I'm playing this game yet again

[T-hawk]

If nothing better happens (where are you Hone Sundan)

   

boo fukking yah!

Now just pray to the gods of Pul to upgrade it

[T-hawk]

Act 5 nightmare done and seven Conquerors crowned again.

First off, a little bit of temporal causality violation. The paladin, playing first, found another Bonesnap. Now that I knew that was on hand after the act, I could have the necromancer start the act with the first Bonesnap made into his Iron Golem! Taking advantage of future knowledge is either a minor loophole in or clever use of the rules. I'm going to go with it, I can't stop myself from knowing what each character already found before the next one goes.

One difficulty there was I had no Sol runes for upgrading the Bonesnap (after spending them all on merc Honors last act)... so I took a few characters through the nightmare Countess and normal cow level to find one, which I'd intentionally left undone for just such a need like this. (The cow level also happened to supply a couple other goodies: a perfect MF Nagelring, and a Sigon's boots that had been a missing piece so far.)

Anyway, Bonesnap makes a great Iron Golem. It's better than the Honor that it replaced: Honor's package of skills/AR/leech does much less for a golem than a player, and Bonesnap's cold and fire resist are great, gets the golem to over 90% resistance on top of a few levels of Summon Resist. Solid damage too, can usually kill a monster in about five hits on p5 to get a corpse chain started without help from the merc, when he's occupied elsewhere. And that's before I put any points in Fire Golem as the damage synergy. I was hesitating on that because 6% per point doesn't seem like much, but to start hell difficulty I'll probably go ahead and invest in Fire Golem, there really isn't anything else to add to this necro build.

The Bonesnap golem died late in the act, here's how. The merc tripped the untargetable bug during the Ancients fight while I was running to separate them, though I didn't realize it yet. Then the first monster pack in Worldstone Keep (Cursed + Extra Strong) all ignored the merc and swarmed the golem and killed him in about five seconds. I almost reacted fast enough to portal out to save him, but missed it. Anyway, I made a replacement by shopping a weapon from Larzuk (a cruel zweihander), which lasted for a while but then also died to a boss pack in the Throne. I finished up from there with the clay golem instead. Lister's pack was surprisingly easy (only about ten hits each from the merc on p3), and Baal was a complete non-event, for whatever reason as always he just never does anything while clay-golem-slowed and Decrepified, and my damage came from the 60% crushing blow on the merc.

That crushing blow came from Rattlecage on the merc, which was an interesting experience with the monster-flee. I didn't really mind if monsters ran away... but the problem was, every time it happened, the merc would immediately sprint off chasing whatever he scared! That I can't live with long-term, so will have to swap out the Rattlecage for hell difficulty.

Druid: His last skill of Fissure came near max, and I started using it... and yeah, it is the strongest piece in the fire druid arsenal, as much as I was trying to use Volcano and Boulder more. Fissure and Volcano deal similar damage per cast, but Fissure hits a wider area with a shorter casting timer. Fissure also has the odd behavior (which I've known all along) of the LastCollide property, the effect of which is that if two monsters are standing on the same fissure missile, it alternates hitting both of them very rapidly and deals enormous dps. But that said, all four fire skills do have tactical applications and I enjoy driving this character quite a bit. Fissure is the mainstay most often. Volcano is best against single large targets or of course fire-immune packs. Boulder is best against single or small groups of small targets, as it rolls through and repeatedly hits them, or in tight corridors where Fissure and Volcano won't work. And Firestorm is best at cleaning up the smallest targets (the blinky demon imps), just because it has the shortest casting timer until you can aim your next shot.

Spearazon: I think I'm sold now on skipping Dodge/Avoid permanently. I realized another way you gain from that: casting Decoy! It always seems that amazons have trouble casting that in a thick fight; I always just chalked it up to the slow casting animation... but what's really happening is Dodge/Avoid interrupting it! This amazon gets off her Decoys faster and more reliably than any I've played before. So I'm hoping that can be enough to get through hell difficulty without Valkyrie. It's even going to be worth looking for a fast-cast ring or two to improve this.

Sorceress: This act I learned how to drive Fire Wall better with her. This image illustrates how and why:

   

You want to cast Fire Wall diagonal to the screen edges, which is orthogonal to the game grid. Medium-size monsters occupy an X shape that extends 3 tiles in those grid-orthogonal directions, so get hit by 3 tiles worth of firewall missiles, as opposed to just 1 tile of collision for a firewall cast in the grid-diagonal (screen-cardinal) orientation. The difference in damage is very noticeable.

The paladin, barb, and bladesin are proceeding steadily with nothing new at the moment.

So on to the loot, of which we did turn up a pretty nice haul from full-clearing the act. (except Halls of Pain, screw that noise, and some bits of the outdoor areas with all the barricades.)

My first guest needs no introduction:

   

Well, that settles that.

   

Whoa. Looks like the paladin's weapon won't be Crescent Moon after all: he dropped himself a Razor's Edge tomahawk from Baal! It's very comparable to Crescent Moon, with similar damage and speed and defense piercing and even open wounds... but also that big 50% deadly strike, which makes it outdamage (and outleech) Crescent Moon in any base by that 50%. And it can get socketed with something, unlike a runeword. 125 strength is a little high but manageable. And he's got this right now to start hell, instead of needing to find and socket an elite base that might take all of an act in hell to show up. So, yeah, he has to use this. It's arguable that Crescent Moon might even still be slightly better, with the CTC Static... but it's not better enough to be worth the cost of an Um, which could be a Duress for someone instead.

And speaking of Um runes:

   

Holy crap! First time I ever dropped an Um from a random monster (previously got them from the hellforge, countess, and super chests.) And also the first time, crazy as this sounds, that I'd rather have wished for a lesser rune instead. (Pul to upgrade Hone Sundan.) Anyway, now I've got three Ums, so after a Crescent Moon for the barb, the others probably will go to two Duresses, for the spearazon and paladin. (Although I am actually tempted to cube two into a Mal, for a Prudence armor. I might actually do that if I get a 2-socket eth-bugged elite armor before a 3-socket for the Duresses.) (Sorry, necro fans, I'm not spending Sol-Um-Um on a Bone runeword for him.)

I also got yet another Fal rune, my fifth. (1 Ko, 5 Fal, 0 Lem, 0 Pul, 3 Um. Randomness is clumpy.) Well, I can still use a fifth Lionheart, this time for the necromancer. (And again I was short a Lum and had to cube one from Ios.)

I then finally did get a Lem rune after that. I'm considering this to make a Treachery armor for the barbarian, but I'm not sure yet, Lionheart for the stat points is also solid. I'm going to do the nightmare cow level first and see if anything relevant comes up there. There's also this:

   

A rare tomahawk with Cruel level damage. A cruel elite does beat the barbarian's exceptional Honor by a fair margin, and he'll probably use this to start hell difficulty. Berserk does waste the dual leech, so I considered giving this to the paladin instead for that reason... but the more important consideration is that the deadly strike on the Razor's Edge feeds into the paladin leeching and he gains more from that. There's also this factoring in to the barbarian's gear:

   

Scored both the Immortal King gloves and boots this act, to go with the helm that dropped before. Nice package for the barbarian here. (I was actually a little annoyed at first when the boots dropped - it's not all that useful by itself but means I have to hold on to it taking up space in case we get more pieces - but then we did!) Anyway, he should be able to use all this for hell difficulty; the downside is no resists on these pieces, but he should be set enough for resists elsewhere between Lionheart/Treachery (Fade) plus Rhyme plus Natural Resistance. The +20 stats on the gloves goes a long way towards supporting a big weapon, such as that rare tomahawk for now.

Next, finally got some exceptional armors this act...

   

... well, like, all of the less useful ones. Que-Hegan's Wisdom is no Vipermagi, but I guess it's good enough to fill the sorceress's armor slot (still just Stealth), and worth socketing with a resist rune. I'm not sure what to do with the Iron Pelt; the damage reduction is cool, but it doesn't do much else and the defense isn't enough to be worth upgrading, guess I'll throw it on a merc. Trang-Oul's armor doesn't do much for general use either, but I have to keep it to presummon Iron Golem, even though it makes the necromancer's stash space crunch even worse yet again. Finally, Haemosu's Adamant is OK defense for the paladin to use temporarily until he can assemble his Duress.

And here's a fun run:

   

I got five consecutive mediocre skill charms with mediocre suffixes. (Half of all skill charms have a suffix, and I got five straight.) I'm not even sure the traps ones are worth using; it's only Blade Fury and only a small gain in damage, though I might go with the cold-damage one; but I did also later get (not pictured) a shadow disciplines charm as well, which is actually the better one for her by quite a bit. For that last one, of course the nice sorceress lightning charm turned up on the one team where the sorceress isn't using lightning.

And as pictured earlier, the other major find was Hone Sundan for the spearazon. Sadly, I still don't have a Pul to upgrade it. But I think it still has to be her weapon to start hell difficulty; un-upgraded Hone does twice the physical damage of Impaler, and that's needed against lightning immunes.

Minor finds: a Steelclash shield, OK for paladin skills, though completely superseded by the Herald of Zakarum. Bloodletter sword, will keep that on hand for the barb, could conceivably be worth using as his weapon if I get a Pul to upgrade it and decide to spend all the Ums elsewhere besides a Crescent Moon. A second Blade of Ali Baba, which someone can take for the nightmare cow level at least, which will be the druid because he can wield any weapon type and can spare the weapon slot for it, and has a Lionheart for the stats to wield it (unlike the sorceress.) Wall of the Eyeless, but I can't really justify a non-resistances non-skills shield in hell difficulty. Kelpie Snare, useful for a merc, I think the paladin's who needs the help against crowds the most. Finally, the barb got a new Rhyme in a Heater shield base, trading out his tower shield version; 2% less blocking but lightweight for no run speed penalty instead of heavy.

I'll do the nightmare cow level next, see if anything good comes from there, before we buckle down for hell difficulty.

[superdeath]

Hope hell difficulty doesnt kill the damn necro...

[T-hawk]

So the nightmare cow level was more of an adventure than usual. That plus setting up for hell difficulty felt almost like an extra act in the sequence.

It started with deciding to do the cows on players-7 for everyone, for the experience to gain one more level, to 73. (73 isn't anything special, just wanted to get one more level for stats and crafts and imbues before starting hell difficulty.)

I had the paladin go first, because I was excited to use the Razor's Edge axe, and also because he was currently holding all my partial gems for cubing (whoever is going first always takes those, so everyone else as they finish can combine gems with that.) He thrashed the cows very solidly - he could actually tank an unlimited amount of them between his defense and leeching.

The barbarian and bladesin... rather didn't. No, playing the cow level on players-7 was not the greatest idea in the world for single-target fighters with considerably less dps and without life leech. Neither were ever in danger - always a snap of a Howl or Mind Blast away from safety - but each took over an hour to grind through four hundred p7 cows. Definitely not the peak of fun I've ever had playing this game. Well, at least they did get that hard-earned level. And the barb's merc could tank an almost unlimited amount of cows, again between leech and defense (with Shout from the barb.)

However, this experience made me think of a new angle for the bladesin. She has an off-hand claw slot available for pretty much anything... so I got her a claw with +Death Sentry. This is an interesting area to think about. I originally decided not to hybridize her character build into DS, so as not to feel like a trapsin rehash. But just slotting in an item isn't a build, so I decided this was in play enough to try out. Did it work? I'd say it helped mildly, but was far from dominating. The death sentries at a low skill level and small blast radius actually aren't good at finding a target that has a corpse within range. And DS's damage is significantly less than necromancer CE, less than half per corpse after accounting for Amplify too. And so DS never resulted in the big chain-reaction domino effect. But it did sometimes helpfully get part of a pack down on health partway. I'm undecided whether to keep trying to use DS as a tool in her toolbox; might use it more on lower player counts towards the end of hell difficulty.

Anyway, the other characters with actual area damage blew through the cows fine as I expected, the sorc and fire druid and corpse explodey necro, where Dim Vision buys as much time as needed for the merc to start each corpse chain. The spearazon did fine too, just had to hack for a while to get enough hits of Lightning Strike's mediocre damage. For the necro, I didn't want to bother trying to keep an iron golem alive, so just used the clay one, and also tried out Fire Golem a bit but he didn't really make any difference.

Got two major pieces of loot:

   

Finally scored the Pul rune I need to upgrade the spearazon's weapon. Came just barely in time, for the last character to play, and on about the third-to-last pack of cows. And here's the other:

   

Tal Rasha's orb. Nice, so now I've got the three common pieces (orb, helm, belt; I'm under no delusions about finding the incredibly rare amulet or armor.) Is this worth using? I thought about it a lot. Each piece is moderately underwhelming: the orb has only the mastery skills, the dual leech on the helm is wasted by a sorc, and the belt does little if you don't need dex. But putting the partial set bonuses together adds up to just about enough: a real +1 skill on the orb and minus enemy fire resist, 10% more fast cast on the belt, and 65% magic find for any three items of the set. Overall, I decided that using a cool set combo was too much of an opportunity to pass up and I had to go with it here. The clincher is the big life and mana on the orb and helm, which wouldn't be likely to come on other options in those slots.

There is a knock-on effect from that: the paladin gave up Tal's helm so he now takes Guillaume's Face instead, and so the necro's merc can't have that so he has to take something mundane (a Wormskull for leeching.)

The cow level also turned up an extra Aldur's boot. And now I realize what I got from pushing magic-find on these characters: it paid off not so much in uniques, but in set items. The diminishing-returns formula applies only half as harshly for set-quality as for unique. And most set items are readily available early as soon as the base item can occur - like Tal's orb is available here where Oculus is too high a qlvl, even though they're the same base item. So that's been the real payoff of the magic find, collecting some nice set groupings in Immortal King's and Tal Rasha's, plus lots of Sigon's as usual.

   

Yeah, set items were dropping that often.

Here's one other ramification of getting all these sets and some uniques: What do I imbue now? I usually do class-specific items for imbues, since they're scarcer to get by other means. But this time, so many of those slots are filled already. Herald of Zakarum beats all possible rares, and I'm not likely to supersede Tal's orb, IK's helm, or Trang-Oul's head either, or Hone Sundan with an amazon spear. The druid can still try his pelts, and the assassin wants to do ethereal claws for Blade Fury, but besides those there isn't much to do here. The standard backup plan for imbues is circlets, since those can come out in many useful ways... but even a lot of the helm slots are filled already too. So actually, the door is open to try one particular plan, between the lack of other needs and the supply of Um runes on hand: the barb and paladin can imbue ethereal crystal/dimensional swords, and if any hits it big enough, upgrade it to an indestructible ethereal phase blade.

---

So now is the biggest inflection point for each of these teams, rebuilding everyone's equipment for hell difficulty. Off comes most of the magic-find frivolity, and on with the resists and life. This team has a very sharp line between items that are already assigned (the set combos and almost every unique) and those that are interchangeable (basically all rares and charms other than +skills), so I put all of the latter into a common pool to reallocate and optimize from there.

Paladin: He's pretty happy: Razor's Edge, Herald of Zakarum, Guillaume's Face (after Tal's helm went to the sorceress), Sigon's gloves+belt (for speed and leech), Aldur's boots, Iceblink armor. That last happened after I'd forgotten I had it on one of the mercs; Iceblink works great with Zeal and will suffice for armor until he can assemble a Duress. What's missing is life leech rings; the spearazon got my only good rare and I kept only one Cathan's, so in his other slot he'll actually use a Nagelring for now. Finally, I socketed the Razor's (with a Hel to save on strength), and also the Herald of Zakarum with a diamond. (BTW, the strength requirements have me nicely satisfied on matching so well: Razor's Edge with Hel is 100, Guillaume's with Hel 98, upgraded Iceblink 97, Aldur's boots 95, HoZ 89.)

Assassin: Two rare claws (Fool's and damage for attacking, skills in off-hand), Lionheart, hit power crafted knockback gloves, Sigon's helm+belt+boots. That last is for the AR/level on the helm, which I want even on top of the Fool's claw. This could be the Hsaru's belt/boots combo instead for similar AR and to leave the helm slot open, but I decided to go with Sigon's, to throw in the life steal on the set and 50% magic-find on the boots; she doesn't have anything else compelling in the helm slot (it would just be Lore.) I did socket Sigon's helm with a resist rune. She's completely reliant on Fade for resists (20% without, 70% with), so it's important to never let that drop; I'm more willing to allow this risk on a ranged character than a meleer.

Barbarian: Rare cruel tomahawk, Lionheart, Rhyme, Immortal King's helm+gloves+boots, Bladebuckle belt (for stats and hit recovery.) The tomahawk will do as a weapon for now, though he's looking to assemble Crescent Moon or maybe an elite Honor if a base for that comes first. And I'm sticking with Lionheart for now (over a potential Treachery), for the stats to wield the tomahawk instead of investing hard points towards requirements that might change with a different weapon.

Druid: Dark Clan Crusher for skills, Lionheart, The Ward shield (socket quested with a diamond, better than a 3-diamond shield), rare gloves/belt/boots, +3 elemental skills amulet. Good setup, but the one thing he's missing is the pelt I had hoped to find, one with both +Dire Wolf and +Grizzly, so that he can have both Grizzly and the passive life bonus from Dire Wolf without spending any prerequisite points to go up the summon tree. He's currently still using the same +Grizzly pelt simply socketed with three rubies for life. (I haven't even found a Lore-socketable +Grizzly pelt.) But his other boon is that he's got resistances covered so well and doesn't need fast-cast, so his ring slots are completely open, and so he's wearing double Nagelrings for magic-find.

Sorceress: Tal Rasha's orb+helm+belt, Que-Hegan's armor, Moser's shield, rare gloves/boots. She does have to give up the big +skills staff now, hell demands resists in the shield slot instead. Moser's and The Ward shields could go either way between the druid and sorc; I went this way since the druid had a socket quest available for Ward while the sorc's went to Que-Hegan's armor and Tal's helm, and also the sorc gets some dex from Tal's belt for a little blocking. (I'm also satisfied at her strength requirements matching: Tal's helm and Que-Hegan's armor are both 55 and Moser's is 53.)

Necromancer: White runeword wand, Rhyme head, Grim's Burning Dead scythe on switch for melee damage, Lionheart, Lore, rare gloves with stats and IAS, Waterwalk boots (dex to wield Grim's.) I can't believe I didn't think of this sooner: I went and shopped a +3 Corpse Explosion wand to load White into, the +3 bone skills works for CE too, it's not just for Bone Spear. I also can't believe I'd been carrying +golem stuff on switch this whole time, that's silly, keep that in stash, you only need that to pre-summon him. So overall I think his best setup is a caster wand plus Rhyme for general use and Grim's scythe for melee damage on switch. Grim's beats the Spineripper dagger when neither is upgraded; Grim's deals real damage as an upper-end exceptional, while Spineripper is low-end and really needs the upgrade to get anywhere, though I may do that if another Pul rune comes. What's not in the mix is Trang-Oul's head. It's not so great for this build: the +2 bone skills is only for CE and nothing besides that, and the Rhyme head has the same +2 CE and better other properties. Where Trang-Oul's would fit is along with Spineripper if that gets upgraded, for the stats to wield it. Oh, and I figured out where to keep Trang-Oul's armor so that it doesn't take up stash space: let his merc wear it! The necro can just borrow it to pre-summon Iron Golem. It's actually pretty good for the merc, with good defense, and the 40% run speed on the armor helps the merc to keep up with the speedy iron golem. Finally, that iron golem is now the second Bonesnap; we'll see how well that survives in hell difficulty.

A footnote here: To socket the Herald of Zakarum for the paladin, I spent one of the necro's socket quests, because the paladin had already used both of his (Razor's Edge and Guillaume's helm.) I don't usually like using rewards from one character to support another, but here's my logic: the necro has no use for his socket quests (White, Lionheart, Rhyme, Lore are all already socketed), and actually Guillaume's was used by the necro's merc first and hasn't even been on the paladin yet, so that socket quest could/should have been the necro's in the first place, and also it may transfer back there eventually if the paladin does get some better helm.

Spearazon: Rockstopper, Lionheart (until she gets a Duress or Stone; I do want to get some defense rating on her), String of Ears, Raven Frost, rare IAS gloves, also Aldur's boots. That last is important, I really want to keep +40% run speed on her, she's the fragile one who most often has to bail out of melee in a hell of a hurry. Besides that, of course her big news was the Pul rune to upgrade her spear, exactly as I'd hoped for... but the result of that requires some explanation.

I spent a while test-driving the spearazon in hell difficulty. I kept a backup of the character file, and tried her out against monsters with a number of different configurations: different weapons, Fend or Jab, and with or without Dodge/Avoid. Until now, I'd only been using the lightning skills and 1-point Jab, but now I have to settle on a full plan for hell difficulty. I observed what everyone says: yes, Fend is critically bugged with Dodge/Avoid interrupting it, most particularly that the following Fend cycle whiffs (or really never happens at all server-side.) I also observed that she can't live on life leech like the paladin; she doesn't have defense and blocking to cut down incoming damage. The most important piece of her play style is Decoy; the right way to handle every monster pack is to always have a Decoy up between you and them, and nibble around the edges with your spear with its long melee reach. So my final conclusion is to go with max Fend, no Dodge/Avoid, and skill points into Decoy throughout hell difficulty.

(Full disclosure: this testing and experimentation involved a lot of swapping around character files and backups. And she died twice during my tests, when I was deliberately playing without the merc and plowed too deep into monsters to see how far she could be pushed. I consider this legit; I clearly set aside the backup file and designated this as experimentation; it's equivalent to nothing happening with this character at all if I'd manually hero-edited a different amazon file instead.)

The last piece here is that I picked Impaler over Hone Sundan as her weapon to upgrade. As excited as I was about Hone Sundan... I think Impaler is better. They are the same speed: Impaler is a faster base with 20% IAS built in and reaches exactly the same speed breakpoints as Sundan socketed with two Shaels. They are just about equal for physical damage: HS deals about a quarter more, but misses a quarter of the time without ITD. Given that equality, I would prefer the more predictable outcome with less variance, which is the ITD spear. And the other big swing is Power Strike, which is still better dps than Fend against anything with high physical resistance, and of course works best with ITD. The crushing blow on Hone Sundan is what everyone gets excited about, but it really doesn't make much difference except against act bosses; the crushing is modified by player count and physical resistance, and really doesn't come out to all that much; in fact the Open Wounds on Impaler deals more damage in general. The stat requirements on Impaler are also a bit easier to manage: slightly lower total, and more of it is strength which matches better with Lionheart, and also it's worth a socket quest for a Hel rune (55 stat points saved = 165 life!) And finally, the un-upgraded Hone Sundan can still go to good use on a merc (the necro's) for the crushing and life leech (Amns socketed), while an un-upgraded Impaler is too little damage to be good for anything.

   

Just a bit for the item connoisseurs, here's a few of my best rares. Doom Touch ring is beautiful for the bladesin, Blade Fury needs just a tiny bit of mana leech, plus it has AR and lit res and magic find. The gloves are on the necromancer, using the stats to wield Grim's scythe, and 10% IAS is okay enough for him, Grim's is a fast base type and he doesn't need to go crazy chasing breakpoints like more intensive melee classes. The boots belong to the sorceress, a whopping pile of modifiers (including the hit recovery) and of course Teleport can deal with low run speed. Viper Circle is the spearazon's, with the FCR to help Decoy, plus life leech and AR and a resist. Finally, Shadow Gorget amulet is also the spearazon's, and a very good fit; she can work without +skills, but really needs the resists and strength, plus there's magic find thrown in.

I did keep some moderate amount of magic-find on each character, ranging from 30% (one Nagelring on the paladin) up to around 90% (sorc and barb with Tal's and IK sets, druid with two Nagelrings plus some elsewhere.) This is OK and not too skewed between the characters. I don't want any to be serving as a carry for others who can't magic-find for themselves, but this is a reasonably close distribution that everyone should be pulling their own weight.

So now hell difficulty starts, though I'll be off some over the holidays, and it might be quite a ways into January before I finish full-clearing the first act for the next report.

[superdeath]

it might be quite a ways into January before I finish full-clearing the first act for the next report.

[T-hawk]

Heh. Still gonna be a while. I finished two characters so far, and the third got as far as Cain today. It takes 6-8 hours per character to full-clear on players-5.

[T-hawk]

Long wait, long writeup, here we go. Hell difficulty is the proving ground where a build really gets put to the test, and these did indeed perform.

First off, I decided on keeping the player count standardized all the way through the act, on players-5. As I said before, I want the characters level with each other, none carrying or being carried for item drops. P5 is a little high in general, but everyone managed it. (I did tweak it near the end to equalize the experience: the paladin overshot by a third of a level after he got six or seven experience shrines; the druid also overshot and dialed it down late; the necro got none and came in under so he went to p7 for catacombs 3-4.)

I'm leading off with this to give the same impact it did for me, because it came first in real time, just ten minutes into the blood moor:

   

Holy crap another Um rune, wow, this team's fourth, and now all three teams found one of those in the first act of hell. I'll talk more about the uses later.

Assassin: Blade Fury turned out to be less effective than I'd hoped. In hell difficulty, it's taking about twice as long to kill each monster as in late nightmare. That's not unusual for many characters and skills. And as a ranged attacker, she doesn't really incur any more danger by taking longer. It does take some effort to keep the merc alive longer, but that's mostly doable with Cloak and Mind Blast. But the problem is that taking twice as long screws up the logistics of the timing. In the time before the target dies, something tends to happen to interrupt me firing at it - either the shadow will mind blast it, or my knockback will push it behind some other monster, or the shadow doing Dragon Tail will knock something else into the way, or I have to refresh Cloak and I lose name-lock on it. And getting interrupted on a target means it starts regenerating and I lose my progress if I can't get a clear line of sight to lock it again. So it's taking quite a bit more player effort to kill things than I'd anticipated. But driving all this is still interesting, still a lot of player skill involved in prioritizing and directing the battlefield.

Where it becomes a problem is physical immune monsters. It turns out that Venom isn't a great solution to them. For one, ghosts have high poison resistance. Second, the problem is being unable to stop regeneration, because Venom overrides any other poison duration. I had to get true Prevent Monster Heal somehow. The best way was to make a Malice claw, which also includes Open Wounds and also a target defense penalty, and swap that in to use against ghosts. I learned with the werebear last team that Open Wounds alone is enough to kill ghosts (slowly), and that did work here.

This assassin has half her stash crammed full of extra claws: Malice for immunes, Strength for crushing blow on act bosses, a rare with CTC Amp, a rare with +Death Sentry, and a socketed elite base with +3 Blade Fury for the chance of making a Chaos or Fury. But she's got something even more exciting coming when we get to the items report here.

Paladin: He's diesel as hell on offense, the fastest clearer here, yeah I totally underrated the zealot build, and Razor's Edge with the deadly strike is the real deal too. He can't quite invulnerably live on leech all the time, but I just have to be careful enough not to get him buried in more than about five monsters at once. Actually the best thing going on with him is his merc's Kelpie Snare (hit slows target 75%, which even stacks with his holy freeze), that makes a big difference to break up packs while running away, and to nerf the nastiest might/fanaticism/extra strong bosses. The one thing that underperformed my expectations with the paladin is the Iceblink armor, which is OK but not great; it can freeze 2-4 monsters with Zeal, but that's when you don't need it; it doesn't help the worst cases of a dozen targets at once.

Sorceress: Also plenty diesel on offense. Glacial Spike is a little mediocre on the damage, but it actually doesn't matter how much it does, any target that gets frozen will stay that way until it dies. And Fire Wall is her heavy hitter. Besides the diagonal-aiming idea I mentioned before, there's also another tactic that I can't believe I didn't figure out sooner, although it hadn't really been necessary until now. To kill something with Fire Wall that you can't keep still, either if freezing doesn't work or if the merc can't stand up to it, this is the play: cast Fire Wall on it and then quickly teleport to the end of the wall, so that the monster runs down it lengthwise.

I'm really liking this build, might be my favorite sorceress I've played. The overall power level is maybe a 6 out of 10, but it's tactical execution with Fire Wall that makes the difference between 3/10 and 6/10, which makes it interesting and skill-rewarding to play. What's cool is that the two elemental trees interact with each other, which doesn't really happen for any other sorceress build, they tend to be just two attack skills of different colors. It's also cool that a fire/cold build gets access to an extra third element, in 1-point Static Field, which I found worth using against most fire-immunes bigger than fallen and of course any dual immune bosses to help out the merc.

Druid: I thought he was underpowered... and then realized that I'd gone to players-8 for one of the super chests and forgot to switch it back, oops. Turns out that the physical half of Boulder and Volcano do indeed get the job done against fire immunes adequately on reasonable player counts. Although the fun part is that I keep being indecisive between Boulder and Volcano. Every time I'm using Boulder, it feels like Volcano instead was faster, and vice versa. But ultimately they're about the same, except of course against large enemies where Boulder crashes instead of piercing through. Act 1 doesn't have many of those anyway, only the brute and tainted and spider types, and the first two of those aren't fire immune so Fissure works instead anyway. I think he will get a bit harder to progress in the later acts with more large monster types that Boulder doesn't pierce, we'll see.

Spearazon: Or should I call her the Decoyzon. The skill she's built on isn't Fend or the lightning skills, it's Decoy. Every monster pack I handle with Decoy to occupy them while I nibble around the edges. Against a big pack or an extra strong boss, I have to recast Decoy constantly, after every single Fend cycle is not too often. I've had to get really good at precision targeting for recasting it, most often trying to aim at the existing decoy's feet before it dies to put the new one in exactly the same place occupying the same monsters. This takes a lot of effort to drive; like the phoenixsin, constantly one slip away from disaster, but I'm enjoying it. She probably incurred the biggest challenge playing on p5, since her limiting factor is usually whether Decoy's health can outlast the monster that I'm attacking.

For offense, Fend is serviceable, and perfectly smooth and not-bugged without Dodge/Avoid. The lightning skills are still stronger so I mostly use those (she was fast through the act because Lightning Strike fries fallen camps like hell), but lightning immunes are common and Fend gets good workouts too. Fend also comes into use against bosses even if they're not lightning immune, because of AR; the spear's ITD doesn't work and Power Strike's AR is bugged and never does, so Fend's AR matters. Besides that, I feel I could use Fend more and dive more deeply into packs if I could pack more life steal on her, currently at only 11% from String of Ears and one ring. Or if she really had a top-end weapon, but there aren't really much of any attainable choices, most of the mid-high runewords like Crescent Moon don't work in spears. The nice thing about her currently is the Open Wounds and PMH on Impaler - it's a great feeling that time works in my favor for once rather than against me with monsters regenerating!

Her other major problem is money. The merc dies often, which isn't unusual for a character with no life buffs or crowd control skills. But the other problem is the weapon repair cost, it's enormous, 30k at a time thanks to the skill modifiers on upgraded Impaler. And that led to this embarrassing moment: I ran out of money to resurrect the merc, which happens on occasion... but then I also ran out of money to repair her weapon, and had to resort to buying a cheap spear and killing a few things with the lightning skills! Fortunately, then an Ort rune dropped, which repairs a weapon when used in the cube.

Necro: He's worth a lengthy report. Hell difficulty is where a build proves itself and he has.

This build is coming together very well. What he's doing just doesn't power down in hell difficulty like other classes do. Corpse Explosion scales with monster health of course, and Amplify cuts past the physical resistance and lets the merc kill things very fast, even on players-5 and with only a middling weapon (un-upgraded Hone Sundan.) I expected this build to be ponderously slow, but he's right around or even a bit better than average for clearing speed among this team.

This build is what I expected and hoped for: a very high player skill ceiling, I can handle almost everything, as long as I'm attentive and accurate at commanding and handling the situation. Dim Vision constantly at the edges of the screen (its radius extends almost another screen-radius beyond), Amplify precision-targeted at whatever the merc is currently engaging, Decrepify when the merc gets in a little too deep and I need to buy him some time (particularly against champion groups that can't be Dimmed), and I hadn't even planned this in the build, but the last key component is Terror to clear even bigger crowds off the merc, particularly minions of a nasty boss. I love how this necro build makes room for all the utility curses to shine, unlike a bone/poison-mancer who is always focused on offense, or a summoner where the skeletons are all spread out and working on their own regardless of what you do yourself. So I can gain mastery of almost any situation with the proper application of these curses, and then comes the exclamation point, Corpse Explosion to bring the house down.

His melee capability helps some, maybe 10% of his total offense. It doesn't really win or accomplish anything I couldn't otherwise, but melee does help clean up the logistics, usually when a monster is at a sliver of life after some corpse exploding but the merc is busy elsewhere. It's also good to apply poison damage to stop regeneration against a single target, particularly ghosts which we have to kill by way of Amplify to break the immunity. What's really nice is the super long melee reach on Grim's scythe, it extends like almost a quarter of the screen, so I can reliably attack a monster while still positioned behind the merc and golem.

The iron golem is worth a mini-report of his own too. First off, he's got a pre-game ritual more elaborate than the New England Patriots: to summon Iron Golem, swap in a wand and head and amulet with summoning skills, plus Trang-Oul's armor, which itself needs a strength belt and ring to wear. Which I had to do over again a few times throughout the act.

   

7000 life on the golem is worth the effort, though. That thorns is even almost adding up to be useful too.

The Bonesnap golem that I was so proud of met his end early, in the Stony Field. But I actually don't know how, if he died or just poofed from being too far away. I was running myself and the merc out of combat. When I saw that the merc had followed me safely, my attention went to something else (identifying some drop or restocking belt potions) and by the time I looked up at the golem again, he was gone. The monsters were a Might-enchanted pack, but it was just foul crows and fallen, not big damage dealers. So I really don't know if he got killed by that or not.

I cobbled together a series of replacements: first the best weapon Charsi happened to have (a cruel pike), which I then switched to a rare Martel with decent (125%) damage that had dropped (and when I had a skill shrine on to prebuff the golem more.) That also died, in the forgotten tower to a thick pack of ghosts when I was too slow in portaling out. I switched to the fire golem instead for a while, which did a little better damage against ghosts, so kept him through the rest of the tower and the jail.

So it turns out that even 7000 life isn't enough to keep a golem alive all the time. Sufficiently nasty boss packs can wipe even that much in four to six seconds, and unlike a merc you can't instantly rescue a golem with a rejuve potion. The ticket to instant rescue would be a source of Teleport, which I don't have (no room for a teleport staff on switch with a melee weapon there instead.) So I had to come up with a decent way of finding replacements. One way is gambling: gamble the biggest base items (great sword, pike, great maul) and hope for an exceptional upgrade (happens quite frequently at character level 80+) with a decent damage prefix, and that's good enough to go with, and way faster than shopping a vendor hundreds of times to turn up some cruel elite.

Barbarian: Yawn. Berserk kills things. One at a time. End of report.

So on to the loot. The story this act was loads of marginal stuff, some small upgrades and a barge of stuff that's interesting but falls short of being useful to use. I'll start with the few of some use and work down from there.

   

Naj's Light Plate armor was the most notable find, +1 skills, 25% resists, 65 life. Perfect fit for the druid, who greatly wants +skills for both elemental offense and his summons, and doesn't need fast cast or Lionheart's stats.

   

... and oh wow, I gambled that just as he needed some more strength to wear the Naj's.

Saracen's Chance amulet, an uncommon find, 12 all attributes and 16 resist all, similar to Mahim-Oak Curio but just a bit better. I gave this to the spearazon, it fits her needs well, she needs stats and resists more than skills.

Peasant Crown, +1 skills and some minor properties, one of the slightest upgrades imaginable over Lore, and actually it costed a socket quest for it to have a resistance (Ral), but I did so, for the necromancer, since he needed fire resist more and Lore only includes lightning.

Skill charms: necromancer bone and druid summoning, both self-found by themselves, always cool when that happens.

   

The druid got this nice piece from Charsi as his last imbue. And so I finally committed to what I'd been avoiding with him, I took hard points up to Summon Grizzly rather than always getting it from a pelt. The tradeoff is the 4 prerequisite points not going into Oak Sage (who still really needs it to raise its own life), but +2 to all skills and 2 more on Fissure is too good to pass up, plus the fire resist. Finally, I even hotkeyed the Solar Creeper to put to use; it's all the way up to level 9 with all his +skills and there's no reason not to use it, even just for disposing of skeleton corpses in act two.

And a footnote to that: I had the spearazon spend her imbues on coronets, since a class-specific item for her wouldn't beat her existing weapon, and we're now at high enough level for an imbued coronet to qualify for +2 skills (78 + 4 for the imbue + 8 for the coronet's "magic level" property.) So of course right after getting the above pelt, the +2 affix I got was druid skills.

Merc gear:

   

Here's an interesting one, check out this rare merc weapon, Cruel and CTC Amplify. This goes to best use on the blade assassin's merc, the one most in need of both the CTC Amp and some damage help from the merc. Although it adds even yet another task to her commanding the battlefield, trying not to overwrite the Amp with Cloak of Shadows.

Silks of the Victor armor, first time any of the teams found that, but +1 skills and basically nothing else in the armor slot isn't good enough for anything. Actually, strike that, it is good enough to upgrade to exceptional and put on a merc, it does reach 900+ defense which is better than my currently lowest merc armor.

Second copy of Hone Sundan, good for a merc of course too.

Griswold's set armor, worth socketing with a resist-all jewel and two rubies for life to throw on a merc (the bladesin's, because it has +20 strength to support that rare ogre axe.)

And that's about all that was actually useful. Now begins the river of almost-but-not-quite useful items:

Second copy of Que-Hegan's armor. I was going to put it on the druid, but then found the Naj's which easily supersedes it, he doesn't need the fast cast. I don't think it fits anyone else either; the sorceress already has the first copy, and everyone else prefers Lionheart or a defense armor.

Whitstan's Guard, but I don't think anyone here wants a shield for just high blocking and nothing else. Actually I really can't think of any build at all that would want this over a readily available Rhyme.

Valkyrie Wing helm! Actually two copies of it. +2 amazon skills... but no, I'm sticking with the Rockstopper, she's got enough offense but always craves more defense. I'm after the margins that will make the difference between a Guardian and a corpse. Rockstopper does that; +skills isn't going to on this build.

Two more copies of Tal Rasha's orb. One has +1/+2 cold/fire mastery instead of the +2/+1 on my first one. So it would be correct to weapon-swap between them for the fire and cold elements... but god no I'm not doing that for that tiny difference, there's a limit to how much even I will micromanage.

Zakarum's Hand scepter, interesting with ITD, doesn't beat Razor's Edge for the paladin, conceivably usable for the necro or maybe barb but I think they've got better.

Heart Carver dagger. Actually a bit better than Spineripper with more damage and ITD and deadly strike, but I think Grim's is still better for the necro's melee.

Infernostride boots, don't think anyone wants max fire resist that badly, the spearazon is the one that might consider it, but I really want to keep 40% run speed on her rather than 20%.

Trang-Oul's gloves. Of course this came up on the team without a poisonmancer. Now I have the 3-piece package a poisonmancer needs, for +25% poison skill damage and -25% enemy resistance, which makes it possible to deal with immunes broken by Lower Resist. But it doesn't do enough here to use on this necro. Actually what I would need is the helm or belt, and then the assassin could use a three-piece combo for Venom.

Buriza-Do Kyanon, the first time any of the teams found that, but no use for it here. (Anyone else ever disappointed that there's not much use for bows in general in this game? They're only for one tree build of only one class. Maybe the druid could have had some sort of hunter subclass. It won't work for my necromancer here because it would never hit, there's nothing for attack rating on either the weapon or any of his skills.)

Second copy of Immortal King's gloves. Actually a little annoying to keep because it doesn't do enough by itself without more pieces, but I'd be kicking myself if I got rid of it and then did find more.

Natalya's boots, same deal, I think everyone has a better rare or set piece, but I have to keep this in case more set components show up.

   

And I got this splendid base for a Rhyme... which of course came up for the team that already found a Herald of Zakarum. I could still see keeping a Rhyme on switch for situational cannot-be-frozen use... but the problem is I can't replace the +20 strength on HoZ towards other item requirements.

Breaking this up into two posts because of a limit of 10 attachments.

[T-hawk]

So that's the long list of marginal stuff. But the real prizes that came this act were in the rune department. Besides the Um up top:

   

A GUL rune! Never dropped that before outside the hellforge. What can I do with it? Not all that much, actually. I don't want a Principle paladin armor; a hammerdin might but a zealot wants defense rating. I actually could make a Kingslayer sword, Mal - Um - Gul - Fal... but nah, it's good but not better enough than Crescent Moon to be worthy of blowing two extra Ums into the Mal.

But several days later...

   

Gul rune times two! That can be a Vex!

Now I was excited about the possibilities here. I actually could make the king of old-school runewords, a Silence weapon which the spearazon might be pretty happy with, if I cubed all four Ums into the needed Ist, but no, that's silly. (Death is off the table, that's ladder only.)

The big option for a Vex is Heart of the Oak... but I decided against that too, and thus didn't use the Guls/potential Vex at all, at least not yet. HOTO is awesome of course, best in slot for almost any caster... but it's only a small upgrade from many other options like Tal's orb. The constraint here is that HOTO also requires a Pul rune, and I did get one in the act, but I have a higher priority for it:

   

A Stone armor. For the spearazon. I'd been thinking about Duress, but I like this even better. I still want to get some defense rating on her, and Stone is pretty much as high as that can possibly go, another 100% above Duress, and this rolled a near-max 285%. And Stone adds strength and vitality over Duress too, and more FHR, and finally the Clay Golem charges make the perfect replacement for this amazon's missing Valkyrie. I'm looking for the stuff that's going to make the difference between a Guardian and a corpse, and that's this much more than a HOTO or Duress. And the base I got is quite nice, a 456 defense dusk shroud.

The paladin did get a Duress. For all its usual goodies (even the cold damage), and he can handle having the lesser defense compared to Stone thanks to having shield blocking, plus also high defense in his shield/helm/belt (partial Sigon's set) slots. Although this base wasn't exciting, a mediocre 404 defense wire fleece, which was the only 3-socket elite armor that came this act, but I went with that now rather than waiting another act for something better. And it rolled a bottom end 151% defense, oh well. The wire fleece requires a bit more strength (111) than he had (100)... so then actually I went a bit further, to 125 total (80 hard points), to allow swapping out the Hel runes in his weapon and helm (Guillaume's) for other stuff, a perfect 40% ED jewel in the weapon (I rarely get to use these; almost every weapon setup wants a Shael instead, but here he's already at max speed) and actually a topaz in the helm, so he would still have one source of magic-find to let me swap out his Nagelring for a good life-leech rare instead.

I also thought about a Smoke after I got a nice 2-socket Wyrmhide armor base, but I don't think there's any use for that on this team. It's not quite good enough for either resists or defense. If someone wants resists, Lionheart and its huge package of stats are better. For defense (which is only the paladin and maybe spearazon on this team), Smoke's 75% isn't all that much, and Duress or Stone or Prudence are better.

   

The barbarian got his Crescent Moon sword. What merits a bit of explaining is the base, the Legend Sword. I would have used a phase blade, but I never got a 3-socketable one in the act, but this 3-socket Legend Sword did come up. The big downside to this base is those gargantuan stat requirements. But the big upside (besides being available right now) is that it's fast and the speed works out perfectly, exactly coming to the fastest breakpoint (-15 WSM, 20% from the Shael, 25% IK gloves, 30% two IAS jewels in the IK helm.) I also like having it in a 2H sword in case I do want to go back to two-handed attacking, which I'd consider if he can find another source of Cannot Be Frozen besides Rhyme. So the stat requirements are the only downside here, but I decided he could go up to 125 hard points in strength, plus Lionheart and the IK gloves and still a Bladebuckle belt. This locks in Lionheart for at least one more act and quite possibly permanently, but that's OK, Lionheart is perfectly fine and he's not itching for anything else in the armor slot since Berserk cancels defense anyway. And this means he can finally commit to Sword Mastery, which will still work in case he does manage a Kingslayer later on, and in that case he'd hire a barbarian mercenary to pass down this Crescent Moon.

   

And I've got one more customer for another Crescent Moon with the last Um: the assassin! Dear god she wishes Crescent Moon worked in a claw, but an assassin is allowed to use other weapons. Yeah, I wish the base was ethereal, but this is what came up now and I'm going with it. Small Crescent is the best practical base for this, the highest 1-hand damage except for a Legendary Hammer which is much scarcer and a higher strength requirement. Blade Fury ignores the slow speed of course.

The downside of this is giving up Claw Mastery, its multiplication won't apply not only to the weapon, but also not to the Blade Fury skill damage that is the biggest portion of her output. But it turns out that's not actually a dealbreaker. Claw Mastery's percentage is only additive with str/dex and the Might merc. I ran all the numbers and the Crescent Moon comes out to about the same damage as her Fool's Grinding claw, except for the crit chance on Claw Mastery, but the ITD on Crescent swings it way ahead. AR is a gigantic problem for Blade Fury, which has no multipliers for AR at all because Claw Mastery's doesn't work for BF, so even the Fool's claw plus Sigon's partial set for AR was still coming to less than 60% hit rate. So with the AR problem fixed, then of course Crescent's static field and even open wounds are tremendous.

She does still have to keep the Sigon's pieces for AR against uniques and champions, and did have to put 25 more hard points in strength (75 total.) The last downside is that she has to give up dual-wielding a +skills claw in the off hand. But that does allow swapping in a Rhyme shield for all its usual goodies, which in turn lets me swap out her resists amulet for one with dex instead to support the weapon. Finally, if she does later come by an ITD claw to beat Crescent Moon, then it would pass over to the necromancer for melee instead.

So that pile of runewords was a good payoff, even if I still haven't used the two Guls or potential Vex. I think the biggest thing I want to see is an Ist to make Silence, I'll be looking out for a base for that. HOTO is possible but unlikely; the Pul is the limiting factor there, and I think I would still use my next two of those on upgrading Hone Sundans for mercs.

The last footnote in the runeword department was assembling two elite Honors for mercs, a thresher and a mancatcher, the two 5-max-socket bases. So to give a rundown on the merc equipment so you can see how I arrange such things:

Necromancer gets the Honor Thresher, obviously by far the most dependent on his merc.
Sorceress gets the Honor Mancatcher, the next most need for physical damage, actually the only character here who can't deliver physical themselves.
Assassin gets the CTC Amplify rare to help Blade Fury, plus Griswold's armor for the strength to support it, plus a Wormskull helm for leech because the rare doesn't.
Spearazon and druid both get Hone Sundan, both of them need leech (2 Amns socketed) on the merc to stay alive, and can use the crushing blow, but don't need big physical damage from the merc.
Paladin gets Kelpie Snare, great for nerfing crowds, plus Wormskull and Boneflesh for life leech because the weapon doesn't.
Barbarian is the least dependent on his merc and gets the last leftover exceptional Partizan Honor.

And then the necromancer also took the two leftover Honor Partizans for Iron Golems, one to make now and one to keep as a backup.

   

Finally, I'm going to take Infanta's advice from the Amazon Basin for the spearazon. I'm going to try out a Defiance mercenary to go with the defense of the Stone armor. 7200 defense for a 28% get-hit rating might just work. Also helps that I also got a whopping 1500 defense ethereal armor for her mercenary too. I'm very aware of the dangers of going without Holy Freeze, but the final reason I'm willing to try is the Clay Golem from the charges on Stone, which does provide an alternative source of slowing monsters. We'll see how this goes, and it's possible I could just switch back to Holy Freeze anyway.

And so this is my most successful team so far, first time all seven finished act one hell. I'm establishing parameters for act 2 that are a little different from the previous teams. I'm standardizing on a player count of 3 all the way through; there's less need to chase experience and items now. I'm relaxing a bit on the full-clearing, specifically going to clear minimally through the palace cellar levels and claw viper temple, those areas can be dangerous with dense boss packs. And I'll do the false tombs only up to the sparkly chests but not to full clear. I will still full-clear the outdoor areas which tend to be pretty safe (despite the last necromancer's beetle experience), and also Maggot Lair and Arcane Sanctuary for the same reason; they're tedious but actually very safe in hardcore, it's nearly impossible to get rushed or surrounded by a dangerous boss pack. And then I plan to make up in act 3 for less clearing in act 2, by full-clearing the jungles and maybe outdoor Kurast.

But that's for next time.

[superdeath]

I wanna know who came up with the text font that diablo 2 uses, because they need slapped.

[Deceptus]

I wanna know who came up with the text font that diablo 2 uses, because they need slapped.

Really? Because one of the reasons I stopped playing the Polish version (aside from its bizarre problems like turning Poison into Lightning damage) was that it changes the font into this:

and it's (even more of) an eyesore in my opinion! At least the original font is stylish and the letters are more bold.

I'm looking forward to all of these guys making Guardian. I feel like there's enough mechanical variety between them that they're not going to die to boredom-induced carelessness, and your player skill looks good when focused.