Diablo II: Patriarch Jade

Jade is a Tesladin, a paladin that utilizes the Holy Shock aura to deal damage to his enemies. I've never actually built such a character before, the closest I've come is a hybrid Teslafroster. This character is going to be build like a tank, but one that can also deal out significant amounts of damage. Still, he'll be able to solo the game without skipping any areas or monsters.

Jade started off untwinkled, as do pretty much all of my characters. As his main aura of Holy Shock doesn't become available until level 24 I knew that he would be a slow starter, and I wasn't disappointed. Using both a level one Holy Fire or Holy Freeze aura for the beginning Jade slowly but surely worked his way through the first two acts. It wasn't until the end of Act II that Holy Shock became available and Jade's power began to increase to a decent level.

Once that happened he took off in terms of ripping apart his enemies. Since there aren't really any immunites in Normal, once Holy Shock was available he walked through the rest of the difficulty without much problem. The only spot he hit a snag was the Chaos Sanctuary, unfortunately. In this area Jade attempted to lure all of the Doom Knights away from their Oblivion Knight overlords so they could be dealt with away from any possibility of being cursed with Iron Maiden. The plan was working quite well, until an OK followed the DKs and caught Jade mid-Zeal cycle.

That turned out to be his only death in Normal. Everything beyond that posed no problems and very quickly Jade was in Nightmare, where things went pretty much the same up until Act II. At this point Jade's damage output was pretty much set but he hadn't really paid that much attention to defense, nor to placing any points into his stats. I was attempting to waste as few points as possible and it cost me a pair of deaths in the desert. Mods of monsters were dealing decent damage to Jade due to low life and zero block (no dexterity) so it really was only a matter of time before that caught up to me.

At this point Jade was level 54 and therefore could equip all of his endgame equipment, so he did. That enabled me to place all of his stat points as well. From this point onward Jade was a Juggernaut and simply ripped through the rest of Nightmare with no problems, even at p8.

Which leads us to Hell difficulty. Due to his ease of dealing with the latter stages of NM and my experience with Lucian I decided to tackle Hell at p3 instead of my normal p1. This lasted all the way to the end as Tesladins are fairly overpowered creatures. Lightning immune mobs did give Jade pause, but none ended up taking too long for him to eliminate. As such progress through Hell as made at a decent pace. I can't say any particularly weird occurrences or situations appeared in Jade's journey.

As such he dealt with everything that was thrown his way, including a pair of LI Ancients. This was followed by OKs in the WSK level 2, Gloams in level 3 and OKs and Gloams in the Throne Room. Apparently the game was making sure I had an ultimate challenge to end Jade's questing, which I didn't mind. Jade wiped out the opposition and then handily defeated Baal's minions and Baal himself to end his journey.

Some interesting facts about Jade. His mercenary was a Defiance Desert mercenary and with the aura Jade's defense was around 12k, which is above the 10k mark where defense actually means anything. This is why he maxed out Holy Shield, as normally I leave that at level 5 and simply recast it more often. As a result Jade was a very good tank and could stand up to just about anything, which was a big reason why he didn't have too many extremely challenging situations to deal with in Hell. More often than not I didn't even realize I was facing a boss until it was time to pick up the loot.

I don't have any future plans for Jade. Perhaps he'll join a multiplayer game or two, but for now he's retired.

Stats:
Level 84
Strength - 78(165)
Dexterity - 86(136)
Vitality - 336(383)
Energy - 15(27)

Life - 1367(1214)
Mana - 197(139)

Lightning Resistance - 95
Fire Resistance - 90
Cold Resistance - 90
Poison Resistance - 90

Skills:
Holy Shock - 20(23)
Resist Lightning - 20(23)
Salvation - 20(23)
Holy Shield - 20(25)
Zeal - 4(9)
Fanaticism - 1(4)

Equipment:
Weapon: Cresent Moon Phase Blade
Switch Weapon: Baranar's Star
Armor: Guardian Angel (15% IAS jewel)
Shield: Herald of Zakarum (Pdiamond)
Switch Shield: eth Herald of Zakarum
Boots: Goblin Toe
Belt: ID Detail
Gloves: IK Forge
Helm: Rockstopper (15% IAS jewel)
Ring 1: Raven Frost
Ring 2: Nature's Peace
Amulet: Saracen's Chance

Mercenary (Defiance Desert Warrior)
Helm: Tal's Mask
Armor: Shaftstop
Weapon: Reaper's Toll

Hellforge
NM - Ko
Hell - Lem