Class Specific Crafting

[JustAGuy]

Good Evening,

Of all the things being added and/or changed in the patch I wonder why the Blizzard development team would choose not to re-enable class-specific crafting? I tested out my favourite of the old class-specific crafts:

Paladin Ring:

Magic Ring + Jewel (any type) + Nef + Hel + Any Item
Produces: Ring with cannot be frozen and +1 paladin skills (if you’re lucky – 10% chance of it)
Or
Magic Ring + Jewel (any type) + Nef + Hel + Io
Produces: Ring with cannot be frozen and +1 paladin skills (33% chance)

This recipe does not work in the current 1.10s beta patch, and it’s a damn shame.

I have been playing the 1.10 beta patch since they released it, and Hell mode is driving me nuts. It’s one thing to have to change strategies, but it’s totally another to be dependent on random monster drops to even have a chance (in Hell). I like to think of myself as a seasoned veteran of Diablo 2 and LoD, but this is bordering on ridiculous.

My personal gripes with the new Hell mode difficulty level (monster regen/monster hit points/monster damage increases) aside, if they’re going to make us dependent on drops, we should be able to do more with those drops. Tempering sounds like a good idea. New cube recipes sound like a good idea. What is BETTER than those things would be some serious crafting – I’m talking class specific. We find stuff, we should be able to work with that stuff, not just "equip or mule/throw away".

Back when they introduced crafting, it sounded like a fantastic idea to me. However, in practice, crafting was good for a total of what, one month? I think it was good for a month or two in version 1.08 of Diablo 2 on the realm (don’t quote me on that one, I can’t remember those days so good anymore) before they restricted it. No one even knows why; I guess it was overpowered. The only way my melee Paladin made it to level 85 was because of those crafted class-specific rings I made for him… Then they went and took my fun away. I don't consider the current "caster", "saftey" and "hit power" very useful, nor have I ever. The only thing I ever cared about with crafting was the class specific stuff.

Now-a-days, Hell difficulty is a place where you need every advantage you can get, and the things that were available via crafting aren’t that overpowering and unbalancing as they once were (if they were ever considered that). Considering that not many people were class-specific crafting when it was actually possible to do so, it’s a wonder why they don’t bring it back now. Personally, if I manage to collect a bunch of runes, I’m more likely to craft up something nice, rather than spend even more time looking for a socketed item to put the the aforementioned runes into (if I have the option to do so, that is). That’s just me though; I get a kick out of making truly unique items. I’m a big fan of rares as well, but that’s a whole different story.

What rubs me the wrong way about the current state of crafting, in particular, are the crafted rings, or lack thereof. I mentioned already about my old Realm Paladin that used two crafted rings to handle his opponents; I spent a lot of time in the Ancients Way and those icy type places because of that “cannot be frozen” feature of the ring. I didn’t have to invest in a specific piece of equipment for the cannot be frozen mod; I had it in the best possible spot, with excellent mods to accompany it. It’s not like I just pulled this ring out of thin air either; I had to trade and trade and trade to get enough runes to actually get a good roll. The best ring I ever crafted was a dual leech (can’t remember the percentage) ring, with +1 to paladin skills, cannot be frozen, some mana, and I think it had some fire resist on it. I didn’t need Stones of Jordan, or any other such unique or rare ring; I had the best possible ring for my Paladin.

Now, with all of the difficulty changes in Hell mode, wouldn’t a little bit of variety in jewelry be nice? Sure, rares are back in full force, but there’s nothing like whipping up your very own rare from only the fines herbs and spices. Not to mention they have a nice orange colour to them.

I had quit Diablo 2 right about the time the Lurker Lounge shutdown a couple of years ago. After all, you can only play Diablo 2 for so long before it gets old. The grief players were starting to get to me as well (but that’s not for this discussion). The nice thing with this new patch is that it makes Diablo 2 just different enough to find interesting and fun again. I’m thinking that, if I find a way to manage Hell more so than I can now, I just might get a few more months out of ‘er. With all of the additions and changes and bug fixes, it's just too bad that they didn't bring class specific crafting back. Maybe it was too buggy, or maybe it was too overpowered. In either case, it shouldn't be that way anymore in 1.10...

Bring back the orange!
~JustAGuy

P.S. If there’s a new unique ring that has +1 skills, cannot be frozen, dual leech, and some resists, let me know!

[Guest]

+skills when it isn't on uniques or runewords(which mostly gives +all skills which is far more overpowered and usually has 1/10th the level requirement) is viewed by blizzard as extremely overpowered.

i'm not sure about 1.09, but in 1.10 you have a 3-7% chance(depending on monster level) that a +skill unique ring will spawn. thanks to my luck though all i've gotten are nagelrings, 7 and counting.

[adeyke]

In 1.09, the best chance you have of getting a SoJ is if the ring has ilvl 39-52. Then it's a 3.2% chance. The chance for a +skills ring continues to drop until a BKWB is available, at ilvls 66+. Then it's a 1.9% chance of a SoJ and a 1.9% chance of a BKWKB. So the chance of a +skills ring there is never more than 3.8% there.

1.10 introduces several other unique rings without +skills and doesn't seem to change the rarities of the existing rings any. So the chances would be even lower there. How are you getting the 3-7% chance?

I do think that a +skills, dual-leech, cannot be frozen, resist ring would be rather overpowered.

[Guest]

oh i remembered a little wrong, it's like you said.

[Zath]

I agree that Blizzard should introduce more crafting recipes, but for a slightly different reason than above. The gameplay of D2 basically boils down to this: kill monsters, gather loot, equip loot, kill more monsters, rinse and repeat, combine with some decisions on stat and skill point allocation, and add a bit of social interaction if you play online. In order for this formula to work, you have to make each stage as enjoyable as possible, so the player is hooked in a cycle of addiction. An extensive crafting system can have a huge positive impact on the gather loot, and equip loot phase here. Not only does crafting create more toys to play with, it also significantly increases the value of any loot you gather. A simple Eth rune that wasn't worth its space in your backpack is suddenly a great discovery as you know it can be used to craft some potentially uber Blood boots. The same can be applied to gems, jewels, and many common magic items. In short, as long as crafted items are properly balanced, they can be a huge boon to D2 gameplay. Blizzard can easily take advantage of this if they would just spend some time designing new crafting recipes.

Note to Blizzard Sales Department: While implementing a new and expanded crafting system in an old game like D2 may not seem like a good investment on first glance, it can actually be a valuable experience for implementing a good crafting system in World of Warcraft ;)

[JustAGuy]

I do think that a +skills, dual-leech, cannot be frozen, resist ring would be rather overpowered.

You know, I agree that a +skills, dual-leech, cannot be frozen, resist ring would be a bit over-powered, but the chances of getting one are so low, that it's not a bad idea to allow us to TRY and get it. Especially considering that when I was crafting these "uber rings" back in the 1.08 days, I was practically the only one. No one else, to my knowledege, even bothered. I even wrote a forum post about the wonders of class-crafting back in the old Lurker Lounge forum. It was met with luke-warm reception, if I recall correctly. When I was trading for Hel runes, people kept asking me why -- when I told them, they just sort of gave me the old, "uh, alright. Have fun with that."

Concerning the roll; at best you have a 33% chance of getting +1 paladin skills on the ring using the aforementioned formula. That requires a fairly high level rune (Io). If you don't use Io, you get only a 10% chance. So, at best, 1 in 3 tries of crafting, you'll get +1 Paladin skills. As far as I can tell, all mods are available to the craft, so there's a wide variety of mods that could show up; chances of getting dual leech are slim. Dual leech with prismatic, or one high resist is also very slim. The only thing that is guaranteed is the "cannot be frozen", and that's worth my Io and Hel runes. If I rolled a "cannot be frozen" and no other useful mods, I'd still wear it. Anything other than the "cannot be frozen" is just gravy for a Paladin.

Crafting at least gives us the chance to obtain an "uber" ring despite one's poor luck when it comes to monster drops. We don't have to rely on a rare ring drop (how often do you get rare rings, anyway?), unique ring drop, or unique/rare gamble, to be able to wear a useful ring. As an alternative, you can collect a bunch of runes, keep the crappy jewels you find, toss in a crappy ring (gamble it if you need one), and craft away. You'll eventually get something very useful, but not necessarily "uber". It's a nice bit of variety in gameplay and item collecting. The fact that I had a dual-leech, +1 Paladin ring with my 1.08 Paladin was the result of many, many, many, I'm talking MANY, cubes. I traded practically everything I had for a bunch of Hel runes just for the chance of a +1 life steal ring; when I actually got dual leech, I almost soiled myself.

Anyway, the point is that it actually isn't overpowering and unbalancing since the chances of getting something ultra-powerful are very slim. The chances of getting something useful, on the other hand, are quite good. I'd definitely equip a "cannot be frozen", +light radius ring, so long as my other ring had something a little more useful for my Paladin.

I think I just regret not exporting that ring from the realm to open, so I could wear it during the beta test (all my accounts expired a long time ago).

~JustAGuy

[Ruvanal]

I do think that a +skills, dual-leech, cannot be frozen, resist ring would be rather overpowered.

... but having +skills (up to +2), dual-leech, half-freeze, and a resist with a still open slot for a prefix on an amulet or circlet is some not overpowered by comparisson? These mods are available rares in 1.10 and on a rare circlet in v1.09. With a socket you could still get the no-freeze property on a circlet anyway. At least the crafted item probably would have had an elevated required level to use compared to a similar rare.

Toss in the relative scarcity of some of the runes required and the problem of actually getting an ideal mix of mods on the item (many of the class crafted fixed mods were not automatic but a small percentage chance of appearing as JustAGuy listed earlier) and the formulas do not all look quite so unblanced overall. It could usually take more effort to get a good ring in some cases than the effort that is being expended in v1.09 on the chipped gem + sword formula.

JustAGuy:

...  Especially considering that when I was crafting these "uber rings" back in the 1.08 days, I was practically the only one. No one else, to my knowledege, even bothered.  ...

I still have several of the class crafted items that I made on the realms from that period. I did loose about half of what I had at one point due to character inactivity for a while though.

I had done a write up on those class crafts back then on what should work or not because many of the formulas were messed up as to the way they were edited for the file that actually was used on the realms. For example the number of inputs for the forumlas were messed up (the +any item requirement due to a item count one higher than it should have been), which would have resulted in many of the formulas defaulting to only the first of each pair (the lesser class crafts would have over ridden the greater class crafts from even being used). I had written up a post for here, but due to the poor way tables were handled on the forums here I was not able to get it too post in manner that would have been readable. I had shown which formulas should have been working and the ones that would have been blocked from working. It also would have been showing what kind of results to expect from most of the formulas also.

I think I just regret not exporting that ring from the realm to open, so I could wear it during the beta test (all my accounts expired a long time ago).

Considering that in v1.08 you should not have been able to actually get a dual leech ring from the paladin crafting, I suspect that you may have actually missremember the properties a little bit. The amazon ring crafts though did have the possibility of getting dual leech at that time.

[adeyke]

... but having +skills (up to +2), dual-leech, half-freeze, and a resist with a still open slot for a prefix on an amulet or circlet is some not overpowered by comparisson? These mods are available rares in 1.10 and on a rare circlet in v1.09. With a socket you could still get the no-freeze property on a circlet anyway. At least the crafted item probably would have had an elevated required level to use compared to a similar rare.

You do have a point. Most of my playing experience comes from 1.09. I simply accepted that rare amulets and circlets were good and rare rings were almost always useless. So the crafted ring would just be better than the rare rings there. +skills only came from one of two unique rings, CBF only came from one unique ring and mana steal only came from one unique ring. So that specific crafted ring would have the most important aspects of three rings, combined into one.

If mana steal was allowed on rares (which it fortunately is again in 1.10) and if either +skills or CBF could randomly spawn on rings, I wouldn't consider that specific crafted ring so overpowered in comparison. It'd basically just be a better chance at a good rare, for a cost.

[JustAGuy]

Considering that in v1.08 you should not have been able to actually get a dual leech ring from the paladin crafting, I suspect that you may have actually missremember the properties a little bit.

Yes, I am mis-remembering. I clearly remember crafting a dual-leech Paladin ring, though, regardless of version. If I didn't actually craft a dual-leech, then it was definitely a high life leech +1 Pally ring with good stats. That's the whole point, though -- it's not a terribly bad idea to allow us to try and craft something with stats I previously mentioned.

I guess I was romanticising the past a little bit. I think fondly back on the pre and post-expansion 1.07-1.08 days... Not so much 1.09 though.

~JustAGuy

[Xergon]

Keep in mind that rings should always be underpowered compared to amulets because you can wear two of them. Along that line, just because you can get resists, skills, reduce freeze, etc. on a circlet doesn't mean it should be available on every time because then you could get it on every item. Balance involves more than just what mods can load at what level. Crafted items, really, should always be less powerful (even tho they can be much better than any rare, which is fine) since you have thousands of people crafting on bnet. This will lead to a huge swell in the number of godly crafted items, esp. since the individual runes and base items are not difficult to find.

Food for thought.