Maybe I'm getting our wires crossed here, But I wasn't saying that melee has an overpowering anything. You won't get any disagreement from me that almost all the powerful skills I've seen are either ranged or AoE, or both.
What I'm talking about is imo it's not very accurate to say there's so many overpowered things in the game as a whole, because that's almost a caster-centric point of view. And D2 does have a melee component to it. And looking from various ver. texts, it's almost as if everytime a mostly caster\ranged player complains 'bah this game is sooo easy', it's the melee part that pays for it. Why the hell should melee builds be nearly crippled just so the ranged\casters can have a 'challenge'?
It is in no way necessary to cripple melee characters so casters can have a game instead of something to do while watching TV and doing homework. Add 50% to all elemental (and poison) monster resistances. The immunes become unbreakable. The slaughters become challenging. Any melee builds hosed? Drop the Conviction stick, and the Meditation stick, which may well be the two biggest offenders in the game. Lose the Enigma. That one hurts melee a little, but I think it hurts non-Sorceress casters far more. I'd say drop all oskills entirely, and I'd be correct, except we'd lose out on Beast, which seems to be more in the spirit of fun than anything else.
Anyway, there are many solutions to get rid of ridiculous casters without killing melee builds. Holy Shield just happened to be about the worst example I could use.
And there are MANY things overpowered about the game. To narrow it to casters doesn't do much, simply because there are a lot of facets, even narrowed to casters, which still make the game a cakewalk. And there are a few that melee characters can abuse as well (albeit not as well).
Again I wonder how many melee builds you've seriously tried. Because anyone who has tried at least one melee build in 1.1+ would not say the above seriously, at least in the context of what's considered powerful effects. The only thing that can even come close to the way CB was is Static Field ctc weapons. A magic 'spell', surprise surprise. Only in D2, where a meleer has to turn to magic to become a better fighter. Only in Sanctuary! (insert Don King smilie icon here)
Melee has never appealed to me, even in games where it's stronger than spellslingers. Casters (traditionally) require more of a finesse approach than the brute force melee has, which appeals to me more. I suppose the opposite is true in Diablo II, but it has been ingrained in me to play casters.
Regardless, Crushing Blow is about the best melee has, and it's very good, but you are correct in that it's not on the level of most caster skills. It would be if the caster skills didn't do such hopelessly high amounts of damage to the entire screen, however.
I'm saying this as a player who had 2 Martyrs that made it to Hell mode, one was 1.09 and the other was post. in 1.09 the earlier incarnation can survive ok in some solo 8(but not invincible, more like a medium armored jeep than a supertank), SP, no trade no twink yada yada, and his best weapon was a 'Black' flail. Post 1.10, his particular build was rendered obsolete. There's still a way to play martyrs of course, just not the 1.09 way. This has both good and bad points.
I've had a Singer survive on two Spirits, and a mercenary. His other equipment was of the quality that people don't even pick up and sell anymore. ~120 defense magic armor. ~150 defense magic hat. Garbage rings with mana and life, maybe a little resistance or MF thrown in (but not both). But his armor cleared at least 3000 by the end of Nightmare, and the health was rapidly approaching 4000. This is my beef with the game. My caster that can perpetually stunlock enemies can tank better than you...tank.
But let's cut to the chase here, if we're seriously comparing what's powerful and overpowered etc, an 8 count game is what we're really talking about. The name of the game mostly becomes who can solo 8? CB isn't bad obviously, but in 1.10 is not what it once was, especially in an 8 count game. Yes, you can have a build and gear combo that has a very high chance for CBlow. But usually for a very hefty sacrifice or price, and you get less of a return for it. The days of surviving on CB alone is pretty much dead imo.
Sounds about right.
(Last I've read Smiters have been getting some hate-o-rade because they can do Uber Tristram fairly well. Kind of reminds me the way Lightning Fury Amazons use to get the same during the heydays of cow level running. It's amazing how one little bonus area becomes the measuring stick for how well a build does in the rest of the levels.)
Uber Tristram aside, you have to admit Smite is quite powerful as far as melee skills go. It never misses. It stuns. And with some upper end (but not necessarily Grief-level) equipment, the damage piles up pretty fast. And I still consider Lightning Fury rather on the upper end of the power curve. Especially with that confounded Conviction stick.
Yeah, and how do we nerf the -meleers- to balance this out? Since this is the classic bliz way of handling things it seems.
I sense some sour grapes here. Blizzard has been rather unjust in the past to just about everything but Whirlwind and Multiple Shot, so it seems you're assuming that *my* proposed fixes should be the same. Drop the oskills and auto-aurae. That would go a long way toward helping. Then decrease caster damage or increase enemy resistances to the point where AoE effects do LESS damage than a well-equipped melee character (single-target spikes are fine).
Then it's probably more helpful to point that out earlier. But that unbalanced upper end should not be re-balanced by squashing the melee part. What inconveniences the ranged\casters, can absolutely halt a meleer. This is what I mean when I don't see your point of mentioning something like Conviction being overpowering for elemental druids and such. I don't see a lot of cry for nerfing Enchant because it might boost a Shock Zealot's power.[/]
The traditional fix thus far has been either quashing problematic skills (which there are too many of) or just buffing enemies universally. Attack the casters specifically, perhaps as above. Aside from getting rid of Infinity, you know what would fix Conviction? Taking away its immunity-breaking capacity. You don't see too many paladins concerned over that facet anyway.
[i]Remove that heavy Warcry specialization for a sec. But keep the rest of what you just said. And drop in oh let's say a dual swing barb. (Which by the way imo is a more accurate picture of what a meleer is. They do their fighting up close and very personal.) Unless you're some sort of D2 savant, those perks you mentioned (high life, high resist,) can instead become a necessity.
Except they don't get that high on a dual-swing Barbarian, which another big piece of the problem. Casters can afford to just dump attribute points into vitality because they don't need to worry about heavy equipment. This was traditionally balanced out by the fact that they got low life boni. But now that Barbarians and Paladins can do it, it's a whole new ballgame. Casters also get a higher +skills count since they don't have to worry about things like attack speed, which ultimately leads to (on Barbarians) higher life, more defense, and higher resistances.
You can say you're talking mostly about the aspects that makes things overpowering. And not the whole game. But that high level Battle Order which makes a WarCrier that more powerful, might be much more critical to another build type. They might not need it to become stronger, they might need it to just survive.
So like it or not they are connected, you can certainly focus only on one aspect ('what's overpowered?'), but you won't get an accurate overall picture if that's your only viewpoint.
Battle Orders is all well and good. It's the fact that the casters are better at doing what melee is supposed to be best at that breaks the game. The Singer will probably have a good ten levels on the melee barbarian in terms of Battle Orders unless the melee guy carries alternate duds to swap to. And the Singer is mostly fixed if you remove the stun. The high life can drop as fast as any melee character up until the point where enemies are rendered utterly useless.
Uber Meph and other things like Dclone is not a 'mandatory'. I know it's treated as such sometimes due to it's popularity, the same way the cow level was once. But no one is forced to do them. Unlike say, waypoint hunting.
Waypoint hunting isn't actually "necessary", per se, but I see your point. However, your point does not change the fact that massive Conviction reduction and elemental ranged attacks that are extremely hard, if not impossible (particularly with desync) to dodge is just flat broken. No, you don't have to kill Uber Mephisto, just like you don't have to make a cold Sorceress with an Infinity mercenary, but just because you don't have to do it doesn't make it balanced.
Heh, of course that usually goes out the window when an elemental ranged attacker enters the picture. But in 1.10+ there's not a lot of that right? ;)
Let's say it's a 50/50 ratio (and I think I'm being generous). You're investing twenty skill points to stop half the game from being realistically threatening. I'd say that's pretty good. And there's the fact that most enemy elemental ranged attacks are dodgable (unlike, say, Frozen Orb).
--me
Edit (as with the above): I only seem to be able to screw up the quote function on lengthy-and-hard-to-proofread posts. Switching to italics--the first post is Fragbait, the second is Hammerskjold.
What I'm talking about is imo it's not very accurate to say there's so many overpowered things in the game as a whole, because that's almost a caster-centric point of view. And D2 does have a melee component to it. And looking from various ver. texts, it's almost as if everytime a mostly caster\ranged player complains 'bah this game is sooo easy', it's the melee part that pays for it. Why the hell should melee builds be nearly crippled just so the ranged\casters can have a 'challenge'?
It is in no way necessary to cripple melee characters so casters can have a game instead of something to do while watching TV and doing homework. Add 50% to all elemental (and poison) monster resistances. The immunes become unbreakable. The slaughters become challenging. Any melee builds hosed? Drop the Conviction stick, and the Meditation stick, which may well be the two biggest offenders in the game. Lose the Enigma. That one hurts melee a little, but I think it hurts non-Sorceress casters far more. I'd say drop all oskills entirely, and I'd be correct, except we'd lose out on Beast, which seems to be more in the spirit of fun than anything else.
Anyway, there are many solutions to get rid of ridiculous casters without killing melee builds. Holy Shield just happened to be about the worst example I could use.
And there are MANY things overpowered about the game. To narrow it to casters doesn't do much, simply because there are a lot of facets, even narrowed to casters, which still make the game a cakewalk. And there are a few that melee characters can abuse as well (albeit not as well).
Again I wonder how many melee builds you've seriously tried. Because anyone who has tried at least one melee build in 1.1+ would not say the above seriously, at least in the context of what's considered powerful effects. The only thing that can even come close to the way CB was is Static Field ctc weapons. A magic 'spell', surprise surprise. Only in D2, where a meleer has to turn to magic to become a better fighter. Only in Sanctuary! (insert Don King smilie icon here)
Melee has never appealed to me, even in games where it's stronger than spellslingers. Casters (traditionally) require more of a finesse approach than the brute force melee has, which appeals to me more. I suppose the opposite is true in Diablo II, but it has been ingrained in me to play casters.
Regardless, Crushing Blow is about the best melee has, and it's very good, but you are correct in that it's not on the level of most caster skills. It would be if the caster skills didn't do such hopelessly high amounts of damage to the entire screen, however.
I'm saying this as a player who had 2 Martyrs that made it to Hell mode, one was 1.09 and the other was post. in 1.09 the earlier incarnation can survive ok in some solo 8(but not invincible, more like a medium armored jeep than a supertank), SP, no trade no twink yada yada, and his best weapon was a 'Black' flail. Post 1.10, his particular build was rendered obsolete. There's still a way to play martyrs of course, just not the 1.09 way. This has both good and bad points.
I've had a Singer survive on two Spirits, and a mercenary. His other equipment was of the quality that people don't even pick up and sell anymore. ~120 defense magic armor. ~150 defense magic hat. Garbage rings with mana and life, maybe a little resistance or MF thrown in (but not both). But his armor cleared at least 3000 by the end of Nightmare, and the health was rapidly approaching 4000. This is my beef with the game. My caster that can perpetually stunlock enemies can tank better than you...tank.
But let's cut to the chase here, if we're seriously comparing what's powerful and overpowered etc, an 8 count game is what we're really talking about. The name of the game mostly becomes who can solo 8? CB isn't bad obviously, but in 1.10 is not what it once was, especially in an 8 count game. Yes, you can have a build and gear combo that has a very high chance for CBlow. But usually for a very hefty sacrifice or price, and you get less of a return for it. The days of surviving on CB alone is pretty much dead imo.
Sounds about right.
(Last I've read Smiters have been getting some hate-o-rade because they can do Uber Tristram fairly well. Kind of reminds me the way Lightning Fury Amazons use to get the same during the heydays of cow level running. It's amazing how one little bonus area becomes the measuring stick for how well a build does in the rest of the levels.)
Uber Tristram aside, you have to admit Smite is quite powerful as far as melee skills go. It never misses. It stuns. And with some upper end (but not necessarily Grief-level) equipment, the damage piles up pretty fast. And I still consider Lightning Fury rather on the upper end of the power curve. Especially with that confounded Conviction stick.
Yeah, and how do we nerf the -meleers- to balance this out? Since this is the classic bliz way of handling things it seems.
I sense some sour grapes here. Blizzard has been rather unjust in the past to just about everything but Whirlwind and Multiple Shot, so it seems you're assuming that *my* proposed fixes should be the same. Drop the oskills and auto-aurae. That would go a long way toward helping. Then decrease caster damage or increase enemy resistances to the point where AoE effects do LESS damage than a well-equipped melee character (single-target spikes are fine).
Then it's probably more helpful to point that out earlier. But that unbalanced upper end should not be re-balanced by squashing the melee part. What inconveniences the ranged\casters, can absolutely halt a meleer. This is what I mean when I don't see your point of mentioning something like Conviction being overpowering for elemental druids and such. I don't see a lot of cry for nerfing Enchant because it might boost a Shock Zealot's power.[/]
The traditional fix thus far has been either quashing problematic skills (which there are too many of) or just buffing enemies universally. Attack the casters specifically, perhaps as above. Aside from getting rid of Infinity, you know what would fix Conviction? Taking away its immunity-breaking capacity. You don't see too many paladins concerned over that facet anyway.
[i]Remove that heavy Warcry specialization for a sec. But keep the rest of what you just said. And drop in oh let's say a dual swing barb. (Which by the way imo is a more accurate picture of what a meleer is. They do their fighting up close and very personal.) Unless you're some sort of D2 savant, those perks you mentioned (high life, high resist,) can instead become a necessity.
Except they don't get that high on a dual-swing Barbarian, which another big piece of the problem. Casters can afford to just dump attribute points into vitality because they don't need to worry about heavy equipment. This was traditionally balanced out by the fact that they got low life boni. But now that Barbarians and Paladins can do it, it's a whole new ballgame. Casters also get a higher +skills count since they don't have to worry about things like attack speed, which ultimately leads to (on Barbarians) higher life, more defense, and higher resistances.
You can say you're talking mostly about the aspects that makes things overpowering. And not the whole game. But that high level Battle Order which makes a WarCrier that more powerful, might be much more critical to another build type. They might not need it to become stronger, they might need it to just survive.
So like it or not they are connected, you can certainly focus only on one aspect ('what's overpowered?'), but you won't get an accurate overall picture if that's your only viewpoint.
Battle Orders is all well and good. It's the fact that the casters are better at doing what melee is supposed to be best at that breaks the game. The Singer will probably have a good ten levels on the melee barbarian in terms of Battle Orders unless the melee guy carries alternate duds to swap to. And the Singer is mostly fixed if you remove the stun. The high life can drop as fast as any melee character up until the point where enemies are rendered utterly useless.
Uber Meph and other things like Dclone is not a 'mandatory'. I know it's treated as such sometimes due to it's popularity, the same way the cow level was once. But no one is forced to do them. Unlike say, waypoint hunting.
Waypoint hunting isn't actually "necessary", per se, but I see your point. However, your point does not change the fact that massive Conviction reduction and elemental ranged attacks that are extremely hard, if not impossible (particularly with desync) to dodge is just flat broken. No, you don't have to kill Uber Mephisto, just like you don't have to make a cold Sorceress with an Infinity mercenary, but just because you don't have to do it doesn't make it balanced.
Heh, of course that usually goes out the window when an elemental ranged attacker enters the picture. But in 1.10+ there's not a lot of that right? ;)
Let's say it's a 50/50 ratio (and I think I'm being generous). You're investing twenty skill points to stop half the game from being realistically threatening. I'd say that's pretty good. And there's the fact that most enemy elemental ranged attacks are dodgable (unlike, say, Frozen Orb).
--me
Edit (as with the above): I only seem to be able to screw up the quote function on lengthy-and-hard-to-proofread posts. Switching to italics--the first post is Fragbait, the second is Hammerskjold.