DII vs. Titan Quest

[Fragbait]

Things that are overpowered in Diablo 1
Stone Curse
Teleport
Chain Lightning
Fireball
Mana Shield
Arguably, Awesome Plate (of the Suffix)

Things that are overpowered in Diablo 2
60% of the Rune Words. A good bit of the elite uniques. Holy Shield. Blessed Hammer. Teleport. Telekinesis (was fixed). Conviction. Lightning Fury. Charged Strike. War Cry. Dim Vision. Decripify. Smite.

I could go on for pages.

--me

:lol::rolleyes:

Hi,

I have to laugh.
Let me try to extend your list of "overpowered" things in DI and DII a bit:

DI
Suffix "of Haste"
Prefix "Archangels"
Suffix "of the Zodiac"
Suffix "of Heavens" (well, still)
Prefix "Emerald"
Prefix "Obsidian"
No resistance penalty in higher difficulties => even in hell, you basically only need two items for resistance and your set: 1 x Emerald, 1 x Obsidian; also no monster can reduce your resistance
No physical resistance on monsters
The spells you listed
The unconfined importance of AC for the survival of a char
All potions take instantaneous effect

I could obviously list some more.

DII
Rares (up to 6 mods)
Exceptional and Elite item classes
Runewords as such
The availibility of + skills on (nearly) all item classes
The skills you listed
Furthermore the skills Freezing Arrow, Valkyrie, Pierce, Tiger Strike (lvl 1 requirement!), Fade, Death Sentry, Amplify Damage, Corpse Explosion, Clay Golem, Battle Orders, Natural Resistance, Salvation, Fanaticism, Zeal (uninteruptable, basically), Frozen Orb, Static Field, Enchant (duration, pre-buff anyone?), Fury, Oak Sage
The ability to pre-buff
Hirelings, even equip-able
Prefix "Cruel"
Prefixes "Jeweler's" and to some extent "Artisan's"

I could obviously list some more.

I think you see where I'm getting. You can't just name all the good things that players use and say they are overpowered. If you feel that way, get yourself a chess program, set the difficulty to high and enjoy the "challenge".
Of all the things you listed, the ones I really can agree on are:

DI
Stone Curse (would be better if it didn't allow 100% cth, or if the monsters could still move, but very, very slowly)
Fireball (to some extent - around 600 maximum damage would have been enough instead of 1000)

DII
Runewords that grant aurae
Blessed hammer

Seriously, try playing singleplayer, no-twink, like when you re-start from scratch. Don't choose a disposasorc for your first char to gather items, perhaps even a melee class, and tell us how you fare when getting to hell.
Also note that there are tons of "underpowered" spells/skills and items in both games, too. This is crucial to balancing them (as far as balance is possible) and offers expert players additional challenges. If all spells/skills and items were the same - well, we'd go a little communist here, wouldn't we? And that has never quite worked out to date.

No offense.
Greetings, Fragbait

[Merlinios]

Seriously, try playing singleplayer, no-twink, like when you re-start from scratch. Don't choose a disposasorc for your first char to gather items, perhaps even a melee class, and tell us how you fare when getting to hell.
Also note that there are tons of "underpowered" spells/skills and items in both games, too. This is crucial to balancing them (as far as balance is possible) and offers expert players additional challenges. If all spells/skills and items were the same - well, we'd go a little communist here, wouldn't we? And that has never quite worked out to date.

I have played untwinked. With many characters.

"Underpowered" things are a necessary function of progressing up the chain in a linear progression like the Diablo series. "Overpowered" things are not.

Conviction, at the very least needs to be on your list. It is completely unfair. Essentially, it eliminates the need for a secondary element (on elemental characters, including, but not limited to, Sorceresses, Amazons, and Druids) AND attack rating.

Holy Shield is the only skill I see as even close to Conviction in terms of raw power. At high levels, Holy Shield makes the caster nearly indestructable. Nothing else can make this claim. Not defiance. Not Shout. Not Ironskin. Not Energy Shield (although it comes close IF you set your gear right).

Teleport is arguable. I'll grant you that one.

If you've never used War Cry, I don't expect understanding there. It's like the old Nova Sorceress, except you stun everything in a radius. For ~10 seconds. The enemies not only don't have a fighting chance; they cannot even move or attack, their two basic functions (aside from dropping items, I suppose).

I could, and should, list more, but I won't, as you're no doubt sick of this line of reasoning. Instead, I'll offer up a definition of overpowered.

Any skill/item/"thing" which is universally used when able to be, and universally good when used. Example: Teleport, Holy Shield, Stone Curse

Any skill/item/"thing" which, even though specific to a build, is so far above the power curve that it makes the game trivially easy (Perhaps "Bottably easy" is a good term here). Example: Blessed Hammer, Conviction

Any skill/item/"thing" which makes monsters incapable of (damaging, hitting, moving, living, etc.) without completely crippling the player using it. Example: Teleport, Holy Shield, Stone Curse, Conviction, Blessed Hammer


"Of Haste" might fit the bill. "Archangels" does not. Level 20 spells are not significantly more powerful than level 15 spells.

So, for your list...
Zodiac--Maaaaybe. Does it grant you a *significant* advantage over Giant's/Sorcery/Precision? Not really. They're just nice.
Emerald--Not really, but would be very much so if available on more than Weapons and Shields. Especially weapons. Look at the mods one must give up for use.
No resistance penalty--Would this even be an issue if Diablo II didn't have one? Advocate fireballs still do plenty of damage to full resistances.
No Physical resistance on monster--Must be why Warriors are nearly universally considered the most difficult class to play.
Armor dependance--I wouldn't say that. Items that provide ridiculous armor (IE, Awesome Full Plate Mail of the Suffix) maybe. Armor dependance...bull. Else Naked Mages, Low-Armor-Warriors, and such would not exist. It isn't a dependance. It's a weight factor. Diablo II offers different means to go about it, but still shares the same polarization if any of those factors is at high levels.
Instantaneous potions--perhaps, but again, would this be an issue without Diablo II saying different?

In short, things (aside from superior tactics) that give players an unfair advantage over enemies are what I consider overpowered. Teleporting over walls is pretty dumb. Static Field, Crushing Blow are pretty dumb. Turning on Holy Shield and not being hit for the rest of the session is outright idiocy. It's not even a game anymore.

--me

[Hammerskjold]

FB has a good point which I haven't seen addressed. Most of your examples use caster builds. Where's the melee part?

>Conviction, at the very least needs to be on your list. It is completely unfair. Essentially, it eliminates the need for a secondary element (on elemental characters, including, but not limited to, Sorceresses, Amazons, and Druids) AND attack rating.

Why are you citing almost every class that gets this so called unfair benefit except the Paladin himself? And why should MP be the all deciding factor for SP as well?


>If you've never used War Cry, I don't expect understanding there. It's like the old Nova Sorceress, except you stun everything in a radius. For ~10 seconds. The enemies not only don't have a fighting chance; they cannot even move or attack, their two basic functions (aside from dropping items, I suppose).

You know, there are still players who chose to play a Barb build other than a War Crier.



>I could, and should, list more, but I won't, as you're no doubt sick of this line of reasoning.

What I'm wondering is why your line of reasoning seems to be based on mostly if not all, caster builds. That's fine if you're talking about casters in general. D2 \LoD is certainly weighted in favor of AoE casters most of the time, but that's not the total picture of the whole game.

You mentioned that 'if you've never used war cry, you don't expect understanding there'. Well I think it's fair to ask if you've ever played any melee builds, because without it I don't expect you to understand either.

[Fragbait]

Hi,

First, I think I wanna say that Hammerskjold addresses a few good points. I would like to see your answer to those.

Second, I did not and do not mean to depreciate the way you think or play.

Third, here are some answers:

Instead, I'll offer up a definition of overpowered.

Any skill/item/"thing" which is universally used when able to be, and universally good when used. Example: Teleport, Holy Shield, Stone Curse

Any skill/item/"thing" which, even though specific to a build, is so far above the power curve that it makes the game trivially easy (Perhaps "Bottably easy" is a good term here). Example: Blessed Hammer, Conviction

Any skill/item/"thing" which makes monsters incapable of (damaging, hitting, moving, living, etc.) without completely crippling the player using it. Example: Teleport, Holy Shield, Stone Curse, Conviction, Blessed Hammer
"Of Haste" might fit the bill. "Archangels" does not. Level 20 spells are not significantly more powerful than level 15 spells.

You know, Fireball, Chain Lightning, Stone Curse, The Haste Suffix, The Zodiac Suffix and others in DI all fit your description. As well as the need to get the highest possible armor - if you're not an expert or a sorcerer, that is.
I also find it interesting that you list Conviction over and over again, but not for Paladins, who have the disadvantage of having only one aura activated that also occupies the rmb and thereby hinders him to use auto-aim skills - Hammerskjold has a good point here. Also notice that granting auras via runewords is one of the few really imbalanced things I agreed with you on. A sorceress and the conviction aura is not pretty, and should not be able to achieve by playing alone.
IMHO, there is also quite a difference between slvl 15 and slvl 20 Fireball, but YMMV.

In short, things (aside from superior tactics) that give players an unfair advantage over enemies are what I consider overpowered.

This is, I think, where I don't agree: If players don't have an advantage over the AI that battles them (be it via crippling the AI or giving the players better things), people will lose the game. As long as they aren't as bright as check grandmasters and as quick as Q3A world champions, they will lose the game.
In that light, I think it is save to say that all players are "overpowered" by your definition, which is what I wanted to express with my ironical list of "overpowered" things.
Overpowered to me means an imbalance between the different chars. In a former patch, WW-Barbs were overpowered. Now Hammerdins are. The game, well, is not. Please refer to my former post what might be imbalanced about it.

I don't have the time now, but I will come back later and write a bit more.
Greetings, Fragbait

[Fragbait]

Hi,

Now that I have a little bit more time, let me address the statements you made.

"Underpowered" things are a necessary function of progressing up the chain in a linear progression like the Diablo series. "Overpowered" things are not.

The 'function of progressing' in Diablo is in no way linear, be it the experience you get, the pace with which your char develops, the difficulty of the game or the distribution of item finding chances. I don't quite understand what you mean. In my eyes, the 'function of progressing' is logarithmic at best. Your "overpowered" things are exactly what helps you cope on the far far right "end" of the logarithm, where progression is slow and difficult. What real "overpowered" things would do is, in my opinion, break the function and paste a linear, quadratic or otherwise different function not necessarily continuously onto the logarithm. Maybe the skill Blessed Hammer in its current form does, and runewords that grant not only oskills (for they are beneficial for the variant building), but that grant aurae which obviously were balanced for the paladin only when the game was created maybe do, too.

Conviction, at the very least needs to be on your list. It is completely unfair. Essentially, it eliminates the need for a secondary element (on elemental characters, including, but not limited to, Sorceresses, Amazons, and Druids) AND attack rating.

I think this has been addressed already. Conviction on a paladin is not unfair in my eyes. It is great, yes. Unfair - no. Also understand that my list was not meant to be taken dead-serious. I don't consider most of the things I named to be "overpowered".

Holy Shield is the only skill I see as even close to Conviction in terms of raw power. At high levels, Holy Shield makes the caster nearly indestructable. Nothing else can make this claim. Not defiance. Not Shout. Not Ironskin. Not Energy Shield (although it comes close IF you set your gear right).

Ah, then 60% of the power builds out there are Conviction/HS builds? I don't think so. My impression is rather Hammerdin and Dual-Element Sorceress at the moment, maybe some Trapsins.
Holy Shield is very powerful. Since the patch that changed its defense bonus to be applied to your whole defense especially so. My lvl 91 fanatic zealot has maxed it, and uses it always. With high-end (well - achievable by playing in singleplayer, i.e. no high end runes) gear, he has 17xxx defense, a 75% ctb and 75% resist all. He is fairly easy to play in most areas, but in some, he is not, and I have to exercise caution, e.g. versus Blood Lords, Vipers, Succubi, Gloams, Dolls and the like. And this is after 5 years of playing and searching items for him. Holy Shield is not overpowered. Imagine if it would up your maximum block chance to a, say, 95% cap at lvl 30! That would be overpowered.
PS: Paladins cannot get the huge life balls that Druids and Barbarians can get. Thus they must be helped with means of damage preventing. Druids and Barbs can get 75% block, too. And Barbs can even get high defense. I don't know why you descend to Holy Shield so frustratedly.

Teleport is arguable. I'll grant you that one.

Teleport alone will never be the 'make or brake' of a build. It is a convenience skill, and while I found it better when the Sorc could still alone use it, it doesn't imbalance the game when others can use it, too, I think. Well, I'm speaking of PvM here, but I was meaning PvM the whole time, so... Can't really speak for PvP.

If you've never used War Cry, I don't expect understanding there. It's like the old Nova Sorceress, except you stun everything in a radius. For ~10 seconds. The enemies not only don't have a fighting chance; they cannot even move or attack, their two basic functions (aside from dropping items, I suppose).

I have never used War Cry. But it seems to me that its duration goes down with difficulty level, no? So if you have a 6.4 sec. duration with slvl 28, doesn't it go down to 3.2 sec. in nightmare and 1.6 sec. in hell? Well, I could very well be wrong here. But with a finite amount of skill points to distribute, this skill isn't overpowered. Great? Maybe, my barbs lived well without it. Unfair? It doesn't speed up the killing, but makes it safer. I don't think it's unfair. And to be a dedicated singer, you have to sacrifice quite a lot of gear for fcr and mana. It would be unfair if the cast speed was high with low amounts of fcr, if the damage was high (it isn't ), and if a Barb wasn't to economize his skill points between BO, the mastery of choice, Natural Resistance and the attack skill of choice (+possibly a synergy) already, I think. Maybe, just maybe, it would have made sense to not be able to stun physical immune monsters with it, since it already can't damage them. But that's about it.

I could, and should, list more, but I won't, as you're no doubt sick of this line of reasoning.

Hm. I think the point is not that I'm sick of it, but that I think it is wrong. Every patch brought with it a character class or build that sort of broke the balance between the classes a little. At some point, it was the WW-Barb. Last time, it was the Hammerdin. Unfortunately, they made auras available as an oskill (not only, but also Conviction), which is rather imbalanced, too. But in general, not all strong items and skills and things are "overpowered". Please understand my point of view.

Instead, I'll offer up a definition of overpowered.

Any skill/item/"thing" which is universally used when able to be, and universally good when used. Example: Teleport, Holy Shield, Stone Curse

Any skill/item/"thing" which, even though specific to a build, is so far above the power curve that it makes the game trivially easy (Perhaps "Bottably easy" is a good term here). Example: Blessed Hammer, Conviction

Any skill/item/"thing" which makes monsters incapable of (damaging, hitting, moving, living, etc.) without completely crippling the player using it. Example: Teleport, Holy Shield, Stone Curse, Conviction, Blessed Hammer
"Of Haste" might fit the bill. "Archangels" does not. Level 20 spells are not significantly more powerful than level 15 spells.

I answered that in my last post, I think.

So, for your list...
Zodiac--Maaaaybe. Does it grant you a *significant* advantage over Giant's/Sorcery/Precision? Not really. They're just nice.
Emerald--Not really, but would be very much so if available on more than Weapons and Shields. Especially weapons. Look at the mods one must give up for use.
No resistance penalty--Would this even be an issue if Diablo II didn't have one? Advocate fireballs still do plenty of damage to full resistances.
No Physical resistance on monster--Must be why Warriors are nearly universally considered the most difficult class to play.
Armor dependance--I wouldn't say that. Items that provide ridiculous armor (IE, Awesome Full Plate Mail of the Suffix) maybe. Armor dependance...bull. Else Naked Mages, Low-Armor-Warriors, and such would not exist. It isn't a dependance. It's a weight factor. Diablo II offers different means to go about it, but still shares the same polarization if any of those factors is at high levels.
Instantaneous potions--perhaps, but again, would this be an issue without Diablo II saying different?

Zodiac (Heavens): Yes, the advantages, especially for a fighter and not a caster, are significant. Are you referring to casters again?
Emerald and Obsidian: While Emerald is not available on Armor and Jewelry, Obsidian is. It should not, in my opinion, especially not on one item with Zodiac or Heavens.
Resistance penalty: This is somewhat balanced because there is no way to get above 75% resist, and Advocate fireballs and Soul Burner blood stars still hit hard. I'll think about it a little more.
Monster physical resists: Warriors are difficult because they can't hit ranged, like the two other classes. They have to chase Advocates and Soul Burners instead of just shooting them. That is why they are more difficult (in hell difficulty) in my opinion. And a physical resistance would also make life a bit more diffcult for the Rogue. Of course, Fireball and Chain Lightning would have to be nerfed a little bit in exchange. That would make for a really challenging hell difficulty.
Armor dependance: I would say that. Rogues and Warriors and even (Battle-)Mages all seek the highest AC available to them, because it is possible for all of them and because it does have a major impact on the surviveability. This is done better in DII, where defense has some effect, but it is set at a rather broad, nonlinear range: In hell, 4000 Defense can net you 50% less hits. 8000 defense may net you 70% less hits, and 16000 may net you 80% less hits. It's diminishing returns - DI doesn't have it. The more, the better - if it is the "Awesome" prefix on plates or something else. Why do you think an item that sets your res to 0 like Gotterdamerung is so good?
Instantaneous potions: Perhaps it is necessary in a game like DI where you can't run or tactically outmaneuver (hireling, minion) your opponents. But again: take everything that I said with a grain of salt, for I was trying to mock you a tiny bit by enumerating several "overpowered" things you didn't name.

In short, things (aside from superior tactics) that give players an unfair advantage over enemies are what I consider overpowered. Teleporting over walls is pretty dumb. Static Field, Crushing Blow are pretty dumb. Turning on Holy Shield and not being hit for the rest of the session is outright idiocy. It's not even a game anymore.

You have to admit that except carefully advancing step by step, there was no such thing as "superior tactics" in DI, I think. Also I have commented on this in my last post. You seem to exaggerate things a little - maybe it's you mocking me, and I can't see it. Static field and Crushing blow is a way to balance the hilariously high hps some monsters have since I don't know which patch. Holy Shield does not grant the user that he isn't hit anymore. By the way, while you could achieve 100% block in DI, you cannot in DII.
They both are great games, and I still think that because of its innovation-grade and its tight atmosphere, DI goes for the win if both games compete for the best action-rpg ever. But I don't think for more than some meager percent points, e.g. DI: 96 out of 100 points, DII: 92 out of 100 points.

It's nice to discuss something I like very much - the two games DI and DII and their individual pros and cons. I think it's time for me to apologize, for I have nothing to contribute to Titan Quest. Could turn into a thread hijack if none of the Titan Quest lovers reclaims it!:o

Greetings, Fragbait

[Baajikiil]

I have never used War Cry. But it seems to me that its duration goes down with difficulty level, no? So if you have a 6.4 sec. duration with slvl 28, doesn't it go down to 3.2 sec. in nightmare and 1.6 sec. in hell? Well, I could very well be wrong here. But with a finite amount of skill points to distribute, this skill isn't overpowered. Great? Maybe, my barbs lived well without it. Unfair? It doesn't speed up the killing, but makes it safer. I don't think it's unfair. And to be a dedicated singer, you have to sacrifice quite a lot of gear for fcr and mana. It would be unfair if the cast speed was high with low amounts of fcr, if the damage was high (it isn't ), and if a Barb wasn't to economize his skill points between BO, the mastery of choice, Natural Resistance and the attack skill of choice (+possibly a synergy) already, I think. Maybe, just maybe, it would have made sense to not be able to stun physical immune monsters with it, since it already can't damage them. But that's about it.

I agree with your points concerning singers; there are a lot of sacrifices, and planning involved in making a powerful singer. With the current overpowered gear though(including auras), a singer is up there as one of the most invincible killing machines around. You really need to play a singer to see it, but even undergeared ones are near invincible, they just aren't killing machines until all synergies are maxxed and a huge amount of + skills. I would say that the currently overpowerd gear(huge + skills, and meditation from a merc weapon) makes singers unbalanced, not the skill itself.

My only nit is that no, stunning is not reduced in duration in hell.

[Merlinios]

FB has a good point which I haven't seen addressed. Most of your examples use caster builds. Where's the melee part?

For the most part, "overpowered" skills lie in the caster arsenal. Aside from ridiculous damage weapons, there isn't much that hacking at something can do that generates the kind of unfairness I was talking about. Crushing Blow comes close, but it's still a damage-based function.

Melee characters can achieve near-indestructibility, but what really throws balance out the window, is that casters, with their obscene damage that effects areas full of foes, can do it BETTER.

>Conviction, at the very least needs to be on your list. It is completely unfair. Essentially, it eliminates the need for a secondary element (on elemental characters, including, but not limited to, Sorceresses, Amazons, and Druids) AND attack rating.

Apologies. I only play single player when the internet is down.

I did not list it for the Paladin because the skill is actually balanced on a paladin. Basically the most efficient thing he can do (sans unbalanced gear and party members) is power up his Vengeance, much like Might would power up Zeal. For the Paladin, it increases damage. For the Sorceress, the Amazon, the Druid, it allows synergies in a particular "line" of skills to be maximized while not worrying about any sort of plan B, because, in short, Conviction is all-encompassing (or near enough it doesn't matter, particularly with teleport).

Fragbait makes a good point here. The skill is only broken when it can be used by other players.

You know, there are still players who chose to play a Barb build other than a War Crier.

Just as there are still players who choose to play a Paladin without Blessed Hammer, yet I have not yet seen someone contend that it isn't overpowered.

What I'm wondering is why your line of reasoning seems to be based on mostly if not all, caster builds. That's fine if you're talking about casters in general. D2 \LoD is certainly weighted in favor of AoE casters most of the time, but that's not the total picture of the whole game.

Correct, but I'm not talking about the whole game. I'm talking about the unbalanced upper end. Whirlwind is all fine and dandy (though it wasn't in previous patches) but it pales in comparison to Blessed Hammer, which has no enemies per second hit cap, is unresistable by the majority of monsters in the game, does not disable all of your actions to use, and has literally no downside to using, or any kind of hindrance (a la Iron Maiden vs. Whirlwind). Obviously this is a polarized example, but compare Whirlwind (generally deemed one of the more powerful melee skills) to just about any high, or even mid-end caster skill. I'm (unjustly?) lumping amazon splash attacks as caster skills (Charged Strike if you want to nit over melee's meaning).

You mentioned that 'if you've never used war cry, you don't expect understanding there'. Well I think it's fair to ask if you've ever played any melee builds, because without it I don't expect you to understand either.

Fair enough--what kind of melee builds are overpowered?

But I stand by my War Cry. It looks pretty innocuous until you start using it. It may be (probably is) a function of the equipment, particularly Insight, but the skill is just busted. You barely have to sit at your computer to use it. Full on Warcry MIGHT fall behind Blessed Hammer. It's a bit slow in the killing department, granted, but it more than makes up for it. The only moderately frightening enemies for a full-on high level Singer are Tomb Vipers and multiple elemental enchanted melee bosses. And it's possible to run through a Viper cloud and survive, simply because no attribute points need be allocated anywhere but Vitality (dexterity if you want to block, I suppose). ~5000 life, ridiculous armor, maximized resistances, enemies who can't move or attack, can't hit if they do (Taunt), can't damage if they hit (Taunt again), and probably something I'm forgetting make for an overpowered character in my opinion.

Here, I guess, is a decent benchmark for judging whether something is overpowered or not...
"If they put this on an enemy, could I still win without completely re-speccing my character for it (or changing tactics completely--barbarian switchies from Axes to Throwing Knives)?"

Conviction + elemental ranged attack? Nope (Uber Mephisto, various Lightning Enchanted Conviction bosses before absorb/broken resistance caps were available)
Blessed Hammer? Gonna say no. But that'd be a fun one to try. Maybe in SP you could dodge.
Teleport? I'd be tempted to say no here, but it's been done. The problem is the AI just teleports randomly at random times. Caster enemies would be vicious if they actively used it to escape damage.
War Cry? Taunt?
Holy Shield? (Melee has ~5% chance to hit? Try playing in Hell with a melee character when you're maybe 15-20 levels under the enemies)
Charged Strike?
Lightning Fury + Pierce (probably not as bad on SP...)
Smite?

I'm done here.




A couple of other points that I don't want to find quotes for and in no particular order...

--Superior tactics were not present in Diablo I
Untrue. "Peekaboo" killling succubi is perhaps the first that springs to mind. High level Chain-Lightning positioning. Stone Curse blocking. There's all manner of things you do and probably don't think about any more. Can Diablo II really compare? Maybe rounding up enemies for a better angle on your Meteor or Lightning Fury. Why not just fire another one? With mana leech/meditation, they're basically free.

--60% of the power builds out there are Conviction/Blessed Hammer builds.
I play(ed) on USEast Ladder. This is probably approximately true (or was when my hard drive crapped out).

--Teleport alone will never make or break a build.
Not quite. But it's pretty close. It will at the very least vastly improve the killing speed, as a person is able to round up and flee from FAR more enemies before unleashing all kinds of death on them. Teleport also unbalances any kind of item farming (a la Mephisto runs), particularly on multiplayer with randomly seeded maps.



--Holy Shield
Does not grant "you aren't hit", but it's close enough not to matter. You should be getting hit maybe 5% of the time at level 90+ (20% to be hit - 20% * 75% block).

Forgive me if I make presumptions. The situation is probably far better in single player. If you're on the realm with other people, you've got multiple war cries on you, most of the Paladin offensive aurae, maybe half the defensive aurae, and gawd knows what else. If you're playing alone, odds are you're item-hunting or farming some experience utilizing Conviction on a non-Paladin in a full game (substitute Blessed Hammer for non-Paladin conviction as needed). Or you're playing a variant.

Finding suitable equipment is much easier on the realms, and not just due to item saturation. Need a high defense plate? Great. Trade that nice Sorceress Orb you found earlier (And as the ladder season progresses, "High defense plate" and "nice Sorceress Orb" become more like "Ethereal Elite Unique Plate" and "Death's Fathom"...) but can't use on this character. Even with ATMA (or something similar), you can't really simulate this. Each item you find and don't need is potentially an item you can trade for something useful (as long as it isn't complete garbage).

(Sorry for the wait.)

--me, hoping I didn't miss too much

[Hammerskjold]

>For the most part, "overpowered" skills lie in the caster arsenal. Aside from ridiculous damage weapons,
there isn't much that hacking at something can do that generates the kind of unfairness I was talking about.

Maybe I'm getting our wires crossed here, But I wasn't saying that melee has an overpowering anything. You won't get any disagreement from me that almost all the powerful skills I've seen are either ranged or AoE, or both.


What I'm talking about is imo it's not very accurate to say there's so many overpowered things in the game as a whole, because that's almost a caster-centric point of view. And D2 does have a melee component to it. And looking from various ver. texts, it's almost as if everytime a mostly caster\ranged player complains 'bah this game is sooo easy', it's the melee part that pays for it. Why the hell should melee builds be nearly crippled just so the ranged\casters can have a 'challenge'?


>Crushing Blow comes close, but it's still a damage-based function.

Again I wonder how many melee builds you've seriously tried. Because anyone who has tried at least one melee build in 1.1+ would not say the above seriously, at least in the context of what's considered powerful effects. The only thing that can even come close to the way CB was is Static Field ctc weapons. A magic 'spell', surprise surprise. Only in D2, where a meleer has to turn to magic to become a better fighter. Only in Sanctuary! (insert Don King smilie icon here)

I'm saying this as a player who had 2 Martyrs that made it to Hell mode, one was 1.09 and the other was post. in 1.09 the earlier incarnation can survive ok in some solo 8(but not invincible, more like a medium armored jeep than a supertank), SP, no trade no twink yada yada, and his best weapon was a 'Black' flail. Post 1.10, his particular build was rendered obsolete. There's still a way to play martyrs of course, just not the 1.09 way. This has both good and bad points.


But let's cut to the chase here, if we're seriously comparing what's powerful and overpowered etc, an 8 count game is what we're really talking about. The name of the game mostly becomes who can solo 8? CB isn't bad obviously, but in 1.10 is not what it once was, especially in an 8 count game. Yes, you can have a build and gear combo that has a very high chance for CBlow. But usually for a very hefty sacrifice or price, and you get less of a return for it. The days of surviving on CB alone is pretty much dead imo.

>Melee characters can achieve near-indestructibility,

With what? Awesome top of the line (and a high chance of it being non kosher) gear? Who wouldn't? Very specific skill combinations in very specific situations? I don't mean to sound rude, but come on. It's 'near' the same way the moon is kind of near to the earth. But it's still pretty far away for most people.

(Last I've read Smiters have been getting some hate-o-rade because they can do Uber Tristram fairly well. Kind of reminds me the way Lightning Fury Amazons use to get the same during the heydays of cow level running. It's amazing how one little bonus area becomes the measuring stick for how well a build does in the rest of the levels.)


>but what really throws balance out the window, is that casters, with their obscene damage that effects areas full of foes, can do it BETTER.

Yeah, and how do we nerf the -meleers- to balance this out? Since this is the classic bliz way of handling things it seems.


>Correct, but I'm not talking about the whole game. I'm talking about the unbalanced upper end.

Then it's probably more helpful to point that out earlier. But that unbalanced upper end should not be re-balanced by squashing the melee part. What inconveniences the ranged\casters, can absolutely halt a meleer. This is what I mean when I don't see your point of mentioning something like Conviction being overpowering for elemental druids and such. I don't see a lot of cry for nerfing Enchant because it might boost a Shock Zealot's power.



>Fair enough--what kind of melee builds are overpowered?

Imo, about zero to none. At least in the context of a full 8 game, since it doesn't make sense to measure what's considered overpowering in a lower count game.


>But I stand by my War Cry. It looks pretty innocuous until you start using it.

No one here said a war crier was innocuous or underpowered. (And I had 2 that went to Hell mode. And 2 is enough for my lifetime.) But a war crier is not a melee build, like you previously mention he's much closer to a Nova sorceress and other AoE builds.

> ~5000 life, ridiculous armor, maximized resistances, enemies who can't move or attack, can't hit if they do (Taunt), can't damage if they hit (Taunt again), and probably something I'm forgetting make for an overpowered character in my opinion.

Remove that heavy Warcry specialization for a sec. But keep the rest of what you just said. And drop in oh let's say a dual swing barb. (Which by the way imo is a more accurate picture of what a meleer is. They do their fighting up close and very personal.) Unless you're some sort of D2 savant, those perks you mentioned (high life, high resist,) can instead become a necessity.

You can say you're talking mostly about the aspects that makes things overpowering. And not the whole game. But that high level Battle Order which makes a WarCrier that more powerful, might be much more critical to another build type. They might not need it to become stronger, they might need it to just survive.
So like it or not they are connected, you can certainly focus only on one aspect ('what's overpowered?'), but you won't get an accurate overall picture if that's your only viewpoint.


>Conviction + elemental ranged attack? Nope (Uber Mephisto, various Lightning Enchanted Conviction bosses before absorb/broken resistance caps were available)

Uber Meph and other things like Dclone is not a 'mandatory'. I know it's treated as such sometimes due to it's popularity, the same way the cow level was once. But no one is forced to do them. Unlike say, waypoint hunting.




>--Holy Shield
Does not grant "you aren't hit", but it's close enough not to matter. You should be getting hit maybe 5% of the time at level 90+ (20% to be hit - 20% * 75% block).

Heh, of course that usually goes out the window when an elemental ranged attacker enters the picture. But in 1.10+ there's not a lot of that right? ;)

I'm out of this thread as well, not out of animosity or anything. In fact most of it was enjoyable. But I got a phoenix strike assasin in SP to finish up in Hell mode.

[Fragbait]

Hi,

>>For the most part, "overpowered" skills lie in the caster arsenal. Aside from ridiculous damage weapons, there isn't much that hacking at something can do that generates the kind of unfairness I was talking about. Crushing Blow comes close, but it's still a damage-based function.<<
Doesn't that remind you of DI? Maybe that is just the way Blizzard likes to make games. Casters (=brain) rule over Melee builds (=fist). Oh, and CB is not a damage-based function. Not at all, it rather is based on the hitpoints of monsters you fight against.

>>Melee characters can achieve near-indestructibility, but what really throws balance out the window, is that casters, with their obscene damage that effects areas full of foes, can do it BETTER.
Apologies. I only play single player when the internet is down.<<
I don't think that is true. A melee Paladin with 75% block and 95% resist all along with some decent defense and life and some %DR is a lot more near-indestructible than just about any caster I can think of. A Barb compensates with a huge life pool. The main problem is that casters can have a huge life pool now, too. Energy is a worthless attribute, not just since 'Insight', but I think when no one could buy mana pots and there were no Insights, caster builds were a bit more balanced and the Warcry Barbs you so loathe weren't as invincible as you describe them now.

>>I did not list it for the Paladin because the skill is actually balanced on a paladin. Basically the most efficient thing he can do (sans unbalanced gear and party members) is power up his Vengeance, much like Might would power up Zeal. For the Paladin, it increases damage. For the Sorceress, the Amazon, the Druid, it allows synergies in a particular "line" of skills to be maximized while not worrying about any sort of plan B, because, in short, Conviction is all-encompassing (or near enough it doesn't matter, particularly with teleport).<<
Fair enough.

>>Just as there are still players who choose to play a Paladin without Blessed Hammer, yet I have not yet seen someone contend that it isn't overpowered.
Correct, but I'm not talking about the whole game. I'm talking about the unbalanced upper end. Whirlwind is all fine and dandy (though it wasn't in previous patches) but it pales in comparison to Blessed Hammer, which has no enemies per second hit cap, is unresistable by the majority of monsters in the game, does not disable all of your actions to use, and has literally no downside to using, or any kind of hindrance (a la Iron Maiden vs. Whirlwind). Obviously this is a polarized example, but compare Whirlwind (generally deemed one of the more powerful melee skills) to just about any high, or even mid-end caster skill. I'm (unjustly?) lumping amazon splash attacks as caster skills (Charged Strike if you want to nit over melee's meaning).
Fair enough--what kind of melee builds are overpowered?<<
Whirlwind once was the top-notch melee skill, but I don't think it still is. The damage boost is rather low, and you can't do anything mid-air. In DI, to compensate for their ranged attack advantage, Rogues did less damage than Warriors. But even then did Sorcerers fall out of balance. I think a good way to restrict the big pros of melee builds was implemented with the Druid and his shape-shifting skills: You can't cast your ranged spells when shape-shifted, yet you only get the life (and defense) boost when shape-shifted. Also elite armors should all require much Str, currently you can get a 467 base defense armor for lousy 77 Str. So you really want an overpowered melee build? How about a properly skilled and equipped fanatic zealot or dragon tail assassin? Maybe not overpowered, but quite powerful.

>>But I stand by my War Cry. It looks pretty innocuous until you start using it. It may be (probably is) a function of the equipment, particularly Insight, but the skill is just busted. You barely have to sit at your computer to use it. Full on Warcry MIGHT fall behind Blessed Hammer. It's a bit slow in the killing department, granted, but it more than makes up for it. The only moderately frightening enemies for a full-on high level Singer are Tomb Vipers and multiple elemental enchanted melee bosses. And it's possible to run through a Viper cloud and survive, simply because no attribute points need be allocated anywhere but Vitality (dexterity if you want to block, I suppose). ~5000 life, ridiculous armor, maximized resistances, enemies who can't move or attack, can't hit if they do (Taunt), can't damage if they hit (Taunt again), and probably something I'm forgetting make for an overpowered character in my opinion.<<
War Cry shouldn't work on PI monsters, as I said before. Apart from that, the skill itself is not overpowered. Insight and all the other oskill aura skills are. Note that without Insight and the ability to buy mana pots, War Cry was a challenge... And I still don't see that the world gets flooded by War Cry Barbs.

>>Conviction + elemental ranged attack? Nope (Uber Mephisto, various Lightning Enchanted Conviction bosses before absorb/broken resistance caps were available)
Blessed Hammer? Gonna say no. But that'd be a fun one to try. Maybe in SP you could dodge.
Teleport? I'd be tempted to say no here, but it's been done. The problem is the AI just teleports randomly at random times. Caster enemies would be vicious if they actively used it to escape damage.
War Cry? Taunt?
Holy Shield? (Melee has ~5% chance to hit? Try playing in Hell with a melee character when you're maybe 15-20 levels under the enemies)
Charged Strike?
Lightning Fury + Pierce (probably not as bad on SP...)
Smite?
Here, I guess, is a decent benchmark for judging whether something is overpowered or not...
"If they put this on an enemy, could I still win without completely re-speccing my character for it (or changing tactics completely--barbarian switchies from Axes to Throwing Knives)?"<<
Interesting benchmark. But by that definition, static field, cold mastery, lightning fury, frozen orb, maul, bo, thorns, fire claws (fully synergized) and many other skills are out. It simply doesn't work this way - monsters and players are too different to be compared. Have you ever seen a player with 15000 life but only 2000 defense? Nope. I think this benchmark is seriously flawed. Tiger strike, critical strike, dim vision, ce, taunt, resistance auras, glacial spike... They could all be overpowered that way. Not a valid criterion.


>>--Superior tactics were not present in Diablo I
Untrue. "Peekaboo" killling succubi is perhaps the first that springs to mind. High level Chain-Lightning positioning. Stone Curse blocking. There's all manner of things you do and probably don't think about any more. Can Diablo II really compare? Maybe rounding up enemies for a better angle on your Meteor or Lightning Fury. Why not just fire another one? With mana leech/meditation, they're basically free.<<
Succubi killing like you described exploited rather bad AI, no real strategy. Chain lightning positioning is quite comparable to the way many DII spells work, e.g. all the piercing Amazon skills, Nova monster grouping, Meteor use etc. You now seem to admit that indeed Insight and half magical half physical spells are the banes of balance in DII...


>>--Teleport alone will never make or break a build.
Not quite. But it's pretty close. It will at the very least vastly improve the killing speed, as a person is able to round up and flee from FAR more enemies before unleashing all kinds of death on them. Teleport also unbalances any kind of item farming (a la Mephisto runs), particularly on multiplayer with randomly seeded maps.<<
It doesn't improve killing speed, it improves movement speed. And I stick to my statement.

>>--Holy Shield
Does not grant "you aren't hit", but it's close enough not to matter. You should be getting hit maybe 5% of the time at level 90+ (20% to be hit - 20% * 75% block).<<
To reach 20% to be hit, one has to heavily invest in str and /or duped runewords for high end armors. If you calculate with 30%, numbers look more reasonable: 0.3*0.25= 7.5%. That means that every 13.33th physical hit does in fact hit you; considering the many quick attacks in DII, that's fair enough for me. How about a Warrior with perfect block and 3XX AC in DI? The only thing that saves DI is the auto-hit feature. Maybe that should have been included in hell difficulty in DII as well, but I think we already agreed that melees with high defense and ctb aren't overpowered. Or haven't we?

>>Forgive me if I make presumptions. The situation is probably far better in single player. If you're on the realm with other people, you've got multiple war cries on you, most of the Paladin offensive aurae, maybe half the defensive aurae, and gawd knows what else. If you're playing alone, odds are you're item-hunting or farming some experience utilizing Conviction on a non-Paladin in a full game (substitute Blessed Hammer for non-Paladin conviction as needed). Or you're playing a variant.
Finding suitable equipment is much easier on the realms, and not just due to item saturation. Need a high defense plate? Great. Trade that nice Sorceress Orb you found earlier (And as the ladder season progresses, "High defense plate" and "nice Sorceress Orb" become more like "Ethereal Elite Unique Plate" and "Death's Fathom"...) but can't use on this character. Even with ATMA (or something similar), you can't really simulate this. Each item you find and don't need is potentially an item you can trade for something useful (as long as it isn't complete garbage).<<
Maybe. But you have to consider singleplayer, too. If you want a game that is hard for a group that is already trying to synergize each other (conviction, bo, oak, insight, lightning fury etc.), it quite possibly is impossible for a single warrior in singleplayer. If you want that, why not go MMORPG all the way? DII just isn't built that way.

>>(Sorry for the wait.)<<
I was waiting for your reply :).


Greetings, Fragbait

[Merlinios]

Once again, sorry for the wait. Gets busy here around the end of the symester, particularly since I STILL don't have my lappy working. Turns out the Mobo's fried. Boo.

And I'm responding separately, both for the sake of organizing my thoughts and for readability.

Anyway...

Doesn't that remind you of DI? Maybe that is just the way Blizzard likes to make games. Casters (=brain) rule over Melee builds (=fist).

Perhaps, but I think my originally grievance was the lack of balance in Diablo II as a whole, not as it compared to Diablo I. I just compare it to Diablo I, because it is the most comparable game I've played, and despite being more primitive, it is better in many respects. It does indeed share many of the same issues.

There isn't really an easy fix to that sort of dichotomy. I think the best I've seen (shameless plug) is once again Guild Wars. Adrenaline was ingenius. Sort of like Warrior mana that allows them to use attack skills at a decent rate, as well as actual spells, but neither is too much or too little (considering Warrior primary).


Oh, and CB is not a damage-based function. Not at all, it rather is based on the hitpoints of monsters you fight against.

You misunderstood this one. I meant that "all" it does is damage. It does damage proportional to enemy health, which is indeed powerful, but ultimately, that's still just damage, as opposed to something like Frozen Orb, which does damage, slows, and destroys corpses half the time.


I don't think that is true. A melee Paladin with 75% block and 95% resist all along with some decent defense and life and some %DR is a lot more near-indestructible than just about any caster I can think of. A Barb compensates with a huge life pool. The main problem is that casters can have a huge life pool now, too. Energy is a worthless attribute, not just since 'Insight', but I think when no one could buy mana pots and there were no Insights, caster builds were a bit more balanced and the Warcry Barbs you so loathe weren't as invincible as you describe them now.

The problem here is that you can achieve decent defense (though not the ungodly amounts Paladins can hit), damage reduction, and resistances on any caster while doing more damage in an area rather than to one target. AND you're probably ranged, so you tend to take less damage, which is, in my opinion, a major contributing factor to indestructibility. As anyone who's ever cheesed the The Bard's Tale with a bow knows, if the enemies can't hit you, you can't die.


I think a good way to restrict the big pros of melee builds was implemented with the Druid and his shape-shifting skills: You can't cast your ranged spells when shape-shifted, yet you only get the life (and defense) boost when shape-shifted.

I always like that aspect, but look at druids in comparison to the other classes, power-level-wise. They're more gimmicky than anything else. Not really sure where that thought takes us, but there it is.


Also elite armors should all require much Str, currently you can get a 467 base defense armor for lousy 77 Str.

This is a HUGE part of the problem.


So you really want an overpowered melee build? How about a properly skilled and equipped fanatic zealot or dragon tail assassin? Maybe not overpowered, but quite powerful.

More than an overpowered melee build, I'd like a lack of overpowered caster builds, but I suppose on some level, equity is better than a completely broken game. The problem there is that melee is still restricted to hitting one enemy at a time, while caster AoE skills do MORE damage than each hit (for the most part).

War Cry shouldn't work on PI monsters, as I said before. Apart from that, the skill itself is not overpowered. Insight and all the other oskill aura skills are. Note that without Insight and the ability to buy mana pots, War Cry was a challenge... And I still don't see that the world gets flooded by War Cry Barbs.

War Cry should indeed not do anything to physical immunes. That's one of the largest problems with it. The other is that you can stunlock everything but a few superuniques (including act bosses), which means the only threatening enemies are those that release damage passively (elemental enchanted bosses), those that explode on death (Undead Stygian Dolls), and those than can put enough damage potential out there to make you retreat before they die/before you stunlock them (Tomb Vipers). Everything else just charges you and runs into your stun wall. Ranged enemies get taunted.

The world isn't flooded with them for two reasons; most people don't realize how powerful they are, and they can't match the kill speed of the other classes in areas where the other classes aren't crippled (Blizzard sorceress squaring off against Cold Immunes), Realm games have become contests for finding out who can kill the most rapidly (or generate the largest numbers on the LCS) or who can find the most phat lewts. I'd think they would be a bit more popular on single player, though.


Interesting benchmark. But by that definition, static field, cold mastery, lightning fury, frozen orb, maul, bo, thorns, fire claws (fully synergized) and many other skills are out. It simply doesn't work this way - monsters and players are too different to be compared. Have you ever seen a player with 15000 life but only 2000 defense? Nope. I think this benchmark is seriously flawed. Tiger strike, critical strike, dim vision, ce, taunt, resistance auras, glacial spike... They could all be overpowered that way. Not a valid criterion.

The benchmark is only flawed because Blizzard decided to make it so. Look at Diablo I. Aside from Diablo's Apocalypse, neither players nor enemies could really do anything the other couldn't (I guess if you want to count high auto-hit on Blood Knights...). This is why tactical retreating and careful progression were necessary. Perhaps Blizzard thought (correctly?) that players did not like this aspect?

The enemies mindlessly run to their deaths (for the most part). Only those that can overpower players before the players can throw down something to render them useless (or dead) are threatening at all, which relegates it to cursing enemies, bugged enemies, enemies that can stunlock and/or run extremely fast to cut off retreat, and enemies that kill upon dying.

Succubi killing like you described exploited rather bad AI, no real strategy. Chain lightning positioning is quite comparable to the way many DII spells work, e.g. all the piercing Amazon skills, Nova monster grouping, Meteor use etc. You now seem to admit that indeed Insight and half magical half physical spells are the banes of balance in DII...

They are certainly some of the worst offenders. The difference I was trying to note is that in Diablo I, it was often more efficient to use grouping tactics, whereas in Diablo II, it is often more efficient to simply fire away until the enemies are dead, whether there is one or many, whether the pack is clumped or scattered.

It doesn't improve killing speed, it improves movement speed. And I stick to my statement.

It improves killing speed BY improving movement speed. A sorceress out of danger in less than a second can resume killing faster than one who has to retreat via running back to the nearest chokepoint to avoid getting swarmed. Having better mobility will result in more time casting spells and less time getting away if you're geared toward destruction as opposed to survival. In fact, teleport makes this very philosophy possible without slowing one's advance rate to a crawl. Hence, it improves killing speed.

Maybe that should have been included in hell difficulty in DII as well, but I think we already agreed that melees with high defense and ctb aren't overpowered. Or haven't we?

Yep. But the key word there is Melee. Holy shield is usable on caster paladins as well, which are, as far as I'm concerned, representative of a very large amount of what is wrong with the game right now.

Maybe. But you have to consider singleplayer, too. If you want a game that is hard for a group that is already trying to synergize each other (conviction, bo, oak, insight, lightning fury etc.), it quite possibly is impossible for a single warrior in singleplayer. If you want that, why not go MMORPG all the way? DII just isn't built that way.

Ramping life (and experience) was a step in the right direction. What about something like adding more resistance, even to the point of immunity, with each additional player? Keeping it doable for one man and having eight men play the same game does not a balanced game make.



I will agree with you that a lot of my grievances are built into the core of the game and cannot be changed. No, it is not the ideal game for me, but basically everything after the 1.09 patch was built specifically to unbalance the game in favor of the players, especially those who cheat. And even those facets that do not follow this trend (synergy) tend to dumb the game down somewhat. Instead of creating a unique build now, nine out of ten people you see on the realms play the same five skills as every other nine out of ten people (by character class). Not to mention people are now completely dependent on either broken items or their party to solve issues that used to require something as fancy as "plan B".

--me

[Merlinios]

Maybe I'm getting our wires crossed here, But I wasn't saying that melee has an overpowering anything. You won't get any disagreement from me that almost all the powerful skills I've seen are either ranged or AoE, or both.
What I'm talking about is imo it's not very accurate to say there's so many overpowered things in the game as a whole, because that's almost a caster-centric point of view. And D2 does have a melee component to it. And looking from various ver. texts, it's almost as if everytime a mostly caster\ranged player complains 'bah this game is sooo easy', it's the melee part that pays for it. Why the hell should melee builds be nearly crippled just so the ranged\casters can have a 'challenge'?

It is in no way necessary to cripple melee characters so casters can have a game instead of something to do while watching TV and doing homework. Add 50% to all elemental (and poison) monster resistances. The immunes become unbreakable. The slaughters become challenging. Any melee builds hosed? Drop the Conviction stick, and the Meditation stick, which may well be the two biggest offenders in the game. Lose the Enigma. That one hurts melee a little, but I think it hurts non-Sorceress casters far more. I'd say drop all oskills entirely, and I'd be correct, except we'd lose out on Beast, which seems to be more in the spirit of fun than anything else.

Anyway, there are many solutions to get rid of ridiculous casters without killing melee builds. Holy Shield just happened to be about the worst example I could use.

And there are MANY things overpowered about the game. To narrow it to casters doesn't do much, simply because there are a lot of facets, even narrowed to casters, which still make the game a cakewalk. And there are a few that melee characters can abuse as well (albeit not as well).

Again I wonder how many melee builds you've seriously tried. Because anyone who has tried at least one melee build in 1.1+ would not say the above seriously, at least in the context of what's considered powerful effects. The only thing that can even come close to the way CB was is Static Field ctc weapons. A magic 'spell', surprise surprise. Only in D2, where a meleer has to turn to magic to become a better fighter. Only in Sanctuary! (insert Don King smilie icon here)

Melee has never appealed to me, even in games where it's stronger than spellslingers. Casters (traditionally) require more of a finesse approach than the brute force melee has, which appeals to me more. I suppose the opposite is true in Diablo II, but it has been ingrained in me to play casters.

Regardless, Crushing Blow is about the best melee has, and it's very good, but you are correct in that it's not on the level of most caster skills. It would be if the caster skills didn't do such hopelessly high amounts of damage to the entire screen, however.

I'm saying this as a player who had 2 Martyrs that made it to Hell mode, one was 1.09 and the other was post. in 1.09 the earlier incarnation can survive ok in some solo 8(but not invincible, more like a medium armored jeep than a supertank), SP, no trade no twink yada yada, and his best weapon was a 'Black' flail. Post 1.10, his particular build was rendered obsolete. There's still a way to play martyrs of course, just not the 1.09 way. This has both good and bad points.

I've had a Singer survive on two Spirits, and a mercenary. His other equipment was of the quality that people don't even pick up and sell anymore. ~120 defense magic armor. ~150 defense magic hat. Garbage rings with mana and life, maybe a little resistance or MF thrown in (but not both). But his armor cleared at least 3000 by the end of Nightmare, and the health was rapidly approaching 4000. This is my beef with the game. My caster that can perpetually stunlock enemies can tank better than you...tank.

But let's cut to the chase here, if we're seriously comparing what's powerful and overpowered etc, an 8 count game is what we're really talking about. The name of the game mostly becomes who can solo 8? CB isn't bad obviously, but in 1.10 is not what it once was, especially in an 8 count game. Yes, you can have a build and gear combo that has a very high chance for CBlow. But usually for a very hefty sacrifice or price, and you get less of a return for it. The days of surviving on CB alone is pretty much dead imo.

Sounds about right.


(Last I've read Smiters have been getting some hate-o-rade because they can do Uber Tristram fairly well. Kind of reminds me the way Lightning Fury Amazons use to get the same during the heydays of cow level running. It's amazing how one little bonus area becomes the measuring stick for how well a build does in the rest of the levels.)

Uber Tristram aside, you have to admit Smite is quite powerful as far as melee skills go. It never misses. It stuns. And with some upper end (but not necessarily Grief-level) equipment, the damage piles up pretty fast. And I still consider Lightning Fury rather on the upper end of the power curve. Especially with that confounded Conviction stick.

Yeah, and how do we nerf the -meleers- to balance this out? Since this is the classic bliz way of handling things it seems.

I sense some sour grapes here. Blizzard has been rather unjust in the past to just about everything but Whirlwind and Multiple Shot, so it seems you're assuming that *my* proposed fixes should be the same. Drop the oskills and auto-aurae. That would go a long way toward helping. Then decrease caster damage or increase enemy resistances to the point where AoE effects do LESS damage than a well-equipped melee character (single-target spikes are fine).

Then it's probably more helpful to point that out earlier. But that unbalanced upper end should not be re-balanced by squashing the melee part. What inconveniences the ranged\casters, can absolutely halt a meleer. This is what I mean when I don't see your point of mentioning something like Conviction being overpowering for elemental druids and such. I don't see a lot of cry for nerfing Enchant because it might boost a Shock Zealot's power.[/]

The traditional fix thus far has been either quashing problematic skills (which there are too many of) or just buffing enemies universally. Attack the casters specifically, perhaps as above. Aside from getting rid of Infinity, you know what would fix Conviction? Taking away its immunity-breaking capacity. You don't see too many paladins concerned over that facet anyway.

[i]Remove that heavy Warcry specialization for a sec. But keep the rest of what you just said. And drop in oh let's say a dual swing barb. (Which by the way imo is a more accurate picture of what a meleer is. They do their fighting up close and very personal.) Unless you're some sort of D2 savant, those perks you mentioned (high life, high resist,) can instead become a necessity.

Except they don't get that high on a dual-swing Barbarian, which another big piece of the problem. Casters can afford to just dump attribute points into vitality because they don't need to worry about heavy equipment. This was traditionally balanced out by the fact that they got low life boni. But now that Barbarians and Paladins can do it, it's a whole new ballgame. Casters also get a higher +skills count since they don't have to worry about things like attack speed, which ultimately leads to (on Barbarians) higher life, more defense, and higher resistances.


You can say you're talking mostly about the aspects that makes things overpowering. And not the whole game. But that high level Battle Order which makes a WarCrier that more powerful, might be much more critical to another build type. They might not need it to become stronger, they might need it to just survive.
So like it or not they are connected, you can certainly focus only on one aspect ('what's overpowered?'), but you won't get an accurate overall picture if that's your only viewpoint.

Battle Orders is all well and good. It's the fact that the casters are better at doing what melee is supposed to be best at that breaks the game. The Singer will probably have a good ten levels on the melee barbarian in terms of Battle Orders unless the melee guy carries alternate duds to swap to. And the Singer is mostly fixed if you remove the stun. The high life can drop as fast as any melee character up until the point where enemies are rendered utterly useless.

Uber Meph and other things like Dclone is not a 'mandatory'. I know it's treated as such sometimes due to it's popularity, the same way the cow level was once. But no one is forced to do them. Unlike say, waypoint hunting.

Waypoint hunting isn't actually "necessary", per se, but I see your point. However, your point does not change the fact that massive Conviction reduction and elemental ranged attacks that are extremely hard, if not impossible (particularly with desync) to dodge is just flat broken. No, you don't have to kill Uber Mephisto, just like you don't have to make a cold Sorceress with an Infinity mercenary, but just because you don't have to do it doesn't make it balanced.

Heh, of course that usually goes out the window when an elemental ranged attacker enters the picture. But in 1.10+ there's not a lot of that right? ;)

Let's say it's a 50/50 ratio (and I think I'm being generous). You're investing twenty skill points to stop half the game from being realistically threatening. I'd say that's pretty good. And there's the fact that most enemy elemental ranged attacks are dodgable (unlike, say, Frozen Orb).

--me

Edit (as with the above): I only seem to be able to screw up the quote function on lengthy-and-hard-to-proofread posts. Switching to italics--the first post is Fragbait, the second is Hammerskjold.

[Hammerskjold]

(I'm having some tech trouble using quotes as well, but I'll try as best as possible anyway. You realize that I'm taking time away from my current Assasin to reply, but since you put a lot of thoughts into this debate it's the least I can do. :)


Your first suggestions of adding 50% monster resist to all elemental and poison, sounds too much like bliz's global solution for a local problem. While I understand your intent is not to cripple the melee part, if past version changes is any indication the result will still be the same.

(edited addition: Here's some builds off the top of my head that winds up paying the cost as well, with that kind of global monster changes. Elemental zealots, melee enchantress, elemental claw assasins, charged strikers, rabid druids, poison dagger necros. In my book they're the type of melee builds that gets to subsidize that proposed change of 'challenge' for ranged\aoe casters. And yes they're meleers to me, even if they don't use a physical attack, since in the context of D2 the type of damage imo isn't the qualifying criteria. Range, and mobility while attacking are more relevant qualifiers.)

You can say well just drop the convict on a stick, and other oskill items, but the same could be applied to skill choices then. Who said anyone has to max out the natural Skill limit? Why not just use a slvl 1 Conviction if you feel that the maxed skill is too powerful?

But we both know that this won't happen anytime soon, at least not in the place where bliz cares the most, and that's online multi.

Dropping oskill items is also a nonstarter imo, even putting aside the fact that bliz for obvious and understandable reasons will probably stick to their word of not making anymore major gameplay changes past 1.10. Let's say for the moment we are in bliz shoes, and we did drop those so called pesky oskill items.

How will that be carried out exactly? Total wipe out will create yet another round of loud complaints from the most vocal customers. 'They took away my hard earned items!!!111' A new, toned down version of the item, while keeping the more powerful older ones can create a dupers market for the old stock. Making global changes, ie instead of tweaking the level range of an oskill item individually, let's just change the Skill itself. It's faster, probably less complicated, and imo it's also a very sloppy way of doing it.

It's a blessing in disguise that Bliz will probably not change anything significant past 1.10, because at least hopefully things won't change for the worse.


You've mentioned I might be 'sour graping', but I'd raise the same objections if it was the other way around. Ie: the only way -any- caster build can progress is to stop using spells, and pick up a stick and brain a monster with it. I don't go all 'YEAAAH! That's the way it should be, score one for meleers!!11'. I have played and enjoyed almost all d2 builds, with each of their distinct strength and weaknesses.

The other thing you mention, if you can't get into the mindset of d2 melee, (and I personally count whirlers and chargers to be a special case, although they hit at melee range they can also move while doing so) then we can't really have a 100% clear communication unfortunately. Since ( and I apologize if I severely misread your writings) your p.o.v and point of reference will be almost always be from the casters eyes, we will not have enough of a common ground to go on.

I mean I think FB has a valid observation about bliz's take on melee in the game series. It's as if they designed it from a caster's point of view. Let's use a powerful melee build here, say a Kicker Assasin. The core build is not very complex, get some Strength, a bit of Dexterity, the rest goes to Vitality. Core skill points is maxed out Dragon Tail.

I've played a few Kickers, and they are quite powerful. But DTalon alone is not what really makes her a melee queen imo. It's the other skills that supplements it, that looks more like caster skills in closer inspection. How about summonable Shadows that can take the heat off the main target ie: you. Combined with a merc, that's 2 meatshields that can bear the brunt. How about Cloak of Shadow, her version of the Necro's DVision. Shuts down ranged attackers fairly well. How about putting a Lawbringer weapon in her hand, so Decrepify can be of benefit. How about something like Cmoon, tasty tasty SField. How about a very economical amp damage weapon, oh wait Amplify Damage is one of those native Necromancer skills.

What I'm saying is looking at it, my personal take is bliz designed all their class templates like this. A melee fighter is someone who has access to caster like skills to boost their few melee skills. And a 'good' meleer is someone who stays out of melee. On one hand it makes sense, obviously in real life something like melee combat is usually very ugly and messy and not something most people would want to do for fun. Keeping in mind that this is suppose to be an action fantasy game, a grim and 'realistic' combat simulator woudn't be appropriate.

But the way bliz designed it, I just get this impression that to them a melee range knife fighter is someone who uses a rifle first, then pulls out the knife to stab the soon to be corpse.

[Fragbait]

Hi,

Once again, sorry for the wait. [...] And I'm responding separately, both for the sake of organizing my thoughts and for readability.

No problem. And thanks.

Perhaps, but I think my originally grievance was the lack of balance in Diablo II as a whole, not as it compared to Diablo I. I just compare it to Diablo I, because it is the most comparable game I've played, and despite being more primitive, it is better in many respects. It does indeed share many of the same issues.

There isn't really an easy fix to that sort of dichotomy. I think the best I've seen (shameless plug) is once again Guild Wars. Adrenaline was ingenius. Sort of like Warrior mana that allows them to use attack skills at a decent rate, as well as actual spells, but neither is too much or too little (considering Warrior primary).

Well, I haven't played Guild Wars.
It's actually a matter of taste: Who is more of a challenge, melee, ranged or caster? Apart from the last two levels, where triple immunes were quite common, this order exactly applies to DI, what with a >800 point mana shield and what not. In the last two levels, maybe a Rogue is better overall, because nothing is immune or resistant to physical damage.
In DII, the order is ranged, melee and caster, if you ask me. At least most of the time - but then again, builds look so different now without the +skills limit and no golden, maxed attributes.
What DII lacks is the real immunity problems that DI had. The difficulty here is that DII has 6 types of damage compared to 4 in DI. And since the skills per character are limited to 3 skill trees (at least before oskills were introduced), it is quite common that chars can't really dish out more than 2 damage types, maybe 3 with the hireling.
Now if one created 3/4 immunes like in DI, that would be monsters immune to 4 damage types! If one replaced physical immunity by physical resistance from 25% (good for overall hell difficulty?) up to 90% (certain foes like ghosts and act bosses, not frenzytaurs seemingly at random, though!), that would be a good step into beefing melee and ranged vs. caster types. Since it wouldn't really work to have monsters immune to 4 types, I think if all hell monster are immune to at least 1 damage type (apart from physical) - currently they aren't - and about 60% (compared to the ~5% now) are immune against 2 damage types, that could work. Bosses would still be able to get up to 4 immunities, making them harder to kill for caster types.

The problem here is that you can achieve decent defense (though not the ungodly amounts Paladins can hit), damage reduction, and resistances on any caster while doing more damage in an area rather than to one target. AND you're probably ranged, so you tend to take less damage, which is, in my opinion, a major contributing factor to indestructibility. As anyone who's ever cheesed the The Bard's Tale with a bow knows, if the enemies can't hit you, you can't die.

As I had previously stated, I think defense is not the problem. It even has diminishing returns compared to DI. Resists are a problem - too many caster uniques offer skills and resistances (think Occulus). But I don't think that that can be changed now - but if we think of the next installment in the Diablo series, that would be a think to keep in mind. Damage reduction should maybe be capped at 33%, but I can't really think of a caster relying heavily on it, since they tend to get hit less already...

I always like that aspect, but look at druids in comparison to the other classes, power-level-wise. They're more gimmicky than anything else. Not really sure where that thought takes us, but there it is.

Ah, but what if there were no physical immunities anymore, like I proposed above? What if Werebear block and hit recovery speeds were more fitting for a melee fighter? Then Druids would rock, too - huge life, damage and minions. Barbs with huge resists, life and damage and Pallies with huge defense, blocking and damage would represent other parts of the melee spectrum. The resist automod on Pally shields would need a nerf then, too. With +1xx% to all resists, it becomes too easy to reach the higher max resists.

More than an overpowered melee build, I'd like a lack of overpowered caster builds, but I suppose on some level, equity is better than a completely broken game. The problem there is that melee is still restricted to hitting one enemy at a time, while caster AoE skills do MORE damage than each hit (for the most part).

There are only a few AoE skills that are able to do more damage than melee attacks, like Blessed Hammer and a fully synergized Fireball. And there are those melee attacks that come pretty close to / are AoE: Zeal, Whirlwind, Fury, Fend (if it was uninterruptable) and many of the releases of an Assassin, including Dragon Tail itself.
But generally I agree that AoE spells that have the advantage of targeting a whole group of enemies should do less damage then. Maybe not too low, because regeneration of monsters is pretty steep nowadays. But if a skill like Fireball can hit up to 5 monsters, it should only do 45% of the damage a well built melee attack can do, if a skill can hit up to 4 monsters, it should do 50% of the damage, hit 3 monsters do 58% of the damage, hit 2 monsters do 71% of the damage and hit 1 monster do 100% damage (something like [squareroot(number_monsters)]/number_monsters ). But this is wishful thinking again already...:rolleyes:

War Cry should indeed not do anything to physical immunes. That's one of the largest problems with it. The other is that you can stunlock everything but a few superuniques (including act bosses), which means the only threatening enemies are those that release damage passively (elemental enchanted bosses), those that explode on death (Undead Stygian Dolls), and those than can put enough damage potential out there to make you retreat before they die/before you stunlock them (Tomb Vipers). Everything else just charges you and runs into your stun wall. Ranged enemies get taunted.

I still think that without the mana regeneration rate that is provided by Insight and the option to buy potions, a Singer Barb is not uber anymore. And because he was quite a challenge then, a stun time for his skill was necessary to let him survive. Now if those oskill aurae that we both seem to dislike were gone completely, and skills would be capped at slvl 25 (maybe 30), then I think they wouldn't be so indestructible anymore. Capping the skills at a lower cap is a neat idea, I think. In DI you could get slvl 20 with the perfect items. Now you can get what - slvl 5x-6x? I think that is too much. Let casters have their +3 to all skills on one item if they wish. But restrict the maximum skill level back to 30 like it was in a former patch (pre 1.09?). Slvl 25 would be harsh for casters, but doable. And interestingly physical damage builds are nearly untouched by such a nerf - what you wanted.

The benchmark is only flawed because Blizzard decided to make it so. Look at Diablo I. Aside from Diablo's Apocalypse, neither players nor enemies could really do anything the other couldn't (I guess if you want to count high auto-hit on Blood Knights...). This is why tactical retreating and careful progression were necessary. Perhaps Blizzard thought (correctly?) that players did not like this aspect?

But even in DI did regular monsters have up to 903 hit points, immune to fireghtning/magic, up to 250% cth and up to mlvl 60, 10 levels above the maximum player level. Now DII doesn't seem so bad, does it?
Monsters with up to the double amount of hp the highest player can get? Check.
Monsters immune to fireghtning/cold/poison or only 3 of them? No.
Monster with really really good AR? Not more than 6000-8000, no.
Monster with levels up to 109? No regular monster, no.

It improves killing speed BY improving movement speed. A sorceress out of danger in less than a second can resume killing faster than one who has to retreat via running back to the nearest chokepoint to avoid getting swarmed. Having better mobility will result in more time casting spells and less time getting away if you're geared toward destruction as opposed to survival. In fact, teleport makes this very philosophy possible without slowing one's advance rate to a crawl. Hence, it improves killing speed.

I see your point, but I think that if one character class has access to TP, others should too in one way or another. Also I think that the safety of teleporting is more due to items like Whitstan's which enable the caster to get quite good block rates and thus safety. So if we nerf TP a bit by increasing its casting animation time / implementing a small cast delay, and nerf Whitstan's a bit, I still think that TP is a nice spell that would lack if it wasn't there and that all classes should be able to access somehow.

Ramping life (and experience) was a step in the right direction. What about something like adding more resistance, even to the point of immunity, with each additional player? Keeping it doable for one man and having eight men play the same game does not a balanced game make.
I will agree with you that a lot of my grievances are built into the core of the game and cannot be changed. No, it is not the ideal game for me, but basically everything after the 1.09 patch was built specifically to unbalance the game in favor of the players, especially those who cheat. And even those facets that do not follow this trend (synergy) tend to dumb the game down somewhat. Instead of creating a unique build now, nine out of ten people you see on the realms play the same five skills as every other nine out of ten people (by character class). Not to mention people are now completely dependent on either broken items or their party to solve issues that used to require something as fancy as "plan B".

Sadly that would be the end of many parties that aren't composed of a perfect amount of different chars. People aren't always able to get online, so the party should be able to play, even if the main source of fire damage or the main tank and physical attacker are absent. So I don't think that ramping up resists would be a good idea.
Also after 1.10 I think many deviant builds got playable. Many unused skills received a major boost through synergies, like FoF/CoT/BoI, Fire Claws etc. And I do remember the DII world playing chiefly the same chars pre 1.10, too. At some point Whirlwinders were dominant, at some point nearly every second game was with a Concentration Pally and a Strafe/Multi Bowazon in it. People sadly tend to play the most potent chars. That will always be like that, and it is virtually impossible to balance all of them. And then again, like many Amazon-Basiners would probably agree on, I think that there have to be 'weaker' chars, so that there is a challenge and diversification for the expert players.


PS: Quotes seem to work now, yay!
Greetings, Fragbait

[Hammerskjold]

> But this is wishful thinking again already...:rolleyes:

Then on that particular note, I think the whole difficulty scaling scheme was good for what it was, but I have no particular interest in seeing it repeated in something like the next gen Diablo\Diablo like games.

I wish I can see more and better examples of dealing and ramping up difficulty in relation with the number and power of players. The usual (and I think a bit dated and tired by now) way of progression might be something like the player starts out as Spiderman let's say. The first type of enemies he will face is probably low level bandits and thugs. Then it goes to maybe more lethal and faster thugs with deadlier bullets. Then technologically enhanced villains starts to appear. Then maybe more powerful versions with pallette swap appears as a boss (it's Doc Oc, with RED HAIR!). And so on and so on until the final evil foozle (let's say, Dr. Doom) appears. The end. If there are more than one Spidey, then give a global boost to the monsters HP. Or global boost to speed. Or maybe +damage to bullets. Zzzzzzzzz....

I mean yes something like that has been done and it has some uses, but overall I'm kind of getting sick of it. It's really nothing more than the same old fight a rat to level up to fight a snake to level up to fight a bigger baddie etc etc etc, but scaled sloppily to give the impression that it adjusts when there's more than one player. It does adjust, but it doesn't adjust very well I think.

But taking another look at the comic book style example, there's another way of doing it that I personally find more interesting. A lone and level 1 Spiderman might be facing the normal thugs, but when Spidey levels up or another hero joins up, those thugs don't get a global boost. They might get better body armor let's say, but their bullets will not be any faster or more lethal, but they certainly won't be any slower or less deadlier. Instead a mafia boss might show up. He won't be boosted by brute force high HP or anything like that. His power might be he has better AI, and he can organize the thugs, so as a group they might have smarter tactics.

When 3 or more heroes join up, then perhaps a more super-powered villain might show up. The previous thugs and mobs may or may not recede back, maybe this new baddie has his own henchmen.

When 4 or more starts banding together, a trio of super villains might appear.

When 5 decides to form a League of Justice, and has enough power combined it might attract the attention of a big foozle like say oh, the purple planet eater like Galactus.

For the players who wants to do a solo vs super, set up something like a Danger Room where you can do such a scenario. And maybe set up a holo-version of other team mates. Or if the player\hero becomes strong enough maybe a trio of villains may decide they need to take the hero out.

Now the above are obviously just a rough idea and examples, but I don't see why it can't be applied to something like Diablo. I'm not current on all the 'vijah' games, so hell maybe there already is a game that has a scaling scheme like this. But I really have no interest in seeing yet another rehash of scaling a la D2.