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    Diablo II

    Monday, June 28, 2004

    Ladder Reset ?!?!?!

    Well its official, the Diablo II expansion ladder is going to be reset.

    From the Blizzard website at www.blizzard.com.

    quote:



    End of a Season
    The Diablo II 1.10 Ladder Season 1 will soon come to an end and Blizzard would like to thank all the players—New, Returning and Veteran alike—for making this a great Season. As a special treat to reward the Top Players from around the world, we will be immortalizing the Top 10 Expansion and Expansion Hardcore Characters in each of the 7 Classes on the Blizzard website. That’s 140 players from each Realm!

    Season 1 Ladder Characters will be moved to their own 1.10+ population when the season ends. Be sure to check back here for details on future Ladder Seasons.


    This will bring and end to season one of the ladder, which has been running since the release of the 1.10 patch back on October 28th, 2003. Blizzard says that they will be placing the current ladder characters in their own season one population separate from the rest. This is a dumb move in my opinion and I believe that they should be placed in the non-ladder realm with the rest of the characters. It is bad enough that we have a ladder and non-ladder but then we will have separate seasons of ladder, in the following year or two we are talking about having all of the players on b.net divided amongst 4 or even 5 different sections per realm.

    However if we can just get past the loss of our characters and the horrible waste of our time the reset isn’t really all that bad. I know that in the past month or so the dupes on USEast were out of control. Andy Bot killed the value of the Soj, trade hacks were ripping people off and numerous other programs were tearing apart this supposable “hack” free game. The reset will bring everyone back on the same playing level but it wont last long. The programs along with new ones will still be there with the reset. They really should take the time and release another quick patch.

    I only wish I had just a little more time to get a character on the ladder, I have a level 95 sorceress that’s a little over 50 million exp away from being number 1000 L. But hey, all I can say is good luck to all of you in the next ladder season, hopefully you will be one of those 140 characters that will get immortalized next time!

    Posted by Spartikis on 06/28/2004 at 01:46 PM
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    Thursday, June 24, 2004

    PvP Elemental Druid Guide

    The Elemental druid is probably one of the most powerful dueling classes out there for Diablo II: LOD but only when properly built. Some of the reasons they are so powerful are as follows. They have an amazing cyclone armor that allows you to take a beating from even the most powerful elemental characters including other druids. Their Hurricane provides excellent defense against close melee attacks. Their oak sage provides a great increase in life and an extra target for those pesky arrows you might encounter.

    However like any character they have many drawbacks. Without the ability to teleport they are very vulnerable. No way to quickly jump on top of an enemy or to flee when necessary. They also suffer from a lack of range. Quick fireball sorcs, bowzons, hammerdins and necros will be able to keep out of your attack range while they attack you.

    --STATS--
    Strength: 30-100 *much higher if you don’t have enigma*
    Dexterity: 150 base
    Vitality: 250 base
    Energy: 20 base

    --SKILLS--
    Elemental
    Arctic Blast-1
    Cyclone Armor-20
    Twister-20
    Tornado-20
    Hurricane-20
    Shape Shift
    None
    Summon
    Oak sage-20

    --EQUIPMENT--

    Helms
    Shako
    Rare skills helm
    Jala’s
    Nightwing’s Veil

    Armor
    Enigma
    Vipermagi

    Weapon
    Hoto
    Earthshaker
    Earth Shifter *yuck*

    Belt
    Arachnidmesh
    Gloomstrap

    Gloves
    Magefist
    Trangs Gloves
    Frostburn

    Rings
    Sojs
    Bks
    Casting Rings
    Whisp

    Amulets
    Mara’s
    Highlords
    Seraphs Hymn
    +3 Ele Ammy

    Charms
    Anni
    Ele gc
    Life sc

    Other Items
    Call To Arms

    --STRATEGY--
    Trap Assassins- Get a whisper ring and Tgods, recast cyclone armor alot
    FOH Paladins- Get a whisper ring and Tgods, recast cyclone armor alot
    PnB Necros- Tele on top of them before they manage to fill the screen w/ spirits
    Poison Necros- Make sure you have way over max poison resist
    Charge Strike Zons- Get a whisper ring and Tgods, recast cyclone armor alot

    Posted by Spartikis on 06/24/2004 at 12:30 PM
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    Tuesday, October 28, 2003

    Diablo 2: LOD patch 1.10 released today!

    Well who knew it?!? They finally released the damn patch. It's been in the works for what seems like forever. The folks at Blizzard must have sacraficed a whole flock of lambs and sold their souls to Diablo himself.

    There's just too much new to post it here so you can read up on the complete info here: http://www.blizzard.com/support/?id=mdt0763p.

    They haven't released a stand alone copy of the patch yet. Right now the only way to get it is to download it inside the game. After it's installed it's a crapshoot getting logged into battle.net. Everyone is getting Realm Down messages.

    Like I said there's just too much new to talk about however the one thing I will discuss is the new anti-cheat system they've been working on.

    quote:
    Implemented a new system to detect and delete 'duped', 'hacked' and other erroneous items from the inventories of Realm Characters as they are loaded.

    So far it seems to be hit or miss with this new system. Lots of hacked and bugged items have been deleted but there are reports of legit items dissappearing too. However no one is sure how many of these claims are real or just upset people. Some bugged items still exist so it's not fullproof. Plus all the duped items are still here. Although I read someplace they haven't turned on the duped item deletion yet.

    They better turn it on soon if they can. Otherwise I'm going to laugh at all the people that sold off their stuff thinking it was going to disappear!

    Now stop reading this and go play people!

    ---- !UPDATE! ----
    Get the patches here if you're having troubles finding it elsewhere.
    Diablo 2: Original (9.4MB) - http://www.alanbarber.org/gallery/files/diablo/D2Patch_110.exe
    Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction Expansion (4.9MB) - http://www.alanbarber.org/gallery/files/diablo/LODPatch_110.exe
    Posted by abarber on 10/28/2003 at 08:40 PM
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    Saturday, July 26, 2003

    My Diablo II: LOD 1.10 Necromancer Guide

    diablo2lod_logo.gif

    I thought I’d share my guide to building a Necromancer for the upcoming 1.10 patch for Diablo II: LOD.  Obviously this isn’t a perfect guide but just what I’m doing and I think it should work pretty good.

    There are several different options for building Necromancers.  You can be a golem master where you spend all your energy on building the strongest golem possible.  A skeleton / reviver master where you work to master raising strong skeletons and eventually slain monsters.  There’s the curse master that learns powerful curses to defeat monster by weakening them then using a melee attack.  Then there’s the choice I go with, a bone / poison master.  The ultimate goal of this master is to create the most powerful bone and poison skills to defeat monsters.

    And I�m happy to announce that the boys at blizzard realized how bad the necro sucked and have made the bone and poison skills much stronger.  In 1.09 a maxed out bone spear does around 200 points of magic damage.  From what I’ve read in 1.10 it looks like it will do around 1000+ points of magic damage.  Of course monsters in hell will also be 4 times stronger so it’s not like you will be stronger but it’s nice to see the major fighting weapon of a character finally do real damage.

    Continue reading "My Diablo II: LOD 1.10 Necromancer Guide"

    Posted by abarber on 07/26/2003 at 02:00 PM
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    Sunday, July 06, 2003

    Diablo II 1.10 beta patch released

    diablo2lod_logo.gif

    Blizzard released a beta of the new 1.10 patch for Diablo II. It's only for the US version of Diablo II:Lord of Destruction expansion currently. However, the final patch will also support the original game. Also, when you install the patch you can only play single player and direct TCP/IP games. Sorry no battle.net yet!

    You can grab the patch here and read up on all the info: http://www.battle.net/diablo2exp/beta/.

    Also make sure to check out the official battle.net forum for the new patch: http://www.battle.net/forums/board.aspx?ForumName=d2-beta

    Continue reading "Diablo II 1.10 beta patch released"

    Posted by abarber on 07/06/2003 at 11:08 AM
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