So, I need a hobby for the next few months. A 100% run appeals to me, and I want to do it right. The any% run's are pretty out of date, and although the recent 100% is epic in all respects, I feel I can add to it, possibly improve.
I shoved all the non-important facts in this, so it doesn't spam the page.
Okay before I role my map can I get a few opinions on how it should be rolled. Here is my current plan for act 1. I want it to be done right, so tell me if you think my ideas are wrong, or if there are better options. Keep in mind I plan to abuse save+exit.
I'm going to manipulate an XP shrine, a stamina potion, a few mana potions and run straight to cold plains, while getting level 2 on the way.
The map I want to roll will have the bishibosh group on the way to stony field. I'll spam firebomb on the group getting 1.5~ levels or so and then run to stony field WP and save/exit.
In stony field I want 2 shrines, one of them being near rakanishu. So I'll get an XP shrine and go to the mass around rakanishu and pull mobs for 10 seconds or so and abuse a poison shrine. Save/exit and do this again and then run to underground--->dark wood, tree(maybe I should manipulate a poison shrine here?), and lastly black marsh WP. Then I'll trist, make a lot of gold, and potion mass (hopefully I'll around level 8 ). Game time should still be extremely low at this point.
Next segment is running/killing on the way to outer cloister while manipulating a few unique/champion packs in tamoe highland and outer cloister. The rest is basically just running/killing on the way to Andy, and getting to 12. After is den with wake of fire, bloodraven, and getting ith el eth from countess to make a malice, which I won't be able to use till level 15.
Any thoughts or opinions before I role such a map?
And yes, I will go through with this whole run.
I shoved all the non-important facts in this, so it doesn't spam the page.
The Assassin appeals to me for several reasons:
1. Speed: She's fast, whether it be killing or traveling. At level 6 she gains a huge speed boost. At level 12 she gain's a huge killing speed boost. The only class that comes close to the assassin would be the sorceress, who gains fireball/lightning at level 12, and teleport at level 18. Wake of fire is arguably better (faster) than both those spells in the normal difficulty, and burst of speed comes much earlier and is possibly better until the sorceress gets a high FCR.
2. Traps: Very powerful in normal and gives her the ability to fire and forget. Actually, lol, traps don't appeal to me near as much as martial arts, which is why I'll probably only be using them in normal. If you've ever been on BNet and watched a level 80 or so assassin with bad gear try and kill monsters with her traps in hell, you probably thought to yourself, "i'm never making one of those things" because they can't kill very well at all. If I were to focus on traps, I would be a level 55 assassin try to kill things with low gear in hell, and that would take years.
3. Martial Arts: This is the main reason I want to do this. It opens up so many possibilities and is extremely efficient at killing very quickly. I'll go into detail later.
4. FUN... the assassin is fun to play.
For those who don't really understand, or are skeptical of how martial arts will work in hell, ill give a brief overview. Basically you have 2 type of attacks; attacks that charge, and attacks that release the charges. Each time you hit a target with a charge attack, you gain a charge, which looks like a spinning orb around the assassin. You can have 3 charges for each type of attack, and can have them all active at once (cold damage, fire damage, lightning damage, immense physical damage, life/mana steal) and all it takes is a normal attack or a finishing move to release the charges.
The Arreat Summit say's this:
Intrinsic to the Assassin's arsenal of abilities is her incredible prowess in the mysterious Martial Arts style of the Viz-Jaq'taar. Martial Arts skills come in two forms, Charge-up Skills and Finishing Moves. A Charge-up Skill is an attack that adds a "charge" for each successive hit within a short time frame. While each Charge-up attack deals normal damage, the charges continue to accumulate until triggered or until the time limit runs out. To trigger the accumulated charges, strike a monster with either a normal attack or one of the Finishing Moves. A Finishing Move doesn't just trigger the release of the accumulated charges-it also adds a powerful effect of its own. Furthermore, by building up a succession of different Charge-up Skills, Assassins can generate a potent combination of effects. Assassins are specially trained in the use of exotic Claw-class weaponry, and some of their skills can be used only when armed with these weapons.
Now the reason it will work in hell as a level 55, cheaply clad assassin, is because of 5 things. The first thing is that although I'll be using a cheaply clad assassin, she'll be an optimally, cheaply clad assassin...As in, lots of AR, block, resist, speed, and enough damage (notice health isn't in there :'().
Secondly is tiger strike. Tiger strike will allow me to take my physical damage and add 1440% more damage to it, and release it into a single target, or turn it into fire damage and release it in a decently large AoE damage in front of me. It can also be used to give me full health and mana with a couple charges of cobra strike (IIRC).
Thirdly is Phoenix strike. Phoenix strike can either release a powerful lightning charge, a powerful ice charge, or a powerful fire charge. The beauty of it is I have the option of choosing which element to use by the number of charges I put into it. This means that I get 3 elemental damage abilities by only having to put points in a single skill. (I might use claws of thunder instead, but I'm not sure)
Now you're probably thinking this is great and all, but the fact remains that I can't just run up and attack a hell minion without being torn asunder in seconds. Well this is because you haven't read reason 4 or 5 yet.
Fourthly, the assassin has an ability called cloak of shadows. Basically I cast it on a group of anything really, and they become blind. Only one or two of them will bother to attack me, while the rest will run around like a bunch of spaz's. There are a couple problems with this ability, but they can be pretty minimal with enough skill, and in an optimum speed run, you probably won't notice them, because the mistakes won't make it into the run.
Fifthly is mind blast. All I need to do is spam this ability on a group of enemies that have cloak of shadow cast on them (not completely necessary) and about 30% of the group will start attacking the other 70% of the group. At this point I dragon flight in with my holy freeze merc and my shadow warrior, get pheonix strike, tiger strike, and cobra strike charged up, and dragon tail them (or a normal attack) to annihilate the mob. This takes seconds.
At level 20, tiger strike does +1440% more physical damage, and with dragon tail that extra 1440% gets turned into aoe fire damage. Pheonix strike can add some heavy cold or lightning damage, which I'll probably having to be doing a lot in hell, while cobra strike is a full health + mana heal at higher levels.
1. Speed: She's fast, whether it be killing or traveling. At level 6 she gains a huge speed boost. At level 12 she gain's a huge killing speed boost. The only class that comes close to the assassin would be the sorceress, who gains fireball/lightning at level 12, and teleport at level 18. Wake of fire is arguably better (faster) than both those spells in the normal difficulty, and burst of speed comes much earlier and is possibly better until the sorceress gets a high FCR.
2. Traps: Very powerful in normal and gives her the ability to fire and forget. Actually, lol, traps don't appeal to me near as much as martial arts, which is why I'll probably only be using them in normal. If you've ever been on BNet and watched a level 80 or so assassin with bad gear try and kill monsters with her traps in hell, you probably thought to yourself, "i'm never making one of those things" because they can't kill very well at all. If I were to focus on traps, I would be a level 55 assassin try to kill things with low gear in hell, and that would take years.
3. Martial Arts: This is the main reason I want to do this. It opens up so many possibilities and is extremely efficient at killing very quickly. I'll go into detail later.
4. FUN... the assassin is fun to play.
For those who don't really understand, or are skeptical of how martial arts will work in hell, ill give a brief overview. Basically you have 2 type of attacks; attacks that charge, and attacks that release the charges. Each time you hit a target with a charge attack, you gain a charge, which looks like a spinning orb around the assassin. You can have 3 charges for each type of attack, and can have them all active at once (cold damage, fire damage, lightning damage, immense physical damage, life/mana steal) and all it takes is a normal attack or a finishing move to release the charges.
The Arreat Summit say's this:
Intrinsic to the Assassin's arsenal of abilities is her incredible prowess in the mysterious Martial Arts style of the Viz-Jaq'taar. Martial Arts skills come in two forms, Charge-up Skills and Finishing Moves. A Charge-up Skill is an attack that adds a "charge" for each successive hit within a short time frame. While each Charge-up attack deals normal damage, the charges continue to accumulate until triggered or until the time limit runs out. To trigger the accumulated charges, strike a monster with either a normal attack or one of the Finishing Moves. A Finishing Move doesn't just trigger the release of the accumulated charges-it also adds a powerful effect of its own. Furthermore, by building up a succession of different Charge-up Skills, Assassins can generate a potent combination of effects. Assassins are specially trained in the use of exotic Claw-class weaponry, and some of their skills can be used only when armed with these weapons.
Now the reason it will work in hell as a level 55, cheaply clad assassin, is because of 5 things. The first thing is that although I'll be using a cheaply clad assassin, she'll be an optimally, cheaply clad assassin...As in, lots of AR, block, resist, speed, and enough damage (notice health isn't in there :'().
Secondly is tiger strike. Tiger strike will allow me to take my physical damage and add 1440% more damage to it, and release it into a single target, or turn it into fire damage and release it in a decently large AoE damage in front of me. It can also be used to give me full health and mana with a couple charges of cobra strike (IIRC).
Thirdly is Phoenix strike. Phoenix strike can either release a powerful lightning charge, a powerful ice charge, or a powerful fire charge. The beauty of it is I have the option of choosing which element to use by the number of charges I put into it. This means that I get 3 elemental damage abilities by only having to put points in a single skill. (I might use claws of thunder instead, but I'm not sure)
Now you're probably thinking this is great and all, but the fact remains that I can't just run up and attack a hell minion without being torn asunder in seconds. Well this is because you haven't read reason 4 or 5 yet.
Fourthly, the assassin has an ability called cloak of shadows. Basically I cast it on a group of anything really, and they become blind. Only one or two of them will bother to attack me, while the rest will run around like a bunch of spaz's. There are a couple problems with this ability, but they can be pretty minimal with enough skill, and in an optimum speed run, you probably won't notice them, because the mistakes won't make it into the run.
Fifthly is mind blast. All I need to do is spam this ability on a group of enemies that have cloak of shadow cast on them (not completely necessary) and about 30% of the group will start attacking the other 70% of the group. At this point I dragon flight in with my holy freeze merc and my shadow warrior, get pheonix strike, tiger strike, and cobra strike charged up, and dragon tail them (or a normal attack) to annihilate the mob. This takes seconds.
At level 20, tiger strike does +1440% more physical damage, and with dragon tail that extra 1440% gets turned into aoe fire damage. Pheonix strike can add some heavy cold or lightning damage, which I'll probably having to be doing a lot in hell, while cobra strike is a full health + mana heal at higher levels.
Okay before I role my map can I get a few opinions on how it should be rolled. Here is my current plan for act 1. I want it to be done right, so tell me if you think my ideas are wrong, or if there are better options. Keep in mind I plan to abuse save+exit.
I'm going to manipulate an XP shrine, a stamina potion, a few mana potions and run straight to cold plains, while getting level 2 on the way.
The map I want to roll will have the bishibosh group on the way to stony field. I'll spam firebomb on the group getting 1.5~ levels or so and then run to stony field WP and save/exit.
In stony field I want 2 shrines, one of them being near rakanishu. So I'll get an XP shrine and go to the mass around rakanishu and pull mobs for 10 seconds or so and abuse a poison shrine. Save/exit and do this again and then run to underground--->dark wood, tree(maybe I should manipulate a poison shrine here?), and lastly black marsh WP. Then I'll trist, make a lot of gold, and potion mass (hopefully I'll around level 8 ). Game time should still be extremely low at this point.
Next segment is running/killing on the way to outer cloister while manipulating a few unique/champion packs in tamoe highland and outer cloister. The rest is basically just running/killing on the way to Andy, and getting to 12. After is den with wake of fire, bloodraven, and getting ith el eth from countess to make a malice, which I won't be able to use till level 15.
Any thoughts or opinions before I role such a map?
And yes, I will go through with this whole run.
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