I don't have too much to say regarding the changes PureRage has put into v1.7, but they include quest-reward changes for A1Q3 and A3Q2, new areas for exploration, and plenty of improvements on the base version I had already enjoyed for a couple years.
A significant chunk of v1.7 is based on the version of HU I started modifying from, which was v1.3. Interesting times prevented me from participating in the HU community, so there are plenty of changes I haven't seen, despite helping some with v1.5 and a bit of QA with v1.6. With that in mind, there will be some features from those versions missing in v1.7 (also keep in mind that they'd return with v1.8 and maybe v1.9).
My changes to v1.3 promoted rebalancing of things like monster resistances and damage, character builds, and items. In general, I adhered to an old saying, "Some people notice a change as small as +20%, but everyone notices +33%". That means that most changes you'll experience from your gear or skills are around that range.
I was frustrated with how a character completely dominated monsters with their immunity pierced, or was completely stopped by monsters when their immunity was not pierced, so I generally reduced those numbers. Skills or gear (all slots together) generally get at most 33%ElemPierce, meanwhile monsters are generally never immune. PureRage has modified the hard-coded resistance buff named monsters get from Fire, Cold, or Lightning Enchanted from +75%Res down to about 33%, so even a named monster's resistance might be breakable. I've standardized monster skill damage as described in
this thread, making it much easier for modders after me to quickly change the spell damage of all monsters. I can release what I think is a decent solo version (-20%monster damage) of the mod after a few minutes of modification.
The numbers and synergies involved in skills are generally smaller. Most skills get two synergies of 2% each (so +80% damage when you maxed both synergy skills). This means that a build is composed of 3 skills, but if you don't max all the synergies for a skill, it's not really a big deal (a skill with 80% synergies does about 30% more damage than that skill with 40% synergies). Since you'll max a 3-skill build around A4 Norm, you have plenty of skill points left to invest in skills that make up for some weakness in your skill set or gear.
I've generally organized skills into builds based on the play style of the build. I often put together skills where one hit a single target hard, one hit several targets, and the last was different. I balanced Summons into either Offensive (Golems, DireWolf, Grizzly, SkeletonMages, Raven) or Defensive. In my estimate, there are about 70 builds that I expect to be enjoyably playable, but obviously I've not had the chance to try them all. I hope some of them are a bit on the weaker side, for folks who want more challenge when they're part of a group, and I'm sure some are a bit on the strong side. One of the benefits of using relatively small numbers is that the mistakes are relatively small. I've set up most summons to use the exponential growth described in
this thread, which frankly makes their growth rate quite hard to modify, but they can still be easily scaled.
Gear is being balanced around having a total of about +13 AllSkills and +30%ElemDamage end-game. The number of +Skills was chosen so that Tier5 (skill level 28+) skill damage does not dominate the skill. Fighting weapons get about +100%EDmg, while armor gets around +100%EDef meaning that upgrading them via the cube is almost always worthwhile (they'll also gain a +1AllSkills if they're Unique or Set). Rare mods are designed with the assumption that you'd roll until you got 6 mods (this means 3 prefixes, and 3 suffixes), so I was able to split an important mod (like IAS or %ED) across all prefixes or suffixes to make rares more reliable. I also used the "Max Level" column of that file so that weaker mods stop spawning for high level situations. For example, v1.7 expects your weapon and shield slots to eventually give you +3 skills each, so almost all (80%?) high-level weapon prefixes give +1AllSkills in addition to whatever they normally give (you wouldn't have to reroll for some singular +3Skills mod). I used autoskills to give +2Skills to all elite shields (there is a single +1Skill mod among shield prefixes), and +3 skills to all elite 2-handed weapons. The automods mean Runewords retain their usefulness a bit longer (I believe "Ancient's Pledge" works fine in A2Norm as well as A5Hell). I think every base item has automods. oSkills are common, since I would need a reason not to include them (we've been recently exploring lots of animation-related issues with some of these sadly).
Between the changes to monster balance, skills, and gear, I'm sure some folks will hate v1.7, but I'm also sure that most players will enjoy it.
Here is a link to the design document I wrote a couple years ago to help organize my changes. It's a lot to read, and most details are about monster, player, and skill balance. In general, when the current testers find something in the game that doesn't match the design, then the design was correct and the game gets changed. The document was written for me only, but I'm pretty sure it's not so terribly written that no one else can figure things out. It contains all the details for skills and their synergies, but nothing is written in stone.
D2 Mod IdeasI don't think it's worth sharing an Items webpage link quite yet, since those are still changed pretty often.