Patriarch Set

I don't have a screenshot this time, because for some reason, the method I used to get screenshots in the past stopped working. When I tried to use "print screen" all I got was a black space. It's too bad, as this character was wearing the full Trang-Oul's set, so he looked very different from most characters. The rest was pretty standard. Baal in the Worldstone chamber, collapsing from my awesome might. Oh, and my character also had an Act II mercenary and a Fire Golem. That's about it.

This was my first poison necro. I later started what I intend to be a more melee-based necromancer with Poison Dagger and enough gear for a strong physical damage attack. That necromancer, Nergal, will have a similar skill distribution, but I'm justifying the repeat as being different enough as an archetype: a melee necro. Set's archetype is poison necro. Well, that's the plan anyway. Nergal isn't very far into the game yet. Set isn't necessarily the typical poison necro, but I really wanted to use the Trang-Oul's set and a poison necro seemed like the best choice.

Poison is a common immunity for monsters. Like most of my characters, Set played exclusively on the /players8 setting, so monsters, and especially ones immune to poison, would not go down easily. I employed a number of methods for dealing with this. Set's switch weapon is a Grief phaseblade. A few swings with that procs a high level Venom, which massively increases the damage of Poison Dagger. Even monsters with tons of health will melt under the power of that much poison, assuming they aren't immune or extremely resistant. The phaseblade can also be used to attack, preferably with Amplify Damage or Decrepify. It doesn't give the damage output of a fully dedicated melee character, but it works. The Trang-Oul's set gives fire skills, with Fire Wall in particular being a strong skill. Most importantly, I invested several points in Lower Resist, ultimately maxing it at Level 90 (and then when I hit level 91, I had to figure out what skill to put a point into) for a level 31 Lower Resist with +skills. Lower Resist made most poison immunities easy prey for Poison Nova or Poison Dagger and left almost all of the rest vulnerable to fire damage. Poison/fire dual immunities that I could not break were very annoying, but not insurmountable. Let's just say that this character has made me hate the Frozen Tundra.

I think this is one of the more powerful options for a necromancer and gameplay was generally more rapid than with my summoner. The Worldstone Keep was still rather tedious and would have been insanely difficult without Revives. I even died once, which almost never happens now that I know the game so well and twink my characters for domination. The Black Souls in the Worldstone Keep are just that dangerous. I also had close calls with the Ancients (mainly they kept killing my merc and I got annoyed and restarted them). Those were the hardest parts of the game for Set. Baal's minions dropped while fighting Revives and Baal himself at several Poison Daggers punctuated by being slowed into harmlessness by Decrepify. This would have been less difficult and tedious if I hadn't insisted on fighting everything on /players8, but oh well. Also, I got PlugY's Diablo Clone to spawn twice as this character trekked through Hell, and apparently the combination of massive poison damage, Lifetap, and Grief made it possible (albeit not exactly easy) to solo that boss, which was cool.

For those keeping track, which is me, I now have five /players8 Hell Baal clears. In order, there was Shamash, Master, Oberon, Stephen, and now there's Set. That's two paladins, a druid, and two necromancers. I have lots of other characters, some in each difficulty. Because I already have two each of paladins and necromancers, I want to wait on completing any more of those until I get one each of the other classes finished. Of course, that implies that I'll actually keep playing Diablo II long enough to do that. Is that realistic? I have no idea. I don't have an obligation to keep finishing these characters. It's just something that I've casually decided to do, and so far I haven't stopped. I've taken long breaks, focused on other games, and I've even started mods (Median is pretty cool and seems better than regular old Diablo II, and Eastern Sun strikes me as generally being an improvement on the original game). Well, if I do finish any more characters, I'll try to get an amazon, assassin, barbarian, and sorceress all to beat Baal in Hell before I proceed with necromancers or paladins. I already have two characters that have beaten Nightmare and are at some point in the game in Hell difficulty: Artemis, a bow-wielding Amazon, and Isis, a tri-element sorceress.