Changes to A.S.

[Crystalion]

- Kick-based characters are now useless.

Well, part of the kick base damage isn't from the boots (~25% of Str+dex) so decreasing the boot damage by 50% isn't a 50% nerf, especially when you consider that that doesn't reduce the elemental adders at all... a Dragon Talon specialist, blessed by Enchant, might still be ridiculously high damage to a single target.

- Delirium wasn't overpowered enough.

Who knows? Maybe "stun" is affecting the wearer (i.e. the *player* or hireling) and is thus a (needed) nerf to Delerium.

I'm still rather disturbed that they didn't try out more fixes on us in the last couple of months. I mean no insult to their QA process in believing that they couldn't possibly have found all the nits we would have published for them from a release candidate. Oh well. I hope they still have someone to do post-release emergency fixes, sans Peter Hu.

My cynical side has always believed v1.10 is probably largely driven by marketing saying they need an update pre-xmas for a new (final) bundle to channel (afaik, excluding the clunky battle chest thing, D2+LoD has never been consolidated into a *single* box, which would have been typical, if only for distribution reasons, by this time). I would expect the new combo box to be the reduced size standard (the "paperback" size standard). If this is correct, then the mass exodus of key D2 personnel might mean we'll never again see corrections to play balance/bugs and will have to rely on mod makers.

Other big questions for the release (apart from the noted tone-down on the kick damage, and play balance adjustment to rune words)...

Were all the horrible bugs corrected (e.g. the +item effect over add-up, like +mana/kill; client/host desyncs)?

Was rune rushing/baal rushing tweaked?

%ed jewels off weapon changed? %vs. undead/demons?

CE still scaling?

Are raised skelies still studly? valks?

Are summons/hires still getting elemental immunities easily?

Cold Mastery pierces cold immunity (if so, how calculated)?

Enchant, synergized Blessed Hammer and Holy Bolt still at high damage beta levels?