Insane win: Shalore Corruptor

[bpat]

Blightmage

After abandoning this character for a few weeks since I didn't think I could kill Elandar, I finally decided to end my run. Overall, until the final battle, I found this Corruptor much easier than my other Insane winner, a Shalore Marauder. This is because I didn't have to deal with some issues that melee characters do, such as highly armored enemies or enemies with high defense (like Gorbat and Grushnak). I also found my damage to be good enough to take down most enemies before my Bone Shield broke, so I didn't worry much about dying except against some enemies like Vor and The Master.

I found a nice t4 warding wand and I used it pretty much to the end of the game, since it made my biggest threats (Orc High Pyromancers and Cryomancers) do nothing to me. Between Draconic Will, Bone Shield, Rune of Reflection, and my warding wand I was nearly invincible. The only enemy outside High Peak that posed a serious threat was Vor, who I kited for a very long time until he ran out of mana (lol), at which point I just killed him.

My category points went to Bone, inscription, inscription, and Shadowflame in that order. I'm still not sure if Shadowflame was a better choice than Survival since I only got 1/5 Charm Mastery from escorts, but the global speed helped a lot and Wraithform helped with kiting, especially in High Peak. My inscription setup was Movement, Movement, Regeneration, Heroism, and Rune of Reflection until the final battle, at which point I swapped my last three inscriptions for two Lightning Runes and a Controlled Phase Door Rune since I couldn't survive a single hit from Elandar once Bone Shield broke.

For prodigies, I took Cauterize and Draconic Will. Draconic Will was essential for keeping my Bone Shield up and Cauterize was great too, although I could have gone Swift Hands if I decided to unlock Survival and it would have probably gone fairly well (I found the Temporal Augmentation Robe but no Murderblade), but overall I'm happy with my choice of prodigies and category points.

The final battle was absolutely brutal compared to the rest of the game. Both my deaths occured in this fight. Elandar got Blinding Speed which with Essence of Speed brought him to over 400% global speed. Argoniel had 106% resist all and took forever to kill. The only reason I managed to kill Argoniel at all was because I died outside of Elandar's line of sight so I could kite Argoniel safely, and even then he took forever, at least 100 turns. I then used spellpower on critical items to get my spellpower to about 97, which was enough to let me stick Burning Hex on Elandar, and then I removed his Essence of Speed with dispersal gloves. I got a lucky stun with Catalepsy after a Blood Spray (turns out Blood Spray ignores spell save, which is good because Elandar had over 130 spell save but less than 80 physical save) and then killed him just in time, with my Bone Shield reduced to only two charges.

Like my Marauder run, this was very stressful but even more fun and satisfying.

[Marson]

Wow, very nice. Given my habit of falling into habit, I'd be happy with a run like that on normal.