Getting blackjacked and pryed is worse.
No way. Blackjack and pried = kill em and you get it backed.
Melted = another trip through gear/deso/dischord
Invockers. And what needs a tweek.
No way. Blackjack and pried = kill em and you get it backed.
Melted = another trip through gear/deso/dischord
Exactly.
Invokers can use hellstream to easily strip someone of saves' date=' yeah they might have a fight and run and have anothr and run but eventually those hellstreams chew away their targets armor, saves, hit/dam and AC..[/quote']
After my experiences with my last two vokers, hellstream is not so reliable to blow saves, given the recoup time you need once your health is low, the reliability hellstream to strip saves is nothing, the only situation I can see that being very useful is vs healer or shaman. Anything that has those wicked mental saves to avoid dispel? Guess what, the armor that gives those same mental bonuses, more than likely gives big ac too. Ill take two oblits and two mutilates in a round over one mangle possibly oblit through sanc. I have had Call lightning pull oblits consistantly enough through sanc that hellstream never crossed my mind.
Its good to know you guys can pull 400-450 extra HP's on your invockers.
But some of us like to have saves. I personally hate being plagued or taking a energy drain.
On the Icestorm and weapon breaking. Well this is extremely balanced if you are playing a uncabaled character. Once you are playing caballed player this will not work (unless he is cheap).
Hellstream blowing up things is nice. But it does not happens as often as you think. It might have in the past, but now people play with -76 vs aff. You will not blow much through those saves.
But now Call Lightning might help you. And it does, if they are stupid enuff to not go to a no call light room.
The last really successful invoker I had quite easily pulled 900+hp as well as -50 combined mal/mental saves. It's all about carrying two sets of eq and changing them based upon who you're facing. Given that switching from a low hp set to a high hp set requires you to heal before gaining the benefit, you normally go around in the high hp set and switch to saves if you've got a communer/mage battle coming.
After my experiences with my last two vokers' date=' hellstream is not so reliable to blow saves, given the recoup time you need once your health is low, the reliability hellstream to strip saves is nothing, the only situation I can see that being very useful is vs healer or shaman. Anything that has those wicked mental saves to avoid dispel? Guess what, the armor that gives those same mental bonuses, more than likely gives big ac too. Ill take two oblits and two mutilates in a round over one mangle possibly oblit through sanc. I have had Call lightning pull oblits consistantly enough through sanc that hellstream never crossed my mind.[/quote']
your statement is contrary to the point of hellstream.
If you are pulling oblits with call lighting then of course hell stream isnt going to be cooking to much armor Hellstream has a good chance to melt armor wih -aff saves, its the point of the power. You hellstream till they lose their -aff then switch to a more rapid firing spell.
My statement may be contrary to the point of hellstream, but it is condusive to playing a mediocre to slightly successful invoker 
Say on in four hellstreams blows a piece of gear (Anyone playing a voker knows this is WAY too often for it to be accurate, but it's just to prove a point.) ok, he has 6 pieces of great affl saves on. not to mention the rest of his gear, so your plan is to draw it out and blow his saves to bits, you first TWELVE rounds go off, and you take off three pieces. Still kicking hard with three pieces of affl saves, you have had your face beaten senselessly in melee combat, or have severely drained your mana and tendriled yourself, or are loaded with mals.
so now, you have lost alot of hp to cut up 3 pieces, now you try to get away, in the meantime the big bad ogre warrior is killing Daryth again! Or on the way to Steel, or any number of places to replace this gear. An invoker cannot stay in combat long enough to effectively nuke saves, you should have known that while Krondrin and Lorfaine fought. I blew up how much of your gear and still lost? Because blowing saves as a whole is an ineffective way to go about it. A warrior WILL hit you, a shaman WILL mal you, an invoker might not be able to pull a hellstream to blow gear up.
How many vokers have you played Ky? I promise hellstream kills pretty much anything that gives ac or saves. I have seen crowns of might crumble, those offer NO saves at all. Hellstream is either A) Buggy from all this talk of affl only saves or 
Rediculously unreliable for that particular style of combat. Personally if you do a voker right with his weapon and mana pool. they can have -76 affl saves and you can still tear them to pieces. You cannot limit yourself to one style of combat, or you will just get really good at re equipping
Re: Mya, You can definately get hp up there EASILY my last two vokers ran around constantly woth 850-900 hp and 1400-1600 mana. It is not really that hard you can get two hundred ish hp without having to sacrifice decent saves, most eq spots correspond to diff places, as a voker you want mal saves so you go after major globe, those rings from citadel or rings north of miruvhor, a little bird to float around with ya, that right there is a good portion of mal saves, still leaving you two necklaces, both bracelets, breastplate, faceplate, and light that I can think of right off hand. You can get about 215 from those pieces alone if you go after the right things. Just need to expand the area in which you think of getting gear. Just because something is crap by itself, does not mean that when piled with other crap, you might find something worthwhile in all that crap.
If that big bad ogre's off in Winter spending the time to tear through a bunch of mobs to get eq back that you blew... he's not after you anymore. Blowing eq with hellstream isn't meant to get you kills on its own, it's meant to make you not worth the trouble of killing (or at least, that's how I've always used it).
If that big bad ogre's off in Winter spending the time to tear through a bunch of mobs to get eq back that you blew... he's not after you anymore. Blowing eq with hellstream isn't meant to get you kills on its own' date=' it's meant to make you not worth the trouble of killing (or at least, that's how I've always used it).[/quote']
Bingo. Its not the equipment hellstream actually -does- blow up, its the fear of what it might blow up. There are plenty of pieces out there that aren't "Oh, I'll just go and grab that back when I'm done". And even for the pieces that you can go and retrieve, who the hell wants to spend 40 minutes in Steel to get your ring back. And that is an estimate for an item fairly easy to obtain; there are a lot of other items I really wouldn't want to lose simply because mindlessly killing 35 mobs I have killed a hundred times before is annoying.
Its a risk vs. reward scenario. Sure, you might go there and hellstream until you are beaten senseless, and get nowhere and have to waste your time resting up. However, that is there to balance out the times when you blow up their ulta-rare item that takes three hours to get, which is only available once every few months.
Objects that help your saves versus afflictive have a greater chance of blowing up, but that doesn't mean other objects cannot blow up.
Its a risk vs. reward scenario. Sure' date=' you might go there and hellstream until you are beaten senseless, and get nowhere and have to waste your time resting up. However, that is there to balance out the times when you blow up their ulta-rare item that takes three hours to get, which is only available once every few months.[/quote']
Exactly. I can't tell you how many times I've blown super-rare pieces of eq, or taken out two unique/rare weapons with a single ice storm. People hate fighting invokers EXACTLY for this reason. Hellstream and ice storm are the FL equivalents of WMDs... nobody wants to mess with someone who can tear their eq apart without even beating them.