ACT ONE
Rill began inconspicuously, as befits an Assassin. Her primary skills will be Claws of Thunder and Blades of Ice, with normal attack as finisher. I do not yet know if I will go for Tail and Flight as finishing moves or not. Rill will rely on Claw Mastery and Burst of Speed, and at first those will be all that she can invest in.
As such, her first several levels were melee-only. Claw Mastery and more Claw Mastery. Claw-and-shield, with Dex going to be a prime focus, likely kept at or near a level necessary to maintain full block percentage. With no charge-ups in play, and no finishers, Rill's first few levels were no different than any of dozens of other chars I have played, including even some sorcies, meleeing their way across the Cold Plains.
At clvl 6, I got slvl 1 Fists of Fire. This is, for all intents and purposes, a pure prereq skill. It does not compare to its cousins down the tree. If an assassin wants to use Fire, the better options are clearly either Tiger + Tail finisher, or Phoenix Strike with one charge. The lowish damage is only half the problem for this skill. The small area of effect is perhaps a larger obstacle to effectiveness. Since Rill had nothing else to do with her mana, I used this skill fairly often. That was mostly just practice for later, though, as Rill's Claw Mastery and Burst of Speed were plenty enough to carry her.
I full-cleared, but there wasn't anything happening of note all the way up to the Outer Cloister. It was my intent to go without a mercenary. Mercs can be badly overpowered in Normal, to a point where they completely overshadow your character there. That's fine if you have a late-bloomer build, and want to get through the morass of Normal as quickly as possible. This was my first real Assassin, though, and even though I chose a build that would be somewhat late blooming, I figured I might as well enjoy the experience. So I avoided Kashya. I figured I could just walk around her and not have to "get the merc killed" to get rid of her. Well, just like Atma with poor Ember in Nightmare, Kashya was very insistent. She ran all over camp chasing me, jumping in front of me, etc, and despite my best effort, I clicked on her by mistake once anyway. *sigh* Well, nothing for it, just get this dumb mercenary killed off and then I could get on with it.
So I took this bright-eyed, bushy-tailed young clvl 5 rogue to the Outer Cloister, gave her no equipment, no help, and ran her into mobs of yeti and black rogues. And she refused to die! It was the most incredible thing. Just DIE already, you silly little wench. End your misery. Get it over with.
With her sad little 1-4 damage, she kicked their butts. She got beat up pretty bad, but then she leveled up and was healed. I tried to get even more and more monsters after her, and they were finally starting to beat the crap out of her. Her health was going yellow, then red.
Then she leveled up again.
*sigh*
"OK, kid. You're worthy. Get your napsack. This is going to be a long journey."
I feel like I "got adopted" by a stray kitten. How did I get into this mess? Ah what the Hell. At least I have someone to bitch at who won't complain about it. (Now if only I could meet someone spirited in real life who wanted THAT badly to become my companion... but that's another tale entirely).
Visala is her name, my little stray. She's, well, she's OK, I guess. I told her to not to do anything jaw-droppingly stupid and for the most part she's managed to comply with that.
A rogue merc's not half bad for a melee char, actually. She stands back and doesn't get into tons of trouble. Can't control her around LEBs, but I managed to avoid letting that become a problem for me.
Equipment is, for the most part, harder to come by in Normal in D2X. If this made the game harder, that would be one thing, but it doesn't, or at least not by enough. All it really manages to do is extend the time you spend there. I didn't really mind that so much as I played Rill. Perhaps I should have written her report fresh. By now, I've been in Normal for a whole month and it's wearing thin. If that patch isn't released soon (like within days) I'm going to have to shelve Diablo for a while.
Anyway, Andariel was slain and Visala was not. I bought some antidotes. Rill tackled Andariel head on and finished her fairly quickly, so only one antidote was needed for Visala, and one for Rill.
ACT TWO
Fate just about decided my course for me. Rill had found two poison charms already. I bought a two-socket claw from Fara and stuck two emerald chips into it, and just like that, I had mad poison damage, far in excess of any other I could have obtained at that point. I would, on subsequent characters, decide to pass up the poison route intentionally, but that was largely as a result of seeing how strong it was with Rill.
At clvl 18, I finally obtained Claws of Thunder. It was, well... at first it was pathetic. Simple as that. Better than slvl 1 fists of fire by a noticeable amount, but otherwise unremarkable. I used it anyway because I might as well. At this point I had slvl 7 Claw Mastery and slvl 4 Burst of Speed, and several points saved.
Note the two rares. That's a chest uberdrop from a chest in the maggot lair. Chest uberdrops are when a chest will drop all set items, all rares, or all uniques (or occasionally, rares and a unique). Magic Find increases your chances of a chest uberdrop, although as I understand it, people have been using this as a loophole on the Realms, with hundreds of points of magic find, and Blizzard instead of capping it or otherwise fixing this imbalance, is just going to nerf magic find across the board, rendering it pretty much pointless for everyone BUT the abusers and loophole players with the ridiculous equipment sets bent entirely on farming certain treasure areas. *sigh* I'd better not talk about that any more, as it's just depressing that they're contemplating breaking yet more of the game to correct excesses they SHOULD NOT have put in there in the first place.
At clvl 19, slvl 2 Thunder was much more useful. I started to get into the feel of how this character will play over the long haul. I'm still thinking that Blades of Ice will be my primary skill, though. Anything that will freeze the enemy is, by definition, entirely viable.
At clvl 20, I've got slvl 3 now, and my tactics are really starting to take shape with this skill. I hardly need the single charge for normal critters, as the poison will do them in. However, for bosses and champs it's worth it anyway. Less waiting, and why not use my skill instead of my cheap poison stacking? So one charge for bosses and champs. Two charges gives off the weakish nova blast, while three gives off a rolling nova-like spray of strong charged bolts. I quickly learned that the charged bolts are finicky. They are somewhat unreliable for controlling large mobs. The nova hits ALL critters in range, whereas the charged bolts will miss some. Thus, if the nova can take down the creature type in one hit, it's always better to stick with the nova. However, the nova can hit a maximum of one time. It's possible to hit larger targets with two, even three charged bolts, for as much as ten times the total damage as the nova would inflict. Your positioning matters with the charged bolts, as well. This is a very very complex skill, requiring lots of attention to details to maximize its use. I'd say more, but right now, it's all one-shot-kill on normal creatures, which means I haven't had to study when to use the charged bolts as much as I will later on. Rill's using nova on mobs now, and one-charge direct lightning damage attack on bosses. I'll go into this skill more in the future.
With Claws of Thunder now in hand and growing in strength, Rill stopped being a walking dairy commercial ("Behold the power of cheese") and actually played with her skills, not just her poison claw and charms.
I upgraded her claw from two chips to a stronger, faster claw with two flawed emeralds. We're moving up from Swiss to spicy Pepperjack now! Well, actually it wasn't quite that bad, but only because I was killing most things with novas, and Visala was getting in some licks, too. However, while charging my Thunder Claw, those targets were being poisoned. They'd have died in the nova blast anyway, though, so I comforted myself with the knowledge that it really didn't matter yet.
The Arcane Sanctuary was... well it was a lot of fun. Not even sorcies quite mop the floor like that. Wow. Charge, charge, UNLEASH. Whole area dead. Yum. I'm thinking at this point that I'm going to like playing a warrior-mage after all. :)
False tombs were a complete joy to clear. I could not get enough of charge-charge-UNLEASH. I would let whole rooms of Red Skeltons pile on to Rill and then UNLEASH, and watch them all -- ALL -- drop dead in unison. Ahhhhh. Now that was fun.
Duriel was an exercise in charge-attack, charge-attack. He batted Rill around a bit, enough to make me break off and circle around twice, waiting for healing to work. I used some minor rejuvs, too. But he was taking large damage from both the poison and my single-charge Thunder. Die you old bug-fart. Die.
I should talk a bit about my item management. First, potions. With the new formula to transmute three minor purples into one full, there's no more need to cube gems into rejuvs, at least through normal. Even if you just cube the purples that drop, you will have plenty. If you save up reds and blues to cube, you can be overflowing, so many that you fill the surplus space in your stash and then start having to store them on the ground in town.
That leaves all the gems, and there are now so many that drop, the best use for the early chips is often to cube them with rings and potions to make resistance rings. These formulas are currently buggy and can, on rare occasions, turn out a confused with result with insane life leech or insane +mana per kill. I discovered this in the beta and reported it, and these formulas are disabled on the Realms pending a fix. They are still alive in single player, though, and through over 200 uses I have yet to turn out a bugged ring. (I'm not looking to do so, either. Just noting that it IS an uncommon result). With the resistance ring formulas, it will add 6% to 36% resist to a random ring, which is created relative to your clvl. So... using these formulas at higher levels produces better rings. Considering that you get so many chips, though, why make them into larger gems when you can take a shot at making some good rings. Even at clvl 18-24 you can turn out rings with half freeze, with -1 magic damage, or with modest bonuses to finding gold and magic items. These are all worthwhile for temporary use, and how else are you going to fill out your resists while still low level? Getting a ring with 35% resist and half freeze, that's much better than any rings you will find at these levels. However, there's a temptation to use up all those extra chips right away, at clvl 16 or 17, and I have found it is often best to save a few for use near the end of act 2 or even into act 3. Also, since they took throwing potions out of shops, you have to save up any exploding potions you find if you want to cube rubies into fire resist rings.
Collecting diamonds or skulls may be worthwhile, and even amethysts are worth saving, if you have any interest in the Safety set of crafted gear, or for possible use on your mercs to allow them to use bigger items more quickly (strength boosts on helm or armor).
I've mentioned elsewhere that it's my opinion (pending any corrections/changes in a patch) that the best use of money for gamble purposes is on circlets and amulets. This will always be true under v1.08 all the way down the line -- even in Hell they are better -- but there just aren't any keeper mods available on gloves, belts, boots, rings through Normal difficulty, as to make it worth gambling for those unless your luck has been especially bad with them. (Can anybody EXPLAIN TO ME why it takes you to clvl 30 to be able to reliably get even 20% faster run on boots, and any better takes even higher levels, while you can get 30% on a freakin CIRCLET at clvl 21? Can someone please clue me in to the logic of that one?)
The benefit of chill on weaponry is now obtainable with cold damage charms -- as good as sapphire chips or flaweds, and usually easy to find. Even if you don't, though, you can spare gems for use. Of course, you don't need to use them, as act one and two are easy enough even for late blooming builds, but generally you'll save yourself a little hassle at almost no cost.
ACT THREE
By now, Rill is coming into her own. Thunder is growing in strength faster than the enemy now, and soon Ice will be available. Rill drew lots of fetishes, in both the forest and marsh. The flayer jungle always has midgets in large quantity (although even there, sometimes more than other times) but the forest and marsh will often have them only at the alcove entrances, marked by the totem poles. Not this time, though. Lots and lots of midgets all over the place. Rill didn't mind a bit, as she'd wipe out large numbers of them, and Visala would clean up the strays.
Rill didn't hit clvl 24 until Lower Kurast. At that point, she had slvl 7 Thunder, which was nothing to sneeze at. By comparison, slvl 1 Blades of Ice just didn't compare. I had several skill points saved up, too, so that I could continue to pump Thunder higher and higher while I worked on improve Ice. You see, I'd skipped Tiger Strike and Cobra altogether, along with all the prereqs for shadow warrior. Visala is all the shadow Rill needs anyway. And Rill still didn't have any finishing moves. Everything saved up to max out both Thunder and Ice asap, and from there figure out what gaps needed to be plugged and how to plug them. Even lightning resistant targets like Hell Swarms and Horrors were no match for Rill's strong Thunder nova.
I did try out some Blades of Ice anyway, though, and... strangely enough, it didn't seem to be shattering any bodies. In fact, it didn't seem to be freezing anything at all. That couldn't be right, could it? Maybe I'm not seeing that correctly. I'll wait until I get to some sturdier targets and test again.
Rill had a bunch of charms by now. Still only the two poison charms, but one of those was 9 over 2, and the double-gemmed claw is 47 over 2. Rill's poison damage was thus over 200 total damage per hit. (Told you it was insane, and this is barely even a modest poison rig). Then add to that a cold charm with 1-2, lightning charm with 1-6, claw mastery, str/dex boosts to claw damage, and a Fiery Circlet of Sorcery I'd gambled up with 25-42 Fire damage on it, and +14 to energy. Then factor Thunder damage, and wow o wowee, Rill can dish some seriously deep hurting.
The Council were no serious problem except for Geleb's death explosion. That was a noteworthy Ouch Moment. Rill repeated the same move on Mephisto that worked well on Duriel: charge-unleash, charge-unleash. One Thunder charge and let him have it. Unfortunately, the game's not quite conducive to that kind of button-hopping precision. So despite my best effort to toggle the attacks, I sometimes got two charges, or zero, on the finisher. There's no "buffer" on commands. It does whatever you are pressing when the opening comes after the last attack, and so you can skip right past a command that it completely ignores. That's probably vital for controlling the game through lag, but it's less than ideal for precision in a lagless environment, and only fuzzes up your control even online, a necessary evil I suppose.
ACT FOUR
Visala had died on Durance Three, her first death ever. I could have saved her, but I wanted her dead, to spare her the risk of permdeath in act 4 (thanks to spitter bug). So Rill pressed on into the Outer Steppes alone. Venom Lords, Flesh Spawners, Doom Knights, all were mowed down by Claws of Thunder novas. Same story on the Plains. I don't even remember what I fought there. Burning Souls and something else. Izzy got the charge-unleash treatment and eventually dropped dead. However, I must note that he HAS been beefed up a little, at least as far as melee characters are concerned. He now autochills on attack, whether he hits or not, and I don't remember that from before. He also hits a little harder. He's still mostly a test of patience, but you can't quite just mindlessly stand there swinging. You have to put a little effort into it now.
In the Plains, I turned up a third poison charm, this one large of pestilence, for 14 over 2. Like, wow. That boosted Rill's damage to about 350 total. Per hit. (Before resistance). Some serious hurting.
Then came the City of the Damned, and it was teeming with-- what else? Damned. To my astonishment, these could often survive one of Rill's novas, so... I thought it was high time to whip out the Blades of Ice in earnest and start relying on that as a primary attack form. (Not discarding Thunder, but working alongside it).
Uh... hmm. I definitely got it right at first. Blades of Ice could be renamed to Bugs of Ice. It's got serious problems, folks. First of all, there is no freeze. It doesn't freeze anything. I wondered if my cold charm was the culprit so I stashed that, made no difference. No freezing. Considering that Phoenix Strike actually does freeze, and the freeze there works correctly, I don't understand how this one could possibly have made it out of QA. Like, did they test this skill AT ALL? Apparently not.
Not only does it not freeze, IT DOES NOT EVEN CHILL! Except for the initial target monster, which was VERY difficult for me to test, considering I'm doing 350 damage per hit to any target I face. It all dies before I can see what's going on, except for the occasional boss, who dies quickly even so. Yep, that was my finding: the area of effect of Blades of Ice doesn't work at all, except to apply damage. No freeze, no chill, no shattering of bodies, ever. Um... it's broken.
You have no idea how disappointing this was to me. Here I am thinking I'm being versatile, somewhat clever, and choosing an alternate but viable path that will give me a freeze option at least as good as Phoenix Strike's, plus the option for single-charge and double-charge cold attacks (you have to store three charges with phoenix strike to get cold damage). I enjoy checking out the less obvious, less-than-uber options while everyone else is rolling out the cookie dough. Sometimes I find cool things that way, and sometimes I'm even the first to explore or accomplish something, which is always cool. I'm actually planning to BUILD MY CHARACTER around Blades of Ice... and it's broken! Um... great.
Here's the kicker, though. Even if the area of effect worked properly (chilling, freezing) I've come to realize this skill has a serious drawback that is NOT suffered by Phoenix Strike: short range. It's not as short as Fists of Fire, but dammit it's pretty close. I knew going in that it would be shortish, but I just didn't realize the full importance of that until I saw the skill in action -- more to the point, until I had seen Claws of Thunder in action and come to rely (already) on its moderate range. Trying to use a short ranged skill after that is... well, it's disappointing in its own right, aside from issues raised by the bugs.
I say again, did anybody at all TEST this skill at Blizzard? Did they give half a damn about it? Do they care about it now? Are they going to fix it?
The bottom line is this: Claws of Thunder is a stronger, better skill all the way around. It does more damage. It has wider range. It's "primary" mode is nova, which takes two charges, while you must have three to get the (broken) freezing effect with Ice -- and Thunder has much greater range and two genuinely different moderate to long ranged applications, as opposed to one short range application which can change from chilling to freezing with an extra charge. Even if Ice wasn't buggy, it should be in the level 18 slot while Thunder is in the 24 slot, since Thunder is better BY FAR and IN EVERY WAY.
*sigh*
I think I know what could fix Blades of Ice, but they'll never do it. If they changed the two-charge attack to a full blown frost nova, that would give it the range this skill desperately needs. If you want freezing, you'd go to three charges and stick with the shorter range already on this skill. That, and repair the bugs, so that the chill and freezing actually work with the area of effect, and you get the applicable corpse shatterings for each. That would put Ice on the map and give people reason to choose it over Phoenix Strike as a weaker altnerative with at least some advantages. But... like I said, they'll never do it. If they didn't care enough to make sure this skill at least WORKED before sending it out the door (or at the VERY least, warning us that it doesn't work) why would they care enough to fix it now? And who at Blizzard is still reading my page after my protest? Maybe nobody.
So... Thunder nova won't kill the nearly-lightning-immune damned in one shot, and Blades of Ice will, but its range is too short, so I miss half a mob or more anyway, even some that are RIGHT BEHIND ME aren't hit. Amazing. So now what?
Claws of Thunder, three charges. Hit them with the charged bolts and watch them go down in a single hit. Yeah, it's an iffy kind of move, but it was Rill's best attack against mobs of damned, and damned if I wasn't going to learn how to use it properly. Thus, I got a lot of practice in with Thunder charged bolts against these demon dogs. This also means that the charged bolts, despite their fickleness, are still your best bet with this skill in large multiplayer games. If used well, they can dish the most hurting on any single attack. You really have to manipulate the mob just right, though. That will be tough to do through the fog of lag and desynch.
On now to the River, and back to nova. Charge-charge-UNLEASH. Zap. "Ashes, ashes, we all fall down!"
Dragon Flight would have come in mighty handy against Oblivion Knights. Still, I could live without that for now. I'll probably make sure to get it by Act Four Nightmare, though. If not sooner.
Storm Casters == multiple hits required for nova. Worse, any hit by nova would run. Arg. So even though nova was the kickass option against knights and venoms, it was out. Out out out. Charged bolts were in and, well, so was Blades of Ice. At slvl 3 now, I could charge Ice once and unleash on a single Storm Caster, and ensure his death. No risk of overcharge (which, let's be honest, happens fairly often, and more so in mob situations or when under ranged attack).
Ah, but with the Vizier's boys, I need not fear them running, so I used Thunder, whatever charges I could get, including two. Zap zap zap. Die, little ghosties. Die. De Seis = Flight Bait. Rill was, as I already explained, still grounded, all her flights cancelled. So I used Thunder and lots of footwork. Infector = afterthought. Zap, and it's Ring Around the Rosie time for them.
And then, lo and behold, the game presents an actual worthy fight. Sort of. Yep, they've turned Diablo into an Izual clone. Instead of pumping up his life even more, though, they've pumped his blocking, pumped his mlvl (so that he benefits more from the Curve) and that's enough right there. Can you believe this nonsense? I counted misses (including any blocking he does) as I stood there swinging, and there was one time that even with an 1150 Attack Rating in NORMAL DIFFICULTY, that Rill missed in excess of two dozen swings IN A ROW. Is this Blizzard's idea of "hard"? *sigh*
I suppose it is harder. Perhaps it's even harder in some sort of meaningful way, albeit not grandly so. I wish I could say that I am happy with it, but I can't. What did I have to do? Nothing really. Just stand there pressing the buttons, waiting for hits. Even if I got a charge going, more often than not, it would dissipate before I could land a finishing blow. Now that's just silly. When my belt ran lowish, I'd break off, cut to town, refill the belt and return for more. There was no brilliant tactical option on hand for working around this insane resistance to weapon damage he now has. I mean, I could have invested into traps and used those on him. But... why? Why bother? I was well able to defeat him, it just... took longer. Look at that to-hit: 66%? That's all clvl-mlvl curve, THE dumbest feature of this game. If you sandbag by playing endless repetitions, you can cut into that penalty, reduce or even eliminate it. That's just plain STUPID, sorry. If the answer to a puzzle is just to waste a lot of time in repetition "leveling up" so you get it easier, that's not a satisfying challenge to me.
The game has other offerings, other ways for me to forge my own challenges, but this ONE stupid feature has virtually shut me out from enjoying weapon builds in this game. When I run into tough monsters (because I've advanced into the curve penalty) and I realize that there is NO WAY to work around that penalty with items or skills or stats, that I can do so ONLY by endless repetitions of leveling up (and then the penalty just goes away, like smoke broken by a breeze) I'm not at all impressed, not with the game, not with the challenge, and not with the accomplishment of "overcoming" it by either slogging through or leveling up. It's... stupid.
If that stupidity were applied equally to magic (a chance for your spells simply TO FAIL because your char level is lower than the target's monster level) I'd have long ago hung this game out to dry and moved on. I'm reminded here about Max's comments regarding "deal breaker", and I wonder if that standard was applied here. The ONLY purpose to the curve that I can see is to sucker stupid players. I'm serious. Pose a challenge that looks hard, feels hard, but as characters level up, the challenge just magically goes away all on its own, leaving players who stuck it through or sandbagged with a sense that they've overcome that challenge and accomplished something, when they haven't. MOST of the difficulty in this game for weapon users arises out of this penalty. Thus, just level up and keep leveling, and then the difficulty factor melts away. You don't have to DO anything: you don't need special tactics; you don't need wise use of skills. All you need is... more levels. Level level level, it's all about leveling. And OF COURSE the expansion pack is easier than D2 for the bnet masses, because it's easier than ever to level up, and leveling is the big secret, the magic pill. Leveling up cures all the biggest challenge in this game: the to-hit penalties of the level curve. You hit more, get hit less, automatically, just by leveling. It's... as I said, it's just stupid.
In Diablo 1, you had to have X amount of armor. You had to have X amount of to-hit. There were certain types of bits of gear you really needed to thrive, and you had to work a bit to acquire them. There was a leveling factor there, too: leveling up made the game easier there. (That's where they GOT the idea for it in D2). But... in D1 it's well balanced. You level quickly up until about clvl 35, which is all you need to be in the clear, so to speak, in regard to the curve. At clvl 35, you were out from behind the eight ball, you could hit and you could block reliably, and there were no bad penalties on you to send you packing with a broken difficulty scale. You could just about get there in one pass. In D2, it's crap. You fall off the curve right away in Nightmare and never get back onto it, unless you repeat repeat repeat, or solo-8.
The curve throws off everything else in the game. To-hit is jacked because of the curve. Be-hit, defense, blocking and its importance, all jackknifed and lying in flames on the road, a big wreck that we all just stare at in dismay and can't move beyond. And yet... we keep playing, and so Blizzard thinks they got it right. That's the scary part: they think the market has validated EVERY aspect of their game, when in fact it has only validated the best aspects of their game, which are so good they drag the piles of bugs and poorly implemented features and PK hassles and morass of imbalances along for the ride.
Blizzard screwed some things up so badly in D2X, though, that I'm sitting here waiting now, at the end of act four, unable to continue with Rill without screwing her up: item drops, merc leveling, those are the worst, the deal breakers. So bad, they are unplayable past act four normal, IMO. (And this is how people who can't or don't ever patch will play D2X, for all time: broken beyond recognition, though many will never realize it). There are other issues, too, and perhaps some I'm not even aware of yet. So I wait.
Rill has already accumulated two perfect diamonds, a perf topaz, a flawless diamond and one chip short of another, about ten runes (not counting spare El's I used in armors along the way, for temporary usage), some extra rings, buncha full purples, and eight or so jewels. Rill still has a claw with two flawed emeralds in it, some charms, some crappy rares, sad boots. Still using a 3-row belt, arg. She did gamble up an amulet with +1 to Martial Arts tree, though, and that nice circlet I told you about. That's about all. Not too bad, but no permanent keeper items yet. Visala has a nice bow and a circlet with +8 max damage (which translate to +30 max, after dex boost). 20-90 damage total for Visala, not shabby at all.
Rill will see you again some time after the 1.09 patch.
- Sirian
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