I'm playing this game yet again

[T-hawk]

Well, at least the sorceress was the fastest character to catch up with a rebuild.  So here's the report from completing act 4 now.  And here's the good news:

   

BONESNAP dropped from Diablo!  Great weapon for the werebear druid.  Massively chunky damage already, and I even already have a Sol rune (unexpectedly dropped from the Travincal council, didn't know that could come so soon) to upgrade it to exceptional (though he'll need a few more levels for the strength.)  Of course it's slow, but I'm willing to spend the werebear's first socket quest to Shael it.  Not sure if this weapon will go all the way to endgame, but it should last at least all the way through nightmare difficulty, and just speeding up that by so much is worth the socket.  Finally, this means the werebear should play last for act 5, just in case some better weapon (Ribcracker) does come up instead.  (Oh, and this isn't my first time playing in a team with a werebear who got Bonesnap, hah.)

Also in that same drop is a unique Jo Staff, Razorswitch.  Interesting set of stats: +1 skills, 30% FCR, 50 all resistances, 80 life, 175 mana.  I wasn't sure if that really beat Leaf, but after the first sorceress died, I decided the replacement really needs those resists and life even at the cost of some skills.  With the first team, it felt like every defensive choice I ever made was the right one, so let's hope that holds up here.

Besides that, just some quick character notes, worth reporting are the ones that got a significant skill upgrade at level 30.

The poisonmancer was the most significant of those, finally getting Poison Nova.  With synergy already in place from max Poison Dagger, Nova was immediately more effective.  I'd never used this skill before.  What I didn't realize was how dense the ring of poison missiles is - it reliably hits everything in range, unlike many missile skills like Multishot or Charged Bolt or Shockwave.  Now I see why people like this character build.  Poison Nova is a lot of fun - actually it feels like what Corpse and Poison Explosion want to be if they weren't clunkily limited by the availability of corpses.  That said, the necro's fight against Diablo was a comical mess, ten minutes of running circles around his fire and lightning while trying to get off novas every two seconds.

The paladin also got a good upgrade with the Conviction aura finally kicking in.  Not Fist of the Heavens yet - going to max Vengeance and Conviction first.  Fist can wait for the moment, there's not a lot of undead for a while yet to come in act 5.  And Holy Bolt at slvl 10 is still pretty good for now, very effective in Plains of Despair (he drew an all-undead monster mix there) and Chaos Sanctuary.

And the assassin is the other one with a significant level-30 skill.  Although I was actually kind of underwhelmed by Phoenix Strike.  I thought it would be awesome in raining a barrage of meteors, faster than a sorceress's casting delay... but Phoenix is actually a lot more clunky to play out than I realized, trying to get exactly one charge and quickly alternate to normal attack to release, and then there's the delay until the meteor lands.  I actually went back to using Fists of Fire, for being much easier to control; not sure how well I'll get used to Phoenix.

But one change here: I'm giving the assassin the three-piece Angelic set.  Phoenix Strike works with any weapon, unlike Fists of Fire that requires a claw.  All Phoenix needs is speed, which the Angelic sabre is, very fast between its base type and 30% IAS as a partial set bonus.  And the other thing this solves is AR, since the Angelic ring has that huge partial-set bonus for it, which well outweighs the loss of Claw Mastery.  Actually, she even has two copies of the Angelic ring, which each give the hundreds of AR and 50% magic find, which is pretty cool.  So I'll see how this goes for act 5.  (Only need the amulet to complete the set -- and in fact the replacement sorceress found one, but by my rules she had to discard it upon catching up so that I couldn't benefit from running the acts an extra time.)

   

Even if her pose wielding a sabre looks goofy as hell.

And weapon notes, besides that and Bonesnap: The paladin has a rare war hammer with decent (70%) ED, cube-upgraded to exceptional, just being a high-end exceptional base item accounts for more damage than any affix on anything else available.  The barb tried a Blood crafted recipe with a war axe, and nailed a big chunky one (112% ED and PMH) on his very first try.  The bowazon still has the Ral-Ral-Ral gemmed bow for the moment; I think that's good enough for act 5 where fire resistance is low, though I'll probably need to get going with a real bow for nightmare.

[T-hawk]

Finished act 5 normal, short report.

The one character worth reporting on is the assassin.  Phoenix Strike is a lot different to play than I expected.  I still can't decide if I like it.  Accurately targeting exactly one charge every time is considerably more difficult than I realized.  You can't really use the easy method of driving a melee character, right-click-drag around to auto-run and attack.  Well, you can, but the swings go so fast that you really can't react and accurately change hotkeys between the chargeup and finisher.  I wish there was a way to have the assassin automatically release after one charge.  The better way to drive her is to alternate mouse buttons (judging the timing based on sound), though that still feels clunky, since for every interruption by way of missing or blocking or hit recovery or the monster running out of range, getting back on track costs at least two more swings (or even more, if you ended up with extra charges beyond the first, you have to release that before you can charge back up once and then release again.)  And Phoenix also doesn't work all that well with Cloak of Shadows, since you want the monsters to bunch up within the meteor blast radius, but Cloak makes them wander around.

But that all said... when you do hit the right groove, Phoenix is spectacular, raining multiple meteors per second and ranking right up there for kill speed.  One big aspect is attack rating.  That seems to be critical for Phoenix, a deficiency basically has double (or quadratic) impact, since you need to hit both the chargeup and the releaser.  This was troublesome at first, but continued to improve throughout act 5, with skill levels in Phoenix plus the double Angelic rings with the big AR/level bonus.  I think her endgame weapon will be required to have ITD or the Fool's prefix (easy to shop at Anya, although hard to get on a rare or with any other useful affixes)... although she might just keep the Angelic package for quite a while.

If I stick with Phoenix, that is.  I'm still not sure if I want to continue this playstyle all the way through the harder difficulties.  There's still room in the skill build to pivot into a physical clawer or kicker instead, with the FoF+Phoenix package serving as the backup for physical immunes.  I can wait a little while longer until I commit for sure.  (Amusingly, her drop from Baal was an extra Angelic Sickle, maybe that's a hint.)  Finally, Phoenix does work well with Shadow Warrior; unlike with traps or kicks, she can use Phoenix pretty well and deliver decent damage, just make sure she uses Fists of Fire once to turn on her synergy.

Everyone else was just trucking along with their main skills, Strafe and Vengeance and Frenzy and Poison Nova and Werebear/Maul.

Attack rating was a widespread problem, with the assassin, barb, and druid all struggling severely.  (The paladin doesn't thanks to Conviction's defense penalty.  The bowazon's AR isn't great but she doesn't really care if she has to strafe a few extra times.)  So going into the next act, I fixed this with some partial set combos that each have a big AR/level bonus.  The assassin has the three-piece Angelic set, as mentioned.  The werebear got a combo of Hsaru's boots and belt.  And the barbarian took a Cleglaw's gloves and sword combo.  Cleglaw's sword also gets a good damage bonus with two pieces of the set, plus 50% deadly strike, making it usable enough in his off-hand for now.  (I actually have the full set for both Hsaru's and Cleglaw's, but neither the barb or druid can use a shield.  The assassin could but Angelic is better and nobody else can use that weak weapon.)

Other item drops from act 5 were a bunch of minor pieces.  Tearhaunch boots, and I was surprised I somehow never noticed the +2 to Vigor (Paladin Only) on it before, so that helpfully goes to him, he doesn't have Vigor naturally (not worth 4 prereq points when it's not for BH synergy) so that's a nice convenience.  Tarnhelm, guess that goes to best use on the assassin for the moment, to shore up her shadow tree.  Immortal King's set helm dropped from Baal, that was a surprise to get so soon, not super amazing but guess it's pretty cool to use on the barb for a while.  Tannr Gorerod, good merc weapon for quite a while after exceptional upgrading.  The werebear socketed his +3 Lycanthropy helm into a Lore.

   

And I went gambling.  I'd saved up most of my money throughout the game for this plan, the right time to start targeting circlets, with the affixes for +1 class skills, +2 tree skills, and 20% prismatic all available at level 40+.  And I got a couple good ones including this beaut.

Weapons: The werebear upgraded his Bonesnap, and it performed as planned, getting up over 2000 damage (in normal difficulty!) and one-hitting most monsters even on players-7.  He didn't find a Shael during the act to speed it up, but someone else did to give him afterwards.  The barb gambled a rare war axe with decent damage and 40% IAS, great to cube-upgrade to exceptional.  The bowazon found an Ichorsting crossbow halfway through act 5 and also upgraded it; I hate using slow crossbows (which are worst with Strafe's buggy speed behavior) but had to use this which hits much harder than anything else she could get her hands on.

But here's the major jackpot.  At the very last moment of normal difficulty, for the last character to play (the werebear), Baal dropped:

   

Kuko Shakaku!  Perfect package of solid physical damage, piercing, and some nice fire skill adders for exactly what the bowazon is already doing.  I'd forgotten this weapon existed but it's perfect here.  With runes for an elite upgrade, it might be enough to go all the way to endgame.

   

Finally: Where's the sorceress?  This report didn't include her... because I'm changing my mind yet again, I'm going to continue without her after all.  Same as the bonemancer before, that was my least favorite character of the group, and I've played similar before, and so I really don't have much desire to keep playing the build or need to crown it as Guardian.  And I want to keep the team pure without treating a replacement differently, and finally I just want to speed this up in real time with six characters going through instead of seven.  So let her rest in peace, while the survivors move on to nightmare.

[superdeath]

Glad to see it wasnt the necro

[T-hawk]

Finished act 1 nightmare after playing a lot over the weekend.

It took longer than the first team, more like 3 hours per character rather than 90 minutes.  Unlike them, this group isn't at the peak of their powers now; most need better weapons that haven't come yet.  The exceptions were the assassin and necro, who do operate like the first team did, with a major attack skill maxed and synergized at this point.  Superdeath will be happy to hear the poisonmancer is definitely the strongest offense presently (with no sorceress), with Poison Nova wiping entire fallen camps in seconds; although his defense consists of wildly running around in circles between poison belches.

For the assassin, I think I will stick with Phoenix Strike.  It's challenging to drive but I'm getting enough of the hang of it.  It's about getting used to the chaos.  You'd think a martial artist should be precision targeting her strikes, accurately releasing exactly one charge for the meteor each time she wants... but in practice that takes too much time to react, so it's better to just spam hits as fast as you can even if half of them come out as the lightning or ice instead.  The lightning release gets better once the second synergy ramps up in Claws of Thunder, which is about to start.

The other character with questions about her development plan is the bowazon.  I'm still not quite sure where to go with her skill build.  She maxed Strafe and put a few in Multi, and is now doing Immolation.  But after that I'm still undecided about how to allocate skill points between more physical damage (Guided Arrow, Critical Strike, Penetrate, Pierce) or Immolation's synergies.  I hadn't realized that Immolation takes two synergies, separately for the fire explosion and the afterburn flames.  My gut is telling me to go with what the game provided and rely on Immolation thanks to Kuko Shakaku; physical damage just really never seems to get high enough short of an Eaglehorn or Windforce.  Although an upcoming Might merc will help some.

And the paladin is starting to become a lot of fun.  With Vengeance maxed, I decided to start raising Fist now and leave Conviction for later.  Fist is effectively three different skills: its own lightning damage, its holy bolts to sweep crowds of undead, and its synergy to Holy Bolt to target single undead.  I love his versatility on offense - but like all paladins, he's vulnerable as all hell with no crowd control; gotta hope the upcoming Holy Freeze merc will help at least some.

Items: The item collecting was marred slightly by twice doing a save & exit with lots of items left in town, once when the paladin got himself trapped by monsters and once by accident with the assassin after killing Andariel.  I lost a bunch of low-level set items and a couple uniques (an extra Frostburn), but I think nothing critical.  The one that might have been regrettable was a Riphook bow, that might have slightly outdone the Kuko for physical damage, although not by much.

The items I did get: a Skystrike bow, though that's probably inferior (slower) to Kuko.  Got three copies of Frostburn gauntlets all in the same act, something the first team never found at all... but I'm not sure anyone on this team really wants it, they need IAS in the gloves slot more than a mana multiplier.  Similarly, also got Chance Guards gloves, which the poisonmancer will take, he's the only one that doesn't need IAS on gloves, and Poison Nova doesn't spam a ton of mana to need Frostburn.  Set items: finally found a Berserker's armor to go with the helm, that's another combo that gives a big AR/level bonus, so the barb will take those instead of the Cleglaw's gloves/sword combo.  Merc weapons: Kelpie Snare (hit slows target 75%), that goes to the paladin's merc, he's absolutely the most desperate for crowd control.  And a Hwanin's Justice polearm and a second Tannr Gorerod also to upgrade.

Interesting weapons: the paladin found a Hexfire unique shamshir halfway through the act (in Tristram) and adopted it as his main weapon.  But then he and someone else found two copies of Aldur's mace.  I worked out this for his best dps option going into the next act: use the mace with one Shael socketed (it comes with 3), plus a Sigon's gloves and belt combo for the 30% IAS to get to a good speed breakpoint, then add two +max damage jewels in the other sockets.  I was a lot more willing to do that thanks to the second copy of the mace which I can socket better if better stuff comes up later.  The Hexfire could go to the assassin - it's fast with ITD, just what she needs - although I'm liking the Angelic sword to enable 100% magic find on the two Angelic rings a bit too much to give up just yet.

A big concern regarding weapons is the stat requirements.  I don't want to go too high on strength and dexterity, never know when a weapon might come up that's great for damage but lower in requirements, as happened with the Ribcracker for the first team.  The paladin, barb, and werebear are all trying to hover around no more than 70 str and no dex invested yet, and patch the deficiencies with charms and socketables.  In particular I'm really unsure about the paladin's dex stat; I'd really like him to have dex for shield blocking, which would mesh with a phase blade of some sort for endgame weaponry; but who knows what weapons with what requirements will come up.  Yes, this situation could be averted by allowing character respecs -- but I want to welcome and deal with this challenge, not have an easy reset button out of it.

The start of act 2 nightmare now means access to the best mercs.  I'm not doing anything clever this time; the bowazon gets Might and everyone else gets Holy Freeze, really everyone needs the crowd control and can't justify anything else.

I skipped the normal-difficulty cow level, and also the Countess quest in nightmare.  Reason is to save them for later.  The normal cow level is a great source of chipped gems when I need those for things like the low-quality repair recipe later, and nightmare Countess isn't likely to give anything useful now but the low runes will be for crafting later.  I do intend to do the nightmare cow level, that can give useful runes and some elite base weapons, at least with the characters that are capable.

[T-hawk]

Nightmare act 2 report.  To start the act, made a slight change to the equipment allocations described before.  The paladin's Aldur's mace got socketed with a second Shael, so he could take 10% IAS gloves instead (Bloodfist, which also has +min damage and 40 life), to leave the 30% IAS Sigon's gloves+belt for the barbarian instead, actually mostly for the 10% life leech that helps him more than the paladin.  Other adjustments: the bowazon got a Peace armor, and took the Tarnhelm, because the assassin got a Lore instead for need of lightning resist, and also it's good to move Tarnhelm's magic find off the character that's already got 100% from the Angelic rings.  I also gambled a lot of boots and belts, and shuffled around resistances with them and charms.

The bowazon got a lot more powerful this act.  Thanks to Immolation getting up to its increasing-returns skill levels past 23, plus more skills from Peace and an amulet, both for Immolation itself and for getting to 100% piercing which is also effectively increasing returns.  Immolation with full pierce in tight packs is quite a force, and the patch 1.13 buffs to blast radius and damage are definitely noticeable.  That's like 90% of her offense now, even with the Might merc helping on the physical side.  Wasn't what I had in mind when I planned the character, but I'm going to have to go with it, play the hand that was dealt in that Kuko Shakaku.  But stay tuned...

The paladin ramped up similarly, with Fist of the Heavens hitting its increasing-returns max skill levels too, and that was a blast wiping all the undead in the tombs.

Haven't mentioned the werebear in a while.  He got better presently too after maxing Maul and Werebear by raising Shockwave now, which I'd forgotten how good it is, this is really the reason to play a werebear, stun an entire room of skeletons and run around them to take out the greater mummy resurrector.  What he really needs is a source of Cannot Be Frozen... and then I realized he actually can have one: he's wearing the Hsaru's belt/boots combo for AR, and I also have the shield, and the completed set grants CBF!  I'll keep some good one-handed weapon (for now the second Aldur's mace) on switch with the Hsaru's shield for that when he needs.

   

Ha, who says Duriel never drops anything good.  This amazon isn't planning to use any javelin skills, but she'll keep that Titan's anyway.  It would be cool to continue this streak: every amazon I've ever done who had a Titan's went on to make Guardian, while every amazon without one didn't.  But then Duriel got even better:

   

Witchwild String!  That's the best mid-level bow for physical damage, and if upgraded the best of anything short of Windforce or a crazy runeword.  I think Kuko for Immolation is still stronger offense at the moment, particularly against packs of flayers in act three, but now she's well set to handle fire immunes as well.

   

A Lem rune showed up super early, in the maggot lair, hadn't found anything past Hel yet.  Treachery is the obvious option, and I even got a 3-socket cuirass already for it... but I'm not quite sure I want to commit, the assassin doesn't really need any more IAS (Phoenix already goes as fast as I can drive it), and might need the life and stats more from a Lionheart eventually.  My original intent for a Lem would have been a Passion bow, but now the bowazon is perfectly set with Kuko and Witchwild.  My other thought is a Passion weapon for the barb on switch, for the +1 Berserk against physical immunes to save the hard points.  I'll save the Lem for the moment and see what happens.

After that, I also got a Lum and three Ko runes; hah, Ko was the big gap for the first team, and now it shows up in clumps here.  That's enough for a Lionheart, it's fine to cube the three Kos into the Fal, Ko doesn't do anything else urgent.  The Lionheart goes to the paladin to replace his Stealth.  It's not going to perfect use presently; Lionheart's resists are overkill on top of a 4-diamond paladin shield, but the stats do help and it's still always 110 life.

I also got an Io, which can make a White wand, probably best-in-slot for this necro build like for a standard bonemancer (don't forget the +4 Skeleton Mastery.)  But I want to find a specific base for it, with +Poison Nova for offense, or +Lower Resist in order to save the hard points up to that.  That can't be shopped, so need to wait for an appropriate drop.  For now, the necro is using a shopped wand with an odd but effective combination of mods: +2 bone skills prefix, +3 Decrepify, and Lower Resist charges.

Armors: got a Goldskin, great for the werebear and very worth an exceptional upgrade, he needs resists with no easy source from shield or skill, also wants defense, and doesn't need +skills in the armor slot.  Silks of the Victor also, something the first team never found, although it really doesn't fit well here for anyone: the werebear got Goldskin; the barb is stuck with Berserker's armor for the partial-set AR bonus; the necro and assassin aren't going near Silks' 100 strength requirement; the paladin and bowazon could consider Silks but are better set with Lionheart and Peace.  So the Silks is just on a merc for now, might be worth upgrading to exceptional just for the defense value.  Also got two copies of Hwanin's set armor, also good enough for merc use.

That's about it, nothing super exciting besides Witchwild, on to act three.

[superdeath]

Act 3 was probably my most hated act, hope everyone survives !

[Boro]

Will we get a D2's 20th birthday update, hmm?

But then again, it IS act 3

[T-hawk]

I knew it was the 20th and wanted to post that day, but was out and busy all last weekend, so didn't get to finishing the last character until last night.

Actually I've come to like act 3.  The jungles are relaxing, I recognize the patterns of how the map grid works to minimize searching and backtracking.  The dungeons are small and quick (except the sewers, but that's not too bad with low monster density), and the Travincal fight is a cool climax.  What's best about act 3 is that your progress never bogs down, there's no moments when all your work is getting undone by resurrectors or spawners or just wasting time against objects like barricades and doors, you always keep moving.

Act 3 is smooth.  I've never lost a hardcore character in the jungle or dungeons.  Only one ever in the act, to a fire enchanted council explosion... ...and then exactly that fate almost befell this assassin, she got blasted to a sliver of life (about 120) by just that.  Too close a call, I need to get her a Lionheart and also a big +life belt (first time that's easy to shop is Halbu in nightmare, so presently.)

And I'm going to like act three if it serves up goodies like this, from a Great Marsh sparkly chest:

   

There we go, a real heavy hitter for the barbarian.  Butcher's Pupil is great for now and endgame worthy if upgraded.  That would need a Pul rune, and some attention to the stat requirements (115 str 83 dex), but should all be doable.

Next:

   

Kuko Shakaku!  Perfect for the bowazon, good physical damage and big bonuses for Immolati... oh wait, we already did this, she already has one.  It was the paladin that found it... so why not him put it to use too!  He kept it on switch, and between the piercing attack, its own fire damage that transfers to the exploding arrow blast radius, and Conviction, it was actually dealing good damage faster than melee against dense enough packs of flayers and itchies.  Worth keeping on switch for flesh spawners and maggots in act 4 as well.  Lionheart gives him the dexterity to use it.  I was already loving his versatility on offense and this makes that even better.

   

And remember how I said the paladin's 4-diamond resistance shield was overkill?  So Mephisto served up this nice little number.

   

And there's my second Lionheart.  I'm loving how this team format works with these mid-level runes.  We always find just enough to put together just enough good stuff, unlike a solo character; but they're still scarce enough that every one is exciting.  Although I'm not going to use this Lionheart just yet.  I talked about it for the assassin, but:

   

I finally turned up the Angelic amulet, completing the full set.  I can't resist using this on the assassin for at least one act, and probably two through the end of nightmare.  The resists and life from the set bonus are almost as good as Lionheart itself, so I'll hang on to that big magic-find bonus from the rings and set for a while here.

Nobody else wants the Lionheart?  Surprisingly, no.  I was going to put it on the necro, until he turned up a Skin of the Vipermagi and kept it.  And someone found an Iceblink armor that seems great to put on the barb, and worth an exceptional upgrade.  The werebear is better set with upgraded Goldskin, the paladin already has a Lionheart, and I think the bowazon still prefers Peace for now; maybe Lionheart later when she needs the stats for an elite-upgraded bow.  (If I still had the sorceress, she'd take the Vipermagi and then the necro would have this Lionheart.)  For now the assassin will keep the Lionheart in stash, to use against act bosses and Ancients.

   

And there's the first skill charm, and it's handsome.  Second one was nice too but not for this team, assassin traps, where was that the first time around, heh.

Recalibrating the barbarian's equipment: I finally got a Sigon's helm, which gives a big AR/level bonus for two set items.  That and the gloves are a perfect pair.  So he doesn't need the Berserker's helm/armor for AR, which frees up the armor slot for the Iceblink.

Finally thought to make a Rhyme shield for the assassin, she can really use the Cannot Be Frozen, even if the MF is overkill on top of the Angelic set, and for hell I may trade it out for either real resistances or a +skills claw.

   

Also got some interesting pieces that don't quite fit in to use.  One was a Minotaur ancient axe.  This is very similar to Bonesnap, same speed, similar damage, crushing blow - but just not quite as good with slightly less damage and would need another socket quest to Shael.  But the interesting angle is that it's a better candidate to upgrade to elite than the Bonesnap; still the same slightly less damage, but needs 80 less strength (requirement 60 lower plus 20 on the weapon itself.)  Not committing to anything with either weapon yet, we'll see what the hellforge runes yield and what the upgrade options are from there.

And two shields, Tiamat's Rebuke and Gerke's Sanctuary.  Both have interesting properties but don't quite fit anyone on this team.  Tiamat's elemental damage isn't quite enough to be worth displacing a paladin shield or Rhyme.  Gerke's would be great on the assassin, but the strength requirement at 133 is too high to be practical.

And a Spellsteel axe, bunch of charges including Decrepify, but that's not really good enough to serve as a physical-immune solution for the werebear or barb.

I didn't talk much about the characters, they're just trucking along with the same skills.  The necro is the only one with any significant change lately, he got the skeleton skills up high enough to be worth using (plus a shrunken head with the +2 summoning skills prefix), and so his hybrid build is working well now, hide behind the skeletons while belching poison novas.

Also, logistically: I got smarter about the order I play the characters.  Mostly I'd just been doing whatever I felt like on a given day, but there are strategic reasons to choose the order.  I should have one character keep all the uncubed gems from the previous act, and play first, then each next character combines their gems with that one, to free up space to receive more gear from the following characters.  And when I have something waiting to go to a particular character (like that rare paladin shield here), I should play that recipient next, to take it and free up space too.  Yes, I'm still doing this with no shared or expanded or external stash; I want the purist challenge of keeping no more than what seven (well, six) characters can carry.

Next up is the biggest reward point at the Hellforge runes, so pray to the gods of Um and Pul.  As before, I plan to full-clear most of the game from here through roughly act 2 hell, this is the sweet spot of good rewards against manageable monster opposition.

[superdeath]

The biggest issue for me is act 3's flayers that come running up and tend to surround me. Would rather take more act 2 beetles..

[T-hawk]

Well, Nightmare Act 4 is the best act for fighting, but the hellforge came out as a bust.  Lem, Fal, Fal, Dol, Sol, Sol.  None of the two critical runes, Pul to upgrade a unique weapon or Um to make a Crescent Moon.  And Fal only does Lionheart and I don't need more of those.

The one useful spot in there is the Lem, and I also had one from earlier.  These can make Passion weapons, an overlooked but very solid mid-level runeword.  I'm not sure for whom, though.  The bowazon would have been my first choice going in, but she's set enough with Kuko and Witchwild.  The werebear, paladin, and barb would all be happy with Passion.  (The paladin least so, because of the monster-flee property; the werebear and barb can cancel that with Shockwave and Taunt, but the paladin would be stuck chasing down everything.)  At any rate I need an elite properly-socketed base to start anything here, so we'll see what happens with that.

Character notes:

Phoenix Strike took on a new life now.  With fire immunes (and highly resistant venom lords), it's not just about spamming meteors as fast as you can, but you have to manage it closely.  It's interesting and engaging to drive, but quite a bit slower to charge up twice and release accurately to get the lightning consistently.

The bowazon also had to adjust to the presence of fire immunes, having to rely on Strafe instead of Immolation, drastically so in Chaos Sanctuary.  Witchwild String worked well enough, though I really do want to get it upgraded to elite.  And I've decided on her skill build: after maxing the Exploding Arrow synergy to Immolation, she will then do skills to support physical bow damage, some combination of Critical Strike/Penetrate/Pierce.  Not Fire Arrow for the other synergy to Immolation (those damage numbers aren't that big), and not Guided Arrow either since Strafe works okay enough against a single target.

For the paladin, I was super excited about putting his undead-fighting capabilities to use in act 4... and then only got doom/abyss knights once throughout the act.  Although he still stormed through Chaos Sanctuary at full power just as I'd built him for.  Except he had one embarrassing moment, when I loaded up a Black flail to put the crushing blow on Diablo via Smite... and realized that I never took a point in the skill.  Oops, but he can fix that before he gets to the Ancients and Baal of course.

The necromancer is still the most powerful offensive force, although met his first poison immunes in the venom lords.  He was able to handle them with his skeleton skills nearing max now, plus Amplify and some Corpse Explosion.

The werebear did his first interesting thing in a while, he found that Shockwave was actually dealing enough damage to kill swarms of maggot young, took about 12 casts but that was still faster than one-by-one melee.

Items, none worth a screenshot:

The one big jackpot was a Shaftstop armor.  Not super rare, but something the first team never found.  This could be a character-defining item, like the Guardian Angel for team one.  Same as that, I'm putting this armor on the paladin, 30% physical damage reduction beats Lionheart's life (and Shaftstop has 60 anyway), and he can make up the resistances with a paladin shield and elsewhere.  Plus solid defense too, which he needs fighting at close range with no crowd control skills.  I'd love to upgrade it to elite, but not sure how to handle the strength requirement, that will depend on what sort of strength he needs for weapons too, plus there's the question of dex for blocking as well which he still hasn't committed to either.  At the moment, I recalibrated the paladin's equipment as the Shaftstop armor, Sigon's gloves + boots + belt package (the gloves have 10 strength to support Shaftstop), the other Aldur's mace socketed with one Shael and some better damage jewels, and rings of strength and dex to support Shaftstop and Kuko.

Magnus Skin set gloves, IAS and AR and fire res, best for the werebear.  (Bowazon still has Sander's gloves, IAS and life and poison damage which are a better fit for her.  Although of course I still want about four copies of Laying of Hands instead.)

Arm of King Leoric wand.  Lots of good skills for a summoner necro, plus 2 bone/poison skills as well.  But it does derail my plan, which was to always have Decrepify and Lower Resist curses as skillmods on wand and head, to save the prerequisite points in the curse tree.  What I think I need is Lower Resist on a head (currently on his wand), and can then spend hard points up to Decrepify which is only half the tree.

Also got a Suicide Branch wand and Magefist gloves.  Perfect fits... for the dead sorceress, oh well.  There's nobody else on the team to use these items, no fast-cast tweakers, the paladin a little with Holy Bolt but he's got other priorities.  (Although now I realized that half my time managing equipment on that first team was allocating all the FCR items between the casters.  This team at least has less competition between themselves.)

And a Swordguard executioner sword, which is fairly cool, but again nobody on this team to use it; too slow for the druid, paladin doesn't want to give up a shield, barb would lose out on Axe Mastery.

That's about it for now.  Continuing on to act 5 nightmare next, although expect this to take longer as I plan to full-clear most of it for levels and loot.