The Arcane Sanctuary should be a fun place, I figured. Nothing there (except the spires) has any lightning resistance. However, there is a marked ramp up of enemy health here, and this translated to needing two hits to kill a ghoul, and sometimes needing two for a goat. Specters died in one hit, and since they both stack and leech mana, I opted to use CS against them constantly, and often against ghouls, but to seek choke points and duke it out with goats using normal attack.
Lack of mana and lack of mana leech are Lytra's main opponents, now. Even at slvl 3 CS, if I open the faucet and cut loose, the enemies race each other to see who can slam their faces into the floor the fastest, but it doesn't take long to empty out my blue. Well, I have a lot of mana and rejuv potions saved up, so I started using more, and it went something like this:
Enter a new segment, lure out the specters, switch to CS, one-hit-one-kill. If there was a large mob of goats and ghouls, I might switch away from my superior short spears to regulars or cracked, throw a plague jav or a couple, switch back and wade into melee. OR: I might seek a choke point and take them one at a time. OR: if now out of mana, I might wade into the fray, drink a blue off my belt, and rush to stab as many enemies with CS as I can "for free" as my orb fills, usually downing half a dozen or more in a big hurry and coming out the other end with max or near max mana to start the next round. This is because Lytra still has only 15 in Energy (the starting value) and I have stuck with my plan, so drinking a mana potion gives 90 mana, and my orb tops off at under 40, I think, so I get what use I can out of the overfill. Or, if Lytra was hurt, I would drink a minor purple and heal while I grab some more mana.
After clearing one segment of the Sanctuary and part of another, I headed west to the teleporter quadrant. This would be a great area for Lytra, I expected. Lure out all the specters, no problems, and soften up any goat mobs with plague javs before I jump across the gap. That was the plan.
Well, I thought I was being careful. I thought I was being precise. And unlike with Hotfoot, I did not just "forget" that I hadn't cleared a certain gate yet and blindly walk through it. No, at least this time I knew it was PACKED with enemies over there, and jumped through entirely by mistake. I must have clicked too near the teleporter, on the floor where I was aiming to walk, and got whisked on through. Major OOPS. This is the worst sort of disaster for a Hardcore character like Lytra.
My saving grace is that this was only Normal. Even so, this was a dire situation. I ended up on the far side of the worst spot in this zone: the lower branch of the east-facing T, where there is no visibility because the gates are too far away from each other. Luckily, the mob over there was SO packed, the game had to put Lytra behind them all. Thus, when she appeared over there, she was about five yards away from the teleportation gate, with a full DOZEN enemies, mostly goats, between her and the gate. There was no one behind her, though, so after a momen't panic, I ran. There was nowhere to go except forward. Four more goats were in the way. I ran around three of them but one blocked my path and got mowed down with a CS blow. Some specters woke but Lytra reached the next gate and blinked through it, then had to open a town portal and lure the specters away, because I couldn't click on the portal with them on top of it.
Oh man, what a hairball that was. I might have stayed to fight but I was out of mana now. I bailed to town.
After healing up and restocking belt, selling junk and so on, I returned but steered clear of that quadrant. I went on to complete the other two, including a ghoul lord boss pack in the stairs quadrant that actually gave me a lively fight. I drank a purple and a blue and still ran out of mana before I finished them off. Lytra could really use a Nightsmoke or Hand of Broc soon. I tried a couple more gamble attempts but came up dry.
By the time I finished the other two quadrants, Lytra hit clvl 21 and boosted her CS to level four. Oh yeah, that made a difference. Goats now in the one-shot kill category, and some ghouls there, too. Each new slvl in CS ups the mana efficiency a good bit, and one of the best things about the three charged bolts is that you even get some rollover effect from overkill. If one bolt will kill a target, the other two are not absorbed and may hit whatever was behind the first target. Then there is the part where the bolts spray even when you miss the physical attack. With my current level of Dex and slvl 1 Penetrate, and no +AR rings, Lytra had about a 75% to hit. That's one more place the Xpack should help: ability to get some +AR on javelins!
I returned to finish the last quadrant, which also held the Summoner. I steered clear of that nasty side where I had wakened the hordes. Branching to the right, I worked around and across the center to backtrack to the nasty corner from behind. And that is where it happened, the miracle drop.
Sometimes this game can still surprise me, offering something unexpected that instantly changes everything, and I mean everything.
I've seen several Iceblinks in multiplayer. The EST found two within a couple hours in Normal and Cy used one to the end of the game. However, the only other Iceblink I found in single player went to Thrower, who could not use it. The freeze doesn't work with ranged attacks, and neither did Rattlecage's effects. That was just fate playing a cruel joke, giving me great items at a time when they were useless to me.
This was different. Iceblink was THE dream armor for Lytra. Nothing could be better for a character already bent to defense. Yet at 195k per gamble attempt, that would have been a total crapshoot for Lytra to plan on acquiring one, and without good luck, she might have spent millions and gotten nothing for it. Thus, I had settled on the next best thing: Twitchthroe. At 33k per attempt, you can reasonably expect to turn it up before too long, barring really bad luck.
Iceblink also introduced an immediate change to my skill tree plan: two points must now be devoted to Impale and Fend. Fend, with a high speed javelin (throwing spears, maybe even harpoons eventually) would help protect Lytra against swarms of weak enemies like maggot young, fallen, and such, and in general offer me another powerful combat option, thanks to Iceblink.
Just as important, I could take my time with any isolated foe now, except bosses or champs. Any loner enemies had just been wiped off the threat meter, and I could use normal attack in perfect safety, needing to expand mana on CS only in crowd or boss situations.
This also meant no need for Frostburn. What would I get from Frosties? 1 physical damage, 1-6 cold damage, defense (heh) and 40% mana boost. Well, some of that might still be better down the line, but the chill effect, so valuable, was now wiped off that list. Also, Nightsmoke was pretty much wiped out, too. Lytra might take a good bit of damage, but she would not be taking damage now as a matter of course. So the value in Nightsmoke was also reduced. However, the value of life and mana leech would be increased, as I would have plenty of chances against frozen monsters to leech back bits of mana and some life. Thus, Hand of Broc became the immediate next priority, and I went to town with the intent of obtaining it immediately.
I gambled five pairs of leather gloves in a row before I land Broc. The +20 mana made a huge difference to Lytra, and so would the mana leech, even 3% with low damage javelins.
This also changed my long range plans for this character. I had intended to play her out, as far as I could go, but Iceblink changes all that. The odds of getting another Iceblink (particularly so early) on another javazon, were negligible. This is my one chance with this config, unless I trade/twink/cheat to get an Iceblink onto another zon, so I decided that Lytra will be halted at 1dot, to wait for the Xpack. There are just way too many good possibilities for having more fun with Lytra in D2X.
With Iceblink and Broc, and CS at slvl 4 now, Lytra turned into an unstoppable ubercharacter here in normal. One-shot-kills on virtually any normal opponent I chose to inflict her wrath upon. Freeze any single target, and here with chill effects yet uncut by difficulty, Iceblink is maddeningly powerful. You can freeze whole mobs if you can manage to untarget your current victim (difficult to do, this game has "sticky" targetting that virtully requires you to fling the mouse pointer across the screen to unstick off your current target). There is CS for mass damage (wouldn't be as impressive in 8way, but what untwinked normal character IS impressive at clvl 21 in 8way?), Jab or Poison/Plague or plain old Throw for LEBs...
...and Fend will add another powerful option: rapid freeze.
Kaa opened my eyes to one thing: Frosties or Etlich would do something that Iceblink won't: chill targets at range. I will be trying for Etlich first, all things considered, and that may take time. Or... the Xpack may change things, too. I'll have to wait and see. Lytra won't be played right away. I will have to dive into the Xpack and learn more about it before I even make a final decision on converting her over. I may even have to play another javazon in softcore first. Don't want to make silly decisions out of ignorance, or die over the same.
While clearing the false tombs, Lytra reached clvl 22 and slvl 5 CS. It was quite a joy to make a stand against stacks of Apparitions and slay each (and watch them shatter) with one hit. Most of my mana was saved for those and ghoul lords, although I had plenty of mana potions and felt no need to save them only to sell them or abandon them at the end of the act. A stack of apparitions or a mob of ghouls was a good time to drink a mana potion (if empty) and get a lot of quick kills in off the "free" surplus mana, then come out with a full blue orb. Yum. Fun stuff.
Lytra wasn't an uberchar in the mow-em-down with unending-leech-effect sense, like a WW barb or MS Bowazon, but the ONLY thing stopping her from that sort of status was mana. I could not apply my uberskill (uber vs these foes) without limit. Thus, when I wanted to or needed to, I could mow down whole rooms with a series of quick stabs -- and I did so at times just for the fun of doing it -- but other times it made better tactical sense to stand at doorways and patiently stab with normal attack, leeching back some life and mana in complete safety, while a horde of melee enemies milled around behind the frozen target, unable to reach me. Iceblink shatters every corpse, including those slain in one shot, so that completely defangs every resurrector type of opponent. At times, when I unleashed Lytra, it was a wondrous thing to watch and listen to all the ice pops -- probably still doesn't compare to an Iceblink Lance barb whirling his way through the flayer jungle, but this is the first opportunity I've had to really enjoy Iceblink.
And you know what? It's addicting. I find that the freeze effect actually simulates D1 stunlock (and warrior/rogue virtual autohit with enough To Hit power) and I enjoyed that more than anything. FINALLY a character that plays rather similar to the D1 warrior, except with a few turbo options on board (at the expense of self-healing and defensive teleport).
In the True Tomb, I kept hearing an apparition's screech in a cleared area. This really got me curious until I finally tracked it down. Apparently, one of them got stuck inside the wall (or outside the playing field). Try as I might, I could not unstick it, nor could I harm it with any attack form.
Oh well. I had to leave it there.
Against Duriel, I opted for Jab, to cut through the chill effect. I'd happily have zapped him with CS if not for the chill. I wanted to keep him chilled, too, you see. He's already dead in the shot below...
...he just hasn't hit the floor yet. :)
Uberdrop was a rare greaves with 49 cold resist and 33 lit resist, but no faster run suffix. I sold it. With no lightning resistance at all, I opted to cube two topazes with a ring, and blah, got only 21% on my Coral. I also never got a third diamond chip, so I cubed those into rejuvs and went gemless onto Meshif's vessel.
ACT THREE
With the weak foes in the Spider Forest, I did not need CS at all. I stabbed the crows in one to three hits, fetishes took a little more, but if I had lots of mana or they annoyed me, I might CS them for a one shot kill.
I played it very careful with Sszark. Ended up separating him from his minions, slaying them easily (two hits) and then mugging the boss alone in some back hallway. I had hired a merc, but Sszark did not touch Lytra at all, and I deemed him unworthy of being immortalized with a screenshot. I think he went down in four or five hits. Woo! It's good to be mighty. :) My realm Javazon (all twinked out with good starter gear, one of my few twinkee chars, better stuff than Lytra has but for the Iceblink) relies on Toes for melee, so she sucks the big egg vs bosses, which is where the real threat is anyway. It felt damn good to kick spider butt up and down the cavern with a supposedly worthless javazon skill. Ha! Take that, you big uglies.
Great Marsh? Long story short, lots of ice crystals were manufactured there. Some of the massive hordes of drowned corpses required more than one CS, but I usually didn't operate that way. I'd hit them once with it, then finish with a normal stab or two. Gloams resist lightning and are weak anyway, so I stabbed them with normal attack. On the other hand, I took great pleasure in popping bramble hulks with one stab. *grin*
It's easy to understand why Charged Strike has been overlooked for so long. It IS pathetic at low levels, it is still rather mana hungry (requiring you to design your whole char around it, as you would have to for skills like smite, poison dagger, or vengeance), and the natural assumption is that skills higher in the tree that appear to replace lower skills ought to be significantly better. Thus people tried Lightning Strike, weren't happy with it, and dismissed that whole branch of the tree. What a pity. And finally, if you don't know about the hit=applied-bolts factor, well, then the skill appears to be the amazon version of a sorcie level one skill, rather than the significant lightning damage weapon bonus it turns out to be in actual practice.
Could there be something to the fact that I'm using javelins with CS? I have not tested it with spears to find out. I mean, I suppose it's possible that the applied damage effect is not built in to the skill, but rather into javelin use with the skill. After all, I've seen spears used with the skill now and then and seem to recall lots of sparks flying, probably more than is accounted for by missed attacks. Hmm. I don't know. Maybe I'll test at some point, or maybe someone else can test. I do know for sure that javelins of all types work marvelously with CS. You can do massive damage in a hurry. Only lightning resistant foes or lack of mana can slow you down.
Upon reaching the Flayer Jungle, Lytra moved into extremely heavy use of Slow Missiles, and here is where the longer duration really came through for me. Twelve seconds is just not long enough. You have to spend six of that engaging and disengaging for recast, so the effective time with missiles slowed is doubled with one extra point invested. Softcore, if you don't mind risking death, yeah, stick to one point. Hardcore, you must survive, so you put your points where you need them and don't worry about it. And in single player, minus all lag, it can be a marvelous thing to weave between twenty or thirty slow-moving blowdarts. :)
Slow Missiles also shortens the range of time-based effects like inferno or LEB sparks. Thus, you can hobble a pack of shamen and throw javs at them from short range in complete safety... as long as your Slow skill remains in effect.
The swarms of flayers and soul killers, the melee types, forced me to use lots of CS, as they would come at me in packs not conducive to normal stabbing/chilling. Oh I could have done it the normal way, but why do all that work when I could stab a couple once and be done with it? I would usually switch to normal attack for the last in the bunch. Total time to kill the first four or five: two seconds. Time to kill the last one: two or three seconds. :) Blowdarters were stabbed with normal attack unless they annoyed me. It felt good to show em who was boss when I got the urge. Some even pestered me from across the river at times, and once I switched to some cracked short spears I had found and showed them how a real missile attack feels.
The fire merc I hired for the Spider Cavern was still alive, believe it or not. Slow Missiles works wonders for merc survivability. So I dropped the Gidbinn in town for the moment (I was visiting Asheara every time I came to town, looking for a good plated belt or an amber helm of stability).
Lytra reached clvl 24 in the Flayer Dungeon, and invested points into Impale, Fend, and Decoy. This left me two slvls behind the curve for CS, but Izzy would catch me up.
I hotkeyed Fend on F5 and remapped the S key from Jab(F3) to Fend. That would mean reaching up the F3 key any time I wanted Jab, but that was not very often at all, I must tell you. Jab was great for cutting through bad lightning resistance, but who needed it with Iceblink's freeze? So mostly the only time I used it was if I got chilled (vipers, Holy Freeze bosses). I also remapped F6 (Slow Missiles) to the X key, so I could one-touch switch between Fend and Slow. This is the first time I have ever done this for right button skills, which leads me to one more reason to take Lytra to the Xpack: more hotkeys.
I keyed Decoy to F4 (my ever-present Minion key, for necros and amazons -- I put my best golem on F4 -- and my secondary defense key for sorcies, paladins and barbs: Leap/Leap Attack, Frost Nova, Thunderstorm, Vigor, or Charge) and then remapped F4 to spacebar. Decoy would be my ASP skill (Ass-Saving Potential) for containing any jailbreaks, or ready for instant access in any situation with the tactical need.
Lytra put decoy right to work, waking the Witchdoctor and crew from behind a safe grate and then introducing them to the wonders of slvl 1 plague javelin.
By now, I had new jewelry. A ring with +49 AR and 5% life leech, another ring with 24 Lit Resist and 4 Mana (replacing the Coral I had cubed, if only barely) and still using that +3 Min Damage ammy, although I had an ammy of tiger and one with -2 MD for backup. Iceblink's -1 MD is plenty for normal, but I will be hoping for more on a rare ring or ammy come Arcane time in Nightmare. My helm was a carry over from act two, with fastest recovery and 18 poison resist. Belt was Hsaru's Stay, gotten while gambling for Nightsmoke. Boots were fastest run, but long about this point, I bought an Amber of Speed boot from Asheara, with fastest run and 40% Lit Resist. Blah to that. I want my Amber on helm or belt, please, where I cannot get Ruby, Emerald or Sapphire affixes. (Was this blizzard's way of subtly encouraging people to increase Lightning Resistance? I'm all for that, but I'd love to see Ruby and Sapphire on armors. I mean, what's the point of not having them there? Those categories already are represented, so there is NO impact on the composition of rares by the presence/absence of the high end resistance prefixes. And those WERE all available on armors in D1: even obsidian was available on armors and helms in D1. So I don't get it). Yep, I want Ruby on my boots if at all possible (Iceblink offers 30 Cold Resist, which if added to a 3D shield would put me at a nice 67 cold resist in Nightmare, and not needing much more for Hell). Oh well. I was happy to have the amber for now. I started looking not only for amber helms of stability, but also now for garnet ones (up to 29 fire resist). I'd make do on what I had to until better came along.
Better came along with Endugu's item drop: ruby amulet of -3 Physical Damage. Ooh! Now there's a good Diablo-fighting piece. Not only my badly needed Ruby (running around with ZERO fire resist is not my idea of fun) but also -3 Dmg for taking the edge off flayer blowdarts, and blunting Diablo's breath.
At least now I have over 40 resistance to the big three elements (remember, 13 cold res from shield).
When I got to Stormtree, I tried Impale. Baaad move. I've made that work well before with a spearazon -- the idea is to do more damage on one hit, thus cause fewer sparks to be emitted. Well, that may have worked if I had stopped to slay all the minions first. As it was, Lytra got cornered and I had to drink two minor purples to AVOID DEATH. Yikes. I switched to CS, slew one of the minions and got out of there, but my merc did not. He had lived from the Spider Cavern to the gate of Kurast, then died keeping Stormtree busy while my reds filled up my health again. I finished the minions, then switched to disposable spears and poison javelin and ran around a little bit until the big guy expired. Whew. A close call. No more Impale for Lytra. I'll work out other options. I had forgotten how ungodly slow that skill really is. Might be an option for pike users, but bleh. It doesn't get it done for javazons.
Well, with the merc dead, time to turn in the Gidbinn and get a new merc. :)
My ring was not too shabby, actually. +113 AR was the biggest bonus (to be further boosted by slvl 1 Penetrate). Also of note, +26% Magic Find. Rest was penny ante, but I switched out the life steal AR ring.
With new merc in tow (cold as it turned out), Lytra entered Kurast. Leapers did not like being frozen. They are lit resistant, though, so I used normal attack on small groups, Fend if a mob grew. The vultures ate CS and how.
"Down birdy, down."
SCRAWWL! Pop, tinkle-tinkle.
"Good boy."
SCREEEEOWL! Zap! Pop.
SCREEEECH! Pop.
You get the picture. Gotta love that frozen effect. One shot kills are also sweet. I felt like a barb with a big ole maul and lots of mace mastery... only I had a shield and dodge, and he would not. :)
Oops, my merc got mugged by Thrashers just inside the Kurast Bazaar. He got trapped and could not follow me as I retreated. Oh well. Better him than me, harsh as that may sound. But it's the truth: same truth you have when playing chess. Some game pieces are expedable, but one is not. Lost that one, it's game over. This same principle does not apply to real life, though, as people are not game pieces. I wonder if sometimes folks with big egos forget that... and some hatemongers never do learn it. Don't be one of those. When you devalue others, any others, you devalue life itself, including your own, and you give away far more than you can possibly gain back in the bargain. Yet I look around battlenet and see many players who treat other players as game pieces, and I feel sorry for those perpetrators. I pity them.
So I had to hire a new merc to accompany me into the Ruined Temple. Thadar had not been available for the Spider Cavern, but to my delight his name showed on Asheara's list now. I snapped him up instantly!
As always, Thadar came through for me. He tanked several minions while I zapped Sarina in about five hits. (That name always gets to me. It is so similar to "Sirian" that I sometimes feel like I am battling my own dark shadow or something -- and it's humbling, because I never pictured my shadow being quite so bitchy -- or even female at all, heh :)
Notice that one spark was missing her? As I mentioned, you get that occasionally with bosses and such. I am not sure why. It doesn't happen often. Consider this akin to the flaky aspect of Inferno, where there are two jets and often you only hit with one of them, halving your damage. Well, if one spark misses a target, there goes one third of your lightning damage, although it may still hit something behind. However, unlike sorcies with inferno, in my experience, trying to reposition the javazon does little good. If for some reason you end up missing, just cope, that's my best advice. It doesn't happen very often at all. More on this later.
In the next temple, I ran into a night lord stairs trap against an extra strong boss. Slow Missiles came in handy and kept Thadar alive. Here you see the overwhelmingly typical results of CS usage: one target absorbing all the damage if you hit with your physical attacks.
Thadar survived through all six temples. He survived Upper Kurast and the Causeway, then a large chunk of Travincal. However, in the very back corner of the temple city, we ran afoul of one of the worse possible situations in Normal Difficulty: a fourpack of Heirophant champions. Not only did Thadar kick the bucket here, but Lytra took a pretty good pounding, too, even with good resistances. I had to drink two reds, two blues and one minor purple to get through this. Their healing one another while blizzards rained on me was not good. It also seemed that slow missiles may have made the blizzards more effective, not less. Hmm.
After that, the rest of Travincal was fairly easy. One-shot kills on normal Night Lords and Heirophants was sweet indeed. I slew the water watchers with poison javelin and left only the council alive. Then it was time to do the Sewer and get my Khalim's Femur. (Or is it the Pelvis down there? I forget. So many organs, so little spare stash space!)
Iceblink and Fend make a great combination. I used CS against the undead flayers, though. Do not want to get into a habit of killing more than one of them at a time, as even in Single Player, they do significant explosion damage in Hell Difficulty, and not to be totally disrespected in Nightmare. One important lesson about surviving tough challenges is: don't be lazy. Form good habits, or you won't be ready when the real fight comes.
Was this a result of magic find? Or would I have gotten this one anyway? You never can tell. Useless to a javazon, but I'd have kept that as an alternate for a sword-using amazon or a melee sorcie.
Sewers cleared, on to the Durance. Lots more undead flayers all over the place. Found a Tearhaunch on level one. I don't have the strength for it (paused at 60 to increase Dex/Vit) and my Amber is better anyway, for the moment. I decided to save it. Had to drop some potions from stash to make room. Now I'm down to just about essentials-only in stash: a couple alternate items and jewelry, the rest full rejuvs. Lytra will be looking forward to the double stash size and alternate weapon/shield configs in D2X. Yes indeed.
Down on Durance Three, the most Blood Lords I've seen in the front room since Thrower's trip through Normal some eight months ago. These boys came to play.
You can see, in the second shot, that I missed with one physical attack, and then all the sparks missed the target and there was nothing behind him to absorb them. Oh well. That's a definite rarity. However it does remind that CS is only mighty if you get the hit. The sparks from a miss are supplemental at best.
These Blood Lords were also robust enough to survive one hit sometimes, albeit not by much.
With Bremm, I went with normal attack. I tried to find a sweet spot but couldn't. Then, when I gave up and got down to business, Slow Missiles produced its own sweet spot that wasn't there at full speed. Interesting. I switched to jab at that point and Bremm was soon dead.
Wyand, without any lit resist, was in bad shape vs Lytra. He hit the floor very rapidly. Then she had to deal with another bad nest of Blood Lords.
I drank one blue potion and just went wild, that did them all in pretty quickly: two shots apiece at most.
Old Maffer hit the floor so fast, I nearly mistook him for ED. Ha! (ED = Extra Dead enchanted. Refer to Astra's page, Hell Acts One and Two, for more details on ED).
Not much to say about Mephisto. Apparently he's not all that much Lightning Resistant.
Uberdrop was a rare field plate. Not too shabby, but Lytra's armor is set for all time. I sold the rare for 20k to Halbu. I jumped back to Kurast to clean up the potions and goodies in town, then ended the session.
The question for act four is, how will Lytra do in the land of high lightning resistance? I suspect that without Iceblink, it would definitely go a bit tougher. Lack of mana would be more of an issue, and I'd have to go a little slower. However, with Iceblink support, I expect to do quite well. We'll see.
Click here to Read About Act Four.