I'm playing this game yet again

[superdeath]

Interesting, i usually just teleported or ran around him to avoid it

[T-hawk]

And now the finale. As before, I stayed strictly on players-1 with minimal clearing for the last acts, and didn't do the Anya quest (and god hell no Nihlathak.) Time to just finish it up for the prize.

One detail left out of the last writeup: I had a Pul rune that I hadn't spent, after the Kingslayer took the last Um, which meant the Pul wouldn't be going into a Stone armor for a merc. I considered an Enlightenment sorceress armor, but didn't have a good 3-socket base, and Que-Hegan's armor is good enough for her anyway. So I put that Pul into upgrading Hone Sundan for the druid's merc, worthwhile to help his physical damage. (Not the spearazon's merc who is also using a Hone, she needs it less because she does better physical damage herself, and also she sometimes swaps the merc's Hone to herself, so I didn't want to raise its stat requirements.)

Starspike, the spearazon: She did very noticeably better by downshifting to players-1, and I knew the reason: now her physical damage was enough to inflict hit recovery on monsters most of the time. That was also another solution to the monster-flee problem, if I could catch a monster and hit it once, the hit recovery would interrupt its fleeing. This didn't work on the biggest monsters (like thorned hulks) with enough health to avoid it, but what I could often do for a big monster fleeing was completely box it in with my team, trapping it so it couldn't move at all between myself, the merc, clay golem, and decoy. But I more often used her other favorite trick, attack with Lightning Strike on a single monster that either wouldn't (boss/champion) or couldn't (packed in tightly enough) flee, and let the lightning wipe everything else on the screen.

But the star of the spearazon's show was her merc. With the Shaftstop and Rockstopper, he never died once the entire act! And I'm gaining a new appreciation for Defiance mercs in general. Both this one and the paladin's were very noticeably more tanky than any of the holy freeze mercs. Both Defiance mercs even completely outright tanked Lister's pack, never had to retreat at all or even feed potions, but held up for the entire minute or so that it took for Lightning Strike and Zeal to bring them down.

The Ancients were the usual show of rerolling about ten times into manageable modifers and then isolating them one by one. Decoy helped a lot for this, it would occupy one or two of them at the center of the arena while one chased me. Baal as the finale was a pushover, thanks to the clay golem's slowing; same as for a necromancer, any source of monster-slowing disrupts his animations somehow and he never does anything.

This was the least powerful build of this team, but it was still satisfying to push across the finish line. As I keep finding with these characters, piling on as much defensiveness as possible almost always seems like the right way to go. Rockstopper and Stone and String of Ears made her way more tankier than I ever expected, almost as good as the zealot. And Infanta was absolutely right that this is the way to build a spearazon: skip Dodge/Avoid to avoid the Fend bug and then it's as smooth as Zeal, spam Decoy to make up for the lack of the valkyrie, and rely on defense rating and a Defiance merc for defense.

Starblade, the assassin: The Blessed Aim merc was the right call, completely fixed her AR problems, and really unleashed that damage-to-demons on Laying of Hands to tear through monsters. Seriously, witches and demon imp types were going down in two blade hits, faster than I could even target them with the pointer. This character turned out way more powerful than I expected, probably more than twice the kill rate that I ever would have expected, thanks to that gargantuan ethereal claw.

   

And Delirium was a beautiful exclamation point, dishing out the CFC Confuse like crazy. Tons of fights looked like this one here, with a giant swath of monsters all attacking each other and ignoring my team. Delirium's Confuse wasn't redundant with Cloak of Shadows at all - it was very convenient to have crowd control triggering automatically, rather than having to stop firing for like five blades worth of time to cast Cloak. One small downside was it overwriting the CTC Amplify from the merc, but that's not something to complain about.

She rolled the Ancients easily, got them on the first try (none of the worst modifiers spawned), and even took on two at once rather than isolating them. Actually her hardest fight was Bartuc's pack, since he spawned Conviction enchanted and the merc lasted about a tenth of a second against the hydras, so I had to do that one without him and the Blessed Aim. Lister's pack slammed the merc around and I did have to feed him rejuves, but killing them wasn't a problem, about six seconds worth of blades each. This assassin might have been one of the most fun characters to build that I've done; she really felt struggling and underpowered at the start of hell difficulty, but each claw and other damage upgrade through the acts made for an increasingly diesel payoff.

Starlava, the druid: Despite what I just said about figuring out Boulder, I actually switched back to using Volcano more against fire immunes. That was also a result of downshifting to players-1. Boulder is still more dps than Volcano when done properly (set up to bowl orthogonally along the game grid, at a target backstopped to not get knocked back)... but all that setup and positioning takes time and effort, and now it was largely easier to just fling volcanoes at wherever the monsters were and it would still deal enough physical damage to kill in about three casts. As I've said a few times, the fire skills turned out quite a bit more interesting than I expected, all four have differing tactical usage and execution.

He handled the Ancients well enough, once I rerolled them into tame modifiers, they just didn't do enough damage to really hurt my Oak Sage boosted team, and it was straightforward to kill the fire-immune one with Volcano and the other two with Firestorm. Lister's pack was similar, had to string out and isolate them, but then Volcano plus the merc killed them well enough. Baal was actually his biggest pain, the fire skills aren't well suited for dealing big single-target damage; Firestorm is the best of the options but the problem was I couldn't keep myself next to Baal to fire it!, between the tentacles and the knockback cold wedge. His other plan against bosses was always crushing blow from the merc, but it's also nearly impossible to keep a merc's attention on Baal instead of getting knocked around or distracted by the tentacles. So killing Baal took about fifteen minutes of long-range Volcano casting, but got it done, with no real danger under Oak Sage's life boost.

Starsmash, the barbarian: He was almost the fastest killer through this act, just behind the paladin. He definitely hit the peak of his power now, finally using his sword two-handed, and Kingslayer is a bit heavier than Crescent Moon, and now up to maximum attack speed after socketing an IAS jewel in his Duriel's Shell with the last socket quest. Also the later acts highlight the side benefit of Berserk, that monster magic resistance stays low compared to physical that ramps up through the acts. He did take a lot of punishment - he spent like a third of his time just running out of combat waiting for healing potions to refill - but a BO-boosted 2700 life ball is always so much of a buffer that it's hard to go wrong. This guy achieved the big hitter style what I wanted, really dishing out serious dps like the Frenzy barb never quite did.

Starsteel, the paladin: Not much to say here, he was the fastest killer, expectedly so given that he's the one real standard power build on this team. Rune Master with four Eth runes was quite a solid weapon, very noticeably hitting all the time including against bosses.

Starshatter, the sorceress: Her big deal was the Oculus, first time I ever tried playing with that and its CTC Teleport. It triggered often, but actually didn't feel dangerous. At any given instant, only a small portion of the screen is actually ever full of monsters. There's actually almost always a lot more visible open space than occupied, and so Oculus actually seemed quite a bit more likely to blink me out of danger than into it. Or, it also seemed that I could react to each random teleport faster than the monsters could, and re-teleport myself to a better spot before they would converge and attack. I know this is riding on the edge of hardcore, but I was actually having quite a bit of fun with the boinging around. Probably wouldn't want to do it for any long term, but once through an act was fine.

Her story of fighting was the Ancients, as shown here:

   

Goddammit. I was getting too cocky about finishing off this team with a perfect record. This happened because I went in to close range to use Static Field, because Talic was fire and cold immune, to get him down partway for the merc to handle. But he caught me with the full brunt of a whirlwind and I was an instant too late on the rejuve. Dammit. (This had nothing to do with Oculus, it didn't trigger, actually it would have saved me if it had!) I got complacent; I got too used to being able to take some damage from the Ancients, with every other character having a bigger life ball and damage reduction equipment or curses (Decrepify.) Talic didn't have any of the worst modifiers (I think it was spectral hit and cold enchanted), which lulled me into neglectfulness. This was completely my own fault, and of course I'm mad at myself, but that's hardcore, what makes the wins have meaning is that the losses also do.

One footnote: I'd used her last socket quest on her circlet (+2 skills), but only got one socket from Larzuk instead of two (on a magic item.) I put in one perfect ruby for life, and would have done a second if I'd gotten that second socket; it's possible that Larzuk's coin flip made the difference in dying here. And that second ruby would have meant break-even for life compared to removing Tal Rasha's set; I didn't really pay attention to how much life that gave up, 60 each on both the orb and helm. Plus Tal's helm has some defense that might have avoided a melee hit, and also the dex on the belt that might have blocked one. I'll never know.

And finally, the climactic moment for the necromancer fans here:

   

Yeah, finally won with one of the necromancers, now Guardian Starblast. For the final blow against Baal, I decided to do it in style, put on the four-piece Trang-Oul's set to use the Fire Wall oskill. No other reason than style points and just for the heck of it, in fact doing that gave up Rhyme's magic find. And got rewarded by a Stone Crusher hammer there, that could have been a pretty hefty zealot weapon.

The Iron Golem (the Swordguard sword) survived all the way through the act this time. Including the Ancients fight, which of course was the major obstacle compared to Baal, who never does anything while decrepified. For the Ancients, I had to reroll them about 15 times to get manageable boss modifiers, and then run around like crazy (risking the iron golem poofing, but he never did) until managing to isolate one for the merc to take down, but I got all that done. Finally, I was also even able to kill some of Lister's pack with the necromancer's own melee attacks, putting a nice exclamation point on that too.

And I also liked this build quite a bit more than I'd expected going in. He was indeed a versatile offensive build, as I really like. Corpse Explosion was exactly as much of his show as I wanted it to be, dominating but not quite solving everything, and there were always just enough challenging situations to keep him interesting. Really that versatility with the golem and his own melee really revolved around Amplify Damage, which I'm coming to realize is secretly the best melee skill in the game.


Items: The one big prize was a Boneflame necromancer head dropped from Baal, that certainly would have been the necro's choice if the team were to continue from here, and worth his last socket quest.

Nothing else that would matter; I got Heavenly Garb and Wall of the Eyeless that hadn't shown up before, but no use for them, the sorceress has enough fast cast and wouldn't want to trade out Moser's resistances. Got a Naj's Puzzler staff, also cool but we don't need it for anything. Also an extra Grim's Burning Dead scythe, which might have been the next iron golem if I needed another. And one more Pul rune, found by the barbarian but who didn't need it for anything, not upgrading his merc's weapon which was already an elite Honor. If we were continuing, I'd upgrade the paladin's merc's Kelpie Snare with it.

   

So that's all here. No postscript this time, I'm not redoing that failed sorceress inches from the end. Thanks again for reading along, hope I entertained someone in my quest to kill endless amounts of lockdown time.

[Meiz]

Very enjoyable read as always, thanks!

[superdeath]

nice!

[T-hawk]

and I finally got around to this, the equipment chart summary: http://www.dos486.com/diablo/starteam3/equipment.shtml

[T-hawk]

And not worth its own thread, but I also made this as a result of playing these teams, maybe it helps somebody: Act 3 Jungle Maps Guide

[T-hawk]

filler to bump the next post on a new page again (I have it as 50 per page)

[T-hawk]

You want more? Well here it is. I couldn't help but think of seven more builds to do this with, and still got jack all else to do as long as my shithole blue state keeps the pandemic lockdown garbage going forever. And I don't think I'm going to delve into the remastered release, since my computer won't run it (I don't even have a Windows 10 computer.) So let's do this yet again.

It started with the first three listed here, which I planned out even before the previous team, and I was going to do just those as a mini-group. But then I started thinking about ways to get more items involved (like rerunning act bosses), and then I started thinking of adding another class or two... and then I thought it all the way through and found one more build of each class I want to run.

In the order that drew me to playing them, here we go:

Assassin: Kicker, which is the last remaining major build among all the classes that I've never seriously played. I once did Tiger/Tail partway, but she died, and that's a different build. I've never done a Talon build, and I still haven't gotten a martial 'sin to Guardian, which I still want to after the phoenixsin died. (I did once make Guardian with a Whirlwind assassin, but that isn't really martial arts and definitely not untwinked.) And so Dragon Talon is a major build that I want to take all the way through, if I can make it.

Barbarian: War Cry singer. That's the most wildly different barbarian build, of course, maybe the most wildly different of any class. I had this in mind all through these teams, but never committed to it over one of the meleers. I had been trying to work in a singer hybrid somewhere, but could never manage it; a singer requires a dedicated build of War Cry and its synergies plus BO for mana which leaves no room for anything else. I did a singer partway a long time ago, who died early (nightmare maggot lair, to a room full of sparking beetles), and always wanted to redo it better. So here goes. He's not forbidden from using a weapon; I made that mistake with my old singer, where trying to kill the last stragglers of each pack with warcrying was just plain dumb in terms of time and mana; this guy will be allowed to use a weapon to do that. My official rule here is no more than 1 point in any combat skill or weapon mastery. This rule should give the right emergent behavior that he'll be focused on warcrying at packs, but can use a weapon against single targets, with 1-point Concentrate (gets damage synergy from Battle Orders) and of course Berserk for immunes.

Druid: Summon/Armageddon hybrid. Like the previous necromancer, this is everything I haven't done with the class rolled into one build. I know druid summoning isn't very strong, but I've never tried it and I want to. And I still want to use Armageddon but the previous druids never got to; it doesn't fit for a fire elementalist because it conflicts with the ridiculous casting timer, and doesn't fit for a werebear because that wants to max so many skills itself. This is the way to make the pieces fit: the summon build is 40 skill points (Grizzly and Wolverine), with the rest going to max and synergize Armageddon, and they cover each other's immunity problems. Finally, all of this works in wereform, so I'll let him put 1 point in Werewolf and up to Fury to be able to fight himself, with Wolverine helping him too. As I wrote before, I love versatile builds with lots of approaches on offense, and this could be the next one in that vein following the Vengeance/Fist paladin and golem/melee necro.

Amazon: "Mageazon", an all-elemental bowazon, only Freezing and Immolation Arrows. There's an elegance and purity to this build over and above other types of bowazon, where you have to compromise somewhere between trying to do both physical and elemental damage. But this build goes entirely for +skills on equipment, and can use a bow with low physical damage and stat requirements, very likely a Melody runeword for +6 bow skills. I did use Immolation on the previous bowazon here, and Freezing a long time ago, and I think I tried the combined build partway once but she died (and back when Ko runes were scarce enough that you couldn't count on a Melody); so I want to get a fresh shot at all of it here.

Necromancer: Poison/Bone hybrid. There's no other new type of necro build to do, so I'll try a poisonmancer over again to get to Guardian. But not by doing the same poison/summon hybrid. It also can't just be a pure poisonmancer, that doesn't work untwinked, can't handle immunity, needs minus-poison-resist gear to work after breaking it. For an untwinked poisonmancer to work, it has to be some kind of hybrid, and I think I found another option: Unsynergized Bone Spear might be just enough damage to be a weak but workable backup attack for poison immunes. Like the mageazon, this build is focused, all-in on one tree of skills and equipment rather than having to compromise anywhere. Or, the other backup plan is what the previous necromancer taught me, that simply supporting a merc with Amp and CE is enough to handle nearly the entire game.

Paladin: Smite/Tesladin hybrid. Same as the Vengeance/Fist paladin earlier, I couldn't decide between the two and so I'll hybridize them. These are the remaining two workable paladin builds (no I'm not doing Charge which is tortuously clunky to drive.) I want to do Smite as a build, after seeing it work well with the zealot when I used it on occasion. But it is clunky with the knockback and I'm not sure if I really want to smite every flayer and maggot one by one through fifteen acts. I also want to do Holy Shock, but also not as a full build, it's really just a worse zealer which I just did. So these make the perfect hybrid approach here: Holy Shock ramps up earlier to kill trash faster through nightmare difficulty, then focus on Smite for hell with optimized gear (elite shield, crushing blow) against tougher monsters where the knockback and stun is beneficial, with Shock still there to cover physical immunes.

Sorceress: Hydra/Frozen Orb. Yeah, it's another fire/cold build same as the previous, but this is the last thing left to do with the sorceress class. I've never built around Hydra and want to try that. And as usual, the all-purpose backup attack is Frozen Orb, because it works with a small skill investment. I have used Orb before, but not for a long time and not yet on these teams. What's different about this sorceress build is that it doesn't need to tweak FCR (both skills are timered), so she can go all in on +skills instead, and won't have to compete for FCR equipment with the singer barb and necro.

   

I've gotten partway through act 3 normal so far, so as before I'll give the first report then.

[Meiz]

These are the remaining two workable paladin builds (no I'm not doing Charge which is tortuously clunky to drive.) 

Charger is a pretty fun and definitely different build to run once you get used to the mechanic. Although very mana heavy and could be problematic without ladder runewords (Insight). But for your next team, try a charger/blessed hammer build for something different

[T-hawk]

I did do Charge an eternity ago, my very first realms character, way back pre-expansion. I found it maddening to have to target and line up charge lines for every single monster, particularly in any tight dungeon without maneuvering room. You can't really take advantage of Charge ignoring weapon speed and use a super slow but heavy weapon, since it's so prone to defaulting back to normal attack instead if your target is within melee reach. One combo is Smite + Charge to knock a target out of melee range before charging, but that's also wasting a lot of Charge's potential to use it with a one-handed weapon instead of the huge damage multiplier with a two-hander. I did think about it some, but I can't think of any way to do Charge that I really want to do or that doesn't just become a gimped version of whatever the hybrid is. Charge wants to be a dedicated build, of itself plus two synergy skills plus Fanaticism as the aura, but sounds like way too much of a grind to drive. (I don't see how it would have mana trouble though - mana leech gear would work fine with Charge's huge damage multiplier, and any paladin can get mana with Redemption aura.)