Stats/skills not working properly...please help.

[My name is KJ]

My main character is currently a level 35 Barbarian.

I keep my stat screen and skill tree open at the same time while leveling, to watch what happens when I assign skill points. When I put points into Frenzy, Sword Mastery, Double Swing, etc., either a) nothing happens, or b) my damage actually goes DOWN (sometimes it will go up 1 or two points, but not by anywhere close to the value it should, based on the skill descriptions). I do have two swords equipped, and I have tried different swords, different levels on different characters, etc. Same problems...

Beyond THAT problem, some of my stats randomly change from game session to game session, and sometimes within a game session: the stats that I have noticed change include Defense, Frenzy Damage, and Frenzy Attack Rating. For example, most recently, I watched my Frenzy Damage go up from 190 to 193, and 159 to 160 (max damage, for each sword) as I assigned one more point into the Frenzy skill (from level 3 to level 4). That was the last thing I did before saving and exiting last time I was playing. When I logged back in tonight to go kill Diablo, my Frenzy damage was 190 and 158. The other stats seem fine (I think my resistances might have been a little wonky at some points, but am not sure), and the game-play is all fine (I'm nearly done with act IV normal on this character).

This is very frustrating and demoralizing for me, as I just want to play some classic Diablo, and am getting my brother and my nephew into the game. Any insight into these issues would be much appreciated! If it helps, I'm running Windows 7 (this could be a cause of the problems???), have the latest patch (1.14c), and have been running the game in compatibility mode (for Windows XP service pack 2), as an administrator, and with desktop composition disabled. These problems also occurred before I began running the game with these settings. Oh yes and I just remembered that I have been playing in /players 8 ("Players set to 8"). Although I haven't tested it much, I'm pretty sure normal (not players 8) has the same problems.

EDIT: My stash's gold capacity also did not change for a long time (at about 150k or so), then, recently, it randomly jumped straight from 250k to 800k (currently 2.5 mil, only like half an Act worth of gameplay since 800k). I haven't played in a long time so maybe this is normal. I don't remember, but it doesn't really seem right.

Thanks in advance...

 

[drmalawi]

I never trust the values on the screen. They are known to be bugged.

 

[My name is KJ]

I never trust the values on the screen. They are known to be bugged.

I wondered about that...it's possible that the damage is actually much higher, and Frenzy is working "as advertised", but the character screen just doesn't display it correctly? Either way, it's pretty damned annoying. One would think that 20 years later, after multiple major patches, a company with the resources of Blizzard, could have taken care of such basic problems as this... It can't be that difficult. Sigh. Oh well, I guess if I don't like it, I can not play, LOL...

Still hoping someone knows a specific cause of the problems and/or a solution...fingers crossed!

 

[drmalawi]

I keep track of damage myself. When you have crushing blow and deadly strike, the damage on the screen does not even take that into account.

You probably know this, but damage from Barb skills are additative modifiers, not multiplicative. Say your weapon has 100 max dmg listed, each level up of Frenzy will add 5% of that, i.e. 5 to max dmg.

Another thing, Battle Command increase your skill levels and Might aura from merc alters damge and thus values on the screen are listed lower when you enter the game.

Since you say logged on, I assume you play on Bnet?