Diablo II character suggestions

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With a bowazon? I can't remember the last time I played with a bowazon. I can only assume that better bows now exist, huh?

I agree with the MeteOrb sorceress. That's a build I've been meaning to try out for a while. What are the synergies usually selected for this build? I imagine Fireball would be useful for a lower level fire spell. I don't remember offhand what synergizes with Frozen Orb, although I think there are a few choices.

The blizzard sorceress and lightning trapsin have two fatal weaknesses IMO - on hell you frequently run across enemies immune to your primary attack. In this regard a MeteOrb is far superior in that there's very few creatures you'll find immune to both fire and cold. (Sure, you'll have areas where some monsters are immune to fire, and others immune to cold, but there will be few in any monsters immune to both fire and cold.)

I never liked Fishymancers, although I have heard good things about the build. Maybe I'm just not making good skill selections. What is the base build for this? What do you do for synergies, and what's the general order?

Hammerdins are very powerful builds, but I've always had trouble with them in confined areas, as their hammers disappear as soon as they strike something. When you are outdoors or in dungeons with wide corridors, they are great. I have major problems with them in the maggot lair, which is unfortunate, as that is a required area.

Conc barbs are still my favorite. They are the only option that has a built-in margin for error on hell difficulty. It's not difficult at all to get a conc barb up to somewhere close to 2000 life points, meaning you can take a hit from just about anything and survive (assuming you have good resistances too). That's because if you have two howling weapons on your weapon switch, your BO should be going off at a minimum of 26 - and that's with the (likely false) assumption that you don't have any other equipment that gives you +skills. My last conc barb had BO that went off at 33 with the weapon switch.

 

IIRC, I have read that bonuses to shouts have been capped to +3 due of balance-issues. Thus the absolute maximum BO can have is actually 23. You can easily imagine why they would do this, considering that Oak Sage can grant some 3x bonus to HP and BO probably doubles that.

What is "Pindle's Garden?" Some über-drop?

Guess that makes me super good for just having finished Hell Baal HC with my lv.80 wind-druid. You may salute "Guardian Wordplay" now.

Have no idea. Never filmed anything, but guess that could be worth knowing if I'm to do anything similar. Have to look at it. If you happen to solve the problem before me, do tell. And give us a glimpse of your stats and items before going in.

 

Pindle's Garden would refer to the area you enter when taking Anya's portal. It's filled with "dead" skeleton warriors which rise up a while after you enter.

Shout capped at +3? I've never heard that before and I don't think there is any cap on that skill nor any other skill.
A different matter are so called oskills. Those are skills from another class that are granted via items.

Windforce is still a powerful and commonly used bow among bowazons, but not as much as before patch 1.10. Compare with runewords like Faith.

Blizzard sorceress have a weakness, that is true. As with the MeteOrb she has to depend on her Mercenary to kill some monsters. The act bosses do not pose that problem though.

Lightning Trapsin does not have that weakness since she has Death Sentry to kill Lightning Immune with. The trapsin can also use Mind Blast and Cloak of Shadows to handle or avoid monsters she has serious problems with.

Hammerdins have a single weak spot and that is the Maggot Lair. There is no other area which makes it really hard to use the hammers. One easy solution to that is to get teleport on an item. Gamble for amulets for example.
I can think of two more options:
- Let your merc handle it.
- Use Smite.
It's not like you can't get through the Maggot Lair. It will just take time.

 

Yes oskills are capped. But AFAIK, items that grant + skills are not. In fact, I know I have played Barbs in v1.11 that have had over level 23 in skills.

I do know that you don't get any synergy bonuses for +skill items. You are only granted the bonus if you are actively using the skill. So a helm that gives +3 to all warcries will give the bonus when you use them, but you won't get the synergy bonus to increase the duration of those warcries.

 

What Earl Grey said, just inside Anya's Portal. Don't kill Nihlathak and the portal always remains open.

Yeah that's definitely a good effort. I partied with a wind druid the other day. I don't think he was particularly careful though - he died 4 times!

Anyway I'll keep looking for a program that doesn't turn my PC into a 386 when I run it with Diablo.

 

Found 'VirtualDub' and it seems to work pretty neatly. Not sure how well it records, but the editing is easy enough. It can be found from www.snapfiles.com -> Freeware -> Video-editing. Then there is Macromedia Director and Sony Vegas, but don't know about their recording capabilities yet.

 

You can kill Nihlathak and have the portal remain open. The key is you can't kill Nihlathak AND touch the waypoint on the second level of the dungeon. I usually kill Nihlathak the first time I go to that area, but as long as you don't touch the WP, you're OK.

 

Ah... I see.

@ Wordplay
I made a crappy video! For some reason it crops a little bit off the top of the screen and it flashes a lot. It's a whopping 300+MB so might have to trim it down/compress. It's my entire Throne of Destruction run. Nothing too exciting, just a screen of minions running around.

 

Out of curiosity, how did you beat Hell Bhaal without killing Nihlathak? I was pretty sure that killing him was necessary to fight the ancients.

 

To kill the ancients you just need to be the appropriate level, Norm: 20 / NM: 40 / Hell: 60

 

The Nihlathak quest has it's own areas which you can only access from Anya's red portal in Harrogath or via the WP in Halls of Pain. These areas are not connected to the remaining areas (except via the Red portal) so you don't even need to enter any of them in order to continue with the "main" quests.

I run Nihlathak for keys with my Hammerdin and to do that fast I have had to take the Halls of Pain WP. It's incredibly fast, taking about 5-10 seconds to get to Halls of Vaught and once there another 5-20 seconds depending on how lucky I am in finding him.
The only thing that makes that a challenge are the bugged viper damage and of course Nihla's CE's.

 

I was aware of Nihlathak being a separate area from the rest of the game. However, I always assumed the game wouldn't let you access the Anceints without defeating Nihlathak first.