CHARACTER CLASSES
Diablo offers three classes for players to choose from, and there actually are noticeable, non cosmetic differences between the character archetypes. There is a Warrior, who beginners or those who favor melee combat and are not that excited by spells should use. There is a Rogue who is a combination of the Warrior and the Sorcerer, able to use both spells and weapons decently, and she also has her own abilities. She is the undisputed master of the bow, in addition she is possessing a very useful trap disarm skill. There is also of course, a Sorcerer who while being the absolute lord of magic, is not very skilled with weapons, which can make this class very difficult for new players. However, in the hands of a skilled player, a high level Sorcerer can be an utterly devastating force. From these basics, you can customize your character to your liking with skill points gained with every experience level. It also should be noted that while the classes are defining, they are not the final word, there is nothing stopping a Sorcerer cracking a few skulls with a mace or a warrior toasting some Vortex Lords with a few rounds of chain lightning. The "classes" are truly not classes in the traditional sense, they are more of an archetype. Each character class has their advantages. The Sorcerer can fire spells left and right, but can die quickly if he gets swamped. The Warrior has to face everyone hand-to-hand, but usually has a high enough Armor Class (AC) that he doesn't get beaten into a fine pulp as quickly as the Rogue and Sorcerer. The Rogue is somewhere between the other two, with the ranged attacks and spells of the Sorcerer.
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WARRIOR
|
|
Stats:
|
Start:
|
Maximum: (naked)
|
|
Strength:
|
30
|
250
|
|
Magic:
|
10
|
50
|
|
Dexterity:
|
20
|
60
|
|
Vitality:
|
25
|
100
|
|
Life:
|
70
|
316
|
|
Mana:
|
10
|
98
|
Level up effect:
+5 selectable attribute(s), +2 life & +1 mana
Starting equipment:
Short Sword, Club, Buckler, 100 gold & 2 potions of life
Warrior skill:
Item Repair: Click on the target item while using the skill and the items present durability goes up. But take care, the maximum durability goes down permanently.
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|
ROGUE
|
|
Stats:
|
Start:
|
Maximum: (naked)
|
|
Strength:
|
20
|
55
|
|
Magic:
|
15
|
60
|
|
Dexterity:
|
30
|
250
|
|
Vitality:
|
20
|
70
|
|
Life:
|
45
|
201
|
|
Mana:
|
22
|
173
|
Level up effect:
+5 selectable attribute(s), +2 life & +2 mana
Starting equipment:
Short Bow, 100 gold & 2 potions of healing
Rogue skill:
Trap Disarm: Warns you when a door, chest or anything alike is a trap, then there you use your skill and disarm the trap.
There is a 50% chance that the skill will work.
|
|
SORCERER
|
|
Stats:
|
Start:
|
Maximum: (naked)
|
|
Strength:
|
15
|
45
|
|
Magic:
|
35
|
250
|
|
Dexterity:
|
15
|
85
|
|
Vitality:
|
20
|
80
|
|
Life:
|
30
|
138
|
|
Mana:
|
70
|
596
|
Level up effect:
+5 selectable attribute(s), +1 life & +2 mana
Starting equipment:
Short Staff of Charged Bolt (40 charges), 100 gold & 2 potions of mana
Sorcerer skill:
Staff Recharge: Click on the target staff while using the skill to rise the staff's present charges. But take care, the maximum charges will go down permanently.
|
WARRIOR
Warriors have the lowest dexterity of any class, and no matter how solid their damage output might be, it will do no good if you cannot hit anything. Therefore, it is strongly recommended that you max your dexterity ASAP, even forgoing putting points into strength or magic until you do so. Dexterity is important for Warriors because it not only gives them higher chance to hit, but it also increases their block chance and adds to armor class. After you max your dexterity, I would max your magic attribute next, then put almost everything you can into strength. You should have both of these stats maxed by around level 17 then focus on raising strength. Because your magic attribute is so low compared to a sorcerer (and even a rogue usually), you should only use a limited set of offensive spells when your char is still lower level, such as firewall or lightning. A Warrior can be a decent caster, but only at higher levels and with superb end-game gear. Try to get your hands on a teleport book as soon as you can, so you can learn the telekill skill and to increase your mobility. Once you have read all the books you can, you will need to hunt for Enchanted shrines to max your spells out.
Essential Warrior Gear
As you progress toward the mid-levels (clvl 30+), it is a good idea to start shopping Griswold for a King's Sword of Speed/Haste, and King's Vampires is a great weapon as well. Having a weapon with to-hit bonus and increased attack speed is vital in the higher difficulties and especially in the end game. The increased DPS just makes handling mobs much easier, and it is required to have a speed/haste weapon to stun-lock mage type enemies. For the shield slot, there are a number of options to choose from but the best and relatively easiest to get are Awesome Shield of the Tiger and Obsidian Shield of the Tiger. You can shop either of these shields at Griswold fairly easily. I recommend the latter of the two, however. Resist on shields allows your char to be more flexible, since it allows you to open up another jewelry slot for mana, and you can still achieve pretty decent armor class with such a shield provided you have a nice plate and the shield is a tower or gothic. Speaking of the armor slot, this is one slot where you may have to forgo using a nice high end armor plate, at least for a while. Good low armors such as Obsidian of the Stars, Lion, and Precision are not too hard to get, but Awesome full plates with a suffix, especially with good stats, are very rare. They can only be found, and often you will have to either settle for a Saintly plate of xx or a plain Awesome full plate w/o a suffix. The helm slot is pretty easy fortunately. The best in slot piece overall is the unique crown called the Royal Circlet. With 40 base armor, 40 bonus mana and 10 to all stats you cannot go wrong with this piece, and like most unique items, it's relatively easy to find (though it can be streaky in terms of how often it drops). There are alternative helms to use, but most of them lend themselves to a specific build or situation. Besides finding a good plate, good jewelry is also tough to come across. Obsidian and Drakes/Dragon jewels of the zodiac are the dream, but for a long while, they are just that, a dream. Most of the time, you will have to settle either for plain zodiacs or maybe some with a single resist prefix. Obsidian or Dragon's jewelry of the Heavens is rare also but somewhat easier to get than getting these affixes with zodiac attached. All in all, the Warrior class is extremely item dependent and it's necessary to use gear that will give you enough dexterity to block foes, and raise your STR and VIT stats at the same time. This makes building the Warrior the hardest of the 3 classes, but arguably the most fun also.
ROGUE
The most versatile class in the game, the Rogue is good at almost everything but her main strength is in archery. Because of her ranged capabilities, it isn't as important for her to put everything into dexterity right away as it is with a Warrior. Generally it's good to max strength first, since like the Sorcerer it is your lowest attribute and maxing it quickly will allow you to wear heavier items. After that, things can get a bit complicated. Do you focus on magic first or start putting everything into DEX? I personally prefer to max magic first and put just enough into DEX to be able to use higher base bows. At lower levels a Rogue will get most of her damage from her weapon anyways, whereas at higher levels most of it comes from her clvl and dexterity. So, it is imperative you try to get as much damage on your bow as possible. As with the Warrior, you will need to hunt for Enchanted Shrines to max your spells out. One advantage the Rogue has over other classes is that because dexterity is such an important stat, hitting opponents will rarely be an issue and she is able to obtain a higher armor class than either Warrior or Sorcerer can. In certain situations you can forgo the use of a bow and equip a melee weapon and shield, particularly against melee foes when fighting with a bow up close could be dangerous.
Essential Rogue Gear
Windforce and Eaglehorn are very good bows for lower level rogues. When you reach clvl 21, it is prime time to take some time out and start shopping Griswold for a good swiftness bow. The ultimate goal of course, is the ever coveted Massive Long War bow of Swiftness. Pound for pound, this bow does the highest DPS in the game and is outstanding in both PvM and PvP because of how quickly and effectively a Rogue can stun-lock foes. Of course, it is a very rare bow, and most often you will have to settle for something a little more modest such as Warrior's, Vicious, or Brutal Swiftness.
These are not easy to shop either but should be somewhat easier to obtain than Massive. Resist swiftness bows, such as Jade, Crimson or Garnet swiftness can also appear, and if you see one don't hesitate to buy it. It must be said though, that these bows probably lend themselves better to PvP than PvM, where a damage modifier is almost always desirable when using swiftness. Later on, toward clvl 30, other good bows can start appearing at Griswold, namely Savage Bow of the Heavens and Obsidian Bow of the Heavens. Savage Heavens is outstanding for low-mid level rogues especially, since they are still getting much of their damage from their weapon. As you reach higher lvls though, clvl 40+, char damage begins to shine more and something like an Obsidian Heavens starts to become preferable to damage modifiers. Having all attributes on a bow is much more effective for a rogue than Heavens on a sword is for a Warrior, because of the Rogues insanely fast attack rate even with normal speed bows. The additional attributes raise her overall mana, to hit, AC, and raw damage, and with the right gear she can become quite a good spell caster. The helm slot for Rogue is somewhat more open than for a Warrior, but again, the Royal Circlet is generally BIS. Because of her ranged ability, playing with low AC often isn't as dangerous as with a Warrior, though if you are lucky enough to get a high armor plate this will make her extremely powerful since she will have the same or more AC than a warrior using a shield with the same plate. For suffixes the best ones are Stars or Sorcery on the armor slot, though precision and harmony are good as well. Jewelry is more or less the same here as with Warrior - Obsidian/Dragon zodiac are the dream, but often you have to settle for plain zodiacor prefixed Heavens jewelry. All attributes items are especially strong on rogue because they tend to have somewhat lower damage compared to the other two classes, but sorcery/wizardry is a good alternative based on gear availability.
SORCERER
At the beginning, the Sorcerer class is the weakest because of his low vitality without the ability to use Mana Shield yet. However, once he learns the Mana Shield spell and a few decent higher end offensive spells such as Fireball and Chain Lightning, it is game over. He quickly becomes a powerhouse that can obliterate anything in his path. The best way to build a new Sorcerer, is to simply put everything into magic right from the get go, since dexterity is of little importance for a Sorcerer as is vitality. You may want to max strength soon though, just so you can equip certain items, and Sorcerer's strength is very low so you can max it quickly. Read as many books as quickly as possible and your char will be well on his way to nuking the forces of hell. Of course you will want to max all your stats eventually, but focusing on magic (and perhaps strength early on) is the surest way to Rome.
Essential Sorcerer Gear
The Sorcerer is the easiest of the classes to build for the simple fact that spells in Diablo are quite over powered, and because of his magic stat and mana pool, he is able to use them with deadly effect even with mediocre gear. In fact, they are so powerful that some people have chosen to play their Sorcerer naked or with cursed gear to make the game more challenging when playing this class. For now we will focus on the most popular build for Sorcerers called the Artillery-Mage, or "Arty" for short. This is the quintessential build for a Sorcerer, as it focuses entirely on power - it raises the Sorc's spell levels to 19-20 and seeks to maximize the Sorcerers magic stat and mana pool. As result, most of the required items for this build are easy to get. Three slots - the helm, armor, and weapon - are all unique items Thinking Cap, Naj's Light Plate, and Dreamflange respectively - which are easy to get. These are the perfect items for the Sorcerer class. The shield slot is pretty open, though many like to keep the trend of building up magic and mana by using a Jade or Garnet shield of Brilliance. The jewelry slots are the only part that is tough - the dream setup is finding 3 x Dragon's jewel of wizardry. These are highly rare though, and usually you will have to settle for plain wizardry or Drake's of wizardry if you're lucky. But it hardly matters, since this build is so powerful and efficient. The only drawback is dealing with triple immunes, which either have to be killed with melee, Apocalypse scrolls/staff, or just avoided altogether. Some Chain Lightning resistant foes can be cumbersome as well. One could opt to play a Tank or high AC Battle Mage, but building this is much harder than an Arty since it requires zodiac jewelry and a high AC plate, as well as a King's weapon if you plan on using melee.
CHARACTER APPEARANCE
The characters each change appearance depending what kind of body armor they're using. If you equip your warrior with field plate, it looks different than when he is wearing scale, which is different from leather. On the whole, there are three different appearances for every class "Tier 1 (light armor),Tier 2 (medium Armor) and Tier 3 (heavy armor)."
CHARACTER EXPERIENCE SHEET
|
Level
|
Experience
|
Increase
|
Increase in %
|
|
1
|
0
|
2 000
|
-
|
|
2
|
2 000
|
2 620
|
131.0
|
|
3
|
4 620
|
3 420
|
74.0
|
|
4
|
8 040
|
4 449
|
55.3
|
|
5
|
12 489
|
5 769
|
46.2
|
|
6
|
18 258
|
7 454
|
40.8
|
|
7
|
25 712
|
9 597
|
37.3
|
|
8
|
35 309
|
12 313
|
34.9
|
|
9
|
47 622
|
15 742
|
33.1
|
|
10
|
63 364
|
20 055
|
31.7
|
|
11
|
83 419
|
25 460
|
30.5
|
|
12
|
108 879
|
32 207
|
29.6
|
|
13
|
141 086
|
40 597
|
28.8
|
|
14
|
181 683
|
49 392
|
27.2
|
|
15
|
231 075
|
82 581
|
35.7
|
|
16
|
313 656
|
110 411
|
35.2
|
|
17
|
424 067
|
147 123
|
34.7
|
|
18
|
571 190
|
195 379
|
34.2
|
|
19
|
766 569
|
258 585
|
33.7
|
|
20
|
1 025 154
|
341 073
|
33.3
|
|
21
|
1 366 227
|
448 341
|
32.8
|
|
22
|
1 814 568
|
587 327
|
32.4
|
|
23
|
2 401 895
|
766 756
|
31.9
|
|
24
|
3 168 651
|
997 549
|
31.5
|
|
25
|
4 166 200
|
1 293 323
|
31.0
|
|
26
|
5 459 523
|
1 670 973
|
30.6
|
|
27
|
7 130 496
|
2 151 378
|
30.2
|
|
28
|
9 281 874
|
2 760 218
|
29.7
|
|
29
|
12 042 092
|
3 528 939
|
29.3
|
|
30
|
15 571 031
|
4 495 869
|
28.9
|
|
31
|
20 066 900
|
5 707 505
|
28.4
|
|
32
|
25 774 405
|
7 219 994
|
28.0
|
|
33
|
32 994 399
|
9 100 803
|
27.6
|
|
34
|
42 095 202
|
11 430 609
|
27.2
|
|
35
|
53 525 811
|
14 305 407
|
26.7
|
|
36
|
67 831 218
|
17 838 843
|
26.3
|
|
37
|
85 670 061
|
22 164 762
|
25.9
|
|
38
|
107 834 823
|
27 439 976
|
25.4
|
|
39
|
135 274 799
|
33 847 210
|
25.0
|
|
40
|
169 122 009
|
41 598 222
|
24.6
|
|
41
|
210 720 231
|
50 937 022
|
24.2
|
|
42
|
261 657 253
|
62 143 167
|
23.7
|
|
43
|
323 800 420
|
75 535 020
|
23.3
|
|
44
|
399 335 440
|
91 472 909
|
22.9
|
|
45
|
490 808 349
|
110 362 065
|
22.5
|
|
46
|
601 170 414
|
132 655 203
|
22.1
|
|
47
|
733 825 617
|
158 854 605
|
21.6
|
|
48
|
892 680 222
|
190 228 390
|
21.3
|
|
49
|
1 082 908 612
|
227 798 497
|
21.0
|
|
50
|
1 310 707 109
|
272 788 700
|
20.8
|
|
MAX
|
1 583 495 809
|
-
|
-
|
|
