What chacacters can actually do hell single player

[Obi2Kenobi]

"What is the meaning of life?".

*laughs for a while*
Read my signature.

In response to the original question, my necromancer is doing fine... he is using skeles, bonewall/prison, and clay(!) golem. And for his attack power, he uses bone spirit.

[Occhidiangela]

That game makes Minesweeper seem pretty lame.

[Occhidiangela]

I had in my list of ideas to try in 1.10, before we found out a great deal more, to try a variation on the Magezon. I am not so sure, anymore, if this one is such a good idea. If I get a chance this weekend, I may mess around with it.

Amazonius Versatilus. (Bow and Jav)

Bow Focus: Fire
Javelin/Spear Focus: Lightning Strike.
(A risk that they did not screw this one up. Early reports seem promising.)

That will probablly use up points nicely to level 74. With 85 points, available before hitting Hell's River of Flame . . .

Max Lightning Strike: costs 23 points
Max Immolation Arrow: costs 22 points (add 5 more Exploding Arrow for synergy total is now 27)
Evade:1
Avoid: 4
Dodge: 6
Valk: 10 (13 with prereqs, to include single point Decoy) (Might be better off puting these points into Exploding Arrow.)
Pierce: 10

81 points, I suspect the other 4 need to go into Dodge or Valk in later difficulties, maybe Exploding Arrow or Charged Strike for synergy.

A few +skills items here and there won't hurt Valk, Decoy, Penetrate, Pierce, and the defensive skills.

Crit Strike needs no more than one point, due to elemental focus, but that may adversely influence leech.

Concerns, besides leech:

1. Getting enough Poison Damage to work against Regeneration.

2. % To Hit in Hell.

3. Shield/Jav or Spear? I can probably get away with Spear/Pike in Normal and early Nightmare, expect to need the use of a Three Perfect Diamond Tower Shield in Hell, for resists and blocking, and for sure a shield against Duriel in NM.

Vulpine Items a must, I expect to get now and again.

4. Act II Merc: Thorns or Holy Freeze? I'd think Holy Freeze, for general crowd Control, but I suspect that the merc is going to get hit a lot, making Thorns tempting.
Valk can then be used to kill via Thorns. I don't recall if Decoy gets to use Thorns while she is being whacked on.

5. Get either Slow Monster or Cold Damage with long duration. Eye of Elytch anyone? That would be a nice find. :)

6. Merc needs to major in elemental damage, Crushing blow, or PMH. "Strength" Lance or Warpike might be just what is needed, rune cubing should get me the Amn pretty easily.

7. Hoping for the luck to get a circlet that offers "Cast Lower Resist" or charges of Lower Resist.

Note:

1. Socketed Bow thoughts: If Eth gets returned to just a -25% DR, that would make for a good choice to socket for the shots when the Mana Ball is low. A Thul or Perfect Sapphire, and poison round out a three socketed bow, for a Six Socket Bow, More Poison. If we get a little luck on a Blue Bow, and something in the Cruel range to help Leech, then two sockets should include ETH and SLOW as a minimum.

2. Problems with Serpant Mages casting Bone Spear?

Just say Slow Missile, a favorite one point wonder.

Here is hoping that I can play this weekend so I can report the results.

[TabithaWolf]

I tried a similar sorc and seemed to do decently before I got bored (player1 only -- hell).

Tal Rasha's set (downloaded char, what an ugly set...; ends up with ~+6 skills i think)
All other items were blues I got off of gheed/charsi (resists were barely into the positives)

10 warmth
20 hydra
10 fb (for spamming during hydra cast delay)
20 orb
10 gs (for emergency freezing, but I might go ice blast for the orb synergy)
20 chain lightning (thinking of taking a different lightning skill, though)
1 in each of the masteries
1 in tp, tk, & static, and the rest of the prereqs (~5 points left over, maybe for more masteries if I ever get that far)

Certainly not an uber build, but I am taking skills I know I will actually use.

str to wear full set
200 vit
base dex
rest in energy

I started in the outter steppes. It seemed too easy spamming orb everywhere. So, I went down to the river. This was actually difficult, doable but very slow. Orb is great for the venom lords, but really poor against the maulers. I really had a hard time when I ran into a champ mauler pack. The minions were easy enough when I got them stuck on the ledges to hydra/gs them to death, but the champ himself was impossible to kill. No matter how fast I spammed orbs at him (he wouldn't stay stuck), he regenerated back unusually fast.

I also tried the bloody foothills. I ended up with hell slingers and something from the quill rat class. They also died easy enough with orb, seemingly too easy. The hard part was dodging ~4 javelins along with a bunch of poisoning quills. I died twice doing that, due to stun lock.

As good as chain lightning sounds, it is far inferior to orb when it comes to packs (vs. no cold immunes). The mana cost is the same as hydra's for the same level, but it is relatively weak against single targets, which is where I'd most likely use it (since my strength is fire/ice). I still think a tri-elementalist sorc is possible, but only if she doesn't go overboard with synergies.

I also had a hard time keeping mana. I had about ~500 mana (no sojs or frosties/magefists for +% mana/regen and no es). When I ran into big packs, I never seemed to have enough mana from just spamming orb.

[Brista]

The major factor is dealing damage seems to be coping with monster regen. Some form of poison attack would be pretty useful. I think druid elementalists may wish to invest in Poison Creeper

The major factor in surviving is (sigh) still being ranged. If you are going up close and personal then you need to be focused, intelligent and have a strong build and decent items. Self found items should do so long as you take trouble to craft shop and gamble good ones

[Orcin]

A few things that I can tell you from my 4-5 days of playing a level 80 MS Zon in Hell with average to below-avg gear.

1. The HF merc is not going to last long enough to be useful in the situations where you need him. The Thorns Merc might work, or at least you would deal some damage to the pack for your 50k gold.

2. Ability to buy mana pots helps. I am not finding low mana leech to be a problem, more of a nuisance.

3. Don't skip the Valk - you will love the new & improved Valk. Especially the one in the red armor - can tank almost anything (mine is level 10). She's still stupid though.

4. % to hit in Hell - sometimes it pays to be a n00b because I have 8 points in Penetrate heh heh.

Regards,
Orcin

P.S. to the original poster: This character is ok in Hell act 5 on players 1 unless I run into extra fast / extra strong packs that wipe out my tanks quickly, then I run for the hills. I am using a Cruel Short Siege Bow socketed with 2 perfect skulls, no knockback, so she is not an over-powered killing machine. This character does not have an ideal point allocation for 1.10 either (ex. 10 points in GA plus the afore-mentioned Penetrate), so I am sure a good Zon player will have no trouble playing single-player hell except for a tough set of attributes on big bosses like the Ancients.