I was the lucky recipient of a beta key from the random post contest on this site and I wanted to use that as a way to contribute to the community. Call it Karmic balance. In the interest of full disclosure let me give some basics about myself. Everything I say is coming from this perspective;
30 years old sharing a home with a very patient, non-gamer girlfriend.
Playing Diablo since age 15
Always plays the rogue/theif character
Frequently plays with techno/industrial blasting
I decided to wait until I completed the Betamaxed achievement (all classes to level 13) to share my opinions of them.
Bam, done!
Before actual hands-on gameplay, my character list in order of preference was:
-Demon Hunter
-Monk
-Wizard
-Barbarian
-Witch Doctor
The same list after achieving Betamaxed:
-Demon Hunter
-Barbarian
-Wizard
-Monk
-Witch Doctor
My first and last choice remained unaffected in their placement, but became more solidly cemented there. I love DH and dislike WD even more than before.
Now, don't get me wrong, WD fans! The class is great, it was definitely enjoyable playing one, its just not my personal playstyle. As a DH fan I can't imagine a better partner than a skilled WD to keep everything at range for some crossbow destruction.
Breaking it down per-class;
Each pic below is my personal end result of leveling to 13. Each character is wearing mostly crafted gear, some AH gear is mixed in as I was testing out how that system worked (both gold and betabucks). But the AH is 95% crafted gear and 5% random rare item drops. There are currently no known legendary items so every player is riding the same gear level give or take a few dps.
Demon Hunter
-This is an extremely fast paced character. I'm able to dish out more damage with a DH than any of the others.
-Un-runed Rapid Fire is a beast on single target and perfectly usable on crowds (in beta at least). I plan to use this as a primary skill through 60.
-Chakram is awesome AoE that felt much more controllable in person than it looks on youtube (skill improvement in the patch maybe?). Low cost makes it very spammable, you can cover the entire screen with these things.
-I expected to use vault all the time but it kinda sucks. You can only use it 2-3 times back to back so it's definitely not usable as a travel skill (I know it wasn't intended as one, but we all thought of it anyway). It's only function is in-combat maneuvers. Meh. I'd rather have ferrets.
-One major thing bugs me; If I have a 22dps hand-crossbow equipped and then equip an 18dps hand-crossbow, my dps stat lowers. According to my stat sheet I do more dps with one hand empty. I get it I guess, I mean, if I have to alternate attacks between weapons then the hungering arrow fired from my off-hand will do lower damage than the higher damage one I could have fired if that weapon weren't equipped. Both weapons have to be equal damage (or extremely close) for there to be a dps gain.
Compounding this is the new damage bonus added to quivers. A quiver is now treated like a sorceress focus or a WD mojo. It's an off-hand item with a static +damage bonus followed by random stats. This, at least in the beta, results in a quiver always dealing more damage than dual crossbows. In this scenario it doesn't matter which weapon you choose; bow, hand-crossbow, or crossbow, since each can be used with a quiver. Not my preferred play style.
Barbarian
-If playing a DH is like piloting an F-117 Nighthawk, playing a barbarian is like filling Optimus Prime with rocket fuel and flooring it.
-Even with a 10 second cool down Leap Attack makes this a surprisingly fast paced character. You can jump between levels in a dungeon without bothering to look for stairs, which is usually rewarded with a cannon ball blood splash into a pool of enemies.
-He punches skeletons so hard they blood-splode (Cleave/Rupture).
-Frenzy is effective but lackluster. Bash is much more rewarding. Every time my barb bashes a zombie's face off it's skull (and its faceless skull off my screen), my subwoofer bashes my internal organs. So awesome.
-Hammer of the ancients is the completely unecessary icing on the murder cake. You kill just as fast if you never use it, but it has this ridiculous effect of bouncing enemies off the floor and to the ionosphere, so I can't resist throwing it down at least once in the middle of a crowd.
-I have no idea why the dps stat looks so low on this character, its not representative of his damage at all. He's a monster.
-He even idle's like a man, spitting a meaty glop on the ground and wiping his face with the back of his hand.
Wizard
-A sleek, sexy character. So much so that I couldn't bring myself to roll a male like my other chars. If I wanted to be represented by a man with eyeliner and perfect cheek bones I'd get an Adam Lambert t-shirt.
-Sorceress fans will be happy. I had a 99 sorc in D2 and can tell you that they play very much the same. They're SO similar that I just now realized I saved the picture as "Sorceress"... whoops. Some of the skills are direct copies of sorc skills; magic missile is a reskinned firebolt, shock pulse is charged bolt, frost nova is nova.
-Wizard is a complete light show. The most impressive skill I have access to is Arcane Torrent (click to see skill). In the picture I have runed magic missile, but I much preferred electrocute. I was messing around and forgot to change it back.
-This class is a combination of Lisa Frank and Heavy Metal. It can dish out extreme damage but feels moderately paced. Attacks are either light flickers or big booms. Not the shot of adrenaline rush that DH and Barb carry.
Monk
-Originally I was torn between Monk and DH as I was a huge Assassin fan in D2 (a 99 with around a half dozen others in their 90s with different builds). After playing the monk I was at first disappointed, but since then I've realized that the class is very solid, it just isn't for me. I don't feel the assassin vibe at all. If you were a paladin fan I think you'll find a home here (I didn't like paladins either, but knew they were solid teammates).
-In D2 I swapped out skills like crazy while attacking, in D3 I planned to play the monk the same way. I expected to use Deadly Reach for the first two parts of a combo and exploding palm for the final hit to apply the big boom. Technically, you CAN do this, but it's not very fluid. The three attacks of a single skill chain together well because they're animated together. If you interject a second skill into the mix it feels like you're stopping the attack and starting a new one. I have no idea if it actually takes longer or not, I just know what it feels like. Breakin ma flow maaan.
-Sticking with combo skills instead of mixing them is a much better play experience but leaves me unfulfilled for some reason. The monk looks like a sports car but drives like a pickup.
-I can see the monk being a player favorite. He's the yin to the Barb yang, hitting 5 times for every single barbarian haymaker. At higher levels I'm sure the pace picks up but I don't see it changing from the mechanical, controlled combos that form it's foundation. Between dodge and heals It's also a very safe character to play so should be big in HC.
Witch Doctor
-I was excited to play this class because I wanted to see it in a different light. Other reviews and videos had me thinking it was boring.
-Witch Doctor is boring. Please take that as my opinion, I'm absolutely not stating that as some sort of fact. For some reason it seems to be the most played character in the beta so I completely understand it just isn't made for me. Every game I join has a witch doctor or two in it. Maybe that's just my experience though.
-This class is pure chaos. Very little about it is controlled. Between throwing frogs and spiders around (self targetting skills) and summoning zombie dogs (self targetting skills) there isn't much you can do to choose what you're attacking. Poison darts work, but even runed it's a glorified firebolt. Grasp of the dead is an average damage aoe on a cooldown. Firebomb at level 11 is okay, not great, but okay. I didn't feel comfortable at all until I got firebats at level 12 which really only amounts to a sorceress' old inferno skill. At least it's aimable and does solid damage!
-In harder difficulties the WD will be a co-op superstar. He'll be able to hold enemies at bay while teammates do his bidding, like they're just a few more of his many pets. In this way he's rockin like a boss. Start coming up with your funny pimp names now, guys, because you'll be turning other players out.
One final note; I greatly dislike the way the game displays your battletag instead of your character's unique name. Now, I chose a battletag I like a lot and use in a lot of games (Kinetic) so for me it's not that bad. Though I'd prefer my Barbarian be known as Brimstone (way more beefy and barb like) he shows up in game as Kinetic (both under my portrait and over my head). The only time you see "Brimstone" is when I talk in chat. If you're in a game with more than two people that leaves people wondering who the hell Brimstone is.
Most people seem to have chosen battletags without regard for display in game. You might have a kickass Monk named BruceLeeroy but as far as I can tell your name is ssjsephiroth. All of your characters are ssjsephiroth no matter what you named them at character creation if you decided to joke around with your battletag when you made it. Not cool bliz.
No one point out how old I sound using that as my "stereotypically bad name".
I hope this helps people still learning about the classes! It was the best way I could think of to say thanks for the beta key
I think you overestimates the DH because your's have quite a good DPS while other classes don't. DPS is not really an class thing, with proper gear every class can have more or less the same DPS.
A good way to judge and compere classes is using gear that gives equal DPS. Personally I think the strongest class is the wizard and the barbarian, then the DH and the WD and monk in the last.
Gear-wise I think the wizard is doing the best, she has a lot of +int. Barb is lacking +str but somehow still killdozes. Weapon-wise, DH is definitely ahead of the others. That's due to the level 13 rare crafted hand-crossbow. I can pump those out one after another until I get a good one. Before 13 I still felt the damage was very good, but you're right, he's pulling ahead on the DPS scoreboard for some reason.
I was able to level a DH to 12 before the newest patch buffed them and wiped the chars and there is definitely a difference. Before the patch their damage was just ok. If anything I'm happy to see that they're completely capable of being top dps after having heard so many disappointing reviews. Before I played the game myself I was starting to worry, but it appears blizzard has addressed the issue.
First decent read on "first beta impressions" that I've read in a while. Thanks for taking time to be constructive and actually put thought into your post.
Thank you! You are awesome! It is good to see a beta tester of your caliber actually got a key... I would be doing the same thing, had I gotten a key. Looks like I'll be waiting till launch, seeing as the calculator contest is going to be pretty much impossible. Again, congratulations on the key, and if you wanna let someone check out the beta, you can always pm me with the info
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Me- Can haz beta key?
Mod- NO NOOB BAHAHAHAHA! *goes to play beta*
Me- /wrists
I was also a lucky recipient of a Beta Key from DiabloFans.com 2 days ago and have waited until I got both Betamaxed and Overachiever Achievments done before saying anything.
I spent the first day of my beta experience running one of each class through the content and then leveling them to 13. It really took very little time. If anyone watches the Force videos you might have heard him mention that there is very little content - this is true. This morning, just to see how quickly I could do it, I ran another barb (from scratch) all the way through to SK including the kill in 21 minutes. I was fortunate to pick the right crypt once and go the right directions in the Cathedral but on my other "from scratch" runs I still average somewhere between 25 and 30 minutes. If I felt like completely avoiding as many fights as possible I don't doubt that 17-20 minutes is pretty possible. Anyways....
I spent most of today grinding SK (Skeleton King) runs through the Cathedral for crafting mats and gold. My Barb is sitting on 100.05 DPS at the moment with all of my other classes running somewhere between the low 70's and the high 80's. Now that each is pretty well geared and I've had time to play with all the classes and skills (that are available) I feel I can give a pretty good review:
Barbarian: Truly a lot of fun. I was fearful that since I usually play this type of class it might be getting a bit lackluster and old, and for the first 8-9 levels, I thought I had confirmed that suspicion. At around level 10 (and this is true for all the classes) things really open up. Even with the limited content available I've found that this class is just a riot to toy around with. The OP's comment about Frenzy is accurate... it works but it's a bit boring when compared to Bash with reverbs. The DPS is roughly equivalent so... no big deal.
Demon Hunter: A little boring early on but then again at-or-around level 10 things start to open up. I think it's Strafe that really brings the fun here. The skills available this early in the beta really work well together and you can combo nicely with the Demon Hunter. Really a lot of fun.
Wizard: That Arcane Blast is intense once it's runed. Cast one and watch a room full of people explode. Again, there's a good mix of skills available later on but unlike the other classes you actually start having fun with the Wizard earlier on (or at least I did).
Witch Doctor: Good all around and again at around level 10 it starts to really give you some good options to work with. That being said, even at level 13 with all the available skills the techniques start to feel a bit disjointed. I can't find a setup that I really like with this class but every time I play it I still have fun watching all the animations.
Monk: I don't remotely care for this class. It just feels boring and I don't know if it's just me but I feel like the Spirit pool just build way too slow and then runs out entirely too fast. I really hope some good alternatives show up later on because the skills present currently in the beta just aren't doing it for me.
On another note, for anyone worried about the skill swapping and the much feared "lack of uniqueness" or "investment" - I was with you originally. Having played with it now, I really enjoy it. For one, after I found a skillset I liked, I rarely changed any of them so you won't be swapping on the fly as often as people might think. Additionally it's really nice to be able to switch from an AOE-based build for mob destruction to a more Single-Target one for bosses.
I'll edit this and post more in a bit - I'll prolly upload some character shots also, I just wanted to weight in on the topic while takin a quick break from the beta madness.
Now back to trying to bug stuff out so I can give feedback - If you get a key I encourage you to do the same. Figure out the exploits before it goes live, a good launch is always key for a game's success.
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Liquid Cooled Intel I7 2700k OC'd to 5.0ghz at a max pull of 1.44v ~ 19-21C Idle ~ 68C max under load.
16GB G Skill Ram ~ 2x Mushkin 120GB SSD's ~ MSI GTX 570 Twin Frozer ~ Asus P8P67 Deluxe
Very interesting read. Witch Doctor to me looks like it could be fun, but also boring at the same time. Glad to see wizard is enjoyable I plan to roll one of those. Also Barbarian, after reading this I want to roll one of those, planned on leveling one of each to max level anyway.
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What is this thing called "real life?" Is that some sort of expansion pack?
I honestly don't have a strong desire to play anything but the Barb, though. I probably won't make alts until my Barb is near finished or my friends want to start new characters for kicks. Or if there is a MUST-HAVE mf character that isn't the barb, then I will create one of those.
I think it's worth mentioning that (for me) each time I switch from one character to the other, I have a lot of fun (except on the Monk - snooze fest). Even with the limited skills we have in Beta there's so many different combinations and situations you can use them in that you end up doing something a little different every time.
On that topic, I'd like to mention that I rarely come across anyone using the exact same build that I do on any of my characters - so blizzard has definetely already achieved that class skill variation they were looking for. Hopefully that holds up in end-game as well - I cant see how it wouldnt since as all the new skills, "runes", and passives are introduced the possible number of combinations jumps massively.
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Liquid Cooled Intel I7 2700k OC'd to 5.0ghz at a max pull of 1.44v ~ 19-21C Idle ~ 68C max under load.
16GB G Skill Ram ~ 2x Mushkin 120GB SSD's ~ MSI GTX 570 Twin Frozer ~ Asus P8P67 Deluxe
I was taking your WD review seriously until you said Grasp of the Dead was just an average spell.
Looks like you went into the WD with low expectations, and are now grasping at straws to keep it that way.
Grasp of the Dead is probably my favorite WD spell at the moment. It's like an AOE DoT that ticks pretty damn hard. I'd say on my WD it does about 70% of the killing during trash and I use it as a suplimental DoT on SK.
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Liquid Cooled Intel I7 2700k OC'd to 5.0ghz at a max pull of 1.44v ~ 19-21C Idle ~ 68C max under load.
16GB G Skill Ram ~ 2x Mushkin 120GB SSD's ~ MSI GTX 570 Twin Frozer ~ Asus P8P67 Deluxe
I was taking your WD review seriously until you said Grasp of the Dead was just an average spell.
Looks like you went into the WD with low expectations, and are now grasping at straws to keep it that way.
Grasp of the Dead is probably my favorite WD spell at the moment. It's like an AOE DoT that ticks pretty damn hard. I'd say on my WD it does about 70% of the killing during trash and I use it as a suplimental DoT on SK.
Yup its powerful. An AoE dot that slows as well and can be placed anywhere on the screen? Yes please.
I was taking your WD review seriously until you said Grasp of the Dead was just an average spell. lol?
Looks like you went into the WD with low expectations, and are now grasping at straws to keep it that way.
It takes a few ticks to kill the targets in the area of effect where most skills one-shot things. I was simply looking ahead to when mobs have more life in later difficulties and seeing that it will be more useful for the snare than the damage. This with the cool-down is where my "average damage" comment came from. I could be completely wrong!
In the beta it's fairly useful as a barrel-buster and one more damage type to stack on crowds while throwing spider jars and other things.
Thanks for all the feedback! When I have more time I'll try to be a bigger part of the conversation. Really looking forward to reading Kankle's post.
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30 years old sharing a home with a very patient, non-gamer girlfriend.
Playing Diablo since age 15
Always plays the rogue/theif character
Frequently plays with techno/industrial blasting
I decided to wait until I completed the Betamaxed achievement (all classes to level 13) to share my opinions of them.
Bam, done!
Before actual hands-on gameplay, my character list in order of preference was:
-Demon Hunter
-Monk
-Wizard
-Barbarian
-Witch Doctor
The same list after achieving Betamaxed:
-Demon Hunter
-Barbarian
-Wizard
-Monk
-Witch Doctor
My first and last choice remained unaffected in their placement, but became more solidly cemented there. I love DH and dislike WD even more than before.
Now, don't get me wrong, WD fans! The class is great, it was definitely enjoyable playing one, its just not my personal playstyle. As a DH fan I can't imagine a better partner than a skilled WD to keep everything at range for some crossbow destruction.
Breaking it down per-class;
Each pic below is my personal end result of leveling to 13. Each character is wearing mostly crafted gear, some AH gear is mixed in as I was testing out how that system worked (both gold and betabucks). But the AH is 95% crafted gear and 5% random rare item drops. There are currently no known legendary items so every player is riding the same gear level give or take a few dps.
Demon Hunter
-This is an extremely fast paced character. I'm able to dish out more damage with a DH than any of the others.
-Un-runed Rapid Fire is a beast on single target and perfectly usable on crowds (in beta at least). I plan to use this as a primary skill through 60.
-Chakram is awesome AoE that felt much more controllable in person than it looks on youtube (skill improvement in the patch maybe?). Low cost makes it very spammable, you can cover the entire screen with these things.
-I expected to use vault all the time but it kinda sucks. You can only use it 2-3 times back to back so it's definitely not usable as a travel skill (I know it wasn't intended as one, but we all thought of it anyway). It's only function is in-combat maneuvers. Meh. I'd rather have ferrets.
-One major thing bugs me; If I have a 22dps hand-crossbow equipped and then equip an 18dps hand-crossbow, my dps stat lowers. According to my stat sheet I do more dps with one hand empty. I get it I guess, I mean, if I have to alternate attacks between weapons then the hungering arrow fired from my off-hand will do lower damage than the higher damage one I could have fired if that weapon weren't equipped. Both weapons have to be equal damage (or extremely close) for there to be a dps gain.
Compounding this is the new damage bonus added to quivers. A quiver is now treated like a sorceress focus or a WD mojo. It's an off-hand item with a static +damage bonus followed by random stats. This, at least in the beta, results in a quiver always dealing more damage than dual crossbows. In this scenario it doesn't matter which weapon you choose; bow, hand-crossbow, or crossbow, since each can be used with a quiver. Not my preferred play style.
Barbarian
-If playing a DH is like piloting an F-117 Nighthawk, playing a barbarian is like filling Optimus Prime with rocket fuel and flooring it.
-Even with a 10 second cool down Leap Attack makes this a surprisingly fast paced character. You can jump between levels in a dungeon without bothering to look for stairs, which is usually rewarded with a cannon ball blood splash into a pool of enemies.
-He punches skeletons so hard they blood-splode (Cleave/Rupture).
-Frenzy is effective but lackluster. Bash is much more rewarding. Every time my barb bashes a zombie's face off it's skull (and its faceless skull off my screen), my subwoofer bashes my internal organs. So awesome.
-Hammer of the ancients is the completely unecessary icing on the murder cake. You kill just as fast if you never use it, but it has this ridiculous effect of bouncing enemies off the floor and to the ionosphere, so I can't resist throwing it down at least once in the middle of a crowd.
-I have no idea why the dps stat looks so low on this character, its not representative of his damage at all. He's a monster.
-He even idle's like a man, spitting a meaty glop on the ground and wiping his face with the back of his hand.
Wizard
-A sleek, sexy character. So much so that I couldn't bring myself to roll a male like my other chars. If I wanted to be represented by a man with eyeliner and perfect cheek bones I'd get an Adam Lambert t-shirt.
-Sorceress fans will be happy. I had a 99 sorc in D2 and can tell you that they play very much the same. They're SO similar that I just now realized I saved the picture as "Sorceress"... whoops. Some of the skills are direct copies of sorc skills; magic missile is a reskinned firebolt, shock pulse is charged bolt, frost nova is nova.
-Wizard is a complete light show. The most impressive skill I have access to is Arcane Torrent (click to see skill). In the picture I have runed magic missile, but I much preferred electrocute. I was messing around and forgot to change it back.
-This class is a combination of Lisa Frank and Heavy Metal. It can dish out extreme damage but feels moderately paced. Attacks are either light flickers or big booms. Not the shot of adrenaline rush that DH and Barb carry.
Monk
-Originally I was torn between Monk and DH as I was a huge Assassin fan in D2 (a 99 with around a half dozen others in their 90s with different builds). After playing the monk I was at first disappointed, but since then I've realized that the class is very solid, it just isn't for me. I don't feel the assassin vibe at all. If you were a paladin fan I think you'll find a home here (I didn't like paladins either, but knew they were solid teammates).
-In D2 I swapped out skills like crazy while attacking, in D3 I planned to play the monk the same way. I expected to use Deadly Reach for the first two parts of a combo and exploding palm for the final hit to apply the big boom. Technically, you CAN do this, but it's not very fluid. The three attacks of a single skill chain together well because they're animated together. If you interject a second skill into the mix it feels like you're stopping the attack and starting a new one. I have no idea if it actually takes longer or not, I just know what it feels like. Breakin ma flow maaan.
-Sticking with combo skills instead of mixing them is a much better play experience but leaves me unfulfilled for some reason. The monk looks like a sports car but drives like a pickup.
-I can see the monk being a player favorite. He's the yin to the Barb yang, hitting 5 times for every single barbarian haymaker. At higher levels I'm sure the pace picks up but I don't see it changing from the mechanical, controlled combos that form it's foundation. Between dodge and heals It's also a very safe character to play so should be big in HC.
Witch Doctor
-I was excited to play this class because I wanted to see it in a different light. Other reviews and videos had me thinking it was boring.
-Witch Doctor is boring. Please take that as my opinion, I'm absolutely not stating that as some sort of fact. For some reason it seems to be the most played character in the beta so I completely understand it just isn't made for me. Every game I join has a witch doctor or two in it. Maybe that's just my experience though.
-This class is pure chaos. Very little about it is controlled. Between throwing frogs and spiders around (self targetting skills) and summoning zombie dogs (self targetting skills) there isn't much you can do to choose what you're attacking. Poison darts work, but even runed it's a glorified firebolt. Grasp of the dead is an average damage aoe on a cooldown. Firebomb at level 11 is okay, not great, but okay. I didn't feel comfortable at all until I got firebats at level 12 which really only amounts to a sorceress' old inferno skill. At least it's aimable and does solid damage!
-In harder difficulties the WD will be a co-op superstar. He'll be able to hold enemies at bay while teammates do his bidding, like they're just a few more of his many pets. In this way he's rockin like a boss. Start coming up with your funny pimp names now, guys, because you'll be turning other players out.
One final note; I greatly dislike the way the game displays your battletag instead of your character's unique name. Now, I chose a battletag I like a lot and use in a lot of games (Kinetic) so for me it's not that bad. Though I'd prefer my Barbarian be known as Brimstone (way more beefy and barb like) he shows up in game as Kinetic (both under my portrait and over my head). The only time you see "Brimstone" is when I talk in chat. If you're in a game with more than two people that leaves people wondering who the hell Brimstone is.
Most people seem to have chosen battletags without regard for display in game. You might have a kickass Monk named BruceLeeroy but as far as I can tell your name is ssjsephiroth. All of your characters are ssjsephiroth no matter what you named them at character creation if you decided to joke around with your battletag when you made it. Not cool bliz.
No one point out how old I sound using that as my "stereotypically bad name".
I hope this helps people still learning about the classes! It was the best way I could think of to say thanks for the beta key
I think you overestimates the DH because your's have quite a good DPS while other classes don't. DPS is not really an class thing, with proper gear every class can have more or less the same DPS.
A good way to judge and compere classes is using gear that gives equal DPS. Personally I think the strongest class is the wizard and the barbarian, then the DH and the WD and monk in the last.
I was able to level a DH to 12 before the newest patch buffed them and wiped the chars and there is definitely a difference. Before the patch their damage was just ok. If anything I'm happy to see that they're completely capable of being top dps after having heard so many disappointing reviews. Before I played the game myself I was starting to worry, but it appears blizzard has addressed the issue.
Hope you stick around, too!
+1rep
My own personal preferences
Barb
DH
Monk
Wiz
WD
Doomwolf (Male Demon Hunter)
Kainé (Female Monk) - Nier Reference
Mod- NO NOOB BAHAHAHAHA! *goes to play beta*
Me- /wrists
~Dan
I'll follow your format:
Preference Prior to Start:
Barbarian
Witch Doctor
Wizard
Demon Hunter
Monk
Preference Now:
Barbarian (For Sure!)
Demon Hunter / Wizard
Witch Doctor
.....
..
...
.......
Monk
I spent the first day of my beta experience running one of each class through the content and then leveling them to 13. It really took very little time. If anyone watches the Force videos you might have heard him mention that there is very little content - this is true. This morning, just to see how quickly I could do it, I ran another barb (from scratch) all the way through to SK including the kill in 21 minutes. I was fortunate to pick the right crypt once and go the right directions in the Cathedral but on my other "from scratch" runs I still average somewhere between 25 and 30 minutes. If I felt like completely avoiding as many fights as possible I don't doubt that 17-20 minutes is pretty possible. Anyways....
I spent most of today grinding SK (Skeleton King) runs through the Cathedral for crafting mats and gold. My Barb is sitting on 100.05 DPS at the moment with all of my other classes running somewhere between the low 70's and the high 80's. Now that each is pretty well geared and I've had time to play with all the classes and skills (that are available) I feel I can give a pretty good review:
Barbarian: Truly a lot of fun. I was fearful that since I usually play this type of class it might be getting a bit lackluster and old, and for the first 8-9 levels, I thought I had confirmed that suspicion. At around level 10 (and this is true for all the classes) things really open up. Even with the limited content available I've found that this class is just a riot to toy around with. The OP's comment about Frenzy is accurate... it works but it's a bit boring when compared to Bash with reverbs. The DPS is roughly equivalent so... no big deal.
Demon Hunter: A little boring early on but then again at-or-around level 10 things start to open up. I think it's Strafe that really brings the fun here. The skills available this early in the beta really work well together and you can combo nicely with the Demon Hunter. Really a lot of fun.
Wizard: That Arcane Blast is intense once it's runed. Cast one and watch a room full of people explode. Again, there's a good mix of skills available later on but unlike the other classes you actually start having fun with the Wizard earlier on (or at least I did).
Witch Doctor: Good all around and again at around level 10 it starts to really give you some good options to work with. That being said, even at level 13 with all the available skills the techniques start to feel a bit disjointed. I can't find a setup that I really like with this class but every time I play it I still have fun watching all the animations.
Monk: I don't remotely care for this class. It just feels boring and I don't know if it's just me but I feel like the Spirit pool just build way too slow and then runs out entirely too fast. I really hope some good alternatives show up later on because the skills present currently in the beta just aren't doing it for me.
On another note, for anyone worried about the skill swapping and the much feared "lack of uniqueness" or "investment" - I was with you originally. Having played with it now, I really enjoy it. For one, after I found a skillset I liked, I rarely changed any of them so you won't be swapping on the fly as often as people might think. Additionally it's really nice to be able to switch from an AOE-based build for mob destruction to a more Single-Target one for bosses.
I'll edit this and post more in a bit - I'll prolly upload some character shots also, I just wanted to weight in on the topic while takin a quick break from the beta madness.
Now back to trying to bug stuff out so I can give feedback - If you get a key I encourage you to do the same. Figure out the exploits before it goes live, a good launch is always key for a game's success.
16GB G Skill Ram ~ 2x Mushkin 120GB SSD's ~ MSI GTX 570 Twin Frozer ~ Asus P8P67 Deluxe
Witch Doctor
Barbarian
Wizard
Demon Hunter
Monk
Barb
DH
WD
Monk
Wiz
I honestly don't have a strong desire to play anything but the Barb, though. I probably won't make alts until my Barb is near finished or my friends want to start new characters for kicks. Or if there is a MUST-HAVE mf character that isn't the barb, then I will create one of those.
Looks like you went into the WD with low expectations, and are now grasping at straws to keep it that way.
On that topic, I'd like to mention that I rarely come across anyone using the exact same build that I do on any of my characters - so blizzard has definetely already achieved that class skill variation they were looking for. Hopefully that holds up in end-game as well - I cant see how it wouldnt since as all the new skills, "runes", and passives are introduced the possible number of combinations jumps massively.
16GB G Skill Ram ~ 2x Mushkin 120GB SSD's ~ MSI GTX 570 Twin Frozer ~ Asus P8P67 Deluxe
Grasp of the Dead is probably my favorite WD spell at the moment. It's like an AOE DoT that ticks pretty damn hard. I'd say on my WD it does about 70% of the killing during trash and I use it as a suplimental DoT on SK.
16GB G Skill Ram ~ 2x Mushkin 120GB SSD's ~ MSI GTX 570 Twin Frozer ~ Asus P8P67 Deluxe
Yup its powerful. An AoE dot that slows as well and can be placed anywhere on the screen? Yes please.
It takes a few ticks to kill the targets in the area of effect where most skills one-shot things. I was simply looking ahead to when mobs have more life in later difficulties and seeing that it will be more useful for the snare than the damage. This with the cool-down is where my "average damage" comment came from. I could be completely wrong!
In the beta it's fairly useful as a barrel-buster and one more damage type to stack on crowds while throwing spider jars and other things.
Thanks for all the feedback! When I have more time I'll try to be a bigger part of the conversation. Really looking forward to reading Kankle's post.