Being sturdy in D2 is all about running and staying far away from the monsters. There's nearly no such thing as a character that can comfortably be surrounded by a big melee pack in the higher difficulties. The only thing that comes close is a barbarian or weredruid with 3000+ life. Armor and defensive skills suck, never enough to be worthwhile until you get into some of the crazy-rare high end runewords. Distance is better defense than anything else.
Sturdy in D2 means hiding behind a meat-shield minion so the monsters never get to you. Necromancers are best for that, of course. Amazons (valkyrie summon), druids (wolves or bear), and assassins (shadow summon) do OK too. Barbarians have no summonable minion but can rely on the big life pool and the stunning war cry. Paladin is the toughest to survive, with no minion, not enough life, no ranged skills, and no monster-disabling skills.
A sorceress has no minion. Her defense consists of constantly teleporting away from monsters every couple seconds. (DON'T invest in the frozen armor skills, it's not nearly enough defense, and the higher difficulties apply penalties so the chilling/slowing becomes useless.) If you can do that, you may enjoy the character. For a single-player playthrough, it is significant that a sorceress's damage all comes from her skills and doesn't need to find a high-end weapon like many classes.
For all the classes, all that kicks in around character levels 24 to 30 when you get the higher end skills. D2 is pretty much a cakewalk through normal difficulty up until the act 3 boss where the game really starts.
Necromancer is probably sturdiest overall if played well. There's two distinctly different build paths: invest everything in either the summon skill tree or bone skill tree, with 1 point in most curses. Bonemancer is probably my favorite class in the game: spam a screenful of high-level bone walls to immobilize everything, and blast them down with the bone damaging spells and of course Corpse Explosion.
Sturdy in D2 means hiding behind a meat-shield minion so the monsters never get to you. Necromancers are best for that, of course. Amazons (valkyrie summon), druids (wolves or bear), and assassins (shadow summon) do OK too. Barbarians have no summonable minion but can rely on the big life pool and the stunning war cry. Paladin is the toughest to survive, with no minion, not enough life, no ranged skills, and no monster-disabling skills.
A sorceress has no minion. Her defense consists of constantly teleporting away from monsters every couple seconds. (DON'T invest in the frozen armor skills, it's not nearly enough defense, and the higher difficulties apply penalties so the chilling/slowing becomes useless.) If you can do that, you may enjoy the character. For a single-player playthrough, it is significant that a sorceress's damage all comes from her skills and doesn't need to find a high-end weapon like many classes.
For all the classes, all that kicks in around character levels 24 to 30 when you get the higher end skills. D2 is pretty much a cakewalk through normal difficulty up until the act 3 boss where the game really starts.
Necromancer is probably sturdiest overall if played well. There's two distinctly different build paths: invest everything in either the summon skill tree or bone skill tree, with 1 point in most curses. Bonemancer is probably my favorite class in the game: spam a screenful of high-level bone walls to immobilize everything, and blast them down with the bone damaging spells and of course Corpse Explosion.
![[Image: noidea.gif]](https://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/images/smilies/noidea.gif)
In this game that's going to help us because he's going to go to the negotiating table with twitchy eyes and slightly too wide a grin and terrify the neighbors into favorable border agreements, one-sided tech deals and staggered NAPs."
Still, thanks for the advice.
Always a pain when legal rights issues from years ago screw things up.
He is running a melee-only sorceror. With my recent D1 game play, this was fun to watch. 
Hopefully he will continue the character.
