Players Rate Changes in Diablo 2 Resurrected; Suggest an Intern Made Them
The fourth season of Diablo 2: Resurrected has begun, and with it the game has received the highly anticipated update 2.7. Among the changes is one that has a truly significant impact on gameplay and ranked competition. Unfortunately, not everything Blizzard delivered was to the liking of players.
While the entire world of digital entertainment awaits the release of Diablo 4, fans are still enthusiastically playing the remaining installments of the series. The fun is provided by Blizzard, which, in view of the upcoming release of the latest installment, has decided to an earlier start of season 4 in Diablo 2: Resurrected, designed to make players' wait for the battle with Lilith more pleasant.
More slots and Next Hit Delay
The new ladders opened on May 4, and it was preceded by an obvious rank reset. As a result, players have been re-running the game for several days now in order to reach the top of the table and get to level 99. Blizzard, as in previous seasons, offers fans four gameplay modes, which are detailed in the description of the update:
- Pre-Expansion Ladder
- Pre-Expansion Hardcore Ladder
- Ladder
- Hardcore Ladder
In addition players received four additional character slots, which are available in all the above-mentioned modes. Heroes that were used for ladder in the previous season were automatically transferred to non-ranked modes. In addition, players were given the opportunity to reset their skill tree and specializations.
The earlier start of the fourth ranking season, however, did not turn out to be the most talked-about new feature that came to Diablo 2: Resurrected. Just days before the release of update 2.7, youtuber MarcoBioBoi presented the most important change that awaited players in the latest season. We are, of course, talking about improvements to the Next Hit Delay system.
What is Next Hit Delay?
Next Hit Delay determines how quickly an opponent can receive damage from an NHD-based attack again after being attacked with a certain skill. In other words, if a monster is the target of an NHD attack, all other such attacks will fly through it without having any effect until the first hit is regisered as completed.
The presence of this type of mechanic is intended to counteract the infliction of damage on a single opponent by many different skills using all sorts of similar "projectiles." As one Blizzard forum user Kabryxis notes in his essay on Next Hit Delay, the system can be called "anti-shotgun mechanic". All this so that it is not possible to continuously attack opponents with certain combinations of skills and thus "decrease" the challenge posed by the game. It is also worth remembering that the whole system applies not only to single-player skills, but also for multiplayer mode, and works in an identical way, except that it covers all characters and their attacks.
However, in the case of Diablo 2: Resurrected such a definition of the NHD system is a thing of the past, as patch 2.7 completely changed the way this mechanic works. From now on Next Hit Delay applies only to projectiles sent by one and the same skill. It is worth noting at this point that the new system refers to the attacks of a particular player. This means that from now on, when playing in multiplayer mode, two wizards can simultaneously hit the same opponent using the same spell, which was impossible before.
The developer's note reads:
"We've changed Next Hit Delay to make it easier to understand, while retaining its original intent. This change will reduce some of the headache-inducing problems in multiplayer mode and help polish some character builds."
Assassin the strongest character in season 4?
Speaking of character builds, it's worth noting that Blizzard specifically noted that Next Hit Delay works slightly differently for the assassin.
- As a result, each of her chargeable individual martial arts attacks is treated separately by NHD.
- This means that, unlike in version 2.6, our attacks will reach the target much more often, as they will not "activate the lock" of the system.
- Thus, the reigning third season Mosaic assassin has become even stronger.
- In addition, the skills associated with her traps now deal percentage damage depending on the modifiers associated with the elements, and this will no doubt prompt players to check out some other builds.
However, if you are not interested in the assassin, and the druid in the upcoming Diablo 4 doesn't satisfy you so far, in addition to the changes related to the beginning of the season and the Next Hit Delay system, the developers have introduced a highly anticipated improvement for the latter character class. From now on, the shapeshifting hero can switch directly between the forms of a bear and a werewolf, which significantly increases DPS in combat and strengthens the character in the current season.
Players react to patch 2.7 and the new season in Diablo 2: Resurrected
If anyone, after reading the above-mentioned news, thinks that, all in all, not much has changed and these kinds of improvements to the NHD system two years after the game's release are pointless, they will certainly not be in the minority. Immediately after the official announcement of the contents of update 2.7. the Diablo 2: Resurrected sub-reddit heated up with discussions, in which fans make no secret of their disappointment and accuse Blizzard of laziness and focus on Diablo 4, as well as serious neglect of players of the second part of the series.
"The sad thing is that they did not make an effort with this ladder, because they want Diablo 4 to be a success. I thought that after season [3 - ed. note], which brought very little to the game, we would get decent changes like sunder charms," notes StandingInBlood
"The new season to me just sounds like crap.
I wish Blizzard knew what important content is, instead of releasing some little silliness every time, then Diablo could have been a lot bigger, but Blizzard is awfully lazy and always does this after releasing every game with a Diablo.
It will be the same when it comes out Diablo 4 and we'll get small updates or just more seasons and that's it," criticizes sTyLeZrEz
"It looks like Blizzard is hiring an intern to do these seasonal updates," writes CakeM1x
Many people were also hoping for loot filtering, or the ability to stack runes and crystals. It's no surprise that a few minor fixes and virtually zero changes to the season itself have angered the players so much.
Of course, in addition to criticism, one will find a few voices of admiration for the changes for the assassin and druid, as well as comments praising improvements to the Next Hit Delay system. However, these types of statements are in the vast minority.
Thus, it's hard to say unequivocally whether the players are right and whether Blizzard has actually "neglected" fans of the second installment, and shifted all its attention to Diablo 4 to deliver the upcoming title at its best. However, this would be most understandable, especially since in recent years there has been no shortage of cases of launches that, through numerous technical problems, have effectively dampened interest in the game.
It seems that fans of Diablo 2: Resurrected will still have to wait for the coveted rich update 2.8. This is because it is unknown whether it will debut before the end of the fourth season, which is announced for September 2023..
