Good point, skills might need more fundamental changes for pvp viability. I guess at a minimum doubling the duration that charges last atleast helps MA without removing the element of tactics.
It helps pvm for sure, but for pvp it’s the skill mechanics that hold it back and not the numbers.
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Iron skin, poison explosion and thunderstorm suggestions sound overpowered af. Also spear/java doesn’t need any further buffs period. Bowa tho is a different story… Blood and fire golem could definitely be improved even further.
Also huge lol on blade shield. It STILL uses weapon durability?? Like seriously still not fixed???
Agreed. I adjusted Iron Skin so it adds 0.5% PDR per level. At level 20, it would be 10% PDR and only works on hard points.
As Poison Explosion has a small radius, applying damage immediately seems reasonable, but would need playtesting in the PTR. As for Thunderstorm, FCR bonus would need to be tuned in PTR as to not be OP.
I know D2R is to stay true to the original classic game but I never quite understood why Lightning never got a level 30 spell despite being the featured element in her selection pose. The flashy element never got a flashy spell. I think Thunderstorm deserves a revamp. Keeping the original effect, each strike also procs a random amount of arc lightning(s) (similar to blood raven’s death or assassin’s phoenix strike charge 2), with the max amount cap scaling with level. Like meteor having different synergies for hit and burn damage, arc lightning could synergise with Chain Lightning. Prolly never going to be implemented but let me dream.
As for Cold spells, I always felt that Cold Mastery was a little underwhelming as a mastery, being hardcapped at 2x dmg and having little to no incentive of maxing because +skill gears/cold GCs will bring it up to -175% for you. Instead of letting a certain cold sorc build only have a certain synergised shield, let all 3 shields synergise with cold mastery to incentivise maxing cold mastery. Frost nova sorc will also be able to choose one type of shield to max along with cold mastery instead of relying on energy shield this way.
Cold has freeze, Lightning has telekinesis knockback, but fire never quite had a CC skill. The only tweak I can think of, is a fixed duration stun for when meteor lands. It’s hard enough to land one, it’s also on 1.2 seconds delay… not too much to ask for, right?
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Agreed, I’m hoping the developers come up with something to boost Thunderstorm as it is a pretty underwhelming skill.
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Thanks for putting the list together.
I’m suprised that venom dosn’t seem to have high priority for assassin players, but I think it definitely needs and deserves a buff, e.g. through a synergy. To me, poison is a signature ability of assassins.
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I’m no expert, but I thought venom is effectively a flat poison damage rather than damage over time and hardcoded to cap at .4 seconds? Seems like a solid assassin skill.
it seems like venom has some weird interaction with poison dagger. adds .4 seconds to the poison dagger duration. looking at maxroll it seems like venom proc from treachery boost the damage more then bramble’s 50% poison damage. D2planner - Maxroll.gg - Diablo 2 Resurrected Resource Website
My revamp for Thunderstorm was to model it after Fist of Heavens. Namely when it strikes an enemy, it discharges a Nova that hits nearby enemies. Alternatively, it can release Charged Bolts based on the number of nearby enemies(mirroring FoH’s Holy Bolts). Charged Bolts would pierce btw. Anyways, I prefer Nova because Static Field is already a synergy for both Nova and Thunderstorm, hence it’s an easy 60 point build(plus Lightning Mastery to round out the damage).
The problem with venom is that it is indeed an ok skill to add secondary poison damage to many builds, but far from being good enough as the primary damage source. Even with good gear the damage is mediocre at best. I would love to build a poison based assassin, but no matter what you combine venom with, it remains a secondary skill, since you can’t specialize and damage isn’t good enough. A synergy would be a great way to promote build diversity without compromising other builds which already use venom as a secondary skill.
@ Salbahis: The interaction between venom and poison dagger is indeed weird. What happens is that the X damage over 0.4 seconds from venom is applied over the full duration of poison dagger, i.e. for a poison dagger duration of 16 sec (skill level 34) venom from treachery adds 315 * 16 / 0.4 = 12,600 damage over 16 seconds.
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Assassin’s Wake of Fire trap - make it shoot 10 times, as the rest of traps do; 15 even won’t be too much. Wears off too fast with just 5 charges.
Didn’t realize all the nuances to venom, will have to leave that to expert Assassins 
Two more changes for the Druid that I hope the developers consider for Patch 2.5…
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Arctic Blast - change skill to a cone of cold rather than a frosty flamethrower
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Hunger - skill always hits target, which is guaranteed for leeching life and mana
Cmon Blizzard, please consider the proposed class balance changes for Patch 2.5!
Not sure if its been addressed but the reason Impale doesn’t benefit from Critical/Deadly Strike is because the skill’s damage modifier is insanely high to begin with. Level 20 is 775% Damage and that’s without any synergy. Compared to other skills in its repertoire, much less to other classes, it’s unrivaled in terms of brute physical power(Only Charged Strike gives it a run for its money imo). Impale was buffed in 2.4 to always hit, is uniterruptable, and applies a Slow effect(63% at level 20). It’s an OP skill now that if it were granted Critical/Deadly Strike, it would be even more broken than it already is now.
Why do Charge and Leap Attack benefit from CS/DS then? They also have very high ED% per level (25 and 30 respectively) and Charge can hit a single target in very rapid succession due to the knockback, allow you to “Charge train” something.
Impale was buffed in 2.4 to always hit, is uniterruptable, and applies a Slow effect(63% at level 20). It’s an OP skill now that if it were granted Critical/Deadly Strike, it would be even more broken than it already is now.
I disagree. It is still very slow (which is fine, I think the speed boost in 2.4 was enough) which limits its DPS, it’s mainly used as a 1 point wonder for the Slow Target against bosses.
Jab is still the preferred single target killer since it attacks much faster which is good for crushing blow procs and with a high level Inner Sight your chance to hit can easily approach 95% (not taking monster block into account).
I think it’d be fine to allow Impale to crit, maybe the baseline 300% ED could be reduced down to 200% or something. There’s also the drawback of weapon degradation that will be a problem until you acquire a self-repair or indestructible weapon, neither of which are very common (at least for spears).
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I don’t know why but Paladins are an OP class. Their skills are insanely OP given that they have Smite, Blessed Hammer and Holy Shield(only skill in the game that makes 75% Block a given with 2 Frame Block Rate). So given that Charge is among their skill repertoire, it’s no surprise that it’s really good(800% Skill synergy on Charge for example…). Nerf anyone?
As for Leap Attack, it’s a slow attack like Impale but doesn’t always hit and it applies knockback over slow(and I find slow > kb but that’s just me). Leap Attack got an AoE though, something that Impale lacks.
If Impale does get Critical Strike(which Maxroll claims it does but I digress), it still attacks too slow to justify using it as a primary Spear attack(save for Ubers). Unless more Skill IAS options become available(Burst of Speed in particular), the only way to make Impale more appealing to use is to give it a skill synergy(Jab and Fend are obvious candidates). Instead of granting %Damage like most skills, I find Impale would benefit greatly if Jab/Fend each provided %Skill IAS to Impale(1% per hard point). 40% Skill IAS would greatly benefit it to reach its maximum attack speed while off-setting Decrepify/Holy Freeze effects.
Following isn’t necessarily a Class Balance change but one that applies to all classes equally(but probably some more than others…) but my thinking was that each skill in the game should have an Energy Stat requirement based on its skill level. Say a skill is level 20 and has an Energy Stat requirement of 30. Well if you want to use the skill, your Energy Stat MUST be 30 or the skill is unavailable, regardless of how much mana you happen to have available. This is similar to how gear is red until you get enough Strength and/or Dexterity to equip it.
Once you get enough points into Energy, skills will require X Mana to utilize as usual. This change will upend the traditional attribute distribution by adding Energy into the equation mix. No longer is it Strength to equip Gear, Dexterity to equip/max block and rest into Vitality but now Energy must be invested in to even utilize our skills/abilities.
Edit
Currently I have following Energy stat requirements for Tier 1(level 1), Tier 2(level 6), Tier 3(level 12), Tier 4(level 18), Tier 5(level 24) and Tier 6(level 30).
Tier 1 = level * 1
Tier 2 = level * 1.5(rounded down)
Tier 3 = level * 2
Tier 4 = level *2.5(rounded down)
Tier 5 = level *3
Tier 6 = level *4
Meaning if Blizzard(Tier 5) is level 40, you’ll need 120 points into Energy Stat to use it. Consequently, if Fireball is level 40, you’ll only need 80 points into Energy. Blessed Hammer at level 40 = 100 points into Energy while Fist of Heavens at level 40 requires a fat 160 points. A BO Barbarian is going to have to go hard into Energy if they want that level 50+ Battle Orders. Oh and this also applies to the Sorceress Mastery skills so don’t slouch on the Energy lest you don’t want the damage boost 
I think having an Energy requirement on gear would be more appropiate, similar to Strength and Dexterity req’s. This would be especially important for gear that has FCR, +Mana, etc.