/vr/ - Retro Games

I love this game. It consumed years of my life and I do not regret it.

I've been drawing up ideas for a balance patch of sorts, with the point being to produce more endgame viable builds without sacrificing the need for planning and careful itemization. Here are the general principles:

- 100/80 point synergies eschewed in favor of 60- and 40-point synergies to allow characters to specialize in at least two different skill families.
> The benefits are twofold: It makes non-sorceresses less dependent on obscure gear to beat immunes (like infinity or a high base damage unique) and it allows more possible builds. One example that I've played with is diverging the javazon lightning skills into melee and ranged synergies, thereby forcing a player to choose between an off-element and charged strike.

- A general increase in damage for skills that do disproportionately low damage.
> There are a number of skills that are not viable simply due to their low base damage, such as the assassin's fire traps/hand grenades, all of the amazon's elemental arrows, bone spear (debatable) and the druid elemental tree (also somewhat debatable). The plan is to bring them in line with other skills.

- Greater damage bonuses for strength/dexterity point investments.
> Physical damage skills in Diablo 2 are, in general, underpowered, especially compared to the investment required to build them. An increase in base damage multiplier from stats would rectify this as well as encourage people to invest beyond what they need for items.

- Removal of blessed hammer/concentration combo.
> Fuck hammerdins.

From there, I'm going to look at ways to make the end of the game more difficult, especially in multiplayer parties. I haven't gotten a good handle on how I'm going to do this yet, however.

Is this something people around here would be interested in?