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Diablo 2 Resurrected: Speculation on next season and patch

Diablo 2 Resurrected 2: Speculation on next season and patch

We are nearing the 4-month mark of the current Diablo 2 Resurrected season and don’t have any updates or even announcements for the next season and patch.  This is purely speculation, but hopefully, someone takes a look at some of these ideas and can make some changes. (I’m free by the way @RodFergusson)

Rebalancing Unique items

Why the rebalancing?  A lot of items are unusable by the time you find them, and even passing on to another character, many unique items are lackluster compared to an open socketed item with a couple of Ith runes in it.  With this general idea, the development team could easily rebalance a slew of unique items in a day or two.

First and foremost:  Changes are in tables/spreadsheets (Excel for example).  Making adjustments literally are as simple as changing the stat modifier and numeric values.    Example:  Say I want to take Blacktongue and change the Enhanced Damage from +50-60% to +100-120%, I change the two values: 50 to 100 and 60 to 120.  More damage for this weapon is a great start.  Let’s take that Blacktongue a step further and make it usable maybe even pushing an occasional upgrade to exceptional quality:

Current:
CLVL26
Adds 112 poison damage Over 6 Seconds
Prevent Monster Heal
+50 to Attack Rating
Poison Resist +50%
+50-60% Enhanced Damage
Post Patch rebalanced version:
CLVL20
Adds 112 poison damage Over 6 Seconds
Prevent Monster heal
+50 Attack Rating
Poison Resist +50%
+100-120% Enhanced Damage
+1-3 Open Sockets

The reduced CLVL is there so if you do upgrade it, it can be used at level 25.  The enhanced damage and sockets mean a couple Iths can be added to make it hit pretty hard for early on and maybe add a Skull for leeching purposes.  Overall, not going to be an endgame item, but a serviceable item in the mid 30’s range.  Honor can be made at CLVL27 and has 160% ED as a good comparison weapon.

Simple to add and remove modifiers, the balance is in making them different enough to shine and have uses.  The problem:  All weapons pretty much need the same type of stuff late game:  High Enhanced Damage, good attack speed, chance to hit modifiers.  These are the basics.  Crushing Blow, Deadly Strike, Leeching are all bonuses.

Armor slots: A lot of items are useable and have solid stats for a smidge of our journey, but most just miss compared to one or two (Duriel’s Shell for example is usually my #1 item to find in an untwinked tournament:  Resist, Life, Cannot be frozen, and solid Armor).  With that there are a few modifiers I wish popped up on more items:  Cannot Be Frozen is one of them as it shows up on a few really great items, and not on enough.  Some general fixes listed below to increase the viablility of uniques.

General overall quick pass rebalancing would be to adjust these on most items:

  • Armor: Enhanced Defense of 100% and resist should be on nearly all armors
  • Gloves: A couple items could be more serviceable such as increasing level of ctc spell/fequency along with IAS/Resist
  • Helm:  2 sockets in some of the lower levels helms would be great.
  • Boots:  Resistances on unique items.  A lot of them lack them, one of the best slots for a Rare.
  • Belt: Not many complaints about belt slot.
  • Shield:  All resist of 30% or 2 sockets on most uniques/set ones to provide good useful balance of modifers.

 

Jewelry: Unique jewelry are solid and used though some upgrade could occur.  A couple of unique items could use some adjustments, The Mahim-Oak Curio could go up to a variable 10-25% on each stat and become somewhat sought after and some of the sets could be greatly improved.  Manald Heal for example should have the two Regeneration components range upgraded to numbers that would provide a noticeable boost.  Regeneration should be 15-20 providing 3-4 Health Per Second and the Mana Regeneration should go from 20% to 100-150%.  This is still far below Meditation range of 300% at level 1, but enough that it would actually be noticeable.

Adding Uniques

This is on my list of items:  More class-specific unique items, ones that are useable in normal that mimic the power of the basic item staves and wands.  Pure bucket list:  Make a unique for every item in the game.  To the Throwing Barbarian, “I got your back!”

Sets Rebalancing Continues

Sets got a decent make over, but some of the items continue to provide no useable feature.  Arcanna’s Head provides two of the worst bonuses at lowest levels for a Head piece and is not even remotely useable sort of just using the whole set. Maybe having someone go over and see that it provides no bonus.

A few elite-based sets could use a bit of touchup. The Disciple could be touched up in the following ways: Have the boots providing Cannot be Frozen once 2 or 3 items are on.  I would add an additional +1 skills to the amulet too with 2- or 3-piece set bonus.  Armor: Add some resistance or life and give the bloody armor 2 sockets too.  For the belt add a nice 25% DR as a 4-piece bonus.  See how we took the Death’s Sash and Gloves and make the elite set be capable of the same mods.  Toss in 50% MF in the modifiers too and it’s a solid nice set.

Rares, Magical, and Charms oh my!

An adjustment I would love to see is that socketing of magical and rare items provides 2 sockets always from quest turn-in.  I would also change sockets to a minimum of 2 on all rare items and go back to up to 3 if you want non-rune words to see the light of day.  This allows some of the items that are on the cusp to exceed, along with socketing of throwing items.  I know circlets would become really good if they could get 2 sockets always.

Magical

Allow vendors to spawn elite base items about 100% more of the time.  Adding an auto-refresh would be great too, though I don’t think it is possible the way the vendors are coded.

Charms

Large Charms get the shaft in this game.  They aren’t great enough for either Grand or Small replacements once the best are found.  Fixes?  Resist all caps at 12%, Str/Dex cap at +8 and other minor adjustments to make them sought after.  Another great fix would be for Large Charms to spawn rare.  I would love all Charms too, but that is just a dream (Along with the Charm inventory so many people want!)

Final thoughts

Rebalancing is more of a wish list than thing that will probably happen.  It looks like the teams are ramping up to make sure D4 is on the fast track and with Immortal racking in all the dough spending time on this game and D3 already seem like they have been placed on the back burner with the lackluster attempts at maintaining a tight timeline.  I think we will get 1 or 2 more seasons prior to D4 launching in D2R at best and other than a couple of Rune words that are “reactivated and adjusted” there will only be minor bug fixes.


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