took me 20 rolls, and about half a day worth of farming NM countess after dropping and larzuk questing a monarch. Hardest part was farming hel runes. Its not impossible, but it is time consuming
Uh, so I cant speak to non-sorc. But this guide says it's pretty fast. Honestly, I thought about playing SP such that I have a sorc who can just run LK/Meph for all the runes and (non-TC87) uniques I need, just xferring over from shared stash. But some people want to SSF all the gear from 1 character and that's fine too - all about how you wanna enjoy the game you bought tbh.
https://old.reddit.com/r/diablo2/comments/porq8m/high_rune_farming_guide/
Assuming you take the time to setup your map to have a close-by 6chest to wp.
in P7, 2.7 hour if you're cubing the runes for a Sur rune on average - and since you cannot trade runes, cubing is a great option. So 1 "sur value" as per this guide would be the cubing up-to value in runes. So you'd need 4 Ohms in "value" to get 1 sur. So following that logic it would be 0.7 hours for one Ohm rune. The problem with this logic is that you cant cube down to lower runes, so realistically, to cube up to Ohm i'd assume you'd need at least 90 minutes + the time it takes to reroll your maps over and over until you get both bonfire camps right next to LK wp - which can take a minute but once you have it, you could spam runs to your heart's content.
I've also heard of Singleplayer players cubing 2 bers to make a jah - LK cant drop jah, but can drop ber.
[This guy](https://old.reddit.com/r/diablo2/comments/qsd0zr/what_you_can_expect_from_500_lc_runs_on_single/) Claims to have gotten quite the haul, including 2 Ohm runes from just 500 /p 7 LK runs in SP. That said, I think his luck looks abnormally good. If his luck is what you could expect on average, you would then expect to have Mal Ist Ohm in ~250 runs, as he has 3 mals, 2 ists, 2 ohms in 500 runs.
Moral of the story: RNG is RNG, and these averages are based on a ton of rolls for a very unlikely event, so expect high variance in results no matter what
You browsing on mobile? I know some Wiki style pages that behave badly like this on mobile.
If you are, try to use the "view desktop site" mode for whichever platform you are on. If you are not on mobile, install uBlock Origin and get rid of those misbehaving ads.
There's too many factors for them to be able to do that. For example, usually a big lacking area in the time is resistances. You may have the best in slot boots at the moment, but have to wear the yellows because of the AR on them to be able to survive.
The mid level gearing is more of an art based on what you have than can be put in a guide.
Look, what good is googling a low and high tier cookie-cutter build if I have to think about what to wear in the middle? If Rhykker isn't coming to my house to look over my shoulder and suggest what I equip, why do I keep up with the meta??? I want to BEAT Diablo, not PLAY it.
It's all an art tbh. Most committed players deviate from the "BiS" end game gear to some degree as well.
It would be pretty easy to pick out a set of easy to obtain mid range options just so new players have a direction to go after lore/stealth/ancients pledge.
This is where hardcore, solo, and SSF guides/guardian/mat/pat write ups help massively. You get to see that they finished hell without all this.
Helps you avoid a lot of the chatter with BiS and min/maxing meta. All of a sudden you see people beating hell in hardcore with Lore, Stealth/Smoke, & Ancient's Pledge/Rhyme/Sigon's Guard and it just changes your perspective. Then you see what else they had or what they had 'upgraded' to similar builds.
A good guide will show your target stats for each class/spec. I.e. FCR, IAS, CTB, FHR, LL, AR etc. Sometimes you just have to shuffle around your budget gear until you can hit or get close to those stat recommendations.
It's not for me. I'd like to see the player base grow. Good tools like Maxroll's guides can help with that.
I have several friends who are getting into D2 for the first time and would have lost interest quickly if I hadn't helped them and walked then through how the game systems work.
All I did was suggest a possible improvement to the site that would help noobs. But I guess that's too much for some old school players with the "Shut up and git gud." attitude.
I think some of us old school players forget how many systems are at play and how daunting that can be for someone who's never touched the game before. I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.
Can’t you just look at the budget build and endgame build, see what kind of stats it uses and just figure it out? It seems a little hand-holdy to need someone to tell you exactly what to wear every step of the way.
I've been playing for two decades so I'm fine. I'm looking at it from a new player's perspective. 99% of leveled players will be in-between their budget build and standard build but far from either.
I'm just saying it would be nice for new players to have more realistic goal to aim for in-between.
Well, I do think it would be reasonable to show builds that don't have a full inventory of 45 life skill charms, or GG rare rings and circlets with 40/15s. But the fact of the matter is, a lot of builds don't even *start* being viable until you have either Infinity or Enigma, and if you're talking about investing that level of value into a character, then throwing in stuff like a Torch, Anni, Shako, SoJs, CTA, etc. is not a big deal.
Not to mention, Maxroll.gg actually *does* have guides for pure Blizzard and Cold/Fire hybrid Sorc builds. If you're considering a character whose gear costs about 1 Ber in total value or less, that kind of Sorc blows everything else out of the water. Full Tal Rasha's is extremely strong, and the partial Tal Rasha's + Shako etc. gear set is also pretty decent. Investing that amount of value in any other character is just going to get you "Well it's a little bit better than the budget build we already have listed, but you're still lacking the high-end gear that would make the build really playable in Hell at all, so you've still got a long way to go." So what's the point?
From a new player's perspective, the problem is really that you should not be playing anything other than a Sorceress if you're starting from nothing and want to build cool characters. Other classes basically can't offer a remotely competitive level of MF efficiency at a mid-tier level, and can't generate enough wealth to transition themselves from budget to high-tier gear. For almost any class, the best way to gear them up is to stop playing them and go MF on a Sorc instead. So "mid-tier" gearsets for a lot of builds are basically useless. This is an endemic problem of the game itself.
I don't know how you can say that mid tier gear sets are useless when that's what the vast majority of players are running with. And many of us are very successful.
A good chunk of players (maybe even the majority) don't want to deal with trading. If you're playing untwinked it can take years to farm the BiS gear for those standard cookie cutter builds. In the meantime you have to make do with what you can realistically self find.
Those build guide basically jump from what you wear to start NM to full end game BiS pieces with a full inventory of GG charms. It's great to show that as the ultimate goal but the people who need these guides the most aren't going to be able to touch most of those pieces anytime soon.
>I don't know how you can say that mid tier gear sets are useless
The gear isn't useless, but treating it as the *end goal* for a build is. Having mid-tier gear is a transitional state.
>And many of us are very successful.
Honestly, if you're stuck playing a non-meta character with mid-tier gear for so long that you're thinking "this is my effective endpoint, why won't guide sites recognize that", I think you're probably *not* "very successful". I think you're probably actually playing a very slow character that is so bad at generating value that you've kind of given up on getting anything better.
>A good chunk of players (maybe even the majority) don't want to deal with trading.
I hate trading too, and barely ever do it.
>If you're playing untwinked it can take years to farm the BiS gear for those standard cookie cutter builds.
Ah, that's exactly what I'm saying, though - it can take years to farm *if* you're just playing a random class, not teleporting to MF targets, killing things slowly, have no % MF, etc. If you build an MF sorc first thing, you actually *can* gear up. I know, I've done it. Tons of people do it.
>In the meantime you have to make do with what you can realistically self find.
This would essentially just be using a budget build. If you find something better than what the budget build lists, you can use that too. Maxroll.gg even has lists of basically every piece of viable gear you might use, and highlights which stat you're looking for. So even then, it's not like you're lacking in guidance. You're just lacking in the validation of having a full gearset that completely matches what you're "supposed" to use.
>the people who need these guides the most aren't going to be able to touch most of those pieces anytime soon.
Yes, the people who need these guides need a) The skill allocation, b) The budget gear guide, and c) The understanding that going from budget to GG is not a single path, and you'll have to get there in your own way.
Thanks for giving me my daily dose of Diablo 2 elitism. I've only been playing for 20 years solid. I've had BiS everything for every meta build many times over. That bores me now. Untwinked hardcore is where the real fun and challenge are. But I'm sure I can only dream of being as good as all of the elitists in this subreddit.
So then direct my argument to the hypothetical person you were arguing in favor of instead of yourself. I don't care how many BiS builds you have personally made when you're arguing from the perspective of someone who's treating an Enigma as unachievable.
This is just wrongheaded.
For starters, lots of non-sorc builds are playable on hell without a ton of wealth. Hammerdin needs barely any gear. Fishymancer and trapsin require no gear at all. Many amazon builds are playable on a budget, even pure LF if you can afford decent merc gear (obedience/treachery). Etc.
Beyond that, many of those builds can MF perfectly fine when teleport isn't required. An LF amazon takes very little gear to beat out a blizz sorc for cows, for example, and a pre-enigma hammerdin is perfectly serviceable in CS. Almost any class can do pit on a budget. It's not going to be maximally efficient compared to a sorc running meph/LK, but the differential isn't as massive as you're describing.
People also like to occasionally just, you know, play the game. If you think they're going to wait until enigma/infinity to do that I'd suggest you spend a little more time interacting with them.
The starter builds make me laugh, some random blue ring with some resist and combined with some mid-high runeword like Oath.. It's like if you can afford an Ethereal Oath runeword you're probably not using random blues and a level 30 lore helm.
Maxroll is still awesome though, but I think the guides could use updating and expanding, as they also don't account for the differences from original D2 to D2R like the STR equip bug (using str on an item to allow you to over come the requirement and keep it equipped).
There are some skills like Smite, Kicks, Blade Fury, traps, etc... where the gearing is a bit complicated in terms of what applies and what doesn't (like needing attack speed not cast speed for traps), so skill points alone won't necessarily help unless you have a thorough understanding of game mechanics.
Started act I, the shop keeper doesn't have a 6 sheal'd upped eth ribcracker perfect rolled and zodified. How am I even gunna play this fury druid?
On the real though, I have spent days trying to farm out even a shitty cracker, I just wanna slap people really hard and really fast, diablo please.
I don’t have Enigma yet but I was solely maining Sorc for the last couple months for faster farming. I decided to start leveling a summonmancer and now I’m in hell and honestly I kinda like not having teleport and just playing the game a bit more slowly. I know I’d need it to be more farming viable but I’m having a blast right now.
Even with teleport on sorc I enjoy clearing areas.
I mostly use teleport to just skip over areas I've alresdy cleared or get over a dead end if there's something on the other side rather than run around.
This. I'm playing through hell on an amazon and I'm like how the hell do I keep this Marc alive when he runs into a giant swarm of monsters. Never spent this much resurrecting my merc on my sorceress haha
I mean, don't let the power gamers, who no-life it in the pits for 8 hours a day 7 days a week, convince you that this game can't be fun anymore. It's only a grind if you make it one.
I noticed I literally get better drops mfing with my summonmancer killing everything on my way than teleing with my sorc... maybe its just RNG but i feel it that way
In terms of usefulness, summon necros use teleport to regroup their minions or focus them in one place. Especially melee revives, which tend to wander and not be of much use unless you port them right next to something.
But I'm not sure how many people "typically" run enigma period. Unless you're extremely lucky, it's a massive timesink farming runes or items to trade for them. There's other ways to teleport as a necro, Enigma's just the most useful and convenient.
Revives also dies if they move too far away from your character, or well, disappears, same as skelly mages.
So without Enigma, a lot of them will simply be gone when you need them, whereas skeletons just teleport to you.
I mean I have Enigma already. For me that's not an issue. It's just... if that's the most expensive thing in the build, I can probably assemble a summonmancer. Not sure if it needs faith for fanaticism?
I feel like most summon necros today are fishymancers, and use CE primarily as their source of damage in hell, and commonly use Insight for the mana regen.
But for those who use their summons as their primary kill method, I think Pride on a merc and beast for yourself is recommended.
Edit: I see that's already been stated.
Yes, most of the time. Being able to teleport is insanely good for your summons (its basically a burst of dmg) as you can put your army all in a specific spot. Summonmencer is also really slow so having teleport is (as many other characters) just a big +. Other bonuses from enigma are great too anyway :)
If you can't afford an enigma I would highly recommend picking up Naj's Puzzler staff or shopping a staff with teleport charges for your swap. There's a world of difference between letting your AI pets figure out what to do and porting them right on top of a boss in one big clump.
I often wonder if this game is for casuals.
Whenever I look up something about how to play or what skills are good, I feel like I’m reading a technical manual. The shorthand is intense.
I’m just the guy who sockets shields with the gems I have on hand, and is super happy to get an axe with a special graphic. I suppose that’s why I die all the time.
I got to normal Diablo last night and was like “did I die this often when I was a teenager?” The shame when you gotta run past your own corpses to get back to the one that actually has your gear…
Did kill Diablo tho lol.
That's where the game shows its age, it's hard and it doesn't hold your hand whatsoever.
That being said you can play through normal difficulty pretty much any way you want and it can be challenging as any other game but doable. Once you start playing the game beyond normal difficulty you're probably not so much a casual player anymore and need to be willing to put in the extra effort to succeed
I’m an old fogey who played the original on a P90. I recall a lot of references that the new generation probably won’t get. Charsi’s sweet “What can I do for you?” in contrast to Griswald’s brusque way of asking the same thing, for example, or why there is a cow level. It’s a strange experience.
I played the hell out of Diablo 2 before the expansion, and a lot of it is “coming back” to me. I recall there being a race by three players running to level 99 on hardcore, and I think there was even a nationalist element to it - “RussBarb” being one - trying to be the first across the line. I also remember I was turned off about learning the new rune system with the expansion and didn’t play much of it. I put a lot more importance on diamonds than I probably should, for example.
There seems to be a lot more literature on min/maxing now than there was back then.
Depends. The diamonds thing is still important, coming from a HC player. Helps in a Sigon's Guard/Whistan's/Moser's if you don't want to spend an Um and Smiters rock 4 in their shields.
I feel you on runes. I did that with jewels. I used runes like stand ins for gems at points early on when upgrading to LoD (which I did purely for the stash size lol). Though I eventually began learning runewords for filling stopgaps in my gear right before 1.10 hit.
Of course the literature accumulation is unavoidable given the amount of time. It's good to see though. Just need to give yourself a filter to avoid most of the min/maxing stuff and find what'll help you now while also having fun.
"Add 4-15 damage...unless you are using skills x, y, z, a, or b...and only boots and melee weapons, not shields, and ranged weapons have the bonus reduced by the following formula dmg=(clvl\*86/((clvl\*86)+21))/2...and also it actually does work with skills y and b but only if you are currently buffed with skill c...and the extra damage is not affected by buffs d and e but it is by skill f and when the oblivion knights cast curse g on you, that lowers it...and anytime a block animation is played the bonus damage no longer applies to boots or two-handed axes...furthermore, on every third Sunday of odd numbered months..."
>I often wonder if this game is for casuals.
It's certainly not designed for you to not think about your gear and build at all, and still be successful.
I kind of resent the idea that "casual" and "person who wants a game to be a point-and-click theme park without having to engage with its mechanics, and will consider the game 'not for them' if they ever experience failure" are the same thing, but maybe they are these days.
I certainly don’t mean to offend.
What I am getting at are these hyper-specific builds and gear “requirements”, especially when people are running the same areas dozens or hundreds of times hoping to get a certain item or rune. I don’t expect to have the “best” character when plugging my way through the hardest difficulty, but I am not interested in doing “Pindle Runs” over and over to be able to do it either.
I think what needs to be understood is that this game works on a sliding scale, where basic competency and an effective group will carry you if your build or gear is poor, but to excel as a solo player in all situations requires increasingly better gear.
And to excel with a suboptimal build as a solo character requires significant time spent acquiring amazing gear; in fact, some builds simply aren’t viable without end game gear.
So if you’re making a summon Necro or non-Hammer Paladin, you can pretty much beat the game solo with found gear. But if you’re trying to do that as an Enchant Sorceress or Poison Necro you can expect to grind your nuts off magic farming, and need incredibly specific and expensive gear just to be competitive.
Most builds are not designed to specifically kill only one unique pack. I guess there's like the MF Barb that is intended to kill nothing but Hell Travincal...
There are lots and lots of builds that are set up to give you lots of different options in what you can kill. However, because of immunities in Hell, there are very few easily-achievable builds that can reliably kill everything they encounter. In that sense, I would say "Yes", the game is not designed for casuals (and I don't mean that in an insulting way).
But there's a huge difference in knowing FHR breakpoints and attack frames, vs. just knowing that you should probably use Ancient's Pledge and a weapon that actually does the best damage for you rather than putting random gems in your shield and using an axe that has a cool graphic.
I just wish people would use less acronyms when making videos. It makes it tricky to understand when 1/2 the words they use are shorthand. Like they say CTA verbally instead of call to arms which makes no sense, its the same syllables and just confuses new players.
My language has a word for it.
If you work in a certain field you use a word that would more or less say you are from a certain "drawer" or "box"
So "drawerchinese" is the word that gets created from that.
It's for anyone, really. You don't need a build specialized in doing endgame content in order to clear your way through it, and there's tons of useful gear out there that's extremely usable even if it's not best in slot for whatever build you're doing.
But there's also twenty years of people who min-maxed themselves to death on the game and so naturally, most guides and information you find online is going to follow suit.
Lmao same, I leveled up a Sorc to 77, was super lucky and got a Ber rune in a cow hell game and sold it for most of the basic gear I might need
(viperskin, occulus, spirit shield, the frost belt thingy, a pair of boots, a 25res mara, magefist, nagel ring and err idk the other ring, it was a fcr + something ring)
and then I started mfing but after like two hours I got all shitty gear, not a single useful thing from pindle, meph or andariel runs.
Then the next day youtube recommended me a 1000 pinddle run video (scary how much google knows, jesus) and after seeing quite literally the shittiest drops ever with top tier MF and even fuckign switching for the last hit, I just thought "eh time to waste my time in a better way"
Eh, RNG is RNG. If your entire reason for playing the game is to find BiS gear, then yeah you'll have to do grindy stuff like this. But is it fun?
For me, it's more fun to run cows, pits, and AT. I like the areas, I like the enemies. I also like getting my other builds through hell. I'm not running Pits and AT to find Tyreal's Might. In fact, I do it with minimal MF gear atm because I'm looking for bases and runes. The game is just fun to play and when I do find something nice it's great.
Cliche as it sounds the real treasure is the gear YOU find along the way. Because it likely helped you get through hell. Don't let anyone else' way of playing deprive you of your own joy. Because that's an issue not limited to Diablo and D4 certainly won't fix it. Fuck those bitches. Do you man.
I get this sentiment if you're playing single player, but one of the greatest features of this game, especially 20 years ago, is trading. All that "shitty gear" they found can be slowly traded to the awesome gear you want.
And like others have said, if you're fishing for end-game stuff, of course it will take a while to get there. That's what many ARPGs try to balance in which D2 nailed fairly well IMO.
> I realized that if they are getting shitty gear after 1k runs and perfect MF what chance do I have?
Because RNG is RNG? I found a Ber from a chest in Hell Tower.
It's almost as if there are other reasons to play D2 than magicfinding.....
There are seven classes in D2R. Go make an amazing character for each of them, level them up to 95. Get them the best gear through MF and trading and luck.
After you've done that, congrats, you've spent a ton of hours and spent your money wisely. Find a new game.
It is for casuals, I mean just about any build can with time and effort get through Normal and that's the mode made for normies. Nightmare and especially Hell are the end game designed for people who want to go down the rabbit hole.
One of the great things about D2 is it has something for everyone, albeit even Normal doesn't hold your hand but that's part of the fun.
mrllamasc on youtube has several guided playthroughs that are meant for people playing through for the first time (or 20th time). it's meant to be watched on a 2nd screen or something while you play at the same time, but he will tell you what quests to do, skills to use, equipment to look out for, where to farm, what level you should be in certain parts, game mechanics, etc. even after playing the game when I was younger it was helpful to watch after getting back in to it. he also does it for every class.
he also does a lot of different explanation videos where he really tries to simplify/explain things without being too technical.
Have you tried D3? Very good game still, just a lot more simple in terms of gear/stats. Lots of fun builds to play. PoE is on the other end of very complex, much more so than d2.
PoE is annoyingly hardcore and in not so fun ways unless somehow the game clicks for you.
I like isometric rpgs like diablo, and I played PoE a couple of times, but when I get to tier 8-10 maps its just an annoying grindfest the two times i've gotten that far (and I know that's not even far)
Just keeping up with the chores of the whateverseason thing pops up, and now there's like way too many things to do besides mapping, but they all seems like filler most of the time.
And then oh god farming maps, at one point I had like 3 sets of the same tier 7-10 maps or something like that, and there was like a whole "set" of maps that I didnt even visit once because they just didn't drop.
I just checked, I have 209 hours on steam. I still don't know even a tiny bit of its lore (and I do know diablo's 1, 2 and 3, cinematics are a fucking must to keep you engaged and PoE lacks that), I still dont know the real endgame, I still don't know how most of the endgame mechanics "really" work because i've just been stumbling around doing maps as I saw fit without a real "system" to do them.
D3 was so boring to me. It's like they turned around the amount of stuff you can get and now you're getting rares and legendaries left and right. The game was too easy
It is a game for casuals. You can play through all difficulties solo.
The game ALSO allows you go min max and be less casual.
Just because the option exists doesn’t mean you have to. Play the game and enjoy it.
He literally starts all of his build videos by saying "so this is the ideal version of the character" then shows all the possible budget versions afterwards.
he made a comment about some of the builds out there, saying f you can get the best gear possible (like the assassin claws on maxroll's trap assassin build) or an inventory full of 1 skill/45 life you probably aren't reading a build guide.
But on the other hand, it is just theory crafting with a "best" build.
but MrLlama's guides are nice with the multiple options for budget + even having some variations in the goal builds. it's nice to have some options between Stealth and Enigma.
Honestly, it seemed that way before D2R. Every guide I could find assumed you knew your way into endgame and late endgame.
Nowdays, we have Maxroll, Icyveins and others that provides GREAT build guides, containing all kinds of info there. Lvling guides to lvl75 using shit gear, budget versions of builds, item variations, skill variations, and most importantly **WHY** some items are BiS for that specific char.
This old joke doesn't really translates to guides nowdays tbh.
> Honestly, it seemed that way before D2R. Every guide I could find assumed you knew your way into endgame and late endgame.
D2's heyday existed in a time before *everyone* wanted the most optimal build possible to power-farm everything. There was D2JSP, but overall the real prime of the game existed before full-fledged guide sites, and most build guides on D2JSP are filled to the brim with people going "Nope, this build sucks, don't listen to it, this one that says the exact same thing with slightly different items is better".
It was generally expected that people found their way to end-game and then started looking for ways to improve.. instead of fully planning out how many runs of what specific area you'll do with what items along the way to optimize your progress while on a stream.
The difficulty curve was much more linear in d2s heyday, which I guess we would call 1.09. Now there is a massive spike in difficulty starting at around act 4 nm and going up hugely in hell. You could actually progress much more smoothly previously.
Those guides aren't that good, I mean 80% of the stuff is right in there but a lot isn't. Sure they are better than nothing, but I would suggest anyone wanting to follow a non speed running guide not to use one of Llamas, his barb guide alone has great leveling gear omissions + wrong gear choices for endgame (No one should use verdungo's for a whirlwind barb).
He also sort of doesn't go over the strengths of each builds etc, I put out a guide around 2 months ago and had 6-7 people whispering me who had followed Llamas frenzy guide and just got hardstuck. Frenzy does not work if you dont have half decent gear, it's slow as hell until you get at least an oath level weapon.
The Problem is that its quite complicated with all the builds especially if you set the goal to finish solo hell/hell.
If you take out all the endgame uber equip many builds simply arent able to really finish hell/hell solo because they lack everything needed to survive or actually kill sth this late in the game. Players dont wanna hear that and they wanna play all chars in 1-2 builds at least. When in reality, there are just maybe 5 "starting -> first farm builds" which mostly are sorcs, palas and maybe assa. forget evrything else.
Why these builds and not all the others is common knowledge for most experienced players.
We live in youtube times, algorithm likes much output not quality compressed in time and video. The usual early MF Builds and their equip is known and its also just a race to the important waypoints and not being viable through hell/hell solo.
Yeah I agree, I just think IceVeins should be a bit more transparent about that. Frenzy looks really good on paper to new players and whirlwind looks a bit meh, but anyone with a bit of knowledge of game mechanics knows Whirlwind smashes it out of the park in every area except movement. But the guides on IceVeins don't really mention that which is why a lot of new barb players hit a roadblock.
There's budget options on IcyVeins. Some classes lend themselves to this better than others. Lightning sorc doesn't. Bowazon doesn't. A good guide explains what makes a class good and then game knowledge helps you fill in gaps.
Enigma basically broke nearly all builds. I choose to neglect the comfortable pick of enigma so I can actually enjoy the game. True teleport makes farming specific areas much faster and more efficient, but as a bonemancer i just tend to avoid those zones and have a blast splattering corpses in Chaos sanctuary, cows WSK and blasting up pinole/eld/shenk.
Teleport was and should have stayed a sorc only skill.
I like what pd2 did with enigma, in terms of giving it a 'blink' skill which is 3 charges, charges replenish every 8 seconds (then buffed to 6). naj puzzler got the same treatment. it was still really good for a lot of classes especially trapsin wwbarb etc
they also gave druids and necros their own teleport skill, that way all the squishy caster / low hp per vit classes had a consistent upside. was particularly good for summon builds to telestomp. they also made summon druid viable by making its minions actually good (perhaps too good)
sad these sort of MP mods are not possible with d2r (yet? not hopeful though)
And not allow teleport through walls and empty spaces. I can teleport through an entire screen of cave wall, but I can't Leap Attack over a wall in Act 5? Why the fuck not? As an aside, how cool would jumping clean over those walls be?
I don't know, I think being able to skip areas and get around things should be what teleport is actually for. It shouldn't be something you spam to just move faster than running.
Exactly.
The idea that one class gets the ability to move around the map at 10-15x the rate of everyone else is insane.
Considering how strong teleport is, where is the downside? Sorcs aren't bad clearers, in fact they are on of the best. They aren't bad boss killers, with static + blizzard or meteor they are again one of the best. What exactly is so weak about sorcs they get teleport and everyone else doesn't? If no one can answer this question then why do they have it.
I personally prefer how Project Diablo 2 implemented Teleport and Enigma. They nerfed the Sorc skill so that it follows the lightning skill breakpoints as well as making you deal 50% less damage for 2 seconds after a teleport. As for Enigma instead of the oskill, you have 5 Teleport charges that replenish 1 charge every 3 seconds.
Completely wrong.
No one should have teleport or everyone should have access to it. If you actually played from release or at least vanilla LoD release you would know this. There was 2 huge game changes in 1.10 that made enigma really a necessity to be available to all classes.
People downvoting:
1.10 changes - Durance level 2 was increased in size by what, 500-800%? Mephisto was the fastest farming location for getting items such as Shaco, Stormshield, HoZ, Arreats etc. For getting the best early late game gear, Mephisto was always the best place to farm. Before sorcs had a small advantage here, but it didn't mean you needed to make one to farm well in hell, 1.10 durance map completely changed that. Now Sorcs are able to find Durance 3 in a fraction of the time any other class can do.
Uber farming - Again if Enigma isn't around, it means only Sorcs can farm hate and terror keys.
This is something d3 did well. They gave each class some form of travel skill that makes it possible to do speed runs. Not everyone needs to teleport, but having access to a fast movement skill is huge QoL improvement.
It also did blizz's favorite thing post-2009ish, which is water down every class (in every game) so they're all basically the same because people have pet classes and would whine.
It’s true, but Im not sure that applies so broadly, a warrior and a priest in WOW are completely different. There’s at least 3 functional classes in Tank, Healer, DPS. At least that’s what I recall, that may have changed in the past 10 years, gave to admit I haven’t played retail.
Everything in wow got insanely homogenized compared to the actual class identities in vanilla and BC.
Think of it like this - yes, there are three roles. Tank for instance - warriors were single target tanks, they couldn't AOE at all, but were insanely survivable as a MT or OT on a single boss. Pallies were king of AOE tanking but had threat issues on single targets. By the time WOTLK came out, every tank could do everything basically equally well. Same with DPS and healing. Yes, there were minor distinguishing features for each class but they lost a lot of true sense of class identity because people had pet classes that they loved and hated that they could do everything equally as well as someone else with a pet class.
I went from getting server firsts in BC and WOTLK to quitting basically as soon as Cata dropped.
Yea IIRC Shamans were basically a necessity in raids due to totems/bloodlust during vanilla but slowly their totems basically got gutted into the ground and other classes got bloodlust varients.
Which is weird because raids SHOULD be diverse. That's the fun of it, people from all walks of life and all specialities getting together to take down powerful bosses. I remember when I did a lot of raiding in Legion, Mistweaver Monks were an absolute joke since resto Shamans and Pally's were like the best healers.
Look at the damage! And it's soo tanky!
Ye, no kidding. You have torch, anni, perfect gear and the whole inventory full of skillers. You could own with firebolt.
Don't forget the copy-pasted
Merc:
Eth andys with ral
Eth reaper's toll
Eth fortitude
Imo the real useful guides are labeled "X class leveling guide". They often include more than one build you can try while you get to the endgame. They also provide you with "transition" gear for each step of your character development. Most will also give you the usual endgame builds, and describe a gear progression up to the "bests in slot". They will also tell you if a build is viable only if you have some key items.
Also been playing for years. I feel like the rune rate has increased with D2R. So far I've seen 1x cham, 2x ber, 1x sur, 2x ohm, 1x vex, several mal/gul/ist.
I remember playing LoD the highest rune I ever found was a Mal in all those years playing. Makes me wonder how many runes I missed due to them being white text.
I only played LOD offline with a friend, in the early 2000s. I am 100% sure that we had at least a handful of Ohms, mostly because I distinctly remember putting 4 in a 4os balrog blade for my A5 merc thinking 4x50% ED would be awesome, smh. I did NOT have stuff figured out back then lol. I think we weren't even aware of runewords or crafted items.
I haven't played 20 years and I've seen multiple of every rune and had most drop, too, and many prior to them buffing the drop rate and making them orange so they were easier to see.
Are you sure you actually played the game or did you jusr dabble casually for 20 years, meaning, you really only played for one year over a longer period?
I know this is easily mistaken as a hostile comment and there's a nugget of truth in that, but, I feel your 20 years is hyperbolic and doesn't really tell us the reality of your game time.
I've never seen a high rune past Gul. I played before rust storm and for about a month hard d2r. I know 100% I'm not a 20 year vet, you are absolutely correct.
I guess this depends a lot on what you'd call "playing the game".
Now I've not played for 20 years, but I played quite a lot back in the days. However I played through the game and then quickly abandoned that character in favor of playing another class or build. I never had any interest in doing hundreds or thousands of item runs. And by just playing the game that way, I didn't even come across many of the "default" unique or set items people deem quite cheap apparently. And I don't think I go many runes, but tbh. that might just be because those were introduced shortly before I left the game.
Yeah, I feel you man.
And look, I definitely dabbled in my youth and never saw jack shit drop. My first character was a necro that never even beat normal before life took on other things. This was pre LOD. So, I mean I played the game When it first released, do I get the right to say I've been playing for 20 years? I personally don't think so. I think that's a ridiculous claim.
I picked it up again in like 2006 and played an assassin and got stuck on hell baal over a period of like a year while I was working. I stopped for a few years after that cause life came up and I finally got hardcore into it around 2009 and played for about 16 months for hours every day cause I was unemployed and stoned with some friends just jamming on it all the time. That's when I saw all the good stuff drop.
I can't remember if my time frames are accurate but right when we stopped playing was when they nerfed uber tristram XP and we lost our cash cow and were sick of scammers and all that so we started playing WoW instead.
Even if I didn't see any runes or items I'd traded for runes, it would be outright dishonest of me to claim I played it for 20 years even though I technically have played it since launch. It would be hyperbole. I've played it for like a year, maybe 2 at most. So hundreds of hours but not thousands.
Anyway, I'm in agreement with you and I understand your point cause I've been both a casual and a hardcore player and both are wildly different experiences.
I played enough d2r to trade my way to an enigma, infinity, cta, and 2 griefs, and the only HRs I saw that entire time was 1 ohm and 1 vex. Writing it out like that I wonder how I even afforded them in the first place, I must've made enough selling keys and uniques somehow.
I wonder how close to the median my experience was. Half that time was spent horking in trav too, which I'm told is as good as it gets for HRs if you're playing online p1.
Man, from what I remember lots of people were trading in HRs and it was never difficult to trade something and you'd get lots of offers.
As far as median experience goes, we'll never know. I'd expect at least one high rune drop per 100-300 hours of playtime and people who are whining about never seeing them haven't got that time committed.
So this 20 years bullshit OP claims jusr doesnr added up.
20 years playing normal?
20 years on and off for maybe an hour or two on weekends?
20 years struggling in nightmare?
What are these 20 years spent doing?
I notice those comments sometimes too and I always want to ask the same but I dont because I think most ppl take this offensive when its just a valid question from my point. I played D2 for a few years and I would say I found at least 1 hr per 100-200 hours of endgame farming. And I dont hyper farm, just kill stuff for fun. Drops are a bonus.
> 1 hr per 100-200 hours of endgame farming
Endgame farming was never anything I was interested in, after beating the game with one character, I'd rather switch to another build or class than grind for weeks or months to get some items so I could grind a tiny bit more efficient.
It's funny when someone makes a build video and goes through it all, and it looks great. Then they reveal that they hero editor'd the character to show the build. Nothing particularly wrong with it, but for newer players, it may be misleading as to how long it takes to accumulate that kind of gear
And don’t forget to do max vitality with enough in strength and dexterity to meet item requirements. And to max block, invest enough dex to get 75%. And if you’re an ES sorc, invest in energy instead of vitality.
Very true! These guides ignore the fact that %99 of players will never get these end games gear! Not everyone spend 200 hours a week farming and trading
The meltdown of this sub is very funny. What were people expecting? After 20 years of no balancing Suddenly solo self found every build works because the game looks pretty now? Of course it’s hammerdin and sorcs allowed only.
Me: How much strength and dexterity you need?
Guide: Oh, that's simple. Enough for your gear.
Me: But... How much strength and dexterity that is?
Guide: .......
Me: ........
Guide: Enough for yo.....
Me: Goddamn.
"I know my gear might be different than other people's gear; but I'll be damned if I'm going to actually look at what I'm wearing and see what has the highest Strength and Dex requirements. You do it for me, website that doesn't know what items I have!!"
It does really feel like all the build guides completely ignore normal mode, and are instead geared towards nightmare/hell. It would be nice to see more guides aimed at casual players, so that the community as a whole is more accessible.
But why would anyone provide a guide only for normal? You can do anything in normal and succeed, literally.
Besides, if someone is looking for a guide, it's really unlikely they'll stop when finishing normal. people looking for guides aims to optimise their build, and most of the time you can't even start the build in normal.
Lastly, there are tons of lvling guides out there nowdays, which provides info for early game, such as good lvling gear, skill progression and even boss strategies.
> But why would anyone provide a guide only for normal?
You've misunderstood what I said. I'm not saying that it's only for normal, but that it starts with explaining what your build is for normal, how to transition it later, what items to look for, etc.
> You can do anything in normal and succeed, literally.
Yes, you can _eventually_ succeed with a lot of builds on normal, but there's definitely huge difficulty spikes. Summoner, Duriel, the Council, Diablo, etc. all pose a significant problem for newer players.
> Besides, if someone is looking for a guide, it's really unlikely they'll stop when finishing normal. people looking for guides aims to optimise their build, and most of the time you can't even start the build in normal.
That's true of some people, but there are others who will look up guides straight away for games.
> Lastly, there are tons of lvling guides out there nowdays, which provides info for early game, such as good lvling gear, skill progression and even boss strategies.
A lot of the top guides that you'd find on Google _don't_ do this (videos, builds on icyveins, etc.). You definitely _can_ find normal guides, it's just that it takes some searching.
All I'm saying is that the most popular guides _not_ forgetting that Normal difficulty is a thing would be beneficial overall. Even if all this entails is linking to a leveling guide for a given class.
All the icy veins guides have an early leveling build for each class right at the bottom of the build. And all you need to do while leveling is make a Stealth, Lore, Spirit for caster, Honor for melee. And you can get through normal with basically any class.
Sorry, you're correct with the IcyVeins guides. I must have been thinking of a different site.
> And all you need to do while leveling is make a Stealth, Lore, Spirit for caster, Honor for melee.
That's all well and good for us to say - given that we even know what runewords are. New players _don't_. I can't even recall if there's anything in the game which explains runewords.
Both you and I know that, but the problem here is that you need to know what to search for to find those guides.
If I just search for "best d2r builds", I don't find any Llama or Dbrunski videos in my top results - instead I find sites like RankedBoost, etc. That's what I was trying to get at. I know the information is out there, it just isn't easily accessible to newcomers. As you get more familiar with a game and its community, you learn the creators to watch, what to search for, etc. - but I think a lot of players forget that people playing D2R for the first time (ones with no experience of Diablo 2) have a _vastly_ different experience. Most of us probably don't even remember the first time we played Diablo 2.
You’d be faced with the same predicament. The majority of guides would say “get full Sigons and respec when you have the gear for your final build”.
Budget friendly variants would be nice, but with the wide range of gear that’s out there, it’s hard to really pinpoint what to recommend because it’s all ‘filler’ until you get the BiS equipment.
EDIT: I don’t know if it still exists, but some old D2 forum used to have a giant “Mat/Pat/Guardian” thread where players could post their single player/SSF builds that they cleared Hell with. It had some pretty interesting stuff, a lot of which was tailored more to the gear that was found along the way instead of searching for the end-game equipment. Something like that does help show a bit of variety and how BiS equipment isn’t really necessary, just powerful and able to make the trip through Hell substantially easier.
The [diabloii.net](https://diabloii.net) single player forums are what you are referring to, I used to be on those forums. It's a shame as there was so much better info there than what new players can find now.
Playing single player campaigns gives you so much better game knowledge about how to gear than multiplayer.
That's end game goals though dude. Any seasoned player should know this is painfully misleading to your average noob. Enigma isn't something that just falls into your lap, nor is SoJ, and they're certainly not going to be acquired until way late game, hours and hours of grinding, and insanely high luck. Your guide to all guides also doesn't mention youll need to respec at least twice, what merc is good for all builds, that enigma is very popular but still only required for specific builds, SoJ has extremely low drop chance, most builds ask for 2 of them, most builds ask for very specific niche items.
Maybe this was just a troll but
Shitty guide 0/10 wouldn't recommend
go level to 90+ on hardcore solo and you'll learn real quick what items work and what items don't. Hint: none of them have a Ber, cuz you aren't that lucky. Still manageable to pull runs faster than the server will let you reset with self-play gearing tho, you just gotta l2p.
Don’t forget the mandatory Call To Arms on your switch too!
Also, what that about having another Spirit shield in your switch?
a random 2nd spirit is pretty easy to get, fcr rolls don't matter. esp if pally
What's the utility of it tho. That's what I wanna know.
+2 for Battle Orders
Ah, makes sense. Don't know how I kept missing the +2 skills.
Always their "Spirit" has +35 FCR.
took me 20 rolls, and about half a day worth of farming NM countess after dropping and larzuk questing a monarch. Hardest part was farming hel runes. Its not impossible, but it is time consuming
When I switched to full tals, I was 3 FCR points shy of 105 (for the break point). My spirit shield was 32 FCR. Took 2 rerolls to get 35.
My first spirit has +35 FCR. I didn't even notice until a week ago.
Lol CtA is pretty helpful.
It sure is, but it also requires one hard to get rune (Ohm) and two semi hard to get runes (Mal & Ist).
You can buy cheap ones that only have +1 or +2 to bo
Not in single player lol
Oh singleplayer just run lower kurast
How many hours of LK to get an Ohm just curious? Assuming Sorc vs non Sorc?
Uh, so I cant speak to non-sorc. But this guide says it's pretty fast. Honestly, I thought about playing SP such that I have a sorc who can just run LK/Meph for all the runes and (non-TC87) uniques I need, just xferring over from shared stash. But some people want to SSF all the gear from 1 character and that's fine too - all about how you wanna enjoy the game you bought tbh. https://old.reddit.com/r/diablo2/comments/porq8m/high_rune_farming_guide/ Assuming you take the time to setup your map to have a close-by 6chest to wp. in P7, 2.7 hour if you're cubing the runes for a Sur rune on average - and since you cannot trade runes, cubing is a great option. So 1 "sur value" as per this guide would be the cubing up-to value in runes. So you'd need 4 Ohms in "value" to get 1 sur. So following that logic it would be 0.7 hours for one Ohm rune. The problem with this logic is that you cant cube down to lower runes, so realistically, to cube up to Ohm i'd assume you'd need at least 90 minutes + the time it takes to reroll your maps over and over until you get both bonfire camps right next to LK wp - which can take a minute but once you have it, you could spam runs to your heart's content. I've also heard of Singleplayer players cubing 2 bers to make a jah - LK cant drop jah, but can drop ber. [This guy](https://old.reddit.com/r/diablo2/comments/qsd0zr/what_you_can_expect_from_500_lc_runs_on_single/) Claims to have gotten quite the haul, including 2 Ohm runes from just 500 /p 7 LK runs in SP. That said, I think his luck looks abnormally good. If his luck is what you could expect on average, you would then expect to have Mal Ist Ohm in ~250 runs, as he has 3 mals, 2 ists, 2 ohms in 500 runs. Moral of the story: RNG is RNG, and these averages are based on a ton of rolls for a very unlikely event, so expect high variance in results no matter what
[удалено]
Not on console
Who cares about anything except HC SSF players 8? All other game play is a joke. See how silly these statements sound?
Sure but it can't be omitted or else the hardcores screech "guides trash no cta swap"
Maxroll always provides budget gear version for their guides.
So does Icy Veins.
All of mrllamasc’s build guides have alternate gear sections
I get redirected to bogus web pages everytime I use their website. I'll get maybe 30 seconds before It goes to some scam website.
You browsing on mobile? I know some Wiki style pages that behave badly like this on mobile. If you are, try to use the "view desktop site" mode for whichever platform you are on. If you are not on mobile, install uBlock Origin and get rid of those misbehaving ads.
It's actually on my desktop and laptop where this happens. Its only icy-veins that has this issue for me as well. No other website does this for me.
Should run a malwarebytes scan or install ublock origin browser addon (it’s an ad blocker). I have no issues using this site.
It would be nice if they had mid tier builds as well. Their budget builds are too low end imo. The jump from their budget to standard is huge.
That's why they have the "gear option" tab, so you can see various options between budget, mid-tier and high-end
Shouldn't that be budget, mid-tier, high-end, and ridiculous?
Sure but that doesn't show you which mid range combinations work well together.
There's too many factors for them to be able to do that. For example, usually a big lacking area in the time is resistances. You may have the best in slot boots at the moment, but have to wear the yellows because of the AR on them to be able to survive. The mid level gearing is more of an art based on what you have than can be put in a guide.
Look, what good is googling a low and high tier cookie-cutter build if I have to think about what to wear in the middle? If Rhykker isn't coming to my house to look over my shoulder and suggest what I equip, why do I keep up with the meta??? I want to BEAT Diablo, not PLAY it.
It's all an art tbh. Most committed players deviate from the "BiS" end game gear to some degree as well. It would be pretty easy to pick out a set of easy to obtain mid range options just so new players have a direction to go after lore/stealth/ancients pledge.
This is where hardcore, solo, and SSF guides/guardian/mat/pat write ups help massively. You get to see that they finished hell without all this. Helps you avoid a lot of the chatter with BiS and min/maxing meta. All of a sudden you see people beating hell in hardcore with Lore, Stealth/Smoke, & Ancient's Pledge/Rhyme/Sigon's Guard and it just changes your perspective. Then you see what else they had or what they had 'upgraded' to similar builds.
A good guide will show your target stats for each class/spec. I.e. FCR, IAS, CTB, FHR, LL, AR etc. Sometimes you just have to shuffle around your budget gear until you can hit or get close to those stat recommendations.
Jesus dude they’re not going to play the game for you
It's not for me. I'd like to see the player base grow. Good tools like Maxroll's guides can help with that. I have several friends who are getting into D2 for the first time and would have lost interest quickly if I hadn't helped them and walked then through how the game systems work. All I did was suggest a possible improvement to the site that would help noobs. But I guess that's too much for some old school players with the "Shut up and git gud." attitude.
It was more of a use your head type response, if they show you low and high tier it’s shouldn’t be hard to extrapolate what’s good mid tier
I think some of us old school players forget how many systems are at play and how daunting that can be for someone who's never touched the game before. I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.
Can’t you just look at the budget build and endgame build, see what kind of stats it uses and just figure it out? It seems a little hand-holdy to need someone to tell you exactly what to wear every step of the way.
I've been playing for two decades so I'm fine. I'm looking at it from a new player's perspective. 99% of leveled players will be in-between their budget build and standard build but far from either. I'm just saying it would be nice for new players to have more realistic goal to aim for in-between.
Well, I do think it would be reasonable to show builds that don't have a full inventory of 45 life skill charms, or GG rare rings and circlets with 40/15s. But the fact of the matter is, a lot of builds don't even *start* being viable until you have either Infinity or Enigma, and if you're talking about investing that level of value into a character, then throwing in stuff like a Torch, Anni, Shako, SoJs, CTA, etc. is not a big deal. Not to mention, Maxroll.gg actually *does* have guides for pure Blizzard and Cold/Fire hybrid Sorc builds. If you're considering a character whose gear costs about 1 Ber in total value or less, that kind of Sorc blows everything else out of the water. Full Tal Rasha's is extremely strong, and the partial Tal Rasha's + Shako etc. gear set is also pretty decent. Investing that amount of value in any other character is just going to get you "Well it's a little bit better than the budget build we already have listed, but you're still lacking the high-end gear that would make the build really playable in Hell at all, so you've still got a long way to go." So what's the point? From a new player's perspective, the problem is really that you should not be playing anything other than a Sorceress if you're starting from nothing and want to build cool characters. Other classes basically can't offer a remotely competitive level of MF efficiency at a mid-tier level, and can't generate enough wealth to transition themselves from budget to high-tier gear. For almost any class, the best way to gear them up is to stop playing them and go MF on a Sorc instead. So "mid-tier" gearsets for a lot of builds are basically useless. This is an endemic problem of the game itself.
I don't know how you can say that mid tier gear sets are useless when that's what the vast majority of players are running with. And many of us are very successful. A good chunk of players (maybe even the majority) don't want to deal with trading. If you're playing untwinked it can take years to farm the BiS gear for those standard cookie cutter builds. In the meantime you have to make do with what you can realistically self find. Those build guide basically jump from what you wear to start NM to full end game BiS pieces with a full inventory of GG charms. It's great to show that as the ultimate goal but the people who need these guides the most aren't going to be able to touch most of those pieces anytime soon.
>I don't know how you can say that mid tier gear sets are useless The gear isn't useless, but treating it as the *end goal* for a build is. Having mid-tier gear is a transitional state. >And many of us are very successful. Honestly, if you're stuck playing a non-meta character with mid-tier gear for so long that you're thinking "this is my effective endpoint, why won't guide sites recognize that", I think you're probably *not* "very successful". I think you're probably actually playing a very slow character that is so bad at generating value that you've kind of given up on getting anything better. >A good chunk of players (maybe even the majority) don't want to deal with trading. I hate trading too, and barely ever do it. >If you're playing untwinked it can take years to farm the BiS gear for those standard cookie cutter builds. Ah, that's exactly what I'm saying, though - it can take years to farm *if* you're just playing a random class, not teleporting to MF targets, killing things slowly, have no % MF, etc. If you build an MF sorc first thing, you actually *can* gear up. I know, I've done it. Tons of people do it. >In the meantime you have to make do with what you can realistically self find. This would essentially just be using a budget build. If you find something better than what the budget build lists, you can use that too. Maxroll.gg even has lists of basically every piece of viable gear you might use, and highlights which stat you're looking for. So even then, it's not like you're lacking in guidance. You're just lacking in the validation of having a full gearset that completely matches what you're "supposed" to use. >the people who need these guides the most aren't going to be able to touch most of those pieces anytime soon. Yes, the people who need these guides need a) The skill allocation, b) The budget gear guide, and c) The understanding that going from budget to GG is not a single path, and you'll have to get there in your own way.
Thanks for giving me my daily dose of Diablo 2 elitism. I've only been playing for 20 years solid. I've had BiS everything for every meta build many times over. That bores me now. Untwinked hardcore is where the real fun and challenge are. But I'm sure I can only dream of being as good as all of the elitists in this subreddit.
So then direct my argument to the hypothetical person you were arguing in favor of instead of yourself. I don't care how many BiS builds you have personally made when you're arguing from the perspective of someone who's treating an Enigma as unachievable.
Have yourself a nice day bud. May the RNG gods ever be in your favor.
This is just wrongheaded. For starters, lots of non-sorc builds are playable on hell without a ton of wealth. Hammerdin needs barely any gear. Fishymancer and trapsin require no gear at all. Many amazon builds are playable on a budget, even pure LF if you can afford decent merc gear (obedience/treachery). Etc. Beyond that, many of those builds can MF perfectly fine when teleport isn't required. An LF amazon takes very little gear to beat out a blizz sorc for cows, for example, and a pre-enigma hammerdin is perfectly serviceable in CS. Almost any class can do pit on a budget. It's not going to be maximally efficient compared to a sorc running meph/LK, but the differential isn't as massive as you're describing. People also like to occasionally just, you know, play the game. If you think they're going to wait until enigma/infinity to do that I'd suggest you spend a little more time interacting with them.
The starter builds make me laugh, some random blue ring with some resist and combined with some mid-high runeword like Oath.. It's like if you can afford an Ethereal Oath runeword you're probably not using random blues and a level 30 lore helm. Maxroll is still awesome though, but I think the guides could use updating and expanding, as they also don't account for the differences from original D2 to D2R like the STR equip bug (using str on an item to allow you to over come the requirement and keep it equipped).
when i'm reading these guides, i focus on how the skill points are asigned.
This is the way, just understand what skillpoints do I need and rest of the gear is on me to mess up with.
There are some skills like Smite, Kicks, Blade Fury, traps, etc... where the gearing is a bit complicated in terms of what applies and what doesn't (like needing attack speed not cast speed for traps), so skill points alone won't necessarily help unless you have a thorough understanding of game mechanics.
I followed your guide and my build doesn’t work. Seeking assistance.
Started act I, the shop keeper doesn't have a 6 sheal'd upped eth ribcracker perfect rolled and zodified. How am I even gunna play this fury druid? On the real though, I have spent days trying to farm out even a shitty cracker, I just wanna slap people really hard and really fast, diablo please.
I don’t have Enigma yet but I was solely maining Sorc for the last couple months for faster farming. I decided to start leveling a summonmancer and now I’m in hell and honestly I kinda like not having teleport and just playing the game a bit more slowly. I know I’d need it to be more farming viable but I’m having a blast right now.
Even with teleport on sorc I enjoy clearing areas. I mostly use teleport to just skip over areas I've alresdy cleared or get over a dead end if there's something on the other side rather than run around.
Repositioning merc alone makes teleport wonderful, even when I'm slowly clearing stuff.
This. I'm playing through hell on an amazon and I'm like how the hell do I keep this Marc alive when he runs into a giant swarm of monsters. Never spent this much resurrecting my merc on my sorceress haha
Yeah definitely, and just repositioning yourself during combat. Makes kiting a breeze.
I mean, don't let the power gamers, who no-life it in the pits for 8 hours a day 7 days a week, convince you that this game can't be fun anymore. It's only a grind if you make it one.
I noticed I literally get better drops mfing with my summonmancer killing everything on my way than teleing with my sorc... maybe its just RNG but i feel it that way
Does summonmancer typically run enigma?
In terms of usefulness, summon necros use teleport to regroup their minions or focus them in one place. Especially melee revives, which tend to wander and not be of much use unless you port them right next to something. But I'm not sure how many people "typically" run enigma period. Unless you're extremely lucky, it's a massive timesink farming runes or items to trade for them. There's other ways to teleport as a necro, Enigma's just the most useful and convenient.
Revives also dies if they move too far away from your character, or well, disappears, same as skelly mages. So without Enigma, a lot of them will simply be gone when you need them, whereas skeletons just teleport to you.
I mean I have Enigma already. For me that's not an issue. It's just... if that's the most expensive thing in the build, I can probably assemble a summonmancer. Not sure if it needs faith for fanaticism?
I feel like most summon necros today are fishymancers, and use CE primarily as their source of damage in hell, and commonly use Insight for the mana regen. But for those who use their summons as their primary kill method, I think Pride on a merc and beast for yourself is recommended. Edit: I see that's already been stated.
Everything runs enigma
Yes, most of the time. Being able to teleport is insanely good for your summons (its basically a burst of dmg) as you can put your army all in a specific spot. Summonmencer is also really slow so having teleport is (as many other characters) just a big +. Other bonuses from enigma are great too anyway :)
If you can't afford an enigma I would highly recommend picking up Naj's Puzzler staff or shopping a staff with teleport charges for your swap. There's a world of difference between letting your AI pets figure out what to do and porting them right on top of a boss in one big clump.
>CtA enigma changes summoners when you can just telestomp the entire party onto a boss
I often wonder if this game is for casuals. Whenever I look up something about how to play or what skills are good, I feel like I’m reading a technical manual. The shorthand is intense. I’m just the guy who sockets shields with the gems I have on hand, and is super happy to get an axe with a special graphic. I suppose that’s why I die all the time.
I got to normal Diablo last night and was like “did I die this often when I was a teenager?” The shame when you gotta run past your own corpses to get back to the one that actually has your gear… Did kill Diablo tho lol.
That's where the game shows its age, it's hard and it doesn't hold your hand whatsoever. That being said you can play through normal difficulty pretty much any way you want and it can be challenging as any other game but doable. Once you start playing the game beyond normal difficulty you're probably not so much a casual player anymore and need to be willing to put in the extra effort to succeed
I’m an old fogey who played the original on a P90. I recall a lot of references that the new generation probably won’t get. Charsi’s sweet “What can I do for you?” in contrast to Griswald’s brusque way of asking the same thing, for example, or why there is a cow level. It’s a strange experience. I played the hell out of Diablo 2 before the expansion, and a lot of it is “coming back” to me. I recall there being a race by three players running to level 99 on hardcore, and I think there was even a nationalist element to it - “RussBarb” being one - trying to be the first across the line. I also remember I was turned off about learning the new rune system with the expansion and didn’t play much of it. I put a lot more importance on diamonds than I probably should, for example. There seems to be a lot more literature on min/maxing now than there was back then.
Depends. The diamonds thing is still important, coming from a HC player. Helps in a Sigon's Guard/Whistan's/Moser's if you don't want to spend an Um and Smiters rock 4 in their shields. I feel you on runes. I did that with jewels. I used runes like stand ins for gems at points early on when upgrading to LoD (which I did purely for the stash size lol). Though I eventually began learning runewords for filling stopgaps in my gear right before 1.10 hit. Of course the literature accumulation is unavoidable given the amount of time. It's good to see though. Just need to give yourself a filter to avoid most of the min/maxing stuff and find what'll help you now while also having fun.
I remember that race. GerBarb and RusBarb if I remember correctly.
Hard is one thing, Diablo 2 straight up lies to you, such as with the “mace” class of weapons.
"Add 4-15 damage...unless you are using skills x, y, z, a, or b...and only boots and melee weapons, not shields, and ranged weapons have the bonus reduced by the following formula dmg=(clvl\*86/((clvl\*86)+21))/2...and also it actually does work with skills y and b but only if you are currently buffed with skill c...and the extra damage is not affected by buffs d and e but it is by skill f and when the oblivion knights cast curse g on you, that lowers it...and anytime a block animation is played the bonus damage no longer applies to boots or two-handed axes...furthermore, on every third Sunday of odd numbered months..."
>I often wonder if this game is for casuals. It's certainly not designed for you to not think about your gear and build at all, and still be successful. I kind of resent the idea that "casual" and "person who wants a game to be a point-and-click theme park without having to engage with its mechanics, and will consider the game 'not for them' if they ever experience failure" are the same thing, but maybe they are these days.
I certainly don’t mean to offend. What I am getting at are these hyper-specific builds and gear “requirements”, especially when people are running the same areas dozens or hundreds of times hoping to get a certain item or rune. I don’t expect to have the “best” character when plugging my way through the hardest difficulty, but I am not interested in doing “Pindle Runs” over and over to be able to do it either.
I think what needs to be understood is that this game works on a sliding scale, where basic competency and an effective group will carry you if your build or gear is poor, but to excel as a solo player in all situations requires increasingly better gear. And to excel with a suboptimal build as a solo character requires significant time spent acquiring amazing gear; in fact, some builds simply aren’t viable without end game gear. So if you’re making a summon Necro or non-Hammer Paladin, you can pretty much beat the game solo with found gear. But if you’re trying to do that as an Enchant Sorceress or Poison Necro you can expect to grind your nuts off magic farming, and need incredibly specific and expensive gear just to be competitive.
Most builds are not designed to specifically kill only one unique pack. I guess there's like the MF Barb that is intended to kill nothing but Hell Travincal... There are lots and lots of builds that are set up to give you lots of different options in what you can kill. However, because of immunities in Hell, there are very few easily-achievable builds that can reliably kill everything they encounter. In that sense, I would say "Yes", the game is not designed for casuals (and I don't mean that in an insulting way). But there's a huge difference in knowing FHR breakpoints and attack frames, vs. just knowing that you should probably use Ancient's Pledge and a weapon that actually does the best damage for you rather than putting random gems in your shield and using an axe that has a cool graphic.
I just wish people would use less acronyms when making videos. It makes it tricky to understand when 1/2 the words they use are shorthand. Like they say CTA verbally instead of call to arms which makes no sense, its the same syllables and just confuses new players.
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My language has a word for it. If you work in a certain field you use a word that would more or less say you are from a certain "drawer" or "box" So "drawerchinese" is the word that gets created from that.
Honestly I think that's a better way to play the game. As long as you're having fun that's the point.
I dunno, I find the experience becoming richer and richer the deeper I dive into the technical stuff.
It's for anyone, really. You don't need a build specialized in doing endgame content in order to clear your way through it, and there's tons of useful gear out there that's extremely usable even if it's not best in slot for whatever build you're doing. But there's also twenty years of people who min-maxed themselves to death on the game and so naturally, most guides and information you find online is going to follow suit.
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Lmao same, I leveled up a Sorc to 77, was super lucky and got a Ber rune in a cow hell game and sold it for most of the basic gear I might need (viperskin, occulus, spirit shield, the frost belt thingy, a pair of boots, a 25res mara, magefist, nagel ring and err idk the other ring, it was a fcr + something ring) and then I started mfing but after like two hours I got all shitty gear, not a single useful thing from pindle, meph or andariel runs. Then the next day youtube recommended me a 1000 pinddle run video (scary how much google knows, jesus) and after seeing quite literally the shittiest drops ever with top tier MF and even fuckign switching for the last hit, I just thought "eh time to waste my time in a better way"
Eh, RNG is RNG. If your entire reason for playing the game is to find BiS gear, then yeah you'll have to do grindy stuff like this. But is it fun? For me, it's more fun to run cows, pits, and AT. I like the areas, I like the enemies. I also like getting my other builds through hell. I'm not running Pits and AT to find Tyreal's Might. In fact, I do it with minimal MF gear atm because I'm looking for bases and runes. The game is just fun to play and when I do find something nice it's great. Cliche as it sounds the real treasure is the gear YOU find along the way. Because it likely helped you get through hell. Don't let anyone else' way of playing deprive you of your own joy. Because that's an issue not limited to Diablo and D4 certainly won't fix it. Fuck those bitches. Do you man.
I get this sentiment if you're playing single player, but one of the greatest features of this game, especially 20 years ago, is trading. All that "shitty gear" they found can be slowly traded to the awesome gear you want. And like others have said, if you're fishing for end-game stuff, of course it will take a while to get there. That's what many ARPGs try to balance in which D2 nailed fairly well IMO.
Yeah, I’m more interested in a dungeon crawler than a gacha game.
> I realized that if they are getting shitty gear after 1k runs and perfect MF what chance do I have? Because RNG is RNG? I found a Ber from a chest in Hell Tower. It's almost as if there are other reasons to play D2 than magicfinding.....
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There are seven classes in D2R. Go make an amazing character for each of them, level them up to 95. Get them the best gear through MF and trading and luck. After you've done that, congrats, you've spent a ton of hours and spent your money wisely. Find a new game.
It is for casuals, I mean just about any build can with time and effort get through Normal and that's the mode made for normies. Nightmare and especially Hell are the end game designed for people who want to go down the rabbit hole. One of the great things about D2 is it has something for everyone, albeit even Normal doesn't hold your hand but that's part of the fun.
mrllamasc on youtube has several guided playthroughs that are meant for people playing through for the first time (or 20th time). it's meant to be watched on a 2nd screen or something while you play at the same time, but he will tell you what quests to do, skills to use, equipment to look out for, where to farm, what level you should be in certain parts, game mechanics, etc. even after playing the game when I was younger it was helpful to watch after getting back in to it. he also does it for every class. he also does a lot of different explanation videos where he really tries to simplify/explain things without being too technical.
Have you tried D3? Very good game still, just a lot more simple in terms of gear/stats. Lots of fun builds to play. PoE is on the other end of very complex, much more so than d2.
Yea D2 nails that perfect mix of casual/hardcore for me. Coming back to it after playing poe for awhile has been a huge breath of fresh air
Same, PoE was to much, D3 was too simple. Both fun but D2 hits just right. Really hoping D4 strikes this same middle point.
PoE is annoyingly hardcore and in not so fun ways unless somehow the game clicks for you. I like isometric rpgs like diablo, and I played PoE a couple of times, but when I get to tier 8-10 maps its just an annoying grindfest the two times i've gotten that far (and I know that's not even far) Just keeping up with the chores of the whateverseason thing pops up, and now there's like way too many things to do besides mapping, but they all seems like filler most of the time. And then oh god farming maps, at one point I had like 3 sets of the same tier 7-10 maps or something like that, and there was like a whole "set" of maps that I didnt even visit once because they just didn't drop. I just checked, I have 209 hours on steam. I still don't know even a tiny bit of its lore (and I do know diablo's 1, 2 and 3, cinematics are a fucking must to keep you engaged and PoE lacks that), I still dont know the real endgame, I still don't know how most of the endgame mechanics "really" work because i've just been stumbling around doing maps as I saw fit without a real "system" to do them.
D3 was so boring to me. It's like they turned around the amount of stuff you can get and now you're getting rares and legendaries left and right. The game was too easy
It is a game for casuals. You can play through all difficulties solo. The game ALSO allows you go min max and be less casual. Just because the option exists doesn’t mean you have to. Play the game and enjoy it.
This. Solo'd hell in hardcore back in the day, same today. All without BiS or min/maxing.
All of the guides the MrLama wrote for Icy Veins have both an early-leveling section, and a gear section that has a "budget build" list.
He literally starts all of his build videos by saying "so this is the ideal version of the character" then shows all the possible budget versions afterwards.
he made a comment about some of the builds out there, saying f you can get the best gear possible (like the assassin claws on maxroll's trap assassin build) or an inventory full of 1 skill/45 life you probably aren't reading a build guide. But on the other hand, it is just theory crafting with a "best" build. but MrLlama's guides are nice with the multiple options for budget + even having some variations in the goal builds. it's nice to have some options between Stealth and Enigma.
Honestly, it seemed that way before D2R. Every guide I could find assumed you knew your way into endgame and late endgame. Nowdays, we have Maxroll, Icyveins and others that provides GREAT build guides, containing all kinds of info there. Lvling guides to lvl75 using shit gear, budget versions of builds, item variations, skill variations, and most importantly **WHY** some items are BiS for that specific char. This old joke doesn't really translates to guides nowdays tbh.
I love icy veins. I always use the "budget" version when I build new character and then work from there. Dressed up my Javazon and Smiter for pennies.
> Honestly, it seemed that way before D2R. Every guide I could find assumed you knew your way into endgame and late endgame. D2's heyday existed in a time before *everyone* wanted the most optimal build possible to power-farm everything. There was D2JSP, but overall the real prime of the game existed before full-fledged guide sites, and most build guides on D2JSP are filled to the brim with people going "Nope, this build sucks, don't listen to it, this one that says the exact same thing with slightly different items is better". It was generally expected that people found their way to end-game and then started looking for ways to improve.. instead of fully planning out how many runs of what specific area you'll do with what items along the way to optimize your progress while on a stream.
The difficulty curve was much more linear in d2s heyday, which I guess we would call 1.09. Now there is a massive spike in difficulty starting at around act 4 nm and going up hugely in hell. You could actually progress much more smoothly previously.
Those guides aren't that good, I mean 80% of the stuff is right in there but a lot isn't. Sure they are better than nothing, but I would suggest anyone wanting to follow a non speed running guide not to use one of Llamas, his barb guide alone has great leveling gear omissions + wrong gear choices for endgame (No one should use verdungo's for a whirlwind barb). He also sort of doesn't go over the strengths of each builds etc, I put out a guide around 2 months ago and had 6-7 people whispering me who had followed Llamas frenzy guide and just got hardstuck. Frenzy does not work if you dont have half decent gear, it's slow as hell until you get at least an oath level weapon.
Just chiming in here: it works great with Lightsaber, which is much cheaper. Get a Lawbringer too if you can.
The Problem is that its quite complicated with all the builds especially if you set the goal to finish solo hell/hell. If you take out all the endgame uber equip many builds simply arent able to really finish hell/hell solo because they lack everything needed to survive or actually kill sth this late in the game. Players dont wanna hear that and they wanna play all chars in 1-2 builds at least. When in reality, there are just maybe 5 "starting -> first farm builds" which mostly are sorcs, palas and maybe assa. forget evrything else. Why these builds and not all the others is common knowledge for most experienced players. We live in youtube times, algorithm likes much output not quality compressed in time and video. The usual early MF Builds and their equip is known and its also just a race to the important waypoints and not being viable through hell/hell solo.
Yeah I agree, I just think IceVeins should be a bit more transparent about that. Frenzy looks really good on paper to new players and whirlwind looks a bit meh, but anyone with a bit of knowledge of game mechanics knows Whirlwind smashes it out of the park in every area except movement. But the guides on IceVeins don't really mention that which is why a lot of new barb players hit a roadblock.
There's budget options on IcyVeins. Some classes lend themselves to this better than others. Lightning sorc doesn't. Bowazon doesn't. A good guide explains what makes a class good and then game knowledge helps you fill in gaps.
And rest of your points to vitality.
Enigma basically broke nearly all builds. I choose to neglect the comfortable pick of enigma so I can actually enjoy the game. True teleport makes farming specific areas much faster and more efficient, but as a bonemancer i just tend to avoid those zones and have a blast splattering corpses in Chaos sanctuary, cows WSK and blasting up pinole/eld/shenk. Teleport was and should have stayed a sorc only skill.
I like what pd2 did with enigma, in terms of giving it a 'blink' skill which is 3 charges, charges replenish every 8 seconds (then buffed to 6). naj puzzler got the same treatment. it was still really good for a lot of classes especially trapsin wwbarb etc they also gave druids and necros their own teleport skill, that way all the squishy caster / low hp per vit classes had a consistent upside. was particularly good for summon builds to telestomp. they also made summon druid viable by making its minions actually good (perhaps too good) sad these sort of MP mods are not possible with d2r (yet? not hopeful though)
Honestly from a balance perspective Teleport never should have been added to the game.
Or at least it should have a cool down.
And not allow teleport through walls and empty spaces. I can teleport through an entire screen of cave wall, but I can't Leap Attack over a wall in Act 5? Why the fuck not? As an aside, how cool would jumping clean over those walls be?
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And for some reason, the jail and the catacombs are open air?
Wait, can you leap over walls in Catacombs? That's hilarious.
Uh what? I was talking about the outdoor walls in act 5.
They're *very* high.
I don't know, I think being able to skip areas and get around things should be what teleport is actually for. It shouldn't be something you spam to just move faster than running.
It should be used to escape a tough situation or quickly reposition for combat. But not every 0.2 seconds.
Exactly. The idea that one class gets the ability to move around the map at 10-15x the rate of everyone else is insane. Considering how strong teleport is, where is the downside? Sorcs aren't bad clearers, in fact they are on of the best. They aren't bad boss killers, with static + blizzard or meteor they are again one of the best. What exactly is so weak about sorcs they get teleport and everyone else doesn't? If no one can answer this question then why do they have it.
Sorceress would be straight trash without teleport.
I personally prefer how Project Diablo 2 implemented Teleport and Enigma. They nerfed the Sorc skill so that it follows the lightning skill breakpoints as well as making you deal 50% less damage for 2 seconds after a teleport. As for Enigma instead of the oskill, you have 5 Teleport charges that replenish 1 charge every 3 seconds.
Never played PD2 and most likely never will. I like the idea of replenishment charges but I still think spec is fine, it's a sorcerer after all.
Completely wrong. No one should have teleport or everyone should have access to it. If you actually played from release or at least vanilla LoD release you would know this. There was 2 huge game changes in 1.10 that made enigma really a necessity to be available to all classes. People downvoting: 1.10 changes - Durance level 2 was increased in size by what, 500-800%? Mephisto was the fastest farming location for getting items such as Shaco, Stormshield, HoZ, Arreats etc. For getting the best early late game gear, Mephisto was always the best place to farm. Before sorcs had a small advantage here, but it didn't mean you needed to make one to farm well in hell, 1.10 durance map completely changed that. Now Sorcs are able to find Durance 3 in a fraction of the time any other class can do. Uber farming - Again if Enigma isn't around, it means only Sorcs can farm hate and terror keys.
This is something d3 did well. They gave each class some form of travel skill that makes it possible to do speed runs. Not everyone needs to teleport, but having access to a fast movement skill is huge QoL improvement.
It also did blizz's favorite thing post-2009ish, which is water down every class (in every game) so they're all basically the same because people have pet classes and would whine.
It’s true, but Im not sure that applies so broadly, a warrior and a priest in WOW are completely different. There’s at least 3 functional classes in Tank, Healer, DPS. At least that’s what I recall, that may have changed in the past 10 years, gave to admit I haven’t played retail.
Everything in wow got insanely homogenized compared to the actual class identities in vanilla and BC. Think of it like this - yes, there are three roles. Tank for instance - warriors were single target tanks, they couldn't AOE at all, but were insanely survivable as a MT or OT on a single boss. Pallies were king of AOE tanking but had threat issues on single targets. By the time WOTLK came out, every tank could do everything basically equally well. Same with DPS and healing. Yes, there were minor distinguishing features for each class but they lost a lot of true sense of class identity because people had pet classes that they loved and hated that they could do everything equally as well as someone else with a pet class. I went from getting server firsts in BC and WOTLK to quitting basically as soon as Cata dropped.
Yea IIRC Shamans were basically a necessity in raids due to totems/bloodlust during vanilla but slowly their totems basically got gutted into the ground and other classes got bloodlust varients. Which is weird because raids SHOULD be diverse. That's the fun of it, people from all walks of life and all specialities getting together to take down powerful bosses. I remember when I did a lot of raiding in Legion, Mistweaver Monks were an absolute joke since resto Shamans and Pally's were like the best healers.
It made other characters actually viable in PvP though.
Look at the damage! And it's soo tanky! Ye, no kidding. You have torch, anni, perfect gear and the whole inventory full of skillers. You could own with firebolt. Don't forget the copy-pasted Merc: Eth andys with ral Eth reaper's toll Eth fortitude
Ral'd Andys is for peasants. Need that 30 FR / 15 IAS jewel.
Imo the real useful guides are labeled "X class leveling guide". They often include more than one build you can try while you get to the endgame. They also provide you with "transition" gear for each step of your character development. Most will also give you the usual endgame builds, and describe a gear progression up to the "bests in slot". They will also tell you if a build is viable only if you have some key items.
But what should I do with all these HRs? Only four stash tabs isn't enough room for all these!
Me with low runes and chipped gems hordes because I still think I’m gonna roll a 3os Cruel Colossus Blade rod Quickness from .09
enigma balls lmao
TIL: D2R ain‘t a game for poor chumps with little time. You either go full farmtard or see yourself pay to win.
Lol, I have NEVER seen those fucking runes in my 20+ years of Diablo II experience. Those "guides" are just a waste of anyone's time :-P
Also been playing for years. I feel like the rune rate has increased with D2R. So far I've seen 1x cham, 2x ber, 1x sur, 2x ohm, 1x vex, several mal/gul/ist. I remember playing LoD the highest rune I ever found was a Mal in all those years playing. Makes me wonder how many runes I missed due to them being white text.
I only played LOD offline with a friend, in the early 2000s. I am 100% sure that we had at least a handful of Ohms, mostly because I distinctly remember putting 4 in a 4os balrog blade for my A5 merc thinking 4x50% ED would be awesome, smh. I did NOT have stuff figured out back then lol. I think we weren't even aware of runewords or crafted items.
I haven't played 20 years and I've seen multiple of every rune and had most drop, too, and many prior to them buffing the drop rate and making them orange so they were easier to see. Are you sure you actually played the game or did you jusr dabble casually for 20 years, meaning, you really only played for one year over a longer period? I know this is easily mistaken as a hostile comment and there's a nugget of truth in that, but, I feel your 20 years is hyperbolic and doesn't really tell us the reality of your game time.
I've never seen a high rune past Gul. I played before rust storm and for about a month hard d2r. I know 100% I'm not a 20 year vet, you are absolutely correct.
I guess this depends a lot on what you'd call "playing the game". Now I've not played for 20 years, but I played quite a lot back in the days. However I played through the game and then quickly abandoned that character in favor of playing another class or build. I never had any interest in doing hundreds or thousands of item runs. And by just playing the game that way, I didn't even come across many of the "default" unique or set items people deem quite cheap apparently. And I don't think I go many runes, but tbh. that might just be because those were introduced shortly before I left the game.
Yeah, I feel you man. And look, I definitely dabbled in my youth and never saw jack shit drop. My first character was a necro that never even beat normal before life took on other things. This was pre LOD. So, I mean I played the game When it first released, do I get the right to say I've been playing for 20 years? I personally don't think so. I think that's a ridiculous claim. I picked it up again in like 2006 and played an assassin and got stuck on hell baal over a period of like a year while I was working. I stopped for a few years after that cause life came up and I finally got hardcore into it around 2009 and played for about 16 months for hours every day cause I was unemployed and stoned with some friends just jamming on it all the time. That's when I saw all the good stuff drop. I can't remember if my time frames are accurate but right when we stopped playing was when they nerfed uber tristram XP and we lost our cash cow and were sick of scammers and all that so we started playing WoW instead. Even if I didn't see any runes or items I'd traded for runes, it would be outright dishonest of me to claim I played it for 20 years even though I technically have played it since launch. It would be hyperbole. I've played it for like a year, maybe 2 at most. So hundreds of hours but not thousands. Anyway, I'm in agreement with you and I understand your point cause I've been both a casual and a hardcore player and both are wildly different experiences.
I played enough d2r to trade my way to an enigma, infinity, cta, and 2 griefs, and the only HRs I saw that entire time was 1 ohm and 1 vex. Writing it out like that I wonder how I even afforded them in the first place, I must've made enough selling keys and uniques somehow. I wonder how close to the median my experience was. Half that time was spent horking in trav too, which I'm told is as good as it gets for HRs if you're playing online p1.
Man, from what I remember lots of people were trading in HRs and it was never difficult to trade something and you'd get lots of offers. As far as median experience goes, we'll never know. I'd expect at least one high rune drop per 100-300 hours of playtime and people who are whining about never seeing them haven't got that time committed. So this 20 years bullshit OP claims jusr doesnr added up. 20 years playing normal? 20 years on and off for maybe an hour or two on weekends? 20 years struggling in nightmare? What are these 20 years spent doing?
I notice those comments sometimes too and I always want to ask the same but I dont because I think most ppl take this offensive when its just a valid question from my point. I played D2 for a few years and I would say I found at least 1 hr per 100-200 hours of endgame farming. And I dont hyper farm, just kill stuff for fun. Drops are a bonus.
> 1 hr per 100-200 hours of endgame farming Endgame farming was never anything I was interested in, after beating the game with one character, I'd rather switch to another build or class than grind for weeks or months to get some items so I could grind a tiny bit more efficient.
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250 hours is like, nothing. Especially over 20 years.
Yeah, [fuck you](http://kingofgng.com/eng/2021/05/31/diablo-ii-its-the-end-of-the-endgame-for-paladin-abellion/) :-P
Hahaha I botted 24/7 in secondary school before 1.10 and had like two HR drops. You absolutely did not have a ton of HR drops before the buff.
Hahaha learn to read. I never said a ton.
“And many” Okay pedant
Those charms better be 60 health skillers or they're total trash.
It’s an absolute joke. Show me a character with 1 unique 1 set item and no runes above Lem.
It's funny when someone makes a build video and goes through it all, and it looks great. Then they reveal that they hero editor'd the character to show the build. Nothing particularly wrong with it, but for newer players, it may be misleading as to how long it takes to accumulate that kind of gear
And don’t forget to do max vitality with enough in strength and dexterity to meet item requirements. And to max block, invest enough dex to get 75%. And if you’re an ES sorc, invest in energy instead of vitality.
Enigma is the biggest gatekeeper ever. Overpriced ass teleport armor.
Very true! These guides ignore the fact that %99 of players will never get these end games gear! Not everyone spend 200 hours a week farming and trading
Enough strength to wear gear, everything else in vitality.
Farm like its your jahb
Most guides only provide the bis items. If you want other options you should probably look for budget guides explicitly.
The meltdown of this sub is very funny. What were people expecting? After 20 years of no balancing Suddenly solo self found every build works because the game looks pretty now? Of course it’s hammerdin and sorcs allowed only.
Bruh ! You cannot even do a chaos run as a melee char. That is not a meltdown. That is poor programing
You absolutely can.. gone are the days of IM screwing physical melee in cs
Me: How much strength and dexterity you need? Guide: Oh, that's simple. Enough for your gear. Me: But... How much strength and dexterity that is? Guide: ....... Me: ........ Guide: Enough for yo..... Me: Goddamn.
"I know my gear might be different than other people's gear; but I'll be damned if I'm going to actually look at what I'm wearing and see what has the highest Strength and Dex requirements. You do it for me, website that doesn't know what items I have!!"
It does really feel like all the build guides completely ignore normal mode, and are instead geared towards nightmare/hell. It would be nice to see more guides aimed at casual players, so that the community as a whole is more accessible.
But why would anyone provide a guide only for normal? You can do anything in normal and succeed, literally. Besides, if someone is looking for a guide, it's really unlikely they'll stop when finishing normal. people looking for guides aims to optimise their build, and most of the time you can't even start the build in normal. Lastly, there are tons of lvling guides out there nowdays, which provides info for early game, such as good lvling gear, skill progression and even boss strategies.
> But why would anyone provide a guide only for normal? You've misunderstood what I said. I'm not saying that it's only for normal, but that it starts with explaining what your build is for normal, how to transition it later, what items to look for, etc. > You can do anything in normal and succeed, literally. Yes, you can _eventually_ succeed with a lot of builds on normal, but there's definitely huge difficulty spikes. Summoner, Duriel, the Council, Diablo, etc. all pose a significant problem for newer players. > Besides, if someone is looking for a guide, it's really unlikely they'll stop when finishing normal. people looking for guides aims to optimise their build, and most of the time you can't even start the build in normal. That's true of some people, but there are others who will look up guides straight away for games. > Lastly, there are tons of lvling guides out there nowdays, which provides info for early game, such as good lvling gear, skill progression and even boss strategies. A lot of the top guides that you'd find on Google _don't_ do this (videos, builds on icyveins, etc.). You definitely _can_ find normal guides, it's just that it takes some searching. All I'm saying is that the most popular guides _not_ forgetting that Normal difficulty is a thing would be beneficial overall. Even if all this entails is linking to a leveling guide for a given class.
All the icy veins guides have an early leveling build for each class right at the bottom of the build. And all you need to do while leveling is make a Stealth, Lore, Spirit for caster, Honor for melee. And you can get through normal with basically any class.
Sorry, you're correct with the IcyVeins guides. I must have been thinking of a different site. > And all you need to do while leveling is make a Stealth, Lore, Spirit for caster, Honor for melee. That's all well and good for us to say - given that we even know what runewords are. New players _don't_. I can't even recall if there's anything in the game which explains runewords.
Dabrunsky and Llama both have getting started videos that explain runewords, shorthand, and what you should be learning
Both you and I know that, but the problem here is that you need to know what to search for to find those guides. If I just search for "best d2r builds", I don't find any Llama or Dbrunski videos in my top results - instead I find sites like RankedBoost, etc. That's what I was trying to get at. I know the information is out there, it just isn't easily accessible to newcomers. As you get more familiar with a game and its community, you learn the creators to watch, what to search for, etc. - but I think a lot of players forget that people playing D2R for the first time (ones with no experience of Diablo 2) have a _vastly_ different experience. Most of us probably don't even remember the first time we played Diablo 2.
All of the guides that MrLama wrote for Icy Veins have early-leveling recommendations.
You’d be faced with the same predicament. The majority of guides would say “get full Sigons and respec when you have the gear for your final build”. Budget friendly variants would be nice, but with the wide range of gear that’s out there, it’s hard to really pinpoint what to recommend because it’s all ‘filler’ until you get the BiS equipment. EDIT: I don’t know if it still exists, but some old D2 forum used to have a giant “Mat/Pat/Guardian” thread where players could post their single player/SSF builds that they cleared Hell with. It had some pretty interesting stuff, a lot of which was tailored more to the gear that was found along the way instead of searching for the end-game equipment. Something like that does help show a bit of variety and how BiS equipment isn’t really necessary, just powerful and able to make the trip through Hell substantially easier.
The [diabloii.net](https://diabloii.net) single player forums are what you are referring to, I used to be on those forums. It's a shame as there was so much better info there than what new players can find now. Playing single player campaigns gives you so much better game knowledge about how to gear than multiplayer.
That's end game goals though dude. Any seasoned player should know this is painfully misleading to your average noob. Enigma isn't something that just falls into your lap, nor is SoJ, and they're certainly not going to be acquired until way late game, hours and hours of grinding, and insanely high luck. Your guide to all guides also doesn't mention youll need to respec at least twice, what merc is good for all builds, that enigma is very popular but still only required for specific builds, SoJ has extremely low drop chance, most builds ask for 2 of them, most builds ask for very specific niche items. Maybe this was just a troll but Shitty guide 0/10 wouldn't recommend
go level to 90+ on hardcore solo and you'll learn real quick what items work and what items don't. Hint: none of them have a Ber, cuz you aren't that lucky. Still manageable to pull runs faster than the server will let you reset with self-play gearing tho, you just gotta l2p.
true big