I want to thank Chaos and Shinlos for their advice. I have made my choices and I really like the Improvements it has made.
I especially want to thank Aleksa for taking the time to write such a detailed guide on the status of her Hybrid Assassain. It is extremely helpfull as it elemenates alot of the guesswork on my part.
As Aleksa reported, this Assassain is fun to play. The play style is not that of a bowazon or an assassain. It has its own flavor of playstyle and with the skills available to choose from, there can be more than one variant.
I have chosen to go with lightning traps as the second tree along with Venom, to aid the Crossbow. I now use the Act 2 combat merc (A huge improvement over the act 1 rogue), who kills very fast and has no problem staying alive. I also am using the Shadow Master for now. I use her like the amazon decoy, but she can actually kill and her traps and mindblast really helps. How she will work out later is unknown. Bos is critical to keep on all the time, as this gives your bow a faster firing rate. If you have max ias then this is not so important.
I just reached Hell(the old nightmare) at level 40, completely solo, except for some help with the last half of act 1. Once I adjusted my playstyle to fit my new skills, I really had fun blasting my way throught the rest of the Acts. I think I drank about 10 full rejuves, and about the same number of lifes and manas to get to Nightmare. That is the least amount for any character I have played yet. The leech from the crossbow really makes a huge difference in keeping you globes full.
I was worried at first about this Hybred being to weak at the starting levels, but it turns out that with a tempered, very fast crossbow, She is not so weak as I thought She would be (we all know the problems with starting some of the characters regarding killing power). She just takes some getting used to. As with anyting new, there is a learnig curve to go through.
My equipment is nothing great. I use a tempered (physical damage) very fast repeating crossbow with some leach and ias and ed. I used the runeword lighning in it and it is quite a good starter bow.
I think at level 15 I was hitting for around 220-450 damage, obviously without venom, a level 30 skill.
I use the Psycho set (gloves, belt, boots) with cnb armor, the Starter barb helm with +1 to light runes in it.
I use the sorc ammy for the itd, and rare +1 rings with some other stats on them. My resists are all 75 with the help of just a few charms. What I will use in the new Hell, I dont know yet, as my resists are all at about 0 there at the moment. At first I only used the traps for a light sorce to guide me in the dark and to pinpoint in which direction a monster might be.. I still do, only now the traps can kill and when I find a group, I cast 5 traps and shoot, rinse and repeat till dead, recasting the shadow if she dies.
This is really a fun character to play, I highly reccomend trying one. I think you will really enjoy the experience.
As with any new Character Style, there may be some kinks to be ironed out as you go. I have already made a couple skill point mistakes and problable will make some more decesions in the future that I may regret later. But I do this on established builds now, so not to worry, I can always start a new one and be more the wiser.
Have fun, I know that I am.
Topic: Merc for Crossbow Assassain? (Read 2677 times)
January 14, 2005, 10:56:20 am
