From the Warlock to the Sundercharm buffs, caster builds have been the golden children of D2R.
Weapon based builds both melee and bowzon need massive buffs. Attack Rating shouldn’t even exist in the game to be fair but it has always been so remain it shall…perhaps it could do with a bit of tweaking.
Overall the stash changes were magnificent. Everything else in D2R has been to the detriment of the game.
BUFF weapon damage builds. Add low/mid tier runewords that are actually useful. Absolutely BS that Spirit even exists.
Both are correct. Casters need nerfs but weapon based builds need buffs too. Grief is not a solution, early play needs work.
Look at maxroll ladder start tier list, pick Wind Druid as point of reference and balance builds to this level.
Removing attack rating would probably result in taking a lot more damage in melee from monsters.
I see that devs are only adjusting damage coming from skill tree and not touching damage stats on weapons at all. Every patch just buffs builds that are based on skill tree damage.
I also read before that weapon damage is designed around old hp values of monsters. Those got increased along with adding synergies while weapons remained the same.
I’ve only just started playing this year, so count this accordingly. I don’t like that players seem to get more rewarded for using the more mindless and effortless caster builds. I’m okay with there being a disparity, but I feel like melee builds should get better chances of better loot for being that much slower and harder than casters.
Shoot this down if you disagree, but I’ve been playing with the idea of adjusting farming a lot in my head. It goes like this: Using The Countess as an example, there are five levels of monsters. If you clear all of them minus the ones in the room with The countess, your chances increase by a significant amount. If you kick all the barrels, they increase another amount. If it took you long time or you used more than a few potions and weren’t just standing around, it would increase it another significant amount.
Unless you blast through the game at the speed of a nova sorc, you can basically expect to never find a high rune.
It’s far from being mindless though… you have to hit the fcr breakpoint minimum and you can’t let your energy shield drop off and you have to deal with poison and bloodmana curse…
It’s fun to play the game with other builds but if you actually want to find items you have to play something fast.
the Bowazon is fine
one of the best builds for suvivability
has a lot of OP runewords especially for midgame, even break the mid game
AR is a fine mechanic, no question about that…
casters are limited and boring… it is all about +to skills… nothing else matters… so boring… physical builds are the most interesting, they have the best modifiers such as leech, pmh, CB, CS…
You are operating under the false assumption that all builds should be able to equally do everything.
That would totally move away from a very core foundation of what makes D2, D2. Characters have identities, and some are way better at certain things than others. This is beautiful, and how the game should be.
The biggest problem of melee is block chance of monsters, not only the AR. Of course, having bad AR doesn’t help, but for example uber mephisto has 50 % chance to block.
I would like if we had ways to bypass blocking chance or the devs calm down a bit on block chance of monsters. Melees have already other problems (AR, no leach/mana life on many monsters, AOE effects after killing uniques, taking all sort of damage, etc).
Tldr : removing the AR just level down the game. I prefer if they make adjustments.
I mentioned in another thread, I think lightsorc has seen some kind of nerfs. But I think nerfing chars is not the way forward. Instead they should be properly boosting other chars and not just by adding some random piece of kit. They need real damage numbers and actual skill mechanics overhaul.
I do think melee builds and lesser used classes like dudu really do need a proper buff and some skills overhauls for the huge masses of completely fkn useless skills. I loved Fury dudu but jayzuz they fkn suck in hell. So disappointing. Those spirits? What a waste of time with their 1 hit death. Pointless.
ive told people this melee is better and has more varity the only difference is their very gear dependant and lack spread damage. BOwazon is good lacks some clear speed compared to caster but due to passive is very safe. Can easily get 6k damage on ga, then factor in high crit strike and deadly stike the damage is massive, remember deadly strike/crit strike can play off each other. The factor in a act 2 might merc with a price rune word and the damage is massive. The othe mlee mainly barbs, shape druids need buffs.
Overall I agree with your perspective, but I would suggest that classes have some wriggle room in being able to emphasise certain strengths (and weaknesses) depending on how you build them out. You should be able to make tanky versions of each class for example.
They don’t stack for 4x damage if that’s what you mean, if one roll succeeds the other is ignored. The only exceptions are Valkyries and A5 mercs, they have the 5% “monster crit” which does stack with either Deadly Strike or Critical Strike for up to 4x damage.