The Confuse kept most everyone occupied long enough for me to pick them off one by one. Then, it was time to take on Mephisto.

I had found a Ravenfrost in nightmare, so I put it on to protect me against Mephisto's Blue Ball of Death. I also bought an antidote potion to give me a temporary boost to my poison resistance. This all turned out to be overkill.



I and my mercenary teleported next to Mephisto and started wailing on him. And wailing on him. And wailing on him. Somebody said in another thread that melee characters are at a big disadvantage to missle fire fighters and spellcasters against Mephisto, because you can't leech against Mephisto anymore. That person is an idiot. The only scary attacks Mephisto uses are his blue ball and charged bolt, but he doesn't use them against melee attackers. Instead, he uses his pathetic melee and poison attack which hardly do any damage at all. I used 5-6 super healing potions to keep up my and my mercenary's health against the poison, but otherwise, Mephisto went down with hardly a fight.

So, Grizabella is now safe and sound in the Pandemonium Fortress. On to Act IV! Here are the usual end-of-act screenshots.

The Quest Screen

The Waypoint Screen

[MongoJerry]

GRIZABELLA: ACT IV

Flush with success from my adventures in Act III, I was feeling cocky -- cocky and a little tired. My "hardcore spidey sense" was tingling, telling me that to go on in this state would be dangerous and that maybe I should take a break for a while. I ignored it and stepped out onto the Outer Steppes.

I charged forward and met a pack of Flesh Spawners. Cold immune. No problem. I started Zealing them, and a might enchanted boss pack of fire immune Pit Lords came from below and more monsters came from above. Uh, oh. I tried to recover, but every time I ran or teleported around, I just woke up more monsters. The Confuse wasn't holding everyone down and there were too many Pit Lords to deal with all at once. Things were breaking down. I teleported to a temporarily clear spot and tp'd to town.

Stupid stupid stupid. You gotta stick with what brought you here. Go at a slow steady pace. Make a beachhead and then take on monsters only a few at a time. Don't get cocky or greedy. I took a break to clear my head and restarted the game.

This time when I walked out onto the Outer Steppes, I hugged the area's edge and inched along slowly. The first monster pack I met were Leapers. Lightning immune, not much in the way of hit points, no problem. Annoying, but no problem. Then some poison immune Corpulents came on screen. This was getting easy. Finally, I saw the third and final monster type: Doom Knights. I went from having the monster roll from hell to having one of the easiest monster rolls possible. Sure, Doom Knights are fire immune, but they're slow, easy to break up, and aren't that dangerous in small groups.

I steadily made my way along the edge of the Outer Steppes and eventually came upon the entrance to the Plains of Despair. I took a deep breath, prepared for the worst, and walked up the stairs. The first monster group to greet me were Doom Knights. I can handle them, I thought. Then some Corpulents joined them. Nice. Finally, some Flesh Spawners came on screen. Woohoo! No Gloams! No 20,000 lightning bolts shooting across the screen!

I progressed along the edge of the Plains of Despair and eventually came upon Izzy. He was surrounded by a huge pack of Doom Knights, so it took a while to clear out his minions. In fact, while I and my merc were busy attacking random Doom Knights, Izzy kept coming up to us and pestering us. "Excuse me! We're trying to kill your minions here. Thank-you!" I wanted to take a screenshot of Grizabella whacking away at Izzy, but I accidentally ended up killing him before I had finished killing all of the Doom Knights around him. He wasn't fire immune, so whenever he got in range of my Zeal, he'd get hit and take damage and of course my merc would take some shots at him every once in a while. Dead Izzy. Oh, well. I dropped a skill point into Lightning Mastery per AWOL's suggestion on the hope that it will improve the lightning damage dealt by my Passion blade and the lightning damage charm I have and then dropped the other skill point into Chilling Armor.

The City of the Damned had Stygian Hags, Damned, and Pit Lords. The Stygian Hags and Damned were dispatched easily. The Pit Lords on the other hand were very annoying. After I had slowly and meticulously picked apart my second group of Pit Lords, I felt I'd had enough and figured that once you kill one Pit Lord pack, you've killed them all. So, from then on, every time I saw a Pit Lord pack, I'd Zeal until the Confuse started and then teleport past the group. I'd slaughter any Damned or Hags in the area to thin the monster herd, but the Pit Lords were left to squabble among themselves.

The River of Flame had Udars, Abyss Knights, and Stygian Hags. Normally, I'd be scared of the Abyss Knights, but several factors were in my favor. First, the Confuse from 'Delirium' really helped. Even if the Abyss Knight himself wasn't Confused, he'd still shoot at the monsters who were. Plus, their spells can be blocked, so my 75% block and max resistances kept me safe. Just in case, though, after the Confuse aura would go off, I'd teleport next to the Abyss Knights and kill them first.

I got to the hellforge area and the Smith came out. I wasn't sure what to expect from him. I lured him away from the other monsters, so I could take him on alone. Finally, with some trepidation, I teleported next to him and started wailing on him. He hit me. And, well, it wasn't too bad. I don't recall the exact number, but I'd say he took at most 1/3 of my life -- maybe only 1/4. He's always spectral hit, so my resistances probably saved me from a lot of damage. Considering my blocking rate caused him to miss 3/4ths of the time, his damage wasn't bad at all. I used Super Healing Potions to heal me but had an itchy trigger finger on my Full Rejuv hotkeys if I ever dropped below half life. It never happened. He died in about 10 seconds.



And all I got was a lousy Pul rune. Sheesh, I got a Pul rune out of my nightmare hellforge.

Along the way to the River of Flame waypoint, I met a couple of monsters I had to park, but otherwise things went smoothly.



Inside the Chaos Sanctuary, the fighting got a little hairy. The first problem is that Doom Knights and Venom Lords are all fire immune. The second problem is that Doom Casters can suck your mana dry and leave you unable to teleport out of sticky situations if you're not careful. And the final problem as everyone knows is the Oblivian Knights. But the OK's were a problem for Grizabella for a different than normal reason. Sure, their spells hurt, but Grizabella's block and resistances neutralize that problem effectively. No, the problem was that the OK's would cast curses that would override the Confuse curse on the minions. (You can see in the above screenshot how a lot of monsters have lifetap or amp curses on them).

The one thing going in Grizabella's favor was that the OK's aren't fire immune, so they can be killed fairly quickly if she's given the chance to get at them. The key is to pick off the OK's one by one. First, you draw the minions away from the OK's, which is pretty easy, since OK's tend to stay back. You then start up the Confuse to give you that extra half-second advantage and then teleport to an open OK and kill him before you're surrounded. Then you teleport away and start the whole process over again. Once all of the OK's are dead, the Confuse aura stays on the minions and they can be picked off at your leisure.

The Grand Visor and his minions were dispatched quickly and then it was off to de Seis.



I've been through the Chaos Sanctuary before with twinked up characters, but it wasn't until now that I realize what a patsy de Seis has become. You used to have to deal with a full pack of Oblivian Knights (mages) and it was as scary as hell. Now, he appears with just a pack of Doom Knights. Gee, that's scary. Not! I teleported over to the main area of the room and drew off the Doom Knights in pairs and dispatched them there. Then, I teleported next to de Seis himself. Without his minions, he fell quickly.

Hmm... There does seem to be a pattern here. No msle's, the Ruined Temple is nerfed, the exploding dolls aren't scary anymore, and de Seis is nerfed. And I thought Blizzard wanted to make things harder.



De Seis may have been nerfed, but the Infector of Souls got a major upgrade. Still, the strategy is the same. Draw off and kill his minions one or two at a time and then take him on alone. I groaned when I saw his attributes. Immune to Fire and Immune to Physical. Plus, he was Spectral Hit, which means his resistances to other elemental attacks were really good. I put on my Raven Frost ring to give me some extra cold damage and my 1-18 lightning damage charm. Those plus the 50 pd charm and the 1-50 lightning damage on the Passion were the only things I had that would do any damage to him. I hoped that the whole Lightning Mastery idea would work. After staticing him to half life, I slowly whittled him down. It took four trips to town to buy potions and 20 minutes (less time than it took to kill Vilehand), but he finally died. A second after he died, a voice in my head asked, "Why didn't you use Berserk?" Doh!



I hit the final seal, teleported onto the platform when Diablo appeared, staticed him to half, and started wailing on him. What a total letdown. This is the first time in a long time that I have played a melee character; I usually play sorceresses, bowazons, or necromancers. I'm used to running like mad every time Diablo starts up his Lightning Breath of Death. But as you can see in the picture, the lightning breath doesn't start for several yards! I know that most of you knew that already and intellectually I knew it before now, too, but this was the first time I had my own character on the line to see it. My merc and I took no damage from his lightning breath. His fire damaged us the most, but we both had max fire resistance and I had 12 mdr, so the damage was quickly repairable with red potions. His melee attack was blocked 3/4ths of the time and it wasn't terrible when he did hit me. I forgot about Battle Cry until about halfway through the battle (it was 2 in the morning, give me a break!). With battle cry on him, he couldn't do a thing to us. He fell in under 30 seconds.

Grizabella is in Act V, preparing to save Harrogoth. More adventures are to come!

Here are the usual end-of-act screenshots:

The quest screen

The waypoint screen

[MongoJerry]

GRIZABELLA: ACT V BLOODY FOOTHILLS AND FRIGID HIGHLANDS

Harrogoth was in trouble. Shenk the Overseer and his minions had laid siege to the citadel. Despite being a population made up of barbarians (who apparently never learned how to Whirlwind), the people of Harrogoth called upon dainty little Grizabella to relieve the siege.

She walked out into the Bloody Foothills and found out just how pathetic the people of Harrogoth were. The foothills were crawling with Lashers and Enslaved and had a few small groups of Slingers providing some missle-fire power. Lashers and Enslaved are both cold immune and stupid. They were dispatched at will. The Slingers are fire immune, but there were never enough of them on the screen at once to do much harm. Also, having 75% block and good defence helped neutralize any trouble they did try to give Grizabella.



It wasn't long before she met Shenk himself. He went down with barely a fight.

That was weak. That wasn't a fight worthy of Grizabella. So, I restarted the game to give her a new crack at the Bloody Foothills. Quill Rats and Lashers. Next! Quill rats and Thorn Beats. That's a little better. An extra strong might enchanted Thorn Beast boss gave Grizabella some trouble and killed her merc twice. But otherwise, she handled the challenge well. Come on, give me something hard here.



Burning Dead Archers and Demon Imps. Now, that's what I'm talking about!

The Burning Dead Archers weren't too bad in small groups, because they aren't fire immune and don't have a lot of hit points. Once the confuse aura switches on and they start shooting at each other, they can be picked off. However, I did run into a nasty area that had three boss packs in it, including one who was might enchanted. It took a lot of potions and three trips to town to revive my merc, but that pack was finally destroyed.

Confident that Grizabella could handle anything that the Bloody Foothills could throw at her, I moved on.



The Frigid Highlands had Demon Imps, Slayers, Siege Beasts, Vile Archers, and Lashers. I groaned. Everything except for the Lashers was fire immune. Even the Siege Towers were fire immune. This was going to be a long slow grind.

The nice thing about the Frigid Highlands, though, is that it doesn't have many of what I call "swarmers" -- monsters that quickly rush you and can overwhelm you if you don't get away fast. Most of the monsters in the Frigid Highlands move relatively slowly and don't swarm, so Grizabella was able to pick things off and make slow steady progress. It was fun teaching the Demon Imps a lesson in teleport. "You think that you can just teleport away from me? Watch this!" *flit* *whap!* *whap!"

This brings up another subject. One person asked in this thread what was the difference between Grizabella and, say, an underpowered Holy Fire paladin as far as fighting style goes. I don't think I gave a satisfactory answer to that question, so I'd like to address it now. Besides the obvious comical and challenge differences, a fighter mage has one enormous difference with a paladin: Teleport. You see, I'm not using Teleport just to get to a fight or cross rivers. I'm using it constantly in every fight. If you asked me what my primary attack skill is, I wouldn't say Zeal or Berserk. I would say teleport. Why? Because, my mercenary's jab can deliver three times more damage in the same amount of time than I can. I use Zeal mostly to start up the Confuse aura and to make me feel like I'm actually doing something. It's mostly my merc who delivers the damage -- especially to anything that's fire immune.

Unfortunately, mercenaries aren't very bright about deciding who to attack, so in a fight, I am constantly teleporting around to try to get my merc to pick off strategic targets. If a monster flees, I don't run after it, because my merc doesn't move that fast or chase monsters who are fleeing. Instead, I teleport on top of the monster and give my merc a chance to finish it off. Think about how Demon Imps behave and you'll have an idea of what this looks like. A fighter mage is constantly flitting in and out and from one side of a battle to another.

In military terms, a zealing holy fire paladin would be like a massive armor tank column with his massive block, defence, hit points, and powerful weapons, capable of powering through a massive monster pack. A fighter mage, by contrast, is more like a lightly armed fast attack or special ops unit with her ability to flit in, kill key monsters (e.g. Oblivian Knights) and flit out fast. But like a fast attack unit, she doesn't have the raw power to bulldoze her way through a crowd. I hope that explains it well. If you saw Grizabella in action, I'm sure you'd see that there's no comparison between her fighting style and a paladin or any other fighter class.



It was a long grueling search, but I found all of the imprisoned barbarians and yelled to them, "Hey! Use that scroll of tp you have in your pocket!" Somehow in all that time in a wooden cage, no one ever thought of that. Stupid barbarians.

Up next: A Damsel Rescues a Damsel or Dies Trying

[MongoJerry]

GRIZABELLA: ACT V ANYA



I climbed up to the Arreat Plateau and breathed a sigh of relief. Finally, I was in a place that wasn't wall-to-wall fire immunes. The Returned Mages, Carvers, and Carver Shaman weren't fire immune, so they could be dispatched quickly. The only fire immunes there were the Demon Gremlins (Imps) who don't have much in the way of hit points anyway. Grizabella had max cold resist and by now was wearing her Ravenfrost all the time (she'd found it off a random monster in nightmare difficulty), so I wasn't concerned about her dying from Shaman glacial spikes. Nevertheless, I still had her teleport next to the Shaman and dispatch them first. The going was smooth and I readily found the waypoint. It was time to be off to the Crystaline Passage.

The first group of monsters to meet me was made of Claw Vipers. Nice, no immunities. The second group was made of Dark Archers. Cold immune, no problem. The third group to appear made me cackle out loud. Snow Drifters -- cold immune. Not one fire immune in the whole passage, all of the monsters moved slowly, and all of them could be easily handled by Confuse. It was a slaughter. I did a full clear of the passage simply to enjoy the rare experience of, as I put it earlier, "bulldozing my way through monster packs."



The Frozen River had Snow Drifters, Claw Vipers, and Gloams. The Gloams were a pain, of course. After I Zealed to start the Confuse aura, I'd Teleport around to take them out first. However, none of the monsters were fire immune, so progress was steady. After a good while, I found and rescued Anya from her icy prison.



I got the scroll from Malah, but I didn't really need the extra +10% to all resists as I had already maxed everything except poison. But it did allow me to substitute out a fire resist charm for a life charm. You can't complain about a little extra life.

I then visited Anya expectantly to see what she'd give me. "An orb?! What the hell am I going to do with an orb? Don't you see what I'm using here? Where's my cruel phase blade of evisceration, you ungrateful wench?!"

Next: Nihlathak's Temple.

[MongoJerry]

GRIZABELLA: NIHLATHAK'S TEMPLE



I entered Anya's portal to Nihlathak's Temple, and I was on my way. I teleported over to the first Prowling Dead I saw waking up and Zealed to start up the Confuse. Prowling Dead are hilarious when Confused. They slam into each other and look like stumbling drunks. They aren't fire immune, so they can be picked off easily.

Pindleskin and his minions were another story. I was too used to the wimpy 1.09 version of Pindleskin and that almost cost me. I teleported right into the middle of the pack, figuring that would save me from the pack's charge attacks, that I could take the pounding from their melee attacks, and that the merc and I could take them down fast. Boy, was I wrong. My merc died and I had to quaff 3 full rejuvs before the Pindleskin's crew was subdued. If she didn't have 75% block and her cold armor up, Grizabella would've met a premature end right then and there. Once again, a little cockiness was making me take unnecessary risks. I entered the Halls of Anguish, tp'd to town, and revived my merc.



The Halls of Anguish had Scarabs, Night Lords, and Horror Mages. None of them were fire immune, but the Night Lords were particularly tough. I took on the regular Night Lords, but each time I did, I had to give thanks for Grizabella's block and defense. The might enchanted boss pack pictured above kicked my butt. I'm sure that if I spent enough time at it, eventually I would've picked it apart, but it wasn't worth it. I teleported backwards and went a different direction.

The Halls of Pain had easy stuff -- Flayer blowdart shooters, Blood Maggots, and Temple Guards. Flayers are fire immune, but when they are Confused, they aren't dangerous since they shoot at each other. After wasting time trying to hunt down packs of Flayers, I decided to stop bothering with them and instead just teleport past them. I killed the Blood Maggots and Temple Guards, though.

I found and touched the Halls of Pain waypoint. Yeah, yeah, Pindleskin, blah blah. This isn't a magic find character, and I was expecting that I would have to reroll the monsters in the Halls of Vaught a few times. Anyway, I said from the beginning that I needed to do every quest and find every waypoint, so I hit it.

I took the stairs down to the Halls of Vaught and an enormous smile came across my lips. Returned Archers, Flayers (blowdart version), Flayer Shamans, and the usual Slayers. There wasn't any need to reroll those monsters. That's about as good as it gets.

Why? Because Returned Archers and Flayers are aggressive. As everyone knows, Nihlathak's most dangerous weapon is his corpse explosion, so it's important to draw out as many monsters as possible from his main room and kill them well away from him. This is especially true for Grizabella, since I'm planning to keep her merc alive for this. Normally, when I take on Nihlathak, I get my merc killed so that he doesn't accidentally kill anything in Nihlathak's main chamber. But since Grizabella's merc does more damage than she does, I want to use him to attack Nihlathak. It's easy to coax Returned Archers and Flayers from the main chamber. Plus they don't have a lot of hit points, so if a corpse explosion does go off, it would be survivable. Bad monster rolls would include Vile Temptresses and Defilers. It is incredibly difficult to coax either of them away from the main chamber (Temptresses can be coaxed, but it takes *forever* to get them all out). Defilers also have a lot of hit points, so their corpse explosions can be dangerous.



I spent 15 minutes coaxing out every monster from the main chamber, except for one Flayer Shaman who was easily ignored. Then, I ran in, teleported next to Nihlathak, and took him apart in about 20 seconds.



It's been a day full of adventure for Grizabella. She must rest in Harrogoth and recuperate her strength before she makes the assent up Mt. Arreat.

[MongoJerry]

GRIZABELLA: THE ASSENT OF MT. ARREAT

The assent of Mount Arreat was a grueling affair. The first stop was the Glacial Trail.



The first monsters to attack were Wraiths. Good, they're easy. While I was dispatching the Wraiths, though, Moon Lords came on screen. Crap. The lightning immune Night Lords in Nihlathak's Temple were bad enough. Moon Lords are also fire immune. I isolated a normal Moon Lord and tried to take him out. It took a trip to town to replenish my red potions just to kill one lousy lone regular Moon Lord. I decided that killing Moon Lords was not worth the trouble. So from then on, whenever I met a Moon Lord pack, I'd start up the Confuse aura and then teleport past it.

Or at least that was the theory. In practice, things were a lot dicier in the narrow corridors of the Glacial Trail. First, the Confuse doesn't necessarily tie up everyone. Often, there would be one Moon Lord in the back who saw us teleporting by and would come after us. Second, if you get involved in a prolonged battle down the corridor, the Confuse can wear off and the whole pack can come charging down on you from behind. Third, bosses and champion packs can't be Confused. Fourth, you might run into a cursed aura enchanted boss who overrides the Confuse curse. The battle shown above was particularly harrowing as the amp enchanted Pit Viper boss kept overriding the Confuse curse and there were about 6 Moon Lords chasing us from behind. It also didn't help that I turned into an undead stygian doll twice in the middle of the battle which isn't that funny when you need teleport to get out of a sticky situation. It took four trips to town to finally clear the snakes from this area (I sure didn't want them chasing me).



I had a group of about six Moon Lords I couldn't shake off my tail until I finally came across the gold chest guarded by Bonesaw Breaker. The Confused Moon Lords focused on the confused Reanimated Horde minions. Once I was confident that all of the Moon Lords were busy, I teleported out of there fast.

The Frozen Tundra was much less eventful. It had Bone Archers and Saber Cats which weren't fire immune and Crush Beasts and Demon Rascals that were. The going was slow but not particularly dangerous. I found the waypoint quickly and entered the Ancients Way.

The Ancients Way had Reanimated Hordes, Spike Fiends, Dark Lancers, and champion Frozen Terrors. None of them were fire immune, but I could definitely tell that monster hit points were ramping up. A couple of boss packs were troublesome but on the whole, it was a steady grind to find the waypoint and the entrance to the Arreat Summit.



Grizabella made it to the summit. But will the Ancients find her worthy?

[MongoJerry]

GRIZABELLA: THE ANCIENTS

There Grizabella was on the Arreat Summit, and I have to admit that I was more than a little scared. There have been plenty of chances up till now to make a costly mistake that gets Grizabella killed. But I'm an old hardcore hand who likes to play underpowered or untwinked characters. I've developed incredible patience and I know that as long as one takes his time and picks his spots, he can come out alive in the end.

But all the usual tactics don't work here. I have a philosophy that says as long as I can damage them a little and stay alive long enough to get to town to repair and replenish potions, then I can kill them. But you can't tp back to town here without starting the battle over again. In addition, Confuse isn't going to do any good here. It's a chica y manos fight and Grizabella can only use what she brings with her.

The first thing I did was create four stashes of potions -- one at each corner of the Summit. The one problem with this tactic is that the computer will clean up potions left on the ground after a couple of minutes, so the clock is ticking from the moment you drop the first potion. I moved charms into my stash and cube to make room in my inventory and bought healing potions from Malah. I put 8 red potions in each corner, tp'd back to town, grabbed the Full Rejuv potions I'd been collecting along the way, and put 6 purple potions in each corner. I then tp'd back to town, recollected my charms, came back to the summit, and refreshed my Battle Command, Battle Orders, Chilling Armor, Energy Shield, and Enchant. I took a deep breath and touched the alter.

I started to fight the first set of ancients that popped out, but then I realized, wait a minute, there were two fire immunes. TP! I touched the alter again and got two fire immunes again. Next! Two fire immunes again. Next! One fire immune, one lightning immune, and one cold immune. Good enough. So, my challenge was to kill:

Korlic (leaper) Immune to Cold, Cursed (Amp), Extra Strong
Madawc (thrower) Immune to Lightning, Extra Fast, Stone Skin
Talic (whirlwinder) Immune to Fire, Cursed (Amp), Aura Enchanted (Blessed Aim)

I quickly determined that I would try to kill them in the above order.



Talic whirlwinded my merc and instantly had us Amp cursed. "You think that Amp curse scares me?" I asked. "Well, you're damn right it does! But how do you like this?" I cast a level 17 Battle Cry which lowers enemy damage by 41%. Battle Cry, the anti-Amp. I also staticed Korlic and Talic down to half before engaging Korlic full-tilt.

The biggest task of battling the Ancients is killing your first one. It's like their power goes as the square of the number of Ancients there are. I would love to show you screenshot after screenshot of the epic battle that ensued at this point, but I was too busy quaffing potions, giving my merc potions, teleporting to position my merc to attack Korlic, and teleporting away to escape and refresh my potion belt to take more than the above screenshot.

The battle was hard, but the damage we were taking was manageable. We weren't in any danger of being one or two-hit killed. On the first hit on me or my merc, I'd quaff or give my merc one or two red potions. When we received enough damage to get down to about 1/3 health, I'd quaff or give my merc a full rejuv. After we'd used 4-6 full rejuvs, I'd teleport over to a stash of potions and refresh my belt. I didn't want to have an empty belt when the computer decided to clean up the potions.

In less time than I expected, Grizabella and her merc killed Korlic. At that moment, I knew that Grizabella had the upper hand.



At that point, I switched my attention to Madawc, since he wasn't fire immune, but I had a devil of a time killing him. As the thrower, he likes to move away from anybody meleeing him and throw his axes from a distance. The battle raged all over.



The problem was that I would teleport on top of Madawc and my merc would get a jab in on him. Then, Talic would come by and whirlwind us and distract the merc. Meanwhile, Madawc would move back and start throwing at us. I didn't like this situation. We weren't doing enough damage to Madawc and Talic was getting free shots on us. I figured I had 75% block. I could take whatever Madawc threw at me. Time to switch targets.

[MongoJerry]

It was the right decision. Talic was already staticed down to half and he wasn't physical immune. The damage we took was easily repairable by potions. I even switched to Berserk just to make things go faster. In not a long amount of time (20 sec? 30 sec?), Talic was dead.

At this point, I saw that the first potions I had dropped had been cleaned up. I raced to the bottom corner and refilled my belt just before seeing the rest of the potions disappear.



At that point, the hardest part of the game was getting Madawc to line up for a good screenshot. Now that we weren't amped, he couldn't do anything to us.



Prior to fighting the Ancients, Grizabella had recently obtained her 83rd level. She gained about half a level's worth of experience points.

Grizabella passed the test of the Ancients and can enter the Worldstone Keep. What fate will befall her there?

[MongoJerry]

GRIZABELLA: THE WORLDSTONE KEEP

The Worldstone Keep Level 1 had Ghoul Lords (cold immune), Black Lancers (lightning immune), and my favorite monster, Death Lords (fire immune). I used the tried-but-true Confuse the Death Lords and teleport past them trick which worked better in the wider passages of the Worldstone Keep than in the narrow passages of the Glacial Trail. The Ghoul Lords and Black Lancers were dispatched routinely. However, I could definitely tell that monsters now had a lot more hit points and could definitely hurt you if you weren't careful.

Level 2 had Serpent Magi, Horror Mages, and Steel Scarabs. Pretty routine stuff, except that the Horror Mages hurt a lot more than I expected them to.



Level 3 had Fire Boars (Immune to Fire), Blood Bosses (lashers, immune to Cold), Horror Mages, Doom Knights (Immune to Fire) and Oblivian Knights (Immune to Cold). I might have been scared of the Oblivian Knights, but I had enough practice with them in the Chaos Sanctuary to know what to do: Draw the Doom Knights away from the OK's, Zeal to start up the Confuse, teleport next to an OK, kill him, teleport back. Rinse and repeat.

I took the stairs down into the Throne of Destruction. My plan was to do a full clear of the level in order to have plenty of room to fight Lister and all the other boss packs -- or have places to park them in case I'm not able to fight them. The first monsters to show up were Hell Witches. Cold Immune, nice. The second group of monsters was made of Burning Souls. Not Fire Immune, also nice. The third group of monsters to show up were Fire Immune Death Lords. Crap.

I considered for a moment rerolling the monsters, but then I thought, "You've been running from Night Lords, Moon Lords, and Death Lords this whole time. I'm at the end of the game. Maybe it's time to show those Death Lords what Grizabella's made of. Isn't Grizabella the great defeater of the Ancients, the Champion of Harrogoth, the conqueror of two Prime Evils? Is she going to show fear in the face of a few simple Death Lords?"



OK, yeah, you can park him. But what about everyone else?



I began the slow grind to clear out the Throne of Destruction. It took on average one trip to town to kill each Death Lord, but it was worth it to show myself that I could do it. I ran into a second Death Lord boss (pictured above). He wasn't physical immune, so I decided to take him out. I didn't want him taking up a "parking space." I was afraid I'd need all the parking spaces I could get for Lister and the other bosses.


The Throne of Destruction is clear. How will Grizabella fare against Baal's minions?

[MongoJerry]

GRIZABELLA: BAAL'S MINIONS

With the Throne of Destruction cleared (except for the one Death Lord boss parked in a corner), it was time for Grizabella to take on Baal's minions.

Colenzo the Annihilator (the Shaman) is Fire Immune but isn't dangerous. He raises his carver minions, so you have to kill him first, of course. This is a pain because of a 1.10 change, though. Under 1.10, the next minion pack gets triggered the moment you kill the boss, so now Achmel the Cursed (the Hollow One) often appears while you're still attacking carvers. It used to be that you had to kill everything in the pack before the next pack appears. Not anymore.

There is one useful thing about this that I noticed in nightmare difficulty. Lister's minions can't be Confused, but the Venom Lords that appear before Lister's pack can. So, if you kill Ventar the Unholy and leave a couple of his minions alive, then Lister's pack will appear and attack the Confused Venom Lords, making it easier for you to take on the pack one member at a time. I don't plan to use this strategy, but it's a useful piece of information to file away.



Colenzo died and Achmel's pack appeared. I got too cocky and teleported right in the middle of the pack to static and wail everything. My merc had died and I was down to 1/10th life by the time I teleported away and tp'd back to town. Doh! I healed myself, revived my merc, went back, started up Confuse on Achmel's pack, gave them a chance to spread out (they're all missle fire types, so they like to move away from their targets), and then picked the pack off one monster at a time.

Bartuc's pack appeared, but they were easier to kill than Achmel's pack. Confuse kept the minions busy and the pack was easy to pick off.



Then Ventar the Unholy appeared. I was nervous about him, because his pack gave me some trouble in 8-player nightmare games. I tried to break up the pack, but because it's extra fast, it's difficult to do that. A couple of his minions did get left behind, but four minions and Ventar himself were still chasing me when a thought occurred to me. These guys are poison immune, not fire immune. Maybe I can just take them out at the cost of a few potions. I switched to my 'Call to Arms' blade for it's Prevent Monster Heal, teleported to get my merc in position, and faced the pack down (see the pic above).

And the pack fell with hardly any trouble. I was worried for nothing.



Then Lister's pack appeared. The pack is Fire Immune and can't be confused. Is Grizabella up to the challenge?

[MongoJerry]

GRIZABELLA: LISTER

The bad news: Lister's minions are Fire Immune, can't be Confused, have loads of hit points, hurt like crazy, and can stun you.

The good news: They're slow, especially under the influence of Holy Freeze. They're also stupid.

Their slowness and stupidity make it easy to break up the pack. I teleported backwards and tried to coax one or two minions out of the throne room. Most of the pack came, but a couple of minions did stay behind. That's was fine.



The best place to break up the pack is just outside the throne room. You come out of the throne room and take a sharp turn. The pack will rush into the corner formed by the low wall just outside of the throne room. Eventually, one minion's pathfinding routine will allow the minion to get around the low wall and come to you. Lead that minion away to a safe location and kill it. It's easy to kill them when they're by themselves. (If more than one minion gets out of the corner at the same time, you can usually shake some off your trail by running/teleporting around various corners).



Rinse and repeat.



Lister himself was Lightning Enchanted. It didn't bother me too much with max lightning resist and 12 mdr, but I did have to go back to town a couple of times to refresh potions. Otherwise, without his buddies to help him, Lister went down quietly.

Up next: Baal

[MongoJerry]

GRIZABELLA: BAAL

The previous four end of act bosses had turned out to be disappointing patsies. I didn't count on that this time. I steeled myself for a long fight.



I teleported over to the central bridge and teleported again to position Grizabella and her merc between Baal and one side of the bridge. That way, if Baal used his cold knockback attack, she and her merc wouldn't be knocked back very far and could return to the fight quickly. After I staticed Baal to half his life and got a few Berserk attacks in, Baal teleported away and a fight that raged all around the room ensued.



A couple of times, I managed to get my merc on one side of Baal and myself on the other. This worked well, since Baal could only attack or knockback one of us at a time in this configuration.



It was a long fight. Baal teleported around a lot and I teleported around a lot. Interestingly, he never cast his clone. I went to town once to refresh potions, but the damage we took was manageable and Baal fell in the end.



Grizabella must rest a bit before taking on the cows. Will Grizabella be eating steak tonight or will the cows make hamburger out of her? Stay tuned.

[Zath]

I want to take this moment to say something about the wonders of magic damage reduce. I've run into a lot of people on bnet who don't understand it and think it's a "junk" stat. However, what they don't get is that it is applied *after* resistances and works on every frame of an attack.

I don't want to disappoint you, but just for the sake of accuracy, MDR has always been applied before resistances, and it is further penalized against frame based attacks such as Firewall too. The following might be of some interest to you:

Article #1: Tommi's Damage Modification Mechanics. See section 3, Applicatoin Order. ES/BA are now applied first in v1.10 though.
Article #2: Tommi's MDR vs. Frame Based Attacks. Still valid in v1.10 I think.

I didn't go through the rest of your posts in detail, but a quick search for Life Tap turned up empty, so I'll make the routine suggestion that you purchase a Wand of Life Tap and use that to keep your merc alive. It should save you quite a few potions and mouse clicks for teleport. Using Life Tap would obviously conflict with Delerium, but it is something worth considering when you encounter champion packs or other hard hitting bosses.

[MongoJerry]

GRIZABELLA: COWS Part I

When preparing to do the cows, I didn't know what to expect. On the one hand, part of me said that it could easy, since the Confuse on 'Delirium' should prevent hordes of cows from swarming Grizabella. On the other hand, 10% of voters in the poll thought that Grizabella would meet her end in the cow level and doubts were creeping into my mind. I had only done the 1.10 cows once and that was with a twinked up character. Maybe the voters knew something I didn't.

My general plan of attack when meeting a pack of cows was as follows:


Plan A:

1. Teleport and/or run up to the first cow in the pack and start hacking to start up the Confuse.
2. Teleport back to get myself and my merc out of the way and get all the cows attacking each other.
3. Find places on the edges of the pack where a cow or two could be faced alone and pick it/them off.
4. Teleport backwards to quaff some reds for both merc and myself in order to conserve purple potions (I went in with two rows of reds and two rows of purples).
5. Rejoin the battle and repeat steps 3-4 until the pack is killed.
6. TP to town in a safe spot to replenish potion supplies as necessary. If necessary, return to the Secret Cow Level through the red portal which will always remain comfortably clear of cows.

Plan B:

1. If plan A breaks down, improvise.




Plan A was a good plan wasn't it? It wasn't without its danger, because you still have to get that first series of hits to start up the Confuse and even Confused cows will attack you and hit you hard if you're near them. But it was a good plan. It was a simple plan. And as you can see in the above screenshot, the plan started off well. And goodness, I managed to kill almost three cows with it.

But then something changed. Something came into the picture. A harbinger of doom. An orange harbinger of doom, in fact.



The cows hit hard enough as it was. I sure as heck didn't want to see a crowd of fanat cows. I was to find out later that this fanat aura enchanted boss was also Amp cursed. Not only could this boss make the cows hit harder and faster but he could also take the Confuse curse off the pack.

I dodged right, and that's about the end of my clear recollection of my actions for the next 10 minutes. I'm staring at a series of screenshots and trying to match it with what I remember. I'm sure that if D2 replay were possible, my next series of moves would look like they were conducted by a panicked drunk.



I dodged right not only to avoid the fanat boss but also because I saw that to the right, the walls made a V-shaped corner. I figured it would be a little easier if the cows could only come from one direction. I was able to kill a couple more cows before the fanat aura started creeping its way that way. Cows came in from the top and right as well. I'm not sure if the minion I am attacking in the screenshot is one of the fanat boss's minions or a minion from another boss. There were several bosses in the area.



I teleported past the pack to avoid any entanglements with fanat cows. I Confused a couple of packs of cows in the top corner and managed to kill two or three cows before I had to start up a tp in the corner and go back to town to refresh my potions.

And, oh yes, that is yet another boss pack you see there. It didn't even register in my mind that I was attacking a minion during this battle. I would later find out that there were five boss packs in the general area:

Star Maim the Unholy -- Immune to Lightning, Lightning Enchanted, Spectral Hit, Mana Burn
Puke Bite -- Immune to Cold, Teleportation, Cold Enchanted, Spectral Hit
Soul Cloud the Sharp -- Immune to Lightning, Lightning Enchanted, Aura Enchanted (holy shock), Spectral Hit
Warp Jade the Howler -- Cursed (Amp), Extra Strong, Magic Resistant
Steel Fang -- Aura Enchanted (fanat), Cursed (Amp), Magic Resistant

[MongoJerry]

GRIZABELLA: COWS Part II



Did I mention that the Cow King was also around?



I reentered the Secret Cow Level through the red portal (yes, I was confident that it was clear). I don't remember how long or how many times I did this, but I remember conducting a series of guerilla war style raids. I'd enter the Cow Level through the Red Portal, move up to the first cow pack and start Confuse (making sure the Red Portal remained clear). I'd kill one or two cows before a fanat, amp, or lightning enchanted boss came on screen. I'd then teleport past the group and kill one or two cows in a pack beyond the first pack.



Then, I'd teleport to the townportal in the back corner and start the process over. On a good trip, I might find a couple of stragglers like the ones pictured above that I could pick off.



But most trips weren't good and the going was hard and dangerous. I don't remember the battle captured here, but I get the idea that it didn't go well. The next screenshot is one of me in town amped, at 25% health, and without my merc. I had to revive my merc twelve times. I started off with over a million gold and I got so worried about running out of cash to revive my merc with that I cleared the Stoney Field to find items to sell at the shop.

I also had to accept as inevitable that I was going to get amped. If an amp boss hits a confused cow, it'll amp everybody. At this point, things were so chaotic that I didn't know how many bosses there were or where they were. I was just reacting to whatever was on my screen. All I knew was that if amp went off or if I saw a fanat aura, I needed to get away fast.

[MongoJerry]

GRIZABELLA: COWS Part III, Turning Point



The turning point came when I noticed that the King's corral was empty except for a few stragglers who'd been delayed by the corral's fencing. All of the other cows, including the King, had been pulled down to the area between the corral and the Red Portal. While I killed the stragglers who for the most part I could take on one at a time, the mass of cows between the corral and the Red Portal moved up into the corral. Perfect. I started up a tp above the corral and went to town.

I reentered the Secret Cow Level through the Red Portal and found a small clump of cows who hadn't been pulled up to the corral. Apparently, all of the amp and fanat bosses had been pulled up, however, because I was able to kill this group of cows freely. By the time I finished killing the group, the main mass of cows came back down from the corral. Perfect again.

I set off the Confuse and teleported past everything. Once again a few stragglers got caught by the fencing of the corral. They were picked off and the process was repeated three times.



If I were to pick the moment when the tide of war shifted for good, I would have to say it was the battle captured in this screenshot. I was able to coax many confused cows around the corner so that I could take them out one at a time. It turns out one of the cows was a boss (Puke Bite) and I was able to face him two-on-one (Grizabella and merc on cow).



For the first time, I had been able to kill an entire mass of cows without having to run or go to town to get potions. I had finally established my beachhead.

After this battle, I had a decision to make. The cows that were left in the area surrounding the King's corral and the Red Portal were all tightly packed around various bosses. I could either try to figure out how to take out the bosses and their minions now or ignore them and explore the other 3/4ths of the level that still hadn't been touched yet.



I chose to explore and clear the rest of the map in order to give me room to work with when dealing with the bosses. It turns out that there were six boss packs in the game, counting the King, and all six were in that region around the corral and Red Portal. The rest of the map was made entirely of normal cows.

Now that I was dealing with normal cows, I could go back to Plan A which worked flawlessly. It was a slaughter. I also found the other corral. It turned out to be even better than the King's corral at, well, corralling the cows.

The only thing left to do now was take care of the bosses.