Hey, everyone. First I’d like to say that I enjoy this game ever since LoD and appreciate the work Devs have done to make this game fun and engaging with every new update.
However playing this game for such a long time I do have a few comments and suggestions to improve the balance for all classes and items in the future.
Firstly I think I have identified (no pun intended) a few basics that would make future item implementations much easier for the devs.
- little played item types
amazon: bowskills
sorc: inferno, blaze
Nec: mages, curses, poisenexplo, psndagger, attract, confuse, weaken, blood&firegolem
Pala: revenge, conversion
Barb: all fairly played, but subpar
Druid: basically all shaper, pure summoner(especially vines)
Sin: Bladeflurry - damage types in order of playability
Cold
- basically cold sorc and that’s it and that’s basically due to cold mastery
- Cold Arrow (very nieche)
- MA Sin (but she does fire/light/cold)
Psn - Nova Necro
- rare psn java
Fire - Firedruid
- Auradin
- firesorc
- MA Sin (but she does fire/light/cold)
Light - trapsin
- java
- dream-pala
- nova sorc
- light sorc
- MA Sin (but she does fire/light/cold)
- little played Skills
amazon: bowskills
sorc: inferno, blaze
Nec: mages, curses, poisenexplo, psndagger, attract, confuse, weaken, blood&firegolem
Pala: revenge, conversion
Barb: all fairly played, but subpar
Druid: basically all shaper, pure summoner(especially vines)
Sin: Bladeflurry - some nieche item types:
daggers
- sometimes shaper
trowaxes & trowdaggers - barb
So let’s talk about the implications real quick.
I think most of the playerbase can agree on Cold Mastery being the single skill making cold sorc so viable.
Apart from that Conviction being able to break light immunity in so many cases makes lightning damage so viable and -res effects on very good/cheap items (griffon/crescent moon).
Firedamage is quite high and therefor can use sunder to make the damage type viable with only a few -res effects.
Poison basically only works on NovaMancer due to deaths web and LR. Even PsnJava and Rabies(still bugged) aren’t a real thing although that’s probably due to the lack of -res items.
So overall breaking immunities alongside a reasonable amount of -res is key to making a damage type viable.
I am not opposed the idea of having items helping with the part of breaking immunities, but i think the curve is steeper for some types than others.
If there where -50 psn res on titans Psn Java would have a better time for example.
Apart from that some skills are simply bad and/or require much heavier skillpoint investment. And most of them are on Druid and Necro - which are probably the least played classes. Posion Explosion, Poison Dagger, Inferno, Arctic Blast, Summon Skeletal Mage, Some curses, most shapeshift skills. I am fine with every class having supporting skills, but notice that some reach their 1point wonders much, much easier. Sorc Warmth, Cold Armor, Static, Teleport are basically free of investment besides the point you put in there.
I think it should be a priority to change skills that are not used/unusable. Now when it comes to items i’d like more item bases to have auto-staffmods like clubs dealing more damage to undead and such. Otherwise items that do generate staffmods will always be in a more special space which is awesome for diversity and continuing this trend is imho a great untapped resource in d2r.
And lastly to add to the item point made: there are a few item types that cant be used because they don’t have any good skill attached to them. Throw-Axes, Throwing-Knives, and especially Daggers have only one skill that really uses them and while throwbarb isnt a complete dumpsterfire, poison dagger is.
So what is all this supposed to lead to?
My suggestions are as follows:
- Poisondagger needs to have some kind of selling point. My personal suggestion would be to make it proc projectiles like nova, but in an arc instead of a circle. Also i would suggest makeng it usable with trowing daggers. Poison Explosion should be removed or changed so it doesnt need corpses. Lastly daggers and throwing knives shoud have a unique quality to them that reduces enemy poison resistance. That could make them a good weapon for druids as well and maybe a blade flurry sin and on switch for Psn Java to not solely rely on deaths web.
- Rabies should be changed to the name of Disease and spread more like chain lightning to make it less wonky.
- change mages to archers OR more points in mages give them better spells(lighting/glacial/fireball) AND differenciate the type by adding firemage, lightmage, coldmage, psnmage to make balancing in the future easier as well as let necro pic the damage type
- let Nec keep skels and archers/mages over games, or let skel mastery be used as usable skill spawning corpses so you’re actually not spending a minute to get them up…
- remove weaken,confuse,attract to account for the mage change as well as let you reach LR easier…
- warcry more range & berserk magic damage bonus, switch howl synergy to bo
- axe mastery makes 2hand axes 1handable
- hard points in mastery as bonus to range for leap-attack and ww
- add berserk as +% magic damage synergy for ww & leap attack
- fireclaw procs molten boulder with 1% per hardpoint
- shockwave procs nado with 1% per hardpoint
- add leap-like jump to wolf/bear to give some mobility
- Add Mosaics mechanic to MA skilltree or add the mosaic mechanic to ALL claws
- mosaic gives “charges never expire”
- Give Strafe/Multishot/GA Cold/Fire Arrows Synergy to add flat fire/cold damage