difference between flawless square and radiant star:

armor: 7x (58-34 stat pts) = 168 stats
helm: 18%-12% = 6% life
weapon: 20-14 = 6 min / 6 max dmg

6% life out of an average of say 8k hp = 480 hp

+10 weap dps (approximately 60-100 dps)
168 stat pts (approximately 250-300 dps)

SO IN TOTAL:
You get an additional 480 hp and around 400 dps.

note: these numbers go up the better your gears are

marquise/10

weapon (150+300)-(20+40)=390 dps difference

no biggie

... thats not counting marquise of course...

keep in mind, this is suppose to be dueling with lvl 30 gear, if they had put req on the gems, flawless squares would allready be over lvl 30..

The restriction of anything can't really be put into place until we have more open ways to test things and more of a crowd to vote imho.

Agreed. I do think that flawless square seems like a good (not set in stone) baseline for now in terms of gems though. And ofc this is easily subject to change (which will probably mean an increase in the allowed gem tier).

Just a thought to add to the gem argument.

When i lld on d2 ladder. sometimes a guy will come along who buys a whole inventory of max/ar/life charms and rapes everyone.

Then eventually everyone catches up to them in gear and it all evens out.

My point is: is someone with a huge bankroll buying expensive gear (including gems) an advantage? yes

however is blindly banning them a good idea without ANY testing? no

LEVEL RESTRICTIONS

-im lazy so i havent read all the pages but IMO the lvl restricts should be based on passives

-reason being is that having and entire passive slot is a huge difference from the former lvls

-This would put the lvls at 10,20,30, and 42 (for -18 lvl items)

-Initially i chose 9 because of certain classes having skills at lvl 9, but i think that 10 will be better for passives not only from a balance standpoint but gear standpoint

thats a bad way of approaching it imo. at lvl 10, a dh gets hungering arrow, vault, caltrops AND smoke screen, while wiz dont get any armor/teleport, wd no spirit walk/hex. so in a way, dh wouldnt get hit at all by the nerf while all the other classes would get cut down on spells.

having more passive slots does make a big difference, but not as much as having all the classes having access to their complete toolbox of active spells.

This post was edited by WereWolf12345 on Jan 21 2013 12:01am

lower lvls. 10 especially will NOT be balanced.

vlld in d2 wasnt balanced at all for this very reason. Without sacrifice charged scepters most classes couldnt even duel with pallys.

the fact is that certain classes will inherently rule brackets.

but the only way to find out all the specifics is to place subjective lvl limits on ALL classes and experiment until we can adjust.

thousands of duels will be needed to perfect these restrictions for each class.

This.