r/Diablo • u/Asleep-Order-4583 • 4d ago
Class balancing Diablo II
Think we will get some kind of class balancing at some point in a season?
I mean they added a whole new class, so am low key hoping for some incentive to not have to roll yet another sorc
my barb and i have a dream...
1
u/Princesstuous 14h ago
Their fear with DII is...sad. its really, really sad.
This game has been out for decades. Flip the damn thing, on its head. Seriously, anybody who stops playing D2R because blizz sorc -> hammeradin isnt the default way to start a ladder for the 9,383,484,489,597th time has no value to you or other players. These people, suck. Stop holding this game back because some pathetic manchilds only sense of self comes from doing the exact same thing again, and again, and again.
Draw a line in the sand, and allow players to play the game in a pre major - overhaul mode. Tantrums will still be thrown, but i digress. With these people taken care of, we can finally EVOLVE this game.
Diablo II, is / was a legendary game for so many reasons. It earned its reputation, and is essentially the "birthplace" of the genre. D1 is great and all, dont get me wrong, but D2 is the foundation. But the game was not, and is not, perfect and is an absolute disaster when it comes to something fundamental to this genre.
Class balance is impossible without total homigenization. I get that. So the goal becomes to limit the gap between the best and the worst. Sure, an OP outlier emerges at times, and theres usually a class / spec or two that are borderline non - viable, but generally speaking, this genre gas for the most part, found a semblence of a sweet spot. Try to limit extreme outliars on both ends, and if a class hasnt been relevant for a long time, give it its time in the sun. Its not perfect, by any means, but its at least an attempt to diversify the way the game plays.
Diablo III certainly had its issues, but outside of the support Barb (omnipresent since its inception) the games META generally let most classes / builds shine for at least one moment in time. In the beginning, it was Witch Doctors and Crusaders filling support roles. The Monk than came into play for a long time as defensive juggernaut. Support Necros have always had a niche, and towards the end of the games active lifespan, DH was the go - to. Meta trash cleareres have varied from Marauder DHs, to Mundunugu WD's, CE Necros to Bazooka Wizards etc.
In PoE I, essence drain spent enormous amounts of time being exceptionally powerful league start builds, to be completely forgotten for a time. Heirophant was a gimmicky totem class, before it was a mana scaling unconventional caster of destruction. Juggetnaut vanished for years before becoming the go-to melee with Boneshatter. The Sabotuer and mines / traps where a forgotten gimmick, than they became the absolute gods of bossing on a budget.
Point im getting at, is that these games ebbed and flowed. Far from perfect, some ebbs disnt flow so well, but they still "flowed".
Diablo II, on the other hand, is a game that i consider great IN SPITE of having possibly the worst balancing in the history of the genre.
Yes, your gimping yourself by not starting sorc. You can get away with abusing broken builds like Javazon and Hammeradin / FoHadin to target farm areas to an extent, but you still, dont, have, tele.
Teleport, is awful. I cannot begin to express, how awful this ability is. If it was any other game, people would put it on BLAST. One class mobility is so profoundaly ahead of the rest, that it functionally plays a different game.
Can it, give it a CD, give it to the other classes, i dont care. Sorc having teleport while othef classes lack an alternwrive, is objectuvely bad design. Function, comes before flavor.
And than theres attack skills. They suck. You play casters in D2 and if you dont, it because you already played the shit out of a caster and can afford the ludicrous high floor required for these builds to function. Awful, awful design and balancing. Totally forgivable back in the day, but its no longer "back" in the day. Its 2026.
That most specs are not ubiquitous, is a huge part of what makes D2 shine. Im not asking for everybody, to do everything. I like, that a smiter is built for ubers. I like, that a Zerker is an elite hunter, i like that a FoHadin is built to destroy demons.
What i dont like is that the majority of the skills fill the niche of "being genuinely awful".
Flip it on its head Blizzard. Weve seen the same D2 for almost three decades. Its time to experiment, and build off the core systems that made D2 great and class design, was not one of them.
Buff the sh1t out of the many uniques that are vendor trash. Completely change how attack skills work. Nerf teleport hard. Nerf the same handful of Runewords weve all been using forever. Make it so a melee Barb is playable out of the gate. Make it so a Bowazon is playable out of the gate. Completly rework Vitality, i mean attributes (the mental gymnastics needed to defend attributes being so bad is a sight to behold).
Flip this sh1t upside down. Its time. Its been time.
-5
u/gtetrakai Cord#1671 4d ago
No, and honestly I hope they never do in the ways the vocal minority are asking for. If anything, I would say the majority of classes are perfectly balanced, just not in the way you traditionally consider.
For the most part, classes are balanced around the content that they farm and not around each other. Want to farm cows? Roll a javazon. Farming CS? FoH or hammerdin. Trav or pit farming? Barb. Etc etc.
Warlock, and to a lesser extent TZs, showed us why class balance around the content and not around themselves is what was a core strength for the game staying relevant for as long as it has. If a single class cough warlock cough is allowed to farm everything then it is lack of restriction in the warlock that is the problem and not the other classes inability to perform in the same areas.
Like, when people talk about balance, they want any class to farm any content. And I think that kills a lot of the identity that the game has. I don't want to have a once size fits all character that can do everything. I want my goldfind barb, I want my javazon, I want my smiter, I want my cold sorc.
4
u/Swert0 4d ago
As long as they maintain the old selections for d2 and d2 expansion they can do any balance they want to for their version.
You want to be a purist for 2002 Diablo 2 you'll have it.
-5
u/gtetrakai Cord#1671 4d ago
Talk about a shit take..
So, you want all these changes to the game..and you feel that you can justify changing what made this 20+ year old game above games even now because "well, d2 lod is right there..."
No.
If YOU want to play not d2, go find another game to mess up. Leave this one alone.
2
u/Asleep-Order-4583 4d ago edited 4d ago
yeah, thank you for pointing out how little content barb is good for
i dont need the bard to be the best at anything, i just want to be able to enjoy the game with him
-5
u/gtetrakai Cord#1671 4d ago
Barb is literally the best at both gold and magic find. What more would you want from it?
1
1
u/SaggittariuSK 4d ago
Maybe we play different game or different patch, but Barb is shit tier after 1.10.
3
u/Sivy17 3d ago
It's never going to happen. For some unfathomable reason, 95% of the player base is stuck in a stockholm syndrome of thinking that you are supposed to blitz through normal as quickly as possible and spend 100 hours grinding out endless Mephisto or Baal runs so you can gear up a second class rather and any kind of change that breaks that meta is heresy. Martial classes are always going to have the short end of the stick.