Is it possible to make werewolf/werebear work with paladin auras? or would that maybe be too strong?
regards and as always thanks for making this great d2 mod!
I’m really looking forward to playing D2R as I’ve never played the original. I love the visuals. It reminds me of those realistic pre-rendered graphics games like RE used to implement. The effects look really cool too. I think the game overall looks awesome. I’m sure a lot of us will enjoy it.
I’m still going to be playing this mod long after though because it offers something unique. It’s its own thing. Where else can you play Diablo 2 with dual classes, masteries, items, and game mechanics from two games? I don’t see this amazing mod ever being replaced…unless Grim Dawn 2 comes out and this team does another mod like this for it.
Haha, good one.
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Who knows…
I’m getting the notion that they are revamping the current engine for GD2 
If you get lucky you might be able to get RoT working in it with “minor” fiddling. That’s all guesswork at this juncture of course but I guess we’ll see what we see when we cross that bridge 
Pretty sure I remember one of the devs stating that the current engine is actually being held back because of supporting older tech (like DX9 possibly) which they did for the KS backers cause that was 2010.
Here is the relevant bit of that post in relation to your comment:
The thing that might have the biggest visual impact now would be to redo lighting and the way materials are rendered but that isn’t really feasible unless we move on to GD2 and leave all this current art behind. If we go on to GD2 and no longer have to support older DX version or existing art, then we’d be free to make bigger updates to the engine.
There might be other posts where he touches on the same topic but that’s the first one I was able to find.
What I meant is that there is absolutely no way that I would ever do another mod like RoT for GD2. Especially after the recent events.
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You mean the D2 remake?
But yeah, either way it goes you’ve already put so much time (YEARS) into this mod. It would be kinda insane to start over again 
Let’s just say that I am sick and tired of investing my free time into something just to find out few weeks later that it was all for nothing. Already wasted more than 2 months on fixing issues caused by various GD updates and now the latest one completely destroyed recently finished Crucible-like event which was supposed to replace SR in the upcoming 0.7 update for RoT.
I grew up with diablo.I still play diablo 1 and 2.People have different opinions.I personally see the d2 remake as a way they can milk people for more money.I really hope D4 impress me and hopefully it’s offline as i have huge lag cause we don’t have a local server.
I didn’t mean to offend anyone though.I saw the game play.It’s basically d2 with some qol and better graphics.I have played diablo 1 and 2 with high graphics mods and it just isn’t the same.Personally i find the d2 mod on starcraft 2 engine are pretty good but again what made diablo for me was the qwerky graphics.
FF 7 remake they changed the battle system.So it’s not even the same game.Diablo changed the graphics so for me it’s not the same game i love.If you ever played diablo 2 median xl mod then you would know that it’s better than d2r.They changed the whole battle system and difficult ubers good crafting system etc.
It’s just different opinions.I personally won’t get d2r as i have the original blizzard box set.If i were a new player i would have gotton it no questions asked.
As long as you have at least 1 D2 class, you can do all content. Of course some will be efficient then others, but it’s very possible. When (heavily) twinked, 2xGD classes also work. Off-meta builds are very possible, I’ve made plenty items specifically to enable those off-meta’s. It simply means you will need a specific item or 2 before you get going (which I think is pretty standard when running something off-meta, it’s called off-meta for a reason).
Can’t speak for how others perceive it, but in my opinion it will. Where the paladin had quite some changes previous(current) patch. Every other class will have plenty this time.
Pretty much, I also won’t be interested. D4 seems more interesting to me as well. I’ll most likely stick to RoT for a while as other than GD, hack’nslash ARPGs generally don’t interest me much.
I don’t think anyone is offended Pierre, I get what you are saying. 
David Brevik said he’d have designed D4 as it is, because they stole all his ideas from Marvel Heroes, LOL! I think he is personally offended it was his project, he was lead, and Blizzard didn’t involve him at all. He says he won’t play D2:R because he mostly plays games to develop them, it’s no longer his. He would just see all the flaws. I can confirm that from an art perspective, if I play a game I did artwork in I see a flaw and try to fix it instead.
Those growing pains seem awful about this mod and the GD updates. Most of us were super excited from those updates. Today played through 2 areas that never existed before, one hidden, and it was GLORIOUS! (aka Grimarillion) The guy making the Starcraft 2 D2 mod canceled his project because his goal was perfect replication of the game. He released it with one act and that’s it, he’s done after all those years streaming coding the mod. I’m sure he got tons of cash from that, LOL.
This mod is very unique and that’ll never happen to it. Hope the update is coming along better lately… It’s painful to hear about wasted time. I’ve been amazed at the dedication to this mod, specifically in development of it, since I found it.
EDIT: I can confirm David Brevik said they decided to keep the game in 2D because 3D back then looked awful and they wanted a more visually stunning product. Had it been, say 5 years later, they’d have done full 3D bar none. So it was a technology challenge specifically, not something where they wanted the universe in 2D forever.
Hey, Ram. Just wanted to drop in and say that I have been following your mod for four years and really appreciate the work you put into it. I hope you don’t get too frustrated: there are thousands of people who have had a blast reliving D2 in the superior GD engine thanks to your efforts.
I have been holding off until your next big patch to play through all of the chapters in hardcore mode… on Normal difficulty at least.
Do not give up Ram, I am waiting for a new version of the mod, more than for d2r. I don’t even know if I will buy this version. There will be nothing new except graphics, here I know that I will have great fun for months or years.
Agreed, the right gear can make almost any build passable. But I have yet to see a 2xGD build that I would consider fun to play in this mod. I think that’s maybe the main issue for me, the fun factor. And if I have to whittle down the boss’s life bar sliver by sliver, I don’t consider that a fun build. I could probably still beat everything with it, save for the hardest encounters, but it would most likely be a drawn out and tedious affair.
Another thing regarding gear, you have to get it in the first place. And with almost no way to target farm for specific items, it can be a while until the leveling process starts to feel good with certain skills. This is less of an issue for long-time players with a stash full of set items, but I’d say that newer or SSF players can’t just choose a random skill and make it work that easily. Sure, later on you can use full damage conversion and all of that, but facets are lvl 75…that’s quite the walk, by that point you’re most likely in hell already. Mabye this whole customization could/should come earlier during char progression, I’m not quite sure. It’s just the middle part of the game can feel very slow if you don’t use one of the go-to leveling skills.
What people consider fun differs from person to person so I cannot really adjust on that alone as a point for adjusting abilities/gear etc. Some like exploding entire screens at once, other want the challenge of slow combat.
Fact is, GD classes have not been touched at all, so they do no compare to RoT classes, as mentioned multiple times already. So if you want a fast paced game, don’t pick dual GD. I do plan to adjust those classes in a future patch so that everything is (more or less) viable again.
I’ve quickly tried a firestrike demolitionist+sorceress (endgame only) with a strong bow + hydra’s and was able to kill some ubers in about 2 minute fights. Which seems long, but I recall some GD fights against the stronger celestials taking much much longer. Someone else tried an endgame 2x GD build and did pretty ok (GDstashed just to check endgame options). But thats just a quick reference.
In terms of balancing. Prior to this patch, anyone would one-shot his way through the content, regardless of your stats/gear/skills used, until you hit the ubers and then suddenly realize 800 OA/AR isn’t enough for end-game stuff (a lot of people bought this just for the RoT mod and have 0 experience with GD mechanics). As now the campaign has increased quite a bit in terms of difficulty, it also clearly shows which skills are way to weak, and which ones still perform well. Something that wasnt really noticeable before. So I’ve buffed a lot of skills to be up-to-snuff for the new campaign with coming patch. Things like lightning, fissure, volcano, double throw etc. Because of the coming skill changes (some skills will function differently as well) I hope to have fixed many of these issues that forces you to level in a certain (few) ways till you find your required item. Respeccing is free and easy to do so I don’t see much of an issue with that.
A quick example. As it’s easy to max a skill, lets say Lightning, after you’ve maxed it there is no way to properly increase it’s damage anymore. This applies to a lot of skills. Diablo 2 had it’s synergy system to fix this, which doesn’t work here unless it’s a direct modifier. So an example for next patch: I’ve simply made chain lightning the secondary effect of lightning. This requires more point investment, through which you can increase your skill damage for much longer than if it would be the single 20-point skill you have maxed already at lvl15 and as a result, ends up as a smoother leveling experience.
Yup, and this is sort of intended. It’s supposed to be a challenge. You should pay attention to your stats, also while leveling. Currently is slightly too difficult though as the defense of monsters is too high (as mentioned many times by now), so you have to focus a lot on attack rating and as a result deal no damage, either you miss everything or you have no damage stats as everything is aimed at buffing AR (exaggerated this a bit, but it’s kinda what happens).
Early game runewords do pretty well, else target farming is just like it works in Diablo 2 (and pretty much any other looter-ARPG). If you are looking for an item you go kill monsters in the area where the monster/item level is. While leveling you can only specifically target farm the new MI’s, which are quite a lot better than uniques of their itemlevel, even if you get non-beneficial affixes. In this case, Stone of Jordan is target farmed by simply running travincal+mephisto on normal. Most people find one or two of those rings within 1 hour. (Sounds long, but how many hours did people spend on finding one at the original D2?).
Your planned changes sound great! That’s really the problem with many sub-par skills, they peak too early in power and then you have nowhere to go from there. Available flat damage modifiers are very low across the board, be it either from augments or devotions, so they can hardly make an impact. So even if you tune up your %modifier to be in the thousands, the base damage is just too low to begin with.
While you’re at it, maybe you could take a look at the offensive celestial powers. Their damage output is pretty much non-existing at this point, seeing that we can do millions of damage per second. A power that does 15% main hand damage every other attack and is on a cooldown isn’t noticeable. The defensive/debuff/percentile ones are fine imo.
And please seriously consider getting rid of reflect entirely. I read you want to reduce it to 2% or so. I’m currently playing a poison javelin amazon/assassin and have two Carrion Wind rings equipped. They have an inherent ability called poison nova that releases 40 projectiles (50% PT) in a circle when hit. The projectiles currently do 100k damage each, so I die the instant those knights pop reflect. I can’t kill entire screens fast enough to prevent that, my poison aoe isn’t big enough for that. So even when just running through the sanctuary to get to the minibosses, there is a high chance for me to die on the way, without actively attacking anything. I don’t want to change my gear just to be able to traverse this zone, that seems unreasonable. High regen mobs are something you can just ignore and move on, reflect is something you can’t ignore and what stops you dead in your tracks. The iron maiden monster affix was removed from D2 because of this and it should be removed in this mod as well. It serves no purpose other than to annoy…sorry to be so frank about it.
Although I’m not a 100% sure about it, it seems that merc/player minon damage also gets reflected back to you. My barbarian does 2 million dps with his whirlwind skill. So basically I would have to change 4-5 items around and not spawn any minions just to get safely through the mobs and then redo all that when I’m at the miniboss. That seems like the biggest time-waster to me, considering this is a fast realtime arpg and not a turn-based game, where stuff like that might be more commonplace.
That’s why I haven’t played any base GD classes, because I still don’t consider them an official part of the mod, and why I don’t comment on them when it comes to game balance yet.
The great thing about the fantasy of this game is dual class doesn’t destroy class identity most of the time. All my characters have a single class vision and the second class is for synergy or proper defense. I could play a GD class in the future and it may still feel like Diablo, because of the attack skills I have chosen, for example.
EDIT: Passives is something I often forget, but in theory a class with less defense or offense can be adapted because of this system. And because of the way passives are given as quest rewards, I play the game 2 different ways:
- Power leveling.
- Passive tree advancement, in which case I skip as much content as possible to get those said passives.
I rarely just walk through every level unless I haven’t played in awhile and I just want to see everything.
Power leveling is when I enjoy most of the content and explore. With many classes this can happen alot in the game, especially with Normal + (or I just play trap assassin and clear it all first try 
).
Is there a way to change the open console key (~ tilde) to something else?
As far as I’m aware, you cannot change the console key.