Diablo II Single Player Thread - 2

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Quite a while pre-level 43. Not too long after that.

There is a 200% bonus damage modifier on the runeword, so not as bad as a plain phase blade. Plus I have a maxed Sword Mastery, which in addition to a significant AR and damage boost, gives a decent chance for a critical strike.

The same thing all barbarians do - Berserk (the other skill on the weapon) - which is synergized by shout, even if you get the skill from an item.

Hmmm... I've been in the 70s for a while, but I could have sworn I had my Gores upped before that. I'm not home right now, but I'd check the arreat summit for whatever the level requirement is for mymidon greaves. (Now that I think about it - it may be 65.) So 72 sounds like it may be right. It's certainly considerably higher than 56, although I don't recall it being that high.

You're not going for max block? Does this mean you're going the trapper route? If so, you may be better served by going for trap based gloves.

It's so strange the way out item finds have worked out. I don't think I've ever had a Wisp Projector, but I've scored several CoTs since switching to SP. I think I have three of them.

 

Sounds like a plan. Regarding the shield, I think there are a lot of other cheap options out there better than Whitsan's, that still won't break the bank when it comes to maintaining max block. There's the old standby of Rhyme, which will also help your resistances. An upped Moser's gets an additional 10% chance to block (because it becomes a Luna), so there's a ton of resistances AND great blocking, and if you're willing to dip a bit into your rune cache, there's my personal favorite, Sanctuary. The downside is obviously the complete lack of +skills on these shields.

Honestly though, if the goal is to get through NM as quickly as possible, that's going to happen whether you have a Spirit or not. I maxed SM before I touched traps, and my traps were kicking ass by Act IV nightmare. By the time I got near the end of nightmare it was the same battle: Cast CoS, cast 5 LS traps, kick one of the stunned monsters to death to refill my mana bulb, after that, everything was dead - at that was at p5. Since you went traps before SM, your traps will be even better. I do not foresee a problem.

 

I'm currently level 80, and have been doing some Countess and Pit runs. Some change in play styles now that I've been doing Hell difficulty for a while. First of all, I switched to p1. I did it at first just to see the difference in killing speed, and it was significant. However, you cannot consider kill speed as the only factor in determining the best player setting. You have to consider kill speed in relation to number of drops, and if you're interested in leveling, XPs earned as well.

So I looked up some info for drop ratios. It turns out the chance for a "no drop" on base players setting for typical Joe Monster is 62%. By upping the player count to p3, the no drop chance goes down to 39% - a significant drop to be sure. However, in so doing, the monster's life doubles, as does the XPs earned for killing it.

To put it into more workable numbers, on base player setting, the chance of Joe Monster dropping nothing is about 3 in 5, while on p3, it's about 2 in 5. Roughly a 50% increase in drops (or a 50% decrease in no drops if you're a "glass half empty" kind of guy). Since I'm now to the point where I'm heavily reliant on traps, which do fixed damage, it takes me twice as long to kill stuff using traps on p3. Similarly with kicks, I can still kill some stuff with a single volley of kicks on p1, and it never takes more than two volleys to kill something (champs, bosses, uniques excepted). Since the monsters have twice as much life now, killing speed with kicks also roughly doubles by upping the players setting to 3.

So the bottom line is I'm increasing run time by 100% to increase drops by 50%. So it makes little sense to do so. With XPs, it's a wash. It's a 100% increase in run time for a 100% increase in XPs - so there's no real benefit of doing that either - if I play for an hour, I'll have gained the same XPs. So the player setting that gives the biggest return on investment for me is p1 in hell.

The summary point here is clear: unless you can come close to equalling your kill speed on higher player settings, you're not going to be getting more drops or leveling any quicker than you'd do so by staying with a lower player setting as a function of time. In normal and nightmare, this is easily doable with superior gear, but much more difficult to attain in hell. I suppose with superior gear, it is possible to have your killing speed increase by less than 50% on p3 compared to p1, which would make p3 worth your while, but I think that would be the limit.

Once you hit p5, the new no drop chance is 24%. So in this case, you're doubling drops compared to p1, but tripling monster life - I doubt even with superior gear you can get that ratio to work for you. Of course, you'd only consider p5 once you calculated the difference between p3 and p1 and decided p3 was better. So a p3 vs. p5 comparison is more appropirate: You're increasing drops by 25% (a monster has about a 60% chance of dropping something on p3, compared to 75% on p5), but monster life has increased by 50% compared with p3.

On p7, the numbers are really stacked against you. The new no drop chance is 15%, so your increasing your drops by just 13% from p5 in exchance for a 33% increase in monster life.

Another aspect that argues against upping the players setting is that this is the calculation for Joe Monster - monsters that are very unlikely to drop anything good to begin with. You're much more likely to land a nice set or unique item from a champion, unique, or superunique, and their no drop chance is 0% regardless of player setting. The only thing that affects what they drop is your mf%.

Finally, the discussion changes a bit when considering act bosses, as they have different no drop chances than other monsters you encounter. Act bosses get 7 drop chances and can drop a maximum 6 items. I won't bore you with all the math here, but on p1, you'll get an average of 4.3 items per act boss kill. That number increases to 5.4 items per kill on p3, and 5.94 items on p5, and never gets any better than that because once you hit p5, the no drop hits 1% for act bosses, and can't go lower. So you can make the arguement that it's beneficial to up the player settings for bosses, especially for the quest drops (the first time you kill them in each difficulty), but never beyond p5.

 

I imagine you'll be higher than 60 if you're already 58 - you get a full level just for killing the Ancients.

For end game gear - what options are you considering?

 

If you're concerned with resists, the best combo by far would be Jade Talon + Spirit, although that takes you down to +4 skills. Only viable if you can still get Talon to level 30 - otherwise you'll lose that extra kick. I have found the upped Gore Riders is acceptable for all your CB needs - especially if you plan on playing p1. So I would go Shako over Guillaumes irrespective of whether or not you plan to go the trapper route (and would also help you get +10 MA skills w/o HotO). Although with Chains, resistance might not be THAT much of a problem (isn't it like 65% res all?).

Arachnid Mesh is a no-brainer. Even though I have several Raven Frosts, I'm actually not using one on this build. I have CBF somewhere (I forget offhand...) and since I have a chance to hit with DTalon of 89% in hell difficulty, I went with rings that give resistances and leech instead. YMMV, but I have found that Talon's huge +25% bonus per level to AR made stacking on additional AR unnecessary.

 

Having never played a hammerdin, I cannot really say for sure, but I would hazard to guess that while the necro may have the highest mf, he'll be the slowest of the three characters. I never take my necro out anymore - there's nothing he can do that the bowazon cannot do faster, and if the sin progresses the way it looks, she will also exceed the necro, and quite possibly the zon as well.

The thing I love about the assassin is she's so fast. I have managed to get my resists maxed (mostly through equipment - my inventory is less than half full) without the use of Fade, so I'm still using BoS almost exclusively. The only time I have fade on is when I get hit and it activates from Treachery. Obviously, I won't switch to my SD claws mid-fight, so it stays active until everything is dead, but then it's back to BoS.

---------- Added 17 hours, 53 minutes and 59 seconds later... ----------

I checked out my character in a little more detail last night, and I realized that I grossly underestimated her AR. I did the first quest in Act II Hell, and I have a 95% (max) to hit all the regular monsters. It dips a bit when I encounter a boss. For example, with Radament, it fell to 89%, but still very good. My current AR is well over 11,000 with DTalon. So no problem hitting anything. That's why I mentioned in a previous post that the only reason to use a Raven Frost is if you cannot get along with CBF, or cannot get it from another source. Otherwise, there are much better options for your second ring slot.

Now for boss runs, yes, I'd definitely use Guillaume's - for a boss fight it will make a difference. When I said you'd be fine with Gore Riders as your only CB, I meant for general questing purposes. As I noted earlier, most stuff dies with two volleys of kicks anyway, so it's not like you're going to greatly speed things up by switching to a CB setup in those cases. I think I'd rather have a shako, or just about anything else that gives +skills on my headgear compared to more CB.

The biggest question you'll have to ask yourself is what you want to focus on once you reach Hell difficulty. If your assassin turns out like mine, you will certainly make use of a variety of Shadow Disciplines, as well as traps and DTalon. If you want to remain mostly a kicker, then obviously you'll want a more combat oriented set of equipment, while with a trapper, it's all about loading up on as much +skills gear as you can get your hands on. Or you can shoot for a middle of the road and try to find a happy medium where you have both kicking and trapping at acceptable levels. For practical purposes that would mean getting your MA skills to exactly +10 for a 6th kick, and maximizing +skills to traps once that is satisfied.

Of the equipment lists you posted earlier, it would initially appear that HotO + Spirit option would be the middle of the road option, as it would give you the most +skills to all trees. The only downside with that is your block percentage. I'm assuming you made Spirit in a Monarch (and not something like an aegis or ward) and therefore won't have a great block percentage. (Note: I'm not saying you should make it in anything other than a monarch - the aegis and ward have strength requirements well over 200, so while they have higher base block chances, anything you'd save in dexterity would go towards meeting the strength minimums.)

Since I still enter melee a lot with my assassin, losing the ability of a high chance of blocking is not something I'm willing to do. I'm currently level 81, and I still only have 700-something life. That's doable in that you've got CoS available which shuts down the whole screen except for bosses/champ/etc. But you still have to enter melee to actually kick them, and once you do that, they can see you again. No matter how good your traps are, you still have to go the kick route against LIs, and against anything that's hard hitting, that could be problematic with a low block rate.

The Bartuc's/Jade Talon is also an interesting chocie. While the 2nd claw doesn't directly benefit the kicker, it does give nice +skills, and the 40+% resist all on JT would also help your resists a ton. If you go that route, I'd definitely throw a point in Weapon Block. The only prerequisite is Claw Mastery, so for two points, you'd have a chance to block in excess of 50% (assuming you have around +8 to the SD tree with standard gear).

I just had a thought for my own character. I didn't want to waste a ring slot on a SoJ just to get to level 30 DTalon, and I just realized that I don't have to do that. I can go with Seraph's Hymn to get that last +1 skill. I currently have a +1 rare assassin amulet equipped. I don't recall what else it has that I could potentially live without, but that might be the easiest way to squeeze one more skill point out of this build.

 

I got a unique I never had before during a pit run last night:

Ethereal Edge - Silver-Edged Axe
Two-Hand Damage: (232-260) To (412-462)
Required Level: 74
Required Strength: 156
Required Dexterity: 55
Axe Class – Fast Attack Speed
+150-180% Enhanced Damage
+150-200% Damage To Demons
+270-350 To Attack Rating
+25% Increased Attack Speed
+10-12 Fire Absorb
+5-10 Life After Each Demon Kill
Indestructible
Ethereal (Cannot Be Repaired)

Nothing fantastic to be sure, but it does offer excellent damage, and with a built in 25% IAS, it is actually pretty fast as well, especially after you add a shael. So it's actually a pretty OK weapon (the etherealness is negated by also being indestructible, and you still get the bonus etheral damage). It's nothing you'd build a character around, but not bad.

I'm also thinking of another sorceress as my next character. She'll dabble in all three trees, but will be primarily focused on fire and cold. When you look at the sorceress skill trees, there is always one skill in each that is synergized by just about everything else in the tree. Those skills are Fireball, Glacial Spike, and Lightning (the regular one, not the Chain variety).

While there is a lot to be said for the Meteorb guide to be sure, I never got the hang of using Meteor effectively, and I never really saw the need for two timered spells, much preferring more spammable spells and fewer with cool down timers. So my two main spells will be Fireball and Glacial Spike.

Skill plan layout:

Fire Tree:

Fire Bolt - 20
Fireball - 20
Warmth - 1
Enchant - 1
Fire Mastery - 1
Subtotal: 43

Fire Bolt gives the same 14% damage synergy to Fireball as does Meteor, but Meteor has 3 additional prerequisites (Inferno, Blaze, Fire Wall) that I can skip entirely by going this route.

Cold Tree:

Ice Bolt - 1+
Ice Blast - 1
Frost Nova - 1
Blizzard - 1
Cold Mastery - 1
Glacial Spike - 20
Frozen Orb - 20
Subtotal: 45

Glacial Spike gets a 5% synergy from all the other cold attack spells. If I really wanted to do this skill tree on the cheap, I could forego Frozen Orb, which would also allow me to skip Frost Nova and Blizzard, and instead dump points into Ice Bolt or Ice Blast, which would give the same 5% synergy to Glacial Spike as Frozen Orb does. All additional skill points available after the base build is completed would go into Ice Bolt, as that gives the 5% synergy to Glacial Spike and a 2% bonus to Frozen Orb.

The reason I'm leaning against doing this on the cheap is that for two more measly skill points, I get an additional spell that I can and will use in Frozen Orb. Unlike Meteor which is impossible to accurately target, Frozen Orb hits just about everything, and since I'm envisioning this build as a cold sorceress with a backup fire attack, it makes sense to do it this way.

Lightning Tree:

Static Field - 1
Telekinesis - 1
Teleport - 1
And Maybe:
Charged Bolt - 1
Lightning - 1
Lightning Mastery - 1
Subtotal: 6

I'm going to have a lot of +skill equipment on this build (+9 at a minimum as I see it) and a level 10 lightning with a level 10 mastery plus a point in the Charged Bolt synergy does 1-312 damage (which ain't bad for three more skill points for dual immunes like Countess).

Total: 94 Done at level 83 with all quests completed.

Gameplay: Obviously, Fireball and Glacial Spike will be my primary attacks, but with the leaf runeword available, the only real choice for early development is the fire tree. Other than prerequisites, all my skill points will be dumped into Fire Bolt early on (to keep the mana cost of Fire Ball at a minimum, I'll work on the synergy first, until I get to the point where I get a bigger ROI by investing in the skill.)

The cold skill come on line at level 18, and I will place most of my skill points starting at that point into GS, despite this not being the first skill I'm going to max. I'll still rely more heavily on Fireball at this point, as it will take a while for GS to catch up in terms of damage.

Once I hit level 30 (making sure to save up a few skill points of course), I'll dump a point into Frozen Orb, and each of the Masteries. Then I'll pump FO until done, as that kicks ass all the way though nightmare. After that, I'll finish GS, and then it's time to finish off the fire skills. I'll have a decent damage spammable spell in two trees, an area of effect timered skill, and even a fallback attack for FI/CI immunes (which will be good enough with help from the merc).

Advantage/Disadvantages between this setup versus a meteorb. The first difference is while a meteorb is a fire sorceress with a backup cold attack, this is cold sorceress with a backup fire attack. Secondly, you are sacrificing damage going this route. Even if you count the extra points you could place in Ice Bolt after the base build is finished, GS is not going to reach the damage levels of Fireball, assuming you maxed Fireball, Meteor, and either Fire Bolt or Fire Mastery with a Meteorb. On the other hand, this build offers superior defense, as GS doesn't just slow monsters, it freezes them solid. Even on hell difficulty, if you spam GS, they are frozen long enough to remain in place until the next one hits, so this build offers a far higher degree of safety compared to the Meteorb.

 

My sin also made some progress last night. I finished Act III Hell. Find of the weekend was my first shako since moving to SP. While the item is entirely unnecessary for this character (it would be a step down from my current headgear), I'm sure it will be put to good use in future builds. About the only thing a HQ would give me that I don't have is MF, and while that would be nice, I am running with about 150 MF right now, so it's not like I NEED that MF, especially not at the expense of the other mods I'd lose out on.

In sadder news, I looked through my stash to find my Seraph's Hymn to get me to a 6-kick DTalon, and sadly discovered that I do not have one. I must have confused that with gear I had when still on multi-player. Given that my boots, gloves, armor, helm, claw and ring slots are spoken for, there are only a few items in the game that would allow me to eke out that final point: Arachnid Mesh, Shadow Dancers, Mara's, a +2 assassin amulet with other decent mods, and the aforementioned Seraph's Hymn, none of which I'm likely to find.

I already have +2 on the gloves, headgear and armor, and a +3 to all variety is impossible. A HotO would up the weapon from +2 to +3, it would make up for most of the resists I'd lose on JT, and would be absolutely perfect, except for the fact I don't have the appropriate base item. Four sockets on a mace or staff class weapon, and since I need a shield, it has to be a one-handed, which pretty much limits me to a scourge. I don't want to equip a SoJ on a non-caster character, and I would need a good +2 assassin amulet to actually switch it, as my current +1 amulet is very nice, giving 17% resist all, magic find, and a nice boost to dexterity.

Things to look forward to once you proceed to hell difficulty: DS is the bomb. I use it nearly to the exclusion of all other traps. The only time LS is worthwhile is against bosses, because there are no corpses, it does marginally more damage, and it shoots 10 times instead of 5. The ability of DS to blow up corpses is so much more useful. Generally speaking, as soon as you get a corpse, you can clear the screen (at most two are required). The only way I could see LS as being the preferred option would be if you worked on a second synergy for it, like Shock Web. In that case, the damage of LS would probably be enough so that the difference would be noticable. My reamining points will probably go into Shock Web, but that's because I really don't have anything else worth investing in, not because I use LS with much frequency.

Things that suck on Hell difficulty: Tough lightning immunes. Things like Udars (or whatever that particular form is called) found in the Durance of Hate in Act III are lightning immune (who knew?). DS works fine once you get a body, but that's the problem, and a cursed and/or extra strong boss can be unpleasant. Your only option there is CoS, and hope for the best. Gloams are not THAT bad. Yes, they are lightning immune, but they are also rather squishy. One of the many benefits of using CoS is that all monsters lose the ability to use anything other than their melee attack. So once you cast CoS, no more lightning bolts (except for bosses), which is really all you care about. With Udars, the thing you're worried about IS their melee attack.

 

Now that you've equipped Chains, your resists should be fine. Getting 65% res all from body armor is outstanding. You shouldn't have to compromise in many other areas, especially since I'm assuming you are going to use Mara's. But still using a Manald Heal is some seriously weak sauce. Yes, having a source of mana leech is nice - even necessary if you don't want to be gulping down mana potions every time you lay down a series of traps - but certainly you have saved some rare rings in your stash along the way that have some modicum of mana leech and other attributes you may find more useful. Other than mana leech, the only thing MH gives is some piddly life and faster mana regeneration, which is completely unnecessary if you already have leech. Although you will find yourself drinking mana potions from time to time no matter what you do. Pretty much every time you run into a pack of PIs, you're going to be laying traps, and with no means of leeching the mana back, an occassional mana potion will be necessary.

I hardly played at all last night - one pit run and one Meph run - and got nothing of value. I think you will be much pleased with your sin once you move on to hell difficulty. It's a very powerful character that has very little problems dealing with anything. CoS + Traps is almost always a winner, in just about any battle.

I did run across a monster that gave me some trouble last night. It was one of the unique council members on the way to Meph. He spawned lightning and physical immune. After I popped the rest of the monsters using DS, he still had half of his life bar left. (Just like corpse explosion, DS deals half fire, half physical damage, so he only took the fire damage.) My only recourse at that point was to venom him to death - which actually doesn't take nearly as long as it sounds. About 30 seconds straight of envenomed DTalon did the job.

 

Hmmm... I did a bit more research on my proposed build, and I'm not sure I want to do it exactly that way now that I'm thinking about it. Looking at the damage range of Glacial Spike, it would appear that might not be a skill worth heavily investing in, unless you really plan on working on the synergies. In a proposed build of 20 GS and 20 points in the synergy Frozen Orb (I'm leaving out the Cold Mastery bonus, as that would apply equally to all cold skills), the average damage of GS is only about between 2-2.5 times what you'd get from a single ice shard from FO. Even after you factor in splash damage, it just doesn't seem like the damage from GS is going to be able to keep up with that. You can certainly hit a monster with at least 3 ice shards (and usually many more) with a single casting of FO, so the only thing you get from using it is the freezing (as opposed to slowing) effect.

Then it goes back to the arguement of the amazon's Frozen Arrow skill, in that you get the same freezing effect for one point as you do for 20 points, although obviously the level 20 FA will do much more damage. It would seem like if I want to freeze stuff, a one point GS - which I'll need as a prerequisite anyway for FO - is sufficient between FO castings. Since there's a cool down timer on FO, it's not like I'm missing out on anything interspersing some GS between FO.

However, if I do it like that, then I'm going more towards the Orbitaller guide. I'll have to think a bit more on this - I have a sin to finish off first anyway.

 

Did a bit more research last night (along with advancing my sin to the first WP in Act IV - I'll possibly get me hellforge rune drop tonight - unless I run out of time before the Steeler game).

Anyway, regarding the sorceress build, I'm almost certainly going with the Orbitaller build. Glacial Spike simply cannot keep up with Frozen Orb. In fact, the only spell that can (and, in fact, exceed when synergized) is Blizzard. However a combination of Frozen Orb and Blizzard is a poorly conceived build, as the two skills do not synergize each other (although they do share a couple of synergies).

Which means I have one of two options. I can either elect to max Blizzard and Glacial Spike (which offer a 5% synergy to each other), or I can ditch the GS idea altogether and just stick to FO. I'm leaning towards the latter.

So the proposed build is a lot like the Orbitaller build:

20 Fire Ball
20 Fire Bolt
1 Warmth
1 Fire Mastery

20 Frozen Orb
7 Cold Mastery
1+ Ice Bolt
1 Shiver Armor
5 Prerequisites

1 Telekinesis
1 Static Field
1 Teleport
1 Charged Bolt
1 Lightning
1 Lightning Mastery

That's a total of 83 Skill Points, which theoretically means I can finish this build by the time I enter hell diffiuclty. It's level 72 with all skill quests done, or level 76 with all skill quests done in Normal and Nightmare. All remaining points go into Ice Bolt, or possibly Fire Mastery.

Skill point allocation: The Fire Skills is pretty self explanatory. The points in Fire Ball, Fire Bolt, and Fire Mastery are the easiest means to get me a decent fire attack without breaking the bank skill point wise. Warmth and Enchant are utility skills for me and the merc (not that I'll be entering combat much after Normal).

Lightning Skills consist of utility skills, a very necessary static field, and a baseline Lightning attack for dual fire/cold immunes. I've got skill points to burn in this build.

Cold Skill require a bit of explanation, as you're probably wondering why I picked exactly 7 for Cold Mastery. Here's the reasoning. There is a linear progression with Cold Mastery. The first point gives -20% enemy cold resistance, and then you get an extra -5% for every other point you spend in it after that. However, there are two points regarding Cold Mastery: 1) Cold Mastery will not break CIs, no matter how high you get it. (I was greatly disappointed by this - only Conviction and Lower Resist are capable of doing this.) 2) You cannot reduce a monster's resistance to less than -100%. Once you get to hell difficulty, you're running up almost exclusively against monsters that are either completely immune to cold, or not immune to cold at all. So the target level for Cold Mastery is Level 17 - when you hit exactly -100% to enemy cold resistance. Points beyond that will increase the damage to monsters that have some level of cold resistance, but not cold immunity. (It's a really short list - basically Act bosses which have some level of resistance to everything.) Since I plan on having +10 to all skills, I'll need 7 hard points.

Equipment:

Weapon: Occulus (L42)
Shield: Upper Moser's Blessed Circle (L61, S100)
Armor: Enlightenment Archon Plate (L63, S103) Pul+Ral+Sol
Helm: Harlequin Crest (L62, S50)
Gloves: Chance Guards (L15)
Boots: Tearhaunch (L29, S70)
Belt: Credendum (L65, S106)
Amulet: Tal Rasha's Adjudication (poor man's Mara) (L67)
Ring 1: Stone of Jordan (L29)
Ring 2: Raven Frost (L45)

HQ, TR's Ammy, Credendum will all give me a pretty good boost to life.

Raven Frost and Credendum will save me a chunk of points in dexterity for max block.

HQ (+2), Enlightment (+2), Occulus (+3), TR's Ammy (+2), SoJ (+1) all provide varying amounts of +all skills adding up to 10. I had toyed with going with Mang Song's Lesson which would get me to +12 all skills, but I really want a shield for blocking and resistances.

Moser's (best compromise IMO for strength requirement, resistances, and chance to block), Tearhaunch, Occulus, and Credendum will provide the majority of my resistances. At the very least, I can max lightning and fire with a minimal amount of charms.

Occulus, Chance Guards, and HQ all provide a nice boost to MF (and of course I'll carry around a Gheed's Fortune - I have a 36% one)

All of the equipment will be available by late NM, and the strength requirement on this stuff is quite reasonable at 106. This seems well balanced. Considerable +skills, good - but not fantastic - resistances, and good magic find. Lowish stat point allocations should still leave adequate points to vitality for life.

 

With the holiday season I visited my parents out of state, so there has been minimal progress made since my last post. I did complete Act IV - got a Ko from hellforge, and nothing of value from Hell Diablo. I was rather disappointed in how slow going it was. I made it through the Pandemonium Fortress without much risk of me dying, but the merc died quite a bit. Everything there has tons of life. A single volley of kicks was usually enough to get the blood lords down to about half life, but as CB loses it's potency the less life the creature has, I was quite disappointed in the total number of kicks I needed to take out regular monsters. (Like 4 or 5 kick volleys, which is a lot more than it was taking even earlier in the Act.)

The most difficult was the Blood Lord seal boss pack. I cast CoS, but my merc died almost instantly. I teleported back to town, revived the merc, and walked back from the River of Flame WP rather than engage them directly through the portal (no room for a retreat if the fight goes bad). I was eventually able to break up the pack to more managable numbers, with gratuitous use of Mind Blast. (Note: MB is a skill that has really started coming into it's own late game. CoS is still generally more useful, but against the really hard hitting stuff, the small chance of conversion and the ability to stun a creature for a couple of seconds is useful.)

I ended up spending the first two skill points I earned after I finished maxing LS and DS into Fire Blast. Every three hard points give all your traps one extra shot (and I already had one point as a prerequisite for all the other traps). I am unsure where my next skill point will go. While all of the lightning based traps give a synergy to LS, only LS gives a synergy to DS, and as I stated previously, I use DS much more than LS. Still, the only other thing I could consider is Fire Blast, and I will need three more points to get a second extra shot, which at this point in my character's career, is still a ways off.