Just finished with double pistol Outlander.
- Long Range Mastery: you'll need 10 because of monsters skill range (like that sandstorm-hurricane aura etc). More is nice, but not mandatory.
- Akimbo: this is basic bread&butter for this build, aim to max it out. For the playthrough, where I did not farm anything, I ended up at clvl 55, so did not max out my skills
- Share the Wealth: 1 point is enough
- Poison Burst: 1 point is enough
- Dodge Mastery: I've put in 4 points for a nice 10% boost. I don't like too much dodge, as with that can't judge how many HP I need to never be 1HKO
- Shadowling Ammo: 1 point is enough. You probably won't even notice much of it during the endgame, but it definitely helps until that. So plan accroding to wether you want to go Game+ or not.
- Brable Wall: I had a long period where simpply no skill was interresting to spend on, and 1 point here helped me through the incrising mobs. Definitely not recommend if you can play without.
- Stone Pact: this practicaly will make you immortal for its period, it's that godly. Eventualy certain enemies (Netherlord, machine cannons) can outdamage its regeneration and stuff, so definitely invest into this.
- Shadowling Brute: you don't want to risk 2-3 machine cannon at once? Would be nice to dispose champions and bosses faster? This is your skill. If you invest into this (I recommend), you also should pump
- Death Ritual: this makes your shadowlings, especialy the Brute linger around a lot longer. I think it is around for 10 seconds, the cooldown is 30 seconds, so 20 seconds here is more than enough.
- Venomous Hail: you still have problems, especialy with bosses that just love to summon hordes and hordes of monsters? This skill will enermously speed up the process (though on the sidenote, it is pretty useless if the bss can teleport, like two of the Three Sisters). And if you are into this, you finaly can consider dumping your remaning points into
- Master of the elements. The bonus is not substantial enough without very specific coditions, namely using Venomous Hail, or your build using wands or something like that, but if you do, and have points around, this is not a bad pick.

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You have a build for a basic playthrough? Remember: it must be available for hardcore. Add it.

The easiest build for hardcore has to be the blinding shotgunner. Get Shotgun Mastery, then fix the slow rate of fire with Rapid Fire. Even partial blindness stacks and refreshes the duration, so you can quickly disable any enemies. Get Venomous Hail later of course for even longer range and shooting around corners. Cursed Daggers, Repulsion Hex, and Shadowmantle if you want to be hyper cautious.

It works so well it feels like cheating.

Embermage is possible, but risky. It has no healing to fall back on besides potions, also no summons to relieve tension, plus it will use its rightclick offensively, what makes it entirely rely on pure offense.

Prismatic Bolt is the only convenient spell to have, and it can "only" be buffed with the three brand skills, so dump all your skillpoints into those as soon as you get them, prioritising the base skill first.
Also, you need mana and sheer power, so while critical damage would be nice, dump everything insteaad into Focus, and when that's maxed out, start bumping Dexterity.

There is Death's Bount, but I found it very invonenient, and even stuff like Ice Storm is bothersome to use. So just bump Prismatic Bolt and the three Brands.

On the pet-side, never give it Mimic transformation, as you need the pet to be as much a meatshield as possible, and Mmic is simply too slow to be of any use.

Some other passives might also worth 1 point, but that's it for the Embermage. Magmar Spear and the ice variant are highly inferior to the Prismatic Bolt build for hardcore.

Prismatic Bolt is the best starter skill for sure. Best thing is it only needs one point in it because it improves very little with further points. You can concentrate on the brands first, then graduate to other skills later and the brands will still be useful.

Blazing Pillar, Infernal Collapse, Hailstorm, and Thunder Locus are among the best spells. Frost Wave and Ice Prison become extremely good after some investment. Shocking Orb takes a long time to get good but eventually is very strong.

One other interesting variant is to use Magma Mace because it's one of the few skills that allows health and mana stealing. If you have an item set with percentage-based lifesteal, you can fully heal yourself easily. Adding Wand Chaos to that can be fun too.

Berserker sucks, and that's it.

The problem is, with ranged weaponry, it deals like no damage.
Its skills are also crap, especialy the ice passive, which only would give damage with a melee weapon, but there is no skill to give melee ice damage.
There is one that gives good electric damage, on the ice tree, and it's a nice way of crowd-control, but it has its limits.

See, the problem is not that it is a melee class. Sure, big slow weapons are not the way to go, but either any onehanded weapon, or a claw will do.
I feel dualwielding is a "bit" risky for hardcore, should be left for the Outlander.
So grab a weapon and a shield. That should work. The main advantage of a normal weapon is the mini-AoE damage, but the claws work well on bosses, and with the chain-lightning skill (activate and forget for 30 seocnds) makes them work. The best thing is, they are super-fast, so triggering critical damage is the easiest with them, at least that's the theory.

Because of equipment-requirements, you probably will invest a minor amount into STR roo.

The problem is Act 2, where the big freezing minotaurs come in. They appear in small hoards, have high HP, and slow you down. If there are goblin ice-acrhers too that can freeze you to place, that's even worse.

Sure, a pro could make anything work, but the only way you or me could make this one work is by serious overleveling.

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Let's try hard for Veteran Enchantress.

- the Corrupted Crypt is the sole dungeon in the game that let's you run from the boss' arena, so you potentialy can tp to town. You can have only 1 TP at a time, but they remain open until you open another one from scroll.
- staves are MELEE weapons, while wands are ranged. And you usualy don't fund staves with (substantialy) higher damage. So forget staves. For wands: they are ok for a while, but you don't get extra range from skills, so you'll have to rely more and more to mana.
- in Veteran and Elite difficulty your pet will constantly run out of HP. This won't make it "die" or put to a respawn-timer: they constantly keep regeneration HP, but obviously won't serve much of a meatshield at that point!
- you WILL need to use HP and MP potions regularly. Get used to it. Though MP potions won't be mandatory for a while. Also, at a point you'll stop finding smaller potions, so just switch in larger options on your quickbar. Don't hurry though, you will likely get away with lesser potions bought in town before you have o upgrade - at least on Veteran.
- do NOT enter any dungeon until you cleared out the current overworld area. Because of difficulty.
- for a Prismatic Bolt build you want 6 in Prismatic Bolt and 1 in Elemental Attunement. This gives 5 sec duration to your effects, and you do have points for this. Also ,you need the chance (this way 15%, bnice round number) to cause the effects the gfirst place.
- Frozen Fate is a handy skill to have for 1 point.
- fishes: you do NOT want mimic, so sell those fishes. Warsnout tand jacckal beast are roughlys the same, and fight better than your basic pet. Spider does some sticky-web effect if you go for that. Crabs are good at fighting. Molebeasts seem to hit harder but slower - I'd skip them after Act 1. There are some fishes that do not transform your pet, instead give straight stat-boosts.
- as we are using wands, Wand Chaos seem to be acceptable for 1 or 2 points. The effects are strong, and 10% is 10%.
- Prismatic Rift though might seem convenient, also seems largly unnecessary.
- augmented weapons usualy do not worth the fuss. Their price minimaly incrise when that meagre weak-medicore-forgetable extra attribute is unlocked, so if it's not a weaopon type you use, don't even bother
- at the spider-infested parts of Act 1 shoot first and ask questions later! Hunt for the cocooned people, because if you do not destroy them small spiders will burst, and they hit hard!
- the minotaur mages (casting coldados and some electric sigil spell) are quite dangerous, and elemental protection buffing is not very achievable at this point.
- when you enter The Widow's Veil (spider area dungeon) IMMEDIATELY START SHOOTING! There's a good chance mini-spiders are hording around, and more, so better get rid of them without even seeing them! Darn, I hate spiders.
- handle every chest as trapped. It can be a trap, or a mimic, or spawn a Cursed Sword, so click on it then run away. You might try to cast Prismatic on it, and if the bolts are lingering around, it's a mimic.
- if you can, play dirty. Meaning if there is a ledge, shoot everything from above with ranged attack while the monsters pile up. Certain abilities like charging also get stuck in ramps.
- do NOT, ever get close to a bat. If you see a single bat - shoot it. It is NEVER alone, will spawn am ultitude of bats, and will trample you before you know what hit you if you want into wand range!
- the Runemaster Set's helmet gives you +2 wand range. I suggest stick to it. If you can, socket it to max sockets, and fill it with +HP socketables.

CLOVENHOOF just oneshot me from 1,400 HP, lvl 19. I think I give up with the mage on Veteran+.

- you'll need some serious crowd-control to the end of Act 1 (and those jumping bulbous things hit hard if they have time to jump)
- in Act 2 leave every machine-dungeon LAST! They are HARRRD.
- always take Netherworlds firsté They are the easiest dungeons of all.
- the wyvern-colonies annoy me, as you have to wait for them to fly up, attack... Myrmidon-roaches ditto.
- enemy spellcasters summoning tornadoes (and whatever that earth-ripple is) can become dangerous fast. Rely more and more on your spell's "infinite" range instead of trying to attack constantly, thus involving your wand.
- the genie's 2nd task is HARD! It is one with the moving spotlight you must stay within. Bring potions!
- the 2nd level of the Vault of Chaos always instantly respawn if you leave the level. Yes, even if you did not leave the dungeon! In case you just want to clean it. The exp isn't bad either if you need some grinding.
- playing on Normal, 2,500 HP seems enough. Not infinite, but passable.
- if you ask me, finish Act 2 in this order: Vault of Chaos, Genie's final task, Faceless King, Breaking the Siege. VoC is a machine-dungeon, but at this point probably the floor-traps are the biggest danger to you. The genies is big, but fights alone. The FKing is a spawner, and that can always be overwhelming (this it didn't spawn like anything, with the Casual Outlander it spawned all the time). Finaly Breaking the Siege is just though, but enough level and gear will push you through, especialy with potions.
- in Act 3 you finaly can buy spells from the female vendor.

Embermage, Normal diff progress, not aiming to NG+++++
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So, finished Act 1 with 1 less level than recommended. But like for the whole of Act 3 I'm over the recommended maximum levels even (started like clvl 39).
The thing is, eventualy you'll accumlate skillpoints, because the game won't let you just pump up the best skills you want, so I distributed, because hardcore is hardcore:

- Prismatic Bolt went up to 10, because of the extra chance to cause condition, and the dmg-boost. I don't think I'll gain enough level to pump it to max level, so it's there.
- Wand of Chaos is at lvl 2, but is considerable to pump further, for more reliable effects. For the same reason, I pumped DEX to 10% critical, and vitality for 5% block. I'm maxing out Focus for now, but pumping Vitality for more block sounds ok too.
- all thee brands are spent as much as possible, as those give the most out of the skillpoints.
- put 1 point early into Frozen Fate for early crowd-control. It worth that much.
- also 1 point into Elemental Boon. It helps, but the duration remains the same, half as the cooldown, and that doesn't make me happy.
- Immolation Aura is another defensive help. It's absolutely great, so do NOT pick up Prismatic Rift! Anything comes close to you will regret it, as the dmg is not negligable, but the best part is the stage-bonuses: 5% all dmg rediuction at ever stage! Again,k 100% sure you can't max out without NG+ or serious overleveling, so will stop at 10, but this was a nice surprise.
- still have 1 point in elemental attunement, where I don't see the skill scaling with character level. This is either a bug, or someone forgot to remove the text. It is considerable to flush extra points into this for the extra effect chance.
- Charge Mastery got pumped to 5, and you can feel the boon, the charge practicaly holds out like forever if you aren't backtracking. I recommend this level, as it spares you much frustration on the mana-department fighting bosses/bg crowds.

Talking about potions, in Act 3 do shoprun (enter/exit town) until a Heal Self scroll is offered! You'll spare a lot on potions (or trips to town) with this one!

On pet: I found a fish to permanently transform iit to a crab (btw, I'd avoid Torso, those will have the same problem as mimic but with worse stats, Swampflyers also sounds a bad idea, I don't have good experiences with flying pets), it has great durability (especialy with equipment, and elemental protection spell).

From the spell-crolls Fireball sucks, but Frost doesn't. From the summon-spells my favs are the zombies, as they can move around, and provide 3 targets for the enemy to waste effort on (especialy good when self-destroct minimonsters (dropnes, spores etc.) are swraming around.
Animal Handling on the pet makes life comfortable, as it reduces travel-time to town substantialy.
Also: put Willpower on yourself. It is "always enabled", meanng it gives you passive resistance against slowing, and even immobilizing effects! What's not to like.

Oh, beware the lightning-archers (ghost-bowmen) in act 3, they hurt, running into a mob would be unfortunate. Oh, yeah, Act 3 constantly tries to ambush you, so play paranoid: if there can be an enemy, shoot first, ask questions later.
Prismatic Mage is also proven far superior to eg. Magma Spear mage, as you don't have to aim, what is a pure boon in ambush situations, and obstacles everywhere. Also, the PBolts self-find you and mines in the vicinity, what is just broken.

For Act 3, the Cacklewitch quest leave the F alone. It is HARD. IF you do it - and this IS an if -, leave it after everything else, including the 2nd dragon. Getting 2 of the parts is just shooting down 2 champions, and that's nothing, but the 3rd is against a spawner, in which arena you aren't even allowed to move (there goes any melee build). And for the witch itself, you have to finish off champion monsters in a row, and fast, because as long as there's any champion around (and she'll summon plenty regular troop too), she's invincible. Plus she is though. Don't forget Elemental Boom, starting with Thiss,the 2nd dragon, it'll help.

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I'm finishing Normal at clvl 55.

Wand Chaos does NOT worth it, as you practicaly no longer use your wand, only your spell. That 2 point did worth it though.

It's not good that you don't have a "now I can't die" spell as the Outlander, so pack that self-healing along potions, just to be sure. You might need it.
At times your HP just seems to be started draining for no appearent reason?
Also, in Act 4 somehow your mana / charge-rate is way worse than before, so investing into that department seems reasonable.

Act 4 is not easy, especialy because of the battle droids, which HURT. I have almost 4,400 HP, and glad for it. Try to use all tricks from the book: use the elevation, use shooting around corners, you can at times even out-range the enemy, and shoot them (almost) off-screen. If you are in a particularly though situation, you even might ant to release Prims from off screen, then run a few steps forward to put the enemies on screen, and use that fraction of second advantage (when there's 2-3 battle droids, especialy with a horde to cover them, this is useful adivce).

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Checked, and with both char, got Eminent Fame, so you can put these data into some skill Calculator if you want.

Next will be Veteran difficulty. I'll run a cannon engineer, summoning secondary. Looks fun. The Force Field is very very good, you can have a shield up if it isn't taken down in 8 seconds, what is great, mana is not an issue for it, you naturaly recharge enough.
You definitely need a cannon from some quest as reward, as some 20 dmg is justn othing, 50 is nice.

IMPORTANT: all summons and buffs fall off when you switch area, like entering a dungeon, so watch out for that.

The higher level cannon skill is not THAT worse on its basic tier as the early one, and on end-tier it gets super funky, but that's the problem: reaching that level. Likely will have to invest in the early skill for that. We'll see. And as the later skill is autoim, we definitely picking it up for shooting around corners at the later levels.

Otherwise, the pure-summoner build has the problem that the first damaging droids come at, what, lvl 14?, and that's waaay too late to just reach there without some imported weapon, or some skillpoints spent. I guess. We'll see, as I planned a pure summoner for elite with a skill-calculator I mean.

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I should investigate what stats higher end cannons need... Anyway, the pure summoner build is NOT a solo hardcore build. To get to clvl 14, the first level of the suicide-drones, you'll have to clear the entire first area: overworld, dungeon, phase portal. And we have plenty of spawners in our midst, so you definitely will need that lvl 7 cannon skill if you want to get through that, especialy on Elite. On Veteran I was able to pass them, with investment innto STR, Heavy Lifting, but it's obvious that skill would be needed if the enemies are even bigger.
And as the cannon is kinda the Outlander's shotgun, the lvl 7 skill is the fire-attack of the mage, and the lvl 36 skill is the mage's prismatic thingy, I'm kinda curious if a cold-mage berserker could work, at least on casual. Too bad the ice-powering passive only enhances melee attack (for what it has no ice skills).

UPDATES:
- cannoner has the problem it can't shoot down (or up) through ledges. Something to keep in mind.
- the Gunbot is a astrong addition, even if the colldown is massive. You'll likely unavoidably need it against the Act1 endboss.

It is, indeed. My advice is to use Blast Cannon, Healing Bot and Aegis of Fate with the biggest, baddest cannon you can lay your hands on. When you're down in a Netherrelm, and the monsters are charging across a narrow bridge at you, one shot from Blast Cannon is all you'll need, and when you've got a hoard of minions between you and a Boss, it will clear them away in short order and be hitting the Boss while it's at it. Aside from that, stick to passive skills that you don't need to think about because you won't have time for swapping in different skills other than tabbing between two.

Thx.
With Embermage I kinda got back using the fast-keys, so I put healbot on tab, and the attack-skill for constant use, and will use the other skills from there. Not that I plan anything but bots, bots and more bots as extra. I also hope on Veteran I can pull it through to use Fusillade as active skill only. We'll see.

Well, the Veteran Engineer perished. Didn't even have a chance, champion mob when entered dungeon. Basilisc on top of it, so even if I had time to react (I did hit all button), I was paralyzed. Bah, humbug!

On Elite it takes forever to kill anything, especialy those darn armored warbests. Still, even if it proves impossible to solo Elite without exp-grinding and stuff, it worth trying out, because like vile gnashers turn a true thret (it creates more vile gnashers from corpses, and there are a lot of corpses on Elite, plus it has time to do so because of the HP-boost).
Also, what doesn't have that much armor, those have shields, and now that"s bad.
Also prepare on SWIFT champions. Those are twice as fast, and with its almost infinite HP you should very much hope that at least its minions will get stuck somewhere, else you can just forget visiting that dungeon.
I'll even experiment only cleaning the first levels of dungeons to collect exp, and return later. I think things do not respawn until you switch overworld area.
If this character perish, I give up on Elite, and go back to Veteran, this time focusing on summons with the Engineer. Cannon support still required.

Well, yeah, that was about Elite for me. I dunno exactly what killed me: the bloody summoner bearmen I ran into (champion horde), my reletnless attitude to not run away and grind up my stats, skills, equipment somehow, or the utter boredom how long and futile this battle felt. So yes, I'm going back to Veteran, and do a summoner first, cannoner second as was the original plan. So I'll be light on Heavy Lifting and stuff, but invest into Eags Shield, what is absolutely miniscule until at least 5 points in it, but whatever, that's the more safe way to do it.
The plan for the basic run is:
- 1 Coup the Grace (extra damage, extra element, scales with level)
- 1 Charge Domination (can help out)
- 1 Charge Recompensation (don't healm uch, but 1 point is ok)
- 9 Aegis of fate
- 10 Healing Bot
- 1 Blast Cannon
- 10 Spider Mines
- 10 Gun Bot
- 8 Fussilade
- 5 Sledgebot
- 5 Immobilization Copter

To let out some steam, I'm also making a Casual Thundra Berserker. All Focus, weapons wands and staves.
It might be a bad idea, but would be funny if this would finaly work. Could heal with Wof Shade, but that doesn't do much until very high levels or something, so sticking to potions this time.
It is very unfortunate Cold Steel Mastery only works on melee attacks - so none of the skills or wands. Again one skill badly designed.
At least I know where to put my skillpoints right away.
Frost Breath is NOT ice-inferno from Diablo 2, it spends mana per use. Then it breathes once, and that's it. No continuous flame.
I'm curious what the higher level stuff do.

Storm Hatchet would be the next step, but it it utter garbage with its casting speed being like an entire second. You'll be toast before the spell does anything. What a bummer.
Northern Rage is fine ... for at best Normal. Far too unreliable for higher difficulty. I suggest it on hotkey, as you'll only use this against summonning bosses, or similar situations. It CAN ease the pressure, damaging a lot of things around. The damage is not very impressive, and as said the reliability is entirely questionable, but still works better than D2 druid. As I have way too many skillpoint in talon, I keep this.

Permafrost is ... simple. The bad side is, too little damage over too long of a time. Sure, I have points for it, but I can't imagine these skills doing good on even Normal.
But on Casual, Berserker is fun, can do insane rampage. Total glass-cannon, which can eliminate hugh crowd in amazingly low time, if you just want some powergaming, try this build out. Frostbreath slows things down, that glacier-thing IS a crowd-killer, and this permarfost/nova thing can help with bosses, or big-HP crowd.

I'd suggest putting more points into Blast Cannon, because it's a very good room sweeper, and does an excellent job of crowd control, especially when that crowd is between you and a Champion or Boss.

The "improvements" for the investment doesn't seem pretty high to me. Am I underestimating the benefit?

When you've got a hoard of minor monsters between you and a boss with ranged attacks, the faster you can blast your way through them the better, especially if you're also chipping away at the boss. That's one thing Blast Cannon is good for, and a few more skill points invested in it are well spent. I'm not saying that you should max it out as fast as you can, just that leaving it at one point is being penny wise and pound foolish.

I mean the more points, or even the rank-bonuses seem miniscule if you don't pick this one over Fussilade.
It's a great skill though eliminating crowds, only thing is, very soon after you get the suicide-drones. and those ARE surprisingly strong. Though given the benefit for points barely do anything there either, it's better off just dumping a bunch of points all at once when you accumlated them, maybe.

The thing is, Fussilade fast outranks Blast Cannon by pure damage, so it goes back to what you'll need more: crowd control, or homing damage. And I simply don't have the experience yet to tell.
On favour of Blast Cannon, it seems, it don't hurt your mana too much. Don't have the thing before me right now, to compare Fussilade that way.

I should also go back to Outlander for a brief run, as that feels underwhelming after Berserker.

You can get Blast Cannon at level 7; Fusillade isn't available until level 35. You'll be getting lots of use out of two or three points in Blast Cannon for a long time before you have a chance to use Fusillade. Of course, it's your character and your call.