i like the way yall are going i would like to see the summon druid to be able to summon all its summons like the necro. even if you have to bring its damage down a little to make it happen i like the thing you are doing with raven. Holy bolt i would like it to damage all enemies no just undead. I like the offensive aruas buff that yall did. Necro i would like the bone spear to have one less synergy and move the damage between the rest to keep the damage so it can diversify a little more. But overall i think yall are going in the right direction. Thank yall for all your hard work for bringing this game back
Read it carefully before talking.
This time updates have a sense. Eager to try it out.
Melee druid use staffs. Donât be nut
Overall, great work by the developers with the upcoming changes outlined in Balance Patch 2.4, but would like them to consider the following changes listed below:
Amazon
- Immolation Arrow casting delay halved and tune damage accordingly
- Inner Sight now lowers enemy elemental resistance by 1-2% per level
Assassin
- Improve Blade Sentinel, Blade Fury and Blade Shield by adding bonus to Attack Rating per level
Druid
- Summon Spirit Wolves OR Dire Wolves AND Grizzly (one type of wolf + bear)
- Improve Ravens by summoning 5 ravens per cast instead of 1 per cast and increase number of attacks. To balance the change, the damage could be slightly lowered to compensate
- Improve survivability of Oak Safe, Heart of the Wolverine and Spirit of the Barbs by adding a small resistance to elemental damage (10-15%)
- Improve Armageddon to hit monsters more frequently and consider removing all wind skill prerequisites
- Consider allowing Teleport to be used in shapeshifted form
- Reduce the cooldown on Volcano
Barbarian
- The two skills Increased Stamina and Increased Speed should be combined into one skill called Athletics. Stamina is worthless since Barbarians tend to maximize points into vitality, which adds stamina anyway
- Improve Throwing Mastery by adding +X% chance to not consume a quantity of thrown weapons per skill point. Playing Throw Barb in current state is awful. Going back to town and repairing many times per run is highly discouraging and ultimately not fun. This change could double or triple quantity of thrown weapons
- Improve Grim Ward by removing the fear effect while keeping the slow effect and damage bonus. The fear effect is redundant with Howl and just annoying while trying to clear an area. Consider changing Grim Ward synergy from Find Potion to War Cry
- Improve War Cry by increasing the skillâs radius by 1% per skill point
- Improve Find Potion by adding small bonus to Gold Find
- Sword/Axe/Mace/Polearm/Spear Masteries now add Increased Attack Speed and +X% Damage per skill point when 2H weapons are equipped (does not work w/ 1H weapons). Greatly improves build diversity by making 2H weapons become viable and competitive vs. duel-wield builds. I miss good ole days of seeing Barbarians slaying enemies with giant swords
- The knockback ability from Bash needs to be moved to Stun. Iâve seen too many players completely ignore Bash through an entire playthrough (even MrLlamaSC) because you have to chase enemies
- Lastly, and most importantly, Whirlwind targeting/bugs/controls needs to be fixed and the damage scaling for early levels needs to be tuned. Currently, at first skill point, Whirlwind starts at -50% damage. At 20, it is 102% damage. Change scaling at first skill point to 7% and increase 5% thereafter for every skill point. At 20 points, you will arrive at same 102% damage. This will greatly improve the playthrough at early levels
Necromancer
- Improve Blood Golem by increasing maximum life of player by 10-15%
- Improve Poison Dagger by adding bonus to increased attack speed per level
- Improve overall Curse Tree by removing all prerequisites to allow more build diversity and incentivizing players to use another miscellaneous curses without requiring a heavy skill point investment to unlock
Sorceress
- Improve Thunderstorm by increasing the frequency of lightning bolts and chance to hit multiple targets
- Frozen Orb casting delay removed and slight increase to damage by increasing Ice Bolt synergy from 2% to 3% per level (missed opportunity to make Frozen Orb competitive vs. Blizzard)
- Frozen Armor, Shiver Armor, and Chilling Armor should not have synergies with each other. No one is going to invest 20 skill points each for all 3 armors. They should instead have synergies with other skills, such as Frozen Orb, Frost Nova, Ice Bolt, etc. For example, an Ice Bolt synergy for Chilling Armor would be nice so Chilling Armor Ice Bolts could do decent damage.
Act 1 Rogue Scouts
- Can now equip crossbows (allow more build diversity for your merc)
- Inner Sight now lowers enemy elemental resistance by 1-2% per level
Act 3 Iron Wolf
- Cold variant can now cast Frost Nova
Act 5 Barbarian Warrior
- Mercenary now has three different variants: Battle Cry, Taunt and Shout
- Can now dual-wield swords (this change allows more build diversity with aura combinations such as: Last Wish (Might Aura), Lawbringer (Sanctuary Aura), Plague (Cleansing Aura)
Plague Runeword
- Developers missed a key opportunity for the Plague runeword by making it allowed in swords only. This is a mistake and the runeword is mediocre at best! With all the great changes to martial arts, this runeword screams Assassin and is probably best in slot for claws. This design decision is very disappointing. I recommend changing Plague to allow it to be made in swords, claws and daggers (or all melee weapons)
Obsession Runeword
With the very elusive Zod, I would like to suggest the developers consider adding three rolls to minus enemy resistance on the Obsession Runeword as follows:
- Add -10-20% To Enemy Fire Resistance
- Add -10-20% To Enemy Cold Resistance
- Add -10-20% To Enemy Lighting Resistance
Polearm Runewords
- All polearm runewords can now be made in spears
Area 85 Levels
- Add Tristram (Hell)
- Add Maggot Lair (Levels 1 and 2)
- Uber Portals (Matronâs Den, Forgotten Sands and Furnace of Pain)
Bul-Kathosâ Children
- Knockback ability removed from Bul Kathosâ Sacred Charge Colossus Blade
3 Likes
Obsession doesnât have ED or any melee stats on it really. Melee Druids wonât be using it.
Ouch⌠They forgot that !?
Item only for casters then. Fail with Zod rune in it.
They could have added something rare in the game like +magic resistance on it (like it exists on a craft).
And display in character screen magical resistance and name physical resistance (instead of %damage reduce)
Oh yeah? Then why canât you wrap your head around the notion that changing infinity or the conviction aura, for that matter, wonât change what you are complaining about? You should be lobbying for a change in the monster stat balancing, right?
i think the only reason they usd zod is to give it a bit more worth
This is exactly my point. People playing D2 want the END GAME content. They skip it because they want to. Because what they want, ISNT WHAT THEYâRE SKIPPING. Forcing people to play content theyâd rather skip is NOT a recipe for success. Its complete incompetence seasoned with a dash of arrogance.
I like most of these changes. Iâd add that they should tweak crossbow speeds as they are slooooooow. I have a Shaelâd Buriza and with 100 IAS on the weapon it is no faster than a Harmony GMB with no on-weapon IAS.
3 Likes
Yes, hence why I said change it so that infinity is able to break the other elements as well. Aka change the monsters max resistances so that lvl 12 conviction aura breaks them. I didnât say change infinity itself. Not sure why you even felt the need to respond to be honest.
The patch is cool and all but I was expecting alot more in terms of shaking the meta, everyone will still play the same builds because they are just way more effective for farming. Also, not adding endgame content or even a way to ramp up difficulty for online games really kills any motivation to play ladder, Itâs just a reset âcough forum gold coughâ with a few mediocre runewords that will see very little use.
2 Likes
They skip it because they can.
3 Likes
I like most of the changes you pointed out, but here Iâm leaning more towards new runewords just for spears.
After seeing 2.4 Rune Words, I donât think I trust Blizzard to make any more new Rune Words. Better to just open up the existing Polearm Rune Words to Spear Class.
We obviously have people making things for a game they do not play.
1 Like
Iâm not really impressed or even interested in anything about this patch, apart perhaps from the lvl85 areas.
All I want to know is whether the changes are being applied across the board (i.e., online ladder/non-ladder, offline, Classic). Will there be any way for people like me who only ever wanted D2 with updated graphics to play the iteration that we enjoy? I am guessing the answer is âNoâ. If so, then thatâs a shame. 
2 Likes
maybe, but frenzy can still miss.
good points. i think there are a lot of options though. it also depends on hardcore vs softcore, and pvp or pvm. how the build goes. there are many different configurations for different uses but i wont go into specifics. i think the answer is it depends. at least with this item we can be having this discussion lol. because without it, javazon was too often a cookie cutter build.
1 Like
Thunderstorm needs more of a buff.
It is a lvl 24 skill and even at very high levels it hits only one target, randomly. It needs to strike faster. Or significant bump in damage so the one strike is really impactful.
Lightning is a lower level skill that easily does 30k to multiple targets. Thunderstorm needs more love.
1 Like
People generally donât know what they want. Fortunately being able to just skip everything and start straight at endgame is a decision left to the devs, and not the general player. The general player would push SKIP and then not appreciate the endgame for what it is. It wouldnât be the endgame anymore, it would just be the game, and theyâd clamor for a new endgame that will never come.
5 Likes