Diablo II

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And I'm playing for the very first time!

I got the battle chest (Diablo I and II) at Best Buy when they had it on sale a week or two ago.
Never played them the first time they came out...



One was easy as pie but two looks to be a huge adventure.

I could use a little guidance, but no story spoils please.



First off I'm a Paladin.
I could use some build info.

Starting stats:

Strength: 25
Dexterity: 20
Vitality: 25
Energy: 15


You get 5 points per level and I'm 16 and added my 75 points as such:

Strength: 53 (+28/1.87 per level)
Dexterity: 42 (+22/1.47 per level)
Vitality: 40 (+15/1 per level)
Energy: 20 (+5/.33 per level)

I've cheated towards strength so I can wear the heavy armor as soon as possible, and dexterity to fight better. I haven't been cheating Vitality too much have I? My HP seems a little low to me but I have no background for the game as I'm a n00bie.

And soon I'll have to start picking which skills to boost up beyond level one.
Any advice out there from Paladin experts?

I found this site and they give some good data but not much as to stat building:

http://www.battle.net/diablo2exp/

I'll be heading off to fight Andariel to end act one soon.

 

Glad you picked up this great game! It's a decade old but still addictively fun, even in inglorious 800x600 resolution.

Alas, the only advice I can give you is to stay away from the Paladin unless you're going to be doing a lot of multiplayer...the Paladin's strength comes from auras that help out the entire team, but that doesn't help you much if you're playing by y'self. Not that you can't beat the game as a Paladin (any class can get up to 30-40 pret' easily), but it'll be a harder climb than if you used another class.

Me, I had the most fun playing the Druid, since he has good summoning and also is a pret' good fighter while in were-shape. I ignored the magicka spell tree for him (too weak).

I'd be tempted to reinstall D2 if I weren't already looking to reinstall Beyond Good and Evil to celebrate the upcoming sequel...

 

Awww shucks.
I wanted a class that wore some mega-duty armor and flipped a coin between him and the Barbarian

So you think he's the lame class...

I thought the Amazon might have been the weakest.

Well I was just going to play though in normal mode and use a couple of different classes and see which I like best to take that one into the higher modes all the way to Hell.

 

Try this site for lots of info.
http://www.lurkerlounge.com/
It also has links to more good sites. There are many build guides out there.

I never took a melee character all the way through Hell difficulty but I think any character can do it. My favorites were Necromancer, Sorcerer and Amazon.

BTW which version are you playing? The various patches up thru 1.10 made many balancing changes to make the characters more equal. At one time the Amazon was the Uber character.

It really only gets fun in Hell difficulty when monsters may have two complete immunities, like complete physical immunity and fire immunity. then it is a real challenge to kill them.

There are official forums on battle.net that have lots of help. Diablo.ii also has good forums. There is a link on the lurkerslounge site.

PS be sure to find the info on the secret Cow Level. Way cool

 

Going with Strength is not a bad idea.

With the 1.11 patch, some of the older skills that you might not normally use become useful by adding bonuses to the other skills you actually use. An example for the Paladin, Zeal is a skill that will serve you well throughout the game. Therefore, after sixth level, you won't use the Sacrifice skill. But the points you sink into Sacrifice now add to the damage that your attacks with Zeal do.

You may not what to neglect energy. Zeal, Prayer and some other auras and abilities you may want to use rely on mana, and energy determines your mana available.

Just curious, did you get the Lord of Destruction expansion with the battle chest? If not, then I don't know if what I said about the skills may not apply...

Also, If you like more of an RTS feel, try the Necromancer. At higher levels, you have a golem to act as a melee assault troop, a few Skeleton mages for cover fire, some sweet spells of your own to fire at troublesome opponents and after level 30, you can resurect enemy creatures that fall to your horde to fight for you. I never got a feel for the curses though...

 

Yes.

It's the Expansion Gold Master Version 1.07

I just found the Horadric Cube last night.
Could only upgrade my gems tough ,as I don't have good stuff to craft yet.

 

If you go to Blizzard's web site, you can get the most recent patch.

With the 1.11 patch installed, I find that my paladin takes a point or two in most of the auras, but my main three skills are Sacrifice, Zeal and Thorns.

Thorns will hurt then worse than they hurt you, good for those big heavy hitting monsters.

Zeal gives you multiple attacks (maxes at 5), and will spread them out if you are swarmed (good for corwd control). Zeal also increases your accuracy with those shots.

Sacrifice, even when not used actively, adds to the damage of your Zeal attacks will do.

With that set up, my level 25 Paladin walked into the early parts of Act IV and cleared the first three distinct areas without getting kacked once, and tried to replicate that today, but was distracted with a phone call while swarmed. I'm not worried, as I still feel that my level is too low for what's coming shortly...

Edit: Did you know that your Horadric Cube can take three rings (Not yellow, gold or green, just normal magic) and transmute them into a Magic Amulet? It works the other way to. Three Amulets change to a ring. Occasionally you get one that's really useful, but I hear that the rings and amulets you make get better as you get to higher levels.

You can also upgrade runes in he same manner as you upgrade gems...

 

The last Necro I played had big points in Amplify damage and Iron Maiden. Amplify's extra 100% damage really helps my summons to plow through monsters, and Iron Maiden is useful against those hard-hitting freaks like Uber Meph, Uber Diablo and Uber Baal...

 

Grrrr...

The 1.11 patch makes the Palidan's prayer (basic level 1 heal aura) no longer passive.
It still tries to heal once your all max out and eats your mana down to zero.

I tried starting a new game with the patch but that's still there.

Probably an upgrade for the battlenet to even out the classes but it sucks in single player.

 

DotW: I'll have to see about picking them up with my Necro. He's in the late stages of Act III, so it may not be in place in time for the first run through Act IV and V...

Aces: Sometimes it's best to swap auras with your paladin. Like only using Prayer when you actually need to heal (and have time to wait). I find that the majority of the time I run Thorns on my Paladin anyway...

 

Amplify damage is my favourite Necro curse. Iron Maiden is great but loses a lot of effectiveness on Hard and Hell difficulties.

 

I started over (same Paladin class) with the 1.11 patch.
I made a few mistakes, the biggest was using the "imbue item" in Act 1 not realizing I should save it until I got a nicer armor/weapon later in the game.

I'm back past where I was and am about to finish Act 2 in Tal Rasha's Tomb.

Playing the 1.11 patch makes many more rare items drop early on.
I actually had to choose between multi-items way back in Act 1.


And I made this so far without dying too!

My hire got nailed though by the boss Andariel in Act 1 and by those lighting shooting beetle things once in the tombs in Act 2.

Post 1000!

 

With the Paladin, you can put a point or two into each of the resistance auras and use them when you expect to need to defend against the element in question...

 

I've seen to very interesting Paladin builds. The first spelt all his skill points on charge as soon as possible, resulting in a 5-6 hit kill on Diablo by the time he got up to him, the second put all his points into that Holy Hammer thing, allowing for a large AoE spam of flying hammers that 1 shot almost all Hell creatures.

Boring builds to play from what I gather, but as effective as hell.

 

I saw a conversion and thorns build, but I tried it and didn't care for it. The idea is to convert an enemy and when his buddied attack it, they get hurt from your thornd aura...

 

I like the Paladin class a lot - I tend to always use Zeal as my main attack, with Holy Freeze, Holy Shock or Fanaticism as my active aura.

They arent quite as effective at killing as sorceresses, but are very versatile.

Put points into strength until its 120 or so, about the same for dex, and the rest for vitality. If you plan on playing the game on Hell difficulty (which is entirely optional), you need lots of hitpoints. To get to hell difficulty, you need to finish normal difficulty, then start again on nightmare difficulty (you start at act 1 but everything is harder), finish that then start on hell difficulty.

Necromancers, Sorceresses and Barbarians are my favourite classes.

 

Actually, the last time I finished Hell difficulty solo, it was with a paladin. A couple of points here - Grey Magistrate is completely accurate in saying that a paladin is a fairly difficult class to play when you're a newbie and soloing. But it is possible. My paladin used the aura holy freeze with the skill zeal. I maxed the following: Holy freeze and it's synergy resist cold, to take my cold damage way up, and I also maxed zeal and it's synergy sacrifice to get me physical damage up to respectable levels as well. I placed a single skill point in vengence to deal with the rare creature I ran into that was both cold and physical immune (meaning my standard attack would not hurt it). I also spent about 5 points in holy shield, to improve my blocking chance and defense.

As for allocating your five stat points per level, here is what I would recommend:

Strength: Needed to wear your equipment. The more you sink into strength, the more options you have. A lot of people plan out what they need their strength to be in order to wear the equipment they have. Since you obviously don't know what your end-game equipment will be, it makes forecasting a bit difficult. I would say that you need at least 100 strength unless you really want to limit your equipment choices. You may want to go as high as 150 if you want to expand your equipment options in hell difficulty.

Dexterity: This is mostly needed to get a high blocking percentage. If you place your mouse cursor over your defense stat in your character sheet, it will tell you what your percent chance to block is. 75% is the highest you can ever get to, and I recommend you shoot for that as a goal. Unfotunately, the formula for calculating blocking percentage is based on character level, so the higher your level, the more points you have to sink into dexterity to maintain your 75% block. The problem is dexterity doesn't do too much for you other than blocking chance (it does give a small attack rating boost and a small armor class boost). So you want to minimize the points spent in it. The paladin has two ways to do this:

1. Invest a few points into Holy Shield. 5-10 points will greatly improve your chance to block. It has diminishing returns though, so there is absolutely no need to take this up to skill level 20. I spent 5 points with my paladin build, although with my items the skill was effectively being used at level 9.

2. Get a shield with a high base blocking value. Your two best options would be a magical bone shield or tower shield with the "of deflecting" suffix on it. Any of the class specific paladin shields with the "of deflecting" suffix would also be great, as they will give you resistances to boot!

Vitality: Every point you can spare should go here. Every point you spend gives you 3 life points (which is a pretty good exchange compared to other classes), plus you get an automatic 2 life points every time you gain a level. On Hell difficulty, monsters hit for a ton of damage, and for a melee class like a paladin that has to get up close and personal to monsters, you're going to need a sizeable life pool. I would recommend having at least 800 life before you start hell difficulty, although 1000 would be better. You can never have too much life, so there's no such thing as a wasted point here.

Energy: I recommend never placing a single point here. Most paladin skills require a small amount of mana. There are a variety of weapons, rings, amulets, and even a couple of helms and armor that have mana steal as a property. The magical name that you would look for is "of the bat", which will give you between 2%-5% mana steal with each hit you do. Having a small bit of mana steal in your equipment should be sufficient to keep your skills going. Any points you spend here are points that aren't going elsewhere, and since you have fixed needs at strength and dexterity, points spent in energy are ultimately going to come out of vitality. As a melee character you'd always want more life than mana. Plus, paladins get an automatic 1.5 mana increase with every level up (you alternate between 1 and 2 mana each level up), so your mana pool will grow gradually.

So in summary:

Strength: 100-150 (depending on equipment/preference)
Dexterity: Depends a lot on what your shield is and how much you spent in holy shield, but go to 100, and then add a point or two per level to keep the blocking at 75%.
Vitality: Everything you can spare. Should be around 200 by the time you reach level 70-75.
Energy: Nothing - rely on mana steal.

 

if you go to http://strategy.diabloii.net/ and look at some of the 1.10 guides (not really THAT different from 1.11). I like the tesladin personally, that and i've always been fond of sorcs (d2 AND bioware games)

 

Right now, My paladin is my most advanced character, but I'm still not rushing to finish the rest of act IV just yet. I'm still going over areas I've already been through to build up experience points. I'm level 27 and want to make 30 before the end of the act.

 

lol

I'm level 27 in Act IV too!

I got killed once in Act III and it was the only time in this game.

I found out what meteor or whatever it's called can do if three or more hit you at once.
Lost 250,000 gold...

So i'm in Act IV and in Hell.
Is there anyway back to the earlier places?
I don't see the gate out of hell in Pandemonium Fortress...