Interestingly, this seems to be a major split in the reviews too. The really high scores don’t seem to care about this, while the ‘lower’ scores (which are still pretty high) are lower usually due to exactly the lack of modern QoL features.
I have been, but I’m not going to play Hell or anything - I’m more like to roll up a new character. Most of my points are in STR and VIT though, since I want to wear heavier armors and not die from random champion packs, but I have put about 20 points (I’m level 17 as of this morning) into Energy.
I was posting from my phone on that post, I just wanted to get the sentiment out there.
I don’t place value over sprint to run, gold clicking (which is no longer a thing; gold is auto-picked up by default now), and inventory management but rather it’s like complaining that Pac-Man can only go the 4 directions - that’s just the way the game is designed, so that’s what I’m playing. I don’t really think of modern games as having a lot of QoL stuff that I’m missing out on, either, now that I’m thinking about it. I’d love an auto-sort button for my inventory, but the load times are non-existent so I’ll just drop back to town as needed to sell and check out what’s for sale (and unlike many other games in the genre, vendors can and do sell stuff I’m interested in). Sprinting is fine, as it’s fast enough I tend to walk more often anyway (especially going to a new area as a squishy Sorc and always in dungeons/caves) so I rarely run into issues with the Stamina bar.
My other favorite game in this genre is Titan Quest and I also prefer it to more modern takes on the genre, such as Path of Exile (which is fine but gets stale for me quickly). Honestly I just might be very into the modern takes on the genre as much as the original stuff - Diablo 2 is so much more interesting to me, from the skills and classes to the enemies, locations, quests, and NPC characters as well as the boss battles and the loot drops. All of it is better to me than the last times I played Grim Dawn, Wolfcen or whatever that was called, Path of Exile, or even Diablo III (which I recently tried to get back into and just would rather not - I’m so burned out on that game, but I never burned out on Diablo 2, and now it looks and plays incredible).
I bought Diablo 2 when it released and still have the discs. Would I buy it again to play it once more on a modern PC with improved graphics? Quite possibly. Would I spend a whopping $40 to do so? Hell no.
Blizzard can’t create anything new anymore so this is them sucking the last bit of cold marrow from the bones of their long dead games.
Do you have a recommended sorceress build guide?
While I get this, it occurred to me this morning reading folks talk about the controller scheme working pretty well that this would be super freaking cool to have on the Switch, so I can maybe run a second character while I’m upstairs watching TV with the wife… Tempting…
I don’t, I googled and found several cool sorted by “tier” lists of various builds and looked for ones that included the Sorcerer, as that’s who I wanted to play. The Blizzard Sorcer isn’t the tip of the spear (the “Tier Spear?” but she was a build I’d never done before, as I have always done fire or once, lightning, so it’s been fun to dip a toe into something different.
That said, I’m not building her like the guide said - you can respec seemingly with no limits so I’m just putting points in wherever and having fun and if I play her into where a “build guide” actually matters, I’ll respec her and follow the advice of the experts.
(I only played hardcore characters in Diablo II).
I never got a Sorceress through Nightmare difficulty, so I never did have a high level Frozen Orb sorceress, or a Meteor Sorceress. But I hung out with several, played by my friends. The main thing to watch out for there was the meteor sorceress killed my hardcore Barbarians a few times. You have to give them a good talking to. Later in the game, there’s skeleton kids. They blow up good when they die. So when the Sorceress you’re hanging out with continuously targets your Barbarian with a meteor (because the Barbarian has the taunts to get everyone to pay attention him) as a way to kill all the enemies in one strike, when he’s surrounded by Undead Kids, the meteor explosion also kills the Hardcore Barbarian.
When I hung out with the Frozen Orb sorceress, that was much cooler, but it’s funny to see the frustration mount when you encounter someone who is immune to that element. Since I never had a high level one, I never did figure out how I would deal with that situation if I was playing solo as a Sorceress.
Thanks Scott. I haven’t played since beating the original yeeeears ago so I’ve been vapor locked worried I would make a dud build. I have no idea what works well together. I’m looking for easy and fun so will keep reading.
Don’t they allow respeccing now? So I think that is a big advantage over the original Diablo 2. You can spend your points and if you find out who did a bad job you can always reallocate without having to re-roll.
I believe you get one respec per difficulty per character. This was added to the original D2 at some point.
Yep. I never used it, because you have to roll a new character anyway when you die, so there’s little point to it for hardcore characters. But I could see it being very cool for immortal characters.
Oops! LOL. I didn’t know that or I wouldn’t have blown my Normal difficulty so early. That said, it’s just Normal so probably not a big deal - I wouldn’t in theory need a respec until later difficulties anyway, I imagine.
PSA that the Assassin skill Veil of Shadows is completely insane, for those unaware of this fact. The “blind” effect it applies (that, the Necro Dim Vision curse, and a couple item procs) basically turns enemy AI off.
When blinded, enemies will:
- If in melee distance of an enemy, act normally
- If an enemy was previously seen, move toward its last seen position
- Stand around and get murdered
Trap Assassins make very very survivable Hell soloers.
I could never manage it. My trap assassin got to Hell difficulty (always with players set to 8), and she was dying to almost every enemy. It was really scary. This was with maximum resistances. It was the only character with which I even cheated and used a trainer to give her the top trap Assassin equipment set (something I would have never found on my own), and she was still almost dying to every enemy.
I can’t remember if I used Veil of Shadows though. It’s possible I thought it sounded like a dumb skill so I never tried it.
EDIT: I wonder if you can still set players to 8 with the new version? Once they let us do that we never played it any other way.
Trap 'sin should be at max block, max resist, and absolute piles of health by Hell. It’s one of the most survivable builds in the game.
Typically you level up with whatever skills you need to stay alive until you unlock the tree then respec to your final vetted build at level thirty or whatever. So you only really need one respec for that.
This was actually one of the major improvements in D3.
Huh. It seems Blizzard anticipated this bypass. There seems to be no physical edition of the game available. At least on Amazon and Gamestop, they’re only selling digital codes. So no used copies.
I just found out that all the versions of this are all cross-save compatible, and now I’m tempted to get a copy for my PS5 to play on my big 65" OLED TV since I can keep playing my same character there. I better do some research on the PS5 version and how the controller works/feels…
How does placing traps work out with the controller? That’s my favorite class but I was worried it’d be awkward throwing down the lightning traps.
Overall the best build I ever did for Diablo 2 was a Meteorb sorceress which used Meteor and Frozen Orb and just decimated virtually everything in the game (except for some very rare Fire + Cold Immunes in Act IV Hell difficulty). I think I got her up to level 93 or something and used her as my primary magic find character to accumulate top level gear for all my other builds. As such, she ran through Mephisto, Pindleskin, Diablo, Baal, etc, with ease even on Hell.
Here’s a great guide.
Don’t be too terribly worried about not having the ideal gear mentioned at the bottom of the guide, as some of it is quite rare, and some (like the higher level runewords) are just not going to happen unless you invest a ton of time into the multiplayer game. The build will still be fine even without the best equipment. Just make sure you’re using gear that complements your build (further increases the skills you’re using, pumps up resistances and stat points, etc).
There is with a controller. On mine it’s press right stick. Unfortunately I don’t see an inventory sorter for keyboard users.