an assassin compendium: plays well with others (multiplayer expectations)

Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster.

It is dangerous for a warrior to know only one thing. It will eventually create short-sightedness and limit the possibilities for additional growth. What is the sense of knowing a thing to such a degree that you become oblivious to other things? If you constantly disregard the the possibilities of other methods and tools, then you become short-sighted and may in fact lose the advantage of your own strength.

The "enemy" in D2 refers not to the monsters — their AI is pathetic and they're often unimaginative — but to the potential limitations of your own style. The highest level of mastery in D2 is the capability to be a flexible, selfless teammate, knowing not only the ins and outs of your own character, but those of every other character as well — for this reason, I would strongly suggest taking every character through the game at least once, the better to learn their strengths and weaknesses, and the better to appreciate those of the bowazon. (What might your reaction be if you steeled yourself towards playing the bowazon and discovered that you truly enjoyed playing the druid? Contemplate the reality of this.) Theoretically, once you see another player use his primary skills, you can formulate a game plan to complement their skills and build. As in real life, try not to get caught in a situation that will render you helpless: in no case do you ever want to be caught with your pants down, lacking that one skill that could have saved your party from going down a shit creek without a paddle. Be able to do everything, even if you can't do it well: at least you'd be doing something. In no case do you ever want to not know how another character's skill complements (or opposes) your own.

For those who insist on playing solo in every game online, why are you playing on battle.net when single-player is less frustrating to deal with? Multiplayer, not the lack of cheats, is the most single compelling reason to play Diablo II on b.net. Being a good teammate is not more important than being a good player, being a good teammate is being a good player; this is the most important part of the multiplayer aspect of D2 only because there's so little of it to be found.

In an eight-player run through A4 (or any act, for that matter), regardless of difficulty level, good teamwork is a must: every player must define themselves as part of a greater whole and adopt the role that they were made for. The bowazon's role in a large group (or any group) is support and cover fire. Unlike melee fighters, she doesn't get into the action but stays detached from it, selectively eliminating threats: she eliminates weaker enemies, ranged attackers and softens up tougher targets while melee fighters take out the targets with higher priority while her valkyrie adds another tank to the team. At higher levels, she can — she must — use FA to play the part of the caretaker, strategically targeting threats that other players can't reach or don't notice.

Team Play

Supporting characters should not try to lead the group — this is the role of the tanks. This is especially true if your character is weaker than the rest of the group — deaths are inevitable, but they slow the pace of the game. In especially tough areas, it is advisable for the team to clear the perimeter of an area, then work your way to the middle.

Try not to wander off on your own; a team will usually do best when working together. If you feel it would be best working in smaller groups or to use different tactics talk about it before starting to play. Remember to keep a watch on your teammates' life bars — they will give you an indication of who may need help. If working in smaller groups and asked to join another group try to do so as quick as possible — they may see something that will cause them a problem and need your help. It is important to learn not to block other's progress; standing in a doorway may offer you an easy retreat, but it blocks access to the room for others. Ranged attackers should remember to let the tanks by to do their job. Be especially careful not to block your partners' retreat; you will not make friends if they are killed because you blocked their escape route. Minions are 'transparent' (you can walk through them), so this problem is less of an issue than it was with classic D2.

When there are multiple players of the same class, it is a good idea to coordinate skills. This is especially true of paladins: it is a good idea at the start of the game for them to figure out who will be using which aura so they don't overlap a lower level version of the same one and reduce the benefit. Also, multiple strong auras can be very beneficial to the group.

Before we begin, be warned of the players who depend on equipment to carry them through the day but lack skill in and of themselves, having no interest whatsoever in developing themselves into better players; those who mock your equipment choices, yet have no suggestions for alternatives other than "get the best gear" are such players. I have placed players like this in a mental category marked "too stupid to live, too rich to die."

Amazons

Re-read the first paragraph of "Team Play" and take note of one of the phrase "this is the role of the tanks." Your valkyrie is a tank, perhaps one of the best tanks in the game: fast summon, relatively low mana cost, high amounts of life. Use it.

Amazons have one quirk that separates them from the rest of the Diablo II cast: they're the only class that cannot attack and move at the same time. The barbarian gets whirlwind; the paladin, his elemental damage auras and Sanctuary; the sorceress, thunder storm; the assassin, her traps and Blade Shield; the druid, Hurricane and Armageddon, and the necromancer, with his fire golem (which is something of a stretch, really). Nothing of significance, just worth noting.

Whether your partners are bowazons, spearazons, javazons or any of their variants, your role can range from primary offense to support fire, but is mainly to stay back and let your arrows do the work. Teaming with other bowazons is simple: seven bowazons alone can literally mop the floor with anything. Your role with spearazons is to prevent them from getting overwhelmed in melee combat and to take care of enemies when she's been hit with an Iron Maiden curse. Javazons and tankazons are tanks: bowazons don't have their defensive abilities. Always, always, always let the javazon go first in any situation, as she can dodge, evade or block nearly every attack and her Lightning Fury attack can literally rip entire packs of enemies out with one fell swoop.

Barbarians

Once reviled as the least party-friendly class in the game, the barbarian shows off his strength and versatility as a tank and melee fighter. While you might find the occasional newbie out there (tip: no Berserk = newbie), most barbarians who have survived long enough to get to Hell are actually very good in parties.

Good barbarian players use war cries to augment the party and remembers that there are other members on the team. His primary contribution to the party is to kill things, but well-developed war cries are an enormous asset: rare is the barbarian without fully-developed Battle Orders. In any case, your job when partied with a barbarian is to soften up your enemies, use FA to cool off sticky situations, then quickly move on to the next group. Target anything that can cast Iron Maiden. In short, help keep a barbarian alive. Sure, you can apply physical damage faster than he can, but when it comes to small packs, he can break them down faster than you. He also has Berserk, the single most powerful attack in the game: it is invaluable for taking out physical immune monsters, so remember that before exploiting Fire Arrow; if possible, freeze it in place so the barbarian can hammer away at the PI without fear of retaliation. In return, the barb should offer Battle Command, Battle Orders and possibly Shout; in the early stages of the game, Taunt and Howl should be used for crowd control and getting enemies off your back. If you find a barbarian who can use Grim Ward properly, you've probably found a good player. If the barbarian uses War Cry, so much the better, as the stun augments skills like FA quite nicely. Like the javazon, the barbarian is the tank: always let him enter any unknown area first.

Necromancers

Best suited for the role of indirect damage, a well-played necromancer is invaluable: their minions are an incredible asset, allowing the both of you to apply damage from afar without fear of retaliation. Most of the time, necromancers use curses to the party's benefit, so Amplify Damage and Lower Resist are two favorites. People tend to think that necromancers are about as dangerous as Gandhi on downers and Absolut, but the necromancer/bowazon team are among the most powerful combinations in the game, especially if a bowazon uses a Might merc with a necromancer and his Thorns merc. A bowazon simply needs to supply the necromancer with an army of thorned/mighted revives so he can start blasting away with a wide-range Corpse Explosion and Amplify Damage. Any monsters immune to physical damage become less threatening with a ton of minions swarming them while under a Lower Resist curse and being hammered away by magical and elemental attacks.

Necromancers who use only golems (and quite possibly a hireling) are a different story. They'll usually use a multitude of curses and bone/poison skills: they're rare, but are usually skillful in that they play their game a lot like defensive bowazons. Note that an Iron Golem is a suicide machine, as monsters will easily kill themselves trying to hit it.

Depending on your style of play, either Amplify Damage or Decripify will be your best friend; a smart necromancer uses this curse around any character that primarily delivers physical damage. Not Life Tap (unless you're playing HC), not Lower Resist (unless you're in a heavy elemental party), not Confuse, not Weaken and absolutely, positively never, ever, ever Iron Maiden. The Blood Golem-returned damage trick no longer works, don't even try it.

Regardless of what necromancer you team up with, avoid destroying corpses with freezing attacks because if the necromancer isn't using them for minions, he'll be using them as weapons. Because only one curse can be applied to a target at a time, take care to remove items that cast curses (or at least warn your partner that you're using them). If the necromancer keeps a lot of minions, watch his back: if you die, you lose some experience and a minion, but the necromancer can usually hold off the enemy long enough to set up a portal to your corpse; if the necromancer dies, he loses experience and a lot of minions and with the sudden loss of your moving shield, you might not be able to get to his body before the enemy overwhelms your suddenly-weaker defense.

Paladins

Party with friendly paladins at every opportunity. A good paladin is your best friend in multiplayer, but it's best to find out what kind of paladin you're partnered with first, then formulate a plan of action. In most cases, paladins exist only to offer their aura: let them. With the new patch and synergies, paladins are no longer able to flash auras, but they can now specialize. That means that when they specialize in an aura, they specialize in an aura so well that you'll wonder how you lived without one, and when they specialize in an attack, that means they've been beefing up on synergies, and as a result, they hit hard. However, the paladin's hardest-hitting attacks (Blessed Hammer is the exception) only hit one target at a time.

The advice given here for paladins apply to every melee character in the game: always expect them to retreat at one point or another and always have your valkyrie's hot key ready. A bowazon can attack with a full life orb so long as she has arrows; a melee fighter can attack so long as he has a full life orb, but while a bowie won't run out of arrows any time soon, a melee fighter is almost always in danger of getting his ass kicked faster than a skinhead at the Apollo. Despite being designated as "tanks," no player character can withstand a full-on assault as well as a full-bodied minion. Think of the melee fighter — even the barbarian — as a containment unit: they keep monsters "contained" within a certain area, softening them for the heavier assault units (if there are any).

Because paladins are defensive gods, they can hold out much, much longer than most. Don't believe me? Ask a defiant paladin what his DR is when he's got his Holy Shield sometime: not a lot of monsters can chew their way through a six digit defense rating.

In short, paladins fight best as part of a team. So long as they're aware of this and don't try to screw things up by playing the cowboy (because more than anyone else, paladins demand no room for error or foolish mistakes: if they die or are forced to separate from the team, they end up hurting everybody), you'll be okay. Otherwise, expect to keep your hands full just making sure they don't die.

The best auras a paladin can use for a bowazon are Concentration, Fanaticism, and either Cleansing or Meditation (so long as it has a high-level Prayer to back it up). While most paladins use Fanaticism, Concentration should not be forgotten: Fanaticism gives speed and AR bonuses, but has lousy range and gives only a fraction of its damage bonus to party members; Concentration, on the other hand, has excellent range and shares all of its bonus damage to all party members, but lacks bonuses to speed or AR. At slvl-30, Concentration has an effective range of 45 yards, giving a paladin and his party more than enough breathing room. And Meditation...well, let's just say you won't have to worry about mana around a good Meditation aura.

Sorceress

A complete offensive machine, sorceresses have little to offer a team besides heavy offense (sound familiar?) and it take a smart player to be a good team sorceress. Unfortunately, there are so few good team sorceresses out there, because most sorceress players are, to put it gently, stupid f*cking idiots: it's like giving a grade-schooler a minigun and watching them go to work: they act with preconceptions of what they think they can do rather on the awareness of what they know they can't do. A good team sorceress doesn't carelessly rush through the playing field and awaken monsters that she shouldn't, but stupid f*cking idiots do. If your sorceress partner awakens everything in a ten screen radius then teleports away because they're resistant or immune to her chosen skill trees, congratulations, you have found yourself a stupid f*cking idiot. Find yourself another partner: not only are they not smart enough to have a contingency plan (like a merc) or a properly planned-out skill setup, but such a lousy player will only lead monsters back to her party members, more likely than not getting them killed. And that person is a stupid f*cking idiot. If your sorceress partner doesn't even bother to tenderize non-lightning immune monsters with a couple of castings of Static Field to minimize graphics, leave immediately: not only will they be moving all over the place in an effort to get away from monsters, but such a lousy player will blow your frame rate to hell, possibly getting you killed, and their stupidity is so contagious, that if you hang around them for more time than it takes to comprehend that the player is a moron, then you will get stupider with every minute as their idiocy seeps from their monitor into yours and zaps you in the eyes like a nice juicy grapefruit. (Yes, I know "stupider" is not a real word, but this might give you a general idea of how many stupid f*cking idiots there are on battle.net.) Even with her heavy damage, sorcs should still advance slowly though a battle. A sorc is very helpful against physical immune monsters and the introduction of your valkyrie provides her with a much-needed tank, giving her the time she'll need to make her strongest skills — Thunder Storm, Fire Wall, Hydra, Nova — work. If your sorc partner specializes in Fire Wall, it would be wise of her to use this skill on top of your valkyrie when she's tanking a lot of monsters. Recommended skills around sorcs are Strafe, Multi, Decoy and Valkyrie.

Assassins

Another one of my favored classes. The assumption here (and it is not an altogether inaccurate one) is that your assassin friend will use martial arts and augment her crowd control abilities with liberal uses of traps and shadow disciplines. Assassins move and kill fast because they need to: assassins can tank just as well as the hardiest barbarian or paladin, but the methods are totally different: they're finesse fighters who attack at the fringes to build up charges, move in to release, then move back out to recharge (using traps and shadow disciplines at their option, though I would suggest setting traps before {Wake of Inferno, Lightning Sentry} and after {Death Sentry} the "advance-release" phase). Because they move around in a vulnerable state most of the time, they require more attention than most other melee fighters, including paladins (because paladins have superior blocking and defense) and druids (because druids have superior hit points and offensive options). If a barbarian is a proverbial mace or axe, then an assassin is a rapier: the latter are harder to use well, but potentially much more effective. (You can usually tell how experienced an assassin player is by their style: veterans don't handle melee like barbarians. It's foolish to expect an assassin to stand in the middle of a pack of monsters and live, so use FAs to cool down melee situations for a swarmed assassin and valkyrie and decoy as a roadblock for anything that tries to chase her down.)

If your assassin partner leans towards traps, consider using your valkyrie in conjunction with her minions as distractions for her traps, which will most likely by Wake of Inferno, Lightning Sentry and Death Sentry. If Death Sentry is her secondary trap, avoid using FA, as the corpse explosions from Death Sentry are much deadlier than its lightning.

Druids

The druid, like the amazon, has two exclusive skill trees (elemental and shapeshifting). The druid can't cast elemental spells while shifted, so there are only two viable skill tree combinations: elemental/summoning and shapeshifting/summoning. I haven't had the opportunity to party with many druids lately, but the most popular combination seems to be shapeshifting/summoning. The general rule for druids is to keep within 20 yards of them if you want to reap the benefits of their spirits.

Shapeshifters are more or less unchanged: they can tank and they can tank well, but have only two avenues of attack outside physical damage. Bears get fire in the form of Fire Claws, while wolves are blessed with poisonous Rabies and Fire Claws. Both are incredibly effective tanks with heavy damage and leeching abilities, courtesy of Hunger, but the styles of tanking are different. Werewolves combine the high life leech of Feral Rage in conjunction with the high damage, accuracy, and speed of Fury (you know, the way it's supposed to be done). Feral Rage needs to be charged up and has a duration of about 20 seconds before it runs out, unless it's been recharged within that time frame. That means that a werewolf is banking on high leech and damage to counteract the damage he'll invariably be taking. Make his life a bit easier and use FA on everything in his path. Some werewolves will invest a sizable amount of skill points in Rabies: this is a very nasty poison skill, but has little importance to the bowazon. Just keep on shooting until they're all dead.

Werebears are a bit slower in the killing speed, but tank with something different: shockwave. This ability allows a werebear to stun almost every monster in the game for up to 15 seconds or more. Stun is very much like freezing: when a monster is stunned, it can't do anything. The basic werebear pattern goes something along the lines of this: shockwave everything that can reach the bear, charge up maul, stun everything again, rip apart as much as possible within shockwave's stun duration, stun everything again. It's safe, it's a godsend to melee characters, but it's also slow. This is were a bowazon comes in very handy, as she can pile on damage on many targets as fast as the werebear can pile on a ton of damage upon a single target. At the higher levels, FA isn't necessary because the werebear can stun things for a longer time than a bowazon can freeze them, but at the lower levels when a bear's shockwave isn't so well-developed, use freezing attacks to compensate for the bear's lack of stunning ability.

Most shapeshifters don't bother to use vines, but if they do, use FA sparingly: they'll need corpses to speed up their recovery. Their spirits — the expected combinations are a werewolf with Oak Sage or a werebear with Heart of Wolverine — and minions help a bowie stay back and peg those problem monsters with elemental arrows.

For elemental druids are...well, it's still early in the patch, but they got a ton of synergies, so the jury's still out on them, but so far, they're looking very, very good. Not as raw as sorcs, but good. Different type of character, same rules apply. Use FA only to get elemental druids out of trouble: some depend on Carrion Vines and Solar Creepers to enhance their life and mana regeneration (and in some cases, are fully dependent on them) and while the spell timers on some of the elemental druid's better skills are long enough to regenerate a bit of mana, if they use Hurricane or Armageddon a lot, they might have to move around a lot, which means they'll get hit.

Unlike necromancers and their many defensive minions, druids get a few heavy-damage minions, but these can be easily overwhelmed while the druid's attention is somewhere else. If you can spare the Valkyrie, use her to support the druid's minions, leaving her to take the damage while the druid's wolves or bears deal it out.

Universal Multiplayer Tips

Use Slow Missiles often. Use Decoy wisely. Always use your Valkyrie. The bowazon's magic color is blue: always use Freezing Arrow around front-line fighters; even if it doesn't kill your targets, it gives your partner valuable breathing room.

Hot Waypoints or TPs

If you leave a Waypoint or Town Portal 'hot' (crowded with monsters), the first thing you should do is to warn your teammates of the danger. There is nothing worse that re-entering the fray, only to witness your own death.

Deaths

If a player dies, the team should rally to clear the corpse and provide a return town portal (TP) for their fallen comrade. With the x-pack, you recover 50% of your experience lost if you recover your corpse without logging out and back, so teamwork is important. It is very bad form to steal the gold or potions dropped by a teammate. In some circumstances, it may be best to log out and rejoin the game.

You should be especially careful that your character does not pick up and equip any other item before recovering the items on your corpse, because if you do so and die, that equipment is restored when you relic. (sic) This is a potential disaster: all of your original equipment will be left on the ground. In this case, all team members should make every effort to help with recovery.

"Plays Well with Others"