Duriel fight started off pretty well, although he quickly ate my three Iron Golems (I dropped semi-worthless axe and claw on the ground as we entered). I cast a few Blood Golems (the dangerous part of the lifelink is removed in the current patch) but that was almost of no use, as they died super fast and the casting took time from Mago's fighting. I found it best to just keep whacking with 'Steel' Flail, with damage backed by my nice Static Circlet of Venom. One of the mages suddenly decided it wanted to imitate my tanking. Stupid mage...
Two of the other mages eventually died to the Holy Freeze pulses, so once I quit the golem summoning, it was down to just me and Sparky:
Thankfully, not much life left to take down, and I had plenty of saved up greater healers and big purples with me.
Recruited a fire mage and gave him a Stealth armor and a Circlet of the Magus.
Pretty easy progress through most of Act III. Not even Sszark could do much. Other than Mephisto, the only exciting fight was the start of Forgotten Temple:
Mana Burn snake bosspack, regular beetles and two packs of regular bats. Mago tanks those two so his mages are left in peace. That's the way to be a general if the need arises.
Found a better necro head in one of the Causeway Temples, with +2 to Skeleton Mastery. I was surprised it could drop that late (I checked it out afterwards, items all the way up to ilvl 24 can get tier 1 staffmods).
Unwanted guests in the act boss fight:
The Meteors sure were annoying (I took enough damage as it was without them!) but I did not want to lose the nice shrine effect. Summoned golems took most of the melee hits from Meph and the cold necromage was great here.
I found Eye of Etlich somewhere late in this act. Nice find, haven't seen that one in a long time. It was slightly problematic the times I needed to build an army in Act IV, though. Apparently, the cold damage of the Eye chills for quite a long time (chill time also stacks with my cold damage charm, right?) so I would get some shattered corpses even if I did not hit them the last few seconds.
It was pretty smooth sailing most of the time, but it was easy to notice the bigger monster life and that the act is the Land of Fire Resistance. Leapers, Doom Knights, megademons, they all have high fire resist.
On the other hand, my usual arch enemies, the spawners, were simply owned, as were the maggots.
I found an Amn rune on the Plains. This changed my plans for the Diablo fight completely, and dropped the danger level immensely. More on that later.
"Uh guys, wrong elemental damage"
Fire Golem is an amazing tank here in Normal against megademons. That pack couldn't do anything at all. The Infector + 4 minions
did get him down to 1/4 life after several minutes, but they still couldn't kill him before we killed them. My army had been wiped out when I had to flee from them to break up at least half the pack. I only had a poison shooter but the stopped life regeneration it brought allowed Ajheed to slowly get the job done. Mago stepped in and smacked a minion or two when it looked safe to do so.
The plan for Diablo was very efficient, and really quite safe:
Level 15 Thorns returns
810% damage! That's almost double of what a level 20 Iron Golem can do, but an even bigger difference is that it allows damage returning from a recastable minion. That's huge. Spamming Iron Golems is time consuming (because it requires preparations). Of course, having a golem that's immune to two of Diablo's attacks isn't bad either. Fire Golem had about 950 life at this stage, and I had enough mana to cast three before needing a drink.
Merc and Mago (using a fast bow, and still wearing that Static Circlet of Venom) provided good added damage.
After this fight, I made a Lore helm from the Sol I found somewhere on the River.
Current skills:
Raise Skeleton 1+2 (only one point allowed)
Skeleton Mastery 17+7
Raise Skeletal Mage 6+2 (provides 4 magi - next point will go here and that will give me one more mage)
All golem skills 1+2
Golem Mastery 9+2
Summon Resist 1+2
Mago the Golemancing Lord of Mages and Ajheed the Fire Mage, level 35, Harrogath
(I think I'll move over and try to finish my skill-less Assassin so I don't pull too far ahead here. It's more fun when we have company.)
Google