Memoirs of a Gamer

Friday, 26 April 2013

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.

Friday, 15 March 2013

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.......

Wednesday, 6 February 2013

CDXLIV's Greatest hits (All the budget guides)

Thursday, 8 November 2012

Diablo III - A Quick Inferno Machine Component Farming Guide-

Here is my guide on effective ways to farm the components needed to the infernal machine, as well as some strategies for the uber battles that I have observed during my time with the game.

Plan Farming

This is probably the most annoying part of process, so lets get it out of the way. The plans for the infernal machine are dropped by the keywarden in Act 4. The annoying part of this, is it is very hard to get a full five valor stack before reaching the area where the keywarden is located, which adds ontop of the frustration that the enemies normally give you in this act. So, on average, you can pick up four elite packs between the two garden areas, if you are lucky, you get the full five, if you are unlucky, you only get three. From my time farming, I was happy if I got four, and I usually found at least one elite before running into the keywarden. If I found the keywarden before getting a fifth elite, I would try to lead him away from the checkpoint and just die, and made sure I went a different direction when I respawned to find another set. I personally farmed this on a lower MP levels, just because at higher MP levels, the mobs get really frustrating if you are not geared to survive it. It took me about 20 runs at MP1 to get it, but it was not as frustrating as trying to get it on higher MP levels since I would rarely die at MP1, so I was able to get more runs per hour with less headaches.

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.