New character Mode option
To welcome those changes without imposing them on those who want to enjoy the remaster in its Pure form, a new game mode will be proposed on character creation alongside ladder/non-ladder , classic/expansion, softcore/hardcore
This new option will make you choose between Remaster/Rebirth
Remaster character option allows them to play the game as it was released on launch, bugs aside
=>Giving a use to stamina by integrating it as a attack skill cost and attack damage booster
That way you create a sink for stamina
And you give a perk for having stamina
Also when you have no more stamina it cost twice as much mana
And when you don’t have mana it cost twice as much stamina
Melee and bow is now way better by having a damage boost and a mana burn/mana deficiency mitigation, he sacrifices power to compensate
Example values: you have 1200/2000 stamina left, if the ratio is 1:10, you get 120% increased physical damage with attack
Vigor now becomes a nice aura, Harmony because interesting
Increased stamina skill on barb now also becomes a source of dmg and ressource
Now sources of stamina and slower stamina drain become interesting attacker choices like Eld rune, Vidala boots, charms
To be clear, the stamina cost isn’t an extra cost for attack, it’s just a payment to access the Damage bonus
=>attacker takes damage is now a counterattack
Iron maiden remains “reflected” damage
But thorn and other source of “attacker takes damage of x” are now reworked to now be based on your default attack damage
Thematically this makes you retaliate to enemies attack
A % chance to happen is added , ie: Amn rune in helm has “ 14% chance of attacker taking damage”
Because of this chance thorns gains a new stats “% chance of attacker taking damage” as well as existing damage amplifier
Super easy to change as well
This would greatly help melee builds as its leeches as well
May I add, since it’s base on default attack, it’s not just physical damage, elemental is counted as well, but it also means that the chance to trigger a retaliation is 0% when in recovery
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=> Arrow effects now stack
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stacking means
use magic arrow skill with a kuko shakaku, it shoots a magic arrow that explodes
This would create a different gearing path than just “use the highest dps bow”
It would give some love to bows like:
- raven claw
- kuko shakaku
- mavina
- wizendraw
- hell rack
- etc
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=> Crafting quivers
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Explosive potion+quiver= Quiver with “fires explosive arrow” affix
Rancid potion+ quiver= quiver with “fires poison explosion arrows”
Oil potion+ quiver= Immolating arrows
Explosive potion + thawing+ quiver= freezing arrows
Endurance potion + quiver = magic arrows
antidote+ explosive potion+quiver= quiver with “Fires poison cloud arrows”
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=> Making unique items great again with the upgrade recipe
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Lore wise, there is no such thing as norm/nm/hell as much as normal/exceptional/elite. Everything is on the same tier, so it makes sense that if there is an elite version of Death web there is an elite version of Ice blink with hell capabilities
and set that can be upgrade now have alternate versions
Meaning a Normal Unique now has a Exceptional and elite version
Not only the base gets upgraded but there can be a buff to its affix or additional ones
Example 1(affix buff)
Rixot keen [normal]
+100% Enhanced Damage>
+5 To Minimum Damage
25% Chance of Crushing Blow
20% Bonus to Attack Rating
+25 Defense
+2 To Light Radius
Rixot keen [exceptional]
+300% Enhanced Damage
+50 To Minimum Damage
25% Chance of Crushing Blow
20% Bonus to Attack Rating
+150 Defense
+2 To Light Radius
Rixot keen [elite]
+400% Enhanced Damage
+50 To Minimum Damage
25% Chance of Crushing Blow
20% Bonus to Attack Rating
+250 Defense
+2 To Light Radius
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Or
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Example 2(additional affix)
Iceblink [Normal]
+70-80% Enhanced Defense
Freezes Target
Cold Resist +30%
Magic Damage Reduced By 1
+4 To Light Radius
Iceblink [Exceptional]
+150-200% Enhanced Defense
+2 cold skills
Freezes Target
Cold Resist +40%
Magic Damage Reduced By 10
+4 To Light Radius
Iceblink [Elite]
+200-250% Enhanced Defense
+3 cold skills
Freezes Target
Cold Resist +50%
Magic Damage Reduced By 20
+4 To Light Radius
This kind of system would help a lot of unique items to become way more interesting and for longer at the cost of the upgrade recipe
Instead of adding new items to the game you have this novelty through existing ones
Ofc this doesn’t fix the bad Elite ones but at least a good chunk would be adressed
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=> summons masteries rework
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Druid and necromancers get a little rework as for the way they summon
maximum summon isn’t regulated by the skill itself but rather the mastery and is now global.
Skeleton and golem mastery now become summon mastery and Druid has a new skill Beast mastery.
Each summons have their own Value in how many summons they are worth. That way you can mix and match. Ie: 3 grizzly or 20 wolf
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=> Poison length reduction now applies to the poison you deal
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This as for effect of making poison more concentrated
Poison that used to deal 100 damage over 10sec could now be lowered to 100 over 5sec
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=> Holy skills now deal damage to the livings
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The magic damage from holy bolt, fist of heaven and sanctuary now not only damage undead anymore
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=> Splash damage as a side product of knockback
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Melee splash through Knockback Aka: killing 2 birds with 1 stone? Giving melee more aoe and at the same time making a mechanic very bad for melee more interesting. And all this with thematic, logic and physics
Knockback is crap for melee since it moves the monster away from your melee range but of we give the special perk of splash to Knockback it would put a solid balm on his horrible drawback. You now have the choice to play without Knockback and therefor no splash or live with the Knockback and the awesome effect it creates
#Logic and theme behind the concept:
We all agree that pushing somebody into other people transfers that energy
Following this, it would only makes sense that knock back causes the same thing and since damage is energy, the transfer of energy is damage
So it would make absolute logic that Knockback transfered damage in a semi-conical shape in the direction of the Knockback
#Things to know about Knockback
Knockback is a really despised mechanic for melee but tying a splash damage to it would make it way more interesting and wanted
It’s also a Stat you can decide to acquire or not
I would tune down the existing sources to create more insentives to stack it and make it harder to benefit from that great mechanic
There is something to know about Knockback it’s that the distance is based on the size of the target. There are 4 catergories
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small (100% distance)
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medium (50% distance)
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large (25% distance)
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immovable (0%)
Knowing that this would alter the shape of the cone
Smaller monsters would generate longer but narrower cones
Larger monsters generate larger but shorter cones
Like crushing blow, I would apply a damage penalty to bow generated splash
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It would be awesome to have mechanics buff rather than just number tweaking
Skills like Bash have 100% chance to KB so it would make this skill super flavourful, it would compensate it’s boring single target and lack of effect
So you make 2 bird 1 stone, you make Turn Knockback from a negative to a positive mechanic and you help melee
TLDR: enemies in the line of the Knockback receive a fraction of that damage by getting bumped by the knocked back monsters
This wouldn’t be much of “ADDING” a mechanic but rather improving an existing one
Super Unique Unique models
The talented artists at blizzard have worked on super uniques to give them each their own Unique model.
Keep in mind that Diablo 2 was rushed and cut short to fit a certain release date constraint which forced the devs to use shortcuts like simply recolouring special monsters to make them different than the normal ones
Instead of being slightly different, super unique monsters now have their own models that reflect their name and story.
Ie: The Countess isn’t just a recoloured dark huntress, she’s now represented with her canon black dress soaked in blood
Ie: tree head wood fist is now a Brute with a Tree head and a trunk arm
=>King of the hells ladder challenge
Easy
I wish endgame was just a bit spicier
We need an endgame mechanic that, games created with Baal quest completed have the remaining unactivated mobs get harder and harder the more cleared the game is.
Let’s call it King of the Hell in reference to king of the hill’s last man standby mechanic
Like playercount, unactivated monsters still can be modified. Meaning they can be buff up until you activate them
for example: PER % cleared monsters gain +%8 life, 5% xp, +2%dmg, +1% resist(cap 95 to avoid generating immune) and some loot bonus(mf&noloot). also areas under lvl85 gain +1mlvl each 4% cleared up to 85, then when all areas are at least 85, the +1mlvl applied to all
So based on those Placeholder values, if you have cleared 80% of the game, all hell areas will at least be 85, monsters will have % increased life, 160% increased damage, at least all their resist up to 95
This makes all alvl85 which makes the whole game farmable
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It incites people in staying in the same game
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favours party play
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incentivize killing monsters rather than skipping them over more rewarding ones
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less stress on servers caused by spamming new games
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insanely challenging content
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solves the boredom of 99 grind by introducing all monsters in the mix to the time sacrifice of setting up your game
=>The 9 Circles of Hell ladder challenge
Note: could be less circles, 9 is thematic to Dante’s inferno. Could be lowered to 4 like Diablo 1 area 13-16 but it would create a steeper progression and i think we should avoid the D3 Inferno mistake which cranked difficulty too fast
How it works
Beat Nightmare and you appear in act 1 of the 9th circle of hell
Only this circle grants you skill/stats/resist rewards. But to compensate, it grants respec
Besting the 9th circle of hell you gain access to the 8th circle of hell which is harder, +2 to all Monsters and area levels
Follow this concept until you arrive at the final circle of hell where All areas are at least alvl85 allowing people to farm in new ways but beware, everything is harder…Diablo is now stronger than Uber diablo
- This would open farming to all the areas of your liking
You would see people doing full clear countess runs, hell tombruns, cow game would be back on the menu
This way the game doesn’t get new content, it just unlocks already existing content to new approaches
- This would also be a Huge component of the ladder, now not only people look for who’s going to be 99first but also who is going to beat Final Hell first
This is the minimum alteration of the game I think we can do to get something close to an endgame buff but it comes at a huge cost in difficulty… this isn’t powercreep, it’s risk vs reward
Note: people often talk about /players x command on bnet but this is different, /players x only affect “no drop”, it doesn’t change the a/mlvl which is important for drops limitations which is why people do Pitruns, it’s alvl85
The ladderboard tracks those who reaches the highest difficulty
**=> The bounty ladder challenge **
Each new game created you can seek for Natalya. She will tell you that her order has spotted strange activities and a high concentration of monsters in X area. She will ask you to cleanse this area
This mechanic greatly increases the density of monsters of this area
There is also a super unique and a super chest that randomly spawns in the area
The ladderboard tracks the total Life of monsters killed
Pvp ladder
This one ranks players by their pvp ability
It’s account based so there’s no new char spamming to abuse the system
You start with 100points and when you kill somebody you gain 5%of his pts and he loses 5%, but only 1% if hostility isn’t mutual
Holy grail ladder
race to the first with all items. To ensure the validity of the entries, it only accounts items that were first picked up by you. So no selling of unid items to trick the holy grail.Comes with the introduction of the Holy grail tab
=>Spawning Dclone through Unique item sink
Note these values are examples, blizzard could tweak them to make them bigger or smaller
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Each unique/set item are yielded a %chance to spawn Dclone based on rarity( ie:minimum soj to spawn Dclone is 75, so let’s say soj has 4% chance to spawn Dclone, mang song being 10x rarer would be 40%, the ward being 20x more common than soj would be 0.2%)
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If you are the one that triggers the event, Dclone spawns in your game, X number of random game that have Baal quest completed see the event trigger as well
Voilà! Now you have a way so that everybody, rich and poor can participate in
Every unique/set item that drop now has a value/meaning and you got a sink/purpose for those items rather than leaving most of them on the ground. You bad luck streak finding only bad unique could be saved by those crappy unique spawn Dclone
This would give back the thrilling feeling of finding unique items to all of em, good and bad
That Eth Griffon you find isn’t completely useless anymore, it could exponentially increases your chances of spawning Dclone due to its rarity
Dclone spawning on soj is an incitement to dupe and a way to launder those duped items… that’s kinda dumb
Dclone SOJ counter was basically introduced to fight against duped soj, but nowadays there is no reason anymore to sink duped soj, if this stays based on soj, not only only rich people will be able to participate which would kill the community event aspect of it but it actually incite people to actually dupe soj to feed the mechanic lol Blizzard should learn from the Indian cobra bounty failure: wikipedia,org/wiki/Perverse_incentive)
Note: this doesn’t make Dclone easier to spawn, there wouldn’t be much more Anni’s floating around, but it would make it a real Community event rather than hackers/cheater incited to dupe soj and sell them to launder them and make profit
It would turn the Dclone event from an Lottery with only golden tickets to a lottery where there are golden tickets as well as bronze, iron, copper, silver ones
=>Quality of item
Base items can spawn Crude/Low quality/Cracked/Normal/Superior
This system is now expanded to magic/rare/unique/set items
Pristine rarity is added and has a 30% increased effect
A cube recipe is added to improve the quality of items up to a maximum of “normal”
On top of that rarity items now spawn with a quality.
So you could get a lower quality Grand father, cube it to up it to normal. But you could also get a superior or prestine one
=>2Handers affix bonus
Let’s determine that buff based on the difference between 2hander and 1h+shield
Since 1h+shield can reach 10sockets and 2h can reach 6 sockets
((10-6)/10)*100=40% potential difference
Therefor a 40% buff is applied
So a archon staff base now can spawn 1-4 x skill implicit
Grand Father now rolls higher from 203-649 now 226-793
You could roll a +4 skill Hoto in a archon staff base that has 1-4implicit skill
There is almost no 2hander used in endgame builds, this would give them flavour for sure
2hander is now flavoured around concentrated power
And 1hander and shield are about versatility and defence
=>Class specific unique/set items to spawn class skills
Stuff like unique scepter is now able to spawn up to 3 random skills on it like white/rare/magic do
This would be a really fun chase to find good combo
Ie: mang song with +3 fireball implicit, making it a +10fireball staff
Ie2: aldur helm with +tornado
Ie3: astreon with +hammer
I think that adding this to the game could revalorize plenty of class oriented base unique and create a more healthy balance between unique and runewords
=>Synergy system 2.0
While the intent behind synergy system was noble, it ruined a lot of aspects of the game
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it kills skills with bad synergies
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it kills skills with too many synergies
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it kills skills with too low synergies
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it greatly weakened the concept of Hybrid build
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Kills the choice of options when dealing with immunities
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it killed most of charges skills
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it killed most of Oskill
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it killed most of Trigger skills
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it greatly weakened build diversity
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The current synergy system is bad, By “bad” I mean the damage only aspect of synergy system. By being damage only it make it so skills that get low total %damage synergy or decent total damage synergy but with too many synergy are doomed, they can never be good or take too much investment to even be decent.
Also the way synergy system got implemented was bad because it mostly add synergies on the same branch of the tree, so if you make a fireball sorc, your synergies are also fire which sucks in terms of tactics against immunes. So if you want to be hybrid it will most likely suck/be impossible because you would need 2 skills with few synergies and high total damage% from sysnergies
The way they added synergy system also killed item granted skills… those skills were already balanced by being low level in a mindset of not requiring synergies, but since they added synergies they have been kept at the same low level and cannot benefit from synergies on other classes.
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A better approach to Synergies would have been skill effects based on general skill type rather than Class and damage restricted
- projectile
- melee
- cold
- fire
- magic
- physical
- lightning
- poison
- area
- buff
- summon
Here’s a quick display(fine tuning required) of what it would look like based on what i started to do for a Mod i wanted to make before Blizzard cut mod support
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mRk7BNo9Mf5HciVSb0aFXuZcU1joQhPbSesyrHTmqJI/edit?usp=sharing
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Then the synergy bonus from each skills is special perks proper those skills
Ie: magic arrow’s synergy bonus:
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Gain 1 additional projectile per 10 projectile skill hard point
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Gain 5%attack rating per attack skill hardpoint
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gain 5% magic damage per Magic skill hard point
That way a sorc/pally/barb/necro/assassin using a bow could invest in their projectile/attack/magic skill to get that bonus on Witchwild String
Other example of what could be done with such system , take Vengeance
Ie: Vengeance’s synergy bonus
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gain 5% fire damage & 1% chance to cast firestorm(same level as vengeance capped at 20) when striking per fire skill hard point
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gain 5% cold damage & 1% chance to cast Glacial spike on striking per cold skill hard point
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gain 5% lightning damage & 1% chance to cast shock web on striking per lightning skill hard point
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gain 5% attack rating per Attack skill hard point
This system also makes it less reliant on “same type skills”. Ie: fireball being synergized by fire bolt which are both pretty much the same skill. But with this system you could buff your fireball through aoe,projectile and fire skill … allowing you to synergize fireball with a plethora of choices that aren’t just a projectile fire spell like it
TLDR: by changing specific synergy skills to more general type synergies you
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revive ctc
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give some love to cross class oskill
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improve viability of builds that use more than 1 tree type
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give a lot of flexibility in your choice of synergy
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allows you to customize your skills
=>Enigma
Enigma now has a new modline “Afflicted by Level 20 Blood mana curse when equipped” (Lvl20 blood mana: use life instead of mana with 100% increased cost)
=>Mouse confinement
Added an toggle option that allows you to select if you want your cursor to be confined to you game or not when using the fullscreen game setting
=>Offline character profile
You now have access to your character’s informations (character sheet+Gear+merc) while not connected in the game
Other players can also have access to this information via a link you can share
=>Merc upgrade
Act 1 merc:
Now uses a rare quiver bound to the merc, this quiver has (*lvl) affixes, the mods of this quiver can be reroll via Ashera with gold cost
normal Merc now use strafe and exploding arrow
Act 5 barb:
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can now use all weapon types
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Norm Merc now use berserker and battle cry
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Nm Merc now use throw and find potion
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Hell Merc now use frenzy and howl
As for act 3 merc, they are iron wolf like was D1 sorcerer:
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don’t try to melee anymore
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norm Merc now use flame/shock/cold wave
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nm Merc now use fire/cold/lightning elemental
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hell Merc now use apocalypse fire/cold/lightning
=>Indestructible affix doesnt prevent the item from spawning ethereal anymore
=>Socketing upgrade
Unique/set/Rare Items that can spawn 5-6 socket now can roll 1-2 sockets at Larzuk/cube recipe
Magic items that can spawn 5-6 sockets now can roll 3-4 sockets at Larzuk/cube recipe
=>Kicking players
You can now kick players from your game
=>All skills can now be used on both mouse clicks
Obviously restrict auras from character skills to 1 to avoid abuse
This would help so many builds, melees especially
It’s annoying to have a 3skill(wc,teleport,find item) rotation on right click for a singer but a Paladin only have 2( teleport conc) because somehow blessed hammer is allowed on left click but not war cry
It’s annoying that melee builds cannot benefit from the melee auto targeting mechanic on right click as soon as they have auras or other stuff that require right click
Note: for those who don’t know right click+melee skill has a special mechanic that makes you automatically attack monsters you encounter
You can make fun of console how much you want but damn the controls are superior just because of this
Changing this doesn’t changes the game, it makes it less clunky and more enjoyable
=>Immunity replacement
Immunity are no longer a thing, they are now replaced with Super-resistant mechanic.
99% is now the maximum resistance a monster can have
Overcapped resistance still counts for resistance reduction and the overcapped resistance penalty (⅕) still exists
Overcapped resistance provides %life increased in exchange to the monsters. Meaning a monster with 125 fire resistance will have 99% effective fire resistance + 26% increased life bonus
=>Runeword over-restriction removal
Runewords that require is specific item class to be created are no more, instead they now are all limited to Gearslot. So no more “can only be made in a sword”, its now “ Can only be made in a weapon”
Runewords can now be created in Magic/rare/set/unique items but with a harsh effectiveness penalty of 25%/40%/50%/60% respectively and this on both the stats granted by the runeword and the base item
=>Shrine/Curse/Buff&debuff
Shrine now protect you from curses, up to 10 times
You can now have multiple shrines at once
Shrine also apply to nearby party members when activated
Curses do not share the same spot as battle cry anymore
=>Ingame lootfilter
The game now has a loot filter that allows you to hide undesirable items but also personalize the appearance of items you may want to be more noticeable
=>Game creation/Join
Game name now increments from you last game if that game name ended with “-#”
refresh game list should be player triggered only
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like console and D3, being able to filter/tag the activity of the game(not a replacement for current game system but rather as a filter) Baal run, chaos run,farming,trade,progression(updates in real time in which quest and act the game is),service,pvp
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Game run timer
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game you click on is copied to top box
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players/description should be only one tab not 2
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there should be a search box
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you should be able to sort by new/fullness
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there should be a game type like on console so people can choose act/quest/run/trade
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kick player from game function(some restriction to avoid ruining hostility system)
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typing the name of the game should show it’s information like when you click on it
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you should be able to link items in your game name/description
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longer game names
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don’t need to leave the game to create a new one, you have access to it from ingame
=>Social
The game now has a serverwide chat where people can chat together
You get your friends activities notified to you like it was back in D2lod “ “xXreaperxX has joined a Hell game called Boobiesbaal-32”
Text colours are brought back to D2lod colours. (Gold=Game System, people joining/leaving games, soj counter, white=ingame, people chatting ingame, green=Whispers, people and friends whispering to you, blue=Server system, servers are going down, etc
=>Anya quest reward upgrade
[visual representation of the process: imgur,com/eziwaIc
Disclaimer: Have to mention beforehand
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completing the quest grant you 1 for free, so 3 free shots like Akara’s respec
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This is only a visual transmutation, not stats is changed to the item in the process
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Theres also a toggle created to switch Alt art on and Off for people who wants to know what other wear during Pvp (ideally inspect function)
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there is also a warning message when trading a personalized item
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The used item is gone… sacrificed in the process, cant get it back
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this would have for effect to valourize items that look great/special but are bad, ie: Girswold edge or BoneSnap
why standard of heroes? First because it has no value and also Because Standard means “Banner, a visual representation of what you represent” and Heroes, therefor Standard of Heroes means " The visual representation of heores" and [Anya Kinda thinks you are a heroe: imgur,com/VW48DLW
The term Transmog doesn’t belong in Diablo franchise, even less in D2, by definition transmog is to change an appearance to look grotestque and funny, that’s not what we would aim in Diablo 2, we want to look good, heroic and intimidating. I’d called it personalized gear
=>We brought back organs
- monsters now drop organs
- Those organs have different ilvl and different effects
- Those organs are used to craft White items into magic/rare items
- ie: Heart= resistance, Brain=Skills, eye= damage. Fallen being fire oriented monsters, they heart would tend to give fire resistance to an armor, fire penetration to a weapon
- Organs were originally meant to drop in D2 and be used to craft items
=>Diablo loot table
Diablo and his lieutenants now have the right drop table according to the Level
The game is named after him afterall
=>Crafting upgrade
over 90% of crafting recipes are garbage, here is how to make crafting better and how to improve the appeal to those lacking recipes
1) Goodbye specific item restriction
No more “to make a caster helm it has to be a Mask!”, welcome “Helm craft requires… a helm”
If the person wants to make it in a barb helm… let him do it
If the player wants to make a blood craft Bow… let him do it
most crafts have bad fixed mods anyway, having restrictions is just detrimental to the game, which is why crafting has never been a thing in D2 beside a handful of craft like caster ring/amulet and blood gloves
2.1) Magic affix retention
Make it so that the sacrificed item has an impact on the craft by having a chance to retain the affixes
So if you have +3 jav magic gloves and blood craft them, you have a slight chance of keeping that +3jav on your crafted gloves
The chance to retain the mod isnt big, i think that 50/50 at max ilvl is a solid base but again it could be balanced differently
that 50% chance is split if there are 2 affixes on the magic item
This would greatly increase the interest over magic items, more interest over itemization = more interest to the game
2.2)Retention bonus
i think it would be cool to make the quality of the jewel help for the retention as well, ie: rare jewel gives+5% chance to retain, facet 10% and then ilvl of the jewel gives between 1-10%(ilvl1 to 99). so a rare ilvl 80 jewel would add 13% chance to retain on top of the
3) Improving lacking recipes
Considering the improvements brought by previous changes, some of them are now improved
but global improvements need to be done to clearly differenciate the recipes and give them personal perks
Conclusion
I can imagine all the Jeweller’s Plate of the whale getting destroyed trying to do a blood or hit power craft on them hahaha
So combining the 2 you could have people trying to sacrifice their:
+6 skill sorc orb with caster craft
Cruel GMB of the fool with Blood craft
etc
this would help crafting a lot rather than having only 3-4 good craft out of 40
People would be hoarding rare and high ilvl jewels, people would be identifying magic items in hope of getting cool affixes to sacrifice to RNGesus, that would be an awesome buff to endgame
=>Ingredient stacking
Runes, gems, organs, keys, token now stack everywhere(inventory, stash,trade, vendor,cube)
=>Inspect others
Like in the good old days of D2Lod maphack, you can now inspect the gear of others
Important note: these aren’t a whole, they are individual elements