@@omartrufflez5305 its more of a pain to the 1st time player who would choose pure summoner build and then regret not having teleport staff 😂 my first character was necro and I did choose skelly build, you probably know what happened in maggot lair 😂 it was ages ago tho, probably 15 years back lol
Still undecided what build I'll play when D2R drops, but I know one thing... I'm playing all the way through, side quests, full(ish) clears, listening to all the NPC dialogue, like its the first time again...
The best way to do a ssf playthrough with whirlwind barb is to play d2 classic instead. Dont xfer to expansion until you find steeldriver. When you do, shael it and upgrade it.
@@scuniverseyoutuber4404 steeldriver is unique I realize that bonesnap unique maul would be way easier to find, steeldriver only drops in later acts like hell mode
3 years later and D2R has really changed this list for the better! Plague javelin/charged strike Zon, double throw Barb, Fire Druid, FoH paladin have all moved up in rank IMO. Would be curious to see your new list
Ww is still good. Llama’s problem was that he refused to slow down and farm a bit in his guided ww playthrough. You need decent gear for ww including a decent amount of crushing blow.
@@jprec5174 Well I think he primarily judges the builds based on how fast you can progress through the game and transition to magic finding, which is applicable to a lot of players not just speedrunners. But honestly, even end game WW barbarian is not that great because he is still only good at aoe damage and struggles with bosses, as it is hard to fit crushing blow onto a WW barb without gimping your magic find %.
Would be amazing if this was linked into the builds you put together in previous videos. Great stuff! I actually got into Diablo 2 again after years of never sucesfully finishing hell and got all the characters through with your tips and knowledge share. It's amazing how much there is to know in order to finish the HELL. There is very little chance of success without learning a lot. You are doing a lot for us casual players! Thanks a lot!
Thank you Llama. I see you catch the feeling of your survey. Most players on D2 are aged and have small time to play, so SSF. Don't get me wrong, we still play sometimes MP but most SSF. Ill probably do a Holy Grail on single player at first to learn again old mechanics of D2 (very used to pd2 aka best mod).
@@johngaughan9399 You do not need ebotd to enjoy WW. Oath is pretty ez to craft in SP and gives You quite a jump in damage .. dual oaths + Even a cheap Lionheart /goblins and You are set... Most if not all youtubers are so used to caster privileges (sorc and hammerdin mainly) that doing a simple Tri whirl seem like pulling this magical thing so súper hard to do....
I quite like Barbs for MF, but you need enigma for the Teleport. But the find item skill is major. I remember I used to join cow levels CS runs, etc and just run around using it on all the corpses. Found a fair few decent items doing so without the mad dash for the grab. Recycle barb I call him haha.
@@dbarnes8923 I mean... you need infinity lol. Ber x 2 mal x 1 and ist x 1... isn't exactly starter friendly and you don't really need to MF at that point
This video is a very good idea to welcome more people into D2R when it launches! This will also help me to make recommendations if friends ask for advice on what character to pick at first. I would love more tier lists like this so that we can benefit from your encyclopedic knowledge of D2! Best characters for: mf in lvl 85 areas, PvP duels, leveling (that could even be split into sub-categories like baal runs), finding keys, farming high runes, gold finding, farming bases for runewords, ladder reset, etc.
I really hate how the whirlwind barb was destroyed. He was so much fun in Classic. yes, his skill was broken for the time. 10xhits per target up to 10 targets? But they shold have reworked it in 1.13 imo. Even with a barb only armor.
WW barb is pretty good since you can reach it’s potential at lvl 50 once you max it. 20 points into sword mastery, 20 points into WW, rest into BO. As long as you have a good weapon you should be good. Frenzy requires a lot of deadly strike and good weapons
honestly WW barb is my favorite and no matter how "bad" it is, I will always play it and it's my favorite. I do wish they would show it love and fix it to be more viable, but unless they do balance changes after d2r releases then it's going to be a no go for the most part.
@@shaylinjames2729 it's good the problem is that you need a very fast weapon or DW to get value out of it. You also need a ton of life steal. Unfortunately barb is not viable until you have the resources to craft a grief. Without grief it's near unplayable.
@@shaylinjames2729 Project Diablo and or Path of Diablo will probably use the D2R graphics on their $hit. So you can run with their class changes...eventually.
I've always done sorc for first play simply because teleport is priceless. mf is easier and can find gear for all your builds you want to make. and start bringing them up. also having a rusher to trade rushes for your new characters is great
Disagree on Throwing Barb, later on (after lvl 40 I think) you get modifiers "replenish quantity) on throwing AXES, so you'll never really run out of "throws". Also Throwing axes count as both Throw and Axe weapon, so you get benefit from both masteries. Left click you put couple of points into Frenzy and swing couple of times to get damage\speed\AS boost, then you start nuking monsters. I forgot what Elite version of throwing axes are called, but they have very strong base damage as they are axes. It's actually very fun build to play around, and I think it might even be better now, considering you can get some boost with runeword items that give different auras and perks.
It would be very interesting how the tier is in groups. I know you made already a guide on optimal groups, but maybe if you have already two S-tier damage dealer how would advantages and disadvantages of the a-d tier characters come into play and would the difference be closer or higher for certain types?
I think a singer barb is S-tier for group play in HC, at least for an initial play through with junk gear. Mainly because you can trivially make the toughest enemies (souls, dolls) harmless. Use taunt on souls (or archers, etc) to stop their attacks and pull them into melee range and stun them. Use howl or stun on dolls. Extra fast, extra strong, frenzy boss pack? Baal waves? Also harmless, everything gets stunned. Nowhere are you safer than with a singer barb in the group, except perhaps with a summon necro. Gear is trivial to find - you can run dual spirit swords, stealth, lore, crafted barb caster amulet, and resists on everything else (rings, boots, gloves, belt, charms), and it’s viable all the way through A5 hell. With your massive life pool, you only need to max lightning resist, so you don’t need a spirit shield or smoke armor, and with everything stunned, you don’t need defense or block. The weakness is that damage sucks past A1 hell, and the build is useless against bosses. Lightning enchants also suck, since you have no leech and you attack at close range. Champions have a low chance to be stunned, but you can outrun them if necessary. And of course you are useless against physical immunes. You can have a second set of melee gear to patch some of those weaknesses, but it has to be really good gear to do anything with low skill investment, and needing to invest STR or DEX to equip a good weapon loses a lot of VIT. All the downsides make it a poor solo build, but the crowd control and BO make it an amazing party build. It lets otherwise squishy party members do more damage because the need for caution (kiting) largely disappears. I wouldn’t say a hammerdin is a group build, in the sense that they are so overpowered that being in a group usually drags them down, because they are tanky enough that they don’t need help on defense or crowd control, and they kill faster than most builds with little worry about immunities, so they don’t need help on offense either…. They’d be better off running on their own separate from the rest of the party in a lot of cases (except maybe places hammers suck, like maggot lair).
I guess druids might get better because of tankiness, sorc a bit weaker as they can die so easily ... Overall Pala, summon necro and trapsin still rock hardcore
@@TheSummoner Amazons are completely fine once you know what you're doing. The rough thing with them is it's easier to die because of a mistake you make 5 seconds ago than other classes because their casting frames are too awful for emergency teleports and decoy takes more knowledge to use well for CC than curses, warcries, etc.
@@Sara_Feingold I see, well I've honestly never played hardcore before, hence why I was quoting the opinion of MrLlama, but I guess his is more tailored towards speedrunning than regular playing.
Fishymancer (summ necro with corpse explosion) is possibly one of the safest and least gear dependent one. His wind druid also almost made S tier, and wind druid survivability is pretty high as well. You get a constant stun (due to hit recovery from mobs) or at the very least a massive slow all around you. And don't forget massive life with Oak Sage, and the best minion in the game next to valkyrie, the Bear.
Very reasonable! Thanks for the well-informed opinion. I feel better knowing what to completely avoid. Some of the mid-tier I will still try out, but I am now NEVER gonna waste my time on any of the D tier hype.
Bowazon nearly C-Tier, was once easily S-Tier. Same for WW Barb, its sad what they did with 1.10 :(. Kicksin was also nice prior to 1.10, I always had fun with it in 1.09. Please make these builds great again Blizzard and bring back Hell Cows and cow channels in general ...
Synergies happened. I strongly disagree that rushing hell cows and then sitting in a corner until you're level 85 was more fun than what we have now. I also strongly disagree that 1.10 "ruined" anything. Synergies are an awesome idea they just need much better balance to widen the meta and bring more builds into viability.
@@aliebrubaker7473 I think that is more-or-less definitionally false. Before, you could use any one of the top tier skills for your class, and your other 91 skill points were free to be used however you liked. After synergies, you could use any one of the top tier skills for your class, and then 40-80 of your other points get tied up in actually making that skill live up to its promise. Synergies made the meta "builds" more defined, but they sucked viability out of more creative spreads. But I do agree that D2R could use a balance patch, to flatten that curve a little
@@ms.aelanwyr.ilaicos then explain how in 1.09 and before there were basically only six or seven builds that could even be really used. Zealot, WW Barb, Meteorb/FW Sorc, Nova Sorc, Wolf Druid, Fury Javazon, Fishymancer. Anyone playing anything other than those builds was meme'ing. Sin was an actual joke. Bear or elemental Druid, nope. Bowazon was meh. Frenzy or Zerk Barbs were pretty ick. Sorcs using blizz or fireball or lightning would be scratching cows versus orb. We have at least that many builds now and the synergies are balanced like garbage. If they actually put any effort into balancing it would make a huge difference. One thing synergies definitely does is create a case/use meta. Monsters are difficult in hell because synergies added power creep like crazy. Certain builds are absolute rulers of their domain (Smiter for Ubers, for example, or the Pitzerker for non-act boss mf runs) where they are extremely strong but are atrocious for other content. Both of the above are trash for clearing cows or chaos/baal. Pre synergies, damage was just straight balanced on a 1:1 ratio against monster strength so any build that hit certain damage milestones could do all content as well as others or nearly. At the end of the day, pre or post synergy a lot of viability rests straight on the developers shoulders. I believe synergies allow for a wider meta because skills can have multiple synergies and builds can be more complex without just being weak IF the skills and synergies are balanced.
One thing on this list perplexes me. I am currently doing a Bowazon only playtrough with PlugY (at lvl 78 rn) and to me Ice Arrow and Lightning Fury are definitelly NOT on the same tier. I don't know what tier they are but Lightning Fury is without hyperbole like 10 times better than Ice Arrow. I have my character optimized for Ice Arrow but got fed up with it and bought random 20ias Javelins from Charsi and tried Lightning Fury and it just clears screens its so good. You can also have a shield equipped with Javelins which gives you options to stack res, as a bowazon, I'm strugling super hard with survivability because of it.
Are you using Ice Arrow or Freezing Arrow? Freezing Arrow will output more damage and handle Lightning Immunes pretty well. It'll just guzzle mana though
@@GiuseppeG11 Yes, but It's not just damage. The lightning javazon is so much better in every regard. It has better AOE, better Single Target, Better Survivability. The only thing it does worse maybe is dealing with immunes but I'm not sure of that either.
@@MykeThaFartSmella69 I'm not sure but I think 'solo self funded/found' aka you play through the game without inheriting god tier gear from outside the current play-through
I'm kinda mad you didn't put Holy Shock/Freeze Zealot here, he can be really strong and his clearing pace is so nice. But overall hard to disagree with your choices, great argumentation on why are they good/bad
@@ickn2005 Right! Hammerdin is so easy to build up. It's like you could find little bits and pieces easily every single time along with making just a few runs of the count and you're set. I remember playing H-din 2006 I think? It's blurry... but my buddy was like why are you using that skill it's really bad. Then I was the first one to make it through hell with a pally haha!
@@muhammetmelikkolgesiz9252 dude the title of the video says „SSF” which standa for Solo Self Found and I just spoke about that manner of playing through the game with the so called Tesladin (or holy zealot as people name the non-Dream Holy shock zealer) and he does just fine throughout the game, he might be a bit slower than his high-end version, but he’s definitely playable for SSF plathroughs! Just finished such playthrough and he was completely fine with a few deaths here and there but overall the character seemed strong
@@cjregunay1668 not fighting them if it’s not neccesary, otherwise by having some degree of physical dmg from my weapon. It’s takes time to whittle them down but possible
you obviously know this but damn perfect timing, really had no idea what is good in LoD since I've been playing pd2 lately but hadn't played d2 for like a decade before that. thanks for sharing the knowledge!
Conc Barbs are badass and super underrated. Yes, they are slow but they are also tanky af and very Hell viable. However they are pretty heavily gear reliant imo.
I was so disappointed when I tested out and found that Holy bolt does damage only to Undead and not to anything else. If it did magic damage to everything else and extra damage to undead, fist of heavens might actually be interesting to try out.
@@Moonface00z I heard its good mod, but what makes me anxious is Splash Damage on EVERY melee weapon, it should be added for few certain skills like concentration, berserk, maybe some skills in martial arts, but making it for all weapons in close combat makes it just thrashy, cheap solution, didnt like to see it.
As far as immunities go for a Cold Sorc, would you recommend dipping into Fire or Lightning as second element? I'm thinking Firewall due to its OP damage.
The problem i always had back in the day was that the best builds were one element (because of synergies, you only had a few points to throw into another element, meaning it wasn't strong enough to kill anything in hell). So when you were in hell and ran into something immune to your type (in particular, my frozen orb sorc dealt with this a lot)...all you could do is run away to try to teleport passed it. Good for meph runs-if you had maphack so you didn't die on your way to the boss. Hell difficulty is the primary reason why soloing is such a pain, because almost every enemy is immune to something so you will run into a lot you can't touch.
@@AwoudeX Hmm, that's a possibility. Couldn't really use firewall back in the day because any PC that wasn't state of the art would damn near completely lock up at firewalls (was a popular 'trick' for PKers, to throw up a few fire walls to lag out most opponents so they couldn't run away). Same issue with lagromancers, one of those bastards crossed your screen you would see like the first few skeletons/revives, then only see one screen every few seconds until they had completely moved off your screen. Can't tell you how many times i'd see a necro go hostile on me, then a second later my game froze up until i was dead and he left. Praying that isn't the case these days
I always played SSF. Once the druid came out in the expansion, I played Werebear. It is slower, but you one shot everything outside of the act bosses. Huge Life pool makes it so you can stand toe to toe and destroy them. Run into the center of a pack and take them out, without worrying about being overwhelmed. Fighting Duriel (the scariest boss in my opinion) was an easy stand in his face and send him back to hell, not even losing half health. Ive never made that fight, and many other fights so easy with any other character or build .
We're planning to do a party of 3 once D2:R releases. Do you have any suggestions for a party comp there? We could just each pick an S-tier and go, but I'm wondering if there'll be something stronger based on synergies between classes?
Lots of fun combinations you could make. I really like enchantress + summoner. Maybe a pally in there for the conviction aura and to be the front guy in some places like the maggots lair. But enchanting the summons is hilarious.
Totally agree with this. One personnal point. From the S tier builds, the sorc is the only one that requires way more gear to deal with Uber bosses than the rest but the teleport part to farm gear definitely make up for it. For an all content untwinked i would put it borderline top A. I also found that balancing Bone spears and Summons for necro does make it better for P1-3 and before getting the right gear to switch to full summon/poison/bone. The 1-2k bonespear damage that one can get really make targets like council members, NM/Hell bosses at lower level more manageable and also help getting that first kill for explosions. The summons are great tanks, add some good DPS especially against bosses and allow your merc to survive way more easily without being well geared which covers where a bone necro struggles. I also do find that build easier than hdin for the earlier part as it never really struggle with Souls (at the worst, use Dim vision), who are just a real pain in the butt until you get an enigma for your Hdin. They scales way better into endgame gear by that point however and never require a skill reallocation to deal with higher player settings. For solo and hardcore, i would put them just after Summoner for this reason, especially that the necro have skellies, revives, bone armor, prison and curses as extra available protection.
At least not at release day. Maybe they'll add an "Resurrected" mode later on? Most of this already got fixed by Project Diablo anyway... so mod support?
MrLammasc.. please give me your point of view and insights when comparing 3 sorc builds: Regular Lightning+Infinity on merc Hybrid Nova+Firewall(or Orb) + Infinity on merc ES+Nova + Scythe Infinity + Insight on merc Which do you think has the highest clear speed+mf potential?
I actually prefer to start with Zeal+Holy Shock Paladin and run nightmare Countess to get enough runes for other build. Double spirit runeword is enough to do good damage, also gamble circlet and amulet for +2 pal sk. The next upgrade is "Crescent Moon" (Shael+Um+Tir) Phase Blade. "Treachery" (Shael+Thul+Lem) Armor is also good for this build. Starter helmet could be Ort+Sol. This build is quite cheap and lightning immune monsters are usually undead, thus could be killed under Sanctuary aura.
I'm surprised Summoner makes it in so high above Bone necro, but it's a pleasant surprise :) You're literally the only YTer I've ever seen ranking the two like that though.
A properly played summon necro is absurdly strong. At low gear levels nothing compares. Back in the day I had a GG geared summon necro on bnet and it would clear uber tristram faster than a geared frenzy barb :D I 100% agree with it being the second strongest character for self found after Hammerdin
@@Mammel248 surprised it's not first tbh. I cleared up to ancients in hell ssf easily and safely on hc with summon nec. Paladin can do it too but probably not as safely.
Bone clears most stuff faster (Bone Spears travel faster than Skellies after all), but is so dependent on getting White from Nightmare Countess. I think that's the thing holding it back from S tier here.
A friend of mine never played d2 and wants to do play as a barbarian, he runs barbarian in every game and just wants to play a big bulky guy jumping in and slashing things (he's compensating). We're mostly going to play as a group of friends and SSF, what should I tell him to build ? Frenzy ? Whirlwind ? I never played baba and I don't feel like he will enjoy singing at mobs
What about hardcore? Just died on my first attempt on the Diablo seals. Hadn't played Diablo 2 in ages so forgot how brutal the mob spawns are. Was trying firewall sorc and it wasn't very good, especially in act 4. Thinking about trying something a little less squishy and kitey this time. Any suggestions? Just want to make it through baal on hell difficulty
I love Paladin aura build, lvl 56 right now, just every point I can get into Holy Shock and Resist Lightning, and I just casually strolled through Normal and Nightmare only having to swing my sword at boss enemies, everything else dies in a couple ticks of shock damage. And it is instant, and it all hits at once. So like walking into a pack of 30 enemies(players 8) all 30 take 1-600 lightning damage per tick, they all drop dead in no time. It's basically a mostly AFK build, i love it.
@@jalefar8247 This is my first play through and just about to finish Act 2 of Nightmare and yeah starting to think I might have to respec for Hell since the aura is doing less and less dmg. Though I know I can get another like 30 levels of holy shock using the Dream runeword i think? So i am wondering what the dmg will be with 2 Dreams and like 25 hard points into Holy Shock
@@richmusick4881 Yeah and getting two Jah runes seems unlikely at best haha even on Players 8 all through Normal and Nightmare I have only gotten up to Sol and I hear people talking about literally never seeing a single high rune in all their games
@@FirstLast-gk6lg Also works very well and will be cheaper if you want to farm for an Infinity first for your merc. You might even be able to make a Grief farming for it which isn't too bad to get. I managed to get 2x Sur (LK farming, i'm done with that as it is way too boring for me), 4 Gul (2x LK, 2x Cows and Chaos) and 1 Lo (cows) but never got the luck for a Jah. As all the runes i've found in SP doesn't even equal a Jah in the end, the odds of getting 2x playing casually is insanely low. I would use it for an Enigma instead even for that build without hesitation.
I'm a big fan of full Mav's frozen arrow. Big CC, resistances and MF. Cheap to start out and if you get decked out with cold facets it can contend with Ice. Strafe deals with cold immunes pretty well too.
I believe Leaf availability combined with being able to buy a +3 fireball base with a little effort pushes Fireball sorc to S tier. There is nothing like being able to SMASH normal and nightmare with minimal effort because you have +6 fireball on your weapon alone. EDIT: Fire gets a bad rap because there are so many fallen in A1 (fire immune) If you can stomach having to tele around to the next area you'll be fine.
If you do, could you please add Frenzy barb into the list? Or double swing barb... Well the one skill that death lord uses. I keep confusing those skill names. IMO very fun and interesting build. Plius WR speed from skill makes barb so fast that He can outrun sorcs if there are no obsticles in the path. Played him for a while and he didint had much trouble in Normal (haven't started NM yet).
I feel like there should be two separate tier lists, one for twinked and one for untwinked. Untwinked javazons struggle through hell solo, but twinked javs can handle literally everything very quickly except the cow king on p8.
@@absalomvane7776 the point of this tier list is not what characters can solo through hell, it's how easily they can do it. You can respec any character to eventually clear any act.
Great video! There are so many guides that have builds which include a ton of expensive items. If you can afford COH, Last Wish, etc. you probably don't need a guide.
Very long time ago I had a holy bolt pally. Holy bolt has probably the highest synergies in the game with 2 skills at 50% so about 16k holy bolts isn't to hard to hit and you could hit something like 7k self found with dual spirits a lore. You can only really farm pindleskin crypt / mauso and ancient tunnels but those are all capable of dropping most of the best gear. So actually an ok build to hell MF with pretty low gear but not really as good for solo playthrough for obvious reasons but you could honestly make it work. I ended up using that character to bot farm in HC hell with nigma and an Edge/Delirium/Treachery bow merc, good times.
Bruh no joke I did a SSF like 10+ years ago. On a hamdin after same thing happened to me. But was a different reason... 🤣 then my bro got hamdin account banned lvl 92 ladder used MH for 3 days w.o me knowing.
For HC you cant get any better than summon necro, first time trying it in regular mode i only died once at a bottleneck in act 4 hell cause I rushed myself
I see alot of newer players try to play Hdins but get wrecked in Maggots lair or whenever the mob runs close to the wall so I just have to say this to the newer players: Hammers will spawn from the pally himself and then spiral outwards meaning to hit those targets against the wall or in the maggots lair you have to walk up to them and cast at point blank range. That's also why Hdins with Enigma will teleport on top of their target when casting hammers.
I can't wait for the guides on some of these builds. I'm looking forward to playing a druid all the way through for the first time ever. I never played druid back in D2 originally and have been waiting for D2R to do the complete play through.
You'll need to do an elemental druid (I suggest Hurricane). Fury werewolf is more gear dependent. Summon druid is only viable on Project Diablo 2 and maybe Path of Diablo.
Interesting to see Dtail sin in C-tier, I find Dtalon along with a beefy shadow + maxed Dsentry is quite strong pvm... rng was good to me and dropped a pair of 200% gores in nm CS :D Totally agree with WW barb D-tier for ssf, you do need gear for him to get his damage and leech up to sustain such a hungry skill and even then manaburn is cancer.
@@majupiju2347 of course, he does ssf in all his playthroughs so that makes a huge difference. My main point (that may be a bit obscure to people not playing assasin) is that he had the dragon tail icon for a "kicker" when I consider a "kicker" to be a dragon talon build. You can build with both but that likely means you're not getting death sentry which is the best PVM skill the assasin has (and you dont really have to worry about scaling the lightning damage on it through synergies, all you are after is the corpse explosion).
DTail&Tiger Trapsin hybrid with Infinity merc and Lawbringer. Thank me later. ;D Insane lightning and fire AoE damage. Definitely not C-tier lol, she can faceroll players 8...
Llama's guides recommend starting fire, since it's crazy easy to build and honestly broken in normal, and respec-ing in nightmare act 2 for wind when you have access to a lot of wind's best abilities.
I guess SSF means no use of stash? Will this list change with D2R and the shared stash? I ask because I just did a Whirlwind barb for the first time and it's the only melee I have ever really liked, BUT I did use plugY to give him some moderate gear. So I guess that's self found, but with D2R self-sharing becomes official. Just wondering if the list will change in D2R?
You can use your stash in SSF. SSF just means Solo Self Found which means getting good gear is 100x times slower compared to trading (with others.) This is why many use a MF sorc to get gear for their other classes. For example a kickasin requires CB gear. They are my favorite class but I usually don't make one until I have Hel rune + Cleg's full set which will be OP for the first 40 levels.
If you want to do ubers, smiter is the play. Nothing else comes close for a budget/ssf clear of ubers. He's not great speed to clear the game and farm, but he's a great boss killer.
I wonder about doing hammering for the star of D2R. But I want to do Ubers as well to grind troches asap. It it possible do it with hammerdin but with 1 point to fanatism and 1 point to smite ?
Tbh maybe I'm just super Newby but whirlwind barb is actually doing really well in NM for me. The real trick is managing to keep up your attack rating by choosing a weapon type early on and sticking with it. Swords seem to work really well as their high attack speed synergizes with whirlwinds damage procs. Its not as reliable as shout barb, but if you have the attack rating to keep up with the area levels, whirlwind barb is probably a solid high C low B tier build imo.
Summon Necro in S-tier is a bit unexpected for me to see u put it there.. yea, its quite safe but it also goes quite slow once he get into hell.. btw, in ur opinion, will WW barb get its role back into the game like good old days? as D2R gameplay seems can go to high frame rate since WW dmg is calculated based on it? P/S: i bet F tier will definitely be cold druid with artic blast or fire sorc with inferno lol
Frames are still at the usual 25 frames. Only visually it's improved but not for the calculation. Summon Necro stays very strong, you kill one thing and just CE all over the place
as an SSF list imo it should be king it requires no gear at all to get through hell you can even get away without resists if you look for games w/o souls on a map
Some skills could use buffs, like Nova, druid summons, assassin martial arts...but so many skills in this game fall into one of a few categories 1. Worse versions of other skills (ice/fire bolt, power strike et al from javelin tree, cold/fire arrow, teeth, twister, poison explosion) 2. Skills that compete for a single slot (paladin auras, druid sage/creeper summons, necro golems) 3. Situational skills that require too many points to be useful (Stun, Conversion, Holy Bolt) 4. Mechanically deficient skills that are never going to be good without a complete redesign (thunderstorm, armageddon, blaze, inferno, wake of inferno, poison dagger, impale, sacrifice) 5. Skills that always have been useless or have been neutered by changes to game mechanics (increased stamina, warmth, solar creeper) 6. Skills that might be ok if they weren't bugged (Dragon Claw, Dragon Tail, Fend) 7. Skills that have been inexplicably split out into multiple semi-redundant skills (elemental assassin ma skills, frost/chilling/shiver armor, dodge/avoid/evade) 8. Boring skills, like most melee skills which are just "attack, but harder" or "attack, but faster" 9. Skills that are hampered by opaque and arbitrary rules (Multishot, Whirlwind, Vengeance) So once you get down to it there aren't really that many candidates for buffs. Like you can buff Paladin defensive auras all day long and still no one will use them or even put points in them for anything other than synergies. You can make Concentrate hit harder but it's still mechanically identical to just attacking. You can buff Ice Bolt damage through the roof but no one wants to use it because it's boring and slow. The skill trees should have gotten a complete overhaul with LOD but alas...
When I was young I always specced for most light radius because my monitor was bad. No wonder I had hard time killing Diablo.
Hammerdin and summon necro is all fun and games until you reach maggot lair.
Corpse explosion is great in maggot lair
Only have to do it once
@@teroe2322 CE is great in every area of the game 😁
@@anupregmi4205 yea its the strongest skill in the game
@@omartrufflez5305 its more of a pain to the 1st time player who would choose pure summoner build and then regret not having teleport staff 😂 my first character was necro and I did choose skelly build, you probably know what happened in maggot lair 😂 it was ages ago tho, probably 15 years back lol
I put 20 skill points into Warmth and melee everything with my Sorceress and it takes over 60 hours to get to Hell.
pro strats
Try it with a leaf made in a +3 Warmth Battle Staff, the +9 total to Warmth might cut your time down to 50 hours :)
But were you cold though?
More lightradius builds!!
The author of 50 shades of grey asked if they can use your story for their next book on masochism :')
Still undecided what build I'll play when D2R drops, but I know one thing... I'm playing all the way through, side quests, full(ish) clears, listening to all the NPC dialogue, like its the first time again...
Stay awhile and listen!
commenting on this to remind you that it is never too late to do it again
The best way to do a ssf playthrough with whirlwind barb is to play d2 classic instead.
Dont xfer to expansion until you find steeldriver. When you do, shael it and upgrade it.
Or just run nm andy for bonesnap that works too
WW Barb is the best character in 1.00 classic.
@@scuniverseyoutuber4404 steeldriver is unique
I realize that bonesnap unique maul would be way easier to find, steeldriver only drops in later acts like hell mode
3 years later and D2R has really changed this list for the better! Plague javelin/charged strike Zon, double throw Barb, Fire Druid, FoH paladin have all moved up in rank IMO. Would be curious to see your new list
this is the video we've all been waiting for. also i played frozen orb first time through, good job younger me. 10 / 10 would recommend.
Younger you knew what he is doing ;D F-Orb with Fireball Metero max can clear everything and can wear alot MF without loosing much power.
Just switched into a bliz/orb sorc and enjoying it a lot.
Whirlwind was so crazy in vanilla, where it didn't depend on the AS of the speer. xD
Ye like d2 classic whirlwind barb 😀
Ww is still good. Llama’s problem was that he refused to slow down and farm a bit in his guided ww playthrough. You need decent gear for ww including a decent amount of crushing blow.
@@jprec5174 Well I think he primarily judges the builds based on how fast you can progress through the game and transition to magic finding, which is applicable to a lot of players not just speedrunners. But honestly, even end game WW barbarian is not that great because he is still only good at aoe damage and struggles with bosses, as it is hard to fit crushing blow onto a WW barb without gimping your magic find %.
WW is very effective but it requires so much HR''s and ists and shit... still my top 1 enjoyable character to play
@@RodrianoEU not it doesn’t. All you need is an Oath and duress and you can do players 8 hell. No other melee build can do that.
Would be amazing if this was linked into the builds you put together in previous videos. Great stuff!
I actually got into Diablo 2 again after years of never sucesfully finishing hell and got all the characters through with your tips and knowledge share. It's amazing how much there is to know in order to finish the HELL. There is very little chance of success without learning a lot. You are doing a lot for us casual players! Thanks a lot!
Yes!! Good idea!
I lost alot of HC chars in hell.
@@Stack-Overflowed happens to the best ;D
It's about time someone made a tier list for D2!
Maxrollgg has plenty of tier lists, although they're mostly for characters already 70
Thank you Llama. I see you catch the feeling of your survey. Most players on D2 are aged and have small time to play, so SSF. Don't get me wrong, we still play sometimes MP but most SSF. Ill probably do a Holy Grail on single player at first to learn again old mechanics of D2 (very used to pd2 aka best mod).
D2 twenty years ago: Barb slaughters everything in a whirlwind of death armed with a Rare Pike. D2 today: I'd rather spam Concentration
Holy shit! You just brought back memories of a pike ww barb I had back then. Hahaha thanks for jaring that memory loose.
its sad
Ebotd warpike ww barbs are still strong.
Ww is still one of the strongest builds in the game. People just have shit ww technique.
@@jprec5174 most people dont have the time to make an EBOTD doing SSF
@@johngaughan9399 You do not need ebotd to enjoy WW. Oath is pretty ez to craft in SP and gives You quite a jump in damage .. dual oaths + Even a cheap Lionheart /goblins and You are set... Most if not all youtubers are so used to caster privileges (sorc and hammerdin mainly) that doing a simple Tri whirl seem like pulling this magical thing so súper hard to do....
Please do a MFing build tier list
I'd love to see what you think
Of course Blizz Sorc would be the go to build :D
I quite like Barbs for MF, but you need enigma for the Teleport. But the find item skill is major.
I remember I used to join cow levels CS runs, etc and just run around using it on all the corpses. Found a fair few decent items doing so without the mad dash for the grab.
Recycle barb I call him haha.
Top 3 are Hammerdin, zerker barb, Blizzard or orb sorc
@@dbarnes8923 I mean... you need infinity lol. Ber x 2 mal x 1 and ist x 1... isn't exactly starter friendly and you don't really need to MF at that point
the best motherfucking build is the Samuel L Jackson build, duh
He did on stream.
This video is a very good idea to welcome more people into D2R when it launches! This will also help me to make recommendations if friends ask for advice on what character to pick at first.
I would love more tier lists like this so that we can benefit from your encyclopedic knowledge of D2! Best characters for: mf in lvl 85 areas, PvP duels, leveling (that could even be split into sub-categories like baal runs), finding keys, farming high runes, gold finding, farming bases for runewords, ladder reset, etc.
I really hate how the whirlwind barb was destroyed. He was so much fun in Classic. yes, his skill was broken for the time. 10xhits per target up to 10 targets? But they shold have reworked it in 1.13 imo. Even with a barb only armor.
WW barb is pretty good since you can reach it’s potential at lvl 50 once you max it. 20 points into sword mastery, 20 points into WW, rest into BO. As long as you have a good weapon you should be good. Frenzy requires a lot of deadly strike and good weapons
honestly WW barb is my favorite and no matter how "bad" it is, I will always play it and it's my favorite. I do wish they would show it love and fix it to be more viable, but unless they do balance changes after d2r releases then it's going to be a no go for the most part.
@@shaylinjames2729 it's good the problem is that you need a very fast weapon or DW to get value out of it. You also need a ton of life steal. Unfortunately barb is not viable until you have the resources to craft a grief. Without grief it's near unplayable.
@@shaylinjames2729 Project Diablo and or Path of Diablo will probably use the D2R graphics on their $hit. So you can run with their class changes...eventually.
@@robbytherob oath exists though, it makes ww viable without hr investment.
I've always done sorc for first play simply because teleport is priceless. mf is easier and can find gear for all your builds you want to make. and start bringing them up. also having a rusher to trade rushes for your new characters is great
Disagree on Throwing Barb, later on (after lvl 40 I think) you get modifiers "replenish quantity) on throwing AXES, so you'll never really run out of "throws". Also Throwing axes count as both Throw and Axe weapon, so you get benefit from both masteries. Left click you put couple of points into Frenzy and swing couple of times to get damage\speed\AS boost, then you start nuking monsters. I forgot what Elite version of throwing axes are called, but they have very strong base damage as they are axes.
It's actually very fun build to play around, and I think it might even be better now, considering you can get some boost with runeword items that give different auras and perks.
It would be very interesting how the tier is in groups. I know you made already a guide on optimal groups, but maybe if you have already two S-tier damage dealer how would advantages and disadvantages of the a-d tier characters come into play and would the difference be closer or higher for certain types?
I think a singer barb is S-tier for group play in HC, at least for an initial play through with junk gear. Mainly because you can trivially make the toughest enemies (souls, dolls) harmless.
Use taunt on souls (or archers, etc) to stop their attacks and pull them into melee range and stun them. Use howl or stun on dolls. Extra fast, extra strong, frenzy boss pack? Baal waves? Also harmless, everything gets stunned. Nowhere are you safer than with a singer barb in the group, except perhaps with a summon necro.
Gear is trivial to find - you can run dual spirit swords, stealth, lore, crafted barb caster amulet, and resists on everything else (rings, boots, gloves, belt, charms), and it’s viable all the way through A5 hell. With your massive life pool, you only need to max lightning resist, so you don’t need a spirit shield or smoke armor, and with everything stunned, you don’t need defense or block.
The weakness is that damage sucks past A1 hell, and the build is useless against bosses. Lightning enchants also suck, since you have no leech and you attack at close range. Champions have a low chance to be stunned, but you can outrun them if necessary. And of course you are useless against physical immunes. You can have a second set of melee gear to patch some of those weaknesses, but it has to be really good gear to do anything with low skill investment, and needing to invest STR or DEX to equip a good weapon loses a lot of VIT.
All the downsides make it a poor solo build, but the crowd control and BO make it an amazing party build. It lets otherwise squishy party members do more damage because the need for caution (kiting) largely disappears.
I wouldn’t say a hammerdin is a group build, in the sense that they are so overpowered that being in a group usually drags them down, because they are tanky enough that they don’t need help on defense or crowd control, and they kill faster than most builds with little worry about immunities, so they don’t need help on offense either…. They’d be better off running on their own separate from the rest of the party in a lot of cases (except maybe places hammers suck, like maggot lair).
@@Randomorph I thank you for your comment and taking the time to write it, it was really useful.
Mr Llama, My friend said he has played with you. He’s the one who turned me onto your channel. We both grew up in Tulsa in the 90s
Can you give us a PVM SSF HC tier list? I would guess it'll be fairly similar with a few things changed due to the nature of HC.
I guess druids might get better because of tankiness, sorc a bit weaker as they can die so easily ... Overall Pala, summon necro and trapsin still rock hardcore
According to Llama amazons are also pretty rough to initially get through the whole game in HC.
@@TheSummoner Amazons are completely fine once you know what you're doing. The rough thing with them is it's easier to die because of a mistake you make 5 seconds ago than other classes because their casting frames are too awful for emergency teleports and decoy takes more knowledge to use well for CC than curses, warcries, etc.
@@Sara_Feingold I see, well I've honestly never played hardcore before, hence why I was quoting the opinion of MrLlama, but I guess his is more tailored towards speedrunning than regular playing.
Fishymancer (summ necro with corpse explosion) is possibly one of the safest and least gear dependent one.
His wind druid also almost made S tier, and wind druid survivability is pretty high as well. You get a constant stun (due to hit recovery from mobs) or at the very least a massive slow all around you. And don't forget massive life with Oak Sage, and the best minion in the game next to valkyrie, the Bear.
I use a Fend zon.....it's like the dollar store version of zeal. is playing this type of zon a form of self harm? if so I think I need help 😥
Very reasonable! Thanks for the well-informed opinion. I feel better knowing what to completely avoid. Some of the mid-tier I will still try out, but I am now NEVER gonna waste my time on any of the D tier hype.
Zerk barb is also not completely awful for ssf. I did it with an insight bill. Maxed howl ftw, battlecry on everything you plan to actually kill.
Bowazon nearly C-Tier, was once easily S-Tier. Same for WW Barb, its sad what they did with 1.10 :(. Kicksin was also nice prior to 1.10, I always had fun with it in 1.09. Please make these builds great again Blizzard and bring back Hell Cows and cow channels in general ...
What happened in 1.10?
Synergies happened. I strongly disagree that rushing hell cows and then sitting in a corner until you're level 85 was more fun than what we have now. I also strongly disagree that 1.10 "ruined" anything. Synergies are an awesome idea they just need much better balance to widen the meta and bring more builds into viability.
A kicker can still be good but needs to be hybrid and still use death sentry
@@aliebrubaker7473 I think that is more-or-less definitionally false. Before, you could use any one of the top tier skills for your class, and your other 91 skill points were free to be used however you liked. After synergies, you could use any one of the top tier skills for your class, and then 40-80 of your other points get tied up in actually making that skill live up to its promise.
Synergies made the meta "builds" more defined, but they sucked viability out of more creative spreads.
But I do agree that D2R could use a balance patch, to flatten that curve a little
@@ms.aelanwyr.ilaicos then explain how in 1.09 and before there were basically only six or seven builds that could even be really used. Zealot, WW Barb, Meteorb/FW Sorc, Nova Sorc, Wolf Druid, Fury Javazon, Fishymancer. Anyone playing anything other than those builds was meme'ing. Sin was an actual joke. Bear or elemental Druid, nope. Bowazon was meh. Frenzy or Zerk Barbs were pretty ick. Sorcs using blizz or fireball or lightning would be scratching cows versus orb.
We have at least that many builds now and the synergies are balanced like garbage. If they actually put any effort into balancing it would make a huge difference. One thing synergies definitely does is create a case/use meta. Monsters are difficult in hell because synergies added power creep like crazy. Certain builds are absolute rulers of their domain (Smiter for Ubers, for example, or the Pitzerker for non-act boss mf runs) where they are extremely strong but are atrocious for other content. Both of the above are trash for clearing cows or chaos/baal.
Pre synergies, damage was just straight balanced on a 1:1 ratio against monster strength so any build that hit certain damage milestones could do all content as well as others or nearly.
At the end of the day, pre or post synergy a lot of viability rests straight on the developers shoulders. I believe synergies allow for a wider meta because skills can have multiple synergies and builds can be more complex without just being weak IF the skills and synergies are balanced.
One thing on this list perplexes me. I am currently doing a Bowazon only playtrough with PlugY (at lvl 78 rn) and to me Ice Arrow and Lightning Fury are definitelly NOT on the same tier. I don't know what tier they are but Lightning Fury is without hyperbole like 10 times better than Ice Arrow. I have my character optimized for Ice Arrow but got fed up with it and bought random 20ias Javelins from Charsi and tried Lightning Fury and it just clears screens its so good. You can also have a shield equipped with Javelins which gives you options to stack res, as a bowazon, I'm strugling super hard with survivability because of it.
Are you using Ice Arrow or Freezing Arrow? Freezing Arrow will output more damage and handle Lightning Immunes pretty well. It'll just guzzle mana though
Pretty sure this isn't a tier list on what does the most damage since Smite would be near the top if it was just based off of that.
@@GiuseppeG11 Yes, but It's not just damage. The lightning javazon is so much better in every regard. It has better AOE, better Single Target, Better Survivability. The only thing it does worse maybe is dealing with immunes but I'm not sure of that either.
@@andrewburek1469 I'm running Freezing Arrow, I always mix them up.
This is great news for me and my friend. We decided to go Summon Necro and Trapsin for our HC playthrough when D2R comes out.
Wow! Nice combo
I think your chat missed the fact that this tier list is SSF.
might be a stupid question but what is ssf
@@MykeThaFartSmella69 I'm not sure but I think 'solo self funded/found' aka you play through the game without inheriting god tier gear from outside the current play-through
im still trying to figure out what the fuck SSF means
@@JungleScene It is solo self found, it is a term for a gameplay mode in Path of Exile where you cannot trade with other players.
Wow, I guess young me did alright.
I absolutely loved Frozen Arrow when I was younger and I kinda wanna do it again just for nostalgia purposes.
Nice :) From the little I have been researching and know about Diablo 2 from way back when, this seems like a good list to me~
I'm kinda mad you didn't put Holy Shock/Freeze Zealot here, he can be really strong and his clearing pace is so nice. But overall hard to disagree with your choices, great argumentation on why are they good/bad
The self found part is what would get most people, for those builds are expensive to truly shine.
@@ickn2005 Right! Hammerdin is so easy to build up. It's like you could find little bits and pieces easily every single time along with making just a few runs of the count and you're set. I remember playing H-din 2006 I think? It's blurry... but my buddy was like why are you using that skill it's really bad. Then I was the first one to make it through hell with a pally haha!
@@muhammetmelikkolgesiz9252 dude the title of the video says „SSF” which standa for Solo Self Found and I just spoke about that manner of playing through the game with the so called Tesladin (or holy zealot as people name the non-Dream Holy shock zealer) and he does just fine throughout the game, he might be a bit slower than his high-end version, but he’s definitely playable for SSF plathroughs! Just finished such playthrough and he was completely fine with a few deaths here and there but overall the character seemed strong
@@arekwisniewski6933 How'd you deal w/ lightning immunes?
@@cjregunay1668 not fighting them if it’s not neccesary, otherwise by having some degree of physical dmg from my weapon. It’s takes time to whittle them down but possible
you obviously know this but damn perfect timing, really had no idea what is good in LoD since I've been playing pd2 lately but hadn't played d2 for like a decade before that. thanks for sharing the knowledge!
How would you rank javazon, Valkyre and fire wall?
So happy to see Bonemancer build on A tier. Necro's my all time fave char.
Charger Paladin is pretty easy to ssf since you can focus on weapon damage rather than +ias and base weapon speed.
Wow good video. You did many playthrough and this is a great overview. Crazy to think that shout is above WW barb. This is very helpful. Thanks!
Conc Barbs are badass and super underrated. Yes, they are slow but they are also tanky af and very Hell viable. However they are pretty heavily gear reliant imo.
@mrllamasc Do you know if there are any plans to rebalance any of the "D" tier skills at the least?
This is the video I've been waiting for! Thank you!!
I was so disappointed when I tested out and found that Holy bolt does damage only to Undead and not to anything else. If it did magic damage to everything else and extra damage to undead, fist of heavens might actually be interesting to try out.
This is where PD2 comes in. They are the updated version of D2
@@Moonface00z so much this
@@Moonface00z could agree more. Project Diablo 2 🙌
@@Moonface00z I heard its good mod, but what makes me anxious is Splash Damage on EVERY melee weapon, it should be added for few certain skills like concentration, berserk, maybe some skills in martial arts, but making it for all weapons in close combat makes it just thrashy, cheap solution, didnt like to see it.
@@lovegood2188 After this change melee is still subpar in comparison to ranged skills. Don't be intimidated by this change, try the mod!
As far as immunities go for a Cold Sorc, would you recommend dipping into Fire or Lightning as second element? I'm thinking Firewall due to its OP damage.
The problem i always had back in the day was that the best builds were one element (because of synergies, you only had a few points to throw into another element, meaning it wasn't strong enough to kill anything in hell). So when you were in hell and ran into something immune to your type (in particular, my frozen orb sorc dealt with this a lot)...all you could do is run away to try to teleport passed it. Good for meph runs-if you had maphack so you didn't die on your way to the boss. Hell difficulty is the primary reason why soloing is such a pain, because almost every enemy is immune to something so you will run into a lot you can't touch.
there are some skills that don't require many points to do enough damage to wear down that pesky immune. firewall is one of them
@@AwoudeX Hmm, that's a possibility. Couldn't really use firewall back in the day because any PC that wasn't state of the art would damn near completely lock up at firewalls (was a popular 'trick' for PKers, to throw up a few fire walls to lag out most opponents so they couldn't run away). Same issue with lagromancers, one of those bastards crossed your screen you would see like the first few skeletons/revives, then only see one screen every few seconds until they had completely moved off your screen. Can't tell you how many times i'd see a necro go hostile on me, then a second later my game froze up until i was dead and he left. Praying that isn't the case these days
I always played SSF. Once the druid came out in the expansion, I played Werebear. It is slower, but you one shot everything outside of the act bosses. Huge Life pool makes it so you can stand toe to toe and destroy them. Run into the center of a pack and take them out, without worrying about being overwhelmed. Fighting Duriel (the scariest boss in my opinion) was an easy stand in his face and send him back to hell, not even losing half health. Ive never made that fight, and many other fights so easy with any other character or build .
We're planning to do a party of 3 once D2:R releases. Do you have any suggestions for a party comp there? We could just each pick an S-tier and go, but I'm wondering if there'll be something stronger based on synergies between classes?
th-cam.com/video/lNdi3aCAkWk/w-d-xo.html he made a video about this kind of
Lots of fun combinations you could make. I really like enchantress + summoner. Maybe a pally in there for the conviction aura and to be the front guy in some places like the maggots lair. But enchanting the summons is hilarious.
Thank you so much Lama, great content as always!
Totally agree with this.
One personnal point. From the S tier builds, the sorc is the only one that requires way more gear to deal with Uber bosses than the rest but the teleport part to farm gear definitely make up for it. For an all content untwinked i would put it borderline top A. I also found that balancing Bone spears and Summons for necro does make it better for P1-3 and before getting the right gear to switch to full summon/poison/bone. The 1-2k bonespear damage that one can get really make targets like council members, NM/Hell bosses at lower level more manageable and also help getting that first kill for explosions. The summons are great tanks, add some good DPS especially against bosses and allow your merc to survive way more easily without being well geared which covers where a bone necro struggles.
I also do find that build easier than hdin for the earlier part as it never really struggle with Souls (at the worst, use Dim vision), who are just a real pain in the butt until you get an enigma for your Hdin. They scales way better into endgame gear by that point however and never require a skill reallocation to deal with higher player settings. For solo and hardcore, i would put them just after Summoner for this reason, especially that the necro have skellies, revives, bone armor, prison and curses as extra available protection.
Hi again! U named Summoner Necro 2-nd best, but how u fixed Nigthmare Andariel and Duriel problem from your Guided Playthrough?
Llama I am a Playstation trophy hunter and I need to get a lvl 99 Hardcore character. What build would you reccomend for this task?
Do you have any vids or ideas for like if you were in a group? Or maybe a small group comp.
Are they going to fix any of the skills that have always been "broken" or useless?
At least not at release day. Maybe they'll add an "Resurrected" mode later on? Most of this already got fixed by Project Diablo anyway... so mod support?
If this making money, nothing is impossible. I guess.
MrLammasc.. please give me your point of view and insights when comparing 3 sorc builds:
Regular Lightning+Infinity on merc
Hybrid Nova+Firewall(or Orb) + Infinity on merc
ES+Nova + Scythe Infinity + Insight on merc
Which do you think has the highest clear speed+mf potential?
I actually prefer to start with Zeal+Holy Shock Paladin and run nightmare Countess to get enough runes for other build. Double spirit runeword is enough to do good damage, also gamble circlet and amulet for +2 pal sk.
The next upgrade is "Crescent Moon" (Shael+Um+Tir) Phase Blade.
"Treachery" (Shael+Thul+Lem) Armor is also good for this build. Starter helmet could be Ort+Sol.
This build is quite cheap and lightning immune monsters are usually undead, thus could be killed under Sanctuary aura.
what would be the best playthrough class to experience the IAS brokenness? does Trapsin take advantage of IAS?
I'm surprised Summoner makes it in so high above Bone necro, but it's a pleasant surprise :) You're literally the only YTer I've ever seen ranking the two like that though.
A properly played summon necro is absurdly strong. At low gear levels nothing compares. Back in the day I had a GG geared summon necro on bnet and it would clear uber tristram faster than a geared frenzy barb :D
I 100% agree with it being the second strongest character for self found after Hammerdin
@@Mammel248 surprised it's not first tbh. I cleared up to ancients in hell ssf easily and safely on hc with summon nec. Paladin can do it too but probably not as safely.
Bone clears most stuff faster (Bone Spears travel faster than Skellies after all), but is so dependent on getting White from Nightmare Countess. I think that's the thing holding it back from S tier here.
A friend of mine never played d2 and wants to do play as a barbarian, he runs barbarian in every game and just wants to play a big bulky guy jumping in and slashing things (he's compensating). We're mostly going to play as a group of friends and SSF, what should I tell him to build ? Frenzy ? Whirlwind ? I never played baba and I don't feel like he will enjoy singing at mobs
howl+zerk or ww. ww is easier but still requires skill and knowledge
@@AwoudeX thanks! He doesn't have any knowledge, I'll look into howl + zerk
What about hardcore? Just died on my first attempt on the Diablo seals. Hadn't played Diablo 2 in ages so forgot how brutal the mob spawns are. Was trying firewall sorc and it wasn't very good, especially in act 4. Thinking about trying something a little less squishy and kitey this time. Any suggestions? Just want to make it through baal on hell difficulty
any class as some sort of defense vs stygian dolls but sin what do you do ? cloak of shadow and mind blast?
What build u starting out mrlama? And what bout rest of the d2 community
Can't wait for D2R!!! Nice video.
hope you can answer...is a nova sorc still viable? its always been my fav sorc build and was hoping i could come back to d2r with it.
if so cant wait for the carpal tunnel!
In time when the game lunches are they gonna change the tiers or make some.builds work better ??
Would this be considered only for Softcore? or would the list be exactly the same for Hardcore?
I love Paladin aura build, lvl 56 right now, just every point I can get into Holy Shock and Resist Lightning, and I just casually strolled through Normal and Nightmare only having to swing my sword at boss enemies, everything else dies in a couple ticks of shock damage. And it is instant, and it all hits at once. So like walking into a pack of 30 enemies(players 8) all 30 take 1-600 lightning damage per tick, they all drop dead in no time. It's basically a mostly AFK build, i love it.
Auradin is very good. I always spec like this and then respec to hammers once reaching hell difficulty.
@@jalefar8247 This is my first play through and just about to finish Act 2 of Nightmare and yeah starting to think I might have to respec for Hell since the aura is doing less and less dmg. Though I know I can get another like 30 levels of holy shock using the Dream runeword i think? So i am wondering what the dmg will be with 2 Dreams and like 25 hard points into Holy Shock
@@FirstLast-gk6lg The damage will kill anything in the game. But it requires two dreams.
@@richmusick4881 Yeah and getting two Jah runes seems unlikely at best haha even on Players 8 all through Normal and Nightmare I have only gotten up to Sol and I hear people talking about literally never seeing a single high rune in all their games
@@FirstLast-gk6lg Also works very well and will be cheaper if you want to farm for an Infinity first for your merc. You might even be able to make a Grief farming for it which isn't too bad to get. I managed to get 2x Sur (LK farming, i'm done with that as it is way too boring for me), 4 Gul (2x LK, 2x Cows and Chaos) and 1 Lo (cows) but never got the luck for a Jah.
As all the runes i've found in SP doesn't even equal a Jah in the end, the odds of getting 2x playing casually is insanely low. I would use it for an Enigma instead even for that build without hesitation.
I'm a big fan of full Mav's frozen arrow. Big CC, resistances and MF. Cheap to start out and if you get decked out with cold facets it can contend with Ice. Strafe deals with cold immunes pretty well too.
I believe Leaf availability combined with being able to buy a +3 fireball base with a little effort pushes Fireball sorc to S tier. There is nothing like being able to SMASH normal and nightmare with minimal effort because you have +6 fireball on your weapon alone.
EDIT: Fire gets a bad rap because there are so many fallen in A1 (fire immune) If you can stomach having to tele around to the next area you'll be fine.
Is there any chance for stackable runes, gems and skulls in D2R?
Summon necro is always going to be the main. But I enjoy mixing Wind and Summon Druid as a hybrid.
And what you think about sacrifice build for paladin?
Hey Llama. I'm a D2 newb and a trophy hunter (platinum'd D3). Do you have a D2R Hardcore solo tier list for the 'pro gamer move' trophy? Thanks!
Llama! This is an awesome take. Care if I react to this? If u dont mind where can I find the link?
If you do, could you please add Frenzy barb into the list? Or double swing barb... Well the one skill that death lord uses. I keep confusing those skill names. IMO very fun and interesting build. Plius WR speed from skill makes barb so fast that He can outrun sorcs if there are no obsticles in the path. Played him for a while and he didint had much trouble in Normal (haven't started NM yet).
I feel like there should be two separate tier lists, one for twinked and one for untwinked. Untwinked javazons struggle through hell solo, but twinked javs can handle literally everything very quickly except the cow king on p8.
Untwinked javazons are fine SSF if they have Freezing Arrow for immunes. It's hardly a struggle.
@@absalomvane7776 the point of this tier list is not what characters can solo through hell, it's how easily they can do it. You can respec any character to eventually clear any act.
Great video! There are so many guides that have builds which include a ton of expensive items. If you can afford COH, Last Wish, etc. you probably don't need a guide.
How would you change this with 2.6 now live? Just add MA assassin to S tier? Anything else?
Subscribing to your channel now, great content! Do you plan on doing a playthrough for shapeshifting Druid before D2R release?
That would surely be DBrunski s pick for D2R
Could be one to throw in there for the guided playthroughs :D
Very long time ago I had a holy bolt pally. Holy bolt has probably the highest synergies in the game with 2 skills at 50% so about 16k holy bolts isn't to hard to hit and you could hit something like 7k self found with dual spirits a lore. You can only really farm pindleskin crypt / mauso and ancient tunnels but those are all capable of dropping most of the best gear. So actually an ok build to hell MF with pretty low gear but not really as good for solo playthrough for obvious reasons but you could honestly make it work. I ended up using that character to bot farm in HC hell with nigma and an Edge/Delirium/Treachery bow merc, good times.
Dumb question, but what are the sources off +damage for smite when leveling? Is holy shield + fanaticism enough?
I played 100+ hours on my necro solo. My game crashed and lost my character:/ well. Welcome aboard mr din. Time to throw some hammers lol
Bruh no joke I did a SSF like 10+ years ago. On a hamdin after same thing happened to me. But was a different reason... 🤣 then my bro got hamdin account banned lvl 92 ladder used MH for 3 days w.o me knowing.
Have you a feral druid build somewhere? :))
and fire druid?
What about the bill cosby class they added?
Great job. Would love to see one for HC!
For HC you cant get any better than summon necro, first time trying it in regular mode i only died once at a bottleneck in act 4 hell cause I rushed myself
I see alot of newer players try to play Hdins but get wrecked in Maggots lair or whenever the mob runs close to the wall so I just have to say this to the newer players: Hammers will spawn from the pally himself and then spiral outwards meaning to hit those targets against the wall or in the maggots lair you have to walk up to them and cast at point blank range. That's also why Hdins with Enigma will teleport on top of their target when casting hammers.
I can't wait for the guides on some of these builds. I'm looking forward to playing a druid all the way through for the first time ever. I never played druid back in D2 originally and have been waiting for D2R to do the complete play through.
You'll need to do an elemental druid (I suggest Hurricane). Fury werewolf is more gear dependent. Summon druid is only viable on Project Diablo 2 and maybe Path of Diablo.
Ive been playing zoo drood just for fun
How does the tier list change from PC to console? or is it the same? I know blizzard is easier to aim on pc for example.
You know you're a bad skill when a man with 10k+ hrs can't recall your name. Feelsbad
Interesting to see Dtail sin in C-tier, I find Dtalon along with a beefy shadow + maxed Dsentry is quite strong pvm... rng was good to me and dropped a pair of 200% gores in nm CS :D Totally agree with WW barb D-tier for ssf, you do need gear for him to get his damage and leech up to sustain such a hungry skill and even then manaburn is cancer.
ssg for mmc with my ddf rng pvm crt and a bdsm aol.. this is how Diablo slang sounded to me before i started playing :D
I think he is rating the builds lower because they take more gear to start getting strong.
@@majupiju2347 of course, he does ssf in all his playthroughs so that makes a huge difference. My main point (that may be a bit obscure to people not playing assasin) is that he had the dragon tail icon for a "kicker" when I consider a "kicker" to be a dragon talon build. You can build with both but that likely means you're not getting death sentry which is the best PVM skill the assasin has (and you dont really have to worry about scaling the lightning damage on it through synergies, all you are after is the corpse explosion).
DTail&Tiger Trapsin hybrid with Infinity merc and Lawbringer. Thank me later. ;D Insane lightning and fire AoE damage. Definitely not C-tier lol, she can faceroll players 8...
@@sixmillionsilencedaccounts3517 well duh.. "infinity" :D without it you drop to /players 3 or lower to maintain speed =)
so druid.. which one would be the better build.. or the cheapest between the fire and wind?
Llama's guides recommend starting fire, since it's crazy easy to build and honestly broken in normal, and respec-ing in nightmare act 2 for wind when you have access to a lot of wind's best abilities.
I guess SSF means no use of stash? Will this list change with D2R and the shared stash? I ask because I just did a Whirlwind barb for the first time and it's the only melee I have ever really liked, BUT I did use plugY to give him some moderate gear. So I guess that's self found, but with D2R self-sharing becomes official. Just wondering if the list will change in D2R?
You can use your stash in SSF. SSF just means Solo Self Found which means getting good gear is 100x times slower compared to trading (with others.) This is why many use a MF sorc to get gear for their other classes.
For example a kickasin requires CB gear. They are my favorite class but I usually don't make one until I have Hel rune + Cleg's full set which will be OP for the first 40 levels.
As we have option for Ubers in single game - do u consider it in chosing?
If you want to do ubers, smiter is the play.
Nothing else comes close for a budget/ssf clear of ubers. He's not great speed to clear the game and farm, but he's a great boss killer.
@@sodapopinski8064 tnx!
Thank you for the list!
Question,are you going to do a pvm tier list for project diablo 2?
I wonder about doing hammering for the star of D2R. But I want to do Ubers as well to grind troches asap. It it possible do it with hammerdin but with 1 point to fanatism and 1 point to smite ?
Tbh maybe I'm just super Newby but whirlwind barb is actually doing really well in NM for me.
The real trick is managing to keep up your attack rating by choosing a weapon type early on and sticking with it. Swords seem to work really well as their high attack speed synergizes with whirlwinds damage procs.
Its not as reliable as shout barb, but if you have the attack rating to keep up with the area levels, whirlwind barb is probably a solid high C low B tier build imo.
It's funny, last I played was around 1.10, maybe 1.11? The tier list I'd set from back then is basically exactly what you have here. Fun.
Please make a best 3 player groups list! Since i noticed ubers is commonly done in groups of 3.
Summon Necro in S-tier is a bit unexpected for me to see u put it there.. yea, its quite safe but it also goes quite slow once he get into hell..
btw, in ur opinion, will WW barb get its role back into the game like good old days? as D2R gameplay seems can go to high frame rate since WW dmg is calculated based on it?
P/S: i bet F tier will definitely be cold druid with artic blast or fire sorc with inferno lol
Frames are still at the usual 25 frames. Only visually it's improved but not for the calculation. Summon Necro stays very strong, you kill one thing and just CE all over the place
as an SSF list imo it should be king it requires no gear at all to get through hell you can even get away without resists if you look for games w/o souls on a map
@@beardface1411 oh still at 25 frames..i know the crazy CE but to get a first one kill is still "slow" sometime based on type of monsters lol
@@xiratak6429 true.. i agree is the easiest class to go through the game for beginner..
Would be great if D2 could make every skill at least viable. Gets old playing the same builds over and over
Yep couldnt agree more
Llama wants some skills to be shit for meme game. But its fair to have alternatives
This should have been fixed for D2R. Having unviable skills just for nostalgia sake sucks.
Some skills could use buffs, like Nova, druid summons, assassin martial arts...but so many skills in this game fall into one of a few categories
1. Worse versions of other skills (ice/fire bolt, power strike et al from javelin tree, cold/fire arrow, teeth, twister, poison explosion)
2. Skills that compete for a single slot (paladin auras, druid sage/creeper summons, necro golems)
3. Situational skills that require too many points to be useful (Stun, Conversion, Holy Bolt)
4. Mechanically deficient skills that are never going to be good without a complete redesign (thunderstorm, armageddon, blaze, inferno, wake of inferno, poison dagger, impale, sacrifice)
5. Skills that always have been useless or have been neutered by changes to game mechanics (increased stamina, warmth, solar creeper)
6. Skills that might be ok if they weren't bugged (Dragon Claw, Dragon Tail, Fend)
7. Skills that have been inexplicably split out into multiple semi-redundant skills (elemental assassin ma skills, frost/chilling/shiver armor, dodge/avoid/evade)
8. Boring skills, like most melee skills which are just "attack, but harder" or "attack, but faster"
9. Skills that are hampered by opaque and arbitrary rules (Multishot, Whirlwind, Vengeance)
So once you get down to it there aren't really that many candidates for buffs. Like you can buff Paladin defensive auras all day long and still no one will use them or even put points in them for anything other than synergies. You can make Concentrate hit harder but it's still mechanically identical to just attacking. You can buff Ice Bolt damage through the roof but no one wants to use it because it's boring and slow. The skill trees should have gotten a complete overhaul with LOD but alas...
How about Auradin ? I know some versions are insane gear dependant and strong but what about budget version for first play-through ?
For first-time play-through SSF: Meme-tier
you forgot berserker barb! :)
really interesting where you put him in tiers?
Whats a good setup if you want to sherpa people thru torch runs, cows and baal runs?
smiter for torch runs, zon for cows, hammerdin for baal/diablo.
TH-cam voice 😍
Would it change with hc /players 8 exclusively?
So when will the smiter video be uploaded? :D