Vengeance Paladin + Lightning Sorceress.

[Jonasir]

Hi, i've just started playing some Hardcore with my friend who is a lightning sorceress. Would a vengeance paladin with conviction aura be a good combination with a lightning sorceress for the reduced resists on monsters?

[5zigen]

Wrong forum man!

But vengance paladin would be good with a lit sorc. Ofc, the vengance paladin will just end up running around with convic on while the sorc kills everything, but that's diablo!

[eohano]

It would work quite well.


Personally, I would make a necro, since this is your first time playing hardcore. Make a Fishymancer, and get Lower Resist. (Either put some points in it or get it from items.) This way you get a wall of skeles that you both can stand behind, which is especially beneficial to the sorc, since (at least in my experience) they're extremely fragile. A sorc or zon spamming from behind a meat wall usually results in epic victory. You also get max corpse explosion, which is fun, useful, and deadly.
That's just me, though.

[LuckyDwarf]

Vouch on the necro. He'll be able to handle more of the game untwinked than the paly and he'll do a lot better solo, later on. Remember to get dim vision and make use of the lesser used curses like attract. Also, lower resist will give the same bonus to corpse explosion that amp will, since it's 50/50 fire/physical. You'll also be less bored as the necro than as the paly, unless you enjoy being a merc.

Lucky

[Jarath]

I'd go with the necro too. 1 point in lower resist (with a few + skills) wont help as much as maxed conviction aura BUT you have the benefit of your skeleton meatshields as Eohano stated, which is invaluable for 2 new characters. Lower resist is not as helpful for corpse explosion as amplify damage, however the sorceress will be doing the majority of the killing anyway so it's not a huge issue.

[NightShade]

As a paladin you are, at best, a mercinary.

As a necro you provide a valuable asset : meat sheilds and lower resist. You operate just as well geared as you do ungeared, which as a veng paladin you cannot say

[Hp_Sauce]

I have to add another vouch to the Summoner Necro with 1 point into Lower Resist.

The Pally build will be great for your friend, but junk to you. The Necro will be great for your friend and also for you.

-hps

[AgentMarth]

While Summoner works, you could also try : Poisonmancer.

Get either a few Revives/Skels, and you will be good. You get meatshields, and a good killing spell that will benefit from the LR.

IIRC i went :
20 Poison Nova
20 Poison Explosion
20 Poison Dagger
1 All Curses
1 All Summons
and maxed Skel Mastery for the bit o boost to Skel/Mages/Revives.

It worked well enough for me. And even better when I got 2 piece Trang, and a Death's Web.

[Dakota]

What kind of damage do you get for your poisonmancer? Viable solo build for HC? Can he handle bosses?

[Tai.]

A Venomancer is most viable starting out if you hybrid him with summons in my opinion.

The primary benefit of the Venomancer is that if you decide to go with level 1 LR (works just fine) you have a character that is basically done with 70 points.

20 Psn Dagger
20 Psn Explosion
20 Psn Nova
7 Curses to give you Decrepify/Lower Resist
1 CE
1 Teeth
1 Bone Armor (totally worth a point when lots of your +skills will be Psn/Bone)

This gives you another 40 points to play with, I tend to lean towards the following:

20 Skeleton
1 Clay Golem
1 Blood Golem
1 Iron Golem
1 Revive
1 Skeleton Mage
1 Golem Mastery
1 Summon Resist
13 Skeleton Mastery (toss last points in here, just happens to come to 13) (can also choose to run less points total here and get the remaining 3 curses, they're all useful)

This allows you to go anywhere and do literally anything. We used him to do Baals/Ancients/Cows/MF and even some rushes. With Lower Resist and Psn Nova you can tear through anything without immunity (i had like 6600 Nova damage with -79% Psn Resistance to enemies from gear and an additional 139% -res from Lower Resist. Combine this with 12 skeletons/13 revives/6 mages/golem/merc and you function as a relatively good summoner for those meatshield times.

Against bosses if you have Urdars or other CB revives you destroy them quickly. If you do not however it's still easy, just a bit slower. Decrepify on Baal, cast Clay Golem on him, surround him with summons and toss off the occasional Psn Nova. He won't regenerate health, he won't move and your merc will have 40% Crushing Blow so every hit by him will be beastly.

Merc Gear:
Obedience Ethereal Elite Pole is the best bet for endgame (crazy cheap for its power) but as you're leveling just take whatever hits the hardest.
You want Leech from his helm: Tal's Mask works great, Crown of Thieves and Vampire Gaze are also great - even Stealskull will get the job done
Armor: Duriel's Shell/Shaftstop/Rattlecage, the basics

Early on you play the necro like a summoner. Your poison isn't particularly overpowered for early leveling, so max Raise Skeletons early on while keeping an eye on your Poison synergies. Every party will want you around, you are a combination of meat shields, Lower Resist and an element nobody else generally brings to the party, poison.

This thread has the specifics for the gear he was using and his endgame statistics: http://diablo.incgamers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=649641&highlight=trang%27s

This necro is SLIGHTLY more gear dependent than your usual summoner, but since he can function in a summoner role with such minimal gear investment it doesn't hamper the build to play with self-found gear.

Cheers
-Tai