Thought on Heralds

Found

Latent Crack of the Heavens very early on, got very lucky there.

Nothing of note since. I will say that solo fighting t5 heralds in an 8 player online game is the most excitement I have playing the game, so that's something.

oOKIWIOo wrote: 12 hours ago

[..] In my experience, and judging by everything I’ve read so far, I’d have to take a week off from my job, lock myself away in the basement and neglect my family [..]

To be fair, if you also pull your boys out of school then half your family is locked in there with you so..only neglecting a fraction of them!

sbn wrote: 17 hours ago

Unhealthy is really a good way to describe this new content. My experience was to use shard on Act1, then Act 2, then I was so far in, why not Act 4, then Act 5. When I was done with it I had spent hours in the game, did find about 4-5 T5 Heralds.

And when I was done, it burned me out of the game. I could not continue. Best I could describe the experience was grinding & depressing. A mechanic designed to force players into a continuous game for hours. Don't leave, or you need start all over.

Whoever was behind the design of this, should never be allowed to work on game design ever again. This just reeked of D4 marketing mechanics B.S.

Yep, this reflects my experience to 100%.

Never before I felt exhausted and discouraged after playing Diablo 2. Since many players are complaining, maybe there is some hope for Blizzard patching this mechanic, but I wouldn't bet on it. They did this on purpose, they knew what they were doing. No one can tell me that they can't do math and this was just an "Oopsie!".

This whole new itemization is downright punishing. We are back to having a mere handful of builds capable of farming hell in ladder. People are band-aiding by playing two ladders at once now just to get hands on a sunder charm. What an absurd, colossal mess... the enforced timesink is real.

I will definetly have a long break when this ladder is over. Player numbers will probably drop by a noticeable amount then. Serves 'em well if you ask me.

Icing on the cake is the Silence we get from all those involved.

We discussed in another thread the topic of whether to blame streamers or Blizzard. HikariNoRevan wrote

the conspiracy here is not that this caters to streamers, but the new RotW system caters to shareholders and board members, as it inflates players’ engagement time, without actually increasing our fun or entertainment, quite the opposite.

I think it could be a combination of the two. This content was simply never tested, never put on a PTR. Who did get to "test" were the streamers, who it seems said nothing about bad design. If anything we have to assume they gave a thumbs up. And it probably was someone in marketing who asked for a system that would require players to spend more time in game to increase metrics. Someone is proud of themselves at Blizzard with a Powerpoint showing the increase in per players hours spent in game.

Whether we can blame solely the streamers is debatable. One thing is for certain, I am unaware of anyone critiquing this new content. If anyone is aware, please post link. I know a few of these Youtubers certainly had multiple videos critiquing D4. What this represents to me is the disconnect between the average players vs the streamers. They simply do not represent us, but it is all the more worse that these are the ones Blizzard communicates with. We do not have a forum, or a Reddit ask me anything or whatever or similar Q&A with Blizzard. This is the same behavior that they do with D4 (and maybe why D4 just turning into a bigger mess).

When you cater a game to 1% who in no way represent the player base, it is just FFS in my opinion.

It only makes sense to artificially increase the engagement time in a game that uses micro transactions.

"Never attribute to Malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

"Stupidity" is maybe a bit harsh here. I think this was just developed on a tight budget.

I have still only found 1 sunder charm (from a T4

Herald lmao) and have kind of given up on actively trying to get them unless I'm really in the mood. I think we all agree this needs a rework.

Iria wrote: 15 hours ago

Heralds should not have an Ire system, instead it should just spawn a

Herald randomly in the area when you kill an elite (2% of the time).

This could work. I think they'd need to reduce the chance from 2% though, particularly if they keep tiered heralds strengths.

Iria wrote: 15 hours ago

Old non-latent sunders should be available as a drop in the game somehow. The latent ones are too rare and some builds don't work w/o a sunder.

Yes, this is the whole chicken-vs-egg problem. You need the sunder to farm the monsters that can drop a sunder. It feels unfair, like it's punishing players who bought RotW; pre-RotW players still have the old sunder drop mechanics.

Rather than just making the old ones still drop, here's what I would do:

Stat-wise, a latent sunder charm is just an old sunder charm with the worst roll (actually, it looks like they might have changed this, making them exactly the same, aside from the name). Have them drop just like old sunders in pre-RotW games.

Give heralds a small chance, scaling with tier, to drop a cube ingredient that is used to upgrade latent sunders. Maybe make it so you also need a

Standard of Heroes or something, making the recipe non-trivial to complete. It would also be a minor consolation prize if you got a shitty Torch.

Lastly, have this upgrade recipe also work on old sunder charms; this would not affect ladder games, but would give non-ladder and offline players some reason to hunt heralds, despite possibly having stacks of old sunders. If this is too much, add another recipe that converts an old sunder to a latent sunder, which you can then upgrade as normal.

I really don't know why they felt the need to buff sunders anyways, with the possible exception of The

Black Cleft, due to the utter lack of '-enemy magic resistance' mods pre-RotW. Now that they've added such mods, making those sunders actually useful for Bone necros and hammerdins, they don't really need a buff, either. It's just more of the power creep that brings D2 closer to the 'arcade game' feel of D3, and if I was in the mood for that, I'd fire up the latter.

I mean, I got a near-perfect

Griffon's Eye that prompted me to register here. I got a +9/-10

Guardian's Light (which annoyed me a bit, as it prompted me to unsocket the -5/+4 facet I'd just stuck in the

Diadem), so now I've got a hat with +23/-30. Add in a sunder and

Thunderstroke, and you've got a character that will never face an enemy with greater than 50% resistance to their main attack. When I get the runes, I'm going to seriously consider Infinity in a

Spear just so she can poke things with it. Former immunes will be from -2 to +8 for resists; everything else will be -60 or lower (many being -100).

If they insist on buffing sunders, what could have worked better is a recipe to add a socket to them (maybe also to other unique grand charms, which at present is just

Gheed's Fortune). Then if you wanted to buff your sunder, you could slap a facet or one of the new uber-jewels into it. It would offer a nice boost without really breaking the game.

Iria wrote: 15 hours ago

Heralds sometimes are too difficult to kill depending on what the base mob is, their multipliers should adjust based on the base mob.

If you mean 'hard to damage past their regeneration', I'd say to just suck it up. We don't need to be able to steamroll everything in the game, and skipping 'unkillable' monsters is a time-honored D2 tradition, like for pre-sunder Blizzard sorcies.

If you mean 'extremely capable of one-hit kills', then yeah, that needs adjustment. My warlock with about 2K life and maxed

Blood Oath (hard points, so 43% redirection) was one-hit killed by a T5 serpent magus type. This was at range, so I wasn't Charged or anything; it was the

Bone Spear that did it. Since this is magic damage, the -100% difficulty penalty doesn't apply, nor do physical damage auras. At best, elemental enchantment or Spectral Hit might have been in play. For this to one-hit kill me, that means it would have needed to deal about 3.5k damage before factoring in resists. If it wasn't a monster critical hit (which doubles all damage, not just physical), this means the potential for around 7K damage from a single hit from a

Herald's ranged attacks, and that's just silly.

Bone Spear, being magic, isn't blockable; this would one-hit kill pretty much everything except a barb with high-level vitality and

Battle Orders, and the second hit would likely finish the job.

I'm all for challenge in a game, but mechanics that allow you to die in one hit regardless of your build and skill just feel cheap.

[edit] Oh, another thing I thought of: make sunder charms like

Gheed's Fortune,

Annihilus, etc, where you can only have one of a type in your inventory. This would stop abuses like an

Energy Shield/

Nova sorceress (who laughs at resists) from loading her inventory with -10% enemy lightning resist charms that also offer a mess of +mana, integer PDR, and MDR (you know, the kinds of things that let an ES sorcy be nigh-unkillable). [/edit]

illdizposed wrote: 5 hours ago

It only makes sense to artificially increase the engagement time in a game that uses micro transactions.

"Never attribute to Malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

"Stupidity" is maybe a bit harsh here. I think this was just developed on a tight budget.

I guess you are wrong. Hanlon's Razor doesn't fit here. Blizzard is a capitalistic company, and not a small one. They have legions of professionals working for them. All they care of is profit. I wondered my lifetime why people can't see reality.

Thing is, there already are microtransactions. Not official ones, of course, but a lot of rmt shops doing unhindered advertising in the game for years now. Please explain to me why Blizzard doesn't do anything against them? They must be aware of it. What if this is actually part of the business plan?

It would be a genius move: Blizzard crushing drop mechanics into non-existence and establishing worst timesink mechanics while secretly selling us stuff over a system of "shadow stores", which officially aren't related to the game or the company itself to not displease the grown playerbase of older players as we are. So they can say "This is NOT us, and we can't do anything about it! Blame the botters, blame the stores, blame yourself! We are the good ones. Our concern is to make you happy!" Yeah, of course. I am too old to believe this shit anymore.

The streamers are just a cog in the machine, their job is to show us the carrot and to pretend all of this is fun.

Never forget: Actions speak louder than words!

DasNarf wrote: 4 hours ago

Not official ones, of course, but a lot of rmt shops doing unhindered advertising in the game for years now. Please explain to me why Blizzard doesn't do anything against them?

Because it is a cat and mouse game, and the the revenue from this D2 does not support playing that game.

DasNarf wrote: 6 hours ago

Never before I felt exhausted and discouraged after playing Diablo 2. Since many players are complaining, maybe there is some hope for Blizzard patching this mechanic, but I wouldn't bet on it. They did this on purpose, they knew what they were doing. No one can tell me that they can't do math and this was just an "Oopsie!".

I think it was an oopsie. I think they listened to the streamers and other 'professional' players, you know, the guys who play 23 hours a day, and have got a hole cut in the seat of their gaming chair, and only get up to empty the bucket underneath, rather than the people actually buying the game (I expect most of the really popular streamers got free copies).

DasNarf wrote: 6 hours ago

I will definetly have a long break when this ladder is over. Player numbers will probably drop by a noticeable amount then. Serves 'em well if you ask me.

This is sad, because if it results in a drop in the player base, it really lowers the chances we get more content in the future. I hope they will realize the new mechanics discourage people from playing (and thus buying future content), and patch it accordingly. It's not unreasonable to think this, either; if RotW is an attempt to gauge what the community will and will not pay for, it would be in their best interests (as greedy capitalists) to offer what we want, rather than what they and the streamers think we want.

I'd like to see more in the future, particularly re-enabling the LAN support they pulled right before launch of D2R. As a Switch player, this is something I'd actually be willing to pay for (though I'll complain while doing so, as it should never have been pulled in the first place).

Schnorki wrote: 6 hours ago

oOKIWIOo wrote: 12 hours ago

[..] In my experience, and judging by everything I’ve read so far, I’d have to take a week off from my job, lock myself away in the basement and neglect my family [..]

To be fair, if you also pull your boys out of school then half your family is locked in there with you so..only neglecting a fraction of them!

Pulling the kids out of school means you can buy more copies of D2R + RotW, and turn them into child labor. Bobby can have his dinner after he finds a latent sunder for Daddy!

I mean, when I was younger, I walked the long way to the

Arreat Summit, uphill both ways, and of course it was snowing. I don't know what you lot are all complaining about!

lectricpharaoh wrote: 2 hours ago

[..] Bobby can have his dinner after he finds a latent sunder for Daddy! [..]

Hate to break it to you but Bobby's gunna die of starvation at that rate.

Schnorki wrote: 1 hour ago

Hate to break it to you but Bobby's gunna die of starvation at that rate.

With the correct amount of MF you can farm new Bobbys on a nightly basis, and if your efficient it should only take 1-2 minute runs. Almost like doing Countess. Much better than spending 8 hours searching for a Sunder. If the wife allows it, you could maybe multibox so to speak (albeit now illegal in all 50 states, including Utah).

4x Wives, with 4 Bobbys each, working 8 hours a day, that is good chance to get at least 1x Sunder per year.

Is the likelihood of drawing ire constant or does it change at higher tiers? It seems like it becomes less likely over time to draw ire as the

Herald tier goes up, but that may just be my limited experience.

Anecdotally, if I make a new game, it seems that ire comes quickly at tier 0 vs staying in the old game at tier 4+.

Schnorki wrote: 6 hours ago

oOKIWIOo wrote: 12 hours ago

[..] In my experience, and judging by everything I’ve read so far, I’d have to take a week off from my job, lock myself away in the basement and neglect my family [..]

To be fair, if you also pull your boys out of school then half your family is locked in there with you so..only neglecting a fraction of them!

And the following week, the child welfare services will be knocking on the door

TL;DR:
Farming sunder in multi-player shard games as Warlocks works Ok. Other ways? Not so much.


The main issue with the current Latent Sunder drop is that, it is supposed to be a rare drop after a good amount of grinding; However, unless you start with a Warlock, the

Herald system design has made it nearly impossible for most classes to farm it even if people are willing to put in the time and effort.

Another important thing to note is that, the

Herald system is not SSF-friendly at all, as has been described by many people in this and previous posts. However, it isn't that terrible if you are willing to participate in multiple players shard games. I learned that from personal experience.

On my way to level 99, I started to join/host public shard TZ 96 games after hitting level 95, since at that point doing TZ 96 easily gives better XP than 8 players

Baal runs. A common occurrence for me is that, when I join a fresh shard TZ game that is filled with well geared 96+ toons, the

Herald laugher starts pretty much right away, and T5

Herald (of

Terror) is often reached within minutes. This is not surprising, as 7 or 8 well geared toons could easily clear out a couple dozens of unique packs every minute. Then for the rest of the game you just hear the alarm rang and rang, and people kill T5 Heralds one after another. As XP gain is often the main goal, these games are quickly abandoned once the juicy zones get cleared, and most people don't stay just because it is at T5, and move on.

A new shard game gets made. And guess what? T5

Herald is reached within a few minutes again. Rinse and repeat. At the later stage the alarm actually got so frequent that it was annoying. Every time a T5 popped up in my zone, I had to slow down my killing spree, as tele-stumping into a T5 pack at 98+ didn't seem prudent. And the XP gain just wasn't worth it (~170k iirc). There was even a game that I got 3x T5 Heralds in one medium size fake tomb, and it was late at night and I was half awake, but had to tough it out and cleared them all based on general Principle.

I only have mf from my

Ondal's Wisdom and Enigma, so less than 119mf the whole time. I didn't keep count, but it is safe to say I have most likely killed over 100 heralds along the way, and a good chunk of those were T5. I found one

Latent Crack of the Heavens, and then one

Latent Cold Rupture.

As we all know how big the variance could be in a RNG based game, a single person finding a couple Sunder Charms doesn't really tell much. However, what I can say is that in those shard games I ran, there were a decent amount of Sunder drops. People linked their freshly found sunders in the chat, and cheered for getting
credit for Chronicle. So far the only one I haven't seen is ironically the most expensive

Latent Bone Break Sunder. Even the more rare

Latent Black Cleft was found by someone in my party a few days ago.

People also linked their high rune finds. The impression I am getting is that, the total sunder drops linked were similar to, or even more than the total of HRs linked. So a sunder drop is kind of similar to a HR drop, rare but not impossible (ofc). For reference, I also found one

Jah and then one

Sur, along with those two sunders. Again, ymmv and this is not implying any typical drop rate comparison.

So we go back to the initial point. HRs can drop from any mob, and you don't need to be super strong to farm around. A latent sunder, being a similarly rare drop, often requires you to have some way to break immunities to effectively farm, and that "some way" just happens to be the sunder charms themselves. Hence my previous complaint: Blizzard makes a new DLC but the non-Warlock players have to play more LoD first to be able to play the new RotW. It is obvious they wanted everyone to go the Warlock route.

Does this forces/promotes multiple player end games? So far I would say yes. Many more end-game players are farming in a same game now, with each player taking over a separate zone. There are deviations ofc. Sometimes greedy players will just jump into your zone once they see the

Herald message, and try to steal it, which is why I have also collected some level 99 ears along the way. But that's just the same old D2 usual, so nothing new.