Terror.

[Nerd]
March 28 - Blizzard has yet again reset the Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction ladder.
What better time to end my D2 Hiatus? Last Wednesday I plunged back into the world of Sanctuary. Mephisto, Diablo, and Baal, beware - but especially Mephisto.
The logical first character is clearly the sorceress. Because I would be starting from scratch, there is no way an Enigma (grants teleport ability) would find its way into my inventory; and of course, the sorc can learn this ability at level 18. Since I had always wanted to try out a hybrid build, I seized the opportunity with this character. She would be a meteorb build - essentially a versatile killer, at the expense of overall damage. I deemed her "ToBeObscene"
...skipping levels 1 - 80... (You don't want to hear it)
at about level 82 i decided to begin my first Magic Find (mf) runs. The hybrid build really shines in multi-monster environments, such as the pits. With left click set as fireball and right click set as frozen orb, ToBeObscene easily cleared areas in which a single element character would struggle.
Mephisto runs are a different story. It took me about ten runs to figure out the best way to do the moat exploit, and even then my mortality rate was startlingly high. To add, the kill speed just wasn't quick enough for me. It would take a good minute or so to get the Lord of Hatred to a quarter health.
It's not that I'm patient, it's that I understand how a good mf run should go: 1.) use the nearest waypoint to the area to be ran, 2.) teleport around looking for the area, 3.) kill everything in the area 4.) repeat for hours.
Let us assume I mf Mephisto for 1 hour. Let us also give 20 minutes to making new games, selling rares for gold/buying potions, and walking from spawn to waypoints. While the time it takes to find Mephisto varies greatly, (15 sec - 3 mins ) I like to believe I generally spend less than 2 minutes. Therefore we will alot 2 minutes to finding the Lord of Terror in each game. It took my hybrid sorc about 1.5 minutes to kill Mephisto.
Do the math: 40 / 3.5 is about equal to 12. Thats twelve runs in an hour.
This pace just isnt what I was looking for. Fortunately for me, you can reset your characters skill points. Once. Goodbye hybrid sorc, hello trusty blizzard sorc.
That's right, I respec'd ToBeObscene into a pure cold blizzard sorc. It didn't take long for the redistribution of skills to pay off. I was slaying Mephisto in 30 seconds, easy.
40 / 2.5 is equal to 16. This translates to four more opportunities to find goodies per hour - at, of course, the cost of losing the ability to run places like the pits.
Oh well, no big loss. I like running Mephisto the best as it is anyway. He can drop almost any item in the game, and is extremely more likely to drop goodies than a random in the pits. (Though I admit, when goodies drop in the pits, they are usually damn good goodies).
My advice to anyone restarting on ladder is to go for a blizzard sorc. You  just can't get enough damage out of a hybrid without really good gear.

Also, on a side note, I am REALLY digging these baal run bots. They make it soooo sooo easy to level up quickly. Of course, I don't use them, but its not hard to find a game with one.
[/Nerd]