Diablo 2 Ironman Challenge?

[DrizztFan24]

I have been throwing around the idea of trying to make a team that could walk from A1 Normal to Hell Baal. I wanted to try and make things more challenging, like the old Diablo 1 ironman/naked trials. I figure since you have to change acts you can't do them QUITE the same, but I think the concept is still possible. Pretty much, have a group that lives off the land and manages to complete the game! Here is what I considered thus far:

-You can combine starting gold to purchase items
-At each act change you may go shopping at the local vendors.
-You cannot return to town to heal/res a merc/buy pots/whatevers between acts.

In order to accomplish this strange quest, I started brainstorming some ideas for parties that could accomplish such a herculean task! This is what I came up with:

-Avenger Paladin with a Blessed Aim merc (once they reach NM mode)
-Enchantress using ES as a tanky character and an A5 merc
-Skelemancer with a Might merc
-Cry Baby Barb (WCs and Find Item/Find Potion) with an A1 Merc
-Lightning Javazon and a Prayer merc
-Fireclaw Bear with a Defiance merc
-Fist of the Heavens Pally with Salvation aura and an A1 Merc
-Tiger Strike Assasin with an A5 merc

I figure this group has enough stuff on the ground to spread damage and dish it back out as well. The FoH pally doesn't need conviction since the Avenger has it already, and FoH is ranged! The only problem I can really except would be a lack of mana regen, for which I am banking on getting an insight RW for the FoH pally. I figure the runes are cheap enough, and you get two of them from A5, that finding the last three pieces should not be a problem. The barbarian really is a utility role in helping people acquire goodies and provide party buffs. Additionally, I am not too scared of the A1 merc providing cold damage (which I tried very hard to avoid) and stealing corpses, afterall, there are only two of them.
Most of the damage in this group will come from elemental sources hence the tiger strike assassin. The Blessed Aim merc and the sorcs enchant should help everybody hit their targets with a very high AR.

Can you, as a community, think of ways to improve this group? Are there any obvious holes I am failing to fulfill? My internet access is limited, so I apologize for any slow replies.



P.S. I couldn't find anybody that had tried this before, so I apologize if I have missed a well-known attempt at such a feat.

[Winthur]

Hello

I applaud the idea, having followed certain Diablo 1 Iron Man variants with enthusiasm

All that I can think of atm:
-Maybe it's my confusion on how ES works, but if you're making an Enchantress I think it'd be better to make a Firewall sorceress since, AFAIK, Warmth is a synergy to both Firewall and Enchant and Firewall also deals a lot of damage particularly since it was buffed in 1.13
-Singer barb okay, I'm not sure if he will be able to tank that well if untwinked even with maxed out War Cry, not sure if maxing out Find Item is necessary
-Why no cookie-cutter Hammerdin?
-Does the Amazon have enough team utility? She certainly packs a punch and can waveclear.
-Turn FoHer into straight-up medic with maxed out Conviction and Meditation, maybe? (Meditation might be superfluous if you get Insight merc)
-If you frontload the caster front a bit you might want to turn Fireclaw Werebear into Shockwave Summoner for bonus protection

That's all I can think of

Also there was a German group some time ago that pulled off naked (nothing but potions) HC Ironman completed with doing Uber Tristram (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsr2Xv6mDO0)

[DrizztFan24]

All that I can think of atm:
-Maybe it's my confusion on how ES works, but if you're making an Enchantress I think it'd be better to make a Firewall sorceress since, AFAIK, Warmth is a synergy to both Firewall and Enchant and Firewall also deals a lot of damage particularly since it was buffed in 1.13
-Singer barb okay, I'm not sure if he will be able to tank that well if untwinked even with maxed out War Cry, not sure if maxing out Find Item is necessary
-Why no cookie-cutter Hammerdin?
-Does the Amazon have enough team utility? She certainly packs a punch and can waveclear.
-Turn FoHer into straight-up medic with maxed out Conviction and Meditation, maybe? (Meditation might be superfluous if you get Insight merc)
-If you frontload the caster front a bit you might want to turn Fireclaw Werebear into Shockwave Summoner for bonus protection


For the ES sorc, I originally just needed the additional AR and damage to the other people in the group. I decided that I could nearly max the Enchant synergies and get a few points into static field with only a minimal drop in fire damage. With that many people on the screen I am sure that the small drop in damage will be overcome by the effect of static. The reason I chose ES was because ES and telekineses synergize to provide a 1:.75 damage trade for life to mana. So there is even a little bit of damage reduction involved. I just figured since warmth would be maxed the sorc would have a TON of mana regen anyways, so it's like having a font of healing underneath your feet.
I actually had no plans of having the barb be a super tank. I suspect the sorc can probably take some of his load, and the skeles/minions take the rest. Especially since the defiance aura will be gained very early on. I just figured he could be the source of gear for everyone else, and if he had to, use Leap. It would be a nice benefit for CC, unless the baddies are Lightning Enchanted.
No hammerdin because I was uncertain if they could really be effective without gear. I tried to get builds that are fairly gear independent, since they have no promises on what gear will be provided. Even the Insight that I am counting on has no promise of ever appearing. Also, when combined with the conviction from the Avenger, the Enchantress just get that much more awesome.
The amazon is in the group because she has ranged elemental damage that isn't fire. Poison javs aren't affect by conviction (IIRC), and the other options involve freezing and losing corpses, or more fire dependence. The decoys might help out a bit, otherwise she won't be the most useful character around. Again, I figured she might be a better fit than a sorc because of the mana regen. Javazon can still hurt without mana, sorcs can't. It just seemed like a safer alternative without promised mana regen gear.
FoHer was chosen for the ranged damage he could offer. I didn't know if hell A5 would cause problems with spear-chuckers and flaming archers. Conviction will already be had by the Avenger, so he can put on Salvation to boost resists. Other defensive auras might be necessary, but I find it unlikely. But the option will always be there. I guess he could play medic though, if the situation would require it. We could rebuild him into a Holy Bolter.
Fireclaw bear was chosen over Fury druid to bring some Tankiness to the table. I expected he would have at least a 10 sec stun on shockwave, and that would be his primary duty. The fireclaw was bonus and easy to achieve plenty of hurt with. It is highly dependent upon breaking fire resists though. Can a summoner provide enough tankiness for the party? I don't know about their damage output or their summons survivability.
Thanks for the critiques though! Keep them coming!

[Winthur]

For the ES sorc, I originally just needed the additional AR and damage to the other people in the group. I decided that I could nearly max the Enchant synergies and get a few points into static field with only a minimal drop in fire damage. With that many people on the screen I am sure that the small drop in damage will be overcome by the effect of static. The reason I chose ES was because ES and telekineses synergize to provide a 1:.75 damage trade for life to mana. So there is even a little bit of damage reduction involved. I just figured since warmth would be maxed the sorc would have a TON of mana regen anyways, so it's like having a font of healing underneath your feet.

Fair enough. I suppose I never really bothered to understand Energy Shield beyond "it can't be a one-point wonder". I don't think you still really considered just how good in PvM is Firewall, particularly if you dedicated CC-bots in your team. It deals a lot of damage if you can just figure out how to cast them which admittedly takes practice. FW is IMHO *the* spell of 1.13.


No hammerdin because I was uncertain if they could really be effective without gear. I tried to get builds that are fairly gear independent, since they have no promises on what gear will be provided. Even the Insight that I am counting on has no promise of ever appearing. Also, when combined with the conviction from the Avenger, the Enchantress just get that much more awesome.

Well, as pointed out in the link, hammerdins can be viable damage dealers when naked, so... :smalltongue: Having conviction really does make everything a little different.


The amazon is in the group because she has ranged elemental damage that isn't fire. Poison javs aren't affect by conviction (IIRC), and the other options involve freezing and losing corpses, or more fire dependence. The decoys might help out a bit, otherwise she won't be the most useful character around. Again, I figured she might be a better fit than a sorc because of the mana regen. Javazon can still hurt without mana, sorcs can't. It just seemed like a safer alternative without promised mana regen gear.
You're forgetting that you can't replenish javelins in Iron Man if they do not restock themselves on their own; plus Sorcies just seem much much more versatile, Amas are basically great beatsticks with good personal survival skill but IMHO they don't necessarily bring anything to the table other class would. Of course she's a viable damage dealer but to forsake a sorc for her? Debatable.

FoHer was chosen for the ranged damage he could offer. I didn't know if hell A5 would cause problems with spear-chuckers and flaming archers. Conviction will already be had by the Avenger, so he can put on Salvation to boost resists. Other defensive auras might be necessary, but I find it unlikely. But the option will always be there. I guess he could play medic though, if the situation would require it. We could rebuild him into a Holy Bolter.

Haven't seen enough FoHer in PvM so I can't tell, to be quite honest.


Fireclaw bear was chosen over Fury druid to bring some Tankiness to the table. I expected he would have at least a 10 sec stun on shockwave, and that would be his primary duty. The fireclaw was bonus and easy to achieve plenty of hurt with. It is highly dependent upon breaking fire resists though. Can a summoner provide enough tankiness for the party? I don't know about their damage output or their summons survivability.
Thanks for the critiques though! Keep them coming!
Fair enough, I never even considered fury druid, werebears of all sorts are much more viable just for Shockwave. Shockwave Summoner is one of the safer ways of beating the game and probably the safest rescue tank but doesn't really do much stand-alone. Fireclaw DPS would speed up your clearing but you have to figure out if you need it. It would certainly be much much stronger with the Conviction pallies running around. However summons are just pretty damn safe. I might be overplaying the "safety" part a little though, maybe I'm not estimating the challenges of the Iron Man mode correctly.

[-teacup]

[...] ironman [...]
First of all, I'd like to note that D2 balance is messed up with 8 players. Probably almost any (not insane) party could make it through the game in ironman with 8 players if the players are decently skilled. But some parties would certainly work better than others. In general, you want to pick builds that do not depend directly on weapon damage--instead rely on skill damage. Putting points in energy is usually a bad idea, but in ironman, it may be helpful to invest some hard points there.

There are some ways your party could be better though. In general, your choice to use conviction + enchant + skellymancer is a good one. Anything not FI should go down fast with a fully chanted party. Also, the prayer aura stacks, unlike every other aura. Since you can't go back to town to heal, all the A5 mercs should instead be A2 prayer mercs. One of these prayer mercs should eventually get an Insight if at all possible. Also, I'd only keep a single A1 merc (for inner sight).

Also, some of the weirder horadic cube formulas can be very useful in iron man. Take a look at the list (http://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp/items/cube.shtml). In particular, if you find any good weapons or armors you may want to use the repair formulas (ort + weapon, ral + armor) since you can't go back to town. Hoard those orts and rals. Since lightning and fire are the most important resists, you can also socket them in armor/helms to fill out your resists. Nonmagical helms/armor filled with orts and rals can make serviceable gear when you're poor.

Everyone gets the runes for ancient's pledge from qual-kek as a quest reward. 3 socket shields drop frequently enough that almost every one can make that useful rune word eventually.

As for your party make up, well, there's TONS of different ways you could do this. I'll make suggestions/refinements that are close to what you've already chosen:

-Avenger Paladin with a Blessed Aim merc (once they reach NM mode)
Vengence's elemental damage is entirely dependent on weapon damage. All other sources of enhanced damage (ED) such as from auras, spirits, curses, etc, do not factor into your elemental damage with vengance. I'd say at minimum you need a 150% ED elite weapon for hell. You have no guarantee of finding such a weapon. I recommend a conviction zealot instead. Beyond the obligatory 4 in zeal and 20 in conviction you can do whatever you want with the rest of your points (holy shield would be nice). Also the blessed aim merc should go to some one else. Conviction comes with an absurd -%defense bonus (-90% at lvl 20), and since you should almost always have conviction up you won't need the blessed aim. Conviction's smallish area may make it so some of your allies won't always benefit from it, so give the blessed aim merc to some one else in the event that they are a screen away from you.


-Enchantress using ES as a tanky character and an A5 merc
Sorcs don't make very good tanks without nice gear, and you'll attack pretty slowly. If you want to attack at all, I recommend a bow, but I wouldn't even bother. You have plenty of other people that can tank much better than you. Plus you have a lot of people to keep chanted: 8 players, 8 mercs, 8 skeletons, a golem, revives, and more. You're probably going to be pretty busy just keeping everyone covered with enchant. It can be hard to get everyone with the way the minions keep scampering around. Technically, you don't need to chant people like the necro, but I find it easier to just spamcast the spell on everyone instead of worrying "Oh that caster won't actually attack with a weapon, so he doesn't need chant.".

The party's found +skill gear should probably go to the enchantress first. Leaf is incredibly useful and always obtainable for chant. If you find a grey 2 socket staff with +enchant that could be your end game chant buffing weapon.

ES is a bad idea for many reasons--it requires a high skill point investement, it prevents you from being able to teleport away in disasters, it has effectively 0% elemental resistance, but most importantly, mana burn monsters do about 256 times more mana damage than they are supposed to due to a bug. There's only one PvM build where I think ES is an ok idea--a hardcore untwinked blind teleporting magic finding sorceress. And that requires hard points in teleport to keep the cost around 4-6 mana (so you can keep teleporting if you get mana burned).

You should max enchant and its synergies first, stopping only to get the necessary 1 point wonders. When that's done, you can spend the rest of you points in fire wall (as someone else already suggested) or static. I'd pick static and just alternate between keeping everyone chanted and staticing all the monsters on the screen.


-Skelemancer with a Might merc
Always a solid option, especially with chant. You're in charge of keeping useful curses over the monster's heads.


-Cry Baby Barb (WCs and Find Item/Find Potion) with an A1 Merc
WC does pitiful damage without heavy investment in its synergies, and it's synergies are all debuffs, which are generally inferior to and do not stack with necro curses. For crowd control, shockwave is infinitely better than war cry, and I think (though am not 100% certain) that if a monster is hit with war cry after being stunned with shock wave, the pitiful war cry duration will overwrite the 10 seconds of stun provide by shock wave. That is bad.

You do want the barb for it's awesome buffs though, so 20 in battle orders, 20 in shout, and 1 in battle command. Find potion/find item shouldn't get more than a couple points each because of the horrific diminishing returns. For your attack skill I recommend anything that attacks fast so you can apply that handy chant damage boost. I'd pick whirlwind (you may just want to single point it to keep the mana cost down), but double swing or frenzy could also work.


-Lightning Javazon and a Prayer merc
A strong option, but you won't be playing it like a normal javazon. When most people hear lightning javazon they think lightning fury because, well, the skill is awesome. In your case since you can't go back to town for repairs, you will be using charged strike and lightning strike far more frequently than usual. I'd only use fury when you have a big mob perfectly lined up. While not as strong as fury, the melee lightning skills are still very powerful. Charged strike (especially with conviction and static) can kill act bosses very quickly. The (1 Spear + 1 Quiver of Arrows = 1 Stack of Javelins) horadric cube formula could be very useful for this character.


-Fireclaw Bear with a Defiance merc
Nah, you have something much better to do with your druid spot. Make a shock wave summoner! It's probably the second safest build in the game. Level 15 shockwave stuns a monster for 10 seconds, the highest possible stun length (ignore the skill text that says otherwise), and you can spam the heck out of that skill to keep everything on the screen stunned. While you and your minions won't do awesome damage, the grizzly is an excellent tank, and the rest of your party will feel like they are playing on easy mode. Max oak or heart of the wolverine and make sure you recast them when they die.


-Fist of the Heavens Pally with Salvation aura and an A1 Merc
First of the heavens + conviction is a painfully slow killer in single player. With 8 people in the game the damage is irrelevant. A blessed hammer pally would be more effective even without concentrate up (assuming you invested substantially in synergies). Or this guy could use zeal just like the other one. While boring, it would be effective.

You'll want to max salvation, not for the awful diminishing returns on resistance, but for the maximum radius. You don't want your buddies getting caught without it.


-Tiger Strike Assasin with an A5 merc
Tiger strike...? Oh--you must mean tiger strike/dragon tail, which will do absurd amounts of damage in this party. Since dragon tail explosion damage depends directly on the amount of physical damage you deal to the target, your favorite curse is amp. For the "Ha, I never miss" defense reduction and the massive -elemental resists, your favorite aura is conviction. So, yeah, your assassin will be happy. Just get the highest damage boots you can find, all other mods on your boots are secondary.

She will also have lots of extra points. Cloak of shadows overwrites curses, so you shouldn't use that. Mind blast shouldn't really be necessary with all the stun being put out by the bear. The shadows are both blah and unnecessary with all the other summons. If you go dual claw you could put a some in claw block, but the diminishing returns make it not worth maxing. Fade has similar problems. I don't really like claw block because it doesn't work when moving, and martial arts assassins have to move around a lot. Venom damage is bad, but a better choice than the other skills I've mention so far. I however, would put my points in lightning sentry and a synergy. You can fire and forget a bunch of lightning sentries for some multi-target non fire/physical damage. It'll help out the amazon when you run into fire immunes.

The people in your party that use weapons can use whatever junk they find lying around since most of their damage will come from enchant or in the assassin's case, their boots.

That's just my personal take on your set up. As I said earlier, lots of other things would work. For example:
3 sorcs (1 fire, 1 cold, 1 light)
3 hammerdins (one runs salvation, the other concentration, the last runs meditation until you find insight, then conviction)
1 buffing then whatever barb
1 shock wave summoner druid

Actually I think that any team that includes:
1 buffing barb
1 paladin with salvation
1 summoner with crowd control skills (druid OR necro)
1 person who can do a lot of nonphysical damage
will succeed at iron man. If you're good you can make do with even less. People have done iron man alone.

[Spuddles]

Could 8 virtually naked characters actually do Hell without grinding for gear? Monsters have huge stacks of HP at that point.

[Winthur]

Could 8 virtually naked characters actually do Hell without grinding for gear? Monsters have huge stacks of HP at that point.

As I posted previously (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE9C46EE1768811A3), there was an 8-man playthrough where they all had literally naked characters and managed to finish the game and complete the Uber Tristram event. So yeah it's possible with enough crowd control and non-gear dependant damage.

[Spuddles]

As I posted previously (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE9C46EE1768811A3), there was an 8-man playthrough where they all had literally naked characters and managed to finish the game and complete the Uber Tristram event. So yeah it's possible with enough crowd control and non-gear dependant damage.

Oh cool, that's really interesting.