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[Aklyon]

A note about scion-getting: If you have a scion in your party, the scion (unlock) won't appear.

[Descan]

I joined the beta about a year and a half ago. Computer couldn't run it well, now it can, guess they did a shit-tonne of optimization.

Anyway, I'm playing a Ranger, trying for a good-old-fashioned speedy crit-heavy dodger~

Then I might try a tanky necromancer templar, because I can. Are they summons for mage/archer skeletons and such? Something I can summon and can dish out damage while I'm taking the hits? That'd be nice~

[Bormok, God of Mud]

From what I've seen, ranged minions are in short supply. There are Skeletons and Zombies which are melee, then there are Spectres which function like whatever corpse you animate did in life (think Revives from Diablo II), so Spectres can be ranged.

[kcwong]

From what I've seen, ranged minions are in short supply. There are Skeletons and Zombies which are melee, then there are Spectres which function like whatever corpse you animate did in life (think Revives from Diablo II), so Spectres can be ranged.

And boy, they are awesome. Link your summon spectre with LMP, faster cast, fork, chain and the likes. There are some notable candidates for spectres - act 3 tentacle miscreation, voidbearer, flame sentinel and the new devourer.

The snakes look good on paper but I find them too fragile, and they like to enter melee range before shooting. Having a Blackguard mage cast lightning thorns on your minions is pretty great too.

[Aklyon]

The problem with spectres is you only can have two (uniques probably give you a couple more), when you can have (effectively) infinite skeletons if they die too fast and around 7 or so zombies. Animate Guardian is the only minion gem with less minions.

[nenjin]

Yeah, at least on paper, I find spectres pretty underwhelming.

[Biowraith]

So the game doesn't seem to cope very well with frequent fast movement. 

I've been running a dual daggers Shadow, and since I've mostly been focusing on offense so far I've been relying on Whirling Blades as a sort of active defense (for those unfamiliar: it's basically a teleport type skill where you rush forward and damage anything in your path).  Not just firing it once to get out of a sticky situation mind, but spamming it back and forth repeatedly as a standard tactic. 

When it works, it's great, enemies die, I don't.  Plus it's kinda fun visually, a sort of Nightcrawler-esque port fu: warp in, stabbity the annoying necromancer, then immediately warp over to the archers and stabbity them, then warp all over the melee guys in a blur.

But as I say the game doesn't seem to cope with it very well: despite my latency being consistently under 50ms, when I use Whirling Blades more than a once or twice in succession (and sometimes once or twice is enough) I guess I desync, because it stops registering hits on the enemies I 'whirl' over, and worse I start rubber banding something fierce and have died more than once due to warping out of danger, only for the game to throw me back into certain death (including one occasion where I narrowly escaped a horde of those suicide bomber guys, and the game helpfully rubberbanded me back into their midst right as they exploded).

I'm hoping this is just teething troubles and it'll improve with time, but from what I gather desyncing has been a long-standing problem, unrelated to individual connection quality, so I may have to shelf the Shadow

[Aklyon]

There are people who use /oos macros (or just /oos itself) if they have major desync problems, but otherwise its just desync.

[Biowraith]

I'll need to give that a try, see if I can salvage the character - it's definitely not a problem I've had in anywhere near the same severity on other characters.  But the times it frustrates me the most are the ones where I doubt that'd help - I don't realise I've desynced until I'm a bloody mess on the spot I thought I'd teleported out of.

[Karkov]

Yeah, the desyncing is a pretty fickle beast, and she haaates squishy characters.  My poor ranger has been the victim of many a teleport fragging, of course that's pretty much a given when you have 600 health in Act 3 Cruel. 

I miss the days of open beta, there wasn't as much desync back in those days.  Or at least it didn't affect me or my friends nearly as much as it does nowadays.

[Descan]

...

Note to self: Get more health. >_>

[Aklyon]

...

Note to self: Get more health. >_>

Either get more health or stack up on ES. Also have resists as much as you can.

[Karkov]

All very good pieces of advice.  Energy shield is great at taking hits, and regens fast when you run away from enemies long enough. 

If you're playing a marauder, a fun build is to get tons of life, regen, and two Blood Magic support gems.  At that point you practically have infinite mana (you use your own life for skills instead of mana), and can use two auras if you get one reduced mana gem (and level it up).  It's been one of the more effective builds for me insofar, I've died about twice due to extenuating circumstances and I'm in Act 2 Cruel.  Comparatively to my ranger who died about once per instance, unless I was in an area twelve levels below me (even then it was still pretty dodgy).

ES seems to be a really good alternative to strength stacking; haven't had the chance to mess with it yet but I've seen it in action.

[Aklyon]

ES requires CI to deflect chaos damage, though.

[Karkov]

Bleh, chaos damage.  Great when you're using Viper Strike or Added Chaos Damage, the greatest incarnation of evil otherwise (although I wouldn't mind trying out that one unique chestplate when I get my regen slightly higher).