D2R 2.5 Ladder Season 2 Changes Preview - Top 10 Skill Changes Expected in 2.5 Patch of Diablo 2 Resurrected

D2R 2.5 Ladder Season 2 Changes Preview - Top 10 Skill Changes Expected in 2.5 Patch of Diablo 2 Resurrected

8/11/2022 3:16:14 PM

Tag: Skill Guide Items Guide D2R Ladder Guide

D2R Ladder Season 1 is in its fourth month, and if Blizzard lives up to its promise, that means a new 2.5 Patch featuring Ladder Season 2 content will be scheduled in August. So it's time to take a look at what changes are likely to appear in the new season, especially those skill changes that have a huge impact on gameplay.

D2R 2.5 SEASON 2 CHANGES

D2R 2.5 Changes - Top 10 Skill Changes To Expect in Diablo 2 Resurrected Ladder Season 2

You probably already have an idea of what a lot of these skills are going to be, but we genuinely think that a lot of them could be just slightly tweaked or changed to actually be useful, and maybe open up some new builds in terms of like new D2R runeword where it's opening up new build avenues for some different characters. Here we summed up the 10 skill changes that would have a huge impact in patch 2.5 of Diablo 2 Resurrected from the famous D2R YouTuber - Dbrunski125's video.

Sorceress Skill: Frozen Orb

Frozen orb is nothing other than an alternative for dual spec build, but in terms of specialization it's a poor choice then we genuinely believe that most builds past like the first month of the ladder - kind of move on past that dual spec, and they sort of specializing whether it's a nova sorceress, lightning sorceress, blizzard sorceress, maybe a fire source or something, there's not really a lot of dual spec builds to get through the game. For some people that want a solo farm that is an option, but there's a far lower percentage of frozen players to blizzard, so we want to propose a different alternative that could actually make frozen orb useful. There are two ideas:

The first is that maybe allow the shards from frozen orb to pierce, so even though there's a cooldown once a shard hits a monster that sure keeps traveling through and damaging more monsters, this could be an alternative to the cooldown that would sort of making it a little bit more useful and more damaged.

The other idea is sort of a tie on to what the devs did. They added synergies between frozen armor, shiver armor, and chilling armor, and the whole purpose behind these additional centuries was to try and incentivize players to do something other than putting one hardpoint into frozen armor, but every single sorceress for the most part 99% continue to put one point in frozen armor. So what if you added damage synergies from frozen armor, shiver armor, and chilling armor to the frozen orb, so you reduce the 2% from ice bolt and you make it one percent, and then you add 1% from frozen armor, 1% from shiver armor, and 1% from chile armor. So this would effectively still keep dual spec build options unchanged, this would buff the damage of frozen orb would turn it into a high point investment build, similar to blizzard.

It would be a good alternative to sort of balance between people that want to play like a high-end powerful frozen orb build at the same time it's not going to impact pvp or make massive screen clutters, so we think additional damage energies from the armors as well as allowing the shards to pierce could make frozen orb an alternative to blizzard.

Druid Skill: Spirit of the Barbs

Carrying on with the theme of the druid, we would really like to see Spirit of the Barbs reworked. Oak Sage is such a powerful skill at level six, a ton of plus life, heart of wolverine, attack rating and damage, really good for shape shifters, but this reflection of damage you can see here - level 25 reflects, 509 damage that is so useless. We don't really think anybody ever uses this skill and it's such a cool looking one so it's such a shame. But it is a good way to sort of balance between Oak Sage and Hearth Wolverine, would be adding additional life mana and defense for every skill point that you invest now. Obviously you would have to have it to be tuned down a little bit to maybe half the life value of oak sage, so you kind of have the choice. Let's say you're playing as a windridge you want a very high life ball or do you maybe want a large life wool and a large mana pool but not quite as much as what oaksage would provide you so it gives you kind of a little bit of play there. Plus life, mana and defense would make spirit of the barbs useful instead of useless.

Druid Skill: Hunger

Transforming The Hunger for the shapeshifting druid to actually make it useful because as it currently stands it has a negative 75 damage penalty and has a large attack rating and life and man of steel attached to it, but the skill itself is really for the most part useless considering any form of life leach and mana leech with high damage is completely fine and then in addition to that if you have a fully charged fill rage you're also getting additional light fleece for shape-shifting through it as well. So something like the reaper's toll setup with a dual each ring and string of ears, you already have a ton of light fleece compound that with feral rage. We just don't see the point of this skill and get the mindset of the original developers they were kind of thinking well, you could maybe alternate back and forth between feral rage, throw in hunger to replenish your man in life, and then go back to fury but with kind of the min and maxing and sort of as time developed, it's a useless skill for shape-shifting druids.

So giving it a flat 100 base damage increase and then also making it an uninterruptible and an attack that always hits is a great change idea for this skill. Imagine just start of a ladder, everyone is always like a bunch of paladins because smite always hits you stack some form of crushing glow and life tap you're good to go, but what about shape-shifting into a bear or a wolf having a ton of extra plus life, you don't have the ore support but you kind of supplement with a lot of plus life and then just smacking ubers with hunger. Having it do a decent amount of damage not be interrupted and then always hit, so you could get a lifetime prop from a wand or something and then just use hunger, and then use that as a budget character to take down uber.

Druid Skill: Volcano

From patch 2.3 to patch 2.4, the fire druid took many steps forward, increasing the fall rate and the radius of armageddon and removing the global cooldown associated between all the different fire skills was a fantastic change, and also molten boulder is great now increasing the velocity and the rate that you can cast it is all great positive changes for the fire drift. But genuinely this build is still struggles against firemen monsters because most of your physical damage is coming from multi-boulder, volcano and armageddon. Armageddon is sporadic ultim boulder is decent does knock back and good damage, but volcano is kind of the big lackluster skill for the fire dirt and that's large because of two flaws with the skill.

The first is the next hit delay that is associated with the skill so any damage from the center volcano or any of the magma that's flying off a volcano has a 1.5 second next hit delay tied to it, so if you're hit with another source of damage in that 1.5 seconds the monster will not take any damage. So when you're dealing with large groups of firemen monsters, it would be nice if we could cast a few more volcanoes to get some more physical damage going with molten boulder, and then remove that stupid next-hit delay or severely reduce it, so that they can actually take multiple hits of the physical damage portion of the volcano, and we can actually do some substantial damage to those firemen monsters.

Nothing major needs to be changed here, and just starting with removing the next hit delay or reducing it and dropping the cooldown maybe a two second casting delay would be a big improvement for the fire druid.

Necromancer Skill: Skeleton Mages

We can understand they didn't want to go overboard in terms of damage, but as it currently stands with a level 45 raised skeletal mage, you really can't kill anything. Blizzard needs to do just two small things to raise skeletal mage that is to increase the rate of fire and increase the rate of damage, we know that it's a really difficult balancing act with how powerful corp explosion is because again if you go back to that post recorded footage, the mages were doing nothing and then as soon as you get a corpse, you switch damn damage and then you corp explode the entire room. It would be very interesting if we could get a first kill off a little bit quicker with the raised skeleton mage instead of a mercenary, so that would be kind of the small tweak that would like to see is just extra damage and the rate of fire, so that if you have a level 45 mage, it can actually do some significant damage.

Necromancer Skill: Fire Golem

We definitely would also like to see fire golem receive a pretty decent buff. Now a level 45 fire golem can do 1600 fire damage and has a holy fire pulse damage of 356, and you could triple that damage but it wouldn't have a noticeable impact for the necromancer, so it's kind of unfortunate because the fire golem looks so cool, but there's a couple ways we could kind of tie together blood golem, fire golem and then skeleton mage to make it a high point investment army but actually be viable. So what if they tied in synergies between skeleton mage, fire golem, and blood golem, where fire golem and blood golem are giving damage bonuses to race skeleton age, so you have to actually invest 20 hour points into skeleton mage 20 points in mastery and then 20 to fire golem and then 20 to blood golem, that's an 80 point build to boost the damage skeleton made, at that point you would still have access to those skills but would kind of limit the amount that you could invest into amplified damage or corpse explosion for radius damage.

So we think that would be a cool way to make the fire golem useful in terms of synergy for skeleton mage but also it needs a bit of a damage buff, you have clay golem that has such fantastic utility from slow down with decrepify and then you have an iron golem which you can turn an insight into an iron golem to get a constant meditation or a for your mana.

Amazon Skill: Immolation Arrow

Moving on to the amazon one skill in particular that we would like to see adjusted is Immolation Arrow, the boson is actually in a pretty good place, multi-shot and strafe are much stronger than what they were in patch 2.3. A lot of people are up in arms from the PVP community but from the PVM perspective it's actually now a build that is more representative of the gear required to make it excel, so if you had crazy charm inventory ruby jewels of fervor or pride mercenary in patch 2.3, the damage was lackluster, but it's in a pretty good spot. The freezing arrow is very powerful, you have a skill that you can spam with no cooldown that completely freezes monsters for two seconds at one point, or with synergies you can actually increase that value a lot higher so you can freeze monsters in their tracks. Whereas Immolation Arrow is tied to a casting delay which we don't really think there should even be a casting delay tied to it that was actually shortened from 2.3 to 2.4 they reduced it in half.

But a couple of options could be applied to Immolation Arrow to make it a little bit better. Because the first thing that we need to realize is that any fire damage dealing build is at a bit of a disadvantage compared to other builds just the elements and immunities, so removing the casting delay could be a step forward, so you could just spam emulation arrow and then maybe having exploding arrow be more single target damage and maybe AOE effect for emulation arrow.

Similar to how berserk adds a small magic synergy to frenzy, it would maybe be interesting if magic hero added a small percent magic damage conversion to Immolation Arrow, so that would maybe help with immunities and sort of make a fair adjustment in comparison to freezing arrow because if you compare freezing arrow builds and stimulation air builds, that cold is just a lot stronger like the damage is about the same when you freeze the monster versus dealing with a lot of fire immunes, and you have an associated cooldown then have fire damage per second.

Barbarian Skill: Grim Ward

There's only one skill that we would like to see adjusted for Barbarian and that is Grim Ward. Despite melee being at a disadvantage, the Barbarian's skills, for the most part, are in a pretty good place, they're all useful and they serve a purpose, largely the specialization of the combat skill trees throw has been improved leap attack and has a little bit AOE. Grim Ward actually is a very cool skill increasing the amount of damage taken and slowing down monsters, you can actually get a pretty high percent damage value or additional damage value taken to monsters using this skill. But the two things that are really holding it back.

The first one is the flea, it's not necessarily like a breaking issue but it kind of annoying when you are trying to whirlwind and drop down Grim Ward, then monsters start fleeing, so if they just removed that, it would make it a more powerful and useful skill.

The second small tweak that we would like to see is the ability to make Grim Ward from demons as well as the undead, like if you are running through the cast sanctuary, there's tons of undead monsters but it won't allow you to use Grim Ward on those types of enemies, it'd be very cool if similar to how they tweaked fist of the heavens to damage like the undead and demons, it would be really neat if we could use grim ward on the undead and demons.

Two small tweaks we think would make reward a lot more viable and more useful for the barbarian.

Paladin Skill: Conversion

Conversion could definitely use some love and would make for some interesting unique twists on the standard paladin. Now we do want to acknowledge that for the most part the paladin is overpowered, zealot, tesladin, auradin, bowazon, the very powerful like defensive skills or support, but we think that the one skill that's lacking a little bit in terms of use is conversion. So if they just simply increase the duration per skill level similar to how the chance to convert increases as well, it would open up some pretty cool options like imagine sort of a summoner necro twist with the paladin - you convert a big army, they're using your fanaticism more they stick around for like three minutes and you have an insane army that supports your zealot in Chaos Sanctuary.

Assassin Skill: Blades of Ice

The martial arts skills, in general, were improved quite a bit from 2.3 to 2.4, the way that you expend charges they're guaranteed to hit with finishing moves, but across the board the damage is a little bit lo and the blades of ice is the weakest skill, so we think that it could definitely use a little bit of love in terms of a bit of a damage buff. Also it would be pretty interesting if they maybe add cold damage animation like stole it from phoenix strike or maybe just give it that chaos ice bolt damage look that would just sort of buff up the AOE and damage a little bit of skill.

The idea behind phoenix strike is lightning, fire and cold, and you have your individual fire claws of thunder and blades of ice setups, but Blades of Ice could use a little bit of love if it was going to pick any random skill to give a little bit of a buff, so some sort of damage and AoE effect, similar to the way that you can release nova damage from quasa thunder, or you could add frost nova damage from blades of ice as well as the phoenix strike version kind of infusing into it.