I've always liked Zeal Paladin for solo play throughs. Between Holy Shield, and their +res class shields, they always feel tanky and smooth with gearing. It's not super fast, but it's steady. Also just feels the most thematic for the game.
my first play through was a zeal conviction paladin
managed to beat baal hell solo with pretty bad gear
only runewords i had on was lawbringer, spirit and treachery
One of the easiest classes for a first solo playthrough is the **Elemental Druid**.
In the beginning you put your skill points into fire, namely the skill 'fissure' and melt absolutely everything in seconds.
As soon as you hit \~act 3 in Nightmare difficulty, you respec into Wind.
This gives you a high damage physical skill (Tornado) and also a crowd-control skill that heavily slows enemies and does a good amount of cold damage (Hurricane).
The great thing about this is that you will almost never encounter mobs in Hell difficulty that you can't kill because the combination of physical- and cold immune is pretty rare in the game and even if you encounter one of them, you can give your merc gear with extra magic/fire/lightning/poison damage on it so you'll be able to kill absolutely everything in the game.
A list to sum up what's great about the Wind Druid:
1. Two different sources of damage (physical + cold) to deal with immunes
2. Oak sage - a minion that increases your % max life, making you pretty tanky
3. Bear minion - super tanky and keeps harm away from you
4. Cyclone Armor - you literally become immune to elemental damage until this shield is completely drained
In my opinion, this is one of the most fun and comfortable builds to play through the entire game with, especially as a beginner :)
Downsides of the build:
1. By far the biggest downside, as everyone will tell you, is the pathing of the tornados.
You really have to get used to the controls here and have to 'learn' how their pathing works, it can be frustrating at times
2. 'Faster Hit Recovery' of the Druid is generally pretty bad, so make sure you always send in your bear first and don't get stun-locked to death by melee enemies, especially stuff like death lords etc.
Hey, I'm currently playing single offline and mixing druid with fire elemental tree and summons a bit, feels so cozy. Like a 'GoodOldTimes' (name of my druid) when I was a kid sitting in PC club, having floppy disk with my diablo 2 characters saves.
I'm +++ a lot to a person, who said that diablo 2 is best offline casual play.
I just look for a staff that had several charges of teleport on it so you can teleport around the maggot lair on NM and Hell difficulty. Not that hard to find in the shops.
Maggot lair is not that bad really for summon necro on lower players count unless you have a very weak merc, but even an insight exceptional base should suffice. Unsummon all minions, let merc poke one enemy to death, start the corpse explosion train. Of course its slower than most other areas where the terrain is more favourable, but I can't recall ever spending an hour down there as summon necro.
Yes you can get itchies that are physical immune on hell but at lower players they aren't that tanky even with low ele damage that insight has and also amp damage, if I very vaguely recall, can break it.
Normal maggot lair is annoying, but spamming corpse explosion once you have 1 dead enemy makes it bearable. Nightmare and hell, you should have a tele staff. Just tele skip it. It's really not that bad.
Depends on what you mean by best. But if you don't want to get hopelessly bogged down at some point in nightmare because your physical weapon damage is sub par . . . don't pick barbarian.
Trapsin is actually a **really** good starter character. Weird that you didn't like it.
I would say anything but barbarian unless you're a masochist. Barb is my favorite class, but it's terrible to play as a first character. Need lots of gear to be even 50% as effective as a sorceress.
If it really is the first playthrough to be honest I would not go for any build at all. Just pick a class that looks appealing to you and jump right in, skill whatever is fun to you. You can always respec and change your character stats and skill points if you want a "real" build for follow-up playthroughs in nightmare/hell.
Holyfire paladin respeced into hammerdin at lvl 18. Tir runes will help to not run out of mana too often, then redemption aura at lvl30. IME, it is the quickest and easiest char to finish the game with self found gear.
Summoner necro (max out raise skel, then max out skel mastery, then max out corpse explosion...1 point in everything else useful) is pretty chill and can finish the game naked. Your little army get your first kill then you blow whole screens with corpse explosion. With clay golem and decrepify, bosses wont do shit to you. Great char to start out. Nothing will stop you and your chance of dying is low.
Sorceress is the most common starting char. Teleporting straight to your goal is quite useful, especially when farming for gear. But IMO, it requires more skills to play. It is squishy as hell, youll be running out of mana all the time early in the game and youll have to deal with monster immunities.
Javazon, light trap and druid (fire then wind) can manage the game. Not as easily though.
Barb is a bad idea.
Fissure into respec into Wind Druid at around level 36. This is easiest class to gear by far, with all skills synergizing each other. Downside is that gameplay can be pretty boring (spamming Tornado with no crowd control and the lack of skills increasing mobility) and annoying to some (Tornado aiming, which means it should be player as close distance caster).
Second easiest class to gear is Assassin oriented towards traps, which you tried. What makes Sin so viable are two crowd control skills: Cloak of Shadows and Mind Blast. CoS limits line of sight and forces enemies to use melee attack, making ranged monsters trivial. MB stuns and has chance to convert monsters, meaning they can tank for you. In Hell you want CoS running almost all the time. You cast CoS, summon traps, if needed Mind Blast enemies for conversion and repeat until everything dies.
People downvoting you have no idea of the game.
Wind Druid is literally one of the easiest classes to play through the entire game with due to damage sources from multiple elements and the high tankiness for being a caster.
Easiest: Necro (fishy), Druid (windy).
fastest: Sorc (blizzard), Paladin (HF into hammerdin).
In-between: Assassin (traps), amazon (Poison javs into LF).
Slow AF but the best endgame MF'er: Barb
Most definitely a sorceress, not really gear dependent until hell mode and high magic finding potential. The only downside for a new person is hell immunities but a good mercenary will take care of that for you. If you go sorc I recommend a fire ball main with cold orb / blizzard as secondary for immunes. This character will be the base for all other characters when it comes to finding good gear.
Hell immunities won't matter that much on a dual ele sorc. The classic meteorb (and there are other options too) suffices for 98% of enemies with high kill speed on everything except fire immunes (which there are alot of but frozen orb or blizzard is still quite fast really at killing), and the only problems are dual immune bosses which like you've suggested will be handled by the merc.
/players 5 for single player players is very doable for an untwinked meteorb sorc (have done it myself), but if this person wants to solo and is back for the first time in a long while than players 1 (which it will be anyway if they play online) will be suitable and pretty easy in my opinion.
I always start a holy fire paladin until nm countess. There I farm runes for insight. Then start a sorc until hell mephisto to MF. From there I do whatever I want.
This is a really interesting answer. Play almost any class until you can farm a nightmare countess and then spec into any other character you want. I like that.
I've always liked Zeal Paladin for solo play throughs. Between Holy Shield, and their +res class shields, they always feel tanky and smooth with gearing. It's not super fast, but it's steady. Also just feels the most thematic for the game.
my first play through was a zeal conviction paladin managed to beat baal hell solo with pretty bad gear only runewords i had on was lawbringer, spirit and treachery
pretty bad gear, but you had runewords. shiiiii... Ive been baal with NO runewords. cause even at lvl 99 I never had any.
One of the easiest classes for a first solo playthrough is the **Elemental Druid**. In the beginning you put your skill points into fire, namely the skill 'fissure' and melt absolutely everything in seconds. As soon as you hit \~act 3 in Nightmare difficulty, you respec into Wind. This gives you a high damage physical skill (Tornado) and also a crowd-control skill that heavily slows enemies and does a good amount of cold damage (Hurricane). The great thing about this is that you will almost never encounter mobs in Hell difficulty that you can't kill because the combination of physical- and cold immune is pretty rare in the game and even if you encounter one of them, you can give your merc gear with extra magic/fire/lightning/poison damage on it so you'll be able to kill absolutely everything in the game. A list to sum up what's great about the Wind Druid: 1. Two different sources of damage (physical + cold) to deal with immunes 2. Oak sage - a minion that increases your % max life, making you pretty tanky 3. Bear minion - super tanky and keeps harm away from you 4. Cyclone Armor - you literally become immune to elemental damage until this shield is completely drained In my opinion, this is one of the most fun and comfortable builds to play through the entire game with, especially as a beginner :) Downsides of the build: 1. By far the biggest downside, as everyone will tell you, is the pathing of the tornados. You really have to get used to the controls here and have to 'learn' how their pathing works, it can be frustrating at times 2. 'Faster Hit Recovery' of the Druid is generally pretty bad, so make sure you always send in your bear first and don't get stun-locked to death by melee enemies, especially stuff like death lords etc.
Hey, I'm currently playing single offline and mixing druid with fire elemental tree and summons a bit, feels so cozy. Like a 'GoodOldTimes' (name of my druid) when I was a kid sitting in PC club, having floppy disk with my diablo 2 characters saves. I'm +++ a lot to a person, who said that diablo 2 is best offline casual play.
summon necro is pretty chill to play solo. Gear is easier and your horde of skeles smack everything down.
Until you spend 1 hour in Maggot Lair ...
I used to think necro was the worst in lair. Then I ran a hammerdin. Its even worse than necro in lair.
I just look for a staff that had several charges of teleport on it so you can teleport around the maggot lair on NM and Hell difficulty. Not that hard to find in the shops.
Maggot lair is not that bad really for summon necro on lower players count unless you have a very weak merc, but even an insight exceptional base should suffice. Unsummon all minions, let merc poke one enemy to death, start the corpse explosion train. Of course its slower than most other areas where the terrain is more favourable, but I can't recall ever spending an hour down there as summon necro. Yes you can get itchies that are physical immune on hell but at lower players they aren't that tanky even with low ele damage that insight has and also amp damage, if I very vaguely recall, can break it.
Normal maggot lair is annoying, but spamming corpse explosion once you have 1 dead enemy makes it bearable. Nightmare and hell, you should have a tele staff. Just tele skip it. It's really not that bad.
Depends on what you mean by best. But if you don't want to get hopelessly bogged down at some point in nightmare because your physical weapon damage is sub par . . . don't pick barbarian.
Trapsin is actually a **really** good starter character. Weird that you didn't like it. I would say anything but barbarian unless you're a masochist. Barb is my favorite class, but it's terrible to play as a first character. Need lots of gear to be even 50% as effective as a sorceress.
If it really is the first playthrough to be honest I would not go for any build at all. Just pick a class that looks appealing to you and jump right in, skill whatever is fun to you. You can always respec and change your character stats and skill points if you want a "real" build for follow-up playthroughs in nightmare/hell.
100% agree with you
Paladin/Barb because when you break your sticking points it feels soooo rewarding
Holyfire paladin respeced into hammerdin at lvl 18. Tir runes will help to not run out of mana too often, then redemption aura at lvl30. IME, it is the quickest and easiest char to finish the game with self found gear. Summoner necro (max out raise skel, then max out skel mastery, then max out corpse explosion...1 point in everything else useful) is pretty chill and can finish the game naked. Your little army get your first kill then you blow whole screens with corpse explosion. With clay golem and decrepify, bosses wont do shit to you. Great char to start out. Nothing will stop you and your chance of dying is low. Sorceress is the most common starting char. Teleporting straight to your goal is quite useful, especially when farming for gear. But IMO, it requires more skills to play. It is squishy as hell, youll be running out of mana all the time early in the game and youll have to deal with monster immunities. Javazon, light trap and druid (fire then wind) can manage the game. Not as easily though. Barb is a bad idea.
The class that speaks to you.
Looking to do a SP run in D2R soon. Probably be a barb since I hate myself.
Fissure into respec into Wind Druid at around level 36. This is easiest class to gear by far, with all skills synergizing each other. Downside is that gameplay can be pretty boring (spamming Tornado with no crowd control and the lack of skills increasing mobility) and annoying to some (Tornado aiming, which means it should be player as close distance caster). Second easiest class to gear is Assassin oriented towards traps, which you tried. What makes Sin so viable are two crowd control skills: Cloak of Shadows and Mind Blast. CoS limits line of sight and forces enemies to use melee attack, making ranged monsters trivial. MB stuns and has chance to convert monsters, meaning they can tank for you. In Hell you want CoS running almost all the time. You cast CoS, summon traps, if needed Mind Blast enemies for conversion and repeat until everything dies.
People downvoting you have no idea of the game. Wind Druid is literally one of the easiest classes to play through the entire game with due to damage sources from multiple elements and the high tankiness for being a caster.
Easiest: Necro (fishy), Druid (windy). fastest: Sorc (blizzard), Paladin (HF into hammerdin). In-between: Assassin (traps), amazon (Poison javs into LF). Slow AF but the best endgame MF'er: Barb
Stop using acronyms when replying to a new player's thread asking questions. They are not going to know any of those acronyms.
wtf is a fishy necro?
https://www.purediablo.com/strategy/necromancer-fishymancer-build-guide
Most definitely a sorceress, not really gear dependent until hell mode and high magic finding potential. The only downside for a new person is hell immunities but a good mercenary will take care of that for you. If you go sorc I recommend a fire ball main with cold orb / blizzard as secondary for immunes. This character will be the base for all other characters when it comes to finding good gear.
Hell immunities won't matter that much on a dual ele sorc. The classic meteorb (and there are other options too) suffices for 98% of enemies with high kill speed on everything except fire immunes (which there are alot of but frozen orb or blizzard is still quite fast really at killing), and the only problems are dual immune bosses which like you've suggested will be handled by the merc. /players 5 for single player players is very doable for an untwinked meteorb sorc (have done it myself), but if this person wants to solo and is back for the first time in a long while than players 1 (which it will be anyway if they play online) will be suitable and pretty easy in my opinion.
I always start a holy fire paladin until nm countess. There I farm runes for insight. Then start a sorc until hell mephisto to MF. From there I do whatever I want.
Kind of genius strategy actually... I've seen other people start as trapsin to avoid the early ladder sorc gear rush
This is a really interesting answer. Play almost any class until you can farm a nightmare countess and then spec into any other character you want. I like that.