Wednesday, April 25, 2012

More Diablo II nonsense (all the builds I'm considering)

I know I have too many Diablo II posts here. Well, I wanted a full list of every build that, at this time, I'm considering running. So here we go...

Amazon
  • Bowazon: Artemis is in Act I Hell (update: Act III). She already has all of her gear and has a 2 FPA Strafe. The focus is on Strafe and Guided Arrow with a Faith Bow and gear meant to increase damage and attack speed. She's not the most durable, but she hits incredibly hard and from a distance.
  • Spear/Javazon: Athena is in Act II Normal. I'm still not sure where to go with her, because I am not entirely sure how effective the spear skills are or how many points need to be invested in them. I only work with builds that can at least generally handle monster immunities, so an amazon focused purely on Lightning Fury or Plague Javelin is probably out of the question.
  • Spear/Javazon #2: I don't have one yet, but once I get a better feel for the spear and javelin tree, I think it's possible to get a second build out of it. If Athena is pure javelin, then I can make a second amazon that is pure spear, probably with Fend. If Athena uses one of the javelin skills and one of the spear skills, a second amazon could use another of the javelin skills and another of the spear skills or something.
  • Magezon (elemental bow skills): Not sure where I'd go with this. If it's possible to get both decent fire and decent ice damage on the same character, this could totally be viable for me. Again, I'm not going pure fire or pure ice, because of immunities.
  • Proc-zon: I'll look into it. Not enough information yet to know whether I could make it work.
Assassin
  • Kicker (Dragon Talon): Nemesis is in Act I Nightmare (update: Act II) and is looking good. I'm going with Last Wish as her endgame weapon because I want to and because it looks awesome, but right now she's using Voice of Reason. Even though she's not high enough in level to use the equipment I have planned for her, she already has very fast kicks. This could become one of my favorite builds. Unfortunately, Nemesis is the only assassin that I actually have right now.
  • Pure Trapper: I'm sure that I can make this work. I'm just not sure on the details. Update Ereshkigal is going to focus on Death Sentry and generally be a cookie-cutter trapper, but she's still too low in level and has been relying on Fire Blast and Charged Bolt Sentry.
  • Blade Fury: I apparently didn't think of this before. Blade Fury uses weapon damage and does proc some things. An assassin focusing on Blade Fury should definitely be viable. 
  • Elementalist (Phoenix Striker): Looks easy. Again, I haven't planned on any equipment or anything, but this could be a fun build. And I might use the Natalya's set here.
  • Tiger Strike/Dragon Tail: This looks like the best way to use the whole charge-up/finisher mechanic as intended.
  • Dragon Claw: I was helping my brother build one of these, but he was making some weird choices against my advice. It didn't seem to be working out all that well for him, but I could try it for myself.
  • Whirlwind Assassin: Something else to try, although I'd probably rather just go with a barbarian for this skill.
Annoyingly enough, the assassin is the class I've played the least, and she seems to have more viable builds for my purposes (soloing Hell reasonably well, and preferably on /players8) than almost any other class. What I've listed here isn't even comprehensive because I've seen there there are so many hybrid builds like kick/trap assassins and such.

 Barbarian
  • Thrower: Enlil is in Act V Normal (update: Act I Nightmare). I haven't played him in a while. Not as overpowered as melee barbarians, but seeing axes fly all over the screen makes me smile.
  • Whirlwind Barbarian: Enki is in Act I Nightmare (update: Act II). He's going for the full Immortal King's set. I don't like how mana-intensive the skill is, but other than that, it seems great for killing just about everything. Hopefully, by the time Enki is in Hell, his mana problems will not be too severe.
  • Frenzy Barbarian: This looks like the most broken barbarian build. It's another build I was helping my brother with, but again, I'd take it a different direction than he did. If I get around to making one of these guys, I'll probably go for Ethereal Breath of the Dying in one hand and Beast in the other hand, because why the hell not? Update: Marduk is in Act I Normal. He's currently using the "Berserker's Arsenal" set (with a second Berserker's Hatchet as his left weapon) and Double Swing because he doesn't have Frenzy yet.
  • Berserker: Haven't really looked into this one, but it seems good. The damage output is huge and the drawback can generally be ignored or at least mitigated. Update: I started a new barbarian, Ares. He will be either a berserker or a concentrator, but I haven't made up my mind yet. He's in Act II Normal now, and Berserk isn't quite strong enough to be impressive yet, but once he gets some more levels and equipment, I think it'll go a lot more smoothly.
  • Concentrator: A barbarian that doesn't dual-wield (well, neither does the Berserker, nor most Whirlwind builds), but this looks like it could be very powerful.
Druid
  • Fury Werewolf: Oberon has finished Hell. He was my first LOD character ever and even by endgame, my setup for him was probably not ideal, but I can't really picture myself doing another pure Fury druid just to see if I can do better. And Oberon worked well enough, really. He took on Diablo Clone and won.
  • Werebear: Hephaestus is in Act I Normal (update: Act II). I was going to try for the whole Hunger build, and then I found out that it's plagued by a desynch bug. So instead, I'm thinking that I'll fill a weapon with Shael runes or something so that I still get a bear that hits at 4 FPA. I'll be using Armageddon of course, because why the hell not?
  • Wind Druid: I'm apprehensive about this one, but I should give it a shot.
  • Poison Werewolf: Haven't investigated this much, but I know that it exists and is viable.
Necromancer
  • Summoner: Master has finished Hell. I made myself stick to /players8 the whole time, which was the beginnings of my realizations that necromancers have so many problems in this game. It took forever. So even though there are some variants, like the commandomancer and the lich lord, I don't know that I care to build another summoning necromancer.
  • Poisonmancer/Fire (Trang-Oul's set): Set is in Act III Hell. Poison and fire immunities are common enough to be annoying, but I can manage, even on /players8, by using Poison Nova to kill everything around the offending monsters and then proceeding to beat them up with my switch weapon's physical damage. This build isn't all that durable and is sometimes a bit clumsy, but the Poison Nova normally slaughters everything around me. Not really overpowered, but I do like the build. Update: Set beat the game at Level 91. One of my most powerful characters so far and easily my most powerful necromancer. He even took on Diablo Clone on /players8, which I apparently neglected to mention here.
  • Bonemancer: Namtar is a character I've created, but he hasn't done any quests or anything yet. I've been saving him for later. My plan is to go with a sort of bone/melee hybrid so that nothing will be immune to me, but we'll see if that's viable. Update: Namtar is Act I Nightmare and is overleveled so I could get some more convenient bone necromancer equipment. I have a gear plan, but it's subject to change. Tentatively, I think it will work well. Maybe it won't be as easy as a poisonmancer, but it shouldn't be unbearable.
  • Meleemancer: Even though I do really like the Trang-Oul's set, I've been thinking about building another necromancer using a similar skill distribution, but with different items, so that I'd have a tankier character that was better at melee. I'd lose the fire skills, but oh well.Update: Nergal is in Act I Normal and is doing quite well. I'm planning on going with Fleshripper and other gear to make Poison Dagger have considerable physical damage alongside all that poison.
The necromancer is my favorite class and also one of the most problematic classes, if not the most problematic. I do have some other ideas, like a damage-return necro and a golem/melee specialist, but I think these are mostly unrealistic if I want builds that can solo Hell effectively.

Paladin
  • Hammerdin: Shamash has finished Hell. I wanted to be sure to finish him before the 1.13 patch took away Blessed Hammer's ridiculously overpowered property of ignoring most magic resistances completely, and I did. Since then, I've modified his gear so that my switch weapon and shield give me a powerful smite. With further gear changes, Shamash was able to beat PlugY's crappy ripoff of the Pandemonium Event (using Smite).
  • Auradin (Conviction Zealot): Stephen has finished Hell. Yes, I named this character after myself. I did that because I knew auradins were broken. To clarify, I'm using Dragon/Hand of Justice and dual Dreams, none of that hybrid nonsense. Stephen isn't particularly versatile. He just runs around and kills everything with his auras. I was able to solo the PlugY ripoff of the Pandemonium Event on /players8 and recently beat Diablo Clone on/players 8. Definitely my most overpowered character so far.
  • Avenger: I remember Nick had one of these and I played alongside him. It seemed pretty powerful.
  • Fanatic Zealot: Probably the cheesiest build in the game. I already achieve a similar effect with my auradin. This is basically an easier version of the same thing, albeit with mostly physical damage instead of mostly elemental damage. Update: I did create a character named Odin that is intended to serve as a Zealot, but I'm not going to play him until I beat the game with at least one of each character, because I've already completed two paladins and I think paladins are cheesy and overpowered.
  • Fist of the Heavens Paladin: Not traditionally used for PvM, but I want to try it. Not sure what the backup skill would be, but paladins generally don't have problems with immunities, I've noticed. My "templar" (Fist of the Heavens paladin), Zeus, is in Act II Act IV Normal. It's too early to be certain, but I think this skill is underrated for PvM. It is single-target and on a cooldown, but the damage is huge and cooldown isn't that long. Lightning immunity should be the only problem, and I'm already planning for that.
  • Smiter: Yes, a pure smiter. I want to. At least, I think so. Update: Anu is in Act I Normal. Smite is a bit mana-hungry early on, but other than that, paladins are broken as usual.
 Sorceress
  • Archmage (tri-element): Isis is in Act I Hell. I'm using Frozen Orb, Hydra, and Charged Bolt. Oh, and I'm also using the full Tal-Rasha's set, so Isis is technically a magic-find character, although I don't seem to have much use for that anymore.
  • Melee Enchantress: Hestia is in Act II Normal. My plan is to have her use dual Dreams, so this could be reminiscent of Stephen's dominance. She'll get rapid attacks using the Zeal from a Passion sword. Update Hestia has reached Nightmare difficulty, but she was borrowing Enki's gloves, belt, and boots. Now that he has them back, I haven't been playing her. Once Isis is done, I'll probably never play any non-Enchantress sorceresses again, which seems like a waste of all those perfectly good spells, but Enchant is just so good and elemental immunities are just too troublesome for any non-archmage caster sorceress.
  • Ranged Enchantress: I didn't think this would be worth it, but that was because I didn't realize how good Demon Machine is. On the surface, doesn't look as powerful as a melee enchantress, but I should give it a shot.
The sorceress is another problematic class, which is why I only have three build ideas I'm even considering right now. In truth, a hybrid enchant/caster should be fine and I could definitely do other variations on the archmage, but all of those use Frozen Orb anyway. Not having any source of multiple types of damage other than Enchant (fire and physical, but it doesn't even really count) and needing synergies to get a lot of damage out of her spells, the sorceress doesn't have a ton of options. Frozen Orb would seem to be the only viable non-synergized cold damage skill, and fire and lightning aren't much better off (Fire Wall, Hydra, Enchant, and then Charged Bolt and maybe Lightning or something).

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