Baal runs were awful for the game in terms of gameplay

i was just thinking about how little baal runs added to the end game grind compared to cows runs, with baal runs you port to baal throne room stand in the same spot and aim your spells in the same spot never moving then leave and do it again, not to mention baal runs are a botters paradise as you dont ever move, when you compare it to to cows run end game (patch 1.9 and below) first you have the rng of opening a cow portal and seeing if you have nice mob density then everyone is moving around herding packs to slay sometimes getting caught in pack and dying and lots of stuff is going on around you at all times , imo baal runs really killed the end game grind and are far worse from a game play point and entertainment point of view, what do you guys think?

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I agree and disagree? I feel like Cows was more interactive and the games were longer and a bit more accessible. anyone could go grab the leg. No requirement for someone with Tele to significantly decrease the time to actually start the XP grind.

Cows have a supremely frustrating limitation though, if someone reks your king, you can’t make any more.

I like the idea of Chaos runs because they are a bit longer like cows, more thematic (cows are a bit of a meme) anyone can TP there and start the walk into Chaos Sanc, and you can’t get locked out. If the meta were to shift anywhere I’d say that would be the sweetest spot.

It was def gratifying to see a heard of cows explode when you threw a lightning fury Jav through them, but I’m not sure that’s the way the game should go back to.

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yea chaos runs were also much better then baal runs imo, i also liked in cows how you dont have to go the same way as everyone els and can go your own way so you get all the loot and you’re not fighting over one spot for the loot

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Cows are still garbage gameplay because they are all melee; highly abusable for ranged characters, which is most viable builds.

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I am picturing an update to a cow’s very limited attack. What of a leaping cow skill which stuns the player for so many seconds? Enough seconds that the cow can do some serious damage with its melee attacks. Imagine 6 or 23 cows leaping towards a player and from all angles. The horror! The horror! Yet, an awesome challenge. :cow2:

:alien: :dolphin:

i mean melee don’t do anything in baal runs too, they just stand there

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Well yes to some extent.

  • Act 1 guys are sort of useless, although they can be rez’d so you may take some hits to kill their leader
  • Act 2 ranged
  • Act 3 is sort of melee but the hydras
  • Act 4 I think is always extra fast, which can be dangerous
  • Act 5 sure, unless extra fast

Part of the “standing around” is because of how the minions leash to their leader, which lets you exploit the AI to pick off minions if you can keep from aggroing the leader. I think the game would be better if this were fixed.

Overall I consider the enemy variety (and having to get to the throne room) to be more interesting than cows.

i mean everything just dies in 2 seconds in the throne room mobs don’t have a chance to do anything everyone is already pre casting, they spawn and die instantly.

I see you’re talking in a 20 year old past tense.

The game today:

If you just pump into a portal at the throne and leech off someone else, you suck at the game and are likely just following bots.

Legit player options in today’s game:

Act 1 has an area that can be used to level a character to 97 - a farming area that also provides all necessary gear, items and runes for every current elite build.

Act 2 also has an area that can be used to level a character to 97 - a farming area that also provides all necessary gear, items and runes for every current elite build.

Act 4 has 2 areas that can be used to level a character to 97 - farming areas which provide all necessary gear, items and runes for every current elite build.

Act 5 has 6 areas that can be used to level a character to 97 - farming areas which also provide all necessary gear, items and runes for every current elite build.

Leveling a character from 97 - 99 is done via one of or a combination of a Diablo kill, Nihl kill, and or Baal kill.

My current clvl 96 ww barbarian can solo from the RoF wp to killing Diablo in less than 1 minute in an 8 player game; from the HoP wp to killing Nihlithak in 30 seconds; from WSK 2 wp to killing Baal in 4 minutes.

There is nothing more boring in D2 LoD than cows.

sure i can also get to lvl 97 farming quil rats in act 1 in 5months, thats not the point, baal runs are so far ahead in xp its not even close and they are little to no work at all, i cant even remember seeing a public game of lvl 90s farming anything but baal, and if they are they are doing it very wrong.

i also found the xp tables showing you get far less xp from certain acts once you reach a certain lvl

What level should you be to gain maximum experience in a given area? Here’s the basic progression.

Clvl 1-11: Act One
Clvl 12-18: Act Two
Clvl 19-23: Act Three
Clvl 24-31: Act Four
Clvl 32-36: Act Five
Clvl 37-43: Act One, Nightmare
Clvl 44-48: Act Two, Nightmare
Clvl 49-52: Act Three, Nightmare
Clvl 53-62: Act Four, Nightmare
Clvl 63-73: Act One, Hell
Clvl 74-80: Act Two, Hell
Clvl 81-83: Act Three, Hell
Clvl 83-94: Act Four, Hell
Clvl 95-99: Act Five, Hell

It’s faster and easier to 99 doing Nihl and/or Diablo than it is to do Baal.

Yea, but here’s the reality progression with bots in D2 right now:

  • Level 1 - 15: Repeatedly clear [Tristram] (normal difficulty)
  • Level 15 - 24: Clear [Tal Rasha’s Tombs] (normal difficulty)
  • Level 24: Complete [Rite of Passage] (normal difficulty)
  • Level 25 - 40: Repeatedly clear the [Chaos Sanctuary] (normal difficulty)
  • Level 40: Complete [Rite of Passage] (nightmare difficulty)
  • Level 41-60: Repeatedly clear the [Chaos Sanctuary] (nightmare difficulty)
  • Level 60: Complete [Rite of Passage] (hell difficulty)
  • Level 61-95: Repeatedly kill [Baal] (hell difficulty).

^ this gets you to the level 90s by skipping huge sections of the game. And the Baal runs saturate the game with items that shouldn’t be so easily accessible.

Bots have to go. Bottom line.

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That is part of the problem (most commonly because of hammers, but not all builds can abuse it like that) but it is also a problem with the experience reward relative to difficulty; the throne room (or any other content) shouldn’t give a meaningful amount of experience when the difficulty has become trivial. Of course, that varies a lot between builds, so I think it makes more sense to do class/spec balancing first, then work on the difficulty vs rewards.

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IMO bring back Ulvling… no one wants to grind baal or cows for 6 months anyway… let those who want a fast way to level have a way to do it besides botting… that will likely stop as many ppl from botting as well… instead of fighting the community why not use this as a quality of life improvement opportunity…

Yes that lets players skip most of the game, but that can also be done without bots; bots (in public games) just make the “get carried / powerleveled” meta widely available. If they remove botting, it helps the economy but it makes leveling a much more difficult experience for a lot of people, and some of them may not appreciate it.

I don’t mind more difficulty, as long as it’s for everyone; it is unfair if people with friends can still get powerleveled. But it’s probably better to balance the game first, or else build diversity will be even worse.

Cow level is a funny easter egg but it shouldn’t be used as a main area where to play.
If I was a dev or level designer… would be weird that everyone just plays 0.1% of the game and rest is skipped.
I used to play classic in 1.09 and back then you needed to make Diablo quest in Hell to be able to enter cow level. Well for that reason none of my characters had done that quest. It was.a proof that none of my characters had to level in the easymode level but instead I mostly soloed in Chaos… often in cow runs.

Chaos runs are definitely more interesting compared to Baal. But I don’t mind Diablo -> Nih-> Baal running at very high level since it brings more variety.

About leveling in general, you don’t need to be 99 for anything really. At level 90 you are basically done building the character the highest I ever had was 96 in LoD and 90 in classic. So don’t bother with months of leveling if you don’t like it.

Anyways one of the big mistakes imo was the introduction of Party bonus exp in LoD. This pretty much enables the whole exp leeching and mass 8 ppl party leveling. Before you would split the exp directly and also if you were 5+ levels lower than party members you would get smaller portion of the exp. At 10+ levels difference the exp would be almost nonexistant…

I think its fine how it is. Baal runs are just one small part of the end game. Most people dont even bother grinding out a million of them its all your choice. There are tons of other options to get xp or loot besides baal.
Some people might enjoy and want to try for that crazy level 99 grind or whatever. Leave it for them. Its a core part of the game.

Baal runs I treated as an XP spot, with some drops. If I actually wanted to find gear I would do bigger areas for the numbers, or conversely smaller areas singularly. Not because of ninja’s or anything but because of efficiency. Number of kills X lottery machine = items.

Bots definitely tainted Baal throne room but plenty of other places to get things done. Could go traveling in the ice tunnels, good drops there, cow level was always a nice slaughter treat. Do some Diablo runs. Baal Throne Room is nice to finish leveling but doesn’t need to be visited exclusively at that point, not that you were suggesting that.

dropwise any alvl 85 area on players 7 is what you do to get everything, pit runs or tunnels are better if you have decent maps, mephisto is also a quick treat.
you basiccally port through the area, stop when you see a bosspack, kill it and move on, with a decent map you are in the area for 2-3 minutes and move on…

the throne room, like wsk is alvl85 and with a drop champ (aka champion in a game started by a patriarch, you get more drops)

cow was simply, play light sorc or java
to get maybe runes and baseitems for runewords to sell

an okay mf spot in terms of monster density, but no alvl 85

and those that do the lvl 99 grind are the ones to attempt nille or dia in a full baal run

@wogrim a well equipped hammerdin will sit somewhere between 10 and 12k hammer dmg
ever seen what a decently equipped sorc can dish out?

i dont want cows to be the only place to lvl and MF but i would love blizz to bring them back from the dead, 1.9 patch not only dramatically reduced XP but also drop rates of uniques runes and pretty much everything.