[Diablo II] help a noob out.

[Lysah]

Nah, Energy shield means death to any tp sorc in hc baalruns.

I've never met anyone who stopped using energy shield in Hell and survived, unless they were so severely stacked that it didn't really matter how they played. The fact remains that it is free health you didn't previously have. If you're in such a terrible situation that your mana is instantly drained, it means so much damage is incoming that you need to stop being stubborn and just S/E before you're actually dead.

[zealous]

I've never met anyone who stopped using energy shield in Hell and survived, unless they were so severely stacked that it didn't really matter how they played. The fact remains that it is free health you didn't previously have. If you're in such a terrible situation that your mana is instantly drained, it means so much damage is incoming that you need to stop being stubborn and just S/E before you're actually dead.

This is quite true from what I've seen playing ladder with friends over the years.

[Lysah]

Actually, the same sorceress that I was solo rushing myself through hell with died because I saw my mana bar disappear and thought I could make out. Was too stubborn to teleport all the way through act III again, since I hadn't found any waypoints. Mana orb disappears in less than one second, health orb is soon to follow.

And if I wasn't using ES, I never would've had the time to choose whether to S/E or not, I would've just been dead to start with.

[Halsynd]

Meh, i never liked Sorcs, when you hit Hell Diff. and half the stuff i immuned to your element, it sucks, personnaly id go with a Hammerdin, easiest class/spec to play. get mobs around you and spam hammers!

[zealous]

Meh, i never liked Sorcs, when you hit Hell Diff. and half the stuff i immuned to your element, it sucks, personnaly id go with a Hammerdin, easiest class/spec to play. get mobs around you and spam hammers!

Hammerdin is one of the most boring specs from any game in existence. How people manage to stay awake playing it is beyond me.

[shadowkras]

Barbarians are fine if you don't plan on doing Hell.

Nonsense. But instead of going WW, go Frenzy barbarian.
You will NEED to buy potions until act 5 level weapons, where you will have a decent mana leech %, once you get your hands on those, while in frenzy, you can spam your skills all day and your mana bar wont move.
Unless the game changed so much in 6 years that a barbarian can get 2shot by bhaal on hell. Otherwise you will be able to tank him just fine with some potions. Just dont go into hell using a bunch of blue gear.

[zealous]

Nonsense. But instead of going WW, go Frenzy barbarian.
You will NEED to buy potions until act 5 level weapons, where you will have a decent mana leech %, once you get your hands on those, while in frenzy, you can spam your skills all day and your mana bar wont move.
Unless the game changed so much in 6 years that a barbarian can get 2shot by bhaal on hell. Otherwise you will be able to tank him just fine with some potions. Just dont go into hell using a bunch of blue gear.

Ok that might have been a very simplified answer on my part. Barbs can solo Hell just fine, even in players 8 with the correct gear. They are however one of the more difficult classes to do that on, basically every other class has builds that are much much easier to solo Hell on than any Barb build.

They have no block and even with PDR, they get smacked pretty hard on some encounters.

The obvious solution ofc is to stack rejuv potions and employ a Frenzy build with high life-steal.

[Troll Sacrifice]

The problem with D2 soloplayer is, that you just don't get the propper drops.

[zealous]

The problem with D2 soloplayer is, that you just don't get the propper drops.

True, and that actually gimps a lot of the possible gear-dependent builds. Including most of the Barbarian builds.

For example, making the "perfect" kiksin (dragon talon assassin) is only really possible on ladder due to the amount of Crushing Blow items needed for that build. I've seen precious few drop in D2 solo play (if at all?...).

[Lysah]

You only need one crushing blow item to have damage, the build is reliant on speed not CB %s. You can craft blood gloves pretty easily, and if your clvl is in the 80s or higher (easily obtainable) you'll have a decent chance of getting something useful. After that you just need the attack speed to frame cap and then the survivability to not die. I was hunting uber diablo with a werewolf who's best item was a non-upped ribcracker, maybe it took me a long time to kill him, but that's also a fault of being a werewolf and not a smiter or kicker. At least it was doable, and relatively safe with feral rage, and I was able to get my own annihilus charm.

Point being, you don't need damage with crushing blow, and you don't need to stack it to have damage. It's overpowered in itself. Stacking it to 70%+ is just a luxury rich players have to make kills a minute or two faster. Barbarians are gear dependant because if you don't have good weapons you will hit even weak minions like Fallen for 5% of their max health, and you'll be playing for hours just to beat your way to the next waypoint. Especially true if you play on anything above players 1.

[zealous]

snip

If you can afford it, stacking CB is far superior than stacking IAS. The latter's usefulness in comparison with other specs is hampered by the fact that you already have multiple kicks (4+) in a small timeframe.

The most essential thing for a kicksin is to have at least some CB, decent block (I prefer shields but players with access to the top-tier runewords may opt for double claws), and boots somewhere at the class of myrmidon greaves.

As to stacking CB, the gap between having 20% and having 75% is enormous. Things die three times faster, therefore giving you more chances to survive.

[Lysah]

Basing your survivability on how fast you kill =/

[zealous]

Basing your survivability on how fast you kill =/

On bosses that would be stupid, on packs of mobs however that's quite often the best calculation mechanic.

The glass canon bowazon is the perfect example.

[Sanitius]

I've never met anyone who stopped using energy shield in Hell and survived, unless they were so severely stacked that it didn't really matter how they played. The fact remains that it is free health you didn't previously have. If you're in such a terrible situation that your mana is instantly drained, it means so much damage is incoming that you need to stop being stubborn and just S/E before you're actually dead.

Well i did the Baal TP teleports for InMemoryToAll (2. lvl 99 lod hc ladder europe). Guess we had like every item you could wish for or where at least able to buy it.

Fanatism aura enhanced groups would eat any ES using sorc doing that with the first hit in /players 8.

p.s.

S/E is not an option down there you just die to quickly

p.p.s.

i just remebered the title of the thread -.-

Anyway cant remember having ever played with ES because most of the time just takes the only chance of escape (teleport) from you in dire situation.

[Lysah]

S/E is always faster and safer than trying to teleport away, you just need to live more paranoid I guess.

[Cairhiin]

Barbarians are extremely gear dependent, you're in for a lot of pain. Sorceress is always the easiest first class.

No, Necromancer is. A Fishymancer can clear hell practically naked.

---------- Post added 2011-11-08 at 03:18 PM ----------

Nonsense. But instead of going WW, go Frenzy barbarian.
You will NEED to buy potions until act 5 level weapons, where you will have a decent mana leech %, once you get your hands on those, while in frenzy, you can spam your skills all day and your mana bar wont move.
Unless the game changed so much in 6 years that a barbarian can get 2shot by bhaal on hell. Otherwise you will be able to tank him just fine with some potions. Just dont go into hell using a bunch of blue gear.

Baal isn't really any measure if a Barb can or cannot solo hell, seeing as Baal really isn't hard and just has huge amount of HP and only really requires some Crushing Blow. There's much more dangerous things in Hell than Baal, ie Lost Souls or Death Lords for instance. Personally I think Barbarians are fine though just very gear dependent.

[Lysah]

No, Necromancer is. A Fishymancer can clear hell practically naked.

Have fun spending twelve hours trying to kill bosses with no damage.

[Cairhiin]

Have fun spending twelve hours trying to kill bosses with no damage.

Easily solved by having a few Crushing Blow items on your Necro, and autoattacking. And a full Skeleton Army + 10+ Reviveds doesn't really kill that slow with Amp Curse and a Might Aura, and as bonus Reviveds can tank any end boss without a problem. Throw in a Clay Golem and Decrepify and act bosses barely even attack.

[Deleted]

In my experience with a great many fishymancers is the difficulty curve goes in reverse.

Normal can be a total pain in the ass quite frankly. Diablo can be particularly bad. His fire nova can 1 shot your whole army. However as the leves pass and you start getting more points into the summon tree and particularly get your summon resist to around 50% (or stop at 17 points after gear) you can just walk over anything.

Go and revive a load of the mobs from the durance of hate that have crushing blow. Bosses die easy then.

I should point out I've only ever played Diablo 2 online twice. My whole 8 year on and off career has been single player, self found, usually untwinked, mod free play.

[Lysah]

Go and revive a load of the mobs from the durance of hate that have crushing blow. Bosses die easy then.

Yes, that's the only option, but how many new players even know what Urdars are, let alone that they have CB and are essential to any minion army trying to kill anything other than quill rats.

Also, getting CB on your nec to auto attack bosses to death? Come on, you're not even trying to make sense now. Hitting Hell Diablo with any success would take like 300 dex on a necro unless you're talking about swapping out your ENTIRE gear set to the point where I wonder why you have to worry about how you kill things because clearly you're not a newly made naked necro.

Also, I stated earlier, summons get ranked up in nightmare and hell by default. Necros get stronger as the game goes on, hell will be a lot easier to manage than nightmare or normal. As the previous post describes, ALL of the end bosses in normal are going to instantly one shot your entire army and you're in for a lot of pain trying to kill them. The same will be mostly true in nightmare, just not quite as bad. By hell your minions can pretty much tank anything except for specific unfortunate situations, but good luck getting there naked. This is my point.


A sorc on the other hand relies on absolutely nothing and comes with teleport. I'm not trying to tell anyone how they should play the game, if you want to make a necro as your first character by all means go for it, but a sorceress will always be the easiest.