Diablo II: Classic Tournament

In the Classic Tournament by EmperorMoo the rules were extremely simply, play a hardcore character in Classic mode untwinkled. Rerunning was allowed, as were any skill and stat distributions. I haven't played Classic in years, so seemed like fun.

I should have read up on the changes between Classic and Expansion before starting, so I wasn't surprised. I was aware of several changes (no charms/runes, no equipment on the mercenary) but many I wasn't. Such as:

No potions can be given to the mercenary
Static Field has no limitations in NM/Hell
Mercenaries can't move from one act to another
No orb weapons
No weapon switch

Turns out some of these ended up being my downfall, but I'm getting ahead of myself. I played this tournament with Mirax, a Blizzballer. Never made one before but they are pretty simple and should be able to solo the game. This was especially important as the mercenary won't be doing much damage of their own.

Things started off somewhat slow, as expected with a sorceress. Hitting everything with a staff until a few points in Firebolt were available, then mowed everything down when Fireball was introduced. The rogue mercenary was a very poor tank and only vaguely distracted the monsters away from Mirax. So moving through tight areas was slow going as Mirax wouldn't move forward very fast. This changed a bit in Act II as the desert mercenary does tank fairly well, or at least well enough to hold monsters in place for a few Fireballs to finish them off. Of course any poison damage kills off the merc right away, so lots of trips back to town to be healed/resurrected were needed.

Act III proved interesting with an Iron wolf mercenary. He doesn't tank, so Mirax leads and had to go slowly to be able to deal with the fast Flayer packs in the jungle. Thankfully they have low health and fall to Fireball quickly. At least now Teleport is available and can be used to reposition the merc when needed, or save his life of course. At the end of the act Glacial Spike is also available and used to freeze any monster packs before they are eliminated, which is the exact tactic used in Act IV.

Both Mephisto and Diablo in Normal difficulty proved to be fantastic and entertaining fights, one dealt with Fireball chains and the other a constant stream of Blizzards.

Started to run into cold immunes in Nightmare and a one point Blizzard is tough to eliminate them, mostly because I have trouble aiming at single targets. Can take up to 6 casts to get rid of a single skeleton, since the merc isn't powerful enough to finish it off on her own. Most of Nightmare was a combination of Blizzard and Fireball chains, I basically forgot all about Static Field as the monsters didn't get close enough. In the end Blizzard was used almost exclusively in Act IV and against Diablo, chilled monsters is just safer.

Hell ended up being a huge jump up from NM. The mercenary died constantly and money became a real problem. However while that mean progress was slowed a bit it wasn't stopped, and Mirax continued onward through the different areas without too much difficulty. This is why her sudden end was so unexpected. Walking across the Kurast Causeway she ran into a double pack of Faithful and Sextons. The Sextons dropped Blizzards on her and with 20% cold resistance she didn't have a chance to react before the Faithful finished her off.

It was a fun tournament and a very interesting departure from my normal DII playing. Now I'll return to the land of softcore and try to finish off the last two to three builds I have in planned before I finish the list I made oh so long ago.