New to Diablo II, have a question.

[Moogle]

hey I'm going to start playing Diablo II LoD for the first time and I just want an effective PvM character. So I looked at the guides forum and saw some recommend a lightning sorcerer.

I looked at this guide and it seemed like it's this one: http://www.d3jsp.org/viewtopic.php?t=2135

What I don't understand is which skill should I up first like in which order? also at the end he said split life and mana he means go 50/50 on stats or make sure to have mana and HP at the same number level?

[Prelude1215]

Hey man a light sorc is very expensive for a person that is new to diablo

i would definitely recommend a blessed hammers paladin the gear is very cheap and its the most efective pvm character class in diablo 2

Gear:

hoto
hoz
shako
enigma
arachs
treks boots
maras
2xsojs

[SuB]

[Moogle]

ok then what stats and skills should I get? I also have another question how do you level up the fastest can you get someone to tank damage while you try and kill or can you do a party and share exp but what is the level limit of sharing?

[SuB]

[Prelude1215]

max vigor
max blessed aim
max concentration
max blessed hammers
xx holy shield

that should do it the rest can go to random skills but holy shield is a great thing to add points to

Reply back if you need any help

[Prelude1215]

msg me in game if you need to spitfire_11

[Moogle]

thanks guys, are you on west spitfire_11? I'm thinking of just doing single player till I get the hang of it and then bnet since there is a lot of words that I don't understand yet. There was this helpful person but he was saying these words that I couldn't understand yet (you guys would probably get it in a second).

edit: sorry more questions. What is the difference between a non ladder and ladder character?

Which one is better and what are the advantages? Which one should a new player pick?

[Prelude1215]

Well im on East thats where the majority of the people that play diablo are from what i understand so just msg me anytime man if im on ill try to help you out breh

[Moogle]

was looking at this guide and I liked how he broke it down what to get and what levels but do you think it's too much dex? http://strategy.diabloii.net/news.php?id=535

[megafusion]

I would recommend an orber sorceress
Easy to play, and she's a good mfer...
Can run thousands of nm andy-meph runs till u find some decent gear

[Tylr]

[megafusion]

no, not really... every time I started from scratch I made an orber... started off by selling pgems and trading em in pubs, once i got about 40 and traded for a tals armor, everything went smoothly..
Imo even an orber with no gear that does around 300 dmg is good enough for mfing...

[Ace]

my 200% fcr light soso got:
Hoto 40 eth
2/10fcr/30str/add
Griff 25/20
Viper upped Umed
2 x fcr ring 20 str + res
Arach
Trang
Sand 15/15
Spirit 35%

owns pretty much everything

ofc with infi merc ^^

[rotto]

Do u want to play pvp aswell?
you should wear fcr rings for 125 fcr if pala

[Moogle]

me? I don't want to PvP yet. Is there any guides out there with pics of the world map? I'm having a hard time finding this place and it would help.

[Prelude1215]

nah man the maps are generated at random so there are a lot of different maps that you could have :S

[Moogle]

aw shit

[treezzzzz]

what all of you have to realize is that hammerdins are VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY gear dependent.
now since he is just starting to play, he prolly won't have very much to work with, which means that he should go with a gear-independent character (aka a sorc)

now since you are just starting, what you want is the MOST GEAR INDEPENDENT character, which is gonna be a BLIZZARD SORC

what you wanna do is level up blizzard and all its synergies, and a few auxiliary skills to help you along the way.

get these as soon as you can get them:
1 point into shiver armor (requires 1 point in frozen armor)
1 point into teleport (requires 1 point in telekenesis)
1 point into warmth

core skills that you should max:
Blizzard,
Cold Mastery
Glacial Spike
Ice Blast
Ice Bolt
(max them in this order)

Now what you are gonna want to do is to get someone to rush you (either someone here on d3jsp or offer to give someone in-game your forge quest in exchange for a rush). Then, join and do tristram runs ("trist runs") until you get level 15-18 or so, then do tomb runs until 20-22 or so, then do cows to 25, then do baal to lvl 40, then kill baal and get a nightmare rush. At this point you can do one of two things:
-- you can kill nightmare baal, get a hell rush, and go do chaos runs in hell until you're level 65 and then do baal until you're lvl 85-90
--OR you can do nightmare baal runs until you are level 70-ish, kill baal, get a hell rush, and do hell baal until level 85-90-ish
One thing to remember is that once you kill baal in a certain difficulty (say normal for example), when you go to the join game screen, it will only show you nghtmare games (NO normal games). so make sure you don't kill baal (or be in a game where someone is killing baal) until you are ready.

Now one exception to this - if you are on USEast Softcore Nonladder, pm me and I'll get you to level 90.


gear-wise, you're looking at prolly this setup:
Full Tal-Rasha's Set (if you can find it, shouldn't be too hard)
Spirit Monarch (also fairly cheap, especially if you play ladder)
Trang-Oul's gloves OR Magefists OR Frostburns (all fairly cheap)
Any boots you can get your hands on (if you can find good boots, waterwalks/sandstorm treks are good, wartravelers if you can get one, but this area is not that important)
Rings - again whatever you can get. mf rings are ok (like nagelrings), sojs are good if you can get them, etc

as for stats, you wanna get enough dexterity to get maximum block with a spirit monarch shield on, and then put the rest into vitality
It's OK if you don't have very much mana. While teleing to find a boss, you can just drink mana pots. But if you die in 1 hit, you don't really get an opportunity to do anything!

Once you are done with your sorc, you are gonna wanna do nightmare andy, nightmare mephisto, hell andy, and hell mephisto runs (do nightmare runs first, once you have enough gear and are strong enough, move on to nightmare runs) to find godly items.

Hope this helped! Any questions/comments feel free to pm me!

[megafusion]

treez you have a mistake in the second to last paragraph "do nightmare runs first, once you have enough gear and are strong enough, move on to nightmare runs" should be move on to hell runs..