06-01-2004, 10:02 PM
Hi Nemesis,
People throw around the words 'suck' and 'viable' with reckless abandon these days I'm afraid. I'd put this down, in part, to the 'uber item culture' and the decision made by most of battle.net to rush characters to the worldstone keep and sit doing baal runs for experience, thereby squandering the opportunity to learn how to use the skills which will be crucial to survival in hell. </rant>
Most character builds can survive happily though normal, nightmare and the early parts of hell without any sort of twinking. You'll find items along the way, but not necessarily for the character you are playing of course. So you are right to be thinking along the lines of characters which emphasise skill power over item power. Sorceresses and Necromancers being the main examples of this. Let's not forget that some of the other classes have some potent skill-based attacks though, or have strengths outside the raw killing power of their weapon (or other equipment). I shall concentrate on the characters you asked about for now though, as this is bound to be long-winded as-is.
Apologies in advance if alot of this is obvious to you, though if at least one person can take away something they hadn't considered before then I consider this post worthwhile. There are also alot of gaps here, as I've tried to gloss over areas on which I could write a thesis (mainly on good utilisation of bowazon skills in various battlefield scenarios), I suggest you read around - but also just play, alot of these things will start to come naturally and also strike you as even more obvious than they have already :)
The Summoner
The summoner is definitely a good first character, a good defensive character with very impressive killing power. Your emphasis will be on +skills and +resistfe gear and, perhaps surprisingly, you can get a reasonably high level on these without having to twink. You don't need any +skills through normal and nightmare, this helps as it gives you plenty of time to have fun both learning your build, and enjoying some fo the coolest and oft-overlooked item creation avenues you have: The horadric cube, crafts, gambling and plain old shopping.
Some useful things to look out for
+raise skeleton/+skeleton mastery wands. You can find these by shopping, adria sells some really nice stuff right from the get-go (although money will be hard in the early stages). A good 2/2, 3/1 wand, or better, is not hard to come by.
chipped gems - I love chipped gems for no twink chars. There are several cool horadric cube recipes you can use:
3 Chipped Gems + 1 Magic Weapon = Socketed Magic Weapon
What use is this? It's your ticket to wealth beyond your wildest dreams! Buy up some no-skills wands/scepters/staves from drognan or adria for a few hundred gold, cube them up and you might get an item with some +skills which you can sell back for a fat profit. This is a great way to fuel an early gambling addiction, or to buy that stylish wand you've been drooling over in the shop window.
1 Magic Shield (any type) + 1 Spiked Club (any quality) + 2 Skulls (any quality) = Magic Shield of Spikes
What use is this? Any type of shield includes necromancer heads. You can cube yourself up some nice +skills gear with this. +raise skeleton and +skeleton mastery being the things you're looking for.
Unless someone more versed in precise game mechanics pipes up, I believe that's potential for +6rs/sm by the time you leave act2 of normal. Not bad, if I do say so myself (and I believe I just have!).
Cheap runewords
Stealth (Tal+Eth) offers you some good caster stats, both runes are easily acquired going through normal:
Magic Damage Reduced By 3
+6 To Dexterity
+15 To Maximum Stamina
Poison Resist +30%
Regenerate Mana 15%
25% Faster Run/Walk
25% Faster Cast Rate
25% Faster Hit Recovery
Ancient's Pledge (Ral+Ort+Tal) can be used for good resists, all the runes are free for completing the second quest in act5(if you haven't wangled yourself a nice shrivelled head by then):
+50% Enhanced Defense
Cold Resist +43%
Fire Resist +48%
Lightning Resist +48%
Poison Resist +48%
10% Damage Goes To Mana
Lore (Ort+Sol) can give you another +skill, amongst other useful mods:
+1 To All Skill Levels
+10 To Energy
+2 To Mana After Each Kill
Lightning Resist +30%
Damage Reduced By 7
+2 To Light Radius
Rhyme (Shael+Eth)
Slightly more expensive as you're not guaranteed a shael through normal, but it's a good caster shield too:
20% Increased Chance of Blocking
40% Faster Block Rate
All Resistances +25
Regenerate Mana 15%
Cannot Be Frozen
50% Extra Gold From Monsters
25% Better Chance Of Getting Magic Items
Crafts/Gambling
Safety or caster gloves/boots can be fun, although you're likely to gamble better - I'd suggest looking mainly for high resist items. Similarly I'd gamble for a nice resistfe belt. You should have plenty of money from scavenging high end wands/staves etc, or from using the chipped/flawed gem trick mentioned above.
Potentially +7 to raise skeleton and skeleton mastery before you leave normal, with no twinking. That's going to serve you well deep into hell (My level 86 necro only uses +10 skills with most of the standard high-end necro summoning gear at his disposal)
Let's not forget that you should be able to gamble/find some rare or blue +summons/necroskills amulets. I don't see +7-10 skills in the necessary areas as too difficult to come by during your normal and nightmare gaming: blue +3 summons amu, rs/sm wand, lore, rs/sm shield.
As for your skills, Raise skeleton and skeleton mastery are the obvious. Putting a point in the curses and playing around with them to learn how to control crowds and exploit the battlefield is a must, I'm sure you'll quickly acquire the skills necessary to really show the monsters in hell difficulty why it's called hell (and they thought it was because they were 'ard ;))
Frozen Orb Sorc
I have no experience with one of these in 1.10. I do have a no-twink Fireball sorc with Orb as a backup skill though. With this character I went for the standard 1.10 max synergies for fireball and treat orb as a crowd control skill and a backup for fire immunes. I'm no expert here, but my sorceress builds again concentrate on +skills and resistsfe. Lots of similar ideas to those mentioned above can be employed. Other runewords, such as leaf (tir+ral), come into effect:
Adds 5-30 Fire Damage
+3 To Fire Skills
+3 To Fire Bolt (Sorceress Only)
+3 To Inferno (Sorceress Only)
+3 To Warmth (Sorceress Only)
+2 To Mana After Each Kill
+ (2 Per Character Level) +2-198 To Defense (Based On Character Level)
Cold Resist +33%
Sorry to be brief on this one, but in essence the decisions are similar (and I have less experience here for you to glean information from).
Bowazon
Possibly the most difficult of the selections you mentioned, it's still perfectly possible to get a no-twink bowazon into the depths of hell. The bowazon is my favourite class by a *long* way. A no-twink bowazon isn't going to be a fast killer very quickly, but she can be a very rewarding experience.
For this I'd advise going a speed route: strafe, with some attention paid to the cold tree is especially effective. The advantage of going the speed route is that damage, although still important, is set down the priority list behind both speed and auxilliary effects. Passive skills are also important, a high level valkyrie will be a key asset to a no-twink bowie. I find her fine at level one through most of normal and nightmare, boosting to 20 makes her one of the best tanks in the game even with no +skills gear at all. In your early levels you'll experience the delights of decoy (I believe there's a link to some good advice on how to use decoy effectively off the front of the lurker lounge), slow missiles and inner sight. Use them wisely, they'll be incredibly useful when you enter hell and the fun begins. Be sure to pump dexterity into the stratosphere - one of the main problems with bowazons in hell can be Attack Rating. Penetrate is also useful here.
Items you'll want to look for
High speed bows. The fastest bows are: Hunter's, Composite, Razor, Double, Blade, Great, Matriarchal. I've found some sweet rare razor bows during late normal/early nightmare. The strafe table for these bows lends itself well to a non-twink character who is in need of speed:
0% IAS 13/3
2% IAS 12/3
13% IAS 11/3
15% IAS 10/3
37% IAS 9/3
60% IAS 9/2
80% IAS 8/2
NB: Standard strafe notation is (Firstattack frames/subsequent attacks in the strafe frames)
If you're lucky you'll get a bow with some ias already on it, but if not you can use a socket quest to shael. 9/2 is a good target, but hard for non-twink if your luck doesn't hold, 9/3 is perfectly reasonable. Socketting armor and helms with fervor jewels is a good way to boost your speed, as is shopping/gambling/crafting for some gloves with ias. The faster you're firing, the more damage per second but, crucially, the more extra effects you'll be applying - knockback, cold, slows target, hit blinds target, amp damage.. whatever you've managed to find! These will keep you safe. You may kill slowly, but it is so rewarding to see those monsters start to fall :) There are some really good posts at the amazon basin on the speedazon. In fact, I believe a recent thread deals with the non-twinking bowie there, too. I've linked the site at the bottom of this post.
Knockback is also a key to survival if your damage isn't going to be too high (the higher damage bows will start to drop in nightmare, and you can survive on a 'good' razor through nm anyway) The best way I can recommend of getting this without relying on specific drops is a hitpower glove craft:
Magic Chain Gloves/Heavy Bracers/Vambraces+Ort Rune+Perfect Sapphire+Any Jewel
will give you
Knockback, 5% Chance To Cast Level 4 Frost Nova When Struck, Attacker Takes Damage of (3-7) and some other mods (pray hard for resistancefe/ias)
Your freezing arrow will help with physical immunes in hell as things start to get trickier, but you can also shop or search for a bow with some amp damage which you could put on switch.. or use a load of gems in a larger bow.
Hit blinds target is another good mod, although not necessarily easy to come by. Some runewords have it, the coif of glory has it too if you're lucky (people would probably give them away in trade too).
Runewords
Stealth, again, is not a bad armor.
Zephyr (ort+eth) is a great low/mid level bow:
+33% Enhanced Damage
+66 To Attack Rating
Adds 1-50 Lightning Damage
-25% Target Defense
+25 Defense
25% Faster Run/Walk
25% Increased Attack Speed
7% Chance To Cast Level 1 Twister When Struck
In one of the fastest bows with a fervored helm (or armor) that'll give you 9/3. Add some 20% ias gloves and you'll be hitting 9/2, not too far fetched.
Other items you'll be looking for - resistfe/dex/ar gear is always good, fast run/walk is great. Just keep looking out for a good bow!
The Javazon
One of my friends describes this as the best no-twink character he has played, he went maxed charged strike and lightning fury, with synergies. His reasoning:
1. Valkyrie - A top notch tank, does the business vs. lightning immunes.
2. Absurd damage without the need to overkill on +skills gear.
3. "like a sorc but less vulnerable" You can afford to gain high hitpoints, and you have a valkyrie tanking for you.
I'm afraid I've never built one of these. I do believe there was a guide on the LL some time back on how to go about one, I'd certainly consider it as a good option for no twink. I'd not expect the emphasis item-wise to be too different from those mentioned above.
Further reading
I strongly suggest you visit The Amazon Basin, if you haven't already. I'm sure they won't bite if you ask some questions about the builds you're looking to play. Plus there is the added bonus of a wealth more experience than I can provide :)
The various arreat summit crafting/runeword pages can be a great asset when you're not twinking.
I hope that helps, apologies for the slightly disjointed nature of my answers. It's such a large question, I hope I've been able to throw some useful ideas out to you.
Kind regards,
30ftSmurf
People throw around the words 'suck' and 'viable' with reckless abandon these days I'm afraid. I'd put this down, in part, to the 'uber item culture' and the decision made by most of battle.net to rush characters to the worldstone keep and sit doing baal runs for experience, thereby squandering the opportunity to learn how to use the skills which will be crucial to survival in hell. </rant>
Most character builds can survive happily though normal, nightmare and the early parts of hell without any sort of twinking. You'll find items along the way, but not necessarily for the character you are playing of course. So you are right to be thinking along the lines of characters which emphasise skill power over item power. Sorceresses and Necromancers being the main examples of this. Let's not forget that some of the other classes have some potent skill-based attacks though, or have strengths outside the raw killing power of their weapon (or other equipment). I shall concentrate on the characters you asked about for now though, as this is bound to be long-winded as-is.
Apologies in advance if alot of this is obvious to you, though if at least one person can take away something they hadn't considered before then I consider this post worthwhile. There are also alot of gaps here, as I've tried to gloss over areas on which I could write a thesis (mainly on good utilisation of bowazon skills in various battlefield scenarios), I suggest you read around - but also just play, alot of these things will start to come naturally and also strike you as even more obvious than they have already :)
The Summoner
The summoner is definitely a good first character, a good defensive character with very impressive killing power. Your emphasis will be on +skills and +resistfe gear and, perhaps surprisingly, you can get a reasonably high level on these without having to twink. You don't need any +skills through normal and nightmare, this helps as it gives you plenty of time to have fun both learning your build, and enjoying some fo the coolest and oft-overlooked item creation avenues you have: The horadric cube, crafts, gambling and plain old shopping.
Some useful things to look out for
+raise skeleton/+skeleton mastery wands. You can find these by shopping, adria sells some really nice stuff right from the get-go (although money will be hard in the early stages). A good 2/2, 3/1 wand, or better, is not hard to come by.
chipped gems - I love chipped gems for no twink chars. There are several cool horadric cube recipes you can use:
3 Chipped Gems + 1 Magic Weapon = Socketed Magic Weapon
What use is this? It's your ticket to wealth beyond your wildest dreams! Buy up some no-skills wands/scepters/staves from drognan or adria for a few hundred gold, cube them up and you might get an item with some +skills which you can sell back for a fat profit. This is a great way to fuel an early gambling addiction, or to buy that stylish wand you've been drooling over in the shop window.
1 Magic Shield (any type) + 1 Spiked Club (any quality) + 2 Skulls (any quality) = Magic Shield of Spikes
What use is this? Any type of shield includes necromancer heads. You can cube yourself up some nice +skills gear with this. +raise skeleton and +skeleton mastery being the things you're looking for.
Unless someone more versed in precise game mechanics pipes up, I believe that's potential for +6rs/sm by the time you leave act2 of normal. Not bad, if I do say so myself (and I believe I just have!).
Cheap runewords
Stealth (Tal+Eth) offers you some good caster stats, both runes are easily acquired going through normal:
Magic Damage Reduced By 3
+6 To Dexterity
+15 To Maximum Stamina
Poison Resist +30%
Regenerate Mana 15%
25% Faster Run/Walk
25% Faster Cast Rate
25% Faster Hit Recovery
Ancient's Pledge (Ral+Ort+Tal) can be used for good resists, all the runes are free for completing the second quest in act5(if you haven't wangled yourself a nice shrivelled head by then):
+50% Enhanced Defense
Cold Resist +43%
Fire Resist +48%
Lightning Resist +48%
Poison Resist +48%
10% Damage Goes To Mana
Lore (Ort+Sol) can give you another +skill, amongst other useful mods:
+1 To All Skill Levels
+10 To Energy
+2 To Mana After Each Kill
Lightning Resist +30%
Damage Reduced By 7
+2 To Light Radius
Rhyme (Shael+Eth)
Slightly more expensive as you're not guaranteed a shael through normal, but it's a good caster shield too:
20% Increased Chance of Blocking
40% Faster Block Rate
All Resistances +25
Regenerate Mana 15%
Cannot Be Frozen
50% Extra Gold From Monsters
25% Better Chance Of Getting Magic Items
Crafts/Gambling
Safety or caster gloves/boots can be fun, although you're likely to gamble better - I'd suggest looking mainly for high resist items. Similarly I'd gamble for a nice resistfe belt. You should have plenty of money from scavenging high end wands/staves etc, or from using the chipped/flawed gem trick mentioned above.
Potentially +7 to raise skeleton and skeleton mastery before you leave normal, with no twinking. That's going to serve you well deep into hell (My level 86 necro only uses +10 skills with most of the standard high-end necro summoning gear at his disposal)
Let's not forget that you should be able to gamble/find some rare or blue +summons/necroskills amulets. I don't see +7-10 skills in the necessary areas as too difficult to come by during your normal and nightmare gaming: blue +3 summons amu, rs/sm wand, lore, rs/sm shield.
As for your skills, Raise skeleton and skeleton mastery are the obvious. Putting a point in the curses and playing around with them to learn how to control crowds and exploit the battlefield is a must, I'm sure you'll quickly acquire the skills necessary to really show the monsters in hell difficulty why it's called hell (and they thought it was because they were 'ard ;))
Frozen Orb Sorc
I have no experience with one of these in 1.10. I do have a no-twink Fireball sorc with Orb as a backup skill though. With this character I went for the standard 1.10 max synergies for fireball and treat orb as a crowd control skill and a backup for fire immunes. I'm no expert here, but my sorceress builds again concentrate on +skills and resistsfe. Lots of similar ideas to those mentioned above can be employed. Other runewords, such as leaf (tir+ral), come into effect:
Adds 5-30 Fire Damage
+3 To Fire Skills
+3 To Fire Bolt (Sorceress Only)
+3 To Inferno (Sorceress Only)
+3 To Warmth (Sorceress Only)
+2 To Mana After Each Kill
+ (2 Per Character Level) +2-198 To Defense (Based On Character Level)
Cold Resist +33%
Sorry to be brief on this one, but in essence the decisions are similar (and I have less experience here for you to glean information from).
Bowazon
Possibly the most difficult of the selections you mentioned, it's still perfectly possible to get a no-twink bowazon into the depths of hell. The bowazon is my favourite class by a *long* way. A no-twink bowazon isn't going to be a fast killer very quickly, but she can be a very rewarding experience.
For this I'd advise going a speed route: strafe, with some attention paid to the cold tree is especially effective. The advantage of going the speed route is that damage, although still important, is set down the priority list behind both speed and auxilliary effects. Passive skills are also important, a high level valkyrie will be a key asset to a no-twink bowie. I find her fine at level one through most of normal and nightmare, boosting to 20 makes her one of the best tanks in the game even with no +skills gear at all. In your early levels you'll experience the delights of decoy (I believe there's a link to some good advice on how to use decoy effectively off the front of the lurker lounge), slow missiles and inner sight. Use them wisely, they'll be incredibly useful when you enter hell and the fun begins. Be sure to pump dexterity into the stratosphere - one of the main problems with bowazons in hell can be Attack Rating. Penetrate is also useful here.
Items you'll want to look for
High speed bows. The fastest bows are: Hunter's, Composite, Razor, Double, Blade, Great, Matriarchal. I've found some sweet rare razor bows during late normal/early nightmare. The strafe table for these bows lends itself well to a non-twink character who is in need of speed:
0% IAS 13/3
2% IAS 12/3
13% IAS 11/3
15% IAS 10/3
37% IAS 9/3
60% IAS 9/2
80% IAS 8/2
NB: Standard strafe notation is (Firstattack frames/subsequent attacks in the strafe frames)
If you're lucky you'll get a bow with some ias already on it, but if not you can use a socket quest to shael. 9/2 is a good target, but hard for non-twink if your luck doesn't hold, 9/3 is perfectly reasonable. Socketting armor and helms with fervor jewels is a good way to boost your speed, as is shopping/gambling/crafting for some gloves with ias. The faster you're firing, the more damage per second but, crucially, the more extra effects you'll be applying - knockback, cold, slows target, hit blinds target, amp damage.. whatever you've managed to find! These will keep you safe. You may kill slowly, but it is so rewarding to see those monsters start to fall :) There are some really good posts at the amazon basin on the speedazon. In fact, I believe a recent thread deals with the non-twinking bowie there, too. I've linked the site at the bottom of this post.
Knockback is also a key to survival if your damage isn't going to be too high (the higher damage bows will start to drop in nightmare, and you can survive on a 'good' razor through nm anyway) The best way I can recommend of getting this without relying on specific drops is a hitpower glove craft:
Magic Chain Gloves/Heavy Bracers/Vambraces+Ort Rune+Perfect Sapphire+Any Jewel
will give you
Knockback, 5% Chance To Cast Level 4 Frost Nova When Struck, Attacker Takes Damage of (3-7) and some other mods (pray hard for resistancefe/ias)
Your freezing arrow will help with physical immunes in hell as things start to get trickier, but you can also shop or search for a bow with some amp damage which you could put on switch.. or use a load of gems in a larger bow.
Hit blinds target is another good mod, although not necessarily easy to come by. Some runewords have it, the coif of glory has it too if you're lucky (people would probably give them away in trade too).
Runewords
Stealth, again, is not a bad armor.
Zephyr (ort+eth) is a great low/mid level bow:
+33% Enhanced Damage
+66 To Attack Rating
Adds 1-50 Lightning Damage
-25% Target Defense
+25 Defense
25% Faster Run/Walk
25% Increased Attack Speed
7% Chance To Cast Level 1 Twister When Struck
In one of the fastest bows with a fervored helm (or armor) that'll give you 9/3. Add some 20% ias gloves and you'll be hitting 9/2, not too far fetched.
Other items you'll be looking for - resistfe/dex/ar gear is always good, fast run/walk is great. Just keep looking out for a good bow!
The Javazon
One of my friends describes this as the best no-twink character he has played, he went maxed charged strike and lightning fury, with synergies. His reasoning:
1. Valkyrie - A top notch tank, does the business vs. lightning immunes.
2. Absurd damage without the need to overkill on +skills gear.
3. "like a sorc but less vulnerable" You can afford to gain high hitpoints, and you have a valkyrie tanking for you.
I'm afraid I've never built one of these. I do believe there was a guide on the LL some time back on how to go about one, I'd certainly consider it as a good option for no twink. I'd not expect the emphasis item-wise to be too different from those mentioned above.
Further reading
I strongly suggest you visit The Amazon Basin, if you haven't already. I'm sure they won't bite if you ask some questions about the builds you're looking to play. Plus there is the added bonus of a wealth more experience than I can provide :)
The various arreat summit crafting/runeword pages can be a great asset when you're not twinking.
I hope that helps, apologies for the slightly disjointed nature of my answers. It's such a large question, I hope I've been able to throw some useful ideas out to you.
Kind regards,
30ftSmurf