Pillar #4 of Zagd3m’s patch notes is noob friendlyness. And you know what isn’t ? Things that are complex for no reason at all.
The answer is now always the same : slam. Indeed, you can puzzlebox or puzzlepiece an item that has been slammed with sockets. In this case, the slam will be removed and another corruption will be rolled (no risk of bricking), and then the puzzle will be applied. This solves the noob trap issue and doesn’t change anything for knowledgeable players.
Skill IAS makes computing breakpoints very complex and tedious. Therefore, it breaks the QoL and Noob Friendliness principles / pillars. Let’s fix this.
The formula has been changed from :
AnimRate + SIAS + EIAS - WSM
where EIAS = 120 * ItemIAS / (120 + ItemIAS)
To:
AnimRate + EIAS - WSM
where EIAS = 120 * (SIAS + ItemIAS) / (120 + (SIAS + ItemIAS))
Effectively, this means that IAS from skills (BoS, Fanaticism, …) would count just like IAS from gear, instead of affecting a specific (and very effective) part of the formula. Simple. Obviously some skills and builds would need to be rebalanced, and a new (a lot simpler) calculator would need to be implemented, but that would make everything MUCH simpler and noob friendly.
Breakpoints make optimization interesting, but it also means some stats are completely useless. We can have both !
For example, a player having 60% FHR when the breakpoints are 48 and 86 would have THE SAME effect of a player with 48 FHR.
The game works with frames and therefore can’t have a float value, that would be between x and x-1 frames. Frames are intrinsically integers.
In fact, we could have float frames. All it takes is to randomise between the float rounded up and rounded down, thus having a chance to use the slower of faster breakpoint. The likelyhood of this chance would depend on how far we are from the next breakpoint.
Example :
# Compute the likelihood of using the faster breakpoint
current_fhr = 60
breakpoints = [48, 86]
range = 86 - 48
range_position = (60-48) / range = 31,57 = (rounded) 32
# Formula to use instead of rounding when the breakpoint is computed
rand = random(0, 100)
if rand < range_position:
breakpoint = 86
else:
breakpoint = 48
This would not change much for most players. For example, sorcs would probably optimize for certain bps because they care about having 100% certainty of using the faster breakpoint. But for noobs, or for players who enjoy having a bit of extra leeway, this change would be welcome … and totally makes sense intuitively. Having 60 FHR would effectively be slightly better than having 48. Problem solved.
For IAS, FHR, FCR, FBR, …
Mods (affixes) that weren’t really useful have been removed.
If you find someone telling you this would indirectly buff rares/crafts, please note that (1) they need this and (2) rares are balanced by optimal combinations of mods, not by the possibility of trash mods. This has always been the case and will always still be. Let them enjoy their fcr/ar/ias weapon, while we make the game better.
Less troll : crappy affixes aren’t the solution, and we could add more affixes that have a chance to be good instead.
This mod doesn’t work as well as poison and Open Wounds, while doing the same thing. Most of the time, an item doing a small amount of poison damage and open wounds would be better, or equivalent, to one with Prevent Monster Heal. Therefore, keeping this effect is creating clutter. Let’s remove it for the sake of simplicity.
No build leverages this mod, so it’s either something we should remove or improve. I say improve !
Now displayed as replenished life per second (instead of 5 seconds, which made no sense at all). Yet, the healing is continuous, it doesn’t “wait” for the end of the second.
That’s it. Now, what we need is to buff the numbers until this starts being really useful.
Replaced by replenish mana, which is equivalent to replenish life. This is easier to understand, and it won’t be broken anyway.
All items that were giving mana regeneration should now be giving replenish mana.
Elemental damage (+fire damage for example) on bows/crossbows/projectiles is … trash. But the could be buffed until they are good enough to be considered as a real addition to one’s damage, and can therefore be kept in the affix pool, not as trash, but as a flavourful (is that a word?) option.
Just buff the numbers.
Examples :
So let’s fix this. (section in progress, TODO).
Blue maps have been removed. Maps only loot in white form, or rare form (aside from unique ones of course).
Victory: in s13, they finally changed it !!!
This will make gf more valuable on gear, and help gf barbs remain relevant. This is also an indirect Gheed Charm buff.
TLDR : synergy percents above 3% are almost always a bad idea. 1% is enough more often than you think. Increasing base damage instead of synergies is almost always better. Math below.
Synergies are the best way to erradicate build diversity. If PD2 sincerely wants to promote build diversity, it should lower synergies % dramatically.
Let me give you an example.
This means that Teeth is only playeable with all synergies maxed. Freeing points for a secondary spell isn’t an option. Diversity is prevented.
A more visual analysis of the issue can be found here : Should you skip that synergy ?.
Now what If I wanted to play a Teeth / Poison Nova nec ? Well, I can’t. There’s no way both spells can be impactful enough to justify the hybrid build. A good question though is : what would be the right damage penalty in this case ? I mean, I agree that a hybrid build should be weaker than a dedicated build, but how much weaker ? Since I can’t cast both spells at once, but the poison damage lasts for some time, I suppose somewhere 80% damage on both would make sense.
If I changed the synergies for Teeth to, say, 3%, the damage would go like this:
There is still a good reason to max synergies, but the spell is somewhat playable with 1 synergy only.
Now, with summons being great meat shields, I can see how this might be an issue on the necro. But what about a sorc ? Well, then, since she won’t cast 2 spells at once, hybrid builds should probably deal around 75% of the total damage even with only one synergy… Which is a synergy percent of 1% !!!
With that said, I suppose you have a grasp on why synergy percents of 5 or more means you are FORCED to max the synergies, thus effectively DESTROYING all hybrid builds you might think of.
For most spells, having 2 synergies doing 3% each would be a good start.
This is a much better balance, and you can still justify a hybrid build. Remember that hybrid builds need a hybrid gear too ; Rainbow facets aren’t multi-elemental ! So the penalty is already huge anyways.
Now, there are situations where this would be OP, mostly when it comes to summons. This was simply a starting point to think from.
Oh really ? Then we need to increase the base damage.
By how much ?
old_damage = base * (100% + nb_synergies x 20 x synergy_percent)
new_damage = new_base * (100% + nb_synergies x 20 x new_synergy_percent)
To have old = new, you need to have :
new_base = base * (100% + nb_synergies x 20 x synergy_percent) / (100% + nb_synergies x 20 x new_synergy_percent)
Problem solved, thank you very much.
Now, the truth is, such a simple approach doesn’t take into accound lld / mld and progression in the mid game, so it might be improved. But it’s a very reasonable starting point.
Do you know what happens when you move damage from synergies to the base damage ? Well, proc builds, at least those that leverage non-synergized spells (from other classes), just got a HUGE buff. That’s a fact. As a result, let’s acknoledge it.
First, let me make a few things clear:
Overall, I think this isn’t a fair objection to the synergy change we are doing.
Yes we need to nerf synergies, and then we can balance proc levels accordingly. That is simple : the math is straightforward.
This patch will suggest many drastic reductions to synergies % while adding that the base damage will be buffed. Assume the above is used.
Bosses (Ubers, Dclone, Lucion, Rathma, …) are great end-game content. But they come with 3 major issues:
Currencies involved in looting an end game boss shouldn’t be consumed when opening its map, but when transforming its “head” (a trophy gained upon killing it/him/her) into actual items (being torches, annis, …). This change would let players try those fights as much as they want, without fearing to losing anythings (but xp and gold, at least in SC). This wouldn’t change anything for veterans who succeed 99% of the time anyways.
Note : we might consider implementing something that prevents trophies / heads from being traded.
Take Hydras for example. They were nerfed because bossing with them was popular, but in maps they suck. At the moment, we can’t buff them without them being OP against bosses. Result : one skill is gone for most players.
The solution would be to have specific balance numbers for skills in the context of bosses, just like we do for PvP. Basically, we could say Hydras deal 50% less damage in boo maps, thus separating their effectiveness for Lod/Mapping from their ability to defeat, say, Dclone.
This means boss fights will involve up to 4 times 4 potions, which can be 33% rajuvs or regular potions.
Obviously this means rebalancing those fights, but it will make them more interesting. We can even do only one of the bosses for season 11 (to see how people adapt), and then roll the others in s12 with the adjustments needed.
S13 update: The team slightly reduced T2 uber difficulty — minion HP cut ~25%, removed innate damage reduction/poison length reduction on minions, and normalized T2 drop rates to 1/200 (same as T1). Lucion desecrate chances were also increased. These are welcome tuning changes, but the structural issues we raise here (currency consumption on failure, rejuv dependency, separate balance numbers for boss fights) remain unaddressed.
Corrupted zones are fun, but they don’t have inner MF like maps.
Let’s help players reach the end game easily, without making the lvl 99 more accessible.
Xp penalty from levels 15-25 have been lowered, so that players and groups who manage to get to act 3-4-5 early gain more experience there.
Xp has been increased from level 73 to level 93, to help players reach the end game faster. This is to compensate the daddy problem the community seems to be facing.
Sometimes you need to sell your merc since it doesn’t level up with you. This happens when you’re right above it in level and get past a certain area level.
The level-based xp penalty applies to mercs based on character level, instead of their own level, meaning if your character can xp somewhere then your merc can do so too.
This should make leveling solo more appealing (good for people who play at the end of the season when there isn’t much help available), without breaking the ladder start experience.
Mechanics like “talk to cain” are confusing for newcomers
Overall this shouldn’t make crafting better or worse, simply faster since we’d skip the crap.
Note : this would hurt gambling to craft items, but that’s probably a good thing (it makes gold more valuable + it encourages using bases found from mobs).
Prebuffing is something we fight against, because it breaks the quality of life and power creep principles.
By prebuffing we mean:
We suggest the following approach against prebuffing:
The goal here is to remove prebuffing entirely. Gear swapping shouldn’t be an optimal strategy (or else players will do it even though it is boring). We’re saving them from this boring dilemma.
Enigma’s tp nerf was needed, but blinking should be more common in PD2. Having items with teleport charges seem a bit outdated. A better mechanism could to give them the ability to blink with SLOW replenishment. This would make them decent before you get enigma, useable as an alternative for infrequent wall jumps, or decent in combination with enigma to get a tiny buff to replishment speed.
Builds that heavily rely on enigma would appreciate the early game buff, while keeping enigma as the main endgame solution. It also means one could use both, with the extra replenishment speed being a small buff to enigma users.
People abuse shrines, particularly xp ones.
This should make it less appealing to abuse shrines, while keeping them as a nice help during playthrough.
Charms are too impactful. Players fill their entire inventory with skillers, torch, anni, and small charms — leaving no room for actual loot, and making charms the dominant gear influence (which isn’t very fun, original, or build specific).
That’s still enough for 3 skillers, torch/anni, and a handful of small charms — which is plenty of power. The point isn’t to nerf charms into the ground, it’s to stop them from crowding out everything else. With 6 fewer columns, picking up items while farming becomes natural again, and charm optimization stops being the main thing you think about when gearing.
Low runes, pgems, and other basic crafting materials drop constantly but in single units. The frequency makes them feel meaningless — you pick them up out of habit, not excitement.
The goal is to make finding these items feel meaningful again. Instead of picking up 40 individual Tal runes over a session, you’d find a few stacks — and a stack of 12 feels like an event, not a chore. It also reduces inventory clutter and click fatigue without changing the economy.
Mercs in d2 were too strong, and PD2 made it worse. The amount of free power, with almost any tradeoff, coming from mercs, is huge. Specifically, mercs are aurabots and cursebots which makes the game far too easy and the itemization of our characters without tradeoff.
Note : This situation comes from the fact that many builds are crap without infinity (for ex) being involved. As a result, playing those builds alone would suck without mercs having this source of auras, and they would pretty much be limited to groups of players. I don’t want to prevent people from playing their fire build solo ; but there are other solutions. Here, I’ll focus on limiting the power coming from mercs, and we’ll cover recovery options afterwards.
Iron golems will be reworked for the same reason and won’t provide an aura.
We want to (1) nerf late game aurabot mercs and (2) help with the early game where they die a lot.
Mercs can now only have 2 auras : one from their own inner aura (ex : defiance for a2 merc), and one from an item. If several items granting an aura are equipped, only one applies, chosen based on aura level (higher first) and (if equivalent) item slot (weapon > belt > boots > gloves > helm > chest).
Note that Innocence has been reworked to avoid its nonsensical power, which means it is slightly harder to apply curses with your merc + innocence.
Damage increased to compensate for the less valuable aura (that merc wan’t used much).
We want to buff mercs early game, and nerf them end game, so that’s a simple QoL in the right direction.
A good tradesite is key to a good economy, and a fluid experience, even for non veterans.
Pricing is a huge issue. People keep writing “offer” because (1) they are lazy or more often because (2) they don’t know how to price stuff. The tradesite should automatically suggest a price for the items listed.
To the team : if you think this is hard to code, ask, I offered to help with this 2years ago and I’m still willing to. I appear to work in this field so I’m pretty confident this can be done without much effort.
Non-US persons sometimes struggle with copy-pasting stuff for keyboard reasons. Fix this please.
Timezones aren’t easy to deal with. Being able to enter a basic “time where I can be there” thing and filter sellers based on potential availability would be helpful. Thos who don’t want to use that can very well not use the filter.