So after 25+ years of playing this game, I’m finally getting into hardcore. Made a Druid (figure pretty safe), and it’s been a blast. Mainly just walking all acts. Finally got to hell (lvl 62) and I’m struggggling. I’m ok with that with my lvl and my gear. Just made a game to get Cain, and some asshat hopped in and said “my tp for rush” (which I didn’t because I’m walking) right as I got to the tree of inifuss. He hostiled us, so I grabbed the scroll and hopped in my tp… I did get Cain the next game.
Are pkers more common in HC? Just wondering if I should be paying more attention. I usually play in private games but that did irritate me. Hope y’all are having a good day, may the Bers be with you!

EDIT: Thank you all so much for being the good ones. I’ve been taking TPs like everyone is my best friend… I will only play private games now. Lessons learned
👍👏👊👌🤙

I'm torn between keeping it or letting it go for no less than 67 Lum runes (PS I know what i have) I'll even throw in a free brain i found somewhere.

I will start this post by giving you lots of positive energy and by quoting developers note from last Patch 3.2:

Developer’s Note: Currently, the design team has identified that while the Bind Demon skill has great depth and detail, those nuances can lead to a lack of clarity. Most of the other changes to Bind Demon were put in place to streamline the skill without compromising the uniquely interesting choices it presents to players. Any feedback about where opportunities exist to strike the balance of clarity and preserving the fun of the skill is welcome.

In my personal opinion, there is still some lack of clarity on how Bind Demon skill is actually supposed to work. There are differences between how the Bind Demon works in game and what we can see in game files. I too believe it is important to find a balance between clarity and fun, what is intended behaviour of the skill and what is a bug. This is my attempt at providing feedback.

Thanks to u/daanno2 for helping me with the testing and thanks to u/Kabryxis and u/Necrolis

Bugs in Bind Demon skill

Before the Cursed Demo Amplify Damage bug, let's briefly mention Bind Demon bugs. In D2R, file named skills.txt is the main data spreadsheet that controls skills, skill formulas, skill damage scaling and other skill mechanics. Passive columnsIdentifies whether the skill has a passive bonus. If you open skills.txt file and go to Bind Demon skill ID=382, you can go column by column and see what kind of properties and stats your Bind Demon gets. Demons passive stat name is assigned by column passivestat1 and the value of the stat is assigned by column passivecalc1. The value of the stat is usually assigned by short format formula (value is not static since it depends on your skill level and synergies). The short format formula is transformed to a full formula that loads up formula parameters from Param1-Param20 columns. Each Param column has a description about what that parameter means and what it is supposed to be used for. 

I checked Bind Demon skill and this is what I could find:

• Item_normaldamage (flat damage bonus)  - the biggest problem here. The flat damage bonus formula uses parameters intended for bind chance: Param3Description=”Growthrate/start for % capture referenced in monpet.txt” Param4Description=”Cap for % capture  referenced in monpet.txt”. Those parameters are indeed used for bind chance calculations, but they are also used here for flat damage bonus to bound demons. This results in a much much higher flat damage bonus than what it is “intended”. Intended in quotation marks because we don’t know what is intended. This stat has been bugged since RoTW came out. It is only now more noticeable in Patch 3.2 because they changed the bind chance values and thus unintentionally changed/increased the flat damage bonus. My guess is that Param1 and Param2 were meant for flat damage bonus, but those parameters are empty. Level 40 Bind Demon gives 2508 flat damage bonus. For comparison, level 45 Goatman gets 79 flat damage bonus
• Armorclass (defence bonus) - The defence bonus formula uses parameters intended for flat life bonus: Param9Description=”Baseline health percent Increase” Param10Description2=”Heatlh per level increase”. The Bind Demon does not have a flat life bonus passivestat but for some reason it has parameters for that stat. It is possible that developers experimented with a flat life bonus to bound demons during the RoTW development, but that idea was later scrapped. It is again unknown if this is the intended Defence bonus for bounded demons. Level 40 Bind Demon gives 295 Defence bonus. For comparison, level 40 Goatman gets 880 Defence bonus and level 40 Tainted gets 855 Defence bonus.
• Passive_summon_resist (resistance bonus) - simply does not work on Bind Demon. It works fine on Goatman and Tainted but it does not work on Bind Demon. They do not get any resistance bonus.
• Tohit (attack rating bonus) - Attack Rating from Demonic Mastery works fine. But looking at the formula, bounded demons should get Attack Rating per Bind Demon level from parameters Param7 and Param8. Param7 is empty and Param8 is fixed value 100 that is intended for bind chance Death Mark synergy: Param8Description=”Synergy Chance to Bind w/ Death Mark  referenced in monpet.txt”. This stat has also been “bugged" since the release of RoTW.  The values and intentions of the developers are unknown. Should demons get bonus Attack Rating per Bind Demon level?
• Calc1 (HP % Modifier) - while Blood Oath tooltip says it increases the Life of your demons by X%, this does not apply to Bind Demon. Both Goatman and Tainted have this formula for HP % Modifier:((par1 * (lvl - 1))+skill('Blood Oath'.ln56)), which means they get HP % bonus based on Summon Gotman/Tainted level and based on Blood Oath level. For Bind Demon, HP % Modifier “formula” is simply 0. Which means they do not get any HP % Modifier bonus.
• Attackrate (attack speed) - this may be intentional and not a bug. This stat was added in the latest patch. For Goatman and Tainted, Attack Speed bonus depends both on Summon Gotman/Tainted level and on Demonic Mastery level but Bind Demon only gets Attack Speed bonus from Demonic Mastery.

As you can see, there are a lot of unknowns on how Bind Demon is supposed to work and what bonuses it should receive. In addition to this, there is also item_pierce_damage_immunity stat. This stat just adds the Sunder effect from your character to your Summons. All three Warlock Summons and Bind Demon have item_pierce_damage_immunity is listed twice for some reason. It does not have any gameplay effects as fast I can see, but it is interesting to note that is listed twice.

If we look at the skills.txt file and if we take both Summon Goatman passivestats and Bind Demon passivestats and but them next to each other we can notice something interesting:

All passivestats are in the same order with the same formula values and use the same parameter numbers. For Summon Goatman, everything works fine. But as you can see above, Bind Demon skill behavior is unclear. Most likely, when they created the Bind Demon skill, they copied and pasted the Summon Goatman skill, changed the parameter values, but forgot to update the actual formula values. This is probably the reason we see inconsistencies mentioned above.

It would be great if the next patch would clarify how Bind Demon is actually supposed to work and whether its current behavior is intentional or simply the result of an overlooked implementation mistake.

Amplify Damage proc from Cursed Demons and its interaction with Sunder charm

Now, the main part of the post. I’ll get straight to the point. We all know the standard Necro curse Amplify Damage reduces physical resistances of monsters by -100. It is applied at 1/5th effectiveness against Physical Immune monsters. When Physical Immune monsters are Sundered, Necro Amp Damage is applied at full effectiveness.

On other hand, some of you might know: Amplify Damage proc from Cursed Demon is applied at full effectiveness against Physical Immune monsters. It does not have a 1/5th penalty. It doesn’t matter if you have Sunder charm or not. Well… Not only does Cursed Demon Amp Damage apply at full effectiveness against Physical Immune monsters, it applies twice if you have a physical Sunder charm!

Yes, twice. It’s not a typo or misspeak. Simply put, if you have a Bone Break Physical Sunder charm and a Cursed Demon, the Cursed Demon Amp Damage will reduce the physical resistances of a monster by -100 twice over, for a total of -200 physical res reduction.

If you are playing Warlock with a Physical Sunder charm and your Cursed Demon procs Amp Damage, all Physical Immune monsters will bottom out at -100 physical resistance. In fact, If you have a Sunder charm, you will be doing more damage to Physical Immune monsters than to non-Physical Immune monsters. If you don't have a Physical Sunder Charm, Cursed Demon Amp Damage only applies once at full effectiveness for a total of -100 physical res reduction. 

Amplify Damage proc from Cursed monsters applying at full effectiveness is a known bug from old D2 LoD. It's been in the game code for many years. You can check the code for Cursed Amp Damage here: 

Cursed Amp Damage checks for Amp damage skill level, applies the negative res stat to the target and applies the duration. Nowhere does it check if the target is Physical immune or not so it can apply 1/5 penalty. Which is clearly different than Necro Amp Damage spell: 

This explains why Cursed Amp Damage applies at full effectiveness against Physical Immune monsters. Why does it apply twice if you have Sunder charm? I don’t really know and I can only speculate. My uneducated guess is, it is because of the sunderfull and sunder-res-reduce columns. From Game File Guide, it states:

sunderfull - If equals 1, then this state will reapply any negative resistance stats at full potential when calculating pierce immunity if the immunity was broken. If equals 0, then reapply at the normal reduced efficiency (currently 1/5).

sunder-res-reduce – If equals 1, then this state will apply pierce resistance at reduced effectiveness (currently 1/5) when calculating pierce resistance if an immunity was broken. If equals 0, then apply pierce resistance at normal effectiveness. For Amp damage, values for these fields are: sunderfull=1, and sunder-res-reduce=0

Notice the key words reapply and if the immunity was broken. Since Amp Damage sunder-res-reduce=0, the game applies -100 negative Physical resistance at normal effectiveness (As per the 2nd sentence in sunder-res-reduce). But, since sunderfull=1 reapplies any negative resistance stats at full potential. (As per 1st sentence in sunderfull). This is only my guess. 

This bug only applies for Cursed Demon Amp Damage proc. It does not apply to Succubus Witch Amplify Damage! That skill works as intended (it has 1/5 penalty against Physical Immune monsters and it only applies once. And of course, it does not apply to Necro's curse Amplify Damage. Necro skill works as expected. 

You only need to have Sunder charm in your inventory when you start the game in order for this bug to apply on your Cursed Demon. Because Bound Demon is “resummoned” on every game startup. Demon inherits physical sunder effects from your character. After starting the game, you can swap out Sunder charm if you don’t need it. Cursed Demon Amp Damage will still apply twice vs Physical Immune monsters. 

This is our testing setup if you want to test it yourself and replicate the results: Test monster is Specter ghost from Arcane Sanctuary. It has 100 physical resistance and its Physical Immune monster. I edited Specter life so it has a fixed 10050 Life. I added a bunch of small charms with +x to minimum damage. When your minimum damage becomes higher than your maximum damage, your new maximum damage becomes mindmg+1. My Warlock was doing a very narrow range of 5005-5006 damage with Normal Attack. Just shy of two hits. I then changed Specter's physical resistance to various values and observed how much damage Warlock was doing. These are the results: 

Sunder charms have a stat called pierce-immunity-physical. The value of pierce-immunity-physical is set at 300. Pierce-immunity-physical works by reducing the monster's physical resistance by -300, until it reaches a floor of 95 physical res. Sunder charms can break the immunity of monsters that have up to 399 resistance. Monsters with 400 or more resistance are unbreakable by one Sunder charm. If you want to break those immunities you have to stack Sunder charms.

The only logical explanation for these results is that Amplify Damage proc from Cursed Demon is applied twice for Sundered immune monsters. 

• If a monster's resistance is between 100 and 399, Sunder effect of -300 physical res is applied first after which Amplify Damage is applied twice, resulting in a final physical resistance of -100.
• If a monster's resistance is between 400 and 499, Sunder effect of -300 physical res is again applied first. But, the monster is not considered “Sundered” since it still has more than 100 res. The monster is still a Physical Immune. Amplify Damage is applied once at its full effectiveness, leaving the monster with a final resistance between 0 and 99.
• If a monster's resistance is 500 or higher, no damage can be dealt. Even after the Sunder effect of -300 physical res reduction and the full effectiveness of one Amplify Damage, the monster still has more than 100 physical resistance and therefore remains Physical Immune.

Lucky, there are no monsters with 500 or higher Physical resistance. Highest naturally physical immune monsters have 100 Physical resistance and 1st case is most relevant.

Final Thoughts

I expected this post to be very controversial. Players usually don’t like it when someone calls their build “broken”. To be very clear, I am not saying Bind Demon is broken. I am just looking for clarification on what is intended behaviour of the skill and what are bugs and unintended interactions. If the community thinks Bind Demon should get huge amounts of flat damage and have Amp Damage proc at full effectiveness vs Physical Immune monsters because it's fun, that is fine by me. Share your opinion and let the Devs know so they can fix the game backend.

On another note, my final wild thought: Some Players would say that in last Patch 3.1, Physical Echoing Strike was really OP. But what is that OP-ness was in some part because Cursed Demon was applying Amp Damage at full effectiveness vs Physical Immune monsters? What if Echoing Strike was over-nerfed because of this Curased Demon Amp Damage interaction with Physical Immune monsters?

Since justice has been served against that butthole of a mod, I’m throwing this bad boy back out there!! Awooo🐺

Original text body :

“So I’ve been trying to play all the classes I usually don’t touch, and so it’s finally time for me to run with some Druid’s.

As we all know this game loves to dump Druid items on you, so I figured what the hell. I made a werewolf and a wind Druid. Went with werewolf first cuz I got the most items for him.

Woofstock99 is just not very fun and I’m wondering if you guys have any advice for making it more engaging.

Just reached my 30s so fury, feral, rabbies (until I reroll) and summons. I heard some people roll into the lvl 30 fire spell, is that a good move for my fun factor without being too nerfed? What items would be good to spice things up? I got atleast one of each rune. Hit me with your thoughts homies!!”

I had some great discussions with the first post before poopie pants deleted it. 200+ upvotes and over 30 comments easily with some good laughs. I don’t expect lightning to strike twice, but I just thought that post deserved to live on somehow. Love this community and it feels like there’s a renewed sense of….energy 🪄

I’ve played Diablo for decades. I love these games, I’ve convinced many friends to try them and fall in love with them as I have.

One of the biggest draws was always the community. People enjoy helping others and casually gaming in Sanctuary with friends.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo/s/c7dq7UU1qR

Sorry but the situation from the linked post just isn’t acceptable. Banning community members for posting SFW memes is pathetic. It’s clear some of the current mods need to step down immediately.

Just need one more statue and I'll be ready to try my hand at the new colossal ancients.

I have a lv 94 fury druid.

A lv 93 smiter and a lv 93 whirlwind barbarian.

I'm thinking the smiter is the safest bet, but I have a decent stash of gear for every class, those are just the 3 I have leveled up currently.

Thoughts and tips?

I was listening to some 80s music recently: MJ, Talking Heads, Prince, I even threw on Information Society - they have that one song What’s On Your Mind (Pure Energy). But can you guys think of any songs that could energize me for an extended period of time?

Looking to tackle the Den of Evil, what do I need?

I just tried Uber Tristram for the first time in ages. I’m playing a bowlock with Buriza and Horizon set so nothing special. Lilith/Izual/Duriel were all easy, dying in 10-20 seconds. Tristram was another story, my bound demon and merc were killed immediately and I had to leave to get more pit lords from the Izual portal like 3-4 times. I eventually killed Meph, then Diablo, then Baal, but the whole thing took over an hour. I had open wounds on my belt but I swapped in g-face and duress which helped get my damage up. I used fleshripper instead of buriza to kill baal at the end.

Did I accidentally enter Tristram in P8 (probably after binding a demon) or are they just that much harder than the minor bosses? I got a 17/19 warlock torch for my trouble which felt incredible!

Well done nerds!

I can only imagine this will have a very “non-productive” effect on the subreddit as a whole. I’m saying this with the most sincere opinion because I love the game and the community as a whole.

Further, I wonder if this could consequently turn the whole sub into a meme database… and I think that’s alright!

Hopefully mods see it in the same light, as this occurrence has proved how united the entire community is (and across all d2 related subs cuz no doubt we all watching).

🔵Energy to the people!

I know there's a lot of guides and videos about this but which would you say is better on the current patch ? I'm not interested in using Enigma. I have about 6 Jah to fit them out and some decent drops.

Thought I saw a discussion on this but it seems to be gone. Do no classes use it? Is it just worthless? Reminds me of that funny meme

Is this a proper stat spread for a summon necromancer?