BOOOO! HISSS! (DII Finale)

edited September 2001 in Gaming

Comments

  • edited December 1969
    [RANT]

    OK, Blizzard, I'll pay $10 for a new Act and $10 for two new characters (the new gameplay features are free and should have been for the original, imho ;), but I want a $10 refund for the CRAPPY endgame cut scene. GEEZ!!! How can you make 6 out of 7 kick ass cutscenes, which are the only marginal story for your game and then serve up that last thing to end it. I killed Baal with one-hand tied behind my back for this? Someone please tell me that the Hell end cut scene is different...

    [/RANT]
    :
    :) OK, got that off my chest. BC_Murgen (not Black Cat, friend from work, as most of you probably know now :) & Tenedor finally finished Normal this weekend. Baal was a piece of cake for us--he didn't even duplicate. We are about 37 & 35 level now and I'm anxious to try out Nightmare a bit before heading back down to Normal if we need more leveling...

    charon.gif
  • edited December 1969
    Re: BOOOO! HISSS! (DII Finale)

    I hit NM in the upper 30s and literally strolled through Act I. Andi didn't even get a hit on me before falling. Zip through Act I - I think I gained mb 1 level the whole time there on NM...

    Conner



    mariusnet home
    mariusnet.gif
  • edited December 1969
    Some notes :-)

    Everyone, and I mean everyone, hated the ending of the XP. It was just irritating and weak.

    Nightmare was emasculated in the 1.09 patch. They removed the 50% physical resists, which is fine since this was a bug anyway, but they also reduced monster HPs to pre-1.08 levels. In combination these two factors make NM pretty weak. Sure, some tough mini-bosses spawn, but the end act bosses aren't tough and with the other changes they made the toughest mini-boss types are one shot kills now. One shot kills no matter how strong your character is (MSLEB + conviction can wipe out 1000+ hps on top of maxxed resists and any amount of MDR you have, which one shot kills anything but Barbs and Druids) are *not* a fun or interesting challenge. They're a hassle to avoid and park somewhere because killing them involves the expenditure of massive amounts of time or dozens of deaths.

    I've spent the time to kill hell Bremm when he came up MSLEB before (And he's always conviction) and it was difficult but do-able before, even if he got other nasty abilities (Extra Fast, extra strong, holy shock, etc.) and healed himself a few times. Now it is difficult to the point of absurdity. Sometimes, because of a bug, the bolts are invisible. Sometimes a boss like Lister gets these abilities. That's just stupid; invisible bolts that, if you have 75% resists and 70 magic damage reduced, still one shot kill you on top of a boss that already is extra fast, auto hits, and knocks back. Did I mention he has a couple of minions at all times?

    Blizz had a lot of bugs to try to fix in 1.09, and they did okay with some of them. Even so they fooked Hardcore Hell players hard in this patch, and took Nightmare from being roughly in line with Normal, to being laughable. You can level to 50 in Normal Act 5, but if you're quick you can get to nightmare at level 35. In fact, I'm willing to bet you can complete nightmare doing full clears without reaching level 50 now (Since you'll get minimal experience at 35 for anything in nightmare past Act 1). You'll need more AR as a melee'r than you would otherwise, and of course you'll be slower, but it's really that easy now. Watch out for nasty mini-bosses and be careful when you do the Council, De Seis, and Lister and you've cruised through NM.

    Anyway, you should be fine to complete NM without much trouble. However, if you aren't at least level 50 (Better 55) in nightmare A5 your XP curve only gets much, much worse and hell will feel nasty tough. You can pretty easily get to 70 in NM A5, but starting hell at 60 works okay. After Travincal in Act 3 hell every critter is level 90, so you should be 85 to be on the XP curve there. Of course my highest character is only 82 and beat hell at about 77, so that's easier said than done, but it is supposedly the way things are designed to go.

    Ramses II
  • edited December 1969
    I understood about zero of that post (:



    mariusnet home
    mariusnet.gif
  • edited December 1969
    Rams is Tha Masta of Diablospeak... 8-) [nt]


  • edited December 1969
    Re: Some notes :-)
    Anyway, you should be fine to complete NM without much trouble.
    However, if you aren't at least level 50 (Better 55) in
    nightmare A5 your XP curve only gets much, much worse and hell
    will feel nasty tough.
    By this do you mean that if you are, say level 45 or so, the monsters are too far above your level and you're not getting the XP you need to level as fast as if you were level 50 or so? Then you're under prepared for Hell? Just confirming my intuition here with the reduced difficultly of the NM creatures combined with the thought that their levels and XP probably weren't changed.

    And although I could think hard about it, I can't quickly come up with what MSLEB is :)

    As always, thanks for the tips!

    charon.gif
  • edited December 1969
    Precisely
    By this do you mean that if you are, say level 45 or so, the
    monsters are too far above your level and you're not getting the
    XP you need to level as fast as if you were level 50 or so? Then
    you're under prepared for Hell? Just confirming my intuition
    here with the reduced difficultly of the NM creatures combined
    with the thought that their levels and XP probably weren't
    changed.
    There's a 'window' in which you get full XP for kills, and it's five levels. If you are outside of the window you get as little as 5% of the normal XP for the kill. Obviously at 5% it takes twenty times the amount of kills it would otherwise. ;-) In normal critters go up to 45, meaning you can level till 50 comfortably. Nightmare was adjusted in the XP to start at (IIRC) 40 through 50 for Act 1 and to ramp up slowly after that to 65 or so in Act 5. Hell is all level 90 past Travincal in Act 3.
    And although I could think hard about it, I can't quickly come
    up with what MSLEB is :)
    Multi-shot lightning enchanted boss (Or bastard). Enchantments on bosses are at 1/2 the mlvl (Monster level) so a level 90 leb boss has the equivilent of level 45 charged bolts, and furthermore spits out 32 bolts (Might be more) per hit. All those bolts are stack up in just 4 spots though, so each time you might take 8 level 45 bolts. Multi shot multiplies ranged attacks by 3, 5, and 7 times (I think the multiplier is random, but it might be set). I believe charged bolt does 130 damage *at least* at level 45. 7280 damage, which you can with maxxed resists under normal circumstances take 75% off of. Leaves 1820 (At 3 shots it's still 780). Leaves players dead. :-)

    Now before 1.09 the property 'magic damage reduced by' applied per frame and before resistance, so for each bolt (Or something along these lines) you would take off the amount of MDR your character had and then apply your resistances. This meant taking the 70 off of the 130. Now you take the 70 off the 7280 and then apply resistances, decreasing MDR effectiveness by an enourmous factor.

    Conviction is also at 1/2 mlvl (Might be 1/4, I always forget which ones are at 1/4) which means level 45 conviction aura. Conviction reduces your defense and your resistances, but it doesn't work for monsters quite the way it works for players, so the numbers don't work out the same (Also resistance rollover from the 'cap' at 75 affects this number) but say conviction is taking off 50% of your resists. That means you're only knocking off one quarter of the 7280 coming in.

    And that, my friends, is an insta-kill. If the bolts are invisible, so much the worse. All of that info is just half remembered from reading posts by guys at the Lurker Lounge, so forgive me if it's half right and 90% wrong. The effect, in the end, is the same though, MSLEB and especially conviction + MSLEB is horribly unfun and unbalanced.
    As always, thanks for the tips!
    'course, any time. :-)

    Ramses II
  • edited December 1969
    D2 is now a coaster for just this reason.

    Keep in mind I only play Hardcore.

    Level 50 in hell/hell. I go down the stairs to the first level and there's a speed enhanced msleb Oblivion Knight off screen. My foot steps off the last step and I'm staring at a monsterless death screen. The shots were so fast I didn't see them till I was already dead.

    Start over.

    Power leveled and pushed hard to level 37. I solo Diablo. I'm in nightmare catacombs. Just solo'd the Smith easy. Next thing I run into is a teleporting msleb skeleton. You'd think that a fire golem with level 23 Iron Maiden (that's something like 750% damage returned) would turn that 7280 into an insta-kill against the msleb but it doesn't. In fact it barely scratches him (61,880 points of damage per hit should leave more than a scratch). I messed around w/him, dodging charged bolts and multi-shot arrows till I figured I was just wasting mana. I hid around a corner, ready to escape/save out of there when he teleports and one of those little, erratically moving charged bolt clouds grazes me. Next thing I know, I'm staring at another death screen. No, ouch that hurt. No, 'OMG I'm gonna die' as I start hitting the full rejuv's in my belt. I was dead before my computer could process the graphics.

    I calmly took the game disc out of my drive, set it on my desk and put my drink on it.


  • edited December 1969
    Well :(

    If they ever fix it, I'll tell ya. It's pretty seriously screwed up though, and there's literally nothing you can do unless you have the old Lightsabres (Unique elites with massive lightning absorb, incredibly rare) and you're already a barb with 2k hitpoints, resists, mdr, etc. It's just stupid.

    Iron Maiden though only works with physical damage, unfortunately, so about your only option was to run far and leave him or save and quit. :(

    Cya in M3 :-)

    Ramses II
  • edited December 1969
    Re: Well :(
    If they ever fix it, I'll tell ya. It's pretty seriously screwed
    up though, and there's literally nothing you can do unless you
    have the old Lightsabres (Unique elites with massive lightning
    absorb, incredibly rare) and you're already a barb with 2k
    hitpoints, resists, mdr, etc. It's just stupid.

    Iron Maiden though only works with physical damage,
    unfortunately, so about your only option was to run far and
    leave him or save and quit. :(

    Cya in M3 :-)

    Ramses II
    I believe in the patch before this latest screwy one, they made Iron Maiden work against ranged and magical attacks when at extremely close distance. I took that to mean totally work but perhaps it only works at a greatly decreased status. Maybe it even got put back to no damage for ranged and magical attacks in the newest patch. I've never had any problems with it working before until I get to hell/sanctuary with those physically imune spectres.

    It's really killin me though. I wanted so badly to take a hardcore necro all the way to king. :(
  • edited December 1969
    Re: BOOOO! HISSS! (DII Finale)

    Well at least they had a decent opening scene, I was so hopeful after that, but alas, they gave us crap for the ending cutscene. I mean honestly that had to be the lamest thing they could have come up with. Personally I would have had Baal retreat into the worldstone itself, and then have Tyrael kick some demon ass on a corporeal(sp?) plane. Better yet, have the hero pulled into the world stone to forever battle the prime evil. In other words go on to nightmare then on to hell and finally to forever be locked in combat with Baal himself. The could have even had Tyrael lay down the smack on the world stone splintering it into shards, and then I would have cut to an outside veiw to see the mountain burst into light and a Tyrael ascending in a ray of light. Oh well I think Blizzard North is/was fairly tired of exploring the Diablo 2 world, and it shows in the bugs and the poor cinematics when you know they can do so much better.

    -Cunbelin
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