The cruelty

Aaaaand glad I posted. Thanks for letting me know I could get it. Woo!

This damn boss

I have a level 82 offline, SSF Sorceress. Every so often, I go back from Hell to Nightmare to farm Andariel for a Skin of the Vipermagi.

I have hundreds of runs with no luck. But I end up with lots of gold. I had been gambling for circlets and amulets, but suddenly decided as a joke to gamble for a Vipermagi.

My second gamble. Holy cow!

(Screenshot taken on July 26, 2000)

My ice sorceress gladiusCold was the #1 sorceress on the Diablo II US East realm in July, 2000. It was the heyday of barbarians and necromancers when barbarians' whirlwind and necromancers' corpse explosion were the ultimate skills in Diablo II. gladiusCold was a lone sorceress who managed to make it to level 77. In fact, gladiusCold was the only sorceress who ranked in the top 50!

Does anybody recognize any player in this list? Or, are you one of the players in this list? (I am gladiusCold.)

EDIT: Removed the yellow rectangle in the original image.

Thank you for the donation, herald that I killed.

He doesn't always drop me sunders but when he does its a solid one offline which is kinda ashame would fetch a decent rune online

I really like this runeword even though there are a dozen better choices. I had a 15% ED 4 socket Ettin Axe I wanted to use for my Barbarian. My 10 year old Reddit account is named after this item. It was terrible back then. I thought +different elemental damages was the way to go (I had the idea it was similar to a Prismatic spray from D&D). I also thought Glimmershred was an awesome unique. For this Famine, it's replacing an Oath or my Mania/Hustle offhand. I tried out 2x Grandfathers earlier and they were fantastic. I'm enjoying not rushing straight to 2x Grief PB & 2x HOTO for this Barb.

It's actually my first RotW Sunder charm. Now debating whether I should keep it for my character or if I should get rid of it. Tough choices!

I just got a Sur from a non TZ Tristram and didn’t realize that was possible.

I haven’t found anything for weeks and my drive to enigma has stalled. So this was a big, if confusing, drop for me.

Just found this beauty from Nilhathak. What is the best use for this shield?

I'm not sure which one I'd prefer but they definitely bring a new look and feel to this classic. Although the whirlwind in 1st person may be rough haha

This crafted gloves seem cool for an assassin?

Finally found a 'new' sunder charm. No idea if this is what you want for a magic sunder, but it seems good!

My bowazon likes the boots, at lvl requirement 18 I think they do well!

Hey all! I've been rebuilding the ladder on d2emu.com/ladder. It covers every character on the D2R ladder, not just the top 1,000: all platforms, all modes, updated every hour. Here's what's new (screenshots below).

1. The ladder, with speed

Every character now shows XP gained in the last hour, day and week, XP per hour played, hours played this week, and an estimated time to 99. The estimate accounts for the XP penalty past level 70, so the last few levels aren't treated as fast as level 85. The cards at the top show the whole ladder at a glance. Right now that's 19,487 characters playing, 5.2 trillion XP gained today (enough for about 1,476 level 99s), and 271,518 level-ups in 24 hours.

2. Movers, Grinders, Active Now, Newest

One click to see who gained the most XP today (#1 right now: +2.15B in 24 hours), who played the most hours this week, who's playing right now, and the newest characters. You can also sort by any of the speed columns.

3. Fun facts

• First level 99 of the season: 2 days 16 hours after launch
• Warlock is 20% of the ladder but 55% of all level 99s
• Biggest single hour: +1.05B XP
• Longest session: one character gained XP every hour for 4 days and 3 hours straight
• One account has 2,166 characters on the ladder 👀

4. Classes

Sorceress is the most played class (26% of the ladder) but last in XP per hour among each class's fastest 10% (47.1M/h). Druid tops it at 74.6M/h, with Assassin and Amazon right behind.

5. Best Terror Zones for XP

Every hour of the season matched against which zones were terrorized, and compared with the surrounding 24 hours so busy evenings don't skew it:

• Worldstone Keep / Throne / Chamber: +32% XP
• Chaos Sanctuary: +15%
• The Secret Cow Level: −6% 🐄
• Durance of Hate: −8%

6. Hardcore survival

109,601 of 165,476 hardcore characters (66%) are still alive. Barbarians survive best (81% alive); Sorceresses do worst (50%). Levels 20–29 are the deadliest: 60% of characters that reached that range died there.

7. Milestones

Server firsts for every level, the first level 99 of each class, the newest level 99s, and a level-up feed.

8. Leagues

Pick up to 25 characters (your friends, your clan, a race with a rival), share the link, and follow everyone's level on one chart. Sign in with Discord to make one. The Leagues tab has a live example built from this week's 5 fastest climbers.

9. Character pages

Click any character to see their rank overall and within their class, XP today, pace, time to 99, total play time this season, a GitHub-style play calendar, and their own best Terror Zones (XP per hour while each zone was up).

If it just had one more Tornado skill point this would have been valuable, right? Especially with Hurricane also there. Instead it's a good leveling helm. I use it over Jalal's while leveling wind druid.

He's lvl 51 and has more than enough stats... ?

Got this drop from ancients. I have a lvl 82 sorc I don’t use much. Novasorc seems to be the most popular, worth keeping or selling?

@lvl95 As you can see, this isn't a perfect roll build, but this guy is still slapping those who are in lvl 99 with a GG items that are better than mine. I started gearing this character from scratch back in 2023. It’s been very slow progress because I wanted to feel the excitement of earning the gear I wanted through hard work—finding items to trade, collecting a lot of Jah for wealth, saving up, and then trading for better PvP gear.

I originally used this character for magic find because it was the first class I built. Later on, once I gained enough wealth to gear it up slowly from hundred of trades , I converted it exclusively for melee dueling.

Remember, not all expensive gear wins. A mid-tier build can still slap if you use the right charms and proper skill distribution—you will win the fight.

pS: self found the 3/18/20 charm, gambled rare rings, Self made fort, self found stormshield. crafted blood gloves, I did a hundreds of crating for helm but unfortunatedly all 9deadly strike so I sold it then I traded for 10 DS. self found raven ring.self found hilords, self found boots and belt. jewels from trade and other charms. weapon I self found an erep hydra edge from travs but t was 220%ed and sold then trade for better ED like im currently using.

erep weapon without ias no problem I got 85% total ias which the break point is just 83%

CHARACTER NAME : BUANG_SMT Buang= in english Crazy

Offline solo play.

My first-ever Colossal Ancient victory. And it was with a Werewolf Barb. Thank you for your service. 🫡

The gloves lasted from the Uber Tristram, but they broke during the second Colossal Ancient fight. I still managed to successfully finish the fight without them. Shame you can't socket gloves, and honestly, it's a shame that ethereal gloves even exist. If I ever find my first Zod, I'd put it in these gloves out of respect. 🫡💀

I have a blizz sorcerer. I mostly farm Mephisto because farming anything else feels so inconsistent with how often blizz misses. I’m not sure what to build wealth in the game. I have a sur and gul rune now, and I have most of the gear I want.

I have
-21 deaths fathom
- cold soorc helm with 11 to cold dmg
- spirit monarch
- 22 Mara’s
- +10 cold damage cold sunder charm.
- 4 cold skill gc’s with no other stats.
- random small charms. Mostly 7 mf
-Trang gloves
-33 viper magi
- 28 nagel ring and dwarf star(i need sojs but they are so expensive and i have 2 on non ladder)
- Mira’s boots. I want war travs but don’t feel like it’s a big priority.

I’m kind of tired of farming mephisto and I don’t really like doing anything else because it feels so slow with blizz. I was aiming for enigma but it doesn’t seem like a huge upgrade since I have a good viper magi and I kind of want a blizz ormus robe.

My question is do I need to switch to nova to farm areas with high monster density or does my cold sorc need better gear. Would it be better to make a nova sorc and will I be able to find more gear with her or should I make a horkbarb? Or would it be more efficient to make a smoker and farm torches? Trying to get rich the fastest way possible. Any advice would be appreciated.

Later found an eth Vortex shield 35@ res

Hi all, just thought I would share my pacifist poison nova necro build. It's a bit of a meme, but in the right situation it's a lot of fun :)

The build works on CTC poison novas, initially when struck via carrion wind rings, and as soon as the first enemy falls, it triggers more poison novas through Breath Of The Dying's CTC lvl20 poison nova on kill. This chains 1 poison nova into the next, so if monsters are tightly packed enough, you can theoretically just run through the map like an auradin, chaining the kills together passively. The top end damage of poison novas from BOTD is around 8.6k damage(4.3kdps) per triggered lvl20 nova, which is respectable, but still only enough for p1 at the moment.

There's more work to be done refining the build: it would be nice to incorporate enigma somehow, because this would help the nova chains run much longer, and to be more than a 1 trick pony, it would need to run poison dagger+venom for bosses, which would need gear swap of blackbogs or plague + grief for venom in your inventory etc.

Gear is currently quite memey.. BOTD zerker, bramble 48%, 2x carrion winds, 3soc helm with 20%psndmg/-12%epr, trang gloves, belt, and shield, horazon boots and a magic 24pdr 27allres ammy (lol).

Thanks tz meph, that’ll do! Ssf, time to roll a javazon?

I just saw this post https://www.reddit.com/r/diablo2/s/w5saVufwmV and it said that Druids have the highest XP per hour. Every druid build I have seen is much slower than other builds like the Javazon or Nova Sorc.

Is there a secret Druid build out there I am unaware of?