Ladder Season 15 and Patch 3.3

kastle wrote: 2 days ago

In spanish patch notes appears Obsession instead of Mania. What do you think?

That seems like a mistake. Obsession is already available to make on non-ladder (since patch 2.6, season 3, 3.5 years ago).

Oh Blizzard,oh Blizzard, why hath thou forsaken us? To deprive us of updated versions of

Bloodletter,

Pluckeye, and Blinkbat, and other items we almost never use. What are we to do? This ought to motivate everyone to signup for Ladder season 15?

oOKIWIOo wrote: 3 days ago

https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/article ... oming-soon

Interesting: They are changing items (mostly low level) for ladder only...
And if you have a bunch of Statues or Shards on NL, I think you should keep them and try to get some more until the patch is released

Ladder starting: August 22, 2026 0:00 AM   This timestamp has been automatically converted to your local date/time for convenience. The format is DD/MMM/YYYY, HH:MM am/pm. This is based off your browser time.

I hope they don't reduce the shard drop rate too much. First time ever I have been playing a bunch of P8. Why? Because of

Terror Zones and cheap shards. A bit of a new challenge for me that adds some new fun.

I can just create a public game, shard all or most of the zones, and get people to join, and for the most part people don't try to overlap in your farming area because every act has good places to farm.

Every now and then there is still a situation where someone races in to try to snipe a

Herald kill drop, but it's much rarer than before when P8 games were just everyone racing to kill

Baal within 2 minutes then rinse and repeat.

Also, with cheaper shards, it's harder for PKers to pounce in games that are terrorized as it's easier for players to just decommit from the game. Which - Blizz should change this, you should have to accept a duel, or at minimum have to go back to town before you can be PK'd

It is a step in the right direction, i would have liked to see more flat mana. A possible way of coming across some of these changed early game items a bit more frequently would be nice. Most of these items are surpassed very quickly and will generally take you longer to get than just getting a Spirit.

I really wish they would just touch crafting a little bit. They got into runewords and never looked back, maybe items that drop to make crafting more accessible? A non tradable that maybe you craft with base crafting mats and it turns 1 craft into 2? idk maybe an item that can vary and can guarentee something on next craft? "+10 clvl to next craft" "x+Skills class/tree -Amulet only" Crafting can be very rewarding, but also requires a heavy investment. Possibly one that "acts as a x craft (runes/jewel/gem)"

Either way I'm happy that there's new stuff coming and some welcome changes. Hope heralds pan out the way the community needs them to overtime.

a rework of the OG runewords could be cool to. modernize them and wouldn't require much, if they wanted to. Some additions here and removals there, i'd mostly like to see them more accessible. Less constraint on weapon typing and more so melee/missile, or on the lesser side condense typing's up a bit allow maces to be used in scepters, for example. I get the separating for, idk the term, so i'll say, "atmospheric value", just my thoughts. There is a few more pre-25 runewords, comparatively to the set that followed. It would follow suit to the changes to items they've made here and breath life into new low level alternatives.

Imagine strength, Honor, Steel, Nadir, etc. had just that little extra, you know? whether that was/is item typing or changes to the stats. GL out there and have a wonderful reset in a few weeks!

Theoutrank wrote: 1 day ago

I really wish they would just touch crafting a little bit. They got into runewords and never looked back, maybe items that drop to make crafting more accessible? A non tradable that maybe you craft with base crafting mats and it turns 1 craft into 2? idk maybe an item that can vary and can guarentee something on next craft? "+10 clvl to next craft" "x+Skills class/tree -Amulet only" Crafting can be very rewarding, but also requires a heavy investment. Possibly one that "acts as a x craft (runes/jewel/gem)"

I was literally just thinking about this earlier after reading those "create a new unique item" threads. Like, a pair of unique gloves (a one-per-character restriction which requires crafting to upgrade like the sunder charms perhaps, with its craft-specific boon varying by recipe) which interact with cube crafting somehow, but my question was how... Reducing the amount of variation somehow would be really cool. I ALSO wish they would do something more with crafting. It's so cool in theory but in practise it's such a gamble that, imo at least, it's just needlessly frustrating to engage with and not worth the effort of gathering all the materials to make a real attempt at getting something good. Maybe some other season they'll give the crafters a cookie.

EmaTheVampire wrote: 1 day ago

It's so cool in theory but in practise it's such a gamble that, imo at least, it's just needlessly frustrating to engage with and not worth the effort of gathering all the materials to make a real attempt at getting something good.

This is the general gripe i see most have, I have 2 friends with wildly differing ideas on crafting. One who loves it and says it's the best and has gotten god items and another who ran their own tests for hours to see the value. Only to determine, for themselves, that it was not worth the investment beyond here and there for amulets and rings.

Can you guess which one played ladder and which one played single player?

Crafting gets a whole lot more enjoyable when you sit on a forum and trade for gems/jewels/runes, but if you're spending the time to farm them? It becomes a whole different game. I get it, it is meant to be the end game, but i think it should be tiered appropriately, let normals use

Chipped Gems of the type, any jewel and any rune, if any. Top it out at like lvl 30 stuff, but open up the door for it earlier, to be useful and something people think of doing. MOST players will use a unique/rare over the crafting hassle. it is what it is, i guess.

varangium wrote: 1 day ago

oOKIWIOo wrote: 3 days ago

https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/article ... oming-soon

Interesting: They are changing items (mostly low level) for ladder only...
And if you have a bunch of Statues or Shards on NL, I think you should keep them and try to get some more until the patch is released

Ladder starting: August 22, 2026 0:00 AM   This timestamp has been automatically converted to your local date/time for convenience. The format is DD/MMM/YYYY, HH:MM am/pm. This is based off your browser time.

I hope they don't reduce the shard drop rate too much. First time ever I have been playing a bunch of P8. Why? Because of

Terror Zones and cheap shards. A bit of a new challenge for me that adds some new fun.

I can just create a public game, shard all or most of the zones, and get people to join, and for the most part people don't try to overlap in your farming area because every act has good places to farm.

Every now and then there is still a situation where someone races in to try to snipe a

Herald kill drop, but it's much rarer than before when P8 games were just everyone racing to kill

Baal within 2 minutes then rinse and repeat.

Also, with cheaper shards, it's harder for PKers to pounce in games that are terrorized as it's easier for players to just decommit from the game. Which - Blizz should change this, you should have to accept a duel, or at minimum have to go back to town before you can be PK'd

Agreed. The mass shards actually made pug games a thing beyond just

Baal runs. A slight drop nerf is still fine but fingers crossed they're not effectively completely removing those games again by nerfing it too much.

Schnorki wrote: 1 day ago

Agreed. The mass shards actually made pug games a thing beyond just

Baal runs. A slight drop nerf is still fine but fingers crossed they're not effectively completely removing those games again by nerfing it too much.

This is indeed the change I see most critically. With the current drop rate of the Shards you literally have a further difficulty level. Initially I thought they drop too often but now I think it is fine as it is.

I've had a 15ed ethereal

Bone Visage in non-ladder stash for at least two years now.

Our time has come.

And there will be an influx of godly Metamorphosis from speculators and/or people who bode their time.
Those +3

Fury: Skill +3

Heart of Wolverine +extras will be coming soon.

Teebling wrote: 2 days ago

Schnorki wrote: 2 days ago

I guess there is the possibility that they're actually splitting it now, allowing for the old version to drop on non-ladder and the new version to drop on ladder, confusing as that may be. We shall see.

What I mean is that this bit, concerning sets and uniques, is really ambiguous in their patch notes:

Blizzard wrote:

Items that have been changed will ONLY be available in Ladder.

Does that mean that these items will no longer drop in NL at all? Or simply that the modified versions of the items will only drop in L, and the 'old' versions will still drop in NL?

Common sense will tell us that it's the latter, but the way they've worded it could also mean the former :/

If the former is true and

Manald Heal would no longer drop in NL, wouldn't that mean the odds of a unique ring being SoJ will increase on NL?

Personally, I think it's the latter and my guess is that the 'revised' uniques are actually implemented as new items.

@EmaTheVampire but those variations actually push you to play and gather materials.
Crafting is awesome IMO when you get to it closer. Crafting gloves as an activity is boring (make char, run in and out of cows/pindle portal, buy gloves, craft...). But now with loot filter and gem stash I just gather all gloves in TZ and craft them when in town. Even after getting nice Ama gloves I continue doing so in hope for better roll on resists or stats. Sold 2 pairs this ladder too.
We are getting enormous amount of drops every game. They mostly left on the Ground. Nothing bad about leaving several pairs of gloves. It is similar to yellow items: most of properties are good on their own but we are looking for some perfect combination of such properties.

@kerph

Gheed

Belt is BiS for some builds or good pick even at lowest roll. Sure you are dropping some. but just imagine it will be without variations, like magfist for example. Only ED varied there. Are we dropping them? Yes. Are they dirt cheap except at the ladder start? Yes.
Horizon

Boots with CBF are also awesome. You can use them if you need. Sure bad rolls are dropped. JP are sold for enormous amount of runes.
Similar as charms or yellow/blue gems

dionisy_cn wrote: 18 hours ago

@EmaTheVampire but those variations actually push you to play and gather materials.
Crafting is awesome IMO when you get to it closer. Crafting gloves as an activity is boring (make char, run in and out of cows/pindle portal, buy gloves, craft...). But now with loot filter and gem stash I just gather all gloves in TZ and craft them when in town. Even after getting nice Ama gloves I continue doing so in hope for better roll on resists or stats. Sold 2 pairs this ladder too.
We are getting enormous amount of drops every game. They mostly left on the Ground. Nothing bad about leaving several pairs of gloves. It is similar to yellow items: most of properties are good on their own but we are looking for some perfect combination of such properties.

Perhaps it's just because my luck is absolutely atrocious, but for an example, being able to control which class you'll get skill bonuses for would go a long way to making it less frustrating... I simply do not have the patience to roll 100 amulets and somehow not get anything for an Amazon. Not necessarily guaranteeing that you WILL get a skill bonus, but guaranteeing that it will come out for the class you're crafting on IF it rolls a skill bonus? Now that would be an improvement I'd be interested in. It still doesn't completely remove the variation you laud, but reduces it somewhat to make things more accessible to those who don't want successful crafting to be a full-time job (like, say, offline players).

To stay on topic here though, it's disappointing to see they're just... doing something weird with low-level uniques, when they could be doing more with the crafting system. We've had ladder-only runewords, yes, but what about ladder-only cube recipes? Perhaps ways to add an ingredient to give more control over the output? I can see why you dislike the idea, however... *shrug* I just don't enjoy gambling, and would prefer if there was more of a way to manipulate the outcome in my favour.

But, without people like me who are unwilling to gamble, you wouldn't have anyone to sell the quality products to, and without people willing to play the slot machine cube craft items, I wouldn't have anyone to sell all these slot tokens

Perfect Gems to. So I suppose it all works out in the end, at least online anyway.

EmaTheVampire wrote: 10 hours ago

but what about ladder-only cube recipes?

We've actually had that in the past.

In D2LoD there's still some ladder-only recipes - upgrading runes to

Hel and higher is ladder-exclusive, and upgrading uniques from exceptional to elite is ladder-only.
(a lot of unique items and rune words are also still ladder-only in D2LoD)

In D2R they removed all ladder-exclusivity on release - there was no ladder on release so they kinda had to. But for the first two ladder seasons, the new recipe for upgrading set items was ladder-only. The recipe was added in D2R patch 2.4 (for season 1) and became became available on non-ladder in patch 2.6 (for season 3).

So there is precedent.

I'm pretty bummed about the

Bind Demon nerf. It was one of the coolest, and most chase-oriented, builds I've seen in D2 ever. I've been gearing up for it for months, and it's been very rewarding to go after. Nerfing it feels so unnecessary and counter-productive.

If they were going to fix a

Bind Demon glitch, I'd MUCH prefer they fixed the stuck lancer glitch. I guess this fixes that by making the lancer useless. But

Bind Demon is so much less interesting as a result.

It's clear they didn't realize what they have here. Still, they spent time on this when there was so much else they could have spent time on that would actually have improved the game.

@EmaTheVampire but we already have control over Crafting. It is when you choose to make caster or

Safety Amulet. Rest is same as looting.
For offline player you 1- have huget amount of mules. 2- can dupe stuff 3- can use character editor. 4- have player setting .
2 and 3 in my case lead to loosing interest to the game in general.
SOJ

Cham and

Zod still not found In offline.

Upgrading useless items -yeah I agree.Not a thing I was expecting. at least not for this items. May be they just hired an intern for the job and he is just doing something least harmful for the game in general?

Anybody know what the new statue drop rates will be?

May be wise to grind them the next few days...

ShadowHeart wrote: 9 hours ago

EmaTheVampire wrote: 10 hours ago

but what about ladder-only cube recipes?

We've actually had that in the past.

In D2LoD there's still some ladder-only recipes - upgrading runes to

Hel and higher is ladder-exclusive, and upgrading uniques from exceptional to elite is ladder-only.
(a lot of unique items and rune words are also still ladder-only in D2LoD)

In D2R they removed all ladder-exclusivity on release - there was no ladder on release so they kinda had to. But for the first two ladder seasons, the new recipe for upgrading set items was ladder-only. The recipe was added in D2R patch 2.4 (for season 1) and became became available on non-ladder in patch 2.6 (for season 3).

So there is precedent.

Hmmmm, I knew about the old exclusive recipes and such, but I didn’t know about the set item upgrade recipe originally being ladder only. All the more reason to say I’m hopeful they’ll do more with it! Give me a reason to play in a new season! Even if it doesn’t give me a god-tier item, I’ll always try something new at least once.

It IS nice to see the new things eventually being rolled down and accessible in non-ladder play in d2r beyond just “created items transfer over at reset,” otherwise I doubt I’d even be suggesting it. The old barrier where I stopped being able to cube runes at…

Shael I think? was always so frustrating. I’d never go back just for that. It’s another element that removes some of the gambling inherent to the system: something that’s valuable anywhere, but particularly when one is struggling to climb that ladder.

departure wrote: 7 hours ago

I'm pretty bummed about the

Bind Demon nerf. It was one of the coolest, and most chase-oriented, builds I've seen in D2 ever. I've been gearing up for it for months, and it's been very rewarding to go after. Nerfing it feels so unnecessary and counter-productive.

If they were going to fix a

Bind Demon glitch, I'd MUCH prefer they fixed the stuck lancer glitch. I guess this fixes that by making the lancer useless. But

Bind Demon is so much less interesting as a result.

It's clear they didn't realize what they have here. Still, they spent time on this when there was so much else they could have spent time on that would actually have improved the game.

Let's see what it looks like before making any calls. Check my post on the top of Page 2 of this thread. The "correct" damage calculations for a bound demon are still quite respectable. Keep cursed up and it should be clearing at nearly the same pace.

The stuck demon bug(s) is definitely annoying, and I wish they would fix that. It makes having a

Tainted out for fire immunity a liability instead of an asset.

Blood Oath is also nearly useless (for bound demons), and I can't tell if it's a bug or feature.

Also note, imo, Bound Demons are meant to play a role with the warlock, not by itself. An AFK pure demon build is fine, but you might have to accept a slower pace of play. Combine a fully prebuffed demon with a synergized

Abyss or Eldrich warlock and you've got some major power there.

departure wrote: 7 hours ago

I'm pretty bummed about the

Bind Demon nerf. [..] Nerfing it feels so unnecessary [..]

Hard disagree.

As is, my side-show Heph (i.e. not even a demon build) can just about 1-shot TZ96

Andariel. That's beyond broken and needs fixing. Or nerfing. Or whatever you'd like to call it.

Schnorki wrote: 1 hour ago

Hard disagree.

As is, my side-show Heph (i.e. not even a demon build) can just about 1-shot TZ96

Andariel. That's beyond broken and needs fixing. Or nerfing. Or whatever you'd like to call it.

P1?

I haven't found a bound demon that is as good at taking down Andy as max

Tainted. At the moment I spend a fair amount of time killing andy on p7 with tainteds. If the concern is how fast a summon can kill andy, bound demon nerfs do not address that as far as I can tell.