Before starting, I have two considerations to make:
1- I saw this review on another forum and found it interesting. So if you wrote it, let me know for credits.
2- This is a change made ONLY FOR PVP by devs
After these considerations, let's go to the topic...
Diablo II: Resurrected Patch 2.4, currently in test on PTR, brings many important changes to the game. While most of them are PvM focused, many still have a big impact on PvP. However, there is one change that only affects PvP -- and it's a big one.
Character hit recovery will now have diminishing returns when being hit by another player.
One sentence. Fourteen words. And that was enough to get the careful, almost suspicious attention of the entire PvP community. Then the PTR went live. Turmoil erupted. The change wasn't just dramatic -- it was meta breaking.
We will analyze and discuss the Hit Recovery change planned by Blizzard and its affect on the PTR.
What are FHR and Hit Recovery? How it is working?
FHR (Fast Hit Recover) is a very important stat if you plan to do PvP. Each time you get hit, the game calculates several factors, including the nature of the attack and the percent of your total life would lose, and determines your chance to engage in a hit animation. If the hit animation procs, you are stunned for a very short time, unable to perform other actions.
Stun duration can be lowered by the FHR stat, which shortens your recovery time. This is important if you don't want to get stunlocked. Being stunlocked means being put repetitively into this hit recovery animation, effectively preventing you from reacting to your opponents' actions.
There are two other ways to get stunlocked: getting knocked back and getting swirled. Skills like Mind Blast, Smite, Shock Wave and Warcry can put a character into a swirl. Even if the attack does zero damage, you can still end up stunlocked.
What is the new mechanic doing?
The idea is this: after getting put in hit recovery, you gain a invulnerability frame that prevents you from being put into a hit recovery animation again for a short time.
-The anti-stun immunity triggers almost immediately after any hit recovery.
-It lasts long enough to ignore several hits if you are opponent is casting directly at high speed, or if you are facing something that hits a lot of times, like a Trap Assassin.
-For some reason, some skills aren't affected or behave differently. Smite seem to not trigger the stun immunity the same way than most other skills (maybe Bill Gates is a Paladin PvPer in Diablo 2: Resurrected?!)
What is Blizzard's reasoning for this change?
To answer that, there are several points to consider:
-The old Weapon Switch Glitch: Weapon Switch Glitch, or WSG, was a Diablo 2 Vanilla bug that was removed in D2:R. Basically, if you spammed your switch weapon hotkey, you would somehow manage to ignore hit recovery animation and walk away from a stunlock. When that bug was fixed in D2:R, it affected the PvP meta by making stunlock stronger. The hit recovery change proposed by Blizzard might be their answer to that meta shift.
-Assassins are prevalent in the current meta as an S-tier class in both 1 vs 1 and Team vs Team: The class that plays most around stunlocking opponents is easily Assassin, with their powerful stun tool, Mind Blast. Most builds even max that skill before maximizing the damage output of their main spell; the more points you put into it, the more your Shadow Master will use it on its own, disturbing the enemy's move. While they don't have much in the way of burst damage, Assassins neutralize their prey with long, oppressive stunlocking, maintaining them swirled as much as possible. In Team vs Team, they are also among the strongest, playing the role of stunbot to setup their teammate aggression.
-Stunlock is particularly oppressive in Team vs Team: Assassins aren't the only stunners around. With their powerful skill Leap, Barbarians are also able to AoE stun their enemies. Paired with an Assassin, they are a deadly combo, often preventing unfortunate players they prey upon from escaping death. This is particularly true against caster classes, who don't have much ability to escape once they are caught this way.
Does the hit recovery change fix theses issues?
Indubitably, yes. If you look at things in a vacuum, Assassins won't be able stunlock their prey, and people in Team vs Team PvP won't get stunned for long.
BUT...
This change will have deep consequences in the PvP ecosystem, far exceeding the limitations on the Assassin class.
What are all the consequence of this change to PvP?
Stunlock isn't a tool used only by Assassins or Barbarians in Team vs Team. Stunlocking is a base mechanic of PvP for almost every class. When a Necromancer, a Smiter, a Wind Druid, or even a Sorceress aggressively chainlock their target, they are expecting Hit Recovery animations to provide a cover for them, preventing their foes from reacting easily and killing them in return. While long stunlocks are indeed mostly an Assassins thing, short stunlocks are used by every classes and promote flashy, aggressive plays. When analyzing the new FHR mechanic, it's hard not to fear that destroying stunlock will result in overly defensive gameplay.
This change, while nerfing Assassins, isn't healthy for the class. As explained before, Assassins don't have burst damage. They mostly rely on stun to kill their prey progressively. They are aggressive hunters who alternate chase phase, stunlock setup phase, and melee attacks. While strong, this gameplay isn't in itself problematic or toxic, at least not in 1 vs. 1. Removing their ability to stunlock risks pushing them to play more defensively -- ie, camping their trap field. Indeed, if they go in melee range with out being able to stun their foes reliably, they run a high risk to get outdamaged and punished by most classes.
Also, the current OP-ness of Assassins is not simply due to their stunlock gameplay. The "can't miss, can't be blocked" attribute of kick and finishing skills (which wasn't a thing in Diablo 2 prior to D2:R, also played a role) also contributed to this. Blizzard resolved part of that problem by making finishing skills able to miss and be blocked, as long as you don't have charge from the other martial arts skills, which typically which aren't used at all in PvP.
It will make Sorceress overpowered. The Sorceress is easily the most defensive class in PvP. They remain at a distance, spamming ranged spells and maintaining that distance by using their high mobilty. As they use Energy Shield with 90% absorb and more, they are almost unkillable without relying on stunlocks and Open Wound. With stunlock out of the picture, there isn't much preventing them from domination.
FHR utility as a stat will be partially (if not totally) negated. In itself, that would be neither good or bad, but it will profoundly change current character builds and gearing.
The new Hit Recovery mechanic is very different from the Weapon Switch Glitch (SWG), so it's wrong to understand this change as a rollback to the Diablo 2 Vanilla meta in PvP. Some people even went so far as to name the proposed change "auto wsg". But WSG was only something you trigger yourself. It implied you were reacting fast enough, and you still had to input precise actions while spamming your switch hotkey. By using WSG, people also ran the risk to get themselves desynched, sticking themselves in hole or against an obstacle. Finally, it's important to note than WSG wasn't as reliably usable as the new mechanic, which seems to counter stunlock much more efficiently and completely.
The new mechanic is counterintuitive, as well as hard to predict and difficult to adapt to its behavior. Depending on how frequently you are hit, it might be better to run zero FHR in some matchups and high FHR in others, but this data will probably be hard to acquire or even theorycraft, especially for new players. In the same manner, having more Faster Cast Rate (FCR) could prove detrimental in some situations if you are playing aggressively.
This isn't good. Players should never be afraid to have to more FHR or FCR in D2:R. These are supposed to be stats that are always good to improve -- neutral at worst, never detrimental.
Is the hit recovery change good or bad for PvP?
While players appreciate the sudden and almost unprecedented interest from Blizzard in PvP balance, the community is heavily divided about the proposed change. On one side, there are those who are happy about it as it prevents the recurring stunlock problem. On the other side, there are those who fear that the new mechanic will ruin PvP, which has been been stable for years. On trade platforms, not a few Assassin PvP player have already started selling their gear.
In a recent survey conducted mainly on the D2A community, approximatively 70% people declared they didn't like the hit recovery change (in fairness, it has to be noted that the sample size was small). Most opposing it wanted it either nerfed (for example with the immunity frame taking sensibly longer to trigger) or just removed, pointing it out more skill targeted nerfs as a better answer to the long stunlock problems. Top players also seem to be generally against the change.
Obviously, it's good to see Blizzard show interest in D2:R PvP, which may let us hope for a bright future for PvP. However, this specific change seems just too much, risking the very identity of the PvP game. A more progressive and targeted approach, with Blizzard perhaps even consulting top players, would fit better.
PS: there is a nice video on the original post showing these changes, but idk if i can post links here
This post was edited by ap4i on Feb 1 2022 03:26pm