Diablo III

[broken_escalator]

Reminds me of Bioshock where you equip plasmids and traits at certain points (once you get them). I enjoyed that system, so this has me hopeful that it will work nicely.

[Gelsamel]

I have not been keeping up with this....

Do we know if the equipment system is going to be similar? Like can I have a Demon Hunter with a Sword and Shield or a Barbarian using a staff? Or is all the equipment going to be class specific?

If the customisation and equipment aren't set up so that I can't play around with strange gimmicky builds then I will be really pissed. I want to play a melee demon hunter.

[Decker]

My guess is going to be that you can equip what you want, but certain items will have certain bonuses for particular types of characters.

[Intrigued]

Well you're still min/maxing on items and their stats, what set of abilities you should have out, what set of passives, and how to slot all your abilities with runes. It's not like they removed all strategy and character building from the game, they just took out some systems that they found pretty much everyone made the same choices in.

I guess I don't see the appeal to clicking a bunch of times to put all my points in vitality rather than having the system put everyone on equal grounds automagically. I'd rather focus on 1) things that make a real impact on the way my characters plays (skills I'm using and runes) and 2) getting back into the action to crush some more demon skulls.

Check these out for weapon info -
http://www.diablowiki.net/Category:Clas ... ic_Weapons
http://www.diablowiki.net/Class-Specific_Weapons

I think you'll find it'll probably be roughly as you expect - you can try some silly gimmicky builds, but not everything will be open, and those builds will not all be "viable". E.g. you can probably do a melee DH, but not necessarily a 2h axe one, and say you can do swords - the character may not have abilities that really compliment that in any way, shape, or form.

[Gelsamel]

Well you're still min/maxing on items and their stats, what set of abilities you should have out, what set of passives, and how to slot all your abilities with runes. It's not like they removed all strategy and character building from the game, they just took out some systems that they found pretty much everyone made the same choices in.

Yes but it depends on what runes/passives and stats they have in the game. For instance if the sets of passives are just "Generic +Damage" and "Generic +Defense" then there is no min/maxing there. It's just choose the one that suits your role.

With the trend in gaming recently I can easily see Blizzard removing a whole lot of item modifications, a whole wide array of skills and a socketables simply because "Having open wounds, crushing blow and deadly strike is confusing!" but that will ruin the min/maxing so much.

Check these out for weapon info -
http://www.diablowiki.net/Category:Clas ... ic_Weapons
http://www.diablowiki.net/Class-Specific_Weapons

I think you'll find it'll probably be roughly as you expect - you can try some silly gimmicky builds, but not everything will be open, and those builds will not all be "viable". E.g. you can probably do a melee DH, but not necessarily a 2h axe one, and say you can do swords - the character may not have abilities that really compliment that in any way, shape, or form.

Ugh, I'm so disappointed. The fact they're restricting so many weapon types means they probably won't have weird gimmicky skills to choose from. I won't be able to do something like a Poison Dagger Necro or an Enchant Melee Sorc or a 2h Throwing Assassin etc. That makes D3 sound many times less appealing than D2. Sure I play my fair share of standard characters but those get boring after a while... part of the fun of D2 was putting all that effort in to crafting your character with so many item types, let alone items, and skills to choose from.

[Obby]

I was particularly fond of my shout barbarian.

[Izawwlgood]

My guess is this actually makes for more viable builds, and since you can swap from build to build easier, it's an overall good thing.

[Gelsamel]

I was particularly fond of my shout barbarian.

Yeah exactly.

Plus, a lot of the awesome stuff you could do in D2 was because some of the skills didn't exactly make sense... and with SO many different item mods and so many different skill synergies and unclear interactions you could do some awesome stuff.

For instance, my awesome Thunder Maul using Ninja Star Assassin only works because the Ninja Stars are based off weapon damage and get bonuses from other +damage sources like normal weapon attacks do. Yet when I think of the current gaming zeitgiest I can't imagine blizzard making an attack like that based off weapon damage, it'd probably be a static damage thing or possibly something that scales similarly to spells in WoW scale off of "Spell power" which would totally destroy the D2 Assassin's Throwing build and essentially make the Assassin useless.

I can easily envisage Blizzard not giving any weird and probably-going-to-be-underused abilities to classes either so instead of having a whole heap of different unique attacks they'll just give you the Anti-Single Unit attack, the Anti-Area Attack, the Defensive Attack, etc.

I'm fearful that min/maxing will just consist of "Do you want to do lots of damage to bosses? Choose the Anti-Unit attack, The +Damage Passive and Item/Slot for that single item mod they have that is + damage" or similar.

What made D2 awesome fun was that there were a thousand different answers to that question because there were a bunch of viable builds and like a thousand passives for each class and 10 trillion different item mods that interact in a myriad different ways.


Ninjad:

Izawwlgood it makes for 'more viable' builds in that there will probably only be one type of build you can do, with very little differences (damage type, size of AoE, rate of fire). So while your X attack Demon Hunter will be as viable as your Y attack Demon Hunter the difference between maining attack X or maining attack Y is essentially nothing.

Whereas D2 allows you to do a thousand different and entirely unique things and -still have them be viable- simply due to the sheer size of the skill sets and item modifications you could mix and match to make it work.

[Intrigued]

Have you looked at the rune system? Did you read that article I linked a few back about how he made basically an up close melee wizard, and how he picked a set of skills, and probably turned down a half dozen more that also could've worked for it, and all the different rune combinations?

Passives will probably be relatively simple and many will be straightforward choices, but 6 active skills out of dozens with 5 rune choices per skill can be dizzying if they do it right. Check this out for some confirmed examples (which can always change) - http://www.diablowiki.net/Skill_Rune#Co ... e_Examples . If they add this kind of depth to all the skills, I think it will add waaayy more than is lost in the skill/stat points and using more weapons (not mentioning that they had similar restrictions in d2 anyway, I'd loved to have been able to make a claws necromancer, but I couldn't, and it was still a lot of fun). If they remove lots of item effects, that could definitely be a detractor to me, but I haven't seen any hint of that.

Anyway, I think they'll leave in the possibility of some crazy builds, but what it seems like they're trying to do is give you a ton of crazy different options that are also viable. So maybe you can't be a crazy axe throwing witch doctor, but you can be a crazy giant toad and zombie bears witch doctor, or one who shoots snakes at people's faces while raining toads from above. Or you can spend all your time sending massive waves of toads that constantly blind all your enemies as they slowly crunch beneath your advancing toad army, helpless to defend themselves. I don't see how that kind of customization is less than being able to use a maul on an assassin. I feel like in your example you're still doing "pick a standard shooting skill, add skills that synergize and item that has the appropriate stats for that skill".

I can't say d3 is going to be good or better than d2, I just don't think the changes they're announcing are at all connected to the pitfalls that you're suggesting. There's still going to be customization and crazy stuff you can do, it just won't necessarily be the same as in d2.

[Beardhammer]

The rune system doesn't turn me off, and neither does the current implementation of the skill/trait system. I like the idea of being able to take X number of abilities into battle, which you customize beforehand. Guild Wars used this to great effect.

I'm not wild about the lack of stat points and heavy restrictions on which classes can use which items. I feel this limits possibilities for silly/crazy builds and forces each class to have a specific identity, rather than letting players decide how to make things. I would much rather have something like all classes can wear plate armor, but it slows you down... maybe it slows the barbarian down less than others because of their large frame. Or maybe monks have a natural proficiency with staves since it's a martial arts-style weapon, but it's still a big stick... a barbarian can hit people with it, too. Kind of like how some classes attacked faster with a given weapon than others, remember? Druids had good attack speeds for mauls and polearms, but they were slow as hell for everyone else. That kind of thing.

I'm especially pissed they're basically telling the modding community to fuck off, and it's ensuring that, if I even buy Diablo 3, it's not gonna be for a while until after release. Modding was the only reason I played D2 for as long as I did, because the base game honestly pretty much sucked. I played a mod called SevenLances heavily, and we even had our own private "realms" that were run with, I think, BnetD. Basically 7L was a mod designed to make the game HARD and to essentially require the use of party members and good tactical planning to survive Nightmare, Hell, and even late-Normal areas. They also added numerous monsters (using assets from other games, including the previous Diablo and Baldur's Gate II) and completely new items and affixes.

I think it's an extremely bad idea for ANY developer to essentially tell a modding community to piss off. I actually bought a fresh copy of Diablo II about a year ago just so I could play a little SevenLances (obviously the servers are long gone, as is support, but it's still available on the net and still fun) - full price, straight from Blizzard. I wouldn't have done that if modding wasn't allowed.

[Jahoclave]

I was particularly fond of my shout barbarian.

I did a potion throwing barbarian once. I was rather proud of that build. Man was that fun to do. There's something to be said about how useful those things can be.

[Mo0man]

I don't understand why people are complaining so much about the auction house. I mean, hasn't WoW and all the gold farming that happens in there proven that that shit will happen anyway? They've tried clamping down on it, and (apparently) a lot of the userbase said no, so now they're monetizing it.

[Kag]

Whereas D2 allows you to do a thousand different and entirely unique things and -still have them be viable- simply due to the sheer size of the skill sets and item modifications you could mix and match to make it work.

What actually happened is that the game is just ridiculously poorly balanced. You have one thousand choices and none of them actually matters because basically everything is trivial.

[BoomFrog]

That's what hardcore mode was for. Nothing is trivial when death is permenent. I only quit because most of my deaths were from lag and exploit abusing PvP ganks.

[Kag]

It still basically doesn't matter at all what build you choose, though. You just can't be reckless in hardcore.

[Spambot5546]

Some people are already streaming. As of this post there's none online here, but you can find VODs by the shit-ton here.

[rigwarl]

The official Diablo3 skill calculator is up on bnet's website (no link I'm at work)! Descriptions for all abilities with each possible rune as well as passives.

I planned on playing a Wizard because I loved running around places without actually fighting mobs in D2 (Sorceress teleport), but in D3 it seems Demon Hunter is going to be the best for that with Vault and Stealth, whereas the new Wizard Teleport is a 16 second cooldown (unless you're in Archon form for a 3 second cooldown).

[Spambot5546]

Here's the link, for those that can't wait.

[Izawwlgood]

Holy shit, I think I'm in love with that system. I so ascited!

[BoomFrog]

Anyone made any viable seeming "odd builds"? I present:

The Melee Wizard

She is a brick house with her crystallizing Ice armor, and blur passive, and she dishes out the melee pain with her enchanted weapon and explosive blasts. Not to mention teleporting in with 2-4 explosive mirror image friends. I have no idea if the dps and defense are competitive at all with "real" melee characters, but it will be fun to try out.

[psion]

Anyone made any viable seeming "odd builds"? I present:

The Melee Wizard

It's so twisted that you have to be over 18 to view it.

[WarDaft]

Anyone know if the runestone effects listed in the calculator replace the spell effect, or add to it?

[Intrigued]

Read the runestone text and you should be able to figure it out. Go with your gut, but if it doesn't specify I think you're safer assuming it replaces. For example, the witch doctor's toads spell, when you change it to mega toad, you'll only get the one large toad, not the mega toad AND the spell's original toads. Did you have a specific spell/rune combo you were confused on?

[WarDaft]

With say, Mirror Image, it's pretty clear. Magic Weapon, on the other hand, any of the runes but Force Weapon could easily be either way.

[Intrigued]

Though from context (since you know the force ability is obviously an increase rather than add the whole bonus), I think it's pretty safe to say they are all "replaces" rather than "adds to". Either that or knock back is way more powerful than it seems. Either way, numbers will change, so the intent of the ability should matter more than the numbers (though that can obviously change as well, though not as likely).

[rigwarl]

To me it seemed like they were definitely going to be "adds to" for Magic Weapon. I guess we wait and find out.

[Intrigued]

I guess I just feel like if they are all "adds on" then the force one is pretty bad. The only situation I can see it being superior to the fire one is if you're attacking only 1 target and are getting at least 2 attacks per second, which is made tougher by the fact that you'll be knocking them back frequently. Considering how rare it seems that you're fighting just one enemy in this game, on top of how rare it would probably be for a sorceress to really just want to be autoattacking rather than throwing spells into the mix too, it just doesn't seem like this would ever pan out. On the other hand, if fire replaces the 20% base damage, you only need to be attacking once every 1.5 seconds or so to beat it out, which is much more reasonable.

As for multi target killing, neither will likely come close to the lightning ability which maxes out at 144% extra weapon damage. Even at 1 attack per second if you're hitting 2 targets with the bounce, you're doing more damage than fire or force. Plus it shoots lightning.

[The Utilitarian]

It seems like depending on the rune it may simply augment the ability or replace it all together.

[WarDaft]

I guess I just feel like if they are all "adds on" then the force one is pretty bad. The only situation I can see it being superior to the fire one is if you're attacking only 1 target and are getting at least 2 attacks per second, which is made tougher by the fact that you'll be knocking them back frequently. Considering how rare it seems that you're fighting just one enemy in this game, on top of how rare it would probably be for a sorceress to really just want to be autoattacking rather than throwing spells into the mix too, it just doesn't seem like this would ever pan out. On the other hand, if fire replaces the 20% base damage, you only need to be attacking once every 1.5 seconds or so to beat it out, which is much more reasonable.

As for multi target killing, neither will likely come close to the lightning ability which maxes out at 144% extra weapon damage. Even at 1 attack per second if you're hitting 2 targets with the bounce, you're doing more damage than fire or force. Plus it shoots lightning.

Force Weapon seems to me like (particularly if there are any multi-hit weapons) a more defensive version of the spell, that gives you a really inexpensive knockback, with some extra bonus damage to help keep damage reasonable with caster weapons equipped.

[Intrigued]

I guess I don't understand why it would boost damage and add knockback if it's meant to be defensive, it's really anti-synergy. Also 45% seems like REALLY unreliable for a defensive attack. The only time to use I could see trying to use a melee knockback defensively would be if you're completely surrounded and then I don't want to be relying on a 45% chance on hit to escape. I guess I don't see why you would want to use that over almost any other defensive abilities. I understand the practical uses of it offensively, as something that will throw your enemy off balance and keep them from attacking you, but then it's really only useful when you are pressing the advantage. On the other hand, if you're talking about weapons with built in cleave, the role of that version of the spell would obviously change drastically, though I'm not going to speculate on that deep of a what-if.

[rigwarl]

Maybe they thought 100% was too good/less fun. Also, not every rune is meant to be competitive: some people just like to knock things back.

The main thing that annoys me is there seems to be a couple "mandatory" abilities for min/maxing per class. For example, the Familiar for Wizards: no cooldown, small cost, permanent 40% damage increase with crimson rune. Seems like you should never skip that.

[WarDaft]

Or Frost Nova + Cold Snap, which might even stack with Evocation, giving you highly/fully chain-able Freezing.

[Intrigued]

Also, not every rune is meant to be competitive: some people just like to knock things back.

That doesn't make sense to me. Obviously there are numbers involved, and if some are overpowered and some are underpowered (e.g. 5% additional damage and 10% knockback chance would be underpowered, 100% dmg 100% knockback would be overpowered), then intermediate value theorem basically tells us that there should be some x and y for additional damage and knockback that make it balanced. Even if for some people it's just "fun to knock things back" why wouldn't blizzard also try to make the skill competitive if all they had to do was tweak numbers? I'm not saying balancing is always easy, but there's no reason you shouldn't make a skill competitive so that the people who just like to knock things back don't feel like they need to take another skill instead. Anyway, I'm sticking with my main point that I think it's probably in the area of balanced as long as all the abilities are "replaces", so I'm not arguing that the skill is bad, just that it leads me to believe that all the other skills replace the 20%, rather than dwarf the force rune into the realm of underpoweredness.

I'd hope they don't introduce any mandatory skills. To me the sparkflint spell reads really vaguely. It seems like the most likely meaning is that it increases your damage by 40% on wand and melee attacks, though could also just be the familiars attacks. It certainly could be all your spells, but honestly I really doubt that. Once again, if that's true, someone in the blizzard balance department needs to be fired.

For the frost nova... sure you have 4 second spammable freeze, but you have to spam it every 4 seconds, and anyone you don't hit is going to keep at you. If the range is relatively small (these types of spells always have been in the past) you're wasting an awful lot of potential just to be able to spam a small area 4 second freeze. It's not without it's perks, but you're giving up using another ability in that slot, or even having something like more than double damage to those frozen targets for 4 seconds. Have to remember this is diablo, you're going to be ripping through enemies and you can run as well. Anything that you can't kill in that 4 seconds (i.e. you need to be able to spam freeze) is likely to be either resistant (only gets chilled) or immune (like a boss). You also are forced to use evocation to make it fully spammable, and there are quite a few other good passives you aren't going to be able to use because of that. Sure it affects other abilities, but I'm guessing in most cases you're going to probably have at least 3 abilities without cooldowns in your lineup that it does nothing for.

[ProZac]

Have to remember this is diablo, you're going to be ripping through enemies and you can run as well. Anything that you can't kill in that 4 seconds (i.e. you need to be able to spam freeze) is likely to be either resistant (only gets chilled) or immune (like a boss).

I was going to comment how this isn't necessarily true, and have you ever played with 8 people in a game that wasn't a high-level gear/farm run, and every enemy could turn into an epic fight of life or death (I remember the sewers in Act 2 being exceptionally difficult), but then I remembered you can only have 4 people in a party in D3, so enemies won't scale as high .

[rigwarl]

It seems to me that the entirety of Magic Weapon and not just that particular rune is going to be for lulz rather than competitive. In fact, I would be very surprised if Magic Weapon was frequently used by min/maxing players, and in the event that melee mages were posting competitive clear times as regular Wizards, Blizzard would probably nerf it into a "just for fun" build. If it doesn't make sense to you why Blizzard would put a move like that into the game, a great example is Timmy, Johnny, and Spike in Magic: The Gathering. Or you can just visit the D2 thread and see people having fun with countless skills that are vastly inferior in pretty much every way to the optimal ones (e.g., Blaze/Blizzard Sorc vs. Meteor/Frozen Orb Sorc).

I assumed the Familiar meant all damage, but again, no one knows for sure yet. However, from what I've seen so far, I'm under the impression Diablo3 spells do scale off "increased damage", whereas in Diablo2 that just meant weapon damage. Furthermore, another thing I was reminded of after that post is that the numbers on the calculator are mostly placeholders.

I don't see Cold Snap being the rune of choice for Frost Nova for the same reasons Intrigued listed.

[Intrigued]

Except that's exactly what they're trying to get away from with the new skill system. They're trying to stop people from feeling like there are a million choices but they can only really choose one. I could definitely see magic weapon panning out if they gave some decent stats on wizard weapons. If you combine the +40% on attacks of the familiar and the +34% from force, that's straight up passive +74% damage on all attacks, which isn't bad. I don't think a wiz should ever just be autoattacking, but it could certainly pan out to be using some autoattacks, and I don't really think anyone should just be autoattacking anyway.

Yeah, if it said "increased damage" i would agree with you, but it says on "all attacks", which doesn't necessarily sound like spells (though it certainly could be). Anyway, I would hope that if it's blatantly OP and everyone basically has to use it, they would have the common sense to fix it.

[Vaniver]

I was going to comment how this isn't necessarily true, and have you ever played with 8 people in a game that wasn't a high-level gear/farm run, and every enemy could turn into an epic fight of life or death (I remember the sewers in Act 2 being exceptionally difficult), but then I remembered you can only have 4 people in a party in D3, so enemies won't scale as high .

Whenever I played D2 single player, I would always set players to 8 for the additional xp and loot- if you did it at the start of the game, you would level up quickly enough to be able to take down everything easily enough. I seem to remember being level 18 after Act 1, but that might be wrong.

[rigwarl]

I personally just can't see Blizzard wanting people to build competitive melee mages; note that World of Warcraft had options for it in their talent tree as well (maybe Warlocks instead of Mages? I can't remember) but it was clearly not meant to be competitive (vastly lower DPS than any alternative). People enjoy melee mages anyway though, just see the only build linked in this thread =) I totally agree with you overall though that the vast majority of abilities seem like they're going to be made viable as opposed to the reverse in D2, but I still think there's always a reserved place for goofy, "bad" abilities in just about every game.

As for the numbers, Demon Hunters have a passive that gives them 100% increased auto attack damage (as well as restores 15 Hatred on hit) and Rapid Fire, which I think is like a 500% attack speed boost (can't view right now)- combined that's over 1000% from auto attacks from 1 ability and 1 passive. While the numbers aren't finalized, the 74% still seems pretty lackluster.

Another thing to note about Wizards though is they have Signature abilities that have no cooldown and are free of cost (with the yellow rune they actually refund energy), so it doesn't seem like you will ever want to melee. Also, do we know if they have a wand AND a melee weapon, or they are the same thing?

[Intrigued]

I haven't seen anything to the contrary so I'm assuming wands will stay melee weapons. There is also a wizard passive that adds 100% damage to wand attacks as well as 15 arcane power and 1% heal per hit, so you could use melee attacks as a valid avenue for restoring arcane power, this is essentially equal to the assassin's passive you mentioned. The rapid fire ability that demon hunters have increases your speed to 6x normal attack speed (600%), but attacks do 30% damage, this also costs 20 fury/sec. That puts you at 180% weapon damage (+80%) in the same time. That's a total of 280% weapon damage, vs the wizard's 220%. Tack on the sparkflint familiar for 260%, not spending any resources (beyond initial buff/summon). I haven't factored in runes because that's a whole lot more thinking to do, but they don't seem uneven to me. It's at least a far cry from 134% vs 500%.

I'm not yet willing to say a melee wizard build (including some spell tossing) won't be competitive. It may largely depend on what kind of stats wands have vs other weapons (crossbows as in the case of the demon hunter), but it certainly seems like it might work, especially if you focus on using melee attacks and really high cost spells. Throw in the fact that a melee wizard is actually one of the examples that their devs had used in an interview a bit back, and I think they're really going to be evaluating those kinds of options. Also, to me, when specced for it, you're basically turning your wizard's melee attacks into his/her "signature ability" - a no cost damaging ability that you can spam to gain back resources while mixing in other spells.

I guess what I'm saying is I'm sure there will always be the opportunity for fun "bad" builds, but I think they are working to make sure that all abilities can be part of viable builds, that's what I would strive for at least, and it seems like that is their goal from what they've been releasing so far.

[rigwarl]

Ah, I had totally forgot about wands in D2, for some reason I was thinking WoW where they're ranged. Sweet, sweet wands that sell for 30k gold if they have any +skills.

You're right that it does seem like they're trying to make every ability useful. The melee replacing your signature ability makes a lot of sense, for some reason I never thought of it that way; I see how that can work (previously I imagined meleeing for pretty much your entire source of damage, like an Enchant Sorc).