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Diablo 2 just turned 20

Mastermind

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Thanks but I am leaning towards Assassin. Is it better to go c/c and invest into claw block or pick a shield? I should build around dragonstrike, right? I don't expect to get any high level runes to build WW Assassin.

What do you mean by dragonstrike? Dragon talon?

I wouldn't go with anything that requires a good weapon if I just wanted to beat the game in a reasonable amount of time
 

typical user

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Welp you are right about equipment. Huh, Necro seems like helluva fun, just explode shit while my army proves to be better than Diablo's. Gonna be wild.
 
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Why should it be done? I can give you 10 reasons of why it shouldn't be (I think you are noob)

- It's a waste of points, you get +0.3 larger radius per point while damage stays the same.
- CE is a 1pt wonder, with enough +skill items you will easily rack up 20 points (40 points you don't need)
- any time you are in a smaller area those are wasted points (most enteriors)
- any time you are fighting a boss those are wasted points

Because its fucking hilarious blowing up 2x your screen radius and you are so OP that nothing matters anyway. 30+ points in CE is literally the joy of being a necro in D2.

- Mages are a solid choice (besides Revives) because 1) they benefit from Skeleton Mastery (which you are maxing anyway), 2) they benefit from auras, 3) they have useful poison/cold attacks vs bosses (high regen on Hell), 4) you have twenty additional meat shields (instead of +6 radius on CE)

Their damage is shit. Their health is shit and they die way too easily to be any kind of meat shield. They get in the way of your better melee skeletons. Most/all of the auras you want to use will only benefit physical damage. Poison/cold attacks you only need 1 of and you will get that with 1 point in it.

- Revives have insane life, also benefit from Skeleton Mastery, also benefit from auras, plenty of them have useful mods like CB

Yeah revives are good, but:
- you only get more of them and you aren't going to need 30 revives. Skeleton mastery is what actually makes revives stronger, not more points in revive. You can't even really use 30 revives since their duration will be so low.
- Even if you use them skeletons will be better in terms of damage most of the time. Revives will just be bodyblocking your skeletons
- in plenty of areas revives are mostly/entirely useless.

Good luck getting even single runeword or set.

You said about 20 things in this thread that aren't true, it's amazing. I'm pretty sure you never played D2

Well he's correct about finding a full set, that's basically impossible unless you farm incredibly hard or are very lucky. Early runewords are pretty easy with about 20 mins spent countess farming (e.g. Stealth is really good), which is also the only way to get a decent early game weapon (socket 3-5 of the runes that add +20 fire damage or +75 poison damage) and resists if you have poor drops.

Thanks but I am leaning towards Assassin. Is it better to go c/c and invest into claw block or pick a shield? I should build around dragonstrike, right? I don't expect to get any high level runes to build WW Assassin.
See what I said about Barb and how equipment and direct attacks are shit for most of the game? Anything but a trapsin is equally shitty except that you additionally only have 1 good weapon type (claw) rather than being able to respec your weapon mastery if you find a really good drop. Martial arts are better than barbarian attack skills though.
 
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jackofshadows

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The problem with that is that many of D2's mechanics are completely unworkable in "normal" playthrough - no sharing, no trading, no farming, no boss runs. Good luck getting even single runeword or set.

D2 is rotten to the core in being an MMO-lite as it is entirely designed around being played as one. Playing it like normal SP game, while possible, is not playing it as intended in much the same way as playing Doom as pacifist.

Meanwhile Diablo 1 worked splendidly as a single player game played like a single player game.
It's baffling how you able to recognize D2's MP-in-mind design and fail to do so with D1 at the same time. I can agree that SP mode was alright in D1 but it was on the same basic alright level in D2 when the game came out. Completing both games on normal was like finishing a tutorial basically, you haven't seen the meat of it even closely. You've barely picked up some interesting items, meet challenging mobs, by the end of it any build was far from fleshing out in D2 etc etc.
 

octavius

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Thanks but I am leaning towards Assassin. Is it better to go c/c and invest into claw block or pick a shield?

My experience (with 1.09) was that you really need a Shield to survive, especially when fighting Cold immunes, since I depended largely on Phoenix Strike. Claw Block just wasn't enough for me; maybe it would have worked if I played more cautiously.
Incidentally I found the Assassin to be the most pwerful of the melee classes I played, although it seems there is a bug with 1.09 making the Assassin always do max damage or something using certain skills.
 
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The problem with that is that many of D2's mechanics are completely unworkable in "normal" playthrough - no sharing, no trading, no farming, no boss runs. Good luck getting even single runeword or set.

D2 is rotten to the core in being an MMO-lite as it is entirely designed around being played as one. Playing it like normal SP game, while possible, is not playing it as intended in much the same way as playing Doom as pacifist.

Meanwhile Diablo 1 worked splendidly as a single player game played like a single player game.
It's baffling how you able to recognize D2's MP-in-mind design and fail to do so with D1 at the same time. I can agree that SP mode was alright in D1 but it was on the same basic alright level in D2 when the game came out. Completing both games on normal was like finishing a tutorial basically, you haven't seen the meat of it even closely. You've barely picked up some interesting items, meet challenging mobs, by the end of it any build was far from fleshing out in D2 etc etc.

I'd say its exactly the opposite. Normal in D1 was well-balanced especially for single player (IIRC MP in Diablo 1 was basically an afterthought). Instead its nightmare and hell where the game essentially breaks down, with literal base game mechanics being broken. IIRC it was monster AC or to-hit that was capped at 255, leading to much weaker than intended enemies at higher difficulty. Also spells capped at 255 magic which meant when you got there you could immediately learn a spell dozens of times over.
 

jackofshadows

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I'd say its exactly the opposite. Normal in D1 was well-balanced especially for single player (IIRC MP in Diablo 1 was basically an afterthought). Instead its nightmare and hell where the game essentially breaks down, with literal base game mechanics being broken. IIRC it was monster AC or to-hit that was capped at 255, leading to much weaker than intended enemies at higher difficulty. Also spells capped at 255 magic which meant when you got there you could immediately learn a spell dozens of times over.
Yes, one-byte limited values is a thing in D1 but I don't recall situation you're describing. Hell difficulty did feel tough as fuck when we were playing and it was exciting to push the limit further and further. It was a game of management by trial and error mostly, for instance: can I block Blood Knight 1x1 consistently (if not then I need more dexterity)? Can I hit him often enough (since it was obvious that they were suppose to be most armored mobs)? Where to even farm gear? And so on. Naturally, we didn't have access to internet-wiki back then. Gold wasn't a problem on high levels - it was all about finding/managing gear and discovering/learning gameplay tricks.

So, what I meant was after thouse extensive co-op sessions SP seemed easy, shallow and almost without loot management: you take what you've got and kill Diablo. Just like in D2 on normal.

To say that devs were designed D1 around MP would be a huge stretch thanks to shrines and black deaths alone but feel of progression was just beginning to rise for me after normal. The char always was half-naked by then, basically. It was a shame that other difficulties were for MP only. Even if they didn't properly thought out them they still somehow did manage to implement it on a decent level. Now, the good question is - maybe they should have discard difficulties completely instead and "stretch" the base game, to make it bigger, longer and more challenging but increase drop rates and xp rewards to compensate all that?

I guess it turned out to be nice balance but they've taken that model as a base for D2 and I agree with what you've said earlier: as a result D2 is simply broken from SP perspective. No suprise that even ahem some hardcore purists here doesn't mess around with it without modding the hell out of it.
 
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According to jarulf's guide (page 92) Diablo is supposed to have a to-hit of 220/300/340 on normal/nightmare/hell but due to the 255 cap it actually overflows so that he only has 220/44/84 to-hit. But apparently its only him and a very small number of other enemies that were affected.

Yeah, I'm not saying that D1 wasn't decently balanced. It's just that it really doesn't seem like the game was designed for nightmare/hell. What with the spell thing, there not really being higher tier of items (like in D2 where there is a reskin of each item for each new difficulty), uniques apparently being broken in general on higher difficulties (according to jarulf), and other things. Certainly it was better balanced than D2's nightmare and hell which somewhat randomly alternates between effortless mowing down of enemies and enemies that deal 10000 damage to you because you had the audacity to stand next to them when they died.
 
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Welp you are right about equipment. Huh, Necro seems like helluva fun, just explode shit while my army proves to be better than Diablo's. Gonna be wild.

Pure trap assassin isn't that equipment dependent and also has Corpse Explosion via Death Sentry. One of easiest builds to play imo. Pure summoner Necro is I guess least item dependent but also pretty boring to play to me, I prefer making poisoner/summoner hybrid.
 
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Grotesque

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Divinity: Original Sin Divinity: Original Sin 2

HAPPY 20TH ANNIVERSARY DIABLO 2 – A LOOK BACK AT THE LAUNCH
AUTHOR:RUSH PUBLISHED DATE:JUNE 29, 2020 1 COMMENTON HAPPY 20TH ANNIVERSARY DIABLO 2 – A LOOK BACK AT THE LAUNCH


Happy 20th anniversary Diablo 2! Can you believe it’s been 20 years? It’s been 20 years and the game is still massively popular which is quite an accomplishment.

As our regular readers know, we’ve been covering the Diablo franchise for 23 years now. During that time we’ve been on this journey with the fantastic community here at PureDiablo. I think it would only be fitting if we took a look back at what was happening on the Diablo 2 launch day which was 20 years ago today.

We were particularly hyped for the game as we had seen a little more of it than most after visiting Blizzard North for a pre-release test session. I think we were just as excited to see how the community would respond as Blizzard was.

When the game launched we were at the launch party which took place on a cruise ship called the California Hornblower which left San Francisco Pier 33. The ship left port at 7PM and sailed its way around San Francisco Bay and under the Golden Gate Bridge. There were around 100 people there to celebrate the game’s launch which included 50 Blizzard staff and around 50 press members.

The Blizzard team appeared pleased with the launch as there had been around 2 million pre-orders for Diablo 2. Remember, pre-orders were really important. There was no downloading digital copies, all game shipped out on CD. Remember that?

There was a lot of champagne being consumed and here are some of the pics from the launch event.


Brevik and Max Schaefer

Brevik and Max Schaefer

Producer Ken Williams and Max Schaefer

Mingling

Max Schaefer – Eric Householder

Eric Sexton – Tyler Thompson – Phil Shenk

TEETHING
Like most game launches back in the day, there was usually some teething problems. In the case of Diablo 2, one of the most common issues was the CD-Rom not being able to read the CDs to install or being able to read the CD once installed. Other issues included unable to connect to Battle.Net, random crashes, bad .dll files. All the usual stuff that would drive you mad when all you wanted to do was start playing.

One peculiar problem arose with single-player characters being deleted when installing 1.01 patch which was caused by not uninstalling the Diablo 2 beta. The first bug/cheat that was found was the ability to generate unlimited gold. Blizzard hopped on this gold bug quickly and applied a server-side update.

THE SCORES
First impression articles were quick to appear, within 24 hours in most cases. IGN and DailyRadar were first out of the blocks. It was looking like Blizzard was about to have another smash-hit on their hands. Final reviews started to come in IGN (83%), Gamespot (8.5), Game Revolution (B+), GamesMania (93%), GameGuru (4/5), FiringSqaud (93%), GameZone (8.5).

There wasn’t much in the printed press at the time but The Guardian was not quite as taken with the game stating that “Baldur’s Gate hangs on to its RPG crown”. Well, they got that wrong.

WHAT TO PLAY?

Diablo 2 Necromancer Art
According to our polling at the time, the most popular character players wanted to start with was the Necromancer. It’s no huge surprise then that the Necromancer is still one of the most popular classes of the whole franchise. Here’s how the final poll looked at the time.

  • Necromancer – 28.4% [1687.244]
  • Paladin – 26.2% [1556.542]
  • Sorceress – 16.9% [1004.029]
  • Barbarian – 14.2% [843.622]
  • Amazon – 14.1% [837.681]
SURPRISES
One of the first things to be discovered in the game was the Cow Level. A shot had appeared back in 1999 before release hinting there was some strange cow level (see shot below from 1999) but we were not quite sure if it was some kind of joke or April Fool’s gag at the time. The rest is history. The Cow Level was a hit.



A lovely surprise for the site team was the inclusion of Elly, Flux, and Gaile as NPC mercenaries in the game. It’s always fantastic to play some part in gaming history.

Here we are today, 20 years on from that eventful launch day. I remember well that we were all hands on deck and not getting much sleep. We were cranking out content and I was firefighting server issues due to the sheer volume of site traffic. Thankfully these days technology has moved on somewhat and technical issues are more manageable. It was a mad few weeks leading up to and post-launch.

RECORD BREAKER
What’s amazing is that Diablo 2 is that it has stood the test of time. It’s without a doubt still one of the most successful games ever made. It had reached 2 million copies sold after one and a half months. It did so well that it was entered into the Guinness Book of World Records 2000 Edition as the fastest-selling computer game ever sold. Within its first year, it had sold 4 million copies prior to the LoD expansion launch.

I think we can all agree that Diablo 2 was simply outstanding, and still is. It’s great to see our community still playing and heavily involved with the game. Diablo 2 is without a doubt one of the greatest games ever made, and with rumours of a remastered version circulating, who knows what the future holds for Diablo 2. Happy 20th anniversary Diablo 2!
 
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Welp you are right about equipment. Huh, Necro seems like helluva fun, just explode shit while my army proves to be better than Diablo's. Gonna be wild.

Pure trap assassin isn't that equipment dependent and also has Corpse Explosion via Death Sentry. One of easiest builds to play imo. Pure summoner Necro is I guess least item dependent but also pretty boring to play to me, I prefer making poisoner/summoner hybrid.

I thought lategame poison in D2 was considered essentially universally crap unless you had amazing equipment to boost poison damage (specifically lots of super rare small charms)?

Summoner Necro is definitely one of the least item dependent. The combination of the army + decrepify means you should be able to do HC Hell no sweat with fairly basic shopped/dropped/sub-20 min farm equipment. Just don't try to rush it, Necro summoner is not a rush class. Its kind of fragile, if you enter an area with the right level then you cruise through it but if you enter 5 levels earlier then your summons kind of melt and you end up using most of the corpses for new skeletons rather than CEing the entire screen.
 
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typical user

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And what about Druid shapeshifter? I've heard rabbies and fireclaws - or in other words poison + fire based attacks make him less dependent on disabling immunities. Plus he gets tons of hp from Oak Spirit and shapeshift forms.
 
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I thought lategame poison in D2 was considered essentially universally crap unless you had amazing equipment to boost poison damage (specifically lots of super rare small charms)?

I did ok with Trang-Oul's set, don't remember using any charms for poison damage. Poison Nova damage isn't great but it's still way more fun to me than just waiting for your summons to killl shit all the time before you start CE'ing. You still get maxed Skeleton Mastery and skeletons and your one point wonders, like mages, Revive, Clay Golem, so the summoner part is still pretty much intact. Can't afford maxed Corpse Explosion with this, of course, but I found it to be still really useful with one point and +skill items.
 
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wat

There's already mods that increase the resolution. Increasing the AI activation radius wouldn't be that difficult. That's assuming it hasn't already been done by mods, and its in fact built in to the Diablo 1 engine where light radius is what activates monsters. If the point of this is to say "if you change it then it won't be the same game", then well duh. Something different is not the same.

I'd have thought he'd be talking about memory requirements or something. Diablo 2 sprites are like 20 FPS. If you wanted to re-render those at, say, 4x height and 4x the width (so x16 total pixels, roughly 4k assuming a moderate increase in viewing area), 6x the FPS (so future proofed for 120 hz monitors), with 2x as many possible directions for characters to face, that's almost 200x as much possible sprite data you need to cache. And of course this assumes you kept all the old models that you rendered the current Diablo 2 sprites from to begin with.
 
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It's time to do an intervention with Lilura . Do ya'll remeber when years ago she was such a nice and polite poster? Just bragging incessantly about her blog and daring to think MotB is better than PS:T. What happened since those innocent days?

is0nRII.png
 
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Summoner Necro [...] The combination of the army + decrepify means you should be able to do HC Hell no sweat with fairly basic shopped/dropped/sub-20 min farm equipment.

Dream on, limp dick.

I say "should" not to mean "I think it could" but "I can do it and if you can't then you either have poor luck or are playing poorly".

Just shop for a decent wand upgrade once or twice per difficulty, make the low-tier runewords for resistances/all skills/etc, don't skip areas and you'll have more than enough XP/skill points to tackle hell. Also make sure to buy a teleport staff obviously.

I thought lategame poison in D2 was considered essentially universally crap unless you had amazing equipment to boost poison damage (specifically lots of super rare small charms)?

I did ok with Trang-Oul's set, don't remember using any charms for poison damage. Poison Nova damage isn't great but it's still way more fun to me than just waiting for your summons to killl shit all the time before you start CE'ing. You still get maxed Skeleton Mastery and skeletons and your one point wonders, like mages, Revive, Clay Golem, so the summoner part is still pretty much intact. Can't afford maxed Corpse Explosion with this, of course, but I found it to be still really useful with one point and +skill items.

Yeah, I must be thinking of poison dagger builds. I don't think the charms work on skill damage so all you need is +skills as usual.
 
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