Edit: Ignore this wall of text & jump to my last post.
I'm getting back into D2 after several years, and it looks like it hasn't changed much except leveling, but I'll get to that later. First I'd like some feedback on the PvM skill plans I have in mind. For some of the classes I really don't know what I want to do with them, so I'll be open to any build you might suggest, but for the ones that I have specific ideas I'll probably only take ideas that are tweaks to what I have (so don't tell me to go martial arts on my trapassin for example :P). Also the name of each class will have a link for the skill plan (just adding that so no one misses it).
Sorceress
This will be an uber tanky magic find sorc. It's kind of hard to add much MF gear since it requires lots of +skills to get energy shield to 40, along with some damage reduction to eliminate whatever gets past ES, aaaaand tons of mana regen to keep a level 40 ES from draining your mana. Last time I played I think I lucked out & found a 4 socket staff with +3 to energy shield & then put Memory in it. Since neither damage type has a huge bonus, the output is a little low, but unless hell mode's gotten a lot harder, frozen orb can easily handle most anything. It was just when I fought cold immunes & had to rely on lightning that it took a while to kill things, but being super tanky meant that wasn't a problem.
Assassin
This was my second favourite class back when. I've tweaked it a little bit since then to completely get rid of the points I had in martial arts so it's a pure trapassin now. Lightning sentry and wake of inferno are both strong enough that they should let me deal with anything that's immune to either element, and having the shadow master instead of the warrior will let her use skills I don't have which ought to make immune mobs even easier.
Druid
This one's extremely simple. I want to be the beariest bear I can be. The harder to kill, the better. You can probably tell that after maxxing out lycanthropy, werebear, maul, and oak sage that I wasn't sure what to do with the rest. Having a 5.2 second stun & an 8% heal seemed like a decent use of 15 points though.
Necromancer
The summonmancer was always a lot of fun, except that I think I had 20 in raise skeleton and skeletal mage back then & found out how quickly they died in hell mode. Sucked pretty badly since you couldn't reset skills then. Anyway, I'm thinking this will work nicely with some +skill gear letting me raise a few skeletons while my golem & revived monsters take the brunt of the damage & I spread curses. I'm still not sure which golem to take, and just recently found out that the blood golem doesn't cause you to take damage anymore so I might switch to that instead of fire.
Ok, for the next three classes I'll admit I really don't know what the hell I want to do but my terminal alt-itis demands I make one of every class. I had some vague ideas of what sounded cool, but after plugging them into the skill calc they looked boring & terrible so any feedback on the next three is definitely appreciated.
Amazon
In this case I'm really happy with the passive & magic skills, but after that I just kinda didn't know what to do. I definitely want to stick with bow and crossbow, but none of the skills look all that fun.
Barbarian
Like the amazon, I'm happy with the support (masteries) skills, but not so much with the active skills. Am I just supposed to keep up shouts & spam frenzy? Sounds kinda boring.
Paladin
The charger sounded like a lot of fun until I actually started playing D2 again & remembered that you're usually fighting a swarm of monsters at a time. It might do great damage against bosses but I don't know how fun the class would be. The cleric build sounded good at first (I like healing in MMOs), but the healing looks weak, the damage looks weak, and it requires level 95 before it's really complete & I like my builds to be more or less complete at around 85.
About the leveling thing I mentioned, when did they start temp banning for making/joining games too quickly? That seems like it really screws with the old Trist/Cow/etc runs to level. I don't want to level a few times & then be banned for however many hours. Is there an alternative, or is there some way to make those runs still work? It's painfully slow to level by slogging through the campaign.
One final question: I'm looking for a shael or lum (preferably) rune. Is there a certain boss I can try farming to get either? The goal is to make Rhyme or Splendor for my sorc.
I'm getting back into D2 after several years, and it looks like it hasn't changed much except leveling, but I'll get to that later. First I'd like some feedback on the PvM skill plans I have in mind. For some of the classes I really don't know what I want to do with them, so I'll be open to any build you might suggest, but for the ones that I have specific ideas I'll probably only take ideas that are tweaks to what I have (so don't tell me to go martial arts on my trapassin for example :P). Also the name of each class will have a link for the skill plan (just adding that so no one misses it).
Sorceress
This will be an uber tanky magic find sorc. It's kind of hard to add much MF gear since it requires lots of +skills to get energy shield to 40, along with some damage reduction to eliminate whatever gets past ES, aaaaand tons of mana regen to keep a level 40 ES from draining your mana. Last time I played I think I lucked out & found a 4 socket staff with +3 to energy shield & then put Memory in it. Since neither damage type has a huge bonus, the output is a little low, but unless hell mode's gotten a lot harder, frozen orb can easily handle most anything. It was just when I fought cold immunes & had to rely on lightning that it took a while to kill things, but being super tanky meant that wasn't a problem.
Uhhh. Dont energy shield pvm sorcs have a lot of trouble against monsters with that attribute that steals mana? Youd need to be able to handle those monsters carefully or you die almost instantly against them and their horde of monsters with them. I cant really tell you to change your build or anything since Ive never really played a sorc with energy shield, but Ive always been told energy shield is more for pvp. Now, you can just reset your stats just in case you dont like your build though. Good luck, and enjoy!
Necromancer
The summonmancer was always a lot of fun, except that I think I had 20 in raise skeleton and skeletal mage back then & found out how quickly they died in hell mode. Sucked pretty badly since you couldn't reset skills then. Anyway, I'm thinking this will work nicely with some +skill gear letting me raise a few skeletons while my golem & revived monsters take the brunt of the damage & I spread curses. I'm still not sure which golem to take, and just recently found out that the blood golem doesn't cause you to take damage anymore so I might switch to that instead of fire.
This build unlike the other ones I have experience with. I'd recommend screwing the mages and using a Clay Golem. The skeletons suck if they're at level 20 in Hell yes, but the goal is to get as much +summoning as possible. Golems do despicable damage, so clay is good due to the slow effect that works wonders on bosses and helps your skeletons stay alive.
Barbarian
Like the amazon, I'm happy with the support (masteries) skills, but not so much with the active skills. Am I just supposed to keep up shouts & spam frenzy? Sounds kinda boring.
I think it's kind of fun actually, but yes that is basically it unless they're physical immune. Here's another guide for you: Frenzy Barb by Rousse
PlugY for Diablo II allows you to reset skills and stats, transfer items between characters in singleplayer, obtain all ladder runewords and do all Uberquests while offline. It is the only way to do all of the above. Please use it.
Supporting big shoulderpads and flashy armor since 2004.
Lots of great suggestions & I'll definitely be using a few of those. Thanks.
I don't see a link in the druid section. Were you referring to this one?
Jittabug, you're right that mana draining monsters can be absolutely lethal to an energy shield sorc, but I seem to remember that it was always possible to avoid them via teleport while I threw DPS at them.
PlugY for Diablo II allows you to reset skills and stats, transfer items between characters in singleplayer, obtain all ladder runewords and do all Uberquests while offline. It is the only way to do all of the above. Please use it.
Supporting big shoulderpads and flashy armor since 2004.
Lots of great suggestions & I'll definitely be using a few of those. Thanks.
I don't see a link in the druid section. Were you referring to this one?
Jittabug, you're right that mana draining monsters can be absolutely lethal to an energy shield sorc, but I seem to remember that it was always possible to avoid them via teleport while I threw DPS at them.
All right, so I've been playing for a while & a few more questions have come up in the meantime.
1) Just tonight I tried to make a second Insight polearm, but this one didn't work. As far as I remember, I made all of my characters as ladder characters (and I know from self-muling items between characters that they can all join the same games so they're definitely either all ladder or all non-ladder). Also since I successfully made one Insight, I can't understand why the second wouldn't work. I inserted them as ral+tir+tal+sol (in that order) in a 4 socket grey (not magical) polearm. If the order was correct, and the weapon was correct, does that mean my characters fell off the ladder or something?
2) My original plan for my assassin included a max level shadow master since she can use every assassin skill. That way she could handle anything that was immune to my two trap elements, fire & lightning. Since then I've remembered how retarded the AI is in this game, and don't trust it to use random skills to kill effectively. I've also seen how quickly a strong clay golem or valkyrie can die, and both of those wind up with a lot more HP than a shadow master or warrior. This leaves me with two questions. Do I invest in the shadow warrior or the shadow master? And should I take the skill to 20 or just invest a single skill point & plan on recasting them a lot?
3) My hirelings die...a lot. I started off with Act II prayer mercs on all my characters at first just because most of them didn't have life leech or much regen, but now most of them have holy freeze mercs instead. I figured the slowing effect would help keep the mercs alive, but it hasn't. Even in packs of normal enemies, my mercs generally live with little to no problem, or they're slaughtered horribly & quickly. There's no in between. I've tried upgrading their gear for more damage, defense, resists, whatever, but they still die. I even tried an Act III cold sorc thinking he would stay at range, but he consistently wanders into the middle of groups & gets himself killed. Any advice on how I can stop throwing away gold on these guys?
4) While doing nightmare Travincal/council with my paladin (I swapped to the Angelic Avenger plan), I was somehow taken from about 475 health to dead, instantly. This was while I had 90% all elemental resists, 75% block, and around 8500 armour which meant they had about a 13% chance to hit me with a physical attack. Seriously, what the hell happened there? Only 3 of them were even attacking me at that time, so they shouldn't have been able to just suddenly burst me down. Is there maybe some sort of glitch that allows that to happen? I could swear it's happened a time or two to other characters, but none of them had the defenses of my paladin so I figured I got overwhelmed.
3) My hirelings die...a lot. I started off with Act II prayer mercs on all my characters at first just because most of them didn't have life leech or much regen, but now most of them have holy freeze mercs instead. I figured the slowing effect would help keep the mercs alive, but it hasn't. Even in packs of normal enemies, my mercs generally live with little to no problem, or they're slaughtered horribly & quickly. There's no in between. I've tried upgrading their gear for more damage, defense, resists, whatever, but they still die. I even tried an Act III cold sorc thinking he would stay at range, but he consistently wanders into the middle of groups & gets himself killed. Any advice on how I can stop throwing away gold on these guys?
I don't know how well geared they are but they're really not useful unless you have really great gear. When you do get really great gear they rock. I do mean really great gear I don't know what kind of gear you have, but hirelings are so hard to make viable.
iirc only act 2 mercs are any decent at all don't bother with any others.
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"A lot of fellows nowadays have a B.A., M.D., or Ph.D. Unfortunately, they don't have a J.O.B."
1) Just tonight I tried to make a second Insight polearm, but this one didn't work. As far as I remember, I made all of my characters as ladder characters (and I know from self-muling items between characters that they can all join the same games so they're definitely either all ladder or all non-ladder). Also since I successfully made one Insight, I can't understand why the second wouldn't work. I inserted them as ral+tir+tal+sol (in that order) in a 4 socket grey (not magical) polearm. If the order was correct, and the weapon was correct, does that mean my characters fell off the ladder or something?
It's possible that they fell off if there was a ladder reset within the last month (don't think there was though?). Probably more likely is that you tried to make it in a spear instead of a polearm. I've definitely done that before.
2) My original plan for my assassin included a max level shadow master since she can use every assassin skill. That way she could handle anything that was immune to my two trap elements, fire & lightning. Since then I've remembered how retarded the AI is in this game, and don't trust it to use random skills to kill effectively. I've also seen how quickly a strong clay golem or valkyrie can die, and both of those wind up with a lot more HP than a shadow master or warrior. This leaves me with two questions. Do I invest in the shadow warrior or the shadow master? And should I take the skill to 20 or just invest a single skill point & plan on recasting them a lot?
I usually just put 1 point in Master and call it good. Summons' health scales with difficulty, so between that and +Skills, they're usually going to have pretty decent survivability. The bad news is that offensively, they're generally too weak to kill effectively; you're going to be primarily using them as tanks with CC abilities. Which is fine. Use Fire Blast on Lightning Immunes and if you run into Light/Fire Immunes, just try to CC while your merc kills them (Death Sentry can help here too) or just run away.
Thanks that was it, Kickin_It. I was trying to socket them in a lance which is a spear. I forgot there was even a difference. And I'll give the shadow master a shot & see if she does any better.
Agreed that the desert mercs are the best ones, but I'll have to try a rogue for my paladin. Being a tanky setup, he really needs the extra DPS from a merc.
I didn't feel like making a new thread, so....necro!
I'm running into problems dealing with certain immunities on two of my characters. My sorceress is cold/lightning, and doesn't have any tools to deal with monsters immune to both (whereas my trapassin can just mind blast the monster into submission while my minions beat on them), and my druid doesn't have any skills to handle physical immunes. I'm planning to give him a Grief phase blade so it will have a little poison & fire damage, but probably not enough to actually kill anything. Any suggestions for either?
I've been using Insight, but I'll get an Infinity to keep on hand too.
My druid's pure bear, so rabies is out of the question. Fireclaw will only hit for 187-194 a hit at 17 (highest level I'll have it at after +skill gear). Think that'll be enough? Fortunately I'll probably be able to run from most PIs if need be.
the only other recommendation for your bear would be to have an item with %proc amp, like atmas, or use/have merc use reapers toll for decrep (not sure if that breaks PI tho). act2 might merc + fort/guils/reapers is actually a really good combo for a melee char - my ik barb is using that merc setup.
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Remember the String of Ears
"to the worm in horseradish, the world is horseradish."
I'm getting back into D2 after several years, and it looks like it hasn't changed much except leveling, but I'll get to that later. First I'd like some feedback on the PvM skill plans I have in mind. For some of the classes I really don't know what I want to do with them, so I'll be open to any build you might suggest, but for the ones that I have specific ideas I'll probably only take ideas that are tweaks to what I have (so don't tell me to go martial arts on my trapassin for example :P). Also the name of each class will have a link for the skill plan (just adding that so no one misses it).
Sorceress
This will be an uber tanky magic find sorc. It's kind of hard to add much MF gear since it requires lots of +skills to get energy shield to 40, along with some damage reduction to eliminate whatever gets past ES, aaaaand tons of mana regen to keep a level 40 ES from draining your mana. Last time I played I think I lucked out & found a 4 socket staff with +3 to energy shield & then put Memory in it. Since neither damage type has a huge bonus, the output is a little low, but unless hell mode's gotten a lot harder, frozen orb can easily handle most anything. It was just when I fought cold immunes & had to rely on lightning that it took a while to kill things, but being super tanky meant that wasn't a problem.
Assassin
This was my second favourite class back when. I've tweaked it a little bit since then to completely get rid of the points I had in martial arts so it's a pure trapassin now. Lightning sentry and wake of inferno are both strong enough that they should let me deal with anything that's immune to either element, and having the shadow master instead of the warrior will let her use skills I don't have which ought to make immune mobs even easier.
Druid
This one's extremely simple. I want to be the beariest bear I can be. The harder to kill, the better. You can probably tell that after maxxing out lycanthropy, werebear, maul, and oak sage that I wasn't sure what to do with the rest. Having a 5.2 second stun & an 8% heal seemed like a decent use of 15 points though.
Necromancer
The summonmancer was always a lot of fun, except that I think I had 20 in raise skeleton and skeletal mage back then & found out how quickly they died in hell mode. Sucked pretty badly since you couldn't reset skills then. Anyway, I'm thinking this will work nicely with some +skill gear letting me raise a few skeletons while my golem & revived monsters take the brunt of the damage & I spread curses. I'm still not sure which golem to take, and just recently found out that the blood golem doesn't cause you to take damage anymore so I might switch to that instead of fire.
Ok, for the next three classes I'll admit I really don't know what the hell I want to do but my terminal alt-itis demands I make one of every class. I had some vague ideas of what sounded cool, but after plugging them into the skill calc they looked boring & terrible so any feedback on the next three is definitely appreciated.
Amazon
In this case I'm really happy with the passive & magic skills, but after that I just kinda didn't know what to do. I definitely want to stick with bow and crossbow, but none of the skills look all that fun.
Barbarian
Like the amazon, I'm happy with the support (masteries) skills, but not so much with the active skills. Am I just supposed to keep up shouts & spam frenzy? Sounds kinda boring.
Paladin
The charger sounded like a lot of fun until I actually started playing D2 again & remembered that you're usually fighting a swarm of monsters at a time. It might do great damage against bosses but I don't know how fun the class would be. The cleric build sounded good at first (I like healing in MMOs), but the healing looks weak, the damage looks weak, and it requires level 95 before it's really complete & I like my builds to be more or less complete at around 85.
One final question: I'm looking for a shael or lum (preferably) rune. Is there a certain boss I can try farming to get either? The goal is to make Rhyme or Splendor for my sorc.
Uhhh. Dont energy shield pvm sorcs have a lot of trouble against monsters with that attribute that steals mana? Youd need to be able to handle those monsters carefully or you die almost instantly against them and their horde of monsters with them. I cant really tell you to change your build or anything since Ive never really played a sorc with energy shield, but Ive always been told energy shield is more for pvp. Now, you can just reset your stats just in case you dont like your build though. Good luck, and enjoy!
Ferret's Trapsin by Ferr3t could also be of use to you. It uses Fire Blast instead of Wake of Inferno since it provides a much greater damage potential.
Similar to your build, but opts for Heart of Wolverine rather than Oak Sage. Very extensive and detailed guide.
This build unlike the other ones I have experience with. I'd recommend screwing the mages and using a Clay Golem. The skeletons suck if they're at level 20 in Hell yes, but the goal is to get as much +summoning as possible. Golems do despicable damage, so clay is good due to the slow effect that works wonders on bosses and helps your skeletons stay alive.
Perhaps this can be of help: Bowzon by Muroidea.
I think it's kind of fun actually, but yes that is basically it unless they're physical immune. Here's another guide for you: Frenzy Barb by Rousse
I've never tried this out, but it sounds kind of interesting: Angelic Avenger by Saltatrix
Otherwise a good old Zealer is never wrong.
I don't see a link in the druid section. Were you referring to this one?
Jittabug, you're right that mana draining monsters can be absolutely lethal to an energy shield sorc, but I seem to remember that it was always possible to avoid them via teleport while I threw DPS at them.
I guess just good luck then. Have fun playing!
1) Just tonight I tried to make a second Insight polearm, but this one didn't work. As far as I remember, I made all of my characters as ladder characters (and I know from self-muling items between characters that they can all join the same games so they're definitely either all ladder or all non-ladder). Also since I successfully made one Insight, I can't understand why the second wouldn't work. I inserted them as ral+tir+tal+sol (in that order) in a 4 socket grey (not magical) polearm. If the order was correct, and the weapon was correct, does that mean my characters fell off the ladder or something?
2) My original plan for my assassin included a max level shadow master since she can use every assassin skill. That way she could handle anything that was immune to my two trap elements, fire & lightning. Since then I've remembered how retarded the AI is in this game, and don't trust it to use random skills to kill effectively. I've also seen how quickly a strong clay golem or valkyrie can die, and both of those wind up with a lot more HP than a shadow master or warrior. This leaves me with two questions. Do I invest in the shadow warrior or the shadow master? And should I take the skill to 20 or just invest a single skill point & plan on recasting them a lot?
3) My hirelings die...a lot. I started off with Act II prayer mercs on all my characters at first just because most of them didn't have life leech or much regen, but now most of them have holy freeze mercs instead. I figured the slowing effect would help keep the mercs alive, but it hasn't. Even in packs of normal enemies, my mercs generally live with little to no problem, or they're slaughtered horribly & quickly. There's no in between. I've tried upgrading their gear for more damage, defense, resists, whatever, but they still die. I even tried an Act III cold sorc thinking he would stay at range, but he consistently wanders into the middle of groups & gets himself killed. Any advice on how I can stop throwing away gold on these guys?
4) While doing nightmare Travincal/council with my paladin (I swapped to the Angelic Avenger plan), I was somehow taken from about 475 health to dead, instantly. This was while I had 90% all elemental resists, 75% block, and around 8500 armour which meant they had about a 13% chance to hit me with a physical attack. Seriously, what the hell happened there? Only 3 of them were even attacking me at that time, so they shouldn't have been able to just suddenly burst me down. Is there maybe some sort of glitch that allows that to happen? I could swear it's happened a time or two to other characters, but none of them had the defenses of my paladin so I figured I got overwhelmed.
I don't know how well geared they are but they're really not useful unless you have really great gear. When you do get really great gear they rock. I do mean really great gear I don't know what kind of gear you have, but hirelings are so hard to make viable.
iirc only act 2 mercs are any decent at all don't bother with any others.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
It's possible that they fell off if there was a ladder reset within the last month (don't think there was though?). Probably more likely is that you tried to make it in a spear instead of a polearm. I've definitely done that before.
I usually just put 1 point in Master and call it good. Summons' health scales with difficulty, so between that and +Skills, they're usually going to have pretty decent survivability. The bad news is that offensively, they're generally too weak to kill effectively; you're going to be primarily using them as tanks with CC abilities. Which is fine. Use Fire Blast on Lightning Immunes and if you run into Light/Fire Immunes, just try to CC while your merc kills them (Death Sentry can help here too) or just run away.
Agreed that the desert mercs are the best ones, but I'll have to try a rogue for my paladin. Being a tanky setup, he really needs the extra DPS from a merc.
I'm running into problems dealing with certain immunities on two of my characters. My sorceress is cold/lightning, and doesn't have any tools to deal with monsters immune to both (whereas my trapassin can just mind blast the monster into submission while my minions beat on them), and my druid doesn't have any skills to handle physical immunes. I'm planning to give him a Grief phase blade so it will have a little poison & fire damage, but probably not enough to actually kill anything. Any suggestions for either?
for druid, rabies or fireclaw can deal with PI's.
"to the worm in horseradish, the world is horseradish."
My druid's pure bear, so rabies is out of the question. Fireclaw will only hit for 187-194 a hit at 17 (highest level I'll have it at after +skill gear). Think that'll be enough? Fortunately I'll probably be able to run from most PIs if need be.
"to the worm in horseradish, the world is horseradish."
"to the worm in horseradish, the world is horseradish."
As for static, I use it, but it only takes things to half in hell, and since I have an insight polearm on my merc, he doesn't hit all that hard.
lacerators are actually quite nice for the job.
"to the worm in horseradish, the world is horseradish."