Is 1.10 Hell playable?

[Crystalion]

Yes, you are now required to have a Cannot Be Frozen item in Hell. [...] Plus, now you're required to have faster run. [...] The regen rate as it stands makes a Prevent Monster Heal just about mandatory for a physical attack based character. That's just ridiculous.

-[b]Pet and Merc rebalancing [...]

Well, given the number of bugs, it seems a bit early for me to proffer an opinion on v1.10beta as the release could be quite different. Still, thus far, I mostly agree with Ignatz side of the fence, as opposed to the "v1.10 sucks/is boring/is too hard" so I will make a few comments...

I don't think requiring one of:
1) fast kill vs. one target
2) poison of ongoing duration vs. one target
3) prevent monster heal vs. one target

is terribly restrictive, compared with saying +runspeed and can't-be-frozen are mandatory. Yes, these are new "requirements", but only for Hell difficulty, where one can presume you've kicked butt enough in norm/nightmare enough to accumulate passable gear (and the cube recipes now make that fairly likely, even if you've had little luck with unique and set drops).

So I agree with your Pros (and some more besides, such as v1.10 having "room at the top" for new toys) while thinking only your Pet/Merc balancing is a serious v1.10 beta issue. But the release isn't out yet, and quite a few things are screwed up (at least 3 bugs with iron golem that I'm aware of, for example), so perhaps this will be fixed.

However, as I've seen mentioned in another thread, DR has been under utilized, so perhaps Hirelings are expected to have better survivability only if boosted by +DR aura, Shout or else Battle Orders, Oak Sage or else good crowd control (since not every play-strat uses the Hireling to tank, right?) In other words, if Hirelings as meat shields doesn't work in v1.10 Hell without some extra effort or cleverness, then imho: great. (I agree that necro skelies, therefore, seem messed up).

...

I would agree with some players complaints about the pace of the game changing except that, given you can enjoy a faster pace in nightmare, if fast pace is what you desire, I don't see any necessity that D2 must also provide players with the highest level drops in Hell at the same rate of kill as nightmare. So, imho, Necro CE is now, relatively speaking, too powerful in Hell, from a "fairness to classes" point of view.

An opposite point of view to mine, with which I have some sympathy (given how Single Players get the shaft because they don't trade), would be that, at some point, every player is entitled to an easy time of it and all the goodies. D2X is actually much much closer to this than some other popular games, like Everquest.

In other words, if someone complains that a particular build had been fun until (v1.10) hell, I say: "great, glad you had fun--perhaps you shouldn't play hell (with that build)".

I may be a bit odd (relative to the D2 playing population as a whole, though, perhaps, not to Lurkers) in that I've played a fair number of builds through nightmare, because I wanted to, without going on and playing them through (...v1.09) hell. I had a lot of fun. I didn't see any need to insist that I be limited by some consideration of whether the build would be "uber" in Hell. "Hell difficulty", in my view, exists purely to reward the small percentage of players that are really into gaming with a serious challenge and the possibility of fun uber goodies (and I mean "fun", not "necessary"). If it is not possible, sans uber items, to make some builds, or even some classes, "fun" in Hell, then that is unfortunate but not, by itself, a reason to condemn v1.10 (imho, ymmv, etc.)

[channel1]

Ignatz: ...a lvl 85 Barb merc in Hell with the best gear there IS in 1.10 and he dies very, very frequently. I can't even keep him alive amid a handful of monsters...

I have a couple of suggestions.

First, stick a Call to Arms in your second weapon slot. It will work on any 4-socket weapon, including staves. Then, cast Battle Orders and Battle Command as needed. The bump to life for your Merc will be worth it.

Second, try Breath of the Dying as the Merc weapon. 50% Poison Nova on kill gives a Melee Merc a nice AoE attack, and the Poison helps with preventing monster's life regeneration. Plus, the +30 to all attributes means a Barbarian merc will get a serious bump to Life and DR.

Delirium is great to stick on the Merc for crowd control, as long as he can get in a few hits to trigger Confuse.

...I'm going to go crazy when 1.10 goes Live on the Realms, I won't know what to do with "typical" legit Realm equipment. :)

-rcv-

[Bun-Bun]

Plus, the +30 to all attributes means a Barbarian merc will get a serious bump to Life and DR.

I seem to recall that mercs don't have vitality, so +vit items don't help them, only +life.

[channel1]

Holy Smoke, I just checked, you're right! Gee, that suxxors....

[Wrathraven]

I'd really like to hear from Paladins and Barbarians who've played hell a bit. Everything I've seen indicates that they're the ones who've taken the biggest hits in hell. After all, Sorcs got a damage boost, Necros have minions, and Amazons are still way over-powered, even moreso now with Valk. What did the Barb get? Longer warcries, okay, that's nice, and slight synergies among combat skills, but overall not much difference in their killing ability (except that WW was kinda nerfed by the animation). Pallys got a better Zeal and some aura improvements, but what else? Monsters have more HPs and regen, hit harder and are harder to hit, the front-liners are the ones who have to deal with that. Just an example: All Act Bosses have Diablo-like blocking now. No effect on Sorcs, but damn ANNOYING for meleers (ask any Barb or Paladin how much they enjoyed fighting Hell Diablo :( ). Is this the pattern for the rest of the game?

[Ice]

I've largely been trying out 1.10 beta hell with three characters... a mageazon, a defiant zealot and a blade fury assassin.

Minions and Mercenaries

All three have little problems keeping their mercenaries and minions alive in most cases. The mageazon has a prayer merc and valkyrie, and protects them with freezing arrow... the prayer probably helped as well. The zealot has a might merc and a clay golem (from stone runeword), protected by a lvl 24 prayer, defiance aura and life tap. So far, many many hours in hell and no deaths from the merc and even the clay golem can survive in mobs not too massive in size. The assassin uses a town guard and shadow master... both largely surviving because of holy freeze from merc or from a Doom runeword on the merc.

Survivability

For the zealot, I focused mainly on a high defence (30k+) and crushing blow with static field for damage. He has no problems in hell except for the occasional physical immune boss... everything else dies off fast whether at /players 1 or /players 8. Actual physical damage is very low since I was mainly using a cleansing or meditation aura (supported with lvl 24 prayer) but could easily have been increased significantly if those points were converted to say a fanaticism aura. Diablo was a non-issue... crushing blow smite is fun.

[Olon97]

I've run through act5 hell with a few trial characters. Two attempts at a frenzy barb did alright but inevitably landed in serious trouble and died because I lack the patience to play 1.10 CD1 style (i.e. string 'em out against walls/obstacles and kill one by one) all of the time.

I had a reasonably time running through with a 1-point in vengance paladin, but with gear that I'm sure I will never see during my play on the realms (don't have as much time to play as I used to).

I may as well have been playing in a party since I was using three paladin auras (defiance from runeword shield, holy freeze type merc, and mid-pumped conviction), two sorceress skills (static from merc's runeword weapon, teleport from runeword armor), two barbarian warcries (battle command and battle orders from runeword switch weapon), a necro curse (lifetap from runeword shield), a necro combat skill (lvl 20 poison nova from runeword weapon), and a druid combat skill (tornado from unique ring - ok that didn't make much of a difference).

The combination of skills from all the classes except assasin and amazon in a single character was pretty potent. Slvl 1 Vengance took down everything reasonably fast (though I used /players 5 to reduce boredom); the mana pool from items and charms lasted long enough to finish off several stone skin minibosses without needing a potion or mana leach (had some damage to mana modifiers that helped). Hell resists of 85 fire, 80 cold, 80 lightning, 75 poison and some -MDR, combined with 20k defence (maxed holy shield + defiance from runeword), 75% block chance (after HS), and the mercs Holy Freeze aura made tanking large groups of enemies feasable (even the dreaded groups of ranged attackers). As soon as lifetap kicks in, the paladin and the act2 merc were worry free.

On that single run I found Stormshield from Nilhatlak and Tal's armor from Baal. Items that are nearly impossible for me to find in 1.09 with my playtime.

I'm sure untwinked ladder play in hell will be a huge headache for me. I guarantee I'll be looking for good cooperative parties.

[Flymo]

I'd really like to hear from Paladins and Barbarians who've played hell a bit.

The first thing I did when the 1.10 beta came out was test a level 99 barbarian for each of the major attack skills, with all relevant synergies maxed, elite unique kit, enough charms to max all resists, but no merc. Then I tried a Baal run with each of them. The only one that killed Baal without dying at least once was the Concentrate barb. I can see that this is going to be a popular build because quite apart from its robustness one of the synergies is Battle Orders which most barbarians are going to maximise anyway.

But when I started playing 1.10 for real I made a Frenzy barb because it is less boring. He is currently in Hell Act 3. The further he gets the harder it becomes. Getting Khalim's bit from the Flayer Dungeon is a major expedition taking hours and usually ending in death in circumstances making corpse retrieval impossible. Physically immune bosses usually have to be parked. However it is certainly doable and I'm still having fun. Normal Hephasto did drop an Um rune which allowed me to make Crescent Moon, and if that hadn't happened things would have been much more difficult.

The barbarian skill that really got nerfed was Whirlwind, because it got no synergies to compensate for the loss of 100% critical hit and because of the little pauses between whirls during which you die. That leaves barbarians with no way of killing monsters except one at a time, which with the changes to act end drops may mean the end of the MF barb. But as a tank I think barbarians are still viable.

[Ignatz]

At least, in my opinion. I always felt that without all the hacked swords and eth craziness, Whirlwind in 1.09 was relatively balanced and a good option for many, but certainly not all viable Barb builds.

Also, more importantly, it's the only true AoE attack the Barb has (unless you count War Cry, which I don't). Given that, characters without a strong method of taking a crowd down often get sidelined by the majority of players.

Removing the 100% crit strike bug seems to me like all the nerfing WW needs. Shame on Blizzard for crippling the most useful, viable AoE the barb has. Even in 1.09 I could count at least a dozen builds of various characters that could kill at twice the speed of a WW barb.

Add that to the fact that Barbs are, by design, always in danger of becoming a tougher merc for some glass cannon partner, and you're worse, even, than a curse bitch. <_<

[Arutha]

For that matter, I don't think any class should have AoE damage skills.

Why ?
Because they're impossible to balance. Give them a decent damage potential, and they'll obviously outperform any other skill, nerf their damage and they'll become useless.

AoE in that game should be restricted to effects (chill, makes monsters flee, curse, etc...) and not include damage.

As for WW in particular, if you absolutely must include AoE damage in the barb's arsenal, it should be AoE and AoE only: that means no more than one hit per target (so that it becomes a very poor 1 vs 1 skill), and I'm very happy with the "stun" effect after each whirlwind. That's something I had advocated for a long time.
Now, the damage nerf wasn't necessary indeed.

[ImpressiveOne]

um.. I haven't counted but I think more than 1/2 of the skills in the game are AoE damage skills. Anybody want to bother counting?

D2 would be so boring if it didn't have AoE skills. You would have to take monsters on individually and that's definitely no fun.

[Arutha]

Melee chars don't have AoE damage skills (and no, a WW barb is NOT a melee char).

Paladin, weredruid, barb (except for WW), spearazon, PD necro, MA assassin (without PS), melee sorc... have you ever played one of those?

They're a lot more fun than a MS zon or an nova sorc.

YMMV

[Rataxes]

I think when he says AoE skills, he means skills that can affect/hit multiple targets at once. The opposite of single-target skills that is. Zeal, Double Swing, Frenzy, Fury, Jab and Fend all fall under this category.

And I'll have to agree that single-target melee skills can get sort of tedious sometimes when you're dealing with armies of Fallens or Flesh Spawners/Maggots. I have played a PD Necro, at least through lvls 1-31, and I can only say that by the time I had chased down my 54th fleeing Carver in the Dark Wood only to see him be revived instantly by some Shaman two screens away that I hadn't seen, I was sorely longing for some skill of mass destruction to just blow all those weaklings to smithereens at once.

[ImpressiveOne]

Melee chars don't have AoE damage skills (and no, a WW barb is NOT a melee char).

Paladin, weredruid, barb (except for WW), spearazon, PD necro, MA assassin (without PS), melee sorc... have you ever played one of those?

They're a lot more fun than a MS zon or an nova sorc.

YMMV

I've played a weredruid, concentration barb, and a frenzy barb. They all got tedious... read Rataxes's post before this. Basically the clicking got annoying.

[Arutha]

... YMMV.

Mass mayhem capability is what makes a char grow tedious real fast for me.

You enjoy killing monsters.
I enjoy fighting them.

:)