Review of new features to come on Diablo 2 Resurrected, mercenary, balancing, runic words, sets and seasonal system of December 16, 2021

speaker

This interview was conducted by MrLlamaSC with the three Blizzard employees:

• Adam Fletcher
• Robert Gallerani
• Matthew Cederquist

New season

• Duration 4 months, 3 months too short
• New character to make, HC, SC, Classic, LOD
• New exclusive content
• Seasonal chests will be "removable only" (so 8 tabs with 4 where you can only withdraw)
• New runic words planned for season 2

The highlights of the season

New Runic Words

• new runic words in accordance with the modifications (Martial Arts assassin for example) and for mercenaries
• more usefulness for unnecessary runes Gul, El, Eth, Ith, etc

The key points of the new runic words

Green Set Improvements

• improved set bonuses
• improvement of unused sets
• not as powerful as D3 sets, viable sets but not overpower
• it will be possible to upgrade a third of a set

The key points of set items

Balance Amazon, Assassin, Barbarian, Druid, Necromancer, Paladin, Sorcerer

General ideas:

• increase the number of viable builds
• keep the soul of the characters
• change in spell cooldowns
• some QOL
• upgrade unused spells

Amazon:

• Improved melee spells
• Passive and magic: improving the basic idea, e.g. slowed missile, improved dodge animation
• Improve underused bow and crossbow spells, e.g. cold arrow mana cost

The Amazon Summary

Assassin:

• Big martial arts buff as well as how combos work
  • Phenix: spending his combo drops one charge instead of returning it to 0
• Shadow Disciplines Update
  • buff duration for example and spell casting time, little work on it
• Updated Lesser Used Traps

The Assassin's Summary

Barbaric :

• Diversity in combat skills
  • battle cries buff
  • slow and debuff resistance enemies
  • no big rework of mixed skills
  • waterspout: little / no change expected
• Improvement in jumping skills
• Improvement in throwing skills

The Barbarian Summary

Druid:

• Fire spell upgrades
• changed the use of the Artic Blast spell
• shapeshifters can use elemental protection spells
• improved less viable summons
  • crows that will have synergies
  • no more reason to choose your invocations better
  • better resistance of certain summons
  • thornux invocation which makes more thorn
  • the kinds of snake will be more interesting

The Druid Summary

Necromancer

• improvement of the various invocation mages
• improvement of golems
• improved bone spells in PvE that will have PvP impact
• bone armor upgrade
• improvement of curses
• Can't summon corpses

The Necromancer Summary

Paladin

• improvement of unused spells, in particular on spell casting time
• improved offensive auras (which do damage)
  • damage that depends on the distance from the target (the farther the less strong)
• little work overall
• no change on damage conversion

The Paladin Summary

sorcerer

• overall good
• cold armor to diversify
• little used lightning and fire spells up (Inferno, Hydra, Nova)
  • hydra easier to cast, more delay, more hydras possible
  • more powerful nova, thunderstom and static field which synergize with nova

The Sorcerer Summary

Mercenaries

Change of spells and improvement of mercenaries that are not of act 2:

• Act 1: more skills (e.g. AOE) for the rogue
• Act 2: possible to buy the mercenaries of the 6 will have no matter the difficulty
• Thorn: "flat" damage, i.e. which does not depend on the percentage of damage inflicted and even if the attacker misses the target
• Act 3: Improved Mercenary Stats
• Act 5: improvement of the mercenary (life) and possibility of barbarian cry

The key points of the mercenaries

Change of zones

• improved ilvl of some unnecessary areas
  • ruined temple 85
  • arachnid air ilvl 85
  • in theory other areas
• obligation to break the orb in Travincal to do act 3

The key points of zones and ilvl

PTR Public Test Realm

This system makes it possible to test all the planned modifications:

• no date for the PTR
• possibly an experience boost system to be able to test everything
• the time it takes to be sure there is no bug

Q&A session

All questions and answers at the end of the interview:

• 1 Diablo Clone (Annihilus)
  • very difficult to access
  • he looks at this point for the redesign and easier way, but no more info
• 2 Number of characters available
  • max 20, no improvement expected
  • related to the operation of the bnet app
• 3. Dev stage
  • Step 1: make the game good (exit the game)
  • Step 2: Do the PTR, make the right changes the right way
  • It's all for now
• 4. What is your favorite change
  • Dev: my favorite change is that there is change and seeing what the community will do with it
• 5. Endgame content and new bosses
  • Not right away but why not after "it's be cool"
• 6. Buff useless items? Staff, armor, two-handed weapons
  • they want more specific feedback
• 7. No More Chest Tab
  • "the goldfish will grow the size of the aquarium you put it in"
• 8. Sharing Ignore List
  • focus their efforts on spam bots and spam
• 9. Impact on Classic mode?
  • some yes, some no (e.g. assassin upgrades)
• 10. New unique items or existing change?
  • No new unique items yet
  • No modification on existing unique ones
• 11. Craft Change
  • No change except the new cube formulas
  • Improvement upgrade of the sets possible
• 12. Resource Stack
  • Not in inventory
  • Question in progress for the trunk
  • Requesting a Resource Chest
• 13. Filter
  • the problem is that the majority of equipment is interesting, even the white ones
  • the best filter would be to be able to indicate the affix we are looking for, but too much dev work, not planned for the moment
• 14.PvP
  • change for PvP due to mods
  • if something "op", bring it up (for example the GAs which break through)
• 15. Bug
  • no specific bug but they fix them when they have them
• 16. Loading time
  • try to improve it, remain complicated and without "real" solution
• 17. Don't Die While Charging
  • the biggest problem is that the game is not paused while it is loading
  • currently they don't have a solution but are trying some improvements like staying in town until the end of loading when using a TP
  • no solution if you take a WP
  • Duriel remains problematic
• 18. Consoles
  • they are thinking about it, nothing to share currently but they are working on it

Final Words from the Developers

They are eager to hear our feedback, that we test their shifts and that we give them feedback. Above all, they don't want us to say to ourselves "D2 is finished and not followed".

By Alchemists, December 2021