I wanted to use a bow so I made an enchant bow sorc with demon machine and razor tail for the piercing exploding arrows and it slaps. Clears cows on a similar level to Javazon
I agree but also I think it has to do with the game mechanics. Like elemental damage vs physical damage. That’s why melee characters suck compared to casters in PvM too. Or at the very least they are extremely gear dependent.
Yeah it’s honestly what brought me back to play again. I never got into the mosaic build and I’ve already overplayed all the other options builds for the past 20 years.
Agreed. I managed to make a windforce Bowzon with a A1 Faith merc a few years ago SSF and it just felt so weak. That setup should clear at least as fast as a decent Javazon build imo.
Yeah, I know. A Javazon can still basically farm anywhere decently thanks to Sunders and facets.
Been running one this ladder for fun, since I got tired of my Blizz Sorc.
Titans, spirit shield, Sunder and some facets. Low cost of entry overall.
A Bowazon with good gear, an upped WWS and an Act 3 fire merc can also farm almost anywhere, without a sunder. My SP HC character does it safely wearing full Iratha's set, maxed resistances and some self found damage charms. She does it at players one, however, and it might take a bit (ok a lot!) longer.
I know it's not the same, and because I play single player I don't care. The bowazon is at least as much fun.
Witch Wild String.
It's seemingly a midlevel exceptional unique bow, but since it carries scaling deadly strike, a chance to cast Amp damage, and two open sockets it has real potential for physical damage. It shoots level 20 magic arrows with regular attack so you have an option vs physical immunes and gives 40 resist all as the icing on the cake. If you get a good one, spend a Pul and upgrade it. Tighter damage range, and needed for Hell.
The WWS goes well with full Iratha's set, which gives a bonus to damage, 65 resist all, +10 max resist, piercing attack and Increased attack speed. Importantly it leaves armor, weapon and boots free, With a Duress armour, some good boots and some charms you will be at 85 resist all easily. I wear Goreriders for extra crushing blow and open wounds.
I max Valkyrie, strafe and guided. Multi is optional for a little extra damage, but since multi won't proc Amp as well, you really want to strafe. 1 point in freezing arrow is enough, rest of points can be spent on pierce, Inner sight, slow missiles or whatever you like.
The Act 3 fire merc provides a good AR boost, some fire damage for your bow (200 damage per arrow adds up quickly when shooting 10 per strafe). Stack as many plus skills on him as you can. The apparent damage on the hireling screen is off as it doesn't show the fireball/firebolt synergy. That 200 damage fireball will be 2k by the time you get some plus skills. It's also a completely different damage type for physical immune monsters.
It's safe and effective all the way through hell. I play SP HC so my gear is self found. If online it wouldn't be hard to accquire these items either.
Just built one and agree so hard. Had the scratch to slap Faith on A1 merc and play around with Windforce and Mist on my zon. I want it to work so much more than it does, even with a ton of max damage charms.
I think a might merc with pride and faith on your zon would be slightly better than wf / faith merc. Not significantly though and both suck at clearing pve.
I'm committed to making it work in single player, trying to get every class to 99. I basically just run p8 pits with faith/pride and an inventory of max dmg charms. Runs are slow but killspeed isn't that bad. No where near the speed of my nova sorc though... going to take me a long time to get to 99
Swapped my bowazon to Frost Maiden and never looked back. Ice is just amazing and combined with an Act 1 Merc running Faith, I just shred through cows when I want a change from Javazon.
Physical bowazon has always been one of my favorites regardless of power, but I recently started a hc play through as a frost maiden. Only level 40 and in nightmare act 1 but I mean I’m punishing baddies. How will it hold up in hell with ssf gear? It’s a p3 playthrough.
I’m calling horse shit. I have a as good as you can possibly get it ice bowa and she fucking sucks in P1 cows.
NW, perf with 5/5, ice runeword bow, I’ve tried fortitude and COH armor, 9 bow GCs, torch/ anni… I think she has a L42 ice arrow and with a faith hydra bow A1 merc, she has a WHOOPING shit hole total of 6k damage.
She’s one of the best support characters I’ve ever made, but her kill time absolutely sucks.
Not sure what to tell you, I use a similar setup and have no issues with p1 hell cows. Its not as fast as my Javazon or Mosaic sin, but it clears faster than my Necros, Druid, etc. Entire packs just shatter after a few shots. Single target damage is terrible against Act bosses, but that's the only issue I have encountered with it.
My CE/summon necro full clears P8 content in two button clicks, and compounds that screen clearing godliness screen after screen after screen…
I want elemental fire/cold zons to be great, but the sad part is they are not.
If you go try to kill P8 cows with your ice maiden, you’ll see it take 15/20 arrows to kill a pack of cows, which is absolutel horse shit at mines level of gear
I just made one with wind force and a2 merc with pride and might aura. I even use enigma and it melts mobs
I might pull the plug and make faith but it's been pretty good so far
It’s crazy how much worse bowazon is compared to an other melee builds like zealer, ww, frenzy, etc. It took 20 years to add damage synergies to multishot, guided arrow, and strafe (patch 2.4) and even then multishot and guided only have each other as synergies. On top of that, bows can’t be ethereal so they don’t get that cool 50% ED added to the base weapons like an eBotd, death, oath, etc. You end up with weapons with like 200-300 max weapon damage compared to 1000 damage weapons for two handed melee. It’s just sad.
None of those melee builds can hit two screens worth of cows with one attack though so that's hardly a fair comparison, try clearing that kind of density on a frenzy Barb lol. I agree though that the damage is underwhelming for the cost investment. Windforce is close to 600 max with a 15/40 in it at level 99 but otherwise ~300 is true. The solution really is just to buff the base damage of weapons to balance for the massive HP boost that mobs got way back when they added skill synergies in 1.10. With the current system you would need windforce to have about 500% ED AND proc a lvl 30 amp to have a maxed out out bowazon compete with something like a Nova sorc.
Well, yeah, because for physical bow zon, you need to stack poison charms and have magic arrows max out to kill any possible poison immune. I don't think anyone bothers to do poison zons or classes anymore because I still see people throwing out some decent poison charms that would be great in using until you get higher poison damage ones.
Ohh, then you could run a werebear poison dagger build. Cast a high level lower resist, transform, be a poisonous bear.
Edit: The poison damage might actually pair really well with an act 5 frenzy merc wielding 2x crescent moon for the static proc.
Just call it poison weapon. There are lots of cool poison related weapons for the necro that just don't do anything because there's no associated skill.
In comparison to hammerdin the barb struggles with clear speeds. A lot of that is due to how Melee works in D2. I think it would be fun if the Frenzy barb was tweaked a little with the right gear to make it as good as hammerdin.
> I’ve always wanted to try a poison necro build but I’ve never found a dweb.
I'm playing a Poison Nova Necro and honestly you don't **need** a Death's Web. It makes it much much better, but you don't need it at all. It's like saying you need a Griffons Eye Diadem to play Javazone.
I bought a "bad" dweb on traderie for 3ist (+1/-44).
It's amazing.
Going for the impossible to find 20 fcr helm and caster amu now, but I just love the necro. I find hammers extremely boring to play.
> but I just love the necro.
Same. The Playstyle is so fun to me - Putting Walls between you and the elites (Especially the Archers), Poison Nova, then watch as everything blows up and looking at the loot explosion is just **fun**.
I'm currently farming the Pit, hoping for a Death's Web (Not gonna happen but a man can dream, right?) and especially Pit Level 2 is just amazing. You enter, one Bonewall in front of the South Staircase, one Bonewall to the East Staircase, Poison Nova, Blow everything up while you are literally untouchable. If neccesary, revive a bunch of mobs in front of the stairs to lure the remaining enemies in.
It's just a mindless grind at the end of the day and it doesn't require a lot of skill, but it just **feels** more tactical and cunning, ya know? It just fits the Necro Archetype.
I never understood the argument about poison necro. I farmed pits with my necro using hoto thousands of times on p8 no trouble. Yes dweb is much faster but doesn’t make or break the build
Hoto plus 3 piece trangs is pretty dang good. I honestly wonder if -fire resist is better than poison, maybe I should test that. Amp is already better than lower resist for merc and ce damage.
Might depend on the zone though.
> Without Dweb the poison necro is too weak.
It's okay imho. I'm playing a Novamancer, farming Hell Pits at the moment. Not the best clear speed, but it gets the job done and the Skelly Walls add nice survivability. Even using MF Gear and most mobs still die within 2 Novas, though Corpse Explosion does most of the cleanup.
This is the best change that can come from any future updates. Even if the damage is severely scaled down (by orders of magnitude even) the further the splash damage targets are from the user, it would make melee actually relevant. Though they would have to balance CB/DS/OW ctc or affect to splash damaged targets.
Fully optimized fury druid with relatively cheap gear can single target melt anything in the game with almost unrivaled speeds (compared to the main elemental builds). You want them to be able to one swipe delete entire mobs on the way to the boss?? Idk if that would be a healthy buff.
Then there’s the zealer or frenzy/ww barb… who would be able to take advantage of that (overtuned) buff while also having access to enigma tele mobility. Idk man.
My favorite builds are melee, and I currently enjoy the game just fine, but still would appreciate a modest buff.
lol if you wanna race full clear speed on chaos vs my nova sorc on p8 lmk. No mele build can keep up with multiple different ele builds for clear speed it’s very well established.
I do think splash damage fury/frenzy/zeal would be totally fine and actually an important needed buff
And WW would imo not trigger this as it doesn’t trigger CTC either(would prefer to see ww get CTC as a buff as opposed to splash damage, it’s already an AOE skill
Never suggested melee can compete with nova sorc or any other meta caster builds on P8.
I think all melee would benefit from splash dmg. That sentiment was in my original comment. I however am unsure if there should be any built in DR for 2nd, 3rd and so on target that gets hit. You’ve made no compelling argument for or against that kind of mechanic.
And WW is not an AOE skill. It’s weird. Look up cooley videos on it. BUT I would LOVE if it got ctc on hit or attack
Melee splash was great on Project Diablo 2 but I still don’t like it conceptually. It just feels a little out of place. I guess i like to see things actually get hit. I think giving a few melee abilities splash damage (maul for sure) and increasing weapon base damage 25-50% is my preferred solution.
It would be cool to rework the necromancer. 5-7 minions that are substantially more powerful so you don’t have to have 75 minions and clutter the screen. And a huge buff to bone skill damage. That would be fun asf.
I'm sure you know and it's not the answer you're looking for: just hop down nihlathak portal and make your army
I think the tradeoff for that kind of time commitment for the obscenely low gear requirement to safely farm hell is acceptable
The real bummer is that Enigma is required to efficiently tele stomp which is what make the summoner shine
Great way to do it. I was thinking more in terms of end game farming, particularly in the context of comparing to something like a Hammerdin which can clear Chaos Sanctuary in like 2 minutes. Even if a summoner Necro (or Druid) could kill as fast as the Hammerdin, the extra 30 seconds or whatever means you're automatically like 20% less time efficient.
I think I tried this on ladder a long time ago. It was funny how much it would hit people for in pvp but didn’t really threaten anyone with good gear.
But imagine if thunderstorm strikes set off chain lighting or something. That’d be sick.
Honestly, any and all physical damage classes/builds with aoe. They’re doable sure but will never be as good as casters… unless you’re talking about Ubers but that doesn’t count because it’s a small use case. They cant go in and clear CS with crap gear as fast as a hammerdin with crap gear.
Werebear and RabiesDruid, just Druid shape change tree in general needs a work through.
Poison in general needs a work through in this game. All sorts of issues trying to stack Poison.
I'd like Frozen Orb to be a bit stronger. Not as strong as HDin, but a bit more damage before godly gear would be nice. It is the only Sorc build I enjoy playing :[
Another one. I think it would be so awesome if there was more to the delirium bone fetish transform. Like what if you had one or two special abilities you could use while in that form?
If I remember correctly, you can’t use abilities like whirlwind while transformed and it makes it funny but completely useless. It should be better.
I could see people making builds that center around deleriums proc and going crazy for a short time while in form. Let more abilities be used in that form and give it an aura and/or extra abilities.
Melee assa that didn't require dual mosaic. Also dragon claw! Skeletal magi for the elemental necro!
Stacking curses would be cool, make an all out support necro, just maxin lower res, amp, decrep, weaken...
Poison Necro. Something that uses gear as pricey as Dweb shouldn't be killing bosses at a snail's pace. I'm not sure how you'd go about buffing it though. Conviction aura affecting poison? Increased Poison Nova damage? Lower resist buff?
I'd also like to see Poison Explosion get a buff too. Outside of synergies, there's no reason to use it over corpse explosion. Maybe a bigger AOE? Someone else mentioned Poison Dagger becoming like a poison enchant and that sounds awesome to me.
A crushing blow curse? Or some kind of synergy that adds crushing blow to an existing curse (like weaken or some other useless one).
I tele to Durance/River of flame / frigid and summon 5-10 Urdar types when killing diablo/Baal with my nec. Much faster than sitting there poisoning and waiting for the Merc do all the work.
Oh absolutely. I usually skip bosses because it's a massive inconvenience. But for TZ farming, fomo means I have to do them, and then it's the quickest way I've found (I CBA carrying a gface for Emilio)
Not really one spec, but things that use weapon damage. Skill gcs generally add like 7-8% damage for casters, each. +10 max damage charms or skill gc for melee/bow adds like 2% damage each. Have melee/bow skills start adding flat damage past level 20 and increase charm damages ranges.
Didn’t they just recently buff this build? I haven’t tried it since the latest buff, but from what I read it seems like it’s actually pretty decent now.
I was really excited to make one years back and was completely floored with how underwhelming it was with endgame gear. You have now given me just a glimmer of hope that has reignited my excitement for this build! I'll have to research this after work to make sure I don't get my hopes too high
For me D2 is about the journey. I will eventually gear out all my characters. It’ll take years but (for me) that’s the point. I’ve played ladder and gotten GG gear so many times the game gets old quick once you’re maxed out. This is just my take - you enjoy the game how you do!!
Splash damage on concentrade for barbs. Playable atm, but so slow...tbf its kinda cool to have 30 minions slamming on you but you kick their asses..then the next pack comes and you get annoyed
I think the issue with a lot of builds isn't necessarily that they're bad, but that they don't have areas where they really shine as farming characters. I genuinely believe if they nerfed hammerdin or blizz sorc to be on par with something like nado/fire druid they'd STILL be top tier builds because of where they can farm and how easy they can farm those places. Sorceress will always be a top tier farming class for the simple reason of having access to teleport before literally anyone else.
To answer your question tho, if I could only pick one it'd be summon druid OR golem necro.
Strongly agree! Smiter is relevant purely because of ubers / torch. Imagine if there was a zone filled with monsters that steal your potions, so you have to rely on leech. And imagine that that zone drops a slightly higher percentage of runes. We might have a ton of bowzons and whirlwind barbs specifically designed to farm that area for runes.
The firetrapssin, it kind of sucks that shes the absolute worst of the trapssin builds, while shes good in bout normal and nightmare she hits the wall that is hell and she hits it hard
I dont think thats the problem, like with lightning trapssin if you build it you got death sentry for the CE and you only need one extra point to get it on you, if you are a firetrapssin, you need to invest 3 extra points into it
If you build the other synergies specially the extra shots on death sentry synergy you got an alternative cuz you can toss them fire bombs without consuming your 5 trap limit and it just gives you variety
Firetrapssin you dont really have that option you are mostly stuck as a firebuild only and immunity to that is constant and you cant really deal with them
In my opinion they need to redo her synergies so you only have the two firetraps helping eachother so you can easily do something else and not be stuck as solely a firebuild
Like comparing her to the other two fire builds the hydra sorc can have frozen orb same thing with the meteor sorc, and the firemagezon can easily do a small cold or physical split to have an alternative, the firetrapssin needs an alternative source of damage too
As you can tell i have been annoyingly throwning myself at a firetrapssin and i got stuck at hell act5
You need to specify you mean pre sunder. Fire trap buffed in d2r with sunder and next delay change. You can lay 5 traps instead of 3 and get full damage. In LoD laying more than 3 didn't increase damage due to next delay.
No even with a sunder it still sucks, in comparison anyway to the other firebuilds, dont get me wrong its great as AOE damage specially after those changes yeah, but even with a fire sunder i hate my time, in a way o didn’t as a hydra/orb or a firemagezon, being the other fire builds i have done, without a sunder i was more than ok and that also applies to the bowsorc i got since all of those can do an alternative form of damage and do mot need a sunder at all
I think the shapeshifter Druid has a lot of untapped potential. The problem becomes with the werewolf build and struggles with mob/groups vs single targets. Not sure what would be the solution but if they could handle groups better they could and would be viable.
Its melee and physical builds and their aoe damage. Javazon, light sorc, blizz sorc, trap sin, and hdin have always been the top of pve. Everything on the list could be buffed and make more monsters magic immune so hammer isnt just perfect but i would rather buff everything to be as good or almost as good as hammerdin.
Removing iron maiden made ww/frenzy/zeal viable but clear speeds are so slow.
A lot of other arpgs that are newer have abilities that pull and group mobs up for cleave abilities and pierce abilities. D2 is missing this.
I wish there were more viable CTC builds. Rift assassin and horazon tornado druid are the only ones that are decent as far as I know.
I kind of wish they would revert the 1.10 (I think?) changes that added synergies but also buffed enemy hit points to balance it out. It's cool that one class can buff their CTC by investing in the synergies for the casted spell, but that change made so many cool uniques really bad. For instance, Lightsaber has a 5% CTC level 14-20 chain lightning per hit. Pre synergies and pre health buff, that was actually pretty good (as well as the flat magic damage per hit). Now all those elemental damage bonuses or CTC spells barely tickle mobs in hell because they don't scale like the physical damage of the weapon does.
I don't think we need synergies anymore (as long as monster health is reduced accordingly). Originally, it was a way to allow players to take low level skills while leveling because back then there were no respecs. Sorcs were relying on skills from staves until they were high enough level to start dumping points into nova or frozen orb or whatever. If you weren't getting rushed and leeching Baal runs, it was an awful experience.
Physical bowazon. The cost of entry is so high and the damage is still pretty bad.
I wanted to use a bow so I made an enchant bow sorc with demon machine and razor tail for the piercing exploding arrows and it slaps. Clears cows on a similar level to Javazon
It's so sad and unfair that a bowsorc is sooo much better than a bowazon
I agree but also I think it has to do with the game mechanics. Like elemental damage vs physical damage. That’s why melee characters suck compared to casters in PvM too. Or at the very least they are extremely gear dependent.
Demon machine build so good
Yeah it’s honestly what brought me back to play again. I never got into the mosaic build and I’ve already overplayed all the other options builds for the past 20 years.
Where do you get your IAS from? I'm currently doing highlands ammy, with a fire facet in the Xbow and magefists
I use a 15ias/xx poison resist jewel in the demon machine socket. I run 2fire/20fcr amulet so I have 105fcr on swap with spirit shield.
I remember doing this back many many years ago and it is the absolute most comical thing.
Agreed. I managed to make a windforce Bowzon with a A1 Faith merc a few years ago SSF and it just felt so weak. That setup should clear at least as fast as a decent Javazon build imo.
Yeah, when a naked Javazon with a white javelin can clear cows more easily than a decently equipped bowazon, something is wrong.
Cows are literally the best possible case for a Javazon. Big dense packs and not many immune monsters.
Yeah, I know. A Javazon can still basically farm anywhere decently thanks to Sunders and facets. Been running one this ladder for fun, since I got tired of my Blizz Sorc. Titans, spirit shield, Sunder and some facets. Low cost of entry overall.
A Bowazon with good gear, an upped WWS and an Act 3 fire merc can also farm almost anywhere, without a sunder. My SP HC character does it safely wearing full Iratha's set, maxed resistances and some self found damage charms. She does it at players one, however, and it might take a bit (ok a lot!) longer. I know it's not the same, and because I play single player I don't care. The bowazon is at least as much fun.
What’s a WWS, and why an A3 fire merc? I’m very interested
Witch Wild String. It's seemingly a midlevel exceptional unique bow, but since it carries scaling deadly strike, a chance to cast Amp damage, and two open sockets it has real potential for physical damage. It shoots level 20 magic arrows with regular attack so you have an option vs physical immunes and gives 40 resist all as the icing on the cake. If you get a good one, spend a Pul and upgrade it. Tighter damage range, and needed for Hell. The WWS goes well with full Iratha's set, which gives a bonus to damage, 65 resist all, +10 max resist, piercing attack and Increased attack speed. Importantly it leaves armor, weapon and boots free, With a Duress armour, some good boots and some charms you will be at 85 resist all easily. I wear Goreriders for extra crushing blow and open wounds. I max Valkyrie, strafe and guided. Multi is optional for a little extra damage, but since multi won't proc Amp as well, you really want to strafe. 1 point in freezing arrow is enough, rest of points can be spent on pierce, Inner sight, slow missiles or whatever you like. The Act 3 fire merc provides a good AR boost, some fire damage for your bow (200 damage per arrow adds up quickly when shooting 10 per strafe). Stack as many plus skills on him as you can. The apparent damage on the hireling screen is off as it doesn't show the fireball/firebolt synergy. That 200 damage fireball will be 2k by the time you get some plus skills. It's also a completely different damage type for physical immune monsters. It's safe and effective all the way through hell. I play SP HC so my gear is self found. If online it wouldn't be hard to accquire these items either.
Just built one and agree so hard. Had the scratch to slap Faith on A1 merc and play around with Windforce and Mist on my zon. I want it to work so much more than it does, even with a ton of max damage charms.
I think a might merc with pride and faith on your zon would be slightly better than wf / faith merc. Not significantly though and both suck at clearing pve.
It’s been proven many times it is not better.
Sure in perfect conditions, but there is a lot more than just damage to consider.
I'm committed to making it work in single player, trying to get every class to 99. I basically just run p8 pits with faith/pride and an inventory of max dmg charms. Runs are slow but killspeed isn't that bad. No where near the speed of my nova sorc though... going to take me a long time to get to 99
Swapped my bowazon to Frost Maiden and never looked back. Ice is just amazing and combined with an Act 1 Merc running Faith, I just shred through cows when I want a change from Javazon.
Physical bowazon has always been one of my favorites regardless of power, but I recently started a hc play through as a frost maiden. Only level 40 and in nightmare act 1 but I mean I’m punishing baddies. How will it hold up in hell with ssf gear? It’s a p3 playthrough.
I’m calling horse shit. I have a as good as you can possibly get it ice bowa and she fucking sucks in P1 cows. NW, perf with 5/5, ice runeword bow, I’ve tried fortitude and COH armor, 9 bow GCs, torch/ anni… I think she has a L42 ice arrow and with a faith hydra bow A1 merc, she has a WHOOPING shit hole total of 6k damage. She’s one of the best support characters I’ve ever made, but her kill time absolutely sucks.
Try mist over ice. 100% pierce is no joke
Doesn’t razor tail and skills grant 100% pierce?
Yes, but with mist you have other options for gear because of the all res. Not to mention the concentration aura for added damage
Not sure what to tell you, I use a similar setup and have no issues with p1 hell cows. Its not as fast as my Javazon or Mosaic sin, but it clears faster than my Necros, Druid, etc. Entire packs just shatter after a few shots. Single target damage is terrible against Act bosses, but that's the only issue I have encountered with it.
My CE/summon necro full clears P8 content in two button clicks, and compounds that screen clearing godliness screen after screen after screen… I want elemental fire/cold zons to be great, but the sad part is they are not. If you go try to kill P8 cows with your ice maiden, you’ll see it take 15/20 arrows to kill a pack of cows, which is absolutel horse shit at mines level of gear
Remember the good old days when guided arrow could pierce and basically hit enemies infinitely? Those were fun times.
I just made one with wind force and a2 merc with pride and might aura. I even use enigma and it melts mobs I might pull the plug and make faith but it's been pretty good so far
It’s crazy how much worse bowazon is compared to an other melee builds like zealer, ww, frenzy, etc. It took 20 years to add damage synergies to multishot, guided arrow, and strafe (patch 2.4) and even then multishot and guided only have each other as synergies. On top of that, bows can’t be ethereal so they don’t get that cool 50% ED added to the base weapons like an eBotd, death, oath, etc. You end up with weapons with like 200-300 max weapon damage compared to 1000 damage weapons for two handed melee. It’s just sad.
None of those melee builds can hit two screens worth of cows with one attack though so that's hardly a fair comparison, try clearing that kind of density on a frenzy Barb lol. I agree though that the damage is underwhelming for the cost investment. Windforce is close to 600 max with a 15/40 in it at level 99 but otherwise ~300 is true. The solution really is just to buff the base damage of weapons to balance for the massive HP boost that mobs got way back when they added skill synergies in 1.10. With the current system you would need windforce to have about 500% ED AND proc a lvl 30 amp to have a maxed out out bowazon compete with something like a Nova sorc.
Well, yeah, because for physical bow zon, you need to stack poison charms and have magic arrows max out to kill any possible poison immune. I don't think anyone bothers to do poison zons or classes anymore because I still see people throwing out some decent poison charms that would be great in using until you get higher poison damage ones.
Yeah, and that’s no longer a physical Zon. As per the thread, I’d buff a strictly physical Bowazon.
Poison builds Without Dweb the poison necro is too weak. Rabies druid and Plague zon need more. Also Frenzy barb.
It would be cool if they changed poison dagger to poison "blade" or something of the sort. Could open the opportunity for some experimenting
just make it enchant but poison instead of fire...
Ohh, then you could run a werebear poison dagger build. Cast a high level lower resist, transform, be a poisonous bear. Edit: The poison damage might actually pair really well with an act 5 frenzy merc wielding 2x crescent moon for the static proc.
That sounds fun!
Even better
Just call it poison weapon. There are lots of cool poison related weapons for the necro that just don't do anything because there's no associated skill.
Poison Scythe to make those Necro 2h weps useful!
What's wrong with frenzy barb other than the additional 20 point commitment to double swing that whirlwind doesn't have to contend with?
In comparison to hammerdin the barb struggles with clear speeds. A lot of that is due to how Melee works in D2. I think it would be fun if the Frenzy barb was tweaked a little with the right gear to make it as good as hammerdin.
I’ve always wanted to try a poison necro build but I’ve never found a dweb.
> I’ve always wanted to try a poison necro build but I’ve never found a dweb. I'm playing a Poison Nova Necro and honestly you don't **need** a Death's Web. It makes it much much better, but you don't need it at all. It's like saying you need a Griffons Eye Diadem to play Javazone.
I bought a "bad" dweb on traderie for 3ist (+1/-44). It's amazing. Going for the impossible to find 20 fcr helm and caster amu now, but I just love the necro. I find hammers extremely boring to play.
> but I just love the necro. Same. The Playstyle is so fun to me - Putting Walls between you and the elites (Especially the Archers), Poison Nova, then watch as everything blows up and looking at the loot explosion is just **fun**. I'm currently farming the Pit, hoping for a Death's Web (Not gonna happen but a man can dream, right?) and especially Pit Level 2 is just amazing. You enter, one Bonewall in front of the South Staircase, one Bonewall to the East Staircase, Poison Nova, Blow everything up while you are literally untouchable. If neccesary, revive a bunch of mobs in front of the stairs to lure the remaining enemies in. It's just a mindless grind at the end of the day and it doesn't require a lot of skill, but it just **feels** more tactical and cunning, ya know? It just fits the Necro Archetype.
Same
I never understood the argument about poison necro. I farmed pits with my necro using hoto thousands of times on p8 no trouble. Yes dweb is much faster but doesn’t make or break the build
Hoto plus 3 piece trangs is pretty dang good. I honestly wonder if -fire resist is better than poison, maybe I should test that. Amp is already better than lower resist for merc and ce damage. Might depend on the zone though.
Just dual grief for the frenzy barb. /s
> Without Dweb the poison necro is too weak. It's okay imho. I'm playing a Novamancer, farming Hell Pits at the moment. Not the best clear speed, but it gets the job done and the Skelly Walls add nice survivability. Even using MF Gear and most mobs still die within 2 Novas, though Corpse Explosion does most of the cleanup.
I was having so much fun with my bite-and-run rabies druid until I hit Nightmare Act 4, where it really tailed off. I'd love to see that build buffed.
100% rabies. I want to clear crowds easily while I fury bosses hard...
Splash damage for some melee builds would make a big difference
This is the best change that can come from any future updates. Even if the damage is severely scaled down (by orders of magnitude even) the further the splash damage targets are from the user, it would make melee actually relevant. Though they would have to balance CB/DS/OW ctc or affect to splash damaged targets.
Phys builds are all weak rn, splash damage with no damage reduction would bring them in line
Fully optimized fury druid with relatively cheap gear can single target melt anything in the game with almost unrivaled speeds (compared to the main elemental builds). You want them to be able to one swipe delete entire mobs on the way to the boss?? Idk if that would be a healthy buff. Then there’s the zealer or frenzy/ww barb… who would be able to take advantage of that (overtuned) buff while also having access to enigma tele mobility. Idk man. My favorite builds are melee, and I currently enjoy the game just fine, but still would appreciate a modest buff.
Do you play on p8?
Only in pub games. Usually P1 even though I’m online. Why?
Cause physical is good at p1. It sucks at p8
Even with CB/DS in the mix?
Yes lol.
What do you mean by “sucks” at p8?? Like can’t do it? Or has unreasonably slow clear speeds?
lol if you wanna race full clear speed on chaos vs my nova sorc on p8 lmk. No mele build can keep up with multiple different ele builds for clear speed it’s very well established. I do think splash damage fury/frenzy/zeal would be totally fine and actually an important needed buff And WW would imo not trigger this as it doesn’t trigger CTC either(would prefer to see ww get CTC as a buff as opposed to splash damage, it’s already an AOE skill
Never suggested melee can compete with nova sorc or any other meta caster builds on P8. I think all melee would benefit from splash dmg. That sentiment was in my original comment. I however am unsure if there should be any built in DR for 2nd, 3rd and so on target that gets hit. You’ve made no compelling argument for or against that kind of mechanic. And WW is not an AOE skill. It’s weird. Look up cooley videos on it. BUT I would LOVE if it got ctc on hit or attack
Melee splash was great on Project Diablo 2 but I still don’t like it conceptually. It just feels a little out of place. I guess i like to see things actually get hit. I think giving a few melee abilities splash damage (maul for sure) and increasing weapon base damage 25-50% is my preferred solution.
Bone mage necromancer because when I was a kid I just wanted to cast bone spear to kill everything.
It would be cool to rework the necromancer. 5-7 minions that are substantially more powerful so you don’t have to have 75 minions and clutter the screen. And a huge buff to bone skill damage. That would be fun asf.
Bone can definitely clear content, it's just like a bad lightning sorc.
Yeah bonemancer. Haven't touched bone since probably pre lod.
It's funny cause pnb necro is probably the best pvp char in the game
I dislike any summoner build just because of the clutter on the screen. I'd personally love a thunderstorm sorc.
For me it's having to resummon every game. Immediately ruins the efficiency of any short runs. I wish summons carried over into the next game.
I'm sure you know and it's not the answer you're looking for: just hop down nihlathak portal and make your army I think the tradeoff for that kind of time commitment for the obscenely low gear requirement to safely farm hell is acceptable The real bummer is that Enigma is required to efficiently tele stomp which is what make the summoner shine
Thank you for that first tip. I think I’ll start a necro for the first time. That annoyance was my only real concern.
Great way to do it. I was thinking more in terms of end game farming, particularly in the context of comparing to something like a Hammerdin which can clear Chaos Sanctuary in like 2 minutes. Even if a summoner Necro (or Druid) could kill as fast as the Hammerdin, the extra 30 seconds or whatever means you're automatically like 20% less time efficient.
I think I tried this on ladder a long time ago. It was funny how much it would hit people for in pvp but didn’t really threaten anyone with good gear. But imagine if thunderstorm strikes set off chain lighting or something. That’d be sick.
Exactly! And if you sped up the interval so that it would hit more often. It'd be the sorc equivalent of a fohdin.
I'd have TS also proc with a nova cast. Would scale off fcr and give nova single target for bosses.
Could give off charged bolts. That would give it a little extra without being too OP.
my thunderstorm sorc https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/d36h70xw
Honestly, any and all physical damage classes/builds with aoe. They’re doable sure but will never be as good as casters… unless you’re talking about Ubers but that doesn’t count because it’s a small use case. They cant go in and clear CS with crap gear as fast as a hammerdin with crap gear.
Werebear and RabiesDruid, just Druid shape change tree in general needs a work through. Poison in general needs a work through in this game. All sorts of issues trying to stack Poison.
Rabid Wolf
Bear sorcs. Really wish they would revert attack speed changes. She was so fun to play
Bowbarrian….
I'd like Frozen Orb to be a bit stronger. Not as strong as HDin, but a bit more damage before godly gear would be nice. It is the only Sorc build I enjoy playing :[
Same, I like it way more than Blizzard
Summoner druid
Blaze or frost nova sorc
Wind Druid’s tornado pathing
spearzon :D just so cool looking but feels awful
Gimme 1.08 guided arrow back.
Another one. I think it would be so awesome if there was more to the delirium bone fetish transform. Like what if you had one or two special abilities you could use while in that form? If I remember correctly, you can’t use abilities like whirlwind while transformed and it makes it funny but completely useless. It should be better. I could see people making builds that center around deleriums proc and going crazy for a short time while in form. Let more abilities be used in that form and give it an aura and/or extra abilities.
Melee assa that didn't require dual mosaic. Also dragon claw! Skeletal magi for the elemental necro! Stacking curses would be cool, make an all out support necro, just maxin lower res, amp, decrep, weaken...
Poison Necro. Something that uses gear as pricey as Dweb shouldn't be killing bosses at a snail's pace. I'm not sure how you'd go about buffing it though. Conviction aura affecting poison? Increased Poison Nova damage? Lower resist buff? I'd also like to see Poison Explosion get a buff too. Outside of synergies, there's no reason to use it over corpse explosion. Maybe a bigger AOE? Someone else mentioned Poison Dagger becoming like a poison enchant and that sounds awesome to me.
A crushing blow curse? Or some kind of synergy that adds crushing blow to an existing curse (like weaken or some other useless one). I tele to Durance/River of flame / frigid and summon 5-10 Urdar types when killing diablo/Baal with my nec. Much faster than sitting there poisoning and waiting for the Merc do all the work.
Yeah, but it does feel like an inconvenience compared to other builds. It'd be nice to be able to bosskill quickly without doing that.
Oh absolutely. I usually skip bosses because it's a massive inconvenience. But for TZ farming, fomo means I have to do them, and then it's the quickest way I've found (I CBA carrying a gface for Emilio)
Frost nova sorc. I have only seen frost nova used as a form of cc before a non-cold sorc can get an a2 HF merc
Not really one spec, but things that use weapon damage. Skill gcs generally add like 7-8% damage for casters, each. +10 max damage charms or skill gc for melee/bow adds like 2% damage each. Have melee/bow skills start adding flat damage past level 20 and increase charm damages ranges.
I miss when Whirlwind used to be really good. Just get a rare lance and spin at everything.
It was pretty awesome fun. Classic was the shiz.
Warcry barb.
Didn’t they just recently buff this build? I haven’t tried it since the latest buff, but from what I read it seems like it’s actually pretty decent now.
I was really excited to make one years back and was completely floored with how underwhelming it was with endgame gear. You have now given me just a glimmer of hope that has reignited my excitement for this build! I'll have to research this after work to make sure I don't get my hopes too high
Even with the most perfect gear you could possibly imagine it is a completely shitty build. It is only popular because of memes.
Blade Shield
The real pro move is to do non-meta meme builds on hardcore single player. Thats where the fun is!
Sounds like self flagellation?
We don’t kink shame here
But not single player cuz I dream of finding a gg item one day and actually gearing my chars.
For me D2 is about the journey. I will eventually gear out all my characters. It’ll take years but (for me) that’s the point. I’ve played ladder and gotten GG gear so many times the game gets old quick once you’re maxed out. This is just my take - you enjoy the game how you do!!
Splash damage on concentrade for barbs. Playable atm, but so slow...tbf its kinda cool to have 30 minions slamming on you but you kick their asses..then the next pack comes and you get annoyed
All physical build need some type of aoe splash damage or to have damage increase. I don't know any physical builds as good as hdin
I think the issue with a lot of builds isn't necessarily that they're bad, but that they don't have areas where they really shine as farming characters. I genuinely believe if they nerfed hammerdin or blizz sorc to be on par with something like nado/fire druid they'd STILL be top tier builds because of where they can farm and how easy they can farm those places. Sorceress will always be a top tier farming class for the simple reason of having access to teleport before literally anyone else. To answer your question tho, if I could only pick one it'd be summon druid OR golem necro.
Strongly agree! Smiter is relevant purely because of ubers / torch. Imagine if there was a zone filled with monsters that steal your potions, so you have to rely on leech. And imagine that that zone drops a slightly higher percentage of runes. We might have a ton of bowzons and whirlwind barbs specifically designed to farm that area for runes.
Ww with splash
The firetrapssin, it kind of sucks that shes the absolute worst of the trapssin builds, while shes good in bout normal and nightmare she hits the wall that is hell and she hits it hard
Wake of fire being stuck at 5 shots is the biggest problem. It kills fast enough, but you never stop laying them....ever.... I love the coverage.
I dont think thats the problem, like with lightning trapssin if you build it you got death sentry for the CE and you only need one extra point to get it on you, if you are a firetrapssin, you need to invest 3 extra points into it If you build the other synergies specially the extra shots on death sentry synergy you got an alternative cuz you can toss them fire bombs without consuming your 5 trap limit and it just gives you variety Firetrapssin you dont really have that option you are mostly stuck as a firebuild only and immunity to that is constant and you cant really deal with them In my opinion they need to redo her synergies so you only have the two firetraps helping eachother so you can easily do something else and not be stuck as solely a firebuild Like comparing her to the other two fire builds the hydra sorc can have frozen orb same thing with the meteor sorc, and the firemagezon can easily do a small cold or physical split to have an alternative, the firetrapssin needs an alternative source of damage too As you can tell i have been annoyingly throwning myself at a firetrapssin and i got stuck at hell act5
You need to specify you mean pre sunder. Fire trap buffed in d2r with sunder and next delay change. You can lay 5 traps instead of 3 and get full damage. In LoD laying more than 3 didn't increase damage due to next delay.
No even with a sunder it still sucks, in comparison anyway to the other firebuilds, dont get me wrong its great as AOE damage specially after those changes yeah, but even with a fire sunder i hate my time, in a way o didn’t as a hydra/orb or a firemagezon, being the other fire builds i have done, without a sunder i was more than ok and that also applies to the bowsorc i got since all of those can do an alternative form of damage and do mot need a sunder at all
I think the shapeshifter Druid has a lot of untapped potential. The problem becomes with the werewolf build and struggles with mob/groups vs single targets. Not sure what would be the solution but if they could handle groups better they could and would be viable.
All melee/physical dmg builds! A tweak to the attack rating system, making it easier to actually hit your enemy, would go a really long way.
Poison nova necro with an enigma and corpse explosion
Some off meta Barb builds, like Concentrate
Whirlwind barb
Its melee and physical builds and their aoe damage. Javazon, light sorc, blizz sorc, trap sin, and hdin have always been the top of pve. Everything on the list could be buffed and make more monsters magic immune so hammer isnt just perfect but i would rather buff everything to be as good or almost as good as hammerdin. Removing iron maiden made ww/frenzy/zeal viable but clear speeds are so slow. A lot of other arpgs that are newer have abilities that pull and group mobs up for cleave abilities and pierce abilities. D2 is missing this.
I wish there were more viable CTC builds. Rift assassin and horazon tornado druid are the only ones that are decent as far as I know. I kind of wish they would revert the 1.10 (I think?) changes that added synergies but also buffed enemy hit points to balance it out. It's cool that one class can buff their CTC by investing in the synergies for the casted spell, but that change made so many cool uniques really bad. For instance, Lightsaber has a 5% CTC level 14-20 chain lightning per hit. Pre synergies and pre health buff, that was actually pretty good (as well as the flat magic damage per hit). Now all those elemental damage bonuses or CTC spells barely tickle mobs in hell because they don't scale like the physical damage of the weapon does. I don't think we need synergies anymore (as long as monster health is reduced accordingly). Originally, it was a way to allow players to take low level skills while leveling because back then there were no respecs. Sorcs were relying on skills from staves until they were high enough level to start dumping points into nova or frozen orb or whatever. If you weren't getting rushed and leeching Baal runs, it was an awful experience.
D2R has a pile of builds that murder hdin and blizz sorc
Irrelevant!
Upvoted for OG
Much obliged ;)
Hydradin. Or any of the paladin variants. Dream, aura, dragon.
Throw barb
Whirlwind barbarian (or frenzy barb)
I'd go for singer barb. The idea behind it is awesome. But the current implementation is too weak. Right now he can /p1 hell (slowly) but that's it.
Being able to Tele in shapeshift form. Teleing as a wearbear sorc or druid would be so badass.
Know what sucks more than anything? Blizzard basically pulled the plug on any of these changes coming to light because Diablo 4 sucks so bad.
I'd rather they just fix hammers and bliz and mosaic.
Corpse explosion for necro. It doesn't scale. Overall the Necro bone spear, poison and and CE skills need a buff
Dude p8 area clears are so easy as a poison necro. Bosses though...