Terror zones destroyed the balance

It seems Diablo 2 became the only game where only caster character can be played.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but no other class and no other build can be able to level up.

After the introduction of

Terror zones, only casters can swing in them and no one except casters. If you do not have a

Teleport, you have nothing to do in

Terror zones, because a player with a

Teleport will clear the location faster than you reach the first monster.

You will say: there is an Enigma in the game that gives a

Teleport. Okay, let’s think. To use the

Teleport, you need to rise yot FCR. That is, in addition to Enigma, you must wear FCR-rings, FCR-amulet, FCR-

Belt …
That is, a physical DPS character simply has to become a caster. It is clear in this scenario, the damage becomes minimal and the physical DPS character turns into a vegetable that can do nothing on its own - just run after the caster.

In general, the introduction of

Terror zones, in my opinion, simply buried all non-caster classes and non-caster builds. They just don’t stand a chance.

The balance you're talking about never existed. Casters always reigned supreme in the mass-killing department. That said, WW, kicksins and Fury druids were buffed to be stronger than they ever were. It's just down to personal preference what you like to farm/how you want to play.

iamergo wrote: 2 years ago

The balance you're talking about never existed. Casters always reigned supreme in the mass-killing department. That said, WW, kicksins and Fury druids were buffed to be stronger than they ever were. It's just down to personal preference what you like to farm/how you want to play.

It's not about the farm. Every class had special places where they were more effective than others.

I'm talking about the speed of gaining experience. All classes somehow were forced to sit in baalrans to increase the experience. Both sorceresses and druids, paladins and barbarians. None of them had the opportunity to gain experience faster in any other place. They all moved at the same speed.

But now casters have got an incredible, absolutely inexplicable advantage, especially at level 95+, because now casters do not need to sit next to a druid in a ballrun.

You could play even the slowest Smiter and keep up with the sorceress in terms of experience, because both you and any caster received the same amount of experience. Now, as you get your 100k for 1 baalran, you get it. And the caster for the same time gets 10 times more in

Terror zone.

I think you're exaggerating things way past what's actually going on, in text and in your head. Ten times faster XP gain? Come on! Twice. Maybe three times, tops. And even then, it's only on an even playing field, i.e. where two players, a caster and a melee masochist, both specifically target boss packs and ignore the riffraff. A smart melee player with Enigma/

Leap can compete pretty well with a newbie who runs bad

Terror zones and wastes their time on groups of 1-4 monsters.

Blizz said about balancing the game but they never really wanted to do that.
Hammerdin and BlizzardSorc were said to be too powerful and Blizz did nothing.
About Sunder Charms, more than 50% of what I've found are Cold. Magic and Poison sunder are super rare.

iamergo wrote: 2 years ago

I think you're exaggerating things way past what's actually going on, in text and in your head. Ten times faster XP gain? Come on! Twice. Maybe three times, tops. And even then, it's only on an even playing field, i.e. where two players, a caster and a melee masochist, both specifically target boss packs and ignore the riffraff. A smart melee player with Enigma/

Leap can compete pretty well with a newbie who runs bad

Terror zones and wastes their time on groups of 1-4 monsters.

When I wrote "10 times", I was comparing the amount of experience the caster was previously getting in the ballrun and the amount of experience he is now getting in the

Terror zone.
At 98 lvl players in baalran get about 100,000 experience. A caster in the

Terror zone gets around 1,000,000.

Moreover, what does "bad"

Terror zones mean? The zone is one for all. Bad or good, it doesn't matter. You either go there or you don't go and get nothing at all.

And why are you talking about newcomers? I am talking in general, not about any single hypothetical case.

I undertake to compare the amount of experience that a caster and a non-caster can get in a

Terror zone. This value will vary depending on the non-caster class.
If a WW Barbarian still has a chance of getting at least 30%, then a smiter or wolf druid is unlikely to be able to.

But even if the caster only gets three times as much, doesn't the 300% buff ruin the balance?

I agree that Teleporting goes faster sure, it has always been like that, but the game is also set up for different characters and purposes. Personally I love the

Terror Zones and usually don't even equip my Enigmas, because I really like running around there.

My main purpose is NEVER getting the most experience, and I'm sure I can't be the only one.

My Bowazon and Charging Pala pretty much one-hit-kills and it goes really fast (especially Pala).

Druid I agree is slower and Barb I have no experience with in the Zones.

Trapsin is also loving it.

For me this has created balance because now I can enjoy more characters without the long transit of getting to

Baal, and still getting what I want and more.

All in all I personally love the new addition.

I'd agree with your (OP) point to some extent but not across the board.

Generally speaking, there's (vastly) different approaches to lvling now.
Some folks actually still sit in Baalruns which remains the same it always has. Though for those as well, you were always better off with some classes than with others as a group of javas, hammerdins and sorcs will finish their baalruns far quicker than a group of barbs and druids.

Some folks run solo

Terror zones. This obviously changes lvling times as compared to P8 but many folks (myself typically included) prefer soloing over the idiocy that usually is public

Terror zones. People seem to just be incapable of staying grouped for the sake of maxing XP for everyone and you end up with 3-4 "teams" branching off, clearing the zone way too fast, leaving you with a fraction of the XP you should've gotten and costing you so much time in re-making new games and whatnot that you're just as fast (if not faster) solo. If you do run solo, any class can take them on at a solid pace (class..not build). Though yeah, some builds have always been better farmers and will always continue to be. The mere fact that some builds are and remain single-target makes sure of that.

And then of course there's the actual successful P8

Terror zones. Now, in those, it depends entirely on the zone.
- If you're looking at something like cows, CS or

Baal runs, any class can typically stay in XP range (excluding WSK 2/3 for

Baal if your group includes those), even without

Teleport and the like.
- If you're looking at less dense, more open spaces like

Arreat Plateau and similar then you start to see a real difference because the teleporters move on quite a bit faster to the next pack (which is now further away), resulting in classes with no run improvements falling behind at some point and not gaining any XP anymore. Pallies can still easily keep up with

Charge but for something like a Zon, you start having problems.
- And then lastly, you have zones with constant dead ends like

Glacial Trail or

Crystalline Passage. Here, any non-teleporter is just screwed (Pallies CAN still get back and keep up but now it actually takes a bit of effort to do so). As soon as you hit the first dead end, teleports move right past it and keep clearing while you are forced to turn around, walk back, try to find the right way there and...well, you will just never catch up again (unless your teleporters are just crazy slow).

Now, knowing that, you can just skip the "crap zones" (which is another related problem in and by itself) but what really irks me if I'm on say my Zon or Pally (i.e. the two without

Teleport) and I do find myself in a semi-capable group, I am forced to be a useless leecher no matter what because their

Teleport + clear speed is so high that I literally spend 100% of my time running after them in order to not get left behind. I've had multiple runs where I didn't lose out on any XP but I also never touched a single mob..ever..not because I was being lazy and didn't want to but because by the time I arrived at the pack the group was on, they (read: the one good java or similar) had taken it down and it was time to keep running to the next one that she had already teleported to only to repeat the same process there. That, to me, is just dumb.

I would argue that

Terror zones and more specifically sunders have actually done wonders for overall balance in that they moved a lot of already good builds much closer to the existing top tier ones and even more so because they actually enabled whole new builds that couldn't do squat before to not only exist but to perform at a surprisingly high level.

At the same time however,

Terror zones have made the difference between "

Teleport" and "no

Teleport" more obvious than ever before. I would still argue that

Teleport and the speed it brings have always been a defining part of this game and shouldn't be nerfed/removed but SOMETHING needs to happen to balance that out for

Terror zones.

You could make

Teleport charges super cheap to repair and increase the number of charges on magic items so folks without Enigma can reliably just use a crappy

Teleport amulet to keep up in the interim. Still annoying to have to replace an otherwise useful amulet for it but something's gotta give.

You could make

Terror zones an entire new difficulty rather than a 1-zone rotation so folks can pick the zones that work for them/their class in terms of "keeping up" instead of having to skip tons of them. I'd prefer this one anyways, not just for the sake of balancing out the lvling for classes but also because it allows you to actually clear an entire game without arbitrarily losing xp and drop chances. You wouldn't have to make a new game every 2 minutes because there's nothing worthwhile left to farm. And you'd actually enable true, solid split runs because literally ANY zone would be worth it (though yes, some more, some less, largely also depending on the build) and those runs, too could last for more than 2 minutes at a time.

You could give every class SOME sort of solid movement boost that is no harder to access than

Teleport for a Sorc.

Charge is a good example though even for that one, it could use some love in terms of fixing the pathing and constantly getting stuck on literally anything. Amazons, Necros, ... they just don't have anything. Could actually be kind of a cool (and balancing) addition for PvP as well. And if done right, this would make Enigma far, FAR less obligatory than it is today which also wouldn't be a bad thing by any means.

There's plenty of options to address this beyond just "nerf a defining characteristic of this game". But something should indeed be done.

I think I understand where you're coming from here, OP.. But it's late, so I may be completely off.

My interpretation is that you are speaking of kill/clear speed of casters vs melee in pure experience sense? Regarding

Terror Zones because they "pull" you out of sitting in

Baal run games and the like if you purely have XP in mind, like kind of making

Baal for xp obsolete?

In essence I think Blizz may have assumed that the zones would have increased the xp rate across the board, across all builds. But, there are just some builds that are so inefficient in a solo play or anything but their niche that you'd be better off in a

Baal game if you really want to level it. They just will always be that way; I'm looking more at name locking single target attacks and the like.

D2 has always been inherently unbalanced. Most games of this genre are on some level or another.

Teleport in itself is just something that cranks up clear speed of anything using it, most movement skills in pretty much every game do it. Of course one could be easily taken on a long list of things that make these casters 'superior,' AoE, range.. (Also, where does a non-teleporting ranged, like a bowzon fall in your mind here?)
When you're looking to Min/Max things like Time efficiency, you will ALWAYS find a imbalance between classes and builds. Some of these gaps will be innately huge purely on a mechanical level. Also, it could be said that this is the reason they exist to begin with..

If your talking about the "balance" of the All classes XP leader board for ladder, then yes, I'd have to say this did have a noticeable impact... But to my eyes, it's just pushed the same classes I always see on it, up and away faster. Kind of just magnifying what was already there.

I feel like when one is making a character to play, and I mean actually play, not just sitting in a

Baal game for xp. You are making a conscious decision to take the bad with the good. Most of the time in my mind it always seems to look like; Less clear speed but more interesting skills. Or, No

Teleport yet more engaging.
I always tend to fall on something I find the most enjoyment playing for long periods of time, often taking a hit on my efficiency of XP gain, or gaining Wealth. When I feel that I'm established most of my casters end up in a utility roll, like getting keys. They collect dust with my smiter/hammerdin, all the stuff I used to help me get to play stuff I enjoy.

Like has been mentioned above, I also have noticed a XP gain in most of the non-caster or non

Teleport/Enigma build I've been playing.
Actually, since I generally play solo, the XP increase has been for everything in a sense, just more noticeable on some builds. That is if I'm actively choosing to play something other than

Baal. I feel like

Baal runs will always have a place, it's just usually so relaxed.. Even when your being an active party member.

I think I agree with you? But, not in the sense I'm interpreting you. More of a ladder aspect I'd agree they have had a larger impact. In my little world, where XP doesn't really matter after Low 90's for almost all my builds.. Any sort of increased perceivable or exaggerated imbalance in XP gain is completely null to me. Kind of subjective topic, I guess.

Not really trying to lean either way here. I'd personally be just as happy with this game if they dropped it identical to what it was just with these new graphics, got some sort of real server stability and then walked away..

Honestly though... After like what, 20-22 years? I'm really glad to have some alternative options to leveling that are not Chaos/

Nihlathak/

Baal. I surely don't speak for anyone but myself, but they have become nearly mind numbing. In this sense I welcome

Terror Zones with open arms.

Jkeemss wrote: 2 years ago

My Bowazon and Charging Pala pretty much one-hit-kills and it goes really fast (especially Pala).

It seems you play a single game.

Schnorki said absolutely right:

Schnorki wrote: 2 years ago

I literally spend 100% of my time running after them in order to not get left behind. I've had multiple runs where I didn't lose out on any XP but I also never touched a single mob..ever..not because I was being lazy and didn't want to but because by the time I arrived at the pack the group was on, they (read: the one good java or similar) had taken it down and it was time to keep running to the next one that she had already teleported to only to repeat the same process there. That, to me, is just dumb.

Tess wrote: 2 years ago

Jkeemss wrote: 2 years ago

My Bowazon and Charging Pala pretty much one-hit-kills and it goes really fast (especially Pala).

It seems you play a single game.
Try to go into the same

Terror zone with the caster: you won't be able to kill any monsters because the caster will kill them before you get to them.

----------------------------


Yes, you are correct.

I suppose there will always be back-sides when Balancing for players with different conditions.

I get your stand-point, and I feel ya, but for players like me, this has been a huge improvement.

Not saying there aren't better Over-All-Improvements.

I think people romanticize the past too much. This "balance" that people miss never really existed.

Physical builds absolutely need a buff though, they are my favorite classes but it's painfully obvious how far behind casters they are in p8.

Enigma with Harmony A1 merc is the only way physical builds can really keep up with a group but damage is still too low.

EMzx25 wrote: 2 years ago

I think people romanticize the past too much. This "balance" that people miss never really existed.

What are u talking about?
Why balance never really existed if casters didn't have the opportunity to gain more experience than physical?

Have you tried getting your character to level 99?
I have. And I'm arguing that the casters had no advantage, because they got exactly the same amount of experience as the phisical. Now casters have the opportunity to gain experience several times faster.

Tess wrote: 2 years ago

It seems Diablo 2 became the only game where only caster character can be played.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but no other class and no other build can be able to level up.

After the introduction of

Terror zones, only casters can swing in them and no one except casters. If you do not have a

Teleport, you have nothing to do in

Terror zones, because a player with a

Teleport will clear the location faster than you reach the first monster.

You will say: there is an Enigma in the game that gives a

Teleport. Okay, let’s think. To use the

Teleport, you need to rise yot FCR. That is, in addition to Enigma, you must wear FCR-rings, FCR-amulet, FCR-

Belt …
That is, a physical DPS character simply has to become a caster. It is clear in this scenario, the damage becomes minimal and the physical DPS character turns into a vegetable that can do nothing on its own - just run after the caster.

In general, the introduction of

Terror zones, in my opinion, simply buried all non-caster classes and non-caster builds. They just don’t stand a chance.

I think that melee was already "buried" and that

Terror zones didn't really change much in the melee/caster balance. In fact, it may be that

Terror zones actually made it slightly easier to farm as a melee, as some

Terror zones are right there at a waypoint and don't take any teleporting to get to.

What didn't help melee in comparison to casters this last patch was Sundering charms, as it made casters comparatively more powerful.

Melee is just in a bad spot overall, but it has some niche uses, and I'm building a melee character right now: a

Travincal-farming,

Whirlwind barbarian. Last ladder, my

Travincal barb horked out about 1

Ber rune worth of items every 400 Trav runs or so. That is far better than what my Sorceress was able to do. Another place where melee continues to shine is doing Uber bosses, of course. In fact, in the present Ladder, I now have more melee characters (2) than caster characters (1).

I don't see any kind of true fix to melee ever coming to Diablo 2. It would require huge changes such as entirely new skills or adding splash damage to melee attacks. Though I wonder, how did Project Diablo 2 address melees' short-comings? I've heard PD2 rebalanced a lot of things and is a better overall game. One thing I heard they did that definitely sounds like an improvement is they gave every class some kind of

Teleport, though I think the Sorceress

Teleport is still the best.

tatarjj wrote: 2 years ago

I'm building a melee character right now: a

Travincal-farming,

Whirlwind barbarian. Last ladder, my

Travincal barb horked out about 1

Ber rune worth of items every 400 Trav runs or so.

You misinterpreted my post or misunderstood what I was talking about.
Nobody talks about farm at all. It's about the speed of gaining experience at 95+ levels. These are fundamentally different topics.

Nobody argues that you can find the

Ber rune by barbarian in Travinkal. We are talking about the fact that before any phisical can reach level 99 at the same time as the caster (with the same amount of time). Now, no matter how hard the phisical tries, he will never be able to reach level 99 at the same time as the caster (it's out of the question to overtake him).

Not sure if before,

Baal runs were not already quicker for sorcs with their abolity to TP around.

And I am not sure neither if all casters should be puy in the same bag, or if the matter is only for sorcs. Indeed, necros need Enigma pretty much - sure when they have it they go fast, but until then they definitely lose killing speed, so XP, before.
Druids probably have the same issue but have not tried them enough to talk.

Tess wrote: 2 years ago

Have you tried getting your character to level 99?
I have. And I'm arguing that the casters had no advantage, because they got exactly the same amount of experience as the phisical. Now casters have the opportunity to gain experience several times faster.

Exp gain was equal because everyone would sit in the same throne room just leeching exp off of the caster who could kill

Baal's minions the fastest. That wasn't fun and I don't miss it at all. Yes, without Enigma and FCR, melee can't keep up in

Terror zones, and yes, that does slow it down for them. You're not wrong, melee just wasn't that great prior to

Terror zones either.

Well, the underlying topic is balance. And balance is inherently a give and take or all classes would be the same. Leveling speed is not the only thing that matters in this game and that does need to be taken into account.

If a random mediocre sorc build (arbitrary example) can level faster than others because she has

Teleport but farms for gear significantly slower than everyone else, can't handle ubers, can't take on dclone, fails in PvP and really doesn't offer anything but faster lvling because she can keep up with groups..does that make her overpowered? I would argue not. It makes her significantly better at one thing (specifically travel and as a result leeching XP off people who can kill stuff -> lvling) while leaving her significantly worse at others.

That concept holds and rightfully so. Differentiation and build niches have been a defining part of pretty much any RPG ever.

The question is, does it really get fulfilled in D2? Are those classes/builds that are so much worse at lvling (which isn't a caster vs. physical thing but a

Teleport vs. no

Teleport and a single-target vs. aoe thing) consistently significantly better at other equally important/core things to make up for it?
Sadly, the answer is obviously a resounding no.

Take a fire druid. Yeah, he's a caster...he still sucks at lvling because he can't keep up with groups (not counting Enigma since that'd solve it for literally any build out there). He also comparatively sucks at ubers. And dclone. And literally any farming activity. He just sucks. Yes, I know, there's some die hard fire druids out there and I'm sorry to you but let's face it, druids in general just make for a great example of something that sucks by comparison (much as I hate to say it..I still like mine, bad as he is).

To a large extent, you could argue the same way with a Bone necro. He'll be just as bad at lvling. He's nowhere near high-end farming speeds. And ubers and dclone are just stupid on him. But unlike a druid, at least a Bone necro is a top-tier choice for PvP so they actually have something that they really are great at to make up for it.

Bone necros have PvP.
Smiters have Ubers.
Horkers have Trav.
Multiple sorc builds, geared javas, hammers and to a lesser extent FoHdins and Trapsins have mass farming (which does largely overlap with lvling).
And a whole bunch of builds and druids have..well, nothing.

Excluding of course the "nothing" part, a distribution and niche sorting is fine and part of what gives a game variety and makes it fun. After all, if everything was just as great at everything as everyone else, why play anything else?

This was a lot more true back when D2 was actually hard and support classes (aura switching,

Shout barbs, ...) existed and were truly desired in your groups but even without that (though I wish it were still the case), some builds being (much) better at certain things than others is perfectly fine, so long as those others have their own niche.

Lvling wasn't balanced in the past. It was always faster for those builds that are great at mass farming simply because their

Baal runs were significantly faster than those of other builds. It merely became more imbalanced now. Or...differently imbalanced. Not because "casters" lvl faster (that generalization is simply false) but because

Teleport = keep up with group = don't lose XP = faster lvling. There is of course also still the "AoE = faster killing than single target = faster lvling" but that part of it isn't new, that's always been there and is what made those farmer

Baal runs so much faster.

Balance as an actual goal in this game is a very, very distant one. And one that frankly I do not believe Blizz will ever even come close to. After all, they've proven to fail at that in basically every one of their games time and time again. Hell, usually when they try to balance things, they just end up making things worse.
That's not to say they shouldn't try but don't hold your breath.

Either way, the balance issues today (which aren't a new thing, they're just in parts different from those we've always had) aren't a simple matter of "caster vs. physical".

As a barb who hit level 97 at the start of

Terror zones and is about halfway now to 98, I think my main complaint is how pathetic most

Terror zones are compared to Worldstone XP. I can get half a bar easy when worldstone tzone hits, but every other tzone pales in comparison. So now this just turns into a waiting game for me, as it's not really worth farming other tzones except maybe CS, cows and trav. Used to enjoy playing all day, now it's just check at the start of the hour, be disappointed it's not a decent one, and continue on with non-diablo stuff. But as others have said, I'd still most likely have this same problem with other classes. My proposed solution would be to make it so multiple Tzones are active at once, giving a higher chance for a decent one and more choice.

Schnorki wrote: 2 years ago

To a large extent, you could argue the same way with a Bone necro. He'll be just as bad at lvling. He's nowhere near high-end farming speeds. And ubers and dclone are just stupid on him. But unlike a druid, at least a Bone necro is a top-tier choice for PvP so they actually have something that they really are great at to make up for it.

As a Bone Necro main trying to hit 99, I feel this