In depth, *realstic playtest and rant

[phooker51]

Well, gee, you have 70+ points and the entirety of the necro's eq list to make those first few bodies.

Have you actually tried doing so?

[whyBish]

I would do it. :P

After you've played a paladin I'm not surprised.

I'm actually having fun in the beta, specifically because I have not yet played a paladin (and am yet to reach hell with a fresh char... I long for those uni days of 80+ gaming hours a week... damn job ;) )

Assassin is nice with her one-point-wonder blade fury. It's like inferno, but doesn't pierce, but can leech etc, and scales with weapon damage. Dual knockback claws are working really nicely so far!

[Ignatz]

The issue, holistically, as I see it is that the Amazon has an overflowing handful of skills that mete out damage by the ten-thousands a second, while the Necro has, at best, one, and it's not nearly as consistant or well-rounded. Multishot, Strafe, FA, Lightning Fury all dish out huge great chunks of damage. Each of those can, with a strong weapon, smear guts across the landscape in a big hurry. A BIG hurry. Mainly because they're designed to do that. Either they work that way or they don't and that's that.

The necro, on the other hand, has no ways of doing this whatsoever, save CE. CE assumes a dead corpse, is much less consistant, is overly battlefield dependant, and can't be brought to abusive damage levels with gear. Thus, it's always reigned in by it's relatively straightforward skill design.

The bottom line is that an Amazon will always have several very good choices when it comes to dishing out huge amounts of damage. Where the Necro, given correct balance, could do it with minions, bone skills, etc, he instead has CE as his only option. And whereas the Zon can run around spamming her Huge Damage skill of choice expending only arrows, the Necro can't run around spamming CE and get anywhere unless he has a fast-as-multishot way of consistantly getting down well-placed, chainable corpses.

The leech concern is a total non-issue. It's not in the least bit hampering. It doesn't hamper her damage, it doesn't cost resources, and it doesn't prevent her from killing at breakneck speed. Worse come to worst, she'll need double or quadruple the leech if she isn't bothering with energy (heaven forbid she put a point into energy). I'd hardly call that a limitor or a hinderance.

I don't see how there can be any two ways about it. The Amazon by design has all kinds of guns for toys, whereas the Necro has all these toys that still aren't a gun.

[Nicodemus Phaulkon]

If I am to understand correctly, there are actually fewer physical immuines in 1.10 than in 1.9, and life/mana leeching has improved with the removal of global physical resists.

Individual monster types now have individual settings for physical damage resistance and leechability. Take it up with a Hell Lord in Hell difficulty if you don't believe me. Having a werewolf with 113% life steal being unable to fill his red orb while in full Fury convinces one immediately that Life and Mana Steal are most DEFINITELY not "improved" in numerical considerations.

Balance... well that's another argument.

[WarBlade]

If I am to understand correctly, there are actually fewer physical immuines in 1.10 than in 1.9, and life/mana leeching has improved with the removal of global physical resists.

Actually net mana and life leeching in Hell is considerably smaller than it once was. I was surprised when I started spamming Freezing Arrow by how fast her Mana globe was drained.

Also, I have heard many people who feel the exact opposite way about the state of the 1.10 valk, as Valkyrie does not have its life scale to the number of players in the game anymore.

It doesn't? Not that it matters. A Valkyrie at level 23 could not be killed by a single minotaur in Hell, so it's not as if I cared what the maximum was. It certainly seemed to have a hell of a lot more staying power than the Fire Golems I've tried. <_<

Edit/Update: Checked the Valk. I was one level out. At level 24 she had 2552 life which finally budged down to a mere 95% or so of it's total while she was tanking an LEB in Act 5 Hell. Any supporting Synergies were one-pointers. She packs a bit of a punch now too, taking a Possessed Bone Warrior down in under a minute all on her lonesome. Not bad for something considered to be an offenseless mobile titanium whacking post. This was all on "players 1" BTW.

[TaiDaishar]

If I am to understand correctly, there are actually fewer physical immuines in 1.10 than in 1.9, and life/mana leeching has improved with the removal of global physical resists.

Not that I'm saying the amazon is balanced or anything... but the leech didn't improve, in hell and nm you leech less (I think 1/2 in nm and 1/4 in hell)

[Lane]

When does "difficult" become "Hard Work"?

I play D2 to relax for a few hours. Hell 1.10 is not relaxing.

Many poeple seem to see 1.10 Hell akin to wrestling with a stuck Jam jar lid for 10 minutes and then when you finally get the darn thing off you feel elated.

Personally I'd like to be able to just take the lid off and enjoy the Jam.&nbsp; :D

Amen!

There comes a point where no matter what the strategy it still amounts to the same result: Placing a rock on the mouse and going to get a drink. :P Seriously, I have done this with Izual and in some (keyword: some) situations it appears there's going to be more of the same in 1.10. This is not what I call strategy, it is what I call boring.

Balance is non-existant. It always has been non-existant. Let's move on because it always will be non-existant. There's really no point in discussing it, unfair as much of it is, because it's not likely to change. However, I do enjoy reading rants so, um, yeah. :)

Anyway! Valk has been improved a lot. I haven't tried her in 8 player Hell very much, but at least in single player she's near indestructible. The timer on her hasn't bothered me much because, well, I've never had to recast her.

Uhm... there was something else, oh yeah! Despite the massive amount of fire damage sorcies can dish out I'm surprised no one's mentioned that what seems like 80% of Hell is fire immune. I speak from the experience of having played a purely fire sorc through Hell in 1.09 and I can't imagine much has changed in 1.10, in fact, most of the Bloody Foothill monsters are fire immune that I've noticed.

[WarBlade]

I speak from the experience of having played a purely fire sorc through Hell in 1.09 and I can't imagine much has changed in 1.10, in fact, most of the Bloody Foothill monsters are fire immune that I've noticed.

Act 5 is an erratic beast. For Bloody Foothills the spear cats and skeleton archers IIRC are Fire Immune, but it's equally likely you'll see crows, hedgehogs and pre-suicide hog people which add up to a whole pile of Lightning and Cold Immunity. If at first you don't succeed, reset the game and try again. :D

[CorwinBrute]

Act 5 is an erratic beast. For Bloody Foothills the spear cats and skeleton archers IIRC are Fire Immune, but it's equally likely you'll see crows, hedgehogs and pre-suicide hog people which add up to a whole pile of Lightning and Cold Immunity. If at first you don't succeed, reset the game and try again. :D

Hear, hear ! I remember ladder-runners re-rolling the RoF back in CD2 days (to avoid maggots mostly). With the "new and improved" monster mix in Act 5 (as someone said, it amounts to "Aliens vs. Predator vs. Terminator vs. Creatures from the Black Lagoon vs. Woody Allen"), it will be the exact same thing.

My take for the favorite 1.10 ladder tactic : use a sorc, make her totally unbalanced (max one skill, mastery and as many synergies as possible), and have 50 team people roll new games in loop to get a good monster mix in an experience-rich area.

[TheDragoon]

It strikes me as ridiculous that this bug is over a year old, the mod community knows how to fix it, yet Blizz put of fixing it, and many other pretty straightforward bugs, for . . . their own reasons.

This is exactly what I've been thinking for the last year. :)

[IlleglWpns]

but the leech didn't improve, in hell and nm you leech less (I think 1/2 in nm and 1/4 in hell)

No, leech is now 1/3rd in hell. This would be an improvement with the removal of the global physical resists if they hadn't added a seperate drain field in the mpq to further cut down leech.

[Kevin]

Don't forget that a lot of monsters have more than 50% physical resist as well. Just because the global is gone doesn't mean that monsters can't and won't be physical resist. From what I have seen, things are now more physical resistant, it is just customized. Even without drain I still think life/mana steal would have been less effective.

I've been saying this since they announced the 50% global physical resist was removed and the resists were done 'by hand'. They took off the band aid and did the real surgery. I fully expected that removing the band-aid solution would make things harder in the end, and it looks like Blizzard proved me right and went a step further with the drain.

Now, keep in mind that life steal is back on ammies and mana steal is back on rings. This makes it easier to get even more with 1.10 items, so they still added a mechanism to help overcome some of it.

Also heal pots heal more, and seem to double more often as well, so you can get 800 HP out of a superheal now. Pots are cheap too and they drop all over the place, some people will just have to learn to drink them more. Those who are used to playing with just what they find are generally pretty good at drinking them already. :)

[TheDragoon]

Uh... I didn't say that. Please remember that some of us view threads in the mode so we can see where you reply to. Thus, click the "reply" button the post you're replying to. :)