Double Threat Barb DblThreatIII is now a lvl 30 Hardcore barb in Act 4 Norm. Been playing on players 6 all the way. His main skills are double swing, axe mastery, and sword mastery. His find item skill is also pretty high (41% chance). The idea with him is to be able to make use of whatever he finds from monster drops or gambles, without trading or muling from other chars. Since he specializes in two types of weapons instead of just one, this essentially doubles the chance that the weapons he finds will be good rares/magics/uniques for him to use. Right now he is wielding two rare ~60% ed war swords and is progressing nicely through Act 4. He is using an Act 2 defensive merc and gave him a Bloodthief Brandistock and a rare cold dmg circlet. I'm hoping he can go all the way thru to Act 5 Hell without muling/trading from anyone. Watch for more detailed stats/shots soon...
Oh yes, DblThreatIII has a sad family history.... His grandfather, DblThreat, who was also Hardcore and built under the same principles, was killed by Duriel in Act 2 Normal. His father, DblThreatJr, got a little farther but was killed (by my own ignorance) by Ssark the Burning in the Spider Cavern in Act 3 Normal. So I guess you could say DblThreatIII is looking to avenge the deaths of his ancestors...
Good luck from me as well. I don't think I have the skills to make it through hell with a melee character like you are attempting.
The Battle With Diablo The battle with Diablo tonight was quite interesting... I had the game on players 6 the whole time. I entered the Chaos Sanctuary, fought my way thru, got to the seals. I was expecting the worst from Ventar the Unholy and his gang of venom lords. Their fire breath can pack a punch. Immediately after I opened the seal and saw the swirling clouds, I ran away into the middle of the Chaos Sanctuary to try to lure individual Venom Lords away from the pack, because they were only really deadly in a group. As I cautiously made my way back to the area, my merc went on ahead, as he tends to do, and I winced as I saw him immediately surrounded by five of the hulking creatures. I was expecting him to get roasted in a flash, but to my surprise he held his ground and tanked them easily. The 9% life steal from the Bloodthief Brandistock, combined with its fast attack speed, was probably what was keeping him alive. I'll have to remember that. Anyway, I killed all the Venom Lords and opened the rest of the seals without too much trouble. Then Diablo did his thing, shaking the screen and turning it red and whatnot, and the battle was on. I had 75 fire res, so his fire attacks were not hurting too much, and almost about 1k defense, so his melee attack was not hurting too much, but his pink lightning attack hurt like a B*TCH. Since my barb was dual-wielding, and had no room for a shield, the physical part of the lightning attack was hitting me full blast every time Diablo opened up on me with it. That, and my lite res was not that good. My life bulb (about 450) was being sliced to less than half with every hose. I found the best tactic was to melee Diablo, getting in a few cheap hits, and then running around like a headless chicken for a few seconds so I would be on the move in case he used the lightning on me. Meanwhile, my merc was invaluable. For some reason Diablo was focused on killing me, so while I ran around and around, avoiding his lightning, the merc was standing right next to him, hitting him again and again. It looked like it hurt, too; the Open Wounds on the Bloodthief was making the Big D bleed all over the damn place. Whenever I TP'ed out to buy potions and then back in, all I needed to do to find Diablo was to follow the ridiculously large trail of blood. He put up a good fight, but he was no match for DblThreatIII. My merc got the last hit in, and because he dealt cold dmg with his attack, Diablo actually shattered into ice cubes when he died (so he was unable to do that death scene where he groans and falls to the ground). I thought this was funny for some reason. The drop was absolutely horrible. Five rares that I had absolutely no use for. They weren't even good enough to be used by other classes. I was more than glad to sell them. So I got ready for Act 5, entered the portal, and...the game crashed. It threw me back out to Windows, something which it had done before not infrequently, and I restarted Diablo to see where it had last saved my progress. Sure enough, the gate to Act 5 was no longer open, Diablo was still alive, and the quest was still incomplete. So all that for nothin', basically....anyone else ever had that happen?
Serious bummer! Can't say that's ever happened to me and I'm grateful for it. What a crappy time for it to happen, too. Congrats on the first round, though. You'll do it again, never fear. My HC frenzy barb managed to take D out solo on /players 8 with only 1/3 the def (though I had higher res, like 65 each IIRC). Used a Steel Morning Star and a socketed rare long sword with dual-leech and a perfect skull/flawles sapphire combo. Like you, I found perverse enjoyment in the copious blood flow from the big lizard. Took about 7 TP's for pots, though. But he didn't shatter. That must have been VERY cool. Now, go back and kick him in the cods for real.
I had the same crash to windows happen with my concentrate barb in the save place. Neither my frenzier nor my WW barb had that problem though. Very odd. It happened every time I tried with that char, all 4 or 5 times.
