This is absolutely crazy, but I'm doing this for a sixth time. While playing my fifth team, I kept getting hit by ideas, for just-one-more-build, one-more-build, one-more-build... but there couldn't be enough for yet another full team... wait, I really do have one for just about every class. And I can't resist, so here we go.
Barbarian: Throwing. I kept avoiding this while building around every other barb combat skill instead... but it really is the most different kind of barb that's realistically doable. (Leap Attack isn't.) The problem with a throwing barb is always how low the damage is, particularly if you don't have a high-end weapon ready to go. But I've come to love doing these builds in this format with makeshift and ramshackle weapons and equipment, so I've got to give this a shot. I still wasn't convinced I wanted to play this build... until once again I hit on a good name that I had to make happen, so meet Stardart.
Paladin: Holy Shock / Holy Freeze. This is a distinct gap in the class that I didn't do, the elemental zealot. I did it a little with Holy Shock as a backup on my first smiter here, but it wasn't a complete build and he died early, so there's room to do it full blown. And there's an obvious route to go with the backup attack: Holy Freeze for its cold damage. It's less damage than Holy Shock of course, but should be viable as a backup, and both skills use all the same equipment. And finally I'm always drawn to a character once they have a good name, and Starshock is irresistible.
Druid: Elemental hybrid, both fire and wind skills. I've wanted to do these both again, Tornado since way back on my first team, and Fissure but with a better fire-immune backup than the clunky physical part of the fire skills. I think both of these skill tracks can fit into the same build, in the same tree and using all the same equipment. The perilous part is what doesn't fit, which is Oak Sage, it's just impossible to fit in those skill points after both elemental branches. But really, that's actually the build-around challenge here, to go without Oak Sage. I've overused that as the easy survivability route for all my druids here, so let's take a shot without it; the merc and grizzly should be sturdy enough to hide behind, plus there's also Hurricane's chilling for crowd control.
Necromancer: Standard bonemancer. I've also missed doing the bone skills since way back on my first team here, when that bonemancer died, so I'll make one more attempt. There really isn't anything creative or interesting to do with the build, though, just bone synergy all the way and that's all there is.
Assassin: Tiger/Tail kicker. Here's why. I want to play a charge-release martial assassin, since that's more engaging and exciting, after my last three assassins were each really monotonous to play with single attack skills. But I don't want to do Phoenix Strike again, and the other elemental chargeups aren't a build because they need Phoenix for synergy and then you may as well just use Phoenix. What's left is Tiger Strike, as both the only other damaging chargeup and the only viable assassin attack I haven't used on these teams. And of course the combo with Tiger is Dragon Tail. I did max Tail with my other kicker here, but only as an accent and not a main damage engine, so I'll do the full-blown build this time. I know the problems of Tiger/Tail against both kinds of immunities, so here's the plans: against fire immunes, simply use Tiger's physical damage multiplier with low-level Talon to finish; and for physical immunes, it's doable to take them down solely with Open Wounds, easily available on a Malice claw.
Amazon: Javazon, but without Lightning Fury, using poison and other lightning skills instead. I can see a fun amazon build here that's just barely not quite rehashing the ones I've already done. I've done every amazon attack skill... except for one: Lightning Bolt, who here even remembers that this skill exists? And the other thing I want to do is Power Strike. I used that some with my spearazon here, but not to its max with a faster one-handed javelin and a more dedicated build for skills and tankiness. And that and Lightning Bolt synergize each other, so that seems to make for a decent build. The backup to the lightning will be Plague Javelin as usual; yeah it's boring but there's really no other option besides a jav/bow hybrid and I don't really feel like doing that.
Sorceress: Enchant/Static Field. I also want to play Enchant again, after the one on my previous team died, and also because she skewed the build's play style with the explosive-arrows Kuko bow and didn't fully get into the skill's big melee damage. But I want to change up some aspect of a repeated build, and the changeable piece of my enchantress is the backup plan, which was physical damage that I don't really want to do again, since it didn't really work all that well compared to the merc. So let's flip that around and lean into the merc: to support him, her backup attack skill will be Static Field! I've always wanted to have a reason to max that, and this is it. I think Static is the perfect companion to Enchant: it can't overshadow Enchant like any direct attack would, but it's perfect support for the merc on fire immunes.
This report comes after I played a version of this team partway but then restarted after playing through some of nightmare difficulty. I didn't like some of the builds (a summonmancer and werewolf which both got rather boring), and also one character died. So I restarted with the roster listed here, and a couple more tweaks: the javazon had done poison first but now I'm changing that to lightning first, and the sorceress had had Nova as the backup to Enchant but I decided to change it up for Static Field instead.
(For reference, here are the rules again.)
As always, there's not all that much interesting through the early acts, so I'll sum up them together.
Barbarian: A thrower is a build I've never played at all before, so there's the most to say about him. He started pretty quickly, which I expected would happen, knowing that thrown javelins are the highest available damage at the very start of the game. And then Balanced Axe weapons come available by gambling; these have the damage of a high-end normal-tier weapon, but at a qlvl of only 16 and can be gambled at character level 12! I got two with decent damage in a few gamble attempts, and these hit really hard for act 1; on players-5 they took down Griswold and the Smith each in only about ten double-throws and Andariel in 25. And also this barb could ramp up quickly because, unlike every other barb I've done in this format, finally this is a build who knows and can raise his chosen weapon mastery right away instead of waiting for an end-game weapon like every other barb had to do.
One oddity along the way was that Double Swing for melee comes available before Double Throw, so he was holding in his off-hand a weapon that he wasn't throwing yet, just for Double Swing to clean up routine monsters without consuming throwing quantity. He did put one point in Axe Mastery for use of throwing axes in melee. And one detail of these weapons that caught me was the limited range - unlike javelins, throwing axes and knives don't reach the corners of the screen; several times I was chucking at a fallen shaman and he wasn't dying until I figured out that the projectiles were disappearing at the edge of their range just short of the target. But one good thing about fighting from a distance was against Duriel, where the barb could stand out of range of the Holy Freeze aura that trips up every meleer.
Longer term, I'm not sure exactly how to set his skill build. The only obvious piece is Throwing Mastery, which he maxed first. After that, the skill interactions and synergies get weird. Double Throw itself adds only attack rating. Double Swing is what adds damage to Double Throw. Then Double Swing gets damage not from itself, but from Bash. There's also Frenzy to consider if I want to mix that in at all, and Axe Mastery for melee with the throwing axes. And on top of that there's the question of maxing Battle Orders, plus perhaps some Natural Resistance for a barb who won't use a shield. For now I think Double Swing is the choice for his second skill, for the damage synergy to Double Throw; I think there's really no way for points in that to go wrong, and attack rating from Double Throw itself isn't so important just yet at least.
Paladin: As I expected, it was a slog to push through the first two acts with one-point Holy Fire and Freeze, although he did shop scepters with +3 to each to help. He could have been doing more damage at this time with a big physical weapon (a cubed savage polearm or gambled pike) and one-point Might, but I've done that a zillion times with so many paladins, so for this one I decided to lean into the elemental plan all the way. Things speeded up majorly with Holy Shock at level 24, since its synergy could already have 12 points ahead of time, and he also shopped a +3 Zeal scepter to deliver it faster. (I'm not putting more than one hard point into Zeal until much later, when I'll know his endgame equipment to know how many hard points he'll need for the 5 hits.)
Assassin: I've played kickers before, but I did find some new insights here. I've gotten to be more precise about targeting monsters and accumulating charges before switching to the finisher. And I got the hang of a good way to deliver the finisher: do it with shift-left click, which makes a meleer automatically target anything in range, so she doesn't waste any time moving if you imprecisely clicked on a monster a bit further away. I also learned how it works well to get into a rhythm of alternating between one Tiger charge and Dragon Tail; the timing of this keeps a small crowd at bay with the knockback repeatedly, synchronized to the time it takes them to re-converge on me each time. So Tiger-Tail is a smashingly fun play style, although risky, it's very tempting to risk letting a lot of monsters converge to catch them all in the blast radius.
Javazon: Not a lot to say here, Power Strike is strong (700 damage in act two normal) and steady if unexciting. She is similar to the zealot as an elemental lightning meleer, but she does feel different to play. The difference is that she can use the click-right-drag method for melee, where a zealot can't since the right click slot is occupied by the aura, so that does give them a different feel. Plus she gets Decoy as well to manage combat. Anyway, she maxed Power Strike and then started raising Lightning Bolt through act three, though the latter isn't strong enough to do much of anything with just yet.
Bonemancer: He started slow through act one, as I knew bonemancers always do. Actually his best offense (rather than terrible one-point Teeth) was a few summoned skeletons from a wand with the skill - he had a fun mini-game of trying to accumulate as much gold as he could before exceeding character level 6, to shop a good Raise Skeleton wand before vendor items go up to higher skill tiers. Well, actually, really his offense was the rogue merc carrying him. At level 18 then Bone Spear finally kicked in, and I know from experience that that's always enough to handle Andariel. Of course then in act two he shopped a +3 Bone Spear wand and took off from there.
Druid: And he started super fast, as I knew he would, Fissure annihilates everything in normal difficulty so not much to say here. Although I was surprised how many fire immune bosses can show up even in normal difficulty, where they have some resistance so the fire enchanted modifier is enough to make them immune. Overall though, there's no question at all about this character's offense between Fissure now and Tornado later; the real point is his survivability without any Oak Sage. He actually did find a pelt with Oak and used it, that's not out of bounds, only skill points in it are; I'm guessing he may do this through nightmare difficulty (where the sage is physical immune) but not hell where low level Sage never survives.
Sorceress: Static Field dominates normal difficulty too, first time I've ever raised it above one point to do that, she'll start with that for a fresh experience and max Enchant later. And because of this, she actually kept the rogue merc for acts two and three - the rogue can target and hit a monster to kill it from Static's sliver faster than the guard who has to walk into melee range. For act three I tried Iron Wolves for this task, but they were much worse at it - their Inferno and Charged Bolt spells are terribly slow at hitting monsters, so I switched back to the rogue. Anyway, for the sorceress's own finisher, she shopped a staff with +3 Fire Ball to socket into a Leaf, which was and will be her mainstay until getting to Fire Mastery which is what ramps up Enchant.
Items:
I somehow never realized this before: the act 1 vendors sell 3-socket Large Shields, I had thought only Fara in act 2 did. So that's available early, and several characters bought one to hold three chipped diamonds (javazon, druid, assassin, paladin.)
Blood Crescent scimitar in act 1, and that was actually really good for the assassin to take for acts two and three: it's fast, comes with resists and life, and even 15% life steal that does transfer to the physical damage of the boots including Tiger Strike's multiplier.
Arctic armor and belt combo - this is also good very early, 100 defense, 10% resist all, 40% magic find. Went to the barb, since he's the one without a shield for resists and without Stealth in the armor slot.
Countess runes for three Stealth armors (sorceress, bonemancer, assassin) and two Leafs (both fireball and enchant for the sorceress.) And more Stealths later in act two.
The sorceress shopped her +3 Enchant base for Leaf, to keep permanently for prebuffing. And look at this - this particular one also happened to come with +3 Shiver Armor! She'll happily take that thrown in for free for the bit of extra melee defense.
Duriel actually dropped a pretty good rare throwing axe for the barb, 40% ED plus PMH and cold damage. Another with similar properties then came from Mephisto as well.
Shopped this jackpot while looking for the bonemancer's eventual White base! This is perfect until he can get that, particularly since it perfectly hits a fast-cast breakpoint, at exactly 75% with this plus Stealth and two rings and an amulet.
And this jackpot from the Savage Polearm cube recipe - that's actually the best-in-slot perfect possible roll to be usable presently (higher bases have higher requirements), including the speed suffix and the perfect roll on the damage.
Hsaru's boots in act two and belt in act three, that's one of the set combos that gives big AR/level. This went to the javazon as the most needy for attack rating at the moment.
Sigon's belt and armor also in act three, a good start to that set, the armor can be fairly scarce, although just this two-piece package doesn't do very much yet, the good stuff is on the gloves/boots/helm.
Skewer of Krintiz, with ignore-target-defense, came in act three, and the assassin took that for act four. Her attack rating is starting to falter too and a charge-release assassin feels that the most, since she needs to hit all of the chargeups and finisher each cycle.
Sweet charm, yeah you can find good stuff in that department early on.
And there's a spiffy ring for this sorceress, who both spams fast-cast Static and attacks in melee!
Runes, an Amn came in act three (at the very last moment for the last character to play, dropped from Mephisto), which is the input to upgrade a normal rare weapon. And that upgraded this for the barb, by far the heaviest hitter he can have this early. Annoyingly, the required level getting bumped to 30 caught me by surprise (the characters are 28 starting act four), but then again he needs a couple more levels to reach this dex requirement anyway.
Leading off again with the barbarian: Now I started to experience the way of the throwing barb, which is the limited quantity of the throwing stacks. I had to pop to town to refill them five or six or more times per area. Everybody complains about this problem with the class... but really, you just have to go with it. Pop a portal and run to Halbu, it takes all of six seconds, just do that every two and a half minutes if that's what's necessary. Complaining about throwing quantity isn't a solution. Just shrug and know it's what you signed up for and just do it.
Paladin: He had a cool trick against Diablo: because Holy Shock wouldn't do anything while using Smite with a crushing blow weapon... he could instead run the Resist Lightning aura! 95% resistance for both him and the merc meant they could both just tank the lightning bolt attack.
Sorceress: Yeah, the fire resistant monsters in act four made her one-point Fireball really insufficient as a post-Static finisher. The rogue merc wasn't doing enough damage for that either, so now I finally went back to a standard town guard, equipped with a cubed savage polearm, and relied on him to kill just about everything after Static.
Druid: He didn't care about the fire resistance; maxed and synergized Fissure blew through everything anyway. Including against Diablo, which was an amusingly incongruous picture, the lord of hell who lives in a giant lava palace somehow dies easily to lava erupting from the floor, hah.
Items:
Sigon's gloves, and that unlocks the good stuff with this set. I gave the gloves + belt + armor combo to the assassin; she wants the 30% IAS, the good physical defense on the armor and belt, can use the 10% life steal with kick physical damage, and doesn't need Stealth's run speed in the armor slot with access to Burst of Speed. (Although Sigon's armor is this bright shiny silver that doesn't match the assassin's shady look at all.) (More relevantly, the Sigon's piece she can't add later is the boots; that deals only normal-tier kick damage where she now can get and needs exceptional boots.)
Sander's gloves too. I've kinda glossed over this item before as typical low-level filler... but it's actually really good for nightmare difficulty, before you need resists in every slot for hell. 40 life is significant while the characters' vitalities haven't yet ramped up into the hundreds, plus the poison damage saves a charm slot. The sorceress took this; she needs IAS (for Enchant melee) and the life, and doesn't need resists in the glove slot thanks to a three-diamond shield.
Two more copies of Hsaru's boots (25% fire res, 20% run speed) - that is also excellent low-level filler and good enough through nightmare, and hopefully more copies of the belt to pair with it will come too.
I also completed all the pieces of the Isenhart set this act... but really couldn't see any way to use it. The set bonuses include AR/level on the sword, run speed, blocking, and resistances... but nobody here is built around blocking and really none of it adds up to any more than just using Stealth and a diamond shield and an ITD weapon in the slots instead. The assassin might have had thoughts of trying Isenhart's, but the Sigon's partial combo instead is just better.
The more important pieces presently came not directly from drops, but by other means, largely because the runes for cube inputs start to come now.
The assassin got her first exceptional boots for kick damage, by gambling a decent rare and then upgrading with the cube. (She's still on Skewer of Krintiz for a weapon, but will shop a Blade Talons of Piercing upon reaching Anya in act 5.)
The barb also upgraded a second hurlbat axe to exceptional, and the paladin got a decent rare armor upgraded to exceptional. (It's surprisingly hard to find decent defense armors at this stage: gambling for upgradable rares is too expensive, there aren't any runewords until Smoke, and vendors have only mediocre normal-tier bases.)
I had this druid pelt from earlier, and now cubed it for sockets, and got two for a Lore. This clinches it that he'll use this and the low-level Oak Sage all through nightmare difficulty at least.
The sorceress made her big change: she now configured herself for dedicated Enchant melee, rather than trying to use low-level Fireball any longer. Her first weapon for delivering Enchant is a Kris of Piercing (ignore target defense); Malah can sell this and so I shopped one. A melee sorceress very much wants a dagger-type weapon; the class goes faster with a dagger than a swinging weapon, actually two base frames faster.
The sorceress also got my first 3-perfect-diamond shield. That frees up every other slot away from resistances, for fast-cast and life and magic-find. And her helm slot can go for socketed emeralds for the dexterity needed for the kris, important because that frees up my dex charms for other characters, the barb and javazon both need them.
I also had enough diamonds for a second shield, which went to the druid. Also runes for Ancients Pledge, for the assassin and javazon; yeah I always talk against that in favor of the diamond shield which is just better, but Pledge is good enough filler with cheap runes when you don't have the diamonds yet. These shields freed up all my other best resistance equipment (gloves, belt, a Hsaru's boot) to go to the necromancer instead, who is currently using a head with +Decrepify in the shield slot but no resists.
Incidentally, I realized that a better base for these shields is a Kite Shield, since it doesn't have the slight run speed penalty that a Large Shield has. The Kite has 4% lower blocking, but I don't care about that, nobody here is built with dex for blocking. 3-socket Kites are shoppable from Fara, so I did that.
I changed what I do for this act procedurally from before. Rather than minimal clearing on players-7, I fully cleared almost all of the act down on players-5 instead. This took only somewhat more time, resulted in one more level of experience (and easier balancing between the characters), and more treasure including more gems and runes for later use. I did skip Halls of Anguish/Pain/Vaught, those areas are just boring and take forever. Also skipped the cow level afterwards, that's not really interesting enough to bother doing in normal difficulty.
Paladin: Holy Shock wipes entire screens of demon imps... by way of the pulse damage alone! It can also take out the exploding frenzied minions before they reach you to blow up, another nice perk. Although the amusingly irritating downside is that the item drops end up scattered all over the place so I have to chase them down everywhere among all the outdoor walls and barricades, hah. Anyway, I really noticed how the pulse damage scaled up throughout this act. It's more noticeable on the pulse damage than the melee damage - you don't really notice when Zealing if a monster takes three instead of two cycles, because the bulk of a meleer's time was spent running to the monster in the first place - but it's very noticeable when just a couple pulses take out an entire screen of monsters, also particularly including the first two Baal minion waves with the fallens and skeletons.
Assassin: She also had a smashingly fun time against the demon imps: her game was that a single click and zip of Dragon Flight's teleporting kick would kill it, by way of the merc immediately attacking it.
Javazon: Power Strike kept ramping up through the act, not directly (already maxed) but by way of the synergy from Lightning Bolt. And Bolt came into its own for usefulness as well. It got up to enough damage to kill the blinky demon imps at range with a few throws, more convenient than running after them for melee all the time. And Bolt was actually very good against Baal - roughly the same damage rate as Power Strike (gimped by Baal's blocking and defense, while Bolt always hits), but much easier to manage by throwing from range beyond the mana burn attack.
Items:
The biggest prize came right up front early for the first character to play: a Skin of the Vipermagi! At just about the earliest moment it could possibly drop, even before going into the frozen river for Anya. This is exactly what the bonemancer and sorceress and druid all want, permanently. The bonemancer is going to take it for now, since he needs the skills and resists and fast-cast the most out of the casters, and the sorceress got something else instead, read below.
Next biggest prizes both came together in the same drop, randomness is clumpy. Rockstopper is unequivocally endgame material for any of these melee builds. The sorceress needs it the most, particularly since she doesn't need skills in the helm slot since Enchant gets prebuffed and Static doesn't need it. Heavenly Garb upgraded is solid for defense through nightmare, and this will go to the assassin. (And it's this awesome deep blue color that looks totally badass on her.)
The javazon dropped herself all of Shael Thul Amn this act, and so put them together into a Peace armor for herself, very nice. She definitely wants +2 skills - all of Power Strike, Lightning Bolt, and Plague Jav scale up a lot for damage at very high skill levels. And also Peace has the high-level CTC Valkyrie which will be great too once she gets around to one hard point in it.
The druid also dropped himself a Shael, and made a Rhyme shield with it mid-act, after the Anya quest for resists let him trade out his 3-diamond shield. After the act this Rhyme went to the javazon; she cares about the cannot-be-frozen and could use the blocking.
Angelic sabre and armor, to go with two copies of the ring from earlier, the package that gives huge AR and 100% magic-find. This is worthy of putting on the paladin: he can work with this weapon, since an elemental meleer only needs speed and attack rating and this has plenty of both, and he can spare the armor and ring slots away from resistances thanks to a good shield.
Immortal King's set helm, also usually comes eventually and did early here. The satisfying part was that it came almost immediately after the paladin made himself a 3-topaz helm for the magic find, which may well have directly caused this. Of course this takes care of the barb's helm slot permanently (unless Arreat's Face shows up), probably socketed with topazes for nightmare and resists for hell.
Razorswitch staff. This is a curiosity that usually doesn't have any use... but I've actually got a good place for it here. Its problem is that almost every spellcaster build can get much more than +1 skills in the weapon slot... but the exception is an elemental druid. Druids don't get any skills on wands or scepters or orbs, and their mainstay of Spirit doesn't exist for me playing offline non-ladder. So this is actually pretty good. The 50 resist-all effectively substitutes for a diamond shield, so this is the equivalent of a one-hand weapon slot giving +1 skills, 30% FCR for Tornado, and 80 life. That's quite solid, particularly that life for this druid who's going without Oak Sage.
Iceblink armor, not something any of the characters particularly needs, but always fun on a merc.
Arctic set gloves. Now I have a three-piece set of the Arctic gloves + armor + belt, and this can actually go to use on the sorceress! The package comes to a total of 250 defense, 10% IAS, 40% magic-find, 70 life, 10 dex, and big cold resist. That defense is as good as anything else the sorc would have in the armor slot at this time; she can live with 10% IAS on the gloves; she wants the life and magic-find and dex (for her kris dagger); and she doesn't need fire and lightning resists in these slots thanks to a diamond shield and Rockstopper. And the sorc taking the Arctic set also frees up Sander's gloves to go over from her to the assassin.
Got a necro head with +3 Bone Spear. The funny part was that I went to put it in stash to save it for the necromancer... and several minutes later then remembered and realized I was currently playing the necromancer right then and should just be equipping it right now, hah. After the act I socketed it into a Rhyme, and he'll almost certainly use this for all of nightmare.
Stuff that didn't make the cut to use: Bonesnap maul and Langer Briser crossbow, but this team doesn't have any users of those weapon types. Also the General Tan flail, but that doesn't fit anyone here either, all the elemental meleers care more about ignores-defense. Venom Grip gloves, life steal and crushing blow, but I don't think anyone here wants that, they all need glove IAS more. And Darkglow armor, haven't had that in a while, the plus to max resists is cute, but it's not quite enough to want to spend the inputs on upgrading it for a merc.
And also, some great prizes from the act came from gambling after it. This is the sweet spot of time to gamble quite a lot of item types, where almost all the good affixes are available but the prices haven't ramped up yet.
Wow that boot is phenomenal! Even the minor affixes are good, half freeze and CTC Frost Nova do help.
And wow that's the most resistances I've ever seen in a circlet slot. The javazon took this presently, since she's the shortest on resists otherwise (with Rhyme instead of a diamond shield or anything else big like Vipermagi or Razorswitch or Fade) and can't get good skills in the helm slot (jav skills doesn't occur on circlets, because it does on gloves instead), and she could use some extra run speed on top of Hsaru's boot which is only 20%.
Besides these, I got tons more good boots from gambling, and some belts and a couple more resistance circlets for mercs. The categories I didn't gamble here were gloves, since 20% IAS requires a little higher item level, and rings/amulets, since those are comparatively better to do later since the price doesn't go up.
The assassin shopped a Blade Talons of Piercing from Anya, since ignores-defense does more than anything else to help a charge-release build. And with this faster base claw, she now needs only 20% IAS gloves for a breakpoint, so the 30% of Sigon's gloves + belt went over to the barb.
The javazon also shopped a Javelin of Swiftness (30% IAS), since that neatly reaches a speed breakpoint, and so she could use her glove slot for +2 spear skills, also shopped. She could get one more speed breakpoint with 20% glove IAS, but the +skill glove makes for more dps than the speed (and I'm not trying to shop a glove with both), including adding Plague Javelin to the damage mix once that finally levels up.
Socket quests: The sorc's Rockstopper is worth committing a socket quest to; it's probably permanent on her all the way to endgame. I socketed an emerald into it for now to support the dex requirement for her kris dagger, though this may change later. And the necromancer's Vipermagi is also endgame-worthy of a socket quest, into which I put a ruby for life, because I actually ran out of topazes for magic-find.
And finally, I made the barbarian a damage upgrade from an unusual source: a Peace runeword armor! For the Critical Strike oskill, which is 32% at skill level 3 (after Battle Command, where the +all skills modifier raises the oskill), and so that's actually quite a bit. He may as well use Peace, since he has nothing else important in the armor slot; he had Stealth but a ranged thrower doesn't need fast cast or run speed, or defense.
Turn the page to continue with nightmare difficulty.