Posted by: Boro - February 16th, 2023, 11:36 - Forum: Diablo
- No Replies
If you could mod d2 resurrected, mainly changes to runewords, skill scaling, synergies, enemy hp / damage / resistances, what would you do, or what would a RBD consensus look like? I know it is pretentious of me, having played through a few times, and right now abusing spirit and insight on my hydra sorc girl (and on my lightning trapper too), but I'm curious none the less.
From what I gathered, there are a few playstyles, or "schools of playing" here. KingofPain's nudist and tweaked variants, T-Hawk's hardcore single pass Star Teams, Kylearan's async team with limited shopping, and of course Sirian's old-old single pass runs, and even Sullla's curious "anything goes" single pass softcore play.
To get back to the Spirit / Insight, I still remember this from Page 2 of T-Hawk's hardcore start team thread:
(December 3rd, 2019, 22:03)T-hawk Wrote: Insight for the merc and Spirit for the caster are just automatic choices with almost no chance they'll be superseded during the lifetime of a twinkless character or group.
As much as I am abusing it (in fact I'll go play with it right away after hitting "post thread"), there is the nagging annoyance at seeing a nice rare sorcie orb with +2 sorceress skills (and 1-2 automod for skills I'm not using right now), fast cast and some mana and know it to be inferior to spirit on many levels. Not only does spirit have way more mana and fast cast than most comparably great rares, but it also has a ton of fast hit recovery, and some vitality as cherry on top, all for the cost of an amn at most. If it was "merely" 20% fast cast, 2 to all skills, and +45..60 energy, (on top of the rune granted bonuses) it would still be great and an auto-include for most casting-oriented players, but it could be superseded by good rares that either cover it's now lost defensive bonuses (for example, a good life affix on a sorc orb), or provide better offense (trapper claws with IAS). I reckon the fast cast could even be lowered to 10% at this cost too.
Insight, meditation aside, is a crazy package too. Lower 60% of a cruel prefix, 16 to 23 levels worth of Penetrate in attack rating, Critical Strike, 5 all attributes, and finally magic find as cherry on top. You could split Insight into two runewords, one with meditation, the other with the rest, and both would be more or less autoinclude for a good part of the game, with each other being their only competitor.
This finally brings the topic of granted-auras and oskills. How much is too much? Casters have been coddled, more or less constantly through the patches, getting both Insight for their merc, and mana potions from vendors. Since 2.4 they can even opt-out from using a desert guy as tank and bring a bow girl instead who doesn't suicide into big boss packs in hell as often.
Minion masters, or just anyone with castable / spammable minions get to use Edge for the thorns aura, which competes with Iron Maiden, and blows Spirit of Barbs, or even the paladin's own Thorns aura out of the water.
Infinity is another autoinclude, albeit at levels so rich I dont have any frame of reference to comment on.
On the Oskill front, Passion / Kingslayer seem (from an outsider view) like a "Just Right" level: expensive flavor, not directly competing with their main class competitors.
Enigma and Call to Arms however, are clearly of the "one-right-choice" (if at crazy late points) type, but again, not much else I can say about them or what to do about them.
On the skills front themselves, Lightning Bolt is bugging me - the idea itself is great: Thrown attack that is essentially a spell in terms of being unblockable and ignoring AR/Defense, having flat lightning damage based on skill level, and converting weapon damage to lightning. It is crippled by lacking damage (both ED% and flat lightning damage) in the skill itself though, and in the amazon lacking access to off-weapon ED% beyond dexterity and a might mercenary.
I don't know if Bliz has any plans to incorporate these new info into an official site, in the mean time I am sick of searching for the info over and over again. I will start off with these V2.6 changes and add the others later.
Feel free to add you own info/edits here. Please Change the Title of your reply for easier search
D2R 2.6 New Runewords and Cube Recipes
Developer’s Note:
Bulwark, Temper, and Ground: We liked where they were at and opted for no change.
Cure: Given Cure’s more niche use cases, we opted to strengthen it with the Cleansing Aura. Note that the base Poison Duration reduction on the item went down, but the addition of Cleansing Aura results in a net-buff to Poison Duration reduction.
Hearth: To build on the theme of this Rune Word, we gave it a bit more oomph to solidify it as a go-to gear option when struggling with enemies who deal Cold Damage.
Hustle: Most of the feedback we received was around the armor form. The bulk of our focus was to improve that form, but we also saw improvements we could make to the weapon form. For the Armor, we wanted to add more offensive utility and some defensive stats in the form of All Resistances. For the weapon, we wanted to make using it as a primary weapon a more attractive option to increase its viability beyond its pre-buff utility.
Metamorphosis: We moved in the direction of a slight buff to Metamorphosis. We want this Rune Word to really compete for best-in-slot for Shapeshifter Druids.
Mosaic: We went all-in on increasing the strength of the Mosaic Rune Word. We wanted to add extra flexibility by increasing the chance to not consume charges from 25% percent to 50% so you can either wield one to get that 50% chance or dual wield for that 100% chance of not consuming charges. We also added an extra effect to how not consuming charges interacts with charge maintenance.
After reading Sullla's writeup of his Hydra Sorceress (with Nova as the backup), I've got the urge to give it a shot myself.
First thing I did though, was to wipe my save files, save for the trapper assassin who I actually wanted to continue now. This included the shared stash, so my 2.5 start was a "semi-clean" slate. Semi-clean because the blue items in my sassy's private stash were still there, not that they'd matter much aside from tedium reduction.
At any rate, as my BlueTurrets (supposed to be part of a "blue items only" team where I lost interest after the 7th run through act 2) blazed through act 3, 4 and 5, heckled Baal a few times for experience, and then did the same in Nightmare, taking care to visit the Countess at every opportunity for her generous rune donations to The Cause.
BlueTurrets' biggest experience was the low point with death sentry failing to do much besides being a burden, forcing a respec (from the experiment) back to and committing to a lightning sentry based build: Fully powered Lightning and Charged bolt sentries, with Fireblast and maxed Shadow Warrior to take advantage of the quick-cast added in D2R, improving my fireblast power without taking up my valuable trap limit. I'm not sure how high I want Shadow Warrior to be, and how much I want in Shock Web (my original idea was that Shadow Warrior would throw shock webs and fireblasts like me, but I got to like her throwing mind blasts and help out with crowd control this way.
After that, every run I made to Baal or Mephisto made me feel the desire to have teleport on me, so that's how Lerny (named after Sullla's Lernie) became the star of the show.
For the first four acts of normal difficulty, Lerny did the same thing as Cinderella: Some points in energy, the rest in vitality, and ignored strength altogether on principle. The skill of choice was Firebolt, and as expected it was a lot less powerful without taking the time to full clear everything. On the other hand, I still got through the acts a lot quicker than with the full clear pace, and had plenty of time to soak up experience in Act 5, clearing up to Anya with just her trusty starter skill.
At that point however, I was curious to try out the 1 pointer pre-reqs to improve her clearing speed, and a +1 blizzard +1 cold skills staff made her an impromptu blizzard sorc. With that she managed to finish getting to level 30 in a flash, and got her Frozen Orb and Hydra.
What followed was what T-Hawk referred to as the backup overshadowing the main skill, because I just couldn't help myself, it's been so long since I played Frozen Orb to it's "full" potential. I respecced Lerny to focus more on Hydra and Frozen Orb, gave her the Spirit sword BlueTurrets spent a socket quest to make, alongside an Ancient's Pledge large shield (base from Fara) and Lore helm (random 2slot circlet for good looks), and spent all my points onwards on Frozen Orb, never looking back at Fire Bolt.
Nightmare went by in a flash. Lerny had comparatively little health, lacking a whale belt for one, and was on middling resists too, but it was practically impossible to hit her when she was teleporting through acts like a maniac. In Act III, she spent about five minutes teleporting through the jungle and grabbing waypoints up to travincal. Then of course she cleared a few areas when I forgot which layout to look at. Same way through act 4, although she was enjoying clearing much of it with Frozen Orb. Hellforge rune was a fal, which, combined with a Lum cubed up from three Io-s, made a Lionheart in a Cuirass. However, when teleporting, faster cast is a form of defense in itself, as I learned to experience by being daring in countess runs. This made me reluctant to give up Stealth's faster cast. What I wanted was in fact Skin of the Vipermagi.
Which dropped right around the time I was thinking about it!
And it was ethereal, damnit. 13 durability doesn't even last that long, unless I play something like a summoner.
That is of course just one thing, and I still had 11 durability to burn. If only I had someone who used an act III mercenary...
Enter Winny, a pure summoner druid I made not long before Lerny. Winny was Winnie's successor, my first to experience a variety of wolves and the grizzly fight together, who just changed mercs at the end of normal difficulty, from Fire Rogue to Fire Iron Wolf. As of 2.4 and onwards, Fire act 3 mercs have Enchant, which helps all my wolves and bear against dual immunes. On top of that, the firebolt/fireball damage is decent enough with modest gear (Spirit, Skin, Lore, Sigon's shield)
A bit more about Winny: I built him to be as offensive as possible, minimizing Dire Wolf points, and going into Poison Creeper and Rabies (for synergy only!) as a third damage type, making him the only character with four damage types going in tandem. I wonder how it'll turn out, but for now, in early nightmare the going is quite fast. Dire Wolves eat up corpses, Poison Creeper does AoE, and Spirit wolves also help with the occasional shatter. I wonder how it'll look like when going to hell, since Spirit Wolves are lacking in the damage department right now, and Poison Creeper likes to die all the time.
Anyways, Winny is waiting for his turn right now, because I enjoy Teleport + Frozen Orb a bit too much. Lerny is beating up Baal with the "moat trick" of teleporting across the gap to the corner of the T-shaped platform at the worldstone, and popping down a full set of 6 hydras, and then popping back, being safe from all sorts of nastiness Baal throws and tends to kill the merc with.
So yep, as T-Hawk predicted, the addition of Bnet runewords made the early-midgame into a one-size-fits-all of Spirit and Insight. Similarly, with shared stash and a couple mules, it was all too easy for me to fall into a hoarder mindset, starting to lose track of what I got so far. (It took a big mental effort to get rid of a bonesnap for example, as I'm not playing mainly-melee characters at all)
I don't mind it though, much of it is still novel for me.
Another "for-fun" toon is SirGuy, a holy fire paladin: Holy Fire was buffed significantly, to the point where I heard stories of people clearing whole screens of enemies in hell while walking by. I have much more modest goals for him, to grab chipped gems and fuel my rune cubing. I also intended him to be a hammerdin before that "need" presented itself, so maybe he'll be a holy fire + blessed hammer hybrid, after I run the numbers of course. I'm also open to other ideas, except for holy shock because that means that some of my hardest enemies would be lightning enchanted bosses, which I don't want on a pally.
He's my first (modestly) twinked character, with 16000 gold granted to him from a shared stash wallet to buy himself a +3 Holy Fire scepter, Arctic belt and gloves, and a Steelclash. He played through Act I in /players 5 as a result, destroying most normal mobs in 1-2 pulses.
Is there a way to modify the "vertical_symbols.dds" file so that the interface correctly displays 10 commerce (2 money bags) or 10 food (2 loaves of bread in an extreme situation: wheat + grassland + floodplains + farm + irrigation + biology)? (Or to modify it just for a different appearance of the icons for art's sake) The .dds file is located here: C:\Program Files (x86)\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Beyond the Sword\Assets\Art\Interface\Symbols\.
Here are the starts, in spoilers in case of accidental clicking.
And here is the minimap:
Attached is the world builder file.
Some notes on the map now that players have had a chance to realize they're in the wrong thread.
-Player distance is roughly equivalent. There's a player right on the edge, which makes it seem like the south guy has a huge amount of room. He does have a bit more but nothing more than a tile or two out of the ordinary.
-I practically haven't balanced the starts. I made sure everyone had an Agri and AH resource (and then realized they were playing a later era start, so this was unnecessary ). I also gave everyone a plains hill and fresh water. Everything else is natural. (So I didn't remove one players 3 plains cotton, e.g.)
-I've added Bronze, Horse, and Iron where players didn't have it. If the map generated it, I didn't move it. I haven't balanced for mithril or gunpowder.
-I haven't balanced for luxuries or mana nodes.
-I've made the north and south polar regions navigable by removing two rows of tiles from each.
I've made other minor edits but not enough to say I've balanced it. (Occasional fresh water sources, turned some impassable mountain ridges passable, moved one player's start 1 tile for greater distance from other people. Stuff like that.) I'm also very, very rusty with FfH, so I can't say if I've helped or hurt.
I will pick Dain the Caswallawn of the Amurites. Illians and Sidar seem more complex to exploit, as opposed to a civ that simply gets boosted wizards.
I would appreciate a dedlurker, not necessary though.
![[Image: Patch2.6%20Runewords-X5.jpg]](https://photos.smugmug.com/GAME-STUFF/n-qN3LNZ/Misc/i-gfGbPvD/0/1efb494d/X5/Patch2.6%20Runewords-X5.jpg)
![[Image: Patch2.6%20Cube-L.jpg]](https://photos.smugmug.com/GAME-STUFF/n-qN3LNZ/Misc/i-GLf4xn7/0/32ba5d52/L/Patch2.6%20Cube-L.jpg)
![[Image: image.png]](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/708123055855239260/1074346937718943835/image.png)
![[Image: H5OSR4S.jpg]](https://i.imgur.com/H5OSR4S.jpg)
). I also gave everyone a plains hill and fresh water. Everything else is natural. (So I didn't remove one players 3 plains cotton, e.g.)
