Best Starting Class

[Xnipes]

Best Starting Class

I did some forum searches for this topic but I did not find any information, so I hope this topic is not redundant. I just bought the battle chest recently and played through Diablo 1 in one sitting and I am nearing completion of Diablo 2. I love the game but I realize I'm joining the community incredibly late.

I'd like to get started with the game and get some gear and do PvM. Which class and build would be a good place to start off for someone who it just starting out and doesn't really know anyone else to play with?

Another question I have is: there are so many terms and things I see on the forums. Will I just pick these up as I continue to play and learn the lingo?

 

[SnickerSnack]

Re: Best Starting Class

Try the beginner's guide stickied in this forum.

Yes. There is a big list around here somewhere.

 

[Mursilis]

Some reading material for you.

Terms, Abbreviations, Acronyms for D2

Beginner's Guide to Build Selection

 

[ptitbob]

Re: Best Starting Class

When you're new to the game, and have nothing, you need to play a class that can get through all hell difficulty with few/no stuff, easily.

This remove all melee characters ( who have much trouble killing physical immune monsters, and are just not great at killing unless you buy/make some great runewords weapons ).

Also, assuming you'll want to find some stuff, you'll have to do runs. This imply a runner ( mf runner, key runner, anything ).
Either case, you need teleport.
So you're basically left with : a caster with enigma, or a sorc.

From my personnal experience, sorc can be annoying in hell, because some monsters are immunes.
Remove sorc.

You're left with :
Bone necromancer
Summon necromancer
Wind druid
Hammerdin
That's about it ( the best, in my opinions.. there's many others, but those 3 are the best imo. I never tried a barb warcry, they might be good too, but they have low damage.. )

Of those 4, I prefer the wind druid. He can run ANYTHING in hell, has lots of health points, deal great damage, and two kind of damage ( from tornado and hurricane ) so you'll rarely find a completely immune monster.

The hammerdin can deal more damage than the wind druid.. but I don't like hammerdins much. And they're kinda harder to use, especially in small areas.

Wind druid is really the way to go.
You can run hell countess, summoner, nilhatahk, mephisto, diablo, baal, everything. You'll be able to find/buy decent items for all your characters with those runs.

 

[NASE]

Re: Best Starting Class

From my personnal experience, sorc can be annoying in hell, because some monsters are immunes.
Remove sorc.

Never heard of the hybrid sorcerer? Meteorb, blizzballer, blizzwall, etc? And I don't know when you started over the last time, yet each time I did, I didn't have enigma - still don't btw.

 

[SnickerSnack]

Re: Best Starting Class

you need to play a class that can get through all hell difficulty with few/no stuff, easily.

.......

So you're basically left with : a caster with enigma, or a sorc.

From my personnal experience, sorc can be annoying in hell, because some monsters are immunes.
Remove sorc.

You're left with :
Bone necromancer
Summon necromancer
Wind druid
Hammerdin

Zuh? The OP is asking for a starting character. Enigma is out; sorcs are in.

OP: A sorc will be your best Act Boss runner. I recommend a Meteorb (guide in the sorc forum). If you want an area runner, I recommend the Fishymancer (guide in the necro forum).

 

[krunchyfrogg]

Re: Best Starting Class

I'm having great success with a Holy Freeze Paladin as my first character. I'm currently at the end of Act IV, and only had trouble with Duriel.

 

[Aien]

Re: Best Starting Class

I hand this advice out all the time and I'm sure nobody ever takes it, but for your first character through the game, play whatever suits your playstyle.

If you like playing melee characters in games, make a paladin or barbarian. If it's ranged fighters, make an amazon. Spellcasters, go with a sorceress. Something in the middle? Assassin, druid, necromancer can be made to suit a variety of playstyles. Mursilis's guide details out these differences beautifully.

Make a boss runner as your second or third character. Why immediately take the fun out of the game?

 

[Phat Wolf]

Re: Best Starting Class

I agree with Aien, first couple of chars of mine were druids that I loved to play with, and it took a while before I realised that in order to get decent items I needed to mf, so I made a meteorb sorc. But the point of the game is to have fun right? So why not just pick the char the suits your style of play as your starter?

 

[TalRasha]

Re: Best Starting Class

I usually make a blizzard sorc right out the bat...and use the moat "trick" to farm Mephisto for decent gear. Once you have most or all gear for a specific class then that's what I usually make next.

If I want to make a hell rusher, I would normally go with a poison necro on a different account so that I can rush myself using two computer/two cd keys for both accounts.

Good luck and it is good to be back in the game.

 

[Machtu]

Re: Best Starting Class

I hand this advice out all the time and I'm sure nobody ever takes it, but for your first character through the game, play whatever suits your playstyle.

If you like playing melee characters in games, make a paladin or barbarian. If it's ranged fighters, make an amazon. Spellcasters, go with a sorceress. Something in the middle? Assassin, druid, necromancer can be made to suit a variety of playstyles. Mursilis's guide details out these differences beautifully.

Make a boss runner as your second or third character. Why immediately take the fun out of the game?

Heed this advice, it is the best.

 

[tommerbob]

Re: Best Starting Class

I hand this advice out all the time and I'm sure nobody ever takes it, but for your first character through the game, play whatever suits your playstyle.

If you like playing melee characters in games, make a paladin or barbarian. If it's ranged fighters, make an amazon. Spellcasters, go with a sorceress. Something in the middle? Assassin, druid, necromancer can be made to suit a variety of playstyles. Mursilis's guide details out these differences beautifully.

Make a boss runner as your second or third character. Why immediately take the fun out of the game?

Amen. For your first few characters, just play around and have fun. Test different characters out, see what you like. On that note, however, don't give up on a character just because the first 20-or-so levels they have crappy skills and are kinda boring. Give every character at least 30 levels to play around with them. Several of the classes don't get fun until 30, such as the meteorb sorceress.

 

[Krazy_Solo]

Re: Best Starting Class

I can honestly give my opinion on this matter with good insight.

Having played this game since the release date be it offline for a the first few years. I have a lot of experience what works early on and what does not.

As for starting out fresh with no previous experience it is strongly advisable to find the class that fits your style of play. As the term "best" is debatable at best.

Amazon- Range class that specializes in Javelin, Spear and Bows. Javelin base tend to be the best starting tree for this class. Most of the damage for javelin zons come from the lightning elemental from skills rather than the weapon themselves. Bow zons tend to rely more on finding a good bow then the javelin based theme.

Assassin- Hybrid class that specializes in use of Claws and Katars. Trap base tend to be the best starting tree for this class. Trap damage consisting of Fire, Lightning and Physical. Other damaging tree the Martial arts rely heavily melee damage, which ranges based on all how many skill charges made ice, fire, lightning and physical damage are found here.

Barbarian- Melee heavy class that specializes in use of Swords, Axes, Spears, Pole Arms, Throwing Weapons, and Maces (Warhammers + Mauls). Generally speaking this class is not ideal for starters due to the dire need for high damaging weapons to keep up in hell.

Druid- Hybrid class that relies on summoning, spellcasting and melee. Although a good choice to go they tend to lack the high end damage that other classes bring to the table. Wind base Druids tend to have high elemental defense are able to kill most of all enemies in hell be it slower than most class.

Necromancer- Hybrid class that relies on summoning and spellcasting. Have alot of choice as far as builds. For starting friendly builds most take advantage of the summoning tree. Only class that can create an army of their own. Lacking direct damage like most class they suppliment with curses that can turn the tide of battle.

Paladin- Hybrid class that suppliment Melee with divine powers. Most of the paladins that are made will always use Auras. Auras are passive abilities that apply stats and damage so long as they are the currently active skill. Zeal, Blessid Hammers and Smite are the most commonly found builds. Hammer Paladins tend to be the jack of all trades when it comes to killing as there are only one type of enemies immune to them.

Sorceress- Spellcaster that utilizes the forces of nature with Fire, Cold, and Lightning. Fire immunities are commonly found in hell so fire skills are commonly paired with cold or lightning. Cold tree is universally the safer tree to work with with the ability to freeze enemies or at least slow them down. Concidered the best starting class due to the fact the only class with the ability to teleport or blink around the game world. Disadvantage of this class is the immunities in hell and low hit point pool. Oom (out of mana) Sorc = dead sorc.

 

[jel]

Re: Best Starting Class

So you're basically left with : a caster with enigma, or a sorc.

It's the starter char, it seems weird to plan on using enigma on this one, it'll just slow down the process as you need to collect wealth before you even have the enigma.

From my personnal experience, sorc can be annoying in hell, because some monsters are immunes.
Remove sorc.

If it's a mf'er immunities shouldn't matter as you're only after a few targets and will build the sorc for these and not general pvm play, removing the sorc is a mistake IMHO.

You're left with :
Bone necromancer

Not a good choice, only hits few targets at most on the same time and does poor damage.

Summon necromancer

Much better, but this char is more for the "I want to complete the game in my first try" kind of guy and not the "I want to build wealth" kind of guy

Wind druid
Hammerdin
That's about it ( the best, in my opinions.. there's many others, but those 3 are the best imo. I never tried a barb warcry, they might be good too, but they have low damage.. )

I wouldn't recommend on planning on having enigma quick, so those chars will be strong, yes, but not nearly as fast as a sorc.

Of those 4, I prefer the wind druid. He can run ANYTHING in hell, has lots of health points, deal great damage, and two kind of damage ( from tornado and hurricane ) so you'll rarely find a completely immune monster.

Maybe, but is everything needed? Beside how fast will he be, without enigma he has to run after all.

The hammerdin can deal more damage than the wind druid.. but I don't like hammerdins much. And they're kinda harder to use, especially in small areas.

I can't think of anyone of interest to run that is in such a small area that the hammerdin takes longer time than the wind druid.

Wind druid is really the way to go.
You can run hell countess, summoner, nilhatahk, mephisto, diablo, baal, everything. You'll be able to find/buy decent items for all your characters with those runs.

I would suggest to first find out how one wants to build the wealth, then start to collect the items needed. It's often a good idea to build wealth through keys and trade these and later through trading unid torches. A lightning sorcerer would really shine here, and it's even possible to get her ES pretty high with a memory stick and some +skills. Sure her damage won't be at maximum, but it will be high enough and with a bit of pdr and 75% all resist she'll do very well, both safe and fast.

Another way is to gamble rares to get wealth, here a gold finder barbarian seems optimal, using warcry or leap to stun the councils and letting the merc take care of them with an insight stick.

I'm having great success with a Holy Freeze Paladin as my first character. I'm currently at the end of Act IV, and only had trouble with Duriel.

At what difficulity?

I hand this advice out all the time and I'm sure nobody ever takes it, but for your first character through the game, play whatever suits your playstyle.

I completely agree! Though it may be a good idea to grant information about what works and what doesn't work, so no one makes a fire arrow amazon who can't get pass act2 normal :ashamed:

 

[Zerosugar]

Re: Best Starting Class

It intirely depends on what your goal is with your new character. Is this going to be your main character or just a gateway character to find the equipment you need for a more 'fun' character.

A. If it is going to be your main character then pick what sounds more fun for you to play

B. If you are starting from scratch and you are making a gateway character to farm gear with to equip your main character i would make a sorc.

Here is why.

Sorcs OWN Normal and Nightmare. I will even go as far as to say the most powerful character in the game in normal and nightmare mode. in Nightmare you can find plenty of powerful items from farming bosses such as Mephisto to compete in Hell. Stuff like Harald of Zakarum and Skin of the vipermagi etc. Mephisto is a very good boss to farm in NM. Diablo and Baal are other options but i don't think they drop anything valuable Mephisto doesn't

1. No other character can kill as fast as a sorc in those two difficulties specially if you go the charged boltress/lightning/orb route.

2. A sorc is easy to make powerful with easy to come by lowend runewords you can obtain in normal mode. Here is a list


Spirit: tal + thul + ort + amn, 4 socket swords/shields: +2 skills, fast cast, life, mana, resists, etc.

Insight: ral + tir + tal + sol, 4 socket polearms: lots of damage, meditation (mana regen) aura, put this on an act 2
merc

Lore: ort + sol, 2 socket helms: +1 skills, mana, resists

Stealth: tal + eth, 2 socket armor: run/walk, mana regen, hit recovery, resists

Rhyme: shael + eth, 2 socket shield: magic find, resists, blocking, cannot be frozen

Leaf: tir + ral, 2 socket staves: +3 To Fire Skills +3 To Fire Bolt +3 To Inferno +3 To Warmth +2 To Mana After Each Kill
+2-198 To Defense (Based On Character Level) Cold Resist +33%

Use the sorc to farm Mephisto in NM for better gear is my prefered tactics. Then equip a more fun Hell character