MXL 2017 first impressions

its made an already hard game, even harder ..

when i say this i do not mean people that know there builds 100% know what items/rune words they need every lvl and have played the game for years, new or returning players are going to get rekt hard which is a shame becuase i thought they wanted to go in another direction to bring in new players, im sure once you get full endgame gear you will reck the game, but getting to that point is going to be very hard.

lordalexander74 wrote:Someone earlier posted suggestions on boosting resists, I'll be taking those into account before moving onto A2. I figure if I play safely, I won't have too much trouble. I'd rather farm/grind a bit and make things easier on myself.

Imo totem necro doesn't "need" to max all resists (I didn't, some random resists from rares) to survive Hatred, with summon army blocking and totems doing all the dirty work hardly anything hits you and your life pool should be pretty massive. In fact only things that gave me trouble were the piercing physical ones (wyrd, claw tornadoes etc.) so damage reduced x on jewelry would have been helpful.

Terror is of course another thing, then I noticed resistances started to really matter, both mine and minions. Difficulty curve was just huge, somewhere around mid act5 I started to melt faces again as better and stronger rares started to drop and money was more than enough to MO anything.

After playing new Median patch for 2 days I realised I don't get satisfaction from the game anymore. The new patch reminds me of cLoD way more than any patches I played in the past (1F9b, Omega, 2012, XIVb, XV, XVI). I kept starting again and again with different charcaters and builds (on TSW) and kept deleting them because I wasn't excited at all (I play solo). Not saying it was caused only by new patch changes, more like the time has come for me to take a break from Median and D2 in general, because I don't belong to people who can play different this game nonstop without getting bored soon. 2,5 years of playing D2 after the break is already a huge time period thanks to awesome Ultimative patches. Still, in every previous patch I played, starting from scratch was more interesting than in the current one. Really appreciate the hard work by marco, sb and others but can't help myself but quit unfortunately. Maybe one day I'll come back to D2 again. This is my feedback so far.

Jampula wrote:
lordalexander74 wrote:Someone earlier posted suggestions on boosting resists, I'll be taking those into account before moving onto A2. I figure if I play safely, I won't have too much trouble. I'd rather farm/grind a bit and make things easier on myself.

Imo totem necro doesn't "need" to max all resists (I didn't, some random resists from rares) to survive Hatred, with summon army blocking and totems doing all the dirty work hardly anything hits you and your life pool should be pretty massive. In fact only things that gave me trouble were the piercing physical ones (wyrd, claw tornadoes etc.) so damage reduced x on jewelry would have been helpful.

Terror is of course another thing, then I noticed resistances started to really matter, both mine and minions. Difficulty curve was just huge, somewhere around mid act5 I started to melt faces again as better and stronger rares started to drop and money was more than enough to MO anything.

I'm also totemancer and went from a1 to shenk with just 20res each. Lvl45, no problems in ta, but this is a build i already know how to use, so i guess gameplay is important besides gear.

For now i can't say much new from what has already been told, a2 and a3 may be a delay, honorific "balance" is a nerf for casters (no -res) and weapons (no luck trial).

But the most important thing is still up, i'm having fun

Having to now quest for certain items like khalims is a really a hassle and takes away from the focus of medians endgame. This isnt supposed to be cLoD, and like stealth said, it feels alot more grindy and cLod like than previous patch.

D2 sure is old. Interface is clunky: switching to a skill through a hotkey and then casting it with a mouse is so 2000, no hotkeys to move items between stash and inventory (moving 1 tile items around got annoying fast and I didn't even get to Fauztinville), no autosorting (the first ARPG with sorting was Sacred and this is the old game too, so D2 is THAT old), potion system is a busy work, no duration for buff/debuffs shown, LCS, various containers require kicking one-by-one instead of dropping an AoE on them, shared cooldown (without showing the counter ofc), no item filter.
The gameplay is still stellar. I don't know why modern devs can't understand simple truth that I don't want to run around with a shitty fireball for half of the game, even Grim Dawn is affected by this plague (TL2 was kinda using the same system as Median, but alas it missed the point of having low lvl reqs for most skills).
I was a bit surprised at crafting orb changes, but I got through Hatred without bothering with them so I guess it's alright and I am not assed to get through cubing this early in the game tbh.
Somewhat funny is I had to take on LC1 wearing TU Great Helm and some rare Tower Shield, which gave my melee sorc a tanky legionnaire look. Slow running speed didn't help to shake this feeling off either.
The interface is a real deal breaker for me though. I guess I will level my sorc to 90 just to see Baneblade in action, but honestly GD is more pleasant to play, even if its combat system is interior to MXL and downright annoying at times due to random enemy equipment.

something thats very much bothering me is the reduced speeds (fcr, weapons). its my personal preference to speed through everything, be agile and dodge stuff. i tried to give it time but i dont view it positively now.
the fastest chars are hit the most by this change. for a superbeast going from 4 to 5 frames minimum is an effective cut of 20% in cast speed (4/5 = 80% efficiency), and the cost to get this 5 frames is quite high at nearly 200fcr.
really hoping that i will change my mind over time on this or that if many people are of the same view there is some sort of petition to switch it back

/e: to be clear, i want to give this more time before saying anything final

Did K3K always have miasma casters or is that another wonderful design decision in the newest patch? An uber where the sole challenge is avoiding the invulnerable mobs, lets give the mobs an unavoidable 75% slow. I literally just save an exit the moment I get hit with miasma.

There has yet to be anything in this update that I thought was a good design decision. I get that they cleaned up the memory and a lot of transparent stuff, but wow why did they make so many mechanic changes that are just awful.

Tadace wrote:Did K3K always have miasma casters?

Yes, minibosses cast this spell. Not a new feature.

It's been there for multiple patches, use summons/erydem to draw the miasma out.