Since the wait for D3 is killing me, I have decided to set a goal for myself. I want to be D2 on SP through Hell with each character. I want this to be completely legit, meaning now mods of any sort, just how the developers wanted the game to be played. So far, I have done it with the Paladin and a Druid. I plan on going bone with a necro next. So, what I need are viable solo builds for the rest of the classes.
Barb: WW or Frenzy?
Amazon: No clue
Sorceress: Meteor-orb?
Assassin: Traps?
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barb: ww or frenzy is viable, it depends solely on player style, but just remember to add 1 to berserk for the PI's
Amazon: hybrid is best bet, go bow and add some to light fury tree.
sorc: probably the toughest since youll be weak no matter what, meteor/orb and blizz/ball are 2 popular builds. but experiment with firewall and nova if youd like
assassin: another hybrid to deal with immunes. probably MA and traps
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"to the worm in horseradish, the world is horseradish."
Well! Just the thread for me I guess. I have personally taken all characters through Hell (literally) on SP so I can say that MeteOrb sorc is definitely a good way to go. Just be careful about running into new rooms headfirst (I was just curious what was in the next room and...) and you should be just fine, you'll pretty much kill anything that isn't both CI+FI without trouble. Javazon works perfectly, just stick a few points into critical, penetrate, pierce, dodge, avoid, evade, then max valkyrie and lightning fury and you are in business. Even hell crypt/mausoleum (all monsters are immune to lightning) won't pose a problem because this char can fight up close if need be thanks to dodging + shield and valkyrie. Can't help with assassin, I'm training a new one myself (just hit level 30) so I'll tell you how it went in like 2-3 weeks :biggrin: I'd definitely go for franzy barb as the speed is just priceless on hell. Basically if you can't attack really fast on hell, it's like you don't attack at all (at least in my experience). I'm curious about the bonemancer as my friend tried it and failed miserably on magic immunes. I'd suggest a summonmancer (skellies + skelly mages + revived + fire golem + decrepify = time of your life).
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A soft answer turneth away wrath. Once wrath is looking the other way, shoot it in the head!
I think I'm going to do a WW barb just because I've never played one. what is the main difference between WW and frenzy? Dmg? Gear?
The sorc will probably go meteor-orb since you guys suggest it.
I think the Amazon will be the hardest but if you have done it wih a jav, I'll go that route.
I assume trapsins are the best for solo he'll. If anyone knows a good build.
I'm not too worried about magic immune for the necro. I did a hammerdin and had no real issues. I just don't like summon necros. They are annoying everytime you die.
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WW Barb is pretty straightforward - 20 WW/Weapon Mastery/BO, 1 Iron Skin/Natural Res/Berserk/Battle Command. Battle Cry can be useful to reduce your incoming damage and make monsters easier to hit. Put all your extra points there or in Shout. Use a 2H weapon that has a decent range (4+) or you won't be hitting as many enemies as you'd like. Just master what's called the "Dance of Death," WW'ing in short, triangular paths through the monsters. This will maximize your number of attacks. WW costs a lot, so you'll definitely need to have a decent amount of Mana leech, as well as enough Life leech to keep yourself alive. Overall, I think Frenzy would probably be an easier build for SP, but I don't have any personal experience to attest to.
The Trapsin guide on our wiki is pretty spot on, though you'll probably want to move some points from synergies (esp. Death Sentry) to Fade for more survivability on SP since you're stuck with whatever gear you can find. But definitely max Lightning Sentry and Fireblast.
yeah, a summon necro will kill you on bosses; no good way to get your summons up during a fight, especially against duriel, diablo, and baal.
Talking from personal experience, I have lost two skeleton mages against Hell Diablo in total. Baal didn't kill a single thing, neither did Andariel or Duriel, Mephisto got Fire Golem twice and three of my melee skelies if memory serves. The Ancients did the most damage by killing 6 of my melee skellies and an unknown number of mages. They still died within 5 minutes. Of all the characters I got to the end of hell (and there were some really good ones), the summonmancer was easiely the most devastating and fun to play. I could basically go through Hell with all resists on -40, armor around maybe 200 and MF around +150% and nobody could do a thing to me because I was surrounded by 30 minions tanking the damage for me (and regenerating so fast they healed up between fights). If your bone necro fails, I can vouch for summonmancer. He's a beast.
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A soft answer turneth away wrath. Once wrath is looking the other way, shoot it in the head!
Alright Marcus, what's your necro build, if it is that good I can't resist playing it. I was always worried about bosses and the guardians but if it worked for you.
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No you get a summoner and put a shit load in Amplify Damage and Iron Maiden. Get everything in skely, skely master, skele, mages, then put rest in summon resist and revive. Best necro build imo. Always works in juggernauts.
Also can you change "Sinlge" into "Single"? It's raping my mind.
Alright Marcus, what's your necro build, if it is that good I can't resist playing it. I was always worried about bosses and the guardians but if it worked for you.
Ok, basically you max out Skellies, Skelly Mastery, Mages and Fire Golem. Since you can easily focus your gear on magic find, it's more than likely that you'll find stuff with quite a lot +skills so there is not much need to pump points into Golem Mastery and Summon Resist, just one point in each. Put between 5-10 points in Revive depending on your taste. I eventually found that skellies were much better killers than anything I revived so I had about 4 in Revive and +6 from items so 10 in total which may in fact be a little more than is needed. Then just one point in Corpse Explosion and one point in Decrepify. You could put more there if you don't want to be casting it all the time, the duration is not very long but again, +skills will do that for you. Then just hire might spearman and you're ready to go. If I can make a suggestion about a piece of equipment, if you find some nice nonmagic shrunken head or better yet head with 2 sockets (and some nice bonus to one of your skelly skills) put Rhyme (Shael+Eth) into it. It will give you cannot be frozen and +25 resists which is great and it even adds +25% MF which fits your build perfectly. The more MF the better +skills and better mercenary you'll have. As for stats, I got Strength to like 60, the rest went to Vitality and Energy (high level Fire Golem costs a LOT of mana so you need to have the mana to even be able cast it.)
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A soft answer turneth away wrath. Once wrath is looking the other way, shoot it in the head!
Well, I personally was really glad I had the mages. Most thougher enemies (bosses with stone skin or physical immunes) actually fell faster to the elemental damages rather than skellies even after decrepify. Cold mages will make enemies even more pathetic than they are with decrepify, and the other elemental damages are also welcome against physical immunes (not to mention having 8 fire mages against andariel is just nasty). As for Fire Golem, I chose him for survivability and the additional elemental damage. Some immune to physical have such high resistance not even amplify damage can take it down so mages and golem are your only option then (and I encountered a lot of such guys on Hell). Also, Golem can easily take on Diablo as all fire damage is useless against him, Red Lightning Hose is bugged against melee on nightmare/hell, and physical attacks alone won't kill the golem when Diablo is decrepified. Basically Fire Golem is the perfect tank in my book. A lot of life, immunity to fire which is the most common element in the game, deals elemental damage which you don't get much of otherwise and when he dies deals nice fire damage everywhere.
Also I have to stand by the decision to use decrepify instead of amplify damage because it adds a LOT to the survivability of your minions. True, amplify doubles physical damage but decrepify slows by 50% and decreases damage by 50% meaning enemies will be pathetically weak and in fact your single skeleton will be stronger than a single decrepified enemy, making your skellies comparatively that much more effective in bigger fights. The slow also decreases the risk that some bastard manages to get past your army and pose a threat to you. Nobody is a threat when they have 1/4 of their original DPS. The choice of golem is yours of course, I admit that they are there more to tank damage than to kill all that much. However I really think decrep is better than amplify damage in 90% of cases, especially against superuniques such as Ancients or act bosses...and although mages are really fragile across all difficulties, the elemental damage is worth it, especially on Hell.
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A soft answer turneth away wrath. Once wrath is looking the other way, shoot it in the head!
Well, considering the fact that you have solo'd he'll with your build, I'll go with your ideas. Thanks for the help. Please share your other builds for your other classes.
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My last SP char was a hardcore Throwing Barb, THE most fun build I´ve ever played. Couldn´t pass Act1 NM though :confused: You should give it a try after you finish your task.
- A necro with Skelleton + Corpse Explosion + Amplify is very nice to solo. You will only have problems with Normal Duriel. After that, when you least expect, you are in Hell Baal
- Meteorb sorcs are very strong and don´t need much gear.
- A Frost Zeal Paladin works incredible. I quit playing with this cause it was too expensive to repair weapons.
Played just a bit with Druid and Assassin, never with Amazon. Have no idea how to solo with them.
Well, considering the fact that you have solo'd he'll with your build, I'll go with your ideas. Thanks for the help. Please share your other builds for your other classes.
Alright, so we are done with Amazon and Necro builds, you have finished Paladin and Druid (I'm curious about your build, I trained 5 druids before I managed to create one good enough to get through Hell). I really can't help you with assassin at this point, since the one I got through Hell was quite pathetic and I died a LOT. Maybe if I had more luck on gear it would have been easier but I really can't recomend her. I'm currently training a new one (finished Normal just a few minutes ago) so once I get that one done, I'll share my experience. That leaves us with barb and sorc.
As for barbarian I had a Frenzy barb. The choice of weaponry is up to you but swords are probably the best choice as you will be able to use any you can find (same cannot be said for maces etc since the best are always two-handed). Also swords have a high attack speed which is vital. Therefore, max out sword mastery, plus put 1-3 points into Iron Skin and Natural Resist. I prefer putting 1 in each and then just hope for some items to boost it up a little. You can ignore the movement and stamina, that's just wasted points for Frenzy barb. You'll move faster than you'd like at times. In combat skills, put 9 points into double swing to get it to cost 0 mana. Putting anything more into that is waste of skill points as the attack rating increase isn't worth all that much. I used double swing as my primary attack as it was much faster and cheaper against larger groups of weak enemies. Frenzy isn't nearly as fast an attack as double swing is so hunting down fallen, fetishes, skeletons etc with frenzy is somewhat clumsy. Frenzy will be much more useful against stronger enemies, uniques and their minions and such. It is possible to simply put 1 point into double swing and then hope for some mana steal or simply down mana potions but points in double swing also boost damage of frenzy so why not. At the end when you have some +skills, you can respec and remove unnecessary points from DS to something more useful. But it's definitely nice when mana burn is not a concern to you...the choice is yours. Back to the combat skills, max out frenzy and put one point into leap attack for some last minute escapes and overcoming natural obstacles. That's all I had in combat skills. You could put some points into berserk to give frenzy some magic damage but I found it better to just have either pair of elemental damage swords or swords with amplify damage in my other weapon set and then just switch against physical immunes. Saved me a lot of skill points (eventually I found The Vile Husk which was heaven :biggrin: ) PI monsters will be somewhat annoying but I don't think it's worth wasting your skill points for berzerk when there is another way to deal with them.
As you might have guessed, the rest will go into warcries since I have learned the hard way that going all into combat and ignore warcries hurts. Get 4 points into find item...it's great for a pure SP char. Then put 10 points into Shout, 10 into Battle Orders and 10 into War Cry. One point onto Battle command. That's it. You'll have solid armor rating, lots of life and mana, you'll be quick on attack and you can deal with bosses easily by stunning all the minions and then beating up the boss solo. You can also easily deal with ranged groups by using Taunt so you can draw everything in for a melee. Battle Cry for some tougher groups is also great, so overall, you'll be using all the war cries you get along the way except for maybe Howl. For a hireling, I'd suggest might spearman since holy freeze could shatter some unique's corpses that you might use for Find Item (try to avoid using cold damage yourself), and also two-handed swords held in one hand don't pack such a punch as they normally would so more damage is welcome. At the end of hell, your skills should be something like this:Frenzy Barbarian
As for sorc, she's pretty simple to train. 1 point in teleport, 1 in static field, max out Fireball, Meteor and Frozen Orb, put ca 10 points in cold and fire mastery and you're in business. You won't need anything else. If you find/buy a decent socketable non-magic staff with bonus to some skill you will use, put Leaf runeword into it (Tir+Ral) and you'll be fine. The bonuses it offers are incredible for such an easy runeword. As for headpiece, you could put Lore into it (Ort+Sol) for additional boost in skills. Your basic build will look something like this at the end of Hell: MeteOrb Sorceress
Freeze spearman will give you more time to fry everything before it can come close so I'd suggest him as the ideal hireling.
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A soft answer turneth away wrath. Once wrath is looking the other way, shoot it in the head!
There are as far as I know 3 methods to build a WW Barb.
1. 2-Handed long range weapon such as a War Pike. If going with the 2 Handed I would not take anything less than Max range (5). Second you want enough IAS on the weapon to reach the fastest breakpoint. It is important to reach the breakpoint since you need to hit as often as possible. You need to leach both mana and life since you can not drink potions when using WW (unless that was changed). CtC gear is useless unless it is on kill or your death. You want to max WW/Weapon Mastery and if possible Shout, BO, Iron Skin. I also like to use Battle Cry curse if you do not have Conviction aura when active. The range is short but it does reduce the monsters defence and damage. Makes it a lot easier to hit with WW.
2. 1-Handed weapon with Shield. You will not have as much range as a 2-handed WW. The max range you can get is 3 with a 2-handed sword in one hand. You will have higher defence and will be able to block. The bad thing is if you block it may interrupt your WW and could leave you in a pickle (middle of a pack with limited or no mana)
3. 2 1-handed weapons. You will have about double the hits since both weapons do swing. The bad news is that the greatest range is 3 so the amount of targets available will be less than with a 2-handed long range weapon. The best weapons are the 2-handed swords.
I would go with the first option but the third option is also good.
Like it was stated earlier you will need to learn how to use WW. You need to think about where you want the exit point for WW. You do not want to end the WW in a middle of a pack or in a dead end. I try to horde the monsters to a location that is beneficial to me. You do have some time to learn on what will work for you in the late normal and most of nightmare.
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Barb: WW or Frenzy?
Amazon: No clue
Sorceress: Meteor-orb?
Assassin: Traps?
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Sorc: That skill set is very effective
[edit]
I will come up with more info on the builds later.
Amazon: hybrid is best bet, go bow and add some to light fury tree.
sorc: probably the toughest since youll be weak no matter what, meteor/orb and blizz/ball are 2 popular builds. but experiment with firewall and nova if youd like
assassin: another hybrid to deal with immunes. probably MA and traps
"to the worm in horseradish, the world is horseradish."
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The sorc will probably go meteor-orb since you guys suggest it.
I think the Amazon will be the hardest but if you have done it wih a jav, I'll go that route.
I assume trapsins are the best for solo he'll. If anyone knows a good build.
I'm not too worried about magic immune for the necro. I did a hammerdin and had no real issues. I just don't like summon necros. They are annoying everytime you die.
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The Trapsin guide on our wiki is pretty spot on, though you'll probably want to move some points from synergies (esp. Death Sentry) to Fade for more survivability on SP since you're stuck with whatever gear you can find. But definitely max Lightning Sentry and Fireblast.
Talking from personal experience, I have lost two skeleton mages against Hell Diablo in total. Baal didn't kill a single thing, neither did Andariel or Duriel, Mephisto got Fire Golem twice and three of my melee skelies if memory serves. The Ancients did the most damage by killing 6 of my melee skellies and an unknown number of mages. They still died within 5 minutes. Of all the characters I got to the end of hell (and there were some really good ones), the summonmancer was easiely the most devastating and fun to play. I could basically go through Hell with all resists on -40, armor around maybe 200 and MF around +150% and nobody could do a thing to me because I was surrounded by 30 minions tanking the damage for me (and regenerating so fast they healed up between fights). If your bone necro fails, I can vouch for summonmancer. He's a beast.
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"to the worm in horseradish, the world is horseradish."
Also can you change "Sinlge" into "Single"? It's raping my mind.
Ok, basically you max out Skellies, Skelly Mastery, Mages and Fire Golem. Since you can easily focus your gear on magic find, it's more than likely that you'll find stuff with quite a lot +skills so there is not much need to pump points into Golem Mastery and Summon Resist, just one point in each. Put between 5-10 points in Revive depending on your taste. I eventually found that skellies were much better killers than anything I revived so I had about 4 in Revive and +6 from items so 10 in total which may in fact be a little more than is needed. Then just one point in Corpse Explosion and one point in Decrepify. You could put more there if you don't want to be casting it all the time, the duration is not very long but again, +skills will do that for you. Then just hire might spearman and you're ready to go. If I can make a suggestion about a piece of equipment, if you find some nice nonmagic shrunken head or better yet head with 2 sockets (and some nice bonus to one of your skelly skills) put Rhyme (Shael+Eth) into it. It will give you cannot be frozen and +25 resists which is great and it even adds +25% MF which fits your build perfectly. The more MF the better +skills and better mercenary you'll have. As for stats, I got Strength to like 60, the rest went to Vitality and Energy (high level Fire Golem costs a LOT of mana so you need to have the mana to even be able cast it.)
Also I have to stand by the decision to use decrepify instead of amplify damage because it adds a LOT to the survivability of your minions. True, amplify doubles physical damage but decrepify slows by 50% and decreases damage by 50% meaning enemies will be pathetically weak and in fact your single skeleton will be stronger than a single decrepified enemy, making your skellies comparatively that much more effective in bigger fights. The slow also decreases the risk that some bastard manages to get past your army and pose a threat to you. Nobody is a threat when they have 1/4 of their original DPS. The choice of golem is yours of course, I admit that they are there more to tank damage than to kill all that much. However I really think decrep is better than amplify damage in 90% of cases, especially against superuniques such as Ancients or act bosses...and although mages are really fragile across all difficulties, the elemental damage is worth it, especially on Hell.
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- A necro with Skelleton + Corpse Explosion + Amplify is very nice to solo. You will only have problems with Normal Duriel. After that, when you least expect, you are in Hell Baal
- Meteorb sorcs are very strong and don´t need much gear.
- A Frost Zeal Paladin works incredible. I quit playing with this cause it was too expensive to repair weapons.
Played just a bit with Druid and Assassin, never with Amazon. Have no idea how to solo with them.
As for barbarian I had a Frenzy barb. The choice of weaponry is up to you but swords are probably the best choice as you will be able to use any you can find (same cannot be said for maces etc since the best are always two-handed). Also swords have a high attack speed which is vital. Therefore, max out sword mastery, plus put 1-3 points into Iron Skin and Natural Resist. I prefer putting 1 in each and then just hope for some items to boost it up a little. You can ignore the movement and stamina, that's just wasted points for Frenzy barb. You'll move faster than you'd like at times. In combat skills, put 9 points into double swing to get it to cost 0 mana. Putting anything more into that is waste of skill points as the attack rating increase isn't worth all that much. I used double swing as my primary attack as it was much faster and cheaper against larger groups of weak enemies. Frenzy isn't nearly as fast an attack as double swing is so hunting down fallen, fetishes, skeletons etc with frenzy is somewhat clumsy. Frenzy will be much more useful against stronger enemies, uniques and their minions and such. It is possible to simply put 1 point into double swing and then hope for some mana steal or simply down mana potions but points in double swing also boost damage of frenzy so why not. At the end when you have some +skills, you can respec and remove unnecessary points from DS to something more useful. But it's definitely nice when mana burn is not a concern to you...the choice is yours. Back to the combat skills, max out frenzy and put one point into leap attack for some last minute escapes and overcoming natural obstacles. That's all I had in combat skills. You could put some points into berserk to give frenzy some magic damage but I found it better to just have either pair of elemental damage swords or swords with amplify damage in my other weapon set and then just switch against physical immunes. Saved me a lot of skill points (eventually I found The Vile Husk which was heaven :biggrin: ) PI monsters will be somewhat annoying but I don't think it's worth wasting your skill points for berzerk when there is another way to deal with them.
As you might have guessed, the rest will go into warcries since I have learned the hard way that going all into combat and ignore warcries hurts. Get 4 points into find item...it's great for a pure SP char. Then put 10 points into Shout, 10 into Battle Orders and 10 into War Cry. One point onto Battle command. That's it. You'll have solid armor rating, lots of life and mana, you'll be quick on attack and you can deal with bosses easily by stunning all the minions and then beating up the boss solo. You can also easily deal with ranged groups by using Taunt so you can draw everything in for a melee. Battle Cry for some tougher groups is also great, so overall, you'll be using all the war cries you get along the way except for maybe Howl. For a hireling, I'd suggest might spearman since holy freeze could shatter some unique's corpses that you might use for Find Item (try to avoid using cold damage yourself), and also two-handed swords held in one hand don't pack such a punch as they normally would so more damage is welcome. At the end of hell, your skills should be something like this:Frenzy Barbarian
As for sorc, she's pretty simple to train. 1 point in teleport, 1 in static field, max out Fireball, Meteor and Frozen Orb, put ca 10 points in cold and fire mastery and you're in business. You won't need anything else. If you find/buy a decent socketable non-magic staff with bonus to some skill you will use, put Leaf runeword into it (Tir+Ral) and you'll be fine. The bonuses it offers are incredible for such an easy runeword. As for headpiece, you could put Lore into it (Ort+Sol) for additional boost in skills. Your basic build will look something like this at the end of Hell: MeteOrb Sorceress
Freeze spearman will give you more time to fry everything before it can come close so I'd suggest him as the ideal hireling.
1. 2-Handed long range weapon such as a War Pike. If going with the 2 Handed I would not take anything less than Max range (5). Second you want enough IAS on the weapon to reach the fastest breakpoint. It is important to reach the breakpoint since you need to hit as often as possible. You need to leach both mana and life since you can not drink potions when using WW (unless that was changed). CtC gear is useless unless it is on kill or your death. You want to max WW/Weapon Mastery and if possible Shout, BO, Iron Skin. I also like to use Battle Cry curse if you do not have Conviction aura when active. The range is short but it does reduce the monsters defence and damage. Makes it a lot easier to hit with WW.
2. 1-Handed weapon with Shield. You will not have as much range as a 2-handed WW. The max range you can get is 3 with a 2-handed sword in one hand. You will have higher defence and will be able to block. The bad thing is if you block it may interrupt your WW and could leave you in a pickle (middle of a pack with limited or no mana)
3. 2 1-handed weapons. You will have about double the hits since both weapons do swing. The bad news is that the greatest range is 3 so the amount of targets available will be less than with a 2-handed long range weapon. The best weapons are the 2-handed swords.
I would go with the first option but the third option is also good.
Like it was stated earlier you will need to learn how to use WW. You need to think about where you want the exit point for WW. You do not want to end the WW in a middle of a pack or in a dead end. I try to horde the monsters to a location that is beneficial to me. You do have some time to learn on what will work for you in the late normal and most of nightmare.
The only part that scares me are the guardians.
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