BANISHMENT
As I got into the Expansion beta, it looked as if Ribinak would be retired permanently, never to be completed. That blocking was changed in the Expansion seemed to be a death knell to this character. That ITD (Ignores Target Defense) was changed so it won't work against bosses was even worse. My no-dex build for my Defiant was no longer viable. Like so many others, Ribinak simply became obsolete overnight. He was done, finito, finished. He was through. Banished. Banished to the Void, gone forever. Retired.
All things end. The Expansion pack, along with its changes imposed backward onto Diablo II as a whole, wrought the end of many characters. WW barbs, no-dex builds of all kinds, SF-dependent sorcies, one-trick ponies of old in all shapes and sizes, wiped out or nerfed beyond the point of being "fun to play any more" compared to new designs. Just the cost of doing business. Ribinak was not one of my more treasured characters, far from it. I'd grown a bit bored with him, finding his particular brand of difficulty more tedious than challenging, and this from the guy who played Ember and Skeletorr in hardcore. So it goes, sometimes.
I banished Ribinak to the Void without even batting an eyelash, much less shedding any tears.
REPRIEVE
Ribinak looked up from his bunk as the cell door opened. In walked a chubby dungeon guard.
"Get yourself together, lad. You've been summoned to appear before royalty."
Ribinak choked in astonishment. Wasn't his sentence to be caged here until "eternity itself passes away"? Now what was going on? Was this a joke? A cruel game? A twist of fate? Dare he hope for justice? "Royalty? What royalty?"
"You're arguing with me, lad? Amazing. I'd think ye'd leap at any chance to glimpse the light of day again." The guard scratched his stubby beard. "Well, all right. Foreigners, they be. From a land far and yon, o' which I never heared afore. Some place called... Pro Crasty. Aye, lad. That be it. The royal lord himself... the King of Pro Crasty Nation. That be your savior here today."
SALVATION
Blizzard North has rescued Ribinak the Stalwart. They rescued him by way of endless procrastination... on this damned v1.09 patch!
I ran out of things to play. That's the short and sweet of it. Got all my new chars to their particular stopping points (most on the doorstep of act five, but a few at other stop points). Got them all as far as I cared to take them, but still no patch yet. Blizzard North, the King of Pro Crasty Nation!
Not wanting to start YET ANOTHER new char, and grind my way through acts one to four, all in NORMAL no less, yet again, I found myself bored. Oh sure, I had played enough games of Minesweeper to break my new mouse. I'd dusted off some old, OLD programs and made a new Descent 1 level for some old buddies of mine attending a LANfest in Florida. I'd SHUT DOWN MY COMPUTER AND DONE WORK ON MY HOUSE, for crying out loud. I'd caught up my webpage here (mostly). I'd gotten married, had six kids and sent them off to college. Still no damn patch yet! Arrgh. Yet I wanted to play some Diablo II. I had "the itch" and I was going stir crazy. It was the height of a nasty heat wave, and no AC. I had watched as many movies on TV as I could STAND, and still no patch. I'd sat and watched grass grow. I had dusted off some old games and played them a bit. Still no patch yet. Arrrrrrrgh. Somebody PLEASE KILL THE KING! Enough already! Like Baal says, "ENOUGH! Enough-enough... enough... enough-enough... nuff... uff-enough... uff... uff-uff... uff... ... uff..."
So there I am, looking over my old chars. Who do I want to rape, drag into D2X, taint with these wacky drops, just to get to play? Ha! Maybe I should just go play some of my old Realm chars. I have a few I kept alive, somehow, through the beta. I could hop on to bnet and play those! Oh wait. No I can't. I don't want to play through lag if I'm playin alone, plus USEast blows snotballs now (glad I got out of that Hellhole six months ago), and East has actually GOTTEN WORSE than when I left it, thanks to the current fiasco, rollback, morphed and missing items, account hacks, barb/druid crash bugs (where others in the game can crash YOU out), and my oh my, what a long LONG list of reasons for me not to go play on Realms. Including the whole "enhance my game experience" PK confrontational load of crap. Even without that, though, there were enough reasons to keep me right here in single player. So... which of my old chars gets the "privilege" of "being upgraded"? Hmm...
Well I could play Smasher. Oh wait, I've already done that! And he's parked now. Hmm. Well... I could play Sissy! Oh wait. She's parked, too. Well, I could play Zap! Oh wait, she's in nightmare, where the drops are REALLY wacky. Oh yeah, and she might be getting nerfed again soon anyway (NO idea what Blizz will do to sorcies in the next patch) so why bother? So... she's parked. Lytra of course is parked, no way I'm jacking up a Hardcore char just to relieve an evening's boredom.
Well then, now what? Sheesh. Hmm. Well, I could dust off Hotfoot (the original) and play her. Or good old Blue. Oh wait, no I can't. They're both one-tree sorcies who aren't in the LEAST prepared for D2X, and I'd have to farm them through act five normal and nightmare, at the very least, to get them ready for Hell. Oh yeah, plus I'd have to "level a merc" through endless tedium, too. Not to mention that these two babes are retired. They had their day in the sun. They completed their battles, earned their rest and retirement. Disturb them now? No thanks.
Oh boy, we're running out of choices here. Ember, Astra, Skeletorr, those are all out. Um... what about some of my unpublished chars, like Money Bags the barbarian, Golly G the golem necro, or Artanni the amazon? Hmm, that was tempting. But no, not quite tempting enough. (And don't ask! I'm not talking about them!) What about Fyre Errow? Flammicus? Urligon? Bonehead! Old Bonehead is a favorite char of many of my readers, and more have written to ask about him than any other chars except Ember and Sissy. Hmm... Yeah, tempting, but there are issues with Bonehead I don't want to discuss here and now. That, and all these chars are in act one or two of Normal, and um, to be honest, I've SEEN ENOUGH of acts one through four of normal for now! OK? OK then. All right? Alrighty then. No more damn normal games today, thank you very much!
So I'm beating my head against the wall here. Up the list, down the list, up the list, down the list. Who can I play, dammit? Who? Who who who??? Arrgh. (Look at all the curse words here! Can you tell I'm a wee bit frustrated with D2X at this point?)
Poor Ribinak. I scrolled right past him (and Eksor Syste, too) many times. I almost shut down the game again. I could, um, be doing more work on my house. Maybe not as fun as D2, but a lot more useful. Hmm...
And then it happened. Something (or someone) whispered in my ear (or the back of my mind) that Ribinak was an option. And since he was a disposable char anyway, since I had decided to banish him to the dustbin of the Void Where Unplayed Characters Go to Shrivel Up and Die, it wouldn't matter if he got tainted drops, or had to farm areas to level his merc, miss out on chances to get the soon-to-be-repaired uniques, or to get to play in Normal difficulty with actual runewords instead of saving up socketed items in stash for runewords that SHOULD be there but aren't yet, and missing out on god knows what else that will be changed in the next patch, and all the other nonsense that my still-valued chars would subject themselves to by venturing past their various parking locations. Bad enough to have tainted them AT ALL by playing this sloppy v1.08. Ah, but who gives a $#!+ about a char I'd already discarded, right? Right? So what the Hell. Dammit, I'm GOING TO PLAY SOME ACT FIVE. Today. Now. OK? OK then.
HAZADE
So Ribinak is a broken Paladin. Broken beyond redemption? Eh, maybe. Why bother to try to salvage him? If a char build turns up fatally flawed, scrap it and start over. Right? And this one was rendered fatally flawed by way of the changes to dexterity, weaponry, etc etc. He's got no damn Dex, and without some, he's toast. So what to do?
Well, there's no way to make do on 20 dex for ten more levels, is there? Well? Is there? Hmm. Perhaps there is. Ribinak does have a decent weapon, and in fact, that he did not ever find a good ITD weapon is now to his advantage! Ha! This old Soldier's scepter of Bashing is just the ticket. It's got good one-hand damage for this point in the game, and all Ribinak needs is a little more to-hit power to see him through until several level ups can increase his Dexterity to a playable amount. And how can you increase AR in D2X in a big fat hurry? You hire yourself an Offensive town guard, that's how.
As for the blocking, psshaw! Who needs that? Not Ribinak. He will need it badly, eventually, but for now, he's only a couple levels behind the curve in Act Five, and almost two levels ahead of other full-clear chars coming out of act four (thanks to time spent in Nightmare). With slvl 18 Defiance, his be-hit is plenty playable and then some, blocking or no blocking. So, for now, he's good to go. Just get that merc first...
Enter Hazade, the highest level Offensive merc in Greiz's arsenal. And "graze" is just what he needs to do, too! As in farm, munch away on some monster food, level up up up up up as fast as he can. And with the broken merc experience in 1.08, that means one thing and one thing only: have the merc fight creatures that are either exactly his level, or within one level. Anything farther away, in either direction, gets seriously nerfed on the returns and isn't worth bothering with. What a pain in my ass. *sigh* Am I even sure I want to do this? How long is it going to take?
Fortunately, leveling a merc from 13 to 20 is no problem. 21 even. Get it all done in easily accessible parts of act two, and it hardly matters if the main char does most of the killing. The level ups come pretty quickly. Ribinak is slowly improving the merc's gear (too cheap yet to BUY him any! Ha!) and I'm not yet bored to tears. It helped that every two merc levels, I had to move to a new area to continue leveling him at the same rapid pace. (Did I actually SAY that? It helped to make it more tedious? Well, apparently I did say it. It was also true. At least my tedium came in several flavors.) But you know, the way they had mercs originally, where you could level your merc quickly in ANY area, that was far better than this! Good grief.
So yeah, maybe it was TOO easy to level any merc. Maybe that was a loophole they needed to close, because players were changing mercs like they changed their underwear: daily! Some more often than that. Need a cold mage? Hire him, level him in five minutes tops. Oops, need a barb now? Ditch the mage, level new barb in four minutes. Yeah, too easy, but better THAT than THIS. Ugh. From too easy to too tedious. I'd rather have it just right, but if it has to be wrong, let it be wrong erring on the side of fun. OK?
From the Arachnid Lair straight to Durance 1 and 2, and from there to City of the Damned. By the time City was nearly cleared out, merc was all caught up: clvl 27 now, with Ribinak still at clvl 28, his experience bar having barely moved throughout this time. Welcome aboard, Hazade! And may you never be named as King of Pro Crasty!
ACT FIVE
We step through the Red Portal of Crashiness! (Sorry, can't stop calling it that, even though the beta has ended and it no longer crashes the game!) On the flip side of that glowing wormhole, Ribinak and Hazade arrive in Harrogath. Everything "on sale" looks like a used horse to Ribinak, all being offered at "better than new" prices. Ha! What a bunch of hoodlums, this lot. Barbarians indeed! And acting like it too! Damn bloody greedy barbarian merchants! No thanks. I don't care if you offer me Godly Ornate, I'm not paying double for it!
So here we go. Real fighting now. Well, OK, maybe not, but at least it's act five, right? The Bloody Easy Foothills, right? Right?
Bzzt, wrong! Wrong-o, buckaroo. Incorrect.
Bloody Annoying Foothills. Dammit, no wonder Spiderdrake complained about these Death Whatevers in act five. You know, the ones with the digging tentacles that burrow through the ground, even below deep pits of spikes, to stab up at your feet and try to impale you. My sorcies and druids and necros and trap assassin all laughed at these things in the beta. They are, um, supposed to suck, OK? But apparently nobody told them this. They certainly haven't figured it out.
So... why are they annoying? Well, they're HITTING ME, that's why. From all parts of the map, once groups of them start digging at Ribinak, he's getting bloody well pasted, and then some. Drink a red, then another, then another. Reds are ALL GONE, just like that, and I'm sitting there with a belt full of nine full rejuvs, wondering what the Hell happened. Ribinak goes scurrying back to town, shaking his head at the COMPLETE USELESSNESS of his 1400 defense rating against these things.
Bug? Or feature? (I vote Option C: Blizzard is damn well sloppy sometimes!)
So why on earth did I never FEEL the sting of these things before? I playtested with LiquidDamage's WW barb in Act Five Hell in the beta, and these things didn't bother him too badly. I playtested with Cyrene's bowazon, same situation (and much MUCH lower level character), and she wasn't slapped around. And that's in HELL. So why were these so dangerous in NORMAL, for goodness' sake? Did they change them since the beta? No, seems unlikely, since Spider, a bona fide skilled melee player, had complained about them back then. No... I had just overlooked them somehow. But... HOW?
Then I realized, when a single CLANG had sounded, marking a shield block, the answer to this puzzle. Dexterity! And blocking. I had tested act five normal with my Isolationist Paladin, but HE happened to have very high dexterity, as well as a good blocking shield. He had been pretty much blocklocked by these things, but not actually torn up, damagewise. Yet Ribinak had virtually no blocking, and their attacks clearly ignored his Defense Rating completely, just like spear cats and rogue archers do. Great.
See, this is why a Defiant paladin or other defense-specialized character seems so useless to the masses. Shield blocking works on everything physical, but there are TONS of monsters all through every act in the game that completely ignore your defense. There are thousands upon thousands of opponents walking around every game of D2 and D2X armed with their own brand of ITD weapons, and any character who goes out of his or her way to focus on Defense Rating via armors and skills is only buying protection against 50% of the opposition. 25% of them have elemental attacks anyway, and another 25% completely ignore your defenses. Even now, in the expansion, which PROMISED us meaningful defense, we still don't have it, and these critters are one example of why.
Good thing Ribinak has this merc to take off some of the heat, for him. That, plus the merc's aura boost allowing Ribinak to HIT things reliably, plus the merc's own ever-improving damage output, though... add it all up, and yes, add in even the annoying ITD digger enemies, and I'm actually having some fun here. Amazing! At least the diggers can be Tempted. I found that if you keep moving, keep shuffling your position, rather than standing still, many of those attacks will miss you. That's not perfect, but it helps.
The diggers are all but irrelevent to ranged characters, except maybe those who tend to stand around too long in any one place. Melee chars on the other hand, must contend with them, and only blocking or lots of moving around can slow the tide of autohits and autodamage they can do. Not even being higher clvl helps you out, nor does any amount of armor. Only blocking helps. If you have a two-handed weapon on hand, you're SOL, my friend. (If you don't know what SOL stands for, don't ask. You don't even WANT to know, trust me).
Well... that nightmare finally ended. On into the land of imps.
Now perhaps, if you aren't yet familiar with my characteristics, you might expect me to rant about the imps. Ain't going to happen. You see, I like the imps. I find them, in terms of how they PLAY, to be comparable to the witches of D1. I liked those witches. In fact, I loved those witches. I took great joy in chasing them down with warriors -- ON FOOT, not via telekill -- and smashing them to bits. Whack-whack-whack, AH-HYAH! Down goes another busty beauty with wispy wings. AH-HYAH! AH-HYAH! AI-EH! Sweet sweet tactical victory.
The imps in D2 are almost, though not quite, like the witches. You chase them a bit, but there's no actual need to work your footwork just so to force them up against a wall and hit them before they slip away. In D2, you can RUN, which changes the whole equation. Also, perhaps, I put more emphasis on foot speed than most players, and I can thus chase down the little runts more easily. Perhaps.
Anyway, whatever people's problems are with the imps, I don't have them. I kill imps and quickly. Smash the little buggers! Chop-chop, down they go. No more work to chasing them than chasing rogue archers, vampires, wounded finger mages, oblivion knights, blowdart flayers, or any other runner in this game. In fact, Imps are LESS annoying than dedicated runners, because they are fairly slow, and tend to stop to shoot more often. Oh sure, they teleport. Blink around a bit. But they don't go far, and I at least have no problems chasing them down and killing them. The average imp blinks less than two times for me. A few stubborn ones escape several times, and rarely, one may live to blink away six, eight, even ten times, or one may blink across a wall a few times, but for each of those, there are fifty who die without blinking away at all. I guess it all comes down to entertainment. Some people find even remotely intelligent opponents too tedious. "My goodness! They run when I come near them? BORING!" So say most players.
That imps don't actually swarm you makes them less dangerous, in many ways, than other opponents. I find dealing with them refreshing. It might get old if that's all there was to do, but the imps have the crush beasts and towers in some places, suicide minions to watch out for in others. I think one reason players avoid this area entirely is the lack of experience from the towers and crush beasts. Worth ONE experience point? Come on now. These aren't Trapped Souls tied to a pillar. These are dangerous! As with the maggot young and flesh worms, I think it's a mistake not to grant experience for dangerous enemies killed. If somebody wants to stand there and farm maggot babies, let them do so! What's wrong with a little reward for their effort? Doesn't make sense to me. Players don't like that, and they "vote" against it by just skipping those fights as much as they can. Then all of Blizzard's work on these areas goes to waste, over some minor little detail they botched. I like the imps anyway, because they are interesting, and I always did like chasing witches with a warrior. Most want it easier, though. Their loss.
Dealing with the suicide minions takes some work. They are very easy to destroy, with very few hit points, but if they get next to you, they blow up. Period. Oh sure, there's a slight delay. They have a short fuse, so to speak. Once the fuse goes off, they blow up a moment or two later, plenty enough time for you to move away, at least in single player. With lag, you're in deeper trouble, but you can still tempt them by continuously moving. Problem is, if they blow up on their own, you get no experience. If you kill them at range, you get a nice bit of experience. YET ANOTHER bias against melee in this silly game. All I can think is, the D2 design team either doesn't know HOW to make the game "hard" for ranged chars, or they just don't care. They've piled ALL the difficulty on the melee chars, while ranged builds can just stay away from most of those threats -- some of which aren't really hard, just tedious.
If you have a merc on hand, though, especially one from acts 2 or 5, you can let your merc deal with the suicide minions. Not only is it safer, but the game REWARDS YOU for doing it that way, and penalizes you if you don't. Your merc can kill the kamakazis and you get experience. If you try to melee them, they just blow up on you, and you get nothing but a slap in the face. This is one instance where, to the cowards go the rewards. So what the Hell. That's the game, might as well play it. Ribinak let Hazade take on all the suicide minions. I'll talk more about the tactics of this later.
By now, Ribinak has gained a few levels, he's got his dex up to 35, his blocking up to an awesome 20%. I should list his gear, shouldn't I?
Soldier's War Hammer of Bashing, +95 AR, -36 enemy defense per hit, 15-26 one-handed damage, very fast attack speed. With 123 strength, the total damage is more than double the listed, and it's plenty enough for now. This item was bought from Ormus in D2 1.05.
Boots: Treads, +30 Run, 50% Stamina Drain, +10 Life - gambled in 1.05
Armor: Plate Mail (heavy, ugh), 186DR, +37 Life - bought in Act Four, 1.05
Ring: -25% Poison Dur, +9 Poison Resist, +112 AR, -1 Damage - gambled 1.05
Ring: +26 Fire Resist
Belt: Goldwrap, +40 Defense, +30 Magic Find, +10 IAS, +2 Light - from 1.05
Crown: 66 DR, +25 Life - bought in 1.05
Tower Shield: socketed with two flawed diamonds and a flawless topaz
Amulet: +23 Cold Res, +23 Lit Res, +11 mana, +40 Gold - gambled 1.05
Gauntlets: +15 Lit Res, 20 DR, Half Freeze, +113 Gold
That 113 gold bonus was not to be underestimated! Now that gold bonus applies to chests, and monsters drop more gold in general, that was adding a ton of cash to my stash. Every monster was dropping 350-600 gold! Champs were dropping several thousands! Ribinak went quickly from 150k gold to 300, 450, 600... up up up it went. Sure, much was coming from selling junk, but a lot came from the gold bonus, too. No wonder they toned that down so it's max 80% now in D2X on gloves, belts, boots. Gloves of wealth indeed!
I also had another spare set of gloves in reserve: rare chain gloves, 15DR, +10 IAS, +9 Stamina, +8 Dex, and -25% Poison Length. Losing half freeze and that gold bonus was too much for the moment, even for better blocking and IAS. So I held these in my cube. Ribinak also found a Cleglaw Pincer glove, but at the moment I'm not wanting knockback. What's the use knocking everything away from me, away from the merc? Maybe at some point, though, so I saved them.
On into the ice caves. Ribinak has rancid gas on tab two, by the way. I rarely used it, mostly against suicide minions. They simply MUST be killed at range, by any means necessary. By now, I've reached clvl 30 and I have slvl 1 Redemption on hand. I've heard people say that one point is all you need, but I disagree. It's no fun standing around waiting for it to "redeem", plus you get a better return with more skill points. For a build with some +skill or +defensive auras on hand, though, one point and the bonuses may suffice. As a paladin, this is your only direct means of cleaning up corpses, and I plan to use that to some degree at least against Nihlathak, and down the road, against Hollow Ones and their pets, shamen types, etc. Not to mention, it's not bad for the health and mana recovery, either.
As you can see, by now Ribinak has found a couple charms (+5 poison damage over 2 on the large, +20 gold and +45 AR on the grand), a couple runes, a couple jewels, some more gems. The perf diamonds were upgraded by gem shrines in nightmare, and the skull came from Hell Forge. The rest, all found since. The Charm in stash is +4 strength, +11 Lit Resist. I'm saving it in case I ever need help to wear new gear, or for any point where I may need the resistance. Right now, Ribinak has got plenty of resistance for everything but fire. I've already cubed him a few resist rings, upgrading from that +26 plain fire res he began with.
You can also see that his wealth has grown tremendously. Over 800k already, shortly after hitting clvl 31. That extra gold stash came around just in time, as I had over a quarter million lying around in town, plus almost full up what I could carry, plus the smaller stash. Yikes. Can't do that in multiplayer!
Here you see a ring I cubed with a thawing potion and a sapph chip. This is the best (unbugged) result I've ever gotten out of one of those cube formulas, and I'm VERY lucky it did not come out bugged, because life leech is one of the two mods that can turn buggy, getting insane boosts, like up to 36%. Ridiculous, and if that had happened, I'd have had to discard the ring. Luckily, it didn't, and I will keep this fine result. The half freeze lets me switch gloves (going to miss that nice gold boost though) and improve Ribinak's already improving offensive performance.
One of my biggest worries with the upcoming 1.09 patch is whether Blizz might kill off these ring recipes entirely. I know they've been disabled on the Realms for many weeks, because of the buggy results. Will Blizz bother to fix this problem? Are they even CAPABLE of fixing it? I wonder. With their quick-fix tendencies lately, wouldn't it be a whole lot less work for them just to scrap these formulae? I sure hope not. Right now, there's nothing but crap, crap and crappity crap available on rings through normal difficulty. Apparently, you need to get to clvl 40+ to get some decent affixes going now, and even then, nothing spectacular.
It's good to have some life leech back, and on an item with AR boost, a resistance, half freeze, and minor damage reduction. Of course, that resist comes from the gem cubing. If I had gambled this ring, it would have come without the resistance, so keep that in mind. Where oh where are all the resists on rings these days? Gone to Valhalla it seems, slain by the evil patch 1.08
At about a million in gold, I decided to gamble away a few hundred k. Why not? Try my hand at some circlets, some weapons for my merc, maybe a few amulets, maybe some gloves and boots and belts. What the hey. Half a million in gold spent later, this is what I have to show for it.
I also got a circlet with +9 life regen, which I gave the merc to help reduce his maintenance costs. (Plus, life regen is as good as poison resistance, too. It counters the effects of poison to a large extent.)
Shortly after that, Hazade reached clvl 30, which is where Offensive mercs get their second aura, Might. Arrgh. When he was using Might, he wasn't using Blessed Aim, and Ribinak had a harder time hitting things, with, like one third the AR he had when Aim was helping out. At least by now, though, he had some Dex under his belt. +8 from gloves helped, too. Down the road, though, that Might will get pretty high, and I can foresee a time when I'm thinking, "Arrgh, I wish he would use Might more often."
WHERE'S THE BEEF?
Act Five is all about offering challenges to melee builds. Here's another one: frozen terrors. They have arctic blast breath attacks. Here's a small fact: chilling DOES NOT slow casting speeds. Sorcies, necros, elemental druids, not only can they all stand back, but they aren't REALLY slowed up by chilling anyway. Meleers stand in the crossfire of multiple arctic blasts, take the damage, get chilled, and are slowed greatly in their attacks. Balanced? Ha! Not even close. But such is the way of act five, end to end to end to end. It's all about obstacles for melee players -- which don't ge me wrong, they are actually quite fun -- but ranged builds just laugh it up, unphased by most of these threats. Here's a complete list of them:
Death demons and their tentacle attacks (can be blocked, but are ITD attacks), suicide minions you can't kill safely or reliably with melee, imps harder to chase down with melee, crush beasts and inferno/cannonball towers with limited range, Baal's minions (enslaved, fire boars, ice spawn, etc) that have only melee attacks and can blow up on you INSTANTLY if whipped into a frenzy while meleeing you, frenzy minotaurs who can only hurt you and who only get worked up into a frenzy at melee range, Nihlathak who blows up the corpses of anything you kill in melee, arctic blast from frozen terrors, Lister and his crew, and Baal's short range orange missile (instant death in Hell -- so impressive, they made the act five cinematic a big light show culminating in the obliteration of the barbarian spokesman by the orange missile, and Baal chuckling at his own "clever" PK hack job). That's a long, fat list of effects biased against melee, worse even than any previous act, at that! Not even counting physical resists yet, it's no wonder the sorcies rule act five.
The few things designed to scare ranged chars are too weak. Magic Maiden has a fat loophole that most players can and do work around -- some not even knowingly. They ought to ditch that restriction and let Magic Maiden be cast at random, on anybody. Then there's the imps, whose attacks are moderately weak, the undead who are a complete joke, harpies with a hopelessly feeble bloodstar attack and their magic maiden curse defanged, and a total lack of the one opponent that makes sorcies TREMBLE in fear (the archer). Where are the archers anyway? WHERE ARE THEY? If only Blizz had stuck a few high level, beefed up corrupted Rogues in the Foothills, that would be a whole other ballgame in there, I tell you! Even if it was boss packs only, no normal ones, but able to show up anywhere at random, that would end the mindless Foothills runs immediately. They'd be OVER, finito, goodbye, thank you come again. Only the skilled or the softcore wussies ready and willing to die... need apply!
Blizzard North has a lot of great ideas, but when it comes to forseeing how the game will play out, they come up short, yet they are too arrogant to do the kind of testing they need to turn up the problems before its too late. And as long as more and more people keep buying, they have no incentive to correct the little things, because those aren't "deal breakers" anyway. Oh yes, some at the company care passionately about making the games the best they can be. Others, however, clearly do not, and making the very best possible product is not the top priority -- you can tell by looking at the results.
Where Ribinak respected the Frozen terrors, the tunneling tendril Death Maulers/Brawlers/Crawlers/TrashHaulers, suicide minions, crush beasts, and lashers, he laughed out loud at the feeble undead. Those poor things are woefully sad. I'm not even sure they stack up to Zombies, and I mean the ones in the Blood Moor! In Normal! Good grief. Somebody beef those up please.
Nihlathak's temple is pretty slow. No ranged attackers, halls where mob control is easy to manage. Those Defilers and their worms are pretty darn weak, but they DO make the mindless undead at least a little more work, and perhaps even mildly threatening. Still, those need some kind of beefing, too. I feel NO NEED to rush to kill the defilers, the way I do with shamen, mummy makers, maggots and vile mothers. Where's the beef???
THE DANGEROUS ENEMY
Here he is, the most dangerous enemy in the entire game, thanks to AoE one-shot-kill-from-long range cheese. Oh sure, you can use some strategy on him, and he IS an interesting fight in that regard, but particularly online (thanks to desynch) he's just too much. Even here in single player, I wouldn't bother with him in Hardcore NM or Hell unless I was in a damn lucky mood, and in Hell or High Water mode, to boot.
My tactic with Ribinak was fairly simple: slowly lure out all the minions, kill them away from the old bastid, clean up the corpses with Redemption, then when it was down to one or two minions left (can't get to zero, afaik, since he keeps summoning more) rush in there and smitelock him with my sad slvl 1 smite, while the merc beats him up, then pray. As you can see, it worked out. Took at least ten or fifteen minutes, as it was hard to lure out minions without the merc smacking them down on the spot.
Now here's a little known fact: those suicide minions DO leave corpses. They are meant to do so, as well! You can redeem them, you can raise skels from them, blow them up with CE, etc etc. I don't think you can Revive them, but you can do everything else with those corpses. And yes, Nihlathak CAN blow them up, too. And that sucks, because of the bug where they can INSTANTLY detonate if they are transformed from normal into frenzied while right next to your character. Blah to that. Stupid Blizzard programmers. Seriously, this is badly sloppy, with a one-shot kill effect. Hardcore killer is what that is. A nice idea, but botched in its implementation.
Here's how it turns ugly. Nihlathak summons endless minions, so you can't lure them all away. Even if one is left, you rush in to attack Nihlathak, the minion closes in on you, Nihlathak whips him into a frenzied state, he INSTANTLY detonates, then Nihlathak INSTANTLY blows up the corpse, and blam. I don't care who your char is, not even the most virile barb or druid ubertank is going to live through that in higher difficulty. And that's not even COUNTING that the corpse explosion improperly scales up with more players in the game. Just two players is enough to double the damage! Not that that's needed.
I could think up half a dozen potential solutions to this nasty little scenerio, but... screw it. Blizz isn't listening. If they are, they don't care. And if they do care, they're powerless to do anything about it. Like so much else that is broken with their game, my advice is either to skip this part, or to come prepared to live with the broken results.
EEE players... if Nihlathak's Death Trap situation isn't repaired somehow, I might remove him from the requirement list for full clears. He's doable with some builds, but others just aren't going to have the tools to isolate him, and beyond that, it's just a roll of the dice, even with a GOOD strategy. ... I don't know. I'll give it more thought, and more time. In the mean time, if in doubt, skip him and come back later. You can go as far as you like, and still come back later, even after 3dotting, and clean up missed areas and parked bosses for full clear credit. So keep that in mind, and don't get yourselves killed fighting a broken boss. OK? Good luck.
ENDGAME
On to the ancients. I thought I took a screenie of them, but must have hit the wrong key. Ouch. Oh well. I pretty much had no trouble with them. They were some work, but I only needed two potions. Defense actually WORKED WELL for Ribinak here. For once.
By now, Ribinak is clvl 35, and Hazade is still clvl 30. He leveled early in the Worldstone Keep, but it's just insane for your merc to fall behind like this. And then... the worst of the worst, a Hump Level for Hazade. He needs to double his total experience to level again to 32, and now that Ribinak is past the narrow area where the merc can get any experience, he'll never level again, ever, unless I go back to earlier areas and replay them to "level my merc". What a pain in my ass. Thanks Blizz, but no thanks. Fix this, and soon, or what's left of my faith in you shall crumble and be scattered upon the wind.
OK, time to talk suicide minion tactics.
Ring Around the Rosie, that's what I call it. You circle your merc, as wide a berth as needed to maintain distance from the kamakazi. It's up to your merc to stab/chop/shoot the bastard things as they run past him. Sometimes the merc gets stupid and just moves around, chasing you, letting the zippy kamakazis run right past them. Nothing you can do but to keep circling, keep running, lead the enemy past your merc over and over until the merc kills it. That's the only way for melee chars to get experience off these things. That, or use your own ranged attacks. With great care, of course. Poison potions can do it in normal Act Five, but you need more in NM and Hell, where these things can get some lively hit points going, even though still much weaker than other act five opponents. I don't advise attacks like charge, leap attack or WW, either, nor do I advise smite. The merc is the best option. If you don't have a merc, get one. If you don't want one, or are playing a variant, don't bother me about it. OK? :) You can always tempt the little bastids, you just won't get experience for detonating them that way, and as you may know, bomb squad duty is a dangerous way to make a living. Nuff said.
Found this useless bit of trash on level 3:
Would have been nice to find it sooner, but by now, better armors had become available in the shops. Ribinak had upgraded from plate to full plate (243 DR) at clvl 31 or 32, then again to Ancient Armor after that became available (clvl 35, after defeating the ancients). The Ancient armor was +49% defense, for a total 350ish DR. Ribinak gained one more level before tackling Baal.
Baal's minions were no big deal. No load lag in single player... well, the lag is still there, but the game isn't running during that time, so you aren't made to bend over and have the old Duriel cheese shoved up your tailpipe. That right there helps a lot, as does clearing out the rest of the level first, to make for retreat room.
I know you aren't going to believe this, but I swear it's true. Ventar, the Venom Lord, posed the biggest threat to Ribinak. Not only did his speedy boys surround Ribinak, they did a lot of breathing on him, and some blocklock. Potion use was required. By contrast, Bartuc and Lister were easily dealt with. Bartuc's minions were smashed one by one, then the boss, and a leftover minion or two. For Lister, I retreated, and lured a couple minions to their doom before waking the boss and the last couple minions. I scattered them out with a brief retreat, then smitelocked each while my merc beat the crap out of them. Rather easy, if I say so. Normal monsters gave me tougher fights many times.
BAAL
This is my first encounter with Baal since the beta. I'm curious to see how much Orange he fires. My tactic? CHARRRRRGE! What else is there for a melee build in this fight? Close the distance, engage. Then stay engaged, or at some point retreat. That's about it. Perhaps I can try to pick my battle ground, but with Baal, since he doesn't actually chase you like the other four act bosses, to some degree you have to fight on ground of his choosing. That, or bait him around a good while, until he ends up where you want him. Screw that, I'm charging in there.
Fire Nova, Orange, Teleport! Arrgh, that bastard. Must charge! Orange again. Um... yikes. Potion required. Must drink wine. Purr-Pull. Re-Joove. That's belt slots two, three or four. No, Sirian, NOT slot one. Those are reds. Oops. You silly player, you. Got too used to drinking reds, not needing any purples, and you HIT THE WRONG POTION.
They say third time is the charm? Orange!
Oops. See, that's all it takes. One mistake, at the wrong time, and it's all over. Yes, I make mistakes. I die, now and then. Not bloody often, but it happens. I play almost all my chars as if it were hardcore. I hate dyin. I play not to die, but I also want the real risk of death. Otherwise, what's the point? Well here you see why melee chars are, in my view, so much harder. They must, MUST, risk much more exposure to the enemy, just to fight hand to hand. They have all the worst threats shoved in their face over and over, including some threats (combo LEBs, suicide minions, Baal's Orange) that just rise off the charts in terms of risk up close but are manageable at range, PLUS they suffer clvl-mlvl penalties. That Baal in Normal is like mlvl 60 or some such insanity doesn't help. Anyway... so I made my mistake. That punk Prime Evil, he just got lucky, and that's the truth. I don't hit the wrong potion all that often, and I certainly don't do it often when my char's life is on the line, the threat not even a surprise.
Blam! Die, you hoary bastard, die.
Well, here was the final tally: Fire Nova, Orange, Teleport, two more Orange, Ribinak bought the farm. Fire Nova, then seven consecutive Oranges (no joke, five of those at point blank!) but this time I hit all the right buttons, and Baal ran out of steam with Ribinak's belt completely empty. End of engagement, score: one apiece. It was a tie. Ties don't cut it in Hardcore, but... life goes on for Ribinak, now with one black mark on his record.
The bad news? Seven god damn Oranges IN A ROW? WTF is that? What a load of crap. Is this something they've further changed on the Realms? Are other players going through this same crapshoot? Or are they just dying and calling that par for the course? I don't get it. I hear numerous players complain about how easy Baal is, when this fight, I got one teleport, two fire novas, and TEN ORANGE. That's well over two out of three Baal moves all the one-shot-kill cheese variety.
So they toned down Baal's Orange range, and they may have toned down the odds of his telekill combo Teleport-Orange move. If they did anything else, I can't see it. Well, hooray for ranged chars. If you maintain distance, yes, it's much easier to fight him than when I first soloed him in Hell with Sor-Cee. But melee chars? Looks like the same old sloppy roll of the dice to me. Maybe he will Orange you, maybe he won't. You live or die on a crapshoot. Yay. Just what I always wanted!
If you note, for the moment all my chars so far in D2X are softcore. I don't have faith in the game yet. I need to see a lot more of Baal, and see what, if anything, can be done to better the odds against the twisty missile of Cheddar Cheese, before I throw the dice with some hardcore char. Yeah, I only died once with Ribinak, and it WAS my fault, but that's only because the Orange is weakish in Normal. That was ten deaths, AT LEAST, for the same situations in Hell, all with Ribinak dead as a doornail before he could even get close enough to swing. And the Orange is too fat and too fast to dodge, so that's hopeless. I don't find that encouraging at all. So I'll look for a trick, a secret -- a loophole, frankly -- and see what I find.
I still think Baal is just another ****ing Duriel puzzle, though. They should have done better.
Ribinak's rather specialized skill list at the end of Normal in D2X:
Defiance @ 19
Holy Shield @ 12
Sacrifice @ 1
Smite @ 1
Holy Bolt @ 1
Charge @ 1
Blessed Hammer @ 1
Prayer @ 1
Cleansing @ 1
Vigor @ 1
Redemption @ 1
Because of his very high mlvl, Baal drops some incredible stuff in Normal, compared to the rest of those chumps. Ribinak got a Fool's broadsword, with an amazing +500ish AR (based on char level, so it could get even better). Just the ticket for a low dex or no dex char, or some poor melee sorcie who can't hit jack without ITD help. Level 37 required, too. Ribinak is almost there. Will I switch to this sword? Not sure. I don't think I'll be discarding it, though. Also got a high level jewel, and a nice blue repeating xbow that got sold.
Final thoughts... I enjoyed Act Five, except for the final moments. Even though the Baal death was a misstep on my part, I was not happy with the idea that Baal is going to be complete cheese in Hell, and perhaps NM too. Ugh. Might nail him hard, but win or lose, it won't be WORTH A DAMN THING, because it all comes down to luck. Did he Orange you or not? Blah and blah, what a pathetic anticlimax. There's a lot to enjoy in act five, but a lot of sloppiness, too. There are a lot of little details that need tweaking, adjusting, and more testing. The whole thing still reeks of the beta to me... but then, this IS still the damned-to-Hell beta version anyway. So I suppose I will wait (and wait, and wait, and wait and wait and wait and wait) for the next patch, before I render final judgement. For the moment, at least, Ribinak lives, and perhaps you will hear from him again in Nightmare.
- Sirian
| Ribinak's Expansion Page | Next Chapter | Sirian's Expansion Page |