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  TABLE OF CONTENTS NORMAL                         MISCELLANY Mechanics Talk 1-Attributes Mehcanics Talk 2-Attack Rating, Defense, and Running Mechanics Talk 3-Blocking and Getting Hit Mechanics Talk 4-How gaining Life/Mana and gaining Resistances work Mechanics Talk 5-Item Affixes and Where to Find Them Mechanics Talk 6-I Can't Hold all this Bling. Mechanics Talk 7-Magicfind and /players 8 Q) Oh I've heard of this game before. Diablo II is timeless. It and its expansion, Lord of Destruction, has been a well crafted game to enjoy even today. And no, I'm not talking about Resurrected, though, if you get past how it looks it's perfectly fine on its own. Released in 2000 and its expansion coming out a year later, Diablo II is the sequel to the original Rogue-inspired action game Diablo. It became a very endearing game with its cutting-edge graphics, voiced dialogue, very deep gameplay mechanics, extremely good music, and the fact that you can do this all online with your buddies. You got to look forward to fighting hordes of demons and finding very powerful treasure as you did so, and with seven classes to play, many different skills to learn and use, three difficulties unlocked as you finish the game, and a 99 level cap, you could be playing this for a while, exponentially so if you go online and go after the most difficult challenges available. That's not to say Diablo II is without fault though: there are MANY gotchas in trying to choose how to build your character, melee sucks rear end even in Resurrected, Attack Rating and Defense are funny mechanics everyone ignores, there's several speedbumps for all characters that will blindside and stonewall unprepared players, and grinding for things you need can take a while. (This is one of the oldest games to teach you that grinding is okay and socially accepted.) Playing this game right is a fun time of slaughtering through hordes of monsters and finding lovely treasures to further slaughter hordes of monsters. Playing it wrong is an inescapable fate of leaving in disgust because it took the game a while to add in resetting your stat and skill allocations. So the main goal of this Let's Play is to take you through the process of playing this game, then playing this game again, then somehow playing this game yet again. But just playing Diablo II is something plenty of people have done in the past 20 years. No, instead, I wanna take you to different Sanctuaries, that fixes some of these faults and has me beat the game in very different ways. Q) Diablo II has mods? Yes. Many of them in fact. Some of them are very good, as well. But for the sake of this Let's Play, we'll be focusing on mods that enhance the core Diablo II experience but not completely replace it. The reason why is to hit the "I just wanna play Diablo II but better" sweetspot, which doesn't actually exist, but if I try four times to hit that target maybe I'll hit it for you. In addition, where applicable, I'll be using some other mods that are meant to be ran in tandem with either vanilla Diablo II or the overhaul mod of your choice. Such mods will also be how I get widescreen images in a game that is normally a 4:3 affair. Q) So which class are you playing? ALL OF THEM. There are many builds in Diablo II, and the mods add even more. While I can't show every single one of them, I can spread out the brand new builds enabled by mods across them all, and then showcase the many ways you can play this game depending on what mods you use. Needless to say each class will have their time in the limelight. As for when and where, I just looked up build guides and then arbitrarily assigned each class to a different mod to showcase it. All classes will beat Hell Baal. That means multiple flavors of Hell. As for any extra content our selection of mods may add, those'll be covered on the side. Most of our mods will have brand new areas at the end, but with some exceptions the mods stay out of the way of basegame, allowing us to make a perfectly normal Let's Play of Diablo II and then remember afterwards oh right, there's more to show off. Q) So you recorded days of you playing this game then and we get to watch that? Nope. Well, yes, but, let's be real: Diablo II is not a game to fill with mindless banter for many, many runs. Even with editing, the game doesn't do much that can't be conveyed with words and pictures. That's what happens when most of your story and dialogue is delivered in in-town lore. As such, to make the very concept of multi-Diablo drifting feasible, we're doing a screenshot LP. The biggest benefit to doing it this way is that I can easily weave the many characters into the same chunk of game they're all on. This should keep things at a brisk, albeit slightly chaotic, pace. Well, you'll see what I mean soon enough. Q) Cool, so you'll be going over immunities and all the different runewords and all the mod additions an- This isn't that informative of a Let's Play. Mechanics that are definitely vital to gameplay will be covered, (like Attack Rating!) but the very nuanced stuff won't be covered. (like how so many things get chances to do extra elemental damage on harder difficulties) I have played quite a fair bit of Diablo II, but not so much that I know everything about every single piece of gear and skill ever. This gets even fuzzier when I throw mods in, so if you're looking for in-depth analyses of builds and what works and what's available, you're going to find that outside the thread. Luckily databases of what gear and options are available exist for each one of our mods, so you won't be left hanging. Q) I want to play [[insert favorite thread mod here]]! Where can I get it? Every mod has, its own webzone to get it and its own install guide to install it. (Unless your name is Eastern Sun.) Follow the guide of your choosing, or just turn your mind off and let the launcher do its thing. Most launchers are very good at giving you something good enough for a modern Diablo II experience. As for adding shinier versions of PlugY and the graphics wrapper of your choice, most of these mods either include their own mods for stash and graphics, or are just not compatible with them. If I don't explain what works, read guides on the internet to see if you even can.
Thread Info -In-game dialogue will always be in italics. -  When we swap to a character, we'll use their icon.-  If we have something quick to say about a mod though, its banner will be used.-Basegame monsters are covered via a pic, their name, features about them, and an arbitrary Challenge Rating, or CR. Modded monsters are, very plentiful and I don't have easy access to their numbers, so they'll be skipped. -While I know a lot about Diablo 2 and have gotten a good idea of its mechanics, I have little info about the mods and especially about the fun newgame+ difficulty levels. As such, disclaimer, this is a semi-blind LP. I'll know enough to get through, but I don't have 4 Diablo II's worth of knowledge in my brain. -It is my hope and prayer that updates will roll out every 3-4 days. I am basing this on no concrete evidence but I do have a backlog so it should work out.  THREAD RULES-No Blizzard drama here. I am well aware of how bad of a company Blizzard has always been but I still enjoy Diablo II despite that because I'm good at seperating the art from the artist. There's threads where you can dump your grievances with Blizzard in with all the others, but not here. This is a safe spot. A, Sanctuary, if you will.  -That said feel free to take the piss out of these games. There's plenty to make fun of. Just don't drag the companies themselves into it. -Feel free to discuss other DII mods in this thread. However, don't expect me to cover them. I probably won't. I mean I'm already covering 4+ and doing 7 runs that's probably too much already. DarkMatt fucked around with this message at 05:41 on Dec 30, 2022 |
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Oct 2, 2022 21:45
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MAJOR MODS USED: Resurgence: https://old.reddit.com/r/Diablo2Resurgence/ Once known as Slashdiablo, this mod hails from reddit and has since gone from multiplayer only mod to fleshed-out chocolate D2 mod. It is also very old. (2013) Of note is that, in the beginning, extra content is very light, so at least for now it's pretty indistinguishable from vanilla D2. Instead, the Hell run is meant to be a better experience and also a unique experience. It'll have plenty of the things you can expect out of these mods, like extra crafting options and loot filters. Unfortunately this does make it one of the most boring until later but hey, sometimes going with what's largely familiar is a good thing. Also I appreciate the maphacks given and will be using them. Features:
Resources:
 Project Diablo 2: https://projectdiablo2.miraheze.org/wiki/Main_Page A mod designed to leave Diablo II's gameplay mostly intact but overhaul item and skill balance to open up many more options and give gear more ways to provide power. (For example: Enhanced Damage on EVERYTHING to multiply your weapon damage.) It also has the funny map gimmick from Path of Exile for characters that get all the way through the game and want ever more things to do, and there's a fair bit to do with Maps. Aside from that it's the same D2 flavor, and D2 but with more/enhanced options that keeps the vanilla feel is what makes this a very popular mod. Features:
Resources:  Eastern Sun:It's on this very forum. No, seriously. This is a mod maintained by goons, and if I posted this thread without doing this mod I feel like I'd be doing a massive faux pas. Anyway if you didn't read that thread, Eastern Sun adds a lot of things, from new toys to new sets to new runes to new monsters to new areas to a new 15 minute experience at the start of the game, and HUNDREDS OF NEW CUBE RECIPES. It sits close to MXL in sheer overhaul insanity, but the from-scratch item crafting you can do in that mod? Taken to 11 in ES. Why grind for your build gear when you can just make massively enchanted items using many, many dstones? Better yet, why not craft mods ON your uniques, or layer mods via the use of jewels that have rarity now, that you can also craft mods onto? Sky's the limit when it come to ES crafting. Also, all the plugins and hacks and cheats included with ES? Honestly, they're mandatory. You'll see what I mean. Features:
Resources:
 Median XL:https://www.median-xl.com/ This is too much: the mod. Ever want MORE Diablo II? This is it. More cool artifacts, more cool monsters, more cool skills, more cool things to do, more levels to attain, more post-Hell content, more challenges, more numbers, more loot, more speed, more graphics, more death. Everything you wanted and MORE. MORE MORE MORE There's a lot to keep track of but honestly it's pretty ignorable early on. The true insanity only begins when you start theorycrafting and evaluating gear. For the thread, thankfully, a lot of the extra content can be safely brushed aside since most of its real additions to challenges are within Hell difficulty. The only new maps before that are leveling quests, of which there are only two. Despite the fact that this mod will change so much about character progression that we won't be able to compare it to the other mods or even vanilla Diablo II, it can be played alongside them just fine. Features:
MINOR MODS USED: PlugY: http://plugy.free.fr/en/index.html If you play singleplayer, chances are you use this mod, or should be using this mod. PlugY isn't just the fabled "infinite stash" mod you might've heard in passing. (which is very buggy! Cap your stash pages before using!) PlugY also does a couple things to bring changes you'd only find in multiplayer into singleplayer, allowing you to do stuff like Uber Tristram, repeatable secret levels, and Ladder Runewords. Unless the mod I'm using explicitly doesn't play nice with it, (or has its own PlugY as part of the mod) I'm using it. Shared stash with more than enough space for any and all characters I use is a pretty vital thing. It also grants infinite respeccing of stats and skills where applicable, which I dunno about you, but I live in 2022 and would like to experiment without consequences please thank you. D2DX: https://github.com/bolrog/d2dx A fancy pants custom glide dll that allows Diablo II to run with them fancy pants Glide graphics and still be a nice flexible modern program for modern Windows. It's very simple to use and very effective. We can even get widescreen resolutions using this, so unless my major mod has ideas for the outdated graphics DII runs on, I'll be using this. I reall like widescreen. Widescreen is my friend. OTHER RESOURCES: Diablo II Manual: http://nyerguds.arsaneus-design.com/manuals/Diablo%20II/Diablo%20II%20-%20English.pdf The Lord of Destruction Manual: http://ftp.blizzard.com/pub/misc/Diablo%20II%20-%20Lord%20of%20Destruction.pdf Manuals for the game. While I, the let's play, will cover the contents of these manuals in said let's play, they are chock full of lore on the settings, people, and monsters you'll find in Sanctuary, so they're worth a read. The Arreat Summit: http://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp/ Old reliable. Official DII strategy guide. A lot of knowledge on items, monsters, and even just bits and pieces from the manual are kept here. It's the future, the site offers vague hints for character builds, and deeper dissection of the game's mechanics are posted elsewhere, (Heck, one of those sites is linked in Arreat Summit.) but it still has everything you'd need to know about vanilla DII and I still use it to quickly look up things like runewords and some of the simpler mechanics. The Amazon Basin: https://www.theamazonbasin.com/forums/ A long established site of, "Let's play Diablo II, together." It also doubles as my goto for deep looks into game mechanics. (see the wiki) It's a big deal, what with being this sort of site since the dawn of Diablo II, and a lot of the finertries of DII info, and even just the DII community, I go here to find. They also cover several other games as well. DarkMatt fucked around with this message at 08:40 on Dec 21, 2022 |
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Oct 2, 2022 21:45
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This space reserved in case of rapid expansion.
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Oct 2, 2022 21:46
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First off, thanks for the reception everyone.TitanG posted:I read through the first update and oh god I can hear every line of dialogue with perfect clarity. I actually find plenty of the voice acting to be very good, for what it is. I'm not doing the best job showcasing that but Warriv, Akara, basically all the quest-givers did narrate their lines very well. If I had to describe it in a way that makes sense, these are people reading off stories and melding their voices into the characters well. Narrators, basically.
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Oct 4, 2022 08:27
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New update. Time to say hi to our neighbors. Also, now that I'm no longer keeping the world's worst secret, the OP has been updated with the rest of the mods. DarkMatt fucked around with this message at 18:42 on Oct 5, 2022 |
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Oct 5, 2022 18:30
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Simply Simon posted:I did try Eastern Sun for a bit, but it was too maximalist for my taste. I either also gave Median a shot but didn't like it from the outset, or people in the community did play and talk about it, it is only vaguely familiar to me. Yeaaah, ES and MXL are mods that are known to be gratuitous. Like, somewhere in the huge numbers and moving parts of those mods Diablo II still exists, but they really aren't D2. Trying to play them like D2 is not a great idea, which means you do have to do quite a bit of strategy guide reading and referring to play through them. I think it pays off though, those two can be quite gratuitous fun at times, just in their own way.
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Oct 6, 2022 19:54
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By all means, feel free to do buildtalk. I don't have nearly as much experience with Diablo II as everyone else here, (despite me acting like I do) so I am curious for an explanation of how, for example, melee Sorc works. (I've seen it work and believe it does. You just won't catch me calling me melee because the bulk of damage the build does is not done through swinging your weapon, unless it's a single target.) There's many builds that can get through the whole of Diablo II and, I can't cover every last one since there's seven classes, many good skills, and four mods. So if other peeps want to talk about those that'd be fine by me. I don't know builds. I just know how the game works. The more pure mods leave the damage formula mostly alone, but because they will tweak damage on your end the balance will be thrown off and things will change. Like, I cannot really fathom how much of a buff melee gets in PD2 where most every weapon adds splash damage to attacks. I don't know any concrete examples because never been to Hell outside of this LP, but I wouldn't be surprised if some things don't work as well anymore. Still, these mods tend to avoid nerfs, with some exceptions like say PD2 making casting Teleport lower your spell damage for a brief moment. Also unfortunately, even in the mods with an extended character screen for showing advanced stats, you just can't get Diablo II to be honest with you about what you have and how much damage you're actually doing. Even Median XL, on my end, will show detailed weapon damage but then the stats on those pages are broken and don't update correctly. It's telling that that mod tells you to download a separate program (D2Stats) to get an accurate readout for your stats. Kinda makes me think a readout on how much damage you're doing was always an afterthought.
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Oct 8, 2022 02:57
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Big Mad Drongo posted:"Viable" is a tricky thing in D2, because more or less every skill is technically viable if you have infinite patience and a way to apply Prevent Monster Heal or Open Wounds. Unlike, say, Path of Exile or most other modern ARPGs there's no infinite endgame to hit your head against and monster damage doesn't scale into one-shot territory as long as you keep up with resistances. I remember seeing, years ago, a guy who beat Uber Tristram with a Smiter decked out in level 1 cracked gear (it ended with him dropping the charm on the ground and exiting the game Oh yeah, the only concerns of any build/character are speed of killing monsters and, can you stop them from undoing your progress? The "Prevent Monster Heal" and "Slain Monsters Rest in Peace" affixes solve that problem. In fact, a lot of things are viable and you don't need much clear speed if you set your goalpost at "just finish normal". But also, I see people spend long stretches of time trying to get the rarest loot in this game. The need for such optimization gets very real the higher you go.
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Oct 8, 2022 06:01
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New update. Mortals in Sanctuary love undead. You'll find demons love undead too. Why don't we go to the graveyard, then, and have the undead shared with you?
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Oct 8, 2022 17:23
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Thanks a bunch for the breakdown on melee Sorc and also showcasing some of the lovely skills available. I do have an addendum in that, Enchant is a good skill. A very good skill. (Off the top of my head I can't think of another way to get a multiplier to your AR you can then use with anything else that has its own AR multiplier.) The issue comes from the fact that it's a buff, not a melee skill, and you'll have to go provide your own via gear. (which thankfully there are options available to get something better than basic melee.) I do hope to, in the future, write up posts giving more of an idea on what the basegame classes do and what's available for them. Whether or not I can depends on whether or not I can do the comprehensive research on them, since I'd have to do quite a bit of reading and making sure I'm reading correctly and getting a solid idea. I think the only classes I haven't played before the LP are Amazon and Druid, and the ones I've finished the game with are Assassin, Necromancer, and Paladin. (Minions is just too chill of a way to play diablo 2 what can i say)
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Oct 10, 2022 05:29
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Well I couldn't sleep well today so new update time. Time to rescue a celebrity.
DarkMatt fucked around with this message at 16:02 on Oct 11, 2022 |
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Oct 11, 2022 15:59
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Simply Simon posted:You're highlighting a constant issue with the story in this update: it doesn't make a lick of sense if you think even for a second about it. It's just when Diablo opens its big mouth and tries to get its puppets to speak and emote that it all comes crashing down. When I start talking about Hell politics we're going to find that a lot of rationales for many things will be dumbed down to, "because they're angels/mortals/demons." This could've worked, in the hands of better writers who cared more about their characters than "it's a demon". And I may be revealing too much by bashing the writing already but I'm honestly surprised that it took me 4 updates to point out how, uninteresting and forced, character dialogue is. Also I was tempted to spin up some fanfiction to have in the lp, but I realized it's not easy for me and also I would be unable to spin the story in any way other than a comedy. I think it's asking a lot of people to take Diablo's story seriously. achtungnight posted:Cain shows up in Diablo 3 too, where he finally dies. I wouldn’t be surprised if he comes back in 4 though, maybe as a spirit.
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Oct 11, 2022 19:29
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Explopyro posted:I'm confused by this. Vigor was the run-speed and stamina-regen aura in vanilla, did you mean to say Prayer or did Project D2 change what Vigor does? It's Vigor. What I got wrong was what it does. I mean when juggling many wikis to keep track of what does what, and when I don't intend to really use auras for the LP, the game does not give you an idea of what aura's what, and what aura's affecting you, so I don't remember what they're all called...or even what they look like. That's fixed though thanks for catching it. Explopyro posted:In early versions, the most infamous thing was the "MSLE", or Multiple Shots Lightning Enchanted. The multiple shots modifier applied to the Charged Bolt projectiles generated by LE, so it'd fill up the screen with them very quickly, and if you went into melee they'd all get generated on top of you (if this happens, you're dead). Ah right, that. Remember reading about it and it's a good thing that got fixed because there are already a lot of things that make melee difficult. They don't also need a unique that's certain death to melee if they thwack it up close. Explopyro posted:I was surprised when they killed him off in D3, mainly because I can't imagine them making Diablo games without him in them, for better or worse he's the most iconic character of the series. Okay, here's the issue with Diablo's story: all you remember is Deckard Cain. I too was in the boat of thinking I liked the story of Diablo II more than III, and then I went back to II and realized I couldn't explain why outside of, "Well they didn't make as many bad ideas." When they axed Cain I'm pretty sure a lot of people had a hard time trying to figure out who else was there that they liked. What's hilarious is they killed him in the middle of act 1, where the only other person they're trying to make you care about is pretty universally reviled for how poorly written she is and what they end up doing with her. You know it's funny because I refuse to acknowledge the existence of Diablo Immortal so if they actually did things with the story in that game, well, someone else can explain it because I don't know nor care, until I feel the urge to see if they took it anywhere at all.
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Oct 12, 2022 00:08
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Keldulas posted:The thing with D2 I feel is that while the plot is essentially non-existent, the game does do some good atmosphere. It’s a very lonely place, where it’s just you and the taciturn mercenary you hired vs the hordes. And then during the moment of rest where you go back to civilization (or what passes for it), you come back to talk to Cain first so that he identifies your poo poo for you. Always talk to him first, his sound bite is memorable and goofy enough that it alleviates the repetition of it. Get attached to the bugger because he’s always there to help you and he’s a constant presence. I think the fact that his services are free helps to endear him, if he charged for what he does I don’t think he’d be as popular. This I think is the reason behind Diablo 2's charm: I have varying degrees of opinions on the places we'll go in this game, but they all look and sound very good at feeling empty and hostile. Though, I feel like this approach to atmosphere does get relied on a bit too hard, because we'll go to a real center of civilization and imo it'll still feel barren. ...Then there's Diablo 3 where New Tristram has many more corpses than they do townsfolk and the number is only increasing. It's not establishing the urgency of the plague in New Tristram. It's honestly just comical. What's curious about Act 1 is that exactly zero quests are required between you and the final one for the act. So long as you have the damage output and ability to avoid/tank damage nothing's stopping you from going to the end of the act. I dunno why you would unless you have leveling uniques handed to you, but yeah, you sure can just not rescue Cain and when you leave Act 1 he's just in the next act. You'll never be rid of him. As mentioned, he will be endearing to you whether you like it or not. As an aside, beyond Cain, the only other good character I can think of that has actual weight on the story is Tyrael, who is, interesting I like his character, but, the best way I can put it now is despite angels being a major factor in Diablo 2 they don't do a whole lot with them. I have a feeling I'll be able to better nail this down as I write more updates though.
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Oct 13, 2022 03:04
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Mechanics Talk 1-Attributes (All Mechanics Talk assume vanilla Diablo II unless otherwise noted.)  A character in Diablo II has four stats: Strength, Dexterity, Vitality, and Energy. Several other stats on the character screen are derived off them, but each level, you get 5 stat points to go put in those four. Each of them do their own things when you get another point in that stat. So you may be wondering what's the most efficient spread of stats? The answer is, unless your equipment demands it, Vitality. Let me explain. Strength only exists to grant extra physical attack damage, at a rate of +1% damage per 1 point of Strength put in. Elemental damage does not benefit, it's only whatever number's on your weapon and any boosts to physical damage you may have. Each point of Dexterity adds 5 points to Attack Rating, and every 5 points of Dexterity adds...one...to your Defense. Depending on the weapon, it'll be Dexterity or a mix of both it and Strength that boosts attack damage. Bows, specifically, care nothing about Strength and everything about Dexterity, and that's actually a good thing because then, instead of just the damage boost, you're also getting attack rating. Vitality simply grants max Life and max Stamina. How much is gained is based on the class: Barbarians get the most at +4 per point. Druids, Necromancers, and Sorceresses only get +2 per point. All other classes get +3. Normally in this game our base health will increased by about 2 or 3 every level, which means to really get a Life total that can survive things, Vitality becomes very important. Energy is Vitality, for Mana. It grants max Mana and how much it grants depends on the class, with Druid Necro and Sorc getting the most and Barb getting the least. However, putting points into Energy also indirectly boosts how much mana you regenerate per second...at a very miniscule rate but I'll cover how that works in a later update. The thing is, the per-point investment of most of these stats can be either bypassed or ran without:
You see, it's not just that more Life = less dying. Think about this from a hardcore perspective, where you aren't allowed to die. 10-20 more Life per level really adds up, and there will be times where you'll get hit a lot. You don't need to devote your stats to killing faster. That's what your gear and your skills are for. You should be using them to not die. Even the crutch points in Energy can be a hard sell because there could be a matter where you could've survived if you had just a bit more Life. Since most of the good builds don't rely on a weapon and Energy does nothing to spell damage, the other stats have well-defined limits to their usefulness. And let me make sure you understand. Sure, you could improve your weapon damage and chance to hit, but then you're losing Life doing so. Your gear will demand you put points in Strength and/or Dexterity, there's no getting around that. But keep in mind that putting 100 points in Strength for double your weapon damage, means you are without, on average, 300 Life. A level 20 Assassin will have around half that unless you dump all her points in Vitality, tripling her survivability. The best argument for putting points in something other than Vitality is if you use shields, because blocking demands you put enough points in Dexterity as well to get a good block chance. Weapons that use both Strength and Dexterity may sound good, but then you realize one point is now boosting your damage for LESS than if it had just used a single stat. While this still allows you to get the benefits off putting points in Dexterity instead of Strength, it's still getting less per point. All that said, though, you know what's the best use of your attribute points is? Holding them until you're needing them. It won't be immediately apparent how much Strength and Dexterity you'll need for any gear you find, and if you're playing softcore death is a slap on the wrist early on. Having the option to adapt to problems instead of being locked in to a solution is the wise thing to do here. If you're hardcore though, yeah, the more Life the better. The rest of the character screen, like Attack Rating, Defense, those damage numbers, will be covered on a later date.   Some of our mods don't like this and will change how this works though. For example, Eastern Sun gives you this charm, which will give various damage bonuses based on your stats. Your max damage goes up with investment in Strength and Dexterity, and your Energy improves elemental damage, with how much depending on what you're using. The normal elements get 1% per 4 points, magic and wind, which is something you'll see in classes like Paladin and Druid, only get 6, and because summons are a little dumb they get +1% every 2 points. Funny enough, Median XL does nothing to these stats...all the meanwhile really increasing your base Life and Mana so Vitality becomes significantly less impactful. However! Direct damage spells will scale their damage off your Energy, (through a new mechanic called Spell Focus) meaning if you use spells Energy becomes an option for improving damage.
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Oct 13, 2022 19:36
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too bad the barb im playin is actually a sorceress 
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Oct 14, 2022 01:23
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FoolyCharged posted:STRENGTH ONLY SORC! YEEEEAH BOY! I feel like at some point when I get the free time I need to do exactly this and see what happens.
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Oct 14, 2022 01:50
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Time for a new update, where we decide that loot is more important than saving the world for a brief moment.
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Oct 15, 2022 18:07
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Gnoman posted:There's one other reason I hate this enemy type above all others. Their death sound is incredibly similar (to my ears, at least) to the sound made by a dropped ring. So every time I kill one, I think I got a nice bit of above-average loot, only to be bitterly disappointed most of the time. Oh, I have something very similar in that sometimes when a Wraith dies my mind tells me I leveled up, and then I look down and get disappointed. This has been an issue since the very beginning and I have never been able to stop myself from thinking that.
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Oct 15, 2022 21:49
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Explopyro posted:There is a lot of technical bullshit (which I can get into if anyone really wants me to) I am making the occasional update that is nothing but technical bullshit. By all means, keep it coming. Speaking of: Mechanics Talk 2-Attack Rating, Defense, and Running (All Mechanics Talk assume vanilla Diablo II unless otherwise noted.)  So, you've heard me shittalk melee and anything using Attack Rating quite a bit already. Today we're here to explain why and also lump in how running works as well because you may not think it, but it also has a factor in not getting hit. First, Attack Rating. It's a massive number that doesn't mean a whole lot in the grand scheme of things. Plenty of trash item affixes in basegame will just give a paltry amount to AR, which sounds like it's good when you use weapons/physical damage, but when I say paltry, I mean "Eeeeh that +10 to AR might give you an extra percent chance or two to hit...early on." Percentage boosts to AR make a bigger difference, and incentivizes getting a good base AR so that you get a better multiply bonus. However, these are mostly available through skills that multiply AR, like Sacrifice and Stun. There's some ways to get AR multipliers off items, but most of those are sets and uniques. But, here, let me finally break down what AR's deal is. This is the formula to see if you ever hit someone with a physical attack: Chance to hit% = 100 * 2 * ( alvl / (alvl+dlvl) ) * ( AR / (AR+Def) ) alvl = your level / dlvl = defender's level AR = your attack rating / Def = their defense Chance to hit is clamped between 5% and 95%. In layman's terms, the 100% base chance is doubled, then reduced based on how greater their level and Def is over yours. I want you to realize something important: character level matters for hit checks. It actually matters just as much as AR. Later on, these numbers will get much larger, and as a result, small differences will matter much less. But there's a problem in this: you see, if both of you have the same level, and the same AR and Def, then what happens is your chance to hit comes out to 50%, or, you miss half your attacks. This is because, if your levels are 20, then (alvl/(alvl+dlvl)) is worked out to be (20 / 40) or 0.5, which means that 200 is dropped back down to 100. The same thing will happen if your AR and Def are the same, and now you'll have crap accuracy. How do you escape this? By having several times the AR as their Def, and that just does not happen in Diablo II, especially when higher difficulties will jack these numbers way up. Guess what having double their level equates to? About a 17% boost so it's around 67% chance to hit. If you have twice of both their level and their defense as AR, then that goes up to a ~88% chance to hit. One of these factors is going to cap at 99. Highest monster level tends to be around the 85 range, so being level 99 and having equal AR to their Def means your hit chance is...53%. Twice their Def is 71%. Worse: as these numbers get higher, it becomes much harder to get the double, triple, and greater quantities of AR to completely overwhelm their Def and have a reliable chance to hit. And finally we'll always have at least a 5% chance to hit and a 5% chance to miss. The issue here is that we don't attack nearly often enough early on to shrug this off. Later, if we choose to swing or shoot weapons, increased attack speed, or IAS, will typically be the solution to monsters that will have significant edges in level and Def, and that's almost a guarantee. The monster numbers scale but your Dexterity bonuses do not. They're so insignificant and the item affixes so minute that it's really not worth it to try to boost your AR without the use of a skill that multiplies it. It's also just not something to seek on gear. There's much better mods to run in its place. All of this applies to Defense as well, but Defense is more straightforward to increase. For starters, you really do not get much of a bonus from putting points in Dexterity. (1 point of Def per every 5 Dex baybee) It's instead off using gear with higher base Defense. Just enough points to put on the heaviest armor or whatever's appropriate is the solution to dodging attacks. Another solution is to just never get into melee range and dodge arrows like you dodge spells. I'm not saying these two mechanics are useless. I'm saying trying to focus on them takes a lot more effort than other mechanics to focus on. Your level and your choice of skill will be the biggest contributions to using a weapon. Item affixes won't add much, especially not points in Dexterity. Even when you get it you will have the hardest time in the world figuring out if it made a significant difference, and the answer is usually no. This is why whenever you want to hit monsters more, you should consider swinging more often first before deciding to increase AR. They're both relevant for melee, and when you're swinging fast enough, your statistics on hitting versus missing will normalize so that that ~3% increase can translate into a more tangible boost to damage. But eventually you can only do so much. It is possible to get the AR necessary though. 5 digits in AR is feasible and will make most everything hittable. Even around 5,000 AR will give you a good enough chance to hit near the end of the game. The reason why AR is unpopular is, instead of devoting parts of your build to that, you could be devoting those parts fo other things like oh I dunno, life, raw damage, not having to roll to hit. Course, none of this applies if a monster hits you while you're running. Stamina is a resource that is only lost when you run or are hit by monsters that drain stamina. It's only used to run, and there's something about running you need to know if you plan to dodge hits. Did they swing at you? Yes. Are you running? Yes. Okay. They hit. Guaranteed. They don't even roll for the attack so if you were running when they swung and you're still in range, it doesn't matter if you have yes Defense, you're still hit. So don't run around in combat! You can run around all you want between combat and you can run to break away from enemies but when you're in the middle of a horde don't run unless you want to get hit! This will not only solve you getting hit despite having a lot of Def, it'll also make sure you don't run out of stamina...in a game where you should be putting more of your points into Vitality and bringing stamina potions if you're running that often. I'm sorry the game or even its manual never tells you running's weakness. If it makes you feel better it's mentioned in Arreat Summit. DarkMatt fucked around with this message at 20:41 on Oct 16, 2022 |
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Oct 16, 2022 17:18
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NGDBSS posted:Putting aside a probable typo (guessing the last factor is AR / (AR + Def)), that's...the same as before? Unless there's some rounding in how Median XL does that calculation I don't see how this gets around the commutative property.  Well it's edited now.
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Oct 16, 2022 20:41
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I am caught between night of the 2nd day and midnight of the 3rd day, so new update is now. It's the end of Act 1.
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Oct 18, 2022 08:06
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Dirk the Average posted:And I think it's worth noting that most of the towns trust you more or less immediately after the first quest or two, usually right around the time the mercenary unlocks. That's usually once you've wiped out whatever immediately threatens the town. Thing is, this is what makes the "mistrust -> hero worship" trope annoying: it just takes one or two nudges for that to instantly melt. I'm not to judge that as realistic or not, but it gets repeated in this game to the point where it undermines the weight of your actions. I guess that's the point: Diablo 2 is just about the power fantasy and not your impact on their world, but I'll still hold it to scrutiny, especially when it hasn't aged well at all. Hey thanks for being the person who knows more about this game than I do because I could've sworn I read that chill doesn't mess with cast speed at some point but then it didn't stick around for when I wrote the update. Oh well. At least I can always edit it in post. MagusofStars posted:One other thing about Andy that you didn’t mention: For new players, she’s going to be your first experience with poison that matters. You encounter a few normal mobs use poison (e.g., poison-themed Skeleton Mages), but it’s both rare and also consistently less threatening than a fire-themed Skeleton Mage or fire-enchanted uniques where they die in a high damage burst explosion or etc. I know I didn't specifically state what your expected life total is going to be for spider lady, but I did write down a number for the poison and called it, "oof. a lot poison." I imagine new players can have a good idea where their life total is at...I hope. It is pretty funny though that, outside of maybe Bone Ash, poison has never been a problem. But the poison by itself does not lead to (almost) instant death. It's definitely the "Oh so she's just like any other monster I'm gonna walk up to her start hitting her and what happened to my life?" And then when that player tries to heal, they then realize that poison is counteracting any meaningful healing they can do with just healing potions. Regardless, the poison, while very dangerous, isn't typically what causes death. (It's the point blank spray.) However, that's going to change soon. 
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Oct 19, 2022 06:24
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Black Robe posted:I get why this is annoying from a gameplay perspective, but as part of the worldbuilding it makes complete sense. This is a medieval fantasy society. 90% of people never go more than a few miles from home in their entire lives. You help out one village and prove yourself to them, at which point they do pretty much worship you because nobody's ever cared about them before and they've likely never met anyone as skilled, but the people down the road will probably never hear about it, because it's not like there's an equivalent of a newspaper or the internet. To be fair maybe I've just seen too much medieval fantasy, because you are right. My complaint is this happens all the time. Though, it's more an issue of "It's a medieval fantasy and it's hard to really deviate from that," than "The writers aren't going anywhere with this medieval fantasy." I was on the fence about keeping the rant after doing the research, but I think, even if I know and understand the setting, genre, and so on, I'm still feeling like the term "hero" is just a word, and I'm 100% disconnected from the power fantasy the game is trying to do. Course, that's on me, not the game. It's also 20+ years old.
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Oct 19, 2022 20:33
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Neeeeew update. We pull up to a desert city but there's evil afoot!
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Oct 22, 2022 18:27
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Dirk the Average posted:I know we talked about the heroism thing earlier, but I want to point out the beginning of Act II now that we've seen it. What I think happened is that I played Act 1 way too much as a child. (Because I was bad at the game at the time and I would on-and-off it, so I would see the beginning of this game a lot.) I realize now, after thinking about it enough, that why I went on a tirade about that is not because of the rest of the game, but because each character is hyped up yet it doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things, since, as mentioned, most people in Sanctuary don't look anywhere outside their farmstead. Like, maybe Paladins have something resembling fame??? You can also say this for Necromancers. But this is more an issue of the writing in the game than the character writing outside the game. It's really just me being too old. The game does try. The rant on sewer levels, on the other hand, I think is justified. MagusofStars posted:I actually enjoyed the Lut Gholein sewers. It's weird conceptually if you think about it (just like every sewer level), but as a dungeon, it's pretty solid. Introduces a couple new enemy types, strikes a nice balance between being a bit maze-like but not over-the-top twisty corridors, excellent end boss. My primary issue with the Lut Gholein sewers is, as mentioned, several of these new monsters can blindside and annihilate you if you let them. You can struggle with Andariel trying to figure out how to survive her, and then get through that and into the sewers and the sewers are particularly nasty if you are still fresh meat. If you stumbled through Andariel you're in for pain there.
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Oct 22, 2022 20:50
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Mechanics Talk 3-Blocking and Getting Hit (All Mechanics Talk assume vanilla Diablo II unless otherwise noted.) You may have thought AR was headache inducing. I didn't talk about shields until now, where very few things about it is actually explained to you by the game. Each time you are hit and you have a shield, you have a chance to, instead, block it, taking no damage but still going into what's termed blockstun. Hitstun and blockstun are different, and item affixes can speed up one or the other. Unfortunately, this does mean faster hit recovery is not faster block recovery, which means you can recover quickly from one, but not the other, unless you get both. This gets worse. If you are in either hitstun or blockstun, you can't block again. This means no, you can't block forever. If anything, if you're not careful, you'll block, then either get hit, or block again, then get hit again, and so on so forth. (blocklock) You can definitely shorten blockstun to the point where you'll have a high chance to block most attacks, but you still don't want to sit there and take many attacks at once. This is why most people will care more about speeding up hitstun, and defense is still relevant even if you're blocking. But, that's not the biggest problem with blocking. No, it's this formula: Chance to Block% = (Shield + Bonus) * (Dex-15) / (clvl*2) Chance to Block is capped at 75% Shield = Shield's base block chance Bonus = Class-specific block bonus, and bonuses from items and skills, all summed together. Dex = your Dexterity clvl = your level Bonus is added to block chance and it depends on what class you are. Paladin obvs has the highest at +30. Druid, Necro, and Sorc all have +20. The rest have +25. Bucklers for example actually have no base block chance so it will be 30% for Paladin. The way you make this block chance higher is by having Dexterity. A lot of Dexterity. They, did not program a floor in this, so your chance to block is actually WORSE if you go several levels without putting points in Dex. The worst part is, you can't really beat this tide unless you dump points in Dex. There's builds that would like decent block chance, or even a max block chance of 75%, for various reasons. Most builds however do not let that trouble them. As before, the higher your level gets, the harder it is to have investment in hitting and dodging matter at all. To have base block chance you need 2 points of Dex per level and 15 more. That number gets much higher if you wish to try to hit the cap through Dex. No, instead, you'll typically use a high grade shield (with high base block chance) and then affixes to get there. It is definitely possible, but Dex has to get a good investment of points, (213 Dex at max level to get normal block chance) which can be unappetizing to some people, because all those points could be in Vitality instead. Some monsters can block as well. Obviously the ones that are shown to have a shield, (like Skeletons) can block, and have their own base chances to do so, but curiously, many monsters have defined block ratings but don't have actual animations for when hey block. What's even funnier is some monsters will have this and still be able to block, all because of a single variable in their stats saying "no it's fine you can block". This means, Greater Mummies, and every act boss, despite not having shields, can and do block. There's a couple others but I think pointing these two out is the most fun. Anyway, hitstun or hit recovery happens when you take significant damage. The more damage you take, the more likely you are to get hitstun, but you need to take at least 1/16th of your health as non-poison damage. This is what makes blocking an investment: any damage blocked will put you in block recovery even if it's just a plink, meaning, for your sanity, you will need faster block recovery to minimize time spent sitting around doing nothing. I'm sure plenty of fresh meat have tried to get max block, and then realize they're sitting ducks most of the time because they're always in blockstun. As for what you can block, typically anything physical. The block check happens after a successful roll to hit, and is affected by nothing but your Dexterity, which means, if you go down this path, you have a 75% chance to just ignore any attack you can block. This is actually really good when paired with enough faster block recovery that you can reliably keep blocking. Spells and elemental damage don't care about silly concepts like hit checks, and if they don't roll to hit you don't roll to block. You, can block things like monster explosions and the explosion from Fire Enchanted uniques, but not block things like Corpse Explosion, Smite, or anything that doesn't deal physical damage. It's not intuitive. Don't ask me for the full list. But I'll share an amusing fact: you can't block anything while holding an item in your cursor. Anyway, the second thing. Remember how you could always get hit when you're running? There's one exception: you can still block. ...Course, keep in mind your block chance is reduced to a third when running so that'll actually be 25% and not 75%...and if you block you are going to stop running because you're in blockstun now, but hey it's something. So, is blocking good? Sure, it can be, later on. Paladins specifically are the best at blocking. If you don't want to use their class-exclusive shields and stack block speed, Holy Shield just makes whatever they're wearing extremely better, to the point where you're blinking and missing you block. Early on you won't have powerful enough gear to support blocking most of your taken attacks, because you won't be A: blocking enough, and B: blocking fast enough. Instead, in most scenarios, more Life will work much better for stopping blows due to how hitstun works. But I do wanna stress: 75% chance to quickly block is a very effective defensive mechanic. Even then shields are always good to have even if you don't get a high block chance because they allow you to stack more item affixes than using a two-handed weapon, but that's a story for another day. These block chance numbers go waaaaaaayyyyy dooooown in MXL. The formula is the same, but your base block chance is either, 3, 1, or 0%. So shields provide block chance right? ...No. Unless it's a class shield which will give you all of 1 extra percent. To be fair, with how wumbo the numbers can get, you can get a good block chance...except it's capped at 50% instead of 75%....Okay nevermind.
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Oct 24, 2022 18:48
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Simply Simon posted:Hey Drognan, you happen to have a wand with +3 Bone Spear for sale? No? 's cool And that's to say nothing about Eastern Sun's, uhh, free included and online-sanctioned plugins to automate shop rolling, which can be pretty mandatory.
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Oct 25, 2022 01:54
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New update. Some mods streamline the macguffin gathering process in Act 2 by giving us the Cube already. The other mods? Well,
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Oct 26, 2022 08:52
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achtungnight posted:Zoltan Kule pops up in Diablo 3 as an Act 2 advisor and later a dungeon boss. Funny you should mention him. And then he's just in your camp because where the gently caress else is he going to go and he attempts to get back at you by littering. It has been a while since I've paid attention to Diablo 3's story, but I think dumbing it down to this is the best case scenario.
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Oct 26, 2022 17:29
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New update. Happy almost Halloween! What better way to celebrate spooky holiday, than to stumble around in the dark?
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Oct 30, 2022 18:33
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MagusofStars posted:It does feel weird they didn't at least give it some kind of reward though; even a meaningless triviality like a random rare amulet or something would make it feel a little more like a real 'quest'. To be real I've always assumed the amulet was the reward for that quest, and I'm not too sure why when it's just a piece of a different key to use later in a different quest. It does definitely feel like Tainted Sun has no place in the Act, but well, I do have a hard time trying to figure out what the good quests are and put why they're good in words. Probably just the ones that have you do doing interesting things but are interwoven into you playing the game, like rescuing Cain or killing Radament. Rappaport posted:I would like to take this opportunity to contrast this miserable slog with the sewer level that opens Act II. Okay, the sewers are several times larger than the town and don't make a lick of sense, but neither does anything about the land of Diablo 2 the way it is presented. As a game section? That dungeon is also dark, but it's comprised of rooms (sort of), tunnels wider than the Sorceress's shoulders, and the only sort of bull-poo poo are the flaming dead archers. Granted they hurt, and are sort of scary, but that's a good thing at that stage of the game. The player is introduced to a new desert locale, so it's different from the English countryside marsh hellscape, and now there's this vague Egyptian desert theme going on, and there's skeletons that are on fire and they want to set you on fire, too. It's a party down there! I'm not kind to Lut Gholein because there'll be other locations later in Diablo 2 that do a better job at establishing vastness and scope. But I will say that most of my hate on the Lut Gholein Sewers has to do with the fact that I never liked playing a sewer level in a role playing game. The Sewers do feel like it's just as hard as Catacombs, if not harder, but most of my grievances with this specific sewer level is not its fault. Burning Dead is a rude wake up call though if the signposting the game was doing in the Monastery doesn't hit home. You're not gonna have fire resist unless by pure happenstance, and it won't be a lot. That said, I will agree it's a good thing that we're going to very different locales, and with how pretty they all look, they really help cement an impression if you were playing this in 2000, maybe even today. It's just that, the gameplay might get in the way of that, because we aren't out of act 2 yet. There's still a couple other rough patches. But also, all I've learned really analyzing Diablo so far is that everywhere's a party if you try hard enough. 
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Oct 31, 2022 04:30
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Plenty of things about Act 2 are more annoying than actually bad. Sewers are rough, Desert can be confusing, and Tombs can be painful but doable. Though, I will agree that there's no defending Maggot Lair, which brings everything not involving splash damage or piercing projectiles to a grinding halt. It's why I'm happy for the mods that improve it, because I'm still wondering why people thought killling monsters 1 at a time instead of all of them all the time was cool.
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Nov 2, 2022 00:17
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New update. Today is the day I call the Vizjerei a bunch of idiots. How? Click the image to find out.
DarkMatt fucked around with this message at 21:38 on Nov 2, 2022 |
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Nov 2, 2022 21:35
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Mechanics Talk 4-How gaining Life/Mana and gaining Resistances work (All Mechanics Talk assume vanilla Diablo II unless otherwise noted.) There's quite a few ways to recover your red and blue juice without using potions. The reason why I haven't really focused on them, until now when I'm doing a wonky way to recover mana with Greg atm, is because they're a mess of mechanics, which means another mechanics talk. For Life, players have 0 innate regeneration. Everyone else does, this includes your minions and hirelings. Courtesy of D2 FAQtoids, here's the formula: regL/s = Lmax * vreg / 4096 * 25 regL/s = Life regenerated per second Lmax = Max Life Vreg = Unit-specific modifier to life regen So if you say, have 300 Life and a regen rate of 2, you get about 3.6 Life regenerated per second. The formula isn't necessary, I can just use simple English: get more Life on your minions -> they get more Regen. There's no way to change their base regen otherwise. Replenish Life, meanwhile, is an item affix that grants you life regen. There's, uhh, one singular problem with this. Every single source of Replenish Life is pathetically miniscule. It'll say Life Replenish +1. You may think it's 1 life per second. It's 1 life over 10 seconds. It's not exactly 10 seconds but it's a close enough approximation that you actually need Replenish Life +10 to get, all of 1, Life, regenerated per second. (As a quick note, there's a rare Drain Life affix that's just this but in reverse. Like poison it can't kill you. It just makes you really easy to kill.) Diablo 2 is not a game where life regen is a viable way to stay alive. I've only ever used it to heal off damage from encounter to encounter. The mods make the wording much more clearer but I haven't seen any of them try to make it viable to run so far. Life/Mana after each Kill is another affix that may sound good, but it also falls off over time and, you must directly land the killing blow on the enemy to get the recovery. This means builds that rely solely on minions never make use of this affix. That said though, it's better than most item-based ways to recover. Damage Taken Goes to Mana is an affix that sounds like what the Sorceress Energy Shield does, but it's not splitting damage to your Mana. It's returning a portion of damage taken to Life as Mana. It's missing the word "suffered" somewhere in there. There isn't any hoops to go through but if you are taking that much damage to clear content in this game, you're probably not clearing content efficiently. Maybe if you're melee? I dunno, it's hard to sell this affix. Finally, there's X% Life/Mana Stolen Per Hit, or, life/mana leech. It does what it says: deal damage, get a percentage of that as leech back. What it doesn't tell you and what really limits its usefulness is, it must be physical damage. You can't leech off elemental or magic damage. If you use spells, which most people use elemental damage over physical for their primary source, this affix is useless. It gets better: some monsters can be physically vulnerable but you still can't leech off them because they just have resistance or immunity to it. And then there's the fact that each difficulty nerfs how much leech you can get off anyone. It's disgusting. They nerfed it way too hard for it to be useful in most builds. If you are a physical build or you have a good secondary physical damage source, though, it can power your mana hungry spells...in the right build, where you are able to afford the gear and/or skill points to make that happen. Now while Life Regen is barely noticeable, you do innately regenerate Mana over time, quite slowly. No matter your maximum Mana, you will regenerate from 0 to full in 2 minutes. So the higher your maximum Mana is, the more Mana you regenerate per second. Replenish Mana % is an affix that makes little sense at a glance, but what it does is speed up the rate. Replenish Mana 100% means you'll get full mana in 1 minute instead of 2. 300% will turn that to 30 seconds, and so on. Curiously, this means doubling your max Mana has the same effect as getting 100% extra Mana Regen...and at the end of the day, that's probably more useful because you're not just getting more mana regenerated per second, you're also getting a bigger can of juice to cast spells with. At the end of the day, the answer most people will give you is to chug Mana Potions. Levels and gear will also give you more Mana, which will improve how much Mana you regenerate, and allow you to sling more spells before quaffing. All this means skulls are terrible when slotted into anything but your weapon. Anyway, Resistances. Yours is boosted primarily by your gear, whatever socketables you have put in it, and then some skills can provide additional resistance. They work as a modifier to the percentage of damage taken of that element: if you have 75 fire resist, you take a quarter of any fire damage dealt. 75 cold resist also means chill durations are cut to a quarter. Same goes for 75 poison resist and poison duration. There is, curiously, a floor to how low your resistances can get, and it's -100, or double damage. We've already seen some nasty elemental damage and we only see many more flavors of bonus elemental damage, so resistance capping is a must for most builds. Of course, some types are more important than others: poison outside of Andariel can either be avoided or safely ignored. Cold resistance to cut down on chill is important, but there's not that many common sources of cold damage. It's, strangely enough, fire and lightning resist you want. The former because the big sources of fire damage are very lethal, and the latter because of Scarab Demons among other things. But there's a bit more at work here: their resistances. There are a couple skills that can lower those resists and cause them to take more damage of certain types. Amplify Damage works this way by lowering physical resist, which is an actual thing the stat screen never shows. You may hope that these are how you punch through damage immunities, and in certain cases you're right. Immune monsters will have resistances at 100 or more, which will be shorthanded to "take no damage". If you attempt to lower those resistances, your debuff will apply at 1/5th the usual rate. If a monster has 110 Lightning Resistance, you would need to apply over -50 Lightning Resist to break the immunity. Several monsters are nice enough to only have 100, but some will have 150 and be utterly invincible to that element. I will have words about this later, when this becomes the norm. But don't despair. -X Enemy Elemental Resistance doesn't do anything to immunities, but work as normal if you break the Immunity. Meaning a 100 Resist monster, that gets broken down to 90 with your lower resist, will now take the full reduction to resist from that affix. That makes that affix an absolute premium for most builds, since it's one of the most effective ways to multiply your damage output. It's also buggy in that the monster may no longer say it's immune, but it still is. There's a couple other tidbits here, but I'm not known for covering every detail. We're getting to the point where we're looking at very advanced mechanics that the devs have no idea how they work, let alone me, so this is a good time to stop. So, if you are wondering, yes, you should have backup damage types for much later on.
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Nov 4, 2022 17:47
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MagusofStars posted:This is also why regen and life-steal are fundamentally pointless. Even if life-steal was buffed, the deaths still occur over such a short time frame that life-steal is rarely going to be enough to tip the scales from dead to "barely survived". And Diablo just isn't built with any real endurance/gauntlet style dungeons, so the fact that steal/regen keeps you topped up between battles isn't particularly meaningful. Yeah, I'm clapping my hands and realizing, "Oh it's really just more life and resists isn't it?" A little disappointing but it does make defenses a simple matter to solve. Which is good. Dying sucks. Like, it's hard to portray, but Eastern Sun does have gratuitous enough lifesteal that you can effectively heal off any damage done to you before they can pile on more, but then there's still all the issues involving physical damage, and just the very act of leeching. It really is just better to slam as much life as possible.
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Nov 5, 2022 06:00
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Spoggerific posted:The Arcane Sanctuary may have a lot of narrow paths like the maggot lair, but to me the important difference between it and the maggot lair is that there are no walls. The stuff blocking your path is all empty space, so you can fire over it with ranged skills. Also, the look of the entire place is I did kinda underplay the Sanctuary oops. Though, from my experience I was unable to pick out the differences, even during the runs where I had to go through 3 or all 4 of the paths. What I can say about it, is that it is indeed an archer's delight and it can be really "fun" for melee who can see the other side of portals, see it's chock full of enemies, and has to either wait for their Rogue to clear it out or just shrug and go in. There probably is a tier list for each path but man, you'd think I would pick up on that but I honestly didn't. (Not to mention, lightning ghosts in MXL make that pretty difficult.) Oh well, we'll be back to it later. I can gush about space sanctuary then, because I do like it aesthetically.
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Nov 5, 2022 12:16
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As a heads up, it is extra life week and I've been spending it socializing in local events. I am definitely going to be late with this next update, (though not that late, maybe just a day or two late) but I figure it's a special enough occasion. It also gives me time to 
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Nov 6, 2022 08:50
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Alright, new update's up. It's the end of Act 2.
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Nov 7, 2022 19:46
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| # ¿ May 9, 2024 01:30 |
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Explopyro posted:I'm kind of confused what you mean by this, unless you're maybe thinking of a source of Teleport? Town Portals also kind of work, though of course you're jumping out of the battle and back into it (and it doesn't work that great unless you open a portal in advance before you need it). Also, you can feed potions to mercenaries. Either by dragging and dropping it onto their portrait (which is usually too slow to do mid-combat), or by holding shift when pressing the belt hotkey. Full rejuvs work just as well on them as they do on player characters. It's not a perfect solution by any means, but it can help keep them from dying. This is exactly what I'm talking about. I can use Town Portals but that's not a good idea for every single time the mercenary gets stuck in a tree, or drowned in a sea of demons, or otherwise pretends to not be here. It's worth noting that some mods make the mercenary much more capable of keeping up with you and that tends to solve most mercenary related problems because they'll never fall behind and then get stuck. I just wish this was all mods. Simply Simon posted:Tyrael is the most incompetent moron in a game full of them. I mean, I wasn't gonna say anything until we finish Normal, but you know what I suppose you don't have to play very much of either Diablo 2 or 3 to conclude he is a giant idiot, as I have. It doesn't help that, while I was going through those games, I kept on adding to the "list of bad ideas Tyrael had" list. DarkMatt fucked around with this message at 19:26 on Nov 8, 2022 |
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Nov 8, 2022 19:21
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