I'm too busy to be this addicted,

[Bob the Beholder]

Well, with the release of 1.10 my Diablo II career began anew. To start off with, I tried out my old Paladin. And I mean old. I started him up and then left him off at about level 12 back in 1.04, got him up to 24 in 1.06, and then up to 75 in 1.09. He was a Zealot with some rather underpowered equipment. Completely unsuccessful, but it was fun to try to go through quests in Hell. Note that all of this is in Single Player, with no contact with any other player or character.

Then, I started up a Hardcore Necromancer. The build was inspired by good ol' Skeletorr, and in a fit of complete and utter originality, I named him Dead_Arthas.

That was going well until in a fit of negligence I lost him to an Ice Boar at level 27. Ah, well. He had extraordinary luck with items, too. I had a unique in my cube, my weapon swap was full of uniques, I had a unique ring, and a unique armor, and a unique pair of boots. This was all with a grand total of twenty magic find. And that was just from Nagelring. That was my first Hardcore character to progress past level 12, too. The farthest before that was a death to Bone Ash's death nova.

On that note, I started up two more characters, and began to consider another. That's where the strategy questions come in. Before this was just an opportunity to ramble.

First character, a Hardcore Necromancer named Biff_Boneson. Arty all the way, baby. I was thinking Bone Spirit for the boss killer and direct damage, and corpse explosiong to whittle down the crowds, with some bone armor for protection, and perhaps a golem to help my merc tank. I was thinking a Barbarian merc, since the aura-guards are just a bit overused in my opinion. And, of course, they tank. That's all they do, pretty much.

The build seems fairly simple. You know "Me put points in bone spirit! Durrr...". But, I'm not too sure about a couple things. I thought I'd come here and ask a group of people who may well be be better and more experience players than myself. (That's not all that hard to do, really)

First of all, should I even bother with the golem? I don't have the experience with the upper difficulties in the new patch to know if any low-point investment into a golem is really worth it. A point each into Clay Golem and Golem Mastery was quite sturdy and dependable, along with a Summoner's Wand, for Arthas up there, but I don't know if that, or that with just a few points added, would cut it later on.

For another thing, I'm not too sure what kind of curses I should be using. I'm betting there's some that could help out a lot, but I'm just not sure which. I remember something about Lower Resist lowering resistance to Bone Spirit's magic damage, but I'm not sure it's worth it to get all the prerequisites just for the one curse. Though, Terror and Dim Vision are useful in just about every situation.

Next character: Cyrella the Hardcore Amazon. I've modelled this character off of a character report I read a very long time ago, and don't remember where I got it from. All elemental arrows, basically, building up to a combination of freezing arrow and immolation arrow, with liberal amounts of pierce and decoy.

First thing, Criticial Strike. I don't think I've ever done an Amazon without it. But, with most of the damage seemingly coming from the elemental skills, I don't think this would be so crucial. Perhaps it could be used to increase the mana leech from the initial hit, but I don't think I'd use up many points on just that.

Next thing, Energy. I'm pretty sure I'm going to need some, but I'm not too sure how much. I don't want to go overboard on it, but I certainly don't want to constantly run out. I'm thinking a bit more than people would usually get, since mana leech isn't quite so guaranteed without trading.

Now, for the conceptual 'not yet existing' character. Some sort of Spearazon. Hardcore as well, of course. For some reason I have some sort of irrational love of spears. And stabbing things with them. In Diablo II, at least. Not them piddly little javelins, but something big and burly, with heavy damage.

The only characters I've known of to use Spears are the old school Jabazons and WW Lance Barbs, from back before the expansion. Is the old Jabazon still viable? I'd think it would certainly be much more difficult, but I've heard people say that it's not even possible anymore, due to how slow Spears are with Jab. Do you have any other suggestions for a character that gets to poke things with big sticks?

By the way, I'm new here. I've posted a couple times, but this is my first topic.

Thanks for any help you may provide.

[Brista]

The best necro tanks are now skeletons I think. If you're going golem then clay is quite attractive now that it slows. Clay golem is a good choice if decrepify is your main curse

And it probably should be. If you also choose a holy freeze merc and use Decrepify and use clay golem, recasting it as required to get it into better position

If you can somehow get hold of a Kelpie Snare (slows target by 75%) for your merc you have a truly evil build :)

I'm not much of an expert on amazons so I'll leave that for other people. I suspect charged strike is probably the way to go, there's a raging debate on whether Fend is viable

Have a read in the Spearazon forum at www.theamazonbasin.com

[Occhidiangela]

That "slows target" has been capped at 50%.

[Bob the Beholder]

A verdict has been reached, on some things.

First of all, rather quickly I decided that I don't particularly care how viable the Necro is, or if I waste points. I'll just do whatever I want with it, and see how far I can get along.

So, Biff_Boneson, the bone only Necromancer. No curses, no minions. Not even poison, unless I really ending up needing it. No mercs either.

My first thought was Bone Spirit and Corpse Explosion, like I said earlier. But without minions, that could be difficult to pull off. The monsters could swarm a bit much to be able to pack 'em into CE range easily. Also, I planned to use bone armor, so that I might actually have a chance of getting to bone spirit. But, since that gets some major bonuses from the bone wall/prison skills, I thought I'd check those out. I inadvertently used Bone Wall to great effect, once, with Dead_Arthas, and I remembered the occasion. I thought that it might be nice to have something between me and the monsters until I've picked off a couple, allowing for effective CE.

So, Bone Armor and Bone Wall. The synergies should keep 'em both pretty strong, if I continue pumping in points.

Whenever a situation gets messy, which may well be every situation later on, I pull up a wall and retreat behind it. Toss a few spirits and then CE the hell out of everything.

But, the one problem I'm having with this so far, is that I really don't want to rely on melee and level 1 skills until Bone Spirit, my first major attack spell.

So, I thought that because I had cut out the cursing and summoning trees, I had a few extra points from all those lost prerequisites, and that you really don't need more than ten points in CE, and decided I could do with some Bone Spear as well. That could cut out some annoyance, and the synergy should improve Bone Spirit some.

On that note, I really don't want to rely on melee and level 1 skills until level 18, either. I've done that way too often, and it's getting a bit tired to run around whacking weak things with weak weapons, just because I haven't whacked enough things to allow me to kill them in a more interesting way.

Also, I've now got a sorceress named Tiamat. My first thoughts for something new were a weird skill and a spammable skill, because spell timers annoy me.

Main skill: Blaze. After reading some of Sirian's character reports, I gained much respect for this skill, and its ability to deal with pretty much anything, except for fire immunes, obviously. It's weird because you run away to kill things, pretty much.

After that, I thought about the lightning and cold spam skills. The only real option I could come up with, without a whole lot of synergy usage, was Glacial Spike. And thus it was.

Any comments or advice would be appreciated. And all the questions from the earlier post, that I didn't adress in this one, are still up for some answers, if anyone would like to provide.

Thanks for any help you may provide.

[whyBish]

That "slows target" has been capped at 50%.

Only in PvP (according to the patch changes / A.S. ...)