Synergies AND immunities were added in patch 1.10 of the original Diablo 2.
With the removal of immunities with sunder charms, and to keep the game fresh and different from D2 legacy, why not revert the synergy change from the 1.10 patch? Instead of forcing players to put points into skills they will never use for the sake of synergies, you can just remove synergies which was an unpopular system and just balance skills around without it. What you guys think?
Synergy is fine and actually fun. The balancing of skill poont investment is fub. Removing synergy does nothing but watering down the game to brainness level
How is it fun putting points in skills you don’t even use? How many Fire Sorceresses use Fire Bolt after learning Fireball? How many Lightning Trap Assassins use Charged Bolt Sentry?
There’s no fun in “wasting” points in skills you will never use, just because it’s a “synergy”. Wouldn’t it be more fun in actually using more skills instead? Like putting points in Martial Arts instead of Charged Bolt Sentry so you can do more?
I disagree with it being watered down. As it is now, the game literally tells you what to max out because X skill has a synergy with Y other skill. You don’t have a choice so it’s pretty brainless.
I think it would be interesting if synergies were reworked to be less restrictive, and instead worked based upon the number of points in a skill tree.
Points in the same tree as the skill would provide the “largest” synergy, while points in the other two trees would provide “lesser” synergies.
The synergies would be determined by each skill like now, and also like now, may have multiple, one or no synergy bonuses.
The obvious benefit of this rework would be build diversity, the freedom of being able to use various different skills with one another with great or potentially lackluster effectiveness.
The problem with removing synergies is that now you max your Blizzard around level 80. Without synergies Blizzard maxes out in lvl 43. Do you see the problem here? Ofc they could introduce another mechanics to restrict the damage b4 it is feasible to be maxed out. D3 has this dps factor depending on the weapon, even with casters and summoners. I don’t like that. Another one could be lvl dependent multiplier. That could work as it is used by many items already.
On another note, removing synergies would give you ultimate hybrid builds. Imagine Lightning, blizzard and meteor with one sorc. This has several consequences. First, it would discourage people rolling more than one sorceress. I don’t know if that is a bad or good thing. Secondly it would make the game easier, in effect, it would remove immunity hindrances. Sundering charms do this already, so I don’t know if this is good or bad either.
In conclusion, I don’t know if I’m for or against this suggestion. It would be interesting to see at least.
Boooo get off the stage clown
As you said before, Sundering charms already do this. Also, pre-1.10 there wasn’t synergies, and from the sounds of a lot of old school Diablo 2 players, that was the golden age of D2, with NO immunities either. If skills were balanced before synergies, couldn’t they do the same thing now?
In what fantasy universe does a mage master all different elements? It is still better than before synergy where you just use lv 1 fire bolt all the way til lv 12. Now I know even if I invest points into fire bolt as I am leveling up, my point isnt wasted as it will synergized my fireball, meter and hydra when my char’s level is high enough to learn them.
Why do people always forget that immunity was around before synergy? Immunity was around in 1.07. Immunity is fine.
Synergy is the only problem. Synergy is the thing telling people where to put their points, and where it tells you to put those points also just happens to make you less effective against immunity. Synergy completely contradicts immunity. They don’t mix. They never will.
Synergy, and ONLY synergy, needs to go. It was a terrible idea from day 1. >.>
Well, this was a thing b4 act I reset quest reward and tokens. It does not have the same importance anymore.
A lot of games do that… Even Diablo 3 does this…
A lot og games allow you to learn lots of weak spells and pick few to master, not mastering tons of them.
D3 is another abomination. If you like that then go play d3
Diablo Immortal does this too. And I bet Diablo 4 will also… D2 is the only outlier in the series…
Doesn’t really make too much sense for a fire skill to boost a cold skill, and so on. Though I do agree, that most skills should have the dominate main synergy and a lesser synergy. This would be a good way to actually balance down some of the top end spells, and balance up some of the weaker spells. I do think that this makes most sense for elemental/magic abilities.
However, I’d remove the physical synergies and just directly buff them, or maybe have one synergy that would act as a different kind of buff, say like instead of Guiding Arrow getting a damage buff from like Strafe, have it instead get +1% magic dmg from Magic Arrow. Many classes have their own built in sets of skills meant to synergize, such as Bowazon with Penetrate/Critical Strike/Pierce, and Barbarian with their Masteries.
They could also rearrange the trees slightly to remove some pre-reqs on certain skills, to both free up points as well as encourage a player to use certain skills in their build that otherwise are too surrounded by useless pre-reqs. Something I mention below, but if you opened up Thunderstorm on a Sorc, a Frozen Orb Sorc could invest points into it as well as a few into Lightning Mastery to help diversify their build a bit.
Really, with respec and resetting Ladders, there really isn’t much point to roll more than 1 Sorc per season unless you are going to build a melee Sorc as well as an elemental one. Besides, without Synergies back in the day, there was a reason to attribute points to secondary buffs/party buffs like Thunderstorm and Enchant. With 2.4, a Nova Sorc works well with Thunderstorm, but it’s harder to work T-Storm into a hybrid build. Also, Enchant is only useful if you are building an Enchant only Character meant for buffing self in solo games through multiboxing/multi pc play, or in a pre-set group that wants an Enchant Sorc; otherwise it’s limited to a melee Sorc only due to needing to Max Warmth and Fire Mastery to make it worthwhile.
If thats the case keep D2 unique. Thank you
Didn’t you ever watch the movie “The Edge” with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin? Yeah, one of their B movies I know…
Charles - “Did you know that you can make fire from ice? Ice, you take it into your hands, and mold it into a lens, which will concentrate the sunlight to make fire.”
You’re right though… Not sure about ice from fire… Heh
To further give an example of this: Sorc Cold Tree: Remove Frost Nova and Blizzard from Frozen Orb path. Frozen Orb doesn’t gain a synergy from either, thus should not be bound by requirements to take then. Easy 2 points freed up
Lightning Tree: Remove Chain Lightning Pre-req from Thunderstorm (3 points freed), Remove Chain Lightning from Mana Shield (3 points freed to take mana shield for defensive instead of cold shield)
Fire Tree: Remove Fire Wall from Meteor as a pre-req (3 points)
Remove Fireball from Enchant as pre-req (2 points)
Paladin: Really, FoH shouldn’t be gated under Zeal, Sac, Vengeance, Conversion since it’s primary a branch of Holy Bolt and Blessed Hammer.
There are other examples, but doing stuff like this can help free skill points to use for hybrid builds and being able to make certain unused skills a bit more attractive for investment.
i mean im not saying the idea is bad…
but… do you really want the same devs who originally thought the first iteration of sunder charms were “ok” to be the ones to do this?
i ok with them being removed and skills being rebalanced.
that would open up a ton of diversity build options
but i don’t think its worth the risk to have these devs do it.
i feel any attempt they end up doing would have a high likelihood end up doing more harm than good.
but i would be all for it if done by competent players who have played with every single skill
While they may be the worst devs for the job in some peoples opinion, they’re the best ones we have to do anything with the game.
No one has the divine best ideas for the game, neither the devs or the players. The best thing that we have is trial and error, which is exactly what they are doing. Great ideas often come from trying good ideas. Good ideas often come from trying mediocre ideas. Mediocre ideas often are the result of bad ideas which are usually not even attempted. Ultimately what it takes is time.
There’s always the OG in its untouched for 12 years and counting state. 
Hell, the old devs broke the system in the first place, and brought rise to the Hammerdin…
But I doubt that this in on the plate. Pez already stated 2.4 was the hurrah for that. I suspect that the Terror Zones will be the primary mode of changes coming to the game from here out, on top of additional qol. I theorize runewords every other ladder with new cube recipes/crafting recipes in TZs, and new items like Sunder Charms the other ladders.