Classes

It's All Here Baby

Where to start? Diablo II offers so many ways to play its clickcliclick game... First, you have one of five different character classes to play as.

Doesn't look good

Very bad juju

Amazons are the ranged warrior class - D2's equivalent of the Rogue. An Amazon can enchanter her arrows or javelins with various spells ranging from the elemental, to a multiple-attack. She can make herself invulnerable while running and hard to hit while standing - or slow down enemy's missile attacks.

Barbarians are the ultimate in melee characters. Pick a weapon class, specialize in it and develop the special attacks. You'll wade into the enemy, arms swinging twin swords, axes, maces or spears of death. In my experience as a barbarian, nothing short of a full-fledged Act boss or major boss could stand toe-to-toe with me and hope to survive. Barbarians also get attacks to hit multiple enemies simultaneously, natural defense options and natural resistances - however, these all cost skill points. Finally, you need not be so selfish - with various battlecries a barbarian can boost his party's stats or hinder his enemies.

Bwaaargh!

Who's the man?!

Necromancers are just that - the masters of the dead. Find a corpse and raise a skeleton, skeleton mage or even create a golem. You will have an army with you wherever you go, to do the fighting for you. To help them along you can throw curses at the enemy such as Iron Maiden - wherein the enemy creature takes any damage it delivers - or Amplify Damage which vastly increases the wounds on an enemy.

Paladins are holy warriors surrounded by a great many auras. Some can freeze the enemies, slowing their movements, while others help the party do more damage. There are healing auras and elemental protection auras. Paladins might not be able to stand toe-to-toe with an enemy as well as a barbarian, but they have other ways of defeating them.

Major moola

Cleaning up

A Sorceress can best be described as a walking nuclear arsenal. Though very weak early on and always weak in melee range, a Sorceress character can unleash firestorms on her enemies, freeze them with chilling ice attacks or let lightning strike them down. What might take a Paladin or Barbarian several "pulls" to take down, or a Necromancer several undead armies, a Sorceress can smite down in seconds.

Oh Yay, Static Character Classes... not

One of the major criticisms of Diablo was that a Warrior was a Warrior was a Warrior. Sorcerers could specialize in different spell areas, but the higher in levels you got, the more generic they became. The same problem occurred with Rogues. Characters couldn't distinguish themselves from one another very well.

With Diablo II, all that has changed. The skill system lets you choose how you want to build your character. While a Paladin will never be mistaken for a Barbarian in terms of melee ability, you can choose auras which make him much better at it. Or you can make him group-friendly with various auras that can freeze/slow the enemy, or amplify party damage. Barbarians can specialize in axes and pure melee disciplines, or you can generalize among the weapons (thus not having to be picky when a good one comes around) or get very-group friendly with the battlecries. Since these skills don't seem to have a cap as far as they go, people can specialize forever and you'll never end up with "just" a generic spell-slinging Sorceress. She could be a master of Fire, for example.