PSA: blade warp does not work through the desert hills, you still have to find the stairways there. It worked on far oasis pools, lost city walls and on the claw viper altar though.
Found the first unique of the walkthrough, equipped it because of the 20% FRW.

Got the first set item of the walkthrough as well. Stealth is still better for me, but it was an upgrade for the mercenary.
Speaking of upgrades to the mercenary, I couldn't find any Kris blades at Fara or Drognan and did not see a Kris drop either. I know daggers were moved to caster vendors, but Drognan also exclusively sold daggers/dirks but nothing higher.

KB fireballs but no pierce. and low dmg ^^

For warp blade in desert hills it def works, just have to be not too close from it. def works easier when ur above tho :)

Eventually (mid to lategame) it might become low damage sure, as of now I still beat everything with 1-2 casts on P8. We'll see how my mileage will vary in nightmare - other than a 1 minute video of a warlock exploding cows with a pentagram and the parallel warlock walkthrough, I tried to dodge gameplay spoilers for my first playthrough.
Ahh, I tried several angles with the blades with no success. I mostly tried them from below that's true.


Duriel was simple, had to keep him in the sigil and spam flame wave. Mercenary drank most of my health/rejuv pots, I drank most of my mana pots. Sometimes knocking back the mercenary made duriel refocus the demon, instantly killing it. I simply resummoned the demon, kept the sigil and the pots running and flame waves dropped him quite soon.

Ormus was the first vendor to sell me a Kris, so I bought some and rolled 2 good bases. The halberd is an upgrade for the mercenary now, the battle scythe I have kept for a bit later when he gains more dexterity.
Act 2 completed, level 26 if I remember correctly. Started putting points on the prerequisites for some lvl 30 spells including consuming my demon. I would still need a few more points for bind demon, but I'll be able to consume my Tainted for some extra fire damage.

So far so good. Took a while to collect all the jungle waypoints, but the xp was fine. Cathan's mask is an upgrade for now.

First fire immunes are coming up already, but Leharas could solo the witch doctor - and got rewarded with an armor upgrade.

Everytime I pop by Ormus I browse his wares for a tele staff. With blade warp it's not as urgent - won't buy one for 377k.

Councils were pretty easy to burn down. Even though my flame wave damage could be a lot higher without me spending all those prereq skill points with blade warp / demons / sigils, it still does the job fine.
The decrepify-sigil is really great against mobs, especially if you catch them in the middle of a spellcast animation, they take seconds to finish the spell. Mephisto went down easily as well.

In act 4 the fire resist mobs required a few more shots than what I'm used to, but not horrible.

Forgot the screenshot of the waypoints, so I backtracked for that. Found the weapon of the new set, I stashed it for now just to check it out later in case I find the rest, but I doubt it'll be useful.

Demon/Merc made no sense against Diablo, even though lethargy was doing a great job in slowing him down, whenever he started casting lightning, merc dropped instantly.
I simply kept him slowed and spammed flame wave, chugged through an inventory of mana pots, but nothing challenging.