I'm playing this game yet again

[superdeath]

Cheering you on!

[T-hawk]

And finished nightmare difficulty with six Conquerors crowned.

A small but sweet moment: The barb started the act short on lightning resistance after some equipment swapping.  I hoped to get through the Anya quest (resistance bonus) at least without running into gloams... but then, before he was even out of the Bloody Foothills, he happened to turn up two good lightning-resist charms.

Another cute moment: the assassin's Angelic sabre once ran out of durability... exactly as another copy of it dropped, so I could just grab that to keep going.

More serious paladin report: While playing the other characters first, I came to realize that act 5 has a lot of undead, as much as half of the guest monsters are skeletons and such.  I was getting excited about using the paladin's undead combat skills here.  So of course, then he turned up no undead at all through the first half of the act.  But from there it ramped up a lot, including an all-undead spawn in Throne of Destruction.  Greater mummies resurrecting doom knights and explodey dolls... that's a nightmare spawn for anyone else, but I was absolutely loving Fist of the Heavens wiping them all.  That all said, he had one scary near-death moment, when Talic (Extra Strong) dealt enough damage to kill me from full health in a single whirlwind, saved only by hitting a full rejuve in a split second mid-whirl, may not even have survived that without Shaftstop.

I also did the nightmare cow level.  I'd originally intended only to do it with the area-of-effect characters (necro, bowazon, maybe phoenixsin.)  But then I changed my mind and did it with the slow meleers too.  I didn't want to skirt the idea of the no-twink rules, which is supposed to be that everything a character possesses came from somewhere they could have gotten it themselves, which wouldn't have been true if only capable characters did the cows.  To my surprise, the meleers handled the cows fine as well, even going to players-3.  Cows on nightmare just aren't that dangerous, their attack rating isn't high (1500) and each of the meleers had enough defense to hold up against up to about ten at once.

Except the assassin, running with low defense.  But holy god that made the cow level fun with Phoenix Strike.  I had her constantly running on the edge of disaster, spamming Cloak and Mind Blast, looking for exactly the right spots where one cow was hanging off the pack just long enough for me to hit a charge and release before getting surrounded.  On the brink of oblivion if I ever slipped up with the crowd control measures for a second, but I'm awesome at this game and so never did.  I came to find that the lightning charge of Phoenix was more useful than the meteors, because it hits over a much wider area, and also immediately on releasing rather than waiting for the meteor's delay.

That all said, I didn't get anything at all from the cows, nothing more than duplicates of a few low level uniques.  Act 5's loot was pretty marginal and nothing really exciting either.

   

Well, this team is good at finding Titan's Revenges that we don't need.

Biggest prize was a Laying of Hands set gloves.  Basically everyone besides the necro wants that.  But there's all sorts of tradeoffs, like the bowazon wants the damage-to-demons the most but needs the IAS the least.  I haven't decided who gets it yet; I'll see where it best fits considering everyone's needs for the fire resist and IAS.

   

Cliffkiller bow.  Okay, I guess this team justified the bowazon well enough, that's now six different exceptional unique bows we found.  Thanks, but I could really use more melee weapons instead.  Cliffkiller is very close to Witchwild for damage figuring in Witchwild's deadly strike, but overall I think Witchwild is still better with its resistances and two sockets, and definitely so if I can upgrade it.

Second copy of Goldskin armor, worth an exceptional upgrade to use on a merc.

Spirit Shroud armor, +150% defense and +1 skills... and Cannot Be Frozen.  I want to upgrade this to elite to use on the werebear, chilling cripples wereform speed and so CBF is a tremendous boon, in hell difficulty where every other boss is cold enchanted or spectral hit.  More on upgrading in a bit.

Finally got a wand with +Lower Resist that is socketable into a White.  That's better than Arm of King Leoric for poison offense.  I'd like to keep Arm on switch for raising skeletons, though not sure if I may have to resort instead to a teleport staff as is usual for summoners.

Blackleach Blade, merc weapon, good for life leech and fun with CTC Weaken.  This led to a little mini-game of arranging merc CTC items (Weaken, Hit Blinds Target on a Coif of Glory helm) on characters where they won't overwrite and interfere with other effects (Lower Resist, Battle Cry, Cloak of Shadows, Amp from Witchwild.)  Blackleach ended up on the paladin's merc, switching Kelpie Snare (75% slows target) to the werebear's, which shores up his weakness against unique monsters where Shockwave's stun chance is low.

Two copies of Blade of Ali Baba (the big gold and magic find), we can't really use it as a weapon but I can't resist keeping them in stash for MF for act boss quest kills.  (Wish I had a singer barb, that's the class that can really dual-wield these.)

Wall of the Eyeless shield, but really not anyone to use that, no fast-cast tweaker on this team.

   

Vile Husk sword, 6% CTC Amp, which the first team found too, but it came four acts earlier this time.  I'm going to do the same thing with it as did the first team: put it on a barbarian mercenary for the druid.  Same as the wind druid before, the werebear deals in physical damage and can really use the Amp; and he already applies crowd control (Shockwave) so that Holy Freeze isn't so critical.

With that, I'm rethinking the werebear's skill plan.  I'd like to keep him doing all werebear skills, rather than the half-assed fire hybrid I'd originally planned.  (Needing 5 useless prereqs in wind skills for Armageddon really irks me here.)  The problem is physical immunes, of course.  But I'd forgotten how amazing Shockwave is.  With that stunning everything continuously, it may work to just wait as long as necessary for the Amp to trigger.  Besides that, I'm also going to try an elemental-damage setup on switch: an Arcing weapon shopped from Charsi, plus the Tiamat's Rebuke shield too.  I'm going to try all of that through act 1 hell and see if that's tolerable enough to handle ghosts that way.  (Or just Shockwaving ghosts to leave them behind is also an option, much as I hate not clearing areas, there really may not be any solution worth the trouble and tradeoffs.)

The werebear's biggest deficiency is his life total, only around 1300 now.  Turns out that the Werebear skill alone doesn't get all that high on life without Lycanthropy or Oak Sage.  I'd really like to max Lycanthropy to get that life total up.  Also want to get a Whale belt on him to take advantage of the big multiplier... but to do that I need some solution for attack rating, which is currently Hsaru's belt + boots combo, might have to go with Angelic ring + amulet here, though occupying those slots will make resistances a big problem.  I have a few rings and charms with AR but the bowazon and barb need them too...

   

Another character about to undergo a rework is the assassin.  The cow level was her last hurrah with the Angelic set.  For hell difficulty, she needs to move on to grown-up equipment, starting with Lionheart's stats and life and resists.  So then I had to do something to replace the 1600 attack rating from the two Angelic rings.  I did that by gambling up this claw here, with Ignore Target's Defense, which is unusual in that it only appears on a few types of weapons (daggers, rods), but does on claws.  I was actually hunting a Fool's modifier (huge AR), but this will do too; it lacks any other typically good modifiers (skills, speed, sockets), but it is the fastest base item type of claw and should do well enough.  For her other hand, I'm undecided whether to go with a +skills claw or a Rhyme shield (Cannot Be Frozen is a lifesaver for her too.)  For her skill build, I'm also not sure where to go after finishing Phoenix and the two synergies; I'm currently leaning towards Shadow Warrior, I think she needs a minion that will hold up, unlike a trapsin who doesn't get mobbed and has time to recast her whenever.

Finally, the big decisions to be made now or soon involve my rune inventory.  After two more Fal and a Lem this act, it stands at 4x Lem, 5x Fal, 2x Ko, 3x Lum, 5x Io, 7x Hel.  I can cube three of the Fal into one more Lem; Fal doesn't do anything but Lionheart and I don't need any more of those.

There's some interesting choices here.  Lem does two major things: make a Passion weapon, and upgrade a unique exceptional armor to elite.  I have several armors I might want that for: Spirit Shroud, Vipermagi, Shaftstop, maybe the Iceblink.  But I also want Passion weapons for the werebear and barb, but I can't do those yet without the elite bases.

But there's also the tension that three Lems could cube into a Pul, which goes into upgrading an exceptional unique weapon.  I have a lot of those I want to do too: Witchwild String, Butcher's Pupil, possibly Bonesnap, maybe Hexfire.  Butcher's Pupil is the strongest of those options: its damage more than doubles, and it won't get superseded among all of its three potential slots on the barb and paladin.  But the 83 dex requirement is just high enough that I don't really want to commit to that.  Actually I'd be okay with that on the paladin (dex for blocking, and he has a rare circlet with 20), but then the barb would have no good axe at all (his other one currently is a mediocre Blood craft.)

So I haven't made any decisions there yet.  I'm going to rebuild and reallocate everyone's equipment before starting hell difficulty, possibly this evening, and see where I want to go from there.

[T-hawk]

I didn't start hell yet, but just a short update after recalibrating all the equipment for hell difficulty.  I didn't throw everything into a common pool like last time; this time I had a better sense for who needs what since there's less overlap without four faster-cast spellcasters, so I just partially rearranged things, and also it's easier to manage with six characters rather than seven.

My decision on the the runes came out that I did decide to upgrade the Butcher's Pupil with three Lems into a Pul.  I decided not to upgrade any armors, since Goldskin seemed to be the better choice for both the werebear and barb, both need both the resists and defense.  So I still have two Lems, and the barb and werebear will each keep one as part of a Passion rune package on hand, in case the right base comes along during hell act one.

Also I shopped vendors for an evening, picking up a bunch of good stuff like some Whale belts, +3 shadow skills claws, +3 martial and bow gloves.  Gambled amulets for some marginal upgrades, one of which was astoundingly a Crescent Moon unique, although I have no idea what character build would want 15% mana leech and little else, maybe an energy shield melee sorceress?

Paladin: He's taking the upgraded Butcher's Pupil.  This weapon is so much better than anything else he can get.  The requirements work out well too: with a Hel rune, its strength requirement goes to 92, exactly the same as the Shaftstop armor.  67 dex is also tolerable and worth about 30 added hard points plus his circlet.  That dex also enables some blocking, along with a good crafted Safety amulet with 10% ICB along with prismatic and paladin combat skills, so I gave him a Rhyme shield, for both the high blocking and Cannot Be Frozen.  The rest of his equipment is rounded out with the Sigon's gloves/belt/boots combo, for the 30% IAS and 10 strength on the gloves, and I couldn't resist using both the belt and boots to enable the 50% magic find on the latter.  And on his rings he needs nothing but resistances, since Vengeance doesn't work well with life leech and Conviction doesn't need AR.

Barbarian: To get him some some weapons, I put all available resources into several Blood axe crafts.  With Tomahawk base items, because that can be acquired semi-reliably from gambling, since the qlvl is fairly low.  I ended up with two of around 150% enhanced damage, not spectacular but will do for a while.  It's nice to have a matched pair of base items because the stat requirements match.  67 dex is somewhat higher than I really wanted to go... but the upside is that does account for a few hundred points of sorely needed attack rating.  Armor is Goldskin, upgraded to exceptional but not elite.  He's also keeping the Sigon's gloves + helm combo for the IAS, strength, life steal, and big AR/level on the helm.  I don't really like being stuck with Sigon's helm instead of a barb pelt with skills, but the AR is critical and the rest of the package adds up to so much too.  Sigon's helm also means not needing the belt or boot slots for the set, so he can load up those with resists and stats including Tearhaunch.

Assassin: I wanted to swap out her shield for a skills claw now, but then realized this build can't go dual claw.  Problem is Normal Attack is the only finisher I want to use, but that always alternates between the two claws and I don't want to be attacking with the second one that doesn't have the ITD.  There's actually no way to make an assassin do a finisher with just one claw consistently.  Dragon Claw uses both and goes slower, and I don't want to use the kick finishers either for the knockback and they also go slower.  So claw-shield is really the only way I can do this.  Anyway, the shield is Rhyme for all its usual goodies, and the rest of her loadout is Lionheart, Lore, Kenshi's amulet and gloves, and resists and life everywhere else.

Bowazon: Not much change, except for this move, I socketed Kuko Shakaku with a resist-all jewel.  Weird choice, but this is my reasoning: to lessen the differential when switching away from Witchwild String's 40% resist all.  Meaning I can rely on Witchwild's resists more without having to overkill to still be within reasonable distance of max when on the Kuko switch.  As for Witchwild itself, I socketed it with a Shael and an Eth; with the bowazon's subpar AR, the -25% target defense is the best thing I can do for Strafe's dps. Besides that, she has Lionheart, Lore, +3 bow skills gloves, and the usual assorted resists and life.

Necro: Even less change, only significant decision was to socket his Mojo (+2 summoning skills) head and got the lucky two sockets to fill with diamonds.  Still using White, Vipermagi, Lore, Chance Guards, a pretty standard basic gear package.

Werebear: He got the Laying of Hands, since he's the one who doesn't need Sigon's 30% gloves to hit a speed breakpoint (paladin, barb) or skills in the glove slot instead (bowazon, assassin), and also needed the fire resist.  He also didn't want a Sigon's set combo since he's still using the Hsaru's boots/belt combo for AR; I just can't find any way around that, his to-hit is terrible at like 50% otherwise.  Angelic ring/amulet would also be an option, but the Hsaru's pair is a better use of two slots since they come with some resistances.  For armor, he's on Goldskin for resists, although it would be nice to trade that in for a Smoke when a suitable elite base comes.  And finally, this:

   

I shopped Charsi (in nightmare via the cow portal for quick refreshes) for a Shocking weapon as a physical-immune solution for the werebear, and got this beauty, with Amp Damage built in too!  OK, I think that clinches it that I'm not going to bother with a fire skill build as backup.  He'll also have one more nonphysical option from the Berserk oskill on a Passion if/when he builds that.  So I'm committing his skill build now to max Lycanthropy and Shockwave.

Beginning act one of hell tonight.

[superdeath]

Necro still does the highest dps/damage?

[T-hawk]

Remains to be seen, I haven't started playing hell yet. Most probably he does against large groups, particularly fallen camps who are fire immune and so Immolation won't work. Maybe against small groups, but the phoenixsin would contend there too, and Immolation if not fire immune. Not against a single target, that's most likely the paladin.

[T-hawk]

Yeah, full-clearing act 1 hell took a lot longer than the previous acts, as I expected.  The start of hell difficulty is the biggest proving ground that separates the real heroes from the pretenders.

And the big thing to deal with in hell difficulty is nasty bosses, of course.  The big dangerous modifiers are Cursed, Extra Strong, Might, Fanaticism.  Any one of those requires careful caution but is manageable.  Any two of those stacked (either on the same boss or in overlapping packs) is a red-alert panic, wiping both the merc and me nearly instantly in like three hits.  How can I handle bosses that the merc can't even stand up to for five seconds?  The answer is stun skills: use something that can inflict a continuous lock of hit-recovery, in Smite, Bash, and even the lowly but run-saving Psychic Hammer, to pin down such a boss while the merc did the work.  Why didn't I have to deal with this much on the first team?  Because everyone there had a good ranged attack, except the barb who had 4000 life.  But this team is so much more stuck in at melee range: the werebear, paladin, assassin, and less tanky barbarian all have to stand in the danger zone to kill anything.  So carefully handling any of these double-dangerous bosses is quite challenging.

Werebear: Holy crap that was a slog.  He took two hours... to complete up through Cold Plains.  (Including Cave, Mausoleum, Crypt in the full clear.)  The whole act took eight hours total for full clearing, some on p3, some on p5.  Bonesnap is just too slow for hell difficulty.  The physical-immune plan did work, between the Shocking sword and CTC Amp he was able to kill ghosts, not fast at all but got the job done.  I made the right call on his skill build with Lycanthropy, really needed the life total of 2500 rather than 1500.  Laying of Hands was tremendous too, I thought the damage-to-demons might be overkill, but not at all, it was huge in running to fallen shamans to kill them quickly before the fallen swarmed in.  He did run into the same problem that Sullla described with his werebear from the online team long ago: Healing potions aren't enough.  Potion amount varies by class, and is low for the druid since it's based on his low vitality-to-life value (before the wereform life multiplier); so it would take like four or more red potions to refill all the way, and it was faster to just pop up to the town healer instead.

But he got two huge improvements.  He was waiting for a Passion weapon, for which I was looking all along for the 4-socket Feral Axe base.  But first:

   

HOLY CRAP YES YES YES DURIEL'S SHELL CANNOT BE FROZEN!!!!  That may be the best possible piece he could have found!  That's absolutely perfect, he needs every one of those modifiers, and well worth spending both a Lem to upgrade to elite and a socket quest for a resist rune.  Then:

   

HOLY CRAP AGAIN!  For the second straight team, I lucked into an Um rune from the Countess!  I'd even saved a 3-socket Feral Axe for just such a possibility...

   

... and so now he's the proud owner of a Crescent Moon, the first I've ever made.

Why the werebear?  The barb and paladin would also love one of these... but it makes the most difference for the werebear.  First, 100% of a werebear's offense comes from the weapon, while it's 50% of the dual-wielding barb's, and roughly 60% for the paladin for when he isn't using Fist or Holy Bolt instead.  Second, Ignore Target Defense matters most for him, which the other classes need less with Conviction and Battle Cry.  Finally the werebear wants the CTC Static and Chain Lightning the most, since he has the least physical-immune solution.

   

However, I decided that even with Crescent Moon's ITD, he still had to keep the Hsaru's boots/belt combo for some AR against bosses, where ITD doesn't work.  I stripped all his other sources of AR (rings, charms) away to other characters, and I don't even have any words to describe how galactially abysmal his AR is, barely over 200 for a 14% chance to hit!  And that's after Maul's AR multiplier; the AR is 70 for normal attack.

Assassin: It feels like this character is somehow cheating.  She takes so many hits at close range even with Cloak and Mind Blast (and so does the merc, who died like 20 times in the act) but somehow she always got away alive.  Ignore Target Defense on her attack claw helps a lot, but does have two problems.  One, the clvl vs mlvl part of the to-hit formula still takes effect, so in high-level (85) areas I was still missing noticeably.  Second and more importantly, ITD doesn't work on uniques and champions, and without that her AR was absolutely terrible, the normal attack finisher was as low as 25% hit chance!  I had to go shop a Fool's claw for AR and keep it in the cube to swap in against bosses.  Even so, she still had to resort to the Psychic Hammer recoil-lock while the merc did the work, many times.  Or, in addition to him, the shadow warrior!  I did decide that after Phoenix and two synergies, her most needed skill was the sturdier minion, and she actually turned out to be able to deal somewhat helpful damage with Phoenix.  Finally, I was really proud of her tactic against Andariel: I deliberately left alive one fire-immune fallen, and pounded him to launch the meteors to hit Andariel, to avoid the boss's defense and blocking!  (I wonder if this can work against Diablo too, if you can kite in something fire-immune from River of Flame after everything dies to the last seal.)  After the act I realized she was deficient in one area, hit recovery, so made sure to give her a belt and charm with that.

Barb: He was the slowest but steadiest, fairly weak offense with middling weapons (both Blood crafted tomahawks), but a big life pool to stand up against crowds and Howl to clear them when necessary.  I had been trying to skip putting hard points up to Berserk to cover it with a Passion weapon instead, but then decided that was silly and way overthinking it, and I don't want to tie him to a Passion weapon for the rest of the game, so just took 1-point Berserk normally, which did its usual job against physical immunes.  Unfortunately nobody ever found the weapon materials I wanted for him: a 5-socket Ettin Axe or War Spike for an Honor runeword.  (I got two Ettin Axes in the act, but the socketing recipe failed to give 5 sockets both times.)  I also decided against a Passion for him too, more below.

Bowazon: She performed more solidly than I expected without having upgraded Witchwild yet.  Immolation is still her major attack, and easily kills everything not fire immune.  It's a lot of micromanagement to constantly weapon-switch between Kuko for fire and Witchwild for physical, but it's worth it, each deals double the damage of the other for its attack, between Kuko's skills and piercing for Immolation and Witchwild's deadly strike and Amp for physical.  Also her missing piece was Guided Arrow, which I finally started using more, hadn't before for lack of enough mana to really support it.  GA turned out to be key for shooting down fallen shamans sitting behind and resurrecting the crowd.  That changed my skill plan a bit: I had raised Penetrate for 5 points worth, but then decided AR wasn't so important because Guided and Immolation don't need it, so I changed skill tracks to Valkyrie instead, a sturdier summon seems to be more what she needs.

Necro: As I had guessed, he was the strongest offense overall.  He feels like playing two character builds at the same time, either the poison or skeletons is enough to handle the game, but he can do both together.  So I had him clear the act on players-8, to get one character to the highest level achievable at this time.  I did find a wand with both +Lower Resist and +Decrepify, so socketed that into a new White for him, freeing up the shrunken head slot rather than tying it to one of those +skill providers.

Paladin: He did well, was actually the fastest through the act in real time (the necro might have been if on p5 rather than p8.)  Butcher's Pupil upgraded is very good, although it feels like it's maybe fifteen percent below what the power level of an endgame weapon should be, although that's probably more attributable to not having Vengeance's skill synergies in this build.  Fist of the Heavens was disappointing; the lightning wasn't useful to kill things at range; because there was no way to keep them at range since anything dangerous enough to resort to Fist was dangerous enough to just wipe the merc.  But the holy bolt portion of Fist was great against big enough groups (basically any undead boss pack), and Holy Bolt itself is very nice too; about the same dps as Vengeance, but very convenient to pick off skeleton archers at range and a lower mana cost.  (Mana consumption is this paladin's one weak spot, since Vengeance doesn't do physical damage to drive mana leech.  He sucks a mana potion for like every third enemy.  Afterwards I gave him more mana charms.)

So I put all that effort into full-clearing the act, but unlike the first team who made out bigtime here, the item drops were pretty dull.  Besides the Duriel's Shell and the Um rune, there was little of any note.  No other runes above one Lum, no skill charms, and no side goodies like Gheed's Fortune or anything either.

Still hurting for any good melee weapons other than the Butcher's Pupil.  Here I got a Coldkill unique hatchet and Sureshrill Frost mace.  Both might be borderline decent if upgraded, but neither of those is enough better than other options to warrant spending a Pul that I don't have anyway and if I did would go into Witchwild String first.

The one halfway notable drop was a Dwarf Star, the first unique ring other than Nagel/Manald for either team.  The necromancer found it early in the act and put it on to wear, more interesting than the fire resist ring he was using, plus another 100% gold find on top of Chance Guards is cute.  After the act I rearranged some resistance items to get Dwarf Star on the paladin; I think he's most in need of the extra fire resilience plus 40 life, and he doesn't need resists or AR or leech in the ring slot.  The assassin would be the other candidate, the other fragile melee combatant, but she's got enough trouble getting her fire resistance to max in the first place.

Some marginally useful merc stuff: Griswold's Heart armor, think that's the first time I ever found that.  Also a Toothrow armor.  Face of Horror (monster-flee) to put on the bowazon's merc, she could use a little crowd dispersement.  Two copies of Hone Sundan, decent for a merc weapon, though not spectacular if not upgraded.  What I really want is 5-socket elite bases for Honor merc weapons.  I got one (a Mancatcher) but need to keep finding more.

Minor upgrades: a Natalya's boot for the assassin (she really needs the max run speed to dart around between Phoenix hits), and a few various resist/speed boots and resist/life belts shopped at Fara after the act.

The one thing I did get was socketed elite armors, which is what the first team had trouble finding, even though this team doesn't have any immediate demand for them.  Got a nice 3-socket 450-defense Dusk Shroud, although a Duress is probably too far down my priority list to happen, it's too cool to just toss.  Same goes for a 4-socket Archon Plate that dropped; the only thing I'd put in that is Stone and there are more important uses for those runes, but it's too cool to toss.  Finally, this:

   

I got a good ethereal Dusk Shroud, and went for the ethereal-bugging socket cube recipe on it to see what I might get.  Was hoping for 2 sockets for a Smoke to give a mercenary, or even 4 sockets simply full of rubies and resist jewels might not be a bad idea... and got 3 making it excellent for a Treachery.  This is going on the paladin's merc, he's the one that desperately needs the Fade for any sort of resilience he can possibly get.  Finally, this is why I declined to make a Passion for the barb or paladin, since this consumes my last Lem at the moment.  (I had 5 total, three of which cubed into Pul to upgrade Butcher's Pupil, one upgraded Duriel's Shell, and the last into this.)

So, since I didn't have any better weapons on tap for the barbarian, I took matters into my hands like this.  There are the cube recipes for 3 chipped or normal gems to reroll a magic socketed weapon.  The output item level is low, but with a base item of high enough qlvl, it still qualifies for higher level affixes like Cruel.

   

So that turned out these two axes for the barb, decent upgrades over what he had been using.  The war spike base item can be shopped from Fara, and the berserker axe dropped in act 1 which I saved for this.  (These weapons also sent me down a rabbit hole of buggy Frenzy speed mechanics and breakpoints, which I think resulted in the optimal socketing configuration seen here.)

To get the gems, I went back and did the normal-difficulty cow level with everyone, as a great source of both chipped and normal gems (seriously, you get one every few seconds.)  This is an example of why I have to stick to the idea of not rerunning areas - otherwise I'd do this forever until getting a Cruel of Quickness for both base items.  BTW, that cow level is also a great source of Amn runes, to fill up all those Hone Sundans with life leech.

Last order of business: Same plan as the first team, I had one character clear hell act one all through on players-8 (the necro, as the strongest to handle it), to reach level 82, for a good chance at gambling coronets with affix level 90 to get +2 skills.  There was a lot of room for improvement here, I had four characters still using Lore in the helm slot.  So I had the necromancer gamble everyone's money on coronets after the act.  Came away with two modest improvements, one with +1 necro skills and more resists than Lore, and a nice +2 assassin circlet with both strength and dexterity.

   

Oh and pour one out for the long-departed sorceress.

My final round of balancing out equipment before starting the next act was very satisfying this time.  Most slots for everyone's equipment were pretty well locked in, except that the ring and boots slots were flexible for almost everyone.  I rearranged almost all the boots and rings between characters, which went very smoothly, pretty much every ring I looked at I intuitively know who it would fit best, between all the mods like life steal (werebear and barb), AR (bowazon and barb), FCR (only the paladin), resists.  And charms filled in the gaps nicely.  Sometimes I spend two whole evenings just shuffling gear, but this time it all went in about two hours last night.

So on to act two next.

[superdeath]

Everytime i see this thread updated, it makes me wanna play d2 again. But then i ALWAYS end up playing either a necro or sorc.. Sigh.

[T-hawk]

Hey, I do remember that poem from back in the day... and being slightly irritated that it takes such an Amazon-centric viewpoint, that every other class exists to serve her.  

You could do live-off-the-land or other restrictions on top of this.  I don't have any desire to.  Vendor restrictions, you can live without shopped equipment, but no buying potions means you'll go nuts running back to shrines for healing.  Going without repairs can be done for most casters but it would be terrible for meleers, they already have enough trouble finding a decent weapon, and the durability lasts like one area.  Actually bows are the only viable weapons here.

Escaping restrictions means you're just committing yourself to get killed by any monster pack that deals more damage than you have potions.  And Duriel and Baal are basically impossible if you can't leave during the fight.  Summonmancer is about the only class where this is even remotely thinkable, but Diablo still wipes his whole plan.  Also you would only ever want to play on players-1.  I understand the idea here, turning Diablo into a contest of resource attrition and decisions on things like IDs, and some might like such an experience, but to me the scale of the game is just all wrong for that, if you want that play a roguelike.  (Actually it occurs to me that the single-pass restriction I'm doing here does act like a roguelike, there's ultimately a limited supply of all inputs, it's just overwhelmingly plenty compared to the cost of consumables.)

[T-hawk]

Long writeup from the long time spent full-clearing act 2 hell.  (Except Halls of the Dead, not really worth the effort.)

Barb: Uneventful through the act, slow but steady, may as well skip straight to the item upgrades.  He got a 2-socket Great Hauberk halfway through, made a Smoke to wear, similar to Goldskin but more resists and defense, and it is nice to trade out a heavy armor for a light one, and finally (and perhaps most importantly) the Goldskin passed over to his merc for resists there too.  Smoke does feel a little underwhelming, the defense is middling and the resists are overkill; but I don't have any other option that he would want over it.  Any of the armors I have like Goldskin would go too high on strength req if upgraded to elite; I don't have runes for Duress or Stone or Prudence; Lionheart doesn't have defense and he doesn't need the stats; Treachery also doesn't have defense and makes me wary since you can't count on Fade's resists always being active.

More importantly, the team effort finally came up with the materials he needed for weapons: two 5-socket Ettin Axes (which took about the expected six attempts to cube-socket) for Honor runewords.  (War Spike would be better for speed, but it's a higher qlvl at 79 and a much rarer drop, I haven't seen any at all yet.)  I talked about Passion a lot, but Honor is just better for anyone who's not dependent on weapon IAS, which Frenzy isn't.  Honor and Passion are about the same damage, but Honor has a wide package of AR, life leech, skills, deadly strike, strength.  I really like Honor, it's the most underrated runeword.  Ladder-only Spirit and Insight get all the attention, and then there's the good stuff from Crescent Moon on up, but Honor is a rock solid baseline that should be enough for any weapon-based class to get through hell.

The two Honors led to recalibrating all the rest of his equipment after the act.  First off, the 250 AR on each Honor was enough to finally ditch the Sigon's helm (with AR/level) for a real barb helm, which is the Immortal King's headpiece he got a while ago.  It's not super great, but +2 to warcries is still 100 more Battle Orders life.  And it's got two sockets, which can each take a 15 IAS jewel, which plus Sigon's gloves exactly equals two more Frenzy speed breakpoints.  He went back to the Sigon's gloves/belt/boots package now - need one of them to enable the good stuff on the gloves (30% IAS and 10% life leech), and since both the boot and belt slots are open (doesn't need a strength belt with the +20 on the Honors), may as well go with both for the 50% magic find from 3 set pieces.

Speaking of Honor, I've been gradually building them for mercs as well.  Every town guard now has one in either a Thresher or Mancatcher, after I kept pounding the cube-socket recipe on those too.  All this Honoring costed a ton of Amn runes, both for the socketing recipe and for the runeword itself, but fortunately I got the last one I needed in the last tomb with the last character.  I'm keeping the two Hone Sundans on hand for the characters that could most use the crushing blow against act bosses, which are the bowazon and necromancer.

Assassin: Phoenix Strike keeps revealing new depths.  I'm glad I stuck with this skill.  I complained before about the delay for the meteors -- but you can actually use that for some cool timing tricks.  Cast Cloak of Shadows, start spamming meteors on one vulnerable target in the middle -- timed so that Cloak expires and the monsters rush in to you just as the meteors land!  Or launch enough meteors to kill a small pack -- and then while they're in flight, quickly charge and release the ice too, to freeze and shatter the corpses.  Also, Phoenix Strike lends itself to playing on a higher player count: the meteors take a while to 'rev up' and start landing, so increasing monster health increases kill time by less than linearly, so you may as well go higher and tack on another couple meteors.  Besides that, I'm also still getting better at driving Phoenix in general; the hit recovery equipment does help some, but really the key is tactical positioning, always aim for a loose monster on the outskirts and let the elemental blasts do the work.  It's very noticeable that Phoenix's lightning charge works a lot better outdoors than indoors, where there's enough space for the lightning blasts to swirl around and hit more stuff rather than running into the wall.  Finally, she reached max on Shadow Warrior which was her next skill after the Phoenix package, and so can raise Fade after that with the last few points.

After the act, her major item addition was a new Shaftstop armor, found by the paladin while wearing the first one.  She traded out her Lionheart for it, which was possible thanks to her circlet with strength and dex instead.  She also socketed the Shaftstop with a freedom jewel, which conveniently brings its str requirement down to exactly the same as her greater talons claw.  I was able to make up Lionheart's resists elsewhere, half by socketing a resist-all jewel in her circlet.  Shaftstop is great on this character, same as the paladin, any fragile meleer wants the 30% physical damage reduction, and stacking that with Fade is even better than additive, 10% more damage reduction isn't 10% better - reducing damage taken from 70% to 60% is actually 17% better.

She also added a Dwarf Star after someone found a second copy of that too, also just like the paladin.  I'm quite amused at how these characters are nearly twins: both are tri-elemental melee damage dealers, with ways to circumvent attack rating (Conviction and ITD), and now match half their equipment loadout too (also Rhyme shields besides Shaftstops and Dwarf Stars.)

Finally, I also got a Bartuc's claw during the act.  Wish she could use it for the martial skills... but it's got nothing for attack rating.  Phoenix Strike is quadratically sensitive to AR deficiency since you have to hit both the chargeup and the finisher, and 70-80% with Bartuc's just isn't good enough, she needs the ITD claw more than anything else.

Werebear: Crescent Moon is awesome indeed.  He feels like a knife carving through monsters.  Although not exactly a fast knife.  More like, trying to use a serrated bread knife to cut vegetables instead, and it isn't very sharp so you have to kind of carve back and forth for a while, but it gets the job done as long as you keep pushing.  Having CTC Amp on the merc (Vile Husk sword) plays well into that.  Whenever it triggers, it feels like a bonus round in a pinball game or something - you get fifteen seconds of a big multiplier to scramble and hit as much as you can during that time.  And Crescent Moon's CTC Static Field does perform great as advertised.  By the time I kill the first monster or two of each pack, the Static has usually triggered at least once, and it's a great help to work down the rest of the pack with a chunk of health already gone.

What surprised me most was that Crescent Moon kept right on trucking against physical immunes!  The CTC Static still works, and so does the Open Wounds which is actually enough damage to kill a ghost in only a few cycles.  Or I could just keep Shockwaving as long as necessary to halt everything until the Amplify triggers from the merc.  So I never bothered using that Shocking sword on switch I'd shopped earlier.

The werebear presently came to max on his skill build (Werebear, Maul, Lycan, and Shockwave which only needs 15 points rather than max.)  Where to go with the last ten or so points left after that?  Not Oak Sage, that's forbidden by the rule about not repeating skills from the first team, and also it really needs to be maxed to work, otherwise its own life is too low and it dies too often.  Not any of the fire skills (elemental tree or Fire Claws), 10 points is nowhere near enough to get any of that to useful.  Not Hunger, I wouldn't bother using that.  Not Raven, Shockwave is more than enough crowd control, and also the blinding cancels out the merc's Amp.  The first usable possibility I thought of was Heart of Wolverine, but then I looked at the numbers and saw it doesn't really add much (like 70%) compared to Maul plus strength (like 500%.)  Another possibility could be to boost Summon Grizzly (actually points in Dire Wolf raise Grizzly's life total), but that doesn't seem necessary either, the bear can easily just be recast whenever.  Finally I found a good choice: Carrion Vine!  That turned out to actually be very useful, each corpse eaten gives back over 200 life (it's a percentage of your max), which kept my life ball full almost constantly, plus very helpfully gets rid of skeleton corpses.  The vine does die a lot but it's not a problem, it's not a catastrophic peril for it to disappear as it is for Oak Sage, and you can just recast the vine whenever.

But that all said, there was one disaster: The werebear took a lethal hit.  In the palace cellar upon entering a room with a ridiculous triple stack of archer boss packs, accounting for all of Cursed, Might, Extra Strong, Extra Fast between them.  He took a lethal hit... but he survived!  Thanks to the mechanic where you can't actually die in wereform - instead of dying, you shift back to human with 1 life.  I popped a rejuve in the instant that happened and got away intact - but that's a reminder to always stay careful in hardcore.

Item improvements: He found a Tal Rasha's mask early on, much needed for his merc.  Then a Fleshrender unique club, with some +druid and +shapeshifting skills, useful enough to keep on switch to pre-buff Werebear and Lycanthropy and Grizzly.  Nothing else besides a minor charm or two and a life leech ring, but he's already pretty much set to go all the way to endgame.

Bowazon: She felt slow, but took about the same time as everyone else overall.   Immolation fires slowly, but it's the heaviest hitter among everything on this whole team, particularly way up at skill level 31.  I knew this earlier but neglected to ever mention it: Immolation's fire damage actually applies twice per shot, both with the projectile hit and again with the fire explosion.  This point hit home when I was fighting some spear cats who have 75% fire resistance and only 15% physical... but Immolation was still taking them down faster than Strafe.

That said, she did run into one bad situation, first time this happened for either team: I got stuck unable to continue.  In the claw viper temple, Fangskin's pack chased me back to the entrance.  When I clicked to go back in, I got thrashed for a full column of rejuves in about 1.5 seconds before managing to click back on the exit again.  This was unwinnable without losing the character, so my only choice was to exit and open a new game and try again.  I did as little killing as possible to get back there, on players-1, and picked up nothing besides potions (there were only a few drops anyway and nothing of any meaning.)

Her biggest missing aspect has long been physical damage.  Strafe has been barely enough to get it done against fire immunes.  But now she finally got that solved, my first Pul rune finally dropped, for the paladin in Arcane Sanctuary, so she could finally get Witchwild String upgraded.  Also:

   

Once again who says Duriel never drops anything good!  Again he delivered for the bowazon, that's War Traveler boots, adds 15-25 physical damage, a very significant bump compared to the low damage of bows in general and particularly Witchwild which multiplies it with deadly strike and Amp.

I also got a second Laying of Hands during the act, and decided that had to go to to the bowazon as well.  She needs that demon damage more than anyone else does - fire immunes tend to be demon types, particularly heading into acts 3 (the council) and 4.  And with the IAS on LoH, then I changed out Witchwild's socketing to remove the Shael in favor of a jewel with damage and hit recovery, which she needs too.

Finally she also added a Credendum belt that someone else found, nice little piece, 15 resist all and 10 str and dex.  It happens to be from the same set as Laying of Hands, which combo gives a minor but satisfying defense bonus.

Paladin: This guy is FUN.  This is the most versatile character I've ever built and I'm loving it.  He presently reached max on his core skill build (Vengeance, Conviction, Fist, Holy Bolt) with points now to start raising Holy Shock for Fist's lightning synergy.  He has so many approaches on offense: Fist at a pile of undead, particularly the greater mummy in the back row while the holy bolts wipe the skeletons, or Holy Bolt to pick off specific undead faster, or Fist's lightning damage at long range, or Vengeance's omnicompetent melee, or even Smite to pin down something or deliver crushing blow.  And the Shaftstop armor on him and Treachery on the merc make for surprising durability; neither is an impenetrable tank, but each can hold up against about five monsters at once which is more than enough.

He got no item improvements during the act... except that I realized I had made a mistake in checking his speed breakpoints, and he didn't need Sigon's 30% gloves, 20% is enough for the breakpoint he's currently at.  So now he swapped out the Sigon's glove/belt/boots set for individual items with more resists, and max run speed on the boots.  That led to enough resists that I could swap out his prismatic amulet for one with +3 combat skills instead.

Necromancer: FUCK.  Sorry, superdeath.

   

Out of nowhere, in what should have been a perfectly routine fight.  There were only three beetles near me, and I was outrunning them into the corner to get a second to cast Decrepify to slow them down.  Somehow my run motion snagged on the edge of the map and I stopped outrunning them for a split second, which proved fatal.  I didn't give enough notice to the Might aura which is what made them a threat.  My other mistake was that I kept pounding on the same column of rejuve potions after they were already all gone - somehow I lost count in my head and expected one more to kick in before switching to another column of rejuves.  They caught me just enough to land enough hits to kill me before I could react.  Dammit.  (Also I had previously had to save and exit the necro once earlier in the act, when I got similarly stuck against a wall by beetles in the Stony Tomb, should have taken that portent more seriously.  Well, at least I guess that means I don't have to push him through the maggot lair and arcane sanctuary.)

I played the bowazon and necro then the paladin, and was struck by how the game felt several gears slower with the paladin.  The necro and bowazon were running around like crazy but the paladin wasn't.  Then I realized why: the Holy Freeze merc on the paladin, compared to Might on the other two.  And that's a commonality for every death in this series: they wouldn't have happened with a Holy Freeze merc.  Both necromancers died to a rush of monsters that Holy Freeze instead of Might would have slowed enough for me to react.  The sorceress died back in normal difficulty before HF was available, but it's still true if it had been.  I have to stop being greedy with Might mercs.  What matters isn't the rate I deal damage, it's the rate relative to incoming damage and reaction time and life replenishment by leech and potion, and Holy Freeze basically always wins on that.  So now going into act 3, I swapped out the bowazon's Might merc for Holy Freeze instead too.

   

Sorceress: Dear lord I wish she was here, oh well.

Ha, after all my concern over spending all my Lems earlier, the very first area of act 2 served up one.  Haven't used it yet, keeping it on hand for the barbarian in case I decide to make him a Treachery.

Random but unhelpful drops: Spike Thorn elite blade barrier shield, Stormchaser shield, Martel of Pain maul, Mahim-Oak Curio amulet, two copies of Sazabi's set helm (decent for resists on a merc, but we've got enough better.)

And this monstrosity:

   

Holy freakin crap.  That's an EXCEPTIONAL base item, not even elite.  If upgraded to Thresher, this thing would have 943 max damage.  Plus life leech built in.  Thing is, I just wouldn't ever actually get around to upgrading it.  That takes an Um rune, but if I got more of those I'd be making three more Crescent Moons and at least one Duress before I'd spend any on this for a merc.  As-is, it's about the same damage and leech as an Honor thresher but a little less good without the AR and deadly strike, so doesn't quite make the cut to use.

Finally, this:

   

Hot damn a Rainbow Facet!  From some completely ordinary urn or jug or something.  I blinked at that for a few seconds of processing.  My brain went "oh probably another useless Nagelring, wait that's not right, wait a unique jewel can't happen, has to be a level 85 area, wait yes it can the maggot lair is level 85!"

   

It's lightning... and there isn't any lightning character on this team to use it.  Phoenix Strike and Vengeance both deal lightning, but aren't designated as lightning skills so the +skill damage doesn't apply, only the -resistance.  Same goes for Crescent Moon's CTC Static.  It does work with Fist, but that's a small part of the paladin's offense, and the -resistance can't go beyond the minimum of -100 which Conviction already often reaches.  So none of these really seems worth a socketing slot for the marginal benefit, so I guess this will go unused.

Next chapter is act 3 hell, when I stop bothering to full-clear in search of treasure, we've got enough equipment to push straight to the end from here.

[superdeath]

NOT THE NECRO