06-24-2003, 10:35 AM
I've been doing some thinking about the forthcoming v1.1 patch that Blizzard has been promising will come out in a few weeks for about a year now. I should've kept my mind on my homework, but then this came up. They're dropping a lot of happy things, like items, ladder, smarter monsters, more restricted level requirements on difficulty levels, tighter protection against leeching, hack protection <_< , new balancing schemes, crap like that, but the big thing here is skills. Nobody has actually said anything about how the skills themselves are going to change...no, I know what you're about to say, but shut up: I didn't say passive skill bonuses, I didn't say more damage, I didn't say new graphics, I said "how are the skills themselves going to change?" which is the sort of thing I'd expect Blizzard to not talk about. Spell timers, area effects, new effects (like a CE-like detonation proceeding a casting of PE, giving me some incentive to use a skill that's supposed to kill slow as opposed to, um...now). And they really should, because either the monsters are going to meet up to the now-massive damage by rising up to the challenge, or the players are going to go through Hell solo all over again.
Here's the problem. You can throw as many passive skill bonuses into a tree as you like - in fact, I believe I suggested that Blizzard do this for the druid elemental tree - but giving a skill with near-zero utility a huge boost in damage doesn't make that skill any better, it just makes for a skill with near-zero utility with a big damage boost, and if it still works like it did when it was weak, it's going to suck even more. But everybody's getting a huge overhaul in how much damage their skills can do! You know what this changes?
Nothing. Give everybody as many intra-skill skill bonuses as they want - it won't change the fact that some skill trees (bow/crossbow and passive/magic!) are just better than others. Hell, they could give these little bonuses to every skill tree in the game except these two and it still won't change a thing because bowazons are still going to smack around 20 monsters at once with huge-damage bows and huge-damage skills. While leeching. Yeah, I know I'm slanted unfairly towards bowazon dominance, but they might as well have called the bow/crossbow tree the "Smack Down the Punk*ss B*tch tree" because on the whole, it hasn't changed since v1.0 and it's still the best physical damage tree out there. Let's take Multiple Shot as an example: some of us might remember when MS was the primary bowazon killing skill, so Blizzard lowered the damage, and what did it change? Nothing. But it had a 25% damage penalty! So what? The damage penalty doesn't mean jack: it started as a skill with no listed enhanced damage bonuses, was nerfed to a skill with a negative damage bonus that screamed "I suck, don't use me!" and it's still popular because of the way the skill works and has always worked. Firing 10 arrows each with a 25% damage penalty, all of them pierce through an enemy once: idiot math says they were at 75% efficiency, but struck twice (they made up for the penalty at the second hit and then some), regaining enough mana to disregard the cost that'll come from firing yet another volley. The skill hasn't changed at all because hey, firing another volley into those monsters was what you were planning to do anyway, right?
Strange that a level 6 skill so easily eclipsed a level 24 skill (Strafe) when Blizzard decided that bowazons were apparently at some risk firing off 62 sequential arrows into an approaching group of enemies. Nice to know they cared enough to scratch out that "risk versus benefit" question out of bowazon heads. Still, as Corwin said, watching a bowazon rapidly fire out 10 arrows in perfect time has some elegance, much like watching the old films of Audrey Hepburn in the little black dress. However, Audrey's dead and buried, and thanks to Blizzard's meddling, so is Strafe.
Of course, this means that once again, every class will have the skill(s) to use, and if my predictions are right, those skills will be the same skills that have always been used, except for the druid, who's finally going to gain a skill tree instead of that dead weight called the elemental skill tree. Perhaps. I have my doubts. Again, everyone's looking at the changes and new stuff without really considering how drastic the shifts in game balance might become - haven't we been through this once before?
Has anyone noticed the sharp rise in damage from these skills, by the way? It's like Final Fantasy: the only way to make a monster really tough is to jack its hit points into the thousands, but without a corresponding amount of damage to back that threat, all you're ending up with are punching bags who really can't hurt you. However, what this means is that if a monster does the sort of damage that makes it a threat in melee, what class is going to be maintain popularity, what in-game principles are going to remain unchanged and unchallenged, and has Blizzard explained to us what formulas - blocking %, physical resistance, DR, leech, AR/DR differences - are going to receive a complete overhaul? (I don't think anyone has actually raised these questions, really, but I feel that they're going to have a profound impact on the game. Just imagine, after two years and ten revisions, defense rating might actually mean something!) :lol:
Aw, AK's whining about bowazons again. Well, yeah (This is my rant, after all.) and no. Let's take another example. Paladins. All of them. I'm going to apologize to the people who play nothing but paladins before I say paladins suck: every other class can do everything better than they can except for one thing, and by the time a paladin gains Fanaticism, that one thing no longer matters because it doesn't benefit anybody but the paladin. (By the way, I'm not sorry that I said paladins suck, I'm sorry you play nothing but paladins.) The game designers meant them to be a jack-of-all-trades, but what they ended up being is a walking combat shrine, so in a sense, they're a jack-of-something. Paladins must have an aura: a paladin without an aura, usually an offensive one because defensive auras mean nothing in an offensively-natured game, is a dead paladin. Think about this for a second: even though the game wants the paladin to be a necessity on a coherent team, no other class is more dependent on auras than the paladin himself. This is why Fanaticism gives increased attack speed to everybody in its puny range, but gives the paladin a huge bonus to damage and attack rating: because he's the only one that needs them - everybody else can kill just fine on their own. "But they can hit hard," you retort. With what? Charge (back up, attack, back up, attack, back up, attack...)? Vengeance (whomp, whomp, whomp, whomp, drink rejuv, whomp, whomp, whomp, drink rejuv)? Smite (hit, stun, take damage from all other sides, hit stun, take damage from all other sides)? These are the only two hard-hitting skills that come to mind because any class that wants to melee against the tens of monsters you will face down in locations like most of Act 2 and everything thereafter desires - no, needs - a fast, hard-hitting attack that will consistently waste your average monster in three or four hits so you don't get wasted in three to four hits. (Frenzytaur with a fanaticism aura, anybody? Who can take that down safely at melee range?) Paladins don't get this: Charge isn't fast enough and Vengeance costs far too much mana for the comparatively weak damage and piss-poor hitting chances it offers. Contrast Vengeance against Berserk: which one is going to lay the smackdown on that thousand hit point physical immune monster tearing your face off faster so you can move onto the next monster? Which one costs less? Bing, barbarian gains a point, paladin loses a point. It doesn't matter that berserk is a level 30 skill and vengeance isn't: a level 5 berserk is far more efficient than a level 20 vengeance. Oh, and the auras are up, but so what? Unless it's Fanaticism (which'll get the paladin killed anyways because the only skill he can realistically use with it is Zeal, which only affects physical damage monsters, and even if they aren't in 1.1, he'll still get whomped because he can't waste them in time), then every other class has already taken advantage of the paladin's aura, doing what they do better at the paladin's expense.
And if you haven't noticed, only two paladin attack skills hit more than one target and neither of them are very strong. And some of you might remember how geeked you were when you found out Fist of the Heavens was going to get a huge buff in lightning damage only to be disappointed by the four-second spell timer and the bowazons with their Goldstrike Arches laughing their cute little blonde butts off when they smacked more white on your screen than bukkake porn.
"But AK," you whine, "paladins get all this really cool equipment: Stormshield, Herald of Zakarum, Schaefer's, Baranar's, Lightsabre, Guardian Angel...if they can use all of this equipment so well, how can they suck?" Because paladins need that equipment to survive, as opposed to the bowazon who picks up an Eaglehorn and thinks "Hey, Eaglehorn, cool...but it's not as fast and effective as my Goldstrike Arch or this cruel ward bow I bought from Larzuk's." Now compare Schaefer's against the Hand of Blessed Light or a cruel seraphim rod: they all have short range, they all have piss-poor damage (since Schaefer's depends mostly on its static field), and if that rod has any skill bonuses, God help you on the repairs. OK, what's my point? Remember when Blizzard said that if a party member wants to share in the loot, then every team member must be within a certain distance of the kill? Paladin players remember how much ground high-level auras can cover: if a barbarian makes a kill under a paladin's aura, but out of a paladin's "experience zone," the paladin doesn't benefit. Unless he deliberately keeps his auras small (screwing over himself and the team), he'll have to play catch up with the rest of the party's incredible killing speed.
Let's move onto druids. "Hi, I'm a big fuzzy paladin wanna-be (*LOL*) who was saddled down with a completely useless elemental skills tree that's so incredibly piss-poor that a level 42 sorceress can smoke a level 75 elemental druid (oak sage and all) like a pack of Turkish Reds." Anybody who knows my druid rants knows what's coming, so I'll skip it. "But elemental skills are getting a huge buff, and they're gonna have a physical damage component, and elemental skills are finally going to be able to do some real damage." Two questions: how are you so incredibly sure that sorceress skills aren't being buffed at the same time (once again, pounding elemental skills into the dirt) and how have the skills themselves changed? For example, have the spell timers changed or will we have to wait another six seconds before we can cast a second Hurricane, thus wasting even more time? Do the spells themselves work and progress the same as they used to? For example, will Firestorm gain range and extra hits with every level, will the boulder stop knocking monsters out of its incredible fire damage, and exactly how can you fix Fissure without making it exactly like Volcano? And shapeshifting skills: "Hi, I'm a druid with huge physical damage, a ton of life leech, insane attack speed and movement modifiers, the ability to stun monsters around me and give my companions tons of life, and an incredibly high Attack Rating."
Can I answer that challenge? It's a one word challenge.
Barbarian.
If druids are so incredibly and versatile, then explain barbarians. They might not get the huge damage bonuses, weak elemental skills, or crappy minions a druid may get, but then again, they don't need them. They offer the party all that (except for the minions...they kill so fast that they don't need them), and more. If a werebear and a barbarian went head-to-head, it'd go something like this:
Druid: Cast Oak Sage, shapeshift, amble forward...SPLAT!
Barbarian: Whirlwind. "What the hell was that? Some little scrawny dude with ugly armor just started growing hair and...hey sorry, 'bout that, buddy, I'm sure I should've done some yelling first, but that massive head wound should clear up any time soon. Anyway, I've gotta fight in a real duel against a bowazon. Bye bye!"
"But a bear can tank!" Yeah, that's on your summons tree, remember? And didn't that tank just get spalttered by a better superior tank? Again, can Blizzard get around the obvious druid weaknesses without forcing him to spread himself thin just to cope and doing a worse job than a barbarian or are they offering us another paladin job - not quite as good as a barb, not quite as good as a sorc?
"But a wolf has that insane damage bonus on fury!" OK, they have a big damage bonus, up to 400% as a matter of fact with a huge amount of life leech, speed, and AR to go with it. Fine. Compare this to a bowazon who doesn't. Anyone remember Legolas and Gimili trading body counts?
Druid: (with ~2000-4000 damage) One!
Bowazon: ( with ~500-3000 damage) Ten!
Druid: Two!
Bowazon: Thirty!
Druid: Oh no, a physical/fire immune! I'll just shapeshift back to my wussy pink human mode and cast my level 35 Hurricane: this should take five castings (30 seconds), so wait up!
Bowazon: *Slams them all with a level 5 Freezing Arrow* Hey druid, why don't you go back to Anya's, get me a coffee with some extra half-and-half.
Druid: What?!
Bowazon: And a twist of lemon.
Druid: I don't have to take this! I'm contributing to the party!
Bowazon: Sweet-and-low. (Sixty!)
(kudos to Paul Smecker)
Oh, and Spirit of the Barbs. Nothing says stupid quite like a level 30 skill that less effective than its level 12 counterparts.
And are we gonna change the way fire claws works? How about rabies? How about Tornado, a skill that had potential? These are almost simple - just add a ton more damage - but there's more that can be done to them. They don't mention things like improvements to the druid's casting speed, if Tornado can be controlled or not (or what element it'll correspond to), if Shockwave's damage will be raised (because I have a feeling that its duration'll be lowered with difficulty), or how Spirit of the Barbs is going to change. Don't get me wrong, I love druids, much in the same way I love the neighbor's smelly one-eyed, three-legged twenty-pound cat who sometimes forgets it's not supposed to piss on my front porch.
The biggest changes to the game are the ones that aren't seen on the screen, like the new IAS, FHR, FRW, and FC formulae we all had to figure out when LOD hit the market, the MF values that suddenly changed, or the speed formula for WW (bye-bye lances!), that kind of thing. One of the things we don't see on-screen, and often one of the things that turn out to be a nasty surprise because Blizzard often says "such-and-such skill was rebalanced" is finding out how they've been rebalanced, and not just in terms of damage.
And AK's brain has run out of gas and is now entering sleep mode. Will add more as I find more coffee to survive yet another lovely day. Ignore the wild-eyed crazy look, I haven't been playing D2 lately.
Here's the problem. You can throw as many passive skill bonuses into a tree as you like - in fact, I believe I suggested that Blizzard do this for the druid elemental tree - but giving a skill with near-zero utility a huge boost in damage doesn't make that skill any better, it just makes for a skill with near-zero utility with a big damage boost, and if it still works like it did when it was weak, it's going to suck even more. But everybody's getting a huge overhaul in how much damage their skills can do! You know what this changes?
Nothing. Give everybody as many intra-skill skill bonuses as they want - it won't change the fact that some skill trees (bow/crossbow and passive/magic!) are just better than others. Hell, they could give these little bonuses to every skill tree in the game except these two and it still won't change a thing because bowazons are still going to smack around 20 monsters at once with huge-damage bows and huge-damage skills. While leeching. Yeah, I know I'm slanted unfairly towards bowazon dominance, but they might as well have called the bow/crossbow tree the "Smack Down the Punk*ss B*tch tree" because on the whole, it hasn't changed since v1.0 and it's still the best physical damage tree out there. Let's take Multiple Shot as an example: some of us might remember when MS was the primary bowazon killing skill, so Blizzard lowered the damage, and what did it change? Nothing. But it had a 25% damage penalty! So what? The damage penalty doesn't mean jack: it started as a skill with no listed enhanced damage bonuses, was nerfed to a skill with a negative damage bonus that screamed "I suck, don't use me!" and it's still popular because of the way the skill works and has always worked. Firing 10 arrows each with a 25% damage penalty, all of them pierce through an enemy once: idiot math says they were at 75% efficiency, but struck twice (they made up for the penalty at the second hit and then some), regaining enough mana to disregard the cost that'll come from firing yet another volley. The skill hasn't changed at all because hey, firing another volley into those monsters was what you were planning to do anyway, right?
Strange that a level 6 skill so easily eclipsed a level 24 skill (Strafe) when Blizzard decided that bowazons were apparently at some risk firing off 62 sequential arrows into an approaching group of enemies. Nice to know they cared enough to scratch out that "risk versus benefit" question out of bowazon heads. Still, as Corwin said, watching a bowazon rapidly fire out 10 arrows in perfect time has some elegance, much like watching the old films of Audrey Hepburn in the little black dress. However, Audrey's dead and buried, and thanks to Blizzard's meddling, so is Strafe.
Of course, this means that once again, every class will have the skill(s) to use, and if my predictions are right, those skills will be the same skills that have always been used, except for the druid, who's finally going to gain a skill tree instead of that dead weight called the elemental skill tree. Perhaps. I have my doubts. Again, everyone's looking at the changes and new stuff without really considering how drastic the shifts in game balance might become - haven't we been through this once before?
Has anyone noticed the sharp rise in damage from these skills, by the way? It's like Final Fantasy: the only way to make a monster really tough is to jack its hit points into the thousands, but without a corresponding amount of damage to back that threat, all you're ending up with are punching bags who really can't hurt you. However, what this means is that if a monster does the sort of damage that makes it a threat in melee, what class is going to be maintain popularity, what in-game principles are going to remain unchanged and unchallenged, and has Blizzard explained to us what formulas - blocking %, physical resistance, DR, leech, AR/DR differences - are going to receive a complete overhaul? (I don't think anyone has actually raised these questions, really, but I feel that they're going to have a profound impact on the game. Just imagine, after two years and ten revisions, defense rating might actually mean something!) :lol:
Aw, AK's whining about bowazons again. Well, yeah (This is my rant, after all.) and no. Let's take another example. Paladins. All of them. I'm going to apologize to the people who play nothing but paladins before I say paladins suck: every other class can do everything better than they can except for one thing, and by the time a paladin gains Fanaticism, that one thing no longer matters because it doesn't benefit anybody but the paladin. (By the way, I'm not sorry that I said paladins suck, I'm sorry you play nothing but paladins.) The game designers meant them to be a jack-of-all-trades, but what they ended up being is a walking combat shrine, so in a sense, they're a jack-of-something. Paladins must have an aura: a paladin without an aura, usually an offensive one because defensive auras mean nothing in an offensively-natured game, is a dead paladin. Think about this for a second: even though the game wants the paladin to be a necessity on a coherent team, no other class is more dependent on auras than the paladin himself. This is why Fanaticism gives increased attack speed to everybody in its puny range, but gives the paladin a huge bonus to damage and attack rating: because he's the only one that needs them - everybody else can kill just fine on their own. "But they can hit hard," you retort. With what? Charge (back up, attack, back up, attack, back up, attack...)? Vengeance (whomp, whomp, whomp, whomp, drink rejuv, whomp, whomp, whomp, drink rejuv)? Smite (hit, stun, take damage from all other sides, hit stun, take damage from all other sides)? These are the only two hard-hitting skills that come to mind because any class that wants to melee against the tens of monsters you will face down in locations like most of Act 2 and everything thereafter desires - no, needs - a fast, hard-hitting attack that will consistently waste your average monster in three or four hits so you don't get wasted in three to four hits. (Frenzytaur with a fanaticism aura, anybody? Who can take that down safely at melee range?) Paladins don't get this: Charge isn't fast enough and Vengeance costs far too much mana for the comparatively weak damage and piss-poor hitting chances it offers. Contrast Vengeance against Berserk: which one is going to lay the smackdown on that thousand hit point physical immune monster tearing your face off faster so you can move onto the next monster? Which one costs less? Bing, barbarian gains a point, paladin loses a point. It doesn't matter that berserk is a level 30 skill and vengeance isn't: a level 5 berserk is far more efficient than a level 20 vengeance. Oh, and the auras are up, but so what? Unless it's Fanaticism (which'll get the paladin killed anyways because the only skill he can realistically use with it is Zeal, which only affects physical damage monsters, and even if they aren't in 1.1, he'll still get whomped because he can't waste them in time), then every other class has already taken advantage of the paladin's aura, doing what they do better at the paladin's expense.
And if you haven't noticed, only two paladin attack skills hit more than one target and neither of them are very strong. And some of you might remember how geeked you were when you found out Fist of the Heavens was going to get a huge buff in lightning damage only to be disappointed by the four-second spell timer and the bowazons with their Goldstrike Arches laughing their cute little blonde butts off when they smacked more white on your screen than bukkake porn.
"But AK," you whine, "paladins get all this really cool equipment: Stormshield, Herald of Zakarum, Schaefer's, Baranar's, Lightsabre, Guardian Angel...if they can use all of this equipment so well, how can they suck?" Because paladins need that equipment to survive, as opposed to the bowazon who picks up an Eaglehorn and thinks "Hey, Eaglehorn, cool...but it's not as fast and effective as my Goldstrike Arch or this cruel ward bow I bought from Larzuk's." Now compare Schaefer's against the Hand of Blessed Light or a cruel seraphim rod: they all have short range, they all have piss-poor damage (since Schaefer's depends mostly on its static field), and if that rod has any skill bonuses, God help you on the repairs. OK, what's my point? Remember when Blizzard said that if a party member wants to share in the loot, then every team member must be within a certain distance of the kill? Paladin players remember how much ground high-level auras can cover: if a barbarian makes a kill under a paladin's aura, but out of a paladin's "experience zone," the paladin doesn't benefit. Unless he deliberately keeps his auras small (screwing over himself and the team), he'll have to play catch up with the rest of the party's incredible killing speed.
Let's move onto druids. "Hi, I'm a big fuzzy paladin wanna-be (*LOL*) who was saddled down with a completely useless elemental skills tree that's so incredibly piss-poor that a level 42 sorceress can smoke a level 75 elemental druid (oak sage and all) like a pack of Turkish Reds." Anybody who knows my druid rants knows what's coming, so I'll skip it. "But elemental skills are getting a huge buff, and they're gonna have a physical damage component, and elemental skills are finally going to be able to do some real damage." Two questions: how are you so incredibly sure that sorceress skills aren't being buffed at the same time (once again, pounding elemental skills into the dirt) and how have the skills themselves changed? For example, have the spell timers changed or will we have to wait another six seconds before we can cast a second Hurricane, thus wasting even more time? Do the spells themselves work and progress the same as they used to? For example, will Firestorm gain range and extra hits with every level, will the boulder stop knocking monsters out of its incredible fire damage, and exactly how can you fix Fissure without making it exactly like Volcano? And shapeshifting skills: "Hi, I'm a druid with huge physical damage, a ton of life leech, insane attack speed and movement modifiers, the ability to stun monsters around me and give my companions tons of life, and an incredibly high Attack Rating."
Can I answer that challenge? It's a one word challenge.
Barbarian.
If druids are so incredibly and versatile, then explain barbarians. They might not get the huge damage bonuses, weak elemental skills, or crappy minions a druid may get, but then again, they don't need them. They offer the party all that (except for the minions...they kill so fast that they don't need them), and more. If a werebear and a barbarian went head-to-head, it'd go something like this:
Druid: Cast Oak Sage, shapeshift, amble forward...SPLAT!
Barbarian: Whirlwind. "What the hell was that? Some little scrawny dude with ugly armor just started growing hair and...hey sorry, 'bout that, buddy, I'm sure I should've done some yelling first, but that massive head wound should clear up any time soon. Anyway, I've gotta fight in a real duel against a bowazon. Bye bye!"
"But a bear can tank!" Yeah, that's on your summons tree, remember? And didn't that tank just get spalttered by a better superior tank? Again, can Blizzard get around the obvious druid weaknesses without forcing him to spread himself thin just to cope and doing a worse job than a barbarian or are they offering us another paladin job - not quite as good as a barb, not quite as good as a sorc?
"But a wolf has that insane damage bonus on fury!" OK, they have a big damage bonus, up to 400% as a matter of fact with a huge amount of life leech, speed, and AR to go with it. Fine. Compare this to a bowazon who doesn't. Anyone remember Legolas and Gimili trading body counts?
Druid: (with ~2000-4000 damage) One!
Bowazon: ( with ~500-3000 damage) Ten!
Druid: Two!
Bowazon: Thirty!
Druid: Oh no, a physical/fire immune! I'll just shapeshift back to my wussy pink human mode and cast my level 35 Hurricane: this should take five castings (30 seconds), so wait up!
Bowazon: *Slams them all with a level 5 Freezing Arrow* Hey druid, why don't you go back to Anya's, get me a coffee with some extra half-and-half.
Druid: What?!
Bowazon: And a twist of lemon.
Druid: I don't have to take this! I'm contributing to the party!
Bowazon: Sweet-and-low. (Sixty!)
(kudos to Paul Smecker)
Oh, and Spirit of the Barbs. Nothing says stupid quite like a level 30 skill that less effective than its level 12 counterparts.
And are we gonna change the way fire claws works? How about rabies? How about Tornado, a skill that had potential? These are almost simple - just add a ton more damage - but there's more that can be done to them. They don't mention things like improvements to the druid's casting speed, if Tornado can be controlled or not (or what element it'll correspond to), if Shockwave's damage will be raised (because I have a feeling that its duration'll be lowered with difficulty), or how Spirit of the Barbs is going to change. Don't get me wrong, I love druids, much in the same way I love the neighbor's smelly one-eyed, three-legged twenty-pound cat who sometimes forgets it's not supposed to piss on my front porch.
The biggest changes to the game are the ones that aren't seen on the screen, like the new IAS, FHR, FRW, and FC formulae we all had to figure out when LOD hit the market, the MF values that suddenly changed, or the speed formula for WW (bye-bye lances!), that kind of thing. One of the things we don't see on-screen, and often one of the things that turn out to be a nasty surprise because Blizzard often says "such-and-such skill was rebalanced" is finding out how they've been rebalanced, and not just in terms of damage.
And AK's brain has run out of gas and is now entering sleep mode. Will add more as I find more coffee to survive yet another lovely day. Ignore the wild-eyed crazy look, I haven't been playing D2 lately.