Diablo 1

[DraQ]

Depends at which level range. Sorcerers do not rule until late game with a good to great mana pool and high levels of CL and FB, also need Teleport, Golem and Stone Curse for triple immune, or if you can sustain it Staff of Apocalypse.

I never really used teleport with sorcerers TBH. Stone Curse is essential, Golem is niche but sometimes incredibly useful (even more so in Hellfire where you have liches), so is Guardian, Firewall is also a must-have.

I'd say in fact that Sorcerers are the worst starting class with no Mana Shield, little HP, mediocre mana pool and spell damage entirely dependent on your level and spell level in most cases, which means that you have a small mana pool and low damage.

I wonder how D1 balance would look if there was no mana shield. I think Sorcerers would be more interesting this way, although I'm not sure if he could beat Diablo without MS.

Warrior is a bit more complex. He starts better than Sorcerer but worse than Rogue imho. He gets a power spike mid game if he gets a really nice shield and a Bastard Sword with Kings and Vampiric or Haste suffix/affix but falls off again since he really struggles with any kind of succubus AI type of monster, so he too needs at least Teleport and Stone Curse but is limited in it's use due to his really small mana pool.

Succubi can be tactically fireballed and it's easier to learn FB and CL than Teleport.
Of course telekilling is immensely powerful, but just learning teleport is somewhat problematic.
Stone Curse is useful, as usual.
As for the weapon, Griswold's Edge is wonderful if you get the quest (it's fast and has knockback, Diablo will generally try to walk back to you and melee if he get's knocked back only one tile), especially if you can get Undead Crown to handle your lifesteal.

 

[Sykar]

Never played the warrior class much, like one play through on normal till level 25, give or take. I preferred Sorcerer and Rogue over it. I just close to never like melee type character in any kind of game.

Call me rangefag if you wish to.

 

[DraQ]

Warrior is pretty fun to play.
Arguably the vanilla class that requires the most thought to develop, using magic as supplement to physical combat instead of firing off barrage of FBs, CL's or a flame wave and then listening to dying screams of offscreen monsters for the next half a minute.
Also the class that's most dependent on gear.

I didn't really experience the power spike you mentioned - catacombs and especially the caves are where you start meeting massed smart ranged attackers (in caves often unreachable behind lava or fence), and tougher melee monsters.

OTOH the Warrior is the class that's the most likely to come out victorious from a melee gangbang, so you don't have as many "fuck, I'm screwed" moments early on.

 

[Sykar]

Maybe I was lucky getting that shield with faster hit recovery. Really let me block Matrix style.

 

[Average Manatee]

Sorcerers are never really underpowered, that's just their lingo for taking more than one spell to empty a room and needing to return to town any more than once per floor. Early game can be annoying when you need to return to town constantly and refill on mana potions (and town portal scrolls are expensive and otherwise hard to come by, so walking home), but they'll be able to kill at least 1 monster with every spell for most of the game which is more than capable.

Hellfire completely fucks this up by switching out your starting staff of Charged Bolt (powerful but runs out fast) with a Staff of Mana (essentially like carrying an extra 18 mana potions every time you enter the labyrinth, and it recharges for like 300 gold where potions cost 50 each). For some reason beyond understanding they also cut his starting spell costs (normally spells start costing much more to cast then with higher levels they go down to about 50% as much, sorcerer starts at min costs). So Sorcerers in Hellfire can just throw spells around like candy, clearing out the first 3-4 floors of the labyrinth in one go, where normally you'd be limping back to town at least once a level, spending half your gold on more mana potions, and using bows to kill any slow zombies.

Rogues are pretty much good at everything. Bows are obviously her strength, but melee works too (high dex + fast blocking = almost unhittable), and she can still cast pretty well. It's just a question of how you develop her and what equipment you get. If you leveled and itemed her like a sorcerer you'll get a good caster (still OP, in fact Rogues get cheaper casting costs in Diablo compared to sorcerers early on), and if you leveled and itemed her like a Warrior you'll have a Warrior that does a bit less damage but has better defense.

Warriors are essentially melee-only. Bows are kind of balanced for Rogue, with Warrior they are too slow and weak, which means as a Warrior enemies are quickly in your face and you'd be better in melee with a shield. Most high level spells are literally unlearnable without stacking +magic equipment, and even then you'll only be able to cast them once before being drained. Once learned you can abuse the shrines that raise all spell levels in exchange for dropping the level of one other spell, but that takes a lot of time to do.

One thing that bears noting is that most of the big spells depend very little or not at all on the Magic attribute for potency. Instead it's usually character level providing damage with spell level providing stuff like wider walls of flame or more range on the chain lightning. So as long as your Rogue or Warrior can cast something you'll be almost as good as a Sorcerer, you'll just be eating mana potions far more often (or relying on mana leech gear).

 

[The Fish]

Interview on Diablo with Max Schaefer, starts around 1:17:30.

 

[agris]

Sorcerers are never really underpowered, that's just their lingo for taking more than one spell to empty a room and needing to return to town any more than once per floor. Early game can be annoying when you need to return to town constantly and refill on mana potions (and town portal scrolls are expensive and otherwise hard to come by, so walking home), but they'll be able to kill at least 1 monster with every spell for most of the game which is more than capable.

Hellfire completely fucks this up by switching out your starting staff of Charged Bolt (powerful but runs out fast) with a Staff of Mana (essentially like carrying an extra 18 mana potions every time you enter the labyrinth, and it recharges for like 300 gold where potions cost 50 each). For some reason beyond understanding they also cut his starting spell costs (normally spells start costing much more to cast then with higher levels they go down to about 50% as much, sorcerer starts at min costs). So Sorcerers in Hellfire can just throw spells around like candy, clearing out the first 3-4 floors of the labyrinth in one go, where normally you'd be limping back to town at least once a level, spending half your gold on more mana potions, and using bows to kill any slow zombies.

Rogues are pretty much good at everything. Bows are obviously her strength, but melee works too (high dex + fast blocking = almost unhittable), and she can still cast pretty well. It's just a question of how you develop her and what equipment you get. If you leveled and itemed her like a sorcerer you'll get a good caster (still OP, in fact Rogues get cheaper casting costs in Diablo compared to sorcerers early on), and if you leveled and itemed her like a Warrior you'll have a Warrior that does a bit less damage but has better defense.

Warriors are essentially melee-only. Bows are kind of balanced for Rogue, with Warrior they are too slow and weak, which means as a Warrior enemies are quickly in your face and you'd be better in melee with a shield. Most high level spells are literally unlearnable without stacking +magic equipment, and even then you'll only be able to cast them once before being drained. Once learned you can abuse the shrines that raise all spell levels in exchange for dropping the level of one other spell, but that takes a lot of time to do.

One thing that bears noting is that most of the big spells depend very little or not at all on the Magic attribute for potency. Instead it's usually character level providing damage with spell level providing stuff like wider walls of flame or more range on the chain lightning. So as long as your Rogue or Warrior can cast something you'll be almost as good as a Sorcerer, you'll just be eating mana potions far more often (or relying on mana leech gear).

It's a shame that HF screwed up Sorc progression so much, good to know.

Your point about warriors isn't correct imo. Even for a first run, regular difficulty warrior, you can learn a host of complementary spells like fireball, chain lightning, and even apocalypse if you're aware of the INT requirements and gear out correctly. It's one of the most fun ways to play D1 in my experience, as essentially a battle mage. Apocalypse depletes your entire mana pool in one cast, but it's nice to have up your sleeve. By the time you hit hell, fireballs are a solid choice for dealing with succubi. In the caves, it's chain lightning for the ranged enemies (iirc).

Warrior is very playable with magic, with foresight and planning.

 

[Ninjerk]

Sorcerers are never really underpowered, that's just their lingo for taking more than one spell to empty a room and needing to return to town any more than once per floor. Early game can be annoying when you need to return to town constantly and refill on mana potions (and town portal scrolls are expensive and otherwise hard to come by, so walking home), but they'll be able to kill at least 1 monster with every spell for most of the game which is more than capable.

Hellfire completely fucks this up by switching out your starting staff of Charged Bolt (powerful but runs out fast) with a Staff of Mana (essentially like carrying an extra 18 mana potions every time you enter the labyrinth, and it recharges for like 300 gold where potions cost 50 each). For some reason beyond understanding they also cut his starting spell costs (normally spells start costing much more to cast then with higher levels they go down to about 50% as much, sorcerer starts at min costs). So Sorcerers in Hellfire can just throw spells around like candy, clearing out the first 3-4 floors of the labyrinth in one go, where normally you'd be limping back to town at least once a level, spending half your gold on more mana potions, and using bows to kill any slow zombies.

Rogues are pretty much good at everything. Bows are obviously her strength, but melee works too (high dex + fast blocking = almost unhittable), and she can still cast pretty well. It's just a question of how you develop her and what equipment you get. If you leveled and itemed her like a sorcerer you'll get a good caster (still OP, in fact Rogues get cheaper casting costs in Diablo compared to sorcerers early on), and if you leveled and itemed her like a Warrior you'll have a Warrior that does a bit less damage but has better defense.

Warriors are essentially melee-only. Bows are kind of balanced for Rogue, with Warrior they are too slow and weak, which means as a Warrior enemies are quickly in your face and you'd be better in melee with a shield. Most high level spells are literally unlearnable without stacking +magic equipment, and even then you'll only be able to cast them once before being drained. Once learned you can abuse the shrines that raise all spell levels in exchange for dropping the level of one other spell, but that takes a lot of time to do.

One thing that bears noting is that most of the big spells depend very little or not at all on the Magic attribute for potency. Instead it's usually character level providing damage with spell level providing stuff like wider walls of flame or more range on the chain lightning. So as long as your Rogue or Warrior can cast something you'll be almost as good as a Sorcerer, you'll just be eating mana potions far more often (or relying on mana leech gear).

It's a shame that HF screwed up Sorc progression so much, good to know.

Your point about warriors isn't correct imo. Even for a first run, regular difficulty warrior, you can learn a host of complementary spells like fireball, chain lightning, and even apocalypse if you're aware of the INT requirements and gear out correctly. It's one of the most fun ways to play D1 in my experience, as essentially a battle mage. Apocalypse depletes your entire mana pool in one cast, but it's nice to have up your sleeve. By the time you hit hell, fireballs are a solid choice for dealing with succubi. In the caves, it's chain lightning for the ranged enemies (iirc).

Warrior is very playable with magic, with foresight and planning.

Just when I was becoming productive in my life...

 

[agris]

Just when I was becoming productive in my life...

If you're playing with the Hellfire expansion, consider this: http://www.lurkerlounge.com/forums/thread-15760.html

 

[Dzupakazul]

Warrior is very playable with magic, with foresight and planning.

While I agree, I don't really think Fireball and Chain Lightning are really that efficient to use on a warrior (or rogue). Your casting time is extremely slow and your DPS in melee, especially with a weapon of Speed+, is simply much better than when casting any spells, and it's also way more cost-efficient.
My favourite Warrior spells are Healing, Stone Curse, Teleport and Firewall.
Healing lets you do something with your mana pool at all times and is a great way to heal yourself in a non-combat situation, without having to quaff a health pot, which simply saves downtime and is more efficient.
Stone Curse is really good for freezing pesky archers, mages and succubi in place so that you can walk up and destroy them. You can also use Stone Curse statues to make temporary cover for yourself - enemies can't occupy a square with a Cursed monster, so if you need a few seconds of reprieve from a Blood Knight to bash in his Viper friends, you can use it that way.
Firewall is fantastic because it affects the AI of enemies somewhat; even if they're immune to fire, they will try not to step in it if they can find a different route to you, which sometimes is very useful for funneling enemies under the tip of your sword. It's also really useful for prospective Rogues who lack the sheer DPS of a Warrior, might lack the Knockback suffix, and also lack the Sorcerer's AoE in mowing down charging waves.
Teleport is exceptional for the Telekill technique - you simply teleport next to your adversary and immediately start swinging. It's one of the premier ways of dealing with the pesky Sorcerers in PvP, too, but it's generally just really convenient for killiing Advocates and Soul Burners. And it's also an useful "oh shit" button, although the warrior casts slowly and might easily get interrupted before escaping, especially if you somehow got yourself surrounded by 8 Blood Knights.
Warriors are generally my favourite class solely due to strategy involved in the tricky parts of Caves/Hell (at least on Multiplayer difficulty levels; Normal is harder than regular Single Player, not only do you not get cool items from a semi-guaranteed selection of uniques like Griswold's Edge, Arkaine's Valor or Veil of Steel, but monsters are slightly stronger and tougher too); they start off as mundanes, but as the game progresses they turn into a mix of Paladin (healing becomes super cost-efficient, plus the heavy shiny armor really adds to that angle) and some sort of a dimensional blinker who will ninja next to you and fuck you up in three precise swings. And that's really kinda cool.
I do recommend picking up all of the "reading glasses" items (+ magic jewelry, primarily, and uniques like Dreamflange) and switching them out for book-reading sessions. Healing starts off prohibitively expensive, but using this method to read more and more books will bring down its mana cost significantly.

 

[agris]

Warrior is very playable with magic, with foresight and planning.

While I agree, I don't really think Fireball and Chain Lightning are really that efficient to use on a warrior (or rogue). Your casting time is extremely slow and your DPS in melee, especially with a weapon of Speed+, is simply much better than when casting any spells, and it's also way more cost-efficient.
My favourite Warrior spells are Healing, Stone Curse, Teleport and Firewall.
Healing lets you do something with your mana pool at all times and is a great way to heal yourself in a non-combat situation, without having to quaff a health pot, which simply saves downtime and is more efficient.
Stone Curse is really good for freezing pesky archers, mages and succubi in place so that you can walk up and destroy them. You can also use Stone Curse statues to make temporary cover for yourself - enemies can't occupy a square with a Cursed monster, so if you need a few seconds of reprieve from a Blood Knight to bash in his Viper friends, you can use it that way.
Firewall is fantastic because it affects the AI of enemies somewhat; even if they're immune to fire, they will try not to step in it if they can find a different route to you, which sometimes is very useful for funneling enemies under the tip of your sword. It's also really useful for prospective Rogues who lack the sheer DPS of a Warrior, might lack the Knockback suffix, and also lack the Sorcerer's AoE in mowing down charging waves.
Teleport is exceptional for the Telekill technique - you simply teleport next to your adversary and immediately start swinging. It's one of the premier ways of dealing with the pesky Sorcerers in PvP, too, but it's generally just really convenient for killiing Advocates and Soul Burners. And it's also an useful "oh shit" button, although the warrior casts slowly and might easily get interrupted before escaping, especially if you somehow got yourself surrounded by 8 Blood Knights.
Warriors are generally my favourite class solely due to strategy involved in the tricky parts of Caves/Hell (at least on Multiplayer difficulty levels; Normal is harder than regular Single Player, not only do you not get cool items from a semi-guaranteed selection of uniques like Griswold's Edge, Arkaine's Valor or Veil of Steel, but monsters are slightly stronger and tougher too); they start off as mundanes, but as the game progresses they turn into a mix of Paladin (healing becomes super cost-efficient, plus the heavy shiny armor really adds to that angle) and some sort of a dimensional blinker who will ninja next to you and fuck you up in three precise swings. And that's really kinda cool.
I do recommend picking up all of the "reading glasses" items (+ magic jewelry, primarily, and uniques like Dreamflange) and switching them out for book-reading sessions. Healing starts off prohibitively expensive, but using this method to read more and more books will bring down its mana cost significantly.

Completely agree, but I've never done more than 1.5 runs through the game with a Warrior-mage so I've never read enough teleport books to make the cost that effective. Still though, Fireball and Chain Lightning work very well for groups of ranged enemies, but you list a lot of good strategies as well.

Taken together, it just goes to show how much fun a warrior can be when paired with magic.

 

[mwnn85]

Greatly looking forward to the release of Freeablo - main site - cross platform Diablo under a GPL v3 license.

wheybags is a Factorio developer so that's double incline right there.

Quite a few of these projects popping up / in progress.

How cool is this? Can't do much yet other than walk around the town as far as I can see.

 

[index.php]

DevilutionX 1.2.0 is out and now supports Hellfire: https://github.com/diasurgical/devilutionX/releases/tag/1.2.0

 

[agris]

DevilutionX 1.2.0 is out and now supports Hellfire: https://github.com/diasurgical/devilutionX/releases/tag/1.2.0

Gregz

 

[axx]

A guy on discord has been posting high framerate support and completely redesigned lightning system, via SDL I believe. But it won't be ready for 1.3 yet.

 

[agris]

Is the current release a 100% working clone of D1 with support for widescreen, or is it still heavily WIP?

 

[Gregz]

DevilutionX 1.2.0 is out and now supports Hellfire: https://github.com/diasurgical/devilutionX/releases/tag/1.2.0

Gregz

No iPad support yet, Diablo I would be fun to play in bed at night.

 

[axx]

Is the current release a 100% working clone of D1 with support for widescreen, or is it still heavily WIP?

Yes. Actually 1.1 has original bugs iirc, 1.2 has bugfixes and hellfire support. Widescreen is working fine, check out the .ini guide on the github wiki page in order to set it ip. The developers are mostly on linux so if youre using windows expect some new features to be buggy.

 

[blessedCoffee]

1.2.1 was added to the GitHub recently.

Spoiler

Bugfixes
Gameplay

• Gharbad not having to go out of vision before progressing his quest
• Diablo: Items with negative AC morphing in multiplayer
• Diablo: Griswold and Wirt selling unusually expensive items
• Diablo: Gold not going directly to inventory
• Hellfire: Some monsters having lower than intended HP
• Hellfire: Auric Amulet not taking effect in most scenarios

Graphics / Audio

• Windows: Glitchy audio

Controls

• Vita: Inability to edit hero name on the creation screen

Stability / Performance / System

• Quest panel crashing the game for some quests
• Windows: Some systems getting a sensor permission error
• Windows: Stability issues and item morphing in Hellfire

Bugfixes for original Hellfire bugs
Gameplay

• Rage/Search/Lightningwall not factoring in the hero level for the first player
• Sparkling Shrine dealing an incorrect amount of damage
• Items with negative AC morphing in multiplayer

[People playing on Windows]
To change default resolution (640 x 480):
Go to "%appdata%\diasurgical\devilution" and open diablo.ini.
Edit these:

[Graphics]

• Width=640
• Height=480

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

King's Sword of Haste FTW.

 

[otsego]

King's Sword of Haste FTW.

Godly Plate of the Whale with Obsidian Rings of the Zodiac

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

Yes, With that combo and somethingorothers shield of the wolf You could stun lock hoards of baddieswhile you click as fast as possible.

 

[DaveO]

Godly Plate of the Whale is impossible to get without serious hacking.

 

[agris]

Is the current release a 100% working clone of D1 with support for widescreen, or is it still heavily WIP?

Yes. Actually 1.1 has original bugs iirc, 1.2 has bugfixes and hellfire support. Widescreen is working fine, check out the .ini guide on the github wiki page in order to set it ip. The developers are mostly on linux so if youre using windows expect some new features to be buggy.

I'm poking around v1.21; and it's pretty slick. Can easily play at 960x540 without non-AR correct image stretching for the 1080p plebs.

One thing I'm gathering is that it's just on the cusp of feature complete implementation of the base games. There's no modding framework that I can ascertain, so all "mods" are edits to the source files pre-compile so it's up to the mod's author to keep their fork updated with the main rep. And none of them are. Also, other basic QoL features I would expect (increased gold pile size, highlight items, hold down click to continue attacking) are not implemented, but are in those outdated mods.

 

[axx]

I believe AJenbo put all those QoL features in the 1.3 roadmap. One difficulty is you're dealing with old code not really meant for modding, that's where Freeablo would come in handy but its development stalled.