I'm playing this game yet again

[T-hawk]

And because I wanted to show it this way, here's a chart summary of everyone's equipment at the end.  Tried posting it in table formatting within the forum but that came out all kinds of screwed up, so here it is as a link.

http://dos486.com/misc/starteam.html

Italics indicates an item they had for a long time but traded out late.  Everyone had a bunch of assorted charms with resists and life and hit recovery and so on, not worth listing individually.

[Bam-Bam]

And because I wanted to show it this way, here's a chart summary of everyone's equipment at the end.  Tried posting it in table formatting within the forum but that came out all kinds of screwed up, so here it is as a link.

http://dos486.com/misc/starteam.html

Italics indicates an item they had for a long time but traded out late.  Everyone had a bunch of assorted charms with resists and life and hit recovery and so on, not worth listing individually.

Of course, stop by here and the inevitable Diablo II siren song has me scrambling to find my old discs!

Well played T-Hawk

[KingOfPain]

I loved the rogue merc when we can bug them into lightning hoses. Still, some of my toons insist on having rogue mercs for flavor.

Why did you choose to have a rogue merc for your trapsin?

And why switch out Holy Freeze (obviously your fav) for a Barb for the druid late in the game?

[T-hawk]

I wrote about those when they happened, but ok I'll go again. The trapsin's rogue was because of Cloak of Shadows. She doesn't need a tank or Holy Freeze, so it was better to have the rogue merc who keeps her distance rather than a melee merc charging in. The druid took a barb merc because he could use a Vile Husk sword for its CTC Amp to help Tornado, and because he also didn't have a great need for a tank or Holy Freeze between the grizzly summon and Hurricane's cold slowing, and because the advantage of a barb merc is fast life regen which works well as a percentage of Oak Sage's multiplied life.

[Bam-Bam]

My aging hands are not pleased with me. D2 makes my hands feel old, for certain. As I fired everything up again, I realized that I've never had a Guardian. Played almost exclusively SC, mostly with slightly or very variant toons.

Seven chances it is. T-Hawk had good choices, though I am going with Summoner, as the bone skills are not fun for me. Will give a chance to reassess after normal based on the fun factor. I want a good chance to make it with all seven, but if I totally hate the gameplay through normal, then I will change even if it lowers the chances for Guardian.

[KingOfPain]

My aging hands are not pleased with me. D2 makes my hands feel old, for certain. As I fired everything up again, I realized that I've never had a Guardian. Played almost exclusively SC, mostly with slightly or very variant toons.

Seven chances it is. T-Hawk had good choices, though I am going with Summoner, as the bone skills are not fun for me. Will give a chance to reassess after normal based on the fun factor. I want a good chance to make it with all seven, but if I totally hate the gameplay through normal, then I will change even if it lowers the chances for Guardian.

Good luck.

I on the other hand am not too crazy about summons, Necro or otherwise. I often find myself attacking my own and friendly summons.

[T-hawk]

Funny that you guys bumped this thread when I was about to revive it myself as well.  If you liked that reporting, keep reading, I'm not done here.

I liked that so much I'm running the whole idea a second time, a new team of seven, call it season two.  I'd considered this since about halfway through the first team.  And with months of shelter-in-place still ahead, may as well just keep playing.

Same rules, of 7 characters trading items after each act, plus now I'm specifying concretely on the rest of the restrictions: no respecs, no rerunning/farming, and most likely no rebuilds after death.  And I'm applying an additional rule to diversify between the two teams: each particular skill can't be raised above 1 point more than once.  This affected some choices for the first team: that trapsin didn't raise Shadow Warrior so that the new one could, that barbarian didn't mind skipping Berserk, this idea was the clincher for not diverting the hammerdin into Holy Bolt so that the new paladin could use it, and finally intending on this yet to come was why I didn't rebuild a replacement necromancer then.

I think this set of characters will be quite a bit more interesting.  The first team was mostly standard cookie-cutter builds, but that success inspires me to explore some riskier but more interesting options now.  And all are distinct from any previous Guardian I ever did.  Here we go:

Amazon: Bowazon all the way, and in fact that's about half the reason I'm doing a second team, really missed having one the first time around.  I never Guardianed a real bowazon; two attempts died, and the one who succeeded had gone jav hybrid when she found a Titan's Revenge.  (Put another way, I've Guardianed three amazons who have always relied on Lightning Fury, never won without it, in fact all three even had Titan's.)  Her backup attack will be Immolation Arrow rather than Freezing, for several reasons: one of my previous bowazons was physical/freezing; Immolation got some mild buffs in patch 1.13; and fire is a better backup because physical immunes like ghosts tend to have cold resistance but not fire.

Necromancer: Poison/Summon hybrid.  Probably the most major build of any class I've never played at all is poisonmancer.  But poison alone is slow to get all the way through hell difficulty without high-end equipment with +% poison skill damage or minus enemy resist, plus there's lots of immunes.  A hybrid works out well, dividing skill points between the poison and skeleton skills (not mages), particularly if he can get Lower Resist on a wand/head to skip a ton of prereq points in the curse tree.  To make sure he's really a poisonmancer through the early difficulties and not a gimped moonlighting summoner, he must max Poison Dagger and Nova before raising Skeleton Warrior or Mastery.

Assassin: Phoenix Strike.  An assassin who isn't traps means a melee fighter of some kind.  My old melee assassin Guardian wasn't really a martial artist, using Whirlwind from a Chaos claw rather than the skill tree.  I've never done a real martial sassy since a half-hearted attempt way back in patch 1.09.  So I spent a while looking over the options in the martial tree.  Physical claw-sin is one path, but that's highly equipment dependent, and similar to Whirlwind anyway but slower and worse.  Kicker is another possibility and works on limited equipment, but I didn't really like the one I played long ago, all multi-swing melee skills feel cumbersome and clunky, particularly skills that struggle for attack rating.  That leaves the elemental side.  And Phoenix Strike seems to be the only worthwhile way to do elemental, the damage numbers come out higher than any of the single-element skills, plus in itself accounts for multiple elemental types.

Paladin: I absolutely couldn't decide between Vengeance or Fist of the Heavens so this is crazy but I'm going to hybridize both.  I've done each of those separately before but unsatisfyingly.  The old Fistadin got really slow in hell and never made Guardian.  The old Vengeadin did, but was drastically twinked.  I want to make Guardian with both a fresh Vengeance and Fist build.  They revolve around the same aura in Conviction.  So my skill build is Vengeance, Conviction, Fist, Holy Bolt.  This omits the synergies into Vengeance and into Fist's lightning damage, but I think those aren't critical and the overall plan has enough of the good parts of both to work.  In particular the Holy Bolt part of Fist is maxed, to clear crowds of undead, in places like the act 2 tombs, gloams, and Chaos Sanctuary.  I'm actually really excited about building up this character.

Druid: Werebear/Armageddon, yet another hybrid.  Physical werebear is the one flavor of druid I've never played; previously did a standard werewolf and Fire Claws werebear.  And Werebear also got some slight buffs in patch 1.13.  But a plain physical werebear has nothing for immunes, and also is severely dull and boring.  Enter Armageddon, which works in wereform.  I've never used that, but I think the damage numbers can get high enough to handle physical immunes and contribute in general.  I think there are enough skill points to do this build: max Werebear and Maul; 10 in Shockwave (reach the 10-second stun cap after +skill items); Lycanthropy at 1 point is tolerable; and the usual 1 up to Summon Grizzly; all that leaves enough to max Armageddon (even though it requires all five wind skills as prerequisites, whose dumb idea was that) and 10 points or so in fire synergy for it which I think is enough to get by.

Barbarian: Frenzy.  That's the one most different kind of barb I've never done.  Although he gets quite constrained by my rule about not reusing skills from the previous team.  The only weapon mastery available for Frenzy is Axe, since the previous barb did both sword and mace, and you can't dual-wield two-handed polearms or spears.  Frenzy works if I can find two good one-handed axes; Honor or a Blood craft might be just barely good enough, but Crescent Moon would be ideal and within the range of possibility from the nightmare hellforge.  Battle Orders limited to 1 point is a drag, but actually that opens up enough skill points to finish the build, max all of Frenzy and both of its synergies plus weapon mastery.  Surplus points beyond that can go into War Cry for stunning.  (But this barb can't be a pure War Cry singer, that needs max synergy for damage and max BO for thousands of mana.)

Sorceress: Meteor, Fireball, Nova, Chain Lightning.  This sounds like a gimpy underpowered mishmash, but hear me out.  I want to do her without cold, because every caster I've ever done has used cold as her secondary attack, because of how the mastery can work with only 1 point.  I need to try changing that up.  As always, a solo sorceress needs two elemental trees to deal with immunes.  If not cold, that has to be fire and lightning.  The previous sorceress already did lightning (CB, Lit, Lit Mastery), so what's left for the most viable hybrid seems to be Meteor+FB and CL+Nova.  Both elements will have limited mastery available (1 for lightning, and fire mastery gets whatever's left after maxing the four main skills), but I think it's workable overall.  I wanted to do fire primary, but there are so damn many fire immunes that it really requires the other element to be as strong as the fire.

More generally, the sorceress is my least favorite class overall by far to try to design.  It feels that there's nothing creative you can do with her.  Every other class gives you meaningful and interesting choices and tradeoffs between offense and defense and summonables and utility skills.  But the sorceress really is nothing but nine different calibers of glass cannon.  There are the cookie-cutter builds of Meteor-Orb or CB-Lit-Orb or single element, and any deviation from those doesn't gain anything interesting for capabilities or play style, it's just a gimpy underpowered mishmash.

Anyway, one aspect of this team compared to the previous is that these characters depend on weapons quite a bit more, all except the necro and sorc.  I'm cool with that.  I avoided weapon-based designs for the first team, but I underestimated how this format of seven playthroughs actually does add up to enough to find a pretty good selection of weapons.  I want to work through that, particularly with a shot at using some of the mid-level runewords like Crescent Moon or Passion that were left out by the first team.  And at least this team doesn't have four spellcasters all competing for FCR equipment.

   

Oh, and I really like the names too, once I had those planned out then I had to start playing the team.

[T-hawk]

As of this writing, I finished the first three acts with everyone.  That's the boring parts, so I decided to get this far to make sure I'd stick with it to be worth writing about, so here you go.

Unlike the first team, which proceeded somewhat haphazardly through the first three acts and skipped some quests, this time I systematically did everything and traded among everyone after each act.  In particular I made sure everyone killed the Countess for early runes (and on players-1.)  The sorceress actually got a perfect drop of Tal-Eth together from that, so had her Stealth runeword armor up and running right away, plus also a Ral for a Leaf fireball staff after act one.  With combined Countess loot I also made two more Stealths for others, plus more later.

First a note on weapons, which this team depends on a lot, as I said.  The best way to access decent early weapons is gambling.  New base item types can appear in the gamble window much earlier than from vendors or drops, as much as two full acts sooner.  And just a few gambles will usually turn up something with a modest damage affix, good enough for normal difficulty and better than a starter runeword in a lesser base item.  Finally, a gambled rare can be upgraded to exceptional later on once the other cube input pieces come.

Bowazon: She was the impetus for the team, but not a whole lot to report, bowazons are always safe and steady, killing from a distance if not super fast.  She gambled better bows frequently through two acts.  At the start of act 3 came her interesting prize, when I assembled a Ral-Ral-Ral gemmed bow for her.  That's actually quite a lot of elemental damage this early, more than she could get with a physical damage bow and skills... and because it's fire damage, it transfers to Exploding Arrow's blast radius!  That was fun in the crowds of flayers, and held up well all the way through act 3, though did get slow against the council and Mephisto.

Poisonmancer: I'd read about this for 19 years and finally played it out myself, the idea that Poison Dagger kills everything in one stab while you run away.  It's true and held up here, the one stab was enough to kill everything even on players-7, all the way until the council in act three.  (Although really the merc was doing half the work.)  I was worried about having to kill Andariel (80% poison resistance), Duriel, and Mephisto with that, but it turned out to be doable enough, each took about 30 poison dagger hits over a total of about four minutes, while recasting Clay Golem a lot.  Stabbing a jungle full of flayers wasn't exactly a cakewalk, but I got some help from a head with +Corpse Explosion.  For a weapon, the only thing he cared about was IAS on a dagger.

Paladin: He also got to do two new things for me.  One, use the elemental auras early, Holy Fire through act 1 and Holy Freeze through acts 2 and 3.  (A hammerdin never takes those auras, since they aren't prerequisites for Concentration.  My old Vengeance guardian skipped ahead past the early stuff with the -act5 command line parameter.)  Two, put early skill points into Holy Bolt and use it against undead!  That will be part of the endgame skill package to synergize Fist, so I could raise and use it now, particularly cool and convenient for picking off greater mummies in the tombs and the undead in Arcane and even gloams.  And it made for an awesome plan against Duriel: just spam Holy Bolt constantly healing Gulzar while he did all the work!  Besides all that, he did use Vengeance for ordinary combat, effective although not super fast.  For weapons, for the first two acts he gambled two-handers (poleaxe then maul), but for act three I decided he really needed a shield for resistances against flayer shamans and gloams and the council, and the best 1h weapon to give him was a Steel runeword flail (and the +6 dexterity on Stealth was key to wield it.)

Barb: I didn't realize how much fun he would be, I never saw before how fast Double Swing goes.  And I could just raise the skill and keep using it, since it's Frenzy's synergy for later.  Frenzy itself was actually slightly disappointing when it kicked in - it's only 7% IAS at skill level 1 and slower than Double Swing, so it will still be a little while until that really gets up to speed.  He gambled Military Pick then War Axe weapons.

Assassin: She also gets that cool benefit of an early skill being synergy for her top-tier skill, in Fists of Fire, so she could raise and use that like other characters did Holy Bolt and Poison Dagger and Double Swing.  That was loads of fun in the jungle full of flayers.  I'd forgotten that there's a weird speed penalty for the elemental charge-up skills (not Phoenix itself), but she worked around that well enough with Burst of Speed and a fast claw.  For a weapon, this build doesn't need physical damage, just any fast claw, which she got by gambling a Blade Talons base item at the earliest opportunity, at level 17 even still in act one, and even came with 10% IAS.  (Too bad Steel for 25% IAS doesn't work in claws.)  But she's been the most fragile character with the most close calls going down to low life; largely because she needed to invest in both strength and dex early for claw requirements, and will take some time to catch up on vitality.  And those melee chargeups make her so tempted to run into the middle of a pack to blow them all at once, but that's going to be the end of her one day...

Werebear: Effective but dull, Werebear and Maul skills peak early for damage, but go really slowly before you can get a weapon with decent speed.  Which was actually the Horadric Staff for the second half of act two.  Then for act 3 he gambled a decent rare maul with some chunky damage and much-needed IAS, then late in act 3 someone found the right 2-socket Giant Axe base (fastest 2H axe) for a Steel runeword for act 4.

Sorceress: Also dull but hugely effective.  Of course Fireball wipes everything in normal difficulty in seconds.  This character was just on a completely other dimension of offense compared to everyone else, it felt like she's operating an entire difficulty level ahead.  I had to play her last in each act to not get addicted to that power level.  Which is going to jump up again with Fire Mastery at level 30.

Item drops: Hand of Broc gloves, dual leech, found by the werebear and he got to keep it; of the characters who deal physical melee damage (so not the vengeadin or assassin), the werebear uses mana more than the barb with Double Swing costing zero.  Also Bloodfist gloves, that one went to the poisonmancer, he's most in need of all of the IAS, FHR, and 40 life.  Sander's gloves too, found and kept by the paladin also for the life and IAS.  Nokozan Relic amulet (something the first team never found), found and kept by the poisonmancer for the fire resist and FHR.  Coif of Glory helm, also went to the poisonmancer, to have some fun with the Hit Blinds Target on each poison dagger stab.  Gorefoot boots, with the +2 to Leap that the barb can actually use, he doesn't need any hard points in that skill.  +3 Lycanthropy pelt for the druid, nice to save two hard points of prerequisites into that skill, will cube-socket into a Lore later.

And for act 3 I put together something cool, for the hell of it: three pieces of the Angelic set, sabre/armor/ring.  Mostly for the 50% magic find, but also just for entertainment value.  The barbarian was the guy to do this package, since dual-wielding gives him a weapon slot to hold that weak weapon without really losing much offense.  (I also considered the sorc, she could particularly use the +50 mana set bonus, but couldn't bring her to give up the Leaf fireball staff.)

And the big secret: Really, the mercenaries were doing at least half the work for everyone but the sorceress.  Gambling works for them too: a Pike in particular does twice as much damage as any other normal-tier base item, and comes available from gambling at clvl 20, early in act two and far sooner than from drops or vendors.  I acquired those pikes early and systematically, unlike the first team, and with them each mercenary was killing faster than the character themselves through acts two and three.

Finally, a note of full disclosure.  This report is my second attempt at this team.  At first I screwed up and got someone killed, early enough that I just decided to restart the whole team rather than either continue shorthanded or figure out rules for rebuilding.  I fixed a few details of the skill builds in restarting: the werebear didn't go for hard points in Werewolf and Lycanthropy (use a pelt for the latter instead), the poisonmancer didn't spend 1 point early in Skeleton Warrior and Mastery, and the paladin planned ahead to have his 1 prereq point in Blessed Hammer at level 18 for that +50% synergy to Holy Bolt.  Finally, on playing through again I stayed on players-5 rather than any higher, to save time; above p5 overshoots the monster levels into the experience penalty and makes nearly no difference, barely half a level per act.

[T-hawk]

Well, shit.

   

Managed to screw up and get the sorceress killed.  My own damn fault, I went in to close range to Static at Infector's pack since they have high fire resistance, but I had neglected my own fire resistance (too cocky with the Leaf staff, precluding any shield) and they all blasted me from full health to dead in a split second.

Here's my thoughts on restarting a new sorceress.  She will follow the same skill build.  She must play solo up through act 4 normal.  Upon completing that, she must discard all items and gold.  She also must not level higher than the first sorceress did.  From then on, she can only receive items from the rest of the team, not give anything to them.

This all preserves the integrity of the team.  From the point of view of the other characters, the sorceress died and they continue on, the replacement doesn't exist as far as they're concerned.  From the POV of the dead sorceress, there's nothing to gain by redoing her in items or leveling or skill build.  From the POV of the replacement sorceress, she's still playing in the same team structure of seven who can find items for her once she catches up.  So I think this set of rules works, that I'm still playing for seven Guardians but can't gain in any way from the death.  And taking the idea to the extreme holds up without problems: suppose all seven characters died and restarted, which would just mean each would be playing solo, same as rebuilding any ordinary non-team hardcore death. Feel free to throw in any opinions.

[superdeath]

At least it wasnt the necro this time...