Builds

Build guides tend to be written as destinations, which makes them hard to compare. A better question than what does this build do is what does it cost, because you are spending three separate budgets to get there: skill points, attribute points, and a shopping list. Sorted that way, our nine builds stop being nine equal options and become a clear order, with two you can reach in Act 2 at one end and several you will not finish until Hell at the other.

The skill point bill

This is the budget that actually decides when a build starts working, because the points arrive one at a time and never come back without a respec. Adding up what each page asks for gives a spread of nearly three to one.

The gap between the top and the bottom of that table is the whole story. The Frenzy Barbarian is a complete, working character for 42 points, and its page says so plainly: it is built for beginners who want to finish Normal difficulty. The Summoner Druid asks for 110, which is essentially everything a character will ever have, and it spends five separate skills at maximum to get there. Neither is better. They are answers to different questions, and the table tells you which question you are asking.

The middle of the table is where the useful compromise sits. The Smiter Paladin and the Wind Druid both name only three skills at 20 apiece, which means both are recognisably themselves at around level 60 and keep improving afterwards rather than needing to be finished before they function.

The attribute bill, and the one build that wants mana

Attribute points are the quieter budget and the pages that give hard numbers give very different ones. The Frenzy Barbarian asks for 285 points across the four stats. The Wind Druid asks for 767. The Poison Necromancer asks for 857, three times the Barbarian, which is a fair warning that it is a late-game character rather than something you build towards from level 20.

Read the last column. Five of the nine builds tell you outright to put nothing at all into Energy, and the Frenzy Barbarian’s 15 points is a rounding error. The reasoning is always the same: mana potions are cheap and plentiful, so paying for mana with a permanent stat point is a bad trade.

One build inverts this completely. The Meteor and Frozen Orb Sorceress maxes Telekinesis and Energy Shield together, which routes incoming damage into your mana pool instead of your health, and then pours every spare point into Energy. On that one character mana is the health bar, and Vitality past 209 is the thing you stop buying. It is the only page in the bucket where the standard advice is reversed, and it is worth understanding before you follow it, because it fails in a completely different way to everything else here.

The shopping list is the same shopping list

Here is the thing that only becomes visible with all nine pages open at once. These builds cover six classes and every skill tree in the game, and their endgame gear is almost interchangeable.

The reason is not laziness. Almost every one of those items grants points to all skills, and points to all skills are worth the same to a Necromancer as to a Druid. Mara’s is +2 to all skills and +20 to 30 to every resistance, Enigma is +2 and Teleport, Harlequin Crest is +2 and 50% magic find, Spirit is +2 and a large chunk of faster cast rate. Once a build has the skill points it needs, the only thing left to buy is more of them.

The exceptions prove it. The two pages that do not ask for Mara’s Kaleidoscope are the Frenzy Barbarian and the Summoner Necromancer, and those are exactly the two pages that describe themselves as beginner builds. One sends you after Highlord’s Wrath, the other shrugs and tells you to wear whatever rare amulet you happen to have. Every build that expects to reach Hell converges on the same amulet.

The practical upshot is that gear you find while playing one character is rarely wasted. If you are working out what to keep, our runewords list covers Spirit and Enigma, and the runewords tier list explains why Spirit is worth making long before you can afford the rest.

If you are building specifically to farm

One page in this bucket is not a build at all but a comparison of five of them judged on a single question. Magic find builds looks at the Trapsin, Wind Druid, Poison Necromancer, Hammer Paladin and Blizzard Sorceress and asks which of them kills fast enough, in enough places, to be worth stacking magic find on.

Its answer is the Blizzard Sorceress, and the argument is about cost rather than damage. The first three are all pit specialists whose efficiency falls off in Chaos Sanctuary, and the first two are expensive. The Hammer Paladin works everywhere but is unremarkable to play. The Blizzard Sorceress matches the others without needing the runewords the others are built around, which means she is the one you can actually assemble on a fresh character. Note that she is also the only one of the five without a dedicated page in this bucket; the Frozen Orb Sorceress is the nearest cold build we cover in full.

Picking one

For a first character, take the cheapest thing on the skill table that suits how you want to play: the Frenzy Barbarian at 42 points if you want to be in melee, the Summoner Necromancer if you would rather something else did the fighting. Both are written for beginners and neither expects gear you do not have.

For a second character, the middle of the skill table is the sweet spot, and the Summoner Druid at 110 points is the one to leave until you are certain, since it commits your entire budget before it is finished. Whichever you pick, check the classes guide first: most of these builds are what your class leveling page respecs into, so you can walk the whole path in one direction instead of doubling back.