Normal Helms - Unique items rework by Zax

General Discussion
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Hey, as I already explained in my previous topic I work on complete overhaul of unique items in Diablo 2 and I will be posting my ideas over becoming weeks/months. I would like to clarify I do this for fun and maybe it will start some good discussion that even changes in unique items would be great.

I am trying to make some unused uniques more viable and some will have even maybe new build opportunities or more interesting bonuses. I think it is sad that there is so many unique items which you find and just let on ground because they are useless and I would like to change it. It doesnt mean all unique will be suddendly OP of course. I am trying to make decent items, not something crazy.

This will be in form of series, I decided to work on helms first and here below you can see my improvements to Normal Helms so enjoy and comment if you like :). Exceptional helms will follow next time.

All items are screeshoted on character with level 90.

---------------------BIGGIN´S BONET-------------------------

Biggin´s Bonet is certainly nice helm for normal but I feel like it has too weak bonuses and defense doesnt really keep up after upgrading.

You can see normal current version on left side and new improved version on right side.

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Changes:

  • Life bonus is boosted from +15 to +30
  • Mana bonus is boosted from +15 to +30
  • New bonus +50% - 100% enhanced defense bonus
  • New bonus +3-10% Faster cast rate

Reasoning behind change
Cap has lowest strength requirements from helms so it should be good for casters who usualy dont need high str investment. And yet it is better for melee characters than casters. So I wanted to have something for casters too on it and +%Faster cast rate is ideal. It has range between +3% to +10%. That can help with some FCR breakpoints and also can be usefull for act 3 mercenary. I also added + Enhanced defense. It makes basicly no difference on normal but it help to Biggin´s Bonet to be viable after upgrade to elite version in cube. If you are curious about result of upgrading, you can see it here:

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---------------------TARNHELM-------------------------

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Tarnhelm is great early on, but as you level up it starts to be obsolete because even +3 topaz helm has more MF so I wanted to improve MF of Tarnhelm for higher level and also added new energy bonus and enhanced defense. MF bonus on Tarnhelm will be weaker on lower levels but will get stronger as you level up.

Changes:

  • +0,5% MF per character level
  • +40-80% enhanced defense
  • +0,25 Energy per character level
  • +% Magic find bonus range change to be always 25%

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---------------------COIF OF GLORY-------------------------

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Coif of Glory is not exactly terrible, but I felt like it deserves something more so I improved it with chance to get 1-2 sockets, added +Mana and some +%defense while also removing quite useless “attacker takes lighting damage”.

Changes:

  • +1-2 sockets
  • +30 Mana
  • +75% enhanced defense
  • Removed Attacker takes dmg

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---------------------DUSKDEEP-------------------------

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Duskdeep is definitely great helm already but I still made 3 improvements. Increased defense for higher levels, change +damage type so it improves all types of damages by 8 points (shield damage included) and removed negative light radies because D2R is already darker than original so we dont need more darkness :slight_smile:

Changes:

  • Removed negative light radius
  • added +% Enhanced defense (1,75% per level)
  • +8 max damage changed to +add +8 damage (increasing also Smite damage)

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---------------------HOWLTUSK-------------------------

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Howldusk feel very weak in original D2 as it doesnt really have anything interesting. It is also not great for melee characters because of knockback and chance that monster will flee. So I decided to make helm better for ranged builds little bit and interesting option for throwing barbarian.

Changes:

  • New range on % Enhanced defense from 80%-150%
  • Removed Monster fleeing
  • Removed Attacker takes damage
  • New range on magic damage reduced by 2-7
  • +3 Throwing Mastery usable by any class
  • +2-6% Life leech

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-----------------THE FACE OF HORROR-------------------

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The Face of terror would be actualy decent for melee builds if it would not have 50% chance to flee. I wanted to stay true to original and its name so “Hit causes monster to flee” stays but I changed strength bonus to dexterity, increased damage to undeads by 100% and to make it even better for builds with bow, I added +5 Magic Arrow skill usable for any class potencionaly opening new interesting lower level builds.

Changes:

  • Strength bonus replaced with dexterity
  • Damage to undeads increased from +50% to 150%.
  • +5 Magic arrow usable by any class

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---------------------UNDEAD CROWN-----------------------

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Undead Crows is kind of weird helm. It is great for summoner necromancer but at the same time it has bonuses kind of useless to necromancer like life leech or bonus damage vs undeads. So I decided to remove these bonuses and instead I added chance to cast bone armor when struck and mana and life after kill so necro can actualy leech something from kills.

Changes:

  • Removed +%Damage vs undeads
  • Removed Attack Ratting vs undeads
  • New bonus +5-10 Life per demon kill
  • New bonus +5-10 Mana after each kill
  • New bonus +5% chance to cast level 3 Bone Armor when struck

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---------------------WORMSKULL-----------------------

Wormskull is clearly another helm designed to be used by necromancer, but it has same issue like undead crown, bonuses on it are not so great for necromancer and many other helms will be much better. So I decided to make helmgreat for starting Bonemancer or Poison necro. New +8 faster cast rate bonus should help to reach higher FCR breakpoints and +Necromancer skills bonus was replaced with +0-2 poison and bone skills. There is also new +% poison damage. I still kept life leech on helm so there are some helms with life leech merc in act 2 can still use.

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Changes:

  • New +5-15% poison damage
  • Mana bonus increased from +10 to +30
  • +Necromanced skills changed to +0-2 Poison and bone skills
  • +8% faster cast rate

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Thats all, Exceptional helms next . Comment if you like or share your ideas how to improve Diablo 2 unique items :slight_smile:

1 Like
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As someone who only plays classic and thus only sees these unique helms, there is good and bad here. You have to consider classic and expansion when you buff things that exists in both regardless of what you’re opinion is of either.
30 life/mana and fcr on a helm would be insanely OP in classic on biggin’s. There would be no reason to use anything else on a caster
Tarn I don’t think needs a change. Plus, I don’t like the idea of it always having a static MF amount. It’s exciting when you finally find that 50% tarn. Don’t take that away.
Coif would be fine if you didn’t have the two sockets
Duskdeep would break classic barbs with that ED
Howltusk isn’t too bad but I’d prefer it kept the flee as it is a popular helm for zons in classic
Face of Horror’s best attribute is the 20 strength. Magic arrow is also useless so there’s no point in it being there.
Undead Crown would be way too OP at lower levels. In normal\early nm 10 life/mana per kill would be insane.
Wormskull would be good in classic for making poison nova a bit more viable. I like this one best.

1 Like
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Well classic should stay classic without changes, is not that point of classic?. I dont really change these things for that. Its for LoD, Maybe I should mention that. But thanks for feedback.

What about new improved set bonuses, are they working in classic too? and Merc changes?

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Basically, everything that comes to expansion comes to classic too assuming it exists there. So yeah, we got all the skills buffs, merc changes, and set buffs. Only things that require extra effort we don’t get. For example, we don’t get shared stash since it would take them effort to code it for classic due to the stash differences between classic and expansion.

2 Likes
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I think it would be very hard to make changes while balancing the items for both so just pretend it is only for LoD. Classic has different patch anyway. You could have old unique version on classic and newer version on Lod.

But would not be nice to have some changes in meta of classic after so many years? Look at what they do now in 2.4 and it is just a start. If they will keep updating game, they cant hold back just because changes would impact classic in some negative way when it is played by small minority of players.

So maybe classic should stay as it is forever or have there only some type of changes.

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Classic is the exact same patch actually. There are just features that are locked behind expansion and a few classic specific skills traits in classic leftover from 1.06 (for example, static works the same in every difficult in classic). Though yeah, if that was for expansion only, which it wouldn’t be if they modified uniques, I couldn’t really give a good opinion.

1 Like
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I appreciate that you do this to help unique items but imo, you shouldn’t focus so much on normal tier uniques.

Casters don’t need further earlygame buffs like this. 15 mana or +1 to skills is already good enough, compared to what rare items can offer.

Duskdeep damage change would be a nerf to Vengeance Paladin and other skills, who want flat damage but can’t use damage+ stat. So I don’t like this change.

I think it’s cool for some good items to have a small negative cost, such as the -2 Light Radius on Duskdeep or -×% fire resist on Andariel’s Visage.

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Dont worry I will be buffing melee weapons :smiley: or making new unique paladin shield helping with that. I have bug plans :smiley:

It would be if D2R would not have issues with too much darkness.