Thursday (12 July) - The Final Stretch

Thursday (12 July) - The Final Stretch

Barbed reached level 59 on Wednesdaynight and is now sporting two legendaries. The AoE nasties have gotten quite deadly, though, and that has started to slow down my progress. Barbed picked up a second legendary two-hand to test out. This one greatly increased my DPS and crit, but at considerable cost in health. I was hoping the increasing amount of "all resistance" gear I've accumulated would keep Barbed alive. If it was just AoE damage, I think I would have been fine. However, too many elites with too many stuns/freezes/etc kept Barbed in harm's way far too long. I went back to the other 2-hander.

The gear available at level 59 has not been very impressive, so the grinding will be slow until some better gear shows up on the Auction House. The gear dropped by mobs has been useless for anything but selling for a long time now. Finding a great piece of gear that you fought long and hard for is one of the pleasures of the game, and not having that is a major downside.

The level 60 gear looks better, but I'm not sure if Barbed will ever wear any of it. If he makes level 60 before reaching the end of Hell level, I'm sure he'll stock up on some level 60 gear for the final battle with Diablo. I don't plan on trying to complete the fourth and final level, Inferno. Once Barbed reaches level 60, and he kills Diablo at Hell level, I will be done with Diablo.

Thursday update: Barbed has gotten less and less happy with his 2-hander as the mobs have gotten progressively tougher. The slow attack speed reduced the number of health pots dropping and resulted in fewer hits which reduced my Life per hit stats, both of which are essential for survival. My last set of dual weapons were around 250 DPS each, which would not do, particularly since the 2-hander was at 461 DPS. I picked up a pair faster 1-handers with over 400 DPS each. The combined might of both raised the overall DPS to around 8900 (vs the 2-hander combined 8800). Everything else was on the plus side as well, and Barbed went back at it. Things were going well until Barbed came upon a pack of hulking phasebeasts. These four plus a blue elite were not the normal sort, which I've seen before and have been able to bring them down. I had just entered a circular cavern through a portal and there was only one way to go. The beasts were in my way.

I attacked. The phasebeasts immediately acquired bubbles (shields) around each that gave them complete immunity to my attacks. If I can't hit it, I can't heal, and Barbed died fast. I went at them a dozen times. There's no way around them, and it's impossible to get away from them by running through them. They are as fast as Barbed. The beasts also drop poison so I can't just stand and try to break the dang shields, either. They hang around just outside the portal. I've drawn them away a couple of times, but never far enough to leave room to get past them. I don't know how long it would it take to break a shield, but my full focus on one of them, and using my 2 minute cooldown nuclear attack (Earthquake) didn't kill it, either. I was able to kill the non-bubble protected elite, but not the stupid phasebeasts.

I read up on these monsters, trying to find a way to take them down. In every case I looked at, those shields do drop regularly. The ones I faced NEVER dropped their shields except when my Enchantress crowd controlled one. But I couldn't kill them in the short time of the CC, and they immediately restored their shields. Other posters have said this particular type of mob is among the top five in difficulty to kill.

It's funny. I also read about players skipping some mob packs that were too hard to deal with. I've never skipped a battle, and clear every dungeon. Until now. And I can't skip them, because I have no way around them. Well, I won't skip them, but I bet I know another way. I exited the game, then came back in. I then backed up one dungeon level before the encounter with the phasebeasts, cleared that level, and re-entered the phasebeast plagued level. As I'd hoped, when I returned to the Heart of the Damned dungeon level where I had been stymied, Diablo gave me a whole different set of mobs to engage. Oh, there were still plenty of hulking phasebeasts around - they just weren't shielded ones. Barbed cleared it out and is now in Areat Crater #2. I have no idea where that is in relation to how close I am to the Diablo encounter, but I think I'm still a ways away from that. Barbed is about halfway to level 60.