Nerfing Items / runewords / skills - Suggestions

Hey guys,

we already have a thread for buffing items to compete with runewords, but I think that´s not enough.
So I´d like to hear your suggestions for nerfs of runewords (or items / skills in general) with your reasoning why. I´m aware, that this won´t affect any upcoming changes, but I think it will be fun =)
Note: I´d assume that every change would affect all of the items, even the ones that already exist.

My first suggestion would be changing Enigma from the GOAT to something with a destinct usecase. And that usecase would be mobility. So I´d remove the +mf, the +skills and add +Energy and another +15% FRW on top of the existing 45%.

Another option would be leaving Enigma unchanged but nerfing

Teleport as a skill to give it a maximum range depending on skilllevel (like

Leap). So you still could

Teleport around, but the range would be way lower, so you´d need to

Teleport way more often, thus increasing the time to reach the destination.

Do you have any other ideas or want to discuss mine?

What is the whole point of nerfing items? So everyone can start using the "new best item" and make the game generally harder / more bothersome to play? Enigma is like one of the best runewords in the game, because it "enables" so many other characters to actually be competitive (think Pitzerker, Hammerdin, etc.). I, for one, wouldn't play the game if

Teleport gets nerfed. This will slow me down considerably and I don't feel like crawling my way through the game.

I think there are good candidates for a moderate nerfing, but nothing too disruptive. And also giving some other items some abilities may help as well.

1- Which ones ?

Candidates runewords:
- Enigma - the most iconic
- Grief - the most obvious
- Spirit - the abused one (for shields at least)
- Heart of the Oak - too common for any casters

I don't see any others that really are too obvious. Sure Infinity is strong but it is damn expensive, etc.

2- Why ?

Allow other gameplays !

3- what to nerf?

> Grief : easy one, reduce added flat damage from 340-400 to 240-300.

Still a great weapon, not an auto win one any more.

> Hoto :

A bit too strong as well, and meant for druids. Here as well an easy change : keep +2 all skills / add +1 to all druid skills. Everyone can still have the +2 all, the fcr, the res, but only druids will get +3.

Once again stays nice but can have competition.

ALLEyezOnMe wrote: 2 years ago

What is the whole point of nerfing items? So everyone can start using the "new best item" and make the game generally harder / more bothersome to play? Enigma is like one of the best runewords in the game, because it "enables" so many other characters to actually be competitive (think Pitzerker, Hammerdin, etc.). I, for one, wouldn't play the game if

Teleport gets nerfed. This will slow me down considerably and I don't feel like crawling my way through the game.

The best option would be, if there is no "best item". But we don´t have that luxury. As phys-melee you have to have a Grief at some point, als phys-dd you need a Fortitude and everyone else basically wants an Enigma, because

Teleport (basically mobility) in combination with everything else it provides, is way too good to give it a pass.
The idea is, to give different items distinct usecases, so you don´t have to get them on 70% of all characters as BiS (other examples are

Harlequin Crest and

Arachnid Mesh).

> Spirit

Hard to balance. Thought of lowering +2 to +1 all skills but that's a bit much. Fcr is its other major booster but somewhat needed for many builds. Let's try therefore to reduce the last 3rd item: +55 fhr is not thematic and gives too easily the breakpoints. Would reduce that strongly, e.g. to 25 or 30, stays a great item but you cannot just sleep on fhr because you have Spirit.

> Enigma

Definitely the hardest to balance.
Nerfing

Teleport would be annoying, many builds need that (e.g. summoners or hammerdins) but it should not be the only option for that.

I would :
- put the Oskill on

Teleport on

Tyrael's Might, as someone suggested
- and on

Naj's Puzzler to make it accessible earlier
- and why not on

Mang Song's Lesson as well ? Or any other to suggest ?

Allow various choice to TP to avoid the "everyone wants Enigma" effect.

As for the nerf part, 0.5 instead of 0.75 of strength per level to make the strength boost less OP, 40% frw instead of 45% (still is quick). Magic find can stay high, evrn if current may be a bit high... perhaps 0.8 per level instead of 1?

Your opinion people !

As for the uniques above:

- Arachnid's mesh: would not nerf it but simply allow the suffix "of the apprentice" to be on belts, would allow to reach 20% fcr on crafted belts like on amulets, stays a high level wonder.

-

Harlequin Crest: reduce added life and mana to 1 per level instead of 1.5 should be enough. Stays great, not OP.

Necrarch wrote: 2 years ago

I think there are good candidates for a moderate nerfing, but nothing too disruptive. And also giving some other items some abilities may help as well.

1- Which ones ?

Candidates runewords:
- Enigma - the most iconic
- Grief - the most obvious
- Spirit - the abused one (for shields at least)
- Heart of the Oak - too common for any casters

I don't see any others that really are too obvious. Sure Infinity is strong but it is damn expensive, etc.

2- Why ?

Allow other gameplays !

What do you mean by "allow other gameplays"? This should be achieved by buffing / reworking items and skills, not by nerfing them. Can you not play with whatever items you wish right now, even if they are not BiS?
Get a

Lidless Wall, instead of Spirit if you feel that the latter is way too common and wish to challenge yourself.

shrodo wrote: 2 years ago

The best option would be, if there is no "best item". But we don´t have that luxury. As phys-melee you have to have a Grief at some point, als phys-dd you need a Fortitude and everyone else basically wants an Enigma, because

Teleport (basically mobility) in combination with everything else it provides, is way too good to give it a pass.
The idea is, to give different items distinct usecases, so you don´t have to get them on 70% of all characters as BiS (other examples are

Harlequin Crest and

Arachnid Mesh).

There is always a best item and a best combination of items for a certain build. Why should it matter if this is Enigma or Chains of Honor? How does this change your game in particular?

Harlequin Crest and

Arachnid Mesh are perfectly balanced items in my opinion. On my 3 characters I'm using

Guillaume's Face,

Arreat's Face and

Harlequin Crest. See? All different helms
This is not Hearthstone where a single card can literally make the game unplayable for most classes / decks and cause tons of frustration in players. In Diablo you're mostly playing against the game itself, so there is no harm in having Enigma if you've put in the time to farm / trade the runes for it. If that's not your thing and you wish to play off meta, by all means, nobody is stopping you.

Seems I missed to put a disclaimer here:
- I am not the OP here.
I am there : forums/if-you-could-up-uniques-to-compe ... 77799.html

- I do not believe that Blizzard will nerf anything anyway. I am not in favor of a nerf, though I believe more diversity in builds would be a good thing. Hence my suggestion in the other thread to up some Uniques and Sets rarely seen.

- Here the challenge proposed by the OP, if I understand correctly, is to say "if you were Blizzard and decided to nerf some stuff, what would you do?". Hence the suggestions above of what I would do in that completely hypothetical context.

- If you look at what changes I suggested, have only suggested minor changes meant to not break any core mechanic, especially on Arach (no change), while

Shako would still be great.

Anyway, think it as an intellectual exercise more than a wish list to Blizzard exactly what I love doing ^^

im in the camp of not nerfing anything , but instead buff other gear to force you to make the decision of this item or that item. Nerfs are easier to do, but buffing other gears is the proper way to do it

Phins_up22 wrote: 2 years ago

im in the camp of not nerfing anything , but instead buff other gear to force you to make the decision of this item or that item. Nerfs are easier to do, but buffing other gears is the proper way to do it

This.

You'd probably be hard pressed to find even a single person who'd actually go "no, less diversity is great, there should only be one weapon/armor/.. to rule them all!". As such, buffing other pieces and/or introducing new pieces more aligned with the current top choices to create more diversity is a solid idea.

Nerfing existing gear however will really only be possible in one of two ways:
1) Nerf existing items and any future drops/rws/.. of the same type.
2) Leave existing items untouched but nerf any future new ones of the same type.

In case #1, everyone who spent ages farming for their Enigma, only to then have it nerfed into pointlessness for them, will be more than just a little annoyed. And in my personal opinion, rightfully so. Even more so since they did say they don't want to do that. And even more so for those people who do have limited game-time and really do invest months into their Enigma. All in all, bad juju.

In case #2, everyone who already has said gear will have an eternal advantage over those who don't, with no way for them to ever even the playing field. That'd be unfair and annoying enough as is in PvE but in PvP it'd be beyond dumb. Again, bad juju. Plus those of us with enough spare runes to create some last minute enigmas and the like pre-nerf would be forever set to beyond ridiculous levels, seeing how they would immediately become priceless.

Merely buffing other gear/creating new gear to offer alternatives however will not make your current gear any worse. You'll still have exactly what you paid for, you still won't have an eternal advantage over those who didn't get it in time but you will then (much like everyone) have a choice as to whether you'd prefer to stick with what you have or whether you'd like to go for new valid alternatives. This..would be nice.

Additionally, nerfing - especially in the context of D2 RWs - is a VERY fine line between balancing and breaking. Take Enigma, the first example of "omg gotta have it!" BiS gear for damn near everyone when thinking about what could be nerfed. Most folks who debate nerfing Enigma very quickly shift that discussion to flat out nerfing

Teleport. And the simple fact is, whether you like it or not,

Teleport and the speed it offers to everyone (via Enigma) has been a core part of this game for decades. Taking that out to the point where

Teleport becomes "mweh" enough to wanna use other gear on builds that currently do use Enigma will not only nerf the hell out of sorceresses at the same time but it'll effectively crush a core mechanic of this game.
Personally, as someone who uses Enigma on some (but not all) of his chars, I would hate to see

Teleport nerfed. Will it create more diversity? Sure. But it'll also take out the "speed factor" that is one of those mechanics making D2 stand out from other, seemingly slow-motion games like that crap

Teleport in D3 for example. In my opinion, that's way too high a cost. And would more likely than not drive a lot of folks back to other games. After all, if you want things slow..there's tons of options out there for that.
Yet, at the same time, there's already competition for Enigma (such as Fortitude for a few builds). Simply adding additional competition to that would be a much, much better approach imo. E.g. add a good bit of run speed and maybe a bit more bonus dmg or -res to Bramble and all of a sudden poison necros would think twice about using Enigma over Bramble.

Schnorki wrote: 2 years ago

Phins_up22 wrote: 2 years ago

im in the camp of not nerfing anything , but instead buff other gear to force you to make the decision of this item or that item. Nerfs are easier to do, but buffing other gears is the proper way to do it

This.

You'd probably be hard pressed to find even a single person who'd actually go "no, less diversity is great, there should only be one weapon/armor/.. to rule them all!". As such, buffing other pieces and/or introducing new pieces more aligned with the current top choices to create more diversity is a solid idea.

Nerfing existing gear however will really only be possible in one of two ways:
1) Nerf existing items and any future drops/rws/.. of the same type.
2) Leave existing items untouched but nerf any future new ones of the same type.

In case #1, everyone who spent ages farming for their Enigma, only to then have it nerfed into pointlessness for them, will be more than just a little annoyed. And in my personal opinion, rightfully so. Even more so since they did say they don't want to do that. And even more so for those people who do have limited game-time and really do invest months into their Enigma. All in all, bad juju.

In case #2, everyone who already has said gear will have an eternal advantage over those who don't, with no way for them to ever even the playing field. That'd be unfair and annoying enough as is in PvE but in PvP it'd be beyond dumb. Again, bad juju. Plus those of us with enough spare runes to create some last minute enigmas and the like pre-nerf would be forever set to beyond ridiculous levels, seeing how they would immediately become priceless.

Merely buffing other gear/creating new gear to offer alternatives however will not make your current gear any worse. You'll still have exactly what you paid for, you still won't have an eternal advantage over those who didn't get it in time but you will then (much like everyone) have a choice as to whether you'd prefer to stick with what you have or whether you'd like to go for new valid alternatives. This..would be nice.

Additionally, nerfing - especially in the context of D2 RWs - is a VERY fine line between balancing and breaking. Take Enigma, the first example of "omg gotta have it!" BiS gear for damn near everyone when thinking about what could be nerfed. Most folks who debate nerfing Enigma very quickly shift that discussion to flat out nerfing

Teleport. And the simple fact is, whether you like it or not,

Teleport and the speed it offers to everyone (via Enigma) has been a core part of this game for decades. Taking that out to the point where

Teleport becomes "mweh" enough to wanna use other gear on builds that currently do use Enigma will not only nerf the hell out of sorceresses at the same time but it'll effectively crush a core mechanic of this game.
Personally, as someone who uses Enigma on some (but not all) of his chars, I would hate to see

Teleport nerfed. Will it create more diversity? Sure. But it'll also take out the "speed factor" that is one of those mechanics making D2 stand out from other, seemingly slow-motion games like that crap

Teleport in D3 for example. In my opinion, that's way too high a cost. And would more likely than not drive a lot of folks back to other games. After all, if you want things slow..there's tons of options out there for that.
Yet, at the same time, there's already competition for Enigma (such as Fortitude for a few builds). Simply adding additional competition to that would be a much, much better approach imo. E.g. add a good bit of run speed and maybe a bit more bonus dmg or -res to Bramble and all of a sudden poison necros would think twice about using Enigma over Bramble.

I feel stupid sometimes, and that's often after talking after Schnorki. Very good summary indeed.

Fully agree that nerfing would always be badly taken, but if you nerf, you have to nerf including the existing.

I also think it would be better to up lower stuff, but for the sake of the discussion, I think just for the theory of it, "what would you do" is an interesting question, at least to build competition for them.

I had identified 4 items, 2 of them were added, and no one commented on the actual changes suggested

Grief has a damage bonus that's out of proportion with other endgame weapons. An "average" rolled Grief will have a +370 (flat) damage modifier, which is like having more than +1100% enhanced damage on a

Phase Blade with 33 average base damage. Iconic 2-handed weapons like

The Cranium Basher,

The Grandfather, and

Messerschmidt's Reaver have similar or less average damage combined with a much slower weapon speed. Ethereal Breath of the Dying is the only 2-handed weapon I can think of that has more average damage than Grief, and it's also considered an outlier.

Since Grief can be put into a 1-handed weapon, you can equip it with something else to stack twice as many magical affixes as you could with a 2-handed weapon. If you have a Grief

Phase Blade +

Stormshield, you will still have about as much average damage as a character that has

The Cranium Basher equipped with 2 hands. However, you will also have the added survivability granted by

Stormshield. Dual wielding griefs would give you an average damage similar to wielding a 2-handed weapon with +1100% enhanced damage, but you could be attacking much faster due to using 1-handed breakpoints on certain skills like

Whirlwind.

lol sorry Necrarch, my "what would I do" would be simple and complicated i guess. Leave existing items alone, but maybe single out specific underused uniques and buff them with some similiar stats as the items you picked out. Add

Teleport to some unique armor maybe (make

Silks of the Victor great again!) like

Guardian Angel instead of 1 to paladin skills, 1 to

Teleport so it still has to compete with Enigma in that slot and add some decent buffs to make it at least a decision you want to think a little harder about. Mosers shield could be pretty sweet with some added caster buffs with its nice blocking and res.

Azurewrath should be an item people want to use, its legendary but doesnt preform like it when compared to something like Grief, buff it! How about

Gull

Dagger being a mainstay because of its caster buffs and still great mf boost??? Or wizpike, its literally only used by builds that require max fcr breakpoints. Pretty niche to most players i would say. Just my thoughts i guess without thinking too too deeply into it haha

Even if you nerf Enigma then people will settle for the next best item and that would be the new Enigma, so it's a closed circle which you can't solve by nerfing or making something more OP. Things will be interesting for a few weeks, then everyone will start using the new meta and we are back to square one ALSO, the "old" Enigmas will start to have astronomical prices (see btal). It has to be like that, because just taking "good old" Enigma from players who already made them would be extremely unfair.

I would rather have more armors with

Teleport or some GG melee armor without

Teleport (I would love to see buffed Chains of Honor, because they are not really THAT good and much more expensive than Foritude or Treachery - and Treachery is more than enough in PvM imo). So there are armors and runewords (see: Fury) that cost high runes and are bad. I think that should be fixed and Blizzard does a good thing by buffing items in D2R

Also for me it looks like many new players find Enigma too expensive and just want to nerf it so it won't be a goto runeword xD But the truth is after a month of playing it's not that bad anymore pricewise and you have space to experiment with niche items etc. Also you do not consider the fact that there are RARE and crafted items better than runewords (although they are are rare ), so you would have to rebalance the entire game