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[Diablo] Vessel of Hatred & S6: Spiritborn, etc. & Realmwalkers
That trailer sure doesn't get me hyped about the mercenary system at all. Only 1 merc at a time, and other than the shield guy who's obviously a tank, I can't really tell what their combat specializations are. They all seem to have a an circular AoE attack, a penetrating damage in a line attack, etc. How am I supposed to decide which one compliments my own playstyle if they're all the same?
Hopefully the extended stream tomorrow will do a better job of showing the system off.
Seems like mercs might not have gear, which is surprising, I wonder how they scale. They've got their own reputation system though which seems cool, and you can set one as a companion and one as a support skill.
I'm not super looking forward to the raid. I don't mind beating it once, but farming it over and over for unlocks sounds tedious. They didn't mention any replayability features. At least they do have a party finder.
The Undercity dungeon is an odd thing where they're introducing a new dungeon system with its own currency and limiting it to just a single dungeon. I hope it provides glyph XP or they rework nightmare dungeons somehow, because they are already feeling outdated today.
Ah, the temper reset scroll is limited, but also somewhat available outside of the co-op.
Some additional info as I’ve seen questions regarding the Scrolls or Retempering
1) These are one time use and can’t be used more than once on any given item.
2) These will be available in the base game as well.
3) And yes this means you have a small chance of finding these as a drop in world outside of Dark Citadels.
I think they would need to be careful on currency bleeding. They are trying to find ways that work within D4 to build bolt on activities like PoE it would look like.
Currency bloat is a little inevitable in ARPGs as it's the simplest way to incentivize players to play new content. They can always consolidate them later when that content isn't the focus anymore, like they did with the herbs for example.
Seems like mercs might not have gear, which is surprising, I wonder how they scale. They've got their own reputation system though which seems cool, and you can set one as a companion and one as a support skill.
I always found smart loot a mess with mercs since Reaper of Souls, I felt basically pushed into the merc with the matching primary stat so we could share upgrades, and that only intensified once you could equip every slot. Seems like it only made sense to do differently if you put a lot of time into grinding/sharing gear, not pushing a single character to do the seasonal objectives.
And then you had things like most legendary gems not even working on mercs (but a handful do), some legendary effects working or not, a complicated mess. So them either having no gear or their own dedicated gear obtained in some other way, I would call an improvement.
Shield Guy is for glass cannon builds. Archer Guy pairs well with single-target burst damage builds because he rewards you for prioritizing marked enemies.
Psycho Granny is probably the most interesting because she opens up a playstyle that didn't really exist before, pure defense + CC. She gets stronger with kills, so you don't want to kill enemies yourself or you'll end up kill-stealing from her and keeping her weak. Instead, you focus on protecting her (and yourself) while she does the killing. It's like having a pet option for classes that don't normally have pets. I'm very curious to see how she would play with a Barb that uses all Defensive skills or a Rogue with all Subterfuge skills.
Demon Kid is the one they're being the most coy about. By process of elimination, I would guess that he's a boss-killer who pairs best with builds that have a lot of AoE but struggle against high-priority elites. No evidence to back that up, just seems like a niche that none of the others fill.
The game is far "easier" than it was at release. Changes to skills, affixes, aspects, and player/enemy health all made things a lot faster paced and such. Like a few seasons again non-Tormented Uber Bosses could pose a challenge, or you wouldn't do the World Tier dungeons 20 levels early.
They turned the knob away from their original goal to chase "blow up screen" since it seemed like that is what the audience wanted.
So basically the exact same thing they should have learned from D3 but decided to speed run the same set of mistakes.
I'm really enjoying coming back after a year and this is much more in line with what I wanted from D4.
Edit- well at least they didn't spend months with RMAH they tried to pump up and keep going by tweaking drop rates this time.
in hindsight its mildly hilarious how much of the good feedback from the last couple seasons is just them reconsidering a bunch of the bad decisions from launch
and I mean, I assume it was always the plan to design their way back to grifts but jfc couldn't the pit have been in for season 1?
hold your head high soldier, it ain't over yet
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
and I mean, I assume it was always the plan to design their way back to grifts but jfc couldn't the pit have been in for season 1?
Based on what exactly. NMD was their replacement for rifts, and the Pit is a pretty limited and sad approximation of what D3 had. And the only reason progression was redesigned around the pit is because people feel more entitled to maxing out their character sheet than their gear. I don't blame the team for having to stumble through hard lessons about player irrationality there.
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surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
Just let the scroll be used however many times you want.
Jesus fuck they're stubborn on this.
tbf this all comes from civ. back then u needed to use limited stone and paper for early civ progress and so the motto became "we built this city on rock and scroll". that spirit lives on
Yeah the population here is not the same for the "competition" for sure. I can brick items in both the other major competition but it is just not going to work here it seems since D3 existed heh. I will save scrolls for GA'd only because the game prints non GA'd items for me to try to temper on. Is it perfect? Eh but I can live with it. Scrolls will work fine for me. But I am also one who is fine with "rarity" and that it should be "rare". I like the rush of getting that "rarity". I understand that is not for everyone though.
The idea was supposed to be that getting good base items became easier, so in exchange you might have to find multiple of them in order to get the ideal tempers. The problem is that it doesn't take long before GA gear is the only thing you're looking for, and great GAs are even rarer than great rares were before. So being able to brick those doesn't really fit the original motivation behind the system.
It kinda seems like maybe masterworking should have been the item-locking mechanic, at least then you’re getting a bonus to something on the item and not stuck with an irrelevant stat. Maybe that would have been received better?
I suspect not though, because this just seems like the new frontlines of the ongoing battle for how progression should work, based on differences in motivation, expectations, and tolerance for grinding.
and I mean, I assume it was always the plan to design their way back to grifts but jfc couldn't the pit have been in for season 1?
Based on what exactly. NMD was their replacement for rifts, and the Pit is a pretty limited and sad approximation of what D3 had. And the only reason progression was redesigned around the pit is because people feel more entitled to maxing out their character sheet than their gear. I don't blame the team for having to stumble through hard lessons about player irrationality there.
I don't think these features spring fully formed in response to player feedback, I think they have to have been at least on the drawing board for a while
I assume they always had some sort of infinite-scaling dungeon a la rifts in mind, because 1) rifts were good and 2) they have made a lot of mechanics like that in past games, so it's not like it's some foreign concept. I think they thought they could get players excited about the open world and non-scaling dungeons for a while and just underestimated how quickly we'd get bored
hold your head high soldier, it ain't over yet
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
Got my character to 100! First max level character in any Diablo ever.
However, i did suddenly find myself feeling like killing enemies was pointless. These doofs dont even give me experience anymore!? Fuck off nerds.
So, two questions now. I guess i have 3 paths now to continue to improve my character, right? I can "optimize" by allocating my points in better places, hope for better fitting gear, etc. I can level my glyphs. And i can masterwork my items. Right? When it comes to new items though, fighting higher and highe level mobs doesnt drop better items at this point, does it? So i just have to hope to get lucky?
Second, i think my last goal for this character will be completing the season achievements. It feels like certain goals, the T6 horde, and the tormented bosses are much harder. Which should i go for? I can reliably get through T4 horde with a couple one shot deaths, but i can only get tormented Varshan halfway dead, so im thinking horde seems more doable.
The idea was supposed to be that getting good base items became easier, so in exchange you might have to find multiple of them in order to get the ideal tempers. The problem is that it doesn't take long before GA gear is the only thing you're looking for, and great GAs are even rarer than great rares were before. So being able to brick those doesn't really fit the original motivation behind the system.
I know. I guess the point I was trying to make was I always have the non GA item that has the tempers on it to go back to because you do get more good bases. You should be filled out with all good to best affix bases with proper tempers before seriously farming GAs now. I will have a trickle of scrolls to retry the good GA bases now. It is not "great" but I think it is "ok". See how rare they are I guess. I feel they will be about as rare as getting that sealed high tier affix with other good affix rolls base in LE or those dozens of divs items crafted in PoE because that is the comparison. I am ok with that.
So I'm around 91 right now, and even finding a 925 set of pants is a problem because the ones I have are two star with health and life per second, lol. Do you get more of those master work material the higher the pit level you go to? I can do 5 with no sweat (last one I did) but is there any reason to go higher?
Ive gone down to lvl 21 or so in the pit, and you dont really get any more material. Ir seems to still always be 20-30. I guess theoretically you eventually get higher tier materials, but i havent seen it yet.
You get the first level of material until 30, and the amount isn't drastically higher at 30 if it takes you way longer than a 20.
At 31 you get the second tier of material, which can be turned into the first tier, giving you 3 for 1. 31 will get you a nice amount of the first tier from that, compared to 30.
Then at 61 you get tier 3 mats, which can also be downgraded.
It's always worth it to do higher levels, assuming it doesn't take you too long compared to running a lower pit twice.
At some point you'll possibly/probably want to run Infernal Hordes instead, depending on your build.
I can do tier 2 hordes ok. Though point click and move can be something of a challenge, lol. Does the mats chest give the master work mats? I can't remember if I've ever seen them.
I've seen em in Tier 3 and Tier 4, though didn't pay attention to how many. I got the feeling it was roughly the same as from the pits if I spent like 80 aether on the mats.
and I mean, I assume it was always the plan to design their way back to grifts but jfc couldn't the pit have been in for season 1?
Based on what exactly. NMD was their replacement for rifts, and the Pit is a pretty limited and sad approximation of what D3 had. And the only reason progression was redesigned around the pit is because people feel more entitled to maxing out their character sheet than their gear. I don't blame the team for having to stumble through hard lessons about player irrationality there.
I don't think these features spring fully formed in response to player feedback, I think they have to have been at least on the drawing board for a while
I assume they always had some sort of infinite-scaling dungeon a la rifts in mind, because 1) rifts were good and 2) they have made a lot of mechanics like that in past games, so it's not like it's some foreign concept. I think they thought they could get players excited about the open world and non-scaling dungeons for a while and just underestimated how quickly we'd get bored
They boosted progression/glyph XP enormously and nerfed the difficulty hard. Like more than a factor of two. It wasn't that NMD didn't scale high enough, its that people seemingly got bored of them regardless (or maybe didn't even try.)
Aside from the boss the current state of the pit feels worse to me than NMD. Its very half-baked compared to rifts, every level feels even more samey. Replacing those levels with NMD of equal difficulty/rewards (pulling from all dungeons, not just the seasonal rotation) would be better right now.
I can't rule out they had other ideas but NMD have gone much worse than planned and you see them trying to pivot from it very quickly. To the point of looking for other ways to give glyph XP (one example being construct season). I would just prefer they actually have something better in place before dumping it.
I can do tier 2 hordes ok. Though point click and move can be something of a challenge, lol. Does the mats chest give the master work mats? I can't remember if I've ever seen them.
Tier 3 and 4 give obducite, 5 and 6 give ingolith, 7 and 8 give neathiron.
If/when you can run them, it's probably better than running pit.
I just did a level 7 hordes, and spent a bit on item chests, leaving 600 or so currency for the material chest. Walked out witth 750 neathiron (so also a very good source of the level 1 and 2 mats if I convert down). Add a few potentially decent items from the chests before that, and 3 stygian stones + a bunch of other materials.
Nightmare dungeons are boring as heck, everytime I have to do a dungeon mechanic or backtrack it makes me groan
Its also a little petty but I hate having the open the map and click the next nightmare dungeon
I yearn for the rifts of old, go fast fill bar get loot, and the pit is the closest thing so far
Completely fake edit but the recycled bosses also make NMDs very boring, especially when the boss they picked is seemingly at random and unrelated to the rest of the monsters in the dungeon
Completely fake edit but the recycled bosses also make NMDs very boring, especially when the boss they picked is seemingly at random and unrelated to the rest of the monsters in the dungeon
Its the same pool of bosses for the pit, they just added tormented shadow attacks (which do help I agree.)
Completely fake edit but the recycled bosses also make NMDs very boring, especially when the boss they picked is seemingly at random and unrelated to the rest of the monsters in the dungeon
Its the same pool of bosses for the pit, they just added tormented shadow attacks (which do help I agree.)
Boss variety is definitely a weak point of both, I think the difference for me is I expect the pit bosses to be a random draw but I think dungeon bosses should feel more intentional (or at least more unique)
I don't hate NMDs but the objectives in them are almost universally detrimental to the fun of just running a dungeon. They need to reveal objectives on the map as you get close and eliminate backtracking, at the minimum.
Glyph XP should not be tied to any one type of content IMO. Just award it as I play any endgame activity. I think in general that whispers should be your incentive to do a variety of activities, rather than making different materials exclusive to different places. Have some global whispers that refresh every hour, e.g. for clearing any NMD or infernal horde. Remove the mundane open world whispers and make the whisper rewards much more substantial - maybe that's where you put all the glyph XP.
I don't hate NMDs but the objectives in them are almost universally detrimental to the fun of just running a dungeon. They need to reveal objectives on the map as you get close and eliminate backtracking, at the minimum..
I know D3 did this but I can hardly get behind this. That's just what it means to be exploring a maze dungeon in D1/D2 and the backtracking is typically rather minimal here, especially after adjustments. Although that "go right" style gameplay suits a time limit better I'll admit.
Zir was a chump! Much easier than the other tormented bosses for my build. The only challenge for me is that his one-shoy one blast thing is a little easy to miss with its transparent color. He got me a couple times with that.
Posts
From the same kill.
Simply terrible joke
the only thing that can stop a bad cancer is a good cancer... with a gun
Which one is easiest in the eyes, obviously.
Also hireling skills can be mapped to be used at the same time as player skills, and there will be a group finder for various content. Nice.
Seems like mercs might not have gear, which is surprising, I wonder how they scale. They've got their own reputation system though which seems cool, and you can set one as a companion and one as a support skill.
I'm not super looking forward to the raid. I don't mind beating it once, but farming it over and over for unlocks sounds tedious. They didn't mention any replayability features. At least they do have a party finder.
The Undercity dungeon is an odd thing where they're introducing a new dungeon system with its own currency and limiting it to just a single dungeon. I hope it provides glyph XP or they rework nightmare dungeons somehow, because they are already feeling outdated today.
I always found smart loot a mess with mercs since Reaper of Souls, I felt basically pushed into the merc with the matching primary stat so we could share upgrades, and that only intensified once you could equip every slot. Seems like it only made sense to do differently if you put a lot of time into grinding/sharing gear, not pushing a single character to do the seasonal objectives.
And then you had things like most legendary gems not even working on mercs (but a handful do), some legendary effects working or not, a complicated mess. So them either having no gear or their own dedicated gear obtained in some other way, I would call an improvement.
Psycho Granny is probably the most interesting because she opens up a playstyle that didn't really exist before, pure defense + CC. She gets stronger with kills, so you don't want to kill enemies yourself or you'll end up kill-stealing from her and keeping her weak. Instead, you focus on protecting her (and yourself) while she does the killing. It's like having a pet option for classes that don't normally have pets. I'm very curious to see how she would play with a Barb that uses all Defensive skills or a Rogue with all Subterfuge skills.
Demon Kid is the one they're being the most coy about. By process of elimination, I would guess that he's a boss-killer who pairs best with builds that have a lot of AoE but struggle against high-priority elites. No evidence to back that up, just seems like a niche that none of the others fill.
So basically the exact same thing they should have learned from D3 but decided to speed run the same set of mistakes.
I'm really enjoying coming back after a year and this is much more in line with what I wanted from D4.
Edit- well at least they didn't spend months with RMAH they tried to pump up and keep going by tweaking drop rates this time.
and I mean, I assume it was always the plan to design their way back to grifts but jfc couldn't the pit have been in for season 1?
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
Just let the scroll be used however many times you want.
Jesus fuck they're stubborn on this.
PSN: ShogunGunshow
Origin: ShogunGunshow
Based on what exactly. NMD was their replacement for rifts, and the Pit is a pretty limited and sad approximation of what D3 had. And the only reason progression was redesigned around the pit is because people feel more entitled to maxing out their character sheet than their gear. I don't blame the team for having to stumble through hard lessons about player irrationality there.
tbf this all comes from civ. back then u needed to use limited stone and paper for early civ progress and so the motto became "we built this city on rock and scroll". that spirit lives on
I suspect not though, because this just seems like the new frontlines of the ongoing battle for how progression should work, based on differences in motivation, expectations, and tolerance for grinding.
I don't think these features spring fully formed in response to player feedback, I think they have to have been at least on the drawing board for a while
I assume they always had some sort of infinite-scaling dungeon a la rifts in mind, because 1) rifts were good and 2) they have made a lot of mechanics like that in past games, so it's not like it's some foreign concept. I think they thought they could get players excited about the open world and non-scaling dungeons for a while and just underestimated how quickly we'd get bored
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
However, i did suddenly find myself feeling like killing enemies was pointless. These doofs dont even give me experience anymore!? Fuck off nerds.
So, two questions now. I guess i have 3 paths now to continue to improve my character, right? I can "optimize" by allocating my points in better places, hope for better fitting gear, etc. I can level my glyphs. And i can masterwork my items. Right? When it comes to new items though, fighting higher and highe level mobs doesnt drop better items at this point, does it? So i just have to hope to get lucky?
Second, i think my last goal for this character will be completing the season achievements. It feels like certain goals, the T6 horde, and the tormented bosses are much harder. Which should i go for? I can reliably get through T4 horde with a couple one shot deaths, but i can only get tormented Varshan halfway dead, so im thinking horde seems more doable.
I know. I guess the point I was trying to make was I always have the non GA item that has the tempers on it to go back to because you do get more good bases. You should be filled out with all good to best affix bases with proper tempers before seriously farming GAs now. I will have a trickle of scrolls to retry the good GA bases now. It is not "great" but I think it is "ok". See how rare they are I guess. I feel they will be about as rare as getting that sealed high tier affix with other good affix rolls base in LE or those dozens of divs items crafted in PoE because that is the comparison. I am ok with that.
At 31 you get the second tier of material, which can be turned into the first tier, giving you 3 for 1. 31 will get you a nice amount of the first tier from that, compared to 30.
Then at 61 you get tier 3 mats, which can also be downgraded.
It's always worth it to do higher levels, assuming it doesn't take you too long compared to running a lower pit twice.
At some point you'll possibly/probably want to run Infernal Hordes instead, depending on your build.
They boosted progression/glyph XP enormously and nerfed the difficulty hard. Like more than a factor of two. It wasn't that NMD didn't scale high enough, its that people seemingly got bored of them regardless (or maybe didn't even try.)
Aside from the boss the current state of the pit feels worse to me than NMD. Its very half-baked compared to rifts, every level feels even more samey. Replacing those levels with NMD of equal difficulty/rewards (pulling from all dungeons, not just the seasonal rotation) would be better right now.
I can't rule out they had other ideas but NMD have gone much worse than planned and you see them trying to pivot from it very quickly. To the point of looking for other ways to give glyph XP (one example being construct season). I would just prefer they actually have something better in place before dumping it.
Tier 3 and 4 give obducite, 5 and 6 give ingolith, 7 and 8 give neathiron.
If/when you can run them, it's probably better than running pit.
I just did a level 7 hordes, and spent a bit on item chests, leaving 600 or so currency for the material chest. Walked out witth 750 neathiron (so also a very good source of the level 1 and 2 mats if I convert down). Add a few potentially decent items from the chests before that, and 3 stygian stones + a bunch of other materials.
Its also a little petty but I hate having the open the map and click the next nightmare dungeon
I yearn for the rifts of old, go fast fill bar get loot, and the pit is the closest thing so far
Completely fake edit but the recycled bosses also make NMDs very boring, especially when the boss they picked is seemingly at random and unrelated to the rest of the monsters in the dungeon
Its the same pool of bosses for the pit, they just added tormented shadow attacks (which do help I agree.)
Boss variety is definitely a weak point of both, I think the difference for me is I expect the pit bosses to be a random draw but I think dungeon bosses should feel more intentional (or at least more unique)
Glyph XP should not be tied to any one type of content IMO. Just award it as I play any endgame activity. I think in general that whispers should be your incentive to do a variety of activities, rather than making different materials exclusive to different places. Have some global whispers that refresh every hour, e.g. for clearing any NMD or infernal horde. Remove the mundane open world whispers and make the whisper rewards much more substantial - maybe that's where you put all the glyph XP.
I know D3 did this but I can hardly get behind this. That's just what it means to be exploring a maze dungeon in D1/D2 and the backtracking is typically rather minimal here, especially after adjustments. Although that "go right" style gameplay suits a time limit better I'll admit.
You also get Stygian stones from lvl 7 and 8.
You can transmute down in the masterwork mats at the alchemist. I do a few lvl 7 runs and I have nearly 1000 of each mat.
How much tougher are Andy and Dury than Griggy? Is it more or less like the difference between non tormented versions, or much bigger leaps?
Also, i think i can get some nice shit from Zir. Is he much more difficult than Griggy, or maybe about the same?