User:Davthompson/sandbox

Diablo 2 is the second installment of a three part trilogy of games designed and created by Blizzard North under the Blizzard Entertainment banner. It is a fantasy online RPG, (role playing game,) that features a group of characters in which the user picks their hero and adventures through a fictional world in an attempt to rid it of Diablo, and his minions. It was created in the year 2000, and was followed up with an expansion set to the game in 2001, Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction.

Gameplay

The game provides a four act experience in which the user navigates their way through an elaborate story line, that includes quests of bravery and sacrifice for the people across the fictional world, culminating with the final battle against "the prime evil," Diablo. The game provides some quasi-religious aspects for the gamer with a keen eye, as at points the hero is aided by Archangels such as Tyrael in his fight for humanity against Diablo, which is another word for 'the devil.' Diablo 2 can be played solo, but was designed for online gameplay in groups of up to eight players at a time. Blizzard Entertainment hosted the online experience on their Battle.net servers across the world and created an online community through a multitude of channels within servers such as US-East, or US-West for example though servers exist across the European side of the world as well.

Characters

Diablo 2 offers five playable hero classes for the gamer to choose from, each with their own unique play style, and individual moves which create different roles amongst the eight person party in game. Characters are built in complimentary fashion to work well with each other, but can be grouped in different ways across classes to accentuate specific strengths for different scenarios in-game.

Barbarian

The barbarian is a hand-to-hand fighter, and the defensive specialist of the group, designed to be able to take large quantities of damage without dying. This makes them almost necessary to any group as it allows the other classes to execute their roles as well undisturbed while the barbarian takes the attention and the attacks of all enemies. He is also a great support player in any group as his abilities allow him to boost statistics of himself and his party members with different warcries, with different shouts for specific stats.

Paladin

Much like the barbarian, the paladin is a melee fighter with great upside as a support player to the rest of the party. His abilities and skills in auras allow him to raise stats of his party members. Where the comparison stops is in defensive abilities as he cannot withstand the damage that the barbarian can, but has specific combat skills that can allow him to attack with aides from the heavens as he comes from a religious order. He is the only melee class that can use a shield in the game, and is modeled after medieval knights, but with heavenly powers to maintain the fantasy aspect of the game.

Sorceress

The sorceress is an offensive ranged type of hero who has the ability to manipulate the elements, specifically ice, fire, and lightning, to damage groups of enemies. Her strength comes in her ability to attack many enemies at the same time, and her casting speed. These two combined make her very deadly, and possibly the best damage-dealer of all five classes. Due to her relatively low defenses, coupled with low health, she cannot withstand much damage at all, but is granted the ability to teleport around in short distances, making it very hard to hit her at all.

Amazon

The amazon is probably the best damage-dealer of the group when attempting to damage a single target. The amazon is a class based around archery, as one would expect, but also has the ability to use spears as well. She is another fast class that is hard to target and damage, but can wear little armor in comparison to classes such as the barbarian, and therefore also dies fairly quickly when trapped. She has the ability to imbue her weapons with magic as well so that strength isn't her only useful statistic in game.

Necromancer

The necromancer leaves his fighting to an army he raises from corpses of his enemies. After killing an enemy he can raise it's skeleton to fight by his side or create golems to protect himself from future enemies. This character is designed around the undead nature of the skeleton and zombies, and the mechanics work as a sort of micro-manage style in a game when all other classes only control themselves. Due to this he has high offense and high survivability, since he can create large armies to fight and protect himself.

Bosses

Each of the four acts is culminated with an 'act boss,' featuring two of the prime evils, and two of the lesser primes. Mephisto and Diablo are the ends of the third and fourth act respectively and are two thirds of the three prime evils, with the third being featured in the expansion pack mentioned earlier. Both are generally 'tank and spank' fights, meaning there isn't an over-arching strategy to them, other than 'do as much damage as you can, as fast as possible.' That being said, both have unique abilities that parties should be cognizant of since they have the ability to wipe out an entire party that isn't paying attention. Bosses of acts one and two feature two of the lesser primes in Andariel, and Duriel who basically serve as a gear check, making sure that players are properly prepared for the next act before moving on, neither boss being particularly hard.

References

http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=27835073330 http://diablo.gamepedia.com/Lore_Summary http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/translate/spanish-english/diablo