Diablo II character suggestions

[Hugo]

So, I've decided to give playing Diablo II another go - but I don't really know what characters will be effective in the long run.
I'll be playing it *with* the LoD expansion pack, and with whatever patch is latest...

I feel like playing a paladin especially, but I'm curious about all builds, not just pally ones.
Please offer your suggestions.

[Taluntain]

Paladin is probably the easiest to start with. I've played a Necromancer and had major problems with the first big boss monster (that female one). Had to get some online help to kill it. But after that, once you advance the skill tree a bit and get some decent ranged spells (bone spear, IIRC), you can take on anything easily enough if you plan properly so that you have a lot of mana at your disposal.

[Hugo]

Thanks, but I was meaning slighly more specifically... Suggestions for skill/ability builds that'll last me through nightmare and hell difficulties... I've never finished the game on normal, usually because I get frustrated due to having too weak a character in the fourth act.

[Duffin]

To be fair a hammerdin wont be very good without enigma. If this is your first char i would suggest a lightning sorc. She can do the highest max dmg of any sorc skill and the countess is never lightning immune so you can do both key, rune and mf runs with this baby. The skills are, 20 lightning, 20 Chain lightning, 20 lightning mastery, 20 charged bolt, 1 teleport, 1 energy shield, 1 telekensis, 1 chilling armor and the rest nova. Good equipment for this character would be occu, lidless (soc with diamond), skin of the vipermagi (with soc diamond), harlequin shako (topazed), frostburn or magefist, tal ammy and tal belt.

EDIT: You wont be able to do hell alone but apart from ik or uber gear barbs or hammerdins very few characters can so id be happy to help with any quests your stuck on just let me know.

[Wordplay]

Choose the one you like and start burning. Worry about the later levels when you are there.

[Gnarfflinger]

I actually had some luck with the Druid with mostly werewolf skills and some backup stuff (the corpse vine, a wolf, maybe the spirit that pumps life points). Werewolves make for fast attackers, so get the biggest one handed weapon that you can get your paws on and as heavy armour as you can get...

[xosmi]

hammerdin, hands down. still highest damage.

you might want to make a sorcy, but dont make a MF specific one, it's not worth it. Go lightning here, all the way, NO mana shield. light sorcs are good for running hell countess and summoner for keys.

after you get those keys, you WILL need a smiter for the ubers. no need to get too expensive, cant pay exile ? get a bone wand with 97 charges of life tap.

for the more extravagant builds, and those with 2 keys especially, make a battlesorceress. that means passion runeword (+1 to zeal all classes) and pumping enchant with it's synergy. NO mana shield, you are a melee character, you get hit a lot. put all points in life, not mana.

a trapsin is fun too, but not really fit for anything...

if you're going barbarian, go either beserker or concentrator, WW got nerfed so much..

necro's are allmost all skellymancers with tons of summons nowadays, no more marrowwalk bug, so bonemancers are even weaker..

lightning fury amazon still works. strafe-zon too.

WW druids are not an option without enigma, make a fury wolf instead.

[Wordplay]

Or, like I'm doing now; take the easy way and create an "elementalist" druid. I.e: a druid that spends skill-points only to the right-side of the "Elemental" tree (wind spells). Create a hurricane and spew tornadoes. Easy way to deal 1k dam and stay out of the fray.

First time trying hardcore (only 1 life), so being extra careful and staying in teams. Seems like others play the same way too more often than not when compared to softcore.

Not sure how others manage to come along with so great gear (and the necessary runes), though.

[Gothmog]

I'm playing in a duo with a friend. Decided on a poison druid. Werewolf with maxed Rabies attack and maxed poison vine for synergy. Pretty fun so far. It's not the fastest way to kill, poison takes a little while, but it's fun when i can just rush through the mob, strike once maybe twice and see them all infected. Hang back for a few seconds until they all drop and loot the spoils

[Quickgrif]

If Pally is what you want try the vengence holy freeze combo. Vengence attack adds all elemental type dmg plus freezes opponent. Add points early on to your defensive auras that give sysnergy bonuses to vengence that will add dmg to vengence without upping the cost of mana per strike with vengence. Holy freeze is great not only it does dmg but it slows enemies down. To round this combo off a few points into divine shield will increase your armro lvl highly and enough points will make it last a good amount of time. With this combo I was wreaking destruction on all three lvls of diffuculty with standrd items (no cheat items)

[Daie d'Malkin]

I've got an elemental druid, with fire spells, esp. Fissures. I've stopped using weapons now as my magic deals much more damage, although I keep an axe in my hand as it doubles my strength.

I've got a few ice spells just in case the monster is immune to fire, and I'm kicking ass atm.

[Aldeth the Foppish Idiot]

My latest build was a paladin. I'm currently level 80-something on ACT 3 Hell difficulty. I built this character on the premise of minimizing incoming damage, and while my damage output is a bit lacking, he does a good job of staying alive.

Zeal is my main attack, and holy freeze is my main aura. I took a defensive Act 2 merc for even more defense.

Skills:

Holy Freeze: 20
Holy Shield: 20
Definance: 20 (synergy with Holy Shield)
Resist Cold: 20 (synergy with Holy Freeze)
Zeal: 20
Vengence: 1
And all prerequisites.

Once you add in the prerequisites a "complete build" would require 108 skill points, which you won't get until you're level 98, which isn't likely to happen. What I did was max out holy freeze and holy shield first, and then rotate around the others. Currently, I'm at about level 15 with zeal, resist cold and definance.

[Wordplay]

My wind-druid hit level 60 in hardcore and guess what? There are almost NO players online, so I'm kinda stuck in Baal. That defencive merc from act 2 does pretty good job (stays alive too), but Baal has simply too much HP and that knock-back spell of his is a pain in the arse even though a druid is otherwise very easy and effective class to play.

What use of forcing people to team-up if there is no one to team-up with? Those few players left just want to kill Baal's minions before leaving. Makes you feel like all those hours tweaking your char are for nothing when you can't get to the last third of the game. Blah.

[ July 19, 2006, 20:30: Message edited by: Wordplay ]

[Goli Ironhead]

Actually, Wordplay, my friend destroyed Baal alone with ease, Alone, first time, not dying even once. Althought it was not hardcore, I think it's just as achiable there.

[Wordplay]

It is, but the bad side of elemental druid is that his spells are quite limited in range (tornadoes + hurricane). So with that knock-back the boss is not too difficult per se, can always return to the town, but just plain annoying and time consuming.

Got through it anyway thanks to a sorc who kindly decimated him to near death before leaving (like everyone else). So it's "Conqueror Wordplay" from now on.

By the way, is it normal for a druid to have only 600 hp with 220 vitality?

[Tassadar]

I found an ethereal Skullder's Ire the other day with my necromancer. Pretty sweet. He's predominantly a skeleton-based build but I put a few points here and there into the wrong skills/stats so he's not as well specialised as I would have liked. Still, he's just got through Hell Diablo no problems whatsoever.

You still on the Europe Ladder, Virne/Wirhe/Wordplay?

[Wordplay]

Yes. Hell-difficulty, hardcore ladder druid on EU servers. If you see my nick, that's me, because there is only a handful of people.

I'll be there for a little while longer, at least, since the game is getting to the part when you need to have a party and if there is no one available, you can't proceed without constantly having to pick up sticks from your arse.

[ July 20, 2006, 22:41: Message edited by: Wordplay ]

[Aldeth the Foppish Idiot]

By the way, is it normal for a druid to have only 600 hp with 220 vitality?

For an elemental druid, sadly, the answer is yes. If you want a druid with high hitpoints, it's necessary to use the lycanthropy tree, and specifically the werebear tree (although the wearwolf tree gives substantial bonuses to life points as well - just not as much as the werebear).

I know a lot of people who play werebears not because of their ability to deal out loads of damage (although I have to admit the potential is there) but because they are damn near indestructible. A level 60 druid with lycanthropy and werebear maxed out can have upwards of 2000 life points with about 200 points spent in vitality.

[Tassadar]

I'll be there for a little while longer, at least, since the game is getting to the part when you need to have a party and if there is no one available, you can't proceed without constantly having to pick up sticks from your arse.

Hardcore's a bit much for me mate but I've just started another summon necro on europe ladder (softcore) so might look out for you if you're around.

[Earl Grey]

If you play ladder an excellent build is the Hammerdin. One major reason for this is the "cheap" runewords that really boost this build:
Stealth armor
Spirit Sword
Spirit Paladin Shield
Lore Helm

Try to build an Insight polearm for your act 2 mercenary.

Hammerdin build:
20 Concentration (Main Aura)
20 Blessed Hammer (Main attack)
20 Blessed Aim (Synergy)
20 Vigor (Synergy)

Blessed Hammer will become powerful around level 25, before that you just hack away with the best weapon you can find.

There are two (other) builds that are really easy to build and play:
- Necromancer with max Skeletons, Skeleton Mastery and Corpse Explosion ("Fishymancer").
- Assassin with max Lightning Sentry and synergies ("Trapsin").

@ Wordplay
I'm playing untwinked HC on Europe in a group called "KTA". We have reached act 2 Hell and if you're interested I could ask if the others would accept it.

You can also check out The Amazon Basin.

HC players don't play in open games except in normal difficulty, they're all playing in closed games with people they trust because of the threat of player killing. That's why there are practically no nightmare difficulty games.

[ July 21, 2006, 16:07: Message edited by: Earl Grey ]

[Wordplay]

@ Tassadar

Otherwise okay, but I'm getting my fill of Diablo 2 with this char already -can't bugger to start from scratch again.

@ Earl Grey

Shure, I got boosted to Act 2 just yesterday and I have some small quests that require doing (Malus, Radament). PM me the time and date (GMT) and I'll try to be there.

Have to say that when comparing my barbarian, Druids are a lot more competitive choise. Easy way to deal damage, no absolute need for twinking or über items, and they can even specialize to summoning, spells, or melee (all groups). Still, sorcs and paladins seem to be better, since pallies have more HP/res and sorcs can basically annihilate anything without getting touched (guess who boosted me?)

[Aldeth the Foppish Idiot]

I think Barbarians are the strongest class - even without twinking, their skills add so many +% damage they are the kings of the melee world.

I agree that through Normal and Nightmare - especially Nightmare - Sorceresses own. That's because you don't see any dual immunes on Normal and Nightmare, and any dual elemental sorceress will just mow things down. The problem kicks in on hell difficulty, when some (but by no means a majority) of creatures come with immunities to two different types of elementals. If they happen to be the two types you use, you're screwed. Then it's time for save and exit and hope the next game you start the creatures in that area spawn with different immunities.

[Wordplay]

Actually, Paladins are the kings of the melee world. They have a lot of auras and enchaments and they do not even need to rush head-on against monsters that can kill him with one or two swipes. Like electricity enchanted bosses. Paladins can just use those hammers and if that doesn't work: a) their shields automatically confer them high resistance against everything, and b) self-boosting auras make them very effective in close-range too.

I'm saying this from personal experience, like you already know from that other topic.

For any melee character, all you need to survive on hell difficulty is:

1. Max block
2. Lots of skill points spent in an attribute that greatly reduces hit frequency. (For barbs, that's things like shout and iron skin. For pallies, that's holy shield with the defiance synergy. For zons, that's dodge/evade.
3. Spend half of your ability points on vitality to give yourself a life pool of around 1000.
4. Take a definance merc along to maximize your defense.

Like I said, with my solo barb, he didn't deal out loads of damage - he just didn't get hit much. Taking a while to kill an opponent is no big deal when they can't hit you.

Plus "party-members whose skills complement each other." The thing is that when compared to other classes, you do not absolutely necessarily need max block, mercs, or other party-members. Sorcerer can simply wipe out the monsters, Paladin can just let the hammers do their job and stay behind his shield, Amazon has valkyrie and bows, necro his minions, and assassin his traps. Druid can use his wind-spells.

The point is that barbarian is the only class that has to go toe-to-toe with Hell-difficulty, near insta-gib monsters. The more players, the tougher time he will have in the fronts. Others have less risky options, like damage-absorbing summons, long-range attacks, and protective spells. In a good situation, you have a necromancer filling the fronts and a sorcerer dealing with the rest. Throw in a pally and it's ideal.

So it seems to me like barb is awfully difficult class to play with especially in Hardcore, where a single death means "the end." To be as effective as other classes in Nightmare and Hell, barbs need excellent items (twinking), maxed out skills (strict planning), and a careful playing-style (slow, tedious nudging to avoid being overwhelmed). In overall, the monsters are better barbarians in every aspect.

[ July 22, 2006, 18:45: Message edited by: Wordplay ]

[Mongerman]

I agree with wordplay. I played this ladder season extensively, and my most successful characters were my skellimancer (wait for something to die, then boom!) and my meteoorb sorceress. Frozen orb simply decimates everything in NM. Barbs on the other end require high end, expensive equipment to remain viable in hell. Ive stopped playing this ladder, but will start up again once new ladder starts. Anyone SPers want to join me?

[Tassadar]

How long is a ladder season?

+1 on necro being one of the best PvM characters I've seen.