Poll of the Day > Diablo Ressurected beta free this weekend.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Honestly if they let us play with others online, without paying for playstation plus, i'd get it for my ps4 right now (Well pre-order it).

I'm down to pay $30 for the game, but I will not pay $30 AND $10 per month to play.

The original game wouldn't let you use many runewords offline, fight uber diablo etc, and of course you can't trade (which is often the only way to eventually make runewords anyway). Trying to get anything but the most simple rune words yourself would take many many months at least.

On my computer though, I already have the orginal Diablo AND I have pluggy. Still means I can't trade for runewords, but I can do players 9 to make drops more likely etc, and I can live without the best runewords if I have to (plus no ladders etc so I can just work on getting em eventually myself).

I may get it on my comp anyway though because I have a few friends who want to play as well, so we might just all play together. Still I have that I won't be able to play on my PS4 which I would much rather do. Seriously they should create their own servers like they used to have to allow people to play on the ps4 without paying $10 a month.

That is a real dealbreaker for me. Even saying I only played for a few months that changes it to a $50 game minimum and probably more if I ever want to play it online again.

Not worth it.

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Ya'll might be wondering, where has wolfy been? He hasn't posted all day!!!

Maybe you would think, he is playing D2 Remaster before the free weekend ends.

Nope, I didn't play that at all today.

Hmmm, maybe he was playing old school D2 with pluggy instead, he mentioned that.

Well, I did play that a bit this morning but then I stumbled on a post where someone said they wouldn't play Remastered at all, since it didn't have path of Diablo's improvements.

Path of Diablo I though, what is that?

So I looked it up and it turns out for years now they have been running a mod for d2, with live servers to play on, that adds some of the stuff from path of exile to d2 and changes how some of the skills work etc. It's constantly updated and was updated just recently in fact. They have new ladder seasons every 5 months or so, on the same schedule as PoE.

So I read about some of the changes, mainly the druid ones so far (although they have added a mapping system like PoE and added a whole seperate inventory area for charms (no more using all your space just for charms, you can have the full 10 GC's with 10 SC's under them, and still have a full (now larger) inventory as well).

Also they added 100 to base stamina lol, no more running out early on.

Meanwhile for druid they allowed you to have ALL summons out at the same time, all wolves, dire wolves and now you get more bears as you boost that skill, you can have all the spirits as well (so oak AND Wolvering) although they do less then in vanilla D2 (about half the hp from oak for instance).

Ravens got a huge increase, now getting decent damage, having synergies that boost it more, doing splash damage and having a max of like 20 of them lol. I am not using em now, but I plan to make another char that specializes in ravens (and can't wait lol, but wolves came first).

Because of the systems they have, synergies etc, there are now tons of different builds to try and enjoy again. They also changed how runes drop so it's a bit more likely to actually get higher runes (so you can actually get runewords since there is no maphack/bots etc).

Tons of additions etc, people are playing it so you can party and trade, and it's new, instead of the same old game I have played to death, over again (mind you I was still having fun, but how much MORE fun is it to actually have new builds?

I knew the "best" build for every class in old D2, and while it's been long enough for me to enjoy remaking them and playing them again, the option to actually have completely new builds/play experiences is amazing. I can't believe i didn't find out about this till now, I would have been playing this for years.

Anyway, I may still get the new one eventually but no more pluggy forme, Path of Diablo is the tits. I'm so stoked.

That is what I have been doing all day, will keep doing for a few more hours before I drop of exhaustion and will do most of tomorrow (other then maybe running out for food lol...cause......i'm down to canned/frozen food).

So happy!!

I am going to have a REAL wolf army now muahahahha!!

Gonna freaking rock!!

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That sounds pretty cool. Although I hate seasons, but I'll probably have to check it out at some point just on principle.

Red_Frog posted...

That sounds pretty cool. Although I hate seasons, but I'll probably have to check it out at some point just on principle.

From what I understand it's like path of exile if you have played that, you can keep your characters after a ladder season is over, it just won't be part of the new ladder.

Not sure how that works since i just started playing this, but the seasons are 5 months long and I never actually played that long back in the old days without taking a break.

Since I always like to start fresh when I take a break anyway, i always came back durring a new ladder season and enjoyed starting fresh.

I've done the same with PoE, I have insane amounts of currency/equipment etc on standard in PoE but have never played it. I always start fresh.

Hardest problem I'm having is sticking with my first wolf army character lol cause there is so many new abilities/changed ones I want to try. I really wanna do a pure raven run now that ravens have been seriously upgraded.


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I know they probably won't, but they really should go back and tweak some of the things that need tweaking in D2R. Ravens, like you mentioned. Holy Fire, which can't make it out of Nightmare at the best of times.

Reinstituting pSkull crafts, Toggling those unused runewords already coded into the game to ON.

At least rune texts are a different color now. I guess that's something.

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Supposedly blizzard and activision are set to do a total rebranding and name change next year, which makes me skeptical whether or not they are even gonna support and update this release long-term

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Yeah, there are so many things they made better in Path of Diablo, like any Amazon bow skills don't use ammo for instance. They also created magical arrows (with different bonuses/buffs on them) again kinda like PoE. They are only 100 arrows per bundle (500 in a normal one you can buy from the shop and normal arrows/bolts no longer drop).

This makes Amazons better at bows then the other classes since they can use magical arrows but don't use them up while using their arrow skills (IE multi-shot, magic arrow etc).

The stamina boost to start is genius btw, it really solves the problem I was having in D2R (or old D2 for that matter), but they ALSO gave every class a movement skill (or teleport) so Enigmas are no longer needed (most of them are from PoE tbh).

The game just plays so much faster/smoothly because of that, it's really awesome.

Here is the website for the wiki if anyone wants to see the changes, especially to the classes/trees etc. https://pathofdiablo.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

I don't see how D2R is gonna compete with that tbh with just a minor graphics overhaul, while running like crap on fairly newer systems (the system reqs are pretty high for it).

The only reason I would guess is alot of people don't know about Path of Diablo, but I'm worried that if it does draw away too many people, blizzard may try and shut it down.

Just playing my druid so far, but the changes are really awesome. Does kinda hurt the whole hybrid play styles I always liked because now there is so much you can do with just 1 tree, but, until I get a bunch of +skill equipment, it won't matter much anyway, so def better for first runs etc.

I think I can still do my general druid setup with sick summons + fury though, since it really don't use that many shapeshift skill points.


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That all sounds really cool. When I get my steam deck itll probably be one of the first things I check out

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Sweet

I just looked into it a bit more, and the hybrid style will work even better actually.

Both werewolf and lycanthropy were changed a bit. Your wolf or bear form has a base duration of 720 seconds and doesn't increase with points, so you don't need to invest points for a longer duration anymore.

Meanwhile the life gained per level is lower, so you can run with just 1 point in werewolf if you want (just using +skills to get the +OIAS bonus which isn't that important for fury anyway).

Lycanthropy gives a small damage and life bonus per point, which would be nice, but again +skills will do more then enough there.

In old D2 you needed to put some points in them even with +skills to have a long enough duration and get 100% or more bonus life, but with this version you can literally put just 1 point in all the shapeshift skills other then fury, so more points to spend on summons!!

Gonna actually reset my skills soon and switch from using a 3 socketed very fast bow, to fighting as a werewolf with feral rage. Gives a nice movement speed boost and plenty of life drain...and I only need a few points in it (Even just 1 is still a nice boost).

Total points needed to be spent is about 4 to make that highly useful now..which is amazing tbh. Means a few less wolves probably, but I don't REALLY need the full 7 normal wolves.

Due to being able to have multiple spirits though and the vines, you are def far shorter on bonus skill points early on.

Really hard to break down the best setup now, especially since Heart of Wolverine is now available at level 6 as well. May have to reduce that to only level 1 HoW, or maybe even get rid of my vines all together (since i'll have life heal from feral rage).

That will save me 2 points (from poison vine + carrion vine). I can take 2 points from HoW (currenly had 3 in it) and that pays for me to get Feral rage, and keep all my wolves heh.

They will do a bit less damage due to not as high HoW, but I'll do more because I'll be using Feral rage and in werewolf form, so should more then equal out.

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Is there a class that has a self-targeted aoe that I don't need to aim? Like someone I can just run in, hit a button, and boom stuff without bothering to target?

tried fissure druid and it's basically random what gets hit and sucks, tried hammer paladin and you actually need to try to aim the hammers and it sucks, etc etc

I just want a class where I can boom things and don't have to aim or try

Nova / Frost Nova Sorceress. It won't perform too well, though.

ReggieTheReckless posted...

Is there a class that has a self-targeted aoe that I don't need to aim? Like someone I can just run in, hit a button, and boom stuff without bothering to target?

tried fissure druid and it's basically random what gets hit and sucks, tried hammer paladin and you actually need to try to aim the hammers and it sucks, etc etc

I just want a class where I can boom things and don't have to aim or try

There are a ton of ways to make chars like that. Blizzard sorcs work pretty well that way. Summon builds also work that way (your wolves kill everything for you), you can even combo summons with valcano/fissure if you want.

Fissure btw is good for enemies that move around alot as they get damaged when they pass over the fissures. Valcano will hit enemies in an AoE but if you place it right under the enemy you do a ton more. The big one for you for a druid would just be your wolves though. You can do a wolf/fury bulid which is my favorite.

Wolf fury builds put 1 point in pretty much all the summon skills but max Dire wolves. Unlike other skills bonuses to skills over 20 from items etc, work for the synergies of a druid, so you don't need to invest points there.

Meanwhile you put a few points into werewolf and lycanthropy (in D2R/old school D2), to have a decent duration to your wolf form (this gets boosted from +skills as well so you don't need many), and then 1 point into the pre-reqs for fury and max fury.

Since your just basically maxing fury and dire wolves, and eventually Wolverine (boost your damage/attack rating and all your summons as well), you can max the character out almost by the end of nightmare and then have free points left over.

You don't have to target ANYTHING...you don't even need to actually attack anything with fury, but it does so much damage, and if you hit with feral rage every 20 seconds, you also drain life while hitting, so it keeps your health up.

But there is a build like what you want for almost every class. Whirlwind for Barbarian for instance. Pally has Zeal with cold aura (instead of fanatacism), less damage but it slows everything around you and is very defensive (and adds a decent amount of cold damage to your attacks.

Assassin has a few traps like death trap, lightning trap, wave of fire trap etc that are AoE and fire and forget.

Necro of course has his summon army AND bone spirit (think that is it) that auto aims for you.

Amazon has both multi-shot (multi-pass) and ....I forget the name but a shot that auto aims for you like bone spirit. With pierce multi-shot can clear huge packs easy, and do to the way amazons work you can actually max that AND a direct target/boss killing skill if you want.

Sorc has quite a few options actually, blizzard is one, there is a later cold one that works as well, then there are spells like hydra and thunderstorm (thunderstorm randomly hits an enemy around you every x seconds without having to be aimed etc).

Basically there are many options for not needing to aim....but...if your using a controller the game seems to auto-aim bow attacks as well now (the guided missile skills like bone spirit are still useful for enemies that move fast/dodge etc).

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wolfy42 posted...

From what I understand it's like...

I get that, and I'm not saying people can't like it or it's wrong. It's just kind of antithetical to how I play games. I just hate taking a break from a game then coming back after a while and being locked out of endgame shit just because I don't want to start over. I guess it keeps games exciting for some people, it just tends to frustrate me.

ReggieTheReckless posted...

I just want a class where I can boom things and don't have to aim or try

Have you considered Necromancer? Their skeleton mages can make boom, and the hardest thing they have to do is organize all the loot in their inventory.

Red_Frog posted...

Have you considered Necromancer? Their skeleton mages can make boom, and the hardest thing they have to do is organize all the loot in their inventory.

Wasn't available as a class in the beta thing that just happened, but yeah I'll probably try necromancer when the full game is out

ReggieTheReckless posted...

Wasn't available as a class in the beta thing that just happened, but yeah I'll probably try necromancer when the full game is out

True, and it was my most hated part of the whole thing. I thought you were asking in general with the beta over.

I hope there's another test before release with the Necro. If they actually are having problems with it, as has been speculated, I need to know.

I think an unanticipated resources hogging event that's tied to there being too many necro minions is why they were a no-show for this.

I almost wonder- if true- if they'll ship it as-is. Maybe it's something that can't be easily fixed but they don't want to cut back on their early sales figures. I mean you can always patch games after the fact now, right? /s

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It would definitely cut into at least one sale, no necro = no Frog.

I can't help but wonder, putting aside that this is all just guessing for the moment, but if it's accurate then how bad would their network programmers be these days? This is a game people used to play on dial up. On 200MHz CPUs. Necro was a recommended class for dial up users since their minions were controlled by the server, so even if it started lagging there was a good chance the army would keep them alive.

Oh who knows for sure? Maybe whatever is tying the new graphics to the old ones couldn't handle a ton of stuff on the screen at once. I mean you'd THINK this wouldn't be a problem at all in 2021 however just look at how many Switch ports of games we get that have inferior performance and slowdown that run just fine on PC or PS4. Anything's possible. Plus it's running two games on top of each other in a way, from how I understand it to work.

I guess we'll see soon enough- Something that big won't stay a secret for long I think.

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People already exploited Necro into the closed beta back in April

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8JIvauAwlQ

Looks pretty good to me

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Thats good to hear, still curious about later acts though

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It does look pretty, although I have to admit seeing a 3080 drop to 80fps in a mundane area does little to inspire confidence. Maybe they really are struggling. Given the Act II limit, the Summoner fight would have likely been the only real test. I see a video where it was done, and it seems to stutter, but there's no details provided.

I still don't get why they did it this why. I have coded games myself, even waaay back in the dos/basic days, and the graphics part is seperate, it's integrated (and now adays probably uses call outs etc), but it's not really a huge deal to overhaul the graphics that your base code uses (so the game plays exactly the same, but the graphics are updated/better.

So go at it like that, redo ALL the graphics in the game, everything that calls to them uses the new stuff, but has the same base code behind it.

Running a whole different program on top of the old code seems crazy to me, and from what I have seen, is not working that well. I can't even imagine it saved that much time/effort.

Also it's freaking rediculous what the system requirements are on this thing. The graphics are not that much better then other current gen d2 like games, but the system requirements are waaaay higher and it's using WAY more resources on your computer.

Compare the system requirements of Last Epoch to D2R and it makes no sense at all, seriously none. You can run Last Epoch on a comp with an integrated gpu lol, 2g is all you need.

Freaking D2R wants 16g ram I believe it is, and a high end gpu (not integrated for sure) and even on my system that has the neccesary reqs (16g ram, 4g gpu etc), it still had problems here or there.

That HAS to be due to having the new code run over the old code, cause seriously, the graphics are not THAT amazing and it doesn't make sense they would use so many resources.

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