old thread died and i thought with the ladder reset tomorrow AND new patch 1.13 might be a good time to start a new thread and get SRK heads to reinstall and meet up.
we occasionally meet in channel SRK if you wanna chat.
For those unfamiliar with the ladder system (since it was added in 2003 when D2 wasn’t as popular) and don’t see why this is important…
When you make a character, you have the option of making it a ladder character. Ladder characters can only play with other ladder characters, and there are some exclusive items/runewords that can only be obtained as a ladder character.
At the end of the ladder season, the ladder is reset - all current ladder characters become regular characters and people have to make new characters to play in the ladder again. Everybody starts again at square one, no getting rushed through the game or getting free unique gear from your friend’s Lv99 character, it’s like playing the game again on its first week of release.
When the new patch first went into test concentration didn’t work on hammers but it wasn’t in the patch notes. I see the patch notes are still identical, can someone confirm once this goes live if conc works on hammers still?
I really wish they did this during the summer like the past 2 ladder resets. I dont blame them though, play dat diablo 2 and then starcraft 2 releases right after. Always tried to be the first 99 with a character that wasnt Paladin or Sorc but could never finish off the last 2 levels.
Hammerdins are still S-tier. Only change to hammers is now they don’t ignore magic damage, I.E. all of like a few packs of monsters here and there, most notably the 2nd minion pack before Baal. Conc does still work on hammers. And yes you can respec, you get the ability once per act by completing the den of evil quest. So a total of 3 easy respecs. More can be obtained end game in a new side quest, similar to collecting organ-sets. Respecs reset everything, skill points and stat points. So the grind through normal shouldnt be nearly as bad anymore now that you don’t have to save up skill points for end of tree skills.
There are some changes, but the tiers on classes will be similar in the end. Expect pally and sorc gear to be at a premium, summon necs are still great to start untwinked, even better due to the increase in damage in corpse explosion.
The only two really awesome things to come out of this patch are the respecs, and the increase in rune drop rates. Finding legit high runes is no longer an impossible task, they really buffed the drop rates a lot.
Every class has at least 1 viable build, but most of the non sorc/pally builds tend to be for a niche thing like PvP or farming specific areas. Certain builds are flat out abysmal, for example spear zons are still completely worthless.
Even barbs got a nice little buff in this patch with the removal of iron maiden from the chaos sanctuary. Now a WW barb could potentially mop up Chaos runs with solid gear.
Honestly, those two sets are not hard to trade for at all; relatively early in the ladder season last time I bought full Trang-Oul’s with Perfect Gems.
Fuck, ladder reset already? There goes 30+ High Runes that I was going to use to buy ladder-only items so I can be even richer on NL.
Gonna check those patch notes, see if it’s worth starting a new character. Hammerdin+spirit shield/weapon destroys the entire game and can even get you through hell. Everytime I start ladder I always make a Hammerdin and spirit runeword weapon and shield, everytime.