What did you accomplish this ladder? & What's next?

[Fearlessone]

This sort of thread happens at the end of a ladder season....What sort of new characters did you make this year, how successful were they, and why or why not? How far did you take them? Plz limit this to char builds you[/] hadn't made before. Also briefly describe what new chars you plan to make at the beginning of next season. If you have already posted your char build in any detail, plz provide a link to it.
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Here are a few of my 'new' chars:

Enchantress with a bow. This sorc uses near max possible enchant, lvl 30 + all the synergies. Reached lvl 86, but didn't really try to level her up much, she dies quite often with the lower resists - no shield (and no energy shield either, which I think was a correctable mistake). Uses RavenClaw. Runs in cs games and helps in rushes. Since the hell cs is mostly fire immune, she is quite limited there and is forced to spend her remaining skills on high static and some orbs so she can do [b]something. Specializes in taking out oblivion knights, and can switch to shard and shield for quick cs games.
http://forums.diabloii.net/showthread.php?t=500337&page=2

Smiter. My first pure smiter ever. Level 89 and still going up, probably the best pvm smiter on USWest in years. Specializes in killing mages in cs runs. Uses holy freeze / conversion for tight spots. Avoids dying by smiting all the oblivions before starting to finish them off. Also is quite nice at getting rid of pesky pk charged strike hackazons. Uses cleansing alot.
http://forums.diabloii.net/showthread.php?t=443517&page=3
http://forums.diabloii.net/showthread.php?t=395215&page=4

WW goldfind / mf warcry bo barb. Has medium lvl of finditem and warcry. Max ww, weap mastery, and BO. Does very well in cs runs and travincal. Lvl 89 and going strong. There's too much competition out there for corpses nowadays!

Whats next? dunno...

[purplelocust]

What sort of new characters did you make this year, how successful were they, and why or why not? How far did you take them?
This ladder season I played HC Classic for a change, though I haven't been playing regularly for months. For me, Ladder Season 1 was SC Classic, LS2 was mostly SC Expansion and a little HC Classic and HC Expansion, and LS3 was HC Classic. I only play with myself, really, since I have a 3 computer setup and prefer to do things my own way. I don't enjoy many aspects of the public games (rushing, know-it-alls who know little, vulgar players, people using hacks/dupes or wanting to, and so on.) The people on my longtime friends list didn't seem to play much this season and weren't playing HC too much. I was travelling out of my home country most of this year and pretty much stopped playing on battle.net earlier this year. I lost some of my characters for not refreshing them but most of them are around, just not being played with.

I ended up with about 25 King/Queen characters playing by myself and had a number of new character types for me.

Standard characters who weren't new for me were a basic stable of Hammerdins, Enchantress, zealots, LF Zons, MF sorcs, and summoners and they were helpful with other characters as support/MF characters or were good to have in game for self-looting purposes.

Characters who were new for me:

A summoner who used Lower Resist as his main curse and skeletons carrying a high-level enchant from my enchantress. He worked out pretty well and was faster through Hell than a typical summoner using Amp. The Maggot Lair and Arcane Sanctuary were annoying but less so than usual and I didn't use Durimules with him, even though that would have sped things up tons, of course. And in Act 4, getting the first corpse was a pain and he did it himself patiently using Attract and Bone Spirit, even though there was a temptation to bring in another character who could have gotten a pile of corpses easily.

A total BO slave. Max BO/Shout/BC with only +skill gear. He could hardly kill a thing on his own, even with a good enchant, but he was great to have around for safety of all characters. Maxing BC was just to improve the duration of the warcries and it is nice and long, so I don't have to go and recast BO all the time. In previous seasons, I was mostly playing with only two computers and would either have enchantress or hammerdin around on the second machine, but with three, I could have the character I was playing, the BO barb and either an enchantress or a character who could loot easily. I didn't have many HC deaths this season, and only two high-level ones, both due to my carelessness.

A Conviction helper and a Lower Resist helper. This was an idea I had that I didn't follow through on completely. The idea was to have a pally with a super high conviction and a necro with super high lower resist for breaking immunities and have one or both of them stand around in town when playing with single-element sorcs. If I needed them to break immunities, they could be called in. I didn't level them that high so they were too fragile to just stand there unattended except in town, and the radius of Conviction isn't that great, so I didn't use them much.

A Clegalot: I had a nice Fanatic Zealot (I have more experience with Frostalots and Tesladins) that worked well, but for HC I think I prefer a Clegs's Frostalot. I've played physical damage zealots more in expansion than in Classic and I was happy with how well he worked in Classic.

A couple of builds I started but never really got going before I stopped playing online: an explosion necro, a poison nova necro, and a Vengeance pally (using Clegs.)

A couple of project builds I never really got going: a Cleric (though I had made a good one a couple of seasons before) and a melee sorc using Enchant from someone else, instead of herself.

Next ladder season, I think I'll play softcore if I play online much. My connection can be pretty flaky and it was depressing to lose a couple of characters from connection-related problems. I play HC on single-player and have switched to mostly playing single player now. In SP, if you lose a character, you can't blame it on the connection and it keeps you more honest about whose fault it is!

For the beginning of next ladder season, if it comes at a time when I want to play alot online, I'll probably do what I usually do- paladins and sorcs to get off the ground quickly, then make some support characters, then try some projects. In softcore, there will be more possibility for experimenting with odd builds, I think.

[WarlockCC]

I only play with myself, really
Any idea how far we can take this out of context ? ;)

[Beltyn]

Not played for quite a while but did get some chars reasonably up on the ladder.

Got a java up to around 82, not the strongest character but nice and safe to play, good for mfing junk in norm and nm cows too.

Made a nice versatile nec using high LR, nova, CE and some summons, very well liked in CS runs, amazing how much a levle 24 LR can carpet things :cool:

Mainly waiting for next ladder and trying some experimental stuff hopefully with forum goers here, cookie cutter stuff really fails to appeal to me.

As such, necs and amas tend to be my favourite chars .

[Akukami]

My first, and only goal for this Ladder was to make a Level 92 PvA Pure Vita Blizzer and gather the best gear I could get for her. I'm quite satisfied with how far I've gotten, and I'm really just MFing and trading for better gear until it's time to start again.

Currently, I'm in search of a nice Red Chain Mail/Hard Leather Armor/Light Plate/Studded Leather, a nice Bone Helm/War Hat/Cap/Skull Cap, a nice Demonhide Sash/Sharkskin Belt/Belt, and a godly Sorc Amulet, and I'm trading off my BvB gear to get what I need.

For next Ladder, I won't be around much to play, so I'll just be MFing with a Sorc and Barb, and if I feel like it, I'll make another PvA Blizzer or SvA Orber for when I get bored.

And of course, I'll be dropping by here for price checks. :grin:

- Akukami

[Kiwi Legend]

Lvled my pala to 93 within the first few months of the season. Got bored on SC. Moved to HC and will never go back.
Im not sure if I will come back in season 4, certainly not with the same commitment...

[zaxien]

whats your acct on hc? Kiwi, I don't think I have seen you around.

Well I myself had my usual mf barb, svs, rush/mf sorc and javazon.
I was well pleased with my pvp bowzon and not so pleased with my def pvp smiter.

Also front page on hc nec ladder and still climbing. ^_^

[Kiwi Legend]

I quit this ladder about 5 months ago.

Acc its-rico

[fledgeling]

Im quite happy of my level 71 warcry barb
he was pure life, but I decided to give him 100str for silks
he could have 8 less points in dex but nevermind

apart from 2 sojs, his gear is pretty good :) 110fcr barb is cool :D

(of course a +2 10fcr prism amu would be better, but Im just happy with the +1 10fcr which took me 1month to get)

[IsThisNamePermanent]

I got 3 gulls within the first two weeks playing again, yah?

[weep]

few crazy items, quit early in the season haven't played d2 in a hell of a long time.. when's the new season? maybe i'll install.

[Rawly]

I started with the goal of getting a character into the top 50 for each character ladder did that quite easily with lv 85 ama,necro, lv 89 baba lv 90 sorc lv 93 pala. Stopped playing sc for a while and took pala on hc to lv 92, got bored and decided to get pala into top 16 again which meant getting to lv 94 which took 4 extra weeks, was already half way when i restarted. Just messing about now think i could make top 10 in europe if i can just get over these stupid failed games and lag spikes.