Best all-around PvM build?

[Cyath]

Having accumulated a decent amount of stuff, I thought I'd finally make a character to end all characters - better to have one great one than 4 good/mediocre ones. Problem is, which one to pick? I'm trying to design one that can go anywhere and more importantly, kill things at a pretty fast speed. I'm also going to be playing solo, with a focus on Pit running. I'm not really sure what could be considered the "best", so I'm going to try picking your brains to see what candidates I can come up with. ^_^

1. Hybrid Amazon (bow/javelin)

Pro : Lightning Fury with Titan's Revenge is pretty powerful, has Valkyrie, has Freezing Arrow

Cons : Doesn't do anything against Lightning Immunes, not very high damage overall.

2. Trap Assassin

Pros : Dual elemental damages, strong minion (Shadow Master) Death Sentry is a powerful skill

Cons : Needs +skills to achieve high damage

3. Bone Necro (with points in Revive)

Pros : Non-elemental damage in the form of Bone Spear, Revives can tank you, Bone Armor is good for extra health

Cons : Needs +skills and Marrowwalks to achieve high damage, low Vit overall

4. Rabies Werewolf

Pros : Rabies is uninterruptible, and does pretty good damage, low mana cost

Cons : No way to deal with Poison Immunes, poison damage takes some time to kick in

Any thoughts or builds that I might have overlooked? I'm brainstorming here, so basically anything is welcome.

P.S - One more note - no Hammerdins. I have one and playing him is deadly boring. Just throwing hammers all day...no fun.

Edit : I forgot to mention - this will be for Hell, so I'm going to need a build that is both tough and deadly. I'm not rich but I can afford most decent items, so go ahead and suggest anything that you think might be useful. It's also going to be for Softcore (Softcore Ladder to be precise) so dying is not that much of a problem (though of course I wouldn't want to die often)

[Yogi_Baar]

I'm not really sure what could be considered the "best", so I'm going to try picking your brains to see what candidates I can come up with. ^_^

Try a BF/DS assassin.

I have a BF-only (and Shadow tree) assassin with no +skills, maxed SM (main killer, even takes care of DS-ing every now and then), maxed CM, maxing Venom, using Malice claws (~11 - 30 dmg, imagine that) and a cold Act III merc (secondary killer). I've just rescued Anya in NM with no bigger problems.

My luck sucks (despite having ~110% MF), the best rune I've found so far was Dol and 2xSol (no Rhyme yet), I can't find a 3-socket claw that's better than normal claws and I rarely kill anything myself. But I'm having GREAT FUN. Now, that IS what makes a character "great", right? ;)

BTW, that Marrowwalk synergy is generally believed to be a bug (to abusers it's a feature, of course), since one point in bone prison turns them from über to not so good. Same thing with Carrion Wind and Rabies, IIRC. I'd stay away from bugs.

[Iceman]

I dont think that i can be of any help with the trap assasin because I have just started playing with her. As for all the others this is what I can tell you:

I would choose the necro. but I would focus on summoning. I allready have a 66lvl with 12 points in revive, a fire golem and six mages. I play in single player mode but with "players 5" and above, they kill anything and anywhere while i just sit back and enjoy the ride. I also have points in bone spear and poison nova and they do pretty good damage but I haven't used them that much so far. I don't know what will happen in hell because I'm still in nightmare. :D

About the amazon the only think i can tell you is that i personally don't like javelins so I went for the bow. Freezing arrow and emmolition arrow (i dont think it spells like that but what the heck) along with the valkyrie. I freeze and burn she finishes the job. She is currently lvl 60 and rising also in nightmare with "players 5" and above. The big problem is that she needs a loooooot of mana.

As for the druid I went for the feral rage because of life and mana steel per hit.


I hope that all of the above can help to you.
If you come up with something new or you make up your mind about your choise let me know.

[arrunique]

This depends on whether you are talking softcore or hardcore. If this is softcore then you don't need resists (or even life) and can focus exclusively on offense.

No matter what the hammerdin is still the most powerful overall build. It combines a powerful(the most powerful?), unresistable area of effect attack with some of the best defense (holy shield) and almost the best transportation (vigor) skills. No matter what build you make it won't be as good as a fully juiced up hammerdin.

For softcore I've had good luck with a strafe amazon but it is fairly gear dependent. You also die a lot because the offense gear doesn't leave much room for resists. A single point in lightning bolt and a decent javelin on switch takes care of physical immunes. While I've never used the mighty windforce I did use an upgraded 199 buriza and that worked.

Build is here:
http://www.lurkerlounge.com/forums/index.p...hl=&#entry38065

In hardcore I'm currently building an orb/fwall sorc who seems to be doing well and in a5 NM. I'm hoping my holy freeze merc will be able to hold hell cold immunes still long enough for fwall to do it's thing.

[whereagles]

I guess you can also try a fully-synergized fireball sorcie. I think that'd be fun to play, though you need a really beefy merc to kill fire immunes.

[Iceman]

I had an orb/fwall sorc, I stopped playing with her when she was around lvl77. Her time was before the 1.10v. If my memory serves me well i used to have problem only with hell fire/cold immunes. Cold immunes were not a big problem. I dont know if things have changes with the latest version.

[arrunique]

I had an orb/fwall sorc, I stopped playing with her when she was around lvl77. Her time was before the 1.10v. If my memory serves me well i used to have problem only with hell fire/cold immunes. Cold immunes were not a big problem. I dont know if things have changes with the latest version.

The orb/fwall sorc is what I started on softcore after my account was ganked in the great password retrieval debacle. I made a major mistake of maxing cold mastery while not putting any points into orb synergy. I also didn't build up a merc because of 1.09 thinking. Without the merc to hold people still in the fwall there was no way to handle cold immune melee monsters.

Now I'm up to level 61 with the orb/fwall sorc in hardcore and am cruising through nightmare. I even found a Hone Sundan so my pokey merc is a lot more buff. Hopefully the Hone is beefy enough to help him survive when I get to hell. One tactic I'm using is keeping a Leaf staff with +2 firewall on my switch, that way my firewall is even better.

I'll see how it works in hell but so far I'm convinced the Orb/Fwall is the only way to hybrid.

Actually I'll give this one a vote for on of the most effective pvm builds. Orb isnt quite the boss shredder that synergized blizzard or meteor is but the hybrid versitility means you can go anywhere.

[Ultimate_Power]

Well, to start off, I would just dump the idea of having a hybrid zon in 1.10. They will get slaughtered as the points will be spread along all three tree skills and there wont be many points to be put into synergies which would greatly hurt your character.

I can't really suggest much about assasins as I have hardly ever played on even though my friends and I have played through at least 8 accounts full of chars.

A necro would be good but I wouldnt really suggest a summon/bone necro as it has the same difficulty as a hybrid zon; the points would be spread too thin between the revives and the passive skills like summon resists and skeleton mastery. For the bone, synergies would be a problem. And then there are the spells. A build that I would suggest is a summonmancer. Those really pack quite some entertainment value.

Well, hope this helped narrow down the choices!

[Cyath]

I actually have a Hybridzon (level 76) she is actually doing ok in Hell. Lightning Fury kills off most stuff and Buriza kills what LF can't kill. 30 skill points unspent. ^_^ So I guess she does work.

I've heard good things about Summonmancers, but are you sure they can kill fast enough? How much damage does a skeleton do on average? I've seen games in which skeletons simply sit and wail away at enemies without killing them, so I'm not too keen on them.

For Bonemancer if I had a head with a +Revive that would solve most of the skill problems...I guess I could trade for a Marrowalks, which would make my damage pretty good. So that's that problem solved.

[Iceman]

Only the skeletons don't do that kind of damage to kill anything(I don't remember the actuall damage). But skeletons along with revives, a fire golem and a merc kill anything and fast. At least this is what happens with my necro.
I don't know if things will be that much difficult in hell because I'm still in NM. For the time being the only thing i do is just walk around and watch my group kill enemies, and of course rise the revives that die.

[Iceman]

I will have to agree with you about the Orb/Fwall. I found my old sorc and checked how she would do in 1.10. It wasn't that bad if you think that i stopped playing in 1.09. She can still kill practically anything in hell but in single-player. She uses the Memory and a unique staff on switch that gives +2 to sorc skill levels and +2 to shiver armor.

My vote goes first to the summonmancer and then to the Orb/Fwall sorc.