This page contains general information about a character’s Stat Points and their effects (especially regarding derived stats) in Diablo 2 Resurrected.

Stat Points¶

Every time a character levels up they’ll receive 5 Stat Points to distribute among their four stats: Strength, Dexterity, Vitality and Energy. The starting stats for each character are as follows:

Starting Stats by Character

In general, your starting stats aren’t terribly important, as by Lv17 you’ll have doubled your starting Stat Point spread. In practice, the variation between character’s starting stats just determines how many points they’ll have to drop into Strength and Dexterity to reach their equipment goals before they start investing into Vitality, which is one of the key factors for survivability. In fact, most builds follow the same basic Stat Point allocation goals - enough Strength for gear, in the case of the Amazon and Paladin, enough Dexterity for gear and max block chance, then the rest of their points into Vitality.

The stats themselves are generally only important inasmuch as they affect what gear you can equip and how they influence various derived stats. Strength influences melee weapon damage, Dexterity influences Attack Rating, damage with ranged weapons and your Block Chance with a shield, Vitality will bolster both your Life and Stamina while Energy will determine how much Mana you have.

The four main stats and their derived stats will be discussed in further detail below:

Strength¶

Derived Stats: Melee Damage

Equipment has weight, and while there’s some nuance when it comes to the armor you wear and how it affects Stamina, when it comes to just equipping items it’s an all-or-nothing affair; either you have the Strength to equip a piece of gear or you don’t. Your character class and skill selection determines what gear you’ll want, which in turn will determine the minimum Strength you need to invest, but generally most characters are looking at reaching 100-150 points of Strength.

You’ll need 50~ Strength for mainstays like Harlequin Crest and Skin of the Viper Magi, while excellent mid-tier Magic Finding gear like Skullder’s Ire and War Travelers will demand closer to 100. Perhaps the most common, most useful, and most Strength-hungry piece of common starter gear, however, is the Spirit runeword. It can be created relatively cheaply in any 4-socket sword (Broad Sword, Crystal Sword and Long Sword - and their Exceptional and Elite counterparts - all suffice) and in 4-socket shields. While the weapons can start being found early in Nightmare difficulty, the shields are tricky for any character who isn’t a Paladin, as the first shield capable of bearing 4-sockets is the Monarch (not a terribly uncommon drop in Act 3 Hell difficulty). This shield requires 156 Strength, and while some of those numbers can be earned with stat-boosting gear, the Spirit Monarch is likely going to demand the most Strength investment out of all your gear - especially for casters. And for new players, it’s definitely an investment worth making.

Of course, characters who earn their living by killing with whatever weapons they possess (rather than with spells) may well face steeper Strength requirements from their chosen weapons, but there honestly aren’t a whole lot of common builds that require more Strength than a Spirit Monarch.

Each point of Strength also increases the melee damage a character deals by 1%. This bonus modifies the weapon damage of the currently equipped weapon, so weapons with higher base damage will see a more significant boost from Strength.

Dexterity¶

Derived Stats: Ranged Damage, Attack Rating, Defense, Block Chance

While most equipment has weight, some also require finesse, and like Strength, Dexterity is sometimes required to make use of said equipment. This is fortunately much rarer than Strength requirements, typically only affecting weapons like bows, crossbows, daggers, fist-weapons, spears, scythes, flails and one-handed swords. That being the case, most characters can safely ignore Dexterity requirements on gear by simply looking for a different piece of gear - no reason to drop points into Dexterity to use a Spirit Longsword when a Spirit Crystal Sword will do just as well, right?

Some characters either have no choice (most Amazon skills are focused around using bows, crossbows, javelins and spears) or find the investment worthwhile. A Paladin, for example, is a naturally tanky character, as their special class item - Paladin shields - tend to come with a hefty supply of resistances. Since you’re probably going to be married to a shield anyways (especially if you’re a Smiter), you might as well get the most out of it, and this means keeping your Block Chance maxed, which requires a significant Dexterity investment.

Aside from gear, most characters looking to actually strike an enemy with some weapon or projectile (save spells - if a spell comes into contact with an enemy, it’ll hit, barring immunities) need to worry about Dexterity, as Dexterity directly influences a character’s Attack Rating. Without going into too much detail, an attacker’s Attack Rating is opposed by a defender’s Defense (also influenced, albeit slightly, by Dexterity), and these two competing derived stats determine whether a melee or ranged attack will hit or not. You can check your odds of hitting a particular creature by checking out your Attack Rating figure in the character screen. If the odds of hitting are low, you need more Dexterity. Gear can also affect your Attack Rating, as some items will add to your Attack Rating, or better yet, will have mods like “Ignores Target’s Defense”.

Generally speaking, your Defense is at best a secondary factor when it comes to survivability. While it’s nice to have a lower chance to be hit, your Life, Resistances, Damage Reduction and Block Chance will all play far, far greater roles in keeping you alive. Speaking of Block Chance, characters wielding a shield will have a chance to block incoming physical (melee or ranged) attacks. The exact chance of blocking an attack is determined by a character’s level, the Block Chance on the shield they’re wearing, and, of course, their Dexterity score. Regardless of all these factors, the max Block Chance is 75% (your block chance is reduced by ⅓ when moving, so a character who otherwise had 75% Block Chance would only have 25% while moving). Given the amount of damage this can reduce, it’s a serious consideration for tankier characters - especially Paladins. Being incredibly general, you can expect a Paladin to need 120-150~ points of Dexterity to reach this goal, which includes stat-boosting items, +skills items and constant use of the Holy Shield skill (100~ hard points invested into Dexterity is a safe approximation).

Finally, Dexterity will increase the amount of damage dealt by all ranged weapons, as well as daggers, javelins and fist weapons. This makes it far, far more important to Amazons and Assassins than to most other classes… save, of course, Paladin.

Vitality¶

Derived Stats: Life, Stamina

Spending points into Vitality will also increase your Life and Stamina. The latter will allow you to run longer, which frankly is a marginal boon, at best, after Normal difficulty. The increase to Life is far, far more important, as a character’s Life total is one of the best determiners of their survivability. Of course, you’ll want to bolster a character’s Life by ensuring they have acceptable Resistances and, if possible, Damage Reduction and Block Chance, but there’s really no substitute for having more Life.

Generally speaking, most builds will want to get whatever Strength and Dexterity they need for gear/damage/Attack Rating/Block Chance and invest all the rest into Vitality.

A list of every character’s starting Life and Stamina and the Life/Stamina gained per point spent in Vitality can be found below:

Starting Life/Stamina and Life/Stamina per Vitality

Energy¶

Derived Stats: Mana

Ah, how the mighty have fallen… long ago, in the murky past when a theorized computer bug called “Y2K” was still a consideration, a character’s Energy stat was somewhat relevant. While it seemed like a long time back then, this hasn’t really been the case in around twenty years. Sure, Mana is nice to have, but there are other, better ways to get more Mana than by dumping Stat Points into Energy. Gear that boosts Mana, an Act 2 Mercenary equipped with an Insight runeword polearm, or failing all that, humble potions will all suffice.

Most builds won’t spend a single point in Energy.

A list of every character’s starting Mana and the Mana gained per point spend in Energy can be found below.

Starting Mana and Mana per Energy

Stat-Boosting Gear¶

As mentioned earlier, there’s a good bit of stat-boosting gear in the game, and some players may be tempted to min-max their stat point allocation to take advantage of this. After all, why drop five more points into Strength when you could just wander around with some +Strength charms and spend those points into Vitality, instead?

Well… simply put, don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Especially if you’re a new player. Your first character(s) will probably not be perfect. If this upsets you - and trust us, we share your pain - try to let it go. Early on you’ll have to use what gear you can reasonably find, not the best of the best. You’re probably not going to be assembling an Enigma runeword for your Hammerdin anytime soon, so don’t count on getting that +0.75 Strength per Character Level (or any of Enigma’s other lovely stats) any time soon. Spend the 100~ points into Strength, equip the gear you find, and if you build up your wealth enough to get better gear that makes your current build redundant, rejoice! Running a new character is much, much easier than getting the gear was.

There are some notable exceptions, however, namely two of the game’s three unique charms. You’ll acquire the Annihilus small charm (Lv70 required) for defeating Uber Diablo and the Hellfire Torch large charm (Lv75 required) for completing the Pandemonium Event. Both of these charms roll with - in addition to other lovely stats - +10-20 to all Attributes. Needless to say, these can drastically reduce the stat points you need to invest for gear, depending on how well they roll, whether you can wait until Lv70/Lv75 to wear them, and of course, whether you can kill the ubers.

This will be covered in more detail later, but for now, we reiterate - don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. You’ll get all that lovely gear with flawed characters. Min-maxing later on is a reward for paving the way with less-than-perfect characters at the start.