Oh yeah, I do the potion chug quite often just to clean up the deluge of item labels.
I think it’d be great if they’d make Find Item not allow potions to drop. Keep the drops the same, but just whenever a potion drops, simply drop nothing.
It’d give Find Potion more value as a skill other than just being a synergy for Find Item and Grim Ward, plus help with the clutter.
A simple loot filter to hide potions and other junk would be nice too.
Overall definitely agree!
TBH I don’t think the extra 5% chance we’re “losing” is going to move the needle by a noticeable amount.
I think this would be a neat idea. Similar idea is to make medium and heavy armor provide some DR boost to make up for the speed penalty, since obviously just the higher defense isn’t worth it since heavy armors are rarely used. That said if your proposed change happened, defense in general would be more important, so maybe both changes would be too much.
This could be interesting depending on how it is implemented. Currently Physical Sunder are pretty niche in usefulness, so that would help. I’m not a fan of blanket “area/splash” damage necessarily, vs. having specific skills that hit multiple targets at close range, but I think there’s room for a variety of solutions here.
I have seen this idea thrown around a few times on these forums and I really like it. Helps with progression for melee. Helps with the whole Grief situation (Grief +damage isn’t effected by base damage so it would remain fairly static, but higher base damage would let devs balance more expensive RW to out-perform Grief, and make it easier to balance melee to casters overall).
Interesting idea. TBH at very low levels, melee is actually competitive with casters who are very mana limited and haven’t unlocked insight or items like spirit that give a big mana boost, and normal difficulty isn’t too bad to cruise through with items found along the way for melee. By late normal and NM though between spirit, insight and +skills items becoming available, casters certainly take off.
In general I think the damage and AR boost for melee builds could use some boosting. I recently noticed that my mid 70s (at the time) Zealot with Demon Limb enchant had quite a bit higher AR than my decked out low 90s Frenzy Barb after my friend’s lvl 36 Enchant. ITD makes that less important, but still puts things into perspective. Zealot gets to boost AR with Fant and passive increase from Blessed Aim, plus can always fall back on 1 hard point of Smite for always hit to deliver some CB goodness, and is in general less skill point starved than Frenzy.
Nice idea and helps control the power creep concern.
Neat idea
I’m generally in favor of reducing the ladder only content - make the ladder race and fresh economy be the motivation to play for those who want it. That said I’d almost go the other way and be consistent with your point 7 and buff NL up to Ladder standards, then balance around that as needed.
+1 to 2H love!
I touched on this on your Point 2, before seeing this, agreed!
Sure.
With the right level scaling, yes.
Honestly, I didn’t even realize this existed. I’m indifferent.
Yes.
Yes.
Not totally sold on the other ones I didn’t quote from the OP.
Yes. And I say this as someone who primarily plays ‘casters.’
I am confused. While I for the most part agree that Melee is lackluster in PVM.
The ladder buffs apply to all mobs. The elite/bosses buff would only apply to, well, themselves.
Additionally, the ladder buffs include armor: a stat that exclusively affects melee.
I get where you’re coming from in one sense that the balance is skewed, but in another sense I overall disagree with the proposed items.
Some important observations to be aware of:
So really, the solution is to implement the following:
With that in mind, most of the buffs proposed in this thread aren’t really needed.
With the specific suggestions:
Get rid of the hit cap for melee. Casters never miss. 5% of all melee attacks are guaranteed to miss, no matter what, due to the hit cap being 95%. Allow us to achieve 100% hit with enough attack rating. I’ll leave whether that’s a linear or logarithmic curve to your systems designers.
Agreed. Having a cap of 95% seems completely arbitrary. Melee attacks also need to get around block chances as well.
Remove the no-hit-check system from running. As it stands, when a character runs in D2R, armor does not apply to physical attacks because the hit check against a character’s armor is completely skipped. This almost exclusively benefits casters. Casters very rarely get hit by physical attacks due to being ranged classes, and if they have to move, have tools to do so without running (teleport). Melee classes, however, get hit all of the time whether that’s the initial charge into a group of mobs, or repositioning in the middle of a fight to continue attacking. Make armor count while running to help close this divide. (Bonus points: tie % of armor effectiveness while running to stamina so it’s not a pointless stat.
)
Remove the reduce-block-chance system from running. No further elaboration. Same reasons as #2.
The reason why these penalties were implemented is because you’d become very difficult to hit without them. That said, armour having little relevance in this game is because of this mechanic, so somewhere in the middle I think is reasonable: armour points are halved during running.
There also should be that penalty after using teleport for a fraction of a second IMO but that’s another thing.
Provide greater AOE to melee. Casters can wipe out entire screens in a few seconds due to the massive amount of AOE they have. Melee builds have no such AOE to use, and even if they did, would still likely be behind casters due to the need to close distance to enact the AOE. This has lead to a dramatic lack of parity between melee builds and casters, as evidenced by the majority of players being either Sorceresses or Paladin caster builds. On top of that, for virtually every class, the “caster” build is usually superior to any true melee option (Hammerdins/Auradins, Elemental Druids, Trapsin, Javazon, etc.). There are plenty of ways to fix this, but the easiest way is to simply make the currently-useless physical sunder charm also provide AOE. (NOTE: this AOE may need to be tied to weapon range (1-5) for balance reasons, especially to prevent Bowazons from clearing TZs as fast as they can move)
This isn’t needed with the proposed solutions above.
Buff base weapon damage across the board. When 1.10 was implemented, monster health and other items were adjusted to make mobs more survivable. Melee weaponry was never adjusted to compensate, and this is the exact patch when melee took a backseat to casters. I don’t know what the % should be, so I’ll also leave that to your systems designers.
With the stated observation above “It’s more that caster characters are too strong, rather than melee characters being weak.” the focus should more be changing up the caster builds. See above suggestion for reducing synergy values.
Buff melee skills so that they provide their greatest scaling increases at low levels. No matter what happens with further melee buffs, leveling a melee character will always be worse than leveling a caster. This is because casters are nearly-item-independent at game start when it comes to offensive power; all of their offensive power comes from skill points, with items only providing marginal buffs to this in the form of additional skillpoints. On the other hand, melee builds are nearly-100%-item-dependent for offensive power, leading to long stretches of artificial leveling walls. Eventually, melee builds just can’t keep going without finding or trading for the right drop. By inverting the scaling curve for melee skills so that the biggest scaling jumps are at early skill levels, it dramatically lessens the importance of finding GG weaponry just to reach endgame and removes leveling cliffs/walls. (NOTE: in order to prevent melee builds from only investing a few points into a variety of skills to get maximum benefit, have the decreasing scale still stay appreciable from 1-20, and only fall off more-dramatically after 20. Also make synergy bonuses high. Both of these will encourage and preserve build specialization that the game seems to strive for now.)
Levelling melee characters is problematic I agree.
I think introducing more flat damage bonuses on melee-based skills is a good approach. See magic arrow as an example.
Give elite mobs and bosses more HP. Casters don’t have crushing blow. Melee does. This is one of the few advantages melee has in current game systems. By making elites and bosses stronger, it makes mechanics like crushing blow even more important. This will help bring clear-speed parity to even for casters and melee.
This would make it more scathing for builds that don’t incorporate crushing blow, such as most bowazons, who already find bosses time consuming enough to kill, while at the same time not phase sorceresses with static field too much.
With the reduction in synergy numbers proposed above, this change should not be needed.
Make Zod runes add ethereal status along with indestructible. Casters don’t care about their weapon damage, nor whether their weapon is ethereal or not. An ethereal Oculus, for example, is just as good as a regular. However, in order to remain even moderately-relevant, melee builds require ethereal weapons outside of Grief. This dramatically limits item options for melee characters compared to casters, making it much harder to reach endgame relevance. Even worse, so many of a melee character’s options (Grandfather, Immortal King’s Stone Crusher, etc.) are immediately off the table because they cannot be ethereal. By the introduction of sunder charms, it appears the D2R developers prefer item solutions to system problems, so allowing Zod to turn indestructible items (which cannot drop as ethereal) into ethereal items will be a big buff for melee. It will make it easier to find a GG weapon that is necessary for melee competitiveness by expanding the pool of options. This also has the bonus of making Zod runes more useful, because right now…they’re not very useful for being the rarest rune in the game.
This will be a huge buff for bowazons whom currently have no access to ethereal items, and is not really needed IMO.
Remove the ladder stats-buff for mobs. Ladder mobs have increased health, armor, and a few other things. Especially with armor, these ladder buffs almost exclusively impact melee builds versus casters. Get rid of them. There’s no reason for them.
This is not a ladder buff, but a non-ladder nerf.
Buff two-handed weapons. Grief is and always will be a problem when it comes to melee relevance, as there is virtually nothing that can compete with it when placed in a Phase Blade. AOE based on weapon range (via sunder charm?) will help this. Buffing base weapon damage will also help since Grief is a static buff not based on weapon damage. However, because of the ability to wear a shield and various other factors, even with such buffs, I’d bet two-handers will still fall behind Grief. Providing some benefit, like unstoppable attacks (like Druid bear form), would be a nice way to address this issue that, while not directly-related to caster/melee parity, is a tangential, systemic issue affecting melee relevance.
That doesn’t seem unreasonable.
Give medium and heavy armors/shields some type of damage reduction buff relative to their speed penalties. As with #2 and #3, armor is a more important stat for melee than casters. Implementing this change will help melee more than casters, and it will also help break the Everyrunewordisinamageplateorarchonplate status quo that plagues the game, as other armor types would finally have a reason to be worn and justify their speed/strength penalties. I don’t know if the damage reduction buff should be 1:1 for the reduction penalty or some deeper fraction, but I’ll leave that decision, like previous issues, to the D2R systems designers.
Casters will just shift to using these armour bases (Full Plate Mail, Chaos Armour, etc) then.
Both seem very reasonable.
Agreed.
Agreed.
Your main point is valid and I would support those changes, but I don’t think there’s a stomach both in the community and at Blizzard for nerfing casters. I also don’t think shared loot is a systems change they’ll ever make since they wanted to preserve many of the core systems of the game (like not allowing hotkeys for PC until a few patches in).
On the specific point of DR from medium/heavy armor and casters just using those instead, that’s fine. Since they get hit far less often than melee, it’s not as much of a buff for them as it is for melee.
On the specific points of bowazons (crushing blow, Zod), like I said at the end of the OP, there would need to be specific tweaks for them because you’re right, these changes flatly applied to bowazons would make it all go crazy. The tweaks could be simple, though, like skill damage changes, CB changes (allowing full value on bows), etc. Still wouldn’t be much from a code-resource perspective to implement.
Happy new year and… Wow a coherent , actually inteligent topic !? This year seems good from the start. !
All points proposed by OP are legit , totally reasonable and doable things (ez doable imo) .
Ive noticed some opositon against melee aOE or splash from melee. … well aOE is needed , there is no way around it if You want to lessen the gap between melee and ranged/casters . How to implent it ?
Imo each melee clase should have a dedicated skill for aOE límited to their weapons Range . IE:
Barb gets cleave (delete the súper useless , no one ever used "stun ) swing in an arc un front dealing weapon damage to primary target and x% to adjacent targets … or Leap attack aOE damage coming from weapon damage
Pallys vengeance hits could explode in a 1 yard radious. And so on for each melee … the principe is simple , aOE tied to certain builds /skills. While keeping it close and personal . (It would still be b tier aOE vs Sss tier from casters. )… Heck if You want a lore reason for melee aOE imagine You have the strength to cut
Heavy and medium armor should mean something , innate DR seems about fair . As some 1 stated that casters would simple use em too… well… good for them , this post and sugestions are not about nerfing casters , it’s about buffing melee ! . If a caster wants to get that DR he /she now NEEDs to invest a hefty amount of strength (thus reducing it’s Vita output) . This bonus DR should be tied ONLY to elite versions of armor .
Finally i want to really highlifht the need for 2handed weaponry … give us a reason other than looks and poverty to actually use em . In conjuction to a flat buff overall of 2h weapons , the benefit from mods youd Also be increased :
Critical/crushing /bleed . Etc etc should be more effective on 2h weapons . Sacrificing a shield /resistances/ MF etc etc for a 2h atm is Bad. Terribad .
Big fan of doubling effects like CB/DS/OW on two-handers as well. Great idea. I think even D4 is taking that approach, come to think of it, and the coding shouldn’t be hard.
There’s 2 camps of thought for this. Either they’re:
The former is easy, adjust the synergy values and retest to make sure the builds aren’t significantly affected by this change.
The latter while I have little sympathy for - as they tend to support excessive buffs to melee based builds, which kills the long term replayability of Diablo 2 - their concerns should be alleviated by fixing party play’s loot system.
On top of fixing loot, party play also means you can also make caster builds dedicated to DPS and single element, and caster builds where each and every individual caster doesn’t necessarily need infinity to get the most DPS out.
If Blizzard won’t implement some kind of instanced loot system, they could at least increase the scaling of monster strength per player in game while increasing drop rates when killed from a party.
I agree with your points here as well. If Blizz did all of that, I’d be very happy.
Based on their latest statements on patches, balancing, etc, it just seems like they don’t have the wherewithal or resources to re-do systems — just tweak them. 
That’s the point of view that my post was written from, but if they do have the time/resources, those things you mentioned would be great.
not the best ideas. melee classes have more hp and defense. they dont need big damage and sorc-like aoe. it would destroy balance of this game totally. anyway there is no class without aoe skills. barb - whirlwind, druid - fury, paldin - zeal, amazone - aoe bow skills, aoe jav skills. I think your opinions are noobish a bit and you have never played this game more than concentration barbarian
Actually a pretty good troll. I bet you’ll get a few replies.
Sir , before calling other Ppl noob You should get your facts straight…
repeat after me : Ww is NOT aOE . ww is NOT aOE
Ww is a moving fast hiting skill , BUT is NOT Even close of being actual aOE . If there are more than 1 target in Range , ww Will randomly pick targets and proceed to hit check em .
IE: ww max frames pero attack with a 2h (non sword) is 5 . (4 for 1h and 2 swords) . Thats 5 attacks in rougly 1 sec … if there are lets Say 3 targets in Range… Ww WONT hit 5 times each target in that sec . It is NOT AOE. Bliizzard (proper aOE) would hit the targets the same amount of times to all targets on it’s área of influence.
"Melee have more defenses and life , that would break the balance " … what balance ? Oh You mean the flawed status quo un wich melee are bound to lag 2 galaxyes behind casters…bcuz reasons? .
Defense means nothing when You can wtfpwn the whole map without Even looking … Theres a reason why bots (99%of them ) are casters…
That’s why I’ve played melee barbs for 20 years - casters stink.
Don’t worry about him. Just a troll doing troll things.
yes. make this easy game even more easy because melee classes should use 1 autoattack instead of 2 to kill monsters in hell. pathetic
You know there is a problem when the best spec of the prime melee class is a pseudo caster build. Until you’re close to the best gear possible, but that doesn’t really count.
But I wouldn’t know how to fix it and there’s probably no need to fix it now after 22 years. Melee splash from mods is not the answer because it makes tanks ridiculously OP, You basically can just hold down auto-attack and watch a 2hr movie.
Just because something has always been a problem doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be fixed. Look at the mana burn bug. It’s been around forever, and it wasn’t fixed until recently.
Regardless, melee hasn’t been worse for 22 years. Melee was perfectly competitive until the patch mentioned above.