I wanted to join this with a Spearzon, but after taking a glance at Safety weapon crafts (which use a Sol rune and have a complete lack of +ED% ), I have settled for some kinda Scepter/Maul wielding Paladin since the recipe for Hit Power weapons is cheap and can be used on many weapon types. Maybe...Sac/Holy Freeze/Redemption and filled to the gills with Blood crafts for life leech. The only problem is the severe lack of AR even with level 20 Sac -- 153%. Hmmmm. Has anyone used an A1 merc for their Inner Sight and found it impactful?
Holy freeze paladin is pretty solid for untwinked but it generally relies on some CB to aid progress. Blood gloves will give some and I doubt it’s truly essential in any event.
@Grisu no need to full clear. My goal is fun and if tedium sets in for Hell, go for a direct playthrough if that makes it enjoyable. I would personally go with Bonesnap if plain elite polearm with 5os (including cubing or more likely Larzuk to guarantee 5os depending on type) doesn’t drop by end of A1. True that’s a lot of strength, but elite polearm will be strength and dext (even with -req). And damage will slow down into mid-Hell if not up’ed risking deeds while waiting for polearm to drop. At least, I think that’s how I’d approach. Good luck
Straight out into NM it became apparent that his gear is now a detriment. Monsters hit harder now, so he popped some points into VIT and went for it. He's still very strong so as long as he gets to the monsters first they fall quickly. It is interesting though not being able to hide behind the merc at this stage, an interesting change of pace so kudos to you on that @PhineasB. The plan is to fullclear all areas in A1 to ensure I get to level 51 by A2 so I can maximize my affixes on my crafts once I get there, as well as collecting some extra materials along the way.
The Cold Plains provided us with our first good surprise:
That enables us to make a rhyme and personalize it if I find a good pally shield. Not sure I'll go that route, but it's something to think about for the CBF. For now is was through Blood Raven, Coldcrow, then Cain (with a decent reward ring that we have equipped) and down to the Countess with fingers crossed.
Meh, but could be worse. Onwards! Things are getting a bit ore hurty than I would like now, especially with elementally based boss packs so its careful going through the rest of the act. We tried an imbue on some boots with disappointing (but not surprising) results. Got rid of and LI Pitspawn and it was through to Andy with relative ease.
@Pb_pal I hope you don't mind, but I'm going to be copying you a wee bit
After playing with sacrifice for a few levels, I realized how incredibly boring and slow a Sac/Freeze build would be. So I'm going to with a Holy Shock/Vengeance/FoH build (this build guide provided much inspiration)...which admittedly will also be fairly slow going in hell Mainly chosen because I've been dying to try out FoH, and I want to craft some scepters! Their staffmods adds an extra layer of mystery behind each roll.
Which, including pre-reqs, comes out to 89 skill points. Any extra skill points will be split between Vengeance and Conviction. Vengeance/Holy Shock for melee, FoH/Conviction for picking off important units, and Vengeance/Conviction for non-undead lightning immunes. I think having some skill variety will make for a more dynamic playstyle than my previous Sac/Holy Freeze build. Oh yes, and a Blessed Aim merc to patch my AR up.
So here starts PopeJohnPaul_II, who was named for that Pope's hobby of self-flagellation which is no longer quite so relevant lol.
Already a double boss pack! And I actually came across another cold enchanted archer boss pack in The Cave prior to this. I had to take off my shield (block-lock) and down some thawing potions for both.
Blood Raven was a completely pushover with Holy Fire/Sacrifice.
@Jocular - Copy all you want, just remember that I deed the vast majority of my tournament characters so....
--
A quick update for me. No progress gameplay-wise, but his gear is bumpin now!
First, some housekeeping. He popped back quickly to normal to try another imbue and actually had some success!
Well, those are his boots for now (and likely the rest of the game), which is great as it frees up crafting materials for other slots. another big gear upgrade as he used his normal personalization on this:
If I find a better shield in the future I might replace this with another rhyme. He learned last act that he desperately needs CBF if he wants to live, so this is his best option for it.
Alright, and now the fun stuff! I'm going to give everything exactly one roll for now, and save ingredients for later once I upgrade his stuff to Elite and figure out exactly what I need. First, the mercenary. I swapped him for Holy Freeze for some semblance of crowd control, and the first order of business was to get him a weapon. I shopped a Lance from Fara and decided to give a Safety Spear one try (I'll try to wait until Elite bases for more shots) and it turned out better than expected.
Nice damage! No leech, but that was always going to be remedied by a Blood helm anyways (though it didn't really turn out this time):
Hopefully he gets more leech next time. Throw in a simple hitpower armour for the Frost Nova procs and he's all set!
Alright that's that. Now for Elding.
Some Blood Gloves (they turned out great!) and a Blood Belt for CB/OW since his 'Steel' Flail is now gone:
A Hitpower armour for some Frost Nova fun (and because I have the spare ingredients)
Love those sockets, gives potentially great versatility to the piece. Safety Crown (gambled the base) chosen for some inherent LR%, and a Safety amulet for the blocking %:
And finally a caster Scepter, since his weapon is largely irrelevant and I need to use up caster ingredients. He got lucky and rolled a +skill at least!
He'll be keeping his Imbued boots, and reward rings for now and I'll reconsider those once he gets to Hell and wants to make his final equipment. This is how he shapes up:
Not bad! Certainly much better than the previous act, feels nice to have some resistances, that's for sure. Now that he's feeling orange and is gutted out of all of his PGems and gold, he's itching to do some actual questing.
Going to cast my entry into this fray with a class I've never made to guardian, an amazon focusing on Javelins and the LF. Got to make me some caster gear to prevent massive chugging of blues!
@Jocular: My experience with single pass untwinked HC Paladins is that they are really bad at crowd control. Conversion is too unreliable for high pressure situations, that's why I tend to use Smite and sometimes even spend some extra points for extra stun duration.
Holy Freeze makes gameplay safer than Holy Shock, but is no guaranteed life safer either. You could opt for a HF merc for additional safety, but BA might be better if you have AR problems (my orange barb has 50% cth without BA merc and 75% with him).
Even if you're using Vengeance, LI will be a pain in the you-know-where. That's why I usually choose dual elemental paladins for tournaments. You can also let your merc handle LIs though, but that only works with Town Guards or Barbs - Rogue mercs are usually not powerful enough on their own. The Inner Sight of Rogues is too unreliable, too (10 in 154 chance to cast Inner Sight instead of attacking). Also, depending on the positioning of your rogue, monsters might be out of the radius of Inner Sight (radius 13.3 yards, which is approximately half of the 800x6000 screen).
Also, with Paladins not being great at crowd control, you usually want a merc to draw fire from you - the Rogue doesn't do that, so I'd only consider her a niche option if for bragging rights or style points
Just my 2 cents.
@Vang: Welcome to the fray! LFZon seems like a good choice for this! You can even use Anya's quest reward if she gives you something good!
Thanks! I'm super happy with the gloves, I don't know if I'll even try to improve them as I'd rather save the ingredients for another slot. My big areas of improvement are going to be helmet/amulet/armour, other than merc weapon of course which will be the main one.
@Jocular: My experience with single pass untwinked HC Paladins is that they are really bad at crowd control. Conversion is too unreliable for high pressure situations, that's why I tend to use Smite and sometimes even spend some extra points for extra stun duration.
Holy Freeze makes gameplay safer than Holy Shock, but is no guaranteed life safer either. You could opt for a HF merc for additional safety, but BA might be better if you have AR problems (my orange barb has 50% cth without BA merc and 75% with him).
Even if you're using Vengeance, LI will be a pain in the you-know-where. That's why I usually choose dual elemental paladins for tournaments. You can also let your merc handle LIs though, but that only works with Town Guards or Barbs - Rogue mercs are usually not powerful enough on their own. The Inner Sight of Rogues is too unreliable, too (10 in 154 chance to cast Inner Sight instead of attacking). Also, depending on the positioning of your rogue, monsters might be out of the radius of Inner Sight (radius 13.3 yards, which is approximately half of the 800x6000 screen).
Also, with Paladins not being great at crowd control, you usually want a merc to draw fire from you - the Rogue doesn't do that, so I'd only consider her a niche option if for bragging rights or style points
Just my 2 cents.
@Vang: Welcome to the fray! LFZon seems like a good choice for this! You can even use Anya's quest reward if she gives you something good!
All solid advice, thank you. The lack of crowd control beyond Conversion did make me think I was setting myself up for inevitable suicide. Maybe I should go with my other idea of Hammer/FoH. Without any +skills it would result in ~1500 damage hammers, and ~1650 lightning damage FoH (plus a 1-point Conviction). No Holy bolt. With Spirit shield and lucky scepter/amulet crafts that should be doable in hell Only problem is I really wanted to see FoH destroy undead units in Act II and IV D': At least there's pretty good synergy between the two skills, hammer for close range aoe, FoH for long range single target. Though if I invest in Holy Bolt instead of Holy Shock for FoH, that opens up a lot more skill points to get stuff like Redemption, Vigor, Cleansing, Meditation...hmmmm.
I think I'll swap to a regular Tesladin for normal and use my NM respec into Hammer/FoH.
Nice progress, everyone. I was overdue on a post with my crafting results at the start of A2 NM, and ended up making some progress with a chunk of time this morning. So here's a two-fer!
For the crafting splurge, I had the Amazon Javelin from Anya reward and two decent rings, leaving a full kit for the merc, and helm, armor, gloves, belt, boots, shield and amulet for Orange. She had found an eth Partizan in A5 Normal, which would get max 4os, so I first spent a pAmmy on that, bringing to only 12 crafts possible. It was a winner though, leaving a decent option for NM Anya personalization reward
Then on to the merc!
Meh. The amp on the second safety spear craft was interesting, but I went the higher damage route. In retrospect, I should have exhibited patience to shop Lances, but oh well.
And then gear for Orange! I first used up the pRubies:
Fire resist was nice on boots! Wrong class on +skill, but the poison length reduction is useful for A2. Next we went with pAmmys:
Plus a shield that was promptly sold. The mask was decent with dual resist, but the armor rolls were quite disappointing. No sockets on all of those, so I guess I was the outlier given all the sockets everyone else has gotten. That left two Emeralds for the belt. Again, I wasn't patient enough for Battle Belts, giving only three slots which was fine for now:
I like the FHR in the second one, so went with that. With charms, her resists were >75 for poison and fire, and >50 for the other two. So workable indeed.
I went ahead and personalized a Rhyme with the Normal reward. After the craft was lame, I decided it's just too valuable an item for this build and tourney restrictions. And then we set out, without much issue except mana pots occasionally running low. The major find was this beauty found in the Dry Hills, which got all resists above 70 with some charm shuffling:
Of interest was a triple boss pack of Unravellers in the Halls (boss 1, boss 2, boss 3), and Fangskin was a kitten with Decoy and LS to thin things out. Other drops of note were Ginther's, Silkweave and Rixot's. And before tackling the Palace, we upgraded to 4 slots in the belt and the merc barely got an upgrade with a Lance craft:
The cold resists on the belt max all, so she's pretty well set and will likely gather crafting materials until she hits ilvl 71 crafting target for max chance for affixes. Good luck to everyone still playing, and congrats to @skiffcz for the Guardian!
Orange, Level 56, A2 NM, Read to Tackle the Palace
* * *
Rich (BB code):
Forumite Character Class Lvl Progress
-------- --------- ----- --- --------
Skiff ColdFever Sorc 77 Guardian
Norcim Valryka Zon 74 A1 H
Grisu Lugh Barb 67 A5 NM
OldSoldier GaranDarkslayer Pal 60 A3 NM
PhineasB Orange Zon 56 A2 NM
Pb_pal Elding Pal 52 A2 NM
Vildecor Rowena Sin 48 A1 NM
Babyhell ItsATrap Sin 21 A2 N
Rich (BB code):
Forumite Character Class Lvl Progress
-------- --------- ----- --- --------
zemaj OUGNecro Nec 33 A3 N
Well, I hit level 70 while rescuing Anya, so I went shopping, gambling and...crafting!
It took me some time, but I finally got those 20%IAS Blood Gloves (with very nice overall rolls! That +15 DEX gives me some nice AR boost
Then some jewelry:
Currently equipped are Corruption Finger (AR!!!!) and Raven Hold as rings and Wraith Gorget as amulet (Teleport charges and 9%FCR for the next breakpoint
That leaves me with maxed resists in NM, 2.3k life, 250 mana, around 80+% CtH against normal monsters with BA and around 70% CtH without BA. Also 2.7k average damage and 48% CB and 12% LL. I might be ready for Hell
Taliesin has finished Act 2! The tombs were a bit of a drag, but I the one benefit was that I started finding lots of runes. I made a Strength Double Axe, two Nadir helms, one Stealth (no second Tal yet), a Malice Spetum, and i shopped a Mechanic's Bone Shield of Blocking in which I dumped two Eld runes. Feeling a little less terrible now!
Eventually I want to be a true hunter and use a bow, so I'll start to look for decent socketed bases.
I'm planning to play quite a bit over the next couple of weeks - my pc has ben on windows 7 for years now, and it's been pestering me to upgrade for a long time. Things are starting to get a little funky overall on this pc too, so it might be time to take the plunge. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if upgrading to Win10 breaks most of my diablo 2 stuff, and that's not a headache I'm ready to have, at least until I finish this character
I ended up doing maybe 90% of act 3 today as well! I had it in my head that you could use wolves and grizzly at the same time, but alas that is not the case. I think it'll depend on the area and target, but so far the grizzly is doing really good work. I'm level 31, no gear upgrades except Ormus' ring reward which was total junk
Great progress @Pb_pal, @PhineasB, @Grisu! Rhyme personalization is just really hard to beat in a tourney like this. And that double-upped Bonesnap is super stylish, which I think is one of the most important criteria!
Act 1 Hell is in the books! Now to the journey...
The plan was to just start proceeding through Act 1 and see how we handled LIs before using any of our saved stat/skill points or burning a personalization. We made fine progress up to the Cave, and then the game decided to punish us. Every monster was LI except for a few fallen packs. Who knew I'd get excited about seeing those guys show up? Sin Bang was our first PI/LI, and even at P1 it took forever for Valryka to shoot him down with the poison damage from our bow using normal attack.
We crafted another Hyperion Spear after the Cave was completed and it rolled slightly better than the previous one, so Kasim is using it now. Not a great upgrade, but we'll take it as it had some decent fire damage which helps with the PI/LI bosses. We also found a non-eth 4 socket Cryptic Axe in the Crypt, along with our second PI/LI boss, so we have an Insight option if we want it. Coldcrow should have been a tough fight based on her mods but she quickly ran into a corner and I was able to pin her in with the Valk, who was able to tank her with no issues. I just kept her pack busy killing decoys while Kasim and the Valk took her out.
I had taken a break after clearing the Stony Field and just ran through it on the next session to the Underground Passage. I went back after getting the scroll, lured away Rakanishu's gang, and then touched all the stones. Everything lit up but no WP to Tristram opened. This was definitely a first for me. I killed Rakanishu again thinking maybe he needed to die for the TP to open but it still didn't. We just exited and started a new game and the TP was open. Anyone know if this happens if you touch all the stones without killing Rakanishu first?
Griswold himself was a pushover with CS. Valk can just take a beating, so I just cast her right on top of him and she kept him busy while we took him out. We were rewarded with an OK ring from Akara for our trouble (80AR/13Dex/20CR) that we have stashed for now. The AR and dex could be useful if we reshuffled some gear around.
Countess dropped us a Fal, which gives us all the runes to make an Obediance for Kasim. Just missing a base for this now.
Pitspawn was tough, but eventually I got him focused on the Valk and she could tank him with no issues. That let Kasim and Valryka pick his minions off one by one. By the time we'd taken them all out the Valk had almost killed Pitspawn by herself. At the Inner Cloister we took a break and did some armor crafting for Kasim and imbued a coronet we found. None of the armors rolled that good (safety, blood, and hit power). Kasim is now using the Safety one since it has some resists and reduced cold duration. It replaced a pretty poor blood armor that he had been using forever. The coronet really let me down; I wanted life and resistances and it provided neither... So we are down to just or NM imbue left. This will likely be a Mat Jav/Coronet/eth elite polearm.
We mostly stayed on P3 for Act 1, dropping down to P1 in places where we ran into LIs. I'm glad we did, as we had some real tough fights against LI tainted bosses throughout the later parts of the act. We had 2 of these bosses that had HF, and they cost us lots of gold on merc resurrections. In one of the fights I burned 11 tp scrolls keeping Kasim alive. Andy was easy, and dropped us a Kuku.
We went ahead and cleared the Sewers out in Act 2 since there are usually not many LIs down here. I was hoping to find a base for Obediance before we go out into the desert but no dice. I might go a little further before deciding on our NM personalization reward, but I'd like to use this probably before we hit the Far Oasis/Maggot Lair. Here's what I'm thinking right now. Also note that we have 17(!) skill points saved at this point, which is fairly ridiculous.
1) Duress for Kasim. The OW here would be a nice plus for PIs, and would help him be a little less squishy.
2) Insight Cryptic Axe - Would be a huge boost to Kasim but its just such a boring choice. Everyone uses Insight these days so I'm tempted to skip this.
3) Harmony Blade Bow - Valryka was use this to start for LIs, and either put points into MA or Strafe. Leaning towards MA since it gives us another type of damage in addition to Harmony's elemental damage. Plus we'd get an extra Valk point if she's cast on that switch. We could also bail on Kasim if we can't keep him alive and put this on a Rouge merc if we needed to.
4) Kuku - Valryka could put points into Immo and take advantage of the plus fire damage on the bow and the +6 to that skill. I've never used Immo so it'd be fun to play with that. We could also upgrade this for the style points (since it doesn't actually do much for us). I'd socket it with a Sapphire Jewel of Freedom (-Req, 22CR) in that case to bring the dex requirement down. We'd be able to use Mat Javs if we did this.
Ruby Jewel of Spirit (35ED)
Fal - Countess
Baranor's Star - Catacombs Level 3
Kuku - Andy
Nat's Boots - Sewers Level 1
Ruby Jewel of Knowledge (35ED)
Valryka, Level 79 CS/LS zon, Act 2 Hell
* * *
Rich (BB code):
Forumite Character Class Lvl Progress
-------- --------- ----- --- --------
Skiff ColdFever Sorc 77 Guardian
Norcim Valryka Zon 79 A2 H
Grisu Lugh Barb 70 A5 NM
OldSoldier GaranDarkslayer Pal 60 A3 NM
PhineasB Orange Zon 56 A2 NM
Pb_pal Elding Pal 52 A2 NM
Vildecor Rowena Sin 48 A1 NM
Dazliare Taliesin Dru xx A3 N
Babyhell ItsATrap Sin 21 A2 N
Rich (BB code):
Forumite Character Class Lvl Progress
-------- --------- ----- --- --------
zemaj OUGNecro Nec 33 A3 N
@Norcim That Kuku makes for an interesting drop! Tough luck on the imbue :/
I'm currently in Act IV, just after killing Meph. But, we last left off after BLood Raven. I've got a lot to catch up on
Of course Act I was very simple and easy. Playing a Paladin in a tourney with respecs means that a point in Sacrifice and Holy Fire is well worth it. And with those two skills the entire act falls right over. Shopping a +3 Holy Fire Scepter made it even smoother.
Here I am bravely repositioning to allow Amplisa a better shot. Oh, the things I do for her.
Giving Griz what for in a strangely empty Trist Akara gave me trash in return, a ring w/ 1 MDR...
The Countess fight went very easily, all of her minions came right out one of their own accord by one while she stayed behind.
Got a Nef and Tal out of it, score! Nadir and Stealth are on their way.
Smooth sailing through until the Pits, where Amplisa decided that she had had enough of life and wanted to join her demonic sisters.
And right before Andariel, one last dangerous encounter. I had skipped Pitspawn earlier in the Jail, but his younger sibling was waiting for me. Truly a nuisance on /players8 as a melee character. Amplisa took them out while I acted as frozen bait.
I apologize to Andariel, I didn't mean to take such a full-frontal shot
Fight was fine on /p8, but I did have to take a few trips into town to replenish my antidote and health potions.
And may she rest in peace. Terrible drops, I can't believe I got a Skull as my upgraded gem.
I think I misread the rules! Are runewords allowed or not? I had it in my head that rune = orange = runewords are okay, but rereading the rules has me questioning.
If not, then I did most of act 3 with Malice on my mercenary, my bad
After swapping out Amplisa for Azrael the Blessed Aim Mercenary, it was time to investigate the Sewers. I really like how the corruption and invasion of Lut Gholein comes across that the first quest you do is below the city itself. Jerhyn is barely hanging on (evidenced by The Palace as well) and could be overwhelmed at any moment. Rada took a while to kill, but is no problem after luring away all of his minions. Especially the cold and poison mages.
In the Stony Tomb I came across a fairly strong group of enemies. All that lightning damage could have been dangerous if not for Resist Lightning (not pictured). RL was very useful for a melee build here in A2.
Next was the cube, and even though Holy Freeze is only at level 1 and Zeal at 4, the cold makes combat in Normal safe to take on Cursed/Extra Strong bosses without much care.
Fangskin had me a little worried. We all know how dangerous he and his Lightning Enchanted Extra Fast minions can be. But, just like The Countess, the minions gladly came out to meet me in 1s and 2s. I did end up switching to Resist Lightning again for the fight. I believe I only had 16 LR at this point.
Another moment of Merc suicide. I think if there were Unravelers in this room he would've kicked the bucket for sure. You can tell in this picture that I have swapped out my trusty Scepter for a 'Steel' Flail.
I rarely do complete Full Clears, even in Single Pass tourneys. I just...can't stand certain areas of the game. The sequence from The Jail to The Catacombs is mind-numbingly boring to me. It's 6 full areas that are nearly exactly the same. I can't stand it. Maybe as a result of too many characters made and dropped not too long after Act I...But another spot I dislike to fully clear are the false tombs. One compromise I have come up with is to clear them starting at the bottom left tomb, but as soon as I find Kaa I'm allowed to skip to the real tomb. For better or worse I didn't find Kaa until more than halfway through And just like with Pitspawn in Act I, I came across a sibling:
Even the name is similar. Dead=Soulless?
Not long after I found and killed Kaa, and moved onto Duriel. Being a pansy I dropped the difficulty down to /p5 despite using one of the most broken Paladin skill combos for normal, Holy Lightning+Zeal.
And, as expected, Duriel didn't stand a chance. I should've done it /p8. My Merc didn't even die and we never had to go to town for more potions.
), I have settled for some kinda Scepter/Maul wielding Paladin since the recipe for Hit Power weapons is cheap and can be used on many weapon types. Maybe...Sac/Holy Freeze/Redemption and filled to the gills with Blood crafts for life leech. The only problem is the severe lack of AR even with level 20 Sac -- 153%. Hmmmm. Has anyone used an A1 merc for their Inner Sight and found it impactful?
Only problem is I really wanted to see FoH destroy undead units in Act II and IV D': At least there's pretty good synergy between the two skills, hammer for close range aoe, FoH for long range single target. Though if I invest in Holy Bolt instead of Holy Shock for FoH, that opens up a lot more skill points to get stuff like Redemption, Vigor, Cleansing, Meditation...hmmmm.
Google