[1.D9c]Blue Death [naginata sin]

Original post by xfenix on the old forums (forumer).
Most formatting is lost.
-WolfieeifloW


Introduction

This character is a melee assassin based around speed. It runs fast, hits fast, kills fast and dies fast. Due to the sometimes extreme speed it is not very suitable for players unfamiliar with the mod, because you often need to know the abilities of mobs before they use them (and kill you). Also it is far from easy to control the char at its top speed. You have been warned.

The speed thing gets doubled at the end game if you want, as you will might get enough slow to freeze the world in its tracks.

Skills

There are 131 skillpoints you can get in the game so lets start with that. Another important thing to know is, that you can get +6 maximum skill levels (1 from toraja reward, 1 from classcharm, 2 from legacy of blood, 1 from moon of the spider and 1 from taha rw gloves). There is no reason why you shouldnt get them so lets count with it. Now to the actual skill distribution.

First of all, there is a bunch of core skills you always want to have: smaxed wotp and broadside, at least 7 points in QoB and 1 point in PB. The rest is pretty much optional, but there are 2 ways to do it: smax ways or get doom. To get doom, you smax crucify and dump remaining poinst to doom. This one is the more defensive way as doom's damage help you leech. The offensive one is to smax all 4 ways and broadside, spending the remaining points in SR, PB and QoB.

Ninja tree

Blink: 1 point - You need the transportation, not the stun so there is no reason to spend more points here.

Starburst: 1 point - shurikens are cool, but these doesnt carry weapon damage so you are not going to use them.

Premeditation: 1 point - +++all skills are going to take care of this. It also decreases your hades gate timer, which is cool but the returns are way too low for point investments. Could be used to sink points.

Rain of Bombs: 1 point - same as Starburst, just this time its bombs.

Perfect Being: 1+ points. Basically you want to be exactly at a breakpoint with your last skillpoint, so this changes with your gear. I got 61% with 2 points.

Bomb tree - nothing, cold lazer or how its called just isnt worth it.

Throwing tree

Scorpion blade: 1 point - prerequisite

Strom crows: 1 point - prerequisite

Wychwind: 1 point - on one hand it is prerequisite on the other hand it is a very useful skill to use on switch, because it wtf anihilates anything that steps on it (or doesnt run from it like death projector...). There is no reason to spend more points here through.

Rocket Blade: 1 point - prerequisite

Broadside: 24 points /smax/ - this skill is pure ownage. Since you will be using a melee weapon as a main attack, the penalty doesnt really matter. The use is to cast it virtually every time you can. Its the core skill of this build.

Ki tree
Way of the spider: 1 point or smax. If you are going doom's way, then you will need the points elsewhere. Otherwise there isnt a good reason to not smax this (the 1-3% avoid from PB or few %s from SR arent rly worth the points).

Shadow refugeee: 1-27 points - this is your bread and butter, high speed, damage reduction and +++dmg to attack. But, if you have enough ++allskills, you can get 40%+ dmg reduction with just a few points and since you will be using broadside + HG the most, the damage bonus isnt that important. Always keep it activated through - you need the dmg reduction.

Black lotus strike: 1 point - no, you are really not gonna be playing with poison.

Death Blossom: 1 point - you are a physical fighter so a melee caster skill isnt very appealing

Way of the Phoenix: 24 points /smax/ - its only a shadow of what it used to be. Mine is lvl62 and does 6944-10416, which really isnt much (it dealt about 2.5x this in its original form in 1.70).

Melee tree

Batstrike: 1 point - You may want to play around with these bats as they get all of your ways and PB. But I just dont like summons....

Crucify: 1 point or smax - your smaller packs/single bosses killer. If you are going for doom then smax, otherwise 1 point.

Queen of Blades: 7++ points - This is one of the potential point sink skills and my choice.

Hades Gate: 1 point - aoe with knockback on 1s timer. You are going to be using this a LOT. Basically every time you have timer here, use it. The downside is that additional points do absolutely nothing - it really doesnt matter if you hit 1.5x or 2x screens range.

Doom: 0-as many as you can. Note that even if you use it often, you dont really need to smax it as the additional soft points add rather little and you might want to use them on some ways.

Special tree
Uberskill:
Way of the Gryphon: smax. This skill is good again, yay. No reason to pick anything else.

Beacon - 0 points. This skill aint too bad because you can often cheese with it, but its not as good as the latest version of wotg.

Vampiric Icon: 0-1 points, this is a skill for casters who lack lifeleech. We have (a lot of) lifeleech so there is no use for this. It also has ND which tackles with naginata's splash.

Way of the Raven: 1 point or smax, the +cold spell dmg boosts Triune's cold dmg which is useful against QT and Astrogha. Also, if you dont really care about your survivability you may want more damage and this actually gives it.


To summarize it, you are supermaxing wotp, wotg and broadside while you spend 7+ points in qob and 1+ in PB and 1 to hades gate. Then you either smax both wots and wotr or crucify and doom. Spend the rest on sr/pb/qob.

Wyrd - The old build used it. You still might, but it collides with both HG and broadside so its usefulness is doubtful at the very best.
General Strategy

Play on /players 8. It makes you lvl faster and gives the wanted challenge to some places and on the opposite you may always drop it for a while if you dont feel like fighting your way through a dangerous are, so there is no reason you shouldnt use it. Just everytime you start the game, type /players 8. Note that against uberquests, unlike in normal game, you usually dont have the level advantage over the mobs so trying them on players 8 might be a wee bit too hard (or impossible, especially if its your first time going there)...

The general way to play is to lay down broadsides as fast as you can, jump around with hades gate as often as you can and what stuff with SR/crucify when you have timer running on both. Needless to say, always activate sr (it turns you blue when its activated, thats where the name comes from btw) - getting randomly killed by a row of random physical hits is definitely not something you would want.

Abuse your speed. Sr gives you great speed which gives you a huge advantage in the actual combat - if you die because you didnt move around and got hit by everything, its your fault...

Play smart. If you feel like you cant approach the mobs directly, then dont. You can always just run around and cast broadsides + hades gates as timer allows. HG knockbacks so it is safe to use and broadside fires on its own so you just lay it down, switch and enjoy.

Just a note, it is often much faster to restart the game than to try to recover your corpse...

Attributes

It total you will always get 610 attribute points (595 from level ups and 15 from quests) + you will get signets from set items disenchanting. So, to the distribution itself, you want dex for damage output, equipment requirements and shield block, str for requirements and vit for HP. You shouldnt need much str or en (100 str should suffice to be able to equip anything you can think of - there is nothing you cant equip as long as you craft yourself a decent -requirements jewel). The actual distribution between dex and vit is your call, the reasons to put into each of them are clear, a lot of people like to sink everything into vit and do well with it, I have put everything in dex and I like it.

Leveling and Equipment

What you wear is directly connected to what you level you are. So Im going to divide it into several parts.

Basics
You are a fragile melee fighter so there are quite a few things you will always want. They are str and dex attributes, +allskills, damage, hp, resists, defense and life/mana leech. You need the attributes to wear higher tier stuff, dmg to kill mobs faster, hp, defense and resists to survive and leeches to keep going. Just keep this in mind while choosing your equipment and you should be doing fine.

A special point comes when you get a decent supply of Ber runes, because now you will be able to craft the strongest part of your equipment - jewels. Generally you want at least 2 jewels - 1 with -requirements, so you can wear high tier stuff more easily and +5 to all attributes for the same reason. Another very good modifier is +life.

Early + mid game
Until you reach level 24, the best call is to get a Shedim rw claw (eld in claw). With 1 point in wots and 1 in batstrike you can kill almost everything with one or two novas. Ofc you might keep doing it a lot longer than just to 24... Generally the modifier you are looking for is +all skill levels, so go get it xD

When you reach 24, or a sooner or later, you might want to get yourself a naginata. You are going to use the weapon type for a long time, because the area effect attack is perfect for the normal game. Needless to say, unique naginata is the best you can get and thanks to the uptier recipe you can just keep upgrading it. Be careful about the dex requirements through.

Lategame + endgame
You will soon get to the point where you will want to do the uberquests (probably as soon as you reach destruction xD). I will explain the individual quests in a special section in this guide, but one thing is the same. For ubers, you will either need a lot more defense (read as slow, since thats the only defense you can get get) than for normal gameplay or you can cheese them.

When you do the easier uberquests your gear will further change thanks to the attribute bonuses from the ubercharms and also thanks to the stuff you drop. Generally you will want to have both a naginata and claw + shield ready (with throwing knife + shield on switch for both versions) . the claw is better for single targets and times when you got a hard time surviving w/o the shield.

Endgame equipment is totally dependant on what sacred uniques/high runes you have dropped/traded , just dont forget the basics .

Equipment

Now there are 2 paths to take. 1st one is to use the set, which is very good. The other one is SU/RW combination.

Weapon

You will actually need 3 weapons to fully utilize the chars potential.

The first one is naginata, for farming, leveling and generally for the big crowds and the most dmg output (often via wyrd) from the 3 weapons. Unique naginata is the way to go, with Ghal rw naginata being special, as it is better than a tiered unique naginata and worse than a sacred unique naginata. If you use the set then use the set one instead.

The second one is a claw, you wont need it until harder uberquests, because until you finish ac500 the block you get from shield is very small. There is a special claw - Triune rw. What makes it special is, that you wont be using it for general gameplay, but to snipe heroic bosses. It is good especially against QT and Astrogha.

The third one is the throwing knife on switch. For most of the game it doesnt matter, since after you use broadside/wychwind you switch back and it does the other weapons damage. The good knife here (if for whatever reason you want it) is a weird craft with as much weapon dmg and +allskills as possible.

Also Void RW is worth mentioning - you get infinite mana + huge slow + reanimates in exchange for some weapon damage.

Also note that using 2x judge claw for the Broadside + HG combo might actually be a very good item choice when you dont have a good naginata.
Shield
Sacred unique shields and crafted shields are the best options here. Whatever fits your need goes, The Gauntlet is particularly useful thanks to having 25% slow.

Body armor
This is an interesting slot, unless you got for the set, then its kinda obvious. There is a lot of possibilities otherwise. Albrechts Revenge - unique chain mail, is easy to obtain and has everything you need, defense, damage, elemental damage and low requirements. There are 3 more options for this slot however, Dragonheart rw armor, Mirage rw armor and Erawan rw armor. Dragonheart will give you a huge defense and much needed life boost, which makes it a very good choice against physical damage only uberquests (like rathmas square, fauzt, TA..etc). Mirage on the other hand, gives a very little defense but compensates it with high resists and movement speed, which makes it very good in elemental dmg oriented quests, like binding of bhaal and heroic levels. Erawan has huge damage reduction and a bunch of usefull affixes, which make it simply good.

Gloves, boots, helm and belt

First of all, you can just get a dex craft for each of these slots, it is especially good for gloves and boots. Leaving crafts aside:

With these spots your main aim should be to get high enough attributes to wear the best weapon/body armor possible.

With gloves Feather claw unique chain gloves are an obvious choice, giving speeds, dex and having little requirements. Then there is a lot of sacred unique gloves which beat them.

Boots are another easy choice, you cant get anything better than stats (while str > dex >>>> vit >>>>>> en), with this said unique heavy boots Death spur and Nephilim/Hibagon rw boots clearly stand above the rest.

Belt is a little tricky, here you can basically choose between Deadfall unique heavy belt aka str bonus and Wormtongue unique light belt aka dex bonus + lifeleech. In the end game there are 2 good rws for this - Ahriman and Truce. Whatever suits your needs.

Helm. This one is hard, Eidolon rw helm is cool, so is Wichhunters Hood and many other sacred uniques. But without access to these - before completing ac500 there isnt much for this slot. Cauldron rw helm isnt all that bad, but also isnt anything good either. Rare might be your best shot here. In the end game the choice is: +2 skills +100 maxdmg with eidolon vs +2skills +5% dmg reduction with Royal Circlet or +5% max resist +5% dmg reduction with Witchhunters Hood.

Jewelry
I am still convinced that upgraded Angel heart amulet has absolutely no competition for the slot. It has everything you need and low lvl requirement. Empyrean bands are back so you just might use them again. There is also the Seal of Nephalem Kings, which has very useful +2 allskills, but it has 120 required level so no MO's...

Challenges

You are going to all of them, there is no reason not to. I have already talked a bit about attribute challenges and I will talk about the rest in the uberquest section.

Ennead challenge
This one is easy, at lvl 72 (the cap is 80) the skellies pose no threat, so just go there and keep killing the necromancer until he drops what you need. You can most probably do it at a lot lower level. A little "trick" might make your time a lot easier. The necro on the right hand side isnt in the area of any totem, so using blink and shadow refugee you can rush directly to him and kill him with a broadside. Needless to say it might save a lot of your time.

Level challenge.
You can find the description on the main page under challenges. The important stuff is, that you dont gain xp in TA, so you can go there at 48 (last skillgaining level before the limit). If you can kill one priestess, you can kill the rest, so there is no reason to do just the one with requirement level 50 and leave the rest. General trick is, that when you cant hit them from the front (they hit hard), you run around and pound them with qob and cast broadside's/HGs. You also might want to poke them to activate sr from time to time. If you are well equipped (high tier on the unique naginata with which you can 1-shot them) you can simply overpower them unless there is a lot of them. Note that when you die it is usually much faster to start again than to attempt to get your corpse.

The Black Road challenge
The info about it is on the same page as for the level challenge. Most of them are "do this uberlevel", the exceptions are Trial of greed and Trial of blood. In the first one you need to amass money, which is easy. The second one is a wee bit tricky. You absolutely have to turn off qob to do it. You do it by getting to the lightning priestess, killing everything around her and pulling her to the entrance (you make tp on the way). Then you go to the wp, through town to the tp and repeat the same process with the cold priestess. Now that you have them together, there is nothing preventing you from killing them and cubing the charm for the reward. The detailed uberlevel overview will be done in the next section.

Uberlevels

There is a very nice descriptions of the uberlevels on the main page, so go here and read them Anyway, I will give detailed strategies how to do them. Some of them might get a lil bit more attention, because they are for the attribute challenges. About item farming, Khalimgrad, TA and fauzt are the places where you shine (in this order) so thats where you want to go for items....

If you are NOT interested in how to do ubers, because it would spoil your fun from the game, do NOT read the following sections.

Dungeon uberlevels

Creature of Flame
Use broadside and it will die.

Infernal machine
Activate sr before entering on some unlucky by-standing mob, run in, rush to the machine and try to kill it as fast as possible with crucify or wychwind. Should you fail (doesnt happen very often with wychwind), restart the game and try again.

Death Projector
Approach the projector from south, spam some wychwinds on it, switch in case your knife sucks, run around a bit and pickup the drops. Yoiu can park some mechanics around the level so you have an easier time killing it.

Azmodan
First of all you need resists, especially the fire one. Kali rw gloves come in very handy here, because they give you +max fire resist and possess spell. You need to get him to 1v1, parking his minions is a way to do it. Should you get asmo + a very few minions, possess them using the skill from kali. That will let you reduce the amount of mobs as you slowly clear most of the lvl. The alternative is to blink at his head and use broadside. Takes really low time to succeed/fail but will take a lot of tries. Note that restarting changes the spawns of monsters there, so you can repeat till you get some easier combination.

Rathma Square
This one isnt easy, you need to get Primus with as few crawlers around as possible. Restarting the game will eventually get you a good chance. The way to proceed is to kill everything you see till you get to primus, then rush him as soon as hes on the screen and dont forget to use broadside when you get close. There is no elemental damage, so your resists dont matter. You can also do the same thing as with asmodan - ignore everything and just get close enough to use broadside and get lucky.

Toraja
You need edyrems here, you get them from The Judgement Day summoning uberquest reward. This needs a little practice but isnt hard. Keep your edyrem up and proceed north to lilith. Kill everything/most of the stuff you meet, especially archers - they are annoying at the very least. Lilith summons morlu, which isnt a problem since naginata has aoe dmg - you kill all of the ones who have lost the shield at once. Once again, you can blink at her head and use broadside, restarting if edyrems dont hit her quickly enough or you get killed.

Cathedral of Vanity
This is one of the hardest ubers. The strategy is to park all of the nuns and inarius in the starting room or the upper right corner of the main room. Once you succeed in the parking you have essentially won, because you will be able to recover your corpse easily. Kill the ball, kill the priests, kill the nuns, kill inarius. In this order. Broadside on the ball might bring very good results very quickly, note that like in K3KBA its too small to hit with a direct wychwind. Also trying to make use of Kali rw's possess is be very helpful here as you dont need a 'perfect' park as it allows you to kill one or two lonely Nuns. Also, there is simply no way you can use this strategy if the ball has teleportation, so just restart if it does.

Summonig Uberquests

The butcher
Go there and kill him, should you be afraid of going head on, just run around untill qob kills him. Or just summon him on the beacon.

The Binding of Baal
Bhall transformation gives you sr level speed, so you dont even need to trigger it. There is no point in going head on. Just keep your distance and spam broadsides/HGs. The lower the timer the faster you do it. Note that if you have some basic skill in dodging projectiles, you dont need resists here despite the fact the enemies do elemental damage (you still have PB for a potential lucky shot). Or just summon them on the beacon.

Assault on Mount Arreat
Keep your distance, run around, cast broadsides/HGs, pickup drop. Or just summon him on the beacon.

Secret: Inarius' Revenge
Run around, cast broadsides/HGs, watch them die. Or just summon them on the beacon.

Judgement Day - first part
Walk around, drink pots as they hit you. As soon as the angel summons, blink-rush him. He has low hp so he should die in almost an instant.

Akarat
Do NOT try to tank them. Run around, cast broadsides/HGs, pickup drop. If you end up with lone akarat, just summon another batch. Or just summon them on the beacon.

Legacy of Blood
Use some minions - Dar-Al-Harb rw sin shield for minion oskills (+edyrem) and take him head on using your army and broadsides. Or just summon him on the beacon. While the minions take the initial (and the last) attack they make.

Lord Aldric Jitan
Go kill the minotaurs at the entrance. Now at their place summon him and quickly run through the port to town. Wait for the timer to reset. Now enter through the main entrance and bomb them from afar by broadsides/HGs. Since they are in a closed area with a narrow entrance, they wont mass run after you but only a few at a time will get out. Pick them one by one. Should Jitan himself get baited. Kill the ones who came with him, then pull him to the portal, there he should be far enough from the guardsmen so he will loose the immunity shield. Note that after every guardsman killed you might need to go to the town for singularity and towers to disappear. There is a little problem here as the guards can for some reason survive the beacon without getting really hurt.


Judgement Day - the second part
Nothing to beacon here.. so now you need minions. Edyrem you have from the medailon you have obtained when you were here for the first time should do the job. Dar-Al-Harb rw sin shield will give some more should you want them. Now go to the stairs leading to the jail and summon them next to it. Tank them with minions till the first angel appears, remember its name and run through jail-tp-wp back. Now by approaching slowly you will aggro the spirits but not the angel. Resummon your army and tank them till another angel appears. If it is the same one, kill it and continue tanking, if it is the other one, kill it and rush the second angel, hide in the jail from spirits and cube the medailon. This needs some practice.

Uberlevels

Island of the Sunless Sea
Go in, kill everything you see and pickup the ton of gold they drop.

Tran Athulua
Spam broadsides/HGs and watch them die. Slow + leeches will make you invulnerable as long as you are hitting something. This will be your main place to farm for quite some time (or not, depending how quickly you get used to duncraig), thanks to the unique bias (and yes it IS better than k3kba).

Khalimgrad
Go in and kill them. Naginata is THE perfect weapon here, high leech will make you invulnerable.

Fauztinville
The hardest part is getting through the heroic level before it. I will get to it later so now to the Fauztinville itself.
Spam broadsides/HGs. Blockrate from shield will make you tough, slow will make you very tough, leech you get from neon knights and harpylisks will make you invincible. Just be careful around necrobots - you dont leech from them so you will need to dodge their projectiles/drink pots while you dont have enough neons/harpys around.

Kingdom of Shadow
First you need to get to the bridge, this is the tricky part as the punisher turrets you use to trigger sr spawn randomly. You might need a few tries to get to the bridge. If you are unfamiliar with the quest, run it through on hatred to remember the way. Generally you start in the top left corner and run to the bottom right corner, its more right than bottom since it isnt a square. Once you get to the bridge, the part with the trick comes. The trick is EXTREMELY effective, so once again, if you dont want the uberquest spoiled, skip it.

The trick is that you go to the town, summon edyrem + whatever summons you might have. Return, immediately blink and tp back to town. This way you will get to the other side of the bridge absolutely safe, it needs a LOT of bad luck to get killed in the process. Once you get to khan you kill him and pickup the pile.

Kurast 3000 BA
This level sucks. Immunity shield completely owns you, because your tanking is totally dependant on leech and you dont leech anything from immune monsters. Combine it with the monsters having both elemental and physical damages high and you are up for a problem. You should have the strategy down from the ennead challenge. Also wychwind is ineffective because it doesnt harm the totem if you hit it directly and doing it by hitting a nearbly skelie is annoying at best. The "rush for the right necro" cheese still works, so getting the hammer isnt that much of a problem. Luckily you need sacred uniques way more than set items, so you dont need to come here aside from getting the hammer.

Duncraig
You need to move around a lot, because both the barrels and poison clouds are instagibs. There is also a relatively lot of physical immunes, which makes the level a wee bit tough. There is nothing (aside from Assur xD) that broadsides/HGs cant kill, you stick with them. The level will get a lot easier once you get used to it. Since there is a big sacred bias, this is THE best place to farm for sacred uniques.

Heroic levels
The exact combination of the mobs is more or less unique every time you enter. You can get both easy ones and lolhard ones (darksisters + bloodbrothers + stormscourges + venom spitters is a VERY good combo). Because of the uncertainty you need both physical defense and resists to survive here. You will need to stay away and spam broadsides/HGs.

Vizjun
This one actually isnt easy. There are 2 ways to do it. First you can just play your usual max dmg loadout and get 75% slow (the set is good for this). You are effectively a 2 shot, but if you advance slowly with broadsides and HGs, the slowed mobs will simply not get a chance to 2 shot you...

The other way is to pick either a shield and 50% DR on equipment (you really wont get much dmg with 50% dr + sr activated) and simply rush it.

Ghosts of Old Bremmtown
This is by far the hardest challenge the game has to offer. You need absolutely top equipment and you can still fail easily. You need to use edyrems (+reanimates) to bait the ghosts, so they dont jump directly on your head. There are 2 problems here: one bad step/unlucky pb or both and you are down. The second problem is the 3 minute timer, which isnt easy because you need to use the baits.

Heroic superbosses and secret boss
You need a special strategy for those, which I wont tell you. Difficulty depends on how good the strategy is

note: gl killing brother laz xD