Diablo II

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I'll need some help from you to answer that. Druids have three skill trees like all classes, but the three trees are radically different. There is a shape shifting tree which is more for a melee fighter build, an elemental tree that will make you into a spell caster, and finally a summoning tree which will make you like a necromancer. You can go with any of those options, but the thing is that since all three trees have a lot of synergies within the same tree, you have to first decide what general type of character you want to play before I can give you build recommendations.

 

Heh...

In my preliminary run throughs (Normal game only) with each character I'm putting one point in each skill just to test them out. I just have the two expansion characters left to do. The Sorcercess is by far my fav and unless the Druid or Assassin blows me away she'll be the class I start fresh from level one with and go through Hell.


I see the Druid is the most versatile.
What a good weapon?

All the other classes seem to have a clear arms choice (Paladin = shield+one handed. Amazon = Bows, etc...)

Does it depend on the build?
If I go shapeshifter/fighter should I use a big two handed weapon and if I go elemental a bow maybe?

 

Druids get bonuses (to swing speed) when using mace class weapons. Most notably things like clubs, mornings stars and mauls. In fact, there are some unique and set items from the mace class that are specifically designed with a druid in mind (they give bonuses to druid spells). You certainly are not forced to use a mace class weapon - a druid can use any weapon assuming they meet the level, strength, and dexterity minimums - but you probably will. You see, mace class weapons are some of the highest damage weapons in the game, with the major downside being that their swing speed is very slow. The druid overcomes that problem.

Take a look at the trees when you start your build. There's really no way to screw a druid up as long as you concentrate most of your points on one tree. If you concentrate on the shape shifting tree, you'll want to max out lycanthropy, and get points in either werebear or werewolf (I'd highly recommend concentrating on one of them, and not trying to do both). If you go with a summoner, you'll notice that spirit wolves, dire wolves, and grizzly bear all synergize with each other, so a skill point spent in any of those three skills makes all three types of summons better. Same thing with the elemental tree. (As an aside, I think calling the third tree the "elemental" tree is a bit inapprpriate, because half of the skills in this tree do physical damage.) It can be a powerful build if you really concentrate on this tree. Half the skills do fire damage, and half the skills do physical damage. (And there is one skill that does both, and gets synergies from both types of skills.) A healthy mix of both types of these skills means you'll be able to take on both fire immune and physical immune creatures in hell.

One word of warning - if you transform to a werewolf or werebear, you'll only be able to cast summoning spells while in that state. You can only cast elemental spells while in human form. (Which is another reason why I said that the three trees are distinct - it's lliterally impossible to specialize in both the shape shifting and elemental trees.)

 

Loving the army of pets I have.
My ravens (found a +3 to raven rare helm from Blood Raven in the graveyard) and wolves and most of all my worm. Yeah I know it's a vine but it looks like a worm.

Just saved Cain tonight and am heading off to see a certain countess tomorrow.

 

What - no spirit?

 

Heh...
Still low level and ACT I.

About to face Andariel and hit level 18 in my next session.

 

The first spirit available is a level 12 spell - it gives you +30% life and is well worth the point investment.

 

Yes, I got them all.
I confused what you said with the (level 18) spirit that gives you attack bonuses.

Now which wolf should I level up because I can only use one at a time?

I assume I should take grizzly (when I get it later) to 20 and one of the wolves.
Then an elemental attack to 20 too.

I'm leaning to a summon druid with one good elemental attack.

 

As for summoning, remember that you can have 5 spirit wolves or 3 dire wolves or 1 grizzly. If you chose to take your grizzly to 20, you probably don't want to take either wolf to 20, as you cannot have wolves (of either type) and a grizzly at the same time. The only purpose of investing points other than in your primary summons is to get the synergy (which isn't that bad of an idea to be honest).

As for which of the three choices is the best, you can make an argument for any of the three. With the grizzly you get one really tough summons, with dire wolves you get 3 fast, really tough summons, and with spirit wolves you get 5 fast summons that eat corpses to regain life. I personally like the spirit wolves, because at high level they can do decent damage, and I like having five wolves running around the screen as a meat shield for my druid. However, all three summoning spells synergize with each other, so there's no harm in placing a point or two in each and deciding which one you like the best. Any point spent will make whatever summons you end up deciding on that much better, so no point is really wasted.

As for the elemental tree, I think maxing only one skill is a very bad idea. That tree is loaded with synergies, and if you are going to invest in that tree at all, you are going to want to sink a bunch of points into it. If you only invest in one skill, the damage is not going to be sufficient past normal difficulty. If you're looking for "one good elemental attack" maxing just one skill is not the way to go.

 

I finally got my Druid to ACT IV (Hell).

No deaths so far.

 

playing online for the first time since patch 1.10 was released, curious about how to work my summoning necro. Currently got lower resist, max skel mages, (level 76 with 5 points to spare), max summon mastery, summon resist to 11, (where it stops going up by even 1 point of resist) and 2 points in poison for corpse explosion (fun).

The real question I'm asking is whether to max skeletons or revives. I got 1 point in fire golem just because , but I'm not looking to have golems be my awesome. Also got an act 2 merc for the aura.

What are good stats to boost after I get str to the min for armors and vit high? Energy doesn't seem overly important and dex might be good for blocking, but iono.

And another question, my pally. Spent 0 points skills or attributes. any advice? (not hammerdin, definately wanna go melee, but I don't know which skills are worth getting now. Maybe Sacrifice max'd with life steal? and fanat?).

 

omni, I would start putting points into either raise skeleton (the warrior ones not the mages) or corpse explosion. More points in corpse explosion expands the radius of effect. I have 20 points spent in corspe explosion and when I blow up a corpse in affects most of the screen. I personally think you spent way too many points in summons resist. In all the necromancers I've played I've never had a problem with my summons being able to survive. (Sure, one dies occassionally, but I just recast it.)

But if the question is whether to get more skeleton warriors or more revives (and you are satisfied with corpse explosion at its current level of functionality, then I think more skeletons are the clearly superior choice. However, if you have a bunch of skeletons running around, you are also going to want the curse amplify damage. You cast it on your enemies and it doubles the amount of damage your skeletons do.

For the paladin - since the new patch has come out it is very hard to play a paladin specializing in sacrifice. The reason for this is that as of the 1.10 patch, life and mana steal only work at 1/2 the listed rate in nightmare, and 1/4 the listed rate in hell difficulty. However, the amount of damage you take by using sacrifice stays the same. By the time you get to hell it is very difficult to steal back more damage than you receive by using sacrifice.

If you want to specialize in fanaticism, I'd go with a zealot. (In which case you WILL end of maximizing sacrifice as well, as it is a synergy for zeal.) By having both zeal and sacrifice maxed you can make use of both skills, because sacrifice isn't a bad choice throughout normal when the damage isn't so bad.

But there are a ton of different paladins, you can be elemental zealot, an avenger, specialize in fist of the heavans - there's a lot of choices out there.

 

Druid is about 1/4 of the way into ACT V and no deaths!



Beat the big D with only two close calls.

 

So the War Hammer doesn't count as a club?
Driud doesn't seem to get the fast speed bonus with it.

That's the one-handed hammer.
I haven't looked into the big two-handed ones yet as I like my shield.

 

Not all weapons of the same type will have the same speed. Where swords are concerned scimitars and its nightmare/hell counterparts usually have very fast attack speed for most characters for example.

You really can't go wrong with any skill build as long as you put points in ones that seem effective and stop putting points in any that seem to lose effectiveness. Then you can start playing around with more focused builds later on.

Careful of skill builds circulating around. A lot of them are only for PvP or people who have accumulated items from beating the game a gazillion times.

 

Well, technically a war hammer is in the mace class, but yeah, it's in the same weapon class as clubs. Just because druids get bonuses from mace class weapons doesn't mean that they will swing all mace class weapons quickly. War hammers are probably the slowest swinging one handed weapon in the game. That said, your druid might be swinging it slightly quicker than other characters. You might have "slow swing speed" whereas if another character equipped it, the description would be "very slow swing speed" (and yes, there is a difference).

From personal experience, I never liked war hammers. They do decent damage, but the swing rate is so slow, that you're usually better off going with something that swings faster. It's better to use a quick weapon that has slightly lower damage, if you can get two swing off in the time it takes you to swing once with a war hammer. (Also, as SI points out above, druids can swing weapons that are not in the mace class quickly, because it's just a fast weapon.

 

About to finish up my Druid this weekend.

Assassin is the last one to do.
What's she like?
Melee?
I see her claws never seem to offer boosts to her skills (like the Paladin shields).

 

It's a pity that the game doesn't give any indication that not only different weapons have different swing speeds but different classes have extensive differences in the length of the base swing of various weapons.

Try Paladin's Zeal using a spear class weapon and compare that to Amazon's Jab, for example.

 

Some interesting finds late in my druid game.
A claw with +1 to all Assassin skills.
A rare helm with +1 to shadow skills along with small bonuses across the board and even one socket to boot.

The game must know I'm doing an Assassin next.


And I found a level 67 set item in the Tal Rasha set!!!

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Almost forgot...

And I even got my first Exceptional Unique!!!

The Peasant Crown.
It's the Unique war hat with +1 to all skills and many other good bonuses.

It's way better than any druid helm I found.
No luck at a good one of those.

 

It seems I've made a grievous mistake. War Hammers are actually of the "hammer" weapon type, not mace. This particular weapon type includes the Maul and Martel-de-fer apparently.

Different weapons of the same type can still have different attack speeds. This correction is for people who have plans to make rune words like Heart of the Oak... Mace is not the same as Hammer type.
I've just recently learned this the hard way.