2.4 New stuff reflections

I am really enjoying the new level 85 areas. The stony tomb in particular is great. I've already found a few less common items like IK armor and

Schaefer's Hammer. Not sure what I'll actually do with those things, but it's fun to actually see them in the game.

As a less serious player I also love the increased availability of annis. It seems ridiculous to be mad about that.

MattMakesPhotos wrote: 2 years ago

Getting upset about something that literally doesn't have to affect you what-so-ever unless you were duping the system by anni hoarding.

That makes such little sense that I don't know where to start, so I'm not gonna get into it with you.. You are reaching wildly tho xP

Leaker416 wrote: 2 years ago

So, in your post about the game being dead for you, you asked that no one try and change your mind, then nailed yourself to a cross and had an epic Poor Little Old Me party. The fair thing would be to extend the same courtesy to others. Those that hate the patch can join your party; I am sure there are plenty of nails left. Those that want to discuss the new changes, good bad, and otherwise can here or in some other thread.

I'm still waiting to hear literally anything specific about why 2.4 is bad and how it actually negatively affected his gameplay. /shrug

So far, I have to say it's been pretty bad for me... I've tried to play a few times now & every time the game has crashed before even managing to finish killing Shenk. So I've just been watching & reading about everyone getting Annis while unable to play. =\

Hopefully the maintenance Wednesday will bring a fix & I'll be able to play again.

I like it, got first anni i've had in 20 yrs, with my Necro guy, without dying, at least Blizz is trying to do something.

Leaker416 wrote: 2 years ago

To be fair, Annis are still Annis, and super important for every build. So, hardly worthless.

Well, I think his point is that Annis will become worthless quite soon... And I tend to agree with this. They're still valuable now, but when everyone and their mom have 5 of them, who will buy Annis? Yes the extremely high stats will still be valuable because some people pay a king's ransom for perfect items, but the lower stats will be worthless, kinda like bad druid torchs and things like that.

Leaker416 wrote: 2 years ago

I am sure the people that used to trade Doombringers, Grandfathers, and Lidless Walls were sad when the uber runewords showed up and made all those uniques essentially worthless for trading.

Well this is actually what I believe is the most disappointing part of the game; Finding a Grandfather should be a thrilling moment, it's so rare and high level and all... But when they're going for pgems, that thrill is short lived. And for

Doombringer, people can't even sell them for a

Hel rune.

High level stuff like that should be exciting to find.

But few months from now, when everyone has a stash full of Annis, will it be exciting? Sure you'll still kill

Uber Diablo and ID it hoping to get a 20/20/10, but most of the time it'll be trash.

Kinda like when you're excited for 3 second when you find a unique ring, then you ID it and it's a bad nagel ring so you throw it back on the Ground.

Annis should be more than a 3 second excitement... But when everyone has an above average anni (shouldn't be too long), that's about all they'll do; Give you some hope for a few seconds, then disappointment when it's not a near-perfect, so it's worthless.

According to the gameplay, everything is fine. But, I have some problems with the game. When I am in

The Countess Tower, then 1-2-3 times during the evening, the game just closes and a window pops up for an error report. This has never happened in other locations. There was no such problem before the patch was released either.

As someone who first played in 1.08 and played a lot until 1.10 or so and never had an Anni, I'm excited to get one.

I can't play much now, but I'll trade one when I can since the prices will be so low.

I think one possible downside to having low roll annis being worth pgems is that everyone defacto gets +10 all res +10 all stats and the game gets easier. It's a step to making the game more casual friendly.

Tjalde wrote: 2 years ago

Leaker416 wrote: 2 years ago

So, in your post about the game being dead for you, you asked that no one try and change your mind, then nailed yourself to a cross and had an epic Poor Little Old Me party. The fair thing would be to extend the same courtesy to others. Those that hate the patch can join your party; I am sure there are plenty of nails left. Those that want to discuss the new changes, good bad, and otherwise can here or in some other thread.

Are you on drugs or is unpleasant just your default setting? You are acting like I just wrote this shit to a random guy that was happy about the patch... He was directly responding to me, what is your problem?

The "in your post" was in a reference to "How can I stay in the past?" which, as best as I can figure, was unsolicited, posted soon after the patch came out, and contained no specifics about why the patch was so terrible for you. It was instead a PLOM Party with a request for no one to engage you on the why, as well as how to keep playing 2.3. Amazingly, people offered suggestions on how to stay at 2.3, and no one asked about the why until a few hours ago. If the referenced post was a response to a PM or in game/discord interaction, then maybe starting out by stating that to add a little context is my suggestion. Otherwise, I think I can be forgiven for thinking it was an unsolicited rant and PLOM Party.

Your first comment in the thread was a similar "I hate everything" post. If you think I started this thread as a response to your post, sorry, no. I did note there wasn't a catch all thread about the new changes, so I attempted to fix it. The first response was...underwhelming. Subsequent posts have been pretty good.

Finally, an opening move of accusing the other person of being on drugs or "unpleasant" is not really a strong one, despite the results it might generate on other platforms. Attack the argument, not the person and all. Further, accusing me of being "unpleasant" is a bit of a stretch I think, but I will let others be the judge of that. One of those perspective things that I can't fairly judge myself.

mishabg wrote: 2 years ago

Leaker416 wrote: 2 years ago

To be fair, Annis are still Annis, and super important for every build. So, hardly worthless.

Well, I think his point is that Annis will become worthless quite soon... And I tend to agree with this. They're still valuable now, but when everyone and their mom have 5 of them, who will buy Annis? Yes the extremely high stats will still be valuable because some people pay a king's ransom for perfect items, but the lower stats will be worthless, kinda like bad druid torchs and things like that.

Leaker416 wrote: 2 years ago

I am sure the people that used to trade Doombringers, Grandfathers, and Lidless Walls were sad when the uber runewords showed up and made all those uniques essentially worthless for trading.

Well this is actually what I believe is the most disappointing part of the game; Finding a Grandfather should be a thrilling moment, it's so rare and high level and all... But when they're going for pgems, that thrill is short lived. And for

Doombringer, people can't even sell them for a

Hel rune.

High level stuff like that should be exciting to find.

But few months from now, when everyone has a stash full of Annis, will it be exciting? Sure you'll still kill

Uber Diablo and ID it hoping to get a 20/20/10, but most of the time it'll be trash.

Kinda like when you're excited for 3 second when you find a unique ring, then you ID it and it's a bad nagel ring so you throw it back on the Ground.

Annis should be more than a 3 second excitement... But when everyone has an above average anni (shouldn't be too long), that's about all they'll do; Give you some hope for a few seconds, then disappointment when it's not a near-perfect, so it's worthless.

Good points. I get the point that Annis aren't going to be traded at all, outside of the perfects in a few days. But that isn't because there is something better, it is because everyone has one, at least for now. So, worthless for trade, but not worthless for personal use. I assume once ladder starts there will be few to no walks outside ladder, so those that are skipping ladder (like me) need to get while the getting is good as this gusher of annis will be closing soon.

Maybe the solution is to keep working on this particular event? Change it so DClone has a chance to drop an Anni (a decent one, but still a chance) and rework the spawn mechanics? Less SoJs, or not SoJ dependent at all?

I also concur that the thrill of finding those elite uniques is something that should be put back in. Not sure how without power creep or nerfing the runewords that took their place. One can also argue that yeah, no one cares that a

Lidless Wall drops, but that thrill is replaced by a

Jah dropping, and the

Jah is much more usable by more classes than just a

Caster Shield.

mishabg wrote: 2 years ago

Well this is actually what I believe is the most disappointing part of the game; Finding a Grandfather should be a thrilling moment, it's so rare and high level and all... But when they're going for pgems, that thrill is short lived. And for

Doombringer, people can't even sell them for a

Hel rune.

High level stuff like that should be exciting to find.

There is no easy solution for that. Changing stats of items or runewords is the least elegant solution, especially if it's done to a bunch of them.
I can imagine adding cube recipes to improve unique item stats though. Something along the line of condensing for instance

Tarnhelm into an "Essence of

Tarnhelm" which can be used on another

Tarnhelm to potentially roll one with stats beyond what you can find. For instance you could roll a +2 skills, +100 mf

Tarnhelm this way.
Each unique would have to have it's own set of max rollable stats to prevent power creep.

There is an easy fix for rares though: Just allow them to spawn magic only affixes and suffixes. That way a godly rare will always be in the cards and people will pick them up.

If you allow rares to spawn with magic only affixes, not only are you rendering magic items essentially worthless in the process, you are also making sets, uniques and runewords even less desired than many of them already are because a full rare's worth of magic only affixes will in many cases be utterly insane by comparison.

Schnorki wrote: 2 years ago

If you allow rares to spawn with magic only affixes, not only are you rendering magic items essentially worthless in the process, you are also making sets, uniques and runewords even less desired than many of them already are because a full rare's worth of magic only affixes will in many cases be utterly insane by comparison.

Yes it would be more akin to the situation we had at the beginning in classic.
The thing is however to be able to compete with best in slot with runewords it almost has to be this insane.
If it's really too much they could limit the amount of magic only properties on rares to just one affix and one suffix.

In regards to sets they could get a similar treatment to uniques.

Personally I am fine to have magic items be the casualties here. It's not like they were ever something that are widely used considering the amount of good low level runewords.
Sure for some builds they are a good budget option in some slots but those would also benefit the most from better rares.

Zero187 wrote: 2 years ago

Oh and the melee fixes are INCREDIBLE!! No more having to constantly be clicking to attack. Can actually hold the mouse button down and it'll keep going from one enemy to the next! FINALLY!!! Can't imagine not liking 2.4. Feels so much smoother as a melee player.

I love this addition to the patch. I can finally try berserker barb.

Leaker416 wrote: 2 years ago

Maybe the solution is to keep working on this particular event? Change it so DClone has a chance to drop an Anni (a decent one, but still a chance) and rework the spawn mechanics? Less SoJs, or not SoJ dependent at all?

I personally really like how it currently works for single player tbh... I think it should just be "spawning dclone costs 1 SoJ" for MP also.

Insomnia wrote: 2 years ago

There is an easy fix for rares though: Just allow them to spawn magic only affixes and suffixes. That way a godly rare will always be in the cards and people will pick them up.

Agreed. In fact, I always felt like rares should've been the most powerful items in the game, not runewords... Because rares actually come from farming, compared to runewords that mostly come from trading (for most people anyway), you just find stuff, trade it for the runes you need and craft the runewords.

Insomnia wrote: 2 years ago

mishabg wrote: 2 years ago

Well this is actually what I believe is the most disappointing part of the game; Finding a Grandfather should be a thrilling moment, it's so rare and high level and all... But when they're going for pgems, that thrill is short lived. And for

Doombringer, people can't even sell them for a

Hel rune.

High level stuff like that should be exciting to find.

There is no easy solution for that.

I think there are 'out of the box' solutions;
Due to the insanely OP runewords, I think we're past trying to make people actually use unique items. If they nerfed runewords people already crafted (or if they buffed uniques, which would render the already crafted runewords obsolete) it would feel really bad for the players...
So I think what they should look for is to make them have a use OTHER than using them.
My #1 idea for that would be to melt them into some kind of currency (unique dust or wtv) that would be use for some purpose. Either a new way to get some stuff already in the game (say, you can use that Unique Dust to craft runes), or an entirely new purpose (an event like

Uber Diablo, which you would need lots of Unique Dust to activate).

If there was something like that in game, people would be genuinely excited about finding high level stuff, because (of course) a Grandfather would give you more dust than say a

Bloodletter. So finding high level uniques would be a great thing, as you'd know you made a lot of progress toward (whatever dust is used for).

Also worth noting that a system like that would increase the value of many uniques, because lots of people would melt them for dust, instead of giving them away for 1 pgem. So the people who would prefer selling them, could actually get a decent price for them.

This is just 1 idea, I'm sure there would be others, if they're willing to go outside the box.
If there is no 'fun' way to make people equip these items, then make people use them in other ways. Anything to get to the goal of making it exciting when people find high level stuff. Because it's a bit sad when items in the top 10 percentile of quality/level are only worth pgems, or even less (nothing at all).
When you find a Grandfather, it should be exciting, when you find a Gladiator's Bane, it should be exciting. Because more often than not, you won't even find 'THAT GOOD' in a farming session... So if even that is worthless, that's pretty sad.

mishabg wrote: 2 years ago

I think there are 'out of the box' solutions;
Due to the insanely OP runewords, I think we're past trying to make people actually use unique items. If they nerfed runewords people already crafted (or if they buffed uniques, which would render the already crafted runewords obsolete) it would feel really bad for the players...
So I think what they should look for is to make them have a use OTHER than using them.
My #1 idea for that would be to melt them into some kind of currency (unique dust or wtv) that would be use for some purpose. Either a new way to get some stuff already in the game (say, you can use that Unique Dust to craft runes), or an entirely new purpose (an event like

Uber Diablo, which you would need lots of Unique Dust to activate).

If there was something like that in game, people would be genuinely excited about finding high level stuff, because (of course) a Grandfather would give you more dust than say a

Bloodletter. So finding high level uniques would be a great thing, as you'd know you made a lot of progress toward (whatever dust is used for).

Also worth noting that a system like that would increase the value of many uniques, because lots of people would melt them for dust, instead of giving them away for 1 pgem. So the people who would prefer selling them, could actually get a decent price for them.

This is just 1 idea, I'm sure there would be others, if they're willing to go outside the box.
If there is no 'fun' way to make people equip these items, then make people use them in other ways. Anything to get to the goal of making it exciting when people find high level stuff. Because it's a bit sad when items in the top 10 percentile of quality/level are only worth pgems, or even less (nothing at all).
When you find a Grandfather, it should be exciting, when you find a Gladiator's Bane, it should be exciting. Because more often than not, you won't even find 'THAT GOOD' in a farming session... So if even that is worthless, that's pretty sad.

All I could think of reading this:

Overall - I'm enjoying the changes. I wished that they made

Frost Nova just a bit stronger. At first, I thought it would compete with lightening

Nova, but after trying it out I don't think its just there yet for the

Frost Nova. And is it just me or everyone else having hard time finding people joining your games?

For the next patch (if they are planning one), it would be nice to see:
1) making imbue fun again by providing token-like items. I remember when I used to play the classic, it was so much fun just to grab a nice base item and hoping that it would roll something nice.
2) some content/event around farming gems to bring some ease to crafting/rolling items. (in addition to stash tab)
3) as some already mentioned, the buffs for the super rare unique items. I think it's a waste of a good content and could potentially make farming bit more exciting.

Never had an Anni before 2.4. Have 3 of them now. I am happy.

On a side note, anyone try out any of the new rune words? Flickering Flame looks interesting. Perhaps a little expensive.

LuckyAce wrote: 2 years ago

Perhaps blizzard couple simply introduce more elite unique throwing weapons that better cater to throwing Barbarians? Who knows. It is also not a budget friendly build in my opinion, as it requires pretty specific gear choices to play otherwise it won’t perform very well.

Just make throwing weapons socketable, 1 socket in the unis, even 2 for the rares, you know the drill. That should sort things out. Should even correct prices for

Zod and respectively

Cham a bit.