I'm playing this game yet again

[superdeath]

Hope the necro lives thru this one lol

[T-hawk]

Yeah, so do I, superdeath.

Another week, another act, act 2 nightmare.

This is when the rewards in mid-level uniques and runes start to ramp up, so I started to do some optional areas rather than just taking the fastest way through. Not full clearing, but in particular I did the optional areas to the sparkly chests (Stony Tomb, Ancient Tunnels, false tombs.) Worth it for the chance of uniques from them; there's a lot of good exceptionals that are available, like the Butcher's Pupil last game came from a sparkly chest in the Great Marsh. I did hit the 2% unique chance once this act, although all I got was two triple-durability rares instead, a paladin shield and some claw. Also I played on players-5 rather than 7, since 5 is already enough to overshoot the experience curve (more than 5 levels above the monsters), and the necro in particular with CE goes smoother on a lower count.

Just a few short notes on the characters, who are all cresting near max on their offensive skills and won't really be challenged until hell difficulty.

Druid: He maxed Volcano, and that's useful against large packs compared to Boulder. Boulder is still best against a small number of monsters at a time that will be knocked back and repeatedly hit. And Firestorm is best against large monsters where Boulder crashes (maggots were about the only ones in act 2; everything else isn't large, like invader types and beetles and claw vipers and greater mummies.)

Paladin: He's living on leech and wow is it working, even with the nightmare penalty he's still leeching 150 life per 1000-damage hit, and his entire life ball per Zeal cycle. Yeah, I was underrating zealots back when talking about Vengeance instead. The Ironstone hammer is really good, because the Battle Hammer upgraded base does a ton of damage for an exceptional, actually more than most elites; it's slow but Fanaticism can mostly make up for that.

Assassin: The Might merc made a huge difference for Blade Fury. But besides that, a boon that I didn't anticipate is how well knockback works with it too. Really what knockback does is complement Cloak of Shadows well - the knockback breaks up packs that already got into melee range where Cloak doesn't disable them. Also, this assassin gets to use Mind Blast more than the previous ones. I didn't like using MB often with the traps or phoenix attacks - it's annoying to have the area attacks bypass the converted monsters and have to clean them up separately afterward. But since Blade Fury hits one target at a time anyway, it's fine if some are mind blasted until I get to them. I'm liking this character a lot: high player skill ceiling, very tactical, good single-target damage but I have to constantly survey and evaluate the battlefield and pick out the most immediate threats.

Necro: He's still doing well; what I'm not sure to do with him is when to upgrade the iron golem. He's still the same savage polearm from several acts ago. I guess if he's working well enough, no need to change at the moment, and if he dies and I need a quick backup, can just shop a good exceptional weapon by now.

Spearazon: Lightning Strike, now maxed, is really good. She was the fastest through this act in real time, with Lightning Strike shredding every big pack of skeletons or maggot young or whatever. Duriel was easier than Andariel, since the decoy would last long enough for me to get in several hits, and I had to pop out for healing only about every thirty seconds.

Sorceress: She kills things. Fast. Although Glacial Spike sucks tons of mana, almost as much as famed hog Nova.

Items were pretty dry this act. I did get a couple exceptional unique weapons, but they were the unexciting Pompeii's Wrath axe and Plague Bearer sword. Feels like this team is lagging compared to the others that had Ribcracker and Bonesnap and Kuko Shakaku and Aldur's mace by now, plus also we haven't been getting low-level staples like Tarnhelm or Goldwrap or Tearhaunch. There's nothing wrong systematically, RNG gonna RNG, but I feel like I'm having to improvise a bit more this time.

The other thing missing so far is crafted items. The reason is that most of the gems and Tal through Shael runes keep going instead into cube-socket and upgrade formulas, basic runewords, or just socketing for stat points. I expect more crafts once I start full-clearing starting in act 4, since I'll get more of the consumable inputs but not more need for those uses.

What we did get was a couple marginal upgrades: Hwanin's set armor, useful for the paladin; Iceblink armor, upgraded for the spearazon's merc. A few more basic runewords for mercs in Malice and Strength in exceptional polearms. (Malice for characters who can't stop monster regen so want the open-wounds, which are the druid and sorc. Strength for those who need the crushing blow vs single targets, which are the necro and spearazon.)

And that's about it, besides the following, the major news was that the barbarian got almost a full equipment overhaul.

   

He finally got the weapon upgrade he needed, an Honor runeword in a Zweihander base. With the other teams, I kind of forgot to think about Honor before hell, before you can get elite bases and 5-socket drops. But you can make a 5-socket item via the cube recipe, and here I remembered to do that with an upper-exceptional base, and the result is a considerable upgrade over anything else available. Although I'm actually going to have him use it one-handed. Zweihander (despite the name, hah) actually has the smallest differential between the 1h and 2h damage numbers (only 35% less), which narrows further with Honor's +9 min/max applying equally to both, and so between that and the faster speed of 1H attacking, it's only a small drop in dps (about one-sixth) while allowing a shield.

So yeah, I think it's time that he goes with a shield. With Berserk causing zero defense and no leech, this barb feels very vulnerable. His survivability is entirely Howl and sucking potions, and it constantly feels like relying on that is recklessly cheating my way through, that it might fail any second at any moment. I want to see how much of a difference shield blocking makes, and the blocking value will be decent with the 94 dex that he needs to support the sword. I'm still trying not to overspend on stat points before finding his endgame weaponry, particularly on a character that won't be wearing heavy armor (because zero defense); but I'm less averse to spending some on a barb; with Battle Orders he's still over 1800 life even with only 200 vit. The shield is Rhyme for all its usual goodies, particularly cannot-be-frozen; I also considered Sigon's, but the +skill isn't that important since he can have +warcry weapons on switch for BO/BC/Shout.

And those stat points now get a big helper: I got Lum and Fal runes, to make him a Lionheart. This is unusual, I don't think I've ever used Lionheart on a barb before, they always want high defense instead, but not a berserker. Other characters here would also want Lionheart (the bladesin also for stat points, the spearazon for resists, maybe the paladin until he finds a worthwhile defense armor), but the barb has the most immediate need for the stats and so he gets it.

I also got a Mahim-Oak Curio amulet, usually a curiosity, but actually very useful here with exactly what the barb needs in +10 all attributes. Finally, I also got a Jewel of Fervor, which I socketed into the Immortal King helm and now the barb is wearing that too. (Leaving the second socket open for now; a second jewel of fervor won't reach the next speed breakpoint now; but will if combined with Sigon's gloves or a Goldwrap belt, if those happen to show up.)

   

The remaining note from the barb is that I don't know what to do with his ring slots. Not leech, because Berserk doesn't. He doesn't need resists between Lionheart and Rhyme and Mahim-Oak and Natural Resist. So I may as well plug in dual Nagelrings, take the magic-find plus the AR.

Besides the barb, the paladin also got an Honor runeword, in an also-cube-socketed Knout, the best 5-socket exceptional base (pity that Battle Hammer only goes to 4.) It's about the same dps as Ironstone up front, but as always Honor's great package beats other comparables. And I figured out I could get the knout to the fastest Zeal breakpoint: it requires one Jewel of Fervor on top of Fanaticism and Sigon's gloves, and the place I could socket that is a shield; so I made him a new shield with that and 3 perfect diamonds; you don't need 4 diamonds in nightmare.

And also the Ironstone can pass over to the necromancer for him to use for a melee weapon too. (Who foresaw this, a melee necro getting hand-me-downs from a paladin? ) I do like the necro having melee capability; it's mostly useful to pick off straggler monsters who took some damage from CE and then wandered out of range and away from the merc/golem. Particularly want that for blowdart flayers in act 3, and the zakarum healers as well. I'd also be happy with ranged combat for the necro, but I haven't found anything really workable in dealing enough damage while having manageable stat requirements.

   

And hah, I knew he was ready to go when his attack rating came to exactly 666.

[Meiz]

So yeah, I think it's time that he goes with a shield.  With Berserk causing zero defense and no leech, this barb feels very vulnerable.  His survivability is entirely Howl and sucking potions, and it constantly feels like relying on that is recklessly cheating my way through, that it might fail any second at any moment.  I want to see how much of a difference shield blocking makes, and the blocking value will be decent with the 94 dex that he needs to support the sword.  I'm still trying not to overspend on stat points before finding his endgame weaponry, particularly on a character that won't be wearing heavy armor (because zero defense); but I'm less averse to spending some on a barb; with Battle Orders he's still over 1800 life even with only 200 vit.  The shield is Rhyme for all its usual goodies, particularly cannot-be-frozen; I also considered Sigon's, but the +skill isn't that important since he can have +warcry weapons on switch for BO/BC/Shout.

Rhyme is much better choice due to increased block speed, which is basically essential if you want to avoid getting block locked with this setup. Notihing is more unfun than the character being unable to hit anyone due to constant blocking animation

[T-hawk]

Yeah, I just played him partway through act 3 tonight. The block-lock is noticeable but tolerable so far. It's a net win even if you cut incoming and outgoing damage by the same amount - relative to the damage rates, you get more time to react to danger, and for potions to replenish life. Really what it does is force me to cast Howl to get out of the block-lock instead of being lazy about not wanting to chase down the monsters.

Too bad Rhyme's 40% FBR just misses a breakpoint for a barbarian, though, the breakpoints are at 20% and 42% (so Rhyme actually isn't any faster than the 30% blocking suffix.) And there exists in the whole game only one single non-shield source of any more FBR, in Guardian Angel armor, and if I got one of those it'd be going on the paladin first. This does mean a Chromatic of Deflecting or some such might beat the Rhyme someday, although the CBF is tough to give up too.

[Meiz]

Yep, my last build was with Guardian Angel which I've rarely ever used before. If you ever find a suitable shield, socketing it with a shael is an option. Of course you'd then need to get "cannot be frozen" from somewhere else so it might be on issue, as is finding a better shield than Rhyme as well

Edit: Little bit off topic, but I've also been getting very heavily back to D2 action, but through a recent mod called Project Diablo 2, https://www.projectdiablo2.com/
A lot of interesting balance changes while keeping the original LoD feeling intact. I'm especially liking the re-introducion of Amazon's guided arrow being allowed to pierce and hit the same target multiple times, which was a thing in one of the earlier D2 patches. The classic multishot / guided arrow build is very enjoyable again

[T-hawk]

Yeah, I've seen quite a bit of spamming about Project Diablo 2 over on reddit /r/diablo2. I'm not interested but I guess a fair number of people are.

Finished act 3 nightmare. Most characters continuing along uneventfully, just short notes.

Barbarian: My first time playing a barb with a shield, and the block-lock is noticeable but tolerable, as I said. I may actually prefer his block rate near 50% rather than max; blocking isn't for tankability, it's just to give me enough time to react with potions or retreating. The Honor sword is quite good as a weapon and I think it can suffice through act 1 hell, when I should find an elite base for a better one, if nothing else better by then. Although what I find weird about this setup is the one-handed sword swinging animation. It looks off-balance somehow, I keep feeling like the barb looks like he's about to fall over.

Paladin: Also liking his Honor a lot, particularly cranked up to max Zeal speed, he's the most powerful for dps out of this group (except when Corpse Explosion or Lightning Strike are hitting a whole screenful at once.)

Sorceress: She came up to her full power level now, with Fire Wall reaching max this act, and now she can use both that and Glacial Spike, the classic "freezer-burn" combo. It's effective; not really any noticeably more dps than Glacial alone, but Fire Wall is useful in costing less mana by killing in one or two casts instead of six or so.

Necro: The Iron Golem survived his third straight act all the way.

Assassin: Longest report here. I've now got the hang of how to most effectively drive Blade Fury, and it goes like this. Hold on one target monster. When it's going to die - when you expect the two or three blades currently in flight to kill it - start clicking rapidly, which keeps the assassin in the blade-firing animation without stopping, until you get a lock on a suitable next target to kill that you can then hold on. And repeat from there. I prefer this method over what the guides say, which is to click-hold on a distant monster and let the blades kill closer intervening ones first... but the downside of that is you can't see the target's health bar, and you lose focus on a partway damaged one if it moves out of the line of fire.

This assassin's weakness has been the weak shadow summon. She needs that to tank longer while BF gradually does the killing. It's now time to raise the shadow, after maxing Blade Fury and Venom. (I'm pausing Claw Mastery at 10 points; that damage increase is small at only 4% per point, the AR doesn't apply to BF, and the diminishing-returns crit chance has plateaued.) I tried out Shadow Master through this act, and now decided to go with that, instead of Warrior as the previous two assassins did. I've always preferred Warrior, because you can easily induce her to cast Fade for survivability, and because you can control her not to cast traps when you don't want her overwriting your own, or to use Phoenix along with you to help out with damage. But the shadow can't use Blade Fury, so SW doesn't have much to do while the assassin is firing, but SM can get in there and mix it up more with her own skills. She chips in a lot of Mind Blast, which is quite helpful as a complement to Blade Fury, since the single-target attack can keep simply shooting at whatever didn't get mind blasted.

On to the items. The story of this act was this collection:

   

Basically all the good mid-level melee helms all showed up now. Randomness is clumpy.

So, how do we allocate them? First, Rockstopper is going on the spearazon. I want the most defensive piece on the most fragile of the meleers. She's the one who wants the resists including physical, plus vitality for life, and even strong defense as I was thinking about for her; might even be worth upgrading eventually for the defense.

Guillaume's Face then goes on the paladin. He uses the deadly strike unlike the spearazon's lightning skills, and can dish out the crushing blow faster. This does mean giving up the AR on Sigon's helm, but I guess he can tolerate that with the 250 on Honor. Guillaume's strength requirement is a bit of a problem; I actually decided to socket it with a Hel to help with that. It's worth a socket quest long term, it'll always be in use at least on a merc, and can be swapped out for a resist rune or jewel later.

Tal Rasha's mask goes... nowhere for now, what's with that level 66 requirement, we won't make that until halfway through act 5. I may put this on the paladin for more leech and resists in hell difficulty, will decide later.

Not much else notable, a couple minor pieces. Fleshrender unique club, which the necromancer will take as his weapon - less damage than Ironstone, but a great package of prevent-heal, open wounds, crushing blow, deadly strike, and a much lower requirement that doesn't require half an inventory of strength charms. Also got a Kuko Shakaku bow, that I'm going to try out on the necromancer for ranged combat, also because of its low requirements, though I don't expect anything spectacular out of it.

   

And I got my first skill charm. Not exactly the greatest, but can't pass up a life suffix.

Besides that, I made two more Honors by cube-socketing 5-socket weapons. One is a Partizan polearm, for merc use, goes to the necro's as the most dependent on his merc. The other is a Tabar two-handed axe... to become a new Iron Golem! This might be a waste of resources, particularly risky as to whether he can hold up against Diablo in act 4, but it'll be fun to give it a shot, I want to try out better golems to see how good they ever get.

Lastly, the rune department. I got two more Fals, which means two more Lionhearts (actually the Fals outpaced the Lums that the runeword also needs and I was missing one of those, but got it by cubing from Ios.) One goes to the spearazon; she doesn't greatly need the stats yet (the Impaler spear's requirements are low), but will certainly take the resists and life.

The other Lionheart goes to the character who does need stats for a weapon upgrade, which is the assassin. And now it's her turn for an equipment overhaul. Lionheart means she can support a claw with higher requirements now. So I gambled all her money on claws to improve Blade Fury, looking for something good in rare quality to cube-upgrade to exceptional, with some combination of damage and/or the Fool's prefix for AR and/or ITD. I got this:

   

The curious part there is the 76 max damage per level - that means this claw has not only Fool's, but it's stacked with the other max damage per level prefix (Grinding)! That works out roughly equivalent to a decent ED% multiplier (roughly 100%), so I went with it.

With the Fool's claw, now she could live without the Cleglaw's gloves/shield set combo for AR (still also has Hsaru's belt/boots pair for that.) And in the gambling, I'd gotten a +2 assassin skills claw, so put that on her off hand. This assassin build can easily go either way of claw/claw or claw/shield, and the former is generally better with Weapon Block better than shield blocking, as long as your resists are covered which they are from Lionheart and Fade, so she can take the skills on the off-claw. Taking off Cleglaw's gloves means losing the knockback property on them... so I replaced that with a hit power crafted glove, which also has knockback, and rolled good lightning resist plus a few other small mods.

Besides the assassin's claw, the rest of my gambling money went to amulets. I'd done circlets around this time previously, but this team already has plenty of good helms; there's only two (bladesin and sorceress) that would want a generic circlet with +skills, and Lore is decent enough in that place. Amulets are a good choice now, with +3 to skill trees now available at level 60 (we're 61.) Didn't get anything spectacular, but a few rares with good combinations of +1 class skills and resists.

Act 4 next, and here's a new angle. I'm going to get greedy here for a bit. I loaded up a fair bit of magic-find on each of the characters, most around 100-150%. This is the time to do it, late nightmare difficulty, when monster threat levels are medium but the rewards in exceptional uniques can be good. This is possible because I have resists covered pretty well all the way around, with a bunch of Lionhearts and good shields and boots and belts, although I compromised some on +skills and life. Some of the specifics: four characters (bladesin, necro, druid, paladin) are devoting the helm slot to 3-topaz helms (this contradicts what I said about the paladin getting Guillaume's helm, which is now temporarily on the necro's merc), and also I stuck a topaz in the barb's second Immortal King helm socket. Plus some usual MF stuff in Nagelrings, various amulets, Rhyme shields.

[T-hawk]

Blew through act 4 quickly, even full-clearing. The characters are strong and nightmare difficulty just isn't that tough.

I have to start with the Hellforge, since this was wild.

   

First came the most beautiful moment I'd imagined. The paladin popped an Um rune from his own hellforge! And thus I know his endgame weapon will be exactly what I wanted, Crescent Moon, soon as I find the right elite base.

Then the hellforge delivered utter trash: Io, Hel, Dol, Dol, Shael. But then:

   

For the barbarian, playing last, again it delivered an Um!

So okay, I have to run some statistics on that. The chance of at least two Ums in 7 tries is 12.8%. But here's a bunch of math just for fun:

What were the chances that everything else was as low as that in the 5 trials besides the two Ums? It goes like this:

At least one Shael or worse in the remaining 5 trials: 1 - (9/11)^5 = 63.3%
At least one Dol or worse in the remaining 4 trials: 1 - (8/11)^4 = 72.0%
At least one Dol or worse in the remaining 3 trials: 1 - (8/11)^3 = 61.5%
At least one Hel or worse in the remaining 2 trials: 1 - (7/11)^2 = 59.5%
At least one Io or worse in the remaining 1 trial: 1 - (6/11)^1 = 45.4%

Multiplying all of those comes to a 7.6% chance of doing that low or worse. And multiplied with the 12.8% chance of two Ums, that comes to a 0.97% chance of the runes having come out that extreme. Or more precisely stated, that exactly 2 runes came out that outlyingly high and exactly 5 came out that outlyingly low or worse.

The multiple endpoints fallacy does apply here. I'm pointing out how unlikely a particular case is after that case already happened, ignoring all the other just as unlikely cases that didn't.

To correct for that, we can look at the runes not as high or low, but for skewedness. Quantify it by the distance from the median.

At least one that is in the most extreme 2/11 steps (Um or Sol) in 7 trials: 1 - (9/11)^7 = 75.5%
At least one that is in the most extreme 2/11 steps (Um or Sol) in the remaining 6 trials: 1 - (9/11)^6 = 70.0%
At least one that is in the most extreme 4/11 steps (Pul+ or Shael-) in the remaining 5 trials: 1 - (7/11)^5 = 89.6%
At least one that is in the most extreme 6/11 steps (Lem+ or Dol-) in the remaining 4 trials: 1 - (5/11)^4 = 95.7%
At least one that is in the most extreme 6/11 steps (Lem+ or Dol-) in the remaining 3 trials: 1 - (5/11)^3 = 90.6%
At least one that is in the most extreme 8/11 steps (Fal+ or Hel-) in the remaining 2 trials: 1 - (3/11)^2 = 92.6%
At least one that is in the most extreme 10/11 steps (Ko+ or Io-) in the remaining 1 trial: 1 - (1/11)^1 = 90.9%

Multiply all those and you get a 34.5% chance of the total results being at least this extreme from the median. Not quite as low as I thought, but still demonstrably improbable.

Anyway, short character reports from the ones with something interesting to say.

Druid: He ran into the obstacle I knew was coming, the first fire immune monsters... which he ignored and kept right on trucking. Turns out that Molten Boulder and Volcano's physical synergy with each other is plenty enough to kill them. Boulder rolls right through doom knights and venom lords, hitting them repeatedly and kills them in about three casts even on players-5. Volcano works too and at longer range. So, like, what's up with all the standard advice that fire druids can't do hell? Did the people saying that ever actually try it? Did they max only Fissure and never try anything else? Do they just have no patience?

Spearazon: And she ran into her first lightning immunes, the Damned in the city of them. (Surprisingly, burning souls aren't.) Impaler's physical damage with 1-point Jab was barely enough to take care of them... slowly, and really the merc was doing more of the damage. Impaler has gone about as far as could be expected, and now she needs a weapon upgrade, but I just don't have any available.

Necromancer: Diablo is the scariest fight of the whole game for him, but like in normal difficulty, he handled it without too much trouble. The key was the same as before, to tank D myself to keep his attacks off the merc and golem. I kept a Nokozan Relic amulet (10% max fire resist) specifically for this purpose, which worked. Diablo's firestorm could do significant damage to the iron golem - it looked like enough to kill him if he took the full brunt - so I never let that happen: I always kept a portal open, and ran for it whenever D went into the firestorm casting animation (very slow under Decrepify so I could see it and react), about five times throughout the fight. And so the iron golem survived, hooray. Finally, the other key was Guillaume's Face on the merc for the crushing blow, which took down Diablo in only a couple minutes of attacking.

Barbarian: Yeah, I like the shield style and will probably go with it that way permanently, unless some crazy good (Ribcracker) 2h weapon comes. The cannot-be-frozen on Rhyme alone accounts for more dps than one-handedness loses, whenever the barb is chilled, which in hell difficulty is pretty much every other boss pack.

So on to the items. That magic-find I talked about worked, sort of. I definitely got a good number of uniques for the short act... in another drastically clumpy distribution: the paladin got eight different uniques before Diablo, the barbarian got five; the necro and spearazon got zero.

Here's the important ones. First off, if the theme from the last act was helms, this time it was shields:

   

Moser's shield is always a fine piece. Although really I don't have anyone to take full advantage of it, everyone who has dex for blocking either wants Rhyme more (barb, paladin) or a dual assassin claw instead. The druid may as well use this as a small resists upgrade over his 3-diamond; the barb would take it for hell difficulty if he can get CBF somewhere besides Rhyme.

Trang-Oul's Wing is also cool, here popped by the necromancer for himself off Diablo. It's particularly suited for a melee necro. The skills and fire resist are stuff you can get on a random head, but the strength and dex stats can help quite a bit towards supporting a decent weapon. Actually the dex can even make for some halfway decent blocking with the ICB here too.

And Visceratuant shield, +1 to sorceress skills. She'll keep it, but not use it for now, she's still using that big +5 Glacial staff and will for all of nightmare difficulty. For hell she'll probably need a shield with resists; not sure if a diamond in Visc would be enough (and Lidless Wall does the same thing better, if that comes up.)

Next, these uniques, the first of which I had in mind as one in particular to hope for:

   

Spineripper dagger and Grim's Burning Dead scythe - the two best melee necro weapons! They're specifically designed for this purpose, to cover a necromancer's deficiencies. One is attack rating, since the necro has no AR skills or multiplier at all (his to-hit rating has sunk below 40%), so Spineripper has ITD and Grim's has -50% target defense. The other is stat requirements: a dagger-class weapon's are naturally low (even if upgraded to elite), and Grim's has -50%. Plus necro skills on both, IAS and PMH on the dagger, and Grim's throws in some fire resist. So these are some really cool options for him. I'll keep both and see how one- or two-handed combat goes with each of them. (I found these with the other teams too, they're not rare, just weren't worth noting then.)

   

Two more good pieces that came for the first time for any of the teams. Finally got a Raven Frost ring! The barb popped it from a completely ordinary skull pile in Plains of Despair. And a String of Ears.

Both of these have to go on the spearazon. Raven Frost is the only place she can easily get cannot-be-frozen, plus the AR and dex are always great for melee. And the damage reduction and leech and even defense on String of Ears have to go to her too. Man, the spearazon is totally the problem child of this family, always getting the bribes to get her to behave...

And a few other complementary pieces, not worth individual screenshots. Dark Clan Crusher, great for +2 druid skills, now he can ditch Hellplague and the need for dex for it. Blade of Ali Baba, magic find, and actually I'm giving this to the necromancer for act 5 nightmare because he can hold it in his weapon slot without losing any significant offense. (And even fill the sockets, with a Hel for requirements and an Io thrown in for vitality.) Rattlecage armor, worth an upgrade to put on the necro's merc, which is a great fit, he wants the crushing blow and can override the monster-flee with Dim Vision.

A few that didn't make the cut to be useful: Bonesnap, possible endgame weaponry for a barb, although I don't think I'm going to try to use it, it takes way too much strength if upgraded to elite, and also this one was low on the damage roll (224% out of 200-300.) Coldkill hatchet, might have been useful earlier, but now not better than Honor for the barb or paladin; if upgraded it would beat an exceptional Honor, but not by enough to justify spending an upgrade rune, and wouldn't beat an elite Honor. The Ward shield, better than a 3-diamond shield if socket-quested for a diamond; will keep that on someone's switch (the druid has nothing else there) and see if anyone ever wants it.

Minor news: I made three more cube-socketed Partizan bases into Honors for mercs. That's really good for them at this point, better than anything else we've gotten. And they'll be in use for a long time, until we get seven better weapons (probably elite Honors), remember each new merc weapon replaces the worst of whatever seven are on hand. This all does consume a ton of Amn and Sol runes, but hey, that's alleviating the space crunch.

And some random rune drops made up a little for what the hellforge missed: yet another Lum and Fal pair, so now I have yet a fourth Lionheart. This one goes on the druid, since he's the caster that least uses Stealth's fast-cast.

But what I didn't get, still, was any armors. I've just got nothing for those at all. I'm now running four Lionhearts, still two Stealths on the necro and sorc, and Hwanin's set armor on the paladin. Not to mention the mercs that are still using vendor shopped junk, of blessed ancient armor or some such. Even a Goldskin or Spirit Shroud would be an upgrade here, come on already.

So I'm keeping the magic-find gear in place for act 5 as well, to see what we can get, particularly hoping for armors, the Guardian Angel came from there before. This contradicts a little of what I said above - for one act, the necro will use Ali Baba and Rhyme rather than Spineripper / Trang-oul's / Grim's, and also the druid is taking a Rhyme for this act, because Lionheart covers enough resists to not need Moser's shield. And most characters are continuing with a topaz helm, including the paladin; which means he still isn't wearing Guillaume's or Tal Rasha's mask, so that the necro's merc can, which is targeted to be important specifically for his Ancients fight. (Don't let me do this for hell difficulty though. For hell, everyone has to go with their real equipment; at most I might bend to squeeze in a magic-find amulet or boots.)

I'm not 100% sure what to do with the second Um rune. Probably should be a Crescent Moon for the barb too, particularly given that he got the rune for himself. But I hesitate because that weapon makes less difference for him, less likely to make the difference between Guardian or failing; he doesn't live on leech and speed like the paladin does; Battle Orders and Howl can slog through just about anything regardless of what the weapon is. I'm tempted for the Um to go for a Duress or Stone for the spearazon, since that might be her only good way to get some good amount of defense. At any rate, this decision won't happen now, and likely not until after act 1 hell when the bases for either the barb's weapon or the armor can occur.

The biggest missing piece is a weapon for the spearazon. (Crescent Moon infuriatingly doesn't work in spears.) Upgrading Impaler would be the most direct way, but the hellforge didn't cough up any Pul runes for it. (And the requirements go way high, would probably spend a socket quest on a Hel rune for it.) Honor would be good like the paladin and barb are currently using, but it's problematic to build in a spear: there's only one 5-socket-max exceptional spear (War Fork), and it's pretty low base damage for an exceptional. I don't have an endless rune supply to try to punch a 5-socket Lance or amazon spear at 1/6 odds. If nothing better happens (where are you Hone Sundan), the baseline plan is Honor in a Mancatcher elite base, though getting to one in hell difficulty may be a task.

Act 5 nightmare next, which will take a while in real time to full-clear, but could yield quite a bit of loot.

[superdeath]

Woot! More necro gear!

[T-hawk]

Yeah, but his downside is that he's so crunched for stash space. He's carrying six weapon setups! Ali Baba/Rhyme for magic find, Spineripper/Trang-Oul's for melee, Grim's also for melee, Fleshrender for act boss crushing blow, wand/head with skills for summoning Iron Golem, and a backup weapon to make a new Iron Golem if necessary (which I just realized is the perfect thing to keep the Bonesnap on hand for.)

[T-hawk]

Also I made a bunch more equipment tweaks before starting the next act. Largely to cram in more magic-find. I know this isn't super interesting to read, but I'm having way too much fun with this.

The assassin took off Hsaru's belt/boots; she can live without the AR for now, with the Fool's claw. This allows more MF, on a boot, and also the belt slot with Tal Rasha's. Which also has dex, so she could swap out her amulet with dex for MF there too. (Her base dex is 50, supporting a claw of 73 requirement via Lionheart and one other item which is now Tal's belt. I'm not sure how high her base dex will go; maybe not any higher; she's a good candidate to use Lionheart to endgame.)

The spearazon is the only one not using a magic-find helm (five others have a 3-topaz, and the barb has Immortal King's), because Rockstopper is just too good and I'd never forgive myself if she died without it, and also I socketed Rockstopper with an IAS jewel to gain an attack breakpoint. So I optimized the rest of her MF around that: she got the best of my three Nagelrings, and also my best MF amulet (Rainbow of Luck), and a good rare glove with IAS and MF and a resist.

I switched the Waterwalk boot from the druid to the spearazon; she has resists covered from Rockstopper and Lionheart, so she'll take the life in this slot, also the good defense and 5% max fire resist. She's actually well set up for actual defense rating, she's got surprisingly good defense in all of the helm (Rockstopper) and belt (String of Ears) and boot (Waterwalk) slots. Still need some kind of defense armor other than Lionheart though.

The druid, assassin, and barb also all have resists covered from Lionheart plus either Fade or Rhyme or Nat Resistance, so don't need that in the boot slot, so can take MF there. But the remaining MF boots I've got have no run speed. The barb can just go without it with Increased Speed. The assassin can go without it too, she hardly moves while fighting, and has Burst of Speed for town and longer distances. The druid needs FRW less than he used to (I used to run around a lot to aim for Boulder rolling lanes, but now he tends to stay still casting Volcano more, plus Fissure is also ramping up), but still wants some, so took a M'avina's set belt which has 20% FRW.

And I realized this tweak for the paladin: his armor slot is weak enough that it's actually better to trade it out for a topaz MF armor, and swap out the topaz MF helm for Tal Rasha's instead. (In other words, Tal's helm is better than anything he's got for armor.)

And...

   

Holy freakin crap I gambled Aldur's boots! I'm not going to use it right now; the only character anywhere near 95 strength is the barbarian, and he's fine with MF in the slot instead. This will probably go on the spearazon for hell difficulty, depending on her strength target for weapon requirements, but every elite spear is way over 95.

And also just a couple procedural notes that I want to fill in. One is that I'm not using Find Item on the barb. Partly because it's really boring and dull to hork everything, and also because it requires sinking two skill points or constantly swapping in a helm with the skill. But also from a sense of keeping the characters balanced. Each character has access to 7 characters' worth of item drops, which is what I'm trying to do... but I don't want the identity of those characters to matter, that there's more loot available because one of the teammates happens to be a barb.

Another is that I've been controlling the player count precisely. It's been p5 for all of nightmare difficulty, except for p3 for act bosses from Duriel onwards. Higher than that just means overshooting the monster levels into the experience penalty, and p5 is enough in the way of item drops (p7 is only about 15% more.) With the other teams, I tweaked the player count a lot more often depending on what each character felt like they could handle... but I want to do it differently this time. I want to stick to the idea that anything any character gets is something that any of them could have done, none of them relying on a more powerful teammate to find more items or clear more areas. This is particularly because of the necromancer, who is highly sensitive to player count because Corpse Explosion always is; I don't want the situation to feel like he was carried at all. This is also why I'm trying to keep the magic-find numbers fairly close to balanced as well.

I've even been keeping the experience numbers precisely balanced, by tweaking the player count towards the end of each act (false tombs, Durance, Chaos, and Worldstone to come) when someone is a little lower or higher. Right now all are within 0.5% of each other except the druid who's a little behind (he routed through the Durance quickly before I thought about doing this systematically; I'll fix this in act 5.) This isn't any kind of variant or requirement, just something I feel like doing. I'm also curious to see how closely the experience numbers track without any intervention as I full-clear all of the next two acts, which should in theory yield the same experience for everyone, though of course there's random variation.