Hello all! I’m not a new player by any means! Quick background, I’m 30, and was introduced to diablo when I was like 7 or so by my brother who unfortunately passed away in 2008, so Diablo is very close to my heart. I for many years wanted to make some youtube stuff for each of the games and made a longplay for 3 recently and want to make one for every character on each game. I’ve beaten 2 quite a few times but never anything really super competitive and would need to grind a bit to keep pace with end game Diablo mainly, as Baal isn’t as much of a challenge for me. My recent playthrough I did on D2R I played as a summonmancer (my favorite class) and I wasn’t smart as I was doing practice for a “normal only” run to see how it would work with my videos. I have never been the PVP kind of guy and just enjoyed playing the games, so making a build wasn’t top priority. I have a HC summonmancer that does just fine, but his skills are more developed for Nightmare, and he’s really overleveled for Normal at level 44. My question here is what should my builds look like on each character, just looking to beat the game on normal? I know normal isn’t a challenge, and I’d agree, but being dumb and trying to max skeletons and forgetting mastery didn’t help as my skels just imploded everytime a boss was on screen. I’ve played a decent amount of druid, sorc, and amazon as well, so I know a decent amount with them, but any “normal only” builds would be awesome! I do plan on playing without outside help so probably offline. I’m just looking for some tips I can write down to practice with and try out. Thanks everyone!
Cooley on youtube is always a good place to start in terms of finding builds. Ginger gaming mentor and LlamaSC. Ggm is on this forum sometimes.
Basically a summonmancer can do most content you just max skelatal skills and get a source of thorns and a iron golem made of insight. There are builds varying on cost but generall the strongest is
Iron golem made of insight. Merc with bramble and infininity in hand as it has resiprosity with your skeletons physical skills. Reply to me here if you want something more in depth. 1 point in corpse explosion. I dont know if you knew that but ce is the crux of a summonmancers build
Hey anything works! If you have general build ideas for the other classes I wouldn’t be upset at that either! For the most part I’m only looking for builds that’ll get through normal relatively quickly (12 hours or less hopefully) with some minimal grinding.
Not build related, but this is a cool D2R channel to subscribe to as well. It’s the community that keeps this game feeling relevant because no one at Blizzard gives a damn apparently.
That’s true. Even before remaster youtubers like MrLlamaSC and their community kept Diablo 2 alive with custom made challenges, organised pvp, speedrunning etc while official public games were just flooded by bots.
If you’re only interested in beating Normal, there are a lot of build options ranging from efficient to wacky. There are some good starter builds though that people commonly use for leveling, but they often can lose some steam after mid-to-late Nightmare.
A few off the top of my head:
Holy Fire Paladin w/Zeal: Breezes through the game up until Nightmare Act 4 where you start running into Fire Immunes. Just put everything into HF, along with pre-reqs and 5 into Zeal along the way, then start pumping Resist Fire. Melts everything. A few Tir runes in gear can help keep Mana up for Zeal.
Enchant Sorceress: You’ll just be hitting stuff with regular weapons until 18, until the fun really starts, but with the right weapons, this can take you all the way through Hell. Pump Warmth until L18, along with picking up Static and Teleport. Using a socketed bow with damage gems can help get you along until then too. Then put everything into Enchant, and make sure to keep both yourself and you merc Enchanted. Also, start on Fire Mastery when you can. The real magic is if you can get your hands on a Ravenclaw bow for exploding arrows. Everything will start melting at record speed! Like with the HF Paladin, Fire Immunes start appearing in late Nightmare, but Frozen Orb makes a good backup to deal with them.
Summoner Druid: Similar to the Skelliemancer, you have a swarm of minions, but your main damage is going to come from Ravens. Just keep leveling Ravens as you can while prioritizing getting Spirit Wolves to L5, Dire Wolves to L3, and 1pt in Grizzly. Finish maxing Ravens before going further with the other summons. Then I prefer Dire Wolves → Grizzly → Spirit Wolves. I also prefer Oak Sage since for a long time your non-Ravens are going to mostly act as meat shields while the Ravens do the killing. Also remember you can recast Ravens at any time on the enemy you want to target to direct them where you want. It’s a slow’n’steady build, but viable all the way through Hell Baal.
Fire Trap Assassin: Super simple, max and use Wake of Fire for pretty much everything. Put spare points into Fire Blast first and use it for extra damage. Don’t bother with Wake of Inferno until both Wake of Fire and Fire Blast are maxed. Melts pretty much everything until NM Act 4.
I noticed you didn’t mention Amazon or Assassin. I have two builds on my own channel geared for starting from scratch, or ladder starters, and the only two I’ve made so far were for those two characters. My goal is to be able to start from scratch and get through Hell difficulty.
I am a tiny channel, just making content for fun. I also have an off-meta build I designed myself on there called the “Self-Righteous Barbarian” which does incredible for an off-meta build, although very expensive.
Kind feels scummy to self-promote on here… so, there’s that. But, with these details above, you can probably find me.
Thanks for the comment! I’ve played a decent amount with amazon, a few nightmare runs i’d say. Assassin I haven’t played at all whatsoever other than starting up the game to test a bit. And I like doing stuff for fun too. If it gets popular great, but the series is close to my heart, and I truly love playing the games, 4 included.
When it comes to Normal Difficulty builds, pretty much ANYTHING can do it. Just a few that come to mind:
Amazon: Charged Strike/Lightning Fury, Jab/Fend, Freezing Arrow, Immolation Arrow.
Given that Resistance will be a Monster specific issue(with some being Immune), pretty much anything that deals Elemental Damage will be quite strong. Yet if you find a very good 2-H Spear, then Jab/Fend could be a strong build. Just remember that you won’t have a Shield with 2-H Spears.
Assassin: Traps(Fire, Light). While Martial Arts got reworked, it pales to what can be done with Traps since their damage is quite strong for Normal Difficulty and are available reasonably early. It also keeps you from getting hit since Assassin’s defense isn’t the greatest despite having Cloak.
Necromancer: Summoner, Bone. Summoner is the popular pick but my only gripe is that to use Skellies requires Corpses. Yet once you get one, they can do quite well on Normal Difficulty when buffed by Thorns and Amplify Damage combination. Bone is an alternative but can be rather Mana intensive and may not deal the damage you’d like since you’ll be using Teeth all the way until Level 18 when Bone Spear unlocks.
Paladin: Holy Fire, FoH. Holy Fire is the popular pick given how early it unlocks. Yet I must also point out an underrated but still strong pick in FoH since you get Holy Bolt at level 6 too and while it can’t kill everything(Animal/Beast are unaffected), anything it can touch dies really fast(including Act Bosses). Holy Bolt also doesn’t need Conviction to roll over enemies, hence you have Aura Freedom(Meditation or w/e you want).
Sorceress: Pick a tree… Literally any Sorceress build works here, although I think Cold does the best imo.
Barbarian: WW, Concentrate, Frenzy, War Cry. Barbarian relies heavily on your Weapon but once you get one with some solid Chest Armor for Defense, he can defeat just about anything. War Cry relies less on your Weapon and more about +Skills given its a Physical Stun spell. Very Mana intensive build though, hence dual Spirit would be highly recommended.
Druid: Zookeeper, Elemental Druid. Zookeeper is an easy build to pull off while Elemental Druid can deal solid damage but can be mana intensive.
Going into NM and especially Hell though, pretty much everything will face obstacles without -Resistance gear/Infinity save for Bone Spear Necro and FoH Paladin. Barbarian can do well if it has the Weapon/Armor to do it.
regarding summonmancer in normal:
only put few points in skellies at first, the first skill to max is skeleton mastery…
if you don’t rush it and play normally then ,andy ,duriel and meph should die right before the last of your skeletons could die…
unfortuneatly diablo will arrive around clvl 28 your skeletons will lack resistances and life to survive his lightning hose… ufortuneatly the only way to combat diablo this early for a summon necro is by means of iron maiden on diablo + recasting clay golem right where the previous one gets one shotted normal diablo should die after few melee hits on the clay golem, however he’ll often try to hit him in other ways… it’s just a matter of recasting golem in front of diablo, and keep diablo under iron maiden. ( if you don’t want to specialise in curses other than amp damage you may get iron maiden from wand staffmods ( act 1 and 2 shops in normal do wonders here)…
baal is a separate case, of you loose all your minions you must townportal out and go somewhere be it earlier waypoint or act, gather a new army and go lower him down some more… do this 2 or 3 times and you should be good… this problem vanishes in higher difficulties as necro pets have different base stats based on difficulty level… on normal skele life and regen are meh on hell they are tanks… unfortuneatly those stats aren’t displayed properly in the skill description, giving a false feeling that all difficulty levels skeles are the same.
I really wouldn’t worry much about a sophisticated build for normal only… either go with maxrolldotgg and look up leveling guides, or do whatever… as in normal any skill combination will do it is nightmare and especially hell that your build must be fine tuned in order to be proficient, however skills for those difficulties start to unlock in act 5 on normal, so it kind of misses the point of a stream video to gimp yourself with 1 point wonders to pump 1 or 2 skills for a build you don’t intend to finish by going higher difficulties…
Summon mancer is actually one of the strongest builds for clear speed once it gets ramped up. I run a less expensive version with hoto in hand there is alot of flexibility with the build because ou have alot of extra points after you max the base skills and their resiprosity.
Max skellies and skelly mastery 1 point into amp 1 point into decrepify and blind and of course corpse explosion. Then the rest you cant essentially put in anything. I maxed my golem then maxed bone armor.
The end game version of this runs beast in hand with infinity on merc and bramble to stack auras for your minions.