Swarmed by Fetish Deamons in WSK level 2, Nightmare, driven by a tired and frustrated human who is clumbsy with a keyboard, TwangThud's deeds are prematurely remembered. I reached for the potion keys, and hit the skill-change keys. Thus neither of us were doing what we should have been doing.
Lessons Learned:
1: The act 2 desert merc (Holy Freeze) is not viable. No amount of equipment tweaking could get him to survive the intense cross-fire of blood-star-throwing Vile Witches and cousins. He was The Light Brigade, and was routinely cut down mid-charge by cannons to the right of him, cannons to the left of him, Cannons before him, and Death at his side. He was no wimp. My decoy had a half-life of about 2 seconds under the same fire, my Valk about 4 seconds. That cross-fire is brutal. I survived by extensive use of D/A/E skills (3 hard points each) and run-like-a-scared-rabbit skills (maxed). Each time he died, I lost the Auras he provided.
2: I lack good grasp of the usefulness of Zon skills at high level (this was my highest Zon ever) and may have made an error in maxing strafe. I lack a good grasp of the equipment most useful to a Zon at high level, and was still tinkering/exploring/researching (Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing). A BAD translation of the German Zon Guides would be vastly superior to the wretched job of translating that Alta Vista Babel-Fish does. Please, somebody, translate the guides to English, and if you do a bad job, enjoy my help tweaking the English into a polished form. We'll both learn.
3: I lack a good grasp of the equipment sets that "play together well" to make a viable kit for a Zon (possibly other classes as well), or the realization that all together they're inadequate and that runewords must be built (and which ones make the most viable set in the field). Theoretical knowledge from reading the descriptions translates (at best) poorly into a useful understanding of field conditions.
Restart delayed until I get better understanding of the Mod itself in Hell; now building a PsychicHammer/MindBlast assassin. I noticed Venom changed (damage over 1.6 saeconds instead of .4 seconds... seems like a trivial difference but I suspect it's rather severe in the field in Hell. How does this affect the use of BladeFury?