"Don Bruder" <dakidd@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:bMednegABfjFopXVnZ2dnUVZ_o3inZ2d@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> Let's start it out in true gaming style:
>
> "No **** - There I was..."
>
> Spent the better part of an hour with my level 68 fireball/frozen orb
> sorc, doing my usual "scorched earth, no stone unturned, no chest
> unkicked" routine in Hell act 1. It paid off in a handful of low runes,
> 3-4 pgems (after cubing up lesser stuff) and a pair of Lum runes - one
> under a rock, the other in a chest. Hit Tristram, free Caine, then back
> to the Dark Woods for mop-up, and on to the marsh, looking for the
> waypoint. Now, this little girl is some serious trouble for anything not
> fire immune - Between her Lore, a Salamander staff, a spiffy amulet with
> +2 fire skills, and her base skill points, plus her synergies, her
> fireball hits for 2243-2597 at a whack. Her orb is still comparatively
> wimpy, only dealing about 270 points, but... <shrug> She gets by. Add
> her Thorns merc toting an Insight, and I don't even bother carrying blue
> potions anymore.
>
> So, we're tooling around in the Marsh, looking for the waypoint, and
> eventually the countess. Clear the Marsh, but I must have blinked as the
> waypoint went by, 'cause I still don't have it. OK, Mugsy - let's take
> another turn around the park... Aha.. There it is - Surrounded by not
> one, but TWO boss-packs of sasquatches - Fortunately both had LI bosses,
> so, fireball wiped 'em out PDQ.
>
> OK, got the waypoint - now to go play with the countess. Head downstairs
> to level 1, and proceed to clear it - Still "scorched earth" and hitting
> every item that might yield something worth picking up. Level cleared,
> head for the stairs. Down we go. Uh-oh... classic stair-trap - Pop in
> smack in the middle of what I'm soon to find out is a boss-pack of
> Devilkins, which are FI, as all of the fallen/carver/devilkin types have
> been since I came into Hell level. OK, switch to orb and get one off -
> just before getting tagged for a handful of points worth of damage - but
> now my mana ball is empty. Aw, crap... Boss has mana burn... This is
> gonna be ugly... Punch the f-key for tele****t, and hover a finger over
> my stack of fat purples to feed either me or my merc as needed while
> trying to tele out of the crowd. No luck - Whack! hit-locked and
> mana-drained. Chug a fat purple, and feed one to the merc. He makes a
> valiant effort, but he's apparently targeting the boss, and there's
> charged bolts going off like crazy. Oh great... Mana burn *AND*
> lightning enchanted? Yeah, this is gonna be SUPER fun... NOT! Merc is
> taking a severe beating - As fast as I pump fat purples into him, he's
> back to under a quarter of his life-bar. Five potions later, he goes
> down as I'm stabbing at the key to feed him the last one of the stack of
> fat purples while TRYING to tele****t to "anywhere but here!!!" in
> between snarfing down fat purples. (and almost instantly getting hit and
> re-drained) Oh boy... we're in SERIOUS trouble now, Kemosabe! I'm trying
> like crazy to either get back up the stairs, or tele away, but I'm
> surrounded and getting beat on like a pinata at a cinco de mayo party.
> Whack, hit-locked and mana ball empty again. Whack. Hit-locked again.
> Life ball below half. Punch to chug a fat purple and try to tele. Whack!
> Whack! Whack! Mana ball empty, life ball below half, hit-locked, and
> punching for another fat purple while trying to tele and/or move to hit
> the stairs. No joy... Whack. Hit-locked and trying to punch for yet
> another fat purple, still trying to tele. Rapid-fire
> WhackWhackWhackWhack! You have died...
>
> Well, wanting to know what I was going to be in for when I tried for a
> corpse retrieval, I sat there moving the cursor around trying to spot
> the boss. Finally got him - YIKES! No wonder the merc went tango-uniform
> so fast: I'm looking at "Devil ****fter the Mad", and he's showing
> lightning enchanted, cold enchanted, extra fast, extra strong, and mana
> burn. As if that weren't enough, he's FI/CI/PI, and I've got
> next-to-nothing in the lightning branch of the skill tree - I think I've
> got a whole 5 points total into the lightning branch of the skill tree,
> Pfft... Nothing worth bothering to talk about. This is a Fireball/Orb
> sorc, after all...
>
> Thankfully, I'd just leveled up on the first level of the tower, so I
> didn't lose much of anything in the way of experience. That being the
> case, I decided that I could "suicide through" the boss-pack waiting at
> the bottom of the stairs. Tried it - three times. Finally gave up after
> getting creamed within two seconds of arriving on all three attempts,
> and as far as I could tell, didn't accomplish much more than scratching
> one of the pack, and chipping a nail on a second one.
>
> Just goes to show that a decent night can turn into a near-total wash...
> All it takes is one LE/EF/MB, FI/CI/PI boss-pack at the bottom of the
> stairs to do it...
>
> Back to the drawing board - Tomorrow!
>
> --
> Don Bruder - dakidd@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
- If your "From:" address isn't on my
> whitelist,
> or the subject of the message doesn't contain the exact text
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without
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> ever knowing it arrived. Sorry... <http://www.sonic.net/~dakidd>
for
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> info
LOL, been ther and done that, too many damned times. A little something to
buy ya an extra second or two....if using FO/FB sorcy, I use an act 2
freezy
merc. That cold aura isn't much in the way of a killer however, it does
buy
ya a second or two, a valuable second or two at that, to use tele to move
along. You'll also find that when teleing to Baal, that same very aura
will
allow you to not be sucked & locked, but actually allow you an escape.
Just
a thoguht to consider.
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