OVERVIEW

I have updated this guide six months after it was originally written, with new thoughts, strategies, tactics, and perspective. There is new information on almost every page. If you are new to my guide, welcome. If you have been here before, I hope you find the additions and changes useful.

This resource is not intended to provide advice to the novice. Novices are welcome to read, but will have to figure out certain things on their own when it comes to references concerning aspects of the game.

This resource is not a program for copying characters I have played. Some so-called guides like to preach that there is one "best way" and they have found it. Nonsense. :)

This resource will not speak to PvP applications. Not only do I have no interest personally in that aspect of the game, but frankly all the best fire skills are a bit FPS hungry, and for that reason alone are not considered viable or even fair by most duelists. Add in the fact that Fire Resistance can cut damage to 1/4, while -MD items can negate most of the rest of the damage on all except fireball and meteor, and what's the point?

This resource is intended to cover all possible applications of the sorceress Fire Tree skills, to examine strengths, weaknesses, applications, tactics, combinations, and character development, when it comes to the Fire Tree. Included will be information pertaining to Fire Sorcies (relying on Fire Tree as main attack), versatile sorcies (mixing and matching skills from multiple trees), and Hot Babes (Fire Skills ONLY).

MINDSET

Static Field is virtually a mindset unto its own. You don't have to aim it, the range can cover MORE than the entire screen, the skill scales its damage to the health of the target, making it much more effective against the hardiest opponents, and the skill (up through v1.06) scales with number of players in the game. Whether or not you opt for lots, little, or none, is up to you. But one thing to understand about the Fire Tree is that it has no skills even remotely like SF in application. SF is universal. You can apply it to any situation with success, and there really are no "tactics" for it. The tactics for SF come in your item selections, your other skill choices (finishers), and in how much range you choose to pursue.

By contrast, the Fire Skills are very situational. Each skill has its place, its possibilities, its shining moments, its achilles heels. To work the Fire Tree with success, you will need to rely on more than one primary attack skill, you MUST have a much more complete understanding of the opponents and the terrain, and you must have (or develop) a thoughtful strategy.

The Cold Tree is virtually a mindset unto its own. You have at your disposal the ability to dramatically slow, or even freeze, the enemy. This offers players the luxury of a generally stationary approach. One can make a stand and continuously fire off attack spells. Strategy can vary to some degree, particularly with blizzard, but generally this tree is point-and-click. So like Static Field, the Cold Tree is not particularly demanding on the player when it comes to battlefield tactics.

By contrast, the Fire Tree requires you to be much more mobile. You will have to use speed, maneuvers, terrain features, raw damage, and area of effect skills, to prevent opponents from closing to melee range -- something the Cold skills can do automatically, to a large degree. You will need to be less wasteful in your attacks, and to know exactly how much firepower you need to get the job done. Enemy resistance is a real concern that will affect you in combat. Skill development and distribution involves tradeoffs along the way, until you reach very high levels where you can have it all. So you will have to prioritize.

If it's raw power you seek, where the skills do the thinking for you and all you have to do is repeatedly push the attack button, stick to SF and the Cold Tree. However, if you want a more artful playing experience, where strategy can make you but lack of it can break you, the Fire Tree comes closest out of all the Diablo 2 spellcasting experiences, to what it was like to play the Diablo 1 Sorcerer: you have to be familiar with the game, the monsters, and the dangers, to succeed -- and you can do so in style. :)

MOBILITY

Realm sorceresses, by and large, have been optimized to the nth degree. A handful of skills are such clear winners in the race for rapid and safe killing in large games that many players have bent their entire playing philosophy around these skills, and would be lost if they had to face opponents at full speed.

Speed is everything to the sorceress, particularly the solo sorceress. This class has no minions, no decoys, no means of affecting enemy AI, no direct crowd control. What the sorceress does have is the cold tree: you can decisively alter the balance of speed by freezing or chilling the enemy. This is immeasurably superior, tactically, to any speed boost for your own character, because you can slow down the pace of the entire fight. The chill penalty in higher difficulties effectively balances this out. In Hell you cannot rely on endless chilling from one spell. If you haven't specialized in the cold tree, you cannot rely on much chilling at all. However, those with high level glacial spike can spam the shots and keep any normal monsters locked in freeze mode. Those with high level blizzard can stack the spells for continual exposure. Those with high level frozen orb get an extended chill duration that buys them time to cast static field or to maneuver, aided by the extra area of effect (chill almost everything on screen in one shot, with minimal aiming, plus hit things off screen too, if you aim carefully) and the high damage, which makes a faster killer outright, and makes most effective "finisher" for cleaning up after SF use.

If you embrace the Fire Tree, then to some degree or other, you are rejecting the Cold Tree or Static Field, at least for that character. There simply aren't enough skill points to have it all, unless you keep all your skills at modest levels.

That's the beauty of the Fire Tree. Damage rates are high, but no single skill can be your everything. You either mix and match several skills, or at times you will suffer for lack of options.

You haven't quite lived, as a sorceress, until you've engaged the enemies of Hell difficulty at full speed. This is an unattractive option for Realm play, though, because it reduces your character's lag tolerance and lag resistance. You dramatically increase your exposure to risks, and you must master the fine art of mobility. Unfortunately, even standard latency rises to a dramatic threat level when everything is running at full speed. The fire tree has options for fighting from a distance, but except for blaze and hydra, they are difficult to employ. Unfortunately, if your only playing experience is online, then you are undoubtedly lag-shy to one degree or another. As such, you may have bent all your tactical resources to maintaining as much distance as possible at all times (the cookie-cutter sorceress with SF/Orb is the perfect example, using the two skills not only with the most damage, but the widest range and nonexistent aiming requirements). I do not disparage these skills, this character build, or this philosophy. They are clearly the most effective from both a survival and killing speed perspective. However, the only way I can see to master the fine art of mobility is to do so in a reliable environment. For me, that required me to play in single player. For some of you, who have the fastest, steadiest internet access, you may be able to do it online, or you may not.

I don't know if I can explain the details, but I will try. With my first Hot Babe, Hotfoot, I essentially applied Realm tactics to the single player environment. I maintained as much distance as I could. I made this work out well, and I mastered use of hydras in the bargain, but I shut myself out from a vital tactical engagement. In effect, I played scared. This was my first character into Hell Difficulty, and I still had a lot to learn about gauging threats. I made a lot of progress with Hotfoot, but in one sense, I also slowed down my progress by opting for the two skills that offered the most effective hands-off approach.

Lag is a blurring mechanism. The more you must suffer through, the more removed from the essence of the game you become. One might think that the best way to learn how to overcome lag is through exposure to lag, but I have found that this is true only up to a certain point. There are tactical treasures that cannot be mastered in the lag environment. I can't speak to what may or may not be possible for the fortunate ones with high speed. I don't have the experience with it first hand to be able to judge accurately just how much impact that minor amount of lag may have. However, from the perspective of dialup analog, I can tell you that it is just not possible to learn and master close combat at full speed through that much lag. This is not to say you can't succeed that way: only that you can't learn properly from it. Your feedback data is tainted by the lag. You can't see what is really going on the server, so you get bad data regarding why a move did or did not work for you. Without a reliable feedback mechanism, you are left stuck in the blurred world of the Realm game, and you may never realize your full tactical potential.

The best example I can offer for the power of playing single player is, ironically, Lok. Like me, Lok thrills to the tactical intricacy of the blaze skill. Lok and I have had numerous disagreements about game philosophy, but from a purely tactical perspective, we have more in common with each other than any two other players, and we arrived there from opposite approaches. You can read Lok's excellent guide for paladins at the Lurker Lounge (navigate there from my Links page). Lok now disparages single player, but I believe it holds the roots of his success. Where I started with Realms, and abominable lag, mastering the art of playing from as much range as possible, Lok started with single player and moved later to Realms. He got to know the game as it really stands, without the blur of lag interfering with his perspective, and as such he laid a foundation for success, developing a tactical relationship with the game where he understood how his actions impacted the opponent. From there, he could add on lag tolerance, but the core of his understanding about the game is not blurred, so he is afforded the luxury of drawing a distinction between what he knows is really happening in the game, and what his client-side response appears to be showing him.

This is the core of tactical mobility.

Throughout the course of playing the Elemental Strike Team, I was also playing single player more and more, and learning how the game really works. With each passing month, my tactical efficiency and confidence rose dramatically. By the end of the EST, I could accomplish with a few clicks, a few steps, what I had once required a ton of open space and frantic distance-maintaining efforts to accomplish. The worst irony of all, is that it required lagless play in single player for me to develop a true comfort with lag play. I now know what is REALLY going on with the game, and I can respond to THAT, instead of responding to the approximation my client screen is showing me. My fear of lag is gone. My fear of the enemy is gone. I know, for the most part, when I am in real trouble or not.

The best reason for playing some single player is learning how to play the game. I look around at those posting tactical advice, and virtually all the useful advice is originating from players who play or have played both single player and Realms extensively. Without the Realms experience, you have no sense for the added difficulty of larger games, the problems of lag, or an appreciation for how thin the margin really is between you and death -- and you have no experience with combining skills in a coop situation. Without single player, or at least a very close approximation (thanks to stellar net connect) you can't develop a tactical sense for the game itself. You are stuck with the blur, held at arm's length from the core of the game, and your tactical precision will be limited by that blur. The more lag you suffer under, the farther away you are from the real game.

In my humble opinion, it REQUIRES both single and Realms to make a complete player. There are invaluable lessons about the game that can only be learned one place or the other, for gameplay in general, and for the Fire Tree in particular. The Fire Tree is the essence of ranged tactical gameplay. Of all the builds I have tried, the Hot Babe has been the most fun, the most tactically rich and engaging.

You can succeed with the Fire Tree with the Realm approach. You can maintain distance in most situations, even at full speed. However, there is a deeper entertainment to be found in engaging the enemy more directly, if your blur level is low enough to permit this. If you just want to dabble in the Fire Tree, you can do so with any sorceress. If you want to master the Fire Tree, I recommend that you play at least one such character in single player, to remove the blur, to enjoy the experience untainted. There are mods available for simulating larger games in single player, if that appeals to you. You need not lose the challenge of more robust enemies if you prefer to play that way. Lag will hold you back. If you have not played lag-free, you are missing a dimension to your game, whether you know it or not. And if you have extensive single player experience, you have an edge over those who have played only on Realms, whether you know it or not.

PRECISION

Precision is only possible in inverse proportion to the blur of lag. Responding to what your client screen is showing you, while playing a Realm game, cannot be precise. You must extrapolate from that, past the lag, to what is really happening with the game mechanics. Some players view this blur as added difficulty, but I see it only as illusion. Yes, it's harder, but the way in which it is harder is meaningless: a hall of mirrors through which you are attempting to perceive something taking place hundreds of miles away, inside the guts of a battle.net server. This is not part of the game, per se. You must cope with it, but you will be better equipped to do so if you distinguish between what is the game and what is blur.

As such, I cannot advise you on matters of precision in relationship to Realm play. There is only one precision, that between you and the game mechanics. The same things that work in single player, work in multiplayer, too, minus whatever response time and inconsistencies are imposed on you by lag. Since D2 is a real time game, your effectiveness will be reduced by the lag blur, and the more blur you suffer, the worse things get. Even so, the solution is to understand the true game mechanic, to base your tactics on that, then to add buffers of lag tolerance from there. You will have to figure out how to do that on your own.

There are several key areas of precision:

1) Targeting. There are two forms of targeting: targeting an opponent, targeting an area. In Diablo 1, to master the bow rogue, you had to master targeting tiles on the floor to get the specific angle you needed, rather than targeting enemies directly. In Diablo 2, this is ineffective. The tiles are smaller, the "width" of shots is less generous, so it is much more important to target enemies directly, particularly with projectile skills like firebolt or fireball. If you highlight an opponent and target them that way, in Realm play, the server will shoot at where the target really is, not where he appears to be on your screen. This approximation factor, this "extrapolation" of enemy position by your client, only makes the blur factor that much worse. The only reason you don't notice it so much is this direct targeting. While this makes it generally inadvisable to target the ground in multiplayer, you still don't want to be doing much of this in single player, either. The exceptions come in situations where you have a bottleneck (such as a door) that you can target, or for the Inferno skill, which will stop firing (and force you to restart) if a targeted critter is slain.

2) Mana efficiency vs Safety. Firewalls, Meteors, and Hydras require a lot of mana. Learning how much you need for a given situation is part and parcel to your tactical success. If you use fewer castings to secure a kill, you can extend your length of time in the field, reduce down time for mana recharge, or be able to invest more into vitality. On the other hand, you need to know when a serious threat has been encountered. You do not want to die with a belt full of potions because you were too stingy to cut loose when you needed.

3) Passive dodging. If you are running blaze, or have laid down firewalls, meteors or hydras, and enemies have engaged you, you will often find yourself in a position of needing to maintain distance from enemies, but not too much distance. You may need to keep them in a blaze or firewall stack you've lain, or keep them in range of your hydras, or help out your falling meteors by leading targets to where the meteors will drop, or keeping them in the area of the afterflames. Against some of the speedier opponents, the best way to keep them in check is making use of Tempting Fate, a tactical move designed to turn the enemy's strength against him. Tempting has such wide application, I will cover it in its own section. Tempting is not the essence of close-range tactics, though. There is no need at all to tempt slow-moving or ranged opponents, and many opponents are better handled in other ways.

4) Active dodging. When enemies are chasing you, and you are trying to cast spells, you get caught between the conflicting needs of maintaining distance and pausing to attack. Use of cold tree or teleport can turn the tide, but Hot Babes do not have these options. When raw foot speed is all you have, you must learn to make do on that alone. If your offensive output is high enough, or you have plenty of room in which to work, you can accomplish almost anything. In tight spaces or with weak offense, you will be put to the test. The enemy WILL reach you, and against speedy opponents, you will end up tempting them (intentionally or not) or you will die. Slower opponents can still pose a grave risk. You cannot afford to be cornered. Above all else, you must maintain situational awareness. You must not walk into places in which you will be trapped with no way out.

5) Use of terrain. Using terrain against the enemy is the best way to turn things to your advantage. Break up mobs into smaller pieces. Interpose a barrier between yourself and your targets, if possible. Pin leapers against obstacles or walls. Secure loop tracks where you can safely play pied piper to larger or faster mobs.

6) The right skill for the job. Unless you play a one-skill specialist, you will have two or more skills to apply to any given situation. Learn the strengths and weaknesses of each skill so you can maximize precision.

7) Divide and Conquer. This is basic principle for success in Diablo 1 or 2. If you can minimize the number of foes you engage at one time, you can win with almost any tactic, even with badly underpowered skills or items. There are more ways to divide and conquer than I care to list here. For some of the most vital ones, read up on Ember's Quest. That whole report is one long treatise on how to effectively divide and conquer. The more precision you have with this strategy, the more effective you will be when fighting enemies at full speed, where a battle is often won or lost based on your preparedness before you even take the field.

8) Speed. Speed is the most essential ingredient of them all.

You need foot speed. Lack of time to work your magic will be your biggest obstacle. More speed increases effectiveness of blaze. More speed allows you to dictate terms to more enemies. More speed means better dodging. Getting fastest run on boots should be a top priority (unless you wish to handicap your speed), and you should avoid heavy armor entirely: no scale mail, no plate mail, no full plate. I also urge you to avoid tower shields. The loss of speed is not worth 8% blocking, unless you are playing Hardcore Realms, where you need ability to survive a lag spike or disconnect, or to cope with the blur in general. A gothic shield still offers 36% blocking with a lesser speed penalty, and can save you fifteen points of strength. By the time you get to Hell difficulty, you also want to be using a light armor (Greyform, Twitchthroe, or a rare quilted or mage plate or such). Barring the consequences of lag, speed is your best defense in 98% of situations. The other 2%, use smarts. Even with lag, speed is still your best defense, but it cannot save you from big lag spikes or disconnects. In those situations, your speed drops to zero, which is VERY bad.

You also need endurance. Pumping your vitality is good not only for adding life, but also stamina. With enough vitality, stamina will cease to be a major concern. Combined with fastest run, high stamina will sustain itself for all but the rarest occasion, meaning you can go for a rare boot with fastest run instead of Treads or Fetlock. Along with that footspeed is the ability to sustain it over time. Going without stamina is a handicap.

Then there is recovery speed. For a Hot Babe, it is imperative that you wear at least one item with Fastest Hit Recovery. More is better (the effects will stack). Going without recovery speed is a handicap that may well get you killed. Speed is all but everything to the Fire Tree. Put priority on hit recovery.

Casting speed is not to be overlooked. If you go for a full tweaker setup, stacking fast cast items at every position, you can dramatically increase damage rates -- for the moment. In the expansion pack, they will be adding spell timers to several Fire Tree skills, which will eliminate this effect. However, even then, faster cast is still important. The longer it takes for you to cast a spell, the longer your sorcie will be locking into the casting animation and rooted to the spot. During casting, your foot speed is zero, and that's bad. Yet you must cast spells to attack. Faster cast items reduce your exposure. This is particularly useful against Duriel, Hephasto and other speedy opponents that may slay you in one hit. I urge you to look for Magefist not only for the bonus fire skill and mana regen, but also for the fastest cast. At the least, you should consider getting fastest cast on your weapon. Going entirely without casting speed bonuses is a handicap.

Finally, there is killing speed. In some situations, nothing else can save you. This is why Meteor is the strongest skill in the tree. Meteor can dish out the largest hurt to the most number of opponents with the least amount of targeting effort in the smallest period of time. Nothing else compares when you are in the crunch, cornered in some tight space like viper level two or the ruined temple. However, firewall, blaze and hydra can also dish out big hurt, and to a lesser extent, so can inferno and fireball, if you max them out. As such, opting not to specialize in one or two skills, but instead to dabble in bits of everything, would be a handicap. Fire tree does simply massive damage to large areas, but is vulnerable to fire resistance. I urge you to make a conscious choice about killing speed, because the choice you make in regard to the skills you use will dictate how important all those other speed factors will turn out to be.

Be precise with all aspects of speed management. You don't have to opt for the most speed all the time, in all areas, but you should at least understand how speed impacts your sorcie and her options.

TEMPTING FATE

"Tempting Fate" is my term for a tactical maneuver that any character class can attempt at almost any time against almost any melee opponent. When a monster with a melee attack form performs its attack, there is a time delay between the start of the attack and when it "lands". During that time, if you move your character out of range, the attack WILL miss, every single time.

This same thing happens to your characters. Your swing takes a certain amount of time and if a target flees and gets out of your range before you complete your swing, you WILL miss. You can see this happen when a spider or vampire, a rogue-archer or fetish is on the run and you try to chase them. You get close enough to swing but they keep moving, so unless your weapon speed is very fast, you will just keep missing and missing until either you corner them or you run slightly ahead of them before you swing, so that they are still in range when you connect.

When you deliberately allow a monster to swing at you, with the intent of stepping out of range before you get hit, I call that "Tempting Fate". When this happens unintentionally, merely as a byproduct of retreating or dodging, I also refer to that as Tempting. If a melee attack is initiated, then fails because the target moves out of range before the blow can land, that's what I'm talking about. Speed is the main factor (target foot speed, attacker's foot speed, attacker's weapon speed) but range is also an issue. Enemies wielding axes are easily tempted. Those using swords have longer range. Those using polearms have a goodly reach and you had better be quick. Doom Knights have a deceptively long reach, and their attack is quicker and more hard-hitting than it may seem. Hephasto has very little range but his attack is ungodly quick.

There are four basic forms of Tempting.

1) First, there is deliberate stand-in-place Tempting. You pause, wait for the enemy to initiate its attack, then step out of range and initiate your own attack before the enemy can recover and close again.

2) There is walking-away Tempting, useful against speedy opponents with slow or moderate attack speeds. This only works if the enemy can run faster than you can walk. You just stay in motion, keep walking, let them swing, then capitalize on the opening to dish out the hurt. This may turn into running-away Tempting vs the most speedy opponents, due either to their chilling attacks/Holy Freeze or their Extra Fast properties... or both.

3) Then there is the "oops" Tempting. You are busy casting a spell and some enemy surprises you, either because you didn't know it was there, or underestimated its speed. They begin to attack while you are still locked in your casting animation. You run at the first chance and hope to escape the blow.

4) Finally, there is bypass Tempting. When you are short on terrain and must run past or through enemies, you are Tempting the whole lot of them. Pray that your footspeed will carry you past them before they can land blows... or stack the fast recovery items so that you keep going even if they hit you.

In D1, Stunlock ruled the day. Attack got priority over Dodge, all the time. Your character had to be focused on achieving stunlock on the enemy, and avoiding being stunlocked by them. In D2, it's just the opposite. Dodge gets priority over Attack now, and both sides can capitalize on this to a great extent. The enemy will not hesitate to Tempt you, if retreat or dodge is part of its AI. How much you want to rely on or make use of Tempting is up to you, but you should at least understand the mechanics behind it.

The Zeal and Fend skills are notorious in that they commit your characters to attacks that may have no chance to hit as monsters move around. That's when the monsters are Tempting you!

Successful Tempting requires precision, confidence, knowledge about the attack speed of the enemy, understanding about your own character's speed (modified by boots, skills, stamina and encumbrance) and enough health on hand to survive when you get caught. And you will get caught!

Tempting is easiest to do, and the most useful, in single player. Even 100ms of latency knocks you far enough out of synch with the reality on the server as to increase the risks manyfold, and more so the worse your lag. Desynch can also be problematic. Even so, there are ways to apply tempting that every character can benefit from. Stand-in-place Tempting gets more dangerous, the more lag blur you suffer under. Oops Tempting likewise relies on response time, and may not be possible. You might also tempt critters on the server who, on your client, appear to be far away from you. On the other hand, both walking-away and bypass Tempting remain extremely effective through almost any lag, so long as the lag does not force your character to pause because your commands aren't going through. Thus, the most important thing you can do in a close encounter is to KEEP MOVING. As long as you are moving, you will Tempt automatically. The moment you stop to stand still, you become a prime target. Hot Babes in particular must understand how vital mobility is to survival.

Obviously, Tempting is primarily useful when attacking from range. Ranged attacks include any attack form that is (or can be) initiated from outside the melee attack range of the enemy. Whirlwind, Charge, Inferno are some examples of ranged attacks, along with what people automatically think of as ranged: bows and spells. The idea is that you Tempt, then strike the enemy from range while it is locked up in its futile attack. You can thus reduce your need to retreat (and fight more effectively in cramped spaces) -- and if you are overmatched by the opponent, Tempting may even be necessary to any hope of victory.

There are three key elements to look for in the enemy when evaluating your risks:

1) Enemy movement speed. Slow opponents generally require no tempting, as it is easy to stay out of their attack range to begin with. Just keep ahead of them and continue attacking from a safe distance until they drop over dead. By contrast, particularly speedy opponents can press you hard and fast, and this can be disastrous in tight spaces, particularly if you don't have any retreat room (such as at the start of new areas, or in some underground locations).

2) Enemy attack speed. This is the most vital aspect of deciding who to tempt and how to go about it. If a foe swings quickly, your escape margin will be narrow, sometimes even to a point where you will only get away if you were already in motion. On the other hand, some foes have a slow attack and you can safely tempt them nonstop, even if they are sturdy enough to force you to trudge back and forth across entire regions in the process.

3) Attack strength. You need to know how much it's going to hurt when they connect with you (which they WILL do, even in single player. Hey, I don't call this "Tempting Fate" for nothing, you know!)

"Walk, do not run, to the nearest exit." That's the mantra to hum to yourself as you Tempt your way across the first half of Act 3. Fetishes are particularly speedy but their swing is slightly on the slow side, and then they kindly stand there for several moments before they run away for a brief time only to come back eventually.

It can take some real courage to nonchalantly walk away from a mob of screaming flayers the first dozen times you do it, but as long as you stay in motion the whole time you are completely safe.

If you RUN away, you will stay ahead of the fetishes and accomplish nothing. Then you stop to try and attack and they are on you, and they are hitting you. Oops. But if you instead let them get a swing, which they have no hope of connecting because you just keep walking and you move out of range, that particular fetish is now temporarily "out of commission" and you can attack with impunity.

You can tempt mobs of up to four without a problem. Five or more starts to get into some tougher logistics because by the time you've tempted the last one, the first one is back again. There are means of coping, but your odds of taking damage goes way way up when the mob is larger than five. Of course, blowdart fetishes and shamen complicate matters, but the "real threat" is the melee fetishes, especially flayer swarms or boss packs -- or undead fetishes, which are perhaps the most vital place in the game to use the Tempting tactic.

Even melee-oriented characters can Tempt in particular situations to good effect. Why fight the whole swarm of flayers at once? Tempt a few, which kindly run away, then kill a few. Fight a couple at a time at most and reduce your risks. Just one example of how to apply the tactic. For Fire Tree use, tempting targets that are standing in flames is a devastating maneuver. Tempting them to hold them still while Meteors drop is another good move. Turn the enemy's aggression against them and make them pay.

There is a certain satisfaction in calmly walking your way through the flayer jungle, full-clearing it with little or no worries. All those players who "hate" Act Three are missing out. Spanking the flayer AI (aka advanced Tempting tactics) is enormously entertaining.

This is vital for lag control on Realms, too. How many times have you panicked when some flayer mob came screaming out of some unexpected quarter? No more! Just calmly walk your way out of it. As long as your movement packets are going through you're completely safe. Now if the server (for any reason) stops getting data from you in real time, then you've got a problem, but when is that NOT true?

Extra Fast fetish boss? OK, now you can run. YES RUN! WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR??? :)

Other foes you can tempt if you've got the speed include fallen ones, skeletons, maggot young, zombies, ghosts, spiders, vipers, zealot types, council members, corpse spitters, and anything that is too fast in too tight of a space for you to safely handle any other way.

Don't go overboard with Tempting Fate, though. Quite often, other tactics will be safer or more effective. Tempting is not your end-all tactic. It is best used for speed control, to take some of the edge off the most aggressive enemies when they are coming at you full speed. Do not tempt leapers, and do not take your chances with anything that might slay you in one hit, or which is slow enough to manage in other ways.

That concludes my general tactical advice. On to the skills with page two.