Kylearan sends an async team to death or guardianship

[Kylearan]

Async Team Finale: Paladin

After I had screwed up with making a Heart of the Oak for the druid he could actually use, I still made it in the scourge base I had and gave it to the paladin instead even though he didn't really need it. While one extra skill level and faster cast is nice, he was already good enough against foes vulnaerable to Fist of the Heavens. It was against lightning-immune animals and the Ancients I felt he would have needed help. But I also didn't want to waste the runes I had already cubed up, so... whatever, why not?

I also decided to have some fun with patch 2.6 runewords and made this for the mercenary:

   

This new runeword is overpowered considering the runes needed to make it, but there are lot of better options once you reach the endgame. Most of my other mercenaries had better helms already, but the paladin's and the assassin's did not, so this wouild be a nice opportunity to try it out (the assassin's merc only got one in a geat helm instead of a demonhead).

   

Here are the paladin's stats before going into act 5:

• Stats: Str 128, Dex 119, Vit 317, Energy 27, Life 1276, Mana 419, Resists all max
  
• Weapon/Shield: Heart of the Oak; Spirit heraldic shield; on switch: Honor scourge and Rhyme heraldic shield
  
• Armor: Smoke; circlet with +1 paladin skills, 20% FRW, +1 dex, fire 37%, poison 18%; crafted gloves with 20% IAS, 5% AR, 1% life leech, 8% CB, +15 life; Tearhaunch boots; Nightsmoke belt
  
• Jewelry: Amulet with +2 combat skills, 5% mana leech, +2 energy, +9 mana, fire 35%; ring with 5% mana leech, lightning 8%, fire 18%, poison 9%; ring with +81 AR, 3% life leech, +11 life, +74 mana, all res +8
  
• Skills: Conviction 27, Fist of the Heavens 29, Holy Bolt 29, Vengeance 29, Holy Shield 10, Resist Fire 7, Resist Cold 7, Resist Lightning 7
  
  
• Mercenary: Defiance paladin with Insight Colossus Voulge; Griswold's Heart with two perfect rubies; Bulwark demonhead
  

As it turns out, act 5 with the monster sets I drew was nearly perfect for a FotH paladin. He could rush through the maps almost as fast as the other characters while slaying almost all monsters he ran past simply by quickly casting FotH three or four times from time to time, it was amazing! As for animal monsters, he only met fire boars and spike fiends which he could only target and kill individually, but only needed about three castings to kil as welll. Awesome! The only monsters not easily killed by FotH were the Zealots in the Worldstone Keep, so he  concentrated on killing their healers (who are not lightining immune) and let the merc deal with the Zealots.

As you can infer, he also survived the Ancients whom I had dreaded the most with this character. I had to re-summon them a couple of times until only Madawc was lightning immune, but I quickly found out that my mercenary was unable to tank them and quickly died. So after reviving him and then re-summoning the Ancients again, the paladin was the first of my team who had to separate the Ancients to be able to safely deal with them. I got lucky and quickly managed to do this even without a teleport staff, and first killed Talic, then extra strong Korlic and finally might-enchanted Madawc. Korlic gave me a bit of trouble, but between patience, potions for me and Holy Bolt for my mercenary, we managed to do it without me having to enter melee.

So in the end, all my worries about not having a good weapon for Vengenace were unfounded and I never needed it anywhere for act 5! 

The fight against Baal was super boring. Somehow he quickly moved to a far-away corner and stayed there, casting his spells which could not reach me while staying outside of the merc's zone of attention, and I simply held my right mouse button down until he died. I don't know why he never tried to advance on us again?

Anyway: Guardian number six out of seven!

   

[Kylearan]

Async Team Finale: Assassin

I saved the assassin for last. She's the only true melee character on the team which has to engage and remain in close combat, and she has also the most varied gameplay and to me was the character that overall I had the most fun with.

   

I also like her appearance best; she looks so fierce and battle-hardened and also disillusioned, it's awesome! Here are her stats before going into act 5:

• Stats: Str 113, Dex 110, Vit 305, Energy 34, Life 1372, Mana 205, Resists all max
  
• Weapon/Shield: Two Jade Talons with a socketed Shael rune; +6 to Shadow Master on switch
  
• Armor: Elite Spirit Shroud socketed with a 15% IAS/cold 12% jewel; Vampire Gaze helmet socketed with a 15% IAS jewel; Laying of Hands gloves; War Traveler boots; String of Ears belt
  
• Jewelry: Amulet with +1 assassin skills, +3 min damage, +9 energy, cold 7%, lightning 7%, fire 7%, poison 21%; Raven Frost; Dwarf Star
  
• Skills: Claws of Thunder 25, Dragon Claw 25, Phoenix Strike 7, Claw Mastery 25, Fade 26, Mind Blast 7, Cloak of Shadows 7, Weapon Block 7, Venom 9, Shadow Master 9
  
  
• Mercenary: Defiance paladin with Obedience Thresher; Rattlecage socketed with a perfect ruby; Bulwark great helm
  
  

Lots of wasted skill points there: In the end, I've never cast Mind Blast once (it was simply never needed), and didn't use Phoenix Strike as well, as hadn't really thought about during planning that with Dragon Claw, I already had a good source of non-lightning damage. In hindsight, I should have invested those points (and their prerequisited) into Weapon Block or Venom.

On the other hand, I never really missed those extra skill points. With max physical damage reduction, lots of absorb and integer damage reduction plus lots of leech, she was a very, very safe character to play, at least during this act. I never needed to take a look exactly what monsters were there - I simply teleported directly into the fray and killed them quickly, getting out of the fight with full life and mana. Getting swarmed? No problem whatsoever! Even Cloak of Shadows got cast rearely, only for some of the more dangerous boss packs. Ths felt almost like normal difficulty.  Going the damage reduction route for this character started out as more of an accident, but in the end was a very powerful build.

Even the Ancients were much less dangerous than I had feared. (I've said that a lot recently... ). I wasn't patient enough to separate them all and ended up fighting Talic and Madawc at the same time, with absolutely no problem. Korlic, lightning enchanted and with stone skin, took a while but in the end was easy as well - even my Master (at level 9) didn't die once.  

To compensate for the tame Ancients, the game served me with the most difficult Worldstone Keep monster draw of the team. On level 1, Death Lords, Invaders and Witches quickly gave me pause and stopped me in my arrogant tracks, and I had to play a lot slower and more careful there. And while my mercenary managed to die twice, the assassin herself was still never in any real danger.

On level two I had a comedy moment, as a Holy Freeze frenzied ice spawn boss and his minions suicided themselves against my Shadow Master without much effect, which really was a bit silly.   

An oddity I've never had before: Baal's throne room was empty with no monsters whatsoever in it, and Baal laughed immediately when I entered the room. Weird. The minion waves required a bit careful play again, but more to protect my mercenary than the assassin herself, and then the fight against Baal was only annoying because I forgot to bring extra mana potions and had to return to town once when he had drained me too often.

   

And suddenly, I have managed what I hadn't believed to be able to do over a year ago: I've completed this variant run with a perfect record, no deaths and seven guardians!

   

Wow, that's something I have to unpack first before I can write a conclusion to this journey.

[Boro]

That's an extraordinary leap. It must have been a lot of pressure to get it right.

[T-hawk]

Well done! And you in your one shot managed what I never did, a perfect team of seven. Yeah, Fade plus more damage reduction for an assassin feels like god-mode. My only dead assassin was the one who didn't have max Fade.

Although I was struck by the image and was going to say the opposite of yours, I don't like the assassin's look there. That boob window is so gratuitous, usually the assassin dresses much more practically than the other D2 women. And her posture is wrong, she should be leaning forward to anticipate combat, not back on her heels where she looks like she could be pushed over.

If you still want more, you could take a spin in the cow level, although I never did. Or at least kill Pindleskin.

[KingOfPain]

I kept saying they must have nerf'd the Ancients.

Congrats!

[T-hawk]

They did indirectly, by way of fixing the extra bugged explosions from fire/cold/lightning enchanted bosses. I think most deaths from the Ancients actually happened from those. Also player powers have escalated in general, like Leap Attack and Fist and with bugs fixed around skills like Fend and Claws of Thunder, plus the new runewords, so anything that was unchanged will be comparatively easier.

The other explanation is that, outside of the known big dangerous modifiers, the Ancients were never that dangerous in the first place to characters that are properly leveled and equipped. It's only the breakneck rushers trying to cheat their way through at the minimum level with no equipment that ever complained.

[Kylearan]

And you in your one shot managed what I never did, a perfect team of seven.

Oh, somehow I thought you did, but now going back to your reports I see that you suffered at least one death each time. But I chalk that up to several reasons, besides luck of course: Bug fixes and power creep in D2R, me using runewords you didn't allow yourself to use, and the fact that only my assassin was a true melee character. The only thing harder for me was that I didn't vendor grind, but that doesn't outweigh all that.

Still, I'm very, very happy with my result!

[assassin] That boob window is so gratuitous

With this I agree 100%, and it's a bit sad that I actually consider it an improvement over many other fantasy depictions of women.

[Kylearan]

I kept saying they must have nerf'd the Ancients.

I guess one reason I feared them way too much in the end was that you only do them once with each character while you do a lot of other "harder" fights a gazillion times while farming, so I have much more experience with other monsters than with the Ancients. Similar with Nilathak: I haven't farmed him much (I usually don't do endgame stuff like collecting keys), so I lack experience with him as well and would have gotten quite anxioius if I had had to kill him in Hell during this variant run.

[Kylearan]

Async Team: Conclusion

First up, huge thanks to T-hawk and KoP for all their comments and feedback, and to Meiz and Boro for occasionally dropping a comment and making this forum feel at least a bit alive!

Playing this variant has been a lot of fun! As someone who doesn't like grinding and so-called "endgame" content, this ruleset really enhances the experience of a normal playthrough. It reduces the amount of "wasted drops" where a character cannot use a class-specific items, and it also nicely hides some grinding in the sense that I got higher runes to play around with than in normal play-throughs.

Would I play it again? Most likely not as it took a lot of time, too much for my liking. But who knows, if D4 turns out to be not good enough to play for long (right now I estimate a 75% chance of that happening for me personally), I might return to D2R and this variant if I want to scratch my ARPG itch. 

One reason the variant run dragged on a bit and had some boring periods was the lack of challenge. Overall, it was a lot easier than I had expected it to be, and at times I caught myself playing like it was on softcore. One reason I like hardcore so much in many games is that it forces me to play slower and with more tactics and strategy and the excitement that comes with the feeling I could die at any time if I make a mistake. There were definitely parts of this run where I had this feeling, which was exhilerating!, but also large parts where I felt I just had to slog through and nothing interesting would happen or challenge me. We've discussed some of the reasons already, and if I come back to play this variant again, I think I'll make some adjustments. Somehow I dislike excluding all runewords that were introduced after a certain patch, but maybe I only allow myself playing on players-2 or introduce some rules to reduce the level the characters will reach, I dunno.

As for the builds I used in this team, overall I had the most fun with the martial arts assassin. Thanks to some lucky finds early on, she started out very powerful, fell behind somewhat in the middle, and was again very powerful at the end, thanks in large parts to Laying of Hands and the two Jade Talons. But apart from her power, she had the most varied playstyle of all, getting to use lots of different skills and tactics depending on the situation.

The Leap Attack barb was fun too, but too clunky and slow at times. Still, I was surprised how much tactical play was involved, which where to jump, when to use Leap, how to keep my merc alive etc. The FotH paladin was interesting to play too, and much more powerful than I had expected. The rest of the builds I knew already, but were fun to play too - maybe with the exception of the bonemancer, which somehow I didn't like much even though he had a lot of skills to use, too.

Trying out the non-standard mercenaries was a very nice experience as well. The new cold rogue was surprisingly powerful both for damage and crowd control, and the fire iron wolf helped my barbarian quite a bit with his Enchant. I was a bit disappointed with the act 5 barbarians though. Similar to the barbarian player class, they still don't feel sturdy and tough enough like in my mind a barbarian should.

My Ist, one Gul and some medium runes were never used in the end, but I'm glad I got to try out and use Wind, even if only for two acts.

Now, before I can finally play some other games there's one last thing I want to do with this team! 

[Kylearan]

Async Team: Addendum

One final entry, a short story using pictures about something I've never done, above all in hardcore.