I have a level 97 fully built mosaic assassin on single player. She can clear any level in the game on players 8, which is great and all, but yeah.. It's an all or nothing play style, which gets tiring very quickly. There is no relaxing, and all the released charges are really harsh on your eyes. Alot of the time i actually need to wait for the lightening & cold effects to dissipate before i can clearly see what items dropped on the ground. Also because you don't use faster cast rate, when using enigma you're not going to be meeting the needed break points for a decent teleport speed. So yeah, very powerful, but it does come at a cost. Forgot to add the assassin has a great perk of being able to open locked chests without a key. This is a very unique perk. It frees up an inventory slot, and takes away the pain of constantly going back to town to buy more keys.

Hey! Been a fan of your D2 videos for years and this was another great addition 😀 I'm currently working on a D2R mod, adding many changes including rebalancing skills, but mainly rebalancing a lot of Unique items aswell as adding a TON of new lorefriendly and balanced Unique's to the game! I would love for you to try it out later when I have it more polished and tested 😀

I agree the mosaic assassin is a particular playstyle that is not for everyone. It’s literally mentally exhausting sometimes, but to say it isn’t the most powerful character in the game is silly. The multi-damage type insane power can not be touched by anyone else, period. That comes at the cost of your retinas and your sanity however.

Fury Druid is my favorite cheap melee build; Obedience Thresher + Duress Armor enables a good combo of survivability (resistances, life) + high damage (High Speed, Crushing Blow, Enchant).

Great Video

Hello captain wholesome, thanks for another great and informative video

I appreciate your knowledge of the game and your way of communicating it to us. Quality content 10/10

Agree. Barb and Druid need massive boost. Especially the barb who needs an aoe skill. Ww range is way to short and reliant on the weapons you have, and warcry's damage and range are laughable.

Okay, so a deep dive on the party pally would be cool. Any build videos you're aware of that we could check out?

I think your ranking is pretty spot on.

On the Assassin build I made use of the kick that has knock back which saved me from sudden death a lot of times.

i wish we would see more expansion's for this game

I would like to say one thing about the druid. In most forms he can trade shots even with bosses. This versatility is the druid's best feature. I can summon a small army and stand with them in the thick of things. I love all builds of many classes but I have never had as much flexibility in all builds. It may not be the most powerful class in some's mind but I thing the druid's versatility and the ability of most build trading shots especially if the have a smidge of shape change and summons.. I would put the druid ahead of barbarian,. assassin and amazon .

Hey! As always a great and very informative video, thanks! Do you mind sharing the strongest Paladin build in your opinion? Or the one that you prefer using? THanks in advance!

I've played a lot of builds and my favorite I always come back to is a Corpse Explosion/Curse/Summoner once he gets enigma. Corpse explosions just decimates entire screens of mobs with almost no consideration for immunity since 50% fire 50% physical. Amp dmg breaks most physical. Mercenary with high crushing blow decimates bosses. Curses make anything dangerous safe if used intelligently (blind will make you impossible to kill). You can do anything. Once you have enigma, god mode is unlocked since you can put your entire army anywhere you want and start the corpse explosion chain instantly.

One thing I believe that holds the druid's spirits back is that the synergies on pets are normal percent bonuses. All that extra AR or DMG or HP might be somewhat okay on the druid or allies normally, but the pets then suffer from very low base values and margin gains from outside sources. This also goes for a shape shifter build, as you already have massive %DMG %AR and %HP from your wolf or bear form.

10+ years ago My top 3 builds -Light/Orb Sorc -Smiterdin -Fury Druid

Could add that defensively paladin has access to the best base shields in the game. Making it a lot easier to work your way through hell on a budget.

I just got my lightning fury zon geared out, just melts everything. So fun. Mainly high rune hunting now

100% Very Much Agree, especially with my Pal, Pally! Whats funny for me is, as a kid i didnt play much Party Pal, and my young adolescent ADHD brain labelled him "boring" for all of 2 and LOD i played. When D2R came out i made it a point to focus first on the characters i ignored back then, started with Assassin(was a Blast! A Mind Blast of a good time!). Then started Partying w Pal. Oh Boy was I Wrong, I couldnt believe the convience, the versitility, the power... What a stud man. Aura concept is just genius. Im glad some were added to runewords, now its just being able to afford them

O wish blizzard would implement what some mods do(or maybe it’s all of them now), and that is splash damage for melee. Even if they nurfed the damage of weapons a bit so that it is a trade off. And maybe even make it a toggle that switches from single target full damage to splash damage but a 25% or so damage loss.

i can confirm 100% that nova sorc easily do ubers but only if you are gg ( held infinity 3k+ mana ect)

If you equip a throwing axe in the offhand and a jav or spear in the mainhand, the off hand axe is thrown as far as the spear. Whirlwind is actually an aoe skill now if you dual wield. The post 2.4 changed how ww worked and it is no longer a succession of ST hits. If more than 1 enemy is present ww will always hit 2 enemies at the same time now. Otherwise you hit a single enemy twice every tick.

Does the -lightning resist stack when dual wielding crescent moon?

For me amazon is my favourite :)

So far I am doing great with my summoner Druid. Great thing is that you basically don’t need mana at all, so you can invest almost all points into DEX and use Faith bow to give fanaticism to your pets. This combined with Fire Iron Wolf mercenary and Heart of Wolverine means a lot of meat shields with fast attacks, huge attack rating, great damage and reliable source of physical, fire and cold dmg to overcome immune enemies. I like this much more than summoning necromancer and the game is so easy.

been playing d2 on and off since 03 and to say im a loyalist is an understatement. i've only created druids. that being said i've never maxed a drurid out in gear until recently in ladder 6. im struggling to get my tornado past 7k dps

currently watching this with my single player lvl 90 barb with 2 standard of heroes, an actual barb torch, an anni and 3 skillers. Death, Beast, fortitude all the good stuff... and I dont feel 6th at all haha

The only way I can make this order make sense is by ranking each class by their absolute best build. In which case I would slightly change the order to be: Mosaic, Paladin, Amazon, Sorceress, Necromancer, Barbarian, Druid, Assassin. No, that was not a mistake.

Goldfind barb and jsp is all you need each and every single ladder

One important thing about the druid tho. Nado druid is a caster with physical damage. Nobody does it like wind dudu does. On top of that, hurricane does some cold damage to get rid of phys immunes

Your description of the Mosaicsin sounds a lot like the top Diablo 3 builds back when I played it (2015-17); all of them were about nothing but the burst damage from 20-30 second Super Saiyan skills that had 2 or 3 minute cooldowns. Just because they were the strongest for GR pushing doesn't mean they were any fun. Mosaic sounds exactly like that, power at the cost of enjoyability, making me happy my non-ladder 'Sin can't have access to it.

Fury druid is my absolute favourite build in the game. Pretty much immortal , can even kill dolls with no worries , 5k health & none of my resistances capped. Its a beast. Love it. Although my fury druid has great gear now , levelling up with not so great gear was pretty good. Felt strong and it is awesome turning into a wolf and ripping everything to shreds.

One other thing you forgot to mention about the Mosaic Assassin, is that if you cast too many meteors the game crashes. I've done this several times. It makes everyone in the game drop.

8 necro summonmancers with revives and skellies are the best. Especially in those maggot lairs and arcane sanctuaries. It is as powerful as a ddos attack.

Sorc is the best without a doubt. Reminds me of when you put trangouls as the best set.

I'm gonna make a mosaic sin after my sorc

Ginger Gaming Mentor. Rabies (random crowd control) should synergize with cyclone and hurricane…. Or ultimately Armageddon

I don't know why, but every time I play through Hell with every classes, I feel like the Druid is the one I'm having the easiest time. Maybe you're ranking the classes with bis gear against Uber, but I've never went that far in the game.

The fire-druid slander is out of control. You don't need all skill points maxed for it to be effective.

The WW barb with a Greif in NM cows is totally perfect and its were it literally should be. With Hell cows in a 3+ player game Greif and WW is a Joke, not good. The Whole build is set back one complete difficulty level if ur comparing to sorc, zon, pally.

Just concerning the assassin dying while building charges. They kinda fix it with the weapon block skill u just gotta reach 60 % on it .

Would a physical sunder charm be broken for the Barb?

you are wrong about throwing barb (unless they did an update) you put ax in offhand and it uses main hand distance mod for double throw

What does static do to Uber bosses same as hell?

can u have multiple auras on at the same time as a paladin by urself?

Lighting nova sorc with self-wielding Infinity is the best / the fastest farmer. Just after mosaic assassin which is even better.

I would love to see the druid fixed. I would like to see summoner being abuil to have a fairly good skill to use. I mean summoner with its Elly tree would be fun or even a SS. I mean necro has CE.. come on. Wouldn't having explod on throw be bad ass ? Would definitely put the idea of fire charms to use. What would you rate the sin without mosac ?

My favorite build is the dragondin with giving dream to my merc/

Armageddon furywolf is quite a powerhouse with a cheap runeword obedience, only gripe is there is no room for MF on this, my sorc can farm at p6 with 500+mf and mt baba(travifarm) can do it with 250/480+ and horking

16nagel, it's like every unique ring I find that is not a 17nagel or a dwarf star 😢

They should have ravens be passive, not a button. Then they should have 20% dmg synergies from the spirit wolf, dire wolf and bear. The other summons should have 10% att spd synergies from ravens. Then the ravens should be able to be effected by all buffs like all summons do. I think this would make the summoner druid actually an a or s tier. Also I think they should just add a real money auction house to the game. I dont think thats what was wrong with d3. It would allow the d2 team to be funded continuously without adding crap to the game. People just buy stuff from the other sites anyways. They could take a 5% cut from each sale and continuously upgrade the game. I think they could add a xp boost buff too, maybe just to non ladder so it wouldn’t hurt players who dont buy it because non ladder isnt competitive. I just want to get to 99 and it takes way too long. What do you think about all that?

For me: 1. Sorc 2. Assa 3. Pala 4. Amazon 5. Act2 merc 6. Necro 7. Barb 8. Act4 merc 9. Act1 merc 10. Druid 11. Act3 merc

Incoming critics, with love! Why did you compare a Fury druid to a Smiter, it makes zero sense. Comparing a Fury Druid to a more traditional Zealer would have been a lot more acceptable. Especially if both are decked out, they have similar clear speeds (excluding auradin setups). And this tier list has really neglected the synergies and utilities of every class excluding the Paladin which you only mentioned at the end, sugar coating the Pally even more. Not hating in the slightest, absolutely phenomenal video and the effort put into articulating this. What would be really interesting is a different take on the classes, on how they fare with their utility skills or even party composition/synergy. Sick vid.

Throw Barb range becomes less of an issue as it goes off your main hand weapon so you're not prevented from using Lacerator you just have to stick it in your off hand, you can then use Warshrike in main hand or demon's arch/wraith flight. It's still a really powerful build (and a lot of fun) but I don't disagree with Barb being where it is in your list by any means. Shout barb is also a viable ranged aoe build if you can get over how silly it looks to play.

I never get upset around druid's placement, nor do i think people should. Druids main flex is its flexibility and width of builds. Caster? Got it, frenzy-lite? Got it, tank? Got it, zoo? Absolutely. If druid was the BEST at anything, hed be the only class played.

Barbs are my best playing char I can do all the content in the game with him

Yes druid is weak in general but still deserved the 6 spot not 7 because he is one off the easy class to start and budget build work 100X better with im then the assassin or the barb also i dont like the moasic build to

Lol poor druid, I don't understand why they have to do him like that. My HC Summoning Druid is pretty much only good for playing NM for its end game. 😅

Barbarian is by far the "hard mode". He needs to be completely geared to even be decent. Paladin is the easiest as he's both an extremely powerful caster and has a lot of survivability. I did forget Druid exists, tho. NGL, I never really played him.

Amazon should be #2 ...most of the time a player isn't killing ubers..I dont put much stock into something im doing maybe 5% of my playtime. Amazon wipes through anything in the game with ease and most importantly in a fun way. For those who enjoy playing a hammerdin for PVE ...I pity the fool.

Whirlwind barb and fury druid are both amazing, although it is absolutely terrible that the wolf can't teleport, especially considering his non-feral rage walk speed. If it could it might very well be the strongest melee character together with zeal paladin. But yeah, in any case 1 build can't carry a whole class. Fire (the caster, because fire claw is alright with a sunder) and rabies druids are in my opinion the worst builds in the entire game, by far. And wind is the worst of the good ones, if you know what I mean. Poor druid :(

IMO while other classes definitely did benefit from patch changes over the years, the druid went from straight up "clunky & unusable" to "viable all across the board". Still lots of room for improvement, but even the fire tree and zoo tree are viable.

Really wish they buffed the druid. No matter how you look at it most druid builds have a lot of room for aditionnal buffs especially the summoning tree. That being said he's the one I have the most fun with

I have to disagree about mosaic not being as powerful as people claim, especially when just charging the nova clears p8 faster than most characters lol

Sorc 1st. because of teleport!

can someone give me the cliff notes holy crap

To many players focus on the best guide and classes etc…not what’s FUN and reliable While I’m sure you know far more than me I’m hurt that druid is 7th he’s not the most powerful but when geared up and enigma he really unlocks in the wind tree I think fire is cheesy and too limited on farm spots but with the fire sunder they do okay I just don’t like the okay style as much. wind is the way Element damage from enemy’s is non existent with cyclone armor

Elemental druid is worse version of sorc. Melee druid has some interesting variations, but requires lots of skill points, and relies on gear. Can be decent DC and Ubers killer, but not best. For melee I'd even prefer assassin. Summon druid is interesting though, and can be combined with Shock Wave. I wouldn't put him the lowest. For me, playing single player, Barbarian is the worst experience - not the hardest, but it lacks AoE skills (and War Cry requires lots of investment to work decently). Barbarian is good boss killer, but terrible at anything else.

Paladin for sure #1 thats a Fact but depends on everyone I love Barb more than Sorc and Assa My #2 would be Barb and #3 Zon

It feels crazy that soso gets relegated so low.. reason being - cant kill ubers. She has teleport... that should be like yeah ok.. second spot easily.

Druid is the best! Haha most fun at least

eth death decapitator > eth reapers toll for fury druid

paladin struggle with kill speed on players 8. Best heroe in the game who can do all content with best speed and survivability is es/fireball sors, no other heroe can even compare.

this is faulty, as its a "end game strongest = best) but just playing trough the game solo, self found, maby even speed run, i would say is just as fun and i think that kinda changes the whole list too

Fury Druid is way better that you think because you can life steal anything + you don’t need life tap on boss you need decrepyfi

I would argue the assassin is the absolute worst, yeah shes got 1 top tier build but aside from that she doesn’t have much to speak of and only mossaic makes her godly As for the traps, lightning traps is awesome but as a lightning ability it falls short to the javazon, for the fire traps she falls short to any of the fire sorc builds, her summon isn’t the best, and she really can struggle without a sunder

I built a tanky mosaicsin that used fortitude. Really fun! :) EDIT: Dual mosaic, Andies or CoA with 2 bers or all res jewels depending on needs, fortitude, bk ring, stone or jordan, maras, cb gloves, either tri res boots or gore riders. phoenix and cta on swap :) High defense, high life leech, decent hp, high damage reduction good res and sitll can run p8

blizz sorc can solo ubers ive done it several times

Barbarians unfortunately suck and the WW barb is my all time fav character. It's too bad

powerfully annoying sin, imo the annoyance outweighs the powerfulness. my gold is for gambling not repairing :) Good Vid!

i can disagree about sorceress. I have Fire Ball sorc with endgame gear and she shreded everything u can beat tristarm withou even try hard. just stomp ubers and shred them down

I wish u had some timestamps in the Video ;-(

Throwbarb is pretty godly with physical sunder..

I don't disagree with the ranking per se. Heck, I'm not really an expert in the game by any stretch of the imagination, but rather look to build or item guides for hints and tips in regard to how to equip my characters the best. The main problem with taking lists like these as gospel is that they are very goal-specific for people who play this game a lot and are looking to maximize and effectivise things, farming in particular, and they have the option of offsetting the soul-crushing monotony that is farming by entertaining with -- and being entertained by -- an audience. (Especially if they're farming a particular character or area -- Pindle/Baal/whoever else or cow/pit runs.) And as long as you aren't expecting that level of efficiency or speed, none of the characters on this list is a bad option. Heck, as far as I recall, one of the major streamers -- I don't remember if it was GGM here, or Sweet Phil or Mr. Llama -- said that while they made these kinds of lists to be helpful or entertaining, he also warned people not to get too stuck in what they were saying here. You're playing this game mainly to have fun, so play whichever build you like regardless of where they end up on a tier list. Rather than put too much importance on tier lists or meta builds (almost all of which require really expensive gear), go look up some budget builds for the character you like and go with that starting out. Don't worry about torches and annihilus charms either, because as you play, you will be able to trade for those -- people will reasonably often trade low-end torces for relatively cheap; i managed to get a Druid and an amazon torch for one IST each, and so will you if you look by the trading option from time to time and as long as you never expect to get what you need RIGHT AWAY NOW GO GO GO GO! I adore my summon druid. I've been able to get him some decent equipment, the most expensive one being a Beast axe. I just love playing said druid because it's just so much fun seeing my wolves and bear go to town on all the mobs. He can't do ubers, granted, but I've been genuinely surprised at how well he handles everything else in the game with reasonable ease. The only downside being that areas with narrow pathways -- the maggot lair and arcade sanctuary in particular -- can be a slow process with ANY summon character, especially if you can't teleport. I also sacrificed one or two points in raven to get my bear form up and running with shockwave, which can help with... say, a particularly nasty group of the Blood lord variety with might or fanaticism auras, especially the ones that are physical immunes. I've also played semi-casually since the game has released, and I've gotten quite a few high rune drops, and those bastards also almost always drop when I least expect it. I've had every single rune drop at least once except the ZOD; the BER that I ended up using for the Beast and the CHAM even dropped while I was doing a tower run. I've had enough LO runes to make me a dual grief/forti barb, and that IS a guy who managed to take down Uber Diablo that one time I was lucky enough to encounter him in the overworld. Did it rankle a bit to see the druid on last place? Well.... yeah, but as Phil here pointed out, last place in a list of good options doesn't necessarily have to mean that much. (Although I laughed a bit when he pointed out that the amazon's Valkyrie was a better summon than even the bear, which... yeah, that might be the case if you lean on the synergies a bit, but I doubt that people are building summon amazons for any reason outside of for the lulz.) Ranking lists are interesting, and they can also be a learning experience to be sure, but if you're new to the game or don't have the time to go all in on it, you don't need to let any of this discourage you from trying out things you think sounds interesting. I mean... I have a fire druid too, and he's doing mostly fine on all the non-uber content. So go rock that summon druid if that's what you had your heart set on. It bears noting that I play on console, so I can't set my game to players X to test how deep that rabbit hole goes, at least not online which I'm always playing at. Honestly, I would have liked it if the game could have been patched to bring the text chat in on the console version, especially since it's very possible to just buy a cheap keyboard and connect that to your PS4/5 or Xbox for all your chatting needs. Would be so much better than the sad excuse that's the emote/talk wheel, especially since other PS5 games do this, including Diablo 4.

wish it was a "ladder start" tier list, or a starting from scratch list feels like all of these lists or guides assumes that you are already far into the end game, with high runes, charms, and unique pieces any character can clear the game if you have a bunch of high rune gear

Sorc on 4th? She is the best ladder starter with Paladin and Nova Sorc with infy is the best speedfarming build in p1-p3

druid IS a "poo poo" character! :P the best mf char being 6, 7 whatever dont make sense on the other hand , even if he may sux at several thing that alone considering mf as the main activity should put it way above

What about hydra build

I never Played Mosaic lol and thank you still dont want to try it

For me it’s 1. Barbarian 2. Druid 3. Sorceress 4. Necromancer 5. Paladin 6. Assassin 7. Amazon

Sorc at 4 is a major L take. Teleport and, to a lesser extent, Teleinesis, are the ultimate QOL skills.

Not true. Singer barb hit multiple enemy's.

Honestly, Ive never been so deflated when looking at a video to start a new character. The sweat level is sad.

dude amazons want to play mutli shot lets be honest they need to buff multishot again

Honestly i think if you go back and watch this video yourself you will agree the amazon deserves number 2 slot.

It not just that the Mosaic Assassin is powerful, she is that powerful with almost no investment. All you need is 2 Mosaics, and 20 in Phoenix Strike, Blades of Ice, and Claws of thunder, and you will flatten everything on players 8 hell. Immunities don't matter, you have 4 types of damage in 1 attack. Cold Sunder is not needed, Damage output is probably higher with 2 Phoenix Strike charges. Life and Mana Leech come from a 1 point skills, Boss killing ability comes from a 1 point skills. There are other S-tier characters, but their budget versions aren't S Tier. Its so strong that the regular rules for ubers don't even apply. You don't need crushing blow, or open wounds, you just need all of your orbs going. I disagree that it's squishy, I ran mine on Hardcore, and I never had a problem, but there are also enough points left over to max out Fade. Building charges is the most dangerous part. Once they are going, everything dies with a tap. I never felt unsafe teleporting in to a pack of enemies. I do agree about the rushed style of gameplay. I also feel like I can't check gear, because I don't want to lose charges, so it's not necessarily a good MF character. Charge can run out before Diablo spawns, they can run out between waves 3 and 4 on baal runs etc.

It's like you don't know that there is a physical sunder charm that the Barb can use for himself, or the druid and necro can use for their minions.

Sorc is # 1. Best budget class given it doesnt need enigma Best end game build in Nova ES sorc. Damage isn't the highest overall, but the sorcs superior mobility allows it to clear areas faster than other classes. Also comes with zero maintenance, almost invincible, self-healing, unlimited mana, no maintaining charges or ammunition. Has tons of viable builds , zon and assasin are basically have one or two viable builds.

So true about Assassin. I wanted them for so long to be good. I tried extremely hard to make martial arts work so many times because we can see and feel the potential of how fun it could have been back then. It is a shame that we need Mosaic to make martial work. In fact I think that ouright sucks balls that it is basically necessary. Levelling as martial arts still feels horribly clunky and slow however. I think all the unique claws and what can roll on magic/rare claws should have some tweaks to help that. Good ol' Bartucs anyone? I wasn't aware the blade abilities in traps had changed so I'll have to play with those at some point.