Interesting new stuff on Arreat Summit

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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