Strongest 2-character party?

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Strongest 2-character party?

With all this talk about "this build is best" and "no, I got more damage per second", I thought I'd force all of you into new lines of thought. So here goes: what's the strongest 2-character party? In other worse: "which two level 99 characters with all quests completed are best suited for doing a full clear of all hell areas". Anything goes, except for maphack

Stuff you might want if you wanna complete hell:
1. lots of damage.
2. three different damage types (preferably all 6).
4. lots of defense.
5. a reasonably performable encounter plan.

So, what party complies with that? My guess is Skellemancer / Hammerdin.

1. Skellemancer:

20 Raise Skeleton
20 Skeleton Mastery
20 Revive (Clay Golem, Blood Golem, Iron Golem)
1 Summon Resists (Golem Mastery)
1 Fire Golem

1 Lower Resists (Amp Dam, Weaken, Iron Maiden, Terror, Life Tap, Decrepify)

20 Poison Nova (Teeth, Corpse Explosion, Posion Dagger)
10 Poison Explosion (synergy for PN)
1 Bone Prison (Bone Armor, Bone Wall, Bone Spear)

Items: +skills, +mana, +mana regen, 75 res all.

Stats:
-- Str: enough for heaviest gear
-- Dex: Max block
-- Vit: everything else
-- NRG: none

Merc: Might on legs - give him leech and defense.

2. Hammerdin:
20 Hammer (Holy Bolt)
20 Concentration
20 Vigor (Prayer, Defiance, Cleansing)
20 Blessed Aim (Might)
20 Holy Shield (Smite, Charge)

3 skill points left... pick for yourself. Perhaps Defiance as a synergy.

Items: +skills, +mana, +mana regen, 75 res all. Famine (runeword) on weapon switch (or some other weapon with different elemental damage.

Stats:
-- Str: enough for heaviest gear
-- Dex: Max block
-- Vit: everything else
-- NRG: none

Merc: Holy freeze on legs. Give him leech and defense. Damage is nice, too.

Encounter Strategy:
1. The necro roams around until his minions whack at something.
2. the necro fires steady poison novas while the minions whack at the creep.
3. Meanwhile, the Pala has eliminated any tactical targets (shamans in particular) and/or scouted ahead.
4. Repeat steps 1-3 until baal is dead or stuff gets hairy.

Hairy Stuff Resolution Strategy:
what's hairy? Phys+Magic immunes. luckily, afaik, that only occurs on non-vanilla monsters, in which case the vanilla monsters should be cleared out first, then the pala can charge-lock the immune with an elemental damage weapon.

... That's my basic idea ...

of course, a naked punching sorc would own both of these guys

*/

 

[zrk]

maybe hammerdin and bonemancer: bonemancer spams prisons ans spears/spirits and hammerdin does the main killin.

 

[tydon]

A hammerdin with concentration, a might merc, and a wf zon with a defiance merc would kill very well in almost all areas, pally tanks, zon sprays...

Another idea would be a pure lightning trapsin and a blizzard sorc, one with defiance merc, one with HF. Ya, they only have 2 elements, but overall, anything cold/light immune would only have to provide one body from the mercs before DS could be used. I think this 2 person party could do very very well...

 

[CRS]

How does a FO/CM sorc do paired up with a Conviction/Vengeance Paladin?

 

[Omikron8]

How does a FO/CM sorc do paired up with a Conviction/Vengeance Paladin?

I agree a maxed out blizzard or FO or fireball or meteor or (insert insane damage spell here) along with a paladin with level 30 conviction (around -140% monster res) should be able to destroy ANYTHING in the game within seconds as long as the paladin can tank sufficiently for the sorc.

 

[tydon]

A pally and any caster (barring necros)
or
A pally and a ranged attacker, aka, zon

 

[illa]

Hammerdin + Bliz sorc can do baalruns including baal in 3 minutes...

 

[tl998]

Notice virtually every combination includes a paladin.

 

[Mr Evil]

An interesting combination would be a summoner necro and an enchant sorc. Imagine adding 1k of fire damage to ~12 skeleton warriors and a zillion revives, boosted significantly by the lower ressit curse. Even dual fire/physical immunes will be no problem, because one or other of the immunities will be breakable with amp damage or lower resist.

 

[Soepgroente]

Nec + sorc

Nec = skeletons, each enchanted by the sorceress. Whooping dmg. Then the nec lower resists everything. Lightning or FO will whoop every fire immune's behind with LR (yea that other word is filtered). Then you have CE and stuff like that. Amazing.

 

[ChiComm]

Fanat pally and Strafezon. Think about it...95% chance to hit for zon, dealing close to 5K damage from afar...

How would a hammerdin and blizz sorc work together (just wondering...i'm not sure how to deal with all those blacksouls in the WS K)

 

[Bz-OwnZ]

Furyzon and Meteorbsorcie

3 elements with nice physical. Killing speed would be absolutely insane.

 

[lextalionis]

Notice virtually every combination includes a paladin.

Thats' because Paladins and Necro's are really good at helping one another. I think the plan would have to be something that would help each other with their active powers. IE: Concentration active with BH would help Amazons.

Something else to look at is the equipment they wear and their minions wear since now we have equipment with aura's. You might want to give an Azurerath to an Act 3 merc.

 

[bunghole]

Im thinkin Viction with a fire sorc, though the skellimancer/enchant sorc seems like a pretty genius idea. Never thought of that. I wonder if on top of enchant you could get a decent orb with frozen mastery? Just my two cents.

 

[lextalionis]

Im thinkin Viction with a fire sorc, though the skellimancer/enchant sorc seems like a pretty genius idea. Never thought of that. I wonder if on top of enchant you could get a decent orb with frozen mastery? Just my two cents.

Decent yes, since you only need a little over 60 points to max Enchant and its synergies

 

[bunghole]

ya, i thought it had 2 synergies. Well, since you cant max orb and frozen mastery, what would you do? Just put into handy skills like tele and chilling armor and such? ooh, or perhaps max static, thats usually fun.

 

[lextalionis]

ya, i thought it had 2 synergies. Well, since you cant max orb and frozen mastery, what would you do? Just put into handy skills like tele and chilling armor and such? ooh, or perhaps max static, thats usually fun.

Well I wouldn't say you can't

20 Warmth
20 Enchant
20 Mastery
2 Prereqs (Fireball, and Fire Bolt)
62 Total

At level 80 you would have 92 skills that still leaves 30 points, that would be level 20 FO and about 5 in CM, not elite, but still not bad. You get the mass chill from this too. And it gives you something to do other than power up your Necro's minions.

If you are thinking of attacking yourself I guess you can zeal with your weapon switch, or you could go the Demon Machine Enchanted Splash damage route, this is hit with some sort of ranged weapon modifier, but it maybe worth it with splash and pierce. * The necro or his minion in this build should be wielding a Beast weapon to provide everyone with Fanatism. This helps with minions attack rate and the Sorceresses attack rate. Conceveably you can fire an arrow or bolt or two between Frozen Orb Blasts.

The other way to go would be to look for Fire Skills and let your necro:

Inferno-Already has some nice synergy help, but its a little buggy to hit things with and its damage is still a bit low, it is an aimable FW, with less damage. At it an its synergies at level 20 with no +skill items damage is Average Fire Damage: 1923-2085 per second. But it gets a good bonus from plus skills.

Fire Wall Average Fire Damage: 3377-3439 per second, it has no synergy, but it still will go up in damage and will always be higher fire damage than equalelant Inferno regardless of synergies. And with all the minions running around meleeing. Its likely things will stay put. So this might actually be a really good way to go. Some melee builds like this skill because they can melee their target and keep it in the Firewall too.

Meteor Fire Damage: 2514-2681
19: Radius: 4 yards
22: Average Fire Damage: 678-741 per second
1: Mana Cost: 26

Hydra: Hydra Fire Damage: 361-427 with 1 point in its two synergies Firebolt and Fireball. I just don't think you can make this work with everything else. I only like it as a distraction and radar.

Lightning Mastery: This isn't a bad idea. If you are going to melee or bow then this isn't a bad idea to improve your elemental damage. This can be pretty significant and at least its more damage for you.

Cold Mastery can work similarly with a Buriza, but I've not heard this is great damage either.

Round Up: I'd advise Fire Wall with this build or Frozen Orb.

The other thing to remember is this build is a lot of Fire Damage and pretty good physical damage from Skeletons and zeal damage. So what skill points does the necro have left to play with and what does he do with them? Bone? Poison is so slow? We know he'll be using some curses. Laughably the Necro could put on Trang's and do some Fire Damage with FW, Meteor, and FB, this wouldn't hurt the skill points available for nasty skeles and would give him an attack.

 

[eatbeef]

Hammerdin + Bliz sorc can do baalruns including baal in 3 minutes...

nice combo, duel hammerdins are very effective(one pally must use enigma).

 

[Asuka Langley Soryu]

Notice virtually every combination includes a paladin.

Here is what I do, Meteorb + Concentrate barb.

I do baal runs in 3-5 minutes just using the barb to shout me and my merc, then I got kill baal. Time variations differ due to size of wsk2 and 3

But when I get there its usually only a few minutes to kill. My meteorb / Holyfreeze merc with reapers toll/shaft/tals helm dispatch everything with ease.

I don't remember how it all breaks down but I do 2 elements (3 technically with static) and he does physical cold and magic damage.

The whole time I've played this sorc I've only ran into 2 monsters that I could not kill anywhere in the whole game. Both were Immune to fire/cold stone skin and had tons of regen and leach. This was all before I switch to reapers toll from a bone hew.

BUT I would say for the best party, Zerker Barb + defiance or might merc and a Meteorb + holy freeze merc.

I think this combo would be the most powerful for a few simple facts, you can do 5 to 6 types of damage the only thing is poison wich can be done with charms. But you have major cold and fire, lightning with static, physical from all of the mercs and barb, and magic damage with zerc.

Combined with shoults it makes you a very very powerful team since you double the life of all of your mercs and you.

 

[Grandar King of Trolls]

What do you think of a bone mancer and an iron barb? You'd be hard pressed to find a better tank, and with battle command, bo, & shout, what minions the necro has will last a long time. I'm trying this out right now and it is really fun. Throw in a might merc and an act 3 cold merc and let the mancer bone spirit/curse/corpse explode, etc and let the barb zerk on backup. Basically, both of these builds are being customed tailored to each other as we go along. We team up with a vengeance tesladin for some real carnage. We haven't made it to hell yet, but I think they'll do ok. What do you guys think?