Diablo 2 Resurrected - Future Non-Warlock Nerfs & Tweaks

Now that Reign of the Warlock has been out a couple months and the latest PTR has received just about all its feedback, I'd like to turn to other changes in the game that I'd like to see which will hopefully appeal to newer and older players alike as this will fix things that have been in the game 20+ years and not just the things that were recently introduced in the D2R ROTW DLC.

Re-Specialize 1 Attribute and 1 Skill Point at a time. 

So many times I need a little strength or dex to equip something or I want to tweak my build a little. The fact I have to roll a new character or fully respec my existing one is too much work. This is ancient design and needs to change. I'm happy paying a fee for it, whether that be gold or essences. How many times do we see a build guide (even my own) state "put just enough strength and dex to equip your gear) well there's no way to know how many points that is because you obtain different gear that has attributes on them as you level and you end up in situations where you can't equip things when you unequip other things.

Add Runewords for Orbs

Orbs are the only socketed weapon bases left that do not have any runewords available (throwables don't count because they aren't socketable). Orbs need some runewords to augment caster builds so we have runewords other than spirit and hoto. 

Redo Act 3 Mercs

This is the one merc that doesn't ever get played. I've tried all I can to make it viable but it's just objectively worse. I'd like to see these redone as a caster class, have their attributes moved to caster, and allow them to equip staffs and orbs + shields.

Fix Duriel's Loot Table

After the nerf to Andariel this is a mandatory change to bring Duriel up to the other Act bosses. He is the hardest Act boss to find and should therefore not have the worst loot table. At minimum scrolls need to be removed. 

Nerf Teleport

It's time for teleport's time to end. Being able to blitz around the entire game has made sorc the must play ladder starter and engima the must use end game chest item. D2 is a dungeon crawler by design and this skill overly simplifies the gameplay loop. To fix this they can simply add a cast delay to teleport like leap and blade warp have. This makes it so teleport can't be spammed and will only be used as a quick damage avoider. 

Nerf Spirit

Spirit is way too powerful way too early for its cost. It's a must use item for anybody playing through nightmare and hell the first time. I'd like to see spirit's resistances, FCR, and +skills nerfed to half their current values. 

Nerf Enigma 

Nerfing teleport isn't enough to nerf Enigma. This chest piece is just too good for every build. I understand it has a huge cost with Ber + Jah, and most average gamers can't actually afford this if certain p2w sites and bots didn't exist, but if those things will continue to exist then this chest needs to be nerfed. I would remove +Teleport and nerf +2 skills to +1 skills, and cap the magic find range at 50% so it's not as good as Skullder's and Wealth. 

Nerf Grief 

Grief is the de-facto go-to melee weapon because of the flat damage it gets. The flat damage should be nerfed to +1-400 instead of +340-400 or halve the existing values. The damage to demons must also be nerfed to +1.5 per level. The ignore target defense should also be removed. 

Nerf Stealth 

Stealth is as good as Spirit when it comes to leveling items and it's the item just about every build uses until they can get better end game chest pieces. The affixes and rolls on Stealth make it so good at such a low level. FRW, FHR, and FCR need to be reduced to 10% instead of 25%. 

Nerf Insight but Make It Available In Staffs & Spears

Insight is a very cheap and mandatory item to use in the early game of D2. It also rolls very good affixes on top of the meditation aura. Meditation Aura should have a level range of 1-10 instead of 12-17. The enhanced damage should be reduced from 200-260% to 100-150%. However, Insight should be available in Staffs & Spears.

Other Spear Runewords Needed 

Add more runewords to the Spear archetype to make Spear builds more interesting. Ex: Death, Last Wish, Wrath, Lawbringer, Insight

Nerf Treachery 

Treachery has become a best in slot item on mercs and for self-use to proc Fade, and then swap to another chest piece. The only reason for this chest piece is for Fade. Simply replace Fade with Cloak of Shadows. This makes it only work on nearby enemies so people cannot use it as a temporary chest piece and it becomes best use on Assassin and not mercs. 

Buff Spear Bases

Spears need their base damage increased by about 10-15% to be on par with polearms and also need more runewords for them to be optimal. 

Buff non-Amazon Bow Bases

All non-Amazon bow bases need their base damage rolls increased by 25% to provide some value to bows outside of GMB & Matriarchal. Then people must choose +1-3 skills vs more base damage. 

Add IAS Fire Gloves 

Currently the top choice for fire skill gloves are magefists but these benefit casters. This hurts IAS based fire skills like fire traps and fire claws. I'd like to see new unique gloves that give IAS + fire damage or +1 fire skills or minus enemy fire resist.

Fix Poison Mechanics 

Poison should not be allowed to be overwritten. If a lower level poison tries to be applied to an enemy it should be added to the existing poison stack on that enemy. Given how low dps poison is (especially without dweb) it wouldn't be too op to allow lower poisons to stack on top of your main poison. 

Fix Off Map Drops 

If any loot drops on an unlootable tile then it should drop at the nearest lootable tile. This will prevent so much lost loot, especially with ghosts. 

Add Charm Bag but Limit It 

I'd like the monkey paw to curl on this QoL request. A charm bag should be added similar to the idol board in LE but it should limit a person to 5x4 or 6x4 instead of the 8x4 people want. This would help limit the number of skillers people can use. Torch + Anni + Gheeds + Sunder + 2-3 Skillers + 5-6 small charms. 

Add Movement Skills to All Classes 

Teleport (needs a cast delay) = sorc

Leap = barb

Charge = paladin

Blade Warp = warlock

Change Lycanthropy to add ‘Pounce’ as an active ability on top of its passive benefits? = druid

Change bone spirit so it teleports you? = necro

Change Cloak of Shadows into a TP skill leaving behind a cloud and spawning you elsewhere? = assassin

Change Decoy so you dive away quickly and leave behind a decoy? = amazon

Improved Loot Filter 

I'd like to see the D2R loot filter expanded to be similar to LE's in game loot filter. I want to be able to change colors of text/background of item names as well as have more agency over what's showing/hiding. For instance, being able to show/hide by rarity, base type, ilvl, etc... and setting a priority so I can hide low ilvl normal/magic rarity items but show low ilvl sets/uniques. 

Improved Lobby Features 

Ability to search/filter games better by trades, campaign, split mf, baal runs, etc... 

Add iLvl Affix On All Items 

I'd like to see the ilvl of every item on the item affixes when showing additional stats. Right now we have to guess based on where something is dropped. 

Upgrade Tomes to Hold More Scrolls 

I'm tired of running out of scrolls when running multiple baal games in a row. I'd like to be able to stock up on a bunch and rapid fire baal games. 

Player Immunity While Loading 

This is something poe has and is a life saver for longer load times. Players should be immune until they load in and move. Obviously this means minions and mercs will also need to be locked during this immunity window to prevent cheesing. 

Add Charms to Gambling 

Make it more expensive than amulets and super rare chance to drop skillers and gheed's (gheed's can only drop if no gheed's in inventory). 

Add a Unique Quiver/Bolts With Quantity Replenish

I'm not asking to make them as viable as a weapon or shield, but allow an end game quiver with 1 affix that auto replenishes arrows/bolts so they are on par with javelins for this affix specifically. 

Allow Shrines to be Used by Every Player 

I'm tired of people yoinking shrines or wasting a gem shrine in my games. Allow shrines to be used by every player in a game. 

Remove Ability to Convert Between Ladders 

Ladder conversion should've never existed. D2R LoD and D2R RotW ladders have to stay separate. However, the ability to convert a ladder character to NL should exist for people who want to quit a ladder early. 

Re-Work Large Charms to be Viable 

Large Charms need to have their affixes roll to the same max values as 2 small charms in order to be viable. Given the inventory tetris being played with skillers there's currently no room for large charms so I would not be opposed to large charms also getting specific affixes on them that cannot be rolled on other charms, like FCR, life and mana leech, +1 to specific skills, etc...

Finish Act 4 & Add A4 Mercs

Act 4 needs 3 more zones, 2 more quests, and another mid-Act boss like Butcher or something. A4 mercs should be angels. Angels should be support paladin like mercs that wield sword n shield and use paladin auras that A2 mercs don't have. One can be Vengeance + Holy Shock, one can be Zeal + Sanctuary, and one can be Vengeance + Holy Fire. 

New Uber End Game Activity 

I'm giving up on my D2 purist mindset on this one. I'd like something other than TZ's and current Ubers to farm. This idea is an uber level you can spawn via drops you farm (maybe standard of heroes even). It'll spawn a 5 floor tower, each floor themed after each act. All enemies will be harder than TZ enemies and the uber bosses in these will be suped up versions of existing bosses. This will be very challenging but very rewarding.

Floor 1 will be the A1 Tower layout full of A1 enemies, a handful of unique packs, and uber Countess. Uber Countess should drop a Tkey and a rune between Pul to Zod. 

Floor 2 will be arcane sanctuary layout, with A2 enemies, and uber Summoner. Uber Summoner should drop an Hkey and an assortment of coveted unique items like shako, occy, arachnid's, griffon's, war travs, treks, HoZ, etc...

Floor 3 will be a kurast layout, with A3 enemies, and uber Council. Killing uber council should drop a large pile of gold and chances at coveted unique jewelry from the council's drop table like mara's, highlord's, opalvein, sling, raven frost, etc... 

Floor 4 will be river of flame layout, A4 enemies, and uber Armorer. Killing uber Armorer should have a chance to drop super rare uniques like Tyrael's, steelrend, grandfather, astreon's iron ward, cranium basher, earth shifter, and templar's might.

Floor 5 will be Halls of Vaught layout, with A5 enemies, and uber Nihlathak. Killing uber nihlathak should drop a Dkey and a chance at other super rare uniques such as death's web, darkforce spawn, death's fathom, and mang song's. 

Add In-Game Trade Feature 

D2R suffers from RMT, botters, and JSP ruining the trade economy. Ad filled free trade sites just aren't enough for people who want to trade in good faith. The current in game trade is limited to a chat channel and creating game names with x4y in the title or see scrip. I'd like to see an in-game trade system where players can list and search for items at specific prices, similar to the GW2 auction house or PoE's async trade system.

BARB: 

Undo Changes That Made Whirlwind Worse 

Whirlwind needs to be immune to decrepify and slow curses. There's no counter to these curses. At least for chill/freeze a barb can wear freeze immunity items but for curses there is nothing they can do and they become useless. There should be no penalty for using 2H weapons. The end game damage scaling should move up from 5% to 6% per level. 

Add A Conical Damage Area to Frenzy 

Frenzy is a skill that is pretty good in a 1v1 fight due to its high attack speed scaling but it sucks against packs of monsters. The best way to counter this is to add a damage cone that attacks an area shaped like a pie slice. This cone should start small at 1 point and should expand up to 20 points invested in Frenzy. This will give Frenzy a similar viability to Zeal so it too can be a much more viable melee option. It's not a true cleave though because the damage would hit 1-2 enemies wide in front of the player and up to 3-4 enemies wide behind the targeted enemy so positioning would still be required to make it viable and not feel the same as Zeal and Cleave.  

Reduce Mana Cost of Warcry 

Warcry is a fun playstyle but it's way too mana starved. Even with insight and points in energy, you still have to chug potions. Mana costs should be halved for Warcry.

Combine Axe & Mace Masteries 

These weapons share common builds and runewords so it would make sense for them to share a mastery node to open up more options for zerker and frenzy. 

Combine Polearm & Spear Masteries 

Polearms and spears should share a mastery node to open up more options for WW barb, especially if someone is playing a double throw/WW hybrid build so they can throw spears and swap to polearm backhand as an idea. 

Fix Warcry Overwriting 

The game should calculate a new warcry's level being applied before applying the buff. This will prevent a level 1 barb from overwriting a max level barb's cries.

DRUID: 

Re-work and Buff Arctic Blast 

Arctic Blast sucks and nobody plays it. It needs more AoE, more damage, and easier ways to scale it. For starters the attack shape should be a wider and longer skill like Baal's hoarfrost attack. Ideally it shouldn't be a channeling skill but it should either be a single big blast on cast or act similar to chain lightning. Arctic Blast also needs a synergy buff because it starts off strong but falls off fast. It needs to provide 20% cold damage per level from cyclone armor and one other skill, maybe solar creeper or spirit wolf. I'd say hurricane but then this will just turn into another wind druid build. Itemization also needs to change. Add a helm runeword that increases cold damage and reduces enemy cold resists and also add +arctic blast to druid pelts. 

Remove Werewolf Pre-requisite from Lycanthropy in Druid Tree 

Lycanthropy can benefit both shapeshift forms so it doesn't make sense to require werewolf to unlock it and saves bear form 1 skill point. 

Fire Claws Re-Work 

Fire Claws is such an awkward build because it requires synergies in the elemental tree and using those skills requires being in human form but using fire claws requires shapeshift forms. Either change it so elemental skills can be used while shapeshifted (also allow teleporting while shapeshifted) OR change synergies to Lycanthropy and Hunger. Additionally, Fire Claws needs an AoE boost. My thought is every few hits add a fiery explosion that hits enemies in a 4-5m radius at 20-30% of fire claw's damage. 

Buff Rabies Druid

Rabies is a decent skill but it has a pretty low ceiling because it's very hard to scale poison damage in this build compared to other poison builds. For starters another synergy needs to be added. I recommend making Feral Rage & Poison Creeper as synergies and update both synergies to +15%. This will give Rabies about 7-8k damage when all skills are capped at 20, which can further scale from gear investment. The poison dot should also be reduced from 11 seconds to 5 seconds. The Rabies infection AoE should be increased from 3 yards to 5 yards. 

Update Fury Druid 

Fury is actually in a pretty good state but I'd like to see it changed to be less clunky. Currently a well geared Fury Druid can melt 1v1 but in large groups it struggles and it also struggles until it's well geared. Buff AR on Fury by 50% OR add a minus defense on hit affix to the skill. This ensures a better chance to hit higher level enemies (personally I'd rather the skill have an "ignores target defense" affix instead). Fury animation also needs to be sped up so the attack isn't so clunky feeling when using weapons that aren't fast/very fast. 

Various Druid Summon Buffs 

Oak Sage life upgrade to start at 100hp and 25hp per point from there. (i.e. 600hp at 20 points instead of 400hp).

Heart of the Wolverine increased max damage and AR% to 200% instead of 158%.  

Spirit of Barbs should add DR. 1% at level 1, 10% at level 20. (1% DR per 2 points, capped at 10%). 

Summon Ravens, increase max hits before they die. Currently 13-31 hits, buff to 20-60 hits (2 hits per point).

Summon Spirit Wolf, increase synergies to 20% and 15%. 

Summon Dire Wolf, increase spirit wolf and grizzly synergies to 15%. 

Summon Grizzly, increase spirit wolf synergy to 15%. 

Poison Creeper & Carrion Vine, increase their max life to match Solar Creeper.

SORC: 

Cold Sorceress Changes (buffs & nerfs) 

Frozen, Shiver, and Chilling Armor skills add Chance to Block. 10% at level 1 and caps at 30% (similar to holy shield). 

Frozen Orb needs another synergy to be end game viable. Add Frost Nova as a synergy and make both synergies 8-10% each so a frost nova/forb build is viable. 

Buff Cold Mastery to -125% cold resistance at 20 points to match conviction aura.

Lightning Sorc Changes

Lightning and Chain Lightning need to remove synergies from Nova and increase remaining synergies to 15% each. 

Thunderstorm needs to be re-worked to work like blizzard. It should summon continuous lightning strikes in an area for a short duration and have a casting delay so you can't continuously stack it. Add Nova as a synergy and make synergies 5% each. (Tstorm + Nova will be a strong build with this change). 

Another Thunderstorm idea is to remove its damage and instead imbues the sorceress to passively and continuously zap enemies within 13 yards to lower their lightning resistance by up to 100% (similar to pally conviction aura). 

Nerf Teleport to add a 4 second cast delay as stated previously. 

Energy Shield is fine but mana burn and ghosts need to be fixed further (yes I know they got fixed recently but it's not enough), so they don't instantly drain mana. Mana burn skills should work like Static Field where they take off a % of mana per burn, but they get diminishing returns past 50% mana.  Since there's no active way to recover ES the mana burn enemies are unbalanced currently because ghosts and baal can instantly drain mana and the next hit basically kills you if you are in p8 hell. 

Lightning Mastery, if Thunderstorm isn't changed to reduce enemy lightning resist then Lightning Mastery should be changed to reduce enemy lightning resist just like Cold Mastery does for its element.

Fire Sorc Changes 

Warmth upgraded so putting 20 points in is more rewarding. Right now it's a 1 point wonder for any non-enchant builds. Reduce regen at 1 point to 20% and increase regen at 20 points to 360%. 

Hydra needs to be slightly buffed. Synergies should be upgraded to 4% each OR add Inferno or Warmth as a 3rd synergy at 3% each. 

Fire Mastery needs to provide a small minus to enemy fire resist on hit modifier and a slight nerf to increased fire damage per level. Perhaps -3% fire res and 7% fire damage at 1 point up to -60% fire res and 140% fire damage at 20 points. 

AMAZON: 

Passive & Magic Changes 

Decoy needs to be fixed so it's not immortal but also has higher hp than it currently has. Decoy is a nice tool to use to pull monsters away from yourself or your merc but right now it either dies immediately or is immortal. We need a middle ground. Start Decoy life at 15% and scale 15% per point invested. 

Valkyrie has a similar issue to Decoy where at low points it's completely useless and dies constantly and at higher levels it's actually fairly tanky. However, valkyrie lacks damage at all levels and its AI is fairly bad. Improve Valkyrie AI to be faster and more aggressive. Give Valkyrie the ability to cast the magic skill with the most points in it (inner sight or slow missile). Increase Valkyrie damage slightly starting at 30% up to 530% at 20 points. 

Javelin & Spear Changes 

Change Lightning Fury so it can't chain infinitely. The busted part of this skill, mostly in cows, is how it can chain infinitely. Change Lightning Fury so it chains to 1 enemy at 1 point, adds an enemy every 2 points, up to 10 enemies at 20 points. 

Buff Impale so it is more reliable bossing skill. Speed up impale's animation so it doesn't feel clunky. Reduce Impale's durability loss so it starts at 40% at 1 point invested and finishes at 1% with 20 points invested. Allow Impale to trigger crits and deadly strike. Nerf slow effect to 50% max cap.

Buff Fend so it's a more reliable melee clear build, similar to zeal. Make Fend uninterruptable just like Impale so dodging or being hit doesn't animation lock it. Add Fend as a synergy to Dodge and Avoid and vice versa. This will help with the defensive struggles of the build and allow Fend to scale its damage and AR which it desperately needs. 

Buff Spear bases so their base damage range is ~13-14% higher. This would put Mancatcher around the same avg dps as Thresher.

Add more Runewords to Spears. I'd like to see Death, Last Wish, Wrath, Lawbringer, and Insight in Spears personally. 

Bow & Crossbow Changes 

Pre-req skills needs to change here. Why does cold get a straight shot to the bottom but Guided Arrow and Exploding Arrow require wasted points in skills they won't ever use? Either add Strafe as a requirement to unlock Freezing Arrow or eliminate existing pre-reqs and simply make Magic Arrow a pre-req to unlock all 3 columns.

Attack Rating on all Arrow Skills needs to be buffed to 250% at 20 points for each one with AR. 

All non-Amazon bow bases need their base damage rolls increased by 25% to provide some value to bows outside of GMB & Matriarchal. Then people must choose +1-3 skills vs more base damage.

Exploding Arrow needs Immolation Arrow as a synergy and both synergies for this skill should be 8% each so the damage feels good. 

Immolation Arrow needs Fire Arrow synergy buffed to 7% and Exploding Arrow synergy buffed to 12%.  This will make Immolation Arrow feel better since it doesn't have the cc of freezing arrow so it needs to do more damage. Immolation Arrow should apply a fire debuff to enemies it hits that scales to -100% enemy fire resist so it can be used as a setup skill to Exploding Arrow.

Ice Arrow synergy from Cold Arrow needs to be buffed from 8% to 10%. 

Cold Arrow's chill effect should apply a cold debuff to enemies it hits that scales to -100% enemy cold resist. This means Cold Arrow will actually have a use in end game instead of being useless. 

Magic Arrow needs to add Multiple Shot as a synergy that provides 2% increased magic damage conversion per point. This will give a roughly 30% boost to single target DPS for this skill and will make witchwild a potential choice for physical bowazons instead of windforce.

Multiple Shot should add Magic Arrow as a synergy giving +1% weapon damage per point so multiple shot's damage penalty can be negated. 

Guided Arrow should be updated to allow piercing enemies again. 

Strafe needs the damage penalty bug fixed. It still feels like the damage penalty wasn't truly fixed and is doing 75% weapon damage instead of 100%. Strafe also needs its hidden hit delay mechanic removed. At high attack speeds you can't stack multiple hits against the same target (aka it currently doesn't allow shotgunning). 

NECROMANCER: 

Summoning Changes

Summons overall need to be fixed so they don't completely disappear when they get too far away or stuck. They need to teleport to player automatically like mercs do. This is especially frustrating with iron golem given its cost.

Skeleton Mastery magi needs a major damage buff. Change magi damage from 200% to 300% at 20 points which should double damage of skeletal mages. 

Skeletal Mages need to have their skills changed to more powerful elemental versions. Lightning should cast chain lightning, Fire should cast Fireball, Cold should cast Glacial Spike, and Poison should cast Poison Nova or should be changed to a Bone Spirit mage instead. 

Revives should last until they die instead of being on a 3 minute timer. 

Fire Golem needs to change Clay Golem synergy to 5% increased fire damage per point instead of AR.

Iron Golem needs its Thorns aura to apply to all minions. In its current implementation only the IG can utilize thorns when hit but it's most likely not the minion being hit. Make it a much lower level thorns compared to A2 merc so it doesn't become a mandatory minion.

Blood Golem needs a 50% damage buff. This will make it more reliable in Hell and increase its life steal for the player. 

Golem Mastery to allow 2 Golems at 10 hard points and 3 Golems at 20 hard points. This allows multiple golems to be summoned so golem synergies are more useful. 

Poison and Bone Changes

Corpse Explosion needs to nerf its range to 8 yards maximum because currently it does screen wide damage and is too op. 8 yards is about half a screen still so it'll still be very viable. 

Poison Explosion needs a buff to range to expand as large as corpse explosion and reduce the poison duration by 30% so poison from the explosion deals damage faster. This would make this a viable skill to use over corpse explosion for the poison necro. Allow Poison Explosion to stack with Poison Nova so one doesn't overwrite the other. 

Poison Nova needs a reduction in mana cost by half to be more in line with other necro skills.

Poison Dagger needs to change to be used with any 1H melee weapon and not limited to daggers. Rename it if needed. Grief may break this skill but Grief should be nerfed anyway. 

Bone Spear & Bone Spirit need to eliminate a synergy each so more points are available in this build and then increase the remaining 3 synergies to 11% each.

Curses Changes 

All Necro curses should not be overwritten by non-necro sources. Curses from other sources should stack with Necro sourced curses. Only Necro sourced curses should overwrite Necro curses. This will be tricky to program but it needs to happen to avoid having mercs and allies overwriting your curses. 

Attract replace with a new curse that focuses your minions to attack the cursed enemy. This will help with bad minion AI and replaces an unused curse. This is a better version of Attract. 

Confuse needs to be a combination of its current curse and the older version of Attract so enemies wander around and attack each other.

Lower Resist needs to scale the same as Paladin's Conviction aura. 

Weaken needs a 25% buff at all levels because it's a worse version of Decrepify currently. 

Iron Maiden needs to scale higher at more points invested so it actually works in Hell. Re-work this curse so it scales like Thorns. It should be x% of damage + flat phys damage. (i.e. thorns level 20 is 1010% damage + 144 flat damage returned to enemy). 

PALADIN: 

Defensive Auras Changes 

Prayer needs a buff to be a viable defensive option in the end game, especially since Cleansing basically scales to the same level of healing. Increase Prayer healing by 50%. 

Cleansing needs a buff so it can better mitigate poison at higher levels. Increase poison duration reduction by 15% at each level. 

Resist Fire, Resist Cold, and Resist Lightning need their passive effects removed. These skills are free 1 point wonders that give paladin free resist all and max resists. These auras active resistance effects can be buffed by 15% to make up for it so people must use them to benefit from them. 

Salvation needs a hard cap of 100% resist all so people cannot scale it to the point of being just as good as the individual resist auras. 

Redemption needs a 25% buff to range, redemption chance, and mana/life earned so it is worth using. 

Defiance needs to add 1% physical damage reduction per 2 points up to a 10% hard cap. Currently defiance feels useless because defense only helps to prevent the occasional hit but does nothing to mitigate damage taken. 

Offensive Auras Changes 

Sanctuary needs a change to apply to demons and undead.

Blessed Aim needs to remove the passive effects. If you want the accuracy it grants then you must use the aura. 

Holy Fire, Holy Freeze, and Holy Shock should have 50% of the effects of their defensive synergies applied to them while the offensive aura is active. Reason being is if you're running a paladin with these skills then you can't run both the offensive and defensive auras so running the offensive auras should grant benefits from the defensive auras. (i.e. running holy shock should grant 50% of the resist lightning aura, scaling with points invested in it). 

Holy Fire, Holy Freeze, and Holy Shock need increased added damage later in the game and need a more active playstyle instead of walking around DPS. Change the offensive synergy on each to increase the elemental damage added to weapon attacks only by 25% / 30% / 10%. This will result in a 10% / 7% / 4% reduction in aura dps and a 15% / 23% / 6% increase in elemental weapon attack damage. 

Combat Skills 

Sacrifice needs to remove the damage to self or keep it at 1% at all levels. Both synergies should be changed to 12% which should give a 17% damage increase at max levels. Sacrifice needs a slashing effect added similar to cleave and can hit up to 3 enemies.

Vengeance needs to add an elemental explosion at 33% of your damage of each element every 3 hits to help with AoE. It also needs to only cost 8 mana at all levels because it's extremely mana intensive at max level currently. 

Conversion needs a re-work so it will passively have a chance to resurrect a slain demon/undead to fight for you. A maximum of 10% chance and 1 revive at 1 point, 20% chance and 2 revives at 10 points, and 30% chance and 3 revives at 20 points. The chance increases with hard and soft points invested. 

Blessed Hammer needs to change the Vigor synergy to Concentration and reduce both synergies to 13% each. This will be roughly a 13% dps nerf but will give an extra 23 points to spend elsewhere. 

Charge simply needs collision fixed. If it collides with something instead of burning all your mana charging in place it should simply stop casting. If this isn't possible then reduce the channeled mana cost by 50%. 

Smite needs the always hit replaced by ignore target defense. This puts it on par with other melee skills so it hits 95% of the time without any AR but isn't so OP that it never misses. To compensate Smite's damage should have a 10% damage synergy with Sacrifice. This will help make smite less of a 1 point wonder as maxing it out will now double its damage.

Fist of Heavens needs its mana cost reduced to 20 so it's more viable early on. 

ASSASSIN: 

Martial Arts 

Overall MA sin needs a core change to make it less clunky but less op than mosaic made it. The damage actually doesn't feel bad in the end game but the gameplay is super clunky with maintaining charges. Mosaic made this too broken so I think the key change here would be changing the charge-up/finishers mechanic. This is how I'd simplify it but I'm curious what others would do. I've seen things about adding a longer timer to charge-up skills or having finishers not consume them. I think we should simplify this build so players don't have to panic about charges and have more choice over what gets consumed. 

Charge-Up skills add a UI ticker that shows how many charges you have. Charge-Up skills only lose 1 charge when used by a Finisher.

Finishers now only consume the last Charge acquired.

How this would work? Hit enemy 3 times with Phoenix strike to build up 3 charges, use 3 finishers or 1 finisher 3 times to consume charges 1 at a time. 

Shadow Disciplines 

Venom needs a synergy to scale damage more in end game. Add Cloak of Shadows (or another non-claws shadow skill) as a synergy that gives +10% poison damage per level. This will help increase poison damage for MA and blade sin builds. 

Psychic Hammer needs a re-work to be usable. Change it to an AoE knockback that is guaranteed to knockback all enemies within 4 yards. This will be a better use as a panic skill. 

Cloak of Shadows should cast Psychic Hammer and/or Mind Blast to whatever level they are in your tree so it has more utility. 

Shadow Master needs major buffs to be a viable follower like valk is for Amazon. Double the AR at each level so the shadow can actually hit. Reduce mana cost by half because it's extremely expensive. Have Shadow Master prioritize the skills you have the most points in so it focuses on using higher end skills. 

Traps 

Lightning and Fire traps are in a very good spot currently but cost a lot of mana, especially in early game. Nerf mana cost of all trap skills by 20% or at least target the high cost ones.

Blade Shield needs to not use weapon durability so it matches other blade skills. This is a very annoying mechanic that requires frequent repairs for no reason. This would open up ethereal weapons for this build which will help scale its damage better, which is badly needed.

Blade Sentinel needs the hidden next hit delay removed. This will make the skill feel better when it can be hitting more often, especially given its fairly low damage and no AR bonuses. 

Blade Fury needs the bonus AR increased to 300% at 20 points instead of 200%. 

Reduce 2H weapon penalty from blade skills. The current 3/8 penalty makes 1H always BIS. 2H weapons should increase damage of the skills, but reduce attack speed and survivability that 1H weapons give so people can choose between hard hits or more utility.

Diablo 2 Resurrected - Reign of the Warlock PTR 3.20 Feedback

It's now been over a month since the start of ladder season 13 and almost 2 months since the release of Reign of the Warlock (RotW). After playing through the Warlock extensively on ladder and in PTR I'm ready to give some feedback on the changes being made, as well as some ideas for the future of D2R. 

Let's go over the patch notes for the 3.20 PTR and my response to every single one on how it feels and if further changes are necessary after testing. 

Overall this patch has performance and stability issues. Load screens are extremely long, CPU & RAM usage are very high, and overall the game can be laggy or even freeze at times. I hope this instability doesn't carryover to the regular game when it goes live. 

Reset stats/skills at Akara does not work and all quests are completed so we cannot re-specialize our build in the PTR but Blizzard finally gave us a few tokens so we could try a few build variations.

Future game idea: the game also needs a way to respec 1 point at a time. Perhaps through the use of a single essence to refund a single skill point instead of a full token for a full reset. 

DEMON TREE Changes: Overall there are lots of good changes being made to the Demon Tree but there are some further changes necessary. I feel Goatman needs a swing back up in attack speed, the Tainted needs re-work, the Defiler needs a nerf, Blood Boil needs a buff again, Consume doesn't do what tooltip says, and Bind Demon needs a major re-work because it feels really bad now.

Demonic Mastery - Max demon count now requires base skill point investment to increase its value. 

Hard points only affect demon count, points from items still grant the damage and speed buffs.

1-9 points = 1 demon, 10-19 points = 2 demons, 20+ points = 3 demons

Note: this includes your bound + summoned demon so if you want to run a defiler with a bound demon then you need 10 hard points

Overall this is a good change to demonic mastery by requiring hard points. It forces investment to get more than 1 demon (i.e. 1 point wonder) and it still gives bonuses to demons if you get more soft points from equipped gear.

Summon Goatman - Attack Speed bonuses granted by skill are capped to 50%.

I Invested 1 hard point + 13 gear points (1 max goat, ~1k dps, 41% attack speed, ~2.9k hp, 6% crushing blow)

Overall this feels like a mediocre change. It takes 20 points in goatman to hit the attack speed cap but Goatman still feels pretty weak as a companion compared to other summons and bound demons. I'd like to see the attack speed raised up to 75% and maybe add life leech to their attacks so they survive better.

Summon Tainted - Fixed Summon Tainted damage to increase from Blood Boil synergy. 

I tried this skill as a 1 point and 20 point variation and found a bug with how the new synergy damage scales. TAINTED IS CURRENTLY BUSTED ON PTR DUE TO A DAMAGE SCALING BUG FROM THE CHANGES AND THEY ARE DOING 45K DPS. This feels like they made the synergy multiplicative instead of additive and it's doing 16x the damage instead of 4x the damage from the maxed out synergy.

Overall I feel the Tainted should be a support summon for the fire warlock. Once the damage bug is fixed it'll feel very weak, especially against fire immunes. Since a warlock is capped at 3 demons there will be no reason to run Tainted because it cannot handle fire immunes. I'd like to see this demon provide a holy fire or fire resist aura and provide a negative fire resistance to enemies upon hitting them (fire exposure). This would be a natural pairing with the fire warlock build that could make it a more enjoyable build experience once you hit the fire immune enemies.

Summon Defiler - no changes in patch notes.

Defiler still feels too overpowered at spreading damage screen wide with its damage share ability. I'm surprised there wasn't a nerf to amount of damage shared between targets or fewer linked targets per level. It also feels very tanky without much investment so a slight HP nerf is necessary too.

Blood Oath - Damage Transfer stat capped at 50%. 

This was a good change because it avoids damage sharing up to 99% and it doesn't really hit the 50% cap as a 1 point wonder so it still requires serious investment to hit the 50% cap. Most people will only put 1 point into this skill unless they're doing a demon only warlock build so it should feel fine going forward. 

Blood Boil - Range updated to have three distinct ranges based off level thresholds: 

Level 1-4: 2 yards. Level 5-9: 3 yards. Level 10+: 4. yards. 

This was a really bad change to Blood Boil. It's difficult to locate demons where you want them to deal damage because once you teleport them they run off randomly. I saw no advantage for how the range used to be and even at 20 points this skill feels bad. I'd like to see these range changes revert and a slight nerf to the damage (~10-15% nerf) or put the skill on a skill delay to compensate for having the larger damage radius.

Consume - Updated bonuses to provide different values based on game difficulty of the consumed demon when it was bound.

Consume change only works for bound demons in the PTR. Summoned demons give the same values in every difficulty at every skill level which seems wrong. Otherwise I agree with the intent of this change because it should give lower buffs for lower level demons. 

Bind Demon - Requires base skill point investment to bind demons.

10 – champion. 15 – unique. 20 – super unique. 

Synergy for chance to bind from Death Mark reduced from 1% to 0.5%.

Reduced the benefit missing health grants. It now increases the chance to bind to demon and varies by type.

Introduced max health cap which varies by each demon.

Cursed Affix chance to cast Amplify Damage skill reduced to 5% from 75%.

Mana Cost reduced to 9 per second.

Removed Conviction Aura, Holy Fire Aura, Holy Lightning Aura, Blessed Aim Aura, and Might Aura from possible pool. When these roll they are now replaced with Fanaticism, Vigor, Thorns, Concentration. Holy Freeze can still roll on a bound demon. 

Fixed Bind Demon to not roll a bind chance every 2 frames, now checks to bind on the 24th frame.

This is the worst change in the PTR patch. I CANNOT BIND A DEMON. I am literally spamming bind demon on every demon I see and it's not working. I am holding down the channeling and taking enemies down to lower HP levels and it still refuses to bind enemies. 

On paper I should be at a 25% chance to bind at 10 points invested so I would expect to bind any demon in 4+ attempts but I literally cannot succeed. I don't know if it's the synergy nerf, the bind every 24 frames change, or the chance to bind based on missing hp. All I know is I either die or kill the demon I want to die before I can get it bound. 

These changes need to revert. Binding a demon shouldn't be this difficult. They finally gave me a bound demon on a new PTR character but once I lost it, I could never get a new one back. 

Here are some suggestions to change how this skill works: 

1) don't base bind demon chance on missing hp because when we kill enemies quickly then we cannot bind them because they are either full hp or dead. I've run into this problem every time, I end up killing the demons I want to bind because I can't stop them from taking damage from other sources.

2) chance to bind needs to be real. If it says 25% but I cast it 100 times and get 0 binds then it's not accurate. This is most likely due to a bug or over nerf, but still the sheet info should match reality. A 25% chance to bind should bind a demon in 4 tries so the chance to bind calculation needs an update to match what the actual chance is when you hover over the demon. 

3) remove the demon max hp cap or greatly increase it because the low hp cap ruins the idea of a demon warlock build. The new hp cap lets demons die quite easily in the end game. If bound demons are intended to die then maybe bind demon should simply create a copy of that demon and then you can re-summon it once it dies like Valkyrie and Clay Golem. Otherwise the demon needs to be tanky enough to survive most encounters because I cannot gear them up to survive and binding a new demon is a time wasting task.

4) cursed demons should cast amplify damage on a timer, instead of on a chance. Once every 5 seconds they should cast their curse and the curse should last 3 seconds. The old way everything was cursed screen wide easily but the new way I rare see curses on enemies. This ensures consistency in cursing but not to the point where everything is cursed all the time. I'd also like to see other curses other than amplify damage, such as decrepify.

5) Fanaticism needs to be removed just like Conviction aura. An argument could be made for removing all auras A2 mercs can provide as well so that we don't have overlapping auras. The fire and lightning auras shouldn't be removed from bound demons. I'd also like to see more auras added to replace conviction and fanaticism like Vigor, Resist Fire, Redemption, and/or Sanctuary.

CHAOS TREE Changes: The changes here were a bit surprising. RoF nerf feels unnecessary but doesn't hurt leveling experience at least. Flame Wave and Miasma Chains were over nerfed by a bit and need a slight buff again. 

Sigil: Lethargy - Removed the Damage Taken stat.

It's an ok change, but maybe replace damage taken with cast speed instead of just removing it that way the sigil slows attackers and casters which fits its description better.

Ring of Fire - Damage reduced to be more similar to Frost nova damage.

In Normal this isn't noticeable which is good but at higher levels this could be an issue because that's typically when this skill falls off. It just feels like an unnecessary change because ring of fire is a leveling skill that's super powerful in Normal campaign and there's better fire skills in the end game. If anything they should've nerfed its early game damage and left the late game damage alone.

Flame Wave - 15% Damage Reduction.

This change is not noticeable in early game but it seems like too big of a nerf in the end game, especially since it's the only reliable fire damage skill in end game. I hope they walk back this nerf to maybe 5-10% reduction instead.

Miasma Chains - Removed casting delay. Added active chain limit of 5. Reduced cloud damage by 50%. Fixed Miasma Chains clouds to not exponentially tick. Fixed Miasma Chains clouds to respect next hit delay if they were generated by the same chain.

Cast delay removal feels amazing but limiting the chain and nerfing damage by 50% is too big of a nerf to this skill which wasn't that powerful to begin with. This skill needs to be as good as other chain and dot skills. It's a similar playstyle in a way with the chaining but it's a dot and requires positioning so it's actually worse than current chaining and damage over time skills. 

Miasma Chains needs more damage and chaining to more targets doesn't hurt. There's no way to scale magic dots in this game like we can with poison dots so the base dps has to be decent. Chaining number should go up with points invested and can hit perhaps up to 10 targets (1 target per 2 points allocated up to 10 chains).

Overall Miasma Chains damage nerf should be maybe 25% instead of 50% and max targets chained should be 10 not 5. This combined with no cast delay might make it a viable build.

Miasma Bolt - Fixed Miasma Bolt so that it no longer double ticks.

This is a good bug fix, and it's working fine. However, it is a big nerf to the skill which means the other nerfs to miasma aren't as justified. The miasma skills feel awful as a result.

Abyss - Fixed Enhanced Entropy so that Abyss Radius, Miasma radius, and miasma duration, increases with bonus skill level for break point increases instead of base skill points. 

This seems to work fine as a bug fix but again it feels like a nerf to the miasma cloud. They nerfed miasma chain cap, miasma chain damage, the double tick of damage on miasma bolt, and the abyss cloud radius and duration. Overall the Magic Damage Warlock build now feels terrible in PTR and needs to be buffed again.

ELDRITCH TREE Changes: These nerfs were needed and warranted. This tree still feels S-tier in the PTR with the right gear and points invested.

Echoing Strike - Reduced damage synergy bonus from 5% to 3%. Fixed Echoing Strike damage bonuses to be additive and not multiplicative. Fixed Echoing Strike not rolling to hit. Fixed Echoing Strike not incurring durability loss on the weapon.

Echoing Strike feels nerfed but still strong. I can clear P1 Hell fairly easily still but I cannot delete Uber bosses like I could before. 

However, I'd like to see Echoing Strike not be an FCR + AR hybrid skill because itemization isn't built around a hybrid attack/cast skill like this. I'd rather it scale with attack speed + AR (like a traditional attack build) or if it remains a caster then FCR scales attack speed and have hit chance tied to amount of points in the skill up to max hit chance (95%) at 20+ points.

Eldritch Blast - Life and mana steal made static at 5%. 

Overall this change is ok but I think it should start at 1% and go up to 10% (1% every 2 points). Most people use this skill as a 1 point wonder so it plays well into that but I think people should be rewarded for investing points into the skill.

I'd also like to see all 3 Hexes be the synergies for this skill, or at least the bottom Hex be the synergy, so someone can choose which of the 3 hexes they want to use with it. This would ensure the skill is being utilized for its intended purpose which is Hexes. 

This concludes the play testing of all the nerfs to the Warlock. Overall I think Blizzard did a good job of bringing the Warlock back down to the existing classes in the game. I think they over nerfed fire and miasma slightly, they got echoing strike into a pretty good spot, and they completely botched the balance of the demon tree.

Terror Zones/Heralds/Sunder Charms Changes: 

Colossal Ancient Statues can now drop from non-Terrorized act bosses.

I really don't agree with this change. I think Terrorized Act bosses having a unique drop tied to them, which then further unlocked a new end game, was a great change. If this change does go live then I hope the non-TZ act bosses have a much much lower drop chance than the TZ act bosses.

The chance to drop Worldstone Shards is no longer modified by player count.

I absolutely love this change and I hope they start applying this philosophy to more items in the game. I believe player count is a very contentious thing in the game now that people realized how good the drop rates are in P8. People now want P8 in online even when playing solo. I think removing player counter to magic find formulas and giving everyone the same drop chances would be a welcome change to the community. 

Heralds now spawn and hunt players immediately upon killing any monster in a Terror Zone. The chance for a Herald to hunt you is increased with each monster killed within the same Terrorized Zone.

Heralds spawn way more frequently now and it feels like a bit of an over correction. I think they should find a halfway point between what it was and what it is now. This also resulted in heralds spawning directly on top of you out of nowhere which nobody likes. Hopefully they go back to the heralds spawning off screen again.

Latent Sunder Charms can drop from any monster, Terrorized and non-Terrorized, using Magic Find. 

This is not the change I wanted for Sunder Charms. I absolutely love sunders and was not a fan of them never dropping. However, they should only ever drop from TZ's so that they are not rewarded until someone beats Hell and unlocks Hell TZ's. This also makes Gheed's Charm even more rare because unique charms can now be Sunders in non-TZ games. I'd like to see this change reverted so Sunders can drop from any TZ monster.

The increased chance to drop a Latent Sunder Charm now starts at Heralds of Dread (Tier 2) instead of Tier 4. 

This is a great change. It was very difficult to get a Tier 4+ Herald to spawn in a game and when it did, it was very difficult to kill and didn't drop Sunders ever. Now it appears everyone will get a chance to farm a Sunder, which is great.

The increased chance to drop a Latent Sunder Charm from Heralds is no longer heavily modified by player count.

Again, this is a great change in the right direction. D2R drops should never be modified by player count. This would end the discussion on people requesting a toggle to change player count in their online games.

If the increased chance to drop a Latent Sunder Charm from Heralds fails to drop a Latent Sunder Charm, there is an increased chance of dropping something desirable instead, like a charm or amulet.

I genuinely love this change. It makes hunting and killing Heralds rewarding. Unfortunately it feels a bit over tuned. I think the first 2 "free" Heralds should not get this buff. It should only apply to Tier 3+ Heralds. This way people still get a small chance on the first 2 "free" Heralds but still have to farm a bit to get the good loot.

Last Epoch - Defensive Affixes/Modifiers Explained

This will be a quick explanation of basic affixes you'll see on most items and passives. These affixes will be broken up into Offensive Affixes & Defensive Affixes. 

Credit: lastepoch.com

Defensive Affixes & Modifiers: from affixes, blessings/shrines, skills, and passives

Life/Health Modifiers: 

Health works to protect against all damage sources. 

Health can be recovered via health regeneration, health leech, health on hit, healing potions, health gain on kill, & health gain on dodge. 

Ward: 

Ward is a shield on top of health, similar to energy shield from PoE but it's not always up and will reduce over time. 

Ward can be scaled in size and duration, leeched, gained on hit, regenerated, gained on skill use, and gained on kill. 

Best classes to scale Ward are Mage, Acolyte, Rogue, and Sentinel. 

Resistance: 

Resistances provide damage reduction against specific damage types: cold, fire, lightning, physical, poison, necrotic, and void. 

Resistances cap at 75% and you will want them all positive in campaign and capped in the end game. 

Armor: 

Armor reduces physical damage taken and slightly reduces non-physical damage taken. 

Armor has no effect on DoTs/Ailments. 

Armor provides less defense vs higher level enemies. 

Dodge: 

Dodge provides a random chance to avoid all damage per hit taken. 

It caps at 85% and has diminishing returns above 75%. 

Scales from "chance to dodge" modifiers. 

Endurance: 

Endurance provides a percent of damage reduction when it triggers and only protects health, not ward. 

Endurance works for all damage taken, including DoTs, but only protects health levels below threshold. 

Endurance triggers when health threshold reaches less than 20% (by default). 

Endurance Threshold scales the likelihood of endurance triggering and caps at 60%. 

Threshold can scale via "added" (additive) & "increased" (multiplicative) modifiers. 

Endurance is used to protect against 1 shots as it'll ensure the last bit of health you have is protected. 

Block: 

Block provides a chance to reduce damage on hits. Block does nothing against DoTs/Ailments. 

Block Effectiveness scales how much damage is reduced. 

Chance to Block scales to provide likelihood of blocking attacks. 

Shields aren't required for blocking but provide the best block scaling. 

Chance to block can scale to 100% and block effectiveness caps at 85%.

Critical Defense: 

Crit defense provides reduction to crit damage taken and can cap at 100% (crit immunity). 

Stun Avoidance: 

Stun avoidance reduces chances of being stunned and can cap at 100% (stun immunity). 

Damage Reduction: 

Reduced Damage Taken or Less Damage Taken gives a flat reduction to damage taken but doesn't work against DoTs/Ailments. 

Debuffs: 

Specific debuffs/curses on enemies can reduce the damage they output via lowering their attack/cast speed. 

Frailty - reduces enemy damage output by 6% per stack up to 3 stacks. 

Chill - reduces enemy speed by 12% per stack up to 3 stacks. 

Blind - reduces enemy crit chance by 100%. 

Stun - Prevents enemies from moving or attacking. 

Last Epoch - Offensive Affixes/Modifiers Explained

This will be a quick explanation of basic affixes you'll see on most items. These affixes will be broken up into Offensive Affixes & Defensive Affixes. 

Credit: lastepoch.com

Offensive Affixes & Modifiers 

Damage Modifiers: 

Added Damage. adds base # damage to attacks. Everything multiplies after added damage. 

Increased Damage. multiplies the base damage after all additive damage is calculated. 

Added damage sources multiply by increased damage's %. 

Example: (Added fire + added melee) * [(increased fire% + increased melee%)*100]. 

3 added fire damage

3 added melee damage

30% increased fire damage

30% increased melee damage

(3*1.3 + 3*1.3)  = 7.8 total damage

Using multiple damage types/sources makes it harder to stack increased damage. It's easier to scale damage using the same damage type. 

Each damage type is increased only by its specific corresponding "% increased damage" type, making it crucial to match flat added damage with the same type of % increased damage for maximum efficiency. 

Critical Modifiers: 

Critical hits do double damage when a crit hit happens. 

Critical damage increases with added crit & increased crit (similar to added damage & increased damage). 

Crits do not increase Damage over Time or Ailments. 

Critical hit chance can be increased up to 100%. 

Enemies can avoid crits via a crit avoidance buff they have or a crit debuff on you. 

Rogue has a crit debuff skill they can apply to enemies. 

Buffs/Debuffs: 

Buffs and debuffs can be given to player and to enemies. They add to damage dealt/taken in a different way.

Shred: Stacks a 4 second debuff on specific stat when they get hit (such as armor shred). Does 2% boss or 5% regular enemy per stack up to 10 max stacks of shred. 

Penetrate: Penetrates specific resistance. Can’t go below -75% resist penetrated.

Increased Damage Taken: Simply increases the amount of damage type taken in an additive (not multiplicative) way. Can stack with penetration & shred. 

Damage over Time (DoTs): 

• DoT is damage that ticks per second over a period of time. 
• Base DoT duration + Increased DoT duration gives total damage over time. 
• DoT cannot be scaled by crit. 
• DoT can be inflicted via specific skills or ailments. DoTs via ailments will be triggered on hit. 
• DoT is scaled via duration, penetration, shred, and damage sources related to the DoT. 

Example: Physical damage over time (bleed ailment). 

Maximize attack speed and increased phys DoT chance to increase how likely a bleed will occur and to get more bleed stacks (no max stacks so higher bleed chance and higher attack speeds can stack 100+ times). 

Increasing bleed duration keeps those stacks on longer and increased DoT/physical DoT will increase bleed damage per tick. 

Physical penetration + phys resist shred will make enemies take more bleed damage. 

Ailments: 

Bleed, Poison, Ignite. Frostbite. Electrify. 

Chance to apply an ailment can be over 100% in case enemies have buffs or you have debuffs lowering the chances of applying an ailment. 

All major DoTs via ailments will be uncapped. A few specific ailments will be capped and will be stated in the skill's description (such as time rot). 

Attack & Cast Speed: 

These affixes are typically found on weapons. Dual wielders speed is based on average of both weapons equipped. 

Overall base attack/cast speed is based on average of skill speed + weapon speed. 

Attack/Cast speed scales via Increased Cast or Increased Attack Speed modifiers. 

Certain skills won't scale in speed (such as dancing strikes or channeled skills) unless the skill specifically states it. 

Convert Damage / Damage Conversion: 

These modifiers/affixes will convert the base damage of skills or all damage sources of skills to another damage type. 

3 Most Common Conversions: 

Convert base skill damage. 

Convert passive skill node. 

Convert all sources of X to Y. (i.e. fire to cold). 

Damage conversion can be used to convert a skill to match damage types that work with your build or to convert part of skill damage type to help with monster resists. 

Minions: 

Minions scale independently from player skills and affixes. Only ballistas share some passive nodes with player. 

Passive nodes & affixes related to minion scaling will have specific wording: 

Minion, Companion, Totem, Allies, Shared, You & Minions, etc...

Last Epoch - Crafting Starter Guide

This is a simple guide explaining each crafting mechanic at a high level. 

Players under level 15 will encounter a crafting tutorial during their first time progressing through the Osprix War Camp. This brief tutorial will walk you through upgrading an Old Silver Ring. You’ll learn how to add and upgrade affixes on items as well as using glyphs. The tutorial will only need to be cleared once per stash, so you shouldn’t have to see it too much during a season.

NOTE: SEASON 4 IS COMING WITH NEW CRAFTING CHANGES. 

The new corruption system will be similar to PoE's vaal orbs where you can use a Rune of Corruption on an item to get a random outcome. This outcome could be a big upgrade, downgrade, or brick the item, and this item can never be modified again, but can be shattered or vendored if you don't like the outcome. 

Credit: lastepoch.com

Start crafting once you can afford runes of shattering. 

Use runes of shattering in forge menu (press F) on items to gain crafting shards from them. This is a dismantling mechanic. 

During campaign you want to mostly vendor all unused items for gold, but in end game you want to start dismantling as many items as you can afford to (usually 50/50 on dismantle vs vendor).

Reforging/Forging Potential: 

You can craft/reforge items as long as they have forging potential. 

Different types or crafting/re-rolling spend different amounts of potential but can be modified via glyphs. Zero potential means you can no longer craft/re-roll an item. 

Exalted items are best forging potential items.

Item Rarity/Levels: 

Normal (white), Magic (blue), Rare (yellow), Exalted (purple), Unique (orange/golden brown), Legendary (dark red/crimson)

Legendary & Unique:

• Legendary potential on a unique item is required to make it a legendary.
• Combine a unique you like with an exalt of the same type (exalt must have 4 unsealed affixes and ensure they are high level good affixes you want), to create the legendary. 
• Legendaries must be created in the eternity cache at the end of the Temporal Sanctum dungeon. Higher dungeon tiers are required to craft higher level uniques. You can eventually skip to boss using tokens at the start of the dungeon. 
• You can also get random legendaries via upgrading a Nemesis boss which you'll encounter throughout the game.
• Save your exalted items that roll high tier affixes that you'd want on a future legendary.

Affixes: 

• Every item has 4 affixes (2 prefixes + 2 suffixes). 
• Crafting screen shows prefixes on left side and suffixes on right side. 
• Best of the Common Affixes: health, resists, primary stats, attack boosts for your skills, +skill levels
• Key Affixes on Specific Items:
• Belts - hybrid health, cleanse ailments (you should seal this one when 100% cleanse shows up on a T1/T2 ailment affix), elemental/spell resists, defensive stats
• Gloves - Attack or Cast speed
• Boots - Movement speed
• Weapon - Attack speed, spell or attack damage

Shards: 

• Shards are used to add new affixes or affix tiers to items. 
• Shards are affix specific.
• Each item can have 2 prefixes and 2 suffixes (4 affixes total). 
• Each affix can be Tier 1 – Tier 5 (tiers change the range of values). 
• Shards add a chance at critical success, adding a tier upgrade on top of the craft. Critical success doesn’t cost any extra materials or forging potential. 
• Shards are obtained via monster drops or via rune of shattering. Shards drop as items that will automatically go to your crafting wallet in your inventory when picked up.

Runes:

• Rune of Shattering: Destroys entire item creating shards. 
• Rune of Removal: removes a random affix from item and returns shards.
• Rune of Refinement: Rerolls all affix values within their same tiers. (PoE divine orb).
• Rune of Shaping: Rerolls all implicit modifiers. (these are the stat values between item name and affixes, PoE blessed orb).
• Rune of Ascendance: Upgrades an item into a unique or set item of the same type (i.e. turns rare chest into random unique or set chest, PoE ancient orb).
• Rune of Creation: Duplicates item and removes forging potential from both. (PoE mirror).

Glyphs:

• Glyph of Hope: Modifies craft to have a 25% chance of no forging cost. 
• Glyph of Chaos: Randomly modifies the outcome of an affix upgrade to another affix. 
• Glyph of Order: Guarantees the affix range when upgrading an affix to the next tier. (i.e. max T3 upgraded with GoO would guarantee a max T4 roll).
• Glyph of Despair: Has a chance to seal a random affix on the item forever and freeing up the affix slot for a new one. (low chance to seal T3+)

Reforging Sets into Affix Shards: 

A new echo was created from Season 2 onwards which allows you to break down your unwanted set items into affix shards so you can roll set bonuses onto other items. 

You can get these shards via choosing The Great Bridge Woven Echo, which you can get on your monolith when you complete a Woven Echo and use the Echo Chamber at the end of it to modify existing echoes in your current monolith timeline into specific woven echoes. 

Ensure you save all your unwanted set items and run this woven echo 1-2 times per timeline to break down all your set items into affix shards.

Last Epoch - Important Keybinds To Use Often

This is a simple guide providing all the most used keybinds. Memorize these because you'll use them. 

Credit: lastepoch.com

G = in game guide, description of everything in the game. Best in game wiki ever made.

J = show quests journal

H = social list (friends/guild/party)

Hold Alt + Mouse over item = shows details of item stats and tooltips 

Alt + Z = shows tooltips for items on ground

Shift + F = loot filter menu

X = toggle loot filter on/off

Shift + K = cosmetics/transmogs

K = MTX panel

P = passive skill tree 

(brain vendor in town is used for passive respec, and you can get specific or all points back immediately)

S = skill tree 

(Drag skills into active skill slots at top of screen and click these to open skill subtrees.)  

(You can respec in skill tree window but skill respec does not instantly give points back and you must re-earn them)

F = crafting/forge

A = command minions

Shift + right click = sell or move item to open window 

Last Epoch Corruption System Explained - Seasons 1-4

This is a brief summary of how to push your corruption once you get to the end end game in Last Epoch. To get to the starting point you must beat the campaign, as well as go through the entire monolith system once before you can start with corruption. 

Credit: lastepoch.com

In your corrupted monolith, complete echoes in one direction away from the center until you see a Shade of Orobyss (it will look like a dark crystal mountain on the echo).

On your way there, build up Stability by completing echos and killing the timeline boss. Each timeline boss kill grants 1 Gaze of Orobyss. Each Gaze gives 12 bonus corruption when you kill the shade, and you can consume up to 4 Gaze at a time.

The total corruption goes up by # of gaze (ideally 12x) + base corruption on the Shade of Orobyss echo map (shown on the bottom right of monolith UI). 

Ideally you want to get to 25+ corruption in a single run, which is what is required for continuing the Forgotten Knights Faction quests. 

Most likely you will kill 3 corrupted timeline bosses before you kill Shade of Orobyss.

Once you have +25 corruption in your current timeline then you should move to the next timeline. 

Complete 1 echo in the new timeline and a "free" pity Shade of Orobyss fight connects to your completed echo. Kill it to jump up ~90% of the max corruption. If you did consume 3x gazes, you should immediately bump up +30-40 corruption simply by doing the catch-up shade in the new timeline. 

Eventually you gain stability tokens to make spawning the timeline boss quicker and gaze idols that give you additional gaze credit. You still have to grind out echoes to the edge of each timeline to find the Orobyss for the timelines though so don't waste these tokens until you find the Orobyss.

Repeat all of the above steps until you are at +300 corruption and all Harbingers are dead. This will eventually unlock higher levels of corruption for each timeline and the ability to fight Aberoth/Uber Aberoth.

You can track your progress in the 2nd tab of the Forgotten Knights panel.

D2R Ladder Season 13 - Reign of the Warlock Review and Echoing Strike Build (updated post PTR nerfs)

D2R Ladder 13 is in full swing now and with it came some huge changes to the game that haven't been seen in 15 years. We got a new class, new ways to farm the end game, new items, and a fresh ladder. 

Credit: Activision/Blizzard

Let's start with the review of the paid DLC. RotW was shadow dropped out of nowhere. Several leaks predicted it, but nobody believed them (myself included). RotW was $25 USD/EUR. For this price you would expect substantial amount of content, akin to an expansion. Instead it was a new class, some much needed stash quality of life, and a re-work of the terror zone end game system. Overall it is not worth the full price, unless you have the time and money to spend on it. Personally I'd recommend waiting for a sale, but my hope is Blizzard uses the money to continue to update the game because they introduced a lot that needs fixing. 

1. The new class - warlock: 

Overall the warlock class feels out of place in D2. It feels more like a D3 and D4 class. It has very colorful spells, mostly purple, which conflict with the darker and more grim tones of D2. People complained that D3 was too colorful like WoW, so it's odd seeing Blizzard go so heavily into a purple themed class. 

As usual, Blizzard released the new class in a very over tuned state. This is common for them to do because they want to drive sales of the new content because everyone wants to play the most powerful class. That may work in modern ARPGs but in a game like D2, which is mostly played by older generations, this tactic backfired a bit. People are upset at how powerful it is and how easy the game is using this class. The class has no obvious flaws, every skill is good and powerful, and certain builds can clear the game without any good gear. This makes warlock feel pay to win because of how powerful it is. You can watch videos from Llama and Cooley to see just how over powered this class is currently. 

2. The Stash QoL

The quality of life to the stash is something players have wanted for a decade now. The game was so limited in what loot you could carry and forced people to create alternate characters to simply be mules. The stackable currencies and gems means people can horde to their heart's content and this alone makes the game much more approachable. It also comes with 5 shared stash tabs instead of 3 which further adds to the quality. 

3. The end game rework

With RotW we got a new end game system tied to terror zones. TZ's were introduced in an earlier D2R update and were very widely loved by the community. They increased the difficulty and loot for a specific area for an hour and could drop a new item called a Sunder Charm. These charms helped break the immunity of a specific element at the cost of a large negative for that same element. Unfortunately the new terror zones are now only 30 minutes instead of an hour, and sunder charm drop rates were nerfed into non-existence. 

The new system relies on a player to stay in the same game for hours (4-8 hours) without leaving. This is because there's a new end game monster that randomly spawns called a herald. The more unique/champ packs killed, the higher the odds are of a herald spawning, and the herald is the one who can drop the new sunder charm. Additionally, unique/champs/heralds can drop worldstone shards which can terrorize an entire Act at a time. 

Act bosses also drop an item called a statue and when all 5 statues are collected a new uber version of the ancients can be unlocked. Killing them drops a new jewel which is very powerful (more powerful than facets). 

Overall Blizzard needs to up the spawn rate of heralds because nobody has time to farm hours straight, and they need to increase the drop rates of sunders. Sunders were a balanced way of introducing more build variety to ladder start. Without them builds like fire and lightning require super expensive gear to work in hell difficulty, especially in terror zones which often have dual immune enemies.

4. Overall review of RotW

RotW isn't worth the $25 cost, the addition of warlock was weird and too overpowered, the new end game system needs a lot of work to be worthwhile, and the stash QoL was a huge win to the game. This puts the paid DLC as a mediocre rating to me. I wouldn't recommend it for anyone at this time, but maybe in a few months it'll be on sale and things will be better balanced.

ECHOING STRIKE BUILD

Now let's get into my warlock build for the season, the echoing strike build. I chose this build because initially I wanted to do a trapsin but with the changes to sunders I knew ladder start would be impossible on that build. My friend was going to do a fire warlock so I decided to go melee and chose echoing strike because it reminded me of spectral throw from path of exile. 

Let's be frank, echoing strike is beyond busted at this point. There are videos of people running around with no gear and clearing the hell difficulty. My experience has been similar once I got my points fully invested in it and got the demon I wanted. However, I think with the correct tuning this build can still be good but not completely busted so let's get into it. 

Leveling: You can level using echoing strike but you will be chugging mana potions non-stop, even with an insight. 

Your best bet for leveling is using ring of fire for normal and first half of NM, and demonic summons for nightmare, and swapping to echoing strike + demonic in hell. 

Demonic summons are extremely powerful and the ability to bind a demon can make the game much easier with a good demon (such as lister from baal's minions, hephaestus from the hell forge, or basically any unique monster who has an aura and is cursed). 

You can be creative with your bound demon, for instance fallen shamans also come with their fallen army, and vile mothers from act 4 also come with their spawn which work as great distractions for enemies.

Just note that demonic mastery affects how many demons you can have including your bound demon. It takes 10 points here to have 2 summons and 20+ points for 3 summons. Ensure you do not accidentally unsummon your bound demon by summoning another demon. 

Echoing Strike - Skill Points: 

Ok once you swap to echoing strike here are the skills to spec into... 

Chaos skills: 

1 point - Sigil Lethargy 

This slows enemies and breaks their physical immunity when inside it so always have it down on your demon/merc to keep them alive. 

Demon skills: 

20 points into Bind Demon so you can capture a super unique (like hephaestus).

10 points in Demonic Mastery so you can have 2 demons (this is optional but helps with clear).

Use Bind Demon on a cursed + fanaticism (orange aura) unique or super unique monster. 

Use Summon Defiler to get more AoE damage with linked targets.

Use Engorge on corpses to heal your bound demon. 

Use Death Mark to teleport your bound demon into and out of battle. 

Eldritch skills:

1 point into a Hex. Pick one as a one point wonder.

Hex: Bane will be something you occasionally cast to imbue your weapon which adds a little damage and survivability to fights and helps with physical immunes on top of the sigil. 

Hex: Purge is a slightly better skill for aoe damage. 

Max points in this order - Echoing Strike, Mirrored Blades, Blade Warp, Levitation Mastery

Echoing Strike will be your main attack skill. 

Blade Warp will be your teleport. Use Blade Warp to get out of trouble or to traverse annoying terrain. It won't go through walls like teleport but it can jump gaps and holes in walls. It also brings your demons and merc with you so that helps with keeping them alive. 

Levitation Mastery helps with damage and chance to hit. You won't be able to fully maximize it but it's the best place to sync your remaining points. You can also put 1 point in demonic mastery if you want 9 more points here. This will increase your single target damage more at the expense of AoE from your defiler.

Note: Echoing Strike changes the spread of the weapons you're throwing based on where your cursor is when you cast it. The closer the cursor is to you, then bigger the spread. The further your cursor is from you then tighter the spread. In large packs it helps spreading the attack out because it shotguns an entire pack really well.

Typical game play cycle: 

• Cast Psychic Ward and Hex to refresh them occasionally. 
• Use Blade Warp to teleport the battlefield. 
• Use Death Mark to get your bound demon in and out of fights. 
• Use Sigil Lethargy under enemies that are surrounding your demon and merc to slow them. 
• Use Engorge to heal your demon(s). 
• Cast Echoing Strike near you in front of packs to shotgun the pack, and cast it far from you on single targets so all blades hit the boss. 

This is an action packed high APM build but most fights you can skip most of these steps to one shot everything with echoing strike since it's so powerful. 

Note: mana leech and mana on kill are huge for this build. You can self equip insight until you get those affixes on gear. 

Attribute Points: 

You will need plenty of dexterity and strength to equip your gear. Personally would recommend ~120-130 in each but ensure you keep some unallocated points handy in case you swap off an item that has attributes on it and you need to add some points to strength or dex. 

Rest of points into vitality. 

Note: warlock will get a passive that lowers requirements on gear which is super helpful and allows more points freed up for vitality. 

Leveling/Budget Gear: 

• Helmet: any rare or unique you can get your hands on, then any +1 or +2 skills helm you can get, or Rockstopper or Tal rasha's crest or Bulwark runeword or Peasant's Crown or Lore runeword. 

• Gloves: any rare, set or unique you can get then Magefists or Trang-Oul's Claws, or crafted Blood gloves (with leech and crushing blow). 

• Boots: any rare, set, or unique you can get then, Waterwalks or Infernostrides or Goblin Toes or Aldur's Advance or Wraithstep or Horazon's Legacy

• Belt: any rare, set, or unique you can get or crafted caster or blood belt. 

• Body Armor: any rare or unique you can get your hands on, then Stealth runeword, then Authority runeword. Spirit Shroud and Que-Hagans are also very good chest items to carry you to end game. 

• Weapon: warlocks can hold a 2H in one hand so target those for higher damage. 
• Insight runeword in a polearm will be best in slot for a while due to its meditation aura. Black runeword in a 3 socket mace will also work well until you get a 4 socket polearm. Even IK Maul, Tomb Reaver, Dreadfang Sword, or Arioc's Needle works.

• Offhand: Any rare or unique shield or book will do here. The rescue Anya quests for each difficulty will usually yield the best item you'll find for this slot while leveling. Other good options are runewords for Rhyme, Splendor, or Ancient's Pledge made in a socketed book. 

• Rings: Any rare or unique you find will suffice. A Ravenfrost could be helpful to prevent from being frozen if you don't have that affix on another gear item. Rings for this build aren't mandatory so they're a good spot to get life, resists, magic find, strength, and dexterity. Crafted Blood, Caster, Safety, and Hitpower rings will also do. 

• Amulets: Any magic, rare, or unique you find, especially with +skills. Amulet isn't mandatory so it's also a good slot to pickup +skills, resists, MF, and attributes. Crafted Blood, Caster, Safety, and Hitpower amulets will also do. 

End Game Gear: 

Gear Option 1: multiple great options in each slot

• Helmet: Guillaume's Face, Crown of Ages, Kira's Guardian, Harlequin Crest Shako, Hellwarden's Will, Horazon's Countenance, Coven runeword, or a well rolled 2/20 diadem. (well rolled 2/20 diadem or CoA will be best in slot here)

• Gloves: Steelrend, Magefists, Trang-Oul's Claws, dual leech crafted Blood gloves. (well crafted blood gloves will be best in slot because the dual leech and crushing blow will feel great in this build). 

• Boots: Sandstork Treks, War Travelers, Gore Riders (gore riders are bis for damage, treks for survival, war travs for mf). 

• Belt: Arachnid Mesh, String of Ears, Verdungo's Hearty Cord. (Arachnid is bis as always)

• Body Armor: Enigma, Fortitude (enigma is bis always but any of the budget chest pieces will work in this build, fortitude is best for damage)

• Weapon: Insight in elite polearm, obedience, breath of the dying, death, reaper's toll, last wish, fortitude (all are viable but BotD and Death should be bis). CTA and Spirit on swap.

• Offhand: Phoenix, Stormshield, Spirit, Ars Dul'Mephistos (mephistos is bis here)

• Rings: Stone of Jordan, well crafted dual leech ring, Bul-Kathos Wedding Band, Raven Frost, Sling ring, Opalvein (ravenfrost is mandatory if cannot be frozen is missing in your build)

• Amulets: Highlord's Wrath, well crafted +2 skills amulet (highlord's is bis) 

Best in Slot Weapon + Offhand post ES nerf = BotD in eth thunder maul + dul'mephistos. 

If you can't get a dul'mephistos you can make a Splendor or Vigilance in a grimoire/tome/codex/compendium with +2-3 echoing strike & mirrored blades/blade warp for similar dps.

Gear Option 2: full Horazon's set (Not as optimal as option 1 but option 2 looks cooler). You'll half your FCR and lose about 10% base dps on top of it so it's not advised in end game.

Merc: 

You can use an A2 (might) or A5 (frenzy) merc. Generally want to use A2 merc for leveling and swap to A5 merc around level 85 when he's high enough level to have the dex to equip phase blades. 

Ethereal items are always best for mercs because they can't lose durability and will come with higher stats. However, you can utilize non-eth until you find or afford better. Always itemize yourself first over your merc. 

A2 Merc: Holy Freeze (good survivability) or Might (good damage) are best mercenaries to use. 

A5 Merc: Frenzy is decent here, very fast, very survivable when geared, shouts taunt

A2 Merc Weapon - You want your merc to use insight (ral tir tal sol) but if you're self wielding insight then A2 merc can carry reaper's toll, breath of the dying, obedience, pride. 

A5 Merc Weapons - lightsabre (budget), lawbringer (in PB), last wish (in PB), grief (in PB)

A2 Merc Helm - start with Nadir (Nef Tir) or Bulwark (Shael Io Sol). 

Best uniques are Stealskull, Vampire Gaze, Crown of Thieves, and Andariel's Visage (andariel's is bis). 

A5 Merc Helm - Arreat's Face or Guillaume's Face

A2/A5 Merc Chest: use anything with good defensive stats until you find a good base to make Smoke (Nef Lum) or Hustle (Shael Ko Eld) or Lionheart (Hel Lum Fal). 

Duriel's shell or Shaftstop or Gladiator's Bane or Skin of the Flayed One are good budget unique options for mercs. 

Then use any of those until you find an elite ethereal base to make Treachery (Shael Thul Lem). 

Finally switch to a Fortitude (El Sol Dol Lo) or Chains of Honor (Dol Um Ber Ist). 

Note that once you get Fortitude you should still equip Treachery until fade procs then swap it out (only necessary for harder content like ubers). 

A2 Might Merc is bis but needs good gear to survive. Keeping your mercenary alive is key so use your teleport to get him away if he's about to get surrounded or is dying. Shift + belt slot will feed him potions.

Generic D2R Playthrough Guides: 

For playthrough, magic finding, and trading guides please look at my past blog posts. They are largely unchanged but I suggest you fine tune a few things that go with this build and this ladder theme. 

Overall this is an S-tier build with how broken it is and leveling with fire and transitioning to echoing strike is a very smooth and easy experience.