Printable View
From what I played on Glim's beta... I love the Barbarian and actually couldn't stand the Demon Hunter. I'm a barbarian / warrior class in almost everything, so I've grown accustomed to it, but the DH it seemed to not have the damage output any of the other classes had. Using the dual crossbows had about as much damage as someone peeing on the zombies. :) Looks like I'll be smashing face with the barbarian again!!
Yea I thought the same thing that the DH was a bit weak in comparison to the others. Also the patch they just did Friday made things a bit more challenging. Before that patch I could go to all the way to the Skeleton King and not break a sweat or use a health pot and rarely need the health orbs. After the patch I encountered large packs of rares with electricity as their special.
I still felt that Wizard wasn't taking enough damage, I almost think they need to drop either the effectiveness of their armor or drop their HP so getting hit is a bigger deal. I'd prefer the former.
Demon hunter seems MUCH MUCH better. I'm not sure what changed, but it seemed like you were dishing out the right amount of damage without twinking and taking the right amount.
I do love all the extra elites they've put in. Though by the time I got to leveling a barbarian, I had all amazing items, so I never broke a sweat going to the end. If something /did/ hit me, it was taking around 12pts of damage per hit... so... things died, a lot.
On catch I found on my demon hunter was that a group of Lightning and Ice elites... After the first ice froze me, I took off running dropping caltrops like I was peeing my pants, then finished them all off from as far away as possible. That was good times!
New way to get into the Beta. Also D3 is now pushed back to at least Feb.
@BlizzardCS is giving away 500 keys for the exclusive Diablo III beta test over the next five weeks. If you want to lead the charge against the minions of the Burning Hells before the game’s official release – follow the instructions below and enter the drawing for your chance to win.
Starting December 20, 2011, we’ll be randomly selecting 100 winners each week to receive a key to our exclusive Diablo III beta test. Drawings will occur at the end of every Tuesday for five (5) weeks for the total 500 keys.
What you need to know:
How to Enter:
- Have an active Battle.net® account
- Be a registered user of Twitter®
- During the Contest period become a follower of BlizzardCS® by visiting http://twitter.com/BlizzardCS and clicking “Follow;”
- Use the hashtag #DiabloBeta and @BlizzardCS in a Tweet
- Send an email of the tweet to cstwitterfeedback@blizzard.com. With a link to your tweet.
If you have not registered a Battle.net account, visit http://www.battle.net to register for a Battle.net account at no cost to you; and if you are not a registered user of Twitter®, simply visit http://twitter.com/signup to register at no cost to you.
Sweepstakes Starts
December 20, 2011 @ 1:00 pm (PST)
Sweepstakes Ends
January 23, 2012 @ 11:59 pm (PST)
An update from Jay Wilson on the state of D3.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/4325...1_19_2012#blog
Also a synopsis from diablofans.com
The anticipated System Changes have finally come in! Here's a quick summary of the changes:
- Scrolls of Identification are gone - players can now identify rares/legendary items without them.
- Button '5' is now dedicated to potions.
- The Mystic artisan has now been removed from the game.
- The Cauldron of Jordan and Nephalem Cube have been removed.
- The Stone of Recall is now a button at the bottom and has been renamed "Town Portal".
- The Blacksmith is now responsible for salvaging players' items.
- Common (white colored) items are no longer salvageable.
- Character Attributes have been changed. See below for details.
- Character stats are now placed in the same place as the inventory panel and the old dedicated stats panel has been removed.
Any ideas on a release date? Some time within the next few months?
Most people seem to be thinking Q1 is out and late Q2 is the earliest. But as with all Blizzard stuff.... You just never know.
http://us.media1.battle.net/cms/blog...9355082248.jpg
Last August we held a Diablo III press tour, and it was with a small group of fansites that I first revealed significant changes were still in store for the rune system. Since then, we’ve been hard at work on the rune and skill systems, and today we’d like to share details on the changes you’ll see in Beta patch 13. We’re confident that these changes will make Diablo III a better game, and to help illustrate why, I'll start with a high-level explanation of our goals for these systems as well as the feedback we were responding to in making these changes.
I'll start with the skill system. Our high-level goal with this system has always been to give players a great degree of power to customize their characters. We believe we accomplished that early on by abolishing skill trees and moving toward an open-ended system where skills, rune variants, and passives are chosen at-will by the player in a flexible customization system.
That goal and the system have been great successes, but the amount of customization we have available doesn’t mean anything if it’s not useful in combat situations. Combat depth is another one of our goals; Diablo III is designed to be a modern action game, built on the mantra of “easy to learn, difficult to master.” What that means for the player is picking a set of skills and abilities that work together, and then executing them in ways that lead to success: the wholesale slaughter of the demonic invasion. With that combat-depth goal in mind, we’ve been internally categorizing the skills since the inception of the system. Many of you could probably identify what these categories were if we asked, and some players have even mapped out what they are fairly accurately.
For every class we essentially created three common types of abilities, and then a handful of class-specific ability types. All classes have skills that fit into categories we call Primary Attack, Secondary Attack, and Defensive. Primary Attack skills are frequently used abilities that typically generate resources. Secondary Attacks are more powerful attacks that are limited in use through resource cost or cooldown. Defensive abilities are used to escape or control the flow of combat. Beyond that, classes have unique categories, like armor spells for the wizard or mantras for the monk. We used this methodology to help us design the classes and their skills, but we weren’t exposing this to the player despite the fact that these categories would give the player, like they did our own team, a better understanding of how the classes work.
One of our other goals is to ensure our game controls and interfaces are easy to use so that players spend their time trying to master game mechanics rather than fighting an interface. Giving players complete freedom to choose “anything” with no direction as to how our systems are intended to work was a failure in our design. There was also a detached relationship between the bottom-bar UI and the skill system. We have six skill slots, and six spots to put skills, but the two interfaces didn't really interact, and stocking abilities in your interface felt awkward.
To fix these issues, we focused on two core changes: (1) exposing the skill design intent by categorizing the skills and (2) linking skill selection directly to the bottom-bar UI to make assigning skills a clearer process. When viewing the skill screen, you’ll be presented with your six skill selection slots; each of these correspond directly to your bottom bar, and each will provide a specific list of skills from which to choose. By providing a clear-cut guide on how to best maximize your build potential, we hope to cover that “easy to learn” half of the mantra.
http://us.media2.battle.net/cms/gall...9356006243.jpg
(A Nightmare-level monk choosing skills and runes from the specified categories)
You may already be fuming because you’re a “difficult to master” type of person, but before you run to the forums, we have you covered. In the Gameplay options, we’ve added an ‘Elective Mode’ for the skill system. With this checkbox ticked you’ll be able to place any skill in any skill slot, as freely as you could before. The Elective Mode option is available at any time with no requirements or need to unlock it. We hope the new, more guided interface will give you an in-game heads up as to the intent of each skill -- and maybe even be the way you play through the game in Normal -- but if you eventually have a build that simply can’t be accomplished the way we’ve laid things out, you’re free to pop on Elective Mode and take the skills you want.
http://us.media5.battle.net/cms/gall...9356013447.jpg
(This screenshot depicts an 'Elective Mode' build made entirely of Primary and Secondary skills. Note that the skill slot names do not accurately reflect from which category a skill is selected in Elective Mode.)
While the skill system is largely unchanged save for some UI improvements and the helpful new (but optional) skill categories, we’ve been working to make some rather intense changes to the runestone system. Before we get too far, it’s probably best to clarify our terms: First, they’re now called skill runes, and they’re called skill runes because they’re no longer a physical item, but built directly into the skill system. Let’s back up, though, and go through some of the problems we were encountering and how this final design is intended to resolve those issues.
Our goal with the rune system has always been to provide additional character customization by allowing players to augment or completely alter their skills in new and significant ways. Originally, we tied this in to the itemization system because it felt like a good fit, as Diablo is all about the item drops. But with around 120 base skills, that meant there were around 600 rune variants; on top of that, each variant had five quality levels each, meaning ultimately there would be something like 3,000 different runes in the game… and we knew we were heading toward a problem.
Diablo is certainly about the items, but later in the game, having to juggle all of those various runes was not only un-fun, it was a serious and tedious inventory problem. We went through a number of different iterations, some of which we fully implemented and tested, to try to solve these fundamental issues while still keeping the customization intact. Ultimately we developed, implemented, and have been playing and testing a new system which we’re confident hits all of the desired mechanics and solves all of the related issues – and that’s what I’m going to talk about today and what you’ll see in Beta patch 13.
http://us.media5.battle.net/cms/gall...9356021057.jpg
(A mid-20's demon hunter choosing a skill and its rune variant)
With the new skill rune system, you’ll be unlocking new skills as you level up just like you always have… but in addition you’ll also be unlocking skill runes. Now, when you open the skill window, you’ll choose which skills you want in which slots, the skill rune variants you’d like, and your passives. All of this is done directly through the UI, and all of the options from the skill, skill rune, and passive systems are unlocked through character leveling progression, leading to a cleaner overall integration of these systems. Just as we set different skills to unlock at specific levels, skill rune choices unlock at different levels as well.
Another thing we strive for in our games is “concentrated coolness,” and while rune quality levels made sense when we were attempting to itemize them throughout the game, they make far less sense as runes are unlocked through the UI. We didn’t want to get back into a situation where you’re clicking a button to pump points into skills. It’s far more concentrated (and cool) when your rune choices have a single and powerful benefit to your skill choice. The new skill rune system does not have ranks, and we’ve instead made each around the equivalent to what the rank 4 or 5 rune was previously. One click, you make your rune choice, and you get an explosive benefit to that skill. That feels a lot cooler.
Runes have been by far the biggest design hurdle we’ve had in the game, and as you know we’ve been continually iterating on them. We fully expect that some of you will be disappointed that runes won’t be part of the itemization system. Internally, it took us a long time to let go of that notion too and stop trying to force them into being items, and instead embrace the intent of the system. Integrating runes with the skill system directly gave us a bunch of great benefits, and even without runes we’re launching with more item types than Diablo II had. We knew we were making the right choice by letting go of runes as items and focusing on the core objective of the system: to customize your skills in awesome ways.
Before I wrap up, I did want to cover that one of the added benefits of the new system is that you’ll be unlocking something every level all the way up to the level cap (60). Now, with each level you’ll unlock at least one new skill or rune, and in most cases you’ll be unlocking three or four. The most immediately exciting part of that system is that skill runes begin unlocking at level 6, which means that players in the beta test will finally be able to play around with some rune variants.
http://us.media5.battle.net/cms/gall...9356028663.jpg
(The above image depicts a potential level 13 witch doctor build in beta with skill rune choices)
Phew. Well, there you have it -- the new skill and rune systems! We strongly believe that these changes are going to make for a better Diablo III, and we’re looking forward to you trying it out in patch 13, which should be live any minute now (if it isn’t already). As always, we’d love to hear your feedback on your experiences with these changes. To help center the conversation on these changes to a single location, we’re going to lock comments on this blog and encourage you to post in a thread we’re specifically making to discuss this: Skill and Rune Changes Discussion.
Thanks for reading.
Jay Wilson is Game Director for Diablo III and won first place in the team’s chili cook-off competition. Recipe available upon request.
Interesting, kind of sounds like the way skills are set in Secret World and Guild Wars 2. Where you chose your set of abilities from a larger set. If I'm reading that correctly that is...
Yea if you go to http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/barbarian you can play around with the builds and see what all the runes do to all the skills. Also the current D3 patch has the runes in it now and you start getting runes for abilities at lvl 3 or 4 I think they said so you can get used to the idea and play around. I've tried a few times to play with it and the choices are a bit out of control when you aren't getting them slowly via playing but rather seeing all of it at once. Every class has 20+ skills and 5 runes per skill.... That's a shit ton of variety.
Then in the end all will be a waste and there will be one best way to go and everyone will go that way.
Well it will probably be more that for X boss go this route and for this boss go X route. But in the end that's what would happen anyway you'd have just spent 50 hours trying to get the right runes to drop so like every game there is still a best way.
Could they have at the very least named the abilities things OTHER than abilities that are in wow?
Blizzard. Frost Nova. Ice Armor. Mirror Image. Ugg
Yeah I had the same thought, it's the same deal with the other classes.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lonskils
Except for Mirror Image which has been a classic Mage spell since the 70s all of those were in D2. Most of those abilities aren't WoW they are just classic archetype spells, it's like complaining when a spell caster has a spell called fireball.
Yep, all of those names were used in Dungeons and Dragons in 1974 (likely what Valdis was referencing), pre-diablo and WoW, so... I don't see the blatant thievery and usage of generic names changing soon.
magic missile ftw
Wasn't calling it thieving. But you'd think there would be of just plain awesome names for spells that wouldn't over lap.
I sort of agree with Lons. I also do not think they are using those names because they are generic names or names of spells that were used in D&D. At least personally I think they are using them to make the game even more familiar to those whose first mmo or hell even fantasy style game is/was World of Warcraft (quite alot fit into this bracket I am sure). In the end I guess it really doesn't matter if its named fireball, fire arrow, or even flaming shit arrow. As long as the game is fun I guess is what matters.
Though again me personally I would prefer names that do not come from most other games etc obviously there will be some. For me when they use names of abilities in other games, I have a idea in my head how they should work and look whether from experience of otherwise. So if I am prepared for it to look and work one way based on the name I tend to get annoyed when the spell/ability does nothing as to what the name would suggest it does.
Case in point, Flamestike in World of Warcraft should never have been named that.
Blizzard is going to rename all of Diablo 3 spells so they will not overlap with World of Warcraft's spells (even though they do the same thing):Quote:
Originally Posted by Lonskils
Magic Missile -> Magic Arrow
Arcane Orb -> Arcane Exploding Ball
Shock Pulse -> Shock Zaps
Frost Nova -> Ice Explosion
Ray of Frost -> Beam of Ice
Diamond Skin -> Skin like Diamond (oh wait that overlaps with EQ)
Spectral Blade -> Ghost Dagger
Wave of Froce -> Energy Wave
Electrocute -> Lightning Zap
Arcane Torrent -> Arcane Volley
Ice Armor -> Armor of Frozen Waters
Energy Twister -> Energy Cyclone
Slow Time -> Warp Time
Storm Armor -> Armor of Electricity
Explosive Blast -> Burst of Explosion
Disintegrate -> Vaporize
Hydra -> Three Headed Snake-thing
Magic Weapon -> Weapon of Magic (hmmm...)
Teleport -> Blink (oh wait.. dammit) Zoom!
Meteor -> Flaming Ball of Destruction
Mirror Image -> Illusionary Images
Blizzard -> Rain of Frozen Waters
Familiar -> Little Me
Energy Armor -> Armor of Energy (shrug)
Archon -> Arcane Entity
Smart Ass!
Coke: Coke Zero stole our recipe!
except in this its not abilities completely invented by blizzard. has nothing to do with names sucking and not doing/looking as the name would suggest. Regardless it still stands that acting as if your designing all these new abilities with the same name/rename makes them not new as they make it sound. No one is saying they stole anything. However it is not as though its written in stone that they must use the same names form previous games and onward.Quote:
Originally Posted by Maegwin
Generics like fireball could be said to be obvious, yet I am sure there is something else they could name it. Again I will say I think they are doing so that their WoW players will be familiar should they never viewed or played within the Diabloverse. Not saying all, but I still maintain that they could of created completely new spells, and visuals that do not need to bear similarities to WoW abilities or even SOME previous Diablo abilities. Oh and with coke zero its still a different type of coke, not the same product with coke Zero written on it.
The problem is as we pointed out almost all of the abilities existed in Blizzard products prior to WoW. Hell the Warlock fire rain spell and the Mage water elementals appeared in the first Warcraft game. I mean sure they could come up with a new name for something that already exists in 90% of all fantasy universes but why waste the time.
I honestly believe it is for player familiarity and continuity. You don't want to have all your players needing to re-learn things, they all have a basic understanding of how Frost Nova should work - and it has a large impact at early levels of gameplay. People feel more comfortable working with something they know and understand, and I think they'll stick around longer and work through any difficulties if the game at least feels like they think it should.
FU, I want Ice Explosion NAO!Quote:
Originally Posted by Maegwin
No, you'll get Frost Nova and you'll like it.
oh okay you can have Icicle Burst.
edit: and Snow Storm!
Popsicle Lick?
Release should be coming soon.... Anyone with the WoW Annual Pass that looks at their battle.net account will see that their D3 game has been activated. This week I believe a bunch of press types are being showed all the Blizzard bells and whistles and sometime next week a major D3 announcement will be made.
Still cant start the DL :P
Nope.
blizzard needs to hurry up
Well that italian site had a rumor that april 20th would be it but late May would be my guess. Blizz said they would like to give a 2 month notice.
I just reinstalled diablo 2 for shits and giggles
Someone asked a Blizz rep on scale of 1-10, 10 being imminent release, how close were they. He answered 9. So yeah, I believe the mid-April date is probably correct.
Well to be fair they asked how close they were to the major D3 announcement not the release date.
Well they have cut the D3 PVP arenas so that the game can ship properly. Note they will be adding the arenas back in with a patch at a later date. Also I believe open world PVP may still be possible.
On another note for people like Wresh it looks like they have changed the hardcore requirement from completing the game on normal to merely hitting level 10.
Good...Quote:
Originally Posted by Valdis
Playing hardcore makes the game just that more intense and fun.
I played through a few more times this weekend. I haven't played since the last big update, but anyone else notice the dungeons seem to be smaller?