A long winded RotW review by a pretty serious casual gamer

I figured I would put together some of my collected thoughts about this update for those still considering switching. I mostly solo and don't chat much, but this is kind of a big deal. There was actually quite a bit in this update, and the information has not been presented well.

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/d2r/t ... ock/171280

Pow, that is the closest to patch notes I can find, on a post from mikelessar. The biggest issue with all of this is Blizzard playing secret squirrel with this info. We don't need surprises with our old game, give us some clear communication instead of disseminating info through social media partners. Post the patch notes, tell us what is going on. Not everything has to be a big dramatic release. Please, go look at how Age of Empires 2 does updates, it is great. I have been playing this game since I snagged the D2 Battle chest box ~physical media~. The game is legendary for a reason, any changes made to this game need to be done as delicately as possible. So lets dive right into the worst of it.

The Warlock. I honestly do not know how they could release this and not understand how broken it is. Do they not play this game? Is this to make people excited to play it before you nerf it to reality? I just don't understand. It is like they took aspects of other classes and then speed runners told them how to make it ridiculous. The Chaos tree is just blisteringly overpowered magic that feels taken from newer games. The choice to change the level requirements of "

Corpse Explosion" and "

Decrepify" sigils for the Warlock from the Necromancer equivalent is baffling. The Demon Summoning is a blast, credit where it is due, but it is also so overpowered as a new mechanic. The eldritch tree... this feels like every speed runner making a melee wizard with no idea of the balance it would disrupt. "Lol lets use 2 handed weapons in one hand, ignore things we don't like (knockback and enemies flee) and do physical damage at higher numbers than casters can do with elements.... oh and make it crit." Just obscene. The whole thing needs nerfed by at least 50% across the board. Its just too efficient. If you are going to do this nonsense with weapons, then lets reduce the damage on them, you don't get to above 100% damage until like 15 points of

Levitation Mastery. The whole class just feels like it double dips on everything. It is fun to play, it is just so over powered it feels like cheat codes compared to the other classes. This class could absolutely work in this game, the skills and character look amazing. Just please, don't make the original characters obsolete to make your new class look better. This is Mosaic turned into a class, and sorry, but----
"If I may...

Um, I'll tell you the problem with the scientific power that you're using here, it didn't require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done and you took the next step. You didn't earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don't take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could, and before you even knew what you had, you patented it, and packaged it, and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and you're selling it, you wanna sell it. Well..." Dr. Ian Malcolm

New Items. Home run folks. I am and will always be super concerned about the drop tables. Putting new stuff in there can mess up the rate at which stuff drops. The items in this game feel good to find because there are good ones and bad ones, each drop has a scratch off lottery feel to it. And each drop might be that small boost you need to be able to clear the next area. (unless you are a warlock and your goat did it for you) The new items seem pretty solid and balanced across the board. There is new stuff I'm excited for and new things i am sure

Charsi will treasure. The crafting stuff is fantastic. The cube is really the best way forward to add content to this game. New gear and sets mess with that drop table. But new rune words, new things to toss in to the cube, take our cool stuff we were already hoarding and makes them resources. Giving us stuff to look for, trade, craft with, get a bad roll, farm again, all for a 1-2% increase in something... that is the feeling you are trying to chase.

Mixed bag time. The inventory. I am greatly appreciative of the 2 new stash tabs, and 2 new characters slots. With no other new content, I would have paid the same price for just these features. The new stackable tabs I am not sold on. Yes, they are 100% more convenient, i am using them, they are incredibly handy. But they are not diablo. Inventory tetris and management is such a core part of this game. Yes, you need to hold onto a couple

El Runes, just in case... that's 2 inventory slots. Everything was a choice, every item was in your inventory because you chose to keep it over something else. The limited inventory made your items feel that much more important. I get having more room for items and rune words, but we are walking a really fine line of changing the actual diablo 2 loot experience. Be careful not to cut the strings that hold this game up. I understand that newer games have newer features that would be cool to add retroactively... but cool isn't good. This game has a feeling to it that other games do not have...adding quality of life features from other games makes this game feel less like itself.

Playable stuff )) I haven't messed with them yet, but I am looking forward to the new Ancients fight. It seems like good endgame content, good drops, and we have a bit of control over how we farm. High hopes for when I get there. The new

Terror zone updates including the sunder charms are great. The half hour zones mean I can run through and try to get as many runs as I can, or have a nice slow hork session and then onto the next zone. Adding a random extra oomph to the enemies in

Terror zones is also appreciated. Huge fan of being able to terrorize an act, just an excellent idea. And the shards to terrorize are also crafting ingredients, making using them more of a decision. Back to that old inventory feel of your choices with gear mattering. I really cannot compliment this enough as far as adding new content to an old game.

And some small stuffs. The loot filter. I haven't even looked at it. I am the loot filter. This goes back to the inventory thing, you killed them, you search them, you find your loot. If you are running through the game fast enough that you don't care about most drops, I am not sure we play the same game. I can see it maybe being handy if I am trying to burn through a

Terror zone super fast? If someone else loves it good for them, I don't want to yuck someone's yum, this just doesn't matter to me.
The Chronicle - this is such an awesome fumble lol. I love it... the idea of it. Please, let us see the info on the items, and then give us a check mark when we find it. I have had to play this game with either a book or a webpage up to look at these items to see what rolls are. The game clearly has the functionality now... leave your fancy chronicle as is, but give us a

Compendium or index so i don't have to grab my phone and check the rune word 6 times before i socket.
Lightning Hose ))) Diablo now does damage with his lightning hose when you are up close. All this power creep and the namesake finally gets to hurt folks. In case you noticed your dclone runs being a bit more dangerous.

Overall, The update feels awesome for a solo. There is more storage and new things to find and do. I can ignore the warlock because i don't have to make one, how they balance them for online play doesn't matter for a solo. The rest of the update around the class feels incredibly positive. I am not sure a game like diablo 2 could be made today. The feel that older games like this have is slowly being patched away into whatever new cool marketing buzz idea that someone had. There is no enjoyment in the process of the adventure, just speed runners trying to sell/show off gear more efficiently. Speed runners don't play diablo 2, they are playing a game called "speedrun" WITH diablo 2. Game content shouldn't be catered to the people who are racing through it, they will do that regardless. If you are a solo, honestly I have a hard time not saying snag this. If you play solo online (me) it is a bit more of a decision, but i don't see them adding new content to D2R now that RotW is out, so i'll follow the community. I love dropping gear in free games and executing clones for people, so i will keep doing that with my two more tabs of stuff to drop. I purposely avoided talking about the trading economy, because that is all on us, patches will always disrupt trade between players. This isn't intended to be negative, I am more than happy this game has support it does. They just need to be very careful adjusting and changing things that contribute to the feel of a game that is not like anything else. People try games or mods with these new fancy features and they keep coming back to D2 for a reason.

I hope this was helpful or at least made someone smile. Happy grinding and I will see you in the Rogue's camp ))

I think we won't have to worry much about the class being too OP, they will certainly tweak things to balance. And let's not pretend there aren't already some OP classes compared to others. There is a reason Paladin and Sorceress are the most played characters.

I am definitely torn on some stuff. The loot filter makes me super happy, and you can still filter back in stuff you filtered out with an easy button press while playing. My brain is trained to read all the loot text very fast, but what I like is that now items won't get lost when there are too many on screen.

As for stackables, yeah it feels dirty, and we all spent 25 years muling every little thing. But sometimes, change is a good thing. 25 years of doing that is enough LOL. And since they only stack to 99, we are still going to mule some.

Idk, this update had me upset for about 10 mins, then I just realized how much fun we're all gonna have.

I agree in most aspects; the warlock is really broken. It seems like they took the best things from several classes and created an overpowered one. For the first time, I'm playing a class more overpowered than the hybrid Javazon. It's quite fun, but I don't complain too much because the mage, amazon, and paladin are all broken. Since my first character was a barbarian, I suffered a lot, but I hope Blizzard fixes it and does a general balancing, and reviews some items because there are items with +5 spells, which is very broken.

Many people asked for Mosaic nerf ( i still don't see how someone playing his game with his Mosaic sin is ruining other people experience though, but the horde has spoken), and it won't be available in the season to come, instead you will have 150 k dmg echoing warlocks speedrunning content. What a trade. Sad thing is they didn't release patch notes at the same time as rotw release. I guess we'll have some really bad surprises when the new season starts. I'm feeling we are somehow beta testing this expansion, and that's why the season starts later than rotw release. I said it on another topic, some few things are cool, quality of life for stash etc, but what we get as counterpart start to look ugly.