The ChuckNoris Challenge

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Freykin
Prowler
17 | 2
# 10, The Seer:

I’m now at the beginning of Destruction, level 118. I’ve got all but one piece of my midgame gear ready, though my jewelry is still lacking. The skeleton reanimates are making everything so much easier! I can reliably get some defensive lines going now, and those combined with 5% Damned Soul reanimate on my amulet gives me a solid group of minions to keep everything busy.

Everything up to Baal was smooth; he took a good 10-16 deaths. I could’ve done it with only 1-2 I think, but that would’ve taken much longer and a ton of portaling for potions.

I’m starting to get the hang of weapon swapping, though it still feels awkward. I get what it adds to the build, as Flame Strike melts almost any single target I come up against, but it definitely takes some getting used to.

The one enemy type I struggle with are elite fire immunes; sometimes they take forever for pestilence to kill. Once I’ve fully MOed my crafted gear that should change hopefully. At least now when that happens my skeletons box them in so I’m not accidentally hit by them anymore. To be specific, this is on stragglers after Boneyard has cleared the rest out, as it destroys any group I fire it into.

My biggest concern going forwards is working on getting one of the sacred amulets; do those drop anywhere specific, or should I just farm in zones with increased unique drops?

I probably will not play more this weekend due to the PoE expansion launch, but I do plan to continue once it’s been a couple days.
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ChuckNoRis
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i'm glad to see that your progress is still good .

regarding the attacks swaping , you should get used to it since a lot of builds do that , be it for accesing a secondary attack as you do , or getting a buff on . awkward or not , you need to do it .

for the (sacred) unique jewelery (rings/amulets/jewels) , (destruction) Fauzinville has a bias for them so there is your best chance to get those . Still , i don't think you are yet prepared to go there . you must get about half the charms first before attempting it , as those inside there hit very hard .

your main concern at this point should be getting the most of the charms you can acces with the mid gear and eating extra signets for more stats -> level to 121 + farm for elemental runes to get the Xis boosted gear -> go for the remaining hard to get charms -> farm for SU's.

the unique amulets can wait for now , since you can find decent enough rares tu use untill then .

good luck !
Istaryu
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Am i late to join this?
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Gekko64
Shadowgate Totem
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yes
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HechtHeftig
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Played a little further with # 16 Reanimatrix.

I'm level 81 and just finished LC 2. it was rather easy despite me having no access to blink from Nef staff. Didn't matter much though. Thanks to my 28 k armor I didn't get stunlocked, even with all the invulnerable opponents charging at me.
I also just upgrade the last 2 things of my gear to level 6, so now I'm fully geared at last.

What I definitely wanted to say is: the transition from using Mana sweep to Mana tide totem is a bit weird. Once you get some decent gear, you'll notice that mana sweep becomes less and less important, since you have more mana --> your mana is emptied at a slower rate. So Mana tide totem really helps keeping your bulp up. However, even with Mana tide totem, I couldn't keep my mana at 100% all the time. Especially when I spammed Arcane torrent against those Porkchops in act 2 sewers. I'm still lacking the adviced rings and amulet though, so that might be the problem. Anyway, when I noticed I dropped below 80% mana, I used a mana sweep to return my damage to its ultimate state, so mana sweep is still important at that point of the game.

Even if Mana tide totems are good to keep your bulb up 90% of the time, it is kinda weird to use, because sometimes you simply have to turn around just to summon another mana tide totem from the remnants of the killed enemies. Especially with reanimates that whole process is kinda lacking. I had only a 20% reanimate chance for skeletons, but those reanimates often ruined corpses, so I couldn't cast mana tide totem right when I needed it. Especially in big areas with few enemies that can damp your killsped.

I expect those problems to dissolve as soon as I get to midgame gear when I can finally stop relying on the totem.

btw: The killspeed in terror is damped a lot. Whereas I could easily kill a screen full of enemies in 1-2 seconds, it's now completely different. Arcane torrent doesn't do outrageous amounts of damage, so when I started farming sewers at level 60, it felt like an eternity to progress. But that's over now finally. I got about 2 k more mana after that, sitting at about 5 k mana now and the clearspeed is quite good (except for fire immune elites)

I hope I can reach 90 tomorrow.
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ChuckNoRis
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the mana tide totem has been adjusted (heavy Nerfed - was that really necessary ? ) in the latest patch so it is not as reliable as it used to be (now only grants 10% regen per level down from 50% - i agree that 50% might have been too much but somewhere at 25% should have been ok to cut it down ) , but is still good to have around in the early game as the mana regen from it is still welcomed (a roll with +4 would be ideal) , as it comes along with Ker RW anyway so why not make use of it .


One of the important gear changes at this point is getting the Teganze amulet asap as that 100 mana after kill is making a big difference in keeping the mana bulb full when fighting vs crowds (besides having the max mana pool increased) + getting the Oracle armor as that increases the mana pool by a lot .

when spamming the main skills vs strong single targets and small packs (be it porkchops) the mana regeneration from mana tide totem is not helping as much as it used to and you still need to use mana sweep from time to time . having access to the mana tide totem does not however forbid in any way using mana sweep if/when needed

once you get most of the mid game gear it will be a different story .

good luck !
Edited by ChuckNoRis 6 years.
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HechtHeftig
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Thanks! Got Oracle now, increasing my mana to around 7400. But thanks to the +4 skills, the arcane torrent costs much more as well^^ So now it's even harder keeping the mana bulb up.
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Solfege
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Quick update on my playthrough of #11 Rooftrellen.

Started Terror at clvl 66, with full T6 gear (except T1 RW helm), and gear fully orbed with the recommended MOs. Just started A5. Currently clvl 104.

Early on in Terrer, I didn't have too much trouble, generally. Defense seemed low for a melee build (about 15k), so keeping Idol of Scosglen active much of the time was important. Character velocity is fast enough now that Acid Fiends aren't needed, which is good, b/c aside from being used as distractions, they're useless.

As I progressed further into Terror, things became increasingly more difficult, and the lack of defense became much more noticeable. Death was a regular thing. Lifeshield was a nice boost at clvl 90, but by the time I hit A5, I barely noticed it existed.

Bosses aren't really an issue. Ravage continues to perform surprisingly well against them when no other enemies are within range. But mobs are a huge pita. It took me nearly 8 hours to go from A2 to the beginning of A5. Some of that was me screwing around, but it still takes a lot longer than I'd like to clear out a pack of enemies, since I'm basically just chipping away at their Life bars until SoR procs and kills stuff.

Also, Ravage is still very much hit-or-miss. LCS says I have a 95% CtH regular mobs, but Ravage's in-game CtH is definitely much lower. I might land 1 hit per use of the skill, if I'm lucky.

As for Feral Strike, I don't like it. At all. It's a pain to activate. It needs to work like Moonstrike (i.e. you don't actually have to hit the target for it to activate).

Also, since this build has such low defense right now, some Life sustain could be really helpful. Even just a point into Pagan Rites would be ok, I think. LaeK from Circle of Life isn't worth much when you're standing there surrounded by mobs waiting for SoR to proc.

XP grinding/Shrine farming in Terror Uberlevels isn't possible atm. My Druid as he is cannot enter TA, and I see no point to Fauzt anymore. I was able to enter K3K once, but only by shear dumb luck (Druid dies almost instantly to Khazra Clan upon entering the Torajan Jungles). Inside, I was able to take out 1 Totem. B/c of this, I decided just to progress through the rest of Terror as best I can. Will try K3K and TA farming again when I'm closer to clvl 120.

Any tips or advice would be appreciated.
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ChuckNoRis
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the only usefull tip/note is that the builds were not ment to be played as strict as for this challenge , so if the progress is being harder than usual is not my fault . your main issues comes from the fact that you are not leveled and geared as intended for certain parts of the game .

normaly you hit 90 in early act 3 (lc2) in SP (quite very easy) , so from that point untill you got to act 5 (the spot where you got to 90 in MP) is a big gap where you could not access the uberskill and lifeshield , things that could make your life easier while progressing trough the game .

again , leveling from 90 to 120 gets a lot faster in SP , which allows farming terror ubers a lot sooner .

also , since you are behind schedule regarding the XP (and gear i suppose) , you must still keep more points into Circle of Life for now . you don't need to rush to the mid game skillplan and respec to 1-pointer just because you can access the uberskill . Again , the challenge is too strict and it is now how it is intended to be played . it's just making the builds harder to play , but then it's suppose to be a challenge after all . meh . with a higher defence your lack of regeneration will not be felt as bad as it does now . i've put 1-pointer pagan rites to help you a bit here.

in therms of better tanking all you can do for now is grind for better gear - mid gear- (much better base defence -> a lot more total character defence) and do the BRC after that.

i'd grind in k3kba for shrines as it's the most doable spot for now . are you using a merc ?

about the Feral Strike you may think of it as you would use Solar Flare for a holy build . it's not nice doing it every few seconds , but you have to in order to boost the build .

good luck !
Dominusignis
Dark Huntress
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I got a bit lucky with my kabraxis charm. Image
Overall the experience with character no. 5 (Rollo) is great. There are only 6 ubers left (Triune, Uldy, Zorun Tzin, Atanna Khan, Laz, The Void).
Gearwise i've managed to get my first xis rune and crafted the buff weapon and the second xis is in progress. For the rest i dont seem to get lucky, not a single SU dropped for my list, but it seems for most of the content the midgame gear is good enough. Sig farming is almost over as well (450/500)