I was thinking

[TheNix]

Putting hard points into strength and/or dexterity adds to weapon damage. I wonder why they never implemented doing the same thing with energy. Hard points into energy adding to the damage of spells and spell-like effects would have seemed to be the logical extension of their existing policy and surely if it was weighted correctly it wouldn't give casters too much power. Laz was experimenting with this in MXL, but I wasn't around long enough to see how it went. As it is energy is almost never used. I'd be interested to hear from you guys why you think it was never implemented and whether you think it could work.

 

[japanzaman]

I think part of the problem was that magic, by and large, is already seriously overpowered in this game and didn't need any extra benefits. The only thing they could do would be to nerf the damage for most spells and then try to come up with a balanced system. I imagine they just didn't feel like it was worth the time and effort to do it correctly.

 

[TheNix]

True, but there is overpowered and there is overpowered. Speaking for myself, my top geared frenzier was able to finish the game at /P8, while my various highly geared sorc builds would have struggled at /P3. At the same time how overpowered is a Fishy is it can beat the game with without any gear at all. The Enigma RW has gone a long way to lessening the OPness of the sorc as well, I'll leave it up to the reader to decide whether the the teleport on it is a good thing or not.

 

[zaphodbrx]

The energy thing is there in MXL. It works pretty well!

 

[Gripphon]

Even with this idea, it would have to be pretty good bonus to damage from energy to be valuable pumping it over vitality, especially since spells are very strong anyway so you don't really have to add more damage to them.

Only thing that prevents casters from being dominating is Find Item. Literally. Remove Find Item from a barb and you don't have a single physical damage character that can compete with casters in d2 in overall damage output and efficiency in most areas. For survival, yes, you can have 5k HP barb that won't die ever compared to 2k HP sorc, but still sorc will clear the game 3 times faster than mentioned barb. We all know how seriously broken Lightning Fury is, right? 1 Fury and screen is dead. Then there are traps from assassin that are strong enough, especially since you don't have to aim with them. Paladin's hammers are also famous. Lower Resist + Poison Nova OP.

But generally, yes, they should have done better job with the energy. Useless stat, unless you play ES sorc. But then again, they also made stamina bar which I don't know what is it for. Some things could really be changed in d2.

 

[pharphis]

Stamina bar is to demotivate players from making a new char