Diablo II, a game I’ve been playing on and off for SUCH a long time. Recently I picked it up again to finish up some business which still bugged me, such as certain experimental character builds.

My style of playing for this period is quick, fair and detached from material possessions: it is done on Europe HC ladder, magic finding and leveling is kept to a minimum and character deaths (which I actively try to avoid, but you know those wacky PKs) are considered mostly inconsequential, with no useless moping between the characters which are still in assembly line. An efficient approach – and as such I hopefully get this game out of my system again less than a month from now.

In the past I did my share of grinding and trading just to get the right balance of equipment… These days I’ve left it all behind, and now I’m only interested in seeing how a build X functions in an untwinked environment. It’s just a shame that higher difficulties count on the player having a LOT more than what you can get by playing the game naturally… Yeah, I suppose it’s a strange thing, hearing a plead for playing the game naturally from someone who glitches games and does fucked-up challenge runs for a hobby, but it’s all quite reasonably explainable. Repetitively killing super uniques for hours just to get great equipment is not what constitutes as (my idea of) stimulating gaming, nor is skipping large portions of the game if experimenting with different conditions is the single most interesting in that game. That’s as well as I can put it.

Needless to say, normal-mode is the mode I consider the true part of the game. It’s the one you can finish even with less-than-optimal or “avant-garde” builds. Also, on higher difficulties the amount of player killers torpedoes up substantially… eventually making it impossible to make a friggin’ party at Hell. At least, a party that does not consist of backstabbers and charlatans!

Here are some builds I’ve made in my about two weeks of semi-intensive playing. I might write more elaborate descriptions in the future if I feel like there’s something to note.

+ healadin Good_Influence (currently lv. 67 and stuck on Hell because a lack of party)

+ summoner druid Pure_Ture (lv. 37 R.I.P.), concentrating on arctic blast for support (instead of the rest of wind-skills). Soon realized that AB is inadequate for support purposes. Then a PK came and put him out of commission because he was a sad sight.

+ summoner druid PureTure_Reborn (lv. 33), a wind druid with summon support. Works better, but wind skills just plain suck, other than Cyclone Armor. Tornados won’t hit for shit! It’s like sometimes when you try to piss and the piss flies everywhere except where it’s supposed to. Not sure if I’m interested in pursuing him over to NM. The most interesting thing about him is that I’ve found a total of 6 fcr rings/amus on the course of normal playing, one rare… something complete unseen in the past. But hey, those rings came to a good use too.

+ holy freeze/zealadin Naked_Pala (lv. ~23 R.I.P.), true to his namesake and wore no equipment. A challenge build at its finest. Too bad paladin’s fist attack sucks, holy freeze is not 100% reliable for protection and your resists are worse than really fucking bad. Died at act 3 to an Fetish Shaman who used inferno. His naked flesh couldn’t take it. (BTW: kept his merc naked too.)

+ kickassin Naked_Assa (lv. 5, retired). An interesting discovery which prompted me to try this build was the fact that 1, claw specials could be done using the fist and 2, Assa’s fist is a LOT faster than claw! Unfortunately the novelty of naked characters was worn off at mid-way of act 1 and instead I wanted to try a clothed variation of this build.

+ kickassin WorkMyAssOff (lv. 14). Not much to say of her. Before the nuke-kick Dragon Tail there’s not too much I can do. I prefer to use claws at this stage because of the naturally nice damage of claws. Maybe an update is reserved for the future?

+ curse/poison necro Unusual_Man (lv. 21). Learned that it’s not worth it to put 1 point to each curse. Not feeling motivated to continue with this char.

+ bone/dim vision necro nonetheless (lv. 23). Dim Vision in fun, bone shots are a bit weak and not very interesting either. Interestingly, found unique buckler from Den of Evil. Probably going to continue this char eventually.

All for now. Expect an update especially on my fist/kickassin, because she’s the most unique of all the characters at this point. (seriously, how can the fist be so fast?)