Chaos and IM spam

[synx]

How do you act 2 infinity sorcs deal with the sheer amount of IM spam?

Can burn through all seals/bosses in under a minute... if I don't get chain IM spammed every screen.

This turns a 45 second run into a 5 minute affair of TP, res, IM, TP, res, IM repeat ad infinitum.

It seems the only option is to make an infinity in a plain scythe, and keep the real one for the two unbreakables.

Any other opinions here? And no, making a trash hammerdin is not an option.

[UberB]

Frankly the best option is to make infinity in a low damage polearm. You were probably unlucky in that chaos run. Sometimes those dastardly OK's like to spam it, other times it doesn't even come up. Or maybe just once or twice.

If you don't want to make another Infinity you can take your merc's weapon off, kill the two seals, leave the Vizier's seal for the last, take out any OK's in the vicinity and then let your merc equip Infinity. With all the nearby OK's dead your merc won't die and you can kill the Grand Vizier and his boys safely.

[Dirkw]

Walk in front of your merc and CL the dk's as soon as you can. It's not a 100% reliable theory, but it seems that the OK's cast IM when you are going into melee with them or their companions. Only very rarely, like 10% of the time, do they just seem to cast IM for the heck of it.
So walk in front of your merc and take the first curse they cast (which typically seems to be Lifetap, maybe because they've been hit by CL?). It's usually safe after that, and you can carefully tp around from there.

I don't exactly understand the OK's AI yet, but I have found that the above works and my merc rarely dies CS'ing.

[synx]

Walk in front of your merc and CL the dk's as soon as you can. It's not a 100% reliable theory, but it seems that the OK's cast IM when you are going into melee with them or their companions.

I was trying this approach out last night, and it seems to be the only one that works most of the time.


ISO : Infinity in a bow :rolleyes:

[Spectrus]

I just take the Infinity off my merc (keep him around though) and use it on my sorc. I don't know how viable that is for most sorcs, since maybe most sorcs go greedy on their strength and dex. But I keep it on the sorc unless something spawns unbreakable LI, then I kill everything else and give it back to him. Stuff tends to die fast enough anyway that he doesn't usually take much damage.

[sirpoopsalot]

I don't exactly understand the OK's AI yet, but I have found that the above works and my merc rarely dies CS'ing.

From what I've learned, it's actually quite simple AI - it's just that when you get multiple OK's in one place, all of the combined cursing becomes kindof chaotic.

Basically, it goes like this:

- When you get within a close enough distance to "wake up" an OK, it will curse you. This distance is somewhere around one ~screen.
- If you don't "wake up" additional OK's, then that's the curse you're stuck with...
- ... except when you get near to melee range of the OK (within about 1/3rd of the screen), in which case they'll cast Decrepify
- an OK that has cursed you will not cast another curse until the first curse expires (unless you enter into melee range, of course)


so, the strategy for fighting OK's can basically be two things:
1. keep moving and waking them up until you get hit with a "favourable" curse (weaken, lifetap, etc) - then stop moving and staying as still as possible while you attack.
2. tele-bomb the OK's aggressively... keeping your merc just out of range for a melee attack while he's IM'ed, but keeping yourself close enough to the OK to get hit with Decrepify. Often you'll need to teleporting "in place" 3-4 times to use this strategy.

Obviously it can be dangerous to stand in the midst of a swarm of raging monsters, so strategy #1 can be tough to maintain. And the problem with strategy #2 is that you're often moving just enough to "wake up" an OK that's often a ~screen away - resulting in that OK overwriting whatever curse you've already been hit with.

... personally, with a sorc, I prefer the 2nd strategy (since sorcs are fragile, and telebombing means you can at least take an OK to the grave with you). Unfortunately, there's no win-all solution (that I've learned).