2.10 Bugs and Feedback

It's been a few seasons since I last played and have enjoyed the new changes such as the trophy revamp. Nice work devs!

I still experience the following bug that can be replicated as follows:
-When holding LMB to move, open and then mouseover inventory. Release LMB and now the character keeps moving to where the mouse is even if released.

This seems to occurs a lot and seems to happen mostly when trying to move while adding potions to belt

Azenoth wrote:It's been a few seasons since I last played and have enjoyed the new changes such as the trophy revamp. Nice work devs!

I still experience the following bug that can be replicated as follows:
-When holding LMB to move, open and then mouseover inventory. Release LMB and now the character keeps moving to where the mouse is even if released.

This seems to occurs a lot and seems to happen mostly when trying to move while adding potions to belt

this is a feature as far as i'm concerned :mrgreen:

And now that I'm thinking about sorc again, let me post the start of a class rework idea I've been tumbling around in my head for a bit...

Sorceress

General

Mana Sweep: now an innate skill usable with Melee Devotion. Cooldown is 20 seconds, scaling with character level to 6 seconds at 120+. Fuck Meditation, never should have been added to the game, give me back my class-specific mana management tools.

Arcane

Mana Shield: now a buff in the arcane tree. Damage reduction scales with base points from 20% to 60%. Mana cost is now 100% of damage reduced, decreasing by 8.25% per 10 character levels (to roughly keep pace with expected elemental resistances; better than before at level 60+, as good as current Arcane Fury at 140+). This should be more attractive to all sorceress builds, without being reliant on specific items or buff uptime.
Arcane Fury: reworked and moved to reward tree, see below

Reward

Witch Blood: removed. All elemental spells +30% damage to compensate (and to help out with leveling).
Arcane Fury: reworked as an ultimate skill. Toggle buff boosts all sorc spells' total damage, but costs an enormous amount of mana and drains even more over time. This is intended as an alternative sink to mana shield - you can go glass cannon with this, or tanky with mana shield, but shouldn't be able to get full value out of both if you try.
Chronofield: on the watchlist for changes, because this will be the default for mana shield builds and debuffs are not that good when you can just blow up the screen instead

Coven

Compensate witch blood's sustain on one of the non-fire picks or just re-add it as a passive here without the damage bonus

Fire

Incineration: Works off of life instead, to reduce the antisynergy with Arcane Fury / Mana Shield?

Melee

Arcane Sustenance: removed, now available as orange text on Lachdanan's Visage

Items

Elemental Children set; dramatically nerfed. The set crowds out other item choices, and the only thing really holding it back is being a glass cannon. Compensate lightning an extra 20% or so on top of the witch blood bonus.
Valthek's Command, Knave: also reduce mana sweep cooldown by 6 seconds
Lachdanan's Visage: orange text is now "Restore 2% max mana on melee attack during Fusillade", removed melee-only tag
Bane of the Horadrim: IDK yet. the obvious change would stack with Cloak of the Outcast for far too much damage to mana, maybe rework to support Ice Bolt Nova

And in other thoughts,..

Covens feel thematically disconnected. They were cool back in Ultimative when you had to pick two elements because of immunities and they came along with your damage choices, now they're just awkward. Snow Queen doesn't even synergize with the cold tree any more because you've already got a big chunk of %life and you can't summon if you go Melee Devotion. The one neat thing they have going for them is that the skill point thresholds and gear synergy makes for some interesting decisions... do you have avoid gear planned? Warp Armor is significantly better. Do you need skill points? Run at least one of Vengeful Power or Snow Queen to save 10+ over the other two.

Melee sorc is kind of emblematic of the power creep Scosglen has caused over the 2.x cycle. It's been my favorite build since I started playing in XVc, but life on attack is far and away the best stat in the entire game, Bladestorm crept up from ~560% WDM in 2.0 to ~1440% WDM nowadays, there's a deadly strike passive too, and Mirage is one of the strongest chase items in the whole game even after nerfs. The problem is, I don't know what the hell to do with it...

IBN is a cool sorc-only oskill that doesn't do quite enough damage for aoe clear and has nadazero for single target. Could use 10-20% damage buff and also either shotgun or move the cold-res-as-damage scaling to an orange text so you can use the regular cold single target attack.

Oh, and it still annoys me that bloodzon is better off building mana than building life. I don't know that it's actually a bad thing because it makes building more interesting, but it's cutting into Mana Shield's territory and I made that suggestion as compensation for dead stats, not to suggest it should be a build-around.

glacial volley of melee sorc (cold) does proc less with 5 frame. at 6 frame it proc on every attack but 5 frame it is every 2 attacks.

Siosilvar wrote:Meditation.

I max this skill with every new character for the first 50-90 levels, then always spec out. Its super useful at the start of the game IMO.

Taem wrote:
Siosilvar wrote:Meditation.

I max this skill with every new character for the first 50-90 levels, then always spec out. Its super useful at the start of the game IMO.

exactly my point. every single character takes it for leveling because it's a bandaid for the fact that mana costs scale linearly, and it replaced some actual class features - sorc had mana sweep, dudu had pagan rites, nec had better mana regen on embalming (so, basically the same, but in one place instead of two). i don't think there should be anything that you use on every single class, especially boring stat passives

Hmm. Doesn't need to scale dynamically. Can just package the damage reduction change with a set discount buff to pay for it. 7/16 is close to what I napkinned to make a 50% Mana Shield have the same effective mana cost as Arcane Fury (which feels about right for the high damage content). I don't know if 50% is the appropriate stopping point for the proposed Lightning tree Mana Shield buff, but it's probably a fine starting point. It's a modestly bigger effective health increase than a Mistress of Pain taking your avoid from 40-55 and that felt pretty good in lab8 except for my lack of Moon Crystals to help with Mana Shield.

I replied before I saw your bigger picture post. That's certainly one way to go about addressing Sorc survivability issues. Less design work too than to figure out something on theme for each elemental tree. I think the proposed Mana Shield discounts are a little too high though. Maybe not too much with removed meditation, but Arcane Fury gets that discount because it needs it for a 95% shield. Even at 60%, probably will not feel the mana cost at all at 140. The discount scales exponentially.

What is a "spear"? I am playing an Amazon using Pounce and for some reason, I cannot use the DWAALLIGHT THROWING SPEAR. It's obviously a fucking spear, but the skills won't work with it... I think the description is missing, "2H", or maybe there is something actually wrong with 1H spears not working properly with amazon spear skills?

saanctum wrote:I replied before I saw your bigger picture post. That's certainly one way to go about addressing Sorc survivability issues. Less design work too than to figure out something on theme for each elemental tree. I think the proposed Mana Shield discounts are a little too high though. Maybe not too much with removed meditation, but Arcane Fury gets that discount because it needs it for a 95% shield. Even at 60%, probably will not feel the mana cost at all at 140. The discount scales exponentially.

resists also scale exponentially, and mana shield doesn't get them.

if you have 85% resist and take a 10,000 base damage hit, even at say 8/16 and 60% you lose 4250 mana for 900 damage reduction (1500 to 600)

iirc 10k is two or three hits from old lab harpies, for reference

Taem wrote:What is a "spear"? I am playing an Amazon using Pounce and for some reason, I cannot use the DWAALLIGHT THROWING SPEAR. It's obviously a fucking spear, but the skills won't work with it... I think the description is missing, "2H", or maybe there is something actually wrong with 1H spears not working properly with amazon spear skills?

consistent with vanilla d2. spears are spears, javelins are not spears (despite one being named "throwing spear"). when in doubt, base items page

You cannot summon spirit of vengeance in town for amazon. Annoying imo.