Interesting new stuff on Arreat Summit

[WarBlade]

I'm still amazed that people think they will be better off with the new changes. It seems to me that if you feel obligated to pumping lesser skills to help greater ones, and vice versa, but if you otherwise wouldnt have used the lesser ones, you won't be able to pump the other skills as high as you used to. With the experience getting harder after level 70 ... well we just arent going to be as versatile as before.

It really depends on the character. Your assessment about sums up the viewpoint of any charatcer that is currently configured to spread points over a wide range of diminishing returns skills along with the primary attacks to get a character build happening. The Barbarian springs to mind.

OTOH, Elemental Druids and Heaven's Fist Paladins are two examples where you can build your characters' primary attacks to their utmost peak by the end of Nightmare and expect no greater gains in Hell until you aquire appropriate +Skills to boost what you've already maxed. This essentially leaves the player in the predicament of doing no better by the end of Hell, than by the start, unless you count added versatility of supplementary skills and stronger defences.

A Sorceress gets around the problem with her Masteries. A Barbarian can invest points in Strength and pick up higher damaging weapons.

This new system allows those 'disadvantaged' characters an opportunity for a smoother ride that will take them through to the end of Hell. We can now do something with those semi-redundant points that either get left or dropped into skills that are seldom, if ever, used. ;)

[kandrathe]

Some thoughts;

My very first expansion character was an assassin, Kia Kitana now lvl 78... She had many struggles, and finally resorted to learning Traps to progress thru Hell difficulty... It would be nice to have Phoenix Strike a viable high level skill.

It appears they have added some things that some may have missed... He appears to have only a few actual points into FOF, COT and BOI. Prior GF posts indicatd that interaction bonuses would only apply to actually assigned skills, not + skills items. However, I have my doubts.

Fire damage; It shows he has +7 skills -- this applies to PS but not the bonuses, ergo since he has 3 skills points in FOF, he should get x1.3 fire damage. 787/1.3 = 605 - 685. My calculation (which may be wrong) show PS fire damage past lvl 20 getting +30 per level, so +210 min/max. 370-390 +210 = 580 - 600, so it appears there is 25 min - 85 max difference. Maybe I have the lvl 27 base wrong, maybe they bumped it up a bit, or maybe the +7 skills is really a factor in calculating the FOF bonus.

Thinking purely from within the known and published on the summit. If one were to allocate 10 FOF, 20 COT, 10 BOI, and 20 PS. It appears to me that having a Level 20 PS with lvl 10 FOF could produce a Meteor 1160 - 1200 + maybe 1500 - 2000 per sec (for 3 secs, I think) Is this New?! Fire splash dmg, or are they just exposing dmg #'s that were already there?. Seems to be higher than the Meteor dmg. I think this is pressing close to a high level sorceress meteor with lvl 10 mastery, with a mana cost of 4.

First I am assuming that the COT value in the picture (which you cannot see) is not as low, maybe 13 or 14. 1751/ (1+.13 x 14) = 1151. It appears that unless my assumption on the COT value is wrong, that they have doubled the base max lightning dmg per level (just a guess, but at level 20 PS lightning may now be something 1 - 700 ). Ergo, (mostly guessing then) a level 20 PS with lvl 20 COT may produce a Chain Lightning of 700 * 3.6 (.13 x 20 +1 ) = 2520. Big!

You can make out the leading one at least, so I'm thinking he has 3 to 5 points in BOI, say 4. This base dmg does not to have appeared to changed upwards. 364-399 / 1.4 = 260 - 285 at lvl 27 seems improved slightly as well, since currently it appears that at lvl 20 you chaos ice bolt dmg of 156-172 (+20 /lvl) or his perhaps his BOI is lower than I think. Using current PS cold dmg 231 - 251 * 2 (.1 * 10 + 1) gives 462 - 502 Chaos Ice bolt. Again, nearing max sorceress frozen orb, with maxed cold mastery.

So, my conclusion is that I think that + skills will apply to skill interaction bonues, or they have made things so much more difficult that all skills are now vastly increased in power.

Then again, with nightmare and hell difficulties substantially increased, maybe this is neccesary to survive... shudder....

As for Natalya's Odium rendering one more transparent... >pfft< Unless Nats claws drop more frequently, I'd be better off buying a lottery ticket with the time/effort wasted trying to find them... Again, the dupers will win this one. I have found the other three on my own, and I feel it would be a personal victory to find the complete set. But, again, I will probably see pigs fly first.

[WarBlade]

Prior GF posts indicatd that interaction bonuses would only apply to actually assigned skills, not + skills items.&nbsp; However, I have my doubts.

Question: Does anyone have said posts on hand?

The wording of the quoted statement to my mind reads as . . .
- Synergies have no impact on skill charges.
- Synergies have no impact on Cast on Attack/when Hit.
- Synergies have no impact on new item effects eg Sanctuary on the Phase Blade.
- Items with +Skills do contribute their bonuses when calculating Synergy benefits.

. . . and it's that last little point that is the one that's up in the air. Do +Skills contribute or don't they. The rumour mill claims only invested points can contribute although looking at the quoted statement has got me wondering. :huh: I'm also wondering if Geoff has interpreted information he's been given correctly. If not, it wouldn't be the first time the D2 community has been misinformed.

I'm looking forward to reading if anyone has the definitive answer, whether from Phrozen Keep or from that blizzard forum which I will not utter here . . . :P

Gandalf quote . . . sorry :unsure:

So is anyone 100% certain with the correct answer?

[Wrathraven]

As for Natalya's Odium rendering one more transparent... >pfft<&nbsp; Unless Nats claws drop more frequently, I'd be better off buying a lottery ticket with the time/effort wasted trying to find them...&nbsp; Again, the dupers will win this one.&nbsp; I have found the other three on my own, and I feel it would be a personal victory to find the complete set.&nbsp; But, again, I will probably see pigs fly first.

well, here's to hoping they fix set items so that they actually drop when you need em ;)

[Smoketest]

I say let the patch come. The game needs a facelift anyway. Besides, if there are major issues with things like which monsters spawn where, I'm sure one of the many mod-makers in the community will come up with a mod to address the problem. After all, we have patch-mods for Hellfire and the like (I wish someone would do the same for Diablo 1.09) so there's no reason to assume that Diablo II will become stagnant even after Blizzard stops updating it.

(When I get my next paycheck, I'm grabbing a new copy of LoD. More than anything, I miss the 800x600 gaming resolution. Hopefully Fry's will still have the Diablo Battlechest for sale.)

Don't worry. Be Happy. B)

[Striker]

http://WWW.BAttle.net/diablo2exp/images/ot.../assassin01.jpg

The "new" chain lightning effect looks different from the old one. I hope that the bolts will seek out monsters, as opposed to just firing in random directions.

[kandrathe]

From the news page at the Arreat Summit...

May 12, 2003

New Skill System in Diablo II 1.10
The skills of each character class have been thoroughly revised. On top of that, a new system of "synergies" has been added to each character’s skill set. Allotting a point to certain skills will result in synergy bonuses to one or more of that character’s corresponding skills. Only the points you assign, and not those granted by items, give synergy bonuses. See the new stats for the Necromancer's Bone Spear skill.

... but again, I have my doubts.

[Jugalator]

... but again, I have my doubts.

Synergies won't increase with +skill items -- that seems to be set in stone, so there's no reason to have doubts about that. :) Or did you think of something else? I don't think they'll change that in a late release candidate either. The patch is probably pretty much feature complete and changing that would require some major rebalancing to the skill system once again.

What I *do* think is that Blizzard has increased NM and Hell difficulties and kept nerfs to a minimum (I even recall them having said that). Instead, these difficulties are now more difficult and they've simply improved the skills where they felt it necessary to do so. Some might have been improved, others might only have minor changes. Those who got minor changes might be the same skills that are kinda overpowered in 1.09. They would then become more in-line with the rest of the game in 1.10 without having to be nerfed. They might go for this tactic to not piss off large amounts of players since they made their skills suck. Of course, Firewall might suck more in 1.10 due to the increased difficulty, but then Blizzard can defend themselves by just saying that the game got harder due to difficulty, not them directly nerfing a character's skills.

But of course, this is just what I think would be most logical to do. :)

[Animation]

What I *do* think is that Blizzard has increased NM and Hell difficulties and kept nerfs to a minimum (I even recall them having said that). Instead, these difficulties are now more difficult and they've simply improved the skills where they felt it necessary to do so.

That's still a nerf. :) Sorry, but if you commit 40 points toward making your Hydras really, really rock against non-fire immunes, well hell. Thats 40 freakin character points. It should rock. If they leave the numbers the same and make the game harder, while bringing up other skills, thats a nerf right there buddy.

Whether you reduce the damage or increase the hit points and AI, its a nerf. The only way for it to not be a nerf is if the skill improves to where it was as powerful as it was before.

I would prefer them just come out and say "we are nerfing a bunch of stuff." I mean, if its not a nerf, your old characters should be as viable as they ever were, barring some special cases where a skill is totally broken. In a lot of cases, its the equipment, or the fact that duping made things easy to get, that broke it. I'd personally rather have them delete all gear from everyone before nerfing my not-uber level 80 sorceress with 20 LM, 20 CB, 20 Hy, 20 FM. I can barely cut it in hell as-is. Maybe I just stink.

That's another thing ... why reign in the top 5% of players and power gamers? You cant without making the average players extremely uncomfortable.

That said, I'm looking forward to the patch, just so I can make a rocking holy fire paladin and a sweet poison explosion necromancer, and an elemental druid that puts my old one to shame. At least I hope so. Then again, I doubt I'll have much fun playing in the post hell environment. I expect to shift to only playing normal difficulty. We'll see how it goes. I am looking forward to the changes, I just suspect it will be a giant freakin pain.

Cheers,

Lewis

[Archon]

Transparency is nice and all but, why didn't they go for the actual Natalya sprite with the cape? I realize its probably too late for them to change it but, I don't think it would have required any large amount of extra art, if any. (That is, if they just added a cape sprite to the naked Assassin.) You listening Isolde? ;P

Of course they probably already thought of the idea, and found some reason why it couldn't work...

Right?.... =/

[Jugalator]

If they leave the numbers the same and make the game harder, while bringing up other skills, thats a nerf right there buddy.

I agree that it's an indirect nerf through the improvement of other skills, but if they haven't touched a skill, I wouldn't say it's nerfed. The rares were great in Classic, but are not very used in the Expansion -- not because I think they were nerfed, but because the uniques are so damn powerful.

If they make the entire game harder, I wouldn't say every character build, every item and every skill was nerfed, but that the game... was made harder.

[kier]

I noticed that chain lightening too, but I couldn't be sure :P . Phoenix strike is a viable skill at high level, my ass has that maxed, she has 0 trap, and is level 82. But her kit is good, so that may help a bit :P

[Jugalator]

I noticed that chain lightening too, but I couldn't be sure&nbsp; :P .

Yes, I tried it out yesterday and took some screenshots. It does look a bit different now, but it depends on the situation too. Since Chain Lightning is used for the 2nd charge, it is already "seeking" / bouncing between the monsters nearby, but when there are none nearby, they just shoot out in a straight line. However, when there are lots of monsters nearby, the graphics look similar to the 1.10 shot. So I'm still not sure what changed exactly. Perhaps just some new randomness is applied to them if no monsters are near (they seem to change direction randomly even without monsters in the 1.10 shot). But I can't see the need to put some effort into this minor change. Just for the looks, or will it really work in a new way?

[Malaclypse]

I don't know if any of you lurkers have noticed this yet, but it appears the second serpent magus is casting bone spear.

Linky to Amazon Basin discussion with pic.

[Jugalator]

I don't know if any of you lurkers have noticed this yet, but it appears the second serpent magus is casting bone spear.

Linky to Amazon Basin discussion with pic.

Wow, that's interesting... What's even more interesting is not the screenshots, but this page:
http://www.theamazonbasin.com/d2/forums/in...2&t=26428&st=75

I quote:

Paul Siramy:

Lol, no, I'm definitively not Isolde, nor am I a Blizzard employee. I'm just in D2 Mod-Making for 1.5 years. On the PhrozenKeep forum I saw a link to that interesting topic, and wanted to put my guess. The original image come of course from this b.net link. Now, the images of the bone spear trail are extracted from d2data.mpq : data\global\missiles\BoneSpearTrail.dcc, direction 25, frames 7 6 5 4 3 (from left to right), and think it comes from the gray serpent.

To be honest, if Loschonorg didn't make his Teaser, I think I wouldn't pay attention to the gfx. Now, maybe Isolde had another thing in mind ? Don't know.

Reply:

Isolde:

Paul gets the reward for spotting what I was talking about ;)