Heirlooms – Skill Trees and Oopsies

Hello and welcome to my heirloom series, where I’ll be going over a lot of early game stuff to prep you for later difficulties and a sense of direction to get you there. In this section, I’ll go over some of the ways you can make use of your three free respecs.

- Respec

Akara -

This should actually be titled “Blow Your respec” which, for those who don’t know, is the reward for the very first quest you get, “

The Den of Evil." The completion of this quest gives you a +1 skill point, or if you’re level 1, it gives you what should have been your starting point (IMO). Alongside giving you the ability to reallocate your attributes and skills, for some classes, this is a blessing, as some trees come online sooner than later and others tend to fall off sooner than later. For instance, it’s not too likely you’re going to build a

Frozen Orb sorc from level 1. You can, but it’s likely you aren’t. The cold tree tends to be a tree mostly respeced into, at least from my interactions with other sorcs. This is where a respec allows for flexibility. You may not like having to go one tree, but do it because it is easier to get through certain points than others. With three free respecs I think at least one should be used to get you started, and you should feel no shame in respecing.

Now, with that out of the way, I’ll give a few examples of how I tend to use my respecs.

We will start with what everyone knows to be my favourite class to start with, the

Holy Fire Paladin. One way I tend to level is by going through normal maxing

Holy Fire, then

Resist Fire. If I have managed to get a

Raven Claw /

Kuko Shakaku /

Demon Machine /

Hellcast then I’ll level without using a respec. Otherwise, I tend to respec into

Fist of the Heavens to get through nightmare and crack into hell.

For the sorc, I tend to level

Blaze or

Fire Wall because they both have

Warmth synergies, and I think

Warmth is incredible when you’re just starting a ladder and have no gear. A

Warmth -maxing build allows you to

Teleport fairly freely into starting and farming, on top of being a great Hell andy killer. Once I have gear or get 40+, though, I tend to switch to blizzard, but going for a

Fire Wall build and transitioning it around level 40 to have orb + mastery is also viable. Shooting for like 10

Warmth + 15

Fire Wall + 5

Fire Mastery, then 1 point

Cold Mastery, and start to max

Frozen Orb from then on should easily clear NM by the time you get to 60+.

A common use of respect is to allocate more strength than you'd want early in the game. Then you get your vitality points back as you get gear and charms that give you strength or even dex at times in the late game.

So now that you have an idea of how some classes might blow their respecs we’ll go over ways to avoid the need to.

- Respec yourself -

Having clear knowledge and goals set out ahead of time will really save you a lot of hassle. Some skills are more valuable later than earlier; using your first point for

Frozen Armor isn’t going to do you a lot of good, and I’d argue it isn’t really valuable until late nightmare or early

Hell, and one point can go a long way to cutting down on character killing speeds. Same with

Energy Shield, which requires 3 extra points. Chasing

Death Sentry in normal or nightmare when you’re a

Wake of Fire build on a sin also cuts out 4 potential skill points, making it not as strong as it can be. Chasing down into the shadow discipline tree can also cause issues because of the 4+ points needed to get the

Shadow Master.

Some classes can just straight-up hold skill points until needed. If you save 2 skill points and want 2 level 18 skills but you’re 16, you can get both, assuming you hold on to 17's, so once you hit 18, you can place your 2 points into each separate level 18 skill. It's useful if you want

Fire Wall and

Teleport both at level 18 and don’t want to choose between the two.

Saving points over “1 point wonders” or level 30 talents, like

Shadow Master, allows your main abilities to gain their much-needed strengths early on. This allows you to account for those skills when they’re more desirable in later difficulties without making any damage sacrifices. Now not all one-pointers are made equal;

Warmth, for instance, is huge value at any state. Whereas something like

Pierce isn’t valuable if you’re

Charged Strike, it becomes valuable when you start to use

Lightning Fury.

Speaking of the Amazon at level 30, most Javazons have access to four skills:

Valkyrie,

Pierce,

Lightning Fury, and

Lightning Strike. So holding points from 27 to 30 will allow you to get all four, should you want to. I tend to get

Valkyrie,

Lightning Fury, and

Pierce, so I save points from 28 to 30 or earlier.

- Is this right? -

The last thing is skill tree accidents. I’ve heard of a lot of people using their respecs because they placed one point incorrectly early in the game. I want people to know that most specs aren’t made or broken by a single misplaced point, and you don’t need to run to

Akara the moment you do it. Let the annoyance sink in a bit; it’ll train your brain to be more alert to potential mistakes than if you just rush to correct them without feeling punished. This can also be used as clarity towards making use of your respec and trying the other spec you’ve been reading about.

Thank you again for reading through, and I hope this has provided some Insight on skill trees. I think the next post will involve a standard ladder start for me and my Insight on breaking into the later game. Along with the classes I make, how I build them, and the reasons behind it all.