New Patch is Coming!

[Kruemelmonschda]

While diluting the overall difficulty might be seen as bothersome, i do like the introduction of terror zones though as it opens the option for more variety of builds and areas for farming and leveling. The introduction of Sunder Charms bothers me though.

 

[bill_n_opus]

But that is a very SPF way of looking at the game. 90+ % of the player base just goes for a power build. They demand "moar powa!" and the devs seem to give it to them.

Trapper with Griffon's, Crescent Moon and a Sunder charm can surely just trap the corners of the screen and kill everything without even seeing it. You can even kick with the CM and static everything too.

Mmmnnn, needs more powa.

Devs need to create a new cube recipe to add max sockets additionally to runewords.

Like, adding 4 more sockets to my Enigma mage plate.

Yeah that would be balanced. 4 lightning facets would do the trick nicely!

 

[Arparrabiosa]

I don't get your point, guys. How is letting the assassin apply -ELR to her traps is “easy mode”? I mean, if that's where you draw the line, how about Infinity? Enigma? CtA, even? How about Hork? Or Teleport? Or Lightning Fury? Will an assassin with griffon's and crescent moon farm faster than a classic Javazon?

Also, when drawing lines about what's easy and what's not, take in consideration that not everyone has 20 years of experience with this game like a lot of people has in this forum!

 

[bill_n_opus]

I don't get your point, guys. How is letting the assassin apply -ELR to her traps is “easy mode”? I mean, if that's where you draw the line, how about Infinity? Enigma? CtA, even? How about Hork? Or Teleport? Or Lightning Fury? Will an assassin with griffon's and crescent moon farm faster than a classic Javazon?

A lightning trap assassin that's currently fully decked out with an infinity Merc etc ... Is already very powerful and really only held back by lightning immunes which only really serves to slow her down and take caution, even on full players 8 setting.

Making the traps now buffed by -lightning res items plus sunder charms means that the light trapsin can pretty much just throw up a cloak of shadows, throw 4 light sentries and 1 death sentry and watch everything blow up.

At least that's what I'm expecting.

 

[Arparrabiosa]

And do you really think that's unbalanced against, or most efficient than, a fully decked Javazon or Lightning sorc with a Sundering Charm? And let's not talk about the Pitzerker. Because that's the bloody thing. I'd be against it, if it's going to be better -read more efficient - that superstar characters that we already have. But I highly doubt it. That change is not going to shake anything. If it's going to provide me more viable options, I'm going to welcome it wholeheartedly!

 

[coju]

We are arguing these points through the lenses of 20 years vets that have amassed wealth since 1.0 and who’s season only changes when a HDD crashes.

I know thread points do apply to bnet as well, but in a sense, they simply don’t.

D2R is up against the likes of modern-time gaming. Devs want player-base to keep playing. Making more items to give more chances for builds to have an item they need to feel powerful is great to me. I don’t have infinity, griffins 3 socketed with -lres, dual chancies and war travs for my trapsin. I have stealth and spirit shield still.

I feel like we’re wanting some of these added changes to help other builds be stronger? They do. But they also make the most powerful builds stronger. And that is what D2R’s competition is all about: every build should be viable.

 

[Jpy]

Agree with the notion that adding more and more to make things easier is unnecessary and just appealing to masses but that’s Blizzard’s MO and if you expected different at this point idk what to say. At least a little excited to try out new shit as I haven’t experienced it online at all.

E: a little emphasis on solving loading screens would be a sight for sore eyes, there’s clearly something being managed improperly..

 

[ffs]

For lighting characters, Infinity breaks the vast majority of LIs. Still probably in many instances it makes sense to use sunder charms as well or as a replacement to go with another merc combo. It is completely game changing on the other hand for fire and cold builds, because CI and FI monsters are often unbreakable.

I saw in the patch notes that at least they changed cold mastery to work at 20% effectiveness. Otherwise, Blizzard Sorc would have been ridiculous when combined with sunder charms. Now on the other hand, Blizzard Sorcs will almost be forced to use sunder charms. Not great either. At least in some situations such as Trav Blizzy, which in 1.14 relied heavily on CM operating without the 1/5 penalty to bring down Toorc's cold resist after being broken by Infinity. This will now be a weaker Trav build, with or without sunder charms.

how about Infinity? Enigma? CtA, even? How about Hork? Or Teleport? Or Lightning Fury? Will an assassin with griffon's and crescent moon farm faster than a classic Javazon?

To me it seems you are mixing up a bunch of different things.

1) The game how it's been for 20 years: CtA, Enigma, you forget to mention Grief (which makes 95% of melee weapons obsolete). Yes it's all debatable whether these are too strong, but that's been the status quo for the game for 20 years. Not going to debate whether these should be removed or changed or silly notions like that. That's the game as it stands, and touching that would be even worse.

2) Berserker/MF efficiency: Don't get me wrong, I didn't like Berserker buffs, but removing immunities is a much more extreme step which drastically alters core game mechanics. Barb's intrinsic power level did not become "stronger", he doesn't kill faster. He just became (even) more MF efficient. That's idiotic but not game-changing. And sadly, most people who really played at high efficiency around here are inactive nowadays. The Hall of Records thread is basically dead for the time being. For more casual players, the buffs make very little difference.

3) Sunder charms: The issue with sunder charms is completely unrelated to MF. In fact, I don't see sunder charms having any meaningful effect on the "MF power ranking" at all frankly. It will just be used to make strong builds even stronger, meaning increasing their killing power, which in my opinion is a shame.

You mentioned Lighting Fury, which I don't understand at all how that should support the argument? Because Lightning Fury is a prime example of why people think sunder charms are a terrible idea. Cookie cutter builds like this that already crush everything will become even stronger, and there's simply no reason to do so from a balancing perspective.

Instead, I believe the reason behind this is to allow people who do not want to spend the time to get Infinity etc. to be less limited with their build choices. But replacing a high-end runeword with a charm, and stronger in some ways (read: fire/cold builds) just turns the game upside down.

Next patch will perhaps be a grand charm "+1 to Teleport" with a 25% life penalty or something... then I would really stop touching D2R.

Anyway, my 2c and that's all I say on the topic...

 

[Arparrabiosa]

@ffs I think you misunderstood me. I wasn't debating if sundering charms are a good idea or not. In fact, I'm not sure about the whole thing. Sure, I'll be farming them because that will keep me entertained farming for a while in the new Terror Zones. What I was against was the point made by @maxicek and, to a lesser extent, to @NorthDakota that the changes to the assassins (specially the -ELR applied to traps) was inherently bad to the game. Which I think they are not. I think that the problem, if it's a problem, lies elsewhere (sundering charms or not).

And let me point out that I don't think that everything should be efficient or viable. Just a healthy handful of things. I don't know about you, guys, but I love the trapsin and I only play her to farm keys, and only because I feel very safe against Nihlathak's corpse explosion. I wasn't even farming with her at all before Ubers were implemented in D2R.

 

[Excalibur]

Powerful or not, I don't see why Assassins should be restricted to one of the best modifiers in the game. It works for every character and every build so It should have been like this in the first place.

 

[bill_n_opus]

Well, did anyone keep a Demon Machine in their stash?

 

[NorthDakota]

I don't get your point, guys. How is letting the assassin apply -ELR to her traps is “easy mode”? I mean, if that's where you draw the line, how about Infinity? Enigma? CtA, even? How about Hork? Or Teleport? Or Lightning Fury? Will an assassin with griffon's and crescent moon farm faster than a classic Javazon?

I feel like we’re wanting some of these added changes to help other builds be stronger? They do. But they also make the most powerful builds stronger.

Powerful or not, I don't see why Assassins should be restricted to one of the best modifiers in the game.

I don't think it's horrible that trapsins are getting stronger. I think it's fine, I believe the power "cap" of characters can be higher and still be fine. I don't think light sorc/java/hammerdin should be brought down, but instead everything should be brought up. Some just have a much farther way to go.

It makes sense to have that modifier work for traps because it's a case where the wording of that modifier makes people think it works with lightning skills including traps. It makes sense to make modifiers easy to understand. The issue is that trapsin already rates as one of these strong builds. It feels so strange that so many skills which include mostly melee are left SO FAR behind while one of the top 5 builds gets even stronger. Like assassin is a massive damage dealer with so many strategic skills in its kit, it's like the safest class and has among the most damage too. You can be several screens away while your traps explode the entire screen screens away with fade up, an extra summon, an on demand aoe stun.

Like the top end of all builds should have these strengths. They should all be able to clear like lightning. Why can't an insane maxed bowazon clear /p8 like a light sorc? Why can't a maxed out barb/melee pally run around one shotting stuff on /p8? I don't even need splash, just let the skills hit as hard as lightning.

 

[Timinator]

I'd say the "moar powa" was the Diablo 3 patch cycle for many years. At least many of the new runewords here are early game things which you probably won't use at the end.

On one side sure the trapper gets more powerful, there will be more trappers, there will be more content creation talking about trappers. It doesn't make any of the any charcters or builds less important though.

As I get older I get more fussy about what to do with my decreasing years left alive, and who knows how long I'll be gaming. Weird to think that 20 years ago today I was excited playing in 1.09 and super addicted to the game. I hope I still am in another 20 from now.

My decision to not bring things from Legacy to D2R has given me the option to one day import them, or keep them in that legacy state.

 

[NorthDakota]

uh WHAT. Look at this dual mosaic build doing /p8 cs

 

[snickersnack]

Also, when drawing lines about what's easy and what's not, take in consideration that not everyone has 20 years of experience with this game like a lot of people has in this forum!

That is a fair point.

I found that the work of learning those details that make the game easy is a lot of what was fun for me. That doesn't mean that everyone has fun that same way, though.

 

[snickersnack]

uh WHAT. Look at this dual mosaic build doing /p8 cs

Yeah, I think that this is exactly what @maxicek was worried about. The assassin used to be a difficult class to play that required careful item management to make it sing. I vaguely remember reading onderdoiker threads to get my charms *just* right.

 

[maxicek]

Pretty much yes. There is a reason I have 24 Assassin Matriarchs and all the other classes are in the 9-13 range. The assassin always had more nuanced gameplay. Full strength hybrids were possible, without comprimising either skill. My UT 99er has lightning damage, fire damage, and crushing blow. She can do the ubers with only minor gear swaps.

The changes seem to make the class more one dimensional. Why would I make a 99er with dual elements etc, when I can just wreck anything with LS only? If people want to play one dimensional characters, there are already loads - Javazon, Hammerdin or a Sorc are all great builds which I have played loads of.

What saddens me is that they are basically removing the one class where the learning curve was harder, where it was trickier to balance the gear and the skills. That was what kept the game interesting, not yet another power build.

That said, I'm interested in this Mosaic assassin now

Also lots of clearly hacked gear in that video. The "Runewords" don't display names, nor do the "Rare" gloves

 

[BullHorn]

Assassin's traps were supposed to be affected by Sunder charms in the previous patch, it was a bug that it didn't (Teo's race to 99 started on Assassin and quickly forfeited when they realized she wasn't working as intended).

If anything the addition of Sunder charms last patch was the biggest deal in D2 balance since 2003 and I'm personally not a fan. The change is disguised as 'build variety' but in reality its build restriction. The game encouraged you to use different builds for different zones or types of farms, but now you can farm everything and anything with any class that has decent gear and a Sunder charm.

 

[Excalibur]

Also lots of clearly hacked gear in that video. The "Runewords" don't display names, nor do the "Rare" gloves

They are probably edited since Mosaic is not available yet but the stats from both the Runewords seem correct so I assume the build will perform as displayed in the video.

 

[Oblivious]

All in all I think I find points of agreement with both sides presented here.
I am happy to see some changes in the game I've been playing for 20 years now, including bug fixes that broke some builds.
And on the other hand there is a part of me that perceives this as a loss, departing from the "hard core" of the game, what with the removal of immunities. Maybe 15 years ago this would have caused me to cry "what are these imbeciles doing?". But I do not consider myself a purist anymore. If there is something new I can try, then what the hell.
And I do not think the difficulty argument ever applied to the SPF. We have alwas found ways to keep the game challenging and fresh.
From a dev point of view, I think they are trying to go out with a bang. I do not believe they are going to be updating the game as often after D4 comes out.