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Best Class for Hardcore


lurch_9944

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16 minutes ago, Nidarox said:

Im in nightmare act 4 at diablo with a trap assassin, she's starting to get very weak since i built into fire and lightning, but it's a good all around build, had a few close calls tho haha

can you back up your save in hardcore, so if you die and that character gets locked out, you can just redownload your save from before and live on? also can you play that solo hc character in groups with people online aswel, or do you have to choose between solo and online play for the whole game.

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I only played D2 back in the day and I’ve no idea if they rebalanced anything, but Sorceress used to be the go-to.  Mainly by being able to annihilate everything from range and being able to teleport to get out of bad situations.  Bow build Amazon used to be decent too.  Basically anything that can put out mass damage from a distance.

 

edit:  They we’re both self sufficient too and could clear the cow level solo with no trouble with decent gear.

Edited by Mr_Stkrdknmiblz
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16 minutes ago, MatThaRiPP3R84 said:

can you back up your save in hardcore, so if you die and that character gets locked out, you can just redownload your save from before and live on? also can you play that solo hc character in groups with people online aswel, or do you have to choose between solo and online play for the whole game.

 

You can do one of two things: play online with people, with no chance of backup, OR play offline solo with save backups. You can't mix and match on the same character.

 

As for the question in the thread title: I'm trying a summoning necro for my hardcore character. Duriel and Diablo on normal difficulty are challenging with this build, but it actually gets easier once to get you Nightmare, since the power of your summons increases when you go to higher difficulties. It's one of the "safest" builds out there, since your main character is rarely in any direct danger (unless your summons all die, in which case you can try to quit the game quickly since you're probably screwed).

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22 minutes ago, MatThaRiPP3R84 said:

can you back up your save in hardcore, so if you die and that character gets locked out, you can just redownload your save from before and live on? also can you play that solo hc character in groups with people online aswel, or do you have to choose between solo and online play for the whole game.

 

Yes you can load the save, if it is an offline character.

These characters can only play solo offline.

But it is safer for hardcore.

 

The online characters are saved in the ballte.net cloud.

If you die you are dead forever.

But you can play with 7 other players, trade and level up faster together.

 

The summon necro should be the safest character for hardcore.

 

Edited by XTC-Krieger
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Paladin speced as Hammeredin.

 

Blessed Hammers are magic dmg,so you don't care about any immunities at all, EXTREMELY usefull on hell. You have tons of resistance and defence,and very quickly in nightmare infinite mana already( if your missing runes for insight just farm countess couple of times). You don't need insane gear. With simple rune words (stealth on armor,spirit on shield and sword,lore on helmet and insight on mercenary) you are very hard to kill and do insane dmg. No way to die up to nightmare end you will be killing every boss and mob quicker then they can say their phrases.

 

With that,paladin is not only most powerfull damage dealer in game (even with endgame hell gear) but also hardest to die with. Just keep your str to be able to equip havier gear,dex to reach hard cap of 75% block chance and all the rest dump into vitality.

 

 

Edited by yoszek
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6 minutes ago, yoszek said:

Paladin speced as Hammeredin.

 

Blessed Hammers are magic dmg,so you don't care about any immunities at all, EXTREMELY usefull on hell. You have tons of resistance and defence,and very quickly in nightmare infinite mana already( if your missing runes for insight just farm countess couple of times). You don't need insane gear. With simple rune words (stealth on armor,spirit on shield and sword,lore on helmet and insight on mercenary) you are very hard to kill and do insane dmg. No way to die up to nightmare end you will be killing every boss and mob quicker then they can say their phrases.

 

With that,paladin is not only most powerfull damage dealer in game (even with endgame hell gear) but also hardest to die with. Just keep your str to be able to equip havier gear,dex to reach hard cap of 75% block chance and all the rest dump into vitality.

 

 

 

I tried this route and my problem with the hammers in act 2 is they would just disappear before hitting most things due to tight corridors and the random pillars in the big rooms.

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21 minutes ago, lurch_9944 said:

 

I tried this route and my problem with the hammers in act 2 is they would just disappear before hitting most things due to tight corridors and the random pillars in the big rooms.

You need to get that runewords and some gear with FCR. With that you will be spamming them faster and faster and there will be a lot of them around. Yes some tight corridors are a problem but quick reposition is needed at the beggining with weak gear. Trust me,Hammeredin is one of the most well known OP builds in entire game.

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I mean Hammerdins but everyone has a hammerdin. 

 

I 2nd the skelemancer. 

 

Go with

20 corpse explosion

20 raise skeleton

20 skeleton mastery

1 clay golem

1 golem mastery

1 summon resist

1 amplify damage

1 decrepify

 

Anything extra goes to prerequisites or Revive. Revives purpose is more soldiers plus potentially a few magic attacks for phys immunes.

Get decrepify as early as possible. Most bosses are way tougher without it (especially Duriel) Combined with clay golem, it slows them to a point where your army can smash them. 

 

Grab a Might merc from Nightmare Act2

 

Its not reliant on equipment a lot so whatever. (Obvs you can make it a lot stronger with good equips but most people are poor) 

 

Dont get into combat yourself unless its building an army back on the blood moor. Merc will always help you out too. 

 

Its not for everyone and somewhat slow, but low-risk and fun imo.

 

Edited by punkshepherd
Rakanishu stole my phone
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If you're going to go for 99 in offline play I would NOT recommend a summon based necromancer.  They are safe to play but terrible for farming or speed killing bosses and entire screens of stuff in hell difficulty.  My main class for hardcore when I used to play this game every day in highschool was lightning javazon with bow on switch.  It is a very safe class because you've got access to Valkyrie on top of your merc, innate damage avoidance skills and she makes strong usage of shields like Stormshield(best non pally shield in the game).  Lightning javazon does tremendously high damage in melee and at range.  Bows don't require heavy skill point investment to get some strong usage out of either so having one on your switch can help if you are fighting a lot of lightning immunes, but stacking your inventory with poison charms will help with that as well.

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See this post: 

We should be asking what the best pre-LoD class is for hardcore, since levelling to 99 will be way faster in classic D2. Was it WW barb? Or Hammerdin was still good back then I think. Summon necro is definitely out though if you go the pre-LoD route, since they were useless on Hell difficulty before LoD.

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On 9/27/2021 at 3:25 PM, XTC-Krieger said:

 

Yes you can load the save, if it is an offline character.

These characters can only play solo offline.

But it is safer for hardcore.

 

The online characters are saved in the ballte.net cloud.

If you die you are dead forever.

But you can play with 7 other players, trade and level up faster together.

 

The summon necro should be the safest character for hardcore.

 

right now im looking at different builds which are budget friendly, necro is one sorc and hammerdin are the others, sorc seems like the most reliable but i'd probably have to level a few other characters in hc just so i could share items. (i doubt you can share items between sc and hc, but idk for sure couldn't find that out) and even still with that bug going around seems stuff dissapears from stash atm, so im just theory crafting a future run.

Edited by MatThaRiPP3R84
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19 hours ago, NathanielJohn said:

See this post: 

We should be asking what the best pre-LoD class is for hardcore, since levelling to 99 will be way faster in classic D2. Was it WW barb? Or Hammerdin was still good back then I think. Summon necro is definitely out though if you go the pre-LoD route, since they were useless on Hell difficulty before LoD.

I think they changed the exp growth with the patch associated to the expansion.
That means that classic would have the same growth as LoD

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Had my first death on hardcore with a level 18 summon necro.  I hadn't played the original D2, so I'm just learning everything about the game and man, Act 2 is rough for summons in Maggot Lair and that Arcane place (which is where I died due to trying to get my skeletons to go up on a platform and ended up getting trapped and swarmed).  Until that happened though, I didn't feel like I was ever in any real danger, although I wasn't too high level yet.  I'll have to look into how you back up your save, haven't ever done that.

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On 28/09/2021 at 5:24 AM, Elegy said:

If you're going to go for 99 in offline play I would NOT recommend a summon based necromancer.  They are safe to play but terrible for farming or speed killing bosses and entire screens of stuff in hell difficulty. 

 

I hadn't considered this. This is a very good point, there is a lot of farming in this game and this will add a lot of time. Especially is using that the skellymancer to get to L99 HC.

 

If item transfer between hardcore and softcore is blocked, I will do one HC playthrough with the skellymancer to finish hell, then another with a Hammerdin for the L99 hardcore (see you in 2-3 years).

 

The other issue is the lag. I am playing as a fire meteorb sorceress and am ripping through nightmare but am very squishy. It lags for a second then all of a sudden im swarmed before I could teleport and die, will most likely do HC offline just for this reason. I know it will improve with time as server issues are sorted but I don't want to risk it.

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6 hours ago, FFATMA said:

Had my first death on hardcore with a level 18 summon necro.  I hadn't played the original D2, so I'm just learning everything about the game and man, Act 2 is rough for summons in Maggot Lair and that Arcane place (which is where I died due to trying to get my skeletons to go up on a platform and ended up getting trapped and swarmed).  Until that happened though, I didn't feel like I was ever in any real danger, although I wasn't too high level yet.  I'll have to look into how you back up your save, haven't ever done that.

you have to overlevel before every new act for safety. and quite seriously before a new difficulty.

 

you need to cap your resistances, with the understanding that there will be a large resistance penalty every difficulty jump you have to again compensate for.

 

I think the best character for levelling to 99 is either a lightning trap assassin or a blizzard sorceress or a hammerdin, Or a amazon lightning javelin spec. all of those classes have powerful low budget capabilities, and if you manage to get lucky and find a ton of interesting gear they can spec into higher budget builds which are even more powerful.

 

farming the cow level at the end of a difficulty is a good way to find runes for runewords.

 

 

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I‘m D2 Veteran with multiple thousands of hours played. Once did a 99 char (softcore).

my first advice is to pick the most fun to play class if you really wanna grind for 99.

i‘m still considering if I really wanna try it on HC. If I do, I will take a wolf Druid or Barb. Also I will probably cross progress. Leveling to 98 mainly on PC and switch to ps5 before hitting 99.

i still warn you… it’s a really insane grind. As off now in offline play almost impossible due to the lack of multiplayer XP bonus! You could also bet on a future patch opening up more efficient ways of leveling by some new endgame content.

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2 hours ago, Waxweazler said:

It just so happened that my HC character died. Instead of hitting "Continue" I closed the game to dashboard and my character was not erased. This happened on PS5.

 

*edit

It was/is an offline character.

This is a really interesting piece of information and will surely be useful! When you loaded back into the character, did you notice any amount of rollback on your progress from when you died?

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10 minutes ago, Vextens said:

This is a really interesting piece of information and will surely be useful! When you loaded back into the character, did you notice any amount of rollback on your progress from when you died?

 

Nope. I was doing Baal runs, so I had an eye on my XP bar. It seems that the state was from the last (auto) save, so little to nothing was lost.

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