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Approval averages of the patch so far from our own member base have shown from moderate to negative, entailed by sighs of soiled hopes and dashed dreams with a patch that fixed select issues years in standing and avoided others (see Patch 1.13 poll). Positive feelings were common only among 16% of our member base, whereas negative opinions topped them at 34%, with the rest somewhere in the middle (based on the input of sixty-four members- if you have not participated yet in the poll, be sure to contribute here).Blizzard has stated that they take criticism in to account on the patch and that opinions are being read over by the Legacy Team and others (see official Blizzard representative response here), and rightly so. There is obviously no way short of global Internet failure that could quell the din of fans across the online community. Thankfully, a member at the official Diablo III forums (J2h) has summarized the alleged top suggestions for the patch that have not been met or been achieved adequately.
Quote from1) Runes need to be more obtainable. Although we appreciate the increased drop rate it simply is not enough. Aside from upping the drop rate[:] gambling runes, rune shrines, hell forge quest reward upgrade are just some of the ideas that have been brought up.
Drop rates for runes, specifically high runes, or HR's, were said to have been increased in the patch notes revealed by Bashiok (see The Wait is Over -- PTR Patch 1.13). Sixen later ran an article showing rough estimates of the actual increase from the base chance to find select high runes to their new chances of being found (see 1.13 Analysis):
Having played myself in Hell mode on the PTR now, I can safely say that I have found no HR's to date. Maybe the chances do need some more tweaking, or should they stay the same? Some contend that such a change is part of the down-scaling of the difficulty across the board of Diablo II in the latest patch, which falls nicely in line with J2h's fifth observed patch trend:
Quote from5) There is a concern [t]hat with respec, the removal o[f] Iron maiden and the nerfing of souls the game is becoming easier. I am sure this is debated although I have not actually read the thread myself.
The WilloWisp, or "Soul", as most players call it (for its other type, the Burning Soul), can be considered one of the most powerful and annoying monsters in the game, often a one-hit kill to the player with low lightning resistance. Even with a large amount of lightning resistance, they often spawn in swarms, such as in the Throne of Destruction in Act V, Hell mode. Even worse is when they spawn as unique monsters with Conviction auras or damage modifiers that augment their attack, often adding to their deadliness. In addition to high damage output, they drain mana in less time than it takes you to click a mana potion.
The official patch note on Willowisps states the following:
Official Blizzard Quote:
- Nightmare/Hell WilloWisps champions/uniques have had their damage greatly reduced.
The damage relief is obviously a help to tip games in the favor of players, but does removing this challenge favor easier play to an extreme and remove a major element of danger?
From themes of danger and challenge springs thought of character fortification. The prime method of doing so is, of course, leveling our characters. It looks like players on the broad are looking for a different kind of grind from the one many have been doing for years now (Baal Runs, anyone?), maybe even something better:
Quote from2) A new way to gain experience would be nice. The most popular way seems to be to make the cow level give more experience. There have been some other suggestions , one of which that jumps out at me is an endless end game dungeon and most would support it but I doubt it is something we will see.
The endless dungeon idea has been being tossed around even by our community for some time, especially in regards to Diablo III. Would this provide a refreshing way of leveling as opposed to the medium we've been using for years? Any form of grinding will ultimately become repetitive and boring, but perhaps in light of what we've been doing for many years now, any change would be a good change.
Quote from3) A way to stop bots spamming in games, channels and farming items. A captcha has been suggested but there seems to be a large % of the community against the captcha idea.
http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=21730685883&sid=3000
http://diablofans.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=55&pictureid=406&thumb=1
Now, this one I believe hit right on the bullseye. Bots, third-party programs that are run by computers to do repetitive tasks (at least in the scope of Diablo II), have been spamming our chat channels, spoiling our trade economy, and plaguing our games with advertisements for years now (with poor grammar and spelling, to boot!). To prove the point, I joined a random public channel on US East recently and took an image of an all-too-common scene (see right).Ways of avoiding bots, at least of the spammy kind, are possible. Creating single player games or games with high level requirements or passwords keep the typically low-leveled bots out of your games so you can go about actually playing the game without a field of tan to blot out your vision. These steps shouldn't be necessary, but be that as it may, are doable.
Bots that run games on an inhuman level, skipping through levels at the speed of light (tentative term) and milking bosses like they're going out of style, have a profound impact on the in-game economy, accelerating it within weeks of a fresh ladder reset to hyper inflation of goods and services. They have been around for years now with no working fix.
Right along side bots comes the issue of bugs, possibly even exploits, that soil the game for normal players, duelers, and people just trying to get through the game:
Quote from4) Bug fixes. While the biggest include TPPK, Aura stacking and drop barbs there are a number of minor bugs that would be nice to see fixed as well. There are a lot of details in these threads.
TPPK, or Town Portal Player-Killing, has also been around for years, with minor, half-hearted fixes coming from the patching team every so often, such as trimming the duration of projectile skills after using a Town Portal or entering town. Often used against the vastly weaker underbelly of leachers and followers in grinding games, the predator in question normally joins the party filled with prey to discover their location, quickly catches up with them, and in one fluid motion (either via a third-party hack or extensive practice) casts projectiles skills in the direction of the targets, sends up a TP, exits to town, and hostiles the party, with the residual projectiles taking the prey unaware and often killing them.
Aura stacking, which exploits a bug in the trade system, allows a Paladin and another player to enter the trade screen repeatedly to "stack" up levels on aura skills, letting the player reach ungodly heights of power. For obvious reasons, this is power is gained illegitimately and ruins the prospect of a fair competition field in dueling games for other completely legit players.
Quote from6) I am sure everyone would like to see new items as long as they are balanced with the ones we currently have. The more choices the more unique our characters can be. New Unique and Rune words have been suggested.
Of course, right along with Diablo II come fuzzy nostalgic feelings of acquiring vast amounts of stuff. Finding, trading, equipping, optimizing, and using items has been a mainstay of the Diablo franchise since its inception. As such, it's only natural that fans would request adding more loot to a loot-centric game.
Invariably, we would want to make sure that such gear would be both functional and affordable. The former is an echo of doubt from patch 1.11, which added one new runeword for armor for each character class. Most of these are hardly worth the investment of time or resources with what else is available. More intuitive modifiers and bonuses, though carefully balanced, would make items more ideal for use. The latter, affordability, would be an obvious concern for completely legit players, especially legit single player fans. Many of the newer runewords come at very high prices rune-wise, often requiring a couple if not more high runes. Unrealistic rune requirements encourage an immense amount of grinding and/or duping of runes to attain them. On the other hand, however, perhaps the difficulty in attaining such runewords makes having them all the better.
7) The enigma/tele debate rages on?€?
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What list would be complete without the relatively controversial topic of Teleport and Enigma? For years the legitimacy of Teleport, alone, has been questioned, which has heavily affected opinions of it in the upcoming third title (see Teleport, good or bad for D3?). With the Enigma armor runeword granting this skill to any character in the game that can afford the item, it has long been contended that the removal or altering of this item would drastically affect the in-game economy, level griding and MFing bots, and even duels. Teleport has long been the number one choice by the masses for transportation in Diablo II because of its mana cost efficiency at higher skill levels, the relative ease of attaining high mana regeneration rates, and its instant effect, all the better affected by Faster Cast Rate.With all that in mind, perhaps Teleportation needs some trimming, or perhaps Enigma needs some nerfing. You decide.
Quote from8) There is a lot of discussion about skill (single or tree) balancing. Here are some of the more popular threads. There are a lot more! Some of the things that keep coming up are Assassin Martial Arts and Druid fire skills,
- http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=21730685246&sid=3000
- http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=21730677745&sid=3000
- http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=21730676557&sid=3000
- http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=21730647612&sid=3000
- http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=21730685771&sid=3000
Ah, yes, and now comes the killer as related to characters: balancing. The magical word has eluded Blizzard for years in Diablo II, despite the innumerable suggestions and cries across the web to make non-cookie cutter builds more viable. Atypical character builds, while fun and a wonderful break from the dull redundancy of rehashing the same-old for character after character, could be viewed as suppressed playing styles for all intents and purposes. Tweaking things like synergy attributes, skill effects, and skill cooldowns can reshape the playerbase's mindset on how to build characters. Other potential limitations, such as monsters that are fully immune to specific (or all) elemental and attack types, restrict the air of open play that many of us wish would return to the game.
Lastly came a suggestion for a change to a manifestation of the Lord of Terror, himself:
Quote from9) There is little debate that the community no longer supports the way the Dclone spawn and Annihilus charm is obtain. It seems to be felt that it currently promotes duping. Although most players appreciate the experience and charm itself we would like would like to see this changed.
http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=21723845867&sid=3000
http://diablofans.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=55&pictureid=426&thumb=1
The big man, himself, requires an enormous toll. Thousands of Stones of Jordan, or "SoJ's", as they're more commonly known, are sold every moment on closed Battle.net in the hope of summoning this powerful adversary to your game (or even your server).The Annihilus Small Charm, resultant treasure of the defeat of the Diablo Clone, is a prize sought after for every build, offering an immense bonus to your character's attributes, skills, and resistances, all the while taking up a modest 1x1 space in your inventory. Sacrifice on the level of SoJ's required to summon the demon really only encourages duping many, many Stones, since the probability of finding one legitimately is already so low.
http://diablofans.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=55&pictureid=427&thumb=1
Duping in general received a hotfix in the patch notes but was rather skimpy on the details (see here). At the same time, it also admitted a wonderful detail about duping: the are other ways of accomplishing it. Such exploits take only the time and dedication of an ardent cheater to find. This, however, will hopefully stem the tide and buy us all some time.As for whether or not fans and players can be expecting any of these things to be addressed in the live PTR, patch 1.13, or future patches, Bashiok offered a smidgen of hope for the die-hard players that will play until the cows come home, hope that will hopefully prove reliable in the future, as opposed to those raised about the release of patch 1.13 (see WCIII Patch is Up- Diablo II Patch 1.13 Soon to Follow?):
Official Blizzard Quote:
We're being careful right now about posting replies (ie not doing it) because we can't commit to anything yet. There's been too much expectation around 1.13 already. We're still evaluating a lot of reports, a lot of issues, new or returning requests, and we'll have to make decisions on a case by case basis for how we'll move forward. It would be a mistake at this point to further raise expectations of requests/fixes that can't or maybe just won't make it in. To give you a small hint, nothing is going to happen or be decided until after the new year.
[...]
I also want to impress upon everyone that 1.13 isn't and never has been intended as a final patch for Diablo II. I realize with the long delays in getting it to PTR, and longer stretches of time inbetween patches that it seems like it's necessary that 1.13 encompass everything because, well, there's just no guarantee that anything will come after. Or in a timely fashion. But, there is a solid long term plan of action for future support of Diablo II. There's obviously plenty of room for skepticism, and I can't blame anyone for that. But even with that skepticism I hope that we can get the message across that we have no intention of stopping here.
Thanks goes to dunhac82 for tipping off the News Team!
Too bad I had posted the same thing yesterday... Unfortunately, mine wasn't front page, lol.
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Yeah, sure, let's turn the Sorceress into the only legitimate MF'ing build. That'd do wonders. Who needs balance when you can just make one king?
Yeah, and someone will mention the Hammerdin. I don't care about damage that build gives. It's about the practicality of the speed teleport gives an MF'er. If only the Sorceress had it, then that would be the most run build for MF, so you're just creating a new problem.
I agree. Possibly a unique small charm with teleport on it, but it would also have to be fairly easy to find in Hell. That would suffice for me. Just get people to use armor other than Enigma.
This. It wouldn't be an issue if the character the skill is native to was the only one that had it, because in Hell it's like impossible to be a Sorceress unless you have very high-end gear that helps break immunity (like Infinity, which is four HR's: Ber Mal Ber Ist). Teleport does not mean the Sorceress has it easy.
Personally, I think the skill on Enigma, if it's kept there (which it probably will be), should be changed so that it's always level one, or the armor, itself, should have negative FCR. Or maybe just have another Teleport but with larger delays.
1939 = Start of WWII.
Is blizzard saying Diablo is Hitler?
Just saying, 1939 is a weird number to pick otherwise.
I say just give it charges. Like 20ish. That way you can use it to get out of a bind and you have to actually think how you are going to use it. I feel it should be super expensive to fix as well. I don't want to go duel and have the kid run to town 9x in 1 fight so he can go repair his charges for his enigma so he can run to the cold plains and back.
In duels however I think it adds a lot more then it hurts. The only characters it really screws over are shapeshifters, and thats only becuase they can't tele for some reason. If you make a list of builds that either wouldn't be possible, or would take a massive nerfing, many to the point of which they wouldnt even be useful in duels anymore, it'd be a lot longer of a list then builds enigma screws. Ridiculous absorb/res stacking screws over sorcs far more then other classes being able to tele.
I think banning tppk, that lame ias/fcr/fhr hack, autoaims, and making it so people don't desynch constantly would improve the gaming atmosphere a lot more then removing tele. I never felt like I got ripped off because someone had a fast fcr set up and good anticipation/aiming skills with their character, but it is mighty lame when some desynching auto aiming hammerdin appears on your corpse spamming hammers 2 seconds after you die to him.
- Shape shifters could actually be used
- Barbarians could actually use more then just leap
- Hammers would be as gay as they are now but I think they should either stop desynch or make it a cast delay after charge
- Javazon can also be useful now without the need of FC
- Zealer could make a rebound altho I doubt it since smite > Zeal anyday
- Foh will get a HUGE boost in fanship
- Fire druids would get a boost in fanship as well since Armageddon would actually be useful since it's unaimable
- Kicker assassins could be useful and would actually use more skills then just MB MB MB MB MB MB MB MB. They have dragon flight remember people...
- Necro could actually use Bone prison on anyone and not just pallys or other melee guys.
- And of course my favorite...noone can run. No more chasing a kid to act 5 from the blood moor to finish a duel, no more waiting 9 minutes so the kid can run and heal at akara, no more jumping rejects who just kamikazi on you cause that's all they can do. This would make it like classic but with runewords, and classic is fantastic.
Enigma ruined a hell of alot more dueling builds then it helped. Of course for this to work honestly the sorc would need some sort of nerfing. Back when enigma didn't exist sorcs could be dealt with with the right game plan but they weren't packing 20k FB spamming 9 screens away.
Barbs, they'd leap even more. Tele is the main way for BvC or BvA to catch anyone. If you can't catch them your gonna play more defensively until they screw up and make a bad tele. Now you can make a bvb, bva, or bvc, they all are viable, and all have their strong points and weaknesses. Get rid of engima and bva and bvc are no longer possible, seems to me like its adding variety to the class.
Pallies, most of them charge more then tele anyhow. Pally builds wouldn't change much with or without enigma.
Necroes, Hey good point, bone prison would be a little more useful without enigma! Oh wait, the entire summon tree would suck balls without enigma. Seems like nigma makes more then it breaks here too.
Assassin, With or without enigma, people are going to opt for wwsin over kicker. Its like making a conc barb over a wwbarb. Its a niche build people make for various reasons, its just not very useful.
Druids, Fire druids suck for more reasons then people having enigma. Good lucking using armageddon as an offensive spell when it trails behind you. They just arent popular becuase they don't do much damage, have timered spells, are hard to aim, and still are outdamaged and slower then fire sorcs. If anything lack of enigma would hurt fire druids, and windy's because you couldnt stack your minions with tele. I'll admit though, lack of enigma would be nice for SS, probably the only builds in the game it'd pwn for.
Sorcs, They'd be getting an obvious boost in the sense of being the only ones left with tele, but guess what, other people tele'ing doesn't ruin sorcs...sorb does.
How exactly are you going to stop people from running? If you can't catch a tele'er with your tele'er, your not going to catch a runner with your runner. If I know I'm gonna flee to town when I get low, I'm just gonna hug the edge of town all the time. Pussies are gonna be pussies with or without tele.
Fix desynch, get rid of the lame ias/fcr/fhr hack, ban autoaims aggressively, and maybe lowering max res/sorb so ele builds arent so damn easy to totallynegate would do a hell of a lot more for the dueling environment then removing enigma.
One other change I'd love to see in dueling is for rejuvs to be unusable while hostile. This would end so much crying in duel games and make pk'ing pub games a lot more challenging:)
Barbs leap then tele and ww, or tele then zerk. Without teleport leap would kinda be only used in team duels since if you are close enough to act on the leap stun then you are close enough to WW or zerk anyway so why leap?
Right but again zealers would get a big boost, FOH would get a huge boost since just cause they don't get a bonus from using teleport they are nerfed from other people using teleport tho.
Oh wait if you die to an amp damage summoner you might want to remake?
Keep it at charges like 20ish and this summoner can still kill newbs or pvm with no problem, just he cant run for help in cold plains anymore.
Pin a guy in the corner and kicker>ww. Kick has amazing stun just like smite. WW and kick are both amazing and kick would be easier to pull off then lay traps, mb, dragon flight, ww.
Fire druids can do alot of damage with their fissure attack and if you don't have over 75% res you will die to a good one within seconds. Armageddon hits in a radius around you and would much more useful when people arn't flying around randomly on the field. Maybe molten boulder and volcano can be useful?
That's right except there are ways to stop a runner. IE bone prison, slow, decrep, ect. You can cut a runner off. With tele if you don't hit him hes gone. People are always gonna be pussies it's just easier to deal with when they are on foot.
Fully agree with that.
It would be easy for them, and fun for us seeing 2-5 new normal monsters around.
Eh, I've always done well with zons, and have come across plenty of other people doing well with legit zons, but lets pretend for a minute that bowzons do completely and utterly suck. How is eliminating every build that makes use of enigma tele just to help bowzons a bit going to add to the dueling scene?
It breaks desynch, mainly useful when theres pallies around, which is pretty much always in duels. It puts things into fhr motion, making it great for useful for screwing with people trying to keep distance if you have high enough level of it, and like you said, its great for groups. I know I'd leap a hell of a lot more in a lot of situations if I lost tele.
Zeal would still blow. Smite > Zeal. Its just not worth it.
FOH is plenty viable now, even if other people can tele. If you get a namelock you can hit them off screen. The only thing hosing foh'ers right now is people with stacked res/sorb. Guess its like the zon thing...even if we pretend foh'ers are worthless right now...is killing every build that uses enigma tele gonna add to the dueling scene?
Lack of enigma would make the only minion worth wasting mana on for pvp druids oak sage. A pure summoner with no tele would suck so much they probably couldnt even pk noobs in a norm baal run. How is killing any usefullness of minions in pvp adding the dueling?
Even if you want to drag pvm into the fray here, I think everyone would agree tele is pretty damn handy to have even if your only use for it is maneuvering your merc.
Oh cool...so kicks would be useful...when you pin someone in a corner!! That happens so often in this game! Really though, you'd never have an easier time landing kick then aiming a ww...just not gonna happen. Kick/zeal is just never going to be popular unless they get some insane bonuses or smite and ww take a huge nerfing.
Molten boulders soooo slow its pretty much a joke if you manage to hit someone with it, and volcano damage just sucks, not to mention they're both blockable, and timered. As far as armageddon goes, personally, I've seen more hits while staying in a small area and having people tele into it then I've seen actively trying to chase someone with it or someone running into it. And as far as the res thing...if your strategy depends on them having sucky fire res to begin with, thats just one weak, underpowered build with or without enigma. Here's what this one boils down to in my opinion, fire sorc > fire druid w/nigma > fire druid w/o enimga. Is gimping a gimp build even more gonna make it better, or do you think perhaps Bliz tweaking their skills would be a better solution?
People are gonna be pussies with or without enigma, and guess what, if you nk me, I'm gonna town on you too! I'd do it with or without enigma, so removing it woudlnt change this aspect of the game at all. If someone does it so much you get annoyed, you could just get someone on your flist to help you gank im faster, or leave and join a different game with different people.
Yea it breaks desynch which is fantastic but let's just say they don't fix desynch, even if you break it with leap how are you gonna take advantage of that .5 second stun? Especially with the range leap gives? No way you are fast enough to run over and catch a ww. It's good for...dare I say pinning people into a wall? If you can maneuver your leap to smash someone into a wall then yes it is viable in a 1v1. Without teleport tho leap's main usage would be in team duels or to give you some breathing room in a pub game.
There's no doubt res/sorb dominate a foher horribly. Just look at .9 or lower, when a foh was actually used. By eliminating teleport to a few charges it would add much more strategy to the dueling field and people would see the benefit of the range of FOH since then people couldn't just bum rush them like they do now. How often do you see FOH trashing games, even with just stock 75% res? Go find a good foher and duel him 5x with enigma then take it off and use stock res and go at it, I think you would notice the difference.
Because there is so little usefulness for a summoner as is it is almost a benefit in itself to just kill the build. They would no doubt have to boost the summon tree to make this work. Removing enigma alone is just a stepping stone in the right direction, but skill changes have to made aswell.
Know how often people run into corners or hide behind shit? Alot...
Know how many ponds are usually out there in the moor..alot. Pinning someone down isn't that hard, and kicks with OW and weapon block could be dominant on the field even against ww'ers. It acts much like smite except it takes AR but it is fast as fuck. Kicks are very useful now in LLD or atleast when LLD existed not sure if it does anymore, but a kicker who can actually out flank you will be devastating.
Well they have -res gear available for a reason. What sorc goes out there with no -res gear anymore? Use -res gear on a druid and hell just use fissure primarily and you would see a different side of a fire druid. It needs to have it's timer nerfed but again a few little skill tweaks and this character stands a better chance with no enigma then an ele druid does.
With Elemental shield, I am daring enough to say any good druid weather it be fissure or nado > FB sorc.
Right..but you still died. See I get the chance to NK a shit talking loser when he is on foot, with enigma the shit talking loser makes it back to town so I can chase him around all of act 1 again till he runs back to town. It just adds a new strategy, the whole everyone can teleport has gotten stale. In the end tweaks need to be made to skills to make this all work good, but enigma staying even with tweaks still means alot of builds are broken. Every class has lived with no enigma already and still do in classic, so we are nerfing the over powered versions of these classes with taking enigma away and boosting the weaker ones so when they are in the hands of decent players they can stand a chance.
In summary of all this...
1. Whats stopping you from playing classic if enigma is so game breaking?
2. You want to completely remove a ton of builds/strategies from the playing field, and nerf down a ton of builds(non of which are currently unkillable in 1v1 fights) just to grant a few builds/skills, most of which are already currently popular and useful, a slight boost. Zeal/kick would still suck, foh/bows are both currently very useful. Even if you think pure bow/foh sucks, theres no denying hybridzons and v/t builds are both powerhouses, and guess what, they make use of bows/foh.
What would add a lot of variety to types characters you'd see in pubs, far more then removing enigma could ever hope to accomplish, is simply tweaking res/sorb so everyone and their brother doesn't just sorb the hell out of any half decent elemental based character that joins. I don't know if you noticed...but all the most common, often considered "best" dueling builds, tend to take advantage of melee and magic damage...there is a reason for that...
Tons of builds? I ruined what...a summoner build? Oh wow..that's a mighty hefty blow I dealt. Well like I said, get yourself a zon or a foher..Ill use 75% res vs that foh and vs that zon ill just use 50% DR and I can guarantee 10/10 I am going to smash it, cause you won't keep the distance. Ill then take off enigma and chase after you, and I guarantee you will do much much better in the duel.
How is that gonna add more variety? There are already a shit ton of FB sorcs, a shit ton of blizzers, orbers are starting to make a comeback now and lightning is just starting to pick it up. Even if you made the res worse which it already is kinda bad since anya glitch destroys alot of builds out there and not alot of people are aware of it, it won't change anything other then guarantee more sorcs. Which there is already an abundance of. Again, FOH would get a boost from this but in the end..how well is he gonna fair when I am in his face hitting him cause he can't get away? Cause the second he gets room to breath and attack...im already on him.