User:Auron/D3

So. Yeah. Dat diablo.

Honestly, for the longest time, I didn't think it would be a hit. It's been 12 years since D2, which I put hundreds of hours into as a kid, but I figured I'd just grown out of the genre. Most Hack N Slash games have been fucking awful between then and now (see also; titan's quest, torchlight) and I figured Blizz was just making a sequel to grab some extra cash (because, y'know, they're poor and stuff).

I am, however, happy to report that the game is not a piece of shit. On the contrary, it's one of the best games ever in the genre, and a strong contender for Game of the Year (imo obv). I'll try to talk about a few reasons why, although the best way to find out is just to buy the damn game and play it for yourself. Which I recommend, btw. Either way, blog hooooooooooo.

Class design

One of the biggest failures in Torchlight is the lack of class distinction - if you look at the talent trees, about half of them are literally exactly the same across all classes (stuff like faster pet shopping speed, faster movement, more gold found, etc), and the other half are copies of each other (warrior in particular had 3-4 AoE abilities that were basically the same skill, used the same way, just with different names and animations). Diablo 2 never really had a problem with this - the classes were unique enough that they all spawned several viable builds, and they each felt different, even though D2 was pretty much a LMB/RMB clickfestival regardless of class.

Diablo 3 follows D2 in this area. The wizard feels like a wizard and has very wizardy spells (meteor, hydra, blizzard, teleport, chain lightning, etc), and the barb is very Barby (harr). One thing to note here is the flavor similarity between Barb play and Titan's Quest kill animations - if you get a killing blow with cleave, you lop limbs off/cleave stuff in half/send it flying. That doesn't happen quite as often with wizard spells I've noticed, and it adds a healthy amount of badass factor to playing the barb.

Each class, in addition to featuring unique flavor and gameplay, has a ton of skills and runes to offer a surprising amount of customizability - several skills for single target, AoE, CC, and self-preservation that generally act differently, and you can pick the ones that fit your playstyle the best. This part feels a lot like Guild Wars, where you can swap skill bars in town to bring more hex removal, melee hate, etc, except in D3, you can do it anywhere (with a ~5s delay before the skill is usable). This means you can swap your build for playing with people (which you will almost guaranteed do, especially in harder modes) or for fighting bosses (as some abilities are top notch against a single powerful target but generally not against waves of weaker trash, like the Wizard's Slow Time with Time Warp rune increasing damage taken by mobs in the field by 20%).

Runes

Somewhat related to the previous section, Runes are a concept familiar to anyone who's played WoW. They're basically Glyphs which change how skills behave - except WoW's glyphs were often very one-dimensional (doing boring things like increasing crit chance for X attack by 5%), and D3's Runes are, largely, more complex. Some runes simply increase the damage of an ability. Some runes make stuff like Chain Lightning bounce to more targets. Some reduce energy cost, some lengthen the damage-over-time component of abilities (or add one, in some cases), some add a stun duration, and some completely change how the skill behaves.

Arcane Orb is a low-level Wizard spell that tosses an orb out to explode for AoE damage - at lower levels, you get a rune that simply increases its damage, but at 20, you get one that changes it to a defensive ability that causes 4 orbs to swirl around your character and explode when touched by enemies (think red/green shell rings from Mario Kart). Disintegrate is a channeled spell that looks like a laser beam and cuts through mobs - fantastic for both single target and AoE. Not long after you get it, you unlock a Rune that doubles the beam's width, allowing it to hit more stuff. You get another rune later that causes decent damage to anything near you while you're channeling the beam, even if you're channeling it in the opposite direction. Barbs get a low-level rune for Cleave that causes any monster killed by it to explode for additional aoe damage - and if you get several kills in one swing, several monsters explode for very respectable aoe damage to the rest of the pack. Runes take the already sizeable list of skills (for a Hack n Slash) and basically triples it, giving you even more control over the playstyle of your choice.

Items and stat bonuses

Itemization in D3 is basically D2 meets WoW. Many of D2's beloved item stats (like Magic Find and Life steal) make a comeback, in addition to new ones like Monster Kills grant +X exp and Gold/Health orb pickup range increased (gold is picked up automatically by simply being near enough to it, and "near enough" is modified by that stat).

On the other hand, WoW's primary attributes of Strength, Int, and Agility (here called Dexterity) come back but have a much more noticeable effect on combat - every point of a class' primary stat increases all damage dealt by 1%. My Wizard with 800-something Int deals 800% more damage with every ability. With this system, even replacing a single piece of gear can make a very noticeable difference in performance - whereas in WoW, you could replace a piece with a better one, gain literally hundreds of Haste or Mastery or Spirit, and not notice a damn thing. Yeah, it adds up, but it doesn't feel like an improvement, and D3 addressed that problem quite well.

Vitality increases HP by X per point (varies based on class, I think), but it's similarly noticeable. If you're having trouble living through a longer fight, or dying constantly to trash packs, pick up pieces with Vitality and your HP pool will skyrocket. This is most noticeable when trying to jump into Nightmare from Normal - normal is largely easy enough to win without any particular attention to gear, but monsters in nightmare pack a surprisingly large punch with a variety of skills, so swapping out pieces to gain HP is a solid plan.

Lastly, all your damage (or most of it, anyway) is based on your weapon's listed damage, instead of the traditional warriors gaining power by getting a bigger axe and everyone else... not. Wizard spells are tied to weapon damage, so upgrading from a 10.0 DPS 1h axe to a 25.4 DPS one will make your arcane orbs hit stupidly hard in comparison. Even Witch Doctor/Demon Hunter companions/summons deal a % of weapon damage, so keeping your weapon up-to-date is important for every class. Protip - always put Rubies in your weapon gem sockets.

Bosses and rare mobs (aka don't stand in the fire)

Some of the boss fights in D3 are hard as tits, particularly in higher difficulties, but unlike in some OTHER GAMES I WON'T MENTION, they aren't hard in stupid ways. They honestly remind me a lot of WoW's raid bosses - D3 is probably the closest I've seen a non-WoW game come to fun raid-esque encounters with big ass monsters.

Some telegraph their attacks easily enough to dodge them (most classes have a teleport, dodge, roll or Endure Pain-type ability to survive the biggest hitters), but as is typical for a raid boss, there's just a lot going on to pay attention to. One boss spawns a rune under your feet that, after x seconds, explodes into a Bone Prison, preventing you from moving until spoiler boss comes and nibbles on your face a bit. Moving away from said rune makes the bone prison miss entirely, and lets you avoid a significant amount of damage. Some bosses spawn lava pools, some black pits of unholy darkness, some acid pits, and they will all kill you very quickly if you have downs and stand in them for more than a second or two.

Winning these fights is mostly about paying attention to your positioning and proximity to the boss (sound familiar?). There's a very basic aggro system, but no tanks or healers (still sounding familiar?) so winning the hardest fights requires picking skills that synergize with your party, moving often and intelligently to avoid unnecessary damage, and using each class' paltry healing to keep yourself alive (through the damage that isn't avoidable). Monks have an AoE heal, Barbarians have a great self-heal, but classes like Wizards have no heal at all, so playing Wizard in nightmare or harder modes is all about not getting hit. If you see the big ass boss walking toward you, ice nova that bitch and run the fuck away, or he will turn you into soup.

Aside from legit full-on boss encounters with storyline bosses, there are rare/unique mobs you run across while simply out exploring, and just like in D2, they spawn with a random selection of modifiers that make them much harder than your normal monster in the area (in addition to having, like, four times their HP). D2 got a little stupid with it by throwing stuff at you that was Cold/Fire/Lightning/Physical immune, and you just kited it around plinking away for 5 minutes doing a smidgeon of its life, but in D3 the boss abilities are very interactive, and most are deadly if handled poorly. Mobs with the Vortex ability will teleport you to them if you try to escape, mobs with Frozen will spew ice crystals around that freeze anyone hit by their explosion for 3s, mobs with Molten will drop a fire trail wherever they walk and explode when killed, mobs with Shield will immune any magic for 5s/10s, and Waller mobs start off throwing your typical DotA wall up to block movement in a direction, but at higher levels they'll drop 2-3 walls in a row leaving you very little room for movement (and very susceptible to ground AoE).

My one complaint (well... I complain about everything, but this is probably my biggest) is how stupid some of the combinations get for solo players, particularly ones without heals (like Wizard, for example!). Unique/blue named mobs with modifiers always come in groups of 3, and usually come with a slew of normal trash mobs - and sometimes there's a rare (yellow named) monster in the area as well. Since kiting is such an integral part of avoiding damage from many abilities, you start the standard marathon around the zone to NOT DIE IN TWO SECONDS to the hilariously powerful mobs you're kiting, only to kite into more mobs (usually just more trash, but sometimes not!). If you're unfortunate enough to get a spawn like this one in nightmare mode or higher, prepare for a long fucking period of nonstop kiting. I was reduced to running 3 defensive passives, 4 defensive active skills, and a RMB that let me fire an orb over my shoulder and keep running for my life as the only reasonable method to kill these mobs. You *can* take a fully offensive build, teleport on top of the biggest bad guys, drop nukes, and die over and over (since their health doesn't regen afaik), but zerging is a pretty pussy tactic and not one I'd ever suggest. For some spawns, however, it's your only option. Either way, this complaint is mostly nullified by the next topic.

Fucking Badass Multiplayer

I mentioned how many of the boss fights feel like raid encounters - and typically those are done with lots of people. Diablo 3 keeps the intensity of the fights high even in a small party of 4 players, and some abilities really shine when grouped up. In a balanced party, the barb or monk will be taking the majority of the hits (while still dealing great damage obv), while wizard/DH provide a few utility skills (like slow time) or CC (slow traps, frost nova, force push) to help keep their melee alive, while also trying to keep their damage output as high as possible. The existence of 4 targets for a boss to swap between reduces the potential threat of death for any singular player, so they can bring less personal defense and more pewpew - which makes the game more fun for all of them (because you don't have to spec and play 100% defensively, like I mentioned in the previous paragraph). Also, there's a 5-second resurrection ability if someone drops mid-fight, so if they fuck up and die to fire like a derp, you can get them back into combat (after insulting them on vent, obviously). The mid-combat res can be a real party saver, and isn't always easy to get off (as it's interrupted by damage), but it's a great feature and means that a single death doesn't result in having to do the entire encounter over again (as it would in single player).

While the boss battles are definitely more epic with a party, the majority of my "fun" is playing the normal questing content with bros. Mob HP and difficulty scales very well with players joining, and those random encounters I mentioned earlier (with uniques, rares, and 10-20 trash mobs) go from a Fucking Nightmare Marathon of Kiting for Five Minutes to a Totally Badass Group Kill Fest with Each Class Offering Unique Utility to Bring Down the Bad Guys Quickly... event. TBGKFECOUUBDBGQ for short. The increased difficulty of mobs does make it more important for players to stick together, as one wandering off can quickly be overwhelmed by a single pack of unique mobs, but the overall product is just... amazing. I really cannot stress how much fun it is to trudge through forests, swamps, mountains, castles, more castles, some dungeons in castles, and some castles in space (no spoilers) with a team of bros putting a huge boot up the ass of every monster you come across.

Another thing worth mention is cross-class synergy. For the most part, you just use your CC/utility and your party "benefits" by not being hit by quite as much stuff, or being able to dodge projectiles (with slow time), or whatever. A few combinations, however, offer dramatic increases in power. There's a wizard spell called Meteor that does six bucketloads of AoE damage and leaves behind a crater that deals damage over time, but it's got a 1s (or something) delay before impact, which offers mobs plenty of opportunity to... y'know, walk out of it. Or get killed by someone else before it hits. A celebratory meteor hitting nothing is a pretty shitty feeling, and I *usually* avoid using it because of this problem. A monk in the party can turn meteor into a huge killing machine - they have a skill that AoE death grips (pulls mobs to the monk), which can be followed with Frost Nova for a 3s stun, and then meteormeteormeteormeteor, which will rape the pack of mobs so hard they'll have to invent a new word for what it does to them.

Lastly, the actual mechanics of mutliplayer are very well done. Once you have someone on realid (or gamertag or whatever), you see their name on a list of games to Quick Join, and you just hop into their storyline at whatever point they're at, without losing your current progress if you decide to leave and make a game later. Even if you're a few levels too low, as long as you play smartly you'll catch up in an hour or two of constant questing without being a huge burden. I have an absolute blast seeing people logging on realid for the first time in a year, then rolling a new char and joining their game to fight the forces of evil with long-lost friends. If you're a hobo and don't know anyone to add on realid, you can make or join public games with randoms. As long as you aren't matched with a pack of downs babies, even pugging is a great experience (at least for normal mode). Occasionally you'll hit a boss that you can't quite beat solo, but if you open the game up to the public (or join one) you can clear that boss and then keep going alone. All in all, the multi-player aspect is really well done, and I recommend playing through with at least 1 other person instead of trying to beat the game solo.

Auction Hause (aka the thing GW didn't have)

The real money AH isn't live yet, but the standard gold AH one is, and it's pretty amazing. I imagine a lot of kids are playing, and therefore some items are stupidly overpriced (you can probably find a number of 4 strength 4 stam leather belts listed for 1mil gold), but you can often find very solid upgrades for affordable prices if you're just having shitty luck with drops. I had a period of time from late 20s to mid 30s where every fucking piece of good loot I got was strength/vitality - so the barb bro I was playing with got really geared, but I got jack shit. By 35, I had fallen behind in damage output due to the lack of loot, so I checked the AH and found a 50+ DPS axe with int/vit, a yellow belt with int, chest with high armor and int with sockets, etc and for ~20k gold I was able to catch up.

For whatever reason, crafting materials are very cheap. If your blue item is worth more than the current dust price (pretty much all are), sell that shit to the merchant instead of disenchanting. If you really want the dusts for crafting, go to the AH and buy them for like 20g apiece - you'll save a shitload of money that way, instead of turning a 200g item into 1 20g dust.

And obviously, it's nice to be able to sell stuff. I find really nice strength stuff occasionally, but my barb bros all have higher level equipment, so I can list it for a healthy sum and get paid for it, instead of basically jewing myself by merching it for 300g.

And then

You hit max level, and the game turns to complete tripe on a bike. The only thing left at 60 is to run around doing silly achievements to unlock designs for your banner, or grinding/farming the same 1 or 2 bosses over and over and over and over to possibly maybe theoretically get 1 drop that's almost maybe even halfway decent (but never for your class), so you then sell it on the AH for gold. Then you look for upgrades to your own gear (which must have vitality, resist all, healthy dose of primary stat, crit/life on hit if possible) and buy them from other players. Once you've done this enough times, you're eligible to move on to act 2 and farm a different 2 bosses over and over and over and over.

Fuck that shit.

The droprate for anything even halfway decent is abysmally small, and because the Auction House is universal, everything that isn't absolutely amazing stat-wise is devalued to hell and back... which is close to (if not fully) 100% of your drops. This is such a big failure in design I can't even comprehend it. The whole point of the D3 endgame is a skinner box design revolving around loot - you get mostly shit, but 1-2 neat upgrades occasionally to keep you going, chasing that next carrot. D3 doesn't even do that right - you don't ever get a fucking carrot. The drop rate on carrots is less than 1%. Most of the time you just get stepped-on cabbage or some shit that sells for nothing and doesn't inspire you to keep playing. You run around farming stupidly designed elites that are invincible half the time (either via shielding, literal invincibility on minions, or extra health/mortar/fast/waller which requires kiting for 5-10 minutes to be able to beat down), then after 5 stacks of NV, run to the end boss and kill him... for shitty drops. My last Belial Inferno kill netted me a whole 3 rares - not one of them was worth more than 10k. He dropped like 5 blues, too - and one of them was a 150 DPS level 53 axe. Why the fuck does a level 53 axe drop in act 2 of inferno mode, the hardest difficulty that requires level 60 and a shit ton of resists/other stats already to even get there? It's fucking retarded. There's no excuse for loot of that quality to drop in inferno mode, ever.

Anyway, the first 60 levels are still kinda decent. The game is pretty polished, not many bugs to speak of (anymore), and the classes are still pretty unique in playstyle; but the endgame skinner box/carrot chase being such a fucking joke kills it entirely. Blizzard has admitted it was a failure, and they're trying to think of ways to make it suck less. Maybe this is too hard a concept for them, but uh... increase the fucking drop rate on good items, so people get carrots more often, so the whole "item hunt" endgame design actually draws people in? -Auron 08:57, 14 July 2012 (UTC)