10-05-2005, 12:50 AM
First of all, best advice I can give you is to play solo through the game at least once into hell before listening to anyone's advice on what does or does not "suck." Most people who give advice on battle.net have never built a character without rushing straight to baal runs - if you actually want to play the game, it's best to discover what works for yourself.
Once you've got your feet wet a bit more, and are looking at building hell-worthy characters, take a look at some of the strategy guides found on Diabloii.net or the Amazon Basin. Many of them are terrible, or basically tell you that you require the absolute best items in order to build your characters, but there are a few real gems out there. Also, even the worst guides sometimes have good little tidbits in them. The exception to that rule is the strategy guide that came with your battle chest. That thing is horrendously inaccurate (and was even when it was written) and offers basically no useful advice. Use it as a coaster.
Some general tips for a sorceress, to get you started:
- Going with only one element will make you very strong through much of the game, but virtually helpless when fighting monsters immune to your chosen attack. If you have no allies in the game with you, that can mean your only options are to skip all of those immune oponents or let your merc handle them - which can often be tedious, difficult or suicidal
- On the other hand, going for all three elements typically leaves you too weak to effectively combat monster regeneration rates, particularly in hell. I only recommend playing a tri-elemental sorc if you don't care about getting very far in hell or have a pretty solid understanding of the skills you end up taking.
- The easiest sorc (IMHO) to play in hell is a dual-element sorc - take any two elements, pick a main attack from those two trees and max them out. Cold-fire is probably the most common here, though my last hell character was a lightning-hydra sorc who I enjoyed immensely.
- Whatever skills you primarily use, a few skills are excellent and deserve at least one point for most sorcs: static field, cold armor, telelport/telekenesis, warmth, frost nova. YMMV on these skills, but they're all fairly safe bets.
Hope that helps. Remember, best way to gain knowledge of this game is still to play it. A wide variety of skills and builds are very fun and effective while considered "useless" by the majority of players on battle.net. Plus, even if your character ends up sucking big time in nightmare or hell, you get to have fun finding that out for yourself :P .
gekko
Once you've got your feet wet a bit more, and are looking at building hell-worthy characters, take a look at some of the strategy guides found on Diabloii.net or the Amazon Basin. Many of them are terrible, or basically tell you that you require the absolute best items in order to build your characters, but there are a few real gems out there. Also, even the worst guides sometimes have good little tidbits in them. The exception to that rule is the strategy guide that came with your battle chest. That thing is horrendously inaccurate (and was even when it was written) and offers basically no useful advice. Use it as a coaster.
Some general tips for a sorceress, to get you started:
- Going with only one element will make you very strong through much of the game, but virtually helpless when fighting monsters immune to your chosen attack. If you have no allies in the game with you, that can mean your only options are to skip all of those immune oponents or let your merc handle them - which can often be tedious, difficult or suicidal
- On the other hand, going for all three elements typically leaves you too weak to effectively combat monster regeneration rates, particularly in hell. I only recommend playing a tri-elemental sorc if you don't care about getting very far in hell or have a pretty solid understanding of the skills you end up taking.
- The easiest sorc (IMHO) to play in hell is a dual-element sorc - take any two elements, pick a main attack from those two trees and max them out. Cold-fire is probably the most common here, though my last hell character was a lightning-hydra sorc who I enjoyed immensely.
- Whatever skills you primarily use, a few skills are excellent and deserve at least one point for most sorcs: static field, cold armor, telelport/telekenesis, warmth, frost nova. YMMV on these skills, but they're all fairly safe bets.
Hope that helps. Remember, best way to gain knowledge of this game is still to play it. A wide variety of skills and builds are very fun and effective while considered "useless" by the majority of players on battle.net. Plus, even if your character ends up sucking big time in nightmare or hell, you get to have fun finding that out for yourself :P .
gekko
"Life is sacred and you are not its steward. You have stewardship over it but you don't own it. You're making a choice to go through this, it's not just happening to you. You're inviting it, and in some ways delighting in it. It's not accidental or coincidental. You're choosing it. You have to realize you've made choices."
-Michael Ventura, "Letters@3AM"
-Michael Ventura, "Letters@3AM"