The Nudist Gazette

[KingOfPain]

No, no, it was a legit question. I wanted to write a summary about the bunch anyway.

Unless someone is playing along it is not easy to get some of the nuances. Each of these characters while they may appear weak may have some "advantages" the other might not have. For example, GGGs the Summoner (fully twinked}, has a heavy pot of HP, with resists even, but the Beyond Naked Druid with all his disadvantage has (free) spammable minions to use as Decoy made him a better safer choice to lead the team. And, while ImMcTyraelGirl looks to have advantages over FoulMouthAlice because Fade and a Shadow Master, FoulMouthAlice actually made a better lead once I decided to let lose his Dim Vision. Together with his Attract, he has never died since.

Finally, no matter how skillful one can be, a certain amount of luck is required to get through some of these encounters. Especially the pair of noods, for example, if Diablo decided to spawn with Flame Wave right from the start, before it is contained, that team would be toasted.




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[T-hawk]

Are there any restrictions on the mercenaries, or are you equipping them normally? I kept finding on my teams that mercs alone can just about handle the entire game with enough patience. Particularly two of them together as you're doing. (Diablo's firestorm would be the exception, heh.)

[KingOfPain]

I kept finding on my teams that mercs alone can just about handle the entire game with enough patience.

Doesn't it make you wonder why there are clvl99 builds with a shopping list complaining they can't keep their mercs alive.

And there is a lot of nuances between "with enough patience" vs being actively participating.

Can those mercs survive on their own in a mildly tricky situation?

Do the drivers of the mercs have any restrictions on Skill usages (or otherwise)? FoulMouthAlice, for example, has 20+ Skill Points saved even at such young age (plus relocate as much as he wants) to put into Summoning which would make his merc an innocent bystander. Same goes for ImMcTyraelGirl, throw down a few Traps and save carrying the merc around.... Yes, I can make the games easier if I didn't go with mercs

Do your mercs have a huge Clvl vs Mlvl disadvantage just as their drivers?

That's just for starters....

The title of each vids tells if they show character stats which would include merc stats too.
all of their equipment would be considered budget gear by the mainstream.

IIRC, both NatureCalls and GGGs' mercs were wearing some makeshift Griswold Heart armor; and only upgraded their Undead Crown after Act3. I think all the end game mercs hovers around 30-40 resists.

FireEngineRed decided to she would be a party of girls. Her Rogue, Kyoto, was only equipped with a KuKo




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[KingOfPain]

I kept finding on my teams that mercs alone can just about handle the entire game with enough patience. Particularly two of them together as you're doing. 

Again, I have shown videos of the Beyond Naked Druid, and GGGs doing their Forge runs, solo.
It also remove one of the biggest handicaps by playing them solo - I can concentrate on playing just one toon.

At the speed how quickly GGGs dispatched Heppy - Is it because of his budget merc, or GGG's HoW, and Iron Maiden on top of Bone Prison, or his Bear?

If I ever question the validity of why these Variants use mercs (already explained in above post), I would have to ask first why 99.9999999999978% of players, with no restrictions..... use mercs. Doesn't it make their games one extra level of mind-numbingly meaningless?









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[KingOfPain]

Jeremiah Solo/3 Hell Andy @ Clvl 65








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[KingOfPain]

Jeremiah Hell Act3 @ Clvl75

The recording of Jeremiah running Act 2 Duriel was corrupted. It was a long and mostly boring run due the tomb was full of PI Ghosts.

I always like Act 3 Councils and and Meph/Councils since they represent some of the most difficult mobs in the entire game. More players died to these guys than anywhere else.

Jeremiah and merc is very much under lvl'd at this point, and the merc can easily get overwhelmed in a thick situation. This is when Jeremiah's crowd control comes in handy - Grim Ward to slow and keep the mob spread out, Taunt to disable monsters and make them take turns to die, and Leap to stunt and push them toward the merc's waiting stick of death.

Travincal and Councils






Mephisto






I am expecting a long battle in the Chaos Sanctuary since most of the monster corpses are unusable and the knights can't be Taunted













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[KingOfPain]

Jeremiah VS Hell Diablo @ Clvl76

You peeps are gonna be the witness
To the ultimate test of cerebral fitness
This grips me more than would a
Muddy old river or reclining Buddha

And thank God I'm only watching the game controlling it

I don't see you guys rating
The kind of mate I'm contemplating
I'd let you watch, I would invite you
But the queens we use would not excite you

One night in Chaos Sanctuary makes a hard man humble
Not much between despair and ecstasy...



The video is sped up to 1.5x until the face off with Big D.
If Jeremiah seems to be running around without cause, that's when he is looking for usable corpse or luring one to where he wants it.



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[KingOfPain]

Jeremiah VS The Ancients, The Pushovers


Jeremiah VS the Ancients at Clvl 76
Jeremiah was levelled a bit much getting to the Chaos Sanctuary. I wanted him to be 75 and under so that he would have at least a 10 Clvl disadvantage VS Mlvl. So the only thing to do thereafter for Act5, to keep from lvling, is to let him run pass monsters and just get to rescue Anya and the Arreat Summit. I am happy to say that running to Anya is one of the most challenging feats. And so we arrived at The Ancients at Clvl 76.





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[KingOfPain]

Jeremiah VS Hell Baal

Jeremiah continued to run pass monsters as much as possible to get to the Throne Of Destruction in order to give monsters the Mlvl>Clvl advantage. The disadvantage affects his merc more than Jeremiah himself. Jeremiah would have done just as well at Clvl 50 with Clvl 50 Stat Points and Skill Points - Just as FireEngineRed was able to tank Hell and chat at the same time @ Clvl 50.

So we arrived at the end game at Clvl 77 giving Baal a 22 levels advantage

Once again we caught Baal cheating in the Throne Room. Last time was non-contact constant poisoning, this time....

Some captions in the video. Jeremiah and merc's stats at the end.



This concludes the adventures of this batch of D2R Variants:

Jeremiah (Barbarian) - Naked Leaping Warder (Leap, Grim Ward)
FoulMouthAlice (Necromancer) - Beyond Naked Traffic Controller (Curses)
FireEngineRed (Amazon) - Naked Four Non Blonde Mode (Passive)
ImMcTyraelGirl (Assassin) - Beyond Naked Ethereal (Shadow)
NatureCalls (Druid) - Beyond Naked Summoner
GoGoGadgets (Barbarian) - No Skills Summoner
GoGoGadgetz (Necromancer) - No Skills Fire Mage
* Beyond Naked - Naked with Base Vit with no Stat Points, Skills set is also limited.
* The Naked Variants can be categorized as Beyond Naked with the Skills set limitations.


What next? Some Classic Diablo?  



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[T-hawk]

That's seven characters in that list... but two necromancers? Needs more paladin