So I went into my closet, looked around, and there was this little man sitting in the corner with a pair of drumsticks looking at me with a longing face. I asked him his name, and he replied, " Drummer sir. Can I finally see some action again? " I though to myself, it had been a while and I need to get my mele fix in, sure.
So I have dusted off the drummer and took him for a swing. Some how, some where, I had finished act2. So what was envisioned as a ruff night in the desert turned into a long, painful walk through the jungle. When I started out with this character, I knew lots of critters surrounding me = not a fun time due to the slow killing speed and horrible leech I would be getting from the wands. Let me tell ya one thing, those little flayers and there immunity to cold is a real bugger. I have an act3 merc for the sole purpose of freezing these little bastards still so I can wack them. When the little guys do not get frozen still, thats bad for him. Espically when there is a mana burner in the group. Sure I could stun them from barking, but once you take a hit from a mana burner, barking is not going to happen for the remainder of the battle. I was so overwhelmed at one point I saw my act 3 merc swing his sword. Once I saw that, I knew I was in some serious trouble. Eventually, quite a few pots latter, I was clear of the cold immune buggers and off to the zakarum chasers. These guys must have seen me coming and thought to themselves, big strong man swinging drumsticks, heh this is going to be too easy.
Walking through Kurast and the sewers was not soo bad. The stupid dolls in the sewers were a pain as I had to kill them being that they were cold immune. No biggie as I just picked up all the red pots I could find. I did get really lucky as I did not have to search out the stairs down to 2 as they spawned right next to an entrance from kurast bazar. The council was taken down 1 at a time as that is the only way it was going to happen. THe lightning immunes were frozen still and bashed repeadely and the cold immunes were stunned for most of the battle. Traveling through the durance was not too bad. I basically frenzyed up on some critters and ran around at warp speed looking for the stairs down. I was lucky in that I did not get backed into a corner from this poor poor tactic.
Mephisto felt bad for me and dropped a pair of Gore riders and some other crap. I already own a good pair of boots, upped goblin toes, so I sold them off.
Act 4 was more of the same. I got bad rolls on the first and last area's with spawner critters. The first area, outer stepps, had the flesh beasts as the spawners. Again, lots of cold immune critters around me = bad. The process was to tackle the spawner and then whittle away the little ones. In the plains of dispair I just hoped for no gloams and I got lucky. It was really late, and i had no gloams, so I decided to stay up way past my bed time and find izzy and kill that rat bastard. With as little damage I do, and as high of HP as he has, i thought this was going to be a long battle. Turns out, CB is a really really good thing. Izzy went down real fast. Not as fast as the charged boltress did him in, but fast none the less. I decided to treat the drummer to some AR and placed those 2 points into the mace mastery. Now, fully geared and BOed and enchanted, I have a 71% chance at hitting Izzy. Not bad, but it does need improvement. Once Izzy went down, I frenzyed up on some critters and made a mad dash for the wp. Found it and went into the river of flame. I told myself that if there was one spawner set then I would continue, 2 spawner sets and its S&E for me. Only the maggots were there so I went ahead and did the forge and found the river wp. The forge screwed me again with a stupid LEM, the charged boltress got a lamer KO, and the battle to get the hammer was really bad.
I started with 16 big purples and finished with only 5. Hephasto swaned PI/CI. Really really bad for me. This meant that only OW and my lightning damage were going to take effect on him. Fortuneatly using only my fists, i do 161 to 403 damage all from charms and duress. Tack on the 1 to 350 lightning on each wand and viola, excellent damage. The problem with Hephisto was that his aura whas blessed aim. He was not superfast like he is sometimes, but every swing, just about, landed and took 1/10th of my red bulb. This battle is usually a precurser to the ancients and this did not bode well for me. We shall soon see. This evening its on to tackle Diablo and laff at the OK's casting IM on me. I figure I will take 50 maybe 60 HP from each swing while IMed. Its going to be hard to continue to swing while IMed.