***Pre-emptive edit***
This is extremely disjointed. Even the sections it is divided into may be somewhat off, and I don't have time to edit right now, but want to get it out there. Read at your own risk.
First off, STOP ADDING MORE AND MORE TOO-POWERFUL ITEMS TO THE GAME. I don't care how common they are. I don't care how easy they are to obtain. It's not about class disparity. It's about game difficulty. A bot can now find and kill the final boss in the hardest difficulty. Problem? Yes.
I forgot the majority of what I was going to post, but after reading through Librarian's list, there are a few items I'd like to comment on.
The fixing of the double ethereal bonus via Horadric Cube socketing is NOT a good plan, at least for the non-ladder trading economy (not that I care, playing only Ladder). These items will skyrocket in value if left in the game. They should be either removed entirely from the game (including those existing in inventories), or better yet, retroactively fixed. Even if possible, this doesn't sound easy. I'm not sure what else to do here. Scaling the defense progression differently doesn't sound any easier.
A fix to the bots (removing them, obviously) would be gravy, but I'm not too hopeful there. I don't have enough coding experience to know how feasible this is.
Revert the mercenaries back to their old hiring scheme with regard to level OR make Hell mercenaries identical to normal mercenaries. Do the same with Nightmare mercenaries (barring Desert Warrior auras, of course).
As much as I would like some actual balance changes (to the good, not this catering to what we feel people have always wanted to make their characters more ub3r), I don't think they're going to happen. As such I would settle for some bug fixes. I think Librarian has covered most of what I was aware of.
Howsabout a ladder reset? Or maybe a ladder reset schedule? I got juked on the last one because I had to move about a week after it started.
Add some of the "features" of maphack. Things like different colored rune text and ilvl display.
Regarding the quote librarian posted:
Increasing rune commonality looks like a plan if we're keeping all of those high-end words.
Constant map revelation would not necessarily be a good plan, but I can see where he's coming from. Is there a problem with doing something like storing the map server-side (to alleviate map-hack).
The spell fixes don't look too bad, but I feel it should be said that someone will always find the "best" skill for speed killing, and as such, the others won't be used too much.
***WISHLIST***
I'm aware that most of these not only will not happen, but are not even feasible given the current budget, player environment, etc. I also wonder how much of this Blizzard WOULD be willing to do if they had the time, money, and manpower. For example, it has been shown that the Diablo I dupe fix was relatively simple, yet Blizzard left it in the game. Since many many other bugs were fixed, the obvious conclusion is they left it in on purpose, probably because they figured (correctly) that a large portion of their gaming community used and enjoyed it. There is an official aggressive stance against maphack and whatnot, but I'm not sure how much is actually being done.
More intelligent synergies would be great. The "Let's have skill X synergize skill Y because there's a logical relation" track is cool, but I'd prefer balance. In fact, let's get rid of them altogether while we're here. They were an awesome idea, but didn't really work. I've heard it said that a better fix would be to scale the level requirement on skills to end at something like clvl 75 (and of course scale the power level as well). This might have people actually using the low-level stuff. But once again, I don't think any of this is realistic, just what I'd like to see.
-Do SOMETHING about Blessed Hammer. No one skill should be that dominating; AoE damage that hits and kills everything but a single obscure monster in Act III is just too much, ESPECIALLY at that kind of level of damage. Remove the breaking of immunity. Scale down the damage. Make the flight path more erratic. Do SOMETHING.
-Do something about Holy Shield. I think the problem (bug?) is that it multiplies ALL armor rather than the SHIELD'S armor. As such, a high level Holy Shield grants max block and potentially fifteen thousand-ish defense. That's akin to the defense of a Barbarian with full-on Shout and Iron Skin.
-Remove Infinity. Conviction on a Sorceress is too much. It creates a very Blessed Hammer-esque situation (as on the straight Lightning Amazon). These classes cannot break/lower immunity/resistances for a reason.
-Remove Enigma. Teleporting should be restricted to Sorceresses. You want to teleport? Get an amulet with charges. Alternate fix: Make Enigma VERY weak, but leave the teleport oskill on. Maybe give it negative "bonuses".
-Call to Arms is not nearly as broken as these two, but you could make a case for stunlock while teleporting.
-Hellfire Torch is out of control. Annihilus is to a lesser extent, but it seems to be stabilizing, at least in terms of numbers. Hellfire Torch, however, seems to be one of the most common items on Battle.net. Before unique charms existed, people would have killed for 5 resist all/+20 life. Now people routinely throw out a less-than-perfect Torch or Annihilus because it's "not good enough". I don't know how to fix this, but it is a problem.
-Annihilus is a known quantity. Perhaps this was the original intent, but I feel that Blizzard implemented it to add a special item to the game in their long-standing tradition of randomness. Not only is it no longer random, but there are people who have enough CD keys to sell enough Stones to break a server all by themselves and still make a profit. Something is wrong with that picture.
-Half-joking here, but what if we could revert (Realm/Ladder) back to a 1.08ish state of the game. Get rid of all of that Enigma nonsense. It's not just the fact that the words are impossible to make without cheating, but the fact that they throw balance out the window. Paladins were not meant to teleport. Sorceresses have to work obscenely hard to obtain the 20,000+ defense your average "Hammerdin" has.
-Make mercenaries beyond the Desert Warriors "useful". I know they're not BAD, per se, but nothing is even close to Desert Warrior power in hell.
-Item transfer between characters. Perhaps a small shared storage.
-"Item decay mode". A mode that creates a stable, vibrant economy--items must have some OUT. Thus far, to my knowledge, only cube recipies, selling Stones of Jordan, using non-repairing, non-indestructible ethereal items, and just plain leaving stuff in a game are the only means of destroying items. What if EVERYTHING eventually died. Maybe a week after it's found? Or X hours of logtime while equipped? Make everything ethereal, but without bonii (wands and such must somehow lose durability). Right now the game is basically to see who can generate the biggest pile of junk. But then that junk just sits there forever. It never gets traded, used, given away, or anything else. Give someone a reason to use that perfect <item that is not used>.
-I think I posted this already, but remove synergies. Find another way to make those "useless" skills useless. Right now they are a resource, but they are still not USED. There are any number of ways to do this. Here's an example. Instead of requiring ONE point to access a skill, have the requirement equal to the level requirement, drawn from any combination of skills of a lower tier within that tree. So to access, say, Frozen Orb, you need 30 hard points in any combination of < level 30 cold skills. To access Fireball, you need 12 hard points in any combination of Warmth, Inferno, and Firebolt. This is somewhat similar to the synergy structure (and as such, I realize it is still very much flawed), but it accomplishes something that synergies do not; it leaves some room for experimentation. How many people even bother anymore? Can't pick up Thunderstorm because it doesn't synergize anything you KNOW you will use. Can't use Blaze for the same reason. So no one even bothers TRYING OUT the skills. I'm sure there are many better fixes than this. Perhaps I'll post some later.
One last comment before I go. I've noticed a trend in what I see as maybe happening, and what I believe will be immediately dismissed. Anything that will be seen by the majority of players as weakening one (or all--probably in relation to monsters) will be dismissed. Blizzard is (probably correctly) afraid that much of their player-base will be upset if something like this happens. But if they add something extremely overpowered, especially if it's for ALL classes, everyone will rejoice. I'll have to take the only real-life example I know of here; Guild Wars. They have implemented the opposite policy, which is to keep the game and its balance intact. Players have roared with vexation upon learning of several updates, but as a result, the game is still as playable (perhaps more so) as when it was first released. It is not BORING. Diablo II is rapidly becoming (read: already is) such. Once clvl 85 is passed, unless you're playing a caster with low armor, there really isn't any thought anymore. Anything with over, say, 10,000 armor becomes "Click on something until it dies. It can't hurt you anyway." This is not "fun", despite what a large quantity of the players would have themselves believe. As evidence, I present both the level bots and the item-finding bots. Uber Tristram was a step in the right direction on the challenge front; Hellfire Torch was a step in the wrong. Ya grok?
--me
Edit: FIX THE LYING CHARACTER SCREEN!
Edit again: Not as important, but howsabout a different scaling for diminishing returns. Perhaps the same endpoint, but extend it differently. For example, my Barbarian has level twelve-ish Find Item. The next point does not actually change the value (46% as I recall). What if it was more like 30% at this level and continued to scale up slowly? Worth looking into?
This is extremely disjointed. Even the sections it is divided into may be somewhat off, and I don't have time to edit right now, but want to get it out there. Read at your own risk.
First off, STOP ADDING MORE AND MORE TOO-POWERFUL ITEMS TO THE GAME. I don't care how common they are. I don't care how easy they are to obtain. It's not about class disparity. It's about game difficulty. A bot can now find and kill the final boss in the hardest difficulty. Problem? Yes.
I forgot the majority of what I was going to post, but after reading through Librarian's list, there are a few items I'd like to comment on.
The fixing of the double ethereal bonus via Horadric Cube socketing is NOT a good plan, at least for the non-ladder trading economy (not that I care, playing only Ladder). These items will skyrocket in value if left in the game. They should be either removed entirely from the game (including those existing in inventories), or better yet, retroactively fixed. Even if possible, this doesn't sound easy. I'm not sure what else to do here. Scaling the defense progression differently doesn't sound any easier.
A fix to the bots (removing them, obviously) would be gravy, but I'm not too hopeful there. I don't have enough coding experience to know how feasible this is.
Revert the mercenaries back to their old hiring scheme with regard to level OR make Hell mercenaries identical to normal mercenaries. Do the same with Nightmare mercenaries (barring Desert Warrior auras, of course).
As much as I would like some actual balance changes (to the good, not this catering to what we feel people have always wanted to make their characters more ub3r), I don't think they're going to happen. As such I would settle for some bug fixes. I think Librarian has covered most of what I was aware of.
Howsabout a ladder reset? Or maybe a ladder reset schedule? I got juked on the last one because I had to move about a week after it started.
Add some of the "features" of maphack. Things like different colored rune text and ilvl display.
Regarding the quote librarian posted:
Increasing rune commonality looks like a plan if we're keeping all of those high-end words.
Constant map revelation would not necessarily be a good plan, but I can see where he's coming from. Is there a problem with doing something like storing the map server-side (to alleviate map-hack).
The spell fixes don't look too bad, but I feel it should be said that someone will always find the "best" skill for speed killing, and as such, the others won't be used too much.
***WISHLIST***
I'm aware that most of these not only will not happen, but are not even feasible given the current budget, player environment, etc. I also wonder how much of this Blizzard WOULD be willing to do if they had the time, money, and manpower. For example, it has been shown that the Diablo I dupe fix was relatively simple, yet Blizzard left it in the game. Since many many other bugs were fixed, the obvious conclusion is they left it in on purpose, probably because they figured (correctly) that a large portion of their gaming community used and enjoyed it. There is an official aggressive stance against maphack and whatnot, but I'm not sure how much is actually being done.
More intelligent synergies would be great. The "Let's have skill X synergize skill Y because there's a logical relation" track is cool, but I'd prefer balance. In fact, let's get rid of them altogether while we're here. They were an awesome idea, but didn't really work. I've heard it said that a better fix would be to scale the level requirement on skills to end at something like clvl 75 (and of course scale the power level as well). This might have people actually using the low-level stuff. But once again, I don't think any of this is realistic, just what I'd like to see.
-Do SOMETHING about Blessed Hammer. No one skill should be that dominating; AoE damage that hits and kills everything but a single obscure monster in Act III is just too much, ESPECIALLY at that kind of level of damage. Remove the breaking of immunity. Scale down the damage. Make the flight path more erratic. Do SOMETHING.
-Do something about Holy Shield. I think the problem (bug?) is that it multiplies ALL armor rather than the SHIELD'S armor. As such, a high level Holy Shield grants max block and potentially fifteen thousand-ish defense. That's akin to the defense of a Barbarian with full-on Shout and Iron Skin.
-Remove Infinity. Conviction on a Sorceress is too much. It creates a very Blessed Hammer-esque situation (as on the straight Lightning Amazon). These classes cannot break/lower immunity/resistances for a reason.
-Remove Enigma. Teleporting should be restricted to Sorceresses. You want to teleport? Get an amulet with charges. Alternate fix: Make Enigma VERY weak, but leave the teleport oskill on. Maybe give it negative "bonuses".
-Call to Arms is not nearly as broken as these two, but you could make a case for stunlock while teleporting.
-Hellfire Torch is out of control. Annihilus is to a lesser extent, but it seems to be stabilizing, at least in terms of numbers. Hellfire Torch, however, seems to be one of the most common items on Battle.net. Before unique charms existed, people would have killed for 5 resist all/+20 life. Now people routinely throw out a less-than-perfect Torch or Annihilus because it's "not good enough". I don't know how to fix this, but it is a problem.
-Annihilus is a known quantity. Perhaps this was the original intent, but I feel that Blizzard implemented it to add a special item to the game in their long-standing tradition of randomness. Not only is it no longer random, but there are people who have enough CD keys to sell enough Stones to break a server all by themselves and still make a profit. Something is wrong with that picture.
-Half-joking here, but what if we could revert (Realm/Ladder) back to a 1.08ish state of the game. Get rid of all of that Enigma nonsense. It's not just the fact that the words are impossible to make without cheating, but the fact that they throw balance out the window. Paladins were not meant to teleport. Sorceresses have to work obscenely hard to obtain the 20,000+ defense your average "Hammerdin" has.
-Make mercenaries beyond the Desert Warriors "useful". I know they're not BAD, per se, but nothing is even close to Desert Warrior power in hell.
-Item transfer between characters. Perhaps a small shared storage.
-"Item decay mode". A mode that creates a stable, vibrant economy--items must have some OUT. Thus far, to my knowledge, only cube recipies, selling Stones of Jordan, using non-repairing, non-indestructible ethereal items, and just plain leaving stuff in a game are the only means of destroying items. What if EVERYTHING eventually died. Maybe a week after it's found? Or X hours of logtime while equipped? Make everything ethereal, but without bonii (wands and such must somehow lose durability). Right now the game is basically to see who can generate the biggest pile of junk. But then that junk just sits there forever. It never gets traded, used, given away, or anything else. Give someone a reason to use that perfect <item that is not used>.
-I think I posted this already, but remove synergies. Find another way to make those "useless" skills useless. Right now they are a resource, but they are still not USED. There are any number of ways to do this. Here's an example. Instead of requiring ONE point to access a skill, have the requirement equal to the level requirement, drawn from any combination of skills of a lower tier within that tree. So to access, say, Frozen Orb, you need 30 hard points in any combination of < level 30 cold skills. To access Fireball, you need 12 hard points in any combination of Warmth, Inferno, and Firebolt. This is somewhat similar to the synergy structure (and as such, I realize it is still very much flawed), but it accomplishes something that synergies do not; it leaves some room for experimentation. How many people even bother anymore? Can't pick up Thunderstorm because it doesn't synergize anything you KNOW you will use. Can't use Blaze for the same reason. So no one even bothers TRYING OUT the skills. I'm sure there are many better fixes than this. Perhaps I'll post some later.
One last comment before I go. I've noticed a trend in what I see as maybe happening, and what I believe will be immediately dismissed. Anything that will be seen by the majority of players as weakening one (or all--probably in relation to monsters) will be dismissed. Blizzard is (probably correctly) afraid that much of their player-base will be upset if something like this happens. But if they add something extremely overpowered, especially if it's for ALL classes, everyone will rejoice. I'll have to take the only real-life example I know of here; Guild Wars. They have implemented the opposite policy, which is to keep the game and its balance intact. Players have roared with vexation upon learning of several updates, but as a result, the game is still as playable (perhaps more so) as when it was first released. It is not BORING. Diablo II is rapidly becoming (read: already is) such. Once clvl 85 is passed, unless you're playing a caster with low armor, there really isn't any thought anymore. Anything with over, say, 10,000 armor becomes "Click on something until it dies. It can't hurt you anyway." This is not "fun", despite what a large quantity of the players would have themselves believe. As evidence, I present both the level bots and the item-finding bots. Uber Tristram was a step in the right direction on the challenge front; Hellfire Torch was a step in the wrong. Ya grok?
--me
Edit: FIX THE LYING CHARACTER SCREEN!
Edit again: Not as important, but howsabout a different scaling for diminishing returns. Perhaps the same endpoint, but extend it differently. For example, my Barbarian has level twelve-ish Find Item. The next point does not actually change the value (46% as I recall). What if it was more like 30% at this level and continued to scale up slowly? Worth looking into?