They came out with their long anticipated patch this week. Any impressions? Is it worth reinstalling?

I think it is. GF and I started playing again after the 1.10 patch was released. It's a clean economy so that there are no cheats and hacks if you play as a new Ladder character.

Plus, there's this new "World Event" that's apparently been going on frequently since that launch of the patch. You get to fight a tougher version of Diablo for a very nice unique small charm.

I'm kind of happy o see they cut out some of the cheating so i no longer have to listen to a billion people going on and on abou hexes. Also the new lobby system is great because there are no selling bots on there yet.

As for leveling and such i think i is a fair amount tougher to level - blood runs and such aren't giving me nearly the xp they used to. However i think that will help push my friends and i into the next diffculty level and make us cooperate a little more.

I play on the West server btw...

The difficulty level has been upped quite a bit in this patch, so it's probably not a good idea to use old characters. Plus, with the new synergy system for the skills, it requires you to rethink how the skill points needs to be distributed.

Act 5 in Nightmare and Hell levels also now have shooters (lvl 80 quill rats, for example) that randomly spawns to discourage the lame "blood runs" and does sort of force people to play more cooperatively.

I'm sorry. Can you elaborate on this more? It'll be better to start of anew than to continue with my high level char?

Well, first of all, your high level characters probably have all available skill points assigned. With the new patch, many bugs and skills have been corrected and rebalanced. For example, the piercing guided arrow bug is now fixed so that you can't hit something with the same arrow multiple times anymore. Also, necromancer's poison skills have been improved significantly so that they are "good" again. If you had build your necros previously, when the poison skills were next to worthless, then it's likely you would not have put any points into poison explosion or poison nova. Essentially, some overpowered skills have been nerfed and some previously worthless skills have become viable again. So, your old character builds might not be good for the new games given these changes.

Also, with the new patch, there are now another distinction for characters. Besides being a hardcore or a regular (non-hardcore) character, the new patch also introduced new "ladder" characters which will be separate from the current existing characters. There are many special items and cube formula that are only available for ladder characters. Plus, new ladder characters will start in a new economy, free of all the bugged, hacked, and duped items. This might also be an incentive for people who are looking for a good challenge.

Also the first time you beat a boss they drop significantly better stuff than future times you beat them. For instance tonight i beat Baal on normal for the first time and he dropped 3 unique items.... beat him again a bit later and he dropped a couple normal blue items. Now if i could just get some decent runes

Damnit this is making me want to start over! I haven't played it in almost a year, but I have a level 60+ barb...

So, it only took them 2+ years since release to fix the cheating problems?

As always i think people will find ways to get around things. First there was the bug to dupe items and they fixed that. Then the hexing thing, and i'm sure more ways will be figured out to cheat in the future. Either way i'm pretty pleased with this patch. If only they'd release a new expansion

So anyone on the West server have some assassin eq for trade?

I use to play Diablo 2 on the West server over a year ago. Got many level 80+ characters. I must have spent thousands of hours playing that game. Finally quit the game cold by selling all my characters with their equipments.

It's about time...wow. This totally flew past my radar. After the beta patch was released I checked the Blizzard website every day for news of the patch. I eventually gave up. I'll have to check this out.

Just got back to checking this thread. Thanks for the info!

I'm thinking about starting up a Sorceress or Necro. Looks like my guided arrow is now worthless!

Anyone see any new guides for decent builds? I am not looking for a cookie cutter build, but if Frozen Orb is worthless I want to avoid it.

Smart man. I never got any sellable characters but stopped playing when I quit working with a guy who also played. I know that if I install this crack addict of a game it will start all over.

Day 163 w/o playing Diablo 2.

Nothing is worthless, and definitely not Frozen Orb. It's the monsters' hit points and resistances that has been upped significantly that makes most attacks seem underpowered. A lot of skills will now require a significant amount of synergy bonus on top of maxed skills in order to put a dent in the critters at Hell difficulty.

But, the sorceress still have have static field, which most newbie players never even touch. I can't recount how many people I've ran into that has Sorceress which don't even have a single point in static field. You have to be very "creative" in the use of static field, but I've found that most monsters still goes down fairly easy when you combine static with another elemental attack which the monsters are not immune to.