What is playable untwinked in 1.10?

[nemesis07]

The last character I played was a level 86 firewall sorceress back when they were the most broken class in the game. I am starting up again and have done a little bit of research, but I can't tell what is playable without twinking. Since I have absolutely no items, I will have to make do with whatever I find as I advance. Is there any class that I can do that with? I started a summoner necromancer, but read that he would suck without +15 to skills, which I wouldn't be able to get. Character classes I would like to play: Orber, Golemancer (if blood golem + iron maiden is still worthwhile), bowazon, javazon. Or if another build is exceptional without twinking, please list that. Thanks!

[Faragon]

Suck is a big word. I started out with a summoner necro, and he does fine with a lot less than +15 to skills. Sure, Hell is tough, but I manage. Untill hell you don't need any boosts, and when you're in hell, you'll be finding them anyway, or finding stuff good enough to trade for +skills items.

Sure, you won't have the sheer killingspeed as with an orber, but hey, you've got safety :D

[Rinnhart]

Most builds, including weak variants, are still viable through nightmare/early hell. Few, very, very few, builds can solo wrecklessly in late hell without good gear.

Summoners are, in my humble opinion, the easiest build to play untwinked. The easiest to play, period, in all honesty. The "sucks without +15 to skills" really only applies if you're going to be trying to do hell baal runs solo.

if blood golem + iron maiden is still worthwhile),

The bug that made IM and blood gollies good has been fixed.

[nemesis07]

Are orbers viable without twinking?

EDIT: another question; Are there still lurker lounge games? I remember in the past only ever playing in the lounge games. They had titles similar to llnx1 (Lurker Lounge Normal Expansion 1) but I can't remember exactly how it is.

[30ftSmurf]

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

[bigeyedbug]

Assassins of just about any stripe are fairly easy to do untwinked. They are helped considerably by the availability of claws for shopping and gambling, as well as a remarkable number of one-point wonder skills. Lightning Sentry/Fire Blast/Death Sentry Trappers are always mentioned as being among the easiest, least Unique-dependant builds of any class in 1.1. And if you're at all drawn to an untwinked melee build (not necessarily recommended unless you have a perverse turn of mind) there are several possibilities there.

[Bob the Beholder]

The stuff about the bowazon.

Sorry about reviving the topic that's been dead for a while (I completely forget this forum's stance on thread necromancy, but overall, I know, it's looked down upon).

Anyway, I just now tried part of what was said about the bow amazon, and it's working all right. I just now hit Slayer, and am about to move on to Nightmare, with completely no twinking, in anyway.

The only problems are the act bosses. Andariel excluded, because she's so early in the game so she's made weak enough that I just whacked with her with a stick 'till she died, every one of them have been a long, expensive, painful experience.

I tried to tank Duriel with a javelin and shield, and a dagger and shield, and it didn't work for anything. So I tried the bow, which worked as long as my mercenary survived, which was about three hits. I went completely broke reviving my mercenerary and buying healing potions and town portal scrolls. Not to mention that I died repeatedly. I eventually sold everything in my stash--gems, random items, runes--except for the Gorefoot I'd been holding onto, which I luckily gambled early on.

Mephisto wasn't so bad. I had to town portal constantly, to refill up on potions, but eventually I got a bit better at dodging his attacks, and he died. It still took a very long time, and a lot of money spent on potions. I mean, you normally don't think of potions as much of a money-leech, but that's just what they ended up being.

Diablo was worse than Mephisto, if only because he blocks and has more hp, so it took FREAKING FOREVER to whittle down his hp. Potions were still problematic.

And Baal, just a few minutes ago, was insane. Even getting to him! There was simply no way at all that I could do enough damage to get past the minions' regeneration with just the bow. Well, Freezing Arrow worked all right, but for half the bastards' life bars (and that's only if I get 'em all hit at once) I used up half a belt of mana potions.

Baal himself was ridiculous. For one, my character screen said I had a 48 percent chance to hit him, but it seemed to be overestimating itself. For every five arrows I shot, only one usually hit. And that's only if the constant cold-wedging and funky nova-thing allowed five consecutive arrows. He cloned himself through the whole thing. With my Paladin, I usually just chop the clone down in a few seconds, if only to get rid of him, but with the bowazon that was impossible. The puny damage I was doing wasn't even enough to register much on him!

Eventually, I switched to Guided Arrow, which seemed to hit fairly often, and just sucked down mana potions. Potion after potion after potion, after potion. I went back to get more about a dozen times.

See, I've done this same thing, repeatedly (you know, the whole 'beating normal' thing) with other characters, and it's nowhere near the problem that this is. I did with a zealot paladin, a zookeeper necromancer, a martial arts assassin, all kinds of stuff.

So, any way the bosses will stop being insane? Will the more powerful bows make this a bit easier? Though, I do already use a rare edge bow, with a good chunk of increased damage; it's just kind of... not enough, apparently.

On a side note, I've found my dumb blonde--soon as I got her--to be more reliable than my Act II mercenary, even if he does have an enhanced damage rare pike with life leach. The Predumblonde era saw this happening at pretty much any time in which a monster--or monsters--would approach my character. Ever. Decoy helped a bit in situations like that, but I really didn't have the mana to be throwing decoys everywhere.

Ehhh... I think I can just stop rambling now; it'll be for the best for everyone, I think.

[Rinnhart]

Not to my knowledge. They were great, though.

[Munkay]

Not to my knowledge. They were great, though.

Very much agreed.

As much as Vick and I fought, I enjoyed every fight.

I miss those games with enrique, RB, sam, tal, et. al.

Good memories for sure :)

-Munk

[Thecla]

Just a few comments -- too long since I played to go into great detail!

1) Untwinked bowazons are highly viable all the way the the end (build up one elemental attack -- like freezing arrow, with da synergies -- and look for high da elite bows near the end, either from shop keepers or from drops (which aren't so rare in 1.10). You don't need uber-unique bows, but you may need to use potions a lot until you get good leech gear & a high da bow.

2) Prevent monster heal is your friend vs. high regen bosses/monsters. Buy javelins with PMH, put them on your weapon switch, and use that to tag monsters to stop their regeneration.

3) A high level valk is an almost indestructible tank in 1.10, and makes bowazons easy all on her own (put plenty of points here or even max her). Support her liberally with decoys.

4) On bosses: as you said Andariel is easy (e.g. to run and shoot); Duriel is hardest on normal IMO -- after that go down with your valk + merc, let you valk tank him, drop decoys periodically on him as a distraction, and fire away from a distance; Mephisto can be cheesed across the moat from a distance, unless you consider that to be beneath you, or just tanked by your valk; Diablo will fall to elemental attacks + valk if you want, avoiding his nasty flame river, and you can always retreat into the sanctuary where he won't follow you; hell Baal I have always personally hated with bowazons.

[Chesspiece_face]

I've always felt that the easiest character build to play untwinked is the tesladin.

20 resist lightning
20 holy shock
20 zeal
20 holy shield

you can easily be doing ~3000 damage at lvl 45 from skills. most things from the end of normal to the end of nightmare will die just coming close to you. And by the time you get into hell and it gets harder again you have decent items to equip or trade with.

[dkass]

I've found that just about any non-specialized non-crippled (ie no variant built around a specific item or using extremely weak skills/equipment) is viable throught the entire game without twinking. Pick one (at random if you want) and try it. Ignore all the bad advice in most of the guides that you NEED this or that uber-item. They're wrong.

One key to no twink play is that you need to do full clears of just about everything. Do all the side quests all the random dungeons and areas. You need a wide variety of equipment to select from to fill in the gaps in the character (and they often won't be the "standard" ones). This also insures you'll be at a reasonable level when tackling various act end bosses (until late hell, extra levels can compensate for a huge number of other weaknesses and are easy to acquire). You'll find some great equipment so build around what you find (buy, gamble or cube). The cube is your friend learn ALL the recipies by heart. If you're not constantly juggling stash space to decide what to keep for cubing what to keep because its good and might fill in a future equipment hole, you're moving forward too fast.

Potions are your friend. Use them liberally there are plenty more where they came from (although that seemed extreme against normal Duriel with a bowzon--sounds like the character needed more strategic thought, or perhaps didn't clear enough areas and tried too soon).

Gems and runes are your friend, although this depends a bit on the exact class (bowzons particularly like them, for other classes, its more variable). If nothing else, they're useful in cube recipies.

I've found the werewolf to be very good no twink. The only thing you really need is a decent fast weapon. Look at The Dragoon's pages. Ignore all the uber weapons he has listed and look at the ones he only mentions as "decent" or something equivalent. Shaels are your friend (you won't need one in normal but do several NM countess runs until you find at least one, if not two of them). Obviously this will depend a bit on what else you find. PI in late hell will be a pain, but doable (I recommend shopping for something very fast with high elemental damage and having either a act 1 or maybe act 3 merc).

[30ftSmurf]

Hey Bob,

Thecla and dkass have put in some great responses to this already, so I'll try (and fail) to avoid repetition. I fell into the age-old trap of concentrating on item advice rather than emphasising styles of play (which, in alot of cases, can make up for some major item deficiencies) - apologies for that!

Act bosses in normal are probably your hardest fights as a pure bow amazon.

Duriel can be a real pain. You can make him slightly easier by full-clearing for levels and always checking out Fara for high block shields and a high damage pointy stick. I've been very lucky on a few occasions and found weapons which allow me to stand next to duriel and suck it up - that said, it still takes alot of potions and some care. Once you have your valkyrie and/or a good merc he's a pussycat - I'd hope you don't have similar problems in nightmare and hell!

The other bosses I have some trouble with are normal diablo and baal. For diablo it is more the length of the fight than the danger - slapping on some good resist gear (even if just blue stuff from the shops) and getting into good dodging habits is a real help here. With enough side questing (a great peice of advice from dkass) you can always wait to 30 before taking him and have the (albeit limited) valk distraction. In nightmare and hell I don't find diablo much of a problem. No-twink doesn't offer you the safety of some guaranteed slows target, but your valk and dodging skills should be honed by the time you take him, I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't have to suck up many potions at all.

Baal is an irritant in normal, and will be in hell. High % slow totally shuts him down, but you're not going to have that luxury no-twink. For hell I find I can keep a valk in his face and just sit strafing (if he clones) or magic-arrowing to take him down. It can take an absolute age, depending on what you've found along the way - but it's usually a safe fight.

I think that's the one piece of advice/encouragement I'd add to what has already been said. Once you've got valk/decoy and honed your skills through normal it really becomes alot easier - you may not be killing at speed (in fact, you almost certainly won't be), but you'll be able to control the battlefield and keep yourself safe. Throwing up a decoy and letting loose a volley whilst your valkyrie and merc catch up and close in on the oncoming enemies can be very satisfying if you enjoy being in control :) "Slow and steady wins the race", and all that jazz.

Pleased to see a long ramble, it sounds like you've really earnt your slayer title, and that gives me great confidence that you'll continue and rule nightmare! You'll be learning more by playing than you have reading this response :)

[Darkling Glory]

Just dropping off my .02 -- I came late . . . no . . . I came way late to necromancers. I decided in the original Diablo that I didn't like them and when I finally saw them, I knew I didn't like them. They look weird, they hang out with weird creatures and they do weird things to those creatures (resurrect them, blow them up, etc.). Anyone whose residential address is the local cemetary needs to be watched closely. (That was how my logic ran. There is no excusing ignorance, so I won't try.) Since 1.10 ladder arrived, I had been playing nothing but bow-variants. I had the ranger, the hunter, and the sniper up and running and I thought, what the heck, I'll give a necromancer a try. By the time I had my fifth skeleton, I was gone and the bow long forgotten. This has to be the easiest character to play in the game. They (summoner) stay alive, use little mana (after initial resurrections) and level quickly. They can be soloed through normal and nightmare. By the time you get to hell, you will have had time to develop your play style and assess various types and styles of equipping. But the number one seller (if your eyes and computer can handle keeping track of 20 to 32 characters at one time) is they are definitely FUN to play.

--DG B)

[Obi2Kenobi]

They were just as good in 1.09, DG. The skeletons were weaker, sure, but it was fun to have tons of them. Makes you rely on many curses instead of just Amp. :)

[Assur]

Hi

One character that isn't equipment addicted is the ShockFreezer. Max out Holy Shock and Holy Frost, the rest of the points in Resist Lightning and Resist Cold and 4 points into Zeal. If you have points over after that put them into Salvation for added damage or Zeal to raise your AR (Holy Shield is another possibility).

You get added elemental damage + aera effect and your resistance level against cold and lightning is raised to 85%! The only thing you need is a fast weapon. This char can also be played as a Ranger or a thrower (it still makes sense to put the 4 points into zeal in case you want to get up close and personal B)

good karma

[Whitering]

Oh, I just really posted this as it will have some relevance given the ladder reset :P

I have found leveling a no-twink will tend to go more quickly and less dangerously on a skelemancer or hybrid zon. A no twink cold sorc is certainly viable with the bonus that you will likely end up with a powerful nightmare meph runner. A point to note on the skelemancer is that the maggot lair is simply an exercise in frustration and torture, much like it is for the hammerdin.

The sorceress will often have trouble, if being built for the end game (meaning not gimping yourself for high level reckless antics later ;) ) with Baal. If you are going a orb route, then he is actually easier to beat if you pump up your life through any means possible (without investing too many stat points as they are relatively useless for a sorc in vit) so that you have more life than mana. Orb is not terribly mana expensive, nor is meteor if you happen to do that cooker cutter build, so you don't need much mana. The last no twink sorc I made went this route and ended up having a field day with Baal as he did not cast his very annoying mana/health curse on me, and I had full blocking :P By Nightmare...well he shouldn't be too hard then as you will find some gear, especially if you take some extra time to farm Mephisto.

As a hybrid zon, focusing in charged strike, a few points in guided arrow, or strafe (pick one really) and start pumping lightning fury when you get to lvl 30 and you don't even need a valkyrie as a tank through nightmare.

To sum it up, charged strike, especially with any amount of leach and resists that can be shopped, will take down any of the act bosses very quickly. Even just dual synergized with LF this is a killer. Do yourself a favour, mostly to save mana and a little time and shop a wand with charges of lower resist. It will only be level 1 if you shop it but that's still 30% resist decrease, all of the bosses even in nighmare will drop to a 1 synergy charged strike very quickly.

A hybrid zon makes for a great first character, making a pure bowie is hard on yourself until you get some nicer gear and you will definitely need to be spending points in valk, which I don't find necessary until nearing hell. After a few points in lightning fury you will absolutely mow down cows and other clumps of low lightning resist monsters. I found doing the chaos sanctuary in all difficulty levels (hell with a strong valk) to be quite easy with this build.

All of this advice is predicated on the belief that you will be playing solo against the bosses and through some of the more difficult areas. Really, as previously stated, you can take any gimp character through the game by partying. There are tons of bnet games devoted to defeating diablo and especially baal runs for levelling. It is entirely possible to be almost level 50 entering nightmare if you do baal run after baal run. If you are partied with nice people you may get to keep some of the nice equipment he can drop.

[Crystalion]

The last character I played was a level 86 firewall sorceress back when they were the most broken class in the game... what is playable without twinking. Since I have absolutely no items... Is there any class that I can do that with? ... Character classes I would like to play: Orber, Golemancer (if blood golem + iron maiden is still worthwhile),&nbsp; bowazon, javazon. Or if another build is exceptional without twinking, please list that.

Lots of the responses here (in the thread thus far) are interesting.

But it sounds to me like what you want is something that can quickly get to clvl 86+ and have a fairly easy time doing so, without great gear, and without getting pathetically stuck aka "sucking" in common situations.

You didn't name any example builds that melee, so I will save myself the time commenting on the merits of the WW, Fury, Zeal, DragonTalon related builds, etc. etc.

Personally I don't think Frozen Orb sorceresses really fit the bill in v1.10 (monsters have too many HPs and therefore regen in the later parts of the game). Perhaps a FO Sorc played to 80ish in Classic, using pumped Static Field, and then converted to LoD comes close to the "easy & quick" criteria (classic doesn't nerf SF so that's your xp speed factor). Such a build also has the points to achieve a good Firewall, so eventually the Hell immunes aren't a show stopper (in LoD... in Classic you'd be a demigod).

Firewall or Fireball/Meteor specialists fit the bill apart from the commonplace of Fire Immunes in v1.10 Hell.

Similarly the excellent Javazon lightning builds suffer if you wish them to fight vs. Lightning Immunes in v1.10 Hell.

If you are willing to learn and put up with the Zen of Blessed Hammer aiming, such Paladins do fit the bill (afaik, being "bad" only in tight quarters if your Zen isn't up to the aiming finesse). If the hammers shot straight forward, this would be the Guided Arrow "sleaze" (abbrieviation for "slay easily") build of v1.10.

I have to agree with other posters that skelemancers do not need super gear to be killing machines... my personal take on this is that you should balance your focus also to a decent range CE. The sticky thing for all summoner/CE necros is when act bosses tear their army to bits and there is no corpse to explode. A large +summon tree skills boost in v1.10 is able to overcome this problem (in combo with, say, Clay Golem and Decrepify slowing the act boss way down). But such a large +skill boost is not necessary until Hell act bosses, afaik, and certainly if no impediment to leveling and advancing rapidly in the game if you simply party up to get the right-of-way past those sticky points.

Because there aren't many problematic Magic Immunes it isn't totally crazy to make a Bone Spear/Spirit build in v1.10 (though I'd suggest some CE radius for xp/killing speed). A high level of Bone Prison (synergy) results in virtually free/spamable crowd control for most situations. Since I think teeth are a poor choice (skill/synergy) my preferred build would be a little slow leveling until Bone Spear became available (clvl 18). Such a build doesn't have ugly trouble with the Hell Act bosses apart from Baal (because he can teleport out of the spammed Bone Prisons). Nonetheless, the weakness of the Bone approach is vs. high HP targets, like the Diablo Clone, when you can't use CE to take them done and have to pit your damage against their regen. If, however, you have an EthEthEthEth (or more) on a weapon switch bow and PMH equiped (various set and uniques) then you can quickly "tag" the occasional problematic target up front to kill the regen. Also, to be fair, trapping everything in solid bone, then killing a couple "slowly" by magical missiles, then CE oblitering the rest, is rather an odd M.O. and probably not to most people's taste.

I think Bowazons are solid, and fun to play, but since the Guided Arrow foo has been fixed, those builds don't have any obscenely high damage (to single target) non-equipment "easy" options. The exception to this is if you have an Enchantress around to bless you. To be fair, I don't think Bowazons are particularly hard owing to a lack of good equipment until Hell. For the sake of this discussion we're assuming you won't have good equipment, even by then, but statistically, given trading, I think it likely a decent bow would be available.

As others have mentioned, there are Trapper builds for the Assassin that benefit greatly from +skill equipment but don't require it desparately. I have played a number of different types of Assassin, so I have preferences here that are too verbose to go into... but there is a wealth of info at AB and elsewhere if you're interested in these builds. Since these builds typically have a mix of lightning/fire/physical damage output they aren't as likely to get "stuck" as most of the other builds mentioned here.

But v1.10 is a bit kinder to "physical only" damage builds, so a Tornado Druid can be pretty easy (although bypassing or partying past PIs is always a big issue).

If you can hitch a ride in the game to quest/location advance whenever you like, doing a Holy Bolt Paladin is very easy and can level up at an incredible rate if you're willing to repetively kill undead. The build overlaps enough with the Blessed Hammer build that you can make a soso Hammerdin as well (or some other Paly build that doesn't need huge numbers of points but those would likely be melee oriented, so I won't comment here).

Some of these builds segue to even better builds with good equipment and some of them just can't be "fixed" (their flaws remedied, no matter what goodies you find).

If you just want to quickly have a high level Sorc for MFing or Rusher utility I'd have to say that I think making a Sorc in classic with a plan to develop Static Field, Firewall and Frozen Orb in some sort of sensible order might make a lot of sense for you (since you've done a Firewall Sorc before, and no doubt understand the Zen of aiming those).

If you come across either a Ravenclaw, Kuko or Demon Machine, making an Enchantress build is quite interesting (of itself, and for the blessing you can bestow upon other builds). My Enchantress in LoD was quite fun and easy, apart from the usual Firewall/FireBall/Meteor type problem vs. fire immunes (as I'm sure you appreciate, the Sorc class, with native teleport, isn't as crippled as other classes would be, for the sake of xp & loot at least, by not being able to deal with FI mobs). You can read MongoJerry's guide if you're not familiar with the pluses and minuses of v1.10 Enchant builds.

Personally I find the initial build to be biased more by whether I intend to mostly solo or party. If you have a regular play partner, for example, I think it totally changes the mix for deciding what builds would be "best". Also all my comments are from a Softcore perspective. I'm toying with the idea of starting out in Hardcore on the new ladder, because I believe I'd find a team oriented group of Basiners to play with (my Softcore Basiner experience having been quite good--but apparently there are more HC AB players than SC and quite often the USWest SC games were empty).

Have fun.

[CelticHound]

If you are willing to learn and put up with the Zen of Blessed Hammer aiming, such Paladins do fit the bill.

I like the way you put that.

It's sad, though, that my ki is not developed enough to deal with Blessed Hammer. (Zeal and Fend are more my speed...)

Good luck and fun on the new ladder, btw. I'm still hoping this will include a 1.11 patch with at least a few bug fixes.

-- CH

[ObsessedAvenger]

A hammerdin will also offer you reasonable success untwinked. Your synergies will give you decent killing power with your hammers.

OA