New Runewords on AT

[Guest]

Its great if they make a special single player setting - but they need to balance the game for B-net.

Thats was the original goal, the fact that they underestimated players, doesnt mean they should scrap the goal.

[Mavfin]

I disagree. If Hell is too easy with the uber items for you, take them off. If I'm screwed in SP without them, I'm just screwed. I spent the same money you did, but you want to screw me 'cause I'm not on bnet with you? I don't think so.

[Walkiry]

Hello Pete,

Whereas it might be true that for a couple of the runewords it'll be possible to cube the necessary runes, I really don't see myself collecting a couple of thousand lower-quality runes (not talking about the gazillion ELs for a Zod here, that's just silly :lol: ) and cubing for months to end.

It was, nevertheless, intended to be at least smile-worthy and not to be taken too seriously ^_^

Cheers.

[Kevin]

If the game hadn't been billed as Hell being party only from the start, I would have agreed with you. Even if you bought it based on reviews that said Hell was a joke (which it was). The game was marketed as a multiplayer game (free play on battle.net). Yeah, Blizzard screwed up, but they said from the start what they intended. You purchased knowing that stated goal. So, if you get screwed, I feel bad for you, but I still don't think it would be the wrong decision. Nothing personal.

I won't repeat the rest of what I said a few posts up. I will only restate that this opinion is based on the current state of the game, stated and implied design goals, and economic speculation based on extremely limited data.

I only posted this because of the new point that it raised, otherwise I wouldn't have bothered to clarify anything else.


(and yes it is my posting nature to try and be overly careful to insure that I am conveying what I mean so I repeat myself a lot and state the obvious as well).

[Mavfin]

I'll agree to disagree. I understand where you're coming from, and I don't necessarily agree with what you're basing it on, but I'll let it go at that. I figure I'll find a way to play hell, anyway. I've found that *most* of hell can be played anyway, you may just have to go back to D1 style, which is much slower. So, even if they balance it for you, Players 1 Hell is still just fine. I've found Players 1 Hell to be viable in the current beta patch with my old characters, and sometimes players 3. If I rebuild them from a fresh start, I imagine it should be fine to run players 5 with in Hell. I know I can do that in NM, so that I can be decently high level when I hit Hell, so the clvl/mlvl thing with melee doesn't shoot me down too badly. If I can do players 1 from there on, that's good enough for me.

I don't see it getting balanced severely enough I couldn't do the above, at least, so probably our little discussion is a moot point.

[CorwinBrute]

I know it screws a lot of people over, but I also think that percentage is much smaller than the multiplayer percentage. Vastly smaller actually.

I think your assumption is wrong here... ( note that I'm not arguing about your opinions, just disagreeing with the assumption that most people play Realms)

IIRC (from a survey done last year), more than 90% of the people buying Blizzard games never log on Battle.net.

Now, I agree that most people still interested in D2 and hence potential 1.10 "customers" (but not all people) are probably playing on the Realms.

[Kevin]

There is more to multiplayer than realms as well I was very careful to use multiplayer and not realms. But I see your point, though I would like to see the survey because I don't believe the number would be that high, especially for Diablo2. For the warcraft and starcraft series, I would believe it though. I know a lot of people that don't like multiplayer RTS games, or who only like to play multi vs the CPU with people they know (i.e. LAN which is still multi, just not B.net)

[whyBish]

"a survey"

I sureyed a few of my online friends and the numbers were the other way around ;)

Anyway, my pref would be for them to balance for BNet. Why? Because it's the only place you can't mod the balance in afterwards. At least if the single player 'gets screwed' the mod-makers can fix it (although admittedly with a time lag).

[kandrathe]

I described this in another thread, but I became worried about Hell survivability for some characters I've been building for over 2 years. So I meticulously reconstructed my lvl 90 Amazon in SP yesterday and ran around all the Acts in Hell difficulty, including killing the bosses. There were some surprises, but it felt like her, and played mostly the same. She is the most fragile thing, and all her gear now is devoted to speed and MF. She had -70 resists in hell, and about 500 life and very little defense. She never allows anyone close enough to physically hit her, so the biggest threats to her are ranged attackers. Elemental damage seems to hurt more now, so I feel I should take her resists up to at least -30, and positive #'s if I can swing it. It appears that the days of needing or wanting 600 MF are over anyway.

[Nicodemus Phaulkon]

Notice anything missing?

After finding an Um in 1.09, I started hunting for a normal item (specifically) in order to determine what the runeword's level was, instead of having it hidden by an elite's (or possibly exceptional's) level requirements.

So. 47. But no Static Field (the Lightning Bolt was minor anyway... so *toss*), nor affecting of enemy's Lightning Resistance. This is two levels lower than the Crescent Moon Highland Blade screenshot that's on dii.net's site, not to mention that the dii.net screenshot has the runeword displayed as how the Arreat Summit describes it.

What am I seeing here? Is this the reality of what Crescent Moon is supposed to be, or did I snag on a bug and missed out on actual expected affixes?

At level 47, and given the runes being as cheap as they are, it would make sense for this runeword to actually exist in *this* format. As indicated before, it would be a wonderful "middle ground" runeword between the King's Grace and the Silence/Fury. We have "Cruel" prefix damage, IAS, ITD... not too shabby. If this is true to form, it would make SO much more sense to me in the sense of game balance. The only items with Static Field upon striking would remain Schaefer's Hammer and Stormlash, which are level 79 and 82 respectively. Believe you me, having Static Field on a weapon at clvl 47 would be the game's undoing. Several here have expressed a "meh, whatever" regard to SF on a weapon. Let me assure you from a Zealot's PoV that it is an awesome weapon.

Can anyone provide collaboration with either "my" version or the "AS" version?

*tips helm*

[Striker]

Can anyone provide collaboration with either "my" version or the "AS" version?

I bought a plain 3 socketed bardiche from Charsi, tossed the runes in, and got the version posted on the AS.



Other than the Um, were the other runes from 1.09 as well, or were they found as you played? If I remember correctly, I believe someone over at the AB found something similar with regards to other runewords missing some affixes. But I don't think anyone could pin down exactly why this is happening.

Edit: Added pic. This is with a level 37 druid, by the way.

[Nicodemus Phaulkon]

Other than the Um, were the other runes from 1.09 as well, or were they found as you played? If I remember correctly, I believe someone over at the AB found something similar with regards to other runewords missing some affixes. But I don't think anyone could pin down exactly why this is happening.

Actually, they were all found in 1.09. Thus, they were all ported to 1.10 via the beta patch. I read the Crescent Moon thread over at the Amazon Basin, referring to a "Editor hiccup". However, this had no editor program involved; all the runes were dropped in-game at some point (albeit all in 1.09).

Reading further, I see that nobbie, over at the Basin, has modded up several of the runewords for a download to be available. I'll pass on accepting that invitation, but it raises the question of what the runewords require exactly.

If 1.10 runewords require 1.10 runes to fulfill them, that will certainly nullify several rune vaults I've built up over the past years.

[--Pete]

Hi,

If 1.10 runewords require 1.10 runes to fulfill them, . . .

That would be in line with Buzzard's attempt to (1) get rid of dups and (2) force people to play on the ladder. If most (or even many) of the new 1.10 items or recipes require all 1.10 ingredients, then the old characters and mules might as well be deleted if one wants to play realms.

Lack of time has kept my testing down, but I have started a bowazon and so far all I've noticed is that a few of the bosses took unreasonable time to kill. Not harder, just slower. OTOH, I'm still in normal act 1, so I'll hold off on any real judgment for now.

--Pete

[Nicodemus Phaulkon]

I think you're dead-on target with guesstimating the reasons, Pete. However, in the intervening hours I've made something of a discovery.

Several of my guildmates have rune and chippy vaults (we're currently battling the Cruel Addiction as a group, seems). After much cajoling and some actual volunteerism, I managed to combine their resources and my own resources to scrape up

3 Eld runes, 3 Sol runes (hard, we're crafters, too), 1 chipped sapphire, 2 Pul runes (THIS cost me an arm and a leg, everyone wants to upgrade their weapons), 3 chipped diamonds and an empty 3 socket Cryptic sword that someone wanted to save for a Fury runeword. Every last one of these items are from 1.09 drops.

However, after applying my Betty Crocker Cubery cookbook, I ended up with a Shael, Um and Tir... cubed in a 1.10 beta environment. Plopping them into the Cryptic... voila:



So while 1.09 runes may not function as 1.10 runes, it does seem that they may be CUBED into 1.10 runes. One has to wonder if cubing runes into the required runes for various other runewords that have been crashing computers would be required as well?

Interesting, no?

*tips helm*

[GenericKen]

Perhaps the runeword attributes themselves have level requireements, and do not appear until you are at a high enough level. In any case, they're in the mpq.


And to all of you who claim static field will be overpowered on a lvl 60 item, you might want to consider the possibility perhaps that Static Field has changed?

From difficultylevels:
StaticFieldMin
(normal) 0
(NM) 33
(Hell) 50

[Nicodemus Phaulkon]

Perhaps the runeword attributes themselves have level requireements, and do not appear until you are at a high enough level. In any case, they're in the mpq.

Unlikely. This was with my level 99 Paladin.

And to all of you who claim static field will be overpowered on a lvl 60 item, you might want to consider the possibility perhaps that Static Field has changed?

Not level 60. The Cryptic sword you see in my previous post itself is level req of 61. The runeword functions as a level 47.

Static field may indeed have changed, but the ability to deal damage to every monster, Champs, Bosses and Superuniques across-the-board within a screenwide diameter cannot be underappreciated... especially in P8 or 8 player game situations.

Case in point: Here's what a P8 Hell difficulty Shenk looked like after I spent 30 seconds dancing with his minions... and I haven't TOUCHED HIM YET...

[Kevin]

That looks like static field to me. It has been capped at 33% in NM and 50% in Hell since LoD came out. The playing around I have done with it makes it look like it is exactly the same as it was on 1.09.

[Striker]

Hmmm. Looking at the three pics I noticed that there are 3 different amounts of charges. Was this always the case in 1.09? I seem to remember some of the charged runewords were always fixed at a certain amount (Holy Thunder comes to mind).