D2r Patch 2.4

[NorthDakota]

I assume that this is in relation to fixing the WSM bug, here is a really old post I found about it:

Diablo 2 Resurrected Best Builds, Guides, and News

Icy Veins provides detailed builds, guides, and news for Diablo 2 Resurrected for all classes: amazon, assassin, barbaria, druid, necromancer, paladin, sorceress.

www.diabloii.net

Here is another:

Diablo 2 Resurrected Best Builds, Guides, and News

Icy Veins provides detailed builds, guides, and news for Diablo 2 Resurrected for all classes: amazon, assassin, barbaria, druid, necromancer, paladin, sorceress.

www.diabloii.net

Basically by swapping which weapon is in which hand and in which order they were placed would change the attack speed. If I had to guess the calculation should now default to "averaging" the weapons regardless of which weapon is placed where.

wsm bug is already fixed in d2r. There's something else called auto-wsm bug, which I believe still works in d2r, which is also related to stat requirements and equipment order, which you can read about here: https://asgardpvp.com/guides/wsm-bug

But I'm fairly sure the order you put on weapons and swapping weapons around and stuff doesn't do anything anymore in D2R. Your slot over gloves should appear in your main hand unless you have something funky going on with your equipment order relating to your hard points in stats and the points given by equipment.

I tried digging into dual wielding in D2R with another thread, but people sorta just told me that the behavior was as it always was, it related to equipment order, and the auto-wsm bug, and then that thread petered out because I figured I was just too stupid to fully understand what the hell was going on.


I think you're right though, it'll probably be some averaging or something like that, or possibly evening out the animation. I just don't understand how it will work since different dual wielding abilities function differently in relation to ias.

 

[Pyrotechnician]

"Was as it always was?" I don't buy that. There obviously is an intentional change otherwise it wouldn't be a patch note.

So maybe did they fix the auto-wsm bug? It sounds like the ordering of equipment changes when you have stats that enable you to wear a different piece of equipment, but without it you wouldn't have enough stats, so therefore by default it changes the order the items get equipped. Kind of like how when you pick up your corpse it won't equip things you don't have enough strength for.

I'm unfortunately not smart enough to figure it out myself and usually default to the experts to tell me how it works.

 

[NorthDakota]

"Was as it always was?"

Except for the wsm bug. Even @Helvete reported similar behavior in 1.07 in that thread.

So maybe did they fix the auto-wsm bug? It sounds like the ordering of equipment changes when you have stats that enable you to wear a different piece of equipment, but without it you wouldn't have enough stats, so therefore by default it changes the order the items get equipped. Kind of like how when you pick up your corpse it won't equip things you don't have enough strength for.

Auto-wsm bug is still in, the wsm bug is fixed - you're just describing the equipment order as its always been and described on the basin wiki. (apparently, I still don't really get it and how it actually affects items in the game and how they are equipped at least with weapons and modifiers and what not)

With the exception of the str bug being fixed now as well XD

 

[NorthDakota]

I'm resurrecting this thread to say something I just realized - with patch 2.4, the sorcy skill blizzard doesn't have a global cooldown (still has it's own cooldown with itself but not with other skills like TELEPORT). Got to thinking about this as I was running my blizz sorc in current patch and remembered a delay being removed from blizzard, so I went through the PTR's skills.txt to look at exactly how it changed the cooldowns, and the global delay is gone.

This is super great because one of the most annoying things about blizzard sorcy AT farmers IMO is the stupid delaying of casting other spells after casting blizzard. In fact, often times its best not to cast blizzard at all and just focus fire targets with ice blast because the delay from casing blizzard is so substantial and delays your runs!! NO MORE. You can cast blizzard and go RIGHT INTO CASTING WHATEVER. Doesn't mess up your casting rate!!

It's fly as hell my guys. Like if I wasn't playing d2r by now this would be the change that did it for me. I am unreasonably hyped by this revelation. It's a big dps increase as you can easily fit in a full 4 iceblasts between blizzard casts, instead of casting blizzard, having the delay, then casting either 3 iceblasts and having a short cd on blizzard still remaining, or casting 4 and having wasted a bit of time before casting blizzard since it was already off CD. You can just cast ice blast right away, or like, cast blizzard and teleport to the next pack, or whatever, with no delay. You guys get the point.

Edit: I have d2r blocked in my firewall settings so I can still access the PTR in single player, and I can confirm, the change to blizzard is the greatest thing of all time. Going to take a while to undo the hundreds of years of muscle memory of that casting delay though

 

[coju]

I'm resurrecting this thread to say something I just realized - with patch 2.4, the sorcy skill blizzard doesn't have a global cooldown (still has it's own cooldown with itself but not with other skills like TELEPORT). Got to thinking about this as I was running my blizz sorc in current patch and remembered a delay being removed from blizzard, so I went through the PTR's skills.txt to look at exactly how it changed the cooldowns, and the global delay is gone.

This is super great because one of the most annoying things about blizzard sorcy AT farmers IMO is the stupid delaying of casting other spells after casting blizzard. In fact, often times its best not to cast blizzard at all and just focus fire targets with ice blast because the delay from casing blizzard is so substantial and delays your runs!! NO MORE. You can cast blizzard and go RIGHT INTO CASTING WHATEVER. Doesn't mess up your casting rate!!

It's fly as hell my guys. Like if I wasn't playing d2r by now this would be the change that did it for me. I am unreasonably hyped by this revelation. It's a big dps increase as you can easily fit in a full 4 iceblasts between blizzard casts, instead of casting blizzard, having the delay, then casting either 3 iceblasts and having a short cd on blizzard still remaining, or casting 4 and having wasted a bit of time before casting blizzard since it was already off CD. You can just cast ice blast right away, or like, cast blizzard and teleport to the next pack, or whatever, with no delay. You guys get the point.

Edit: I have d2r blocked in my firewall settings so I can still access the PTR in single player, and I can confirm, the change to blizzard is the greatest thing of all time. Going to take a while to undo the hundreds of years of muscle memory of that casting delay though

Yeah they removed a lot of the delays for skills messing with other skills. Didn't realize the importance that it would bring to Sorcs!! Great find!

 

[Excalibur]

Was about time. I leveled my Blizzard sorcy from 95 to 96 and this was one of the most annoying things.
Glad they are doing stuff without the need of us to mention them.

 

[HanShotFirst]

Here

What do folks think?

Edit:
I think I'm most intrigued by the new Act 5 mercenary. A dual wielder that uses uses Frenzy, Taunt, and Iron Skin? ... I can't wait to try that out.

The changes to the Throw Barb seem like they would make the character much more fun to play ... I wonder just how long you could go without having to return to town for repairs/replenishment.

Also, it's neat that there's a Combat Mastery that will affect daggers for the Barb. I was just wanting this with the untwinked, sp, Barb, that I'm currently playing through the game.

I like that Druids don't have to go down the wind side of the Elemental tree to get to Armageddon ... that never made sense to me ... Armageddon has always seemed like an earth and fire skill and not at all a wind skill.

I'm not sure about allowing Druids to have all the summons out all at once ... Summoner Druids always seemed plenty viable to me before any changes were made. I guess at the very least it's an interesting thing to test ... I wonder if it will be reversed ...

Similarly, I'm not sure that Stafe and Multi Shot needed a damage boost by getting synergies. <Shrug> Oh well. I guess it would help untwinked characters.

Allowing Infinity, Obedience, and Pride in spears, and Amazon spears, is also intriguing ...

So I guess, I've got two characters that I really want to try out:

1) A Thow Barb that uses the new Act 5 mercenary. <-- Maybe another Bulging Biceps character!
and
2) A Summoner Druid.

Both untwinked. Twinked, I feel like the feeling of power creep would be very front and center ... especially in the case of the Druid ...

 

[Jcakes]

Diablo II: Resurrected Patch 2.4 PTR | Ladder Testing | Has Ended

The upcoming PTR 2.4 test goes live on March 2 and will focus on ladder functionality, Uber Diablo updates, and additional balance changes since our previous PTR.

news.blizzard.com

New patch notes

 

[Vildecor]

I think I like pretty much everything in these changes.

The druid having access to all summons I think gives him some parity with the Necromancer. It never made sense to me that a necro can have skeleltons/mages/revives/a golem, while the druid could only pick one of the 3 main summons to use.

I'm also super happy that the /players x setting will now persist through games. No more copy/paste or command line argument needed.

 

[Babyhell]

An Obedience in Amazon spear? Pretty.

Infinity? Oh my... bye bye bosses faster than ever xD

Interested in the summon druid. Having the pack with a Faith archer druid will be nice enough. Untwinked journey will be viable too, or say safer.

Throw barb journey is still on my todo list. Great news here again!

I have time before D2R 2.4 in SP (or only the runewords are merged after seasons?), but it will give me some more interest for D2R.

 

[Excalibur]

Infinity has finally found a suitable character to equip it!
Infinity Amazon Spear? Oh my god!

I always though they would eventually allow Wolves along with Grizzly but not both Wolves! This is awesome!

I personally like the physical damage boost in the Bow skills.

More options for mercenaries... I love it! And I wonder if Lacerator can be used by those dual wield Barabarians? If so, Amplify Damage for melee characters would be insane!

Very nice that Armaggedon doesn't require Hurricane anymore.
Very convenient to keep the players command to the next game.
Good move to increase the monster density in the new lvl85 areas.

Still don't see anywhere that Cain can identify items inside the cube. This is extremely annoying given the fact that you don't carry Tome of ID with many chars and that you don't have enough space in your invetory to move the item.

Haven't read the fixes yet but looking the rest changes all characters are getting stronger which would require somekind of a new event in hell where you could have some more challenge.

Three Characters that I want to try out.
• Holy Fire Paladin
• Infinity Amazon
• Summoner Druid

 

[Miron]

So soon?? Blizzard/Microsoft decided to speed things up?

From the old forum (2016):

QUOTE=mir....

I would like to see:
1. Ladder runewords for SP
2. New items (weapons) as crafting bases: swords, bows etc
3. Improve the mercs. Not the AI but items they can use (axes for barbs, orbs for a3 mercs....)


I also must honor T72on1 from the same thread:

Spoiler

Interesting topic.

As I said in the patch 1.14a thread, I fully expect we'll actually get one or more patches after 1.14a, which will include bug fixes and stuff like that. Here's my wish list for such a patch:

* all content available on ladder should be available in SP as well (and I think off-ladder too, but I don't play off-ladder that much, so I'm not the best person to judge that)

* being able to do the Cow level, even after the Cow King has been killed

*no IM back in the CS please; I hated it

* cube recipe to upgrade normal weapons

* cube recipe to upgrade set items; many of the sets would suddenly become endgame viable !!

* remove arrows and bolts from the game; they take up unnecessary space; add durabitlity instead, just as with non-ranged weapons

* in the same vein, remove stack size of thrown weapons, or at least increase stack size a lot or add replenish as an auto-mod; I love Double Throw Barbs, but they are unplayable atm due to town trips every few minutes

* remove silly bugs like NM Smith and Griswold (at least I think it's him) being able to do their Hell drop instead of the NM one, just because of a typo

* fix well known bugs, like AR bonus not working properly on some Bow skills, Inferno and Arctic Blast not working properly or the infamous Fend bug

* have the ability to assign a 'move' button; now if I'm in a dangerous position and want to get away in a hurry, but accidentally click on a monster, I'm in for some trouble

* fix the LCS so it's actually more or less accurate, and add some useful statistics like amount of GF, MF and CB to it

* make Ubers and DClone available on SP; DClone would have a different spawn mechanic obviously

* buff the Act 3 mercs, so they see more use

* buff underused skills like Skeleton Mages and Thunderstorm

* pervent minions to get lost and go poof, especially Iron Golems
increase Act 4 to the size of the other acts (I know, highly unlikely, but this is a wishlist, right? )

* Druid shapeshifts no longer have a duration, but work on a turn-on, turn-off base

* Blaze also has skill based frw

* Druid Grizzly, Dire Wolves and Spirit Wolves can now be active at the same time

* be able to put Paladin Auras on left click, so we can finally auto-attack with that class

* extended durartion on Frenzy, so you don't have to stress out to lose the Frenzy stacks all the time, or at least not so fast; similar skills like Maul, Feral Rage and the PS MA skills already have this extended duration

* make gems appear in a different colour as well, so they are easier to spot (either orange I guess, or a colour not currently in the game)

* fix the bugged damage of Tomb Vipers

* new runewords; a lot of them are already in the game txt file, but just not enabled yet

And ofc what @pharphis said (same thread)
"Enable plague runeword" - you got it!

We can probably go even further and find same suggestions


On a bit more serious note, those changes really motivate me to forward those chars to D2R:
- Hunter druid
- Werebear druid
- Double throw barb
- Lightning Strike zon (is this the lvl 30 melee skill?)
- Fend zon
- Fire druid
- Fire based zon
- Few chars that use non-act2 mercs

Also it gives some motivation to build:
- Holy Fire paladin
- FC druid
- Impale zon
- few more chars I didn't think of yet

 

[lizard]

This is pretty big.

Love the changes to druid summons. As I read it, it only affects the wolfs and bears and not the spirits or vines.

Also interesting that they reverted back to the PTR attack speed calculations but increased speed cap.
Can someone with access to PTR report how it compares to Legacy, are new were forms as fast as past or is it still a nerf to were forms. I think the concern was that only Grief would be viable now.

Love the changes to Mercs. A5 Barb was always my favorite and I have even more reason to use him now. Double wielding for A5 mercs is huge.

Also amazing that rogues can use amazon bows now, that was always a weird restriction, that did not make sense at all and restricted them too much.

 

[Sopper]

Also amazing that rogues can use amazon bows now, that was always a weird restriction, that did not make sense at all and restricted them too much.

But this will result in non-amazon-bows will be completely useless (like xbows already are) and 4os GMB/MB will be very expensive to get (online trading)

 

[NorthDakota]

Hyped for the seal boss change.

Most exciting though to me is the multishot change. I'm not sure how much damage it comes out to in the end but I'm just happy to see changes and excited to see how it turns out.

Also really excited for spearzon and throw barb. I'll probably be making lots of new builds once this officially hits.

 

[Coyote_Sly]

Those shifter druid changes....

I'm not sure I like the generic attack speed. Weapon choice was *limited* on shifters, but it was also *different* than every other build where Grief is just hands down the best by miles. And I'm really, really skeptical that you can functionally *get* enough attack speed for a bear to work - I'm sorry, but slow just doesn't cut it when the only think you have access to is a one-at-a-time namelock skill set, unless the change to melee Co trol (which I haven't tried yet) is just completely game changing.

 

[art_vandelay]

Don't worry guys, the wereform changes are all for the better! Once the attack speed calculations are unified across the board they can finally implement a new mechanism displaying weapon dps and a feature to automatically drop your current weapon when you find one with higher dps.

 

[lizard]

There are a bunch of really good bug fixes. e.g.:

• Fixed an issue where a few melee skills would often miss when attacking moving targets (Amazon Fend, Druid Fury, Paladin Sacrifice, Paladin Zeal).
• Fixed an issue that could cause players to miss their attack when using melee skills against enemies that are just barely within striking range and moving away
• Fixed an issue where fire enchanted monsters were doing too much damage in Nightmare difficulty
• Fixed an issue where continuing to move after running out of stamina could cause the stamina bar to not refill.

This should help melee a ton, especially the missing attacks because of moving enemies.

 

[snickersnack]

Allowing Infinity, Obedience, and Pride in spears, and Amazon spears, is also intriguing ...

I've been playing a spearzon and noticed that there are very few runewords that you can make in a spear, so this is pretty interesting except for one glaring problem: none of those have ias. Obedience hits like a truck, but it'll be slow... I'll make one for sure, but I don't see it being very useful. I might make Infinity. I wish they'd allow Oath in a spears, but that'd probably be too OP.

 

[Vildecor]

I've been playing a spearzon and noticed that there are very few runewords that you can make in a spear, so this is pretty interesting except for one glaring problem: none of those have ias. Obedience hits like a truck, but it'll be slow... I'll make one for sure, but I don't see it being very useful. I might make Infinity. I wish they'd allow Oath in a spears, but that'd probably be too OP.

I think Obedience could be useful for Fend now that it attacks twice as fast. I had moved over an amazon to try out the Fend changes with both an Arioc's and an upped Lycander's, and damn she attacked super fast. I'm so glad there is no more Fend bug with the new changes and you can actually play it with a Valkyrie.