Support NeoGAF

[ComputerMKII]

How are DH for anything higher than normal?

Anyone has a build they can link me?

I'm satisfied with my DH on Nightmare but since I've put everything in DPS I can die in a few hits so I have to constantly stay away from mobs and let the other classes do their thing.

Here's my current build (I've just reached Act 2)

Primary: Bola Shot (Rune: Volatile Explosives) -> Almost never use it
Secondary: Rapid Fire (Rune: Withering Fire) -> Good against bosses and tough individual mobs
Defense: Smoke Screen (Rune: Lingering Fog)
Vault (Rune: Tumble) -> You'll need it
Archery: Fan of Knives (Rune: Hail of Knives) -> I use it as an emergency skill for when I'm surrounded
Multishot (Rune: Fire at Will) -> It's a shotgun in disguise, great for wiping out groups of mobs
Passives: Vengeance, Archery and Steady Aim

 

[fuzzyreactor]

I think there's a strong argument that's good. I prefer mucking around in max level stuff rather than grinding toons I've already played through content that I've already seen.

same. i dont want to grind the whole game over everytime i want to play differently

 

[valeo]

Im a die hard Diablo 2 nut but im actually enjoying Diablo 3 more. Everything is a lot more polished. the skill system is tons of fun and every level is something new and exciting. Manual stats were pretty useless in Diablo 2. The combat feels a lot better. the loot in normal isnt as interesting as Diablo 2 but once u get to nightmare and hell that changes. Biggest plus is the difficulty. This game is much harder than Diablo 2.

Once we get an expansion pack and 2 dozen updates for performance and balance i could easily see this game being just as addicting and timeless as diablo 2

Agreed; guess it's just weird that they didn't take all that we learnt from LoD and put it into D3 instead of waiting for an exp pack.

Skill system is DEFINITELY better. I've used so many combinations on my Wiz already that have been damn fun; with Sorc I was stuck spamming 2 skills over and over.

 

[mysocksarepink]

When are spoilers going to be ok in this thread? Spoilers for a Diablo game are ridiculous to care about in the first place.
.

Edit: Never mind, I see now. Seems a long time for this kind of stuff.

Never! Go away


edit: Almost done with Nightmare... still, for the sake of all

 

[fuzzyreactor]

I'm satisfied with my DH on Nightmare but since I've put everything in DPS I can die in a few hits so I have to constantly stay far from mobs and let the other classes do their thing.

Here's my current build (I've just reached Act 2)

Primary: Bola Shot (Rune: Volatile Explosives) -> Almost never use it
Secondary: Rapid Fire (Rune: Withering Fire) -> Good against bosses and tough individual mobs
Defense: Smoke Screen (Rune: Lingering Fog)
Vault (Rune: Tumble) -> You'll need it
Archery: Fan of Knives (Rune: Hail of Knives) -> It's a shotgun in disguise, great for wiping out groups of mobs
Multishot (Rune: Fire at Will) -> I use it as an emergency skill for when I'm surrounded
Passives: Vengeance, Archery and Steady Aim

85 Vit, how in the hell. must be impossible in SP

 

[Red Blaster]

The loot sucks and building new characters of the same class is pointless. Those two things alone make the longevity on this game way shorter.

That's good?

*play for 30 hours*

Oops your build sucks for Hell, try again!

 

[ComputerMKII]

85 Vit, how in the hell. must be impossible in SP

I don't play SP.

 

[valeo]

85 Vit, how in the hell. must be impossible in SP

The Wizard that solod Diablo in Inferno first had only 7k hp.

Resists > vit

 

[Unicorn]

sure!

^ quoted for irritating size.

I wish there was an easier way to show all the items, but i think everything I'm wearing is bringing me at least 50 intelligence and some vitality. I used to be all about wand + source/shield combo, but I found out how sick 2-hand staffs are and haven't looked back. HP was around 20,000.

Quick thoughts:

1.) My passives buff Arcane, and I basically have all Arcane spells equipped.

2.) the primary is the one that moves in a sine wave and does stupid damage...and arcane orb secondary is the version of it that adds more damage. both allow you to kite bosses. just fire and keep moving while dealing significant damage. I find this greatly preferable to skills like Desolate, lightning and frost ray which require you to be still while casting.

3.) diamond skin for when the stick & move strategy gets into trouble (say, when they lock you in one spot) or when I'm just having trouble dodging. It's set on the option that makes it last longer.

4.) Archon for nuking down blues and yellows. I actually don't use it much on bosses, as it requires you to be stationary to lay wood.

5.) Magic weapon because...well shit, it's adding 700 to base damage. 700! lol.

6.) Hydras - the key to my strategy. My Arcane Hydras provide continuous damage on bosses when I can't (when I'm running for dear life). To a degree, you can just maintain hydras against bosses and just run away. The Hydras can do damn near all the work for you. This allows you to manage low hp situations better, as you don't feel so desperate to dive to finish a boss. You can be hella patient when hydras are on the team.

I still have yet to find a meaningful use for the tornado. I like the energy armor for the crit buffs too. That said, this setup let me roll through the last 2 acts on Nightmare. Cheap deaths and lag deaths aside.

edit: and I forgot to mention: I intentionally sought out a 2 handed weapon with that much intel and vitality that gave a bonus for Arcane damage, as I knew I wanted to focus on an Arcane build. If I could have found one with more Intelligence, I would have bought one...but my budget was like 7k. Yes, I got that staff for 6,000c.

I guess my problem is I use wand and orb.

going to try the oscillating balls electric balls though.

 

[fuzzyreactor]

The Wizard that solod Diablo in Inferno first had only 7k hp.

Resists > vit

demon hunter doesnt have force armor and energy armor. any other class would be toast.

 

[RDreamer]

The loot sucks and building new characters of the same class is pointless. Those two things alone make the longevity on this game way shorter.

That's the thing. You're not even building characters at all. There's no building involved. You're collecting items and progressing in levels. No building. And building was one of my primary loves in D2

 

[PowerK]

FYI. Here's a good Diablo III ENB site.
http://darkd3.com/

 

[Dresden]

That's the thing. You're not even building characters at all. There's no building involved. You're collecting items and progressing in levels. No building. And building was one of my primary loves in D2

I have plenty of complaints about D3, but there's just a disconnect when I see people complain about how the skill system isn't like D2's. As problematic as the rune system can be, it's still miles ahead of D2's system.

 

[Fugu]

As I played through act 2 for the fifth time, I thought to myself, "why am I playing this?". And so I closed the game and stopped playing, because, quite simply, the game isn't very good and isn't worth being called Diablo.

Most of the progression comes down to the increase of a single stat; Blizzard knows this, so they've made that stat occupy a disproportionately large amount of the screen. Blizzard has fulfilled their prophecy of making primary statistics worthless by having each character be able to development one stat plus vitality at the detriment of all other stats. No kidding you've taken away the option to distribute stats! Not that it matters anyway, because the difference that a level makes is almost meaningless unless it comes with a big skill that you don't have or if you don't know what your build is going to be.

The expectation was that the itemization would make up for the lack of skill and stat point distribution. It is in itemization, however, that the game is most notably and inexcusably flawed. The list of issues is long, but they all stem from the fact that there is little reason to focus on anything other than the end-product stats of DPS, health, and defence; as a result, bows that generate intellect (for example) are almost completely worthless due to the fact that the tiny bonus (in this case, resistance) is not worth the absolutely ridiculous increase to damage that would come with an identical bonus to dexterity. Bonuses secondary to damage, as a whole, have completely given way. Resistances are not nearly as important as they were in Diablo 2 so they are simply a throwaway stat. The proportions have been unkind to life/mana per kill, and due to it occupying an affix, using such items often comes at too great of a cost to DPS. Classes no longer rely on a stat to increase chance to block, so vitality is effectively the only worthwhile defensive investment. Staggered jumps in gear at the beginning of every difficulty severely disincentivise putting any effort into collecting any decent gear at any difficulty below inferno. The removal of the level requirement on gems has already made normal and nightmare difficulties a joke for characters with a jeweller. Blacksmithing is a pointless vacuum of gold due to you being unable to regulate the stats on the item you generate; all items with no boost to stats and a socket are completely worthless (unless they have some sort of insane base damage), and crafting, much like the game, will certainly produce many of these. While the uselessness of unique items has already been beaten to death, I will note that it is especially curious just how useless they are considering how rare they are.

The lack of variety in stats and itemization has led me to believe that Blizzard intends to distinguish us by the skills that we choose to use. And in this regard, I would suppose that they have delivered, but without any non-linear method of progression, this is only fun for so long, and that time is shortened significantly by the offensive and downright lazy game over which we are expected to play: Every act requires you to, at some point, repeat nearly identical dungeons with basically no landmarks or significant fights to differentiate them. In fact, this is basically the entire premise of Act IV and it occupies much of the meat of Act II. The regular monsters drop at an alarming pace and are so non-threatening that their existence is mostly trivial. The randomly-generated bosses represent such a gigantic spike in difficulty that fighting them isn't fun, despite the fact that some of the random traits represent one of the most potentially compelling parts of the game. This is especially evident when synergistic abilities appear on the same monster; this system needed to be more regulated than it is because as it stands right now, boss packs are little more than a pointless brick wall that make softcore unpleasant and hardcore impossible. It is a problem that will not be overcome with better itemization, as their difficulty is not just due to their huge numerical prowess but the fact that they can often liberally restrict player motion or deal damage in an otherwise unavoidable way. By far the best and most exciting parts of the game are the act bosses, and it's almost cosmic that Blizzard has so vehemently discouraged players from running them by making them drop nothing interesting past normal. At times, it is almost as if Blizzard is attempting to make a bad game on purpose.

I won't even mention the graphics (except to say that they are often non-functional to the degree that they interfere with the game), the plot, the server issues, online-only, the four player cap, the matchmaking, the continued existence of rushing, or the auction house. All of these things are issues, but they would only be worth discussing if the game itself weren't so damn problematic, but it is. Moreso than Jay Wilson's numerous slips, Diablo 3 represents that the team has little clue as to what makes Diablo and its sequel so great.

I'll be going back to playing Diablo 2, as I find the things that I have left to accomplish in that game (twelve years after release) far more compelling.

 

[DY_nasty]

demon hunter doesnt have force armor and energy armor. any other class would be toast.

DHs can run... but that severely cuts into their damage output.

They can dodge just about anything, but it doesn't matter because when they finally do get hit they lay down.

 

[DJ Lushious]

Me and a buddy are experiencing crippling latency issues. We're jumping from 200ms to 1500ms within seconds. Is it Blizzard or my ISP (Comcast)? Anyone else experiencing this? I'm right outside Chicago, USA, just as a gauge.

 

[fuzzyreactor]

That's the thing. You're not even building characters at all. There's no building involved. You're collecting items and progressing in levels. No building. And building was one of my primary loves in D2

it is building, you just arent stuck with what you build. the armor, weapons, skills and runes are what make your build. as it was for the most part for D2 as well.

 

[Oblivionmancer]

What seriously blows my mind is that it took 12 years.

D3 is not a big game. It's not overly ambitious. It's not particularly pretty. It doesn't have some unique feature that has never been done before. It's a good dungeon crawler with addicting loot. Don't get me wrong, D3 is a great game. But 12 years? I guess I'm just curious on what could have taken so long when you look at the final product. If anything, there are a lot of features that are pretty basic. The AH interface could use more options and the matchmaking is pretty terrible when you have no friends to play with.

They either went through dozens of revisions with several rollbacks or we're all in a deep coma.

Just curious, that's all.

There ya have it. In addition, I can't help thinking they stripped away features to sell us separate in expansion packs.

 

[Shouta]

woo, Picked up a mega tweaked Wiz hat with like 172 INT and VIT on it plus other goodies and a gem slot thanks to my MF levels. Feels so good.

I've finally hit 4.8k DPS with 110% MF on my Monk (Act II Hell), takes a bit but feels good. I know I can get higher but eh, loooooooot.

 

[mysocksarepink]

85 Vit, how in the hell. must be impossible in SP

I'm satisfied with my DH on Nightmare but since I've put everything in DPS I can die in a few hits so I have to constantly stay far from mobs and let the other classes do their thing.

Here's my current build (I've just reached Act 2)

Primary: Bola Shot (Rune: Volatile Explosives) -> Almost never use it
Secondary: Rapid Fire (Rune: Withering Fire) -> Good against bosses and tough individual mobs
Defense: Smoke Screen (Rune: Lingering Fog)
Vault (Rune: Tumble) -> You'll need it
Archery: Fan of Knives (Rune: Hail of Knives) -> It's a shotgun in disguise, great for wiping out groups of mobs
Multishot (Rune: Fire at Will) -> I use it as an emergency skill for when I'm surrounded
Passives: Vengeance, Archery and Steady Aim

I use Bola Shot <3 fucking love it. I use the rune that adds the stun I love how it sticks and explodes.. awesome for standing far backa nd lightin dudes up and havin em esplode! ^_^

Secondary -> I use rapid fire for bosses / uniques (set to key 3) and chakrams to cutdown large groups (right click) which is so useless against single mobs / bosses / uniques

defense : traps I use the rune which decreases cost of disc.. was a tough choice, used to use the one which added damage / stunned but I love how they use less... disc, meaning more overall traps and finally allows me to vault . before I could only drop traps and then I'd run out of disc ie no vaults

vault = <3 I use the rune to stun / snare when I vault through enemies... makes vault an incredible offensive ability, to vault through em, volley (grenades) and rain down hell while they're snared in my traps. also makes for a great escape... vault through em.. STUNNED. continue vaulting away

archery = none, used to us fan of knives .. but I'm never in melee range... too squishy

Volley... <3 I use the run to drop grenades, awesome for ripping apart a group of mobs. I just gotta stay in range, but that's why vault + traps are useful because I'll vault through them and drop trapstun / down behind me


can't recall my passives... 90% of them suck. I know I use the 15% damage against the snared units.... fucking awesome, since I use tons of snares

I think I use one which increaes hatred by 25

forgot the last, I'm drunk, ignore thet ypos

 

[KuroNeeko]

I'm trying to come up with a melee build for my wizard, something like the old enchantress build from D2. Having a hard time coming up with restrictions, though, since you can still cast offensive spells with a sword equipped.

Hmm, then again may not be possible with the D3 skillset. Might have to go with an elemental wizard or something.

 

[Archer]

anyone else selling EVERYTHING and buying 1337 gear on the AH?

 

[RDreamer]

I have plenty of complaints about D3, but there's just a disconnect when I see people complain about how the skill system isn't like D2's. As problematic as the rune system can be, it's still miles ahead of D2's system.

I get what you're saying, and I understand why people didn't like to have to restart things if they wanted a different build for hell. But I don't get why something has to be the be all end all of hell or else you just wasted all your time. I guess I just played things differently. I tried all sorts of shit. I never followed a build. I never followed advice. I just did what I wanted to do. I put stats where I wanted to. Sure I think I had one or two characters that weren't so great in hell, but I had quite a few that were surprisingly better or at least on par with the fad build that was going on at the time. And even if they weren't so great later in hell, I still had quite a bit of time working with a fun new way to play, and building things up, gathering equipment fit to my play style, etc.

it is building, you just arent stuck with what you build. the armor, weapons, skills and runes are what make your build. as it was for the most part for D2 as well.

No, that's not building. Maybe you can call whatever you play with a build, but then I'm going to say every freaking action game that ever existed suddenly had builds. What this game has is collecting, and choosing whatever skill you want to use at a given time. You're not building anything.

I'm trying to come up with a melee build for my wizard, something like the old enchantress build from D2. Having a hard time coming up with restrictions, though, since you can still cast offensive spells with a sword equipped.

Hmm, then again may not be possible with the D3 skillset. Might have to go with an elemental wizard or something.

This is the stuff I'm talking about. D3 doesn't allow you to do creative things like this. You're pigeonholed into these very specific classes and can't do anything outside that box, really. In D2 each class had a lot of wildly different subclasses.

 

[Achtius]

nm

 

[Quote]

I'm not sure what they're thinking with the Auction House. Isn't it supposed to be Blizzard's free money revenue stream? You would have thought it would have been better than WoW's at launch, or at least on par. Right now the filter system is so inconsistent. I can change 1 value, and get completely different results, that should have should up in my previous filter.

Example, my character's name is "Blame" which is a Wizard. I can search with the filter "Wizard" or "Blame (Wizard)" and the results are 100% different. I can search for a ring with INT over 10, or over 15, and the results for the rings will both with have INT+50 but a different list of items. I end up searching INT+5, INT+10, INT+20 because it's so wack.

 

[fuzzyreactor]

As I played through act 2 for the fifth time, I thought to myself, "why am I playing this?". And so I closed the game and stopped playing, because, quite simply, the game isn't very good and isn't worth being called Diablo.

Most of the progression comes down to the increase of a single stat; Blizzard knows this, so they've made that stat occupy a disproportionately large amount of the screen. Blizzard has fulfilled their prophecy of making primary statistics worthless by having each character be able to development one stat plus vitality at the detriment of all other stats. No kidding you've taken away the option to distribute stats! Not that it matters anyway, because the difference that a level makes is almost meaningless unless it comes with a big skill that you don't have or if you don't know what your build is going to be.

The expectation was that the itemization would make up for the lack of skill and stat point distribution. It is in itemization, however, that the game is most notably and inexcusably flawed. The list of issues is long, but they all stem from the fact that there is little reason to focus on anything other than the end-product stats of DPS, health, and defence; as a result, bows that generate intellect (for example) are almost completely worthless due to the fact that the tiny bonus (in this case, resistance) is not worth the absolutely ridiculous increase to damage that would come with an identical bonus to dexterity. Bonuses secondary to damage, as a whole, have completely given way. Resistances are not nearly as important as they were in Diablo 2 so they are simply a throwaway stat. The proportions have been unkind to life/mana per kill, and due to it occupying an affix, using such items often comes at too great of a cost to DPS. Classes no longer rely on a stat to increase chance to block, so vitality is effectively the only worthwhile defensive investment. Staggered jumps in gear at the beginning of every difficulty severely disincentivise putting any effort into collecting any decent gear at any difficulty below inferno. The removal of the level requirement on gems has already made normal and nightmare difficulties a joke for characters with a jeweller. Blacksmithing is a pointless vacuum of gold due to you being unable to regulate the stats on the item you generate; all items with no boost to stats and a socket are completely worthless (unless they have some sort of insane base damage), and crafting, much like the game, will certainly produce many of these. While the uselessness of unique items has already been beaten to death, I will note that it is especially curious just how useless they are considering how rare they are.

The lack of variety in stats and itemization has led me to believe that Blizzard intends to distinguish us by the skills that we choose to use. And in this regard, I would suppose that they have delivered, but without any non-linear method of progression, this is only fun for so long, and that time is shortened significantly by the offensive and downright lazy game over which we are expected to play: Every act requires you to, at some point, repeat nearly identical dungeons with basically no landmarks or significant fights to differentiate them. In fact, this is basically the entire premise of Act IV and it occupies much of the meat of Act II. The regular monsters drop at an alarming pace and are so non-threatening that their existence is mostly trivial. The randomly-generated bosses represent such a gigantic spike in difficulty that fighting them isn't fun, despite the fact that some of the random traits represent one of the most potentially compelling parts of the game. This is especially evident when synergistic abilities appear on the same monster; this system needed to be more regulated than it is because as it stands right now, boss packs are little more than a pointless brick wall that make softcore unpleasant and hardcore impossible. It is a problem that will not be overcome with better itemization, as their difficulty is not just due to their huge numerical prowess but the fact that they can often liberally restrict player motion or deal damage in an otherwise unavoidable way. By far the best and most exciting parts of the game are the act bosses, and it's almost cosmic that Blizzard has so vehemently discouraged players from running them by making them drop nothing interesting past normal. At times, it is almost as if Blizzard is attempting to make a bad game on purpose.

I won't even mention the graphics (except to say that they are often non-functional to the degree that they interfere with the game), the plot, the server issues, online-only, the four player cap, the matchmaking, the continued existence of rushing, or the auction house. All of these things are issues, but they would only be worth discussing if the game itself weren't so damn problematic, but it is. Moreso than Jay Wilson's numerous slips, Diablo 3 represents that the team has little clue as to what makes Diablo and its sequel so great.

I'll be going back to playing Diablo 2, as I find the things that I have left to accomplish in that game (twelve years after release) far more compelling.

funny you say all this as if Stats werent useless in Diablo 2 as well. Actually more useless tbh. Every character u just get the stats that u need to equip your end game gear and then pump all the rest into VIT. Maybe energy for wizard if using mana shield

 

[RDreamer]

Example, my character's name is "Blame" which is a Wizard. I can search with the filter "Wizard" or "Blame (Wizard)" and the results are 100% different. I can search for Int over 10, or over 15, and the results for both with have like INT+50. I end up searching INT+5, INT+10, INT+20 because it's so wack.

The search for your specific wizard just doesn't show anything your wizard cannot equip right now. It pretty much auto locks the top level of the items to what you are right now. If you search generic Wizard, you get any items that any wizard irregardless of level can equip.

 

[GhostRidah]

I wish I could log in to play, time outs again...

 

[Unicorn]

anyone else selling EVERYTHING and buying 1337 gear on the AH?

got 9 items that were too high and no one will buy, so... no, not yet. Also I keep spending my gold on Dyes. I just want a Dark purple, but Royal is certainly not a royal purple.

 

[Alex]

Blizzard's attempts to kill traditional talent trees is my favorite thing about them in recent years. Absolutely abhor them and it's part of the reason I'll likely never be able to touch Diablo II ever again.

 

[Hero]

Go back and play Diablo 2 some more if you think there's more variation and depth to character "builds."

Diablo 2 is the Super Smash Bros. Melee apparently.

 

[Archer]

got 9 items that were too high and no one will buy, so... no, not yet. Also I keep spending my gold on Dyes. I just want a Dark purple, but Royal is certainly not a royal purple.

I'm selling my yellows on the AH for max 10k gold per item. Most are lvl 10-20. Sold maybe 70% of em easy.

 

[Dresden]

This is the stuff I'm talking about. D3 doesn't allow you to do creative things like this. You're pigeonholed into these very specific classes and can't do anything outside that box, really. In D2 each class had a lot of wildly different subclasses.

I do miss them, but the reason there were so many builds was because most builds were fixed around two or three skills which you pumped everything into.

 

[Tremis]

Itemization is currently very bad. I've been poring over the affixes for the last few years in development and again currently and there are very few that are remotely interesting.

The ones I was most excited about were the +skill ones, but they are so minimal that it isn't even worth the affix slot. Not to mention that they only apply to attack skills and that they are all either +dmg or decrease cost. The proc-based affixes are also not high enough to be useful and legendaries are not memorable or flavourful, nor do they seem to have unique affixes which would require serious consideration for a build. Affixes are currently way too weak in general.

Blizzard stated that one of the purposes for removing runestones and levels was a chance for itemization to take over and become more complex and interesting, but they've apparently ditched that idea. They barely made any changes to the legendary item stats since they took them down after people complained other than add a few useless skill affixes here and there.

Hopefully they realize that item complexity and uniqueness are what drove people to desire them in D2 and fix this issue.

 

[RDreamer]

As I played through act 2 for the fifth time, I thought to myself, "why am I playing this?". And so I closed the game and stopped playing, because, quite simply, the game isn't very good and isn't worth being called Diablo.

Most of the progression comes down to the increase of a single stat; Blizzard knows this, so they've made that stat occupy a disproportionately large amount of the screen. Blizzard has fulfilled their prophecy of making primary statistics worthless by having each character be able to development one stat plus vitality at the detriment of all other stats. No kidding you've taken away the option to distribute stats! Not that it matters anyway, because the difference that a level makes is almost meaningless unless it comes with a big skill that you don't have or if you don't know what your build is going to be.

The expectation was that the itemization would make up for the lack of skill and stat point distribution. It is in itemization, however, that the game is most notably and inexcusably flawed. The list of issues is long, but they all stem from the fact that there is little reason to focus on anything other than the end-product stats of DPS, health, and defence; as a result, bows that generate intellect (for example) are almost completely worthless due to the fact that the tiny bonus (in this case, resistance) is not worth the absolutely ridiculous increase to damage that would come with an identical bonus to dexterity. Bonuses secondary to damage, as a whole, have completely given way. Resistances are not nearly as important as they were in Diablo 2 so they are simply a throwaway stat. The proportions have been unkind to life/mana per kill, and due to it occupying an affix, using such items often comes at too great of a cost to DPS. Classes no longer rely on a stat to increase chance to block, so vitality is effectively the only worthwhile defensive investment. Staggered jumps in gear at the beginning of every difficulty severely disincentivise putting any effort into collecting any decent gear at any difficulty below inferno. The removal of the level requirement on gems has already made normal and nightmare difficulties a joke for characters with a jeweller. Blacksmithing is a pointless vacuum of gold due to you being unable to regulate the stats on the item you generate; all items with no boost to stats and a socket are completely worthless (unless they have some sort of insane base damage), and crafting, much like the game, will certainly produce many of these. While the uselessness of unique items has already been beaten to death, I will note that it is especially curious just how useless they are considering how rare they are.

The lack of variety in stats and itemization has led me to believe that Blizzard intends to distinguish us by the skills that we choose to use. And in this regard, I would suppose that they have delivered, but without any non-linear method of progression, this is only fun for so long, and that time is shortened significantly by the offensive and downright lazy game over which we are expected to play: Every act requires you to, at some point, repeat nearly identical dungeons with basically no landmarks or significant fights to differentiate them. In fact, this is basically the entire premise of Act IV and it occupies much of the meat of Act II. The regular monsters drop at an alarming pace and are so non-threatening that their existence is mostly trivial. The randomly-generated bosses represent such a gigantic spike in difficulty that fighting them isn't fun, despite the fact that some of the random traits represent one of the most potentially compelling parts of the game. This is especially evident when synergistic abilities appear on the same monster; this system needed to be more regulated than it is because as it stands right now, boss packs are little more than a pointless brick wall that make softcore unpleasant and hardcore impossible. It is a problem that will not be overcome with better itemization, as their difficulty is not just due to their huge numerical prowess but the fact that they can often liberally restrict player motion or deal damage in an otherwise unavoidable way. By far the best and most exciting parts of the game are the act bosses, and it's almost cosmic that Blizzard has so vehemently discouraged players from running them by making them drop nothing interesting past normal. At times, it is almost as if Blizzard is attempting to make a bad game on purpose.

I won't even mention the graphics (except to say that they are often non-functional to the degree that they interfere with the game), the plot, the server issues, online-only, the four player cap, the matchmaking, the continued existence of rushing, or the auction house. All of these things are issues, but they would only be worth discussing if the game itself weren't so damn problematic, but it is. Moreso than Jay Wilson's numerous slips, Diablo 3 represents that the team has little clue as to what makes Diablo and its sequel so great.

I'll be going back to playing Diablo 2, as I find the things that I have left to accomplish in that game (twelve years after release) far more compelling.

Honestly, even though I'll likely keep playing this for a little bit (I really don't have a better game I'm in the mood to play right now), I pretty well agree with everything you said. I wouldn't say they're purposefully trying to make a bad game. The impression I get is that D2 was so loved by absolutely everyone that in the quest to somehow top it they felt like they had to recreate the wheel and make things wildly different. The truth is that D2 was pretty much as close to perfection in that formula as you can get. The only changes I'd like is an assurance of no duping or anything, and separate loot drops (because you shouldn't get punished even more for having a slower connection or slower computer). Other than that, it had the formula down.

 

[Lafiel]

Just beat Diablo 3 on Normal with my Monk. Took me around 16 hours and 30 minutes. Last two acts were fun as hell, but the story was pretty shitty, and the ending was anti-climatic as fuck, I sort of wonder how it's even going lead into a expansion.

 

[kitzkozan]

Blizzard's attempts to kill traditional talent trees is my favorite thing about them in recent years. Absolutely abhor them and it's part of the reason I'll likely never be able to touch Diablo II ever again.

Yeah, I didn't play Diablo II at the peak of it's popularity and I am not really impressed by the talent trees. It's not flexible and there's an optional path which almost everyone will end up taking. This is why Blizzard is now removing the Diablo inspired talent trees in WoW for something more flexible which is how I would describe the builds you can make. Diablo III is about flexibility and experimentation with your skill set.

 

[Diatribe1974]

While I'm still in Act 1, how is the Witch Doctor by Act 4?

 

[Fugu]

funny you say all this as if Stats werent useless in Diablo 2 as well. Actually more useless tbh. Every character u just get the stats that u need to equip your end game gear and then pump all the rest into VIT. Maybe energy for wizard if using mana shield

There's also max block and the fact that energy is only so neglected because people itemize for it. As well, that is more about the small pool of useful stats on items, which, in Diablo 2, includes (in addition to base statistic increases) +skills (individual, tree, class, and overall), +oskills, skill charges, life/mana leech, life/mana per kill, health, mana, resistances, absorb, +% elemental damage, -% enemy resistance, damage reduced by n, damage reduced by %, +(%)defense, +(%)attack rating, howl/monster flee, freeze, crushing blow, open wounds, reduce/ignore defense, fire/cold/poison/lightning damage, fbr, cannot be frozen, poison length... There are multiple ways to affect your offensive and defensive outlook in Diablo 2, and these ways produce different outcomes; in Diablo 3, many of these benefits have cursory roles (who cares about elemental damage when resistances are so shallow anyway?).

Go back and play Diablo 2 some more if you think there's more variation and depth to character "builds."

Diablo 2 is the Super Smash Bros. Melee apparently.

Read the whole post. I never said there's more variety in builds in Diablo 2, just that the variety that exists is more meaningful because you actually have to do something.

Also, funny enough, I still do play Melee.

EDIT: You know, it's interesting that people keep telling me to go play Diablo 2 when I say things about it. I have played it. I have, in fact, probably played it more than any of you. There is nothing that you can tell me about Diablo 2 that I don't already know.

 

[Empty Space]

I'm playing a Monk right now on Hell in Act III and I'm getting worked. I've been struggling with enemies pretty much since the start of Act II and was only able to get through it by throwing myself over and over again at the enemies or in a lot of case with any colored enemies just running by them.

Here are my stats

 

[Ashodin]

I don't know what some of you are smoking. This game is pure crack and I think about it every day. EVERY DAY.

 

[jersoc]

alright, finally hit 60. just gotta finish up act 4 now.

 

[Unicorn]

I'm selling my yellows on the AH for max 10k gold per item. Most are lvl 10-20. Sold maybe 70% of em easy.

I had similar items listed for about 5-10k. none are selling. 1 day left. buh.

 

[The Hermit]

As I played through act 2 for the fifth time, I thought to myself, "why am I playing this?". And so I closed the game and stopped playing, because, quite simply, the game isn't very good and isn't worth being called Diablo.

Most of the progression comes down to the increase of a single stat; Blizzard knows this, so they've made that stat occupy a disproportionately large amount of the screen. Blizzard has fulfilled their prophecy of making primary statistics worthless by having each character be able to development one stat plus vitality at the detriment of all other stats. No kidding you've taken away the option to distribute stats! Not that it matters anyway, because the difference that a level makes is almost meaningless unless it comes with a big skill that you don't have or if you don't know what your build is going to be.

The expectation was that the itemization would make up for the lack of skill and stat point distribution. It is in itemization, however, that the game is most notably and inexcusably flawed. The list of issues is long, but they all stem from the fact that there is little reason to focus on anything other than the end-product stats of DPS, health, and defence; as a result, bows that generate intellect (for example) are almost completely worthless due to the fact that the tiny bonus (in this case, resistance) is not worth the absolutely ridiculous increase to damage that would come with an identical bonus to dexterity. Bonuses secondary to damage, as a whole, have completely given way. Resistances are not nearly as important as they were in Diablo 2 so they are simply a throwaway stat. The proportions have been unkind to life/mana per kill, and due to it occupying an affix, using such items often comes at too great of a cost to DPS. Classes no longer rely on a stat to increase chance to block, so vitality is effectively the only worthwhile defensive investment. Staggered jumps in gear at the beginning of every difficulty severely disincentivise putting any effort into collecting any decent gear at any difficulty below inferno. The removal of the level requirement on gems has already made normal and nightmare difficulties a joke for characters with a jeweller. Blacksmithing is a pointless vacuum of gold due to you being unable to regulate the stats on the item you generate; all items with no boost to stats and a socket are completely worthless (unless they have some sort of insane base damage), and crafting, much like the game, will certainly produce many of these. While the uselessness of unique items has already been beaten to death, I will note that it is especially curious just how useless they are considering how rare they are.

The lack of variety in stats and itemization has led me to believe that Blizzard intends to distinguish us by the skills that we choose to use. And in this regard, I would suppose that they have delivered, but without any non-linear method of progression, this is only fun for so long, and that time is shortened significantly by the offensive and downright lazy game over which we are expected to play: Every act requires you to, at some point, repeat nearly identical dungeons with basically no landmarks or significant fights to differentiate them. In fact, this is basically the entire premise of Act IV and it occupies much of the meat of Act II. The regular monsters drop at an alarming pace and are so non-threatening that their existence is mostly trivial. The randomly-generated bosses represent such a gigantic spike in difficulty that fighting them isn't fun, despite the fact that some of the random traits represent one of the most potentially compelling parts of the game. This is especially evident when synergistic abilities appear on the same monster; this system needed to be more regulated than it is because as it stands right now, boss packs are little more than a pointless brick wall that make softcore unpleasant and hardcore impossible. It is a problem that will not be overcome with better itemization, as their difficulty is not just due to their huge numerical prowess but the fact that they can often liberally restrict player motion or deal damage in an otherwise unavoidable way. By far the best and most exciting parts of the game are the act bosses, and it's almost cosmic that Blizzard has so vehemently discouraged players from running them by making them drop nothing interesting past normal. At times, it is almost as if Blizzard is attempting to make a bad game on purpose.

I won't even mention the graphics (except to say that they are often non-functional to the degree that they interfere with the game), the plot, the server issues, online-only, the four player cap, the matchmaking, the continued existence of rushing, or the auction house. All of these things are issues, but they would only be worth discussing if the game itself weren't so damn problematic, but it is. Moreso than Jay Wilson's numerous slips, Diablo 3 represents that the team has little clue as to what makes Diablo and its sequel so great.

I'll be going back to playing Diablo 2, as I find the things that I have left to accomplish in that game (twelve years after release) far more compelling.

I know its a huge post, but its exactly as I feel. Add that to the lag caused by the always online aspect, I actually returned to DII and had a better time.

 

[Oblivionmancer]

While I can't disagree with the notion that attributes were poorly implemented in Diablo 2, that criticism ignores the many ways in which the character 'building' aspect of Diablo 3 is weaker. It's fair enough to say that the customization is all done through gear, but the problem is that there are simply fewer considerations that go into making gear selection. It's all about pumping damage and vitality, whereas in diablo 2 you were after resists and damage reduction, as well as life leech or getting life tap procs or charges on a wand. You were trying to get crushing blow and +skills, and adding auras and special skills from other classes, and bumping up your mana pool and your regen, and more, and you couldn't get all these things at once. You were making choices with your limited item slots, and the priorities were different across builds and classes.

It would of course be incorrect to say that those kinds of considerations don't matter at all in Diablo 3, but they definitely matter a lot less.

Moreover, the decision to make leveling a super quick and trivial process has a definite effect on the longevity of the game. When I played a new character on Diablo 2 I was running tristram in act 1 and bloody foothills in act 5 and doing Baal runs in normal because nightmare was hard and I needed to get ready for it, and that took time during which I could feel myself getting stronger in meaningful ways. In Diablo 3 it's a pretty straightforward rush from 1-60, and instead of making choices and balancing options, the game is kind of just leveling your character up to the enemies in the next area for you, as long as you are present enough to attend to damage+vitality when cycling through equipment.

Now I'm not uninstalling the game and pissing on the disk just yet, but my concerns about Diablo 3's longevity in comparison to it's predecessor are thus far seeming pretty well justified.

Oh, and the story and writing are bad compared to its predecessors, and Chris Metzen is bad and should feel bad. But that's more for the spoiler thread.

I don't know what some of you are smoking. This game is pure crack and I think about it every day. EVERY DAY.

I'm still having a lot of fun as of now as well but we're less than a week in and I played Diablo 2 for 10 years. Now in fairness, the Diablo 2 we had at launch was pretty damned different than the one that exists now, but it was the foundation for what I take to be a more demanding and more interesting game. Time will tell of course.

 

[Brandon F]

Blizzard's attempts to kill traditional talent trees is my favorite thing about them in recent years. Absolutely abhor them and it's part of the reason I'll likely never be able to touch Diablo II ever again.

Agreed. Though I have been inclined to revisit D2 out of curiosity, but many of my issues with the game revolved around potion spams and skill tree planning. I never did play once the Respec option became a thing, but D3 builds a vastly more engaging system than refunding my points every few levels to maintain viable build progressions.

I'll certainly empathize that the loot tables seem a bit fucked in D3 though. I'm too early to really provide context, but its been the major contention argument among many of my friends working through the higher difficulties. They are as pissed as many seem to be in this thread.

 

[KuroNeeko]

I'm not going to get into an argument of which game is better yet, since I'm still plodding around in Act II normal. I will say that the tinkerer, or the more creative type of player, will have a harder time staying with Diablo III.

I can understand why they're allowing you to change your skills on the fly, not everyone wants to restart and play through normal every time they want to try a new build. With D2, each of my sorceresses were different - I had a hydra sorceress, a tri-elemental sorceress, a melee sorceress, an ice sorceress. Each one felt different and, putting aside the need to horde skill points at lower levels and the fairly static stat distribution, there was a real sense of commitment to that character. Once you put a point in, that was that. I mean, you really had to think where you put your skills. Do you pump electric bolt in the beginning, do you build or glacial spike or save the points for blizzard? Yeah, it was flawed, but I had a crap load of characters and each one was different; each one had their own memories, success stories, and utter failures.

I don't feel that in Diablo III. Once you have each of the characters at 60, there's little reason to make another. Want to try a new "build" then just swap out skills. It's catered to the casual, time-constrained gamer. It's also there for the "omg-I-don't-want-to-choose-the-"wrong"-skill-someone-tell-me-what-skills-I-should-raise-for-my-entire-character's-career-lol-this-game-is-so-easy" faq-loving, board posting players that are so terrified of playing something "sub-optimal" or making a "mistake." (Not that there's anything wrong with that, it's your free time. I think you're missing out though.)

I don't mind the Diablo 2 way of character building taking more time, I'd been planning on playing this game for years, just like I had D2. To be honest, though, I can't see DIII keeping me satisfied for that long. It's going to come down to new content (which is the plague of this gaming generation), that takes time to make, and will cost money. Or maybe Blizz just wants you to be satisfied with D3 long enough for you to make the switch to the next Starcraft expansion, then D3 ex-pack, then Starcraft, then Titan, etc.

Oh well. Don't get me wrong, D3 is still fun for me. I'm having a lot of fun and I hope I'll be proved wrong. I hope future loot drops will open new gameplay options, but I might just have to go to hardcore and limit myself to what skills I can use to scratch my tinkerer itch.

 

[Ashodin]

I played Diablo 2 for 10 years.

Wow

I played Diablo 2 for like maybe two years. I would never ever grind 10 years on a game like that unless it was an MMO and I had content after content. Seriously man.

 

[Synth_floyd]

I find it to be fun but the always online aspect is just a blatant money grab by Activision-Blizzard. The only positive is that it allows them to come up with constant improvements and expansions, but I'm sure that they will try to charge as much as they can for them.

 

[Achtius]

I'm playing a Monk right now on Hell in Act III and I'm getting worked. I've been struggling with enemies pretty much since the start of Act II and was only able to get through it by throwing myself over and over again at the enemies or in a lot of case with any colored enemies just running by them.

Here are my stats

How do you guys survive in hell with so little vit? My is like 800 (23k life)and still get rape XD

I got simliar armor too (DH)