Diablo II: Patriarch Silverbolt

Silverbolt is a Fanatic Zealot, a Paladin that utilizes the Zeal attack and Fanaticism aura to enhance his physical attack. This is the type of character that requires a good, high damaging weapon in order to be effective. It's a very simple build with few variations, normally in the area of how to deal with physically immune monsters. Mine followed the mainstream concept of maximizing damage output above all else.

Silverbolt started off untwinkled, as per the norm, but with the plan to upgrade his weapon early and often in order to keep his damage as high as possible. Progress in the beginning was slow but steady as the first act of Normal normally doesn't have any major obstacles I haven't seen before. Silverbolt progressed through nicely and with the addition of some lightning/fire resistance charms was able to tank the lightning beetles of Act II and shaman of Act III comfortably.

Still his progress the farther into Normal he got was slower and slower. And this with the constant twinkling of weapons: Bladebone to Rusthandle to The Chieftain to Steeldriver to Hand of Blessed Light. As such the mobs of monsters couldn't simply be engaged head on after Act I, they would swarm too much and overwhelm our hero. Instead Silverbolt could be found hiding behind his trusted Desert Warrior mercenary and letting the more hardy companion soak up as much damage as possible. Environmental obstacles were also used to great effect in this regard, such as the doorways of the Act II tombs.

AS expected Act IV lead to a fair amount of close calls, but no NDE until Silverbolt was suddenly surrounded by spawners and their kin. With a pillar to his back Silverbolt had no where to run and ran out of potions before the spawners ran out of kids. Dying in Normal really wasn't part of the plan, but it did show some overconfidence on my part as a boss pack of spawners really needs to be handled a bit more delicately, no matter the difficulty. After that Silverbolt was able to complete out the difficulty without any other dire circumstances, including fights against Diablo and Baal.

This brought him to Nightmare, at level 45. Here just about all of his end game equipment could be worn, and was. All that was missing was his weapon, boots and gloves. Even though his damage output didn't grow considerably, his defensive ability gained an exponential boots. Max block was suddenly very possible along with 90% resistance to all elements. As a result Silverbolt blew through all of Nightmare difficulty with almost no problems. In fact he used only three health potions the entire difficulty, not counting any that went to the merc of course. He did get caught once by an Oblivion Knight in mid-zeal cycle in the Chaos Sanctuary, from which death was the only outcome. I truly thought all of the OKs were farther away, otherwise I would never have tried to zeal in their presence.

Upon entering Hell both Silverbolt and his mercenary, a Might Desert Warrior, were almost full equipped, all that was missing was the merc's Reaper's Toll. This was my answer to the physically immune monsters that would be encountered, namely Ghosts, Swarms and unique bosses. Silverbolt's single point in Vengeance was purely for any unbreakable PIs. Silverbolt took Hell at P3, as I had a feeling he could handle it. He could, all the way through.

Tactics were reversed from NM, Silverbolt was in front tanking the monster mobs while his mercenary hung behind and poked them with his polearm but mainly remained in a safe position. Due to max block and around 11k defense Silverbolt was as much a tank as possible. That coupled with a decent amount of life leech meant he could survive almost any mob encountered head-on. The only monsters he let the mercenary lead was against Ghosts so they didn't drain his mana away.

Silverbolt did keep the trend going with a single death in Act IV. I was being careful and using Vengeance only in the Chaos Sanctuary. However while swinging against a Doom Knight one of those mana draining wisps drained away all of Silverbolt's mana almost instantly (it was low to begin with). At almost the exact same time an Oblivion Knight cursed him with Iron Maiden. So when Silverbolt's swing landed home he died, or his swing after killed him. Either way an unfortunately chain of events conspired to Silverbolt's only death in Hell. From there onward he ripped through the rest of the difficulty without any other unfortunate occurrences. Baal and his minions were almost anti-climatic after all the effort of getting to the World Stone Keep in the first place. Especially since the Throne Room consisted of Dolls, OKs and the Witches that kept Silverbolt cursed the entire level. At least that overrode Iron Maiden, the only plus possible.

No plans to do anything else with Silverbolt. I did find a Lower Kurast map with two campfires for him. It's possible I'll use him for LK running to pop all chests/logs/bodies in the area once and a while. I'm not really going to try for thousands of runs with him, since a single run takes a few minutes easily. Other than that Silverbolt will retire comfortably.

Stats:
Level 84
Strength - 105(126)
Dexterity - 78(106)
Vitality - 317(352)
Energy - 15(15)

Life - 1157(1357)
Mana - 139(317)

Lightning Resistance - 90
Fire Resistance - 90
Cold Resistance - 88
Poison Resistance - 57

Skills:
Zeal - 20(28)
Fanaticism - 20(26)
Sacrifice - 20(28)
Holy Shield - 20(28)
Vengeance - 1(9)
Defiance - 7(13)

Equipment:
Weapon: Heaven's Light (Amn-Shael)
Armor: Guardian Angel (Ort)
Shield: Herald of Zakarum (Pdiamond)
Boots: Gore Rider
Belt: String of Ears
Gloves: Laying of Hands
Helm: Rockstopper (Thul)
Ring 1: Raven Frost
Ring 2: Angelic Halo
Amulet: Angelic Wings

Mercenary (Might Desert Warrior)
Helm: Vampire Gaze
Armor: Duriel's Shell
Weapon: Reaper's Toll

Hellforge
NM - Io
Hell - Fal