This is a post regarding some changes disussed in 2.4. There are many welcome additions and changes brought up during the stream. Here are a few that are concerning.
I won’t respond in this thread. It is opinion based on playing this game extensively in college, and modding both for solo and for a well known mod once the maker hung up the reins and allowed veterans of the community there to continue it.
Newer players, and even some older ones are bound to disagree…I expect a lot will.
Thorns, Might from Act 2 mercs.
Keep thorns as is please.
Not very many people take thorns because they don’t see it as always impactful. Heavy melee mobs like minotaurs and the last set of Baal’s minions are where it earns its pay. Might aura on minions does not compare here.
This gives a cost vs benefit to Thorns vs Might. Removing this diversity dumbs down the knowledge, and CHOICE of WHY to use which aura. Might, in general has a higher clear speed vs safety vs very scary melee mobs. Most will always choose the former. Some of us HIGHLY prefer the latter.
Making this integer based damage return is what should have been done to the Oblivion Kight Iron Maiden curse, rather than removing it. Make a clone of the skill, slap it on Obk’s and you are done. It is not difficult (I’ve modded a lot, and for one of the better known D2 mods).
You will not change the psychology of the players. They will almost always still choose Might for damage. So why then even bother if they still aren’t going to use it?
Making it on attack rather than on hit just makes it more like Might. Always on damage. Please don’t start unifying things like this.
Vipers and mechanics You didn’t fix squat. You changed something that WAS MEANT TO BE THAT WAY. Some of us are old enough to remember the infamous Blizzard post by MichahW ‘Working as intended’ that was STICKIED on your old forums. Was the code really wonky, yes. But ffs don’t say you FIXED something that you simply CHANGED.
Secondly, you just destroyed any reason whatsoever to use blue items for this purpose. The way to defend against that cloud was 2 fold. 1) STAND STILL. and 2) Integer Damage Reduction. And more explicity about 60 of it. You can do well enough with about 1/2 of that.
You also lowered the skill ceiling in the game AGAIN. Good players actually know wth to do, and rarely die there. But no. You cater to people that don’t know mechanics, don’t care to learn, and so water down the game for the rest of us that like this kind of dangerous thing in the game, that has been there for 20 years working that way, and explicitly stated it was intended to be that way, even when pressed over a decade ago.
Bone Skills and energy
Lowering the energy cost of things like Bone Spirit just gives even less reason to every put a point into that thing called Energy. It’s one of the primary stats in the game in case you forget. (i jest, but not really) Even with Insight, you will burn through your mana without investment. This is how it should be. Reducing this burden just promotes higher Vita builds which are already what most do because they ‘are supposed to’
Also, when you get the ability to start teleporting, Insight alone with no energy will still lead to deaths from Mana burn in particular. (Don’t start fixing these either…leave this stuff dangerous). The way to NOT die in those case is Energy, not Vitality. It’s about not being at bottom of mana pool by the time you can cast next. With Energy investment, you become much safer.
Lowering skills costs in general always lead to even higher avg life pools. This shouldn’t be further incentivized.
Wolf skills and IAS
All I have to say is you better be careful with this. With higher attack speeds, Wereforms quickly become wholly hell broken when you start talking 3 frame and below (I think Hunger can get this with Werebear iirc? I forget…I played to much modded versions since, and I only see people discussing that possibility when talking about making well established FPA calculators when I gave a quick search). If you let it go lower that 4, you start seeing a significant difference very fast. If you allow 2 frame…ya…Ubers will be a cake walk. Especially with high Crushing Blow values available. If memory serves, only an Assassin can currently get 2 frame attacks, with blue items.
There is somewhat of an issue with Wereforms in the items. Werebear FireClaw builds don’t really shine until they are very decked out compared to Werewolf. From your discussion, I personally disagree with your idea of what is best gear/ way to play these characters. I played them a ton, and you disregard too much to even really go into in a post like this…The main point is it can be helped by items in the appropriate range of about lvl 50-85.