Farming characters setup

Hello community,

So I started playing on the server this summer and after reading guides and whatnot I ended up having 4 characters for farming.
1. Blizzballer - farming meph, trav for starting gear and rushing the other characters
2. CE summoner - farming cows for runes, bases, gems, etc.
3. Hammerdin - replaces the sorc for faster MF runs
4. Smiter - farming Uber

I saw people suggesting ama, asa and barb for starting characters after ladder reset. What are they used for and how are they better than the setup I mentioned above? When I played 15 years ago ama and asa was mainly used for cow runs, I don't know if they are used for anything else. Barb has Find Item which is neat but is it worth the expensive gear just for that? Or is it used only for find item/bo and actually kill the monsters with other character and not gear up the barb?
As you can see I'm a casual player, it would be nice if some veterans could clear things up for me on this. What's your character setup?

 

I think that you're on a good track, stick to it.
FI barb is mainly used for farming Travi for gold / jewellery / gems / items / occasional HR's; in any other area, it is very slow compared to other builds and simply not worth it, imo.
For cows, yes, ama and assa are good build choices, but can be way more expensive than the CE summoner.
After you have made a stash full of bers and higher, you can look into other builds - my advice.

--- Double Post Merged, Oct 11, 2021, Original Post Date: Oct 11, 2021 ---

Later Edit:
On another note, a FI barb may be a really-really interesting build choice (probably not very fun playing, though), in a tag team. Meaning that you find another gaming buddy with a similar playing schedule, he does the killing, you do the BO and horking and collecting, and you split the loot from both. The only condition is that the main killing char should leave enough corpses for you to hork (so no redemption, CE and blizz are still ok-ish, lightning javazon / sorceress / trapsin are the most OK).

 

Ye, that's what I mentioned in my post. Are people doing this? Or they just multibox with their own barb?

 

Most likely the latter.
D2 was intended and designed for cooperative multiplayer setups. Synergies, experience gain / incentives, enhanced drops, kill speed, being able to achieve more in the same time frame - these are some of the cooperative multiplayer bonuses (there are definitely more).
Unfortunately, this has been mostly lost to mindless countless runs, for drops mostly.
To me - and I'm sure that to many more - the most fun times are server restarts (I caught 2 of these), where one can experience some semblance of cooperative multiplay. Other than those, full public Baal / Diablo runs are the closest thing. Playing together is rather the exception, than the norm, elasse.

 

Ye, it's kind of sad. I was watching a streamer when D2:Resurrected launched and he was playing with his buddies, planning builds to set a record for speedrunning. Also farming CS on classic. Seemed rather fun. It's a lot less boring than farming on your own, it becomes like a thing you do in the background. The "mindless countless runs" are killing me, I can't do it for more than an hour. But also the game has a major drawback when it comes to multiplayer - loot distribution. I guess that's why naturally it became a solo game. I remember watching some Diablo 1 videos and that game seemed insanely hard and you don't have those OP items that we have in D2. Probably multiplayer was more popular back then.

 

Top3 (not sure of the order of them though):
End-level boss killers: light sorc, hdin, furyzon
Efficient grinders in cheap gear: trapper, furyzon, orber.
Helpers: smiter, chanter, BO

The thing about blizzard its delay. You miss the mob, soso does not do anything for 2 seconds. Blizzarder is likely for baal runs in a group. Orb damages less but has 1 sec delay only, and in average, that extra damage is not required. For example I rushed 2 players (player 3) on hell with a miss-geared orber (kyra helm, storm shield, occu, no skillers and things like that). It surprised me, was not even slow at all.

Summoner ain't no good for anything unless skeleton damage is extreme-boosted over skill lvl 45 and as much as I noticed that is not the case on this realm. Without that, summoner makes lag, nothing else. If the summoner gets attacked, its HP is damn low, the summoner dies. CE does not balance these out. Assassin is more durable, and death traps are better than simple CE. Elem druid is another misfit. That hurricane makes lag like an amazon fury but does not do damage.

Barb is still a champion in gold finding and killing hell travical. It does that in like half a minute (runs into the temple, uses stun cry until everything does / merc kills them), and collects like 3-400K gold in a run + tons of unique / rare rings, jewels, gems. Even faster grinder than a furyzon on hell cow runs. The side note is: that game style ain't no fun. Barb also BO helper champion (around lvl 60 BO). That is the only fun with a barb in 1.13, stack up cry skillers and do a skill lvl 68 BO just to show off

 

I use my barb,,,, alternate weapon full of ist in double phase blade using find item maximum skill, enigma armor, n many magic find small charm
Like it,, hahahahha