Most unrealistic spells in D2?

[Nukeman8]

A recent comment from flux (How most spells in d2 are a tad on the unrealistic side) got me thinking what would you list as the most unrealistic spells in the game? just for fun of course. :crazyeyes:

Also what spell/skill would you most want to take with you into d3?

Of course having firebolts fire with your hands isnt exactly everyday real life but my most unrealistic would have to be:

Meteors: A) For the simple fact that you can do this anyway, in caves, tombs, in the maggot lair. In fact the only places you cant use this spell is towns where it could actually be possible lol.

Frenzy: is another favourite of mine, just for the fact that the poor barb must be nackered by the end of 1 act lol

Multishot, At max level your shooting 20 arrows from 1 arrow, according to the manual the amazon spilts 1 arrow up into many. No wonder the skills has reduced damage these days, all them arrows all from 1 must be like being hit by splinters.

A skill i hope they carry thro would be corpse explosion, looks funny, sounds funny and well the mess afterwards is the best ever.

[yukisho]

Teleport in caves, tombs and such is dumb.
Lighting - Looks like something Zues would be doing.
Necro Reanimate. Ever seen Resident Evil, Dawn of the Dead? It never turns out peachy.

[Nukeman8]

"Necro Reanimate. Ever seen Resident Evil, Dawn of the Dead? It never turns out peachy."

lol to true.

[stillman]

Skeletons raised from quillrat bodies or those deadly swarms that don't even have skeletons. The cheap explanation givin is that the spell uses the pre-existing life forces of the corpse to create a skeleton.

Barbarian's leap is too much like Super Mario's leap.

War Cry that damages monsters without damaging your chr or the party.

Amazon's pierce arrow can go through solid metal armor, but not through some naked enemies or trees.

Fissure and vines: the ground heals up. Also, vines taking out huge 500 pound demons is silly.

All the assassin traps seem more science fiction looking than fantasy.

All the assassin kick moves: kicking 500 pound demons to death? For god sakes, use a hammer or something.

Worst ever imo: Shapeshifter's weapon damage is used even though the werebear/wolf no longer carries the weapon.

[Meyhem]

hammers flying around in circles around the pally? lol

[Nukeman8]

Hmm dunno about your vine 1, some real life snakes can take out elephants with just 1 bite.
Couldnt agree more with the assasian kicking 1 thou lol. Talk about the long way round to killing something

[Jek]

Smite - Who the heck can smack baddies up with a shield that fast.
Teleport - Traveling faster than light is bad mojo, I hear.

I'd love to see teleport again, the strongest skill ever - and please Blizzard no off-class skills this time about, a return of Immolation would be swell too.

[Cwicseolfor]

I think the way this thread's going, every skill will be listed before long.

[Nukeman8]

wellll your probably right, should of done a most realistic skill would of been much shorter.
erm autoattack anyone?

[Rashiminos]

Conversion: How is hitting a monster supposed to make it think that it should fight for you?

[j_vellinne]

Conversion: How is hitting a monster supposed to make it think that it should fight for you?

"Don't bite me! *Whack!* Bite them!"

Or have you never heard of rolled up newspapers? :)

[Erwwwd]

I think the way this thread's going, every skill will be listed before long.

Indeed. Talking about realism in a world filled with demons, sorcerers and the walking dead is a bit silly as well.

[Brother Laz]

There's a difference between a skill that could work if magic worked, and a skill that would make no sense even then.

Even magical arrows don't move at 15 yards per second; a straight line shot cannot pierce a quill rat on the ground, then a bat in the air, then another quill rat on the ground; and if Lightning Fury shoots lightning from the target and from walls, you should be able to throw it at the ground, too.

[Nukeman8]

There's a difference between a skill that could work if magic worked, and a skill that would make no sense even then.

Even magical arrows don't move at 15 yards per second; a straight line shot cannot pierce a quill rat on the ground, then a bat in the air, then another quill rat on the ground; and if Lightning Fury shoots lightning from the target and from walls, you should be able to throw it at the ground, too.

Indeed, the necro spell corpse explosion isnt as silly as it sounds if there was such thing as magic but having swarms drop plate armour from seeminly nowhere is unrealistic anyway you look at it

[Omikron8]

fantasy game != reality

if you want more reality go play age of conan

[stillman]

I think this thread IS going somewhere. Notice all the pretty splash effects of the waterfall in D3, the waterfall that no one will ever look at eventually because we don't interact with it? Well why don't they put this sort of effort into game components that we DO look at all the time. For instance, why not animate the archer to arc the bow upwards when shooting at flying mosnters or a super tall boss. That would just make my day if they did something like that. But no, all the attention has to go into the background.
Sometimes, I think they've got the priorities all wrong. They need to go the extra distance and do a few more chr animations to be more real, at a cost of not spending 100 man hours designing some background waterfall.

I think what Brother Laz is getting at is that it's Ok to have unrealistic fantasy elements like meteors falling from the sky, but it just looks like poor design when it's being used undergorund. Sometimes it's an easy matter to touch up these spells to make them more feasable.

[Erwwwd]

About the meteor-skill, I don't think it is unrealistic

The sorceress conjures the thing in to being, she can do it in a cave as well for all I care, it doesn't matter where it is conjured.

It is magic. It is made out of thin air. Thin air is everywhere.

Now explaining the skill as if she were to direct a real meteor from the sky would be unrealistic, as a meteor would take a lot longer then the casting delay to fall all the way down to earth.

[sirwhere]

spell = unrealistic, by definition.

So let's not haggle about this, ok? :)

[stillman]

But would you want the spell to simply pass through a tree or wall? No. That would look terrible and cheap. I don't want to be ripped off like that. I want the designers to put effort into making spells look and feel "right". If you see fire where half of the flame is flickering into and out of the tree then that just looks bad. They need to go the extra mile and animate the flame to burn around the tree and not disappear into it.

I don't understand the argument against this thread. In the D3 video, you see zombies falling off a bridge instead of having half the zombie lying on the bridge and the other half lying flat in space as happens in D2. This is a major improvment. It's like you're saying "Look, they're zombies. They're not realistic anyways, so just have them die and defy gravity anyway. Zombies are magic. The magic permits them to float in space instead of plummeting downwards naturally."

And what about barbarians? They're fast anyways, so should we accept a 2 frame animation for all attacks which is the cheapest and suckiest look possible?

[Cast_Raider]

hammers flying around in circles around the pally? lol

I suppose all spells are unrealistic, but if the list is the silliest spells in D2, this one takes the cake.

*hold down cast button*

HONK HONK HONK HONK HONK

*paladin makes a hand gesture like a trucker honking his horn, goofy little hammers swirl out*

SWIFF SWIFF SWIFF SWIFF SWIFF SWIFF

*half the monsters aren't hit, other half die instantly even in an 8 player game*

[Arioch]

Any spells are "realistic?"

[stillman]

Yes, they are. The fire burns the bad guys. That's realistic. It's magic, yes, but this is a game where physics and magic co-exist.
Another great advancement in D3 was the burning animations added to the monsters hit with fire attacks, even the boss at the end. According to this simple "spells <> real" argument, you guys don't seem to care about making the spells look right. These are not Nintendo days anymore. It's about time Blizzard started making spells look feasable, and yes, spells can and should look feasable.

[Erwwwd]

Well, I don't think you have anything to fear Stillman. It is an 8 year old game, the little mishaps wasn't really "laziness" by the creators.

It was a game of it's time. Actually it was a game that could at that point be played on computers that were already a couple of years old. Blizzard tends to make games with relatively low-requirements.

The next game will have much nicer graphics, features and interactions with the environment, as you already saw in the trailers.

Don't worry about things looking kind of primitive in D2 at the moment, it is what it is, and D3 will improve on it.

[Flux]

Indeed, the necro spell corpse explosion isnt as silly as it sounds if there was such thing as magic but having swarms drop plate armour from seeminly nowhere is unrealistic anyway you look at it

To steal a joke from the feedback to my old decahedron column, when i wrote about the top 10 physical improbabilties in D2... each gnat carries one tiny metal ring in a tiny invisible backpack, and when they die they instantly knit them together into ring mail.

[psykeman420]

um...all of them :P