Fresh Ladder startup strategies?

[Caaroid]

I was secretly hoping the new ladder would lure you back :)

New Ladder:
I play regularly with two friends, and among us we posess 8 CD keys. This makes rune running a bit easier and a lot more profiatble. The approach we had over the "past" (i.e. the current) season was, that we got one character to lev 40 (practically it was a lev 42+ bowazon with maxed Valkyre and Magic arrow) in Normal, then got all the other characters to act5, and "piggy-backed" the characters to hell. This way all of our mules became hell-capable, got burned in, and had some OK rune drops.

With the new ladder, however, one'd need powerful characters to do all the rushing (hell council is usually the most painful aspect, requiring either a hammerdin, a bone necro or an elemental druid).

So our plan for the new ladder is as follows:

• Create an ORB sorceress for MF-ing purposes (mainly for NIGHTMARE mephisto, allowing us to gather equipment fast for the rusher characters)
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• Creating a rusher character. No definite plan yet, the ideal would be an enigma hammerdin/ele druid, but since we haven't seen an engima yet, it's not something we'd plan on doing. Instead we'd probably make a series of characters; a sorceress for teleport and eliminating easier targets (Andariel, Duriel, Mephisto, NM Diablo), and another few characters for clearing the "hard" areas (Travincal, River of flame)).
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• Creating an enchantress (paralel process with the rusher character). She is cruicial for the character development (lev 1x-25); must be able to open cow games in normal and allow lev 1x characters to one-hit-kill the cows.<>
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  Using these characters, we only have to worry about the levelling of the main rune rushee (the character who allows the others to piggyback). The usual leveling strategy for us consisted of a poison-setup: 20 poison jewels in helm, armor and weapon, allowing the character to one-hit-kill everything in normal act1 in 8 player games; the levelling was usually done in "Mule Parking" games or baalruns. Since we used amazons for this purpose, killing was swift without enchant to level 15 (this is useful since leveling goes faster if one can jump the character from baalrun to baal run, guaranteeing 8 player games). Al level 15 the character got her ravenclaw, and with enchant she levelled herself to 21 in the canyon, after what further levelling was done in the cow level. At 25, ancients were slain (takes 2 runs for lev 21->25), and exp is leeched in baal games (a magic arrow/valkyre build is hardly a mass murderer). Reaching level 42 she can equip Lycanders, and the rusing part is done.
  
  Since our group is composed of good friends, we all knew each others' passwords, allowing easier rushing to act5 (since we kept rotating the rusher characters, or even had 3 rushers in the game at the same time -- usually in act2, when we only had one rushee to complete all the quests, the others just piggybacked her to act3; or in act3, trying to find durance3).
  
  Another idea (that I got a long time back in your original "Great Race" thread) is to use a MA/Trap assassin as the main killer character. She'd use blade sentinel for leveling in the lower levels (with the poison setup of course, 3x4x20 = 240 poison damage at lev1 from equipment; initially using bow then sentinel). Later on she's transformed into a kicker; a tiger strike/dragon tail assassin can achieve 18k damage with IK boots. This setup might be more advantageous than the amazon, since she moves faster, levels faster and has less trouble with NM baal. Also she is less equipment-dependant than the amazon; instead of the class specific weapons she'd do good with dual strength claws.
  
  We'll see how this new setup works out. If the ladder will ever reset.