06-28-2003, 05:15 PM
The character imbalances come (IMHO) from some fundamental issues that aren't going to be fixed just by tweaking skills or items.
The defensive abilities( resists, defense, shield/claw block, 'zon D/A/E, and high vit) all require an investment, either from skill/stat points, or equipment builds. And the melee chars get better skills & stats to enhance those, as they should. However, the best defensive ability is don't get hit in the first place! If you do that you don't need all the other stuff. Thus you can take a bowazon or sorceress and do hell with no defense, no shield and 0 or even negative resists( albeit with caution). That's just not possible for a melee character. Advantage: ranged chars.
On the offensive side you need multi-target attacks in at least two elements -- counting physical damage as an element -- to do well. This is where the problems occur. The paladin has effectively one multi-target attack in zeal. The others just aren't effective. The sorceress has a number in three elements( I believe at least 2 in each element). For the bowazon, with pierce, 9 of her 10 bow skills are multi-target. She has 5 end-game capable bow skills( 6 if you count fire arrow), 4 of which are inherently mult-target, in 3 different elements.
The paladin has great killing skills for killing one critter at a time. That's not how the game is built, alas for him. You have to do your slaughter wholesale in D2, and he just doesn't have the skills, and it would take some major skill changes to give them to him.
So the most successful offensive characters are those which can put all their resources towards offense, neglecting defensive abilities, and who have multi-target skills to kill crowds quick. That describes the bowazon and sorceress quite well.
The amazon benefits from being a hybrid melee/ranged char by design and thus having some of the very best defensicve skills in the game in Dodge/Evade. As the first char Blizzard did in D2, she also has two of the best-designed skill trees in the game, with 5 of 10 bow skills being end-game useful, and 9 of 10 passives being end-game useful. The spear tree, alas, is the buggiest skill tree in the game.
My $0.02 to "balance" the character classes: make sure the melee chars have at least 2 multi-target attack skills; add decent ranged attacks to the monsters and get them to target ranged characters; and give them more offense so you need to be more concerned. I don't see that happening, however.
The defensive abilities( resists, defense, shield/claw block, 'zon D/A/E, and high vit) all require an investment, either from skill/stat points, or equipment builds. And the melee chars get better skills & stats to enhance those, as they should. However, the best defensive ability is don't get hit in the first place! If you do that you don't need all the other stuff. Thus you can take a bowazon or sorceress and do hell with no defense, no shield and 0 or even negative resists( albeit with caution). That's just not possible for a melee character. Advantage: ranged chars.
On the offensive side you need multi-target attacks in at least two elements -- counting physical damage as an element -- to do well. This is where the problems occur. The paladin has effectively one multi-target attack in zeal. The others just aren't effective. The sorceress has a number in three elements( I believe at least 2 in each element). For the bowazon, with pierce, 9 of her 10 bow skills are multi-target. She has 5 end-game capable bow skills( 6 if you count fire arrow), 4 of which are inherently mult-target, in 3 different elements.
The paladin has great killing skills for killing one critter at a time. That's not how the game is built, alas for him. You have to do your slaughter wholesale in D2, and he just doesn't have the skills, and it would take some major skill changes to give them to him.
So the most successful offensive characters are those which can put all their resources towards offense, neglecting defensive abilities, and who have multi-target skills to kill crowds quick. That describes the bowazon and sorceress quite well.
The amazon benefits from being a hybrid melee/ranged char by design and thus having some of the very best defensicve skills in the game in Dodge/Evade. As the first char Blizzard did in D2, she also has two of the best-designed skill trees in the game, with 5 of 10 bow skills being end-game useful, and 9 of 10 passives being end-game useful. The spear tree, alas, is the buggiest skill tree in the game.
My $0.02 to "balance" the character classes: make sure the melee chars have at least 2 multi-target attack skills; add decent ranged attacks to the monsters and get them to target ranged characters; and give them more offense so you need to be more concerned. I don't see that happening, however.