How Runewords RUINED Diablo 2 

Tbh, Llama is one of the only ones who can do a complete roast of Diablo 2 and after two hours do a live 8 hours of D2, and beat the game with a Necromancer with a poison dagger lmao

Tried a self-restricted no-runeword run with a frenzy barb. It was amazing. So many awesome items out there forgotten by time.

I still remember having to repair my items before selling them to get max gold

I feel like the meta for a lot of games these days is just run through as fast as you can. Constantly to the next objective. The best play throughs I’ve ever had are when I put limitations on myself and thus have to go slower and think some more. And it’s funny that when you slow down you start to see and appreciate the little details and subtleties that make this game the masterpiece it is

I stopped playing d2 Just before the big runewords came out. When i came back to it years later it was truly completely different. The original runewords were Sometimes useful but not op. I somehow like and despise the new runewords at the same time. The new runewords are fun but they completely devalue almost all other items.

I really loved the 1.09 days running a guided arrow amazon with buriza, shaftstop, vamp gaze or just mowing cows down with frozen orb + thunderstorm sorc chasing uniques and rares was fun because it all felt manageable to do and rewarding. Personally when I put in the time to grind an Enigma solo in the end I felt "Oh god it's finally over", I dislike the system behind HR drops and the overall gigantic power boost they provide simply nullifying everything else and it created a boring economy where trading just didnt feel enjoyable and fun anymore.

I remember early LoD days, the meta for awhile was WW Barb with dual Fury Balrog Blades. One minor change that amped up the difficulty a lot was when they cut the life and mana leech figures in half. You used to be able to get 6% leech on really low level gear and could leech indefinitely on most monsters, potion chugging wasn't a thing back then. :(

i remember when spirit first came out i couldn't believe an item like that even existed. I thought they had made a huge error on the runes required and thought it had to have high runes and they were gonna hotfix it asap

I strongly disagree that ruinwords ruined the game, the problem is not with the ruinwords themselves, Its that blizzard never bothered to expand upon the crafting system in the game, Eastern Sun its a great example of how Crafting should have been done in D2... Not only you can add modifiers to items, but also spell skills, How cool is it to have CTC Frozen Orb on an item, or fataticism or chain lightning or spells like curse or lower resist, You can also farm materials and make news items from that, i played Eastern Sun for years and i love it, To balence the powerful crafting options you need to farm a ton of materials as they are not cheap.... My point is the lack of advance crafting options is what ruined Diablo 2 for many in my opinion.

I'm not in the "They ruined the game" camp, but I'm pretty close. When the runewords came out we were all really excited, because it was so new, and everything was powerful. We hadn't hit that moment where literally everyone had the same gear but it quickly became that. Enigma definitely changed the game for the worse. Botting really took off after that too

Nice vid. One remark: OP rares mentioned like 300+ ED weapons were only introduced in 1.10. Rare affix pool was very weak in 1.07 1.08 and 1.09. However pre-patch rares (before expansion) were indeed strong, and also very common due to the fact that the affix pool was much smaller than today. It was relatively easy to gamble a triple 3x resist boots with STR.

I think Rune Words didn't ruin D2 initially because of the drop tables they had for runes. They were very rare to drop. Yeah during patch 1.09 was indeed the golden age of D2 I remember playing quite a bit on the old bnet servers back in the day and I had zon with buriza and guided arrow and that was amazing. Also remembering having the full mavs set as well. Also old school Windforce added +35 to dex and I remember how much that item was in demand. Not sure when drop tables for runes changed but once they changed the drop table for runes is when I think RuneWords broke diablo 2 because the runes became more common as drops than they were granted the high runes are still rare but they still drop every now and then. Yeah I agree with you Llama there is no simple solution to the problem because if you do one thing you will alienate one group of people and if you did another thing then you would alienate the other group of people.

I agree with your point at the end that there isn’t an easy solution to the power creep. I personally find the same joy of grinding my way up to those words, but, it also makes you feel less value to the gear that carried you to that point. I’ll never forget the joy of grinding LK and Countess in Hell, just to get my first Enigma for my first “real deal” summoners. The pure catharsis of earning something, after weeks of grind and willpower, is why I’ve played RuneScape since ‘05, and have played OldSchool since ‘19. However, yeah, once you get your dream words, nothing compares… and you kill the joy of progressing, that you can only get again by making a new character, but, you’ll be tempted to twink to that point. I find the solution more to be Median’s approach, by altering your own gear, and making it work to your skills. That’s just my idea though, and I think it’s a good start. :)

16:14 I really liked that you mentioned Project Diablo 2. It's a really awesome mod that has improved D2 beyond my wildest expectations. I would love for you to do a more thorough overview of the mod with gameplay footage or at least screenshots covering some of the REALLY cool stuff.

I personally like how project diablo 2 solves these problems. For example nerfing spirit to +1 skills and less fhr, removing absorb. Or enigma having a teleport with 3 charges that replenish called blink, but most classes also get new movement skills. And the crafting system is neat, allowing crafted items to be a huge part of endgame along with rares and uniques. I didn’t even buy D2R when I realized they weren’t going to truly shake things up or add any kind of endgame mechanics. I would rather just play LoD at that point (although I think I’m in a minority of players who feel that way).

Ethereal Cruel Colossus Blade Of Quickness (yellow glow) - Or The Lamprey for the red colour. I loved those days, or farming for a cruel hammer of quickness for ur zealot dueller. We were some of the original LLD players as well, and it was so exciting and fun when there wasn't really rules around it like getting hell rushed for the points, then taking your level 21 paladin or 18 paladin in and completely crushing a dueller room. Also in terms of runewords I still love a stepping stone weapon being an Eth " Oath " balrog blade runeword. I wish that runewords like that saw use as a more end game or stepping stone to rare weapon. Anyway, eating dinner don't want to ramble too much.

Corruptions are always interesting. Many uniques need buffs and reworks. Rares really need an affix pool buff, PD2 did some of that right, like FCR on belts, FCR and +skills on body armors, deadly strike/crushing blow on weapons, things that can get pretty insane, especially with crafting on top. Slapping +skills on everything might sound lame, but not much can be done about it if that's so powerful. Maybe more focus on +% elemental damage affixes to balance it. Immunities were also a mistake in the long run, or rather the limited ways to break them. 95% or so resistances would still be a big roadblock at first, but something that you could deal with using various items with -resistances affixes. Sunders are barely a bandage on that issue when in most cases endgame character prefers Infinity anyway.

The one thing Mr. Llama forgot to mention (which is a big part of changing the game forever) is the fact that back in the days you couldn't just open up a browser page and look at the complete list of all runewords that exist (or at least those kind of helping tool sites weren't so popular). What this meant is that you actually had to experiment yourself with putting different combinations of runes into items just to find out what is the exact combo needed for what runeword, and if you didn't write them down (and you for example had your character deleted/killed), you would struggle a lot later on with creating the same thing from the shear memory. That aspect alone, of experimenting and collecting resources just so you can "gamble" with them and very often waste them but also getting the full on satisfaction when you finally succeed just shattered later on. On the other hand, what also kinda changed D2 forever are so called "builds". Or let's say meta builds. I played for an age (don't ask me how) on version 1.07 and then later on 1.09 (until I switched to D2R) and there weren't so strict "builds" you ran with, you had a bunch of characters that are different classes yet they usually had a bit of everything or what Llama mentioned before character resets, we all had characters that had a bunch of "wasted" skills that never got any use. Ahhhh those were the days my friend! :)

I loved the hunt for uniques. I would love making rares top tier again. Maybe even create the possibility of personal sets with them: your three personalized rares should become a set.

Completed LOD 1.07 offline because I didn't have internet back then - and runewords were worthless because there was no way to find out what words worked without losing both runes and equipment. The fundamental problem with runewords is that you have to wiki them, it's unreasonable for anyone who isn't super-online or obsessive to discover their function through play. Even older games like Dungeon Master would at least give you scrolls with recipes for spells. They were implemented in a user-unfriendly way on launch, and then subsequently made worse as time went on. If they were to vanish from the game, I don't think I would miss them. I'd probably enjoy finding loot more, like... I'd actually look at the loot if it doesn''t have sockets.

Hot take, but I think in a world devoid of bots/duping/jsp, Enigma would be a fair item. If you can find/trade for a jah and a ber within a game economy untainted by the issues I mentioned, not only would we see far *less* of them but you would absolutely have earned everything enigma does for you.

Would definitely come back for a full season of no runewords.

I think we can throw in Mosaic in the broken runeword category. Over the time, I feel like we get attached to the runewords as they offer some form of guarantee in achieving a strong character. If you grind long enough, you'll get to them eventually. Applies to the solo self found game experience. The same could be said for uniques but most come short to the runewords in terms of power but I feel like increasing their power will make them equivalent to runewords. Some form of nerfs is required, specifically the low cost runewords. What would be fun though, is adding possibilities for rare items to be best in slots through very rare attributes or crafting, specifically for shields and armors.

Cross class skills from runewords were always so neat to me. They were what made the game so fun especially seeing the interactions with the skills on the new class. Melee dual dream enchantress inspired my builds across other diablo games but also across many other rpgs that weren't even made by blizzard.

Meh at some point you either powercreep to keep the interest up or let a game rest in peace. Rune hunt is the D2 endgame. I like it. Thats why I still play D2 while D3 and D4 collects dust.

What frustrates me its the huge potential for new items and runewords but blizzard couldn't care less

On the release of D2R, I played SSF non-LOD HC. I had played a lot of Slash Diablo, so I was very familiar with the LOD meta of the game up to that point. I was amazed at how well the game flowed, how exciting it was to identify rare items, & how I had to handle different immunities once I got into Hell. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I didnt need to spam Countess til I got the same item everyone else had. I wasn't disappointed at the Hellforge. I enjoyed it so much, it kinda ruined LOD for me. I haven't played any mods recently & I can imagine vanilla D2 not scaling well long term, but the game itself just was such a joy to play.

It's one of the reasons I play classic and have absolutely no interest in expansion. In classic, everyone has different gear. You don't farm for runes, you farm for rares. With a rare, you never know what you're going to get and I just love that feeling when I find a gg one. It's just so much more satisfying.

Hardcore Solo self found on player 1 difficulty has made the game more rewarding for me. Although it’s definitely time consuming, u may end up playing the same characters for years. It will take a while to find true gg items. And aside from hardcore just playing through the game.. leveling up, facing true challenges is the best experience for me.

Seasonal runeword are a cool idea to keep the game fresh though. Similar to how they would implement ladder only runewords back in the day. Also Brevick and Blizz North left before 1.10 was released. They implemented all these items and then blizz north was dissolved and it was never fixed or altered. Peter Hu finished 1.10

How do I play patch 1.09 where Baranars Star was a decent weapon for a zealer?

i remember playing diablo 2 and getting rares from time to time and i felt pretty good about their powers, they were pretty interesting, then i visited the Wiki and saw all the crazy stuff and those items never felts as special again.

I only play solo / offline, so I appreciate i have a very different experience to many others - but I love the runewords, because they're still VERY special to me. I still haven't had many of the great OP ones you list here, I've yet to find a Ber rune myself. Granted i've only been playing a few months now in D2R, but I did play a lot back during LoD days. I think for online players - who essentially get access to everything incredibly quickly by sheer number of ways to gear, its understandable - as your gear journey isn't really a journey anymore - just a destination and you need only trade a few neat things you find to get there. I think seasonal models would be a good route if blizz is deciding to continue D2R support, no runes season etc. I think skill charms would be a sick addition though, would need some real hamstringing though to make sure they aren't equally as busted mind.

at least they made BER the rune for Enigma. and Infinity.. not impossible, but i can count on my fingers in one hand how many i have found SSF... farming bots ruined that and made rune words a problem... i put 500 hours into a farming sorc and found 1 BER in 500 hours of farming. SSF Infinity and Enigma on 1 character is borderline impossible without 1000s of hours in farming. BUT i do agree with Grief, Spirit and Insight as breaking the game...

My biggest issue is that they buffed all monster health, they buffed all skills with the synergies and then left physical damage characters behind

Will you play classic MrLlama? Maybe you can get blizz to add extended stash for us

Played D2 since release and I never let myself use teleport on non sorcs. A code of my own invention but a code nonetheless

As a casual player there is nothing wrong with those runewords. It takes forever to find them yourself - so the grind is still there. The only thing I miss from the good old days is the community - but that could be solved by an in game trading system and functional chat...

I’m 37 and played d2 when it first came out and quit immediately after they added runes. Just gems was so fun

As someone who had played d2 off and on since 2001 LOD, I’ve never had a jah rune in my inventory and have never been close to having enigma. I feel like I can speak for a large portion of the community and say that those end game items are usually unobtainable unless purchased or traded and are not even part of my normal gameplay. I’ve spent 700 hundred+ hours in D2R since its release and over 3 seasons and my single player, I have created 1 grief, 1 coh, 2 cta, 2 hoto, and found a zod, never close to infinity or enigma

i personally would go a rather rough path to some solution, which is just remove grief, and then nerf rest so those wouldnt be so op compared to rest. i want to see rares in use! also perhaps some way to make said rares more viable, similar to what orbbof corruption did, maybe even have the bricking as part of it 😂

What if the rune word strength varied based on level of the base item used to create it, so a normal base would have stats appropriate for normal play, etc. You would still be godly in Hell, but at least your normal and nightmare play would be more varied

You can find amulets and helms with teleport charges, which allow you to teleport without needing Enigma or a weapon swap. I used such an amulet on my budget HC uber smiter, where you don't need that many teleports for a run (needed life tap on weapon swap, so couldn't use that), but it would otherwise get annoying (and costly) to repair constantly for general farming. If there was some automated way to repair items with charges (like a charm that used gold from your inventory to repair charges on equipped items every 2 seconds, perhaps at less than the current repair cost), then those other items could be competitive with Enigma (you could also nerf Enigma to use charges). Alternately, you could add an amulet crafting recipe guaranteed to add teleport charges that auto repair using gold, so it's a self contained single item. The crafted teleport ammy could have a high level requirement (so it's late game specific), and would use one of the lower high runes as an ingredient. In return for the high rune cost, it would be guaranteed to have +2 skills for a random character class (in addition to the auto repairing teleport charges), making it competitive with the best unique ammys if it rolls well, even ignoring the teleport charges.

To add to this: Runewords also cemented the choice of mercenary, always choosing from Act 2 either a Might or Holy Freeze (and sometimes prayer) due to the Insight and Infinity being best suited (but not limited to) Polearms.

One interesting change to solve the teleport and enigma dilemma would be to add teleport as a chance to roll on the standard of hero’s. This way you still have to grind to get it just like a torch but it could still roll as worthless like it is now. It would also take up space in your inventory and you could change it to a 2 or 3 slot item in there where now it changes your inventory some as well.

The Big Issue with Runewords is that they are often far better than the majority of items you could get at that level. If they were less powerful or more niche, that would probably feel better, stuff like Ancients Pledge, where it's a solid option if you don't have anything better but it doesn't push out every other shield that exists. I kind of feel like Stealth itself is still problematic though because there's pretty much NO reason to not use it for the entirety of normal and most of nightmare, potentially into Hell because of how many bonuses it gives. And then once you get to endgame runewords like Enigma you can see how warped the game became around them. On one hand they are THEORETICALLY harder to get because they require multiple specific items, but every rune is far more common than most unique items or even a good rolling rare. In my mind, runewords should be good fallback or niche equipment that can help get you through if you don't get good rares or uniques, but they should pretty much never be BIS.

i’m torn on these game breaking items, on one hand, each new ladder obtaining these is my end game goal (as i do legit trading /farming to get them), so it’s fun to work towards them, and feels great to finally obtain. on the other hand, it does limit what you can equip and what items can be considered “exciting” because all you want is the same runeword over and over again. side note, love content like this!

feel like one thing that should be mentioned about items such as enigma (no requirements pretty much since it gave you the strength) is, unlike almost any other item in the game, you *REALLY* wanted to have at least ONE enigma, because then all your characters could use it if necessary. So the impact is a lot different than say a barbarian specific item, this one item you must have and any character you play gets to have enigma. The feeling you'd get was that everyone had enigma, was by far the most common item in the game.

Nice video, would really love a D2 season without runes, would be very interesting

I remember how overjoyed I was as a ten year old, when set items dropped. The feeling seeing that green was glorious. Now all im looking for is orange and gold. As you said, sets and rares are nearly obsolete.

TBH, I’d bet that most of us never even touched D2 before LOD. The enigma runeword specifically is what enables the sorts of shenanigans that make the game more interesting than any other arpg.

That is what happens when you have dev making gear for themselves and not for the betterment of the game as a tactical possibility. The person in charge of making skill balancement, items and other such thing that affect the tactical perspective should NEVER play their own work, unless they're very casual, if you put someone in charge, and they play a certain class, they're going to make gear for themselves, that's unnavoidable other than to hire somebody that does not play.

Half of the video can be about just Spirit and how it did it's deed. Changed the primary weapon(shield) for more than half the builds/playstyles.

I think it would have been better if they made a +1 to teleport affix possible on rares. I personally enjoyed 1.09 more than anything since.

I agree 100% on the Spirit portion. I was "unfortunate" to find a 45 resist all Crown Shield and now I have a completely stupid shield, that is impossible to replace.

I come from the times where XPing in Outter Steppers was common and finding rare Ornate Plates gave an equal thrill of finding a top-tier items nowadays. If the plate turned red after IDing it, it was godly

It was such a good game players try to extend it as much as possible, beating the game on hardcore max players. Then ubers. Then doing it with every class. Then through builds. Then having one of every kind of superweapon runeword. Then holy grail. And you feel disappointed that you finished it. A great game with an atmosphere that cannot be beat. Diablo 3 and 4 should have been extensions of D2 each giving 4 new acts and increasing level max to 150 overall.

1 You forgot CTA Engima spirit grief cta act 2 Merc Need to get addressed 2 To bring other items to the front or equal value for game play Players need ways to add stats or buffs to items -Add a means to add sockets to magical amulets -Add random amounts of sockets from socket quest to all classes of items - make it repeatable (increases player retention+community interaction) -Jewels stats should be buffed 60-90 level range (20-30%) -Players should be able to clone jewels and inscribe them -Gems should give elemental damage -Anni should have teleport on it -Remove the cost of stone rings of Jordan from cube unless drops are fixed to X number of times players runs something -Add different types of unique jewels (Facets) -Buff set items to have teleport on all completed class sets -Skill Charges should be 4X'ed 90%reduced cost Change enigma teleport to charges -Give players a way to make items ethereal -Bring back bugged ethereal armour New recipe to add more stats and curse the item as well Merc should give all buffs a cross the board after each act give different auras All aura* should be acquired on each Merc max out at Lvl 7 *Lightning, fire, cold resistance should be removed These wouldn't have a lot of use chases This would weaken the rune words as a whole Jewels should be the best in game items players should be able to keep and use them once obtained With a crafting recipe they cost gold and gems to add into an item (wow jewel crafter recipe=item + gold=item + farmable material=same color gems + rune of level range = 2 jewels )

Could there be a ladder and/or that allows the scroll back through time to create d2 to be what the player wants?

The problem with in theory rolling things back (remove runewords or nerf them) is that people will just find the next thing to complain about. Like if you really want, then go play single player without the runewords or maybe open a duel league with rules around banned runewords. For pvm... a hammerdin will still obliterate the game. If anything it feels like having a segregated forum might be the answer. In any case, I still think diablos an incredible game 😂

Better then d4 😊

The fact that enigma is BIS for a lot of sorc builds says it all

The problem has never been that teleport is too powerful, the problem is that the overwhelming majority of maps aren't designed to have anyone actually walk through efficiently. If things were designed in a manner than made sense for actually walking through, people wouldn't feel so pushed towards teleport. But when it's literally sometimes a) spend 5 minutes walking a circle around the entire map to get to a room adjacent to yours, or b) spending less than 1 second to just teleport through the wall... there really isn't much choice left.

Enigma, Infinity, Spirit, and Grief could all use a small nerfing. But more important to me would be making the uniques stronger. Even with a minor nerfing; will something else be better for melee than Grief? Probably not. I feel like hell p8 has basically been tuned with runewords in mind and the root issue is there aren't any uniques that reach the same heights even with how rare some of the unique drops are.

Let's discuss how runewords ruined Diablo 2: They didn't. The end.

It would have been really cool to see an overhaul of the system for rare items at some point after 1.10, so that the highest-end rare modifiers on any equipment slot could be in competition with end-game runewords. Make it unlikely enough to find such insane mods all together that they would be, in fact, very rare, and runewords would still be the simpler option to have a viable character. But for players who enjoyed the grind and wanted to maximize as much as possible, you could still keep looking and one day identify a rare phase blade that had better modifiers than Grief, or a rare body armor that was so good it made you want to give up having teleport as a non-Sorceress caster. That was actually one thing I enjoyed about playing Diablo 3 single player on console (well after the whole auction house nonsense on PC). Unlike when replaying Diablo 2, there was actually a sense of excitement around finding rare items and even varying modifiers on uniques. When I replay D2 now, the only things I really am trying to find are runes, and then when you find the right ones, you're just set, and the grind to keep maximizing stops.

i love runeword do u know how hard is it for Summon Necro to walk around small tunnel?

I still, to this day, play D2 in version 1.09. It is, in my opinion, the best version of the game. It has the expansion and all that it contains but at the same time no OP runewords, the caster/melee characters are more evenly balanced (no mana pots to buy) and more diverse builds (no synergies, more points for different/unrelated skills). Edit: In 1.09 the only way you could get Tal from Countess in normal is by cubing, the highest rune she drops is Eld. Not very time efficient I think.

There are a few end game levels, early: when you equipe with a set, mid end: when you equipo with unics like viper magi / azurreat, etc, and super end game: Grief, Infinity, Enigma, etc. You can stay in mid End with unics.

Happy to see someone with the same take on rune words. They became the meta and over time we stopped seeing unique builds.

As a D2 classic player for years, I saw this title and immediately clicked. I was a big trader in D2 classic NL with pre patch dupes and GG's. Although I played D2 expac a decent amount when it came out, it never felt the same. Runewords changed the game and builds became less diversified. I even tried to play classic in D2R when it came out, but the bnet servers not showing games quickly ruined the already small community. You're basically forced to play xpac now or play single player. I decided to make a gg rares only char on D2R and even though it's underwhelming compared to my strong runeword chars, I enjoy it more. Reminds me of a better time in my Diablo 2 history. Thanks for posting this Llama. It's nice to get your take on this.

Is that shield really so good even though it only has 47% blcok chance?

I always thought it was hilarious devs thought enigma needed faster run walk as well when it should have went on chains of honor. Giving an alternative to people that don’t want to teleport

100% agree on Spirit I remember writing entire thread posts on forums...... describing how Spirit is so overpowered, that its no fun even looking for shields and caster weapons.... all the way until late game, nearly ruined d2 for me Unbelievable how stupid ideas like Spirit made it into the game......(should cost 1-2 hrs and be 1-2 all skills and 5-20 fcr)

This is why me and many other stayed in classic D2. So many good rare items and no runewords. Loved my old collection of duped execution swords, lances and ornate armor. I remember people leaving for xpac. They’d get rich instantly by converting their duped ammys, Sojs and boots because those were viable in xpac

It is really unfortunate that if you’re not playing a sorc but want the best builds you’re going to farm enigma. It’s hands down one of the best rune words in the game, and just as llama said that’s not even including teleport on it

1. Slightly increase base weapon damage 2. Adjust rare affix pool for high ilvls to increase the chance of getting a good one 2. a) remove self-repair mod from affix pool 2. b) remove ethereal rare items 3. New cube recipe: Zod (+ some junk) + non-eth rare item = ethereal and indestructible item

enigma, spirit, grief and infinity should be removed: - enigma removal needs : add teleport charges on rare rings/amus - grief removal needs : unique weapons such as grandfather, doombringer, or lightsabre should be buffed up a little; rare weapons should be able to scale up more. - spirit removal needs : none, just remove it. - infinity removal needs : like for enigma, add chance on hit/strike/being hit to trigger conviction/lt/whatever_aura on rare rings/amus (EDIT: thanks for this video it emphasize how blibli cut this community in half at that time and it feels good to ear some else talking about this)

We would love to see a follow up video on how you think would be the best way to undo the damage OP runewords have done!!

I think a solution could be to add 3-4 rune words each season, but also facing out 3-4 rune words, so there would be a fixed numbers of rune words. Then it would be new an interesting each season with new rune words, and the old ones should never come back. So those 4 rune words would be gone in a couple of years. That would be so interesting in my opinion.

Hi Llama, what is your opinion of the old fan-patch 1.09 Final, which is still available somewhere on the old forums? It "fixes" some bugs in Diablo 2 LOD 1.09 and re-introduces some stuff from earlier patches. I vaguely remember that "the wall" I usually hit on my characters entering "Hell" difficulty just wasn't there in the "old" Diablo 2 LOD 1.09, but I haven't gotten a character to Hell on that fan patch yet.

as a kid growing up without internet rune worlds were a mystery, so I guess they don't ruined much stuff for me since I discovered many of them recently

I played a Bone Spear/Corpse Explosion Necro all the way through hardcore using a Lore, Stealth, White Wand and an Ancients Pledge. Although, at some point, I found a 2os Necro Head with skills on it that I used to make a Rhyme. I could have continued to use the Ancients Pledge and it was perfectly fine. Several of the original runewords you mentioned are pretty powerful and end game viable. I would LOVE to see crafting Armors, Shelds, Weapons, etc. be buffed to compete with runewords. Crafting has always been underused except for caster amulets, blood amulets and rings, blood gloves just to name a few.

Llama, this is an important conversation to have in the D2 world and I'm glad that someone who has a large audience and who's voice carries weight is talking about it. It boggles my mind that so many people don't see how these runewords are a net negative for the game. Well I shouldn't be surprised, in a world of ultra-consumption-I-want-everything-now-without-effort, power creep is everywhere and is hard to avoid and especially hard to reverse. The runewords you chose as flag bearers are perfect representatives of what should be regarded as a game design failure, in a game that (mostly) revolves around farming items. I believe Stealth is also one of the worse offenders and your Top 4 should be expanded to a Top 5 to include it. Now, what's tricky is that the community is very divided on what the best course of action would be. Many love these runewords and think everything is fine as is. Others would want everything else to be buffed to rival the power of these OP runewords. I like to think that most adult, educated and intelligent people who have a couple years (or decades) of experience with D2 and who have some basic notions of game design and balance DO NOT fall in these prior categories. Regarding Enigma, which I regard as the worst design mistake on this list, I agree with you that while adding Teleport to other items / with more flexibility (jewels, charms, essences...) would be *less bad* than the way things are, the problem still lies in the fact that the skill itself, Teleport, is simply too strong in its current state. People talk about 1 point wonders, but Teleport is The Wonder of all wonders. How many skill points do you have to invest to have a potent Blizzard? Blessed Hammer? Tornado? Even Whirlwind? If Teleport is to exist at all without a cooldown, then perhaps it should only be possible to achieve with 20 hard points invested in the skill. Perhaps even with hard points in a synergy -say Telekinesis- as well, so that you'd have to think twice about the sacrifice in damage before going for it. In my opinion it SHOULD be the sorceress' signature skill, but there should be a cost to this power. A nerfed teleport would still be a great tool to have, but it would require more skill, particularly more foresight, to use effectively. Now I can't even imagine the uproar that such a change would cause, but I'm confident it would make the game better. EDIT: note that I only considered adding a cooldown to Teleport, but I'd be interested in a discussion regarding range as well. I'm just brainstorming, so please don't impale me, but if Teleport and its hypothetical synergy each acted on a different axis (cooldown, range), it could make for some very interesting choices in skill distribution!

It's very interesting that they didn't nerf teleport, but created enigma instead.

the awesome thing about runewords is the whole crafting aspect, you can even cube low quality stuff into normal quality, and then cube sockets onto them, alongside of course grinding your way up with the runes them selves. but I fully agree that the end reulst is pretty sad. I always pickup rares of exceptional and elite stuff just to see the rolls and more then often im complely amazed at how worthless the affixes are 90% of the time.

would be cool to see a playthrough on one of these older patches pre runeword someday

You make valid points. Anytime there is a single item that's BiS for any (or most) characters, it's a problem. There's never going to be a perfect balance. Given where things are now, the best solution is probably to improve rare and unique items. Give some of them a chance to roll some of the more interesting rune word abilities. Allow them to roll with charges that are actually useful. Like you said, it's just hard to get excited about seeing any unique shield or armor drop when it's just going to be replaced at some point. It would be nice to see better magical items, too. There are only a small handful that are actually good and I've never seen any of them in 20+ years of playing the game.

I would love to see rares, uniques and particularly set items get a boost so they can hold their own against runewords. Set items, to me, seem like the hardest hit just bc it takes so much time, effort and stash space to have all the pieces of a 6-item or even 4-item set only for it to not compete with one runeword (let alone four). If the set requires using a weapon, armor, helm, shield... it's not going to be worth it.

So I missed out on Diablo 2 for a very, very long time. I played a little bit before D2r, but have played significantly more since the remaster. I mostly play offline, and my luck seems to be a bit skewed as I have found a Zod, a Cham, and several Bers before a Shako (still don't have). But I made my first Enigma like 3 days ago target farming a third Ber at Trav, and that feels incredible. I personally don't mind the power of rune words *right now* because I haven't gotten to play with them as much as others have. I'm looking forward to making an Infinity next. But I also completely understand how stale gameplay can get when it's pretty much only the same stuff in every slot for every character. I like the idea of charms adding a skill like Enigma, but again, I feel like I'm too new to really have a fair assessment of what would work best for the game.

I can still vaguely remember the old, old days. I still really love D2, especially pvp. Coooley and DFC simply put gear/stat restrictions in place to balance the characters and builds. I do think D2 could benefit from a rebalancing, and I haven't played PD2 yet but I think they're doing a lot right, but at the same time, from what I've seen it also quickly falls into the same narrow tracks most mods have gone before - you get a little bit Too much freedom and end up with +2 skills on basically every item. I feel like to achieve balance via a mod, the task just moves to then balancing that mod, while also pleasing everyone. Personally, I like early D2 because I like the struggle, the limited items and resources, incrementally getting stronger much slower as a result, while I know most D2 players would prefer quantity, faster, more options, quality of life, to rush through the game and farm bosses at speedrun pace. I prefer D2R as is. At least it is as the game officially stands. I would however maybe be interested in a PD2 Light variant.

I think the solution would be to do the same as World of Warcraft Season of Discovery. They should create a live-service version of D2:R, adding a patch from 1.09, reimagining this huge patch entirely. Like yeah, we can nerf items, but those items are still available for those who already got them, and it would be unfair for newer players to make those versions impossible to get. Now in this reimagination of this patch there could be a lot of fun versions of said runewords. Like yeah, enigma should have +1 to teleport, but the +str, magic find, faster runwalk and +2 to skills shouldn't be there. Like have these unique options, make it possible to have conviction. But have drawbacks. You should have to chose between grief and a good rare. There should still be one thing to thrive for after these runewords. Melee should be completely reworked for that, and noone will wanna do that. Thing is, more people would play with a D2:R Season of Discovery version, than with D4.

sometime early 2023 was my first play through of D2. i played a sorc and used a guide a little bit. I can't echo enough just how much spirit took away from the game for me. i play games like D2 primarily because i like getting cool items and getting stronger. within the first several hours i got a spirit sword (which rolled 35 fcr) and it was great how strong it was, but literally every single wand that dropped was useless from there on out and I knew that I wouldn't get an upgrade until i get HOTO, more runes. what was especially disappointing about it was I found the wands and oculus-type weapons to be some of the coolest pieces of gear....but all useless....I still ID'ed them all and looked at them...and many looked interesting too....but they were al worse. the best I could find was just a 'slight' downgrade from my spirit.

Runewords should never have been a separate item type, to compete against rares/uniques. Runewords are too strong and make uniques in the same slot worthless. But also, the runeword system is just so much more boring than finding unique items. Runewords should have been something different completely. For example, it could have been a system to augment other items with certain abilities (similar to socketing, but a different system). But that's just an example. If there ever will be another D2 expansion (one can dream), I'd wish all runewords were removed from the game completely, and runewords brought in in a completely different way. Of course adjust skill trees (remove Teleport), other uniques, and so on.

great video. I think providing a way to suffix rare items further will be a good way to balance things out.

All of this is one of the reasons I started playing regular D2 again, no rune words at all, having to work hard to get good items.

I like runewords, but I think they needed to constantly be adding new ones back when they first released (and push the power down a lot on the very best ones). I like some of the new rune words they released in D2R. I'd love to see some new high level ones that compete with the current high tier meta. At the same time, I think rares and magic items (and many many sets/uniques) should get enhanced. A cube recipe to merge affixes on items (taking an affix and adding its value to an existing affix) up to a very powerful maximum would make it so you'd still hunt for great rare items.

Does anyone remember Peltier the barb? It was the 90+ pike (and later lance) barb that was always in the top 10 on the ladder on U.S. East, gaining #1 for multiple weeks on the ladders back in the first few years of D2. He was obv. played by a team of professionals during that time. Funny story, at one point I happen to see him in a random public game so I joined on my summon necro, he wasn't chatting or anything and like clearing A2 sewers in NM or something. He finally came to A4, and I challenged him to a duel. He literally killed himself on my blood golem after he charged out of the Pandemonium Fortress stairs and instantly went into WW. I cast iron maiden on him immediately since that's the only way to kill a melee as a summon necro if they happen to attack your golem, lol. Pretty sure the grinding team sold the char to some novice, and I don't think he had the gear they were using anymore, his character was half naked.

Diablo 2 Resurrected brought me back for a short while, but I eventually abandoned it once again, the same way I abandoned it after 1.10. If they were to rebalance runewords, even if it was like a "ladder only rebalance" like starting a new ladder season with 1.10 runewords removed (and maybe added new, less powerful/more balanced ones) I would be playing this game again like I was a teenager.

I find myself playing D2R and keeping uniques to center builds around that don't include runewords. The runewords are there to tackle the toughest enemies and content in the game but if I wanna do an Inferno or Enchant build, the uniques for that are still there. People confuse the meta of each game, in that they believe it's the only way to play the game when it really isn't.