Skill selection only to one spot Why can't I use the spiders AND the poison bolt. Or fire bats and grasping hands. There's few enough skills as it is without arbitrary rules
Multiple power levels on runestones being gone
Turn on elective mode in game options and you can assign any skill of any type to any slot. High level gear can roll affixes that boost rune effects and fulfills the purpose that higher runestone ranks previously did.
Playing D3 just makes me miss D2. I miss when spells didn't give a shit what weapon was in my hand. I miss having more than a handful to choose from, and I miss being able to assign whichever one I want to whatever button I want. D2 Sorc players got pretty screwed in D3.
I also miss gems, and runes, and sockets. I miss giving a shit what gear dropped; so far, everything I've seen is so "meh" inducing that I don't care. I miss my choices having a meaning; I miss the thrill of speccing out and optimizing for your playstyle, instead of just clicking a few buttons and being done. I miss being able to USE my skills without having to swap them out and wait for a cooldown.
An interesting little game this D3 is. A worthy successor to D2 it ain't.
Skill complaints I understand, but loot was pretty darn crap in D2 before the second act. You usually got one or two decent things in the whole first part. I've found some fun stuff, a health restoring belt, gloves that give more xp, and a sweet knife that restores health when I kill things and increases gold. I'm hoping that 'of the whale' and that sort of stuff start showing up soon though. I like stats!
Skill selection only to one spot Why can't I use the spiders AND the poison bolt. Or fire bats and grasping hands. There's few enough skills as it is without arbitrary rules
Go to options -> gameplay -> turn on elective mode. It lets you put stuff where you want
And I'd really like someone to tell me what their point of reference is for "not enough skills". Counting off the talent trees, the diablo 2 sorc had 26 total skills, while the diablo 3 wizard has 25 skills with 5 runes each. Dat's alot of skills
The game itself, it's great. Blizzard has hit a home run, and thats only considering the first six levels. Everything just flows so nicely
The atmosphere
The sense of power from the skills and abilities
The witch doctor voice
The fact there is still a tad of humor but the situation feels INCREDIBLY dire
The graphics
Things I'm sad about
Skill selection only to one spot Why can't I use the spiders AND the poison bolt. Or fire bats and grasping hands. There's few enough skills as it is without arbitrary rules
Multiple power levels on runestones being gone
Numerous problems with online only being brought to the forefront during this stress test. They really should have rethought that.
It's a weird decision to make the game even more noob friendly, although I'm not sure it really achieves that... or anything else worthwile. You can bypass this restriction by going in options and turning on "Elective Mode". This will let you put any ability in any slot. (There's arrows on top of the skill page to change categories when selecting a skill)
So ive played through the beta on the WD, and gotten about halfway through it on the monk. I stop to take a look at the achivements and notice the soul jar questline that apparently i missed. what area does that start in?
Late, but I stumbled across this in the cemetary while I was looking for the crown. It was just in a big square room and it spawns waves of skeletons for a minute. Surviving gives you the achievement, but it was pretty easy as the monk. I just stood in a corner and tore them up with long range punches.
I'm level 12 now on my monk and it is a blast. They're nice and versatile, you can blind, slow, snare, have long range melee combat and teleport/gap closers.
Only thing that has bit me in the ass is upgrading the smith up to level two. I wasn't looking and made the basic staff for the monk, but it requires level 15 to use. Whoops!
I think my concern with the possibility of builds stagnating eventually is that
- certain skills seem to synergize very well with each other, meaning that the number of possible working skill combinations is actually less than it might seems. For example, you wouldn't use Entangling Shot with Impale as the Demon Hunter. Instead, Rapid Fire / Strafe makes a heck load more sense. Caltrops would have considerably less value in such a situation too.
- While enemies may spawn with random modifiers, generally, you know what sort of enemies will spawn are in an area and their behaviour, so it's possible to prepare to a certain extent.
- The Nephalem buff sounds great in practice but I suspect it could eventually end up like Magic Find in Diablo 2. You could load yourself with tons of MF (say 500% to 700%), but your killing speed would drop so drastically such that it made more sense to just do it with less MF but get in more runs at the same time. Likewise, while the buff is great, in practice I suspect people will happily forgo it to swop to a tuned build just to kill faster if the time savings are considerably higher.
- You really don't get the benefit of one point wonder skills anymore such as the Nec's curses/Sorc's teleport or ice armors/Paladin auras.
It's still too early to tell, but I forsee that Blizzard will have to address these issues eventually. All in all though, from what I've played of Diablo 3, it's still a great great game.
I thought that changing your skill/runes with a 5 second cool down was enough of a deterrent. It set things up nicely for when you are focused on AoE'ing, you could switch to single target skills right before a boss. Its apparent that they really really do not want you to switch ever unless its right before you start playing.
What's a more interesting mechanic: one where it makes sense to have your aoe build and your single target build, or one where you're motivated to balance the two?
The first one actually. I like toying with multiple builds.
Lucky for you, the system still allows that. Either in between play sessions with no downside whatsoever, or you lose a magic find buff, but probably kill faster.
This way, there's at least some motivation for both specialized and balanced builds.
I think my concern with the possibility of builds stagnating eventually is that
- certain skills seem to synergize very well with each other, meaning that the number of possible working skill combinations is actually less than it might seems. For example, you wouldn't use Entangling Shot with Impale as the Demon Hunter. Instead, Rapid Fire / Strafe makes a heck load more sense. Caltrops would have considerably less value in such a situation too.
- While enemies may spawn with random modifiers, generally, you know what sort of enemies will spawn are in an area and their behaviour, so it's possible to prepare to a certain extent.
- The Nephalem buff sounds great in practice but I suspect it could eventually end up like Magic Find in Diablo 2. You could load yourself with tons of MF (say 500% to 700%), but your killing speed would drop so drastically such that it made more sense to just do it with less MF but get in more runs at the same time. Likewise, while the buff is great, in practice I suspect people will happily forgo it to swop to a tuned build just to kill faster if the time savings are considerably higher.
- You really don't get the benefit of one point wonder skills anymore such as the Nec's curses/Sorc's teleport or ice armors/Paladin auras.
It's still too early to tell, but I forsee that Blizzard will have to address these issues eventually. All in all though, from what I've played of Diablo 3, it's still a great great game.
Skills synergizing isn't really a flaw if each skill still works no matter what you choose. We'll have to see.
Preparing for a fight is yet to be determined. Sure isn't needed in the beta, even if it is possible.
The Nephelem Buff, to my understanding, is gathered by killing things. So yeah, going a kill things fast build is perfectly logical. What's the issue here?
If they design the skills right they're ALL '1 point wonders'. So far they're doing a pretty good job.
I don't see them touching any of these to any major degree. All the ACTUAL problems this game has barely get mentioned, no wonder they're making it in...
Skill selection only to one spot Why can't I use the spiders AND the poison bolt. Or fire bats and grasping hands. There's few enough skills as it is without arbitrary rules
Go to options -> gameplay -> turn on elective mode. It lets you put stuff where you want
And I'd really like someone to tell me what their point of reference is for "not enough skills". Counting off the talent trees, the diablo 2 sorc had 26 total skills, while the diablo 3 wizard has 25 skills with 5 runes each. Dat's alot of skills
I had no idea you could do this. Thank you SO MUCH.
The beta ends at level 13. By that point the wizard has 10 spells, and multiple runes. How many spells could a Diablo 2 sorc have by level 13?
Technically? 15.
Realistically? one point each in Ice Bolt and Ice Blast, one in Static Field.
"more than a handful" in D2 means pick Frozen Orb or Blizzard.
Just for the record, I played a Glacial Spike/Meteor Sorc using no guides for the build, cherished every drop, never owned a single SOJ, and only ever leveled up to 40-something. So, yeah, the way I played and enjoyed D2 may not be representative of all D2 players, nor do I claim that D2 was a perfect game. It just feels to me like we've lost some of D2's strengths in character development in order to fix some of it's shortcomings.
I have a question that may have been asked already. If I have, say, two 7 DPS 1 hand weapons, or 1 10 DPS two hand weapon, which should I use? Do my abilities base off of my total DPS or my main hand DPS?
Skill selection only to one spot Why can't I use the spiders AND the poison bolt. Or fire bats and grasping hands. There's few enough skills as it is without arbitrary rules
Go to options -> gameplay -> turn on elective mode. It lets you put stuff where you want
And I'd really like someone to tell me what their point of reference is for "not enough skills". Counting off the talent trees, the diablo 2 sorc had 26 total skills, while the diablo 3 wizard has 25 skills with 5 runes each. Dat's alot of skills
Seriously this is an important option. This makes wizard so much better.
I have a question that may have been asked already. If I have, say, two 7 DPS 1 hand weapons, or 1 10 DPS two hand weapon, which should I use? Do my abilities base off of my total DPS or my main hand DPS?
I'm not sure how it works for, say, wizard spells, but with the barbarian it looks like you change off. Attack with one weapon, then the other, and so forth. So if you have two weapons with effects you want to have, it would make sense to use both.
Although I ended up just using a flamberge because it's super fun to kill whole groups of enemies and get those "7 with one blow!" bonuses. That's totally a reference to this.
I have a question that may have been asked already. If I have, say, two 7 DPS 1 hand weapons, or 1 10 DPS two hand weapon, which should I use? Do my abilities base off of my total DPS or my main hand DPS?
I'm not sure how it works for, say, wizard spells, but with the barbarian it looks like you change off. Attack with one weapon, then the other, and so forth. So if you have two weapons with effects you want to have, it would make sense to use both.
Although I ended up just using a flamberge because it's super fun to kill whole groups of enemies and get those "7 with one blow!" bonuses. That's totally a reference to this.
Stuff like wizard spells, rapid fire for DH, etc is what I'm curious about.
Far as I know it scales off your Damage number and since Wizard's at least don't alternate attacks with the items they can equip it just whichever setup gives you the bigger number under Damage. Demon Hunter I'd guess alternates like Barbarian, but someone feel free to verify that who's played one and tested.
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CarbonFireSee youin the countryRegistered Userregular
edited April 2012
Enjoying the game so far, especially with the darker, sharper overlay. The default graphics are just too bright and blurry for my taste. Withholding judgment until the full game drops whether I'll be picking it up or not.
Will have to group up with some fine PA folk tomorrow for some ol' fashioned monster killin'.
Skill selection only to one spot Why can't I use the spiders AND the poison bolt. Or fire bats and grasping hands. There's few enough skills as it is without arbitrary rules
Go to options -> gameplay -> turn on elective mode. It lets you put stuff where you want
And I'd really like someone to tell me what their point of reference is for "not enough skills". Counting off the talent trees, the diablo 2 sorc had 26 total skills, while the diablo 3 wizard has 25 skills with 5 runes each. Dat's alot of skills
I had no idea you could do this. Thank you SO MUCH.
Same here. Ray of frost / arcane blow. Shit up thing here I come.
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VariableMouth CongressStroke Me Lady FameRegistered Userregular
why doesn't my royal crypts waypoint saaaaave I want to kill this guy over and over
Wizards and witchdoctors can't dual wield so it isn't an issue for them. I think I heard that dual wielding alternates weapons and comes with a baseline attack speed buff, but I'm not entirely sure about that. And it might work differently for some of the skills.
It grants a 15% attack speed boost and you alternate hands with each swing. This means it's very easy to decrease your overall DPS by putting on a subpar offhand.
If I had to guess what happens with Rapid Fire, it's probably consistent with everything else, so alternating hands for each tick of damage. It would be easy enough to test with a high damage crossbow and a shitty offhand to see if there is a wide spread.
So far, I've beaten the King with Wizard, Barb, Witch Doctor, and Monk.
- Witch Doctor seems like a good idea, but is horribly underpowered so far. Which is too bad, because SPIDERS EVERYWHERE is pretty fun.
- Barb feels super overpowered, like, holy shit that first zombie flew 10 feet overpowered. Damn, he feels like he's hitting the shit out of everything, BAM!
- Monk w/ Teleport Fist is pretty awesome, and the heal is nice.
- Wizard becomes infinitely more bad-ass with spectral blade. Slice slice slice.
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VariableMouth CongressStroke Me Lady FameRegistered Userregular
I used the kick that hits everyone around you, never touched the heal. the kick pushes back I think
Demon Hunter takes flak because he needs to wait the longest to get any AoE damage, and in a beta with a cap of 13 against trivial enemies, low level powerhouses like the monk kick and cleave make those classes king in this bizarre artificial environment.
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
Skill selection only to one spot Why can't I use the spiders AND the poison bolt. Or fire bats and grasping hands. There's few enough skills as it is without arbitrary rules
I was having way more fun with the Demon Hunter once I got bola shot. Also having sooo much fun with vault and caltrops.
Foolish Chaos on
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
Got Crippling Wave for Monk. Holy shit that is awesome. AoE damage and attack speed reduction, and add to that the passive that reduces enemy damage by 25% when you damage them. That is some badass AoE debuffing shit right there.
It grants a 15% attack speed boost and you alternate hands with each swing. This means it's very easy to decrease your overall DPS by putting on a subpar offhand.
If I had to guess what happens with Rapid Fire, it's probably consistent with everything else, so alternating hands for each tick of damage. It would be easy enough to test with a high damage crossbow and a shitty offhand to see if there is a wide spread.
After some testing I can confirm that this is exactly what happens. Rapid shot fires four attacks per activation/tick that it is channeled, and if you are dual wielding hand crossbows the four damage ticks will come from alternating hands.
A team of 4 monks sounds like it would be the stupidest thing. Oh look we're all invulnerable, heal when we aren't, and revive if you can manage to kill us.
Witchdoctor is the most overpowered class in the beta, by far. Once you use the intel buff skill and get around 100 DPS, everything dies instantly. 5 stacks of the intel buff + a few intel/damage items and a 2 handed 20 dps crafted flamberge and everything else falls down. Firebats do crazy damage although I still prefer grasp of the dead because it has such a long range that you can engage monsters off screen or over long distances, which may come in handy later. Skeleton king dies in seconds.
I still love my monk though. Put a bunch of IAS gear on him and throw 2 single handed weapons and it is a goddamned speed machine.
Also, they need to lengthen the skill switch timer. The fact that I can switch skills during the skeleton king fight doesn't bode well for other boss fights later on. There should be an in combat and out of combat timer, so that if you have been in combat in the last 15 seconds then your timer is longer preventing mid-fight switches. I like the idea that the harder fights require a sacrifice - if you go in with the wrong build you will probably die, instead of being able to run off and do a skill switch.
So I'm loving DH. The class does an absolute 180 after you get Dual 1h Crossbows, and a pair of decent rings. Things went from dying super slow, and needing to be kited, to blowing through things like every other class.
Witchdoctor is the most overpowered class in the beta, by far. Once you use the intel buff skill and get around 100 DPS, everything dies instantly. 5 stacks of the intel buff + a few intel/damage items and a 2 handed 20 dps crafted flamberge and everything else falls down. Firebats do crazy damage although I still prefer grasp of the dead because it has such a long range that you can engage monsters off screen or over long distances, which may come in handy later. Skeleton king dies in seconds.
I still love my monk though. Put a bunch of IAS gear on him and throw 2 single handed weapons and it is a goddamned speed machine.
I just did a playthrough of Witch Doctor
MILLIONS OF JARS OF SPIDERS
Love that class.
So I assume the weapons you equip modify the damage of the jars of spiders / darts? It's a bit of a weird system where the witch doctor's concerned.
Witchdoctor is the most overpowered class in the beta, by far. Once you use the intel buff skill and get around 100 DPS, everything dies instantly. 5 stacks of the intel buff + a few intel/damage items and a 2 handed 20 dps crafted flamberge and everything else falls down. Firebats do crazy damage although I still prefer grasp of the dead because it has such a long range that you can engage monsters off screen or over long distances, which may come in handy later. Skeleton king dies in seconds.
I still love my monk though. Put a bunch of IAS gear on him and throw 2 single handed weapons and it is a goddamned speed machine.
I just did a playthrough of Witch Doctor
MILLIONS OF JARS OF SPIDERS
Love that class.
So I assume the weapons you equip modify the damage of the jars of spiders / darts? It's a bit of a weird system where the witch doctor's concerned.
Makes as much sense as the weapons affecting Wizard spells.
Xeddicus on
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
Posts
Turn on elective mode in game options and you can assign any skill of any type to any slot. High level gear can roll affixes that boost rune effects and fulfills the purpose that higher runestone ranks previously did.
Skill complaints I understand, but loot was pretty darn crap in D2 before the second act. You usually got one or two decent things in the whole first part. I've found some fun stuff, a health restoring belt, gloves that give more xp, and a sweet knife that restores health when I kill things and increases gold. I'm hoping that 'of the whale' and that sort of stuff start showing up soon though. I like stats!
Maybe not for the night, but I think for at least another hour...
Go to options -> gameplay -> turn on elective mode. It lets you put stuff where you want
And I'd really like someone to tell me what their point of reference is for "not enough skills". Counting off the talent trees, the diablo 2 sorc had 26 total skills, while the diablo 3 wizard has 25 skills with 5 runes each. Dat's alot of skills
It's a weird decision to make the game even more noob friendly, although I'm not sure it really achieves that... or anything else worthwile. You can bypass this restriction by going in options and turning on "Elective Mode". This will let you put any ability in any slot. (There's arrows on top of the skill page to change categories when selecting a skill)
Battle.net: Fireflash#1425
Steam Friend code: 45386507
Late, but I stumbled across this in the cemetary while I was looking for the crown. It was just in a big square room and it spawns waves of skeletons for a minute. Surviving gives you the achievement, but it was pretty easy as the monk. I just stood in a corner and tore them up with long range punches.
I'm level 12 now on my monk and it is a blast. They're nice and versatile, you can blind, slow, snare, have long range melee combat and teleport/gap closers.
Only thing that has bit me in the ass is upgrading the smith up to level two. I wasn't looking and made the basic staff for the monk, but it requires level 15 to use. Whoops!
- certain skills seem to synergize very well with each other, meaning that the number of possible working skill combinations is actually less than it might seems. For example, you wouldn't use Entangling Shot with Impale as the Demon Hunter. Instead, Rapid Fire / Strafe makes a heck load more sense. Caltrops would have considerably less value in such a situation too.
- While enemies may spawn with random modifiers, generally, you know what sort of enemies will spawn are in an area and their behaviour, so it's possible to prepare to a certain extent.
- The Nephalem buff sounds great in practice but I suspect it could eventually end up like Magic Find in Diablo 2. You could load yourself with tons of MF (say 500% to 700%), but your killing speed would drop so drastically such that it made more sense to just do it with less MF but get in more runs at the same time. Likewise, while the buff is great, in practice I suspect people will happily forgo it to swop to a tuned build just to kill faster if the time savings are considerably higher.
- You really don't get the benefit of one point wonder skills anymore such as the Nec's curses/Sorc's teleport or ice armors/Paladin auras.
It's still too early to tell, but I forsee that Blizzard will have to address these issues eventually. All in all though, from what I've played of Diablo 3, it's still a great great game.
Lucky for you, the system still allows that. Either in between play sessions with no downside whatsoever, or you lose a magic find buff, but probably kill faster.
This way, there's at least some motivation for both specialized and balanced builds.
Skills synergizing isn't really a flaw if each skill still works no matter what you choose. We'll have to see.
Preparing for a fight is yet to be determined. Sure isn't needed in the beta, even if it is possible.
The Nephelem Buff, to my understanding, is gathered by killing things. So yeah, going a kill things fast build is perfectly logical. What's the issue here?
If they design the skills right they're ALL '1 point wonders'. So far they're doing a pretty good job.
I don't see them touching any of these to any major degree. All the ACTUAL problems this game has barely get mentioned, no wonder they're making it in...
I had no idea you could do this. Thank you SO MUCH.
Just for the record, I played a Glacial Spike/Meteor Sorc using no guides for the build, cherished every drop, never owned a single SOJ, and only ever leveled up to 40-something. So, yeah, the way I played and enjoyed D2 may not be representative of all D2 players, nor do I claim that D2 was a perfect game. It just feels to me like we've lost some of D2's strengths in character development in order to fix some of it's shortcomings.
Seriously this is an important option. This makes wizard so much better.
I'm not sure how it works for, say, wizard spells, but with the barbarian it looks like you change off. Attack with one weapon, then the other, and so forth. So if you have two weapons with effects you want to have, it would make sense to use both.
Although I ended up just using a flamberge because it's super fun to kill whole groups of enemies and get those "7 with one blow!" bonuses. That's totally a reference to this.
Stuff like wizard spells, rapid fire for DH, etc is what I'm curious about.
Will have to group up with some fine PA folk tomorrow for some ol' fashioned monster killin'.
Same here. Ray of frost / arcane blow. Shit up thing here I come.
I guess that would be too easy or something
If I had to guess what happens with Rapid Fire, it's probably consistent with everything else, so alternating hands for each tick of damage. It would be easy enough to test with a high damage crossbow and a shitty offhand to see if there is a wide spread.
- Witch Doctor seems like a good idea, but is horribly underpowered so far. Which is too bad, because SPIDERS EVERYWHERE is pretty fun.
- Barb feels super overpowered, like, holy shit that first zombie flew 10 feet overpowered. Damn, he feels like he's hitting the shit out of everything, BAM!
- Monk w/ Teleport Fist is pretty awesome, and the heal is nice.
- Wizard becomes infinitely more bad-ass with spectral blade. Slice slice slice.
I don't know why I've read so much negative sentiment about this class. Once you get two crossbows + multishot the class is fantastic to play.
Plus those bonus abilities actually make sense. The stealth + fastroll abilites completely compliment the playstyle of the class.
Go to options and turn on Elective Mode.
After some testing I can confirm that this is exactly what happens. Rapid shot fires four attacks per activation/tick that it is channeled, and if you are dual wielding hand crossbows the four damage ticks will come from alternating hands.
Then I switched to two daggers and attack speed gear. :O You must try it.
I still love my monk though. Put a bunch of IAS gear on him and throw 2 single handed weapons and it is a goddamned speed machine.
Also, they need to lengthen the skill switch timer. The fact that I can switch skills during the skeleton king fight doesn't bode well for other boss fights later on. There should be an in combat and out of combat timer, so that if you have been in combat in the last 15 seconds then your timer is longer preventing mid-fight switches. I like the idea that the harder fights require a sacrifice - if you go in with the wrong build you will probably die, instead of being able to run off and do a skill switch.
I just did a playthrough of Witch Doctor
MILLIONS OF JARS OF SPIDERS
Love that class.
So I assume the weapons you equip modify the damage of the jars of spiders / darts? It's a bit of a weird system where the witch doctor's concerned.
Fixed that for you.
Makes as much sense as the weapons affecting Wizard spells.
What? That's madness.