Diablo II: Resurrected PTR 3.2 Coming Soon

i will say the lock nerfs on ptr were a bit weird, like the

Echoing Strike/ethereal changes and disallowing shields w two-hands but still allowing grimoires. those things really made the warlock feel interesting and unique to me. it doesn't address the real problem imo, which is that the raw numbers on his skills are just insanely high regardless. would much rather more power be taken out of skills instead!

(also would love to see

Engorge changed to be shorter duration, but allowed to stack multiple times so that your demons get stronger as you feed them more corpses - as a

Blood Boil hater it would make pure summoner feel more active i think)

kerph wrote: 1 hour ago

would much rather more power be taken out of skills instead!

They did do that. They changed ES so it's no longer multiplicative with itself. ES adds both flat damage and ED%, and the ED% of the skill itself was multiplying its own flat damage (which was like 3-4x more than the weapon's damage). By making it not be multiplicative anymore they effectively reduced the ES warlock's damage to a fraction of what it is right now on the live realm. Exactly what you're talking about - power taken out of the skill.

kerph wrote: 1 hour ago

those things really made the warlock feel interesting and unique to me.

Being able to wield two-handed weapons with a

Grimoire in one hand is still a unique thing for warlock.

ShadowHeart wrote: 1 hour ago

They did do that. They changed ES so it's no longer multiplicative with itself. ES adds both flat damage and ED%, and the ED% of the skill itself was multiplying its own flat damage (which was like 3-4x more than the weapon's damage). By making it not be multiplicative anymore they effectively reduced the ES warlock's damage to a fraction of what it is right now on the live realm. Exactly what you're talking about - power taken out of the skill.

...

Being able to wield two-handed weapons with a

Grimoire in one hand is still a unique thing for warlock.

i do know that, that's why i said more - if they felt they needed to take more power out of the class i would have rather had it come out of somewhere else. ignoring

Echoing Strike (can't really speak on tht, never played it much), even on ptr i still feel his overall power was too high on many builds
it is still unique though you're right, just wish they hadn't had limited options like that

Well, IMO it never really felt 'right' to use a shield on a warlock anyway (what I mean is, it felt out-of-place, they were clearly meant to run around with grimoires, just like it will always look odd with shields on necromancers too )

Besides, I called this particular change before ladder even started (tbf, I expected them to do this exact change with a balancing patch for the ladder start - not this late)

that's totally fair lol, i will admit it looks a little silly on him :p

I'm inclined to say the whole reason for the shield thing was to specifically address early gear relative OPness via Insight + Spirit and similar.

Later on, grimoires generally beat shields anyways so it no longer matters.

Curious to see how long they're actually gonna take with all of this.
Just looking at season dates, I wouldn't even be surprised if there's a 2nd PTR coming up first (or they just take forever internally, whichever).

Last season was a bit longer it seems which I guess can be blamed on RotW launch timing. But going back to an average of the last 4 seasons would have the next one launching some time in the first or 2nd week of June. So..quite a while to go still.

Given, there's nothing stopping them from just randomly shortening this one either but hey..
In either case, could likely still be well over a month before anything actually gets released.

Schnorki wrote: 27 minutes ago

Curious to see how long they're actually gonna take with all of this.
Just looking at season dates, I wouldn't even be surprised if there's a 2nd PTR coming up first (or they just take forever internally, whichever).

Last season was a bit longer it seems which I guess can be blamed on RotW launch timing. But going back to an average of the last 4 seasons would have the next one launching some time in the first or 2nd week of June. So..quite a while to go still.

Given, there's nothing stopping them from just randomly shortening this one either but hey..
In either case, could likely still be well over a month before anything actually gets released.

Thanks for your estimation! Had this question you just answered without me asking it in my head for quite a while now