Character builds

[C Elegans]

Since we often get questions about character builds, this thread is for posting different character builds. For convenience, I would suggest that we all roughly try to follow the template I made below for the Strafezon.

I will make one post in this thread for each of the seven classes in D2 LoD, and if all guides do not fit into one post, I will make links to the remaining ones. This is to keep the builds on top of this thread, whereas discussion and suggestions for builds to be included, can be posted later in this thread or in a new thread.

So please start posting builds, and I will add them

[C Elegans]

The Amazon

The Amazon is usually played with bow, javelin or spear. My favorite 1.10 built is the Strafezon, a Bowazon that uses Strafe as her main skill.

A Speedy Strafezon

Stat points
Very simple: I put everything in dex. Everything. I get strenght and life from items. Dex is how your Bowazon do physical damage. However, it may be more convenient for most players to have strenght enough for your equipment, and if you play HC, maybe some points in vita.

Skill points
Max Strafe and Penetrate, get Valkyrie to lvl 17 including +skills equipment. You can then put the remaining points in Critical strike and Pierce if you wish to play pure Strafer, or into Cold arrow or another elemental attack if you want an elemental attack for the physical immune monsters. I prefer the CS/Pierce, and then I use a Merc with Reaper's Toll to make the physical immune monsters not immune anymore.

Equipment

Suggestions for the average player:
Bow: Wildwitch String, Goldstrike Arch, Harmony
Armour: Lionheart, Smoke, Twitchthroe
Helm: Stealskull, Rockstopper,
Belt: Goldwrap, String of ears, Nightsmoke
Boots: Look for faster run/walk and resists
Gloves: Laying of hands, Sigons gloves and boots give IAS and str.
Amulet: Cat's eye, Highlords, + to Passive skills and resists
Rings: Look for life leach, mana leach, dex, max damage and resists

"Godly" (best possible equipment):
Bow: Windforce sck with 40ED/15max jewel (or 40ED/15IAS)
Armour: Chains of Honour or 4 sck armour with IAS/max jewels
Helm: Mavina's diadem sck with IAS/max jewel (or Kira's with IAS/max or IAS/res jewel if you need resists and don't have CoH)
Belt: Nosferatu's coil
Boots: Goreriders
Gloves: Rare or crafted +2 Passive & Magic, 20 IAS, resist and/or life leach (or Laying of Hands)
Amulet: Cat's eye
Ring 1: Perfect Ravenfrost 20 dex/250 AR (dex is most important, so go for 20 dex/as high AR as you can get)
Ring 2: max dam/life leach ring (with some resists if you need)

To reach the 9/2 breakpoint with Windforce (WF), you need 120 IAS, which is easily obtained by using for instance:
WF -20
Mav's diadem, sck IAS jwl -45
Cat's eye -20
IK boots and gloves -25
Nosferatus' coil -10

This way you don't need to Shael your WF, but can instead put in an ED/max jewel.

To hit the 8/2 breakpoint with WF, you need 157 IAS:
WF -20
4 sck armour with IAS jwls -60
Cat's eye -20
LoH or crafted gloves -20
Nosferatus' coil -10

is 130. You can find the remaining 30 IAS either by sck your WF with ED/IAS jewel and use Kira's guardian sck with IAS jewel, or by using Mav's diadem and still sck your WF with an ED/max jewel (my preferred choice).

My Strafezon also has her inventory full of max dam, life and poison charms, and a 19/20/9 Anni. A Might merc with a Reapers toll help increasing your damage and remove physical immunity.

Gameplay
A base vita/all dex Strafezon is very fragile but deal a massive amount of damage due to her attack speed. She must be played with a bit of hit-and-run strategy, much like a sorc in the old days. Use your Decoy often when you scout in dangerous areas. Make sure your merc and your Valk are alive and well. At Hell difficulty, look out for poison since your resists will likely be quite bad (mine are -80). A Strafezon with good equipment is an excellent Magic Find (MF) character. You can make Pit runs and Chaos Sanctuary runs faster than a cookie-cutter Hammerdin with Enigma, HoZ and all that
Have fun and may you find high runes in Chaos Sanctuary

[C Elegans]

The Assassin

The Assassin is a class that can be played in many totally different ways, as a pure Trapsin, a pure Martial Artist, a hiding Ghost, a ranged attacker or any combination. Most PvM players choose MA-Traps hybrids. Personally, I love the pure MA Sin, so here is a guide for one such build.

The Tiger Strike/Dragon Tail Martial Arts Assassin

Stat points
Strenght should be your main focus, since it both allows you to use the best equipment and adds to your claw and kick damage. If you have stat points left (which you most likely will have in the end) it's always good to put them in Str.
Dex: If you play claw/shield, you should have Dex enough to reach max blocking for your shield. If you play claw/claw as I prefer to do, you should only have dex enough for your equipment. Some of the high end claws demand quite a lot of dex though, so make sure you have points enough for the best claws.
Energy: Nothing. All Assassins except pure trappers should only have base energy since you leach up mana with items and Cobra Strike.
Vita is depending on your gear, if you have very good gear you don't need much vita actually. Whereas 200 points in Vita makes it easier to survive in Hell, it may not be necessary if you find good items, so don't put too many points in Vita early on.

Skill points
Max Tiger Strike and Dragon Tail, they are your main skills.

20 in Tiger Strike
20 in Dragon Tail
1 in Cobra Strike (to leach up mana and life)
1 in Claw Mastery
1 in Burst of Speed
1 in Weapon Block
1 in Fade (optional, depending on how much resists you have on your gear)
1 in Cloak of Shadows
1 in Shadow Master

The order in which you put your skill points doesn't matter a lot, but this is one suggestions: Start out with 1 point in Tiger Strike and 1 in Dragon Talon. You will not yet have mana enough to use it very often though. Then put 1 point in Claw Mastery and 1 in Psychic Hammer, because you want to get the prerequisites done with. At lvl 6, put 1 point in Burst of Speed, and use it all the time thereafter. Save points so you can take 1 point in both Weapon Block, Cloak of Shadow and Cobra Stike at lvl 12. If you are new to playing Assassins and using charge-up skills, practise on toggling quickly between Cobra Strike (when you need mana, you probably don't have any good mana leach items yet) and Tiger Strike, releasing them with Dragon Claw if you go dual claw, or Dragon Talon if you go claw/shield. Also practise on using Cloak of Shadow as crowd control. (Later on you can also use Mindblast for this purpose.)

When you reach lvl 24 life becomes very easy. Put 1 point in Dragon Tail and 1 in Shadow Warrior. Now, you have your main skills, plus a nice tank. I always put 1 point in Dragon Flight too, but those who want to have an absolutely perfect character sometimes use a claw switch with Dragon Flight and thus save 1 skill point! However, this build is not really tight with skill points.
1 point in Mindblast is optional, it's a very good crowd control skills that may come in handy at Hell difficulty, but it is not necessary. 1 point in Fade is also optional, it gives you good resists but since you can't use it simultaneously with Burst of Speed, you may end up not using it. My advice is to wait with Mindblast and Fade until later, and see if you need them or not.

At lvl 30, put 1 point in Shadow Master and start using it instead of the Shadow Warrior. From now on, put all your points in Tiger Strike and Dragon Tail until they are maxed. You should then be around lvl 45-48 (depending on how many of the optional skills you put points in) and it's time to start working on your elemental damage. Max Phoenix Strike, after that you can choose different paths depending on taste and what equipment you have found:

If you like elemental damage, max one of the synergy skills to Phoenix Strike. Claws of Thunder do the most damage, and in big crowds you can first release charge 3 to freeze the monsters (will do very little damage though) and then release charge 2 to dish the damage. You can also max only Blades of ice. By now you should be about lvl 78-80 or so, which means you will still have some skills points to spend on a stronger Shadow Master (11 with your gear is the perfect breakpoint), Burst of Speed (aim for 11 with gear here as well), some more in Weapon block if you are claw/claw, or something else. (Remember that both SM and BoS are prebuffable, so you can use a weapon switch with high +skills when you cast them, and then switch back to your combat weapons)

You can also max only Phoenix Strike, and instead put more points in Shadow Master, optimise your Burst of Speed, put more points in Weapon block and perhaps in Claw Mastery if you need AR.

Remember to check what lvl of BoS you need to optimise your IAS with the claws you use! IAS breakpoint tables can be found easily, I will try to post a link to one here.

Equipment

Suggestions for the average player:
Claw/s: Unless you find some special magical or rare claws that are really good, make Strenght and Malice runewords from claws with nice skills early on. Then look out for claws with +skills and large bonus to damage.
Armour: Duriel's shell, Shaftstop (give this to your merc when you find something better ), Lionheart, Smoke
Helm: Stealskull, Rockstopper
Belt:String of ears is easy to find and really good
Boots: Waterwalk, Nat's boot, rare boots with faster run/walk and resists - look out for kick damage
Gloves: Laying of hands, Magus, crafted Blood gloves, Sigons with boots
Amulet: + to MA skills and resists
Rings: Look for life leach, mana leach, dex, max damage and resists

"Godly" (best possible equipment):
Claw/s: Rare or magical claw with massive %ED and +skills, Bartuk's, Fury Runeword, Natalya's - the combinations are endless, many play with 2xBartuk or Bartuk+Jade Talon or Bartuk+Nat's. For my first pure MA sin I played with an incredible high damage rare claw and Bartuk's.
Armour: Chains of Honour, Arkaine's Valor
Helm: Vampire Gaze or Tal's mask
Belt: String of ears, Nosferatu's coil
Boots: +2 skills Shadowdancers, Upgraded Goreriders
Gloves: Dracul's grasp or rare/crafted with +2 MA skills, 20 IAS, resists and/or leach
Amulet: +3 MA and resists, Mara's
Ring 1: good Ravenfrost
Ring 2: Bul Khato's with 4 life leach or rare dual leach (mana and life leach)

If you decide to play claw/shield, of course Stormshield is the best. I however recommend you to play this build dual claw. Also, look out for skillers (grand charms with +1 to one skill tree) with +1 to MA, and perhaps one or two +1 to Shadow skills as well.

Mercenary
For this build, choose a merc you think is fun to have, without thinking of what is most efficient. I usually play with a Rouge or Iron Wolf because they are quite lousy unless you give them great equipment and since the Shadow Master is a melee minion, and it's nice to have a ranged one too.

Gameplay
As soon as you have got Dragon Tail at lvl 24, this build is very easy to play through Normal and Nightmare. When you reach Hell difficulty, it will be significantly more difficult and you will often risk to get overwhelmed by fast monster crowds. Thus, you must start using Cloak of Shadow and perhaps also Mind blast. For difficult crowds you can cast CoS, back and recast your Shadow close to the monsters. If you play in a party, everybody will love you when you cast CoS at the feared Gloams in Hell

[C Elegans]

The Barbarian

The Barbarian is a powerful warrior with many highly variated skills, which makes him fun to play. He was one of my favorite classes in 1.09, but I have little experience of playing Barb in 1.10. The Barb can be played as a melee char using the War cries as support skills, or he can be played as a pure Singer. Other interesting skills include Find items and "build in" increased speed. The most common builds often use Whirlwhind or Concentrate as a main attack.

The Wolfbarb
The Wolfbarb is an interesting build that uses the unique Barbarian helm Wolfhowl that let you turn into a werewolf. The guide is mainly aimed at PVP, but the Wolfbarb can be played in PvM as well, and the guide includes modifications for PvM too.
How to build a Wolfbarb (pvp)

[C Elegans]

The Druid

The Druid can be played as a Summoner, a Shapeshifter on an Elemental druid, or combinations between these skill trees.

The Wind Druid (1.10)
In 1.10, the Wind Druid quickly became on of the most popular cookie cutter build for druids, as Hammerdin for Paladins and Meteorb for Sorcs. The Wind Druid is a very powerful build in both PvP and PvM.
Guide to the Wind Druid

[C Elegans]

The Necromancer

Some popular Necromancer builds include Poison and Bone (P&B), Summoner and Golemancer.

Guide to the Summoner build

[C Elegans]

The Paladin

Paladin builds

Hammerdin Guide by Piff

HAMMERDIN v.1.10

STAT POINTS:
Like most builds, enough strength to wear equipment and enough dexterity for max block with holy shield. The rest in Vitality and none in Energy.

SKILL POINTS:
20 in Blessed Hammers
20 in Vigor
20 in Concentration
20 in Blessed Aim
1 in holy bolt (prerequisite to blessed hammers)
1 in Might (prerequisite to blessed aim/concentration)
1 in Prayer (prerequisite to vigor)
1 in Cleansing (prerequisite to vigor)
1 in Defiance (prerequisite to vigor)
And the rest in Holy Shield

To begin with the build starts a little slow. Place skill points into prerequisites as you advance in levels so that you can get them out of the way. Once you reach level 18 things start flying by. Place a skill point in Blessed Hammers and Concentration and continue until you have them maxed out. Then move onto Vigor and Blessed Aim until you max them. At this point you should be pretty much set for the game. Start placing points into Holy Shield to increase both your defense and your chance of blocking. If you do this all right you should eventually be able to do around 10k+ if you have the right equipment.

EQUIPMENT:
For Average Builds
Weapon Wizardspike (for FCR), Spirit, or nice Scepters with +skills
Shield Spirit
Armor Guardian Angle, Griswold’s Armor
Helm a nice +2 skill circlet with resistance if possible
Belt String of Ears, Snowclash, Glooms Trap
Boots Tearhaunch, Water walk, War travelers
Gloves Something with resistance and stat upgrades
Amulet +2 skill amulets with resistances
Rings Raven Frost with Madles Ring or Something with resistance

BEST Equipment
Weapon Heart of the Oak
Shield Herald of Zakarum or Exile
Armor Enigma
Helm Shako
Belt Arachnids mesh
Boots Sandstorm, War Travelers
Gloves Something with resistance and stat upgrades
Amulet Mara's
Rings 2 SOJ's or BK's Ring

Mercenary
I suggest getting a Frost Aura from Act 2 nightmare to slow down enemies so your hammers can get them. Equip him with Tal's mask and some armor that would give him extra strength to use a nice pole arm weapon for Insight

[C Elegans]

The Sorceress

The sorceress can be played as single, dual or tri-elementalist. With the synergies in 1.10, the single elementalist deals a lot of damage, but due to monster elemental immunities, she cannot play solo but has to party. The Meteorb and the Blizzard build are both very common, suitable for Magic Find (MF) and easy for the beginner to play. Please follow the links to the threads where the different builds are described in detail.

The Meteorb Sorc (1.10)
The Meteorb Sorc is one of the most powerful sorc builds, and she is the perfect beginner's build since she can solo the game at Hell difficulty. She is also the perfect MF character.
How to build a Meteorb Sorc


The Fireball Sorc (1.10)
The Fireball Sorc is a build suitable for both PvM and PvP. For PvM, just use a combination of Meteor and Fireball. She is an extremly powerful and fast killer, but in PvM she must, like all single elementalists, play in a party or have a very good Merc to help out with fire immune monsters.
How to build a Fireball Sorc

The Frozen Orb/Chain Lightning (FO/CL) Sorc (1.10)
The FO/CL Sorc is a strong build that suits players who like fast and frenzied playing style. She is as strong as the Meterorb build, but is more item dependent to be an equally quick killer. Like the Meteorb, she can solo the game and she is an excellent MF-character.
How to build a Frozen Orb/Chain Lightning Sorc


Pure Blizzard sorceress in 1.10 by Dottie

A pure blizzard sorceress was one of the first builds I played in Diablo II. It is easy to play and quite powerful. You should be aware that since you only have one type of attack you will not make it through hell alone. You have to play with a friend who can deal with cold immune monsters.

Stat points
A blizzard sorc has a lot of stat points, so if you accidentaly place a few points to many in any stat don't worry, you will do nicely anyway.
Strength: Enough to wear you equipment, nothing more. If you don't know what equipment you will wear, and are perfectionist, it is easy to find rings and other items with strength to manage untill you have decided.
Dexterity: The best option here is to have enough dexterity for maximum block* with a good shield. You can also ignore dexterity and place the spared points in vitality, but that would be harder to play.
Vitality: All spare points. More life is always good.
Energy: Place as few points here as possible. Leave it at base if you like, but without good equipment that might be too painfull.

*Blocking: Every time you are hit by a melee or ranged attack you have a chance to block the attack with your shield. The chance depends on the type of shield, your level and your dexterity. The chance to block an attack can not be greater than 75% and is calculated by the following formula:

Blocking = Shields Block value * (Dexterity - 15) / (Character Level * 2)

This means that the higher your level the more you need in dexterity to maintain the same blocking %. Dont aim for 75% block with a lousy shield. Chances are you will find a better one sooner or later, and then you have wasted a lot of stat points. To be sure not to waste any points aim for a block value that is the same as your current shields block value. That way you are sure not to have wasted any stat points when you finally find a good shield. The finaly aim is to get 75% block though.


Skill points
20 in Blizzard.
17 in Cold mastery including the bonuses from your equipment.
1 in Static field.
1 in Warmth.
1 in Teleport.
2 in the prerequisites Telekinesis and Frost nova.
All the rest in the three skills Ice Bolt, Ice Blast and Glacial Spike.

The order in wich you place your skill points doesn't matter much, but obviously you should max Blizzard first. Place one point in cold mastery early as that is the only synergy-skill that benefits from your +skill equipment. You can place more than 17 points in cold mastery if you want to, but there is a reason why you should not. Cold mastery gives a penalty to a monsters cold resistance, but the resistance may never be lower than -100%. 17 in Cold mastery gives a -100 modification to cold resists, so if you have more than 17 it will only help against monsters who have a cold resist greater than 0. Quite a lot of monsters in hell difficulty have high cold resist though, so dont cry if you have placed more points there.

Equipment
Finding equipment for a blizzard sorceress is rather easy. You only have to look for three things: + to skills, high resistances(75%) and some extra mana. If your equipment gives those three things you dont have to worry about much else. Faster cast rate is also convinent for teleporting around but your attack doesnt benefit much from it. If you want to use your sorc to look for good items you should have a lot of magic find.

Suggestions for the average player:

Weapon: A rare sorceress Orb with +skills and some resists.
Shield: Visceratuant, A socketed shield with 3 perfect diamonds, Moser's Blessed Circle.
Armour: Skin of the vipermagi, Smoke.
Helm: Runeword Lore, Rare or magical circlet with + cold skills.
Belt: Look for resists and mana.
Boots: Look for faster run/walk and resists.
Gloves: Frostburn or anything that gives resists.
Amulet: Rare or magical amulet with + cold skills.
Rings: Look for +mana and resist.

Mercenary
A melee mercenary is more or less nessecary. You should put some effort into finding good equipment for him, he is important for your survival. Make sure your mercenary's level is close to your own, if he lags behind use static field to hurt monsters so that he can kill them. The best mercenary is either a defensive merc from act II normal(defiance aura), or an defensive merc from act II nightmare(Holy freeze aura).

Gameplay
Blizzard is an easy skill to use so there is not much to say here. Don't be afriad to use teleport to take you to safety if monsters come to close. If you meet cold immunes in Nighmare difficulty use static field and let you merc kill them. Just make sure to feed him with healing potions as soon as he needs them. When you encounter stygian dolls in nighmare and hell difficulty do not imidiatly cast blizzard. Instead you should teleport away a quite small distance. Your merc will be teleported with you and he will start to move towards the dolls. You take a step back, and the dolls will target him instead of you. This is very good as the explosion when they die does not hurt him. In this situation use blizzard. If you find it tricky to get to the point where you actually get blizzard you can place a few more points in Ice Blast. If duriel is a problem in normal difficulty you can go to the magic shop and by a staff with the Blaze skill. Cast blaze and run away from him in a straight line, so that he follows you in the fire. To kill him this way takes some time though.