Ok people, reality check here. We’re talking about someone who’s just bought Diablo and has 2 level 10 characters. They don’t need advice on 90th level Hell runs.
Daddypants, pick any 2 trees you like and that sound cool and look fun. After you’ve got a few character classes through normal difficulty, try those characters again at Nightmare level. Then have fun trying the classes you haven’t beaten the game with at normal difficulty.
You are now ready for a Hell run, also it is now 2010.
In short yout probably going to find Diablo 3 is out for you to play before you need to worry about ultra level min/maxing. Have fun and don’t be afraid to experiment.
2 out of 3 trees is the best way to go at it for every char but like others have said, there might still be skills in the third tree you might find useful.
I also recommend you get the expansion, Lord of Destruction. The two new classes are cool (the assassin is my favorite one of all of the whole game) and the new levels are great.
I completely forgot by the time I read the last post. I suggest then that he stick to the shadow and martial arts trees. In my experience the traps tend to lose their use later on in higher levels. and besides, the Shadow Master skill uses traps so its not such a big loss in versatility to not have them yourself.
On the other hand, the Martial Arts require a lot of finesse to use effectively (managing your charge-ups and finishers), while the traps are fire-and-forget. And my experience is that they remain plenty effective, until you start running into lightning-immunes some time in A4 Nightmare (but almost all single-player builds run into that problem sooner or later). Between having five traps out at once, and the relatively large area each shot covers, they’re one of the higher damage-dealers available. And, of course, the Shadow Master argument cuts both ways, since she also uses martial arts.
Mostly, I don’t reccomend Paladins for inexperienced players on general principle. It’s just a complicated class t play. A lot of its abilities are special-use, and you have to be a bit faster and more aware than normal. Course it’s pretty sweet if you do it right. I never could quite perfect it.
Seriously? You can get to level 75 in Hell with one, maybe two evenings of Tristram/Tomb/Cow/Baal runs. I realize that for a novice player character-rushing is probably a way off, but in my experience Diablo II really lends itself towards min-maxing specifically because it’s possible to advance so quickly.
For a newbie-friendly, more leisurely pace I’d suggest a skelemancer with a handful of levels in Bone Spear to make Act II tolerable. The big problem with the new patches is that characters designed for single-player runthroughs very quickly lose potency, as many points of valuable synergy end up getting wasted (in the grand scheme) on interim skills.
I stand by it. Sure you can grind your way to Hell quite quickly if you’ve got the time to play for hours everyday and know exactly what your doing. Although 1 or 2 evenings does sound implausible. 10 acts in one night, really:dubious:.I’d say it took closer to a week.
A new player, experimenting around, playing casually a couple of hours here and their, trying all the classes.Many months of play before they reached Hell level
Nonsense. The amount of time you spend playing at levels below 70 is far less than playtime above 70. Build planning early is essential to avoid the discouragement of having to toss out an unviable character after you have put time into levelling it.
So my classic bowazon with the seeking arrows and six element damage gems (plus enough mana drain to fire seeking arrows forever) won’t work any more? Of course, I never even played LoD, so what do I know.
Well, as stated above, summoning Necromancers are popular right now. And Necromancers love to party with Paladins. I agree, though, that it takes some good reflexes and practice to get it right.
It’s been a while since I played, but I loved paladins! What is the current build that’s so difficult to play? Are they not as specialized anymore?
I loved running around with multiple auras. Conviction/Vengence, with Holy Freeze or Might on my merc, with a Doom poleaxe, adding a third. And I think there was a rune shield that gave a fourth aura as well, but I can’t remember. Maybe Thorns or Sanctuary?
You think it takes TEN MONTHS to get to hell mode??
And FWIW, Blizzard has never, ever released a game or a patch on time. IIRC, Diablo 2 was delayed for over a year and a half (mostly because they were rebuilding Battle.net). The 1.10 patch took almost two years. And Starcraft 2 is in danger of slipping into Duke Nukem Forever territory.
I’m just sayin’, don’t hold your breath. I’m waiting for D3 as eagerly as anyone else, but I’ll be shocked if it comes out in 2010 at all given Blizzard’s track record…
Some more advice for Daddypants:
**Just play the game and have fun! ** I think I screwed up my first 3-4 characters in that game, but I had a lot of fun learning how everything worked. I’m not sure how easy it is to solo hell mode nowadays in single player. Hell has become insanely difficult since the 1.10 patch. Getting the rarest items and runewords always was on a par with winning the state lottery several times in a row. You might want to try making some b-net characters and jumping online once you’re more familiar with the game. Playing with full parties always was more fun.
Or you might not. When I left D2 a few years back, everyone was basically concerned with doing baal runs to get levels quickly, and getting the “best” gear. There’s a lot of cheating and BS on battle net. You can occasionally find some cool people to play with though.
Took me at least that long from buying the game to trying Hell mode. Sure if your hardcore grinding hours a day,every day,you could level characters up very quickly.
I played it casually,a couple of times a week, breaking off to play Deus Ex or whatever the ultra-hot game at the time was. I never even completed normal difficulty with the paladin as i found it dull. I did try both a Spearazon and a Javazon with the Amazon however. Completing D2 on Nightmare with those 2 plus the other character classes, 10 months easy.
Wow, y’all are really making me want to play again. Are there any dopers still playing regularly? Has anyone been refreshing the mules we used to have?
To the OP: If you want to learn the game, the best way is by going on B.Net and playing with other Dopers. You will learn more about the game playing with people like Chronos then you will any other way. If you want to start a new character on B.Net let me know and I’ll start playing with you.
I think this is another difference between single player and multiplayer that people are talking about, here. I’ve personally seen characters go from newly-created to level 75 in A5 Hell in a single evening, but that was only possible because there were other high-level characters actively helping the new char out in every way the Straight Dope brains could think up. Even if you don’t have a regular group of friends you play with, you can level pretty fast in Baal runs with anonomys nobodies. But if you’re actually genuinely playing single player, then there will be spots that will slow you down considerably (where exactly they are depends on your build), and it’ll be a long time before you can solo the high-exp runs like Baal (and probably slower, even then).
This is absolutely true and good to remember. 0 to 75 in a decent weekend was quite easy if you had two or three dedicated pals and a Duriel mule. If you are 75 and do Baal runs with a full pack of 80-somethings, you can crack 80 in a short Saturday morning’s work.
For me, “single player” means 85+ soloing in Hell.
If you are playing honest-to-goodness single player, then you can level quite quickly with decent build using Players X. Either way, you only have to take your time if you want to. It is not inevitable, even if you do not have a great deal of playtime at your disposal.
Thanks for all the great advice. I’m playing casually right now. I try to get an hour or so in each night, but the Mrs. and I have other things going on as well, not to mention my 360 that is collecting dust. I’m just playing normal mode, single player and having fun with that. I started a barbarian last night. Picked up one of the shouts as a skill after a couple of points in bash. I’m not sure I like having to hit a function key before clicking one of the mouse buttons. How do you remember what skill is linked to what F key - sticky note?
Blizzcon has been announced for mid-August. FWIW, I expect Stargate 2 around Xmas and D3 in summer or fall of 2010.
Go into settings, and you can map every button to whatever you want. I usually have things set up for ASDF, QWER, ZXCV and a few other randoms (like SPACE for weapon switch, 1234 for the belt slots, etc.).
Also, you might want to play around with the Players X function. In DII, the more players in a game, the more experience monsters give you (they also get more life as well). It makes leveling up quite a bit easier if you need to revisit areas before moving on. I think you just type in “players X”, with “X” being a number between 1 and 8. You may need a slash or something before it. Once you enter it in correctly, you get a confirmation message on the screen.
As for remembering the buttons, I tend to use the same button for similar functions. I have my skill buttons set to QWER ASDF and F1-F8: Q is always something that chills or otherwise hampers enemies, like Bash or Freezing Arrow, W is always something that targets many enemies, like Strafe or Zeal, E is my basic attack for a small number or single target, and so on. F1 I always have set to my Tome of Town Portal, the other low F-keys are usually buff skills like shouts or summons, F6 is something that helps me move around faster like Teleport or Vigor, and so on. Of course, this is just me: You can use whatever patterns make sense to you. Also note that you can change the skills you have on both left and right click, so you always have two things you can do without the keyboard.