Hellfire Patch v1.02.A5: Classic HF with less bugs and more polish!

[FireIceTalon]

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The max beneficial AC in PvM is 285 for a level 50 char, which is pretty easy to get as it is if you find a nice Awesome Full Plate of whatever.

I agree that in vanilla Diablo a Warrior can obtain high or maximum effective AC with reasonable ease already. But... this thread is about Hellfire, so I have to discuss this from that perspective.

As a matter of technical accuracy, the minimum effective Armor Class in Hellfire against non-boss enemies is actually 301 AC. This is due to Flesh Things, which (in Hell difficulty) are Level 58 with 270% chance to hit. While I forget the exact figure, the maximum useful AC here against bosses like Diablo (with his chance to hit bug fixed) and Na-krul was somewhere around 410 AC.

More importantly, most of Hellfire's new classes are encouraged to play without shields. That's a significant hit to the AC of the Hellfire classes (though less so for the Monk), and the loss of an item with a decent Hit Point or Resistance bonus as well.

And most importantly, Barbarians and Bards with no shield cannot block at all, making them entirely dependent on their Armor Class to avoid hits - the same AC which is naturally lower without said shield. This makes their melee careers quite painful at high difficulties; stun-lock and item durability (plus repair expenses) become serious concerns.

I'm not saying these characters can't achieve maximum useful AC, but even with a Level 50 character reaching 300+ Armor Class with no shield is not easy. I'm curious if a Barbarian could even break 300 AC at Level 50 at all without wearing Gotterdamerung and +Dex jewels instead of +All.

And that brings me to another point. I don't think discussing characters in terms of Level 50 makes sense here. Back when you could always find someone to play Hell/Hell with on Battle.net, playing characters over and over until eventually hitting Level 50 wasn't uncommon. But Hellfire never had Battle.net support, most of us probably don't have that kind of free time any more, and Marsh's Mod changed some things with the item table that would invalidate some or all of the equipment of any existing character, so I suspect anyone using a Level 50 character here would be an anomaly.

So, here's a more comprehensive list of useful Armor Class maximums against any normal monster found in Hell difficulty:

Level 30: 341 AC
Level 35: 331 AC
Level 40: 321 AC
Level 45: 311 AC
Level 50: 301 AC

With all of these factors considered, I don't think being able to find a magic plate with up to 225 AC (38 more than the previous 187 AC max) is unreasonable, especially since a 255 AC plate already exists in Hellfire. I have to admit, I almost forgot about the Armor of Gloom myself.

But even considering all of that, I still agree with you that it is unnecessary. If I were to actually implement higher qlvl affix drops, I would consider altering it to exclude items that couldn't legitimately be generated; so you could find the types of Holy Plates, Emerald Bows and Whale Helms etc. that Wirt could of sold before, but no Godly Plates of the Whale or other newcomers. Maybe. I'm not sure I'd ever even implement that at all, so the specifics of how it would work may be wasted thought.

Plus, not sure what the implications would be from a PvP perspective.

None. As you said, vanilla Diablo 1 PvP is fine. I've never heard of any serious PvP activity in Hellfire, and I suspect that's probably because it is broken for some reason. If not because of the various bugs it came with (such as Warriors blocking first and checking AC second), then probably the weird items (255 AC Plate, +60 Dex rings).

Hydra Rings of Wizardry

Just wanted to note that the Hydra's and Wyrm's affixes only appear on Staves, and reiterate my earlier comment about only intending to enable allowed affixes to be generated on items, not change which items affixes are allowed on.

My apologies. Framing your message in the context of Hellfire/this mod seems largely dismissive. You strike me as a long time Diablo player that is intimately familiar with the game; I respect and admire that. I share your love for the original game in its unaltered form and suspect, were I ever to make a project like this for it, I doubt I'd find sufficient reason to modify it outside of bug fixes. Hellfire was a mess though (and perhaps arguably still is somewhat, despite the efforts of community members over the years).

Ah, you were speaking in the context of HF only. For some reason I thought this was being applied to vanilla D1 as well. Well, this makes more sense now, thanks for clearing that up mate! BTW if you ever return to vanilla D1 there is still a few of us who play co-op games regularly on Battle.net, channel Diablo Deu-1 on Europe. Mostly high level vets, but some new players also. Best of luck with your mod^^