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Diablo 3 Beta [Beta withdrawal underway!]

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Looking for some gaffers to help beta test my Diablo 3 website, send me a pm if you are interested since I figure advertising my own website on Neogaf is not allowed so I won't post the link. But yeah, I am looking for Diablo fans to give me feedback and suggest more website features. Figure you guys would be the best for that!

Anywho, I was kinda hoping beta patch 15 was the last one :( I just got all 5 classes to level 13 again..... Oh well, i hope this patch has something cool in it.
 
I have to agree that the Demon Hunter starts slow, probably more so than other classes, but for some reason I keep coming back to her. I really liked some of the skills I had, and then were changed up/removed from the beta. Strafe and Evasive Fire both felt really good. Vault is a favorite.

Wizard I like, but regardless of the skills, I think the armor progression is the weakest of all the characters. The sets are too similar and there isn't a single one that really makes me say "WoW!" like there is with at least one set on each of the other classes.

Barbarian is a good, solid class. Because of that though, he just seems a bit average. He's sort of the "balanced stats in every category" character archetype.

Monk and Witch Doctor don't appeal much to me, but they may be more of an acquired taste that takes some time to appreciate. They might blossom at later levels, but I haven't enjoyed them as much as the other classes in the beta. I still intend to max out every class in the retail release though.

So I'll probably pick Demon Hunter or Wizard to start, roll a Barbarian second, and then pick the one left over for a 3rd character. Monk and Witch Doctor would be last in no particular order.

Still debating on whether I'd roll a female or male Demon Hunter though. Both are pretty neat, but I'm leaning towards selecting the "canon" gender for most classes. So that would be female DH. Barb I like the male better, though the female design there is really strong. Wizard I would probably never roll a male, not because the female is a great design, but because the male look I find really poor. Monk is a tossup for me - both are very cool. And Witch Doctor I'd probably roll a male - I like the look slightly better, but I'm really not a fan of that at all.
 
Realyn said:
gratz ;). To repeat my question, are there still beta key giveaways somewhere or did I miss that train ?
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I know that feeling. I really wish I could get in just for this few weeks to see which class I want to roll when d3 goes live, but the blizzard gods just never seem to bless me in that way. It's sc2 all over again.
 
Notes for patch 16:

Diablo III Beta Patch 16 – v.0.10.0.9183
Released 4/9/12

General
All characters have been wiped. Please note that this wipe will also affect gold, items, auctions, achievements, followers, and artisans.
A new feature has been added that allows players to view their FPS while in game
To access this feature, hit Ctrl+R (for PC) or CMD+R (for Mac) while playing

The cooldown on swapping skills while in Normal difficulty has been decreased from 15 seconds to 5 seconds


Classes

Barbarian
Active Skills
Bash
"Clobber" rune now has a 35% chance to stun the target for 1.5 seconds

Revenge
Heal decreased from 6% to 5%


Demon Hunter
Active Skills
Caltrops
Discipline cost decreased from 8 to 6

Smoke Screen
Discipline cost decreased from 18 to 14
Duration decreased from 3 seconds to 2 seconds
Now provides a 10% movement speed boost while invisible
Can now be used while under the effects of crowd control abilities:
Using Smoke Screen will break the effects of crowd control, as well as cause your character to be immune to additional crowd control abilities for its duration

Vault
Discipline cost decreased from 10 to 8


Witch Doctor
Active Skills
Haunt
Now performs 575% weapon damage over 12 seconds (down from 15 seconds)

Sacrifice
Weapon damage increased from 200% to 275%


Crafting
Gold and material costs for crafting recipes have been adjusted
The chance of salvaging Rate materials from Magic items has been increased


Items
Class-specific items no longer have the chance to be generated with affixes that cannot be used by that specific class
For example, "Increased Hatred Regeneration" will no longer appear on Wands

Demon Hunter one-handed Crossbows have received a damage buff
Spirit regeneration on Monk items has been increased


Monsters
Slow, stun, and other movement-impairing effects are now more effective on Treasure Goblins
In response, Treasure Goblins will now sprint away for a moment after being hit

Scavenger monsters will now burrow less often
Zombies will no longer feast on corpses unless they are full health
This is to address an issue which was preventing zombies’ enrage timer from resetting correctly


Bug Fixes

For a full list of documented game and service bugs, please review the Known Issues sticky located in the Beta Bug Report forum.
Players can now queue for Public Games on "Reign of the Black King" after killing the Skeleton King
Players queuing for a specific Public Games quest should no longer be placed into groups on a different quest
Being hit with a knockback ability while using Tempest Rush will no longer disconnect you from Battle.net
Placeholder text should no longer appear when looking at deceased Hardcore characters in the Hall of Fallen Heroes
There should no longer be a delay when accessing the Auction House
The female monk should now properly play her "Not Enough Resources" error message instead of her "Invalid Location" error message when attempting to perform an ability without the required amount of resources available
Items with affixes that reduce resource costs will now correctly reduce the minimum amount of a resource required to perform a skill
Several Simple and Advanced tooltips have received grammar corrections
Click to expand...
 
About fucking time the Witch Doctor got some buffs.

edit: nothing for wizards? :lol they should change the arcane orb back to how it originally was.
 
Yep, looks like nothing regarding skill tweaks for the Wiz for beta accessible skills. There are some tweaks for later level stuff discussed in the unofficial change log on Diablofans.

I am ready to mess around with patch 16 and see if anything else is different.
 
It's for normal mode only, so probably to allow an easier time for people to find a build they are comfortable with going into harder content.
 
No mention of the stuttering issue for Mac (or PC). I'll have to test it out either way. The in-game FPS tool is convenient though, for Mac especially with no FRAPS equivalent. Possibly a boon for PC as well as there may have been some issues connected to running FRAPS when playing the beta.

Most of the stuff is pretty minor. I'm curious to see what the changes to crafting are, as it just says adjusted. Did costs go down? Up? We'll have to login to see.
 
CarbonatedFalcon said:
No mention of the stuttering issue for Mac (or PC). I'll have to test it out either way. The in-game FPS tool is convenient though, for Mac especially with no FRAPS equivalent. Possibly a boon for PC as well as there may have been some issues connected to running FRAPS when playing the beta.

Most of the stuff is pretty minor. I'm curious to see what the changes to crafting are, as it just says adjusted. Did costs go down? Up? We'll have to login to see.
Click to expand...

the stuttering issue kinda was fixed for me awhile back after one of those patches. may have one or 2 but it smoothed itself out later. i guess that's just me. which is the reason why i didn't bother with the beta since i got it lol.

EDIT: nevermind. lol
 
CarbonatedFalcon said:
No mention of the stuttering issue for Mac (or PC). I'll have to test it out either way. The in-game FPS tool is convenient though, for Mac especially with no FRAPS equivalent. Possibly a boon for PC as well as there may have been some issues connected to running FRAPS when playing the beta.
Click to expand...

I like the inclusion of the in-game FPS tool as well.

I spent about an hour today with FRAPS running testing out FPS and smoothness with Ambient Occlusion set to off, performance, and quality with fullscreen windowed and fullscreen settings. Saw negligible differences between FS windowed and FS and without VSync on it always stutters and looks choppy as hell even though framerate is well above 60 no matter what other settings I am running.

Ambient occlusion is a big performance hog. I get around 110-120 FPS with max settings and AO off, around 75-85 FPS with max settings and AO performance on with random dips into the 60s, and 65-70 FPS with drops into the 50s with max settings and AO quality on.

My sweet spot has been AO performance and fullscreen with VSync enabled. Most of the time it is really smooth once new area/monster assets are loaded the first time.

System specs: i5 2500k at 4 ghz, 8gb ram, Geforce 560ti
 
ParityBit said:
5 second skill swap cooldown? What's the point?
Click to expand...

With no cooldown what so ever you can bet your ass programs would be made to switch to skills instantly allowing a player to use every skill/rune combination at once. Basically it needs some cooldown, and from the phrasing it seems like harder difficulties will have a longer cooldown.
 
So I'm testing performance on OS X. It's still kind of wonky, but at least I can get a better handle on exactly how bad (or good) it is with the in-game FPS counter. It gets about 10 FPS with the same settings I would normally have on Windows (Fullscreen, 1080p) where I would be getting anywhere between ~25-40 FPS normally. However, it does reach a very playable (though rapidly fluctuating) ~30 FPS when it's at the smallest window I can make it with all low settings.

The major issue(s) still aren't fixed.
 
I havent had too many stutters on Windows 7 since the last patch, but I hope they did a quick fix on the audio levels. Hopefully my friendlist works right too.
 
And here we go! My story refresher for both Diablo games is now complete.

Full Playlist: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL517434D31A9B209F&feature=view_all
Start with Diablo 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loqqoG1GAVE
Start with Diablo 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUBkzOMeX-g

Essentially, I've got all of the major story footage from both games plus a little combat b-roll to keep things interesting. If you were looking to replay both games in order to get a refresh on the story, you won't have to because I've got ya covered. If you're new to the franchise and you want to see how the story played out in both games, this has got ya covered.

I put in quite a bit of time into this, so I hope you guys enjoy.
 
ZealousD said:
And here we go! My story refresher for both Diablo games is now complete.
Click to expand...
Brilliant work ZealousD. I was just about to go back and try to find the posts about this in the thread and here you posted them complete! These videos must be linked in the OT for Diablo 3 when the time comes..
 
TylerD said:
Brilliant work ZealousD. I was just about to go back and try to find the posts about this in the thread and here you posted them complete! These videos must be linked in the OT for Diablo 3 when the time comes..
Click to expand...

Yeah I've been working with CarbonatedFalcon on this. I was originally going to help as a lore collaborator in the OT but with the new one page restriction that section had to be cut. That's partly what inspired me to make this video series in the first place.
 
ZealousD said:
And here we go! My story refresher for both Diablo games is now complete.

Full Playlist: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL517434D31A9B209F&feature=view_all
Start with Diablo 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loqqoG1GAVE
Start with Diablo 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUBkzOMeX-g

Essentially, I've got all of the major story footage from both games plus a little combat b-roll to keep things interesting. If you were looking to replay both games in order to get a refresh on the story, you won't have to because I've got ya covered. If you're new to the franchise and you want to see how the story played out in both games, this has got ya covered.

I put in quite a bit of time into this, so I hope you guys enjoy.
Click to expand...

Damn I miss Diablo 1... your recaps also show how important the sound effect/music/voice balance in the series is (I know i've been stuck on this, but I hope they fix it for retail).
 
I realized that I actually DO have an issue with one of Diablo III's mechanics.

It is the hireling. Around level 10 in the beta, the templar had a whopping 1.2 dps on his character sheet. I realized that he has no weapon equipped that increases it, so I have put a rare weapon into his hand that had a 9-10 dps (or even higher, I do not even remember) stat on it.

Guess what the new dps stat was on the templar...yeah, 1.3(!) dps. He did not do more damage. Now THAT is bullshit. Do not make items scale that badly with mercenaries, please.
 
He runs around punching dudes for massive damage, then gets a spear and deals 1 per hit.
He's like goku or something.
 
So much stuttering... so much. =(

The new ingame fps counter shows 60 fps but the counter/game continuously jumps from 60 fps to several hundred fps every two seconds or so providing another shitty layer to the already existing stuttering issues,.
 
Corky said:
So much stuttering... so much. =(

The new ingame fps counter shows 60 fps but the counter/game continuously jumps from 60 fps to several hundred fps every two seconds or so providing another shitty layer to the already existing stuttering issues,.
Click to expand...

Yeah just checking it out on OS X earlier the FPS was pretty much changing every microsecond. It was never steady.
 
Corky said:
So much stuttering... so much. =(

The new ingame fps counter shows 60 fps but the counter/game continuously jumps from 60 fps to several hundred fps every two seconds or so providing another shitty layer to the already existing stuttering issues,.
Click to expand...

Limit to 60 fps while on foreground?
 
Corky said:
So much stuttering... so much. =(

The new ingame fps counter shows 60 fps but the counter/game continuously jumps from 60 fps to several hundred fps every two seconds or so providing another shitty layer to the already existing stuttering issues,.
Click to expand...

Does it feel like you're playing with a flat tire? It's hard to describe it but I have that issue on every game I play. It jumps up to a good fps then down, then up, then down on predictable cycles. Drives me batshit crazy and I have no idea how to fix it.
 
I am really hoping Blizz fixes this, because it definitely feels like an incompetent tech behind the game. I do not even understand how it is possible, even if I am still confident that the full game will be better.

Because they HAVE to notice this shit on the pc's they play in the office, right? And they would think about how to fix it? Right? : (
 
Does anyone's gameplay here experience lag spikes/delays when you're at a party of 4 people and everybody's spamming their special abilities on loads of enemies?
 
V_Arnold said:
I am really hoping Blizz fixes this, because it definitely feels like an incompetent tech behind the game. I do not even understand how it is possible, even if I am still confident that the full game will be better.

Because they HAVE to notice this shit on the pc's they play in the office, right? And they would think about how to fix it? Right? : (
Click to expand...

Not much time now. May be post release optimizations.
 
Not sure if anyone looked at all the skill changes that have been datamined for the new patch (and not listed in the notes), but man, did the Monk and DH get some of their regen abilities smacked hard or what...

I'm thinking of playing a WD first because it seems to be the least played and seems to be the only class now still getting buffed:P
 
We are giving away two of the Diablo 3 SteelSeries headsets on our Facebook page. All you have to do is "Like" us! We did a review on them and gave it a solid 4.5/5.0.

Winner's will be announced this Saturday morning. This contest is open to anyone in the continental U.S. or Canada
heroshot-steelseries-d3-001.jpg



*Mods if this is not allowed please mock me and all that good stuff, SteelSeries gave us two headsets to give away so I figured GAFers would love a set ;)
 
Square Triangle said:
We are giving away two of the Diablo 3 SteelSeries headsets on our Facebook page. All you have to do is "Like" us! We did a review on them and gave it a solid 4.5/5.0.

Winner's will be announced this Saturday morning. This contest is open to anyone in the continental U.S. or Canada


*Mods if this is not allowed please mock me and all that good stuff, SteelSeries gave us two headsets to give away so I figured GAFers would love a set ;)
Click to expand...

Thanks for including Canada!
 
Joe Shlabotnik said:
Well what we're basically hoping for here is that the release build they have in the office right now is well ahead of the beta. If their version is having the same problems, though, there probably isn't time to fix it before release.
Click to expand...

Being it is this close to release and they need to make sure the game is stable on the current hardware, I would bet good money that the current build is very close to the office build.
 
maabus1999 said:
Not sure if anyone looked at all the skill changes that have been datamined for the new patch (and not listed in the notes), but man, did the Monk and DH get some of their regen abilities smacked hard or what...

I'm thinking of playing a WD first because it seems to be the least played and seems to be the only class now still getting buffed:P
Click to expand...

Ah man, I just looked at the Unofficial DH changes and they nerfed so much of what I wanted to put in my build. :( Multishot going from 15 Hatred to 40, ouch. Preparation runed with Punishment having it's hatred increased. My build was centering around resource reduction costs and ways to keep both resources high. With multishot costing so much more, the idea of using Supression Fire to quickly fill up Discipline won't be as good as it was. And I was toying with the idea of including Bola Shot runed with Bitter Pill for a way to gain Discipline if need be.

I'm sure it was proving to be OP in some regards, hence the nerf, but damn if I didn't want to try them out in their current state. I guess it's back to the drawing board to look at a different build.
 
yeah, I have the feeling that I'm going to have to just go into D3 retail somewhat blind with the post-13 abilities, and just feel out what works and what doesn't as I go. I've kind of always done that though (which resulted in my assassin being a complete mess as early as nightmare, but that's not the point) so it should be good.
 
nacire said:
Ah man, I just looked at the Unofficial DH changes and they nerfed so much of what I wanted to put in my build. :( Multishot going from 15 Hatred to 40, ouch. Preparation runed with Punishment having it's hatred increased. My build was centering around resource reduction costs and ways to keep both resources high. With multishot costing so much more, the idea of using Supression Fire to quickly fill up Discipline won't be as good as it was. And I was toying with the idea of including Bola Shot runed with Bitter Pill for a way to gain Discipline if need be.

I'm sure it was proving to be OP in some regards, hence the nerf, but damn if I didn't want to try them out in their current state. I guess it's back to the drawing board to look at a different build.
Click to expand...

If they've made multishot cost more for the same damage multiplier, that sucks. I can understand why they did it though; DH's regen'd hatred so fast that it would have been ridiculous.

I don't know how I'm going to decide between DH and Wizard. Maybe I should go Wizard since they can use almost any regular weapons instead of being stuck with bows/crossbows.

Edit: First rune listed on the official calculator is one that lowers the hatred requirements. I guess they've essentially made it so that you can either have multishot with the other rune bonuses, or multishot that costs very little hatred.
 
Is anyone playing this game with an i3-2100 or i3-2120? I'm just wondering if such a processor is good enough for the game. I can get an i5-2320 for £40 more but I really need to keep costs down. I will be pairing it with a HD 6850 or 6870 and wondering if I will be able to run the game well, my resolution is 1680X1050.
 
Geezer said:
Is anyone playing this game with an i3-2100 or i3-2120? I'm just wondering if such a processor is good enough for the game. I can get an i5-2320 for £40 more but I really need to keep costs down. I will be pairing it with a HD 6850 or 6870 and wondering if I will be able to run the game well, my resolution is 1680X1050.
Click to expand...

More than enough. This processor is enough for 99.99% modern games.
 
Geezer said:
Is anyone playing this game with an i3-2100 or i3-2120? I'm just wondering if such a processor is good enough for the game. I can get an i5-2320 for £40 more but I really need to keep costs down. I will be pairing it with a HD 6850 or 6870 and wondering if I will be able to run the game well, my resolution is 1680X1050.
Click to expand...

With a card like that, it doesn't really matter too much how powerful your processor is anyway :P
 
Teknoman said:
Damn I miss Diablo 1... your recaps also show how important the sound effect/music/voice balance in the series is (I know i've been stuck on this, but I hope they fix it for retail).
Click to expand...
I hope you aren't reading too much into whatever the music balance in my videos happened to be. The music was added later during editing. With Diablo 2 especially I set the balance manually.
 
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