New to hardcore, playing untwinked

My friend and I were getting bored with SC so we gave HC a shot. I made a frost zealot and he made a rabies druid and we leveled together until A4 norm, and a group of infernos took me out. Just playing that pally was enough to get me hooked on HC. So we start over, this time I make a fishymancer, he makes a martial arts assassin. This time we get to a2 NM. My friend is about 54 at this point when he runs into some pack of specials while I was afk for a second. Next thing I know I'm running to catch up and he gets killed. Soooo now we are starting over again, I may continue with the fishymancer once we get back to that level. Hes restarting with a pally, some type of fanaticism zealot. Could anyone recommend a build with good survivability that would have synergy with his char? I know the fishymancer would be great with amp damage and all the various CC curses, but in the mean time I need a fun and durable build to play with him. Thoughts?|||Maybe a double swing barb to support him in the fray, or another pali. You could both use holy fire, then one could respec to holy freeze. Holy freeze coupled with a fanat zealot or DS barb should be good for nightmare.

As the saying goes, the best defense is a good offense, so rather than looking for a 'synergistic' build you should look to builds that can kill quickly untwinked. Trap assassins are alright, you might struggle a bit when fire blast becomes inadequate and the light skills aren't strong enough yet. You really can't go wrong with a sorc, fire is good for act 1-3, then you can respec to blizz and pwn everything |||Characters that use up close combat are usually short lived in my experience. My best success is with casters (although they are very fragile also) such as a sorc or necro.

Most importantly just have fun and make a character that will allow you to do so. One you can consider looking at is an orb/tk sorc with max block. Fun, durable and fast.