OK guys, I know you like my long posts. But I actually have no time now to go into much details. Im writing this 5 minutes before I'm off on my holiday. So brief summary:

Sunder charm drop rates

>Patch notes: Reduced the drop rate of Latent Sunder Charms when using Magic Find. Note the Herald drop rate is unaffected.

Rarity of Gheed Charm increased from 1 to 15. Rarity for each Sunder charm remains the same at value 1. Which means out of all Unique Grand Charms that drop from standard monsters and that are affected by Magic Find, 71.4% will be Gheeds and 28.6% will be Sunder charms. Before, Unique Grand Charm distribution was 14.3% Gheed and 85.7% Sunder charms.

Conclusion: Sunder drops from Magic Find are now 1/3rd of what they use to be in Season 14

Ancient Statues drop rates

>Patch notes: Reduced the drop rate of Ancient Statues.

Blizzard has heavly changed all numbers for Bosses and TZ Bosses. (NoDrop, Item, Junk, Gold, etc). But statue drop number remained the same. This drastically changes the overall Ancient Statue drop chance:

• non-TZ Bosses drop about 3x to 4x less Statues.
• TZ Bosses drop about 1.5x to 2x less Statues.

Here is a table with exact drop chance:

Patch 3.3 - Season 15 - Ancient Statues drop chance

Shard and Heralds changes

>Patch notes: An additional item will now drop alongside a Worldstone Shard. Reduced the drop rate of Worldstone Shards.

Shard drop rates have also changed slightly. But I dont have time to get precise numbers.

>Patch notes: Increased the chance of dropping Rare quality and higher items from Herald Tiers 3+.

Heralds Unique/Set Factors have changed. For Tier3 and Tier4 Heralds new Unique/Set Factors 800->850. For Tier5 Heralds new Unique/Set Factors 800->870. But only for "Extra" drops!! (Heralds have 1 or 2 extra item drops next to their regular 2 item drops). Which means you will see:

• 9.57% more Unique/Set items from Tier3 and TIer4 Herlads
• 22.71% more Unique/Set items from Tier5 Heralds.

Thats all I have for now. Best of luck in the new Season guys. May ascent through the Ladder be swift and violent.

Diablo was never really a multiplayer game for me, or for most people I know really. The only time I ever played it socially was back in the old times of Diablo 2 LAN, when I would mess with my highschool bud and hunt him for his ears with my barbarian (lol) 

Even then it felt more like parallel play with some meme moments than an actual co-op experience. Spent the years since trying to dodge the online direction the series took with Diablo 3. My instinct was always to burrow away from all of it and play solo, so I did, including PoE and other games that became notorious for how the player economy worked. I also play Grim Dawn and Last Epoch exclusively solo (and more often than not SSF). I know these are technically trading games, and that not engaging in the online element technically sets you back. But I don’t care. I had MMOs for multiplayer, ARPGs felt better the other way.

But I’m in a social mood lately since I started playing Vermintide, and I want to carry over some of the coop chillness into Diablo 2, so I’m wondering… Like, is there a segment of people who play this gave primarily/intentionally as a 2 player co op game? It seems like such a fun concept, doing it beside one other person and sharing that permanent tension, dragging each other out when things are dire. That sounds like a completly different, thrilling way to play. Probably makes it easier too (?) but I don’t care about difficulty - just how well it works as a wholesome but deadly coop experience.

Trouble is, I have absolutely no idea where the people who play like this even are. I basically need just one other person who wants to take a hardcore run seriously as a duo. I don’t use a lot of apps (I tried Gameram for Arc Raiders and some other games like that, extraction and PvP based) but for Diablo specifically is there like a dedicated niche Disc server mayhaps? Do people actually play D2R this way, hardcore and co-op specifically for the shared stakes, and if so, I really want to try it like this.

Just feels like permadeath can turn a solo grind into something that’s more like a 2 man survival pact. If that makes sense. Did you try it like this/ what were your experiences if you did n would you recommend it?

Hi all,

In an effort to prepare for next season, I tested out my last season Summoner/Blood Boil Lock for about 5 hours in P7/P8 content today.

With 50 points in Bind Demon (pre-buffing) and running in 400 MF gear, I found the kill speed was slightly slower than before, but not to the point where I was concerned about the spec. My demon was the Cursed Fanat Dark Lancer with 2 defilers for support and an Act 2 Might Merc with an insight to help with mana regen while teleporting around.

The demons felt slightly squishier but nothing engorge didn’t solve. Even T5 herald packs with the various auras were not too difficult with some repositioning and healing. Most other mobs died within a few hits at most.

As someone who liked this play style a lot last season, I intend to run it again next season even with the changes.

It's my first time playing through the game and I have completely hit a wall during the ancient fight in act 5. No matter what strategy I am using I can't figure out how to beat them and my character keeps missing them when I am trying to land hits. I am a barbarian, level 33, strength is at 71, dexterity at 34, vitality at 132, energy at 13.

In my skill tree I have How 1, Shout 1, Battle Orders 3, 12 in axe mastery since I have been using axes as standard weapons, Bash 4, Leap 1, Stun 1, Leap Attack 1, Concentrate 6, Whirlwind 3, .

I have a two handed axe with 33 to 67 dmg and +50enchanced damage, +80 to attack rating, an armor with 183 defense, +35 enhanced defense, a helmet with 61 defense +33% enhanced defense, boots with 23 defense +46% enhanced defense, 10% better chance of getting magic items, a belt with 16 defense +40% enhanced defense, an amulet with 28% extra gold from monsters, a ring with 3% life stolen per hit, +2 to strength, +3 to energy, +17 maximum stamina, cold resist 5% and poison resist 5%, and a ring with 6% life stolen per hit and damage reduced by 2.

Is there even any way to beat them with my current gear or setup? At this point I'm debating to just make a new character and try again, and if I do what would be the most beginner friendly class for a pve, melee combat run? And what skills and stats to focus on to ensure I won't hit the same wall again? Or is there any cheese or secret to how to make the fight easier?

I'm a casual gamer who's played D2 on and off. I just got D2R (can't believe it's taken me this long to get it), and I'm loving the QOL improvements. One such improvement is the quick cast. I love it... for the most part.

I play Nova Sorc and this build requires quite a bit of potion chugging, and I just realised that it's actually quite difficult/awkward for my left hand to quick-cast and drink a potion simultaneously. My skills are on F1, F2, F3 etc., potions are on 1, 2, 3, 4. To do this, I have to use 2 fingers on my left hand. And my fingers/wrist has to do funny things to do these 2 actions. Even as I try binding the skills to say QWERTY which is just under 1234, it's still a bit strange for my fingers. So, to makes things easier on my left hand, I don't do 'simultaneous moves'. (Still finding that my left hand is kinda working overtime.)

Previously, without quick cast, I'd cast spells with the right hand (mouse 2), and that freed up my left hand to press a key to consume a potion. There's a lot more clicking with this 'traditional method', but I could do cast & drink simultaneously a lot more easily.

Has anyone else here have that problem? Did you go back to playing without quick-cast?

Is there a way to only have quick-cast on for certain skills/keys?

Thanks guys/gals.

Edit: more info on my setup:

• left click = normal attack
• right click = teleport
• mouse wheel up/down = force move
• space bar = Town Portal
• F1 frost nova
• F2 static
• F3 nova
• F4 cold armor
• F5 telekinesis

Shards: They still drop very frequently, they shouldnt become a bottleneck. Saw several drop just running a few Tombs and Pits.

Herald drops: They felt better, for the several T3-5s I ran. Definitely saw some rares, and one unique (Arkaines) after just two or three act crawls, so I expect that will be a useful farm all season.

Bind: Bind +Damage value is about 1/3 what it was (mine went from ~2400 to ~800), but fortunately it doesnt seem to be anywhere close to a 66% nerf to total DPS. I guess the +Damage is added after other modifiers, or something. It definitely is noticeable, but doesnt destroy the build. You're just going from 1-shotting whole packs every time (with defilers) to sometimes 2-shotting them. The biggest difference I felt was against T5s and Diablo, where I had to carry more of that fight myself to speed it up - so I might end up trading Insight eCV for an eDeath Decap so I can Mirrored on bosses and T5s, that sped things up considerably. Stone Skin TZ was also noticeably slower, especially against undead, but you should be skipping those anyway in actual play.

Context and caveat: I'm a casual MF build running with a Hell Clan, because every time I take the time to bind a Lancer I die in a freak accident soon after :P It may be more of a difference if you're running a super-high-end Bind Demon build that was soloing Uber Ancients or something before.

edit: and I'm /p1

Finally got around to building an ES Nova Sorc since it's one of the few S-tier builds I'd never tried. Maybe my expectations were too high, but she's feeling a lot weaker than I expected, both survivability and damage.

I'm running mostly P8 terror zones, but I've basically given up on heralds since they take forever to kill. Merc dies constantly too, and she's just really squishy overall.

Gear is standard Nova setup (a few rolls could be better, but mostly BiS). Rotation is telestomp > 2-3x static field > nova.

Stats: 465 HP / 2115 mana (with BO), level 34 Nova/Mastery/SF, 105% FCR breakpoint, +464% lightning skill damage, -76% enemy lightning resist.

Anyone else run into this, or is something in my setup off?

I'm still very new to D2R and I can't wrap this one around my head.

I see that every guide is using tele staff. That's all great but repairing it is quite expensive for a new character with not that much gold.

Is there something I'm missing or doing wrong?