Patch 1.14 dual class option

[Soepkieken]

Patch 1.14 dual class option

In Patch 1.14, you will be able to dual class!!! That means you can be a barbsorc, assazon, pallydruid or whatever!

This is how it works:

You choose your MAIN class, in which you also pick 1 SKILL TREE. The other 2 skill trees are not available anymore when dual-classing. You get the looks, life/mana per level, FCR, FHR, FBR + block rate, attack speed, ability to (dual) wield certain items,... AS IF YOU WERE PLAYING YOUR MAIN CLASS SINGLE CLASS.

Then you choose your second class out of the 6 other remaining options, AGAIN YOU CHOOSE ONE OF THE THREE SKILL TREES of that second class, and again the two other skill trees are not available to you.

Every first and second level, you gain a skill point you can spend in your main class, EVERY THIRD LEVEL, you get that levels skill point to spend in your subclass skill tree. Hard skills coming from quests are to be distributed in the subclass tree (at level 99, that's 66 skillpoints in main class skill tree, and 44 points in sub-class skill tree).


ADVANTAGE OF GOING DUAL CLASS:
- Making new unique powerfull combinations.
- Using class-specific items with non-class skills.
- Choosing main class with good life/mana/FHR/FCR/attack speed/... while using your subclasses skill(s) as your main skill(s).
- You can "regain" skills (from the "lost" two other trees of your main class) by using items. E.g. if your main class is barb and you've chosen the warcries skill tree (meaning you lost combat and mastery tree), a barb helm with +1 to whirlwind makes that skill back available to you.

DISADVANTAGES:
- You only have 2 skill trees, instead of 3.
- you are restricted to spending less then 2/3 of skill points in one tree, and more then 1/3 in the other (otherwise, an almost fully synergized charged strike of an amasorc with just 20 points in lightning mastery would be way overpowered).
- There are rarely synergies between your two trees (fire mastery would be one to fire claws e.g.).
- "Barbarian only" for example only applies to you if your main class is barb, not when your sub-class is barb.

A dual classer is not overpowered, nor underpowered if you choose good combinations. Fun options can be:

PURE SUMMONER (Druid summon/necro summon)
You lose the advantage of curses and CE, but get another bunch of pets that doesn't rely on corpses.

WINTER BARB (any Barb tree/pally defensive aura's)
Your double doom zerkers will cause nice cold damage, accompanied by a possible -120% enemy cold resist on the weapons. You have to give up the masteries and/or warcries and/or combat skills however (I would keep combat skills to whirlwind with him, extra AR can come from a demon limb).

VENOM ZON (Zon bow tree/assa shadow tree)
Adding poison to your arrows, extra survivability through fade, MB and cloak of shadows, and your slow valkyrie replaced by a shadow master. Defenitively one of the new most popular classes!

THE SUPPORTER (Necro curses/any pally aura tree)
A multiplayer-only build that is there to become good friends with everyone else.

THE ENCHANTED WEREBEAR (Druid SS/sorc fire tree)
Fire mastery doesn't completely make up for the loss of synergies to fire claws, but the attack rating from enchant solves a big werebear problem.

...

And like this we can go on forever. With 21 skill trees there are literally more then a hundred of combinations possible. Ofcourse some of them are not really an option (Amazon passive and magic with Necro curses seems pretty bad to name one), but some of the combinations hold great potential and can be, above all, fun to play. I doubt it though that there are many uber builds (*cough*hammerdin*cough*) to be found in dual-classes.

Ofcourse, this is just an idea for 1.14. I would really like it to be a major patch (like 1.10 was). That's why I'm posting this idea. I also made a post with a list of suggestions to improve so far useless skills already.
http://diablo.incgamers.com/forums/showthread.php?p=7715749#post7715749

I'm new to post on the forums, but I'm old when it comes to reading them and playing the game (maaany years).

I'm curious if others like my idea of (limited) dual classing. The limitations are put to not overpower dual-classers. It would be fun to see a whole lot of unique new builds after 1.14.
For fun: which dual class (main skill tree + sub-class skill tree) would you like to try out first and why?

 

[redground]

Re: Patch 1.14 dual class option

Offensive Auras Tree + Light Tree



Game have no fun after lvl 30

 

[Technomancer]

Re: Patch 1.14 dual class option

I've basically built my own game system idea off of this concept of a main class skill sets with optional secondary skill sets from other classes. I think it's a great idea, but retrofitting it to D2 could have some breaking combinations, like redground mentioned. However, Light Tree + Infinity is broken too, just more expensive.

I see a few common paths people would follow, like picking Light Tree for Tele no matter what class they are. Setting a 2 tree limit for multiclassing would help offset a lot of the potential abuse. I mean, especially if you could pick 3 trees from 3 different classes, imagine Pally Combat, Barb Masteries, and Zon Magic and Passives!

With 2 trees, I can see some pretty fun combinations possible though:

TRUE Elemental Ranger: Pally Offensive Tree with Zon Bow Tree
- Or Pally Offensive with pretty much ANY class's elemental tree.

Wolf/Bear Barb: Barb Combat or Masteries with Druid Shapeshifting

Necrodin: Necro Curses with Pally Combat skills

NecroJavazon: Zon Jav skills (poison and lightning) with Necro Lower Resist

Fire/Lightning/Ice Elemental: Pally Holy Fire, Freeze, or Shock with matching Sorc Tree for Mastery (of course without Resist skill synergies, probably pointless, except for Cold Mastery which lower CR)

Self-Enchanter: Pretty much any Combat class with Sorc Fire Tree for full-power Enchant

 

[Trylledej]

Re: Patch 1.14 dual class option

as fun as it might be, i dont see this one comming...

too much to handle when making fit into the game.... the balance would be off as i see it..

you write it yourself - "pick a good main with good blabla bla. + the idea of gaining abilities u cant, by getting it from items - far more than offset the balance anyone can do to the skill/character issue here

on another note, i dont see it fit into the diablo world as a posibility, the lore and life of the inhibitants in Sanctuary is (imo/my view) that a man/woman chooses/gets their proffesion, either from birth right (barbarian) or through study (sorceress)

the ideá might could have worked in D3, since its 20 years later and people needed to find new ways/new dieties/new meaning but imho not in D2

 

[Soepkieken]

Offensive Auras Tree + Light Tree



Game have no fun after lvl 30

I personally think that the currently existing pure lightning sorc with an infinity merc is stronger then this dual-classer:

- She can spend almost all her points in Lightning skills, unlike the maximum 66 (and that is at level 99!) of the dual classer. A dual classer can not max the charged bolt and nova synergies, resulting in much less damage of her (chain-)lightning.

- Infinity on the merc means she doesn't have to get as close to her enemies as a dual classer (conviction has a low radius), so she is safer-play.

- The dual classer has 44 points at level 99 to spend in offensive aura's. 20 in conviction is obvious, but the rest is pretty much wasted.

- The dual classer doesn't have acces to 1 point wonders like warmth & frozen armor.

As you see, the skill points restrictment especially really balances it out. I cannot think of any overpowered dual-classer exacly because of this restrictment. The only stronger points of the dual classer in this example are that she is cheaper (which I like, having played a lot untwinked), and she has a conviction aura in pvp (but does less damage, so the enemy can just stack lightning resist).

as fun as it might be, i dont see this one comming...

too much to handle when making fit into the game.... the balance would be off as i see it..

you write it yourself - "pick a good main with good blabla bla. + the idea of gaining abilities u cant, by getting it from items - far more than offset the balance anyone can do to the skill/character issue here

on another note, i dont see it fit into the diablo world as a posibility, the lore and life of the inhibitants in Sanctuary is (imo/my view) that a man/woman chooses/gets their proffesion, either from birth right (barbarian) or through study (sorceress)

the ideá might could have worked in D3, since its 20 years later and people needed to find new ways/new dieties/new meaning but imho not in D2

I don't see it coming either, because it's indeed a lot of programming work and it needs to be implemented with care. Seen how minor 1.13 was, I don't hold high expectations for 1.14, even if I think it's time again for one last revolutionary patch. Still, I liked to share my dual-class idea with the community.

I don't think the balance would be broken though. Can you give me 1 possible build (don't forget: 66 skillpoints main tree, 44 sub-class tree!) that you would consider overpowered (that is, passing the level of a grief-smiter [pvp], CB-smiter [ubers], hammerdin or 200% FCR meteorb)?
Feel free to add items that "bring lost skills back" (there aren't that many good ones, delirium barb helms and druid pelts are the exception). I'm quite sure you will have a hard time to find such a build (you can use any uber-item you want). Challenge! If you really can come up with an overpowered dual-classer, I will humbly admit my defeat ;-).

About the lore, that's personal taste. I find it not far-fetched coming across an amazon who converted to the pallies light religion in her adoloscence, a druid fascinated by the death-aspect of nature (+necro), or a barbarian who has become the shaman of his tribe because he has a born-in affinity with fire and can throw fire balls and meteors. With any combination you could invent an interesting story that makes sense in the diablo ii fantasy realm.

 

[crook]

Re: Patch 1.14 dual class option

Perhaps some combos could be gamebreaking, but most will be underpowered. Allthough: I'm used to playing singleplayer and those immunities at hell limit your options, with this their might be more viable options to make solo'ing hell more fun/doable

I would rather see some way to break some immunities in every tree to some extent so that we will see more variety in builds. (hammerdins much?)

 

[mephiztophelez]

Re: Patch 1.14 dual class option

while it's a pretty cool basic idea, i don't see it becoming a reality.

in fact, i hope it doesn't.

here's why: when D2 was first coded up, the most common net-connection in use was the 56k DialUp.

D2 was designed around that massive bottleneck. granted, this has meant a lot more of the grunt-work is done client-side rather than server-side, opening up many possibilities for hackers to work their nefarious voodoo.

in order to fix many of the on-going bugs in D2, Blizzard would pretty much have to re-code the whole game essentially from scratch.

ditto, if they were to implement your multi-classing plan, it would require massive amounts of recoding to be done to the game.

i for one would much prefer it if Blizzard were to put that kind energy and game-development $$$ towards making sure D3 is the worthy D2 successor we all hope it will be.

 

[omgwtfbbqpwned]

Re: Patch 1.14 dual class option

It's a nice idea, maybe you should create a mod and see what others think.

Blizzard for the most part, will not be doing anything drastic for D2 anymore. Their main changes in upcoming patches will mostly involve:

- Fixing bugs.
- Changing numbers, not concepts. Why introduce a novel concept into D2 when they can add it to D3? Each time they add a new concept to D2, that's one less "cool new feature" for D3.

 

[OmniSliver]

Re: Patch 1.14 dual class option

Can you give me 1 possible build (don't forget: 66 skillpoints main tree, 44 sub-class tree!) that you would consider overpowered (that is, passing the level of a grief-smiter [pvp], CB-smiter [ubers], hammerdin or 200% FCR meteorb)?

Although i have never run ubers, I think a main passives (amazon, barb or assassin) + sub-smiter would be a better (and cheaper) boss killer than a standard smiter.

My first char would be a skeleton necro with sorc fire (for enchant and fire mastery+CE) or sorc lightning (for tele, static and ES). Note that you can have CE + 5 curses with a wand and a necro shield.

Also, a main sorc with skeleton tanking would be very easy to play, with an orb for 1-point wonders, like static, teleport, warmth, energy shield, ice shields, etc.

In short, I don't think this system would be balanced, but it would be very fun to experiment with. And that is what Diablo is about.

 

[Soepkieken]

Re: Patch 1.14 dual class option

Although i have never run ubers, I think a main passives (amazon, barb or assassin) + sub-smiter would be a better (and cheaper) boss killer than a standard smiter.

My first char would be a skeleton necro with sorc fire (for enchant and fire mastery+CE) or sorc lightning (for tele, static and ES). Note that you can have CE + 5 curses with a wand and a necro shield.

Also, a main sorc with skeleton tanking would be very easy to play, with an orb for 1-point wonders, like static, teleport, warmth, energy shield, ice shields, etc.

In short, I don't think this system would be balanced, but it would be very fun to experiment with. And that is what Diablo is about.

I think a smiter is as good as it gets when it comes to ubering, and a sub-smiter would just be as good. It's true that with assassins fade or barbs natural resist, he'll has to be less rich to do the job. But cheaper builds are very welcome! I don't think an amazon's passives would help him much (CS is way overrated), I think he's better off with his aura's.

The skellysorc would in my opinion not be that different from a poison/skelly or bone/skelly hybrid. You'll only have about 60 points (we mostly don't reach level 99) to spend in your sorc tree and with about 40 points in the summon tree you're tight too. If you want to get skills from other trees of your main class, you'll have to sacrifice + skill gear, making both your skellies and spells weaker. By the way, only the main class has acces to its item-skills, so either you go for warmth/tele/frozen shield as a main sorc (with weaker skellies, no curses and no CE), or main class necro for CE/curses (with much weaker sorc spells, 40 points is few to get something worth it).
All in all, your dual-classes picks sound like a lot of fun, but I think they will not be as powerfull as you think: taking a wand and a head for 5 curses and CE means you'll lose a potential +6 necroskills and other goodies like resists, FCR and good block (HotO + unique head).

 

[flamewolf]

Re: Patch 1.14 dual class option

I got the most broken guy you could get: Summoning necromancer with paladins thorn aura.

 

[Soepkieken]

Re: Patch 1.14 dual class option

I got the most broken guy you could get: Summoning necromancer with paladins thorn aura.

You can already have that now: just put on a bramble on your necro or your merc, or get a merc with thorns (I think his thorns is level 18 on high levels, so with delirium, CoH and Silence it would be level 24, better then bramble).
I don't see what is so "broken" about this guy... .

 

[Necaris]

Re: Patch 1.14 dual class option

Yeah I don't expect major changes to d2, what with blizzard having their hands full with Cataclysm, Heart of the Swarm, and D3.

That being said, seeing a hammerdin or light sorc with pierce would be pretty funny.