TOP 5 Things you dislike the most about Diablo2

General Discussion
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Since there currently is a thread going on about what we dislike the most about Diablo 3, I thought we also can one about what we dislike the most about Diablo 2.

D2 Remaster / Resurrected is still a possibility this year with gamescom being close and the Digital Blizzcon happening early next year, so why not make this thread now.

This here is my TOP 5 List of things I personally dislike about Diablo 2.

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#1 Monster Immunities

Enemies in Hell Difficulty being completely immune against certain damage types is very much my biggest dislike about D2.

Instead of completely being immune to damage, High Monster Resistances would have been more than enough, so that instead of being completely immune, the monster now just takes a lot less damage from an element.

That would have the advantage of

  • no longer being reliant on the Infinity Runeword for mercs
  • no longer having to carry a wand with Lower Resist Charges with you all the time
  • being forced to go dual-element
  • no longer having to let your merc deal with them

Without Monster Immunites you still could do all these things, but it would open up the option to use a single element on your build. You would be a lot weaker against enemies with a high resistance to your element (compared to a build that uses dual elements), but you longer had to do one of the things listed above.

#2 Synergies

Many builds just put points into synergies to buff their main skill, but then never have a use for the synergy skills again in active combat. So these skills are basically acting as passive skills to buff the main skill.

If synergies wouldn’t exist and the game would be balanced in accordance with that, then you could e.g. build a Fireball + Firewall + Hydra Sorceress that would be perfectly viable (assuming the global cooldown gets turned into a skill specific cooldown).

Removing Synergies would just free up more space for putting your points into skills you actually would want to use in active combat, than just for skills that you will (almost never use) actively and just for buffing your main skill.

#3 Potion Spamming and having too many Hotkeys for Potions

I have a strong dislike for this.

I know this is controversial, but I personally would rather want to have a single Health Potion Slot that a single button can be assigned to, which allows you to drink Health Potions that have 3 charges and recharge themself over a duration of x seconds per charge (think about Dashing Strike for D3’s Monk, just for Health Potions), than this constant potion spamming and then refilling the belt and searching on the ground for potions, etc.

They can then even increase the amount of health a HP Potion heals from a flat amount to something like 25% instantly and 25% over x seconds.

However, I would be okay if there is a single button for health potions (with x charges that refill themself over time) and the belt could be used for things like mana potions and other potions (although Mana Potion Spamming is also annoying, but that could be solved by Minor Skills like Bash, Fire Bolt, Charged Bolts, Lightning Strike, Jab, Magic Arrow, Firestorm, etc generating Mana instead of costing Mana).

#4 Inventory and Stash

  • no separate inventory for charms
  • too small inventory
  • inventory tetris (I dislike it and would prefer it if items are smaller)
  • stash too small
  • no shared stash

#5 Mercenaries not resurrecting themself after x seconds

You always have to go back to town and revive, which takes you out of the fight.

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Now share yours.

8 Likes
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potion spam, play the same story 3 times, unbalanced attributes, no skillbar, power vs. convenience

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  1. People making D2 thread in a D3 forum
  2. D2 fanboys dissn’ D4 before it comes out
  3. All the “D2 is better” posts
  4. Being associated with cheaters due to offline mode
  5. Loosing my online character because i dont play that often
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  1. too many modders especially auto pick up ones
  2. not open world
  3. item drops being linked to specific mob types (however i don’t want the best item to drop from the easiest to kill mob).
  4. the feeling of having to farm the same boss over and over.
  5. being a noob because i was a wee little kid when i played it.
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Yay, another thread wanting to turn D2 into D3. :disappointed:

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Mostly agree with those 5.

Immuneties - limits builds too much. Monster resistances on the other hand is great thing as a counter to the usually inherent strength of single dmg type builds.
Trading - boring gameeplay, somewhat too low droprates
Synergies - limits builds unnecessarily. Meant to counter one-point-wonders, another D2 flaw, but still a bad idea
Boss runs - quite boring end-game
Potion spamming - boring gameplay, too easy get hp back leading to bad difficulty balance

I guess the 90 days account deletion should be #1 actually. But then you can of course avoid it through offline mode.

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First - and foremost, I despise the controls.
Second - too much clicking (gold, potions)
Third - Graphics are outdated, but this is minor for me. Good game play always trumps graphic quality.

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Baalruns / Cows…known as the great Endgame of D2.

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Well… As a self-acclaimed D2 fanboy let me try

  1. Potion spam oriented fights, while it’s staple at PvE for some builds seeing the same thing at PvP is dull.
  2. Instant townportal that cheese the encounter even in bossfights
  3. Overpowered runewords, I don’t mean only Enigma here there are tons
  4. Weak A.I that can’t navigate or chase due to low resolution of old times and narrow view field of player
  5. Tons of exploits to patch and fix which took Blizzard about 15 years or so to compile together

Extras:

  1. Endgame farming is not efficient unless you read half an encyclopedia thick information about monsters’ drop habits, item levels an treasure class. That’s a conundrum 20 years ago when internet were hardly a thing back then.
  2. Everyone end up getting funneled to Pindle, Meph or Baal runs when they have other options but simply they don’t. There are more efficient bosses for farming out there.
  3. Combat doesn’t pickup pace without the right affixes ever. Why yes this is largely due to immunity and resistance causing the pace to be sloggish. But without mana steal you’re bound to spam potions, without increased stamina you can’t maneveur.

I think immunity and synergies were fine and meant to balance each other for character’s powerlevel but… if I were to name something where that hurts the game it’d be the combat pace. When you add this next to the randomly moving A.I that stand their ground half of the time, you’ll have a weird concoction.

5 Likes
10

That is a big one too.

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11

Hmmm let’s see. can’t think of anything because D2 is still king.

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Kings are historically known for having no flaws.
:full_moon_with_face:

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My biggest dislike was the death, especially in multiplayer with strangers. First, all of your goodies fly every where. Second, people can mad dash and take it. Third, you run back naked, so you better have back up gear. If you don’t, then there is a good chance that will die over and over and over again.

At least that was fixed in D3.

My second dislike was loot in “public” multiplayer. Some people would stop dpsing a boss when its around 1-5% health and mad click the ground in the hopes that they get the loot. Personally, I would use public multiplayer for the boost in exp and solo or closed multiplayer for loot.

Another thing that D3 fixed.

The third would be the hackers and item sellers. Yes, even in closed BNet. They moved from Open BNet and ruined the game for so many people. I am still convinced that was the downfall of the game. People would sell items via PayPal and that was spam spam spam spam spam. The items the were selling were not even legit items either, they were duped. Again, hackers.

That was fixed in D3 as well, as far as I know.

Last problem was the supposed PvP in public multiplayer. Nothing worse than getting in the groove and enjoying your game when someone decides they want to go hostile on you. Really? It was usually an Amazon with Strafe too. Stand back and spray the whole map. Very cheap and very annoying. Then again, that was one of the risks of ‘public’ multiplayer.

Not even an issue in D3.

Other than that, it was a damn good game and I miss it a lot. I could still play it now, but it is so outdated that the graphics hurt my eyes. Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end. I guess you could say that’s another problem with D2, it came to an end.

3 Likes
14

I think you’re confusing hardcore and softcore. Your corpse is only lootable by others if you die in hardcore. This can actually be beneficial if running with a friendly HC group, as the group can pick up your valuables so you don’t lose them.

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D2 is nearly perfect.

  1. the bots are out of control
  2. Diablo clone event sucks, it’s only useable by cheaters.
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I never played HC in D2.

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  1. The Hostile Button being non-mutual: The hostile feature of Diablo 2 pretty much made griefing in the form of pking and/or nking possible; and there wasn’t much of a way for a strictly pve player to defend themselves besides leaving, and this wasn’t favorable if the player happens to be farming when they were hostiled. This form of griefing is also what gave Diablo 2 pvp a bad reputation, as most of those who are against pvp believes that everyone who wants pvp merely wants it to grief other players.

    So I hope if they ever do remake Diablo 2, they make pvp a feature where all parties involved must be in an agreement before anyone can attack one another.

  2. Druid being unable to cast skills except for summoning, shapeshifting, and Armageddon while in Wereform.

  3. Magic type Damage having no methods of breaking Magic Immunity (that I know of anyway).

  4. There wasn’t any powerful Magic type absorption item as there was the other elements. (Poison also didn’t have any affix to reduce it’s damage, but it did have affixes to reduce it’s duration).

  5. There is no reliable way of fighting Uber Diablo.

1 Like
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I agree with all of these.

I could have put ‘Balance’ as Point 5 instead of ‘Self-Resurrecting Mercs’, but that would have had a lot of sub-points of which attributes would have been one, side by side with things like itemization and skills, etc.

yeah, endgame in D2 could and should have been more diverse and open.

nah, I wouldn’t say that, since it are compare ably minor things that would be taken over from D3, the reduced inventory tetris or self-resurrecting mercs.

And in D3 there are not even Resistances.

Furthermore Immunities and Synergies indeed kinda limits build- and skill-diversity in D2, so there is a solid argument against these, regardless of what D3 did or didn’t do.

I see it the same way…

… as well as this one…

… and also here.

Could have been more open and diverse.
A lot of mods added some great new endgame stuff.

Oh yes, the 1.10 runewords.
imo they would have been totally fine, if they also had buffed some Uniques to compete with them.

Maybe there could have been a tier beyond normal item → exceptional item → elite item → xx item, that specifically only can be reached by uniques…

… and then when you upgrade a unique, they should also increase the affixes on them, not just the base damage/defense, and maybe higher unique tiers could add additional affixes as well.

If the endgame in D2 Remastered is more diverse and open, it sure would be great!

I would like that minor skills like

  • Fire Bolt
  • Charge Bolt
  • Jab
  • Magic Arrow
  • Teeth
  • Bash
  • either Double Swing or Frenzy
  • Firestorm
  • etc

… would generate Mana instead of spending Mana.

That would give you the option to either…

  • spend points into Energy,
  • stack on mana potions,
  • to use mana leech
  • spend points into a minor skill to generate mana,
  • to give your merc the Insight RW.

This just opens up more options.
And if synergies would be removed, then there would be points left that you could put into a minor skill.

yeah, Stamina feels terrible in the beginning.

Maybe it could be turned into a short-term Sprint Resource that has a limited amount on all levels, even on high character levels, like in Median XL.

I think that would be great.

I can see this point. It forced players to make some decisions on how to deal with things.

I personally don’t like them since they limit build- and skill-diversity too much for my taste, but this is probably one thing where it is about different preferences.

Yeah, a lot of things were fixed in D3 compared to D2, but D3 also took away a lot, like all the RPG Systems (Attributes, Skill Tree) and itemization got a lot worse in D3.

I always thought that they should have added %Magic Resistance and %Physical Resistance as a basic affix to items (on rares and magic items) and that these resistances should have been more common on RW’s and Unique Items.
50% max Res on them might still have been alright, or maybe 65% at max.

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Graphics.

Stamina.

Immunities.

Trading.

Baal. I killed him so many times and he keeps coming back every game. Makes me angry.

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As I remember Double Swing of D2 Barbarian class just do that after investing enough points (I think after 10+ or so it states mana cost as minus values) at it. Some minor skills of other classes indeed could do that or at least synergize to cut mana cost of other skills. That’d be great.
But potion spam is treated like a goldsink forcing you to micro manage things, so this clunky mechanic is there to stay. Mana and lifesteal are a must and this shouldn’t have work that way at all.

As you said stamina starts terrible early, later you never feel its impact in the mid-game. It only sorta matters to kite unique monster packs in Hell difficulty for hit and runs which is cheap.
Without slower drain or faster recovery, you can not sustain that either. Especially if you’re a not a barb or paladin and don’t have access to Harmony RW yet. Only when stamina drain monsters appear at act3 in Hell yet again, it kinda make sense for a punishment mechanic but that’s all. No other role in gameplay.

It should’ve been handled like it was in MedianXL like you said. Either that or some Barbarian or Paladin abilities also should’ve consume stamina besides mana too.

Yep. By the trades, runewords are not hard to bring together anymore with bots rampant.

Maybe. I don’t really want a D2R, but sure.

2 Likes