Comment on Celebrating 25 Years of Diablo II with David Brevik

DioramaOfShit@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

• Laser@feddit.org ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Nah, the game has plenty of flaws and design issues.

  Example: defense. It’s completely different from most games that came after it and unintuitive (it works like in Diablo I). It rather works like evasion in newer games and it’s basically the defensive version of attack rating. Either it negates all physical damage or nothing. Not to be confused with chance to block. Which does the same, but with blockstun. Oh, and while running, your defense is set to zero. Which again isn’t explained anywhere (but you can check it by keeping your stats open and running). Walking is fine.

  Hidden stats: so more defense is better, right? Not necessarily. First, you have the strength requirements which are visible; second, there are hidden armor classes that impact your character’s movement speed, which is why stuff like Archon Plate is so good.

  So there are four resistances (fire, lightning, ice and poison). Just kidding, it’s actually six because physical and magic damage can also be modified in the same way (though that attribute is rare for players, but it exists). But they’re not shown on the resistances page, but rather under all stats if modified. This is how monsters gain their “immune to physical / magic” property.

  Then the game doesn’t really explain itself most of the time. Take “Amplify Damage”. The in-game description is “Increases the amount of damage received.”. So let’s guess what it does: probably amplify the damage regardless of type and then apply resistance? You couldn’t be more wrong, it lowers physical resistance.

  Talking about skills, the skill trees could use some improvements I think. I’m not a big fan of synergies because it can force you into dumping points into practically unusable skills.

  Items are also a bit of a pain point. A lot of uniques are straight up unneeded because they’re only relevant when itemization doesn’t matter yet and then just fall off. Their effects are often not as unique as one would like. But this is excusable because the game pioneered a lot of this stuff.

  Where it gets ugly is when none of the items matter (be it rare, set or unique) because of runewords. The biggest offenders are Enigma, Infinity, Insight, Grief and Spirit. Infinity and Insight usually go onto your mercenary, so they’re not competing with personal equipment slots. But just double Spirit is really good. Paladins, the first or second best class, can use this even earlier because they don’t need to wait for Monarchs; their exceptional shields can have four sockets, in addition to very good resistances. They stand above other classes with the sorceress. Or did until Mosaic was introduced.

  Oh, and did you know that “+X% enhanced damage” behaves differently depending on whether it’s on a weapon or on another piece of equipment?

  Still love the game to death. But it’s not flawless

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