Fixed the blurry image. I'm doing challenge runs otherwise the game is just chipping away at levels, filling the inventory with potions, and town portaling when you run out.
CHALLENGE: With eight potions only, clear all of the Hell or Crypts on Hell difficulty, on Hellfire. You can use what you pick up, inventory gear swapping allowed but no inventory consumables.
Builds I used to complete these challenges (all solo self-found):
Barbarian (lvl 40-41)
King's Axe of Haste/Blood/Vampires (swap to get health/mana back)
Scavenger Carapace (-15 damage taken from enemies)
Undead Crown -- (Lifesteal)
Empyrean Band (Halves Trap Damage, +2 all attributes)
Dragon's Amulet of the Zodiac (+60 mana, +20 all attributes)
Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac (39% resist all, +18 all attributes)
Warrior (lvl 40-41)
Champion's Sword of Haste (two-handed)
Scavenger Carapace (-15 damage taken from enemies)
Undead Crown -- (Lifesteal)
Amulet of Thieves (Halves Trap Damage)
Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac (37% resist all, +20 all attributes)
Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac (39% resist all, +18 all attributes)
Bard (lvl 37-38)
King's Sword of Haste/Vampires (dual wield, attack speed and mana steal)
Scavenger Carapace (-15 damage taken from enemies)
Obsidian Crown of Sorcery (35% resist all, +19 to Magic)
Empyrean Band (Halves Trap Damage, +2 all attributes)
Dragon's Amulet of the Zodiac (+60 mana, +20 all attributes)
Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac (39% resist all, +18 all attributes)
Why choose these items in the builds that did work? The difficulty of the final level of Hell is in dealing with the Advocates efficiently. Melee enemies aren't a problem at all, in fact their presence lets you get free hits to heal up with Life or Mana steal. Hitting the damage threshold to stunlock the toughest melee enemies is not hard with a King's weapon, and groups can easily be kited into positions where you can kill them one-by-one without taking any hits, even without a shield or armor. In fact we don't care about armor at all because it barely works against fireballs and melee enemy attacks can be avoided with skillful movement, positioning, and stunlocking. Blocking interrupts stunlocks on Advocates, as blocking interrupts your attack animation, so don't want to use a shield. Shields are needed to get enough armor for it to matter much against melee enemies, so we should give up on armor entirely.
Killing Advocates with Melee requires Haste-boosted attack speed of Warriors and Barbarians with sword or axes respectively to stunlock them to prevent them from teleporting away after the first 1-2 hits. We'll take too much damage from large groups trying to corner each one, and monsters in Hell regenerate quickly, it's not efficient enough to try to chase them down after teleporting. They have to be killed efficiently enough that Lifesteal can sustain us.
The Bard can never get fast enough attack speed to stunlock them, even with Haste, though she can land two hits usually. Any character can use Stone Curse to kill Advocates but they will run out of mana, unless we run a Vampires weapon for mana steal. Even then, the cost of the Stone Curse won't be regained by the mana steal done when killing the Advocate. So often instead I used Teleport after hitting them twice to make them teleport away, and hitting them one more time. My Bard items are geared toward maximizing mana to survive with Mana Shield, and sustain with a Vampires weapon and a belt of only mana pots.
Defenses are all focused on reducing magic ranged attack damage. First, "Halves Trap Damage" from the "of Thieves" suffix or Empyrean Band reduces all ranged attack damage by 50%, due to a bad implementation. Then, flat minus damage is subtracted, the Scavenger Carapace takes away 15. Then, resistances are applied, and then Mana Shield reduces damage by 33%. So a 100 damage fireball gets cut to 50, then to 35, then 8.75. Without that -15 damage, it would come to 12.5 at the end. So for a 100 damage attack, that's a 30% further reduction. An armor of the Whale instead of Scavenger Carapace could increase our health by 100, or around 25%, so that's not as much of an increase in effective HP. Extra damage reduction over extra Life makes the Life we gain from Lifesteal more efficient too. This was the key to making this challenge possible, so far, at my level of skill anyway.
Barbarian is by far the strongest for this challenge. He does enough damage to 2-shot Advocates and 1-shot with a crit (Barb and Warrior get 1% crit chance per level). Cleave melts melee. He stunlocks Diablo. Teleport can be used to chase down Succubi or Arch Liches, with mana regained with a Great Axe of Vampires.
Warrior is like a worse Barbarian, lacking the cleave. He doesn't even have that much more mana since his ring suffixes need to both be Obsidian. The damage on my Warrior is also low since I can't find a King's Sword of Haste, but he can never get to the damage of the Barbarian, he 3-4 shots Advocates. His advantage would be the ability to use a shield effectively, but it doesn't seem worth it even in the Crypts where there aren't any Advocates. He can barely kill Diablo. I swap off of Empyrean Band and Scavenger Carapace for that fight.
The Bard could barely kill Diablo too, not enough attack speed or damage to keep him stunned. Her cleave makes melee groups a free mana pot, and running Mana Shield with Vampires is peak damage reduction and sustainable spell usage.
I've given up on doing it with the Monk, and I'm still seeing if it's possible with the Rogue. The Monk only does decent damage with a staff, and blocking with the staff messes up his ability to stunlock Advocates. The Rogue can't Lifesteal or Mana steal so she will require some real item optimization and near perfect play. She destroys Diablo with Windforce knockback though. And I don't have a Sorcerer, not sure how far he could go needing mana for damage.
So far Rogue is looking like:
Royal Circlet
Obsidian Plate of the Stars (+40% resist all, +9 all attributes)
Merciless Bow of Thunder / Windforce
Empyrean Band (Halves Trap Damage, +2 all attributes)
Dragon's Amulet of the Zodiac (+60 mana, +20 all attributes)
Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac (37% resist all, +20 all attributes)
Royal Circlet and Plate of the Stars for the all stats, she needs all the damage she can get. Rogue gets it from Str+Dex, so all-stats is best. I didn't use Oils for the other characters but it seems like she needs it. Getting consistent 3-shots on ranged enemies might make the challenge possible. She doesn't get enough health or mana and can't lifesteal, so Scavenger Carapace is less worth it I think. I run Mana Shield on her for the damage reduction.
