Agree
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Another reason 1.10 destroyed the game. It wasnāt just uniques that were viable before then, but also rares and even blues. A quality blue was potentially BiS, and the Rwās that existed, were arguably BiS if you didnāt have a perfect rare, or compared that RW to a blue.
I do have to say though, some uniques are amazing and vastly underrated, like Stormlash, Runemaster, or Death Cleaver. Stormlash is BiS for dreamadins in terms of clear speed, but of course, Grief is the single target damage king.
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because everyone from the original team quit just before 1.10 came out which changed the balance because the game was ridiculously easy in 1.09 (you can still beat hell on any class naked so that tells you something about how easy it used to be).
many of the items they had made for the patch were runewords (the exceptions being some of the uniques you can still use with builds) because they only had 2 runewords using runes above mal at the time and none using ohm, Lo, sur, ber, cham, or zod.
They wanted to have high end runewords because the expansion was about runes after all.
Blizzard south didnāt balance items after the team from blizz north left so obviously anything based on the easier balance of 1.09 or earlier was going to be weaker and none of those items have been touched.
the fact that blizzard is now showing that they are willing to touch items with the set balance announcement means that we have a chance of them finally touching balance of uniques and old rune words finally so it is a step in the right direction at least.
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This is almost entirely false. The only thing you got right was the original team leaving Blizzard.
They didnāt purposefully make the game more difficult because it was too easy, lol, thatās ridiculous. You certainly couldnāt beat the game on hell difficulty naked with any class, either. Iām not sure where you got this, but itās entirely incorrect.
1.10 had ridiculously powerful runewords because a million glitched, duped items were floating around, and they had to make new items to outshine the glitched items and make them obsolete.
If they were trying to make the game more difficult, they wouldnāt have made insanely powerful items. How does that even make sense to you?
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1.10 patch notesā¦ also they
- Increased difficulty for high-level players to reduce future exploitation of the game system.
- Made monsters tougher
- Beefed up monster difficulty in Act V, Nightmare, and Hell difficulties. This was accomplished by improving monster stats (hp, ac, etc.) and by boosting their AI/behavior in Nightmare and Hell difficulties (that is, by making decisions more often and by simply moving faster). In Nightmare and Hell difficulties monster damages have generally been increased ā dramatically in some cases.
- Reduced the effectiveness of Experience runs, power-leveling, and leeching.
- Increased the rate of occurrence of Unique monsters in Hell difficulty.
- Increased the Experience penalty for Character level 70+ as follows: Character level 1 - 69: 100% Experience Character level 70 - 99: 85% - 0.8% Experience (approximately exponential decaying)
- Reduced drops from the most-run Super Unique monsters, Thresh Socket and Pindleskin.
- Cut Experience and reduced drops in the Cow Level.
even without the notes saying they did exactly what i said you should know anyway. They never nerfed physical abilities yet people seem to think they were way stronger in 1.09 you do the mathā¦
check out his nude character playlists if you donāt think itās possibleā¦
the glitched items were all but wiped out with the patch, duping still existed though.
if you are going to call someone wrong you should at least do a minimal amount of research on a game you clearly donāt play much.
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If you are playing through the game and find that sword when you are level 42 you wouldnt complain at all, it would probably be a nice upgrade. Not all the uniques are going to be endgame quality you have to remember the game was made for the playthrough not for what we have come to call the āend gameā, min/maxing chars.
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The logic is pretty clear here.
Uniques are introduced with finite values. When you later introduce new items with increased values (Rune Words) over those that were originally introduced, the finite values of the Uniques do not improve.
In my opinion, Uniques need to be given the same treatment as the new set items, a cube recipe that upgrades not only the base of the item, but also scales attributes commensurately.
Power creep is inevitable. As long as the game is being improved, thereās no way to avoid it.
Honestly I think runes and runewords is what made Diablo 2 the legend of a game it is to this day. Think about D3 and how many unique weapons there are, yet many (myself included) feel D2 is a much better game due to runes and runewords.
Also, a runeword is itself its own unique item, it just required several items (runes) to make it. What if enigma was a unique armor piece that hardly EVER dropped (similar to how often a jah and ber rune drop)? Runes IMO are just a cooler way to make cool items.
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Powercreep
Oath costs nothing and is far superior to most uniques. Grief is laughable cheap for what it is. And so on.
Stormlash is ultra rare. Yet, it cannot compete. Grandfather, Schaefers hammer etc all are really bad.
Well yes and no ā¦ mostly you are right of course
There is nothing that can compare to Death Web for PnB necro (in terms of rune words). But look on the bigger picture - uniques arenāt THAT rare and overtime they fairly easy saturating market. High-end rune words comes much harder (at least in theoryā¦). What rune words have that unique doesnāt? Well ā¦ mostly auraās or cross class skill. Take from rune words weapons auraās and unique will become more than competitive. Alternatively, if you give some to unique weapon aura - that will propel such weapon to the high demand
Imo things a bit more complicated here
a) āIn generalā melee canāt compete with casters - out of top of my head 3 face roll built are casters - hammerdin, wind druid and PnB necro. Why this is a case? because physical damage greatly mitigated in Hell and melee mostly rely on that in addition to it - melee donāt have half decent AOE or at very least PBAOE and while melee outshine casters on single target ā¦ most of the game content ā¦ clearing trash or safely bypassing trash ā¦
b) Blizzard sought balance in introduction immunities and Ubers, to offset this rune words been introduced and unlike unique weapon rune words are scalable and stack (think about aura on the merc + native merc aura + aura on the rune word weapon ā¦ Now Blizzard got them self in situation where they canāt boost synergies for melee (it will instantly make melee overpowered) and they canāt boost unique things - that would trivialize game
c) there is no way out this loop w/o introduction of new content which is not on the table well lol except may be D3 way - go past Hell with new setās, uniqueās and rune words
Any tiny portion they made more difficult was in response to new runewords that were literally 3-4 times the power-level of BiS weapons that existed before that, not because the game was too easy. You clearly didnāt actually play. The game was actually made far easier with 1.10.
All of these runs are performed by casters on singleplayerā¦ on the current patch, smart guy. Lol!
Absolutely incorrect. You can still trade for iths on battlenet even present day.
Agreed. I played D2 since day 1 and kind of stopped playing after I finished LoDās hell Act 5 and maybe stayed a little longer after but I never got into the whole runeword stuff. I remember using things like Lidless Wall for my shield etc. (I know some still do but the runeword ones are so much better). Heck, I remember when Windforce bow was the shiz and the go to. I donāt even see anyone ever talking about that one anymore.
Actually Windforce is one of the few uniques that are still viable or even bis in bowazon builds.
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It been hardly trivialized what happens - game was made exponential harder for elemental casters (due to immunities) - melee (and weapons) fell here as a collateral damage. To offset this rune words been introduced. But let be honest - even prior 1.10 you could deal use wands with decrify/liftap, even prior 1.10 you could use ammi with teleport charges, even prior 1.10 you could use 15/40 jewels
P.S. where I would 100% agree with you that prior 1.10 FO Sorcs were absolutely no brain built that just rolled over everything like steamroller
Only if you are running with Faith on Merc 
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my exact wording
your response
then i post proof of someone beating the game on every class naked and you say
i mean i get words are confusing to some people but omg.
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As sorceress the only runewords i use are on my body armor and on my shield everything else is unique. 2 out of 10 items. And i am one of the best geared sorceress out there so tell me that uniques are not great
No Infinity or Spirit Monarch?!?!? 
Merc is different story. He is with Fortitude, Infinity and RAL socketed Andarielās Visage.
My Sorc is with Spirit Monarch and Chains of Honor thats why i say 2 out of 10. Even with merc still more uniques that runes.
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