Variant: The Classicists

[Boro]

Following a few fruitful discussions after a sighting of a wild Sirian in his natural habitat, Gario came up with a new variant, that hopefully will shake things up a little

The Rules:

Classic Diablo 2, No Synergies
Alright, y’all, there is a variant Diablo 2 run being set up: a Classic Diablo 2 experience from before the days of 1.10 Synergies, from before the days of Runes, Crafting, and Elite items. Working around all this should be interesting in a 2.06 D2R world is gonna be… interesting.
The rules of the variant are as follows:

• Softcore. Could be much harder on hardcore, but it’s not fun to rush people up to our level whenever someone dies so relax.
  
• Classic. Not Expansion. We don’t want runes, crafting, or elite items defiling our experience. We’re goin’ back to 2000 with this one, lads & lasses.
  
• Any skill can be maxed. You want to play lv 20 Charged Bolt and lv 20 Fireball Sorc? Go for it. However…
  
• No synergy skills can be any higher than level 1. If you put more than one hard point into any skill, any skill that is listed as “Receiving bonuses” cannot be any higher than level 1 (to avoid issues with prerequisites). If you leveled Charge Bolt passed level 1 Lightning cannot be leveled anymore. Want Skeletons? Cool, can’t get Skeleton Mastery or Summon Resist any higher than level 1.
  
• No twinking, obviously, though who even has a classic character to twink with?
  
• Everything is run. Caves, Crypts, etc, will be full cleared.
  
• We will be running Normal, Nightmare, and Hell, though since there is no Act 5 a difficulty is cleared when Diablo is killed.
  

Now obviously, we can't quite go back to the glory days of 1.05, with iron maiden oblivion knights, heal-a-port spam, and no immunities, but this is perhaps a suitable variant for opening up room for unusual builds. We plan to set up a run in the near future, so anyone interested can join.

[T-hawk]

Ok, not a signup but I can't help but think about what builds you'd do for that.

Paladin: Vengeance/Conviction is the standard build that works (Zeal and Holy Shock/Freeze need synergy to ramp up), and throw in Holy Shield.

Amazon: Lightning Fury and then what else, hybrid with Strafe I guess, plus Valkyrie.

Barb: Not even a variant, Berserk / Battle Orders / weapon mastery / War Cry and you're good to go.

Necro: He's the toughest since skeletons, bonemancy, and poison all need synergy. If he's always going to be with the party, I guess focus on curses, Amplify or Decrepify and Lower Resist, plus Corpse Explosion.

Sorc: Assume the elemental masteries are allowed? Frozen Orb is obvious, and pretty much anything else in the fire or lightning trees with its mastery.

(The expansion classes can't be present, but for a druid a standard werebear would be easy enough. For the assassin I'd do Blade Fury, since that takes Claw Mastery and Venom and neither of those are synergies the way the game defines them. Tiger/Tail kicking is also an option and unsynergized Phoenix Strike can complement it too.)

[Boro]

I only got comments on three:

Barb: Funny, D2R changed synergies on Berserk to Battle Orders from Shout, so I guess it's Whirlwind or bust (whirlwind has max attack rate regardless of attack speed)

Sorc's masteries are allowed, so yes, Orb, and some points in static because there is no 25/50% cap. I am thinking of running firewall third, unless there is something without a warmth synergy that still does well enough on it's own.

Necro can also use Revive, from our discussion with Gario.

[superdeath]

hmm.. interesting.

If i had the free time, id probably go sorc-ice.