Necro & Pala Untwinked Solo Hell

[LaZeR]

Necro & Pala Untwinked Solo Hell

My friend and I want to play some old school and try soloing (dueting) untwinked- no connection to the b.net realm whatsoever- all the way from A1 Normal to Hell Baal.

We've finally decided on the two chars:
Hammerdin (ofc)
&
Summoner (Mostly CE naturaly)


So we thought we should ask around for some help for gearing them up.

Bear in mind it's untwinked- so no trades or anything. We'll try even without MF runs.


Any ideas?

Thanks

 

[Noodle]

Re: Necro & Pala Untwinked Solo Hell

With that duo, you're going to have a tough time in the Maggot Lair. There won't be enough room for hammers to whirl, or for more than one summoned skeleton to attack. The paladin may want to throw a point in smite, and keep the best weapon you can find on hand to get the first corpse and let Corpse Explosion take over. It'll be very doable with some patience, though.

 

[xNamastex]

Re: Necro & Pala Untwinked Solo Hell

My first thought is that those 2 builds don't synergize each other very well other than the meat shield factor. You might want to consider changing the pally to a zealot. A lot of the curses will help the zealot and your army synergistically such as amp, decrep and life tap.

Other combos:

Necro + Javazon or Bowzon
Any sorc + Conviction Zealot

Best imho is Necro/Zealot as stated above.

 

[LaZeR]

Re: Necro & Pala Untwinked Solo Hell

1. I don't really like amaz. Don't know why, but I guess that's out.

2. Will the Conv break immunities even in Hell? And aren't those two chars a bit fragile without a meat shield?

3. I'm not really familiar with Zealots. Isn't he gear-heavy? Do you think it would be viable in Hell Untwinked with crappy gear?

With that duo, you're going to have a tough time in the Maggot Lair. There won't be enough room for hammers to whirl, or for more than one summoned skeleton to attack. The paladin may want to throw a point in smite, and keep the best weapon you can find on hand to get the first corpse and let Corpse Explosion take over. It'll be very doable with some patience, though.

Never thought of that. The Smite thing sound reasonalbe. But that would probably be the 1 place I would have any kind of a problem with this combo chars, isn't it?

 

[Noodle]

Re: Necro & Pala Untwinked Solo Hell

Yeah, Arcane Sanctuary could be a bit of a challenge too, with some of those narrow stairways and stuff. The rest of the game should be a breeze - use skellies to occupy monsters, hammers to get the first couple of corpses, and corpse explosion to kill everything else on the screen. Should be a killer team running Baal.

 

[DoomBoy]

Re: Necro & Pala Untwinked Solo Hell

With the respec in mind, here is something you might want to look at:

Boner + Holyfire Zealer in normal

Boner/CE + Holyshock Zealer in nightmare

Summoner/CE + Hammer/Smiter in hell

Hope that helps.

 

[viRTux]

Re: Necro & Pala Untwinked Solo Hell

Really it's only hell you need to be worried about. You can do whatever the hell you want normal/nightmare and it's a piece of cake (unless you really don't do MF runs).

That said, I've always like the zealot/necro idea. With amp, life tap, PIs and health are no issue for the zealot anymore, and fanaticism beefs up the minions. Add in double act 2 mercs (might and holy freeze), it shouldn't be too hard.

Hammerdins and summoners can both go untwinked through hell by themselves so obviously duet can too, just makes arcane/maggot harder.

I'd say the zealot.

 

[nolan16]

Re: Necro & Pala Untwinked Solo Hell

Wow.. not sure what everyone is thinking. That zealot is going to be TURRIBLE in hell without some twinking. This is SC i'm assuming?
I would probably do a hammerdin + summon necro or an avenger (conviction aura) + sorc (lightning).
I wouldn't recommend any melee chars if you are untwinked. With the avenger setup, the sorc will be doing most of the killing, but the killing would be fast.. That set up might not be as fun for the pally.
Really, you could put a hammerdin with any sort of caster and be fine untwinked (trapper, elemental druid, necro, sorc).

 

[krischan]

Re: Necro & Pala Untwinked Solo Hell

Apart from the problem with tight spaces, both characters have a common and very important need: +skills items. None of them needs decent armor or weapons (except for a good shield for the hammerdin). That's probably not good for untwinked play, it might produce arguments and most of the decent items will be useless.

 

[LaZeR]

Re: Necro & Pala Untwinked Solo Hell

Wow.
I'm lost.
One guy says a Zealot is a good idea, the other says it's terrible. Frankly, this may be a problem, since I don't have a whole lot of experience with Melees. However, that's why I'm interested on the other side to try them out.

So- again- I'm confused:
What IS a good 2 player combo for untwiking Hell, where both players can have fun?

 

[krischan]

Re: Necro & Pala Untwinked Solo Hell

The problem with untwinked play is that there aren't many choices to get along in hell mode. Melee and missile characters need expensive weapons which you will most probably won't have found when you need it.

That said, I've always like the zealot/necro idea. With amp, life tap, PIs and health are no issue for the zealot anymore, and fanaticism beefs up the minions. Add in double act 2 mercs (might and holy freeze), it shouldn't be too hard.

There is no amp+lifetap, it's either the one or the other. Both are curses and only one of them will work on an enemy at the same time. The skeletons of a summoner will probably be better than an untwinked melee character. A zealot would be completely useless in comparison if he doesn't have a really good weapon. I think I would try some sorc together with the necro. A blizzard sorc is probably best, she doesn't need as much support from +skills as other sorcs and FCR is only needed for teleportation. Mercs: Act2 nightmare offensive (might aura) + act 2 normal offensive (blessed aim), at least the one of the sorc having an Insight weapon (highest rune needed: Sol).

 

[LaZeR]

Re: Necro & Pala Untwinked Solo Hell

With a pretty standard untwink gear, I think we can come up with ~+6-7 skills.
Ain't that enough for casters, Hdin in particular?

And with a Blizzard Sorc she would be pretty crippled in Hell. Or should the Necro go for a big Lower Resist too?

 

[krischan]

Re: Necro & Pala Untwinked Solo Hell

With a pretty standard untwink gear, I think we can come up with ~+6-7 skills.
Ain't that enough for casters, Hdin in particular?

And with a Blizzard Sorc she would be pretty crippled in Hell. Or should the Necro go for a big Lower Resist too?

Summon necros have a problem with PIs, that's not really less of a disadvantage.

While cold immunes are the job of the necro, the sorc deals about fire PIs and fire immunes. PI -> no first corpse from summons -> no CE. Fire immune -> CE deals just half damage.

When decent gear is available, I would change to a two-element build, however.

 

[LaZeR]

Re: Necro & Pala Untwinked Solo Hell

Well, the main problem is that we want 2 builds that would almost always actully do some damage and not sit back on immunes.

That kind of leaves out any 1 Elemental build without Infinity. Or do Lower Resist can break immunes??

And leaves us with Magic, Physical and Melee builds. That's why we chose Hdin and Summoner. But are there any other options? Any Melee build that can actually survive Hell untwinked?

 

[krischan]

Re: Necro & Pala Untwinked Solo Hell

Lower resist can break immunities indeed, but if that's your plan, I would use a lightning sorc instead because typical LIs are easier to break than others while a lot of FIs and CIs are too far beyond 100% to be breakable at all. However, untwinked ones deal less damage than cold sorcs and if the monsters are cursed with lower resist, they won't be amped and the skeletons will have a harder time to kill them.

A hammerdin is helpless against all magic immunes, just like a cold sorc is helpless against cold immunes. I agree that there are more cold immunes than magic immunes, but a cold sorc will have no problem with monsters in tight spaces and lower resist will increase her damage (well, at least a bit) while it won't boost hammerdins at all. Also, I for myself don't like to play hammerdins because their hammer field has so many blind spots and it can be tough to target certain monsters, even weh n going very close. Running (in contrast to teleporting) has the disadvantage that your computer might have a slightly wrong idea of where your character really is and the difference is often great enough to decide about hitting or missng opponents.

A summon necro is a melee build in a certain way, it's just the skeletons which do the melee. All you need is distance attacks which kill the enemies while the skallies old them at bay. The necro has CE (which is half physical and half fire) and a cold sorc has blizzard. I suggested a cold sorc because she's pretty good at dealing decent damage with area spells, even if her skill bonuses are low.

Even with the best gear, there is no build which doesn't have a problem with certain kinds of monsters and things are expected to be a bit tougher (or a lot!) when playing untwinked, but that's the point of it all.