Are Melee Characters Viable?

[adamantine]

I've started playing my melee assassin again(stopped playing at level 16), remade her with more defence thought in mind, but I bumped into a whole load of problems:

0) I have spent the majority of skill/stat points to boost my hp/vit, which means I've got 375 hp at level 17, in act 2 sewers. The monsters do 1/2 to 1/3 of my healthbar in damage, which is kind of absurd. I've gotten gothic plate now which boost my def pretty good, but since it's all a mix of elemental and weapon attackers it doesn't help.

1) There's no increased run/walk in the game(I haven't checked unis/sets), only decreased with heavy armour. Therefore if you try to run away you won't manage to, and you always get hit, and since you die in 2-3 hits, if you're about to get hit by more than 1 monster(which isn't fast) you're dead, instantly, every time, nothing to do.

2) Rares seem very scarce, and with the always upgrading item quality(worse than d2x it seems) if you want to use more damage weapons/higher def armour you'll have to go with ordinary ones, otherwise you'll do too little damage and get hit all the time.

3) You have to get attack rating, defence, and higher damage compared to mages/ranged attackers, which equals spending a whole lot skill and statpoints, while you still need resists(more skill points) and health(skillpoints and vitality).

4) Weapons break in 30 seconds. Well, I just changed the durability on all items to 250, so no problem there anymore.

5) Mercs. I've tried to hire some 3-4 times, because of the difficulty they die in a few secs(the desert merc was 1-hitted by a single beetle), I can't imagine how I'd suppose to keep them alive.

Hmm, I probably forgot something more. Are you supposed to use stone curse for crowd control, all the time, in every single place? Seems kind of dull.

Or is it just supposed to be hard in the beginning?

[Brother Laz]

> All this and more is why I abandoned the mod.
> Once you have the runes for a stun runeword, it'll get too easy.
> Walk, don't run. Having 14% chance to get hit as opposed to 95% makes a difference.
> Mercs were unfinished - I made them weak on purpose so people would not [ab]use them in the beta.
> Rares suck? Didn't notice.
> Durability is only bad on lower items.
> Not stone curse... dark embrace.
> Dark embrace is why the 'sin has such low hit points.

[adamantine]

> Not stone curse... dark embrace.
> Dark embrace is why the 'sin has such low hit points.

Yeah, I noticed. I wrote (and played, and died, and died, and died, and tried different strategies, and died) a lot more after that post.

I've only tried a couple of other mods (considered great by most people), but didn't like them at all, this one is the only one I've played for 3+ hours.

There are a lot of bugs(which I've mentioned far below), and now for the second time (last time was on the char before, which I'm not playing anymore) I'm getting this when trying to open the stash on my (second)character.

Assertion Failure
Location: D2Common/SKILLS/Skills.cpp, line 3470
Expression: ptSkill

I tried to open them with a character editor (ATMA), that's all, and they wouldn't even open, so I don't that think that can be related.


In case you don't want to (or have time to) read all that rambling, in short:

* Poison damage on weapons is 50-100 at act 1 already, while emeralds have single digit damage, and the poisoner's (buzzer) poison attack in act 2 does ~2 damage total with no resist.

* SrcDamage with submissiles might only work with 128. Radament's ranged attack has 10 there, but it does 1 damage. I've noticed it behaving this way as well when trying to fix Claw Viper's bugged poison javelin skill.

* Rares don't suck, they rock. But with the rarity (and 800 itemtypes) when you get to higher level and need more defence/damage you'll have to give up those rares. Since I'm only in act 2 I could be completely wrong.

* The Sin's starting skills don't show any difference in damage on the character screen.

* The useless-items-factor is 10x higher than in unmodded.

It probably sounds like i'm complaining too much....but Median is better than anything out there.

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And now for ramble-mania:

I managed to get to sewers level 3 eventually, and killed Radament. I thought at first he'd slaugther me with his bone spirit, but it was that attack the gargoyle towers in act 1 use, which did 1 damage to me. Maybe an anti-mage spell? Melee was a pretty stupid idea, he did about 350 damage with his. He went down pretty quickly from ~20 firebolts though.

My build right now consists of:

Spells:
1 heal
1 firebolt
1 static spike

Passives:
2 life per kill
2 mana per kill
1 lightning/cold/fire resist
1 increased energy/strength/dex
4 increased vitality
1 increased hit points
1 increased gold find

I figured the lightning spell would be good if I'd bump into fire immunes and can't use melee, that hasn't happened so far. It's basically the same as nova, although it probably can hit the same target more than once. Not much use except for farming easy places(going back to act 1 for potions) because of the low range.

Firebolt has served me well, whenever I die now I just stun(Dark Embrace) the monsters then kill 'em with Firebolt. Also against cold/lightning mages I use this since they run away so much and their attack sends me into hit recovery.

Heal is amazing, there could just as well not be health potions. Actually I forget to use potions all the time(if I didn't I'd might escape many "insta-deaths") since this is so good.

Passives, yeah, big mistakes here. The "per kill" ones aren't of much use when I have 470 hp and when monsters chop off half of that, and since I might only kill 10 monsters per death, mana per kill isn't of much use, so both of them were a waste.

Next time(or as I level up) I'll put 3 points in the elemental resistances(which gives me 43 in each), then a couple in +vit/hp, that should increase my survivability a lot.

Since I bought a normal Great Axe(for all my money!) I've only been using stun, since I'm killing monsters as fast as they're killing me. I'm kind of wondering if its speed is intentional: it has way higher damage than any other weapon I've seen, and i'm swinging this like it's a phase blade(could be faster even).


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edit #2 > It seems like the scaling never stops, the desert giant spiders do some 300 damage, which is a little bit more than half my hp now at level 21. I sure wish there was some way to reduce physical damage, but all the dr items i've gotten have had a value of 1, wow..

I tried going back to act 1 for easy loot (which is a good idea, I got several rares and gems in only a few mins), was pretty amusing to get killed by the Rakanishu replacements, they had 50% chance to hit me at level 20 with 450 def! The Smith after landing an amp on me did around 350 damage, ow.


Compared to d2x's "95% useless items" Median has 99.9%. After finally getting 3 Eld's(and only Eld's) I tried cubing them...with no result. There's no new cube recipes, just the quest ones and gem upgrading, there is only one runeword with Eld, which wasn't finished, joy. So no use for gems except socketing, no use for runes except runewords(zero properties), which I can understand because of runeword balance reasons. No jewels for crafting.

Potions cost about 100+, and they sell for 1-2, so you'll have to gather several inventories full to just a single one, so going back to easier places is the best way to get any potions if you need them.

Jewels are about as good as properties you find on items, and since they're so rare, they're total junk. What about getting 3% magic find, or 1% lightning resist jewel every ~3 hours? Woop.

Charms, well, at least you can switch between them, and I've actually gotten a good one: +1% vitality! It only seem to add hp sometimes if I put it on/off, maybe it's really 0.7% vitality? I've got ones which give me a total of 4% in resists, so not completely useless.


Poison damage seem pretty bugged up(/me blames low amount of testing and .txt confusion!): chipped/flawed emeralds only got one figure poison damages, but weapons with clvl requirements of ~5 have up to 100! And the poisoners in act 2 do about...1 damage with their poison attack.


I tried out a mage(-act2 command) to see how "overpowered" they were in comparison, and, hehe I had it harder with a Sorc. Seems like I took more damage(350+ to a monster just outside act 2 town) with energy shield up, and it's worse to lose both your hp and spellpower in a single hit. I so don't want to imagine how hard the ancients will be.

Her starting skills wasn't much to brag about and neither was the damage of spells, it seems these(mages) are more equipment dependant, since that's got to be the way to get good spell damage.


I'm really loving the Sin's starting skills: first you try to position the monsters (while not getting killed in 3 hits) with stun, then multi-hit 'em (with a good range weapon) to death. Or stun 5+ scattered monsters, hitting one a couple of times then going around and stunning them again. Or if you're feeling brave: just let tons of monsters surround you then multi-hit them and pray you're doing more than 1/12 damage.

[Brother Laz]

Assertion Failure
Location: D2Common/SKILLS/Skills.cpp, line 3470
Expression: ptSkill

And this was the nail in Median's coffin. Have no idea what causes it.

I tried to open them with a character editor (ATMA), that's all, and they wouldn't even open, so I don't that think that can be related.

Because of modified itemstatcost.txt.

* Poison damage on weapons is 50-100 at act 1 already, while emeralds have single digit damage, and the poisoner's (buzzer) poison attack in act 2 does ~2 damage total with no resist.

What poisoner? Is there even a monster that does poison damage in act 2? As for weapons, yeah it's probably a bit early, but what's its duration? Eight seconds?

* The Sin's starting skills don't show any difference in damage on the character screen.

Do they actually have different damage?

* The useless-items-factor is 10x higher than in unmodded.

Just the runes? I made it so that the better rares don't spawn with crap affixes. Did it not work?

[...]it was that attack the gargoyle towers in act 1 use, which did 1 damage to me.

Huh?

I figured the lightning spell would be good if I'd bump into fire immunes and can't use melee, that hasn't happened so far. It's basically the same as nova, although it probably can hit the same target more than once.

Well, it isn't like nova, it's a circle of 12 charged bolts. And yes, it can hit multiple times.

Also against cold/lightning mages I use this since they run away so much and their attack sends me into hit recovery.

Try running away so they chase you, and then turning around and hitting them before they start casting.

Already planned on a cold skill?

Heal is amazing, there could just as well not be health potions. Actually I forget to use potions all the time(if I didn't I'd might escape many "insta-deaths") since this is so good.

Yay, first it was too weak, now it is too strong.

Next time(or as I level up) I'll put 3 points in the elemental resistances(which gives me 43 in each), then a couple in +vit/hp, that should increase my survivability a lot.

You didn't? That would explain it.

edit #2 > It seems like the scaling never stops, the desert giant spiders do some 300 damage, which is a little bit more than half my hp now at level 21.

Don't worry, the scaling decreases from here on.

I sure wish there was some way to reduce physical damage, but all the dr items i've gotten have had a value of 1, wow..

Defense rating...

I tried going back to act 1 for easy loot (which is a good idea, I got several rares and gems in only a few mins), was pretty amusing to get killed by the Rakanishu replacements, they had 50% chance to hit me at level 20 with 450 def!

They're guest monsters from a higher act.

The Smith after landing an amp on me did around 350 damage, ow.

On purpose: he's supposed to be like the Butcher in D1, an uber-enemy early on.

Jewels are about as good as properties you find on items, and since they're so rare, they're total junk. What about getting 3% magic find, or 1% lightning resist jewel every ~3 hours? Woop.

Rather have 15% IAS or +20 max damage?

Charms, well, at least you can switch between them, and I've actually gotten a good one: +1% vitality!

The sarcasm in this sentence is so obvious...

It only seem to add hp sometimes if I put it on/off, maybe it's really 0.7% vitality?

It depends on your base vitality.

Poison damage seem pretty bugged up(Adam blames low amount of testing and .txt confusion!)

Hey, I'm not stupid! I just suck at balancing...

Seems like I took more damage(350+ to a monster just outside act 2 town) with energy shield up

Actually, you should not be taking any damage unless the damage was greater than your mana pool and the shield drops.

PS: did you know 'sins get an attack speed bonus for using staves?