Diablo 2 Classes

Amazon

The Amazon is an active skill oriented fighter who hails from a group of islands in the Twin Seas, near the border of the Great Ocean. Her skills are oriented around personal protective abilities, the use of a bow and arrow, as well as the spear and javelin.

The Amazon is most similar to the Rogue of Diablo: both are primarily associated with bows, and both make equal use of strength and magic. The Amazon is different in that she can also use javelins and spears adeptly. The class is loosely based on the Amazons of mythology.

Barbarian

The Barbarian is a powerful melee-oriented character in Diablo 2, and the only character capable of dual-wielding. The Barbarians originated from the northern steppes near Mount Arreat. His skills are divided into various weapon masteries, war cries, and combat skills. The masteries are purely passive and allow the Barbarian to specialize in different types of weapons and to gain natural speed and resistances. His war cries can enhance his and his party's abilities in combat, reduce the enemy's abilities, frighten the enemy into fleeing and even cause considerable damage to them. The Barbarian's combat skills are attacks that maximize brute force, his greatest asset.

The Barbarians, in Diablo 2, originated from the Northern Highlands, which is where Act 5 of the expansion takes place, and can also be hired as mercenaries in that Act.

The Barbarian was originally conceptualized for Hellfire, the original Diablo "expansion" made by Sierra. The character was not implemented in the final version but was included as a hidden class in the 1.01 patch for Hellfire. The character had the same appearance and speech as the Warrior but had altered statistics and a different ability.

In both nightmare and hell modes, the natural resistance for all characters drop. The Barbarian is the only class that can passively increase his resistance through a skill.

Sorceress

The Sorceress focuses on ranged elemental spells in three areas: ice, lightning and fire. Her ice spells can chill or even completely freeze affected enemies, but do less damage than lightning or fire. Lightning spells can do both very high and very low damage, whereas fire spells deal more consistent damage.

The spell "Teleport" essentially defines the Sorceress, allowing much faster mobility than any other character. The strong point of the Sorceress is powerful damaging spells and casting speed; her weakness is her relatively low hit points and defense, demanding that the player pay close attention to keep her out of the fray.

Sorceresses are, according to the storyline, a rebellious coven of female witches who have wrested the secrets of magic use from the male-dominated mage clans of the East.

Necromancer

The Necromancer is a versatile spell caster with control over the powers of death. His skills are split into summoning, curses, and poison and bone spells. Summoning skills allow him to form many skeletal minions from corpses, to temporarily revive deceased monsters to fight along side them, and to create various golems with unique properties. Poison and bone skills include the Necromancer's direct-damage spells as well as some defensive abilities, while his bone attacks generally cause less raw damage than the Sorceress's spells, they are resisted by very few enemies which allows them to be good against a wide variety of monsters. Curse skills serve a supportive role by inflicting a status ailment upon enemies in their area of effect, allowing for very powerful strategies when used with skills from other trees. All classes can take advantage of curse effects in multi-player.

A signature Necromancer ability is Corpse Explosion, which violently creates a burst of gore and flame by destroying the body of a fallen enemy.

According to the story line, Necromancers are the priests of the cult of Rathma from the far Eastern jungles.

Paladin

The Paladin is a member of religious warriors fighting for the glory of light and all that is good. They hail from the Church of Zakarum in the east. To reflect this, the zealous Paladin's combat skills range from fanatical attacks to heavenly thunderbolts. His skills are split into combat skills, defensive auras, and offensive auras, the latter two of which can enhance personal abilities, lower the amount of damage dealt by enemies or recover health. These auras are helpful in a multi-player game as many of them can be used to upgrade all of the party's stats. Most auras require no mana and this makes a Paladin a very economic character as the paladin needs to spend little to nothing on mana recovery.

The knights of Zakarum are highly proficient in the use of a shield, both as a weapon and with greatly enhanced defensive capabilities. The Paladin is the best with defensive skills and is also the best if the player wishes to passively weaken enemies. Some of the Paladin's skills are extremely efficient at eliminating the undead.