If monster HP now scales normally in normal difficulty (i.e. act5 monsters in normal now have ~25k hp instead of 4k) that automatically means in act1 nightmare sees this exact same jump (well, another jump from act5 normal to nm), and then again in Hell. So it all goes back to the the HP adjustment that was done starting at act2 normal.
Nerfing the pets a bit more is fine, to feel the sense of challenge as much as other classes I guess? Monsters also deal a lot more damage but you hardly notice that as a summoner, it being a passive playstyle.
If you still one-shot everything, increasing damage or granting abilities isnāt really helpful in increasing difficulty is it? Unless it turns into some like Akane (every thing one-shots you as well). Most monsters did decent damage already, but were just never alive long enough to even be noticed.
Interesting you say that because after the recent campaign rework, people have been reporting things that never occurred to them before, like Oblivion Knights casting Iron Maiden. They thought it was a recent addition and were surprised when they have been told it has been there since 0.4 version (Act 4 release). They simply never seen this ability to be used by enemies before because everything was so easy and died instantly.
Sorry if I come across as a bit brash, thatās just the way I word things. I really admire your mod for what it does and itās a beautiful rendition of an old game recreated in a modern engine. I guess I just wish it would also take some cues from modern games like Path of Exile.
Donāt get me wrong, I donāt want to be able to explode several screens at a time or complete an endgame map in under a minute like you can do with PoE. But the main attraction for loot-based games is getting better gear, not having prolonged fights around every corner. I can go for Soulslikes or Roguelikes for that specifically. H&S games for me were always about bossing so putting waves upon waves of tiny speedbumps in my way really diminishes the fun of the whole process for me.
I guess what Iām trying to say is: bosses should always be a challenge, while trash mobs should only be in select few instancesā¦to keep you on your toes.
Personally I feel that being a waste of gameplay time, if you spend several hours leveling up and finding worthless loot, if the end-game is all that matters. Why not just get rid of the leveling process in a game and just let you jump right into the end-game grind?
This is what made Diablo 2, and GD in my opinion, much better than say, Diablo 3. While leveling finding gear pieces really matters. And in current state, endgame geared toons can roll through all content while new (or SSF chars) have a challenge. I donāt see whats wrong with really well geared characters having an easy time vs crappy geared characters.
Here the whole lvl1-100 should matter, at least in my opinion, which makes the experience a lot slower than before (or something like PoE I guess, my experience with PoE is limited) but at least by the time you reach act5 Hell, you should be able to almost jump into end-game as well without suddenly need to farm easy boring content over and over again just for a few items before you can do an uber as the difficulty difference was so big.
Thereās nothing wrong with players in top-tier gear having a much easier time, thatās the way it always was and always should be. But games like these are very repetitive by nature, youāre playing all the acts over and over and over again. For the first few times a much slower approach might be more rewarding in terms of game experience. But after that it just becomes a slog, thatās why PoE did away with the 3 tiered difficulties and expanded the game to 10 acts. Itās basically the same thing difficulty-wise, but it lessens the feeling of running in a hamster wheel.
By making players take longer to get to endgame and finding worthwhile loot this whole feeling gets even more emphasized. Because letās be honest, most of the good loot you get from bosses anyway. So white mobs taking longer now to kill doesnāt help me in any way to prepare for endgame encounters. It only delays the gear grind more and doesnāt make me want to start another toon, because it will be just as tedious with that one.
Grim Dawn is also notorious for having a lackluster threat system when it comes to petsā¦this is not a fault of your mod but it still plays into things. Casting a single debuff might be enough for a boss to loose interest in my pets and charge me instead.So when you say that players need to rely more on debuffs from now on it just creates another layer of annoyance when playing pet classes. The fact alone that you canāt set a stance for skeletons (being permanent minions) is puzzling to me.
Maybe Iām too accustomed to modern ARPGs by now, but I just canāt see the benefit in making everything take longer to kill without giving the players something to counter that. If the drops would be increased to make up for the loss in kills/h, then Iād probably have no objection to it.
Intended to be talking about Holy Bolt, not charged bolt above. It also doesnāt always hit and Iām not sure why. Maybe it requires a target or other things get in the way like walls or other monsters or it misses due to monster movement. The game works, so not saying itās not playable or not fun, just a bit weird.
Interesting about the players 8 thing, Iād forgotten that. The D2 mod I was playing (in the original D2) simulates greater challenge with higher damage and monster health pool. I never experienced hell in vanilla except when I first got the game and found out everything was immune against sorceress, so I donāt know the difficulty there, but Iāve always liked greater difficulty. Iāll see when I hit it if thatās still the case, LOL.
So I guess there was a misunderstanding as to what the last few patches would actually do.
I agree with the idea of trash mobs taking a long time to kill being tedious. It makes the normal difficulty feel very grindy. Mind you, this is also with pretty GG gear since I used all runewords and low level set gear. I think trash mobs are a bit overtuned in the current patch. Iām a longtime D2 player and I donāt remember normal difficulty ever being a struggle save for a few boss fights and elites with crazy affixes.
I feel that the latest patch is a significant upgrade from how it was a few weeks back, that was mindlessly easy. But, I do think that lowering the health pool of trash mobs a bit would go a long way in making the game feel like less of a grind.
Edit: Not trying to trash the mod, itās my favorite D2 mod out there. Just offering my experience with it so far.
Iām closing in on level 30 and the game still feels just right to me. In my earlier comments I noted the game actually made me get a second damage source early and I felt like the fights were actually worth something.
Repeating the game with each difficulty is simply how D2 was setup for endgame and fully realizing your character. I wouldnāt expect the game designers to add 5 more acts to avoid repeat content.
EDIT: I also like the pacing of each act and each area isnāt getting boring. Noting I havenāt really tried melee classes yet.
Fuzzy if its true that endgame geared characters in this patch roll through the content then the Necromancer needs some SERIOUS work. I will never be able to beat Hell Mephisto with a summoner Necromancer in this patch, let alone Diablo, or Baal, or the Ubers. It one thing to make the game challenging, its another to turn a loot finding game into something that takes literally hours to kill a boss. Playing solo in full 8 player games was a challenge in D2 because the rare mobs could spawn with buffs that could nearly one shot most characters, not because their health was so high that you had to sit there hitting white mobs for 5 minutes.
Mephisto and baal have an ability that heals them a bit on a hit. So for a summoner build thatās harder to counter then a non-summoner build. You just need to micromanage your summons find another tactic that works. Blast him with bone spirit for example with using just a merc and a golem. Diablo is just as easy as beforeā¦ well he has more HP, but he doesnt heal like mephisto or baal. The ubers have also not changed, so as a summoner you should have no issues with those.
And yes, those abilities are specifically in to counter summoners as those have by far the easiest time in all other content.
As it currently is, necromancer is one of the strongest characters in the game. So I doubt he needs a rework. Here is an example in ubertrist https://youtu.be/YJh2DLVrsIY?t=37
I recommend aiming for a hybrid caster+summoner playstyle. Something like vampire gaze + grims burning dead makes it very viable.
Didnāt feeI any different on my high account this patch. (6 piece mythicaI nataIyas is seriousIy broken. 6 projectiIes bIade sentineI with 2miI dps each, and they bounce back. if you stand cIose to enemy you shotgun with 24miI dps. and IifesteaI etc. works cause % weapondmg). Anyways, despite others i think itās a good direction to make the campaign a bit harder.
My only problem is that mobs on the first zones give too little exp for how tough they are. My level 4 paladin in cold plains starts to get already grindy.
edit: played again got to stone fields and again too grindy at the start, diablo 2 players 8 gives way more exp which compensates the extra life of the enemies on normal and early nightmare, only on late nightmare and hell things start to get very hard. Right now normal feels like playing early hell on diablo 2 p8.
@Wolfyop: I had quite the experience on Normal + around level 4 with my paladin. It was frightening. How does things change if you play in standard normal without the extra difficulty?
After the first area the game can really punish you without a skill, when I started I was going specifically for one that wasnāt an early skill. I think it was Holy Fire, LOL. It took some real effort but then things were fine for awhile.
Weāre mainly talking about the leveling process being a drag now. Iām not sure what a video showing an endgame char that probably is decked out in BIS items is meant to prove. Even when itās still fun at that endpoint, the way to get there just got a lot less fun in my opinion. Again, just taking longer to kill stuff doesnāt automatically provide more thrills or makes for a tenser leveling experienceā¦it just uses up more of your time.
What Froschbein posted is proof of thatā¦cause heās also talking about endgame playing an imba char. Thatās not the issue at hand here, as others have pointed out as well.
All of the players reporting slow clear speed on trash mobs after the recent update are using pure pet builds. Other builds seem to do just fine even while leveling SSF so the issue clearly isnāt overall HP increase rather than pure pet builds themselves.
This will be looked into down the road but my advice for all of you having issues with clear speed on pet builds: try using different approach and implement āactive playstyleā (hybrid pet build where character uses dmg abilities together with pets) or try completely different build for the time being. Who knowsā¦ maybe you will enjoy playing something less passive even more.
So, I was one that bitched about this new patch, especially early game. Its still very very early, but after reading all the comments by everyone, including Ram, I changed it up. I decided to change things up from what I usually play. I did up to act 4 normal with a pure pet class (necro), which was my prefered spec and then the same with Assassin (blade sentinel + bust of speed + shadow warriror/master) <āfirst time every trying that. The assassin was miles infront in most aspects of the game, alot faster clear speed and slightly easier to take bosses down.
I was against these changes for sure, but like I saidā¦after what Ram said just now, changing things up a bit really did make a difference, adapt to the new patch and do things that you usually dont do. (Iām also using components and really pushing the characters instead of just mowing through content until end game)
