I'm new here and I'm in some dire need of help!

Most guides - even ones that say beginner in the title - require some type of unique that you might not have access to. People are silly like that...

For a first character, I'd suggest:
- pick up life nodes, as your first priority.
- a build that picks up a lot of strength nodes to support armor
- pick up armor nodes and maybe some evasion but not ES
- get some shield block nodes
- get most of your elemental resist from gear not the tree
- chaos resist on the tree is good

Plan something before getting too far in. If you plan to use weapon based attacks, don't try to augment a secondary caster-type skill with the tree or visa versa.

When linking skill gems, pay attention to the text directly below the skill name (attack, spell, single target, cold, fire, AoE. Etc.) not all gems are helped by all support gems. Example: fireball is not an attack but rather a spell. So, it's not affected by faster attacks. Faster casting helps fireball.

Play your 1st character as far as you can and save items that may help a 2nd character level.

When the next race season starts, join in. You will die early and often, but it is a good way to try out characters and gear painlessly. Races are generally short events (about an hour) and full of unexpected events.

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Dingernalt wrote:

Look, I've played a lot of Diablo clones

Then you never played Diablo 1 or 2 because those where complex like hell (Threshold for almost anything, crafting etc).
The wiki is nearly the same size in Diablo 2 and how can anybody not see the big "Class" subforum?

You didnt even look for guides / builds, you opened a thread in General [Removed by Support]