01-23-2004, 01:29 PM
rwbatema,Jan 22 2004, 09:04 PM Wrote:I heard that (in v1.09 on) monsters get a 4X bonus to their AR over what is listed in the monsters.txt file, but that doesn't totally solve my problems.Try v1.00 on ;)
Basically, what happened was, they beta tested maxed out defense-focused Barbarians and Paladins, and found that hell difficulty was a breeze for them. So, as a quick fix, they multiplied all monster AR by 4.
This, of course, screwed over all other builds to the point that defense doesn't matter unless you have a ton of it AND a significantly high defense skill bonus, such as Defiance or Shout.
It wasn't noticed for a long time, because shield blocking didn't have an animation against melee attacks, so people thought their defense was working, and that sheilds only worked against missile attacks.
It still hasn't been rectified to this day. The real problem was that Barbarians and Paladins had two skills each that could increase their defense (Iron Skin and Shout, and Holy Shield and Defiance), and that the skills gave far too much of an increase over builds that didn't use them. Instead of making the gap smaller by lowering the bonuses the skills gave, and only giving them one defense skill each, they forced non-defense skill builds to use sheild blocking to make up for it. They then introduced blocklock and the dex requirement with 1.07, making the gap even wider. The only thing they did to help was add defiance mercs and elite armor, but being forced to use one type of merc out of a dozen is no different from being forced to use one of the high defense builds, in my opinion.
Jarulf found the "feature", and Bolty has a page devoted to it on the site:
http://www.lurkerlounge.com/diablo2/discov...es/081100.shtml