/vr/ - Retro Games

first-playthrough, especially on hardcore, is dependent on socket-item farming

there are 3 socket weapons and 4 socket armors that you can get before reaching him, and you can use the cube to make perfect gems

4 life gems in an armor, and 3 elemental gems in a weapon can all go a long way simplifying things

if you really don't want to use town portals (for some reason?) I suppose you could drop tons of potions on the ground so you can pick them up during the fight

>>1900089
I killed him as a Barbarian without portalling back. The best part is that I had been sinking all my skill points into Axe mastery and ended up fighting him with a sword.

I had a frenzybarb, finished him off with no portals easily.

I think OPs talking about Diablo 1.

Anyways, if you play a sorceror you should be nigh invicible by the time you reach him.

>>1900089
Wrong image OP.

>>1900089

>unbeatable the 1st time

what the fuck am i reading

>>1901586
Fuck that piece of demon shit!
That cold aura!
That damage!

This is definitely the biggest choke-point in the game.

OP here.

I'm basically level 27 Druid with 4 regular wolves who get fucked every time Diablo does that aoe attack, so all I can do is

>enter his dominion
>spawn a volcano while wolves distract him
>make a portal
>git the fuck back to town

Rinse. Repeat.
This takes forever.

I stun-locked him with some spell.

>>1901683
Tornado that bitch.

>>1901586
Fuck this faggot. I always have problems with him simply because you can't do shit if you get hit once.

>>1901683
if you're a fire druid, use the rolling rock thing, it should have knockback.

>>1901628
>I died
>it must be unbeatable/unplayable/aged horribly

>>1900089

He's the worst boss ever made. I can't even remember how many solo HC runs this guy ended.

So many hours lost to this douchebag.
The only way to beat him without cheating ( player 8, trading with other players, fighting him with other players)
is to be extremely cautious and to take your time.

Try to use a real good bow on an ice act 1 mercenary to slow the fucker down.
With the assassins trap it's not that hard just run away like a coward and he'll eventually die.

For the necro if you have Decrepit Diablo is a joke. Decrepit + Ice skeletons + Ice mercenary + Golem makes him so freaking slow you won't have to make your army a lot of time.

For the sorceress you gotta know his pattern real well and be cautious too.

Still haven't beaten him with a barbarian. Fuck you Diablo.

>>1901712
He's not that bad. At least he doesn't almost one shot you like Diablo does and he's only in Act 2, if you die you won't be losing too much time making your character from scratch.

>>1901830

All of this. I'm stuck at Diablo with my paladin. I just don't have any time to do anything until I'm dead. Mercenary dies from two or three hits from him and so do I. No time to heal and I get in max two hits. When things start looking good he'll just jail me and use that fire aura blast.

Fuck this game. Unbalanced as shit.

>>1900491
>Diablo 1.
>Warrior.
>Get to Diablo's lair.
>Put on magic ring and scroll summon a golem.
>Golem beelines for Diablo.
>Great distraction, excuse me while I kill minions.
>Minutes later screen pulls away from me.
>Diablo is dying.
>Golem is still punching away at his dying animation

Define "cheat". He is unbeatable without using TPs the first time, but so is the council, for most characters. If you have a good build and got lucky with gear, you won't need to literally spam portals every few seconds.

But I've had that happen, too.

Why do people praise this shitty game so much?
I've had so much more fun with vanilla Diablo 3, let alone now with patch 2.0.1.
Bosses can get pretty fucking hard, but you've got a fighting chance on your own if you have the skills.

>>1901876

> bosses
> hard
> in diablo 3

ISHYGDDT

Max lightning and fire resistance and ~10% life steal for melee = boss diablo easy mode.

The fire hose is 50% lightning damage fyi

>>1901845
Do you even have holy shield? Is your lightning and fire resistances maxed? Life steal?

Pally is one of the easier classes to kill the big D with.

>>1901586
>>1901665
In 1.0, his area would load in real time, leaving you staring at your corpse when it finished.

>>1901847
>Diablo 1
>Warrior
>equip staff of Apoc
>walk next to wall of Diablo's room
>use all charges
>win

>>1901876
>implying diablo 3 is hard at all whatsoever

git gud m8

>>1901845

Are you playing on softcore? If that's the case he isn't impossible at least, you can get him even if you die over and over again, get a few hits in, have a ranged mercenary and keep going. Diablo in solo self drop hardcore IS hands-down the worst boss ever made. Don't even think about taking him down with a paladin, barbarian or any non ranged classes.

The only tip is to slow the fucker with ice and try to have a lot of resists.

>>1900114
You can't play hardcore before defeating Diablo.

Usually I tried to grid until level 24 since that's where some builds starting working out.
Likewise Duriel may have to wait until you turn 18.
Generally there's nothing wrong with dying the first time if you learn their attack patterns and the like. If you can't manage to defeat Diablo then your build sucks.

>>1901586

>First playthrough as necro
>This guy rapes me for two days
>Every friend I have play Barbs
>They all duped retarded op rare items
>They laugh at me for having problem with him
>They tell me in Act III there are op enemies
>I finally get through that maggot faggot
>Go to Act III shitting my pants
>The OP enemies they were talking about are fetishes
>Rape whole act III 5 times faster then friends
>Friends tell me it's because they gear is shit
>They start new chars to abuse imbune quest

God damn it, I was surrounded by retards.

>>1901832
Duriel will fuck up most companions you have so he can cause problems for characters with weak defense since you can't run away from him.
I never managed to defeat him on Nightmare with my inferno Sorc.

>>1902018

IMO the game gets easier BUT way riskier in HC nightmare.

Duriel will never attack you from range which means he is easier than Diablo IMO. You can see Duriel coming from a mile so you can safely log out if he gets too near so you are most likely to not lose a character against him.

Diablo on the other hand can fuck you up badly no matter what you do.

Here's what you need to do to beat Duriel :
Range attack him for a few seconds until he kills your mercenary. TP in town, revive your Merc and attack Duri again. Over time he'll die.

What you need to do to beat Diablo : Try slowing him down, do your best to dodge his attack and hope for the best. He can always surprise you and destroy what took you weeks to make.

>>1901898

No to all of that. I'm new to the game and it's pretty silly to have a single boss that requires such resistances. Excluding Diablo, Duriel was the only thing that has posed me a challenge. Everything else in the game was laughably easy and never made me think about resistances and such.

I've always found Mephisto the real "unbeatable the first time" Boss.

>>1902202
Nah Mephisto always got stuck in a pillar and was easy prey

>>1902103

>pretty silly to have a single boss that requires such resistances

He's the final boss pre-expansion. You get to him after fighting the hordes of hell itself. He is literally Satan. Everyone, including his brothers, say he is the baddest motherfucker in the cosmos.

And you think its unreasonable for him to be powerful?

>>1902103
>don't worrry about resists

Yea I'll see you in Hell difficulty, and after that at the Ubers in Uber Tristram, if you have anything less then 75 in all resists you are pretty much dead already

Get some res and don't stand in the lightning like a retard.

I've had most trouble in the maggot lair due to the lightning immunes/enchanted and narrow tunnels. Nothing impossible but it ended up taking endlessly.
The only exception was my whirlwind barb.

>>1902235

Maybe on hardest mode. This is a game, not a simulator. The game must raise the difficulty sensibly and not suddenly throwing you against something that's ten times harder than anything you just fought. The hordes before Diablo are very challenging, but Diablo himself is just a clusterfuck. The devs are pretty much telling you to fuck off for not playing "correctly".

>>1902236

"hurr durr git gud hurff"

How about I'm not an elitist shitter and I just want to finish the game on normal mode for shits and giggles. Also I'm new to the game and don't even know what the hell Uber Tristram is. Sounds like an endgame thing for best players.

>>1902357
All bosses in Diablo 2 (and 1) do huge amounts of elemental damage, and tons of gear drops in the game that gives you resistances to that, shit they even give you gems and runes that you can put in shields to gain resistances too.

The game is giving you plenty of options on how to mitigate the damage, why do you refuse to use them?

Shit, you probably could have even geared up with the mounds of shit that drops in Chaos Sanctuary alone.

>>1902357
>This is a game not a simulator
HOW DARE A GAME FOLLOW ITS LORE. HOW DARE IT ASK YOU TO PLAY WELL

>>1902357
>The game must raise the difficulty sensibly and not suddenly throwing you against something that's ten times harder than anything you just fought
Its the game's last fucking boss. (before the expansion)

I have no idea how you even reached him not taking resistances in to account, its a huge mechanic in the game. Lightning enchanted mobs and wisps are insane with out resistances.

>>1901683
Summoner druids are crap. You don't get the 7000 skeletons of the necromancer to hide behind and you don't get useful support spells either.
The bear is passable as a companion but it's not worth to invest all your skill points into it.
Oak spirit is a useful buff to keep around, particularly in a party.

>>1901683
Teleport back to Act-1 and talk to the preistess.
She can reset your character once per difficulty after you cleared the den of evil.

Max out Tornado, Bear and that HP-boost familiar thingie,
get as many mana-boost items as possible.

Tornado away while bear tanks big D.

>>1902462
How do you get 60+ skill points at that point? Grizzly only becomes available at level 30 so you'd have to reach 49 to maximize it.

>Finally make it to Diablo in the Chaos Sanctuary, playing a zeal paladin.
>Have fanaticism on and maxed fire/lightning resist with the mighty Shael/Shael/PSapphire longsword.
>Wreck his shit (As long as I don't get hit by the lightning hose, fuck that shit, it's a physical damage magic attack.)

Duriel still wrecks me no matter what though, and I will say being a summon absolutely blows against act bosses due to their resistance to summoned monsters (And you run out of corpses for skeletons).

>D2 2000 LoD 2001
>early D2 you can stack 'reduce magic damage' items
>Diablos Inferno/Lightning attack does no damage since it was based on damage per pixel
>D2 today
>always TPing to town for more mana pots before you get your Insight merc

>Diablo 1
eh I cheated way too often to know, gotta import 100s of spell books and see what they all did.

>>1902474
Sorry, it should be:
"Max out tornado, *get* bear ..." etc etc ...

With the oak thing you can get bear to 1000 HP or more.

>>1902481
You can still stack damage reduction through normal and be immune to a lot of enemies, it's just finding enough damage reduction is difficult, and for Diablo his lightning attack is half physical damage, so you need both normal damage reduction and magic damage reduction.

It's a fun thing to mess around with, but ultimately by nightmare things do too much damage for flat damage reduction to keep up in a meaningful way, so you have to switch to percentage damage reduction.

>>1902479
The last time I played a summoner I got build the bow with the rune word that gives you thorns aura and lowers prices which turned out pretty useful for the start.
Clay golem and decrepify is a useful combo against later bosses. Throw in some ice damage and they grind to a halt.

>>1900491
In 1 my usual approach was to probe the surrounding area with ranged attacks and spells to prevent getting overwhelmed.

>>1902493
Yeah, my complaint is really just skeletons vs bosses. You have no way to replenish your forces when attrition becomes a thing beyond leaving and returning. Also, summons in general take greatly increased damage from act bosses and deal reduced damage, so there's a huge disconnect between act bosses and normal mobs for the summoner necromancer.

Clay Golem is great, but not because of its damage, but because its health pool makes it almost invincible and the fact that it does a raw slow to enemies, greatly reducing their movement and attack speed.

>D2 1.08
>Changed Izual to be able to drop treasure.
>D3 release
>Izual doesn't drop shit
was this supposed to be an easter egg no one got?

>>1902481 found it
>D2 1.09, 1.07 was LoD era
>Changed the 'Reduce Magic Damage' property to spread across frames for multi-frame attacks (such as Fire Wall).

>>1902365
Unless you're playing online ladder, you will never see Uber Tristram anyway, so I say don't worry about it.

>>1902518
one thing I liked about D3 is that Izual wasn't a punching bag anymore.

So followers like skeletons and shit are kinda useless against bosses when playing solo?

I'm thinking of leaving the druid behind and starting fresh with another class build, like the barbarian where you don't need anyone but yourself.

>>1902543
If you're playing ladder, summoner necro is one of the most powerful characters you can have endgame, but a lot of what you need to make it work you will simply not get your hands on if you play single player.

>>1902550
what do you mean? there's different loot multiplayer? I thought d2 was single oriented, thats why the online-drm tantrums were thrown come d3.

>>1902543
If you're playing druid, I would say go with a wereform (Both are good in different ways) or with an elemental build. You can use summons, but personally I don't find the druid's wolves/bear to be as useful as a primary means of shitwrecking like a skeleton necromancer.

For gearless builds, rabies werebears and wind druids do pretty good.

>>1902553
Latter play is online only but can also be single player.

>>1902553
The loot is the same between single and multiplayer, the difference is that you're likely to wind up with a lot of stuff you don't need in single. For example, those Amazon skill charms you got on your druid? Yeah, they'd be incredibly valuable if you could give them to an amazon, but since you're in single player, you might as well vendor them.

That said, a lot of people prescribe humongous importance to gear, and I don't personally think it's as big of deal until you're playing post-hell content. The right skillbuild, magic/rare items, mid level runewords, and proper tactics will allow you to make it through hell-baal even if you have to go about it very slowly.

>>1902562
>>1902567
Ladder is different from regular online play. It was essentially a ranking of competing characters based on how much experience points you had. Every so often, the BNET ladder would "reset" and it would be a race to make new ladder characters and try to make it to the top again. It was even more competitive on hardcore.

http://diablo2.diablowiki.net/Ladder_FAQ

The real drawing point is that ladder characters had access to special ladder-only items.

>>1902583
If I remember right though, ladder items are available to single player and open b.net characters as well, though I could be wrong. I'm a little more fuzzy on key drops for those characters, however.

if we're talking 1.10 druid go Wind, aka Nado as in Tornado, hit's physically multiple times and you can cast it constantly as a wall of tornados as you walk down a corridor.
>easily the best solo build with little to no gear

only problem is one of the Ancients in hell might be Physical Immune so get hurricane eventually.

>>1902553
Some of the loot is different. Several runewords only work in multiplayer, Annihilus can only be obtained through an online event, et cetera.
Add to that all the trading you have to do to get any amount of high-runes, set pieces and stuff.

>>1902508
>but because its health pool makes it almost invincible and the fact that it does a raw slow to enemies, greatly reducing their movement and attack speed.
That's what I meant. It's a cheap and effective addition to your army.
I don't think I ever had problems with bosses past normal Diablo. Even Hell Ancients which are usually the hardest to solo are easily dispatched. It's even possible to cheap out on decrepefy.

>being bad at Diablo

I can't even imagine this, I've been playing these games for years, it's in my blood

>>1902815
The issue is when it's your first time playing it and not reading up on how to do things or what to aim for. D2 LoD endgame is basically built around having Arreat Summit bookmarked in your browser.

>>1902592
I personally think lightning trap sin is the best build with shit gear, just get either the shadow clone (if you want only traps casted) or shadow master if you want it to do things, get a merc and hope you can get it the Insight runeword halbred and you'll be fine against all non-lightning resistant dudes. Run past the lightning resist ones or just use themind push thing

>>1900089
Lightning Hose is rape.

>>1903413
>3rd and 5th wave of baal minion [unique] have a chance to be immune to lightning

I know you can lead them out of the room and continue on.. but you'd really want to kill them for XP.

>>1903413
Trap/kick assasin is my favorite build.

>20 Dragon Talon
>20 Lightning Sentry
>20 Death Sentry

>use burst of speed/fade
>place a death sentry
>use mind blast
>kick the fuck out of an enemy
>Corpse explode
>more enemies die

It's quite funny to play with.

>>1900089
Frost Zealot + Bow + Hit slows target. He becomes so worthless.

>>1902417

Nope. It was pretty much a cakewalk up until Diablo for me. Dunno how I managed. Guess I'll try replaying it soon and focus more on the resistance stuff and see how it goes. My build was pretty much just maxing out damage output and disregarding survivablity. I killed the monsters so fast they couldn't hurt me.

>>1905153
>I killed the monsters so fast they couldn't hurt me.
With a paladin? That approach is more suited for Amazons or sorceresses.

Zeal/Fanaticism paladins stacked with a defiance merc are getting me all hot and bothered.

>>1905208
They're good if you can get your hands on a decent weapon.

>>1905153
That approach will get you killed as soon as you start hell difficulty, believe me.

>>1905249
Which are good, not runeword melee weapons? I never played too much with melee characters (Usually played trap assassins, different sorceress builds, bowazons, even a cry barb), and I already know about Grief and Breath of the Dying runewords.

>>1905357
For a zealot?

Whatever is one handed and has high base damage. Life steal is great too if you can get it.

>>1901586
>fighting Duriel for the first time as a necromancer
this kills the optimism

>>1901586
>Fighting Izual or Diablo as a summoner necromancer

>"Oh God I spent 40 points into my skeletons and they just fucking die, why he kills my merc in one hit, why decrepify doesn't work on diablo while he's throwing me that fucking lightning stream!?"

>"Well I died, let's just go back through the town portal and gather some skelle-FUCK bone prison, lightning stream aaaaaaaaand I'm dead again"

I ended using a wand with bonuses to bone spear and bring a thousand potions with me.

fuck them both.

>>1901830
>fighting him with other players
So playing a game intended for multiplayer with other people is cheating now?

>>1905865
>Clay golem
>Thorns Curse
>Corpse explosion
That's how I do

>>1905357
Can't go wrong with +damage% modifiers, or even a really nice +max damage weapon. Lifesteal and attack speed on it is a bonus as well, and sticking higher tier rubies or sapphires or topazes in a multisocket weapon works too for a while.

Though technically less effective, I prioritize attack speed over damage increases because it leaves you less susceptible to being interrupted and allows you to more quickly dispatch weak enemies.

If you don't mind low runewords, Steel and Strength are both nice and incredibly easy to make (Tir-El for Steel, Amn-Tir for Strength). Steel has an attack speed increase, while strength has a lifesteel modifier.

>>1905981
Strength is especially nice for zeal paladins, but that amn rune can be a bitch to find in the early game when you actually need it.

>>1905992
It's possible to run Countess for a while and use the cube recipe to upgrade what you find at least.

>>1905924
Clay Golem + Decrepify is what the Fishymancer guide suggests, because both work to cripple the speed of the boss.

>>1906015
But where does the damage come from?

>>1906015
>normal Countess runs
Thank Jesus I played this game on multiplayer where low level items were given out for free.

>>1905992
I really recommend a few countess runs to anyone playing. Lore (Ort-Sol, gives nice bonuses and +1 to skills for a helm), Strength, and Stealth (Tal-Eth, gives a move speed increase and mana regeneration to a body armor) are all great and easy to build. Rhyme (Shael-Eth, various stats, +25% magic find for shields) is also nice, but Shael is somewhat difficult to find in normal.

Also, don't discount crafted items either, I used a lot of safety items in normal and blood items all give health and health related things (Natural regeneration, lifesteel, etc.). Their only flaw is that they need perfect gems to craft, and there's no good place to find a lot of flawless gems to up.

>>1900000

>>1906023
From your skeletons and mercenary, they have a much easier time surviving once the boss is slowed enough, though you may have to exit for reinforcements a couple of times.

>>1906110
Bah, that isn't my cup of tea. Why have skeletons when I can have explosions?

Though that isn't mean to discredit your strategy, just to show my personal distaste for it.

>>1906115
For when you get no explosions (hi Baal, hi Duriel). Necromancers have a few options for those times, skeleton hordes are one of the safer ones. And seriously, I doubt you can kill Diablo with just CE, there won't be enough corpses from killing the seal bosses.

>summon necromancer
>being told to stop summoning it's lagging other people in the game

I don't play a summoner but I have no idea why people kept telling them to stop summoning.. and I was on a 466mhz system
>skeletons blocked the 2nd wave's poison bs

>>1906156
I think he just meant, "Why bother with skeletons when I can just nuke down the boss with damage spells?" It's not a bad question, and I'd even agree that for a solo necro, it's probably best to go with bone or poison backed up with a clay golem. Though if you've got someone who's got high single target damage with you, your skeleton army will pave the way though things quicker than anything else in the game.

>>1901847
lol, were you mad? Did you feel like the golem had "stolen" your kill?

>Play Paladin
>Max Prayer, Cleansing and Holy Bolt
>Become a White Mage
>Stand back and blast teammates with healthy holy bolts
>Everyone loves me

Except when I become useless in harder difficulties. I wish there was a better way to do this.

Also, redownloading now. Hardcore mode is always my favorite until someone comes in around lvl 20 and player kills everyone

>>1900089

Slight not /vr/ related, but I dream of a day when Diablo 1 is released on PSN where I can play couch co-op and online with 3 other people.

This will never happen.

>>1906181
It would be nice if Prayer scaled exponentially after 20 like some skills. At 20, it might be 21 health/3 sec, at 25, 41 health, and at 40, 150+ health. At those high of skill levels, there's almost no way you can be wearing effective gear for other tasks, so there's no harm in making a skill like Prayer incredibly good.

>>1906181
Leaving town was the scariest part of hardcore.

>>1906186
The Playstation version is 2 player only, so no, it wouldn't.

>>1906260
The thing I hated about hardcore is that because the damage occasionally and rarely spikes up with unique monsters spawning with modifiers I'm not prepared for, I wind up stressing out quite a bit and playing far too slowly and passive. It seems like once an Act, there will be an enemy who drops my health to 10% in a few seconds while everything else barely touches me.

I still play hardcore, but I fucking hate extra strong, extra fast, aura enchanted (Fanatasicm) minions that crop up time to time, even with a massive amount of armor and damage reduction they can murder me.

>>1906301

It also wasn't online. In my fantasy reality it would be 4 player local and a mix of online and offline multiplayer but everything else pretty much the same

>>1902591
ladder items are only available to ladder players, but once your ladder character gets retired to normal games your ladder items are available in normal games which you can throw away to newbies since unranked characters are useless

If you had to create a new class that was balanced within the confines of the others (As in didn't make the other classes obsolete or fundamentally change the game such as requiring teamplay for the class to be effective), what would you make?

I always wanted a sort of physical attack based caster class, something different than the assassin. Like, imagine if you took things like enchant and frost armor from the sorceress's skills, bone armor from the necromancer, and cyclone armor from the druid and then added some destructive spells and strikes along with it.

Like I said, the assassin's pretty close, but I was thinking of something more heavily armored and defensive oriented that used magic to beef itself up/win fights through attrition.

>>1906159
back then there was no master race and everyone used cheap garbage, it wouldn't be surprising if skellingtons caused a lot of trouble

>>1906363
perhaps extend the idea of necromancer's golems and make a class around a super golem that is like a second mercenary

first skill tree has that golem, his passives and few commands for him.
second skill tree lets you buff your allies, and buffs work better on the golem
and third skill tree has loads of lightning based skills because why not

>>1906363
I'd probably make another bow using class since we only have one currently. Either that, or add the ability to use bows with certain skills like the barbarian's concentrate and the paladin's vengeance. I hate the fact that bows are the territory of one class only and no runewords give skills to bows.

But if I could add more...
>Always see battle.net avatars, particularly the Starcraft ones.
>Would add a Marine, Firebat, Medic, and Ghost with their own skills trees.
>Marine plays like the barbarian, lots of skills to use with a multitude of weapons, passive skills, and commanding skills.
>Firebat has defensive skills that reduce the damage he takes and fire based spells, along with the firebat only flamethrower weapon that works just like the current spell.
>Medic gets access to healing abilties (like prayer on steroids), party buff auras, and favors one handed weapons and shields (So it's basically a paladin with better healing and less offensive auras).
>Ghost has a lot of utility abilities aimed at controlling large groups of enemies (Like his lockdown and EMP), also has high long range damage and limited psionic support abilities.

I don't know, I was always disappointed we never got a Starcraft in a similar vein to D2.

>>1906376
Not retro, but I'm reminded of Warcraft 3 tower defense maps where endgame was decided by who had the best computer. People would always yell at me "STOP SUMMONING FUCKING CREEPS YOU ASSHOLE" while the game would be running at one frame every four seconds. Eventually, the game would collapse and I'd be pronounced the victor most of the time.

Even with a 500mhz pentium 3 and 128 MB of RAM on the stock computer I got from Dell, I never really had much trouble with Diablo 2 though.

>>1901876
>Diablo 3
>having anything resembling fun
Pick one.

>>1900089
>cheat with town portals
How is using your items cheating?

>>1906502
Didn't it at one point in time cause Diablo's health to reset each time you left the Chaos Sanctuary? I know the strategy guide says that, but I have a feeling it was changed before LoD came out.

>>1906486
>enchantress with the guided arrow bow
>venom sin with the guided arrow bow

enchantress with jewelers/IAS jewels stuff was pretty fun, all the other sorc's be confused as fuck.

>>1906525
I remember a sorceress dropping into one of my hardcore games, enchanting my weapon so it did a gorillion damage and leaving without a word.

Was confused.

>>1906514
That's what "prevent monster healing" is for.
They probably just lowered his health regeneration rate.

>>1906363
There was a super expensive melee sorceress build.

It focuses on maxing enchantment and the three elemental masteries, and then equiping all runewords that grant elemental auras.

>Dream Runeword on helm and shield (Io + Jah + Pul), granted a a level 30 holy shock aura that was affected by lighning mastery

>Dragon Runeword on armor (Sur + Lo + Sol), granted a level 14 holy fire aura that was affected by fire mastery

>Passion runeword on a Phase Blade (Dol + Ort + Eld + Lem) granted Zeal and berserk skills.

The rest of the equipment was focused on melee survival (Verdungo's hearty cord, Dracul's grasp, Bul Kathos Wedding band, Mara's Kaleidoscope, etc.). An Act 2 mercenary with holy freeze and an Infinity runeword completed the build.

I created one with hero editor, and it was quite fun. It wasn't very resistant, but it was amusing seeing her one-hit-kill everything (she packed like 20k per hit)

I could try making a bow variation of that build

>>1906853
It sounds similar to the infamous Ebaydin.

>>1901876
0/10 bait would not rage and sage all fields

First time I fought him with the pally and only needed a crown with 45 lightining resistance not to die. Killed him. Maybe I portalled back once, can't remember exactly.

>>1906896
Are you talking about the auradin? That fucking build was incredibly overpowered in PVP.

>He just passes near you
>Conviction aura
>Holy shock
>Holy Fire
>"You have died"

It was expensive as fuck to make.

>>1906910
Aura-stacking and Oskills are ridiculous, period. That's why they are some of the most expensive items to make and most only exist on ladder.

>>1906910
I rolled auradins back in the day, they were fucking great. Just running around watching shit die without doing anything.

>>1906982
Did you build them on your own (grinding, trading) or you bought them premade? I played battle.net for years and I couldn't even get an infinity runeword. The best I could get was a sorceress torch.

>>1901665
>>1901586
I just want to remind everyone that he's not as bad as people make him out to be as long as you remember to upgrade your shit during Act II, because up until that point you can beat most anything with kind of mediocre equipment.
Most bosses in Act II seem to fucking cream you otherwise.

>>1907060
On my own, I wasn't even aware you could buy shit in D2.

I was doing variations of damage-aura-based Paladins since like 1.02 or so. When the expansion hit, suddenly they were viable again after a few versions of nerfing. I just ran with a bunch of +3 skills items and shocked/fired everything on the screen while avoiding every monster's attacks - to be honest I don't even know how to beat "LOOKING FOR BAAL?!" without an auradin.

>>1906910
I always found the name Auradin silly because every Paladin has an aura.

>>1907101
That's just a regular Holy Fire/Frost/Shock Paladin, not one that requires a dozen high runes and exploits a bug that causes auras to overlap. Those only became available with 1.10.

Lightning sorceress was always my favorite build. Lightning looks awesome in d2 and with enough cast speed you can have a constant stream of it, and the damage is ludicrous with good gear, 30-40k.

>>1907112
>30-40k.
More like 3-40k.
Did you play the early nova build or the later lightning+chain lightning+charged bolt synergy builds?
Chain lighting was my favorite due to how it jumped to enemies.

>>1907125
I only put points into nova after everything else. I particularly like charged bolt after 10+ skill bonuses.

>>1907112
Yeah, charged bolts do obscene amounts of damage at high level with synergies and masteries. Coupled with an Infinity-wielding act 2 merc, that sorceress is unstoppable,

>>1907105
Yeah, you're kinda right. The name mostly was given because they used a fuck ton of auras, and they were the main source of damage.

>>1907101
Yeah, you could buy premade characters with godly equipment (supposedly for dueling? I didn't see the point of buying one). The internet sites that were selling them made spambots that flooded games and annoyed the fuck out of everyone. Now they are almost 90% of battle.net's population. As >>1907105 says, the "auradin" was a build that used fucking expensive runewords to stack elemental auras, while you had conviction as your main one, to lower enemies elemental resistances and defense.

>>1907147
>Coupled with an Infinity-wielding act 2 merc
Infinity is very hard to come by. Insight is a more practical option.

>>1907147
It might be better to stick Infinity on your Sorceress so she benefits from the -enemy lightning resist. Actually, if Conviction and/or Lower Resist breaks an immunity, does -enemy resist take effect?

>>1907248
It's not bad but there's better choices unless you're starving for mana all the time.

>D2
>Grind for an eternity to finally get a full Griswold's set for my paladin.
>Buddy just bought an Exile shield off a site with some other stuff for $3.

I think that's what sort of killed the game for me. It wasn't quite as fun when the vast majority of people were running around with "perfect" builds and item sets.

Here's an interesting question: Am I the only one who got tired of the LoD expansion and went back to classic for shits and giggles?

Seriously. Played LoD for years, but there's just something far more satisfying about finding godly rares in classic. Especially when playing SP off the realms. Without your mercenary, the feeling of being alone is more akin to that of the original Diablo.

Here's a rundown of differences for those interested:
>No Act V.
>No Runes.
>No Charms.
>No Druids.
>No Jewels.
>No Circlets.
>No Assassins.
>No Elite items.
>No Ethereal items.
>No increased Bank.
>No increased Stash.
>No Socketed body armor.
>No Class-specific items.
>No weapon toggling/swapping.
>No Crafting or Crafted items.
>No Gambling for Exceptional items.
>No Unique or Set Exceptional items.
>No equipping or healing Mercenaries.
>No Level 30 Skills on Scepters, Staffs, or Wands.
>No Mercenaries travelling from one Act or game to another.
>No Horadric Cube Formulas that require Expansion only items.
>No Socketed, Magical, Rare, Unique, or Set throwing weapons.

>Diablo Clone drops nothing.
>Whirlwind always has a 4 frame animation.
>Dexterity has no effect on Chance to Block.
>Static Field has no penalties in Nightmare or Hell.
>Resistance penalties are -20% in Nightmare and -50% in Hell.
>Rare body armor can get 1 socket with a Cube formula like any other rare item.

>>1907658
Unless the enemies are weaker, I don't see how it'd be possible to beat hell difficulty in normal D2. Even with top tier exceptional items, some of the enemies just wouldn't be doable if you rolled a bad unique. The lack of +max resist stuff would mean lightning shooty wisps would oneshot you.

>>1907658
I will have to give it a try

>>1907658
The resolution and stash size really hurt me. Diablo looks better than D2 on 640x480.

>>1907672
If playing with the latest patch, random bosses can occassionally be a grind when playing solo. There aren't too many you have to park, but any bosses that spawn with Might, Mana Burn, and Fanat PLUS increased strength and speed are often too tough. Often I can whittle away the pack and then face off one on one. But sometimes they just regenerate health too damned quickly to kill. Sometimes they can one-shot you, too (fucking Smith).

Act bosses are a breeze, even in Hell. They are predictable and have equally predictable mods.

>>1907693
Yeah, it's surprisingly fun to not have to worry so much about all the little things like charms and dexterity's affect on block rate. It's just a simpler game overall.

My favorite part is how damned difficult it is to get +skills. It seems like in LoD, everyone has at least +10 to all skills regardless of build. It kind of annoys me how OP every cookie-cutter tends to be in LoD.

Playing classic is much slower, by comparison. Especially on older patches. You can very easily be killed if you rush ahead. You need to slow up a bit when playing alone, not unlike the original Diablo.

>>1907698
The stash BLOWS! If you play offline, I would recommend ATMA for muling, though it does nothing for you if you run out of space during the current game session.

But the resolution can be bumped up to 800x600 if you're playing classic through the LoD expansion like I do. You can only do this with patch versions 1.07 and later though.

>>1907672
>The lack of +max resist stuff would mean lightning shooty wisps would oneshot you.

Oh, didn't respond to this, but you have to play slow and methodically like the original Diablo. If you rush into a pack, then yeah, dead. But if you skirt the edges and pull out a couple at a time, you're good with middling to max res. even with under 1000 health.

/vr/, is there any good Diablo 2 mods other than Median XL. I've stopped playing late 2011 cause, well, idk, I got bored. I wanna get back into it though.

>>1900089
smiter paladin, shits still easy even easier if you get any amount of crushing blow by some sort of luck

>>1908145
Well there's Eastern Sun for a huge conversion.

I've been using Sebish for my single player runthrough since I don't want to grind at all.
http://www.moddb.com/mods/sebishs-diablo-2-lod-modification

Best way to make a vengeance paladin? How should I build my skills? I'd like the build to be hell-viable as well.

What do I need to watch out for when using vengeance over zeal?

>>1908626
It's been like 5 or 6 years since I made an Avenger, but I think I remember a few things that were at least applicable back then.

Conviction is gonna be your main 20-point aura (lowers enemy resists).

Vengeance is strong, but rips through your mana pretty quickly. You can help mitigate that by just popping one point in it and then pumping your resist fire/cold/lightning auras to like 10 each, as points in them boost the elemental damage on Vengeance via synergy. I believe putting points in those auras also passively raises your resist caps from 75 up to a potential 95. I think.

Aside from that, get Holy Shield. Not sure on how much to put here.

And then stats basically follow the same for (pretty much) every D2 character:

STR: Enough for gear
DEX: Enough for max block
VIT: Everything else
EN: Nothing

That's all I remember.

>Spider Forest
>Great Marsh
>Flayer Jungle

That shit was the worst.

>>1908145

I used to play Kingdom of Tenai and I rather enjoyed it but I don't recall seeing it in recent years. I think it got abandoned and disappeared.

>>1908145

Hell Unleashed is pretty nice. Mostly about keeping the game as it is while ratcheting up difficulty, the number of rune words and bosses. The drop rates are kind of on the extreme side but honestly if it wasn't it would be impossible to play.

>>1909523
>Hell Unleashed
>bosses like Baal are renamed to {________________BAAL________________} just to fit their life meters

I've never actually beaten D2 on Hell in singleplayer, it's always been a MP game for me... I should try it out.

>>1908656
I think the lower resists of conviction cap at 25 points, so if your endgame gear would push you above that, you should adjust down accordingly.

Speaking of resists though, how does conviction and -resists from facets work? Does conviction get applied, then the facets, or do the facets fail to function since they attempt to apply to immunities first?

Damn you /vr/, I just hopped on and finished Act 1. This game is like crack, I even felt a twinge when the Arctic Furs dropped for me.

>>1910649
Seeing a brown or green item drop is like snorting a very small amount of cocaine. Just enough to keep you trucking toward that next bump.

Makes you wonder how the D3 team managed to fuck up their predecessor's formula so badly.

>>1910723
I'VE GOT 15 MILABREGA'S ORB

I NEED MORE

>>1910723
>Makes you wonder how the D3 team managed to fuck up their predecessor's formula so badly.
They had a strict "no fun allowed" policy.

Goodbye hardcore character...

>>1910740
They sort of broke their own rule. Diablo keeps people playing because there's just enough drops to give you an incentive to keep grinding, while in D3 they reduce it down so much it wasn't in order to try and get more from their AH. The problem with that is that no one cares to play when they're not getting their high, so then the AH doesn't get used.

The only game were a system like that works is EVE, and even then there's other issues at hand that's killing that one.

anyone playing on uswest ladder? im still in normal from the ladder reset and stopped playing when the only games were act 1 or baal farming

>>1910723
Blizzard got too fat and greedy from all that WoW money.

>>1910803
It wasn't just that, it's that the relevant developers are no longer there or have been over promoted. In D3's case, Blizzard North ceased to exist, I don't know if a single person who worked on D2 was still there.

I mean, not Diablo related, but there's Metzen, who absolutely needed someone to keep him in check so he wouldn't rehash the same story over and over again and keep everything in perspective.

>>1910740
>They had a strict "no fun allowed" policy.

>>1910827
>I mean, not Diablo related, but there's Metzen, who absolutely needed someone to keep him in check so he wouldn't rehash the same story over and over again and keep everything in perspective.

Don't forget him injecting his corruption fetish into yet another goddamn game.

>>1910735
What's creepy is that right after you posted that, Diablo dropped one.

What's the best place to farm massive amounts of gems? I need some for crafting, I have a ton of low runes and jewels, but never enough gems.

I know andy has a good gem drop chance, but is there any place to get them in bulk?

>>1911267
They're just as likely to drop anywhere, though the more difficult the area, the higher the chance of a gem being of higher quality.

>>1911267
Find a shrine near a waypoint
Is it a gem shrine?
If no, quit to main menu
Then reload
Go back to the waypoint
is it a gem shrine?
If no, quit to main menu
Then reload

I just got to hell difficulty.

This is...unreasonable.

>>1911637
Try to get the den of evil or just keep doing Baal runs until you reach level 70-75.

>>1910752
The AH was removed and item drops were completely reworked.

>>1911684
Those were just two problems out of many.

>>1911684
While that is certainly better for the game, I'm more ridiculing them for not better understanding how to implement the AH. From a business standpoint, the RMAH had the potential to make them an incredible amount of cash, they just didn't realize that they needed to preserve the incentives to keep people playing at the same time.

If the RMAH was instead a sort of "convenience" thing (In that the use of the AH allowed you to quickly purchase something you wanted without spamming a trade chat channel for a while and haggling a barter trade with someone), the entire thing would've worked much, much better. It still would've been a kick in the nuts to players in general (Since many players would probably just put up their items to sell for real money on the AH instead of trying to barter them), but with the drop rate equal to that old D2 and the ability to barter and trade, no matter how unlikely, would've probably allowed Blizzard to avoid a lot of flak with it.

I would say that D3 would've probably made them more money had they perfected the RMAH while making D3 free to play with regular content updates. Free may not be in Blizzard's vocabulary, but getting that golden goose working for them would be tantamount to a steady income from subscription fees without the bad press from veterans of the game's predecessor.

>>1911267
Try densely packed areas of late Nightmare, and on the highest /players x setting you can manage so more items drop. This also applies to runes but you'll have to go on to Hell for the highest level ones. Or do Countess.

>>1911602
And also keep a flawless on you at all times in case you run across a gem shrine. Be sure to discard any others before clicking it though, I believe it's randomly chosen.

>>1910723
Diablo 2's loot game just has something special that no other hack-and-slash has been able to copy for me. There are a huge number of items, but there's still a great amount of those who you immediately recognize and serve a specific purpose. Like "oh I found this staff unique it's going to be pretty good for my lvl 50 sorc". In other games you try to get good shit but I don't get the same comfy feeling of looking for specific items, like some sort of adventure game.

The thing that makes me always eager to replay D2: enhance sorc. There is something so inherently janky and ridiculous about the build that I never get old of running it when I replay.

Anyway, I find the fun in D2 to play through the game as far as I can (which is usually late nightmare or early hell) then drop it for a bit. I never got MMO-style grinding here.

>>1912253
D2 is the only game where "grinding" is fun
I can do baal runs for the whole night but fuck if I can stand any of the popular MMOs, they're the most boring games in existence.

>>1910750

>Teleport through durance of hate lvl 2
>Run into a group of stygian dolls
>Merc kills one of the in one hit
>"You are dead"

Those Motherfuckers,...

>>1911637
Keep making baalruns until you get to level 70-75.

Also, run travincal/mephisto/Diablo/Baal on nightmare to get decent equipment to tackle hell with at least 20-30% of inmunities to all elements (especially lightning). If you try to play through hell difficulty with negative resistances, you'll die many times, and lose a lot of exp.

Starting a new char on LOD US realm east
Name is russian_bear

whenever I picked up the game I'd always make my second character a sorc.. to farm for my first one.. then stay on the sorc.

Guardian Angel plus that resistance circlet on my act 2 merc + moat means mephisto just lightnings and frost orbs my merc while I unload spells with my negative resistances and double ali baba ISTIST blades.

Actually I've been meaning to go back and see what the DPS really is back then, made dozens of DPS spreadsheets for PoE so D2 shouldn't be that hard.

>>1912457
My resistances are pretty baller.

What's bad is every time I run into a physical immune, I have to switch to vengeance and lose out on that sweet sweet life leech.

>max resists
>stack vit
>where gear with life rolls
>spam pots

Thats the secret to 90% of diablo

>>1913116
WHAT'S THE OTHER 10%?!

>>1913163
Not being stupid.

>>1913201
Bullshit.

Reveal your secrets!

>>1912457
>at least 20-30% of inmunities to all elements

I barely managed it with 80+ resists as a paladin. I have no clue how people do it otherwise. It did become somewhat easier with a Guardian Angel pushing my resists to 95%, but then I had more difficulty with physical damage in general because the GA does not exactly have a good amount of armor for hell.

My major problem in hell though (beyond the wisps in Act 4 and 5) is I just wind up getting ganged quite a bit. It's particularly a problem against extra fast mobs because by the time I see them they surround me and beat me to death. That, and bosses often output so much damage to my characters that I can't simply sit there and eat potions the entire fight without having to run out pretty often.

One ladder season, things were better because I had picked up a Schafer's Mallet which was a huge upgrade from my usual weapons (Often I'm using a Baranar's Star or low-mid runeword in an exceptional/elite weapon) and let me chew through stuff pretty quick.

>>1914112
Yeah, the consensus seems to be that if you want to survive hell, you have to either have access to some pretty good gear or have some people to fight alongside you.

If you're doing singleplayer...good luck.

Hey /vr/ I've been playing D2 for the past month trying builds because my first time playing I ran a shitty dragoon barb that did NO damage and couldn't understand why.

Now I have a Javazon in chapter 2 nightmare with a bank full of perfect and flawless gems/skulls. What the fuck do I do with them? I can't buy grey items anymore, and this partial set effect I have is too good to pass up.

What can I do? I didn't know how to use the cube in my first playthrough,but now I have all these 100% rejuvs and gems I don't know what to do with.

Please help.

>forgot my first character from this month was actually a maul assassin

Posting from phone. Can't Screencap bank for some reason. Gives me a blackened screen.

>>1911684
that was merely a patch slapped on shit that is fundamentally flawed

>>1914224
These two pages will be your best friend:

http://diablo2.diablowiki.net/Cube_Recipes
http://diablo2.diablowiki.net/Runewords

Also don't forget that you get a free stat/skill respect per difficulty level once you complete the Den of Evil quest.

>>1914249
>>1914249

Thanks for nothing mate.

>>1914224
Cow level is great for socketed items. Javas are perfect for cows.

>>1914286

Is it true if I kill the king they won't ever spawn again?

>>1914371
Yes, at least for the difficulty.
Since the king is however lightning immune the chances of accidentally killing him with a lightning based character is low.

>>1914224
You use perfect gems to reroll grand charms you get from nightmare cow level.

>>1914383

Oh great thanks. I'll try to farm there a bit although I doubt ill get anything better than the set chest piece and necklace I have atm.
Still using my shitty 2 topaz gemmed skull cap from act 1.

I'm getting bored of Javazon honestly. In all RPGs I've played I've always been a battle mage type class. I've been thinking of running holy shock paladin, but I don't know if that uses a shield like I want. 2 hand builds are boring as hell to me.

If not that, then I'm going to make a random ass battle mage build with sorceress. She has enchant, teleport, ice armor buff, butt fuck does her health blow. Any ideas for a build with these skills? I'm aware I don't need to max out abilities and have a basic understanding of ability synergy. It's just Warmth makes things complicated, and I won't get anywhere with just enchant.
Should I max warmth first then enchant with teleport, and an ice armed at level one? Any help is appreciated.

>inb4 another anon gives a broad and insulting answer.
>tfw no gf.

>>1914395

wait I can REROLL CHARMS? How? I drop shitty charms as soon as I identify them. Waste of space which I am in dire need of.

Looked at gamefaqs and the arrest cube recipes and saw nothing on charms or uses for gems outside upgrading them and rune upgrading. Comepletely useless to me since I rarely get runes.

Contemplating on vendoring myflawed gems too.

is it possible to trans items?I'm kicking myself for tossing partial sets only to get more later that cchapter.

I had a full necro set on my java in chapter 2 and tossed it. Isenheart sword I tossed since I got a unique falcion or cleaver for ky ice merc only to get the plate body later.

I mad.

>>1914398
Nearly all Paladin builds use a shield due the holy shield skill and the special paladin shields from LoD. For holy shock the damage of the weapon isn't important anyway so the advantages of two-handed weapons are minor.

> I'm aware I don't need to max out abilities and have a basic understanding of ability synergy.
You should concentrate on one skill and its synergies. For the sorceress many people go with frozen orb as a backup because it only takes a few skill points and invest the rest into fire or lightning attacks.
Going for a jack of all trades will just get you stuck sooner or later since you lack raw power.

Maxing warmth is pretty pointless since you will regain more mana than you can spend and the skill points are better invested elsewhere. One point enhanced with +skills is enough.

>>1914409
http://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp/items/cube.shtml

Basically you just toss 3 pgems and any blue item in the cube, and you get another blue item out of it.

>>1914412
Automatically assumed it only meant armor and weapons. That feel.
>>1914418
Frozen orb? ill have to look at the growths of sorc honestly. only made a character, got to the tower and realized I spent too many points too early once I got 18.

I think ill go with Paladin then. Zeal remin#me of my solo red mage playthrough on the NES.
>sword and shield maybe
>enhance, holy shock
>multihit

Wish I could heal, but oh well.ill give this a shot later today.

>>1912623
>I've been meaning to go back and see what the DPS really is back then
>base it on a lv 95 Blizzard sorc
>Rotation is based around blizzards casted on cooldown, 1.8s or 45 frames
>blizzard does its damage over 4 seconds
>Rotation is Blizzard, Ice Blast, Ice Blast, Ice Blast, Ice Blast repeat
>added cold damage%'s were calculated

huh.. I knew ice blast hit meph hard but I didn't realize Blizzard did such sucky DPS by itself.

>>1914461
It's a good idea to plan ahead and save up points for the higher level skills. You can't pump everything into one but there are usually a number of interesting skills on level 18, 24 or 30.

Healing is not that important. Put one point in meditation and put it on during rest periods to refresh your mana and health. Redemption also has its uses so either spend one point or get it from a sceptre in your alternate slot.
Later you can use life drain to maintain health.
In general there are a few auras worth to keep as an option for specific situations even when you obviously want to concentrate on a single one to use most of the time. Vigor for instance is practical for rapid movement and Sanctuary helps against ghosts.

Zeal is a case where you may be better of spending extra skill points into the synergy since it yields more damage that way.

>>1914515
Isn't blizzard an area effect?

>>1914515
>forgot to mention break points in FCR
>63 for 9 frames and 105 for 8 frames
>25 frames per second
>90 frames should be two blizzards going at all times
>>1914526
yeah but if you look at glacial spike that's an AoE too.

>1914535
I'll admit that one is a projectile that AoEs vs an instant AoE specified.
>listed all the dps for different scenarios
>meph dancing in your blizzards or keeping him baited and eating both or just face tanking with ice blast

>>1914515
crap when I edited (forgot) to include the anni and torch I didn't take 4 out of cold master and put into orb, ill update it after I nap

>>1914112
I was going to suggest upgrading it with the cube, but I believe for Excep->Elite that's ladder-only. PlugY is an option for SP usage.

>>1914409
Be aware that the possible mods for re-rolling are determined by where you found the charm. Find the charms guide for more information.

>>1914520
That is dependent on if you have trouble hitting stuff because Sacrifice boosts damage, but not AR, while Zeal does both, but offers less damage.

>>1914839
>I was going to suggest upgrading it with the cube, but I believe for Excep->Elite that's ladder-only.
It actually works in both single player and ladder, but not on non-ladder realms.
(Ko+Lem+pDiamond) for armor, (Lum+Pul+pEmerald) for weapons exceptional -> elite if anybody wonders.

Mod question, how exactly were the character sprites made for D2? Were they 3D models that the devs just captured by frame originally, or is there something else to them?

>>1914515 (me)
fixed a bunch of little things and adjusted for a bigger time window for three blizzards to tick in a 25 frame [1s window] window
>cold mastery wasn't factored into blizz dps
I should've just modified the damage range numbers instead of throwing it in with every other calculation
>but then people would be bitching they don't report seeing 20K blizzards in game

>>1915323
so only the second casting break point sorc can out dps the rotation by just casting ice blast.
>these numbers finally make sense
>straight Glacial spike is on par with blizzard for the most part

>>1914520
>Zeal is a case where you may be better of spending extra skill points into the synergy since it yields more damage that way.

The formula I'm following in singleplayer is:
>sacrifice (for zeal damage)
>zeal
>fanaticism
>holy shield
>defiance (for holy shield defense bonuses)

Of course getting the higher tier weapons and runewords is a problem, but at least hell countess can get me a little bit closer to that sweet sweet Grief phase blade I see in my dreams.

>>1915510
I know a lot of people say to get something that gives lifetap (Either chance on cast or charges), but I think you should try to find something that casts amplify damage during your playthrough as a zeal paladin. Atma's Scarab is great for that (An amulet with ok stats but a chance to cast amp damage on attack), but there's other rare weapons that have it as well.

Amplify Damage will break most physical immunities and if the target has any physical resist at all, likely triple your damage against them. Sure, lifetap will keep you alive longer, but if you're not having much trouble with that aspect, blowing down enemies in 1/10 of the time it'd normally take you is pretty great.

>>1915539
>Amplify Damage will break most physical immunities and if the target has any physical resist at all, likely triple your damage against them.

Thanks, I had no idea about that.

I'd just been frantically smacking them with vengeance and sucking down mana potions.

>>1915539
I played an assassin with the axe that could cast amplify damage.
The idea was to charge up Tiger Strike, let Amplify Damage proc and use Dragon Tail as a finisher.

>>1915572
What kind of PI? Sanctuary lets you ignore the physical resistance of undead which has a far bigger effect than lowering the resistance from 100+% to 80+%

>>1915578
Wraiths...shit.

>>1915578
Yeah, sanctuary is great against physical immune undead, but AD will weaken them further assuming they don't have immunity, by taking them below 0 resist.

Sanctuary is certainly important though because anything with more than 120 physical resist can't be broken by AD (Not too many enemies have that though).

>>1913084
get draculs grasp if you can, get the chance to life leech aura. works with smiters too. Also delieruim the rune word is fucking fun as fuck in hell. Causes like level 20 confusion which covers the screen basically, and lets you just slowly kill monsters even in hell at your leisure while they fight each other,

>>1915074

>>1906514
D2 classic diablo refilled his health if you returned to town pre 1.10, yeah. Also when you killed him it gave you a 60 second countdown timer and then sent you to the next difficulty

>>1915510
I'm afraid in your dreams is likely where it shall remain. High-level runes are virtually unfindable regardless of where you look. But at least it's only one rare rune, maybe you'll get lucky.

>>1915714
How does that 1% Delirium effect affect you? It seems pretty dangerous, especially for a melee character who will be getting hit a lot. Also I'd rather save an Ist rune for Call to Arms that's a stupidly good runeword for any non-Barbarian class.

>>1907658
>>classic
Are you talking about D1? To my shame I still haven't played that one.
But I've played D2 1.0 for several years back then and the following isn't actually true:
>No Ethereal items.
>No Socketed body armor.
>No Class-specific items.

>No Mercenaries travelling from one Act or game to another.
Not sure about this one but I think your mercenary does carry over to a next Act.

>>1915807 not the one you're responding to...
>No Ethereal items
the etheral bonus was added later, no reason for grays at the time.

>>1915831
>bonus
More like a curse since you can't repair that item. I'll try and grind some to find one. I suppose I'll have to make a webm or something as proof. Might take some time.

>>1915862
Items don't lose durability on a merc, and certain higher runewords have indestructible as part of the deal. I'm pretty sure Breath of the Dying is one of them.

>>1916043
>Breath of the Dying

I remember seeing barbs dual wielding botdswords on hardcore ladder.

It was like seeing someone with a shiny legendary Pokemon.

>>1916079
I almost always saw people with nice gear on battle.net, and I always thought there was just some secret I was missing on getting it. I never actually owned any high runeword without getting one on non-ladder. The best items I ever had was a full Trang-oul's set, Griswold's Armor, a Herald of Zakarum, and my most cherished item, a Schafer's Mallet.

>drop nostalgia
>Two GFs and a Grandfather sword off Pindle
>SoJ off of a fallen guarding wirts leg
>saw a Zod drop during a clear-to-Baal-run game
>had two Ist runes drop for me in my lifetime, one from Meph himself and one from Andys room.. not sure what did drop it
I also did the cardinal sin
>1.10 era
>hey anon wanna chip in two bucks? we're gonna buy HRs off ebay
>SURE for 2 bucks who cares!
>we get a couple dozens of HRs
>make all the runewords we wanted for our characters

>>1916095
Most people who had access to high-tiered stuff were in dedicated clans. You'd help each other out through Hell and then trade items until everyone could do MF boss runs faster. It was a positive feedback loop that started off very slowly, especially at the start of a ladder season, but then chugged along powerfully once people had decent gear.

If you were playing casually, you had very little chance of getting good stuff unless you were friends with someone who could outfit you.

>>1916205
My problem back then (I was 16 or so when D2 1.09 hit), was that I simply didn't understand the value of a lot of stats on gear. I'd pretty much ignore blue items entirely, same for rares, and use obsolete uniques and sets in the face of better magic items.

While this wasn't really a problem in nightmare for the most part, it made hell particularly undoable, and it was further compounded by my lack of vitality, especially with my sorceress (I thought energy shield would eventually reach 100% absorb, so I put everything into energy and had ~400 health at level 80. Not only did it not absorb 100% of the damage, the damage it did absorbed was unmitigated by resists, making it completely useless.). Still, my sorceress was the best character I had for farming because she could just avoid the majority of damage and spam firewall to kill mephisto while he was out of range.

>>1916164
I had some similar happen, even the items were just given to me. Once you've got nice stuff, you don't have much incentive to keep playing.

>>1916273
I only stopped playing when everyone else did, when the only duel games going were in Hell and hammerdins abound.
>years before that it'd be
>gg fgt imma get my hdin

>you will never duel 1v1, zeal vs zeal, again in a 8p game

>>1916164
>trading 40p gems for SoJs
>trading SoJs for Occy rings
>your friends share their white rings with you
>tfw patch 1.09 came and you logged in for the first time wondering if you got lucky and kept your occy rings
>tfw your level 93 orb sorc from 1.08 could barely keep Uber Diablo from regenerating all his health before you got back from town to restock on pots

>Just got to Level 9
>Motherfucking caves
>Huge as fuck demons that shoot lightning and shit everywhere
>Somehow manage to take down the lesser ones without dying
>Suddenly a special one out of nowhere
>Three-hits me
>mfw

Holy FUCK this game is hard and I'm only on Normal. I'm still having a ton of fun.

Thanks to the guy who made the PSP repack. It's so comfy to play this on a handheld.

>>1916463
I never had fun with D2 duels because it all felt so rock-paper-scissors.

>Certain classes you'll never catch with your build and will be kited to death.
>Similar classes will almost always win against you if they have better gear.
>Some builds will wind up with a stalemate (Such as the time I fought a cold sorc with high enough cold resist/absorb to negate all her attacks and her lightning damage wasn't high enough to actually harm me, but I still couldn't catch her.)
>A few builds you will completely dominate.

I almost never felt like it came down to outplaying an opponent in a duel, almost everything was decided prematch. It got a little better as you got close to top tier gear with duel builds, but still not engaging enough for me.

Also, I tried to start a low level duel server once, a guy came in with max socket gear full of +9 max damage gems. He did around 1.2k max damage with a min of 30 at level 11.

Real talk. Should I buy this or what.

>>1916626
I remember my friend doing this, twinking and using +damage jewels for LLDs

I didn't take part in LLDs, it's neat to see what can be accomplished though.

>>1916679
Diablo 2 is somewhere between an action RPG and a roguelike with a heavy focus on item finding. If that sounds like your cup of tea, then go for it.

I've only met one person who didn't like D2, and I think it was more because he was a hipster than anything.

>>1916692
It's neat, but ultimately it's like playing MTG. Everyone starts off with poor, unoptimized stuff and everyone has a good time with how crappy it all is. Then, someone improves their stuff a bit, and the arms race begins. Eventually you fall in to a rut where all you're playing is boring, meta approved, viable things and things become 98% preparation for two minutes of combat. I guess that's just the price of having a lot of freedom in a system though.

>>1916679
I think it's a bit overrated, but by all means still a good game. You can't really go wrong with it, assuming you don't absolutely hate the basic premise to begin with. Go for it.

>>1915510

I've wondered about the fana aura + zeal. sn't it better long term to just invest in concentration and get one's IAS from gear? I mean zeal does quite quickly set you at like two frames per attack.

>>1916763

If that's your experience with MTG you need to play more limited and less constructed. If you want pure awesome go to a pre-release event for a new set.

>>1917010
There's an IAS calculator on a German site somewhere that can accurately answer that question. The answer will be different based on your gear and if you'll be using a merc with concentrate or have a friend using it.

Different weapons have different breakpoints and minimum frames per attack. Zeal lowers the minimum frames a bit, and it's fairly hard to get enough IAS from gear to fully reach that breakpoint for most weapons. I think phaseblades and other -30 base weapons would be some that don't need it though.

>>1917010
Fanaticism is better than Concentration in almost all regards. The only reason to use Concentration is Blessed Hammer.

>>1900089
Try him on hell and hardcore selffound.
Took me about 15 minutes with my stormer.

>>1916556
>Thanks to the guy who made the PSP repack. It's so comfy to play this on a handheld.

Shame I can't play it on my vita fucking piece of shit paperweight.

>>1916556
>PSP repack
Where can I grab this? Google just gives me instructions on how to set it up on my own.

Is there a good port/mod/whatever for D2 to enable the correct aspect ratio and maybe higher resolution?

>>1917302

Nevermind. Glide Wrapper it is.

>>1917063
>Calling Vita a piece of shit paperweight when Dragon's Crown exists

You're a Diablo fan, you owe it to yourself to play that game, it's basically Diablo in 2D.

>>1917715
Diablo is already a Diablo in 2D.

>>1917737
It's in 3/4's birdeye, nigga.

>>1900089
I'm dying to replay this with someone over TCP/IP. Any takers?

>>1917854
Tomorrow I'll be available.
Enchantress sorc FTW

>>1917783

What the fuck are you talking about. The game is made with 2D graphics. 2D is in no way connected to the perspective. Diablo 2 has toggleable fake depth effect that scales the sprites by their distance to player, but it's still 100% 2D.

>>1917854
Just got it again, always rolled a druid and kind of rusty but I am down.

>>1917854
Should probably just do normal realms instead, less lag (maybe) and no need to give out IPs or set up Hamachi.

>>1918841
I'm not him, but I'm playing on battle.net, have a 36 pally on normal ladder on East.

Would be open to starting a new character on West or a hardcore character in either area if there are other people playing.

Kinda a noob, but gimme a game to join and I'll join.

>>1917783

The word is "isometric", not "3D".

That Sebish mod mentioned in an earlier thread is stupidly unbalanced, but helpful for trying more expensive builds on. I've been building a collection with an Infinity Sorceress and am currently using all that to start on a melee Dream Sorceress for some variety. It'll be a world of hurt to get her to the level she'll be able to use Dream without using respecs, and I'll have to skip out on Energy Shield without the necessary charms too, relying on the mercenary. Ought to be interesting.

>>1918879
And where the fuck did I say 3D?

>>1919094
Sebish mod is just for people who want to try a singleplayer experience without needing to grind.

If you want to try out builds, just use a character trainer.

tell me about your first Diablo II character /vr/
>grandpa's only activities are playing D2 and yelling at black people
>seven year old me thinks his game looks rad
>we play for a little while, then he buys me the game and the xpac
>go home and install
>make a mighty Barbarian
>fight my way through
>stat distribution: a whooping 2 points in strength, 1 in dex, 1 in vit, 1 in energy
>skills: BASH. Almost nothing but Bash, 1 point in Leap Attack (and whatever pre-reqs it had), and 3-4 points in sword, axe, AND polearm mastery (I'd put points into whatever weapon I had at the time)
>no buffs/debuffs or elemental resistance, as those were useless and for gay homos

I did manage to beat Diablo with this build. I had tons of gold but I picked up and sold literally every single item I found, so my strat was:
>port in
>drop a portal as soon I can
>hit boss maybe once, kite until my minion dies
>back to town, rez him and continue
Took hours.

>>1919296
There's something really wrong when you can get a collection of Ohm-Zod on Hell difficulty but nothing lower, and Countess can drop multiple Chams at once. Gambling is similarly broken: Set/Unique is too common and it produces nothing but Exceptional items past a certain level, though no Elites at least as of L98. And given all that, being able to buy runes, getting 6 stat points per level + doubled base stats, larger inventory and lower resistance penalty (-60 instead of -100 on Hell) was completely unnecessary. There's also some grinding that can't be eliminated, like magical/rare item mods (especially charms), getting a specific unique amulet/ring (still subject to rarity thankfully), getting any unique/set not available in gambling, getting the right item for runewords, getting gems, etc etc etc. So really, I feel it should be in between: Rare things are still rare, just not at lottery-winning odds like they are on the realms.

On the other hand the unique/set drop rates seem somewhat reasonable for singleplayer, even with the higher-than-normal magic find. Having more monsters and bosses is nice too.

>>1919342
A Necromancer that used Bone Spear and a golem. I sucked at the game around then and didn't get past Normal.

>>1919342
Summoner necromancer, full on skeletons and a fire golem. My fire golem skill got so high at one point, I didn't have a large enough mana pool to summon it (Seriously, it needed ~450 mana per summon). I had 20 skeletons because this was before synergies, and they all instantly died every fight against a unique/lightning enchanted/act boss even with summon resist at 20. The fire golem did no damage but could survive a few hits. My necromancer was so squishy from lack of vitality and so lacking in resist gear, holy fire enchanted mobs were a large threat due to AoE damage.

Eventually I rolled a paladin and just zealed my way through everything, I think I made it to Diablo in Nightmare before throwing in the towel.

>>1906159

NEVER OBSOLETE???
How can you possibly come out with this sort of thing?
Don't you have laws against false advertisement?

>>1919342
Pretty much identical to your character, although i think i eventually remade it and focused around whirlwind.

Clueless barbarian masterrace.

>>1919342
Summoner necro. I had heard that skeletons were supposed to be useless but I didn't believe it and kept putting points into them and got decent results.
It turned out that skeletons had gotten a massive boost in the later patches so all the advice I remembered was useless.

>>1919413
>THIS COMPUTER IS NEVER OBSOLETE
>when you join EMAHCINES NETWORK
>Unlimited Internet access for $19.95 per month*
...
>Plus, upgrade your PC to the fastest model on the market every 2 years for only $99!
>*some restrictions apply

>>1919439
>$579 for 2yrs of internet access + upgrade fee

So what do you guys think is a good build to go through Hell solo?
Paladins can deal with things and zealots aren't equipment reliant but I've played lot of paladins, would like an alternative

>>1919446
I've soloed hell with a variety of characters. You can find a capable build for all classes.
Use a skill calculator to see how much damage you can get with 80-90 skill points spend.

>smite + crushing blow

I wish I'd played a paladin all those years ago...

>>1919375
Yeah, a lot of that takes much of the fun out of the game.

I honestly wish it could just be PlugY with higher drop rates, but whatever.

>>1919342
Teeth necro
>have a point in Teeth
>hit one of those shrines that gives you skill-ups
>notice Teeth shoots even more teeth
>holy shit it's like a teeth shotgun
>almost all points go into Teeth

I don't even think I beat Act I

>>1919490
The days before synergies were brutal.

Nothing like having an army of paper mache skeletons.

>>1919443
It might've been a better deal back then because PCs were much more expensive. I remember paying somewhere around $1 per MB of RAM once, and it was even more expensive before that.

>>1919486
Smiter is a lot of fun. 1v1 is practically invincible, the rest of the team would let me deal with bosses while they rained on him in the distance. Good times.

>>1919489
I don't mind the drop rates as is, but I do wish there was a "build your own blue item" thing. Being able to cherry pick mods on white items for a price in gold would be wonderful, especially when you could just pay some cash for a cruel colossus blade instead of rerolling merchants ~50 times.

Thankfully, if you need specific resist rings, there's a cube recipe to get a 25% resist ring for each type of damage. It costs a perfect gem, but I make use of it to shore up holes anyway.

>>1917883
>>1918785
>>1918841
>>1918859
I set up a realm for us so we won't have to exchange IPs all the time.
Use 'Battle.net Gateway Editor' to add 'gabriels.no-ip.org' as a realm.
Note: This is an open battle.net realm.

I'll be starting a new Paladin right now if anyone wants to join me.

>all the Diablo r34 is shitty Diablo 3 stuff

man...

>>1901830
>Still haven't beaten him with a barbarian. Fuck you Diablo.
have a belt with as many Full Rejuvs as you can, be cautious, and preferrably go Berserk Barb with a good maul (or even Ribcracker).

>>1905208
>>1905249
>>1905357
What I'd rather do is just go Holy Shock/Zeal. Elemental damage bruisers are some of my favourite D2 characters, including Fireclaws Werebear.

>>1919834
Why is Holy Fire so weak? Shock has raw damage and Freeze has the slowing effect but fire just has extra range for the pointless area damage.

>>1919867
I'm putting all my points into Holy Fire and Resist Fire until I can use Holy Shock.

>>1919874
Why would waste points like that? Do you plan to reskill for Nightmare?

>>1919876
You can reroll once per difficulty so yeah.

>>1902103
he isn't a single boss that requires such resistances. in the subsequent difficulties everyone will do elemental attacks. even the lowly mooks a lot of the time.

>>1919834
Just drop a single point in vengeance.

It's all the elemental damage you'll need.

>>1919892
Element-focused is way faster on killspeed in most cases, though. All you need is a fast weapon, no need for big damage.

I took a Fireclaws Werebear through the entirety of Nightmare with only a Kris of Quickness for a weapon. I do need a much better weapon for Hell, though.

>>1919881
Outside of closed BNet I'd recommend to use the -act5 parameter to skip the parts before you get your main skills.

>>1919973
Thanks man, I had no idea you could do this.

I love this game. It consumed years of my life and I do not regret it.

I've been drawing up ideas for a balance patch of sorts, with the point being to produce more endgame viable builds without sacrificing the need for planning and careful itemization. Here are the general principles:

- 100/80 point synergies eschewed in favor of 60- and 40-point synergies to allow characters to specialize in at least two different skill families.
> The benefits are twofold: It makes non-sorceresses less dependent on obscure gear to beat immunes (like infinity or a high base damage unique) and it allows more possible builds. One example that I've played with is diverging the javazon lightning skills into melee and ranged synergies, thereby forcing a player to choose between an off-element and charged strike.

- A general increase in damage for skills that do disproportionately low damage.
> There are a number of skills that are not viable simply due to their low base damage, such as the assassin's fire traps/hand grenades, all of the amazon's elemental arrows, bone spear (debatable) and the druid elemental tree (also somewhat debatable). The plan is to bring them in line with other skills.

- Greater damage bonuses for strength/dexterity point investments.
> Physical damage skills in Diablo 2 are, in general, underpowered, especially compared to the investment required to build them. An increase in base damage multiplier from stats would rectify this as well as encourage people to invest beyond what they need for items.

- Removal of blessed hammer/concentration combo.
> Fuck hammerdins.

From there, I'm going to look at ways to make the end of the game more difficult, especially in multiplayer parties. I haven't gotten a good handle on how I'm going to do this yet, however.

Is this something people around here would be interested in?

>>1920126
> Fuck hammerdins.
I tried to play one but they're just so damn boring.

>>1920156
They're boring and they make the game boring for everyone else by completely ignoring resistances and logic. When Blizzard removed them in 1.09, the game was much better off.

>>1919973

What does this parameter do?

>>1920386
http://diablo2.diablowiki.net/Game_commands
> -act1: Characters are level 1 in act 1. (Default setting.)
> -act2: Characters are level 16 in act 2.
> -act3: Characters are level 21 in act 3.
> -act4: Characters are level 27 in act 4.
> -act5: Characters are level 33 in act 5.

I didn't know about these either, rarely played single player.

>>1920386
http://diablo2.diablowiki.net/Game_commands
>act#: New characters will appear in that act, at the preset level, with unspent skill and stat points.
> -act1: Characters are level 1 in act 1. (Default setting.)
> -act2: Characters are level 16 in act 2.
> -act3: Characters are level 21 in act 3.
> -act4: Characters are level 27 in act 4.
> -act5: Characters are level 33 in act 5.

I didn't know about these either, rarely played single player. I will later when I want to figure out the chances of making skill charms.

>>1920386
Starts you off at level 25 in act 5 normal with no quests completed. Only works in single-player.

>>1920386
A new character will start in act 5 with level 33.
you can either continue from there or jump back to act 1 if you want to do the quests.

>>1920431
I used it to check out skills. A calculator can only tell you how much damage you deal but not how the skill actually feels like.

>>1919867
Holy Fire's still a carry over from early development philosophy. Lower ranked skills were suppose to be directly better.

They attempted to improve that by having Resist Fire scale faster than Resist Lightning, but even with 20/20 in both skills, Holy Shock does about twice as much damage at equal levels. Doubling the synergy bonus from Resist Fire would've put them on par with each other.

>>1919498
Less about that and more about the imbalances that existed back then like MSLE, Duriel, Nihilathak's absurdly broken Corpse Explosion, Diablo's firestorm stacking, Iron Maiden from Oblivion Knights, and so on.

>>1920431
Again, read the charms guide it goes into detail on the mods, and especially skillers. The first place you can find them is Nightmare Act III Great Marsh/Flayer Jungle. I'd recommend trying Lower Kurast though because of all the chests, and it's easy to just use a teleporting Sorceress to dodge everything on /players 8.

>>1919489
For what it's worth I still prefer it to getting blueballed by the vanilla game or using a character creator. There's still some luck required to find specific items and effort to procure gold to gamble with, though I did find a HoZ, IK and Tal Rasha set armor, and a couple pages of crap Uniques.

>>1920474
As far as I can tell, the only practical use for holy fire is to make games more dangerous.

>>1920508
I'm going to macro cubing charms and record results, I know where the ilvl charms I should get drop.. just wondering what the chances were and what kinda chance it's relevant to my class.

>>1920557
Some people use it for chipped gem hunting in act 1. Max rank holy fire can be achieved pretty quickly and it has a longer radius than holy shock. Just run around act 1 killing everything in your proximity with its AoE and pick up your loot.

>>1920563
>tfw finding a ...
>pali defensive aura
>ama passive
>necro curse
>barb mastery
>druid shapeshifting and summoning
>... skill grand charm

How does a bonemancer handle magic immunities?

My mercs gear fucking sucks and I just want to dim vision and forget the mobs that have it, corpse explosion is a hassle when its the mummies that just shoot at me and never get pulled to corpses.

Are there any bosses that have magic immunities?

>>1920636
I used to borrow my cd key to friends and cousins. It's a wonder I still have it and it wasn't banned, I found out years later that my cousins used a maphack
Those ungrateful fucks

>>1919413
>PSN+ get you free games!

>>1920720
http://diablo.gamepedia.com/Immune_Monsters_%28Diablo_II%29

There's very, very few enemies with Magic immune as one of their attributes, though sometimes uniques can spawn with it. But yeah, a merc would be really useful for dealing with them or poison if you want to branch out a bit. Your golem can probably indefinitely tank them though.

>>1920784
I used to always use a maphack. I took a break for a while and come to find out, Blizzard stealth banned everyone who had used them two weeks after I left. I fortunately wasn't caught.

I really liked having everything automapped right out of the gate, but using the screen shift to nuke enemies from beyond their acquisition range was pretty broken, though technically you could do it blind. Even so, there's external programs that will generate a map based on the seed of your game that Blizzard can't do anything about, though it doesn't get displayed in game.

>>1920587
>ama passive
Doesn't sound too terrible as a boost. Most of the skills aren't worth investing into due to diminishing returns but one point more in all of them can't hurt.

Going with a druid werebear for my solo build. I'm hoping the big health will get me through hell. What's a reasonable weapon to get in SP?

>>1920890
Why don't you just play and see what you get? You don't have to specialize on one type of weapon like a barbarian.

what is the best class to solo diablo 1 and 2?

>>1919720
what zone? It dun work for me

>>1920910
B-but I can't decide on my max strength then

>>1920963
Not him, but just respec as needed

>>1920963
More strength doesn't hurt a werebear.

>should've been rolling GCs in my cube instead of disregarding gems all those years

tbh it's fairly low chance and getting that many pgems to burn legit... would feel like a terrible gamble imo.

>>1920943

For Diablo 2

>Hammerdin
>Meteor/Frozen Orb Sorceress
>Chain Lightning/Frozen Orb Sorceress
>Summoner Necromancer.

>>1920580
I miss the chip economy.

For a good handful of chips, you could get some decent gear from higher level characters.

>>1920943
Sorceror > Rogue > Warrior

>>1920943
sorcerer

zealot paladin or summon necromancer

Goddamn I love lightning
How do you even play other elements

>>1920890
Basically you either play a Mauler Werebear or a Fireclaws Werebear. With the former, pick up a good beatstick, like a 2handed maul, preferrably Bonesnap in early game or something (you can in fact play an IK Mauler). The latter is easier because all you need is to maximize attack speed and physical damage is harder to scale with IMO if you're playing untwinked. Either of those approaches will last you until Hell, where all meleers have problems and require better gear, but Hell is managable.

Decent late game werebear weapons include:
6xShael Phase Blade (Fireclaws; you can use a 4xShael Flail if you can't find a Phase Blade), Ribcracker (Fireclaws, but it's more traditionally a Furywolf weapon), Oath in ethereal Cryptic Sword/Feral Axe (either), Baranar's Star, Nord's Tenderizer, Razor's Edge, Frostwind, Horazon's Tornado, Windhammer, Reaper's Toll, Lightsabre should all get you through hell with some patience.

Remember that if you do end up with an attack speed reliant build, that shapeshifters don't benefit from +IAS% that doesn't come on a weapon. So there's no point to get Treachery or upgraded Twitchthroe just for better Attack Speed, because the gains aren't there.

Make sure to invest in Shockwave whichever Werebear you build, like 4-5 points is good enough, it's amazing crowd control.

Is there any class half as fun as the rogue?
>Run from a boss while putting traps

>>1921116
Oh, and whatever you do, on any melee champion ever (one that doesn't wield BotD/Grief and does so much damage that CB becomes obsolete, at least), get a source of Crushing Blow. It helps take down elemental immunes if you're a Tesladin or a Fireclaw. Cheap sources come from stuff like the Goblin Toe boots or crafted gloves. Around 25% CB helps out a whole lot.

Really cheap Smiter builds can solo the Uber Tristram event if you stack Crushing Blow on them, it's that good.

>>1921107
This guy knows what's up.

>>1921127
Oh also I forgot to mention that Aldur's set can be decent for a Fireclawer, and that you can also make a build that relies on the Hunger skill, but I never tried it and I heard it's wonky, so try googling it (I think it's called "Kodiak").

>>1921127
>Really cheap Smiter builds can solo the Uber Tristram event if you stack Crushing Blow on them, it's that good.

SmiteNCrush is so fucking ridiculous.

Blizzard pls go
But seriously
>Have Windows 8.1
>read this thread
>DL Diablo and LoD
>Oh shit this looks awful
>Go online
>read, change video settings and DL Sven's glidewrapper
>Looking good
>Suddenly realize I forgot how to build a werebear druid
>Just dump points into Strength/Stam HNNNNGGH
Any help or suggestions?

>>1921159
http://diablo.incgamers.com/forums/threads/please-read-first-pvm-pvp-druid-guides-updated-nov-1-2007-der.607049/

pick whichever one of those you like best

>>1921168
Hey thanks buddy!
Here's a funny /pol/ related image.

>>1921171
>/pol/
>funny

Pick 1

>>1920998
the RNG continues

>>1921274
>88 pgem pack 3.95
>pack of 9 sorc cold skills for 1.75
>pack of 9 sorc cold skills w/ 10-20 life 2.75
fuck rolling your own, I'd pay 3 bucks not to roll thousands of them

>>1921290
I used to have about 16 or so shimmering small charms of vita, three of which were perfect +5% all resists/+20 life. I really thought about buying more perfect ones off of sites just to consolidate my inventory down a bit, but I refrained.

I never actually had more than a couple of skill charms though, I didn't put much faith into them.

>>1921430
>+800 to life from charms

>>1921290
Yeah at that point you think "I could pay 20 minutes of minimum wage to save 500 hours of grinding, so why not?"

>>1922068
A lot of people take that mentality with EVE, except on there your stuff less permanent than b.net ladder.

>the pile of gold and weapon/armor dropping sounds still haunt your every waking moment
>you heard them just now when you read that

>>1901876

Diablo 2 actually had variety in builds and gear. Having one character that you use forever and can change his build on a whim is MMO-tier awfulness.

>D2 has rendered all games unenjoyable for me, with the exception of Dragon's Crown, which was kind of a derpy sidescrolling Diablo

I have a loot addiction.

>>1901876
this is what happens when you play diablo 3 first

even if diablo 3 didnt have all those glaring flaws people complain about the biggest thing wrong with it to me is that it just feels like a wow team made it, which they did

shit feels like torchlight pretty much

soon blizzard will cash in on a remade diablo 2 with battle net 2.0 that will be much worse then diablo 2 and will be the final blow to the diablo 2 community

like patch 1.13 wasnt enough

>>1922098
>actually saw a Gheed's Fortune drop once
>sorceress with a telekinesis vacuumed it up almost instantly

>>1922175

that sucks but really that shit isnt really worth much. unid is like worth one high rune

>>1922175
I never played in groups at high level beyond baal runs, almost everyone had grabbit at one point and it was especially bad with sorcs.

Playing with friends was much better in that regard, divvying up loot was much easier.

>>1922131
Respecs are good because some interesting builds are terrible in early game. Speaking of which my melee Sorceress is up to Act V, it has been a slog through Act IV even with twinking. The first three acts were sorta fun though, telekilling and click-clicking like a Warrior.

I also opted to try Energy Shield, it's been pretty nice against melee, but not elemental, supposedly mana burn enemies will destroy it, haven't had enough of those to check. I'll give the mercenary an Insight polearm to help with that until I can wield Dream runewords. Then he can have Infinity instead.

>>1922098
*whit*
*whit*
*ping*

>>1922192
Playing with friends made it all worth it.

>"hey anon ur barb need a ccb?"

>>1922230

Sure, but there needs to be a limit like there is in D2. D3 it's just, "Lol, 4gut re-spec, tp brb"

Guys, I could never get into D2 because I sucked shit at it and all my characters were awful. I remember making a sorceress and pumping all my skill points into Warmth because I was always running out of mana, for example.

I don't really want an exact guide or skill build, but are there any resources out there that will tell me what to do and what not to do, in a general sense? Like a Diablo II primer?

>>1922956
If I remember right, one of the Diablo 2 wikis that you can find on google has a beginner's guide and a bunch of character playstyle guides.
I started playing a few months ago for the first time and I managed pretty well with those. Of course asking /vr/ for tips sometimes helped too.

Newbie guide (someone posted it earlier in thread): vitality strongest stat.

Also, putting points into warmth isn't a waste as sorc. You need warmth unless you are running a silly build like my enhancement builds.

>>1922230
>>1922803
I liked the system in Titan Quest. You had an undo option while spending points and could spend incremental money to remove them afterwards.

>>1922970
1 point into Warmth is great but with synergies you don't really want to spend more than that.
There are several such one point wonders.

>>1923024
>There are several such one point wonders.

Go on...

>>1923202
Just off the top of my head, a multitude of necromancer curses like Amplify Damage that don't increase in effect, only range and duration, the Paladin's Meditation, Salvation, Redemption, and Sanctuary skills, the Battle Command Warcry and leap from the Barbarian, the aforementioned Warmth and Teleport, and probably Cobra Strike from the Assassin. All of these have harsh diminishing returns or are otherwise not valuable enough to bother sticking multiple points into and are better off just being increased with skill items. Most of them have a binary effect where the magnitude isn't important, such as Sanctuary allowing you to ignore physical resistances of undead.

>>1923401
What >>1923202 needs to take away from that is to use his own judgement. Some one-pointers are not useful or worth the prerequisites to some builds (Redemption) or may deserve more points for unusual builds (Warmth is a synergy, but also invaluable for an Energy Shield Sorc). Same applies to stat points: Dex is a crucial stat for glass cannon Bowazons.

>>1923673
>Dex is a crucial stat for glass cannon Bowazons
They're called glass cannons because they completely forgo vitality. Bows and javelins both get extra damage from dexterity so it's not a mistake to have surplus points.
Dex also factors into blocking. Check your defense to see the chance to block with your shield. The maximum is 75% and a common method is to raise dexterity every level to keep it there.
It can cost quite a bit with a low blocking shield so carefully consider if you want to make the investment. Blocking also takes time and Fast Block Rate isn't easy to get.
Paladins should normally go for it due to Holy Shield

>>1923715
Strength and dex give such tiny damage bonuses that no build actually uses them to boost damage. Any character not pursuing max block only needs strength and dex insofar as their gear requires it.

Besides, most characters will pass the extra damage threshold simply through the bonuses they get from endgame gear.

>>1922956
Here's my comprehensive build guide for all characters.

Stats:
There are really only two stat builds: Basic and max block. The basic build is that you put all of your points into vitality except for that which you need to wear gear. This build works for any character that won't use a shield, paladins (because they have holy shield) and, generally speaking, sorceresses. The max block stat build requires you to invest approximately two points of dexterity for every level you gain to obtain a 75% chance to block. Any character that will use a shield and is not a sorceress/paladin is advised to build max block.

Skills:
...This obviously depends on the character, but virtually every skill in Diablo falls into one of three categories:
1. One point wonder. These skills generally scale pointlessly but are useful to have. Nearly every passive skill in the game is a one point wonder.
2. Worthless/prerequisite. These get one point.
3. A useful skill, or a synergy to a useful skill. These should get most of your skill points, and you should aim to max them. Generally speaking, you want to first max the skills you'll actually use and then the synergies for those skills.

In conclusion, building a character is as simple as putting one point into all of the passives and then maxing the skill you're going to use and as many of its synergies as you can. Some builds are more complex than this, but that's the general idea. Pick an offensive skill or two and boost the things that support it.

If you choose a character you want to play, I can provide more specific advice.

>>1923884
>Any character that will use a shield and is not a sorceress/paladin is advised to build max block.
This is a good post, but I'd like to note that if you somehow happen to play a shapeshifter druid with a shield (though most weredruids will want twohanders - Ribcracker is a great weapon for any Furywolf, and both Maulers and Fireclawbears have good two handed options) you might not want to go max block because the frames for blocking on shapeshifters are extremely weird even on high dex builds with Whitstan's Guard in offhand. Aside from that, vouche.

>>1923893
I honestly can't envision someone using a 1h on a were_ build unless they just happened to get one of the really good 1h maces and nothing else.

But yes, I agree with you. It might also be worth noting that, in general, anything that causes your character's shape to change also causes your animations to get slower. This is mostly pertinent to druids, but it also matters if you're a Necromancer and you want to wear full trang's.

Max Block is a tricky thing. Some characters really benefit from it (javazons with max block and some resists are indestructible) but the math is sketchier on spellcasters, partially because their gains from vit are lower but mostly because you don't really expect them to get hit in melee. It's complicated further by the presence of low ctb% shields that require huge dex investments to get to max block (or anything close to it).

>>1923884
>If you choose a character you want to play, I can provide more specific advice.

Not that guy, buy Ice Sorceress? Or summon Necro? I never really got what I should be putting my points into with that one, summon masteries or more summons.

>>1924151
>Summon Necro
Raise Skeleton, then Skeleton Mastery, then Corpse Explosion. 1 point in everything else, put more points into whatever you feel like fits your needs/playstyle (Candidates: Revive, Summon Resist, some of the curses, Golem Mastery).
Reasoning: Normal Skeletons deal more damage than Mages because your main curses are Amplify Damage and Decrepify and naturally form a frontline for your Necromancer. Mages often spawn with shitty Poison. First max Raise Skeleton lets you raise more skellies at a time. Your most important skill on any PvM Necro is Corpse Explosion - your minions (or spells, if you're a boner necro) are just a means to get that first corpse off to start a chain reaction. Max it for higher radius and watch it form chain reactions. Remember that Amplify Damage amplifies Corpse Explo's physical damage (it deals physical and fire damage). Curses to use: Amplify Damage against most things, Dim Vision against shooters early game, Attract/Confuse against annoying normal monster stacks, Decrepify against bosses (along with Clay Golem, slows bosses really well), Lower Resist (good party spell), Iron Maiden (in some niche cases). Best golem is usually Clay for additional slowing power, Iron if you can find an expendable weapon that's also good (which rarely happens) and Fire Golem is slightly better at drawing aggro from monsters due to his fire aura.
Playstyle: Go to Act 1, make minions, have minions and mercenary tank up, cause a corpse to explode, blow everything on the map up by setting off a chain reaction from that single corpse, beat Hell on hardcore while naked.

>>1924151
>>1924186
>Ice Sorceress
This depends on your goals. Pure Ice Sorceress is good for parties and for running Mephisto (and a variety of other subbosses), but will have issues fullclearing the game due to Cold immunes. That kinda sorceress will max out Blizzard and all its corresponding synergies with 1 point in Warmth, Static Field, Teleport, etc. It's a no-brainer, really.

A more malleable single player build that utilizes Cold is any of the Frozen Orb builds because Frozen Orb has little in terms of synergy yet is very cost-effective. All you need to have satisfying kill speed is 20 Frozen Orb and 20 Cold Mastery (Frost Bolt's synergy with Orb is pretty bad and should be ignored). From there on, you can make your Sorcie try out any spells from different trees and have a viable dual-element sorceress that can tackle on all challenges given by the game. Good combos with Frozen Orb include:
>Fireball/Meteor [max out them both and Fire Mastery]
>Chain Lightning is favored by some peeps
>Firewall [requires a lot of micro to do right but has a lot of potential and I think it's underrated, plus it's also not very synergy reliant)

So, if you just want to start a sorc from scratch and get through the game from start to finish on your own, a dual-element sorc is probably your best bet. Meteorb is the most cookie cutter sorcie by far, right next to pure lightning sorc.

>>1924151
Summon necro is fun. For starters, "summon necro", by itself, is not a build: A skeleton build only requires around 45 points to be effective, and many of those points are transferable. But here's the basics:

20 skeleton
20 skeleton mastery
1 amplify damage
1 clay golem
1 golem mastery
1 summon resist
1 bone armor
1 corpse explosion

This basic build gets you the maximum number of skeletons with the most health. As you're leveling, you can alternate between leveling skeleton and mastery; you get roughly equal effects from both except when a point into skeleton will give you another skeleton.

From there, you have a few options.

The most popular option is to convert this into a revive build, which adds an additional point into the revive prerequisites and 20 points into revive. I think this build is kind of pointless -- the revive skill has bad diminishing returns -- but it's, again, popular. People generally invest in corpse explosion after this.

Better options? If you're playing multiplayer, the fishymancer is a classic, which is built with one point in revive (plus prerequisites), one point into lower resist (plus, again, prerequisites) and the rest into bone wall, bone prison, and bone armor, in that order. This build provides great support, especially for undergeared parties in hell. However, it's kind of pointless in single-player.

Your other option is to build for poison nova, which will become your primary skill. That build looks something like this:

20 skeleton
20 skeleton mastery
20 poison dagger
20 poison explosion
20 poison nova
1 clay golem
1 golem mastery
1 summon resist
1 skeletal mage
1 revive
1 into every non-AI curse
1+ lower resist
1 bone armor

Poison nova is a MASSIVELY underrated skill that takes only 60 points to max. The idea here is to use summons in conjunction with poison nova, with your main damage coming from the nova (except against poison immunes).

>>1924186
>>1924196
>>1924197
Thanks a ton guys, I think the main problem I had as a dumb kid was thinking every buff/debuff spell was worthless, for some reason.

>>1924197
You sure that's the fishymancer that takes bone spells? Nightfish, who seems to have originated the build, doesn't seem to think much of bone spells while heavily recommending Corpse Explosion.

It's interesting what you say about Poison necros, I thought those require tremendous amounts of wealth to be of any use. Then again, I've had a lot of characters shot down after a less-than-glamorous early game and how their late game supposedly sucks hard anyway, so I wouldn't know. (That's why I never took a Bowazon anywhere, as much as I wanted to, and I wish there was a good recipe for a Bowa that wasn't gear reliant.)

>>1924197
A note on bone armor: Bone armor is one of the few skills in the game that benefits more from synergies than it does from actually putting points in it, so if you find yourself with extra points that you want to use for survivability, put them into bone wall instead of bone armor.

Cold sorceresses come in two (and a half) flavors: Pure blizzard, meteorb, and blizz/fireball.

The pure blizzard build is one of the most straightforward builds in the game, and it consists of maxing blizzard and its prerequisites as well as cold mastery. It's also one of the strongest builds, and only really falters against cold immunes.

Meteorb and blizz/fireball both address this immune weakness, and these builds are quite a bit trickier. The way you build these hybrid builds is to gradually level up both skills in an alternating fashion. Your main skill is the cold skill, and you level it when it stops being effective at killing. The fire skill, in turn, you level when it stops being effective at killing cold immunes. Meteorb is better at baal, blizz/fireball is better at... pretty much the rest of the game. If you're not twinking, blizz/fireball is the better choice.

>>1924151

Not the expert, but, wouldn't you want to master the summons instead so they get ripshit powerful instead of having hundreds of minions that are borderline useless? I mean have a few for different situations but otherwise make them all powerful and invincible.

>>1924206
The term "fishymancer" has taken on a life of its own, and in the context of ladder play generally refers to a necromancer that is useful but is nonetheless entirely incapable of killing anything by itself. You are definitely correct about the original meaning, however.

Poison necros work in single-player because the damage scales well enough untwinked until the very end of hell. To compete with sorceresses and hammerdins, you will need unusually good gear (death's web is a must), but you will play fine solo. Besides, it is always an option to simply treat poison nova as an immune buster and rely on summons/CE for your primary damage.

I've personally played this build (on hardcore, no less) a dozen times and I can attest to its value. I would rate it as about on the same level of the javazon in terms of its effectiveness untwinked.

Bowazons being useless without staggering gear is a real shame. If you want to play one, the best way to do it is to run a previous patch version (like 1.09).

>>1924214
Raise Skeleton makes skellies hit harder and be more numerous, Skeleton Mastery makes them sturdier. I'd take the former first over the latter because if your army gets wiped out, all it takes usually is a trip back to Act 1 (or just a step back to a previously killed area) to kill weak monsters and re-raise your army. More skellies means your minions will give you more of a frontline, too.

The formula for Raise Skeleton AFAIK is that the first three points give you 3 skellies and then every third point after gives you another skeleton, so it's harder to make a huge army as you progress past 3 points but I don't think that's worth going Mastery first over Raise anyway.

Alright, while we're on Necromancer topics, I thought I'd ask about Iron Golem. Does anyone have the specifics of what the iron golem receives from items, perhaps a link to a site that has it in great detail? I was really thinking about making a necromancer entirely around the concept of a badass iron golem, and while I've heard anecdotal recommendations (6x pDiamond shields for massive resists, IK's maul for crushing blow, Insight runeword for meditation), I'd like to know exactly what I can do to tailor an iron golem to a specific build.

Playing a smiter paladin on east ladder, have a question:

Bout to respec to change from the 3 resist auras to Salvation and to get my stats in order (was gonna upgrade to one shield, then didn't, so I have like 20 points too much strength) and was wondering if one point in Vigor (so it gets +skill) would be any good.

I already have +65% faster run/walk from gear and can outrun any monster in the game but I wanna go faster (and apparently the Vigor run/walk increase works better than gear ones do.)

Is it worth the 3 points or am I gonna screw myself?

>>1924239
I remember, during one Baalrun, a Necro BMing some guy who dropped his armor by accident and the Necro turning it into a golem immediately.

Honestly I'm not quite sure about your idea because it doesn't seem that an Iron Golem will ever be particularly good at damage dealing even if you made him out of a high tier runeword or something. So just make him an aurabot or CB machine or similar; build him for utility.

>>1924245
I always get Vigor on my Paladins because it's a very convenient skill if nothing else (and can save your hide on HC). It's just 3 points, I don't think you're at a risk of screwing yourself; a core smite build seems to only utilize maxed Holy Shield, Smite and Fanaticism, with everything else being up to you. You don't seem restricted in any way.

>>1924263
I was also curious if he gained skills from weapons (Such as Passion granting +1 to Zeal and +1 to Berserk), but that seems highly unlikely. Still would be halarious.

I'm more looking for possible uses like perhaps making him out of a Bramble for the mass thorns, maybe it would be good in conjunction with Iron Maiden or Lifetap. Only trouble then is that I'd lose Amplify Damage which is my primary curse for damage.

>>1924274
I wonder if you could use the Obedience runeword for a golem.

I don't think an Iron Golem does anything beyond normal attacking, so +skills seem worthless if they're not auras. Potentially having a personal Call to Arms in your party would be too good it seems.

>>1924239
I will make a longer post about this later but the short version is that they inherit basically everything but are working from a terrible base pool, especially in the damage department.
Just use a clay golem.

>>1924196
If you're using Frozen Orb + something else don't max Cold Mastery, because past L17 it only makes a difference if an enemy has cold resistance (most enemies either have none or are immune, and for act bosses you're better off using your main attack). Additionally you should be getting some +skill items to help it along if you're playing a Sorceress.

>>1924263
Aight, black sanic it is.

>>1924320
This idea works for any build using cold damage really, and it's worth noting that, unlike a synergy, cold mastery benefits from +skills. It is possible (with good gear) to only need one point into cold mastery.

Having said that, with *bad* gear cold mastery provides great returns per point, so it's a worthwhile investment in conjunction with a reset.

>>1924398
Also is there anyone on East Ladder Softcore that has a Royal Shield with 4 sockets handy? Or one with no sockets? Or a low quality one?

If you want something in trade I have some lowbie greens and lowbie runes.

>>1924435
A blade barrier (the third level spiky shield) with 3 sockets or no sockets or low quality also works too. Thanks in advance to anyone that helps out a needy whiner.

>>1924462
What do you need it for? I'd presume a 4 socket shield would go for Spirit runeword?

>>1924471
Yeah, for Spirit.

I could also do Ancient's Pledge or Rhyme with the Blade Barrier, or a rolled socketed Royal Shield that came out with less than 4 sockets, if it came to that.

If I can't get a good runeworld shield I'll probably just upgrade either my yellow Spike Shield or Crown Shield and socket them with the barb quest guy to get a perfect diamond for resistance.

>>1924435
>Softcore

Have you no shame?

>>1924512
This is my first time playing Diablo 2 and my friends are casuals. Also I wanna duel people later on.

Speaking of, is there still active pvp at high level?

>>1924521
>Speaking of, is there still active pvp at high level?

All pvp is between twinked out characters and people who have been playing for the last thirteen years.

You're better off pvping between friends.

>>1924529
Ah, sounds like.

I'll try to convince my friends to give hardcore a try (they've played Diablo 2 before, and are supposed to start playing with me "soon") but even if not I'll probably give hardcore a shot once I at least get to Hell difficulty.

>>1924426
If you're specializing in cold you'll want it higher for resistant enemies (Mephisto is 75% on Hell for example), it's not like there's much else to put the skill points into besides maybe Frozen Armor.

>>1924512
Not him but the high-end stuff is far too rare to want to lose, especially online where it could be due to something beyond your control.