Things that should be implemented in the next patch.

[C Elegans]

@Siberus: I have not played any user made mods, but my first reaction to your suggested skill trees for the sorc and the necro, is that you should not decrease the flexibility but rather increase it. In my opinion, the synergies have already decreased the possible variation in viable builds (unless you have godly equipment in which case most sorc builds are viable).

For the sorc, I don't like the idea of making the three elements more similar, since more similarity makes builds using 2 or even 3 elements more boring to play. What I personally would prefer would be to variate the skills more and make it possible to use all 3 elements and more than 1-2 skills as main attack.

I like the idea of a passive skill tree, though.

For the necro, I agree with Molto that it's a pity to remove the poison skills since it again decreased possible variation.

Something I would like to see in a mod is the ability to change skill points. In the otherwise horrible game Restricted area, they use a skill tree system very similar to that in D2, but if you change your mind you can replace your skillpoints later, but at a very high cost. This I would like in D2 for two reason: 1) you may make a mistake and 2) it would make it easier to level in the boring early days, from 1-30 or so.

[Siberys]

I hope this is a bit better for you. I am open to suggestions, but wish no vulgarity, sarcasm, or general offensiveness to the comments. I apologize for going off on you last time Moltovir. I seemed a bit offended by the post, but after looking over it again, it really wasn't (Note: that was before you edited it).Diablo 2: Veil of Hate Class features-

As tertiary skills, every class has the following.
Warmth- health
Channel- Mana
Mana shield
Inner sight
Dodge
Avoid
Burst of speed
Defense- increase in armor
Offense- increase in damage
Pinpoint- increases attack rating
(Maybe others with suggestions)


Necro-
Curses-
Slightly altered like-
Amplify damage gradually increases instead of the set 100.
Weaken gives you +1 strength per level in addition to weakening the monsters
Life tap gives you a percentage that increases over time, rather than the normal 50%.
Decripify, again decreases there speed over time instead of the set limit

Poison/bone spells-
Teeth SYNERGIES nerfed slightly.
Poison dagger nerfed a bit but changed to poison weapon.
Corpse explosion has an increasing rate instead of a random rate.
Bone spirit buffed slightly to give it an extra spirit every 5 or 7 levels.


Summoning skills-
Raise skeleton is slightly buffed. (Thank you Blizzard for nerfing it)
Skeleton mastery has a counter for the stats of a mage skeleton
Skeleton archer is inverted as a new unique skill
Golems are given another synergy from Golem mastery. +1%-3% damage per level of the mastery.
Raise monster's duration is increased to permanent, but at a cost of the first 5 skill levels
at a -50- +0% of monster stats. It will increase, but not until the 6th level is gained.
Summon resist is tweaked slightly for the increase in skill level amount.


Combined poison and curse spells together (Same stuff just on one page instead of two) called Afflictions.

Sorceress-
Fire skills-
Got rid of fire bolt and made fireball a 6th level spell with tweaked stats.
Got rid of blaze and replaced it with a fire wall.
Firewall's place is now Fire ring. It eminates from you and then stays in place damageing opponents
as if it were a wall, but a ring instead.
Warmth gives Health regeneration instead of mana as
Hydra has an increase over time of duration, but works as a sentry from the assassin list, you
will only be able to have ten out at a time.


Ice Skills-
Got rid of Ice bolt and Glacial spike, replaced with a tweaked ice blast w/bigger radius.
Blizzard has an increase over time of duration
Frost nova is slightly reduced in mana (2%-4% per level) making the skill worth while
Frozen orbs casting delay is reduced to .5 seconds instead of 1 second.


Lightning skills-
Teleport has a range on it now per level
Static field starts off at 10% and increases by 1% each level

(The lightning skills are actually pretty alright in my opinion)

All masteries of elements are the same now. 30% with a 10%-20% increase over levels of that skill.

[Darth Zenemij]

Lightning skills for a Necro eh? What about druid and assassin? Did you cover those yet?

[Siberys]

Necro doesn't have lightning skills.

He shouldn't at least.

Nope, checked and he doesn't.

[Darth Zenemij]

Sorry I didn't see that it was under sourceress. But what about Druid/assassin?

[Siberys]

I'll get those later on. Let me work at a bit at a time.

[moltovir]

I like the changes you made, but since I play Necro's a lot (almost exclusively ), I'd still like to make some comments:

-I've already said why I think that 15% synergies for lvl 1 skills aren't overpowered at all: synergies add a percentual amount of damage to the base damage of the skill, and if the base damage is low, the synergie bonus is low. A level 20 unsynergized Teeth does 23-31 damage (21 teeth). A lvl 20 synergy adds 15%*20= 300% damage to Teeth, which is a huge amount. But because the base damage is so low, it's still low when trippled (92-124 damage). A fully synergized Teeth requires exactly 100 points and does 300-403 damage (agreed, multiplied by 21 because you have 21 Teeth, but more than half of those misses and due to NextDelay only one Tooth can hit a target!). To compare: a lvl 20 Bone Spear with exactly the same synergy investment does 1250-1350 damage!
Nerfing Teeth would to unnoticed by 99,99% of the Necromancer player, but again you make another funny build impossible (yes, I've played a Dentist and I'm not ashamed about it! )

-In my opinion, the curse tree is one of the best designed trees in the game (together with the Amazons P&M Tree and the Barbarians Warcries), because every single skill has its use (except Weaken). Not only are you taking away much of the variation it offers, you don't even keep the most valuable curses but only those who are good for melee characters. Lower Resist is what makes you a Sorceress' best friend (apart from Conviction paladins). Terror is a lifesaver: I can't remember how much it saved me from getting overwhelmed by stair traps in the Worldstone Keep. You're also dropping every single AI curse in the tree: although most people think it's weird, I'm a big fan of the DDC's (direct distraction curses) like Dim Vision, Confuse and Attract. There isn't a better defense against Gloams or Black Soals than Dim Vision: they just get blinded and don't move. Having trouble with a large pack of monsters? Confuse a group, Attract a monster on the other side, and suddenly they've broken up in manageable clusters of monsters who are damaging themselves! DDC's are the lifeblood of Necromancer builds with high damage but low survivability, like the Bonemancer, Meleemancer or Venomancer.

-Although I'd love to see Raise Skeleton buffed, I don't get why you call it "nerfed". Necromancer Summoners are one of the most viable, damaging and safe PvM builds in Diablo 2: their skeletons can reach high damage (or obscene damage with the help of item runewords and skill boosters), most enemies are put in hitlock due to the large amount of swings they take from 3 or 4 skeletons, your Necromancer rarely gets hit because of the 60000 hp moving wall of bones in front of him, Act Bosses are a pushover when they're Decripified and slowed by Clay Golem, and a Summoner can easily solo the game untwinked (low item dependency). I'd recommend the Summoner to any person who wants to start playing Hardcore.

[Siberys]

Nerfed=lowered in statistics.

I didn't get rid of anything actually. Just balanced what is there and added more. All the curses will be there, just those are the ones I will work on.

[Siberys]

Amazon Skills-

Javelin/spear-
Fend gets synergy of 2% damage per level from Jab
Jab gets synergy from impale at 1% attack bonus per level

Passive/Magic Skills-
Penetrate increase due to monster stats being raised.
Valkyrie will have +1 valkyrie every 10 levels.

Bow/crossbow skills-
Multiple arrow will start of with less damage (35% instead of 25%) and gradually increase to 10% extra damage
Exploding arrow will have an increasing radius on it.
Immolation arrow will have an increasing radius on it.
Strafe will be slightly faster.


Barbarian skills-
Nothing changed with Warcries

Masteries-

Weapon masteries will have an increase in attack speed after 10th skill level.
Weapon masteries will have .25% extra critical per level after 20th
New skill- Elemental Mastery- Harness the power of elemental damage in your weapon. (Note: Does NOT give you elemental damage,
but increases an existing one)
Increased Speed nerfed slightly

Combat Skills-
Bash will start with 3 mana cost, but as you progress, it will cost less (-.25 mana per level down to 1)
Double swing slightly slower
Whirlwind is now stronger than before.


NOTE: Nerfed= lowered in stats.

[moltovir]

If you're really going to do this, can you please remove the timer on Immolation Arrow too? Immozons have been incredibily nerfed by this timer

[Siberys]

I'll lessen it, but it is a pretty insane skill. I'll reduce the 1 sec. timer to 1/2 a second.

[Siberys]

Assassins-

Many of the martial arts skills will have an extra percentage based effect for the increase in monster toughness

Claw Mastery will be the same as Weapon Masteries and not less than that.

Poison will do less damage, but have a passive effect instead of a duration.

Sentry's will have increases in shots over levels.

New Skill- Speed for thought. This will effectively increase your speed of your weapons passively. It will start out at 2% and increase by 1% each level.
(I would add this to the non-unique skills, but it doesn't fit with some other characters like the sorceress and necromancer)

New Skill- Flurry of jabs. This will let you produce an effect similar to Zeal, but with claws only. It will have a maximum of 7 strikes total, but will always increase with attack rating and damage.

Paladin-
Holy Flame, Frost, Lightning are in the same level. I think it is rather pointless to have them at three different levels. Same goes for the resistance.

Not much to change in terms of Unique skills.

New Skill- Celestial Smite:
This let's you strike an opponent ignoring most of the creatures immunities/Resistances. This gives you a bonus on cold, fire, lightning, and physical damage and several other effects such as crushing blow, prevent monster heal, and others. This has a synergy of +2% per 10 ranks of Vitality.
(Yes, Vitality.)

[Nekasrof]

Druids

Druids are my favorite characters, so I will address the changes I would like to see.

I would like to see more synergy between trees, while keeping synergies that already exist in the same tree.

For example, Lycanthropy should grant 5% health boost to Spirit wolf, Dire wolf, and Grizly Bear.

Werewolf should grant a bonus to attack rating (and maybe even attack speed) to Spirit wolf, Dire Wolf, and Grizly Bear. Werebear should grant a bonus to defense (and perhaps damage) for the wolves and bear.

Conversely, putting points into Spirit Wolf should grant a small bonus to both shapechanging forms, perhaps 5% attack rating per level, Dire Wolf should grant a 5% health bonus to both forms, and Grizly Bear should grant 5% increased damage to both forms.

The fire skills should grant fire damage to the druid minions, and the Hurricane skill should grant them cold damage.

I feel that these synergies would help to make many different character models viable.

Of course, focusing on one tree will still work, but using two different trees equally becomes viable.

This last bit is wishful thinking, but I would like to see the maximim number of spirit wolves increased to 10 and the max number of dire wolves increased to 6. Also, and this is just a maybe, allow the druid to summon one type of wolf and the bear at the same time.

There, my 2 cents.