only seeing this happening with additional content though
since when was Hydra not viable? next time try hydra/orb works wonders
joining with a troll account sounds expensive :), had to pre purchase the game to write in the forum because i wanted to voice an idea.
i only wish for the skills remain as they are, as someone pointed out not all skills are supposed to be hell viable
Throwing myself on this topic…
It’s apparent that Diablo 2 was ment as a RogueLike, where your struggle ends when killing Baal in Hell, and begins again in the expansion second expansion that never came with content for level 85-95 – before retiring your character’s journey.
…
Playing self found, most of the classes and builds are not actually hard to play, just tedious.
They’re hard because you deal low damage and have low defenses, but mostly because you overextend, and try to run past mobs in order to reach the next waypoint or kill the boss or find the stairs.
…some classes and builds suffer more and less than others.
In Diablo 4, I really recommend the devs take the D&D approach of having skills increase with character level as a secondary passive increase, because in Diablo 2, level 1 skills are for the most part just laughable, and serve absolutely zero purpose, again with the exception of a select few skills that are one point wonders.
Back in Diablo 2 – not all skills have linear progression.
One way to fix absolutely useless skills could be to improve their level 30 synergies.
If Ice Bolt gains 4% chance to pierce from each level of Frozen Orb, AND only has Glacial Spike as a synergy, with higher synergy bonus, it could become a viable skill that needs a total of 70 skillpoints invested into cold to be effective.
And being ice it could become 50% physical damage, with one synergy boosting physical damage, and another cold damage.
…
Playing a Hydra sorceress, I had a lot of fun. But my Frozen Orb was weak, and Hydra wasn’t all that great with decent gear, and it doesn’t add to fire damage from fireball.
Fair enough.
But I realized that by just dropping Hydra, my sorceress improved very much.
Which was a sad discovery; My Hydra sorceress’ weakest link was Hydra.
But Hydra falls into the “Good enough. Some skills can be mediocre” category.
It’s extremely useful in Hardcore.
…bow damage penalty to bosses should just get tossed out of the window like the hot garbage it is.
The devs should TRY all the different skills in the game and try to make them work in hell in their own playthroughs – and not change the skills, but evaluate if the skills actually work like intended, in solo and duo same level playthroughs.
Like.
Try playing an Blades of Ice assassin, while another player plays a Zealot alongside them.
Try playing a Magezon, alongside a sorceress.
Try playing a bone necromancer, alongside a Fire elemental druid.
Try playing a werewolf alongside a whirlwind barbarian.
…
In short, there’s a lot of discrepancies in solo and group outputs:
Druid and Assassin skills seem balanced for a game where they have a paladin aura or necromancer cursing enemies – but the paladin has those auras when playing alone, and the necromancer has curses.
The sorceress and barbarian have masteries.
…thus druid and assassin elemental and physical skills and defenses are at about 1/5th of the effectiveness level of Sorceress and Paladin in terms of damage, don’t reach half of that of the barb, while their defenses can’t match the paladin nor barbarian.
They can barely kill, and die easily.
It’s fine to leave some skills challenging.
It’s fine if some skills absolutely require a really rare item or a complete set or a hellfire torch and some very specific gear to start working.
Sure, some skills can make your character a one trick pony, with few ways to deal with immunes, okay.
…
But when I have an inventory FULL of skillers, the absolute best gear that can be squeezed out of Baal running him 1000 times, have reached level 90, and the character still cannot kill Baal as comfortably as a level 74 budget zealot or hammerdin…
Hang the fruit high. Have skills you have little hope of getting to use if you speedrun or play the game rogue-like… But try to find a way to have most offensive skills have a path to viability by character level 90.
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Doing my best to procrastinate at work – Assassin
No need to discuss Trappers, everyone loves them.
Melee assassins are rare and that’s an aspect of their complexity to play vs people’s desire to facetank everything and zoom through the game. Melee Assassin is probably the hardest melee character to play and thus why it’s considered non-viable. Assassin is meant to be a glass cannon and her damage potential is impressive if you do the charges and finishers. At the cost of this is survivability and for that she is given Cloak of Shadows which is probably the least used assassin skill…
MA skills – are actually good the problem people have is the charge and release aspect of the Assassin. The elemental skills could probably use some % convert physical damage to elemental like the Zon’s base elemental skill does. This helps with immunities.
Psychic Hammer – fun to use once you first invest a skill in it. It will never be exciting. It could probably be a good synergy for Mind blast…
Mind Blast – Seems to be more of a ‘convert’ or stun you enemies than a real damage skill in the first place. With decent use you can convert things before you dive in and thus up your survivability. This adds to the ‘things’ to do before just straight up attacking things and thus just gets thrown to the side in favor of diving in with kicks!
Cloak of Shadows – IMO the most under-used skill that is vital to an Assassin. At lvl 10 Cloak you get +37% to your def and -42% def to your enemies def. This also acts like Dim Vision, stopping all ranged attackers from attacking and stopping all monsters from swarming you. This is the core skill for an MA Sin’s survivability and it seems to be unused in most situations.
Venom – it has issue with the way the poison is applied, this would just be a good ‘bug’ to fix.
Traps line:
Blade skills – These seems to be very ‘misunderstood’ and the ‘advertised’ damage doesn’t seem to be accurate. From ages ago Blade Fury Assassins were viable, although it took a lot to understand what was going on. With heavy investment they are good, with 1 pt investment they are sufficient side skills for MA sins.
I think the best thing they can do for Blade skills is correct the damage calculation to show what is really happening. Clarify if/if not Claw mastery helps, decide if it should help and maybe fix that. After reading an old write up from an old guildie, I think I will make a furysin…
Honestly after diving into these I don’t think there is much wrong with the Sin. The real issue is Melee doesn’t roll as fast as casters thus no one likes them. Add in the Sin is the most complicated Melee toon to run so she isn’t used much.