Greetings!
I have never played D2 and know little to nothing about it other than the existence of “Ball Runs” and “Hammerdin.” As a SSF to the core player, how viable is D2 in that regard? Is all content still manageable at high difficulties?
Thanks
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All content is very manageable as SSF, it will just take you longer to get there. You do not need BIS gear to beat Hell (the last of 3 difficulties), but it will be slow. Because the game has trading, SSF will always gear a lot slower than multiplayer. I have personally played single player offline and beat Baal on Hell with 4 different classes.
The game isn’t designed to require BIS gear. It just makes it easier.
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Thanks! Maybe will give it a try when it comes out.
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If you don’t limit yourself to those, I say pretty viable. More enjoyable than bot runs at least.
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This is what you need to aware of. You can’t just plow everything over. You need to learn when to commit and when to draw back. Dying has a price so you want to avoid it. Kiting works but not in every situation. Judgement matters.
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Diablo 2 is best played 1 of 2 ways.
Totally single player, no hand me downs, no help, and you hunt for as many of the rarest items in the game.
Group up for leveling bc it’s super fun to play with others when drops don’t matter, like during leveling.
Pvp is it’s own thing LLD is the only worthy pvp high level pvp is trash.
That’s how D2 is best enjoyed, if you try to group after leveling its garbage unless it’s with friends, if its online it will be cruised by a bot or meta player flexing his youtube video at you.
Play D2 solo, you won’t regret it.
You’ll see there’s rare items to be found unlike D3 where its rare copies of old items and group exp farming lol. I mean greater rifts are great but shouldnt be the rewarded mode / the whole game.
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The game’s style of inundating the player with immune monsters has always been one of its shortcomings to me. As a result, this means some builds will very much not work in Hell without specific items for you or your Merc. Without these, you’re likely to want to have your build focus on 2 damage types/elements. Even then, you’ll still run into mobs you simply can not kill.
Otherwise, Hell prep is pretty much endless Meph/Diablo/Baal runs for your first character. If you’re not a Sorceress with Teleport, expect it to take 5x longer. You might have people snarkily tell you a specific mob is the best source of a specific item, but what they often leave out is you’ll probably still be farming it for weeks if it’s one of the deliberately rarer drops and may never get it even then.
Basically, expect your first character or two to fail if you play blind. I don’t consider that a strength of the game, but some people try to pass that off as learning when it’s really just a bunch of broken/antiquated systems snowballing against the player. Such is why a lot of people want more than just some basic QOL with D2R. Unfortunately, the purists will hem and haw while assuming an otherwise ancient game will somehow captivate a new generation for years/decades.
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My advice for you is to search for mods with better drop chances if you don’t enjoy excessive grind. D2 as a whole is very outdated game and if you are used to more modern aRPGs you might not like it at all.
The real problem are the Blizzard management that don’t want to do a real remake with content updates in order not to cannibalize D4.
It can be brutal if you pick wrong class and / or wrong build.
Manageable if you go for dual element sorceress, possibly even hammerdin.
Was viable but slow going back in 2000-2002. Pretty sure the changes since have made it easier. With mods I’m sure it can be even easier.
It’s not exactly hard to solo Hell, but some classes have a much easier time at it because they’re not as gear dependent.
Sorceress is definitely the way to go if you want an easier time. Don’t go with a Barbarian unless you don’t mind having to farm a bit for gear.
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SSF is great in D2. The game isn’t overly dependent on gear and that’s one of its strengths. People will complain about immunes but there are ways to work around them if you take time to read the skills.
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Depends on how far you want to go… NM is doable, Hell (at least with Sorc) not quite… I mean you won’t get enough LowerRes to beat immunities so SSF in D2 is in large part class-dependant issue tbh
Also depends on expectations.
Hell is fairly easy to get through, slow and steady. Dominating Hell is a different matter.
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Sure it is.
I was bored last year and went back and played through D2 single player with a sorc. I had very limited D2 experience (I played a bit as a kid but I’m not even sure if I beat Normal back then). I was able to solo my way through Hell without a huge amount of trouble. Took me a couple weeks of evenings and weekends.
You don’t need all the lower res stuff, just do a dual element build to get around immunities. I didn’t run into too many dual immunities. I had to fish for a set of ancients without dual immunity to my spec (Frozen Orb + Lightning/Chain Lightning), but outside of that you should be able to kill most stuff with one of your two elements, and skip the odd thing that’s immune to both.
I wasn’t flying through Hell or anything, I wasn’t really playing an optimal spec, but I just liked Frozen Orb so that’s what I primarily used. But with limited D2 experience and a sub-optimal spec, I still managed to work my way through Hell as a solo sorc without too much difficulty.
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Wow! Thank you for the replies people! I will go with either sorc or necro because these are the archetypes that appeal to me from a role play standpoint. I completely forgot about the PvP issue. I am going to be avoiding this feature.
In general, for games this this, I want at some point to kill everyone at max difficulty, with speed not so important.
As loot drops were mentioned, are there gear pieces that are locked behind specific mobs or are there just higher chances to drop Item X?
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I’ve played a metric F load of Diablo 2 over the decades. All content is 100% soloable.
Good Choices. Necro is a ton of fun commanding big armys of skeletons ravaging everything and using mercs auras to boost them etc. Sorc is great for Farming bosses because her easy access to unlimited teleport, and some really powerful nukes.
There are gear pieces locked behind certain level areas of the game. It’s pretty easy to find out where to hunt for the specific item you are looking for. There’s probably hundreds of item calculators online by now. 
Torch is locked behind Ubers (You need to farm keys then organs then fight Ubers). Annihilous is locked behind Uber Diablo (he spawns from selling multiple SOJ’s). Most higher level gear won’t drop on Normal and some won’t drop on Nightmare. Everything else will drop on Hell from any mob. Some mobs/bosses do have a better chance of dropping certain items.