I guess I was rather unlucky though, because I swear I didn't get anything but those 'gold' or completely ordinary magical items, even from the bosses. I would have to go to the shop to find a decent staff for my char, because those would always be better than whatever dropped. Also didn't help then that there wasn't really a single spell I liked.
It happnes. Sometimes the random seed just gets, dunno, corrupted? And you just won't get anything worthwile.
Somehow, it gets unstuck when you just start a different char. I remember my first warrior got absolutely nothing until the end of ACT I, then I switched to a caster, lo and behold, lots of charms, lots of epic stuff.
Not even sure there were any direct damage spells not linked to staff damage?
Plenty, but not in Spirit mastery (save for that life drain which sucks later on), you have to pick up Earth or Storm for that. And that splitting attack was waay op, 3x the damage for almost no downside, they nerfed in one of the recent patches.
I had waay more fun with spirit as a secondary mastery for a melee build. Deathchill Aura, when fully developed, i a really good mass debuff.
If you want to play 100% caster, you're better off with storm/earth, maybe dream.
The skill system is a bit confusing at times, often just putting one point I can't really say if a skill is good or no. Especially for the summons, which gain new abilities at higher levels.
titancalc.com is useful for trying shit out, but it has one big downside - doesn't show skill coldowns, which make and break skills sometimes.
Each class in D2 also had a much bigger skill tree
Kinda, you had ~11 skills in each tree, making that a total ~33 skills for each characters. However, most of them are just filler, you take them as prerequisites, and level 30 skills generally trump lower level ones.
In TQ you get ~22 skills in each mastery, there are useless ones to be sure, but most often there is something for each build in every tree, even "caster" masteries have skills which work good with melee chars.
Now, TQ let's you mix and match skill trees, giing you a max ~44 skills total. Some combinations suck, other are really powerful.
Ever wanted to make a successful bow user in D2? Well, you're stuck with amazon for this one.
In TQ you can make an archer that shoots flaming missles and hurls fire grenades, or one that uses debilitating poison, one who summons wolves and dryads for help, or ones that catch enemies in barbed nets and leaves them to bleed out.
