Lok's updated reports on playing his Mageazon, Arrowitch, from the beginning to Baroness

January 30 2001 - In the beginning
I am trying out a SC mageazon on weekends when realm lag is too dangerous for HC. The one I have now is around lvl 22 and is through the spider forest wp (did the cavern quest).

The angle I am trying with this char is to get a minimum dexterity to use a piercing bow, the pump everything else into mana (it is SC after all), going for raw natural mana regenration to support arrow use. We had a vidala set on the league mule, so I put it on. You need only 50str, 39dex to wear the set as the ambush grants 11 dex. I overpumped dex to 50 natural with the eventual aim of using doomslinger (that is not on the league mule for SC).

As I now understand it, Vidalas is supposed to do +80% damage, freeze foes, and pierce. Apparently freeze only works point blank, pierce has always worked, but in 1.03 the damage bonus was only +1. With my 61 dex, my listed bow damage is something like 7-60 for a normal arrow with this 3-18 base bow. This is far far higher than you would expect from dexterity alone, so I guess they must have fixed the damage mod for the set in 1.04. What this means is with around 14% manasteal, you can acutually support for a long while an ice arrow. So this makes a great twink set for the mageazon- you got to be 14th level to use it though, but there are a bunch of struggling levels between 14 and 24 and 30 when you finally get immo and valk. Also the mana steal lets you go physical early (pump str, dex to targets first). The indefinate piercing ice arrows make most of normal cake, so it should be little problem reaching immo and valk.

For the low game, vidalas is pretty good. The boots give you the stamina boost and speed boost you need for a retreat, string out, and pierce strategy. However in the long term 4 slots just to get piercing is a bit steep, and your mana steal and normal arrow hit rates are probably insufficent to support mana refill via stealing. At this point it is probably time to switch to doomslinger (if you can get it). Utilmately you probably want (frosty or magefist), the eye, doomslinger, (leyamo or nightsmoke), heavenly garb, 2 perf skull helm, SoJ's- anything to up your regen rate or total mana, and things which beef your skill levels.

Anyway in the vidala build, I was worried about Duriel ( ok I forgot I was in SC). I loaded up a kite shield, short spear, chunked a point into jab, and put on another crappy ring at lvl 21. I had something like 175 life and fairly junky gear, and took her down to 10%. I portaled out when my belt was dry, returned with more meat and a full belt, then USEast spike killed me and my meat shield. After that followed an embarrasing series of gear recovery attempts, which ultimately succeeded and killed Duriel. A little better prep and gear and I think you could do Duriel in HC with the mageazon.

My big remaining questions are will the joy of piercing immo be worth all of the mana struggles, and can you achieve a liveable mana regeneration rate as a zon to keep the lethal mix of FA, IMMO, and Valk going throughout the game?

February 6 2001 - Lvl 32
ArrowWitch made it to 32 this weekend. She traded 2 perf skulls for a doomslinger, and was able to finally leave behind vidalas (although she still wears the boots). The vidala gear was nice, but in nightmare having a -10 resistance is not such a hot idea.

The speed of doomslinger is addictive. It is a fantastic bow if the bulk of your damage is non physical. Bolts seem to slide through large packs leaving bright patchs of flaming ruin.

Her stats now (base): 50str, 50dex, 120 ene, base vit, ~200hp, ~230 mana.

Her gear, roughly- tarnhelm, doomslinger, chance guard gauntlets,vidalas fetlocks, nightsmoke, prismatic ammy, rings with resistance and life, rare armor with resistance and life.

From 24-30, she was struggling with immo. The basic problem is immo works best on stationary targets, and against melee opponents, you really need a tank to take the heat. I was grouping with a sorc a bunch and she was not tanking at all. The sorc did use glacial a bunch, so that helped. Self tanking often made immo work on bosses.

At 30 with valkry, life changed tremendously. Now everything bunches about the valk and she can immo them. She keeps ice arrow on the left to freeze those monsters which end run her valk- seems like being unfrozen forces an immediate chase AI check, so this is a good way to stop it. She still can not immo with impunity as she has found none of the mana regen stuff. Typically she fires one well placed piercing immo shot into the crowd and makes it count. This style of play is easy on ammunition, and usually 300 bolts is plenty for a nice long trip down. If she is careful, she finds enough blues to make steady progress.

Ice arrow now is much weaker in physical damage, and is only really useful as a means of taking on a porting boss in a low player count game. In a high player count game, I try to limit the bosses range, but in some instances it is pointless and I just move along leaving the porting boss alone.

The explosion damage in nightmare on immo doesnt do much to anything but the weakest of creatures, although it will take out a wraith pack. The real damage is in the immo baking the creature. It is beautiful sending one into a tight group of skeletons and seeing them all die rapidly in flames. I am disappointed by the lighting effects- I would like to see flames act as a light source and illuminate an area, rather than act as a point bright source screwing up your night vision.

Although I put a point into freezing arrow, I havent really been using it much. I think maybe it will see more use in the tombs to come.

Arrowitch is through ratamount in act 2, nm now. I didnt have much of a test on Anduriel since the player I was grouping with used heavy static on her. The extra fast smith ran to my valk and stopped long enough to die in about a 10 stack of immo. Yep, gonna keep pumping valk and immo until I run out of points- got about 8 banked left. The same sorc went crazy with cold stuff on ratamount, so again I had no real test there. Immo does seem to work well in a blizzard, if you can see well enough to target anything.

February 12 2001 - Lvl 38
Arrowitch made 38 this weekend. Her gear remains unchanged since the last report, as she has yet to gamble or find anything better than her present gear.

Again she played a bunch with her sorc buddy, and competition for blues was fierce. She chunked another 10 pts into strength hoping she could get frosties and use them (could use both cold duration and mana) and her friend has magefist, so she will never gamble magefist in a group game. I am thinking leyamos sash may be better for her than nightsmoke (what she presently has) since she does not get hit that much and could use regeneration. She continues to use tarnhelm as she gathers perfect skulls (has a flawless right now). She has no mana regeneration items yet.

She soloed her way to the valley of magi from town over the weekend. Egg layers were pretty easy. Spearcats were easy- just chuck an immo at them after you slow missiles, then run around them in circles. They fire at you and stand in one spot. Sabercats were another story. Even with fastest run and no armor/shield penalties, they often get around the valk. My standard ditch tactic of pumping an ice arrow into them then backing up off the screen is not so effective because (a) they are very fast, (b) duration is less in nightmare and I have no cold adders, (c) they have shield block so often it does nothing. Freezing arrow is a better way to break the AI chase end run of the valk, and the mana cost of my minimal level FA is minor.

The maggots lair was a real pleasure- piercing immo down a hall would flame up the entire passage. They are forced to walk through the immo to get at me and they die in droves. Coldworms lair was also a pleasure- 5 immos and the room was on fire and cleared out in no time.

The viper temple went well. I would use slow missiles to light stuff up, then scurry behind the valk. For level 2 I ran down the stairs and headed to the NW corner, recasting valk. THere are some boxes and other objects there which give some coverage, and it is an easy sprint to the altar from there. Slow missiles actually slowed LEB emission from fangskin. I also later noticed this effect on KAA. It seems like if the LEB has a ranged attack (guess it is the spit attack for the vipers), then its LEB gets slowed. Immo around the valk took care of most everything in there, and I never saw fangskin drop.

I ran through the palace as fast as possible. Immo did lay waste to the vast skeletal packs, and combined with slow missiles this is perhaps the best character to run that paticular level HOWEVER the juicy drops of the AS were far too tempting.

At level 33 I was in the AS. Nightmare clear of AS and is very different than normal clear without valk. First of all your valk tends to move to the edge of the path and block wraithes over the black abyss. If the wraithes are off the path, you get no drops and you get no immo fire. A really bad valk placement can equate to lots of wasted mana, as the explosion damage alone takes much longer. The cure is a backup and recast of valk in the middle of the path. As I have been pumping valk, the recast cost is substancial (one day Ill get my frosties...).

Another problem which crops up is the valk often will dig in her heels and refuse to move forward. The poor mans solution to this is either backing up and forcing her behind you (then you will probably need to recast her once you get through the tight spot and need coverage ahead), or to town portal. Returning from portal will often fix the problem, and it gives you a free mana recharge. I think it is a good policy to have enough mana left to recast valk while you are here, as there are numerous instances where you can get pinned in with your valk blocking your retreat and a huge hoarde of stuff coming at you from the front. The passives seem to help me live through these situations, so perhaps later I will put more points into passives.

The most annoying problem are those lightning posts. The valk goes over and begins the 2 hour process of spearing the post to death. You can blow out your entire mana ball with immo on it and repeat with another blue worth of mana and the thing will only be half dead. What I finally wound up doing was dragging the near stuff back to the valk on the post, disposing of it with immo, then going off to the new section and portaling to town. This forces the valk to leave her obscession with the post, and lets you return to normal combat.

The best fix for the summoner was to charge his platform and cast valk on top of the platform. This draws his fire and his minions attention away from you, and gives you the breathing room you need to hose the area with immo.

The canyon of the magi was fairly easy for me, as there was plenty of room to maneuver. Spear cats mean you have to set up several immo piles going in opposite directions, but it was not too bad. For kicks I tried out the tombs.

Now most of the tombs have stairs traps, so I would use immo and run for most everything. Usually a huge mob would pile up around the valk, and a couple shots there would be enough to seriously destroy most of the pack. However there are so many that overflow is a serious problem and even your FA cant keep up with it (well at least my 1sec duration one couldn't). My solution was to run and gun. I would stop and pop soulless ones with immo to reduce the animation, then keep running. Ghouls are annoying because they flee out of the immo pile when hurt. Holding down ice arrow on them works, but with no mana steal it is very inefficient. The best way to deal with the situation is to hose the reanimators, free up your valk, then follow the valk around as she pins the ghoul lords and then immo them. A lord standing in a corner is a sitting duck and will sit there in the immo until it dies.

The other big situation was with doors. My usual procedure was to cast slow missiles (lights up doors, screws ghouls and animators ranged attack), open door, lay down a few immos through the doorway (hopefully getting a direct shot at an illuminated animator). If the animators were out of the line of fire, I would then wait until the bulk of the skeletons were dead and we were in a reanimate/burn cycle, then dash through the door to the far side of the room, turn, and hose the animators. This worked out very well, and overall I think the tombs are easier to deal with than the AS (as AS is a headache with valk management).

Kaa and his buddys were cake. It was easy enough to hose all the animators with immo. Then I stuck a valk on Kaa, and backed up and slowed missiles on him (really cuts LEB damage), then did the 10 immo stack. Poof he went, and that was that.

Teleporting bosses remain a real thorn for this character, and I need some kind of long term character solution for them. I am thinking of pumping IA for this reason, relying upon the combination of cold damage and chill duration to cut its movement, but right now with my present mana ball I can not really affort to pump IA too high.

This character can venture with impunity way deep for her level, as her arrows always hit, and immo is the great equalizer. I have received great xp in the AS up through clvl 41 in SP, so being there at 33 is a bit early for most of my characters. Aside from valk management, this character could hang there better than most.

Right now I have +2 skills and enjoy
16 immo
10 valk

As you pump valk, you can actually see her starting to do serious damage to things (seen with large jumps in the life bar). I have chance guards and tarnhelm so I can tell by gold when my valk gets the coup de gras and when it is me, and many times it is the valk. I think her physical damage may be a nice compliment to my complete lack of physical damage, and I will continue to pump her until I run out of points. Immo also gets a point every level. Only 6 more levels and it will be max. I have around 280 mana now, and something like 220 life (lots of adders) w/ 60 str, 50 dex, starting vit, ~135 energy. When I hit mana regen shrines, this character really motors, being able to signinficantly up her immo use. I hope that is the way things will feel later on.

February 20 2001 - Clvl 50
Began this weekend with the following stats/items:
Lvl 38, 60 str, 50(68)dex, 20vit, 140ene, 223 life, 278 mana 17 immo, 11 valk, everything else at 1 pt doomslinger, tarnhelm, chance guards, nightsmoke, vidala's fetlocks, prismatic ammy of perfection (15p, 19c, 21f, 15l, 18 dex), rare armor (234def, dmg red by 1, 19f, +27 life, +2 min dmg), ruby ring (48f), amber ring of the mammoth (38l, +37life)

I was taking it easy in the tombs and AS of act 2, NM, mainly because I was enjoying the drops and also because my sorceress friend (Riplash) was of lower level. I also wanted to get a few levels on my valk so I could do Duriel with bow and valk instead of the jav and shield thing.

So around level 39 we decided to do Duriel. By this time I had a 12th valk, and Duriel was having trouble dropping the valk in a 2 player game. The sorc did not use static- she mainly used cold and hydra, and my gazillion stacked immo went to work.

Upon gaining act 3, I decided to solo through most of it as fast as possible, as retreating flayers were a bit annoying. At the time I was not using FA on my left (which I am now doing) since I did not have the mana to support its casual use, nor did I have the mana steal to recoup its use. Saving my mana for immo and using ice arrow was more effective.

I am moving to a heavier use of decoy. It seems like the awareness range of valk is less than I remembered last time I played one intensively in 1.03. So what I do is cast a decoy into a new zone, wait, advance halfway, recast decoy. When the creatures swarm the decoy, valk advances and engages just as they drop the decoy. This works far better than moving into a new territory, then retreating back behind the valk, and then having to break chase AI with freezing/ice arrows. All you really need to do is use the FA/IA on overflow monsters. Flayers can retreat towards you behind the valk, and this usually means firing one arrow to freeze (left click), one arrow to burn (right click), then freeze hold it in the immo (left click hold). If you line this up well, the freeze hold can support the valk as she does in the pack about her. With ~1 second freezing duration and super fast doomslinger, you have just enough time to pull this off on anything but highly cold resistant monsters in nm.

Slow missiles is also just simply fantastic for most situations involving ranged attacks. Using the decoy advance technique, you can get close enough to use slow missiles on them, then dump either a valk or a decoy in their midst, with a couple of immos for good measure.

After pumping valk as hard as I was, I was starting to notice the valk doing significant damage on creatures. Many times now my valk has killed off a nasty, weakened boss. Do not dismiss the physical damage of a high level valk- it can matter and make a difference.

Anyway, I had little difficulty with the jungle (although it was slow, burning up mana fast and requiring more bolts than normal as IA was coming into play more). I got a +59 mana ring from my gibinn quest (with some other props detailed later) which helped a bunch. I got a nice stairs trap in the temple, but was able to run into a corner, set up a huge immo pile in the crowd, and freeze hold defend myself from stragglers as the immo cleared stuff out. It is times like these when you are very glad you have a hard to drop valk. Travincal was also fairly easy- slowing missiles + big dumb valk + huge immo would cut through even the toughest council member. Riplash joined me for mephisto/durance 3- we got an easy load for dur 3 (no ghouls + sparkfist). Again slow missiles cut down on the LEB emission from sparkfist, and my valk occupied him long enough for the immo to bake him nicely. THe same strat was reapplied for Mephisto (used valk across the river with immo from long range for support).

Act 4 also progressed well until Hephasto. Hephasto got us in a lag spike on the bridge. We managed to trap him on the bridge and set up portals from a safe spot where I could cast valk, watch it die in about 2 blows, and immo heph. Riplash had no radius on static yet, so all she could do was send in glacials and hydras. Our problem was the valk wasnt beefy enough in a 2p game- We later tried heph in a 6p game, and the valk had so many hp Heph couldnt drop it.

So by about lvl 40 I was up to the Chaos sanctuary. Now I really wanted to play some serious nighmare hell for the next 10 lvls and hopefully get frosties to up my cold duration for hell, and possibly upgrade most of my gear by intensive gambling. I would join high count games and sell off every single wand/scepter/staff I could find, until my stash was full and I had to carry overflow gold on my person, then I would go do a normal pw protected game, gamble, and mule off some of the more interesting finds. This paid off eventually with frostburns, greyform, treads of cthon, and a nice ring. With the acquistion of frosties, my mana went way up, and life became much much easier. At this point it was far more effective to go to a perfect skull crown than tarnhelm, as the replenish life and mana help a bunch with the huge ball. Immo wasnt putting me in as much of a mana bind now, and I could fire ice arrow a long long time. I gambled leyamos, and did the numbers on it vs. nightsmoke, and think in the end perhaps nightsmoke is the better belt because (1) resistance, (2) 3 rows, and (3) the occasional refill via damage.

My favorite stomping ground was the chaos sanctuary. Many people don't bother with it, but this kind of zon is pretty close to ideal for running it solo. The valk lasts long enough to take the heat and let you immo bake stuff on it. Even in 8p games, stacked piercing immo makes pleasant progress. It is also really easy to funnel them into a side passage bottleneck, and really get intense immo stacks going. It seems like immo will explode hit near miss creatures, but only leaves a patch of fire on direct hit creatures. Slow missiles in the CS really preserves your valks life, and decoy advancment techniques work great for crowd control. In general ob knights are the worst (no surprise) but I think she has an easy time of it.

Ob knights will retreat past the valk. You can slow missiles and send an immo on one, and run about it at a distance, and it will stand in the fire and burn. If you get too close, the retreat AI kicks in and then you must use ice arrow to try to freeze hold it. Even with high resistance, with frosties you have just enough duration to hold them, although if they block one arrow they can unfreeze and move. The best way to do these guys is to flank wide around the valk and put an immo on them while they are firing (stay off at long range so it still engages the valk). Unless the valk breaks through the pack on it, the ob knight will often die firing in the flames.

The balrog are also difficult. They have the AI of running past your valk a ways, then doubling back. The best thing here is to fire immo from offscreen at where you think they are bunched and peek in every now and then.

Infitus is pretty easy. Between valk and decoy you can solo pop the seal and end run the crowd, then fire from offscreen intensive immo and take out the pack.

De Seis is difficult and in general not worth the effort. TO take him use a slow advance with decoys, slow missiles and valk. If you can get him at the end of a narrow passage, you can just hose down the entire area with flame. Eventually the valk corners him and then it is all over for him. The real trick here is to dispatch all overflow retreating ob knights that go past the valk with ia/immo/ia hold.

I had Riplash with me for my lvl 49 kill of Diablo. I only had to recast valk once, and she took about 5 good pops from diablo. This is for a 2p game. This is very different than my xp with a low level valk used for a strafe azon, wher the valk goes poof when Diablo uses his fire ring. I think Diablo may not be able to drop my valk in a 8p game. I got lvl 50 with my diablo kill.

Hell difficulty act 1 was a relief after life in the CS. I could one hit immo kill most of the stuff in the blood moor. I did get a big challenge in the cold plains- Bishibob or whatever his name is was FEB and teleporting. Good grief- at this point I still don't have much in ice arrow and my physical damage is small. The most effective tactic was to right click and hold immo on him and pound every blue I had. Eventually he stops too long in stacked immo and dies, but that eventually can be several potions.

The fallen of hell really hit my low vit mageazon hard, and I had to reevaluate my crowd control practice. The problems are that they run off in different directions when one guy dies, which means you have lots of overflow monsters around you. At this point I decided to switch to FA on my left. Ordinarily this was unthinkable from the huge mana waste. But now I was discovering that my 10 mana cost on a lvl 2 FA was regenerating with the crowd control use I put it to. Yes my freezing duration is pathetic with only frosties (1sec), but that is long enough to break chase AI on a big crowd and let me reposition further away from them than the valk is (so they acquire her as the target when they unfreeze). You do not need to be as precise with aiming it.

I thought some on FA vs IA on my final pump after using FA on my left, and still will go with IA. FA is there for crowd control, not damage, and to use it heavily on my left, I really want its mana cost low. Pumping it hard will drive up its mana cost and make me want to use it less, with no real increase in duration. IA wins in the damage/mana race for porting bosses, and its increased duration will help on the IA/immo/IH hold strat- even without the eye of etlich, I should be able to get >2s freeze duration in hell with it, which should be enough for freeze hold. Also a low cost FA means I can set up an immo bake pile in a reanimator zone, then toss in FA as fast as possible to hold them frozen so they freeze shatter from the immo. Even if I get the eye (have the precursor ammy, and have been sinking the gold into gambles), the mana cost reasons for not pumping FA remain. At highest mana cost, IA will be something like 9 mana, which I should eventually be able to support (FA or IA 20 ad nauseum).

I finished with the black marsh wp in hell diff. Here are my stats at 50:
Clvl 50, 60str, 50(78) dex, 25vit, 200 ene, 265life, 623mana
Hell resistances 1% fire, 5% cold, 13% lightning, -25% poison.
Skills (includes +1 bonus from doomslinger) 21 immo 21 valk (1570 life for 1p, +400% dmg, +100% attack, +100% def, 105 mana) 4 IA 1(2) pts in other reqs, including FA.

Doomslinger, treads, frostburns, greyform, nightsmoke, prismatic perfection ammy, ring (4% lifesteal, +3 replenish, 6% cold res, +59 ma), ring (38% light res, +39 life), perf skull crown ( +10 replenish, 38% mana regen).

Comments- I stopped pumping at 200 energy. I understand here is the point of diminishing returns for critical mana heal (a chance to get double effect from mana pots), and my mana is pretty good now, and I could use some more life/stamina. I am gambling on boots, jewelry, hoping to get the eye or a high resistance fastest run pair of boots. Greyform is pretty good from a resistance stopgap standpoint, although I will use a hell imbue on mage plate (nm imbue gave me crap). I did after writing the stats down gamble a great rare ammy with +life + mana taking me to 690 ma, ~300 life, + pois/light res.

February 26 2001 - Closing In On Meph
When we last left, Arrowitch was level 50 in hell difficulty, act 1, Black Marsh wp. I managed to play her some more last weekend, and am up through hell/act4/lower kurast wp, and I still need to go back and do the flayer dungeon (but I have the wp). I don't have details on my characters stats in front of me, but I have pumped all points into vit + ice arrow (IA) since last time and have reached lvl 54.

Some highlights
I took Arrowitch as fast as I could go through act 1. In Tamoe and the Black Marsh, I needed to use freezing arrow (FA) much to deal with monsters end-running my valk. The tower with the countess was not that difficult, as even worst case monsters could be handled by dumping a lvl 21 valk into the room, setting up some immolation, and going into the adjoining room. I intensively used decoy scouting, the technique where you cast a decoy, advance, and recast the decoy. This generally works better for me than advancing and freezing stuff as it swarms me, but you can get by with the latter if you are facing slow creatures like zombies.

Anduriel dropped with great ease- my valk jammed her in the doorway, and I got such a huge immo stack on her that she could not walk through into my room before she died.

The sewars of act 2 and Ratamount were an excersize in patience. Again decoy scouting was used. The decoy would take the initial hits from offscreen skeletal archers, or the rush from cats. For Ratamount, I got an immo pyre going, then sent FA after FA into the pack to get freeze shatter. Once I was down to stragglers, I ran around my valk and slowed Rat's missiles, then immolated him.

The nastiest foes of act 2 were the leapers. You have to stand well back to get them and not have them pick you up. What seems to work well on leapers is to back up from where your valk is engaging them, cast a decoy right next to you, and send out a few FA's.

Sometimes creatures leaping past your valk will go for the decoy instead of you. Once you get one with FA, send an immo arrow into it, then return to the freeze and hold strategy. Although my duration was improving on the IA, I still prefer FA for this situation since you can freeze many of the hopping leapers, and it is in general safer to use FA. Decoy scouting is a must for the desert maps with leapers and cats, as they are very fast and you do not get much in the way of second opportunities.

The maggot lair was a pleasure as always. Piercing immo and FA rule the roost here. Immo clears out the blockage in Coldworms lair quickly and efficiently. Even scarab beetles are not that difficult since their emission hits walls. My great find was a cold damage amulet (the Chaos Sanctuary says it gives me 5 sec of cold duration, bringing me to a 1.75s duration on FA. Off went my 50ish life/mana ammy with the poison and lightning res.

The lost city was a difficult map since I had zero poison resistance and no poison length reduction items. THe cats which lob the poison potions could reduce me with great ease to a few measly hp with a single well placed toss. In the end, I just would go to town each time I got poisoned.

The viper temple was very easy. I was using slow missiles and decoys so I would not be surprised. Immo would kill off the snakes before they could advance far. For level 2, you enter facing west. I usually go west into the main chamber, then north around the altar. Usually my valk follows and engages in a rear guard action vs. fangskin. I then liberally apply FA and immo about the north end of the altar until I have control, and return to support the valk. A level 21 valk lasts a nice long time For fangskin, it is simply fire off a few immos and back up.

The arcane sanctuary is much easier for me now too. The big difference is discovering that decoy was meant to be used heavily here. For instance when you see wraithes coming, recast your decoy such that they will engage it on the path and burn in immo when they get there. Valk comes in and holds them after they finish the decoy. Against Ghoul Lords, cast the decoy right behind them. Everything closes on the decoy and lets you flame the entire pack, and they block the ghoul lords from retreating (decoy can do this too). For the porter zone cast decoy, flame, recast decoy, flame, repeat until your decoy stands up for a while with nothing fighting it. You can use your automap to see when your decoy drops, as its blue plus symbol goes away when it drops. Decoy advance against the summoner kept the firewalls off of me and on my decoy. Once you got the valk engaging the minions, she would take the heat off. For the final approach, recast valk onto the summoners platform, advance up the stairs, and immo him. He burns nicely.

The true tomb was an instance of risky play for me. Usually you get the logjam in the doorway of reanimating skeletons. You can clear out most with the immo pyre/FA trick, but there always seems to be more straggling on in there, and eventually you reach the 'ok time to go for it point'. You then dash in, slow missiles to see where the reanimators are, serve up an immo or two to each reananimator, and use FA to keep the skeletons off you. This is sort of an on the fly, blaze sorceress playing style that can put you in a few jams where you have to just hold down FA and send off the occasional immo to clear out the crowd which swarms you.

Duriel was cake, even solo. I went down with a meat shield and my valk. This gives you good odds it will be them and not you that takes the initial hit. My first action was to step behind my valk by a few yds and toss a decoy in duriels direction. Any time Duriel knocked the valk to yellow, I would recast the valk right on Duriel. Any free time I had would mean another n immolation arrows on Duriel. You could see her lifebar dropping rapidly from the stacked immo. Maxxed valk is just enough for hell Duriel.

The jungles of act 3 are a royal pain in the ass. I am having to revert to my leaper strategy, where after the valk engages the enemy, I put a backup decoy near me to scrape off the flayers. Hell flayers are so very fast- you have to cast decoy, wait a second or two, then advance. Advancing too quickly will put you near the rapidly moving swarm of flayers and get you kille, particularly if you have any desynch. Again FA is important here- I find it is best to lob in a few FA's into the crowd around the valk before setting up the pyre, since the explosion freeze stops them from over running the valk and swarming you. You absolutely must identify when shamen are around and take them down with immolation sniping. IA is the way to go against river watchers. My level with IA is not high enough to really use it against porters yet. For now immo still does the job (that and a blue or two). IA is also great for flayer blowgun guys who stray off in your direction.

So with my present gear, I am something like 630 mana, 320 life, and negative resistances. If you use decoy and valk properly, resistance is not a necessity. Freeze duration items become much more important in hell, and my +1 cold damage amulet of frost is more useful than a rare amulet with great resistance and plenty of life/mana. I have yet to get the eye on gambling, but as my level goes up the odds of me getting a rare frost amulet also go up. I got fastest boots with some resistances from persistant gambling, and muled off the treads of cthon.

March 5 2001 - Baroness Arrowitch
I reached Barroness at lvl 56 with Arrowitch.
Rather than detail all adventures, I will just stick to the things which stick out in my mind as important.

Durance 3 was extremely hard since Sparkfist was multishot lightning enchanted. I don't know what else he was since I was running for my life most of the time. Even with slow missiles he was killing my level 21 valk with 1500ish hp in under 2 seconds, typically 1. I wasn't able to do much with him since (a) he was faster than me, (b) I could get no relief from my valk, and (c) if you leave him alone long enough, he heals himself. Perhaps had more people been in the game, my valks multiplied hp would have been higher and she would have been able to hold him still long enough to accomplish something. Even trying to recast valk right on top of him while immo was going was pointless, as the multishot lightning emission from the previous valk would kill her off before she could do anything. My solution was to run over a couple of rooms and deal with stuff there, parking Sparkfist in the stairs room.

For Hephasto, I used the same tactic I would later use on Diablo himself. I cast valk, fire off a few immos, then recast valk before she drops. As long as the valk can stick around a couple of seconds, you can make progress in achieving a multiple stack of immo which will win the day. This tactic did not work on sparkfist, however.

For teleporters, I was still using immo instead of ice arrow. I got up to around lvl 12 ice arrow with around 50 dmg by the time I hit barroness, so I don't know how the full strength one would work. Immo stacks and eventually they do not port or port into a stack and die- it makes better progress, but you do go through the blues.

Ice arrow is still very useful. Usually in an overflow situation I go freezing arrow, immo, ice arrow. The ice arrow costs less, lasts longer, and does additional elemental damage. I normally do not need to help out the ones around my valk, as they burn nicely in the blaze. Also ice arrow is great against leapers and river watchers, although perhaps FA with the explosive effect pumped may be better against leapers since leapers have lower hp. I liked IA against ghouls and casters that would stand off at range.

I have not maxxed IA, but in regard to the question of IA vs passives, I would definately go passives if you know you can get the eye of etlich. Gambling intensively for it for about 10 levels yielded no eye for me, and the best I got was a crummy +1 cold damage amulet (5 sec cold duration).

I think the path of 60str, 50 dex, then 200 energy, then the rest in vitality is a good one for SC. I can see Ice's point that perhaps after 100 vit you may want to go back to energy. Also if you are doing SC, you may have to deal with potions longer and pump vitality in parallel with energy.

You can run hell hell with negative resistances as a mageazon and still deal with abyss knights. The key is decoy scouting- the initial blast of energies hose the decoy, and you can safely advance towards them with decoys. I think the whole tactic of decoy advance is central to the mageazon.

Anyway, this character was a real blast, and I think its build is much stronger than it may appear on the surface- perhaps putting in line with other mainstream characters.

Lok

Mageazon rules
Original Thread