Looking for a truely viable 1st character build

Hei there all
Nice site. This is my first post here. My name is Draksen, French from Finland (yes yes it does exist haha)

I start with a question, something I'm sure many players of D2R will ask in the future:
what's in your opinion the best (or the bests) character to create as a 1st character in D2R which will allow us to play in Hell mode without struggling and to start doing some MF with.

The question may sound trivial, but I'm sure it isnt. In the official forum a similar question was asked and the answers were surprising: make a sorc, make an assassin, make a druid, make a barbarian (trust me, that's what someone suggested)
but let's stay serious: we want a character which is able to deal with immunes in Hell and which can evolve in Hell mode with relative basic items, obviously as it will be our 1st toon. Most of the character builds proposed when such a question is asked require specific items to work properly.

My son made 2 months ago a lightning assassin in single player mode D2LoD. It was really fun until act 1 hell, then he stopped because of the lightning immunes. So I guess the lighting sorc may face the same "wall" ?
According to the poll on the main page, 40% of the players are tempted by a sorc as 1st character. How do you plan to play it, dual elements?

For my part, I still think that I'll go for a fishymancer, as it sounds the most safe and "able" with low gear despite ofc being slow.

thanks for sharing your views on the matter

@Draksen Lightning Trap Assassin, Poison/Summoner Necromancer, Blizzard Sorceress and Hammer Paladin (in no specific order)

Keep it simple,

Fireball sorc for Normal, respec into

Frozen Orb for Nightmare and deep Hell MF'ing to find items for your sorc and next builds.

Fire is very powerful and the synergies line up nicely, you can pump

Fire Bolt, then right into

Fireball and they all benefit eachother.
This also gives you the option to build a Leaf staff later, or if you are lucky, find a sorc orb with 10% faster cast and a fire skill, open sockets for

Tir runes (mana per kill) and this allows you to use a shield, since you will want to use an Ancients Pledge runeword shield, later on in Normal and 100% into Nightmare. It will work until you can replace it with a lidless or Spirit

Monarch down the road.

Cold is the best to re-spec into for NM and lots of good MF places in Hell (Andy,

Ancient Tunnels, Meph, Pindle)

Youll need to get a merc when you get into A2 Nightmare, Defensive is the best for a sorc, and buff him up with a high def, ethereal armor, life leech and IAS, and an Insight polearm.

You can re-spec to Blizzard if you like, its very powerful, but you have to practice with it to be really efficient, esp against bosses who move around like Andy or Meph, I find it easier to kill Andy and Meph with

Frozen Orb, because you can target them direct or where they move, and

Dodge their attacks as well.

Try it all out and have fun is the most important thing!

[Guide] HOW TO LEVEL A SORCERESS FOR DIABLO 2 RESURRECTED | STATS - SKILLS - GEAR

Revenant wrote: 2 years ago

You can re-spec to Blizzard if you like, its very powerful, but you have to practice with it to be really efficient, esp against bosses who move around like Andy or Meph, I find it easier to kill Andy and Meph with

Frozen Orb, because you can target them direct or where they move, and

Dodge their attacks as well.

Funny, most people say that

Frozen Orb is the one requiring practice

Also Firewall is supposedly fixed in D2:R, Orbwall may become viable again.

Hammerdin, multi element Sorceress (fire+Ice), summon Necro with corp explosion are all great choices to help guarantee you beat hell mode. Obviously good gear on yourself and mercenary is nice too.

Thanks all for yours replies!
I appreciate!

I just ran into an interesting article on reddit about a

Fireball sorc with 20 pts in Orb (without synergies)
The guys pretends it works also fine. Never though about that one ...
How does it sound?

Draksen wrote: 2 years ago

Thanks all for yours replies!
I appreciate!

I just ran into an interesting article on reddit about a

Fireball sorc with 20 pts in Orb (without synergies)
The guys pretends it works also fine. Never though about that one ...
How does it sound?

That can work extremely well. Orb is very powerful with just a few points invested and with some in

Cold Mastery.

Teleport is just too good for magic finding but I'll throw out a Skelemancer using

Corpse Explosion as a really solid ladder starter.

I recommend two builds.

1. Auradin.

• Start with
  Holy Fire, and literally just dump everything into it, and a few points into
  Zeal. You will obliterate everything in Normal Difficulty.

• In nightmare, switch to
  Holy Shock and dump into
  Holy Shield, with
  Zeal still.

• Late game, attempt to get dual Dream runewords, then run with
  Conviction as your primary aura; this will compleetely break the game and you can even solo ubers if you combine this with Last Wish. I'm not joking. This build just facerolls everything in the game.

2. Necromancer

• Run summoner with
  Corpse Explosion.

• Repeat step 1 until you beat Hell.

• No, seriously, I'm not joking; that's the build.

Build #1 has my vote because it's extremely fun, takes planning, buildings, gathering, etc. It allows you to experience every area of the game, and fight anywhere and anyone you want.

I think the best way is

Charged Bolt or

Fireball sorc putting some points into energy, and getting Stealth and Leaf, until level 24, then switch to blizzard. Farm countess until you get a

Sol rune, and keep an eye out for an Insight base polearm starting at the end of Act 4 (where item level of polearm drops equates to a potential of 4 sockets), I believe. That way you can use the socket quest to give it 4 sockets and make an Insight runeword. No more mana problems. Can farm

Mephisto using the moat trick in nightmare until you're geared up to move to hell. Repeat Meph farming moat trick in hell. Gear up a javazon from Meph drops/trading and get to hell cows. Farm runes for Enigma. Teleporting

Lightning Fury javazon with Infinity on Merc. Can then begin hell

Chaos Sanctuary/

Baal runs.

Bodach wrote: 2 years ago

I think the best way is

Charged Bolt or

Fireball sorc

My issue with running

Charged Bolt sorc is that

Andariel is difficult to kill. It's much better (although more tedious) to run Static +

Fireball because of Leaf and the fact that

Andariel has a -50% aversion to fire, making her farmable. Then later switching out of static+

Fireball when you can afford blizzard. This also doesn't require a mid difficulty respec.

Krythic wrote: 2 years ago

Bodach wrote: 2 years ago

I think the best way is

Charged Bolt or

Fireball sorc

My issue with running

Charged Bolt sorc is that

Andariel is difficult to kill. It's much better (although more tedious) to run Static +

Fireball because of Leaf and the fact that

Andariel has a -50% aversion to fire, making her farmable. Then later switching out of static+

Fireball when you can afford blizzard. This also doesn't require a mid difficulty respec.

^This is the way.

BillyMaysed wrote: 2 years ago

Krythic wrote: 2 years ago

Bodach wrote: 2 years ago

I think the best way is

Charged Bolt or

Fireball sorc

My issue with running

Charged Bolt sorc is that

Andariel is difficult to kill. It's much better (although more tedious) to run Static +

Fireball because of Leaf and the fact that

Andariel has a -50% aversion to fire, making her farmable. Then later switching out of static+

Fireball when you can afford blizzard. This also doesn't require a mid difficulty respec.

^This is the way.

+1 on this is the way.

Charged Bolt can work, LLama shows it in his guided playthrough, but you really need to burn a re-spec early to make it viable through the rest of Normal. With Fire, you save a re-spec, and Fire dominates every inch of Normal.

Farm countess for a few

Ral runes,

Tir,

Tal,

Sol, and an

Eth for your Stealth. Tower is an easy place to level to about 14-15 and instead of Trist runs, you get runes benefit.

I know many prefer Blizzard, moat trick meph, ect. I just prefer

Frozen Orb 10/10, you can go right at Meph each time, no need to kite him over to the moat, hope you do it right the first time... Whereas with Orb, you just hit him once, static him as he floats over towards you, then hit him with it again,

Dodge his attacks, orb,

Dodge, orb,

Dodge, orb, meph splat. Works very well in Hell as well, you just really need to time efficiently as his orb or lightning can 1 shot you if you get caught.

Run that build until you have the gear and skillers, with Infinity, to switch over to Lightning for your end game build.

Yeah, I personally prefer Leaf/

Fireball. I usually get people yelling at me for it and insisting

Charged Bolt is better. At least I'm not crazy.

Bodach wrote: 2 years ago

Yeah, I personally prefer Leaf/

Fireball. I usually get people yelling at me for it and insisting

Charged Bolt is better. At least I'm not crazy.

I only like

Charged Bolt more because of the early AoE. And I don't mind burning a respec -

Teleport +

Nova melts on normal and early nightmare, then I have the nm respec to go Orb/Ball.

Personally, I always start with a

Frozen Orb/

Fireball (

Meteor or

Fire Wall backup) Sorceress. Fairly early entry but have to go slow, especially with groups. With a Desert Warrior Act 2 Mercenary with basic gear, there isn't a lot of things you can't kill in Hell with some patience and knowledge of how to play. Hope this helps. Cheers.

Why do so many people give up the second they face immune monsters in Hell?

It's super easy, before you get Infinity -and god knows how long that would take-, you just skip/ignore them, or let your mercenary kill them (potentially using the mercenary bug if needed). You don't have to kill every single monster you come across

Cleared the game solo with assassin run fire traps with a mix of martial arts initially then switched to martial arts with light unless they are immune to physical and light will be fine. then just need amplify or something to get rid of physical immune

Tesladin with

Holy Freeze/

Holy Shock variant, or a Flash Dancer assassin (Kick/Trap combo).

Can solo all content in the game with self-found gear, as well as the ability to uber with the same 4 item 100% CB set up (Black, Gface, Gtoes and a lifetap

Wand).