ACT FOUR

Lytra opened act four with Venom Lords, Corpulents, and Cliff Lurkers. Only the leapers resist lightning, so I had one-shot kills against the others any time I wanted to take one, if I had the mana. The leapers worked out the same as they had in act three: normal attack vs one or two, fend against mobs. No problems.

The Plains held Doom Knights (which only have 20% resist, compared to max for Abyss Knights and 60% for mages), Doom Casters (some lit resist) and Burning Souls (high resist). As such, I reserved mana for the Doom Knights, which almost all got the one shot kill treatment. I had to watch out for the casters, though, as their missiles would zap my mana when I wasn't careful, and that was like stealing some CS power away from Lytra, so I took to using CS on them, too, if there were several of them. Burners would die in a few normal stabs, and I would also use normal attack against stragglers. Occasionally, things got lively.

When Lytra got to Izual, she could not find any way to keep all the sparks in line. No matter which angle I attacked from, one trail of sparks would miss him. Thus, I suspect that I was only getting two thirds damage the whole fight. Izzy has a lot of health, so after drinking two blues, I ended up just standing there with button pressed on empty and letting regen plus mana steal fuel one CS attack every couple of seconds. It's not as if Izual were actually dangerous or anything, so it was only a question of burning more potions to save time, and I opted out of that.

With the Izzy points, CS rose from slvl 6 to 8 and the critters didn't like that very much.

An interesting battle came at the city entrance: an Abyss Knight boss pack nearby. At first I thought that Abyss Knights were populating the city and resigned myself to a lot of Jab use here, but no, it was only the one boss pack. Also hordes of Damned, some bats, and plenty of Pit Lords.

The Abyss Knights meant Jab, as no sense spending a lot of mana on CS for a decimated return. Would have been worthwhile if I could leech back the mana, as CS damage, even quartered, beat my Jab damage, but it just wasn't mana efficient, and that was a problem. So Jab it was.

By contrast, against these Strangler champs, I used CS and really pounded them hard, despite their resistance.

By the way, you see Lytra wearing a crown. That's Iratha's Coil, +30 to Fire/Lit Resist, something else I found in Act Three. With that, and also a low-end sapphire ring I had turned up, Lytra could get high resistance to fire, cold and lightning all at once, and still wear her rare ring. Not too shabby!

I also bought a Garnet of Stability great helm from Hratli and pushed my Strength to 63 to wear it. When I didn't need cold resist, I could pick up Fastest Recovery instead with the great helm, and shuffle that one ring back to the lightning resistance to keep that high. Not the best arrangement, but certainly more than adequate for completing Normal. Fastest Recovery would be nice in some spots.

The River held Urdars, Grotesques, and Fiends. The grotesque wyrms led me to use more Fend, but I stuck to CS for attacking everything else, and normal attack vs stragglers or if mana ran low but risks were also low. With that level up, I now had slvl 9 CS, very potent stuff.

My char screen listed the damage at 49-79 but that is just not correct. That's the damage for my physical attack plus one spark. That isn't how CS works. You get all three sparks to hit in all but the odd rare occasion, assuming your attack hits. If not, the sparks fly around like typical charged bolts, and there is no physical damage. They hit what they hit, if anything.

So my real damage was 129-189 with my little javazon in Normal Difficulty. That was vs nonresistant foes, like those Grotesques. Against lightning resistant targets, damage would be cut appropriately, so in that regard, Lytra reminds me of playing a one-tree sorcie: you get into troubles against targets that resist your attacks. Even Cold Tree sorcies have this trouble in a bad way until they reach early thirties and Mastery starts to kick in. So that 129-189 translated to only 40-66 against targets with max lightning resistance.

Therefore, ironically, Act Three would be the best leveling ground for a CS-based Javazon. Just stay out of the Sewers and away from leapers, Stormtree and Bremm. Hell Swarms also resist lightning, but not as much as they resist physical damage, and they are low on health, so you won't notice much. The River of Flame would be pretty good, too, but hard times if you draw Stranglers and Abyss Knights.

And the javazon experts call this skill worthless or redundant? I can only presume that NOBODY ever saw fit to give this skill a serious try, or if anybody did, they either botched it or never made it public. Power Strike may indeed be worthless except for variant use or as temporary help in act one normal, but CS is the amazon equivalent of paladin's Vengeance skill: massive elemental melee damage. Yet it's not weapon dependent, so you don't need to go with massive two-handed weapons or perfect rare onehanders to get the proper benefit, like Paladins do. In fact, speed is far more essential, thus pike wielders no doubt think the skill sucks, particularly if all they ever looked at was slvl 1, which frankly does suck. Stick a speedy javazon in there and the only thing slowing her down is running out of mana. And that is where the Xpack will fix things, I hope. Unless they overnerf leeching (which is quite possible, I would not put that beyond them as a ridiculous "fix" to the problem of some two-handed items -- bows, martels, lances -- simply doing TOO MUCH DAMAGE in combination with mass-area attacks like WW, MS -- thus doing nothing to solve the problem, but breaking every leech-dependent variant or one-hander build in the process) then mana leech should become viable for javazons who pump strength a bit and make use of magical or rare javelin class weapons appropriate to their stage of development.

Lytra's plan for Hephasto: no sense running out of mana doing 40-66 damage. Better to Jab him, keep him chilled (that resistance cuts chill time to 1/4), and back off whenever Lytra gets cursed. Run around, hit him with poison javelins until the curse wears off, then return to melee. Plan worked out just like that, too.

There was an experience shrine beside the Hell Forge. I saved it (no sense letting curse overwrite it, and Lytra did get cursed three times). So I smashed the soulstone and got so-so gems. No diamonds, blah, but I got a perfect emerald, flawed ruby and topaz, and a plain skull. Since I expect to transfer Lytra to D2X, where rares can come with a socket, I decided not to do my usual selloff and instead keep all these gems. There went four more potion slots. Heh. To make up for it, I put all those on my belt in column 3, moved the minors to column 2, and dropped one column of reds. Down to one of those now. Should be fine. If I get into troubles that can't be handled by one column of reds and one column of minor purple, I need to get the Hell out of that situation in a hurry anyway. :) And with Lytra's thirst for mana in the thick of heavy combat, I expect to keep that column of blue on button four for a long long time, if not permanently.

So I had saved this experience shrine. I hit it and ran for the river maze, wading into the thick populations there with complete abandon. Lytra charged into battle, CSing everything in her path, including pups. If it moved, it died. Out of mana? Drink a blue, rush to kill ten more things on the "free" mana then rush to kill another ten on the mana orb. Wounded? Drink a red. Drink another blue and wade into the next aisle. Oh my goodness, LOOK at all these targets! Like fish in a barrel, Lytra could not miss. Well, OK, maybe she could miss a little. She missed four times in a row on one Grotesque, wasting quite a bit of mana as her bolts wiggled around the target, but finally she got the hit and the vile thing popped into ice. Drink a minor purple and wade into the next area, shrine still active. Hurry hurry, let's rake in the experience. Plenty of potions in town so drink up, move on, kill kill kill kill kill.

River maze 90% cleared before the shrine effect wore off. Lytra gained over one fourth of a level. Three red, one minor purple and four blue (the whole column) used. Woo! Now that was fun. :)

Uberchar? Perhaps not. Viable? Ha! Try clearing 100 critters off the river with your untwinked melee paladin (with Iceblink) in that time and then come tell me that Charged Strike is worthless.

On into the Chaos Sanctuary: Lytra's CS set to clear the CS. Heh.

I slowed things down here. I took cover from mages and let melee critters come to me, then charged the mages and downed them in two stabs apiece, unless they tempted me (happened a few times, they can haul ass when they get scared).

Even a boss pack of mages was no big deal with Slow Missiles in effect. Thank goodness for slvl 2. Yeah I could have gotten by with less, but why suffer? I want to focus on killing, not on refreshing every other second. Even if Lytra makes Queen, she won't be played to high levels, so live while you can, I say.

I decided to pop the Vizier's seal while I was over there. Then I ran for open ground, which I knew might stick me right in the middle of the pack, but what the Hell. I could Fend to freeze them all, right? Might as well see what Fend can do.

Well it couldn't do as much as I hoped. The Vizier is extra strong so his blows stung, and there were so many minions, not all of them could get into Fend range. I had to drink two blue (from their missiles sapping my mana) before I had most of them frozen, and then there were just so many that it was taking too long to get anywhere on Lytra's modest physical damage. After drinking two red, two minor purple and three blue, and nothing dead yet, I had enough of that nonsense. Fend has its limits even with high speed and iceblink. Lytra could have stayed there all day against some opponents, but not these Storm Casters with their mana leeching power. So enough of that. I switched to CS, busted through two ice statues and got Lytra out of there. Once I reached the pentagram area, I opened a portal to return to town and restock belt. Whew.

OK, so just as with Hotfoot and Bluebonnet, I am reminded not to toy around with the Seals. Just take a portal out of there and be done with it. Stay smart, stay alive. That would have been a quittin situation in Nightmare -- or one dead javazon. Yikes. Even barbs have it tough in that situation. They have to avoid stunlock long enough to get a Leap/Leap Attack off. Only Paladins, with Auras and maybe Sacrifice, can stand in the middle of complete mana sappage and not care.

The mage pack? Divide and conquer. The Infector? Ha! CS mowed em down in a big hurry. The floors of Hell were thirsty to drink of melting ice. Diablo? One red, one minor purple, and four blues.

Big Red attempts to put the smack down on Lytra. She was not impressed.

You can see the damage report on the char screen, like I mentioned. 49-79? Not hardly. Not if she hits.

Didn't need to use much Decoy yet, but I will probably add another point to that. Like Slow Missiles, that's something softcore chars, those who continue to high levels, and those who twink goodies to their new chars, can make do on at slvl 1. They will get extra points there anyway, if they don't start with them. That will change in the Xpack, though, with level reqs on unique items -- but people will just keep some chars back in regular D2 to hunt up uniques with no level req, then make transfer mules to move them to D2X, so that seems like a ridiculous solution to me. But anyway... for Lytra, another level in Decoy would not lower the cost much, and it won't add any toughness, but it could add five seconds to duration in many situations and may be worthwhile. Or perhaps I will add quest points to Crit Strike, Penetrate, or Dodge. I am not sure.

You can see I had Inner Sight up on right button. No sense using fend or slow missiles against Diablo.

Lytra's gear at the end of Normal:

Iceblink: +30 Cold Resist, -1 MD, +4 Light, Hit Freezes Target (melee only) - found Arcane Sanctuary
Hand of Broc: +3% Life and Mana Leech, +20 Mana, +10 Poison Resist - gambled Act 2
Iratha's Coil: +30 Fire/Lightning Resistance - found in Kurast Sewer
Boots: Fastest Run, +40 Lightning Resistance - bought from Asheara
Plated Belt: +28 Life - found in the Great Marsh
Gothic Shield: +29 Poison Resistance, +20 Blocking (61 total blocking) - found in Disused Fane
Amulet: +41 Fire Resistance, -3 Damage - Witchdoctor Endugu
Rare Ring: +113 AR, +26% Magic Find, +8 Mana, and two minor bonuses - Gidbinn Reward
Ring: +24 Lightning Resistance, +4 Mana - found in Act Three
Throwing Spears (three stacks of 80, all found, first found in the Outer Steppes)

Great Helm: +27 Fire Resistance, Fastest Hit Recovery - bought from Halbu
Ring: +33 Cold Resistance
Ring: 5% Life Leech, +49 AR
Amulet: +26 Life
Amulet: -2 Magic Damage
Tearhaunch and Nagelring, some gems but no diamonds

Lytra is the first character I have ever played who desired to acquire diamonds but completed a full clear of Normal and ended with none. Well, actually, she found two chips, but zero gem shrines, and made those chips into potions. Thus, she found diamonds, but ended the game with none. First time that has happened to me. The Nagelring was gambled. Lytra has over 350k in cash on hand. Diablo's uberdrop was a rare crown, not too bad, but not that good either. I will probably sell it for 25k but haven't decided.

Final thoughts?

I set out to create for myself a crippled variant and discovered the strongest melee character I have played through Normal: not overpowering, but the best overall mix of offense and defense, for the most total strength I've yet seen. Iceblink probably made the difference there, though, on the defensive end. So I figure that it would be a fair assessment to call Charged Strike "viable" and stop there. You still must account for the high mana cost, and that's a problem for multiplayer application, trying to solo or even coop in larger games. CS has the power to get it done, but for how long? A meditation paladin would be her best friend. In fact, that's Prince Charming incarnate for a CS javazon: a nice, reliable meditation pally to marry and hold on to forever. :) Lacking that, though, the mana efficiency of CS only keeps rising with more skill points. You could make a good build with proper support skills (dodge, jab, slow, penetrate, decoy, valk, some ranged attacks, maybe get Lightning Fury and Pierce in some modest amounts at first and be willing to throw some javs), this is a viable build and a lot of fun to play. Iceblink, Goblin Toe, Etlich, Twitch, Iratha's Cord, Goldwrap, Bloodfist, Frosties, Stones, Tarn, Wall of Eyeless, Nightsmoke... lots of item possibilities for juicing her up even more.

How can people have overlooked this skill for ten months? I always believed what others said. I believed it so much, I came here looking for the next Ember. Ha! In her dreams, maybe. She's way too strong for that.

Now... the waiting game. I originally intended to play Lytra to conclusion (death or Duchess/Queen) but that Iceblink drop changed everything. I won't get that chance again, not the way I play, so my javazon Countess is now on hold, pending what turns up in D2X. Check back then for more information.

- Sirian

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