Help a Diablo II beginner!

Lncredible

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Mar 23, 2009
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My favourites have always been amazons, wherein you get the choice to use a bow, or throw javalins.

"Bow-azons", however, become terrible after normal difficulty without any good gear.

I would make a "javazon" and put lots of skills into "Charged strike" and then "lightning fury". It is both very satisfying and very effective. Gl mate. Message me if you have any diablo related questions.

Don't be led into using a barbarian. You will truly suck in Nightmare without experience in the game's mechanics like "attack rating", and will thus not be able to hit much and take a lot of damage.
 

Axell699

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Sep 13, 2008
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Since Diablo 2 and LoD vanilla are tailored mostly for multiplayer,your single player experience will not be the best( low drops and low levels). I personally suggest you start with a mod installed. Eastern Sun or Medial XL are 2 great mods that signifficantly increase the game's appeal introducing new monsters,skills, and a ton of new items and goodies.
 

The_Yeti

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Jan 17, 2011
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Don't Accept Emailed Item Lists From Fellow Players Looking To Trade Items~~

Unless you like walking into a corner and dropping everything you worked for.
 

blackdwarf

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Jun 7, 2010
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yeah, diablo II is my favorite game ever.

you can indeed seargh the internet for guides, which are usefull, but you need some undertstanding from the game. the best to start with is the barbarian, he just the normal warrior of game, with the plus he can wear 2 2handed weapons later on. i did never really played him and i started with the necromancer. wath i seriously suggest with stats and spells is just do some things, try stuff. the fun part about diablo is that there doenst excist a best way to build your character. heck, if you want you can build yor whole character around one spell. and there doenst excist really a character that is the best. a good questiion would be: do you play online or ofline?

i will give a quick sumary of the classes, but to be fair i didn't play with them all son i can be wrong at some points.

barbarian: physichal melee. strong, high surviability. easysist to play. i dont remember the trees though.

necromancer: (my guy :p) can raise minions. can be a caster, with some strong abilities (corpse explosion :D). lastly he has curses, which can be some good cc or strong debuffs.

wizard(other name though, can remember it now) has spells for fire, ice and electricity. really strong caster and has AOE spells.

amazon. (never played with her) like is said, you can make her a warrior like the spartans in 300, or a archer.

lastly: the paladin: has good buffs for the team, but can be strong warrior aswell, has some cool shit too. hammerdin!!!


if you will play online i suggest that you start with rooms with a password, so you can play alone for awhile. or you can be powerleveld, but that is not really fun, and not what you want when you are learning the game.
 

jovack22

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Jan 26, 2011
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Here's the tried and true for casual-serious gamers (there are "expert" builds which I won't get into because they rely heavily on items and you won't be at that level for a long time).

You can do well online with this PvM (player vs monster) and OK in PvP (if you want to be tier 1 in PvP these builds won't cut it at all and require the hardcore expert builds). I could win solo hell with each of these, and I always chose the defensive Act 2 merc (again, expert builds utilize different mercs)

Summoner Necromancers -- might not seem like it would work but it does... won't work pvp at all

Hammer Paladin -- repetitive, but powerful... was slightly nerfed though
Zeal Paladin -- if you want a melee class, this is what you want. Altho there are other melee classes specific for PvP, this is your best all around. Probably one of the most fun builds.

Sorceress: Meteorb (meteor/frozen orb/fireball), Blizzard/Fireball, etc... sorceress is fairly straightforward. Find a main spell, and a secondary on another tree so you can get through immune monsters... avoid shitty spells -- straightforward like i said.

Wind Druid -- tornado/cyclone and win
 

Lord Legion

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Feb 26, 2010
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I think it is "set players 8" press enter put that into the chat window in singleplayer and your singleplayer game will be like a full 8 player multiplayer game. So better loot and more exp from monsters...of course those monsters are also stronger...but it is a fair trade-off.

My most recent was a werebear druid. With a fast enough weapon, it outclassed all my other melee builds.
 

Carboncrown

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Oct 17, 2009
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A good way to start is to go fire Sorc and get a Tir and a Ral rune from the I act 4th quest "boss." Put them in that order on a two socket stave and you'll get a pretty handy rune word:

Or just make a corpse explosion, iron maiden and bone prison Necro. U mad Duriel/Diablo/everything ever?

And listen to Togs.

EDIT: Those are the most efficent I can think of, most fun I ever had was with a throwing Barb(not recommended) at a Lan party. Best way to play IMO, is try and fail with a buddy(just have your mouse finger ready for that sweet, sweet loot sound).
 

Altorin

Jack of No Trades
May 16, 2008
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Axell699 said:
Since Diablo 2 and LoD vanilla are tailored mostly for multiplayer,your single player experience will not be the best( low drops and low levels). I personally suggest you start with a mod installed. Eastern Sun or Medial XL are 2 great mods that signifficantly increase the game's appeal introducing new monsters,skills, and a ton of new items and goodies.
Or, just run the game singleplayer and set the number of players to 8.

My ONLY issue with Diablo 2 is the loot system that necessitated farming stupid SoJ's or other Uniques to trade with other players to get the items you want. I hated that. If I make a character and put 60-100 hours into him, I shouldn't have to jump through a crazy amount of hoops to get the gear I want for him.
 

ArseRocket

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Sep 6, 2010
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Don't use or sell a single gem, you want to keep them until the horadic cube when you can transmute them into higher versions. This will really help in the long run.
 

-Drifter-

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Jun 9, 2009
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babinro said:
Arguably the most fun class to play in Diablo 2 is the Skeleton Necromancer. Pump all points into things like Skeletons, skeleton mastery, and then a point into amplify damage and you have a solid build that only truly struggles against the act bosses..
Are you sure? I've never seen a summoner Necromancer that I'd actually classify as useful. Now, admittedly, I'm no expert, but I found it more effective to put lots of points into teeth, and later, bone spear. Teeth works very well for quickly killing large groups of enemies, as well as slowing them down, and bone spear does a lot of damage, plus it shoots through enemies. Can be very useful in the more claustrophobic areas. Just map one to the left mouse button and the other to the right so you don't have to constantly switch spells in the middle of battle.
 

Savagezion

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Mar 28, 2010
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Ultimately, you pretty much can't go wrong on Diablo 2. I only run hardcore characters anymore as it is the only thing that allows challenge to be involved. Follow these basic rules and build how you like:

1) Don't be afraid you won't have enough mana and fear not having enough hit points. Your Vitality should always be your highest stat (at least 20+ points higher) and Energy should always be your lowest. (I take that back but only in regards to a mana shield sorceress. Even then, your vitality should be 1 one your top 2 stats.)

2) You get ~105 skill points total. Build from the bottom up on the skill tree. Know which level 30 skills you will be running and build accordingly. You can safely run 2/3 skill trees strongly. Pick two class skill trees and mainly focus on them.

3) If you find yourself not liking your build you can now reset your skill points once per difficulty level so there is some room for error.

My recent druid:
Lvl 20

Str 50
Dex 40
Vit 65
Egy 30

I am not running shape shifting skills at all. This build will run oak sage, summon grizzly, carrion vine, and various elemental skills perhaps dire wolves too later. Right now I run 1 dire wolf.

I mostly play singleplayer and occasionally multiplayer with a friend but he doesn't like running hardcore so it is a semi-conflict of interests. I care more for the challenge/risk than the loot hunting. He prefers the loot hunting to the challenge/risk.
 

helldragonX

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Mar 3, 2010
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My main build was a shape-shifting fury druid. All of your skills would go into werewolf,lycanthropy, fury(main attack) and fire claws. And mostly your ability points would go into Dex and Vit, enough str to wear equipment and maybe a couple into energy. Oh and Life Leech and Mana Leech are your friends.

With the equipment I wore I could deal between 20k-100k dmg each attack.
 

babinro

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Sep 24, 2010
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I've played all of the class builds in my above post in hell. Frenzy was a lot of fun but I couldn't survive on hell difficulty. Only concentration barb could beat hell difficulty for me...and its a long slow paced battle.

The other one that wont survive in hell was a skeleton necromancer. If you want to play a necro to win the game in hell you need to go bone necro for bone spear. Extremely slow going during early normal and late hell game though.
 

Conza

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Nov 7, 2010
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Hobo Joe said:
I've just found a copy of Diablo II in my brother's stuff and I'd like to try it out as I'm aware of its reputation. I'm sure there must be some D2 veterans here so if you could give me some sound advice I'd really appreciate that. Which classes are best to begin with? Which ones will be strongest in the late game etc.?

Any general advice would be great too, or any tutorials/starter guides you could provide.
Firstly, good on you for playing a 10+ year old game, I'm not sure I could, but I loved this game when it was still modern in 00/01.

I played as a Necromancer, loved that character, he could use a double handed sword, or a wand to help his powers, and I don't think I ever beat the game honestly, but if I were going to, that'd be the class to do it with.