D2 content patch 1.13 in the making?!?

[Dr.Disaster]

Just stumbled over this while checking some news:

http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?top...1&sid=3000

It indeed baffles me that Blizzard seems to plan new game content, not just a bunch of fixes.

Dr. Disaster

[FoxBat]

I expect the release to coincide with some major D3 announcement.

Hoping for some kind of resolution upgrade myself.

[WarBlade]

Hoping for some kind of resolution upgrade myself.

LOL, yeah.

I've just installed Diablo II: Lord of Destruction today. I haven't played this game in ~four years aside from some curiosity/old-time's-sake attempt about three years ago I think. Oh man, the graphics were horrible until I stuck "-w" into the shortcut and got it running windowed. I see 800 x 600 is still the maximum resolution under the latest patches.

I actually found it kinda funny.

[KingOfPain]

Frankly, I never had much faith in Diablo patches. They seem to "break" more things than fixed things that I am impressed with.

Today, I fitted one of the Forge mules (clvl 47) a partisan Insight, suited him up for playing and used up his 47 lvls of stats and skill points to give it a whirl. The LCS says he has 95% ToHit vs a NM fallen, and 85% ToHit vs monsters in the AS. However, WW manages to miss whole groups of monsters occasionally, yes, whole group. This can be fatal with harder hitting monsters. WW misses too much and does too little damage. I brought in HotBowBabe to enchant the mule to up his ToHit to auto-hit vs AS monsters and up'd his damage that can one hit kill anything in NM AS, but still, a group would take many whirls to dispatch (other than the few times that it kill a whole group with one whirl, as it should be). It still misses whole group occasionally. Sigh.

(as it should be: Your normal clvl47 toon would have killed the same group in less time. Whirlwind, although it feels fast, it isn't. It spends too much time traveling the distance - from closing in, the actual whirl and overshoot)

If I had built this character as a playing whirler I would be quite disappointed. A whirler has never been powerful since the first couple of nerfs, and now it feels like a crippled variant. It's hard for me to think of any "normal" build of any class that can not out-perform a whirler.

KoP

[Doc]

Frankly, I never had much faith in Diablo patches. They seem to "break" more things than fixed things that I am impressed with.

Today, I fitted one of the Forge mules (clvl 47) a partisan Insight, suited him up for playing and used up his 47 lvls of stats and skill points to give it a whirl. The LCS says he has 95% ToHit vs a NM fallen, and 85% ToHit vs monsters in the AS. However, WW manages to miss whole groups of monsters occasionally, yes, whole group. This can be fatal with harder hitting monsters. WW misses too much and does too little damage. I brought in HotBowBabe to enchant the mule to up his ToHit to auto-hit vs AS monsters and up'd his damage that can one hit kill anything in NM AS, but still, a group would take many whirls to dispatch (other than the few times that it kill a whole group with one whirl, as it should be). It still misses whole group occasionally. Sigh.

(as it should be: Your normal clvl47 toon would have killed the same group in less time. Whirlwind, although it feels fast, it isn't. It spends too much time traveling the distance - from closing in, the actual whirl and overshoot)

If I had built this character as a playing whirler I would be quite disappointed. A whirler has never been powerful since the first couple of nerfs, and now it feels like a crippled variant. It's hard for me to think of any "normal" build of any class that can not out-perform a whirler.

KoP

Your weapon absolutely SUCKS for whirling. That's the problem. Whirlwind needs tons of IAS, and if I recall rightly, only weapon IAS matters. Thrice shaeled Hone Sundan was a good WW weapon to shoot for, and there were others.

A partizan is painfully slow, and the insight runeword has no IAS at all. So yeah, you aren't going to hit anything.

[KingOfPain]

Lets assume I used the slowest weapon available, then it misses hitting whole groups of monsters in the AS with a range 4 weapon and autohit ...

Working as intended, Bill?

KoP

[Doc]

Lets assume I used the slowest weapon available, then it misses hitting whole groups of monsters in the AS with a range 4 weapon and autohit ...

Working as intended, Bill?

KoP

Whirling with two phase blades and lots of crushing blow, or two flails, with say, the Black runeword, or even two fast two handed swords, and lots of crushing blow and open wounds, and whirlwind is still one of the best physical attacks in the game. Whirling with a shaeled Ribcracker staff and you can dominate. (You need to up the ribby though) You really don't even need physical damage any more for whirlwind... Just enough to leach mana and life. You just need speed and lots of it to trigger crushing blow.

Which leads to Frenzy... You get good and frenzied up and then go all whirly... Stuff dies. Whirlwind is still insanely powerful, just different.

That said, frenzy is better. Whirlwind is good situationally with frenzy. Set frenzy to the right mouse button and run around at full speed on auto-pilot giving stuff the business, and when you encounter a boss pack, frenzy up, switch to whirlwind, and start shredding.

[Dr.Disaster]

Lets assume I used the slowest weapon available, then it misses hitting whole groups of monsters in the AS with a range 4 weapon and autohit ...

Working as intended, Bill?

KoP

I'm no WW expert but here are a few numbers.
With a 0% IAS partizan like Insight WW does a 12 frame attack. With a tripple Shael'd Hone you WW with a 4 frame attack.

btw .. only IAS on the weapon(s) increase WW speed. No matter how high Frenzy is it does not speed WW up at all.

Dr. Disaster

[Doc]

I'm no WW expert but here are a few numbers.
With a 0% IAS partizan like Insight WW does a 12 frame attack. With a tripple Shael'd Hone you WW with a 4 frame attack.

btw .. only IAS on the weapon(s) increase WW speed. No matter how high Frenzy is it does not speed WW up at all.

Dr. Disaster

Half true. Frenzy increases your foot speed. Allowing you to close the distance with WW faster and travel faster through the pack, doing more hits. Frenzy offers damage through increased movement rates. More movement, more attacks, less time spent traveling, more hits on monsters to apply crushing blow.

Also, you get the frenzy damage bonus. Which is nice, but not as effective as you might hope.

[KingOfPain]

Heh, I wasn't asking for pointers on a whirler. I was stating the WW is broken.

...and lots of crushing blow and open wounds, and whirlwind is still one of the best physical attacks in the game.

Stuff dies. Whirlwind is still insanely powerful,

I think you are mixing up how powerful WW is (or not) with crushing blow - As Dr Douglass commented years ago Bash is the most powerful skill since it can kills Hell Heppy with ~4 hits in a 8 player game. Well yeah, he was loaded with 100% CB. It might as well be any attacks or even normal attack as long as it hits. You are making a case on how powerful CB is, nor WW.

...just different.

Yep. It's broken. But Bill Roper would say its working as intended

EDIT: You are making a case on how powerful CB is, nor WW. That should have read "You are making a case on how powerful CB is, NOT WW" Bad typo


KoP