Slacker Finale

[Zed-F]

It's the end of the world as we know it, but we feel fine....

The slackers team variant has concluded. Tonight we made our way past the Ancients, through the WSK, and ultimately defeated Baal and his minions. Though there was the occasional death, overall the effort went rather smoothly, especially as the game handed us relatively few piercing attacks to deal with and no gloams. Then, to top things off, we went back and vanquished Nilly in his lair, without much in the way of difficulty. Between various delays due to vacations and whatnot, it took quite a while (Shadow estimated a year and a half) but in the end we emerged victorious!

Here's where we can post the final stats for our characters. I'll start another thread for what's next.

Zedf-Systah's Vitals:
--------------------
CLVL 82

STR 10/31
DEX 25/37
VIT 10/10
ENE 35/45
LIFE 317
MANA 217
RES 15/9/63/-20
Unallocated Stats: 420

With Enchant:
AR 858
DMG 1751-2229
DR 192

Skills: (Should have maxed Warmth instead of Fmastery, but there you go)
-----
FBolt, Warmth, FBall, Hydra 1+5 (not counting leaf)
Enchant, FMastery 20+5 ( with leaf, 31/28 )
Ice Bolt, Ice Blast, CM 1+0
Static, TK, Teleport, LM 1+0
Unallocated Skills: 42

Final Gear:
----------
Wpn 1: Raven Claw
Wpn 2: Leaf (+3 Enchant Staff)
Hat: Rare; +2 Fire skills, 20% fast cast, 17-45 Fre dmg, 5% life steal, socketed with +3%/-3% minor fire facet
Armour: Smoke Breastplate
Gloves: Blue; Russet of Alacrity (16 FireRes, 20 IAS)
Belt: Blue; +100 life (3 rows)
Boots: Blue; +30 lit res, +30 w/r
Ammy: Blue; +3 fire skills
Ring 1: Rare; +5% life steal, +9 Dex, +22 lit res, other minor mods
Ring 2: Rare; +50 poison/3 sec, cold res 13, lit res 24, other minor mods
Charms: +17 STR, some resists, life, extra elemental damage

In short, largely crap.

Mercenary: A2 HF merc, equipped with Sigon hat, Sigon armour, upped (exceptional) Woestave. Not a great killer but good support for the rest of the merc team.

Systah never really contributed all that much damage to the team personally -- but the net effect of spreading enchant over several mercs and various disposable minions added up. Sometimes it seemed like the mercs were doing most of the killing and everyone else was just riding on their coattails. Of course that wasn't all enchant damage... but every little bit counts, right? Right?

[ShadowHM]

TyeFune's vitals:

CLVL 82

STR 80/105
DEX 70/70
VIT 150/170
ENE 30/46
LIFE 486/758
MANA 202/444

Resist: 29/43/75/70

Unallocated Points: 185 (I always knew I was a wuss compared to Zed ;-) )

Skills:

Arctic Blast, Twister 1+7
Cyclone Armour 7+7
Tornado 16+7
Hurricane 20+7
Ravens 2+1
Oak Sage 11+1
Spirit Wolf, Dire Wolf, Grizzly 1+1

Unallocated Skills: 32

Final Gear:

Fleshrender Barbed Club (plus one Druid skills)
Hat Blue +3 elemental skills
Lionheart Mesh Armour (+90 life, 30 resist all and +10 energy was too useful to pass up)
Gloves rare (Lightning resist 29)
Belt rare (10% FHR, 74 mana)
Boots rare (20% FRW, Heal Stamina 25%, Fire resist 12, Poison resist 33, 1/2 Freeze Duration)
Shield: Socketed 3 Perfect Diamond large shield
Amulet: Blue + 3 elemental skills
Ring 1: Blue +6 energy, + 70 mana
Ring 2: Rare, 10% FCR, +74 mana
Charms: various, mainly life and mana, some resists

Mercenary: Act 3 Cold, equipped with an Eth Skin of the Vipermagi (dropped by normal Baal, for a while he was the best dressed member of the team), prismatic circlet, gemmed war sword (resists), Ancient's Pledge shield (hand me down from TyeFune)


Tyefune was a wuss about his life ball, because he needed to be at the forefront of the action to be able to let Hurricane work. He spammed Tornado when he could, and tried to keep his Bear and Oak Sage up to keep the heat off companions and keep their life balls up too. There was many the time when he felt that he was just a spectator, both with Cold Immunes and when the action got sufficient to bring his computer down to 2 or 3 fps. But, as Zed said, every little bit helps, right?

This game series was great fun. Shishak took over for Occhi sometime in Nightmare, and we lost Telemont and Doc early in Nightmare. There were lengthy gaps (one big one caused by my summer cottage sojourn), but we perservered. Baal fell to some very slack characters who even had time to joke during the final battle.

[Occhidiangela]

SmOcchi_DaBare
(170 Points unused)
S - 60/78
D - 55/65
V - 105/105
E - 115/121
Life - 521/599
Mana - x-38/x
+ 1 Assassin Skills from a Rare Circlet
+ 3 Traps Ammy
+ 1 Shadow Skills Grand Charm.
+3-32 LGT Damage from various charms
+3-7 Fire Damage from a charm
+15 Poison / 3 sec Charm
+29 FHR from a belt and a charm

Final Equipment:
Fools Blade Talons and a 3 PD SHield.
W II is Malice Claw and 5% slvl 3 Lgt on striking claw.
No armor
Rare Circlet
Rare Rings
Rare Boots
Rare gloves
Caster Crafted Belt

Skills (28 Points unused)
Martial Arts: None. She did not have the energy to do all than punching and kicking.

Shadow:
1 each in Claw Mastery, Block, Burst of Speed, Cloak of Shadows, Mind Blast, Venom
Zero in Shadow Master
15 Shadow Warrior
12 Fade

Traps
1 each in Fire Blast, Blade Sentry and Fury, Wake of Fire, Sock Web, CB Sentry, Lightning Sentry.
11 in Death Sentry and Wake of Inferno

Merc = Razan (Might)

Rare Stygian Pike (Soul Barb)
Lore Circlet
Ethereal "Blessed Bone Weave of Life" with two sockets: Tal and Ral for resists help

SmOcchi had Blade Fury as a staple, which Zed's Enchant certainly helped. Death Sentry is of course a fine crowd pleaser, while the Wake of Inferno received mixed reviews. The Next Delay issue was raised early on, not sure how the end game went.

Shadow Warrior at higher levels did not do too badly, I suppose. From his equipment, I imagine Razan was a reasonably tough merc.

Cloak of Shadows for Crowd contol handy early on.

Shisak will have to fill in the rest, or one of the other players.

Occhi

[Hawkmoon]

Vandy_Graff's vitals:

Str - 91/91
Dex - 25/31
Vit - 131/131
En - 60/85

Life - 526
Mana - 416

Resists in Hell: 54/54/68/40

Unallocated stat points: 183 (can't compare to Zed!)

Skills:
Thunderstorm, Lightning Mastery - 20+5
Static Field: 8+5
Chain Lightning: 2+5 (don't ask me why I dropped an extra point here; I can't remember!)
Charged Bolt, Lightning, Nova, TK, Teleport: 1+5
Ice Bolt, Ice Blast, Cold Mastery, all 3 cold Armors: 1+4
Warmth: 4+3

Unallocated skill points: 28

Equipment:
Que-Hegan's Wisdom, socketed with Ort
Circlet, +2 Lightning Skills (yes, that was the only mod)
Sacred Globe, +1 sorc skills, some lightning (31) and poison (24) resist
Ancient's Pledge large shield (used since A5 Normal!)
Scarabshell boots, fire resist 37
Rare gloves, lightning resist 19, fire resist 26, CTC lvl 5 Nova
Plated belt, +77 life
Ring 1, +80 mana, dmg reduced by 2
Ring 2, cold resist 28, replenish life +3, other assorted junk mods
Ammy, +1 sorc skills, fire/lit/pois resist 10, cold resist 27
On weapon switch: blue orb with +3 T-storm
Grand charm with +1 cold skills
Other charms with +life, resists

Merc: Kasim (Prayer)
Griswold's Heart socketed with Ral, Ort and Thul (only in the very last session, as luck would have it; before that he wore a 4-socket chaos armor for +30 resist all)
Tiara, 7% life steal
rare lance, 62-250 dmg

Vandy kept Thunderstorm running at all times, and would fire either Chain Lightning or Ice Blast at the monsters to aid the efforts of the others. The choice of T-storm was made as being a true Slacking skill, since it took no conscious direction.

As the other team members have mentioned, I often felt like I wasn't contributing much to the effort. In Hell, the damage from T-storm and Chain was pathetic. When I could remember and position myself correctly, Static was a big help in taking down bosses. Still, we really suffered when our mercs bit the dust; the res bills got pretty high by the end!

Cheers,
Hawkmoon

[CelticHound]

BringOutYerDEA

(You have no idea how long it took to find a variation of that name that wasn't already taken!)

As a summoner, it was basically my job to just show up...

We'd started Slackers back in 1.09 on Roland's Realm. At the time,
Summoners weren't uber like in 1.10. I was just intrigued with the
idea of summoning waaaay too many skeletons, and planned to max the
two first level summoning skills. When 1.10 came around and we made
new ladder characters on USWest, I changed the plan to mages.
Otherwise I might as well have made a cookie cutter summoner, and that
would have been no fun for the party.

To make the character a tiny bit more balanced, I also chose not to
put any points outside the summoning tree, and before NM (or was it
Hell?) could not uses Curses or P&B skills from items, either. I also
avoided using Revive for the majority of the game.

I think this char worked out pretty well. The army made a definite
contribution in soaking up damage, but wasn't even close to
indestructible. (And we were lucky to draw so few piercing attacks in
Act V - those are a bane for me when I play a full force
summoner.) The downside was that my continual need for corpses
conflicted with SmOcchi using Death Sentry.

The Trang-Oul's Scales was an amazingly lucky drop. It came
from some random monster in the fields of Act I Hell. Before then, I'd
hardly spent any stat points. I only put points in Vitality toward
the last few acts of Hell.

Other gear notes: The +2 skills head was also fortunate. The wand was
shopped. I think I cubed the amulet. (I was cubing all the junk
jewelry I could get my hands on.)


Level: 82
Experience: 864,111,707

Strength: 95/95
Dexterity: 25/35
Vitality: 110/110
Energy: 25/35

Attack: 80/145
Defense: 6/928

Stamina: 255/283
Life: 416/533
Mana: 187/251

Unallocated stat points: 245

Resists in Hell: 48/8/75/26


Skills:

Skeleton Mastery: 20/28
Raise Skeleton: 1/9 (5 skells, 392 life, 87-89)
Clay Golem: 1/9
Golem Mastery: 1/9 (2978 life, 11-27, 49% slowing)
Raise Skeletal Mage: 18/26 (10 mages, 347 life, spell level 41)
Blood Golem: 1/9
Summon Resist: 1/12 (60%)
Iron Golem: 1/9
Fire Golem: 1/9
Revive: 1/9

Life Tap: 0/4
Decrepify: 0/4

Unallocated skill points: 47




Equipment:

Trang-Oul's Scales: +2 summoning skills, +40% R/W, +40 poison res
Lore Circlet: +1 all skills, +10 energy, +30 lightning res
Shopped wand: +3 all summoning skills, +3 summon resist
Rare Unraveller Head: +2 necro skills, +1 decrepify, +1 life tap, +15 fire resist
Rare heavy Boots: +20% R/W +2 dex, +38 cold res, +24% magic find
Rare light gauntlets: +23 lignt res, half freeze, -25% poison len, 76% gold find
Chromatic amulet: +30 res all
Rare ring: +26% lightning res, +7% fire res, +26% poison res
Rare ring: +8 dex, +29% fire res, 40% gold find
Rare belt: +17 FHR, +4 life, +28 stamina, +24 light res, +29 fire res, -25% poison len
(Also found a Goldwrap in normal, but it got retired by hell)

Charms (16 spaces) for a total of:
+113 life
+44 mana
+14 lightning resist
+10 cold resist
+8 fire resist
5% magic find
12% gold find


Merc: Haseen (Thorns)
Level: 82
Life: 1687
Dammage: 335-1176
Defense: 1725
Resists in Hell: 75/75/75/75

Rare Sallet: +40 life, +20 cold resist, +19 lightning resist, 71 def
Socketed Loricated Mail: TalRalOrtThul, +30 resist all, 437 def
Rare Ogre Axe: 66-357, +14% cold resist, socketed with a -15% reqs jewel