Step 1: Create a Sorceress in Classic. Go through all of normal up until level 30 by maxing out charged bolt at every level. It sweeps through normal mode the fastest of anything, max cb, 1 point teleport
Step 2: Respec in nightmare mode to the full classic rush orb / static / fw build listed below
Step 3: Farm norm meph/diablo and nm andy/meph until you have full gear listed below, or enough fg / pieces to get the items (remember we're talking same day as reset, so you can't simply buy them all)
Step 4: Start Crushing people on day 1 of ladder. You can charge exorbitant prices, you'll be the only one around, well besides other people doing this eh?
I averaged 15-20 minute runs the last 3 or 4 seasons, usually starting at 200 fg per slot, for whatever fg was worth back then, it was easy to earn 10000+ to float a full season.
Course as d2 is dead, and d3 is dead, and d2jsp is dead, I'm simply posting this now that its too late and I'm not going to bother to do it.
Skills: (you should hit level 70 before crushing, leveling via chaos runs)
20 Frozen Orb
20 Teleport
17-20 Cold Mastery (20 recommended, greatly helps vs meph)
1 point thunder storm
1 point lightning mastery
1 point fire mastery
5+ points static field
2+ points firewall
0 warmth
0 cold armors
As you level beyond that, split points between firewall and static, but try to keep static at 5 points minimum first, around level 75 you should have 6 points each.
This build is specially tailored towards soloing classic rushes on its own, it needs no prebo and can kill act 3 hell travincal (prespawn it with 2 players before other people join)
Against most of the game, you're a maxed teleport / orb crusher. Its fully powered, ice bolt would do nothing with its utterly minimal boost. Either orb completely destroys everything in classic, or its cold immune.
Static field greatly speeds up the killing. With a large aoe, you can kite bosses by doing static-step-static-step, and in classic static has no minimum 50% cap, so hell bosses die quickly to it.
Against plain cold immunes, like vipers, your primary killing method is to trap them and static them down to 1% hp and finish them with firewall. It does enough damage to rip through 8 player cold immunes with just static
Against cold/fire immunes, specifically, Toorc Icefist in hell trav, you win by killing everyone else, then tanking him out by just standing and staticing nonstop until he's low, and finishing him with combined thunder storm + nova + static spam.
Even though nova/ts are 1 pointers, they are *only* used to kill 1% hp fire/cold immunes, which is really just toorc, and 1 point is all that necessary with lightning mastery
Items:
Iratha's Crown
Iratha's Gloves
Iratha's Belt
Iratha's Amulet
Twitchthroe Armor
Spectral Shard Dagger (vendor a fcr wand until you get one)
The Ward Gothic Shield, or a 3 socket with 3x diamonds
2x FCR rings with resistances
Rare Boots with resists, *or*, if you're lucky, Hotspurs (absurdly rare, don't expect to actually get them in classic new ladder)
Fill your inventory with tomes of TP and belt with HP & Mana regen, and you're good to go.
Stats:
Str/dex: Enough to use gear
Vitality: All the rest
Energy: 0
dexterity does not help blocking in classic.
70% FCR
85/85/85/85% resists
71% blocking
(high HP)
I've used this exact build for 3 or 4 seasons, and it works wonders each time. Usually #1 slot on ladder for the first day, finished rushing by end of week, sell back the char, and make a bajillion profit
I could explain the little tricks to classic rushing itself, but naw. Basically, maphack it up, prespawn hell travincal with only 1 player in the game before starting the hell rush, and if lots of vipers are in the circle in act 2 in hell just remake instead of killing them, non-unique vipers regenerate HP and are a pain to kill.