The PvP Thread

In the off chance you manage to get pvp up and running...

Still don't think Shako is issue at all. I know this school of thought came from Grip and I know what was his angle, but don't think Shako is issue in the slightest. 1.07 Shako is still super easy to get and very good for majority of the builds out there. What are options besides it?
Druids will stick to their pelts or circlets since they have multiple sources of % life so Shako loses a lot of its power.
Zons will be sticking to Kira's if they need resists or Valk/IAS+FRW circlets to get those bleeding edge breakpoints.
Arreat for barb? It's pretty underwhelming honestly. I wouldn't use it myself.
The only other helm that is really multipurpose is CoA, either berber or ber/req for 155 str(vs 156 of spirit). While I can do and force 1.07 Shako for new potential recruit in pvp in like 2-4 hours tops (which I have done already in the past) good CoA with at least 2 sockets and 14% DR is stupidly rare. We probably get 1-2 of those every MFO on entire player pool combined while 1.07 Shako is super accessible. IIRC back when we were talking on irc/discord we calculated that 2/15 CoA is about as rare as Tyrael's Might. Yeah, classes that aren't pressed for fcr breakpoints will take 1.07 Shako without thinking much and 2/20 circlets will be taking a backseat a lot of the time. I honestly don't mind it because only thing harder to get than good CoA is good circlet >_>

As for your idea about reviving pvp, as long as we don't have decent stable hosting I don't think we can do much. I tried tampering with my router to get pvp up and running couple months ago with Grip, but damn router is just too unresponsive and we never managed to host/join to each other. If you can host/find someone with decent optic fiber connection to do it and we can probably do something, set up a stream here and there, post videos and clips etc to SPF and see if there is any interest in watching/joining some pvp. SPF probably changed a lot since I was gone and you might know more about its current state..
 
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Since we are here:
How does everyone feel about 1.07 Shako?

My biggest problem is that it is so good, it becomes the default choice for almost all builds. This makes builds have less variation (especially when 5/7 classes will be wearing Enigma too. It means other choices are much less useful - 20FCR circlets, Griffons, Arreat's. This decreases variation in builds and makes arguably the best part of PvP - Tinkering with the build - less intresting.

So if (and I hope we do) restart HLD, do we ban 1.07 Shako?

max.
What you said. Bigger problems are:
1. It makes strong characters even stronger reducing the usefulness of lower tier characters
2. It inspires defensive playing style

I'm not sure what is the right amount of life Shako adds compared to alternatives we could use in its place. Like 500 for sorc and necro, 800 for assasin/paladin and 1k for barb? Could be. Whatever amount it is, trapper will become much stronger with extra 800 hp than say character like kicker. Sorc would profit more from 500 extra hp than barb from 1k. The fact is tier 1 characters are so strong that any extra buff on them is more pronounced than buff on lower tier characters.

Who uses Shako? Necro, sorc, hammer, assassins, barb. 3 of those characters (+ trapper) really don't need Shako to be stronger, but this extra life just pushes them even further above from weaker characters that also use Shako. It is awesome to have 5k hp sorc, but ya know, from time to time someone might want to play some lower than tier 1 character and stand a chance at killing her. Especially true against necro who is hard to kill, even harder if he has Shako. Hammer is another strong character who can 3 hit kill anything and on top of it is invisible majority of time. And has over 5k hp with max block. Let's add 5k hp trapper who can camp among traps and has block on top of it.

As for defensive playing style... I'm playing a barb against trapper. Barb has 8k hp, trapper has over 5k. Would barb bother to jump on trapper among traps? Probably no because he can't possibly come close to killing 5k hp anytime soon with clawblock. Will trapper attack barb? Hardly, that thing has massive 8k hp and besides barb is supposed to attack, not trapper.
Now let's assume characters don't use Shako. Would barb attack say 4.5k hp trapper more directly? Chances are definitely higher since that is no longer over 5k hp and barb could hope to kill her much sooner. In return, barb would have 7k hp now. Would trapper attack him? Probably not, but the fact is barb might play more offensively and has 1k less hp could give her some initiative for attack too instead of camping behind traps.

This is just one example, there are plenty more like it. I certainly am less inspired to attack and more inspired to just turtle if I'm facing some massive hp characters, or 5k hp sorcs or necs or hammers who I can't possibly kill anytime soon and have to play my cards in a more safe and cautious way. Without Shako sorcs and necros probably won't change their defensive style, but it will make other characters have higher chance of success if they attack them turning the game into more offensive battle.


Does this mean I'd ban Shako? No. I'm just bringing what issues I see in using it. In my opinion it makes PvP more of a turtle parade and making strong characters even stronger in comparison to lower tier characters. Similar arguments could be given for beta CtA as well and honestly I could literally write everything the same for it, but benefit of using it is longer duration making it less possible to expire in a heat of the battle and giving more mana making play more fluent, but one could argue we could use extra mana on charms to balance. I do think removing both Shako and beta CtA could increase quality of games, but I could also be wrong about that.
 
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Biggest issue with PvP is not equipment, it is lack of good host. We didn't really experience playing on a good host apart from a very short time. And playing was awesome, suddenly barb was playable too. All those characters that profit the most from extra HP are also ping resistant making them even more powerful. We should experience playing on a good host where not every second teleport is black screen and where offensively minded characters could chase sorc/necro without eating invisible blasts all the time. Then we would know for sure how things stand. I wrote it from perspective teleport=black screen
 
Heh I just remembered when we were doing the math to figure how much it'd cost each to get some server for PvP ^^'

About items. I was good at two things: doing sweet looking excel sheets and grinding for itamz. I was never as good as some of you guys theorycrafting and figuring out balancing, etc. So I won't comment much about it. But is the issue about 1.07 Shako how good it is vs how "easy" it is to get it? Isn't beta CtA and pre-buffing more broken for several builds? And res/sorb stacking?

Oh and I had hosting advantage often :p
 
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I have pretty fast unused vps thats sitting on a backbone in Milan, Italy. Address for latency tests is [ 37 dot two four seven dot fifty-three . 194 ]. If pings are ok for enough people and there would be significant demand, I might try to figure out how to run diablo on a headless Debian and dedicate one core to 24/7 server :p
 
I'm getting anywhere 27 to 30 ms. Given that usually we were playing on 170+ I'd say this is pretty darn good. That being said I'm sure d2 actually adds some delay and Croatia is very close to Italy so others results might vary and ingame performance might be different too. It's probably best shot we have so let's see if there's any more interest in doing this.
 
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I'm getting about 32-34ms from the UK, which from what I remember isn't too far off what I got to the b.net D2 servers in game. Adding a bit on for the ancient code and it should still be quite good.
 
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I got 54 from Texas. Good enough ping for some counterstrike 1.6 so probably good enough for pvp. That was through a VPN as well.

*I tried without VPN now and it doesn't seem to affect my ping.
 
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Melee vs Melee?

I only have V/T, bva, ghost... Interested?
 
ghost without traps would be fine with me

still have to gather gear for pvp tho ;)

what about mindblast, can it be useful even without traps?

cast it and whirl haha
 
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What weapon to use on a Fury wolf, except insane rares?

1hand, to carry Stormshield

Basicly just BotD BA, that's it?

what would be the perfect fury weapon?

Fanged Knife of awesomeness or eth Phaseblade?
 
EBoTD Zerker for one handed. Grief Phase is good damage but short range. But wolves are a hard character to do well with.
 
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