ACT ONE
Venus will be a late bloomer. Her primary skills are both level 24, her secondary skills levels 18 and 30. Support skills will not be used until after Normal, perhaps even late into Nightmare. So... the first several acts will be making do on a shoestring, mostly riding along behind a temporary merc: rogue in act one, prayer merc (the all-purpose low maintenance unit) for acts 2 and 3. By act four, Venus will have enough skills to stand on her own without any tedium, and my plan is to ditch the merc there and go without a hireling thereafter.
Melee attacks with claw and use of Fire Blast until level 6, no merc yet. Nothing exciting happening here. Kill Raven, get merc, buy her a longbow at Gheed and ride along behind her for a while. Slvl 1 Blade Sentinel is quite strong for that point in the game, but also at its most mana-hungry. Shock Web is good for taking out skeleton archers. Nurse that along until clvl 12.
I want to like Charged Bolt Sentry, I really do. However, it's just not that good, especially at slvl 1. The potential is good for mobs, but Wake of Fire is even better, as each wave can hit multiple targets, and the firing rate is faster. Wake of Fire also does more damage -- not potentially, since if you add up all the charged bolts that's more, but it just never happens that all those bolts hit one target, and like I said, if it's a mob, then Wake of Fire is multiplying its damage, so it still comes out ahead.
In fact, Wake of Fire is so quick, it looks deceptively effective. You can spam five of those traps and they spend themselves very quickly, allowing you to inflict paper cut deaths on even tough-looking bosses in single player. Wake of Fire is not only enough to get you to clvl 18, and Blade Fury, but it frankly can get you all the way to clvl 24 if it had to, albeit at only slvl 1, it'd be hurting at a few spots along the way. The bottom line, though, is that the damage total is not that good, and does not increase much per level. It's only the firing speed, dishing out its feeble damages in a big hurry, and the way it handles mobs almost as well as single targets, that make it look so good. You can make this skill work, even long term, but Wake of Inferno is undoubtedly stronger and more mana efficient.
Somewhere in the Barracks, Venus Fly got her first item break: the Hand of Broc unique gloves. These babies are great for any D2X melee build, offering dual leech and a hefty mana boost. The leech was useless to Venus, but that mana, that helped a lot. Not only to set more traps, but improved regen rate was a hidden bonus. These gloves could carry her a long way.
I drank a lot of potions to down Andariel with Wake of Fire, but down she went.
ACT TWO
Wake of Fire not very effective against Burning Dead. Ah, but that's why you hire the Combat merc. His Prayer is an effective anti-poison, and you almost never have to feed him potions. Just give him a good weapon, lead him around, and let him kill everything that gives you any trouble. Why mess with slvl 1 CB Sentry? Merc kills all those Red Skeltons in one hit.
Whoa, lookit here. Death's Hand! Venus has the golden touch with gloves, I see. Merc's Prayer is plenty enough poison resist on its own, for now. I'll just hold on to those babies for later use, though. They're a one-stop snakebite kit, and I'm sure to want them even over the Broc at points to come. (They really have beefed up enemy poison -- enough to annoy mage types, and actually threaten melee chars, or at least make them pay attention at times.)
I'm making use of El runes as they drop -- mostly for the merc. Stick two El's into a superior splint mail and just like that, merc's got 130 DR armor. I'd stick in skull chips if it wasn't a prayer merc -- life regen takes a lot of the work out of maintaining your mercs early on -- but that isn't necessary for the Combat guard. Sometimes I use jewels with my mercs. There's no sense saving every jewel in single player. Use some or you'll only sell them anyway, as it takes some time to gather gems and runes for any crafting, and those are better off waiting for later clvls and better ilvls anyway. For weapon, I gave the merc a spetum socketed with three emerald chips, too. Yeah, poison is just about the strongest choice for non-twinked chars and for mercs -- at least pending changes to poison in 1.09. Since Venus has no poison damage herself, there's no overlap. I just want to get to act four and my real skills, so the game proper can get underway.
In the Maggot Lair, clvl 18 arrives, as does Blade Fury. I make some limited use of it right away, but at slvl 1, it's nothing to write home about. I'm dreading the mana costs, though, when they rise to 4,6,8 per blade. Ouch. Compared to the fixed costs of my other traps, which will all cost 20 apiece but dish out (eventually) thousands of damage per trap, it seems painful by comparison to spend 8 mana for 100 damage, which will get cut to 50 by global physical resists in Hell (unless they change that, too). But we shall see.
Arcane Sanctuary, clvl 20, 21... hmm. You know, this Blade Fury is not too shabby. Once you invest in it a little, it becomes a rather effective skill. The worst part is that I can't sustain the mana costs, and yes, sometimes the skill misses moving targets. It will miss less, though, once I'm past the merc stages, and fighting on my own.
Uberchest in a false tomb dropped me two set items: Angelic Sickle saber and Sander's Taboo gloves. OK already on the gloves! Wow. Like... now I've got three pairs, and how will I ever use all of them? I save them anyway. In fact, what the Hell. What's a large stash for if not to clutter it with complete crap? I saved the Sickle too. You never know, right? (Yeah right). But what else am I going to do with that stash space? Hold three potions? Three Eld runes I'll only end up selling later? Three crappy gem chips I'll probably sell or waste later? So I saved the Sickle. (Oh stop snickering).
Duriel...
Hmm. You know what? Duriel's Freeze is slowing my trap setting. Hmm.
But, um... being chilled doesn't slow casting speed. It only slows weapon speed. Um... right? Hmm. ... Don't tell me that Assassin Traps are all like the new Chain Lightning, tied to weapon speed for cast time. Oh good grief. I asked you not to tell me this! No wonder life sucks with a fat wand in my hand. Hmm. What am I going to do with this down the road? Those Sander's Taboo are looking pretty nice, right now. +20% attack speed. It's a crying shame that Triumphant items don't work with traps (which are considered Minions, for that purpose. Blah). Or I'd go back to Charsi, buy myself a two-socket Katar (for the weapon speed) and socket it with two Tir runes. Pending that, I need this Dragon's Wand for the mana and mana regen. I'll just have to make do. (Hmm, you know... sabres are pretty fast. Aren't they? Not as good as scimitars, but... Yeah Right. Dream on).
Duriel dropped me an Angelic Raiment. Hmm. I decided to stash it. I would have tried it on, with the Sickle, but a sabre needs 30 dex to equip, and Venus only has minimum, 20. I'm not bloodly likely to spend 10 points into dex, either. But... who knows. Maybe I'll get some charms or some dex on a ring, or something. So I saved the Raiment. Look! Yes, Venus now has 9 spaces taken up by Angelic crap she'll never use, and another 8 taken up by more set items, all gloves. Some pretty decent looking luck so far, actually. Why couldn't all this glove wealth be spread out over several chars, instead of piling on to one? Oh well.
ACT THREE
You know what? Flayers die in just one burst of slvl 5 Blade Fury. No need to hold down the button to keep firing.
You know what else? Venus Fly's mana orb is, like, not draining very much. I'm using more costly shurikens than I was in act two, and it's somehow costing less. Like... what is up with that, anyway? Hmm.
Whoa. I figured it out!
You know how it says "Minimum 3 mana to cast"? And then it says "# mana per blade"? I thought the 3 mana came before any blades, and each blade cost # mana, and it would fire three blades minimum. NOPE. That is not how it works. Instead what happens is, it fires three blades as the Initial Casting, which costs 3 mana, then if you hold down the firing button, your Asn will toss extra blades at # mana each. ONLY the extra blades incur the per-blade mana cost. Thus, Venus running around pressing the Blade Fury attack without holding it, to spray three shurikens here, three there, tagging Fetishes in the jungle, was doing so at 3 mana per attack. Total. 3 mana. Three. Only three. Just three. One plus two. Two plus one. Five minus two. Cube root of 27. Three. Per use. Regardless of slvl. And it's going to stay like that, because that's how it works.
If you use Blade Fury like a timer spell, cast it with a quick click then stop, the cast again later, it's only three mana per use! The exact opposite of what I was thinking, which was that it would be more mana efficient to hold down the button, so as not to incur that startup cost over and over. Wrong! The startup cost IS the efficient part. You get three blades for three mana, then as much as 8 or 10 mana PER BLADE for extras, if your skill is maxed out. Wow. Well that changes everything.
Venus put away her Wake of Fire capgun toys and started mowing everything down with Blade Fury. In fact, I was QUITE tempted just to keep pumping this skill to max it out, instead of pausing for an extended time at slvl 7 like I had planned, to save points for Inferno and Lightning traps. We'll cross that decision bridge later, I decided. For now, just enjoying my discoveries.
I also realized there was still not only a valid place, but a prominent place for holding down the attack button and incurring the extra costs. Bosses in particular, it was better to finish them quickly, to show no mercy, than to worry about conserving mana. There were other times, too, when Venus would go into vicious mode and spray blades at onrushing mobs, mowing the whole lot of them down, the same way an infero sorcie would down whole herds of charging beasts.
Clvl 24 now, and Blade Sentry has reached my target of slvl 7. I also have Wake of Inferno available, and Lightning Sentry. I started using those traps immediately. They were especially helpful against the Hell Swarms in the Kurast Bazaar, as those things have high physical resist and would not die to three blades. Battlemaid Sarina got owned by shurikens. Venus Fly's traps caught themselves a fly girl. They ended her buzzing right quick-like, too! Hmm, what's this she dropped? A green ring? Nah! Couldn't be! No way. That's not an Angelic Halo. I'm NOT that lucky. Besides, I could only wear two pieces anyway. I'd still need more Dex to use the saber.
Oh my. That IS a Halo. Um... Time to log on to the net and check the Arreat Summit for item information. (Alt-tab from town, dial up, ho-hum, tapping foot as I wait to connect. Drumming fingers. "Are we there yet?" Ah yes, logged on now, load up the AS. Angelic Set. Heh, this is the broken set with the +skill loophole. Ugh. I don't want any part of that. Well, I don't have the whole set anyway, so I'm good for now. Let's see here... Hmm. The armor gets a defense boost with 2 items, and WOW 50% Fire resist with three items. The ring gets... 50% Magic Find! Very nice. OK, that's worth it. And the partial set bonus is... 10 dex? No way. That must be a typo. ... ... Oh my goodness, 10 dex. Would that let me equip the saber? No way. It can't! Can it? Hmm.)
Well what do you know. And the most incredible part of all? THIS IS THE RIGHT CHARACTER FOR THIS SET! This character could be content using the Angelic items for the rest of her game! That ring is +life and +regen, Magic Find, and effectively also +50 Mana and +50 Fire Resist, since that is the Partial Bonus for three items, and the bonus on the armor for three items. The Armor actually has credible defense, best I could hope for until Hell, anyway, or close to it. But get this: the weapon gets a 30% speed bonus for three set items. And assassin trap-casting speed is based on the weapon speed! Like, look at Venus go now. She's, um, FLYING with her cast rate now (at least for Inferno and Lightning). Amazing. Dare I even pray for the final item in the set? Even if I don't ever get it, these three items are keepers! The +50 mana, and all this other stuff, it's awesome without being game-breaking. You've got to love the new partial set bonuses. That's one thing in D2X that Blizzard got right.
Now that Venus is all decked out, it's time to hit the Kurast Sewer and fling a few shurikens.
The Council required the spamming of traps, but a combo of Inferno or Lightning and a nonstop stream of Blades did them in fairly quickly. I allowed my merc to die here. May he rest in peace. Unless my plans change, I will never use him again.
Mephisto has lots of resists, but he is most vulnerable to cold. That's the only type of damage I don't have available, so I spammed the Wake of Inferno.
Mephisto dropped me the Sander's Riprap set boots: WOW. 40% faster run! And some other goodies. Not sure what the set bonus is for two items in this set, but I won't find out until clvl 28, when I can wear the glove.
ACT FOUR
Nothing much to say about the Steppes. I don't even remember what I fought, only that I used mostly Lightning and short bursts of Blades. On to the Plains, where corpulents, doom casters and burning souls assaulted me. I took to using Inferno here, mostly, and more Blades. Izual got the same treatment, and below you see the mess accumulated in and around that battle.
Izzy's the ink spot on the left splattered over the rest of the splatter. Some of that clutter is the remains of many spent traps.
On to the city, where the damned die quickly to inferno. The bodies there were piling pretty high, too, as once I had a foothold, I set up death zones through which nothing penetrated.
That looks like a circus bear walking upright and juggling blue potions. :)
The City was fairly routine: inferno, more inferno, blades and more inferno. Venus was thrilled with all her speed now: attack speed, foot speed. The only thing she was lacking was mana recovery speed. I had gotten her a wyrm's circlet, but she was still drinking a lot of potions as she spammed the fire or lightning traps. I'll see if I can fix that soon. Down to the River now...
Maggots, Grotesques and Stranglers, oh my. What a messy lot that is. The stranglers required deft Blade use, since they would run away from other traps once wounded. Not only that, but one quick volley of three blades wouldn't always do it, so I had to make sure to stand there and shoot an extra blade each time, or they could get away.
Note in the picture above, Venus has low mana and I'm using short bursts of Blades at minimum cost to pick off stragglers after the big battle. Below you see a particularly thick nest of maggots.
One of those bugs dropped a rare glove. Probably crap, but with Venus's glove luck, it will turn out to be an uberrare, just you watch.
Dayum! Well I didn't actually believe that, but it happened! LOOK at that glove! Yeah, two throwaway properties, but four VERY nice affixes: two good resists, half freeze, and some magic find. More magic find = better chance to complete the Angelic Set, and dammit, those resists are really nice. After all this glove luck, to get such a nice rare is almost silly. I may well end up sticking with this glove and letting all those nice set and uniques rot in storage.
Yeah, the 20% increased attack speed on the Taboo would be useful, as would the 40 life, but... let's not go overboard on the trap casting speed here. In fact, while it's nice to be able to rip out a pack of traps more quickly, let's not forget that the actual attack speed of the traps themselves is what matters most, and that's not affected by any items. With the speed boost on the Sickle, I don't really NEED more from a glove. The resists, magic find, and half freeze will do me better vs the big act bosses anyway. What a dilemma! Too many good gloves!
Here you see Venus fighting some Strangler champs.
I had to use lightning traps on HeyFatso. He was too quick for the inferno traps, and their shorter range didn't help either. In fact, even with 40% faster run, I had some close brushes with this guy as he neared the end and was at his fastest. I may have to park him across some lava or something to take him down in NM and Hell.
The main bonus of Lightning Sentry is that its range increases with more skill levels. The lightning travels farther, and it will also target things from farther away. Lighting is the only speedy trap attack. Now maybe if you use Cloak of Shadows all the time, you can get away without needing a speedy attack; but it's my view that the traps can stand alone, and it's best to learn how to use them that way before piling on all the support skills like Shadow Warrior, Burst of Speed, Cloak of Shadows and Psychic Hammer. Thus, Lightning Sentry is actually my favorite trap. It's not a cure-all, but I'm a COMPLETE believer in speed as the ultimate combat factor, even over strength. The monsters that concern me in Diablo are only the ones with speed on hand. Even the original Baal in the beta, with his longer-than-now ranged one-shot-kill twisty Orange Missile was only a DEADLY threat because of his INFINITE speed with the telekill move. That's the ultimate speed: just appear on top of you and spit instant death. Of course I had a problem with that, it was too strong. They made some changes to him, but I have yet to find out if those changes really fixed that problem, although they do seem to have made it better.
Speed, and more speed. Attack speed, foot speed, missile speed, enemy speed. Speed! Of course I'm going to prefer the fastest trap. Did anybody ever imagine otherwise? :)
Even so, I recognize when strength is more valuable in a given situation than speed, especially when shooting bugs in a barrel. Also note the shield change. I've switched from my old rare spiked shield to a 3-socket Kite embedded with three Eth runes: that's 45% total extra mana regen, or about the equivalent of slvl 2 Warmth. It made a big difference, too. Venus's mana potion use calmed down from constant back to occasional.
On into the CS, and now it's kick ass time. They are finally playing for keeps, as Venus is forced to use mostly Lightning traps to combat Oblivion Knights. Here you see the final cleanup after a brutal battle with a boss pack in the front entrance.
Working up past the second lava pool, there was a massive nest of knights and mages there. Venus spent a couple of minutes casting lightning traps around the corner to hammer them, and using Blades to pick off any of the melee units who charged through to her.
Then came the LEB. Used to be, once upon a time, one extra boss or champ pack at most in the CS. Them days of yore, they be gone. Welcome to the New Age. Here comes boss #2, and aside from being lightning immune, he also has fire resistance. Yay.
I used blades on him as well as inferno. Not really a deadly fight, but it took more work than the usual fare so far. By comparison, the seal bosses were all pushovers, even the fire immune Vizier. Lightning is the most reliable trap I have, so as long as it works, monsters are going to die.
That includes Big Red, too. Here you see the end of his reign.
Just LOOK at all the white sparklies on the floor. Those are the remains of many dozens of lightning traps. Down in the left corner, you can see a letter of the quest log pop-up. Diablo is dead in this shot. He just hasn't hit the floor yet. You can even see the treasures flying.
So there you have it. Clvl 26, almost 27. Slvl 7 Blades of Fury, slvl 3 Lightning and Inferno traps, slvl 1 in prereqs, nothing in the other trees, buncha skill points saved. Good items, good fun. Completed weeks ago now, and on hold waiting for patch 1.09
Venus Fly will see you then.
- Sirian
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