Version 1.2

Written for Diablo II Lord of Destruction Patch 1.08

This strategy no longer applies to the latest version of Diablo II. It remains here for archival use only.

Summary

In my opinion, the most unique and interesting thing about the druid's elemental skills is that two of his spells have an area-of-effect (AOE) that moves with you: Hurricane and Armageddon. Armageddon does greater average damage, but Hurricane has a more useful AOE because it attacks and chills all monsters that approach you. The Druid also has two unique spells whose area-of-effect moves (somewhat drunkenly) in the direction of your choice: Tornado and Twister. Both are fun to use, but Tornado does much higher damage. And so to my mind the best reason to play an elemental druid is to have some fun with Hurricane and Tornado. And a lot of fun it is, while it lasts.

The bottom line is that you can build an effective and satisfying high level elemental druid around only 5 key skills: Hurricane (20), Tornado (20), Oak Sage (5+), Summon Grizzly (1+), and Carrion Vine (1+).

You will also need to pump your mana to 600+ so you can spam Tornados while your Hurricane is running continually. Don't waste your precious skill points on Ravens, Spirit Wolves, Dire Wolves, Poison Creeper, Solar Creeper, Heart of Wolverine, Spirit of Barbs, or any elemental fire spell except possibly for Armaggeddon. Play in 1-4 player games to derive maximum benefit from your amazing moving area-of-effect damage spells (Hurricane+Tornado). More below.

Welcome to Diablo II

In D2/D2X, you must make skill allocation decisions before fully understanding the consequences of your decisions. The skills are incompletely described and their interactions undocumented. They may look good at lower levels and easier difficulties but don't scale into higher levels or difficulties. Sometimes the consequences of your character building decisions are not clear until hundreds of hours of game play have elapsed and you suddenly realize that your character is a dead end. It may be incapable of killing monsters of sufficiently high level to gain any more experience. It may be incapable of surviving long enough to accumulate the experience necessary to reach the next level. At that point you realize your character is essentially incapable of gaining another level, that there is nothing you can do to remedy it, and you may feel bad because you have just wasted hundreds of hours to build a very high level mule.

The process of making a viable D2/D2X character is made more difficult by Blizzard's constant game "rebalancing" which invariably means that they weaken the skills that are more useful than they had anticipated, but rarely (if ever) will they make an unexpectedly weak or useless skill more useful. So anytime you specialize in a useful skill, you can be sure it can only become less useful in the next Blizzard patch. And if you perversely choose to specialize in useless skills, you can be pretty sure that they will remain useless forever.

So the purpose of this guide is to share my experiences with you, and to provide some advice on how to build an elemental druid that hopefully avoids those bad early decisions and unfortunate dead ends. This guide is based on the experiences of MalabarMan, my successful level 54 elemental/summoning druid on the European realm.

Welcome to the Druid

The druid has three skill trees: elemental, summoning, and shape shifting. The elemental tree allows you to cast spells that cause cold, fire, and physical damage (no lightning or poison). The summoning tree allows you to summon spirits that enhance your capabilities (like the paladin's auras), animal minions that fight for you (ravens, wolves, and bears), and unusual vines that recover mana and life from monster corpses. The shapeshifting tree allows you to gain melee combat bonuses by morphing into a werebear or a werewolf.

The druid cannot cast elemental spells while in animal form, so there are only two viable skill tree combinations: elemental/summoning and shapeshifting/summoning. Currently shapeshifting/summoning is by far the most popular druid build on the realms. Shapeshifting gives you the most powerful and fun build at the earlier levels: a fast-moving, fast-attacking, high-damage and high-life melee character that is more like a paladin than a barbarian. Shapeshifting druids are viable in hell difficulty, if you can find a weapon with high enough damage and are willing to bypass the physical immunes. But between levels 30 when you first get Hurricane and past level 50 when you've maxed it, the elemental druid dominates PvM. MalabarMan has helped a lot of shapeshifters and sorceresses recover their bodies in nightmare difficulty.

Welcome to the Elemental Druid

Elemental Druid: The Good
The primary strength of the elemental druid when compared to all other character builds is that you have Hurricane, a high-damage spell with a long-lasting instantaneous area-of-effect that moves with you. Wherever you go, the elemental damage is around you. Whether running or standing, no monster can approach you without getting chilled and hit repeatedly. No need to target individual monsters. No need to stand still so you can cast your offensive spells. No need to hold the monsters in the fixed area of effect of your spell. It's like a Blizzard spell whose damage follows you around.

At level 20, Hurricane hits and chills all monsters within 5.3 yards of the caster once per second with 202-227 points of cold damage per hit. That's an average of 2,145 points of cold damage per monster per cast, for only 30 mana. Since the mana cost is low (30 mana) and the duration is high (10 sec), it's easy to maintain a hurricane continually, without ever running out of mana. The hurricane follows you around and attacks your enemies. At level 50+, in a single player game, MalabarMan can literally run through any map in regular or nightmare difficulty killing monsters instantly as he runs by them. He has to slow down for champions and uniques and their minions, but most of the monsters will just explode as he runs by. No targeting needed, no slowing down, no running out of mana. Monsters exploding as you run by! No other character build has ever offered that kind of stunning PvM power in regular and nightmare difficulties.

This unique druid capability lends itself to an exciting blitzkrieg style of PvM play. Running through corridors and killing monsters ahead of you before you get there. Firing Tornados in front of you and then moving forward under their cover. Briefly pausing when you encounter a unique or champion monster, and then quickly dispatching them with a flurry of Tornados while your Hurricane works its relentlessly deadly effect.

A secondary strength is the druid's summoning skills, which allow you to increase your life (great for hardcore!), recover some mana or life from corpses, and create an animal meat shield that draws monster fire while your cheap area-of-effect kill spells do their work.

At the time of this revison, there is an active debate among high level elemental druids about the merits of Hurricane vs. Armageddon. Hurricane does a modest amount of certain cold damage while Armageddon does a larger amount of uncertain fire damage. Both are mana-efficient, and both have an area-of-effect (AOE) that moves with you. The Hurricane AOE is instantaneous while the Armageddon AOE is delayed and hence useless while advancing. For this reason, Armageddon is only useful while standing still or retreating. As such, it is little more than a poor man's Firewall/Meteor and I cannot recommend it to you.

Elemental Druid: The Bad
The central weakness of the druid's elemental skills is the absence of multiplicative effects. Each elemental druid spell stands on its own and there is no skill-based way to enhance one skill with another. As a result, the elemental druid reaches the peak of his power around level 50, after he has maxed hurricane and tornado and there is no other skill-based way for him to increase their power. After level 50, your only way to increase your character's power is to find better magical items.

All other character builds benefit from multiplicative effects. Sorcs can boost their elemental damage spells with elemental masteries. Necros can combine bone spirit with lower resist; corpse explosion with amplify damage or lower resist; revives with amplify damage, decrepify or iron maiden. Melee characters can increase their damage by increasing their strength, finding a better weapon (exceptional, elite), boosting their passive skills, and increasing their combat skills.

Multiplicative effects allow you to create an extremely powerful character whose abilities will carry you far into hell difficulty. Each point invested in a multiplicative skill continues to bring you benefits as long as you play your character, even to level 99 in hell difficulty. Without multiplicative effects, your character will peak when he has maxed his best skills, which is typically around level 50 while playing in nightmare difficulty.

Unfortunately no such skill synergies exist for the elemental druid. Each elemental skill stands on its own, so you must rely entirely on equipment to achieve multiplicative effects. That means above all a wand of lower resist (level 36) for your Hurricane/Armageddon. Equip your mercenary with a fast weapon of amplify damage, and spam your tornados when the curse goes off.

Additional weakness of the druid are (1) the druid has no natural way to escape when trapped (no leap or teleport, except as a charged item); and (2) the druid's elemental skills provide vastly less damage when compared to similar spells in the Sorc's arsenal.

Elemental Druid: The Ugly
It's not clear to me whether an elementalist is viable in hell difficulty because I haven't played a D2X druid beyond nightmare. I suspect it will be much slower going than nightmare. Tornado will be half as effective due to 50% monster physical resistance, and Hurricane will be curtailed by more frequent cold resistance and much higher monster life. As Bolty notes, the elemental druid may be relegated to a support role in hell difficulty as your high-level grizzly and barbarian mercenary do most of the real work.

Nonetheless, Hurricane and Tornado are a lot of fun in normal and nightmare difficulties, and offer you a unique and satisfying D2X experience that you cannot get with any other character build.

Since writing this guide, I have been contacted by numerous D2X players who claim to have level 80+ elemental druids that play successfully in multiplayer games in hell difficulty. All use level 35+ Armageddon as their primary attack spell. Their strategy is based on collecting large numbers of +skill items (amulets, circlets, unique rings, shields, charms, etc.). See Zarathustra's Guide to the Elemental Druid for a clear exposition. At level 54, MalabarMan has only one +1 druid skill item (a pelt). So I personally do not consider a strategy based on obtaining +15 skills from items to be viable. And if you could find +15 skills as a sorc, you would be godlike instead of merely getting by as an elemental druid.

Elemental Skills

MalabarMan's two primary kill spells are Hurricane (cold damage, 6 sec delay, 10 sec duration) and Tornado (physical damage, no delay). He keeps Hurricane running continually (ie., recast it every 10 seconds just before it stops) and spams tornados with the left lick while waiting to recast the Hurricane with the right click.

Elemental Skills: Cold

Arctic Blast. Breath cold air on your enemies. Required as a prereq for Hurricane. Fun to use and quite useful early in the game (eg., acts 1 and 2), but mana inefficient. Higher levels provide longer range, longer chill duration, and slightly more damage. Early in the game you can use this to kill monsters that revive or heal other monsters while your summoned animals attack the other monsters. One point only. Any extra points you put in this spell are wasted.

Hurricane. By far the most exciting and unique PvM spell in the elemental tree (see above). Arguably one of the most satisfying PvM skills in the entire game! It follows you around and deals chilling cold damage to anything that you approach or approaches you. IMO, this spell is the best reason to play an elementalist. Max this as soon as possible. Once you get Hurricane to level 10 you will become a PvM killing machine through nightmare difficulty.

Elemental Skills: Physical

Twister. Prerequisite for Tornado and Hurricane. Provides low damage and a momentary 0.4 second stun. Fun to use, but Tornado is just as much fun and does much more damage. As soon as you get Tornado six levels later (at level 24), you will never use this spell again. So one point only here, and use it until level 24 when you replace it with Tornado.

Tornado. This spell rocks. Eventually you want max this. Initially unappreciated by D2X players because the tornados do not move in a straight line and they can be difficult to target. So what! It is a great mana-efficient fire-and-forget mass kill spell. At level 20, it dishes out an average of 278 points of physical damage per hit to every monster that gets in its meandering way, for only 10 mana, with no timer. A single Tornado can even hit a monster more than once! That's way better than bone spear (172 magic damage for 11.7 mana at level 20), at least until you reach the 50% physical resistance in hell difficulty. Whenever you find monsters in a clump or in a line, you spam tornados at them and they die. Quickly. You can also use it to target individual monsters, but you have to either (1) move around to find the best position to hit them from or (2) get very close to them. Particularly useful when you get trapped. This great spell deserves to be maxed. Its big downside is that its damage is halved in hell difficulty due to the across-the-board 50% physical resistance.

Elemental Skills: Fire

The fire skills are only worth pursuing if you want to use Armageddon. Armageddon is better than every other Druid fire spell in terms of damage per second, damage per mana, or damage per cast. Average Armageddon damage is greater even than concentrated Volcano damage. So if you want to use fire, save your skill points for Armageddon. Personally, I regret putting any skill points into the druid's fire spells. They do much much less damage than the sorc's fire skills and unlike Hurricane, they do not create a unique play experience. That being said, many elemental druids use Armageddon as their primary attack spell.

Like Hurricane, the Armageddon AOE follows you around but it is not anywhere near as useful. Hurricane is great when you are advancing because it always hits and chills 5.3 yards in front of you so you can use it to attack while you are advancing. The Armageddon meteors are always lagging behind you so you cannot use it to hit monsters in front of you while you are running. Nor can you use Armageddon to hit monsters that are on impassable terrain. Armageddon works best for static battles. In that situation, Armageddon does more damage than Hurricane but you will eventually ask yourself: why am I using this lame fire spell when I could easily be doing more than twelve times as much fire damage per second with Firewall and Fire Mastery?! So my initial advice stands: don't waste your points on the druid's fire skills. You'll have a lot more fun as an elementalist if you pump Hurricane, Tornado, Oak Sage, and Summon Grizzly instead. If you want to deal massive fire damage, then play a sorc instead.

Firestorm. A complete dud. A classic study in Blizzard nerfing: this is what happened to Diablo's cool "fire twisty lanes" spell after Blizzard made it useless for you. Zero points unless you are writing a term paper on how Blizzard nerfs cool skills.

Molten Boulder. Knockback your enemies with a giant bowling ball of fire! Double your fun in the arcane sanctuary! Makes me feel like I'm in an Indiana Jones movie. Great fun to use, hilarious to watch, but largely useless due to long spell timer, low damage, and poor mana efficiency. Make a mule character to try this fun spell out at least once. Zero points except to that mule character.

Fissure. Reasonably mana-efficient and a potential complement to your primary kill spell (Hurricane) because its area of effect is fixed, so you can cast it and hide. But would't you rather be spamming tornados or buffing your grizzly instead of micro-managing the spell timer? Zero points.

Volcano. A weak spell that has acquired a cult following. Fire boulders shoot up out of the ground and then fall onto random locations nearby. Sure looks cool, but its area of effect is pathetic because monsters in the AOE often emerge unscathed (ie., take little or even no damage). Volcano is only effective against a single stationary monster like a lightning spire (ie., start the volcano underneath the spire so all the boulders hit it on their way up). But Armageddon will cause more damage even in these situations! Note that ChippyDip's skill information on Volcano is incorrect, the listed damage is not per eruption. Zero points to this over-rated cult favorite.

Armageddon. Of all the druid's spells, I was most looking forward to this one. Great name, cool visuals, but a massive disappointment. For each cast, meteors drop randomly from the sky in a 5.3 yard radius around you at a rate of roughly 4 per second for 10 seconds but you have no control over where they land or who they hit. Each meteor has its own AOE which is larger than it looks like on the screen. Experiments show that each monster in the Armageddon AOE gets hit an average of 10 times per cast. Most casts result in between 7 and 12 hits per cast, but the most I've counted is 15 hits and the least is 4 hits, so the variance is quite high. There is a palpable delay from when the meteors are launched to when they hit the ground. As a result, the meteors are always falling behind you when you run forward, so this spell only works when you are standing still or retreating. This spell is worse than what Firewall and Meteor will look like after Blizzard nerfs them in a future patch. Zero points to this disappointment. If you want to deal massive fire damage in a static battle, play a fire sorc instead.

Elemental Skills: Other

Cyclone Armor. Prerequisite for hurricane and tornado. It absorbs a fixed amount of elemental damage, after resistances and MDR are taken into account. It takes a while for me to notice when my Cyclone Armor elapses, so it's not as useful as it might initially seem. You can use this to defend against an LEB, oblivion knight, or end-of-level boss if you are willing to forgo your tornados and recast it continually. Would have been more useful if it prevented a one-hit kill from a ranged elemental spell attack, but it doesn't do that. So only one point here as a prereq unless you find yourself dying frequently to elemental attacks.

Elemental Skills: Discussion

Before getting his 3D large shield, MalabarMan had the most trouble with LEBs because you must stand close to them to keep them in the Hurricane and hit them with the Tornados. The Tornados and Ravens generate a lot of lightning, so you need very high lightning resist and reasonable MDR to kill LEBs with Tornados and Ravens. Or you can just move right along when you first see that lightning fly....

In retrospect, MalabarMan wasted 18+ points on weak or useless skills. If I could do it over again, I would have first maxed Tornado (currently at level 10) and now be pumping Oak Sage and/or Summon Grizzly in preparation for hell difficulty.

Summoning Skills

You can have one spirit and one vine active at the same time. For an elementalist, the best spirit is Oak Sage and the best vine is Carrion Vine. The best minions for an elementalist are the lone Grizzly.

Summoning Skills: Spirits

Spirits are like paladins' auras. They follow you around and provide benefits to you, your minions, and the other members of your party.

Oak Sage. This spirit increases the life of you and your party by 30% at level 1 to 125% at level 20. This is definitely worth getting, whether you play hardcore or softcore. The only question is how many points you should allocate to this. I put it to level 5 (+50% life) for softcore play through nightmare, but will increase it before I get to hell difficulty because you loose a lot of experience when you die in hell difficulty. For hardcore, you will eventually want this skill at level 20 (+125% life). Be sure to recast this when its life gets low or you may be into a nasty surprise.

Heart of Wolverine. Increases the damage and attack rating of you and your party. Great for some melee characters, but useless for elemental druids. Zero points.

Spirit of Barbs. Reflects melee damage, like the paladin's thorns aura or the necro's iron maiden curse. Unfortunately this is a poor man's thorns because it only reflects 50% damage at level 1 and 240% damage at level 20, ie., not enough for your minions to kill anything in this lifetime even at level 20. (Thorns starts with 250% reflection at level 1 and goes up to 1010% at level 20; Iron Maiden starts at 200% and goes up to 675%.) Its only redeeming features are the large range (20 yards) and long duration (until the spirit dies). In any event, this weak skill is completely useless for elemental druids because you do the killing and your minions are only there to absorb the damage. Zero points to this Blizzard mistake.

Summoning Skills: Vines

The only vine that is worth anything to an elementalist is Carrion Vine, as much for its corpse destroying ability as for its small life replenishment.

Poison Creeper. Fun in the Blood Moor and Cold Plains, but largely useless beyond that because it doesn't apply much poison, it moves around slowly, and it dies very easily so you have to recast it frequently. At most one point here as a prereq for carrion vine.

Carrion Vine. This is the only useful vine to the elemental druid. It consumes corpses and increases your life by tiny amounts. An additional benefit of this skill is that it sometimes eats corpses before they can be revived or exploded. Initially I thought this would be a great spell because I mistakenly thought the life healing depended on the life of the corpse (like life steal), so the skill would scale in multiplayer games and at higher difficulty levels, when the monsters have more life. Wrong! At level 1, it heals 4% of YOUR life for every corpse it consumes. So if you have 100 life, you get back 4 points for every corpse it consumes. At level 20, it heals 10% per corpse, or 10 points per corpse. That's it. At level 54, MalabarMan has 612 life (with Oak Sage level 5) so he receives 24.5 points of health per corpse consumed, ie., less health than from a minor healing potion! You can get better health regeneration on a magic ring. This vine dies a lot, so you have to recast it often. You also have to wait around after a battle for it to consume the corpses, which can get tedious. Nonetheless, carrion vine is worth having and I recommend that you put at least one point here.

Solar Creeper. Like Carrion Vine, except it recovers tiny amounts of mana (based on the size of your mana pool) instead of tiny amounts of health. This spell is totally useless for the elemental druid because your own natural mana regeneration will dwarf the tiny mana recovery provided by this skill. Zero points.

Summoning Skills: Minions

You can have up to five ravens plus either (1) five spirit wolves or (2) three dire wolves or (3) one grizzly bear. Initially the three dire wolves looked like the way to go. But now I firmly believe that the grizzly is the best choice for an elementalist because it doesn't die as easily. The wolves are completely useless against champions or boss monsters because they get wiped out immediately in one hit.

Summon Raven. Unlike other creatures, ravens do not have life and can never be killed in a single blow, no matter how damaging. Rather, ravens can dispense a fixed number of hits (12-31, depending on skill level). So no matter how powerful the monsters get, they will not be able to kill off your ravens any more quickly. When you fight an end-of-level boss, they can wipe out all of your wolves and bears and your mercenary in an instant. But not your hardy ravens! An additional benefit at lower difficulties is that the ravens momentarily stun their target and interrupt its attack when they hit. Unfortunately ravens cannot be targeted, either by melee or ranged attacks, so they quickly become ineffective for defensive purposes. They are useless for offensive purposes in nightmare difficulty because high monster regeneration negates the little damage they inflict per hit. Regrettably, only one point here as a prereq.

Summon Spirit Wolf. These will be replaced by the strictly superior dire wolves at level 18. Additional points gets you more spirit wolves and also increases the attack rating and defense of all summoned creatures. Your minions are a meat shield, so only one point here so you can eventually get the grizzly.

Summon Dire Wolf. They run around quickly and do a fair amount of damage, but they die instantly against powerful monsters. They start with 85 life at level 1. Even at level 20, they have only 198 life. The grizzly starts with 213 life at level 1! I recommend only one point here, so you can get the grizzly.

Summon Grizzly. The grizzly does a modest amount of damage at lower levels (35-75 at level 1), a large amount of damage at higher levels (660-726 at level 20), and starts with 213 life. Its attacks have knockback, which is useful to break up a clump of monsters. Since you can recast your grizzly at a targeted location, you can also use it to fight LEBs from a distance if your resistances aren't up to snuff. To increase the grizzly's life, you can pump "Oak Sage" or "Summon Dire Wolf". It's better to pump Oak Sage because that will increase your life as well. The grizzly is your primary meat shield through nightmare, not your killing skill. So I recommend at least one point here; that should take you through nightmare difficulty.

Play Strategies

You'll start by killing things with your club and single raven. Throwing poison and fire potions is also effective at lower levels. At level 6, you will get Arctic Blast and your lone spirit wolf. Arctic Blast will become your primary killing spell. Save it to kill anything that revives or heals other monsters, and be patient. You will have to suck it up until you get Twister and your one dire wolf at level 18. At that point, you can use Twister on mobs and Arctic Blast on single monsters that revive or heal.

Resurrect the free Act 1 mercenary as needed to help you get to Act 2. A fast bow socketed with chipped emeralds works wonders. Then hire a defensive mercenary in act2 and equip him with the highest-damage polearm or spear-class weapon you can find. Any armor or helm that increases his life or resistances is good. I equip my mercenary with helm and armor that have been socketed with rubies. No matter how careful you are, your merc will probably die a lot. Resurrect him when he dies so he continues to level with you. Even at lower levels, he will be invaluable until you get Tornado and can start killing things yourself. When you get to act 5, trade him in. The act5 mercs are better than act2 mercs because they regenerate life so much more and for that reason die so much less (unless they are poisoned).

If you stall out because your minions and Twister+Arctic Blast are too weak to get you to Tornado at level 24, then it's time to party up. Your fellow party members will be glad that (1) your summoned animals draw fire away from them, and (2) your Oak Sage increases their life more than battle orders. Arctic Blast and Twister makes you look helpful and no one will know that you only have them at level one. Remember that you need the others more than they need you, so don't run around collecting treasure and potions while your team members are killing monsters. Always let the melee characters get the first pick of the potions.

Increase your strength to at least 24 and at most 30 so you can wear the early druid pelts (for their magic and skill bonuses only), and then stop. Later (eg., level 30+) you may want to increase your strength to 60 so you can use Frostburns (if you have it) for the excellent +40% mana and the increased mana regeneration that results from that. Defense doesn't matter to you, so any additional points you put in strength are wasted. Armor, weapons and shields are useful only for their magical bonuses. You can get some great armor at level 17 by socketing the common runeword Stealth (Tal+Eth). The unique belt Nightsmoke is great if you have it since you will take damage and may as well benefit. Don't touch your dexterity. Periodically increase your vitality so you don't die more than once in a while. You loose a prohibitive amount of experience when you die in hell difficulty, so you must have 400+ life when you enter nightmare and 800+ life for hell difficulty. Other than that, pump your energy until your mana recovery is high enough to maintain a continual Hurricane with occassional Tornados thrown in. You should have 100+ energy by level 30 if possible. More energy means faster mana regeneration means more tornados means quicker kills means accelerated leveling. Nonstop tornados are a surprising amount of fun, so MalabarMan has more energy than is strictly necessary. At level 54 in nightmare, MalabarMan has 105 vitality and 170 energy, which gives him 612 life and 840 mana with magic. (Love that Bahamut's ring of regeneration!) With 840 mana, MalabarMan can fire 159 +25% faster cast consecutive tornados before he runs out of mana. All future attribute points will be allocated to vitality.

The best weapons for an elementalist are wands and staves because they have low prereqs and can carry tremendous magical bonuses (+mana, +fastest cast, +resist, and charged skills). At higher levels, a wand with Lower Resist charges is best because it makes your Hurricane more effective and you can use it with a shield for MDR and better resistances. Alternately, it is possible to find, gamble or trade a club with +1 druid skills at level 30 and +2 druid skills at level 50. A shield is useful only for its magical bonuses (resist all, MDR, +skills). The best shield for an elemental druid is probably a large shield socketed with three perfect diamonds for 57% resist all. Note that shields with lower prereqs (eg., bone shield, spiked shield) can only have two sockets which only gives you 38% resist all. You will also need magic damage reduction, additional life and mana, and +skills. Faster cast, faster run, and mana/life regeneration are all nice but not essential.

Your play style will change dramatically at level 30 when you get Hurricane and start dishing out some serious damage. Keep the Hurricane running at all times, especially when you are exploring new map areas. Keep your oak sage, your carrion vine, and your bear alive at all times primarily for defensive purposes. Spam tornados into crowds and at monsters that aren't quickly killed by the Hurricane.

Power Leveling

The benefits of playing in games with more than 4 players is greatly reduced in D2X compared to D2. Don't play in 4+ player games -- you will just have a much harder time killing the monsters and get cheated on the experience.

In the earlier acts (1-3) the monsters are not as dangerous as they are in the later acts (4-5), so you can afford to have longer battles with those monsters in exchange for the additional experience and more frequent treasure drops of a multiplayer game. So the best risk-adjusted power leveling strategy for an elementalist is to play in 4+ player games in the early acts and then play in 1-2 player games in the later acts.

Party up if you encounter someone reasonable on the same map, on the same quest, or when you have to kill an end-of-level boss. Don't party with anyone who is more than a few levels higher than you unless they are doing more than their share of the killing. If you want to party, your best partners are smart melee characters who attack the monsters that revive or heal other monsters (your hurricane will take out the other monsters easily). If your melee partner attacks the horrors while you handle the hollow ones, it's time to find a new partner. The worst strategic partner is a summoning necro who uses Iron Maiden instead of Amplify Damage or Decrepify. Your hurricane will slow the monsters down, which hurts his IM, and your Carrion Vine and cold damage will take away his corpses.

The hardest single area for MalabarMan is probably the maggot lair because his tornados are useless in the narrow twisty tunnels, the hurricane/armageddon area of effect is reduced, and his minions get confused. You can make it through solo by repeatedly recasting your minions in front of you, but this gets tedious quickly. A better strategy for the maggot lair would be to either (a) party up or (b) let someone else get the staff while you get the headpiece.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Umbriel for his excellent Dark Angel's Diablo II Abbatoir, to Bolty for the Lurker Lounge and his insightful feedback, and to the DiabloII.net strategy forums for their debate.

In playing D2, I benefited tremendously from guides produced by other players in the early days of that game. My first D2 character (a barbarian) literally could not progress beyond level 34 in nightmare due to poor initial skill allocation. I played for days in Nightmare Act 2 but was unable to make any progress because I couldn't kill enough monsters before I died again and lost what little experience I had gained since my last death.

The D2 guide which most influenced me was Stonedog91's Guide to the High Level Polearm Barbarian which was the first D2 guide to establish the importance of specialization in area-of-effect kill skills with multiplicative effects (mastery + WW), of exploiting skill synergies (long weapon reach + WW + mana/life steal), of gambling for better equipment, and of saving your early skill points for the useful high level skills later on. This ground-breaking guide completely changed my style of play, and massively increased my enjoyment of the game.

I also enjoyed Vorpal X's excellent guide to the Tweaker Sorceress which redefined how to build a great D2 sorc.

Recommended Reading

• Blizzard's Arreat Summit Excellent source of basic information about skills and items.
• Zarathustra's Guide to the Elemental Druid Informative guide to an alternate elemental druid build, based on Armageddon and an obscene number of +skill items.
• The Lurker Lounge High quality fan site, with editorially reviewed content and a decent set of forums.
• Dark Angel's Diablo II Abbatoir Useful and informative guide to D2X play, including strategies and tactics. Among other things it tells you where to play for maximum experience, depending on your level.
• Chippydip's Skill Information Very useful "skills trainer". Lets you allocate skill points and see how they interact. Includes skill information not found on Blizzard's site, although some of ChippyDip's information is incorrect. Use this site to help plan your character.
• Runica Runeword Database Lets you search for runewords by item, runes, etc. Very useful in figuring out (a) what to do with the runes you have and (b) what runes you should be looking for to make the runewords you covet.
• Unofficial Diablo II Forums Active collection of message boards focused on D2X, with a diverse set of opinions and styles.

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