That was the duelist. He was so fun . And it was all going really well against Piety, but then I was too smart for my own good and got myself hit by the fire beams 2 or 3 times while trying to dance around it with cyclone. D'oh.
The shadow's also dead, but I didn't like him much anyways
The loss hit really hard. Not only is cyclone very enjoyable, he also leaves a big fat hole in the team. Only the marauder doing melee, and I fear nobody will even be able to pick up good swords... He also had just found a Rage support gem which was fun, and would be awesome on the marauder with Warlords Mark.... And I was also looking forward quite a lot to bleed explosions which I've never had in action... I think I'll come back to play this next time, which probably is if and when the famous PoE 2 releases.
(June 18th, 2023, 05:59)thrawn Wrote: I was also dying mainly from overconfidence
It always is that. In campaign you can always hit a portal or at least alt+F4* when things get hairy, but the thrill is to stand through those fights... I feel like the asynch team format may also be contributing. When first going in against Piety I was remembering that she was tough, so I went with the Templar who is very safe, and played super cautiously... but by the time I arrived at the duelist I had already killed her 5 times, including with the squishy scion and the annoying shadow (although there were close calls), so surely it would not be that much of a problem with this strong character? And then he dies WiTh tHe hEalTh baR disAPPPEarED already
But let's talk of the living. Yesterday the witch was the first to pass Kitava act 5 and get her -30% res reward. She is super duper powerful. I went with her first because I wanted to relearn Innocence and Kitava mechanics on someone I felt would be rather safe, but she just melted them away, faster than I remember from most of my nonruthless old chars. Her main setup is a 4link with Summon Raging Spirit - Infernal Legion - Minion Speed - Melee Splash which is nice for ruthless, but of course far from optimal. Crucibles made her a nice wand:
That was possible because she can actually run 100% crucibles, and at times even the zombies survive!
But the spice of it of course is in Minion Instability exploding skulls with Infernal Legion. I set it up with minion elemental resistances such that the raging spirits still live for a considerable time, applying their hits and fire aura, but then explode shortly before expiring. A focused build would make them explode fast, but focused building requires focused gear.
To my own mild surprise, all the exiles that got to act 5 made it to Kitava!
Oops.
So much for the Scion. I have to admit I didn't expect her to make it very far. I got silly, and built for Hexblast Elemental Equilibrium Ignite - it was always the plan to use all the Damage Over Time and Burning support gems with her, but even so on a four link the damage remained subpar. She took the node with "curses refresh ignite duration", so she'd curse with Flammability once, cast Hexblast with 100% ignite, then keep cursing for infinite ignite, which felt quite smooth. But still there was a lot of oomph lacking. Fire Trap would clearly have been much stronger, and I kept finding trap gems - Summon Skitterbots with the Scion herself, and Advanced Traps after she died (not really sure I'd use that). I was going to return to Fire Trap eventually, but needed to gather respec points, or so I told myself while enjoying my meme build...
I don't really understand what killed her, with this playstyle she was actually able to spend near all of her time kiting, and I don't really think I saw a spell or anything hit her. But this happened three times, where she got to very low life in like three hits from I don't really know what, and the third time it got her below zero . Weird thing is the other guys apart from the marauder all fought pretty similarly, but none had this issue. All had higher damage though, so less time spent in the danger zone.
RIP. I was making up a discourse in my head how Innocence is the actual act boss over Kitava similar to how act 4 Piety is imo over Malachai, and then that...
Templar:
Still on a two link with Combustion only for his Holy Flame Totem, but he's a monster anyways. Totem masteries with 5% damage taken by totem and totems taunt upon summoning leave him pretty safe together with Mind Over Matter, and he can do 90% crucibles without much issue.
I found the boots somewhere in act 4, hadn't seen those before. They are not really what he needs, but fun nonetheless. Totems rarely get destroyed now, in any case. No idea how big the share of the reflect thing of overall damage is.
He also found an Elemental Army support gem, which will make the witch even more ridiculous (will need to take away some minion elemental resist from the tree so the skulls still explode before expiring)
Ranger:
Finally got a support gem! I tried Snipe for a faux support, but it felt clunky and I didn't really see a boost to damage. Barrage is nice, even though it makes chill/freeze worse? Anyways, with the bow and the Ice Shot gem (I believe it's a pretty popular skill) she's still packing a lot of firepower, even though the bow is from act 3 still. I picked up some promising blue ones during act 5, but doubt they'll be an actual improvement. Maybe with crucibles?
She also has not one but two uniques equipped:
Prismweave is pretty great, just the opportunity cost of no life on the belt hurts somewhat.
The helmet is rather dubious, but I want to use special toys when I can justify them. She was already going for 100% spell suppression so it's no bad fit. But hopefully she'll also find something better eventually.
Marauder:
He's also been doing pretty well. Somebody found him a Melee Physical Damage support gem in act 4, which was all he could ask for. As a reminder, he's doing Static Strike with combined fire/lightning damage to proc Trinity support, so his multipliers are pretty high. Heavy Strike shows higher damage than Static Strike at least in the tooltip (and I've been too lazy to check in PoB), so that is also in the four link and gets the same supports. Ideally he hits with SS to start sending out beams for 3 seconds, then does a few hits with HS, at least against bosses.
He took Blood Magic, which sent his lifepool very high at least for the moment. Also the instant warcry keystone, which also smoothens stuff a bit.
So, with the act 5 boss reward of -30% resistances, I'm curious how the team will fare. Resists are all 20-50% (chaos negative, sure enough). I remember that Aberrath was always rather rippy, so maybe I'll avoid him for the time being.
Still miss the Duelist, not so much the Shadow, and I think the same will go for Scion. Now a team reduced to four exiles of course also means much less equipment found per act, and more equipment that has no good use. Still hope to get at least one through the campaign. I believe all four are plausible; difficult to ranke them besides witch >>> all (but she may also die to some fluke suddenly, as happened to her predecessor last league. especially now without full resists)
came back from vacation, assigned items, and then I had the glorious idea to finally use some of the sulphite I've collected, so went right into the mine and got the Marauder killed within 20 seconds, no idea what happened, just that I'm stupid
Really one of my most stupid deaths ever
I lost the mental fortitude for this. The remaining three characters were doing pretty well, then in act 7 I lost the Deadeye to a >90% Crucible in the Ashen Fields because I wouldn't Alt+F4 when I should have. Was trying to run high level Crucibles to get a bow done before league end. Yeah, shouldn't do that in HC.
Then the day after the witch died - to a >90% Crucible in the Den She was stille terribly powerful and was doing those Crucibles rather effortlessly, but that one spawned in a bad spot and again I did not take sufficient caution.
Looks like I wanted to die. I did not bother to take up things with the Templar, and went to download BG3.
Still, up to act 5 I really liked the format, and might do something similar when 4.0 releases, thinking abotu a reduced formatwith 4 characters or so. And not ruthless
I hope some readers were entertained mildly at least, despite no further comments.
I was reading along a little bit, though I never played the game. I feel for you about the deaths in lapses of attention, I did the same thing with the D2 teams. But it sounds like the concept is portable to other games - sharing and arranging the items is of course by far the high point of it.
. And it was all going really well against Piety, but then I was too smart for my own good and got myself hit by the fire beams 2 or 3 times while trying to dance around it with cyclone. D'oh.
