Diablo 2

Amazone Builds             

PvP Bowzon   PVP Jabberzon    PvP Poison Amazon

Assasin Builds

Tiger Strike/Death Sentry Assassin Lightning Trapsin The Ninja

Druid Builds                  

Elemental Druid

Paladin Builds

Hammerdin

Sorceress Builds             

Chain Lighting/Frozen Orb Sorceress  Lightning Sorceress

Barbarian builds

Concentrate Barbarian    Magic Find Barbarian

Necromancer builds

Skele-mancer     Daggermancer

The Bowzon was so very popular and overpowered back in 1.09 but since 1.10 character classes like the Hammerdin have taken over, although this is the case the Bowzon can still dominate.p>

This is a guide, not a precise build so feel free to experiment around this to make your own unique character for better or for worse. I’m just writing about what I have found to work well.br>
i) Stats

This is your characters outline and what decides on your end game gear, its useful to see what you will think you will be wearing when this char is finished, best to be realistic, i.e. don't set yourself up for faith if you know that you are never going to be able to really afford it.

Strength

The only use this has for the bowzon is to help her wear her items, so as with so many builds nowadays the minimum possible (i.e. wf needs 134 but if you are also wearing chains of honor then you only need a base of 114 as the extra 20 will come from your armour) and since 1.10 body popping is far less of a problem.

Dexterity

This is the power house of the bowzon, this is where her damage comes from, after you have the required amounts in the other stats this is where I recommend you put the rest of your points.

4 dexterity points gives 1 defence
1 dexterity point gives 4 attack rating

Vitality

This depends on your gear, if you are super rich and can afford godly charms then you can get 2k+ life with base vitality (+Bo) easily which is more than enough, although if you are relatively poor then life is harder to come by and so I'd recommend points here, 100 should see you through fine.

1 Vitality point gives 3 Life
1 Vitality point gives 1 Stamina

Energy

Well as with allot of builds this is best left at the base amount, guided arrows really do not take much mana and in PvP these are pretty much the only attack you will be using.

1 Energy point gives 1.5 Mana

ii) Skills

Well there are a few main skills that if you want to duel successfully then I recommend but then quite a few skills you can play with for entertainment or against certain char classes

The Main skills

Guided Arrows (MAX)

This is the skill to use, it follows the enemy and ignores target's defence, what else could you ask for.  The more points you put into this the greater your damage so I recommend a full 20 points otherwise you will probably feel your damage lacking. Prerequisites are Magic Arrow, Multi Arrow, and Cold Arrow.

Dodge/Evade/Avoid (12+)

These help allot in PvP because they mean that you can completely dodge some attacks meaning that you take no damage whatsoever. The amount of skill points you place here depends on if there is somewhere else you want to put points as well, although I recommend at least 12 in each as after this the returns diminish.  This will give you 50% / 58% / 50% to dodge enemy attacks. If you find out later that you have maxed all the skills you want to then come back here and spend your remaining points.

Critical strike (Depends on your gear)

Now, I'm in two minds about this skill and basically I think it comes down to what gear you are wearing, You have to see how much Deadly Strike you have (remember Deadly Strike does stack)

Deadly Strike is the same thing as critical except that they DO NOT stack on top of each other. When you attack the computer in effect rolls to see if you do double damage with one. If you do then it does not roll for the other as you cannot get 4x the damage, but if the first roll fails then it rolls for the next one. Therefore if you have 50% deadly and 50% critical in theory you will always do double damage, although it does not work like this in real life although your chances of not doing double damage are quite low.

Therefore if you are wearing allot of Deadly Strike gear then very few skill points are needed, yet if you are wearing basically no Deadly Strike I recommend getting this very high, maybe even maxing it.

The above are most definitely the main skills for PvP and if you are designing a character precisely around them then you can in theory max them all. Yet we all know that to level we need some kind of PvM ability so I also like the following skills for my amazon

Multi Arrow (10)

This can be used in PvP as well although I find that I don't usually have enough attack rating for it to be very useful although in PvM this is still the king, especially at the high fpa that a PvP bowzon should be shooting at. More points than 10 is really a waste, you can get away with as little as 5 if you want to.

Valkyrie (1)

The Valkyrie is an invaluable tool for taking some of the attention off you and 1 point is more than enough for what we want her for, although you will have to respawn her quite often. If you want her to be of any use other than a brief distraction she needs to be level 17+ (this is the level where she gains access to rares). Although for PvP this will not prove very useful.

Penetrate (1)

This will boost your attack rating which doesn't help for Guided Arrows but again in PvM Multi Arrows still need to hit, 1 point boosted by some +skills is fine pierce (1). This does not work in PvP, the days of Buri being the king bow because of its huge pierce left with 1.09, but it is useful in PvM for multi as it helps clear that room a little bit faster.

Immolation/Freezing arrow (1)

In PvM immune to physicals do appear and its useful to have some means to defeat them although again since PvM is not the main aspect of this build 1 point is all that's needed. In PvP they can be used yet are rather easy to dodge and so will not be that useful.

Pr requisites (3)

There are only 3 pre requisites for the main skills, Multi, Magic and Cold Arrows.  Multi is useful on its own as stated above so really only two prerequisites for the core of this build. If you want to migrate away the basic structure of course more will appear.

iii) Gear

This is always a hard section to write in a guide as people vary so much in what they can afford. For each section of gear I will attempt to find Cheap, Medium, Expensive and Best.

Helm

There are a few options here that you can choose from, Shako offers skills, life, mana and magic find. Now for this build the mana will not be that useful as not much mana is required, also since this is PvP the magic find will be useless, but the skills and life could prove invaluable. Another helm at about similar price is Vampire Gaze, this helm provides damage reduction, life leach, mana leach, since 1.10 came out leach has been useless in PvP, but Gaze does offer up to 20% damage reduction which can be very useful when dueling melee chars, although this build is not meant to actually get hit. Attack speed is a large factor in PvP so a helm with IAS is always very favorable, Mavs helm is good, also 3 socketed helm with 3 15IAS jewels can prove useful and cheap, but also for the best can be very expensive, as if you can afford it jewels with ed and IAS can prove extremely good. If you can't afford 3 15IAS jewels then Sigons is always a good leveling/cheap helm. Also I suppose I should mention Crown of Ages, this is a very good helm although it requires huge amounts of strength, too much really for an amazon.

Cheap: Sigons/ Biggins bonnet

Medium: 45%ias helm/Gaze/shako

Expensive: ed/IAS

Best: Life/ed/IAS

Armour

This can be used to make up for any weak points with the rest of your gear.  For example, if you want more damage reduction Shaftstop is viable, it also offers 60 life which can be very useful. Another cheap armour is Duriels Shell offering Resists, strength, Cannot be Frozen and Life.  All in all quite a nice armour. For leveling or if Shaft and Duriels are out of reach then Twitchthroe is a more than decent armour. Then of course there are the slightly more expensive armours, Chains of Honor is very useful mainly for the resists, although the skills and strength are useful too. Fortitude is useful mainly for the huge 300%ed. Also you can go with ed/IAS armour, this is useful if you are lacking IAS for a certain breakpoint.

Cheap: Twitchthroe/Duriels shell

Medium: Shaftstop/60%ias armour

Expensive: Chains of Honor, ed/IAS (life if you can)

Best: Fortitude

Amulet

This depends on how you have distributed your skill points. Highlords offers +1 skills, 20% IAS and Deadly Strike, but if you have a high Critical Strike then other amulets like Cats Eye with its fast run/walk, IAS and dexterity. These two amulets both have huge advantages, so more than likely you will have a reasonable level of Critical Strike therefore if you are wearing Gore Rider boots then Cats Eye is the better option, while if you have chosen wts then I personally believe Highlords is more advantageous. Maras Kaleidoscope is also useful if you are wanting better resists.  Cheaper amulets could be any amulet with 20% IAS, resists, life or any useful property that you think your character is lacking. Also Angelic in combo with the rings is very useful as it offers huge AR and quite a bit of life.

Cheap: Magic/rare amulet with relevant properties, or angelic

Medium: Cats Eye (even though this is cheaper than mara's I recommend it over mara's)

Expensive: Mara's, Rare amulet with very good properties

Best: Highlords/cats eye (depends)

Rings

I am combining both the ring slots together as your build will most likely use two of the same ring. My favourite ring for PvP is Raven Frost, as it gives dexterity which increases your damage, also you cannot be frozen which is very useful.  I find that the damage increase is larger than the + skills from Bul Kathos and SoJ, although Bul Kathos offers a large supply of life as well. Other cheaper examples are Angelic rings with the amulet, this gives insane AR and decent life.

Cheap: rare/magic or angelic

Medium: Raven frost

Expensive: Bul Kathos wedding band

Best: Raven frost

Boots

The boots, although not key to the build, can give you some useful mods.  The cheaper options could be any boot with decent run/walk + any other mod that you think your build is lacking, but there are some pretty decent boots out there and the best part is that they are not that expensive either. Gore Riders are my preferred boots as although they do not offer the most run/walk they give Crushing Blow, Deadly Strike and Open Wounds chances which are very useful. War Travelers offer some decent mods, the damage is always enjoyed although I think the chances on Gores outweigh this extra damage. Then there are Waterwalk. These boots offer quite a large amount of life and some dexterity which is pretty useful. As touched upon in the amulets section Gores + Cats Eye or Highlords + wts are the better combinations

Cheap: magic/rare

Medium: Waterwalk

Expensive: War Travelers

Best: Gore riders/war travelers

Gloves

There are a few useful mods that you can get from gloves, but there are really only three main choices. Laying of Hands is the amazons classic gloves offering IAS and quite a bit of Fire Resist. Then there are Draculs offering Life Tap (beware this is classed as BM with CH) and Open Wounds also a nice bit of Strength. Then there are a rare pair of gloves with IAS and other useful mods like Knockback (I'm pretty sure most people view this mod as BM) then any other extra useful mods are always welcome, be they resists or attributes or +skills (passive or bow). If you cannot afford the above then a magic pair with 20% IAS and any useful mods are welcome (be aware you can only get +2 to skills on rare and +3 on magical).

An easy way to get some pretty good gloves is to buy them off the venders as they can sell you very decent gloves (for instance I bought +3 java 20%ias pair once).

Cheap: Magic/rare pair with IAS

Medium: Laying of Hands

Expensive: Draculs/rare pair

Best: Godly rare pair with IAS knock back + skills and life/resists or something similar.

Belt

The belt is the part that can help you reach an IAS breakpoint or if this is not an issue then can gain quite a bit of Life/DR or other useful mods from. Goldwrap is a cheap belt offering 10% IAS and that's about it, but is the only NON BM belt with IAS. The other belt with IAS is Nosferatu's Coil and with this belt you get IAS, Strength and Slow (slow is BM). Then if you have already reached the breakpoint you want then I recommend Verdungods, this gives a huge life boost and 15% DR also some FHR. If these are out of your reach then a magical/rare is most likely your best bet.

Cheap: Magical/rare

Medium: Goldwrap

Expensive: Nosferatu's Coil/Verdungo's

Best: Verdungo's/Nostferatu's Coil (depends on whether you are playing BM or not)

Bow

This is the part that your entire build should be based around as this determines how much IAS you need and how useful your %ed is. With the addition of the new runewords Faith has appeared. Now this gives the amazon insane power and gives her the ability to reach 7fpa quite easily. But the biggest debate is which bow to place this in. The common belief is that a Grand Matron Bow is the best as you can get +3 bow and crossbow skills which of course is a significant advantage. Now, the Matriarchal Bow also offers this ability (at even less IAS) but has significantly less damage. There is also the option of a Shadow Bow which can hit the 7fpa easily as well but does not have the ability for the + skills. The only way you can decide which bow to use is to look at the rest of the gear you are going to use and see how much IAS you have, bearing in mind if the GMB spawns with a low level of Fanaticism it will be nearly impossible to reach 7fpa without loosing Fortitude. As the only way is using IK or Sigons comb which means you loose wts and knockback or skills from gloves

That is all there is to say about Faith really, if you are not going to use Faith there are plenty of other decent bows out there. There is of course the great Windforce which offers insane max damage but you will be stuck with 8fpa, although this bow is pretty cheap nowadays. Hand of Justice is a great bow and because it doesn't have any Knockback is less BM than WF. If these are out of reach for you Eagle is still a good bow although the damage is limited, and then there is Witch Wild String which is very versatile and when upgraded can offer pretty decent damage as well. Also the is BoTD allot of %ed and quite a few other nice mods but is pretty expensive. Although it is very possible Faith could become BM in which case this would be the next best option (as WF is already BM).

Bows that need mentioning are rares and cruels. Now these can spawn extremely nicely, I'm not going to list the possible mods here as there are so many nice combinations but these tend to be very expensive

Cheap: wws

Medium: Eagle/wf/BoTD

Expensive: HOJ/Faith/cruel/BoTD

Best: Rare

Weapon Switch

This is often underestimated on most characters, but can be very useful in various situations. Undoubtedly the best option here is Call to Arms with Lidless Wall (or another + 1 skills shield).

But also Titans+ Stormshield can be used which will give you Bblock dr, Fast Run/Walk which are all very useful in a duel. You could also have another bow on switch for instance WF on switch to Faith, if your mercenary has Faith and gets killed therefore you loose the aura, but you can switch to Faith to retain attacking speed etc.

Cheap(ish): Titans + Stormshield, or harmony (this offers vigor which greatly increases your speed)

Medium: WF (or another bow, wws is another good example)

Expensive: Call to arms + lidless

Best: Perfect Call to arms + up'd lidless

If you have enough strength then Spirit is better than Lidless, but I do not advise putting points in strength just for Spirit.

Charms

There are so many combinations you can use here, Run/Walk charms are very useful although Run/Walk has diminishing affects, so you do not need too many (I aim for a total of about 100%faster Run/Walk). Then this is also one of the large supplies of life for this char, and then if you can afford charms with max damage and Ar on as well then all the better.

Cheap: Run/Walk and life charms

Medium: Run/Walk and life charms with 2nd mods

Expensive: Run/Walk and life with damage and ar

Best: 3/20/ (Run/Walk) and 3/20/20(please be aware of dupes so 3/20/19 are probably a better idea)

iv) Socketing

Here I cannot decide much for you at all because you could have almost any combination of gear yielding different possibilities, but basically try to counter your weaknesses, i.e. if you are just off the next breakpoint then socket with an ed/IAS jewel or something, if you are low on resists then um is a very useful rune. The most important though is the IAS, really in PvP you want 7fpa, although 8fpa can manage, lower than that you will probably start to struggle.

v) mercenary

There are a couple of possibilities here, depending what you want from your mercenary.

Act2 nightmare offensive mercenary (might aura)

As for equipment for this guy Life DR, IAS and %ed on armour and helm and any high damage weapon, that's if you can't afford some of the newest runewords which offer auras.

If you're using a Might mercenary then he himself will not actually end up hitting people in PvP much, so if you can afford it you want auras that will benefit you. As there are so many possibilities with how you kit out your mercenary I'll just list some top end equipment:

Pride war pike
Dragon Archon plate
Delirium (in any helm)

This is just one possible kit for a mercenary, for instance you could change to:

BoTD war pike
Fortitude armour
crown of Ages

I just personally get act2 mercenaries just for their auras, not their killing abilities.

Act1 Fire Rogue

This mercenary actually has a chance of hitting an enemy in a duel due to their range. This affects what gear you give them as in PvP they will never be able to take many hits, therefore I advise basing them around damage, except for the following.

The new runeword Harmony offers Vigor which means you can run a lot faster.  The best bit is that it isn't very expensive either. Other than Harmony they can use Faith (since they will also then give you the Fanaticism aura then you can use a different bow yourself to get even more damage.

As for armour Fortitude, then an ed/IAS helm

As for other cheaper mercenary armours and helms the following are all useful:

Shaftstop
Stone
Duriels Shell
Gaze
Shako
Crown of Thieves

  

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Stats

Strength - Enough for items, so plan ahead incase you get something better than what your using and don't have enough strength for it.

Dexterity - Around 200+ should be fine. This includes items. This will give you 75% block with a storm shield. 

Vitality - Your best friend after Dexterity and Strength.

Energy - Base. 

So basically just your average melee dueler build as far as stats go.

Skills

When you're first starting out during the lower levels divide your points between 3 skills. Jab, Critical Strike, and Dodge. This way you can do a lot of damage at a lower level. Make sure you have Mana Leech because Jab can get a little pricey on the mana. 

Jab (20) - Obviously put 20 points in this. 

Dodge (18-20) - You may not need to max this, just make sure you have about a 59-60% chance. You can get this with +skill items which I'll get into later. So honestly, aim for about a level 18 base level Dodge. Your items should boost that to 26-28, give or take.

Note: Watch out for Dodge lock. This can make you lose the duel without doing any damage to the other player. It's not cool when it happens, but still, the positives of this skill outweigh the negatives. Just don't get mad when it happens. 

Critical Strike (18) - This one you'll want to get to about 74%. Again, you won't need to max this skill either, just get it to a high %. It eventually starts to repeat itself and there are other skills you can max, then come back to this if you want to.

Penetrate (20) - This is one of your best skills. Max this skill and with your +skill items, this should get to roughly level 26 (not including passive charms). That's a 285% bonus to Attack Rating (AR). Now if you can get passive charms, this can easily get over 300%. Wow!

Inner Sight (20) - Max this too. A high level IS could cut a PvPers defence by half. This, plus the huge AR boost from Penetrate, makes even a 50k def Paladin or Barbarian easy to hit. 

Note on skills: These are your main skills for a pure melee Jabber. Any other skill points you have left over you can put anywhere you want. Using a Valkyrie is fine but don't use it in PvP. A Paladin with LT and Zeal has a better chance to cast LT when he hits your Valkyrie. After your main skills are done Avoid and Evade would be a good to put a couple in. There will always be BM duelers so you'll need some type of defense against them. Some is better than none.

Items

Read these first before you look at the items.

This is where the Jabber is either made or broken. Open Wounds (OW) is the Jabbers best friend, but you can get by without it. Mine only uses the OW from Gore Riders and she does just fine. She's also got 18.5k attack rating without Angelics. She's not even half filled with 3/20/20's either. 

Also, don't build this Amazon based around defense. Anyone who's attempted an Amazon knows that defense means nothing for a Amazon. You can barely get hit while only having 1000 defense. So when you're looking for armour, go for the mods. You'll have a choice of whether to use Cham or a Ravens. It's up to you. Ill explain them while I talk about the items.

Titans: This is the best weapon for this build. Unless you can find an insane rare, use Titans. There's a catch though. Regular perfect Titans won't cut it. Not against an eth DC or botd. You'll have to go with an upgraded Titan with 190+%, or an eth upgraded with 190%. Even though this build is half reliable on Open Wounds, doing 1500 damage per hit still won't win any duels. You'll have to at least make a dent if your wanting to beat the more advanced meleers.

Armour: There are a few you can use that are good. Ill start from best to worst, even though the worst is still very good, it's the worst of the 3.

Best - Jewelers Armour of the Whale. If you can afford it, 160/60 IAS. This is the best armour for this build, hands down.

Second best - Duress. Has nice mods on it, especially Open Wounds. 

Least of the 3 - Stone. 60% Fast Hit Recovery isn't too shabby. Plus several other decent mods on it too. 

Storm Shield - This is important if you want the max damage reduce. Make sure this has either a Cham rune or an IAS jewel. 

Gore Riders - Don't need any explanation for these. The mods speak for themselves.

Gloves - Rare or crafted. +2 passives with Dexterity, Strength, Life, or IAS. Any combination is fine as long as there's +2 passives and 20 IAS. 

Note: If you're looking to have some fun though, you could use Dracs. 25% Open Wounds plus more Strength. Also, if you're dueling a Paladin that uses LT, the LT off Dracs could come in useful. 

Helm - I found a Shako to be the best helm for this build. +2 skills. 10% damage reduce. Well over a hundred to life and mana. And not that it matters all too much but a whopping +2 to all your stats. Socket this with an ed/IAS jewel or a Cham and your set. 

Belt - Verdungo's is probably your best bet. Damage reduce, hit recovery and 30+ vitality. 

Note: There are a lot of other belts you can use, but this one seemed to be the most successful GM belt I came across.

Rings and Amulet: Here are your options:

These are not in any order. They are all good, it's mainly about what you're comfortable using.

#1: If you used a Cham rune in your item set up, then 2 Angelic Rings and the Angelic amulet work beautifully. 

#2: Ravens (1 or 2), plus a rare ring with great stats. And +2 all skills rare amulet with life, Dexterity, etc If you can't get this amulet, a Cats Eyes is fine too. Or even a Highlords for more Deadly Strike. Up to you. Since you'll have enough Deadly/Critical Strike already Cats Eye might be the better choice. 

Secondary Items

If it's allowed to be used where you duel, then you'll want to get a CTA. It's a nice feeling when you see your Jabber with 3000+ life. And a +1 skills shield. 

Charms: Max damage charms, Life charms, Attack rating charms, Passive charms, etc. You get the idea.

Now when you're done with all this, you should be around level 85ish. You'll want to finish the build at level 90ish. If you want to go further, more power to ya! You should be ready to have some fun now.

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Poison Javelin: This is the most important skill in this build, the main damage dealer. This skill basically streaks a line of poison across the field, poisoning anyone running through. This skill is quite like the Necromancer skill Poison Nova damage-wise, and they both need a finishing skill, something to chip off the last 1 remaining health because poison cannot kill completely unless the damage is very, very high.

Plague Javelin: This skill causes your javelin to explode into a big field of poison, causing whoever the javelin hit to be poisoned for sure. Some people might argue that this skill would be better for PvP, seeing as how the poison radius is larger. After testing both, I realized it is very, very hard to use Plague Javelin in PvP, because everyone is constantly moving around, and landing a Plague javelin on a player is just too difficult. Also, Poison Javelin’s damage is much higher, which matters quite a bit when dueling high life opponents.

Guided Arrow: This skill transforms your arrow into a homing missile that tracks down targets in the general direction the arrow is heading. This is where you have a choice, whether to invest into guided arrow and use a slightly more powerful/faster bow, or just use Widowmaker. For less wealthy players, putting at least one point into this skill is recommended, and equipping a fast bow. Even for players that can afford Widowmaker, this skill is suggested, seeing as to Multi-arrow is useful as well.

Multiple Shot: This skill splits your arrow into multiple ones, depending on the level of this skill. This is also very useful as an alternate to Guided Arrows. Spamming arrows with this skill is also good to knock down that last hit point from your opponent. The only drawback of this skill is that it requires some attack rating in order to be useful. If you lack enough attack rating, the arrows will never hit your opponent.

Strafe: This skill is like a machine gun, shooting up to 10 consecutive arrows at once. This is also an alternative to guided arrow/multiple shot. This is highly recommended against for a number of reasons: 1. Like multiple shot, quite a bit of attack rating is required to be able to score a successful hit on the opponent. 2. Large amounts of skill points are required to get up to this skill (this is a level 30 skill), and therefore a waste. 3. When you are strafing, you cannot move, making yourself a vulnerable target to enemies.

Support Skills

D/E/A: These are the main survival skills, dodge, evade, and avoid. They are skills that allow you to avoid incoming attacks while running, attacking, or just standing still. Very useful in some instances, a killer in others. What I mean by a killer is that quite often, your Amazon will get trapped in an “avoid lock”, which means you keep dodging incoming attacks, and not being able to attack or move. This also means you are very vulnerable and can be killed easily. At least 1 point is recommended in each and with enough + skills, 1 point is all you would need.

Slow Missiles: This is a one point wonder skill. This skill slows all incoming missiles, which is VERY useful against Sorceress’s, other Amazons, etc. This skill allows you to dodge all missiles with ease, buying much time vs. opponents.

Jab: This skill allows you to stab at your opponent with increased speed. This skill is useful against Barbarians whirlwinding you. Keep in mind to hold shift when jabbing a whirlwinding Barbarian

Optional Skills

Valkyrie: This skill allows you to summon a shining warrior with a spear and follows you around like a lost puppy. I hate hate hate this skill (did I mention how much I hated it?) because its AI (artificial intelligence) is horrible. Basically what the Valkyrie does is it wanders around and somewhat follows you around. The only usefulness a Valkyrie can come into use, in my opinion, is when it accidentally wanders into the path of an attack and takes the damage.

Critical Strike/Penetrate/Pierce: These three skills are the skills on the very right of the passive/magic tree. I find these three skills pointless to a Poison Amazon, seeing as to you would not usually hit your opponent with the actual javelin. Critical Strike gives you a chance to do double damage on hit. Penetrate gives you extra attack rating, useful only if you plan on using strafe or multiple shot. Pierce allows your arrows/javelins to pierce the target. As I stated above, useless.

Skill Placement 

This is where personal preference plays a huge part. This part of the guide discusses where to invest your hard earned skill points. All information in this section is based on my preference, and what I think is better.

Balanced route (recommended): 
20 Poison Javelin 
20 Plague Javelin 
1-20 Guided arrow 
1-20 Multiple Shot 
1-12 D/E/A
0-20 Valkyrie 
1 into all prerequisites 

Build finished at around level 80-85

This build is what I would make and is highly recommended. Max guided arrow is to take care of opponents who teleport and are harder to hit with poison. A few Guided Arrows with a high damaging bow should take care of most sorceress’s and such.

Pure Poison route:
20 Poison Javelin
20 Plague Javelin 
0-20 Jab 
0-20 Valkyrie 
1-12 D/E/A
1 into all prerequisites 

Build finished around level 80-85 

This build requires Widowmaker for Guided Arrow. High damage javelin recommended for this build due to the use of Jab.

Both builds requires maxing out Poison/Plague Javelin. Valkyrie and the amount placed into D/E/A are all depending on personal preference. 

Stats

Stat placement looks something like it would for a lightning Amazon:

Strength: enough to use your gear (~80 or so)

Dexterity: Enough to use your gear (~60-90, depending). Enough for max block with Stormshield.

Vitality: Vitality is essential to survival. Pump as much as you can into here.

Energy: Base. Poison Javelins do not require large amounts of mana, plus you wont be throwing THAT many. The only skill that would eat up mana would be Guided Arrows, but you have enough mana to shoot out ~10 Guided arrows.

Suggested Equipment

This section discusses my choice of gear to use on this build.

Javelins

Unlike lightning Amazon builds, this build does not require a high damaging bow. The javelin is purely used to create a cloud or streak of poison and nothing else (unless you are jabbing of course). Even when jabbing, average javelins would be fine, as long as you have a moderate chance of hitting. The javelins listed below are from best-worst:

Titans (do not upgrade unless jabbing often, higher requirements are not worth it)
Thunderstroke (only if you do not have titans)
Demon’s Arch

Bows

Bows for the Amazon build, unlike Bowazon builds, do not require a high damaging bow. All the bow needs is relatively fast attack speed, in order to be able to spam efficiently. Widowmaker is required if no points are invested into guided arrow. Bows below are listed from best-worst:

Windforce (relatively cheap, good to take down Sorceress’s with. Shael’ing it recommended)
Breath of the Dying Hydra Bow (only if you are very rich, for this is not worth it for this build. The only advantage this bow has is its speed.)
Widowmaker (only if you didn’t invest into Guided Arrows)

And basically any bow that has decent attack speed. Doesn’t have to be unique, could even be a 6 socket bow with 6 Shaels in it.

Armor

Armor for this build should have + stats, + skills, +% poison damage, increased attack speed, + resist, or + damage reduction. Armors below are listed from best-worst:

“Chains of Honor” Archon Plate - Medium defense, +2 to all skills, 65 to all resist, +20 to strength.
“Bramble” Archon Plate - +% Poison Damage, Poison and Cold resists.
“Enigma”Archon Plate - ONLY if you don’t have Chains of Honor, the only good thing about Enigma is the +2 to all skills and 8% Damage Reduction.
Shaftstop - The classic Shaftstop, good looking, 30% damage reduction, 60 to life.
“Lionheart” - decent armor overall, cheap, adds stats.
Skin of Vipermagi - +skill, resist.

There are too many viable armors to list, as long as they have the mods listed above, the armor should be pretty decent for this build. 

Gloves

There are several varieties of gloves that would be useful to this build. 

Lavagout - 20% increased attack speed.
Rare/Magic +skill/increased attack speed gloves - self explanatory.
Laying of Hands - 20% increased attack speed.
Trang Oul’s gloves - 25% extra poison damage.

Belt

One choice, and one choice only, unless you cannot afford, use Verdungo’s Mithril coil for the damage reduction. Other choices are Thundergods (yuck) and Nosteratu's Coil.

Boots

Not much to say here. Goreriders, War Travelers, or Sandstorm treks would be my choice. Waterwalks or Aldur’s boots would not be bad either.

Shield

One choice, and once choice only, if you want to survive most opponents: Stormshield. Any other shield would not be good for this build.

Jewelry

For rings, wear Ravenfrosts on one hand, Manald heal, carrion wind, Bul Katho's ring, decent rares, are all good choices. As for amulet, Highlords or Maras is the top choice. Any good rares or other unique amulets are ok too.

Dueling Strategies

This build’s dueling strategy would probably be different from that of any other characters. Your strategy will vary depending on your opponent. Here’s a quick guide of how I would take care of each type of opponent. Keep in mind I’m only listing the more common builds that you would be up against, any peculiar builds, you will have to figure out for yourself.

General Strategy

Throw a poison javelin in the direction of your opponents left, them one right, then plague straight at them. This should force them to be poisoned. Finally, start spamming Guided Arrows, and voila, a smoking corpse.

Sorceresses

Fireball/Meteor

Against these type of gals, you have to constantly move around. Toss a few poison javelins in every direction and switch to your bow. If you put points into a Valkyrie, this would be a nice time to summon it. Also, if you can get close enough slow missiles will render this sorceress useless. As soon as you slow missile, you can get close enough to score a plague javelin on her, then start spamming Guided Arrows. Keep in mind slow missiles tend to piss people off, so be careful who you are using it against.

Blizzard/Glacial Spike/Ice Blast

Against these sorceresses, always keep moving in random pattern. For the smarter ones that teleport around, spam Guided Arrows and maybe toss one or two poison javelins. Otherwise, poison here is useless. For those that sit in their own blizzard, they are just a target. Hit them with plague javelin and then start spamming with Guided Arrows. You should see a message saying was slain by . Finally, slow missiles really help against those that are handy with Glacial Spikes or Ice blasts. Keep in mind although lower damage, glacial spike travels much faster than Ice Blast.

Lightning/Charged Bolt

This build is dealt the same way as the fire sorceress. Only thing to keep in mind is that when you slow missile them, be careful no to run into their stream of slowed lightning, it hurts. Also, don’t get too close for too long, thunderstorm tends to rip through anyone with low resist.

Barbarians

Whirlwind

These guys are tough, high resist, lots of life, and crazy defense/block. Then there’s the teleporting kind, the annoying freaks that just won’t stop chasing after you. For this build, do not switch to bow unless they are running away. If you are going 1v1 with a whirlwind barb, switch to walk (press R). Hold shift if they try to whirlwind you and hit them with a plague javelin. Remember, always hold shift and attack them when they are whirlwinding you. After they are poisoned, start jabbing them to death. Your block should keep you relatively safe until they are dead.

Throwing

Treat these as a high-life sorceress. Slow missile them and nail them with a plague javelin when they are throwing. When they stop to attack, they are very vulnerable for that few seconds, so take your chance to spam Guided Arrows at them.

Amazons

Lightning Fury/Charged Strike

A couple tips necessary to stay alive, always keep moving, throw a poison javelin over your back and keep running if they are chasing you, and let them get close enough to hit you with charged strike. Charged strike hurts A LOT, and you don’t want to be nailed by one of those without absorb and full resist. Lightning Fury does not hurt as much so you don’t really have to worry. I would suggest slapping on absorb, but I think absorbing ruins the whole point of dueling so it’s up to you.

Bow

Unless you have the perfect opportunity when they are not firing, do not switch to bow. Keep your shield on and start tossing poison javelin’s like mad in their direction. Good amazons keep moving, so foreshadow their next move and toss a poison javelin ahead of them. Then shoot a couple Guided Arrows if they run away.

Poison

For these builds, this is all about a battle of speed and strategy. Be sure to keep moving and dodge the incoming Guided Arrows/javelins. The right placement of javelins should nab this victory for you. Throw ahead of where they are running, and spamming Guided Arrows when they are not close is suggested.

Druids

Wind

Same goes for this build as for blizzard sorceresses, keep moving, always. Teleporting druids are deadly, as you go into lock of they manage to hit you with one tornado. Don’t bother using Guided Arrows in the beginning, their bear eats it. Try to kill his oak, but don’t go out of your way to do it. Hitting these guys with poison javelins should be pretty hard, but throw a couple on a chance they might teleport into it. As soon as they are hit, shoot Guided Arrows after them.

Fury/Rabies

These builds match you on the poison damage. What they lack is range, so keep it that way. Keep running, and throw a poison javelin if you have the chance. Good rabies druids have much much faster run/walk, so if you cannot outrun them, kill their oak sage, poison them, and then start jabbing.

Necromancer

Bone

Keep moving, out run their bone spirits, and do not stand still at risk of being hit by clay golem or bone spear. Throw random poison javelins, and then start spamming Guided Arrows. Your only chance of winning is to either poison them, or hit them continuously with consecutive Guided Arrows before they have a chance to recast their bone armor.

Hybrid Bone/Summon

Same goes for these guys, but your only chance is to poison all his minions. Then you have a free shot at the necromancer himself. That is the part where he dies. Keep in mind, this is probably the hardest build you can encounter, it requires much skill to be able to hit a teleporting one.

Summon

Plague javelin his skeletons, they will die shortly. Then target the necromancer himself and kill him.

Assassin

Trap

Keep out of range of their traps, do not ever get close, for you will be mind blasted, and cannot move. Keep out of their trap range and shoot Guided Arrows after you throw a couple poison javelins.

Whirlwind

Keep your shield on, they will obliterate you. Treat them the same as whirlwind barbs, try not to move so much. If they have traps, move out of their range, because you might go into avoid lock.

Martial Arts

Piece of cake, nail them with plague javelin, then start jabbing.

Paladins

Hammer

Do not let them get close. Throw a plague javelin when they are casting hammers (they cannot move), then starting shooting Guided Arrows. Keep in mind they will probably block most of the arrows, but when they start walking, they will bound to be hit by at least one.

Zealot

When they get close, plague javelin then, and start jabbing, keep your shield on.

Charger

Throw a poison javelin in their direction, and hope they run into it. Same strategy as vs. zealot after that.

Smiter

Do not let them get close, unless they are at low life, even then be careful. Once the Smiter gets you once, you are pretty much doomed. So keep running and shoot occasional Guided Arrows.

Fist of Heavens

For these builds, kill them as fast as you can. Another way to obliterate them is to keep your distance and shoot Guided Arrows in their direction. This may take a while, but nevertheless, it works.

Mercenary Choices 

Highly recommended against for several reasons:

1) It’s bad mannered to have a mercenary when dueling
2) Mercenaries get expensive because they die fast in duels
3) They die fast (as stated above)

However, some good choices would be a rogue mercenary, to finish off opponents for you, or an act 2 nightmare defensive mercenary, for the holy freeze. Same reason as rogue.

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Stat Points

One typical approach is to have enough Strength and Dexterity to wear your gear and put all the rest of your points into Vitality. You can't really go wrong with that. If you're going untwinked it's pretty hard to tell what your endgame gear will be like so it's not easy to tell what strength you'll need in advance. What I'd recommend is to conserve your skill points if you're in doubt and spend them when you think you've found your endgame gear.

My own assassin had 105 strength, 120 dexterity, 250 vitality and 25 Energy (base) when she beat the game. I've found this to be a pretty good balance between Strength to wear gear, dexterity to have some flat AR and vitality to be able to take a few hits and still live. Of course you can only keep your strength this low if you find one of a few choice weapons so you might have to allocate your points differently.

At any rate, it is recommended to have about 1000 life in Hell, just in case.

As for stat progression: Early on you might want to spend most of your points on Strength and Dexterity because enemies are weak and you need some base strength and dexterity to wear your gear. But don't neglect vitality completely or you might not get very far. It's possible to die in normal, too. (obviously, this mostly applied to HC).

3. Skill Points

As is often the case with hybrids, you've got to make every skill point count here. When you are in doubt whether or not you should get a point in a skill I didn't mention or recommended against I'd suggest to make a backup of your char and do some testing.

First let's go over the what and then let's take a look at the why:

3.1 Target Values

Martial Arts:
20 Tiger Strike
1 Cobra Strike

Traps:
3 Fire Blast
1 Shock Web
1 Charged Bolt Sentry
20 Lightning Sentry
20 Death Sentry

Shadow Disciplines
1 Claw Mastery
1+ Burst of Speed
0-1 Fade
0-1 Venom
1 Weapon Block
1 Shadow Warrior
20 Shadow Master
1 Psychic Hammer
1 Cloak of Shadows
0-1 Mind Blast

That's around 90 skill points which is more or less doable without any major leveling. Doesn't matter whether you have 15 or 20 points in LS.

Okay, now let's explain why we did this, how we're going to use what we got comes in another section.

The Martial Arts tree should be pretty clear: Tiger Strike is our main source of damage so maxing it is a good idea. Cobra Strike is especially helpful in untwinked play but even when twinked it is well worth one point.

The Traps are pretty obvious, too. We're maxing Death Sentry to get a huge radius on the corpse explosion as well as to get our lightning damage up. Lightning sentry acts as a synergy for Death Sentry, but even before I had maxed LS I found DS's lightning to be helpful already. Why 3 points in fire blast? Well, you get an extra shot for death sentry for every 3 points and as you have to spend one point anyway... I found it helps me because I need to recast DS less frequently. Definitely worth two more points.

The Shadow Disciplines are what makes or breaks this character. Let's take a look at the relevant skills, starting with Cloak of Shadows. This is the most important skill for this build. It blinds all enemies in a huge radius, making them stand around doing nothing while you are free to dart around between them and bring them a swift death. The importance of this skill in terms of crowd control can not be overemphasised, more on how to use it later on. For now let's just say it rules and move on. Burst of Speed is a very handy skill and I had it active at all times. I wouldn't spend more than one point on it if you have a few +skills items up your sleeve. If you don't have any I'd spend about 3-4 points but not more. Shadow Master is one of the best summons in D2, maybe even better than the Valkyrie. Her usefulness increases as you spend more skill points and at higher levels it's almost impossible to kill her. You won't regret spending skill points on her, that much is for sure.

Now, what about the skills I recommend to spend 0-1 points on?

Venom is a neat skill but this build lacks the points to have a naturally high level here. If you've got a lot of +skills items one point might actually give you a sufficient boost to make it useful, though. It won't ever be your main killer, it's just one more way to make the most of high +skills.

Fade is okay but I just couldn't get used to being slow again. My resis all were where I needed them without fade anyway so I didn't really need it. Not even in the chaos sanctuary to reduce the curse duration. It doesn't really help if the duration is reduced by X% if a new curse is cast every few seconds. Even reduced, the duration never runs out.

Mind Blast is a lot of people's favorite crowd control skill but I found that even though I had a point in it, I rarely used it. Cloak of Shadows is just superior to it in every way. (at least for this build, might be different for other chars). For one, you have to target mind blast whereas CoS is centered on you, making it an auto-target skill. Next, CoS is a lot more reliable. It will always work (with the exception of the few monsters immune to it) whereas mind blast might not work when you really need it, or the duration might be up when you're right next to a converted enemy. Finally, your shadow casts mind blast often enough so that it's not really necessary to do it yourself. So, if you like mind blast, go for it, but I'd rather spend the skill point elsewhere.

3.2. Skill Progression

I won't give level per level instructions as this character's skill progression is pretty straightforward and the exact numbers depend on when you get the quest skill points. Basically you more or less max your skills one after the other and get points in the one point wonders as soon as you can. First skill we work on is Tiger Strike. Get a point in Burst of Speed at 6, Cobra Strike and Cloak of Shadows at 12 and Shadow Master at 18. (don't forget to the prerequisites ;))

Next order of business is to get Shadow Master up to a level where it starts being useful. That depends on how much + skills you can muster, I'd suggest about 10 points for starters and adding more later on.

Once that's done I'd max Death Sentry and then put a few more in Shadow Master before synergizing DS. After you have about 10 points in LS I'd put some more into Shadow Master, again depending on your + skills. When you get the 2 other points in Fire Blast is up to you. I didn't really use traps until I reached Hell, but in Hell I wanted them. :)

If you're using venom and Mind Blast you might want to get points in there early on, especially in venom.

3.3. Hotkeys

I think this deserves its own section as this is something that's very important for this char. You've got so many hotkeys that you really can't use the F-keys and hope to rule. You can probably do it but more likely than not you will die trying because you're just a bit too slow (in HC at least).

Now, of course there are many ways to arrange your hotkeys, here's what works best for me:

Potions are okay on the number keys from 1-4
The little "^" to the left of "1" is what I use for weapon switching.
Skills are placed on q,w,e,r,a,s,d,f, y/z, x,c and F12 for town portal. (y/z because it's different for US and German keyboards ;) the key I mean is on the lower left corner at any rate)
Mercenary Inventory is "o"
My Inventory is "i"
Quests are "u"
Stat Screen is "z/y" (the key left of "u")
The Skill Tree is on "t"

Here's how I mapped my skills, worked good for me. (LMB means it's on the left mouse button for me. All the rest is on the right one)

"Q": Tiger Strike (LMB)
"W": Cobra Strike (LMB)
"E": Normal Attack
"R": Unused

"A": Cloak of Shadows
"S": Unused / Mind Blast
"D": Lightning Sentry
"F": Death Sentry

"Y/Z": Burst of Speed
"X": Unused / Venom
"C": Shadow Master (Warrior until you get Master)
"V": Unused / Fade

As you can see it's arranged by groups as best as possible. First row: Attack Skills, Second: Crowd Control and Traps, Third: Buffs and Summons.

Side note: If you've been using the F keys so far and are remapping just now for this build it will take some time to get used to this. At first you'll be slower than with the F keys but that's what normal is for: Practice. Soon you will be a lot faster than you were before.

4. Attack Rating and Defence

I've inserted this chapter so that the following one about gear will make more sense. For the record, I'm assuming that you enter hell in your early to mid seventies and that you will beat hell around level 80. This is the way things usually work out unless you take very long leveling breaks.

First, for those who didn't know, the chance to hit monsters and the chance to be hit by monsters displayed in the character screen are not necessarily correct. The calculations ignore the effect of levels and as most things you'll fight in hell are of a higher level than you are your chance to hit will be worse and their chance to hit you will be better than displayed. So, the stat screen might claim your chance to hit is 80% but in fact it's only 70% or even 60%.

Okay, now let's talk about defence and why this build doesn't use it: I've found that defence needs to be pretty high in order to be reliable. It doesn't really matter if you have 0, 2000 or 4000 defence. It more or less translates into "if it swings at me, it hits me". So we ignore defence completely and with cloak of shadows at our side we can easily get away with that.

Now, what about AR? Well, it's nice to see you're doing 2-3k damage normally and 8-16k damage charged up but if it takes you 7 swings to get three hits for the charge ups and then another 3 to connect once on the finisher this lowers your damage over time quite a bit.

What I'm trying to say is that AR is a pretty huge issue for this character. We have two skills that help us here: Tiger Strike adds some % to your AR and cloak of shadows lowers your enemies defence which is a good start. Unfortunately, that's as far as skills can take us. The rest will have to come from outside sources.

That's something to keep in mind when we make our decisions concerning our gear, sockets and mercenary. I wouldn't suggest having AR much lower than 8k in Hell. This seems like a lot and if you look at the stat screen it even translates into a decent chance to hit but don't be fooled. Try counting your swings and your hits for a short while and you'll be able to tell how often you hit. (20 swings, 10 hits = 50% chance to hit. Not 2 swings, 2 hits = 100% chance.) I'd be comfortable with about 12k AR or more.

I'll mention some ways to help our AR now, though most of it will come up again later on:

• Getting a Blessed Aim Mercenary. This increases your percentile AR bonus and may be a very good idea. Most of the other mercenaries are no good to us anyway.
• Using the Angelic Amulet and 2 Angelic Rings. This is one of my favorite ways to increase AR, especially on characters that have a good percentile bonus but almost no flat AR.
• Putting points in Dexterity, 1 point in dexterity gives you 5 points of flat AR. Probably my least favorite method. I'd rather spend my points on vitality. But this char needs every ounce of AR it can get so going up to around 100 dexterity might not be a bad idea.
• Using Demon Limb's Enchant charges. This is another way to increase the percentile bonus and it works really well. Demon Limb has 20 charges of slvl 23 enchant which lasts over 660 seconds (>11 minutes). Neat! I used this to replace my blessed aim mercenary.
• Getting more flat AR from your gear. Socketing perfect diamonds into helm and armour is definitely uncommon but a perfect diamond would probably help us more than a 40%ED/15%ias jewel.

5. Gear

Okay, so what are we looking for here? As our build is part martial arts and part traps we want a good compromise between physical damage for the MA side and + skills /mana for the traps side. First let's take a general look at things. I'll go over the item slots and say what we might want here.

Weapon Switch 1: A big, hurty two handed weapon. Damage is the main priority, followed closely by low requirements. (a thunder maul is great, but we don't really want to have 253 Strength) IAS helps, too. Crushing blow is useful in hell when you're reducing the players to 1. Don't bother looking for open wounds or prevent monster heal, they are useless to this build. (this goes for all item slots).

Weapon Switch 2: This one will be for casting traps, SM and Burst of Speed, so what we're looking for here is + skills.

Armour: Defence is not an issue here. We'll never get it anywhere near high enough to be of use anyway. Resistances, +skills and AR are useful here. PDR (this typically means Shaftstop) doesn't hurt but it's not required.

Belt: Try looking for resistances and leech.

Gloves: Resistances, IAS and leech are all things you can find on gloves that are useful to us.

Boots: FRW is the main priority here, followed by resistances.

Helm: + Skills, resistances, leech, AR and resistances are what we're looking for.

Rings: Look for AR, resistances and leech.

Amulet: +skills, resistances and leech.

Charms: Resistances, AR, Life / Mana.

Okay, so now that we have a general idea let's take a look at a few options from the uniques and sets the game offers.

5.a. Weapons

Probably the most important choice you'll make is what to use here. As far as weapons go, the top choice is an upgraded Ribcracker. It doesn't really matter if you don't have one with close to 300% ED, even a mediocre one is awesome. As an added bonus you can equip it at level 56!

Another good option is Steeldriver. Damage, Speed, low requirements, all check. The regular and exceptional version make excellent weapons to use in normal and nightmare.

Bonesnap is a great starting weapon as well. Upgrading it once would make it definitely fit for nightmare.

For the completely untwinked, an Honor Weapon is an ever popular choice. Putting this into a war club for example can get you a good way through the game.

Some harder to find but useful options include (but are not limited to) Doombringer, the Grandfather, Ethereal Edge, Hellslayer, Messerschimdt's Reaver or Windhammer. Some of those do have very high strength requirements, though, making them a less than ideal choice unless you gear can boost your strength a lot.

On the weapon switch we want +skills and loads of them. 2 Bartuc's Claws are the best option here. Culwen's Point and Lidless wall can serve, too. Rare assassin claws can be useful, too. Skull Collector gives +2 to all skills, too. Ondal's wisdom even has +4 (if you've got a perfect one, of course) and if you've got the very rare loot you could even use a Mang song's lesson.

Picking your weapon is probably the only gear choice that's independent of what else you have available. With the other item slots it depends on the other items your char is using. For example you don't need the resistances from the skin of the Vipermagi if you're already at 75% resistances.

5.b. Armour

There is no single best option here, in my opinion. A lot of things are more or less equally useful. One the unique side of things there are the spirit shroud, the skin of the Vipermagi, Shaftstop or que hegan's wisdom that could be interesting, depending on what you need.

On the rune word side, Smoke (NefLum) is interesting for twinkered and untwinked play alike. Probably the cheapest way to get 50% resist all.

Gloom (FalUmPul) is interesting for similar reasons though there are a lot of builds that profit more from it than this one.

5.c. Headgear

There are a lot of things you could use here. Harlequin Crest is useful but looks ugly. A rare +2 assassin skills circlet can be interesting. Rockstopper can provide resistances and FHR. Kira's Guardian can boost your resistances if you need that and the CBF doesn't hurt either. Vampire Gaze is useful, too but nearly as ugly as the shako.

As far as rune words go, Lore (OrtSol) and Delirium (LemIstIo) are interesting. But with Cloak of Shadows at your disposal you don't really need Delirium. Blinded monsters are less dangerous than confused ones.

5.d. Gloves

Laying of Hands is ever popular and indeed hard to beat in terms of usefulness. Good rare or crafted gloves can be quite useful, too. Frostburn can be interesting if you find that you run out of mana for your traps too often.

5.e. Boots

Natalya's Boots are a very good pick here. 40% FRW and resistances to the two most dangerous elements are quite helpful. War Traveller adds 15-25 damage which turns out to be a fair bit after tiger strike, so they might be a good pick, too. Gore Rider might be worth a look too. Other than that, rare boots can quite often be better than the set and unique versions.

5.f. Belt

The String of Ears provides PDR and leech which may be what you need. Nightsmoke has some resistances and huge damage goes to mana which is never a bad thing to have. Verdungo's Hearty Coil adds a nice amount of vitality. Rare belts are often quite useful, too.

5.g. Amulets

Mara's Kaleidoscope is probably the first thing that leaps to mind here. It's indeed quite useful, especially for the trapper side of our char. Cat's Eye and Highlords Wrath are okay picks, too. Same for Crescent Moon which provides nice leech.

5.h. Rings

Surprisingly, rare rings are quite often more useful than uniques, here. AR and resistances are what we're most interested. The Stone of Jordan wouldn't hurt for our trapper side, though. Ravenfrost might be interesting for the martial artist but personally I've found the cold damage annoying since shattered corpses can't be used by DS. CBF is only moderately useful as blinded enemies rarely freeze you anyway.

6. Gear continued: Complete and Partial Sets

Some items that may not be interesting on their own do gain a lot when used together with others from their set. This section covers the complete and partial sets that might be useful to this build. (all considered to be good enough for Hell)

Complete Disciple Set:

This is what my own char used to beat the game. The resistances are good, +skills are there, and the set gives a very nice boost to mana, too. That LoH is part of the set doesn't make it any less appealing either. Overall a very good pick if you can compensate the lack of AR. (and if you can find it)

Complete Iratha's Set:

Probably my favorite set in the game. Amazing resistances, even a boost to max resistances. 20% FRW and 20% IAS from the gloves. A very good and easy to find choice. As with the disciple, the fact that it includes an amulet might cause AR issues because you can't wear the partial angelic.

Partial Angelic Set:

Another one of my favorites. Most common combination is to wear two rings and the amulet. All in all that gives you 115 life, 20% damage goes to mana, +12 replenish life and most importantly, insane amounts of flat AR. If you have AR issues, this is the way to go. More AR will most likely prove more useful than anything uniques can provide. You could also wear the armour and two rings, if your amulet slot is already occupied. For obvious reasons you should not use the weapon.

Partial Immortal King's Set:

Another commonly used (partial) Set. The Gloves, Belt and Boots are relatively easy to find and give good bonuses, mainly to strength and some resistances. May be useful if you need extra Strength to equip a weapon for example.

7. Mercenary

There are only two mercenaries that you should consider for this build: Might and Blessed Aim. I don't think I need to go over why prayer and thorns are no good to us.

Defiance is pretty useless because 1) even with defiance our defence will most likely not reach a level where it starts being useful and 2) with cloak of shadows at our disposal the need for defence vanishes anyway.

Holy Freeze is useless for similar reasons. We don't need enemies to be slowed and blinded. They don't move when they're blinded in the first place, we don't need them to not move slowly. :D

Now, when should we pick blessed aim and when might? That's easy: Pick blessed aim when your AR is lower than you'd like it to be. If that's not the case, pick might. I'd suggest getting the might mercenary in NM and if you find that your AR is too low in hell change mercenaries there. That's easier than switching back to Might if you reach hell with your aimer and notice that you don't need him.

Personally I think I'd go with might. As you don't have anything enhancing your physical damage while charging up, might has a pretty large impact then. It doesn't do anything on the finisher, though. 1400% ED or 1600% ED is basically the same. The thing is that with might you are often able to kill one foe while charging up, finishing him on the 3rd strike and then knocking another one down in one hit with the finisher. If you go with the other AR hints I've given somewhere in here you can probably make do without BA.

As for his gear... Try to give him a big damage weapon with life leech if possible. An ethereal honor weapon leaps to mind. His armour should provide PDR if possible, Shaftstop being the obvious choice. If you don't have that, aim for resistances. His Helm should provide leech, PDR or resistances. Tal Rasha's Helm, Vamp Gaze or the crown of thieves are common picks.

8. Tactics

Well, most of the time our tactics are pretty straightforward. First, we'll always run, not walk, in case that needs to be mentioned. Of course you should cast your shadow and buffs before entering battle. Now, remind yourself of the strengths of this build: Speed, crowd control and a mean punch. So, at the start of a battle we move in close, trying not to get hit, cast Cloak of Shadows (using the weapon switch with fewer +skills as you can't recast CoS until the duration is up) and then start kicking ***. (and *don't* forget to recast CoS as soon as you can)

But don't just start flailing around mindlessly, either. This char needs a bit of thinking to work well. Let's say you start hitting an enemy with tiger strike and you reach the third charge up, what do you do now? If you think the answer is release the charges, you've got it wrong. ;) First, look at how much life the enemy you're hitting right now has left. If it is little, keep hitting with Tiger Strike (or switch to Cobra) until he's dead and then release your charges on a fresh enemy. The best way would be to release the charges on a fresh enemy as soon as you're charged up and then kick the first enemy some more but I've found that this is pretty hard to do. I think the way I described above is a reasonable compromise. :)

Well, this is already the most important lesson: Cast CoS, then kick ***.

On a side note, don't forget that you've (probably) got 2 claws on switch which allows you to use weapon block. So if you approach a pack of archers for example it might be a neat idea to do so with the claws active.

Once you get traps you're presented with more options. You could cast your death sentry before starting to attack. That way it helps with its lightning damage but might already be used up by the time you get the first corpses. Or you could back away after you get a couple of corpses and then cast DS. Both work okay. If you're faced with something that scares you it might even be a good idea to play trapper for a while and let your mercenary and shadow do the tanking.

Well, that's already pretty much all there is to say about normal game play. Just dart around kicking ***, keep CoS active and season the whole thing with a few traps. Rinse and repeat.

Now, on to some specific problems:

Act Bosses are generally not a huge problem for this character. She's good at dealing with single enemies that have a lot of life. Just make sure you have your shadow out and in case of bosses with dangerous attacks (Diablo) be ready to dodge. Against Baal it proved to be a neat idea to charge up on his tentacle buddies and release on him.

Gloams are a joke with this lady. Once blinded they don't do anything and before they're blinded you are probably too fast for them to hit you. (then again, I've practiced a lot against them so they may just seem easier to me) At any rate, CoS is the answer (again). Death Sentry takes the trash out after you got the first few down.

Boss Packs are usually no big problem either. You deal so much damage that taking out the boss should be easy, especially since he is the only one that chases you after you cast CoS. This also applies to the seal guardians in the chaos sanctuary and Baal's minions. Lister is a different story as he and his gang can't be blinded. I've found that Death and Lightning Sentry are great to deal with them. Just retreat slowly and cast traps as you go.

The Ancients are tricky with this one. Needless to say that you need to re-roll them when they're FE. Assuming you can get them unbugged I'd suggest to try and get at least two of them to attack your mercenary and shadow and then quickly dispatch the third. Be careful if they pack mods like cursed, extra strong or damage enhancing auras. If your mercenary and shadow can tank them and they're not LI you can also use traps. That worked great for me.

Iron Maiden: Watch out when cursed with this one! Even a regular attack will probably be enough to kill you. My way to deal with this is to either cast traps, or run past the melee fighters and engage the oblivion knights as soon as they cast a different curse on me.

The FE Bug : Well, there is nothing you can do to survive if you get hit by a bugged enemy in hell. You're just dead, end of message. One way to deal with this is to scan every single boss you meet for the bug and stay away if he is FE (stay away from the minions, too). Let your mercenary kill him or use traps. Just to be sure that everyone knows it, the bugged damage is not only active on the death explosion. It can transmit to charged bolts of LEs or beetles, regular attacks or just be dealt when the boss feels like it. Don't be fooled if you happen to survive an FE boss, not all of them are bugged. Imo the best way to deal with this is to stay in SC or get a mod.

9. Potions

This is just a very small section but it doesn't really fit elsewhere. I'd suggest to not have just rejuvenation potions with you, even if you have enough to fill your belt. I always use the first 2 rows for healing, third for rejuvenation potions and fourth for mana. This is simply because I like to have the right potion for the right moment. Sometimes I lose about 1/4 of my life and don't want to use a rejuvenation potion, but especially in HC it's beneficial to be at more or less full life if possible. I've found that I have less qualms about burning a healing pot than a rejuvenation. You don't have to do it this way, it's just something to think about.

10. Magic Finding and Runs

Despite her being quite fragile, this is not a bad build for MFing. Of course she is not as good at it as the top notch chars but she is definitely capable. I'd suggest to keep your lightning resistances high and not completely ignore +skills but you can easily reach a decent level of MF with her.

She's very good at running Hell Mephisto, for example. (assuming a fast map, of course). Once you enter durance 3, head straight for Mephisto: Turn south at the first crossroads and keep to the northern wall in the council member's room. He'll ignore you almost always leaving you free to deal with Mephisto himself. Recast your shadow on top of him and start kicking his ***.

Baal / WS K Runs are no big problem either. CoS keeps you safe from most things and DS makes sure you can clean the place quickly. (same applies to the pit)

Running the countess is also an option with her. A good map for her is pretty hard to get, though.

Andariel is not safe from her either. Her goons fall to traps easily and killing Andariel herself should not prove difficult for this one.

That said, I would probably not use her for HC MFing, simply because I tend to get sloppy when MF and this char does not tolerate a huge amount of sloppiness. She does stay fragile. But you've got discipline and want to keep using this char after she makes matriarch or guardian she's definitely ready for more.

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Terms

Here are a few terms that can be good to know when talking/reading/discussing Assassins.

PvP - Player VS Player
PvM - Player VS Monster
DR - Damage Reduction,
Sin - Assassin
Nec - Necromancer 
Barb/baba - Barbarian
Pally - Paladin
Zon - Amazon
Dru - Druid
MDR - Magic damage reduce
R/W - Run/walk
FHR - Faster hit recovery
CBF - Cannot be frozen
Str - Strength
Dex - Dexterity
Nrg - Energy
Vit - Vitality 
Clvl - Character level
Slvl - Skill level 
FBR - Faster block rate
FPA - Frames per attack
FPS - Frames per second 
IAS – Increased Attack Speed
CR - Cold Resist
FR - Fire resist
PR - Poison Resist
LR – Lightning resist
CI – Cold Immune
FI – Fire Immune
LI – Lightning Immune
PI – Physical Immune
DTalon – Dragon Talon
DTail – Dragon Tail
CM – Claw Mastery
SM – Shadow Mastery
SW – Shadow Warrior
CoS – Cloak of Shadow
BoS – Burst of speed
MB – Mind Blast
WB – Weapon Block
LS - Lightning Sentry
DS – Death Sentry
CB – Crushing Blow
OW- Open Wounds
DS – Deadly Strike
CLvL – Character Level
SLvL – Spell Level
C/S – Claw/Shield
C/C – Claw/Claw

Skills

Now, enough small talk, let's get on with it. I will first discuss the skills a Dragon Talon/Trapper can utilize when playing.

Martial Arts

First of all, since this is partly a Dragon Talon sin, the most important skill of all is:

18-20 Dragon Talon (The number before the skill name always means how many base points the skill should have)

Dragon Talon is a very interesting skill because it's one of the fastest attacks in this game. It consists of a rapid series of kicks on a single target. Unlike the Paladin's Zeal or the Druid's Fury, Dragon Talon hits the same target with the entire series of kicks. This ability gives it several advantages over, for example, Zeal and Fury because it can make good use of items mods such as “Chance to cast xxx on striking” and most importantly Crushing Blow. But we’ll get to that in the Item section. 

Dragon Talon is not a claw attack, it is a kick attack and the damage is therefore calculated from your boots. Elite boots are the best because they have the highest damage. The damage you will deal with each kick will not be very high compared to Zeal or Fury, but it will be a very fast attack which compensates for the low damage, so don't be scared off by the damage.

Depending on the gear you will eventually use, or the gear you are now using, you should invest either 18 or 20 skill points in Dragon Talon. The reason is that the skill grants one extra kick each 6th slvl. So at slvl 18 it kicks 4 times, at 24 it kicks 5 times and at 30 it kicks 6 times. Now, there is no use in having a 20 base Dtalon and 6 +skills from items, which makes slvl 26 Dtalon, because there are 2 wasted skill points. It is better to leave Dtalon at slvl 18 so that it reaches slvl 24 with items. The difference between slvl 24 and 26 is only a little bit of damage and attack rating, which you most likely wont need.
Another good thing about Dtalon is that elemental damage transfers to your kicks. An elemental damage weapon is therefore a very good resource.

Not to make things too confusing here’s a list of mods that will transfer to your kicks:

- Open Wounds
- Crushing Blow
- Elemental Damage
- Magic Damage
- +X% Enhanced Damage from non-weapon gear
- +X% Life Leech
- +X% Mana Leech
- +X% Chance to cast xxx on striking

Now, these mods does not transfer to your kicks:

- Deadly Strike
- Critical Strike
- + Max Damage 
- + Min Damage
- +X% Enhanced Damage from weapon
- +X% Chance to cast on attacking

This is all the skill points you will invest in the Martial Arts tree. Let's move on.

Shadow Disciplines

This tree is your saviour! It has all the skills you will need to survive. How many points you should invest in each skill entirely depends on your equipment so I will only mark a recommended number in the form of x-y.

1 Claw Mastery
This skill has no effect on kicks or traps at all! So, it should be left at slvl 1.

1-5 Burst of Speed.
This skill must be activated for it to be useful. It gives a very nice amount of IAS and fr/w. However, it can not be used in conjunction with Fade. Which you will use depends on your items as well.

1-5 Fade
This skill must also be used active, just like BoS. Fade gives a ton of resistances against elemental damage as well as it reduces curse duration. So basically, depending on your gear, you will have to choose between BoS(IAS) or Fade (resists) to have activated. You should not use both, instead optimize your gear for either IAS and use fade or optimize it for resist and use BoS. It usually comes down to how many sockets you have, how much IAS and how much resist your gear grants.

Fade has two other nice things to it though. First of all it grants a hidden 1% pdr for each slvl, and it also works with +skills. Secondly fade make your character transparent which is really cool! It has no real effect though.

1-10 Weapon Block
This skill only works if you use c/c (which I will discuss in the item section). If you use c/s then leave it at slvl 1.
This skill gives you the ability to block attacks with your claw. Not only physical melee attacks but also ranged elemental attacks and as magic attacks. I would preferably get this skill to slvl 10 with items, which means 50% block. Less is possible but you want to survive right? My recommendation is 50% because it is a nice round number and it’s certainly enough block to make it through hell.

1 - Shadow Warrior
This is a helper for the assassin. It goes around and uses your skills on her own. She is very useful as a tank rather than a killing machine. However, the Shadow Master is better so leave this one at slvl 1.

1-5 Shadow Master
This is the one you should use. She lays traps and uses MB on her own, she also uses the martial arts tree. Master can take a harder beating than Warrior which makes her a better tank and more suitable for this build.

Some people like to have a strong Master to do their tanking, but I prefer to be able to recast her sometimes and put the skill points in other places. Depending on your amount of +skills I would recommend 1-5 skill points. If you are packed with Shadow Discipline skill charms only 1 point is recommended. If you only have a reasonable amount of +skills then up it to around slvl 5. It’s a matter of taste how much is needed so try her out at slvl 1 first.

1 Cloak of Shadows
This skill blinds targets that have not yet seen you, which makes them stand still and give you the element of surprise. CoS also reduces monsters defence and increases yours. Some people really really find this skill useful, but I really don't. I tried it once but didn’t find it very good. So try it out...but even if you like it 1 point in it is enough.

0-1 Mind Blast
This skill is very good. It stuns monsters for a short period of time and gives you a safe opportunity to do some kicking.
I have yet not put any points in MB on my own character because my Shadow Master frequently uses MB which means I don't have too  But it does deserve 1 point since it is very useful in some situations.

0 or 20 Venom
This skills is very useful for PvP and a few think it is very useful in PvM as well. When maxed it can deal a great amount of damage per second, but the timer is very short which makes it awful if you want to use a “hit and run” – technique. I would only use this if I'd tried it before and liked it. If you haven’t then leave it a 0. I did.

Now we can move on to the Trap Tree.

Traps

Traps are very useful for the high amount of damage they can deal and the versatility they have. You can cast them around corners or in front of you to see if there are any monsters and they are great group killers. They can also kill of enemies on their own if given some time.

20 Death Sentry
This is the must-have in the trap tree. The Corpse Explosion it sets of is the only real group killer you will have. Once there is a corpse, DS takes care of the rest.
Some say it only deserves ~10 points, but as you also will use it as a synergy I recommend maxing it.

1-20 Lightning Sentry
Lightning Sentry deals more damage than DS but doesn't have the CE. Lightning Sentry is very useful for killing single targets and small groups. This is your secondary skill for bosses and Lightning Immunes.
DS is a synergetic to LS.

1-20 Charged Bolt Sentry
This is where all your leftover points should go. At the end of the game this skill will probably have around 10 points in it. Unless you are leveling very high in which case it might even be maxed.
CBS is mainly as a syngergetic to LS and DS. 

I should mention that it is also possible to do a fire trap based character with maxed Death Sentry, Wake of Inferno and the rest in Fireblast. With this route the fire damage will be lower than the lightning damage of LS but the CE from DS is still available. But if your a fire freak it is possible route though not as effective.

That covers the Trap tree and we are ready to head on Where to place your stat points.

Statistics

How you should place your stat points depends a little bit if you are c/s or c/c. A c/s will probably have a little more dexterity for max block, otherwise it’s mostly the same. Nevertheless I’ll dived the stat allocation into two separate, one for c/s and one for c/c.

Claw /Shield

Strength – Enough to equip your lowest item with strength bonus. A lot of the items a kicker will use gives huge strength bonus so it can be keep at a reasonable low base. However, you CAN NOT put to little in strength because it is the major damage bonus to your kicks. I would aim for about 200 strength with items which can be achieved with a ~80 base. Depending on what boots you will wear you will not need more than 208 strength. If you want to know how strength affects your kick damage then I can recommend taking a look at this excellent guide to kicking, written by jrichard. 

Dexterity – Enough for max block with gear.

Vitality – All the rest! Depending on your gear this number can be as high as 300 or more! The assassin gains 3 hp for each point invested which is quite much life when vitality is in the 300 area.

Energy – You wont need to put any points here. Dtalon will be able to leach enough for your mana problems to be very small.

Claw /Claw

Strength – Less than C/S. I would go for 79 base as you most likely will use Bartucs which gives a good strength bonus. If not, enough strength to equip the lowest item with strength bonus.

Dexterity – Enough for the lowest item with dexterity bonus. Your attack rating will probably still be good enough.

Vitality – All the rest baby!

Energy – None, same reason as for c/s

That takes care of the statistics. Lets move on the fun part, items!

Items

Claw / Claw or Claw /Shield?

It’s kind of hard for me to decide. I will draw up the pros and cons of both and let you decide.

Claw / Claw:
+ Higher Str/dexterity bonuses -> More life
+ Claw Block which can block elemental attacks
+ More +skills -> more trap damage and attack rating
- Less block for physical attacks
- No elemental damage weapon (can still be kept on switch though)

Claw /Shield:
+ Possibility for more elemental damage
+ Higher block for physical attacks
- Less +skills –> less trap damage
- Less life

I would base the decision on what equipment I had available. For me, the choice is obvious. C/S is really only good if you can afford very expensive weapons and runewords. C/C can provide so many more useful mods, which in my opinion makes it superior. To make the decision easier here comes a list of mod to look for on items.

What to look for

Because this is a hybrid build it is much more difficult to decide what gear to use. You always have to sacrifice something for something else. But in the end you want as much of everything as possible. Here’s a list of mods to look for:

-+Skills. This is very important. It raises your trap damage, your resist or IAS, block, SM, number of kicks, attack rating and kick damage.

-Crushing Blow. This is what makes Dtalon work. Crushing blow is a percentage which transfers to your kicks. If CB is triggered it removes 1/4th of the targets life after the kick damage have been dealt. 
For example, lets say we have a monster with 20 000hp. Your kick damage is 1k and lets say you have a 100% chance to hit and your Dtalon does 5 kicks. The first hit does 1k damage and triggers CB, this in turn removes 1/4th of 19k hp, which is 4750 hp. So basically, in 2 kicks you have done almost 6k damage. Imagine if the other kicks also trigger CB and you’ll se how CB is the killer with Dtalon.
Crushing blow will transfer to your kick from all items except your second hand claw. That is, the claw to the right on the screen.

- Increased Attack Speed. This is the 2nd part of Dtalon usefulness. Dtalon can kick as fast as 2fpa! The initial kick is slower and calculated on its own, but the following kicks are very rapid. What determines your kick speed is first the WSM on your weapon (if c/c it’s the WSM of the first claw you equip that counts), then how much IAS you have on your gear. Combine the speed and CB with DTalon and you’ll see that in the example above the 6k damage can dealt in less than half a second!

-Resists. You’ll need resists to survive so its a given. However, remember that you also have a choice between fade and BoS.

-“Chance to cast xxx on striking”. This is a very useful mod with DTalon. Because the attack is so fast even a 5% chance to cast xxx is triggered often. There is also some very useful things that can be cast, such as amplify damage, life tap, high level sorceress spells and so on...

-Strength, Dexterity and Vitality. Always useful. More kick damage and life. 

-Life leach and Mana Leach. Helps to stay alive when attacking. Also reduces the use of potions.

Now I’ll discuss a few possible items to use.

Specific Items

In this section I’ll list several items in all categories and explain why they are good or bad and give them a small grade.

Claws

Bartucs Cut Throat
This is my claw of choice if you go with c/c. It has almost everything you need: +skills, a massive strength/dexterity bonus, life leach and faster hit recovery. And it’s fast.
Grade 5/5

Jade Talons
This claw may be bad at first glance, but I’ve found out it’s really good! Ok, so it does have less +skill than Bartucs and no strength/dexterity bonus, but the massive resists might enable you to use BoS instead of fade which will save a lot of IAS on the rest of the gear. Jade also takes care of all mana leach problems.
Grade 5/5

FireLizard's Talongs
This one is decent. It has IAS, +MA, a nice fire damage bonus and good fire resists.
Grade 3/5

Shadow Killer
This one isn’t very useless. It does have “chance to cast frost nova” but you don't really want to give up a claw slot for a spell that don't deal any useful damage.
Grade 2/5

Runeword Strength
This one is excellent! It has a lot of CB, life leach and strength. This is a good cheap choice. I recommend using it with a Bartucs for the strength/dexterity and +skills.
Grade 5/5

Magical Claws
These can be very good, however also very rare. Things to look for are fast claws with Quickness mod and sockets. They can completely cover your IAS needs, though cut straight through your budget!
Grade 1-5/5

Helms

Orphan’s set helm, Guillames Face
This is probably the best helm for this build. It has a lot of Crushing Blow, fhr and a nice strength bonus. Use this mainly for the CB.
Grade 5/5

Shako
Shako is a very good choice if you don't need more CB. It has everything else you want. +skills, life, mana, pdr and so on...but I would not give up 35% CB on Guillames for it unless I have lots more in other slots.
Grade 5/5

Andariels Visage
This one is also a good option if you don't need more CB. It has IAS, +skills, strength and ll. However it has drawbacks; -30% fire resist, high clvl requirement.
Grade 4/5

Crown of the Ages
This one is probably better than both shako and Andariels. It only has +1 skills but the other mods make up for it; strength, resists, pdr, fhr and a possibility of 2 sockets!
Grade 5/5

Stealskull
Decent option with IAS, dual leach., fhr and magic find.
Grade 3/5

Tals Mask
Good for the 10% dual leach, resists and life/mana.
Grade 3/5

Body Armor

When it comes to body armors there are many good choices. I will list my favorites below. 
Body armors are usually a good space to get resists because armors with 4 sockets can easily get 30% resist all with no cost at all, but for wealthier players armors can give up to 60% resist all if needed.

Vipermagi
This one provides +1skills and good resists. It is a cheap and mediocre choice though. There are many better but this is a good armor for poorer players.
Grade 3/5

Natalyas set armor
This one gives life and +2 Shadow Disciplines which can be useful. It also has some poison resist. The best thing about it though is it comes with 3 sockets. They can be used for whatever need for your particular build. There is no partial set bonus to talk about though.
Grade 4/5

Leviathan
This one has a great strength bonus and pdr bonus. It’s very expensive though.
Grade 3/5

Lionheart Runeword
This is my favorite and the armor I use. It gives plenty of bonus to dexterity and strength as well as a lot of life. It also grants 30% resist all which is very nice.
Grade 5/5

Chains of Honor Runeword
This is the absolute best armor for this build. It gives +2skills, good strength, life leach, very good resists and also some magic find. However it is very expensive so don't plan on getting it aren't a wealthy player. 
Grade 5+/5

Belts

Thundergods Vigor
This one is good for its +20 strength/vitality and it’s +% to max lightning resist and absorb. High lightning resist and absorb make the game a lot easier in some areas, for example gloams in act 4 and 5.
Grade 4/5

IK belt
This one is excellent. +25 strength and great resists to fire and lightning. Useful for those who lacks resists. And its cheap.
4/5

String of Ears
Good and relatively cheap choice. Its got life leach and pdr.
Grade 4/5

Nosferatus Coil
This one provides IAS, strength and life leach. 3 very useful mods for this build.
Grade 5/5

Verdungo's Hearty Cord
Massive vitality boost and good pdr. Its good if you lack life but its not really that good in my opinion, at least not for the price.
Grad 3/5

Gloves

Dracul's Grasp
These are great. The have life leach, strength and Chance to Cast slvl 10 Lifetap. Lifetap is a very good asset when kicking in crowds. Lifetap makes you leach more than you will ever need. It fills up your bulb in one kick.
Grade 5/5

Crafted or Rare gloves
These can be very good. Look for IAS, +MA or SD skills, dexterity, strength, ll and CB.
Grade 3-5/5

Set gloves
There are several set gloves with 20 IAS and some other small mods. They are quite useful, though not as good as those mentioned above.
Grade 2/5

Boots

Boots is one of the most important part of the gear since the boots determine the kick damage. 

Upgraded Goreriders
These are the best boots for this build. The elite version has the highest damage of all boot types and Gorerider also comes with crushing blow. This is the boots you will want to get.
Grade 5/5

Normal Goreriders
These are still useful for the CB, however the kick damage is so low that it starts to get hard killing things in hell. They work very well through nightmare though.
Grade ¾

Shadow Dancer
These are the second best pair of boots. They do lach CB, but they still have the same kick damage as Goreriders but they also have dexterity and +Shadow Discipline skills, which is nice.
Grade 5/5

Rare and Crafted boots
Ideally you want elite boots because they have the highest kick damage. Crafted and rare boots can be really good if they get resists, strength/dexterity and leach.
Grade 1-5/5

Rings

Ravenfrost
This is almost a must-have for any build. Luckily it’s very cheap. For this build it adds tons of attack rating which is extremely useful. It also has cant be frozen and 20% cold absorb.
Grade 5/5

Bul Kathos
This one is quite good. The life leach is a bit to low though, but the +1skills and life bonus makes up for it. Very expensive though.
Grade 4/5

Stone of Jordan
This ring isn't really that useful for this build. All it’s got is +1skills but that isn't worth one ring slot.
Grade 2/5

Rare and crafted rings
These can be awesome. Look for life/mana leach, resists and strength/dexterity/life. In 1.10 it is also possible to find dual leach rare rings which is extremely good. 
Grade 3-5/5

Amulet

Maras
Maras is an excellent choice. The +skills and resists helps both you traps, kicks and survivability. Quite expensive for the average player.
Grade 4/5

Cats Eye
This one’s got IAS, dexterity and fr/w. It’s a good choice it you’re using fade, but with BoS you probably wont need the IAS and sacrificing an amulet slot for dexterity and fr/w is a waste,.
Grade 3/5

Metalgrid
Metalgrid serves one useful purpose, attack rating. It adds several thousands of it. The other mods don't really help that much. The summon golem charges might be fun, but in hell they wont last long.

Magical/Rare amulets
These can potentially be the best. However the clvl requirement of great rare amulets is usually 89. Look for +skills, leach, strength/dexterity and life.

This takes care of the item selection part. Lets move on with how you put together your character for best performance.

How to make a “Complete Character”

When I decide to create a new character I always spend hours thinking of how her gear, skills and stats will be before I start playing her. For me, that is the part I enjoy most. In this section I will talk about what to think of when planning your character and how to do it.

The first thing you must do is decide what the characters purpose is. Is it for Magic Finding, PvP or PvM? Do you want it to be able to take on every part of the game on her own or just do certain areas? The question list can be made long...

After you have decided the purpose you need an idea of how big your budget is. With this budget you will trade for (or try to find) the items you will need. You don't want to plan a character using items you probably wont afford, instead plan her around items you have or can get.

Now, the end goals you want for this build are these:

- Maxed resists in hell.
- 50% crushing blow or more. The more the better.
- Good amount of +skills to raise your trap damage, attack rating and so on.
- Enough IAS for the fastest kick speed.
- Some leech to keep you alive.
- Some mf if that is your purpose.
- Enough fhr to reach a breakpoint.
- Some Open Wounds to prevent monsters heal.
- Ways to deal with all kinds of immunities.

The real trouble is how get all these things on the same time. I usually start off with the most important pieces of the equipment and try to mix together pieces so I achieve the above. 
The most important pieces of this build are those that have crushing blow. So, you want to start your gear setup around those kinds of items, for example Goreriders and Guillames Face. After that it’s basically trial and error, but do it on paper. Remember that you also have sockets to use for most of the things you need, specifically IAS and resists.

One of the hardest decisions with this builds is fade or BoS. If you can get maxed attack speed with your gear but not maxed resists, then use fade. If you can get maxed resists but not the fastest attack speed, then use BoS. If you can get both with the same setup then it’s really a matter of taste. I prefer BoS because I like the fr/w, I hate to be ineffective and slow.

Here follows some links to sites where you can find all the tables you need.

Here is the Assassin FAQ which contains answers to the most usual questions about the assassin, but it also has tables for fhr.

Here is a page with tables over how much IAS you will need for different attack speeds with different weapon.

Mercenaries

This build really benefits from mercenary. I usually don't use one because I think they are mostly trouble; they’re expensive to resurrect and they die often. However I decided to try a mercenary out with this build and I’m glad I did.
In my opinion there are 3 choices: Blessed Aim, Might and Holy Freeze.

Blessed Aim
This mercenary gives you more attack rating which is good, however you will still have good attack rating without it. But if you want a few more % better chance to hit then this is your guy.

Might 
This one will boost your kick damage by a few hundred in the end. The damage boost isn't huge, but some like all the damage they can get. Might also makes it easier for the mercenary himself to stay alive. In my opinion is isn't the kick damage that kills, it’s the crushing blow. I doubt 200 more kick damage speeds the killing up noticeably.

Holy Freeze
This is my choice. Holy Freeze makes you and your mercenary safer. It also allows you to get a corpse much faster when you are attacked by multiple monsters.

Play Style and Strategy

In this part I will say a few words on how to play this build.

When you are playing this build you have several weapons to wield. You have traps, corpse explosion, kicks, shadow master and mercenary. You will fast learn on when to use which and how. 

The basic idea when attacking a crowd is to lay down 1-2 LS and 1- 2 DS. How many depends on the group. The LS will start hurting monsters while the DS waits for a corpse to explode. Your shadow mastery and mercenary will also attack which provides 2 great tanks for you. What you want to do is go at the weakest monster and as fast as possible kill it. With DTalon and CB it usually takes 1 series of kicks. In later hell it might take 2 or 3 though depending on luck, monsters hp and amount of CB. Once there is a body DS will basically take care of the rest. If DS uses all of its CE charges a LS will finish of the job.

If you encounter ranged monsters or really tough ones which you don't want to melee because they will most likely kill you, you still can handle them with ease. LS will be able to take care of all non LI monsters throughout the whole game. Just use your shadow master as a tank and stay back and cast LS until the monsters are dead. Also use a few DS once there is a corpse.

When you encounter a boss, this build will really shine. Cast your shadow master as your tank in front of the boss then put up 5 LS. Then start kicking away. Crushing blow will remove 2/3 of the bosses life in less than a second. The last part is the toughest because CB wont be able to remove very much life. This is where your kick damage becomes important. You don't need 2k kick damage to kill bosses though. Your traps will probably do the rest after CB has lost its use. An elemental damage weapon on switch is also a good asset to use in the last parts of the bosses life.

Do remember that your playing for fun, and this build is fun!

Other uses for this build

Player versus Player

This builds is not meant for PvP but it might still stand a chance. DTalon is a great PvP skill but you will most likely need to change your gear for pdr.  LS is also quite useful, however most good PvPers have 85% lightning resist and a good amount of absorbs which will make your traps do little damage. But if you are mostly playing PvM but would like to try PvP you can certainly do that with this build.

Magic Finding

This build was to my surprise a good MFer. She might not be able to wear huge amounts of mf, but with a skullders and a shako she can still kill almost as fast. If you only want to mf then I would probably do another build, but this build can still do it very good. Especially Eldritch and Shenk because they are surrounded by monsters. Once there is a corpse DS will take care of the rest. Baal is also quite easy. The only problem is the last wave, but hey...everyone have problem with them. They aren't LI though so your traps do hurt them quite a bit. It might not be enough though, you will need to separate them and kill one at a time.

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How to Build a Ninja

Attributes

Strength – Around 200 with gear
This build has to be strong. Strength contributes directly to Blade Fury, Blade Shield, and Dragon Talon. You absolutely must wear Myrmidon Greaves. Upped Goreriders are 156, and Shadow Dancers are 167.

Dexterity – Enough to maintain 75 % Blocking
This depends entirely upon your gear. Attack rating is not very important with Cloak of Shadows active, but you have to be able to block. This usually needs to be around 150 with gear if you use a shield.

Vitality – Everything else
With hits in Hell topping 1000 Damage, you need all the life you can get. Damage reduction helps a lot here, as do resists.

Energy – Zilch
Dragon Talon costs 6 points. Blade Fury costs less than 4 Points per Blade. Use + Mana gear.

Skills

Martial Arts

Dragon Talon – 18-20 Points.
The Number of points here depends on your +Skills Items. You get one extra kick for each six points, so make sure you’re not wasting two extra skill points if it doesn’t give you an extra kick. The kicks are rapid-fire at 2 fps, and they all hit the same target. Throw in some Crushing Blow, and this gets scary.

Tiger Strike – 1 Point + Skills
Talk about a one-point wonder. At level one, three charges significantly boosts the damage on your initial kick with DT. Remember, that’s only the first kick, but this is still worth one point, especially if you have some +Skills involved.

Cobra Strike – 1 Point + Skills
Another amazing one-point skill. Mix three charges of Cobra Strike, three charges of Tiger Strike, and one maxed Dragon Talon, and your days of Leech gear are over.

That’s it for the Martial Arts tree. Simple, huh?

Shadow Disciplines

Claw Mastery – 1+ Points
This is where your extra points go. Blade fury takes its damage from your total weapon damage, in a manner of speaking, so anything that raises your base damage is very good. 1 point adds 30% extra damage. After that, the bonus is 10% per point and never tapers. However, at only a third the effectiveness in each spent point after the first, this skill can wait.

Psychic Hammer – 1 point (prerequisite)
You’ve got to be kidding me. Ninjas have mastered their bodies. Let the silly monks master their minds.

Burst of Speed – 1 Point + Skills
Ninjas must be fast. They must be able to run and hide. However, attack speed means next to nothing with Blade Fury and Dragon Talon. And with the diminishing returns on run speed, some good boots will get you where you need to be better than wasting skill points.

Cloak of Shadows – 20 Points
This is a very difficult skill to use. When you can run like the wind, it’s hard to hold back and let this skill work. However, at high levels, it is unbelievably fun. CoS can reduce an enemy’s defense almost to nothing. That is equivalent to an exponential Attack Rating boost. It means you can focus on damage in your gear and strength in your stats. It also provides a moderate defense bonus. It’s not as good as a defiance aura, but it’s a darn sight better than nothing.

Weapon Block – 10 Points
This one is tough. You really have two options here. Since mods from a secondary claw do not carry over to Blade Fury or Dragon Talon, you might want to use a shield since you can achieve a higher block and probably get some nice resists. The other side of this, though, is that weapon block faces no penalties for movement. With ten points in this skill, you’re only going to get hit half the time, period. Run all you want. If you do choose a shield, though, make sure you get one with high resists. My opinion? Simple. What Ninja ever used a shield?

Shadow Warrior – 1 point (prerequisite)
She’s good in normal, but not good enough to waste any points on.

Shadow Master – 1+ Points
Another tough call. She’s a great tank, but how many points? If you can cast her at Level 17 she gets all her shiny new equipment. It depends on your gear. I leave this one to personal taste.

Fade – 1 Point + Skills
For Emergency Use Only. if you're using a shield or Jade Talon, then resists, so resists shouldn’t be too hard to come by. As for the Physical reduction, it’s too scant to make a difference. One Rockfleece is worth ten of these skill points and a lot easier to get.

Venom - ? points
Again, personal taste. This is a great skill to combine with Blade Fury, since its attacks are faster than venom’s duration. If you always play in a party and can get away with being a consistently ranged attacker, go for it. It’s not that great for solo play, however. The monsters come too fast.

Traps

Fire Blast – 1 point (prerequisite)
Honestly, a Master of Stealth throwing Molotov Cocktails?

Wake of Fire – 1 Point (prerequisite)
Still fuzzy on why a Ninja would want to illuminate a room and blow her cover.

Blade Sentinel – 1 Point (prerequisite)
This is a fun skill, but doesn’t do enough damage to be worthwhile.

Blade Fury – 20 Points
This is the Ninja’s weapon of choice. Yes, the direct damage is low. It is graded to generally make up for the lost damage on your claw. But don’t forget the ¾ weapon damage. This skill essentially puts you at a 6 fps attack with your melee weapon and almost all its bonuses. Yes, Crushing Blow transfers. Yes, Enhanced Damage transfers. Yes, Knockback works. Yes, Leech works. Yes, Chance to Cast Spells on Striking works. Oh, and did I mention she’s standing ten yards from her adversaries? Think about that. She’s like a Javazon throwing at 6 fps who never runs low on ammo.

Blade Shield – 1+ Points
Strictly speaking, this could be optional. Ideally, you’re rarely close enough for it to work. However, when you do need it, your leech gear will transfer. That mean monsters coming into your range are restoring your life and mana every second. Try 15-20% of 200+ damage per monster per second. Doesn’t sound so bad now, does it? Well, don’t get ahead of yourself. Leech is cut to 10% of your gear’s total in Hell. 20% = 2%. Doesn’t sound so great now, does it? This is a great skill in Nightmare, though, and it does look cool.

That about does it for skills. If you follow this plan, the build is essentially complete at 82 Skill points, or level 70. That leaves a lot of wiggle room for seasoning to taste. Go Knuts!

How to Play

General Strategy

This build is all about finesse. Remember, this is marginally a Role-Playing Game. So, play the role of a Master of Stealth. The main idea of this build is threefold:

1: Don’t get noticed.

2: Don’t get hit.

3: Hit hard and fast, then RUN!

We’ll take them in order. First, don’t get noticed. This build is the epitome of patience. You must go slowly! If you are swarmed, you have no crowd controls. That means no traps, no corpse explosions, no group knockback skills. A Ninja peeks around corners, makes a noise, and lures her prey to their death while their buddies are snoozing. Cloak of Shadows is essential. Unfortunately, its duration sucks! However, it is relatively cheap to cast, and is a lifesaver in many situations. The monster AI, however, must not be underestimated. Once they start after you, CoS does nothing until they are rerouted, usually through an attack. Which brings us to Point No. 2

Don’t get hit. If there is a better way to stay alive than not getting hit in the first place, I don’t know what it is. This is where Blade Fury comes into play. When the monsters see you and move to attack, you cast CoS and run. As they follow you they are separated and you begin firing Blades at them as fast as possible. Remember, Blade Fury’s speed is set at 6 Frames, or 4 blades per second, so IAS means diddly here. When the enemy is hit with a blade, their AI resets, and they begin to meander due to CoS. At this point, you have two options. You can continue to pelt them with blades, which almost always hit due to the defense modifier on CoS, or you can move on to point 3.

Hit hard and fast, then run! If the monster you are up against is particularly strong, or if it is unaffected by CoS (bosses, champions, etc.), your next move will be a decapitation strike. Make your way to the target, charging Tiger Strike and Cobra Strike on the way in. Use Dragon Talon on the big guy. Retreat. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Specific Tactics

This build is a little rough to play, partly because you never really know how hard you are hitting. Blade Fury has a casting animation, so there is a short delay anytime you release the mouse button. In order to get the most out of your 6 fps attack, you will need to stand back, stand still, and click on a place behind your target. Personal Note: Why in the hell Blizzard made Shift the default “stand still” key is beyond me. Right handed players should immediately switch it to the space bar. Trust me, you’ll love it.

Since you’re not actually targeting an enemy, you can’t see his life. This is usually not a problem, though, because all the big boys are going to be taken down with Dragon Talon, which is targeted. For the most part, though, you’ll find yourself running around with the pointer near the edge of the screen. As soon as you see an enemy, hold the space bar (See above) and you will let fly a barrage of Blades. Aim at the enemies farthest offscreen and you will kill them before they know it. As the rest start toward you, they will be caught in the crossfire.

This is where your Shadow Master is crucial. She will usually throw out just enough traps to slow the pack down, and your attack is fast enough to keep one or two enemies in recovery-lock at all times. When they get too close, either run away and regroup, or switch to Dragon Talon and clean up. Places that most builds hate are the places the Ninja shines. The Maggot Lair is a Ninja’s dream, and the Arcane Sanctuary just lines them up for the slaughter.

The other end of the stick is a real pain, though. Wide-open spaces are a nightmare. The Flayer Jungle is nerve-wracking. You are surrounded before you can even get started firing. This is where CoS becomes important. If you get swarmed, drop a CoS, stand still, launch into Blade Fury, and start spinning slow circles. You will begin to thin out the ranks relatively quickly. A Holy Freeze Merc will help a lot in this situation.

Choice of Mercenariess is debatable, though. The Holy Freeze merc will slow everyone down, making targeting and strategic retreat much easier. The Might Merc will increase the damage of both Blade Fury and Dragon Talon. There’s also something to be said for having a Barbarian Merc for use as a human wall. Which you choose is up to you.

One last thing here. This build must be treated as a melee character. Unless you have a way to beat Physical Immune Monsters, you’re screwed. Elemental Damage transfers to all your attacks, though, so you should be okay, as long as you have some mixed elemental damage. Open Wounds always works well in this situation.

Here Comes The Science!

Well, the logic, at least. This build works because of your gear and your playing skills. If your gear has low damage, you will die. If your gear has no useful mods, you will die. If you are too slow, you will die. If you are too fast, you will die a lot. Remember, the Way of the Ninja is Stealth.

I will not go into which mods transfer to your skills. Read naliworld’s general FAQ for that. I will simply mention which mods are most useful to a Ninja.

- Crushing Blow is critical. It’s like casting Static Field on one enemy. Shoot for at least 50%, preferably 100% or more. Use Guillaume’s Face, Goreriders, Rattlecage, Stone Crusher, Stormlash, anything you can get with Crushing Blow. The only downside here is that Crushing Blow isn’t as effective with Blade Fury. Console yourself with the 6 fps attack from half a screen away.

- Open wounds will carry onto both skills, and is not resistable. This is much more effective than poison damage, so if you can find this mod, hang onto that item.

- Ignore Target Defense is your savior. It only works on normal monsters (no bosses or champions), but you will mainly be using Dragon Talon for those guys anyway. With ITD, you always have a 95% chance to hit, as long as you don’t tackle monsters more than about 5 levels above yours. Even then, you will still be in the high 80’s or low 90’s. Get this mod.

- Chance to Cast Static Field on Striking is a big help, too. This is the closest thing you will have to a crowd control skill. If you can find a weapon with this mod, use it.

- Increased attack speed means next to nothing. Save your mod space for more useful mods, like resists. Since your attack speeds on your two primary skills are set, you are already as fast as you will get. Combine that with Burst of Speed, and IAS fades into the sunset.

- Enhanced Damage is almost as important as Crushing Blow. This transfers to Blade Fury (not Dragon Talon). Since we are adding ¾ of your weapon’s total, every point you can wring out makes your blades deadlier.

- Elemental Damage also carries over onto Blade Fury and Dragon Talon. If you’re lucky enough to have a set of Firelizard’s Talons or a Stormlash, you’re way ahead of the game. Look for smoldering charms of winter and storms. They’re pretty cheap, and they add up fast. The elemental damage on kicks doesn’t show up on the character screen, but it does transfer.

- Leeching is good with Blade Fury, but a quick Cobra Strike with Dragon Talon can be substituted. Since your Blade Fury damage is usually relatively low, you will need to shoot for at least 15-20% leech before you see real results. Before you discount this as a waste, however, remember that Blade Shield will leech as well.

I don’t like to go into specific gear, but I will say that this character is a little difficult to play untwinked. However, this build is for people who are tired of their endless unstoppable MF runs with their lvl 96 hammerdin, so twinking is probably not a problem. Shoot for some of the higher end stuff, like Firelizard’s, Shadow Dancers, Gaze, Stormshield, Steelrend, etc, but don’t overlook mid-range items. Goreriders, Guillaume’s Face, Rattlecage, Moser’s Blessed Circle, Duriel’s Shell, T-God’s, Hellmouth, Tiamat’s Rebuke, Rockstopper, Duress, etc. are all good mid-game choices. If you use a shield, find one with resists, then socket it. Stormshield is incredible, with Strength and PDR, but it is expensive. Moser’s Blessed Circle with two Perfect Diamonds yields 63% resist all and 62% blocking. Not too shabby. If you can find the runes for a Chaos claw, use it. It has added damage and two chances to cast pretty high-level spells on striking. Overall, just look for useful mods and high damage. Be creative.

I will, however, sound off about one particular Set of gear. Sell your soul for Natalya’s Odium. In case you haven’t looked at it recently, I will take the time to list all of the mods that it has that help a Ninja:

- High Resists
- 30% PDR
- + Strength
- + Dexterity
- 14% Dual Leech
- 40% Faster Run/Walk
- High Damage Claw, Even higher vs. Undead and Demons (That’s practically everyone)
- + 3 to Skills
- Ignore Target’s Defense – Every Blade Hits!
- Cold Damage
- Socketed Armor

Good Luck beating that set of mods with any other 4 pieces of gear. It even leaves room for a shield, or you can switch to a higher damage primary claw (Firelizard) if you prefer to use Weapon Block and you will still get set bonuses if Nat’s Mark is in your off hand. The only downside is the low-damage boots, but this build is only secondarily about high-damage attacks. The most important aspect is enhancing blade fury and, of course, looking cool.

Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow…

Well, that about wraps it up. This build is certainly not for everyone. It is a uniquely interesting and different build than most, however. It utilizes skills that are rarely seen for what they are really worth, much like people who create charged bolt sorceresses. If you’ve ever sat back and said to yourself, “Man, this is all old hat. I need a challenge.” Try this on for size. One size definitely does not fit all, but it looks real good on you if you wear it right. Enjoy, have fun, and Go Knuts!

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Abbreviations and Terms

• MF = Magic Find
• GF = Gold Find
• AR = Attack Rating (to/hit)
• lvl = level.  Mlvl, Ilvl, Clvl, Slvl: Monster, Item, Character, Skill
• Str/Dex/Vit = Strength/Dexterity/Vitality, character stats.
• BO/WW/Hork = Battle Orders/Whirlwind/Find Item, Barb skills.
• Seed = Refers to the variable stats on an item.  For example a Stealskull can spawn with 30-50% magic find.  32% would be a poor seed, so 43% would be a good seed, 50% would be a perfect seed.
• 1s/2s/3s/4s = Number of sockets on an item, 1-4.
• HC/SC = Hardcore/Softcore.  Mortal/Immortal char types.
• A = Act. A1, A2, A3, A4, A5.
• NM = Nightmare, H = Hell.  Difficulty levels.
• MP/SP = Multi-player, Single-player.
• 1H/2H = One-handed, Two-handed.

Barbarian Creation

The best possible way to make your MF Barbarian is to create him from scratch, with this as his long term goal.  You can of course convert an existing Barb to an MF'er, but there might be some skill or stat points wasted on things you don't really need for your MF'ing.

The equipment is extremely important for such a character, and you'll really do well if you have all or most of his long term gear ready before you begin. If you are just getting started finding good gear you'll have to work your way into it, and you will find better stuff as you go, but it's better to have enough good stuff to plan most of your equipment out in advance.  It's much faster also.

Sword Barbarians

A Sword Barbarian is the best option for an MF-Barb, for two reasons.

Ali Baba: The best way to kill a boss is while dual wielding The Blade of Ali Baba Unique Tulwar.  If you have points in Sword Mastery you'll have better damage and Attack Rating when you switch from your main weapon to the Ali Baba(s), and that makes it quicker to get that last hit.  If you have a different weapon mastery it's not impossible, it will just take more swings.  You might offset this with AR gear, or more points in Berserk or Whirlwind.

Shield: Sword Barbs can easily use a shield, since a Barbarian can use any sword one-handed with a shield. A Shield is very helpful (almost mandatory) for dedicated MF'ers, for the defensive and stat bonuses. Hardcore characters need to pay special heed to this, of course. If you are running through Durance two with a 2H weapon, it's just a matter of time until you lag out or get desynched and die. There are good one-handed axes and hammers, but you'll have to switch from the two-hander you use for faster leveling, and you'll still have the low AR problem with Ali Baba.

A third, lesser reason is that it's generally easier to find/make a big damage sword than a Polearm, Spear, Blunt, or Axe.  If you already have one this is irrelevant, of course. More on this in the equipment section.

Long Term Goals

You can begin doing Hell Meph runs at Clvl 65 or lower, but you'll need pretty good equipment to be safe and successful at that point.  We'll use Clvl 75 as the base level here, for the amount of skill points and stats you'll have then, so subtract some if you are looking at a lower target Clvl.  Your Barbarian will of course level up from Meph kills, but slowly, and hardly at all past 85.

I began doing Hell Meph runs with my current MF Barb at Clvl 71, and he's 79 now, almost exclusively from killing Meph.  Being higher level helps in many ways; you get more hit points, you have a better to/hit based on the Clvl vs. Mlvl comparison, you get more skill points (though you should be pretty well set for Meph runs by Clvl 70), etc, so leveling up never hurts.  My last Barb was doing Meph runs at 72, and with virtually the same equipment at 86, he was MUCH faster at the Meph kill, and I'd added to nothing but Vitality.  Being a higher level helps a lot on your to/hit against very high level monsters.

Your MF-barb gear will contain few, if any, +skill items, so you'll generally just have the amount of skill points you've placed.

At Clvl 75 you'll have 86 total points (74 points +12, 4 for the skill quests on each diff level).  Here are where your skills should be at that point. This is 71 skill points at the minimum levels recommended, leaving you 15 more to assign. You can add more to WW or Berserk or Natural Resistance or Faster Run, or try some of the optional skills listed in the skills section.

The main attack skill I recommend most is Whirlwind.  You can also use Berserk or Frenzy.  More on that in the skills section.  WW is the easiest to use, and the fastest to use when you are leveling up from 30 to 70+, and is best for Super Uniques or Baal runs.  Berserk is best for Meph runs.

• Battle Orders: 20
  • Howl and Shout are pre-reqs.
• Sword Mastery: 20
• Whirlwind: 10+ (if this is your main skill)
  • Bash, Stun, Concentrate, Leap, and Leap Attack are pre-reqs.
• Berserk: 1+ (requires Whirlwind, 6-8 if this is your main skill)
• Frenzy: 0, or 15+, if this is your main skill
• Natural Resistance: 10+
  • Iron Skin is a pre-req.
• Faster Run: 1+
  • Increased Stamina is a pre-req.
• Find Item: 8+ (optional)
  • Find Potion is a pre-req.

You should have around 1500 max damage on your WW, with about 2500 AR.  Less of each is possible, but will slow things down.  Try adding AR on a Charm or two if you are taking too much damage from Meph, more hits will increase your leech and speed considerably.  If you add 200 AR from charms (Grands can have up to 125) that will be worth 800 or more AR once modified by your WW and Sword mastery, and should make a noticeable difference.

Hotkeys and Controls

The MF Barb doesn't need a lot of hotkeys.  At the most simple, you'll have Concentrate and Berserk on your left click, and WW, Leap Attack, Battle Orders, and Town Portal on the right click.  Shout and Battle Command should be on the right click also.  Optional Warcries such as Battle Cry and War Cry might be hot keyed as well as Attack or Concentrate on the left click.

You can put all of the skills on the right click, including Berserk, Concentrate, and/or Bash, but I find it easier to keep direct melee attacks on the left click.  Hotkey Attack to the left also if you will need to use it sometimes.

When casting your Warcries, you should always cast Battle Command (for the +1 to all skills) first, then cast Battle Orders and Shout.  You must remember to always cast Battle Command first though, if you cast Battle Orders later without the bonus, you'll reset your hit points, which can be bad. 

Inventory Management

MF'ing runs are generally very quick, create a game, do the run, exit the game when it's over.  You don't need town portals, identify books, or space to pick up more than one or two items.  I generally carry town portal scrolls in one slot of my belt, and you can put one or an ID scroll in your cube if you think you'll need them.  You won't very often, especially as you get used to doing fast runs and get a technique for it.

Charms are your friend.

Your inventory will be almost totally full of charms eventually.  When leveling up, charms that add to your AR and damage and hit points are most useful.  At higher levels you'll want as many MF charms as possible, and possibly some AR, resistance, and hps ones also, if needed.

An ID tome is very convenient, and necessary if you are doing Cows.  Other places you can wait and get your loot ID'ed by Cain in town if you really need another 2 spots for charms.  Doing Meph runs you'll be running right past Ormus at the beginning of each run, so you can buy ID scrolls, use them, and sell the ID'ed stuff right then, or run over to Cain first.

I always carry a Horadric Cube for the storage space bonus.  It takes up 4 spots in your inventory, but you can put 12 spots into it, so it's +8 spaces, end of story.  It's nice to have 12 (or more) empty spaces in your inventory, so you can unload a full cube at once.

If you are going full out MF'ing, especially if you are just doing Pindleskin or Meph runs, you can totally fill your inventory with charms, and have just a Cube for storage.  If you get two good items at once you'll have to do some maneuvering, but two good drops from the same run aren't all that common (though often there will be several items you want enough to pick up and sell next game).

If you have no space to pick things up, you'll have to open your inventory and click on the item.  This will pick it up, and you can then drop it into your Cube directly. If you are really out of space, you can pick up an item, and exit the game with it still on your cursor.  When you next join a game you'll have to drop it to move, but if you create your own game this isn't a problem, and it's certainly better than not bringing the item, or dropping some charms to carry it.

Mercenaries

Most Whirlwind Barbs don't use a merc, since the merc dies so often.  As the WW barb spins through and around huge packs of monsters, there will always be a few beasties who target the merc instead of the Barbarian, and will beat him to death while you are killing other things.  Also you don't really *need* a merc, being such a powerful character.  A Might merc is very helpful for the added damage, especially when leveling up, but if you are spending all of your time and most of your potions to keep him alive, he's not exactly helping you level faster.

Berserk and Frenzy Barbs benefit more from a merc, and have an easier time keeping him alive, since they can tank for the merc, rather than spinning all around like a WW barb does.  For those types of Barbs, a Holy Freeze or Defiance merc would be most useful, though they could also benefit from artillery support, such as from a rogue or Act 3 merc.

It's not uncommon to use one Merc while you are leveling up, and then switching to another type once you reach Clvl 75 or 80 and are going to do MF'ing full time.  If you are just leeching your Exp all the way, then this and most other strategy points are irrelevant.

All Barbs can greatly benefit their mercs with beneficial Warcries.  Battle Orders doubling your Merc's hit points is always a good thing, but you will often have to go back to town to get a heal and quickly fill the merc up all the way.  And don't forget to refresh them before they run out, often times when you refresh your own Battle Orders your merc can be out of range, if he's stuck on a corner or still fighting one last monster, so you need to be sure the merc is getting the benefit.

Merc MF'ing Selection and Tactics

You can use a Merc for the MF'ing bonus (let the merc get the kill and their MF adds to yours) but most Barbs aren't real good at this.  You'll generally have to lower the monster to a sliver, then let it beat on you while you wait for your merc to get the last hit.  This can be painful, especially since you are probably equipped with dual Ali Baba at that time (for the maximum MF upon death) rather than your normal sword/shield.  Meph hurts a lot when you have no blocking, no damage reduction, low no-shield resistances, and you aren't hitting him to leech back.

For Merc MF'ing, a high level Might Merc is the best bet, in my experience.  Some players recommend the Barbarian Mercs, if you are only using them for boss killing. They won't do as much damage as a Might merc, but they hit very quickly with a sword, and that much leech can keep them alive.  They also have higher stats than the Act 2 mercs.  Might mercs are more useful elsewhere, for example you can keep one along when you are doing Bloody Hills runs, and your damage will be increased dramatically.  Also you'll be hitting Meph or other bosses for double the damage you normally would, which makes the fight much faster.  Might mercs are great for SuperUniques also, since those monsters don't do so much damage, and will die quickly to the Mercs attack.  Pindleskin with a Might merc is very easy, almost as fast as doing it solo.

The problems are in keeping the merc alive on Meph, and getting the merc over the blood moat in the first place.  When you enter Durance 3 you'll run to the blood moat and leap over, but your merc won't warp over to join you, since he's not far enough behind.  He'll be stuck on the peninsula or other side, often with the chasing mob of Dolls or Bremm and company next to him, which usually results in a very quickly-dead Merc.

There are three ways to deal with this:

• Teleport.  If you have teleport charges on your Amulet or Circlet you can use one here, and your Merc will pop right next to you when you do.  The drawback is the expense and detour it takes to get it repaired.
• Run to the back.  This is the easiest way, when you leap over the moat, you just run up past Meph, to the back room where the gold on the floor and chest are.  Your merc will be far enough away and will warp over.  The drawback is it takes some time to do, and there are very often Blood Lords up there that are annoying, and can cook your Merc with their Meteors.
• Town Portal. This is the method I find easiest.  You just leap over, and as soon as you land, cast a TP, pop to town, and then back down again.  Often the Merc will be low on hps after being pounded some on Durance 2, or he might not have filled up fully from your Battle Orders, and in either case, you can run to Ormus to get a full heal for you and the Merc in just a few seconds while you are in town.  Keep the town portal scrolls in one row of your belt so you aren't giving up MF charms for that inventory space, and just buy a new one each game when you hit Ormus for healing potions or to sell loot.

Whether this is worth it depends on how fast you can do it, and how much MF you have.  If you've already got 800%, then adding to 950% with the Merc isn't going to make much of a difference, due to the diminishing returns. Letting the merc get the last hit generally takes 25% longer, much longer than that if he dies and you have to resurrect, so do it if you are the type that agonizes over every blue or yellow Shako and Crusader Bow, but otherwise you might just want to do 15 more runs in an hour, and hope for better luck on quantity, rather than merc-added quality.

Berserk and Frenzy Barbs have better luck with mercs for the MF, since they can run up and tank the monster, taking all the damage themselves, while their merc gets in free hits.  It's very hard to use WW with a merc, since the monster will target the merc as soon as you start spinning around.  Mercs and minions take huge bonus damage from Act Bosses, so don't be surprised if your merc seems to be dying much faster than he does normally.

The main survival problem for Mercs comes from their equipment.  Since you are using him here for the killing blow, you must have good MF on him, or there's no point in doing it at all. But if he has MF gear on (the easiest is a 3T helm and 4T armor) he'll be low on resistances and hit points, and therefore die more quickly.  It's nice to have 250% MF on your Merc, but if he's dying constantly due to no resistances, you might have to compromise some on equipment, giving him a Smoke or Lionheart, rather than a 4T or Skullder's.

The best merc MF'ing gear is pretty obvious, it's the same stuff you'd like to wear.  If you have enough of that stuff to stock up your Merc, then go for it, but most players don't.  This is a bigger issue Hardcore, since you have to consider that if you die, you'll lose everything on your merc (and most likely yourself, since MF runs are almost always done in solo games).  Losing your gear sucks, losing good stuff on your Merc also is really painful.  A Harlequin Crest is probably the best single Merc MF'ing item, since it gives great MF, damage reduction, and a huge hps bonus.

Life Tap: One clever suggestion we've gotten from several readers is to get a wand with Life Tap charges, and use that on Meph.  With Life Tap on, your Merc will fully heal himself with every hit he lands, and can tank the boss solo if need be.  Ideally you sliver Meph, then back off and switch to your dual Ali Baba while the Merc gets the last few hits.  The wand is best equipped in the second slot with your main sword.  Cast it before the Merc gets hit, and it'll last for the rest of the fight, most of the time.  (Life Tap = 16 seconds at Slvl 1, +2.4sec per Slvl.) Wands can come with 100 or more charges of this, and they aren't expensive to repair.

The main drawback is you are giving up your shield to equip this wand instead, and that's risky if you are Hardcore.  It's not recommended that you hold the wand instead of an Ali Baba, since the whole point to using a merc is to add to your MF. You could switch to the wand from your Inventory, then back to your main sword or shield, but that would take a bit of time.  You can try to do Baal with Life Tap, but he has so much elemental damage that Mercs rarely survive to get the last hit, especially if they are frozen by his Cold Wedge, so they are best used on Meph and SuperUniques.

Merc MF'ing Gear

Mercs only have three equipment slots, so their options are limited.  Much more info and details on all of these items in the Equipment section, later in this guide.

Remember that mercs can wear Ethereal equipment forever, since nothing takes any durability loss when they are using it.  So if you find a good item that's Ethereal, always consider it for the Merc.  In many cases items that you wouldn't use even if they weren't Ethereal can be great Merc gear.

The Merc's MF adds to yours, but keep in mind how diminishing returns work on your MF, as seen in the table below.  Use  this calculator to see your exact totals.

The point of this is that if you have very high MF on your character, adding more from your merc is not a big benefit.  If you have low MF, then your merc's MF makes a big difference.  If you have 700%, and your merc has 200%, that only takes your Unique MF up 14% if you let the Merc get the kill.  If it takes you a minute longer per run to let the Merc do it, and he dies half the time, then it's probably not worth the trouble for the tiny increase.

Whether you bother with a Merc or not relies heavily on the "what if" factor.  If it drives you nuts when you get a magical or rare Crusader Bow, or Loricated Armor, or other potentially great Set/Unique item, then you'll want all the MF possible so at least then if you get a Rare Hydra Bow, you won't curse yourself for not having just a smidgen more MF on your merc, that might have succeeded on making the item Gold or Green.

All items mentioned in the merc gear are covered in the main items section of this guide, with links and stats.

Armor

Mercs get the most from MF from Skullder's, which also has good defense. Tal's Armor is probably the ideal, for the 40% to fire/cold/lightning, as well as huge defense and 112% MF with a topaz.  But it's almost impossible to find, so you'd probably be using that armor yourself if you had it. Four topaz armor is easy, try to get an elite ethereal with good defense for the merc.  Another option is the Set Ornate Plate, Griswold's Heart, which has over 900 defense and 3 sockets. If you could somehow find Griswold's Valor as well, the set Corona, which has very good MF and defense, wearing both at once would give your Merc a bonus of 20 strength and tons of defense, with nearly as much MF as plain socketed 7 Topaz items.

Headgear

A 3 Topaz helm is the easiest to find.  Other good helms are the ones you'd want, a Harlequin Crest, Stealskull, or even Tarnhelm.  Harlequin is excellent for the damage reduction and huge hps bonus, and Stealskull adds more life leech and IAS, both of which help a lot. You can also find rare Circlets with good MF along with other bonuses such as resistance or stats or hit points or leech. Griswold's Valor would go well with Griswold's Heart, as mentioned in the Armor paragraph, but it's virtually unfindable.

Weapon

This varies by the merc type.  The ultimate merc MF'ing weapon would be the Runeword Silence.  It's got 30% MF, in addition to great damage, lowered requirements, and 75% resistance to all.  This would be the best possible weapon for just about any merc situation, (short of a 6-Ist weapon) but with Ist and Vex required, it's very hard to put one together.

All Mercs can equip a 6-socket weapon with 6 Ist runes, giving 180% MF, or more realistically put MF jewels in, getting up to 60% or so.

Act One Mercs want the best damage, fastest firing bow possible.  They can't use crossbows or Amazon Class bows, which rules out Buriza or Lycander's Aim.  The +3 skill Lightning Inferno trick isn't very useful for Meph, since it's not all that much damage, and he's got a lot of lightning resistance.  In any event, these mercs kill slowly and tend to run into danger, especially if you are using WW, so they aren't real good options.

Act Two Mercs use polearms or spears. Just about any unique excep Spear or Polearm is a good option, especially if you have an Ethereal one you can't use yourself.  Look for ones that add to defensive bonuses, such as the Unique Lance, Spire of Honor, which has a bonus to defense.  IAS and life leech are very helpful also, and a big ethereal cruel would be great..  The Unique Fuscina Kelpie Snare and the Unique Battle Scythe Athena's Honor, both have bonus hit points. Meatscraper, the Unique Lochabar Axe has 30% MF, as well as decent damage, life leech, and IAS bonuses, so it's probably the best option, if the damage is enough for your needs.

Act Three Mercs use a sword and shield so have the highest possible MF (Ali Baba, unsocketed, and Rhyme would be good for 105% at level 80.), possibly 180% sword and 75% shield (got 9 Ists?), but their elemental spell attacks don't pack enough punch for effective boss killing, so they aren't a real good option.

Act Five Merc Barbarians benefit from +Barbarian skill equipment, and can wear Barbarian class helms, though nothing on those really helps much with MF'ing.  They equip swords, so same as the Act Two guys, any Ethereal Unique is a nice weapon for them, or if you have a spare Cruel sword, they'll go well with it. They can use an Ali Baba for the big MF, but the damage on it isn't much.

Skills

Warcries

See our Character Section for recently-updated and very extensive info about every Barbarian skill. Warcries are here.

All builds will want to max out Battle Orders.  The main decision to make is about Find Item.  If you are going to be doing nothing but Meph runs, there is no need to put any points here.  However Hork (the onomatopoeic nick name for Find Item) is mandatory if you are going to be doing any Super Unique runs, such as Pindleskin, or if you want to profit doing the Cow Level, or want to improve your finds leveling elsewhere.  I highly recommend it.

Warcry is another optional skill that's very useful.  It stuns and damages monsters for a short time, and can be a life saver if you get mobbed.  It's very helpful in places like the Cow Level also, but again, if you aren't going to do those areas, you don't need it.  A good connection to Battle.net (no lag) and a shield helps a lot to replace War Cry.  If you are going to add it, you can wait until Hell to do so, though the Clvl 18 pre-req skill, Battlecry, can be quite helpful as you are getting to Clvl 30.  If you know you are going to do Warcry eventually, put a point in Battlecry as soon as possible and use it.  More in the strategy section.

When casting your beneficial Warcries, always cast Battle Command first, for the +1 to all.  This will make your Battle Orders and Shout more effective.  You must remember to cast BC before BO every time though, or you'll reset your hit points.

Recommended Skills:

• Howl: 1 point, pre-req.
• Shout: 1 point, pre-req.
• Battle Orders: 20 points, know it, love it.
• Battle Command: 1 point, well worth it. 
• Find Potion: 1 point, pre-req. 
• Find Item: 8+ points, optional.  More in the strategy section.

Optional Skills:

• Taunt: 1 point, pre-req for Warcry 
• Battlecry: 1 point, pre-req for Warcry (helps on early leveling also) 
• Warcry: 1+ points, at least 3 or 4 are most useful.  Optional (add at high levels, if at all).
• Grim Ward: No points, not recommended.  Of possible use in the Cow Level or for Pindleskin runs.
  

Combat Skills

The type of Barbarian you are going to play must be decided in advance.  I generally recommend going with Whirlwind for your main skill, since it's the fastest killer most of the time, especially if you go two-handed with your sword.  Going from Clvl 30 to 70 is far faster with WW than Berserk or Frenzy, and it's safer, leeching back a ton, keeping you moving and less likely to be hit, etc.

Once you are actually doing just boss runs, especially Meph runs, Berserk is actually better, since it has a huge AR bonus, lets you tank so your Merc will be more viable, and does enormous damage.  There isn't any leech, but you can use Concentration for that, when needed.  However going from Clvl 30 to 70 or 80 hitting monsters one at a time, one swing at a time, is very tedious.  Berserkers will need a lot more patience than I possess, or else will want to try and party leech exp quite a bit.  Berserk is so effective (overpowered) that you can save a lot of skill points using it.  Just 6 or 8 is plenty to slaughter anything with Berserk, and you'll save 10 or more skill points.  Stick them into Find Item, Faster Speed, Natural Resistance, etc.

Frenzy isn't recommended for Hardcore, since you have no shield and are standing toe to toe, so any bit of lag could be your last.  You also need two good weapons for Frenzy, and it's harder to find 2 big swords than 1 big sword.  It's great for boss killing though; 20 points in this and you can use your dual Ali Babas all the time, if you want, and easily take down bosses with them.

All three of these work well for MF'ing Barbs, I recommend Berserk if you have the patience to level up with it, WW if you don't have as much patience and want to be a powerful killing character elsewhere (such as doing Baal runs, which are very hard with a Berserker), and Frenzy if you just want some variety, and are softcore or very confident in your connection.

Recommended Skills:

• Leap: 1 point, pre-req.
• Leap Attack: 1 point, pre-req and mandatory for Meph Runs.
• Bash: 1 point, pre-req and useful for boss killing.
• Stun: 1 point, pre-req.
• Concentrate: 1 point, pre-req.
• Whirlwind: 10+ points, more adds damage and AR.
• Berserk: 1+, 4 or 5 is plenty.  The best boss killing skill.  Go to 10 or more if you are using it full time.

Optional Skills:

• Double Swing: 1 point, pre-req for Frenzy.
• Double Throw: 1 point, pre-req for Frenzy
• Frenzy: 1+ points, can be useful for boss killing with dual Ali Baba, but it's not needed, and is not as effective as Berserk.
  

Combat Masteries

Sword Mastery is best for reasons mentioned above.  If you do Axe, Mace, Spear, or Polearm, you'll want at least 15 points, and most max them out for the damage, AR, and critical hit bonuses. Points in your weapon mastery are generally better than points in Whirlwind or Berserk since your mastery adds damage and AR to everything: WW, Berserk, Concentrate, Bash, etc.

Recommended Skills:

• Sword Mastery: 20 points.
• Increased Stamina: 1 point, pre-req.
• Increased Speed: 1+ points, optional, but very helpful for Meph runs.
• Iron Skin: 1 point, pre-req for Natural Resistance.
• Natural Resistance: 10+ points, how many depends on your other equipment.  Past 13 diminishing returns really start to come in, but more points here gives you much more freedom in your equipment choices, to go all out for MF.

Optional Skills:

• Mace Mastery: No points or 20 points, depending on your weapon.
• Spear Mastery: No points or 20 points, depending on your weapon.
• Polearm Mastery: No points or 20 points, depending on your weapon.
• Axe Mastery: No points or 20 points, depending on your weapon choice.
• Throwing Mastery: Not useful.

More on how to use the skills in the Strategy section, later in this guide.

Stats

The MF Barbs's stat distribution is pretty simple.  The more hit points (especially Hardcore) the better.  You'll want to plan your weapon in advance (since it will almost certainly be the biggest Str/Dex req of any of your equipment) and add just enough stats to use it, and no more.  More Dex is not so bad, since it'll help with your blocking and AR, but more strength is basically a waste, since it just adds to your damage, and you aren't really after massive damage.

You can also look to go with less than the biggest Elite weapon.  A big Cruel Executioner sword would do enough damage, and save you 19 Strength compared to a Colossus Blade, which you could turn into 19 Vit, worth upwards of 160 hps, once you factor in Battle Orders.  A Champion sword is 163/103 Str/Dex, compared to the 189/110 Str/Dex of a Colossus Blade.  That's 33 stat points saved, which is worth around 264 hit points!  The lesser damage might take you a few more swings, but for the huge hit points boost, it's worth it, especially Hardcore.

You will not likely have much, if any, equipment that adds to your stats (since you'll be all magic find gear) so you will probably have to achieve the minimum requirements naked, or nearly so.  War Traveler has +10 Strength, but few other top MF items have any bonuses to stats.  If you have some great rare with MF you are planning on wearing long term, then incorporate that into your final Str/Dex figures.

Ideally you'll have around 2500 AR and 2000+ hps when you're doing Meph runs, though you can go with much lower hps and survive.  You don't really need more than 1000 or 1200 for Meph, but more gives a margin for error, especially if you get some lag running through Durance 2 or 3.

Strength: As much as your heaviest item requires, and no more.  Generally this will be your sword, since none of the top MF armor is all that heavy.

Dexterity: As much as your sword/weapon requires.  You'll probably need around 100 to have sufficient AR.  If you have more points in Berserk or WW you can get away with less Dex, and you can add tons of AR with with charms or equipment, if you need to.

Vitality: As much as possible.  Once you've met your equipment requirements, usually around Clvl 60, you'll put every point from there on into Vitality.  Barbarians get 4 hps per vitality point, more than any other character, and that 4 turns into about 8 with your Clvl 20+ Battle Orders, giving you 40+ hps per Clvl. Do that for 20 levels and you've got 800 more hit points.

Energy: Never add a point here.  You only get 1 mana for a point in Energy, and if you need more mana you can very easily add it with a charm or two.  One small charm can have 15+ mana, which is equivalent to 15 stat points.  In comparison, one small charm with 15 hit points is equivalent to about 2 stat points in Vitality.  If you have to ask if it's better to make up 15 stat points or 2 stat points with a charm, you should probably stop reading right here and go play checkers or something less complicated.

Equipment

I recommend that you do a sword barbarian, either from scratch just to be your big MF'er, or you can convert an existing one.  In any event, the main weapon recommendations in this equipment overview will be for swords, for that reason.  Other types of weapons are covered to some degree, but less thoroughly.  It's not all that hard to pick your weapon anyway, you want one with IAS, big damage, maybe some leech, etc.

There are a few caveats on the MF'er weapon though, since big big damage isn't really your goal.  You want a weapon that does enough damage to kill the monsters, but since you'll generally be doing your item finding runs in solo games, you don't need a huge damage item.  It helps, but it's not like you are trying to solo the Ancient's Way in an 8 player game, where massive damage is the order of the day.

In fact, it's often helpful to do less damage, since you want to whittle the monsters down to just a sliver, so you can then kill them with just a few swings of your Ali Baba.  If you are doing huge bites of damage with each hit, you'll find it difficult to get the monsters low, and will either kill them with your main weapon, costing yourself 200% MF, or will have to swing repeatedly with your Ali Baba, taking longer and probably getting yourself battered and maybe having to drink potions.

If you can get a weapon with decent damage and AR that's good enough, and it has other things, like +hit points, resistance, etc, it's much better for your MF'ing than just a pure huge damage weapon.  Use the bigger damage one to level, switch to the all around weapon when you go full time to MF'ing.

Glossary of Commonly Used Game Terms

AR: Attack Rating 
BP or BPS: Breakpoint(s) 
BotD: “Breath of the Dying” Rune Word 
CBF: item property “Cannot be Frozen” 
Clvl: Character level 
Dual Leech: an item that has both Mana and Life leech 
Echoing: prefix found on magic items; grants +3 to warcries 
ED: Enhanced Damage 
FCR: Faster Cast Rate 
FHR: Faster Hit Recovery 
IAS: Increased Attack Speed 
ITD: item property “Ignore Target’s Defense” 
LL: item property “Life Leech” 
MF: Magic Find 
ML: item property “Mana leech” 
PDR: item property “Physical Damage Reduction” 
PMH: iem property “Prevent Monster Heal” 
Prismatic: a property on an item that gives +all resists 
PvM: Player versus Monster 
PvP: Player versus Player 
R/W: Run/Walk (as in run/walk speed) 
Slvl: Skill level 
TP: Town Portal 

Stat Point Distribution

The most important things to consider before assigning stat points are what weapon you plan to be using at endgame, and whether or not you’re going to use a shield. This will give you some idea of how much strength and dexterity to aim for. I personally prefer berserker axes, thanks to their base speed of 0, wonderful 1 handed damage, and ability to obtain up to 6 sockets, meaning you can create virtually every Rune Word weapon available. This will be discussed more in the equipment section.

Strength

Enough to use your biggest item. If you’re following this guide to the letter, I’d suggest getting your strength to exactly 156 base and stopping, as that is the requirement of Stormshield, the biggest item you’d be using. You can alternately use your other gear to reach your targeted amount, though I personally feel 156 is a good, safe number - not too much, and yet not too little, either. Massive strength isn’t so important, since most of the end-game items you’ll be looking for give 20+ strength bonuses (arreat’s, CoH, Stormshield, etc), and because your main concern is survival.

Dexterity

If you’re going with shields, you’ll need a hefty amount of dexterity to maintain max blocking. Stormshield, for example, requires 222 dexterity at level 99 to achieve max block. Whether you make that you base amount or get there with items is up to you, just so long as you have enough to maintain max block.

Dexterity has several desirable effects on your character. Aside from assisting in determining your block rate in the formula, every 4 points into dexterity gives you 1 extra defense, which is useful to the build. Likewise, dexterity gives you ar at an exchange of 4 points per 1 stat. If you ever decide to pvp with the build, you’re going to want as much ar as you can get; thus, you can never really waste a point of dexterity on a concbarb.

On the other hand, if you’re not planning to use a shield, then you need only get enough dexterity to use your weapon. You can leave it at base for big mauls, since there are plenty of ar boosting skills and items in the game, and one of our “tools” — battle cry — knocks off 50% of an enemy’s defense, making him much easier to hit.

Vitality

Everything you have left. While in the past, Ironbarb variants didn’t really require a lot of life, things have changed in 1.10. There are several types of creatures who ignore defense, and with damage from enemies increased across the board, you’ll want a hefty amount of HP to soak up magic and elemental damage in the later parts of Hell.

Energy

None. All of your skills use at or around 2-4 mana, so this is not an issue, even vs. mana burn uniques.

Skill Point Distribution

Here is where we get into the blood and guts of the build. As I stated before, this template is a variant of the Ironbarb, though it forsakes some of the traditional steps taken by its forbearer to max defense to instead become more versatile and balanced. The basis of this is the synergy chain: Concentrate is your main skill, which chains with Battle Orders, which chains with Shout, which chains with Berserk, which chains back to Concentrate. Thus, just about every skill in the template works with another one, making the barb operate much like a well-oiled machine.

Below is a list of all the skills you will need, as well as my reasons for selecting such. Keep in mind that this is a skill point distribution for the entire 110 points acquired by level 99; as level 80 is a more reasonable estimate, I will provide my suggestions of what skills should be worked on last.

The Big Four

Regardless of what little changes you want to make to personalize the build to your tastes, there are generally four main skills that are the main strengths of the character. Whatever path you take, make sure you max these four skills.

Concentrate: 20 skill points

Concentrate is the engine of the build. This skill, once overlook for its poor damage and slow killing speed, has become a powerhouse in 1.10, with synergies boosting its damage to very large proportions, along with massive defensive boosts and the inability to be interrupted. Plus, at the meager cost of two mana, you can get by with little to no mana leech when using it as your main skill.

Battle Orders: 20 skill points

Even with your huge defense, max block, resists, and pdr, your character will take quite a pounding from magical and defense ignoring enemies. Thus, the more life the better. Battle Orders likewise has several very important synergies in the patch. For one, it gives concentrate an incredible +10% damage a level, which alone would justify it’s use. Furthermore, the skill grants a +5 second/level bonus to Shout and Battle Command, both of which are critical to this build plan. So for your 20 point investment, you get a skill that gives +200% damage to your main skill, doubles your life/mana/stamina, and increases how long your defense and skill boosting warcires last by an excellent 100 seconds. It’s also party friendly, benefiting you, your group, your merc, and any other summons/hirelings/friendly npcs in the area.

Shout: 20 skill points

Shout boosts the defense of you and your party by huge amounts, which will help you survive the harsh environment of the patch. Also, just like Battle Orders, Shout has some valuable synergies to take advantage of. It too features the wonderful +5 seconds/level boost to Battle Orders and Battle Command, so with both this skill and BO maxed, you’ll get +100 to each of them, and +200 to Battle Command, making that skill last over 3 minutes with only ONE skill point invested in it. The skill also provides a 10% damage/level bonus to berserk, which you’ll want a point of anyways for dealing with those pesky PI’s later in the game.

Weapon Mastery: 20 skill points

A lot of people will tell you that boosting a mastery is a foolish act in the patch, that working with synergies is a much better idea. However, with this build you are already maxing the three skills that do the most using synergies in your build: BO, Concentrate, and Shout. The only other skill you could really consider working on is Bash, but all that does is give you 5% damage/level, while a weapon mastery gives you 5% damage, 8% ar, and increases your critical strike chance. Thus, it is the humble opinion of this writer that every player should pick a weapon to specialize in and work on maxing it out. Which one you pick is totally a matter of personal opinion, though I sincerely feel that axes offer the most to the template, as they have the most powerful one handed weapon in the game in the berserker axe, can use most every Rune Word, have very low requirements, and are the only candidates for use with the blood weapon recipe, which can create some insanely powerful weapons, should you get lucky. I’d like to note that because of the difficulty of gaining levels in the patch, I would suggest making this the second-to-last skill you work on; the three preceding skills should be your top priority.

The One Point Wonders

The next section of skills are the ones you’re definitely going to want one point — and typically only one point — of. Make sure you pick up all of these over the course of your barb’s career.

Battle Command

BC always deserves a point of investment, just because it is so useful. BC first, then use Shout and Battle orders for a lovely +1 skill boost to both of those when they are cast. BC also receives some nice synergies that make it much more powerful in the patch: +5 second/level boosts from Shout and BO. Thus, once you max those two, you can cast BC, Shout, BO, and then BC again to get the +skill boost to it, increasing all of your skills for a good 4 minutes!

Howl

One of the main issues with playing a Concentrate barb is the fact that it’s a “one enemy at a time” skill; thus, you don’t have much in the way of crowd control. That’s where Howl comes in. When swamped with enemies, a blast from Howl will throw them into a panic, forcing most (if not all) of them to flee from your character. While most of the time this won’t be necessary for your barbarian, thanks to his huge defense, you will run into several occasions where you are pitted against an enemy class that ignores said defense (like Moon Lords, Gore Bellies, and their kin). A quick spamming of this will give you some time to breath, and thin out the mod quite a bit, making it much less frantic and more manageable. This skill works wonders with Taunt as well, and tactics combining the two have been explained in the Gameplay section.

Howl has a limit on its terror inducing ability, designated by the formula slvl + clvl + 1, as compared to the monster’s level. Likewise, certain enemy types, as well as all act bosses, champions, and unique/super unique enemies are immune to this skill.

Taunt

Ok, this is probably going to turn out to be a somewhat lengthy rant. Taunt is, without a doubt, my favorite skill, one that is so under-appreciated that it is ridiculous; it is a skill that has so many applications that I feel it should be a staple for nearly every barbarian made post-1.10.

So what’s so great about Taunt? Here we have a skill that forces an enemy to stop what it is doing and move into melee range to attack you, while lowering his damage and accuracy. While it may not seem too great at first, to an ironbarb, is an incredible, incredible tool! Following activation of the skill, one of three things is going to happen:

1. The enemy will swing, and the attack will be negated by your blocking
2. The enemy will swing, and miss, thanks to your huge defense
3. The enemy will swing, make it past your blocking and defense, but do meager damage, thanks to pdr from the skill and your equipment

But wait, there’s more! Taunt is also extremely party friendly, allowing you to pull enemies off of your weaker compatriots and onto yourself. You can also use this to your advantage when working with your merc, as you can use it to keep heavy hitters off him. Furthermore, use of the skill causes enemies to abstain from using special attacks, and taunt works wonders against ranged attackers, forcing them to stop shooting and walk right up to you. and, you can use it in combination with Howl for some incredible crowd control. Howl to scare off the crowd, taunt to pull back the ones you want to deal with as you feel like it. All of this for just one point!

Berserk

This one doesn’t really need much explanation...it’s been a staple of every barb build since Blizzard introduced PI’s into the game, and since it converts all of your damage to magical, it is totally unaffected by the deadly Iron Maiden curse. A one point investment is plenty enough, as you’ll get an additional 200% damage from your shout skill and it will be boosted a level by battle command, though you may decide to come back and put points into this later in your career; see the spare point section for more detail.

Battle Cry

For one point, you get a skill that significantly lowers the damage dealt by enemies and halves their defense, making them much, much easier to hit. Battle Cry has the added bonus of working on nearly everything in the game as well, making it a wonderful tool to use against bosses like Duriel and Diablo and other high-defense, high-damage uniques. Also nice for when you are being mobbed, because even with your defense and equipment pdr, it’s nice to get every possible edge you can in combat in 1.10.

Note: Battle Cry works in PvP

Increased Stamina/Increased Speed/Ironskin/Natural Resistances

All of these skills provide powerful passive boosts to your character. While in previous versions of the game, it was prudent to play a good 5+ points in Increased Speed and Natural Resistances, this is not the case anymore thanks to synergies. One point in each one is enough; with +skill items, battle command, and good equipment/charms, they will all be upwards of 7 or more with just one point invested.

Other One-Pointers of Interest

Here I’ll list a few potential skills you might look into getting, if you feel like it. Previous versions of the guide had these listed in the main build, but seeing as how people have different tastes, I’ve decided to separate them out and let the player decide if he wants them or not.

Find Potion/Find Item/Grim Ward

I’ll just lump all of these together. Find Potion and Find Item are listed for obvious reasons...you never know when you’ll score that Zod rune or high-end unique using FI, and FP will let you stock up on potions for long excursions when you don’t have a TP.

Grim Ward is a whoooooole other story. I know most of the readers of this guide would probably see this as a wasted point, but it is actually quite the contrary. GW is a very powerful tool in the right hands. While most of the time, you’ll rather use Howl instead, the ward shores up for Howl’s weaknesses. For example, in close quarters, Howl will scare off the enemies, but if they hit a wall, they will just turn around and come right back, attacking you regardless of the fear. Grim Ward handles this case very well, putting up a defensive zone that nothing will enter for 40 seconds; thus, when the enemies hit the wall and come running back, they’ll just turn around again and scurry off. This is nice to use when you come up against a powerful unique boss as well, giving you 40 seconds to dance with him alone. You can also employ some very powerful tactics involving the ward: Set a few up in a perimeter and any enemies trapped within will become panicked, running back and forth between the wards while you take them apart. It’s also really nice for parties, since you can create safe zones for casters, archers, and throwers, and use it when at lower levels to safely navigate dangerous terrain, or ensure your retreat by throwing one up while on the run.

A nice bonus to all three of these skills is that they provide you with a form of corpse disposal, which is extremely useful when facing mobs of resurrecting foes.

Leap Attack

Another staple for most barb builds, LA is basically barbarian line-of-sight teleport. Lets you get across rivers, gaps, hills, groups of monsters, and many other obstacles you will encounter in the game. Of course, if you’re using something like Enigma for your armor, or a teleport amulet, this skill loses its luster, so keep that in mind when planning your strategy.

Remaining Skill Points

At this point, you should have anywhere from 14-19 points left over in your build. After you’ve got your one-pointers down and the core skills taken care of, you’re free to spend these however you’d like to strengthen yourself in the late game (8x-99). Below I’ll list a few of the more popular alternatives, just to give you an idea of what to look at.

Offensive-Oriented Barbs: Bash

The sole reason for working on this late game is to take advantage of the 5% damage/level boost to your concentrate skill. With a powerful weapon, high levels of bash can net you upwards of 500+ extra damage, which is then multiplied by deadly and critical strikes. Keep in mind that synergies are only affected by actual investment in the skill, and not by adders, so in that regard it is sometimes more prudent to put points into Bash over Ironskin for those players seeking more of a balance between the two. The downside, of course, is the aforementioned requirement of high-weapon damage for this skill to shine. If you’re swinging something with a max damage of around 150 or 200 or so, this skill really isn’t going to help you much, so keep that in mind when picking a filler-skill.

Defense-Oriented Barbs: Ironskin

Those of you interested in bvb or in possession of extremely high-defense armor pieces might consider Ironskin for your investment. With really good gear, points in ironskin can net you another 5-7k defense easy, which is really nice, especially when you aren’t swinging. The downside is that defense works on diminishing returns, so if you already have a high amount (17k+), the bonus is likely to only lower your change to be hit by a small amount (3% or so, for example), and then you have to keep in mind that when you swing for conc, you’re adding even more defense which may already take you to the dodge minimum of 5%. Defense is likewise worthless against certain enemy and damage types, which one must take into consideration when deciding how to build their character.

Hybrids: Berserk

For those players looking to create more of a hybrid-style barbarian, Berserk is an excellent option. The 1% magic damage/level conversion is nothing to sneeze at, as it can help you get around the resistances of some creatures (and players). Likewise, more points will lower the duration of the skill’s flaw, and increase the damage and ar to massive proportions. It can also make taking care of PI’s and IM enemies that much easier, and is nice in pvp against defense-ignoring enemies like smiters and hammerdins who can drop you in a matter of seconds; one or two huge hits from berserk, with its irresistible magic damage, is often your only hope for victory with the build in such scenarios.

Other Options

Of course, you can always just take your spare points to work up skills that are lacking. You might be more of a magic-finder, in which case you could look into Find Item. Or, you might want to invest in some of your other skills, like Increased Speed or Natural Resists, if you’re lacking in either of those departments late in the game. You could even think about picking up entire new skills, like whirlwind or throwing mastery, if you wanted to be able to do a bit of everything. The point is that after you get the main 4 skills of the build set, you’re pretty much done, and anything else you invest in is more frill-material, so have fun with your character and make him whatever you’d like!

That should all add up to 110 skill points, the maximum amount you can acquire whilst playing through the game. Since it’s rather difficult to level past 80 in the patch, I would recommend working on your weapon mastery and sub-skills last, as they do not provide much other than increased AR and frill-material; all of the other skill point investments provide you with useful tools for handling your foes.

Outfitting Your Conc Barb

Now we come to the fun part of the build: the equipment. While it is important to have the skills you need to survive, you’re going to need the gear to capitalize on them. In this section I will list good equipment for each slot, as well as what I consider the best for the character and why. Note that I generally make mention of uniques and set items, as I have no way of knowing what properties you will stumble upon as far as mods on rare and magic items goes. When in doubt, use a blood crafted item.

Keep in mind that since this is still technically an Ironbarb, a good property to look for in all of your equipment is high defense. This, along with good resists, will help you make the most of your skill distribution. Also, you need to think about the breakpoints for Concentrate, which vary depending on the weapon. I have included a section that gives basic numbers for the two most popular one-handers, colossus blades and berserker axes, in the “Gameplay Tips” section; for other weapons, consult the Weapon Speed Calculator located at the top of the diabloii.net forums.

General Properties to Keep an Eye Out For

• +skills
• enhanced defense
• physical damage reduction (this caps at 50% total for the character)
• +% resists (lightning, and fire in particular)
• magic damage reduced
• mana/life leech
• +stats (strength and vitality in particular)
• increased attack speed
• cannot be frozen
• crushing blow/deadly strike
• prevent monster heal
• % damage to demons/undead
• +life 

Properties to Avoid

• Knockback; you’re a melee-range character, pushing the enemy away is a bad thing.
• +Light Radius: this mod isn’t really so bad, it just has a feature that is worth mentioning: increasing the light radius around your character also increases the range at which enemy monsters can detect you; this can be troublesome early in your barb’s career when his defense is low, as you could accidentally stir up a nest of archers while attempting to handle a small group of melee-range enemies. On the upside, these items are worth a good deal of gold early in the game, and are fairly common, so you can sell them off for a healthy profit and use the gold for shopping or gambling.

Helm

There are several possibilities when it comes to the headgear section. Anything that provides nice resists and defense is a plus, though since you’re a barbarian, you’ll more than likely want to look to barb helms for the +skills. At lower levels, some of the smaller sets like Sigon’s are great, and any of the normal uniques will carry you forward quite well. At mid-to-high level, Guilluame’s Face stands out with its deadly strike/crushing blow and strength boosts, along with the ever-popular Vampire Gaze. The Rune Word “Delirium” can likewise be excessively powerful, socketed into the right helm. Overall though, I still believe that nothing really beats the good ol’ Arreat’s Face; she provides huge defense, stat boosts which will help with damage and accuracy, life leech, +skills, 30% faster hit recovery (which I will discuss more in the charms section), and wonderful resists.

Several of the new high-level unique helms are very nice, though none of them have mods that really outpace the mid-level helms in terms of the level-requirement-to-useful-ability department.

• Low-level: Sigon’s helm, Dusk Deep, Tarnhelm, Biggin’s Bonnet, a decent Rare
• Mid-Level and up: Rockstopper, a good Rare barb helm, Arreat’s Face, Guilluame’s Face, Vampire Gaze
• Endgame: Arreat’s Face

Gloves

Glove selection really depends on what your weapon is, as you will more than likely need some extra IAS to help you hit a decent frame rate. Thus, anything with 20% ias is wonderful. At lower levels, the Hand of Broc and Bloodfists are great, along with Sander’s Folly with the +40 life/20%ias. Sigon’s set gloves are very nice in combination with another piece (like the shield) for the 30% ias. Lavagouts and Venomgrips stand out for the mid-range, the 'gouts in particular for the increased attack speed and fire resist. Laying of Hands is nice at higher levels for similar reasons, as well as Dracul’s Grasp (life tap!). Steelrends are very powerful with the damage/cb, strength, and HUGE defense, and as always, blood items are excellent for any slot.

• Low-levels: Hand of Broc, Sander’s Folly, Sigon’s Gage
• Mid-level: Lavagouts, Venomgrips, Magnus’ Skin
• High-level: Dracul’s Grasp, Laying of Hands, Steelrends
• Endgame: Blood Gloves or any others with 20% ias if you need help hitting breakpoints, Dracul’s or Steelrends if you don’t

Belt

Early in the game, Death’s Sash, Lenymo, and Nightsmoke are all great items to stumble upon, though you will more than likely just end up using a strengthong rare belt until you get up in the 30’s. String of Ears is very popular at the mid-level, thanks to the leech and pdr (which, when combined with Stormshield, can take you to max). I am personally very fond of Thundergod’s Vigor, as the +20 strength/vitality adds a lot of life/damage to the build, it has nice defense to capitalize on, and the lightning max resist boost/absorb will keep you alive when you go up against Gloams and such in later acts. Hwanin’s belt is also very, very nice for a mid-level Concentrate barb, with the Prevent Monster Heal and +defense per level.

Nosferatu’s Coil (now renamed Siggard’s Stealth) is great at higher levels with the slows enemy, leech, strength, and ias mods, and the new Arachnid Mesh spiderweb sash is very, very powerful for the +1 skills and 20% fcr (which you will appreciate when you’re surrounded by a huge group of defense ignoring enemies and REALLY need to get that howl off). Verdungo’s Hearty Coil is probably the best overall, however, with the added pdr to bring you to max, that HUGE vitality bonus of up to 40, nice defense, and the 10% fhr to help you hit breakpoints with less charms.

• Low-level: Death’s Sash, Lenymo, Nightsmoke
• Mid-level: String of Ears, Thundergod’s Vigor, a good blood-crafted belt
• High-level: Siggard’s Stealth (Nosferatu’s Coil), Arachnid Mesh, Verdungo’s

Boots

The old favorite, Treads of Cthon, are extremely nice boots that you can pick up at level 15 and wear throughout the game, though until you get a decent amount of base stamina, Vidala’s Fetlocks (level 9) would probably serve you better. Goblin Toe also gives a good deal of crushing blow.

Mid-level introduces you to Gore Riders, which are some of the best boots you can get for a barb now that the critical hit bug is gone. War Travelers are still very nice though, and Marrowwalks are becoming increasingly popular in the PvP circuit.

• Low-level: Treads of Cthon, Vidala’s Fetlocks, Goblin Toe
• Mid-level: Gore Riders, War Travelers, strong blood boots
• High-level: Marrowwalk, any of the mid-level boots
• Endgame: Gore Riders

Amulet

A lot of nice options for this slot as well. A good rare or blood amulet can provide you with resists, +skills, and dual leech (plus life and run/walk on the blood amulet), along with other nice mods. Eye of Etlich is pretty nice on the low end, and Cat’s Eye picks up a lot of ground later on for the ias, defense, and r/w increases. However, Highlord’s Wrath would be much more useful in the patch, for the same reason I mentioned in the boots section: no more critical strike bug. +1 skills and 20% ias on it helps out a lot too, assisting you in getting to your targeted frame-speed. Of course, for PvP, the Angelic set amulet with two of the rings can add literally thousands of ar to your character, so keep that in mind if you plan on dueling and you find your hit % lacking.

• Low-levels: Eye of Etlich
• Mid-level and up: Cat’s Eye, strong rare/blood amulet, Highlord’s Wrath
• Endgame: Highlord’s Wrath
• PvP: Angelic set amulet, in combination with two copies of the ring

Rings

Early on in the game, the mods you can find on rings are pretty limited. Rings with the +max damage mod are fairly common, and very useful to early in the game, until you can manage to get a nice rare, set, or unique ring, like Cathan’s Seal or Manald Heal. Other than that, just keep an eye out for physical/magical damage reduction, as well as leech of any kind.

For the more advanced characters, the typical rule of thumb still applies: unless you have a Cham in your armor or something, you’re gonna want at least one Ravenfrost. Cold damage for corpse disposal, AR, dexterity, cold absorb, and that tasty “cannot be frozen” mod make it one of the best all around rings you can get. As for the other slot, there are several possibilities. Bul Kathos’ Wedding Band is lovely with the + skills, life leech, and HP boost. Blood-crafted and rare rings are awesome now as well, since with some luck you can get one with mana leech and +all resists as the mods, which means it will be dual leech, prismatic, +strength and +life. You’re definitely going to want to get mana leech on one of your rings if it isn’t already on your weapon.

As mentioned in the amulet section, the Angelic set ring in combination with the amulet adds a huge amount of ar per character level; thus, if you’re suffering for hit %, you might consider the amulet with two of the rings for your jewelry.

• Low-levels: Manald Heal, Cathan’s Seal
• Mid-level and up: Ravenfrost, blood/rare rings, Bul Kathos’ Wedding Band
• Endgame: Any combination that makes up for your weaknesses, namely leech and Cannot Be Frozen
• PvP: Angelic set ring x2, in combination with the amulet

Shields

The main purpose of the shield is to give you that 75% max blocking, so anything with a high block rate is excellent. Sigon’s Guard is superb at any level, with the huge block, low requirements, and +1 to all skills; it can carry you a long way. For MF, “Rhyme” is very nice for the block, resists, and magic/gold find rates. Further on down the line Moser’s and Gerke’s pick up a lot of steam, and upgraded versions of these (using the exceptional-to-elite cube recipe on the ladder) are very powerful endgame items. And of course, you can’t discuss shields without bringing up the king of them all: Stormshield. This is *the* shield to aim for, thanks to its huge block, 35% pdr, resists, and +30 strength (which really boosts that one-handed damage a lot).

• Low-level: Sigon’s Guard
• Mid-level: Gerke’s Sanctuary, Moser’s Blessed Circle, Whistan’s Guard
• High-level: Stormshield
• Endgame: Stormshield

Body Armor

Ok, there are a ton of good options for this slot, and a lot of people may not agree with my personal decision, but let’s go through the choices.

During the low levels, any high-defense piece of equipment will serve you well, with notable instances being Sigon’s Shelter, Iceblink, and especially Twitchthroe. For the extremely low levels, simple armor socketed with chipped rubies does a great job.

The mid-to-high levels open up many, many more options. Since you’re a defense oriented character, anything with huge defense is obviously of interest. Godly elite armors of the whale and titan are of particular interest, with their huge defense and nice bonuses, along with the possibility of getting two sockets on them for jewels/runes. An ethereal version would just be insane.

Old favorites like Arkaine’s Valor and Gladiator’s Bane are likewise very good, and ethereal zod’d versions are awesomely powerful. Also, several of the exceptional level armors are very nice with the new unique upgrade cube recipe. Duriel’s Shell and Black Hades come to mind, Duriel’s for its awesome mods and Hades for the 3 sockets and huge defense.

“Enigma” Rune Word armor is a great piece of equipment...nice defense, the teleport skill, r/w bonus, mf, a large +strength bonus, and several other noticeable properties will more than likely make it a staple for barbarian pvp combat. The "Stone" Rune Word is likewise very nice, and can give some insane defense totals to a character; the runes are fairly common to boot, so it makes a good mid-level armor for those of us who aren't as financially well off in the world of Sanctuary.

Finally, “Chains of Honor” Rune Word armor is of special interest. I know a lot of hardcore defense nuts will argue that this thing doesn’t have enough for an ironbarb, as it only grants the user and additional 70%. But, I stress again: 1.1 is about balance, and this armor is about as balanced as it gets. You get the enhanced defense. You get Life Leech. You get 65 to all resists. You get 8% pdr. You get +20 to one of your main stats, and +7 to your life restoration rate. Throw in the damage bonuses to demons and undead (which make up well over 2/3 of the enemies in LoD), and the +2 skills which, as I mentioned above, gives you boosts to virtually everything (resists, defense, stats, ar, damage, life, mana, run/walk, etc), and you have what is quite possibly the best armor around. The runes are a bit high though, with Ber and Ist being the most expensive, but if you managed to get them all and cram them in an archon plate, wire fleece, great hauberk, or other elite LIGHT armor with high defense (light because it doesn’t affect r/w speed or stamina drain), you’ll have one godly piece of gear.

• Low-level: high defense magic/rare armor, Sigon’s Shelter, Iceblink, Twitchthroe
• Mid-level: Guardian Angel, Shaftstop, Duriel’s Shell, "Stone" Rune Word
• High-level: “Enigma” and “Chains of Honor” Rune Words, anything with good stats/high def
• Endgame: either of the high level armors

Weapons

Regardless of what mastery you go with, you’re going to want two echoing weapons on the switch for using your warcries. Any two will suffice. Don’t waste your time with “Call to Arms,” as the runes are excessively expensive, and the BO/BC bonuses do not stack; you’re much better off with a cheap pair of echoers.

Now, as for your main weapon...well, it all depends on which mastery you pick. With axes and swords, you can make strong, one-handed weapons that will let you hold a shield. Both of these are candidates for the “Cresent Moon” Rune Word (Shael Um Tir), which is a very cheap, very effective piece of equipment with the static field, chain lightning, and lower lit-resist effects; its only downside is the high repair cost, which can be negated a bit by sticking it in a normal quality weapon instead of a superior. “Beast” is likewise very nice, though a bit more expensive; the fanaticism aura is wonderful, though.

Rare and Blood weapons are likewise very powerful, since they can get the cruel, quickness, and master’s mods all on the same weapon, with sockets and leech, meaning that in theory you could end up with the most powerful weapon in the game. Larzuk and Halbu are also reliable sources of cheap, powerful magic weapons (as you gain levels, good mods like cruel and quickness will come available), which can be used to great effect if you can’t swing a high-end Rune Word or unique item.

Of course, the best possible weapon you could hope for, overall, would be “Breath of the Dying” (Vex Hel El Eld Zod Eth), which is godly when socketed into an ethereal elite weapon. The damage and speed are insane, the +30 to all stats is amazing, and the dual leech makes picking out other equipment a lot easier (good-bye, mana leech ring). Of course, it requires Zod...I believe someone did the math once, and you have a better chance of getting hit by a falling plane that was struck by lightning than you do of finding a Zod.

• Possibilities: anything with good damage and speed. That’s all that really matters. “Cresent Moon” is an excellent choice for crowd control.
• Endgame: “Breath of the Dying,” if you can get the runes!

Socketing

For low-level gear that isn’t terribly valuable (like store-bought socketed items), rubies of any type are nice for the +life, and diamonds in shields for the resists. For your nicer stuff, anything that boosts your damage is very useful, such as high % ed jewels. Thus, I’d probably cram those in your helm and shield, as well as anything else you have an open socket in. Look for nice second mods, like ias (to help get your frames down) and +life. Alternatively, you could stick a cham in, freeing up a ring slot, or ber or pul to help you get max pdr/boost your defense. Also, if you’re overly rich and feel like it, you can socket your echoing weapons with something like Ist runes or MF jewels, for when you use Find Item.

Charms

There isn’t too much to worry about in the charms department, just throw in anything that helps you out a lot, while leaving at least 8 slots open for picking up items.. Faster run/walk, vita, and max damage charms are always nice, and Mastery and Warcry charms can also help out (mastery more-so than warcry, since masteries have no synergies). And of course Annihilus, if you can manage to get one.

You will, however, want to have at least one 100+ small poison damage charm, to help combat monster life-regeneration rates in the patch (if you don’t have pmh somewhere else in your gear). Also, I’d suggest throwing in one large or two small faster hit recovery charms...these, in combination with Arreat’s Face and Verdungo’s belt, will bring you up to the 48% fhr breakpoint. While this doesn’t help you while using concentrate, since it is uninterruptible, it does help with berserk and your warcries.

Mercenary Selection

Act 2 mercs are your best bet, thanks to their good stats and auras, which help you and the rest of the party out a lot. There have traditionally been three big choices:

Act 2 Normal/Hell Defensive

These guys give you the defiance aura, which can take your defense to insane proportions when combined with Shout and Concentrate. With decent gear and a high-level Shout from you, you can get this guy up around 20k defense, and yourself to 30k base, which makes both of you massive tanks.

Act 2 Nightmare Defensive

Always popular for their Holy Freeze aura. Slower enemies mean less swings, less swings mean fewer hits. They were an excellent choice prior to the patch, but now, I would never hire one, for two reasons: one, some enemies cannot be frozen, and thus they are useless against them; and two, the “Doom” Rune Word. This thing is incredible. With it, any merc can be a holy freeze merc, thanks to the passive aura it provides. It also gives +2 to skills, making the merc’s personal aura that much stronger. Thus, there is really no reason in hiring a Holy Freeze merc, if you can get your hands on the runes for “Doom”.

Act 2 Nightmare Offensive

Ah, the Might Merc, staple of the barb class. Regardless of the fact that his aura has been nerfed down a lot, it still tops out at level 20 by level 99, which gives a very respectable boost to your damage, and there are no enemies that ignore damage (except maybe an immune to physical, immune to magic unique that would nullify both concentrate and berserk). With good armor and your massive Shout, he’ll have no trouble surviving, and will greatly increase your killing speed. Throw on a “Doom” ethereal pole, and he’ll be kicking some crazy ass. Think about it: between this merc and your cries, you’ll have a health/mana boosting aura, a defense boosting aura, a skill boosting aura, a damage boosting aura, and holy freeze...my God.

So, in short, while the Defiance merc is nice, with your big defense, you won’t really need that much more. Go ahead and get some more damage from the Might merc.

Outfitting Your Merc

Anything with big defense is a plus, and you should try and make sure everything he’s wearing is ethereal, since his gear doesn’t get damaged. He’ll need some life leech from something, but other than that, it’s up to you. Vampire Gaze and Shaftstop are nice for the pdr and leech. Crown of Thieves is very nice as well, and an “Honor” weapon is a powerful, east-to-make weapon for earlier in the game. I’d definitely try and get the runes for “Doom,” just because that will make the merc much more powerful and useful. For the super rich, “Chains of Honor” is a nice choice for body armor, with the +2 skills (which will boost his aura) and life leech, and “Delirium” Rune Word is an incredible helm, with the % chance to cast Confuse. Doom, Delirium, and CoH, all in ethereal gear, would probably be the optimal equipment, though there are certainly many other options.

Gameplay Tips

Well, now you have the build, and you have the gear. So just how do you use them together to traverse the harsh new environment of Hell 1.10?

For the most part, the build is pretty straightforward. Enter the battlefield, cast Battle Command twice, then Battle Orders and Shout, and go to it. Concentrate will be your main skill for killing, alternating with Berserk when you go up against a PI. Not too bad. I do have a few pointers though that should help you through some of the tougher parts of the game:

1. Use a Shield

I cannot stress this enough. Shields are, literally, a wall at arm’s length. High blocking will allow you to nullify up to 75% of all physical attacks thrown at your character, which includes Meph’s ice orb. Likewise, just because you have huge defense with this build doesn’t mean you’re immortal; there are several enemy types that totally ignore defense, so you need to have something to fall back on to keep from getting whipped. Likewise, on the occasions where you have to use Berserk, your defense drops to 0, so you need to have some sort of protection. Enemies in the patch are much, much more dangerous, and a group of archers can tear you apart before you even get to them; thus, it is now more important than ever to use a shield. Shields likewise provide you with another slot for modifications and socketing, helping you get more ias/cannot be frozen/resists/stats. The benefits of a shield are far, far too great to pass up.

2. Don’t run with sharp objects

When heading into a high traffic area: walk, don’t run. When running, your block rate drops to 1/3rd, and your defense drops to 0. If you DO have to make a quick escape, spam Howl first, and then tp out or start running. If pursued by a fast monster, drop down a Grim Ward or two to cover your trail, and keep going.

3. Use provocation to your advantage

Ranged attackers are a pain, since you are a melee range warrior and they typically tend to run when you get near them. Counteract this with a health dose of Taunt. That will force any enemy to stop whatever it is doing and walk right up to you, making those Imps, Bone Archers, and Quill Rats, and cat warriors from act 5 a helluva lot easier. It’s also useful on Fallen and other enemies that light to run away when you kill one of their buddies.

4. Crowd Control Techniques

Howl and Taunt are two of the BEST tools in your arsenal, and deserve hotkeys. Whenever you find yourself faced with overwhelming odds, just spam a few howls and take care of the mob at your leisure. Practice using the two in tandem, and you’ll find that there truly is nothing in the game that you cannot handle.

When facing large groups of enemies headed up by a Might, Blessed Aim, Fanaticism, or Lightning Enchanted unique, use Grim Ward to your advantage. Either attempt to kill off one of the minions, or run back to a previous corpse, then throw one up. That will scare off the troops, leaving you alone with the boss. Then, spam Battle Cry to bring down his damage and defense, and have at 'em.

Finally, you occasionally come up against large groups of defense ignoring, fear immune enemies (such as Lister and his minions). If you have max blocking and decent damage/leech, you should be fine, just bunker down, spam your Battle Cry to take their damage and defense down, and wail into them. If you’re not very comfortable with your barb’s stats and gear, however, you’ll want to divide and conquer. Use the terrain to your advantage, separate them off and try and handle one or two at a time. It’s times like these you’ll be glad I told you to get a shield.

5. He’s got your back, you get his

Regardless of how aggravating he can be, keep that merc alive. Sure, he may die a lot in the beginning, and cost you a good deal of money, but in time, he will develop into an awesome, awesome side-kick, what with his improved stats in 1.10. Give your merc some good gear, keep him ressed, and do whatever you can to make life easy for him (via taunt and howl), and he’ll pay you off in the long run.

6. Things that will give you trouble, and how to handle them

So you’re standing in the Chaos Sanctuary, hacking your way unscathed through a huge horde of undead, whistling merrily and thinking “Man, that Halciet has set me up with a tight build!” when suddenly your life bulb empties and you drop. Wtf?!

Iron Maiden is one of only two real dangers to this build. Even with all the defensive measures we’ve taken, you cannot protect yourself from yourself. Any curse slinging enemy can totally screw you over if it throws up Iron Maiden while you are in mid-swing, and unfortunately for us, most of them are immune to Taunt, so you can’t make it come to you. Thus, you must take extra care when venturing into any area inhabited by these creatures.

In previous versions of this guide, I suggested using Leap Attack to take care of enemies possessing the capability of casting IM. Unfortunately, it has been brought to my attention that Leap Attack is no longer flagged as a ranged attack, so it will easily get you killed. On the other hand, we’ve learned that magic damage is NOT affected by the curse, and thus Berserk is your quick and easy solution to this problem. Whenever you approach any group of enemies supported by a caster (such as the infamous Oblivion Knights), switch off to Berserk, and bing! - life is good.

The gloam-class enemies located in various places throughout the game pose the second threat to our build. Their ranged lightning attack can take you apart in a matter of seconds, and they are often surrounded by a large group of melee-range enemies that will get between you and your quarry.

Luckily, the gloams can and should be taunted, which will draw them to you, where they won’t cast their lightning attack. Run into the area spamming howls to disperse any crowds in the area, and then taunt them back one at a time. Make sure you have max lightning resist, and, if you have it, throw on Thundergod’s Vigor for a bit more support. Just don’t let them stay at a distance or they will rip you to pieces, no matter how stout you are. It also helps out a lot if you have a mercenary with “Doom” and/or “Delirium,” as that will slow them down, and a blast of Confuse will get them targeting each other instead of you.

Other than that, the only thing you might have trouble with are mobs of Balrogs and such of their type, as their Inferno attack can do a hefty amount of damage. Grim Ward and Howl tactics make them easy enough to deal with, however, so you shouldn’t have any real problems with them once you get the hang of the build.

7. Fighting the Diablo Clone

Due to his huge block rate and massive resistances to all physical and elemental attacks, your best bet is to go in with weapon and shield, throw up a Battle Cry, and start whittling away using Berserk. Almost all of his attacks are fire based, so make sure you have this resist maxed, and you’ll want decent lightning resist as well, in order to survive his Armageddon and Lightning attacks. “Prevent Monster Heal” helps out a ton, and when you spawn him, try and do it in an area with weak enemies, like Bishbosh in the Cold Plains. Just make sure you have a good amount of potions (since the Clone is immune to leech), and throw up a portal, and you should be ok. For reference, I’ve soloed him several times, taking an average of about 6 minutes, using 6-9 rejuvs between my merc and myself each time, and neither of us have died yet. He’s nowhere NEAR as tough as everyone makes him out to be, so while you should respect his power, don’t be intimidated.

FAQ

Q. Is 9fps really worth it?

A. It really depends on how wealthy you are. 9 fps is definitely a very nice thing to have, but it usually involves socketing your gear with some extremely valuable jewels and such to get there. It is definitely worth getting there, if you can, but in most circumstances, you should definitely worry more about creating a more balanced and stable character and settle for 10 frames.

Q. Two-handed weapon for damage, or a shield?

A. While you can get a massive amount of damage with some of the new weapons in the patch, it is my humble opinion that nothing really beats a shield. They just provide you with so much diversity. It provides an extra slot for mods and socketing, as well as nullifying 75% of almost every hit thrown your way. In hardcore or laggy situations, this can mean the difference between life and death, especially in the new environment. Furthermore, the dexterity required to reach max block helps boost your accuracy up a ton, and every 4 points gives you another point of defense. Plus, between Shout, Ironskin, and Concentrate, you can easily add a good 3000-5000 defense to your build with the addition of a shield. Sure, you may kill a bit slower, but patience is a virtue, my child, and it is better to live to deal the damage than to die before you can.

Q. Why Bash, and not Ironskin?

A. Two reasons: one, synergies do not benefit from +skill items, so if you don’t put points into Bash, you don’t get any real bonus to damage, and Masteries don’t synergize with anything anyways. Two, there are several enemies in the game that totally ignore your defense when attacking, thus there are several occasions where it won’t help you at all. Nothing ignores damage, on the other hand, so more damage is always good, plus harder hits = more life leeched on attack. Besides, if you followed the guide and have decent gear, you should already have a good 24-30k defense anyways.

Q. How does howl work?

A. The formula for howl is as follows: clvl + skill level + 1. If this total is less than the level of the enemy in question, howl will fail; else, they will run off in terror. Under most circumstances, you should be at a comparable level to your foe in the patch, if you pace yourself, and it is fairly easy to find items with +skills on them, so you should be fine with just one point in howl. On the other hand, if you feel that your howl isn’t working as well as it should, you can consider dropping some points into it (instead of bash), or even going back and leveling in an easier area for awhile.

Q. How should I distribute my stats/skills as I level?

A. I personally feel that it is the purpose of a guide to give an outline of where one should go with a character, rather than how to get there; it seems to take a lot of fun and personalization out of playing a character if you follow a strictly dictated path of creation. However, since I get a lot of questions about this, I’ll give a rough outline of creation.

In the early levels, you should focus mainly on getting your pre-reqs and saving skill points for when you hit higher levels. If you already know exactly what weapon you want to use, you can go ahead and start pumping a mastery; else, you may just want to save those points until later (make sure you save at least 3, so you can pick up Berserk, Battle Command, and Natural Resist as soon as you hit 30). Put a point in all of your general skills as they come available. At 18, pick up Concentrate, and drop a point in it each level through 23. Once you reach 24, you can start heavily pumping BO; this should be the first skill you max, as it will greatly boost your life, and provides more damage per level than Concentrate does alone. After that, I would work on Concentrate until it was finished, and then Shout. Your mastery and bash should come last, as the other skills are much more important to your survival.

As for your statistics: strength will be the most important stat early in the game, so for the first two levels, I would go 2 strength/3dex and 3srr/2 dexterity respectively. This will allow you to wear Studded Leather right off the bat. After that, for balanced play, you can drop into the 2-2-1-shift rhythm, where you put 2 points in strength, 2 points in dexterity, and 1 in vitality for a level, then the next level, all the number shift one position to the right (becoming 1 strength, 2 dexterity, 2 vitality, and then 2 strength, 1 dexterity, 2 vitality, and so on and so forth). Do not be afraid to drop full levels into strength or dexterity if needed to use equipment or obtain max block, of course. After awhile, you’ll have enough strength to suit you, and by the end of your character’s career you will have fallen into a 2dex/3vit routine that will keep your life up and blocking maxed.

Q. My newbie barb is so poor! What do I do for money?

A. There are plenty of things you can sell early in the game to get yourself some cash. Stacks of throwing knives and javelins usually sell for around 460 gold, and magic staves/wands/scepters with +skills can net you several thousand a piece. Likewise, fulminating potions and rings/amulets with +light radius on them are worth a good deal, and more or less useless to your character.

Q. How important is max pdr?

A. Physical damage reduction is a very nice thing to have when you go up against defense-ignoring enemies, though not as important to your survival as it is in other builds. Try to get as much as you can, but don’t sacrifice other good mods in exchange for a few more %.

Q. Is that a picture of you in your Avatar?

A. Yep.

General Tables and Recipes for Blood Items, FCR, FHR, and BPs

Barb casting frames/Fast cast needed (taken from the Barbarian FAQ)

• 13 : 0 to 8
• 12 : 9 to 19
• 11 : 20 to 36
• 10 : 37 to 62
• 9 : 63 to 104
• 8 : 105 to 199
• 7 : 200

Estimated frames/fhr required tables (taken from the Barbarian FAQ)

• 9 : 0
• 8 : 7
• 7 : 15
• 6 : 27
• 5 : 48
• 4 : 86 

Concentrate Weapon Breakpoints (determined using the IAS calculator located at stats.diabloii.net):
Note: these bps vary depending on the base speed of the weapon used; thus, I have just listed the most popular one-handed weapons. Check the link to calculate for other weapons.

Berserker Axe (frames/ias needed)

• 15: 0
• 14: 9
• 13: 18
• 12: 30
• 11: 48
• 10: 75
• 9: 125

Colossus Blade (frames/ias needed, when used one-handed):

• 16: 0
• 15: 6
• 14: 15
• 13: 24
• 12: 39
• 11: 58
• 10: 89
• 9: 147

Blood Item Recipes

Note: all recipes require a perfect ruby and any magical jewel, along with the following reagents:

• Weapon: magical axe + Ort rune
• Ring: magical ring + Sol rune
• Amulet: magical amulet + Amn rune
• Helm: magical helm/casque/armet + Ral rune
• Armor: magical plate mail/templar coat/hellforge plate + Thul rune
• Shield: magical spiked shield/barbed shield/blade barrier + Ith rune
• Gloves: magical heavy gloves/sharkskin gloves/vampirebone gloves + Nef rune
• Boots: magical light plate boots/battle boots/mirrored boots + Eth rune
• Belt: magical belt/mesh belt/mithril coil + Tal rune 

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A sore subject with many, but it warrants being spoken of. Casting delay is when a skill gets cast there is a no casting time frame that will prevent other skills from being cast. 3 skills in this build have a casting delay:

Armageddon ~6 seconds (150 frames)
Hurricane ~6 seconds (150 frames)
Firestorm ~ 0.6 seconds (15 frames)

What happens here is when the skill is used the 3 listed skills appear red like they would in town, during that time they are uncastable. There is nothing you can do to shorten or get rid of that casting delay; you have to learn to deal with it. When casting hurricane and Armageddon, in order to keep them active 100% of the time, you will find that Firestorm is rarely able to be cast. By adding charges of fissure you increase the duration of Armageddon and increase the power of Firestorm (by 23% per slvl). Charges of fissure are available on clubs and staffs with up to slvl 7 charges. This will help some with the Armageddon, Hurricane problem.

Casting delay and FCR

FCR does not get rid of casting delay but will allow for more castings per timeframe. What happens is the actual casting time of the skill is shortened but the time between castings remains the same.

"The cast timer for firestorm is 0.6 seconds, or 15 frames. A single second of time takes 25 frames. With taking the affects of timers on cast time into account, it means that with no fast cast gear, the druid will take 25 frames to cast 1 firestorm, or 1 second. With full fast cast gear (163%) to hit the 10 frame break point, each firestorm will take 21 frames. As the burn time is 16 frames, this means that you almost get a continuous stream of flame. The firestorm will do 4/5 listed damage per cast at max fast cast." - Garbad_the_weak

In my opinion you will not notice the Firestorm cast delay once you have 30% or better FCR (14 frame breakpoint), you will definitely notice the casting delay of Hurricane and Armageddon. During the Hurricane and Armageddon casting delays you can and should use Tornado or Twister, when Firestorm is available it is the better skill to use. Most times I find myself using either Firestorm or Armageddon using both at the same time with hurricane just do not cut it.

Stat Distribution

Strength – enough to wear all equipment

Dexterity – enough for high block rate, I suggest keeping your chance to block above 50%, of course 75% is preferred.

Vitality – whatever you have not spent elsewhere spend here

Energy – 0, with your skills needing 4-30 mana per cast max you will be better served using +mana items and potions.

I highly suggest keeping a high block rate, you will be close to battle in order for the elemental skills to deliver full effect. Having 75% chance to block is a great thing and will serve anyone well. You really have low strength requirements your main item only needs 77 strength. Compared to the other builds out there you can spend very little and be quite strong with equipment. Think like a sorceress here saved stat points can give you more life which you will want and need. Oak sage for the hybrid will boost your life significantly, having “Call to Arms” (if you’re really rich) on the switch will more than provide enough extra life to this build.

Life will become a major problem with this build typically Druids are known for high life. They have BO from their party or Call to Arms on the switch, Oak Sage to boost their life, summons to protect them. With this build you do not have those benefits so think more like a sorceress than a druid when getting your stats figured out.

Alternative Stat Arrangement

Strength – enough for Earthshifter to be equipped

Dexterity – 0 you will not need it for equipment, blocking, or AR so no stat points

Vitality – whatever you have not spent elsewhere spend here

Energy - 0, with your skills needing 4-30 mana per cast max you will be better served using +mana items and potions.

Earthshifter has charges of volcano which will give Armageddon an additional 18*14% more damage. It also has +7 elemental skills, the downfall is it will give no blocking and will cost an extreme amount of stat points so less life. It would be a glass cannon so to speak.

Damage values

I often wonder what kind of damage to expect out of a build. Here I will describe differing amounts of total damage.

With 0 +skill items you can expect a total damage of:

Firestorm 504- 586
Twister 340- 360
Tornado 1501-1602
Hurricane 929-1040

With 5 +skills

Firestorm 811- 921
Twister 487- 520
Tornado 2117-2266
Hurricane 1232-1437
Armageddon (+1 staffmod) 604-936

With 10 +skills

Firestorm 1272-1420
Twister 665- 710
Tornado 2821-2997
Hurricane 1573-1688
Armageddon (+1 staffmod) 1147-1528

With 15 +skills

Firestorm 1848-2051
Twister 865-922
Tornado 3591-3795
Hurricane 1941-2056
Armageddon (+1 staffmod) 1751-2192

To get Twister to 1000 minimum damage you must reach 19 +skills, this is possible but very unlikely. Remember you lose 2 Plus skills due to your armor right off the bat. Having 2 fire skills for over 1000 damage, along with your windy style druid, makes up for the small damage loss of the windy.

As you probably guessed more +skills = a stronger build.

Leveling & Gameplay

First 30 levels

You are in a funny situation for the early part of the game; you have no cast and forget skills. Hurricane is available at clvl 30 so is Armageddon, but until then your stuck with wind and Firestorm. How are you to survive? Easy start early by maxing Firestorm, in your first 30 levels you should max Firestorm and place 1 point in other skills as they become available to you. Once Firestorm is maxed place points towards a goal of 10 in cyclone armor. This will give you the best result, twister and tornado are not strong yet but there are no immunes yet either. I suggest making a leaf staff for an extra 3 skill levels to your Firestorm.

Levels 30-XX (when stone can be equipped, 47 minimum goes up with elite armors)

In these levels you have hurricane, a fully fledged Firestorm, and a point in Twister/Tornado. Your damage sources are going to be hurricane and Firestorm. There is a problem though and you will quickly learn about it as you play. Hurricane has a casting delay of about 10 seconds after its cast. This delay effects your Firestorm/Armageddon/hurricane skills (I suspect the other fire skills as well) and will keep you from being able to cast them. This is why cyclone armor of 10 is so important, you don’t want to have to wait on casting Firestorm or not have a hurricane running. These are the hardest levels in your build. Learn how to switch from hurricane to tornado then once Firestorm can be used again switch to it (this play style becomes very useful later on as well). Keep placing points in hurricane, it will add to every other skill except Firestorm.

Stone armor and beyond

Once stone armor is placed on your build you will notice a 4 fold increase (well 23%*16 = 368%) in your Firestorm damage. This is a welcome surprise, now you can use your hurricane and Firestorm at a decent damage rate, meanwhile your Tornado will become useful. Max Hurricane first then Tornado then Twister.

You also gain a minion, keep the golem out with you he will be surprisingly useful. The golem cost ~ 4800 gold per cast so in short order he is less expensive to replace than the mercenary you’ve been running around with. In some instances leave the mercenary in town and use just the golem it makes more economic sense to do so (maggot’s lair hell comes to mind).

At any point in time you can start using Armageddon. The extra 36 synergy levels make this skill useful. Remember to cast Hurricane, then Armageddon, Armageddon, Hurricane. In other words Hurricane last 3 times as long as Armageddon so the player needs to recast Armageddon twice as often as Hurricane. Every 30 seconds you will get 20 seconds of Armageddon and 30 seconds of Hurricane. Casting delay will rear it ugly head when you are trying to keep Hurricane and Armageddon going at the same time, there is nothing the player can do about it so just have to get use to it.

Keeping Armageddon and Hurricane active through Nightmare is okay, keeping them active in Hell can be harmful. In Hell you run into death beetles and other lightning enchanted enemies with hurricane on expect to take a lot of lightning damage you may want to have high resistance to lightning. Let the Hurricane down unless you need the extra power using tornado and Firestorm will be your best bet for facing lightning enchanted creatures.

Keep an eye out for +skills; every +skill you get is more damage for each type of damage you are dealing. When facing things that are not immune to any of your skills (poison immunes, lightning immunes) your skills will gain 3 times as much with every +skill. Remember you have 3 types of damage physical (Tornado/Twister), cold (Hurricane), and fire (Firestorm/Armageddon); use them to your advantage.

Item Affixes

Personal note: I hate guides that tell you what items YOU MUST HAVE in order to build the character, for the most part those type of guides mislead and narrow the play experience, especially for more challenging builds that teach skill to players. I won’t give items for this guide but some suggestions on what to look for in the items the Druid uses.

Armor – “Stone” rune word is a must as described above, for untwinked players this build would be near impossible to play. The “Stone” rune word is really the only item that needs twinked though, it may be a reason to go a bit off the untwinked path for one this build.

Helmet – You should be looking for +skills, FCR, +life, resistances out of your helm, if your using a pelt you can get staffmods that work with your build, in fact Armageddon would only come from this item so getting a +elemental/+3 Armageddon/ +3 Hurricane pelt would be a most godly item.

Weapon – You are a caster so +skills, +elemental tree, FCR, +Mana/life, charges of fissure are all good choices to keep a look out for. My most ideal weapon would be a club with +3 elemental tree and slvl 7 charges of fissure.

Shield – The most important part of a shield is defense; so get a shield with high chance to block, resistances, and other defensive characteristics. I use a Moser’s Blessed Circle with 2 perfect diamonds, but other fine shields are out there.

Jewelry – Rings and amulets are made for casters in my opinion, they have +skills, FCR, +life/mana, resistances and other useful affixes, they would be a good place to add on magic find if the player is so inclined.

Gloves, and Boots – FCR is important on gloves so would be +skills too bad only Magefists have the +skills this build would want and that would only help 1 maybe 2 skills. As for boots resistance, +life/mana, and other typical caster affixes. Faster run/walk is really not needed in the Boots though you need to be close to the enemies and able to runway but you don’t want to go running full force into them when trying to strike them with tornado so I suggest avoiding faster run/walk and sticking to the basic resistance, +life/mana boots.

Charms – First and foremost skill charms with +elemental tree will take precedence over most charms out there, especially if they have a stat booster like +str or +life as a second affix. Resistances and life are important for this build to get from charms, with charms its not impossible to get 75+ in all resistances with the build. Other affixes the player could want is FHR, increased stats (I suggest only using small charms for this one), +mana, and maybe Magic Find.

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1) The Stats

Strength - Place only enough for gear. Typically 75-90 base without gear is enough, though adjustments should be made depending on your gear selection.

Dexterity -You should defiantly have enough here for max block, typically you'll even need a little more than that to achieve a 90%+ Attack Rating (AR). But be careful not to over do it, there are many items that significantly boost your AR.

Vitality - Everything that doesn't get put into Strength and Dexterity should go here.

Energy - You typically wont be using a lot of mana so no points are needed here. Again, we have gear available to help with this.

2) The Skills

The Poison and Bone Branch

Bone Armor/Bone Wall - 1 point, if you feel you need a boost to it place points in bone wall, the synergy bonus of bone wall is better than points actually placed in the skill. This skill is helpful at the early level, however unless you plan on using the marrowalk bug at higher levels it's less effective unless you heavily invest in it. Especially now that it doesn't cancel one attack outright as it use to.

Bone Prison - Unless you plan on boosting it a lot near useless. Though helpful for boosting Bone Armor with synergies. Personally I don't care for this skill, it requires too many points and too many casts to truly trap an opponent in it.

Teeth - 1 point prerequisite only

Corpse Explosion - A good supplemental spell for poison the immune and emergency situations. Also a necessary skill for one of the featured advanced techniques.

Bone Spear/Bone Sprit - Not used

Poison Dagger - This is what it is all about. Max it. More on point distribution in the poison damage section.

Poison Explosion - Max it. Not only for the synergies but also for the spell itself. By far it is the most powerful poison spell in the game that can not be modified.

Poison Nova - Max it. Though you will seldom use it you need the synergies.

The Summoning Branch

Skeletal Mastery/Raise Skeleton/Skeletal Mage/Revives - Those that follow the Poison Dagger path will not have enough points to make this branch effective. If you simply must have skeletons pump mastery and put one point in the skeleton of your choice. However I strongly suggest you ignore this line.

Clay Golem - This is perhaps your best friend. It slows it's target, has massive hit points, self heals, and is cold resistant. Is a key factor in the safest way to kill bosses. How many points you put here is a matter of taste. Many are content with one point here and one point in Golem Mastery and Summon resist. Myself I like to boost it by about 5-10 points for greater slow target and the hit point boost.

Golem Mastery - I like to pump this a little less than Clay Golem. 1-7 points are recommended.

Summon Resists - No more than four points here, after this it more points become much less effective.

Fire Golem - If you plan on PvP play this is a must have. Poison dagger wont kill other players, but rather it reduces your opponent to 1 hit point. It's fire aura will easily give you that last point of damage. Can also be somewhat helpful with those that are poison immune. However, because the damage is low even when pumped up be prepared for a very long battle with the immune opponents.

Iron Golem - Only good if you sacrifice a good item for it. Personally, I'd rather use such gear to trade for items I'd rather have.

Blood Golem - Absolutely not. This Golems life share ability will get you killed if you're not careful.

The Curse Branch

Amplify Damage - The true Daggermancer has no need for this other than the fact that it is a prerequisite for the other curses. If you plan on using Corpse Explosion then you may wish to boost it to the point where it's radius is the same or slightly lower than the Radius of Corpse Explosion. This way the Amp Damage wont overwrite your curses that are affecting those that aren't getting hit by Corpse Explosion. If you plan on going a more melee style play with your weapon switch then a few points here isn't a bad idea.

Weaken - 1 point Prerequisite only

Terror - A very handy curse in the Daggermancer's spell book. More points means those that are terrorized will flee for a longer amount of time. However base is good enough for our purposes. At a certain point you may wish to rely upon the item modifier "flees in terror". More on this one in the strategy section. 1 point here.

Decrepify - Though a staple of Meleemancers and most other necromatic builds, you wont be using this one much. It's better to rely on golem and gear for slowing your target down. Though again if you plan on a more melee attack on the weapon switch you might want a few more points in it.

Iron Maiden - Nearly useless. Might find it handy against certain bosses with your golem, but not with the big four after normal mode.- 1 point prerequisite only.

Life Tap - A very handy spell. Used properly and your mercenary and yourself will have a full health bar most the time. Also very useful when used in conjunction with Confusion for fighting bosses and those that are poison immune. Doing this allows the surrounding confused opponents to attack them and leech life off of them, and thus making it possible for the lesser beasts to kill them for you. Otherwise you will typically cast it for only a second or two so you and you mercenary can heal then switching to a more useful curse.

Lower Resists - This spell will lower the resistance of poison, fire, lightning, and cold spells. Needless to say this is a very important spell for those using Poison Dagger. But because the radius increases with more points and the fact that it will overwrite your AI curse no more than 4 points should ever be put here. I recommend 1 point, with plus gear it will get too big if you don't keep it in check.

Dim Vision - Very useful curse for the Daggermancer. It makes those that are effected blind to everything around them that is outside of melee range. It doesn't work on the powerful opponents in the game though. This is the curse of choice for most Daggermancers, Most try to get it to level 15 or better since its duration is cut dramatically in Hell.

Confusion - For me this is quickly becoming the curse of choice for me. It causes your opponents to attack each other. Though not all will quit attacking you while confused enough are that even the biggest of crowds becomes manageable. Champion ranked opponents will attack the confused and likewise the confused will attack the Champions. Life Tap the champions and then confuse the surrounding beasts and you wont have to deal with those champions at all (or if you do they will be severely injured). Like Dim Vision you'll need to pump this up to 15+ to keep it useful in Hell mode. If you plan on using this curse I highly recommend a few points (5 or so) also in Dim Vision or Attract for greater crowd control.

Though I should warn you, confuse at high levels brings lots groups from other areas of the level. Also if you have it high enough and hit beast that it doesn't work on that is off screen it counts as a failed attack and they come at you, I've met Mephisto in the side rooms of the Durance 3 upon entering. Though knowing this can also be used to your advantage, you'll never see cows go down much faster than a high level confuse (or for that matter so many on the screen at once.)

Attract - some people swear by this one, and if you are running with a large group of allies it does seem to work better than confusion. But because it is only you, your golem, and your mercenary confusion has much more practical. However a few points here isn't a bad idea since it can be used to distract the ranged opponents while you concentrate on the melee opponents. Just make sure that when you use it on the ranged that you pick your target carefully, make sure it is on one or two opponents that are near the middle of the pack of ranged attackers. Otherwise it wont have any effect. Attract can also be used to great effect if you plan on using Corpse Explosion. It will help tighten the crowds of opponents allowing you to hit more opponents with fewer points in Corpse Explosion

3) The Mercenary

The selection of a mercenary is a very important aspect to this build. Most necromancer builds rely upon the stacking effect of amp damage and the Act II nightmare might mercenary. If you are gong with a Meleemancer type weapon switch then by all means continue with him. However, those of us that like to let our poison do the work will receive no benefit from this mercenary. We have three choices of mercenaries that will best suit or needs.

1) Act II Normal Defensive (Defiance Aura) - This is my favorite mercenary. He makes for a great tank, and with his aura you can easily maintain a high defense rating. With your chance to block maxed it makes it very difficult for the enemy to land a hit on you.

2) Act II Normal Combat (Prayer Aura) - This would be my second choice. The prayer aura will increase your Hit Point pool dramatically. Very useful for recovering from those hits you do receive. The best benefit though is that the aura stacks with Clay Golems high hit point regeneration rate which if you've put points in clay golem can make it extremely durable.

3) Act II Nightmare Defensive (Holy Freeze Aura) - A very powerful aura indeed. This one freezes/chills all that come near him making it very safe for you to run in, stab and then retreat. However, the other two mercenaries can obtain this with the Doom rune word. Even if you are poor and don't have the runes to makes Doom I'd prefer the above mentioned mercenaries in hopes of eventually acquiring them. Though it is possible to switchback to defiance or prayer in hell should you get the runes. It is perhaps the most useful of all the mercenaries for this build. Those running with a Holy Freeze mercenary can if they choose dedicate many less points to the AI curses in that this aura will be doing most the work. However getting to Act II nightmare will be difficult with a Daggermancer unless you are rushed.

Makes sure you keep your mercenary close to your level. It's easy once you get this build down to run without a mercenary. But when you need him you're really going to need him, so don't neglect him. Also be warned you might wish to not give him a weapon or at most a weak weapon so that he won't steal your kills. If you are using +mana per kill gear this will destroy your mana regeneration. If you do this make sure you have a decent weapon in storage for him to use on bosses.

4) Poison Damage

For those not familiar with it much of the information here I am borrowing from "the Toa of Poison". In this text the author goes through and explains exactly how the computer calculates poison damage. It is an impressive document and I commend him on doing a fine job with it. However, the math involved is fairly complicated and a rather long process. Here I summarize it down and simplify the math into what I hope is a more people friendly formula. Also parts of it no longer apply to the 1.10 environment, the ranged combat poison bug has been fixed.

It is important that you understand these concepts so that you can adjust you poison damage to suit your needs at ant given time. Don't make the mistake in thinking that the more poison sources you carry the better your poison damage is. It is very important to understand this section so that you can determine the best items available to equip to achieve your objectives for different situations

Before we start with the math it is important that you understand a few terms and concepts. First you must realize that poison damage is computed by the frame. A frame a segment of time in which that your computer redraws the picture on your screen. Diablo II has a frame rate of 25 frames per second. In other words, the image you see on screen is drawn or adjusted 25 times every second you play. Most of us are familiar with this because a number of spells work this way in the game like firewall, meteor, and inferno.

Now I will be using the following acronyms and definitions for the following terms:

Damage= Damage listed on the item
Duration= When I use this term it refers to the duration as listed on an item in seconds.
DPS= Damage Per Second
FR=Frame Rate
DPF=Damage Per Frame
DF= Duration in Frames
I=Items
SD= Spell Duration

The first thing we to determine when using poison items to boost our spells is the Duration in Frames. This is easy to figure to. So for every poison item you have you simply multiply the Duration by 25. Duration (in seconds)*25=DF

Duration of poison damage from items (note not spells well get to that part in a minute) is averaged. So to figure how long your poison will last you simply add together the DF of each item then divide by the number of items. So For example lets say I have a dagger socketed with a Tal rune (75 poison damage over 5 seconds) a Wormskull (80 poison damage over 8 seconds) and a small charm of blight (6 poison damage over 2 seconds).

It should be noted as well that multiple sources of poison damage on a single item should be treated separately, regardless of the listed damage on the item. As an example if you place 2 Perfect Emeralds in a dagger the listed damage would be 202 poison damage over 6 seconds, however when figuring your damage they should be considered as such 100 poison damage over 6 seconds AND 100 poison damage over 6 seconds . Needless to say this complicates things when using magic and rares that have both the poison damage prefix and suffix. In such cases you can never know for sure what the stats are for both those poison sources. And is part of the reason you can't rely upon poison damage calculators for this information. When using such items I recommend trying them out a little with a few different items to determine it parameters approximately.

The DF of each item is

Tal Rune. 25*5=125 DF
Wormskull 25*8=200 DF
Charm 25*2= 50 DF

For the DF of the combined items we do this:

[125(tal)+200(wormskull)+50(charm)=375] /3(the number of items)=125

Now the beauty of Poison dagger is that the duration of the spell is added onto this figure. So for example your poison dagger has a duration of 5.2 seconds you would add (5.2*25) 130 frames for the total FD. So we now know that our victims will be under the effect of our poison for 255 frames (255/25=10.2 seconds).

But how much damage? Now we need to find the DPF. Here it gets even easier. For each object you divide the Damage/DF. So in our above example we'd get:

Tal 75/125=0.6
Wormskull 80/200=0.4
Charm 6/50=0.12
Spell(level 10) 104/130=0.8

Now we just add them up. Note that the DPF of the spell is added on here. So our total DPF with items is 1.92 poison that lasts 255 frames.

Total damage would be 489.6 Hit points of damage. Or 1.92*255= 489.6. Not bad considering this set up is easily possible at level 20.

Now because the duration is averaged as you might have surmised that duration can have a dramatic effect on the damage we do. This is why it is important to know how the poison works, you now have the tools to adjust your poison damage for certain situations.

For example if we remove the charm from the equation above we get a DF of 325+130=475 DF what does that do to the total damage. Well the DPF goes down by 0.12 so our new DPF is 1.8 however our total damage goes up because the duration has increased and we now find our dagger strike doing 855 damage total (475*1.8). As you can tell by removing one source we nearly doubled our total damage.

However it's important to adjust your poison to reflect what you are doing in the game. Here I give four examples of different games and the poison types most suited for them..

1) Meleemancers - You want the duration to be as long as possible so that you don't have switch your weapons as much while fighting. In general questing you need not worry about raising your DPF cause the poison dagger is only used to supplement your other damage.

2) Boss Runs - Here the Daggermancer wants a long lasting high damage poison. It makes for faster kills and safer game play in that you have to stab them less often.

3) Questing -Here the Daggermancer may wish to try to lower his total damage in favor of a higher DPF to kill faster and speed up play.

4) Playing with other poison characters - Be very careful of the assassins venom, you will most likely never get a DPF big enough to overwrite it. Try to explain to them that they shouldn't attempt to attack the same opponents as you since the duration of venom is only .4 seconds will cancel your dagger spell. Likewise you should be weary of Rabid Druids. However, you shouldn't have to worry too much about them, most likely your poison dagger will have a higher DPF than they do. And should you ever group with the one or two poison Javazons realize that they have the potential for the biggest damage of all, and considering there aren't many of them out there you should probably assume that they know what they are doing and that they have a higher total poison damage than you do.

Regardless in group play a higher DPF is better. Most likely the opponents wont last long enough for the total duration of poison dagger.

Here is a handy chart I have made with the most common Poison damage gear in the game:

*Because the Infernal set includes a wand full set bonuses are not included. 
* The 3 item Disciple#1 set if figured without Dark Adherents bonuses.  The 3 Item #2 is with
* The Disciple Full set is figured with the Dark Adherent's bonus figured in.

I should also say here that once you get your Poison Dagger to level 10 that you will get more DPF by investing in the synergies than the spell, however you don't get a duration bonus with points in synergies so you should try to keep it balanced in such away that compliments your style more. For example a Meleemancer may wish to only put 10 here then max the synergies before going back to Poison dagger. A pure Daggermancer will most likely keep them somewhat in check and in a fairly even ratio through out the build. I would however suggest maxing Poison Explosion before Nova. If only for the fact that it makes Baal's and Diablo's minions much easier. It doesn't take very many points to make it truly effective, and anywhere that you opponents come from a single predictable direction can often be killed quickly and efficiently with this spell.

5) Item Modifiers/Gear Selections

Before I start I should remind the reader that I will only mention a few items by name here. Mostly I want to give you the tools so that you can make better judgments in gear. For the most part I like working with item modifications because as most players know rares are often better than Unique gear.  Special attention will also be given to the rune word Venom.

Leech Hit Points/Mana - For the true Daggermancer who relies upon the poison to kill these modifiers are near useless, and in the case of needing emergency hit points you have Life Tap.

+ Hit Points/Mana per kill - For the true Daggermancer much more appropriate. My general rule is one mana per kill per level of poison dagger. Though this seems high it will also help make up the mana lost from casting curses and other spells.

Faster Cast Rate - well Poison Dagger is triggered by striking an opponent, and curses are pretty much instant casts as well. Not really needed, unless you are going to be using items that grant the Teleport skill.

Ignore Target Defense - You got your chance to hit at 90%+ and it doesn't work on bosses, not useful at all.

-Target Defense - A much better alternative to the Ignore Target Defense. This one works on bosses too.

+ Defense vs. Missile - Since you don't any range in your attacks this will help protect you from those stray shots before you hit the ranged attackers busy with a curse.

+Running/Walking Speed - The more the better. The faster you run the better chance you have of not getting hit while you run in to strike.

+Attack Speed - Some is good, however not necessary since your only hitting everything once. And really it only applies to instances where you are going to hit things repeatedly.

+Hit Recovery Rate - Very Important. This will make it so that those few times you do get hit you can still get a stab in without getting lock blocked.

Target Can Not Heal - Very important in hell mode. Make sure you have this one somewhere in Nightmare, by hell it's required. 

Cannot Be Frozen - Again Very important, this will save you from one of the most dangerous types of attacks for you.

Terror/Howling - This is a great mod to help you keep the group sizes down. This item modifier works much like terror though it only works on opponents that are one level greater than you are and below.  This is handy in that it doesn't overwrite Lower Resists and will clear opponents that stand so close that you can not target the other. This can be quite frustrating. And it surpasses terror in the fact that it only effects the one opponent you strike.

+skills - No need for summery.

Resists - Since Melee combat wont be much of a problem with you since you are only engaged in it for a second, you should strive to have your resists maxed or near maxed most the time. The biggest threat to your well being is in the form of ranged elemental attacks.

+cold damage - handy for slowing beasts down. Don't use this with terror/howl in that the beasts will snap out of the terror much closer to you for an extra attack or two before they die.

Open Wounds - Nice physical drain that makes your poison seem much more damaging than it really is.

Crushing Blow - Handy for the bosses, but not completely necessary. For the purest the fun is in the slow poison death even on the big guys. Though necessary with Meleemancers.

Critical Strike/Deadly Strike - Purists don't do enough physical damage to make this worth while. Again important for Meleemancers.

+Poison Damage - No brainer, though not necessary. Remember the above examples, a few really good poison items are much better than lots of lesser ones.

+Attack Rating - you can never have enough AR. Of Particular interest are items that add a percentage or points per level, but don't over look those items with just a straight AR boost too, coupled with a % item and they help a lot.

Knock back - can help loosen up tight groups of opponents where targeting them can be problematic. 

There are 3 pieces of gear that deserve special attention. Two of them are from the Trang's Set. The gloves give a +25% poison spell damage modifier, the Shield/head gives and additional -25 target poison resist with a 3rd set item. The pure Daggermancer does quite nice with this set, there is a bug with the full set in that casting and attack rate are off, but since you only hit once you need not worry about the attack rate too much, and curses don't receive any benefit from casting rate. Also the Fire spells are an excellent addition for helping with the poison Immune. And the effect that you walk at your running speed is also a nice bonus. Though seldom do you run out of stamina by the time you can equip the complete set.

Also of note is the Rune Word Bramble this item is of note only cause it has a +25-50% poison spell damage. That's huge, with this and 3 pieces of Trangs you can get -25% target poison resists and increase the spell damage of your poison dagger by 50-75%. It doesn't get any better than that. 

It has recently come to my attention that items that have the Assassins Venom Charges are stackable with Poison Dagger. Though I haven't seen this in action, if true either Arachnid's Mesh (Level 3, 11 charges) and Andariel's Visage (Level 3, 20 charges) should be sought out as well. If this is true one could easily get to 75- 100k damage mark with the tip notch gear.

I bring these up not so much as gear you have to have but gear you should be trying to get. Again if done right a Daggermancer can clear the entire game (though some areas will be more difficult than others) untwinked.

Now for a word about the Rune Word Venom. This item will give you synergies as if you have level 18 Poison Explosion and level 15 Poison Nova. Though this is tempting, don't fall prey to the easy out. A successful Daggermancer needs to be sharp and have full knowledge of their abilities. But then again I'm very much a purest, use it if you must, personally I think there are better things to save a MAL rune for.

Since this isn't a guide for other builds wishing to compensate their builds with poison damage I won't get into details on how to use this for that purpose.

6) Strategy

So now you got your build, your mercenary, and you know what your looking for in gear. Time to get into the strategies and techniques of the Daggermancer.

First I should say that this build is best suited for solo play while questing. The slow method of killing can be discouraging for those not use familiar with it, however if played right you can even be an asset to those groups that kill at a fast speed too, it's all in how you play it. The Daggermancer might very well feel useless next to the faster killing builds, and meanwhile unsympathetic players will feel as though you are leeching. However when doing boss experience runs you'll find you are typically very welcome you got one of the biggest damage spells in the game and you have very helpful curses that you employ, who wouldn't want you around then. 

So first let's look at solo play.

For general questing and leveling up you will typically want a faster acting poison. If you keep you poison dagger and synergies at an appropriate level for your character level this shouldn't be much of a problem. The general technique is basically hit and run. First you cast the AI curse of your choice then run around the mob of opponents striking each one once. For tougher or tightly packed opponents you can cast the AI curse, strike, then cast Lower resist and then terror to break up the groups. Go from one opponent to the next as fast as possible, this will keep your killing speed as fast as possible if that is what you choose to do. Remember though it's also fun to watch as they die off one by one as well. 

While playing in groups it's important that you stay ahead of the pack of players. Here you will run around and cast you AI curse of choice all over the place and go through and pick off the ranged attackers. Occasionally casting a curse behind you for the following pack of players benefit. This can actually make the runs extremely fast especially if you can get a good jab in on the named and champion groups before the rest of the group gets to them. You might not kill them but by the time the rest of the group gets to them they will have dramatically reduced hit points and easy to pick off for the rest of the group. Think of yourself as a scout/sniper while in group play and everything should go well.

Now for bosses, one of the biggest problems a Daggermancer has is that bosses can be rather problematic. This is why it's important to keep your mercenary to level and to have a good Clay Golem. When facing bosses make sure you keep your golem up and cast on the opposite side of the boss from where you and your mercenary are standing. Clay Golem for some reason is always top on the order of what a boss will attack if given a choice, by casting them on the opposite side of you and your mercenary you're both safe from the deadly head on attacks. If you have to, recast Clay Golem before it dies to keep it fresh. For these occasions I typically have a wand and head on the weapon switch that features any of these +skills. +Clay Golem, +Golem Mastery,+Summon resists. I also like to have plus Bone Armor on them if I don't put points in that line (which I often don't). This way for the bosses you can create a golem that will last a few attacks, here you simply run in hit with poison damage then back off and keep the golem up. You should occasionally cast Life Tap on the boss as well to help your mercenary survive.

If I don't do this with a buffed up golem gear on the weapon switch I typically have a big elemental damage throwing knife to throw at he boss. This will better compliment lower resist and I use throwing daggers because I am a Daggermancer after all, and you get to equip a shield. Also for either method don't be afraid to toss a few bone walls up between you and the boss this can often be a lifesaver should things go badly quick.

Advanced Techniques and Strategies

Juggling- So you're in your teen levels and pumping dim over poison dagger. Your poison will kill but it needs to run it's full duration, or you might need one extra hit on them to get that kill. Here is where you can juggle the opponents. Here you strike them with poison dagger and either terror them or let your howling dagger do it for you, they'll run off and once the howl/terror wears off they will come back only to have you do it again if needed. If you practice you can actually get 3 or 4 going one returning just before the next and then add new victims as the old ones dies off. If you get really good you can bounce them off objects, extra points if you can do this and the poison wears off just before you hit them again.

Even if you don't plan on using this technique you should try it a few times. Especially when you start getting items that are hard to determine what the poison damage is. It is also great practice for the next technique.

The Suicide Bomber

Here you use the terror to send a freshly poisoned victim towards a crowd of AI cursed. If you time it right (which is why you practice juggling.) you can drop them close enough to the crowd that you want eliminated and then cast Corpse Explosion on them. This also works great with Poison explosion as well if your aim is a little off and the corpse drops a little too far from the group. Here you simply cast Lower resist on a portion of the crowd directly on the other side of the corpse from you, so that when they come to attack you they must walk over the corpse. Then cast Poison Explosion on the corpse just before they get to it. Poison explosion is so powerful it should drop all but the greatest of opponents rater quickly, for safety feel free to cast Dim Vision on them again after they are poisoned.

PvP

First I should say that I don't duel or PK. However I also seldom run from a fight and have collected more ears than I have given out in non hacked PK situations. Most of this information are tactics that I have modified from other threads on PvP play. Though the defensive section I have done a few times with great success in the past.

The Daggermancer has definite strengths and weaknesses in the PvP environment. First the poison damage isn't affected by any PvP modifiers, However they also don't kill other players but rather reduce them to one hit point. The weakness is that to use your dagger you must get into melee range to do so and honestly even a Meleemancer isn't typically strong enough to go head to head with others that want to go melee. However you do have other options.

The type of PvP also will effect your play style as well. Here I will define two different PvP situations. They are PK Defensive, PK Offensive/ Duel.

PK Defensive - This is actually probably your best chance here. That is because if the PKer will most likely assume you are a bone necromancer. Or a summons necromancer. There aren't very many poison necromancers out there so most likely they wont come equip with poison reduction gear. This assumes that they haven't watched you play, if you've been watched and selected as a target odds are they will equip one piece of 75% poison duration reduction gear. Since it doesn't kill most wont bother with real poison resistance. After all they got a bunch of hit points and you wont last long.

So what to do when they hostile you? First if you know where the stairs and TPs are, try to adjust your map so that these points can be seen. In the mean time head near the largest camp you've most recently wiped out and put the corpses between you and him. Summon your clay golem now too, even if you got fire start with clay, you want to slow them down at first. Also if you can terror a few beasts his/her direction, they move faster when it wears off and is great way to confuse the PKer a little bit. Now here is were it gets interesting, and what you do next will depend on your abilities.

Wall yourself in with your clay golem cast to the outside if the attacker doesn't have a spell that passes through walls/prisons. Just before they enter the screen area start casting poison explosion in the direction they are coming from. Since most people aren't familiar with Poison Explosion most wont think twice about running through it , and in fact they'll probably think you hit the wrong button in fear or nervousness. Now once they have turned green can finish them off with a fire golem, Iron maiden, or teeth. You can even start to melee them if you have made your build in such a way. Here since it is a PK situation Life Tap is acceptable, though in honor dueling it is a no-no. 

Daggermancer on Offense/and the Duel

This is a little trickier, first you should always stake out potential victims. If you can see how long poison lasts on them etc. Mephisto runs are good for this since the poisons there aren't so plentiful and powerful that people go out of there way to pump poison resistance, as they do on Andy and Act 2.

Once you've found a target that doesn't chicken or TP to town, you now rush them and use your novas to make sure they don't have antidotes. From there you can either fight them with Poison Dagger (hit and run style), or lure them over a corpse and PE them or just continue with novas. Finish them off just as mentioned above. My personal favorite is with teeth, not sure anything is more insulting than going down to a 1 point level 1 spell. Also it always hits and even with reduction gear will always do one point (which is exactly what you need).

Might not be a bad idea to either use points or item for a level one Bone Spirit to chase them should they try running off screen.

Do expect people run or TP out if your poison doesn't drop them to 1 within a couple of seconds. You want the biggest possible DPF for doing this. However one thing in your favor is that the health bar kinda lags behind the actual damage when you are poisoned. So they (and you) wont necessarily know when they get to one. 

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Strength (Str) : Strength lets you wear equipment. How much you need depends strongly on available gear. I'd shoot for 115 after items if you want to wear Guillaume's Face (check out the section about Baal running to see why you will want to wear this helmet), or 156 if you want to use Stormshield.


Dexterity (Dex) : Here you will want enough for blocking (with a good shield, of course, don't aim for 75% chance to block with a shield that has 30% base chance to block...).

Why? Simple: More points in Dex mean less in Vit, and thus, less life. Now, why is it a good idea for a Necromancer to sacrifice Vit for dex? The Necromancer receives only 2 Hit points (HP) per point in Vit. This is the low end of what chars get, meaning that he loses less life than other classes that get 3 or 4 points life per point in Vit.

Good shields for this build are the Homunculus (72% chance to block), a rhyme (runeword) Tower Shield or Sigon's Guard (64%). Don't try to reach max blocking with a shield that has a lower base chance to block than Sigon's, and even in the case of Sigon's I'd craft an amulet to help with blocking. (More on that later).

Bottom line is that you will need around 200 Points of Dex at level 92 (trust me, in 1.10 you won't get a lot higher than that anytime soon.). There is a formula to calculate the needed dex at a certain level but I think it's easier to just hover your mouse button over your defence value (this shows you your chance to block) and see if you reached 75% blocking yet.

Vitality (Vit) : All the rest. Not much more to say here. Everything you don't need otherwise goes here.

Energy (En) : Don't get Energy higher than 70. I think you could even get away with no points spent here, but normal difficulty will be pretty tedious because you'll need to quaff a lot of potions.

2.b) Stat Points - Progression:

There's not much to say here. At low levels I'd work on energy and strength, then on vitality. Most likely you won't need blocking in normal at all, so I'd not worry about dex until later. Blocking gets important in Hell, so be sure you've got enough points saved to add them as needed. Don't be afraid to keep stat points saved if you don't want to spend them, there's nothing wrong with that. I've seen a lot of people beat the game with a few hundred points to spare. (I did that, too)

3.a) Skills - Target Values:

Summoning:
20 Raise Skeleton (RS)
20 Skeleton Mastery (SM)
1 Raise Mage
1 Clay Golem
1 Blood Golem
1 Iron Golem
6+ Revive
1+ Golem Mastery
2+ Summon Resist (SR)

Poison & Bone:
1 Teeth
20 Corpse Explosion (CE)

Curses:
4+ Amplify Damage (Amp)
1 Dim Vision (DV)
1+ Attract
1 Decrepify (Decrep)
0-1: Iron Maiden
0-1: Life Tap
0-1: Lower Resist (LR)
0-1+Bone Armour

The base build can be completed with only 75 Skill points. Skills that are marked with a "+" are likely candidates for further skill points. I suggest reading what I have to say in the skill analysis before adding a lot of points to any of those, though.


Note: If you have spare skill points, the damage your skellies deal is displayed as lower than it should be. I do no know if the bug is in the display only and your minions to the right damage in game or if they actually deal less damage. At any rate, the difference is not large but it deserves mentioning.

3.b) Skills - Progression:

Normal

2: Amplify Damage (1)
3-7: RS (5)
Akara: RS (6)
8: SM (1)
9-17: RS (15)
Radament: RS (16)
18-21: RS (20)
22: Weaken (1)
23: Terror (1)
24: Decrep (1) (before the fight with Duriel)
25: SM (2)
26: Clay Golem (1)
27: Golem Mastery (1)
28-30: SM (5)
Tyrael: SM (7)
31-32: SR (2)
33-45: SM (20)

Nightmare

Akara: DV (1)
46: Confuse (1)
47: Attract (1)
48-50: Amp (4)
51: Raise Mage (1)
52: Blood Golem (1)
53: Iron Golem (1)
54: Revive (1)
Radament: Revive (2)
55: Teeth (1)
56: CE (1)
57- 60: Revive (6)
Tyrael: CE (3)
60-70: CE (14)

Hell

71-72: CE (16)
Akara: CE (17)
73: CE (18)
Radament: (19)
74: CE (20)

3.c) Skills - Analysis:

The whole purpose of this section is to explain why I used the skills I used and why I spent as many points on them as I did. There are also a few hints on how to use the skills here. Seasoned players may want to skip this.

1) RS and Mastery: Not much to say here. More points mean more skellies and more damage for the skellies and your revives. Skellies will start having trouble with hard enemies in Act 4 Hell and beyond. If you have enough + skills items you will most likely be able to beat the game using only skellies and your mercenary. Points added to RS increase damage a lot more than points added to mastery.

Note about summoned creatures: If your skill level changes, your skellies retain the level they were summoned at. So, if you have 20 RS and are under the effect of a shrine (+2 to all skills) you will summon at skill level (slvl) 22 and those skellies will remain at slvl 22 even after the effect of the shrine wears off. You can use this to your advantage by having a lot of + skills gear on switch. Note that this works the other way around, too: If you put more points into RS you will need to resummon your skellies for them to be at your new slvl.

2) Raise Mage: Mages are not useful for this build. This build is geared towards physical damage. The mercenary and my main curse (amp damage) don't aid the mages at all. For this skelliemancer, mages do more harm than good. Especially in tight areas like the maggot lair or the arcane sanctuary where they will block your skellies' path. They also like to block doorways. I heard that some people like using cold mages against act bosses, but personally I never needed them and resummoning mages until you get enough cold ones is tedious. Still, if you have problems with an act boss it might be worth a try to summon as many mages as your slvl 1 with + skills allows.

3) Clay Golem: The slow effect makes the clay golem useful against single enemies like act bosses but not so useful that I'd want to spend more than 1 pt. Usually you will have 8-10 skellies, your mercenary and 4-10 (or more) revives. You don't need another tank.

4) Blood Golem: Don't bother casting this one. He does nothing for you the Clay or Iron Golems don't do better.

5) Iron Golem: Interesting if you have access to a steady supply of high-end items. Using the IK Maul to create Iron Golems worked fine for me when I was running Baal. (IK Maul has ~40% Crushing Blow and is very easy to find. At any rate, I found them faster than my golem used them up)

6) Revive: Despite the (relatively) poor AI revives are far from useless. Especially since you can only have a limited number of skellies adding a few revives can be a great help. Just pick your revives carefully. In general it's a good idea to revive fast monsters or monsters that are dangerous to you and deal physical damage. More on that later, in the section about revives.

7) Strategy for using Revives: Having an item with Teleport helps a lot. Enigma would be ideal but something with charges works, too. (An Amulet for example) Use that to gather your forces (teleporting next to Baal, Diablo, or into Coldworms chamber). Move a bit after you teleported as sometimes your monsters don't move if you're standing right on top of them.

8) Corpse Explosion: As you will most likely play normal and nightmare on players 8 almost exclusively I'd suggest not investing more than 1 pt here until later in the game. Once you reach hell and switch to players 1 it is extremely useful if you want to kill in a hurry. You don't have to have it, but if you intend for your char to be used for MF you will probably want it. Well, and it's not like there was anything better you could do with 20 skill points. Trust me, max this skill. Remember that CE is 50% fire and 50% physical. So, amp damage or lower resist can increase the damage it does.

On a side note, CE is not useless on players 8, don't let the fact that it doesn't scale blind you to that. It does not get a bigger penalty than any other skill. Monsters on players 8 have 450% life. Assuming an amp'd monster with no resistances, CE does between 90% and 150% damage. 3-4 casts would still be enough in that case.

9) Amp Damage: The most often used curse. Lowers physical resistance by 100%, which doubles the damage your skellies deal and increases the damage you do with CE by 50%. It also breaks nearly every Physical Immunity you will encounter in the game. I like having more than 1 point here because it lets me amplify whole crowds in a hurry and I can get back to doing other things, like casting attract or CE. You'll be pretty slow if you need to cast Amp 4-5 times before you've got every monster.

10) Decrepify: Another great curse. Monsters are slowed by 50%, their damage is reduced by 50% and their physical resistance is lowered by 50%. This is extremely hand against act bosses but is _not_ recommended against normal enemies. Do not forget to cast this curse against act bosses, though. You will notice a huge difference in your troops' performance.

11) Dim Vision: Handy to use at the start of a battle or to stop ranged attackers. It also keeps reviving monsters from raising their dead, as they can't see them anymore. It’s also great to stop Gloams from frying you. I almost never used this curse, though. Using Attract in combination with Amp is far, far superior to using DV.

12) Attract: The crowd control curse. This one really rules. Cast it on a monster and all the other monsters start attacking it. This curse cannot be overridden by other curses. (Meaning if you cast amp damage on top of it, the attract curse stays active.) What makes this curse so useful is that a) Monsters stop attacking your troops and b) you can cast amp damage on all the other monsters that are currently attacking the victim of this curse. This gives you crowd control and more damage. (Remember, if you cast amp damage on top of dim vision the dim vision curse is gone). When facing a boss pack, cast the curse on a minion, not the boss as it doesn't work when cast on bosses.
By the way: You do not cast attract on the monster to kill it. You're casting it to keep several enemies busy. I'm stating that because some people asked why to bother with this curse, as it doesn't really kill the monster.

13) Lower Resist: This curse has one situation where it is handy, if you have points to spare you might want to consider putting 1 point here at most. There are some enemies in the game that have more than 120% physical resistance. This means that they will stay PI, even after you cast amp on them. This only applies to a few choice bosses and you can kill them without LR, but LR makes it a just a bit faster. There will be more on that later, in the section about Physical Immunes.

14) Iron Maiden: Only as a prerequisite if you want LR.

15) Life Tap: This curse returns 50% of the damage your troops deal as life. At first glance this sounds like a very good thing but life tap is still not very useful for this build. Once your mercenary gets any leech at all he will easily leech back the life he loses. My skellies rarely died, too, so I prefer to keep my enemies amp'd rather than life tap'd. Might be useful for the early stages when your mercenary has no life leech of his own or if you are in an MP game and have some fragile chars along.

16) Bone Armour: This skill might be handy in Hardcore. Personally I haven't used it yet but if you have spare skill points it does sound like a good idea.

3.d) Skill Points - Comparison of Curses:

There are several curses that have somewhat similar effects. The trick here is to figure out which of these are the best pick for you for a given situation. Note that the answer to these questions is not "always use curse 1 and never curse 2" but rather "use curse 1 here and use curse 2 there".

i) Decrepify vs. Amp Damage:

Quite often people have asked, which of these two was the better curse, so I thought I'd add a small paragraph about that. Some people argue that the -50% speed and damage decrep provides make it the better curse, but actually you won't need those things very often. Remember, the -50% damage and -50% speed don't do anything for you if you don't take any losses without them. So long as your army doesn't take heavy losses, there is no reason to use decrep, especially since it takes a while to affect larger crowds with this curse. In most cases, amp is the better choice. Decrep enters the scene when you come up against single, tough enemies. Either Act Bosses, or regular boss packs with nasty mods (extra strong, fanaticism or might aura). Lister is a good example here. If he is extra strong and fanatic I usually use decrep instead of amp.

ii) Dim Vision vs. Confuse vs. Attract

Another argument I've frequently seen is which of these crowd control curses to use. I've already brushed this argument when I talked about the individual curses, but I think this deserves it's own paragraph as it's being brought up that often.

All of these curses serve when it comes to stopping monsters from hurting you, no argument here. The key factor is that you cannot override attract with another curse (attract on the other hand, can override other curses) which allows you to keep a group of monsters busy and under the effect of amp damage. None of the other curses can do that for you.

Confuse does make all the monsters attack each other, but as the damage they deal is so small compared to their life it's not really a valid alternative to attract.

There is one situation where I'd cast dim vision rather than attract. When you're dealing with very dangerous ranged attackers and can't take the time to aim attracts but just want to fling a curse in the general direction of the monsters. Like Gloams that are shooting at you from off-screen for example. I'd dim vision those, then teleport up close and amp & attract them.
Against regular archers I still prefer using only attract as it works just fine here.

You will probably notice that it's not necessary to cast attract all the time. In most battles your forces will do just fine without it (or another crowd control curse). But don't forget that you have those crowd control curses. They'll be helpful to you at the start of a session when you have only your mercenary and nothing else.

3.e) Skill Points - What to do with spare points:

Well, as the official build ends at level 74 we will need something to do with all our extra skill points. At first glance there are a lot of options but most of them won't do you any good.

• Option 1: Getting an offence spell, either poison or bone. Bad idea. Without synergies those spells do next to no damage. Next!
• Option 2: Getting bone wall or bone prison: Between your curses and your army you really shouldn't need more crowd control. Next!
• Option 3: Adding a few more points to your favourite curses because you think duration is too short or the radius is too little. Good idea. Do that if you want to.
• Option 4: Getting more Revives: Good idea if you have fewer than 10-12 and want a few more. Personally I like to have 12 revives in full MF gear. Depending on your MF gear this may take more or less points.
• Option 5: Maxing Golem Mastery: Good idea if you want to use an iron golem. Only advisable for boss running and then only if you can summon him out of an item that has crushing blow. But if you can do that this is a pretty decent idea. Do not do something crazy like casting him out of a beast rune word unless you will _never_ face Oblivion Knights again. Iron Maiden kills this golem instantly. The IK Maul is a good choice here. Can improve your times for Mephisto or Baal running significantly.
• Option 6: Getting more SR: Good idea if the gain is still worth the cost to you. Maybe you will need 1 or 2 extra points for MFing.
• Option 7: Getting Lower Resist. Good idea if you want to speed up killing of those unbreakable PI enemies.
• Option 8: Getting a few points in Bone Armour. Good idea if you are feeling fragile.
• Option 9: Something different: Good idea if you didn't like my suggestions. Don't come running if you don't like the results, though... *wink*

4.a) Gear - Untwinked:

The first thing you need to know about this build is that it can basically beat the game "naked", which makes it perfect for playing untwinked. (To me, untwinked means that you start with nothing and do little to no boss runs and thus you'll never have a lot of godly items)

I'd suggest always picking up flawless gems and cubing them to perfect. There are a lot of things you can do with them that will help you survive. You might want to have a few of every gem of every quality, just in case you want to upgrade some runes.

What we're looking for in equipment are the following things: MF, Resistance to Lightning, + skills and to a lesser extent: resistance to all elements.

Now I'll cover some of the "cheap" choices, slot by slot.

Weapon:
- Wand with + 3 RS and good other mods. Ideally something with + X to summoning tree and +3 to SM

Helm:
- 3 Socketed Crown (or other headgear) with Ort Runes or Perfect Topazes (PTopaz), depending on your need.
- Tarnhelm socketed with a PTopaz
- Peasant Crown

Body Armour:
- 4 Socketed Gothic Plate (or other armour) with Ort Runes or Perfect Topazes
- Wealth Runeword (LemKoTir)
- Skin of the Vipermagi

Shield:
- Sigon's Guard with a PDiamond
- Rhyme Runeword (ShaelEth)
- Whitstan's Guard with a PDiamond

Amulet:
- Resist all amulet (Cube: 1 Perfect Gem of each kind + 1 magic amulet)
- Rare resist all amulet with good other mods
- Amulet of Teleport (You will want to gamble for one of those in any even)
- Crafted safety amulet with 10% blocking (see here for info on crafting items, crafted items are like rares but they come with a few "built in mods. The saftey amulet comes with 1-10% increased chance for blocking. It is possible (maybe even easy) to get one with 10% blocking and resist all.)

Boots:
- Rare or Magic Boots with Resistances, MF or Faster Run / Walk
- Sigon's Boots

Belt:
- Sigon's Belt
- Rare Belt with resis
- Goldwrap

Gloves:
- Frostburn
- Chance guards
- Trang Oul's gloves
- Rare gloves with resis, MF

Rings:
- Coral Rings (Cube: 1 Magic Ring + 1 Perfect Topaz + 1 Rejuvenation Potion)
- Magic or Rare ring with Resis and MF
- Nagelrings

4.b) Gear - Twinked:

If you already have a decent array of items you will have an easier time beating the game. Here I'll list only the top choices for each category. You won't necessarily have some or all of these items but don't worry. As I said before, you don't need any of those; these are simply the top choices. In this section, the first emphasis is on kill speed, with only a small thought given to MF. For MF gear check the MF section further down the road. (Note that this is just the top picks that I'd use if I had everything that was available. You do *not* need anything of this to beat the game.)
Feel free to experiment with the gear you have, you don't really need anything. If you're not interested in MF focus on + skills (especially for the summoning tree) and resis.

Weapon:
- Weapon 1: Arm of King Leoric
- Weapon 2: Beast Runeword (on switch)

Helm:
- Harlequin Crest

Body Armour:
- Enigma Runeword
- Skin of the Vipermagi

Shield:
- Homunculus (PDiamond)

Amulet:
- Mara's Kaleidoscope
- Resist all amulet with good other mods (+3 to summoning tree, ideally)
- (Rare) Amulet of Teleport with good other mods, this (the teleport part) is a "must" if you don't have enigma

Boots:
- Wartraveller
- Marrowwalk

Belt:
- Arachnid Mesh

Gloves:
- Frostburn
- Trang Oul's Gloves
- Good Rare gloves

Rings:
- Stone of Jordan
- Wisp Projector

Charms:
- Resistance Charms of all kinds
- Summoning Grand Charms

At high skill levels your skellies will do insane damage, if you can get a lot of + skills you will probably be able to beat the game using nothing but skellies. Note that revives do not ramp up like this; their strength increases more linear.
Having the beast rune word on switch would increase your killing speed quite a bit (because of the fanaticism aura) but it's very expensive. If you have to choose between Enigma and Beast, go for Enigma.

5.a) Hireling - Choice & Gear:

Our final Mercenary will be a Might Mercenary. (Act 2, Nightmare, offensive Mercenary). He has the edge over everything else that is available. (For explanations check the next section). In normal I'd suggest using an Act 2 defensive Mercenary, though an Act 1 Mercenary could do well, too, if you have a decent bow for her to use. Still, I'd prefer the one with the aura.

Make sure your mercenary is always the same level as you are. Leveling him may take a while at first, but it will pay off in the long run. If you put off leveling him for too long he will never start to gain any real experience as the amount of XP he gets is dependant on how close his level is to the level of the monster he fights. (Keeping his level close to yours is especially important for your final mercenary. It isn't really such a big deal if the first one lags behind as you're going to fire him in Act 2 Nightmare anyway.)

As for the mercenary's gear: Make sure he has decent equipment. Don't just treat him as a walking aura. If you're untwinked it might be a little harder for you to get great gear but do try to keep him supplied. Shaftstop would make great armour and it's not that hard to find, same for Vampire Gaze, which would be your top choice for a helmet. (Both items socketed with res all jewels if you can manage that). A decent weapon would be an ethereal polearm with the Honour rune word. That is very easy to get and provides decent damage and life leech. On the unique side of things, Bonehew is an excellent late game choice that isn't all that hard to come by. Tomb Reaver would be your very high-end choice. The most popular act 2 mercenary weapon, The Reaper's Toll, is a very poor choice for this build as the mercenary will constantly override your curses which is something you don't want.

As a thumb rule, try to give your mercenary damage, leech, resistances and damage reduction.

5.b) Hireling - Comparison of available Mercs:

Act 2 vs. everything else

Act 2 mercenaries come with one big advantage: Their Aura. Nobody else has one and that gives Act 2 mercenaries the edge over every other mercenary, almost regardless of what char you play. This is especially true for this build as you have a lot of minions that will benefit from your mercenary's aura.

Might vs. Thorns

Might makes all your skellies and physically attacking minions stronger whereas thorns only works if a physically attacking enemies hits something. So, Thorns is weak when you fight few enemies or enemies that don't attack physically. Might doesn't care. It's always strong.

Might vs. Prayer

If you use your curses cleverly your minions will not get hit very often and hence they won't need any extra healing. Even if they do get hit, they are durable enough to withstand a few hits and regenerate fast enough so that you rarely lose any minions. The benefit of might outshines that of prayer by far.

Might vs. Blessed Aim

Blessed Aim helps your skellies hit. On paper this seems to be a good choice but once you are actually in the game you will notice that your skellies have no problem hitting stuff. That makes the blessed aim mercenary pretty redundant for our build and certainly not more useful than might.

Might vs. Defiance

Defiance improves your Skellies defence, aiding them in surviving melee attacks. Looks like a good choice at first glance but skellies have problem surviving even in late hell so you don't need the defiance mercenary.

6. Hardcore

Basically there is not much to say about hardcore. Your strategies and gear choices stay the same as the build was supposed to be able to beat the game without dying.

In general, it is a good idea to progress a little more slowly in hardcore, level up a bit more, sell a lot of stuff and gamble. Gloves, Belts and Boots are common choices here. Watch for resistances here.

The section about untwinked gear applies to hardcore, too. Just make sure you focus on resistances more than you'd do in SC.

Basically, you have to be a lot more careful in HC as once you're dead you stay dead (big surprise here). I'd suggest completing the game in softcore at least (with any char) once before trying hardcore. Take a good look at what monsters in hell can do and remember the dangerous ones.

I advise against reckless moves like running too far ahead of your army, that will probably get you killed sooner or later. Also be careful in areas that spawn Gloams. If one of them has conviction you could get in deep trouble.

Another known issue are Fire Enchanted bosses. Make sure you're outside the blast radius when they die, same for Cold Enchanted bosses and Stygian Dolls. The last two aren't bugged but they can hurt.

Running vs. Walking: Another of those things that are frequently brought up. Personally I prefer running for several reasons. For one, walking looks strange to me and I prefer to be as fast as I can. I got my necromancer to guardian without dying and without walking so I guess I can safely say you don't have to walk. Just don't charge along blindly leaving your minions behind. That's not really a good idea.

7. Tactics for specific Monsters and Areas & Frequent Problems

This section will include all those random tidbits of knowledge that don't really belong anywhere, as well as some tactics for act bosses and certain difficult areas.

A note on Player Settings: You should be able to take most, if not all of normal and nightmare on players 8. (assuming you follow the skill progression, that is. If you max the mastery first you will be a lot slower) If your gear is top notch you should be able to do the same on hell. Note that in players 8 hell your main problem is not getting killed, but running out of patience waiting for monsters to die.

The most annoying areas are undoubtedly the Arcane Sanctuary and The Maggot Lair. The passages are very narrow and your minions can't properly engage your enemies. The easiest way to beat those areas is to set the game to players 1, unsummon all of your minions and let your mercenary and CE do the work. (This applies to Hell difficulty. Normal and Nightmare shouldn't be much of a problem)

Andariel: Shouldn't be much of a problem due to the large amount of monsters she keeps around. Replacing lost skellies is easy here. In hell you can also use CE against her.

Duriel: Only a problem in normal. People usually only have difficulty with him if they forget to cast decrep and spend their points differently from the suggested skill progression.

Mephisto: Another weak boss. As usual, keep him decrep'd and you should be fine. Maybe consider reviving a few council members.

Diablo: A lot of people have problems with him, too. Usually this happens when they forget to cast Decrep, don't cast the clay golem or don't have points in SR.

Baal's Minions: CE makes short work of them. I like to use amp against all of them, except against Lister if he spawns with might or fanaticism.

Baal: May take a while to kill in normal play. Teleport is important. Decrep and clay golem are used as usual. If you intend to run him, check the appendix about the CB Set-up.

Physical Immune Monsters: Amp takes care of all normal PIs and most bosses. The others can be defeated with CE or by reviving monsters that use elemental attacks. Lower Resist helps, too.

Gloams: Usually they shouldn't be much of a problem. Try evading their fire if you can, Amp them and use CE as the first goes down. Teleporting right next to them is a good idea unless you are dealing with a conviction boss. Dim Vision is nice but I found that I rarely needed to use it. Keep your mercenary's resis up.

Blocked Doorways: Quite often people have problems getting through doors or narrow passages blocked by a few monsters. Only one or two of your skeletons will be able to attack and monsters may take forever to go down that way. Fortunately, there are some ways to deal with this: The first option, available to all necromancers, is to cast terror several times. That scares monsters away from the door and you will be able to move in. The second option is a bit more straight forward and this will probably be your preferred way of solving issues like that in later stages: Just teleport into the room.

Getting the first corpses: Well, once you've got your army you're pretty much unstoppable, but what about the start of session when you don't have any army?
Some people like to visit earlier acts to get their first skeletons, but I found that to be unnecessary. Your mercenary should be more than sufficient to get those first few corpses. Just make sure you put those crowd control curses to good use to keep him alive. Also, consider casting CE on the first few corpses, rather than beginning to raise your army immediately. Usually it's faster to cast CE on the first two corpses and then have about 20 dead monsters rather than raise skellies or revives immediately.
Once you've reached Act 5 you could just pop through the red portal and raise the dead bodies in Pindle's Garden as skeletons. Personally, I never found that to be necessary but it's still nice to know.

8. Revives

A general note about revives: They are all next to immortal unless their timer runs out. Hence monsters with a lot of life (or physical immunity) don't make better revives. That being said, there are several kinds of monsters that make good revives:

Archers like Dark Rogues or Skeleton Archers are excellent choices as they don't need to close with the enemies and thus can never get in each other’s ways. Those are probably my favourite revives. Spear Cats are okay, too, but they seem to be less effective than the archers.

Succubi make good revives if nothing else is available. Their attack is physical but they are a bit erratic. An annoying side effect is that a lot of them cast their own curses. Usually you will want another curse to be in effect so you may not like some types of succubi. Experiment a bit to see which ones you like.

Ghosts are great revives for the arcane sanctuary. They can't block each other's path, which is awesome in this place.

Standard Melee Monsters are solid choice. Examples are Serpent Magi, Doom Knights, Desert Raiders, Dark Rogues, Beetles, Balrogs, Yetis and Thrashers. All of these make decent revives especially if you can teleport.

Gorebellies and their look-alikes (the big guys with the clubs) deserve special notice as they have Crushing Blow. If you're entering a tough battle against an act boss or the Ancients consider looking for a couple of these guys. Note that you can bring them from act 4 to act 5. Just make sure you can quickly get to where you need them, so you'll probably want to leave your town portal open in act 5 and get the Urdars without using a new portal.

Vampires are okay if you need to take something down that's PI and stays PI. They are also useful in the Arcane Sanctuary, as they don't need to close with their enemies. They're not as good as ghosts there but better than melee monsters like Goatmen.

But not every monster that you fear makes a good revive. Gloams are poor choice, as are Stygian Dolls, or any other erratic creature, for that matter. (Gloombats, Fetishes, Fallens) Slow moving creatures like Mummies, Zombies, Cadavers, Maggots or Corpse Spitters are very poor, too.

9. Hotkeys

Well, this will be a short one, but I does need mentioning as having a good hotkey setup will make you just that much more efficient. Here's what I suggest, it may seem a bit weird at first, but once you got used to it you will not want to go back, I promise you that.

(Note, the point here is not to assign the skills the way I did, the point is using the letter keys for hotkeys. I do have some thought behind assigning them the way I did but maybe you'll find that it doesn't suit you.)

Q: Skill 1: Corpse Explostion
W: Skill 2: Golem (note: Should you summon an iron golem unmap this hotkey, lest you destroy your first golem accidentally by summoning a new one)
E: Skill 3: "Wildcard 1" curses like Life Tap, Terror or Lower Resist go here if you find that you need them.
R: Skill 4: "Wildcard 2" curses like Life Tap, Terror or Lower Resist go here if you find that you need them.
A: Skill 5: Amp Damage
S: Skill 6: Dim Vision
D: Skilll 7: Decrep
F: Skill 8: Attract
Y/Z: Skill 9: Raise Skeleton (this on is "Z" for Americans and "Y" for German keyboards)
X: Skill 10: Revive
C: Skill 11: unassigned

F12: Town Portal

T: Skill Tree
Z/Y: Character Screen ("Y" for Americans, "Z" for Germans)
U: Quest Screen
I: Inventory
O: Mercenary Screen

Number keys 1-4: Potions (1+2 Health, 3 Mana, 4 Rejuv)

Appendix A: Magic Finding and Boss Running

A lot of the things I'll say here have nothing to do with the necromancer build, but apply to MF in general. It might still be interesting to some and it covers quite a few frequently asked questions about magic finding. Still, it can be skipped in good conscience if you don't want to do any serious MFing.

Things I'll cover here are the basics of how MF works, where to MF in the various stages of the game and how to compare your MF results. (Like, comparing your finds from Mephisto to what Baal gives you)

First up let me repeat once more that magic find works on act bosses just fine. Regardless of what blizzard or anybody else says. Several people (including me) have done extensive testing on that and have verified that MF works just as it always has.

Okay, that being said, how does it work? Well, let's say a monster has a 1% chance of dropping a unique item. If you wear MF gear that gives +100% chance to find magic items his odds will be 2%. If his odds were 4% before they are 8% afterwards. Simple right?

Now, one more thing you need to know about Magic Find is that there are [/b]diminishing returns. Meaning that your actual MF percentage is lower than the sum of MF you get from your items. That means that every single point of MF helps you less than the last. But that doesn't mean it's a bad idea to try for as much MF as possible. It is only a bad idea if it slows you down a lot. With this build you shouldn't really have those problems as you can sacrifice basically everything for the sake of MF without endangering your life or slowing down.

Oh, and in case any body was wondering [b]MF works just fine with your minions. (I've seen this being asked a couple of times on various boards)

Word of Advice: All the Act Bosses are a lot easier to kill if you have crushing blow. (Check the section about CB for more info)

There's one last thing we need to cover before we move on: How to reroll maps. Let's say you don't like the map you have because the waypoint is far away from where you want to go. Now, just change difficulties and you'll get a new map. Of course you have to explore it again and it might not be good but after a few tries you'll probably get a good map. As you'll have to do quite a few runs to get what you want it does make sense to spend some time looking for a quick map. After you've got one, keep that map. Some people may tell you that maps "dry up", meaning that after a while you don't get any good results anymore. I have not been able to prove that something like that does happen. I did about 500 Meph runs on the same map and results didn't change noticeably. The first 30 runs yielded the same average number of uniques as the last 30 runs, etc. But we'll get to the comparing part later on. For now let's just say once you've got a quick map, stick to that until you're done running. Oh, and by the way: Maps change once you enter MP games so be aware that you'll lose your perfect map if you go MPing.

Okay, let's get started: Whom to run? Common targets are Nightmare Mephisto, Hell Mephisto, Hell Pindleskin, Hell Thresh Socket, Hell Eldritch, Hell Shenk and Hell Baal, and of course the level 85 areas in Hell, namely the Worldstone Keep and the pit. Now we can tick these areas off one by one.

Nightmare Mephisto: The good things about him are that you can run him quickly if you have a short map and that he drops very well, just like all the act bosses. And you can access him without fighting a lot of monsters (unlike Diablo and Baal). He is probably your first stop in your MF career. Personally I ran him only long enough to get a few basic items so that I could get to Hell Mephisto. This build is not perfect for running Meph but it can cope well enough.

Hell Mephisto (max TC 78, lvl 87): Now, this is where the fun starts. As always with Mephisto, it's important to have a good map. (A Waypoint close to the stairs down). Everybody runs him because it's very quick and the results are good. I'd suggest moving on after you've gotten most of the items you can reasonably expect him to drop. Which means most items of TC 72 and lower. While Mephisto can drop up to TC 78 his odds for TC 75 and TC 78 are low and very low respectively so you will probably get those items quicker from other places. (In other words, don't run Mephisto for Stormlash). Same as with NM Meph, this build isn't perfect but it can manage.

If you plan to farm Mephisto (NM, Hell, or both) for a lot of gear you should seriously consider doing this with the perfect char (imo), a Vegasorc ( http://forums.rpgforums.net/showthread.php?t=83592 ) Note that you do *not* need any gear from mephisto to beat the game with this build. This is probably only something that's interesting for you if you intend to run mephisto a lot. (500-1000 runs are a common number here. By then you'll have gotten most of the things he can give you)

Hell Pindleskin (max TC 87, lvl 86): Pindle can be found on the other side of the red portal in Harrogaths. He used to the last stop in an MFer's life. No more. He cannot drop Tyrael's Might, the rarest item in 1.10. (He also can't drop Azurewrath and the Arachnid Mesh) Also he no longer drops that much better than other monsters making it actually more profitable to run other places. Still if you want to run him this build can take him down very fast.

Hell Thresh Socket: He's on the Arreat Plateau, right next to the entrance to the cave. Another of the main MF targets in 1.09. Still good but no longer as much out of the ordinary as he used to be.

Hell Eldritch and Hell Shenk: Those two can be found close the Frigid Highlands waypoint. That's actually the main thing they have going for them: Being quick to run. They pose no problem for this build and if you enjoy running them they are good for some lower upper class items.

The level 85 areas (max TC 87): In those areas normal monsters have a level of 85, champions are lvl 87 and bosses are lvl 88. This means that bosses and champions can drop every item in the game. Most common choices are the Pit (Act 1, Tamoe Highlands) and the Worldstone Keep. The difference between the two is that the monsters in the Pit are easier to kill, but the WS K has Baal at the end of it, which tips the balance in its favor for me. Also I enjoy playing in the WS K more because it's more dangerous and thus less boring.

Hell Baal (max TC 87, lvl 99): This guy can actually drop every item in the game and as he is at the end of one of those lvl 85 areas the time you spend getting to him is well spent from the item hunter's point of view.

Now, on to part 2: How to analyse your findings, this is only interesting to you if you want to compare your findings to those of others or if you want to compare your Mephisto results to your Baal results. First of all you need to know about failed items. A failed unique item is a rare item with 3 times the normal durability; a failed set is a magic item with 2 times the normal durability. (For example, let's take a colossus voulge, a failed unique would have 150 durability, the failed set would have 100. Obviously you need to know the base durability in order to check this) A failed item can be created in two different ways:

1) The game tries to create a Unique (or Set) item but the base item that has been selected doesn't have a Unique (or Set) version. This is what would happen all the time when the game tries to create a Unique / Set Colossus Voulge.

2) The game tries to create a Unique (or Set) item but the monster that drops the item has a level that is lower than the quality level (qlvl) of the item. Let's take an item with a high qlvl (87), the Arachnid Mesh (unique Spiderweb Sash). Now, let's say you kill Pindleskin and he decides to drop a Spiderweb Sash. As Pindle's level is 86 he cannot drop the Arachnid Mesh and thus you'll end up with triple durability Spiderweb sash.

Ok, but what about bows or other ranged weapons? Well, there's no way to check if those are failed or not. But sometimes you can deduce a few things: For example a blue grand matron bow you got from hell baal can't be a failed item. Neither can a yellow short bow.

So, now that we've gotten the basics out of the way we can start comparing our findings. What you need to count is the total number of Sets and Uniques. (Total number = regular Uniques + failed Uniques). Obviously you have to disregard runs where you got things like a blue Crusader Bow where you can't be sure if you've gotten a failed item or not. (you can say for sure that a yellow crusader bow from hell baal can't be failed, though) Also you need to count the total number of items you got, as well as keep track of how many runs you did.

If you do all that and do a statistically significant number of runs you will find that Baal and Mephisto have exactly the same odds of dropping you a Unqiue or Set item. (Personally, I did 500 Mephisto and 200 Baal runs (while taking notes, in total I probably did "some" more); but something like 50 should show you the right tendency, too. Remember not to change anything while taking notes (MF percentage, player settings, etc).

Appendix B. MF Gear

Generally speaking, the perfect MF gear gives you 75% LR, a decent amount of + skills and (surprise) a lot of MF.

I'd suggest using something like this, which is my MF gear for the WS K and Baal:

Weapon: Ali Baba with 2 Ists
Shield: Homunculus (PDiamond)
Helm: PTopaz Shako
Armour: Enigma
Gloves: 40% Chance guards
Belt: Goldwrap
Ring1: 30% Nagelring
Ring 2: 28% Nagelring
Amulet: 30% Res All, 28% MF
Boots: War Travs

Charms: 1 Gheed's Fortune and a lot of 6-7% MF small charms, preferably with Resis as a second mod. Add enough 11% LR charms to get to 75% Resistance to Lightning. I'd suggest keeping a 2 x 4 area clean so you can pick up at least one item.

The good thing about this set up is that it gives you a lot of gold find, too, which helps keeping the amulet charged.

Where to get all these charms? Pick up every Flawless Gem and cube it to Perfect. Then get some high level small charms (from the WS K or the Pit) and start cubing. It took me a bout 300 PGems to get all the charms I wanted.

Now, you might not have all of these items, here are some alternatives:

- Nagelrings can be replaced with Wisp Projectors if you have trouble against gloams.
- Enigma Armour can be replaced with Skullder's Ire (PTopaz), Wealth Armour or 4 PTopaz armour and an Amulet of Teleport. (I'd advise against boss running without Teleport, it is a lot faster if you can move your forces as needed.)
- Homunculus should not be replaced unless you really have to. +4 to curses, great blocking and a ton of resis are hard to beat. Sigon's Shield can be used if you don't have the Homu.
- The Blade of Ali Baba can be replaced with a Gull Dagger.
- The Harlequin Crest can be replaced with a good Tarnhelm or some simple 3 PTopaz headgear.

Appendix C. NF's Crushing Blow Setup (tm)

NF's patented Crushing Blow (CB) Setup consists of three parts, all of them really easy to get:

1) A 6 sockted weapon (I used a Phase Blade) with 4 Eths and 2 Shaels OR 4 Eths 1 Shael and 1 Um (Open Wounds pwns). This makes sure you can hit Baal, even if your AR is extremely low. (Remember, normal "Ignore Target Defence" doesn't work on Act Bosses, but "-100% Target Defence" does) (basically a 4 socketed weapon with 4Eths is enough, too. But it's not that hard to find something with 6 sockets)

2) Gore Rider or Goblin Toe. Those provide crushing blow and open wounds in the case of Gore Riders, I'd go with Goblin Toe if you don't have gore riders or if you have an um rune in your phase blade

3) Guillaume's Face: This provides the biggest chunk of CB.

These three items together can reduce the time you take to kill Baal to a fraction of how long it would take using only skellies and your mercenary. Note the physical resistance affects CB and Baal starts with 50% PR. With Decrep you get him down to zero but with amp damage you get him down to -50%, which increases the damage CB does. But he may be easier to kill with Decrep because of the slow effect.

Now, what shield do we use with our Phase Blade? Ideally, Stormshield. If you don't have that, any shield with decent blocking and resis will do. A Rhyme Tower shield is a cheap alternative. Don't forget that you'll use this shield only against Baal himself so it doesn't really matter if your resis drop a little on switch.

Appendix D. Multiplayer Games

I haven't been able to test this aspect of the game very extensively, due to my bad connection, so I'm relying heavily on what people told me here. By all reports your minions don't cause as much lag as you'd expect, which is good.

But your large number of minions can make it hard for other players to see what's going on. Characters like a fanatic paladin may have trouble seeing their targets and they might miss being cursed with Iron Maiden, which is probably fatal for them.

This build works best in concert with other chars that focus on dealing physical damage, like Paladins, Shapeshifter Druids, Amazons or Barbarians, because they benefit from your main curse. Some of these increase your killing power though auras or spirits which is nice.

Spellcasters like Sorcs or Elemental Druids will probably appreciate your crowd control skills but other than that they probably work less good with the build than other chars. They don't increase the damage you do and you don't increase their damage either. Cold spells will often shatter monsters leaving you with no corpses to work with.

The worst partner for this build is probably another skelliemancer, though. Your minions will probably get in each other's way (not to mention the added confusion) and there's really no need for two cursing characters along.

On a sidenote, it might make sense to ask other players if they'd be willing to remove their Nature's Peace rings for the duration of playing as those render corpses useless to you and that's not really good.

That being said, make sure you have a group of people that need / appreciate what you can do for the party. And that is mainly crowd control. Between your curses and your minions you can make the world of Diablo a pretty safe place for some of the more fragile builds or those lacking crowd control of their own.

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Statistics

I recommend utilizing the bare minimum required strength, dexterity, and energy, dumping everything else into vitality.

Energy: nothing. Use equipment and charms to increase your mana pool. You will be starving for mana early. Suck down the blues and bear with it. Your time will come.

Strength: slowly add strength. I recommend 30 by level 15 so you can wear Treads of Cthon unique boots at level 15. Then 60 by level 29 so you can wear Frostburn unique gloves. Last, but certainly not least, make your strength 89 by level 42 so you can use the unique shield Herald of Zakarum. This shield gives +4 skills to hammer and is the only shield I recommend. Having 89 base strength will also ensure you can pick up all your items off of your corpse should you die. No body popping. Go slow with the strength so you can build up your vitality. You will need it.

Dexterity: enough to maintain a 75% chance to block with Holy Shield active. My recommendation is to use math to find the least amount of dexterity required to maintain 75% blocking. Battle.net says that Herald of Zakarum has an 82% chance to block. This is deceiving. The actual chance to block is calculated using your paladin’s dexterity, your shield’s stated chance to block, and your paladin’s level. Quoting from Ragnarod’s 1.10 Paladin FAQ:

“Total Blocking = (Blocking * (Dexterity - 15)) / (Character Level * 2)

Where Blocking is (Shield Blocking + Holy Shield bonus) if you are using Holy Shield. Notice that even if you won’t be shown more than 75% blocking in your shield, its base chance to block might be higher (for example, Stormshield has 77% chance to block, and Herald of Zakarum has 82% chance to block for paladins, those are the numbers that you have to use)”

Using my method, you will have 75% total blocking at level 24 and beyond. Before level 24 you’ll be very close to 75% chance to block, but with your high vitality you will stay alive. To take advantage of this, you will need +9 to combat or all skills and one skill point in the skill Holy Shield. You must then cast Holy Shield every 230 seconds when it expires.

I’ll tell you the easy way to get +9 skills in the equipment section.

Vitality: everything else.

This is where I recommend putting all your stat points:

Items

The Maximum Damage Paladin is very item dependant. He must maximize his +skills items, his maximum mana, his mana recovery, and his faster casting.

All the items I recommend are from patch 1.09 and earlier. I do this because they are so easy to come by even for the casual player. Anyone with any time in this game and a modicum of trading can easily obtain these items. If you find better equipment then use it but remember the principles I stated above.

At level one, mule a Khalim’s Will to your paladin. Do not confuse this with Khalim’s flail. For Khalim’s Will there are no level, strength or dexterity requirements. I’ve had one for years. It’s the best weapon for characters under level 18, maybe further. It doesn’t matter if you get it in normal, nightmare, or hell. Just get one and use it every time you make a new character. It will kill almost any monster in Acts 1 and 2 in one hit.

At level six, get Death’s Hand and Death’s sash. These will give you 30% increased attack speed, cannot be frozen, +15 to all resistances, 8% life steal, and make you nearly immune to poison in normal. I use this set until level 23.

At level 11, get two Cathan’s Seals, set rings. These give you 6% life steal each. With Khalim’s, Death’s, and Cathan’s you now have a nice +25% life steal at level 11.

At level 15 it gets sweet. Grab a Tarnhelm, an Eye of Etlich, and Treads of Cthon. Now you have +2 to all skills, +3% to 7% additional life steal, any normal monster you hit gets frozen, and you can run faster. I hate running slow. Get a perfect Eye if you can so you will have 32% life steal at level 15.

At level 17, get a 2 socket breastplate and put Tal and Eth runes in it. Breastplates require 30 strength and are ridiculously easy to find. Tal+Eth makes the excellent “Stealth” rune word. It gives faster casting, faster hit recovery, faster run/walk, and faster mana regeneration. Sweet.

Now we need to start thinking about faster casting. Quoting from Ragnarod’s 1.10 Paladin FAQ:

With Stealth we get 13 frames.

At level 18, I highly recommend a Rusthandle unique grand scepter. It does decent damage and gives you +1 to paladin skills. Note the strength requirement of 37. You won’t have the base strength required at level 18, but some plus strength charms will help you out. With this you will have +3 to all skills. Your hammers will be doing enough damage to kill everything in your path. I never used my weapon to hit anything after level 18. Ditch your life leech rings, put on two Manaldheal unique rings, and fill your belt with one row of red pots and three rows of blue pots you should have no problem having enough mana. Pick up blue pots as you go and you should be able to kill everything with hammers from level 18 and up. Drink all the blue potions you need. Buy them from the NPC’s. Really, there should be no problem with mana with this build.

At level 23 get Magefists. These, with Stealth, will allow you to get the 12 frame breakpoint. Since you are taking off the Death’s Hand you can go ahead and ditch Death’s Guard and put on a Nightsmoke for more mana.

At level 29 put on 2 Stones of Jordan and Skin of Vipermagi. Skin and Magefist will allow you to break the 11 frame cast rate. The added skills and much needed mana will allow you to cast a lot more hammers. Also at level 29 you should make a “Rhyme” Shield. “Rhyme” is the runeword formed by Shael and Eth runes. This is the best low lever caster shield there is. If you use a 2-socket bone shield, you will get 70% chance to block. The bone shield is light so you can run faster. You will get 40% faster block rate, +25 to all resistances, faster mana regeneration, cannot be frozen, +50% extra gold find, and, to top it off, +25% magic find. It will last you until you get your Herald of Zakarum at level 42. You can also use a 2-socket grim shield to make this rune word and get the same benefits. With Skin of Vipermagi, Nightsmoke, and a Rhyme shield you should have 55 to 70% resistances. Ten more when you complete the Anya quest.

You have a choice here at level 29. If you need more mana, drop your Magefists and grab some Frostburns. It will slow down your casting by one frame, but you probably won’t even notice it. In addition, you can use a Whitstan’s Guard from the Disciple set. This is a great shield for blocking. I socketed mine with a perfect diamond for the resists. I found that in Normal I needed more mana than faster casting so I used Frostburns and the Rhyme Shield.

At level 33 get a Suicide branch and trade your Magefists for Frostburns. This bad boy along with Skin of Vipermagi will put you into the 10 frame casting range. To me this is the best PvM rate. Trying to get to the next frame is not worth it. You have to sacrifice too much equipment in my opinion. I love this wand. +1 to skills, 50% FCR, 10% max mana, +40 to life, +10 to all resistances, it’s all good. At this point you will have 65 to 80% resistances, assuming you did the Anya quest. Capped at 75% of course.

At level 36 get a Glooms Trap and Silkweaves. If you have mana problems after putting these on you are doing something wrong. You will still need to drink mana pots though. When you switch out, you will lose 10% of your resistances, but you don’t need them that much right now.

At level 42 you get to wear the fabled Herald of Zakarum. Your total chance to block is now 75%. You get strength, vitality, resistances, oh and did I mention +4 to your hammer skill! The Herald of Zakarum, Skin of Vipermagi, Suicide Branch, and the Anya quest will net 90 to 105% resistances. In normal, you will have maxed resists. If you want to maintain maxed resists in Nightmare you should socket your HoZ with an Um rune. Be careful, Um requires level 47.

At level 61 grab a Wizardspike. It has more max mana than Suicide, mana regeneration, and just as much FCR. You lose a skill point, but it makes up for it with +75% to all resistances. With this item you will have your resists maxed in Hell assuming you followed my other items.

At level 62 dig up a Harlequin Crest, unique shako. +2 to skills, Life, mana, oh and +50% magic find. Put a topaz in it if you want even more magic find.

At level 67 put on a Mara’s Kaleidoscope. +2 to skills and even more resists. If you followed my items you will not need the resists here, so go ahead and get one with low resists, they are easier to trade for.

Skills

I saved the best for last. This is where I did most of my work. I used common mathematical techniques to find the fastest way to develop the most damage as quickly as possible while leveling up your Hammerdin. He does this at the cost of having no melee combat skills to speak of. No Zeal, no Vengeance, and only one point in Smite. He uses the normal attack with a level one might aura until he can effectively cast hammers.

Speaking of auras, this guy does not right away max Concentration. To achieve the maximum damage hammer at the lower levels it becomes necessary to max Blessed Hammer first, then balance Concentration with the synergies Vigor and Blessed Aim.

You may be thinking this sounds ridiculous, but the whole idea is to maximize hammer damage at lower levels. This will be proven here.

First off Concentration adds 50% of it’s stated damage to Blessed Hammer. This means that it adds 30% on the first point and 7.5% on all points thereafter. On the other hand, Blessed Aim and Vigor add 14% damage to hammer. To quote Snake-Byte, “but what you've got to remember is that Vigor and Conc increase the base damage of hammers, and that is again modified by concentration. So say you're getting 14% per level from Vigor and Blessed Aim, at some point you're going to start getting more damage per point in Conc than you are per point into the synergies because the synergies increase the base damage of hammers.”

Secondly, nothing increases hammer damage than points in Blessed Hammer. The added damage tails off at the top end, but even at level twenty the increase is better than the 14% added by BA or Vigor. In other words, max Blessed Hammer first.

Here is the cool math part. If math is boring to you go ahead and skip to the SKILLS DISTRIBUTION section below.

I modeled the min and max damage of Blessed Hammer as a function of skill level an came up with two second order polynomials.

Base min = 0.1285*BH^2+6.9255*BH+5.6421

Base max = 0.1333*BH^2+6.804*BH+10.032

Where BH is your Blessed Hammer skill level. Please note that these formulae are approximate with respect to actual damage. They should get you to within a few points however. The main idea is that you can use them to prove what skill gives you the most damage.

Next we add in Blessed Aim and Vigor

Min = Base min*(1+0.14*(BA+V))

Max = Base Max*(1+0.14*(BA+V))

Where BA and V are the skill levels of your Blessed Aim and Vigor. Please note that items that add skill points to your BA and Vigor will not add damage to your hammers. They do add damage to base hammer damage and Concentration.

Now we add Concentration. Note that Concentration damage is calculated as a percentage of base hammer damage plus the damage added by BA and Vigor.

Total min = Min*(1+0.5*(0.15*C+0.45))

Total max = Max*(1+0.5*(0.15*C+0.45))

Where C is your Concentration skill level.

If you put it all together in terms of skill levels only and simplify you get:

Total min = [(0.1285*BH^2+6.925*BH+5.6421)*(1+1.14*(BA+V))]* [1+(0.075*C+0.225)]

Total max = [(0.1333*BH^2+6.804*BH+10.032)*(1+1.14*(BA+V))]* [1+(0.075*C+0.225)]

This you can easily insert into a spreadsheet as I did in the Hammer Damage spreadsheet in Excel file available from me by email. I also put in my stat points level by level using the chance to block formula to find required dexterity. My address is at the end of the guide.

Skill Distribution

First off I must thank Loboleal for figuring out the best point distribution. I only came up with the formulae; Loboleal did the painstaking point-by-point distribution. If you want to max your Hammer Damage by level 79, do what Loboleal recommends. This is assuming you have completed all the skill point adding quests, Den of Evil, Radament, and Izual in Normal, Nightmare, and Hell.

Level 1 - 12: one point each in Might, Prayer, Smite, Holy Bolt, Defiance, Charge, Blessed Aim, and Cleansing. Save all other points. If you have done Den and Radament you should have 5 points leftover.

Level 13 - 17: put a point in Blessed Aim every level. Trust me.

Level 18 and 19: You should have plenty of points to do this. Blessed Hammer, Concentration, Vigor, and Blessed Aim. Now you can cast some killer hammers. And with your level 7 and 8 Blessed Aim they will be very powerful.

Level 20 - 23: Pump Blessed Hammer every level. Do Izual, but save one point at level 23.

Level 24: Holy Shield and Meditation. In case you don’t know, Holy Shield is your best friend for defense. It increases your chance to block and your defense rating.

Level 25 - 38: Max Blessed Hammer, but go ahead and drop a point in Redemption at level 30. You should still be in Normal leveling up. At level 38 you should be at 20/2/2/9 for BH/Conc/Vigor/BA.

Level 39 - 70: Here it gets interesting. What we have found is that at this point you should alternate Concentration and one of the synergy skills, Vigor or BA, to maximize your damage. I picked Vigor first arbitrarily here. You could just as well max Blessed Aim first. They add the same amount of damage. So at level 39 put a point in Conc, at 40 put a point in Vigor, and alternate until you max out both skills. This will occur at level 70. By the way, by level 51 you should be in Nightmare and done with Den of Evil and Radament. Kill Izual about level 60, move into Hell about level 70, and clean out the Den of Evil.

Level 71 - 79: Max Blessed Aim. Grab the Hell Radament and Izual quests to complete your build.

Level 80 and up: You are on your own now. Holy Shield is nice to increase your chance to block and save on some dexterity points for use in vitality.

If you want to see how it all works out damage wise, here it is:

Mercenary

Get a Nightmare Act 2 Holy Freeze mercenary. This is the only mercenary I recommend. Give him a good weapon, some life leech, and some resists and he will slow down all your enemies so you can pelt them with hammers. I recommend Duriel’s Shell, Tal’s Mask, and a Spire of Honor, or Hone Sundan if you have some nice ED jewels to put in it. Make sure he levels up with you. I know it’s hard to resist killing everything in sight with your awesome hammers, but let your mercenary get a few kills himself.

Leveling Up

I’ve read some posts, some websites, tried things out and come up with a method of leveling up that works for my paladin and me in 1.10. Some might think it’s cheesy so take it with a grain of salt.

Level 1 - 12 Solo Act 1. Do the Den of Evil quest. Get as far as you can by yourself. At level 12 get someone to kill Andariel for you. Get an Act 2 mercenary.

Level 12 - 18 Do sewer runs, kill Radamant. At level 18 have a high level sorceress grab the cube, the staff, and the amulet for you. Get the Arcane waypoint from her.

Level 18 - 24 Do Arcane runs. This is your chance to perfect your hammer technique. Kill everything with hammers. I found that if you pick up mana potions you won’t have to buy any. Don’t forget to put your Khalim’s Will back on your mule.

I hate Act 3 for some reason. To skip Act 3, have a high level sorceress go to Travincal and kill the council members. Do not pick up the flail. You will not be able to take a portal to Durance until you talk to Cain. Grab the Durance waypoint. Kill Mephisto. I had no problem killing Mephisto solo at level 24.

Level 24 - 26 Clear all of Act 4 solo, especially Izual for the two skill points. I had no problem doing all of Act 4 including Diablo using nothing but hammers and my mercenary.

Level 26 - 42 Do Shenk and rescue the barbarians. I did this solo. Have someone give you the Crystalline Passage waypoint and grab Anya. Get the Ancients’ Way waypoint. Do the Ancients quest. I soloed the Ancients at level 27 and didn’t even lose my mercenary. Touch the altar step back and spam hammers, move, spam hammers, etc. Then go get the Worldstone waypoint.

I found doing Baal runs to be amazingly easy. From the Worldstone waypoint I use vigor and run through to the Throne room. You’ll have to drink a health pot every once and a while running, but Baal’s minions will replenish your supply. The formula is easy. Spam a nice hammer field right before the minions appear. Most of the minions will die very quickly. Run up to the last ones and nail them point blank with a hammer or two, or let your mercenary kill them. The council member group is the worst because of their hydras. If you spam a hammer field to kill most of them, cast a portal, then go see Malah for a quick heal, your mercenary won’t get killed by their hydras. For Baal just run up to him and nail him point blank with hammers. At this level solo Baal runs will give you almost a full level per run in Normal.

Level 42 and up: More into nightmare once you get your Herald of Zakarum. The funny thing is, Nightmare is easier than Normal in this case. Watch every monster fall beneath the feet of the mighty Hammerdin.

Hell is much harder though. I waited until I got my Wizardspike and an Um rune in my HoZ so I would have maxed resists in Hell. I have no problem doing solo Baal runs. This guide is primarily written for the leveling up stage rather than the end game. There are other fine Hammerdin guides on this website that focus on fighting strategy and the end game.

Bogus Hammer

Level 85 Paladin
Strength - 116
Dexterity - 147
Vitality - 303
Energy - 22
Life - 1219
Mana - 660
Defence - 3008 (w/Holy Shield)
Chance to block 75%
All resists 75%
Lvl 34 Blessed Hammer
Lvl 31 Blessed Aim
Lvl 31 Concentration
Lvl 29 Vigor
Lvl 15 Holy Shield
Hammer Damage 8949/9041

He can continuously cast hammers for about 20 seconds before running out of mana.

Note: skill levels added to the synergies do not affect hammer damage.

His gear:

Harlequin Crest socketed with perfect topaz
Skin of Vipermagi socketed with perfect topaz
Wizardspike socketed with Ist rune
Herald of Zakarum socketed with Um rune
Frostburns
Mara’s Kaleidoscope
2 Stones of Jordan
Gloom’s Trap
Silkweave boots
3 combat Skills charms
2 Offensive Skills charms
13 6-7% smfc

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A) Quick FAQ

How is this build for running through hell? Awesome. I think it's the best PvM build out there with the right equipment.

What kind of MFing can this build do? Just about anything. Eldritch, Shenk, other Ac5 Super Uniques, Baal, The Pit, Meph, Andariel, and Countess. Pindle is do-able but it's not particularly as fast as Meteor or Blizzard.

This is my first sorc. Do you recommend this for new sorcs? Probably not. Unless you are rich and have all the items to twink your sorc I think you would be much more suited for Meteorb. But then again, my guide may provide all the information you need to succeed.

Is CL as powerful as Meteor? Yes and No. This is explained in the CL section of Skill allocation and statistics.

Is CL/FO leet item dependant? To be an unstoppable speed freak killing machine, yes. To be decent, no.

Does the low minimum damage that CL has negatively effect the sorc's performance? In most occassions, you will never notice the minimum damage downside. If there are a low number of enemies on the screen, then yes it does come into play but that is why you have Lightning and FO to deal with them.

What is the 4 frame penalty? CL suffers a 4 frame penalty for hitting the same monsters more than once in a single cast. As long as monsters are far enough away that it doesn't violate the 4 frame penalty, CL will bounce back and forth between them for the full number of hits alloted (4 frames at CL's travel speed = about 2/3 of the vertical screen in distance). It can also hit monsters multiple times that are packed tightly. An example is: arcs 1-8 of 11 total arcs strike different monsters. Those hits take up 4 frames in which the last 3 arcs can nail the same monsters again.

What are the sorceress FCR breakpoints?

0%-8% = 13 fpc (frames per cast)
9%-19% = 12 fpc
20%-36% = 11 fpc
37%-62% = 10 fpc
63%-104% = 9 fpc (ideal for untwinked)
105%-199% = 8 fpc (ideal for twinked)
200+% = 7 fpc (impossible to achieve as far as I know)

CL and Lightning have a slower fpc I believe but I do not know for sure. It may start at 15-16fpc and drop from there. At 110% FCR you should be casting 2.5 times per second or close.


B) Skill allocation and statistics

Your typical build will look like this

18-**20 Lightning
20 Chain Lightning
20 Lightning Mastery
1-**5 Static Field
1 Teleport
2 in prereqs
**1 Energy Shield
**2-9 Charged Bolt (1st point is taken as prereq)

20 Frozen Orb
10-**17 Cold Mastery
1 Frozen Armor
5 in prereqs
**1 Chilling Armor
**1 Shiver Armor

**1 Warmth
** = customizable skills

The main build is complete at 98 points or level 88.

The customizable skills listed can be a bit of tailoring to the build according to how you want to play but you only have 11 hard to get points to play with so it's more of an end game deal. If you want to concentrate on Hell Meph, put more in CM. If you want to run The Pit more, raise Lightning and CB. If you feel the need to increase your Static Field range, go ahead.

Chain Lightning
Each point in a CL synergy raises the damage by almost 100/arc. By increasing the optional skill CB to 5 you would effectively get a 250 average damage per arc increase to each target. A notable increase.

The damage factor of CL is a bit hazy. It can do massive damage but in a different respect to Meteor.

A quick calculation reveals this:
(with these stats: 20CL/20L/20LM/1CB/+10skills/+0 monster resists/CL damage = 9-3949):

1970 average damage * 11 targets * 4 CL = 86680 average damage per 1.2 seconds

That's a ton of damage and it's a screen killer. But...with the 4 frame penalty in effect thats only 7880 average damage to each individual enemy. This is what I am talking about when I say CL slows down in high player hell games. 7880 damage doesn't really cut it due to monster/player count scaling. But it is more than adequate for solo or low player games.

The other downside to CL is it is very mana intensive. But there are ways to deal with this in which I will discuss in Tips and Tactics section.

But then you have to consider CL's other good attributes. Where Meteor is confined to a 4 meter space on the screen, CL can hit enemies anywhere within 1.5 screens and start arcing targets from any point. It also decimates packs of monsters that tend to scatter, killing them much faster than a Meteor sorc could. Scattering enemies like devilkin, demon imps, blood lords, Succubus, etc.

With the change from IAS to FCR dependency in 1.10, it is much easier to obtain insane casting speed with CL. It is possible to cast 5-6 CL by the time one meteor hits the ground using 105% FCR. FCR is very important to increasing your damage output. The faster you can cast CL the more damage you will do over time. You just can't do that with Meteor. FCR to a CL sorc is just as important as IAS to a Bowazon.

Lightning
You should also have Lightning maxed for the CL synergy. This is a great finishing skill for those left over monsters. It is also a great CI super unique killer for monsters like Shenk. Not much to say here as it is a pretty straightforward skill.

Frozon Orb and Cold Mastery
For more information on FO and CM, I decided to include an excerpt from sajsa's Meteorb guide. Very informative and everything sajsa explains applies here.

Quote:
Originally Posted by sasja
Why Frozen Orb and Cold Mastery?
1.10 has made the Sorceress' skill points incredibly tight by introducing synergies. Each tree has at least one attack with 3 synergies, which - if maxed - will get the damage of that attack to incredible heights. But maxing this attack to the full will cost you 20 skill points in the attack itself, 3*20 skill points in synergies, and another 20 points in the relevant mastery, so this requires 100 skill points out of 110 being ultimately available at level 99 - a level most of us will never reach! Having a cold spell which slows the fast monsters i Hell is invaluable, and Frozen Orb is a bargain. It only has one synergy, which is not powerful enough to really be necessary, kicks *** all the way through Nightmare, and does decent damage in Hell. Furthermore, the unique function of Cold Mastery makes a few points go a long way. Each skill point in Cold Mastery will increase the percentage which will be subtracted from your opponent's cold resistance before calculating the damage, down to a minimum of -100%. Only cold immune monsters cannot be affected by Cold Mastery. Let's run a few examples to see how useful this really is. I'll compare skill level 0, 1 (giving -30% to the monster's cold resistance), 7 (giving -50%), 17 (giving -100%) and 27 (giving -150%) in Cold Mastery, assuming an average of 265 damage pr shard for Frozen Orb.

Monster with 0 in cold resistance:
Cold Mastery 0 (0%): 265 * (100 + 0)/100 = 265
Cold Mastery 1 (20%): 265 * (100 + 20)/100 = 318 (improvement of 20% - not surprisingly)
Cold Mastery 7 (50%): 265 * (100 + 50)/100 = 398 (improvement of 50%)
Cold Mastery 17 (100%): 265 * (100 + 100)/100 = 530 (improvement of 100%)
Cold Mastery 27 (150%): 265 * (100 + 100)/100 = 530 (improvement of 100% - remember that -100% is the lower cap)

Monster with 75 in cold resistance (for instance Mephisto):
Cold Mastery 0 (0%): 265 * (100 - 75 + 0)/100 = 66
Cold Mastery 1 (20%): 265 * (100 - 75 + 20)/100 = 146 (improvement of about 120%)
Cold Mastery 7 (50%): 265 * (100 - 75 + 50)/100 = 199 (improvement of about 200%)
Cold Mastery 17 (100%): 265 * (100 - 75 + 100)/100 = 331 (improvement of about 400%)
Cold Mastery 27 (150%): 265 * (100 - 75 + 150)/100 = 464 (improvement of about 600%)

2.a Skills.

These are actually pretty obvious. You're either aiming for the highest damaging lightning possible since that's your main PvP skill or you make sure you can take a punch but end up with less damage. That would mean we obviously max lightning, and lightning mastery. Then as much in the synergies as you can spare without forgetting the essential skills such as warmth & teleport. That makes for this allocation:

1 warmth
1 telekinesis
1 teleport
1 thunder storm
20 charged bolt
20 lightning
20 chain lightning
20 lightning mastery
1-20 nova (whatever you can spare)

Or if you go Energy shield route:

1 warmth
20 telekinesis
8-20 energy shield (depending on your pre-casting equipment)
20 lightning
20 lightning mastery
1 thunder storm
20 chain lightning
Rest in charged bolt/nova

That's right, no cold armor. Grab an orb with (ultimately) +3 shiver armor +3 cold skills for casting your PvP armor (your weapon switch is good for this if you're poor and cannot afford call to arms like me). In PvM frozen armor might be more useful, decide which you want yourself. Shiver has the best defence & duration where frozen armor freezes, but the freeze length is very minor in hell where it's cut to ¼ of its original length. If you have something like Call to arms on switch though, you can't go wrong with a point in frozen armor.

Telekinesis does -6,25% mana drained when using energy shield for each point you spend in it (note that +skills do not count). This is pretty essential since in version 1.10 energy shield gets damaged before resistances and damage reduction, making you lose insane amounts of mana without it. In PvP, where you take the highest damage in the whole game, you will absolutely need the synergy to make energy shield of any use. One hit and you'll likely be low on mana without it. See my energy shield explained mini-guide.

Since giving up 27+ points that would synergize lightning it means giving up over a third of your damage, I chose not to use energy shield, and rely completely on teleport for my defence. If you do intend to use energy shield, you'll want to "pre-buff" it. This means that you find as much +to energy shield or +lightning skills as you can, use that equipment, cast energy shield and put on your better setup for dueling. You don't need to worry about energy shields duration, it starts at 144 seconds (roughly 2½ a minute) and increases with 60 seconds, 1 minute, for each point. I also strongly recommend going for maximum energy shield if you go for it at all, since 95% is 10 times better than 50%. This limit is at level 40, any points after that are wasted since only the duration increases, but it's already forty minutes so that's plenty.

Lastly, the reason why I'd only put one point into thunderstorm rather then 20, is because the increase of thunderstorm is only about 1500 damage, where you lose a third of your main damaging skills damage. Since the PvP penalty is now 17% where it was 25% before, and the double hit bug with thunderstorm is gone, and thunderstorm got no increase in damage since 1.09, it results in a pretty weak skill for both PvM and PvP. It's worth the single point easily though, but nothing more.

The total of this package requires 105-106 skill points meaning you'll have to level up 93 times if you've done all the skill-quests. Level 94 is what you should shoot for, after that the minor increase of life isn't worth the pain of leveling to me. With an energy shield build there's still stuff to synergize after level 94 of course. Obviously you'll be slightly better at level 99 but nothing extreme. Perhaps you need level 95 for a really nice crafted amulet, too. Any skill points left after level 94 should be put in warmth, a cold armor, teleport or energy shield. Of course you can get by with lower levels than 94, but your damage will suffer a little from it. If you skip 10 points of nova and only get to level 84, you lose about 4000 damage. It's as simple as that, so I really recommend at least level 90, because that's very doable.

Finally some damage figures to get you warmed up (assuming +20 to lightning skills & completely synergized skills)

- 16,6 yard static field
- 659-686 charged bolt #24 bolts
- 129-135 telekinesis (if only the stun improved with more points… now it's just useless other then a neat tool to grab waypoints, gold, potions, your stash etc)
- 1983-2583 nova (sweet rushing tool! Also nice for naked killing annoying people in pubby games, hehe.)
- 6-32689 lightning (the big killer!)
- 6-12207 chain lightning (nice in PvM, really nice)
- 4 mana cost teleport (with 1 point, may I remind you)
- 1273-1884 thunderstorm (1 point only, sweet)

That's not counting %lightning skill damage, but those increases aren't that huge because your mastery already gives loads of %enhanced damage and it stacks with that.

Energy shield or not? Basically ES makes you immune (well, the damage is so small that you don't need to watch your life) to any attack. Your life is really low though, so poison and/or open wounds will bring you to 1 really fast because they don't get absorbed. The second issue is, will you be able to keep the shield up at all times? You die if you lose your ES, simple. It's a real good defence though. Outweigh damage vs. survivability here.

2.b Stats

I'll get sttp (straight to the point)

Strength: As much as needed for your equipment. As little as possible.
Dexterity: Base, enough for wizardspike, or enough for max block. I wouldn't go for a build with no dex though, as not being able to use wizardspike gives up a lot of versatility. You're almost there anyway, with 25 base dexterity, anihilus, shako and possibly waterwalks. You can always -req your wizzy, if you've got a nice jewel with more mods.
Vitality: The rest. You can't have enough life.
Energy: I said nothing before, though you need as much mana to be able to keep teleporting. If you don't have 10 lightning skill charms or a call to arms (or simply don't want to use CtA, which is very understandable) you may end up with lower mana. In this case it's worth the sacrifice of life, since you'll be a sitting duck without mana.

Yea dexterity, should you go for blocking or not? I'll list a couple of advantages and disadvantages for you. I'm not going to say what you should do, just giving some objective advice so you can make the decision yourself.

Advantages:

- 75% block means 75% chance to completely negate any physical attack. On average damage taken this means 75% physical resistance.
- Some elemental attacks can be blocked. Mephisto's cold ball for example. Those are the only two advantages, but they are nothing to sneeze at.

Disadvantages:

- Investing in dexterity means you'll have less life. About 300 usually, before call to arms. This means you're risking 1-hit kills a little more, and simply can take less of unblockable damage.
- Blocking sort of limits your shield choice, since you'll be needing a shield with high block % to not lose too much of your precious life.
- Block-lock. Every time you block you go through the block animation. This means you're toast against a quick attacking enemy without a good block rate. This is in particular annoying in PvM once you're surrounded. Even though hit recovery is usually slower than block recovery, you need to have at least 1/12 of your life taken away in one hit for any effect at all. This usually shouldn't happen, in PvM at least. More details on FHR/FBR later.

Most people go for a blocking-build for PvP. For a relatively slow connection it's definitely a must or amazons for example will eat you alive. There's also a lot of people that don't go for block though, thinking they can beat most blockable attacks anyway because of teleport and want the extra life for elemental opponents. This also holds truth, though a good amazon or barbarian is a tough match-up without block.

I went for block myself, with a stormshield + shako getting 45 DR% with charged bolt & PvM in mind, and got a little disappointed. Together (str + dex) I wasted about 250 points that could've gone into vitality. That's 500 life! I found that my mercenary could do the tanking and that I could use charged bolt safely most of the time without getting hit badly. Mostly if I got hit it was by elemental attacks. Sure when I wasn't careful while mephisto running and my life had dropped below 100 I was grateful for hearing that "ping" indicating that I just blocked the cold ball. On the other hand I was begging for more life when facing off against a boss-pack of black souls (lightning immune, yikes!)

My rebuild used no block, but she never really got off the ground anymore because the ladder ended and I focused on my druid.

It's up to you.

For an energy shield build I strongly recommend against block, you'll need all the mana you can get, you'll survive melee anyway if you can put up enough mana.

3. Equipment
3.a. Untwinked equipment

Probably the hardest part of the guide, people might start yelling "I can't afford this, I can't afford that" but I can't help that. You simply need to have a little wealth to play PvP effectively. In PvM use whatever you find. Lightning isn't great for untwinked play. It's certainly doable, but you'll have an easier time with Meteorb for example. You don't have to be very rich, but you kinda need the basics. If you're going untwinked simply aim for these stats on your items mainly:

+Lightning skills
+Life/mana
+resistances
+Faster cast rate
-Enemy lightning resistance (this is extremely nice for magic finding at mephisto for example, a mere 25% decrease will double your actual damage on mephisto)
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3.b. PvP equipment:

On to the more wealthy equipment part. Before we pick this, there are a couple of things you need to know. One second is 25 frames, this means that if you're at 10fpc, you can cast at the very most 5 attacks every 2 seconds.