Rogue Revival: Svava


I played as Svava during the Rogue Revival team variant; the name "Svava" was the name of one of the Valkyries in Norse Mythology, which seemed appropriate for this project. I had barely played any Diablo II in years before taking part of this group; I did play a lot of the game when it was released in 2000, but virtually everything I knew had been changed in later patches. I bought the expansion pack specifically for Rogue Revival and was learning as I went as far as that went. My largest gripe with D2 had always been with the low quality of the average online player; if you've ever spent any time in public games, you'll know what I mean. After meeting up with the Realms Beyond group in early 2002 while playing Civ3, I had gone back and read through some of the Realms Beyond Diablo content and always wished that I could have taken part in group ventures like Sirian's Elemental Strike Teams. Rogue Revival gave me the chance to experience legitimate team play along side expertly talented players, and it was fun from start to finish. I'm very glad that I was able to take advantage of the opportunity.

My goal for Svava going into Rogue Revival was to build a durable character who could swap between ranged attack with the bow or go over to melee as the situation demanded. I planned to take strength to around 100 to be able to use most weapons and armors; since half of all points were required to go into dexterity, and as a Red Rogue I was prohibited from adding to energy, that meant everything else by definition would end up in vitality. That high strength ended up getting me several nice donations of weapons and armor from the other players (more on that in a minute), and I had to take the strength much higher than I expected to wear my endgame armor. Such is life.

The columns are divided between melee setup (left) and bow setup (right). Almost all of the damage done by Svava came from Enchant; she was doing only about 200 or so physical damage and the rest was fire. I expect that that was the same for the other Rogues as well. All the dexterity got the attack rating up to crazy levels, but the monster to-hit still was only around 65-70%, and that still doesn't factor in the monsters' innate blocking abilities. In short, Svava still missed a heck of a lot when fighting (Attack Rating and Defense are both just horribly broken in D2). The dexterity did get my blocking percentage up to a permanent 75% though, which was good. For all that defense, most enemies still had about a 60% chance to hit Svava in Hell. See my above comment on AR and defense.

I tried to emphasize getting a lot of life on Svava; I hate dying, and one of the best ways to avoid doing that is to get a lot of life. Resistances are big for me too; I managed to get all of them to 75% (except poison, the least-important one) with both shield and bow setup by the end of the game. Most of the time in Hell I had the resists at max with the shield but not with the bow. Not pictured here is the 60% Faster Hit Recovery gear that Svava was wearing at all times in Hell; I'm a huge fan of faster hit recovery and it's a big reason why I was often able to get out of situations that killed other Rogues. Playstyle was another factor there; knowing that some of the other Rogues were more aggressive than me, I would often try to make sure that I got out of a portal alive so that we could re-establish somewhere else with at least ONE Rogue having their gear intact. To my own surprise, I ended up with the most experience at the end of Rogue Revival - not from dying the least, but from allowing others to do the extremely dangerous job of setting up portals in insecure areas. Teleport, naturally, was also a huge help in staying alive.

I was always a huge fan of the Cold skills tree for Sorceresses in D2, so I picked my Rogue skills to go along with that. I figured that Frost Nova would be helpful in situations where we needed to hit all of the enemies at once; the damage would be inconsequential, but the important thing was to get the enemies chilled. In the same vein, I took Glacial Spike as my secondary skill to have some freezing power on hand, knowing that there would be many situations where we would need to dispose of corpses. Frost Nova proved very useful throughout Normal and Nightmare, but the chill length became so short in Hell that I stopped using it there. Glacial Spike came into its own in Hell; the monsters became so fast that we needed its power often to make any progress at all, and without freezing corpses we couldn't do anything against shamans or greater mummies. I would have liked to take Glacial Spike to level 10 (max allowed for the variant), but that would have required taking Frost Nova to level 20, and by the time we started Hell I didn't have enough skill points remaining to do that. I didn't point more than the one point into Cold Mastery because my cold spells were never about doing damage, just freezing/chilling the targets, and it wouldn't do anything to help that. I somehow doubt that the enemies were scared of the 40 or so damage that my Glacial Spike was doing in Hell, but it was still freezing them for about a second, and that was what mattered. I went with Chilling Armor to see if it was worthwhile compared to Frozen or Shiver Armor, and no - it's not. The conventional wisdom is right on that one.

As far as Fire skills go, all Rogues were required to max Enchant, so a bunch of points went into that. Since Enchant gets a damage boost from Warmth, and the mana regeneration rate certainly didn't hurt, I decided I might as well max that as well. Towards the end of the game in Hell, I decided I didn't have enough skill points remaining to get Glacial Spike to a decent level (since 2 points would have to go into Frost Nova for every 1 in Glacial Spike), so I stuck the extra ones into Fire Mastery for the extra boost to Enchant damage. Not the most complicated thought process there... The only Lightning skills I had were a point in Teleport and a prerequisite point in Telekinesis.

Rather than type out the stats for all of Svava's gear, I decided to be lazy and take screenshots of them instead, then make a collage. Sue me. Svava's melee weapon was the Unique Divine Scepter, which dropped in the jungles of Act Three Nightmare and was donated to me by one of the other Rogues since I had the strength to use it. I eventually socketed it with a jewel that increased the attack speed, but not until the very end of Hell. The shield was donated from Sirian when he upgraded to something better; I though that the shield looked plenty good to me! I used my Normal socket quest on that and stuck a perfect diamond in it for the extra resists. The armor was a Smoke runeword on a Loricated Mail (VERY high strength requirement, but great modifiers and defense). I used a different Smoke runeword armor through Hell Acts One and Two, then swapped to this after it dropped in Hell Act Three. My helmet was another unique that dropped in Act Two Hell and had too many useful abilities on it to pass up (especially the Faster Run, since I only had 10% on my boots). I socketed that as well and stuck an Ort rune in it. Imagine that, I actually got good use out of all three socket quests!

Gloves had increased attack speed and some fire resist on it; everything else was just gravy. I got them sometime in Nightmare and used them for a very long time. The boots I think may have been from Normal; I used a Cube formula to upgrade them from a normal base to an exceptional armor. They only had 10% Faster Run, but everything else was excellent, and I was able to cover the speed with my helmet. I used a bunch of different belts throughout the game, then finally went to this one for the life boost once I had enough resists from other gear. My rings are junk and do little other than provide strength to use the Smoke armor (I gambled a bazillion rings and never got anything useful). Amulet is a non-descript resist-provider.

Feel free to laugh at that bow. I decided to go with a bow that was low on damage, high on defensive bonuses. Since more than 80% of the damage was coming independently from Enchant anyway, why not? Thus I've got Knockback and Terror runes in there, a Cold Resist Jewel , and a faster attack jewel. I was still waiting for something worthwhile to drop for the last spot when we completed the three-dot run. Ah, well - maye I'll still find something for Friendly Fire mode.

Some of the things that I'll always remember from Rogue Revival... The Countess Quest in Nightmare was the first real setback the team ran into, and the chest failing to open at the end was hilarious. Slogging through endless tombs in Act Two... especially the night we fought twenty bosses in three False Tombs and took over four hours to finish. Or how about the amazing struggle in the Claw Viper Temple, or the City of the Damned, or the Worldstone Keep... Then there was the night I was killed by a fire, the time the game server kept freezing (appropriately in the Frozen River!), the night we struggled so hard to get to the stairs in Worldstone One and then failed to keep a portal there, the number of dubious portals pronounced "safe" to come down, the endless jokes and bad puns from the other teammates... It was fun, guys.

No writeup is complete without commentary on the individual players, so here they are in no particular order.

AlanSHB (Acme_Archery): Alan was a great teammate throughout Normal and Nightmare, having to leave us at the beginning of Hell to work on a major new project (significant dollars involved). Alan's Hydras helped us out many times, and it was a shame he couldn't spend more time with the rest of the team. If you should read this Alan, try to drop us a line and tell us how you're doing.

ErickSinda (Artemis_Red): Erick was our fill-in player and joined us about halfway through Act One Hell, eventually having to leave the team shortly before we finished Act Four Hell. Erick and I were the Ice Queens of Rogue Revival, at many different points in time doing little more than spamming Glacial Spikes at the enemies to slow them down or remove corpses. Erick also saved us a ton of time by teleporting ahead and setting up portals for the rest of the team on multiple occasions. And without the Prevent Monster Heal dagger he had in his stash, we probably never could have cleared the Viper Temple on that memorable night. I also remember Erick for his very aggressive playstyle, charging right up into the faces of the enemies frequently. That put Artemis_Red on the ground a lot, but also was of invaluable assistance many times. How Erick managed to catch up to us with a new character in a week also boggles my mind, but was impressive as well.

Hawkmoon (Garnet_Electra): Welcome reinforcements have arrived! Hawk always joined up with us about 15-30 minutes into our sessions and provided much-needed help. As the one female member of the Rogue Revival Team, Hawk was a good sport at putting up with the team's (many) tasteless jokes. You also can't find a more consistent, dependable D2 player out there than Hawkmoon, who never tried to steal the spotlight but was always there pitching in to help the team. She's also a savvy veteran of multiple D2 variant teams and undoubtedly knows much more about how the game works than I do. Hawk was on the grunt job of Prevent Monster Heal duty for a very long time and never complained - the perfect example of a team player. Best wishes for you and your family this summer Hawkmoon.

Dathon (Red_RidingHood): Dathon did a million different things for us in Rogue Revival. As the only one with Meteor, Dathon was in high demand any time we were fighting large groups of weak enemies (maggots and pups being the best examples). Starting about halfway through Hell, he also started watching the town merchants and snapping up anything that had curses on it; Terror, Dim Vision, and Confuse were all lifesavers, and Lower Resist probably saved us more than a half hour against Lister and Baal alone. Behold our team Necromancer! Dathon had a lot more experience than most of the rest of us with the changes made to D2 in 1.10, so he was frequently a source of information for the rest of the team - that is, when Dathon wasn't cracking jokes instead. Not to mention that Dathon saved us all in the Claw Viper Temple by being the only one to get his body back before our final try at the level. I'll also throw out here that Dathon lives only 15 or so minutes away from me in real life, and in bad weather we frequently would have the same flaky Internet connections. Dave, if you want to drive down here and have a drink, I'm buying.

Jaffa (Varecia): Jaffa is an old D2 veteran who I had run into first with Civ3. He's a hell of a player at both games, but Diablo probably fits his style of play best. Jaffa was one of our two Blue Rogues, and also excelled at getting portals up in dangerous locations (of course, this also got Varecia into trouble at times, hehe). Jaffa was always easy to recognize in the screenshots since he was the only one who used a crossbow consistently throughout Rogue Revival. I don't know if he changed to something else later, but Jaffa found a wicked crossbow sometime in Nightmare that was doing a ridiculous amount of damage; it was very obvious on the nights that Jaffa was missing that our "heavy artillery" was out. Along with Cy and Sirian, Jaffa is a veteran of the Elemental Strike Teams and knows all the ins and outs of D2 team play. It was always a pleasure to spend time around such a talented individual.

Cyrene (CyMakeSticksFly): Cy is both a tactically brilliant player and a constant joker who sets the standard for inane commentary in-game. Since we were using the TeamSpeak server and headsets for Rogue Revival, this was only taken to a higher level compared to text alone. One shouldn't be fooled by that though; Cy is a grizzled veteran of not only D2 but the original Diablo as well - I know he ran a bunch of Ironman games with other Diablo legends like Charis and KoP. As the other Blue Rogue on the team, Cy chose to go with a setup that allowed him to do a lot of tanking at times; Cy's tanking saved the team on notable occasions in the Pit Level Two and Viper Temple Two. Now that tanking also got Cy killed on many different occasions too, but I would never rub that in, would I? There was rarely a dull moment with Cy on the team, and I mean that as a compliment.

ME0003 (MoonGrabber): ME0003 is one of Sirian's friends from when they were both younger, and he didn't have too much D2 experience when we started out Rogue Revival. To his great credit though, ME0003 vastly improved as time passed and his death numbers actually went down even as the difficulty continued to ramp up to higher and higher levels. Another team player who didn't always stand out from the other Rogues, ME0003 was always there helping out through some of the most difficult fights late into the early morning hours in the City and Worldstone One. He also found out the best way to take on the Stygian Hags by getting up in their faces and meleeing them, saving the team an innumberable amount of time and effort. Wayne, best of luck to you and your young family, and I'm sure I'll run into you again from time to time.

Sirian (Red-Rover): Last but certainly not least is Sirian, the creator/team leader/everyman of Rogue Revival. Sirian is not only a Civ3 master strategist/Descent ladder champion/coin-op arcade all-time record holder, he is a damned good Diablo player as well. Ever heard of Ember? If you're reading this and you haven't, you owe it to yourself to click the link to Sirian's website and read the stories of characters like Ember, Skeletorr, Wussie, and the rest. Any time that the Rogue team was foundering or unsure what to do, Sirian would usually take charge and provide us with a portal or figure out some kind of a solution that would allow us to keep going forward. His ability to look at a tiny portion of the map and deduce the layout of the level is positively eerie. Let me also introduce Sirian the "comedian"; Sirian loved to dump bad jokes and horrible puns on the rest of the team that had the rest of us groaning (I swear he did it just to hear our reactions). That along with Sirian's running jokes "we'll clear this place out REAL quick" were as much a part of Rogue Revival as fighting the monsters. Oh, and if things are proceeding too easily, Sirian will deliberately stir up a huge mob just to shake things up and see if we can deal with it. Umm, thanks for "training us" to deal with tough situations. To be fair, Sirian's Frozen Orb was of incalculable value to the Rogue team; I don't know if we could have won without it. You won't find a more determined, tenacious, and cunning player anywhere than Sirian; he WANTS to get the hardest possible monster draws just to challenge his own abilities - and then he drags the rest of us along with him for the ride. Seriously, it was always a pleasure Sirian. Thanks for including me on the Rogue team.

Having written the entire Rogue report, I'm finally out of things to say. Whew! I hope that some of the other team members will include some of their own comments and impressions here later to provide some other points of view. Svava will see you again on her Four-Dot Run.