~ + ~ D2r Gm Melee Ladder ~ + ~ - Topic

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Sep 11 2023 11:26am

For the sake of recordkeeping and history of melee on Diablo, I am writing a detailed update here of some changes that have recently taken place within our community. This also has the benefit of helping new/returning players get a better feeling for the current ruleset and state of GM melee on D2R.

What's new?

First and foremost (if it wasn't already apparent), we have moved back to this thread. We thank Stevo (see below) for letting us call his amazing D2R Softcore Melee Ladder our home for such a long time (his thread reached over 110K views!). We hope to carry the tradition here, so please note that this thread is now our official GM melee ladder thread moving forward - the ladder rankings will be posted here, as well as challenges, sign-ups, and all that good stuff.

Second, there are three major rule changes the admins would like to announce:
ㅤㅤ* Death is now unbanned in FvZ matches only.
ㅤㅤ* Metamorphosis is now unbanned in FvZ and FvF (but please note that both parties must still agree to its usage in FvF matches).
ㅤㅤ* No sages (Oak or HoW) may be used vs. conc or jab.

In regards to the first and second rule changes, this is a long time coming. For reasons that we don't need to reiterate, the win rate did slightly flip in favor of druids. Although the wolf druid advantage is not overwhelming, it is enough that the admins consider this a change that should help level out the playing field. There were fears that allowing Paladins to use Death vs. fury druids was going to be too OP and wipe out Druids - in response, we also unban Metamorphosis, a strong runeword that should hopefully contribute to overall evenness and fair matchups that feel good and fun to engage in.

In regards to the third change, well, we need to help our conc and jab brethren as much as we can.

The admins have received questions such as:
"Why can't Death be used in Zeal vs. Zeal matches?" The answer to this is quite simple - our melee community has a thriving and very active ZPK (Korean style melee duels) Ladder that is for Zealots only where Death is unbanned. We feel that Zealots can check out this ZPK Ladder and participate in it if they want to use Death in most matchups. For this Ladder, though, we want to retain some spirit of LoD, the UGML, and East rulesets (in other words, we don't want Zealots to only use Death here in every single matchup ever). Thus, Zealots must get a little more creative and imaginative here when facing off vs. other Zealots. Please message NeilM for more information about the ZPK Ladder, which, again, is very active, thriving, and fun.
"Why can't Death be used in Fury vs. Fury matches?" The answer is the same as above - if Death were allowed in Fury vs. Fury, the admins are confident that this would be the only weapon used in these matchups for the foreseeable future. In order to promote diversity and creativity, we are limiting its use to FvZ only.

Third, we are entering a new phase of melee with these rule changes. We feel that the rule changes, moving threads, etc., is significant enough to warrant starting over our Win/Loss records and starting from a clean slate. Therefore, everyone will start this upcoming Season with a 0-0 record, and your old record will be "immortalized" and remain unchanged next to your name as your "legacy record."

Fourth, we are going to be more "strict" about following the time restrictions of challenges and extensions moving forward. One of the most frequent complaints about our Ladder is that it is slow and clunky, with people getting caught up in 1 week or even 2 week challenges.
You have 72 hours to complete a challenge. If you cannot complete it in this time frame, one of the duelers must request an extension. An extension is only for 24 hours. There are no exceptions to this. If you don't request a extension and the 72 hour timer runs out, you will receive a dodge. If you do request an extension but it doesn't get done within the extra 24 hours you've been given, you will get a dodge. We have to keep things moving, plain and simple. However, the admins want to stress that dodges aren't "bad." It's not a big deal to receive one. It is just to help keep our Ladder moving. If you receive two consecutive dodges, you will be put at the bottom of the Ladder (or simply removed entirely if you are AFK).

Fifth, our Discord is awesome and thriving!

Please message me here on d2jsp if you want to join. We hope soon that we will merge with the ZPK Discord and create one giant, thriving melee community for D2R players.

Thank you

Thank you to

Stevo

who let us use his D2R GM Melee Ladder thread for so long and gave us a good home. We also want to share that Stevo has donated 100,000 fg to our melee community for future events and tournaments. This is an overwhelmingly generous donation and will help fund our events for the foreseeable future.

Thank you to

Ferdia

for taking his time out of his busy schedule to make our new awesome banner (see above). It looks amazing!

Thanks to Tier1 and Minhaz for being awesome co-admins, and the community for keeping melee alive and well.

Current sign-ups

We are unfortunately in an indeterminate waiting game with Blizzard. We don't want to start this upcoming Season until Blizz decides to reset ladder. PezRadar said this will probably be the end of this month (September) but we have no confirmed dates yet. In any case, we will continue to take sign-ups for the upcoming season while we wait. Here's who I have so far (21 participants already!). Feel free to sign up here in this thread and I will keep this updated.

Trix1309 - Zealot - Noice
Leicalized - Zealot - Casino
IQLimited - Zealot - Chaos
IQLimited - Conc - Gavel
NeilM - Zealot - Banefire
Dikata - Zealot - Zhekov
Dikata - Conc - Delyan
emg - Fury - ezew
emg - Zealot - ezep
Tier1 - Zealot - Z-OG
hgrfdsa123 - Jab - Queen
Jchurch07 - Jab - Araaj
eCheque - Fury - Meepo
mxracer89 - Fury - Áed
mxracer89 - Zealot - Amiro
Koston - Fury - Werewolf
Koston - Conc - Kodiak
Vejituh - Zealot - Sentinel
brotherlyhippo1 - Zealot - Ragnar
brotherlyhippo1 - Conc - Force
rato - Zealot - Goku