In the catacombs, we continued our streak of finding exceptional sets and uniques with zero caster stats:
At this point, I only had about 50 MF still on my gear. Wearing MF, sadly, hasn't payed off for this character. We could've equipped an amazon or a zealot, though. Andariel and Radament quickly fell:
As I had the levels I needed and at least some gear, I didn't kill everything I encountered anymore - usually, I just used dim vision, checked if there was an easy-to-kill bossgroup, and if not, I walked past most opponents. Resistances are still great even with conviction - way too much FR, though:
Carefully teleporting around the maggot lair:
And just when I thought that my equipment was propably final, I ran into an ethereal thresher, also guaranteed to get 5 sockets from Larzuk. Glad I saved that NM socket quest - new honor, here I come:
Mercenary damage is really nice now. Teleporting directly on top of the summoner got us a key, which we didn't keep:
As we are mentioning keys now: This run is basically completionist in terms of quests and waypoints, excluding anything to do with Nilathaks temple. No reason to risk my life going in there. I raised up some monsters for Duriel, and ended up not even having to use decrepify against him:
Then, early in Act 3, out of habit, I picked up another grey elite armor - and it turned out to be a 3os Dusk Shroud - in the end, we did end up getting our Treachery:
Our merc is really strong right now. Pretty great stuff. Also got this ring from Ormus to replace our 29 fr one (we have waaaay too much fr):
Mephisto went down rather quickly thanks to our merc. Used AD against him, as he wasn't really able to do too much damage, maybe thanks to all the skill points in monster resistance:
After dealing with Izual, we made our way to the hellforge, where we found the highest rune possible - Gul. Sadly, that one is completely useless to us:
CS wasn't too bad - our mercenary can provide a corpse for CE within seconds, so we can start blowing up enemies while the skeletons mostly act as blockers - with only +3 skills, their damage isn't great anymore. For hell diablo, we had to give a few potions to the merc, but eventually we got him into the decrepify + clay golem slow lock, where was almost unable to complete any of his animations, taking away most of his power:
On to act 5 - dim vision was incredibly important here. We had some types of slingers basically everywhere. We spammed our curse at every corner of the screen, skipped some ramparts with teleport charges and made our way to the frozen river, which turned out to be the first place were I actually had to reset - maybe I didn't have to, but I decided to. A huge and dangerous group of souls right at the beginning, and some champions, unaffected by DV. The next round of frozen river had no souls, and was easier to deal with.
Still, I did quite a bit of teleporting in order to skip very nasty groups of ghosts - PIs are killable, but annoying. Now, our resistances are truly maxed out:
Anya, for the first time, actually gave me a usable item - but I didn't want to respec that late in the game in order to fulfill the strength requirements. Otherwise, with a PD from Larzuk in there, this would've been great, because we had enough LR and FR to still get to the max:
Now, another true challenge - hell ancients. Always tricky, and very dependent on their enchantments. In my first go, Mawdac got stoneskin and was PI. I didn't pay close enough attention to merc health and lost my most important damage dealer somewhere through the fight. In the end, I made the call to reset - Mawdac was almost dead, but so were most of my skeletons:
Second try, after making my way to the River of Flames in order to resurrect some Urdars - super easy. No stoneskin, could just use AD and wait for the ancients to die:
Honestly, I expected this to be harder. Had much more trouble with a druid here.
As for Worldstone Keep - dim vision is king against souls:
Here we are, walking up to the throne:
Our final level - 83, with one extra point in clay golem (for extra slow) and one in CE (to match the radius of AD), as we have pointlessly maxed out summon resistances now. The merc got his last level right at the fourth wave, which he was also responsible for dealing with by providing an early corpse for CE:
I resurrected the venom lords for the fifth wave. I could skip that one by pulling them away from Bhaal, but I decided to see if I could beat them in a direct battle - turns out that I could:
All thanks to those runewords on my mercenary. Now, for Bhaal - this one was a bit of an anticlimax. This battle took us several minutes, but I got him into the decrepify + clay golem slow lock almost right away, and his casting animations are terribly slow. The only thing he could do was a fire nova about twice every minute, less powerful than the replenishing life on my gear, or my mercs lifeleech from honor. All I had to was give my merc a single health potion, cast decrepify every five seconds and watch as Bhaal's hitpoints slowly shrank down:
Victory:
No usable loot, but we don't need it anymore.
A nice run. Sadly, I had to rely entirely on shopped items and common runewords, with the nice addition of the Lem rune from NM hellforge as the only non-expected extra boost. I really had a ton of unique drops thanks to having some decent MF for most of the run, but none geared for our necro. Luckily, he doesn't need such things, being among the least item-dependent builds. A staff with teleport charges is honestly more important, as long as the resistances are high. For my taste, I spent a little bit too much time in the pit, but I really wanted that treachery. I'm happy that I still ended up getting it later on - it was fun watching the mercenary go to town.
The first character on an account I would recommend to make a "cookie cutter" build; high survivability, cheap in terms of items, fast moving and/or fast killing (ie hammerdins). It will make all other characters more fun to play if you have one of these characters to item hunt for your other characters and do some trading. This is if you want to play MP I mean, SP is whole other bag.
Many builds in D2 require items to work, some require very expensive ones, but many builds require a decent selection of uniques, kits or rares with certain affixes. But when I say "work" I mean 8 player hell. Anything before or less than that doesn't require much other than patience.
Personally I've never played Ubers, I quit before that patch, so have no idea what it takes to fight them. I found the rune bloating and rune word inflation to break the delicate economy and item balance that was before that patch (was 1.13? Can't remember now). So I don't know anything what's required to do them, but one thing that I enjoyed so much about D2 (and miss in ie grim dawn) was how easy it was to find other players, join games and do quests together without any hassle. And it wasn't much PK'ing either, at least not back in the day when I played.
I agree very much with the logic behind this post. Especially noteworthy is that with the shared stash feature, the focus will be much more on building up a strong account as opposed to separate characters. True on the ladder or in single player.
However, I actually think an MF build isn't necessarily the strongest first build anymore (although I used to). If you're starting from complete scratch and are going to be pretty strict about self-found gear, then I suggest building a character that can run nightmare countess most effectively.
I wouldn't just beeline to the countess either, but would kill everything along the way and pop chests etc. Albeit I wouldn't recommend going out of your way to 100% clear the tower. The tower is one of the first places that consistently drops four socket items, flawless gems and of course the countess rune drop. Not to mention you'll get the occasional good set or unique from these runs, though they aren't the goal. The goal is to build up a small stash of the lower level runewords -- Insight, spirit, lore, ancient's pledge, stealth if you don't have it yet and even rhyme. With these runewords in hand, you can blow through normal and even nightmare difficulty for most builds. They have the benefit of being universally good as well, whereas hunting for something like say Cathan's set is only going to help a couple of builds.
As such I actually think a preferable starter character is a melee one. A concentration barbarian or a fury druid are the best choices here. They require little gear investment, because they need little mana steal. They get large life boosts which is the best defensive stat boost in the game. I think the concentration barb is a little better as he can more easily transition to running hell countess with the berserk skill. He can also be respec'd into a whirlwind barb once you find enough mana steal gear. I just find the tight passageways of the tower to not be great for a hammerdin. And a sorceress can be a super squishy character when you have little gear.
If you want advice on personally min-maxing in a not too absurd way for the ladder (or even your single player account), I'd say start with a NM countess runner AND then use that character to build up a magic find hammerdin or sorceress. Skip grinding levels in normal Baal runs too and just head straight to NM tower with that first char.
For a first character, you really do want a low level of gear dependence. And most melee characters need a weapon that hits fast and hard. Those can take a while to find/make. Two characters into my Hardcore project, and I'm only now considering a weapon-based build.
If I'm building a "first" character, I'll look for area clearers rather than boss runners. A summoning necromancer is great for that. Invest a bit of time building up your army, then just walk through slaughtering everything in sight with minimal effort and risk.
Unless you stop paying attention, and fall to hubris. RIP Prebek, my HC necromancer from earlier in this thread.
A note on four-socket items ...
There are three tiers of socket availability. The first tier caps at 3 sockets, the second caps at 4, and the third caps at 6. Individual item type limits also apply.
The first tier applies to items dropped as socketed in normal difficulty, and to items up to level 24 socketed via quest/cube recipe. The second tier applies to items dropped as socketed in nightmare difficulty, and to items of level 25-39 socketed via quest/cube recipe. The third tier applies to items dropped as socketed in hell difficulty, and to items of level 40+ socketed via quest/cube recipe.
What does this have to do with the countess' tower? Some of the deeper levels of that dungeon have area level 40 or more. Items dropped there, or from boss groups in earlier levels, will hit the third tier if you use a quest/cube recipe. Which might not be what you want. When I was looking for a flail to put Heart of the Oak into after my character got lucky with a Vex rune, my preferred areas to run were earlier in act 1 Nightmare because of that.
For a first character, you really do want a low level of gear dependence. And most melee characters need a weapon that hits fast and hard. Those can take a while to find/make. Two characters into my Hardcore project, and I'm only now considering a weapon-based build.
If I'm building a "first" character, I'll look for area clearers rather than boss runners. A summoning necromancer is great for that. Invest a bit of time building up your army, then just walk through slaughtering everything in sight with minimal effort and risk.
Unless you stop paying attention, and fall to hubris. RIP Prebek, my HC necromancer from earlier in this thread.
The opening "runs" I'd recommend to anyone is nightmare tower. Skip past Black Marsh and just clear the tower baddies in a line to the countess. The area levels (38-42) are a tad higher than areas even right past it, the bottom levels don't get matched until late jail/catacombs. It's the best place for the universally usuable OP gear that can get anyone thru nightmare imo. Rune drops are a guaranteed pickup of each run, and they add up via cubing, unlike mf gambling.
Necro is mostly a safer build, but it's slow to solo normal and nightmare. And it's slower to do gear-finding solo runs of any kind. It is the best build to try a solo, ungeared run all through hell, so if it's your goal. And even slow-but-safe Baal hell runs. There is a lot to recommend in the build.
Fury druids can buy store bought mauls that dominate even past NM countess. For barbs you can stick one point in the three one-handed weapon types, until you respec. That enables you do take advantage of a wide variety of weapon drops or even stores. I suggest just doing these runs on players 1 too, so super high damage isn't even necessary.
I would think that a character that gives high damage from skills and no dependence on weapons or gear would actually be easier because you can then just stack magic find bonuses as well.
Hehe it's funny how reading some theorycrafting posts about DII can make that old itch flame up so quickly again! My god what an amazing game DII is and what a profound impact it has had on so many gamers.
If staying in NM to do Countess runs and if it's one of/the first char on the account, I would personally go for a frozen orb sorc. At least as I recall it (memory is old and rusty) frozen orb sorc doesn't need any items to breeze through nightmare alone, it's only at the very end at players 8 she will struggle without +skill items etc and then she trails of badly in Hell without massive item innvestment (of which I've never done myself).
Since I am no expert on druids, I've only had one caster druid, I don't know Maul. A similar choice of which I have more experience though is the cheap zealot paladin. The auras can keep you alive, boost damage and coupled with a decent NM act 2 merc, can make you do fast runs. Vigor makes traveling (and therefore finding ie the countess tower) faster and doesn't rely on mana. Fanatiscism and shield boost make you both durable and pretty effecient and together with a concentration or chill merc youu get a more offensive or defensive, whatever you choose (though that's of course the same for all melee builds). Same here though, Hell will be a struggle without great gear but NM is not that hard.
Personally I would never go conc. barb. Single attacks is just too boring and slow for my taste. Going down the tanky route can be a fun experiement, to see how high you can boost your defenses, but doing runs is about speed and effeciency and that requires more speed IMHO. If I would go barb (and I do love barbs!), I would go for Frenzy but that requires finding two decent attacking weapons. But again, in NM that isn't very hard and you don't need to obsess over breakpoints until later in the game.
All of the above should be taken with a grain of salt (and as my personal choices, not as objectively best the choices) since I haven't played the game actively in 10 years, hah! I do install it every now and then but never play for long.
Another fun character I had that breezed through NM was the kickassin. She was cheap too, she needed a Hell generated (or late NM) pair of boots to get the max damage from item to work, but she was very fun in NM. Fast, durable, fast killing. Sucked in Hell though, hah.
I'm drawn to these types of builds, the quick attacking types; frenzy, zeal, kicks, the druid wolf (though I've never taken one long though). The only one I can think of I've never really tried is the jabazon. I found that skill to be a hassle.
Personally I would never go conc. barb. Single attacks is just too boring and slow for my taste.
Concentrate isn't really a main skill for me; it's the backup plan that has solid enough stats to use while the main plan develops. If you're going for Whirlwind and Battle Orders, you're probably better off investing in weapon mastery than WW at first, and BO grants a synergy bonus to Concentrate. So your one-point skill actually gets a pretty high damage bonus, making it usable.
The build I just started is a Fire Claws/Maul werebear. Unlike a Fury wolf, he doesn't have to scramble for a solution to physical immunes. And he attacks just as fast; 6-frame attacks with his planned gear (Oath feral axe plus a bit of off-weapon IAS) where a Fury wolf would have 8/5/5/5/5 attack sequences.
Currently ... act 1 normal completed. Updates will follow.
Well, OK, that's one-point Maul. But I still keep it charged, because extra damage and stuns are great.
FWIW, my build recommendations are based on hardcore mode. That's why I'd eschew a sorceress first. I also think all caster builds suffer greatly until you have an Insight polearm for your mercenary. Yes, you can and should rely on mana potions. But that reliance is going to slow down a clear speed. An ungeared sorceress is going to be difficult to solo through normal imo on hardcore. Especially relying on cold skills. One option here is to build a fireball sorc for normal, then respec her at level 30.
As jmerry said, concentrate barb for NM countess is more of a waystation for a future WW or frenzy build. You invest one initial point into concentrate, one into the three single-handed weapons, and then you boost battle orders. Sword and shield can keep you alive. With BO and the low mana cost of concentrate, you don't even need mana steal. And because Tower runs are best done on players 1 anyways, you don't need a high DPS. These melee and high HP builds are also good for rushing past certain areas if you don't want to fight. Much safer at that than caster builds. Some additional points in favor of the tower is that it tends to produce a high concentration of boss packs as well as good poppable doodads -- super chests, armor and weapon racks. This coupled with the aforementioned higher monster level for early act one means it's a perfect early drop zone.
It can actually take quite a bit of time to get a four socket polearm imo. It's quite a specific find and not even all the poles can spawn with four sockets -- bardiches for example. This is why I favor melee/tank to start over a caster. As I said above too, hammers in the tower is just super unfun in my experience too.
Love the discussion though, lots of good points all around.
I disagree on the HC sorceress on normal and nightmare. Even with running players 8 most of the run (also bosses) the game was very easy even with my ironman melee inferno build. The only issue I had was not paying attention to poison resist, so some of those ranged attacks from mummies etc were challenging.
Any character should be fine for hardcore normal. As long as you are a bit careful, use potions properly, and in case of sorceresses, don't teleport like crazy.
Yeah, that's the general rule for sorceresses. Teleporting by everything speedrun-style is risky. Playing more normally and actually clearing things is much safer.
My default sorceress build is fire/ice. Fireballs later supplemented by meteors, and frozen orb once you hit level 30. A Leaf runeword is a very good thing to start with - find a staff with +fireball, and you get massive bonuses to that and Warmth. The Countess drops the runes, and you can shop at Akara or Drognan for the base item. It clears normal very quickly, with no need for respecs.
While you can get more power on a synergy-intensive skill by focusing completely on one element, this isn't recommended for anyone playing solo. Immunes are everywhere in Hell difficulty, and that means having a second element is essential for a solo sorceress. Frozen Orb with a point of Cold Mastery is about the cheapest viable option for a secondary element.
My werebear Osmadi has now cleared act 2 normal, and is level 28. Time to give up Khalim's Will, because now he can wield Hwanin's Justice for comparable speed and vastly higher physical damage. He's been pretty much unstoppable so far, with all of the hand-me-down gear he's been using.
It's worth mentioning that even if you AREN'T in Hardcore mode (where one death is the end, and Blizzard quite famously does not care about your internet connection going out), if you are dedicated enough to actually want to reach levels 97-99, you STILL don't want to just casually go around corpse hopping to get things done, because you will lose 10% of you current level EXP each time you do (though you can't lose the current level you have and go back down).
Some other tips are, if you are going to play a Necromancer as your first character, bear in mind that every time you leave the game to reset mobs (which is a huge part of the gameplay loop), you are going to have to go to a low-level area and raise all your minions from actual corpses each time, which gets super-annoying after awhile. The other point I'd make if you are a first-timer is that the only real "wall" you'll come up against in normal difficulty is Duriel, whose cold aura can't be mitigated by thawing potions. Your Merc will survive maybe 5-10 seconds against him, and the most viable strategy for beating him on your first character is to pop a town portal every time you enter his room and retreat back to town to get your merc back until he goes down. A Sorceress with Blaze can also be a fun way to do it.
On a side note, certain skills like Inferno and Artic Blast have been bugged for the entire duration of the game's release, and while I don't know if they WILL be, they absolutely SHOULD be fixed to do the correct amount of damage.
On the Necromancer and raising armies ... it gets a little easier once act 5 is open. There are some corpses right outside the city gates, and Anya's portal leads to an area with enough corpses to raise your whole army (if you act quickly enough, and maybe drink a mana potion).
I haven't had much trouble with Duriel as a necromancer ... but I play single player, and set \players 8 in normal difficulty. When you're facing him at level 28, and can supplement your large and sturdy army with Decrepify, he's not so scary anymore.
Anyway, on to the main point of this post. My new HC werebear Osmadi has now cleared normal difficulty. A summary of his progress in three pictures:
First, Osmadi made an oath.
Next, things got personal.
Finally, the oath was fulfilled.
The build ... Fire Claws primary, keeping a one-point Maul charged as much as possible. Use really fast weapons, because of how the wereform attack speed formulas work. Only Fire Claws, its synergies, and Lycanthropy have more than one natural point so far. Standard melee hand-me downs for most other slots - partial Angelic set, partial Sigon's set. Weapons used: Khalim's Will, level 1-25. Steel runeword Naga, level 25-28. Hwanin's Justice, level 28-49. Oath runeword ethereal Feral Axe, starting at level 49.
Only one fight proved dangerous - Diablo. 1000 HP is not enough to tank his lightning hose in normal difficulty when you don't have blocking or maxed LR. He'll get easier in higher difficulties, because that spell picks up a safe zone in close. That's not the case in normal.
One fat purple used, and Osmadi needed it.
I went with a single-pass full clear. That got Osmadi to level 48. One more victory lap of a Baal run and the cow level, and he made it to level 49 for his ultimate weapon. That third screenshot is from just after killing Baal the second time. It was a lot faster than the first.
Nothing too special found, since it's normal. He did find a few things I didn't have already in Hardcore, but nothing I actually want to use. An ethereal Bloodletter is cool, but it's not actually useful.
Yes, I have a naming theme for this HC project. Necromancer Prebek, assassin Danys, druid Osmadi. All enemies from the BG series that fit the class, but not any major quest objectives.
I took some time off of quest progression and instead did some normal Baal runs with Osmadi. He had a perfect map for it, and incredible killing speed with his new weapon, so why not?
Ten runs later (p8, about 150 MF), he's at level 55. Twelve assorted sets and uniques found, three of which I didn't have already in my HC collection. And one of those was really good - Raven Frost. Osmadi's definitely going to use that.
Most of a week later ... Nightmare difficulty done. I cleared the whole thing at players 8, finding lots of stuff but not much of it very good. I switched from my starter gear with 100 MF to proper resistance gear after act 2, including a Duress dusk shroud and some crafted gloves (20% IAS, 9% crushing blow, 2% life steal). Over all five acts, it was a total of 11 new items that I didn't have already in HC. Skystrike is probably the best of them.
The character tends to take lots of damage and need to recover it with life steal and Carrion Vine, so there were some times that life got low. Especially against enemies I couldn't steal life from. Skeletal warriors and mages in the Stony Tomb, skeletal archers in Abaddon. Oddly, the ghost/gloam/bone mage draw in the Frozen River isn't a problem at all. The closest calls came from minotaurs - a fire/lightning enchanted Blood Lord in the Crystalline Passage that knocked Osmadi down to about 20% health, and a cursed Death Lord just inside the Worldstone Keep that I had to retreat back up against twice.
The normal difficulty threat of Diablo was no longer an issue. Osmadi just stayed in melee and ignored the multiple attempts at lightning hose attacks for no damage.
Some pictures:
A truly evil thing here. A maggot egg that just wouldn't die or hatch. And it blocked the way, except for the brief moment that it let Osmadi through. I ended up having to portal out and return from the waypoint.
My best find of the difficulty, from a random container in the Crystalline Passage. Actually, my act 5 session also picked up two Ko runes. I could literally make a Sanctuary runeword shield with the finds from that one session, not resetting the monsters at all. Not that Osmadi has any use for such a thing.
Nihlathak. Yes, I cleared everything. Nihlathak involved some careful play drawing out minions and letting the vine eat their corpses. Eventually I got him clear, and brought him down without risking the corpse explosion.
Baal. Killed at level 75. Or, at least, Osmadi was at level 75 after killing him. He has about 2100 life in bear form with Oak Sage out, and Fire Claws is good for 2700 average damage. Plus the physical component, which is smaller even with the very powerful weapon.
Current skill build: Fire Claws 20, Lycanthropy 5, other shapeshifting skills (except wolf-only) 1. Summons all 1 except 5 Oak Sage. One point in Arctic Blast and Cyclone Armor ... a waste, really. Raw life with Oak Sage and Lycanthropy would be better. 37 points FC synergies, aiming for 40 before I go back to boosting life. Items grant +2 shapeshifting, with another +3 all on switch for buffing.
Current stat build: 190 base strength, one misclicked point into dexterity, all the rest vitality.
Attack rating is fine when using Fire Claws, low when using Maul. That misses a lot, so I use mostly FC even on fire immunes. Maul is only worth it to build up or maintain a charge; once the charge is there, Fire Claws is strictly better.
Based on alpha feedback, they have TRIPLED the size of the shared stash, making a point that they know loot hoarding is a serious pastime among players.
So I took a break between Nightmare and Hell on my latest run to farm and level up the previous character. My assassin Danys is now level 86, after a bunch of River of Flame/Chaos Sanctuary/Diablo runs. Well, they're not exactly fast enough to be called "runs", but that's the standard term.
On one of those ...
Bring on the awesome runewords! .... Wait, I can't make any awesome runewords with that unless I have at least two other very high runes to go with it, and I don't have any of those right now? Darn. I guess that'll just sit in the stash for a while.
Nice, I got a Cham for the first time ever last ladder season. But it was a bittersweet drop -- such a rare find, but not all that great on its own. I never even ended up spending it, waiting for a good polearm drop to build a Doom. Still was a thrilling find!
Looking forward to the shared stash on D2R. Three seems like a solid number for mult-char, ladder play. It will still force players who play a lot to eventually dump some gear. Checking the battle.net forums and people are whining that it's not enough. But it strikes me as right in that you should be forced to make tough decisions on gear. It will make for some interesting choices in hardcore ladder play.
I don't play it anymore because it's systems have become so bloated, but Path of Exile's currency and even unique item stash tabs are the gold standard.
Nice, I got a Cham for the first time ever last ladder season. But it was a bittersweet drop -- such a rare find, but not all that great on its own. I never even ended up spending it, waiting for a good polearm drop to build a Doom. Still was a thrilling find!
Looking forward to the shared stash on D2R. Three seems like a solid number for mult-char, ladder play. It will still force players who play a lot to eventually dump some gear. Checking the battle.net forums and people are whining that it's not enough. But it strikes me as right in that you should be forced to make tough decisions on gear. It will make for some interesting choices in hardcore ladder play.
The Battlenet forums would whine about the sky being blue. Each character ALSO has a personal stash in addition to the shared one. I don't know what the character limit is going to be, but let's say it's 14 to be conservative. That is more than enough space to hold onto everything you could possibly need. Mind you, transferring items in the old version, even between your own characters, called muling, was an exceptionally tedious process that also had a pretty decent chance of losing you your items in the attempt. That's all been eliminated with the drag and drop shared stash. Run out of room, make a new toon. People have been going so far as to buy multiple additional licenses of the game to store their gear for years. We're past that, and that is all that matters in my book.
Nice, I got a Cham for the first time ever last ladder season. But it was a bittersweet drop -- such a rare find, but not all that great on its own. I never even ended up spending it, waiting for a good polearm drop to build a Doom. Still was a thrilling find!
Looking forward to the shared stash on D2R. Three seems like a solid number for mult-char, ladder play. It will still force players who play a lot to eventually dump some gear. Checking the battle.net forums and people are whining that it's not enough. But it strikes me as right in that you should be forced to make tough decisions on gear. It will make for some interesting choices in hardcore ladder play.
The Battlenet forums would whine about the sky being blue. Each character ALSO has a personal stash in addition to the shared one. I don't know what the character limit is going to be, but let's say it's 14 to be conservative. That is more than enough space to hold onto everything you could possibly need.
Yeah the only people who are missing out are grailers and you should be running a mod for that anyways, unless you're just screenshotting items, in which case the stash size doesn't matter. As you say too, even with a conservative char limit, the possible stash space on an account is immense. Hoarders can still build mule characters, and muling will be less tedious with a shared stash to facilitate transfers. There's always a segment that agitates for any challenge to be nixed from a game, as we saw upthread when that community poll came out.
Nice, I got a Cham for the first time ever last ladder season. But it was a bittersweet drop -- such a rare find, but not all that great on its own. I never even ended up spending it, waiting for a good polearm drop to build a Doom. Still was a thrilling find!
Looking forward to the shared stash on D2R. Three seems like a solid number for mult-char, ladder play. It will still force players who play a lot to eventually dump some gear. Checking the battle.net forums and people are whining that it's not enough. But it strikes me as right in that you should be forced to make tough decisions on gear. It will make for some interesting choices in hardcore ladder play.
The Battlenet forums would whine about the sky being blue. Each character ALSO has a personal stash in addition to the shared one. I don't know what the character limit is going to be, but let's say it's 14 to be conservative. That is more than enough space to hold onto everything you could possibly need.
Yeah the only people who are missing out are grailers and you should be running a mod for that anyways, unless you're just screenshotting items, in which case the stash size doesn't matter. As you say too, even with a conservative char limit, the possible stash space on an account is immense. Hoarders can still build mule characters, and muling will be less tedious with a shared stash to facilitate transfers. There's always a segment that agitates for any challenge to be nixed from a game, as we saw upthread when that community poll came out.
"NO changes" was the mantra of many in the Classic WoW community, and it turned the end-game into speed-running nonsense. There are various fights and events in the world that grant powerful temporary buffs. Stuff like 5% crit when you're lucky if a superb item gives you 1%. Guilds basically mandated you get 4 or 5 of these buffs, and then log your character out at the raid entrance until the weekly run, which had people blowing through Molten Core and Blackwing Lair in 45 minutes. Yes, these buffs existed back in the day, but it was never the intent of the designers to exploit them like this. And no one did so at the time.
Point being, when you re-launch a classic title, you need to take the 15-20 years that passed in-between into account. In D2's case, that's adding a stash. In the case of Classic WoW, at the very least, meta-gaming knowledge that trivialized content and made the entire max-level experience a chore rather than an adventure should have been disabled in raids.
A final update ... Osmadi's journey has come to an end. Level 83, in act 2 Hell.
Hell difficulty slowed things down, enough that I lowered the player count to 5. His damage just wasn't high enough to justify p8. Also, moster defense got high enough that Maul just wasn't hitting anywhere near often enough, and I switched to Shockwave as my usual right-click skill.
There were a few dual fire-physical immune monsters.
They didn't actually cause a serious problem - between incidental elemental damage, Prevent Monster Heal, and the Bone Spirit procs from Oath, I was able to wear them down consistently. My worst scare in act 1 actually came from Blood Hawks in the Black Marsh - about four boss packs piled up and made it practically impossible to do anything but run away.
Andariel dropped a nice item - Rockstopper. The resistances were very welcome.
And then, as I worked my way through act 2, this happened.
The boss of the group was down, health was a little low - but that's still around a thousand at least, out of over 2600. And then, suddenly, he was dead. My best guess is that Werebear wore off and was immediately followed up by a hit or two. And maybe taking out the Oak Sage, too - that would drop Osmadi to about 800 max HP, and it's very easy to go from a third full to dead at that point.
The maggot lair's difficulty varies depending on the character. For this one - fire-based melee with squishy summons that can support from behind the front - it's probably easier than average for its level (which, to be fair, is 84/85 in Hell). None of the enemies are fire-immune, and none of them are super-fast and aggressive. And those narrow corridors are probably a net advantage with this character's profile.
It's just that one battle which suddenly went from routine progress to "Your deeds of valor will be remembered." The dangerous fire enchanted boss was down and it was just some ordinary bugs...
Oh well. The rules I'm playing under me allow me to retrieve all equipment from the dead character, so I can always rebuild at some later date. (The muling program I use allows everything but the corpse equipment to be retrieved after a death. For that, I use trickery involving muling with the character active to dupe items onto a stash or toss those dupes into the void.)
Comments
In the catacombs, we continued our streak of finding exceptional sets and uniques with zero caster stats:
As for Worldstone Keep - dim vision is king against souls:
Victory:
A nice run. Sadly, I had to rely entirely on shopped items and common runewords, with the nice addition of the Lem rune from NM hellforge as the only non-expected extra boost. I really had a ton of unique drops thanks to having some decent MF for most of the run, but none geared for our necro. Luckily, he doesn't need such things, being among the least item-dependent builds. A staff with teleport charges is honestly more important, as long as the resistances are high. For my taste, I spent a little bit too much time in the pit, but I really wanted that treachery. I'm happy that I still ended up getting it later on - it was fun watching the mercenary go to town.
I agree very much with the logic behind this post. Especially noteworthy is that with the shared stash feature, the focus will be much more on building up a strong account as opposed to separate characters. True on the ladder or in single player.
However, I actually think an MF build isn't necessarily the strongest first build anymore (although I used to). If you're starting from complete scratch and are going to be pretty strict about self-found gear, then I suggest building a character that can run nightmare countess most effectively.
I wouldn't just beeline to the countess either, but would kill everything along the way and pop chests etc. Albeit I wouldn't recommend going out of your way to 100% clear the tower. The tower is one of the first places that consistently drops four socket items, flawless gems and of course the countess rune drop. Not to mention you'll get the occasional good set or unique from these runs, though they aren't the goal. The goal is to build up a small stash of the lower level runewords -- Insight, spirit, lore, ancient's pledge, stealth if you don't have it yet and even rhyme. With these runewords in hand, you can blow through normal and even nightmare difficulty for most builds. They have the benefit of being universally good as well, whereas hunting for something like say Cathan's set is only going to help a couple of builds.
As such I actually think a preferable starter character is a melee one. A concentration barbarian or a fury druid are the best choices here. They require little gear investment, because they need little mana steal. They get large life boosts which is the best defensive stat boost in the game. I think the concentration barb is a little better as he can more easily transition to running hell countess with the berserk skill. He can also be respec'd into a whirlwind barb once you find enough mana steal gear. I just find the tight passageways of the tower to not be great for a hammerdin. And a sorceress can be a super squishy character when you have little gear.
If you want advice on personally min-maxing in a not too absurd way for the ladder (or even your single player account), I'd say start with a NM countess runner AND then use that character to build up a magic find hammerdin or sorceress. Skip grinding levels in normal Baal runs too and just head straight to NM tower with that first char.
If I'm building a "first" character, I'll look for area clearers rather than boss runners. A summoning necromancer is great for that. Invest a bit of time building up your army, then just walk through slaughtering everything in sight with minimal effort and risk.
Unless you stop paying attention, and fall to hubris. RIP Prebek, my HC necromancer from earlier in this thread.
A note on four-socket items ...
There are three tiers of socket availability. The first tier caps at 3 sockets, the second caps at 4, and the third caps at 6. Individual item type limits also apply.
The first tier applies to items dropped as socketed in normal difficulty, and to items up to level 24 socketed via quest/cube recipe. The second tier applies to items dropped as socketed in nightmare difficulty, and to items of level 25-39 socketed via quest/cube recipe. The third tier applies to items dropped as socketed in hell difficulty, and to items of level 40+ socketed via quest/cube recipe.
What does this have to do with the countess' tower? Some of the deeper levels of that dungeon have area level 40 or more. Items dropped there, or from boss groups in earlier levels, will hit the third tier if you use a quest/cube recipe. Which might not be what you want. When I was looking for a flail to put Heart of the Oak into after my character got lucky with a Vex rune, my preferred areas to run were earlier in act 1 Nightmare because of that.
The opening "runs" I'd recommend to anyone is nightmare tower. Skip past Black Marsh and just clear the tower baddies in a line to the countess. The area levels (38-42) are a tad higher than areas even right past it, the bottom levels don't get matched until late jail/catacombs. It's the best place for the universally usuable OP gear that can get anyone thru nightmare imo. Rune drops are a guaranteed pickup of each run, and they add up via cubing, unlike mf gambling.
Necro is mostly a safer build, but it's slow to solo normal and nightmare. And it's slower to do gear-finding solo runs of any kind. It is the best build to try a solo, ungeared run all through hell, so if it's your goal. And even slow-but-safe Baal hell runs. There is a lot to recommend in the build.
Fury druids can buy store bought mauls that dominate even past NM countess. For barbs you can stick one point in the three one-handed weapon types, until you respec. That enables you do take advantage of a wide variety of weapon drops or even stores. I suggest just doing these runs on players 1 too, so super high damage isn't even necessary.
If staying in NM to do Countess runs and if it's one of/the first char on the account, I would personally go for a frozen orb sorc. At least as I recall it (memory is old and rusty) frozen orb sorc doesn't need any items to breeze through nightmare alone, it's only at the very end at players 8 she will struggle without +skill items etc and then she trails of badly in Hell without massive item innvestment (of which I've never done myself).
Since I am no expert on druids, I've only had one caster druid, I don't know Maul. A similar choice of which I have more experience though is the cheap zealot paladin. The auras can keep you alive, boost damage and coupled with a decent NM act 2 merc, can make you do fast runs. Vigor makes traveling (and therefore finding ie the countess tower) faster and doesn't rely on mana. Fanatiscism and shield boost make you both durable and pretty effecient and together with a concentration or chill merc youu get a more offensive or defensive, whatever you choose (though that's of course the same for all melee builds). Same here though, Hell will be a struggle without great gear but NM is not that hard.
Personally I would never go conc. barb. Single attacks is just too boring and slow for my taste. Going down the tanky route can be a fun experiement, to see how high you can boost your defenses, but doing runs is about speed and effeciency and that requires more speed IMHO. If I would go barb (and I do love barbs!), I would go for Frenzy but that requires finding two decent attacking weapons. But again, in NM that isn't very hard and you don't need to obsess over breakpoints until later in the game.
All of the above should be taken with a grain of salt (and as my personal choices, not as objectively best the choices) since I haven't played the game actively in 10 years, hah! I do install it every now and then but never play for long.
Another fun character I had that breezed through NM was the kickassin. She was cheap too, she needed a Hell generated (or late NM) pair of boots to get the max damage from item to work, but she was very fun in NM. Fast, durable, fast killing. Sucked in Hell though, hah.
I'm drawn to these types of builds, the quick attacking types; frenzy, zeal, kicks, the druid wolf (though I've never taken one long though). The only one I can think of I've never really tried is the jabazon. I found that skill to be a hassle.
The build I just started is a Fire Claws/Maul werebear. Unlike a Fury wolf, he doesn't have to scramble for a solution to physical immunes. And he attacks just as fast; 6-frame attacks with his planned gear (Oath feral axe plus a bit of off-weapon IAS) where a Fury wolf would have 8/5/5/5/5 attack sequences.
Currently ... act 1 normal completed. Updates will follow.
Well, OK, that's one-point Maul. But I still keep it charged, because extra damage and stuns are great.
As jmerry said, concentrate barb for NM countess is more of a waystation for a future WW or frenzy build. You invest one initial point into concentrate, one into the three single-handed weapons, and then you boost battle orders. Sword and shield can keep you alive. With BO and the low mana cost of concentrate, you don't even need mana steal. And because Tower runs are best done on players 1 anyways, you don't need a high DPS. These melee and high HP builds are also good for rushing past certain areas if you don't want to fight. Much safer at that than caster builds. Some additional points in favor of the tower is that it tends to produce a high concentration of boss packs as well as good poppable doodads -- super chests, armor and weapon racks. This coupled with the aforementioned higher monster level for early act one means it's a perfect early drop zone.
It can actually take quite a bit of time to get a four socket polearm imo. It's quite a specific find and not even all the poles can spawn with four sockets -- bardiches for example. This is why I favor melee/tank to start over a caster. As I said above too, hammers in the tower is just super unfun in my experience too.
Love the discussion though, lots of good points all around.
Any character should be fine for hardcore normal. As long as you are a bit careful, use potions properly, and in case of sorceresses, don't teleport like crazy.
My default sorceress build is fire/ice. Fireballs later supplemented by meteors, and frozen orb once you hit level 30. A Leaf runeword is a very good thing to start with - find a staff with +fireball, and you get massive bonuses to that and Warmth. The Countess drops the runes, and you can shop at Akara or Drognan for the base item. It clears normal very quickly, with no need for respecs.
While you can get more power on a synergy-intensive skill by focusing completely on one element, this isn't recommended for anyone playing solo. Immunes are everywhere in Hell difficulty, and that means having a second element is essential for a solo sorceress. Frozen Orb with a point of Cold Mastery is about the cheapest viable option for a secondary element.
My werebear Osmadi has now cleared act 2 normal, and is level 28. Time to give up Khalim's Will, because now he can wield Hwanin's Justice for comparable speed and vastly higher physical damage. He's been pretty much unstoppable so far, with all of the hand-me-down gear he's been using.
Some other tips are, if you are going to play a Necromancer as your first character, bear in mind that every time you leave the game to reset mobs (which is a huge part of the gameplay loop), you are going to have to go to a low-level area and raise all your minions from actual corpses each time, which gets super-annoying after awhile. The other point I'd make if you are a first-timer is that the only real "wall" you'll come up against in normal difficulty is Duriel, whose cold aura can't be mitigated by thawing potions. Your Merc will survive maybe 5-10 seconds against him, and the most viable strategy for beating him on your first character is to pop a town portal every time you enter his room and retreat back to town to get your merc back until he goes down. A Sorceress with Blaze can also be a fun way to do it.
On a side note, certain skills like Inferno and Artic Blast have been bugged for the entire duration of the game's release, and while I don't know if they WILL be, they absolutely SHOULD be fixed to do the correct amount of damage.
I haven't had much trouble with Duriel as a necromancer ... but I play single player, and set \players 8 in normal difficulty. When you're facing him at level 28, and can supplement your large and sturdy army with Decrepify, he's not so scary anymore.
Anyway, on to the main point of this post. My new HC werebear Osmadi has now cleared normal difficulty. A summary of his progress in three pictures:
First, Osmadi made an oath.
The build ... Fire Claws primary, keeping a one-point Maul charged as much as possible. Use really fast weapons, because of how the wereform attack speed formulas work. Only Fire Claws, its synergies, and Lycanthropy have more than one natural point so far. Standard melee hand-me downs for most other slots - partial Angelic set, partial Sigon's set. Weapons used: Khalim's Will, level 1-25. Steel runeword Naga, level 25-28. Hwanin's Justice, level 28-49. Oath runeword ethereal Feral Axe, starting at level 49.
Only one fight proved dangerous - Diablo. 1000 HP is not enough to tank his lightning hose in normal difficulty when you don't have blocking or maxed LR. He'll get easier in higher difficulties, because that spell picks up a safe zone in close. That's not the case in normal.
One fat purple used, and Osmadi needed it.
I went with a single-pass full clear. That got Osmadi to level 48. One more victory lap of a Baal run and the cow level, and he made it to level 49 for his ultimate weapon. That third screenshot is from just after killing Baal the second time. It was a lot faster than the first.
Nothing too special found, since it's normal. He did find a few things I didn't have already in Hardcore, but nothing I actually want to use. An ethereal Bloodletter is cool, but it's not actually useful.
I took some time off of quest progression and instead did some normal Baal runs with Osmadi. He had a perfect map for it, and incredible killing speed with his new weapon, so why not?
Ten runs later (p8, about 150 MF), he's at level 55. Twelve assorted sets and uniques found, three of which I didn't have already in my HC collection. And one of those was really good - Raven Frost. Osmadi's definitely going to use that.
The character tends to take lots of damage and need to recover it with life steal and Carrion Vine, so there were some times that life got low. Especially against enemies I couldn't steal life from. Skeletal warriors and mages in the Stony Tomb, skeletal archers in Abaddon. Oddly, the ghost/gloam/bone mage draw in the Frozen River isn't a problem at all. The closest calls came from minotaurs - a fire/lightning enchanted Blood Lord in the Crystalline Passage that knocked Osmadi down to about 20% health, and a cursed Death Lord just inside the Worldstone Keep that I had to retreat back up against twice.
The normal difficulty threat of Diablo was no longer an issue. Osmadi just stayed in melee and ignored the multiple attempts at lightning hose attacks for no damage.
Some pictures:
Current skill build: Fire Claws 20, Lycanthropy 5, other shapeshifting skills (except wolf-only) 1. Summons all 1 except 5 Oak Sage. One point in Arctic Blast and Cyclone Armor ... a waste, really. Raw life with Oak Sage and Lycanthropy would be better. 37 points FC synergies, aiming for 40 before I go back to boosting life. Items grant +2 shapeshifting, with another +3 all on switch for buffing.
Current stat build: 190 base strength, one misclicked point into dexterity, all the rest vitality.
Attack rating is fine when using Fire Claws, low when using Maul. That misses a lot, so I use mostly FC even on fire immunes. Maul is only worth it to build up or maintain a charge; once the charge is there, Fire Claws is strictly better.
On one of those ...
Looking forward to the shared stash on D2R. Three seems like a solid number for mult-char, ladder play. It will still force players who play a lot to eventually dump some gear. Checking the battle.net forums and people are whining that it's not enough. But it strikes me as right in that you should be forced to make tough decisions on gear. It will make for some interesting choices in hardcore ladder play.
I don't play it anymore because it's systems have become so bloated, but Path of Exile's currency and even unique item stash tabs are the gold standard.
The Battlenet forums would whine about the sky being blue. Each character ALSO has a personal stash in addition to the shared one. I don't know what the character limit is going to be, but let's say it's 14 to be conservative. That is more than enough space to hold onto everything you could possibly need. Mind you, transferring items in the old version, even between your own characters, called muling, was an exceptionally tedious process that also had a pretty decent chance of losing you your items in the attempt. That's all been eliminated with the drag and drop shared stash. Run out of room, make a new toon. People have been going so far as to buy multiple additional licenses of the game to store their gear for years. We're past that, and that is all that matters in my book.
Yeah the only people who are missing out are grailers and you should be running a mod for that anyways, unless you're just screenshotting items, in which case the stash size doesn't matter. As you say too, even with a conservative char limit, the possible stash space on an account is immense. Hoarders can still build mule characters, and muling will be less tedious with a shared stash to facilitate transfers. There's always a segment that agitates for any challenge to be nixed from a game, as we saw upthread when that community poll came out.
"NO changes" was the mantra of many in the Classic WoW community, and it turned the end-game into speed-running nonsense. There are various fights and events in the world that grant powerful temporary buffs. Stuff like 5% crit when you're lucky if a superb item gives you 1%. Guilds basically mandated you get 4 or 5 of these buffs, and then log your character out at the raid entrance until the weekly run, which had people blowing through Molten Core and Blackwing Lair in 45 minutes. Yes, these buffs existed back in the day, but it was never the intent of the designers to exploit them like this. And no one did so at the time.
Point being, when you re-launch a classic title, you need to take the 15-20 years that passed in-between into account. In D2's case, that's adding a stash. In the case of Classic WoW, at the very least, meta-gaming knowledge that trivialized content and made the entire max-level experience a chore rather than an adventure should have been disabled in raids.
Hell difficulty slowed things down, enough that I lowered the player count to 5. His damage just wasn't high enough to justify p8. Also, moster defense got high enough that Maul just wasn't hitting anywhere near often enough, and I switched to Shockwave as my usual right-click skill.
There were a few dual fire-physical immune monsters.
Andariel dropped a nice item - Rockstopper. The resistances were very welcome.
And then, as I worked my way through act 2, this happened.
It's just that one battle which suddenly went from routine progress to "Your deeds of valor will be remembered." The dangerous fire enchanted boss was down and it was just some ordinary bugs...
Oh well. The rules I'm playing under me allow me to retrieve all equipment from the dead character, so I can always rebuild at some later date. (The muling program I use allows everything but the corpse equipment to be retrieved after a death. For that, I use trickery involving muling with the character active to dupe items onto a stash or toss those dupes into the void.)