First Nightmare win - HIgher Necro
Posted: Mon May 19, 2014 9:22 pm
http://te4.org/characters/4806/tome/6e8 ... 838a259a2f
I enjoyed my last necro so much I rolled right into Nightmare with a new one. Sometimes, though, when you try to apply lessons learned on Normal to Nightmare, there's a little slippage.
5 deaths - one before level 24, one fake "death" when he drowned himself in Last Hope to become a lich, and 3(!) on High Peak in the final fight. I'd never made to High Peak before on Nightmare and I had never bothered closing the portals before on Normal. My typical strategy took advantage of frequent resting to reset the long cooldowns on Nightfall spells and Highborn's Bloom, and I basically cruised from level 24 all the way through High Peak without any serious challenges. On High Peak, though, the portals left me nowhere to hide and I got shredded. I finally got desperate enough to realize I needed a new strategy - in retrospect, if I'd ran over with my boots of the hunter and squashed the Demon Gate ASAP I probably would have been fine, but, live and learn! Or, you know, die three times in a row and then learn... just happy I learned before I ran out of lives, nothing quite like losing right at the end.
I had been a little disappointed in Grave spells on Normal difficulty, so I played a fairly minimalist necro for my Nightmare run as proof of concept - just Nightfall spells, Create Minions, Forgery of Dusk, Impending Doom, and Channel Staff as main offensive tools, backed up with Surge of Undeath and Essence of the Dead. I wanted to keep my forgery focused on really strong spells. Very few creatures survived the alpha strike, and so I liked this approach all game... until High Peak, where I really missed Vampiric Gift. I could easily have done with only 3 in Aura Mastery , 1 in Circle of Death, and 2 in Essence of the Dead, which would have made room for Grave at 1-1-1-5. With Dark Empathy 5 and 100% stun resist the minions wouldn't have been that inconvenienced by forgery Cold Flames, and the ability to combine healing with attacking would have really helped, as would having Cold Flames grinding away on Bone Shield round-in-round-out.
Still, a win on Nightmare is a win on Nightmare.
I enjoyed my last necro so much I rolled right into Nightmare with a new one. Sometimes, though, when you try to apply lessons learned on Normal to Nightmare, there's a little slippage.
5 deaths - one before level 24, one fake "death" when he drowned himself in Last Hope to become a lich, and 3(!) on High Peak in the final fight. I'd never made to High Peak before on Nightmare and I had never bothered closing the portals before on Normal. My typical strategy took advantage of frequent resting to reset the long cooldowns on Nightfall spells and Highborn's Bloom, and I basically cruised from level 24 all the way through High Peak without any serious challenges. On High Peak, though, the portals left me nowhere to hide and I got shredded. I finally got desperate enough to realize I needed a new strategy - in retrospect, if I'd ran over with my boots of the hunter and squashed the Demon Gate ASAP I probably would have been fine, but, live and learn! Or, you know, die three times in a row and then learn... just happy I learned before I ran out of lives, nothing quite like losing right at the end.
I had been a little disappointed in Grave spells on Normal difficulty, so I played a fairly minimalist necro for my Nightmare run as proof of concept - just Nightfall spells, Create Minions, Forgery of Dusk, Impending Doom, and Channel Staff as main offensive tools, backed up with Surge of Undeath and Essence of the Dead. I wanted to keep my forgery focused on really strong spells. Very few creatures survived the alpha strike, and so I liked this approach all game... until High Peak, where I really missed Vampiric Gift. I could easily have done with only 3 in Aura Mastery , 1 in Circle of Death, and 2 in Essence of the Dead, which would have made room for Grave at 1-1-1-5. With Dark Empathy 5 and 100% stun resist the minions wouldn't have been that inconvenienced by forgery Cold Flames, and the ability to combine healing with attacking would have really helped, as would having Cold Flames grinding away on Bone Shield round-in-round-out.
Still, a win on Nightmare is a win on Nightmare.