Blizzard, Last Minute Changes To Consider

PTR Feedback
#1

First off, I wanted to say well done by the development team. It’s very clear they are taking feedback seriously and the changes outlined in the recent patch notes are fantastic. With that said, listed below are a few remaining changes that I hope they consider…

Class Changes

Amazon

  • Ice Arrow - buff damage as skill is single target (e.g. double damage as compared to Freezing Arrow and would make skill more valuable versus bosses and elites)

Assassin

  • Blade Fury - attack rating should scale per level and not a mere flat 10%

Druid

  • Battle Orders, Battle Command - can now cast BO/BC in shapeshifted form
  • Rabies - increase poison creeper synergy and reduce poison duration
  • Lycanthropy - add faster run/walk by 1% per level for greater mobility
  • Poison Creeper, Carrion Vine, Solar Creeper - die too quickly, significantly increase life for added survivability, and improve life/mana regeneration scaling per level as they suffer harsh diminishing returns

Barbarian

  • War Cry - reduce mana cost to 0.60 to improve cost-effectiveness
  • Grim Ward - change fear effect to taunt effect, currently redundant with howl
  • Leap Attack - use % weapon damage for the damage to surrounding enemies
  • Whirlwind - most non-controversial change they could implement is to tweak the numbers and start whirlwind off at 0% (currently starts at -50%). All this penalty does is to discourage players from using whirlwind during their Barbarian playthrough

Necromancer

  • Raise Skeletal Mage - increase elemental damage and increase missile speed

Sorceress

  • Thunderstorm - increase frequency of lightning (e.g one bolt per half second)
  • Hydra - Fire Bolt synergy increased from +3% to +6% while removing Fire Ball synergy

Mercenaries

Act 1 Rogue Scouts

  • Can now use crossbows

Act 3 Iron Wolf

  • Can now use staffs and orbs
  • Can now use teleport for added survivability
  • Can now block when shield is equipped
  • Can now gain +sorceress skills from gear
    • As Act 1 receives +amazon skill bonuses and Act 5 receives +barbarian skill bonuses, then it makes sense Act 3 should receive +sorceress skill bonuses

Act 5 Barbarian Warrior

  • Can now use axes

Runewords

Cresant Moon

  • Can now be made in Claws and Daggers. Crescent Moon is a 3 socket runeword, it’s a perfect candidate to be made in Claws, and opens up more build diversity for Assassins. And don’t forget about Dagger Barbs

Unbending Will

  • Can now be made in Axes. This mid level runeword has a huge boost to enhanced damage, it greatly benefits from being made in an ethereal berserker axe

Obsession

  • With the elusive Zod, the developers should consider buffing Obsession as follows:
    • Add +10-15% To Cold Damage
    • Add -10-20% To Enemy Fire Resistance
    • Add -10-20% To Enemy Lightning Resistance
    • Increase Magic Find to 100%

Set Item Bonus Changes

Bul-Kathos’ Children

  • Knockback ability removed from Bul Kathos’ Sacred Charge Colossus Blade
    • Knockback must be removed to make it viable. You can’t use Frenzy with this two sword set because of this effect, making for a very slow kill speed

Heaven’s Brethren

  • Add +100% Enhanced Defense (3 Items)
  • Add +20% Crushing Blow (Full Set)
    • Heaven’s Brethren is designed as a defensive set, although the damage is fairly low, and the clvl requirement of the shield is very high

Isenhart’s Armory

  • Add +50% Enhanced Damage (3 Items)
  • Add +1 To All Skills (Full Set)
    • Isenhart’s Armory does not have enough damage for melee and lack of plus skills means this set isn’t effective for very long

Berserker’s Arsenal

  • Add +20% Increased Attack Speed (2 Items)
  • Add +10% Deadly Strike (Full Set)
    • Berserker’s Arsenal is mediocre when compared to other class-themed sets, offering +1 to all skills, and axe deals poor damage

Trang-Oul’s Avatar

  • Fix bug that increases casting delay resulting in slower casting
    • Perfect time to fix this set

Area Level 85 Changes

  • Add Tristram (Hell)

General Changes

  • Move Cain by Stash in Act 5
  • Allow Cain to identify items in Horadric Cube
  • Crossbow strength and dexterity requirements reduced

Improve Console Controls

  • Allow player to move the minimap by using right thumbstick
  • Allow player to turn off auto-display loot text (e.g. breaks immersion)
  • Allow player to move potion from inventory to belt (e.g. hold button to move)
  • Allow player to allocate attributes in intervals of 10 (e.g. tedious when respecing)
15 Likes
Exhaustive and Compiled Changes for Patch
#2

knockback is nice with whirlwind…so i would keep it on bk sword…its also the only sword which has knockback so…dont pick on it…pick on others swords instead of that one…there Doombringer and Grandfather that could use attention

1 big change would be to enabe indestructible uniques items to have a chance to spawn as ethereal

2 Likes
#3

Set items should also be able to spawn as Ethereal

4 Likes
#4

I would love for them to change the “4-44 cold damage” on Reaper’s Toll to literally any other type of damage.

1 Like
#5

That would be an interesting change.

#6

Speaking about rabies/poison creeper, I think poison creeper NEEDS to do viable damage by itself even without the rabies synergy… Because a summoner druid (who wants to focus on wolves and bears) will never be attracted to poison creeper if it is only viable with 40 pts investment… And a summon druid will never be viable unless they have good AoE damage - and this means spirit of barbs and/or poison creeper need to be buffed (these are summon druids main AoE skills)…

Act 3 lightning static merc is also AMAZING for summon druid, but most people are still stuck in old meta… And if they do use A3 merc, they choose fire to enchant their wolves (still no AoE). So we need to make Act 3 merc more attractive, particularly the fire/light variants…

1 Like
#7

Werewolf stamina bonus should change to faster run/walk.

6 Likes
#8

Please add 10% more FCR and 10-20%FHR to Naj’s set. It’s hard to encourage players to wear full Naj’s set compared to Double-Spirit+Lore+Stealth… If Naj’s set had just a tiny bit extra FCR/FHR, it would be competitive against these cheap runewords :+1:

If Naj’s set was an okayish set to wear in the mid-game, it would help reduce the frustration of starting ladder with non-teleporting classes, and make non-sorceress classes more viable ladder start characters…

If Naj’s set had these improvments, I believe people could use fire druid and fire trapsin (and maybe CE necro?) as viable ladder start characters that could compete (to a degree) with sorceress :+1:

#9

My idea for poison creeper line.

Move creeper to Lvl 12 skill. And make it so that 3 creepers are spawned at higher levels.
Remove both solar and carrion vines from the game.
Add a poison bow skill that is ST spreads through enemies like rabies at LVL one.
Add another poison bow skill for level 24 that is similar to poison javelin. Leaves a trail and explodes at target location.

Synergies would be between all of these. And rabies would also be an additional synergy.

Why these changes?
-Gives an additional character bow skills, removing the monopoly from zon. Adds a second poison build (venom assassin isn’t really poison focused)
-Hunter druids become a thing now. Summons plus bow skills. Instead of having me sit there cheering them on.

No one uses the vines, so replacing them, I think, with a new way to play druid would be hype.

4 Likes
#10

Agreed, faster run/walk bonus for Werewolf would be a welcome change.

1 Like
#11

Controller/console should be able to
Toggle off auto display of item text when items drop and when you are standing near them. Ruins immersion and gameplay…

2 Likes
#12

Added thoughts on improving console controls to the OP.

1 Like
#13

I’d like to see the Heaven’s Brethren set get tweaked into some semblance of usefulness. It has such a cool unique look.

Off the top of my head the strength requirement could be dropped by a bunch. The two items with the lowest strength reqs have the Requirements -XX%

Buff Weapon damage, add some leech, maybe CB

For a set that requires clvl 44/68/69/81 it needs help.

3 Likes
#14

yes, Crossbow Druid!

Fun fact: ranged weapons work in shapeshift too

2 Likes
#15

The problem with Thunderstorm is how good it already is in PvP; when you buff it’s damage and frequency to respectable levels, all a Sorceress has to do is teleport around, passively attacking her foe, until the fight is over.

For PvM, I think adding stun duration and a small AoE around the target would make it a decent utility skill that might come in clutch from time to time.

2 Likes
#16

Good point, don’t want to break TS for PvP.

2 Likes
#17

Extremely well-thought-out list of changes. I hope the devs hold a meeting just to discuss these proposals: this is solid stuff. There might be a couple re classes I’m not so knowledgable in that aren’t that great, I don’t know, but what I recognize is absolutely golden.

1 Like
#18

Thanks for the kind words, just trying to share a few more ideas to make this nostalgic game perfect or close to it.

#19

I don’t think they care about pvp at this point, they buffed holy fire without reducing the range again. You’re just gonna have a bunch of charging auradins spamming foh cheesing People now. Might as well buff thunderstorm storm up the wazoo. Seems like they love passive do nothing builds.

1 Like
#20

Some additions/changes:

Necro poison dagger should be poison weapon and should be usable with all weapon types. Alternatively, allow use with throw weapons and allow it to be cast at a distance.

Druid Rabies, allow creeper to spread rabies in addition to the damage buff. The poison DPS should be comparable to Poison Nova.

Merge Find Item and find potion, if the item roll does not proc, a potion drop is guaranteed.

Lobbies for console and capacity to join games or party within game.
Full bnet friends list access within game.

And yes, FIX MANA BURN.

Here is some expanded feedback on low level sets (since some runewords are so easy to make in a fresh start, maybe also improve normal set and unique drop rates in Normal Difficulty only):

1 Like