I am having a lot of trouble deciding what my first character is going to be on the 23rd. Part of me really wants to go paladin, because you can effectively go through normal, or at least to mid 20’s as a holy fire paladin, with ease. Then swap to hammerdin, and effectively run through the game to hell. But, I also kinda wanna go Sorc, to start farming that gear faster. I know I am going to make one of everything, but for a strong start, I can’t seem to decide if I wanna go sorc, or pala. Sorc can MF with little to no gear, pala can MF with minimal gear, but does require at least some.
Each day, I flip flop to wanting to make one or the other first.
So I humbly ask the Forum’s opinions, and pro’s/con’s that you guys know for Sorc Vs Paladin for start.
A sorc has easy access to teleport, which helps a lot setting up for quick hell meph runs. Once you can farm meph, you get plenty of useful gear, which also helps setting up a stronger hammerdin next.
Cold sorc is the best starting build by a long shot, due to teleport and cold mastery. You can MF ancient tunnels, mephisto, andariel, etc. to build up gear for your hammerdin and other characters.
But even if your hammerdin is geared, sorc will be a faster MF’er (in areas without cold immunes) until your paladin has enigma. Without it though, you can bring your hammerdin into Chaos, Pit, and other high value areas where cold sorc would struggle. And paladin can still zoom around with Vigor so still quick. Definitely cold sorc is the best starter though just to farm some decent gear quick.
There isn’t really a rush, but I know how I play most games. I generally play far more hours than I intend to play, and am not rushing, but simply play for many hours, which in turn get’s me further down the rabbit hole.
Based on my usual playstyle of almost all games, I will have a character at least part way through hell on the first day, even if I go solo play, and try to take it slow. (I don’t rush it, I just put alot of hours in at a time) But there are points where you just need that gear to get further, or maybe I am misremembering. So I am not sure if I will be able to go straight through with the paladin, and be able to effectively farm it some gear, or if I should build that sorc first, so that I can farm gear for the next one.
But as you said, there is no rush, and it’s not even ladder, so maybe I should go hammerdin first, with the slower magic finding, to sort of help slow down progression?
I think part of my “why rush” response should have included “Why take the same old path?”
My first instinct is to go Barb or Sorc. But that’s what I ALWAYS do. Probably gonna leave my comfort zone this time around. Maybe go Necro or Zon for the first play through.
I’m probably just projecting on you. If Sorc and Pally are your top choices, go with the one you’ll have the most fun playing.
I can only agree with the other comments here. Ignore “optimal” and just have fun! I’ll start with a trapsin, which is a lot of fun to me and also quite good for mf etc.
I was obviously thinking Sorc first, but now I’m leaning towards Fishymancer. Both are decent MF, although Sorc is faster, but I play SSF so I’m in no rush. I’ll be playing this game for the next 20 years;)
That’s a fair assessment. I didn’t think of it as taking the normal path. My usual path is Sorc first then everything else later. But I usually spend most of my time on paladin. But since that’s the later one, I have never actually leveled as a paladin. It’s always just been bug rushed, then leeched xp in cbaals to get levels, then put on the gear the sorc farmed, and go. So I kind of wanna try leveling and actually going through the game as a paladin.
But going even further out of my comfort zone, it might be fun to run druid or necro or assassin.
I’ve been having a similar debate. As it isn’t ladder why bother with a character that I want to play or would make on ladder. My other thought is will they let us do HC without having to beat normal? If we have to beat normal I may just make a sorc so I can rush others to HC.
I’ve been thinking about a melee assassin or wolf druid. As I’ll just remake things when Ladder starts or if I have to unlock HC, why go for my Necy or Pally right out the gate.
I have wandered away from sorc start a few times and deeply regretted that decision after a few days. You can run things like hell chaos with a hammerdin but with junk gear it still is not super easy. You can die very fast and the runs are slow. Sorc allows you to teleport with ease to bosses like Andariel and mephisto which are easy to kill with a spell like blizzard.
The sorceress has the best wealth gain and gear progression for starting out. However if you are not worried about gaining wealth at a more efficient pace. Something like the hammerdin is not a bad choice as you could get lucky running TC85 areas with a high rune drop or something godly like deaths web, fathom, tyraels etc, however hammers can be kinda of annoying without enigma.
Other good starts are Lightning Fury javazon for running hell cows which requires you to get a hell baal quest kill before making the cow level and then you could toss areas like frigid and pindle into the mix. Summon Necro can clear the whole game at a very slow pace, I think its alot weaker for boss kills tho because of utilizing corpse explosion for AoE clearing.
Windy druid can do decent too but again positional tornadoes without enigma can be annoying. Trap assassin can be viable with the lightning trap and death sentry (pops corpses like the necro spell). Fire trapper can also run hell cows fairly well. If barb is your thing I hear you could make a warcry barb and farm hell travincial and use item find on the corpses also. Just some ideas for you.
First character should always be sorc, no matter what. Nothing beats teleport. Once you find decent gear then you can make whatever character you want. Doing countess or Andariel runs without tele will take you forever. Countess has 5 floors and you also have to find the tower first.
If you have no one to group with, play Sorceress. You will be able to effectively farm alone in several places with decent area levels once you reach Hell.
If you have some people to play with, go for Paladin. It’s always easy to find a Sorceress to join your group. She can be the one to teleport the group to CS or Baal, while you’re doing shenk/eldrich/high council