Top 5 untwinked builds

My vote goes to Skelemancer. I kicked off the second season with one and used him to MF for me up until about 3 weeks ago. The only place I ever ran into any trouble was Baal (takes forever to kill)--follow the guide's suggestion and get a hold of some CB gear, keep Baal decreped and whack him with whatever you've got. It'll speed things up.

I might also throw an honorable mention to the frost zealot. He's a bit more difficult in the furthest reaches of hell, but last ladder season I played one as my first char all the way through hell solo. If you manage to find some half decent equipment along the way, it's a viable build that doesn't need a lot of ubergear to play.
 
jiansonz said:
I disagree with this.

If you rely on the merc and give them good weapons (hint, hint, socketed bows, hint, Savage polearms...) even a skill-less build shouldn´t have much trouble reaching late Normal (level 45+) even on /players 8.
I belive you missunderstood me. In my post I wrote "slvl 30" which means SKILL lvl 30 (not CHARACTER lvl 30). You are of course right - LF is a very good skill in late Normal and I would say more: this skill is preatty uber even through all NM. You can meet first packs of lightning immune regular monsters late in A5 NM and on this stage of game a good mercenary can still manage them.
If I wrote about limitations of pure LF build I meant Hell difficulty.
 
sangfagel said:
I belive you missunderstood me. In my post I wrote "slvl 30" which means SKILL lvl 30 (not CHARACTER lvl 30). You are of course right - LF is a very good skill in late Normal and I would say more: this skill is preatty uber even through all NM. You can meet first packs of lightning immune regular monsters late in A5 NM and on this stage of game a good mercenary can still manage them.
If I wrote about limitations of pure LF build I meant Hell difficulty.

OK, sorry about that. I always play untwinked and skill levels of over 30 are not even in my D2 world. :lol: I think the highest I´ve had is lvl 28 (Bone Spear with my first 1.09 necro).

If you count low, you could easily have at least level 25 (+2 from javelin, +1 from gloves, +1 from amulet and +1 from circlet or 'Lore') without sacrificing too much survivability and other things.

In a tournament in the Single Player forum, I made Guardian with an untwinked Valkazon. Actually, it was never really dangerous (!), so that build is perfectly viable. I got lucky with the merc´s gear (HF merc: Hone Sundan, Iceblink and lightning damage circlet) and that helped a lot.
What if you turn your build around? Start with my Valkazon, take away a couple of points from the evasive skills, Penetrate and Decoy, and pump Lightning Fury instead. That would have made it easier against the PIs. However, in that tournament we were forbiddden to use bows and javelins (other than for mercs).
 
Skelemancer. For the exact reason you're going for -- untwinked. This is always the first character I make on a new ladder, or when I went hc for a while, and after all my old chars expired.


You can viably run a skelemancer around in hell with no equipment on, though even untwinked this wont be necessary. As you are going thru you are bound to find plenty of +skills stuff, make a lore hat which is pretty easy, you can find a necro head, and if desperate, you can vendor shop a +2 wand. I usually try and make a stealth armor which i end up wearing until I find something better.

Then I just mf with him until I find something good, then make a char based on whatever item that is. In the case of the current ladder, I found a Frostwind sword, so I made a conviction/zeal pally (who found his own bstar). This works out well, just making chars based on what you find. Keeps trading hassles to a minimum.

realjeep
 
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