Diablo II: Expansion Pack (release date!!!)

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Diablo, Bro. of Mephisto
what character class died?

My necro. Every last one of my xp points disappeared for some odd reason. *sobs uncontollably*

this is my own personal oppinion, but I really like the amazon, and the assasin. I also like the paladin.

What skill plan are you following for the assasin?

[Chowlett]

I too recommend the Assassin - I follow a predominately charg-up/finish + traps route, with the pre-reqs for the good shadows throuwn in. Also, go for double claw attacks, health is not a huge problem. Maybe have a single claw/shield combo on the other weapons set.

If you like the necro, you might like the Druid, going as summoning. I couldn't get into either. But I did find the sorceress fun, but she's a little underpowered now she's around level 40. My barb merc kills more than I do.

[The Mad Monk]

What's everyone's ideas on character/merc matchups? Iv'e been playing around with this a bit, and these are my inital opinions:

Amazon: Cold Iron Wolf. With a valk to do the tanking, and the IW spamming glacial spikes, the Amazon (of whatever build) is a fairly-well balanced party all by herself.

Assasin: Cold Iron Wolf. Really helps with crowd control, especially if traps aren't your strong suit. Again, shadows are there to help tank.

Bararian: Cold Iron Wolf. Crowd control is essential, especially with those damn imps.

Druid: Cold Iron Wolf (seeing a pattern here?), or possibly Rogue with cold high-damage bow. Druids can have minions or not; without minions, a druid may have the normal crowd control problems that vex melee characters, and an IW is essential. With minions, crowd control becomes less of a problem, but the lack of long-range fire can still leave them in a bind with areas such as the act 3 rivers. Here, a rouge outfitted with the appropriate bow can do wonders. A desert warrior's auras can certainly help everybody, but the number of minions that actually benefit from the auras I've seen (as opposed to the ones they say are available) is rather small.

Necromancer: Desert Warrior if a zookeeper, hard to say otherwise. Zookeeper necros can have tons of minions, including spell casters in four flavors. Crowd control is never a problem for the properly managed necro hoard, and curses can quickly cut bosses down to size. The auras of the DW, of whatever flavor, can boost the hoard's efficiency greatly.

Paladin: Rogue with cold high damage bow. Unless built heavily speciallized for boss-killing or PvP (chargadin, etc.), Paladins have a wide variety of crowd-control options available already. They also have ranged fire options available, mainly in the form of spiritual hammer or holy bolt, but these options are limited in how they can be used (holy bolt can only be used against undead, SH is pretty useless in the maggot tunnels and similar areas, etc.). A properly equipped Rogue helps to make up for these deficiencies.

Sorceress: Anything but Desert Warrior. It depends on style of play; lot of sorcs are using barbs as tanks, which is fine if you are in the 'stand there and spam' school of spell casting. I tend to play a more mobile game, and the last thing I want is a merc that just stands there and gets killed while I'm trying to make a retreat. I prefer Rogues, since my sorc (tri-elementalist, mainly GS and Hydra) can handle crowds just fine, but benefits from the extra power a high-damage cold bpow can provide. Plus, the Rogue seems to understand the meaning of 'strategic withdrawal'.

Just a few thoughts...

[Chowlett]

I didn't realise the Desert Warriors had auras now. Must look into them...

So far, my chars haven't got overly far through, except for a spear-azon (who's just discovered that Fend isn't all it's cracked up to be), and cuprosti the Level 39 sorc, about halfway through Act 2 nightmare.

The amazon has just hired a cold IW, on the basis that he's far more powerful than my Cold Rogue. Only trouble is, he never seems to make use of that sword of his - it's just graphical really. But anyway, his Spikes are wonderful, although not a lot of use against the quick moving flayer-class.

My sorc has hired a barb, mainly because she moved straight into Act 5 Normal when I got the expansion. Admittedly, the barb does do a "Death or Glory" thing quite often, but there are a few things you can do to counter this.

1: Carry an antidote potion. One will do, it's just he seems to have tendency to get poisoned for long amounts of time.

2: Ensure you have at least 1 point in teleport. Teleporting moves both you and your merc - so if he or you is in trouble, just port out of there.

In addition, the barb mercs have a great benefit over any other merc - unless poisoned, they seem to rapidly heal themselves - and 'm talking about 3 seconds from red to full strength. Having given him a good sword, the only fault I can find with him is that he kills more things than I do...

[Chowlett]

Man I love the expansion. Before I left Uni, my Level 30 Paladin (Sir St_Probos) was next to useless in nightmare Act I quest 6. (Well, the catacombs). My friend found a second Sigon's Guard, however, so he gave me that as he already had one, to give us a boost. I've now killed Shenk and rescued the prisoners, and levelled up twice. I also found, joy of joys, Sigon's Wrap - which has been tweaked in the XP. It now offers defensive bonus commensurate with level - plus 72 at level 32 - and 2 items of Sigon's steel now give 10% life steal! Say hello to 14% total life steal, and goodbye to death. Add to that a handy strong barb merc and we're rocking on towards Anya. Soon as I kill Baal, I'll use my already-accrued imbue to get some rare armour (unless I find the Sigon one first ), and Andariel won't stand a chance.

[DinoDoc]

OK, I've been working on these plans for two characters that appear to be interesting and I was currious which one you people thought was the better one and/or what improvements you'd make to each one.

Sorceress

Warmth: 8 (Thanks TMM)
Blizzard: 18.
Static Field: 9.
Glacial Spike: 5.
Frozen Orb: 4.
Energy Shield: 4 (Is this better?)
Teleport: 1.
Cold Mastery: 6.
Lightning Mastery: 4.
Shiver Armor: 1

Druid

10 points in Lycanthropy
1 point in werewolf
10 points in werebear
5 points in shockwave
5 points in maul
1 point in Raven
5 points in Spirit Wolf
3 points in Dire Wolf
1 point in carrion vine (and prerequisites)
3 points in HoW

[The Mad Monk]

I don't know enough about druids, yet, but I do know something about sorcies, so I'll give a few suggestions on that one.

My first move would be to dramatically reduce warmth; My sorc has 8 warmth (including +skills items) at level 37, and its proven to be more than enough. At that level, warmth provides a mana refresh of +118% (ir thereabouts), which make for a mana orb that goes from empty to full in less than a minute; with 550 mana, my sorc can fire a level 6 glacial spike sixty-two times before before bumping the bottom (continuous, with a 10% speed boost). A more experienced sorc player said that warmth must be matched to your casting style, and this can really only be done by watching your manasphere as your sorc develops, adding warth as needed.

My second move would be to add a fire based spell (fireball will do, if you really don't want to climb that tree). The sorc's main strength in this game is that she has easy access to three out of six damage categories, in a world where monsters can have up to two immunities; this advantage should be used as much as possible. Lots of sorcs nowadays use firewall, but it seems a likely nerf target. My fave at the moment is Hydra, even after its nerf.

My only other question would be the number of points spent on energy shield; do you really intend to get hit that much?

If you do, it might explain the twenty in warmth...

[Dis]

I have about 8 in warmth in my sorceress. I probably won't put anymore. before the expansion I was going to boost it to 20. but there is no need now

she is primarirly a cold sorc, with fire spells thrown in to inflict more damage.

Paladins are fairly fun.

My amazon is struggling in Nightmare. I should be doing 200 damage per arrow (including poison stacked damage). but for some reason the hit points barely drop. buy my sorceress using blizzard (which currently does less than 200 damage) thrashes most monsters. What's up with that?

I have been playing my barb lately. He's a tank, but not that fun. I had to go beserk or he would be useless. but he's always out of mana using beserk all the time in nightmare. so I don't have much mana to use many war cries. And I have 11 wasted points in whirlwind.

I tried an elemental druid. level 20, but I couldn't beat duriel . my merc (amazon from act1) does more damage than me. Maybe if I get him to level 24 and tornado.

[DinoDoc]

1) The 8 points in energy shield idea was probably a leftover from my Classic Diablo days. How many skill points do you think it deserves?

2) I was planning on being a cold/lightning sorceress but you do make a good point. How would you reorganize my plan to best take advantage of the fire tree?

3) Dissident: Frenzy is the best barb skill right now.

[The Mad Monk]

Well, I have only one point in energy shield, and my+3 skills boost brings that total to four; this works well for me.

If you are doing a cold/lightning sorc for the fun of it, I'd say stick to that. If you want to use the fire tree for insurance, going as far as fireball or firewall is probably more than enough. Before she advanced far enough to aquire hydra, my sorc did the freeze-fry routine (GS to stop 'em, firewall to cook 'em, rinse, repeat); this was before the advent of firewall as uber-skill, and should still work after the expected nerfing.

My top barb is a frenzier--it works well.

[Dis]

well today was my 3rd try using a druid. and it has been successful

my first was a werebear. The attack speed was killing me. Not to mention lag that caused me to miss too many times. I miss at a bad time was disasterous. I think they should beef up damage and hit points of werebears to make them on par with werewolves.

my next was an elemental/summoner. I did everything the right way. But I was level 20 and struggling in the tomb of tal rasha. And I couldn't hardly dent duriel. My hireling rogue did most of the damage. the elements were fun, but they just aren't powerful enough. and there is no specialized equipment for a elemental druid.

my 3rd today was a werewolf. I must say it kicks ass. I am at level 21 nearing 22. Even without fury yet (a lvl 30 skill) he is fast and damaging. I just entered act3 and bought a maul with enhanced damage. Everything is 1 hit kill now except some uniques. A miss here is no big deal. In fact I miss fairly often. but I still have around 300 hp's, so not to big deal. I do get beat up, but I have yet to die. This character is stronger than my barbarian when he was a comparable level. Of course my barb used a 1 handed weapon. But nevertheless, the werwolf is the melee king. This character is my keeper.

[DinoDoc]

Which skill deals more damage: Hydra or Meteor? And how many skill points does it deserve?

[The Mad Monk]

Offhand, I'd say Meteor does more damage--certainly up-front, and probably over time as well--but Hydra is the 'sneakier' spell, so it shouldn't be discounted simply because of less damage.

Both spells require a modicum of skill to use effectively; Meteor has an 'arrival time', which forces you to 'lead' your aim, or bait the monsters to where you aimed. You can also hit monsters just off-screen with it, due to the initial strike radius, if you know where they are. The flamewall damge generally isn't worth adding into the calculation.

Hydra lists lower damage, but it should be remembered that that damage is for the individual shots the hydrae make, and they do spit out quite a few of them. Hydra makes a great scouting skill, since the hydrae have a visual range apart from yours, so they can shoot at targets that are well off screen--or around corners, or behind walls, etc. They will always target the closest enemy within range, regardless of intervening objects (they can't harm critters hind walls, but they can certainly point 'em out). Since hydra don't do as much damage, you generally have to reapply them, while moving around yourself (to draw targets into range, and keep out of range yourself).

How much to add? If this would be your secondary attack, max it after maxing your primary; if a tertiary, maybe ten points; if (with hydra) simply a scouting tool, one will do.

Now this is just my POV; any other Meteor/Hydra users out there?

[DinoDoc]

Thanks, TMM. You've helped me complete my new Sorceress paper build. Tell me if this is better than the first.

Warmth: 1
Frozen Orb: 20
Static Field: 1
Glacial Spike: 5
Energy Shield: 1
Cold Mastery: 10
Hydra: 10
Fire Mastery: 10
All Pre-reqs: 1

This is the stat point distribution I was thinking of going with.

Strength: 60 (for frostburns)
Dex: BASE
Vitality: 200+
Energy: 100+

[Chowlett]

My gut feeling is that a warmth of 1 would be too low. My sorc has an altered warmth of 6, giving +90% recharge, or so. I have no problems, but was running out at lower levels. You may find that until you get your energy up, you may have difficulty.

About the only other thing I'd say is that at level 1, the radius on SF is pitiful, and you have to get very close to the monsters your attacking. The damage doesn't increase, but the radius of effect does increase dramatically. I wouldn't be happy with mne at less than about 3.