Beta is over, homie. I’m here to stay!
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So which aura weapons are there for act3 mercs?
Class and merc balance after 1 or 2 ladder season.
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Act 3 and 5 mercs are weak. No arguing that. I’m just saying Act 2 isn’t the only useful merc.
You are saying the act 1 merc has one (extremely high end) runeword that makes it useful.
How many uses does the act 2 merc have?
- meat shield
- dps
- aura (without an extra runeword) (at least 3 of which are useful)
- dual aura (with multiple runewords, some of which are low cost)
What do you call a game where there are 4 choices (mercs) and one of them has multiple usecases, while the others have 1, 0, 0 respectively?
A game in desperate need of balance.
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"Imo they should not stack in inventory, only stash. It is really just an indirect way to increase the stash tbh. Which is good. Likely more efficient for the servers than more stash space."
I can see where you’re coming from here. I am not fond of the idea either. I am just really speaking in terms of game-breaking vs. not. I’d prefer this didn’t exist along with you.
“Balancing doesnt mean buffing mercs overall. That definitely should not happen. More about making the lesser used mercs competitive.”
But on the flip side – what if a merc is just good for a certain build? I don’t think mercs were ever meant to be competetive but just a far weaker but determined warrior willing to join in your fight. Mercs in Diablo 2 I believe are far more fitting for the game-world than D3.
"Some endgame content surely could change the core of D2.
Stuff like Rifts etc. should never ever be added to D2 imo, no matter how well balanced you can make it. D2s endgame happens in the game world. That should remain true."
Right, but, in the same fasion, unless you are a full, 100% purist (which I do not agree with either), we have all played mods that added in some content / changed how items themselves work and it was an entertaining experience. Do I think vanilla should go as far as most of these mods? No – but, many of them did have some decent QoL ideas without actually changing D2 into a new game (Median XL was awful, sure, but many other mods weren’t).
I personally want a happy medium for everyone. New content and slight changes may be cool – but the core of D2 and what made it what it is (a flourishing trading market, pvp scene for those who desire and actual rarity of items outside of botnet unlike D3 where everything you need rains from the sky like diarrhea.
Unfortunately, you will never find that happy medium. Everybody has different expectations for the game and what they want out of it. If you spend too much time trying to please everyone, you will please no one.
Instead of trying to cater to the changers, Blizzard should stay the course and release the game as they promised it would be. That way we all know what we’re getting.
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Well im with you, honestly. I see no issues with FFA loot, no limitations to hostility (outside of the many safety checks that already exist and id even advocate for some of them to be removed – this is a hostile world. Not a build-a-bear) and as close to the vanilla experience as possible.
I am just being open to QoL ideas, ultimately. I can assure you – things like universal ploot for all are not something I will ever get behind or want. Ever.
In addition - truthfully, and this is a fair argument:
Shared stash is a huge change. 100% Purist D2 carried the inherent risks of running out of personal space and needing to “mule” which meant either risking that you were 100% sure your game was permanent after 5 minutes, or having a trusted friend. Then, you had to ensure you kept your characters “permed” or you’d lose it all anyway. Using cheat and hacks to bypass this 10+ years after launch or auto-perm, etc didn’t change that this was part of the core gameplay.
Having the ability to bypass all of that is a massive core change, as the countless number of lost items back in the day (which reduced their availability in the trading economy) will no longer occur. I don’t hear anyone against this, though, even though it reshapes a huge portion of the game.
Ultimately, the bottom line is D2r should be as close to D2 as possible, but concessions have already been made. There will never be justification for changing the loot system and even further deeper core gameplay mechanics, but, additional QoL features and new content may not be a bad thing by default.
I’d be down myself for keyboard-style skill and movement triggers. Carpal tunnel isn’t something I want and I am not a young kid anymore.
Blizzard from Blizzcon and forward has promised repeatedly that hey would listen to player feedback and game changes were possible. Consistent with this idea, they have sent out multiple surveys and in fact changed the game in response to player feedback.
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“That was also in the poll. Only 38% supported keeping D2R FFA only so we will see if Blizzard listens to the minority or do what is apparently best for the game and supported by more people.”
Haven’t we already resolved this? We are all well aware many who never played D2 are answering that they did on the D2r poll in order to push their desired D3.5 version of D2.
When did we develop an issue with seperate realms? My statement was clear that it’s against universal ploot – not your own seperate, unmergable realm with ploot.
Im confused.
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If they just re-release D2 with a fresh coat of paint then the game will be as dead as d2 bnet in a matter of months. A group of a few thousand diehards aren’t going to keep this game alive and updated. It needs a big playerbase, and it won’t have that if 90% of the players get bored and quit after a month or two from lack of content.
Right now the progression will go as follows for most people:
1-Get the game and have fun making through the end of Hell enjoying the nostalgia.
2-Grind Baal runs for a bit enjoying the nostalgia and then eventually get bored of baal runs and make some new characters.
3-Start up a MF sorc hoping to get some gear for fun pvp/pvm character builds.
4-Proceed to do like 100 MF runs getting hardly anything, not find any of the high runes needed to actually make the fun runewords, and quickly get bored with the lack of viable content to farm for items.(this is where maps/rifts/etc could add some spice)
5-At this point I predict a few different outcomes. The player gets bored and quits because they can’t pull off any of the fun builds without high runes, the player starts botting to make up for the abysmal drop rates, or the player is a grinder and they proceed to do thousands of mf runs slowly working their way up. 90% or more of players aren’t gonna be the grinder. If we had new content like maps/rifts it would at least make the grind a bit more tolerable. Doing Meph run #578 isn’t fun.
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A loot filter doesn’t matter when there are bots or players using the pickit scripts to steal loot. Those programs already have a loot filter built-in. 
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If the player hosted server doesn’t send down the item to the other clients, the only person that can run a universal pickit script would be the person hosting the server. The clients wouldn’t have the data for the item for the bot to pick up.
Almost 9,000 respondents. 98% who identified as D2 players.
Since that poll was also advertised on r/diablo2, d2jsp, Blizzard’s D2R forum, Rhykker’s youtube, twitter, among other places I think your argument lacks merit. Moreover you do not need to be a reddit user to vote.
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Again. I don’t know how many times I have to say this:
This is NOT an MMORPG. Diablo 2 doesn’t need hundreds of thousands of players to thrive. Even when D2 LoD has 5-10k players online, trading is still alive and well, games can be found all over the place and the core communities of the game are active all over the internet and on Discord.
I don’t know why you guys think this game needs a sustaining population to be successful. This isn’t a new game. It’s solved. It’s not going to hold onto everyone that jumps in at launch. And by the way, most people that WILL play, are going to be people that buy around launch.
When the next big game comes, most people will hop ship and board the next hype train.
You will always be able to find games on D2R, no matter how old it gets. It doesn’t matter if Blizzard supports it or not.
Look at the other remastered Blizzard classics. They didn’t get new content. And you can still jump in them and find a game in no time.
You’re gonna have to live with a fresh coat of paint and understand you’re paying for a face-lift and minor additions - NOTHING more. If you want a grand slam new game release, this ain’t it. You’re on the wrong forum, when you should be on the Diablo 4 forums.
Also, I will add: Diablo 2 is a single player game. You can do everything on your own. So really, it doesn’t matter if the game dies or not.
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Obviously you haven’t been paying attention to twitter. They already said new features including QoL changes are coming post launch.
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We’ll see about that. Once the game launches and all the players asking for changes go to the next game, we’ll see if Blizzard actually follows through. Why do you think they’re waiting post-launch? They’re floating the idea and nothing has been confirmed.
Because they are focused on getting the game shipped? Seems pretty obvious to me.
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“Almost 9,000 respondents. 98% who identified as D2 players.”
And you vetted them for Diablo 2 history? All “9,000”? I’m impressed because there isn’t even an online history for such. You must have some seriously powerful skills far above the rest of us. I’m very interested in learning (and I am not being facetious here either – if you mastered that level of data validation, I as a software developer would be interested in your methods).
But, back to reality now… Because, like, no group of immature millennials who simply want to force their will on everyone else because the word “no” was never taught to them in life have never lied on a survey… got it.
This is the real world – I can identify as an attack helicopter if I want – doesn’t make me one 
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