Falling Down the Ladder

The USWest Expansion Ladder on Thursday, July 12

Look at all those Sorceresses!  11 of the top 16, with eight of them being level 99.  What a travesty, huh?  Not really.

Today's LoungeRant is about the ladder - why it's good, why it's bad.  I've been inspired to write this based on the feedback I received from my Lord of Destruction beta report #5, a report which has since lived in infamy (for me, at least).  Blizzard nullified many of my main arguments in that editorial when they released patch 1.08, making me look like an idiot (it's not really a whole new game when the company forces many of the new changes down the old characters throats in classic D2!).  I figured that since I already look like an idiot, I can afford to pour it on and reveal more of my opinions on things - as if my opinion carries more weight than anyone else's.  People put stock on something if it's on a website, though, so I can get my voice heard more - just remember that it's the voice of just one guy with a little too much time on his hands.  Nothing more, nothing less.  The only real authority I might have is my many years of experience in the Diablo gaming scene since 1997.

The ladder is the #1 source of griping, complaining, and of course, nerfs.  Blizzard did bring it on themselves when they decided to add it, but it was a good idea.  It takes a game which is generally non-competitive, and gives those who wish to compete with others the chance to do so.  You might say that PvP is where those energies should be placed.  I disagree, since the game really isn't designed for PvP, and characters who wish to fight other characters need to be designed quite differently than those who fight monsters.  So the ladder makes a great outlet for the general competition - who can reach the top first?  Who's the biggest, baddest character out there?  Well, on July 12, 2001, on the USWest realm, those 12 characters are the Kings of the Hill.  Good for them!  I'm not being sarcastic, either, I applaud the players' work, intelligence, and determination.

That's what it takes to get to the top, you see.  Despite the claims of so many that getting to level 99 is just "a feat for those with the time on their hands," the race up to the top is not just won by teenagers on summer vacation.  If it were, there would be hundreds of level 99 characters up there.  The players who got to level 99 so quickly also had brains in those heads of theirs.  They knew what the powerlevel classes would be, how to deck them out with the proper skills and equipment, and how to play them to maximize their experience gain per hour.

Myself, I'm not a ladder player.  The highest level character I've ever had is a current level 61 Sorceress who I started the day I bought the Expansion Set and she got there in 4 days, untwinked, playing about 4 hours a day.  Wow, she's dull - she literally plasters everything that comes her way in an 8 player Nightmare difficulty game.  The game devolved into a point-and-click adventure.  Of course, I'm still grinning, thinking of all the non-beta testers complaining that the Static Field nerf would make her useless.  It would be immature of me to say "I told you so," so I won't.  Wait, I just did...

But now, that's the problem.  Because the top of the ladder is crowded with Sorceresses, people are calling to nerf her ASAP.  It's amazing how fast the pendulum swings.  The Barbarian has fallen off the face of the earth in terms of powerleveling.  Since the Sorceress is my favorite class, I'm getting a taste of what Amazon players felt like after 1.04 suddenly made them dominant - the Sorceress is now the character to be for those who enjoy getting those fast levelups.  Why is this?  The ladder.

The ladder is unforgiving - it just shows in simple terms which classes are better at leveling up quickly and efficiently.  That's what it does, and it does it well.  The problem arises when everyone falls into the trap of believing that leveling up quickly and efficiently is all that counts.  It's a very big trap.  It's what caused the overflow of Barbarians in the past - you could go whole games without seeing any characters but Barbarians and Amazons once you get to a high enough level.  None of the others were "worth playing."

You see it all the time, from new players and seasoned ones alike:

"Which character is the best?"
"The Barbarian!"
"Why is that?"
"Look at the ladder - it's almost all Barbarians."
"But I like the Paladin."
"Forget him, he sucks.  There's like, one Paladin on the ladder."

So the player starts a Barbarian.

There's a crucial distinction to be made here.  There's a difference between characters that level up quickly and efficiently and "best characters."  For example, you could have a devastating fire-tree Sorceress, who just pancakes everything in Hell Act 5.  Except those fire immune monsters.  No big deal!  She can just skip the levels where those monsters appear.  After all, all that matters is her ability to kill things as quickly as possible.  Lightning Sorceresses have a distinct edge here, since there are far fewer lightning immunes than fire immunes.  I'm not saying that those level 99 characters aren't well-rounded - by level 99, you can be sure they have skill points spread out in 2, maybe 3 trees.  But while getting there, they can level up far faster by concentrating skill points in one tree and just skipping areas which are strong against that one tree.  It's great for leveling up, if that's your goal.  But it sure doesn't make you the "best" character.

It all depends on what your game is.  Most players are not ladder players - in fact, ladder junkies would be surprised to find how much of a minority they are.  Only a very small segment of the Battle.Net populace bothers to compete on the ladder - yet the ladder controls so much of how we perceive the game in terms of character balance.  If the Sorceresses own the top spots, then they're the "best," and John or Jane Doe B.net player will be more likely to play one because she's the "best."

It sounds like I'm trashing the ladder.  I'm not - I'm just pointing out a behavior that affects so many of us eventually, because we're surrounded by it all the time.  Blizzard first gained experience with the ladder phenomenon in Starcraft, their superb RTS game which remains the best in the biz.  The reason it's so great is the incredible mix of three races which work completely different, and yet are balanced.  When Starcraft was first released, though, this wasn't the case.  Those who remember the early months will recall that the Zerg race dominated, winning around 60% of the time over the other races.  With data compiled from thousands upon thousands of games, Blizzard could make slight adjustments to the races in order to reach that 50% ideal.  People cried out about imbalance in that game just as they do with Diablo II.

But this doesn't apply here.  You can't just look at the recent Sorceress dominance and say, "this needs fixing now."  The Starcraft analogy doesn't hold water because that was a game designed for direct competition.  Diablo II isn't.  You're only competing here in terms of who can level up the fastest, and not who is the toughest character.  What people want to see on the D2 ladder is what they see on the Starcraft ladder - that if you play a favorite race, or class, you should have a shot at being #1 just as much as any other.  The problem is that the game isn't designed for that.

Yes, Sorceresses are the best right now, a development some beta testers were predicting before the final was released.  The Sorceress is a character designed for pure offense.  If you look at her skills, there are only a few designed to assist her defensively or to help a party.  Those are exactly the skills which are generally ignored by ladder players.  On the ladder, offense is everything.  Is it a shock that the character designed for pure offense is dominating?

Of course, I'm referring to the softcore ladder here.  In Hardcore, the rules change.  Unfortunately, with the way D2X works now, Sorceresses need almost no mana to do well depending on her skill choices.  My level 61 Sorceress using Meteor and Thunderstorm has 100 energy and around 300 mana - and it's more than she needs!  As a result, she has pumped her vitality and has almost 700 hit points!  Plus, she doesn't suffer from the insane repair costs which are affecting the melee classes, such as Colossus Swords that cost 125,000 a pop to repair.  Translation: she levels up fast.  REALLY fast.

With mercenaries and a drastic increase in the number of mana potion drops, Sorceresses are able to concentrate on pure killing.  Frozen Orb isn't the skill of choice anymore, since slowing those monsters down isn't the priority for survival it was before.  Pure killing is what wins the ladder.  But I'm getting away from my main point.

My main point is that we need to collectively stop putting so much emphasis on the ladder.  These classes will never be balanced in terms of their ability to kill quickly.  The Paladin will never be the dominant class!  He's built from the ground up to be a party player and not the star of the show.  Does this mean that the Paladin isn't the "best" character?  He doesn't need to skip fire immunes, or hang out in the Bloody Foothills over and over.  :)  Does that make him "better?"  How the heck can we possibly define "best," anyway?

If we keep calling for nerfs, the neverending cycle will...never end.  I'm losing count of the sheer number of times the poor Barbarian has been cut back.  But since the Sorceress rules now, let's nerf her.  Then the Druid will be next.  Then the Assassins will be running the show, and we can nerf that class - and the Amazons will once again rule the roost.  The true losers of many of these nerfs are the low level characters.  Skills are modified to prevent those level 80+ characters from totally dominating, but those modifications often change the way a skill works during a character's tender years.  Ouch.

The fact is that Sorceresses make really crappy party characters.  There's really only one skill that boosts other players - Enchant.  Other than that, the way they help a party is by using cold skills and annihilating everything in sight.  Since the cold tree is now out of style (it doesn't kill as quickly, so the ladder Sorcs don't use it, so it "sucks," remember?), most Sorcs just see parties as a group of characters who will tank for her a bit.  And that Conviction Paladin or Lower Resist Necro is simply along for the ride - you can bet that some of those high level Sorceresses partied up with them in order to advance even faster.  Also, don't forget that Sorcs are party leeches until they get to the level they need to start pumping their primary attack skills.  It's only then that they take off.

If you're into leveling like mad, play a Sorceress.  If I were a player who enjoyed competing on the ladder, that's what I'd do.  I wouldn't sit there and moan that the Barbarian can't level up quickly enough.  The players who picked the Sorceress as the character to compete with were smart and had the foresight to see beyond the Static Field nerf, realizing that she now had the immense firepower to blow the other classes away.  Kudos to them!  They've outwitted many, many other players who never gave a thought to playing her.  However, if you're just in for a fun game of Diablo II, try one of the other characters.  You know, maybe that "sucky" Paladin class.  You might have a little fun along the way, especially if you stop worrying about what everyone else is doing and remember that it's just a game.  If you join a game and a Sorceress is cleaning everything out before you even get a chance to see it, move on.  Blizzard could nerf her, but then in the next version it'll just be the Druids or Assassins or Amazons cleaning out everything instead.  Then what?

One argument floating around is that Sorceresses are only dominant right now because they don't need much in the way of equipment to do well.  After all, her entire offense is based on her character level, as she needs skill points to kill things.  Other characters that are more equipment dependent don't have the killer layouts yet, and may catch up to the Sorceress in deadliness.  Now, I don't know how true that is myself, but I think it warrants patience to see how things will round out.  The Sorceress is definitely "easy" to level up with, much like the Corpse Explosion-based Necromancer was in the early days before the nerf of that skill.  And mark my words now: don't count out the Barbarians.  I feel that people have yet to discover how deadly they can be...

Anyone else want to see the removal of the level cap?  It's so much easier to reach level 99 now; hey Blizzard, how about getting rid of the cap and letting these competitors go as far as they can?

All too often, I see players define a skill or a set of equipment as "bad," because it doesn't contribute to fast leveling.  Their justification is simple - the ladder is what counts, and that means leveling up fast.  But wait!  Thanks to their skill choices, they don't have a prayer of beating a certain kind of boss, or a physically immune monster.  That's ok, they can just "skip" that monster.  In my book, that sure as heck doesn't make that character the "best."  But it does in terms of the ladder.  Take a look at all the "strategy guides" which come out just after the release of D2 and D2X which actually contain lines such as "just skip this boss or party up to get help with so-and-so."  Does that sound like strategy to you?  Just something to chew on, and I hope you enjoyed this article.