Thursday, October 15, 2009

Diablo 2 1.13 patch update on october 14th

d2 1.13 DELAYED AGAIN AND AGAIN

The official Blizzard's thread on diablo 1.13 patch has been updated. Even if it's a short post, it claims very bad new for the patch 1.13. Bashiok said "The decision on whether or not to include the enlarged stash size has been slightly delayed". This mean more delay for the update. But as it keep, the most featured content of the patch is still on the table "the enlarged stash size", they haven't yet gave up. Only delayed again because as far as we know, it could make the game impossible to run but if they do remove it, it will require tons of ressource. This is a situation they don't want to happen so the diablo 2 LoD patch 1.13 is on standby

Sunday, October 11, 2009

10 000words post about Diablo II:Lod patch 1.13 – I tell you all the #1 Patch changes

This is the biggest post ever made about a single topic for diablo 2 patch 1.13. Of course there will be another post for the patch itself, but never ever close to be this big, even this small introduction paragraph is huge. This is crazy, but I tough it could be fun for every one to see the huge work Bashiok from blizzard had to do. Well, his work was split over a month and he had only to read, but however I still have did completly the work from scratch for about 3500 words. Who can beat this? There it is. Well I hope google will love all that meat then too. I went thorougly through all the 100 pages of suggestion for the diablo 2 patch 1.13 patch note people would like to see and and I put all the stuff togheter to make a ten tousand word post. You can count it, I guess there is about to be more thant 10 000 words. This is very annyoing as I can count over 15 hours of work with all the reading and the making up. I did not copy and pasted the whole, well not at all. I'll copy only the very best and give them credit. For the others, well, I said in my words what their crap meant. I went by the useless and kept only what I tought was funny and usefull for our purpose. Everything has been categorized. You will see one category and its content for all the following categories and more:

nerf hammerdin, improve damage, dueling, anni: the cause of duping soj, shared stach and Stash size, tppking in hardcore, warden/Rust Storm, rare and set improvement, ability to retrieve expired characters, increase the difficulty, permanent mute list, immunities and invulnerabilities vs. resistance, chance of drop, synergies, bugs/fixes/glitch, enigma (see teleport), Iron Maiden, Spambots, itemhop, dupes/ duped item/ cheats, Captcha, Standard of Heroes, World Event, User interface, Singleplayer, mercenary, runes balances, The secret cow level, gamebreak, gems/runes/items,in game commands, Anti-rush measures, Teleport, Diablo with macbook, Magic Find, Exp gained, Charms, skills

nerf hammerdin:
It begin bad, not much to say, All we have to do is reduce the synergy for it and add some magic immune in the throne room. No more hammer pally.

Sexy-gods

5) Hammerdins do more damage
6) Hammerdins have more life
7) Hammerdins cannot die
8) Announce me as the best hammerdin when everyone joins a game
9) Make my hammerdin have 1 life, to give those who duel me a chance to kill me ( wont happen)
10) Make TEAM GUN the leaders of the east realm (too late)


Improve damages:

Damages must be improved. In no way any melee character can do a correct amount of damage without one of the "runewords" . Enchance the base damage for two-handed weapons.


Dueling:

Both should accept to duel (hostile delay), otherwhise we should hear " plz wait before the other player accept". Maybe absorb should be disabled in "pvp" or it should be like physical damage reduce.

Shared Stash/Bigger Stash:

I got 2 or 3 idea to the "storage problem". Of course like every one said, the stash should be bigger. Instead of 6x8, 10x12 or you should be able to purchase new pages for the stash, this will act like having multiple stash but will not remove the "sharing problem". It should be shearable between all the characters of an account by only entering the password or a new password to the stash. This will be the safest way to mule. Something interesting I read was that we could make the cube bigger by completing the quest in higher difficulty so this way the quest is not worthless anymore, you have some purpose to do it. It should add 2x2 every time you complete it.

Hardcore:

In hardcore, there should absolutly be an option to de-activate hostilities or make players unable to attack other player. Like the level restriction option, we should be able to chose if we want to allow or not duels ingame or not. Said in other words, the option should be named "COOP" or "PVP" game. If coop is selected no one can become hostile, if not it remain as it was. There should be a delay after that hostilities are declared like 5-7seconds for the TPPK.


Rare and set item:

Rare and set item should be as good as runewords or at least enough powerfull to make us want them instead of just not picking it and say not again this piece of crap. Rare item should have the same caracteristics as the uniqs or runewords like +1-2 all skills, 10-20 all resistances, damage reduce, enchance defence%, enchance damage%, all stats, fast cast rate%, Fast hit recovery%, +def (+500) etc. Full set should be definetly more powerfull. People played for to long runewords, its time to huge buff rare item. UBER CHARACTER should be wearing the best rare item, they should not be cookie-cutter geared. Of course those very better rare item should be very more hard to find and be valued much more. In many cases rare item should looks more powerfull than uniq or runeword. All powerful chars should not look like Carbon Copies of eachother. Some rare rare item should be way better than runewords.


Ability to retrieve exipred character:

Sabacca50

-Ability to retrieve expired characters
There is no reason why I shouldn't be able to retrieve my expired characters. From what I understand, the only reason characters expire is to free up the name they were using. If this is the case, then an expired character should have a rename option.
For example, I click on my expired character and try to log in. Instead of getting "Player not found" I would get "Your character has expired. Would you like to rename it?" and if you choose yes, you would rename it. If you choose no, it would go back to "Player not found".
Also, many expired character were made before synergies existed. I think it would be only fair that if your character has expired, all of your stats and skill points would be reset and awaiting your distribution.
If this functionality was brought to Diablo 2's table, then I would totally expect a huge increase in activity and interest. I have a level 95 amazon that I would like to play, but it has expired so long ago. I am sure that many people have many characters that they want to play again, especially with all the new events and items, but they cannot, because their characters are expired...
Please, consider this with all seriousness.


Captcha validation:

C(e)

- Force users to enter a CAPTCHA response when creating or joining games.
This can and will stop all in-game bots.


Annihilus: The cause of duping

On of the funniest thing I've read on the suggestion forum is the following(in my words): Annilus is the cause of the destruction of LoD these past years. When sojs was the currency in d2 it was okay to sell them to get anni. But quick, people began to work togheter and sell more and more sojs to get more anni and soon there was no more sojs over B.net. The duping began at that time. Duper duped hundreds and thousands of sojs to make more anni and even become richer on B.net. Some realised it was time to make real money with a fake in a game. Then, itemshop appeared all over the net and then Spambot on every single open channel and game. Caused the destruction of the game. There is the solution: Make diablo walk on a random server not on the "hot ones" and replace sojs by something else more random. Duper should not in any way be advantaged of this.


Increase the difficulty:

The general difficulty should be greatly increased. All the bosses should be harder. THE Diablo II event should be hundreds time more harder.


Pemanent mute list:

Add a permanent mute list ( have it stored locally on the player's computer if it cant be stored online) so we can ignore spammers once and for all.

Immunities vs. High resistances:

Immunities should be removed in hell and be replaced by HIGH resistance or an extreme resistance. It is not really fun to have to wait until your mercenary have killed every thing and worser if you are a fire sorc. Invulnerability should not be a mean. It is unfair and conviction should not be the only way to play the game. ( a part of the solution has to work with synergies)


Chance of drop:

Maybe if the drop chance are hugely boosted for high runes, the duping will be solved in part.


Synergies:

synergy totally ruined the game...not only it "forced" the player to spend all his points in a single tree or a single part of tree(like the trap assassin has to spend into all her traps to get decent lightning sentry damage), it also reduced the diversity of characters on the realm....This is the reason the only thing you see in duel games nowadays are hammerdins, bone necros, trapsins and some sorceress....of course there are more but hey, theres what? 10 different builds that are really good in pvp now...I really do love the pvp system d2 has but when it comes to diversity and differences....theres none at ALL...and if you do happen to try a non cookie-cutter way of building youre char, youre gonna get totally smashed because you didnt follow the synergies....What happend to the good old Firewall sorces or orb/ts sorceress or golem necromancer, thorns paladin and much more...you had to use you're brain to put the right skills to acomodate every situation and not rely on those damn synergies to do all the work for you...I'm sure there are alot of players just like me who dislike synergies and theres a reason why...i just named a few but there are more...Before i first bought the game, i was at my friends house and watching him play and he showed me what the skills and stats were etc....I was surprised by how "unique" you can play and build youre character and this is what made me buy the game, because you know theres only one player on the whole realm whos build just like you...others will have a certain advantage you wont but on other side you will have something they dont, and this is what makes the game so fun...I never encounter a character anymore and say, wow ive never seen this, its actually pretty strong..."Nice Build Dude"..

There should be synergies for every single skill and cross tree skills. Skills tree should have synergies togheter to make more balanced build between trees.

Bugs/fixes:

Old items and bugged item like .08 item such armageddon slippers, valkery wings and bugged tal armor should be removed and most likely disapear. Pk bug like shots casted before entering a tp or mercenary out of town when the owner is in town. People should not be able to wear gear when they doesnt have the required strenght in the stats tab. At the moment, only the total strenght you have is necessary to wear equipement, but it should be the stats strenght that you have. (using a str charm to equip a piece of equipement then remove it makes your character naked) Reason is because I do not necesserly want to see "naked" people and fighting naked. Baal quest glitch must be removed (ancient quest must ablsolutly be completed before you can complete baal quest, Staying in town should be anymore enough to complete the quest). Of course, t is the same for mephisto ( you must absolutly smash the compeling orb before entering the durance of hate, Having durance of hate level 2 way point is not anymore enough). required level to enter cow level.

Wheelofd2 (this man is such a pro, perhaps his post is probably half my whole post, of course I haven't read it totaly its to long but for those who tought they had found all the bugs in d2 there they are).

[New Bugs]

Waypoint Memory Leak - the WayPointRoom appended to pObjRegion (a new segment created each time you activate a waypoint by visting it, not clicking on it), isn't freed properly should more then one waypoint be activated at about the same time (this CAN happen in MP games). Only one node is freed, but the index is set to NULL, thus leaving some memory leaked.

Kick Skills - Several bugs here, the client skill-triggering validation does not check if you're already in PLRMODE_KICK (which is a bug), this is what causes all the bugs associated with these skills (there is no AR bug with them, this is only a display glitch at best). The result of this bug is that the skills will not perform an attack server side until you let go of the mouse button, since they ge re-initiated every frame for as long as you hold the button.

Kick Skills Part II - Added 5th June, 2008, some more bugs on Dragon Talon, it attacks twice every "hit" (the dispatcher is called twice, ofc the skill is so bugged in vanilla that this would go unnoticed without first fixing the broken srvStFunc), the evaluation for knockback chance is bugged, it looks like it originally was supposed to factorize the mLvl and cLvl of target/attacker like other skills, but ends using the mLvl of the target for both factors (which means not matter what you attack with it, the outcome of this formula will be the same). (The formula currently is: ((mlvl + slvl) - mlvl) which will always result in slvl).

Kick Skills Part III - Added 7th June, 2008, some more issues with kick skills, due to incorrect code in the default melee damage creation func, kick skills will recieve elemental damage from weapons. Caused by a missing return statement. (this is evidently a bug, first the state of both weapons is set to inactive, it should exit after this, but it continues to the 'normal' code that activates one of them again if the player can dual wield --- which assassins can).

Psychic Hammer - copy/pasted code from Dragon Talons knockback section, with the same formula bug on (using mlvl twice).

Kick Damage Bonus - This stat isn't really used in vanilla, but the bonus is added twice instead of once, so +1 is in reality +2.

Power Strike Bug - The power strike SrvStFunc ignores the attack rating bonus from skills.txt

Smite Bugs - It wasen't ever meant to hit all the time, they do call the attacker/defender routine icon_exclaim.gif, the problem is that they ignore the results of this, probably because they confused AND with OR. Smite also does not set unitflag #64 which tells the game a skill has been executed successfully (which will cause all kinds of glitches that may seem irrelated), finally. Smite used by monsters uses the damage specified for mode A2, even if they didn't use A2 to launch the skill (and even if they have no damage specified for A2).



Airstrike Bugs - New (but old nontheless)
I forgot to list these two bugs before, the Freezing Catapults in act V don't do anything because the code for their collision functions is broken (I never bothered to look into what exactly is broken, but my guess is that the general radial AoE redesign in v1.10 broke this). The Hell Meteors (stuff in river of flame) is entirely broken, that is meteors flash around the screen but never land, and when they land only rarely explode, and when they explode they spawn just 1 flame, instead of a fire patch (like meteor, and like they worked before v1.10)


Boss Event Screwup

Boss events that are delayed by a timer (Poison Death, Cold Enchanted, Lightning Enchanted, Firegolem Explosion, Fire Enchanted, Lightning Nova on death and others) all use the same timeout Id, as a result each single time a timeout is being set, all of these events will execute their effects.

Client Do Func Bugs

The client will continue executing the ClientDoFunc for skills even after you go into hit recovery, which leads to blank zeal swipes and ghost missiles that do not hit anything because they don't exist serverside

Stuck-age Bugs

After using certain skills (Frenzy, Leap Attack, Whirlwind) the player can get stuck in place, this happens (to my knowledge) when you start using the skills in the very moment you are hit by an attack and the server changes your mode to hit recovery, because the client keeps executing the do func (related to previous bug) you remain stuck in this state for eternity

Unowned Skill Summon Bug

Summons created by skills you do not have (CTC, Oskill) will vanish after random events take place because the summon rehashing function is called in places that shouldn't call it (such as when drinking potions other then rejuv potions)

Ethereal Item Bug

The defense bonus to ethereal items will increase every time the item is used in a cube recipe that alters item flags, this happens because the defense stats are saved directly on the item

Monster Damage

Monster elemental damage is completely broken, the function Blizzard uses to generate monster stats does not discriminate between the different elemental damage columns, as a result the game will use the damage from the first column for all elementally enchanted attacks the monster can do (=Gloam Bug), this is further complicated by the feature that elemental damage done by monsters is effected by their critical hit chance.

MissileSrcDamage Bugs

The spell casting vipers added by v1.10 will append their melee damage to the poison clouds they release, this isn't really a bug (the code works like it should!), but careless design

Leeching Bug

Melee attacking monsters that do life, mana and stamina steal damage do twice the amount of damage indicated (this means that those bugged mana drain bosses actually do 512 times the proper damage!!), in the function that creates pDamage after an attack hits incorrectly adds the new value to the old value, instead of setting the old value to the new value!

Generic Damage Bugorama

Skills that use SrcDamage values other then 128 do not have the proper amounts of damage as SrcDamage is incorrectly (and inconsistently) applied throughout the code which may lead to damage being reduced more then it should, on missiles the situation is worse as some damage types are not reduced at all.

Item Damage Order

This is more of a design flaw then a bug, the game will apply the ED% bonus after other damage boni have been applied, this is not a bug because there is no way to change the check order in vanilla (weapon damage and extra weapon damage use the same stat, so changing the order would break ED% completely).

Missile Poison Damage Bug

Poison rises its ugly head again, blizzard confused Poison_Count stat with Poison_Length when it comes to applying SrcDamage to the missile damage, as a result skills like Multishot (that have SrcDamage other then 128) will end up with invalid poison duration when you have more then one poison source (this is related to the above but deserves a seperate place)

Monster Regen Bug

Monsters that are low on max hitpoints will end up having no life regeneration (this applies to quill rats and other low enemies on normal only), the calculation used ((hp / regen) << 10) will result in 0

Crushing Blow Bug

Players that have >99% physical resistance can become immune to crushing blow, as the function used for Crushing Blow does not discriminate between monsters and players (it should be capped to 50% here as well!) when it checks for resistances to lower the damage you take from crushing blow

Summon Stats Bug

Summoned monsters will recieve extra attack rating and defense equal to 100% of the value listed in MonLvl.txt for their mLvl (noratio is ignored)

Attack Rating Bugs

Monsters that use ranged attacks that require attack rating (Quill Rats, Blow Pipers etc) have twice the attack rating they should have (due to a incorrect assignment in the attacker / defender code)

Throwing and shooting skills that add an attack rating bonus to the missiles do not add their bonus (it passes 0 to the function instead of reading the bonus of the missile)

Blessed Aim and Penetrate use the same state, as a result the two skills can cancel each other out because they will replace each others state statlists

Life / Damage Shifting Bugs

There are many places in the code where Blizzard forgot to handle life and damage in 256ths, this results in 1/256 life assigned to units, which can cause all kinds of weird behavior

Invalid Objects

The ObjGroup data listed in levels.txt is very broken, some groups have a chance of 0% to spawn, other groups do not contain objects and thus just decimate the amount of objects spawning in the area

Curse resistance Glitch

Curse Resistance is checked in the same function that handles most time-based statlists assigned to units, except for a few cases that are handled specially it will be applied to every time-based statlist, which means it will reduce the duration of positive effects as well

Trigger Event Bug

The Frozen Horror arctic blast incorrectly triggers events, which can lead to a sprite overflow when the skill is cast on a Sorceress using Chilling Armor

Cleansing Glitch

Less severe, but still, cleansing will also reduce the duration of shrines because shrines are incorrectly flagged as curses in states.txt

MonType.txt Lookup Bug

All lookups for records in MonType.txt done on the client will incorrectly use the record count from MonProp.txt

Boss Picking Column Glitch

This isn't a real bug, but then again it does cause some likely unintentional behavior (such as generating nests as bosses), the game uses nmon instead of umon to pick bosses after normal, which means they are picked out of the normal enemy pool instead of the special boss pool

Fires Magic Arrows Bug

You don't actually fire magic arrows, they only look like magic arrows on the client, in reality they are just regular arrows. Note: the srvdmgfunc is called properly, but any other appended missile functions are not called (the loss of ammo is not controlled by special functions but by a boolean in missiles.txt).

Magic Pierce and Magic Skill Damage Stats

These stats, while not being used by vanilla, are inconsitently referenced by the code, so should they chose to use them in the future without fixing this mess, expect new bugs icon_wink.gif

Multishot Lag Bugs

Several boss death effects do not have NoMultishot set to true, as a result encountering and killing them if they have the Multishot UMod will spawn their death effect up to five times (Shenk et al.)

Oblivion Clone Bug

Extra oblivion knights added by v1.10 and v1.11x do not recieve the proper components, which means they show up with mismatching glow around their hands, this is caused by them not checking the BaseId, but rather checking the HcIdx

Crafted Items Bug

The game does not display affix-colors for Crafted Items because they were forgotten in the item-color function inside D2Client.dll

Drop Limit Bug

The fix to the old chest glitch has broken some act boss drops, some act bosses were originally meant to drop 7 rather then 6 items

Ai Bugs

Many monster Ais are incompletely coded, for example the Fetish Shamans will never use their Fetish Aura skill and Oblivion Knights do not attempt to heal allies (in the later case the game even attempts to pick a target for healing, which needlessly wastes cpu cycles because the return is discarded right away), many other Ais have potential to jam up, this section is too large to cover in detail, theres just verymuchalot of broken stuff here...

Homing Missile Bug

The target seeking flags used on the client and server for missiles that automatically seek a target (Guided Arrow etc) are not identical, this can sometimes lead to different units being targeted on both ends, which makes the missile vanish

Palette Shift Bug

The last batch of palettes in RandTransforms.dat is never used by the game because they forget to adjust the index in the only lookup that really matters (the one in the drawing function)

Self-Resurrect Bug

The self-resurrect ability of the Reanimated Hordes incorrectly accesses the Ai-Parameters which leads to them almost never resurrecting (or taking very long to resurrect) --- this isn't really a Ai bug because this isn't part of the Ai-code, this is a MonUMod (AiAfterDeath)

Trapped Souls Bug

Trapped souls that drop their items with a delay (those that go up in flames when you touch them), do not take into account your characters gold and magic find, they pass NULL to the tc function

Copy/Paste Is 1337 Bug

Blizzard copy/pasted that Desert level for the uber quest in v1.11x, and forgot to set the Waypoint Id to -1 (255), waypoint lists are constructed clientside, and we all know what that means

Diablo Clone Bug

Uber Diablo (or the Clone, one of the two) doesn't use the diablo-mode chart entry, instead he uses the same normal monsters use, which can cause unexpected problems

Treasure Class Upgrade Bug

This is a critical bug, the function does not check whenever it is reading the last record inside the TCEX BinImage, as a result it can end up traversing random memory until it asplodes

Poison Cloud Bugs

Some poison clouds have invalid hitclass set in Missiles.txt, as a result they play the same sound like a javelin does when you walk into them, which can be very annoying. The trail left by Plague Javelin doesn't do damage, because of a typo in the serverside movement function

Mana Burn Bug

Melee attackers that have the mana burn boss mod will incorrectly deal 256 times more manasteal damage then they should (the damage is shifted twice instead of once)

Quest Drop Bug

Some quest flags are being reset when they shouldn't allowing you to recieve Andariels and Duriels quest drop infinite times until you visit Act II.

Fangskin Bug
The treasureclass assigned to Fangskin on hell doesn't exist


Iron Maiden:

Weaken Iron maiden or remove it as a cast from monster in act4.

Permanent Mute list:

Enable some way to report other players in game. It was a major hassle to report a player to Bnet for active scamming and spreading word that he could give other people map hacks and rune dupes. I would like it if in the "party" screen you could report a player to Bnet, fill in the reason for your report, and allow a saved time-log (which saved the messages in that game) to be sent to Bnet, so they could handle the player and take faster measurements.

Dupes/duped item:

Runes and jewels now carry an own ID and are therefore detectable by Ruststorm
Dupes Unperm/Poofing: This helps cheaters since they can always make more. Legit players have noway of telling an item they just traded for is duped. Cheaters are aware of ways to prevent there duped gear from disappearing. These non-cheating legit player have there duped gear poof & then buy more from the dupers. Trading may as well be disabled entirely given this situation.


Standard of heroes:

10% mana and heath regen past lvl 90 would be nice
+7 to all attributes
Casts Apocolypse on death 44% chance ( the spell from diablo one)
1% chance to revive player upon death


World Event:

Uber monster have obliviously to become "immune" and not higly resistant to certain thing in the game. They should not be targetable anymore by any curse, crushing blow or piercing attack. Uber boss must be obliviously ten time more harder. There should not be any way that any person may do the game without having a full team working togheter to realise it. They should be like instance on wow, without a team you can't even defeat the first boss. They should be so much harder and harder and harder that it will have to take you an hour to kill it with a fulll geared team. The reward, of course, should be worth it.

Matrim

Change the way the World Event is triggered:

1.) Let the Clone walk on the whole realm instead of just 1 of its servers. That way everyone has the chance to challenge Uber Diablo and receive the unique charm, given that they beat it - not just those dealing in "Hot IPs" and "Private World Events", which is an unfair business to say the least.
2.) Let the item to be sold not be the Stone of Jordan but rather the Standard of Heroes. This would finally give a use to the SoH. Everybody who seriously engages in the end game can get those - unlike SoJs, which require much luck with drops or (this is the far more common method) duping. Also, challenging ubertrist in a team of 8 instead of doing it alone would finally make sense, since more Standards are dropped. Might push team gameplay.
3.) Drastically increase the number of sales necessary to trigger the World Event, because the Standard of Heroes is a more common item than a SoJ, and since it would spawn on the whole realm. Make it a random number between 30000 and 40000, say. I don't think I'll see the day dupers have the nerve to dupe 40000 SoHs - but as a community effort, this number of collected SoHs is doable. Might want to choose the number relative to realm activity/size. For example: Average player count multiplied by 90% to 110% (to keep it slightly random).


User interface:

On the bottom right corner we should see an "arrow" which one we can click to access the "second character page" and be able to view all the stats we can't currently see as the: Fast cast rate (FCR%), Fast Run Walk (FRW%), Fast Hit recovery (FHR%), Magic Find (MF%), Gold Find%, Life Leach%, Mana leach%, Crushing Blow%, Deadly strike%, Open Wounds and certain break point.


Mercenary:

Mercenary should have their own set and one set for each type of mercenary, one for each act. A pot belt (I.E. at 50% of health they auto pot). Mercenary from act 1,3 and 5 should become more attractive compared to act 2 mercenary (I.E. act5 mercenary should have the caracteristic to auto cast "shout", combat should have the charactheristic to auto cast "battle command" and offensive to cast "battle orders". Mercenary should become more powerfull and usefull.


The secret cow level:

Kill the cow king do not preven you anymore to open "the secret cow level". Also, the cows have their strengh increased.


Game break:

20games hours function has screwed up magic finder (Mfer) but bot still not hurted. It must be removed. When you attemp to join a full game, it glicth the game full so even if people leave it will still say that the game is full and this for 20mins. It must be fixed. All temporary restriction rules need to be abolished. Obviously they don't stop people from using bots so, why punish legit players.


Gems/Runes/Items:

More low-level runewords would be really usefull. High runes, after gul, only needs one HR + a Perfect gem to cube instead of 2HR. It will have as results that all the High runes are equal and EVEN ALOT THE DUPER. Increasing the hellforge hr's drop will not be a matter anymore. Runewords are now available in many more type of armors and weapons. (I.E. If you look at the multitude of polearm runewords and yet those same runewords can't be made in a spear, which is technically the simplest of polearms.) Some items have now poison and magic absob as the fire, the cold, and the lightning absorb. More runewords should be available with low rune like shael dol sol io, etc. Hard core runeword only item. What if there were random and very rare rune shrines or something similar that gives HR?

Dragoonwraith (aight this dude is so OP, I hope he did by hiself all the counting otherwise he's bad, but if he does he deserve a very own spot on my blog)

The highest Rune that drops from Hellforge is Gul. The highest Rune that the Countess can "special drop" (i.e. have an above average chance of dropping) is Ist (she can drop up to Lo normally, but she's no more likely to do so than any other monster, i.e. not at all likely). The drop rate for Runes above Gul are so low that mathematically it is impossible for anything less than 99.9% of HRs available on Battle.Net to be dupes. That means if you think HRs are a reasonably valuable item now, consider that they are supposed to be 1000x more rare. Without dupes, no one would trade an HR, they'd just be way too rare. Nothing in the game would be worth one (at least none of the ones with good Rune Words - I could see a Cham or Sur getting traded), other than perhaps a different one (though even then it'd be rough).
Cubing's not much better. You have a 1/11 chance of getting Gul from Hell Hellforge. There are 256 Guls in a Zod - to my knowledge, no one has ever cubed that. And I hang around on forums where people have cubed things like Infinities (64 Guls) and Enigmas (96 Guls). Those things take months of work - and that was during Season III, where absurd amounts of duping absolutely destroyed the value of Guls since every one already had HRs (and Guls were notably almost worthless in and of themselves, being used only in a few not-very-popular Rune Words). In a year-long ladder season, cubing an Enigma would require several hours of play every day for most of the season, with a fair amount of duping. Without duping, I doubt you'd ever be able to do it before the ladder ended. You'd be looking at doing somewhere around 1100 Hellforge runs.
Meanwhile, there are 78 Rune Words. LOD originally had 24, 1.10 added 47, and 1.11 added 7 (not 10 like the patch notes claimed). Of the 78, 31 (i.e. 40%) Rune Words require at least one HR, the same ones that would be nigh-impossible to get without dupes. Actually, 1.10 added 29 of those 31 Rune Words, so over 60% of the Rune Words added by 1.10 required Runes that were impossible to actually collect. Several require multiple HRs - Last Wish requires a ridiculous five HRs (254 Guls of cubing, interestingly still less than a single Zod).
I think it's very clear that the designers of 1.10 simply did not realize just how rare HRs are. However, this all suddenly actually makes sense if Hellforge is changed to drop Mal-Zod. The only thing that doesn't make sense is some of the overpowered runewords.
Oh, and more Rune Words for class-specific items (a la Chaos and Exile) would be nice. One for each class, and more Rune Words that fit in Class-Specific items (without requiring them) like Spirit fits in Pally shields. Leaf Orb? Probably overpowered for the price, but currently you can't stick anything in Orbs.
And I'd also like to see more crafting recipes, make them a little less niche.

In game command:

While playing "windowed" or in "window mode" we should be able to add the command "always on top". In game on closed b.net, we should be able to make the command "/player x" because without it its not a challenge at all. In an other hand, joining a game with more than 6 player isn't an option because no one ever stay in a single game more than the time to complete what they are doing either is baal or the cows, never a game last more than 5mins. A game filter to find the game we want to play. A basic of the search engine (I.E. find a word in a game name like: "act 1" "cow" "baal" "quest" "leveling", etc.


Anti rush measure:

Rush can be countered by adding a minimum required level for every last quest of every act. Those anti rushing measure require levels to get boss kill quest (5/10/15/20/25, 30/35/40/45/45, 50/55/60/65/65). It would be fun add to the game the following error message "It is now impossible to enter a Townportal to an area you have not visited before". In the throne room, Baal spawns monster randomly. Those mobs are designed to have various immunities( all the 4 immunites should be seen in the five waves of creep).


Magic Find:

The best items drop from monster that can't be scripted easily by bots: random small monster with HUGE MAGIF FIND, rather than small or none mf with bosses and super uniques. Here the better mf you have the better you make, instead of the botting way: the more runs you do the more money you make. Chance of drop rise with the Character level.


Skills:

Improve fire trap dmg on sins.
Improve dmg of armageddon/volcano on fire druid.
Make animalforms (wolf/bear) beeing able to teleport and cast cyclon armor in form. (Lower their dmg with teleport buff)
Lower the maximum ES percentage to 90 on sorc.
Improve dmg on inferno/firewall on sorc.
Improve nova dmg on sorc.
Improve dmg on frost nova on sorc.
Improve dmg on warcry on barb.
Give zons back guided arrow. Guided arrow and piece should work in harmony. I never considered this a bug and it just makes sense
increase healthpoints of the Necromancers summoned mages
Buff the plague, fire and melee javelin skills of the Amazon.
Decrease the effect of Concentration stacked with Blessed Hammer. Fix Blessed Hammer to no longer harm enemies "Immune to magic"
Increase the effects done by 'most' "Martial Arts" abilities for the Assassin.
Increase the effects of Necromancer curses while lowering the effects of "Life tap"
Paladin's Blessed Hammer: Blessed Aim and Vigor Synergies should be 7% per skill point, not 15%. And the Hammers should be ineffective against anything that is Magic Immune, not pierce the immunities of Undead/Demons.
Paladin's Smite: Landing a hit should be based on Attack Rating instead of being auto-hit - against everything
Barbarian's Melee Combat: He's supposed to be master of combat but is outdone by Zeal Paladins and Fury Druids. The only thing a Barbarian is currently good for is Battle Orders, Shout, and Battle Command. And even then a Barbarian is not needed for the Battle Orders and Battle Command due to the game-breaking Call-to-Arms rune word -- which makes the Barbarian completely worthless.
The ability to Revive Iron Golem to keep the same item
Cold mastery more weaken but able of pierce some could immunes because cold sors are too strong on duel and in hell is impossible walk and not finds any immune for sorc.
Enchant of sorc should add explosive hit like dragon tail of assassin.
Poison dagger converted to a passive skill like masteries of barb. It could became more weaken but if a necro could use simple poison dagger attack and throw poison dagger necro could gain some strength on duel on classic especially. Almost forgot trade damage and poison time of poison nova and poison explosion.
Necro should revive his army from the really dead ones I mean if a Skeleton dies he could revive a new skeleton from the pile of bones.
Druid is such a slowpoke could something be done about his fast hit recovery?
Charge skill bugs could be fixed, sometimes the charge just frozen and pala can’t move. The other bug occurs and holy shield end and pala are charging the result is impossibility of charge.
Leap and leap attack bug as well, sometimes this happen on barbs.
Dragon flight of assassin should become a free skill of target like leap attack and charge. Example we press shift and dragon flight then we just make a teleport, dragon flight even have a delay so I think this won’t give her many advantage is just for dynamic position.
Fade and speed burst skills could be used combined.
Frenzy of Fury rune word should become oskil so assassin could use too.
And finally and more important for the sake of all players make something about the groups of monsters that use lightning skills not fade, wind armour, slow missiles nothing could stop the immense damage and lag that they bring.

Minionofboredom:

The main problem I see with skills is that they are good when you first get them, but made utterly useless at higher levels. When I say that something "could use a damage increase," it is most of the time in reference to at high level rather than when the skill is first acquired.

When I put a "*" mark near a skill, I am talking about the Diablo II community as a whole. Of course they are used occasionally, but it is indisputable that the realms are rampant with "cookie-cutter" builds and skills such as Plague Javelin and Phoenix Strike are rarely seen on any realm, and that they are completely outclassed in terms of survivability and damage compared to these "cookie-cutters."

Amazon:

Dodge/Avoid/Evade: bugged such that if it triggers during an animation (notably Fend, or when throwing a Lightning Fury, hence "Fend bug"), the animation continues on the clientside but no hits are registered on the serverside.

Poison/Plague Javelin: Could use a substantial increase in damage per second. *

Penetrate: If the %AR to flat AR bug affects only missiles, and most of the Amazon's skills are missile based....

Magic Arrow: End-game +damage is negligible. *

Cold/Ice/Fire Arrows: Each rendered totally obsolete by its successors. *

Exploding Arrow: Could use a damage increase. *

Guided Arrow: Reinstating piercing ability versus enemies but not players would make Guided Arrow far more useful in PvM.

Strafe: Bugged, see above.

Immolation Arrow: DOES NOT NEED A TIMER, area and damage per second of fire pillar is woefully low.

Assassin:

Martial Arts: As much as I love them, an across-the board damage increase would be useful, as their damage : time ratio is very low due to the nature of charge ups. Rarely seen as a "viable" build.

Phoenix Strike: A bit underwhelming. Meteor damage is laughable. Chaos Ice Bolts could use a larger/denser area of effect, and damage increase at that. *

Venom: Also could use a damage increase.

Psychic Hammer: Could use a big, huge, amazing damage increase and perhaps pierce or do SOMETHING worthwhile. *

Fire Blast: Could use a substantial increase in damage and area of effect per level. *

Shock Web: Could use a damage increase. *

Charged Bolt Sentry: Could use a substnatial damage increase; hey, I think it's a pattern here. *

Wake of Fire: Could use a substantial damage increase. *

Death Sentry: Corpse explosion doesn't scale with monster health based on players in the game.

Necromancer:

Clay/Blood/Iron Golem: Damage totally underwhelming.

Fire Golem: Damage not as completely terrible compared to other golems but could still use a smaller-scale increase; Holy Fire is useless.

Raise Skeletal Mage: Damage totally underwhelming in comparison to regular Raised Skeletons.

Revive: Only good for meat shields; damage is pitiful but not as pitiful as Golems.

Teeth: Could use a substantial damage increase. *

Corpse Explosion: See "Death Sentry."

Curses, General: Amplify Damage, Decrepify, and Lower Resist are the most widely used, with the others falling far out of favor. They are useful, no doubt, but nothing beats pure damage.

Iron Maiden: Totally underpowered when used by the player, totally overpowered when used against the player. *

Confuse/Attract: Crowd control at best; monster damage is too low to be of use to a necromancer with summons since he'll have all the crowd control he needs. *

Barbarian:

Bash/Stun/Concentrate/Berserk: Even if these skills inflicted millions of damage, area of effect skills such as Blessed Hammer would far outclass them.

Double Throw: For the only throwing skill that the Barbarian has, it's no wonder that throwing axe based barbarians are rarely if ever seen. *

Paladin:

Defensive Auras, General: Unless in a group with multiple Paladins, Defensive Auras are rarely preferrable over offensive.

Prayer: Totally, completely useless after level 12. *

Might: Isn't it kind of redundant with both Concentration and Fanaticism, unless in party play?

Holy Fire: Useless in every respect: outdamaged by both Holy Freeze and Shock, and pulse damage is laughable. Could use substantial damage increase. *

Thorns: Negligible amount of damage reflection. *

Blessed Aim: Obsolete after Fanaticism. *

Holy Freeze: Could use slight increase in pulse damage.

Sacrifice: Single targeting, self-injuring, and not worth using. *

Smite: Why it has a different damage cap and always hits is beyond me.

Vengeance: See the Barbarian combat skills. *

Blessed Hammer: Could use major decrease in damage or reduction in Concentration bonus; does not need to pierce Undead immunity; does not need to be capable of doing 16k damage while many other unused offensive skills of other classes can barely hit 3k.

Conversion: Converted enemy is too weak to make a difference versus his bretheren; functions at best as a short-time meat shield. *

Fist of the Heavens: Great for PvP; unsuable for PvM. Could use change in Area of Effect: lightning damage instead of Holy Bolts, possibly?

Sorceress:

Ice Bolt/Blast: Why would you ever use them after Glacial Spike? *

Frozen/Shiver/Chilling Armor: Redundant to have them all.

Frozen Orb: Synergy is on the low side and has debatable impact on damage.

Charged Bolt: Could use major damage increase.

Thunderstorm: Underwhelming, makes virtually no difference in killing speed.

Firebolt: Why would you ever use it past level 12? *

Blaze: Could use a damage increase. *

Fire Wall: Could use a longer duration, or an increase in duration per level. *

Meteor: Damage per second could use major increase.

Hydra: Very weak damage, very low Firebolt cast rate, does not need a timer but instead a limit to the number of possible Hydras there can be out at once. *

Druid:

Elemental Skills, General: Could use an across-the-board damage increase. *

Armageddon: Could use greater area of effect and slightly greater meteor density.

Werebear: Could use a more distinct level 30 skill instead of Maul.

Raven: Could use a damage increase more so than Psychic Hammer.

Poison Creeper: Could use a substantial life and damage increase.

Spirit of Barbs: Useless, reflected damage in general is too low to matter.

Free toughts:

The full rejuvention potion has it drop rate increased. Torches are now tradable as the annihilus small charm. Friend list go from 25 to 50. Game timer, Kill counter (in game and in character's lifetime). Enigma has now 30 charge on teleport instead. Large charm give now + to a single skill ( I.E. +1 to lighting fury!) Rise chances to get uniq in gamble, this way money will become more usefull.


Finnaly, there it is, I don't think any one will have ever read this completly, but if you do so please, comment and say anything even if its that my english is bad... It is 8000 word, but whatever it is what it is...

Thursday, October 1, 2009

New update for Diablo 2 patch 1.13 on 9/30

Diablo 2 patch 1.13 updated october 30th


The bigger stash size is now official as a part of the content for the new patch, Bashiok just confirmed it on the patch 1.13 post. Then Bashiok said "an increase in the player stash size (a feature in the patch) could compromise the Diablo II Battle.net service." which will delay again the release of the patch 1.13 because "the hardware and configuration could potentially not handle the increased stash size gracefully under heavy load." So whats now? "Currently we’re investigating potential impact as it is one of the larger content features in the patch and we’re hoping it can remain a part of the release. If it does have to be removed it will require additional time to remove it, generate new patches, and test, which will add time before we can go live on the PTR." We gotta wait again but only for 1 week and less.


1 week and less before the next update? COOL. BECAUSE I CAN'T WAIT FOR DIABLO 2 PATCH 1.13 TO BE RELEASE.