This article is a small tribute to all the folks at theamazonbasin.com . It is the place where I lurked back in the day and literally learned to be a better person while vehemently consuming all the creative write-ups people contributed out of their sheer passion for the game and the community.
I played Diablo 2 for as long as it existed. I became interested in Ladder seasons recently for one concrete reason: there is a periodic reset of all your progress and you get to experience the game from the very beginning.
Somehow I get naturally bored if for prolonged time I use “powerful” characters like a FoH/Hammerdin, most Sorceress builds, a Javazon etc.
I did focused Mephisto farming following the great guide by Socialism, and I counted my runs with the number of yellows I amassed hahaha (I suppose I did something close to 3000 runs across 2 seasons). For timing I used a stopwatch on my phone (I would hit “lap” when I quit the game in the Pandemonium Fortress), and if I recall correctly my average time was slightly below 1 minute with the best of 30 seconds and the worst of 2 minutes. I got a lot better at Durance map reading but it still can get you lol. I used an Xbox controller and TinyMod to nullify loading times on my older machine (but I had to perform the runs “blindly”, i.e. I could not see my HP and Mana. It is not as scary as it sounds though for this particular activity hahaha).
I used a Lightning Sorc to do a similar thing with the Countess to quickly obtain mid-runes and Keys of Terror. This helps a lot with trading if you do not want to do Mephisto runs.
A FoH-din was fun to clear Chaos and Arcane Sanctuaries, but it also got old for me.
Because of this fatigue that inevitably happens with monotonous farming using simple builds, I figured maybe I can change my approach to avoid it, or at least postpone it. Here are some builds that I found to be more fun for me personally.
Summoner Necro
This is a rather standard build from what I understand. It was super-reliable, safe, fun and could farm most anything efficiently (even p3) without a Sunder Charm. Most importantly, you can easily beat the game solo, there is nothing that can stop you (it was not always like that, but these days it is easy).
Here is what I ended up doing skill-wise:
- 20 Raise Skeleton
- 20 Skeleton Mastery
- 20 Corpse Explosion
- 20 Dim Vision
- rest in Blood Golem
I tried to get Skeletons to do 1k damage, which is achievable at slvl 50 or so. Up until slvl 28 they feel weak, but then they suddenly start to make a difference (if I remember correctly the damage formula changes around that point).
I had a Meditation Iron Golem and actually thought about making a Pride or a Beast Golem. It is essential to be able to Teleport such Golem to safety quickly because it is very aggressive and can die easily. Points in Blood Golem increase its life, that’s why I chose that skill.
Moreover, Iron Golem is re-cast when you enter the game, and your equipment at that moment is used to calculate its level and HP. I remember checking every Shrunken Head and Wand hoping they would have high Golem Mastery mods, and sometimes I would even equip those before quitting the game, haha!
Corpse Explosion is the main killing skill for this build. Amplify Damage curse increases its Physical damage further, this is what I usually cast on monsters.
Now, Dim Vision is not something I see people talk about online at all, so this is me sharing a little secret with you hehe. This skill allows you to literally walk near Conviction packs of Gloams in Worldstone Keep and stay relaxed as if you were clearing Cows. It makes Moon Lords forget they can use Frenzy, and Prowling Dead do not charge at you anymore. The duration of the curse is divided by 4 in Hell, so putting points into it becomes necessary. It is well worth it though.
Decrepify can be used to disarm Baal (he stops teleporting under it), Lower Resist can help teammates, Urdar Revives can theoretically kill Dclone and even Ubers (I only did the former once), Clay Golem is super helpful in slowing down packs and bosses during playthrough.
A fella I played with online went even further and made a pure CE-necro: the mercenary provided Conviction aura and had high Crushing Blow, so there was no need to rely on Skeletons to get corpses. It was a pretty cool variant and a neat idea.
Wind Druid
This one is also quite standard, and it feels just powerful enough for me to enjoy the game longer.
It goes like this:
- 20 Tornado
- 20 Hurricane
- 20 Cyclone Armor
- 20 Twister
The Tornado/Hurricane combo works throughout the game, and only becomes more efficient and satisfying as you obtain better gear.
One thing that is super useful is a dual-Lawbringer mercenary. Specifically, in Tal-Rasha Tombs or Arcane Sanctuary, when you face nasty packs of Ghosts you can take one of those swords from your merc into your hand, and all the undead starts to feel full pain from your Tornadoes.
Furthermore, I think this is one of very few builds that can get advantage of Ali-Baba’s Blade and Wealth runeword - you can literally use them as your main equipment for farming.
Twisters are great for crowd control - they do not allow monsters to swarm you if you greet them with this skill.
I used a Cold Sunder charm and a +3 to Hurricane pelt to make Hurricane more efficient - not Tornado. Tornado felt strong enough anyway, it was more annoying to wait for Hurricane to deal with physical immunes. And it feels more effective because it hits everyone in the radius.
When I got a bit more rich I could afford a Doom Berserker Axe. It was fun to use it on Dclone, but for TZs I preferred to stick to Ali-Baba.
Earth Shifter Werewolf
This is something I tried to do because the Earth Shifter dropped. I ended up with a melee character that can more or less safely clear Cows. It does not need a Sunder Charm either.
It is actually tri-elemental:
- 20 Armageddon
- 20 Firestorm
- 20 Hurricane
- 20 Tornado
- 1 Fury
Now, the Earth Shifter seems to be designed for a melee character that also wants to have high skill levels in the Elemental Tree, and this is what I tried to do. On the Internet you will find a build that synergizes Fissure, but I wanted to have Hurricane too because it is very good for crowd control and provides cold damage.
So, you end up being a very basic Werewolf that can still leech life back because the weapon hits hard, and by constantly proccing Fissure and having Armageddon and Hurricane around you end up being more safe than you could expect (the Cows seem to spend much more time in hit recovery this way). And all this stuff deals enough damage together for it to work in the Cow level.
Gear highlights:
- Jalal’s Mane
- Treachery armor
- Elemental GCs
- Torch and Anni
Jalal’s is nice because it gives bonuses to both Shape Shifting and Elemental trees at once. Treachery is very cool due to its damage reduction, and high resist and attack speed bonuses. The Skillers allow you to actually be that Elemental Beast you were meant to. The Torch and Anni are also very important to compensate for the low Shape Shifting skill levels.
The best part is that no one uses that weapon so you can buy it very cheaply and already have your endgame weapon at clvl 69. It is a cool alternative for a ladder start if you don’t want a cookie-cutter build but still want to be able to farm something.
Poison Creeper Druid
I have seen people mention Poison Creeper as useful for speedruns on Normal difficulty, and there is a guide for a Rabies Druid.
I wanted to try both of these things at a new season start. The Creeper did work for the Normal difficulty, although I did not perceive it as powerful. Baal fight was a first glimpse into the amount of patience I will need.
Once I entered Nightmare around clvl 29 I realized I need to get +skills gear if I want to continue. I did not find any Poison Creeper pelts, but I did farm a Spirit Sword at least. It was quite tedious, I noticed that Rabies skill does not really seem to work well or even add damage to the Creeper’s poison (if I understand correctly, the latter is not a regular poison attack and it should stack with regular poisons). Still, it was doable.
My plan for Hell was to see if I can get something out of the Countess to help me out with damage. My goals were simple:
- find 4-socketed Monarch
- buy Torch
- buy Trang’s gloves
I wanted to beat the game without buying everything, but I was ok with the Torch and the gloves.
Overall, I was able to get 2 Lems, 1 Pul, 2 Ums, 1 Mal out of the Tower before proceeding to Andariel (I could also run the Pit somewhat). 10 days into the season a generous guy sold me a 15/17 Torch for Um + Pul + Lem, and the gloves were worth a Key of Terror. I used the Mal to make Rain runeword to have a higher level Creeper. I found only one Monarch and it had 2 sockets and was ethereal. Luckily, a Lum also dropped so I wore a Splendor shield until the end of the game. All my money went into gambling for an amulet although I could only get +1 to Druid Skills.
But most importantly I was faced with a choice: do I abandon the whole idea as the build is painfully weak, or do I find a fitting “solution” to make it more bearable. I did not want this character to turn into a Summoner Druid, that would have undermined the Poison Creeper build.
At one point I simply thought about adding the Spirit of Barbs to the setup: it would add physical damage over time, but would not overwhelm the poison component. To my satisfaction, the next run all the Blood Hawks killed themselves with 4 hits or so. I found a Rattlecage earlier and Diane could apply Crushing Blow from behind the pack of wolves, so I just went straight to the Catacombs.
And this strategy got me through the whole game basically. I would engage with packs and throw Spirit Wolves at them, reposition the Creeper, occasionally summon Solar Creeper to clean up the corpses, and cast shockwave on Archers. I skipped most of the places where Poison and Thorns were not strong enough by using a Teleport staff (often via leaps of faith hahaha).
Travincal was bad with all the healing, but they split up eventually and I remembered I could stun them.
Chaos Sanctuary was particularly nasty, I had to heavily stun and run past everything there, and rely the stun, Diane and the Creeper to take out Seal bosses. Diablo himself was ok, I could hide behind a lantern there and throw wolves at him.
I learned to skip Baal waves with Enchantress during season 13, and could pull it off perfectly with this druid. Hell Baal took 30 minutes I believe (if not more) with slvl 31 Poison Creeper (3k damage over 4 seconds with my gear) and me constantly keeping an eye on Diane. It was the final test of patience, haha.
I plan to enhance this setup with Death’s Web, a cheap Defender’s Bile and maybe a cheap Sunder, some Skillers, and a +3 Poison Creeper pelt. If I do get rich through this guy I could consider Bramble and dual Plague mercenary of course.
I figured this build is good for farming Normal because the Spirit of Barbs these days does raw damage to attackers, and it is ~700 at slvl 30. Still, I have found only one +1 to Creeper pelt there and it had 1 socket. I made one from cracked Antlers with El rune recipe though, and got 2 sockets in it with the Cube recipe. I now collect every damaged pelt I see lol.
Demon Machine Enchantress
This is also quite common and I made 2 of these. I like the ability to boost new characters with high level Enchant and Raven Claw bow, as well as having a Cows-capable character with built-in Teleport.
I made a video about how a cheap clvl 75 Enchantress like this can overcome Dclone.
I also used this build to farm statues, the damage is quite reasonable for all act bosses.