HoB - Character Classes and Skills
General Changes
Hoard of Bugtraction doesn't change the entire skill system or entire skills. It is no problem to build any subclass similar to the known concepts in unmodified Diablo II - Lord of Destruction. But some of the synergie effects have changed or are decreased. So you may, as an example, build a Necromancer focussed on Bone Spells, or a Sorceress dedicated to just one kind of elemental damage. The build will be viable, if with less damage due to restricted synergies. Keep in mind that monsters have less life in Hoard of Bugtraction. On the other hand you'll have some points spare to evolve an alternative which is strongly recommended.
At least similar to unmodified game, if not more so, a one-dimensional build will encounter lots of problems in later areas and difficulties. Even with a strong hireling on your side you'll soon see heavy limitations of single-minded builds.
We've invented some hidden boni, especially regarding synergies. Those will either be invisible in skill tree or don't have exact descriptions. However, we gave our best to show the effects properly in calculations done for skill descriptions in skill tree, character screen and so on.
Global Adjustments
Some chenges will affect all classes similarly.
Following listing shows all global tweaks we've done.
- resistance penalty in Hell difficulty is decreased to -80
- duration of freeze effects is a third of nominal value in Hell difficulty
- duration of AI-bending effects is a third of nominal value in Hell difficulty
- Leech in Hell difficulty is globvally halfed, thus the same penalty like in Nightmare
- characters start with ten more hitpoints compared to original game
- base movement speed of characters is slightly increased
- slightly more experience beyond character level 74
- attack ranking values are changed, so some skills will cause more aggressive monster behaviour than others
Skills available for all Classes
To make something actually useful out of all that crossclass business in Lord of Destruction we've decided to invent some skills which can be used by all classes. Those skills are only available via some very specialized items, and they'll affect native skills of any given class in different ways. Some may look useful only to one or two classes, but this could be understatement. Some should inspire the player to think about a variant build which would be hard to do in unmodified game.
Those specialized items are not that easy to lay your hands on, you won't find them below any wet stone. For game balance's sake the items will also apply some bad effect to the character, since specializing always needs some fee. So character's intelligence (similar to energy and mana) or movement ability will decrease, or a weakness to a kind of damage will show; in some cases maybe native skills which don't match the special focus will need more points to increase their level.
