What's your favorite character?

[ChromaticOnion]

I'm always interested in stories about neat characters.
What was/is the most fun character you've ever played?
What are cool varients or builds?
Has anyone tried a charged bolt/blaze sorceress?
Or mabye a leap-attack only barb?
Oh, what about a dual throw barb?
I love crazy ideas, so throw 'em out!
Also, any really dumb ideas that didn't work are cool to!

[Tuy]

I tried a bow using Barb. He was fun and I always liked it when people laughed at him in public games but even with an Act 2 Blessed Aim merc he didn't have enough attack rating to hit anything beyond normal. :lol:

[Elric of Grans]

Hail Onion,

My True Amazon is my favourite: two-handed Axe primary weapon, Bow/Immolating Arrow for Physical Immunes, Bow/Strafe to weaken groups if I pick a fight with too many at once, Bow/Freezing Arrow when I want to chill some critters, Javelin/Plague Javelin for a bit of fun, and Javelin/Lightning Fury for when Strafe and/or Immolating Arrow are useless. You can see more about her on my web page, and you can read the rules for the variant on Realms Beyond. My other AMZ are also up there on my `top characters' list :) Next best would be my Mystic Knight, followed by my Blue Mage.

[Nicodemus Phaulkon]

Has anyone tried a charged bolt/blaze sorceress?

Level 58, Champion and climbing. All hail the mighty Carpet of Zot™!

Oh, what about a dual throw barb?

Level 71, Champion and dealing with Act 5 at the moment; he also has Frenzy for spice and Berserk out of necessity... but it's the throwing that's the fun (axes, accept no substitute). I hadn't assumed these were so unheard of? I know Occhi has one, at least. Certainly there's enough javelin barbs out there that I've come across.

*tips helm*

[Ice]

Most of my characters have been variants, of which the more interesting ones are:

SC 76 Buriza Singerbarb - leap is fun
SC 90 Charged Boltress (pure CB) - converted to FO/CB/TS upon hitting brick wall in hell act 1
SC 60 Polearm Sorc - Hwanin's Full Set
HC 77 Cleric - FoH, Holy Bolt only - Angelic Raiment Full Set
HC 73 Scythe Assassin - blade shield build
HC 70 Venom Trapsassin - javelins
HC 76 Assassin - normal MA/trap hybrid - Angelic Raiment Full Set
HC 82 Chance-to-cast Barb - FO, Poison Nova, CL, Meteor, Firestorm, Blaze, Weaken
HC 48 Axe Sorc - the Minotaur (only reached NM act 3)

Then there are the more 'normal' variants like mageazons, elemental druids, true amazonians etc. All hitting hell act five except for the polearm sorc (act 1) and the axe sorc (died to lag in NM).

[Jedi Knight]

Or mabye a leap-attack only barb?

I still have a leap-attack barb from D2 1.0, that was converted to LoD. He's level 51 now, with decent gear. In fact, I thought he would be useless in LoD because so many things have changed, but he's quite capable of killing things in early nightmare. LA is on left click, so it's used as regular attack too... I think the AR bonus is applied even at melee range. I always preferred LA over WW, it's funnier, and safer, too.

I've never really weird builds, although I recently created a bow sorc that will have maxed enchant and shiver armor.

[Brista]

I think that "variant" means a roleplayed theme to a build like a Gothic Knight

Mageazon, etc are "builds" rather than "variants"

[WarBlade]

Heh. Don't get Elric started. ;)

Just in the last couple of days I've been trying to attach names to Paladin builds and also attempting to catagorize various builds by "style" or "variant" and bugger me if the old D1 colloquialism, "variant", doesn't fit too well any more. It's no surprise that the meaning of the word has changed a bit in Diablo II circles to start intruding on what used to be called a "style". :unsure:

[Sickywicky]

Lemme see.... :blink:

These are my "excentric" chars :
-bashbarb.
-arty/boomer necromancer. (use 12 hotkeys + left mouse button for this guy :) )
-Fireballsorceress.
-Hybrid amazon with lightning fury and freezing arrow.
-zealot/charge-adin. (just bought an awesome military pick with 25 lv2 life tap charges for my switch,many friends think I'm insane :P )
-kukoshakakusorc with blizzard
-Ironbarb with frenzy.

Pretty much all of my chars aren't really cookiecutters. ;)

[Elric of Grans]

Hail Nico,

"I hadn't assumed these were so unheard of? I know Occhi has one, at least."

I know Zarathustra, GrendelPrime and myself have also made them - with Javelins. I think I've made three... maybe four. I am fairly sure Kai (you remember Kai, right?) has made one too, though I could be getting mixed up with someone else.

While I'm at it, I may as well mention that I've also made countless Leap-Attack Barbarians - I even still have one today that uses only Leap and Leap-Attack

[Elric of Grans]

Hail Brista,

(Sorry WarBlade, he's got me started ;) )

Actually, a Mageazon can be a variant, in just the same way a Whirlwind Barbarian or Firewall Sorceress can be: every variant has a build as the base of it - if it did not, then it would be kind of difficult to play :P A Mageazon, if played as a Sorceress, is a variant: at least, that is how I have always played them (I originally called them Amazon Sorceresses, before I heard of the term `Mageazon'). Of cause, you could play simply any old Amazon and use Immolating Arrow and Freezing Arrow for your primary attacks, but if you base your build as trying to imitate the Sorceress, then it's a variant.

[LavCat]

Not sure if she would be a variant, but my most recent sorceress is making her way through act I hell with a berserker axe. She uses one point in frost nova much as one might a warcry (to slow things down), and she has maxed enchant. Oothoon eschews sissy sorceress spells and has no stat points in energy. I allow her hydra, since technically the hydrae are summoned minions.

Problem is things that are immune to physical and fire. I plan to replace her merc's honor ethereal superior grim scythe with a shocking bec of quickness to see how well that works.

[Ice]

I think that "variant" means a roleplayed theme to a build like a Gothic Knight
Mageazon, etc are "builds" rather than "variants".

Being an asylum variant convert since D1 times, this is the definition of variants that I've always gone with.

Mageazons (at least the original concept) pretty much fit well into the variant definition... in that she emulates the sorceress in all manners except for the use of the bow as a medium for casting spells. Ice bolt as cold arrow, ice blast as ice arrow, glacial spike as freezing arrow, fire bolt as fire arrow, fire ball as exploding arrow and firewall as immolation. And just like a sorceress would pump up mana for offence and use +skills and +mana/+mana regen gear, a mageazon does the same thing... except that faster cast is being replaced by ias.

The same can easily be said for my buriza barb and chance-to-cast barb... characters built to emulate an amazon and tank-sorc respectively. A minotaur sorc using great helm types (for the horns), the minotaur ancient axe, with the high strength and vitality characteristic of a minotaur.

[Smoketest]

My very first Amazon was started after a year or two of playing Rogues in D1. Consequently, she played through Normal with a bow, no bow skills and pumped passives. Diablo rewarded her efforts (that final battle was an hour long at least) with Silks of the Victor. She then retired shortly after entering Act 2 Nightmare. (I had a hard time finding a decent damage bow for her, especially since the bow damage bug existed at that time. Mephisto dropped a nice rare bow for her, but the game crashed and she lost it.)

I recently retired a Concentration/Whirlwind/LeapAttack barb after my tri-elemental sorceress made a mockery of him in Nightmare Act 5, followed shortly by my Fanatical Zealadin who almost tied her performance. My barb never found anything decent for equipment and so took forever to kill anything, my sorceress was using a Memory staff that she put together, and my paladin had found the unique exceptional club (~65-110 1-h dmg) in Act 5 Normal and was laying waste to everything in sight.

The most fun I've had lately is with the aforementioned 3-tree sorceress. She used T-storm, Blizzard and Hydra, with an Act 2 merc. I had the good fortune of finding a 4-socket gnarled staff with +1 T-Storm and +1 Blizzard on it, and quickly turned it into Memory. Once I learned how to use teleport to position my merc in the right places, she sailed through the game. Until she got Blizzard, I used store-bought staves of +(2-3)Firebolt, +(2-3)Fireball and +(2-3)Glacial Spike to get her through the game at a Players 3 setting. She occasionally found nice rare orbs, even a nice +2 all skills one, but nothing compared to Memory.

I currently have a spearazon who's going for Lightning Strike (or whatever that level 30 spear skill is called) as a main skill. I know it won't be easy, but I've never tried a spearazon before and want to do something with that skill tree for a change. Perhaps after I learn how to play a proper spearazon, I'll try a Javazon.

Back in D2C I built a lightning-only sorceress who used a +mana war scepter 'of piercing' to whallop any enemies who stubbornly refused to be damaged by lightning. That was interesting. I retired her after she static-fielded Diablo into oblivion.

I have virtually no experience with Necros, Assassins and Druids, though someday I'll get around to trying them out. I hate corpse explosion (dunno why...) and instead want to do bonespear/spirit and golems, but the current version of the game makes it rough going in the beginning. Too bad golems aren't as good as the hireable mercs. :(

My characters are always untwinked, since I don't have mules full of godly items, or even complete sets, to give them. Most of my melee characters run at Players 3-5 and my sorceress goes players 8 once she gets Blizzard. (I love that feature.)

Someday I want to try firewall and meteor. Actually, I still want to make a Blizzard/T-storm/Meteor "Bad Weather" sorceress, just for laughs. Triple-tree sorceresses do require a load of skill points, but they can go anywhere and take on any monster. I just love them. :D (Thanks to Venomous Vixen for introducing the idea to me.)

Well, even if I didn't give you an idea, I hope you enjoyed reading about my misadventures. :)

[Walkiry]

Has anyone tried a charged bolt/blaze sorceress?

Level 39, Destroyer and climbing as well ;)

Blaze sorcies are a lot of fun indeed.

[Juliet Must Die]

Currently the most interresting character I'm building, is a throwing sorceress. I recently heard that ligtning- and firemastery also raised elemental damage added by your equipment, so i thought I'd give it a try. I'm aming to have very high elemental damage and to raise it further by pumping the masteries. Also I'll be using Enchant, Thunderstorm, Static field and chilling armor. As for attributes I'll be pumping strength and dexterity so much that I'll be able to carry high-end defence equipment and achive max chance of blocking. Vitality will have second priority and energy will not be pumped at all. I've just started her yesterday, so I can't say if she'll be viable, but i think that she has a fair chance...

Off-topic question: Does the masteries boost elemental damage added by charms too?

Thanks in advance

[WarBlade]

I'm pretty sure it does, however a cautionary note: Enchant damage is halved for missile fire attacks according some sources. The people who have tested this (and I haven't) are people I would trust in the area of test data.

Going on that I'd say the benefit of Masteries would be equal between melee and missile attacks.

[Juliet Must Die]

At "Chippydip's Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction Skill Information" it says that only one third of Enchant's damage is applied to ranged attacks, so I'm aware of the loss. Anyone who can confirm if it's half or one third of the damage that is applied?

[WarBlade]

no t-stuff :unsure:

[Faragon]

Most fun character? Melee Sorceress Barbaria_Ann (Pre-LOD). Solely for the thrill ;)
Second is my Inferno Sorcy, but that was also Pre-LOD. Post-LOD it's definetely my Martial Artist Assassin.