Diablo 3 ROS updates - Blizzard continues to disappoint

So there's been a couple of big posts on the battle.net forums, written by well known members of the community.  These posts revolve around the latest decisions of the development team and their attempts to fix issues that they did not foresee.  This came about when the developers pigeon holed themselves by doubling down on a critical design flaw of core game.  The whole concept of "damage = Main stat x weapon damage" is finally being seen as a poor design choice, and Blizzard had the perfect opportunity to address this issue with an expansion, but instead, they choose to cover it up with other "improvements".  It is good to see that there are more people out there that realize this and have stepped up to speak out about it to spread the word.

For those curious, here are some links.

Nubtro's post: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/11306220847?page=10#185

Drothvader's post: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/11582608407

Why I'm not going to buy Reaper of Souls

So, as always, Blizzard is top notch when it comes to the art and animation of their games.  The crusader looks good, the moves look awesome and as always, the character model and moves are very well done.  I really enjoyed seeing their creative process when it came to polishing the character and the upcoming zones in Reaper of Souls.

When the panel switched to talking about "Loot 2.0" is where I started to really be disappointed.

Thoughts on Changes/Adds to Diablo III - Reaper of Souls

Class Changes: http://www.diablofans.com/news/2021-diablo-iii-reaper-of-souls-datamined-class-changes-including-even-more-crusader-abilities/

Item Affixes: http://www.diablofans.com/news/2019-spoilers-ahead-diablo-iii-expansion-reaper-of-souls-datamining-post-bosses-game-modes-clans-ladders-and-more/

At first I thought I would go in depth, line-by-line of the posted info.  But considering that this is just internal testing and a lot, if not all of the information shown here will change as time goes on.  I figured I would just keep this post relatively short and simple.

The Diablo team at Blizzard seems to be going in the right direction, although I personally feel that this is not a complete fix of the real issue with the game.  But of course, to fix what I feel the real issue of Diablo 3 may require a complete rebuild of the game engine, and I guess they might not want to go down that road.

No More Auction House in D3

Source: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/10974978/diablo%C2%AE-iii-auction-house-update-9-17-2013

Well, this was unexpected.

Diablo III - Reaper of Souls - Initial thoughts...

So much to my surprise, Blizzard announced the new expansion for Diablo III last week at Gamescom.  Its called Reaper of Souls.  

Wrath of the Berserker and Archon to be Changed - My response to Travis Day

In response to this following post in the forums.. http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/8568988912?page=1#16

The permanent up time is not the main problem with these skills, and I would like to point out that while in archon form, you are quite limited in skills.  You still need to drop out of archon to re-cast, and if you remove this feature of archon, you would completely kill the build, and reduce the already low amount of viable builds in the game for the wizard.  The other point is, a wizard can just swap over to a Chantodo's wand, and just proc the critical mass passive to refresh the cooldown anyways, so you end up just making it inconvenient.

Also, comparing Wrath of the Berseker and Archon in the same manner is pointless, given that you are very limited in what skills you can use while in archon, while the barbarian still has full use of their skill selection while in wrath.  If you want to make some meaningful change, maybe consider making WOTB more like Archon in the way the skills are different while in that form.

With that in mind, then the real problem is Wrath of the Berserker, but there are several elements that make this skill so overpowered, and by the looks of it, the community and the developers don't have a real grasp of the "actual" problem.  The main problem is not that you can keep it up indefinitely with Thrive on Chaos rune, nor is it the buff in DPS output and movement speed.  Those bonuses I have accepted, and while they could be toned down a bit, the real problem with the skill is not those two aspects of Wrath, but that you are permanently immune to any crowd controlling effects, and that is the real issue with wrath.  So the problem is the barbarian itself lacks any other hard CC break.  So if we are to fix the problem, we need to shift this completely broken ability mechanic and move it to another skill, either via Leap, Overpower or a War Cry of some sort.  Then you can drop CC immunity from WOTB completely, and maybe even keep it around as a way to break CC on initial cast, but while in Wrath, the player is no longer immune.  That alone I feel will bring a bit of balance back to the class.  Yes it is a nerf, but I think a lot of players would agree that this one is needed.

Ways to fix D3

First, and most important thing is the need for more content, and more challenging content. This can be done by adding even hid difficulty, and even endless dungeons are very easy to implement in the current game engine. Its great that we have new items to craft to get more stats, but we need to have something to do with these new stats. We need things to draw the players back to the game, all the current issues with the economy and such are mostly because of the shrinking player base. Less people in the economy means less people making use of the gold sink mechanics that are already in the game.

Diablo 3 - Coming to Playstation

With the announcement of PS4 last night, we got some interesting news that Diablo 3 will be available for PS4, and also for PS3.  But what does it mean?

Initially, I didn't really think much of it, there are still a lot of details missing that I am more interested in.  Such as, would they have their own realm? or would they mix in with existing PC realms?  How or will there be an Auction House?  How would the control scheme even work?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFFNtE3yu20

Well, thanks to this gametrailers video, I at least get a bit of an answer to that last question.  So, there will be 4 player local co-op, and it will not be split screen, instead, the screen will be zoomed out, and you'd be playing it like old school gauntlet, and other action rpg games.  That's kinda cool actually, a different and new way to experience the game.  But how would loot be distributed? Are they going back to shared loot drops and its whoever can make it to the drop first?  Will it be colour coded and bound to each character until it is picked up?

Also, in the video, they touch on the control scheme, where the analog stick is in direct control of the character movement, so that leads me to guess that for skills that are ranged, there will be some sort of targeting system where you can quickly toggle between targets.  Either with the right analog stick, or some other button, like L1.  My guess right now is, the 4 buttons on the controller are to each skill bar, and left click would be on the R2 trigger, and right click would be moved to R1.

They also mention the inclusion of an evasion mechanic, which I assume would be tied to a button, which would be L2 (since its the only button available).  Which is kind of interesting, because, currently on the PC version, there is no such evasion mechanic.  So will it be added in a future patch? and if so, how would it tie in with the current mechanic?  My guess that with higher dexterity, the window to successfully activate this evasion proc is bigger?  Anyways, that's quite interesting development, especially for brawling, which has been confirmed that it will be included in the console version.

I am wondering however, that with the introduction of the new crafted BOA items, is that a hint that the console version will not have an Auction house, and the only way to get good gear is to farm it on your own?  but then again, a diablo game wouldn't be a diablo game if there weren't some way to trade gear between players.

So we will have to wait and see.......

CDXLIV's Greatest hits (All the budget guides)

Compilation of all the Educational Monday posts of CDXLIV's livestream. (twitch.tv/cdxliv)

Barbarian
http://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo/comments/13y0xz/a_budget_barb_for_every_occasion_levelingfarming/

50m MP7 Archon Wiz
http://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo/comments/18g2l5/educational_monday_vods_results_50m_mp7_archon/

CM Wiz 2.0
http://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo/comments/149sfc/educational_monday_budget_wiz_20_results_and_vods/

Archon Wiz
http://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo/comments/152dq0/educational_monday_vods_and_results_1m_mp3_25m/

60m Transformer Wiz
http://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo/comments/17xot7/edumon_ultimate_transformer_wizard_vod_results/

Monk (original - fall 2012)
http://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo/comments/13jk6o/educational_monday_budget_monk_vod_and_results/

SW/Overawe Monk - 1.07 (winter 2013)
http://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo/comments/18tjb7/educational_monkday_results_vod_10m_50m_100m/ 

Demon Hunter (updated - winter 2013)
http://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo/comments/19bu9o/educational_monday_vod_10m_50m_100m_dh/

Witch Doctor - March 2013
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1u_-0lCoXNYon0lEU9DU_isccMZCcm1oJ2gi4SQxHd0U/edit?usp=sharing

Witch Doctor
http://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo/comments/12r7n4/educational_monday_budget_wd_vod_and_results/

D3 - Legacy Nats vs New Nats - The Evolution of Demon Hunter Playstyles.

So, in the past, I had convinced myself that the Legacy Natalya's set items were not worth the gold, compared to the updated versions.  Now that 1.05 has been released, and the increase in shadow power duration, I must say that I was wrong about this.  But I'd like to write out the thought process as to why in the past, it was not as appealing.

When I was first looking at these two Natalya's set items, I was relatively low paragon level, and I was not geared as well.  So my mindset at the time was, "I need more stats to be better", which at the time made sense.  I need to deal more damage, and the only way to do it is to have more stats in general, more dexterity, more crit chance, more crit damage and better weapons.

Diablo III 1.05 Patch - 2 weeks in

So its been a couple weeks since the latest Diablo Patch has come out, and having spent a decent amount of time within the various monster power levels, here are my thoughts on the latest changes & additions.

Updates to Existing Events.

So a few patches ago, they disabled the effect that a player's magic find stat had on chests, so 99% of the time, the big glowing chest was just a huge sign of disappointment for the players.  In this latest patch, they took a step back, and now a player's magic find stat does have an affect on what comes out of the chest, plus it becomes affected when a player has five nephalim valor stacks.  Another nice thing that Blizzard has added is that these chests count as a valor stack, so if you have three, opening the chest will give you the fourth stack.  If you are at five stack, it will reset the countdown timer.

In addition to the changes to the resplendent chests, the random side events have also been reworked with a similar mechanic.  Completing these side quests will now grant a valor stack, and they now all end with a unique monster.  I am unsure if the valor stacks affect the quality of drops from these unique monsters, but from what I have experienced, its been a mixed bag of a bunch of blue items, to getting a legendary item from another.

Diablo 3 - Phoenixrage's Demon Hunter Guide - updated

So I play quite a bit of D3, and I check out the Diablo Sub reddit when I'm not playing.  My main character is the Demon Hunter, and I see a lot of people still with questions on what to do with the Demon Hunter once you reach Inferno and even in general.  So I'm going to try my best to remember how things were early on for me as a Demon Hunter in D3, and hopefully get some tips for those people who are still relatively new to the game and or the character.

Things to keep in mind, my first character was a Barb, and second was a Wizard, the Demon Hunter was my third level 60 character, and ended up being the one I picked to be my main as things moved forward with paragon levels.  I also leveled my Demon Hunter around the 1.03 patch, so some things may not apply now, but its just how I remember it.  (warning, this maybe a really, really long post).

Diablo 3 - moving forward

So after a few hundred hours in Diablo 3, I’ve begin to think about what I’d like to see added.

Here are some of the things I’d like to see added and/or change to Diablo 3.

More Items, More legendary items, More variation in artwork.

Currently for rare items, there’s only one set of artwork for each character at a given item level.  I would like to at least see all types of items available at i63.  Example: 2H crossbow -The stat between the two items maybe similar, but one could look like the current hellion crossbow, but another could look like a stonebow.  So at least they look different visually.

I’d also want to see a much wider varity of items and legendary items mixed in the pool.  Currently, there’s only one really desirable 2H crossbow.  I’d like to see more added to the mix so not all top tier demon hunters are using the same manticore or windforce.

I would also like to be able to dye all armor to any color I want.  This will also help add to player customization.  Maybe for the demon hunter’s cloak, the player’s banner would show up as a pattern, and it would apply to shields as well?

Diablo 3 - 1.04 patch preview thoughts

So the developers at Blizzard just released more details of what the next patch to Diablo 3 will include.  This time around, there's a new mechanic added to the game, as well as some wholesale changes to many things that are already in the game.  Here are some of my thoughts about the changes. 

Diablo 3 - some thoughts, tips and tricks after 60-ish days

So, its been just a bit over two months since the games release, and so far I've gotten three of the give classes to Level 60.  So here's a quick update on what I've been doing in the game.

I started out with a Barbarian, but once I hit 60, and tried to play a bit of Act 1 Inferno.  I quickly realized that I was not geared enough for that level, but instead of grinding it out, I decided to switch to a ranged character.  So I decided on switching to a Wizard, since at the time, we didn't have a high level wizard in the group.

Trying to get to level 60 on your first character is the hardest by far.  The nice thing with Diablo 3 is now your chest stash is shared, along with your gold.  So on your second character, you should have a decent amount of gold, which will allow you to buy items to keep up your gear.  Playing the game naturally (i.e. without dipping into the auction house or have friends give you gear along the way) means that you'll never really have gear that is the same level as your character till you reach far into Inferno difficulty.  As a result, I was able to get my wizard to 60 relatively quick.  Also, I began to use a ruby in the helmet more to get the percentage bonus for experience points to further speed up this process.  It also helped that as I played, I tried to keep decent items that I found on the way that I figure would be useful for other classes.  This and a couple visits to the auction house really helps speed the game up.

Diablo 3 - review

So, I figure I would hold off on this review till I had a decent amount of time into the game. 

  

It has been a number of years since I have played any Diablo games.  It has been so long since I clicked endlessly for hours, killing monsters and creatures of the forces of evil.  I pre-ordered and pre-loaded the first day that Blizzard starting taking pre-orders.  Was the wait worth it?  After (and still) playing the game for quite a bit, I say yes, totally worth it.  Blizzard, once again, does not disappoint.

One thing I remember back with the previous games was my lack of interest of playing through the game multiple times.  I did not "get" the whole loot collecting aspect of the game, mostly because I played on my own, so I was never exposed to "better" items, and thus, never looked into how to get them.  I do remember trying out a second play through in Diablo 2, but didn't like how everything was significantly harder.  I was young, and did not truly appreciate it in that way.  But thanks to games like Borderlands, I've gotten the loot bug.  So that is why I've been lagging a bit on my blog and YouTube work.