Aaagh! Vast hordes of em

[Thecla]

...I just got through a thrilling battle with Treehead Woodfist (on nightmare): although he could take out 1/3 to 1/2 of my 300 odd life in one hit, he was barely able to dent my lvl 2 valk. And provided she spawned with poison damage, she was able to keep damaging him. I ran circles around them. I cast decoy, and ran figure eights around my decoy and treehead/valk. Then I recast my valk until she had a cool colored armor. Then I cast slow missile. If I could've jumped up and down I would have, but I couldn't. I went to town to chat with Gheed for a bit. Then I fired immolation arrows at the rock walls and fire arrows at the trees. In the end, Treehead went down. I think it must have been the slow missile that did it, but it was a close thing.

[kandrathe]

Ok, you got me curious and a bit frightened, so I meticulously rebuilt my lvl 90 glass cannon (500 life), burizon. Stats, items, skills, charms are now the same as my realm character. The only thing I was missing was my lvl 90 baba hireling and his CCB of Gore. All this was players 1. Everything felt mostly the same, she played the same and other than needing a little more resistance (was -70, maybe I'll aim for positive #'s ). I think she'll be ok. I found that the elemental damages hurt her more now. Leeching seemed to be the same. I took her to some representative areas in Act 1 - Act 5 and then attempted to take out all the act bosses. Andy was no problem, skipped Duriel for now.

Mephisto was much harder... I tried my usual trick of standing far off to one side and shooting toward where he should be standing with GA, and he rushed me. Mephisto one hit killed her with a lightning bolt, as I found out he has some other new tricks. I used to just ignore his charge bolts and lightning bolts, and then dodge when he was casting his lightning orb. The Valkyrie withered in one or two of his blows. His poison attack was gone, but then we didn't close with him much.

Now, his lightning bolt hurts somtimes (pry 1-XXXX) dmg, but it also chills. I got hit with the lightning/cold ball once as well, but that only did about 90% of her life. He was quite persistant in chasing her down now, and is about twice as fast as the old mephy. He also is pretty dangerous in casting a modified version of Blizzard. His drop was very poor, but the council combined was ok and it was quite a hoot. Then I went to Travincal, and it was much easier. The fact that certain members of the council are no longer mostly PI is very nice.

Saving the fun of Diablo, Baal and Duriel for tomorrow.

I also want to try out the rune words "Call to Arms(AmnRalMalIst)", "Hand Of Justice(SurChamAmnLo)", "Passion(DolOrtEldLem)", and "Breath Of The Dying(VexHelElEldZodEth)" as Grand Matron and Hydra Bows. So far have done "Call to Arms", and it will be pretty neat for her to be able to use BO for herself, Valkerie and baba. Damage is slightly less than Lycanders, but this RW has some nifty features for a bow. It is a good thing these runes are rare, because in a Crusader or Hydra bow they will be powerful, and I think on par with Eaglehorn and Lycanders. Not quite a Windforce though, but the runes for CTA, and Passion are not nearly as rare. BOTD and HOJ will be as rare or rarer than a Windforce.

[Crystalion]

> 1.10 state of affairs

Yes, CE at 50/50 fire/physical does get more powerful without the 50% global physical resist. But the Zon and her cute little 100% physical arrows gets more powerful, too. The arrows do more damage proportionally than CE in terms of resistances

I haven't played a zoomancer in quite a while

The AS says that it does indeed repair charges. Heck, I'll say it: I LOVE the new Ort repair recipe.

Don't forget AmpDamage. There is a huge non-porportional [vis a vis 50% global gone, whether Necro or Amazon benefits proportionally more] edge if the Necro ever faces a nearly immune or phys immune that he pulls down into cream puff status. I am not aware of how many/often high or immune phys mobs now appear in v1.10, but clearly there used to be a *lot* of phys immunes mobs the Necro could not Amp whereas now the mobs *can* be amped. This is a huge boon to the Necro.

My Necro (a v1.09 freebie bone prison spammer with CE maxed--yes, in v1.09 Hell this build had problems) uses a thorns merc. I got to hell without ever bothering with revives or skelies. Now, in v1.10, it makes a lot of sense for me to use revives, because they distract the enemy and the thorns vs. no-more-50%-global-phys mobs again makes sense to get corpses generated for my Amp/CE finishes. Is my playstyle more complicated than Amazon MS/chill/knockback? Yep. Is my rate of kill better overall? Probably not.

Now that the Phys resists are reasonable I've been considering that LIfetap (50% melee damage deal stolen as life, apparently *no* effect to fight of mob leech resist) might actually keep my merc alive ala the old blood golem cheese, as he does almost as much damage as his HPs. I presume his jab actually attempts more than one stab at that damage level as well.

Ah, Ral or Ort to repair is quite funny, if you can figure out a way to rush the Act5 rune reward. CorpseMourn [exceptional Ornate armor] has 40 charges of level 5 CE (4 yard radius) so it might indeed make sense now for a non-necro to plan on the occasional chain reaction mass slaughter. That begs the question of [how] did they "fix" the cow level. I've not thought to take a trip there yet as I've been having too much fun playing my new Assassin [boy, Baal moving around semi-intelligently is a real shock, as I hadn't expected to need to fight a war of attrition].

[Albion Child]

Try playing 1.10 NM with an untwinked BowZon for a little while and then tell me that MS and knockback need nerfing.

I'm playing an SP MS zon currently in act 3 hell. She uses a 63 max damage blue razor bow and despite being fairly slow at killing, MS is still overpowered. Her equipment is mediocre at best and I have made many "mistakes" when building her including misplaced stats, several wasted skill points, (I put a few into strafe just to check it out and originally planned to make her a hybrib so 3 or 4 points are wasted in the jav tree.

A character like this should be having a quite difficult time in any hell act. She rarely gets into a situation she can't handle and this is the first zon (as well as about the third or fourth character PERIOD) that I have ever played.

MS is overpowered.

Equipment list:

20 IAS gloves with some resists and other stuff
P ruby Twitch
Rare helm with + 40+- life, resists etc (nothing great)
Treads of Cthon
Rare amulet + 30ish life, +1 to pass/magic skills, resists, life leech
Manald heal ring
Rare life leech min/max ring with fire resist
various charms, none notable except 1 175 psn damage large charm
P skulled razor bow with around 63 max damage

Uses Act 2 Might Merc with 120+- damage pike of the leech, armour of the whale, and tarnhelm.

I think multi should get 1/2 damage or perhaps only 1 arrow every other level or perhaps no pierce.

Also, IMHO guided should not get a damage bonus. It should however be autohit instead of ITD.

P.S. She has no knockback/slow/freeze target/ cause monster to flee etc. just plain old cold damage.

[pjnow]

Albion,

A couple of questions about your Zon.

What level? How much life?

Did you build her from scratch in 1.10?

Out of curiosity - Where ( where and from which critter ) did you find the 175 poison charm, Tarn and Twitch?

[Ryethe]

Although you may not want to admit it, the only patch that is truly balanced for singleplay in ANY Blizzard games is 1.00. After 1.00 all changes are made to balance out the multiplayer aspect. Even in games like WC3, skills are balanced for equal battles where everyone starts out on the same note. However this sometimes breaks single player, which was balanced for having an enemy that starts out with a ton more units than you. The same applies for D2. The game is in reality balanced for parties which works together to overcome the monsters' individual strengths.

As much as this may suck for all you singleplayer people, it is truly the way Blizz thinks.
-Ryethe

P.S. Immune to Ailments would be AWESOME. Somebody e-mail this idea to Blizzard :)

[kandrathe]

It's worst against minion/champion packs who really have to be strung out.

I'm just starting Act 1 NM at lvl 41 (at players 8), and now I'm finding that things are as you say. My lvl (12+3) Bone Spear does 323-343, and lvl (12+1) Bone Spirit 477-525. Corpsefire and his 8 minions were all Stoneskin, and it took an entire belt of mana potions Amp Damage and Bone Spirits to drop one. Luckily they are slow. Into the cold plains we found a Fanatic dark rogue pack that killed my Merc and had me bolting for town 5 times. My experience is ramping up fast, though and the damage on my skills is also increasing quickly. I'm finding myself resorting to tactics, heaven forbid. Just as you do, we string them out. We use attract to get them to swarm at the edge of my range and then I cast confuse on the lot of them. Spam them with Bone Spear for 4-5 times, recast confuse. Once 1 or 2 have died switch to Corpse explosion until we are out of ammo, then back to confuse and Bone Spear.

Learning crowd control is key I have almost died 3 times in the cold plains by getting swarmed by Dark Rogues or Fallen. I'm not sorry that I've been investing skill points as if this were Hardcore. My adj stats are now at Str:66, Dex:51, Vit:98, Nrg:84. My focus on Vitality has saved me from at least 4-5 deaths so far. I made it through normal without dying and I'm hoping to make it through NM death free as well.