I'm playing this game yet again

[KingOfPain]

All act 3 pix missing.

I was feeling sorry for the lack of report on the Necro...

Although not quite a full melee Sorceress but a very effective imitation of an Assassin. Sounds like fun.

Ouch for her demise. One of the more interesting toon to read about. I prefer a ShaftStop + String Of Ear over Stone but you worry about FHR... and the lump of clay is nice too

Seraph's Hymn would have been a nice addition to the Sorc, goes hand in hand with Laying of Hands, but

I have done some quick math on that. A decent Fire Eschuta's Temper is the better weapon for a Fire Sorc, especially if you have a Fire Jewel to go with it. it is McTyrael’s preferred weapon.




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[T-hawk]

Oops on the images, thanks for the catch, fixed now.

Yeah, I wish I had Shaftstop for the sorceress. I found two which went to the bowazon and necromancer, since I wanted higher defense on the sorceress for melee, but then when she got a two-handed ranged weapon then she needed Smoke for resists. And yes the problem with the combo of both Shaftstop and String is hit recovery, they don't have it and it's hard to get in slots other than armor and belt. Actually the item that was really missing for the sorceress was a Rockstopper helm, that never showed up for this team and she would have taken it if it did.

I don't think Eschuta's can beat a Leaf staff for Enchant, since the latter is +6. Prebuffing is a different story, but yes for combat I'd want the orb and a shield over any staff.

[KingOfPain]

Eschuta's is +3 Fire, Spirit +2
Eschuta's + 10-20% Fire Skill damage. say average 15%, which is about 2 Slvl
then Fire Facet +(3-5)% Fire damage, -(3-5)% EFR
Even beats a Hoto setup with same amount of FCR

[T-hawk]

I'm still playing non-ladder, so no Spirit, and I don't think Eschuta's with only a +1 shield (Sigon's) can beat a +6 Leaf for Enchant. I don't have a fire facet either. But yeah, for anything other than prebuffing Enchant, Eschuta's is great.

[KingOfPain]

So yea, Enchant prebuff is not based only from slvl. The difference is not much to write home to especially at the **low Enchant slvl McTyrael has because she has only 1 hard point in Enchant with an average Eschuta's. The Enchant damage can further be bumped by other items such as an Ormus' Robes with % to Fire Skill Damage

Considering Enchant on a fully dressed merc is (in this case)
3678 @slvl 12
3695 @slvl 13 on the high end - with only 17 more dmg

We can further deduce that

Eschuta's + 10-20% Fire Skill damage. say average 15%, which is about 2 Slvl

is in the ball park


**Max Fire damage @ slvl 13=50
**Max Fire damage @ slvl 14=54.5


EDIT:
With HotBowBabe the difference on merc is plus Min/Max 86-109 dmg



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[T-hawk]

Finale is up, same link again, scroll down to act 5: http://dos486.com/diablo/starteam5/hell.shtml

[KingOfPain]

Finale is up, same link again, scroll down to act 5: http://dos486.net/diablo/starteam5/hell.shtml

Links broken. Suppose to be .com
Do you own .net too?

[T-hawk]

Damn. No I don't own the .net, I use that for testing locally, in my hosts file to point to an Apache instance on my own machine, pasted it out of the wrong browser window.

Thanks. Fixed at .com: http://dos486.com/diablo/starteam5/hell.shtml

[Kylearan]

I've played Act 2 with 4 chars now, so it was time for a treat and i've allowed myself reading your report for that act.

That battle with your paladin in the Arcane Sanctuary sounds tough, but fun! Very cool that you fought it out instead of save/quitting and rerolling.

I actually found myself wishing I'd built her around BoS instead of Fade from the beginning - the extra speed makes a significant difference on the fairly slow animation of Dragon Claw.

Hah, I have the same thoughts for some time now. It's strange that a martial arts skill for a class designed to be nimble and agile is sooo slooow. 

After the act, I embarked on a side project. I went back through the early difficulties to full-clear everything I hadn't done before.

Interesting strategy, although it sounds more like work than fun. The idea behind that is nice, great to see you still come up with new ideas even after 4 teams - too bad it didn't pay off. But man, I'm so envious of your Suwayyah imbue after my 15 failed attempts! 

[T-hawk]

Hah, I have the same thoughts for some time now. It's strange that a martial arts skill for a class designed to be nimble and agile is sooo slooow. 

I think what happened is this. Dragon Claw uses the same two-claw animation as the elemental chargeup skills. They didn't want those to accumulate charges too fast, so the animation is slow, which affected Dragon Claw as well.

The other problem is Weapon Block. In original D2, I'm pretty sure this skill has the same problem as Dodge/Avoid with Fend, that the attack gets invisibly interrupted by the evasion skill. It was almost impossible for my assassin to hit anything when taking frequent hits from things like firewalls or a lightning enchanted boss. I don't know if this was fixed at all in Resurrected (for either class.)

Interesting strategy, although it sounds more like work than fun. The idea behind that is nice, great to see you still come up with new ideas even after 4 teams - too bad it didn't pay off. But man, I'm so envious of your Suwayyah imbue after my 15 failed attempts! 

Yeah, I actually kinda regretted it by the end of it. I thought it would go quickly in an hour or two per character, but it ended up being more like 4 to 5 to get through all those areas and over a week for the whole team. This wasn't the first time I did that - I did it for my Frenzy barb on the second team when he needed weapons too, and did get some decent results there, and it went faster for that team with more area-attack characters. But yeah, I guess I used up all the luck between us for claw imbues - my Blade Fury assassin on my third team also got a spectacular imbue.