Diablo II & me
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Lady Isis-ofJANG
Created in early October 2000, young Isis aspired to be everything Nepthys was, but better. She did quite well, with her overall stats and fighting prowess (for her given level) growing roughly 15 levels ahead of her elder sister. She followed in Nepthys' footsteps with high vitality for excellent survivability, but skipped the gemmed pavise, topping off her natural strength at 65.
History
A spoiled brat from the start, Isis' first complete wardrobe consisted of the following:
- Stone of Jordan (2)
- Face of Horror (+20 str)
- Twitchthroe (mainly for the +str)
- Ume's Lament
- Treads of Cthon
- Nightsmoke
- Rare gothic shield (+life, +mana)
- Frostburns/Magefists (depending upon the situation)
- Eye of Etlich (with a whopping 3% lifesteal!)
As soon as she could, she ditched the ugly unique mask for a nice dual perf. sapphire skull cap which gave her +43 mana and stayed on her head until lvl 39, whence she graduated to good rare crowns. In only her second game she was able to join a party that was fighting Andariel and thus moved on to Act II at the ridiculously low level of 10. She went on to level up twice in the first room of the Act II Sewers alone!
Isis didn't follow the most common newbie advice given in the Sorceress Tower -- to max out Warmth as early as possible. She went for high Static Field at the expense of Warmth, using annoyingly unsatisfying light mana potions from time to time. Pumping up Static, though, allowed Isis to often refill her life & mana orbs by simply levelling up because she was making kills so fast.
The young sorc experimentally put a point into Fire Ball (and the unfortunate Fire Bolt prereq.) and let +skill items pump it up to lvl 6 or 7. Fire Ball is actually quite a potent spell as proved by a hacked non-realm version of the character with maxed Fire Ball, maxed Fire Mastery and lvl 1 Orb tearing through hell/hell at lvl 75. However, this unorthodox style required constant switching between Orb to slow monsters, Static to hurt them, Fire Ball to finish most of them, Glacial Spike (GS) to control the fire immunes, and Teleport to control crowd formations. In the end, the extra keyboard work made the fire projectile spells just a bit too much to handle. There go two wasted skill points. Ah, well. No big deal.
Sometime between lvls 22 and 25, Isis bumped her cast rate up to 8 fpc (frames per cast) with the addition of a fast cast +55 mana 49% lightning resist ring. By this time an upgrade from a fast cast +resists +dex amulet to a similar one with +1 sorc skills had already made up for the skill boost she would lose by taking off one Stone of Jordan. Additionally, by this time she had enough mana to ditch Frostburns forever in favor of Magefists.
At lvl 30, Isis again departed from the status quo by initially keeping her Cold Mastery (CM) one level above her Frozen Orb (FO). This worked far better than expected, allowing her to be extremely thrifty with mana. The reasoning here is that since most of the damage a sorceress deals comes by way of Static Field anyway, why artificially pump up the damage of your FO when it's only going to drain your mana orb at a ridiculous rate? Keeping Orb arbitrarily one point below CM actually created a nice equillibrium. Isis was able to cast FO quite frequently, thus keeping all monsters on the screen chilled and slowed, while also squeezing the most damage she could out of each cast. Not until the dreaded realm of diminishing returns (skill levels over 10) did Isis break this pattern.
Nepthys had been a party girl in her younger days and gleefully (and constantly) hitched rides with higher-level folk. A rude awakening came when she hit Hell difficulty at level 34 and began to be systematically pinned, slaughtered, flayed and quartered by skeleton archers. Isis, on the other hand, went solo all the way, questing in public games with names like "8ppl exp GOGO" and "10ppl lvl fast." Never missing a stride, Isis hit Hell at lvl 45 and kept on going like nothing had changed. By this time she had slapped on a 3 perf. diamond ("3D") gemmed gothic shield (she figured towers are overplayed?) and had maxed her lightning resist. Nepthys had once maxed all resists in Hell, but eventually slacked off in this regard in favor of vitality- and energy-enhancing items which more than made up for the slightly higher elemental damage she would receive. Isis learned from this experience and again chose the 3D shield route to keep her item options wide open without having to worry about tradeoffs between +mana/+life and +resists.
Isis levelled in the Hell difficulty Canyon of Magi for awhile and then moved straight up to Act 4. Since then, she's been avoiding annoying Doom Casters and hunting juicy Venom Lords while working hard to hide Izual from the myriad higher-level barbarians who try to steal him from her in nearly every game. (You have to wonder why barbs, the easiest characters to level, always run frantically to leech experience off of other players they see on their minimaps.)
Stats
Skills
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