New 1.10 item

[Baajikiil]

Quark, are you the same Quark who released the hacked items on west?

Boy, would that be something :lol: Seems a little unlikely though.

EDIT:

Isolde, do you work for blizzard?

Isolde has been vouched for by several people here as a bona fide Blizzard employee.

[kandrathe]

That is exactly how I feel. It would be a better game if your ability to survive relied on skill and experience giving the character the edge, rather than on how lucky your were with the item drops.

[kandrathe]

For me, the main problem of the "gap" is with bosses. Beating a CE/MSLEB with a melee character not loaded with absorb gear is ranging from hard to impossible. Dolls and Nhilathak are also pains for many otherwise good characters.

Me too! I recall my Assassin trying to keep a MSLEB Hephasto pinned across a bridge, whilst I had to go to the Panda fortress to buy the best CB, and then kept TPing back to town to restock on potions and bolts for 2 hours (realtime) in order to kill him. I know, anyone else would have quit the game and respawned a Hephasto without MSLEB, but I'm just darned stubborn sometimes. Anyway with my luck his next incarnation would have been fanaticism...

[HeLRaZR]

Isolde has been vouched for by several people here as a bona fide Blizzard employee.

Well that being the case, and Hiya Isolde, no-one seems to know if the patch will affect classic play or not. I am not interested in the details but can you say yea or nay?

[Occhidiangela]

If the game is going to make leveling harder, what is the point in an item with clvl 85 requirement. If you can defeat Hell Baal without hitting level 80, which I have, then this item must be aimed at duelists if it requires level 85.

OK, high Magic Damage, which cannot be resisted makes some sense for high level duelling, giving some melee characters a way to get around high Phys Damage Resistance.

Now, how does that serve SP players? Not at all, IMO.

Sanctuary as an aura on an item that will frequently only beneift duelists? Interesting, or maybe, an attempt to get folks to do their power leveling in act II, Kurast, in the CS, or wherever the Undead run amok.

I see no possible reason for any Unique item to have a clvl req greater than 70. Every unique needs to be usable to defeat Hell Baal. If you can commonly kill baal before 75, what would be the point of the item in the first place?

I don't see it. Then again, I don't design and balance games for a living. :)

Beyond clvl 75, it seems that the aim is to influence PvP.

Am I wrong about this?

[TaiDaishar]

Well Occhi, considering (and hoping) what Blizzard has said about the patch is true than the game should be harder now meaning that you won't be able to kill hell baal before lvl 85.

And I'm not talking only about numbers, they said they're reworking the entire AI for the creatures.

[Occhidiangela]

With any three player team, unless Hell Ancients Become impossible, Baal at 70 is doable due to the way skills interact to boost each other across class boundaries.

So no, I don't buy that Baal Hell is any harder for even a small team.

[Isolde]

So many things to respond to ;)

First off, not everything is going to be for SP. Just like not everything is for realm play. And chances are, players are going to be a radically different level at any given point in the game depending on whether they're playing SP, MP, the skill level of the player, their play style, and what sort of build they're playing. Some players take on hell baal with their level 25 firebolt sorceress (it isn't as if he regenerates) [edit - i was thinking of diablo, probably not possible to hit baal at 25] and some players aren't comfortable facing him until their ww barb is level 88. Some players will never reach 85, and others will have a dozen (yeah, even in 1.10).

You're right in saying that the high magic damage has a much greater impact on PvP than on PvM. And that Sanctuary has no effect on PvP at all. I think what you might be missing is that each item is assigned attributes depending on a whole host of factors. Some attributes are assigned to give the item flavor (otherwise, why add light radius at all, especially on high level items?). Sometimes it's an attempt to boost an underused class or build (this is a dangerous move though). Sometimes it's to add another opton for increased variety. Sometimes it's because we have a fun property and it has to go somewhere. Each item fills a different role (or often, several roles, and sometimes no role at all).

Azurewrath doesn't match the shear damage output of a socketed cruel/evisceration (except vs. undead and phys. immunes). But it's very useable and it's extremely cool looking. For some people that makes it worthless, and for others, they'll level to 85 just so they can use it (and items like it).

At any rate, it wasn't designed as a "PvP only" item. No doubt its influence in that area will be significant, but that isn't the "aim".

And the level req? Sad to say, it's pretty arbitrary. We really don't have time to test each item in proper context, so some things just depend on the intuition of whoever made the item.

[Brista]

Occhi, you're certainly right that people don't need to be high level to finish the game

My Blaze sorc hit Hell Ancients at level 55 or so. I was doing all quests so I had to slow down and level her up to reach the minimum level for Ancients. She finished the game at 63 which is I think the lowest for a character doing all quests (60 to enable Ancients which gives you 3 levels)

Me and my friend Wazzer ran through the game with melee characters too finishing at 63 and 64 respectively. I had a werewolf he had a pally. We probably did all quests, that was a while ago

Both in softcore on BNet in games open to anyone and played at breakneck speed

I don't think you're right about 85+ being solely PvP. I'm one of the people that lose interest really once I've run out of quests to do but I know a lot of people who've taken characters way past that, some even to level 99 purely in non-cow level PvM. And for people like us finding a sword like that might tempt us to play the character a bit further, perhaps? Well it would me anyway :)

And who knows they might do something like this

/wish mode on

levels 1-25 Normal difficulty, Baal is mlvl 25
levels 26-50 Nightmare difficulty, Baal is mlvl 50
levels 51-75 Hell difficuly, Baal is mlvl 75
levels 76-99 YouReallyDontWantToBeHere Difficulty +1 immunity per monster, +1 mod per boss, Baal is level 99

/wish mode off

Now that would get good use out of things like Gladiator's Bane and Azurewrath as well as meaning anyone turning up a Windforce has truly earned it :)

[CorwinBrute]

We really don't have time to test each item in proper context, so some things just depend on the intuition of whoever made the item.

That's probably the most honest and forward-coming statement I have ever seen from a game programmer, and that's very refreshing. :P Well, for a currently developed product anyway, since game programmers/designers are always happy to point at the flaws of the previous iterations of their games once a new one is in development ("Yeah, we knew the interface, the graphics, the AI, and the plot sucked big time in Revenge from Killer Time Zombies from Another Dimension 5, but trust us, we corrected all those little flaws in Revenge from Killer Time Zombies from Another Dimension 6, so you can buy it, trust us.")

Back to the matter at hand : I think D2, with its incredible variety, loads of equipments, and tons of skills, is a bit like Magic : the Gathering™©®, in that given enough time people will always find ways of getting around the system. For MtG, after the first few expansions, WotC got the message right, and started removing cards of the main game very quickly, as well as testing new cards a lot more, ie in degenerate and brutal ways (of course, they didn't succeed in balancing the game, but it was still a good move forward). Does Blizzard has the same "crash test" approach regarding items and skills in D2 ?


Regarding the point of "you don't need an item you can't equip for killing Hell Baal", I would respectfully disagree. I think one of the great points about D2 is its variety, both in methods/strategies and goals. You may want to play for PvP, or for killing Hell Baal at the lowest possible level, to build a pure-offense "glass cannon" character or an indestructible HC tank, you may want to collect all items or play untwinked... Having high-rlvl, powerful items gives some replay value to the collectors and a much-needed boost to those wanting to bring their character to the highest possible level, without removing options for the other players. As long as there are enough relatively easy to find items to make the game playable at lower levels (stuff like good crafting/cubing recipes, decent and doable runewords...), I certainly won't complain if Rlvl 85 stuff exists, unless it creates such a huge power increase that the game either has to be rebalanced to cope with said items, thus increasing the "gap", or becomes a pure click-fest for those lucky or rich enough to get the candies.

[CelticHound]

Hi Brista,

I read your post as referring to mlvls in the *four* difficulites, not clvl requirements, so this post isn't really a reply to you, but since you used the word "level" at all I thought I'd stick my reply in here.

I showed this thread to a friend, we got talking about level requirments, and I said I wasn't in favor of having them to enter higher difficulties, since it's like assuming no human being will ever run a mile in under four minutes and setting up the equipment at the track with that in mind.

He thought a cool idea to counter PAs would be if there was a character on a given map whose level was significantly lower, the monsters would home in on him. The worse the level difference, the farther out the effect extends. If you brought a level 1 into the cow level, *all* the cows would immediately charge. (Maybe distant ones would teleport to a screen or so out.) It would turn PAing into a game like Capture the Flag.

Disclaimer: This post made for amusement value only.

-- CH

[Walkiry]

* providing a more interesting play experience (more variety, greater challenge)

Play experience is about clearing the acts, killing the monsters and feel entertained by it!
As I see this it must be about mixing monsters a little more! In my wild dreams this means Oblivian knights in
Act 5 , but it could just means more varity in acts! Can you Imagine how annoying Imps would be in Bloddy foothils for a mellee character!

*Shudder*

If this means fetishes will spawn in more areas than the act 1 catacombs (annoying enough) and the act 3 jungles (which I *always* skip) I'm uninstalling the game and never coming back.

It'd otherwise be nice to have more variety of monsters though :D

[Occhidiangela]

Per your comment, Isolde:

And the level req? Sad to say, it's pretty arbitrary. We really don't have time to test each item in proper context, so some things just depend on the intuition of whoever made the item.

Sad to hear that so little harmonizing is done in that regard. Your other comments I understand, thanks. Me, I'd like to see the cap of +Light Radius be raised to +15 versus +5, but I understand that there are reasons NOT to do that. :)

[Occhidiangela]

From Brista's

/wish mode on

levels 1-25 Normal difficulty, Baal is mlvl 25
levels 26-50 Nightmare difficulty, Baal is mlvl 50
levels 51-75 Hell difficuly, Baal is mlvl 75
levels 76-99 YouReallyDontWantToBeHere Difficulty +1 immunity per monster, +1 mod per boss, Baal is level 99

/wish mode off

Vivendi Boardroom Difficulty. :)

[Elric of Grans]

Hail Occhi,

I thought this was the way to the highest difficulty:

A master programmer passed a novice programmer one day. The master noted the novice's preoccupation with a hand-held computer game. ``Excuse me,'' he said, ``may I examine it?''

The novice bolted to attention and handed the device to the master. ``I see that the device claims to have three levels of play: Easy, Medium, and Hard,'' said the master. ``Yet every such device has another level of play, where the device seeks not to conquer the human, nor to be conquered by the human.''

``Pray, great master,'' implored the novice, ``how does one find this mysterious setting?''

The master dropped the device to the ground and crushed it underfoot. And suddenly the novice was enlightened.

From `The Tao Of Programming' :)

[Roland]

Before D2 came out, they said "You will not be able to solo Hell difficulty. Period."

And how long was it before people were soloing Hell diff players 8? Yeah, that's what I thought. :P I don't put stock in anything Blizzard says about D2. The only thing I DO put stock in is that they have no idea how to balance the game. Period. :P

Joy. Not only do I have to completely RELEARN how to mod in 1.10, I'll have a whole slew of new CRAP to fix. As if I was finished fixing 1.09?? Yeah, right. Oh joy... I feel the migraine already.

[WarBlade]

The only thing I DO put stock in is that they have no idea how to balance the game. Period. :P

Well I think most of them probably have a few clues, but it's unfortunate that some of the primary unbalancing gameplay culprits have been sadly ignored.

For example, the game will never be balanced as long as a Paladin can hit one target with a click (or spread damage thinly with Zeal) while a Sorceress can fill the screen with ice. <_<

[Wiccan]

~Hands roland the bottle of asprin and vodka!~

there i hope that helps with your modding

[Bolty]

Hey, with each patch that comes out, SOMEBODY at the Lounge has to be the self-appointed "this patch blows, Blizzard sucks, what the heck is wrong with them" leader of the forum. Looks like Roland is it this time.

And the patch isn't even out yet. And we still don't know what's in it.

I think it's a new record!

-Bolty

Forget something?

[ShadowSeer]

Greetings... i just got back from the P.X ,right now i am in kentucky and decide to use some my husband internet connection to see if he was alive and well and i see with the fall of a madman, comes on the heels the fabled1.10 patch... maybe we should hold more wars to get patches to come out?, no...no. i am not saying the United States should pick another country to pick on..... but does seem to be funny that after the war comes the patch....

next stop onto lowell mass. then to bed with my husband and my baby girl!