Will this game be like the original was or will all class/specs be level with each other?
Example… In the original, hammerdins can solo hell baal runs with 7 other people standing around not helping. Shapeshifting druids cant even beat hell difficulty singleplayer.
Pallys can do more than bless hammers.
Sorcs can do more than freeze orbs.
Zons can do more than toss titans.
Druids can do more than make hurricanes.
Sins can do more than light traps.
Necros can do more than bone spirit.
I guess barbs use WW but I’d never make a barb in D2…
Point is, back in the early 2000’s I chocked this up to just poor balancing because every game sucked a little back then. But with this chance to fix all of this it would be nice to see a fire sorc that can kill stuff. A zeal pally that can kill stuff. A whirlwind barb that can kill stuff. A bow zon that can do more than Diablo runs. A necro that can do more than cow runs. The ultimate goal should be this… No matter what you choose to be you can solo a hell baal run with 7 people not helping. It’s called the hammerdin standard.
tldr;
I’d like to play this game my way for once. So my question is are at least a few more builds going to become viable or is it still going to be 1-2 builds/class?
Also while typing this i thought of another question.
“runs”
Will they still be a thing?
what about rushing and grushing?
From what it looks like the skill balance will be what its at currently in D2 LoD.
Not sure when you last played, but there are more builds, then trap, wind, orb, hammer, javzon and bone necro.
The claims you’re making are wildly inaccurate. Of course hammerdin is one of the strongest builds, but SS druids have no problem beating Hell. It seems you have a serious lack of knowledge and experience based on the things you’re saying. And your claims sound really outdated, like 2001 era patch balance complaints.
To your point though, homogenization and over-balancing is a really negative thing usually and there are plenty of examples in modern games. It takes away the flavour and quirks that make games interesting. One of the reasons WoW classic was so popular is because many players didn’t like how different classes in the retail game had very similar or homogenized sets of abilities when performing similar roles in PvE. People wanted to go back to when every class was entirely distinct. Of course there are more balance challenges and discrepancies that occurred in Classic WoW, but players deemed class identity and niche roles/specialization to be of greater importance than the game being reduced to simply classes being divided into 3 roles, all more or less interchangeable with one another.
Class identity is what sometimes leads to the perception of imbalance, but it’s important to remember that no one class is the best at everything, even in D2 and they all have their place. It is also totally okay for some classes to be better than others at certain things. D2’s classes have builds that range broadly in their effectiveness among gold/magic finding in certain areas, PvM killing and support, PvP and there are many specialty builds to counter other builds and classes, and so on.
Also for PvM, just about everything is viable. Some things are better than others, but you can beat the game with all classes and dozens of builds among each of them, no problem.
And every class has builds that can solo 8 player hell. Some more gear dependant than others but no class needs GG gear to do it.
I don’t think you will be able to play it your way, the meta is pretty much the same. But long term I’d expect some balance changes. Nothing major though. So get your sorc ready whether you like the class of not lol