Endgame difficulty curve.

[Game]

I don't have time to respond in full right now, but I disagree a lot with things said in this thread. People want things to be a little too easy it seems. A lot of these suggestions may make the first week or two of playing easier for new players, but after that it completely sucks and people will burn out faster than ever. The way drops work on this server weren't just wildly thought up, drop rates of all sorts of items (blue organs included) have been changed a lot overtime to find the sweet spot, I am very pleased with the drop rates of almost all items right now.

Crucible could use a little tweaking, but I am not going to add 10 more levels, I do not think that would help much of anything. When Crucible came out though I did say I will work on expanding it in different ways in the future, I will touch on that probably in patch 3.4. the first 2 bosses aren't meant to be super hard, it isn't supposed to get real hard until after that.

[rrra]

2) This statement is patently absurd. Not only do you make it sound like first both the golemancer and javazon are the best classes/builds (the former is useless without a tank and the latter doesn't even compare to a zeal paladin), but you would have us believe that within 1 to 2 weeks people will, after a reset no less, get all the things either classes will need from endgame material. Really? So you expect that to just magically get the cow queen set the first few times you do Inferno cows? How are you going to get past Azathoth and his minions the first time? How are you going to deal with the lich king for that matter the first couple of times? How about the crucible? There is no way you will get the best equipment with both classes in 2 weeks without cheating.

Ok I dont think you really understand whats going on here. Lucid is entirely right about this. A golem mancer isnt a tank. Its golems are the tanks. Since clay golems slow the effected monster; reducing the number of spells and attacks it throws out and are incredibly tanky, they allow you to tank difficult bosses very easily. (if it weren't for clay golems, lich king items would be much rarer) The necro itself, just needs to cast the appropriate curse and then hide in the corner. That makes it a strong and (more importantly for a reset) cheap support character. So early on in a ladder reset, there is no better support character than a golemancer vs bosses.

As for the DPS role, currently the javazon is the best overall DPS character in the game. Its just very hard to gear so you dont see many of them. It has the highest single-target dps with charged strike. (Charged strike does more damage then zeal and doesnt have an attack rating, it also does more damage than smiters at perfect gear) Its aoe is almost as good as the bowzons as well. Where it loses to the zealers is in areas like plaguelands and inferno areas, where the monsters arent clumped enough for lightning fury to be effective and their hitboxes are too small for charged strike to one-shot them. In those areas, its lack of sustain hurts as well.

The best DPS role for a ladder reset is up for debate now. I havent tested this, but I think an orb sorc may be able to compete with the javazon now vs bosses. Its super cheap to gear, and a skilled orber has high single target damage. Its also safer than a javazon at that stage and the change to cold mastery means it doesnt care about immunes anymore. At a ladder reset, I may suggest a orb sorc over a javzon in some scenarios. A good sorc can dodge sindragosas much easier than a javzon can for example. There may be others that are competitive now with the change to immunities that I havent thought of. I would be curious what others thought about this.

Also, Ill note that skilled teams can routinely clear endgame content and find many of the gg items early on in a season. If you are familiar with Diablo 2 at all, you know that this is routine even before the bot-hordes kick in. They know how to work together and utilize loot tables to find exactly what they need. Most people just dont have the know-how or the time to do this.

As for your larger concern about the item curve. Before this most recent patch, I would have agreed with you that the curve was too steep. For basically every character, it was basically a tale of two lives: life before cowset and life after cowset. The only characters whose best-in-slot items did not include cowset were basically builds who used the shrieking lich and glass-cannon bowzons. I cant think of any others.

I dont think its sunk in for a lot of people yet. But that has now changed. It is now the case that rares are the best-in-slot items for most slots since they have the potential to roll better than any unique that doesnt have a build-defining proc or spell-effect. So rares can be extremely powerful now at the very end game. In addition, they can be very strong early on. Even the low-medium rares can be very effective for people without much wealth early in a season. They allow you to farm content effectively until you can get even better rares or those build-defining uniques you need to complete your builds. You just need to be able to determine what stats your character needs and hunt for rares accordingly. This is something anyone with a working knowledge of Diablo 2 can do. If you need help on what stats you need for what builds, well thats what the forums are for. Plenty of people around here (myself included) will be happy to help you with these things.

Happy Hunting

[Game]

Ok I dont think you really understand whats going on here. Lucid is entirely right about this. A golem mancer isnt a tank. Its golems are the tanks. Since clay golems slow the effected monster; reducing the number of spells and attacks it throws out and are incredibly tanky, they allow you to tank difficult bosses very easily. (if it weren't for clay golems, lich king items would be much rarer) The necro itself, just needs to cast the appropriate curse and then hide in the corner. That makes it a strong and (more importantly for a reset) cheap support character. So early on in a ladder reset, there is no better support character than a golemancer vs bosses.

As for the DPS role, currently the javazon is the best overall DPS character in the game. Its just very hard to gear so you dont see many of them. It has the highest single-target dps with charged strike. (Charged strike does more damage then zeal and doesnt have an attack rating, it also does more damage than smiters at perfect gear) Its aoe is almost as good as the bowzons as well. Where it loses to the zealers is in areas like plaguelands and inferno areas, where the monsters arent clumped enough for lightning fury to be effective and their hitboxes are too small for charged strike to one-shot them. In those areas, its lack of sustain hurts as well.

The best DPS role for a ladder reset is up for debate now. I havent tested this, but I think an orb sorc may be able to compete with the javazon now vs bosses. Its super cheap to gear, and a skilled orber has high single target damage. Its also safer than a javazon at that stage and the change to cold mastery means it doesnt care about immunes anymore. At a ladder reset, I may suggest a orb sorc over a javzon in some scenarios. A good sorc can dodge sindragosas much easier than a javzon can for example. There may be others that are competitive now with the change to immunities that I havent thought of. I would be curious what others thought about this.

As for your larger concern about the item curve. Before this most recent patch, I would have agreed with you that the curve was too steep. For basically every character, it was basically a tale of two lives: life before cowset and life after cowset. The only characters whose best-in-slot items did not include cowset were basically builds who used the shrieking lich and glass-cannon bowzons. I cant think of any others.

I dont think its sunk in for a lot of people yet. But that has now changed. It is now the case that rares are the best-in-slot items for most slots since they have the potential to roll better than any unique that doesnt have a build-defining proc or spell-effect. So rares can be extremely powerful now at the very end game. In addition, they can be very strong early on. Even the low-medium rares can be very effective for people without much wealth early in a season. They allow you to farm content effectively until you can get even better rares or those build-defining uniques you need to complete your builds. You just need to be able to determine what stats your character needs and hunt for rares accordingly. This is something anyone with a working knowledge of Diablo 2 can do. If you need help on what stats you need for what builds, well thats what the forums are for. Plenty of people around here (myself included) will be happy to help you with these things.

Happy Hunting

That is exactly what I was shooting for, and I am glad people realize it! Rares have a LOT of potential now. Sure they don't have certain unique effects like auras, skill modifiers, or anything like that, but they can provide an awesome amount of stats with a decent roll. This opened the door to so much more possibility. It helps new players get started, it gives veteran players something to farm and can literally do just about any content in the game to find them so it doesn't get boring, and it lets people have a crazy amount of builds to work with. These rares by any means did not make the endgame uniques / sets useless, it just gives you some choice! You can still use cow set or any of the old builds and still be just as strong, or you can use rares as well. Patch 3.2 was a really big game changer when it comes to items, I hope more and more people realize just how much variety there is now!

[LordManhammer]

Yes, yes, yes. I messed around with my a lvl 93 Barb last night to get a feel for how the rare items would impact gearing now that thier potential stats have been buffed. I removed all of the toon's gear and bought a sword/shield that would have been issued at lvl one upon creating the character. I assigned skill points into the Barb's passive resistance/defence/sword mastery abilities and the rest into shield throw. I put stat points into about 125 str and 150 dex, the rest into vit. At this point I had a character that could effectively farm normal Plaguelands. The magic and rare gear that dropped was more than enough to get me started and I can see how I would eventually be able to move on to nightmare and then hell in this manner. The only real game changer item that you woul absolutely need to farm hell infernos would be an item with the chance to cast Amp damage on hit and there are several that can drop in nightmare Plaguelands. This process will of course take time but it is way easier now than it was before patch 3.2.

I think the gap has been sufficently bridged.

[caca]

Yeah rare item give a HUDGE durability to the game IMO. You can now expect to loot a Godly rare or a godly craft... yeah as the name says it IS rare ! that is the point... still some uniques cant be replaced but for some builds new rares can be a nice add... before patch boots/belt was like Cow or lich king. Now plenty of possibilities...
Oh btw did i say ...

THANK YOU GAME TO BRING ME BACK CRAFTED AND RARE!!!!

fuck it already spend like... hours farming cows only for crafting stuff
because maybe ppl did not noticed but... new craft are like...
so yeah i think that the guy that "cant do" end game content, doesnt do it because he cant... but because (like i do because i hate pala) doesnt want to make the chars that will permit him to do so.
Once again so do i, i dont feel like i wana make this shitty pala or java to make dream l lands and invest time in that... i prefer have fun with my shitty necro poison doing cows, hell cows, plaguelands lich, and 1 or 2 new inferno lvl
and those can be farm with full trang... so please PLEASE, dont tell me no one here will be able to give you some crappy trang set ?

[vaudeville]

Actually rrra, I do understand that and yet again it sounds as if you folks think I don't know how this game works. What I don't understand though is how are you supposed to have a good golemancer and javazon when you don't have good enough equipment for either and the only way you can "tank" well with golems is with that equipment. THAT is the point. Nothing else. And that is why I have shown frustration with most of the comments here because many of you seem to think you'll just get all those items you need within days if not a few weeks even after a reset which I can only see happening with lady luck being right by your side the whole time.

I have yet to see a modestly equipped duo of the javazon and golemancer do well against any end game content (golemancer and paladin yes, but not a javazon and golemancer. You would have to run that experiment to dispel my pessimistic view. I take it you and a friend will have no trouble taking the lich king with just the trag stuff for the necromancer (and therefore summoning only 1 golem) and whatever mediocre equipment a javazon would have.
a javazon would have.

[vaudeville]

I don't buy that whatsoever aside from the fact that yes a lightning zealer is pretty much difficult to make without material from accomplishing the crucible. That is true.

I also do not buy for a minute that people have been that lucky with cow queen sets. I have yet to even see or hear of one piece drop after all the runs I've done and that's with players with more mf I could hope to have anytime soon.

[vaudeville]

I don't have time to respond in full right now, but I disagree a lot with things said in this thread. People want things to be a little too easy it seems. A lot of these suggestions may make the first week or two of playing easier for new players, but after that it completely sucks and people will burn out faster than ever. The way drops work on this server weren't just wildly thought up, drop rates of all sorts of items (blue organs included) have been changed a lot overtime to find the sweet spot, I am very pleased with the drop rates of almost all items right now.

Crucible could use a little tweaking, but I am not going to add 10 more levels, I do not think that would help much of anything. When Crucible came out though I did say I will work on expanding it in different ways in the future, I will touch on that probably in patch 3.4. the first 2 bosses aren't meant to be super hard, it isn't supposed to get real hard until after that.

How are newer players not burning out already ? I know a player that hasn't even been on here for a week, and he considered quitting thanks to the endgame difficulty and the drop rates. I suspect he may only stay on a bit longer just because he recently got stuff from a veteran player.

[Lampogriz]

removig a possibility to rush players via spectate mode and gaining exp will help alot

[Frigide]

@vaudeville

Man, how do you think we did at ladder reset?

I personnaly came to play here 2 weeks after reset in october. I knew nothing about the additionnal content.
I had to read wiki a lot, ask ppl questions, find my own way to get items, coz in addition, i couldnt get free mav or tal, i had no tal amu for like 2/3 weeks or more.
I made a cheap smiter, coz as ur saying if u know D2, u must then know how to make a smiter, even with shitty items... (astreon dracul dragonscale veil etc)
I farmed knarst + kaalut + othuyeg + shaa for days, i couldnt take on mappo and i died so much doing the 3 other bosses from DL. BUT I FARMED THEM ANYWAY.
Made some inf cows with mav set when i could, and eventually traded a cow part to finish my 1st cow set.
When i had my java to 7.5k charge strike, i made mappo runz, sometimes took me 5 mn to kill mappo, and so what ?
Thats how the game is ... kinda hard at some point to transition to being strong in late game content

My point is, its totally doable, without any kind of help (or maybe a little bit of trading, which is a big part of D2 anyway)

If u know how to make a bad smiter + a mav bowama and a tal sorc, u just have to farm then.
If u answer me u dont wanna invest time in farming, then just dont play D2?

Did you email Blizzard because ppl can do ubbers faster than u, or coz sorc is a must have to farm bosses when ur poor?
Did you email them to say hammerdin is OP? Java is OP? Make Keyz drop more often coz its boring to farm for it?

Some things said in this thread makes me feel like you guyz want the mod to be noobfriendlied so its easier to get to late game, but part of the game IS to get to late game, not play 1 weeks and kill all DL without dying...
(in that regard i totally agree with lampo that the spect mode is lame, even so i like the fact i can have all my chars XPing at same time easy, but it seems lame)
... OFC after 2 weeks of playing, u cant have all the best items, and i'd say FORTUNATLY!!!

I surely would prefer to have more players in here, and i dont wanna be rude to you, but man, if its to hard or to much time to invest farming and getting gear, just dont play in here? Go play D3? u ll have so much less time required playing to be happy with what u have...

PS: i didnt mention the fact u can also play in TEAM, and so get more chances to be ok for late game by comboing classes.
(i always used a BO barb, which enabled my chars a lot faster, even with low items. having double life is a way man ...)