So I’m going to be relatively brief with this concept, but I think a lot of people here, I imagine mostly new D2 players, don’t really get the purpose of the item hunt here.
In Diablo 3 your item set and BiS list can be considered required to even play a build.
In Diablo 2, this is not the case. So many people seem hyper focused on some of the rarest items in the game like Shako, War travs, rune words involving high runes like ber or jah, and so forth. You can play and beat the entire game on all difficulties without these items. You can beat hell difficulty without a single unique item. You need to respect the mobs that you’re fighting and the area that you are in, but it’s totally doable.
The difference between Diablo 2 and Diablo 3 is that in Diablo 3 you hunt items that you already have to min max them. In Diablo 2 you hunt for items that enhance an already effective build or in some cases completely break the game; like enigma giving a hammerdin teleport or getting an infinity to break immunities. However, none of these items are actually requirements. They are just nice to have.
Diablo 2 comes from an era where finding some over powered item was a plus, not a requirement. I think a lot of the problems people are experiencing with Diablo 2 itemization is that they are treating BiS lists on Icy Veins or wherever they got them from as bare minimum requirements and then getting frustrated when they don’t have them all in the first month. Finding a Gryphon’s eye is not supposed to be a given thing. It’s something that happens once every handful of seasons where you’re like “holy crap! I found a gryphons eye this season! Maybe I’ll make a light sorc or javazon! Wow…!”
I hope people can take a step back and really get some perspective on how itemization works in this game vs Diablo 3. The godly items are not supposed to be common, and are in no way required. Enjoy the journey, and I wish you good luck in your item hunt!
100% This. I read it / see it, all the time on these forums. People complaining about not getting literally, the rarest stuffs in the game. Which, NONE OF, is needed to beat the game. It’s all just flavor.
This very much needed to be said. And very well put.
Streamers, maxrollgg, and icy veins all suffer from the same inherent flaw in thinking: “Get gear first then play the game”. It doesn’t work that way at all.
Information is presented to us in a top down fashion which is ludicrous. In D2 you go from the bottom up. Small upgrades over time until you eventually reach some form of BiS gear status. And even if you don’t hit that benchmark you can still succeed.
Exactly. People consuming information from a top down perspective really skew the experience of the game and set completely unrealistic expectations. But that also seems to be a hazard with games in general these days. Everything is spreadsheeted to death and everyone wants the most optimal load out right from the start.
I see the term “endgame” used a lot too. There really is two different gaming “cultures”. The “old” one and this modern one that’s so over designed and clinical.
D2 has no “endgame”, it’s just a game. The game starts at level 1 and every moment from then is relevant. There are no arbitrary grinds or gates or gear checks. You just play and improvise and adapt and learn.
Rune words was the biggest mistake Blizzard made. It makes all other gear totally worthless. A white item no matter the runes you put in it shouldn’t be more powerful than a great rare let’s say.
But people just run by a rare and don’t even look at them. They are worthless no matter the stats or magic on them. You need a white trash item with sockets for a rune word.
Oddly no one sees the problem with that terrible game design. That’s the sad thing. Blizzard trashed the whole game when the added rune words. And the player think it’s good design because they say nothing about it.
Just like Act 2 Merc in NM being so overpowered it makes the other ones worthless no matter the gear you can put on them. This is good game design how?
I don’t think Blizz ever intended for RWs to be as commonplace as they are. Online play was young back then and there were unforseen consequences I assume.
In an online medium, with thousands of people farming, RWs are easier to obtain in a hodgepodge fashion by trading through various outlets. Most grossly outperform all other items available precisely because they were probably intended not to be so accessible.
Comparatively, if your solo self finding? The Runeword I craft damn well better be leagues ahead of rares and uniques because I had to find Rune A B C and D AND I had to find/craft the correctly socketed item to put it in. It better put every other item to shame due to the extremes of effort I had to go through.
When mehisto drops scrolls and gold piles after 500 runs and drops are buggy i dont think any post on mf is going to save this game. They are hurting the game on purpose to get people interested in immortal and d4
That is absolutely not true. And I would love to see stats on even 50 runs for Mephisto and what the drops are because I guarantee they’re not that bad. I’ve been playing this off and on for like 20 years now and it doesnt feel any different.
Maybe, but only if you have made one of the gear tolerant classes and builds.
If you are levelling normally, with no boosts, you will definitely hit a brick wall with some classes and chosen skills. In those cases you will need a respec and/or much, much better gear, goldy gear even, in order to proceed.
There are enough classes/skillsets that simply will not work without the best of gear, because it is all very badly designed and balanced.
Quite the opposite, there are a number of very cheap, easy to get and ridiculously powerful runewords, eg Insight, Honor, Edge, Leaf, King’s Grace, Peace, Lore etc I believe these were made on purpose to overcome bad class/skill designs.
A “choke point” is when even after having equipped very good gear, your build is grossly ineffective and there you are forced to
(a) leach XP/boosts from public games, or
(b) change skillset and playstyle completely, eg from Bowazon go into Javazon, or
(c) Somehow acquire tremendous gear (does not always help if skills are crap)
Yes and no, it is not “extremes of effort”, you’d need a few Countess runs for sure, but there are very powerful runewords out there with I think Shael being the highest rune.
Yeah everything you listed is dumb cheap and way to strong for the investment. lol its more of a pain finding the base than the runes. dunno when 4os swords/poles start dropping. a5 norm i wanna say? mayyyyybe chaos?
there is no actual “endgame” in diablo 2. you level and gear up a character, collect tons of loot, give away the stuff you don’t want, and you keep the stuff you like to stash and have ready when you level up another class. i almost never find sorc gear on my sorc, but i’ve got sets of assassin, paladin, druid, and amazon gear ready to go when i play those toons
Yeah I really can’t stand these gear lists on places like icy veins. In d3 you can reasonably expect to get all of your GG items fairly quickly. In d2 you’re just not going to get a BIS slot’d character without putting in serious time and effort and like OP said they’re not needed to play your build unless you’re talking about auradin or bear melee sorc.
There are enough classes/skillsets that simply will not work without the best of gear, because it is all very badly designed and balanced.
Any class and any build can do Normal without much trouble. Nightmare and Hell are optional for people who want to continue to play the game, over and over…
