Early Game Succes Build?

[Emiliow]

Hello,
I am new to this forum. I've been looking through this site for different builds but none have really fit, what I am looking for. I would much appreciate any help.

What I want is that I have a goal. This goal is to beat the three Diablo games on my own though I need only to beat it on normal difficulty. I have managed to go through the first one with a warrior, but now when I want to tackle the second one there are so many choices for characters.
The problem with the builds I've found here is that most of them require high lvl characters and they're focused on higher difficulties.

What I need is:

- I need a class that can go through normal mode, with an efficient skill set. I don't want to waste the skills. But since it is normal mode I won't go much higher than lvl 40's - 50
- It can't rely too much on equipment (out of the ordinary) since I probably won't get anything great.
- I want it to be exciting. I've read about the fishymancer as an easy build, but it seems pretty passive.

I hope you can help me.

 

[Rawness]

A fishymancer is not that passive; passive in the sense, perhaps that his minions are ahead of him, but the selection of curses as well as corpse explosion makes it quite an active task. But he doesnt really excel in normal, and curses + ce is ilimited because of mana. If you are only going to go through normal, there are many types of bulds that normally wouldnt work that wall, that will if you are just going through normal. Druid summoners with alot of summons + active combat high level poison creeper or a wake of fire, fire trap assa will work very well in normal and throughout all the acts, even with a players 8 setting. A summoner druid or a WoF Assa is my recommendation. A fire trapsin can also use the Leaf runeword with a Tir Ral for 3+ fire skills, which is quite easy to get from a few countess runs, with a staff easily purchased from Akara. Also look out for a Tal Eth so that you can stick those into an armour for the best low level runeword, Stealth, 25 frw is always nice on a normal character. Poison creeper is an awesome normal game summon that scale with /players setting. A paladin with Holy Flame can also do quite well in normal, untwinked.

WoF-Sin
1+ claws mastery, 1+ burst of speed, because walking faster makes things less slow and attack speed influences the speed at which you throw fire blasts as well as lay traps. Rest is into fireblast, a skill that can pack quite a punch at low levels. 11 points, until you get to Wake Of Fire, then you put points there. When WoF is done max out Fire blast. Then you are not gonna get any more points to put into anything.

If you are using 1.13d you can reset the skills you actually do have with the Akaras quest. You can do this in all 3 difficulties.

 

[pharphis]

fireball sorc with 'leaf' runeword will beat everything for you. Once you reach lvl 30 start pumping Frozen orb (and 1 point in cold mastery) so you have 2 elements for the last few tough monsters. Put at least one point in static field and use that to weaken any tough monster and especially to chip away at life on act bosses. Blizzard will work as well if you prefer to use that instead of frozen orb, FOrb is usually best for builds that only have a few points to spare (lvl 40-50 char is in this boat)

Good luck!

 

[japanzaman]

A Fire trapper using the leaf runeword can march through most of normal without many issues, with the exception of perhaps the Maggot Lair due to the tight areas. Just use wake of fire and a shadow warrior and you'll have little problems with Normal difficulty.

If you want to continue through to Nightmare you would probably need to respec to a lightning based trapper at that point.

 

[BobCox2]

They all can do this easy.
Really Your can build UGLY and win normal with stuff you pick up in any build.

What Build did you want to try next really and ask for advice on that or pick a high end that sounds attractive and go for that.

 

[Emiliow]

Thanks for your responses. I decided, that I wanted to try something different, so I went with a fire build sorceress, pretty much like pharphis suggested. Great, thank you all!

 

[BlizzBallerSorc]

Fire/ice sorcs seem to work well. I have the same goal as you, and am in Act V Nightmare at the moment. I have a Level 62 or 63 sorc whose main attacks will eventually be Fireball and Blizzard. Right now, however, there are so few cold immunes I'm just sticking with Blizzard and Ice Blast 90% of the time.

I put points into ice skills first, which worked fine for me. I could have gotten my skills more pumped up by putting points into fire skills first and using a Leaf Runeword, but the slowing power of ice was so powerful on Normal that I blasted through no problem.

A few things I'll say (keep in mind I'm not on Hell difficulty yet).


1. Perhaps save some skill points to invest in max block in case a good shield drops. I did not do this because I thought I'd never find a good shield, and I was at base dexterity when Whitstan's shield dropped. Fortunately, I had the foresight to save all the +dex charms I found and keep an amulet, so I threw these in my stash, pumped dexterity every time I leveled up, and put a Perfect Emerald in my armor, and was at max block in no time. (I also put a Perfect Diamond in Whitstan's). The block seems even better than 75% honestly--I stood in front of NM Diablo and he hit me straight on with his lightning blast time after time and I took ZERO damage. I never thought of how great max block would be--all the other defenses reduce damage, but blocking means you take zero damage. It's pretty cool.


So, save some points in case a good shield drops so you can make the decision of whether to go the max block route or the max vitality route later on. With single-player, you will have to build your player around the equipment you get.


2. Focus on defensive equipment. Even if you get a +3 skills type weapon, you could just level up 3 times and be doing the same damage. Obviously, leveling up 3 times won't give you +3 across the board, but I'm just saying that you'll be doing plenty of damage even without a weapon. I'm assuming once I get to Hell difficulty, defense will be even more important.

3. Be sure to shop your Leaf staff from Drognan until you find a 2 socket staff that has +3 to Fireball (or whatever your main attack is--I'm assuming it's Fireball) and then you'll have a total of +6 to Fireball. If you used Inferno, I suppose you could shop a +3 Inferno staff and get a total of +9 to Inferno, but I don't know about this as a main attack skill--Fireball seems to be the standard. These runes are a sure find even in single-player, so as a fire sorc, this is definitely a piece of equipment you can count on getting.


I've been using the Act V Barb merc that I've had since normal, and he's good for tanking--all his resistances are at max, which should be good in Hell. I haven't tried an Act II Merc, but I figure I'll just keep this guy and ditch him if he becomes worthless--I'll already invested a good bit in equipment.

A few more tips you might find useful:
Normal Duriel - Buy a +2 Blaze staff from Drognan, load up on stamina potions, and just run in circles while Duriel burns himself to death. I did this and didn't even die once--and this is far better than letting your merc tank to death, IMO. It takes a while, but I barely took a hit the entire time. Letting the merc die seems more time/gold consuming, and you have to go back to town a lot.
NM Duriel - Even though he has high cold resistance, my Blizzard was so powerful that I just ran in circles and cast Blizzard and it easily killed him.
Mephisto - Normal and NM - I've seen some videos of people moating Mephisto and still being close enough to take his hits. If you can do it right, however, you can be entirely out of his range and still hitting him. He's not that difficult, however, so you probably don't even need this trick.


If any of this advice is terrible, the more experienced people can let me know.

 

[BlizzBallerSorc]

My bad--I just realized by "beat the three Diablo games" you didn't mean Normal, NM, and Hell, but D1, D2, and D3. I feel a bit silly now. Any build can do that pretty easily. Just play and have fun. Leaf would be good, but it may make the game even too easy. Honestly with my cold skills I could one-shot any non-boss on Normal the entire time through, so it wasn't much of a challenge. I can only imagine if I had pumped fireball and had Leaf early on, it would have been ridiculously easy.

Just enjoy the game--you'll have fun.

The Duriel Blaze tip is still a good one, though.

 

[pharphis]

@blizzballer sorc,

block doesn't work on spells and it definitely doesn't work on diablo's lightning hose which applies a constant stream of dmg. The reason you took no damage from it was because his hose has a blind spot when toe to toe with him in NM and hell. Disappointingly easy

 

[BlizzBallerSorc]

@blizzballer sorc,

block doesn't work on spells and it definitely doesn't work on diablo's lightning hose which applies a constant stream of dmg. The reason you took no damage from it was because his hose has a blind spot when toe to toe with him in NM and hell. Disappointingly easy

Really? I'm curious as to what is going on now!

I was shocked when I took no damage, so I tried it from some different distances just for the heck of it. At least 10 times I took zero damage at any point in the stream--far away, up close, etc. That lightning stream DESTROYED me the first time I tried to fight him without the shield on NM. I had to be very careful about not getting hit.

Then when I went back with the shield to see the difference it was a breeze. I don't have any more lightning resist than the first time I fought him, and my defense hasn't particularly improved in general apart from the shield. (My old staff had some resists on it, so switching it out for Whitstan's with the P Diamond resulted in roughly the same resistance to Lightning.)

Any clues as to how I'm taking zero damage from this lightning inferno that was so damaging without the shield? Are we sure shield's can't block spells/magic damage?

 

[BlizzBallerSorc]

Wait--I think I've found the variable!

Another variable that changed was that not only did I switch to Whitstan's Shield, but I also found Blackthorn's Face Death Mask, which has a +20 Lightning Absorb. When I got it, I researched absorbs a little, but couldn't find much info. Apparently this feature is far more handy than I thought, especially when it comes to facing Diablo!

 

[pharphis]

both absorb and magic dmg reduction will make a huge difference. I happen to not remember if his hose is half physical dmg or what it is, but if it does physical dmg and you have lite absorb enough to take NO dmg that would mean you're absorbing the difference in dmg that any other portion would be doing to you.

 

[BlizzBallerSorc]

I just checked--it is half physical damage, so I'm assuming the shield is blocking and the lightning absorb is taking the difference. A good combo for fighting this particular boss, I guess.

I apologize to the OP for derailing his thread, but I think the original question was answered.

 

[pharphis]

I just checked--it is half physical damage, so I'm assuming the shield is blocking and the lightning absorb is taking the difference. A good combo for fighting this particular boss, I guess.

I apologize to the OP for derailing his thread, but I think the original question was answered.

Just keep in mind that the shield would check to block at every frame (I think it does dmg every frame) so it's essentially impossible (probability of 0.75^25) block every single hit by blocking (that's if you can even block every frame, and I don't think that's how it works due to animations)

If you have any integer physical dmg reduction it will reduce the physical portion of the dmg significantly

 

[BlizzBallerSorc]

Just keep in mind that the shield would check to block at every frame (I think it does dmg every frame) so it's essentially impossible (probability of 0.75^25) block every single hit by blocking (that's if you can even block every frame, and I don't think that's how it works due to animations)

If you have any integer physical dmg reduction it will reduce the physical portion of the dmg significantly

That makes sense. I think a few times I took a teeny bit of damage--I'll have to do it again and look more closely. I'm not sure about physical damage reduction. I'm trying my best to be a smart player (haven't played the game in ten years, and back then I just beat the game on normal and left it at that) but I don't have anything like the encyclopedic knowledge that many forum members here have, and I don't even have my character stats stuck in my head. I continue to be surprised at just how complex a game Diablo II is on close inspection.