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I mean, I guess I might use one with Dragondin honestly… but yes, very odd
i see it as a play for melee and bowzon, its useful
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Just another case of llamas awful design and ideas. Randomly slapping flat % fcr, frw, fhr modifiers on items doesn’t ultimately change anything when there is a severe imbalance between existing pool of unique items. Project Diablo 2 is inherently superior to the current state of D2R.
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So I mean, even though I would usually just use a rare dual leech ring with resists and stats, I can see manald being useful because it provides much needed (for some builds and gear) mana steal along with a few other minor perks. Getting yet another minor perk to it just makes it that extra bit nicer
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I wonder, do people like you ever exhaust yourselves like you do for the rest of us?
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Manald heal was already a good ring I would use all the time. Like every other buff on the list, these are aimed at helping the playthrough.
This buff in particular seems to target the non casters. And of everything on the list of changes, this is probably the most impactful one.
I mean, Blinkbats is crazy too if it would drop more. But I see menald heals all the time and I do think it’ll help the melee characters in a race.
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It’ll be a free boost for those that are using it anyway for ML, especially for leveling where you want to rush faster
It won’t keep anyone from swapping it for a good ML rare ring if that’s what you need for your gear set
Blinkbat would indeed be crazy, if Stealth weren’t available… but yeah, Blinkbat will be awesome for 5 levels
Manald now will be a great option for phys bowazons until you can afford dual leech.
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I’d rather have Blinkbats over Stealth as a melee character.
Better run/walk speed, better hit recovery, missile defense, damage buff. Defense is better to boot, and you can upgrade Blinkbats.
The only debatable part is the mana regen. The mana after kill I think is even better than regeneration for builds that don’t put any points into energy early on, but I’ll have to try it and see.
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Highly debatable… 5% better frw is neglible… same with the hit recovery, missile defense… you also neglect to mention everything that Stealth does better, such as Dex, resists, mana regeneration, etc. Not to mention the ease of availability of Stealth
Blinkbat will just be a swag piece of armor for those who want to be cool (which is totally fine and I appreciate that as much as anyone)
Negligible doesn’t mean non-existant. And because it’s there does mean it’s better at those things.
Dex does help with attack rating, so that’s not nothing.
Poison resist is kind of whatever for normal and NM. Especially for melee.
And I already mentioned, the mana regen is probably less good than mana after kill just because most melee characters don’t have a big pool of energy for regen to be useful early on.
So I would still rather have Blinkbats over Stealth if I was a melee character.
But like both of us have mentioned, this is cool and all, but it’s probably never going to drop when you need it in Act1 normal. Otherwise you’re stopping for Stealth every time.
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Exactly and thank you
Its great if you lucky to find one during speed run.
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Yeah, it’s gonna be one of those game changer items now. Like if a Lenymo or Hand of Broc drops. And I think that’s going to be the intent with these item changes going forward.
I’d say on my playthroughs, 1-2 uniques drop in Act1 normal. Now the chances of those uniques being useful is another story. Making these items more valuable and change the way you play if you get them is going to be the interesting thing if they keep making these changes.
But just… weird. Why slap a random FRW bonus on a ring that’s about healing?
Well, now it’s about healing and frw. Things change 
I know, it’s strange.
If only blizzard would just allow pd2 to run d2r it would solve everything. They are tiers ahead of modern blizz/activision/microsoft because they base the changes on gameplay.
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Yes, strange indeed. I wonder what else we can slap FRW onto next. Maybe shaftstop?
No.
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