Diablo II builds

[Humodour]

You've got the one-hit-wonder vengeance/conviction combo for immunes. Anyway, javazons suffer just the same from lightning immunes, and hammerdins similar when it comes to physical immunes.

[Dark_Raven]

Hero Editor is your best friend. Edit your character, game items or make your very own custom items.

[Hurlshort]

Hero Editor is your best friend. Edit your character, game items or make your very own custom items.

 

Thanks, worked like a charm. The game is more fun without dying.

[mkreku]

I died like a little bitch surely 20 times to the claws of Diablo last night. He shot me with some red beam that was insta-kill for my weakling of a paladin. I finally figured out a tactic to beat him, but damn I was frustrated for a while there. Run from the teleport pad to Diablo, die from first red beam, run back for five minutes, collect corpse, die again from red beam and so on.

 

It turned out it was possible to stay far away from him and let him shoot those red beams as much as he wanted, because sooner or later he always came running for me with some crappy rush attack. That's when I let loose my Zeal on him, ONCE, before I ran away again, out of reach for his lame red beam. It took a while but it worked.

[Shryke]

You've got the one-hit-wonder vengeance/conviction combo for immunes. Anyway, javazons suffer just the same from lightning immunes, and hammerdins similar when it comes to physical immunes.

 

true, lightning javazons have that problem too, but hammerdins are fine, because blessed hammer does magic damage, not physical, and only like one critter pretty much in the whole game is magic immune

[Humodour]

You've got the one-hit-wonder vengeance/conviction combo for immunes. Anyway, javazons suffer just the same from lightning immunes, and hammerdins similar when it comes to physical immunes.

 

true, lightning javazons have that problem too, but hammerdins are fine, because blessed hammer does magic damage, not physical, and only like one critter pretty much in the whole game is magic immune

 

Wow, that makes Hammerdins even more boring than usual then. Honestly, immunes make things a bit exciting. You know - clicking more than one button for once.

 

But see, this is why I hate cookie cutter builds - they're boring as bat**** (and yes, that's saying something in Diablo 2).

 

mkreku: you're not alone. If you make it to nightmare, the thing to remember is that his red lightning hose does lightning damage. If you get about %40+ lightning resistance it makes the world of difference. Another trick which you probably discovered is to either run around him or away from him when he shoots it. It does damage per second like act 3 shaman's inferno, so it's nasty.

Edited July 5, 2008 by Krezack

[Shryke]

yeah i've always gone for the slightly less generic builds

 

i was quite partial to my druid summoner for a while, but then decided i wanted to try out a fire druid, so i deleted him

 

i've never really been able to get into barbarians though. i tried a concentrator, and it did pretty good, but it just wasn't.... fun

[Blarghagh]

I've never been very serious about this game but I'm thinking about doing a playthrough, but I don't know what character class I should pick. Can anyone tell me what the classes strengths and weaknesses are (LoD included)? I've tried going to the battle net strategy guides but it's no help.

[Shryke]

a pretty easy class to play through with is as a summoner necromancer

 

just max out raise skelly and skelly mastery, ignore skelly mages, and put one point in each curse

 

then you'll still have enough skill points left to play around with it a bit

you can either go for a golem of your choice, or you could even start putting some points in bone armour and wade in there and help your skellies kill things

[Blarghagh]

I'll give it a try.

[Shryke]

be warned though, some consider it pretty boring, as most of the time you just sit back and let your minions kill everything

 

i like to mix it up a bit, and maybe equip a bow to get in there and help a bit too, or use skill like poison dagger or bone spear

[Tigranes]

So uh, I caved in and bought meself some cheap second hand D2/LoD. Wa-hey!

 

Its been so long since I played though, so I forgot everything. I know I want to play sorcereress again, but I forgot all those basic things like where I should put my skill points in and the possible combinations. I don't like following cookie cutter builds, but I want to remember those basic competitive hints - help Krezack, etc?

 

I really don't remember much at all - I'm thinking of going Frozen Orb / Energy Shield though I might look at alternatives like Inferno or Blizzard specialisation. Just basic questions like, do I simply pump all the points into Energy or look at putting some into Dexterity? For skills it would be Orb, Cold Mastery, Telekinesis and Energy Shield at 20.. then probably a bit in Static Energy and Teleport.

[Azure79]

So uh, I caved in and bought meself some cheap second hand D2/LoD. Wa-hey!

 

Its been so long since I played though, so I forgot everything. I know I want to play sorcereress again, but I forgot all those basic things like where I should put my skill points in and the possible combinations. I don't like following cookie cutter builds, but I want to remember those basic competitive hints - help Krezack, etc?

 

I really don't remember much at all - I'm thinking of going Frozen Orb / Energy Shield though I might look at alternatives like Inferno or Blizzard specialisation. Just basic questions like, do I simply pump all the points into Energy or look at putting some into Dexterity? For skills it would be Orb, Cold Mastery, Telekinesis and Energy Shield at 20.. then probably a bit in Static Energy and Teleport.

 

I haven't played in a years as well, the last time being when synergies came into effect. Basically, synergies was Blizzard's way of persuading players to invest in lower level skills, as most people up to that point would save their skill points until they reached level 30, when the most powerful skills became available.

 

So, if you're a cold sorc, not only would you max frozen orb, but also invest points in say, lower level skills like ice bolt and glacial spike to increase the overall damage of frozen orb, since each point in a lower level skill would increase the damage in frozen orb. If you look at the skill tree ingame, you can see which skills synergize with each other.

 

Also, you'll find in higher difficulties, most enemies are immune to one or two types of damage. So if you specialize in just cold magic, you'll be frustrated when you encounter hordes of cold immune monsters. Your attacks will have no effect on them. So you have to branch out to other skill trees like fire and lightning if you want to successfully take out those monsters.

 

Your build will cause a lot of grief in higher difficulties as many enemies in all acts will be cold immune. I would suggest(my suggestions might be outdated by now)

 

Cold/Fire Sorceress

 

20 in Frozen orb

5-10 in Cold mastery

20 in Meteor

20 in Fire Mastery

As much as you can in Fireball since it increases the damage in Meteor

One point in everything else like teleport, energy shield, warmth and static field.

 

Max orb first since its pretty easy to use, and will slow enemies down. Also you really won't start encountering cold immune enemies until later levels in nightmare. Start investing in the fire tree after the cold tree.

 

This is a cookie cutter build, but its hard not to build a non-cookie cutter build that won't have you dying or be frustrated in later difficulties. Since you're starting from scratch gameplay will be challenging enough without hand me down items.

 

Skill points are tough. I would only invest enough in strength in wear what you need to, none in dex, around 70-80 in energy(Items will boost mana later on) and everything else in vitality.

 

I can't believe I remember even this much. If only my brain would retain other information like this.

[Tigranes]

Yeah, I think I quit before synergies came in. Looked a little bit up and am investing into Ice Bolt as apparently that helps Frozen Orb. Glacial Spike as well? Ah.

 

Level 15 and got to Act 2, doing okayish with no real swag to speak of (obviously). Already have 100 energy (i thinka bout 90 without items), so probably time to put a reasonable amount in Dex. (heh, still on 10vit.)

 

Good point about only going for cold - sorely tempted to just branch out into lightning, but not really sure how that would work - in the past it wasn't really a good idea.

[Humodour]

Hey, just saw this sorry. I'd stop putting points in energy if I were you (most people suggest base energy). You'll probably soon realise it was a bad idea to abandon vitality, though it can make things more entertaining as you pay more attention in combat (or die a lot). Dex is ok to keep your blocking up, but it's all or nothing. General rule is: enough strength for gear, enough dex for max block, the rest into vitality.

 

Generally multi-element sorcs go 20 frozen orb, 1 cold mastery (pierce does wonders), then the rest of their points in another skill + its synergies.

 

Example - charged bolt sorc takes:

20 frozen orb

1 to 10 cold mastery (+ skills helps here, I'd go 5 for a fresh char)

20 lightning mastery

20 charged bolt

20 lightning (synergy)

1 to 10 warmth (+skills helps here, I'd go 5 as above)

 

Since I doubt you'll get above level 80 it's probably not worth thinking about the rest of your points. Obviously items to look out for are +skills and fast cast.

 

Energy shield is dangerous. It's generally an all or nothing deal. You'll note it requires a decent investment in telekinesis as well in order to not sap your mana ball completely within a few hits (no mana = no teleport, no killing = dead).

 

What Azure says is generally on the money, though I'd disagree with him about energy.

 

The most fun sorc is an enchant sorc, though. Although if I were going to build a starting sorc it'd probably be a Hydra sorc... either way, Sorcs aren't good starting chars IMHO... very item dependent and fiddly.

 

*cough* MP with me! I promise to play a 'unique' build and let you set the pace *cough*

[Humodour]

Yeah, in fact, I'm gonna go start an Assassin that throws blades everywhere and kicks smegheads in the face repeatedly.

 

P.S. type /playersX - where X is 1 to 8, and sets the game difficulty (but also level of XP rewards and item drops).

[Musopticon?]

I looked for my Duablo cds, but I've borrowed them to someone some time age and can't remember who the damn idjit is!

 

Well, new D2+LoD costs less than lunch, no big investment. And I'm giddy about starting a poisonmancer with my friend who loves playing as assassins. I spent all my coffee breaks just thumbing through the D2 manual to come up with a decent build for two player mp. That is quite a testament to the hold this game still has over me. I'm addicted before even starting!

[Humodour]

Don't worry, I did similar. Me and a friend will be playing a synergistic duo like this:

 

He'll play poisonmancer/summoner hybrid, I'll play ranged enchantress sorc. I cast enchant on his skeles, he casts lower resist on our enemies, all hell breaks lose as we pwn.

[Azure79]

Argh... all this talk about D2...must resist installing again...

 

I'd agree with Krezack on the energy after thinking about it. I think base will be enough as long as you have enough potions to drink along the way.

 

And i'm not sure about glacial spike synergizing with orb, it was just an example.

 

Have fun playin!

[Tigranes]

Example - charged bolt sorc takes:

20 frozen orb

1 to 10 cold mastery (+ skills helps here, I'd go 5 for a fresh char)

20 lightning mastery

20 charged bolt

20 lightning (synergy)

1 to 10 warmth (+skills helps here, I'd go 5 as above)

 

I assume one takes charged bolt because of lightning? Damn, I alreayd have 8 in ice bolt (for the cold stuff).

[Humodour]

No, actually. Charged bolt is a very powerful skill.

 

Now I haven't checked this out lately, but I know I used to play charged bolt sorcs for the novelty. People would go "CB? Hahahaha" and then I'd wipe out the room. But because the patch introduced synergies, CB became a main-line skill.

 

Let's do some maths:

At level 20, CB does 13 to 15 damage (avg 14). Pitiful.

The thing is, you shoot 22 such bolts. 22 * 14 = 308 damage. Eh... that's OK, but not all bolts will hit one monster. It could be an OK crowd control skill, right? Maybe, BUT...

20 in the Lightning synergy gives +120% damage:

240*2.2 = 677 damage. This is actually getting good.

Now for lightning mastery: 677 * 3.8 = about 2500 damage

See what I'm getting at? Now, imagine yourself with a few fast cast rings and amulets, spamming charged bolt in a room full of monsters - there's no cast delay like on Orb, Meteor, etc. It's pwnage.

 

And you can use it on bosses, too. Because the bolts are clumped depending on where you click (near sorc = wide dispersal, far away from sorc = tight dispersal up to that point), you can thus control how many hit any one target or group of targets. With bosses, you can just walk up to them, cast it just in front of them, and watch them take all 22 bolts. Act bosses are easier because they're so fat they absorb them all anyway.

 

It's not exactly a safe build since you often have to get close. You've got a fairly synergised Lightning at your disposal as well, though, remember (it does 1,500 damage average in a line).

 

And I know the prospect may not be appealing at first, but you can start a new char with the advice we've given, and be up to level 15 to 20 again within 2 to 4 hours. Just a thought... personally I enjoy starting new chars. Of course, if you're playing with friends, you can just stick to an entirely cold sorc, as you'll do lots of damage, and your friends can handle cold immunes. You'd probably want to grab an act 2 defiance merc once you hit at act 2 in normal (so he can tank, and so he can handle cold immunes a bit, and so your defence gets higher).

Edited July 8, 2008 by Krezack

[Tigranes]

Well I've played for only 5 hours, but I'm in Kurast with level 20. Most of that was played with one other sorc starting anew, so I consider that good time. It was pretty hilarious when I fought Duriel with 15 Vitality and like 90 health, and he would basically kill me in 1 or 2 hits. We just decided to forego tactics and go in TP, teleport around attacking him before lag killed us, immediately going back in, until he broke.

 

I think I lost 40k in that battle.

 

The noobage out of my system, I've got 8 in icebolt which I'm going to regret, so I may just do that and start a new character. I've been using lightning a bit in the Act 2 tombs and it *is* an appealing prospect. With Frozen Orb as additional ranged skill CB/FO does sound appealing (and new). Or I might do CB/FO anyway with this char and accept less efficiency. Depends.

[Humodour]

Haha, well whatever you choose, have fun!

 

I'm trying to convince somebody to play HC with me but nobody will bite.

[Tigranes]

Play on USEast, I'll play with you. Wherever 'HC' is.

 

I will go with FO/CB and follow your guidelines, its just a matter of new character or not. We'll see, it's 9:30pm and I've got some thesis work to do.

[mkreku]

By the way, I got a tip to put a lot of points in Fanaticism, which sounded fine at the time. The only problem was that the skill itself didn't open up until I hit level 30. I can do that, I thought, and played like a madman to get to 30 while saving my skill points for that mythical skill. When I finally hit 30, I was eager to spend them.. only to find out I could only spend ONE lousy skill on Fanaticism at level 30! To get to level two in that skill, I have to be level 31. And I assume for level three I need to be level 32.. That means I'll be maxed out by the time I hit LEVEL 50! Screw that, Diablo 2 isn't THAT much fun