Let's start it out in true gaming style:

"No sh.t - There I was..."

Spent the better part of an hour with my level 68 fireball/frozen orb
sorc, doing my usual "scorched earth, no stone unturned, no chest
unkicked" routine in Hell act 1. It paid off in a handful of low runes,
3-4 pgems (after cubing up lesser stuff) and a pair of Lum runes - one
under a rock, the other in a chest. Hit Tristram, free Caine, then back
to the Dark Woods for mop-up, and on to the marsh, looking for the
waypoint. Now, this little girl is some serious trouble for anything not
fire immune - Between her Lore, a Salamander staff, a spiffy amulet with
+2 fire skills, and her base skill points, plus her synergies, her
fireball hits for 2243-2597 at a whack. Her orb is still comparatively
wimpy, only dealing about 270 points, but... <shrug> She gets by. Add
her Thorns merc toting an Insight, and I don't even bother carrying blue
potions anymore.

So, we're tooling around in the Marsh, looking for the waypoint, and
eventually the countess. Clear the Marsh, but I must have blinked as the
waypoint went by, 'cause I still don't have it. OK, Mugsy - let's take
another turn around the park... Aha.. There it is - Surrounded by not
one, but TWO boss-packs of sasquatches - Fortunately both had LI bosses,
so, fireball wiped 'em out PDQ.

OK, got the waypoint - now to go play with the countess. Head downstairs
to level 1, and proceed to clear it - Still "scorched earth" and hitting
every item that might yield something worth picking up. Level cleared,
head for the stairs. Down we go. Uh-oh... classic stair-trap - Pop in
smack in the middle of what I'm soon to find out is a boss-pack of
Devilkins, which are FI, as all of the fallen/carver/devilkin types have
been since I came into Hell level. OK, switch to orb and get one off -
just before getting tagged for a handful of points worth of damage - but
now my mana ball is empty. Aw, crap... Boss has mana burn... This is
gonna be ugly... Punch the f-key for teleport, and hover a finger over
my stack of fat purples to feed either me or my merc as needed while
trying to tele out of the crowd. No luck - Whack! hit-locked and
mana-drained. Chug a fat purple, and feed one to the merc. He makes a
valiant effort, but he's apparently targeting the boss, and there's
charged bolts going off like crazy. Oh great... Mana burn *AND*
lightning enchanted? Yeah, this is gonna be SUPER fun... NOT! Merc is
taking a severe beating - As fast as I pump fat purples into him, he's
back to under a quarter of his life-bar. Five potions later, he goes
down as I'm stabbing at the key to feed him the last one of the stack of
fat purples while TRYING to teleport to "anywhere but here!!!" in
between snarfing down fat purples. (and almost instantly getting hit and
re-drained) Oh boy... we're in SERIOUS trouble now, Kemosabe! I'm trying
like crazy to either get back up the stairs, or tele away, but I'm
surrounded and getting beat on like a pinata at a cinco de mayo party.
Whack, hit-locked and mana ball empty again. Whack. Hit-locked again.
Life ball below half. Punch to chug a fat purple and try to tele. Whack!
Whack! Whack! Mana ball empty, life ball below half, hit-locked, and
punching for another fat purple while trying to tele and/or move to hit
the stairs. No joy... Whack. Hit-locked and trying to punch for yet
another fat purple, still trying to tele. Rapid-fire
WhackWhackWhackWhack! You have died...

Well, wanting to know what I was going to be in for when I tried for a
corpse retrieval, I sat there moving the cursor around trying to spot
the boss. Finally got him - YIKES! No wonder the merc went tango-uniform
so fast: I'm looking at "Devil Shifter the Mad", and he's showing  
lightning enchanted, cold enchanted, extra fast, extra strong, and mana
burn. As if that weren't enough, he's FI/CI/PI, and I've got
next-to-nothing in the lightning branch of the skill tree - I think I've
got a whole 5 points total into the lightning branch of the skill tree,
Pfft... Nothing worth bothering to talk about. This is a Fireball/Orb
sorc, after all...

Thankfully, I'd just leveled up on the first level of the tower, so I
didn't lose much of anything in the way of experience. That being the
case, I decided that I could "suicide through" the boss-pack waiting at
the bottom of the stairs. Tried it - three times. Finally gave up after
getting creamed within two seconds of arriving on all three attempts,
and as far as I could tell, didn't accomplish much more than scratching
one of the pack, and chipping a nail on a second one.

Just goes to show that a decent night can turn into a near-total wash...
All it takes is one LE/EF/MB, FI/CI/PI boss-pack at the bottom of the
stairs to do it...

Back to the drawing board - Tomorrow!