[EDIT: due to 5000 word limitation, the sections for preferred stats and tips have been removed from this post. This post becomes Diary Part 1 and is limited to MP10 for Normal Act 1. MP10 Normal Act 2 - 4 will be in Part 2. Nightmare in Part 3]

I have 3 objectives in writing this diary:

1) To keep a diary for myself - on how I fair in hardcore at various stages
2) To give players new to hardcore an insight of hardcore, & maybe to attract them to play hardcore :P
3) To assess the possibility of completing Normal Act 1-4, then Nightmare Act 1 in MP10, using various classes

Background

I recently made a switch from Softcore to Hardcore.

At Softcore, I have three 60s with more than 600 hours played in total. My main is a P70 Perma-TR Monk for 10 minute Alkaiser MP0/MP1 farming. I am getting a bit bored of the routine farming. I am getting 1-4 legendaries per hour in Softcore, but I am getting less and less excited now about the quality of loots. To kill the boredom and to take a break from Softcore, I decided to give Hardcore a try.

In Hardcore, death = permanent disappearance of your character, together with all the equipped items and items in the bag. I previously didn't understand why players choose to play hardcore where they risk losing all the time, efforts and gold invested into a character. However, now as I started playing it, I am getting more and more addicted to it. I am afraid that I would not revisit Softcore in the near future unless there is some good interesting updates to it. I also see that some friends have started playing hardcore.

As of now I have 5 leveling classes in Hardcore. I hope at least 3 of them could make it to level60 without dying! My 5 initial (somehow I am expecting some of them to die) characters are:

1) WitchDoctor - UlumuluWey
2) Barbarian - FightTruPain
3) Monk - LastGirl
4) Demon Hunter - NineLivesCat
5) Wizard - WisdomToLive

I like their names. What do you think?

I picked Witch Doctor as my first character in Hardcore, and I chose MP10 to see how far I could go. I started with zero gold balance, and only use looted items and merchant items for my WD. [Edit: After accumulated some gold I am buying items from AH too, e.g. on socketed Helm and weapon at lvl15] To my surprise I made it to the Skeleton King without much sweat. In retrospect, it was easy to level with WD. My WD uses dogs to tank and he avoids taking most of the melee hits. To satisfy my curiosity, I also leveled up the two melee classes viz Barb and Monk in MP10 to see the relative difficulty in playing these classes.

I will record now my statistics at each crucial boss fight. The first checkpoint is the boss fight at Skeleton King. I didn't record my WD's statistics since I didn't think of writing this diary at first. So, we are missing WD at Checkpoint 1.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Checkpoint 1 - The Skeleton King

WD - 11, not recorded.
Barb - 10, 776 HP, 21 DPS, 219 Armor
Monk - 11, 660 HP, 32 DPS, 111 Armor
Demon Hunter - 11, 800 HP, 74 DPS, 151 Armor
Wizard - TBA

Summary:
- WD is overpowered. WTF no adrenalin rush at MP10?
- Melee classes: I have a relatively hard time with Barb c.f. Monk. In retrospect maybe it is due to lower DPS from Barb. However, my monk is also meaner with her skills such as blinding flash (good for CC) and she can spam a hell lots more of Lashing Tail Kick (as a spirit spender, and kick the mobs off!) with the high spirit regen attacks with Thunderclap.
- Demon Hunter: I have a fun time with DW Demon Hunter. My cloak and the 2 Xbows have hatred regen and I just spam Rapid Fire. I like the sound of it.....like a machine gun! I chose the skills: Caltrop, Vault, Entangling Root, Rapid Fire.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Checkpoint 2 - The Butcher

WD - 19, 1432 HP, 96 DPS, 294 Armor

Summary:
- WD. Despite an overpower class in Hardcore, I did think at some stages of the fight whether I am going to lose my WD. Some of the butcher's hits brought my HP down to 50%, and to be overly cautious I would walk away to refill my HP first before another stun + fire on the ground got me.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Your certainly making things interesting for yourself arent you? I've been doing the same with my WD and Monk @ mp10 and Im pleasantly suprised how well its going so far. I'll be watching the diary with much interest. Especially when you make the jump to the next act. I've been moving along pretty easily with the Wiz, Barb and DH on mp0 (dont judge me! ;)) but I definitely notice that there is less margin for error. Good luck Douvy.

Damn. You're hardcore @douvinsky! I just started a HC barb on MP0. Finding gear is definitely harder. Very fun!

edit: updated tip section

I also played some MP10 HC, but I always turned off MP for boss fights.
So good luck on doing it MP10 all the way.

Edit : added Preferred Stats section

Edit: WD downed Butcher last night. Updated Checkpoint 2 with the stats. Next in line on the chopping board will be my monk.

@douvinsky Is your WD still using dropped loot/merchant gear only now? If so, very impressive. I would agree though that WD is probably best class for HC. It has such good tools for soloing. Too bad I lost mine due to DC, wonder how far I would've got in Plvls with it...

Posted by razer22 at 01/02/2013 10:12 PM

@douvinsky Is your WD still using dropped loot/merchant gear only now? If so, very impressive. I would agree though that WD is probably best class for HC. It has such good tools for soloing. Too bad I lost mine due to DC, wonder how far I would've got in Plvls with it...

For my WD, all are dropped loots/ merchant gears EXCEPT for the following three:

1) Socketed Helm - 12k
2) Socketed 1H - 20k
3) Shoulder - 10k

Given that I am on MP10 (and I have accumulated a comfortable level of gold for AH purchase), I am going to upgrade my toon again before the next major boss fight. I am also happily spending gold to gear up my lower level DH, I wanna see how fast she can kill with more DPS (& hopefully not less vital) gears.

I have also edited my original post to reflect that I no longer just rely on dropped loots and merchant items.

Original Post can't exceed 5000 words....hence I update it here with my Demon Hunter on Checkpoint 1. Her DPS is more than double that of my monk, and I have a fun time melting those mobs with my machine gun. Fight at SK is super easy.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Checkpoint 1 - The Skeleton King

WD - 11, not recorded.
Barb - 10, 776 HP, 21 DPS, 219 Armor
Monk - 11, 660 HP, 32 DPS, 111 Armor
Demon Hunter - 11, 800 HP, 74 DPS, 151 Armor
Wizard - TBA

Summary:
- WD is overpowered. WTF no adrenalin rush at MP10?
- Melee classes: I have a relatively hard time with Barb c.f. Monk. In retrospect maybe it is due to lower DPS from Barb. However, my monk is also meaner with her skills such as blinding flash (good for CC) and she can spam a hell lots more of Lashing Tail Kick (as a spirit spender, and kick the mobs off!) with the high spirit regen attacks with Thunderclap.
- Demon Hunter: I have a fun time with DW Demon Hunter. My cloak and the 2 Xbows have hatred regen and I just spam Rapid Fire. I like the sound of it.....like a machine gun! I chose the skills: Caltrop, Vault, Entangling Root, Rapid Fire.