A quick PTR / 2.5 Update

This! Please consider it for NL players too before releasing it!

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Amazing… ONE SECOND… The ladder transitions for the original game would usually take at least an hour, sometimes a bit longer… Sometimes with hiccups…

I guess that’s the difference between a 1999 Compaq Presario Frankenbuild server versus modern state of the art server hardware, eh? :laughing:

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This makes me a sad Panda.

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That’s not at all what the feedback was.

Terror zones are irrelevant for ~99% of the players. Before level 94, terror zones provide no benefit, as players still get full experience from level 88 monsters. In the current ladder around 4,000 out of 4,000,000 players are above level 97. Meaning that the rest 3,996,000 players are 96 or below. Seeing as 99.9% of players are below 97, it is reasonable to assume that ~99% would be below 94.

No, you shouldn’t have. You wasted your time. People have been telling you over and over and over what the game needs and instead of listening to your base, you invested your resources into a feature that only benefits some streamer who lost the race to 99 and started making excuses.

One more time - look at PD2. It’s made by devs who actually play the game and know what it needs. D2R is lagging horribly behind what 5 passionate people have done in their spare time and it’s beyond embarrassing.

Adding the QoL features that players were indeed asking for would have cost far lower in terms of effort and would have had a far greater impact:

  • stackable runes and gems
  • charm inventory
  • more stash space
  • and all the other features and balance changes that have already been proven to benefit the game by the PD2 devs
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Every class in the game, whether it works for their build or not, can eventually obtain and use enigma to increase their farm/content speeds. And allow them to be “meta-enabled” (picked/played by average joes, whether faster or slower, at least chosen)

Now consider that within the druid class, a subset called shifters (both bear/wolf) is completely unable to utilize enigma. Dbrunski is one of the few that occasionally play this class despite it’s never-meta-ness via mobility issues, and can/has spoken to this issue. Allowing wolf/bear to teleport in form and potentially even cast CTA would be very positive for D2R as a whole, which he has asked/hoped for on youtube/stream. In ladder shifters are being told to leave group and get on another class because of just how ineffective and left behind they are. So much pain/sadness :(***. These QoL issues would potentially generate interest in playing a dead class and allow less “hammerdin/FoHdin” only metas. As long as it’s somehow not allowed in pvp/while flagged there is no logical reason for the community to dislike this change. Mainly because the shifter class still melee, and will still be D tier at farming even after such a change. It would just allow them to enter the room so to speak.

Nothing is more important to few who choose to be shifter despite the cards stacked against us vs. the other meta picks. Please please please make this change…

Free the shifter!

(edit: The lack of teleport use in form even means being unable to reset position of mercenary during battle etc, it runs deeper than just mobility failed class issues in D2R)

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Hope you guys follow the feedback from the person from which you took the concept of terror zones

After all we all want the game to be the best it can be

Players at level 83 will get the equivalent experience from a Terror Zone if the same area was a fixed level 85 zone. Regular monsters would be mlvl=clvl83+2, Champions would be mlvl=clvl83+4, uniques would be mlvl=clvl83+5.

Clvl 84 and up, you start gaining more from Terror Zones, again, compared to if the same area was a fixed level 85 area.

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I’m so so scared of this part.

Players found some of the TZ content to be easy but we also can determine what characters played on PTR who offered that specific feedback and we noticed a lot of this came from Hammerdin players. The team has some ideas on this and we will be sharing that soon. I expect it to create a bit of a shift in build/class opportunities for players.

Please blizzard… don’t do anything… please don’t spoil the game anymore…
Your balancing is worst of the worst.
Stop please.

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That’s the main reason why a lot of Terror zone difficulty should come from player agency

Like:

  • evil urns

  • shrines empowering nearby monsters

  • breakable items spawning elite monsters

  • once the zone cleared or the boss is killed, the terror moves to another zone a notch stronger

That way the zone can be hard, but harder if you want to

1 Like

No, that’s not how XP works. Higher monster level does not automatically mean more XP. Look up the formula.

I expected to see one of two outcomes: a) Remove Terror Zones to relaunch in Season 3, b) Launch Terror Zones as is.

It almost seems like B was the choice, with a couple of alterations. Still nothing to address character slots (inb4 hur dur buy another account), no mention of inconsistencies between casters and physical to hit vs higher level foes, two big feedback points being increase density, and have more zones active at once since zones will vary wildly with what character types to do them.

As for Hammerdins being the biggest pool of players complaining about too easy, I would say that this is due to the nature of the preset builds offered on PTR: High end H-Din, Infinity Sorc, Zerk Barb with Grief, Javazon with Infinity, and high end Fohdin. No melee without Grief or above level 85, no Bowazon, etc. It’s almost as if their 20 character limitation held back creating a number of pre-set builds to really test out PTR.

Lack of proper planning was an understatement. Some of us were asking in direct Twitter posts for information more than a month prior to the 4 month time period. Depending on the final version of 2.5, I may play a character on it, but probably will skip season 2 to stay on non-ladder, whenever it finally rolls over. At least this communication does seem to confirm that TZs will be Ladder only, which is a little disappointing for us that wanted to spend some time on our non-ladder characters, that we have both a pre-season and opening season of to manage, but it will probably roll over at end of season anyways.

Hate to sound negative, because I actually had warmed to the idea of Terror Zones, but I still feel that the ball was dropped on the features the community as a whole wanted to see.

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Please don’t… let us find the way.
Don’t touch the character balance anymore.

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Would you honestly rather wait 4 months for the TZs instead of 3-4 weeks? If they’d start without TZs, the S2 would become as old and stale even sooner than the S1.

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Maybe another PTR, so 2 weeks, then 1 week to patch to 2.5 and then 1-2 weeks’ notice after 2.5 drops.! So new season is forever away!

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Keep in mind that your feedback =/= everyone’s feedback. I’d wager the majority of feedback is given via the PTR feedback survey and is largely positive on this change. I agree with some of your suggestions, but not all of them.

I personally don’t want stackable runes in the inventory (though I would welcome a currency tab with a small max stack of 5 or so to reduce muling), nor a separate or expanded charms inventory.

PD2 is alright, but D2R doesn’t need to turn into it, because they can and should exist separately in my opinion. I prefer the pacing of D2R, as well as the d2r changes over the pd2 balance/skill changes.

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Intrigued to see what they do with the hammerdin. Tear the meta down please. Do lightning characters with infinity next! If you can’t break all regular fire and cold immunities, lightning shouldn’t be broken either.

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The worst balancing was actually making the Hammerdin in its current state.

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Yes, I totally agree.
But, I think nerf the hammer is better option.
To balancing few character? It will be another disaster.

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Are you saying it can’t be done properly, or that you think Blizz will just not do it properly?

First i want to say Thank you for finaly communicating with diablo2 players we waited 15 years to hear back from you so 5 weeks or so is ok for us

and also a lot of us are planing on takining off work for the Reset so please give us a 2week notice so we can plan ahead most of us are in our 30s now so we gots responsibilitys!

and as for some ideas i hope we can change a few builds as well to add more roatations each season so not everyone is going hammerdin or sorc. i can host a few idea posts to help if needed.

and also a lot of the HC community would like the portal lag to be fixed or any lag for that matter

as for the rest we are happy for season 2 to come hopefuly the last week of this month or first of oct. but in all fairness please give us 2weeks notice