Just finished D2+LoD. It was fun. Felt draggy at times...

Just finished D2+LoD. It was fun. Felt draggy at times, and expected a tiny bit more of epicness like wc3/scbw from the reputation it has, but it's still quite fun. Maybe D3 can show some more grotesque stuff in their cinematics. My fav moment was trying to get that special hammer for the quest in Act1. I think that was the first actual dungeon you had to go through and the atmosphere was great in that big church and underground thing to kill Andariel. Act 2 was ok, but act 3 (jungle) was just annoying. Fighting and finding Duriel was also one of my fav moments.

I used a sorc fire (glasscannon, putting most in fire ball) build and had to portal cheese at most of the bosses. I went blind into the game and tried to do most stuff myself (and couldnt be bothered to do online mode). One problem I had was that I barely had items that were good for sorc. For the last 2-3 acts i think I barely upgraded any items. A lot of the drops were better for other classes.

If this was the early 2000's and I still was a teenager, I'd probably enjoy it a lot more. I wish I played it back then (I'm 27 and always put off this game for some reason). But still it's a solid game and would recc. I'm curious how D1 and D3 are (I've heard of the D3 issues)

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>Maybe D3 can show some more grotesque stuff in their cinematics
You're in for some disappointment there.
D1 is pretty fun actually, if you don't mind it's barebones nature.

So you beat it on normal? Beat it on hell then say you beat it.

this

>Barbarian runs in first and gets fucking merced
>Necromancer is a bro who tries to back him up but gets in serious trouble
>Amazon and Sorceress sticking to the original plan of an ambush but trying to hurry the fuck up because Barb and Necro are in trouble
>Pally being late as fuck, what the fuck pally you piece of shit

fuck paladins

A major point in D2 is the ability to re-run areas that offer the potential for good item drops -- Travincal and Mephisto in Act 3 are really the earliest, Act 1's Tristram has some potential, and Act 5 has two quick targets with Shenk and Eldrich before running Baal.

The question is, did you try to hit these areas multiple times, grind some levels, increase the difficulty with the /players X command, and put yourself ahead of the curve, or did you just roll through Normal in one shot?

`>or did you just roll through Normal in one shot?
i did that basically. i did not redo/grind areas. but i went fairly deep into exploration to level. the only mobs that were hard to kill were venom lords which took 5 fire balls in act4

>I used a sorc fire (glasscannon, putting most in fire ball)
Before patches Fire had other fun spells. If you can find 1.0 I highly recommend playing with all classes. They were fun and powerful each in their own (several) ways. The disadvantage is lack of the two classes which were added in the expansion (Assassin and Druid) and worse MP stability.

Holy shock paladin
Hammer paladin
Meteor + frozen orb sorc
Summoner + corpse explosion necro
Bone necro
Martial arts assassin
Wind druid
I had fun with those builds if you feel like starting over

Are golems shit now? I know mass skeleton was pretty much worthless since at least 1.07 or so.

>just a min guys, gotta buff up first

Ah, that would be a little rougher, though it's good that you explored and picked up some extras that way.

If you make a second run at it, try a Paladin -- personal favorite is a combo of Holy Freeze and Zeal, along with an act 2 mercenary for added fun. Fire Sorcs can run into trouble pretty quickly against immune enemies as they show up early in Nightmare mode. Also, if you're purely playing solo with a local save, I suggest using "/players x" to boost the difficulty/exp/loot.

Golems are okay, but Skellies and Corpse Explosion are much more versatile, especially when you factor in curses, a might merc, and the ability to break physical immunity with Amp Damage. A Necro can solo his way to Hell Baal with mediocre items and a few well placed skills.

>Corpse Explosion
Wasn't it heavily nerfed at some point? I stopped caring at all somewhere around 1.11 or something and it feels like it was 50 years ago instead of mere ~15.

>especially when you factor in curses
Well duh, Necromancer.
Sounds fun overall. Might even be enough to overcome my dislike for LoD for a few runs.

Play it online like we did in the early 2000s. Play a season on ladder, it wont be the same but its not too far off the experience. Make a jsp account if you really want to get into line

>I'm curious how D1 and D3 are
D1 is stiff as all fuck since it was meant to be a turn-based game at first. It does have the best atmosphere overall tough.
D3 has the best gameplay, using your skills and killing monsters feels good, but the systems (monster abilities, xp curve, resistances, damage numbers, skill availability, numbers in general) are all really bad. The dark atmosphere was thrown away in favor of a more cartoony one which most people hated.

Necros just such kid. Telesummon is best and it doesnt look fun. Bone is a pvp build and isnt even good. Poison is shit at everything

D3 is basically a WoW arpg reskinned as diablo

>Telesummon
Huh?

>Poison is shit at everything
I don't remember poison anything being particularly good ever.

What is so god damn good about this fucking picture
It's genuinely fucking perfect
The Fighter is on the ground after getting his fucking head stomped on way out of his weight class and its awesome.
The fucking cleric with barely anything left to do, desperately trying to cast one last spell before he killed by the demon.
The ranger and I assume wizard of sorts doing the only thing they can do until a reliable front line comes, planning the perfect strike
And then the fucking baddest mother fucker in the entire piece.
The strongest member of the party, the one that has does nothing in their life but train to do one thing, kill demons approaches.
Look at how he walks, with the most certainty that regardless of what is behind this corner, what is making the Ranger and Wizard hide from plain sight due to how menacingly powerful this foe is, he still is casually walking towards it knowing he can defeat it.
Also most likely knowing that whatever this foe is has probably dealt with his fellow companions the fighter and cleric by now and that is another reason why the wizard and ranger are hiding.
Are paladins the best, no not the best the single most important thing in any game ever made?

Enigma for teleport, minions stack. Teleport on top of things and minions all attack instead of running around like retards

CE was toned down a bit -- low levels have terrible range and the damage was reduced from what I recall, but once you can dump a dozen points in (late game, Skellies murder everything pretty efficiently until Hell mode), the radius is quite nice and it becomes huge AoE damage that wrecks shit.

Proper curse management can seem intimidating, but it's largely about knowing what you need and hotkeying the important stuff. Amp Damage will always be a big one -- it's a 100% reduction in physical resistance and can break physical damage immunity in later enemies. Decrepify (along with a point in Clay Golem and a source of cold damage like a merc weapon) will lock down most bosses and champion enemies. Dim Vision is another great Hell mode utility to prevent ranged enemies from raping you, though it's mostly useless before then.

Paladins are the best in diablo 2. They are tanks and teleport around spinning magic hammers of justice. Or they are ubertanks and charge around and smite enemies with their sheilds.

>WoW arpg reskinned
I had a reoccurring camera bug resulting from some network shit shortly after launch, like during the RMAH drama and all that, which really REALLY highlighted just how much I was playing a literal diablo homage in the WoW engine in a private instance on their servers and it totally broke the magic for me, that and getting to nightmare X mode or whatever it was and seeing how I'd need to grind for years or just spend money to compete with chinese gold farmers for upgraded gear completely put me off the game for good

Paladin is on cpp

>Enigma
Right, rune words. And apparently that's an obscenely, disgustingly powerful one.

Paladin is on cpt

Yeah, Enigma kinda breaks the game for most classes if you put one together.

Diablo 3 launched broken for the first week. It was never much fun. I grinded paragon act 4 endlessly and got really geared. But its fucking soulless because there was zero incentive to play other acts. I was asshurt you could grind bosses anymore for good drops

>late game, Skellies murder everything pretty efficiently until Hell mode
I've stopped going skelly once mages got progressively weaker and weaker and you don't want to dump a lot into warriors because you're going to cry at the end of Act IV otherwise.

>Proper curse management can seem intimidating
Nah, I loved it since the game was released. Main appeal of the class for me after skellingtons because useless. I guess it can be hard for the average modern player, though.

Hell is retarded in difficulty and requires a level of grind many people wont care to take the time to do. Too much time spent farming nightmare Andy then meph and diablo for it to be players8 worthwhile.

Enigma on a geared out ele druid was my favorite and enigma ww barb were my favorite pvp chars. I like enigmas

>Just finished D2+LoD
lol
No you didn't.
I've been playing it since it was released and I haven't "finished" it yet.

>That moment when you realize running drops your defense to 0 and tanks your block chance

D3 isnt the same game. Its casual and fun but once you've done it a ton its just QOL improvements. It's not as bad as Yea Forums claims, they just wanted path of exile instead.

It's really not. I don't remember doing any grinding on nightmare. I did a few tomb runs in hell, but that was like less than an hours worth. Otherwise I just played the game.

Oh, warriors have been buffed immensely. Skip mages and go 20 mastery and 20 warriors. They scale up in Nightmare and Hell modes, too. Originally, Diablo would slaughter them all with one fire ring, but these suckers can practically face tank the red lightning.

You can beat hell pretty easily if you aren't tarded without any grinding. Most characters have one point wonder skills that can slaughter the game easily.

I mean online you can beat hell in a week. I can get geared the fuck out in a month or two. Had a disgusting 750mf bliz sorc last season. Entire inventory full of expensive ass 7mf resist charms

on a base level necro is the most op shit ever

I could never get into any other ARPG that isn't D2. PoE got close, but something didn't click with me. What do D2 players think of Grim Dawn?

Just because a game "theoretically" has no ending doesn't mean that the single player GAME isn't over. Of course its over after normal or hell or beyond, because you're just playing the same goddamn game over and over again.

Diablo II and Lord of destruction ended for me after defeating baal, watching that cheesy tacked-on ending and closing out of the game.

Jesus Christ, how terrifying. It's like an entirely different game. Are you going to tell me next that Novas aren't shit now too?

>novas aren't shit now
What the fuck are you smoking? Nova was one of the best sorceress skills in the older versions.

I'll have to reinsall my 1.0 and see if it's true, but from what I remember it was pretty good on Normal SP which means jack shit. It didn't last long enough and didn't freeze hard enough. Ice had much better skills both for disabling and damaging.

Oh I'm dumb, I didn't notice that you said novas instead of nova. Nova is good, frost nova is shit. But if you are talking that far back, then every sorceress skill (and every character in the game) was utter garbage in comparison to frozen orb.

I kindof want to try a curses and golems only melee necro and meme through the acts since normal lets any insane shit work.

Walking through act 5 hell was the only way i fucking beat it

>Nova is good, frost nova is shit.
And I somehow blanked out on the electric nova existing at all and though about Necro's Poison Nova (which must be still shit unless I'm in a parallel universe).

>frozen orb
Oh-ho-ho, it's a very powerful spell in the first release but there are others, trust me. And it's very costly. And you don't have charms or runes.

It has an ending. You beat baal in hell and thats the end of the game. Online you can then do hell cows, grind keys, and do ubers. Once youve done that youve done everything and its over. You continue by starting over

ARPGs are really balanced around beating it on their final difficulty though. Being them on normal is essentially a tutorial.

Hardcore mode makes you really appreciate those throwing potions

>that madman who actually hit 99
>in hardcore

No. Frozen Orb was the best skill unquestionably. Nothing compared. Enemies dealt low damage back in the early days of Diablo 2, so going near 100% energy with energy shield was completely viable. Let's take a look at other skills:

>blizzard
Doesn't stack. It is shit.
>meteor
Takes seconds to deal damage while frozen orb deals it instantly. Also way less area of effect.
>lightning/chain lightning
I'm pretty sure Blizzard made these purposely bad as a joke. They used attack speed instead of cast speed, making them completely useless.
>nova
Okay, but less area of effect and less damage.
>firewall
Less area of effect and less damage. Awkward to actually kill things a lot of the time.
>hydra
Low damage, low area of effect, stupid AI. No reason to use this.
>whirlwind
Back in classic, this would attack at 12.5 times per second always. A very powerful melee skill, still way less damage and area of effect in comparison to frozen orb.
>anything paladin or necromancer
Not worth considering, they were dumpster characters.
>lightning fury
The only real worthy comparison to frozen orb in specific instances. Arguably better in a few specific cases.
>frozen orb
In classic, this was the god. Casts at normal speed, no skilldelay, each cast can hit a single enemy upwards of ~30 times if you know what you are doing. This skill is easily dealing ~9000 damage per second in classic, which is hilarious because that would be very viable even in modern Diablo 2 with its inflated enemy hitpoints.

Necro is shit when you get to hell and realize none of your minions have the resistances they need.

Impossible on those laggy pos server without hax

>>lightning/chain lightning
Don't know about PvP but in coop or SP they dealt decent enough damage. Not enough to warrant switching from other skills but still.

>>firewall
You needed some way to slow down or stun an enemy. Don't even remember which way was the go to (from weapon?) but I don't think freezing was the option.

And that's not all spells you've listed, just the ones that were relevant in later versions. That's a hint.

What was your fav quest?

I have no idea what you are talking about. The only other skill that is even worth noting is corpse explosion, but that is still very relevant in later versions. But even corpse explosion wasn't better than frozen orb, since you couldn't teleport, cast slower than the sorceress and have to rely on subpar spells to get the first kill while the sorceress already killed everything in one cast. Besides corpse explosion, the only hypothetically comparable skills would be something like holy fire or holy shock, since they are the only other skills that hit the entire screen, but these dealt crappy damage.

>You needed some way to slow down or stun an enemy.
Why would you do this when frozen orb kills everything in one cast?

>Don't know about PvP but in coop or SP they dealt decent enough damage.
Remember that in classic lightning mastery gave reduced mana cost. So not only were these skils slow to cast, they also dealt no damage. There was no justification for using lightning or chain lightning.

meh I dunno I don't really have the time nowadays for going too deep into games. I just wanna get the 'experience' once and get it over with. Getting too old for things like starcraft ladder or whatever competition/grind there is.

Understandable. Feel the same, even if I really enjoy the game, I won't bother with achievements/trophies. Wish d2 wasn't such a hassle to run on w7 and my autism will make me play 5 characters at the same time. Last time I ended up with one char on level 30 and 7 characters on level 12