Here's your warning. This post is pointless to more than 95% reading so fair warning, feel free to move along and save some time. It's just a little history. LMAO. Now if you like rabbit holes, Let me begin.
Many of us played from way back in the day, 1.08. We've come and gone, came back for ladder resets etc. I read a few archived forum posts and I guess the nostalgia got me. I'm pretty sure it's gotten us all at one point. I remember getting into a discussion with some old friends as to when I left. I think WOW just came out. I never really formulated my position though as to why I felt it was time to move on to something new. And for some stupid reason, randomly, I went down the rabbit hole reviewing every patch item in chronological order, I need a life
Then I hit up some long forgotten archived forum posts and suddenly , just short of 20 years, that simple train of thought resurfaced. What made me know it was time to move on to something else back then? That's when it hit me. They killed the Bowazon. LMAO. Take that with a grain of salt. I just so happened to main a Bowazon and I'll be the first to admit we were sitting as undisputed kings of the hill back then in PvP. But I guess that kind of run paints a pretty big target on your back. I didn't play classic regularly but D2 LOD was a match made in heaven for me. It was quick, gritty and addicting.
1.08 we were cruising around with no problems, same with 1.09. We had one HELL of a run right out of the gate! Then 1.10 changed everything. With one patch we were plucked off the top of the hill. LMAO then buried in the Moore. It was brutal. I felt the changes almost directly targeted my class and build. With 1 patch, they would raise (or re-balance) all other classes (more so with magic castors) and bury the former title holders. Now I still love playing most classes, but my heart was always with the Bowazon class/build. And here's how 1 patch changed everything.
1) They introduced Synergies and left Bowazons behind. Every caster out there received big boosts in damage while physical damage characters were left in the dust
We could no longer keep up in the damage race.
2) They practically did away with Life Leech (due to the PVP side penalty).
3) They specifically branded Pierce + GA as a bug, when this was not case. Pierce (which would max out at 4 passes if I remember) would interact with GA as an intended function of the Pierce + GA mechanics. GA would
target nearest target and Pierce would allow each arrow to roll for success and re-target if successful. That was a big break from game release. It was the bread and butter of the top Bowazon builds, including hybrids.
The orginal code , example - Missles.txt file, was coded to allow this mechanic as it was intentional. So they applied a server side patch to overwrite client side mechanics to nerf Pierce + GA. Which seemed to be against the "founding fathers' intentions", all hail Brevick and Team
4) They introduced the Enigma rune-word which gave every class the primary Sorc skill Teleport. This meant, any class or wielder could close the distance almost instantly. Telestomping was born from this.
Well like I said, we had one HELL of run at the top. Other classes needed some time to shine, I get that. More varied builds came out because of it, Can't argue that. but...
I have never heard or seen such a brutal assassination to a single class/build in the game than 1.10.
This post was edited by MashedTatorz on Aug 20 2020 03:34am
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