Kylearan sends an async team to death or guardianship

[Kylearan]

So returning to RB has triggered my old reflex of writing about the games I play; It helps my motivation and focus, and I love reading other people's writeups so it's only fair to return the favor. Plus, if T-hawk can talk to himself on this forum I can too, right?

I was really inspired by T-hawk's solo team hardcore variant. After grinding and twinking some softcore characters for soloing the Ubers (I don't do trading), I got tired of the easy, repetitive gameplay (deja vu...). T-hawk's variant will pose a challenge, and while I always loved to find my own stuff, the team aspect of it still allows for some interesting gear and runewords.

T-hawk's rules will be tweaked a little bit to my personal taste:

• No vendor farming. I can look what all vendors in town have to offer each time I'm there anyway, but no arbitrary shop resets. That also means I won't go back to earlier acts for shopping unless I'm there for a different reasone, e.g. imbuing something at Charsi's. (I'm sure I won't start to invent excuses to go to town just so I can look at the vendors, as I find vendor shopping just tedious.)
  
• Runes and potential runword bases go into the shared stash. That means if a character dies, no runes are lost and I still have the potential for interesting runewords. Since I always play self-found and never trade, there are a lot of runewords I've never made, and I'd like to have the chance of experiencing something new there.
  

My goal is to try out some builds I never played, facilitating the changes coming up in patch 2.4. Related to that, I'd like to use some mercenaries other than my typical A2 desert merc - although there's one problem with that: I feel in hardcore, each melee build that doesn't have a strong summon is more or less forced to use a melee tank as a merc, or he'll die to dolls in hell. This is quite unfortunate, as for some builds I would have loved to pair them with a new A3 iron wolf or A1 rogue, but I don't see how I can safely deal with dolls and their explosions then. Or am I overreacting here? 

I won't do full clears (as I had originially considered), as this will get too tedious. I still would like to go to rarely visited (by me at least) places for variety and xp, and use the players setting to gain the needed experience and additional loot.

This will be slow going - I don't have as much time for playing as I used to have back in my active RB days. But I cannot wait until patch 2.4 finally lands, as all the character planning has really hyped me up for this!

[Kylearan]

These is my preliminary plan for the team. I've targeted level 85, i.e. 97 skill points, for the builds. Points in prerequisite skills I don't intend to use are not mentioned.


Barbarian: Since patch 2.4 improves leap attack, in particular its animation speed, I'm more than happy to finally try out a leaper! He will have no AoE whatsoever, but I don't mind that as long as the majority of the team has some.

Skills: Max Leap, Leap Attack, Mastery (don't know yet which one), Battle Orders. One point in Berserk, Battle Command, Find Item, Iron Skin, Natural Resists. That leaves me with three points which I'll probably put into Find Item. Since Battle Orders is now a synergy to Berserk, this should help a bit with killing bosses and physical immunes with Berserk.

Merc: While I'd love to try out a fire Iron Wolf for his enchant and fire damage support, I don't think I really want to tank hell dolls. So instead, I'll hire a barbarian brother from my tribe to fight alongside me. A desert merc would probably be better, but also more boring. I just hope I won't miss Insight for mana regeneration...


Assassin: So many options, so much fun stuff to try out with this class! Since I've just played a Dragon Talon/Death Sentry kicksin, I'll go with a dual claw martial arts build without traps next. Specifically, I'll focus on Claws of Thunder with Dragon Claw as a finisher, using Phoenix Strike if other elemetal damage types are needed. I see the internet is no fan of Dragon Claw, but I'd like to see for myself (and don't want to rely on finding elite boots for kicking again). I also know I deliberately make the build weaker by not investing into Death Sentry, but I think it's boring to use that skill in all builds. She already has AoE, so I'd like to rely on that instead, even if it will be slower.

Skills: Max Claw of Thunder, Dragon Claw, Phoenix Strike, Fade. One point in Dragon Flight, Cloak of Shadows and Claw Mastery, which leaves five points which will probably go into Claw Mastery as well.

Merc: A Defiance desert merc for defense and reliable tanking. Having no shield on the assassin, I think she'll need that extra defense in hardcore.


Sorceress: The casting timer for Hydra will be removed, so I'll try a Hydra/cold hybrid. Since Frozen Orb has no meaningful synergies, it's a natural supplement.

Skills: Max Hydra, Fire Mastery, Frozen Orb, Cold Mastery. One point in Telekinesis, Teleport, Static Field. The remaining four points will probably go into one of the armor skills; don't know which one yet.

Merc: An act 5 barbarian witch protector.


Paladin: Way back then I've played hammerdins, zealots, smiters and avengers. I'm also interested in playing an auradin, but getting dual Dreams and/or Dragons is not realistic in this context. So that leaves me with an esoteric build around... Fist of the Heavens! Using Conviction as his main aura and vengeance for lightning immunes/non-undead, I wasn't really sure how viable this would be in hell, even with considering the buffs from patch 2.4, but I sure wanted to at least try! Funnily enough, when writing the first post above linking to T-hawk's site, I saw that he had played exactly that build in one of his teams, and more than once wrote about how fun it was. So, yeah.

Skills: Max Conviction, Holy Bolt, Fist of the Heavens, Vengeance. One point in Resist Fire/Lightning/Cold and Holy Shield. The remaining single point... don't know yet.

Merc: A Holy Freeze Desert Merc. Even though the casting delay on FotH has been reduced somewhat, I think I will need extra time killing non-undead stuff and want the tanking and crowd control; also the Insight.


Amazon: My first ever D2 character was a Strafe amazon, and I never played one again since then. They buffed Strafe now, so it's time to try again. I suspect this will be the most boring character in the team, but I've just played a Javazon with Freezing Arrow in softcore and don't want to play another melee character using Fend or Impale in this team, so Strafe it is.

Skills: Max Strafe, Magic Arrow, Valkyrie. Five points in Pierce and Critical Strike. That leaves me with 16 points I don't know where to put... Decoy for a more robust Valkyrie? More Pierce and Critical Strike? Dodge/Evade/Avoid, now that it should be safer? Not sure yet.

Merc: With two strong summons, I don't feel like I really need a melee merc. Instead, I'll take a cold Rogue for crowd control while strafing and for added elemental damage. Amazon sisters! (And because nobody else in the team would use a Rogue merc...)


Druid: Never really played a Druid, ever - somehow this class never appealed to me. So I'll start with a standard wind druid.

Skills: Max Hurricane, Tornado, Twister, Cyclone Armor. One point in Grizzly, rest in Oak Sage.

Merc: I and my Grizzly need a tank, so a Defiance desert merc it is. Boring, but I lack experience with the druid and don't know if a different merc would be a good enough fit for bosses and dolls.


Necromancer: Will be a standard bone necro, as I've played the other main builds in the past. I'm actually looking forward to play around with lots of Bone Prisons!

Skills: Max Bone Spear, Bone Spirit, Bone Wall, Bone Prison. One point in Clay Golem, Golem Mastery, Summon Resists, Amplify Damage, Decrepify and Corpse Explosion. The remaining six points will probably also go into Corpse Explosion.

Merc: With the golem and bone prisons, I (foolishly?) feel sufficiently safe to use a ranged merc instead of a tank. Just to try him out, I'll take a lightning Iron Wolf to see how useful his Static Field will actually be.


All in all I think I like this mix of different playstyles, only the amazon I'm not that excited about. Also, still three desert mercs, but what can you do...

[T-hawk]

You don't have to talk to yourself, I'll do plenty of talking with anyone else writing their way through this variant.

For not going back to earlier vendors, one thing you would miss is bases for crafting. Most can come by gambling, although the one area where that's a pain is exceptional four-row belts. You'd also miss bases for runewords, particularly Lore and Rhyme, and White for a bonemancer. Also bases for a 3-diamond gemmed shield.

Don't worry about dolls in hell. I got past them fine with medium-tanky melee characters, like a spearazon, zealot paladin, kicker assassin. The people who complain about dolls are the people who play at maximum breakneck reckless speed all the time and explode a whole bunch at once. Slow down and attack them one at a time and they're no problem. They don't do much melee damage; you have a lot more time than you think to deal with them.

For mercs, I found Defiance unquestionably better than Holy Freeze for any character who will wear armor for high defense, most notably any paladin, and it was also key for my spearazon and melee druids. I don't know how the other types of mercs play out in the new version.

Targeting level 85 for the builds - actually you need to make sure your build works by about 72, since that's when you start hell, and also note that the quest skill points don't come until later, particularly Izual.

I like this assassin build. It never looked good in old D2 since half of your Dragon Claw attacks are wasted (only one releases the charges), but it looks to work quite a bit better with the change that each finisher attack consumes only one charge. I'm not sure Claws of Thunder will be worth using over Phoenix Strike; every time I looked at the numbers for the elemental attacks, Phoenix always seemed to come out better, and that's not even considering the NextDelay problems with Thunder.

Sorceress: Hydra might need the synergy from Fire Bolt/Ball, instead of max cold mastery. If you go with max cold mastery, Orb will be the primary attack overshadowing Hydra.

And of course I'm rooting for that paladin build. Single points in the resist auras aren't going to do anything; your resists should be max anyway with a good paladin shield. I put leftover points into Holy Shock to synergize Fist's lightning damage.

Amazon: I'd definitely recommend Decoy for extra points; you can do quite a lot of tactical management by spamming her quickly. Dodge/Avoid don't seem worth it; as I say with shield blocking, if that dice roll ever saves you, you made a mistake by being in that danger in the first place. Also I would hesitate to commit to Pierce and Critical Strike, on the chance that her endgame bow is Buriza with piercing or Witchwild String with 100% deadly.

Druid: I'd recommend Oak Sage over Cyclone Armor. Oak Sage helps the whole team a lot, including itself. And I would never remember to keep recasting Cyclone in situations where it gets taken down quickly.

[T-hawk]

Also on full-clearing: I think it's worthwhile to full-clear specifically from nightmare act 3 through hell act 1. Those are the best areas where you can get a wide variety of endgame loot, in mid-level uniques and runes (Pul and higher), plus +skill grand charms. Before that, there isn't so much to find that's worth the extra effort. And hell act 2 is a pain to full-clear, with the most annoying monster types in maggots and resurrecting mummies and ghosts, and then there is less time left after that to use any loot.

[Kylearan]

Thanks for the feedback!

For not going back to earlier vendors, one thing you would miss is bases for crafting.  Most can come by gambling, although the one area where that's a pain is exceptional four-row belts.  You'd also miss bases for runewords, particularly Lore and Rhyme, and White for a bonemancer.  Also bases for a 3-diamond gemmed shield.

Good point, and this would go against my intention of maximizing the chance for trying out different runewords. So I should be able to visit previous acts after all. I know I'll still won't overdo window shopping because I hate it.

Targeting level 85 for the builds - actually you need to make sure your build works by about 72, since that's when you start hell, and also note that the quest skill points don't come until later, particularly Izual.

True! Good thing most builds have at least some spare points then, but I'll keep that in mind when deciding where to invest my points while playing.

I'm not sure Claws of Thunder will be worth using over Phoenix Strike; every time I looked at the numbers for the elemental attacks, Phoenix always seemed to come out better, and that's not even considering the NextDelay problems with Thunder.

I saw some people having great success with Claws of Thunder with patch 2.4, so I'd like to try it out myself. Also, the meteor part of Phoenix Strike sounds clunky to use - but the nice thing is that I should be able to switch between the two and use what works best for each situation.
Regarding nextDelay, I first considered using Dragon Tail instead of Dragon Claw because the knockback should mitigate the nextDelay problem. However, I don't want to do kick damage again; also, while the fire damage from Tail sounds like a nice addition, it's based on the physcial damage so is probably better combined with something like Tiger Strike.

Bottom line is that I don't mind ending up with weaker builds while trying out new stuff, I guess.

Sorceress: Hydra might need the synergy from Fire Bolt/Ball, instead of max cold mastery.  If you go with max cold mastery, Orb will be the primary attack overshadowing Hydra.

Yeah, maybe - I'll wait until the final patch before deciding what to do here. First they had buffed Hyrda considerably then nerfed it again, so I'll have a look how it ends up. But since I'd like to use Hydra more than Frozen Orb, the final spec might indeed change a bit.

Druid: I'd recommend Oak Sage over Cyclone Armor.  Oak Sage helps the whole team a lot, including itself.  And I would never remember to keep recasting Cyclone in situations where it gets taken down quickly.

Cyclone Armor is a damage synergy for Tornado (9% per level) and I'm not sure how Tornado will do in practice, so I thought I might need the extra punch. On the other hand, not investing more in Oak Sage in hardcore feels wrong, too. I'll have to think about that.

[Kylearan]

Two merc changes in my planning for the async team. The barbarian will use a fire Iron Wolf instead of an act 5 barbarian after all because I'd like to see how his Enchant helps my barb with more damage overall and against physical immunes in particular (although the Iron Wolf shouldn't be too smug about being the only one with AoE damage or he will be replaced immediately!). And regarding my fear of hell dolls, I mean, if a barb with high Battle Orders cannot deal with dolls in melee, who can?

Also, the necro will hire a fire Rogue instead of a lightning Iron Wolf. I plan to spam Bone Prison/Wall quite liberally, so I guess Static Field won't be useful that much outside of boss fights. Cold for crowd control isn't needed either, so let's try raw fire damage instead - and I guess an Insight bow will help the necro a lot more too.


I hope the patch will land soon, as I'm really stoked to play this team! If I could be sure the changes made by the patch will affect existing characters as well, I'd start playing right now - the patch is not very relevant during the lower levels. But since they are changing and moving around synergies quite a bit, I'm not sure they want to hose existing builds, so I'd better wait.

...which means I'm taking a break from the game until the patch arrives, as I'm fed up with farming keys for soloing the Ubers. 40 very boring, mind-numbing Summoner runs and no key.  I find it infuriating that this is more or less the only part of the game gated by luck instead of skill. You could try to fight hell Baal naked at level 61 if you wanted, but you cannot fight the Ubers unless you grind until the stupid prng lets you through.

[KingOfPain]

More of less the same here. It's hard enuf to be naked, it would be much tougher to have that one or two skills they depend on nerf'd. But so far they seem to be mostly buffs

I haven't "played" for a couple of weeks. I have been running Personalize and Socket mules tho.

[Kylearan]

Hooray, the patch is finally here! \o/ I might be wrong, but I think they improved melee left-click targeting a bit; if you lock target on an enemy holding down the left button until you kill it, it will automatically target the next enemy in melee range so you can keep holding down the left button. Or was it like that before and I never noticed? Anyway, I actually prefer this to holding down the right button and sometimes missing the monster hit-box with the pointer and then running instead of attacking.

So I began to send out my ASync team, starting with the barbarian as I wanted to play someone robust after the long break. However, the fact that he didn't manage to find a single unique or set item during a full-clear of Act 1 and only got el/eld/eld runes from the countess doesn't bode well for the team.  

Anyway, will report back once all members have reached the first barrier, i.e. Act 2. I know the first acts of Normal aren't very exciting, but since playing this will take a lot of time I think I'll motivate myself by writing about it right from the beginning.

[Kylearan]

Normal Act 1

While everyone is scrambling to play the new D2R ladder, the Async team has quietly reached Act 2. Even though it's so early in the game, I already enjoy T-hawk's team variant quite a bit. I always liked building up new characters with only self-found gear, and the fact that each drop has the potential to be useful for someone in the team instead of being only merchant fodder revitalizes the loot mechanics for me nicely.

It's also interesting how this variant turns one fundamental bit of the game's design upside down. Keeping up player engagement by providing variety is normally achieved by the acts being different. When you get bored by the graphics and the monster sets of one act, you reach its end boss and a new act with a new town, new style, new monsters and new item levels opens up. (At least this is how it works for players who like the progression aspect more than the grinding for end game gear.)

However, here the variety is provided by giving you a different class to play the same act again, which shifts the perspective quite a bit. It allows for a more direct comparison of playstyles when you fight the same monsters of the same level back-to-back with different classes. Act 1 normal is not that meaningful a comparison yet, but I'm looking forward to see how this experience changes during the course of the game.

For this particular mix of classes and builds, the difference in power and speed was remarkable. The sorceress struggled the most, which was to be expected - and I really don't like her playstyle of constantly having to drink and buy potions in the beginning (and I almost died twice to extra strong archers - how embarrassing...). What surprised me was how far ahead the paladin was: Between melee attacks supported by one point in Holy Fire and a bit later leveling up Holy Bolt, I was killing stuff so fast that I quickly set scaling to players 7 and would still one- or two-shot most things! And the mana cost was really cheap, too - incredible. The assassin was similar - even with two non-magical claws, an early claw mastery and tiger strike were more than enough to kill things at players 7, and a bit later burst of speed and dragon claw made playing her pure joy. While the paladin could one- or two-shot single monsters, the assassin could do the same to whole groups on p7 with style - I hadn't had that much fun in D2 for a long time! Also, I hadn't realized beforehand that Claws of Thunder would build up two charges per attack, which perfectly fits Dragon Claw which is a double finisher attack and thus both make for a nice rhythm in combat.

The rest of the characters I played mainly at players 3 (the druid later at players 5) because I couldn't stand the tedium of higher player counts, and thus the paladin and assassin finished the act at level 20 while most others only reached level 18 (19 for the druid and the sorceress).

As I said, I like building up new characters and can still find joy in good low-level drops, even if I know they are only useful for one act or so. Trading between characters is only allowed between acts, so I got lucky when my amazon found this javelin right at the beginning of the Den of Evil:

   

This carried her through most of the act, as I couldn't find a good enough bow after getting Multishot on the way to Strafe - I later had to settle for e mediocre crossbow for now. Apart from that, the team found Arctic Furs (from Coldcrow no less), Berserker's headgear, Hsarus' Iron Stay and two Fists and two Cleglaw's shields. Some of those are useless, some will get used for an act maybe. A bit better with maybe a little bit of staying power were these:

   

The assassin found Bloodfist, and will also keep it for now, as she is the one most in melee combat.

   

Stoutnail will go to the druid for now, as he will be in melee as well until he finally gets Tornado. I could probably buy or make something better with gems, jewels or runes, but since I haven't ever used Stoutnail before, I probably should try it out now for once.

   

And finally Biggin's Bonnet, which falls into a similar category and isn't that bad for an early melee character who needs mana for his combat skills.

Unfortunately I remembered setting the players count to 1 for the countess for only two of my characters and thus needlessly reduced my chances of getting more runes. I got 2 El, 2 Eld, 2 Tir, 2 Nef, 2 Ith and 3 Ral runes from the countess and one additional Tir rune from Andariel, which unfortunately won't allow for an early Stealth armor. https://d2rune-tracker.herokuapp.com/ says I can only make three runewords with these runes: Nadir, Steel and Leaf. Leaf I will definitely make for the sorceress once I find a suitable staff (I'll settle on a solid one instead of waiting for a very good one, as my rules won't allow me to grind the vendors), and I'll probably make a Steel flail for the barbarian, as much for the +2 mana per kill as for the combat stats.

Looking forward to Act 2 and a change of scenery!


TL;DR: 7 Cains rescued, 14 to go.

[T-hawk]

Yeah, your sorceress has a long way to go on normal attacks and level-1 skills until 30 for Hydra and Orb. And yeah, paladins peak really early, I found that too, even in the original game before the patch buff to Holy Fire, and Holy Bolt ramps up quickly too.

For act 2, the tricks to good weapons are gambling (you can gamble better base items long before they come available from vendors or drops, particularly pikes and mauls), and the Savage Polearm cube recipe which can give several exceptional bases. Steel runeword for the barb or paladin is OK, though you won't have a very good base yet, gambling can get something better. I'd recommend a two-hander if you do use Steel; at this point any available shield is quite marginal and two-handed damage is better. For the assassin, gamble any Blade Talons base item, just because it's a faster base and you can't get it otherwise for a while longer. Same for the amazon, I think the sweet spot for bow gambling is Short War Bow.

Keep the Hsaru's items - the boot/belt combo is very useful for attack rating towards later normal difficulty.

I found that I preferred to keep the player count the same across the different characters. Mostly that I don't want to be tricked into thinking a weaker character is stronger than they are when they're just playing on a low player count. It also feels more fair that everyone is earning the same amount of gear, rather than the high-count characters carrying the lesser ones. But up to you how much patience you have with level-1 Fireball and Twister, of course.