Some ideas for ME 1.9

[Angelus]

Hi all

I played 1.10 a bit lately and since that patch will open up new ways to mod some stuff i thought i come up with some ideas and post "my view of things" for Me 1.9
Well here we go:

more difficult!

I guess this one wont be done.... but i still think that ME is too easy and should be made harder.
I loved D1ME where you managed to do hell solo only on the last 5 or so levels, and only with good equipment (atleast it was this way for the warrior i played).
In D2ME its not a problem to get "straight" through to act4 hell, without going back one act and level a bit. Instead (even though you will have some difficulties from time to time) you will "walk" through all acts and later play only the last few maps from act 5 (no need to do the whole act, like in D1, since there are WPs which bring you anywhere you want).... and that doesnt feel right.
After all Diablo2 is a mulitplayer game, and in my opinion it should be nearly impossible to get through hell alone (until your really high lvl [high level = early 90s])


Weapon Speed

I never understand what Blizzard thought when they made such strange different base attackspeeds for all chars/weapons....
That a Sorc is faster then a Barb with almost all two handed weapons may be stupid, but since she cant really use them, shes not overpowered.... something you can't say about the Druid whos very fast or fast with all mauls, axes and polearms.
If its possible, please make those char/weapon speeds a bit more realistic and reasonable (especially conserning the Druid).


-10% Res

Its still way too easy to get 75% resistances, or more (my brothers Paladin has all res maxed and lightning at 88% although one of his rings has no resistances and hes using no shield).
Getting all res at maximum should atleast be a bit difficult, so that you may sacrifice something instead of risking too low resistances (even if its only one or two skillpoints into one of the many +res skills)


Holy Fire/Frost/Shock Auras

Now that all three have "Aura Damage" and add damage to the weapon, Holy Frost seems a bit too strong with the additional freezing effect. The damage should either be taken out (and make the aura as it was before) or lower it quite a bit, so that its not superior to the other two.

Oh and maybe give those auras a small syngergie bonus with the resist fire/cold/lightning auras.


Morgoth

How about some more monsters in Morgoth Throne Room, like in the good old D1 days ?
Makes him a bit harder to beat and to beat some more monsters up is so much more rewarding

Oh and while im on Morgoth, is it possible to change his AI a bit, so that he casts that "blue knockback thinggy" less often ? Its the most annoying spell/attack in the whole game, since you cant evade it... and it gets really evil when he repeats to casts it or when he and his clone do it at the same time


Act 2 Mercs

Ok i know this was discussed before... but I still think those "rip off Paladins" are a) too strong and b) make the Paladin a obsolete "partysupporter".
They totaly unbalance everything, they take the "hard part" away from range/caster chars (meatshield that has Holy Frost, so you avoid the problem of beeing engaged directly), they work as giant, two legged healing potion (with prayer and infinite mana) and they give the meele classes even more damage (might...).
And its not like they were useless without their auras, they deal insane amounts of damage with their spears (AFAIK the best weapon a merc can wear, compared to bows and swords) and are super fast with jab.
Even if you dont want to take the auras away totaly, just give them the 3 res auras, then everyone who uses them has a free maxed out resistance.... then the Paladin will also have a purpose in a party again.


Static Field

I always thought Static Field is overpowered since its the only skill which deals %damage and also has its max damage at lvl 1. So if its possible in 1.10, you could change the dam to 1.25% +1.25% for every additional skilllevel.
This way it would still come out with 25% at lvl 20, but you would have to actually invest some points.
I mean its the most powerefull spell in the game... it doesnt feel right that you can put in 1 skillpoint, have the full effect and let the range get boosted by +skill items.
(Only problem this solution would have, is that the damage output on the first lvls would be ridiculous low, maybe +2% on the first five levels and +1% on the rest would be better)


Summons

Summons have extreme high life in hell, because as "monsters" their HP get boosted in every difficult level (my lvl 15 Valkyrie has about 3,4k life in hell), what makes them a meatshield that hardly ever dies... and even if there are enough monsters to knock my Valkyrie out, i can just recast her over and over again, until im far, far away or till i killed all the enemys (I never even tried to save one of them, since i can easily recast them and thus keep half the monsters on the map occupied).
I think this sucks a bit, since those chars with a Summon have a huge advantage against those who doesnt... and i dont think that Summons were intended to be "almost unkillable shields, which are easily replaced" anyway... I would like to see them as "tactial unit", which can support me, but isnt replacable in a second.
So I would like to have Summons with fewer HP and a big cast timer (1 to 2 minutes or something like that), so that you cant replace them all the time and actually have to look after them.
(To make one thing clear I talk about Valkyries, Shadow Masters, Golems, Vines and Spirits, not about skeletons/revives or raven/wolves/bears... it would be ridiculous to put a timer on those, since they are absolutly needed for the chars survival)



Thats it for now, but im sure there will be some more soon
Feel free to discuss, criticize and flame

[Éowyn]

some ideas are nice some so oh lala

but about static field

I don't really like your idea of giving it only 1,25% HP Damage per level, if you make it like this then you have to remove the cap so that in hell mode you can also lower a moster's Life near zero.
I don't want to put 20 skill points in a skill and then it only works till 50% Life...
Either you leave it as it is or you are going to change both the damage and the cap in Maiar and Valar.

And btw Lightning res counts for static field too...

[Jonaleth Irenicus]

Why forcing characters to go back and level up before advancing into higher difficulties is not a good idea:

Because in D1, you wanted to go back to the catacombs and fight those goatmen. The magma demons and lightining demons in the caves were deadly and fun. I would rather fight the blood knights in Normal diff Hell rather than Nightmare Skeletons in the church.

In LoD, I don't want to go back to Act 1 once I have passed it. Yeah, the rogues are fun, but they are scattered here and there. You are fighting quill rats for crying out loud. Act 3 is a nightmare. There are really crappy monsters in the forest, you lose your way all the time, and in Kurast, there are some nice monsters, but there are so many buildings you have to go looking for the monsters.

Anyway, I don't think making the game harder just so people have to go back and level to advance will only make it boring, not fun.



Druid seems to have a problem with weapon speeds, but the Druid is not overpowered since he doesn't have a hugeset of weapon skills. The bear has passive enhanced damage, but the wolf has to rely on skills only. I am playing a werewolf in 1.10 right now, and I don't see him having superior damage output compared to my barbarian before him.



What kind of items does that paladin use? Maybe he has worked hard for getting those items and having 75% all resistances? If you have done the scroll quests in all difficulties, you still have to get 145% all resistances to get max resists.



Holy Freeze already has lower damage (added to the weapon) compared to Holy Shock (I am not sure about Holy Fire). With synergies, I am sure Holy Freeze falls behind of the two. Holy Fire gets damage bonus from Might, Holy Freeze from that resist cold and Holy Shock from resist lightining. I think they all get bonus from Sanctuary.



More monsters in the throne room wouldn't hurt, it would actually be nice if V&K put Black Knights in there (or the Liches from Hellfire). The Cold Attack is really the most annoying, even if you have holy freeze, but I think you'll have to tell Blizzard about this one



Act 2 merc probably need to be tidied up a bit as you say. I would probably remove Holy Freeze, Defiance and maybe Thorns. Prayer is only useful for the Zoomancer (or lets say the OverSummoner) and Might does not actually give loads of damage.



Eowyn has said why Static Field shouldn't be changed that much. The NM/Hell penalties aside, there are lightining resistant and immune monsters. Static Field is hard to balance because it can be overpowered or underpowered and never quite making it between the two.



If you increase the damage of the summons (and I mean increase is A LOT), then what you want could be achieved. The problem with your 3.5 K life Valkyre is that in Hell, she can't even keep monsters from regenerating.

[Éowyn]

Hmm I have to say someting about that too now Yesterday I only had to write something about static field and then go to bed.

»more difficult

Hmm I think the difficultiy of a level depends much in what monsters you get in there when you create the game... For example if the river of flame is crowded with mages it is much more difficult than it would be if there where no mages.
Going back in Akts hmm the problem is that one person likes that akt and one likes that, I personally like akt 3, but there are not may how like it (; But in 1.10 they are forced to make it because you cannot use tps befor completing certain quests


»weapon speed

Hmm I played a Bear Druid in LoD and I cannot say he's fast and overpowered. He makes lots of damage, but the babarian does more with the same weapon and the mastery. And with a normal speed weapon he is slow in my eyes. If I got crowded it was sometimes very hard to get out of there alive. Fortunately I had shockwave and could stun the monsters to make my way out.

»res
@jon in ME there is only -60 res all in hell mode I think

But I can't say something about this because I never had full resistances. And maybe it is easier for some classes to get full res than for others

»auras

Hmm are you sure Holy Freeze deals that much damage ? I thought Holy Shock is the killer.

»Akt End Bosses

Hmm I would also like it if they would be like the smith (I don't know his ME name at the moment) in the river of flame. With different "skills" everytime. E.g. one immunity, faster run or extra strong, elemental enchanted. A real fight like in BG2 with the Bosses. But I think there they where more balanced and not either a one hit killer or a looser like it is in D2


»mercs

Can't say much about them because I didn't really used them lately. My favourite were Akt 1 Rogues in the last time (;
Vigor would also be a good aura for the akt 2 mercs (; Blessed aim is not too powerful, yes might is maybe overpowerd, prayer hmm I think it is usefull early, but becomes useless in maiar/valar, thorns hmm only really usefull for summoners and a nice boost for iron maiden :mgreen: Holy Freeze hmm I liked it sometimes, and some variants are using him at the moment, because he helps them to survive what about a cleansing merc ? Defiance is powerful indeed hmm.

»summons

Hmm a valkyrie is no longer treated as a monster in 1.10 und don't get a life boost from difficulties. At last this is what they wrote in their patch notes. And they do have a casting timer, but 1-2 minutes is much too long in my opinion.

And those chars how does hava summons may have an advantage over other chars, but not a huge. E.g. Would a summon be usefull for an babarian ? No he is strong enough and a palading has his shield, a sorc well usefull indeed but she has teleport and mana shield.
For an amazon it is usefull but you can also go an fin knockback or monster flee, so it would not overpower her, The summoner ok what would he be without his summons they are one. The Druid hmm you can play him in many ways. The only char I must think about why she has summons is the Assassin, because I don't really think she needs them she does much damags as the babarian. Well but I don't know if the summons from her deal much damage they are helpful in some way.
And if it is like they said and these summons won't get a life boost in maiar/valar it is ok like they are I think.

[Angelus]

@Jon

Hmm maybe what I wanted to say didnt come out the way i wanted *G
I dont want to "force" the player to go back several acts, not even that you had to repeat a whole act.
I would like it when you wouldnt be able to progress from one area to another in a straight line, and end up repeating the last few areas from act 5.... I would like it when the game would progress slower.
Instead of repeating the last 2-3 act 5 maps, you would need to play every act only a bit longer. This way you wouldnt end up at act5 hell with lvl 70 and got 29 lvls more to go into boring Morgoth runs.



Problem with the Druid is that he is very fast with all kinds of "big damage" weapons, like mauls and axes, while all other chars are slow with those.
And the Druid has quite powerfull skills in both shapes, "Maul" (passiv bear skill) adds +390% damage and stuns the target, "Feral Rage" (passiv wolve skill) adds 145% damage and 39% life leech (and he can use "Fury" as active attack skill which again adds 100% damage). Plus you can add 100% damage from "Heart of the Wolverine", so that you come to a total of 345%damage as wolve and 490%damage as bear, now add a (for the druid) fast elite polearm to this (which can easily go over 300 damage) and you do the math

I my opinion the Druid is one of the most unbalanced chars (if not the worst) and his attackspeed defenetly adds to this



Hehe sure he "worked" quite hard for those items, but i still think it should not be easily possible to get 75% or even more without both rings add to resistance and without using a shield.
And like Nath said the total minus in ME Hell is -90, so that you get -60 with the resistance scrolls.



Not sure how this works in LoD 1.10, I didnt played it long enough to know much stats, but even if Holy Freeze falls behind damage wise, its still superior with its 50% (or more?) slow effect.



Yeah, its more like a pinball when he shoots you from one corner to the next, I absolutly hate that



Yep that would be another way to weaken them a bit, by removeing the "good" auras (those that you listed, but add might to that list, since it gives you the most damage in ME)



Like you said its almost impossible to balance Static Field, but IMO it shouldn't stay the way it is, you can get the most powerfull skill in the game on a staff and even get the full benefit out of it.
I must confess that my idea may not be the best solution, but if you remove the nm/hell cap it gets way too powerfull (and it is too powerfull with only one skill point needed in it....not even CE can be compared to this).
Oh and actually my suggestion would increase the damage a bit (5% to be presicely), i accidentally took the numbers from the Arreat Summit instead of Nathalias site



Yep got to agree, they do nearly no damage.... a bit more would be good.


@Nath

Yep thos "Trigger Quests" are a step in the right direction, but they wont slow it down in ME, it only makes it harder to "shuttle" someone.



hehehehe maybe the reason that you never get full resistances is that your so picky about what you wear :P



I normally dont mind the end bosses, but as I said this is defenetly the worst spell in the game.



Ahh good to hear that Blizzard fixes atleast some problems so no more Valkyries with 4k life


hehe a Summon for the Barb ? Would atleast prevent 50% of my deaths.
The advantage a Summon gives you, is that you can split up monsters, and pin them to a certain area, while you deal with them one at a time.
When I do the Council with my Rohirrim I only face one of those guys at the time, while my Valkyrie holds back the others. When she dies I instantly cast a new one and have all the time I need for the one I currently face.

[IronDeath]

@Jon
You know many players of the me mod ( at least the veterans ) started playing me cause its much harder than Lod or classic D2, but its still too easy at times, if i remember the balrogs, black numenoreans or the uruloki in morgoth chamber from D1, than D2 is a Kindergartengame *g.
Don't get me wrong i don't want one hit kills on the side of the monsters as i don't want them on the side of the players but it doesn't feel right to slaughter sauron, morgoth or glaurung alone ( with a relativly low level compared to D1me times... my old lvl 41 warrior was barely able to single hell/hell in 2 from 5 games ).

For the druid, as my brother stated.. the fast attack combined with the damage boost on his lycantrophy skills are a save garant for unbalance, since i found rare polearm weapons which easily broke the 300 damage line, another thing is his immense life boost with is were-forms, since he got nearly as much life as the barbarian from lvls and vit, hes a walking healing potion in his werebear form.

The paladin of which my brother spoke uses a 450 damage two handed axe so hes got no shield, one of my rings haven't any resistance on it either, so i too think its too easy to get max res or even more ( since my paladin got 88 lightning res without any problems )

The Might aura on the mercs is one of the most unbalanced things in the me mod at my opinion.. might is the aura with the highest damage bonus .. and you got it for free.. all the time... without any negative effects.

Static is the second candidate for most unbalanced thing in the mod
there is no skill compared to this one, in seconds you can disintegrate half of the life of any monster ( atleast on normal, but still enough on nm and hell to be completly overpowerd ).
the other problem is that static hits in an area, if i calculate the time i would need to do so much damage to so many enemys with my paladins, i would faint for sure *g.
And for the resistences... what is with physic resistence or physic immune ( ok really really rare in the me mod but still there) its allways an argument of the casters that the sorc got sooooo much problems with the immunes or resist monsters, but i need just one stone skin boss and i'm in really big trouble ( hell diff ) or one ghostly champion, or an physic resist monster like the little glowing worms in act5, or a physic immune boss ( i guess you got my point )

And for the summons, my brother talked only about those meatshields, golems, shadow master and valkyre, not about the skeletons or revives.
And a Valkyre isn't there to kill enemys but to block them, but when eowyn said that the bug is solved anyhow, this topic isn't such a big deal anymore

[Éowyn]

And for the resistences... what is with physic resistence or physic immune ( ok really really rare in the me mod but still there) its allways an argument of the casters that the sorc got sooooo much problems with the immunes or resist monsters

Thats not true.
There are only immune bosses and dragons in the mod and a stone skin boss is not such a big deal too. You need five times as long as if it won't have stone skin but sometime going slow is nice

You can also balance a game to death. A Sorc has Static field and it is strong, but she must not use it right ? Many sorcs I met even didn't know what static field is. It lost popularity after LoD because of the cap in Nightmare and Hell mode.
Have you ever played a Sorc and used static all the time (after LoD) ? I don't think so. I even wondered if you used it often.
I myself only use it here and there in in some games never....

I don't see why you would tweak this skill to death.

[IronDeath]

Sorry Eowyn but i'm sure your wrong in this point, the wormthinggys in act5 definatly have physic res, i have to hit them for hours with my paladins which don't use elemental damage, but with my vengeance paladin they die in seconds.

For the static field..... i never played a sorc, i hate sorc *g, i hated the sorcerer in d1 and i hate the sorc in d2, this class has been allways overpowered and i don't think they are much fun to play ( but each player his class *g ).
But i know static field from other players, and i think that skills should be balanced when you could, its the same with CE.
You don't have to use it, but someone will use this skill so it has to be balanced.

[Éowyn]

I havn't said they don't have physic res, I talked about immunities. And if a boss has stone skin you need 5 times as long because stone skin does damage res +80% and a 3 times higher defense.

I don't know... If this is you point of view.

I don't think this should be done. Is this the goal of a mod, that every skill is perferctly balanced and it dowsn't matter which skills you use, you are always as powerfull as if you would take other skills.
I think no.
There are skills that are more powerfull than others. There are chars that are more powerful than others, but if you play in a party they can help the weaker chars. I played a warcry barb in LoD and at the beginnig I thought he will never make it to hell mode. But I was wrong. Sure he is weak in some way especially against bosses and in 8player games he deals nearly no damage. But he also makes fun in some way because you can hop in the abyss mages and stun them and they can't do anything while the other s kill them. Or I use find potion as well and all the other chars get filled with the big purple pots while we are playing. Warcry does also use very very very much mana especially when you have so much faster cast. I have ~2500 Mana with my barb thats twice as much as my sorc and ~10 Mana/kill ~100% regenerate mana and it is not enought. Thats why I use finde potion. The only way you can keep fighting with the others is to find those big purple pots. And I find more than enought. And it is fun playing as long as nobody is in the game and tells you all the time to do something and not only earning xp from the others kills.
Static has an advatage too. It is very strong agains act end bosses and normal boss monsters/champions when they are not lightning immune or have much lightning resistance. But on normal monsters it dosn't do that much damage, you can do more damage with other skills and on some lighning resistant bosses or champions you also do more damage with other skills.
I like it the way it is, some skills have special advatages and some are more powerfull than others that is natural. Maybe you should be able to use nearly all skills and this is already done in the ME mod. In my opinion it is already very well balanced much much better than LoD. So why balance it more and more and more until nearly every skill makes summa summarum the same damage only with another animation. Where is the variation there and the fun. I my opinion then they died

[IronDeath]

@ Eowyn
For your first question " is this the goal of a mod, that every skill is perfectly balanced... " it seems so that Varaya and Khan want to achieve this goal, but not as you said that every skill does the same damage but with another animation.
Static Field is unbalanced, CE was unbalanced and got nerfed so its better now, the same goes for Frozen orb which is now a good skill to use but not the uberkiller it was before.
We didn't say, please make all skills the same, we say, please make all skills balanced, if that means to lower the damage of some skill, then it has to be done... thats atleast my opinion.

Btw anyone of you noticed that you, my brother , Jon, and I are the only people which discuss these change suggestions ? *gg
not really that much reaction, in past suggestion posts of my brother where more action... ah well we'll see, maybe most of them are sleeping.... or too lazy to read and post that much

[Éowyn]

But you also must see that static does more damage on some monsters and less damage on other monsters than other skills.

Maybe just nobody plays D2 at the moment.

[Jonaleth Irenicus]

I am sorry I was thinking of the new 1.10 patch (and not ME) when I was talking about certain stuff. For example, I totally forgot that Might was the highest damage aura in ME.

I was playing Ghostmaster yesterday, it sucked me in so much that I couldn't come here to chat

Maybe there could be another way to approach Static Field: Casting delay? Maybe remove the caps in NM/Hell and add a casting delay? That way, Static field would be dealing damage faster than some skills in the beginning of the fight (as it was meant to be I guess) but would lose its advantage in time. Just an idea.

I think sorceress has the problem with immunes because the chances of getting a dual elemental immune are higher than getting a physical immune monster. True sorceress deals BIG damage, but only when she capitalizes on one or two elements, and a Hell viable sorceress must be able to dish out all three elements.

I looked at Arreat Summit for the offensive elemental auras, Holy Fire deals less damage than Holy Freeze (even with synergies), there is something wrong about this one. Holy Shock is still the highest damage, no matter what.

About the Druid: Especially the Werewolf is one of the hardest classes to balance, because of this wierd attack speed problems. Yet I cannot see what can be done to balance the issue (its a little off balance and decreasing the attack speed is not a good way of solving it).

About acts: Maybe it would be nice to introduce level requirements to all acts (much like the level requirement on the ancient's quest). This would stop people from rushing forward but it would also help people to fight monsters that are about their own level.

[Remuz]

Hi everyone, long time no post, I'd like to contribute with my thoughts:

Some months ago, I lost all my characters to a very dumb mistake (I ended up deleting most of my harddrive.. grrr... amongst others, I lost Ainasul, the first char ever to kill Morgoth in valar diff in the D2ME Mod ).
So I stopped playing altogether, only to dive again when 1.10 came out. I played it since that time and I must say it is very interesting.

Firstly, it is a lot more difficult than before. What is good is that one playing sp or with a strange variant can still get to the end of nightmare pretty easily (a bit harder than before, but still doable). Once you get to hell difficulty, things get really rough and challenging.
I'd like to see this sort of scaling in the mod : make it a bit hard (but not too much) in the eldar and maiar difficulties, then make it very challenging (a lot more than what it is at that time). So, veterans who want a real challenge get what they want, and those who want an easier game can still complete most of it.

Then, please develop sinergies, but not on every skill. For exemple, in 1.10, synergies have been applied to the paladin's auras, so that you may invest in several auras and still get some benefit from it. (exemple : Meditation got a synergie from prayer, so that now it heals some life along with the "normal" mana regeneration effect). This is a good use, IMHO.
What is a less clever use is the synergies applied to the sorceress skills. Now, if you want to be able to kill in hell difficulty with a fire skill (for exemple, meteor, I love this one), you have to invest to too many other fire skills to boost the damage (firebolt, fireball and, of course fire mastery in the case of meteor). The problem is that you're not left with many skill points and you lose a lot of versability (you end up having only one useful skill). Since in the mod there aren't many immunities, the problem is not so important. But still, I'd like to be able to use more than one skill, for more fun.
One solution for it could be to make cross-tree sinergies, so that you could have more than one useable skill but still benefit from sinergies.

But, please, please, use sinergies, they are really much fun.


About the level caps on acts, I have to disagree. Not all characters are quite as effective troughout the course of the game.
Say, for exemple, that I'm building a character that is very effective in the beginning (a firebolt sorc, for exemple ). I'd like to be able to rush the beginning, since things are way to easy. I can slow down later when things get harder.
On the other hand, if I'm building a character that gets its full power at level 50 (a kick-assin, perhaps?), I'd like to be able to reach hell early, since I know that I'll be as effective in killing in hell as in nightmare. (hope you see my point, sorry for my poor english)

All in all, the 1.10 patch has lots of very good idea that could be taken to make the MEMod more interesting. V&K, if you are not already, you should really take a look at it.


I think that post is long enough, by now. Please comment!

[Remuz]

Oh, yes, I forgot something...

Since fighting monsters of your level is so important now (even more than before), couldn't there be a way to see it ingame?
(say, in the character screen, when you look at your to-be-hit chance? I'd say something like "chance to be hit by a fallen (lvl 2) : 10%").

Grrmmmm... after reading this again, I think that's pretty unrealistic, since it would involve hex-editing...

[Jonaleth Irenicus]

The level cap on difficulties/acts would stop you from worrying over the monster level situation at least.

The thing about rushing forward is: it is not good anymore (especially if you are on singleplayer and nobody is there to kill the big bad guys). If you have a character that can easily kill Act 5 monsters and is strandled in Act 4, it is still not such a bad thing the character has to exp up there. You are probably getting more experience per monster because you are not experiencing the level difference penalty.

[taurendil]

I feel i just have to react to a few statements here

Static Field is unbalanced, CE was unbalanced and got nerfed so its better now

In 1.10 CE got changed again so that the damage scales up with more players in the game. It is now again by far the biggest damage spell in the game. The radius is lower though than it was in the early days, but when maxed you can still clean most of the screen.

True sorceress deals BIG damage, but only when she capitalizes on one or two elements, and a Hell viable sorceress must be able to dish out all three elements.

If one thing is clear when looking at the 1.10 patch it is this: Blizz once again tried to make hell difficulty impossible to solo. I have tried it with a couple of characters and found it to be nearly so unless you have absolutely perfect equipment. And you're not going to find perfect equipment if you can't solo ofcourse. So every realm character you make in 1.10 should be party oriented. In conclusion, Jon, the only sorceress that is viable in hell is one that specialises in 1 or perhaps 2 trees. Imagine howmuch of a boost you can be to a party with 100 skill points in 1 skill. Do this solo and you are obviously dead.

Furthermore, i don't think the druid is overpowered. Not in LOD and certainly not in ME. Take the classic fury werewolf in LOD for example. A very powerfull melee character indeed, very comparable to the barbarian. Made the paladin really pale in comparison. Now in 1.10 they gave zeal some +damage and a big synergy to boost damage some more. Now the melee paladin and druid build do compareable damage, the paladin with the blocking and other shield bonusses, the druid with more hp, both boosting the party with an aura. Sounds very balanced to me.

[Éowyn]

Oh, yes, I forgot something...

Since fighting monsters of your level is so important now (even more than before), couldn't there be a way to see it ingame?
(say, in the character screen, when you look at your to-be-hit chance? I'd say something like "chance to be hit by a fallen (lvl 2) : 10%").

Grrmmmm... after reading this again, I think that's pretty unrealistic, since it would involve hex-editing...

There is a way of doing this, but it requires in some way cheating. I think you know Map Hack. Now you can disable all of its "features" in the config except the one that a monster's monster level is shown in its life bar.

Quill Rat (Lv.2)

Then you would have what you want and don't really use a cheat.

And about Valar impossible to solo, I don't like this idea too. Some people want to play solo too
Sure these synenergies are nice in some way. But when you build a 2 tree sorc you won't have any skill points left for synenergies. And with a one tree sorceress I made bad experience, well I didn't really played in big parties with here.
She was my first LoD Sorceress I used Meteor and Fireball after 1.10 she is going to be stronger because both skills are going to profit from each other, but with all these immunities you can't really play alone. And the nice three tree build will be pretty weak because she can really max one of here skills together with the mastery.

The Druid as Wearbear is no walking life potion, maybe if you're also using the vine, but I don't think it that much useful. And maybe I did something wrong, but my wearbear is slow and takes damage even with ~+40% or more IAS and ~+15% or more life steal.

[Myhrginoc]

There is a way of doing this, but it requires in some way cheating. I think you know Map Hack. Now you can disable all of its "features" in the config except the one that a monster's monster level is shown in its life bar.

Quill Rat (Lv.2)

Then you would have what you want and don't really use a cheat.

I know you are referring to mápháck in about as benign a way as is possible, but we really do insist you don't refer to it on this board. We warn people for advocating it, and it wouldn't be fair to make exceptions.

If you wonder what we consider unacceptable per our Terms of Service, part XV, if the program runs outside of the game, fine, but if it runs within the game, not fine. So a character editor is okay, because you have to edit the d2s while not in a game to have effect. But a trainer is not because it changes your character while the character is in a game.

[Khan]

Comments:

Difficulty
The overall difficulty in normal and nightmare feels right to me and we really don't want people (and ourselves too) to get in situations so early in the game when we must go back and act. It is ok to feel that the fighting is becoming less easy and the occasional death is happening every hour or so but dying more often early on is not good.

The problem about the scaling of difficulty in D2 vs D1 is that in D2 monster threat is much more dynamic. In D1 you entered a level of three types of monsters, with doors that worked as chokepoints (not as in D2 where monsters laghit through doors, lagteleport themselves behind you or just plainly ignore walls .... you guessed it: because of lag. Btw I am talking LAN or Singleplayer here) and also these monsters' combat values were pretty condensed and well defined. A Black Knight has 200 HP while a Steel Lord in the next level has 220 which you can actually feel as a slight and steady increase in threat.
In D2 you have in one situation Quillrats that are nearly immobile, very scattered in groups of 3 or 4 and have 100 HPs... and a few steps away you get assaulted by three groups of Orc Chieftains with each 8 Orcs, a group of archers and a bossgroup of charging Lancers with a Conviction aura that suddenly makes all monsters hit you with 50% chance where they before had 20%.

So if we made the singular monsters tougher, those situations above will result in one hit kill scenarios that are not fun but frustrating.

but on the other hand I agree that in Valar diff things can go a bit rougher maybe because this is where a real character will be from level 50-60 upwards and there he should take his time to beat the final challenges.


Weapon speeds

I am not sure if thats editable with the new patch. And if so it would imbalance the artificial balance we managed now with all the skills and damage boni that are adjusted to the current weapon speeds.
The druid is really not overpowered. I know it is ridiculous that he is so slow with fast weapons and so fast with the huge ones, but as it is it doesn't overpower him.
The only thing I really hate about this seemingly random weapon speed determination is that you never know if a given weapon is usable at a viable speed


Resists

yes it might be a nice idea to make the malus even bigger in Valar, but not much since right now it's already pretty balanced. Of course you can manage to have max resists. But you must trade of lots of good features for it and it's still only 75%.
Try to play the game with 50% resists and you will see that it's a major pain in the lower back of your hero. We don't want to make characters slaves of shields or having resistances on each single item.


Skills and synergies

The synergies we have in mind are primarily very small boni that make it useful to either spend points in low level skills to survive the initial 30 levels while still not going wasted, or to be able to spend points into skills you never use after you spent 20 in all necessary skill points of your built.

For example my Smiterdan is maxed out it all he needs (smite, might, holy shield and a few in thorns and conversion) so he would love to invest some points in concentration to get say a 3% synergy bonus per level on might.

as for additional effects, we will try to remove and edit all these first to make all skills work like in 1.09 and from that point on see what useful changes can be made with the new options (mainly in formerly useless skills like Blade Fury, Holy Fire, Blessed aim, Enchant etc)


Summons

Summons as they are now are mainly meatshields (apart from the druid summons maybe) and to serve that purpose they must have huge hitpoints. It is much more difficult to balance them like players for example in respect of getting hit. We can balance the game so that normal players have AC enought to have a behit% of 20-25% which makes them survive melee combat if not surrounded.
For Summons this is not as easy as there AC or Behit% is nowhere to be seen and we are unsure of which boni and mali they get on top of their listed values in monstats.txt

Therefore they are probably hit much more than players (also because they are dumb as a rock and don't know fear even if they face ten grinning Nazgul). Their only way to survive a useful amount of time is having huge amounts of HP.

But I do agree that they have too much health in multiplayer games. So if possible we will turn off their HPs getting boosted by more players or the players X command like monsters are.


Morgoth

well editing is AI is kinda tricky but ... in our current working version he has errr... some sort of company.
You will love it

[Jonaleth Irenicus]

It is amazing how D2/LoD can present a character situations that are impossible to deal with just because of what Khan explained. It was not such a problem as of 1.09, but if Blizzard releases 1.10 in much the same shape as it is now, single player is doomed.

The thing is, I tried a lot of characters in the current version and I have still not been able to get past Hell Act 3. It is too much frustrating (in single player at least).

The situation is, my single player characters find it very difficult to proceed in Hell (the situation has reached such an extreme that you either kill the monsters easily or face an "impossible to win" scenario).

However, my Paladin coupled with a Sorceress friend actually SLAUGHTER the monters. It was so easy to kill the monsters that we actually stopped playing the characters before we got to Act 3. Anyway, moving on...



Disturbing summon news from 1.10: I do not know what kind of control you have over them (in terms of changing them), but in 1.10, Necromancer skeletons, especially the normal skeletons, are VERY durable. I do not know if it is high defense (I don't think so), or if they get some kind of physical resistance, but my Undead King has 28 in all skeleton skills, and my Fire Golem who has 1700 life dies MUCH FASTER than my skeletons which have 600 life. When monsters target my Fire Golem, it is dead meat in a few seconds. However, I rarely have to replace my skeletons because of death (I lost 4 skeletons to Mephisto in NM, players 8).



Does Morgoth have Black Knights with him? Oh please oh please, let him have black knights. Maybe even a few old ArchMages from D1? Pretty please?

[Éowyn]

Disturbing summon news from 1.10: I do not know what kind of control you have over them (in terms of changing them), but in 1.10, Necromancer skeletons, especially the normal skeletons, are VERY durable. I do not know if it is high defense (I don't think so), or if they get some kind of physical resistance, but my Undead King has 28 in all skeleton skills, and my Fire Golem who has 1700 life dies MUCH FASTER than my skeletons which have 600 life. When monsters target my Fire Golem, it is dead meat in a few seconds. However, I rarely have to replace my skeletons because of death (I lost 4 skeletons to Mephisto in NM, players 8).

Really ?
Nice than a skeletton guy isn't that impossible anymore

[Pispotje]

[b] SUMOONS [/b]

This problem already does excist, somehow (some??) monsters(not only bosses) do extra dam to summons/golems my 2400 hp fire golem can die in 3 hits on valar/act5, I have to play at players 3 command to play "normaly" normaly= not constantly recastaing the golem, without casting much other spells, I can play on players 8, so now my golem nearly never dies, so if you're planning to keep their same hp regardless of players difficulty...... you truly have to boost them in an other way. otherwze the golem is useless (I'm already talking about lvl 20 firegolem/mastery)

[b] difficulty [/b]
I don't know how difficult it is for melee-chars to finish act 5/valar normaly, but I think regardless of cahr-type, it has to be near impossible to fininish the game solo-like, like it was wit d1me (I never had my 3th dot) now I can beat the game at players 8, here's a huge difference

[b] resist [/b]
Hmmmm, this will make my char even more vulnarble against spells, my equipment doesn't allow to have much more resis, though I sacreficed my resis for dam, and luckly a few monster are able to hit me with spells (lightning/fire aura monster and meteor casting liches) are a big pain in my ass.

[Jonaleth Irenicus]

Really ?
Nice than a skeletton guy isn't that impossible anymore

Not only is he "not impossible", I think he is really good, he would be very useful in a party. I was mainly playing this guy for fun, I wanted a character that practically required the least skill/attention. He has maxed Skeletons/Mages/Mastery, 1 point in Amplify damage, and currently trying to max FireGolem. He is Clvl 68 about now, doing Act 5 NM (just rescued Anya). I have always been playing with "players 8" and he never had a hard time.

I have +12 summoning skills total (so Slvl 32 in maxed skills). I can summon 12 Skeletons and 12 Mages. The only thing I do is cast amplify and either watch television or eat. From time to time I portal to town to get all skeletons together (they sometimes spread around), but compared to 1.09, skeletons are lot more durable, fast, and try as much as they can so stick close to you.

Since Skeletons do not die easily even in players 8, I think this Necromancer could be very useful in parties (he would lag probably, but think of how many times he will save others by his horde). I would say his killing speed is average (his advantage is that he never faces impossible situations since he deals all damages).

Oh by the way, I did not invest in anything in the Bone&Poison tree. I could probably use corpse explosion or poison nova to speed things up or keep every monster poisoned, but I wanted this Necro to be the ultimate laziest character ever so I ignored the skills (I was so reluctant to put that 1 point in amplify damage that I had to wait till I was Clvl 50 or so).

[Éowyn]

You are really playing a lazy char. I tried to play such a necro too (or to play necros at all) but I didn't came far. He is too lazy for me hehe. So I tried a new one with poison nova but didn't came far to (because of Icewind Dale 2 )

[Jonaleth Irenicus]

Sometimes I meet a boss group and just leave my necro there and don't even bother with amplify damage (unless the boss is cursed, because then it is an eye for an eye).

With the new teleport item, my necromancer's workload has doubled (I have to cast teleport from time to time, so I have to right click, imagine my pain).

Oh, did I mention I do not use revives because they would require replacement after 180 seconds (that makes an extra clicking every three minutes, but the problem is getting into the trouble of choosing the suitable revive and getting one that is fast and able to follow you around, too much thought included...).