So here we go on arranging equipment for hell difficulty. This is way too much writing, but I keep loving doing it, so here we go.
Javazon: Rare javelin with +2 skills and Fool's, Peace armor, Rockstopper helm, 3-diamond shield (Artisan's of Mammoth), Lancer's of Readiness gloves, Whale belt, Nagelring, one Harpoonist's charm. The one somewhat unusual item here is Peace, but that's what this javazon build wants: all the skills she can get since both Power Strike and Plague Javelin scale up a lot with increasing-returns at very high skill levels (29+), and the CTC high-level Valkyrie is significant too.
Assassin: Sensei's of Piercing claw, +2 skills claw, Spirit Shroud armor upgraded, Rockstopper helm, Kenshi's of Readiness gloves, Garnet of Whale belt, imbued wyrmhide boots for kicking. She has dual claws instead of a shield to intentionally avoid having any blocking; more on this below.
Barbarian: Rare francisca axe, crafted flying axe, Smoke armor, Immortal King's helm, Razortail belt, Aldur's boots, Angelic rings and amulet. The one place here I'm disappointed is the Smoke, which isn't very exciting; I wanted to get him into a Lionheart instead, but he really had to go with Smoke's higher resists since he really couldn't cover that anywhere else, with the jewelry and belt slots committed for things other than resists.
Bonemancer: White wand, Skin of the Vipermagi, rare circlet, Rhyme necro head with +3 bone spear, Bloodfist gloves, Whale belt, fast-cast rings and amulet. Bog-standard bonemancer loadout, except for the Bloodfist glove which is a bit unusual, but that's actually a good fit for him with life and hit recovery, a good use of the glove slot since he doesn't have hit recovery elsewhere but does have resistances covered.
Druid: Dark Clan Crusher club (+2 skills), Skin of the Vipermagi, Gaean (+3 elemental) of Life Everlasting circlet, 3-diamond shield (jeweler's of hit recovery), Coral of Whale belt.
Paladin: Gemmed military pick (Eth Eth Eth Eth Shael Shael), Lionheart mage plate (then Duress waiting after act one), Darksight Helm, 4-diamond shield, Whale belt, Natalya's boots. Actually what's significant here is his lack of +skills - only +2 offensive auras on his amulet and none anywhere else - so he had to put 4 hard points in Zeal to get the full five swings.
Sorceress: Fool's Kris of Swiftness, Spirit Shroud armor upgraded (then Stone waiting after act one), Rockstopper helm, Chromatic of Colossus shield (socket-quested with two diamonds for 66 all resists), Immortal King's gloves/belt/boots. Also Enchant prebuff gear: Leaf on switch, Volcanic circlet and amulet in stash, plus Magefist and one fire skills charm.
This is worth some discussion, the Immortal King's package for a melee sorceress. She actually uses and wants everything here. The big linchpin is the 20 dex on the gloves, exactly enough to support her kris dagger weapon, so that saves hard points or fitting dex in other slots. I did a lot of calculation comparing this package to what she'd have on individual items in these slots - trading out a Whale belt is the big downside. But this package actually totals more life than that: 120 in all, with 40 on the boots, 40 indirectly from the dex (via hard points into vit instead), and 40 from a ruby in Rockstopper's socket after removing a topaz from there thanks to the magic-find on the boots. So the life is actually better, and the rest is comparable to rares: 60 resists (on the belt), top run speed, magic find, and hit recovery. The rest of the upside is the defense value: the pieces total to 600 defense, which comes to over 2000 after the merc's Defiance and her own low-level Shiver Armor, and that does cut her get-hit rate by 15% or so. The strength requirement is high but manageable, with the strength on the gloves and belt themselves, plus she has a good rare amulet with 18 along with big resists.
Besides the individual characters, the broader set of decisions here was what to do with my collection of runes: 2 Um, 1 Pul, 4 Lem, 5 Fal, 3 Ko, 8 Lum. Some of the short answers: upgrade Spirit Shroud for the sorceress (the assassin's was already upgraded), make Smoke for the barb, two Treachery for mercs (druid's and paladin's), and upgrade an Impaler spear for the druid's merc.
And now some of the analysis requires going back and forth in time a bit. The right approach was for the characters who were going to use the Ums to wait to play last, and see if the others turned up anything that would change those plans. And... they did.
These were the barb's weapons going into hell difficulty. The important one is Storm Hew - look at the Cruel damage there on a rare! I intended to use an Um rune to upgrade this to elite.
But then we got a better option. I got this flying axe during act one before the barb played. (It actually came from the assassin's imbue. She had found the base item for it right when she got the imbue quest, so I had her do that and then the barb would later trade his imbue to her on a claw.) Check that out - decent damage, 40% IAS, and knockback. That's good enough so that Storm Hew wasn't worth spending an Um to upgrade. So the barb just used Storm Hew as exceptional for act one rather than upgrading it, and would switch to Dread Thirst afterwards.
The second Um was intended for a Duress armor for the paladin. I didn't have an elite base yet, but I did have this really good mage plate. If I didn't get any good 3-socket elite base, I'd just go ahead with Duress in this, better to have it earlier even if it's a little less optimal later on.
But I did get some good elite armor bases. It's always hit-or-miss for getting socketed elite armors in the first act of hell, but they did come this time. I decided I couldn't settle for an underpowered mage plate for Duress with the better wyrmhide available after the act. That meant the paladin needed some other armor stopgap, and the best thing I could do was put Lionheart in the mage plate instead. I wish he could have had something with real defense, but Lionheart will have to do, it's a lot of life considering he does use the stats (strength to support Darksight Helm and dex for his military pick) so that saves hard points or other slots to go for life instead.
And the 4-socket great hauberk here will go for a Stone for the sorceress after act one. The second Um was available after the barb didn't need it for a weapon upgrade, and I could get the Pul that Stone also needs by cubing three Lems. What I had intended but didn't happen was spending that Pul to upgrade the ethereal Pierre Tombale Couant for the sorceress's merc. Also during act one someone else also found another Lem too, so instead I could spend one of the first three Lems on a Treachery for the paladin's merc before he played, and then the new Lem after the act would go into cubing the Pul for Stone.
Mercs: I made sure to handle one particular point for two of the mercs - the sorceress's and druid's - make sure they have Open Wounds in their loadout. These two characters can only deal fire and physical and not anything else, so they have no way to handle bosses immune to both which are quite common. Open Wounds can do it - it can kill anything with enough time. So the druid's merc has an Impaler spear (upgraded), and the sorceress's has a Boneflesh armor which is actually pretty good, also some defense plus life leech.
Other than that, the rest of the merc gear isn't anything particularly notable. Most have Honor partizan polearms, and there's a mix of armors, two Treachery, one Smoke, Iron Pelt, Guardian Angel, Haemosu's set cuirass. I put some attention to balancing out life steal numbers, giving the three Tal Rasha's masks to mercs who didn't have an Honor weapon for leech.
Procedurally: I full-cleared the entire act with all characters, at players-5 for the first half and then p3 for the indoor areas starting at the cloister. Blood Raven was rough for some of them, spawning zombies faster than I could kill them, so I had to kite them away repeatedly. After a few characters then I realized I should do that fight by switching to players-1, since the summoned zombies have no rewards anyway.
Assassin: She gets a long report here, with a lot to talk about.
First off, her mainline attack of Tiger-Tail is doing what I expected, blowing through anything not immune to physical or fire. And even for fire immunes, it still works okay, Tail still delivers Tiger's physical multiplier for kick damage, and the knockback still happens and helps tactically even if the fire splash doesn't hurt them.
But what I haven't talked about yet is her backup skill plan: Phoenix Strike. I hadn't committed to this when I started the character, but did now going into hell difficulty. Tiger-Tail is a powerful but narrow build, while Phoenix is the opposite in being widely versatile, and so they complement each other very well. There are enough skill points available to max Phoenix: Tiger and Tail don't need any other skills for offense (not claw mastery or any synergy), and Fade can wait a little longer to get up to max. The equipment is compatible: Tiger and Phoenix both want speed and defense-piercing but don't need damage on the claw, and they don't attack with the second claw so that slot can be used for +skills. In particular this assassin is really cranked up on martial skills from equipment (+10 total), and that's got Phoenix dealing some substantial damage. Enough so that I decided not to put any skill points into synergy for Phoenix, since any synergy would be for only one element out of the three, and I'd rather have those points to max Fade. And finally, I do want to get a phoenix striker to Guardian after my last one failed, and this will cover that without having to play yet another assassin over again.
So playing the Tiger-Tail and Phoenix builds rolled together in one was an absolute blast. I love characters with versatile approaches on offense, and this assassin has tons. Through the act, I constantly made use of all three elements of Phoenix: the fire meteors against physical-immune ghosts (fire is the best backup for a physical attacker since physical immunes usually have low fire resistance), the lightning against big crowds of fire-immune fallen, and the ice to shatter corpses and help control a big battlefield. That last was quite significant - she could actually keep a whole battlefield freeze-locked with it! I hadn't known that Phoenix's ice gets increasing returns on freeze length at high skill levels, and so way up at skill level 30, that was quite substantial, over five seconds - while they're frozen, she can get all the way through a lightning charge for damage and another ice charge to refresh the freezing.
Another point with this assassin is blocking. Or rather the lack of it, she's built to have no blocking at all. It's much smoother and more enjoyable to drive a martial assassin without blocking ever interrupting her rhythm. All my other melee assassins found block-lock to be a serious drag, for all of my phoenix striker, dragon clawer, and Talon kicker. In particular it hits worst for a charge-release assassin, since she needs to get smoothly through four hits each and every time. And you need to keep hitting smoothly even more so when you're relying on Dragon Tail's knockback to keep bumping crowds out of melee range. So this assassin's build is to avoid having a shield: you can't get a shield's block chance low enough, because of the dex requirement for claw weapons; even the lowest shield would have 15% block chance or so, and even that's too much, during the duration of four swings in a charge-release cycle, that's going to trigger sometime. So she's been dual-claw instead all along. This also means avoiding ever putting a skill point in Weapon Block, and that in turn means no access to Shadow Warrior or Master. But I think that's an acceptable tradeoff. A low-level shadow really doesn't do all that much compared to a merc. I should be able to get by without it; remember I had a spearazon who skipped Dodge/Avoid and Valkyrie for the same reasons, and she got to Guardian.
And one other thing I'm doing differently with this assassin than all my others: she's not keeping shadow +skill claws on switch for buffing Fade, but simply casts it with her regular equipment. I'm keeping myself in the habit of snapping off a Fade refresh constantly, as often as every mana potion consumed, and that's much smoother to do without having to weapon-switch every time. It's a far bigger danger for Fade to ever expire unnoticed than any difference from a few skill levels in it, plus she never accidentally ends up trying to attack monsters while on the wrong weapon switch.
And that also frees up the weapon-switch slot for something else. She keeps a Malice claw there, and that proves surprisingly and constantly useful in hell difficulty, yet another component of this character's tremendously versatile offense. Malice is really great at handling bosses: ignore-defense on her main claw doesn't work, but Malice's minus-defense-per-hit does, so after enough hits on a boss then she'd be hitting every swing. Plus prevent-monster-heal is often critical as always, and Open Wounds also can always kill anything given enough time.
Barbarian: He found a new attack plan: actually the mainstay of his offense became one-point Frenzy, of all things. Because that just happens to get synergy from Double Swing, which he's already got because it gives synergy to Double Throw. And so with that and Frenzy's own speed, Frenzy is just about the same damage rate as throwing. So for any routine non-threat monsters, he'd use Frenzy instead to save on throwing quantity, and doing it that way can use the right-click-hold melee method which is easier than individually aiming throws at every monster. So he ended up using throwing mostly only against boss packs and shamans or archers. Man, the barb skills are so weird, everything synergizes something else and then that something else turns out better than the build you were trying to do.
Anyway, he needed to pick his last skill to raise, after maxing Throwing Mastery, Double Swing (damage synergy to Double Throw), and Battle Orders. I really didn't want this to be Frenzy and make him even more of a gimped version of that build instead of the thrower he's supposed to be. Raising Double Throw itself doesn't help, since it adds only attack rating, which he doesn't need with the Angelic set pieces for that. There's no other combat skill he would use, and anything else in masteries (iron skin, natural resistance, axe mastery for melee) seemed pretty marginal too. Finally I realized one decent way to go: Shout. He could use some defense, but actually this is more for the merc, since he's using Might so lacks Defiance, so Shout can plug that gap of merc defense quite solidly. Finally, Shout also happens to synergize Berserk, for the times he has to use that against physical immunes.
Anyway, act one was pretty rough for him, since he was still stuck with that underpowered exceptional axe for now (and one other deficiency of that is a smaller stack size, so even more frequent town runs for repairs.) Still, I figured I'd rather put up with that for now and save the Um rune rather than spend it to upgrade that axe, and he'd get up to power once he got that imbued flying axe after this act. And he wasn't ever in any danger, as a ranged attacker and with Battle Orders plus also Howl when necessary, he'd get through anything given enough time, just took a lot of grinding. It actually wasn't even all that slow overall, only maybe a third slower than most of the other characters. His trump card was his dual CTC Amplify, on both the merc's spear and one of his own axes, and whenever that triggered which was quite often, he'd cut through that target pretty quickly.
Bonemancer: I can't figure out how I feel about this class. Same as my last one back on my first team, I loved them through nightmare difficulty, but then in hell somehow they felt stale and dull, even though it's a high power level. I guess because other classes get interesting for tactics and strategy against immunities, while bonemancy is just the same drill constantly no matter what. At least I'm consistently using the peripheral skills here which I didn't really on my previous characters - keep Bone Armor refreshed, and spam Bone Prison against anything that looks halfway dangerous.
Paladin: And he was the second fastest through the act after the bonemancer, and not unexpectedly so since he's the second-most standard power build on this team. Lightning immunes are common to foil Holy Shock, but Holy Freeze is surprisingly workable as a backup - the numbers say it's about 1/4 the damage of Holy Shock, but it definitely seemed to kill lightning immunes faster than four times slower. Besides that, his other key attack plan was one-point Smite, same as any melee paladin - either keep a boss in knockback-lock while the merc does the work, or rapid-fire switch between Smite and Zeal in order to quickly get in hits during the hit recovery time.
On the defensive side, he is definitely vulnerable without a defense armor or shield blocking; he had to smack emergency rejuves way too often in this act. His savior here was of course the Cloak of Shadows charges on the Darksight Helm, although after casting Cloak each time I did keep forgetting to hotkey back to Holy Shock, hah. Actually, his other significant improvement on defense was actually his weapon reach: the military pick has the longest reach among one-hand weapons, and that made it very noticeably easier to hide behind the merc and attack over his shoulder, quite a bit more than with the sabre (Angelic) he had used for nightmare. And also one fun interaction: Darksight Helm has -4 light radius, which does make it hard to see indoors... but the pulse damage from Holy Shock lights up the monsters!
Druid: He's, like, the most average character I ever played. He gets methodically through anything, but not rapidly or excitingly. He has some variety in offense in casting different spells against the right targets (Fissure mainstay, Tornado for fire immunes, Firestorm at single targets for less mana than Tornado, Hurricane to chill crowds)... but there's no need for tactical execution or positioning or anything, just pick a spell and keep casting it until things die. You'd think that this druid should feel like the assassin, in playing two different builds rolled into one (wind and fire), but he really doesn't. This build is a little less than the sum of its parts, largely because Hurricane and Fissure's casting timers conflict so he can't use both together, which is unlike the assassin, where the different chargeups can stack. Anyway, his one build decision here was that I did decide to skip Grizzly and put the points all into Tornado synergy instead; it could use that, and I'd actually rather not have a minion besides the merc, better to have monsters cluster all on just him to be within Fissure radius.
Sorceress: She does have an interesting play style. Remember her plan is to handle fire immunes entirely by Static Field and the merc. This worked, but took some tactical execution, exactly as I like it. Her play pattern was to look for whatever fallen shaman was the most isolated at any instant, and teleport right on top of that, and hope the merc could take it out before all the fallen converged to distract him. If he couldn't, then look for the next most isolated shaman and do it again.
As for non fire immunes, Enchant wrecks them in an instant, look at that damage number there. Including Andariel. This was almost a downside, Enchant is so strong that any time I get to use it is over so fast, hah. But actually what surprised me was that the sorceress could actually do something against fire immunes, scratch out just a tiny bit of physical damage herself; the Fool's prefix on her dagger adds 40 damage, and with that she could occasionally nip a fallen or shaman where the merc had left a tiny sliver of health.
She did lose one situation: in the Pit level 2, there was an extra-fast Might-enchanted boss pack of rogues that swarmed me within four steps from the stairs. I teleported past them and grabbed just enough space to portal out, but wasn't going to risk re-entering that.
Items: Actually very little. No runes above two Lem, and almost not a single useful unique.
These were the significant finds. Turned out that everything interesting from the act made for a nice package to rebuild the paladin's equipment.
First there's that six-socket phase blade. I had thought about this, to build the same gemmed weapon as his military pick in a faster phase blade instead, but didn't think it would actually happen. I didn't want to spend a socket quest for the phase blade, and didn't expect to get one naturally or enough for enough cube attempts to hit 1 in 6... but then the very first one that dropped happened to have six sockets!
Of course the downside of the phase blade is the high dex requirement... but of course the upside of that for a paladin is shield blocking. But the problem with that plan was that he didn't have any good shield for blocking: Rhyme isn't really worthwhile when it wastes cannot-be-frozen because that's already on his helm, and I don't have anything higher for blocking like Sanctuary. But then he happened to drop for himself that fairly nice crown shield, with 37 base resists, and the cube hit four sockets on it for diamonds. 55% blocking is a high base value, so even without any modifiers this is halfway decent enough to go with. In fact he actually had resistances covered well enough that he only needed 3 diamonds in the shield, so the last socket could be for an Eld rune for extra blocking. With that and Holy Shield boosted by a Rose Branded scepter and shield on switch, he got up to 67% blocking, solidly decent enough.
Finally, there's that Cat's Eye amulet. This is quite an oddball item, IAS and dex and run speed in the amulet slot... and it's actually perfect to tie this package together. Turns out that this IAS with the fast phase blade plus the two Shaels and 20% gloves gets him over the top to the fastest Zeal breakpoint. And of course the 25 dex goes to full use in supporting that phase blade, equivalent to 75 life in redirecting hard points into vitality.
I really like this package - this came together so nicely, these moments are why I keep playing this game format even after so many runs through it already. Having the fastest Zeal breakpoint is really good; that shortens Zeal-lock, which was a noticeable problem when he needed to disengage from combat quickly. Run speed from the amulet is also great for a somewhat fragile meleer. And the last upside of all this is that the dex gives AR too, which he could use; the weapon's -100% target defense works only at half effectiveness on bosses, so he had noticeable trouble hitting them (particularly Andariel) since this build's base AR is so low.
The javazon got a possibly better javelin - here's a crafted one with Fool's, and 30% IAS which her other one doesn't have, but this is only +1 jav skills instead of +2, which does matter. I think the right approach for her is actually both - switch in this one for areas where she's using Power Strike so the IAS matters, and use the other one where Plague Javelin is primary so the +skills matters more.
Trang-Oul's armor, and I did with it what I've done a couple times now: put it on the necro's merc, so he can borrow it from there to pre-buff a summon (clay golem) without occupying stash space.
And the only other item of any significance was a Gheed's Fortune. Although it's almost anti-perfect at the bottom of its range (20% magic find and 10% reduced vendor prices.) Can't resist using it of course anyway. The assassin took it after the act, since she had no other magic-find (the sorceress is getting Stone, so the assassin took the sorc's Spirit Shroud with higher defense, trading out her own with lower defense and a topaz.) I also rearranged things to put the Dwarf Star ring on the assassin, since we want the gold-find from that stacking with the gamble discount.
And one other nice charm.
Unhelpful items: Windhammer maul, though that doesn't help anything, this isn't the druid build to use it (you build a meleer but with Tornado to give synergy to the CTC Twister.) Dangoon's mace, Goldstrike Arch bow, and a few other mid-level uniques but not that work for any of these builds.
And once again after the act some of the best scores came from gambling (and with the discount from Gheed's Fortune.) Doom Wing is damn near best in slot for an elemental druid, the sorceress loves both of the next two rings, and that last ring is pretty nice too and ended up on the javazon.
And Grim Eye there made me partially rebuild the bonemancer's equipment. This amulet is really good, but it's missing fast-cast, and he needs fast-cast in all three jewelry slots for a breakpoint (Vipermagi 30 + White 20 is one breakpoint at 47, and 75 total is another.) I decided it was worth it to drop down one fast-cast breakpoint to pack on over 100 extra life, by trading out all three jewelry slots from fast-cast to resists and life. Also one of his old fast-cast rings went over to the druid who gained a breakpoint with that and his amulet.
Anyway, now could come the Duress for the paladin and Stone for the sorceress as planned, with the bases from this act and the runes from before it. (Going slightly out of order here - once again, everyone else played act two before them, just in case anything else turned up that might make me change plans again.) Both rolled nicely high on defense.
Procedurally: I still full-cleared the act. On players-3 for outdoor or easy (sewers, Arcane) or level-85 areas, and players-1 for the annoying areas: Halls of the Dead, Claw Viper temple, palace cellar, tombs. With one minor adjustment: anyone who couldn't handle physical immunes well (only the barb) would drop to p1 for Arcane Sanctuary and swap that with p3 for the palace cellar.
Javazon: She did surprisingly well, mostly with Plague Javelin. I was worried about all the tombs, but actually only one kind of monster in there is poison immune (dried corpse), and actually the poison worked well on the burning dead and ghosts and unravelers. I had talked about her switching javelins between skills for Plague and speed for Power Strike, but she came to settle almost all on the better skills javelin, which makes a bigger difference for Plague. In particular, the unravelers could often be killed by a single throw of Plague, which was noticeably more likely with the one additional skill level on it.
Paladin: Duh, now I realized why Holy Freeze plays as stronger than I thought. It deals 800-800 damage while Holy Shock is 1-3200; that's not a quarter, that's half on average including the high minimum. Anyway, besides that, now he even had another option on offense: thanks to Open Wounds now in his loadout from Duress, he could kill things with Smite all the way if need be, could keep any dangerous boss stunlocked with that. Particularly fun whenever I could take out a Cursed boss that way without it ever landing an attack to deliver the curse. He has a really fun play style thanks to all his speed; with max boots and the run speed on Cats Eye, he would charge all the way into a room in the tombs, snap off Cloak of Shadows from Darksight Helm, and kill the greater mummies quickly with the max-speed phase blade before the skeletons would converge.
Barb: He's yet another victim of Berserk Syndrome. No matter what barb you think you built, one-point Berserk ends up doing better than whatever else you were trying to do. Particularly with all the high physical but low magic resistance in act two: beetles, maggots, ghoul lords, blunderbores, and of course immune itchies and wraiths. This barb is winning in spite of his skill build rather than because of it. Throwing is still fun, particularly with Amplify triggers on both the merc's spear and one of his throwing axes, but yeah it's not any kind of power build.
Sorc: I thought she would have trouble getting through the fire immunes in this act, but there were a lot only in the sewers, every area after that went easily enough with the merc able to take out a small group of fire immunes at a time. In particular in the Claw Viper temple she had this fun play style: the greater mummies in there are fire immune but the skeletons aren't, so she would teleport the merc on top of the resurrector, and while he worked then she could keep one-shot hitting all the skeletons and easily outrace the raising. The later tombs were a bit less smooth, where the burning dead skeletons are fire immune, but even that wasn't too bad since she could teleport to the greater mummy and kill it herself before the skeletons converged, and the merc didn't take too long to clean them up. And her best moment was in the canyon, where no fire immune types spawned; she got an experience shrine and managed within its duration to take out four entire boss packs of beetles and spear cats and blunderbores!
Items:
First off came a simple and sweet Raven Frost ring. Found by the javazon and worn immediately and absolutely perfect for her: attack rating, dex to support her javelin (had been an emerald in Rockstopper which can now be swapped out), cannot-be-frozen which she doesn't have elsewhere, 40 mana helps noticeably too, and even the cold damage saves a charm slot.
Next big prize: a Gimmershred throwing axe for the barb! Although it does have some downside for what he'll need to trade off: he has to give up either knockback and better IAS on one of his existing axes, or the CTC Amplify on the other. Also the increased stack size doesn't help usefully if the other axe doesn't also have that or replenish-quantity.
Also got a Deathbit throwing axe. This is useful only if upgraded to elite and I don't have a Pul rune to do that. Also it's slightly suboptimal since then Axe Mastery won't apply to melee attacks using this weapon. But I might upgrade and use it later if possible.
String of Ears, and it even has perfect stats in 15% damage reduction and 8% life leech. The assassin took it. Nobody on this team is fully built for physical damage to live on leech, but her kicks deal some, so she may as well make use of it. She wants the damage reduction the most anyway, as the most vulnerable meleer after the sorceress (who is committed to Immortal King's belt.) 15% works out to virtually effectively more than the 100 from a Whale belt, particularly stacked with Rockstopper and Fade.
And whoa, a Thunderstroke javelin from Duriel. Wow, it has +6 Lightning Bolt and this is exactly the javazon build to use that, built for that rather than Lightning Fury! But... the problem is those steep stat requirements. This javazon has very minimal strength and dex; she'd have to add over 100 dex from equipment. (Dang javelins can't be socketed for a Hel rune for lower requirements.) To use this, she'd have to give up at least the skills from Peace for Lionheart instead in the armor slot, plus also a skills amulet and Rockstopper's defensive stuff for stats in those slots intead. I left part of this decision to fate: I gambled coronets after the act, for the chance of getting something good with amazon skills and stats. But I got this instead:
Huge resists that match Rockstopper's, and +2 amazon skills! But no stats. Okay, so she won't use Thunderstroke, which wouldn't be all that great for act 3 anyway with all the lightning immunes. But this circlet is worth using, trading out Rockstopper; this javazon really wants super high skills (now at +12) for damage, and it can be socket-quested with a ruby to partially make up for Rockstopper's damage reduction. And Rockstopper always passes down to good use on a merc; here it went to the javazon's own as the next most needy for survivability after the three mercs that already had Tal Rasha's helm.
Well, a Saracen's Chance amulet might be one way to work towards those stats if I do want to sometime.
Also Natalya's helm, and wow this is still really tempting me to squeeze that Thunderstroke onto her...
Here's something unusual, a rare armor that's really good for a merc. Godly elite defense, sockets for resists, and even hit recovery. It ended up on the assassin's merc as the one who most needs merc survivability who didn't already have a Treachery (paladin, druid) or need open-wounds in the armor slot (sorc).
Also in the merc department: an ethereal Mancatcher that cubed into 5 sockets for a splendid merc Honor. It went to the javazon's merc, as the most needy for merc damage after the better-equipped sorc's (eth Pierre Tombale) and druid's (upgraded Impaler.) Also a second Kelpie Snare, found by the barb and helpfully put on his merc for the Duriel fight, and will keep it on hand for the later act bosses as well. And several ordinary 5-socket threshers and mancatchers, so every merc has at least an elite Honor in those now, superseding the partizans I'd had before.
Got a second Harpoonist's skill charm, great, the javazon is the one who most needs high skills on this team. Also an Acrobatic charm but I think that's just barely not quite worth the space, one level in passive/magic skills doesn't do much for her, doesn't help Valkyrie since that comes from the CTC level 15 on Peace.
Minor upgrade for the paladin: got a four-socketed crown shield with perfect 45% base resists rather than 37%. In fact now he could get away with only two diamonds in the shield and thus two Elds for better blocking.
Stuff that didn't make the cut to use:
Nature's Peace ring, slain monsters rest in peace, but I think that's only ever used for Nihlathak runners. Here the sorceress did keep it in stash, it also has prevent-monster-heal and occasionally there's a boss where she needs to deliver that.
Ethereal Todesfaelle Flamme sword. This is a cute proposition to maybe use. It has level-10 Enchant charges, which gives a bit of attack rating. They can't be recharged on an ethereal item, but there's probably enough to last until the end of the game for the few times I might care to use it anyway. The etherealness matters for the lower stat requirements, which might be just within reach of the barb, who will keep it on switch and maybe use the Enchant for times like the high council, ancients, and Diablo and Baal minion boss packs.
Baranar's Star, solid elite melee weapon, but there's nobody on this team for physical melee.
Corpsemourn armor, but that didn't quite make the cut for any merc over other options, and no character is near 170 strength for it.
Skull Collector staff, +2 skills and 80% magic find (scales with level.) I'm never quite sure if there's anything to do with this. I was a bit tempted to give it to the druid since his class doesn't get any big +skills in the weapon slot, but nah, he can't replace the resists on his 3-diamond shield.
And the druid went and found an Ohm rune! Sadly, that doesn't do anything immediately without some other high runes, Mal and Ist for a Call to Arms, Vex for Exile, Sur for Bramble. The act yielded no other runes above Fal.
One deficiency in the runes department: I'm juuust short of being able to upgrade a weapon, either Deathbit for the barb or the ethereal Pierre Tombale Couant polearm for the sorc's merc. I have 1 Lem, 3 Fal, 6 Ko, 8 Lum, 2 Io, 6 Hel. All together that's just enough to combine into a Pul... but the upgrade recipe also needs a Lum, and all of those would get consumed into the Pul.
Although then I realized something else to do with those runes. Make Treachery for the barb. No idea how I didn't think of this sooner. I'd saved an archon plate with 3 sockets for any runeword that might need it. Treachery's Fade gives resists as good as Smoke, the IAS gives him two more speed breakpoints (and now Gimmershred's 30 versus the 40 on his old rare axe isn't a loss), plus the Venom even helps a fair bit.
(Once again, a bit of time travel, the right way to sequence that decision was out of order. To make the Treachery would cost part of the runes for a weapon upgrade. I should play act 3 with everyone else first then the barb last, to see if anyone else finds runes that would keep the weapon upgrade available while spending a Lem now for the Treachery. They did so I did make the Treachery now.)
Once again I full cleared everything, players-3 outdoor and p1 indoor, although skipped the false temples, those are way dangerous with stairs traps and give hardly any treasure.
Javazon: Ok, I was worried about fitting in that Thunderstroke for skills, but then this happened:
She crafted herself a javelin with +4 skills, shortly into the act. So now her best play pattern was to keep the Fool's javelin on her main switch for melee with Power Strike, and switch to this one specifically for throwing Lightning Bolt against boss packs dangerous enough to warrant it. Particularly the explodey undead dolls of course. Although actually one advantage of this javazon's skill build is against those dolls: Power Strike and Lightning Bolt hit only one at a time, so she's not in danger of exploding a whole pack at once as Lightning Fury would.
Assassin: Oh yeah, she had an absolute blast in the jungles, blowing up gigantic packs of flayers in one kick. Even the fire-immune shamans hardly slowed her down, where the physical damage from the boots with Tiger Strike's multiplier was still enough to take them out in two or three cycles. Although then she had to be very careful about exploding undead dolls in the dungeons, of course. I found that her best play pattern there was to take exactly two charges of Tiger Strike before finishing with Dragon Tail, which would bring the dolls low on health but not kill them, and then the merc could clean them up easily. Anyway, her other development was that she now finished her main skill build (Tiger, Tail, Phoenix, Fade) and would now have her last few skill points for something else. I decided the way to go was lightning synergy for Phoenix Strike, it's significant value (13% per point) and she does use it often, for fire immunes, particularly for act four coming now.
Druid: At least he had no problems with dolls, with Fissure easily able to roast them from long range around the merc. Barb: same, throwing axes cut them down quickly and safely.
Necro: He also finished his main skill build, of Bone Spear/Spirit/Wall/Prison. He could go a few different ways with his last few points. I decided to go all-in on bonemancy and make it Teeth for a tiny bit more synergy, over the other possibilities of Decrepify or Corpse Explosion or Golem Mastery.
Paladin: He did have to worry about dolls, but only mildly so, shield blocking works against them so he'd have to be really unlucky to get blasted by too many at once. And also I could use Holy Freeze instead of Shock, for its lower damage rate, so less likely to pop several at once. One other thing I noticed with this paladin is how good he is at taking out fleeing monsters. There are a lot of types in act 3 that flee, like the jungle apes, spiders, zakarum zealots, ghoul lords in the Durance. But for this paladin, they would often drop dead even while fleeing, from either or both of Open Wounds from Duress and/or the pulse damage from Holy Shock. Anyway, the paladin also finished his main skill build (Holy Shock/Freeze, Resist Lightning/Cold) and of course the place for his last few points would be Holy Shield.
Sorc: She could easily handle dolls, via the merc, cut their health with Static and let him do it. Overall her plan of entirely relying on the merc for all fire immunes is actually working very well, quite a bit better than I expected. Static Field helps him a lot: it makes him pass the three-second melee test of killing a single monster before more catch up. The clay golem from the Stone armor also helps for that - whenever there's a pack that's a little too thick for the merc, what I do is get close enough to let a few of them hit the clay golem, which slows them, then I teleport away and the slowed ones usually won't follow fast enough, thus breaking up the pack. And her other hidden asset is Telekinesis, to keep a boss in knockback-lock while the merc works, that's how she handled the high council. That all said, she had one heart-stopping moment, in the flayer dungeon, where she got blasted by a Conviction + fire enchanted + cold enchanted gloam boss (remember the bug that when fire and cold enchanted are stacked, both explosions fire twice each) to what might have been under 100 life in the instant before I hit a rejuve.
The sorc also finished her skill build (Enchant, Fire Mastery, Warmth, Static), and in fact she had done this a while ago since her prerequisite lines are short, and she now had eight skill points left over. I decided to go into Shiver Armor with them, which seemed like a good a use as any. It's only additive with the merc's Defiance so it's not a big modifier, but really it's backup defense for whenever the merc goes down, plus the longer duration means less downtime when I overlook refreshing it. The other skill choice I toyed with was Energy Shield, since this sorc hardly uses much mana so it could be used for an extra life pool instead, but what scares me is getting hit and depleted of mana right in an instant where I need to teleport.
Items:
First, whoa. From a champion ghoul lord on Durance 3 for the druid:
My first thought on a unique amulet dropping was, probably another useless Etlich or whatever, and I was trying to remember what else useful it might possibly be, Crescent Moon wouldn't be, maybe Atma's Scarab or Metalgrid would fit somewhere somehow. Totally forgot about this queen of the category, Mara's Kaleidoscope. The recipient for it is certainly the javazon, she needs high skills the most, and +javelin skills doesn't otherwise come on amulets, and she doesn't need the slot for fast-cast or anything else in particular.
Laying of Hands finally showed up, exactly what the barb has wanted since day one, and he'll keep it permanently. And actually the best thing this does is let me discard several other gloves with slightly different combinations of speed and resistances since he'll always prefer this instead. (Funny aside: this and also all of Sigon's, Magnus', and Sander's set gloves all came in the same game for the same character. Randomness is clumpy.)
Also got Raven Frost again, actually two more copies, yeah randomness is clumpy. I gave one to the sorceress; she could use cannot-be-frozen and doesn't have it elsewhere, can also use the attack rating, and I could make up for swapping out a fast-cast ring with a fast-cast amulet. The other Raven Frost might go to the assassin, where cannot-be-frozen in a ring slot could free up her armor away from Spirit Shroud, but I don't know what else she'd put there; she needs defense (so not Treachery), but I don't have any useful defense armors on hand. Maybe she'll go with that plan if the hellforge runes yield an Um for a Duress or Stone for her.
Trang-Oul's Wing, makes three pieces of the set (armor, gloves, trophy), which gives the +13 to Fire Wall oskill if the necro ever wants that. And actually I do know one time he will, against Achmel in Baal's minion waves who is magic immune and difficult to focus the merc on. (Just have to remember to keep a strength amulet on hand to put on the armor.)
Got another Gheed's Fortune, and this one with much better stats than the first. The assassin upgraded from the old one to this one, since she still has no other magic-find, and the lesser one went to the javazon, she's next-lowest on mf (just one ring with a bit) and she's probably the most able to compromise a few life charms to fit it.
Wow, check out this merc beatstick: some damage, 40% IAS, life leech, even poison built in, and CTC Amplify! This is absolutely splendid for the barb's merc. He'd had a lesser rare with CTC Amp all along, but this is quite a solid upgrade.
Doesn't help but a fun find, Ormus' Robes. I don't think it fits anyone on this team; the elemental boost doesn't boost bonemancy, or Tornado, or Plague Javelin, or Enchant meaningfully (the +15% is only additive with Fire Mastery not multiplicative.) It might help Tiger Tail or Power Strike or Hurricane or Holy Shock/Freeze, but it's a small boost and those characters have higher concerns in their armor slots.
Also more fun finds that don't help. For Demon's Arch, the problem is that the throwing spear category just doesn't work for a barb, since the stack quantity is much lower than throwing axes and knives. And Alma Negra looks imposing, but a paladin really can't go without any resistances in the shield slot.
Charms: no useful skillers (got one bow skills which isn't on this team), but here's three pretty nice ones.
Runes: got a Ko, Lem, and Pul all in the act, the Pul from Mephisto's center chest here, sweet, good thing I toggled to players-8 before popping it, same as I did the time I got an Um from it.
That made for a bit of funny sequencing. Before the act, I'd been debating whether to make a Treachery for the barb, given that it would consume rune material that I wanted for a weapon upgrade. Turned out that I just found the runes for both anyway, so that let me spend a Lem ahead of time for the barb's Treachery and then also have a weapon upgrade afterwards... but what remained after that was still exactly my original dilemma, I still had the same original pot of runes that could either make another Treachery now or save for another weapon upgrade later.
I decided the weapon upgrade now would be the ethereal Pierre Tombale Couant for the sorc's merc. That damage number isn't even complete: factor in the 55% deadly strike and it's actually 226-985, holy crap. It's equivalent to 537% enhanced damage if the ethereality and deadly multipliers are converted to that scale. I also invested fully here in spending a socket quest on it as well for a Shael. With tons of fire resistance coming up in act four, plus at least one of the ancients, she really wants that merc operating at the absolute max damage output I can give him.
The other consideration for weapon upgrading was Deathbit for the barb, but I decided not to, it just wasn't quite enough of a gain over other options, including the fact that even though it's a slightly faster base (compared to a flying axe), it actually wouldn't gain him any speed breakpoints. Really, the barb for his second weapon after Gimmershred just wants to keep the crafted flying axe with CTC Amplify instead. The damage on that (+107%) is close enough to any other option he has (highest is +174%), and the Amplify is just such a savior in so many situations, particularly for act four coming now which has high physical resistance for nearly everything.
And finally I decided to make one more merc Treachery (three total), particularly since I got an ethereal-bugged 3-socket great hauberk base for it, over 1000 defense. I don't need any other weapon upgrade at the moment, and if I do want one after act four, the hellforge runes most likely would amount to enough to do it.
I continued to full-clear on players-3. Probably not really necessary, all the equipment is well set so any gains would be minimal both for that and for experience for just one more level. But I like doing it and pushing the characters to that level of challenge rather than wimping out by skipping areas or dropping to the lowest player count.
Javazon: Plague Javelin is really shining for her, more than it has for any other javazon, both because this one is using weaker lightning skills, and because Plague gets increasing returns for being cranked way up on skills equipment, all the way up to skill level 35!. It easily wipes most non-immunes in one cast, or two for the highly resistant venom lords. With the Izual skill points, she finally finished her main build (any amazon with Valkyrie needs lots of prereq points in the passives tree), and the place to go with the last few was Decoy to shore up her defense including its synergy to Valkyrie.
Druid: He got the most aggravating monster spawns possible, including flesh spawners in all four consecutive areas that can have them, plus also maggots on the river. It wasn't too bad for this character build, since Fissure feasts on tightly overlapping monsters. But it was tedious to pick off each last spawner one at a time, and so he was the slowest in real time. At least one thing worked in his favor: maggots hiding underground would die anyway, since Open Wounds from the merc would continue working.
Assassin: She was also slow. Yeah, this is where Tiger-Tail peters out, everything is fire immune or physical resistant and either foils it. And she kept getting fire immune venom lords and doom knights in almost every area. She could use Phoenix Strike against larger groups, alternating between charges of the ice to keep them frozen and the lightning for damage, but that approach still took a long time to kill them, twenty or more charge cycles. Against one or two at a time, what was more practical was Tiger-Tail just for the physical damage and for less mana cost. And the best way tactically to do that: line up so that the knockback on the target drives it into the merc, so that his attention would stay on that one until it died. Besides that, one unusual bit: this was a rare character for whom the Izual quest skill points were a significant offensive upgrade, since those were her first few synergy points into Phoenix's lightning charge.
Halfway through the act I figured out some better play patterns for her. One was against the flesh spawners: the children have much lower physical resistance than the spawners, so she should always target the children with Dragon Tail and let the splash do more damage against the spawners than attacking them directly. And for the venom lords with high physical resistance: she should switch to the Malice claw she keeps on switch, and just let Open Wounds from that do the work, that was actually a higher damage rate than her own Tiger-Tail physical damage, largely because Open Wounds isn't cut by physical resistance. And of course she also continued using Malice against every boss, where ITD on her main claw doesn't work but Malice's minus-defense-per-hit does.
Sorceress: Wow, relying on the merc entirely for fire immunes is still working spectacularly, now at max power with his ethereal Pierre Tombale Couant polearm upgraded and Shael-socketed. This merc took out the fire immunes quite a bit faster than the assassin or druid player characters could, helped by Static Field from the sorceress herself.
Paladin, barb, and necromancer are proceeding steadily. The only downside is that the bonemancer runs to town for mana potions approximately every thirty monsters, but really that's not any worse than throwing refills for the barb. I played him last, since I knew he would be the fastest in real-time by far, with no immunity problems, particularly in Chaos Sanctuary where Bone Spear rips through everything and even Bone Spirit homes on the fleeing oblivion knights. The barb also finished his main skill build and put the last few points in Natural Resistance.
Items: First, the hellforge...
The hellforge gave the wildest results it has yet. In order, it gave Io, Um, Ko, Um, Um, Um, Ko. Yeah, FOUR Ums, three of them in a row, holy crap. I don't even feel like calculating how improbable that was. And also...
I got yet another Um in a random drop. And, on top of that, the druid for his second time dropped an Ohm rune!! Wow.
Okay, let's sort out all of that. I have 2 Ohm, 5 Um, 1 Pul, 1 Lem, 3 Fal, 6 Ko, and enough of anything lower.
Two Ohms don't do anything, either individually or by cubing to a Sur. I could do a Chaos claw, but this isn't the assassin build for that, and I don't have a base anyway. Man, if either of those had actually been one step lower at Vex instead, then I'd have an Exile or Heart of the Oak. So the Ohms go unused.
As for the rest of it... I'm *just* short of cubing everything up to a huge prize, a Mal and Ist to go with one Ohm to make a Call to Arms. Any one more rune from Fal on up would do it. (Turns out that spending that Pul on upgrading the Pierre Tombale for the sorceress's merc caused this; I had no idea that would end up keeping me out of a CTA.)
The thing to do with extra Ums is usually Duress, but the problem there is that I don't have any more three-socket elite armor bases.
So here's what I did do. First, the Sanctuary shield (two Ums cubed to the Mal) was a super easy choice; the paladin had been keeping that perfect 45% base for a while for this possibility. (And in the randomness-is-clumpy department, that was my second consecutive Sanctuary that rolled exactly 62% resist all.) Plus the dex on it lets him swap out the emerald socketed in Darksight Helm for a life ruby instead.
The best answer for the armors was to transfer my existing Duress from the paladin to the assassin, and give him a newly made Stone instead, for which I did have a four-socket base. The assassin needs the Duress more, since she really needs the open wounds and crushing blow when she has to do physical damage against fire immunes, more than the paladin who deals two types of elemental damage himself. And the assassin doesn't mind trading out her Spirit Shroud, thanks to the extra Raven Frost ring from last act for cannot-be-frozen. And the paladin uses Stone better than the assassin would, in that the clay golem's slowing gives him a bit of crowd control, which the assassin can already do herself with Mind Blast.
That left two Ums, but I really couldn't find a good use for them. Many possibilities, but none really seemed like an upgrade. I could do a Bone armor for the necromancer or Rain for the druid, but neither really felt like worth trading out their Vipermagis, particularly since both are socketed with a ruby for extra life. A Prudence armor was also doable (I have an ethereal two-socket scarab husk, although not eth-bugged), but again that didn't feel like an upgrade over anything that anyone had, including for any of the mercs. I'd also like a Crescent Moon polearm for a merc, but don't have a base for it.
What I settled on was a merc Duress. I unsocketed a Treachery from this base, which hurt, but I wanted this instead. The sorc's merc really wants this, for the crushing blow and open wounds when she needs him to deal all the damage, particularly on the Ancients and Lister. One Um was left unused, in the possession of the paladin, in case he does find another Duress base in the upcoming act.
Besides that, there were two Lems left (one by cubing from Fals.) I used those to upgrade armor items, the sorceress's Rockstopper helm and a Guardian Angel armor for the paladin's merc.
Other than that, little of note came from the short act.
Randomly cool circlet here, from a gamble, although it's not better than her existing one (+2 skills, 19% prismatic, 57% lightning.) But this one does help, in that it lets me discard some strength gloves I'd been keeping, since if she needs strength for something, it's here.
A second ethereal elite polearm that cubed into 5 sockets (thresher), so that's another great Honor for a merc, went to the necromancer's as the one who most needed an upgrade to merc damage, for act 5 which has some magic immunes including Achmel's pack.
Viperfork unique elite mancatcher spear, fast base and 50% IAS plus poison damage. It's just about the same damage as Honor for a merc (factoring in Honor's deadly strike), but 20% faster, but without the life steal. I decided against using this; only two mercs have a plain (non-ethereal) Honor polearm, and those are the paladin's and assassin's, both of whom don't rely on the merc for damage all that much, but can't protect him all that well so would prefer Honor's leech on him instead.
Sorceress fire skills charm, second one for this team, go go Enchant prebuff. Also druid shapeshifting skills, but that doesn't matter here.
Djinn Slayer sword, but nobody here needs that, maybe the paladin if it had ITD, but it doesn't.
Finally, I did some minor equipment optimization, shuffling around boots and belts and rings to optimize resistances everywhere and leave the most room for life from charms. The one significant change that came out of this was with the javazon: she actually went back to Hsaru's boots and belt, since they happen to have the resistances she needed in those slots. And so with the partial-set big attack rating bonus from that, she could switch away from the Fool's javelin and use the +4 skills one full time now.
Also at this time I planned out how to use all the socket quests, both the few I hadn't used yet now and everyone's for the quest they would get in act 5.
Barb: his merc's rare polearm with Amn
Amazon: circlet with ruby
Necromancer: circlet with ruby, also use his other remaining quest to socket the druid's merc's Impaler spear with Amn
Assassin: her off-hand claw with Io for vitality
Paladin: two quests, for both his merc's Tal Rasha's helm and Guardian Angel armor with resistance runes
Sorc: dagger with Eth rune
Druid: Dark Clan Crusher with Io, circlet with Shael (I ran out of rubies and Ios for life, so hit recovery was the next best choice, so he could swap out boots and charms with that for more life instead that way.)
I also planned out to do the Anya quest with some characters, who set up to swap out a ring with resists for one with life instead after doing that.
Anyway, here's the finale. Strictly players-1 all the way, minimal clearing, just get to the end and claim the crown.
And there we go. Finally on playing this team format for my sixth run, I ended it perfectly with all seven successful Guardians.
Stardiamond, the javazon: This character was interesting to build, pushing to the high skill levels, but on the dull side to play. Plague Javelin is the most underrated skill in the game, particularly at super high skill levels, but yeah playing it is just waiting for the casting timer and the poison damage. For her lightning side, Power Strike and Lightning Bolt are just Charged Strike and Lightning Fury but worse. I had hoped Power Strike might find a niche, but it's really held back by having no solution to its attack rating problem, javelins can't ever have ITD or Eth runes. Lightning Bolt does have a small niche, in that it's the only attack that can carry crushing blow without being blockable, so she used that against the Ancients and Baal (and kept several extra javelin stacks in the cube for more throws.) So overall, this this character was a positive experience. Her worst bit was gloams spawning in the Throne of Destruction, immune to both lightning and poison, so all she could do was wait for the merc to take them out.
Starspell, the Enchant sorceress: Damn, this was one of the strongest characters I've ever built. Not just for her own Enchant for 5000 fire damage to wipe anything not immune to it, but also hers was the best merc I ever built, or even heck the strongest offense of anything ever was just to teleport him on top of things. Particularly with Static Field to support him, where that makes him easily pass the melee test of killing a monster in a couple seconds before the rest catch up. He even tanked Lister's pack outright; most mercs with defense can, but a huge ethereal Duress on him plus Tal Rasha's mask's life leech plus Stone's clay golem slowing made it really easy. The sorceress was no slouch herself either on defense; with Stone plus Rockstopper plus the Immortal King pieces, multiplied by the merc's Defiance and her own mid-level Shiver Armor, she had 13k defense rating, and with that she could teleport into almost any ordinary non-boss monster crowd and not worry. This was a great character and I'm glad I saw this through after my previous enchantress died.
Stardart, the throwing barbarian: His amusing moment: he didn't have crushing blow on hand for Baal, so had to do that the slow way; I had forgotten Pindleskin and killed him afterwards... who dropped a Crushflange with crushing blow, hah. Anyway, this character was perfectly robust like any barbarian, nothing is going to kill 3200 Battle-Ordered life, particularly one who can attack from range. Of course it was repetitive running to town for throwing refills all the time, but the actual gameplay of it was more interesting than I expected, in trying to get tactical positioning to aim at bosses or set up piercing lines with Razortail, plus mixing in other skills in Frenzy and Berserk. Although like all barbs, more often than not he could just use one-point Berserk that would outdo whatever else he was trying to do.
Starshock, the elemental paladin: His biggest pain was Achmel's pack. Poison immune so he couldn't stop regeneration (wish he'd had a Duress instead for open wounds), lightning enchanted so resisted Holy Shock, couldn't focus the merc on him with all the resurrecting, and can't get him out of range of Baal's Decrepify curse. Got it done but it took a while. The other packs were easy enough with standard tactics of separating them, and so was Baal with crushing blow delivered by Smite. Anyway, I'm also glad I pushed through this character; the shock/freeze zealot is known as a fringe power build, and that's right about where I like my power level on these character teams. And the paladin's MVP item and perhaps for the whole team was his Darksight Helm, which is just so amazing, charges of Cloak of Shadows for the best crowd control skill in the game for the class that lacks it the most.
Starsmoke, the hybrid elemental druid: This was the least exciting character on the team. And as a hybrid of the wind and fire skills I'd done separately before, he wasn't doing anything new. And this hybrid is a little less than the sum of its parts, since the casting timers conflict for Hurricane and the fire skills. Although the one advantage over a straight wind build was that Hurricane's chilling is more reliable, because anything not chillable never gets in range because it wasn't fire immune so Fissure killed it at long range instead. This character was mostly filler to fill out the team, but he performed well enough in the end. He did have a really rough time against Lister, where extra fast and fanaticism meant the merc couldn't hold up; had to isolate Lister and jump into a portal every ten seconds for healing. And also against Baal where he had no better plan than forty minutes of casting Fissure at long range.
Starscourge, the bonemancer: He actually improved somewhat even this late in his career, since I had added significantly more mana to him in the last round of equipment shuffling, 50 on one ring and another 50 on charms. Of course, as the one real standard power build on this team, he carved through everything the fastest. He didn't even need to bother separating the Ancients, just buried them in bone prisons plus Decrepify. To my shock, he even wiped Achmel's magic-immune pack in seconds - turned out that Corpse Exploding all the regular skeletons added up to enough damage to start bringing down the greater mummies, which could in turn be exploded themselves. Baal for him was also just a long time of long-ranged casting, but it was easy enough.
Starlynx, the Tiger/Tail/Phoenix assassin: She had godawful trouble with the Ancients. First off, she needed dozens of rerolls to get them without any of the dangerous modifiers. Then the weird problem was that she somehow couldn't hit Talic. She could swing like twenty times and get one hit, no matter what his modifiers were. This doesn't make sense. I know her Piercing claw doesn't work, but she used Malice for the minus-defense-per-hit which should, but didn't seem to even after a hundred hits. He's not listed as having shield blocking either, although I think he spawns with a shield, but even that shouldn't account for that much trouble. So three separate times, the assassin beat the other two ancients first, but then couldn't take down Talic before running out of potions, so she had to start over. He was stone skin for two of those and lightning enchanted for another, and so after those failures I had to keep respawning even more times until those weren't on him. Finally I got him on a run when he was harmlessly teleportation and magic resistant. This all took over two hours, including the failed attempts and over a hundred respawns total to get manageable boss modifiers.
Besides that, she kept getting fire immunes in the act in almost every area. Tiger-Tail still works anyway for 2k physical damage... but you know what else does that? The merc. Same as for the sorceress, the merc just carved through any fire immunes faster than the player character herself could. But she also had Phoenix Strike as a tool. And particularly in Worldstone 3, where she got an all fire-immune monster spawn of flayers, demon imps, and doom knights, she had lots of fun tearing through that with Phoenix. At least Ventar's and Lister's packs were both easy, where Phoenix's ice charge could keep re-freezing them indefinitely, while the damage came from the merc and crushing blow and open wounds on Duress. Baal was also easy with crushing blow.
And here is the chart of everyone's equipment to summarize everything. (There weren't any item drops in act 5 worth reporting.)
And so there I finally got a perfect completion of this challenge, all seven Guardians, even a melee sorceress. Although one might even say the mercenaries were the real stars of this team; half of them outdid the player characters for damage half the time, particularly the sorceress's. I'll always wonder if this would be possible without them. Thanks for reading once again.