07-05-2003, 09:31 PM
This isn't directed at anyone specifically, I just posted it elsewhere and wanted as much feedback as possible.
I wonder if anyone who says "stop whining" about the new difficulty has tried starting over, or playing in hell without the benefits of uber pre-existing gear. When this patch rolls around, the only way I intend to play is ladder. I don't want to play with the thousands of people who have pindleboted, duped, hacked, farmed, or what have you. I know there are plenty of legit players, but I want a fresh start on even footing (I gave up xpac long ago to go back to classic hardcore.)
I want a more difficult game, I want more technique and a challange, but Blizzard is 'fixing' problems in an idiotic fashion (and creating a slew of new problems, I might add).
I'll break down the testing I just did, and this will be looong:
Lets assume we're on the ladder, and I won't have the benefits of all the newfangled godly gear. I have, for the sake of not getting raped in 2 seconds flat, converted some of my better classic gear, which I would guess will be on par or likely better than what you can get in public games going up the ladder.
Level 82 necro (saved from hardcore classic on bnet)
Amulet: +2 necro, high prismatic, 40 life, str
Rings: 2 sojs (good luck finding those)
Helm: 70 life, 10 energy, dual ~30% res grim helm (remember this is from classic)
Shield: Sigons or Eyeless or Prismatic max block pdiamoned grim shield
Weapon: Umes
Belt: 14/3 str/dex, 50 life, dual ~35% res battle belt
Boots: 17/8 str/dex, 30% r/w, 40% fire res
Gloves: Frostburns
Armor: 98 Life, dual 30% res, mdr 2
Original skill setup:
Max IM
roughly 10-11 Amp Damage
Max CE
roughly 16 bone spirit
roughly 16 bone shield
2-3 in golem mastery and summon resist
1 in the golems and skeletons and revives
1 in bone wall
2-3 in lower res
assume 1 for the rest of the prequisite skills
Add +4/5 to all after items.
Admitedly, I didn't think this build would work without some modifications, and boy, was I right. I grabbed a defensive merc from a2 and suited him with some big life armor and like a 300 damage weapon. I tested 4 and 8 player, the results were pretty much the same.
A4 Hell, ROF
Urdars and Venom Lords (actually the blue ones with a different name)
- cast fire golem
- cast im
- fire bone spirits
- run like hell because despite recasts and 100 bone spirits, could not damage any enemy significantly
Overall: golem was completely ineffective and could not touch any monster, IM at level 25 was irrelevent because monsters regenerate faster than it can damage, Bone spirit moved a tick of hp, say | much, but I emptied my belt of full rejuvs and the enemy was not even near 1/2 dead, in 8 player mode, their HP hardly moved. Various curses like Lower Res, and Amp had no impact.
Deciding I might need some minions, head to A1 Tamoe Highland.
- Essentially the same story, except unloading 500 bonespirits or so managed to kill one monster. Amp and CE, and voila, a few bodies. I make a few into revives and a few skeleton mages, head back to A4, this time trying city of the damned.
- Skeletons crushed within 20 seconds
- Golem needing continuous recasts as per usual
- Revives dead within 30 seconds
- can't touch enemies, running out of rejuvs
So this is harder than I guessed it would be, ridiculously so. I revert to 1.09 and fire up jamellas. I give myself an extra 200 skill points because I have a suspicion that a complete reorganization of mine won't even be close to enough.
New point distrubution:
Max CE
Max IM
Max Bone Spirit
Max Fire Golem
Max Golem Mastery
Max Summon Resist
Max the other golem that gives Fire Golem health bonuses
Max Poison Dagger
Max Poison Explosion
Max Poison Nova
- Add some attract thinking it will help, notice it lasts for all 5 seconds at lower levels useless... no choice but to max it... 20 second duration.
- leftover points go to skeleton mastery and a few in skeleton mage
The rest of my skills I leave aproximately the same, for (lol) realism's sake.
Now lets try that again:
A4 Hell, ROF 8 player.
- golem has 7000+ life... neat... costs 300 mana to cast... not neat.
- cast im, again, no effect
- start firing off poison nova like no tomorrow, it keeps their healing down, and slowly eroding health, but 2 second duration amounts to jack crap (this is 2000 damage over 2 seconds with max to all the synergies remember). Monsters are not taking much damage and I am bottoming out on mana pots.
- decide to try poison dagger seeing its impressive numbers, manage to stab an enemy or 2, and though they stay green for a while, when it passes, they regenerate the HP
- break out attract, dump it on the enemies hoping they will hurt eachother... negligable, though the relief in pressure is nice. But regeneration trumps all their damage (adding poison nova and dagger doesn't help)
- Lower resist with poison dagger and alot of bone spirits, still can't get an enemy past 1/2 life
- no corpses
- no ce, no skeletons, no revives, no dead bodies except mine if I didn't run back to town.
I went to A1 to try and get a few revives... the poison skills did better there, but I tried A3/A4/A5 with a few skels and revives, and they got reamed, and I was back to the procedure above.
On that note, tried A5. Skeleton archers in the foothills are poison immune. I can't even MOVE their HP.
Other things I tried
- iron golem at medium level, around 10... he doesn't live very long and recasting him is a pain in the ass.
- blood golem is a complete waste of time, does no damage
Now would all you people saying "we'll find ways around" or "you need the good gear!" explain how I am supposed to get that elite gear (which I might add, doesn't even help a necro that much besides +skill) if I can't kill single monsters with mediocre but semi-realistic gear and beyond that, TRIPLE the skill points I will have access to? Sure this game needs a difficulty increase, and encouraging cooperation is fine, but don't you find it a LITTLE stupid that a level 25 fire golem with max synergies deals a whopping 350 fire damage and an impressive 42 (FOURTY TWO) holy fire damage? Am I missing something? Shouldn't max poison nova with max synergy be able to damage enemies without needing 30 recasts? Should Bone Spirit ONLY make a difference with max to all its synergies? Shouldn't there be more than 1 way to kill monsters besides dumping poison and bone spirits until there is 1 corpse to CE? Shouldn't I be able to play on the ladder without needing a party of 3 to kill ONE monster for me so I can even get exp in the first place? At no point in time should it be nigh impossible for a single person to play the game, 8 player mode or no 8 player mode. It simply isn't fun to rely 100% on other people, or to spend 15 minutes fighting 5 monsters near a waypoint.
I like playing with people, I have friends who play, but that doesn't mean I should be forced to play with them at all times. If I wish to be remotely competitive on the ladder without an entourage, I should have the freedom to do so. I've tried similar scenarios with other player classes, and you know what? The results aren't far off. I've played hardcore diablo 2 exclusively since its release, so I don't balk at the possibility of danger or death, but come on, this is just stupid and boring.
It comes down to Blizzard being crass and careless. How in the world do complete oversights like this creep and REMAIN in a patch 2 years in the making? Yes, this is a beta patch. But you expect me to believe a company like blizzard can't put 20 minutes into testing this (which is what it took me) before releasing it for public consumption?
Lastly, it occurs to me that this game would at least be PLAYABLE if Blizzard did away with monster regeneration. What, is 4x the hp not enough? It was an annoyance before, but it is the heart of the problem now.
I wonder if anyone who says "stop whining" about the new difficulty has tried starting over, or playing in hell without the benefits of uber pre-existing gear. When this patch rolls around, the only way I intend to play is ladder. I don't want to play with the thousands of people who have pindleboted, duped, hacked, farmed, or what have you. I know there are plenty of legit players, but I want a fresh start on even footing (I gave up xpac long ago to go back to classic hardcore.)
I want a more difficult game, I want more technique and a challange, but Blizzard is 'fixing' problems in an idiotic fashion (and creating a slew of new problems, I might add).
I'll break down the testing I just did, and this will be looong:
Lets assume we're on the ladder, and I won't have the benefits of all the newfangled godly gear. I have, for the sake of not getting raped in 2 seconds flat, converted some of my better classic gear, which I would guess will be on par or likely better than what you can get in public games going up the ladder.
Level 82 necro (saved from hardcore classic on bnet)
Amulet: +2 necro, high prismatic, 40 life, str
Rings: 2 sojs (good luck finding those)
Helm: 70 life, 10 energy, dual ~30% res grim helm (remember this is from classic)
Shield: Sigons or Eyeless or Prismatic max block pdiamoned grim shield
Weapon: Umes
Belt: 14/3 str/dex, 50 life, dual ~35% res battle belt
Boots: 17/8 str/dex, 30% r/w, 40% fire res
Gloves: Frostburns
Armor: 98 Life, dual 30% res, mdr 2
Original skill setup:
Max IM
roughly 10-11 Amp Damage
Max CE
roughly 16 bone spirit
roughly 16 bone shield
2-3 in golem mastery and summon resist
1 in the golems and skeletons and revives
1 in bone wall
2-3 in lower res
assume 1 for the rest of the prequisite skills
Add +4/5 to all after items.
Admitedly, I didn't think this build would work without some modifications, and boy, was I right. I grabbed a defensive merc from a2 and suited him with some big life armor and like a 300 damage weapon. I tested 4 and 8 player, the results were pretty much the same.
A4 Hell, ROF
Urdars and Venom Lords (actually the blue ones with a different name)
- cast fire golem
- cast im
- fire bone spirits
- run like hell because despite recasts and 100 bone spirits, could not damage any enemy significantly
Overall: golem was completely ineffective and could not touch any monster, IM at level 25 was irrelevent because monsters regenerate faster than it can damage, Bone spirit moved a tick of hp, say | much, but I emptied my belt of full rejuvs and the enemy was not even near 1/2 dead, in 8 player mode, their HP hardly moved. Various curses like Lower Res, and Amp had no impact.
Deciding I might need some minions, head to A1 Tamoe Highland.
- Essentially the same story, except unloading 500 bonespirits or so managed to kill one monster. Amp and CE, and voila, a few bodies. I make a few into revives and a few skeleton mages, head back to A4, this time trying city of the damned.
- Skeletons crushed within 20 seconds
- Golem needing continuous recasts as per usual
- Revives dead within 30 seconds
- can't touch enemies, running out of rejuvs
So this is harder than I guessed it would be, ridiculously so. I revert to 1.09 and fire up jamellas. I give myself an extra 200 skill points because I have a suspicion that a complete reorganization of mine won't even be close to enough.
New point distrubution:
Max CE
Max IM
Max Bone Spirit
Max Fire Golem
Max Golem Mastery
Max Summon Resist
Max the other golem that gives Fire Golem health bonuses
Max Poison Dagger
Max Poison Explosion
Max Poison Nova
- Add some attract thinking it will help, notice it lasts for all 5 seconds at lower levels useless... no choice but to max it... 20 second duration.
- leftover points go to skeleton mastery and a few in skeleton mage
The rest of my skills I leave aproximately the same, for (lol) realism's sake.
Now lets try that again:
A4 Hell, ROF 8 player.
- golem has 7000+ life... neat... costs 300 mana to cast... not neat.
- cast im, again, no effect
- start firing off poison nova like no tomorrow, it keeps their healing down, and slowly eroding health, but 2 second duration amounts to jack crap (this is 2000 damage over 2 seconds with max to all the synergies remember). Monsters are not taking much damage and I am bottoming out on mana pots.
- decide to try poison dagger seeing its impressive numbers, manage to stab an enemy or 2, and though they stay green for a while, when it passes, they regenerate the HP
- break out attract, dump it on the enemies hoping they will hurt eachother... negligable, though the relief in pressure is nice. But regeneration trumps all their damage (adding poison nova and dagger doesn't help)
- Lower resist with poison dagger and alot of bone spirits, still can't get an enemy past 1/2 life
- no corpses
- no ce, no skeletons, no revives, no dead bodies except mine if I didn't run back to town.
I went to A1 to try and get a few revives... the poison skills did better there, but I tried A3/A4/A5 with a few skels and revives, and they got reamed, and I was back to the procedure above.
On that note, tried A5. Skeleton archers in the foothills are poison immune. I can't even MOVE their HP.
Other things I tried
- iron golem at medium level, around 10... he doesn't live very long and recasting him is a pain in the ass.
- blood golem is a complete waste of time, does no damage
Now would all you people saying "we'll find ways around" or "you need the good gear!" explain how I am supposed to get that elite gear (which I might add, doesn't even help a necro that much besides +skill) if I can't kill single monsters with mediocre but semi-realistic gear and beyond that, TRIPLE the skill points I will have access to? Sure this game needs a difficulty increase, and encouraging cooperation is fine, but don't you find it a LITTLE stupid that a level 25 fire golem with max synergies deals a whopping 350 fire damage and an impressive 42 (FOURTY TWO) holy fire damage? Am I missing something? Shouldn't max poison nova with max synergy be able to damage enemies without needing 30 recasts? Should Bone Spirit ONLY make a difference with max to all its synergies? Shouldn't there be more than 1 way to kill monsters besides dumping poison and bone spirits until there is 1 corpse to CE? Shouldn't I be able to play on the ladder without needing a party of 3 to kill ONE monster for me so I can even get exp in the first place? At no point in time should it be nigh impossible for a single person to play the game, 8 player mode or no 8 player mode. It simply isn't fun to rely 100% on other people, or to spend 15 minutes fighting 5 monsters near a waypoint.
I like playing with people, I have friends who play, but that doesn't mean I should be forced to play with them at all times. If I wish to be remotely competitive on the ladder without an entourage, I should have the freedom to do so. I've tried similar scenarios with other player classes, and you know what? The results aren't far off. I've played hardcore diablo 2 exclusively since its release, so I don't balk at the possibility of danger or death, but come on, this is just stupid and boring.
It comes down to Blizzard being crass and careless. How in the world do complete oversights like this creep and REMAIN in a patch 2 years in the making? Yes, this is a beta patch. But you expect me to believe a company like blizzard can't put 20 minutes into testing this (which is what it took me) before releasing it for public consumption?
Lastly, it occurs to me that this game would at least be PLAYABLE if Blizzard did away with monster regeneration. What, is 4x the hp not enough? It was an annoyance before, but it is the heart of the problem now.