I've made it to Act 3 hell now. Barb still hasn't needed to use a shield. I took screenshots of the stats I had against most of the bosses. Barb solo'd most encounters only using decrep from Spellsteal paired with some slow from gear. NM Diablo took a bit of patience but mostly it was just being alert about when the lightning hose animation began and getting out of the way. I used eth upgraded Kelpie Snare so I think I had 21% slow not counting decrep for that fight.
Ancients were cheesed with my necro; summoning my full army and dealing as much damage as possible, returning to town and repeating. Their damage didn't seem as strong as it used to be so I imagine with a block setup I could've done them with the barb without too much trouble. At that point I finally picked a build for my sorc and decided to try Nova/Static/TS... Nova is ridiculously good vs trash but TS' range seems underwhelming, I don't think i'll be able to do many bosses with it since I have to get be so close.
Anyway back to Baal and his minions... I'm not sure what the rationale is between the changed order but it would make sense to me Asmodeous was the first one since he's still by FAR the easiest of them all. I ended up doing achmel with the sorc, I could probably have done him with the barb using sanctuary aura but I didn't bother trying. Glasya hurt as usual but I don't remember having much difficulty with her. Although Darkness spawned with fairly easy mods it still took me 3 or 4 tries I think. With only 17% PDR I had to be super disciplined about when I WW'ed him to not get thrashed by tornados.
Baal was a pretty good fight. It took a while to separate him from the tentacles. According to my screenshot I had 28% slow against him using the ethereal upgraded Kelpie that I used for Diablo as well. Once I got rid of the tentacles it was again mostly about being disciplined about not engaging and WW'ing with less than 80% health; after a patient battle and half a cube of pots or so he fell:
For hell I've skipped everything that wasn't mandatory so far... While I didn't like how shitty act 1 hell and to a lesser extent act 2 was in 1.3 from a farming perspective I'm also not too fond of the idea that you can farm endgame gear minus 95 uniques already in act 1... Maybe its because the nova sorc is so ridiculously fast at farming trash (trash being too weak imo) but I have collected a bunch of 80-86 set/uniques and 2 cham runes in a very short time... I haven't really played melee since 1.21 so I'm not sure what the best use of the Zod is but I'm guessing Sorrow TM or the concentration War Pike? Apart from those I guess the best endgame weapon is still ethereal Executioner's Justice from what I can see in uniques.txt...?
Anyway, Tobial was fierce. The barb might've been able to handle him with a block setup but in the end I managed to kill him with my sorc and her act 5 wolf merc (which seems incredibly strong - I've never used act 5 mercs previously). Andariel herself was much easier by comparison. Using the 25% amp from my necro she fell in a pretty short while.
Act 2 - Ardual, Maggot Queen and Juggernaut were all complete pushovers with 70% LL and sufficient res. Only the juggernaut managed to bring my barb low briefly with the amp/aura damage spikes. Summoner was a different beast but mainly because I didn't stack enough cold res on the barb initially. I moved him out of the way with bash/TK and then cleared the mummies with the nova sorc. After I fixed the cold res he was a piece of cake with the barb. Champion Wyrms are still easily the one of the most silly things in this mod and I ended up parking/skipping them for the most part. Thrack was a complete farce, I hope his skills changing between 1.5b and 1.5c was an attempt to make him a bigger threat.
Duriel was another beast. Again if I had made a block setup with sufficient CB% he might've been easy enough but how I went against him proved to be a very close match. The only fight I've had so far where the changed monster HPTable that I use might've made a difference (I use vanilla values to make farming faster/less tedious, that means I fought duriel and other bosses with a 250 multiplier rather than the 350 value set by Mraw). I had 3 or 4 attempts where I tried a slightly higher defense setup but in the end I settled for using the slow setup albeit with a Stormspire rather than my eth Kelpie (thinking I might need it later and the durability is running low).
For act 3 I'll get the barb to 90, upgrade his equipment and maybe decide on the use of the zod rune/endgame weapon before giving Mephisto a go in the next days.
Edit:
As I was doing the act 3 quests and gathering the waypoints I found I had a perfect durance level 2 (shortest distance from WP to level 3 possible) and decided I might as well give Meph a go. Mithia spawned lightning enchanted and there was almost no champion Seraphs on top of that so it only took a few minutes before I had the portal open.
Meph was much less of a struggle than Duriel. I did use a full cube of healing potions and had to use my necro's amp for the last third of Meph's life (forgot to bring smith rune for my Spellsteal) but the barb never really got close to dying. Once again I used a 22% slow setup with enough light res to counter the LR curse.
I'll be preparing for Diablo the next days. I'll try a few things with the barb and probably level/spec my pala into a FoH build if the barb falls short. I took a glance at the zod runewords again... I guess Hatred and Last Wish are options too, LW looks pretty good although i'll have to find some more runes and a suitable base. IDK how good slvl 5 Fade is now though. Sitting on 2 Cham/1 Jah/1 Ber/4 Sur/7 Lo for now, planning to make a Faith Glaive for the necro.
Edit2: Made the Faith and completed my hellforges: Cham, Sur, Lo, Um (!) and found another Ber so I can make Last Wish once I actually find a worthwhile base item...
CS is going to be a pita to clear with the Mariliths... probably gonna stack up on pierce on the sorc and yolo them. If I spec FoH on the pala it'll be quick to clear out all the other mobs but I'm not sure if its good enough in this version even with a lot of magic pierce.
I haven't been able to find Trang's gloves to complete the set but finally found the Overseer skill to not have to rely on Warpspear for the necro anymore. Trying to decide if Enigma+Mancers set or something else is really worth it or if Trangs is decent enough. Haven't actually used Mancer's set since 1.21..
About (elite) uniques - I understood the need to add more sockets to make them competitive but with everything having 3-4 sockets crafting/rares have become completely obsolete. Should be more of a middle ground IMO with uniques offering properties that cannot be gotten from rares/crafts but with extra sockets available on those making them better in some scenarios.