I freaking hate items with crossclass effects.

[gekko]

Some skills seem ok, however I have a problem when Blizzard decides to give one class's BEST skill to anyone who wants it.

I'd much prefer no cross-class skills, period. Who's to decide what skills are "main" or "best" skills and which are just variant material? Personally, I consider sanctuary to be one of the most absurdly powerful and dominating skills in the game -- certainly it's only useful against the undead, but it offers practicall immunity versus one third of the games enemies when used properly (even at slvl 1, let alone 10+). But that's me -- many others feel it's a worthless skill. Are they wrong for disagreeing with me? Of course :). But they're still entitled to those opinions.

Right now, a necromancer who specializes in curses is an amazingly powerful addition to any group. A barbarian who specializes in warcries is an amazingly powerful addition to any group. Now, however, any character can simply don the right equipment and take over these positions. The fact that this equipment is going to be difficult to obtain on the ladder realms simply can't be counted on to balance them. Balance by rarity doesn't work. Period. Not without a very aggresive anti-dupe and anti-hack stance.

Blizzard should be designing their unique items and rune-words as if almost every battle.net player could, in theory, acquire them. The best items in the game should be better than the average ones, of course, but they shouldn't be this far ahead of the "average" stuff. I like the way a good number of the normal uniques were designed -- offering different or unique mods that fit with certain builds, or offered certain advantages not available on yellow or blue items. Items such as frostburns, nightsmoke or iceblink, which gave somewhat unique properties without badly overpowering the items.

On that note, I also think *every* skill in the game should be on diminishing returns past slvl 20, and items should be designed so you must trade off certain things (life, mana, resists, hit recovery, run/walk, ANYTHING) to pick up other strenghts. And I also think a sorceress should need to have a large mana pool to utilize maxed out high level skills (can the timers and boost the mana cost, baby!). But that's just me, and I don't want to start a "this is how they should fix the game" thread.

gekko