Tavrobel: You are clearly playing the game a lot. What is your overall opinion of it?
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Tavrobel: You are clearly playing the game a lot. What is your overall opinion of it?
All in all, I'd have to say more of the same as Diablo II, except it has a graphics and skill update. And a different economy. Mostly these are improvements of mechanical fixes.
TL;DR: Plenty has changed but not enough for me most people to say, OHH WOW THAT'S NEW AND EXCITING. The formula is still there, you take a relatively overpowered hero, and slam into hordes and hordes of mooks, and expect them all to die. The very few who don't are an actual challenge, but you can't plan on it. They've cleaned up a lot of the champion mods, and each one presents a significant challenge. Some are worse than others, although I have found Health Link, Damage Reflected, and Extra Health to be relatively pleasant. Frozen/Mortar and Vampiric/Desecrated are easily the worst ones I have seen. I can only imagine it to be worse if it were Frozen/Mortar/Plagued or Vampiric/Desecrated/Waller. Arcane is dumb, but I'd take that over Fire Enchanted and Mana Burn all day. DIII is intended to be difficult. DII has mods that do 512 times more damage than intended.
Economy should be much healthier. With the introduction of the auction house, DIII has taken a step in the right direction. If Blizzard really is concerned about the in-game economy more than what they cared in DII, then this is right on every level. In the last game, nothing could be done safely on realms or Hardcore without the supervision and organization of D2JSP, and even then, there's the risk of scamming. Some people just didn't care. With the impersonality of the auction house, it just makes everything easier, and manageable for Blizzard. It's like they took the black market and realized that it's only black because someone forgot to turn the light switch on in the room.
I'm mostly upset that the Auction House is not inside of the game, and is in the selection lobby. The code for the Mystic is still in the game, but just completely disabled. They could just replace it with an Auction House vendor (like how I.Eye and Nexon did with Dragon Nest). Some people are a little ridiculous in their demands, but that's the problem with people, not the system. I am a little upset that you can't take down items early, there's no postage fee, and that there is a posting limit. Also, when you search for "All Damage" it won't work, making it very difficult to isolate items like "+4-8 Damage" Rings.
The skill switching system is absolutely brilliant, but I miss the allocation system where you can choose which stats go where. This kind of makes it hard to do anything outside of the designated class role. Ultimately, the Wizard will always be magical DPS, the Demon Hunter will always be ranged physical DPS, the Witch Doctor is a Summoner/magic DPS, and the Barbarian is a Tank/physical DPS. The Monk can switch between area DPS and full support. I predict soon that people will just play a party with 3 Monks and a glass cannon, or even worse, 4 Monks. It's overpowered, like the Paladin class, but for slightly different reasons. This could potentially be problematic a few years down the road, but in DII, it took people years to find Life Tap working on Smite, and another few years to realize that it works with the runeword Grief, and Blessed Hammer didn't do anything until they added the damage synergy from Concentration and the runeword Enigma.
I'll have some more observations later. I've taken too much time to work on this.
EDIT: So, a major gripe I have with the game is the server instability. Blizzard knew that this game was going to be played, with the dedication that players had shown on the previous game. Why were they not prepared for this? Why did they not take down WoW servers and turn them into DIII servers? People shouldn't be playing WoW anyway. Every single hour I am plagued with problems with either the Auction House, connection in general, or playing the game. The game is really well made. Everything goes along so easily. There's thought but there isn't much that obstructs you or is intrusive.
Everything keeps you in the game, except for the stability issues. Right now, I'm sitting in a chat with other people, bitching about the auction house, because I am losing gold right now. I have 10 items, with prices that are low (I mean low) and should have been bought instant. They are all sitting there, and my friends can't even see my items. So they can't be bought.
Does anyone know how irritating that is? To have a capped economy? Blizzard is all like "well we only want people selling their best items." Not a single person there has read an economics book. The economy is consumer driven. There is a demand for items at every level right now, why am I marked? How often do people buy stuff from the supermarket? How often do people buy stuff from the Lamborghini people? Blizzard is saying "hey we only want you to sell Lamborghinis." But I don't need a Lamborghini. I need cash and food.
So, quick recap of my adventures thus far. I start out in a village beset by undead in a medieval landscape, battle my way through Tristram's cathedral, fight the evil Skeleton King, and eventually face off against a demon named the Butcher. Then I get teleported out of the medieval landscape to an arabian desert zone, starting at a luscious, rich city being plagued by demonic manipulations rather than all out conflict.
I thought I was paying for a new game.
You're paying for act IV. You'll love Act III.
Just started Hell mode, tanking stuff with about 6.5~7k HP for the lulz. So far the only things that seem to be able to kill me are frozen arcane enchanted elite mobs, which seem way too common.
Also, Værnnond#1491. (Disregard my name filter. That's ae, not æ.)
OMG. The cow level.
http://i.imgur.com/QBkPl.gif
Whimsyshire is amazing.
dignifiedpal #1881
This game is insanely irritating playing as a melee.
While it may not seem that way when you first start it, there's a very serious problem that exists between the ranged and melee classes. Melee classes tend to have to punch stuff in the rotting sores in order to do anything. This is really nice and fun in Normal, because nothing does anything to you, but once you get past that it is a severe reality check. With ranged classes, you learn to kite and stay away, or risk taking damage. Your itemization options are the following; the first, go full on glass cannon, hide/kite long enough for something to die, and rely on your large damage to live. Lifesteal optional. While you're kiting, you're just waiting for your potions to come up, and that's about it.
Your second option is to get whatever tanking stats you need along with a balance in damage. This allows you to play without having to waste as much time kiting, but ultimately you do damage, simply because you haven't died. Not optimal, but less irritating at times. Mechanics in this game involve champion and elite mob packs that full-heal if you even dare leave the screen or if you are dead for more than 10 seconds. It is a meaningful decision: your choice is to either do plenty of damage the whole time, or do lots of damage some of the time.
When it comes to itemization, this allows you to choose glass cannon, and to maximize only one stat, the ultimately cheaper and more readily available option on the marketplace. Your slightly tank build lets you slap on whatever vitality, armor rating, and resistances come your way. I have been playing with a Wizard who, before his respec, had 44000 HP, and opted for a two-handed weapon with 800 DPS. He acquired this at least 48 hours before I did.
This option does not exist for melee classes. I don't know how it works for the Barbarian, mechanically, but the concept overall is the same. In order to maximize the usefulness of the class, you must be able to tank and deal damage simultaneously. You can not trade one for the other: should you go pure offense, you will die before getting into range; should you go pure tank, you do no damage, and die anyway, as your options for escape are cut off by the unrelenting hordes of mobs that when you add their damage together, tends to be more than yours. Also, enemies try to aggro your squishies, too.
In the unfortunate (yes, unfortunate) event that you have teammates in your game, your ultimate contribution is outclassed by the bonuses that enemies receive for having multiple characters in the game.
In terms of itemization, you must (no, really) maximize all of the following: any stat that gives you increased armor, armor rating of equipment, Vitality, resistances, raw damage, attack speed, and life steal. The monk has it relatively easy off, for a Monk using two passive slots, the highest resistance in one category is now the resistance in all categories, and Dexterity is given the same armor bonus as Strength, which is 1:1. 5000 armor is only 60% damage reduction against mobs your own level. It takes 250 of resistances in each category to reach 45% damage reduction. You are not paying for what is advertised in Inferno. Ever. This is because the enemies are all levels 61, 62, 63, and 63.Quote:
Ramp Up Per Additional Player:
Description | Normal | NM | Hell | Inferno
Monster HP Increase Per Additional Player | 75% | 85% | 95% | 110%
Monster XP Increase Per Additional Player | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0
Monster DMG Increase Per Additional Player | 0 | 5% | 10% | 15%
This causes a bit of a problem. The likelihood that these mods can spawn on a weapon with limited mods is low. In any case, I can only ever have six at most. That kind of forces me to choose not what I want to make my character to be effective, it is what I need for my character to be effective. I can spare no space for things like "increased Spirit regeneration" if I lose 100 Vitality (3500 Life).
I have nowhere to begin in fixing this. If you increase the stats on mods, you're making it just as good for ranged. If you increase the number of mods allowed, this makes the decisions of a ranged character meaningless, by forcing them to also go with mixed damage and tank, without actually solving the problems that melee already has with being able to do both at the same time. Even worse, is that it will force the market to concentrate only on items that provide everything, inflating it worse than what it is now, and de-valuing anything that does not fit the exact specifications of a class that needs everything.
One could consider increasing the prevalence of class-only equipment, as it happened in Diablo II's expansion. But that is an expansion away. May I never see another HoZ again or a Druid helm with +3 Hurricane. Blizzard has already said: no content patches. qq wutdafuq dis sux
Fortunately, this is actually all a fix to the itemization problems of Diablo II. The incredible amount of trash mods, the over-poweredness of Runewords and pre-set items. I agree that the most powerful items in the game should be be Rare items, but there is a complete lack of any item that has guaranteed, preset mods. None before 60, for sure. Even the crafting system is basically a random drop generator.
/sigh
I suppose that this kind of goes back to Blizzard's philosophy to force classes into specific roles. DPS, DPS, DPS, Tank, Tank. Not exactly much room for imagination. Even League of Legends has better options than this... actually, no I lied. League is DPS, DPS, DPS, DPS, Support. In case you haven't noticed, I have a fundamental problem with itemization that improves what you can do without offering items that give you new ways to play. DotA is a good example of a game that has both (if only it weren't boring after having played thousands of games).
Let us go back to the damage increases that enemies do to players through the four modes. Here's a hint: You will die if you get hit. This is an acceptable compromise for ranged classes. This is not acceptable for melee, simply because we do less damage per swing/cast even when we have to spend the extra time to reposition for every enemy. It doesn't matter what enemy it is. Trash mob, minion, champion, elite, bosses. They'll all kill you.
You missed a major point (or rather, only touched briefly on it). I don't know how anyone noticed, but the crafter is simply the gamble mechanic from previous Diablo games redone.
Why is this important? Because it shows the truth about this game: It exists solely for the Auction House. There are so many trash mods, and poorly itemized ones, because Blizz doesn't think they matter. With a huge playerbase, good ones will pop up, and they want them to be highly sought after enough that they'll go on the Auction House and make Blizz more money. Someone crafting a legendary weapons with a good set of mods will be able to sell it for real world money, which Blizz gets a cut of. Why would Blizz care that most players get screwed over by this setup?
Did they care when all their changes to Diablo II basically made the game unplayable for the average character? No. And that didn't even make them money. This will. D3 is not a game for players.
Anyway, for the Monk, I intend on maximizing Dodge as much as possible. High Dexterity, Dual Wielding (with the Passive), the Dodge Mantra (still looks like the best one to me), and our various control abilities like Blinding Flash (which is awesome). Way of the Hundred Fists will take a back door to our piercing move with slight range (forgot the name). Wave of Light will be awesome for doing ranged damage. And I'm hoping my Mystic Ally can help keep things off me.
Finished the game for the first time last night. Meh.
There isn't much to say about the crafting system, to be honest. It is a random drop generator, only for a certain amount of gold, you can choose the drop that you will get, with a predetermined amount of mods. In reality, if you were simply farming you could get many more mods, but no guarantee that item class would drop. Let's not even mention how difficult it is to obtain money in this game without resorting to using Inferno vendors and then selling those items for a profit on the market.
It would have been fine if the AH were only a market, but it happens to also have taken over the shadier part of the business model from D2JSP, and that is in the exchange of real money for power.
As far as the Monk goes, I have tried most of the strategies. There is a build that is gaining popularity, which relies on the Spirit generation from one of Fist of Thunder's runes that gives you 15 Spirit per critical hit, but this applies to all crits, not just those used during Fists of Thunder. The Spirit generation is then traded for Sweeping Wind (which can crit a lot) and spamming Cyclone Strike. This mass expenditure of Spirit means mass healing with the Transcendence passive. A similar crit rune for 10 Spirit exists for Deadly Reach, as well.
Ultimately, it still had the same problem as my personal build, that you must somehow get into range. Note the relative lack of range damage. It's also fairly expensive, because crit chance is difficult to find on armors.
There's a couple ways of stacking hard damage reduction, as well. This comes from Conviction/Intimidation rune, Resolve (damage reduction on striking for 2.5 seconds), and Crippling Wave/Concussion rune, reducing damage some more. 10, 25, 20, respectively. This build lacks a good means of healing, as you have to switch between auras, so you lose a lot of regeneration. My Inner Sanctuary/Circle of Protection is also some 35%.
I have found dual wielding near suicidal past Hell mode, but it could work if you find two good equal damage weapons with high amounts of every stat. Dexterity and strength mean armor for our Monk. For bonus effort, this lets our Monk also have up to 6% Lifesteal if it comes from 3% on each weapon. In any case, I still think there is a severe lack of healing potential. If your dodge chance is anything less than 80%, you'll find that the survivability trade off is still not worth it in terms of keeping you alive.
You'll have to let me know how it goes. Thus far, I can not avoid the very reality of melee: you will get hit, and if you get hit, you die. I personally find that the Mystic Ally dies too quickly (it is definitely nothing compared to the Assassin's Shadow Master or Shadow Warrior). Also, Way of Hundred Fists/Windforce Flurry has greater range and damage every third hit compared to any stage of Deadly Reach. Of course it's really only worth it if you have at
least 2.0 attack speed.
There's also some Dodge available on Cyclone Strike and Fists of Thunder.
Despite my initially really disliking a lot, I'm warming up to it. Some of the most fun my wife and I had was when we accidentally joined a game with one of our alts before we knew you could reselect previous sections. So we were trying to finish Act I with level 8 characters and it was a lot more strategic and difficult.
I do like how easy it is to share gear around between characters and I like getting some crazy rare and awesome drop to pass down to other characters that I plan to play with later.
I have been finding myself having significantly more success after changing some of my items around. I decided to opt for higher Dexterity and lower Vitality items that bore All Res with high stats in another res category (Physical in my case) to use with the equal resistances passive. This, combined with every single damage reduction skill, has allowed me to stay alive just long enough to kill things as late as early Act III (I glitched myself forward). I can not however, kill Inferno Belial.
My biggest problem right now is farming gold, really, to upgrade my armor a little more.
Also, the Spirit proc on critting has been fixed for Fists of Thunder and Deadly Reach. The one for Crippling Wave was never glitched to work with all crits.
fml support monk got nerfedQuote:
Originally Posted by Bashiok
The more I play this game, the less happy I am with it, and most of it boils down to the loot. Maybe I'm just spoiled, but I am too used to games like SWTOR and even WOW by now, which have far, far better loot systems, as they actually have some semblance of order to item acquisition and itemization. The fact is, the loot system in D3 is just horribly, horribly broken.
You find a single good piece of gear, and use it for about 15 levels because the complete and utter randomness of the RNG ensures that you aren't going to find anything nearly as good for your character in that time.
Ninety percent of the mods are completely useless, and serve only to decrease the rate at which valid, usable gear spawns. White and grey items are completely frelling useless and honestly shouldn't even be in the game, as they don't even serve as vendor trash, selling for 6 gold a pop is not a worthwhile return on investment.
And the worst part is, they clearly are doing all of this on purpose. Look at their legendary setup. You get some set stats, and some random. A legendary fist weapon will have decent itemization for a monk, while still having a great deal of random changes availible on the item, which would make loot for the entire game a lot better.
The fact is, and it is becoming more and more obvious, that D3 exists for the auction house, and the auction house is going to be the only reliable means of getting gear. Blizzard may like things that way, but it sucks for the players.
My question is coming from the perspective of someone who doesn't play these games often but does enjoy them when he plays them (although I've always felt they spend too much time on dungeon crawling and not enough on involving storyline, but that's just me growing up on Final Fantasy for you). Anyway, my question: Is Diablo III the best of it's kind? Or should I look at something else?