S Series input, comments, and discussion thread

[Blinn]

The wiki format isn't really conducive toward having a back and forth discussion, especially for a topic this massive. The comments sections always end up as a giant blob of text, I think it'd be easier to discuss here.

[Goeido]

My thoughts:

-Keep the noobs odd charm, maybe remove the socket, but having access to lvl 1 skills is a good thing, you dont have to chop down monsters with a caster char...

-removing bosses from blood moor is not that urgent, but more beginner friendly, so its nice

-the beholders in act 4 are REALLY annoying for melee chars with their mana drain and slow effect.

added recipe suggestions:

-make a recipe to reroll white items

-make a recipe Multistocker+wirts leg+scroll of town portal: remove 56 decipherer points, add a cookbook point

-Allow using more rerolling recipes with gem can (the higher rare/magic rerolls, scroll 22 and 23)

craft charms:

make them one space bigger (small-large, large-grand, grand-square) and add fixed mods to random mods.

suggestions:
Ruby: + fire skill damage, absorb
Topaz: + lightning skill damage, absorb
Emerald: + poison skill damage, length reduction
Saphire: + cold skill damage, absorb
Diamond: + magic skill damage, magic resist
Obsidian: + wind skill damage, damage reduction
Skull: + summon damage, ??
Ametyst: + max damage, slow

[Nameless]

[quote=Goeido";p="419747"]-Keep the noobs odd charm, maybe remove the socket, but having access to lvl 1 skills is a good thing, you dont have to chop down monsters with a caster char...[/quote]
I like the noob charm, but if you decide to remove the socket, then it should become much smaller, 1 square (small charm) or at most 2 squares.

[quote=Goeido";p="419747"]-the beholders in act 4 are REALLY annoying for melee chars with their mana drain and slow effect.[/quote]
While the Beholders are annoying, or more correctly, very dangerous/problematic depending on your build, they are at least a challenge. Maybe they shouldn't have all they annoying attacks/mods at the same time. It's ok that you're slowed, but then the Beholders shouldn't move so fast and be immune to freezing, for example.

What I really dislike are the monsters that are only annoying but don't give any challenge, especially if they occur in large numbers or are almost the only monster in a level. I'm thinking mainly about ranged monsters that do neglible damage, the imps in A5, the catapults or the panther woman type monsters that hurl poison potions. Revivers are also really annoying if they spawn in large numbers and you don't have RIP, but many of them are at least challenging. Any monster that attacks from off-screen is bad IMHO (catapults).

Poison is also annoying, for 95% of all monsters the damage is neglible, but it gives your screen an ugly green tint. Reduce the number of monsters that do poison damage and don't use it that often as an additional damage, shorten the duration of monster poison effects, but increase the damage per time. I'm still not sure if the few times poison does real damage are intended or a bug of D2, whenever it happens, both the duration and the poison damage are very high.

[quote=Goeido";p="419747"]-make a recipe Multistocker+wirts leg+scroll of town portal: remove 56 decipherer points, add a cookbook point[/quote]
I would generally prefer if the Multistocker recipes that make expensive items (Maples, Anvil Stones) return the item, rather than store the point. In 90% of cases I want to use the item right after I make it and extracting requires you to cycle the stocker to the item in question.


I would like to have more forging (removable) options so you have more mid-level gear options. Some important mods can only be dstoned, but (for me at least) dstoning is something that only applies to end-game gear and it would be very useful to have those mods at mid-game (Piercing, Wind/Magic damage, +/- Light radius (mainly for the merc), +FRW).
For example, I would like recipes for RIP and auto-repair (like AS36/37) but as forging recipes. So this uses the forging "slot" of the item and you can get the materials back. The recipes should not use an Ancient Scroll, or only a low one (20 or lower). A "gem forging" would also be nice, add the mods of a flawless gem as a forging mod (forging is generally 4 times as strong as dstoning, so using the mods of a flawless gem would fit).
I think the recipes to add extra mods to blue (magic) items (AS 18-21) are a waste. They are extremely expensive, so end-game only, but there are very few cases where a magic item makes a good end-game choice, even when you included these extra mods, even discounting the huge cost in dstones. I would prefer relatively cheap forging recipes instead, for example to add about 4 times regular forging stenght mods as a forging mod with these recipes (e.g. +80% IAS for the weapon recipe, +40%/+60% better/faster block for shields, ...)

I would like the top AS recipes to be a bit more accessible, both by making it easier to get the scrolls and by making them a little cheaper (at least those you can't use more then once or twice). I've been playing ES for years and I have yet to make a Veteran's charm or socket any charm. When you play mostly tourney/untwinked and don't farm Hell areas for weeks, then these recipes might as well not exist.
Same, of course, for all crystal recipes. At the rate I'm going, I might be able to make my first Kanji rune in another 2 years.

[Goeido]

[quote=Nameless";p="419749"]

I would like the top AS recipes to be a bit more accessible, both by making it easier to get the scrolls and by making them a little cheaper (at least those you can't use more then once or twice). I've been playing ES for years and I have yet to make a Veteran's charm or socket any charm. When you play mostly tourney/untwinked and don't farm Hell areas for weeks, then these recipes might as well not exist.
Same, of course, for all crystal recipes. At the rate I'm going, I might be able to make my first Kanji rune in another 2 years.[/quote]

Im playing the Heptad which didnt start too long ago and I already got 3 veterans odd charms and socketed two unique charms (a2 nm). I agree on crystal and scroll availability, though.

Suggestions:

1. Make a scroll upgrade recipe (Scroll+anything (cookbook) = next higher scroll)
2. Make some recipe based on flags which can transform flawed crystals (Flawed crystal + chipped crystal + flag = flawed crystal of chipped crystals color)

[Metropolis Man]

While I don't mind that this thread was created I really prefer players offering feedback on what's forthcoming on the wiki page right in the Comments section — Unknown and I offer up our suggestions in the various sections and players then respond accordingly. Adjustments are made to the main sections to keep the ideas current based on player input.

The problem with this thread is there's no organization. After a couple of months it will be a 20+pages long disjointed mess with 1000 ideas. I will keep tabs on it though and incorporate players' ideas into the suggestions that I will be making on the wiki.

[Nameless]

The problem with the Wiki is that while there is a facility for comments, it is vastly inferior to this board. And the page itself isn't really a place to post all the ideas and wishes everybody has for the S series.

The best would be to distill what is posted here and put it on the wiki, but that should be done by somebody who will have some say on what will actually be included in the patch.

[Hans]

Unknown would be the best person to do so since he/she is working on it. Metro would be a good choice as well since he is the Moderator for the site.

[kjara]

I'll repost my sorc ideas here. Currently sorc oskills are almost always worthless(besides masteries, teleport and energy shield) and its almost always better to go a single elemental sorc.

One fix to this would be to change the current sorc synergy system to a synergy + passive boost(i.e, firebolt currently gets what, 6% synergy from other skills? Change that to 2-3% synergy and 1-2%passive(meaning soft points count), thus if you get oskill firebolt and oskill fireball, they would synergize to some degree, and be slightly less useless). This would also make multi dtype sorcs a bit more viable as well since one point into all of the synergies would with +sorc skills give some synergies.

Another idea would be to totally rework mastery of fire/cold/ele, since currently all sorc skills are adjusted damagewise downward to balance that out(and these assume the +55% from one hard point, which only sorcs get).

Could make them rather than just a damage boost, instead be effect boosting(i.e, hard points into mastery of x gives extra firebolts, a larger fireball explosion, larger blizzard radius, a chance of a 2nd wave of charged bolts, that sort of thing). It could still include a minor damage boost to make it still useful for non-sorcs, but not have the huge +55% for the passive point anymore. Could even make it diminishing returns so that its useful as an oskill damage wise but useful for the hard point boosts for the sorc without giveing too much of a damage boost to sorcs?


Edit:
If you want to get rid of the noob charm, one option would be to have the starting equipment start with +skills(ie, the sorc starting staff could start with +1 firebolt, +1 charged bolt and +1 ice bolt). That way you don't have that free +1 to a first level skill forever, but the sorc doesn't have to melee its way to level 2(something that always seems silly to me) but still will want to replace that staff with something better pretty quick(ie a starter staff).

Edit2: VV My only problem with that is its basically a 2nd druid(1 elemental damage tab, 1 summon tab, 1 melee tab). I like the best of the best/summon ideas, but I think we need something other than melee for the 3rd tab just to make it play different.

Edit3: VV One idea mabee would be to combine this with a rework of the paladin. Could move some of the auras that seem to fit a caster better(the prayer/meditation line, and perhaps some others, mabee some of the elemental ones/conviction?) and turn the 3rd tab into an aura/defensive buffs tab. Not sure what to give the pal then though to fill his 3rd tab(if you combine the remaining auras into 1 tab).

Edit4: could change the pal into the following: a combat tab thats melee/defense oriented--add the might line of auras here, a aura tab that contains most of the current defensive auras+ some new ones?, and a ranged tab, that takes the current holybolt line and the current bow line, (perhaps the holy shock ect. line?).

[Metropolis Man]

I had some truly radical ideas for the Sorceress. One would be to basically only keep the "best of the best" skills and put them into a Spells tab. So, you'd have a mix of Fire, Lightning, and Cold right in one tab.

Another tab could be called Mage Spirits. Mage Spirits would be the Sorceress' long-needed natural summons. My thinking is they would be along the lines of ghosts in appearance. And of course, they would deal elemental damage.

But, I'm drawing a blank on the 3rd tab. Maybe a whole tab devoted to hand to hand if the Mage Spirits work out.

EDIT: Good idea on the auras, kjara. But, to be honest, I'm thinking the Mage Spirits will either have built in auras benefitting the party, or this will be something learned by the Sorceress through the Mage Spirits tab.

Maybe the 3rd tab could be Potions — incredibly powerful concoctions brewed up via the Cube and learned skills.

[Hans]

I would like to see changes to the Necro Bone and Poison tree.

I think one side of the tree should be dedicated to Melee and physical attack:
Poison Slash --> Bone Armor --> Blade Fury --> Killer Scythe

Poison and Corpse
Poison Explosion --> Corpse Explosion --> Prison of Corpses (Bone Prison, I wonder if it can be set to use corpses) --> Poison Nova --> Decaying Corpse (desecrated corpse that sickens and weaken monsters that get effected, it works like Poison Explosion and the Weaken curse)

Bone and Mage spells:
Frozen Spear --> Bone Spirit --> Magic Missile (Multi Shot Bone Spirit that deals less damage per bolt but makes up for it in numbers.) --> Bone Wave


Metro:
The idea about giving sorcs a Potions tree would be great. I have seen in Nez mod that the Assassin had a trap that would launch potions that would do damage. Maybe bringing a similar type of skill to ES. It would be great if the sorc can create crafted potions that only they can use.

I can see for the sorc a potion mastery skill that will increase the damage of the throwing potions available right now. Maybe some skills that mimic the use of potions but maybe in a trap. Fire Blast can be ported over and maybe Shock Web as well. I also see a Stun Grenade

[Metropolis Man]

I can see for the sorc a potion mastery skill that will increase the damage of the throwing potions available right now.

Potion Mastery...yes. But, not for the current potions. They suck. Who uses them? I'm talking about truly sick things crafted in the Cube that do huge damage.

[Hans]

I think it might be a good idea to move all the throwing skills from the Barb and move them to the Paladin. The Paladin would need to get rid of the two arrow skills. The throwing skills would still work with his shield skills. The only throwing skill that could not be moved over is the Double Throw skill.

I think it might be a good idea to move the skills around so that Aura's would fit in the same tree as the main skills for a build. The tricky part is to decide on the sub trees for some of the Skills.

I think the three main trees should be:

Ranger: The Attack skills are going to be Thrown Weapons, Bear. The tricky part is on which auras to put here. I think some of the offensive and defensive aura's that do not fit in the other trees).

Crusader: The melee skills and defensive skills (shield) and the main offensive aura's

Monk: The Casting skills will be here. Vengeance attack skill and the Holy Aura's will be here. The Protection from Elements will be here. I do not know if Salvation should be here or in the Ranger Tree.

[edit]
Some of the aura's may need to be removed or only available as oskills or move some of them to other characters.

[edit]
I think the Mercs should be looked into as well.

[MetalShadow]

I think most offensive spells could stand to benefit from a big reduction of synergy-based damage, and the introduction of things like level-based bonuses. This would streamline a lot of caster-type characters, particularly the Sorceress, whose skill trees are bloated with synergies to the point that cross-tab hybridization and any kind of flexibility is basically impossible, since you need to invest upwards of 80 skill points to make one skill a viable offensive option.

Certain skills are a bit on the redundant side and could probably stand to be changed into something else that has a similar flavor but a slightly different function; Stun, for example, could be changed from an attack skill into a passive that adds a stun effect to melee attacks. The Sorceress has tons of redundant and/or useless attack skills that could be replaced with something without anybody noticing their absence.

@Hans; I actually think the PnB tree is almost perfect the way it is. A few tweaks here and there wouldn't be out of order, but we shouldn't go out of our way to try and fix things that aren't broken. There are a few things that could use minor tweaks or adjustments, but I think most of the skills and the general layout is more or less worth keeping.

Magic missile sounds like it would basically just be a better version of Bone Spirit, and also sounds more like a Sorc spell (doesn't the Wizard have this spell, in D3?). Why not just give Bone Spirit multiple projectiles? Having skills later in the progression that are essentially the same, only better, is something that happens all over the place in the Sorceress' spell trees, and we know how well that works.

Rather than shoehorning Bone Wave into the left-side progression and getting rid of Bone Wall/Prison (both awesome skills, especially playing untwinked), it might be better to take a page out of the DIII playbook (zombie wall!) and repackage Bone Wall and Prison as skills that are a combo of offense and defense. Seeing as that's basically what Bone Wave is, the three would fit together well as a sort of "defensive offense" branch.

All this said, here's how my PnB tree would look;

Left -
Bone Armor still at top, not a pre-req for anything
Lava Lance (Frozen Spear, repackaged as a fire damage skill. Leaves behind patches of fire when it hits a target.) -> Spirit Vortex (Bone Spirit, just with multiple missiles. No more corpse explosion pre-req.) -> Hell's Gate

Middle -
Poison Slash -> Disintegration Cloud (remove the poison damage on Poison Explosion, up the physical damage a little, and increase the duration and spread of the cloud itself so that it lingers a bit longer) -> Corpse Explosion -> Poison Nova -> Pandemonium Gate (Releases a fire explosion, a poison cloud, and a spray of lightning bolts. Requires a corpse. Should be possible, but would probably require mad missiles.txt skills to get the projectile-chaining right. Big, big cast delay, more for balance purposes than lag prevention.)

Right -
Killer Slash/Deathstroke (with PS as a pre-req) -> Blade Fury

Rift Barrier (blocks enemies and shoots very short-range lightning damage projectiles. Deals lightning damage when struck. Pretty sure this is doable, the skill would basically summon a wall of cow-balloon type monsters that have a short-range projectile attack. Change the graphic from bones to some kind of freaky cloud, or ghosts, or something.) -> Zombie Cage (surrounds target with immobile monsters with a melee attack, similar to those chained up dudes you see all over Act 4) -> Bone Wave

It would probably be a good idea to add a limit to the amount of Cages/Barriers a player could summon, otherwise they'd be able to litter the screen with the things; this isn't a problem with Bone Wall/Prison, since those don't attack, but it'd obviously be an issue with walls that can deal damage.

[Cheveyo]

I think it might be a good idea to move all the throwing skills from the Barb and move them to the Paladin. The Paladin would need to get rid of the two arrow skills. The throwing skills would still work with his shield skills. The only throwing skill that could not be moved over is the Double Throw skill.

Maybe, but I just have some thematic... issues... with thrown weapons as standard-issue for a paladin.

(I am aware of the irony.)

Bows/Crossbows also have some synergy with Holy Fire and Holy Freeze, since IIRC the damage gets applied again to the AoE on Exploding and Freezing Arrows.

[freykin]

From what you've described, MetalShadow, I'd love your version of the PnB tree.

I'm another vote for the Sorc getting some nice changes done to her, since she does have a lot of skills that just aren't viable either in the numbers or the execution. I like the current fire bolt/ice bolt/charged bolt, but some things such as Snow Spirit or Blaze just get completely outclassed by other skills.

I like the idea of a bow paladin, but I'm not sure how I feel on the current skills they've got for it. I'll be running one in the heptad once I get my farmer started rolling (almost to where I can go into BRW with my golemancer), so I'll post my thoughts on them after that.

I also like Metro's potion sorc idea, that could be pretty cool if done well.

[Nameless]

In general I think the skill trees are basically ok. Also, from the general idea of the mod, Eastern Sun isn't a mod that sets out to do a completely different game (like many other mods), but more a "vanilla but better" flair. Basically the LoD that Blizzard SHOULD have made from the beginning.

That said, there are a number of redundant or relatively useless skills that can be removed/replaced with better skills. The sorc especially has a lot of skills that could be improved or replaced by something better: Flame Wave/Fissure (similar), Blaze (hardly useful as it is), Snow Spirit, Lightning/Chain Lightning.

One idea that I would like is to give characters the option of still using "replaced" skills as special "oskills" from the DA (or a similar item). Kind of like Werebear was brought back, it uses the skill level of Elemental Form. I'm not sure if this is possible for all skills, it may be very hard to implement for spells because of the way the damage calculations are handled.

Synergies and rebalancing: One idea that I would like is to give everybody a "level synergy" in addition to the synergy from hard points in other skills. e.g. reduce the synergy Fire Bolt receives to 3% per point, but you get an automatic 1 point synergy per char level (or per level above the base level you need to get the skill). Everybody would get the level synergy for all skills, so when another character uses oskill Fire Bolt, he would still get that synergy. The main reason to have this is to avoid making spells uber powerful in mid-game, otherwise if you pump a skill like Frozen Orb, it will be extremely powerful around level 50, but improve very little later on.
Adding passive boni (synergies from soft points) should be done with a LOT of care, if at all. The main reason is that it makes wearing tons of +to skills even more important for casters, try to balance a skill if every +1 to skills not only increases the skill level but gives you the equivalent of 5 points into synergy skills as well! If you balance skills versus monster life so that a sorc with +20 skills will do ok in late hell, then one with +25 skills will pwn the monsters.

Giving the sorc masteries massive secondary benefits from hard points is IMHO not a very good idea, if they work like this, then maxing them will be imperative for practically every build (kind of like almost every barb today puts 18 points into Battle Command).

Balancing Masteries and Sorc skills: The current scheme leaves the sorc a bit underpowered. For the sorc, the masteries should balance out the fact that she is fragile (low life, weak deffensive skills) and has no summons that can tank for her. Option 1: The base damage of her skills should be (almost) the same as other casters, the extra boost the masteries give her would balance her bad defense, she needs to kill monsters faster to keep them from attacking her. The masteries could be toned down a bit (e.g. 20% extra boost for having hard points, 2% per soft point, an extra 2% per hard point).
Option 2: Give her summons, e.g. make Snow Spirit into a clone of Ghost Decoy. Her summons don't need to do a lot of damage, they need to prevent monsters from attacking the sorc.
Option 3: Give her good crowd control skills. Time Stop is great, when it works, but in Hell the effective duration is too short to be very useful and too many monsters are immune to it. Suggestions: Thunderclap (similar to War Cry, stuns monsters). Burning Ground (or whatever you want to call it), lay down patches that slow monsters (like the spider webs fleeing spiders leave). Possibly clones of Bone Wall or Prison (Ice Wall/Prison). Possibly even a variant of Grim Ward (but that doesn't require a corpse). The main problem with all these is that bosses are generally immune (or partially immune) to most of these effects, so the sorc would still require some means of dealing with them.
Of course the different options can be combined to some extent.

One general wish I have would be to try to make hard points equally important for all skills. Currently there are some skills where hard points don't matter at all, at least into the skill itself, while for other skills hard points mean everything. For example, Battle Command, Energy Shield need hard points, soft levels do very little (increase the duration a bit), Winter Fury gets the extra range only from hard points, the actual skill boni from Aerial Guard are almost useless, the main reason to invest is to get the passive boni from hard points. In contrast other skills benefit very little from hard points but need hard points in OTHER skills (for synergy). Almost all spells or damaging skills are here, for many of them you need to pump synergies. Mind Blast gets its range increase from synergy not from points into the skill itself, Inner Sight gets the important -%DR from synergy.

[Al-T]

Well this is from a relative newcomers point of view but here's the thoughts of my sorc:

"I can use cold, lightning and fire damage spells but for some reason the Gods won't allow me to enchant my weapons with anything other than fire. Why I have the inherent ability so why did they short change me this way "

I would like to see enchant have the ability to use multiple elements, reduced damage on each of course, with the combined effect meaning you could build a melee sorc who wouldn't necessarily have to rely on "Conviction" or other tricks and/or expensive items to be Hell viable.

[digital_mana]

That said, there are a number of redundant or relatively useless skills that can be removed/replaced with better skills. The sorc especially has a lot of skills that could be improved or replaced by something better: Flame Wave/Fissure (similar), Blaze (hardly useful as it is), Snow Spirit, Lightning/Chain Lightning.

Lightning and Chain Lightning are extremely powerful.... The redundancy issue isn't so much a problem because they act very different. Chain Lightning is good for spread out and large groups, where lightning is good for small tight clusters and single mobs you don't want to get close enough to use Charged Bolt on. The lack of "bouncing" is made up in the fact that it does almost twice the damage of Chain Lightning. I think they are fine as is, they both have their tactical advantages. I'd be pretty sad to see either of them taken away, I've become pretty accustomed to using them both on my 98 light sorc.

Lightning Hydra, Lightning Inferno, and Telekinesis are pretty useless, though. I'm not sure why, the numbers look impressive enough, but they just seem much slower to get the job done.

[digital_mana]

That said, there are a number of redundant or relatively useless skills that can be removed/replaced with better skills. The sorc especially has a lot of skills that could be improved or replaced by something better: Flame Wave/Fissure (similar), Blaze (hardly useful as it is), Snow Spirit, Lightning/Chain Lightning.

Lightning and Chain Lightning are extremely powerful.... The redundancy issue isn't so much a problem because they act very different. Chain Lightning is good for spread out and large groups, where lightning is good for small tight clusters and single mobs you don't want to get close enough to use Charged Bolt on. The lack of "bouncing" is made up in the fact that it does almost twice the damage of Chain Lightning. I think they are fine as is, they both have their tactical advantages. I'd be pretty sad to see either of them taken away, I've become pretty accustomed to using them both on my 98 light sorc.

Lightning Hydra, Lightning Inferno, and Telekinesis are pretty useless, though. I'm not sure why, the numbers look impressive enough, but they just seem much slower to get the job done.

[Blinn]

Before getting into massive discussions of reworking specific skills, entire skill trees, synergies, immunities, sets, recipes, and other things, here's some thoughts on some general topics and little things.

Crazy suggestions and new stuff wishlist

Lvl 100 rewards - Special additions for only level 100 characters, as a goal to reach level 100. Level requirement 100 items and/or charms with one of a kind abilities, high level oskills, or skills you cannot get anywhere else. A lvl 100 Amazon gets an item with an oskill for an "enhanced Valk" that comes with an aura similar to an Act 2 Merc for example. Maybe give MF and GF bonuses, since you can't get exp anymore you will get better drops as compensation.

Renaming utility - A small program like the Gamble Filter, but this one lets you rename your characters.

Items

CtC Skill procs - Many of them simply fall into obsolesence too quickly, especially straight damage spells (Fireball, Fire bolt, Ice bolt, FotH, Chain Lightning). The useful ones are the spell procs with special properties, like curses or cold damage/freeze. I think the skill levels on the damage procs could be higher. The % chance to cast can be lowered across the board as well while raising the skill levels even higher. I mean a 30% CtC of lvl 10 Fireball is silly. Might as well make it a 5% chance to cast a lvl 40 Fireball.

CtC Amp damage suffix on rings - Despite being immensely useful forever to some characters, it appears randomly on a low range of ilvls and you cannot roll this suffix past a certain level. I think it would be fair to remove the cap on spawning these so they can spawn all game long, this is hardly a suffix for only low levels.

Life/Mana/Vitality/Energy per clvl and Vitality/Energy affixes - Since these are unaffected by +%max mods and skills, I would be in favor of pruning most or all of these mods. They would simply disappear from the affix list, and on sets/uniques/word items replace them with similar +life and +mana mods.

Spell Charges - They can substitute as synergies, but very few items are actually useful in this manner. I wouldn't mind seeing more items with charges to use as synergies (of course only assuming synergies are as they are now). For instance, some items with decent level Fireball charges to give more bite to Immolation procs.

Positive and negative combination affixes - Such as the "heavy" prefix that adds defense and increases equipping requirements. It could be interesting to use negative properties to allow for more powerful effects on some prefixes. "Rainbow" and "colorful" prefixes can get higher damage at the expense of a resistance penalty or something.

Quiver affixes - We could use more affixes for quivers. There's little else of note besides %EDamage, slow, piercing, and elemental damage. You don't need to find many before you realize they all look almost the same.

Base weapon type conversion recipes for mercs - Seeing how merc weapon types cannot be expanded due to Macs, I would like to see new recipes that add "merc only" along with a base conversion for certain weapon types. For instance, a Rogue can only equip bows, so there would be a recipe to convert a crossbow into a bow and make it merc only. Barb mercs would get recipes to convert maces and axes into swords, Iron Wolves can convert daggers and wands into swords. This would greatly expand equipping options for mercs, without needing to create tons of new items.

More gemwords - Helms have "special" gemwords, maybe there can be some for other slots that do other things. Helms have oskills covered, maybe armor can come with powerful CtC when struck mods, etc...

cLoD coupons - I think the exceptional and elite ones are just too hard to complete, especially given how lousy most of them are. I think the redemption recipes need to be cheaper somehow, fewer wildcards maybe? Maybe a cheaper reroll recipe as well, there are so many possibilities that rerolling is virtually futile.

cLoD 1.09 runewords - While the 1.10 runewords are generally very powerful, the old runewords from 1.09 are mostly quite sad and could use a makeover.

cLoD runeword types - Also, the runewords are often skewed heavily in favor in certain weapon types. There are tons of runewords for polearms compared to spears for example, even though the weapons are similar. I think it needs to be spread out more evenly.

Crafting - Needs a big overhaul of some sort. These are expensive, random, with a heavy clvl requirement penalty, and give you practically nothing that you can't get on a rare for cheaper that you can use earlier. The preset mods should be "special", not generic junk like life leech, +life, and resists that show up everywhere.

Monsters

Undead and Demons - I feel like too many have been removed. The demon and undead damage properties are very ineffective now that so many monsters are "animals", why bother with these properties when they're "turned off" against so many targets.

Boss packs - I think the density of boss packs in all areas could be increased. Especially in the special areas I think there should be many more bosses, not only for challenge but also because they give better experience than normal monsters. Naraku-Nihlathak's Domain should be bursting at the seams with boss packs.

Boss and champion drops - 2 potions and 1 item is a weak drop IMO, I would prefer 2 items and 1 potion. Gold drops from champions could also use a boost, without much gold find the gold piles from champions aren't much better than a regular monster's gold drop.

Jackpot drops - Get rid of the coupon jackpots and replace them with something else. A Unique, Set/Unique mix, or ore jackpot would be nice.

Duriels - I'm not sure what can be done, but their impassable corpses are a major annoyance in the Marsh of Pain since the level is full of bridges and chokepoints.

Skills

Hard point caps - Revert all skills to 20 points as a cap, rather than the current 30/25/20 point model. Under the current system, it's all to easy to have little left to work with to add any flexibility.

Decoy - Give it a token Holy Fire Aura or something with pathetic damage much like a fire golem. It would tickle enemies in a decent radius and attract more attention to itself, like a decoy should. The aura itself should be incapable of inflicting noticable damage, it's just for drawing attention.

Map stuff

Shrines - No idea how much flexibility there is with modding shrines, but they're generally too close to useless IMO. Better/different effects, more duration, and being unaffected by curses would be nice changes.

Treasure Chests - Any way to improve sparkly chest drops? Once in a while they'll cough up something neat, but more often you get a random bunch of crap magic items and potions. They're often the pot at the end of a rainbow for the hard special areas, so they give up more than just a bunch of blues. Treasure rooms would be neat if possible, a room deep in Nihlathak's Domain with 3-4 Gold Chests or something for example.

Keys - Locked chests are just plain irritating, increasing the key stack even further would be welcome.

[Metropolis Man]

cLoD coupons - I think the exceptional and elite ones are just too hard to complete, especially given how lousy most of them are. I think the redemption recipes need to be cheaper somehow, fewer wildcards maybe? Maybe a cheaper reroll recipe as well, there are so many possibilities that rerolling is virtually futile.

cLoD 1.09 runewords - While the 1.10 runewords are generally very powerful, the old runewords from 1.09 are mostly quite sad and could use a makeover.

cLoD runeword types - Also, the runewords are often skewed heavily in favor in certain weapon types. There are tons of runewords for polearms compared to spears for example, even though the weapons are similar. I think it needs to be spread out more evenly.

To be honest, I'd just like Eastern Sun to be ALL Eastern Sun. No Decals. No Coupons. Now, before you fly off the handle and retaliate — my suggestion is to take polls and find out everyone's favorite LoD Uniques and Runewords and simply incorporate them into ES via our own Uniques and Runewords.

[Blinn]

Well I honestly wouldn't miss much if all coupons were to disappear, but the 1.10 runewords as a whole are very competitive. Eastern Sun doesn't have decent replacements for many of them, so you might as well just port all of them to ES than try and pick out only the good ones.

[Metropolis Man]

That just may be a good idea, Blinn. Although there are a few redundancies — Pride, Obedience, etc. We'd have to find out from players which version they like better, or simply end up doing a frankenstein of both versions for the S Series.

[Edairu]

First off, I love to see the mod is making some progress .

Now about the coupons. When I played ES heavily I would for some reason (don't ask me why) collect cLoD coupons. Even after getting several chars to 70+ and constantly rerolling all the useless ones... the most I could get was maybe ten decent Exceptionals. And maybe two or three Elite uniques.
This really makes me wonder if its worth picking them up at all. They seem more of a hassle than they're worth.

As for the cLoD runewords. I'm sure a good number of them can be used effectively. But the problem is getting those runes in the first place. You need 1) The specified Rune Decal and 2) The ES Rune to combine with. Its like trying to collect two of every necessary rune. I'd be fine if less than half of the cLoD runewords made it through to ES in some shape or form. It would make things easier on everybody to not have to pick up those damn decals.

And finally, I would love to see the Sorceress specializing in a potion crafting or "Alchemy" skill tree. Those crappy throwing potions (fire, poison, you could add cold/lightning as well) could be buffed greatly and become a Sorceress only weapon. Along with her very own potion crafting skills to create those massive explosions of death at the highest skill levels.

Anyway, keep up the good work everyone.

[Berto]

Well this is from a relative newcomers point of view but here's the thoughts of my sorc:

"I can use cold, lightning and fire damage spells but for some reason the Gods won't allow me to enchant my weapons with anything other than fire. Why I have the inherent ability so why did they short change me this way "

I would like to see enchant have the ability to use multiple elements, reduced damage on each of course, with the combined effect meaning you could build a melee sorc who wouldn't necessarily have to rely on "Conviction" or other tricks and/or expensive items to be Hell viable.

I love this idea. Give the sorc an enchant-like ability, however perhaps make it add all 4 types of elemental damage (Or maybe only 3, getting rid of poison). Or maybe even split it up into 4 (Or 3) different abilities, adding some versatility. Also, maybe allow the ability to somehow synergize with the Paladin skill vengeance, which would be a nice combo.

Decoy - Give it a token Holy Fire Aura or something with pathetic damage much like a fire golem. It would tickle enemies in a decent radius and attract more attention to itself, like a decoy should. The aura itself should be incapable of inflicting noticable damage, it's just for drawing attention.

To be honest, being a zon making use of the Decoy ability quite often, I don't see much of a problem with it. Most if not all of the times, as soon as I drop a decoy down, monsters instantly turn their attention from whatever they are attacking to the decoy. Granted, adding in a holy -damage- aura of some kind wouldn't hurt, I don't myself experience a problem currently.

I really like the idea about level 100 rewards. Perhaps add in some charms or items for 100 only. Or, throw in some quests/domains for level 100 characters only, with the rewards being items/charms/etc.

More boss packs? Yes! Especially in the special areas, such as Bloodravens Workshop, Marsh of Pain, Naraku, Cow level, and the like. That would be fun

As far as the LoD items/runewords go, I honestly like them, and believe they add a lot of options/versatility to the game (My zon is currently using the Ice runeword, which is the only bow runeword with nice Gold Find).

Perhaps keep all of the LoD items/runewords/etc, but rather "ES" them. That is, keep the name and major characteristics the same (For some examples of a characteristic, for BotD it would probably be its high %ED, high attributes, LL, etc; for Pride it would be its concentration aura; for Bramble its thorns; etc.), and throw in some more "ES" characteristics. Maybe even get rid of all of the LoD runes/decals, and rather just make the runewords take the ES runes instead, getting rid of the decaling process.

Also, a suggestion on crystals/kanji runewords... Maybe instead of requiring 200+ crystals for one rune, make it 10 instead (Okay okay, this may sound radical, but hear me out). Currently I have 2 characters, a 93 zon, and a 91 paladin. I also currently have only 2 crystal types with over 10 crystals (The rest are in the 6-9 area). So thats 2 kanji runewords, one for each character, which isn't THAT imbalanced.

Also on the topic of kanji runewords, create more of them! Currently there's only 1 runeword for each kanji rune. On top of the fact that crystals are so hard to find, if I were to somehow get the correct amount of crystals, there's a slim chance that I would even be helped by the kanji runeword.

I don't know... Just throwing some ideas out there.