Some tentative changes didn’t survive contact with the beta:
I appreciate that the team can try something, see it doesn’t work, and take it back — that takes guts, and I said so on Discord. But with Combustion, I still wonder how the intent survives a total revert. If it needed two nerfs, was there a goal behind those changes that we could still reach another way?
Sometimes I wonder if there’s one clear vision behind all the changes. Maybe there isn’t one for everything — and maybe that’s fine. If I had to guess what S14 is about, I’d say bugfixes, guilds, and a few new ideas to keep the game fresh. That’s a good season to me! Senpai reads the feedback and takes it seriously, and that’s a real strength. It can also make the direction hard to see from the outside. I’d love to know what the team is aiming for with some of these changes. Then maybe we can help get them there.
Beta patch #6 fixed poison-based attacks dealing 256 times their intended damage. Apparently it had been like that for roughly an hour. Somewhere out there, a poison necro had the best hour of their life. This is what betas are for, and honestly, it’s delightful.
I do hope the team looks at poison more broadly at some point, though. The damage formula feels weird and inconsistent to me. Maybe we could have a simpler, more modern take on poison.
This is the sleeper story of the beta for me. Buried in the tentative notes and beta patches is a real itemization shift:
I’ve argued before that the best possible rares should have a chance to beat runewords on each slot. That’s the endgame I want: find a great rare, rebuild around it. Does a +2 rare chest beat Enigma? Probably not today. But rares are getting interesting across more than one slot, and that’s already fun. I want to look at a drop and wonder if it’s good instead of throwing it away without thinking.
Moving DS/CB off circlets is nice too. Melee doesn’t have to cram everything into one slot anymore. More places to find good gear, more reason to keep picking things up. That’s the kind of change I’ve been asking for in my Top 10, so yes, I’m happy to see it.
Animation desyncs, controller crashes, stash edge cases, guild-hall phasing, DClone pillars, tooltip lies — there’s a lot in here. Not flashy, but this is the stuff that makes the game cleaner and more stable.
This is a guess, and I could easily be wrong, but I wonder if the team has started using AI-assisted coding tools. Maybe they just had a very productive few weeks! Either way, it’s good news: the boring fixes nobody streams about are how an old game stays alive. More of this, please.
Beta #4 gives mercenaries full experience credit and removes the level-difference penalty (the owner-level cap stays). No more watching your merc fall behind because you outleveled the monsters keeping them alive.
I was among the people asking for this, so I’m glad Senpai took it into account. Thanks! Small change, real quality of life.
Six patches in four days is not a design document — it’s a conversation. The community says things, the team tries things, some stick and some bounce back. I like seeing the beta actually beta: catching the 256x poison bug, reverting what doesn’t work, and making rares more exciting.
I’d still love to hear a bit more about the intent behind some of the changes, but I’m having fun watching this patch come together. Keep iterating, Senpai — and if you ever write that “S14 is about ___” paragraph, I’ll happily read it (and help if I can!).
]]>This was the hottest topic in the channel by far. Same complaint, several angles:
The most efficient way to level right now is a level-1 naked character getting carried to hell, then standing a screen behind a high-level in Chaos. Strange that the optimal route is also the most hands-off — and it makes all low-mid items pointless past day one, since your second character never actually plays through the game.
Playing solo gets you players-5 loot, but not players-5 XP. Leveling an alt alone, or league-starting outside a full group, feels like self-punishment. Groups and boosts could stay ahead — just let solo be close enough to be a real choice.
A level-1 character has no business in a hell game. Gate it behind a minimum level, or behind the ancients quest itself.
Someone even brought up the ancient act 3 flail trick — muling Khalim’s Flail onto a level-1 character, letting them die, and looting it so you can smash the Compelling Orb in Nightmare and Hell without assembling the organs. The fact that the optimal way to play an ARPG involves sacrificing a naked mule in a blood ritual just to skip playing the game is peak Diablo 2 jank. You might think it is fun, but maybe it is outdated right ?
Digging deeper, this debate isn’t new. Older posts asked for corrupted playthroughs as an alternative leveling path, waypoints shared across the account once you’ve cleared a difficulty (the argument being: rushes already let people skip the game entirely, so at least reward the ones who play it), and way back, someone proposed gating each difficulty behind the first days of the ladder.
My honest position: either fix works, the status quo doesn’t.
I’d vote for the first. Alts are where build diversity lives. If the ladder feels dead by week three, part of it is that replaying the game just to try a new build asks too much. Make trying builds cheap and people try builds. The current setup is a boring dilemma: the fun way to level is the slow way, so people take the boring shortcut. But mostly I want the devs to answer the question at all — right now we get the worst of both worlds.
Ursa’s Nightmare is the kind of item I love — you give up real stats to buy a bigger splash radius. More gear built on that trade, please.
Straight into my favorite wound: melee physical builds can’t map because single-target damage doesn’t scale with pack size. Last week I was arguing in the stream recap that the devs should ask whether base splash is too weak. The S13 review already celebrated local splash fixes for Frenzy, Tiger Strike, Fend, Fury, and Zeal — that’s the kind of change that makes more skills worth trying.
This suggestion is the other way into the exact same problem: keep base splash conservative, but sell radius through items. Using Ursa’s Nightmare as the template is clever. It turns splash into an itemization dial: builds that need mapping pay stats for it, bossers skip it and take raw damage.
I’d take both. Higher base splash so more skills get a baseline shot at maps, and more items that let you convert raw power into AoE. They’re not in competition.
A fire/cold sorc shouldn’t have to sink points into three unused lightning skills just to unlock Energy Shield.
Same disease as the 80-point builds from Top 10 #6 and the sorc armor discussion: prereq chains are synergies wearing a disguise. They look free — “just put a point in it” — but they tax exactly the builds that want to spread across two elements. Every dead point in a chain is a point not spent on your actual build.
Not every prereq should go. Some are teaching moments, some are power gates. But a long chain to reach a defensive skill feels wrong — defense shouldn’t require offense homework.
What if potions stayed viable into nightmare and hell — a slow, inefficient way for a single-element build to fight through immunes instead of skipping them?
The potion part is a band-aid, but the question underneath is the good one. Even Senpai admitted on stream that immunes are a problem — his defense was that they’re core to LoD, so changing them breaks the legacy. I don’t buy it, for two reasons:
Where I’d put the fix hasn’t changed: my Conviction/Infinity proposal. I made the same case in my S13 review and when I disagreed with a cheaper mini-Conviction idea: breaking immunes should exist, but be expensive and limited — not binary. (And for the version where Infinity’s Conviction just gets deleted, see the censored page, where ideas go when they’re too bold to ship.)
The map pool only grows — should some of the older maps rotate out at this point?
I get the instinct, but it solves the wrong problem. The pool feels bloated partly because a third of it is dead for your build — roll a fire sorc, watch the immune walls pile up. Cutting maps shrinks the pool; cutting immunities inside maps grows the effective one. More maps worth running within a ladder beats variety that only exists between seasons.
Same root cause as the potion ask, by the way. Half of these wishes trace back to immunities if you follow them far enough.
Reroll recipe for torches? Some currency to reroll staffmods? Rerolling crafts ? Uniques ?
Different asks, same request: less RNG. And mostly no, but let me argue it rather than just vote. Torch/anni rerolling is power creep for bossers — the people farming the most deterministic content get an even more deterministic payout. A staffmod reroll currency doesn’t fix staffmod farming being miserable; it adds a second lottery next to the first. If slam/craft RNG is too punishing, tune the odds — don’t bolt on undo-buttons.
Loot is fun when loot is random. Let’s keep this.
Where I do sympathize: these asks exist because some grinds feel bottomless. That signal is real. But the fix belongs in the base odds and in more things worth farming, not in consumable nonsense.
Every element has rainbow facets except magic — so, magic facets when?
Hard no, because the missing facet is the feature. Magic builds don’t get facets, so they don’t need facets, so their gear slots stay open for other things. That slot freedom is what makes magic feel like its own thing instead of element #5. Add the facets and you’ve traded a real asymmetry for fake symmetry.
Sometimes diversity means one path deliberately doesn’t get the toy.
Worth the read, genuinely. Under the recipe wishes there’s a pattern: a lot of these posts are secretly asking the same questions — what should leveling be, what’s splash for, are immunities still earning their place, how much RNG is the point of the game. The devs do read the channel (the 60-point-builds idea from Discord made it into my own stream notes), so keep posting.
And next time the post might be about yours. You’ve been warned. If this was interesting, tell me, if it wasn’t, tell me too. Discord is your friend, and maybe I can be too.
About the quotes: everything in blockquotes is a rephrased, compressed version of real messages — no names, not verbatim. I condensed the long ones down to the part I wanted to react to. The point is the ideas, not the people, so sorry for modifying your words a bit.
]]>First, thank you. A game this old still getting this much time and new ideas is great to see, and the QoL is where I feel it the most: a Deposit Materials button that sends everything to the right stash tabs, a clearer charm inventory, /toggle to mute the chats you don’t want without muting server messages, plus a global chat for those who want it. Controller got some love too — per-skill aim assist toggles, and movement that actually stops when you let go of the stick.
None of this is flashy, but you feel it every single session. More of this please.
Stream #2’s big reveal was the restored Blizzard North guild system: 100 members, a guild hall that goes from cabin to castle, shared stash, trophy case, gold sinks for all of it. Stream #3 added rank-locked tabs so you can invite strangers without watching the vault walk away — someone on that team has been in a guild before.
PD2 keeps betting on group play, and it did work before — allocated loot made party play actually function. But it was done halfway. If you’ve mapped in a party you know people still dash for the small drops, worldstone shards and the like. I’d rather they finish that first: a real allocated loot, all the way, before building more social stuff on top.
As for guilds themselves, the features sound smart, but a guild hall doesnt change what I play. I’m not convinced yet. I’d love to be wrong though, so let’s see what they do with it.
This is the part I care about the most.
Smite now gets life and mana steal, and the desync got fixed. My Top 10 asked for a Smite buff, so partial victory. Partial, because I don’t think this is the buff that matters.
I think the reason almost nobody maps with Smite is the AoE: there’s barely any. It hits one thing at a time, so it’s a boss skill. Great on a single target, bad in a map full of demons. I don’t understand why they keep pushing Smite further in the direction where it’s already good.
And I don’t think it’s only a Smite problem, it’s a melee one. Dragon Talon has the same shape: a single-target grinder, the poor man’s Dragon Tail — DTail comes with AoE built in. I wrote a whole post about kicksin itemization and even that wasn’t the real issue: the skill can’t hit a pack.
If you zoom out, PD2 clearly knows it has a physical splash problem: base splash exists, and every patch adds more splash to individual skills. Concentrate going magic splash this stream is the same pattern. But then I wonder: is the base splash just too small? Does it make sense to patch every skill one by one? AoE is something you can tune up or down, to get whatever balance you want between mapping and bossing. I don’t have the answer, honestly. I’d just love for the devs to ask themselves the question.
The desync fixes for double swing, frenzy, berserk, kicks and bear summon are real work, and melee players will feel it. It changes how melee feels, not what melee builds are, but I’ll take it.
Concentrate deserves a second word: magic splash ignores physical resist, a straight buff for concentrate barbs — and for oskill folks, Passion gives +10 Concentrate, so zeal-oskill builds using it as a sidearm gain too. Quiet itemization shift. I like it. I simply do. Let’s see how it goes.
Fist of Heavens bolts now damage everything they pierce. Real buff — whether it makes FoH a mapper is another question, but the direction’s right.
Chilling Armor’s Cold Enchant synergy moved to Blizzard, Shiver Armor’s went to Frost Nova, and Chilling’s retaliatory spikes now deal AoE on impact.
It’s aimed at the same thing I wanted: Cold Enchant shouldn’t be a tax on armor synergies. But I proposed removing the Chilling synergy entirely and adding Warmth. Their version still keeps an armor tied to Blizzard, which pushes points where an enchant sorc doesn’t want them. I think mine was better, but maybe I’m biased :)
The AoE spikes are the interesting part though. At least they’re looking at the synergy web I keep complaining about.
And while we’re on sorc: the class is pushed really hard toward one element. Masteries reward going all-in, skillers are single-element, and synergies make a real build cost 80+ points, so a second element was never affordable anyway. Multi-element sorcs exist on paper and are just worse. I don’t get why the game keeps pushing mono builds that are way stronger than multi, when it could give multi some air. I’ve seen people in the Discord feedback asking for 60-point builds instead of 80, and yes, please. I think that opinion is becoming the majority. Fewer forced synergies means more different skills in a build, which is the whole point of nerfing synergies.
Indestructible becomes repair durability. Replenish life becomes half freeze duration on boots, gloves, belt. Curse resistance reshuffled and buffed on chest, helm, shield. Chest FCR up to +20%.
Not exciting, and that’s fine, it’s removing dead rolls. Indestructible was a “your slam did nothing” roll, and replenish was about the same. A slam should be a gamble on power, not a coin flip between good and nothing. Good cleanup.
Four new ones: Madness (4os weapons), Finesse (3os armor), Deception (3os helms), Jealousy (3os zon javelins) — plus matriarchal javelins going to 3 sockets and a pile of armor bases going 2 to 3.
I don’t mind new runewords. But they’re a cheap addition that doesn’t fix the core issues, same point as in expensive runewords are not end game: more mid-tier gear doesn’t create build diversity by itself. So why not, but why?
They can also create balance problems on top of the ones we already have. Madness brings three curses, apparently, and I’m not sure “your merc throws 12 curses at everything” is a mechanic we want to feed. I already argued that mercs shouldn’t stack auras (full proposal): it turns gear into merc fodder instead of player choices. I think we should ask the same question for curse bots, and fix the structural stuff around proc builds first.
Jealousy is the one I like. A runeword for throwing zons, with a base change made to socket it: that one has a job. If the stats are good it could open a build instead of crowding one.
Cow Form oskill on the full Cow King’s Leathers set. Delirium Form on Delirium. A Diablo 1-flavored Poisoned Well map. A map event full of super chests and a loot piñata boss. Twelve more alt-arts, another community map.
This is great, and just thank you. Making Delirium and the Cow set optional transforms creates exactly the diversity we need: a new way to play it’s own thing, that nobody is forced into. Love it. The alt-arts are pure cosmetics, and the chest event sounds like a fun jackpot for mapping.
QoL, social features, more content: all welcome, none surprising. And again, thanks to the team for trying new things, it matters.
But three streams in, I still haven’t seen real balance changes, fewer synergies or a fix for snapshotting. Maybe that’s for the next stream.
S14 looks like a comfortable patch so far, and that’s fine. I just want something that makes me want to try a different build.
]]>Uniques and sets get their own tabs, with room for one of each item and stat ranges visible before you find them. Add a map tab and automatic page affinities, and stash management suddenly looks a lot less like mule management.
Discovery Progress is the part I find more interesting. Find and identify an item in the same game, and party members who were there get credit toward the grail. Finish it and you get an aura; the top finishers get a special version. I like a season goal that isn’t just more damage. Party credit could be a nice reason to play together, though I don’t know yet how the details work for solo players. Either way, this sounds more fun than another stash tab full of mules.
The team is removing Blessed Hammer’s collision with walls and objects. I proposed a 5% chance to do that through the Meditation synergy. They chose the QoL fix over my build-choice version, and I can’t blame them: hammers hitting walls feels bad.
But this doesn’t change the Hammerdin build. Concentration is still the obvious aura, and the synergies still push you down the same path. My Top 10 is about changes like reducing synergy pressure so skills have room for other choices. This fixes how hammers move, not how Hammerdins are built.
Blaze gets phasing instead of the longer duration I suggested. That’s useful, but it doesn’t make Blaze a build. Dire Wolves getting pierce is a nice summon buff; I’m not sure it creates a new reason to play them. The +5% elemental jewel prefix could be interesting, but I want to see what it competes with before calling it a win.
Socketing straight from a stack and a monsters-remaining counter are exactly the kind of small fixes that remove daily friction. Character sorting is welcome too, and there’s a new map.
Gloom got a real rework, and I care about this one — Dim Vision when struck is one of my favorite defensive procs. I liked it enough to steal a weaker version for Gloom’s Trap. The new Gloom keeps the proc and adds a curse identity: you may apply an additional curse, and curse resistance goes from 20% to 30-40%. That’s the kind of buff I like — better for curse builds specifically instead of just more stats for everyone. A cheap chest runeword enabling double-curse setups could open some builds.
No real news on my bigger asks: balance changes, synergies, or snapshotting. Maybe those are for the next stream. This was a good QoL start; now show me the changes that might make me play a different build !
After all, PD2 was supposed to be about build diversity.
]]>I really like DH, and I think this is one of the best-organized community wishlists. I also agree with many of the problems he identifies. But I don’t always agree with the solutions. Sometimes I would pull a different lever. Sometimes I would focus on a different problem entirely.
DH points out that the 3 dungeons currently share the same monster pool. They are also not very rewarding compared to the difficulty, especially on Hardcore. This makes it difficult to build a party and find a good reason to run them.
His ideas are to give dungeons different monster pools, add mechanics that favor melee characters in some dungeons, and add better rewards. He also suggests a “Protect Charsi” event with waves of monsters attacking her and an improved imbue as a reward.
Good ideas. Dungeons should not just be harder maps with a different name. They should give us reasons to choose one dungeon over another.
WSK and Throne are dangerous, but they are not always worth running. Black Souls can be a real problem when you don’t have the right defensive tools. The Ancients can also have too much one-shot potential during the playthrough.
I agree with these problems, and mostly with DH’s proposed solutions. The bigger problem is power creep. We created T1, T2 and T3 maps, and now T4 maps, but the original LOD content did not become more interesting at the same time. So most players naturally moved on to maps.
It would be good if WSK, Throne and other LOD areas had a real purpose again. Not necessarily better than maps, but different enough that running them feels worthwhile.
DH mentions Inferno, Charged Bolt Sentry and a Tiger Strike rework. These are all on my own lists too.
This does not mean that every skill needs to become S-tier. But if a skill is fun and has items built around it, it should have a way to become a real end-game build. More of this please.
Some of DH’s suggestions are small, but would improve the game every day:
These changes don’t affect build balance much. They simply remove annoying friction. I like this kind of change because it makes the game better without forcing everyone to change their build.
DH suggests separate Solo-Self-Found ladders for Softcore and Hardcore, like in Path of Exile.
I would probably implement it differently. Every character could start with an SSF tag. The tag would disappear when the character trades or joins a non-solo game. This would give SSF players the recognition they want without creating separate ladders or splitting the community.
Same goal, different mechanism.
DH wants Enigma’s Teleport to go back to its full LOD power, without the spell damage penalty. His arguments are that other classes could compete better with Sorceresses in LOD farming, and that Jah runes would become more useful.
I think the nerf was needed. If Enigma gives the best mobility and is also the obvious armor choice, body armor becomes another solved slot.
But I agree with the problem behind his suggestion: mobility is too concentrated. My first idea would be to add more, weaker mobility options, such as items with slow-replenishing blink charges.
Another possibility is to split Enigma’s strengths. It currently gives both mobility and a huge Movespeed bonus. Maybe those stats do not need to be on the same item. We could have one end-game armor focused on Teleport, and another high-mobility armor focused on Movespeed.
I’m not sure about the exact solution yet. But this is how I usually think about build diversity: instead of making the one answer stronger, create several answers with different strengths.
DH wants to restore Grief’s damage, but specifically says he would prefer to do it without flat damage.
This is important because Grief’s Damage +X is the same kind of affix I criticized in my kicksin post. If Grief becomes stronger through Enhanced Damage, max damage or another normal scaling method, then I think we would probably agree.
The problem is not necessarily that Grief should be strong. The problem is that Damage +X is a strange and unreliable way to create that power.
DH suggests adding around 100% ED to Breath of the Dying, beyond the old LOD values, so it can compete with other Zod runewords.
I agree that BOTD is in a bad state. But I would rather add around 30% ED per season and see what happens. If it becomes a good option after one or two seasons, we can stop. If it is still weak, we can continue.
I don’t mind waiting a few seasons, as long as the vision is clear and we know we are moving towards the right target. Buffs are easier to stop than to undo.
DH suggests that dungeon bosses could drop Uber Item Shards. Three shards would create a random Dclone or Rathma item in the cube. The shards would not drop for solo players, to encourage group play.
I like the goal. More group play would be good, and dungeons need better incentives. But I think allocated loot should be fixed first. Small items like WSS, currency and other materials are still not properly allocated, so leechers can benefit without helping much.
Fixing that problem seems more important to me than adding another group-only reward. But maybe I don’t have enough dungeon experience to judge this one properly.
DH wants to increase Rabies damage while slowing down its spread. This would improve bossing and reduce its mapping dominance.
I understand the idea. I would probably look at the poison duration instead. Rabies already kills monsters quickly in maps, but then you have to run back to the corpses to pick up the loot while the poison is still active somewhere behind you.
A shorter duration could reduce the damage without making that part of the gameplay worse. Maybe this is a small point, but playstyle problems matter too.
DH suggests a cheaper Sorceress orb runeword with a mini-Conviction aura or some -resistance. His goal is to help Sorceresses transition from LOD content into mapping, where they currently have a difficult time.
I want the opposite. I think Conviction, especially on Infinity mercenaries, is already too strong. My proposed solution would be to reduce its range based on hard points, or make it break immunities without also lowering resistances.
DH sees a transition problem and wants to give Sorceresses more -res. I see -res as part of the problem.
This is probably the suggestion where we would disagree the most.
DH’s list is very focused on late-game mapping, dungeons and pinnacle content. That makes sense, because this is the content he tests. But I tend to focus more on the systems behind build diversity.
Prebuffing and gear swapping make balance much harder. Either you balance around the optimal snapshot and punish normal players, or you balance around normal play and allow very strong optimized setups.
I still think snapshotting should be removed entirely.
Synergies forcing players to spend 60 or more points on skills they never cast is probably the number one thing I would fix if … I could.
They don’t just affect skill builds. They also make proc items weaker, because proc builds cannot invest in the same synergies as a normal skill build. I wrote a dedicated analysis about this.
DH has a lot to say about making individual skills and items stronger, but not much about this system. That makes me think build diversity is probably not as high in his priorities as it is in mine.
DH mentions several aura and item buffs, but I would rather fix the aurabot problem first. End-game mercenaries can stack too many auras, which makes aura items less interesting for the player. My proposal is to limit mercenaries to 2 auras. This keeps the big powerspikes, but removes the whole aurabot nonsense.
Sets, oskills and early-season viability are also important to me. Not everyone has time to reach level 99. If someone wants to play a Multishot bow Sorceress, I think they should be able to do it as soon as possible instead of waiting until the end of the season.
This is one of the differences between DH’s list and mine. He is mostly looking at the top of the ladder. I am also interested in the part of the season where most players actually spend their time.
Overall, I agree with most of DH’s problems. I would change several of his solutions, but that is normal. We probably have similar goals: more viable builds, more interesting content and fewer boring problems.
If I had to summarize the difference, DH often asks: “How can we make this item, skill or activity better?” I often ask: “How can we make this one useful without making it the only answer?”
That is also why I like his list. It gives us a lot of concrete problems to discuss, even when I would solve them differently.
The list is open for comments, so DM him on Discord if you have additions or disagreements. This post is my contribution to that conversation.
That is surprising for a build whose defining attack is a kick. It is also a good example of how one small formula interaction can shape an entire item slot.
PD2 kicks use a unified base damage formula:
Base = Dex/4 or Dex/3 + boot damage + flat damage
Damage = Base × one large additive %ED bucket
The Damage +X affix is added to the base. It is therefore multiplied by the entire endgame %ED bucket — often around ×25. Astreon’s +100–125 Damage is not a minor bonus: it is a huge source of kick damage.
The question is whether this is a good itemization choice, or just an engine interaction that makes a Paladin weapon the obvious Assassin weapon.
With a realistic endgame setup — Dragon Talon 30, both synergies at 20, 150 Strength, 150 Dexterity, and 300% additional gear ED — the comparison looks like this:
| Weapon | Average damage / kick | Main reason |
|---|---|---|
| Astreon’s Iron Ward | 6,718 | Damage +112 is multiplied by the kick formula |
| Stalker’s Cull | 5,810 | +skills, +Kick Damage, Deadly Strike |
| The Redeemer | 5,853 | Damage +90 and +Damage to Demons |
Astreon’s Damage +112 contributes roughly 2,800 damage per kick in this example. That is more than the total damage contribution of many complete items.
This is not because Astreon has a kick-specific identity. Its advantage comes from the generic Damage +X affix — a quirky modifier that historically behaves differently from normal weapon damage and interacts with several skills in unusual ways.
By contrast, Stalker’s Cull is clearly designed to support an Assassin: it has Assassin skills, +Kick Damage, Deadly Strike, and Tiger Strike bonuses. Yet Astreon is still stronger for the primary attack because of one generic flat-damage affix.
Weapon damage does not apply to kicks, so the weapon slot should ideally be about useful effects: Assassin skills, +Kick Damage, Deadly Strike, Crushing Blow, charge-up bonuses, or utility.
Instead, the biggest raw-damage option is a Paladin scepter. The build’s best weapon is determined less by its identity and more by whether its Damage +X happens to enter the kick base.
If Damage +X works, Astreon is the obvious raw-damage benchmark. If it does not, several alternatives become more competitive.
The usual explanation is: “weapon damage does not apply to kicks.” The practical explanation is: “weapon damage does not apply, except this particular weapon-style Damage +X affix does.”
That distinction may be technically meaningful to the engine, but it is not intuitive to players.
Using the same example, removing Damage +X from kicks produces this comparison:
| Weapon | Current average | Without Damage +X |
|---|---|---|
| Astreon’s Iron Ward | 6,718 | 3,941 |
| The Redeemer | 5,853 | 3,621 |
| Stalker’s Cull | 5,810 | 5,810 |
This would make Stalker’s Cull the stronger raw-damage option, while Astreon would still have a clear purpose through Crushing Blow and magic damage.
I would not remove every form of flat damage. The proposal should be narrower:
Damage +X affix from the kick formula.Adds 15–25 Damage, unless testing shows that it creates the same problem. This makes sense: Adds X–Y Damage is the same kind of affix as +min/max damage on charms and jewels — generic gear damage that exists across many item types. If a charm’s +max damage helps your kick, a pair of boots doing the same is coherent.Dex/4–Dex/3) over buffing boot base damage. This strengthens the build’s identity — a Kicksin should want to invest in Dex — instead of just making the item hunt bigger.The goal is not to punish kicksins. It is to stop one generic weapon affix from deciding the entire weapon slot.
This is not an obvious balance fix.
The Season 4 change was deliberate. PD2 explicitly stated that kicks would benefit from flat Damage +X. Removing it would reverse a conscious buff, not correct an undocumented mistake.
The damage loss is substantial. Astreon loses about 41% average kick damage in the example above. If kicksins need that power to remain competitive, the change would need compensation elsewhere.
The vanilla evidence is contradictory. Some classic kicksin guides say flat physical damage did not work with kicks; another respected guide says +X Damage did work. The affix is historically inconsistent across skills, so claims about what “always” happened in vanilla should be treated cautiously.
Smite raises a legitimate consistency question. Smite also benefits from Damage +X, despite not using normal weapon damage. If PD2 removes the affix from kicks, should it also change Smite? The answer may reasonably be no — a shield attack has a stronger connection to the equipped item than a foot-based attack — but the distinction should be intentional. And there’s a pragmatic argument too: Astreon and Redeemer are Paladin weapons. Damage +X working for Smite keeps those items relevant to the class they were designed for; on kicks it just lets an Assassin poach Paladin gear.
This may be a niche issue. Kicksins are not necessarily overpowered, and Astreon is not automatically the best choice for every situation. A targeted change may not be worth the complexity if the interaction is not harming the broader game.
I think removing Damage +X from Dragon Talon is worth considering, not because Astreon is game-breaking, but because it creates the wrong kind of best-in-slot choice.
Astreon should be attractive because of Crushing Blow, magic damage, and its anti-undead identity. Stalker’s Cull should be attractive because it is an Assassin weapon with kick and martial-arts synergies. Both can be strong without one generic affix deciding the comparison.
The strongest version of the argument is therefore not “Astreon is too powerful.” It is:
A weapon-specific flat-damage affix should not be the main reason a Paladin scepter beats Assassin claws on an Assassin kick build.
That would make the weapon slot more coherent, more diverse, and more interesting — as long as the change is tested and compensated if necessary.
Damage +X exist at all?There’s a deeper question behind all of this. Damage +X is a weird affix — it looks identical to Adds X–Y Damage on an item tooltip, but it behaves differently across skills, doesn’t display on the character screen, and its mechanics are arcane enough that veteran players disagree about how it worked in vanilla.
From a new player’s perspective, Damage +100 and Adds 50–75 Damage look like the same thing. They are not — one is a buggy engine relic that works on some skills and not others, the other is plain flat damage. That confusion costs real understanding.
Maybe the better fix isn’t removing Damage +X from kicks — it’s asking whether PD2 needs this affix at all, or whether it should be normalized into regular flat damage. That is a separate, bigger conversation. But it starts with the same observation: a mechanic that only veterans understand is a mechanic that fails most of the playerbase.
Several S13 changes overlap with ideas we — and many others in the community — have been pushing for. Good to see.
Frenzy and Tiger Strike splash is now local. The melee splash bonus now only applies to the skill itself, not to other skills. This is exactly what we suggested in our Top 10 #1 and patch notes. It opens up build paths for Frenzy and Tiger Strike without indirectly buffing Whirlwind assassins.
Hydra now pierces. We suggested Lesser Hydra pierce to make it viable for mapping, not just boss fights. The team applied it to the full Hydra. Great change — it gives Hydras a real mapping identity.
Blue maps removed. Maps now only drop as white or unique. This is something we advocated for — it simplifies the map economy and removes a confusing tier.
S-tier nerfs landed. Volcano, Nova, and Corpse Explosion all got toned down. These were our Top 10 #1 targets. The nerfs are moderate — they didn’t overdo it, which is the right call.
Smite and other D-tier skills buffed. Smite got crushing blow efficiency improvements and cap removal. More of this, please. Smite for mapping maybe ?
Not everything worth mentioning is on our list. A few S13 changes caught our attention:
Critical Strike rework. All crit sources are now combined instead of rolling independently, and the multiplier went from 1.5x to 2x. This is a clean, systemic improvement that makes crit more consistent and more impactful across the board.
Mastery reworks. General Mastery became One Handed Mastery (applies to any 1H melee weapon), and Spear/Polearm became Two Handed Mastery. This removes the old “which mastery do I pick” confusion and makes weapon choice more flexible. Good for build diversity.
New Barbarian skill: Split Throw. A dedicated throwing skill with returning projectiles that pierce and shotgun on the way back. Throwing barbs have needed love for a long time, and this gives them a real active skill.
Crushing blow scaling rework. The old formula made CB nearly useless in p8. The new scaling keeps it relevant without making it trivial. This was long overdue.
Fend, Fury, and Zeal splash bug fixes. Turns out the splash bonus never worked properly for these skills. This is the first season they actually apply. That’s a significant buff hiding in a bugfix.
Potions during mobility skills. You can now drink potions during charge, leap, whirlwind, etc. Simple QoL, big quality of life improvement.
New uniques and maps. Several new uniques (Embersworn, Giant Maimer, Ephemeral, Skyfall, Nethercrux) and new unique maps (Djinn’s Domain, Na-krul’s Abyss). More items and more content is always welcome… unless they don’t find a reason to exist. Maybe there’s some iteration needed on the new uniques?
Credit where it’s due — the team shipped some solid work this season.
Infinity nerfed directly. The team removed the +35% FCR on staves and reduced the -lightning res from 45-55% to 40-50%. It’s a step, but self-wield Infinity remains BiS for most light sorc builds, and Conviction is still “break immunities AND lower resistances” in one package. Our proposed Conviction rework would have opened up more alternatives.
Boss difficulty reduced. T2 uber minions got HP cuts and damage reduction removals, and drop rates were normalized to 1/200. Welcome tuning. But the structural issues — currency consumed on failure, rejuv dependency, separate balance numbers for boss fights — remain unaddressed.
Raven got attention. The team reworked Raven — cold damage, new limit scaling, synergy reductions. But they went the opposite direction from what we proposed: base damage was nerfed, and Raven stays a summon support skill rather than becoming its own build. We still think a dedicated Raven Druid is worth exploring.
Going through the rest of our Top 10:
#2 Snapshotting / prebuffing. CTA can no longer be made in bows or crossbows. That’s it. Demon Limb untouched. Prebuffing is still alive and well. Our proposal would remove it entirely.
#5 Naj’s set. No set changes at all this season. Naj’s is still just a staff you use alone, which isn’t how sets should work.
#6 Synergies. A few token reductions (Jab 18%→15%, Cold Arrow 17%→15%, Volcano 9%→8%). These are 2-3 percentage point drops — not the overhaul we proposed, where most synergies would drop to ~3% and base damage would be buffed to compensate. Hybrid builds remain non-viable.
#8 Fluid breakpoints. Not mentioned. The proposal to make partial progress toward breakpoints meaningful would help new players without harming veterans.
#9 Aurabot mercs. No aura cap. Faith untouched. Innocence untouched. Mercs are still aura platforms. Our 2-aura cap proposal would keep the big power spikes while removing the aurabot nonsense.
#10 Conviction. Not reworked. Only the Infinity item was nerfed. Conviction still does too much — break immunities, lower resistances, lower defense, all in one aura.
S13 is a net positive. Several of the changes we’ve been advocating for are clearly things the community wants too — it’s good to see them happen. The local splash fix, Hydra pierce, and S-tier nerfs are all meaningful improvements.
But the structural changes — the ones that would truly unlock build diversity — are still ahead of us. Prebuffing, synergies, aurabot mercs, Conviction: these are the bottlenecks. Until they’re addressed, we’ll keep seeing the same builds dominate, the same items mandatory, the same mercs on every character.
S14 could be the season where it happens. We’ll keep posting ideas on Discord’s #feedback channel — feel free to join the conversation.
]]>But here’s the thing: you haven’t. You’ve just reached the mid game. And I think treating runewords like Enigma, Infinity, or Faith as the final goal is one of the reasons ladders feel short and the end game feels flat.
Let’s be fair — the appeal is obvious.
I get it. I’m not saying the feeling is wrong. I even believe this is good: that moment where you are about to get them, or just got them, feel great ! But the feeling is misleading us about where these items sit in the progression curve. In order for the late game to shine, too!
The problem isn’t that runewords are good. The problem is that they’re so good that nothing else competes.
I believe a better end game would be one where runewords are still good, but not the only option. This would mean:
The good news is that the fixes don’t require reinventing the game — they’re targeted changes that open up space for other items to matter.
Exemple of changes that would help (we don’t need to implement all of them):
Limit merc auras to 2. Right now a merc can stack several auras, becoming an aura platform that outshines your actual gear. Capping at 2 auras (one from the merc’s own aura, one from an item) keeps the big power spikes — Infinity is still great — but removes the aurabot nonsense. Your merc becomes a companion again, not the main character.
Rework Conviction. Conviction is the reason Infinity is mandatory. If we move it from “break immunities AND lower resistances” to just “break immunities,” Infinity stays valuable for sorcs and the like, but it’s no longer a 10x multiplier on every elemental build. It would still be BiS for most builds, and create a mid-game powerspike, but at least alternatives wouldn’t be 10x worse (if something is 30% worse, it is already significant).
Nerf Faith on mercs, buff it on players. Faith’s Fanaticism aura is too strong on mercs and not strong enough when you actually equip it. Lowering the aura level and adding IAS directly to the item shifts it from “merc aura bot” to “real weapon for real builds.”. Ideally, for build diversity, Faith should be balanced around being an option for both mercs and players.
Rework Iron Golems. IGs currently let you stack yet another aura for free. The rework removes that aura and makes them about something else entirely — tanking and utility — so they’re not just another way to sneak in Might or Fanaticism.
None of these changes delete your runewords or make them useless. Infinity stays, Enigma stays, Faith stays — they just stop being the only answer. If you pick Infinity, you won’t also get Templar’s Might. If you run an A3 merc, you can’t have Defiance + Fanaticism + Might all at once. It’s about meaningful choices instead of aura-stacking.
And that’s the whole point. When there’s more than one answer, the end game gets a lot more interesting — and a lot longer.
]]>This website lists all the changes that should be implemented (imo) in PD2, for it to become what it claims to be.
I am Zagd3m. I’ve been playing D2 since WW1, and before that I was serving in a pre-life bacteria research facility on mars. I said too much. I tend to spam the #feedback channel with ideas, so I made a website to collect them. Simpler, leaner, nerdier.
Good game design often involves finding the right balance between competing goals and understanding that not every player will agree with every decision. That’s why some suggestions have been censored. With that said, see you on Discord’s #feedback channel.
I am active on Discord, so feel free to react there.
]]>First 3 are PD2’s official goals, which I agree with, and the next ones are mine.
By fan service, I mean when the largest part of the community asks for something, something (sometimes slightly different) should be done. Not everyone plays PD2 24/7. Regarding power creep, I don’t want to make the game easier with every patch, only to invent harder late game content to compensate. This isn’t only about balance, but also about consistency and staying true to the original game.
Build diversity isn’t going from 50 possible builds to 51. It is going from 50 to 50².
We’ll know we have build diversity when not all kicksins play Phoenix, when not all (elem builds) mercs play Infinity, etc… If there’s only one reasonable option, I’ll be thinking about ways to give you another option, and that’s what patches should focus on imo.
We’ll sometimes mention the “boring dilemma” concept. By that, I mean having the choice between an optimal strategy that feels boring or bad, or a suboptimal strategy that feels great. When such choices are offered to players, game designers are probably doing something wrong. We’ll try to detect such dilemmas and fix them.
Examples of boring dilemmas:
- Precasting / prebuffing
- Gear swapping
- ...