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62 replies   16579 views
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Description

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Can be used to make Runewords:

7
Bizington wrote: 2 days ago
This game has SOOOOO MUCH to offer if you look for it. When you look for BiS what do you look for? DAMAGE!!! Right? Wrong. I built a smiter and was ridiculed for using
Heaven's Light
over Grief because DAMAGE. He's a Paladin. He's not allowed by Oath to use anything other than a bludgeoning weapon. It's a ROLE PLAYING GAME. In essence, we are playing Dungeons and Dragon with virtual paper (a GUI).
My stereotypical paladin would wield a shiny sword, not a blunt mace. :) But that's an opinion.

JARY wrote: 1 day ago
And the biggest issue I see with the Loot is the same curse that's been lingering over this game since 20 years ago, the Runewords literally destroyed 99% of the Set Item and Unique potential, (...)
It's so bad... just take Isenharts's Armory for example, even if you had the ENTIRE set and had the strength to run full set by Act 2, by the time you even hit Act 3 the damage and stats have already
Fallen
off, the stats are so measily just getting a 'Steel' or 'Malice' and 'Stealth' and maybe a Rhyme shield later on for some low runes is already far superior.
I slightly disagree: runewords aren't bad per se. 1.10 and later ones are.

If Expansion was limited to the original runewords, the itemization wouldn't have been so bad. Look at them. Some are mediocre. Some are good, like Ancients' Pledge, Leaf or Lore. Almost too good, but there are non-RW alternatives, like
The Ward
,
The Salamander
or
Peasant Crown
respectively, and for most of them endgame sets/uniques are better, even taking into account the RW's flexibility of minmaxing the base.
White is the only endgame-viable original RW, I suppose; some other are also used, but somehow limited: Black (solely because of CB), Memory (solely for pre-buff) or Wealth (solely for GF).

Also, there were no oskills nor auras when equipped! When you wanted a
Teleport
, you needed a Sorceress. When you wanted
Battle Orders
, you needed a Barbarian. When you encountered an immune monster, you either needed a Paladin with
Conviction
, a Necromancer with
Lower Resist
, or another player using a different damage type. No Infinities, no Sunders, just teamplay.

JARY wrote: 1 day ago
And now for the gameplay. The
Terror
zones is a nice touch, but let's be honest, people still basically just Chaos run and
Baal
run, that's never really changed. The game was literally more entertaining back in the days 20 years ago when it was centered more around Hell Cows, there was better teamwork and more fun killing them than the meta now. That's why I said: Uber Cow Level perhaps? WOuld be kind of sweet... a Cow Level with tougher and faster cows with Ubers surrounding it, maybe even throw in different terrain like rivers and new surprises. The players want to try creative builds, but we also need a challenge that requires teamwork to beat. No single task should be able to be solo'd by just going Hammerdin or Mosaic sin, give us a task that requires a Shockwave bear to
Stun
, someone to heal and Pally to provide
Salvation
so party doesn't die, and multiple damage dealers to take out, give ppl something that borderline seems impossible unless they have a coordinated effort to conquer that's what the ppl want and deserve with this game is more challenge. Ubers aren't a challenge, ppl realized long ago just get crushing blow and lifetap and stack some resist for one part and you're set, we need a new challenge.
I wholeheartedly agree. The cows are too easy - especially given their loot. They are slow, they have no ranged attacks, they use no skills, they have no immunities, ... A perfect area for mindless AoE farming. Given no danger and a massive advantage of AoE against tight monster packs, there is no place there for melee builds, yet alone for support ones.

I wish we had an uberlevel like in Median XL. Look at how cow level looks there. Cows don't walk, they charge at you. Some shoot. Some are invisible. Some summon more cows. And the king... Those immunities and MASSIVE AoEs. I know it's a mod, and player characters are also tremendously buffed, but the core design (not health/damage numbers) could be ported to D2.

But to make teamplay worthy, one thing must be done: GET RID OF MONSTER SCALING. Otherwise someone would quickly figure out the optimal team (most likely a single player), and the rest of the party would be to leave the game not to increase the difficulty. This is what happened with UT.

Also, a single
Hellfire Torch
as a reward regardless of the party size made it not worthy to invite other players. Even worse, random players could simply snatch the reward and leave you with nothing. If teamplay is to be incentivized, it'd need to be fixed somehow so each player gets a fair share. And it'd need to be done carefully - so no one could make a game with 7 mules to get multiple rewards.
7
User avatar

JARY 11

PC
Trang Oul wrote: 1 day ago
JARY wrote: 1 day ago
And the biggest issue I see with the Loot is the same curse that's been lingering over this game since 20 years ago, the Runewords literally destroyed 99% of the Set Item and Unique potential, (...)
It's so bad... just take Isenharts's Armory for example, even if you had the ENTIRE set and had the strength to run full set by Act 2, by the time you even hit Act 3 the damage and stats have already
Fallen
off, the stats are so measily just getting a 'Steel' or 'Malice' and 'Stealth' and maybe a Rhyme shield later on for some low runes is already far superior.
I slightly disagree: runewords aren't bad per se. 1.10 and later ones are.

If Expansion was limited to the original runewords, the itemization wouldn't have been so bad. Look at them. Some are mediocre. Some are good, like Ancients' Pledge, Leaf or Lore. Almost too good, but there are non-RW alternatives, like
The Ward
,
The Salamander
or
Peasant Crown
respectively, and for most of them endgame sets/uniques are better, even taking into account the RW's flexibility of minmaxing the base.
White is the only endgame-viable original RW, I suppose; some other are also used, but somehow limited: Black (solely because of CB), Memory (solely for pre-buff) or Wealth (solely for GF).

Also, there were no oskills nor auras when equipped! When you wanted a
Teleport
, you needed a Sorceress. When you wanted
Battle Orders
, you needed a Barbarian. When you encountered an immune monster, you either needed a Paladin with
Conviction
, a Necromancer with
Lower Resist
, or another player using a different damage type. No Infinities, no Sunders, just teamplay.
Well, the irony is the only examples I gave which was Steel, Malice, and Ryme compared to Ishenhart's set, those were all ORIGINAL runewords. But also, these makeup like 10% of the total runewords, and these makeup the first 1-2 year of runewords till 1.10 and 1.11 changed the game forever which made up over 90% of the gameplay... again, dude, back when I was posting in 2005 this was a strong argument ppl made, but its 2026. We've been living with the current set this entire time.

Also, let's go over some of these "too good" items you listed:

Lore is good, great Act 3
Helm
although I'll take a Tarn over it. Any caster item with '
Tir
' early on is good. Ancients Pledge is overrated, worse than Rhyme in every way, it's slightly better than throwing 3 flawless dmds in a shield. No blockrate or block increase, just a complete overrated garbage shield. I've mentioned before, I think 'Stealth' Armor is one of the best in game early armors.

For the other items: Salamander is complete garbage, just run a Leaf +3 firebolt, easy to shop for, few council runs will get it. Black is horrible 'cause of the knockback, and crushing blow just doesn't matter that much till nm-hell, the weapons ias isn't even good... literally find anything, and it'll be better than this runeword.

But when it comes to the ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM... the biggest abuser is *drum roll* 'Spirit', sadly. For any caster, Spirit sword, Spirit shield, just blows almost any other option mid-game out of the water even through hell, it's just that good. Like, it isn't till you're talking INSANE LATE GAME items like HOTO, Enigma, Harley, etc. that ppl start to even "waver" running dual Spirit, that's how insane it is in terms of stats-stick.
7
JARY wrote: 8 hours ago
Lore is good, great Act 3
Helm
although I'll take a Tarn over it. Any caster item with '
Tir
' early on is good. Ancients Pledge is overrated, worse than Rhyme in every way, it's slightly better than throwing 3 flawless dmds in a shield. No blockrate or block increase, just a complete overrated garbage shield. I've mentioned before, I think 'Stealth' Armor is one of the best in game early armors.

For the other items: Salamander is complete garbage, just run a Leaf +3 firebolt, easy to shop for, few council runs will get it. Black is horrible 'cause of the knockback, and crushing blow just doesn't matter that much till nm-hell, the weapons ias isn't even good... literally find anything, and it'll be better than this runeword.
Tarnhelm
is nice because of MF, but you need to find it first. It's so much easier to find
Ort
and
Sol
, and make Lore in any random 2s helm.
Stealth is the best early game armor, agree.
Black in a
Flail
is the best available weapon for a budget smiter. It's enough to beat UT. It's not mean to be used for regular play.

JARY wrote: 8 hours ago
But when it comes to the ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM... the biggest abuser is *drum roll* 'Spirit', sadly. For any caster, Spirit sword, Spirit shield, just blows almost any other option mid-game out of the water even through hell, it's just that good. Like, it isn't till you're talking INSANE LATE GAME items like HOTO, Enigma, Harley, etc. that ppl start to even "waver" running dual Spirit, that's how insane it is in terms of stats-stick.
That's what I meant. Spirit is the elephant in the room because it's a 1.10 runeword, and, not surprisingly, outclasses almost any alternative. No original RW offers so much power.
9

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