The Best Budget Build in D2R 2.6

When it comes to budget builds in D2R, there simply aren't many viable options. Effective builds require expensive gear as a rule of thumb. However there are still a few optional budget builds that are on par with their expensive rivals.

In order to be considered efficient, a build should deliver high amounts of single target and area damage while having decent enough survivability not to get in trouble too frequently. Melee and Bow builds rely heavily on the weapon’s damage, thus they are only effective with expensive weapons. Because of this, the only builds that come into play are casters.

Casters can generally be classified in two categories: Those that deal exponentially higher damage with higher skill level, and those that deal closer to linearly higher damage. As + skills equipment is also expensive, we will need to go with the second category to find our best budget build.

The few builds that more-or-less meet the above mentioned criteria are the Plague Javelin Amazon, Lightning and Death Sentry Assassin, the Summoner/Corpse Explosion Necromancer, the Fire Wall Sorc, Frozen Orb Sorc and the Blizzard Sorc.

From a damage standpoint, the sorceresses have a clear advantage, but their survivability is worse than any of the other builds. The decisive factor of which build is the best comes down to the teleport skill. Sorcs can easily access this skill, and they also have the fastest teleport casting frame rate. Other builds require an enigma, or a teleport charged item in order to be able to move via teleport. Sorcs have a huge advantage in this factor.

Despite being vulnerable, Sorceresses can stay out of trouble by keeping distance from monsters and teleporting away once they get near. This requires constant awareness and some skill, but that's the cost of all the pros that come with sorcs. A little known survivability booster trick is to put on a Treachery runeword armor and have fade cast on hit. We can then switch to any other armor, and enjoy the benefits of having a level15 fade casted on us for 5 minutes, boosting the sorc's survivability greatly.

Now that we came down to three builds, it's time to decide which one is the best. Firewall Sorcs have the downside of not being able to control the damage and range of their attacks, monsters can easily move out of the damage range of a fire wall, which is highly problematic against targets that move around quickly. Frozen Orb, while being a skill that can be used in versatile situations, does not deal a huge amount of damage in budget equipment. Finally, we are left with the Blizzard Sorceress build, with the only downside of having a long casting delay. In patch 2.4, Blizzard's 4 second casting delay was reduced to 1.8 second, while Frozen orb's 1.2 second delay was reduced to 1 second, making Blizzard a much more competitive skill. Due to this, the Blizzard Sorceress is clearly the best budget build in the game.

To learn more about end-game progression of this build, check out our Blizzard Sorc guide.

If you decide not to farm for hundreds of hours, you can quickly buy runes from our D2R Store.