Curious - Dual Box w/"Buff Bot"

[Hybrid]

I had an idea tonight that I may want to give some more thought to...

I play with two computers running. The second one is a laptop with only a mousepad, making any actions in the game a bit cumbersome. Therefore, I usually only park the laptop character in a game for the extra xp, etc... and use it to make muling easier. However, I'm wondering what it would be like to rush a character on the laptop to actually run around with and augment my summoner.

Not that it's really necessary, as my summoner can pretty much blast through everything in the game (although I haven't done uber tristram yet, just the mini-ubers). Still, it would be interesting to see what would happen.

As I'm no expert on the various classes and skills, my thought process hasn't gone too far on this idea. One choice would be to rush a barb and build up his warcry skills for the party's effects from Battle Orders, Battle Command, etc... Another much simpler to utilize character would be to use a paladin that concentrated on offensive/defensive auras that have beneficial party effects. Combine this with selecting a merc with a different aura than my might merc, and it might result in an amazing little army running around with 3 nice auras running all at once and some additional hotkeyed auras for special circumstances.

It's possible that the auras wouldn't stack, might cancel each other out, or something like that. However, careful choice of the auras that I concentrated on would result in a nice little mixture of boosts that my summoned army would receive.

Anyway, although it would be a pain to run two characters together without a /follow or /stick command in D2, it might be fun to see what I could come up with. Just wondering if anyone has tried this or maybe what suggestions you folks might have for a class/skill combination to use as a "buff bot" character to augment my summoned army.

[Kirah]

The 'buff-bot' concept is kinda a neat idea. I'd lean toward the barb battle cry system because you simply 'fire and forget'. Place the barb in a clear zone just outside of town with his merc to guard him if you missed anything and you do the warcries on your group then tp back to whatever you were doing (rinse and repeat when warcry expires). With the pally buff-bot, you constantly need to move the pallybot to benefit from the aura which is kinda a pain. I tried it once and found it awkward since I was basically playing two characters.

Let us know what you tried and what worked!
Kirah

[jag]

I dont think trying bring another character along would be too easy from a touch pad -- so you are looking for buffs that can be done all at once to your army. The will have to be re-cast when time on them expires - but their are at least 2 good choices.

Easiest buffs would be from a barb to get life and defense for your skellys as you had said. Probably the best choice...

Another would be to build an enchant sorceress -- will give extra fire damage to each skelly (and more ar though not really helpful on the skellys)
- bit harder to do since you have to try to cast this on each skelly even though they wont stand still ...

[Hybrid]

Honestly, I hadn't even considered the enchantress idea. Unfortunately, I think the single-buff casting would be too difficult to deal with. I'm still leaning towards a paladin, even though it would indeed be awkward to keep moving him with a mousepad. However, seeing as how it wouldn't be for everyday use it might be managable.

Maybe get a defiance act II merc, concentrate the paladin's gear on plus skills items, and max out fanaticism as the main aura. Also max prayer for some quick catch-up healing to switch to once in a while. And then max out conviction, or at least get it to level 21 to be able to negate uber Mephisto's aura in Tristram (I think I read somewhere that doing this works). I haven't added everything up yet, but I'm pretty sure there would be plenty of skill points left to max out another 1-2 useful auras.

That would mean I'd have my army running around with might, defiance, and fanaticism aura for the most part, and maybe if I add some cheap runewords with thorns or other semi-useful auras there may be more. Additionally, there would be a few situational auras hotkeyed on the paladin to switch to as well.

It would take a lot of work (I'm not the fastest rusher in the world), but I think it would be a sight to behold if it worked out.

[Sgraffite]

Check your pm, it's definitely doable. When I started leveing my characters I had a light sorceress, bo barb, and hammerdin. Between their mercs and themselves there was defiance, might, concentration, meditation, holy freeze, and battle orders up. I would basically walk around and let the mercs kill everything on normal mode and some of nightmare. I didn't have good equipment so it didn't work so well on hell mode because the mercs would die too fast (bad resists and dr).

[MrGoth]

A druid who has oak sage out, and at half dicent levels, can have a horribly large radius. Iirc, in .09 cows, my druids oak covered almost the entire area.

[Kirah]

Man, I must be tired. I totally fogot about the sorc enchant trick. The other nice thing about the Sorc is that you can enchant each skellie from the safety of the town (thus not risking the sorc's skin) and being able to easily recharge mana. The druid thing would be ok but again you'd have to be basically moving the secondary character a lot. The pally has the same problem, but you've got more choices in which aura to have active.

Good luck and let us know what you decided to do!
Kirah

[motorpsycho]

isn't concentration better than fanaticism, when you want to aid a party?