State of diablo 2

They're really grindy, and in the same unfun sense as having to remake your character in Diablo 2 to change builds.

(That's aside from the bad writing, archaic shitty gameplay, horrendous character design, bad controls, bad art direction, etc. But those don't relate to this directly.)

Did Final Fantasy diddle you when you were a kid?

Read more kotaku mate.

I understand where you're coming with this argument, but I always though that it made you commit more to the choices you made, and had more strategy and though involved, even if you had to create 3 or 4 characters before you got a build you liked

that re-roll option just takes me out of the game… my best barbarian was absolutelly not my first character, i first tried a few different builds and then restarted and spend entire levels without spending skill points before the unlocking the abilities I really wanted and then reinforced them from the moment they became available

i also hated among other things that diablo 3 allowed for constant shift on the builds, almost on the fly

...

Now I feel like playing some D2.

Is there any site for fun builds? Last time I rolled as Bonemancer. I was playing with 2 of my friends through the game on the hardest difficulty and I essentially bitchslapped Diablo myself with Bone Spirit with a debilitating spell thrown in every once in a while, while my friends (barb and druid) were doing shit-all damage to the guy.

True, the fact that you can't change your skills almost necessitates a deeper understanding of the game's mechanics and strategy. It's like making the leap from normal to hardcore characters.
But fuck me if it's not an absolute pain in my ass. Call me a casual on this one, I just hate it. I usually end up making a bunch of characters to experiment with anyway, but it just feels more tedious without the ability to respec.

You get one reset after the 1st quest of every difficulty, then you get one when you get 1 of every essence of each boss.

It's especially pointless to lock players into builds because it means they just research a perfect one in advance anyways and never try anything new.

Reminder to play Median XL.

just different things for different people.

Hi newfag

not a newfag, but usually post more in Holla Forums and Holla Forums, so it slipped

Do 8-man naked (no equipment) ironman mode ~search youtube for it.

just reinstalled this
fairly new to the game but last time i installed this shit i ended up rolling necromancer (tried bone, poison and corpse explosion in each respective difficulty. CE 100% carried me through nightmare)

what play

A necro oldfag here. Corpse explosion doesn't get stronger in 8 player mode and its radius gains were nerfed significantly since the time of me playing the game the last time. OTOH the cow level is amazingly easy with it.

Yeah, in large groups the Necromancer's role is generally to be a tank. Anyone gets in trouble they can just move back behind the invincible skeleton wall, plus enemies tend to mostly attack the skeletons anyways. Plus a degree of support since you'll ideally have an aura and your merc will have an aura or two. Paladins can do better auras, of course, but only one at a time.

It's hard to enjoy the game now because something just seems wonky about the clicking. Like the pathfinding is fucked or something. I can't explain it.

Iron Maiden in Chaos Sanctuary is also gone, OP. You're way behind.

Respeccing should have been there from get go.

I don't remember offhand the exact patch versions, but I think that wonk was around since 1.08?

OP, iirc shit changed a lot with 1.10 (the final gameplay change patch) onward. Re-speccing is just a bandaid that barely covers a gaping wounds in the game's fundamental structure. Pre-req skill tree does not age well. Stat point allocation sounded great and fresh on paper when it debuted, but does not age well without re-spec. It did not help that the fun police started to infect deeper with each patch release. You can still find some fun in the game, just realize that 1.10 onward made the game different depending which patch you remembered playing last.

Reminder to put at least 1 point in holy freeze as pally for normal difficulty if you want the game on training wheels

Durr, I should've wrote, free stat allocation without a class limit or cap without re-specc ability.

That was the first thing that got nerfed for necro. Probably patch 1.01 haha

You want pal on training wheels? Hammer paladin all the way.
classic.battle.net/diablo2exp/skills/paladin-combat.shtml#blessedhammer
Concentration aura buff BHammer. Also synergy with the running aura; anything you can't kill, you can run away.
Do it!

Guess what dipshit, if RNG decides to lay a thick fucking log on your chest and not give you the set items to complete your build, but instead every other set item you don't want you can just swap your skills to temporarily take advantage of that set. So progression doesn't need to come to a screeching halt.
If they patch the game so that another skill that wasn't viable before now is you don't have to fucking start all over.
If you just want to test a skill out you aren't fucking locked into that choice forever. Just for wanting to explore the games mechanics more.

Jesus fuck OP you must be more autistic than this fucking rant.

For the rest of you fucks:

I have a normal fag friend who likes to co op in it. I already told him it's shit, but he doesn't listen.

Holy shit nice trips you devil.

Yep, when new patches come out they usually also break a lot of builds before the re-spec thing, and that was not fun at all. Fuck the sanctimonius pricks who says "just build a new char, it will be fun starting over and over and over". Fuck them with a burning rake, I've played more than enough to know the early levels is a lot of padded filler.

This is what is frustrating in many ways. I've played a ton of D2. That part of D2 locking in your choice though, if you rip away the nostalgia and contrarian faggots defending it. It ages really badly. Re-spec doesn't fix the bad foundation but at least it reduces the retardation.

D3 on PC is at worst garbage, at best meh tier. On console it's actually somewhat less cancerous, but kinda proves that bliz likely wanted d3 to be console bait in the first place.

I'm considering buying this but I'm curious as to what the current player population is like.
Are there many servers still up? Are there still trist runs and stuff like that going for new players to boost through?

I only ever really played through the campaign with a friend, so I didn't get to grind the endgame and all that cool stuff.

Those drop from the act bosses too and not just from Uber Tristram bosses

Yup, 1.10 made me quit the game.
Difficulty went up, and fun builds went out.

It was the end of pure single minded builds like FW sorc, it was all a push to promote coop play since the end goal was to push D2 players to WoW.

Also the end of fucked up dupes and soj everything (like soj occulus)

It was the beginning of the new blizzard, streamlining everything, putting up barriers to channel the park visitors instead of letting them have their own fun however they want to.

Is there a way to play pre 1.10 d2 today on modern PC with win7 ?

Melee poisonmancer/corpse explosion tank. Or if you have a group to play with leaping sorcerer barbarian yelling man

Tristam
It

I think 1.10 also overestimated the amount of fun that was left in the game, bizarre considering bliz not only squashed many fun builds but also upped the exp curve, making it more tedious to reach max lvl. Blizz you godamn nigger, D2 was fairly decent especially in some earlier patches but it wasn't undisputed GOAT.
I doubt bliz cared specifically about co-op that much, but for sure they cared about pushing Online Realms and WoW. They don't understand that it's not a 100% overlap between the two franchise fanbase of Diablo and WoW, yet that was a yuuge push in D3.
I think how they went about it was wrong but many people could not see it at the time. Their solution was Online Realms, but nowadays I think that doesn't solve the problem at all, just moves it into two semi different places instead of keeping it to one. Especially with many of the better Runewords available as Realms Only. I think something like the way TL2 handles it is better in current year.
It basically was, iirc Bliz north got canned and many of the key people that IMO really made the better part of bliz up and left.
I haven't played it in a whilesorry brah, but on paper it shouldn't be a problem for Single Player or maybe LAN. Otherwise 1.10 with mods and utilities to enable realms only runeword for Offline and such, if you don't like 1.10 vanilla.

What happened in 1.10 to make it unfun? The last time I played was patch 1.04

made the game more difficult, in a try to force people to coop more during online "runs"

upped the XP curve by qutie a lot, too much actually, leveling became a grinding bore.

killed a lot of fun and quirky builds, also many traditional builds, by complete revamp of skill system with synergies and many nerfs.

erased all the dupes and cheated items from online. there used to be bugs that permitted massive duplicate of items, and also permitted to spawn item online that virtually didn't exist by merging properties of 2 differents items into one, the most populars being the "soj" items, an item already good, with added properties from Stone of Jordan ring.

those special items enabled fun builds thanks to all the +X to skills, and those builds went to the trash.

I forgot they also introduced a lot more of the "immune to X" monsters, especially in the final difficulty level, killing even more one-trick pony builds, like sorcs using only 1 element for example.

and covered most of the changes, certainly feel free to try seeing it for yourself, YMMV and such. But basically dual element builds with a physical attack like crushing blow as backup is a minimum if you plan to venture beyond Normal difficulty, thanks to the retarded monster immunities. It's not that hard to do but it does put into question bliz "of course we want players to have diverse builds" because in practice cookie cutter power builds almost becomes necessary, especially if you can't always rely on having another co-op player.

Crushing Blow as a scaling attack or % based iirc was nerfed in 1.10, before if you were a poorfag but you knew what you were doing you could still compensate with a Strength runeword weapon or other items that has CBlow. 1.10 upped the itamz requirement, not drastically but IMO noticeable enough to be annoying.

Just off the top of my head here.
-Barbarians keep getting nerfed it seems with every patch, it's like someone at bliz has a hateboner for the class. You can still find some fun with barbs, but IMO in 1.10 he's more like a traffic cop. Last time I played D2 I did play some high level barb using a dual wield barbarian, no whirlwind. IIRC using dual runeword phaseblades, I forgot the exact name but it's the one with chance to cast decripify, and the other was Crescent Moon chance to cast Static Field. Can also use or combine it with Crushing Blow.
-Certain skills\spells no longer stacks, and has a timer cooldown. I might misremembered, maybe this was in a previous patch but even if so, 1.10 has or kept it. Affects some sorceress and a couple of the fire arrow skills iirc.
-Drop rate for runes were supposedly improved, but practically speaking I think they're still dismal. More runewords, but the more useful ones are online realms only unless you run a mod.

Ouch, that's got to hurt…

Haven't played Diablo 2 yet. What should I expect from this game aside from the traditional hack and slash gameplay? Does the game still hold up?

Expect to get your shit kicked you fucking pussy. Not really though.

It.. does and doesn't hold up. Just jump in.

How is it both dated and timeless at the same time?

This is such a sexist image, the scantily clad women are just hiding, waiting for the big strong man to come

That's the tradeoff of killing everything else super-fast, you can still beat the game with such a build. Additionally, pure lightning Sorceress with an Infinity polearm is one of the most OP builds as most lightning immunities are weak enough to be broken by the aura. Even more stupid is using 2 Dream runewords + Lightning Mastery + Enchant + Infinity runeword on a merc. The aura will kill things quickly as it is but actually hitting things will be like 60000+ damage base.

CE remains a fantastic skill though, and thank christ they drastically nerfed it on Nihilathak, that guy was such an asshole.

The fundamental problem with the stats is this.
There are very few builds where you want to do anything else.

Well no it wasn't a real problem in 1.09 and older, because it didn't matter so much if you wasted a few skill points on early game survival or just experimentation. Indeed I was happily running a 3 element Sorceress around those days. Nowadays you can barely do 2 elements.

Please tell me where you're getting these sets to drop that is so reliable. Fact is you shouldn't rely on specific items unless you can trade for them or they're fairly easy to come by.

Trufax, I think I ran only the lowest DEX\STR for gear, 50-60(? it's been awhile) because AC is pretty much worthless. Block was meh, I used shields unless it was a dual wield barbarian and dual claw assasin, but I used a shield for the resistance or other bonus not really for AC or blocking. Everything else VIT. That's pretty much for every single class and build I played.

a bad roll with Ancients iirc can mess up a mono element sorc without an Infinity polearm. INB4 then get an Infinity Polearm or co-op with a Convict Paladin. Infinity needs some high level runes, if you choose not to play with duped runes that's going to be more difficult. Basically I didn't like how 1.10 raised the item and gear requirement. It just made the divide more glaring between holy shit this is fucking tedious and holy fuck this is not so bad with this gear, it's almost fun even, wait bliz, why the fuck did you think being so stingy would make things more fun?!

Aren't the drop rates of high level runes massively increased? Back when I played you pretty much stood a better chance at playing the lottery as opposed to seeing a legit Jah or Ber rune.

Classic.

Officially sanctioned Blizz art. Maybe the two long-range builds want the big black pal to tank for them? Haha

They improved them but they're still extremely rare, don't even bother trying to find them yourself. Online you'd have to be able to trade for them, in singleplayer you can try mods but the only one I've seen went way too far where the only hard things to get are good magical items (read: skillers) and certain set/uniques that can't be gambled for.

They can be trivially re-rolled by opening a town portal and reactivating the altar. Similarly, Baal's minions groups 3-5 can be lured away from his throne if they are a problem.

Nope, the patch notes said it was, but in most practical sense it meant dick all. The mid level runes were slightly increased, but if you want to farm runes iirc NMare and Hell countess runs were still likely more profitable. The high level runes were still fucking hard to get by legit means. IMO the problem was bliz was also getting skewed information. They thought players running around with high level runeword was the norm. It's not, even with a lot of people playing the odds were still pretty bad. Let's be honest here, most of them were dupes. But bliz either can not see that or will not cop to it because that would mean their anti-dupe system is far from perfect.
That and the whole system of balance by drop rarity is not that great of an idea. I've had many a debate about this before, and usually there's always one or two players or even a bliz rep that would try to defend it as "we don't want an instant win button". Which is completely missing the point. I remember they changed some of the runeword recipes to add additional high level runes. IIRC based on their skewed interpretation that players would easily get a Jah or Ber or Mal and Ist. Except they were looking at players with duped gear, and iirc a duped rune is undetectable once it's used in a runeword. So IMO Bliz was looking at skewed data, and 'balanced' the drop rate according to skewed data. Garbage in, garbage out.

Still doesn't change that often times they can spawn with a bad combo. Challenge is one thing, tedious is another.

Considering how many builds were heavily dependent on using Enigma or other rune words requiring these rare as shit rune words that's nothing short of retardation.

Are the devs at Blizz fucking autistic or something? Thats the same logic that led to Uberdiablo being triggered by SoJ sales. Because that totally wouldn't give a giant incentive to dupe even more SoJs all the time.

I remember when the dual Dream glitch became public. That was fun.

That image is triggering, triggering my Diablo2 autism I thought I buried long ago.
Aight the barbarian probably tried to whirlwind mindlessly into Diablo himself, which is a bad idea. If you must whirl, whirl around the edge. The necro should've either used bonewall\prison,with decrepify. Decrepify even at one point is handy vs bosses. Some people like Clay Golem to slow, that's fine personally I prefer decrepify. Sorc should cast Static Field if she can, that javelin + shield Amazon can be a great Act Boss killer with Charged Strike. Paladin either BHammer, or Conviction or Holy Freeze or Holy Shock+zeal.

You love it, you hot buttered wench.

why do virginal no-life nerds associate a game's convenience-factor with manliness?

Yep. It's a bad combo of retardation and part of the business. Many of their testers were just doing a job, some of them don't have a clue that players running around with Enigma was not supposed to be that common of a sight.
I've wondered too. I mean where is the logic of "We want to get rid of duped soj because we're totally anti cheating guise. So we'll make an event that is triggered by selling soj. Which would totally disincentivise dupings of soj. Oh yeah if you kill the event boss you get a pretty nice reward."
If I was just a wee bit more cynical, I'd think that bliz actually don't mind cheaters or something, since they get to just sell a new key to perma-banned cheaters account. While players who don't dupe, well they don't really buy anymore pass keys do they? Nah, it can't be that. Be far too diabolical. :^)

A group of 8 german autists have done it naked

1 barb: war-cry & leap (leap stuns monsters on landing)
1 druid: bear tank & werebear shockwave for stun
1 necro: golem & poison (to counter the life regen of monsters on Hell difficulty)
1 assassin: traps & mindblast for stun
2 sorcs: artillery
2 pals: resist all & conviction; holy bolt to keep allies alive
No amazons :P

Ah forgot to mention, you may remember this but it's fun trivia for those who forgot, and why it's related to the mentioned stupidity of garbage in garbage out skewed info.
Some of the 1.10 runewords also spells out another word if you take the first letter from each runes.
Call To Arms 5 Socket Weapons Amn + Ral + Mal + Ist + Ohm
Call to Arms = was originally ARMI, the Ohm was added iirc during 'testing', beta or open beta. Stupid thing is IMO, bliz claimed it was for balance reasons, too powerful for too easy of a price. So they add an Ohm. I'm goin, blizzard you damn nigger, Mal and Ist is not that common, and adding an Ohm raises the rarity too high for players who don't dupe, and you fucking ruined the pun of Call To Arms = ARMI.

user I'm pretty sure germans have an innate racial bonus stat for autism in D2. In all seriousness I've played some challenge builds, but I also don't always have 8 people that can do naked build runs. Cute D2-LoD chibis pic.

Again that's the sacrifice you make by going single element. Do two if that's a problem, although with 1.10 you're kinda limited to Frozen Orb + Lightning or Meteor/Fireball if you don't want to be too slow.

I expect that would be a reasonable assumption if duping wasn't a problem. On that subject is there a table with the drop odds as of latest patch? Picture is 1.10.

If you want optimal item running, sure. But it's not necessary to beat the game.

If it's a glitch they haven't patched it out. Besides as hilarious as it was to try out in SP mods, you can do almost as well for much much less.

Call to Arms should be really rare considering it lets anyone cast Battle Orders, one of the best buffs in the game. The less wealthy can party with a Barbarian.

Whats Holla Forums opinion about Median XL?

Eh? I'm not that single element user player. Personally I go dual element with nearly all classes, 3 if you count physical crushing blow as backup. Again it's more of a matter of tedium creeping into the game for me, ymmv.
There used to be some good analysis in a couple of fansites and guilds, problem is are you asking for SP or Ladder Season drop rate? SP might not be changed in 1.11 onward, and a code reader can likely do it. Ladder Realms might be trickier since iirc bliz may or may not tweak the drop rate to be different there. From what I remember from a non duping player guild I used to play with, the drop rate on realms was still fairly bad. Not sure if that has changed in the most recent season or not.
Iirc the recipe for cubing up was a far bigger practical impact for getting mid-high runes, vs bliz claims of improved rune drop rate.

+1-6 To Battle Orders +1 to all skill is not that hugely imbalancing overpowerful from what I've tested. And bliz saw a lot of players running around with BOTD weapons. If they thought that duping was not a problem, or CTA was too powerful, there's really something wrong in their water cooler.
It's 2016 at the time of this writing. I don't know if D2 online is completely dead, but I can imagine it not having the same amount of player base compared to it's heyday where you can just say "ey yo, any Barbarians with some dank BO looking to group up?" Then again I haven't checked the numbers on b.net since I lost a lot of interest after bliz north was disbanded.

I kind of want to try out diablo 3 but i absolutely doN't want to give it any money.
Maybe when private servers will pop up somehow.

Console versions work offline.

Yeha well i'm a poorfag i doN't ahve any.

So why the fuck did everyone hate Diablo 3 for making that basically a default play ability of the game? All you had to do was change your equipment and your slotted abilities and perks.
Which you could do any time not in combat.

So what, just another case of hipster shit whining and "gamers" hating change?

Yeah. Diablo 3 actually has a huge playerbase.
The console version is the best. They dump all the seasonal loot into the main game instantly and get total patch parity with pc on the same patch day.

I believe people don't like how extremely easy respecing is in the third game.

This. Switching out skills makes everything else pretty much trivial. There is never any reason to make more than one character of each class.

Nah, personally I don't mind the re-spec system for D3. For myself constant online requirement on PC was one factor. I really didn't like how aggresively pushed it was. Second factor was the gameplay on the PC version was nothing special to me, it actually seems better on the console and if I have to pick one, I'd go with the console version over PC. Third, Jay Wilson? Fuck that loser.

you can only reset stat/skill points once per difficulty, until hell difficulty where you can find items from act bosses or w/e to be able to do it again

well since this is a s2 thread anyway, ill just get this out of the way and say that enigma call to arms, +skill charms, and +%chance to find magic items period were mistakes
and actually, i think the game would be better if a player could only have up to 5 charms at once, and +skill charms didn't exist

There's a "free2play" version, I think.

Let's you play up until lv20 and up to the Skeleton King. Dunno about class limitations.

Oh, thanks user i didn't know.
I doN't think it will change my mind, but atleast i can try it out.

I use Diablo 2 SE modmanager for this.
It also come packed with plugy, which among other things gives you a huge stash that you can share with other characters on the same computer, the ability to reset your points at anytime as much as you want, ladder runewords in single player, ect.
It also blocks you from battle net.
All of these things can be turned off separately or all together

I raged so goddamn hard. I still had fun, though

Diablo 2 let's you respec just once per difficulty, or through a hard to get end-game item.

Okay let me get this straight

Play TL2 and see what it's like with no respec

Diablo 2 essentially nerfed every class in the name of "variety".
The sorcerer from Diablo 1 was top tier but they gimped it so hard in Diablo 2 that its shit. Not to mention forcing character builds which make it possible to completely fuck yourself over because so many skills are objectively trash and you are forced to build your character with no knowledge what you are gonna face. That and the cancerous dungeons which made no sense but were annoying to navigate anyway.

In some ways I sympathize with the "respec is for casuals" opinion but when shit like that happens it's good to have the option.

or at least refund skill and stat points when a class is changed, or something

Pretty sure you only have the ability to reallocate skill points in the very beginning of the game, either the first few character levels or the first few story chapters.

Do you use that mod in the image you posted? I'm looking at the ModDB page for it and it seems like a bit much and might make the game a lot easier.

Any mods worth playing? I heard Eastern Sun was solid and MedianXL (but not ultimative) is good. Are the earlier versions really better? I just got 1.13c+PlugY+multires set up in guhnoo+linux.

Bowazon is literally unplayable as of the skill overhaul, unless you want to count 'maxed strafe' as a bowazon. Literally every Bowazon will also still want to put a point into jab, nothing wrong with that, the evasion+tower shield combination is an easy way to take the heat off the rest of the party.

The way you used to be able to effectively play bowazon in old patches was putting a bunch of points into Pierce, bringing a knockback bow, having minimal-level frost arrow on left, maxed Immolation Arrow on the right, and then nail them to a wall, and attempt to keep them within the slowly intensifying flamepit as you spam Immolation Arrow, that is also doubled because it first makes a flamepit upon hitting the enemy, and then when it hits the wall behind them.

Now Immolation Arrow requires sixty skill points to be as good as it was on hit, which is still not great, and the duration of the flamepit was reduced to flat three seconds from the druation-scales-with-level.

This did not even work that well, since lots of of enemies on hell would be too fast to pin down reliably, be immune to fire, or just have so much HP you would run out of mana potions before emptying their lifebar, but apparently it was too broken. While fire fucking wall is exactly as broken as it ever was. Fuck Blizzard.

that pic is just the launcher.
It can be used to play the game at what ever patch you choose.
As far as I know any modifications may be disabled if you want a to play as a purist but on a particular patch. which is really all that I use it for

Hey cool, never rolled Satan's digits before. In a Diablo thread that has to be a sign in my favor.

My friend plays with coworkers on his PC, but he got it on PS4 so we could couch co op together. Actually he originally got it for us to play on the 360, but we quickly found another level of Blizzard's kikery when we realized last gen only goes uo to patch 2.0 I think. So no Kanai's cube, no Grifts, shitty set bonusses, no ancients etc.

I was just complaining that set drops aren't reliable. It took me ages to finish my Shadow set on my DH, but in the interim I got enough pieces to complete the Marauder's and Natalya's set several times over. My argument was that if that happanes you can just swap your skills for that set bonus instead and proceed on to higher levels of Torment where you have a greater chance of getting what you need. Even if you don't get any set items you can still maximize your potential with what you do have by being able to change your skills on the fly.

they nerfed hammerdins by making some key elite mobs magic immune, as well as its scaling a few years ago. They also have serious mana problems unless you want to spend a point in redemption, and you're gonna be useless until you get good gear.

Avenger/Zealot hybrid is the good shit

How in the fuck is this a bad thing? Why do you feel the need to have several characters of the same class? How does it "make everything else trivial"? If you try to take on a higher difficulty without any outside help fom maxxed characters you will still get your shit kicked in. You don't suddenly get godmode by being able to switch between skills. You still need to be able to use those skills effectively.

Fuck it doesn't work with pierce anymore…that's fucking stupid.

I wonder when that happened. I don't remember that change. IMO whenever the original d2 team left is when blizzard should have kept their grubby little shitfingers off the game but we know that didn't happen.

All things considered it's bad yes. But I must say it's nice you can still slog through solo helldifficulty with a bowzon. It's painfully slow ofc but some builds can't get through hell at all even.

There are tons of issues with diablo3's free any-time respec gameplay. Really though it boils down to diablo3 being shit and letting you bypass any inherent difficulty in an area by simplychoosing the optimal skills for an area. With all those choices, things become meaningless.

In diablo2. You picked a playstyle you wanted to roll with and you went for it, for better or worse. You make your character, start to min-max from the start or simply make an early game build and respec it for a late-game transition later. Solid and done. Then you enjoy making another of the same class but you make a different build/skillset to experience the game through a different playstyle and or for other specific needs.

d3 is just lololol look how awesome strong i am xddd

For D2? Nah, see , and the re-spec from Akara does not need to be used right away or at all if you don't want to, and as long as you don't use it, it will still be there.

Couch co op on ps4 version is not bad.
Eh, dafuq? Is that bullshit just for the 360? Either way this is why I'm not a yuuge fan of nuBliz.

I had a test amazon character that had that exact build. I tried a lot of things to make it work, and for myself my conclusion is Immo arrow got borked thanks to the reduced duration, cooldown no stack, and immunities. While the patch notes said it's damage got boosted, in practice it got borked and nerfed hard. INB4 use dual element, I tested it not for a general build but to see how the skill would function in 1.10. Exploding Arrow seems better if a player wants a fire arrow skill, and IIRC even as a synergy point dump Immo arrow does not give as large a percentage. For a general build of elemental bowazon, Iirc I had an ice and fire bowazon and strafe, with an Edge runeword bow, and something to apply Open Wounds on. So a crafted blood belt, or Riphook bow if I find it.
Bliz fun police went overboard with their nerf stick IMO. Iirc in the very early days, pre expansion pack Immo arrow was powerful but had graphical issues due to spamming and stacking. IMO it got overcorrected from powerful fun to party trick level skill.

I never played D2 past Act 3. And that was a decade ago, I don't remember shit about it anymore.
Which patch should I update it to in order to have the best experience?

Blergh that fucking stupid humongous overdesigned warcraft armor in D3 really pisses me off

To any friends reinstalling this:
While I was configuring stuff, I stumbled across a PhrozenKeep thread that updated D2 Multi Res to 1.13c, but the link was dead. I managed to find a link to it on some chink site (Baidu). Reupped so you don't have to suffer runes

a.pomf.cat/xomdac.zip

use PlugY to load the DLL.

Absolutely. The 360 and PS3 versions are capped at 2.0.6.
They won't even upgrade to 2.1 because "the hardware can't handle it." It's biggest bunch of bullshit.

that amazon is t h i c c

exactly this

The last time I played it on console was ps3 couch co op, it's not without it's charm but I treat it as arcade-y, more gauntlet type of game.
But that bullshit is fucking gaaaaaaay.

It is infurating to read threads from a few years ago on the subject because every fucking Blizzdrone dismisses any form of criticism about it so smugly.

Someone says they've never had an issue with performance on Xbox 360 (anecdotal I know):

And here's the response:

The fact you have no issues doesn't mean they can add more…they have stated that they hit the ceiling…

Then one guy who's kinda based fires back:

Apparently, you have to be in Blizz development team to doubt it's bona fides.
And blog comment, that was posted a week prior release = Announcement.
Also you have to be grateful for a very rare opportunity to give your money in exchange for a game (without patches, but still).

Don't enemies not see you until you get into the original game's range? It would be game-breaking with any ranged attack.

No but it was related to my point that single element, while unable to kill immune monsters, will tear the shit out of everything else.

Both if they're different, and ideally, if they have a "rarity" akin to rings and amulets, just those values will do. Calculating the odds as they'd appear in actual play is complicated by where people are running the most, and by special drops (ghosts, Countess, sparkly chests, etc).

The buff is still one of the best ones, not something that every non-Barb player should have access to. Same story with Enigma and Teleport.

Play with friends is still an option, locally even. You don't have to party with complete strangers.

Needing to farm act bosses is another problem if you accidentally respec to something totally shit without a reset.

They should've allowed one with the 1.10 switch because it invalidated so many different builds overnight.

Paladins don't have a lot of ridiculous synergies so you can actually make interesting builds with them too.

Yeah, that bullshit came from the top of blizzard down to the bottom of the blizzdrones iirc after bliz north was disbanded and nuBliz really started to show it's cancer.

Problem is 1.10 damage rate in Hell mode can hit like a freight train to most builds. Single immunities is not even the real problem, it's when a combo of them can make the game go from challenging, to this patch is retarded.

I semi retired my D2 autism a while back, but iirc try D2 Amazon Basin if you haven't already. There used to be some code readers and analysts there with interdasting info and studies of the game mechanics and nuts and bolts. You don't need to register to just browse the forum and info. I don't know what the latest news is, but back then getting info for Realms Ladder is tricky since bliz supposedly can tweak their codes on their end. Besides obvious differences like ladder only runeword and events etc, that shit makes it hard to definitively say what the drop rate formula on ladder because theoretically bliz can change it at their whim and treats it as a black box for you not to pry into. Most of the info that I remembered was thanks to code readers and modders that read the SP codes.
Been there done that got the t-shirt with that debate, bro. It usually winds up in the same place too, did bliz make a mistake putting -any- previously class specific skills into Runewords etc, and usually brings the same cycle of what about fun vs fun policing by overcorrection.
Ok? I wasn't talking about the technical ability to play on LAN. I was talking about with the game's age usually brings with it reduced interest among people, fair or not that seems to be vidya's nature. And D2 still has the SP aspect to it, it was never designed to be a MMORPG lite, that cancer influence seems to come later when the purge of Bliz North started to increase.

Image source: unidcolor.deviantart.com/gallery/56392727/Diablo

Maggot lair is the worst for hammerdins. Hahah

Don't patch it and play it as is. Nostalgia!

rip

When will we get another private d2 server?

dont clay golem and decrep stack? i remember them stacking and even the slow target on weapons.

Fuck it let me tell you a little story:

I wanted to play D2 with runes, but not on battle.net because of all the bots the economy is ruined. So I looked at private battle.net servers. Found one single solution: PvPGN + D2GS. Ok, sweet!? No. PvPGN is open-source and only provides part of the "package" needed to hosting a D2 server (or WC3/SC). That second part "D2GS" was a closed-source reverse-engineered project that ended up being dropped. There is no real support, many different "how to" with not many really working. Worst of all most require some version of Windows as the only known working D2GS program was a Windows executable.

Moral of the story is that it is a colossal pain in the ass getting a private Battle.net/Diablo2 server setup. It required me using WINE to run D2GS.exe as well as some C hacks to WINE source code to fix a TCP/IP bug to allow clients to even fucking connect.

So I have my own, working, private D2 linux server, but I would need some serious incentive to set this shit up again or even clone the VM (oh yeah, I started that project on a physical server that got upgraded into being an ESXi host so I did a bunch of austic shit doing a P2V migration).

Why, exactly, is it so difficult to have a private D2 server?
The game has a "open" multiplayer mode, if I remember correctly, that basically allowed for box-hosted characters. Which implies, to me, that the game itself is capable of being its own host of sorts.

Yes it does from what I remember. I've used decrep+clay golem before, but I tend to just spam decrep vs act boss and such, depends on the type of build I was playing at the time really. Just personal preference in my case.

Well as I mentioned the server is proprietary (Blizzard never released the code). The "server" is actually a group of server programs that have been reversed engineered over time:

You can find open-source projects for all of those except the D2GS (the Diablo2 specific game server), but it seems as if Blizzard has made all the D2GS projects disappear. The last update to the abandoned/lost D2GS project appears to be for 1.13c (somehow I got it working with 1.13d), but again as I mentioned has no support.

Yes, kinda, you can play Diablo2 multi-player without Battle.net, but you don't get Ladder seasons (normal/hardcore) nor runes for Runeword gear. Possibly no anni/torch/Ubers too.

Oh didn't know about all of that.
I remember rather clearly getting runes when playing it single player, though.

Sucks that you need a 3rd party mode (PlugY dll?) to get battle.net only events/enemy/items. I just want to defeat Uber-Diablo in single-play.

Fave class is Necro.
As a mostly table-top rpg player, it's fun that I can play RTS in an aRPG without the bookkeeping. Go golem & skele army. Haha.

Oh yeah, I just meant the Ladder the runewords. Need to be on a bnet server to be able to make the Ladder runewords :)

Yeah that's really all I wanted to do!

If someone has some serious resources, I can at least provide a sort of template VM (I would nuke my .MPQ files and passwords, etc). That way all someone would really need to do is some user configs, drop in their .MPQ assets, and launch all the daemons in order. Here's a bit more info on the VM I made to run this crap:

Pretty straight forward here; I use Slackware because Ubuntu is Afrikaanz for "I'm a fucking retard."

This part is a royal assfuck. I remember having to use this specific version of WINE for the following patch to compile properly, and fix networking. Here are the code changes to WINE's "sock.c":

Ladder-only runewords~ everyone chooses act2 merc with the rw that gives Conviction. -_-
Giving anyone with the right runes another class' skill is a mistake. *koff*teleport*koff*
Also… killing Cain in Diablo3. fffffffff

Nah, it allowed for interesting builds.
Sadly, the game didn't really elaborate of those much more than using best-in-slot gear and high level shit.

A legitimate criticism for some, to be sure. However, because I like some of the other non-runeword gear that does the same I personally feel it's a bit moot.

Yes, I have a wolfbarb :)

Respec is the last of diablo 3's problems,
but it's bad because you can do it instantly and everywhere.
This led to players adjusting their playstyle depending on the drops, instead of the opposite.

I mean I guess so, but that seems more of something to do with the players than the game's ability to respec like that.

I always find these sorts of complaints kind of funny. They're avoidable to your own personal playing unless you can't control yourself otherwise.

Like when someone complains about a voluntary RPG skill system in a shooter. Just don't spend the skill points if its a problem.

Necromancer is heavily dependent on teleport for skeleton wrangling.

I dislike respecs because I like to play class builds that is NOT overly dependent on gear.

So the D3 respec anytime annoys me. At least, make respec at town only. Waiting for a team-mate to respec in the middle battle kills the momentum of gameplay. That's what I get when I play with randoms since everyone I know quit d3 already. My fault for thinking trying out the new patch.

The biggest problem is Diablo 3's itemization and stat systems. Respeccing on the move means nothing when the only thing that matters for you is getting Vitality plus [insert stat that makes your class spit out bigger numbers on screen here] and maybe one or two ultra late game uniques that synergize with your favorite skill. Not like it matters anyways since even on seemingly ridiculous difficulties the game is still piss easy because everything scales relative to you.

Not at all, but it certainly helps.

Not the way I play my necro

Zookeeper all the way. *Sips tea while waiting for the dumb but enthusiatic skeles to mop up*

I've never had an Enigma armor outside of test or modding situations, and while it's handy it's more than possible to play a skeleton necro without Enigma.

Until they fix the "skeletons wandering off screen and disappearing" bug, teleportation is required.

Those are nice d2 pics mang, the artist knows some neat details. Fucking triggering my D2 nostalgia and autism though. Fuggg.

Here's one more for you. Even wondered what if Tyrael helps you with Duriel rather than appearing in Bhaal/Tal Rasha's after Diablo set him free?
youtube.com/watch?v=K2BOw2XVTNE

Skeles are expendable. As long as golem is tanking, it's all good. Do you even chess?

Bhaal/Tal Rasha's PRISON CHAMBER after Diablo set him free?

Extremely irritating bug that is easily fixed by teleport's presence = necromancer is heavily dependent on teleport.

Weren't skeletons more likely to be teleported to you than disappearing though?
I remember running in circles AWAY from the summons so the skeletons that had wandered too far from where I wanted them to be would be leashed towards me everytime.
Teleport outside of extremely expensive ring charges weren't really a thing until freaking years later and necromancers could work and even farm just fine, a bit slow and sucked hard in stages like Maggot's Lair, but they worked.

...

I'm digging these pics and art, interesting interpretations yet has the spirit and details done well.
Just remembered, randomized guest monsters appearing in Act V. Still kinda meh about that.

Above is trufax. Also maggot's lair with a necro, I think that's why I started to prefer bone spear and bone prison + CE and decrepify necro. Skeleton necro is fun, but I think Bone Jailer and Bone Spear chucker necro suited me better.

Since this is a D2 thread, might as well do this too. Post your builds you faggots, pre 1.10 patch, patch 1.10 onward, Lord of Destruction, D2 Classic.

You get one reroll if its a former non expansion character.

D2 classic was Charge/Zeal with Holy Freeze.
LoD was wind druid.

...

you don't even have much reason to respec in D3 since everything plays the same and everything comes down to equipping items with +xxx to your primary stat

On a more topic-related note, what should I expect going into Diablo 1 coming from Diablo 2?

fresh meat

Slower pace, but controls are IMO more precise due to it's strict grid tile system. Every class can theoretically learn a spell (in D1 it's called spells, D2 is called class skills). Stats are capped according to class so there is no way to permanently fuck up your stat or attributes, at most a temporary inconvenience if you for eg. decide as a Warrior you're going to put all your early stat points into Magic. The progression after all your stats are maxed are via gear and character level.
Classes have more defined built in traits, ie Sorceror has the fastest casting speed, Rogue has the faster\fastest bow attack speed, Warrior has the fastest shield block and fast (fastest when you get the appropriate weapon) one handed melee attack speed. Character damage comes from a combo of stat\attributes and character level.
Diablo:Hellfire is a non bliz made expansion pack, IMO it's worth finding it if you're interested in mods. Hellfire as is, is a bit of a mess. Mods fixes a lot of the issues though.
Subjectively, the atmosphere of D1 is darker and more claustrophobic but in a good way. All the action is dungeons, no overland overworld other than the town where you buy \ repair your gear and supplies.
Vit is far less important in D1 vs D2. Still, avoid getting hit by zombies called Yellow Deaths, since they can permanently damage your HP. Avoid touching Fascinating, Ornate and Sacred shrines, since iirc they can permanently lower your Mana points. Also a reason not to touch unidentifed goat shrines and cauldrons since they are random and can give you those 3 shrines.
Read Jarulf's Guide to D1, it's the definitive guide to Diablo 1. It's not a "do dis and be awesome powerful" type of guide. It's more of an extensive technical manual of the game's nuts and bolts. IIRC made by a fan who happened to be a smart scientician of some kind. Bliz gave a shout out to him in D2 in the act 3 Iron Wolf mercenaries name roster.

Those are berry berry nice art.
Charge was fun but can be annoying with that glitch. Still fun in maps with more space though.
Druids were my less played class, I've played a wind druid, but I think a werewolf druid suited me more.

This.

Runewords like "Passion" (that gives Zeal) were fun to play around with.

Charge had a glitch too. If you charged with an obstacle in the way, you get stuck.

Werebear with shockwave and a zoo. Dump as much vit and resist. The ultimate D2 tank.

Ah yes, that was not fun. What was the quick fix, switch skills to unstuck glitch iirc?
Tried that one too. I think I liked werewolf best out of the druid builds since I can pretend I was playing Jon Talbain.
A few things that I did like about D2 was high level summons. I kinda miss that, I like TL2 despite it's WoW like aesthetics, but summons in that game are weakass.

Diablo2 Patch 1.13 is when respec was introduced.

Can't remember how to unstuck but there was a way.
Werewolf mode is faster but the stand & melee mode negates his speed advantage. Werewolf should have got a move & attack mode ala charge/leap attack/whirlwind.
Hmmm… I liked Torchlight 1. I'll have to try TL2 but weaksauce summons make me sad.

Is Path of Exile worth the time?

There definitely was, I thought it was switching to another skill quickly but it's been ages for me. I'm sure the innernet has the answer somewhere.
True, it really needed something like that to be really Jon Talbain like.
It might be fixable if you're comfortable modding it, since TL2 is mod friendly and comes with it's own official editor. I haven't played around with it though so I can't say with absolute certainty. But TL2 vanilla IMO is almost D2 redux in a way, some of the original bliz members being part of Runic probably had something to do with that. Some of the big difference iirc is Vanilla TL2 passive skills except for a few of them are meh, since it's mostly about active skills. And the unfortunately weaksauce summons.
Stat distribution wise IMO comes down to picking either Str or Foc for your offensive stat (I've tried both, both can work but I prefer Foc based) Dex at 50 or 55 base, basically where I can reach 10% crit chance before any gear bonus. 100 Vit if I want blocking. Usually I do even if I only have Shield+one handed weapon on secondary switch. Then everything else either to Strength or Focus. All in though, I usually do not split between the two.

I wish I can offer an informed opinion unfortunately I never played PoE.

Pic almost looks like it would fit on a D2 themed mugen fightan gaem. I always wanted a Diablo Vs Capcom fightaen.

1v1? I'm thinking a KOF 3v3 system would work better.

Also EITR looks like a pixel-art version of Diablo2.

Fuck it. Time to reinstall Old Faithful.

Try Nox.

Tried Torchlight?

Why the fuck

...

3v3, but either marvel vs capcom gameplay or Samurai Showdown 2 gameplay. Roster wise I'd throw in every class from the franchise so far. Hell, in some ways I wished bliz could have used their cancer in a more entertaining way. Chibi Diablo puzzle runeword fighter. Super Diablo Racing. Diablo's Crown side scroller slash 'em up. Obviously keep the main bread and butter of Diablo but throw some crazy skunkworks games on the side.

Interdasting mang, reminiscent of Diablo1 too, maybe the color palette. Not a fan of the pixel bloom, wonder how it actually plays though.

i posted a multires for 1.13c earlier in the thread. confirmed it works. Requires PlugY to load the DLL though.

There a torrent for D2 still active somewhere?

Sigma when

Oh shit man, thanks a lot. The 800x600 resolution really lowered my enjoyment from playing on 1.13.

Is this the version that allows for Uber Tristam and ladder runewords in singe-player? If so, I'm there!

PlugY lets you run Uber Diablo, Uber Trist, have ladder RWs in singleplayer, and much more. It's also highly configurable.

Yes. Several, actually.

PlugY for 1.14 when?
At this point I'd even go so far as to install MedianXL if they updated the whole package and that was the only way to get the PlugY functionality back into D2.

Downgrading apparently isn't an option if you use the digital installer, and my CDs were stolen a long-ass time ago, along with my Dreamcast and my Gamecube.

Last thing I played before our group fucked off to GW was a ES Sorc. Gonna dig up the old CDs and do it again sometime.

The reason for no downgrading on the digital download is because the game files have been drastically altered from 1.13 to 1.14. In their effort to spruce up the game for modern systems, they've removed most if not all .dll files in the main folder, and presumably rolled them directly into the executable (which grew several MB in size, most likely due to this very reason). I think the renderer has also been changed, I don't think it has Glide anymore, but I could be wrong. I still play on 1.13.

Game won't load when I try to load the DLL.

Oh shit, it works. Can't see shit captain. Also, need to run in windowed mode.

Path of Exile tries to be a good game, but ultimately fails, and hard.

The biggest problem is the skills. All of the skills are lame and tame. All of the offensive skills feel weak and underwhelming. But the game was designed that way so that you could boost the power of the skills through support gems. So where is the problem? A shitty skill that bounces 3 times is still a shitty skill at its core. And that's all the game has: shitty skills.

Then there's loot and trading. You want to find good items? Fuck you, never happening. Go make an untwinked character in D2 and you'll get a decent rare every 5 hours-ish until you reach lvl 40+, at which points you'll get a decent rare every hour or two from gambling + drops + boss farming. With good MF gear, you'll also get a steady supply of uniques and sets. All of which will eventually lead to upgrades for your character. In PoE you don't get good upgrades leveling. I've hit lvl 70+, which is a decent chunk of time when playing untwinked and without a cookie-cutter build. You'd be lucky to even find one decent rare during that game. Finding a unique that you can equip or trade for a decent amount is even rarer.

Currency system is fucked. Instead of giving you gold and letting you do whatever you want with it, you get tokens. Like 20 different types of tokens with varying degrees of rarity and usefulness. And unless you're a power user, most of them are completely worthless to you except as trading tools. See that token that you get 2-3 per hour of? Ya, you need over 10k of those to do anything meaningful. Good bye stash space. But in reality it just means that instead of getting good drops, you get tokens and you trade those tokens for the exceedingly rare good drops and uniques that other players get. Oh it is possible to use tokens and craft gear, but the odds of getting good gear are abysmally bad and crafting great gear with tokens is only an option for the richest of the rich. What's so bad about this: the core of ARPGs is getting good loot to improve your character. PoE replaces that core with getting tokens that you have to trade to other players to get the loot you need.

End game has to do with maps, a system that D3 ripped off and called rifts. Maps are items that drop at higher levels. You can use tokens on maps to add modifiers, and modifiers increase the map difficulty along with its rewards. The higher level maps are quite rare and so you'll want to spend your hard earned tokens to make those maps worth running.

Last problem is the combat. In PoE, there's no such thing as a slow death. PoE is the land of one-shot abilities from monsters and the few defensive skills available to players revolve around invincibility to keep yourself alive. Amazing D2 defensive skills like Attract, Grim Totems, Shockwave or that Cloak of Shadows assassin skill don't exist in PoE and have no place in the super fast paced combat system. You either clear the whole screen of enemies instantly or your character sucks. You either use the automatically procing invincibility skill or you die instantly. When I last played, it wasn't uncommon to get 1 shot from off-screen enemies (called Rogues) or bosses. Even on a defensive oriented character.

Overall the game is shit compared to D2 and I regret putting so many hours into it.