Diablo II: Matriarch Esmay

Esmay will be a Fishyzon, which is an Amazon that utilizes the Freezing Arrow and Lightning Fury skills to damage her enemies. She will not have a valkyrie available to tank monsters, so will have to rely on her mercenary and a low level decoy to keep herself safe.

None of Esmay's main skills are available for much later in the game so she started off life poking everything to death with her javelins. Luckily for her a set of rare javelins fell early, but still she had great trouble getting through the beginning of Normal. Even when she received a mercenary for support both were not using any special skills and instead only a normal attack to damage the monsters. As a result progress was extremely slow, and remained that way all the way until the middle of Act III.

Finally around the end of the Flayer Jungle Esmay started to use her skills. Up to this point her mercenary was doing several times the damage per hit as she was and she was tired of being a second-class character. She had finally gotten Charged Strike up to a respectable level so that it would deal a great deal of damage. This was key as it is mana intensive and the reward had to equal the payment necessary. It turns out this was the case, even though Esmay had to start running around with half her inventory taken up by mana potions. She picked up every single one that dropped and still had to return to town often to replenish her stock.

However as a result Esmay began to simply roll over all monsters packs encountered. Between one to three pokes with a javelin and a monster was dead, and sometimes the ones behind as well if some of the bolts missed the initial target. She did have an issue with getting stun locked, since she didn't have any faster run/walk she had to try and keep her mercenary between her and the monsters so that she would not be interrupted. As long as that was done Esmay and co ripped through to the end of Normal.

At this point she was able to equip a few pieces of equipment that are intended for endgame use, such as Titan's Revenge, Moser's Blessed Circle and M'avina's belt and gloves. With these added Esmay's blocking increased dramatically and as such she was in much less danger of getting stunlocked. Act I was pretty much a continuation of the end of Normal in that nothing could stand in her way. She did run into one or two situations where the monsters were lightning resistant, such as Misshappen, and there she had to switch to utilizing Freezing Arrow. This worked because by this point that skill was pretty much maxed and the monsters dropped like flies.

As Esmay progressed through Nightmare she progressively began to use Freezing Arrow more and more, until it was her main skill near the end of Act II, which is when it was finally maxed. This came in handy when dealing with packs of skeletons, since the corpses shattered upon death they couldn't be resurrected. Esmay did have issues however with dealing with packs now that she didn't have a reliable tank in the valkyrie. The mercenary simply couldn't cut it by himself against the worst of packs and as a result Esmay have some issues. Most notable was in the Viper Temple where the first level had a stair trap of about two dozen snakes. Esmay tried to escape them by running farther into the temple to gain some breathing room, but every turn simply loosed more monsters upon her until she was cornered and eliminated.

That was more overconfidence than anything else, she should have taken things slower and would have survived her first attempt into the temple. Regardless she was successful the second time around. Freezing Arrow is much more mana intensive than Charged Strike however, so Esmay is running out of mana potions frequently, requiring more trips back to town. However once I got the hand of it she progressed nicely through to Act V, where she ran into more problems.

Her issues in the Barbarian homeland didn't start until the Crystalline Passage. There she kept encountering back spawns of snakes, frenzytaurs or some combination thereof. Her mercenary simply wasn't capable of tanking two champion frenzytaurs at a time and as a result Esmay found herself running dangerously low on gold for resurrections. She had to start picking up all the items that gave good money returns to keep things going, but it was quite close for a little while. Eventually she did finally make her way to Baal and dispatched him with relative ease.

Hell, it turns out, didn't start off so bad. Esmay started off at P1 assuming all the immunities would make it too difficult otherwise. That turned out to be a mistake, so she ramped things up to P3 from the Cold Plains onward. Now she could no longer stay with a single skill for the majority of the time. Esmay found herself switching from Charged Strike, to Freezing Arrow, back to Charged Strike and then a few Lightning Furies to finish things off on a constant basis. She is questing with FA as the primary skill, but that's as much for the cool aura that Mavinas set gives than anything else. Besides, she'd be a lightning Amazon otherwise and that's not her point. She's a Frost Maiden first, with a CS backup skill and I intend to play her that way as much as possible. Besides, the frozen monsters makes the mercenary job of tanking so much easier.

Things went smoothly for the most part, although single cold immune monsters take a while to eliminate with CS if they aren't very large (think vampires). Still Esmay wasn't noticing the fact she was questing without a valkyrie, something none of my Amazons have done up to this point. Esmay was having a grand old time until she was ambushed out in the desert of Act II. Apparently there was a vulture extra strong, might enhanced boss hiding behind a palm tree where it couldn't be seen. Esmay, thinking she had nothing to fear stood nearby and plucked away at the minions. Suddenly Esmay's life was practically zero and then it was gone, two hit knockout. After that Esmay was a bit more careful to stand out in the middle of nowhere so monsters didn't have anywhere to hide.

Everything through Act III was done at P3, but it was dropped down to P1 from Act IV onwards as it was time to end Esmay's quest. She ripped through Act IV like it wasn't even there. Hordes of maggots dropped in a single FA and LFs took out any CI stragglers. Diablo didn't even require a single health potion, although the mercenary didn't need about a dozen resurrections due to IM just to get to Big D. Nothing of interest was dropped of course, why would Hell be any different than the rest of the areas up to this point.

Act V was a bit tougher than the previous act, but not enough to give Esmay any real problems. She did find herself using the decoy to keep ranged monster packs busy while she dealt with someone else, something she rarely had to do up to this point. While that became common practice, for the most part everything else stayed the same, with one exception. From the Crystaline Passage onward Esmay no longer quested with her bow as the main weapon, instead her javelins were the main weapon as cold immune monsters outnumber non-CIs in all areas except the WSK. So while there was less freezing of monster packs to keep the mercenary alive, this was replaced by LF strikes that wiped out the packs faster than they could hurt the mercenary, so it evened out in the end.

No champion packs of Frenzytaurs were encountered so Esmay had no trouble all the way through Baal and his minions. The WSK threw at her the obligatory monster spawns of Unravellers, Dolls, Oblivion knights and Souls but in Esmay successfully engaged them all. The minions when down with a whimper and Baal, while he did remain cloned the entire fight, was defeated without too much hassle.

A few parting thoughts about the Fishyzon. She's a very overpowered build. Even untwinkled she'd be able to handle all of Hell at P3. The equipment that Esmay wore wasn't the most optimal for her skills, as she was more a themed build for the Mavinas set than anything else. She could have been even more deadly with a few choice gear changes and could perhaps had dealt with Hell at P5. With this being my first Amazon without a valkyrie sidekick I found the experience odd but didn't notice her absence too much. The fact that FA worked even better for tanking monster packs had a lot to do with it, as did the chance to decrepify that the mercenary's Reapers Toll provided. Overall a very safe and powerful build, exactly as advertised.

Stats:
Level 84
Strength - 92(122)
Dexterity - 130(199)
Vitality - 273(273)
Energy - 15(15)

Life - 1035(1035)
Mana - 139(294)

Lightning Resistance - 75
Fire Resistance - 75
Cold Resistance - 75
Poison Resistance - 75

Skills:
Freezing Arrow - 20(26)
Cold Arrow - 20(26)
Decoy - 1(7)
Pierce - 1(7)
Lightning Fury - 20(25)
Charged Strike - 20(25)
Lightning Bolt - 4(9)

Equipment:
Weapon: Mavinas Caster (shael)
Switch Weapon: Titan's Revenge
Switch Shield: Mosers Blessed Circle (2 Pdiamonds)
Armor: Mavinas Embrace (cold facet)
Belt: Mavinas Tenet
Helm: Mavinas True Sight
Boots: light plated boots - LR 28%, PR 27%, 23% MF, 20% FRW
Gloves: Mavinas Icy Clutch
Amulet: All resist 30%
Ring 1: Raven Frost
Ring 2: FR 18%, CR 17%, 4 Dex, 24 AR

Mercenary ( Desert Warrior)
Helm: Tal Rashas Horadric Crest
Armor: Shaftstop
Weapon: Reaper's Toll

Hellforge:
NM: Sol
Hell: Ko