What exactly are these tips for? It sounds like they're "tips for leveling up fastest by minimizing town trips". Certainly not tips for how to have the most fun.

5. Get bored quickly and jump onto another game.

Whole process of playing should entertain you, not reaching the maximum level, best gear, etc. in shortest amount of time. The faster you get everything you need, the more bored you become. However some people prefer getting everything as fast as they can, so it's their choise...

What if you could get all best gear, max level in first 5 minutes? Would it be interesting enough to keep you playing it for a week? I doubt so, but such players usually have others games to play then - which is good for their gaming style.

Nothing I wrote makes the game easier or harder - it just makes you more efficient.  I meant merely to start a discussion about how people can improve their enjoyment of the game by maximizing the parts they enjoy.  For some that will be PvP, for some its power leveling,  and for some it is trudging through on hardcore mode, holding their breath.

That is interesting - and should make it easier to play through regardless of class - but it doesn't nullify my point.  There will always be unique items, rings, socketables, etc, that can be used by multiple classes.  Worst case you could trade your second best Barbarian sword with a friend who's got a spare wand of amazement.

This isn't a speed playing guide.  I'm not talking about skipping quests, not reading flavor text and sprinting through levels - I'm talking about things you do to maximize your gameplay experience.

Oh I've seen it, I just don't believe it.  I'm pretty sure the last time Blizzard was on time with a release, they were making console titles.

Tip #6: Don't worry about Tips 1-5 since the game won't be out for basically another year

I have never beat either Diablo or Diablo II/LoD, it is very difficult to pull off. I did get close once with a paladin, my favorite class, just could never beat the Lord of Terror himself, and I got to some of the last hell levels in the original.

In D2 probably easiest, most item independent was Necromancer summoner. Until hell difficulty, there were nothing difficult at all. You summon a bunch of skeletons, some mages, enemy monsters themselves (revive skill) and a golem (clay one probably was best) and get skeleton upgrades. Mostly they do physical damage (except skeleton mages, which aren't so powerfull), so to avoid physical immunes or highly ressistant in later difficulties, you could have cursed with decrepify (-50% physical resistance and some slow or amplify damage -100% physical resistance). Items even though could have made it a lot stronger, but were good enough even the ones, you found yourself. If by some luck you get exceptional unique trident for your hireling, then such boss like Baal, couldn't even move at all during the fight (he would be too slow to teleport and that wouldn't require mana for decrepify), although you can get enough mana potions and use it yourself.

Casters however (sorceress, paladin with hammer, necromancer with bones/poison), had probably easier time killing specific monsters and did that faster, however their survivability was not high enough.

Sorceress had teleport, without which she would have been useless even with high damage. However hell difficulty even with it is not easy. You can get one skill which is your main one (meteor, firewall, etc) and another which is great by itself (frozen orb). So you could pretty much kill everyone (if not - hireling + static field until 50% hp). And teleport made it easy to skip bunch of immunes, which were not required to kill.

Paladin had skill, which was so powerfull due to monsters not being immune to it (except very few). To be effective with your found items, you needed some skill to be fast just in case (charge), to have someone to tank without you (mercenary) and to master the pattern of hammers. Then slowly you could reach the end of hell. Bosses however are deadly to this one (Duriel, Andariel, Diablo).  Need to search high +resist items to survive against them, because especially against Duriel, you couldn't use surroundings for your advantage (he would often charge at you and kill) and kill pretty quickly.

Druid - a weaker summoner however also quite viable until hell. Even there he is pretty tough, however against physical immunes... He was weak (exceptional unique trident was a must and even with it you couldn't kill ghosts).

Of course it is possible to beat hell with any class, but it takes lots of time to - farm items youself for a while, die a lot against strong enemies, skip some too powerfull enemies.

However you remember hammer paladin (especially him), summoner necromancer weren't such builds, which everyone played from the start of the game, because people didn't realise the potency of them? So tip for Diablo 3. Take a deep look at skills, game mechanics and try to find the best way to become strong overall - not to level up skills, which might have problems later on.

I'd like to see such hammeradin, which could easily reach 10k damage with hammers with his own found equipment without any major farming. Have you actually played hammeradin?  20 skills points to every synergy + blessed hammer + concentration aura + (by some major luck) 10 + to all skills (from items) = ~7500 damage. Of course they could solo hell even with that damage.

Even though they were not good at start, they as you say they got buffed. Still not every player realised how good they became until some tried.

I also thought that you may be mistaken about items... Such items like Enigma are pretty much unaffordable legimately. Such items like Harlequin Crest are very rare and also takes lots of time to farm on single player. To get a bunch of + skills items to reach blessed hammer to 10k + have high resistances on hell... You'd need to farm so much... And I have in mind such players, who very likely won't have a single good unique item and still want to beat hell.

Skeletons good for lagging people out? If people don't have good connection, computers, it's not that Necromancer's problem. If server or game itself are not able to hold this, it's not player's fault (if you joined him). And we are not even talking about teaming up in multiplayer for (probably easier) gameplay. So playing alone at the beginning doesn't lag out anyone even if it really could lag other people.

As for his "weak" against AoE bosses. Also, have you played summoner necromancer? I personally did on single player, no items from other characters, etc (Was first character). Have you forgotten "Summon ressist" skill? It gives ~50% ressist to everyone - not so much, but good anyway, Life tap also could help against some specific enemies. And yeah, two bosses are really powerfull against this build (out of all of them). Andariel who has highly damaging poison nova, which can kill skeletons pretty quickly and Diablo with his fire. So yeah, some difficulties. Need to go somewhere else and respawn your army, and continue boss fight again. But you did the damage to boss. He won't regenerate so quickly (unless you take forever) and in few such tries you will finish him. You can even prepare bodies in Andariel's room (with Diablo that doesn't work). Decrepify was such a good debuff there that even those Bosses used their powerfull AoE quite rarely compared to without this debuff. And you pretty much always had enough corpses to create them (clearly never played necromancer), unless you get someone with ice skills/attacks in your group. Oh and I forgot on previous post. Hireling which gave damage bonus was amazing with this minion bunch + corpse explosion skill to quicken things up. Actually corpse explosion (pretty overpowered skill) was main skill. Minions killed 1-2 enemies and you with curses -physical resist, could have easily wiped out hundreds of enemies afterwards.

So my point is, if you are not able or didn't play summoner smartly, don't spread wrong information that it is not able to beat hell. I've played probably all builds possible (except absolutely worthless ones) and this one (in my opinion) is the best build to beat hell on first try without any items. You are nearly completely item independant. They make you stronger drastically if you get good ones, but still without them you are powerfull. Yeah you won't do that faster than sorceress, who has problems with immunes (you can avoid most), and especially against those... Baal's last minions. You can get them out of the room to "deceive" Baal that you killed them, but still you have troubles with surviving against groups of enemies in many other places. What if let's say, 24 level sorceress can kill Mephisto in hell in an hour or so easier than necromancer at level 50? There were many ways to trick enemies, to get yourself in better situation, but that doesn't mean that you are better under all or most circumstances. So toughest enemy for necromancer with skeletons hands down is Diablo. All others are pretty easy or not so difficult, whereas other classes (hammeradins, sorceresses included) had a lot more troubles in a lot more situations + more item dependant.

If you still think that I am wrong about summoner being so easy to solo hell, ask hardoce diablo II fans. I'm pretty sure they know.

It's been several years, so maybe I've got the numbers wrong.  I seem to recall reaching 10k just with the scraps I found along the way.  At any rate, the point is that you can still solo hell easily with this guy, and we're in agreement on that!

I am fully aware.  My brother was a big-time MF'er and 99% of his high runes came from hellforge payments for rushes.  I preferred to make new characters and play through the beginning; never once found a high rune outside of hellforge, ever.  Hellforge high runes only go so high, so you'll never complete an enigma like that.  It was effectively unattainable without duping. 

I never said that this combo was legitimately doable.  I just said it was broken, and in more ways than one I might add.

My brother was an insane MF'er; he had so many unique unid shakos that he would literally give them away to anyone who asked nicely enough.  I once saw him throwing them (and other insanely good stuff) on to the ground to make inventory room for even more valuable stuff he'd just found.  To guys like us, yeah it was rare and we'd hardly ever find one, but to those with the right MF gear it was pretty pedestrian.

**shrug**

I defer to your expertise on the matter, then; I can't claim to be an expert on any particular build even though I've tried most of them.  I never saw a decent pre-synergy summoner necro in hell mode, and never took one that far my self until synergies came around. 

Now, I totally agree summoner necro works just fine all the way through post-synergy.  I've done it myself, though I quit before actually reaching the end.

If you still have your CD-key, Blizzard will let you do a direct download.

First organize all your tips and tricks, meditate on them.

Then load up your copy of Diablo 2.

Fetch Brother Laz's Median XL Super Mod and install.

Discover that all your tips and tricks are worthless and that you have died and gone to hell!

Ask Satan* what you should do!

He will tell you that anticipation of any game is much more fun than the game itself will be; that getting there is not really all that much fun compared to thinking about getting there. So, then you learn to mod.

*aka Brother Laz!