I'm a long time D2 player and I've always played on battle.net. Recently I decided to try something I've never done before: single player. It has definitely been challenging to say the least. To avoid issues with monster resists I'm using a hammerdin. I've made the easy runewords like spirit etc and I'm currently lvl 71 in hell mode. It had been pretty smooth sailing up until hell mode and it just seems like I can't get anything done because I die so easily now. Is this just something that is to be expected? I can only use the gear that I find so it's just been hard to progress. My main question here is just simply to ask if there's anything else I should be doing that will help me that I'm just unaware of. I don't really get much exp in nightmare so it's kind of pointless to do runs there. Also, to try and get any better gear drops I need to be in hell. What do I do???

The Pit is a nice place to MF early on in Hell. All of the good items can drop there, no magic immunes but there are archers..

Post your setup and people can tell you some easy upgrades hopefully. NM Meph can give you everything you need to beat Hell for any character type. It's boring though..

The gear I'm using is pretty crap. Spirit sword and Spirit shield. I found an iron pelt unique body armor which I'm using because it has higher def than anything else I've come across thus far and has some damage reduction. The rest of the stuff I'm using is just random rare stuff that's dropped. A2 Merc with holy freeze using Stealth and Nadir and a random rare poleaxe. Merc dies really really easily. At this point it's almost pointless to even resurrect him in hell mode. Standard skill points for hammerdin (Max hammers, blessed aim, concentration) the remainder of points split between vigor and holy shield. I've got 1.4k life and 2k def. Hammers currently doing just over 3k damage.

this is no offense to you but it seems you are not an experienced player. hammerdin is one of (if not THE) easiest char in single player.
you already have spirit sword and shield which is all you need to make it through hell. what shield do you use as base for spirit? should be a pala shield with 30+ all res. what fcr roll on your spirits? if it's 65+ combined then you only need 1 ring with 10 fcr to reach 75 fcr breakpoint which you should aim for at the start. you can shop 30 frw/30 fire or light res boots at charsi/gheed in hell.
use lore helm. you can shop the base at fara act 2 normal. stat dex until 50% block or more if you like (putting a few more points into holy shield isn't bad either). str only to wear items and energy nothing ofc. rest into vita. but most importantly --> kite the monsters. you are a caster with a range attack. make use of it. cast a few hammers, run some meters and cast a few more. keep moving to not get hit. monsters will walk into your hammers and die.

run NM Baals on /players8 - you can get at least 5 more levels there

avoid exploding dolls like the plague

also should help to build up your gear a bit more from the drops at NM Baal

This post was edited by The_Charade on Dec 11 2019 09:49am

It's true, I'm definitely not the most experienced with playing a hammerdin. I find that it is fairly (no pun intended) hit or miss. Whereas most other classes I'm used to playing are directly accurate in their targeting. The base I used for the spirit shield is a heraldic shield with no mods. I would love to use a pally shield with 30+ all res but I haven't come across one yet. I will look into making a Lore helm and see if that makes much difference. Thanks for the notes!

make a smoke for resist ir find viper at nm

insight for merc
and try to get him some lifeleech on helmet and treachery as soon as possible

also, in general, defense is not that important of a stat