Regarding BladeFury in v1.7:
- It's using 1/3 weapon damage, and then adding appropriate physical damage so that it's balanced with arrows (i.e. it's doing standard AoE damage, not 1/3). The benefit of this is that you can use a low-damage weapon with useful mods (for example I made some unique throwing daggers with dramatically above average EDvsUndead/Demons, which is very strong when used with BFury (vs Undead/Demons anyways), and simply average otherwise.
- BFury has been made to pierce targets (provided you've got some +%Pierce gear, AND you are using a weapon that could pierce (i.e. a bow or thrown). It sucks that you can't get the pierce benefit with a claw, but D2 seems hardcoded for this. If anyone knows of a solution then please let me know.
- There is a synergy where points into BFury give BoSpeed a 2%Pierce bonus (so 40%Pierce with maxed BFury). If you want to use that bonus with a Bow or something, then you've paid for it so have a blast.
- Just recently I adjusted the BFury damage description in the charscreen to be more accurate. It's not flawless, but it's bugged in the same way as every other ranged attack skill in D2 (they do not accurately include +%ExtraDamage (i.e. FireMastery)). By lucky coincidence, that error in v1.7 should not amount to more than 10% in the displayed damage (i.e. if it shows 1.1k, it might be doing 1k, which is pretty dang close).
Regarding v1.7 in general:
I mentioned around February that I don't mind sharing the design document describing v1.7, but I was expecting to share it around May-July, when it was a bit more final. Nonetheless, if anyone wants to take a look at the link, just PM me and let me know. If you spot errors in the design, it would be great to learn about them. Some things require play-testing, but errors in the design do not (and they affect more). You could simply double-check my math or confirm a formula's accuracy.
For example Angel noticed that the design never mentioned or seemed to account for the CastRate uniqueness of Lightning and ChainLightning, and told me about it. I raised the issue with PureRage and the Testers, and a surprisingly trivial solution was found and has been implemented. The only change required was to give those skills the same casting animation token as every other skill. I don't expect the testers to discover anything wrong with this change.
As has been mentioned, the skill trees are significantly different (same skills, just different synergies and numbers, e.g. AoE skills generally do 1/5th monsterHP as damage while single-target skills aim for 3/5th, synergies are based not on element but on targeting (single with AoE), effect (DPS (flames/poison) with Chill/Stun (so things get burned longer)), defense/offense (e.g. BoneWall is part of a Teeth or BSpear build), etc. I'd like the builds to have fairly different play-styles. I've been aiming for around three 60-point builds per tab, or about 10 builds per character. In general things appear balanced. I'm sure some builds will turn out too strong or too weak, but hopefully not more than about 20% in either direction. BFury was balanced as an AoE skill (so 1/5th monHP damage) not simply because it can pierce, but mostly because of it's fairly unique ability to leach, apply CBlow, etc. It's definitely worth a test-run though, to see if maybe 8/25 monHP damage (like v1.7 Lightning) would be better (all AoE spells are not the same).
I've similarly modified all monsters. In general their base resistances are 0% (Norm), 33%(NM), and 50%(Hell). On top of that base, I might have added resistances across the 6 elements such that they add up to 49 (e.g. 8%ResAll, 25%ResFire+Cold, 49%ResPhys, etc). I used a formula to make sure no monsters in Hell have more than 99% resistance to an element, with a few exceptions. PureRage has successfully modified the hard-coded resistance buff provided to named monsters with "FireEnchanted", "ColdEnchanted", etc so that rather than +75%Res to that element, it's +33%. This means that in Hell, a 99%ResFire monster spawning with FireEnchanted will be nearly unbreakably immune, but this doesn't occur often, and it's Hell difficulty.
Broad-sweeping changes like monster resistances and skill synergies might sound like they'd take ages, but I started in 2012 and took long breaks.
The design document is not small, and written mostly to remind myself of how I'd like things to end up (some parts will be hard to understand since my short-hand comments weren't meant for others). If you are willing to read it, I won't be offended by your first few comments demonstrating a lack of understanding (I've already shared it with several people, so I'm getting used to the initial reactions). Read it, think about stuff, then feel free to point out any flaw you see.