I hope the developers consider improving weapon base durability as a crucial step towards improving melee characters in the game while also closing the gap between melee vs. elemental builds. Plus, it’d be nice to reduce the amount of trips to the blacksmith for repairs as many weapons in the game break too quickly. As a starting point, they should consider a boost to base weapon durability across the board as follows:
Normal: 25% increased durability
Exceptional: 50% increased durability
Elite: 100% increased durability
A few examples are shown below for comparing current base weapon durability to improved. As you can see, this is a fairly modest change…
I’m not against it. But it’s also not necessary like at all. Most weapon durabilities make absolute/total sense. Spears are not some super durable weapons. Axes will dull quickly with repeated use. And etc. Please keep some semblance of reason/realism in D2.
I respectfully disagree. Durability on weapons, especially elite weapons could be improved. Short swords, axes, and military picks have notoriously low durability between 24-26, which doesn’t make sense and utter garbage for fast attacking characters like Frenzy, Zeal, etc. Increasing baseline durability by 50% shouldn’t be an issue and helps out melee.
That’s okay. We can agree to disagree. Like I said, I’m not against it. I just don’t want to see durability to not matter at all ever. Or if we’re gonna do that, then at least make arrows and bolts infinite while we’re at it. Hell, even let them spawn as magic or rare or make some unique quivers and bolts. There’s just so much more pressing stuff they can/should focus on before getting all the way down to re-assessing durability numbers.
The developers could always expand the Self-Repair suffix found on magic and rare items (repairs 1 durability every 33 sec) to Jewels.
Self-Repairing Jewels could open up possibilities for Ethereal weapons and negates the limited use of being irreparable (provided it has open socket). Zod is just too elusive to be used in this manner and saved for runewords in all practical matters.
…imagine if only they make a new series of act 4 quests,quest 4-5-6, where one gives you the opportunity to make one item ethereal, once per difficulty, but with a 50% chance of destroying the item instead;
You get to try again with a new item until it succeeds once, then the quest is completed.
I just wanted to bring this back to the top as it’s still something we need. Whether we increase durability, or decrease the chance to use durability, something would be great. Some way to make things indestructible would also be great.
As it is, I only use phase blades in PvM because I was sick of repairing my axes after every short run. It runs out so quickly that it’s painful.
It’s not even about the gold cost; it’s about the time and stuff around. I also don’t find an ort rune anywhere near as often as I need to repair. With Berserker Axes, I need to repair every run or two. It’s almost comical.
