Yep, Multishot + Lightning Enchanted mobs (MSLE) were notoriously vicious. Usually they meant “run like hell”.
Edit: I didn’t know they were ever nerfed! I usually just avoided them.
In v1.10, which was probably after your time. Part of the reason for the viciousness was a bug - gthey would go invisible when too many bolts got on the screen (especially a problem from an Amazon skill iirc). So you’d be dying to invisible lightning bolts from hell and not even know it. It’s possible that got fixed. A D2 wiki suggested there was a nerf in 1.10 but I didn’t read what the change was.
Oh! Ha. I get it, and I’m totally on your side on this one.
I thought you meant resistances as a “STAT” like “I take less fire damage because I (the player) have 4 points of Fire Resist”, from a player point of view.
I had nightmares about those bugs in Act 2 that did static bolts as a natural thing for them… and there were MILLIONS.
This is like Hell difficulty in Diablo II since patch 1.10.
The presentation made it sound deeper than that. The level cap was 99 in Diablo 2, but the highest level an enemy ever got was 85. However, the level cap is 60 in D3, and the enemies in Inferno will be 61, always a level above you, ALWAYS. It sounds like Diablo 3 Inferno will be all about maximizing builds/equipment/runes/gems, which sounds an awful lot like WoW’s end game.
^ Except without the tediousness of organizing raids and farming for badges.
It comes down to how much one ‘level’ makes a difference. At the end of the day a level is only an abstract number, the enemies in Diablo II varied greatly in their dangerousness and that wasn’t always mandated by level.
Totally agree, THIS I might actually do! :)
DeepT
2030
I am sure the level cap will be raised with each expansion, not that it matters much now that there aren’t any skill points anymore. In fact, beyond unlocking tiers of skills, leveling itself has little meaning now.
KevinC
2031
Perhaps this is overly cynical of me, but I think they want to steer as much progression as they can towards gear rather than levels, skillpoints, etc. It’ll make easy DLC/expansions and by releasing new tiers of gear similar to how they do with WoW, it’ll keep up the traffic at the AH as the gear treadmill keeps on going.
Not to say that they won’t increase levels with expansions, I still think they will (60 is kind of an odd number, although I know that WoW started with that).
sinnick
2032
What did people typically do in D2 when they hit the level cap? Is there anything left to play at that point, like there is in WoW?
KevinC
2033
They farmed items, whether for personal use, for trade, or just to collect. Some people also enjoyed PVP, and others enjoyed Hardcore which meant that you were frequently working on a new character.
Yeah, once you beat Hell it was just item farming or start a new character. My brother programmed a pretty sweet item farming bot that he just checked on every now and then to purge its inventory of the best stuff.
sinnick
2035
Starting a new character I can understand. For me part of the appeal of D2 was in customizing your build. I never reached the point where I was farming gear … I don’t think I would ever have that much time on my hands.
DeepT
2036
I never got anywhere near the level cap, so I do not know. None of my characters could ever survive very long in the hell difficulty. However, from what I hear, it was loot farming. There was the chance of the random yellow drop that would have the exact modifies you wanted, or at the very least, a better fit then you previously had.
You could also loot farm for alts.
sinnick
2037
I remember once I was playing on a level 67 amazon, which was about as high as I had ever made it. A friend who had multiple lvl99s gave me a piece of gear, which was a bow that had like a 50% chance of casting Fist of the Heavens on anyone it hit.
It was pretty amazing to play with, but I don’t know if I ever would be able to obtain something like it myself.
On hardcore servers some people actually tried for the top ladder slots. One of my few video gaming claims to fame is managing to get a top 10 amazon for a while on US East hardcore.
The farming was a big part, too. For me, the fun of D2 was seeing what items I found and letting those items lead me to a new idea for my next character and build. This is kind of a different idea in hardcore, as they aren’t “alts”, but your next life. Getting into planning your next character is your consolation for losing the current one. But hardcore D2 is really an entirely different game (and a far better one, in my book) than normal D2.
I’m sad to hear they are losing the old skill system – can someone point me to a description of the new system? I don’t care about all of this AH and DRM nonsense, but if they killed the idea of planning and building new characters I will be pretty bummed.
KevinC
2039
They replaced the idea of skill points with a hotbar. Now choose six active skills for your hotbar along with three passives, and that’s your “build”. I’m pretty meh about it myself, I love tweaking/customization my skill allocation in builds. It’s probably the part of CRPGs I enjoy the most.
erikg88
2040
Terrible idea to kill character differentiation via builds. As I understand it, you can swap around your skills at any time, free of charge? If so, there are no more builds, just 5 classes you can play.
