I'm playing this game yet again

[superdeath]

Yes really, not being able to easily tell between certain letters/numbers because the font is so bad, they could have just used some sort of standard easy to read font and not made it special and i would have been happy lol

[T-hawk]

The text looks like shit in these screenshots because I changed my video setup at the start of this team. I set the Glide wrapper to do the scaling to my desktop resolution of 1920x1200; previously Glide ran at 800x600 and the monitor did the upscaling. The upscaling from the Glide wrapper looks really smooth in motion and in person, but it seems the way that D2 takes screenshots is to capture the upscaled Glide video buffer and downscale it again, which makes it look like total crap. Look at the shot of Naj's Light Plate here for the difference - the right half was captured in windowed mode afterwards without any scaling artifacts. Maybe I'll have to do that regularly for the text captures.

Yes, this is my best team for mechanical variety by a fair margin, and yes every death previously was from some sort of carelessness or impatience, except the phoenix sin that was mostly fatigue. If that happens to anyone here it would be the spearazon. I'm good at playing but there will always be some moments when I'm less than perfect, so I do try to cover that by packing on as much defensive equipment as I practically can.

[T-hawk]

Here we go from act 2, steady progress. Here's the reports in the order I played them, to give more of a feel; sometimes I rearrange them to build up a narrative, but this was the raw sequence.

Assassin: Blade Fury with Crescent Moon is freakin sweet. The ITD matters a lot, even the Fool's claw plus Sigon's partial set for AR was still hitting less than 60%. And it's so awesome to see every target already at half health from the Static after the first couple monsters of each pack. And I hadn't realized (even after using Crescent on the werebear last team) how the Static interacts with the -35% lightning resistance - that does go below 0% resistance to increase Static's damage beyond the stated 25%, and so it can actually drive monsters quite a bit below half health. There is one downside to keep in mind: the CTC Static occurs centered from my location, not where the blade hit, so I'm tempted to fight closer to the monsters to be in Static range of more of them, and I have to be careful of that.

Spearazon: This character is a wild ride. She feels like she's always on the edge of disaster, even more than the phoenix assassin, this one without any panic-button escape hatch like Mind Blast or Teleport or Howl. But, that said, her defensive setup worked. Infanta was absolutely right that a defense armor in Stone plus Defiance (and minus Dodge/Avoid) are the way to go with a spearazon, and thanks Deceptus for helping point me in that direction. It's true that it's hard to tell in a thick fight how much is due to the defense rating and Defiance doing their the job, or how much the monsters are occupied with the clay golem and decoy instead of me, and how much the clay golem's slowing is making up for the lack of Holy Freeze. Some of all of that, I'm sure. Defiance even interacts with Decoy very well too: if I'm reading the AB wiki right, Decoy has a monster level that is close to the character's, and gets the standard ~1500 defense of a level ~80 monster, so Defiance multiplies that to nearly 5000 on the decoy.

So, to my surprise, she could Fend off plenty of lightning-immune beetles or spear cats at once, at least five or six beetles attacking and even sparking. The defense doesn't make her or anyone invulnerable (particularly against any nasty boss pack), but what it does is cut the rate of incoming damage enough so that leech and potions can keep up. There's a better-than-linear effect here - if you're taking a third more damage than you can leech back, and then increase your defensiveness by a third, your survivability horizon doesn't just go up by a third, it goes to infinite, as your net damage taken goes to zero. So she even handled Fangskin's pack on players-3 fine without ever having to retreat, perfectly positioned to stab from behind the offensive line of merc-golem-decoy. She actually had a lot of fun in the maggot lair, with Fend against the beetles and Lightning Strike frying huge groups of itchies and maggot young. Lightning Strike is the hidden gem about this class; it's just always overshadowed by the spectacle of Lightning Fury and the heavy hitter of Charged Strike, but it's actually really fun and effective on its own too. I also had a smart moment with her vs Duriel: swapped the merc's Hone Sundan to myself in order to apply the crushing blow faster with my own Jab.

   

Well, one thing got worse with this character: her money situation. You thought I was complaining about 30k repairs on Impaler being bad? Try an elite Stone armor with Clay Golem charges, frequently taking hits in melee... it's over a HUNDRED thousand. She's certainly set one record, the most expensive character I've ever run. (I've used Stone before, but never on a meleer taking such frequent hits and golem deaths to recast.)

And what else I'm not used to is the CTC Iron Maiden on the Saracen's Chance amulet. It startles me every time. I spent years conditioned to recoil and flee instantly whenever I heard that schwrrrng sound effect, before it was removed from oblivion knights in a patch... and it's weird as all hell to have that working in my favor now. (Like all damage reflection effects, it doesn't really do anything in hell, reflecting 100 melee damage against 10,000 health does jack.)

Necro: First I fixed one thing I can't believe I didn't think of about seven acts ago, made him a Black flail for crushing blow on act bosses.

The iron golem lasted through Duriel without ever dying. I did have to portal out to refresh his health against a few of the worst bosses, notably a Fanaticism Extra Strong ghost in the arcane sanctuary, and Duriel himself of course. The iron golem did poof twice from being too far away, in the maggot lair, and in a false tomb after Duriel. Both times I switched to the fire golem for the rest of that area, who helped noticeably with fire damage against ghosts and itchies. The iron golem replacements were the backup Honor polearm first, then a rare elite spear with okayish (100%) damage that happened to drop, then after the act another leftover merc Honor polearm.

In Arcane Sanctuary, the necromancer's melee capability proved key. The only way to kill the wraiths was Amplify and just grind through the high remaining physical resistance. The merc could barely outrace the monster regeneration, so the necro's own melee was important to stop that by applying poison damage, plus his own damage (mostly the fire damage on Grim's) too. Arcane still took over an hour to full-clear, but I've had worse.

Barb: Crescent Moon is tremendous for him too like the assassin, more than doubled his dps overall. ITD makes such a difference, even with Berserk's decent AR at a hit rate of around 75%, the difference between that and 95% is still very noticeable. Also this sword has a longer melee reach than what he was using previously, and that helps too. One problem can be block-lock; I actually took off his shield for a while in the maggot lair to avoid that from crowds of maggot young. And again in Arcane Sanctuary, where he could really power up to full strength for a while, when I decided I could go with the Rhyme off to get the big two-handed damage, since there's little threat or chilling from those types of monsters and it's easy to always position behind the merc.

Speaking of the merc, he also did great. The hey here is Shout, which this is the first time I've ever maxed; it's a nasty tease that it's Berserk's damage synergy but Berserk zeroes your defense; but Shout does wonders for the merc's tankability. Particularly after a godly wire fleece happened to drop, getting him over 13,000 defense; the merc would routinely kill a Cursed boss faster than it ever hit him to deliver the curse! He could stand up against an entire boss pack of ghosts in Arcane without me even needing to Howl them away.

   

Sorc: This was her amusing moment. On entering the Claw Viper temple, there was a nasty stairs trap. I was madly teleporting around to find a sliver of space to cast some fire walls... and accidentally solved the entire dungeon by inadvertently teleporting past the wall right into the exit.

She also had trouble on level 2, couldn't handle Fangskin's extra fast cold immune pack... unti I teleported into the center where the vipers can't fit up the stairs to get there. I grabbed the viper amulet and portaled to town (the merc had died), but then decided to return and finish the job, and got a cool reward of Nord's Tenderizer from Fangskin.

Druid: He handled act 2 easier than I had expected. The obstacle was the fire-immune Invader types that occur everywhere, but I had misremembered, it turns out they aren't large and don't crash Molten Boulder, so it rolls through them dealing plenty of physical damage. Blunderbore types do crash the boulders, but they're only in the palace cellar (the type in the tombs isn't fire immune so Fissure works there.) And he had a comical experience in Arcane Sanctuary: half of it was hugely entertaining with Boulder blowing down the alleyways, but half terrible whenever dealing with stairs because Boulder won't fit along them. And the really annoying part was that he had no way at all of hitting wraiths that flew out of bounds (all the druid fire skills are limited to walkable land except Volcano's piddly rocks), so I spent way too much time running to herd them over the platforms.

   

Paladin: Still diesel as hell. Duress fixed his defense problem (amusingly at exactly 10,000 with Duress and HoZ multiplied by Holy Shield), and he could slam through just about any pack of monsters, just about never had to retreat and regroup, so he was the fastest clearer by a wide margin. His one memorably challenging fight came in Arcane Sanctuary, against a champion pack of ghosts. I couldn't separate them, and couldn't hold up against the attacks long enough (champions get an AR multiplier) to kill them with 1-point Vengeance. What I had to do was stand still spamming Smite in all directions, to knock back a ghost each time it came near me and the merc; for each of them to recover from that knockback took a long time (several seconds) thanks to the slowing on the merc's Kelpie Snare; all while Open Wounds was doing the actual work of killing them over a time span of about a minute.

And I'm trying something else for him for the next act: a Defiance merc. The paladin's weak point is actually the merc's tankability, he would die to more than about four monsters at once. After seeing how the Defiance merc helped the spearazon and her merc immensely, and Shout also did very well for the barb's, I think a Defiance merc would be very good for the paladin and his merc here too. The final piece is Kelpie Snare on the merc for slowing monsters, so Holy Freeze is less important, like for the spearazon as well with the clay golem from Stone as a source of slowing.

Items:

I said before how this team keeps finding its payoffs in set items. And, jackpot!

   

NATALYA'S CLAW! Thank you maggot lair! These teams don't get to spend much time in level-85 areas, clearing them just once, and so can't get much of the high TC87 base items... but I got one here! And yes, the assassin will give up her Crescent Moon to use it. It does come to quite a bit more physical damage by Claw Mastery kicking back in (remember that CM multiplies Blade Fury's skill damage which is greater than the claw itself.) And the static field is less important in act 3 which is about ninety-four percent lightning immune. This is a great find, top-end claws are hard to get; there's no runewords until Chaos, and not a lot of uniques, which all have nothing for AR, and so the ITD is tremendous here like on Crescent. Natalya's claw isn't a perfect fit for Blade Fury; it can't be ethereal and wastes the 40% IAS, but it's still great enough with the damage and ITD. And don't overlook the +200% damage to both demons and undead, that comes to quite a bit -- note that applies to Blade Fury's skill damage as well. It's also worth a socket quest for a Hel rune to bring down the stat requirements.

And there's another improvement I can make to her game plan with this claw. ITD doesn't work on bosses, so Blade Fury has terrible AR problems there... but what I can do is use a melee attack so that Claw Mastery's AR can kick in, plus the 40% IAS. So I put one point in Tiger Strike. Finally, switching her primary weapon back to a claw means she can dual-wield an off-hand +skills claw again, and also I now upgraded that to an exceptional greater talon, because it's faster for the combined WSM.

Also in the claw department, I also got a Firelizard's Talon claw. Cool find, but the lack of anything for AR makes it a dud for Blade Fury. I considered dual-wielding this claw with Natalya's and using Dragon Claw instead for her melee, but decided against that; I don't want to give up a +skills claw for general use (Firelizard's doesn't really do anything off-hand) and no I don't want to carry and constantly swap in Firelizard's vs bosses.

   

Here's the other best find, Gore Rider boots, and in two copies, hah, randomness is clumpy.

   

And Verdungo's Hearty Cord belt, interesting find, haven't had that before.

I considered putting both of these on the spearazon, but decided against it. Verdungo's is similar to String of Ears, but I decided I wanted to keep String's life leech on her instead, particularly in act 3 with a ton of lightning-immunes so she'll be Fending and hungry for leech. And Gore Rider doesn't go to best use on her: the deadly strike is partially obviated by her own critical strike skill, her spear already has big Open Wounds, and she can get crushing blow by borrowing the merc's Hone Sundan. And finally she really can't make up the fire resist on Aldur's boots anywhere else.

One Gore Rider went to the assassin, which is a fine fit, all that stuff works with Blade Fury. Too bad this isn't a kicker build (actually I did think about one point in Dragon Talon, but the strength requirement after upgrading the boots would be the problem), but the assassin is still the best place to use it anyway. This led to overhauling almost her entire loadout, every slot changed out except only Lionheart and her knockback crafted gloves. Out went the Sigon's helm+belt+boots combo, she doesn't need the partial-set AR bonus with ITD on the claw and a melee skill for AR. In those slots instead go the Peasant Crown which she took from the necro (we'll see why later), a nice blood crafted belt with resists and life, and Gore Rider. I also happened to craft a really nice blood ring with two great resists and 14 dex to support Natalya's claw, and that in turn let her swap out her +dex amulet for one with better (19 all) resists.

And the other Gore Rider and Verdungo's went to the paladin. He could handle giving up the fire resist on Aldur's boots. And I really wanted to get Verdungo's on him; the damage reduction and vitality on that are what would swing a life-or-death difference in hardcore at this point. This meant giving up his long-faithful Sigon's gloves+belt combo (10% leech, 10 str, 30% IAS.) But he could handle that with another avalanche of equipment swapping. He's got two good life leech rings, unlike the spearazon who needs Raven Frost and resists. He replaced the socket in Guillaume's helm with an IAS jewel (that also happened to have a +defense prefix, on exactly the character to make use of that.) Then he replaced Sigon's 10 strength and the rest of the IAS by taking the necromancer's rare gloves. And that also has +dex to allow swapping out his +dex amulet for one with a better resist (the fire resist that replaced Aldur's boots) and some magic find.

And the last bit of this chain reaction was that the assassin's discarded Crescent Moon could still go to use: with the necromancer! It definitely beats Grim's scythe with the ITD and Static. The problem is the stat requirements, but I solved that with these:

   

I happened to gamble that whopping +2 necro skills circlet with huge strength. And then I had the idea of making that shield, with two Ko runes just for the dexterity, and a single diamond which makes the shield's resistances about the same as the Rhyme on his front side switch. It seems silly and underpowered, but he really doesn't need anything else (any skills or blocking or any more resists) in the shield slot when using a melee weapon. These stat adders were what let him give those rare gloves to the paladin, and so I was really satisfied at solving all the pieces of this puzzle.

By contrast, the spearazon and barb changed no equipment slots at all from the last act, and the sorceress got only a minor amulet upgrade. The druid also got a minor upgrade, a second Waterwalk boot, he doesn't need anything else in the boot slot (resists covered elsewhere) so may as well take the life (and he's below the strength requirement for Aldur's); and he swapped out his Nagelring since now I care less about magic find.

A footnote: I used a socket quest from the barbarian to socket that circlet for the necro. This is because the necro was actually short both of his (he had socketed Guillaume's for his merc but then that went to the paladin, and Peasant Crown which the assassin now took), and the barb hadn't used any of his (every slot is already a runeword or pre-socketed.)

   

Trang-Oul's helm! That makes four pieces of the set and missing only the belt. But I'm still not using any of it; the helm does almost nothing and doesn't enable any more significant partial-set bonuses; and each other slot is superseded by something more important. I also got an extra Trang-Oul's Wing, actually 2% fire resistance better than the first, yay.

More stuff that didn't help:

The Atlantean ancient sword, solid with damage and +2 paladin skills, might have been good for the Fist hybrid paladin, but doesn't beat Razor's Edge here (or Crescent Moon for the barb or necro.)

Nord's Tenderizer, a similar evaluation goes for that. It's very good but everyone just has better; I think this would be the second-best option for every single one of the paladin, barb, necro, and assassin, hah.

Demon's Arch elite throwing javelin, cool but not of any use here.

Wizardspike, another fun niche item but doesn't help anything here.

Immortal King's maul. Cool, but between the strength requirement and the weapon mastery, I can't really rebuild the barb around that now. And no the paladin is not giving up a Herald of Zakarum shield for a two-hander. Actually it's kind of hilarious to think about the necro using it for melee, but he's nowhere near a 225 strength requirement.

One thing that didn't happen was making more elite Honors for mercs. I only got one. The cube-socketing recipe failed to hit 5 sockets on about seven or eight other threshers and mancatchers, oh well. At least that lack of Honors saved me the Sol rune that went into crafting the assassin's beautiful blood ring.

And for runes, I got zilch all, highest was two Ko which I put into the necro's shield. So I still have the two Guls unused, we'll see if I ever put those together into anything useful, would still need a Pul to make Heart of the Oak or Ist for Silence.

I did a little bit of rearranging everything after the act, mostly put all the life charms in a common pool, and reassigned them in order of the characters neediest for life getting the best ones (spearazon > paladin > necro > sorceress > assassin > druid > barbarian), with a little wiggle room based on any prefixes, like defense to the spearazon and AR to the blade sin.

In act 2, I did my plan of mostly full-clearing, except for the palace cellar levels, claw viper temple, and the false tombs beyond the sparkly chests. So in act 3 I'll make up for that a bit, by full-clearing the jungle areas which I like, and maybe outdoor Kurast (actually more interested in all the chests and other poppables there.) I did all of act 2 on players-3 and will do the same for act 3 except for the Durance. I downplayed the magic-find on the characters a bit more now; each still has at least one source for 20% or so; only the sorc and barb with the Tal's and IK sets have much more than that.

[superdeath]

In act 2, I did my plan of mostly full-clearing, except for the palace cellar levels, claw viper temple, and the false tombs beyond the sparkly chests.  So in act 3 I'll make up for that a bit, by full-clearing the jungle areas which I like, and maybe outdoor Kurast (actually more interested in all the chests and other poppables there.)  I did all of act 2 on players-3 and will do the same for act 3 except for the Durance.  I downplayed the magic-find on the characters a bit more now; each still has at least one source for 20% or so; only the sorc and barb with the Tal's and IK sets have much more than that.

Act 3 is probably my worst act, as in i die there the most often out of all of them. Those little bastards swarm me far too quickly when i play (been awhile though)

[T-hawk]

Act 3 I'm pretty sure is my safest in hardcore actually, particularly outdoors. I've never lost a character in hell act 3 except for the phoenix sin in the Durance. (I have in nightmare to the fire enchanted council.)

Anyway, posting out of turn here for this fun piece:

   

Nice toy there, and nearly perfect (sockets vary 3-5, damage up to 270%.) Any suggestions for what the paladin might do with this? (Not the barb, he's on sword mastery not axe.) I have two jewels of 39% and 37% damage, although I'm not sure if there's any combination of those and Shaels or anything else that can beat Razor's Edge with the deadly strike.

[T-hawk]

Act 3 done. Not a whole lot to say on the characters, but I will keep talking about the necro at least.

This necromancer build is still way more powerful than I ever would have guessed or anticipated, it's turning out to be the second or third fastest clearer on this team, after the zealot and maybe sorceress. The merc is plenty reliable to get enough kills to start the Corpse Explosion chain every time, and not slowly. I had no idea that simply following the merc around and casting Amplify is like three-fourths of a strong necro build right there. Any necromancer can do this, but I just never took notice with bonemancers and poisonmancers that were occupied doing other things instead. I didn't even need the curse crowd control for the first half of this act; I didn't use Dim Vision at all until Stormtree's pack, and only a few times after that (although very notably did for a gigantic stairs trap in Ruined Temple where I was Dimming about three dozen monsters.) And I did sometimes have fun with Crescent Moon for his melee, although the CTC Static hardly mattered, by the time it ever triggered the merc had already killed two corpses to blow the CE fuse on everything. In fact Corpse Explosion was almost a liability in the Durance, against dolls; it was a very real danger to blow enough at once to get instakilled from all the explosions, and so I even had to lay off CE a few times and let the merc do the work a bit more slowly.

BTW, one difference with act 3 that is subtle but very noticeable when you think about it is shield blocking on the monsters. Acts 1 and 2 have that all over the place, on the skeletons and rogues and spear cats and greater mummies. Act 3 has almost no monsters with any shield blocking, and that was very noticeable in how much more smoothly the merc would kill things.

The Iron Golem is a small part of this build, maybe 10% of the overall offense, but it is nice to have him killing a few things at a sliver of life after some exploding, or helping start the CE chain against the toughest monsters. Once again he never died in the act; he almost did to Bremm and of course Mephisto, but I portaled out fast enough to get him healed each time. He poofed once in the great marsh (really irritatingly; he wasn't even far away, barely off the screen), and I replaced him with another Honor in a 5-socket Executioner Sword base that dropped earlier and I kept on hand for that.

Spearazon: She had the same problem with dolls, very liable to kill enough in the same Fend cycle to be very dangerous, in fact she got blasted once to a sliver of life (under 150) that I'm pretty sure would have been Deeds if not for the damage reduction on Rockstopper and String of Ears. But she made it through, as did the whole team.

Sorceress: She had some problems with killing speed with any cold-immune type that runs away, like the zakarum zealots, and bats in the sewers. Quite a pain to keep flinging fire walls and hope they hit. Although that wasn't dangerous, just annoying.

Druid: He was ponderously slow in the Spider Cavern of all places, took like 45 minutes to clear all the fire-immune spiders in there. The problem is they regenerate faster than other types of monsters; particularly minions could barely be outraced by Boulder and Volcano. I really need to get a source of Open Wounds on his merc.

Assassin: Blade Fury with Natalya's claw is nice, ITD is always sweet and it deals very good damage. But stay tuned for something exciting for her.

On to the items. I did full clear the jungle areas as planned. And I talked about clearing outdoor Kurast for the poppables, and called that one perfectly, jackpot! :

   

Duriel's Shell popped from an ordinary basket! There's what the barbarian wanted, Cannot Be Frozen. Now he can take off the Rhyme shield and really power up to full strength. I feel I don't need the blocking any more; I did back when he started using the shield, but now he's much higher level, with a thousand more life, more damage to kill threats faster or more Howl to clear them, and enough resists elsewhere to cover Rhyme's absence and no need for its magic-find now. And I really want him to live up the promise of Berserk using a two-hander with its biggest melee damage multiplier. Switching the barb's setup from Lionheart to Duriel's did mean having to handle the difference in stats and resistances (including losing Rhyme), but I could manage it, mostly thanks to neglecting having spent any stat points since the start of act 2, hah. Also the barb has a socket quest available for Duriel's, for a fervor jewel to get to maximum two-handed attack speed.

I was also thinking about putting Duriel's Shell on the paladin instead, since he doesn't have CBF (with HoZ instead of Rhyme.) But then this happened:

   

Ha, looks like the paladin gets a toy with Cannot Be Frozen anyway! And it's nearly perfect, the sockets are variable from 3-5 and the damage up to 270%, wow, nice find here. I was determined to use this over Razor's Edge; remember my goal here is Guardianship, and Cannot Be Frozen is more likely to make the difference against a threat to that than any small difference in damage between weapons. I made a spreadsheet comparing lots of combinations for socketing options, and to my surprise this came out the best:

   

Four Eth runes to get to -100% target defense. This sounds crazy, but this definitively fixes his attack rating problem, which was actually pretty drastic with a hit rate below 60%. It turned out that solving the AR adds more dps than any combination with damage jewels. It's obvious when you think about it: each Eth rune increases my hit rate by something like one-sixth, and no ED% jewel can add one-sixth on top of the existing 366% damage. Plus more crushing blow from hitting more often. Also note that -100% defense is different and quite a bit better than Ignore Target Defense. ITD doesn't work on uniques and champions but -% defense does; it's nerfed only vs superuniques and bosses, and still gets half effectiveness even then.

But this is what I hadn't realized: each successive Eth rune gets better, more minus-target-defense has an increasing-returns effect, not diminishing! I didn't realize this until seeing it in my spreadsheet, but then the visualization hit me instantly, and it looks like this:

   

That shows the effect. Each chunk of enemy defense removed means the next chunk has greater impact, because the same value is a greater proportion of a smaller total.

What about the speed? Ettin Axe is a slow base, and one Shael is nowhere near enough to get that to max speed. I solved that with the king of speed solutions: made him a Treachery armor! I never want to use a low-defense armor on a character using defense multipliers, but it works out here. He's still got over 10k defense, with a fine Treachery base (a 486 defense great hauberk), Herald of Zakarum (447), Guillaume's helm (220), and Verdungo's belt (106), multiplied by both Holy Shield and the Defiance merc. I won't rely on Treachery's Fade for resists (make sure fire and lightning are still near max even without), but it's still welcome whenever it triggers (the physical resist stacks nicely with Verdungo's), plus even the Venom too.

Also the speed situation is that he doesn't need the 15% IAS jewel in Guillaume's helm, so can replace that with something else, actually a Fal rune to help with Rune Master's strength requirement. And finally the Duress that got swapped out from his armor slot can still go to great use on the necro's merc, also incidentally repaying him for the socket quest he spent on the paladin's Herald of Zakarum.

(Damn, all that was a long writeup for one weapon, but it shows how I approach and think about all this. And Rune Master is probably the weapon that makes for the most analysis, with all the possible combinations.)

And then the Lower Kurast poppables struck again: Bartuc's claw came out of another ordinary stash. Nice find here; this claw isn't for Blade Fury (nothing for AR), but it's great to use off-hand, with skills and stats and hit recovery. As for the Blade Fury claw, though, then the following happened.

I imbued a new claw, an ethereal War Fist. That base item dropped, and that was too good a chance to pass up trying; it's the best claw for Blade Fury, the highest damage and BF doesn't care about the slow speed. The assassin had used all her imbues already, so I had the paladin spend one of his, since the assassin had traded him a favor by socketing a Sigon's helm that he had used for a bit, and he didn't need his imbues for himself since he wasn't going to top his weapon or shield with a rare. What resulted was HOLY GALACTIC CRAP LOOK AT THIS THING

   

Holy. Freaking. Shit, that thing is gargantuan. Of course its problem is AR, but damn I'll do anything I need to in that department for that gobsmacking damage. First I gave her all the AR charms and rings I could manage, but that's just a few hundred and you need a few thousand. An Eth rune socketed would help, but I have no socket quests available from anyone right now, so that will have to wait until act 5. I didn't keep any Angelic or Hsaru's set combo for AR, after discarding them thinking that nobody was going to use it. I do still have a Sigon's set combo for AR, but then I nailed this beauty on a gamble:

   

That's the Visionary modifier for the AR multiplier, which just happened to also come with assassin skills, and even dual leech, pretty sweet! That will have to be good enough, multiplying her AR from about 1100 to about 2000, enough for a 60% or so hit rate against most of hell. (I had to manually figure that; you can't see it in-game correctly; Blade Fury shows no attack rating, and the AR shown for normal attack includes Claw Mastery which doesn't apply to BF.)

Although, one minor problem: There's a really irritating interaction with the new claw and Bartuc's. Because the stats on Bartuc's are needed to support the rare, every time I weapon switch (to +shadow claws for pre-buffing), Bartuc's becomes the primary weapon active for Blade Fury, before its stats kick in to check for supporting the rare claw. This happens even if Bartuc's is in the off-hand slot (the boot side.) To make this work, every time I weapon-switch, I have to temporarily put on enough str/dex equipment to support the rare without Bartuc's, then lift Bartuc's to make the rare the primary, then replace Bartuc's and swap back the other equipment.

In other news, I got a Titan's Revenge, cool. Although now I'm going to formally state as a variant rule that this spearazon is disallowed from using 1-hand spears, so that I'm not tempted into making her a gimped melee javazon. So this will go unused... but as I said before, I've got a perfect record that every amazon I ever had who owned a Titan's went on to make Guardian, so let's continue that here.

Also got a second Immortal King maul, from yet another Kurast poppable. I had lost the first one somehow (some mishap in the ATMA program), but then realized the obvious thing to do with it: the next Iron Golem, of course. With jewels for fire and prismatic resistances in the sockets. Also got an extra Bonesnap and a Swordguard executioner sword, to take into the next act as more backups.

More random set items: Mavina's bow and Telling of Beads amulet, but neither is any use here. And a second Tal Rasha's mask, always great for a merc, here it goes to the bladesin's, that merc needs the life leech the most because his weapon doesn't have it (a rare with CTC Amp.)

Crow Caw armor, helps for the sorc's merc for the Open Wounds, she sometimes has trouble with monster regeneration.

   

Cool charm here. It went to the necromancer as the most in need of that combination. (The spearazon always needs resists, but she's got plenty of hit recovery from Stone and Rockstopper.) I got one skill charm too, a second necromancer bone skills, though not sure if fitting it in is worth giving up about 50 life of other charms.

But the good stuff happened in the rune department.

   

First, yet again an Um dropped for this team.

   

Then, holy crap again! At the very last moment for the last character to play, Mephisto dropped an Ist rune!

   

And then I also got a Mal! This came from the Halls of Pain in nightmare difficulty, that I went back to clear after act 3 hell, for reasons that I'll cover in a later post.

I'm not spending any of these runes just yet. I intend to use some for particular characters as they start act 4. But I'm not going to write yet about the possibilities I have in mind, since they may change depending on the hell hellforge, and I want to focus on what actually happens and not on speculation that ends up changing. What I'm going to do here is go step by step individually per character. Characters that might be getting a runeword from these will play act 4 later, while others not dependent on these runes will go first, to gain as much information as I can from their hellforges before I commit with these. (The total right now is 2 Gul, 1 Ist, 1 Mal, 1 Um, no Pul at the moment but I could cube one from Lems and Fals.)

That's all for now, though I intend to make an interim report once I settle on those runes, partway through act 4.

[T-hawk]

Here's the interim report that I promised, to give the same feel as playing through it.

I've done five characters through act 4, all but the spearazon and barb. The hellforge results so far were Fal, Hel, Hel, Lum, Ist. Also random drops of a Lem and a Pul.

None of those change my primary plan, so here it is. With the two Guls from act 1, and the Ist from Mephisto:

   

Dol Eld Hel Ist Tir Vex. SILENCE. There's a fulfillment twenty years in the making, I finally get to make the king of old-school-cool runewords.

I know Silence isn't all that big by modern standards. But the class that does want it is a spearazon, since all the comparable stuff like Crescent Moon or Oath or Grief doesn't work in spears. And it fits very well for the spearazon class in general. The biggest factor is Hit Blinds Target +33, huge crowd control for a class with no native ability for it. 75 resist all is also gigantic for anyone without a shield, frees up a huge amount of charm and jewelry space. And +5 spear skills boosts Power/Lightning Strike nicely, and also Fend for both AR and damage. Plus hit recovery, IAS, mana steal, and even magic find (on the Ist) thrown in. I'll put up with the monster-flee to get all that.

Her speed situation with it required a bit of reconfiguring. To get Silence to the 5-frame Fend breakpoint (it's a 0 WSM base, slower than -10 Impaler), I need 30% IAS in the gloves slot, which means Sigon's plus a second piece which has to be the boots. But of course I don't at all mind adding in the 10% life leech from that combo as well. It will lag in the AR department compared to Impaler's ITD, but she's at about 75% hit rating from Raven Frost plus Fend's AR multiplier, which will have to be good enough. Finally, her leftover Impaler goes to good use, on the sorc's merc, for the Open Wounds to counter monster regeneration.

I had been planning for this since the Guls dropped in act 1, hoping for the Ist from the hellforge, but then that came sooner than expected when Mephisto dropped it, so I can do this going into act 4 instead of after.

And I can now talk about the plans that didn't happen. My dream was to get two Guls from the hellforge quests and cube all four up to an Ohm, which would have made all the pieces for a Call To Arms spear instead. Nobody remembers this, but CTA has great fighting mods too, it's not just for pre-buffing Battle Orders. That would have been wonderful, but that particular stroke of luck didn't come to be. I also had in mind a Kingslayer sword for the barbarian, which would have taken yet another Gul (or enough to cube up to one), unlikely but within the realm of possibility.

I have to commit now to the Silence with two characters yet to go (also the barb, not just the spearazon herself), because of getting the base socketed. I could only do that with a socket quest and the barb was the only character with one unused. I'd gotten that Matriarchal Spear base with +3 skills, and that's rare enough that I hadn't seen any others with even +2, and never mind enough for attempts to expect a successful 1-in-6 cube socketing roll. A socket quest was the only practical way, and the only one I had available was the barbarian's. I'll cry if both the barb and spearazon get Guls, which would mean I missed my chance at CTA, although at least I'd still have Kingslayer for consolation.

Besides the Silence, two minor plans with the runes also happened. The random drop of a Pul freed up all my Lems that I might have cubed into a Pul instead. So with two of the Lems, I upgraded two pieces of armor: the Crow Caw armor for the druid's mercenary, and the Rockstopper helm.

   

The Rockstopper is pretty sweet, it went from 199 to 407 defense, and with the Defiance merc that's actually a pretty decent defense gain for the spearazon.

That's all for now, full act 4 report to come in a few days.

[T-hawk]

And the full report from act 4 hell. The Hellforge loot was mostly lousy: Hel, Hel, Lum, Lum, Fal, Ist... but then the barbarian playing last nailed a Gul, very nice, read on for the results after the character notes.

Necro: I gave his merc the Duress that was leftover from the paladin, but then halfway through the first area realized the problem with that: Duress has cold damage that shatters the corpse ammo he needs. That wasn't workable, he really needs to count on every corpse being available to explode. So I mostly switched the merc back to Trang-Oul's armor, though did swap back to Duress for major fights, notably Hephasto and some stone skin bosses where he needed the open wounds.

The IK maul Iron Golem did well, dealing noticeable amounts of damage... until he died to Lord De Seis's pack. Not really a surprise, but how fast it happened was - the golem ran directly into the middle of the Fanaticism pack and died from full health (7400 damage!) in under two seconds before I could react. Taking out that pack took a little while (needed lots of Terror to spread them out), and I switched to the fire golem since Infector's pack would be up next. Then somehow Diablo's firestorm still killed the fire golem, so I switched to clay for the slowing. Diablo himself wasn't much of a problem - on hell difficulty, it's easy for my whole team to stay inside the "lightning bolt ground zero" range, and so his only dangerous attack was the firestorm, which did kill the merc every time it targeted him (I could never get Diablo to target the necromancer instead), but we brought Diablo down in just a few minutes thanks to crushing blow attacks from both the necromancer (a Black flail) and the merc (Duress).

Paladin: Rune Master did well as his weapon. About the same dps as Razor's Edge, but a noticeably smoother experience with a perfect hit rate plus Cannot Be Frozen. I also liked Treachery on him, although I did find out that a high-defense character doesn't get hit enough for the Fade to be on all the time. He did have two downsides, both more comical than bad. One, the new weapon is the same dps, less per hit but 40% more hits instead of missing... which means the durability runs out 40% faster, sometimes as fast as under two minutes of attacking! Second... I facepalmed when I realized Treachery's Fade costs you 80% of the duration of an experience shrine, hah.

Assassin: She was the opposite of the paladin, changing away from an ITD weapon (Natalya's) to one with AR problems, so not nearly as smooth. In fact it was also about the same dps against normal monsters, but did gain significantly against uniques/champions where ITD doesn't work. It will get somewhat better again with an Eth rune socketed from the quest in act 5.

Also I decided to fix her equipping problem (that weapon-switching makes Bartuc's off-hand claw the primary before its stats can support the main claw), by giving her enough dex for her main claw without Bartuc's. This involved a dexterity ring, trading out an AR ring... but 15 dex on a ring gives almost as much as an AR ring anyway. So Bartuc's stats aren't helping to support the main claw or any other equipment... but it's still not wasted, that 20 dex is another 100 base AR, plus a little damage multiplier.

Then late in the act the AR solution hit me like a brick wall. I should be using one of the most overlooked resources in the game: hire a Blessed Aim merc! After the act I ran the numbers, and sure enough, trading out Might for Blessed Aim actually gains a small increase in dps with this setup, including more frequent hits of Venom. As a bonus, Blessed Aim also enables the merc himself to hit more often to apply his CTC Amp weapon, and also even the shadow too to hit more with the elemental claw skills that she uses often.

Druid: I finally figured out Molten Boulder, and goddamnit I'm kicking myself that it took this long to realize it. Its damage always seemed so inconsistent and I just figured out why. It's exactly the same principle as Fire Wall. You want to bowl in a screen-diagonal / grid-orthogonal direction, so that the boulder crosses through 3 subtiles of the X-shaped monster footprint. Once I realized that, it was very obvious what was happening. When aimed the right way like that, Boulder significantly and consistently outdamages Volcano against fire immunes, and so now I did that all the time. (Volcano could be faster when the merc was helping, to avoid Boulder knocking the target away from him.) Finally, Firestorm also experiences the same orthogonal principle too, although less pronounced since its firing lines are less straight.

Spearazon: Silence sure makes for a different game style for her. I never would have expected this from a spearazon, but she's strong enough to be able to plow into pretty much any leechable monster pack, short of the nastiest ones like Fanaticism or Might enchanted. Decoy's distraction plus Silence's monster-flee and blinding can disperse enough of almost any pack pretty quickly that she can survive on defense rating and live on leech from there.

The downside is chasing down the fleeing monsters, of course. Although I found one cool trick, cast Decoy right in a fleeing monster's path to block and interrupt it! But really, the better plan was to, whenever the coast was clear enough, flip back to Impaler on weapon switch and kill easy things without worrying about the monster-flee. Impaler was important enough for this that I'm keeping it on her weapon switch rather than pass it to a merc. I did have to be very careful when on that weapon switch without Silence's resists active.

Actually the best thing about Silence might be the +5 skills to Lightning Strike, which was her best skill against larger packs -- in fact I would often deliberately attack only a boss in a pack because it wouldn't flee! Finally, she also had one more strategic avenue, in trading weapons with the merc on occasion; I would give him the Impaler to bring down a dual physical/lightning immune boss by way of the open wounds (I could do it myself, but that would cost mana potions and durability, and him doing it wouldn't!), or also I could take his Hone Sundan's crushing blow for myself against a singular big target (Izual, Hephasto, Diablo.)

That all said, she did have some hot moments, particularly against Infector's pack, she had to portal out from the corner and come back from the waypoint, as quite a few characters do. I think she had at least two moments where her life dropped low enough that she would have died without the physical resist on Rockstopper and String of Ears, although of course without them I wouldn't have been pushing her as hard.

Barb: Nothing new with him, except that he finished his skill build (Berserk, Howl, Shout, Sword Mastery) and the last few points could raise Natural Resist and Battle Orders a bit.

Items:

   

The big payoff was the Gul rune from the barbarian's hellforge. As I said when I talked about the spearazon's Silence, I wanted another Gul to do a Kingslayer for the barb, and now I could. In fact I made it right there in the middle of the act, since he had taken possession of the other pieces ahead of time, including the base sword for this potentiality. It's not really much better than the Crescent Moon, but does hit a bit harder plus the crushing blow. And the +Vengeance is actually a little bit useful, better than 1-point Concentrate vs magic immunes. This runeword perfectly matched the team's inventory of mid-high runes, so I'll go with it to put all of them to some use. Particularly since I could still have access to Crescent Moon's CTC Static Field anyway: my barb hired a barbarian merc to wield the old Crescent Moon sword!

There was also an Ist in there, which I put to use in the same thing Ist always does, a Delirium helm, this time for the blade assassin. As always, that's amazing for any ranged-weapon character to dish out the CTC Confuse, and who doesn't get hit into the doll morph much. And she can give up the Visionary circlet in the helm slot thanks to the Blessed Aim merc.

   

Laying of Hands finally showed up for this team, and actually two copies, and actually both in the same game for the same character, randomness is clumpy. One goes to the paladin for all the usual best-in-slot reasons. But the second can't go to the other melee fighters, the barb or spearazon; they're designed around higher speed requirements in the glove slot (IK and Sigon's.) Where it can go is the assassin; she ignores the IAS but does make tremendous use of the demon damage with that gargantuan ethereal claw, particularly now with Blessed Aim to make it hit and to substitute the demon damage for the lack of a Might merc. Laying of Hands does mean giving up her knockback gloves, but that's less important now, with Blade Fury now killing much faster, particularly with going to players-1 now for the final act.

Hexfire shamshir, +3 to Fire Skills, dropped by the druid for himself from Diablo. That's worth using as an upgrade over +2 skills Dark Clan Crusher, which can stay on switch (along with a Sigon's shield) to pre-buff his summons. He can handle the 58 dex requirement with Waterwalk boots, plus the rare gloves you saw earlier with +11 str and dex, plus one ring.

Shaftstop armor also finally came, definitely worth an upgrade to use on a merc, the spearazon's. (Consumed my last three Fal runes to make a Lem, but that's fine.)

Second copy of Rockstopper, found by the spearazon appropriately enough, and also put on her merc.

Warshrike throwing knife, cool but not any use here.

Cranebeak unique war spike, never had that before, but again not of use, doesn't beat Rune Master for the paladin or Crescent Moon for the melee necromancer.

And lastly, this jackpot:

   

At the last moment once again, Diablo for the last character to play dropped something major, The Oculus! Finally rolled a unique after three set-quality (Tal Rasha's) swirling crystals.

This is the first time I've ever had an Oculus. I know full well about the dangers of that CTC Teleport for hardcore... but that sounds like challenge-accepted to me, I'm not passing up this chance to use this major endgame item. I had kinda been looking for an excuse to swap the sorceress off Tal Rasha's set anyway, so she could use a +2 sorceress skills circlet I had gambled. Oculus's resists can replace Tal's helm, which of course still goes to use on a merc. Oculus's better fast-cast lets me swap out one fast-cast ring and fit in a Bahamut's ring for mana. Finally I also have another customer for Tal's belt: the barbarian, for the 20 dexterity, replacing a Bladebuckle belt and some charms.

(Also in that drop is the fourth Nord's Tenderizer for this team. Randomness is clumpy.)

   

Oh, and a couple pretty sweet AR charms for the assassin, both found by herself.

One final act to come next.

[superdeath]

on hell difficulty, it's easy for my whole team to stay inside the "lightning bolt ground zero" range,

The what range??

[T-hawk]

This is about Diablo's red lightning attack. It doesn't start right at his fingertips, it starts a short distance away, and that gap escalates with difficulty level. If you're standing close enough to him, the starting point of the bolt can be beyond you and not hit you. That gap is sometimes called "ground zero". It's possible in nightmare difficulty to be within that gap, but you have to be positioned just right, and minions usually won't be. But in hell difficulty, that gap is wide enough that you can usually keep yourself and all your minions inside it.