I’m sure there have been several ideas for nerfing Teleport, but most of them are shallow attempts or attempts that have been tried already in mods and weren’t really favorited by anyone.
I’m not interested in the Enigma debate, I only want to discuss the power in Teleport itself, regardless of which character is using it.
I’m sure most would agree that Teleport is overpowered because it grants easy access to distant locations that are favorable to farm (Act Bosses for example) and simply just being an efficient way to travel quickly. My aim for nerfing Teleport is to reduce its effectiveness at this without making it entirely useless.
So for some actually creative ideas to nerf Teleport without making it utterly useless:
Make mana cost increase with relative frequency. By relative frequency, I mean the more times you cast Teleport in the past x duration, the more the mana cost is increased. I don’t like this one as much, as it further increases mana chugging, makes Sorceress more powerful (with ES being a viable spec now) by way of impacting them less, and does nothing to help characters unable to teleport. It also has no impact on Teleport charges (but maybe that’s not a bad thing).
Make maximum teleport distance decrease with relative frequency. By relative frequency, I mean the more times you cast Teleport in the past x duration, the more the maximum teleport distance is decreased. This will probably be my preferred idea until someone comes up with a better one. Teleport is reworked to only teleport a maximum distance by default, and the more you use Teleport, the more the maximum distance you can Teleport is reduced. This would obviously be balanced around Teleport spamming. If you were patient enough with your Teleports (think something like once a second or so), you would be unaffected. The merit in this over something like a cooldown is that even in panic situations, you can still teleport (IE you blind teleport into a pack on the other side of a wall and don’t want to die). You can also use it to reposition mercenary if needed. This partially aids builds unable to teleport (by reducing the effectiveness of distance traveling without removing the other utility uses of Teleport).
Make mana cost increase with distance. The further you teleport, the more it costs. I don’t like this idea as much for the same reason as 1. However, I think this one is better than 1, as it still keeps Sorceress in the lead naturally, but if she wants to cover distance she’s going to have to chug mana like crazy or build ES, which then she’ll be teleporting somewhat using her life pool.
Ideas I think render Teleport useless and break the fantasy of D2R’s design:
Add a cooldown. I really think this is a terrible way to nerf Teleport. I know PD2 took this route, and that’s why I can say it’s terrible. The only reason people didn’t riot is because they actually fixed Teleport’s balance, which I will discuss at the bottom of this post. This does nothing to help characters unable to teleport.
Introduce a damage debuff after teleporting. Another PD2 take. I think this is terrible too, and most players who use Teleport on PD2 I’ve seen talk about it agree it feels awful. I think Senpai is starting to back off on this change (but don’t quote me on that, I don’t follow PD2 too in-depth). This is just adding anti-QoL to using Teleport, which is simply terrible game design. If a skill isn’t fun to use, why does it exist? Especially one as iconic as Teleport.
How to actually fix Teleport:
None of the above solutions will truly fix Teleport. The only way to fix Teleport is add a variety of areas that are worthwhile to farm that are easily accessed from town, fairly dense, and have good drop rates, so Teleport users don’t gain any advantage. All near-town superuniques (Eldritch, Pindle, Travincal) are extremely popular areas/monsters to farm for this exact reason. I don’t think more unique monster-style drops should be more accessible though, as people will only be running through town 90% of their runs. I think specific areas near waypoints should have their area level increased as needed (like how River of Flame and Chaos Sanctuary are now) and noDrop should be nerfed. Right now, unique and boss monster farming is the extreme meta, because it returns the most items per second. Farming basic monsters is not as strong, and this is because they are not guaranteed to drop items like bosses and unique monsters are. I am not suggesting to massively buff drop rates or make all monsters always drop items. Just tune down the noDrop a little bit. Right now, p1 noDrop chance (the chance for a regular monster to drop no items at all) is roughly 62%. At p3 (or p2 partied), its roughly 38%. This is nearly double the amount of items regular monsters would be able to drop. If you do the math and check the odds, this is still inferior to superunique/boss farming, but the difference is much closer and makes non-Teleport characters much more rewarding to play than they are now. I think P3 should be the new P1 and let P7 and P8 continue the diminishing returns gain (P7 partied noDrop = 3%, P8 partied noDrop = 1.6%). P7 partied would likely end up near 1% and P8 partied would likely end up near 0.7%. This would effectively reduce the need for Teleport at all (without needing to change it at all). This is what PD2 did (maps). Nobody needs Teleport to farm the areas with the best drop rates, as they’re close to town and the areas are dense. Teleport just becomes a QoL tool in those areas once you have it.
All of the ideas for teleport are what I’d consider “drawing board” ideas and “band-aid” fixes, or rather something to discuss prior to or shortly after the release of the game.
Teleport as we know it in Diablo 2 has been the way it is for over two decades. It’s too late to make any significant changes to its mechanics without angering a part of the player base.
pd2 changed teleport for their 10k playerbase and nobody really cared. people would be open to tp changes. but i dont think we need to change tp (bottom of my post) to make it balanced
I don’t think many care what pd2 did, or what any other mod for the game did to alter the gameplay. Diablo 2 Resurrected should stick to its roots. After all, those mods wouldn’t exist without the original game.
“My friend” has decided hes just going to buy an enigma with real $ within the first few weeks of next season and use it to make a PK build to ruin baal runs. GG
Could something be done perhaps with the False Tal Rasha Tombs? Perhaps have the False Tal Rasha Tombs be level 85 areas, and eliminate noDrop inside them?
They are all accessible right off the waypoint, yet they are completely skippable during play throughs, so increasing the difficulty there does not impact players playing through the game.
They are large areas that are almost always skipped yet have decent monster density.
Turning off noDrop in those specific areas makes them attractive to MF hunters, but the Tombs also have every immunity in the game, so it’s not an immediate pick over other farming options.
i think you’re on the right track, though i dont know if i would go so far as to NO nodrop…
for anyone curious, noDrop is customizable per treasure class, and as many treasure classes can be made as needed, so the above idea would be easily doable with light modding
another idea. buff mainly the base run speed hard enough to make teleport become inferior, but keep the walk speed roughly the same. so when you need speed you toggle run. if you are fighting monsters you can toggle walk. unless you need to go very fast during the fight.
I posted my thread days ago also regarding this but not for nerfing teleport, but to rearrange map waypoints so that it is more convenient for chars without teleport. No need to change teleport, hurts nobody, but it will be lovely if, for example, durance level 2 waypoint is no further than 2 screens away from durance level 3 entrance, or stony tomb is the same wrt act 2 town gate, or ancient tunnel… and many thing else that make non-teleport convenient, without touching this skill.
Since we already have example of cold plains waypoint always near its entrance, or arachnid lairs always next to spider forest waypoint, this can be done and easily so, just need to copy paste code lines.
I like your 2. idea about shortening teleport distance.
Seems to preserve the flavour while getting a drawback from spamming, which is the thing that makes Teleport overpowered - that spamming. I think this could make even PvP better. Currently PvP is about spamming teleport 99% of time. %FRW gear would be more useful.
Also like the idea about farming more areas in contrast to the current meta areas.
I wonder if all areas could be made lvl85 after you reach the endgame point. Its sad that we miss many monster types and areas because those are inefficient to farm.
For example if getting Standard of Heroes consumed or something makes for your character all areas lvl85 or increased density, etc. that would be awesome to farm anything anywhere for same efficiency. You could cross from Act1 to Act5 with same chance to drop all items along the way.
Btw. the game is poorly designed in these areas: you get lvl85 Chaos sanctuary which is quest related unavoidable area, super dangerous area. While you get lower lvl areas which are skippable like Anya quest, which is even more dangerous (Souls) and isnt 85 area. Thats one example.
PD2’s “nerf” on teleport is a joke. You’re having a knee-jerk reaction. The sorc tele reducing damage after teleport is nothing. All it does is slightly slow down kill speed. It does absolutely nothing to your mobility. It’s not a nerf at all for traveling. You saying it would make teleport useless is laughable. I lololol my way through PD2 the same as I do in LOD. The Necro’s tele has a cooldown for a few seconds. Even then, it can be reduced and it more useful for grouping minions than traveling since they have A1 merc’s with passive Vigor aura and Necro specifically has an off hand that gives it too on equip. No one says anything about it because the nerfs are barely noticeable, sorc’s is still unlimited, tele is more accessible to others without Enigma, and FRW is massively improved. Stop trying to act like them taking away/nerfing your shiny toy will bring an end to the entire world. It was justified and executed very well in PD2.
at least some poor china farmer gets something to eat for a month from it.
I don’t think we should change teleport at all. It would hurt people that want to grind to 99 and everyone who has done it or was even close to it, knows that it is already hard enough to endure the grind. AND NO, I don’t want lots of follow up changes to fix the “fixed” teleport.
The idea with more easy access tc85 areas via waypoints would help non sorc classes early, but they all suck compared to CS because of Diablo drops + XP. So this wouldn’t change much.
I propose a midrune word with +1 teleport and some starter stats. FaloLum or something along those lines. It would boost the usefulness of those runes and balance the early game.
example:
FaloLum
+1 skills
+1 teleport
25%manareg
15 allres
10 str fal
10 vita io
10 energy lum
Already said it… there is no point in rearranging the maps
The solution to this problem you speak is no making bad areas easier to skip by foot
It’s to make bad areas better which makes their clearing a point of attraction by giving them an incentive to clear the areas
the demonic list
every time you kill a super Unique, the whole game gains +1mlvl(unactivated mobs, capped at 85-87), when all areas reach mlvl85, the buff to mobs is dmg/life/xp/noloot/resistances
Ideally super uniques would gain more buff than regular mobs, making each next one harder and harder. There could even be some shenanigan with them being allowed to higher mlvl lvl and TC so down the line they can drop everything to compensate the fact that no-loot bonus doesn’t affect them
This would incite people to hunt them
Finally we would have a reason to kill blood raven
We would have a reason to revisit the den of evil for Corpsefire, the barrack for the smith, maggot for coldworm, etc
All especially all those more unknown
People would learn about all the Super uniques and potentially their story
There are like 60 of them
Killing them all could even trigger a special event. Potentially using legendary super Unique removes from the game or some never seen like Reziarfg http://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp/monsters/act5-reziarfg.shtml
People would create games and hunt parties to kill them all, have better farming areas and ultimately trigger the Event
Restless Darkness
When you full clear an area, sunbeams appear like in the den of evil and you character says something
At that moment, a time starts
10 minutes(example time) later a message springs
“Darkness has engulfed The far Oasis, evil walks again on this land”
the area is repopulated with monsters, stronger ones
This buff to monsters is similar to what playercount provides
dmg
life
xp
no loot
But also
mlvl*
all resists(including magic and up to 99 )
maybe even a bit more density
King of the Hell
Game with hell baal quest completed have this mechanic. This mechanic determines the total number of monsters in the game and the least of them are left, the stronger they become.
You have a tracker displaying the % of the game that is cleared. This is where the leaderboard gets it’s data. Highest % reached, highest % boss kills, fastest time to reach 100%
Reward people for killing as many monsters as possible, not just specific areas or skip to bosses
As some1 said some WPs in short distatnce to next lvls.
More lvl 85+ areas.
Less exp penalty after 70.
Less chance for no drop for p1.
Teleport get 2sec CastDelay and -40 fire/light/cold res for NM and -100 f/l/c res for Hell while frames and CD time, resistance penalty is decreasing by 1 by +lvl.
Telekinesis get synergie for Teleport: CD is decreasesing by -0.1sec per lvl.
All great ideas… none of them need to be considered.
There is NOTHING wrong with teleport. The only issue is the small, OVER vocal minority who just wont shut up about it and just want to troll the game.
If the devs ever consider this fringe minority the way the game should go, they should all be fired.
Clearly you’ve never leveled a character from 95 to 99. You want to prevent players from rapidly bipassing areas and monsters that provide little to no experience on the road to 99. The experience distance between 96 and 99 is greater than the distance between 1 and 96. Super Uniques in Chaos and the Throne are only mlvl 87, they provide no noticible experience. Only Diablo, Nihlathak ad Baal provide end game leveling experience.
A zerker barb seal rushing with Enigma takes about 1 minute to get to and kill Diablo, without Enigma it takes about 5 minutes. Hindering teleport could add unnecessary long lengths of time to the 99 objective.
The same zerker barb is arguably the best mf build for the Holy Grail. Your suggestion as well just greatly slowed that objective down for no reason.
Will you donate 10 million $$ for them to do so?
There are good solutions, there are great ones, there are cost effective ones. You just love to choose the ones that cost the most time and human resources.
Probably never manage a project for your company irl before?
Please think about time, human resource and cost factor before posting realistic solutions. Nobody will consider your solution seriously if you don’t fit their budget of time, money and human resource. Real life is not a simulation.